Saturday is Buster Posey Day at Oracle Park, meaning roughly 40,000 people will be cheering, smiling, reminiscing for the currently retired Little League coach.
They’ll be fawning over the three-time World Series champion. The MVP. The future Hall of Famer.
The guy who Joey Bart isn’t.
Outside expectations for any catcher taking over after Posey, let alone the Giants’ highest draft pick since Will Clark, would be unfair. Bart knows he’s not Posey. Nobody is. He’s a different player, a different person, and is paving his own path in the majors.
Yet it hasn’t been the smoothest transition out of Posey’s shadow for Bart. In 17 games, he’s produced an astronomical strikeout rate but has earned universal praise from his pitching staff. He’s hitting .176 but has three home runs. His pride in preparation has been put to the test as the Giants have had 21 pitchers log at least an inning — tied for second-most in the National League.
Ups and downs. Bart has stayed even-keeled through them all, which might just be the hardest part.
“You got to stay the same,” Bart, 25, said after Friday night’s 3-2 loss. “Obviously I’ve gotten off to a slow start. Just up and down, up and down. But I’m not worried about that. I’ll be right where I need to be soon. It’s just kind of how I attack it. You can’t ride with the highs or the lows of this game. It’s too hard.”
That’s a universal message, and it’s one that the 2021 Giants took to heart during their 107-win campaign. But it’s especially relevant now, as San Francisco has lost five straight for the first time since 2020 and seven of its last eight.
And the sentiment applies particularly to Bart, who has struck out an alarming 28 times — including twice more in Friday’s loss — in 62 plate appearances. In Posey’s 2010 Rookie of the Year season, it took him 61 games to strike out 28 times. Again: different players.
It hasn’t been all bad for Bart in the batter’s box. His three homers have propped up his peripheral numbers; he has an above average 112 wRC+ — sixth among regular catchers. He’s giving the Giants value from a position that doesn’t provide much league-wide.
But Bart’s 45.2% strikeout rate is the highest in MLB among players with at least 50 plate appearances. He said he started hot but got a little banged up on the club’s first road trip. He’s obviously not trying to strike out. It’s a tough league. He vows to stay positive and work through the failures.
“I think Joey’s pressing just a little bit,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said after Wednesday’s loss in Los Angeles. “Don’t think that’s unusual for a young player.”
But the struggles at the plate haven’t bled over into his work behind the dish. That’s something Kapler has been particularly impressed with.
“He’s staying very consistent behind the plate. He’s doing a nice job of communicating with our pitchers. Every time I go out there to make a mound visit, he’s right on top of things…the fact that he’s struggled some at the plate isn’t affecting his performance behind the plate or working with pitchers.”
On Friday, Bart caught starter Alex Cobb and Sean Hjelle in his MLB debut (among others). He and Cobb went into the game thinking the Cardinals would be patient at the plate. They’re one of the lowest chase rate teams in the NL, so the game plan featured a traditional diet of early-count fastballs to get ahead.
But the Cardinals showed aggression at the plate early. Cobb, a 11-year veteran, prides himself on feeling out the rhythm of the game and going from there. On the fly, he and Bart audibled to significantly more splitters and offspeed pitches than they planned for pregame.
It worked. Cobb tossed five innings of two-run ball, missing only on a Harrison Bader home run. The starter recorded a career-high 19 whiffs.
That type of radical shift in approach from Cobb shows confidence in a rookie catcher, something that’s been repeated by every pitcher this year after just about every start. The universal praise often comes unprompted. The pitchers trust him. That matters.
“I don’t want to stick to one format because it seemed like a good idea before the game,” Cobb said Friday. “Let’s see what their game plan is. Joey did a really good job tonight. We haven’t thrown that many first-pitch curveballs this year, and he felt that was a good way to go. He was throwing it down consistently. It’s really nice to get on the same rhythm, get the grip and go. Rather than get out of rhythm and shake, not feel like we’re on the same page.”
Preparation begets confidence. When gameplanning, Bart imagines himself in the box against any of the Giants’ pitchers and think: what would he least like to see thrown against him? In calling a game, he tries to find a balance between all the pregame video, analytics, tendencies and other information overload and the intangible “feel” of any night.
“When you get on the same page with your starter, it’s a lot of fun,” Bart said. “It’s a blast. That’s the most enjoyable part of my game, are those moments with a pitcher and watching them dominate.”
Sean Hjelle, the 6-foot-11 righty, made his debut on Friday to become the 21st pitcher the Giants have deployed this year. Injuries and COVID-19 have forced Bart, Curt Casali and the staff to work on the fly.
On top of all the opposing lineup studying, PitchCom learning, spending time on his own performance at the plate, Bart has had to download the tendencies of all sorts of pitchers.
For Hjelle specifically, Bart had already done most of the work. Bart and Hjelle, both in the same 2018 draft class, have worked together so frequently, they’re at a telepathic level of connection.
“We’re at the point where we’re in each other’s heads a little bit and we know who wants to throw what when,” Hjelle said.
Seth Corry, another pitcher who worked with Bart in the minors, described the catcher to KNBR in March.
“When I think of Joey, honestly I think about consistently from an attitude standpoint,” Corry told KNBR in March. “He’s never, ever going to get too high and he’s never, ever going to get too low. He’s very consistent when it comes to the way he plays and his attitude…I’ve always respected him for that. A real professional when it comes to that.”
That even-keeled nature feels almost Posey-ish.
But again, that’s not a fair — or relevant — comparison.
“There’s a lot of pressure being the successor to Buster Posey, but I think Joey’s doing great,” Carlos Rodón told The San Francisco Chronicle in April . “It’s time to move on. No offense to Buster. But turn the page. You’ve got to have a short memory in baseball, and I think if you ask Buster, he’d say the same thing. It’s a new era.”
Even the new guy knows it: it’s time to turn the page. Perhaps the Buster Posey Day festivities are as much a celebration of him as it is an acknowledgement of that fact.
The results, at least so far, have been scattered for Bart. But his attitude through the start of 2022 shows he’s ready for the team’s next chapter.
