Where is Buster Posey? | McCovey Chronicles

It’s 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, some unpleasantness has taken place, and whatever’s going on in the clubhouse seems to have bubbled over into the field of play. So, last week’s SB Nation Reacts survey was well timed.

Poll respondents were asked, “How has Buster Posey done as President of Baseball Operations?”

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.

While I’m 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’s 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’s look beyond all that, even.

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’s 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’t think it’s reasonable to hold subpar players to a higher standard. It’s not as though their track records were unknown to us during the offseason.

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

Now, it was only a month ago that I joked about how Buster Posey needs to sign himself to a 2-year extension so that he’s 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’s no real value in him continuing on past 2027 — if there’s even a 2027 season.

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

Now, this used to be a somewhat anonymous position, but that’s 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’s history — 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’re still feelings its ramifications — 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’t all be on the manager and players.

But, he’s Buster Posey, and it’s going to take fans a long time to accept that he’s doing a bad job or that he did a bad job last season, too, as this season didn’t come out of nowhere. Maybe I’m misremembering, but his last public comments might’ve been around the time of his pouty KNBR interview with Brian Murphy (no relation and that’s not me on the radio!). It wasn’t 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’t 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’s added no new data to the collective memory. He extends fans’ magical thinking just a little longer — “Just wait until Buster cleans house!” —

Anyway, here’s the response to that survey:

Just 20% are firmly behind Buster Posey’s cosplay of a baseball exec. More than half are hedging or giving him the grace they’d hope to be afforded if they woke up one morning in charge of a baseball team.

And that’s 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’s what’s 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’s happening on the field. Do respondents think there’s still a chance the team turns around its fortunes in 2026? 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.

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?