“Your levelheaded approach to the game inspired me and every other player that set foot in those Giants locker rooms through the years. “You were 60 feet from me in my greatest and worst moments in baseball,” Zito tweeted. Many of Posey’s former teammates that didn’t watch his retirement announcement in person reacted on social media and elsewhere.įormer Giants pitcher Barry Zito, a 2012 postseason hero, posted a thread on Twitter praising Posey’s level-headedness and poise in high-pressured situations behind and at the plate. And that he felt settled when Posey reached out to him for a one-on-one meeting. The Giants exec said he was “rattled” by the fan response to his hiring in 2018, with some people calling the former Los Angeles Dodgers general manager a mole or claiming he was too numbers-oriented. “I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything you’ve meant to this organization,” Zaidi said. Giants president of baseball operations jokingly asked Posey if he was sure he wanted to retire before praising him for helping lead the team to its first postseason since 2016. A performance that satisfied Posey, but left those in the Giants front office hoping for more. 889 OPS and 18 home runs, his most since 2015. Doubt still lingered after a disappointing 2019 season, so Posey wanted to use this last season to prove to himself he could still compete at a big league level. A year off spent with family, including two newborn twin girls in 2020 amid the pandemic was the final push. Posey admitted he knew the 2021 season would be his last before it began. Posey leaves baseball having bookended his career with a World Series title - followed by two more - and a franchise-record 107-win season in 2021. Playing through pains after ankle surgery in 2011 and hip surgery in 2018 played a primary role in pulling Posey away from playing at least one more year, he said. In his retirement at age 34, Posey opted out of the team option on his contract worth $22 million. Posey’s manager for 10 of his 12 big league seasons, a probable future Hall of Famer himself, wasn’t the only baseball luminary to heap praise on the catcher in the wake of his retirement announcement. I was fortunate that for 10 years I had one of the best all-around catchers in the game.” “From that point on, he was someone I relied on,” Bochy said. That’s how much he impacted the game.”īochy knew he had a special player the first time he saw him as a 23-year-old rookie game planning with Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and a prolific Giants pitching staff en route to a World Series title in 2010. And that’s how I look at a guy that goes into the Hall of Fame. “Being a catcher, handling a staff, winning three world championships and what he did offensively. “His body of work, nobody impacted the game this past decade more than Buster on both sides of the ball,” Bochy said after Posey’s retirement announcement on Thursday. To Bochy, Posey’s legacy as one of the greatest Giants in franchise history should have him as a lock in baseball’s Hall of Fame. No one, arguably, has watched his career as closely as former Giants manager Bruce Bochy. Championships, individual awards, generational wealth, the works.SAN FRANCISCO - Buster Posey announced his retirement after 12 seasons with the San Francisco Giants. Posey was the game's best all-around backstop for a decade or so, and he accomplished just about everything a player could hope to accomplish in this game. WAR is not everything, particularly with catcher defense so difficult to quantify, but a number that big is tough to ignore. He was the best offensive catcher of his era and one of the best players in baseball in the 2010s regardless of position. When the time comes, Posey will receive serious consideration for the Hall of Fame at a minimum. 302/.372/.460 hitter with 158 home runs in parts of 12 seasons. Posey was a seven-time All-Star and retires as a career. He led baseball in batting average and OPS+ despite the wear of tear of being a catcher, which earned him the NL MVP award. Posey's best season was 2012, when he hit.
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