San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey announced his retirement on Thursday, after a strangely improbable “return to form” during the 2021 season that defied all convention and logic at age 34. Long the media darling, we have commented far and wide on his irregular production and statistical lines while playing in The House That Steroids Built—not to mention his extreme lack of postseason production (just a .667 OPS).

Interestingly, Posey cited the physical toll of the game on his body, which sounds awfully coincidental with our suspicions of him as a PED user—particularly in the 2012 and 2021 seasons. Plus, it’s odd he wouldn’t continue to play, since his Hall of Fame credentials may be suspect in the eyes of some voters with such a short career (only 10 full seasons). Posey could move to first base defensively (or wait for the NL to adopt the designated hitter, which is coming for 2022, like it or not) and make millions more.

Either way, he’s always been overrated: He didn’t deserve the 2010 NL Rookie of the Year Award, since Atlanta Braves outfielder Jason Heyward outpaced him in WAR by a huge margin (6.4 to 3.9). After being his average self for the first part of 2011, he suffered a horrible ankle/leg injury, and many thought his career was over. But he strangely came back in 2012 at age 25 to post the best season of his career, posting numbers he would never come close to again.

That reeks of PED use in his recovery from the injury, and it’s so obvious, it’s sad we even have to point out again and again. Then, after he reverted to a merely good baseline of production from 2013 to 2017, he began declining hard to the point he posted just a .688 OPS during the 2019 season. After not playing during the Covid-impacted season of 2020, he came back to post the second-best season of his career in 2021 at an advanced age … only to retire now. Hmmmm.

Let’s be clear: Posey was not the reason the Giants won three World Series titles. His postseason .667 OPS demonstrates that, and the prowess of the pitching staff is suspect itself, so when sycophants want to point to the record 14 postseason shutouts he caught behind the plate, that’s the fallacy of circular logic, for sure. The whole organization probably has been cheating since the late 1990s, so how do people give credit to Posey for that?

He was always just a pretty boy who came along at the right time to benefit from a fraudulent organizational philosophy. Posey was a good hitter, sure, but only probable PED use made him an NL MVP vote winner—while a teammate of his took the fall for organizational sins during that same season. Some people lead charmed lives, evidently, and the media fails to scratch under the surface or look behind the curtain.

It’s a shame that with all the not-so-coincidental circumstantial evidence against him that “experts” and “fans” continue to put this guy on a pedestal. We can only hope that some serious investigative journalism occurs between now and January 2027 when Posey will be up for a Hall of Fame vote: He’s a borderline candidate as is, in terms of production, even with his probable PED use, and we know he rarely hit well in the postseason.

Like Derek Jeter, he also won a Gold Glove he didn’t deserve (in 2016), further augmenting his reputation in the eyes of the clueless. Again, an ounce of critical thinking here reveals a lot that people don’t want to acknowledge about the alleged Golden Boy of the Giants success. We just wonder if people will actually apply the facts to this case, and hopefully we will be here in five-plus years to assess the damage done by Posey to the sport as his name shows up on a Hall of Fame ballot.