The vibe shift is real

Buster Posey has planted his flag.

As someone who’s quick to judgment based on scant information — a process that has served me well for most of my life even though it’s about as reliable as a coin flip — I can’t help but view the comments made by Buster Posey this afternoon in a hotel lobby in San Antonio that were posted to social media just moments ago as a clear statement that he intends to shakeup the way the San Francisco Giants Baseball Club operates.

Dramatically.

Per Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic (via Twitter/X):

When we learned years ago that the team had gutted the clubhouse innards to install servers and computer stations, it read as a clear sign that Farhan Zaidi was putting his mark on the organization and dragging it further into the 21st century. We know from comments after his ousting that there was definitely an intent to ignore or forget about the championship era from last decade and while I always understood the rationale behind it, it always seemed like a move that would backfire if the team didn’t succeed going forward.

Well, the team didn’t succeed and the guy who was there the last time it was a success wants to go back to The Old Ways and I don’t think that’s much of a surprise at the end of the day. My fear has always been that a lurch back to those old ways simply delays the team regaining its footing; and, as much as I’d like to believe Buster Posey when he stresses the importance of analytics, there’s the possibility that he’s speaking like a politician: it’s a big tent, where everyone matters in theory, but in reality only some people and ideas are actually important.

On the other hand, I think this is probably for the best. Zaidi had to remake the team in his image if he had any hope of success. The shadow he was working under (the shadow of success, by the way) must’ve been obnoxious when it wasn’t a hindrance. Posey has to remake the team in his image and it certainly does seem like that image is going to be similar to the one we experienced last decade.

This additional comment in Andrew Baggarly’s thread really underscored this:

So, this is even undoing some of the work that Bobby Evans did after the team’s unceremonious fall from relevance in 2017.

My sense is that this isn’t some sort of Busterian Jihad. I don’t think the Giants will suddenly ignore on base percentage or prioritize contact over other hitting skills (recall that contact and low strikeout rate was of primary concern during the Brian Sabean days), but this shift of emphasis from data scouting to human scouting and player “makeup” really does suggest that an older style of thinking will inform decisions — at least as much as analytics, but I suspect the formula won’t wind up being 50/50. Will Clark might’ve been more right than wrong. I hope not too right, though, because it’s my personal belief that a 180-degree turn (or anything approaching 180) would be colossally stupid and I choose not to believe Buster Posey has the capacity for that degree of stupidity.

Still, it would be funny if this all shakes out to mean that the Giants will simply steal more bases and claim fewer players on waivers while the other quirks of their personality that have developed over the past few years (certain platoon situations, an emphasis on finding pitchers with a sinker-slider combo) remain unchanged.

But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

It certainly does seem like Buster Posey is determined to reinvent the way the Giants run Baseball Operations, only, what he’s saying and doing sounds a lot less like “invent” and much more like “re,” as in a “return” to a certain style of play — and it’s logical to assume that style is the one he and the Giants excelled at last decade.

Is it possible to marry the two styles? Absolutely. The Dodgers, the team the Giants will be looking up at for the foreseeable future, don’t subscribe to any one philosophy or style of play. They have the talent, depth, and resources to utilize them all. Now, if the Dodgers’ ownership group woke up with the Giants’ revenues tomorrow morning, they would jump off a cliff, so the Giants can never hope to even approach the Dodgers’ way of doing things, but the very notion that “new school” and “old school” can’t be merged — and aren’t already merged — is silly. And I feel sick to my stomach even invoking “old school” because I know we’re well beyond this being an argument.

The Giants aren’t going to suddenly start bunting more or eschewing the designated hitter in favor of the pitcher hitting, but I suspect Buster Posey’s plans are to put together a team that more closely evokes the 2010 Giants, because it worked before. I’m assuming this conclusion based on scant information, sure, but there’s symbolism and then there’s bluntness, and just as Farhan Zaidi ripping out the heart of the clubhouse to install computers was a blunt act, so too is taking them out of the clubhouse and elevating a human scouting guy to the GM role.

My guess, based on Posey’s comments this afternoon and new GM Zack Minasian’s interview on MLB Network this morning, is that the team is going to be a “scout, but verify” organization, letting human decisions lead the way with numbers there to serve as a backstop. I’m not sure if that is a meaningful departure from the way things were done in the Zaidi years, but I suspect it is a departure to some degree.

This is a joyful day for people who’ve never wanted 2014 to end. The Giants are back, baby, and whether or not they’re good on the field in the future, they’re the team you remember.