Giants’ young pitching explosion doesn’t happen without Posey

Ray Black’s fastball shoots out of his hand at 100 miles per hour. Reyes Moronta’s fourseamer is nearly as blinding.

Starters Andrew Suárez and Dereck Rodríguez have heaters that routinely touch the low-tomid 90s, and neither pitcher is afraid to throw their fastballs on both sides of the plate.

Baseball is changing and to break into the big leagues, a pitcher must throw hard and must induce whiffs. To stick around, a rookie’s best bet is to listen to Buster Posey.

“Whatever he’s going to call, I never shake him off because he knows more than me,” Suárez said. “It’s crazy how he adapts in the game.”

Posey didn’t play in Tuesday’s All-star Game, as a hip ailment requiring a cortisone shot prevented him from joining the rest of baseball’s elite. If he did suit up, Posey would have entered the game in the middle-to-late innings as a reserve, which is when the Giants catcher appears to be at the top of his game.

Twice last week, Posey showcased his remarkable feel for calling pitches with first-year pitchers on the mound deep in games.

Before he smashed a walkoff single in the 13th inning of a 5-4 The San Francisco Giants’ Buster Posey sits in the dugout before their MLB game at AT&T Park in San Francisco on June 22.

win over the Cubs, Posey caught three scoreless innings of relief from Rodríguez, who marveled at the veteran’s feel for the situation.

“Pitches I haven’t thrown at all,” Rodríguez said, when asked what Posey called. “He’s probably called them with other guys but with me he never called them. Today, I guess he knew with the confidence I have that I could execute those pitches and I felt comfortable throwing them.”

With the bases loaded and no one out in the seventh inning of Friday’s game, Posey developed

a plan for Moronta. Instead of having the reliever greet A’s hitter Chad Pinder with 98-mile per hour heat, three of the first four pitches Posey called were soft sliders.

After two fastballs, Posey went back to the well and asked for a breaking ball. Moronta recorded a strike out and soon escaped the bases loaded jam unharmed. The one-run lead the rookie preserved turned into a 7-1 Giants win.

“That’s Buster at his best,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “Handling the staff and in particular the young guys. They have so much confidence in him and they’re on the mound and they’re looking at one of the best catchers ever in the game.”

A fastball will get a pitcher to the big leagues, but Posey expects younger players to refine their secondary offerings if they want to stay there. He understands how hitters adjust and he knows what works in the first inning doesn’t always have the same effect in the seventh.

“My changeup has gotten better and he’s told me to start focusing on it between starts,” Suárez said. “Throwing the slider up was a big game-changer for me. I had never done that and he calls it. He’s helped me out a lot and he has a lot of confidence in me.”

Despite losing their top three starters to injuries during the first half of the year, the Giants are 4.0 games out in the National League West thanks to the emergence of rookie pitchers.

After a rough beginning to his career, Suárez has posted a 2.75 ERA since the start of June. Rodríguez’s 2.91 mark in the same time frame has been just as critical, as he’s recorded five quality starts while demonstrating the ability to pitch deep into games.

Moronta is one of the Giants’ top relievers, possessing a 1.93 ERA and the valuable talent of stranding inherited runners. Black may not be far behind, as he rebounded from a terrible major league debut with three straight scoreless outings.

Though all four rookies figure to have important roles during the second half, the Giants will need even more out of Posey, who is enduring one of the most challenging seasons of his career.

Aside from having to help new arms assimilate to the highest level, Posey has played through pain that’s curbed his power and limited him to starting about three quarters of the Giants’ games.

“Everybody’s got stuff they’re dealing with,” Posey said. “You try not to make more of it than what it is. If I hadn’t been fortunate to go to the All-star Game, you guys probably wouldn’t know about it.”

Despite hitting just five home runs and posting a .774 OPS in the first half, his lowest mark since an injury-shortened 2011 season, Posey was still selected to his sixth All-star team. His reputation among his peers landed him the spot, but the Giants’ youngest pitchers are proving that the status he has achieved is deserved.

“They trust him,” Madison Bumgarner said. “He’s good, it’s not just them trusting him, he’s seen everybody for the most part and he’s smart. He’s a baseball guy. There’s not really anything that he don’t do.”