Your 2026 Giants: The Future Horizon

Some fans and media are so bummed out about how bad the Giants season has been, that they are missing the big story of this season: the rise of the farm system.  One beat writer wrote that improving the farm system is the only positive development of the 2026 season.  Below is my comment, with added content.

Your 2026 Giants: Eldridge’s Progress at 25 Games

Since I’m collecting Bryce Eldridge’s batting game log data, I thought I would give a 25 game update.

Your 2026 Giants: Eldridge Usage

There has been a lot of talk about mishandling Eldridge after his promotion. I didn’t share that opinion, but didn’t keep detailed track of his usage, so I decided to look into this, see whose impression is correct.

Your 2026 Giants New Manager: Tony Vitello

As has been announced for a while, the long time ultra successful University of Tennessee head coach, who led his team to multiple College World Series, and won one in 2024, Tony Vitello, was hired to be the Giants 40th manager in franchise history.  He gets a three year contract, with a vesting option (conditions unknown, but likely wins) for a fourth year, making $3.5M per year.  Which is not much more than his current contract with UT. 

Here are some informative articles and videos about the Giants new manager:

• The Athletic Andy Baggarly: Closing in on Vitello, Pursuit of Vitello meaning, Vitello Timeline (subscription required; but you get Andy Baggarly, who broke the story and had been hinting at the connection for a while now, and is a great storyteller and writer, he’s why I subscribe)
• SF Standard John Shea:  YouTube video (Kerry Crowley and John Shea), Posey Hires Vitello (Subscription required)
• NBC Bay Area Sports Alex Pavlovic:  Vitello Hired YouTube, Vitello Hired, Max Scherzer on why Vitello works, Vitello contract, Vitello shares selfish reason to join Giants
• Baseball America:  Vitello Makes Perfect Sense
• MLB.com:  What Vitello MLB players say about him
• KNBR:  Interview with Vitello after Kilen drafted
• The TK Show:  Dave Fleming discusses Vitello hire, quotes people who know him
• Youth Inc:  Vitello YouTube Interview: Building Winners 
• Yahoo Sports:  Five Facts about Vitello 
• Knoxville News:  Vitello’s Approach to Baseball

Your 2024 Giants: Why Six Years Is Not Enough (also: Posey/Minasian)

[Wrote most of this in mid-October, just never got around to finishing until today's announcement of Zack Minasian as the new GM, so I've added some comments about that]

Just read an article on Fangraphs, written a while ago, regarding how long draft prospects take to reach the majors.  It was going to be a key rebuttal regarding the six years people have been complaining that Zaaidi’s had enough time to rebuild the team. Then reality took a left turn.

I was taking off for a vacation in SoCal, to visit my daughter, and was away from my phone since I was driving my wife and I down.  So after we checked in, I checked my phone and my brother who also follows the Giants text me "Posey!"  And I'm wondering what happened.  Then I see The Athletic notifications of articles about Zaidi being replaced by Posey.

So, now, after he’s been fired and replaced by Posey, instead this post will simply be a learning experience for those who don’t understand the player development process very well (which, based on the vast majority of people commenting on The Athletic, is a vast majority of Giants fans; which aligns well with what I experienced when defending Sabean back in 2007-2010).

Zaidi Success Streak in Finding a Valuable Player: 2022 and 2023

As I captured in my first post and second post about his finding young contributors, Zaidi as Dodger GM had a streak of adding prospects or young veterans at low cost (either in money or prospects or both), and still in their 20's, but wasn't established yet, who contributed at least 1.0 bWAR at some point during Zaidi's time there, and he was able to continue that into 2019, whereas the Dodger's streak ended in 2019, and he continued in 2020 and 2021 with the Giants.  This post will look at his record in 2022 and 2023.

ogc thoughts

In 2022, the streak continued, with the addition of Jacob Junis, and Yaz led the way again.  These players, who were all originally acquired when they were in their 20's, and were not all that good before acquisition, added at least 1.0 bWAR in 2022 for the Giants:

• Mike Yastrzemski (31 YO): 1.9 bWAR; he continues to deliver value, after being acquired for the 2019 season.
• Thairo Estrada (26 YO): 1.6 bWAR; he got into 140 games, starting 129 of them, and played across most of the diamond.
• Jacob Junis (29 YO): 1.6 bWAR; he was a nice surprise, and continued Zaidi's streak of adding a new player producing at least 1.0 bWAR
• Tyler Rogers (30 YO): 1.0 bWAR; as I noted in the post link above, Rogers was added because the prior GM never gave him a chance.
• J.D. Davis (29 YO): 0.9 bWAR; great contribution in 49 games, 32 starts, would prorate above 1 WAR
• Wilmer Flores (30 YO): 0.7 bWAR; I include him because it was a relatively small contract.
• Alex Young (28 YO): 0.6 bWAR
• Jarlin Garcia (29 YO): 0.4 bWAR
• Luis Ortiz (26 YO): 0.3 bWAR
• Mauricio Dubon (27 YO): 0.2 bWAR
• LaMonte Wade Jr (28 YO):  0.0 bWAR
• Zack Littell (26 YO): 0.1 bWAR

There were a number of negatives as well, but nobody is perfect. The point is that he added players who produced well, at least at a 1.0 bWAR production rate and together produced 9.3 bWAR to the 2022 team.  This was a sharp drop from the prior two seasons, which were boosted greatly by the Gausman addition, as well as declines by past contributors. The 2022 team was mainly boosted by Estrada playing a full season, and the additions of Junis and Davis.

There were improvements and new additions in 2023, and his streak continued with the final push by Tristan Beck to reach the benchmark 1.0 bWAR:

• LaMonte Wade Jr (29 YO): 2.7 bWAR; great comeback season, was finally healthy
• Wilmer Flores (31 YO): 2.6 bWAR; I include him because it was a relatively small contract and added in his 20's.
• Mike Yastrzemski (32 YO): 2.4 bWAR; continued to produce in his early 30's (has added 12.0 bWAR while with the Giants) 
• Thairo Estrada (27 YO): 2.3 bWAR; continued to produce and improve as a starter, great young find
• Tyler Rogers (31 YO): 1.7 bWAR; Rogers was originally added because the prior GM never gave him a chance and he was added in his 20's.
• Tristan Beck (27 YO): 1.1 bWAR; acquired in trade of Mark Melancon. I'm stretching my definition a bit to include him, as he was acquired in Melancon trade, because the idea is for low cost acquisitions. But I'm including him because it was a good trade, to dump money, where prospects is of lesser concern. A trade like getting Jeff Kent for Matt Williams would not count for this since the idea of the trade was to get value for value.
• J.D. Davis (29 YO): 0.9 bWAR; wasn't as good in a starting role, unfortunately, but still added some
• Jacob Junis (30 YO): 0.8 bWAR; wasn't used as much, despite all the holes in the rotation
• Blake Sobol (25 YO):  0.2 bWAR; Rule 5 Draft pick, had to be kept on the roster all season for the Giants to keep him on the team past this season, I view this as a success of Zaidi's processes for acquiring young talent at low cost, though it is not that high a WAR, but when I first started this up at the end of the season, he was actually at 0.6 bWAR.

Overall, including others with positive and other with negative, these players, all acquired by Zaidi when they were under 30 YO, and not for much money or assets used to acquire, produced 13.9 bWAR in 2023, which is nearly what was produced in 2020-21, and both were about 3 times as much as produced in 2019, as prior acquisitions continue to contribute while adding in new producers.

Farm System Producing

Because the young players were a more prominent part of the season, I thought I would start addressing the homegrown portion of the roster.  These players produced 10.6 bWAR in 2023 (there are some repeats here, from above), with the vast majority produced by the three veterans, and below are all the positive contributors, I'm skipping over the ones below zero:

• Logan Webb:  5.5 bWAR
• Tyler Rogers: 1.7 bWAR
• Camilo Doval: 1.5 bWAR
• Tristan Beck:  1.1 bWAR, Beck did well as a bulk reliever
• Ryan Walker: 1.0 bWAR, Walker excelled as an opener, could be future set up man, if he can continue doing well
• Patrick Bailey: 0.8 bWAR, Patty excelled as a catcher, but unfortunately the long season appear to have caught up to him, he will need to build on his stamina. Still, he was a Gold Glove finalist (one of 3), and although only promoted in mid-May, led the NL in a number of catching stats. Also, baseball-reference doesn't include framing value, but Fangraphs does and he had 2.6 fWAR, which should be more representative of his value.
• Austin Slater:  0.7 bWAR
• Keaton Winn:  0.3 bWAR, Winn did really well as a bulk reliever, but got hit hard at home, ending up with a huge ERA despite great peripherals (8.9 K/9; 2.30 K/BB). Most projection systems see a better performance from Winn than Beck
• Kyle Harrison: 0.2 bWAR, Harrison is the top ranked LHP in most Top 100 rankings for 2023 and 2024 seasons, he made the leap to the majors, with some ups and downs (so did Cain and Lincecum), especially that great early start. The seasonal rate for this is 1.0 bWAR, so as a 21 YO rookie, he was almost an average pitcher. The future is bright for this one!
• Tyler Fitzgerald: 0.2 bWAR, this rookie was a nice last minute surprise, producing a lot of power in just 10 games started. Not sure why he wasn't promoted earlier, as it appears that for 2023, it was fish or cut bait time, so they finally gave him a shot, and he did well.  Since he can play almost every position on the field, except catch and pitch, he will likely start the season as a utility player, but will get starts across the diamond, both to give him experience, as well as rest players. 

Now, among the ones who were below zero, I thought I would discuss two of them, Luis Matos and Heliot Ramos.

Thoughts on Luis Matos

Matos had an up and down season. He was especially bad at defense, considering defense was supposed to be part of his package.  His hitting was actually okay, about average, as his offense prorated to a full season was close to 2 wins, but his defense prorated to -3 wins, it was that bad.  He was only 21 YO, and the Giants have already signed Jung Hoo Lee to be the starting CF, and Zaidi in a recent interview, noted that Matos is now the starting LF, which means Conforto is the main DH.

Since he was so bad fielding CF, moving him to LF should help to minimize him as a defensive liability, especially since Lee is considered a plus defender in CF, which should also help to cover for Matos' lack of natural fielding instincts, which I saw noted in a variety of reports on him.

As I noted in my last post (where I analyzed Heliot Ramos), part of my prospect analysis covers the prospect's age in relationship to the league average, as I've noticed that performances, at least in the minors, follow the pattern of excelling when in the same relative age range as before, when he excelled previously.  

In 2023, he was 21 and -5.6 years younger than the players in AAA, and hit .353/.404/.626/1.030, with a .336 BABIP.  That compares with his .304/.399/.444/.842 in AA, with a .320 BABIP,  where he was -2.7 years younger.  That's similar to his 2021 season, where he was 19 YO (-2.1 years) and hit .313/.359/.495/.853 in A-ball, with a .332 BABIP.  He did not hit that well in 2022, where he was 20 YO, -2.6 years, hitting only .211/.275/.344/.619, with a .226 BABIP, showing how low he can go. And in 2023 in the majors, he hit .250/.319/.342/.661, with a .285 BABIP, and was -7.2 years younger than the league.

For Matos, a 22 YO in 2025, he'll be -6.2 years younger than the league. He is roughly the age behind the league as he was in 2023 in AAA, where he was -5.6 years younger, and he hit well, albeit in small samples, but his BABIP was basically near what he has hit before when he hit well, so it does not seem that far out of the question that this batting line was real.  

Here's why I believe in Luis Matos:  his contact rate and eye are great for hitters.  He had good contact rates (85% and higher is good) and eye (100% and higher is elite):  

• A-ball:  86% contact rate (AB-K/AB), 46% eye (walks/strikeouts), .853 OPS, .332 BABIP (-2.1 years)
• Advanced A-ball, A+:  82% contact rate, 42% eye, .619 OPS, .226 BABIP (-2.6 years)
• AA:  90% contact rate, 142% eye (ultra-elite), .842 OPS, .320 BABIP (-2.7 years)
• AAA:  92% contact rate, 100% eye (still elite), 1.030 OPS, .336 BABIP (-5.6 years)
• Majors: 86% contact rate, 61% eye (good hitters are above 50%), .661 OPS, .285 BABIP (-7.2 years)

This reminds me of how well Pablo Sandoval (the Panda) did in the minors before he made the majors.  He had really good contact rates as he rose in the minors (lacked the patience that Matos showed).  Then his power kicked in when he turned 22.  Panda averaged a homer every 22 AB in AA when he was promoted to the majors, where he averaged a homer every 48 AB.  Matos averaged a homer every 30 AB in A-ball, every 34 AB in A+ball, every 38 AB in AA, and every 16 AB in AAA (obvious outlier), and then every 114 AB in the majors.  Hopefully the power he showed in the minors will translate to the majors soon enough, 30-38 AB roughly is equivalent to 15-20 homers in a season.

With a contact rate of 86% and eye of 61% in the majors in 253 plate appearances, that demonstrates his ability to correctly gauge the strike zone and make contact better than most major leaguers, so the next step in his development is for him to do more damage with his bat when he makes contact.  He reportedly has worked out this offseason to bring his power into play in the majors, and there is a picture of him circulating around showing off the extra body weight he has gained. 

At this point, I have greater hope that he can produce as a major leaguer than any other Giants OF prospects, simply because he's shown that he can be good judging the strike zone in the majors and making contact.  Add in his production in the minors when challenged by being one of the most youngest in that level, the ability to keep on making good contact, then with him taking a leap in ability in 2023, gaining more walks at every level, including the majors, vs. his ability before at lower levels, and thus I can see why Zaidi announced recently that they are starting Matos in LF in 2024.  He has the potential to break out if given the opportunity, and at worse, if he struggles again, Conforto can slide back into LF from DH, or perhaps another OF will get the opportunity to play (Meckler, Ramos, Fitzgerald, Sabol, McCray, basically in that order).

Thoughts on Heliot Ramos

I still believe in Heliot Ramos.  Ramos finally broke through and had a good season in AAA.  His best seasons were in 2019 and 2023, when he was 3.5 and 3.6 years younger than the league.  Unfortunately, he was 5.2 years younger than the majors in 2023, would puts him at 4.2 years in 2024, and 3.2 years in 2025, when he would be 25 YO.  He should be out of options that year, and hopefully ready to break out, and he might break out late in the 2024 season, if he follows his age vs league pattern.  And with all the OF on the roster, and Lee signed to be the starting CF, I don't think he will see much action in the majors in 2024, unless there is a lot of problems with the outfielders.

I covered this in greater detail in the last post I published.  As noted above, Zaidi recently noted in an interview that Matos is the starting LF in the current configuration of the starting lineup, with Jung Hoo Lee in CF, and Yaz and Slater platooning in RF, which presumably means Conforto is the DH (though a recent rumor is that the Giants are pursuing Jorge Soler to be their DH, so stay tuned for more changes). So I'm pasting the last three paragraphs, with changes to account for Matos in LF:

However, given how poorly he hit in the majors in 2023, I would be cautious and look at 2025 being the season he breaks out (when he's 25 YO), with 2024 being perhaps in the .700-ish OPS range in the majors, where he doesn't play much unless he can keep his OPS above .700 consistently, instead of going hot and cold all the time.  I would not bet on him breaking out, but I wouldn't bet against him either, depends on how he does the first half of 2024. 

His main problem, as with most prospects who struggle, they just strike out too much.  Some fans complain he hasn't gotten a chance, but in his chances so far, he's been striking out a ton in the majors while not getting much walks or hits. It's one thing if he's blasting homers while striking out, like he did in Sacramento last season, but one homer in 82 plate appearances, with a weak ISO of 92, speaks to an overmatched hitter.  I think he will get more opportunities in 2024 (of course, that's a low bar, some critics would note), and will break out sooner than later.

And he probably will get opportunities to play in the majors in any case in 2024.  I doubt there will be another starting OF signed, so as noted above, it'll be Matos in LF, Lee in CF (where he's expected to be plus defensively, and can help Matos out in left center), and Yaz/Slater in RF (where they have been good defenders before), with Wade as a backup OF, but mainly platooning at 1B.  Hopefully we don't see much of Ramos in 2024 because that means issues for someone in the OF, but since Yaz and Slater seems to be injury prone, I expect Ramos to get occasional opportunities to show his progress vis-a-vis the majors.

2024-25 Could End the Complainers' Comments on Developing OF

Based on the above, the starting lineup by 2025 could be Matos in LF, Lee in CF, and Ramos in RF, and the three of them could end the complaints that the Giants haven't developed a starting OF since Chili Davis, if they produce well.

Speaking of Lee, I haven't decided if Lee should qualify for extetnding this streak in 2024.  Technically, he would, as he has had no MLB experience, and essentially is a good minor leaguer.  However, he was paid over $100M, so it's not like the Giants didn't think that he wasn't talented.  I'm open to being convinced either way, if anyone would like to chime in.  

Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Giants Not as Good as [fill in team blank]

The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants.  The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:

• Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team
• 2023 season was a disaster
• The farm system has not made any progress
• They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.
• Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers
• Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars
• What's the plan?

This is the seventh and last in a series examining each complaint.

Your 2022 Giants: My Thoughts on Zaidi Interview on Frustrating Season

I wrote most of this (I also added new thoughts) in response to the comments made in response to the interview Tim Kawakami did with Farhan Zaidi (only subscribers):  

Kawakami: Farhan Zaidi on this frustrating Giants season, why it happened and what comes next

Your 2022 Giants: So, do we trade for Soto, or no? Farhan's M.O. Sees All

I wrote this in a thread comment on TA about the possibility of trading for Soto. Many comments were about Sabean's Modus Operandi, as well, so I addressed that too. Then, as I am wont to do, I added other stuff, thoughts come at me all day... (and sorry, wasn't able to finish before the trade deadline, where Soto was traded to the Padres)

Your 2021 Giants Post-Mortem: The Subtle Art of Shoving it up Their Butt

As Clay Bellinger indelicately put it after the Dodgers, ugh, beat the Giants in the 2021 NLDS, the first time the long-time rivals met in the Divisional Playoffs era, Logan Webb "Huge props to Logan Webb ... he shoved it ... up our butt, twice"

Twittter Video Link

Brandon Belt Discussion by Keith Law and Jason Gray

There was a nice video discussion about Brandon Belt by ESPN's Keith Law and Jason Gray (I follow @KeithLaw's twitter account and learned of this by this re-tweet) on ESPN today.  It is really good so check it out (also discusses Bryce Harper and Eric Hosmer too, if you are prospect hound and looking for fantasy advice for 2011), but I am providing a rough transcript as I want to make some points regarding Belt and the Giants:

... Other great offensive prospects are in the AFL besides Harper.  One of the most impressive is Brandon Belt.

(Gray) Some say he came out of nowhere, and he sort of did, as he's relatively new to hitting, being drafted twice as a pitcher.  Kudos to SF staff for his development.

They changed his stance, hand position, in order to get the most out of his raw talent.

There are openings in SF in 1B and LF, he could make impact in 2011.

I (Law) love the way they changed his stance, he's more upright now, picked his hands up, more leverage in swing, can get bat to any spot in zone, good plate discipline, pretty good defensive 1B

Giants Thoughts

I wanted to point this out for a few reasons.  First, obviously, always good to hear good things about our prospects.  Belt is arguably the Giants #1 prospect now, depending on how you view Wheeler's potential.  He's definitely the closest to making the team as a starter.  Nice to have him recognized by experts such as Keith Law.  And they called him a great offensive prospect.

Second, I like the detail they gave in what he is doing right as a hitter.  Don't always get to hear such information when prospects are described, period, and they gave a lot of detail that we normally don't get to hear about our prospects.

Third, wanted to point out that while technically it is true that the Giants have openings at 1B and LF for 2011, I seriously doubt that will happen.  Huff loves the team too much to leave it over money and the Giants do not skimp in signing players they are interested in keeping, which Sabean alluded to previously, when a reporter asked or suggested that Huff might be traded to get prospects since he'll be a free agent.  He got $8M each for 2 seasons when younger, he'll probably get something like DeRosa's 2 year, $12M ($6M per season) deal, maybe with team option year added. 

Burrell already said that he'll accept a bench role in 2011, and that suggests that he'll sign for minimum money ($1-3M);  he grew up Giants fan and clearly wants to stay on the team at all costs.  Burrell staying would be another reason why Huff will re-sign.  Together, 1B and LF are covered, plus Cody Ross, according to Sabean-speak, probably will be retained as well, giving us Torres, Ross, Burrell, Rowand, and Schierholtz in the OF already for 2011.  No space for Belt in 2011, unless injury, sudden (and complete) change in heart, poor performance, or Belt just Babe Ruth's his way to MLB lineup (Huff can play 3B, LF, and RF too).

Misconception that Giants Don't Develop Position Players

Lastly, the Giants have been painted as a poor organization for developing position prospects because, well, they haven't really developed a position prospect for a long time (or at least a good one) until Pablo Sandoval came along, and I think that this discussion highlights that perhaps it is more a matter of not devoting their high draft picks to hitters, than of lack of ability to develop hitters.

Look at all the things Law and Gray describes that that Giants did with Belt.  That does not happen randomly, it is a recognition of how to hit and adjusting the hitter to improve what he could do, within the constraints of his talents.  There are so many adjustments noted that the Giants did to Belt, you can't do all that and hope to randomly succeed, you do all that because you have a methodology of how a major league hitter succeeds and mold the player to it.

And that is where most people complaining about the Giants ability to draft position players are missing something, something I've been trying to explain for the past 6-7 years about the draft:  there is not a lot of obvious talent in the draft, except when you draft in the top 5 or so.  And odds are not great there either, around 40-45% chance of finding a good player there, based on my study, not even flipping a coin odds.

And the Giants for the most part have used their first round pick on pitchers - with odds of around 10% for Cain's pick, around 20-25% for Bumgarner and Lincecum's pick range.  And the odds get exponentially worse for the second round and on down the draft.  They simply have not devoted many higher draft picks to position players until recent drafts, and still drafted pitchers early in Bumgarner and Wheeler. 

So the real reason most position prospects don't work in the Giants farm system is because they are lacking a lot of qualities that make up a good hitter due to the fact that they are drafted many rounds later, and not because they are incapable of developing hitters.  If you are fishing in an empty barrel, the reason you don't catch fish isn't necessarily because you are a bad fisherman.

And though one could say that the Giants lucked into Belt since he was a 5th rounder, but again to the points that Law and Gray made, an organization that is incompetant in developing a hitter would not have been able to make all those adjustments with Belt and get him hitting the way he is, one of the best offensive prospects in baseball.  I would credit the Giants for identifying that Belt, in his unformed state as a hitter, since he was just recently converted from pitcher (funny since the Giants are semi-famous for converting position players into pitchers), had the raw talent to become a better hitter given additional instruction.

Given the Giants move to drafting more position players earlier in the draft - Fairley, Noonan, Culberson, Gillaspie, Kieschnick, Crawford, Joseph, Dominguez, Belt, Brown, Parker, Jurica - the Giants will probably be seeing more "success" in developing position players going forward, when, really, it is more an emphasis of their rare resources (early draft picks) on position players in recent seasons rather than the historic emphasis on pitching that they have basically hewed to since Tidrow took control of player personnel and development.  And this new emphasis was marked by when John Barr took over scouting for the Giants.

World Series News

Bochy earlier announced the rotation (Home/Road) will be Lincecum H, Cain H, Sanchez R, Bumgarner R, Lincecum R, Cain H, Sanchez H. Probably best this way, get Lincecum and Cain pitch critical games 5 & 6.  Also puts Lincecum mano-a-mano with Lee, giving us best chance to win game 1.  Interesting stat I saw tweeted by Ranger's fan is that in Wild Card era, almost every team that won game 1 ended up winning the World Series. 

In addition, Andres Torres sound like he's healthy and ready to play game 1.  If he can hit like he was at the end of the NLCS, that would be a huge boost to our chances of scoring first and winning the World Series. 

Jenkins: Why Not Play Posey Elsewhere?

Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins asks this question in a recent column, "Who Cares If Posey Can't Catch?" He says what if the offense is struggling and Posey is killing AAA pitching, should he be brought up and play other positions. My answer: any Giants fan should care.

Giants Thoughts

Catcher is the position at which Posey provides significant value. If he were like Matt Weithers, then, yeah, he could be very valuable at almost any position with the way he hits (assuming he can field decently at other positions), including 1B. Posey, however, is only valuable at up the middle positions, he would be average at best for the corner positions and below average at 1B, unless he can field that position as well as the greats do. And catcher is where he would be especially valuable, unlike CF, 2B, and even SS, where offense is available to a great degree.

Looking long-term, while catcher can be a debilitating position, I think Posey is posed to have a career similar to Craig Biggio and it would fit in with our current prospects/personnel. Posey can be our catcher during his pre-free agency years for the most part, then shift to either CF or 2B as needed, though most probably CF as we have Burriss and Noonan coming up who might hold the spot for a number of years if they develop, whereas we don't have any great prospects coming up in CF, only average ones, maybe Mike McBryde in the near-term or Wendell Fairley eventually. And SS is always a position in need, though hopefully Brandon Crawford could be the long-term answer there.

At that point, hopefully one of our other catching prospects might be ready to take over. Jackson Williams is suppose to be a very good defensive catcher, maybe by that point, our offense can afford to have a poor hitter like him catching (or he could develop enough offense, catchers often take until their late 20's to develop their hitting) and be the defensive stalwart that he was projected to be. We also have other catchers, like Hector Sanchez, who might develop by then as well. Then at some point Posey could possibly be moved to another position, depending on the Giants need and extend his career as a valuable player.

This is the lack of patience that Henry Schulman noted the other day that I blogged on in my last post, that is fueled in part by the impatient press corps who follows the Giants. Both the Chronicle and Mercury have been lambasting the Giants the past few years for their alleged lack of development and long-term thinking when, as I've been showing those same few years, that the Giants have a plan and that plan revolves around great pitching and great fielding overall.

Yet these same people, some of which whole-heartedly advocated trading away Lincecum for Alex Rios (now that would have been the worse trade of all trades in Giants history, and we have doozies just in the SF era, of great players traded away for almost nothing: Orlando Cepeda, Gaylord Perry, Dave Kingman, George Foster, Bobby Bonds, Willie McCovey, Bill Madlock, Jack Clark) think that they know how best to get the Giants moving forward.

Sure, if you want to maximize your play in 2010, playing Posey at other positions at mid-season when the team is struggling would probably be a great idea for the short term. But who are you going to get to catch for you in 2011 and beyond? He's not going to improve if he's playing other positions and he might start to let up mentally on this catching if you get him thinking he might play other positions.

Now, if Jenkins is talking only about September and the playoffs, then this would be a brilliant idea. Most NL teams are hamstrung when they get into the playoffs and particularly in the World Series, as there will always be players struggling or injured. Posey could step in at that point for a month or so, and be the utility starter (giving needed rest to the regulars) while also being the backup catcher which would be his main job.

Then if the Giants would be so lucky to make the World Series, he could be a worthy DH for the team, whereas most NL teams have been and will be hamstrung with a bench player thrusted into the DH spot (remember our DH's in 2002? Shinjo, Dunston, Feliz, players who had no right to be DHing). Now THAT would be a great advantage to have, adding a Buster Posey to the lineup during the World Series.