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00:00It was as clear as day. It was as clear as day, and I'll give you again
00:05What I would call
00:07The pluses and the minuses and I hesitate to even call them that because everything is so TBD
00:15But walking into the into the room the suite level at Oracle Park today
00:20It was very clear, and I mean the second you walked in look
00:24We've all done a lot of these things and you can tell
00:28When people are excited and when people aren't and and the first thing you see is the number of people who showed up a
00:34Lot of people. Oh, yeah a lot of people a lot of people within the organization
00:40You know what I mean Pat Burrell just cruising around like all
00:43All smiles, and you see what the Giants are doing and busters the president bow melds the manager Matt Williams a third
00:51Burrell's the hitting coach like you see what they're doing and
00:54And is that the right thing or is that a PR thing I think in this moment. It's a little of both
00:59Hopefully it's a lot of both. Yeah, hopefully it's a lot of both
01:02But people were excited about this the media is sort of reflecting
01:08What you the public?
01:10think about this and feel about this and
01:13Everyone prioritized being there and everyone across the board was like this is exciting and people within the organization
01:21Let me just tell you I
01:22Described it earlier, and I think I might have been talking about something else, but the the analogy plays
01:28People within the organization looked like they had just taken a shower after a hike
01:33Like that's how they felt
01:35That's the it was just like oh god. Thank goodness. Thank goodness and so all positivity there
01:43followed by
01:45some of
01:46Buster's opening remarks, which we will play for you in a moment
01:50But I thought the summary of his remarks were this is about players. We need better players
01:58We used to our teams created memories with great players and Barry Bonds created great memories
02:05Will Clark memories McCovey maze Marischal memories?
02:09We need better players, and that's what we're going to try to go do I
02:15Think that has to hit people in a good spot. Don't you think yes?
02:19And I think even beyond we need better players. We need our players to play better
02:24I think that is as much a part of it as we need
02:28better players the players that we have need to play better, and I heard a lot today about
02:33fundamentals and pitching and defense and you know Buster even talked about
02:38changes to
02:39Scouting and coaching staff changes, and we know that the GM Pete Petillo is going to be
02:45Reassigned in some sort of a role, but I look at what the message was today
02:51And it was of course we need better players
02:53But we need to get back to playing Giants baseball and if you think about when they won the World Series in 2010
02:5812 and 14
03:00Yeah, it was pitching and defense and one of those years. They actually were toward the top in home runs one year
03:06They were dead last in home runs, so it isn't only about we need better hitters. We need more power
03:12We need more boppers and Buster said this today
03:15and I think Bomell
03:16Actually echoed it saying you need to have an offense that can score in a number of different ways
03:22And I was thinking a little bit about the 49ers and Kyle Shanahan
03:26You have to be able to run it you have to be able to throw it shallow throw it intermediate throw it deep
03:31You have to have a special teams unit that can
03:35Not give up big plays and can hold their own and make field goals and cover punts
03:40You know cover kickoffs and return kickoffs
03:42and you need to have all three phases on a football team be buttoned up and I think about this Giants team this year and
03:50They didn't hit a lot of home runs, and you struck out a bunch
03:53You weren't very fast, and you didn't situationally hit very well
03:58So if you want to like take that analogy to football your ground game was terrible
04:04Your deep throwing game home runs was mediocre
04:08Your your strikeouts
04:10Which are basically to me like penalties like false starts and illegal shifts and the rest of it when you strike out nothing good can
04:17Happen unless the catcher misses the third strike you were the Jacksonville Jaguars, but you found a way to go eight nine
04:23Right you're sort of like the Jets from last year
04:26They had no quarterback, but you found a way to go seven and ten because sometimes things would bounce your way
04:31Yeah, I mean if you want to look at things
04:34Broncos you know you had a pretty good defense listen you can defense
04:38This is why I find it believable that the turnaround could be quick. I don't know what what moves
04:43They're going to make I don't know which of the young guys are sustainable
04:48Which of them will really hit like is Hayden Berg song suddenly just gonna be a staple in the rotation all year
04:53Maybe he will I don't know, but when you look at a team that went 80 and 82
04:58But you also go they didn't do anything well. What did they do well?
05:03What did they do well
05:06Well
05:07Starting pitching in the second half was good. Okay. That's a little bit of a small sample
05:12Yeah, and they were terrible the running game. They were a net negative
05:16They were the worst in baseball as far as stolen bases versus stolen bases allowed of course home runs
05:22You were I think 15th or 16th not great strikeouts you struck out
05:28In baseball what if I just gave you broad strokes and the whole year not don't spotlight the last two months
05:35Were they a good hitting team are we doing Grandy's grades were they a good hitting team?
05:40Hitting they probably would get a C-. Were they a good pitching team pitching?
05:46Probably a C. Were they a good defensive team?
05:49I would say C plus would be minus were they a good running team
05:54Oh, they were a D- or an F. Were they a good power team?
05:58They were a C. And were they fun?
06:01fun
06:02Like fun and interesting. I said were they fun. Oh D-. Okay, so again
06:08Our average grade was about a C-. What did they do well?
06:13Not not much. Thank you. Nothing well
06:15Stiney and Gu actually had an interesting conversation earlier about did they underachieve and
06:20I really don't think that they underachieved at all. I get where you're coming from
06:24That's a hard question to answer because it is based on everybody's initial perspective on what they what they were going to be
06:31I'd argue if you if you took what it sounded like on
06:35Opening day what what the fans sounded like I would argue that they did underachieve
06:40But that was just our our prediction right and and and our our excitement in the fact that Chapman and Snell
06:46Late in the game both joined the team. I get it
06:49But Snell didn't pitch much until mid-june was where we didn't know that then right?
06:55But I'm just looking back at it, and I'm looking at the totality of their parts and Kyle Harrison
07:00We were expecting too much out of a 22 year old making his first real season as a frontline starter
07:07Jordan Hicks was a converted reliever
07:09We expected too much out of him the rest of the rotation your various Keaton wins and the rest of it until Hayden birdsong
07:17It's like okay birdsong kind of was a deodorant to a rotation that underachieved your bullpen
07:23Was hit and miss the majority of the year your closer had to get sent to triple-a
07:28I mean your pitching staff if anything underachieved it was your pitching staff
07:34I think that the offensive line the lineup itself was about what you would have expected
07:40Chapman had a year that you would have expected
07:43Conforto was what you thought he would be
07:45Patrick Bailey was
07:47Phenomenal and then absolutely terrible and he kind of leveled out to about where you'd expect
07:52Yeah, Elliot Ramos was a bright spot. He was better than you thought he would be of course no doubt
07:59Wade got hurt and was out forever
08:02Tyro is a disappointment
08:04Casey Schmidt was underwhelming Tyler Fitzgerald was a big plus
08:09That was a find a Yaz was exactly what you thought
08:11Yes would be he hit like 212 solid baseball player, right?
08:16So in general, I think the offense turned out to be about what you would have thought it would be
08:20Um, you know, you didn't mention jung-ho Lee obviously he was exciting and then he was hurt
08:25Here's part of buster today on the Giants
08:29Identity going forward. I wouldn't say the brands been tarnished. I mean again, I think that's a lot of discussion
08:34We're gonna be having over the next weeks and months is about our identity, you know
08:39and and again
08:40I want to be clear like our identity really boils down to the players on the field and the way that they play and
08:46The type of players they are and how they handle themselves not only on the field but in the community
08:50So I think that's gonna be a big part of discussion is like what what really is important to us as an organization?
08:56And what are we gonna hang our hat on at the end of the day?
08:58Okay, so I spotlight that one for a specific reason
09:02This would be all the only thing that you could consider a downside for today, and I don't really think it's that
09:08I think it was predictable and I think it it there was no way around this but Buster Posey at certain times
09:16sounded very green and
09:18He is right. He's never done this before. He's 37 years old
09:22But when someone asks you when you take a new job as the president of baseball operations and
09:30and the
09:32The old guy has been removed
09:35Who so many people did not like he's gone and here comes the new guy
09:40And that almost sounded like in an election year asking a presidential candidate. All right
09:46What's your thought on?
09:49Pick a topic the border abortion, whatever thing we're never gonna talk about
09:54Throw that out. What's your thought on that? Well
09:57We're gonna talk to people and we're gonna find out what we think about that in the next two months
10:01It's not an acceptable answer if it were a presidential
10:05Situation this is Buster Posey, right, but you did like in a perfect world. Hey Buster
10:10What's your identity and his answer is well?
10:11We're gonna talk with the people we hire and as a group we're gonna come up with our identity
10:16It would sound so much better if he leaned in and looked at the camera and goes. This is who we're gonna be
10:25I
10:26Think we're gonna be a team that goes out there and throw strikes and when the other team hits it
10:31We're gonna catch it and throw to the proper base. No, I don't think that I think that there's a way to answer that question
10:36different organizations
10:38Prioritize different things for instance you have cited a few times where he has used the phrase pitching and defense
10:45That can be an identity right was for three World Series championships
10:50Not that long ago. You can sort of give your philosophy on things
10:55We want more everyday players. We want to be faster
10:59We want to have pitching and defense now as our calling cards or whatever
11:05We want to hit 300 home runs in a year. You can say whatever you want
11:10But what Buster said was well, we're gonna talk about it and figure out right which is fine
11:15As long as we all accept that he's green
11:18He doesn't have all the answers yet that someone might normally have in this particular press conference enough
11:25But I ask you what was their identity this year their identity was we are
11:31Mediocre we're good at nothing. We're not fast. We don't have a lot of power
11:36We don't have a lot of frontline starting pitching and our bullpen is not very good
11:41I can tell you what nobody like us. I can tell you what they wanted it to be and you're right
11:45They weren't and that's the worst thing
11:47like Bomell to me
11:50Represented we're gonna button up the baseball. Yeah, Gabe Kapler. What did he want I?
11:57Matchups, I want human beings in other words like we're gonna have lots of coaches and
12:04and we're gonna do it a certain way, and we're going to be about a
12:09a
12:10philosophy and that's the kind of person that we want and that person can have three different faces a
12:17Person can be a left-hander or it can be a right-hander or it could be a switch hitter
12:21Or it can be a moment or who pitches the eighth who pitches the eighth and a half and like
12:27Overly doing all of that
12:29Bomell wanted to come in and go you know what we need we need major league baseball players
12:35We need people who are going to be professionals you run hard to first you pick up the ball when it's hit to you
12:40You know what the hell you're doing out there
12:43And you go play baseball go be a baseball player
12:46And then they gave us Marco Luciano at short and the guys literally like I mean you might as well had someone face
12:54backward toward home plate
12:55When the hitters are hitting the ball, so that was what they wanted their identity to be
13:01But it wasn't right and that's why Farhan Zaidi
13:04I think largely lost his job because they had no identity, and I'm just looking at a few quick metrics from the season they committed
13:1387 errors which was one more than the league average
13:16So they were an average defense as it pertains to just errors they were averaged at almost everything their ERA
13:244.10 league average
13:264.07 so they were a tick below average
13:30OPS on base plus slugging their OPS was 701 the league average was
13:36711 so every metric they were either a tiny bit above or a tiny bit below and you look at your record and you were
13:4380 and 82 and in terms of interest level and sizzle you were probably the
13:4921st most interesting team in baseball you didn't have a lot of name players
13:54You didn't have a lot of excitement
13:56Elliott Ramos was an all-star based on seven weeks Logan Webb is always your all-star
14:02He was good and solid all year, but beyond that you had a meteoric closer
14:06Who couldn't keep the job your best player is probably your third baseman who he strikes out a lot?
14:12He's really good on defense
14:14First half of the year people were largely more often than not frustrated with match admin
14:20Yeah, but he settled in he settled in and had the year
14:23I think when you look at his numbers and then add in his leadership abilities his professionalism and his durability
14:29He had the year that you wanted him to have and he had the year that you're expecting him to have over the next four
14:35Or five but beyond that
14:37Your catcher was good defensively and then he wasn't and then he couldn't hit and on and on your exciting
14:43Centerfielder got hurt after a month and change and then the rest of it was just kind of piecemealed
14:49Mediocrity so what's Buster supposed to say about his identity he can say, you know
14:55We want to be pitching and defense or we want to hit a lot of home runs or we wanted this or we wanted that
14:59but you look at your roster right now and
15:02You don't have an identity and that maybe is what he has to do between now and March is to figure out
15:08How to make this roster into one that has an identity and again, I I think that he answered it indirectly
15:15throughout the day
15:17Buster Posey
15:19Wants better players and I know that you go. Well, that's not an identity who doesn't want that
15:24I mean that he wants players that people might talk about after the game
15:30You know what? I mean? And you hope Bryce Eldridge's is one of those guys
15:34They're probably gonna need to sign a few guys. But yeah, it's gotta come
15:38It's got to come up through the farm
15:40And so right now if you want to circle one person that can be the quote-unquote
15:45Identity of the Giants over the next five to seven years. It's right now. It's just a hope it that it really did
15:52There's nothing else that you can sink your teeth into than that. You hope it's Bryce Eldridge
15:59You do and if you're looking at Buster Posey and what happened with their run and how they came to prominence
16:06It was more than Buster. It was Pablo and it was Madison Bumgarner
16:11It was Matt Kane and it was Tim Lincecum and it was other
16:14homegrown players that turned into the core of guys and so maybe you already have some of them on the roster now Patrick Bailey looks
16:21Like he should be an everyday catcher and Tyler Fitzgerald is a guy who if he's not your second baseman
16:28He could be at least your super utility guy and play short and play second and play
16:33Centerfield Elliott Ramos is an all-star
16:35You'd expect him to be a mainstay and you've got Hayden birdsong and Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison
16:41So that right there is seven guys
16:43Who should be a core part of your team for the next two to three or four years?
16:48So can you add to that from the farm with the likes of Bryce Eldridge?
16:53Can you add to that from the outside and really have a core of guys that fans can start to latch on to?
16:59Let's go to Chris and San Jose next up on Willard and Debs. Hi Chris. Thanks for calling
17:06And gone good, yeah
17:09He hung up on himself. Yeah, it's not that way. I know that's what that sound is
17:16It's all bad Chris, yeah, we had a button with your face
17:19It at eight nine five seven nine five seventy. Let's hear a little bit more
17:25From Buster. This is what he envisions on the Giants moving forward
17:29It really hopefully what it's going to be is we all love I know Bob loves good crisp clean baseball
17:35And guys that are gonna be always prepared
17:37I think what I can draw on from a player is knowing that if I went into a game and I know I had
17:42Prepared to the best of my ability no matter the outcome or result of that game
17:47I could be satisfied with that and that's you know for me
17:49I'm hopeful that our guys are gonna get there and that's gonna be something that is really important to them as well
17:54He was asked how involved he'll be day to day with every little decision that comes for a team
18:00I think that remains to be seen
18:03Again I you know, I mentioned empowering we're gonna we're gonna bring it bring in a GM
18:07And I think once that comes in some of the delegation will will take shape a little bit more. I want to be
18:13As as useful as I can to be with all the people that I'm working with but also having in mind and understanding that it's
18:19somewhat somewhat of a
18:21Delicate balancing act to where I don't want to be the type of leader that is constantly feeling like somebody's I'm looking over somebody's shoulder
18:28So I think a lot of that is gonna be handled over these next weeks month as we start to have more
18:34Conversations and and get synced up more so see that's that's what I heard repeatedly today that caught my attention
18:41That's big. Well, it is but do you notice the way he starts how involved will you be day to day?
18:48His first sentence out of his mouth was that remains to be seen
18:53So the repetitive action of Buster today and again, I'll state this very clearly this was exciting this was awesome
19:00I am all in I didn't meet anybody who's not all in
19:04Everybody is all in just keep in mind that he's green
19:08Because at a press conference when you're introducing something brand new
19:13it's kind of like going to a job interview if you go to a job interview and
19:18The boss just looks at you and goes why should I hire you?
19:21Well, you're not gonna be like well that remains to be seen
19:25like you're gonna say
19:27here's what I'm thinking and
19:29Buster did very little of that today. There was very little of this is our identity. This is what I want to do
19:36I want a short stop. I'm gonna hit the trade market. I'm gonna this I'm gonna that he did he never did
19:41I'm gonna he did a lot of well, we're gonna hire other people and then we're gonna figure it out. What's your identity?
19:49Well, that's what we're gonna talk about. Well, how do you see the future? Well remains to be seen
19:54There was a lot of that and so I was just reminded of the fact that Buster is 37 years old
19:59And he's never done this before and I am much rather would have him say that
20:03Then say things that he either doesn't believe or can't back up. He's in day two on the job
20:09So he's being asked questions about what are you gonna do and he's 37 with no experience?
20:16And so he could say well
20:17We're gonna win the World Series within three years and we're gonna remake this farm system
20:21And we're gonna bring in the highest paid free agents that money can possibly buy and he could sell whoop tickets
20:29And he could go all the way over his skis all he wants and then in three months people circle back and go well Buster
20:36You didn't do that and you didn't do this and you were wrong about that
20:39The one thing that I heard him say in that answer
20:43Just kind of reminded me of what drove us crazy about Farhan and it's the constant
20:48roster shuffle and he said something to the effect in that quote of
20:52You know, I'm I'm gonna be not that he's gonna be hands-off, but he's gonna you know, kind of let guys
20:58Play he's gonna let guys work through it. I think he's also talking about the people he hires
21:03Like I don't want to be over their shoulder too much, right?
21:06And I also think that he's gonna allow guys to not be yo-yoing back and forth
21:12And I you know, I just picked a guy and I looked at Blake Sable and he got recalled May 4th
21:17He got option May 21st. He got recalled July 30th. He got option August 1st
21:23He got recalled September 1st, and then he got option September 3rd, and then he got recalled today
21:29Which is ostensibly that's exciting meaningless
21:32It just means that he's gonna be on the 40 man for the offseason, but I'm seeing ten different
21:38Transactions for a rule five guy who I know he's bottom of the roster
21:43But I could pick any player on the roster outside of the big boys like Schmidt
21:48How many times did he go up and down and Luciano and Luis Matos and all the rest of it?
21:52And I I was hearing from Buster. Maybe not exactly what he said
21:57The feeling I got was
21:59They're gonna pick guys
22:01They're gonna have him play and they're gonna let them play and not be so quick to just send the guy down you have to
22:07Yeah, you have to look no matter if it's the young guy
22:10That's actually getting yo-yoed or if it's the veteran who has the locker next door who's watching it all happen
22:16Yeah, it just makes everybody uncomfortable
22:18Makes everybody uncomfortable and it's why Evan Longoria a few weeks ago
22:23Liked a post that said Farhan's ID's job is in trouble
22:27Like just take that take that and realize that's how it felt to the players
22:32Doesn't mean they get to run the show, but that's how it felt and I don't think that that leads to good play
22:39I
22:40I'm a believer in that
22:42You know some of that stuff in terms of like their their morale if you will that's a word that I keep coming back to