“When someone like Buster asks for the ball, you give it to him”

Buster Posey’s introduction as the new President of Baseball Operations went about as well as you could’ve imagined and cemented some suspicions about the state of the team.

We’re five weeks shy of the last time the San Francisco Giants introduced a President of Baseball Operations, but this time, it’s Buster Posey, and we all know him. The gathering this morning at Oracle Park had positive vibes and clear statements that were sure to assuage the concerns of some long-suffering fans who simply didn’t get the last guy’s POV.

Of Farhan Zaidi, Chairman Greg Johnson said the Giants “wish him nothing but the best.” He then thanked Kristen Posey for allowing the team to have this opportunity to hand the team over — “hand the ball to” — to Gerald Dempsey “Buster” Posey to be the second President of Baseball Operations in team history.

There will be puff pieces, think pieces, and scathing pieces written about all this, here and elsewhere, so I’ll stick to a straightforward recap with some half-considered commentary interspersed. Johnson opening the press conference with a note of thanks for the trailblazer (in the POBO role) followed by an organic and solid joke signaled that Times Have Changed.

Rather than relying on Buster Posey to clean up his rough wording, Johnson could just hand it over to Buster Posey, and that’s the real sense you got from everything he said: the ownership group was more than happy to hand the daily baseball operation over to the second most-famous living Giant on the planet for the next three years (no contingencies!).

“It was really Buster’s desire to be 100% accountable for baseball.”

There was a polish to the entire presentation that was absent from the Zaidi years going all the way back to even when Larry Baer introduced him. The reason being? Comfort. For everybody.

Although Buster at times seemed a little nervous, he warmed upped in the later innings as the conference went on. His answers were never rambling or convoluted or even too inside baseball. He was the Buster Posey most fans imagined when they yearned for him to wrest control from The Analytics.

Of course, Posey’s not going to get away from the data. He wants the Giants to be the Giants he helped create, which was built on the idea of the Giants that came before, but not be so backwards-looking that it ignore the things that makes things great in the 21st century. “Analytics are here to stay. It would be a mistake not to use them,” Posey said.

The team intends to hire a new general manager, reassign current GM Pete Putila, possibly boost assistant GM Jeremy Shelley’s role, and amp up their scouting. He made references to bringing in “a girl” to the operation, which could open the door for Kim Ng to be the next GM, but he also referenced Brian Sabean — specifically, “From a scouting perspective, I value scouts […] I look to Brian Sabean and his scouting background.”

So, on the one hand, this is a lot of potential deference to the straw hats and the old school, but there was also a sense that he was really just seeing a flaw in the decision-making that he felt could be different and maximize the operation. A few comments to boost my point:

One thing I’m very confident about: there’s a tremendous amount of great people in place.

How much information can you give a player before it’s too much — before it’s diminishing returns?

We want guys to ultimately to — when I say guys: the guys on the field that are out there every single night and day — to be accountable for their own careers. And I do think we live this day and age in our baseball world, where there is so much information that it’s easy sometimes to shift blame for one reason or another.

My plain read of that is that a foundation has been built and all that’s needed are some tweaks to the decision-making process. The Giants — even by Zaidi’s admission — need to do better in their player development and so that’s where some of the focus will necessarily be, but at the major league level, Posey seems to want to get away from the analysts and the algorithms being the stars of the show, and (oh — now I see I’m drifting too far into opinion here) I think that’s a very real concern.

You can easily imagine analysts being a little more concerned with their data versus making sure the players perform and the team actually succeeds. Posey wants to emphasize the importance of the players, and I think if we look at the last decade-plus of the sabermetrics revolution of the industry, there has been a concerted effort to make sure the front offices got more of the credit. Hard not to imagine that causing a conflict or confusing priorities.

Think about it: it’s not difficult to imagine a situation where coaches give players info and pull a “I did my job” when the results don’t line up with expectations, which creates a scenario where the players have to work in service of the numbers and not the coaches in service of the players. But also, if he brings back Brian Sabean… lol.

Anyway, Buster Posey controls Baseball Ops for the San Francisco Giants now. He’s a player selected by a prior iteration of that department, developed by it, and produced by it. This is a unique situation. Can he succeed? I’ve only doubted him a couple of times: when he said (basically), “Let’s do this again” in his speech at the 2010 World Series parade and when he came back from hip surgery. I don’t want to do it again, even if the context is radically different. This tweet encapsulates a big part of the situation for me, a Buster Posey enjoyer:

We are living in a reality that Buster Posey wanted. He’s fueled our imaginations for a decent chunk of our lives, so I’ll hold off on the pessimism for at least a couple of days.

A press conference is not a metric of success for Baseball Ops, but it was successful unto itself. Buster Posey talked about how they’re in the “memory-making business,” how he wanted to — essentially — field a team that reflected (and I’m putting words in his mouth but I find this phrase very fitting:) The Giants Way; and if it’s unclear what that is then he wants to define it for those who don’t know or who forgot. Greg Johnson gave a better answer about payroll and Buster Posey indicated they were interested in discussing a Blake Snell extension. Bob Melvin and Posey also had a solid joke exchange:

POSEY: If I ever made eye contact with Bob when I was playing, I never felt like he liked me.

MELVIN: Oh, I admittedly didn’t. And I never made eye contact with him either because he was always making my life really difficult.

POSEY: So, I’m happy we’re gonna get to share some more endearing glances, I guess.

But Bob Melvin also had the line of the day to explain this new normal:

“It’s Buster Posey. It’s the Giants. That’s a big deal. When someone like Buster asks for the ball, you give it to him.”