1:30pm: The Athletics have now formally announced these moves.<\/p>\n
12:58pm: The A\u2019s will designate catcher Austin Wynns<\/a> for assignment today when Shea Langeliers<\/a> returns from the paternity list, reports<\/a> Martin Gallegos of MLB.com. Langeliers and the recently reacquired Jonah Heim<\/a> will split catching duties for the time being.<\/p>\n Wynns has been with the Athletics since last June, when they picked him up in a cash swap following a DFA by the Reds. The 35-year-old has appeared in 36 games with the A\u2019s and taken 110 plate appearances while slashing .167\/.204\/.304. It\u2019s a far cry from the outlier .400\/.442\/.700 line he delivered in 43 plate appearances with Cincinnati, though Wynns was never going to sustain the .520 average on balls in play that propped up his Reds output.<\/p>\n In parts of eight major league seasons between the Orioles, Giants, Dodgers, Rockies, Reds and A\u2019s, Wynns has come to the plate 826 times and recorded a .231\/.276\/.347 batting line with 19 home runs. The journeyman backup doesn\u2019t have particularly strong framing grades in his career, but Statcast considers his blocking skills average and he\u2019s nabbed an excellent 30.2% of runners who\u2019ve attempted to steal on him in his career.<\/p>\n Wynns\u2019 poor performance at the plate will send him to the waiver wire in all likelihood, though it\u2019s possible another club swings a cash swap to plug him in as a short-term backup. Wynns has more than five years of big league service time, so even if he clears waivers, he can reject an outright assignment, elect free agency and retain the remainder of this year\u2019s $1.1MM guarantee. Even when Wynns has cleared waivers in the past, he\u2019s found another big league opportunity fairly quickly. Clubs clearly value his experience, his defensive chops and his work with pitchers \u2014 hence his five-plus years of major league service between six clubs despite perennially subpar offensive output.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1:30pm: The Athletics have now formally announced these moves. 12:58pm: The A\u2019s will designate catcher Austin Wynns for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20467,5,4],"class_list":["post-692896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-austin-wynns","tag-baseball","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116534885968820473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}