The Seattle Mariners are reportedly finalizing another small addition, signing C Andrew Knizner to a major league deal per Daniel Kramer of MLB.com. The veteran backstop will be 31 for the 2026 season,
and seems likely to receive a league minimum-adjacent two-way deal that would allow Seattle to option him despite having exceeded his initial allotment of minor league options across the last seven seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers, and San Francisco Giants.
Knizner (pronounced KIZ-ner, silent first ‘n’ and the z is before the second n) has a .211/.281/.316 line with a 68 wRC+ for his career, and an uninspiring -1.7 fWAR in 326 games and 975 plate appearances. Other estimations are kinder, with Baseball Reference’s bWAR seeing him as a 1.0 WAR player in his career, and WARP from Baseball Prospectus granting him a forgettable -0.1. What none of these estimations, nor Baseball Savant, seem to find impressive is Knizner’s defense relative to his peers, making the light-hitting righty a peculiarity in terms of his niche.
Knizner hasn’t always been destined for a bench role. The 2016 7th rounder for the Redbirds was a steady hand at NC State University who moved behind the dish as a sophomore after initially playing 3B on campus. His strong offensive numbers up through the St. Louis system had him near the top of the Cardinals’ prospect list in 2019, as well as an inclusion in the FanGraphs top-100 list at 82nd, two spots behind Will Smith of the Dodgers and two spots ahead of Jarred Kelenic, newly of the Mariners. The acclaim followed representing St. Louis in the 2018 All-Star Futures Game, and Knizner was slated to be the eventual heir to Yadier Molina at Busch Stadium at his 2019 big league debut. While the expectation could not have been that Knizner would match Yadi long-term, the youngster struggled immediately, and served in an up-and-down backup backstop role for the next few years.
His keys to the starting job came in 2023, as Willson Contreras shifted out from behind the dish briefly, but Knizner’s best year at the plate could not overcome a surprisingly stagnant capacity for framing, blocking, and curtailing base stealers. He’s bounced up and down with a couple organizations since, and while his framing seems to have improved since leaving Yadi’s shadow, it is honestly surprising the M’s are pursuing Knizner for a big league deal, even at a presumably minute cost. Watching Knizner swing, you can see the Mitch Garver resemblance, and his ability to hit the ball hard was at one point above-average, though it’s not been present whatsoever in the past couple campaigns.
There have been teams willing to sign and play Knizner for the past seven years, and at one point he was a rather promising prospect. It could be Seattle sees something in him they think might be improved into a southpaw-swatting threat as they’ve long prized in a backup C, with Garver, Tom Murphy, and Luis Torrens in recent years. Without wanting to be too much more critical than this blurb has been/felt, Knizner has not yet been that player as a big leaguer. He’ll need to find that gear to emulate Murphy and Torrens more than Seby Zavala in his tenure.
