The Mariners were one of the most talked-about teams in the first half of the 2018 season and finished with an impressive 89 victories on the year, but that total left them an improbably significant nine games back from even obtaining a Wild Card berth in an extremely top-heavy American League. The organization is in somewhat of a tough spot, with an aging roster, a crowded payroll and a thin farm system, but GM Jerry Dipoto and manager Scott Servais made clear at their end-of-year press conference that there are no plans to embark on any sort of significant rebuild (links via TJ Cotterill of the Tacoma News Tribune and Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times).
“The likelihood of ever truly considering a tear-it-down model, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Dipoto said. “…That doesn’t make sense because we have so many positive elements with where our teams is, guys like Mitch Haniger, Marco Gonzales and Edwin Diaz. There are the pieces you are trying to build around, not the pieces that you are trying to send away.”
Seattle does have its share of aging veterans and the subsequent payroll issues that one would expect with those aging veterans. Felix Hernandez is owed $27MM this coming season but will be off the books following the 2019 campaign. Robinson Cano is still owed $24MM annually through 2023, however, and Kyle Seager (who took a step back at the plate in 2018) is owed nearly $20MM in each of the next three seasons. Those issues, paired with a thin farm, are certainly problematic, but the Mariners have plenty of silver linings to give them optimism as well.
If there’s one veteran whose status is up in the air, it’s longtime designated hitter Nelson Cruz. The 38-year-old remained a prodigious slugger and a formidable threat in the heart of the Seattle lineup this season, hitting .256/.342/.509 with 37 home runs. But Cruz is a free agent and no longer capable of playing the outfield with any regularity, and the Mariners under Dipoto’s watch have tried to become more athletic and defensively versatile. Much has been made of a possible reunion, but Dipoto hinted that the team has not yet decided if it will have a dedicated designated hitter next season.
While Dipoto said he “never viewed Nelson as holding us back” because of his inability to play defense and noted that “Nelson Cruz is a winning player,” the executive still doesn’t seem sold on re-signing him. Dipoto added: “But clearly if we were committed to going back to the DH-only player, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. We would have taken care of it much earlier this year,” suggesting the Mariners would’ve re-signed Cruz during the season if they were fully committed to bringing him back.
Even though he’s a one-dimensional player, Cruz was still part of the solution for the ’18 Mariners – as his 2.5 fWAR/2.9 rWAR indicates – and determining his future will be one of Dipoto’s key responsibilities during the offseason. Cruz is easily the most important pending free agent for a team which just extended its major league-high playoff drought to 17 years. Despite their ongoing struggles relative to the rest of the league, Dipoto seems encouraged by the overall performance of this year’s club. While Dipoto acknowledged that the Mariners “failed to reach the goal” of snapping their league-worst streak, he noted that “on paper we should feel good about” an 89-win season.
“To be honest, knowing that it would have required us to get to 98 wins to get to the playoffs probably helps you sleep a little bit better, because that’s not a particularly realistic goal,” continued Dipoto, referring to the 97-65 campaign the division-rival A’s posted en route the AL’s last playoff spot.
Both the A’s and the AL West-winning Astros figure to once again serve as major roadblocks for the Mariners in 2019. As such, Dipoto & Co. will have their work cut out for them this winter as they attempt to build a team good enough to break Seattle’s postseason drought next year.
Not a Seattle fan so I wouldn’t know, what’s the big deal about Marco Gonzalez?
3.43 FIP, 3.59 xFIP, 1.7 BB/9, 7.8 K/9, and had a 3.25 ERA in all months not named April or injury riddled August (25 starts not counting April or August). Was pretty legit.
Look at his peripherals, they a far better than the traditional stats.
He will be a solid #4 starter, possibly a #3 at best. He is a younger version of Mike Leake, though it remains to be seen how/if he can handle 180+ innings per year. He is only a big deal because he happens to be Seattle’s second best starter, and we don’t have many young players on this current roster to get excited about (and very few in the minor’s who will help in the near future).
He was top 30 in fWAR for pitchers which would imply #1 starter status, I don’t know if he can keep that up but giving him a #3 ceiling is pretty silly considering he’s already topped that
In addition to the stats, if you haven’t already, watch the guy pitch. He looks terrific. Innings still an issue, however.
Yeah I agree he’s a good pitcher. Probably a solid #3 starter albeit one who is injury prone. I just don’t see how Dipoto can argue that type of player as a reason they have legit pieces to build around. Sure he’s a solid building block, but pretty much everyone has a better young pitcher than gonzales
Dipoto should have been fired instead of extended. He did what he’s good at, gutting the farm system. The M’s have the worst farm system in baseball. Zero internal help on the way for a very long time.
Remember when the mariners had a farm system to begin with? Me neither
They did in the early 2010s, except none of them turned out to be any good. Ackley, Hultzen, Montero, Smoak, Franklin, and later on DJ Peterson, Alex Jackson, etc.
How do you gut a farm system that had nothing to begin with?
Look at most of the prospects Dipoto has traded none of them have turned out to great besides maybe O’Neill
Mallex Smith is a very good player too but he was obviously never part of his plan.
That’s because most of them are still prospects… Lots of them have been traded recently and are still in the MILB, or are just getting their feet wet in the bigs. Wait a few years before you say that none of the prospects dealt have turned out to be good.
O’Neill has a 56% contact rate and a 33.1% kS%. He was the return for Marco Gonzales and I doubt Jerry regrets making that move. Chris Taylor, even with his K’s, was one of the bigger misses. His positional flexibility could have been useful this season.
Name any prospect that has turned out to not be good?
Well, some notable prospects he has dealt include Nick Neidert, Pablo Lopez, Ryan Yarbrough, Luiz Gohara, Freddy Peralta, Enyel De Los Santos, Luis Rengifo… That isn’t insignificant, especially when you consider how thin they are on pitching depth right now.
They will have a new GM and Manager this time next year, even with their new contracts.
Like to see the cards ask about seagar they have the farm and need
They don’t need a farm to get Seager.
no amount of defense can compensate for failure to produce at home plate. to many offensive holes.
zunino, heredia, gamel
Not sure why Gamel is on that list. He hit .272 which puts him in top 3 BA for the team. Zunino, Seager, and Heredia I could agree with. Seager’s defense was his saving grace but at the rate at which it dropped off this year…I’d take Jeff Cirillo at least he didn’t make errors.
Gamel didn’t hit for any power. That’s a perfect example of what an empty batting average is.
Gamel got on base and that’s valuable. The problem with the Mariners’ offense was all the sub .300 OBP bats in the lineup. There were 4-6 of them in the lineup regularly in the second half. Healy, for example, had power, but he had an enormous GB% and couldn’t walk if his life depended on it. He couldn’t advance runners despite his power, so Gamel was far more productive than he was.
Dear lord. That’s the problem with baseball nowadays. It’s all about the homerun.
Does your assessment of Gamel apply to Ichiro? Empty average with so few homeruns….
Gamel is a solid hitter. Yeah he won’t hit for power but I’ll take a high on base %, triples, doubles, and steals over Nelson Cruz, Zunino, and Seager hitting empty/pointless homers; you can literally count on one hand the number of meaningful home runs that trio hit.
M’s need King Felix back on healthy again so he can anchor that pitching rotation like he always do. It was just a down year that is all
*down three years.
Jerry Dipoto isn’t just GM.
He’s Executive VP & GM of Baseball Operations.
That is a fancy title, that sounds like it carries a lot of power. Good luck, Jerry. Always rooting for you.
Thanks
I don’t think they should bring back Cruz.
He slashed just .242 / .314 / .472 in the 2nd half and he turns 39 next year.
Mariners should keep the $14.25 million freeing up from his salary, along with about $11 million expiring from David Phelps and Mark Rzepczynski;s contracts to address CF and / or LF and a SP.
The Mariners really have two options this offseason: increase payroll and go for it–without depleting their farm further, or committing to some kind of rebuild. It sounds like the cash isn’t going to be there, so I’m anticipating a rebuild.
Jerry has suggested that a complete tear-down makes little sense and I agree, because they don’t have many near-ready prospects bangin’ on the door and they still have a few albatross contracts to deal with. A tear-down would likely mean 5-7 years of bad baseball.
I personally believe they should at least consider selling high on Diaz, depending on when their timeline for contending lies, but it’s understandable that he is seen as part of the new core, along with Haniger and Gonzales. Paxton, Colome, Leake, Gordon, Vincent, and Segura (if he would waive his no-trade clause) could all be on the auction block. Gordon and Vincent wouldn’t net much without some dough going along with them, but perhaps they could get a healthy return for Paxton and some interesting, lower-level prospects for Colome and Leake.
Would that be enough to jump back into the race in 2020 or 2021? My guess would be no, given the lack of upcoming pitching prospects. But they’d have financial flexibility to potentially buy arms.
Whatever direction they go, 2019 is probably going to be ugly for Seattle fans.
Trim the fat off the payroll, the team will be better off.
How does Dipoto still have a job? How does he keep getting hired?