Why? Because I wanted to
Andrew Knapp retired this week, walking away from the game that had given him so much.
A .209/.309/.312 career slash line for a batter is nothing to write home about. Glance at it quickly and you’d probably assume whoever did this was doing their best Bob Uecker impression, only with more power and more of an ability to take a walk. Yet this line does not belong to the former Braves (and Phillies!) catcher, but it does belong to someone who squatted behind the plate for the Phillies during the lean times.
When the Phillies had decided to rebuild, we clung to the future. “Trust the prospects!” was the battlecry, ringing forth to anyone who would remain remotely invested in the team while they continued to tear themselves down in an Astros-style rebuild. There were names that we all knew, names that were drafted, names that were traded for, names that provided a hope that things would be better, Citizens Bank Park would fill once more with cheers and happiness instead of yawns and indifference. Some of you would hope on more accomplished names while sickos would see the ones that would crowd the fringes of the roster, filling in needed gaps once the stars arrived.
I am one of those sickos.
Andrew Knapp, this is your tribute.
Drafted in 2013 by the Phillies with their second round pick, Knapp came with the reputation of being a bat first catcher who would at least not embarrass himself behind the plate. Indeed, his predraft writeup for Baseball America saw him as precisely that:
His defense needs work and he’s presently a below-average receiver, after splitting last season between first base and right field. Aside from summer ball, this is the first year he has caught regularly since high school. At 6-foot-1 and 192 pounds, Knapp is athletic and has the hands, feet and above-average arm strength to make it work behind the plate. He just needs more repetitions and coaching.
He’d get that needed experience in the minors where he focused mainly on his receiving skills while his offense just kind of went along the days. It wasn’t great, but for an expected backup catcher, it wasn’t horrible either. 2013 saw him hit .254/.340/.401 in 247 post draft plate appearances with then short season Williamsport, then a 2014 season across two leagues that saw him hit .260/.324/.385. As I said, not great but not horrible.
Then Knapp found his way to Reading.
Reading is well known in the industry as a hitter’s heaven. Numbers of Phillies prospects tend to inflate there, thus inflating the opinion of those prospects on a national level and that’s kind of what happened. For Knapp, that’s almost precisely what happened. Starting off the 2015 season in Clearwater, he was promoted to Reading at midseason and went off, boosting his OPS over 300 points (.725 in Clearwater, 1.050 in Reading) and putting himself on the prospect map. Baseball Prospectus took note, offering up this evaluation:
Knapp was trundling along through the 2015 season, not looking like much more than perhaps a future backup catcher when he broke out in a big way in the second half at Double-A Reading. He posted a 1.050 OPS across 55 games in the Eastern League, and while he won’t be close to that kind of hitter going forward, there’s enough to like in the bat now that a real major-league role has come into focus for the switch-hitting backstop…[t]here is no real carrying tool here, but Knapp offers enough across the board to be a useful member of a major-league roster.
And that’s pretty much what he became. Promoted to Philadelphia in 2017, Knapp spent the next three seasons backing up the likes of Cameron Rupp and Jorge Alfaro prior to J.T. Realmuto’s arrival in town. Once he showed up, Knapp would see his playing time, however meager it was, dwindle and with that, his numbers followed suit.
To be fair, in those two seasons prior to Realmuto coming, he wasn’t exactly promoting his case to be the primary catcher. A .226/.330/.341 slash line over 419 plate appearances in those two seasons doesn’t jump off the Baseball Reference page, but a catcher who has that kind of on base ability coupled with the switch hitting Knapp was doing is not to be cast aside with no recourse. He made a perfectly fine backup catcher, hence the acquisition of the then best catcher in baseball. In the Covid shortened 2020, he was much better, splitting time with Realmuto thanks to the newly instituted National League DH rule which allowed Realmuto to stay in the lineup without the rigors of catching. In that season, Knapp hit .278/.404/.444, good for an OPS+ of 137. In fact, his 130 OPS+ as a catcher that season was one of only six catchers that high who had at least 80 plate appearances.
2020 was a weird year.
Alas, that would prove to be the highwater mark of Knapp’s career. The following season, everything fell apart. He was only able to muster a .429 OPS with the Phillies in 2021 as the backup, thereby forcing the Phillies to move on in a new direction and earning his release. He end up in three different organizations in 2022, a paltry .393 OPS following him in 46 plate appearances. 2024 saw his final bow in San Francisco, where after three games and six plate appearances, the end finally arrived. There were some minor league stints sprinkled in here and there in those years following 2020, but the call to join a major league roster and stick for an entire season never came.
Why does Andrew Knapp deserves 1,000+ words? What has he ever done that would warrant such length?
Those players of the dark years in between the 2011 dominance and the 2022 return to the playoffs have a special place in our hearts. Looking back with fondness on that era isn’t something many people are going to do, but there are some who stuck with them. That mantra mentioned earlier – “Trust the prospects! Trust the prospects!” – resonated with a certain portion of the fanbase. We all knew that a rebuild was in the future once the golden sun of the 2007-11 team set for good, but it seemed that the front office kept trying to delay it. Kept pushing away the very idea that a team in Philadelphia shouldn’t be playing for something worthwhile. So when it was time to hear about, follow and observe those players that were in the minor league system that were going to be the “next chapter” of Phillies baseball, you latched on to some.
It wasn’t the players’ fault.
Years of negligence of the farm system left it a pretty rough landscape. When players that were supposedly going to be productive in the majors starting populating some prospect writing lists, it became a point of pride.
Knapp was never one of those players. He was on the team to be one of the players at the bottom of a roster that didn’t generate 4-5 WAR, but instead, he was supposed to be one of the ones that didn’t produce negative value. Good teams are good not only because their ceiling is so high, but also because their floor is high as well. The players at the bottom of the roster that were able to generate 1-2 WAR brings that floor upwards. The problem with Knapp is that he just couldn’t do it. From 2017-2022, his bWAR totals were 0.4, -0.5, 0.1, 0.8, -1.5, and -0.2. On the field, he just wasn’t that good.
But as we know with some players, it isn’t all what they’re doing on the field that makes them valuable. Knapp’s teammates seemed to love him, even mentioning him by name once they were in the World Series and how their former teammates saw how they had impacted the 2022 pennant winners.
“One guy I thought a lot about during this Andrew Knapp,” Rhys Hoskins said…“That’s someone who worked his tail off, didn’t necessarily get a lot of time on the field but never complained about it. He knew what his role was…[j]ust somebody who I wish was able to be here to see the work kind of come to fruition.” 1
Those kinds of quotes don’t come around for guys who just sat and waited their turn. It’s the kind of quote that shows that behind closed doors, that player meant something.
So, good luck in retirement Andrew Knapp. A select few of people on this globe can call themselves major leaguers, current or former. You’re one of the lucky ones.
1 Breen, Matt. “Ex-Phillies Left an Impact on This Year’s Team.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 Oct. 2022, p. C5.