This week in Major League Baseball is a critical checkpoint for teams to trim down the players on the fringes of their rosters, and the San Francisco Giants decided one veteran no longer made sense to keep around.
Seven-year veteran catcher Andrew Knizner had a strong second half of the season in limited duties, but overall, he wasn’t a major factor in the Giants’ season. He finished the year with a .598 OPS in 33 games, totaling one home run, five RBIs, and 23 total bases.
With Patrick Bailey firmly entrenched as the starter, the Giants probably entered the offseason thinking they could find a cheaper backup than Knizner, who was entering his final year of arbitration eligibility. So on Friday, it appeared the 30-year-old is being cut loose.
According to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the Giants were preparing to designate Knizner for assignment ahead of the Friday deadline to tender contracts for next season to arbitration-eligible players.
“Giants will DFA C Andrew Knizner,” wrote Heyman. “Above-average framer and defense, hit .306 in second half with 137 wRC+, and season K rate of 11.4% was by far best of his career.”
Whether Knizner were in fact DFA’d or non-tendered is likely of no consequence, as if it’s the former, he’d become a free agent anyway in the very likely event he cleared waivers.
Knizner, who has also played for the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers, had a fielding run value of zero and a 10th-percentile average pop time of 2.0 seconds this season, so calling his defense “above-average” might be a slight exaggeration. But he certainly wouldn’t cost much, either.
With three months to go until spring training, Knizner now begins the hunt to find a new contract, preferably of the guaranteed variety.
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