![]() Follow our Tampa Bay Times sports team on Twitter and Facebook. Never miss out on the latest with the Bucs, Rays, Lightning, Florida college sports and more. ![]() Sign up for the Rays Report weekly newsletter to get fresh perspectives on the Tampa Bay Rays and the rest of the majors from sports columnist John Romano. Of course, the Giants won the World Series three times during the first five seasons of Posey’s career. Like Evan Longoria, David Price and Carl Crawford before him, Posey would probably have been traded or left via free agency after five seasons, or so. Given Tampa Bay’s limited resources financially, it’s hard to imagine Posey getting a nine-year, $167 million contract the way he did in San Francisco. 5 in the draft where the Giants selected him. ![]() Once the Rays decided to pass on Posey, he dropped to No. It’s also a question that fans in Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Baltimore could be asking, as well. Obviously, that’s a question that can never be answered. The Giants had been in San Francisco since 1958 with a parade of Hall of Famers such as Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry, but they had never won a World Series in the Bay Area until the year Posey arrived. The Rays were in Boston battling the Red Sox for first place - the day of the draft was the day of the infamous Coco Crisp-James Shields brawl on the mound - so our attention was divided in Tampa Bay. In that sense, the ‘08 draft didn’t attract the same fanfare as it might have in other years. The Rays were in the unusual position of leading the American League East while simultaneously holding the No. It was the summer of 2008, and Stu Sternberg’s management team had taken over baseball operations only a couple of years earlier. Posey was in Tampa Bay’s grasp - until the Rays decided to put him back on the shelf to take Tim Beckham. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) Initially, as a young player more than a decade ago. This isn’t just some exercise in fantasy management. San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey will reportedly announce his retirement from baseball on Thursday. And this isn’t Manny Machado or Gerrit Cole or some other free agent the Rays could never afford. This isn’t Albert Pujols, who escaped the attention of every scouting director in baseball for 12 rounds in the 1999 draft. Given that backdrop, Posey may be Tampa Bay’s greatest miscalculation.
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