The Brewers announced that they’ve designated catcher Eric Haase for assignment. That clears active and 40-man roster space for newly-acquired backup catcher Danny Jansen.
Haase’s position on the roster was clearly tenuous once the Brewers lined up the Jansen trade. The righty-hitting Haase has backed up William Contreras all season. He hasn’t gotten much playing time. Contreras leads MLB in starts behind the dish, leaving Haase in the lineup on just 19 occasions. He’s batting .229/.289/.357 with a pair of home runs in 77 trips to the plate.
It’s not easy to get into any kind of offensive rhythm with such infrequent playing time. Haase has power but has always had a lot of swing-and-miss in his game. That’s a common profile for a backup catcher, but the 32-year-old isn’t the plus defender that teams tend to prefer from their #2 backstop. While Jansen’s recent defensive grades haven’t been great either, he had a stronger reputation with the glove earlier in his career than Haase has ever had.
Haase is out of options, so a DFA was the only way to take him off the big league roster. Milwaukee has a couple days to try to find a trade partner. They’d need to place him on waivers if there’s no trade by Thursday evening’s deadline. Haase is playing on a $1.35MM arbitration salary. He has enough service time to refuse an outright assignment but would forfeit what remains of that salary to do that, so he’d likely accept an assignment to Triple-A if Milwaukee manages to sneak him through the waiver wire.