Buster Posey and the Giants are back for today’s FanFest.
Giants catcher enters 2019 season as hungry as ever
Buster Posey looked out over his rain-soaked kingdom, now known as Oracle Park, and reflected on the fact that his 10th full major-league season is about to start. “It’s kind of like having children,” Posey said Friday. “Sometimes the days and weeks are so long, then you look up and it’s their eighth birthday and you think, ‘What the heck happened?’ “That’s kind of baseball.”
And, just like with growing kids, sometimes you look up and your team is almost unrecognizable from what it was just a short time ago. What the heck happened?
That’s the place Posey finds himself, almost six months removed from right hip surgery and more than four years removed from his last championship parade. The three World Series trophies are in a glass case, but the franchise feels very different these days.
“I’ve always felt very fortunate to be part of an organization that tries to put a team on the field that has a chance to make the playoffs, to just get in and have a chance to compete in October, and I sure hope that’s still the case,” Posey said. “That’s all I can hope for. That it’s still the case.”
New president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi is in place to rebuild the operation. But the most important Giant, who will turn 32 in March, doesn’t sound like he’s crazy about the term “rebuilding.” He made that clear when he said he was fully on board for adding superstar Bryce Harper, who met with the Giants in Las Vegas this week.
“Sign him up,” Posey said. “What team out there wouldn’t want a Bryce Harper or a Manny Machado or a lot of these free agents?
“We want the best competition, so you know you’re going to see a great game. Not like, ‘Oh these guys are in a rebuilding mode.’ We’ve got to figure out a way that, in each game, the fans have the feeling
the competition is at its highest.”
Posey is still the Giants’ anchor. After an offseason of front office change and speculation about a roster upheaval, he remains the bedrock.
Posey tracked the Giants’ changes as he worked in the East Bay to rehabilitate his right hip. His August surgery followed one of the deluge of injuries that swamped the Giants roster last season and derailed whatever hopes the team had of making the playoffs.
There was no single moment when Posey realized he needed hip surgery. It was a slow deterioration. But now he feels significantly different.
“I’ve been able to train more normally and get the right type of muscles activating that I haven’t felt for a few years,” Posey said. “In my weight lifting, I can tell the correct muscles are able to engage.”
Though Zaidi said the team would err on the side of caution with Posey, the catcher is optimistic that he will be active in spring training and ready to go by Opening Day.
“Optimistically, I feel I’ll be able to catch as I have in the past,” Posey said, noting that he learned a lot about the rehabilitation process when he fractured his ankle in 2011. “That’s my personal expectation. That’s what I’m hoping for.”
Posey was relaxed and reflective at Friday’s FanFest Media Day, looking out at the enormous scoreboard that is still under construction and wondering how it may impact his view from behind home plate. He described the maneuver he was doing — a onelegged Russian Dead Lift — when he first felt the right side of his gluteus maximus engage (“TMI?” he wondered). He said fixing his hip means improved rotation, which should help his power numbers and his running, “so I expect to steal 20.” When a television microphone fell off the table in front of him, Posey snatched it out of the air, equally quick with a quip: “See? The hands are good.”
Posey did not go on the recruiting visit to Las Vegas to meet with Harper. He’s done so in the past, during the team’s pitches to Shohei Ohtani and Jon Lester.
“Maybe it’s superstition,” Posey joked. “Every time I reach out they seem to go somewhere else.”
He hasn’t spent a lot of time talking to longtime batterymate Madison Bumgarner (“Nobody talks to him in the offseason”) or reflecting on possible life without Bumgarner, the subject of trade speculation.
“I sure hope we’re in a position where that’s out of the question,” Posey said, meaning that the team would be in contention.
He hopes the team is in a position where, after a quiet offseason, it can go after some bigger names.
“I’m hopeful we’re in the position where we say we’re making those improvements and we have a chance to be there at the end of this long season,” he said. “I understand how people can get down about the last couple of years, but I do believe that we have guys here that have it in them still to play better than we have the last couple of years.
“I think that if we can get in that mode, one that a lot of us have experienced in the past, that we can make a run at being back to where this city deserves the team to be.”
When he thinks about it, Posey is shocked at what has happened over the past two seasons to the team he led to three championships.
“That’s fair to say,” he said. “If it didn’t shock you then you’re not in a really good mind-set. I know one way you’re not going to win is to go into the season thinking you’re not going to win. That’s a guarantee.”
And, perhaps, a pointed message to management.