Notes (3/15): Mariners make good trade, complete offense, upset fans
Well, I was sort of right.
Yesterday morning, through a process of elimination, I guessed the Mariners would add Jesse Winker and Matt Duffy as their impact bats. A few hours later, I looked half smart.
I don’t have much new to add about Winker today, and I plan to write something more involved in the near future. But I’ll reiterate some of my main thoughts.
Winker is one of the 10 best hitters in baseball against RHP — he posted a 178 wRC+ against them last year. He can’t hit lefties and he can’t field, but he’s very, very, VERY good at the thing that he’s good at.
Basically, the Mariners added the equivalent of Bryce Harper to their lineup for 70% of games. Maybe someone who plays in 70% of games doesn’t sound all that impactful, but he just so happens to fit extremely well with another use-limited player on the roster.
Here’s some quick math:
2021 wRAA per 650 (*handedness split)
Jesse Winker vs RHP: 66.5 (*70%)
Luis Torrens vs LHP: 21.5 (*30%)
TOTAL: 53.0 wRAA per 650
For context that pair would have ranked behind only Harper, Juan Soto and Vlad Guerrero Jr. last year in wRAA per 650. And no it doesn’t work exactly like that, but the point is the Mariners shouldn’t care that Winker has a somewhat limited in skillset — they should try to highlight it through the construction of their roster.
My other guess was Matt Duffy, and instead the Mariners traded for Eugenio Suárez.
I guessed Duffy yesterday after concluding the Mariners were fine running with Abraham Toro as their starting 3B. Duffy represented the safe option to supplement Toro’s and could fill in as a passable starter if necessary without long term commitment.
Suárez represents kind of the opposite —a high risk bounceback candidate. Rather than gamble on Toro with Duffy as a safe fallback option, the Mariners are gambling on both Suárez and Toro at the same time. It’s a more aggressive approach than I expected them to take, but it’s fairly clever.
This ties in fairly well to the discussion that was prompted immediately after the trade was announced.
The Mariners are apparently done adding on offense. Jerry Dipoto noted they were in on a lot of free agents, but those talks led to “a lot of dead ends.”
A lot of fans seem to be upset about this. They like the deal to bring in Winker but they still see a sizable hole in the infield that could be filled by one of the remaining free agents like Kris Bryant or Trevor Story. And I think that’s a fair sentiment.
But I’ve been skeptical about the Mariners level of interest in adding Bryant or Story even before adding Suárez. I think they were open to Bryant or Story or both at a given price — they probably still are — but I don’t think they see either as massive upgrades over Toro and/or Frazier. And I don’t think they want to commit a roster spot for six to eight years for maybe half a win at the margin in 2022. It’s fair to want them to take every small upgrade that’s available, but I understand the team’s reasoning and I’m kind of ambivalent.
The bigger gripe in my opinion is that the Mariners haven’t been in on Carlos Correa, who does represent a substantial upgrade at the margin. I don’t really understand the logic here other than ownership simply doesn’t want to commit so much money to a single player. That’s somewhat frustrating from a purely competitive standpoint, but it’s a tired, unwinnable battle at this point.
I’d like to see the Mariners add another starting pitcher and a lefty reliever, but I like the roster quite a bit as it stands.
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