The only player common to even three of those Boston championship teams was a guy who sat on the bench for half the game ( David Ortiz). The Giants’ three championships on his watch, by the way, are more than any other team in this millennium beside the Red Sox.
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302/.372/.460 (126 wRC+) hitter, a seven-time All-Star, Gold Glove winner (it was tough to break through against Yadier Molina), MVP (2012), batting champion (also 2012, making him one of just five catchers to win, if we’re counting back to Deacon White in the National Association in 1875), Rookie of the Year (2010), league WAR leader (2012, via both fWAR and bWAR), and pitch-framing king who shepherded the staffs of three World Series winners in a five-year span. So far as we know, Posey isn’t playing through anything as debilitating as the three-time Cy Young winner’s chronic arthritis, but the long-term effects of multiple concussions are nothing to trifle with, and Posey, already a father of two before the adoption, has two new reasons to want to make sure he enjoys his retirement years.Īs to where Posey’s retirement leaves him with regards to the Hall of Fame, to these eyes, he’s checked every box except sticking around long enough to satisfy every last random crank on social media or sports talk radio. The parallel between Posey and Sandy Koufax isn’t perfect, though both played just 12 years in the majors, accumulated numerous individual honors and reached the pinnacle of their respective positions in helping their teams win three championships, then departed abruptly. This is Koufaxian stuff, a player retiring despite still performing at an elite level. That one cost him most of the 2011 season, the follow-up to his NL Rookie of the Year-winning campaign, and resulted in the addition of a rule to eliminate unwarranted contact at the plate.
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Then there are the collisions, the most serious of which fractured his left fibula, tore three ligaments in his left ankle, and required three screws to pin the bone in place while it healed, plus a separate surgery to remove the hardware. He also chose to forgo the daily grind of a job via which he’s been concussed at least twice, in 2017 and ’19, and probably more than that given the number of foul tips off his mask that have left him dazed he was in concussion protocol for one such shot in late July.
Posey chose to walk away from all that in order to be with his family, which now features two adopted twin daughters who were born prematurely last summer and spent time in the newborn intensive care unit. Obviously want to have conversations with Buster and continue to have internal conversations about that, but having him on this team next year is a high priority.” President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi had already signaled his intent to retain Posey one way or another, saying after the team’s elimination, “He is in our estimation the best catcher in baseball this year. A multi-year extension seemed even more likely, particularly with the possibility of the universal designated hitter on the horizon.
He did that while helping the Giants to a major league-high and franchise-record 107 wins, then continued to torment the division rival Dodgers with a two-run homer off Walker Buehler in the two teams’ first-ever postseason game - nearly the first splash hit by any right-handed batter at Oracle Park, save for a water tower in right field - and then three hits the following night.Īt the tail end of a nine-year, $169 million contract that he signed in March 2013, Posey had a $22 million club option with a $3 million buyout - hardly a cheap proposition, but a no-brainer for a big-spending team dealing with a franchise icon and a new window of contention. 304/.390/.499 with 18 homers (his highest total since 2015), a 140 wRC+ (his highest mark since 2014), and 4.9 WAR, tops among all catchers and tied for eighth among all NL players.
At the age of 34, while adhering to a strict two-days-on, one-day-off load management plan designed to keep him available and productive, he hit. Wait, what? Posey just finished a season in which he earned All-Star honors for the seventh time, having come back from opting out of the 2020 season out of consideration for his family and two solid but injury-marked seasons, one of which ended with surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip.
Instead, out of the blue on the day that would have been Game 7 of the World Series had Tuesday’s outcome gone the other way, was a stark, almost shocking tweet from The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:īREAKING NEWS: Sources tell The Athletic that Buster Posey will announce his retirement tomorrow. There was no farewell tour, no long goodbye, and no fairytale ending.