Final week, I requested a easy query:
What makes the 2025 Giants Buster Posey’s crew?
Nicely, just a few days later, we have now the reply.
Posey’s daring, brash, and even perhaps reckless commerce for three-time All-Star slugger Rafael Devers on Sunday is a giant black-and-orange stamp from the brand new director of baseball operations on the Giants group.
Right here’s what I’m about.
The commerce additionally made an announcement to the fanbase and the remainder of baseball: The Giants are achieved performing like something lower than the only big-league crew within the richest metro space in America. They’re achieved making an attempt to beat the Dodgers within the margins — they’ve the muscle and so they’re going to flex it. After years of pushing fiscal prudence and never earnestly making an attempt to maintain up with the Joneses, Posey is completed pretending anything however the crew in blue issues.
Devers, who has a cool quarter of a billion — $250 million — remaining on a deal that runs by 2033 for the participant and till 2043 with deferred funds for the crew, is coming to San Francisco for Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison, and two minor leaguers. The Giants will tackle each penny of what stays on Devers’ contract.
Is it a little bit of conspicuous consumption? You wager.
May the Giants need this transfer again in just a few years? Maybe.
However Posey is true: nothing issues however beating the Dodgers. And the Dodgers don’t fear a few contract like Devers’. So the Giants shouldn’t both.
The previous catcher’s competitiveness is famous. It was the driving drive behind titles.
And we now have clear proof of it manifesting in his new gig.
The aim is to shut the hole, and the hole was enormous. You may’t have a look at the Dodgers’ lineup after which the Giants’ this previous weekend and assume something completely different.
However whereas Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, and Rafael Devers aren’t on the extent of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, a minimum of they will share a Nationwide League All-Star crew locker room (and maybe suggestions for learn how to make investments their insane quantities of cash).
That is the form of deal that the Giants needed to make, identical to Posey needed to roll a head just a few weeks again.
The post-shake-up increase was waning. And whereas that’s not a legitimate motive to tackle 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars}, the questions of “what next?” that stemmed from that shakeup required extra than simply one other Farhan Zaidi-like transfer. Dom Smith — nearly as good a man and as respectable a participant as he is perhaps — isn’t going to carry the Giants over the Dodgers within the standings.
One other assertion I made final week, earlier than Sport 1 of the Dodgers’ collection — which the Giants misplaced 2-1 to fall two video games again within the Nationwide League West: “Just just because the Giants are doing better than anyone should have reasonably expected doesn’t mean that this is the time to rest on the team’s laurels.”
Posey definitely didn’t try this.
This deal has certainly been brewing for a bit of bit. Giants tv analyst Mike Krukow mentioned on KNBR that Posey lately requested him which of the crew’s three younger pitchers — Landon Roupp, Hayden Birdsong, or Kyle Harrison — was going to be the most effective. May he have been gauging commerce worth? The chance to maneuver Harrison — Krukow’s choose, for what it’s value — because the centerpiece of a deal for a participant like Devers doesn’t come round typically.
And let’s be abundantly clear right here: the commerce bundle despatched to Boston for Devers is embarrassingly gentle. In Harrison and Jordan Kicks, the Giants jettisoned two pitchers who’re in all probability relievers at greatest (Hicks was already moved to the bullpen this season.) The Giants have just one untouchable minor-league prospect, and Bryce Eldridge remains to be safely stashed in Sacramento. Funds apart, this was a coup of a commerce.
Boston simply needed to unload Devers’ contract. The Giants are prepared consumers. If Devers have been a free agent final yr, he would have landed an identical deal. I’m certain the Giants would have prolonged a proposal.
I’m not so certain Devers would have accepted it.
Which is why Posey’s commerce deserves accolades, not hand-wringing.
If the Giants can’t purchase gamers like Devers in free company and so they can’t create them of their farm system (a minimum of on the present second), then they’ll have so as to add them by way of commerce. It’s that or just not having elite-level gamers.
Sadly, conditions just like the Devers deal — a crew trying to jettison a fair-market contract for an elite bat however not anticipating a high-level return — come up not often.
If Posey didn’t pounce on this deal, how would the Giants — with their bottom-of-the-barrel farm system — have added a participant like Devers within the coming weeks and even the approaching years?
There’s a similarity to the Warriors’ Jimmy Butler commerce right here: A bizarre state of affairs, with the Bay Space crew being the appropriate crew in the appropriate place on the proper time.
Like with Butler, it’s not as if the Giants are buying a very distressed asset. The issues that made Butler expendable in Miami ceased to exist the second the Warriors acquired him and signed him to the extension he needed from the Warmth.
Devers’ points that led to his commerce ought to be left in Boston — the Giants aren’t signing a 3rd baseman to take his job with out consulting him; they have already got a 3rd baseman on a long-term deal in Matt Chapman (whose harm may need expedited issues a bit, right here).
We will all agree can all agree this can in all probability not be a great deal within the not-too-distant future. Devers isn’t a lot of a fielder, his most popular (to the purpose he was traded) place of third base is blocked, and if his bat slows down even a bit (he swings as quick as Adames — a cautionary story), his worth tanks.
However I’ve a two-word retort for such considering: Who cares?
What did the Giants lose on this commerce? The largest loss is cash, on which the Giants ought to be lots set.
And what did they achieve? Solely the left-handed middle-of-the-order bat this crew — which, once more, is competing not only for a playoff spot however the Nationwide League West — desperately wanted.
If possession — and don’t neglect that Posey is a part-owner of the crew — isn’t anxious sufficient concerning the monetary features of Devers’ contract to stop this commerce, then no fan ought to be anxious for them.
What did all of the fiscal prudence over the previous few years earn the followers? Tickets, concessions, hats, and parking didn’t go down in worth as a result of the Giants weren’t spending as a lot as they may.
If Posey didn’t make the most of this example — and the commerce bundle says nothing if not “I’m taking advantage of you” — one must query his competitiveness.
Fortunately, that’s one thing that we’ll by no means need to do.
After years of reducing requirements, the person in cost needs it as dangerous because the followers within the stands, and he’s performing on these urges.
What extra may you probably need?
