There was no farewell tour, no long goodbye, and no fairytale ending. Instead, out of the blue on the day that would have been Game 7 of the World Series had Tuesday’s outcome gone the other way, was a stark, almost shocking tweet from The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:
Wait, what? Posey just finished a season in which he earned All-Star honors for the seventh time, having come back from opting out of the 2020 season out of consideration for his family and two solid but injury-marked seasons, one of which ended with surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip. At the age of 34, while adhering to a strict two-days-on, one-day-off load management plan designed to keep him available and productive, he hit .304/.390/.499 with 18 homers (his highest total since 2015), a 140 wRC+ (his highest mark since 2014), and 4.9 WAR, tops among all catchers and tied for eighth among all NL players. He did that while helping the Giants to a major league-high and franchise-record 107 wins, then continued to torment the division rival Dodgers with a two-run homer off Walker Buehler in the two teams’ first-ever postseason game — nearly the first splash hit by any right-handed batter at Oracle Park, save for a water tower in right field — and then three hits the following night.
At the tail end of a nine-year, $169 million contract that he signed in March 2013, Posey had a $22 million club option with a $3 million buyout — hardly a cheap proposition, but a no-brainer for a big-spending team dealing with a franchise icon and a new window of contention. A multi-year extension seemed even more likely, particularly with the possibility of the universal designated hitter on the horizon. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi had already signaled his intent to retain Posey one way or another, saying after the team’s elimination, “He is in our estimation the best catcher in baseball this year. Obviously [we] want to have conversations with Buster and continue to have internal conversations about that, but having him on this team next year is a high priority.”
Posey chose to walk away from all that in order to be with his family, which now features two adopted twin daughters who were born prematurely last summer and spent time in the newborn intensive care unit. He also chose to forgo the daily grind of a job via which he’s been concussed at least twice, in 2017 and ’19, and probably more than that given the number of foul tips off his mask that have left him dazed; he was in concussion protocol for one such shot in late July. Then there are the collisions, the most serious of which fractured his left fibula, tore three ligaments in his left ankle, and required three screws to pin the bone in place while it healed, plus a separate surgery to remove the hardware. That one cost him most of the 2011 season, the follow-up to his NL Rookie of the Year-winning campaign, and resulted in the addition of a rule to eliminate unwarranted contact at the plate.
This is Koufaxian stuff, a player retiring despite still performing at an elite level. The parallel between Posey and Sandy Koufax isn’t perfect, though both played just 12 years in the majors, accumulated numerous individual honors and reached the pinnacle of their respective positions in helping their teams win three championships, then departed abruptly. So far as we know, Posey isn’t playing through anything as debilitating as the three-time Cy Young winner’s chronic arthritis, but the long-term effects of multiple concussions are nothing to trifle with, and Posey, already a father of two before the adoption, has two new reasons to want to make sure he enjoys his retirement years.
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