Official 2023 San Francisco Giants Off-Season Thread - Jung Hoo Lee signs with SF 6-years $113 Million

I keep reading comments that Bart's attitude is a becoming an issue for the front office. At the same time, he himself is still having issues calling a game. Maybe he becomes our DH if/when it becomes official for the NL.

Hoping Patrick Bailey has better season next year.
 
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Fozz said:
I keep reading comments that Bart's attitude is a becoming an issue for the front office. At the same time, he himself is still having issues calling a game. Maybe he becomes our DH if/when it becomes official for the NL.

Hoping Patrick Bailey has better season next year.
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Is he another Gary Brown?
 
Sergio Romo was on 95.7 earlier and he said Posey's baseball IQ is unmatched. When asked if there were times he butted heads or disagreed about the pitch Posey was calling Romo said it was exactly the opposite. He said there were times Posey told him to intentionally shake him off, get inside the batter's head. The game within the game :pimp:
 
not even surprised.

should just retire the number next year and have a proper send off while it's still fresh. not wait until years later
 
Buster Posey’s career was like no other in Giants history
https://theathletic.com/2933824/202...in-giants-history/?source=user_shared_article

In the long, long history of Giantsbaseball, there are only a few lines of demarcation that compare. There was the move from New York to San Francisco. There was the time the entire franchise was supposed to leave forever but ended up with Barry Bonds instead. There was the transition from the worst ballpark in baseball to the best, with all the financial might that came with it. And there was before Buster Poseywas drafted, and there was after.

It’s easy to overreact to breaking news, so believe me that I stared at that opening paragraph for a while. Wrote it and rewrote it, looking for hyperbole and anything that would look dramatic and cringey in retrospect. Can’t find it. Not from here. There was a franchise without Buster Posey, and there was a franchise with Buster Posey, and those two franchises were radically, impossibly different.

There were other Giants players who split eras in half, with a clearly defined before and after. Of course there were. Giants fans got to watch the world’s greatest living baseball player for years and years, and you’re not even sure which outfielder I’m referring to. Hall of Fame-caliber talents tend to make you think about the before and after, and the Giants have had several.

Posey’s before and after isn’t like anyone else’s in franchise history, though. Willie Mays’ arrival was in New York, in an era when San Francisco baseball fans pledged allegiance to Joe DiMaggio. His brilliance in San Francisco was just one part of the larger idea that there was Major League Baseball there in the first place, and Willie McCovey’s timing was even more tethered to that idea. The best comparison is probably Will Clark, who hit a home run in his first career at-bat, which came in the first game after a 100-loss season. He eventually led the Giants to two division titles and a pennant.

But all of those befores and afters had something in common: Every one of those seasons of San Francisco baseball ended in disappointment or heartbreak. Sometimes the team was so lousy, the disappointment came in April. Sometimes the team was so close, the heartbreak never really left. There was a ticker-tape parade down Market Street to welcome the Giants to San Francisco, and that was it. That was always going to be it. The Cubs and Red Sox got the bulk of the lovable-loser press, but it was just as much a part of the Giants fan’s identity.

Then the Giants called up Buster Posey in May 2010, and there was a parade. And hugs. Then there were more parades. Before, there were lamentations and woulda-coulda-shouldas. After, there was a golden era that was as much fun as almost any other in baseball history. That description applies to anyteam, not just the Giants. It was about as much entertainment as any team has ever offered its fans, and Posey was responsible.

This is reductive, and it glosses over the contributions of dozens and dozens of key players, some of whom were also around for all three championships. Picking the “most important” player from the era is like picking the most important wall of your house. It’s probably a tie. Extend the analogy out a little further, though, and you get to the foundation. Can’t even have the walls without one of those suckers.

And it’s not as if you can’t enjoy a baseball season or a player’s career without a championship. If I tell you to stand and applaud for Will Clark right now, you’ll do it, whether you’re at home or on an airplane. But what happens when you get all the best parts of a baseball season and career with a mess of championships?

You get the career of Buster Posey. It comes with a before and after that’s easier to spot than almost any other.

It’s not as if you needed extra help to appreciate how important Posey was to Giants baseball, but you got it in 2020. It was a shortened season, only 60 games, but through his absence, Giants fans got an accidental master class in what a talented catcher means to a team. Forget the batting title, the All-Star appearances and the awards, and focus on the catching. Focus on Posey glancing up at the opposing batter before he puts down the sign. Focus on his ability to steal strikes:


Focus on his otherworldly knowledge of the game, or the other positions he held but never officially interviewed for, like de facto pitching coach and clubhouse leader. None of the best parts of the championship era happen without that.

It didn’t hurt that he was also hitting .300 and clubbing extra-base hits along the way, of course. That will be missed, too. Some franchises — heck, mostfranchises — have never had a catcher hit that well for them.

After the shock fades, the timing will make way more sense. Every pitch had the potential to alter his health for the rest of his life. He played the most demanding position in the sport, and the surgery on a 24-year-old ankle was still present with every squat from a 34-year-old. It’s one thing for us to read “hip surgery,” wait a bit and then welcome him back, like nothing ever happened, but it’s another thing to go through the hip surgery and then play 100-plus games. It was fun to watch Posey, but it couldn’t have always been fun to be Posey.

Add in two sets of twins, and it’s easier to wonder why we didn’t see it coming. There were a lot of possible scenarios that would have made you think, “Goodness, everyone would have been better off if he just went out on top.”

There were also a lot of possible scenarios in which you would have enjoyed baseball as much as you ever had. Posey won’t be a part of a 108-win team next year, and he won’t get the NLCS-winning homer in 2023. He won’t end a bases-loaded threat in the ninth inning against the Dodgers by throwing behind the runner at first, and he won’t be behind the plate for another no-hitter. There’s so much Buster Posey that we still might be missing, and you weren’t ready for that.

There was the Buster Posey that was, though, and it’s hard for any single professional athlete to do more for a franchise. The Giants before Posey were an assortment of electric arms in a beautiful ballpark. A pretty good time, not going to lie. Try the garlic fries.

The Giants after Posey were one of the best shows that sports ever offered to anyone. It was probably the best baseball you’ll ever watch, and you knew it at the time. It’s understandable if you wanted more of it. The All-Star season that helped the 2021 Giants win more games than any team in franchise history was a delight and a perfect bookend, but it was also a heckuva tease.

You weren’t ready for the idea of a graying Posey ambling out to throw out a first pitch, or the idea of him as a gum-chewing manager in another uniform. You weren’t ready for a Giants team without him, and neither was anybody else. But the shock will fade, the sadness will dull and the memories will push through. One second, there was a baseball player in Tallahassee, and another second the Giants were the envy of baseball for close to a decade.

At the risk of sounding like something embroidered on a throw pillow, just be happy that it happened. There were so many ways it didn’t have to, but it did. The Giants were a franchise with a legacy of sadness, and then they weren’t. What a marvelous and unexpected turn of events that was, and it was an absolute joy to watch.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the money he got from the Body Armor sale played a factor to his retirement. He definitely got paid big time from that.
 
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