Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Buster Posey does not sound as alarmed as some of the rest of the Giants community.
Yes, it’s hip tightness for a hip that had been surgically repaired in 2018 and hampered him the following season. But he feels good, he said, and this sort of thing creeping up in mid-March, while he’s building up his body, is normal.
“It was nice to go through those three innings and couple of at-bats and not have any issues,” the legendary Giants catcher said Sunday in his return to the lineup. “It just got tight on me. I think it’s pretty common with something like this for the muscles to get tight and then when that happens, the hip joint doesn’t move as well as it should. So just try and take some time to get this thing moving better.”
He had been scratched from the lineup Tuesday in a move that Gabe Kapler called “precautionary” multiple times. Curt Casali caught a few games back to back, and the Giants are better equipped than last year to handle any games without Posey.
He and Kapler have not talked about an ideal number of games to play this year, but his days of playing 150 games are finished.
His mindset is “play as much as I can,” Posey said over Zoom. “I’m sure they might see it otherwise, but we haven’t talked about it to this point.”
Kapler said there are no firm rules about what he needs to see from Posey in order for him to be ready to catch April 1; no back-to-back test to pass. But he said there aren’t concerns about Posey being ready in time.
“He is and he looks healthy,” the manager said after the Giants’ 10-4 win over the Dodgers at Camelback Ranch. “So that’s a really good signal for the day.”