San Francisco Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey wants everyone to know that his team’s putrid performance to start the season isn’t the fault of first-year manager (and first-year big leaguer) Tony Vitello.

Posey used his biweekly hit on KNBR Thursday morning to fall on his sword for the team’s miserable 20-30 start.

Amid his empty claim that the season is still early yet and gaslighting framing that the Giants’ only two options to close this season were to overpay Edwin Diaz or pray Ryan Walker returned to form, he also said it isn’t fair to blame his rookie manager for this team’s failure.

“I understand where the fans’ frustrations are, but I don’t think it’s fair to put it all on one person. You could put it on me before Tony, in my opinion, based on how things have played out,” Posey said.

And you know what, he’s right: It’s not Vitello’s fault.

Though I do think it’s fair to put it all on one person: Posey.

But in sorta-kinda taking the blame Thursday, Posey also resurfaced one of the many fundamental flaws Giants ownership made when handing over the baseball side of the team to someone with zero experience for such a role.

You can’t fire him.

After all, he’s part of the ownership group.

He’s also a living legend with a bronze bust practically cooling in the cooperage.

And that makes Posey an excellent human shield for the principal owners of the team, with whom he is in lock step about how to run their real-estate investment empire — sorry, I meant baseball team.

The same cowardice and ignorance that led team CEO Greg Johnson to give Posey the job in the first place will prevent him from ever firing him.

After all, Posey “wanted the ball” after the 2024 season — due process of filling the most important job in the organization be damned. Johnson didn’t have the guts or vision to tell Posey “no” then, so why would that change now?

So while it’s not Vitello’s fault this team stinks, if that’s still the case in a few months, he will be the one sacrificed on the altar of public relations. That is how the modern front office works. That’s how Posey has worked. Another knee-jerk reaction.

It’ll be easy, too. You can’t fire a part-owner, but you certainly can kick the manager, with their inscrutable responsibilities, to the curb.

Remember: Posey hired Bob Melvin twice — once when he took over as team president, again when he extended him last summer — but fired him after last season.

The guy who built the broken car stays in the luxury suite; the guy (partially) driving it gets tossed into the bay.

But Posey and his staff assembled a roster that’s fundamentally flawed, horribly haphazard and profoundly limited. This is a team built entirely from streaky, tenured veterans. It was a grand exercise in plausible deniability for a front office that operates as if the public perception comes first and the baseball later.

So we see a lineup that doesn’t put together rallies but rather hopes for individual lightning strikes and a pitching staff of independent contractors. We see a squad that has no identity and marginal cohesion.

To lead this group, Posey reached down into the collegiate ranks to hire Vitello, a guy who had zero days of major-league experience on his resume.

Vitello was an incredible college coach at Tennessee. He’s a fiery guy and a magnificent talker. But what’s a guy straight out of the SEC going to tell Matt Chapman — with his everything-he-wanted contract (including a full no-trade clause, thanks to Posey) — about fighting through a brutal, soul-crushing slump in the show?

How’s he supposed to manage a bullpen without a reliable closer (or even a viable option for one) because the front office treated the ninth inning like a theory in the offseason?

The inherent naivety of this setup was exposed before Memorial Day. And now it will be a massive uphill battle just to scratch back toward the team’s homeostasis of a .500 record.

The structural unfairness of Vitello’s job is the real crime here. Posey pops up in the media for a controlled chat once every two weeks, and he’s allowed to speak in broad, protective platitudes. You have to give him deference, right? He’s a legend.

Meanwhile, Vitello, who has less experience in the big leagues than nearly all of his players, all of his staff and most of the media, too, has to stand in front of the cameras before and after all 162 games. He has to explain why the bullpen of cast-off arms and not-ready-for-primetime players melted down again, why his generational-wealth stars aren’t hitting and why his this-will-do veterans in the rotation aren’t suddenly better than their track records. He has to find a way to play Bryce Eldridge, called up by the front office ostensibly to prevent fans from booing after a winless road trip, despite there being no opening for him on the roster. Heaven forbid someone with tenure sits for a day.

Yes, he has to defend how he, a novice, played his hand, even though the deck was stacked against him before he ever walked into the dugout.

To be clear: Vitello’s tactical blunders have been real, but they’re the symptoms of the disease, not the cause. The disease is an ownership group that thought star power in the executive suite could manifest or even replace competent roster construction on the field.

I’m not advocating for Vitello to be fired. Far from it. He was put in an impossible situation by an executive who gets to learn the job on the fly with total immunity.

Vitello should be afforded the same opportunity. I doubt he’ll receive it.

So if Tony V. gets the axe at the end of the year, it won’t be because he failed. It’ll be penance for his boss’s sins.

Because, as Jed York once smugly said: “You don’t dismiss owners.”

Posey can claim the blame on the radio all he wants, but without a massive turnaround, the manager — the guy without equity in this big little corporation — will pay the bill.

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