Posey, Giants mum on negotiations
More than a month removed from the MLB Draft, Leesburg’s Buster Posey and the San Francisco Giants – who picked Posey fifth overall – still have yet to agree to terms.
Danny Aller
When the Major League Baseball All-Star break officially begins today, the game’s present stars will take the field in at Yankee Stadium in New York.
But across the country in San Francisco, the Giants continue to wonder about the status of its future ones.
The Giants’ top four draft picks taken in the June 5 MLB First-Year Player Draft remain unsigned, most notably its first-round selection at No. 5 overall, Florida State junior catcher and Leesburg native Buster Posey.
And unfortunately, neither side is saying much about where the negotiations stand.
"When we're in the process of signing new players, whether a free-agent or a drafted player, we really don't discuss or characterize negotiations out of respect for both sides," Bobby Evans, the Giants' director of player personnel, told The Herald during a telephone interview Friday afternoon.
"We want to be helpful, but I'm not sure what to say beyond that. We just don't talk about negotiations (that are still ongoing)."
Attempts to reach Posey or his reported representative, Jeff Berry, were unsuccessful. Posey returned to Leesburg last week after winning the Brooks Wallace Award in Lubbock, Texas, and will be in New York on Wednesday as one of the finalists poised to win arguably college baseball's most coveted honor, the Golden Spikes Award.
With the Giants' top four picks still unsigned, it doesn't appear unusual that Posey and the team haven't reached terms. In fact, Evans said that of the 50 players the Giants selected in the 2008 Draft, only "22 of the 50 are currently signed." All players have until Aug. 15 — the MLB deadline for anyone taken in the 2008 Draft — to ink a contract.
However, the clock may be ticking faster for Posey than others.
While Evans is the point man for negotiations with the FSU star, San Francisco GM Brian Sabean was quoted in a Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat report July 4 as saying that if Posey was not signed by the All-Star break, that per organizational policy, Posey likely would be issued a 2009 minor-league contract and would miss the remainder of the 2008 minor-league season.
"It would probably be a post-dated contract if he waits that long," Sabean told the Press Democrat. "If you've laid off and don't get out till that time, really the rest of the minor league season is an exercise in futility, to waste that protection year."
The "protection year" Sabean speaks of means, according to MLB rules, college players do not have to be protected on the 40-man roster until after their third season, which would assure Posey would be a member of the Giants' organization through at least 2011, rather than 2010 if he was to sign a 2008 minor-league contract and immediately go into the Giants' farm system.
When asked about Sabean's comments, Evans said he hadn't read the Press Democrat article, but then added: "If Brian said that, then ... he runs the show. That's certainly been our policy we've operated under in the past, but I'm not prepared at this time to say (definitively) what we would do if he's not signed before the All-Star break because I haven't read Brian's quote."
Of course, there's always the other option — and it's one both sides likely don't want.
If Posey and the team don't come to terms by the Aug, 15 deadline, he would then have the option of either returning to Florida State for his senior year or playing for a non-MLB-affiliated organization for a season until he could re-enter the draft the following season. Such was the case of former Florida State star and Lowndes native J.D. Drew, who was drafted No. 2 overall by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1997, but when he and the team couldn't agree by the deadline (Drew and agent Scott Boras reportedly wouldn't settle for less than a $10 million signing bonus), Drew chose to play one year for the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League.