Buster Posey has already strongly hinted at what SF Giants approach will be at MLB trade deadline

Will the SF Giants buy or sell at the trade deadline? It is a discussion that changes almost on a daily basis with front offices around this time of year. However, Buster Posey has conveyed that the plan is to compete, and with that in mind, they look to be buyers at the MLB trade deadline.

Buster Posey has already strongly hinted at what SF Giants approach will be at MLB trade deadline

Before the SF Giants finally snapped their six-game losing streak Tuesday in a 9-0 stomping of the Braves, things were looking bleak with the Giants’ playoff expectations. When the Giants made their blockbuster move to acquire Rafael Devers on June 15th, they were sitting pretty with a 41-31 record and a 64.4% chance of making the playoffs. Before their current mini two-game win streak, they only had a 25.7% chance after going 11-18 in Devers’ first 29 games as a Giant.

Thankfully, Devers looks like he’s starting to turn a corner donning the orange and black, as in his last two games, he’s manned first base for the first time in his career and enjoyed a two-homer game on Wednesday. The trade for Devers was an unusual one, not just because of how high-profile it was, but also because of how soon before the deadline it occurred and how many years are left on Devers’ deal. It was about winning now, to be sure, but it was also about winning in the future and acquiring some of that star power they’ve been lusting after for offseason after offseason.

A lot of what’s gone wrong in that 29-game stretch where they went 11-18 has been an offense that’s performed well short of expectations, but all the pieces of a competent lineup are already in place. On paper, a core of Devers, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, Jung-Hoo Lee and Heliot Ramos could and should win them a lot of games in tandem with the Giants’ usual brand of above-average pitching. That last part is the real problem, though.

Consider that in Justin Verlander’s illustrious career before coming to San Francisco, he had never had a stretch of more than seven starts without a win in any of his 19 seasons. In his 20th year now with the Giants, he went winless in his first sixteen starts until finally breaking through with his first on Wednesday.

Consider again that Hayden Birdsong couldn’t collect a single out in his latest nightmare start and quickly got shuttled to Sacramento the next day. Also, consider that Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks were two of the pieces that left for Boston to get Devers, and even though that hasn’t come back to bite the Giants too much quite yet, it’s still a contributing factor in their current dearth of rotation depth.

If the Giants still consider themselves to be in win-now mode, sitting 1.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot, they’re going to need starting pitching. That hasn’t been a secret, and they’ve already been connected to a plethora of arms who are supposedly out there on the market. Is it worth the risk for the Giants to push in all their chips and continue to buy at this point in the season, though? The person whose opinion matters most on this topic is the guy in charge, Buster Posey, and if we’re to believe the public comments he’s made recently, indications are he feels the answer is yes.

Just a few days before acquiring Devers, Posey made an eyebrow-raising comment on one of the most infamous trades in Giants history, when the team traded for two months of Carlos Beltrán in exchange for Zack Wheeler, who blossomed into an ace that’s been worth 41 WAR to this point in his career. Buster, as it turns out, thought the deal was great at the time.

“I love the Wheeler trade,” he remarked in an appearance on Tim Kawakami's podcast. “I mean, I just think it's such a bold move by [then-GM Brian Sabean]...It was just a signal to the group that he felt like we were in a position to go out and win again...I don't really look at that as a negative, because again it was the leader of our operations saying, 'I believe in you guys.'"

Posey’s been on the front lines as a player, and he’s won three championships in that role. He doesn’t have the mentality of a pencil-pushing executive who will stand pat with a .500 roster and hope for better luck next year. Posey goes all-in, and for a big-market team like the Giants, he understands that there’s no reason not to try and win every single year.

Posey joined the Murph and Markus Show on KNBR last week, and was asked about whether the postseason should be the expectation for the Giants, and his response left little room for doubt, “It’s always the expectation."

And even if the Giants don’t have quite as much talent or money as the Dodgers, why shouldn’t that be the case? The time for roster churns is over. If the Giants are going to re-enter the memory-making business, selling at the first deadline of Posey’s executive career isn’t a real option. We’ll see if the Giants can bring in another arm or two to help fill out their staff, or even a bat to shore up the offense, but make no mistake – they’ll be taking a big swing.