Buster Posey taking blame for SF Giants' bullpen woes is a good start, but now comes the hard part

The SF Giants just had one of their worst seasons in the history of the franchise and obviously the front office has to answer a lot of questions. They attempted to answer some on Tuesday as president of baseball operations Buster Posey, general manager Zack Minasian, and manager Tony Vitello had an end-of-season press conference.

While there’s only so much they can say to try to inspire some sort of confidence going forward, Posey at least did one positive thing by accepting blame for the team’s bullpen woes in 2026.

“The bullpen struggled this year and I’ll take the blame for that. That was, you know, something that, probably, overestimated some of the guys that we had in the pen and as I’ve already mentioned that’s something that we’re going to do our best to try and address this offseason,” Posey said.

That’s a good start. Many executives would try to deflect blame and Posey himself did not give a very good answer when grilled about the team’s bullpen earlier in the year on KNBR. He got defensive and made his infamous Edwin Díaz remarks which was a bad look.

So, accepting blame is a good thing for him to do but that’s just the start. Now comes the hard part which is actually rebuilding a bullpen that was one of the worst in baseball this season.

Giants have work cut out for them to improve bullpen

There are a number of interesting free agents out there. On the higher end are guys like Adrian Morejon and David Bednar who will not come cheap. If the Giants sign them there will inevitably be comparisons to Mark Melancon who never came close to living up to the four-year, $62 million deal he signed with the Giants ahead of the 2017 season. It’s a deal San Francisco is literally still paying for.

Cheaper closer options could be Kenley Jansen who is nearly at 500 career saves or Pete Fairbanks who is coming off a bad year with the Miami Marlins. 

The biggest mistake would be to sign just one reliever and call it a day, but the fact is that the Giants are probably going to have a lot of the same guys in the bullpen next year. José Buttó and Randy Rodríguez are going to come back from injury, Jason Foley and Sam Hentges are likely to be back, and guys like Trent Harris and Dylan Smith could also factor into the equation. Don’t forget about Camilo Doval either who is back in the fold.

That doesn’t leave a ton of room for additions, but the Giants may have to get a little creative if they want to see better results from the bullpen in 2027. Posey has accepted blame which is a good start, but now he actually has to commit resources to the bullpen so fans at least have more confidence than they did going into 2026 when it came to the relievers on the team.

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