Buster Posey walks along the outfield grass during the San Francisco Giants spring training opening game against the Los Anglels Angels at Scottsdale Stadium on February 28, 2021 in Scottsdale, Arizona. (John Medina/Correspondent)
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When Buster Posey stepped into the batter’s box and received his customary ovation from the crowd at Scottsdale Stadium Sunday, it all felt so normal.
Baseball is back, Posey is donning orange and black again and fans were scattered around the seats on a brisk afternoon at the Giants’ spring training home. It didn’t necessarily feel like the Giants’ 5-2 loss to the Angels was taking place during a pandemic –particularly because roughly half the fans ignored a stadium mask mandate– but there was one not-so-subtle reminder that Sunday’s game was hardly business as usual.
“You can hear people’s comments,” Posey said.
From fans who barked like a dog when Giants outfielder Darin Ruf came to the plate to another who yelled, “Four more years” when backup catcher Chadwick Tromp took an at-bat, it was easy for players and coaches to hear exactly what fans were saying.
Scottsdale Stadium is typically packed with 10,000-plus fans for the Giants’ Cactus League home opener, but with protocols in place to encourage social distancing, the club announced a paid attendance of 863.
“The Angels’ first base was saying it kind of felt like a high school game,” Posey said. “It was different.”
Giants center fielder LaMonte Wade Jr. said a sold-out stadium often produces “white noise” that makes it difficult for players to hear what individual fans are yelling, but that wasn’t the case Sunday. The reduced capacity set-up might make focusing more challenging, but players who spent the 2020 season performing in front of empty stadiums prefer the soundtrack from Sunday to the void they experienced last year.
“It’s good to have them in there,” Wade said. “It’s better than dead silence and fake noise coming in so I appreciate the fans coming out.”
Posey shines in debut
When Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi discussed all of the transactions the team made during the offseason at a press conference last month, he was quick to point out that the biggest addition to the club wasn’t a free agent signee or a player acquired via a trade.
It was Posey.
Nearly a full year after he took his last Cactus League at-bat, Posey returned to the Giants’ lineup Sunday against the Angels. In two plate appearances, the starting catcher drew a walk and ripped an opposite-field single for the team’s first hit of the spring.
“It felt good to be back,” said Posey, who chose not to play last season after he and his wife Kristen adopted newborn twin girls. “It’s a game I’ve loved to play since I was a kid so being able to get out and compete and get on the field was great.”
In a game filled with some sloppy defensive mistakes, shaky pitch command and some awkward swings, Posey’s play was the obvious bright spot.
“I thought he looked great on both sides of the ball,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “It was actually the most encouraging part of the day. High quality at-bats, saw the ball well, thought he did a nice job receiving, worked with the pitchers well and had the nice clean knock to right field. He looked like Buster Posey.”
Posey caught three different pitchers –Conner Menez, Zack Littell and Jay Jackson– and was forced into high-stress situations as all three allowed the leadoff batter to reach base. The Angels scored four runs with Posey behind the plate as Littell and Jackson each gave up hard contact, but the catcher said he felt strong.
“I mean you can never replicate game speed obviously but it felt like I got some good work in this winter,” Posey said. “And, but it’s definitely nice to be out and have, you know, a little bit of adrenaline going with the game and come out of it feeling good.”
Kapler mentioned last week the coaching staff wants to get Posey 50-to-60 at-bats this spring to prepare for the regular season after such a long layoff, but Posey said he’ll continue to evaluate how he feels with his timing and rhythm at the plate.
“I think coming into it my thought is to try to get some more (at-bats than usual),” Posey said. “But also if we get two to three weeks out from now and I feel like I’m at a really good place at the plate, I’m not going to grind through spring training unnecessarily.”
Wade handles center field, Dubón struggles at shortstop
One of Kapler’s primary focuses this spring is ensuring his most versatile players get enough repetitions at the positions they’ll be expected to play during the 2021 season.
The Giants coaching staff felt that it was difficult to ask players to move around the diamond and play multiple positions last season after an abbreviated summer camp limited practice time, so ensuring a greater level of comfort is a point of emphasis during Cactus League play.
Two of the players the Giants will watch closely this spring appeared in Sunday’s starting lineup as Wade played center field while Mauricio Dubón started at shortstop.
Wade made a pair of putouts in the outfield, including one that required him to range into the left center field gap and communicate with left fielder Alex Dickerson on the run.
“You can see everything, it’s all right in front of you, you don’t have a bad angle,” Wade said of what he likes about center field. “And I just like the fact that you can communicate with the left and right fielder, you know just have that responsibility out there and it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy covering all that ground.”
Dubón, who had played the outfield sparingly in his minor league career before becoming the Giants’ full-time center fielder last season, is tasked with providing depth behind Brandon Crawford at shortstop. Kapler knows Dubón has the athleticism required to excel at the position, but on Sunday, the Giants saw that he still has plenty of room for growth.
With Littell on the mound to open the second inning, Dubón let a groundball sneak between his legs, resulting in a fielding error. Later on in the game, he picked up a slow chopper up the middle and tried to race to second base to get a force out, but was too slow and was unable to make a throw to first in time, too.
“We mentioned to Mauricio that we’re glad it happened on the first day, the first spring training game so we can clean some of those things up,” Kapler said.
