Giants catcher Buster Posey, right, reflects on his career and life as he turns 30.
Catcher not giving in to notion of decline as he hits milestone
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The sun will set Sunday and rise Monday as it always has. Nothing will change for Buster Posey, aside from the imaginary partition his mind will construct at the behest of an artifice known as the calendar. Posey turns 30 on Monday. When everyday folks reach that age, they roll their eyes, quaff a few drinks with friends and mourn the passing of their Bacchanalian youth. For baseball players, turning 30 means much more. It places them at the top of a bell curve.
The rise to the left is “up and coming.” The drop to the right is “natural decline.” That is the perception, for outsiders as well as the players, at least in their mind.
Posey understands this. On an early spring training morning, hours before speaking to a Chronicle reporter about the impending milestone, Posey and his wife, Kristin, had the conversation. He told her he had to bust through that mental partition or ignore it entirely.
“We were talking about how I think there’s somewhat of a stigma to turning 30, and how it’s important for me to not become a victim of that or fall prey to that, and just be appreciative of feeing good and feeling healthy,” Posey said.
“It’s easy to say, if you feel something, ‘Oh, I’m 30 now.’ I might have felt the same thing when I was 25. It’s important for me to understand that it’s just a number, and if I prepare the way I should, I’m going to feel great every day.
“At least I’m going to tell myself that.”
Posey still has much to do in baseball. What he has done already places him on a Hall of Fame track.
He has been a central player on three World Series championship teams. He has won a batting title, National League Rookie of the Year honors and the league’s Most Valuable Player Award.
He has overcome a horrific leg injury that spawned a significant rule change on runners attacking catchers. Unofficially, it’s called the Posey Rule, which he hates.
He has also raised his game-calling, throwing, pitch framing and leadership behind the plate enough to unseat the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina as the best defensive catcher in the National League. Posey won the Gold Glove Award, voted on by managers, coaches and fans, for the first time last season.
Posey has caught three no-hitters, including Matt Cain’s perfect game. Two days after he turned 26, Posey signed a nine-year, $167 million contract, still the biggest in club history. He has made millions more in endorsements.
Posey’s curriculum vitae is enough to make an ordinary Joe examine his life and ask himself, “What the heck did I accomplish before I was 30?”
“It’s very hard to imagine he’s only 30 with that resume,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who shared the spring-training clubhouse with Posey in 2009 as the 21-year-old catcher was beginning his career and Roberts was ending his.
“The way he carries himself, his respect for the game, hasn’t changed,” Roberts said.
Bengie Molina was there at the beginning, too. He was the Giants’ catcher, an accomplished receiver with a World Series ring, who in 2010 would be pushed out of San Francisco in a trade with the Rangers so Posey could assume the role the Giants envisioned when they selected him with the fifth pick of the 2008 amateur draft.
Asked to assess Posey’s rise since then, Molina said, “Where do I start?
“Catching-wise, he’s four times better than when he started. He got comfortable behind the plate. I love watching his game. The way he controls the pitching, he’s amazing. Hitting, everybody knows he can hit. MVP and all that. And now a Gold Glove.
“The way he came on is exactly what we saw coming.”
Posey might be fulfilling his destiny, but his road to 30 has not been straight. More like a wave.
He hit .305 with 18 homers in 2010 on the way to his Rookie of the Year award. He lasted only two months in 2011 before Florida’s Scott Cousins barreled into him at home plate, leaving Posey with a broken leg and three torn ankle ligaments. He returned in 2012, won the batting title at .336 and hit 24 home runs with a .957 OPS to secure his MVP award.
Posey has not come close to replicating those numbers, however. He hit .303 over the next four seasons with an .830 OPS, and averaged 17.5 home runs a year.
Last year Posey’s OPS dipped below .800 for the first time in a full season while he hit a career-low 14 homers.
The natural question is, why? The easy answer — which might or might not be the right answer — is that age plus the accumulation of innings caught has equaled an offensive decline.
“How many years has he been squatting?” one longtime major-league evaluator asked rhetorically when quizzed on Posey’s offensive numbers.
If the physical burden of catching has suppressed Posey’s power and production, the lineup could suffer as Posey moves into his 30s because neither he nor the team is keen on a move to the infield.
However, Giants officials continually dismiss the idea of a sliding scale, with Posey’s offense dipping as his career games caught rises. Perhaps his MVP-year numbers were an outlier created by a better supporting cast.
Indeed, the 2012 lineup was the strongest of the three championship teams. Posey
batted behind Melky Cabrera, a .346 hitter who reached base 39 percent of the time. When Cabrera was suspended for the rest of the season in mid-August, Pablo Sandoval moved to the third spot.
When Posey was asked whether he thought his position has prevented him from approaching his 2012 MVP numbers, he pondered his answer for several moments.
“Who’s to say?” he said. “You add up the number of games the previous five years, it’s hard to say if it has or not. I’ll say no.”
Posey views 2012 from a more oblique angle, in the context of returning from his leg injury.
“When I think back to that year, it wasn’t like I was striving to put up those numbers,” he said. “My biggest goal was to stay on the field.
“Sometimes I wish I could get back to that mind-set. Sometimes I do strive to get to a certain point, more so than being in the day and what I need to accomplish that day.”
Posey has achieved his fame under the intense illumination of the social-media era, with no personal blemishes.
In eight-major league seasons, the father of 5-year-old twins has not generated a single negative headline off the field with an inflammatory comment or act. If he has any skeletons in his closet, they are well-hidden.
He has been the West Coast’s Derek Jeter. Posey’s approach is calculated, but at the same time genuine.
“I hope that is who I am,” he said. “I think it’s important to me, especially being a father, to set a good example, first and foremost for my children, but then for other kids out there as well. It’s definitely something I’m aware of.
“I don’t know if you believe it or not, but there are times when there are certain things I’ve wanted to say that would probably cause more ruckus than the normal stuff that I say. A lot of that is planned because I don’t want to become a distraction.
“I think some guys might have good intentions, but the stuff they say or don’t say becomes more about them than the team.”
Posey is the undisputed clubhouse leader who rules by example, buoyed by the weight of all he accomplished in his 20s. His subjects also enjoy a wicked sense of humor that Posey hides from the public.
One story from way back illustrates Posey’s whimsy — and guts.
Posey was a rookie in 2009 when scowling Randy Johnson ended his career with the Giants. As they boarded a team flight, Posey was walking in front of Johnson, who sought a row near the front for his 6-foot-10 frame. All three seats. Posey turned around and asked the Big Unit if he wanted the aisle or window. Even as a joke it was bold, given Johnson’s temperament and Posey being a novitiate.
“He kind of looked at me funny for a minute, and then I ran to the back,” Posey said.
Eight years later, Posey gets first pick of seats. He is turning 30, and people are expected to respect their elders, right? “When I think back to (the MVP season of 2012), it wasn’t like I was striving to put up those numbers. My biggest goal was to stay on the field. Sometimes I wish I could get back to that mind-set.” Buster Posey
He begins his fourth decade already established as one of the best players of his era and one of history’s best at his position. If he completes his contract, he will be a Giant until he is 34 — 35 if the club exercises its option for 2022.
He just returned from the World Baseball Classic, where he might have witnessed his future in Puerto Rico’s Yadier Molina, the gold standard for catchers for more than a decade. Molina hit .307 last year, when he turned 34. He and the Cardinals are not pondering his replacement. To the contrary, they are negotiating an extension.
“Yadi caught 140 games last year,” Posey said. “I definitely can look at him and be inspired by him doing that.”
Molina should find the road to Cooperstown well-marked. While the Hall of Fame is too far down the horizon for Posey — he has not played enough years — many of his numbers and accomplishments through age 29 compare favorably to those of the enshrined catchers.
“I see stuff, or hear people say something, but that’s a long ways away,” Posey said. “I look at guys like Pudge Rodriguez, who got in the Hall of Fame this year, and how the longevity of his career compares to mine. That’s a long way to go.”