How SF Giants’ stars Belt, Crawford and Posey rewrote records, beat odds and led stunning revival

SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t long ago the future in San Francisco looked grim for a trio of homegrown Giants stars whose best days were seemingly behind them.

In the midst of a demoralizing 89-loss season in 2019 that culminated with a blowout loss to the Dodgers, Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt appeared mostly helpless and largely overmatched.

Posey was one year removed from major hip surgery when he finished the season with a career-worst .257 batting average. Crawford had lost a step at shortstop and lost any sense of rhythm in the batter’s box as he graded out worse than a replacement level player with a -0.5 WAR. And for the first time in his career, Belt had finished below the league average in OPS+ as his balky knees appeared destined to render him ineffective in the years to come.

So as the 102-win Giants go waltzing toward October, the biggest surprise isn’t that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and manager Gabe Kapler rejuvenated the franchise and built a legitimate World Series contender. It’s that the Giants did it with Posey, Crawford and Belt leading the way.

“We’re the only three left from the World Series-winning teams,” Crawford said last week. “And hopefully this one is one also.”

That Crawford can speak seriously about the Giants’ World Series aspirations only two years after it seemed he would struggle to hold onto a roster spot until the end of his contract is one of the most remarkable stories in baseball this year. That the Giants’ veteran shortstop can do so while playing alongside two teammates who have been by his side for more than a decade is one of the most unique.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time three position players who had been on the same team for at least 10-plus seasons together reached the postseason was in 2006 when Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams reached the playoffs with the 97-win Yankees.

“To be around the game for 10 years is something special,” said Belt, who fractured his hand Sunday and will miss the next few weeks of games. “I believe I’m very fortunate along with Buster and Craw to be here that long and then to be mentioned in the same category of legends like that, it’s pretty cool.”

The night the Giants became the first MLB team to clinch a playoff berth, Crawford sent the factoid about Posada, Jeter and Williams to Posey and Belt in a group text thread.

“It puts it into perspective how unique it is to play with a couple of guys for this long and then still be playing well after all that time,” Posey said.

Zaidi had been on the job for less than 12 months when the trio wrapped the underwhelming 2019 season that provided plenty of reason for long-term concerns. The Giants’ president of baseball operations knew he would face massive blowback from a fan base that adored the World Series heroes if he dared to blow up the roster, but the opportunity to do so wasn’t much of a reality.

In Zaidi’s first full offseason with the Giants, no team would have parted with valuable prospects to take on contracts belonging to Posey, Crawford and Belt that were bloated and seemed destined to age poorly. So instead of reshaping the team’s core, the Giants’ front office built around it.

Zaidi and new general manager Scott Harris hired Gabe Kapler to bring a managerial style that focused on “player development at the major league level” to the Giants. Kapler then hired a staff full of inexperienced yet innovative coaches who brought out-of-the-box ideas, new techniques and an advanced understanding of analytics to the club. The key to maximizing the results from the changes was receiving buy-in from the team’s established veteran leaders.

“With all of us, you can attribute (our success) to our hitting coaches in some way,” Crawford said. “I don’t think some of the adjustments with those guys were as obvious as some of mine were, but I think they have helped them to a certain extent whether it’s approach, pitches to look for, stuff like that, this year.”

As Crawford has often said, after the struggles he dealt with in 2019, why wouldn’t he be open to new ideas?

“Their open-mindedness to non-traditional training techniques has helped them,” Harris said. “All three of them have been outspoken about the new things they’ve done in recent years that have enabled them to perform at such a high-level and that starts with open mindedness. When you combine that with the talent and determination they’ve shown throughout their careers, you end up with players who are still achieving great things.”

Throughout the 2021 season, a group of veteran players who had already proven early in their careers that they possessed immense talent showcased their abilities in unexpected ways.

Posey has returned from a season at home caring for adopted newborn twins with his wife Kristen to hit above .300. Belt’s 29 home runs hit are the most by any Giant since Barry Bonds blasted 45 in 2004 and his 158 wRC+ ranks alongside the best hitters in the sport. Crawford has set new career-highs in home runs and RBIs and has reentered the Gold Glove conversation with a sensational season on defense.

“I think on both sides of the ball, they’re as confident as I’ve ever seen them,” Posey said of his teammates. “And obviously success is going to lead to that confidence, but I think it starts with the way they prepared in the offseason, the way they prepare before all of these games. They believe in the process and it’s been fun to watch.”

Before Zaidi and Harris even arrived in San Francisco, 2021 was set up to be the end of a storied run for the team’s homegrown stars. After Posey signed a record-setting eight-year extension following his 2012 MVP season, former Giants general manager Bobby Evans signed Belt and Crawford to extensions before the 2016 season that were timed up to expire following this year.

When Belt and Crawford signed their contracts, most major league teams were placing a growing emphasis on developing more athletic young position players. Back in 2016, the future was bright for all three players, but it was unrealistic to think it would remain that way into the next decade for two players in Crawford and Posey who play the sport’s most demanding positions and another in Belt who had dealt with various injury issues.

Yet as the 2021 regular season winds down, Crawford has already signed a two-year, $32 million extension to remain with his hometown club while the Giants will have the choice of exercising a $22 million club option for the 2022 season with Posey or negotiating a multi-year extension provided he wants to continue his career. Belt is the only member of the trio whose future in San Francisco is largely uncertain, but he recently told the Bay Area News Group “this has been home for me for 10 years and I’d love to hang around.”

“We knew we wanted to make this season special and enjoy what time we had left together,” Belt said. “You don’t know if this is going to be the last year, if we’re going to have more years, but we just want to come out and make sure we have fun. We wanted to do it together as friends.”

The Giants have more pressing goals to achieve in the coming weeks, but one that remains on Crawford’s checklist is ensuring this ride isn’t their last together.

“Those are the guys I’ve played with the most and you see how rare it is, not just with the Giants, but across baseball,” Crawford said. “And they’re my friends. It’s always great to play with your friends so it would be great to get that done.”