After general manager Jerry Dipoto oversaw a future-driven retooling of the Mariners’ roster over the winter, there was little expectation they’d break their 17-year playoff drought in 2019. The club then got off to a sizzling 13-2 start this season, perhaps creating a glimmer of hope that it would enjoy a Cinderella campaign. Two and a half months later, though, it’s clear this will indeed go down as another lean year for the Mariners. They’ve lost 45 of 69 games since they came bursting out of the gates and now own the majors’ eighth-worst record at 37-47.
The trajectory of the Mariners’ season surely hasn’t gone to their liking, but the franchise isn’t discouraged. Quite the contrary, Mariners owner John Stanton recently told Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times in an in-depth interview that’s worth checking out in full (interview links: 1, 2). We’ll take a look at a few of the highlights.
Stanton’s of the belief the Mariners are executing their plan properly, saying: “I think we’ve done exactly what we’ve set out to do. I try to resist the temptation to take a snapshot of a movie — even the midpoint of the movie. I view us as on a journey to have a sustainable, championship-caliber team as soon as we can.”
In the Mariners’ estimation, they’ve done a great deal to improve their long-term outlook dating back to the winter, even though it has come at the expense of immediate success.
“We’ve gotten younger,” Stanton offered. “And I don’t really like the word controlled, but from a contractual point of view they are players we know will be here for a longer period of time. We’ve gone from being one of the oldest teams in baseball to being middle of the pack in age”
Pricey 30-somethings such as Robinson Cano, Jay Bruce (originally acquired as part of the Cano deal) and Edwin Encarnacion (also acquired in the offseason) are gone. Their departures opened up varying degrees of financial flexibility for the Mariners. Meanwhile, shipping out the likes of James Paxton, Edwin Diaz, Jean Segura, Mike Zunino and Alex Colome during the winter went a long way toward adding capable younger players to the organization – including shortstop J.P. Crawford, center fielder Mallex Smith and catcher Omar Narvaez at the MLB level.
Reflecting on the December blockbuster that sent Cano and Diaz to the Mets, Stanton told Divish, “I personally love Robbie Cano, but having a 40-year old second baseman or probably DH by that time isn’t ideal, and even though I think Robbie will be better than any other 40-year-old at that time, we needed to do something.”
It does appear the Mariners got the better end of that deal thus far. Cano, who will earn $24MM per annum through 2023, is having a brutal season at the age of 36. Diaz has been good, on the other hand, though not the game-ending buzzsaw he was in 2018. And the centerpieces of the Mariners’ return – 19-year-old High-A outfielder Jarred Kelenic and 23-year-old Double-A righty Justin Dunn – are their top two prospects. More than that, Kelenic and Dunn are a pair of the game’s best prospects in general.
At the beginning of June, six months after the trade with the Mets brought Bruce to Seattle, the Mariners flipped him to Philadelphia for minor league infielder Jake Scheiner. However, the Mariners had to pay the Phillies $18MM of Bruce’s remaining $21.6MM salary to take him off their hands. Similarly, the Mariners paid the Yankees in mid-June to take the more valuable Encarnacion, who has about $16MM in guarantees left on his contract. They and the Yankees are essentially splitting the money, which may have driven down the Mariners’ return for Encarnacion. The M’s only acquired 19-year-old Low-A pitching prospect Juan Then, whom Dipoto once traded away.
Stanton defended the Encarnacion trade, saying: “I will tell you categorically that situation was not about the money. It was about the pitching prospect we got. He was a guy that we felt really good about and were really excited to get back. We wanted that kid back.”
The fact that the Mariners are paying Bruce and Encarnacion to play elsewhere is “fine” with Stanton because “the value of our flexibility is greater than the dollars that we have to pay.” Stanton continued: “We bunched up some salary dollars now and probably overpaid some salary dollars in some respects, but then we’ve freed ourselves up so that we if he need another starting pitcher — and I’m not saying we will — but if we need an additional starting pitcher in 2021 then we are giving Jerry the budget to be able to get the best guy he can.”
Stanton mentioned 2021-22 as a potential time frame for the Mariners to return to contention, in part because AL West juggernaut “Houston has a lot of their really becoming free agents” then. At the same time, though, Stanton’s “resistant to being too specific on it. I think the intent is for us to get better and be more in control of players. There will be signs that we believe it’s time when you’ll see us step up on a free agent to fill a gap. That’s a pretty good indication.”
For now, the Mariners’ win-loss record “isn’t, for me, the important metric on how we are doing,” insists Stanton, who’s instead focused on the growth of their young players in the majors and minors. In Stanton’s view, the team’s “exceeding expectations overall in terms of the quality of guys that we have added.”
I would love to hear from some people who are regularly analyzing this club what they think the actual direction of it is.
As a die hard M’s fan for many years I’ve been wanting a “tear down” to occur for years. I think Dipoto is making the right moves and they are heading in the right direction.
Do they trade Haniger?
I’ve never understood why they would. The whole core, including Haniger, is 26~28 years old. Why single Haniger out? Just ’cause he’s been here longer? I don’t get it.
As much as I love Haniger if they can get a crazy return why not? If it doesn’t blow them away then he stays. Always worth listening.
Can’t get a crazy return anymore like we would have from Atlanta before the season started if we pulled the trigger
At least they have the most wins in a season. That’s pretty cool.
Tied
As a Mariners fan and nerd from LL, what I love about this “rebuild” is that it hasn’t just been about prospects. We’ve acquired these young major leaguers and they’ve all delivered:
– Mallex Smith (after a godawful start)
– J. P. Crawford,
– Domingo Santana,
– Omar Narvaez,
– Shed Long (currently roster-crunched down to AAA)
And Haniger and Vogelbach (best hitter on the team) are still here too! That’s a fantastic young core of position players.
Holy crap is the pitching a catastrophe though.
The M’s have infused a ton of talent into their system over the last year. I think they could’ve/should’ve gotten more cash eaten or an actual lottery ticket with upside for Jay Bruce. But it’s hard to complain about the direction. They were too flawed to win with Paxton and Diaz. They managed to save a bunch of cash and get some top prospects to open hopefully a relatively long window for playoff contention.
FWIW the word from both sides of the Bruce trade to Philly was that the deal as completed was the best minor-leaguer/the most cash from Seattle that Philly was willing to do.
While selling off the veteran collateral from last off-season’s trades, Jerry has been very clearly focusing on eating as much 2019 payroll money as possible in order to get as much talent back as possible. It’s the anti-Marlins. I actually kind of love it.
If they had waited two days until after the McCutchen injury who knows how much better a return/dollars they’d have gotten. Two days in a 162 games season, crazy.
LLockhartt, Tom Murphy and Austin Adams have been valuable acquisitions as well that flew under the radar. The jury’s still out on the Kikuchi signing.
I mean he’s going to have to really turn it up for that not to be a poor signing. It wasn’t a huge dollar gamble but he doesn’t have swing and miss stuff and he really doesn’t even have pinpoint control. 59MM isn’t cheap for a guy who looks to be a backend starter. I really can’t see him being anymore than a #4. At 28, this is his prime. It’s hard to say that’ll improve over time.
Pitching wins championships and the Ms have very few top pitching prospects. IMO unless the Ms go out and purchase at least 2-3 frontline SP’s and a BP in the next year or two there won’t be any winning seasons never mind championships coming to the NW anytime soon.
Really? Gilbert, Dunn, Sheffield and now Kirby. not to mention Gonzalez and Kikuchi. Now a couple of this guys need to make adjustments, but we’ve got some time. I dont think any of those guys will be an Ace, so they will probably have to ho out and sign one, but between those 6, we should be able to fill in from 2-5.
I never understood the contention that “pitching wins championships” as if suddenly pitching is more important to winning a baseball game relative to hitting in a post season game vs a regular season game.
BTW, Boston last year had the most runs scored in all of baseball and the EIGHT best ERA. In 2017 Houston had the most runs scored and the ELEVENTH best ERA…
Let’s stop propagating the myth, yeah?
Houston also traded for JV mid year and he was an integral part of the WS team. You don’t need 4 aces to win a championship (or Cleveland would have a few) but it’s very hard to win without that 1 guy you can ride all postseason.
I still don’t get how that means “pitching wins championships” any more than “good players win championships.”
As I said, the data over the last couple years shows offense as being more important. Obviously, winning teams are likely to also have good pitching. But it’s really just an old false cliche to say “pitching is more important than hitting in the post season, but you need both in the regular season” haha.
Of course you need good hitters and the Ms have some promising OF’ers coming thru, we should see Jake Fraley promoted shortly after the ASG, he will surely be better than Mac Williamson. However the M’s are light in INF prospects coming up in the next yr or 2. My point is other than Logan Gilbert the Ms don’t have any stud aces similar to Verlander and Cole coming up. Dunn shows promise but we have no idea how he will do vs the AL’s top hitters. Sheffield, Kikuchi and Marco are not frontline starters. Look at the disastrous 4-5 game stretch Marco and YK went thru in May! Kirby is miles away. I never said “pitching is more important than hitting.” Although the Ms have drastically improved their farm system they’re still behind the top teams in the AL.
In the ALDS Nathan Eovaldi had a 1.29 ERA Rick Porcello had a 1.59 ERA to go with Sale’s 2.84 ERA. In the ALCS and the World Series Boston’s BP was lights out. In the World Series Eovaldi had a 1.13 ERA in 3 games, Porcello 1.93 ERA David Price had a 1.98 ERA – Boston’s lineup was lethal but they don’t win that 2018 WS without shutdown pitching and a BP (Joe Kelly!) that raised their game for the postseason
Thats exactly why 98% of the players drafted this year were ALL pitchers.
Jerry is doing a very good rebuild. But it wasn’t necessary to give us a dumpster diving bullpen. No one cares how old the bullpen is, as long as it works. And M’s BP doesn’t work!!
I don’t understand why Dipoto only goes for cheap, low-end, DFA type guys in stocking the bullpen. He’s getting young guys with potential for other positions, why not the bullpen? My fear is the crappy bullpen will lose games and demoralize the better guys.
True, but the Ms getting a better draft pick when tanking. though last time they did that they won the final 3 games of the season and lost out on strasburg. Bullpen arms on a bad team are a dime a dozen. Why sign kimbrel, when available, when the team isnt going to compete? Predicting Houston or the top tier time at the time will fade is no guarantee a club will even make the playoffs when the kids can play, let alone advance into the playoffs
Oh I was never on the Kimbrel bandwagon. That never made sense to me. Plus why would Kimbrel want to pitch for Seattle? A losing team? Just wasn’t happening, even if Dipoto went after him.
He’s looking for a diamond in the rough. He’s scrapping the the bottom of the waiver wire for guys getting roster crunched off their teams with still a lot of team control. If your going to lose, does it really matter but how much? Eventually one of the pasta noodles is going to stick to the wall.
Marinerfan, relievers without experience are easier to acquire than other positions. There’s no urgency for them yet. Dipoto wanted to see what he had in Rumbelow, Altavilla, Bautista, and Festa first..
Warren, Mills, Anderson, Gerber, McKay, and Delaplane are all going to need a look soon as well..
Some have already failed to impress, like Scott and Rumbelow, but others will learn and grow, and we’ll probably see more relievers brought in following the 2020 season.
I think we could see Swanson end up in the bullpen as well. Hopefully Sheffield cuts it as a starter.
Jerry is not going to waste a ton of money on our Bullpen during a complete rebuild year. It’s a waste of money. Its not about winning games, but it getting the chemistry in sync this year.
I mean let’s be fair, he has gone for some decent relievers. You just forget about them because none of them can stay healthy.
He’s also swung and missed on at least half a dozen RPs this year! IMO he should’ve been more patient with Shawn Armstrong- he let him go after just 4 games. Instead of letting him go he should’ve just pulled him out of high leverage situations, give him a soft landing per se. Mind you, Dipoto seems to have struck gold on Austin Adams
We need King Feliz healthy to anchor the M’s rotation. He’s just injured right now but should be back soon…
His days of pitching for the M’s are over. He’s now a #4-5 at best.
He’ll never be a staff anchor again. He won’t be here past this year for sure, and he may or may not be good enough to stay in the rotation when he gets back from the IL, if he does.
I’m pretty sure he’s just trolling peeps.
Huge Felix fan, it’s so sad to see your favorite players decline- Felix is no longer the pitcher he once was. It’s possible he can stay in a rotation somewhere next year but his days of being a #1SP are long gone.
Definitely a full ofshit liar.
Who and how so?
Could probably get a couple of MLB top 100 pitchers for Haniger and Gonzalez. Should have pulled the trigger in the spring when value was higher.
They traded for Haniger and Gonzalez because they’re both young and good. So why trade them away just because this year wasn’t supposed to go well? That kind of roster churning is what has plagued this team for decades.
Marco is exactly the type of player they want when they’re ready to compete. Even if he isn’t the #1 they want, he’ll certainly be good enough as a #2-4 to stay. Young and controllable; the exact definition of what Dipoto wants.
i would bet they’d deal Haniger it they got blown away, he’s a bit on the edge age-wise (he’ll be 29 this December) for their time frame.
Haniger is only a year older than Gonzales.
True, That’s what I get for posting before checking.
I crack up at all of these Yankees haters trying to say this team is screwed in a couple of years. Do me a favor take your head out of your backside and just take a glance at their roster how many of these guys are under contract for quite a few more years and are nowhere near the age of 30. It is nothing but young talent who have already proved to be some of the best in the game. I could sit here and name every player that is under 30 some even under 25 and odds are 95% of them are making the All-Star team this year and I would be here all day. As far as Stanton goes anyone can suffer injury funny I did not hear anyone saying what a bad contract this was when last year and what was considered a bad season he had 38 bombs and 100 runs batted in. But, the next year he suffers a couple of injuries and the Yankee haters are out in drones. All I have to say is odds are come October the Yankee fans can come out on this site and say “would you look at that! Yankees in the World Series and they did not have judge or stand-in for most of the year“. The most hysterical part of all of this all you haters know had your team lost your two biggest bats for nearly the entire season you probably would be in last place and you know it and that is what pisses you off. Now that you have been educated you can move along.
Umm…I think you wanted to post this in the thread above this one…
DiPoto is a worst GM than he was as a Relief arm. His moves are ALWAYS unfocused and he likes to trade cause Dust blinds people’s vision.
There are so many Dipoto trolls in the posts. I just want him to win just so they go troll someone else.
Do me a favor
Go look at all the trades since the end of the 2018 season. Look at every single one. I guarantee you that you will be unable to convince yourself he lost half of them. Almost all of them are working out well so far, especially the biggest one of all, where we traded expensive (and now bad?) Cano and Edwin Diaz for Jared Kelenic and Justin Dunn.
Even the Segura one, which M’s fans hated at the time, is starting to look pretty good, with JP Crawford and the prospects we later got for Santana, EE.
I think the GM in Pittsburgh passes the M’s GM. May I remind you of the Archer and Gerrit Cole trades? Both trades have set the Pirates back and for years to come unless they make smart moves with likes of James Tallion, Sterling Marte, Corey Dickerson, Edison Vazquez (one of the Top 10 closers in the game),Josh Bell, Gregory Polanco, and for peanuts, Adam Frazier. If they trade smart with some of these guys, it could actually push the Pirates to winners a lot sooner than the path they are currently taking. So, Pirates GM is hands down the worst GM in the game due to the last few trades made. Pirates gave up Cole, Meadows, Glasnow, Shane Baez, and a few others to get the likes of Moran, Joe Musgrove, Archer, Jason Martin, and a few others who haven’t lived up to the hype. At least the M’s have a farm system, Pirates traded theirs away!
Mets are absolute idiots to make that trade. Mariners are brilliant in giving up Diaz to get rid of Cano.
Years ago, the Pirates gave up two meh prospects to get rid of Francisco Liriano (who was single handedly losing game after game for them) but they were just called cheap, not brilliant, for doing it.
We had Ketel and traded him and his current line is….?
I know…it hurts being an M’s fan.
You also got Haniger and Segura back in that trade. Segura is now JPC and you still have Haniger. I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep over that.
The M’s have a lot more WAR from that deal than the Diamondbacks got.
Haniger: 8.3
Segura: 6.7 (plus JP Crawford’s 1.3 and prospects)
Marte: 7
Walker: 2.5
I know …it hurts being an uneducated fan trying to sound like an educated fan.
But D+ for effort at least!
Marte is better than Haniger and Crawford both.
Are you really crying about a trade that is close to a wash. The winners and losers of that trade have yet to be determined.
haha
Me? No.
Seriously, are you guys even reading the thread? My goodness.
Ah, sorry. You didn’t mean me. Yes, you are right.
sounds like one of Dipoto’s cronies talking- go back to work
All I did was give facts to a girl/guy spewing nonsense haha. If that makes me a cronie in your eyes, I don’t care haha.
Getting rid of Cano was a great deal. Maybe the best deal since Toronto dumped Wells on the Angels. .
Ms fans are due a decent trade- May I remind you of these peaches: Shin Soo Choo for Ben Broussard, Adam Jones and George Sherill for Erik Bedard, David Ortiz for Dave Hollins, Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek for Heathcliff Slocumb. And ppl wonder why Mariner fans like Jerry Dipoto!
Dude, Stanton has some sort of mental illness and needs serious help. What the hell is he talking about?
What did he say that was wrong?
So…….they really wanted the young RHP back from NYY??? what does that say about the trade originally when they shipped Then and JP Sears out to NYY for Rumbelow who is now released…. … If the M’s valued him as a quality relurn for Edwin E ( we wanted that kid back- Stanton)……sounds like they the original trade was a poor decision…. accountability?
Diaz has a 4.92 era, and a 6.89 era since may 1….how is that good
Diaz went through ‘rocky patches’ in Seattle after long absences, in other words he was at his best when he was used regularly. That 4.92 ERA is misleading because he has not been used as much this year. If the Mets can win more games he can easily get that ERA below 3.00 before the end of AUG.