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Two other factors to keep in mind.
As Knizner will get more expensive in arbitration, other minimum salary catchers will be coming up. A non-tender could follow to save a few million. Not this year, but maybe next.
He has one more minor league option year but when that is gone, they lose roster flexibility with him.
It should BW, and is the most likely outcome for most backups. With Knizners backup playing time arb scale, which will be minimal, he’s better off being non-tendered and testing free agency, just look at those $ above.
Willson has talked the talk about taking over for Yadi. He’s going to have to walk the walk too, to an extent. Nobody expects any of those 150+ game Yadi seasons, but I will bet you 100 starts is not what the Cardinals have in mind. Not for $87 Million. But the worm will turn and we will see.
BB keeps saying he is not hating on Knizner. I get that, and agree he’s not.
I’ll add, I’m not a big Knizner fan either, although today it seems like I’m a Kiz defender. I think I understand his value within mlb relative to all other catchers available. Emphasis on available.
Look what OAK and TOR asked Mo for, to acquire a catcher. Mo quick pivoted to 80+mil.
Look at this winters FA class of catchers and rank Knizner within. Can you name 5 FA catchers you’d want ahead of Kiz? 4? He’s our backup until a more valuable comes along, and I hope it’s not by trade or free agency. Positional scarcity matters.
I never thought Knizner was too awfully bad during his limited playing time. He does feature some stretches when it seems that only a Faustian type deal will allow him to reach base, but all in all, I never recall him making too many bad plays while he was situated behind HP. I think he may have suffered from simply not being Yadier Molina. Much in the same way, but to a lesser extent, that Matt Holliday sometimes received criticism for simply not being Albert Pujols.
Unless the Cardinals tank or Knizner hits the wall at Daytona and gets banged up, who else would back up Contreras at C?
Sounds about right. Our catchers logged 604 PA’s last season. Contreras likely bats in the top 5 lineup spots so catchers may reach mid 600’s next season.
150 would be close to half the 293 PAs Knizner got in 2021, which is the sort of thing I figure is wanted. 150 black holes in 162 games is not going to be anything like what we had last season between Knizner and Yadi and Romines. Massive improvement.
Figuring 600-625 or so PAs from the catcher position, that would put Contreras at around 450-475 or so PAs as the catcher, and something over 100 PAs as DH to get over 550 PAs total. 460 and 130 maybe. Something like that. 130 DH PAs over 162 games would not hugely cut into the reps needed by the emerging young guys trying to develop and work their way in or establish value. That seems like a plan that makes sense by getting value from Contreras’s contract and balancing the forces in play.
It wouldn’t surprise me too much at all if Contreras gets plenty of looks from the 2 slot. Especially if O’Neill can stay on the field and produce. If he can, my own view is that Contreras is best suited to hit behind O’Neill at #6.
Good. I’m glad he found some work. It wasn’t his fault, but I can’t help but to equate Romine with the end of the first half of the ’22 regular season. It seemed like as soon as the Cardinals picked him up, the entire gearbox looked like it was about to scatter. Dark days indeed…Then the trade deadline happened and he was DFA’ed and the Redbirds immediately took off. Like I said, not his fault, but I don’t care for bad omens…
In regards to back up catchers, anyone remember Gary “Grand Slam” Bennett? He tatered up for a walk off GS vs. the Cubs in a crucial W for the Cardinals when they were in the midst of a tailspin and in danger of allowing the Astros to overtake them in the NLC towards the end of the ’06 season. I watched that game and if I recall rightly, it was a Sunday night game on ESPN. We should see what he’s up to…Haha!
It wouldn’t surprise me too much at all if Contreras gets plenty of looks from the 2 slot.
Given the last lineup we saw, nothing will surprise me.
Well yeah, but although it wouldn’t be my ideal design, hitting Contreras at #2 would be mild in comparison to the last line-up we saw. And he did it twice. In a row. I’ll be curious to see if he ever has the audacity to hit Donovan at #5 again. I’m wagering six bits that he won’t. Make that a dollar…
Some saw Donovan in the 5spot for the postseason, I saw Pujols in the 2spot.
Donovan at 5 was the trickle down effect of the main purpose.
Oli took our best 2nd half bat and put him in a position to see the best pitches possible. Pujols could have been protected by Carlson/Dickerson or by Golden-Nado.
Well, seeing as how the great slugger was our best 2nd half bat, maybe he should have slotted Pujols at #5 to protect Golden-Nado? He certainly seemed to be better protection for those two guys than Donovan was.
Yeah, you’d imagine one of those tech whiz-kids could design and engineer some sort of a failsafe to prevent those intentional glitches.
Hitting Pujols 2nd may have been as much about getting him a few extra at-bats during the chase to 700 as anything else?
It was off putting to see him in that slot through for sure and for me, hitting him 5th was the play.
Managers look for “damage” from the 2spot. It’s why Goldy led the club in GS, hitting second.
Donovan played nearly everywhere and hit nearly everywhere. He’s like a cure all. If there’s a problem, put Donovan there.
In 108 GS, the most Donovan hit in any lineup spot was 36 GS, batting second, one-third of his GS. We’re at our best when he floats.
Every baseball person knows that its a bad idea to all of a sudden move a guy who is accustomed to a certain batting order position and expect him to do well instantly without a settling in period, or do well ever for that matter. You face different game situations, you see different pitches, the psychology is different. You don’t just shift a guy around unless they are used to it. But some dweeb crunching numbers at a computer would think it was slick. And then some other dweeb in charge would agree with the first dweeb, they’d high five, push their glasses back up, and send it on down to Ollie.
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