Buster Posey's parents tell the story about the one attempt their son made to free himself from his nickname. He was very young, in elementary school, and Gerald Dempsey Posey III informed his folks he no longer wanted to be called Buster.
The response was, in summation: Well, that's what we call you. That's your name.
That the boy simply moved on and never raised the issue again was probably some early insight into his tendency to keep everything in perspective, to recognize what he can or can't control and what's actually important. Teammates and scouts talk about his unique equilibrium in everything he does -- his handling of pitchers, his interaction with umpires, and his at-bats. One evaluator summed up Posey's textbook simplicity as a hitter: "He hits fastballs to the opposite field, and he pulls breaking balls."
Posey turns 30 in March and is right in the middle of his career and uniformly regarded as the best catcher in baseball, entering Year 5 of his nine-year deal with the Giants. He's a four-time All-Star, won awards for Rookie of the Year Award and the MVP, shared in three championships. He's probably a good enough hitter that if he wanted to, Posey could tack on three or four more seasons as a first baseman, or a DH.
Given his personality, however, my guess is that he won't defer his life after baseball any longer than necessary. Posey isn't the sort who needs the attention and adulation. He might be the least likely player to position himself for a year-long farewell tour.
What follows is total speculation: I suspect that when Posey's current contract ends, he'll retire, after the 2021 season. I've never asked Posey about when and how his career might end, and anyway, it would be in his nature to wait until the question is actually relevant to form an answer.
But Posey is not the sort who will embrace a late-career drift for the sake of chasing statistical benchmarks. Posey -- who has 1,005 career hits -- isn't going to hang around for No. 2,000 because he thinks it'll polish his Hall of Fame resume.
Rather, I think he'll play until he stops enjoying it, because he knows he'll enjoy what's on the other side of his final game, at home.
Posey continues to be at the center of what the Giants will try to accomplish in 2017.
In our continuing positional rankings, as based on input from evaluators around baseball: the Top 10 catchers.
1. Buster Posey
Because he didn't become a catcher until he was in college, his defense behind the plate was long considered a secondary strength. He was a great hitting catcher who was good defensively.
That is no longer the case. His defensive work is now as respected as his offense. Posey was the best among all catchers in pitching-framing metrics last season, the tangible stuff, and evaluators respect him for the intangible stuff -- for the way he prepares and works.
Mark Simon of ESPN Stats & Information sent along these notes about Posey's more subtle defensive abilities.
• Posey blocked 414 pitches last season, preventing them from being wild pitches or passed balls. He had 21 wild pitches/passed balls. His 95.2 percent block rate was the best among everyday catchers and second-best overall (Robinson Chirinos was 96.6 percent but made only 47 starts).
• Posey led the majors (all positions) in defensive runs saved on bunts with four. Why? He had 16 putouts/assists on bunts, per Baseball Info Solutions, tied with Francisco Cervelli for most among catchers in 2016.
• Posey led catchers with 23 defensive runs saved last season (which includes pitch-framing data not noted on Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs). Posey led all catchers in total defensive runs saved since 2011, since 2012, since 2013, since 2014 and since 2015
• Baseball Info Solutions started tracking defensive runs saved in 2003. Posey has caught the 30th-most innings in that time, but ranks 4th among catchers in defensive runs saved with 95.
Posey scored 82 runs and drove in 80, the highest runs/RBI total for any catcher, with 49 extra-base hits and 64 walks. He and manager Bruce Bochy communicate about his workload, which is substantial: Between his starts at catcher and at first base, Posey has played in 146 or more games in five consecutive seasons.
Early in Posey's career, the industry assumption was that eventually, the Giants would move Posey from behind the plate and mostly use him at first base. But with Brandon Belt now locked into a long-term deal, there are no apparent plans for Posey to reduce his catching workload. With the Giants going through a second-half collapse last season and Bochy trying to find some traction, Posey stayed in the lineup, and evaluators thought this impacted his offense somewhat.
Posey starts at catcher, by year:
2012: 97
2013: 98
2014: 109
2015: 103
2016: 122
From Sarah Langs of ESPN Stats & Information: Posey's first game of the 2017 season will be his 900th career game. Through 899, he has hit fewer homers than Hall of Famer Johnny Bench, but is outpacing him in doubles, RBIs, batting average and OPS.
2. At the time that Lucroy rejected a trade to the Cleveland Indians and was instead swapped to the Rangers, the assumption within the industry was that Lucroy would work out an extension with Texas. But this hasn't happened yet, and as it stands, Lucroy will be eligible for free agency in the fall, with a whole lot of money at stake in 2017. Lucroy hit well for the Rangers after the deal, batting .276 with a .539 slugging percentage. His pitch-framing metrics were not as good for the Rangers as they were in past seasons with the Brewers, and some evaluators suggested this might have been because of the composition of the respective staffs.
From Sarah Langs: Lucroy hit 24 homers as catcher, the second-most in the majors behind Yasmani Grandal. The total was a career high and he fell just one RBI short of tying his career high of 82. Lucroy is one of five active primary-position catchers with a career BA above .270 (.284) (min. 3,000 PA), along with Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, Victor Martinez and Yadier Molina.
3. Yadier Molina
Following Molina's thumb surgeries in 2015, the Cardinals intended to move at a deliberate pace with their longtime catcher in 2016. But Molina had his own set of expectations, far higher than anybody else's, and once more, he was on the field just about all the time. In a season in which Molina turned 34, he started a career-high 142 games, 14 more games than any other catcher in 2016. He batted .307, with a .360 OBP and 38 doubles.
There was a time in Molina's career in which his presence on the field meant that other teams would eschew the opportunity to steal bases, but that has changed.
Stolen bases vs. Molina
2011: 35 steals/68 attempts
2012: 46 steals/65 attempts
2013: 26 steals/46 attempts
2014: 23 steals/44 attempts
2015: 37 steals/63 attempts
2016: 67 steals/85 attempts
Evaluators feel he doesn't block balls in the dirt as well, at this stage in his career. But Molina continues to be one of the best and most durable catchers, and he needs 407 hits for 2,000 in his career, which might be the magic number for a player regarded as perhaps the greatest-ever defender at his position.
4. Yasmani Grandal
The Dodgers' catcher could be held up as the model of what teams look for in the position in this era of analytics (if they don't have access to a Johnny Bench/Buster Posey type superstar, that is). Grandal takes his share of walks and gets on base. He hits for power (27 homers last season). As a switch-hitter, he can give the Dodgers platoon advantages -- and just as important, his presence means the Dodgers are never at a platoon disadvantage at catcher; last season, Grandal had an .824 OPS against right-handers, .780 against lefties.
And he is a god in pitch-framing metrics: only Buster Posey rated higher than Grandal last season in the data collected for Statcorner.com. Grandal is 28 years old, and eligible for free agency after the 2018 season.
5. He had his best season for power in 2016 with 22 homers, and for the fourth straight season, Perez won the Gold Glove for his defense. But in the rankings posted here, evaluators cited some erosion over various parts of his game, most notably, in his ball/strike presentation to umpires. According to at least one metric, Perez ranked last among all major-league catchers in this. A contributing factor could be in how much he has been on the field: He has played all but 79 games over the past four seasons -- a blessing and a curse for a catcher.
6. He was part of a team that made the postseason again, the sixth consecutive year for Martin, and the ninth time in his career. He has done it with big-market teams (the Dodgers and Yankees), for small-market teams (the Pirates), for teams ending long droughts of not reaching the postseason (Pittsburgh and Toronto). It's hard to quantify what that all means, but it means something.
Last year, he started 119 games at catcher, his most since 2009, and for the third season in his career, he achieved 20 homers, and scored 62 runs, the third-most among catchers. Martin had the most strikeouts of any season in his career, 148, with his contact rates declining significantly. Part of the work of catchers is to play through hand and wrist injuries, and only Martin could know how much the wear-and-tear of his position affected him.
7. Gary Sanchez
If the question posed to evaluators for the purpose of this survey was framed differently, Sanchez might've been higher than in this spot, because of his incredible performance the last two months of last season. Evaluators were asked: How would you rank these catchers? Instead of, Which of these catchers would you like to have on your team at the outset of 2017?
Only three players posted a higher OPS than Sanchez after the All-Star break -- Joey Votto, Freddie Freeman and Miguel Cabrera. Votto, Freeman and Cabrera were the only three players scored better than Sanchez in wRC+, a metric which measures runs created, and the guy right behind Sanchez was Mike Trout.
The Yankees thought all along that Sanchez had high-end talent, but had concerns about his work ethic and attention to detail after what they saw during his first promotion to the big leagues in the fall of 2015. But he found catcher religion by the start of spring training in 2016, a complete turnaround, and simply dominated.
Late-season numbers by young players are often a mirage, but there are a couple of factors worth remembering:
A) Last August and September, the Yankees played a whole lot against the Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles, three teams contending for the playoffs.
B) Pitchers tried just about everything they could against Sanchez and still struggled to contain him. Among major leaguers with at least 225 plate appearances, Sanchez saw a lower percentage of fastballs than any player other than Pedro Alvarez. Pitchers made their adjustments against him, and he still had 32 extra-base hits in 201 at-bats.
8. Brian McCann
His production has been as steady and predictable as that of any player in the big leagues over the last decade. He has had nine straight seasons of 20 or more homers, and in eight of the past 11 seasons, McCann has posted more than 70 RBIs. He has been among the more adept pitch-framers in the majors. He turns 33 next month, and with the Yankees paying down some of his contract over the next two seasons, he was a good buy for the Astros, as they sought an offensive upgrade at catcher.
9. If you were to generate a team of underrated All-Stars, Realmuto would probably be the catcher, because few casual fans know about all the stuff that he provides. He hits for average (.303 last season, with a .343 OBP), he has some pop (12 homers, even while playing in a cavernous home park where he had only three in '16), and he's durable. The 25-year-old even runs. He had 12 steals last season, and he led all catchers who qualified for the batting title in a baserunning efficiency metric -- which is a little bit like being the fastest offensive linemen, but still, it's value that most other catchers don't possess.
He did not fare well in the pitch-framing stats last season, but he worked with a staff that doesn't collectively offer a lot of command -- the Marlins were 23rd in first-pitch strike percentage.
10. Willson Contreras, Chicago Cubs
His athleticism and energy leaps off the field for evaluators. Once Contreras learned to steer all of that in the minors, he quickly became a big-league option for the Cubs, and he'll have a lot of responsibility in 2017 -- perhaps taking over as Jon Lester's catcher, and getting some starts with Jake Arrieta, whose stuff is challenging. Contreras, 24, played his first game last June 17, and in 76 games, he hit .282 with an OPS of .845. He'll continue to move up this list in the years ahead.
Honorable mention
Francisco Cervelli, Pittsburgh Pirates: A lot of the pop he showed in recent seasons has dissipated, with his slugging percentage declining from .432 to .322 last year. In 2016, he had one homer. But he gets on base a lot and the Pirates really like his daily energy.
Stephen Vogt, Oakland Athletics. He had a career-high 103 starts behind the plate and was picked for the AL All-Star team for the second straight season.
Sandy Leon, Boston Red Sox. His emergence at age 27 from a backup into an important member of the highest-scoring team in baseball stunned some evaluators last season. He batted .310, with an .845 OPS, and partnered with Cy Young winner Rick Porcello.
Tucker Barnhart, Cincinnati Reds. Pushed into action because of the injuries to Devin Mesoraco in 2016, and he had a nice season, batting .257 and posting career highs in doubles, homers and RBIs.
Welington Castillo, Baltimore Orioles. He'll be an interesting test case this year. The new Diamondbacks regime, which believes in analytics more than the prior leadership, cut him free -- and Castillo was signed by the Orioles, who don't rely as heavily on analytics, to a multiyear deal.
James McCann, Tigers. Regarded as a good catcher, and he has some power as he hit 12 homers last season.
Wild card: Wilson Ramos, Tampa Bay Rays. He'd be high in the Top 10 list if he hadn't blown out at his knee at the end of the 2016 season. The Rays' hope is that Ramos could return to catching sometime around midseason in 2017, but the fact that he signed a two-year deal means that the bulk of the work he does behind the plate for Tampa Bay could occur in 2018.