From what I remember reading, and what I found San Jose is actually a pitchers park. I remember reading that when tracking Posey, so was a little surprised by your post.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/minor_league_park_factors_2006/

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3289

Granted this is still from a couple of years ago, but still it shows San Jose being a fairly heavy pitcher’s park. Do you have other information that shows the opposite?

The Cal League is a hitters league, but as mentioned SJ is a pretty extreme pitchers park.

FWIW, BP’s peak translations have Posey as a ~25 HR hitter based on his line so far. Also, basically a .300/.400/.500 guy, which I would take from a catcher any day.

Peak Translation: Applies a typical aging pattern to the regular translation, to try and assess how good the player will be at his peak. Peak generally means somewhere around age 27; however, since the components of offense don’t age at the same rates (speed decays earlier than power, for instance), and since players don’t have the same mix of those components, the actual peak age has some variability, as early as 25 for pure speedsters and as late as 30 for sluggers. The adjustments for pitchers are considerably more sketchy; the very idea of a typical aging curve relies on predictable, steady changes in performance, while pitchers tendencies are dominated by essentially unpredictable point impacts, most commonly either injuries or developing a new pitch. All in all, though, the peak translation is an important tool for me to assess prospect status.

The Cal League is no more of a hitter’s league than the PCL is – especially the western part of the PCL.
Check out the HR and slugging stats for the PCL they’re pretty stratospheric. Of course, for the most part, you do have a higher and deeper caliber of pitching in the PCL vs. the Cal League.

1. It derails his defelopment time learning the C position at AAA.

2. 2B has been a severe offensive black hole for most of the season, when it was manned by Burriss, Matt Downs, and Kevin Frandsen. However, over the past 3 weeks +, they’ve turned it over to Juan Uribe and he has been a significant offensive upgrade. If you’ve noticed, the Giants offense has been increased about 25% in runs, HRs and slugging, in that time frame. It’s not all due to Uribe, Ishikawa has been much better recently and they’ve given much more PT to Schierholtz in RF, but Uribe is the main reason for their offensive surge.

3. I love Posey and think he’ll have a bright and long career, but I doubt he’s their starting C at the start of 2010. More likely he’ll spend at least the 1st half of the season in AAA, and then be called up if he’s still on track and the Giants need help for a title run.

4. I hope that the Giants do look into having Posey spend about 40 games each year playing a position other than C, in order to prolong his career and to keep him fresh. Trust me, this has already been a big, and heated, topic of discussion on the Gaint fan blogs that I frequent, so you’re not the 1st to bring up the idea. I believe that the most likely scenario would be for him to trade off with Pablo Sandoval, an above average D catcher in his own right, to keep both of their bats in the lineup together. Sandoval will most likely stay at 3B in the future, unless the Giants swing a deal for a good 3B, in which case he would slide over to 1B. I saw Posey play games at SS and OF in 2007 and 08 while at FSU, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he would be a fine defensive 3B, 1B, or LF in the Majors with very little practice needed. 2B is a bit of a harder stretch in my mind, because it is more of a specialized position than 3B and 1B, requiring more range and the ability to turn the DP. I feel Posey could play 2B, but he’d need much more training time to get up to speed.