Buster Posey ripped up SF Giants' championship blueprint with Rafael Devers trade

It’s the one-year anniversary of the SF Giants trading for Rafael Devers. Many a retrospective and “how it all went wrong” piece will be written in honor of the occasion and it’s understandable why given the fact the team is 69-93 since making the trade.

While Devers doesn’t deserve all of the blame for that implosion, it’s hard not to view the trade as a real turning point in Buster Posey’s tenure as president of baseball operations. It was the moment Posey really ripped up the “pitching and defense” blueprint he said he would return the franchise to.

When Posey took over as the president of baseball operations and replaced Farhan Zaidi, he set out to reestablish San Francisco’s brand of baseball. The Giants didn’t have a real identity under Zaidi other than platooning like crazy and trying to win at the margins which worked beautifully in 2021 but not so much after that.

It made sense that Posey would try to roughly recreate the model of success that led to three World Series titles in a span of five years. Yet, while he espoused a return to pitching and defense his actions have reflected a different plan.

His two biggest additions since taking the reins of the front office have been signing Willy Adames and trading for Rafael Devers. Both players are streaky sluggers who can hit 30-plus home runs but can also go through stretches where they are simply unwatchable at the plate.

Not only that, but Adames has shown his defense is a pretty big issue and Devers has had to adjust to playing first base with some very mixed results. Neither Adames nor Devers was a “pitching and defense” kind of move.

Plus, the Devers trade meant to upgrade the lineup, which made sense since the Giants were playing winning baseball in spite of a lethargic offense the first few months of the 2025 season, but Posey sacrificed pitching in order to make it happen.

Many of Posey's moves have run counter to 'pitching and defense' blueprint

He gave up Kyle Harrison, the most promising young arm in the organization, to land Devers. The Boston Red Sox then foolishly traded Harrison to the Milwaukee Brewers where he has come into his own and had a phenomenal season. That’s not a pitching and defense move. 

Then in the offseason the Giants made an improvement to the lineup by signing Luis Arraez but the most glaring holes on the roster were in the rotation and in the bullpen. Posey and the front office decided to sign Tyler Mahle, Adrian Houser, a bunch of injured relievers and called it a day.

Looking back, the results should have been fairly predictable. It’s become clear that there is no plan. There’s no overarching vision. The team still has no identity. They now have so much money invested in the lineup that it seems highly unlikely ownership would even allow the front office to make meaningful investments in the pitching staff. 

Maybe Posey can swing some trades to infuse more talent into the organization on the pitching side but at this point it’s just hard to be optimistic about things. Perhaps he is still learning and will slowly grow into the role which he has not even spent two years occupying. But it’s fair to wonder if the Devers trade ruined his regime almost as soon as it began because it tore up the team’s ostensible blueprint and replaced it with a bunch of overpriced veterans at the heart of a lackluster roster.

How the Giants move forward is unclear. What the team does at the trade deadline and in the MLB Draft will be extremely important for the future of the franchise so Posey has a chance to steer the ship back in the right direction but he really can’t miss going forward after it seems pretty clear he misfired on the Devers trade.

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