After Deliberation, Giants’ Buster Posey To Stay With Hockey Style Mask

When it comes to Buster Posey, anything is news. If we knew the color of his underoos (they’re green today, yellow tomorrow, by the way) there would be a blog post on it – so here’s your daily erotica on the goodness that we call teh Posey.

According to Baggs, Buster has decided to stay with the “hockey style” catching mask after spending much of the off-season and Spring trying out the traditional two-piece style mask.

More times than I can count in the past two seasons, we’ve seen Buster clearly look stunned and shook up after taking foul tips off the modern styled mask which resulted in Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy and bullpen catcher Billy Hayes more or less pleading with the Georgia product to change up his mask style. Both Hayes and Bochy, former MLB catchers themselves along with Kruk & Kuip have denounced the hockey style mask, saying that the impact/force is distributed throughout the mask with little area to escape as opposed to the two-piece style which will separate assuming the force is too great, resulting is less damage to the said catcher.

Of course, never one to avoid the flip-flop, Bochy came out yesterday saying there were no proven scientific studies on the differences between the masks and that Posey needs to be comfortable behind the dish:

“You’ve got to be comfortable back there,” Bochy said. “All the studies show there’s no real difference between them when it comes to absorbing tips. It’s what he’s accustomed to and that’s so important back there. He’s going with the mask he likes.”

There’s no doubt that Posey needs to be comfortable and he gave the traditional mask an extended try-out per the requests of the coaching staff but he never seemed comfortable in it, thus the return.

To me, both mask styles have their pro’s and con’s so you’re not really doing yourself a disservice by choosing one or the other. You’re going to end up with some nasty tips that ruin your day either way, so as long as you’re comfortable with a particular style – run with that.

And stuff it cotton balls and bubble wrap, you know, for preventive measures. Matter fact, just wrap yourself in bubble wrap, Buster. It’s not like it’ll hurt your speed, you know, since you’re not even the fastest catcher on the team.

BAH-DUM!