The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created lingering uncertainty surrounding the outlook for the upcoming season, but the Giants will head into the new year with one key assurance: Buster Posey will be back behind the plate in 2021.

Giants manager Gabe Kapler said he fully expects Posey -- who sat out the 2020 campaign after he and his wife, Kristen, adopted twin baby girls who were born prematurely in July -- to reprise his role as the club’s starting catcher once the team reconvenes next spring.

“We’ll think about Buster as a surefire lock for our Opening Day roster and [getting] the lion's share of the reps back there,” Kapler said Tuesday during a Zoom call with reporters.

Kapler said he’s run into Posey a few times at Oracle Park this offseason and noted that the 33-year-old veteran used his sabbatical to bulk up his frame and improve his overall fitness.

“He really is in great physical condition,” Kapler said. “I think everybody will notice when they see him he's added some muscle, some usable lean tissue. He's looking agile and strong and fresh. I think the time off gave him an opportunity to kind of reassess where his body was. He's taken that opportunity to make some physical conditioning improvements.

“It’s kind of difficult to say an exact number of games a week we expect Buster to catch, but obviously everybody on this call knows he’ll be our primary catcher. It’s not just the voice that we’ll lean on heavily, but between the lines, we're going to utilize his brain and his body to the best of our ability.”

Despite playing the entire season without Posey, the Giants managed to exceed expectations in 2020, finishing third in the National League West with a 29-31 record and falling only one game short of the playoffs. The return of the face of their franchise should help stoke optimism that the organization can continue to build off that success in '21, which will mark the final guaranteed year of Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Johnny Cueto’s contracts.

Posey batted .257 with a career-low .688 OPS and seven home runs over 114 games in 2019, but he showed signs of a potential offensive resurgence before the season was upended by the pandemic last spring. Even if he’s no longer the middle-of-the-order force he was at his peak, the Giants believe Posey will continue to bring value through his handling of the pitching staff and his defensive prowess behind the plate, which was sorely missed in 2020.

Without Posey in the fold, the Giants were forced to lean on a cohort of inexperienced catchers, including Tyler Heineman, Rob Brantly, Chadwick Tromp and top prospect Joey Bart, who struggled after being installed as the team’s No. 1 catcher in August. Bart has long been viewed as Posey’s heir apparent, but the Giants have signaled that they might prefer to start the 24-year-old rookie at Triple-A Sacramento in 2021 to give him more time to develop.

Such a scenario would also give the Giants more time to think about how Posey and Bart might eventually coexist on their Major League roster. The return of the universal designated hitter would make it easier for Posey and Bart to split catching reps, but the Giants and the rest of the National League are still awaiting an official resolution on that matter.

“I think those thoughts are still in progress,” Kapler said. “I don't think it's any secret that last year was a challenge for Joey on a number of different levels. We think that the development time that he had at the Major League level was really good for him, and we'll continue to assess his readiness.”

No winter ball for Cueto
Cueto had expressed interest in pitching for a winter ball club in his native Dominican Republic this offseason, but Kapler said that option is no longer on the table. Cueto hasn’t pitched in winter ball since the 2008-09 offseason, but the veteran right-hander had been hoping to get some extra work after logging a career-worst 5.40 ERA over 12 starts in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery.

“That's always going to be a choice that considers the health and well-being of a player,” Kapler said. “I think it always considers the long-term interests of the club as well. I think all of those things considered are probably why Johnny's not pitching in winter ball.”