PHOTO: EAKIN HOWARD
Buster Posey told us it was “time to go” back on June 4 and the Giants said “aye aye captain” and tore off seven wins in a row.
To reward his crew, Posey gifted the clubhouse with Rafael Devers in a trade on June 16.
It seemed that no one felt it was “time to go” more than Posey himself, who made the sort of brassy move that has been missing around these parts for years.
The Devers Giants rewarded Posey with an 11-14 stretch that left us all using the Blink 182 Tom DeLonge “WTF” meme on our texts to pals.
We have all taken a breath, not seen the Giants since last Sunday against the Dodgers (ouch!) and are ready to storm Toronto on Friday with a whole new outlook:
Time to Go, Part Deux?
(I used the French for the Canada thing. See what I did there?)
The Giants are 52-45. Sixty-five games remain. If you estimate a very conservative 33-32 in the final 65, that gets you 85 wins. That’s better than the 2025 Vegas over/under, so congrats to Posey on the Prize Picks/Underdog fantasy payout. Will 85 snag them a wild card spot? Dicey, at best.
With two of the wild cards firmly held by the loser of the Mets/Phillies NL East race, and then by the Milwaukee (Nobody Beats The Miz) Brewers, that leaves one spot on the dance card. The candidates: your Giants (45 losses), the Padres (44 losses), Cardinals (46 losses) and maybe the Reds (47 losses). That means we have ourselves a wild card pennant race, folks — starting Friday in America’s Hat.
And that also means the hyper-competitive Posey will have to figure out if he can add anything to the roster by July 31. Things that might be on a Posey shopping list would include a possible starting pitcher (gulp), another bullpen arm (a Sabean specialty) and maybe even help at first base?
After landing Devers, does Posey have the material to trade for anything meaningful? And should he? As Posey told us yesterday on The Sports Leader: “…at a certain point, I think you have to say ‘there’s a tremendous amount of belief in the team that you have’; If I’m in the position of a player, if I’m constantly listening to people up top (saying we need to make moves), at a certain point you say, ‘well, do you not like the guys that are here’?”
Classic Posey. The old catcher and clubhouse leader naturally falls back on his instinct of grit and grind — and that goes for the question of acquiring a starting pitcher, too. When I asked him about bumping up against innings milestones for youngsters like Hayden Birdsong and Landen Roupp, Posey answered in Cain-Lincecum-Bumgarner love language, pointing out that Roupp and Birdsong are young, their bodies are trained for this and the Giants want starting pitchers to go deep into games. It’s part of the Posey front office philosophy, a stark difference from his predecessor.
He defended Devers’ brutal first month — the three-time All-Star is hitting .202 in orange and black, with an OPS lower than Christian Koss — by pointing out the very human ordeal of Devers being uprooted from his home franchise, and moving to an entirely new situation. That all rings true, but Posey acquired Devers to be an impact bat, and if the Giants are to go, say, 35-30 in the final 65 (does 87 get you in? maybe!), Devers is going to have to produce like the player he has been for almost a decade.
Posey said it all while marking just his tenth month on the job. Dude has left a mark already. Posey left our conversation saying the feeling he had going to the ballpark for Giants-Dodgers made him feel like October, which he said is “the best thing in sports.”
It’s all there for the Giants. We’ve taken a breath. It’s time to go. Part Two.