Giants designate LaMonte Wade Jr., sign Dominic Smith as Buster Posey seeks to jolt offense

New York Times

2 days ago

As a cornerstone catcher on three World Series championship teams, Buster Posey was as renowned for his level-headed perspective as he was for his clutch hitting and receiving skills.
But patience does not always equal indecisiveness.
The San Francisco Giants' first-year president of baseball operations made a series of bold roster changes Wednesday morning to jolt a slumbering offense, designating struggling first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. for assignment and replacing him with Dominic Smith, who had opted out of his Triple-A contract with the New York Yankees earlier in the week.
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The Giants made two other changes to address an underperforming bench, designating backup catcher Sam Huff and optioning infielder Christian Koss to Triple-A Sacramento. They will be replaced by catcher Andrew Knizner and lefty-hitting outfielder Daniel Johnson, neither of whom were in spring training with the club but had joined Triple-A Sacramento on minor league contracts last month.
The most significant and likely the most difficult move involved saying goodbye to Wade, who achieved folk hero status as 'Late Night LaMonte' for his uncanny run of clutch hits in the late innings on the 2021 NL West championship team that won a franchise-record 107 regular-season games. Wade received only 381 plate appearances that season but finished sixth among NL players in Win Probability Added. And he emerged as a strike-zone savant to rival Juan Soto while posting on-base percentages of .373 and .380 over the past two seasons.
But Wade's production fell off a cliff over the past two months while he hit .167/.275/.271 with one home run. The 31-year-old's window of opportunity with the club was closing as other options came online. Outfielder/first baseman Jerar Encarnacion, who fractured a finger in spring training, rejoined the team this week. Top prospect Bryce Eldridge hit his way into a promotion to Triple-A Sacramento on Tuesday, and veteran Wilmer Flores has proven to be much more productive than just a right-handed platoon partner.
Wade's struggles were easier to cover up in April when the Giants got off to a hot start and scored consistently. But the club has scored just 32 runs over its last 16 games, putting considerable pressure on a pitching staff that ranks second in the major leagues with a 3.03 ERA. The Giants haven't scored more than four runs in any of their last 16 games, their longest since a 19-game stretch in 1965. And they are coming off two gut-wrenching home losses to the San Diego Padres, wasting Logan Webb's effort in a 1-0 defeat on Monday and then letting a 2-0 lead slip away in the ninth inning of a 3-2, 10-inning loss on Tuesday that probably had more to do with their inability to tack on runs than closer Camilo Doval's rare hiccup.
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Before Tuesday's loss, Posey met with reporters and said the club was 'trying to exhaust all options' to jump-start an offense that hasn't received much from Wade, catcher Patrick Bailey, and most notably, $182 million free-agent shortstop Willy Adames.
But the question has been floating out there ever since Posey took over the big chair from Farhan Zaidi in October: How would Posey handle the moment when he had to make difficult decisions about players who were among his former teammates? In a role that often requires callousness, how much would sentiment get in the way?
Perhaps that question has been answered now. Posey, of course, was among Wade's teammates in that record-setting 2021 season. But that didn't make any difference on Wednesday. Not with the Giants' offensive challenges threatening to erode their early-season gains.
Although Posey showed no signs of panic as a player, he also likely absorbed his share of lessons from former manager Bruce Bochy, including this oft-repeated line: 'If it isn't working, change something.'
So the Giants will give at least a short-term look at Smith, a 29-year-old veteran of eight major league seasons with the New York Mets, Washington Nationals and Cincinnati Reds who didn't make the Yankees roster out of camp and was buried on the depth chart there. Smith hit .255/.333/.448 with eight home runs in 189 plate appearances at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and is expected to see time at first base and provide a little more left-handed power potential off the bench.
Johnson is a lefty-hitting 29-year-old Vallejo native who appeared in one game for the Baltimore Orioles last year and 35 games for Cleveland over the 2020-21 seasons. He was playing for Durango in the Mexican League when the Giants signed him to a minor league contract on May 2; he hit .272/.312/.534 with six home runs and five stolen bases in 109 plate appearances for Sacramento.
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Knizner, 30, has spent parts of six major league seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers and was released by mutual consent from his minor league deal with the Washington Nationals in mid-May. He combined for a .378 average and .512 on-base percentage between Triple-A Rochester and Sacramento and represents a contact-hitting upgrade over Huff, who had struck out 25 times in 53 at-bats.
And what about Wade? It's unlikely he'd be scooped up on waivers because a claiming team would take on the remainder of his $5 million salary. But because he has more than five years of service time, he can reject an outright assignment to Sacramento and become a free agent. He's almost assuredly played his last game as a Giant.
(Top photo of LaMonte Wade Jr.: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)