SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Buster Posey recalls watching Andrew McCutchen in awe.

They were 17, spending a few weeks together as teammates on a junior Olympic team in Taiwan.

McCutchen remembers Posey’s immense popularity — swarmed at every single stop. Cheered when on the bus, or when fans just thought he was on the bus.

“The one thing that I remember is all the Taiwanese natives really loved Buster Posey. I don’t know why,” McCutchen said, chuckling. “But they’d be doing the whole roll call of the team and they’d say Buster Posey and everybody would go crazy in Taiwan. We’d get on buses, we’d be on the bus waiting to leave, fans would be coming up, ‘Buster Posey, Buster Posey,’ like, ‘He’s not on the bus.’ But I know he’s a very likable guy, so I’d always joke with him about that in the times playing against him.

“I said, ‘You ever know or wonder why they liked you so much? He said, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’”

Now, more than a decade later as early 30-somethings, they are teammates again with the San Francisco Giants. And McCutchen kind of understands it now. He thinks Posey is pretty cool.

McCutchen considers the star catcher San Francisco’s go-to guy.

“I look at Posey as the captain. I look at him as the jefe,” McCutchen said, using the Spanish word for boss.

Grinning and chatting up his new teammates, McCutchen is already at it shagging flyballs in right field and taking his cuts in the covered batting cage.

He arrived at Scottsdale Stadium on Wednesday, well ahead of position players’ reporting day Sunday and then the first full-squad workout Monday.

“I just remember watching him and Justin Upton and thinking they were just a notch above everybody else at that age,” Posey said. “And obviously both of them did have a meteoric rise to the big leagues. Even then they were men playing with boys back then.”

McCutchen is no longer the face of his franchise the way he had been as a beloved member of the Pirates, and new third baseman Evan Longoria is in the same situation after departing Tampa Bay in the December trade that brought him to the Bay Area.

Padres land Hosmer

According to John Morosi of MLB.com, Hosmer received an eight-year deal with an opt-out clause after the fifth season.

This will push first baseman Wil Myers, whose six-year, $83 million deal signed in 2017 was the team’s biggest contract ever, to the outfield. Myers, who played with Hosmer briefly in Single-A while in the Royals’ system, has said he would be happy to move if it meant the Padres got Hosmer.

The 28-year-old hit .318 with a .385 on-base percentage in 2017, both career highs. He hit 25 home runs for the second season in a row.

“Hos is a great teammate,” said Padres pitcher Chris Young, a member of the Royals’ 2015 World Series championship team. “One of my favorites. He shows up every day. He’s energetic. He knows how to work. He takes care of himself. He’s competitive between the line but knows how to have fun in a clubhouse. The ultimate teammate and competitor. I love him.”