The Rangers have acquired corner infielder/outfielder Patrick Kivlehan as the player to be named later in the recent trade that sent Leonys Martin to the Mariners, Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News tweets and the teams have announced.
Kivlehan, 25, posted a .256/.313/.453 batting line in 518 plate appearances at Triple-A last year, hitting 22 home runs in the process. He’s hit for a better average and reached base at a better clip in prior seasons, though, and showed enough that MLB.com recently rated him Seattle’s fifth-best prospect. The MLB.com team credits Kivlehan with good athleticism and makeup, noting that he’s still working on his polish after having spent much of his college career playing football.
In sum, then, Texas’s haul for Martin and righty Anthony Bass includes Kivlehan, young outfielder James Jones, and righty Tom Wilhelmsen.
That sucks I liked him
M’s are going to regret letting kevlehan go
Care to elaborate?
Fairly young prospect that can play lots of positions, hits for decent average and good power, has a very good arm, and great on-base capabilities. The mariners also have a gaping hole at first now
Woudn’t call his OBP skills great. Agree with everything else. He slugged .470 at Tacoma’s pitcher friendly stadium. The power will play nicely in Arlington. Both teams appear to have traded to the dimensions of their respective ballparks.
Good OBP for seattles standards, I do hope he does good in majors though
The Rangers absolutely robbed Dipoto on this deal. I was hoping Kivlehan was going to get a shot at 1B in spring. I cannot believe he traded our 4th best prospect and a solid 7th/8th inning reliever for a CF Texas didn’t even have a spot for anymore. This really pisses me off.
I agree seems like a ton to give up for a 4th outfielder.
Let alone intra-division.
I expect Leonys Martin, who has posted 9.2 bWAR over the past three seasons, to be Seattle’s everyday center fielder in 2016.
4th OF?
you are kidding right?
he would have been a 4th outfielder for Texas this year
He will be our starting CF and be a huge upgrade at the position over anyone else we had.
haha what?
The reason Martin didn’t have a spot was because he and the rangers FO didn’t get along.
Martin is an immediate and obvious upgrade over pretty much any outfielder we had in the organization, and Kivlehan is a guy that “maybe” would have a shot at making the big league club because Lomo, Trumbo, etc were sent away.
If anything it simply sucks to lose Wilhelmsen, but losing Kivlehan as part of this deal means literally nothing.
Call me when he because more than a sporadic call-up/roll player by the Rangers.
My M’s just got fleeced. Totally thought Kivlehan was part of our future.
Patrick Kivlehan, who turns 26 years old this month, posted a .256/.313/.453/.766 line in 518 plate appearances at Triple A this year in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.
Kivlehan is a great story, and is more than I had hoped the Mariners would surrender as the PTBNL, but he’s little more than a lottery ticket.
Time to move on.
Dont understand the “part of a future” crowd – the future for the m’s is now, and he’s not better than the current lineup. It would be insane to get rid of Guti or Smith and expect Kiv to perform.
Steamer600, which assumes 600 plate appearances for each hitter, projects a 2016 WAR of a negative 1.1 for Patrick Kivlehan:
fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=…
Trying to predict a players MLB WAR value who never stepped on a major league field is a futile exercise.
Not when one measures a nearly 26-year-old’s stats from 461 minor league games against stats from the vast sample of other minor leaguers in millions of minor league games.
Yep. Because everyone knows that the high statistical correlation between MiL and MLB production is absolutely meaningless, right?
I agree. We got bent over and screwed over this one. My question is….does anyone remember when the Mariners fleeced another team, and not the other way around? The Jay Buhner trade?
I guess I jumped the gun on my used phrase. Let me elaborate on what I meant: I expected Kivlehan to have a shot at the role of being a useful 1B in 2016 (and beyond), especially with Trumbo gone and Dipoto looking for uncostly starters with years of control… In which Kivlehan had the maximum amount of. To you guys who say he couldn’t play CF, you’re right. But he could play first, and the corners, which is now a shallow part of our roster depth.
This isn’t a complaint against Martin, who I am actually still very excited about, more so a second guessing of the PTBNL choice.
D.J Peterson has the exact same skill set with a higher ceiling, so I can understand the deal
Except Petersen is no where near MLB ready. Kivlehan was knocking the door, and he’s much more athletic with the ability to play in the OF.
The M’s are win-now mode and simply didn’t need him. What’s he gunna do, displace Seager? Nope. Can he play CF? Nope. The M’s OF will see their SPs ERAs drop like crazy.
He could play 1B or at least given a shot. He was one of our few minor league players with some value. He could of been used in another trade. Seems fairly ridiculous that we gave up this much for another teams 4th OF who didn’t figure into their OF rotation and was most likely going to be non-tendered.
I think you think his value is/was higher than it actually is/was
Kivlehan was also a Jack Z pick, and Dipoto wants to put his name on the team, so it is what it is.
Maybe that is the case. If it is, I think it’s an asinine move. Give them someone else…..other then the #5 prospect in our organization. Me thinks this one may come back to bite us in the butt.
Kivlehan would not have been a reliable replacement for Trumbo or LoMo soon. So, it really was not a loss. He was #5 on a pretty bad farm system that could not develop position players not named Kyle Seager.
“Knocking on the door” according to who?
Considering what Heyward is going to be paid(when his best skill is outfield defense) and Martin arguably the best defensive outfielder in the game. Probably better defensively than Heyward. The deal makes sense. Heyward is by far a better over all player, but Martin has huge value. He was either going to be traded or play for the Rangers. They weren’t going to move him just because.
Past two trades for Dipoto have been head scratchers. Trading Trumbo and Riefenhauser for Clevenger was pointless. Why give up another player just so you could get out of Trumbo’s contact. Considering you could’ve non-tendered Trumbo in the first place. Adding Kivlehan to this trade makes Texas the winner of this trade. Interesting how Dipoto stated he also wanted to rebuild the farm system but trades it away at the same time.
Can the Angels take back there GM now. He seems to be doing better at making our rival teams better than he is his own. I have slept through enough 1 to 0 losses and seen Hernandez youth wasted with this same style players moves where we give away our good players for garbage (Adam Jones for example not to hate on Berdard just all that was given up to get him) while stock piling other teams useless parts (Figgens for example). Need to spend some time developing players before thowing them away just because they are not “your guys”.
Wait to judge dipoto until Felix throws the first pitch of the season
I would be the happiest person to be wrong and am not a pro scout but have seen the same type players picked up by Mariners with every new GM only to switch plans when fans get tired of losing 1-0 or 2-1 score games and Felix pitching Cy Young ball but getting stuck with barely a winning record at end of season. Add in the miles on him Crews and Cano and thing could get ugly real quick. The players he is getting are not much of improvement and he is giving away to much to get them. 9 million contract or not Trumbo was worth a lot more than a poor fielding back up catcher and he still threw in a relief pitcher on top of it. That and adding Kivlehan as the ptbnl to our rivals tipped that trade into loss. Seems like he is working more for his former teams and forgets he is in charge of Mariners now. As stated would love nothing more than to be wrong but seen it to many times before.
As a Rangers fan who watches almost every game, Leonys is not a “dependable solid player” as some people have been portraying him as on here. If you’re expecting him to come to Seattle and bat 270 with 15 home runs you guys are sorely mistaken. Y’all will soon find out, Yes he will make great plays on defense and throw people out. But the problem is if he didn’t play defense he has ZERO value. Sometimes it’d be strenuous watching this guy. There would be times where it seemed like this dude couldn’t hit a beach ball if you sat it on a tee. He was traded because the Rangers wanted him to go spend some time in the instructional league just to hone his skills but he was upset that he wasn’t added to the playoff roster so he said no. Is he a complete slouch? No. But when we have delino deshields, arguably the fastest player not named billy Hamilton. And plays pretty darn good defense. It makes leonys expendable. I’ll take deshields over him all day long in center. Hopefully he turns it around for you guys though.
I agree with Texfan. Leonys was not reliable for much except throwing out base runners. He needs some work in the batting department and apparently doesn’t want to do what’s needed to do that.
Yeah whatever y’all Mariner fans need to tell yourself about Martin. I don’t know how many times i saw him go zero for his last 25 to 30 AB’s. No matter how you spin it Texas won in this trade