{"id":373207,"date":"2025-11-12T05:27:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/373207\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T05:27:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:27:14","slug":"buster-posey-giants-will-spend-but-improvement-must-come-from-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/373207\/","title":{"rendered":"Buster Posey: Giants will spend, but improvement must come from within"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS \u2014 Buster Posey has been a major-league executive long enough to understand that his cohort is a polite society. You keep more hidden with collegiality than with confrontation. The general managers\u2019 meetings, which began Tuesday at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, are about setting agendas, surveying the transactional landscape and making nice.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the best forum for Posey to gather industry opinions about his unconventional managerial choice of University of Tennessee coach Tony Vitello.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only feedback I\u2019ve gotten (from) people I\u2019ve heard from is they think it\u2019s a good hire,\u201d Posey said. \u201cSo I\u2019m guessing that there\u2019s people that think it\u2019s not a good hire. They\u2019re just not saying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former major-league manager Joe Maddon wasn\u2019t so shy. In an interview with KNBR<\/a> on Tuesday, Maddon called the hiring \u201cinsulting\u201d while citing Vitello\u2019s lack of professional coaching experience. There are bound to be others who will express a similar opinion that Vitello hasn\u2019t paid his dues or that he leapfrogged many minor-league coaches who have paid theirs. It\u2019s an opinion Vitello acknowledged in his introductory news conference Oct. 30, saying he hopes those people will consider that he met the grind in a different way while spending more than two decades on the recruiting trail and in the dugout as a college coach, and that he further hopes to earn respect on the major-league level through his relentlessness and hard work.<\/p>\n

The surest way Vitello will earn that respect is with a successful season. And for that, he\u2019ll need the most important and universal managerial attribute of all: a talented roster.<\/p>\n

For the San Francisco Giants, that means acquiring multiple starting pitchers. And multiple late-inning relievers. They must improve their outfield defense and base running. Then there are the roster crevices that could do with a bit of sealant: a veteran backup catcher with some sock, a versatile hitter in the Wilmer Flores\/Dom Smith mold who can ensure that 21-year-old prospect Bryce Eldridge can matriculate at the proper pace, and in a perfect world, an upgrade over Casey Schmitt at second base. Mostly, though, it\u2019s pitching the Giants need. A lot of it.<\/p>\n

Yet the dialogue during Posey\u2019s media availability Tuesday had a lot more to do with vibes than offseason goals. Posey cited players such as Heliot Ramos and Jung Hoo Lee and Luis Matos while saying \u201cthere\u2019s more in the tank\u201d and \u201cmeat on the bone.\u201d Posey made it clear the Giants will augment their roster from the outside world this winter. He made it even clearer that a successful return to the postseason will require internal improvements under the leadership of Vitello and a coaching staff with some assembly still required.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is we\u2019re gonna need \u2026 I mean, I looked at it like this is a player and I think I look at it even more so now: The successful teams are going to have players within their system that make an impact,\u201d said Posey, citing developing pitchers such as Blade Tidwell, Carson Whisenhunt, Carson Seymour and Kai-Wei Teng as key contributors in 2026. \u201cI think for us to get where we want to go \u2014 and certainly don\u2019t read between the lines and say that we\u2019re not going to make additions, because we\u2019ll most certainly do our best to improve pitching like always \u2014 but we\u2019re going to need some of the Tidwells, the Whisenhunts of the world, the Tengs, the Seymours, and I\u2019m probably leaving one or two out there, to take that next step and really contribute on the pitching side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posey\u2019s uninspiring remarks appeared in stride with wet-blanket comments that Giants chairman Greg Johnson made earlier this month when the San Francisco Standard asked him<\/a> about competing at the top of the starting pitching market, where Framber Valdez, Dylan Cease, Tatsuya Imai and perhaps Ranger Suarez will command contracts in excess of $100 million. Johnson\u2019s reply: \u201cI\u2019d say we\u2019re going to be very cautious about those kinds of signings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson expressed the usual caveats that the Giants were open to any contract that made sense while acknowledging that big-ticket contracts would have to be balanced with a five-year horizon that already includes major commitments to Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames and Lee. Then Johnson circled back to the Vitello hiring as a cause for optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we feel like we could be an improved organization with this kind of leader,\u201d Johnson told The Standard. \u201cThat\u2019s really the end game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it though? When the Giants rotation ranked 21st out of 30 teams with minus-0.7 Wins Above Average despite receiving healthy and load-bearing seasons from Logan Webb and Robbie Ray? For all the scripts an organization can use to reach the postseason or win a World Series, it\u2019s impossible to imagine the Giants returning to October baseball or reaching a satisfying endgame without a starting staff that leverages its home-field advantage.<\/p>\n

The good news is the Giants are guaranteed to invest $17 million in an All-Star starting pitcher Jan. 15. They\u2019re going to pay an All-Star closer, too. The bad news is the money is a deferred signing bonus owed to Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell, who contributed 20 starts in 2023 before opting out of the remainder of his two-year, $62 million contract. And the accomplished closer who\u2019ll be cut a check is retired right-hander Mark Melancon, who will get $1 million every Jan. 15 through 2027 in deferred signing bonus from the four-year, $62 million contract he signed before the 2017 season.<\/p>\n

Folding in those deferrals, the Giants project to have more than $193 million in payroll commitments on a cash basis. Their payroll calculation relative to the luxury tax is slightly less. The Giants could spend roughly $57 million before they\u2019d bump up against the first tax threshold of $244 million.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the vibe they\u2019re giving off: This free-agent class isn\u2019t worth the splurge.<\/p>\n

The cautionary tales shouldn\u2019t be too easily dismissed. The Giants hampered themselves after the 2015 season when they committed more than a quarter of a billion dollars to pitchers Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija. The current hot stove will have several high-profile closers, including Edwin D\u00edaz, Devin Williams and Robert Suarez, but you couldn\u2019t blame the Giants for being scarred by the disastrous deals they gave out to Melancon, and before that, to Armando Benitez.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Posey, in his second season as the Giants\u2019 chief baseball officer, is adopting a new public policy to underpromise and overdeliver. Or perhaps the Giants really did use up their largesse, or at least as much as they are comfortable allocating, while taking on more than $250 million when acquiring Devers from the Boston Red Sox in June.<\/p>\n

Either way, the Giants are setting high expectations that Vitello will make an immediate impact. And he\u2019ll need a savvy coaching staff to help with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very in tune with the types of personalities he wants,\u201d Posey said of Vitello. \u201cWhen he\u2019s thinking about skill sets or attributes for certain coaches, he\u2019s measuring their personality traits almost equally. I think it\u2019s a very smart way to go about things because you\u2019re hoping to get buy-in from the players for whatever messages are coming over from the coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Giants are close to announcing that Jayce Tingler, the former San Diego Padres manager and Vitello\u2019s one-time teammate at the University of Missouri, will be hired as bench coach or with an associate manager title. Posey confirmed that assistant hitting coach Oscar Bernard, a Spanish speaker who hails from the Dominican Republic, will return. So will assistant coach Taira Uematsu. Special assistant Ron Wotus, the longest-tenured coach in franchise history, will return in a similar role.<\/p>\n

But bullpen coach Garvin Alston will not return. Neither will former bench coach Ryan Christenson, who caught on with the A\u2019s as their first-base coach, or assistant hitting coach Damon Minor, who left for a position with the Chicago Cubs\u2019 Triple-A club. And the pitching coach situation is wide open after J.P. Martinez, despite being under contract for 2026, received no assurances and took a bullpen coach position with the Atlanta Braves. Even first-base coach Mark Hallberg, who was Posey\u2019s roommate at Florida State and considered a shoo-in to return, has been \u201cpopular with other teams as well,\u201d Posey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith nothing being a guarantee for J.P., I think he took the bird in the hand,\u201d Posey said. \u201cI\u2019m a J.P. fan and had a good talk with him after he took the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess where the Giants go with such a pivotal hire. They were rebuffed when they requested permission to speak to San Diego Padres bullpen coach Ben Fritz. They spoke with former New York Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner before he agreed to join the Braves. Vitello, a former infielder who served as a pitching coach as a college assistant, is sure to have his own preferences for the role, especially after leading a Tennessee program that fast-tracked velocity monsters such as Garrett Crochet, Ben Joyce and Chase Dollander to the big leagues. But he\u2019ll also need an experienced hand to help him manage workloads over the uncharted novelty of a 162-game season.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, it\u2019s about establishing trust and a relationship with your pitchers,\u201d Posey said. \u201cThere\u2019s no question that there\u2019s a different language that\u2019s spoken nowadays, and I think it\u2019s helpful to have somebody that can have those conversations \u2026 and not necessarily with just the younger players.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the hitting side, with Pat Burrell expected to be reassigned within the organization, industry speculation is widespread that the Giants are targeting Toronto Blue Jays assistant hitting coach Hunter Mense, who played under Vitello along with right-hander (and potential Giants free-agent target) Max Scherzer at the University of Missouri. Mense worked in Toronto under hitting coach David Popkins, who was credited for instilling the kind of contact-oriented, grinder mentality that Posey has cited as a characteristic he hopes to instill in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of it when these groups get going, there\u2019s a confidence that happens, too,\u201d Posey said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to measure how much that comes into play. When you\u2019re confident, you\u2019re going to take close pitches easier than you will when you\u2019re searching. So it all adds up to that final piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good vibes are good. They can be the final piece. They are also difficult to maintain when you don\u2019t have enough talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 Buster Posey has been a major-league executive long enough to understand that his cohort is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,1275,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-373207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-san-francisco-giants","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115535075445881850","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}