SAN FRANCISCO — During his playing days, Buster Posey always found himself fascinated by the action leading up to the MLB trade deadline, and it’s easy to see why that was the case. Posey’s first few seasons were marked by flurries of activity at the end of July.
In 2011, his first full Giants season, Brian Sabean tried to fill the void left by Posey’s leg injury by dealing Zack Wheeler for Carlos Beltran. A year later, Posey won a title because Sabean went out and got Hunter Pence and Marco “Blockbuster” Scutaro at the deadline. The 2013 deadline might have been the most interesting of all; Sabean stubbornly stood pat, holding pending free agents Pence, Tim Lincecum and Javier Lopez because he found the offers to be insulting and thought all three could help the Giants win again in 2014. They did.
A couple years later, Posey watched the clubhouse try and make sense of the Matt Duffy-Matt Moore swap. In his final big league season, Kris Bryant arrived to try and lead an aging group to one more title.
Posey experienced just about every type of approach over his 12 big league seasons, but he’s now the man in charge, and that brings a different set of emotions. He smiled this week and said this trade deadline will be a lot more stressful, but he’s also excited to tackle it. He cannot guarantee that he’ll be able to make a splash, but that’s the goal, at least, in large part because the Giants have the type of pitching that can carry you through October.
“I think there’s pressure to put this team in a position to win ball games, because, as you mentioned, the pitching staff is really good and I believe that that’s going to continue through the year,” he said on Thursday’s “Giants Talk” podcast. “Yeah, I think there’s urgency from everybody to provide these guys with run support.”
There’s just one problem right now: It’s June 5.
In 2012, Pence arrived from Philadelphia on deadline day. Scutaro was picked up four days earlier, on July 27. The Moore trade happened just minutes before the deadline in 2016, and the Bryant deal was such a last-minute scramble that a team official raced around the ballpark at one point to try and find Joey Bart and let him know he wasn’t in it.
As he chatted with beat writers on Tuesday, a day before making three roster moves, Posey said he has found in recent weeks that “we’re at a strange point of the season as far as other teams’ willingness to make trades.”
With the addition of the third wild-card spot, executives generally aren’t ready to make moves in June. And if they do have a big piece to sell, they know they might do better by waiting until the deadline when they can get a true bidding war going.
This year’s market is complicated by the fact that the upcoming free-agent class is considered weak. In a deadline preview for ESPN, Jeff Passan wrote that there “is no obvious best player available” and executives believe there won’t be a lot of top-end talent changing teams.
The available pool always changes the closer you get to July 31. But there’s nothing Posey can do about the calendar.
“I think it’s a real thing. It’s the nature of markets, right?” he said. “There’s going to be more of an urgency the closer you get to whatever the deadline is. I was talking to the coaches today — and they’ve done such a great job with the group and just relaying the message, and it’s one that they do already, but we’ve got to go with what we’ve got here.
“There’s never any certainty. I do know this, even though this is my first year doing this, there’s never any certainty that you’re going to be able to improve even if you wanted to. We can’t sit around and wait for somebody to come in via trade. We’ve got to go out and get the job done with this group.”
Posey mixed things up Wednesday by adding Dominic Smith, Andrew Knizner and Daniel Johnson to the roster, but all three are veterans who were in Triple-A. The Giants will have to wait until much closer to the July 31 deadline to gain true traction in trade talks, but they should at least be in a good position to negotiate with any team ready to sell.
There are few things more valuable than controllable starting pitching, and the Giants have plenty of it. They have three young starters in their rotation right now, and top prospect Carson Whisenhunt leads a talented Triple-A rotation. The Giants also have more than enough bullpen depth to deal a reliever or two and not take a step backwards.
This year’s deadline is July 31, giving Posey, general manager Zack Minasian and the rest of the front office two months to keep surveying the market. It’s not even close to the time when the calls really pick up, but Posey said the front office continues to explore all options.
“I believe in consistency. I think that that’s a positive, to have a consistent roster,” he said. “But it’s almost negligence if you’re not at least looking.”
