Giants designate struggling LaMonte Wade Jr. for assignment

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The struggling San Francisco Giants designated infielder-outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. for assignment Wednesday along with catcher Sam Huff.

In addition, San Francisco signed infielder-outfielder Dominic Smith to a one-year major league contract, selected outfielder Daniel Johnson and catcher Andrew Knizner from Triple-A Sacramento while optioning infielder Christian Koss to Sacramento.

Manager Bob Melvin said Monday that with Wade’s struggle to produce his at-bats would likely go to others.

“It was tough,” Melvin said. “Look, LaMonte’s being realistic too when he said, ‘I get it, I haven’t performed very well,’ and I don’t know that at this point in time a little bit of a break and change of scenery won’t be good for him. We wish him the best going forward. I’m shocked if he wasn’t given another opportunity. But based on what has been going on here recently we felt like we needed to make some moves and we did.”

The 31-year-old Wade, who hit a career-high .260 last season and has contributed many timely hits during his four-plus seasons with the Giants, was batting .167 (24 for 144) in 50 games this year. He went 2 for 17 with a double, RBI and three strikeouts during the team’s recent nine-game road trip.

The Giants entered Wednesday night having gone 16 straight games scoring four or fewer runs — their second longest single-season streak since moving to San Francisco in 1958. They did so in 19 consecutive games in 1965.

Buster Posey, San Francisco’s first-year president of baseball operations, called it “a difficult decision” with Wade.

“One of the trickier things for me is there are still guys on the team that I played with. I had a different relationship with them as a player than I do now, but still consider LaMonte a buddy,” Posey said. “So it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but we’ve got to get some offense going.”

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