Why it was time for San Francisco to move Patrick Bailey

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz break down the Patrick Bailey trade that saw the catcher move from San Francisco to Cleveland. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

There are two unimpeachable facts about Patrick Bailey that make him one of the most interesting players in the sport.

He sucks at hitting or has sucked at hitting, and is brilliant defensively.

The general consensus is that Patrick Bailey is the best defensive catcher in the sport.

But I’ll, I’ll soften that and I’ll say he’s a top three defensive catcher in the sport, but by most models that teams have, he’s at the top of the list.

He’s the best.

A team that I’m sure has a very elaborate defensive model, the Cleveland Guardians, should not be shocking that they are valuing a player of this sort.

A team that has employed Austin Hedges for a number of years.

This is, in a way, the left-handed hitting version of Austin Hedges, except with a little bit more, maybe a little bit more offensive punch, right?

Yeah.

I mean, he’s a switch hitter, so I mean- Switch hitter.

Excuse me I guess he’s better from, better from the left side, whatever that means.

but yes, he has at times earlier in his career shown You know, he, he wasn’t a first-round pick- Confidence exclusively because of his defense.

There was at least some hope- Yeah that he could maybe get to some power, but the defense has always been the headlining trait, for sure.

Buster So let, let me just say, when you are rocking an OPS of 383, you are liable to get traded, released, or DFA’d at any point for any reason.

That is a fact.

That decision is defensible.

If you’re gonna prioritize offense and you’re saying, “I don’t care how good Patrick Bailey is back there with the glove, he is one of the worst hitters in the sport or has been one of the worst hitters in the sport, let’s move on from that,” I think that is totally fair.

I get it.

What is clear to me based upon my conversations with various people around the game is that Patrick Bailey’s specific skill set is not something that Buster Posey and the Giants organization, as it’s currently run, values, right?

Or at least they do not value it as much as, one, other teams, or two, other traits.

And Buster Posey, because he is one of the greatest catchers of his era, one of the best offensive catchers in the history of the sport, may or may not have had some unrealistic expectations of what Patrick Bailey was going to be.

Now, those expectations should be not OPSing 383 or whatever.

I understand that.

But based upon what I’ve gathered, the relationship or lack thereof between Patrick Bailey and Buster Posey was never going to be conducive to get Patrick Bailey to a point where he was going to be an offensive contributor for the San Francisco Giants.

That is not the only reason this trade happened.

There are a myriad other reasons, but it was part of the process here, is that the Posey/Bailey dynamic just wasn’t gonna, you know, bear fruit down the road.

And crucially, there were suddenly alternatives that Buster Posey viewed as viable relevantly because he acquired them

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