Last year’s fifth overall pick in the baseball draft, Buster Posey, has been promoted to AAA. This is significant, because I would think he is about a month and a half away from the majors. The Giants are also having Posey bypass AA ball because they want him to get a feel for major league pitching.
As you might recall, Posey was last year’s Golden Spikes award winner, given to the best collegiate baseball player. His numbers are outstanding so far and it looks like he might translate into a 0.280/20/80/5 guy in the majors. Defensively his play is solid with a 0.996 fielding percentage so far this season. His 10 passed balls is a bit concerning and he is gunning down nearly 50% of would be base stealers.
How will his arrival impact the Giants? My guess is that at 34 Benji Molina is either expendable or ready to take a backup role. This September, Buster will undoubtably be called up for a month long audition. If all goes well he should enter next season as the starter. Of course they will in all likelyhood start him in AAA until the end of May like the Orioles did with Wieter this year. In order to protect an extra year of no free agency. By the middle of next season, he should be the starter for the Giants for years to come. So what is his apex?
Like I said earlier, look for 0.280/20/80 to start, but as he grows into this prime years 27-31 years old, he could develop into a 0.310/30/100 guy from behind the plate, those numbers would put him in some rare company (Piazza and Bench). Maybe I am looking to much into this, but from what I have seen of Posey he is a very special player. He is going to be one of those players that teams are going to kick themselves for not drafting.
As far as his cards go, well they are already high from a season of speculators gobbling up all in sight. His autographs run anywhere from 20 – 100 dollars and game used or patches are running about half that. He is a great through the mail signer, and because of that i decided to make a custom card that you can send to him now that he is in Fresno. Let me know what you think of the card. I tried to find a photo of him from spring training.
He is such a great guy. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him several times in San Jose. Go get em Gerald Posey!
“He is going to be one of those players that teams are going to kick themselves for not drafting.”
You’re absolutely right. For example, the Rays can’t possibly be happy that they chose Tim Beckham over Posey. Beckham and Posey were their two finalists for the #1 pick, by the way.
They took Beckham because of the money. Beckham isn’t bad, he should develop into a 20-20 guy in a few years, but Posey was ready and the difference ended up being under a million dollars. The only reason they passed was because Posey originally wanted 7 million, he ended up taking 6.1. The Rays should have known this, plus he was already popular in Florida because he attended FSU.