Buster Posey is probably the best defensive catcher in baseball

Buster Posey is in his eighth major league season somehow. He’s made four All-Star teams. He’s won three Silver Slugger awards. He’s been a Rookie of the Year, an MVP, and a World Champion three times over.

But he’s missing something.

Did you know that are landfills are overflowing with old memes? Please, recycle your old memes. Future generations will thank you.

But, no, Buster Posey doesn’t have a Gold Glove. It’s time. To be fair, in his first couple seasons, he was a little raw, especially when it came to blocking pitches in the dirt, so it wasn’t a Crawford-like tragedy that he was overlooked for that guy on the Cardinals for so long.

It’s time to pass the baton, though. Keith Law released his list of baseball’s best defensive tools, and Posey takes the top spot behind the plate for "Best Catcher Glove":

1. Buster Posey, Giants

2. Yadier Molina, Cardinals

3. Russell Martin, Blue Jays

4. Jonathan Lucroy, Rangers

5. Francisco Cervelli, Pirates

These five catchers are all above-average receivers, framers and game-callers, and all have been doing it for a little while (or a long while), giving me more confidence in the rankings here, because it is one of the hardest tools to evaluate visually and the statistics we have to measure catcher defense remain imprecise and/or nonexistent.

One of the imprecise statistics we do have suggests that Posey isn’t just the best pitch-framer in baseball, but that he’s miles ahead of the competition and he’s been among the league leaders in every season since coming into the league.

Another one of the imprecise statistics we have is caught-stealing percentage, which can be especially finicky. Think batting average, but with a much smaller sample every year. Still Posey is leading the NL this year, which isn’t something he’s come close to doing before. His arm is absurdly accurate this season, allowing him to cut down runners even if the pitcher isn’t giving him much help.

You’re not having a lot of fun as a Giants fan right now. I most certainly do not blame you. So think of this post as an olive branch. Not as a symbol of peace, but as something to poke and scrape the poop out of all the nooks and crannies on the bottom of your shoe. You can throw away the branch when you’re done. But we were suspecting that Buster Posey was pretty good at his job, and now there’s external validation to help reinforce that belief.

If it doesn’t lead to that first Gold Glove this year, I’m not sure if it will ever happen. But it will probably lead to his first Gold Glove. You have to find the silver linings that baseball offers, friend.