More poise, not noise, what Giants need most
Rah-rah leadership wouldn’t make players better than they’ve been
Would the Giants be a better ballclub if Buster Posey could channel his inner Draymond Green?
Since Posey is the Giants’ best ballplayer, and their catcher, and an eight-year veteran, should he be busting his team out of its doldrums by smashing up clubhouse furniture and flipping spreads (old-school term for angrily destroying team buffet tables)?
That was the inference from a recent Fox Sports story, in which author Ken Rosenthal wondered whether the Giants’ clubhouse is too sedate. Not edgy. Which perhaps translates to the Giants’ less-than-dynamic performance on the field.
It’s a topic worth batting around, especially since we have seen the effect Green has on the Warriors, who, somewhat like the Giants, are a quiet team.
Green stirs the pot, keeps guys on high alert, challenges and irritates. He leads by the force of his personality.
Is that what the Giants need?
Well, to an extent that used to be the job of Hunter Pence. It could be that injuries and his subpar performance this season have sapped some of Pence’s fire and brimstone.
Does Posey need to step into that cheerleader gap?
I wanted to ask him Wednesday, but he was in a hurry before the game. He granted me an 80-second interview, in which we talked about his hitting but didn’t get to the clubhouse stuff.
So we’ll just go with my opinion here, which I believe is similar to that of manager Bruce Bochy, who opined that the Fox story was much ado about nothing. Or as Bochy put it, “pole vaulting over mouse turds.”
Shakespeare couldn’t carry Bochy’s jock.
Maybe the Giants could use some more fire, but baseball isn’t basketball. The emotional intensity that a guy like Green can stoke in his team is nothing like the lower-grade burn and evenkeel focus required in the grinding, more languid game of baseball.
Draymond couldn’t play major-league baseball. He’d be dead in a week, either from the exhaustion of being geeked four hours per night, or beaten to death by teammates who are just trying to eat their pregame meal in peace, for God’s sake.
Meanwhile, quiet old Buster Ballgame is hitting at a Hall of Fame level, and his catching is still stellar — he threw out two would-be base-stealers in extra innings Tuesday night. And to show he’s not Buster Blasé, Posey has mixed in a couple blow-ups at teammate Brandon Belt (for not covering first, not scoring from second).
Lost in this train-wreck-within-a-dumpster-fire of a Giants season is Posey, who so far is doing his best hitting.
Posey was the league MVP and batting champion in 2012 when he hit .336 and had an OPS of .957. This season he’s hitting .344, tops in the major leagues, and has an OPS of .951, well above his career OPS of .855.
The case could be made that Posey’s numbers this year are more impressive than those of 2012. That season Posey had a sweet niche in the batting order, behind hot-hitting (thanks at least partly to the juice) Melky Cabrera.
And you know how they say hitting is contagious? The 2012 Giants could hit. The current crew ... not so much, as you may have noticed.
Last season Posey hit .288. I asked him Wednesday whether he changed his approach, changed anything.
“Yeah,” he said, “just kind of the way I’ve been practicing, just practicing on getting the ball up in the air a little bit more. I think it’s translated and helped my path. It has to do with the path and the way you go through the zone. It can be pretty minor, but it can make a difference for sure.”
Is this a change he made in the offseason?
“I started thinking about it in the offseason, just the way I go about practicing,” he said. “And so far it’s been good.”
Another batting title? Posey shrugged.
“Of course, I’d like to do it,” he said, “but we’ve still got three months of the season left, so long way to go, and obviously the main focus is trying to get on track and rack up some wins.”
The Giants won three World Series since Posey arrived, which is exactly three more than they would have won without him.
If the Giants were winning right now, if Madison Bumgarner and the other team leaders were having the kinds of seasons they’re expected to have, we would now be praising the calm, steadying poise and presence of old Posey.
What the Giants need isn’t more Buster Posey. What the Giants need is more Buster Poseys.