| Buster Posey | |||||||||||||||
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.jpg) Posey with the San Francisco Giants in 2018 | |||||||||||||||
| San Francisco Giants | |||||||||||||||
| Catcher / President of Baseball Operations | |||||||||||||||
| Born: March 27, 1987 Leesburg, Georgia, U.S. | |||||||||||||||
Batted: Right Threw: Right | |||||||||||||||
| MLB debut | |||||||||||||||
| September 11, 2009, for the San Francisco Giants | |||||||||||||||
| Last MLB appearance | |||||||||||||||
| October 3, 2021, for the San Francisco Giants | |||||||||||||||
| MLB statistics | |||||||||||||||
| Batting average | .302 | ||||||||||||||
| Home runs | 158 | ||||||||||||||
| Runs batted in | 729 | ||||||||||||||
| Stats at Baseball Reference | |||||||||||||||
| Teams | |||||||||||||||
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| Career highlights and awards | |||||||||||||||
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Medals
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Gerald Dempsey "Buster" Posey III[1] (born March 27, 1987) is an American former professional baseball catcher and is currently the president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball (MLB). He spent his entire 12-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the Giants, from 2009 until his retirement at the conclusion of the 2021 season.
Posey was born in Leesburg, Georgia. He played four sports in high school; in baseball, he excelled at hitting and pitching. He attended Florida State University, where he began playing the catcher and first base positions. He won the Golden Spikes Award and the Brooks Wallace Award in 2008. The Giants selected him with the fifth overall pick in the first round of the 2008 MLB draft. Posey made his MLB debut on September 11, 2009. He and Madison Bumgarner both made their Major League debuts in 2009 and established a reputation as one of the best batteries in recent MLB history.[2]
As a rookie, Posey finished with a .305 batting average, 18 home runs, and 67 runs batted in. He caught every inning of the playoffs as the Giants won the 2010 World Series. He was named the NL Rookie of the Year. In 2011, after he was severely injured in a collision with the Florida Marlins' Scott Cousins at home plate, Posey missed most of the year. The collision is widely seen as pushing Major League Baseball to adopt rule 7.13 in regards to blocking the plate prior to the 2014 season, informally known as the "Buster Posey Rule".
Posey returned from his injury in 2012 and caught Matt Cain's perfect game, batted .336 to win the 2012 NL batting title and was voted the 2012 NL MVP. He won his second World Series that year, as the Giants swept the Detroit Tigers in four games. In 2013, Posey signed a franchise-record eight-year, $167 million contract extension with the Giants.[3] He won his third World Series the following year as the Giants defeated the Kansas City Royals. Posey is the second player in MLB history, after Pete Rose, to win the Rookie of the Year, a League MVP, and three World Series championships. Posey played in four no-hitters in his career, catching three of them. In 2016, he won a Gold Glove Award. In 2019, the Johnny Bench Award was renamed the Buster Posey Award, which honors college baseball's top NCAA Division I catcher. In September 2022, Posey joined the Giants' ownership group.
- ^ Baggarly 2011, p. 10.
- ^ "Giants' Madison Bumgarner-Buster Posey Duo Best MLB Battery in Decades | Latest News, Videos and Highlights". Bleacher Report. March 14, 2016. Retrieved July 9, 2019.
- ^ Olney, Buster; Stark, Jayson (March 30, 2013). "Buster Posey signs nine-year deal". ESPN. The Associated Press. Archived from the original on November 6, 2014. Retrieved October 16, 2014.