Buster Posey Retires: What are his Hall of Fame Chances?

Last Thursday, San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey announced that, at the age of 34, he was retiring from Major League Baseball. Posey just completed a nine-year, $169 million contract that he signed in March 2013, but there was a $22 million club option for 2022 that the Giants would almost certainly have exercised, given that Posey was coming off a renaissance campaign (.304 BA, 129 OPS+, 3.5 WAR) in which he helped the team to 107 wins and an N.L. West title.

Posey decided to opt out of the 2020 season because of COVID-19, which gave him a sneak preview of life without baseball. Posey decided that he would rather spend more time with his wife and four children than continue playing, especially since the game was more physically painful than ever. For most of the season, the Giants had Posey on a two-games-on, one-game-off load management strategy which certainly helped him maintain his high production level. As a result, Posey is now the first catcher in MLB history to hit .300 or better in his final campaign.

Now that his retirement is official, Posey will be eligible for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2027.

Cooperstown Cred: Buster Posey (C)

• San Francisco Giants (2009-2021)
• Career: .302 BA, .372 OBP, .460 SLG, 158 HR, 729 RBI, 1,500 Hits
• Career: 129 OPS+, 44.9 bWAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• Career: 57.6 fWAR (FanGraphs version of WAR)
• 2010 N.L. Rookie of the Year, 2012 N.L. MVP
• 7-time All-Star, 4-time Silver Slugger Award winner, won 2016 Gold Glove
• Won 3 World Series Championships with the Giants

(cover photo: San Francisco Chronicle/Mathew Sumner)

Buster Posey: Career Highlights

Gerald Dempsey Posey III was born on March 27th, 1987, in Leesburg, Georgia, a small town about 175 miles south of Atlanta. The nickname “Buster” was passed on from his father, who had been called Buster as a child. Posey played both catcher and first base at Florida State University. He was selected 5th overall (by the Giants) in the 2008 player draft and made his major league debut 15 months later, in September 2009.

Posey only had 17 plate appearances in 2009, so 2010 was his official rookie campaign. The Giants had an established catcher (Bengie Molina, Yadier’s older brother), so Posey started the season in the minors. After slashing .349/.442/.552 in 47 games for the Fresno Grizzlies in the Pacific Coast League, Posey was recalled at the end of May and began his rookie season as a first sacker. Molina was traded on July 1st, opening up the backstop position for their budding 23-year-old star. Posey’s move behind the dish sparked a blistering pace of hitting in which he hit .427 with 7 HR and 24 RBI in 25 games. He finished the 2010 campaign with a .305 BA (133 OPS+) and 3.9 WAR, which was good enough to be named Rookie of the Year and finish 11th in the MVP voting.

Posey’s 3.9 WAR was 3rd best on the 2010 Giants, who won the N.L. West win 92 wins. Posey had the privilege of catching a staff that included Tim Lincecum (the 2008 & ’09 Cy Young Award winner), Matt Cain, Barry Zito, Jonathan Sanchez, and, late in the season, rookie Madison Bumgarner.

In the playoffs, after dispatching the Atlanta Braves in 4 games in the NLDS, the Giants were matched up against the Philadelphia Phillies, who had won the last two N.L. pennants. After the Giants took two out of the first three games, Posey had a signature postseason hitting performance in Game 4, going 4 for 5 with 2 RBI in the team’s 6-5 victory. San Francisco would go on to win the series in 6 games.

Posey hit .300 with a home run and 2 RBI in his first World Series appearance. Bruce Bochy‘s Giants prevailed over the Texas Rangers in 5 games. Posey caught every inning of the Giants’ 15 postseason contests.

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The Posey Rule & the 2012 Comeback

Besides his role in helping the Giants to three World Series championships, Buster Posey is also best known for being the impetus behind the “Posey rule” to limit home plate collisions. On May 25th at AT&T Park, Posey broke a bone in his lower left leg and injured the ankle after a collision at the plate with Florida’s Scott Cousins. The injury ended Posey’s sophomore campaign. Three years later, MLB created rules to govern plays at the plate. One of the key highlights of the rule stated that “a runner may not run out of a direct line to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher, or any player, covering the plate.”

After undergoing multiple surgeries and going through grueling rehabilitation, Posey came back better than ever in 2012. In the signature season of his 12-year career, Posey led the majors with a .336 BA. In addition, he posted career highs in HR (24), RBI (107), OBP (.408), SLG (.549), OPS+ (171, also the best in all of baseball), and WAR (7.6 per Baseball-Reference, best in the National League). Posey was elected to be the N.L.’s starting catcher in the All-Star Game (the first of 7 appearances, 4 as a starter).

Posey’s brilliant campaign (in which he would win the MVP) helped the Giants to 94 wins and another N.L. West title. Buster finished the season in style, slashing .371/.448/.618 in his final 78 games.

In the playoffs, San Francisco lost the first two games of the NLDS to Dusty Baker’s Cincinnati Reds but clawed back to win Games 3 and 4, setting up a winner-take-all contest in Game 5. The Giants had a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning before Posey essentially put the game away by swatting a grand slam to left-center field off Cincinnati’s Mat Latos. San Francisco closed out the series, setting up a battle of the All-Star backstops in the NLCS against Yadier Molina and the St. Louis Cardinals. (Molina had a breakout season himself and would finish 4th in the MVP race behind Posey, Ryan Braun, and Andrew McCutchen). Once again, Bochy’s Giants were on the ropes after the Redbirds won three of the first four games. And, once again, the Giants won the last three games of the series, outscoring the Cardinals 20-to-1 in Games 5, 6, and 7.

The NLCS win put San Francisco back in the World Series against Jim Leyland’s Detroit Tigers. Thanks to three home runs by Pablo Sandoval, the Giants won Game 1 easily, by an 8-3 score. After that, the Giants shut out the Tigers in both Games 2 and 3, setting up a clinching opportunity in Game 4. With the Tigers leading 2-1 in the top of the 6th inning, Posey hit a two-run home run down the left-field line off Max Scherzer to put the Giants ahead. Later, the Tigers would tie up the game, but the Giants won it in the 10th on an RBI single by Marco Scutaro.

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Third Title in 2014

Thanks to some weak performances by starting pitchers not named Madison Bumgarner, the Giants sagged to a disappointing 76 wins in 2013. For the second straight season, however, Posey was the best player on the team (with a 5.3 WAR) and an All-Star. His numbers dropped off from the previous season (.296 BA, 15 HR, 72 RBI, 134 OPS+), but he was still good enough to finish 20th in the MVP balloting.

The Giants resumed their winning ways in 2014, earning a Wild Card berth against the Pittsburgh Pirates thanks to 88 regular-season victories. Thanks to a complete-game shutout by Bumgarner, the Giants easily defeated the Bucs in the Wild Card game. Unlike the 2012 postseason in which the Giants had to win six consecutive elimination games in the early rounds, San Francisco blitzed past Washington in the NLDS (4 games) and St. Louis in the NLCS (in 5 games). Ultimately, the Giants defeated the Kansas City Royals in a thrilling 7-game series, with Bumgarner coming out of the bullpen on two days’ rest to shepherd the Giants through the final five innings of Game 7. Posey caught all but two innings of the Giants’ 16 postseason tilts, including all 18 innings of Game 3 of the NLDS.

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Overall, in the regular season, Posey hit .311 (143 OPS+) with 22 HR, 89 RBI and again led the Giants in WAR (with a 5.1 mark). Additionally, he finished 6th in the N.L. MVP balloting.

2015-21: Buster Posey’s Final 6 Seasons

Buster Posey had another big year in 2015 (.318 BA, 133 OPS+, 19 HR, 95 RBI, 5.9 WAR), but the Giants missed the playoffs by recording only 84 victories. In this campaign, his 5.9 WAR was tied for the best on the team (with Bumgarner). Posey’s campaign was good enough for a 9th place MVP finish.

In 2016, continuing an on-again-off-again trend, the Giants were back in the postseason party. Although just the 4th best player on the team (by WAR), Posey had another strong campaign: .288 BA, 14 HR, 80 RBI, 115 OPS+, 4.9 WAR. He finished 14th in the MVP vote and won his first (and only) Gold Glove. (Winning Gold was a challenging feat in the N.L. during the Yadier Molina era).

Anyway, this season, the Giants won 87 games, and that was enough for a Wild Card date with the New York Mets. Bumgarner again tossed a complete game shutout, helping the Giants to a 3-0 victory. However, the Giants were no match for the 103-win Chicago Cubs, who won the NLCS in 5 games.

2017 was a lost season for the San Francisco Giants, who went 64-98. Bumgarner missed three months early in the season thanks to a sprained AC joint in his left shoulder due to a dirt-bike accident. The rest of the rotation (Johnny Cueto, Matt Cain, Matt Moore, Jeff Samardzija, and Ty Blach) were mediocre to terrible: the team had a 4.50 staff ERA. For the year, the now 30-year old backstop slashed .320/.400/.462 (127 OPS+) with 12 HR and 67 RBI. He posted a 4.0 WAR, best on the squad for the 5th time in 6 seasons.

Things weren’t much better for San Francisco in 2018: with a rebuilt pitching staff, the Giants went 73-89. Posey only played in 105 games, thanks to a hip injury that required surgery. At 31, Posey was starting to show his age: although he hit .284 (108 OPS+), he only managed 5 home runs with 41 RBI. Still, his 2.8 WAR was best on the squad.

In what would be Bruce Bochy’s final season at the helm of the Giants, the team struggled again to a 77-85 record in 2019. Posey, frankly, looked as if he might be finished as a productive player. He posted career lows in all slash-line categories (.257/.320/.368), posting a below-average OPS+ of 83 and WAR of 0.5. Posey suffered another power outage in 114 games (445 plate appearances), with just 7 HR and 38 RBI.

Mostly because he and his wife had just adopted premature twin girls, Posey decided not to participate in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The Giants, under new manager Gabe Kapler, went 29-31 in the 60-game season.

Posey returned in 2021 and, as we’ve seen, had a renaissance campaign, and the Giants had a magical regular season, one in which they needed every one of their 107 victories to edge the Los Angeles Dodgers for the N.L. West title. The Giants got an MVP-caliber season from veteran shortstop Brandon Crawford in addition to Posey’s comeback campaign (.304/.390/.499, 140 OPS+, 18 HR, 56 RBI). They had a team filled with both veterans and young players who performed well above average.

After the Dodgers vanquished the Cardinals in the Wild Card game, the Giants were matched up against their division-mates in the NLDS. In the first inning of Game 1 (at Oracle Park), Posey delivered the final signature moment of his career by launching an opposite-field home run into McCovey Cove off Walker Buehler, helping the team to a 4-0 victory. Unfortunately, the Giants wouldn’t advance to the NLCS, with the Dodgers taking the series in 5 games. Posey hit .300 for what would be his final postseason series.

A couple of weeks later, Posey announced his retirement at the age of 34.

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The Hall of Fame Case for and against Buster Posey

Let’s get the “case against” Buster Posey for the Hall of Fame out of the way. It’s pretty simple: he didn’t play enough. Thanks to injuries in 2011 and 2018-19, his decision not to play in 2020, and to retire at the age of 34, Posey finished with low counting numbers:

• 1,371 games (1,093 as a catcher, just the 96th most in MLB history)
• 5,607 career plate appearances
• 158 HR, 729 RBI, 1,500 Hits

Posey’s career hit total would be the 4th lowest for a Hall of Fame catcher from the National or American Leagues, ahead of only Roy Campanella, Ray Schalk, and Roger Bresnahan. As Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe has often pointed out, no players from the expansion era (1960 and beyond) have made the Hall with fewer than 2,000 hits. Posey finished an even 500 shy of that milestone.

Thanks to the low counting stats, Posey’s #1 match on the Bill James “similarity score” list is Terry Steinbach. In another Jamesian tracker, Posey’s “Hall of Fame Monitor” score is just 79, in which 100 is the number for a likely Hall of Famer.

If Posey had played any position other than catcher, his career statistics would be disqualifying. But catchers age faster than the players at any other position and need to be looked at differently. Where Posey does well is in peak value, accolades, championships, and pitch-framing.

Buster Posey’s Peak Value

Because Buster Posey only played 12 seasons (including his 7-game cup of coffee in 2009), virtually his entire career can be viewed from a “peak value” standpoint.

If we take the years 2010-21, Posey’s Baseball-Reference WAR of 45.0 is the 9th highest in Major League Baseball and the best among all MLB backstops. For these years, Posey’s WAR edge among catchers is enormous: Yadier Molina is a distant second (33.9).

If you look solely at catchers, Posey ranks #1 in OPS+ and all three slash-line categories (BA, OBP, SLG). In addition, he scored the most runs (662), collected the 2nd most hits (behind Molina), and drove in the second-most runs (with 6 fewer than Molina).

With a broader view, encompassing the entire 21st century, Posey’s WAR is still the second-highest to Minnesota’s Joe Mauer among MLB backstops. Mauer finished his career with a 55.2 WAR and will be on the Hall of Fame ballot in two years. Mauer, who spent his whole career with the Twins as Posey did with the Giants, also retired at a young age, hanging up his spikes at age 35.

Posey is unique as a Hall of Fame catching candidate because of the high value of his offensive production, as measured by his 129 OPS+. There are only ten catchers in baseball history who delivered an OPS+ of over 125 while rapping at least 1,250 hits. It’s a list of 9 Hall of Famers and Buster Posey.

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If you want to make a more exclusive club that includes players with a .300 batting average and a 125 or higher OPS+, it’s a list of five players: Posey, Mike Piazza, Bill Dickey, Mickey Cochrane, and Ernie Lombardi.

Posey vs. Molina & the Value of Pitch Framing

As I noted earlier, Buster Posey won only one Gold Glove Award, thanks in part to spending so many years in the same league as Yadi Molina, who won 9 of them. Although Posey was not in Molina’s company when gunning down would-be base stealers (33% for Posey compared to Molina’s 40%), he was on par with Yadi in other skills. For example, he had only 27 passed balls and 244 wild pitches allowed in his career (compared to 95 PB and 534 WP allowed by Molina, albeit in nearly twice as many innings caught).

There’s another skill for catchers that can be measured in today’s game. Posey is credited with saving 129 runs in his career thanks to his pitch-framing talent (these statistics can be found on FanGraphs). That’s better than Molina’s 125 runs saved due to pitch-framing in the same years (2009-21).

During the 2009-21 seasons, Molina’s overall defensive value, measured by Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), is only slightly better than Posey’s (128 to 116) despite over 4,000 more innings caught.

And, so, let’s take a look at a direct statistical comparison between Buster Posey and Yadier Molina. You’ll notice here two WAR numbers. The first is bWAR (the Baseball-Reference version, which doesn’t include pitch-framing metrics); the second is fWAR (the FanGraphs version, which does).

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Although there are some misgivings from those in the sabermetric community due to his poor hitting, Molina is generally considered a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, a view with which I agree. It seems, by these numbers, that Molina gets to Cooperstown by the volume of his work (he’s caught the 4th most games in baseball history) while Posey gets there by the quality of his hitting.

Incidentally, Hall of Fame historian Jay Jaffe noted something interesting if you use the FanGraphs version of WAR. It’s that, during Posey’s best years (2012-17), he had the second-best fWAR in all of Major League Baseball:

• Mike Trout: 54.3 fWAR
• Buster Posey: 43.0
• Josh Donaldson: 35.6

If you take the broader view of Posey’s (and Trout’s) entire careers, Buster is still #2 on the list:

From 2009-2021:

• Mike Trout: 77.8 fWAR
• Buster Posey: 57.6
• Joey Votto: 56.7

It seems to me that being arguably the second-best player in the game (to the incomparable Trout) for 6 years (or 12 years) is a strong credential for a plaque in Cooperstown.

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The Best Player on a Team with Three World Series Championships

As we’ve seen, Buster Posey was usually the best player on the San Francisco Giants during his playing career. The Giants are a team that won the World Series three times in five years. Only eight other teams have done that.

Here is a list of the WAR leaders for the Giants from 2010-14:

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In this following graphic, I’ve listed all nine dynasties that won at least three titles in five years or fewer. In some cases, of course, those dynasties lasted more than just those five years. I split the Red Sox dynasty of 1912-18 (won the World Series four times) into two five-year parts because Tris Speaker was traded to Cleveland just before the 1916 season. The chart shows the WAR leader of each dynastic franchise during the years in question.

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Hmmm. Looks like a pretty good list for Posey. It’s a list of nine inner-circle Hall of Famers and Buster.

Conclusion

I like the way Jay Jaffe summed up Buster Posey’s career in his article posted last Thursday. He noted that the ZIPs projections from Dan Szymborski projected 408 more hits and 6.5 more WAR if he had kept playing for five additional years but that we can’t give him credit for that, and we don’t need to.

“To these eyes, even with a short career, Posey is a clear Hall of Famer, a player I’ll have no hesitation checking the box for when my 2027 ballot arrives in the mail. That he retired early while still capable of playing at an All-Star level isn’t something I can hold against him, as he doesn’t owe me — or you, or anyone — two or three or five more seasons while increasing the risk of long-term damage to his noggin. He’s the kid in the class who came into the final exam, scribbled furiously but methodically while keeping his composure, and left the building 30 minutes early, knowing full well he had aced the test, while everybody else scratched their heads and prayed for a gentleman’s B. You might resent him in that moment, but at some point, you’ll be clapping for his valedictory speech.”

— Jay Jaffe (FanGraphs, November 4, 2021)

As we’ve seen, Posey was the best player on a team that won the World Series three times in five seasons. His manager (Bruce Bochy) will likely have a plaque in Cooperstown soon. Buster deserves to be the first (and possibly the only) player from those teams to join him in the Hall.

Add in the fact that, if you include his pitch-framing skill, you can make a case that Posey was the second-best position player in baseball from 2009-2021, that’s a Hall of Famer.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

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