Brandon Belt’s contributions to the Giants are one thing, but his season in Toronto is something else entirely.
On Monday, the United States will honor veterans of the American military with the Veterans Day holiday, which was instigated by the ceasefire that ended World War I back in 1918. If you’re so inclined, remember to thank your the military vet in your life for their service or sacrifice. And if you’re not, there’s always baseball news.
The annual GM meetings were held this week in San Antonio and it was Buster Posey’s first opportunity to get to know his new industry cohort. It was also a chance for Bay Area beat writers to engage with him in a less formal setting.
A couple of days ago, Andrew Baggarly wrote for The Athletic (sub required) that Posey has a meaningful reason for wanting to run Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants:
Posey is doing this because he cares about the game and about the Bay Area […] he does not want to be a shadow power with a board seat.
Buster was able to provide some more of his thinking about what he values in players, too, and how that might manifest in development and acquisitions. This led to a key quote that’s already floated around the site this week:
“How does a player feel like they’re valued? It’s playing time and how they’re paid, right?” Posey said. “If the industry is paying a guy to have an .850 OPS, but he only drives in 40 runs, well, where’s the incentive to drive in runs if it doesn’t matter? So the challenge, from my perspective, is that driving runs does matter to me.
Baggarly — who very, very clearly has a strong relationship with Buster Posey that was no doubt formed during his daily coverage of the team back in 2010 — took to Twitter/X last night to contextualize this quote even more:
There’s a lot of nuance I’d like to express on this point, but a) it’s not a short answer and b) I’m trying to limit contributing content here.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) November 7, 2024
Ok well I’ll try. Hitters have been told to shrink their zone and only swing at pitches they can do damage against. Good advice! But that means more called third strikes and less effective (at times) situational at-bats. I think Posey values hitters who go up there and compete.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) November 7, 2024
Posey also knows that skill variety in a lineup is important. You need on-base guys and RBI guys. (Only the truly elite can do both.) This isn’t rocket science. LAD knows this. That’s why they signed Teoscar.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) November 7, 2024
When I first read the article, I got caught up on trying to figure out which player(s) he was thinking about when he made the .850 OPS/40 RBI comment. I first took to FanGraphs and looked at every player since 2010 (who had enough PA to qualify for the batting title) who had an .850 OPS. And then, this helpful Giants fan on Twitter/X cut through that noise:
he’s thinking of 2023 Brandon Belt
— lolo (@sfglolo) November 6, 2024
Indeed! In 2023 for the Blue Jays, Belt hit 19 HR and drove in 43 in 404 plate appearances, slashing .254/.369/.490 (.858 OPS). Zing!
This seems like a mean thing to think about a guy Posey also wants to honor for helping to put the franchise back on the Baseball map after the Bonds years. In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline “Posey plans to celebrate former Giants teammates Crawford, Belt, and Bumgarner,” John Shea suggests that this will take the form of a day or days of recognition at Oracle Park for each player. Shea quotes Posey as saying,
It’s important that those players and the fans have that closure. […] all three of them had careers that make them deserve something like this. … And I’d like to have them speak on their own as well, put a little pressure on them.
So, Posey did appreciate Belt’s contributions to the Giants at the time (because they won) or not? Belt had two good RBI seasons with the Giants (82 in 2016 and 30 in the 60-game 2020), but yeah, he wasn’t a 30 HR, 100 RBI guy. Jeff Kent famously said that “The money lies in the RBIs,” and maybe that makes more sense to Buster Posey than “players who don’t make outs are extremely valuable.” Not that the latter isn’t true, but which quality helps teams win more — from a player’s perspective?
Did that thinking make him hesitant to push for the team to sign Belt this past season when the team could’ve used his help and he was just sitting there available? (Presumably, Farhan Zaidi would’ve needed to ask ownership for more money to make such a move)
It might be all of the above. Earlier this morning, Andrew Baggarly posted to The Athletic (sub required) that “sources” have told him there will be “austerity measures” and that the team “is expected to step back from the $206 million they spent last season.”
On Wednesday, I looked at the publicly available information to figure out about how much the team had to spend and concluded that the team’s current projected payroll was about $44.7 million away from what they wound up spending this past season. Baggarly’s conclusion based on what he was told said the team might have “perhaps $30-$40 million” to spend this season.
Enjoy the long weekend.