Buster Posey Is Learning the Giants Can't Be Fixed Overnight

The last year-and-a-half has been a rocky road for Buster Posey's San Francisco Giants.

San Francisco Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey. | Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

On Sept. 30, 2024, the San Francisco Giants surprised the baseball world by hiring former star catcher — and franchise icon — Buster Posey to be their new president of baseball operations. The announcement came just three years after Posey retired from playing the game.

It was a move that was meant to reinvigorate an organization that had been mediocre for six years under Farhan Zaidi. The team made the postseason just once during that stretch, in the franchise-record 107-win campaign in 2021.

Almost two years later, the Giants are once again a mess. The hiring of Tony Vitello, an extremely successful coach in college who had zero experience coaching in the big leagues, made headlines throughout the offseason, mostly due to Vitello's inability to keep the press off his back.

Now the Giants are one of the worst teams in baseball and are poised to be sellers at the trade deadline. Big names such as Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Willy Adames could be out the door. It's a disaster.

In a way, not all of this is Posey's fault. He inherited a roster that wasn't ready to contend. But it's also been almost two years, and Posey's fingerprints are all over this operation. The trade for Devers last year looms large, as does the signing of Adames to a $182 million deal. Posey was also integral in the $151 million extension that Chapman signed, though that officially occurred under Zaidi's watch.

All of those expensive veteran bats have been integral to the Giants' offensive woes, thus making it reasonable to blame Posey for everything that's gone wrong. But is he at fault, or is he just a scapegoat who deserves time to fix this mess?

Time Is Running Out to Make Everything Right

Tony Vitello (center) is introduced as the new manager of the San Francisco Giants by president of baseball operations Buster Posey (left) and general manager Zack Minasian. | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

Let's start by answering that simple question: Should Posey be given leeway to operate despite the failures of his first two seasons?

The short answer is yes. He just arrived on the scene, and even though he's made some moves that are now questionable in hindsight, it's still not enough to disqualify him from continuing forward.

But there's enough of a sample size to know that Posey needs to fix this — and fast. Sure, a rebuild of sorts might be on the horizon, but it's better to commit to that than to hover around mediocrity for eternity. Better to rip the Band-Aid off now than waste everybody's precious time.

What the Giants will do at this year's trade deadline is anybody's guess. A ton of big-name players could be seeing themselves out, which, while sad on paper, is just the reality of the sports business. San Francisco got itself into this mess — it's time it gets itself out of it.