SF Giants undertake major roster shakeup to try and jumpstart offense

The SF Giants simply cannot get anything going on offense right now, so sooner or later something was going to have to change. The Giants made a spate of roster moves today to try and improve the team and shake things up.

The Giants optioned infielder Christian Koss to Triple-A, designated both first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. and catcher Sam Huff for assignment, promoted outfielder Daniel Johnson and catcher Andrew Knizner from Triple-A, and signed first baseman Dominic Smith to a major league contract.

SF Giants make flurry of roster moves to shake up offense

The DFA of Wade is probably the highlight of all these moves considering he has been on the team since 2021. However, it is not a huge shock because he has simply been terrible at the plate this season, slashing .167/.275/.271 with one home run and 15 runs driven in.

Wade was a good Giant, but the Giants had to try and get some sort of offensive production at first base. There was some thought that the team would DFA him to make room for the returning Jerar Encarnacion, but they waited just a few more days to pull the plug.

Dominic Smith is probably not going to be the team's savior, but he at least provides something different for the team at first base. Smith is a career .246 hitter with 64 career home runs. Last season with the Red Sox and the Reds he slashed .233/.313/.378 with six homers and 34 RBI.

The Huff DFA makes sense because he was not doing much offensively for the team with a batting average of .208 in 53 at-bats. Knizner does not offer much more offensively, but he did have ten home runs in 2023 when he was with St. Louis.

Koss's demotion is a little surprising since he did a nice job of filling in for an injured Tyler Fitzgerald at second base, but he has simply not gotten many at-bats since Fitzgerald returned from injury.

Daniel Johnson is an interesting call-up. The Vallejo native was signed last month and hit well in Sacramento with six home runs. If he starts to catch on at the big league level there is a golden opportunity to sell "Hi, how are you?" t-shirts which is a reference maybe a few people will understand and is a bit of a stretch since it is referencing the late musician Daniel Johnston, but oh well, close enough.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey and general manager Zack Minasian were clearly unhappy with the product on the field as of late, so they are making these moves to see if they can get things turned around for the Giants.