The Red Sox announced that they’ve traded left-hander Roenis Elias to the Mariners in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. Boston had originally acquired Elias alongside right-handed reliever Carson Smith in a trade that sent Wade Miley and Jonathan Aro to Seattle. The Mariners had two open 40-man spots prior to the trade, so they don’t need to make a corresponding move for Elias, who will report to Triple-A Tacoma.
Elias, 29, debuted with the Mariners as a 25-year-old back in 2014 and turned in a terrific rookie season, tossing 163 2/3 innings of 3.85 ERA ball with 7.9 K/9, 3.5 BB/9, 0.9 HR/9 and a 45.4 percent ground-ball rate. His sophomore season yielded comparable results in 2015, but the Mariners flipped him for a more established arm at the time in the form of Miley.
Despite his quality results in Seattle from 2014-15, Elias was a scarcely used piece in Boston. The Sox gave him just eight big league innings in total from 2016-17, and he spent most of his time with the organization in Triple-A. Elias had a solid season with Pawtucket in 2016 when he turned in a 3.60 ERA over 125 innings (19 starts, two relief appearances), but injuries limited him to just 43 innings between the Majors and minors last year.
With the Mariners, Elias will likely be shuttled between Tacoma and Seattle for much of the season and serve as a depth option for both the rotation and the ’pen, though he’s worked exclusively as a reliever with Boston this season. Given his previous success with the M’s and his solid 2016 season in Triple-A, it’s not out of the question that he could eventually claim a more permanent role on the big league roster.
The Mariners have three lefties in the Major League bullpen at present: James Pazos, Marc Rzepczynski and Wade LeBlanc. It’s still early in the season, of course, but neither LeBlanc nor Rzepczynski has come out of the gates with an especially strong start to the season. Dario Alvarez is the only other lefty reliever on the 40-man roster in the minors, so Elias provides some additional depth in that regard.
[Related: Updated Boston Red Sox depth chart and Seattle Mariners depth chart]
From Boston’s vantage point, Elias may simply have been a ways down the depth chart and taking a 40-man spot the team would rather allocate elsewhere. While Brian Johnson is currently the lone left-hander in the big league bullpen, southpaw options on the 40-man roster in the upper minors include Bobby Poyner, Robby Scott and Williams Jerez. Left-hander Daniel McGrath, 23, could be another eventual option who’s gotten off to a strong start in Double-A, though he’s not yet on the 40-man roster.
rip roonis
Probably for the best. He was decent, but was behind 7 other guys for a starter role, and behind close to a dozen for a relief role.
Agreed
I thought Dealin Dipoto was dead because he’s been so quiet
Hopefully they stretch him out quick and plug him in ahead of Erasmo Ramirez.
I agree 1000%
He or Miranda should take Gonzalez’s spot in the rotation, the Mariners cannot afford to let Gonzalez try and develop while in the majors if they want to win. I am not sure if Marco will make it through waivers as he’s shown great potential but they cant afford to keep him in the majors.
They wouldn’t put Gonzo on waivers and they aren’t going to move Elias back to starter. The most likely move will be Elias for Leblanc at some point. If Gonzo doesn’t pick up the pace he could shift to the long guy in the bullpen but they’d need a real SP to do that, not Miranda
Exactly. You wouldn’t think that Dipoto is stupid enough to trade one of the best power hitting prospects in baseball who now is in the majors at 22 for a crappy pitcher who is out of waivers and lose him a month into the year. but then again he made that gawd awful trade so anything is possible.
This is seeming more and more like the way Dipoto deals go. When he came to the M’s, we had good/great pitching and terrible hitting. Dipoto immediately moved to make the offense better and depleted our pitching.
He traded Elias and Carson Smith for Wade Miley and Jonathan Aro. Now he trades cash/player to be named for Elias. So, the end result is he traded Elias for Elias, losing Carson Smith in the process.
And the Mariners aren’t any more competitive than they were. Maybe it’s time to “deal” dealin’ Dipoto!!
No he traded Carson smith and cash considerations for wade Miley and Jonathan Aro when it all boils down.
And then flipped a year and a half of Miley for Miranda, who has been serviceable albeit unspectacular.
I don’t want to defend the Miley deal too aggressively, because I didn’t care for it from Seattle’s end even at the time, but they’ve hardly been burned by it thus far.
If you look at Dipoto’s history, he hasn’t traded away any pitchers of great consequence outside of Taijuan Walker, who netted them Segura and Haniger:
Walker, Carson Smith, Danny Farquhar, Elias, Mike Montgomery, Vidal Nuno, Zack Littell, Andrew Kittredge, Nick Neidert, Emilio Pagan
Montgomery would be nice to have around, and Littell has elevated his stock (but he also netted them Pazos).
The Mariners’ pitching went downhill more because Felix and Iwakuma got older than anything else. The minor league system was already lacking for quality pitching prospects when he got there.
You can’t build a playoff team through trades. The other 29 GM’s would have to be incompetent for that to be a path forward.
Everything starts with the farm system and every team’s run ends with the farm system.
True, but Dipoto also only has two draft classes so far which you can’t really judge for 3-4 years
I agree to an extent
You can build a playoff team through trading players for young players and prospects, while supplementing it with strong players acquired via trade,
however I agree that you can’t build an entire team through trades barring outstanding luck, simply because of the crazy prospect capital it would take to acquire enough solid major leaguers to make a strong team. The Mariners, however, didn’t completely build their team on trading for major leaguers. Honestly, a lot of their deals, as Steve said, worked out rather well with a few exceptions.
Healy for Campos might end up being very bad too. But that’s going to take 5 years to figure that out and I don’t think that timeframe is of Dipoto’s concern.
Healy won’t be at 1st for 5 years White will more than likely be ready before that and Healy will be traded or a DH. It depends on if Vogelbach can hit MLB pitching which he hasn’t shown yet he can. He has shown he isn’t the answer to our long-term 1st base needs. When White is ready one of those will more than likely DH and give White a day off when he needs it the other will be traded.
Hopefully he gets a fair chance. It was a bummer he never really got one in Boston.
Who would you have given him an opportunity over? They needed a lefty reliever. He couldn’t deliver. Granted small sample size but if the team saw upside, he’d still be there. Nothing not to like so hopefully the change of scenery does wonders for him
Yeah my point was more that the opportunity was never there in Boston for Elias. I’m hoping one presents itself in Seattle.
Wow bigd nes I was exfspctinga Rons Elias ton be a big part of the Bortson starting pitchering.
Sorry. I accidentally had autocorrect off.
Kid deserves an opportunity somewhere he has decent numbers. It takes a special kind of player to handle the Boston and New York markets, maybe the Sox saw he couldn’t?