Upon the departure of Mitch Garver, the Mariners entered this winter with a hole in their catching corps.
Wait, what?
I don’t need to get into how magnificent Cal Raleigh’s historic 2025 was here. You know it. I know it. The girl reading this knows it. What may have fallen through in his charge to sixty (sixty! still boggles the mind) homers last year was the workload behind the plate that he’s shouldered; since 2022, his 499 games at catcher lead all of baseball, with his 4149 innings and 457 starts in that span trailing only J.T. Realmuto. Throw in 38 games as Seattle’s DH last year, and Cal crossed the 700 plate appearance threshold – nigh-unheard of for a backstop.
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Catching is famously tough on the human body, and many teams in the modern era opt for a more balanced job share rather than the traditional starter/backup model to keep both players healthy. But when your MVP runner-up and newfound face of the franchise crouches behind the plate nearly every day? Whoever plays second fiddle isn’t exactly a top priority.
Andrew Knizner is no stranger to being the irreplaceable’s replacement. Drafted in the 7th round in 2016 by the St. Louis Cardinals out of North Carolina State, he broke into the bigs in 2019, making his debut in early June after franchise legend and Yadier Molina hit the injured list due to a thumb strain. He was sent back down after just two games, but came back up after Yadi again hit the IL with a thumb injury, getting into eleven games – and hitting his first big league homer – before heading back to Triple-A Memphis, returning after September roster expansion.
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Buried behind an established – if aging – duo of Molina and Matt Wieters, Knizner struggled to find consistent playing time in MLB, stepping to the plate just 75 times over 26 games in 2019-20. After Wieters retired following the 2020 season, though, backup catcher was wide open for the Cards, and Knizner seized his chance, spending all of 2021 on a Major League roster while playing in 63 games and collecting 185 plate appearances. The results weren’t exactly pretty, as he turned in a paltry 48 wRC+ and subpar defensive marks, but a double-digit walk rate and a deflated BABIP of .223 suggested that more could be unlocked from his bat.
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With Molina entering his final season in 2022 – and missing about six weeks with knee inflammation – Knizner faced the unenviable scenario of both suddenly becoming important at work and stepping in for a franchise legend. Starting 78 games behind the plate, enough to be listed as St. Louis’s primary catcher per Baseball-Reference, his 77 wRC+ doesn’t jump off the page, but it represented a jump of nearly 30 points. He continued to receive not-great marks for his framing and pop time, but graded out well as a blocker, and St. Louis opted to keep him on after signing Willson Contreras as Yadi’s long-term successor.
Knizner enjoyed his best season in 2023, finally finding some game power in popping ten homers en route to a 92 wRC+ over 241 plate appearances. While the power was great to see, the tradeoff was a downward trend in both his strikeout and walk rates, with each of them moving about four points in the wrong direction. It wasn’t enough for the Cardinals, and they non-tendered Knizner that winter. He quickly found a new home with the Rangers, acting as Jonah Heim’s backup, but if you thought his 2021 was rough? Don’t look at his 2024 numbers. Texas DFA’d him in August after bringing aboard Carson Kelly, and he finished off the year in the Diamondbacks’ org before signing a minor league deal with the Nationals that winter.
His time with the Nats was short-lived. Despite a fiery start in Triple-A Rochester, he was released in mid-May, but was quickly scooped up by the Giants, who promoted him to the big league roster in early June and kept him there for the rest of the season. Behind all-world defender Patrick Bailey, Knizner only got into 33 games with San Francisco, and his triple slash of .221/.299/.299 and 73 wRC+ were in line with his career numbers, but something had changed in his process at the plate. Through 2024, Knizner struck out at a clip of 23%; not terrible in this day and age, but higher than you’d like for a hitter without much thump. In 2025, though, he cut that in half, going down on strikes at a rate of just 11.4%, and the walks stayed at around his career marks. He also had his share of clutch moments, racking up a cumulative +.163 WPA, and none was bigger than an eighth-inning go-ahead triple against his former club on September 27th.
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The obvious caveat here is that we’re talking about just 88 trips to the plate, and his chase rate was largely unchanged, but any time someone bucks a trend like Knizner did last year, it’s worth keeping an eye on. His defensive marks showed improvement, too, particularly in the framing department, though with the ABS challenge system on the horizon, it remains to be seen how impactful those gains will be.
The M’s signed Knizner to a one-year, $1 million deal in mid-December; just barely over league minimum. Although Seattle claimed a third catcher in Jhonny Pereda on the in late January, Knizner’s lack of options and more substantial big league track record of 323 games all but ascertain he’ll be breaking camp as the Big Dumper’s backup. Expectations for him both at and behind the plate will be tempered; most expectations for second-string backstops are. If he can show that his contact gains were for real, though, he should once again settle in nicely as a replacement for the irreplaceable – and give Cal Raleigh’s knees some more well-earned rest.
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