Major League Baseball links - Buster Posey retires, Tigers add Tucker Barnhart

Buster Posey made official his retirement from the San Francisco Giants and Major League Baseball yesterday, calling time on a brilliant Hall of Fame career that included a trio of World Series titles, an MVP, and seven All Star appearances.

Cincinnati Reds fans have an odd section of our brains devoted to Buster Posey memories, of course. It’s hard for many to get over his impact on some of the biggest moments in recent Reds history, of which there have truly been perilously few. So, I should probably apologize for using a picture of his greatest triumph at the expense of the Reds - tagging out the untaggable Skip Schumaker as the latter made one of the grittiest slides in the history of the sport.

Congrats to Buster on what was really a pretty perfect career. He burst on the scene, lived up to the hype, overcame injury, won it all all the damn time, slumped, stepped away during the pandemic to focus on family, and surged back to again show he could be at the pinnacle of the sport while having eyes on a post-baseball life. He’s been the best catcher in the sport of this generation, and will be in Cooperstown quite soon.

Our friends at McCovey Chronicles had some thoughts about Buster’s press conference yesterday.

The other pertinent catching news of the week involved the Reds, too. Tucker Barnhart got shipped to the Detroit Tigers so the Cincinnati Reds didn’t have to get egg on their face for not wanting to pay him, and the Reds were also too cheap to pick up his option and try to move him later this winter - that, of course, would involve a slight bit of risk and paying him while trying to move him, and we just can’t have that. We broke it down from the Reds perspective in podcast form, but our friends up at Bless You Boys detailed how it was an aggressive move from a Tigers club that appears to be moving in a different direction from the frugal, fumbling Reds.

Across the division in St. Louis, the Cardinals declined team options on a pair of players who, at times, have tormented the Reds. Both Matt Carpenter and Carlos Martinez will become free agents, as VEB relayed, likely ending their runs with the club for good. In Carpenter’s case, the 36 year old might well hang up his spikes for good, which were very, very good spikes for a long damn time. Congrats to him, too, if that’s the case.

Over at Pinstripe Alley, there is worry that the New York Yankees could disappoint their fans this winter by balking at the high prices of the elite free agents, a concept that I thought was only reserved for fans of the Cincinnati Reds. Of course, that’s because the Yanks already got over $220 million on the books for the 2022 season and there’s a looming work stoppage, but it’s never not fun to point out when the Yankees, of all clubs, face reality every once in a lifetime.

Imagine being linked to Corey Seager, anyway. This freaking team.

We have long opined that Chris Taylor would be a perfect fit for the Cincinnati Reds, in part because he profiles as an upgrade at like every single position on the diamond most of the time and can play all of them whenever, wherever. He’s now a free agent, and the folks at True Blue LA tried to guesstimate what his upcoming contract will look like. SPOILER ALERT: it looks like it’s too damn expensive for these damn Reds.

The Chicago White Sox declined their option on Cesar Hernandez, as Jesse Rogers of ESPN reported. Hernandez has been mostly a 2B in his big league career, though he’s picked up a few cameo spots at shortstop after breaking into the bigs in CF. He’s like the caffeine-free diet Chris Taylor, which is more the market where we should probably be focusing our expectations as the Reds try to make additions this winter. That statement assumes the Reds actually try to make additions this winter with eyes on winning baseball games in 2022, however, and I’m still not convinced that’s a thing that will actually happen, so maybe I should just shut off the whole ‘have expectations of this damn franchise’ thing altogether again.

That’s it for this reposter, folks. I’d go on but in an attempt to align our blog payroll with our resources, it’s time for me to cut this one off where it is.