4:18pm: San Francisco has designated catcher Tim Federowicz to open a 40-man spot, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets.
Federowicz, 30, was projected to command $1.3MM as a 3+ service-class player in arbitration. In theory, he could have been retained to serve as Buster Posey’s backup, with Nick Hundley qualifying for free agency, but clearly the Giants have other plans.
Though he has seen time in six MLB seasons, Federowicz has only once taken more than a hundred plate appearances in a single campaign — his 2013 effort with the Dodgers. All told, he owns a .196/.245/.313 slash through 318 trips to the plate at the game’s highest level.
At Triple-A last year, he hit a sturdy .300/.366/.463. Indeed, Federowicz owns a career .877 OPS through parts of seven seasons at the highest level of the minors. Still, he has yet to receive an extended look in the bigs.
3:45pm: The Giants have claimed utilityman Micah Johnson off waivers from the Reds, as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets. He had only recently landed in Cincinnati in a waiver claim from the Braves.
Johnson, 26, has bounced around a fair bit in recent years, moving from the White Sox to the Dodgers and then on to Atlanta before starting the present offseason with a flurry. Along the way, his prospect star has generally waned, though perhaps it’s too soon to give up on a player that comes with some pedigree as a well-regarded prospect.
Last year, Johnson did manage to produce a useful .289/.377/.400 batting line over 155 plate appearances at Triple-A. That represented an improvement on his ugly output at the highest level of the minors in the prior campaign. Johnson earned a brief stop in the majors for the third-straight season, but still has fairly minimal time there.
Clearly, the speedy Indiana University product is still seen by teams as worthy of some ongoing opportunity. The Reds evidently hoped to slip him through waivers, only to see another team with a high-priority spot on the NL waiver wire grab him instead. It wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Johnson bounce around a few more times this winter as teams jockey for position with 40-man roster spots.
What would have been the incentive for Cincinnati to sneak Johnson through. I believe he would have been able to become a free agent based on his service time at this point. They may have had a deal in place before, but either way, seems to me like a waste of $20,000 when you’re just going to risk him walking for nothing. At least they got their investment back.
As for SF, like I said for Cincy- he’s an out of options left-handed bench bat who can play multiple positions. If he remains on the 40-man roster, then he has a chance to make the club out of spring training.
with how terrible the roster played last year I wouldn’t be surprised to see more pickups like this to throw at spring training, I mean you really don’t want to into next season with the gorkys-s and tomlinsons as your bench to back up guys that are question marks, it is anothr recipe for disaster. I would hope that they would be challenging everyone on the roster (minus of course buster, craw, bum and the guys that would block trade like cueto and shark) to produce or end up on the chopping block either as a payroll trade or a release. Personally I think that if a couple guys step up or get acquired it would go far to push everyone in the right direction but the FO sounds like they feel like moves that fail are better than staying put and failing.
Micah Johnson is not as versatile defensively as you make him out to be. Despite great speed he has stone hands at 2B and a chronically weak throwing arm that resulted from elbow surgery back in college. He’s pretty much relegated to LF, PH and PR in the NL. He might have more of a future in the AL with the DH if he can just avoid the disabled list. He has had an assortment of injuries to varying parts of his body since his pro debut with the White Sox. When Johnson was healthy in the Chicago system he had excellent BA/OBP and SB numbers and was pegged as their potential future leadoff hitter before the injury bug and his defense at 2B derailed those hopes.
Once upon a time another former White Sox player had a similar bumpy road with his stone hands at 2B when he debuted with the Montreal Expos organization. However, his bat and speed were so outstanding that the Expos moved him to LF. Tim (Rock) Raines eventually made it all the way to the HOF this past summer. Johnson has some of Raines’ elite speed and base running ability along with a better bat than the like of Reds CF Billy Hamilton. I still hold out hope that Johnson can finally catch a break with his health and land with a team that might give him a legitimate shot to leadoff in LF or at the DH position. At 26 (27 in December) Johnson is running out of time but maybe he’ll get his chance with the Giants or some other team in the AL this coming season.
Micah just keeps bouncing around. 4th team in 4 seasons
Actually this will be his fifth organization. He was drafted in 2012 and debuted with the White Sox in 2015, was traded to the Dodgers in the 3-team deal with the Reds for Todd Frazier two off-season’s ago, was dealt last January by LA to Atlanta, was claimed on waivers last week from the Braves by the Reds and ditto today from the Reds by the Giants.
Micah Johnson just can’t clear NL waivers. Too bad, because his best shot might be in the A.L. as a potential leadoff hitting LF/DH due to his subpar defense not helped in the least from a chronically weak throwing arm that resulted from elbow surgery back in his days at the University of Indiana. He’s a very intelligent and talented young man and a great teammate.
Once again, best of luck to him. Perhaps he can work his way back to the White Sox organization at some point and in some capacity as they continue their rebuild.
I always kinda feel bad for guys like Johnson, Profar, Jesus Montero, guys who were considered to be big cogs in a team’s future plans, but never panned out, or at least haven’t shown anything yet, but are quickly running out of time.
they also haven’t been given the opportunity to play everyday, look at a guy like Chris Taylor, who gets to play everyday now, and has improved his game dramatically
The same might be said of Nationals CF Michael Taylor who took advantage of injuries to both Adam Eaton and Trea Turner and finally began fulfilling some of his enormous promise.