The Mariners will include outfield prospect Taylor Trammell on their Opening Day roster, manager Scott Servais told Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times (all Twitter links) and other reporters. Trammell hasn’t only just made the roster, but Servais that Trammell will be the starter in either left field or center field depending on the health of Kyle Lewis. Another notable Seattle prospect in Justin Dunn has won the sixth starter job, Servais said, while Rule 5 Draft pick Will Vest has also made the team and will work out of the Mariners’ bullpen.
The 35th overall pick of the 2016 draft, Trammell is set to make his Major League debut after having already been part of two huge trades in his young professional career. Trammell was originally drafted by the Reds, who sent him to the Padres as the only piece San Diego received in their end of the three-team blockbuster in July 2019 that saw Trevor Bauer go from Cleveland to Cincinnati, while such notables as Franmil Reyes, Logan Allen, and Yasiel Puig were part of the five-player package acquired by the Indians. After a little more than a year in San Diego’s farm system, Trammell was on the move again, dealt with Ty France, Luis Torrens, and Andres Munoz to the Mariners for Austin Nola, Austin Adams, and Dan Altavilla.
It’s naturally unusual to see a top-100 prospect dealt twice in as many years before he even begins his MLB career, and it could speak to why Trammell has fallen closer to the back-end of minor league talent rankings over the last four years (he topped out at #11 for Baseball America and #16th for MLB.com, both prior to the 2019 season). Trammell has hit a solid but unspectacular .270/.363/.406 over 1799 plate appearances in the minors, but only a .234/.340/.349 slash over 514 PA at Double-A. According to MLB Pipeline’s scouting report, Trammell “got a little pull-happy in 2019, which led to more swing and miss, but he still drew a ton of walks and showed off premium bat speed.”
Trammell put in work to correct his swing at the Padres’ and Mariners’ alternate training sites in 2020, and clearly Seattle was impressed enough to allow Trammell to bypass Triple-A and directly suit up in the big leagues. While Lewis’ injury was surely a factor in the Mariners’ decision, Trammell was already gaining a lot of buzz to make the team even prior to Lewis’ collision with the wall, and was seen as a potential starter in left field. While scouts are mixed as to whether or not Trammell could be a long-term center field option, he can surely handle the position on a short-term basis while Lewis recovers.
The other interesting wrinkle to the Mariners’ decision is that if Trammell sticks on the active roster, he’ll gain enough service time to reach free agency after the 2026 season, whereas holding Trammell back for a few extra weeks would allow the M’s to get a seventh year of team control over his services. Naturally, service time is a particularly contentious issue in Seattle in the wake of comments made by former president/CEO Kevin Mather during a rotary club speech, as he openly spoke about keeping such youngsters as Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert in the minors long enough this year to delay their service clocks. Trammell was indirectly referenced by Mather as well, when he noted that though the Mariners had several of their top prospects working out at the alternate training site last season, “there was no chance you were going to see these young players at T-Mobile Park. We weren’t going to put them on the 40-man roster, we weren’t going to start the service time clock.”
Dunn already has a year and 20 days of service time accumulated over two seasons and 52 1/3 innings for the Mariners, and the righty will now enter Seattle’s rotation for the second straight year. A highly-touted prospect in his own right, Dunn and Kelenic were the prizes of the trade package received from the Mets in the Robinson Cano/Edwin Diaz trade. Dunn has a 4.13 ERA as a Major Leaguer, though with almost as many walks (31) as strikeouts (38), Dunn’s advanced metrics indicate that some good fortune went into that respectable ERA.
Vest was a 12th-round pick for the Tigers in the 2017 draft, and the left-hander has a 3.88 ERA and 25.6% strikeout rate over 132 1/3 innings in Detroit’s farm system, working exclusively as a reliever. As per the provisions of the Rule 5 Draft, Vest must remain on the Mariners’ big league roster for the entire season in order for Seattle to permanently retain his rights; otherwise, the M’s must offer him back to the Tigers for $50K.
Reaching free agency after the 2016 season? Now I’m less interested in his performance and more so in his time travel abilities.
I’m surprised there isn’t already a white knight response along the lines of, “it’s a free site…REEEEE!!!”, to your post.
Justin Dunn is not left-handed.
Will Vest is also not left-handed.
DIdn’t they already select his contract last offseason? Put him on the 40-man roster because he was Rule 5 eligible?
He was on the Padres last offseason and I don’t think they ever added him
They didn’t. The Mariners did though. On November 20, 2020.
yeah um…
Trammell!!! Well deserved!
Corey Brock, the Mariners beat writer for The Athletic had an interesting write up about Trammell earlier this week. Definitely a good read if you’re a subscriber to The Athletic.
Better headline: “Taylor Trammell Makes the Opening Day Roster”
Will Vest is a great baseball name. If I were him, I would sign only contracts with vesting options going forward.
Some will vest, some won’t. I hope Vest will.
Taylor Trammell is already on the M’s 40-man roster, so the headline is incorrect.
I’ve liked Trammel for awhile. I hope he does well in Seattle.
Basically they don’t consider him a long term prospect or h e would be with Kelenic in AAA
You can manipulate service time whenever you want as long as you can justify it
It’ll be much easier to send Trammel back down claiming he needs AAA time than it would be to justify sending Kelenic down, if he’s as good as they expect
There’s no reason to manipulate service time w players like trammell. He’s average at best and will never break the bank. He’s more likely to be sent down due to performance than service time
If he was ranked in the top 20, why would you expect Trammell to only be average, but expect Kelenic to be more?
Because Trammell has underwhelmed in the minors.
And overwhelmed in Spring training, so what’s your point?
Bot- “average at best” – what!? Did you watch his ST games? Hardly anyone gave the young man a chance before he came into ST not because of a ceiling of being “average” but only because he was traded twice. He cant control what FO’s do. He can only give 100% then see where he lands.
Trammell came into ST in fantastic physical condition- Built like a LB but graceful in the OF He was determined to show his new team he meet the M’s FO goal of “controlling the zone” in his AB’s. He made things happen at the plate and looked head shoulders above the other players fighting for the LF spot. His hard work to get into the best shape of his life paid off- showing elite exit velocities each time he barreled up during the Spring.
Earning his debut had nothing to do with the Kyle Lewis minor injury as Mark is suggesting in this article. The KLew injury only impacts whether Trammell will be chosen over Haniger to cover in CF if Lewis misses a game or 2. Trammell was “the story” of 2021 Camp from the very beginning. He is a great kid, loved in the clubhouse. Last night after being told he was going to make his ML debut he only goes 2 for 2 w 4 RBI’s. Giving him in his (43AB’s) over Spring a .302BA 3 HR’s 8RBI 2 SB and more importantly a well above avg 1.016 OPS all while playing good defense. Hardly average
I was so glad when the pads flipped him after a year. He’s almost perfect except he can’t hit. Declining value prospect who found his way into one of the most difficult parks to hit in. Unless Ichiro and him have an mlb version of the karate kid ongoing the next few years, featuring how to hit a baseball, and it successfully pans out there’s no hope for this guy sorry.
Hosmer- you sound salty, haha. There might not be any hope for the 2019-20 version of TT that you saw as a Padres fan. However players can improve, young men can grow and that’s exactly what he did in this years ST. I watched him in every single ST game avail. I read similar comments like yours from many SD fans who were convinced the kid had blown his chance. So many SD fans were glad he was traded. I even read plenty of M’s fans comments saying he has no future w Seattle- trade him!! Before he had one AB in a SEA jersey, they didn’t give him a chance to show what he’s learned. Well guess what- he took his chance. A 1.016 OPS shows plenty of hope for this guy. I get that it’s “just ST” but all he can do is try to prove ppl like yourself and the foolish SEA fans who were writing him off before he came to camp.
He might still struggle with off speed stuff initially like many young MLB players do but he showed elite exit velocity this Spring and most importantly- that he could improve on his performance in Friar Brown jerseys.
The Mariners are great at cleaning up hitters and getting them to produce. It has been going on a lot longer than people think, Haniger was a AAAA-player with good hard contact numbers, they got him to translate that success to the majors. The Mariners also did this with Austin Nola, Tom Murphy, Dylan Moore, and Kyle Lewis. They have found a way to revamp swings with guys who have good barrel rates and hard hit contact numbers. With Nola, Murphy, Moore, and Lewis, they were all hitting the ball on the ground more than 50%, but they changed them all to fly ball hitters and it paid off. They first targeted faster guys like Strange-Gordon and some other players with weaker batted ball profiles, once they realized what they needed, they started looking for guys as previously stated that make the ball jump off the bat and who have an ability to find the barrel. Trammell is finding the barrel and hitting the ball hard all over, but he has stopped hitting on the ground over 50% of the time and that change has led to a great Spring Training, if he can maintain these changes he’ll be every bit the same top 30 prospect he was as a Reds minor leaguer and he might make Mitch Haniger expendable in the not too distant future. Rodriguez, Kelenic, Lewis and Trammell gives the Mariners a balanced two lefty/two righty offensive attack in the outfield with the fourth of those ending up at DH, keeping everyone fresh and focused for the whole season. Nice problem to have for Seattle, a 20,21,23 and 25 year old group of outfielders playing together for the better part of the next decade.
Nice post. You are right about Lewis and trammell not being able to hit. Interesting now to see it play out from a Seattle player development perspective
Bravo, CincyMariner! The next few years should be exciting for M’s fans.
Spot on Cincy- thx for the positive comment. So many ppl have such misplaced anger towards Dipoto and the M’s FO. It’s good to see someone recognizes the steps we’re taking to improve.
The Austin Nola trade could end up being one of Seattle’s best trades yet. A refreshing change for an Org who, prior to Dipoto’s regime made so many terrible trades. Google MLB worst trades- you’ll see plenty of M’s trades on that list! Adam Jones, Freddy Garcia, Big Papi, Varitek, on and on….
Shot out to the reds who unloaded this guy for Trevor Bauer. A future cy young winner for a future 4th outfielder. Excellent job at acknowledging a players peak value and getting a max return on the player. And another great example of why u should always trade your top prospects at peak value. Always !
Lewis is at peak value, should they trade him? Kelenic is at peak value, should they trade him?
If the point of playing professional baseball is to win a trophy why on earth would you tear a team down with the intention of having good young controllable talent only to trade away the talent right before they debut or in Lewis’s case after 90 games in MLB? Thats insane! If we lived in a Universe where MLB teams won trophies solely for developing then trading their best talent then maybe your comment makes a slight bit of sense. But we dont! In this Universe we rebuild MLB teams to develop young talent to build a winning team for more than 1-2 yrs. The goal is to get 6 or 7 yrs of valuable production at very little cost. We don’t spin our wheels by developing talent then trading them before they can contribute! SMH!
LOL
Reds would have been much better off keeping Trammell, Downs, Gray, etc. Reds front office is run by idiots who thought they were contenders. Bauer may have been a Cy Young winner, but they still needed an expanded playoff to even get to the postseason and then they sucked so bad and got booted out right away. Reds should have been selling the last few years rather than buying and signing guys like Moose and Castellanos. Could have a lot of good prospects and its looking like some of them (Trammell, India, Stephenson) are ready to make a big league impact. If only.
There’s a handful of other examples of why you shouldn’t trade your prospects at peak value as well. You can’t justify that trading prospects at peak value is a good idea all the time. When you’re in the middle of a playoff race, it makes sense, but the Reds were a so-so team in 2019 when they traded Trammell, and Bauer played 21 games with a 2.4 bWAR/3.2 fWAR.
Are you saying that the Pirates should trade Ke’Bryan Hayes now? Are you saying that the Rays should trade Wander Franco? Maybe the Orioles should trade Adley Rutchman since he’ll probably not get any better than a consensus top 3 prospect.
Trammell from what I know was a singles hitter. Someone list the last successful singles hitter?
I hope that’s a rhetorical question.
Gwynn and Ichiro are two HOF I can think of off the top of my head.
VegasSDfan- that Trammell has since grown up and filled out! He’s more than a singles hitter now.
Alan Trammell.
Ichiro made a descent career as a singles hitter.
Alan must be proud of his son right now. Good luck Taylor!
Ya. I did notice the resemblance….he’s got his mom’s nose, though.
She wants it back….
Wilson misplayed a foul pop up last night in foul territory, he let it drop between him and the catcher, two pitches later Trammel smashed a bomb to right. Got to see trammel for first time last night. Hope the kid excels.
I just don’t get this. The guy was traded by the padres for literally nothing but a guy having a lucky year with the Mariners. Now he has one great spring, which I guess he couldn’t do in San Diego and all the sudden he is the starting left fielder or center fielder for the Mariners. Just don’t get it. Lol
Mariners goin to the playoffs for sure this year mark it down
Will Vest is a RIGHT-handed Relief Pitcher, he’s also listed as Shortstop and Leftfielder on his Baseball Reference page….kind of a weird combo, eh? GO M’s!!!