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Buster Posey is going to be on the Giants for the next nine years.
My goodness, that's a sentence into which you can dive and frolic like Scrooge McDuck. Giant for life. Buster Posey on the Angels? On the Mets? Generals? Back the hell off, other teams. Buster Posey, Giant for life. Props to Steve at Bay Area Sports Guy for being the first with the rumblings.
It's a nine-year deal according to the beat writers, which buys out five years of free agency. According to Ken Rosenthal, there's a club option for 2022. Just looking at that year makes me giggle and titter. I mean, Blade Runner takes place in 2019. We're going to have the opportunity to watch Buster Posey on the Giants until it's the future. Literally! The future!
The deal is for nine years, $167 million according to Henry Schulman, which includes this year's $8 million. That's an average of just over $18.5 million, which isn't going to seem like superstar money in nine years. It's less than what Ryan Howard's making now. So there's substantial risk in the deal, but it's easy to get bowled over by the big figure at the end. If Posey is still a superstar by the end of the contract, the Giants will have a bargain player.
That opens up a discussion, then, about how likely it is that Posey will be a superstar at the end of his contract. I'll bet the Twins have wished they could ctrl-z the Joe Mauer contract more than once over the last two years. But that's a terrifying subject for a little bit later.
For now, though, Buster Posey is a Giant for a long, long time. All it took was 1.3 Zitos to make that happen, so I'm okay with it. Worry about tomorrow tomorrow, but that part about the earlier tomorrow, where you were worried about Buster Posey leaving the day after tomorrow? Not going to happen.