The Mariners have acquired Kendrys Morales from the Twins in exchange for right-hander Stephen Pryor, the team announced.
Morales’ stay with the Twins didn’t prove to be a lengthy one, as his tenure in Minnesota lasted just 39 games. The switch-hitting slugger’s overall numbers with the Twins don’t look like much, as he’s batted just .234/.259/.325. He did, however, just wrap up a 12-game hitting streak that saw him bat .292/.314/.417, so he’s showing some signs of life at the dish. Seattle designated hitters have batted just .217/.294/.343, so the bar for improvement isn’t set that high with the Mariners.
The Twins signed Morales shortly after the draft, paying him the prorated version of a $12MM base salary on a one-year deal. In other words, the Twins paid about $3.08MM for less than two months of Morales and turned that into the hard-throwing but control-challenged Pryor. The Mariners, on the other hand, appear to be on the hook for the remaining $4.3MM on Morales’ contract.
Pryor, who turned 25 yesterday, has spent much of the season with Triple-A Tacoma as he recovers from surgery to repair his latissimus dorsi muscle that he underwent in 2013 (as noted by Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN on Twitter). In 31 innings with Tacoma this season, Pryor has posted a 4.65 ERA with 7.8 K/9 and 5.2 BB/9. However, Pryor does have some big league experience under his belt, as he has compiled a 2.81 ERA with a 35-to-16 K/BB ratio in 32 Major League innings. He’s averaged 96 mph on his fastball in his brief time in the Majors and can be controlled at least through the 2018 season. Pryor will report to Triple-A Rochester, per the Twins.
Morales was said by agent Scott Boras to be interested in working out a long-term deal with the Twins. Morales also said (via interpreter) on a road trip to Seattle that the reason he didn’t sign with the M’s this past offseason was that didn’t want to be in the same situation (presumably referring to the possibility of taking a one-year deal and again being hit with a qualifying offer in the 2014-15 offseason). It’s possible that the Twins could again show interest in Morales as a free agent this winter, and if he can hit well over the final two-plus months with the Mariners, he figures to do better on the open market than he did last time around. Because he did not spent the entire regular season with one team, he is now ineligible to receive a qualifying offer.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Morales really needs to build a time machine and just go back and accept that QO now.
Morales really needs to build a time machine and just go back and step on home plate.
Oh god…..the pain all just came rushing back. Why did you have to jump??!?!
Seems like that injury created a rift that led to a 3 year downward spiral for the Angels. Although it could’ve been a lot worse. Still managed 2 winning seasons in the next 3 before this season.
And/or make all his teammates just get out of the way xD
Best comment of the day.
He does that, the Angels maybe don’t spend how many millions on Pujols. Who knows who the Angels sign with all of those millions and where does Pujols go? Wow, the game would be so different…all because of one broken leg.
He was so good, especially after losing out on signing Mark Teixeira.
Talk about a great first comment Chalk1973!
Well done.
wow…
lol I thought Morales said he didn’t want to go back to Seattle
I suspected when the Twins signed him it would a sign and trade, not a bad move for the Twins
I’d imagine a lot of players have a change of heart when the team they are going to is winning.
I guess. He didn’t play well and they didn’t get much in return, so it’s not a huge win.
They signed him and traded him, but he was unproductive while they had him and they got nothing much for him, and it only cost $3 million.
A low cost addition for Seattle
Is this a joke?
A rental who doesn’t want to be there. Brilliant.
He had to approve the trade because it came so soon after his signing, didn’t he?
I’m going to guess there will be news of an extension shortly. It’s the only thing that makes sense in this case. (Making “sense” being a relative term).
I would imagine Boras will be taking Morales’ talents to free agency without the QO attached to him.
That’s why I love this trade LOL
the only way the M’s can get Morales is via trades… lol
Yowza. Credit to the M’s for swallowing their pride, but still, this is the best impact hitter they can find? I hope not.
Why do the M’s continue hoping these 1B guys who don’t hit well on other teams are going to hit well in Safeco? LoMo, Smoak, Hart, Morales…at their career best they seem to be average hitters. Morales has hit for high average for periods of time, but never with power and never for very long it seems. Isn’t the DH position supposed to be pure offense?
Perhaps because Morales hit well at Safeco last season. He had a triple slash of .282/.339/.472 with 12 HR and 42 RBI’s. Despite struggling in Minnesota, hopefully he can ride his recent 12 game hitting streak and put up numbers somewhere in the ballpark of last year.
he just hit .292 over his past 12 games for Minnesota. he has historically hit well at Safeco.
Weren’t 4 of those Games in Coors Field? Probably 3 additional hits that in any other ball park are outs. In a 12 game sample…yeah that .292 doesn’t look that great now.
And my 1st place Orioles done nothing
Orioles need to have something of value that they are willing to part with first. But they don’t want to give up Bundy, Machado or Gausman so expect more mediocre trades like the past couple years…..assuming they make any at all.
Why be upset over this?
Unless the O’s acquire Cashner or Quintana, I don’t care if we miss out on the
Morales’s of the league.
Im sure sox would take machado for Quintana.
Aren’t they 21-11 in their last 32? They just played like a team ready to compete in October against the Angels early this week.
There better be more moves that follow.
Dang, Pryor is a stud and under control for a while. Good thing Maurer has stepped up and made him disposable.
Hopefully Kendrys can step up and be the impact bat behind Cano. GO M’s!
Yea, I would hate this trade for the Mariners if their bullpen wasn’t doing as good as it has been this season. Hopefully Kendrys will be better than a Hart.
Not sure who you’ve been watching, Pryor has been awful this season and his velocity is down to 91 from 97 2 years ago.
Pryor may never be what he was before his injury. I wouldn’t call him a stud right now. His velocity has dropped considerably. Without the overpowering FB that he had, he will need to learn to pitch differently.
As others have said, his velocity is way down after his surgery. It may eventually come back or it may not. The Twins could get lucky but right now he’s probably not fit for a major league bullpen.
Started from the bottom now I’m back.
Oh the irony.
I know they were never going to get much for him and I know next to nothing about Stephen Pryor, but I would have hoped for something other than a reliever.
He has the potential to be an amazing closer. You guys got a good deal.
Eh, he’s alright. Hasn’t been the same since his surgery.
For a change, it’s about having a chance at the post-season this year for the Mariners. Their bullpen is one of the best in the majors, and the pen was doing fine without Pryor… so this is probably a good deal for both teams. Pryor will probably end up being pretty good if he avoids injuries, and Morales can only do better than what the M’s have had at DH so far this year… he hit well from both sides of the plate for Seattle last season, and after a late start this year I hope he’s just getting warmed up now and is ready to start rockin’ it.
But they already have Glen Perkins and drafted two college guys with “potential to be an amazing closer” just last month. Seems Pryor at least threw hard before his surgery, so maybe he’ll amount to something I guess.
You can never have enough guys with closers’ stuff. When they get expensive, trade them to Detroit.
Lol, welcome back Kendrys!
Wai.. Huh.. wha really? Very funny guys great joke.. Wheres the camera?
Well having Morales reject the QO was the best thing that happened for Seattle. Not only to they get him back on a 1 year deal but the AAV is lower than the QO.
But they gave up talent.
Not much though.
Talent is talent. You have teams with all the money in the world like the Dodgers and Yankees that have a tough time finding it.
This seems like one of those moves that everyone knew was going to happen one way or the other.
They got him not for 6 months but for 2.2 months.
Already counting the M’s out of the postseason?
The M’s are the Pokemon Masters of 1st Basemen/DH types… They have the leagues stockpile of them now… Loney, you’re next! Howard may be let go and you know they are eyeing that… Konerko? Morneau? LaRoche? they just need to catch em all muahahahhaa…
they only want the bad ones, though…
The M’s need to sign Cliff Lee so I don’t have to buy any new Mariners gear this year.
Good luck with that, Lee will be around 37-38 the next time they’ll be able to sign him.
Don’t worry. They’re just going to flip Morales for Vargas in a day or two.
That’ll be an awkward first locker room visit.
At least he will know where everything is.
Um…ok didn’t really see this coming. Hoping Hart gets DFA’d now….
Dang it… Jesus is tearing it up in AAA right now, was hoping we’d bring him up and cut Hart.
He may yet get a chance, with both Smoak and Morrison pretty much floundering at the major league level this season! I don’t know that the Mariners would want to play Montero at 1B much, if at all… but they could try it. And now Morales might get a few games at 1B too, who knows. Neither player is good defensively, but if one plays 1B while the other DHs, it should represent an upgrade for the offense.
Don’t speak of Jesus like that. He has to be playing a higher level than AAA or my mama was wrong about him the whole time.
That recent performance is key. You have to figure there would be a period of time before Morales shook off the rust. If he’s past that point then he will be a big help to the M’s. With the emergence of Maurer as a shutdown relief pitcher the team didn’t really need Pryor this season. Getting shut down by Mets pitching was apparently the last straw and the team made an affordable move to improve at DH.
I was against getting Morales earlier, but that was before watching Hart flail for two months. The M’s can’t wait for him to come around.
Agreed, they certainly can’t wait for Hart to produce if they are serious about contending. Also not sure they can wait on their two-headed first baseman (Smoak and Morrison) to come around. I think they can be fine keeping Ackley in LF if they are able to get more production from 1B and DH. But adding a corner OF would sure be nice, and maybe this move to acquire Morales is the first in a series of positive dominoes. M’s fans can hope so, anyway! Like most M’s moves, nobody seemed to see this one coming… so who knows what other deals (surprises) may be in store.
I saw it coming since he was signed. It only made sense that the Mariners would be intent on getting him back despite Morales rejecting the QO. He was a good fit for them and that QO is the only thing that stood in their way of re-signing him.
Good points, with Morales, Hart, LoMo all splitting time as DH/1B.
You think one of them will be dealt?
And things come full circle.
I think the Angels should’ve jumped on this to solidify their DH role again. Ibanez went over the hill and CJ Cron is experiencing the grow pains the Halos should’ve expected from him.
The Angels don’t need more offense and definitely don’t need to trade any prospects, assuming LAA has any left, for Morales.
Maybe so. But never rest on your laurels. The only glaring weakness the Angels offense has right now is leading the AL in strikeouts w/ RISP despite climbing to 2nd in BA w/ RISP. And one can argue that ever since Ibanez was released, things quickly improved in that spot. But now Cron, as mentioned, is experiencing his growing pains, and there hasn’t been much out of the DH spot lately unless Scioscia is just content on rotating it between Trout, Pujols, Hamilton, and Cron. Never hurts to continue adding on. But it’s a moot point now. I still think another mid-rotation/back end starter is the bigger need.
Cron got sent back to AAA and Navarro is playing 1B so Pujols rest at DH down the stretch. Angels have the number 1 offense in the MLB, pitching has wisely been their focus in trades.
Might as well stick with Cron, I think he’ll be better moving forward for the Angels than Morales will be for the Mariners.
I agree. I was thinking more along the lines of a rental to give Cron time to develop, and by season’s end having them split the time.
I don’t think Morales is going to solidify anybody’s DH position. He didn’t fill it very well for the Mariners the past few years…(which begs the question why they brought him back)
It’s hard to solidify a team’s DH position for a few years when you’re only on the team for one. That would be some DH.
The way Albert Pujols is limping around, you sure you wouldn’t want him to be the full time DH?
Well, looks like Butler’s staying in KC now — unless Seattle flips him for Morales. 🙂
Seattle won’t stop until they have all the DHs
We’re just playing Pokemon and trying to collect them all. Unfortunately they all share a common weakness, Pitchers.
Um and here I was hoping Montero was going to get the call. Ah well. If this trade means that Hart is gone that is fine by me.
lol he’s afraid of getting hit with a QO? He’d be lucky to get an offer that big.
Morales is ineligible for a QO this off-season he was referring to signing another one year deal this off-season and being hit with a QO after the 2015 season.
No, he was worried about that in the offseason, which is why he turned down a one-year deal in hopes of signing for multiple years elsewhere. Obviously, it didn’t work out for him.
He is still listening to Boras say “don’t worry we’ll get you a 4 year $80 MM contract soon”
Montero is doing well in AAA. They could have recalled him back up to DH. Morales is a good bat though and I think the M’s took note of Morales when he clobbered them in the Twins vs Mariners series in Safeco. If the Mariners could get Malone and or Rios they should make the playoffs no problem
Seattle’s DHs have been awful, this should help. Morales is basically playing for a contract next year, and the loss of Pryor is helped by the emergence of Maurer. I like the move.
I think it only pans out well for the M’s if Morales is purely motivated by money and hits like Nelson Cruz for the rest of the year. If he hits like he has in the past 2yrs, the M’s now have five DH who can’t hit north of .280 or more than 20HR.
I like the move offensively but doesn’t make sense to continue to load up the 1st/DH position – Smoak, LoMo, Hart, Montero, and now Morales. Hopefully an outfielder/utility player is the next move.
With numbers like his he would get a quaflying offer anyway from anyone
No, but his offseason concern in taking a one-year deal from the M’s was that he’d just be back in a QO situation a year later. That’d probably be a better situation to be in than this, of course.
oh wow, I guess last year seemed really long….waiting on Morales to hit like he did with the Angels!
118 WRC+ last year. If he could do that the rest of this season, he’d be a huge boost to the Mariners line-up.
Seattle’s DHs have slugged .293 this year, with an OBP of .277, all while hitting .196. They basically have had Brenden Ryan at DH. This is a good move for them.
wow…had no idea they were that bad. When the big offensive solutions at 1B were LoMo and Hart I knew it would be bad, but not THAT bad!
Do the Mariners have a plan? They just traded a fireballer for a guy they could have signed before the season giving up no one. The case can be made they didn’t need him as much at the start of the season compared to now; but this still looks sloppy by Jack Z.
Pryor isn’t exactly a fireballer right now. He’s lost about 5 MPH on his fastball and may never get it back. Was at 91 MPH 2 weeks ago.
Wait, are you saying you would have accepted the QO? We did try to sign him, it was Kendrys who didn’t want to sign here. If he was to sign him for more money, then THAT would have been a bad move by the GM.
Wait… what?
He couldn’t get a QO anyway, from Seattle or Minnesota, because he signed so late.
Hence why I said “without the QO attached to him”.
You think?
haha.
Haha Smoak better be gone!
I hope Jack Z has another trade coming soon.
Not to worry trades for Loney, Morneau and perhaps even Ryan Howard are in the works…. They are called first-basemen because acquiring first-basemen should always be your first priority.
Not sure why you mentioned the Dodgers, they have talent. Joc Pederson, Corey Seager, Julio Arias, Zach Lee. All valuable prospects that are almost guaranteed not to be traded. Ownership has made that clear since day 1, we’ll see if they stick to their word or not but things are looking good for the Dodgers “talent” wise.
At least this will be the end of waiting on Smoak to pull his head out of his…
So clearly that whole Corey Hart/Logan Morrison plan worked out as well as expected for the Mariners….
It was just a cheaper version of the whole McCann/Beltran plan…. worked out about as well too.
Touche. Down to the “one player with bad knees” aspect (Hart/Beltran). Still, McCann had way more upside than either of those guys the Mariners signed and the team had just suffered through a season of Chris Stewart doing a pretty horrible impersonation of a starting catcher.
I can think of 85 million reasons why I wouldn’t want McCann.
More often than not, players perform to the back of their baseball cards. I’d trust the first 10 years of his career to be more indicative of the player McCann is, rather than an isolate 3.5 months. Plus, he’s slowly coming along. He took 2 days off (well, one day off and then a team off day) where he worked with Kevin Long, the Yankees hitting coach, and got rid of a toe tappping timing mechanism and his hands are closer to his body and not moving a lot. The result has been about a hit and an RBI per game since he made the change, more or less. I’d love to see a break out 2 homer game, sure, but right now, it’s been enough to have the team go 6-1 since the All Star break so I’m happy.
I feel a lot better about the Yankees getting $85 mill worth of value out of McCann than I do about the Dodgers getting $118 million of value out of Matt Kemp or $71.5 million out of Andre Either.
McCann is one of the best game callers and framers in the league.
So that’s why the Yankees signed McCann, it make perfect sense now it had nothing to do with his bat. It was all his defense and likable demeanor.
My point was the signing isnt all that bad, and with his bat hes still putting up decent numbers for the catcher position. Its the most important and critical position in the game, the way hes helped them with the injuries to the pitching and how hard he works with them is pretty remarkable
he is not wieters, posey, or molina
We don’t need much offense when EVERY game is lost by only 1 run. Now if Seattle can land Kemp and Rios to solidify our OF we will be set.
Interesting. The Twins paid 3.08M for Stephen Pryor. The Mariners paid Stephen Pryor to get Morales back on a partial year contract for less than the QO. Strange world.
Pryor for Morales is a no-brainer. That being said, I hope it’s the first of several trades to improve offense. Marlon Byrd and another starting pitcher (Young could wear down; hasn’t pitched a lot the last few years.) BTW, M’s just announced that they’re bringing up Chris Taylor and Jesus Montero, with Bloomquist heading to DL. Morales reports tomorrow, so either Montero gets sent down or Hart gets DFA’ed at that point.
Welcome home Kendrys! Now lets go with a darn tooten World Series!!!
Just think if Jack Z had any sense he would have signed him in the off-season and the M’s would be near first place. Too many games of goose eggs or guys coming up to the plate with no thump in their bats. Good low cost move, but jeez.
Sorry, but Morales isn’t worth anywhere near +5 wins in less than a full season, even if he had the season of his life (which he’s not).
I personally hate this deal at this stage unless we get another hitter on top of this. This guy already turned down our QO when we would have given up nothing to get him, but now we give up a player we’ll never get back in exchange for 2 months of Morales in the middle of a bad year. If you’re counting WAR we’ll be lucky to even squeeze another win out of him the rest of the way.
I PRAY this is not their biggest offensive move.