{"id":753488,"date":"2026-06-22T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753488\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:24:09","slug":"where-is-buster-posey-mccovey-chronicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/753488\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Buster Posey? | McCovey Chronicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a bit since Buster Posey last made public comments. He was practically front and center during the last road trip when he traveled with the team, but since then, the team has gotten worse<\/a>, some unpleasantness has taken place<\/a>, and whatever\u2019s going on in the clubhouse<\/a> seems to have bubbled over into the field of play<\/a>. So, last week\u2019s SB Nation Reacts survey was well timed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Poll respondents were asked, \u201cHow has Buster Posey done as President of Baseball Operations?\u201d<\/p>\n

This seems like a pretty straightforward question designed to solicit a straightforward response. For whatever we think about Buster Posey the Hall of Fame bound catcher, none of that could possibly apply to his cannonball into the deep end of the executive suite.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m of the belief that the captain of a ship is responsible for the behavior of his crew, I understand why fans would want to saddle the poor play and the worse behavior onto the players themselves. We would have to ignore that Buster Posey put together the clubhouse that\u2019s populated with these weirdos, bozos, and abject losers, but being a fan means that ignoring aspects of a team is one of our superpowers. So, let\u2019s look beyond all that, even.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no pitching. Not really. They\u2019re lucky to have the previous front office\u2019s development success in Logan Webb, but after that, it\u2019s Backend Starter Theater.The Rafael Devers deal, which already wasn\u2019t going to work out for the team in the long-run looks like a dead weight in the short-run, too<\/a>.Willy Adames is probably on a 30-homer pace again and plausibly a season similar to last season (108 wRC+), but he\u2019s hardly the captain<\/a> he seemed like he was going to be when the year started and it seems pretty clear, too, that his best days are behind even him already.<\/p>\n

With those two big deals on the books, the Giants had to go out and solicit more investment in the offseason just to boost their Baseball Operations budget enough to support this year\u2019s team. Were the fringe additions of Tyler Mahle and Adrian Houser sensible dollars? Or the pennies thrown at the bullpen? Most fans would say no. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s reasonable to hold subpar players to a higher standard. It\u2019s not as though their track records were unknown to us during the offseason.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the Devers and Adames deals (on top of the previous front office\u2019s commitments to Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman, Robbie Ray, and Logan Webb), it\u2019s the way Posey has spent at the manager\u2019s position. Thanks to picking up Bob Melvin\u2019s option only to fire him \u2014 Posey\u2019s decision! Not the behavior of the players \u2014 the Giants are spending $10.5 million on the manager\u2019s position in 2026. An outrageous sum of money indicative of someone in charge who doesn\u2019t have a handle on their responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Now, it was only a month ago that I joked about how Buster Posey needs to sign himself to a 2-year extension<\/a> so that he\u2019s forced to stick with the Giants for 5 seasons and really make a go of this whole President of Baseball Operations thing, but the hiring of Tony Vitello has been such an error in judgment and his silence about the ongoing anti-Pride Night protest very surprising to see, that there\u2019s no real value in him continuing on past 2027 \u2014 if there\u2019s even a 2027 season.<\/p>\n

Yes, his \u201clegacy\u201d as an executive might be a bit more positive in the long run should the team\u2019s player development system become a real strength of the organization, but we\u2019ve said that about the last couple of executives running the show. By the way, on that note, Buster\u2019s off to the second worst start of the Giants\u2019 top baseball executive in franchise history (or, at least, since Baseball Reference started keeping tabs on who a team\u2019s chief baseball executive was). Here\u2019s how he stacks up through his first 239 regular season games:<\/p>\n

Bob Quinn, 1993 & 1994: 136-103 (.569)Brian Sabean, 1997 & 1998: 135-104 (.565)Horace Stoneham, 1970 & 1971: 135-104 (.565)Bobby Evans, 2015 & 2016: 133-106 (.556)Chub Feeney, 1950 & 1951: 128-103 (.554)Tom Haller, 1981 & 1982 & 1983 (25 games) : 126-113 (.527)Al Rosen, 1986 & 1987: 121-118 (.506)Farhan Zaidi, 2019 & 2020 & 2021 (17 games): (.490)Buster Posey, 2025 & 2026: 112-127 (.469)H.B. Richardson, 1976 & 1977: 109-130 (.456)<\/p>\n

Now, this used to be a somewhat anonymous position, but that\u2019s no longer the case. With the hijacking of the sport by the Moneyball crowd, the GM\/POBO has become one of the most famous figures on any team. That Buster Posey finds himself down near the bottom of performance in the franchise\u2019s history \u2014 trailing one of the most divisive figures in team history but also one of his current advisors whose poor stewardship left the player development so barren that we\u2019re still feelings its ramifications \u2014 should be enough for a lot of fans to grade his time in the position rather harshly. The Giants are also on a 65-win pace. That can\u2019t all be on the manager and players.<\/p>\n

But, he\u2019s Buster Posey, and it\u2019s going to take fans a long time to accept that he\u2019s doing a bad job or that he did a bad job last season, too, as this season didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. Maybe I\u2019m misremembering, but his last public comments might\u2019ve been around the time of his pouty KNBR interview with Brian Murphy<\/a> (no relation and that\u2019s not me on the radio!). It wasn\u2019t quite the equivalent of the time that Farhan Zaidi ragequit a live interview while he and Jon Miller watched the Giants mess up on defense several times in a row, but it was demonstrative enough as to be suggestive about his leadership style and how he handles pressure in a role where he can\u2019t hit or field his way out of the situation. This is where his strategy to disappear when the going gets tough might actually pay off. He\u2019s added no new data to the collective memory. He extends fans\u2019 magical thinking just a little longer \u2014 \u201cJust wait until Buster cleans house!\u201d \u2014<\/p>\n

Anyway, here\u2019s the response to that survey:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just 20% are firmly behind Buster Posey\u2019s cosplay of a baseball exec. More than half are hedging or giving him the grace they\u2019d hope to be afforded if they woke up one morning in charge of a baseball team.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s another part of this worth considering. Most fans know they could never have been or will never been a professional athlete, but the vast majority think they could be an exec or a scout or an agent or an owner. It\u2019s what\u2019s driving the online thirst for a lockout and salary cap for these latest Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. I wonder how much of this result has anything to do with what\u2019s happening on the field. Do respondents think there\u2019s still a chance the team turns around its fortunes in 2026<\/a>? Are they just waiting for the draft and trade deadline? The time element is probably the answer, but I find that to be the least compelling reason to hold out on rendering a judgment.<\/p>\n

Buster has rolled up his sleeves and come down from the pedestal of being a Hall of Fame bound baseball player and that alone has earned him a lot of credit. How much, though?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a bit since Buster Posey last made public comments. He was practically front and center during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,354400,85],"class_list":["post-753488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}