The San Francisco Giants announced Monday that Buster Posey, who retired after the 2021 season with three World Series rings and an MVP award, has joined the front office in an unspecified capacity. The club simultaneously hired Curt Casali and Jandel Gustave, both former teammates, into baseball operations roles.

Posey, 34, caught 1,371 games for San Francisco across 12 major-league seasons. His playing contract paid him $159 million in total guarantees, the largest sum the franchise ever committed to a homegrown position player. He has spent the past two years in what the organization described as an advisory role, attending spring training and making occasional appearances at Oracle Park. The new position formalizes that relationship, though the club declined to specify reporting lines or title.

Casali, a backup catcher who played parts of eight seasons including 56 games with the Giants in 2021, arrives from the Cincinnati Reds organization where he finished his playing career last year. Gustave, a right-handed reliever who pitched 19 innings for San Francisco in 2020, retired in 2022 after shoulder surgery. Both are expected to work in player development, focusing on the lower levels of the farm system where the Giants have struggled to produce everyday position players. The club has not graduated a homegrown everyday catcher since Posey himself debuted in 2010.

The moves follow a disappointing 79-83 finish in 2023, the second consecutive losing season after the franchise won 107 games in 2021. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has faced internal pressure to add voices with organizational continuity, particularly after the departures of scouts and coaches who worked under former general manager Brian Sabean. Posey's presence addresses that directly—he played under three managers and caught four different pitching staffs that reached the postseason.

The timing is notable. The Giants enter the offseason with roughly $60 million in payroll flexibility and holes at second base, shortstop, and left field. Free-agent negotiations typically accelerate in mid-November. Front offices prefer their decision-makers in place before those conversations begin, not during. Posey's hire, announced three weeks before the general manager meetings in Scottsdale, suggests he will have input on this winter's roster construction.

What to watch: Whether Posey attends the GM meetings November 6-9, and whether he travels to free-agent showcase events in the weeks that follow. Also, any changes to the catching infrastructure at the Double-A and Triple-A levels where the organization has cycled through four different coordinators since 2020. The Giants are expected to pursue at least one veteran position player before Thanksgiving, the typical deadline for clubs filling obvious roster gaps ahead of arbitration non-tender decisions.

The Casali and Gustave hires may matter more for 2026 than 2024. Both have relationships with young pitchers and catchers in the system who were amateur prospects when Posey was still catching everyday. That continuity—Posey's voice in the room, his former teammates on the back fields—is the structure Zaidi lacked when the club went 162-186 over the past two seasons.