February 4: Gonzales will receive a $1MM signing bonus and be paid salaries of $5MM in 2021, $5.5MM in 2022, $6.5MM in 2023 and $12MM in 2024, tweets Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. There’s no buyout on the $15MM option for the 2025 season.
February 3: The Mariners have announced a contract extension with southpaw Marco Gonzales. He’s now guaranteed $30MM from 2021 through 2024, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets. The deal includes a $15MM club option for another campaign, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link).
Though it has been a fairly quiet winter for the Seattle organization, the club has now managed to strike two notable long-term deals. The other was a surprising pre-debut pact with first base prospect Evan White.
Gonzales, who was already under contract for the 2020 season, had been on track to qualify for arbitration next winter. He’d have reached the open market at the end of the 2023 campaign. Instead, the M’s have now secured his services for one would-be free agent campaign while picking up an option for another.
As he’s now closing in on his 28th birthday, Gonzales will now be under team control through his age-33 campaign. Given the costs involved, it was a pretty easy bet for the team to make. And it’s equally understandable that the CAA Sports client was interested in locking in earnings at this stage of his career.
Gonzales has been quite effective since coming over from the Cardinals in a mid-2017 trade. Over the past two seasons, he has carried a 3.99 ERA over 369 2/3 innings with 7.1 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9. While there’s nothing especially about his stuff or his peripherals, Gonzales has successfully tamped down on the long ball and studiously avoided hard contact.
It’s certainly not the typical profile of an extension target. Gonzales sits in the 90 mph range with his fastballs and managed only a 7.9% swinging-strike rate last year. Neither is he a groundball monster. But he was able to keep hitters off balance by utilizing five pitches with equivalent frequency — none less than 15.9% of the time and none more than 24.1%.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Should be a prime trade candidate come july. Quietly had a good season last year.
Ha no. Seattle is already in desperate need of controllable quality starting pitching even with him in the fold.
John Halama
Over the past two seasons Marco Gonzales has ranked 23rd among all pitchers with 7.1 fWAR, barely trailing Blake Snell and James Paxton:
https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2019&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=&rost=&age=&filter=&players=&startdate=&enddate=
Interestingly, oft-maligned Trevor Bauer is ranked #8 and “overpaid” Zack Wheeler is #10. Aaron Nola, who a number of people trashed here recently, including with the declaration that he’s the 4th best ace in his own division, is #11 overall, both leagues included.
To be fair, Nola is the fourth best ace in his division. And I grew up with Nola and am a fan.
Comparing him to two players who were injured in 2019 isn’t the best way to gauge his worth in terms of fWAR, nor is fWAR the best way to gauge the value of a pitcher.
Nice blast from the past Monty.
Scherzer, Degrom and Corbin are all in his division, so what’s your point?
Injuries do not enhance a player’s value.
Durability does.
Absolutely not. They believe he’s going to be key to helping the younger arms integrate. He’s seen as a core piece.
He is absolutely a core peace — and a true joy to watch pitch. His fastball appears much faster than the miles per hour suggest, by way of how well he hides the ball and his change of speeds.
Then trade hm! Great young return.
Nope
????
Love it, Marco is a fantastic #3 option, now we just need to see what we have with Gilbert,Sheff, etc and we will HOPEFULLY only need to spend on 1 starter next season before we start competing.
Love it. A very underrated acquisition by Dipoto. He’s not flashy but neither was Jamie Moyer. No, I am not saying he is as good as Moyer, at least not yet, but he is a soft tossing durable lefty that posts very decent numbers.
Trade was a steal.
id have to wait on that. getting this production for a prospect is good, but O’Neill hasnt been all that bad himself so far and is still early in his career.
Solid number 3 starter for a 4th outfielder.
O’Neill has been bad. He’s simply Lou Ferrigno in a baseball jersey.
lol I thought you were comparing Moyer to dipoto at first
this guy quietly went from huge injury-prone question mark to a great mid rotation arm with perhaps more to give.
Great deal for the M’s. Buys out 1 and maybe 2 FA years for a 200+ innings guy. Nice 3/4 starter type for when we start to contend.
Not quite sure the hype around this guy. Kinda reminds me of Jason Vargas
If Gonzales can keep up his current pace than he’s well better than Vargas, who was pretty hit or miss most of the time. he also has more potential than Vargas showed. oh and, Vargas himself has stuck around long enough and has been productive, so its not a terrible fate.
Please use apostrophes properly next time. No offense!
ill admit i made a comma error but i dont see the apostrophe issue.
Fifth to last word, its. A couple of missing capitalization’s as well ;).
Quite an ironic comment, @Briffle
Yes. The apostrophe in “capitalization’s” is incorrect. But at least Briffle ended their sentence with a period.
Thank you Vamp, but your sentence structure could be improved. Throw in a couple of commas!
Why do you have the word “capitalizations” with an apostrophe s? Irony, yes.
What is “apostrophe s”?
‘s
Vargas has been worth 16.7 WAR over his 15yr career. Marco has been worth almost 6 WAR in his first two full seasons in the majors. Outside of both being lefthanded, I don’t see the comparison as being all that valid.
From 2010-1, Vargas accumulated 6.0 fWAR. With only a 90 MPH fastball, Marco Gonzalez probably can’t afford to lose much velocity. Perhaps the Mariners are banking on his cost certainty improving his trade value down the line. In other words, “If we see continued growth from the team, we’ll build on it.”
Maybe this will setup a price range for Boyd’s extension??
Average starter, average stuff, not impressed. League average pays, I guess.
You’re paying for his consistency and possible upside rather than to a bunch of unknowns who will take up roster spots and even hurt the team. Every GM would pay for that.
No upside. He throws 90.
Your user handle is “moneyballer”. Is the joke that you don’t get how 7.1 fWAR over the past two seasons for a prime-aged LHP who can throw 200 innings a season was extended for 4/30MM (7.5MM per year, which is worth less than 1 WAR on the market by estimates); or is it that your online user handle is “moneyballer”? I’m all for some horseplay in the comment section, but throw me a line here, Billy.
If you throw 200 IP every year with a 4.00 ERA, you’re worth a lot of money.
I would take him and his 4/$30 over this year’s fa class of Roark 2/$24, Pomeranz 4/$34, and Lyles 2/$16
Not impressed. In a big game that you need to win, you want him on the mound?! I don’t.
Lmfaoooo, does that salary they are paying him say ace?!?! Get a clue.
Hey money- he’s in the Ms rotation, he doesn’t play in any big games. He won’t for at least 2 yrs. Btw, I’m an M’s fan!
We’re paying this guy to be a 3 starter. No where close to an ace of a staff that’s contending. Provides valuable innings and great leadership skills
i actually have watched him pitch almost every game, he has started as a mariner, and i would have no problem putting him in a game that i need to win.
Same watching him pitch all last year, it seemed that a lot of his runs came from a few bad games where most days he’d trot out and give you 6/7 innings of 2 run ball
Another under the radar bad move on Mozeliak.
i dont know about that. Gonzales was a serious question mark when he was traded while O’Neill was in the top-100 stratosphere. O’Neill’s ceiling is far from spoken for.
Well earned contract extension. Now time to field a competitive team
Agreed on the first part. The second part would be swell and nice, but don’t fry up those corn dogs yet.
A solid young pitcher. I like Gonzales.
He’s a quality starter and this is life changing money. Looks like a win-win situation.
I bet the Cardinals would trade Tyler O’Neill for him.
Probably not. They have several Gonzales level starters, not very many O’Neill talent level outfielders
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/07/mariners-acquire-marco-gonzales-from-cardinals-for-tyler-oneill.html
Let’s see who is an idiot!
I’m glad someone got the reference to this trade.
Over the past two seasons no St. Louis Cardinal starter has posted a higher fWAR than Marco Gonzales, who has more than doubled the fWAR of all Card pitchers except Jack Flaherty and Miles Mikolas.
If the Cardinals wouldn’t trade O’Neill for Gonzales they’d be idiots. Whether or not they really need Gonzales is irrelevant. Gonzo is more valuable than O’Neill. A trade would free up a pitcher that they could dangle for another outfielder.
The Mariners r rewarding a guy with a 3.99 ERA? What a joke! No wonder they stink.
Over 200 innings that’s pretty good. There are many other reasons why we’re a bad baseball team right now. Wouldn’t call our organization as a whole bad but yeah the mlb team is bad rn.
Solid extension for a pitcher to lead the rotation through a rebuild.