The Mariners have agreed to a minor league contract with three-time All-Star Carlos Gonzalez, per Bob Nightengale of USA Today (Twitter link). The 34-year-old Boras Corporation client has been invited to Major League Spring Training and would earn $750K if he cracks the big league roster.
A star-caliber player with the Rockies from 2010-16, Gonzalez is now three full seasons removed from his last above-average year at the plate by measure of park-adjusted metrics like OPS+ and wRC+. Dating back to Opening Day 2017, he’s slashed .260/.328/.423 in 1204 plate appearances with the Rockies, Indians and Cubs — including a .200/.289/.283 output in 166 plate appearances in 2019. Both Cleveland and Chicago released Gonzalez during the 2019 season.
That said, Gonzalez is a perfectly sensible roll of the dice for the Mariners, who’ll be without right fielder Mitch Haniger early in the season due to his recent core surgery. The Mariners figure to have Mallex Smith in center field in 2020, with rising prospect Kyle Lewis likely tabbed for left field duties. In right, they’ll take a look at Jake Fraley, Braden Bishop, recent waiver claim Jose Siri and now CarGo as they look to bridge the gap to Haniger’s return to the roster.
From 2010-16, Gonzalez posted a very strong .296/.353/.535 slash with 184 home runs, 197 doubles and 28 triples in 3714 plate appearances. Along the way, he racked up an even 1000 hits in total and captured three Gold Glove Awards, two Silver Sluggers and a National League batting title (.336 in 2010). It’s obviously doubtful that he’s capable of anything approaching that peak form, but the Mariners will take a free look at what Gonzalez has left in the tank this spring.
I seriously hope he does well, but being 34 and not having played a full season in years makes it hard.
He had some really good years but he’s too far removed from those days for me to put him in the bounce back candidate category
Maybe the Mariners still have some Vince McMahon vitamin packs laying around from the Cruz and Cano training kits. Then we might get the next late career revival story.
#CarGo
#musclecream
#DavidOrtiz
Actually D,Ackley has or had more left in the tank than this 34 yr old. Just that Servis didn’t like or use Ackley last spring as he only gave him 18ab’s and Dustin was on base 9 of them .526 obp. 2nd highest on the team then released him. Go figure. And the Rainier’s outfield couldn’t hit a beach all. All while Ackley had hit .365 his last season there and they always contended for the playoffs besides last yr. Lol
Gonna go ahead and predict 100 wins
For their opponents? Haha
For the 20 & 21 seasons combined, sure.
Bold prediction, the M’s can’t get 100 wins in 20 and 21 combined.
Yes, almost like I was joking around…
Pfft we’ll get at least 110 in the next two years
Yeah, sure. They only have about 6 frontline to mid-rotation level starters (Sheffield, Dunn, Gilbert, Kirby, Campbell, Carlson),about to pour onto the roster this year and next, as well as two superstar caliber prospects (Kelenic and Rodriguez). Don’t be surprised when White hits 30 HR and wins a gold glove either. His power suppression is due to him hitting in the worst hitting park in the minors and by a large margin. That’s why Lewis had a home OPS of .633 and an away OPS of .886, we of course saw what happened when he spent a month at the majors. .Evan White had a split of .718 OPS for home games and .940 OPS for away games. Cal Raleigh who looks to be a Grandal-light player is .628 OPS at home vs .795 away and that’s a guy who moved two levels this past year. While this year looks rough, Dipoto will start adding player around the break if it makes sense and for sure by next off season. The Mariners would have to sandbag to lose 140 games over the next two years, book-it!!
First, the Angels are way over-hyped for adding a good 3B on the wrong side of 30 and all of a sudden they aren’t an 80 win team?! The Athletics are going to start having to tear-down next year with Chapman reaching arbitration and other players becoming too expensive. The Astros are rated as having one of the worst farm systems and they can’t keep giving out high-end contracts to everyone. They kept Bregman, Altuve, Verlander, and Greinke, now they are going to have to cut their loses with Correa, Springer, and/or Gurriel. I think people are over-estimating the talent in the AL West over the next two years. I’d bring up Texas, but they aren’t worth more than this one dismissive sentence when talking about their hopes for contention. I’ll bet the Mariners miss the playoffs in both 2020 and 2021, but so will the Angels and the Rangers. Trout will be the best player of his generation and the best player ever to never play in the World Series and he can thank his greed. Nobody needs $40M a year for eternity. If I was a professional baseball player, I’d cut my salary down by 1/3, so long as the team promises to be sniffing the threshold for the team cap every season. Imagine if Trout, Rendon, and Cole took 1/3 less. Trout would make $27M/yr., Rendon $24M/yr., and Cole $24M/yr, but they’d make the playoffs every year for the next half-decade.
The reality is that the Astros have two more runs in them. The Athletics will make the playoffs in 2020 and miss in 2021. The Angels and the Rangers will hold down 3rd and 4th in 2020, In 2021, the Mariners will skip over Texas and sit in 4th place. Win expectancy for the Mariners will be around 70 in 2020 and 78 in 2021. By 2022, they should jump to 90+ wins.
Cole will certainly make the playoffs every year in his contract, nobody is touching The Yankees in the AL for a while.
The Blue Jays are pretty intriguing. The Rays are always amazing, Especially when you consider their team currently and they are sitting on a ton of talent just below the major league level. Nothing is a given. That being said, sure Cole is set and he was always a Yankee fan, but if he wanted to play close to home, he could’ve take $225 over 9 years and lived near his folks in LA. But switch out Cole for MadBum, Strasburg, Wheeler, or one of the other top starters. Anything would be better than the staff they will run out there this year. Sure Ohtani has top of the rotation stuff, but he’ll be on pitch limiters and will miss half the season. The point is $200M cap and 1/5 (Trout) on one player and 2/7 (Rendon) on another player doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room when you are paying 1/8 of the cap to two other albatross players (Upton and Pujols).
Nope 117 wins. 34 in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has a 40 game hit streak 16 with at least one home run. Kyle Seager, CarGo, Vogelbach all will be All Stars. Vogelbach not only wins the HR Derby but he shatters the total home runs with 65
The mariners are really getting desperate. People think the orioles and tigers are gonna be bad this team is gonna be horrible
All three of these teams are gonna be bad, I’m still not ready to put the Mariners in the Orioles/Tigers tier of suck yet
Tigers are, at least, rebuilding. The O’s have no real direction like the Rockies.
Do some research before typing and making yourself look stupid. The Orioles have a clear direction and are in a full rebuild. Their minor league system is much improved from where it was. They’ve devoted a lot of resources to their new analytics department as well.
The Tigers have 3 or 4 good pitching prospects and a couple interesting position players, albeit one who is years from helping. Meanwhile, the Orioles are loaded in the farm system and so are the Mariners. The Rockies lack top end prospects besides Rodgers, but they have already graduated a decent numbers of their top prospects and will reload when they trade Arenado and Story. The Tigers won’t be good for 4-5 more years and that’s if they can trade Boyd for a nice return and hit on some mid-round picks as well as get good value from rounds 2-5. As bad as they are, they should be getting good talent in Round 1 every time until they turn the corner. The reality is that the Cabrera contract is going to sink their best efforts until it is off the books.
Tigers are loaded with pitching down on the farm thats not the problen. They lack postion players, but in 2021 theyoung arms will be called upon and they will only have 40-45 million on the books. The owner chris illitch has said he is willing to spend when the time comes. We hadto endure 5 crappy seasons to undue the old mans spending and dombrowskis gm decisions. It left us with a 150 million payroll and no farm system. 2021 and 2022 the tigers will be revelant again. I am pleased with the direction the rebuild is going and with this years number 1 pick hopefully an impact bat will come along too, although it will be few years. We also have some studs coming up through the international market that will make an impact. I get it its wasy to pick on us fans as we know we have sucked considering or run from 06-15. But dont write us off quite so soon as you think.
Agreed: the O’s could add every FA still available and they could all be instant upgrades at any position sans Mancini
I just looked at depth charts, and I kind of agree with you. Personally I don’t like Vogelbach, I don’t see the hype … and he’s their best hitter… Seager can be good, but of late he hasn’t been. And Tom Murphy is good as a catcher. As for Baltimore they have Mancini leading their offense, and he is terrific, a great bat. And they also have Alberto, Santander, and Nunez who all quietly had great years last year. (Santander was good not great, but above average for sure). Pedro Severino behind the plate is good, the dude has a cannon of an arm.
Margo as their staff ace vs. John Means… Both are young, decent pitchers, but I’d rather have Means. The rest of either staff is pretty bad, Kikuchi is a bounce-back guy, and Justus is a breakout guy… maybe. As for the O’s, the rest of their rotation is trash, Cobb, Kohl Stewart, and Wojciechowski.
The Bullpens are decent, though the O’s are better with Givens and Castro, Fry, Bleier, and Harvey. Then for the M’s…. absolute trash, though I do like Sam Tuivaliala.
So in review, the O’s are not as bad as the M’s, but the M’s are younger and might have more potential. But as of today, the O’s are better.
lol wtf? You looked at the depth chats but completely ignored all of the data? Literally every one of the projection system have the Orioles at least 7 games worse than the Mariners, which is more then the binomial variance.
So you can’t do an eye test on this cite? I’m saying that the Orioles look way better than the M’s, and with the A.L West getting stronger, both teams will be facing tough competition.
No that’s not what you said, you said you looked at the depth charts and then went into a very long diatribe unevenly comparing the 2 teams and then concluded by way of a spine tingling feeling that the O’s would be better.
Seager had a good season last year after returning from injury.
Your second paragraph sure makes it sound like you think kikuchi and Justus are on the Orioles.
Sheffield doesn’t have the make up as a starter, he’ll be a reliever by 2022
Okay, the problem with your analysis is that you miss the real value of the team. Shed Long is poor man’s version of Albies, Seager played on a bad foot and when he was finally healthy, he posted a 3 WAR season in 2/3 of the year, Haniger is a 5 WAR player when he is right and with 2/3 of a year should easily be work 2.5-3.0 WAR for the remainder of 2020 when he is healthy. The Mariners are close to graduating or already have graduated 7-8 players who are all impact players (White, Lewis, Kelenic, Sheffield, Dunn, Rodriguez, Raleigh, and Gilbert). Every player I just included were listed in the top 100 prospects in baseball over the last couple years with the exception of Raleigh who Jason Churchill on prospectinsider.com just listed as the 4th best Mariners prospect and the scouting report he shared matches the same scouting report that was given for Grandal when he was drafted (more power from the left=side, more control and average from the right-side, questions about his arm, but is above-average at framing). The Orioles are nowhere near as talented. The only difference between them and a good AA team is Mancini and Givens. By the way, Adams and Brennan are both much better pitchers than Tuivailala, Which doesn’t really speak to the fact that the Mariners have a ton of bullpen arms about to make the team. I just don’t consider them impact pieces because they are usually one trick ponies with a fastball and breaking ball or change up or they are a failed starter.
Interesting. I wonder, as an M’s fan, what this signing (if anything) means about Haniger’s return timetable
Nothing has really changed…just gives team options till he does.
All of the Mariners trolling that goes on in these comments sections has really gotten wearisome….
…then again, so has the string of 18 consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance.
The Ms were always close though. Not making the playoffs once by a single game. Had this new payoff system theyre talking about been in place over the last 18 years, they would have been in the postseason season in 02, 03, 07, 09, 14, 16 and 18. never the best, but not always the worst.
Mariners gambling on one year guys knowing that their future is in the mid/high minors with 2021 or 2022 being the year that the “compete” window opens….love it!
The #5 farm in baseball. The mariners are coming…
#5farm
No offense but didn’t we say this too during the Zduriencik era?
Cautiously optimistic…
The top prospects in Zduriencik’s era of failure was due to his top prospects being flawed. He depended too much on pitching prospects which is a whole topic unto itself. But also his three offensive prospects were a 1B who derived all his value from his bat, a catcher who derived all of his value from his bat, and a 1B/2B/CF who derived all of his value from his bat. Smoak, Montero, and Ackley were all suspect defenders who were supposed to hit a ton to make up for positional issues (Montero/Smoak), a poor throwing arm (Ackley). I guess you could consider Nick Franklin in the same mold as a 2B/SS prospect who wasn’t good enough to play SS and needed to hit more to play 2B. Throw in Walker, Hultzen, and Paxton who all ended up being injury prone as pitchers tend to be and that blew up their very top heavy farm system.
The difference with the Mariners this time is that they are 40-60 players deep in terms of real major league talent. Now there will be many that don’t reach that level, but there are up to 60 guys who you could squint and see a chance for them to make the majors. Back when Zduriencik was running things, they had the big prospects I listed and then Chris Taylor and Kyle Seager surprised some people, but the Mariners graduated more players to the majors in the last couple years than they did during all of Zduriencik’s tenure and they still are loaded in the minors.
The difference is that all of the Zdurensik guys were top 5 picks, while Dipoto only has one of those guys which he traded for. The top draft picks are automatically going to be ranked high but fell flat because of poor player development, while Dipoto’s management has been developing their guys into top prospects .
You look at a guy like CarGo and it’s a perfect example of why I would be leery of trading for Nolan Arenado. Those home/road splits wound make me think twice.
Your definition of “perfect example” and my definition of “perfect example” are VERY different.
Low risk for the Mariners. Good luck to CarGo. I hope he bounces back and has a couple decent years left.
He wont even make the Mariners roster
Exactly! I think Jarred Kelenic has a better chance of making the Opening Day roster and that’s not happening! I’d love to see Kelenic make the team- can you imagine the buzz and hype that would generate in the fan base? Probably see Kelenic late Summer
Hope the best but I think yes cooked.
He’s done but no harm no foul
While I loved him in his prime, I can see this ending only one way. Seattle tells him to get in his Car & Go home.
Bad pun Tuesday’s are back!
Fraley and Bishop are far more likely to get their opportunities in center field at the expense of Mallex Smith. We already saw Smith shifted to left last season when either of those two were in the lineup.
Let’s have a poll:How many games will the Orioles,Tigers,and Mariners each lose? 100? 105? 110? More?
Marlins want in on this poll.
Let’s have a poll:How many games will the Orioles,Tigers,and Mariners each lose? 100? 105? 110? More?
i lik gomez he wus real good with the brewars. he has strong arm and good bat. i now he old but wee all cant be yung lik we usetoo. i remimber wen he coght that ball in millers staidyum oh man is what i said too my wife oh man.
Blatant fake literacy issues here. You overdid it.
that whut my wife say sumtims u overdid it lol jus joshin u but seerusly i do overcuke the diner sometims n my wife says u overdid it gess it mor than joshin u. jus joshin u
It’s not funny.
PS please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard
For the life of me, I can’t figure why when Mariner, Orioles, tigers, and the Phils didn’t call the Dodgers who were trying to trade Pederson and Stripling. The Angel got mad at Dodgers when the trade for Betts and price took so long it was a salary dump they wanted pre 40 man roster players.
Why would the Mariners want 1yr of Pederson during a rebuild?
Well, if all they had to do was trade Dylan Moore for him… then they’d have to do it. But there’s no chance that’s what it would be.
All this time I thought Carlos Gomez was CarGo.
Thought he’d be a nice fit for Detroit but Seattle works too.
If he could go back to his better obp days, he’d still have a little value … but I think his career is done. Might be better off attempting something overseas or Latin America
If he wins the RF job and puts up a .250/.310/.400 in the 6 weeks or so until Haniger comes back, that will be a victory for the Mariners.
He’s not going to make the roster, he’s a backup to the backup brought in as insurance in case Fraley and Bishop fall flat on their faces. I see our OF as Lewis LF, Mallex CF, Fraley RF with Bishop/Dee Gordon as 4th OF. IMO CarGo will be asked to play on the AAA team in Tacoma but he’ll refuse then look for a new team in April.
I like this guy when he was a cub. I wish him much success in his future.
He’s more like a Marc Williamson signing.