Buster Posey Already Carrying Giants

SAN FRANCISCO -- As the hours and minutes to the trade deadline tick away, the Giants are looking less and less like they need that big bat that we all figured they had to have.

That's because Buster Posey has become a big bat much quicker than anyone could have reasonably expected.

Posey was promoted to the majors on May 29 and he became the everyday catcher when Bengie Molina was traded on July 1. Since then, he's been nothing short of the best offensive player in the league.

Posey has hit .459 with a .788 slugging percentage, both league-highs, in July. He also has seven homers and 23 RBI this month. (To put into perspective what that means for this team: only four other Giants have more than seven homers this season.)

He's currently riding a 19-game hitting streak, second-longest in the league this year. Corey Hart had a 20-game streak. The record for a San Francisco rookie is 22 games, by Willie McCovey in 1959.

"He's been a big shot in the arm for us," manager Bruce Bochy said of his cleanup hitter. "There's no getting around it. We think a lot of Buster. We are not surprised by what he's doing."



For the season, Posey is hitting .368. Since he's just played two months, he's hasn't yet cracked into serious Rookie of the Year discussion, but he'll certainly be there if he keeps doing what he's doing for two more months. (Ryan Braun didn't get called up until May 25 when he won Rookie of the Year in 2007.)

In the meantime, awards and hitting streaks are not high on Posey's list of topics of conversation.

"I'm just playing ball, trying not to think about it too much," said Posey, drawing perfectly out of the "Bull Durham" Handbook for Rookie Quotes.

Posey knows his place in the clubhouse. A former first-round pick who signed for a then-record $6.2 million bonus, Posey doesn't act like a star or franchise savior, which is one of the reasons that his veteran teammates have grown so fond of him already.

"He's a great kid," pitcher Matt Cain said. "You can tell. He's not cocky or arrogant. He knows he's a good player. He knows he's going to have a great career."

Obviously, it's still much too early to say that Posey is going to going to be even close to this good for his whole career. Giants fans remember how John Bowker fooled them with a hot month in June 2008. With Posey, though, it's not just the numbers. It's the way he swings the bat.

"The thing that a lot of us did when we were younger is you try to come up and press and do more than we are capable of, try to hit home runs," Giants second baseman Freddy Sanchez said. "But him, since Day 1 he's come up with the same approach at the plate. He stays inside the ball great. Everything he hits is to right-center. When you go to right-center, especially with the type of power he has, there are a lot of hits that way."

Posey is the opposite of Pablo Sandoval, the other half of the young duo the Giants hope to be at the heart of their offense. Sandoval swings at everything. It is perhaps no coincidence that he hasn't continued the success of his first year-plus, when he hit .333. This season he's dropped to .263. Posey's approach looks more sustainable.

"He's got discipline at the plate," Bochy said. "He's a patient hitter. He's got one of those swings that the bat stays in the zone a long time. He gets inside the ball well and he can handle the pitch in and away. Those guys who have that type of swing, they are going to find a way to get the good part of the bat on the ball. That's what Buster does."

Posey's offense was never a question, although the Giants may not have expected him to do this well this quick. What kept him in the minors for the first two months of the season was what the Giants perceived to be an issue with his work behind the plate. Posey, who didn't start catching until his sophomore year at Florida State, was not as adept at calling games as the Giants would have liked. They didn't want to hand the keys to their vaunted pitching staff to an unproven catcher. Since the Giants finally decided to take the plunge with Posey by trading Molina, the rookie has been a quick study behind the plate.

"He's been great," Cain said. "It's been a pretty smooth transition. Sometimes it takes a little time to get on the same page. But he's been real adaptive, so I give him a ton of credit for wanting to catch on fast. He put a lot of effort into that."

Giants pitchers had a 3.46 ERA with Molina behind the plate, and they had a 3.11 ERA with Posey, heading into Monday's game. Posey had also thrown 43 percent of would-be base-stealers, compared with Molina's 23 percent.

"It's nice to have a catcher hitting cleanup, swinging the bat the way he is and catching," Bochy said. "That's a scarce commodity. That has softened the blow of some of struggles by other guys and some injuries."