Kurtenbach: At a half-billion dollars, Buster Posey might have built baseball's most expensive albatross

For years, the loudest complaint in San Francisco was that Giants' front-office head Farhan Zaidi couldn't convince a star player to take his team's money, even if he threw in the deed to the Golden Gate Bridge as a sweetener.

Looking back on it now, that might have been a blessing.

Because Buster Posey has been able to land "star" players on long-term deals - guaranteeing more than half a billion dollars combined to Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, and Rafael Devers.

And in return, he's bought an offense so toothless it should be eating soup through a straw.

Posey didn’t fix the Giants’ roster by paying for middle-of-the-lineup thump. No, it appears that he merely subsidized three declines.

And they’re taking the entire Giants’ offense down with them.

If something doesn't dramatically change with Adames, Chapman, and Devers - one of them, all three of them, anything will do - soon, this Giants' season will never get out of second gear.

Let's be fair to Posey - unless you're buying out the arbitration years of a 20-year-old, no one signs a long-term deal in baseball thinking that it's going to pay off for the full duration of the contract. You're paying for the good stuff by paying for the bad stuff, too.

But I'm wondering when the good stuff shows up for the Giants' big-money troika. And I'm ruing the long-term future if this is indeed these players' present.

Let’s start with Devers.

The Giants took on the full weight of his Red Sox contract (more than $225 million, running through 2033) in a sneak-attack trade that felt like a heist. Turns out, Boston was the one wearing the ski mask. Devers has a slugging percentage closer to Patrick Bailey’s than Jung Hoo Lee’s right now. Not great! By WAR - which is, admittedly, a flawed metric - he’s nearly twice as bad this season as the next-worst everyday player in baseball (100 at-bats).

What happened to this guy?

Well, he can’t hit the fastball. His swing-and-miss percentage has spiked eight points on that pitch - a massive jump in this sport. And, sure, he's hitting more breaking balls this year, but he's delivering a miserable .246 expected slugging percentage on those pitches, which is the equivalent of a single every four at-bats. So much for power. Why is this happening? Great question. It’s conspicuous that his bat speed has dropped two miles per hour over the last three years. Oh, and sticking him at first base isn’t a defensive alignment; it’s a harrowing, nightly journey into the unknown. That might be part of the issue.

It certainly can't be as simple as "he's pressing too hard," which manager Tony Vitello has suggested time and time again this year.

This isn't a massage, it's baseball.

Though I can understand if you’re a bit confused about that when you watch Devers at the plate.

Then there’s Adames.

Remember, this guy had a free-agent market as quiet as a library on a Tuesday morning. Posey bid against absolute ghosts and handed him a top-of-the-market, five-year deal anyway. It was a statement of intent for the new boss.

What have the Giants received? A sell-out-for-power hitter who, this year, forgot to pack the power.

Adames shows flashes, sure. You squint, and for a second, you think it might come together. But reality hits harder than him. He strikes out a ton, he's walking almost never this season, and when he finally does make contact, it sounds fantastic right up until it lands in a fielder’s glove. Add in that he runs the bases like he’s wearing lead cleats and fields his position like his glove is on backward, and you’ve got a wildly expensive disaster. Don’t worry, though; he only has five years left on his deal after this season.

Which brings us to Chapman.

The old regime, namely Zaidi, didn’t want to pay him. Posey, then just a part-owner, stepped in, put on his Santa suit, and gave Chapman his exact asking price. Since he inked that six-year, $151 million deal in September of 2024, his numbers have fallen down an elevator shaft.

Chapman used to swing hard and make loud contact. Now, he just swings hard. His average exit velocity plummeted from the elite, top 10th percentile to a worst-than-mediocre 70th percentile this season. His sweet-spot percentage - balls that come off the bat between eight and 32 degrees - sits in the second percentile overall. Yes, the second, as in 98 percent of baseball is doing better.

Chapman turned 33 on Tuesday, and the Giants are on the hook for four more years after this one. Even his defense, his calling card, has slipped from great to merely good. Ignore the Casey Schmitt errors at first; Chapman simply doesn’t have those cat-like reflexes at the hot corner anymore.

Yes, the top third of the lineup is a mess. The bottom third, as well established, is a mess. The middle? Anyone's guess. This is Giants baseball.

If the New York Mets didn’t exist to absorb the national embarrassment, we’d be talking about this San Francisco lineup as a historic catastrophe. And it doesn’t take an Ivy League analytics degree to figure out why they aren’t hitting as a collective.

They're getting nothing - in some cases, less than nothing from the big-money guys in Devers, Chapman, and Adames.

Can they turn it around? Of course. Hitting a baseball is a dark art. It’s impossible for you or me to understand the nuance of doing the hardest thing in sports.

It’s painfully obvious when guys aren’t hitting - anyone can not hit.

That said, I don’t need to be a mechanic to know when a car is on fire.

Right now, this trio is a half-billion-dollar albatross strapped to the franchise’s chest. These supposed stars playing like scrubs only cranks up the pressure on the rest of a lineup that’s already in over its head. Worse, it heaps unfair, franchise-saving pressure on top prospect Bryce Eldridge to show up and be the messiah, whenever that day comes. If it comes.

(Is that Posey’s next big, flashy, headline-grabbing button-pressing move? The previous ones aren’t looking so hot.)

Until these three figure it out, this isn’t a contending baseball team. No, it’s an outrageous reminder of the dangers of free agency, a mausoleum of past-prime regrets, and a testament to just how green Posey is to this whole "running a big-league baseball team" gig.

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This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 12:56 PM.