{"id":341342,"date":"2025-12-12T22:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341342\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T22:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:37:07","slug":"mariners-working-on-deal-with-andrew-knizner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341342\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariners Working On Deal With Andrew Knizner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariners are in conversations with free agent catcher\u00a0Andrew Knizner<\/a> on a deal, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive<\/a>. If they reach agreement on a big league contract, he\u2019d be in line to back up\u00a0Cal Raleigh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Knizner spent the second half of the 2025 season with the Giants. He\u2019d begun the season in Triple-A with the Nationals but was released in the middle of May. He signed a minor league deal with San Francisco and jumped onto the MLB roster a few weeks later. Knizner spent the rest of the season working behind\u00a0Patrick Bailey<\/a>. The presence of a two-time Gold Glove winner blocked him from getting much playing time, though he had a brief run as the starting catcher when Bailey missed a week and a half with a neck strain.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Knizner (31 in February) started 28 of his 32 appearances behind the dish. He stepped to the plate 88 times and hit .221\/.299\/.299 with one home run. Knizner has played parts of seven MLB seasons between the Cardinals, Rangers and Giants. He owns a .211\/.281\/.316 batting line in a little under 1000 career plate appearances. The former seventh-round pick has a much better .292\/.387\/.443 mark across 583 trips to the plate at the Triple-A level.<\/p>\n

Knizner has caught more than 2200 major league innings. His early-career defensive grades weren\u2019t great, as public metrics weren\u2019t favorable on his pitch framing. He has rated closer to average in that regard over the past two seasons, though his blocking hasn\u2019t been as strong. His arm strength is middling, and he has thrown out a below-average 16.4% of baserunners in the last four years.<\/p>\n

San Francisco opted not to tender Knizner a contract for his final year of arbitration. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected<\/a> him for a modest $1.3MM salary, but the Giants want to leave the door open for rookie\u00a0Jesus Rodriguez<\/a> to win the backup job in camp. Seattle doesn\u2019t have a second catcher on their 40-man roster.\u00a0Mitch Garver<\/a> hit free agency and they traded<\/a> rookie\u00a0Harry Ford<\/a> for lefty reliever Jose A. Ferrer<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

Knizner has five-plus years of MLB service and cannot be sent to the minors without his consent. If he signed a big league deal, he\u2019d enter camp as the presumed #2 catcher. The Mariners will probably continue looking for depth options via waivers or minor league free agency to push him for that spot, but it\u2019s not a position to which they need to devote many resources. Raleigh will be in the lineup almost every day at either catcher or designated hitter. He started 119 games and logged 1072 innings behind the plate this past season. Only\u00a0J.T. Realmuto<\/a> and\u00a0William Contreras<\/a> took a heavier workload.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners are in conversations with free agent catcher\u00a0Andrew Knizner on a deal, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[134031,49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-341342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-andrew-knizner","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}