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Braves Place Ehire Adrianza On Injured List, Recall Johan Camargo

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The Braves have recalled infielder Johan Camargo and placed Ehire Adrianza on the injured list, per the team.

Adrianza isn’t hurt, but he was away from the team for personal reasons, per David O’Brien of the Athletic (via Twitter). He now must go through COVID-19 protocols before returning to the team. The 31-year-old infielder is in his first season with the Braves after spending the past four in Minnesota.

While he’s away, Camargo will step into a familiar role as a utility player off the bench. Camargo, 27, has appeared in 349 games with the Braves over the past four seasons. He owns a career triple slash of .261/.319/.430, though he has struggled at the plate the past two seasons.

Latest On Nationals’ Covid-19 Testing

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TODAY: The Nationals have no new positive cases from their latest round of testing, per the Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli (via Twitter). The Nationals continue to work towards hosting the Braves on Monday, but no official announcement has yet been made.

4:55pm: Three Nationals players have tested positive, and the Nats are awaiting another test from a player that is likely positive, Rizzo told Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic and other reporters (Twitter link). Rizzo said one of those players has a fever, but the rest are asymptomatic. The entire team is now self-quarantining, Nightengale tweets. It’s unclear whether the Nats and Mets will play at all this weekend.

10:45am: Despite a previously scheduled off-day on Friday, the Nats and Mets will not make up their game tomorrow, tweets Olney. Joel Sherman of the New York Post hears the same, adding that the league prefers to exercise extreme caution, particularly given that the additional early off-days in the schedule and the two teams’ geographic proximity makes it easier to reschedule the opener.

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that the Nats are awaiting official confirmation from a follow-up test, but initial results from the latest wave of tests did reveal a second positive among their players.

10:15am: Tonight’s season-opening contest between the Nationals and the Mets has been postponed due to Covid-19 related issues, ESPN’s Buster Olney reports (Twitter link). The Nats were known to be down five players as of yesterday, due to one positive test from a player and five close contacts (four players, one staffer).

Nats general manager Mike Rizzo said yesterday that his club was expecting to make a series of corresponding roster moves and play as scheduled. That, apparently, will not be the case. ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweets that there are concerns about “at least one more” positive test among the Nationals this morning.

The names of the player or players who tested positive aren’t known, although some of the roster moves that had been planned by the Nationals had come to light. The Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty reported last night that outfielder Yadiel Hernandez, infielder Luis Garcia and lefty Sam Clay were all ticketed for the Majors (Twitter links), while FanSided’s Robert Murray added that catcher Tres Barrera was in line to be added to the big league club as well.

Under the league’s 2021 health and safety protocols, an individual who tests positive is subject to a 10-day quarantine period, while close contacts are subject to seven-day quarantines. The first positive test for the Nationals came Monday morning, although the result wasn’t learned by the club until early Wednesday.

NL West Injury Notes: Dodgers, Rockies, Giants

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Brusdar Graterol’s placement on the 60-day injured list was either a procedural move or incorrect, depending on who you ask, but the Dodgers’ right-hander does plan on returning to the field in less than 60 days. His delayed debut this season is “related to COVID from the past,” per Jorge Castillo of the LA Times. It’s a peculiar situation surrounding the flame-throwing Venezuelan. He’s not hurt, simply behind. He didn’t begin throwing this spring until late in March, and he’s still working himself into game shape. Let’s make the rounds to see how other arms are progressing out west…

  • Kyle Freeland is working his way back from a shoulder injury suffered near the end of spring training, and there’s no timetable for his return. That said, he does appear to be making progress, per Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post. Specifics remain scarce, but the presumption seems to be that Freeland’s injury won’t threaten his season. The Rockies are able to start the season with a four man rotation, but they’ll soon need to add another arm to the mix beyond German Marquez, Antonio Senzatela, Jon Gray, and Austin Gomber. Newly-signed Jhoulys Chacin could be a candidate for bulk innings. Keep an eye on Antonio Santos in the long-term. The 24-year-old righty made his debut last season after just eight starts in Double-A. He may not be the first name called this season, but he’s likely to find his way back to the Majors at some point in 2021.
  • The Giants released a number of injury updates, per MLB.com’s Maria I. Guardado (via Twitter). Jaylin Davis will be out for four to six weeks as he rehabs left knee tendinitis. John Brebbia and Tyler Beede are both throwing twice-weekly bullpens as they prepare to come back from Tommy John surgery. Dedniel Nunez underwent his own Tommy John surgery this past Tuesday, and he will begin his rehab process this week. Lastly, Alex Wood threw a sim game as he tries to return from a lower back strain. Wood was expected to play a big role in the Giants rotation picture this season, and they still hope that’s the case.

Offseason In Review: New York Mets

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Mets fans had high hopes when Steve Cohen, now the wealthiest owner in Major League Baseball, officially took over for the much-maligned Wilpons in November. They shouldn’t be disappointed with the results so far.

Major League Signings

Trades And Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

Notable Losses

After purchasing the franchise for $2.4 billion, one of Cohen’s first orders of business was to retool the Mets’ front office. That meant bringing back former general manager Sandy Alderson as team president, parting with previous GM Brodie Van Wagenen and hiring ex-Red Sox, Cubs and Diamondbacks executive Jared Porter to replace him.

Based on what Porter accomplished with those clubs, giving him a prominent role looked like a reasonable move, but it couldn’t have gone worse for the Mets. Just over a month after the Mets appointed Porter, they fired him in light of allegations that he sexually harassed a female reporter when he was with the Cubs. They subsequently named another offseason hire and former Red Sox executive, Zack Scott, as their acting GM.

If you take away the front office ugliness, which is certainly hard to do, it was a productive offseason for an organization trying to escape a four-year playoff drought. Once Cohen grabbed the reins, expectations were that the Mets would spend at the top of the free-agent market, though that ultimately didn’t come to fruition despite efforts to sign elite free agents such as right-hander Trevor Bauer, center fielder George Springer and catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Even though they lost out on top-class free agents, the Mets were quite active on the open market, where they addressed several areas of need. Their biggest pickup in terms of dollars was catcher James McCann, who parlayed a terrific 2019-20 run with the White Sox into a four-year, $40.6MM guarantee. It’s fair to be skeptical of the 30-year-old McCann, who wasn’t all that effective as a Tiger from 2018-20, though he did enter this past winter’s market as the consensus No. 2 catcher available because of his performance in Chicago. Mets fans surely would have preferred for their team to land Realmuto, who wound up re-signing with the division-rival Phillies on a five-year, $115.5MM pact, but he didn’t put pen to paper until late January, and Alderson indicated that the Mets weren’t willing to wait around for JTR to make a decision. They now have McCann, who signed in mid-December, and Tomas Nido as the top two backstops on their roster.

The Mets didn’t fare as well – at least on paper – in center, where they didn’t add Springer or Jackie Bradley Jr. They instead signed stopgaps Kevin Pillar and Albert Almora Jr. for a combined $6.25MM. Neither is a surefire everyday player for the Mets, who can still regularly deploy Brandon Nimmo at the position alongside Michael Conforto in right and Dominic Smith in left. The Nimmo-Conforto-Smith alignment is the Mets’ best outfield bet in terms of offense, though they’ll be sacrificing some defensive ability when they turn to those three. Pillar isn’t the defensive marvel he was earlier in his career, though he’s still competent in the grass and as a hitter, while Almora earned plus marks in center as a Cub from 2016-20.

As for starting pitching, while there’s no Bauer – for whom the Mets finished as runners-up to the Dodgers – they weren’t inactive in that aspect of free agency. The Mets retained Marcus Stroman, who accepted their $18.9MM qualifying offer after sitting out 2020 because of COVID-19 concerns, and signed former Mariner, Diamondback and Blue Jay Taijuan Walker to a reasonable three-year, $23MM deal. Neither will pitch to the Cy Young level that Bauer did last year, but Stroman’s an established mid-rotation starter and Walker has looked like one at times. That wasn’t all for the Mets’ newly made starting staff, which swung separate trades for longtime Indians standout Carlos Carrasco and former Padres southpaw Joey Lucchesi.

The plan was for Carrasco to join Stroman, Walker, ace Jacob deGrom and either Lucchesi or David Peterson in the Mets’ rotation as they await the return of Noah Syndergaard from Tommy John surgery, but Carrasco suffered a hamstring tear last month that could keep him out until at least May. Syndergaard may be back within a few weeks after that, which will perhaps give the Mets a rather formidable rotation down the stretch. If all goes according to plan, there should at least be quite a bit of depth – something New York’s rotation has lacked in recent years.

Of course, Carrasco certainly was not the headlining piece in the deal that transferred him from Cleveland to New York in early January. Rather, the trade centered on superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor, who was down to his last year of team control – in which he’ll earn $22.3MM – and was not going to sign an extension with Cleveland.

With no chance to retain him for the long haul, the Indians sold one season of Lindor for a package of young players – Amed Rosario, Andres Gimenez, Josh Wolf and Isiah Greene. Rosario and Gimenez were very promising prospects for the Mets in recent years, but trading them, Wolf and Greene for Lindor made sense for the club – especially if it was confident it could prevent Lindor from testing the free-agent market next winter. The 27-year-old four-time All-Star was in line to become arguably the leading player in the 2021-22 class when the Mets acquired him, so they took a risk when they made the trade.

As of a few days ago, there was little optimism Lindor and the Mets would hammer out an extension by his April 1 deadline, but the Cohen-led club found a way. At the proverbial 11th hour of negotiations, the Mets agreed to a 10-year, $341MM deal with Lindor – by far the largest contract in Mets history and one that counts as the third-biggest guarantee MLB has seen. It’s the type of exorbitant signing that would not have occurred during the Wilpons’ reign atop the Mets.

Thanks in part to Lindor’s entrance, the addition of McCann and their aforementioned outfield, the Mets are heading into the season with an offense that looks tough on paper. Granted, the unit will be without second baseman Robinson Cano, who thrived in 2020 – his second year as a Met – because of a 162-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs. The silver lining is that the Mets won’t have to pay Cano the $20.25MM they would have owed him for this year, but it will hurt to lose him based on last season’s output.

Cano’s temporary exit aside, the club will still welcome back first baseman Pete Alonso, second baseman Jeff McNeil and third baseman J.D. Davis as starters. All three can hit, though the Mets did show interest in replacing Davis during the offseason when they pursued Justin Turner and DJ LeMahieu in free agency and considered trading for the Cubs’ Kris Bryant. Turner and LeMahieu re-signed with the Dodgers and Yankees, respectively, while the Cubs didn’t trade Bryant. However, as an impending free agent, Bryant’s among those who could interest the Mets if they’re still looking to upgrade at third during the summer.

The Mets should score their fair share of runs with this cast of hitters, but whether their bullpen will be able to lock down leads late in games is another question. New York added former Twin Trevor May and Aaron Loup, previously a Ray, in free agency. The two of them carry quality track records, though it’s debatable whether those pickups will be enough for a team that will begin the season without Seth Lugo after he underwent bone spur surgery in the middle of February.  As far as healthy holdovers go, the Mets will need another big year out of closer Edwin Diaz, who rebounded tremendously from a disastrous 2019, and it’s imperative that Dellin Betances, Jeurys Familia and Robert Gsellman bounce back. Those three have put together solid big league careers, but it’s no sure thing they will provide the Mets decent or better production this year.

Although neither the Mets nor their fans checked off every item on their wish list during the offseason, the team nonetheless looks demonstrably superior to the one that finished the abbreviated 2020 campaign with a horrid 26-34 mark. Thanks in part to their winter transactions, the Mets should push for a playoff spot this year, and they appear capable of ending the Braves’ three-year run atop the National League East.

How would you grade the Mets’ offseason? (Poll link for app users)

 

Latest On Bob Melvin’s Future

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There is a chance that this will be longtime manager Bob Melvin’s last season at the helm of the Athletics. This is the final guaranteed year of Melvin’s contract, which includes a team option for 2022, and he and general manager David Forst have publicly addressed his status this week.

“His option at this point is more a function of what he wants to do rather than what we want,” Forst said Wednesday, per Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle. “He’s earned that right. So that will be the conversation we have going forward.”

Melvin, however, wants to stay in Oakland. The Bay Area native said Friday (via Kawahara): “I have no desire to go anywhere else. I’m perfectly happy here and my bosses have taken good care of me here. So that’s where I stand on it.”

At this point, it’s hard to imagine the Athletics wanting to cut ties with Melvin, who has held the reins since 2011 and led the small-budget team to a 767-689 regular-season record with six playoff berths. Melvin, previously a skipper with the Mariners and Diamondbacks, has won Manager of the Year honors three times – including with Oakland in 2012 and ’18.

Felony Charges Against Luis Campusano Dropped

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Padres catcher Luis Campusano was arrested in Georgia last October on charges of felony marijuana possession, but the matter has been dropped. State prosecutors have elected against pursuing it further, citing an “issue of probable cause for the traffic stop,” Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Police found 79 grams of marijuana on Campusano when they pulled him over. That checks in well above 28.5 grams, which is the state’s limit before it becomes a felony. He could have faced up to 10 years in prison had Georgia pursued the maximum penalty.

With this issue out of the way, the 22-year-old Campusano will be in line for playing time throughout 2021 and beyond with the World Series-hopeful Padres. He made the Padres’ Opening Day roster after Austin Nola suffered a fractured left middle finger, leaving Campusano as their main option behind Victor Caratini for the time being. Campusano will start for the team in its game against the Diamondbacks on Friday.

Sixto Sanchez Dealing With Mild Shoulder Inflammation

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April 2, 3:05pm: Sanchez has mild inflammation in the back of his shoulder and will rest for a few days, De Nicola tweets. The Marlins don’t have a timetable for his return, but it should be a slow process, per Mish (Twitter link).

10:50am: Sanchez will undergo an MRI, tweets Craig Mish of the Miami Herald.

April 1: Prized Marlins righty Sixto Sanchez cut his most recent throwing session short due to what the Marlins termed “slight discomfort” in his right shoulder, tweets Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald. He’ll be evaluated over the coming days as the Marlins determine a course of action. MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola adds that Sanchez had been slated to throw around five “innings” and 75 pitches in a simulated game but cut things short after just the second frame, at which point he informed the team of the discomfort.

While the decision is being tabbed as a precaution at the moment, there’s some obvious concerning when any pitcher complains of shoulder pain. Sanchez was optioned to the the Marlins alternate site earlier this week, but that decision was only made because he was behind in his throwing after being in Covid-19 protocol earlier in camp. He’d thrown just eight innings during Grapefruit League play, and the Marlins hoped to get him built back up at their alternate site, with an eye toward a mid-month debut in the rotation. The shoulder issue, however, could obviously impact that timeline.

Sanchez made his big league debut in 2020 and impressed through seven starts, pitching to a 3.46 ERA with a 20.9 percent strikeout rate, a 7.0 percent walk rate and a massive 58.0 percent ground-ball rate. He’s considered one of the 10 to 20 best prospects in all of baseball and is viewed by the Marlins as a future linchpin of the rotation. He accrued 103 days of Major League service time in 2020, so there’s no real service-related benefit for the Marlins keeping him down at this time; he’d need to be in the minors through late July in order for his path to free agency to be pushed back another year.

MLB Informs Teams 2021 Draft Will Be 20 Rounds

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Major League Baseball has settled on a 20-round draft for the 2021 season, J.J. Cooper of Baseball America reports. That outcome has long seemed likely, as it is the minimum number of rounds required in the 2020 agreement between MLB and the MLBPA. While it’s obviously a step up from last year’s five-round event, the 20-round length still clocks in at half the length of the standard 40-round draft.

This year’s draft was already set to look quite a bit different. For starters, it’s been known for months that the event will be moved back to July. Major League Baseball also announced back in November the formation of the MLB Draft League — a six-team showcase league that will offer some of the country’s top amateurs the opportunity to compete against one another in the weeks leading up to the draft. There’s also been talk of an NFL-style combine of sorts, which would give clubs more up to date medical information on potential draftees. Pushing the draft back until after the College World Series and state high school tournament completions also avoids injury risk for top talent after the draft.

Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo, meanwhile, has a full breakdown of each team’s league-allotted bonus pool for this year’s draft. The Pirates, picking first overall, lead the way at $14.394MM. The Tigers check in with the second-largest pool at $14.253MM and stand as the only other team north of $13MM. The Astros, who had their first- and second-round picks stripped as part of the organization’s punishment stemming from the 2017 sign-stealing scandal, have just a $2.94MM bonus pool. As Collazo observes, the individual slot values of the first 22 picks in the draft are all greater than Houston’s entire bonus pool. The Astros do not have a selection until the 87th overall pick.

On that note, it’s worth reminding that the assigned slot values for selections in the top 10 rounds have not progressed from 2020 — another element to which the union agreed in last year’s negotiations with ownership. That means the top slot will again be valued at $8,415,300, and values will gradually descend from there. There are no slot values after the tenth round, as usual. Teams can spend up to $125K per pick in Rounds 11 through 20 without any money counting against their pool. Any dollars over that mark will count against a team’s pool. Undrafted players can again become free agents who are free to sign with any club, but those bonuses are capped at $20K apiece.

Nationals-Mets Series Postponed

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12:16pm: Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo tells reporters that the fourth suspected positive has indeed been confirmed (Twitter links via Jesse Dougherty and Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post). The organization currently has 10 individuals in quarantine: the four positive cases and six (five players, one staff member) impacted by contact tracing.

11:23am: Major League Baseball announced Friday that it is postponing the entire weekend series between the Nationals and the Mets to allow for additional testing and contact tracing in the wake of multiple positive Covid-19 tests among the Nationals’ roster. At least three Nationals players tested positive leading up to Opening Day, and the team is said to be awaiting definitive word on what it believes is a fourth positive test.

It would appear, then, that the Mets’ season opener will be pushed back to Monday in Philadelphia. It’s not clear when the Nationals will get underway at this time. The league’s press release indicates only that it will “continue to provide scheduling updates as available.” At the moment, the Nationals are scheduled to host the Braves in a three-game series beginning Monday before traveling to the West Coast to take on the Dodgers next Friday.

Under the league’s 2021 health and safety protocols, an individual who tests positive is subject to a 10-day quarantine period, while close contacts are subject to seven-day quarantines. The first positive test for the Nationals came Monday morning, although the result wasn’t learned by the club until early Wednesday. Details surrounding the additional positives and potential absences — including the identity of the players in question — remain unclear.

Offseason In Review: Seattle Mariners

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The Mariners added some recognizable veterans to a roster that will soon see some of baseball’s top prospects surface in the Majors. The “reimagining” phase appears to be nearing its conclusion.

Major League Signings

Trades and Claims

Extensions

  • None

Notable Minor League Signings

Notable Losses

Entering the offseason, the Mariners looked as though they had the potential to spend more than some rival clubs. Seattle carried a 2021 payroll projection of just over $70MM — a number that would dip all the way to $7.15MM in 2022. With many clubs around the league not expected to spend at all, an opportunistic approach seemed plausible.

As it turned out, the Mariners front office was also reportedly limited in its dealings by an ownership group reeling from last year’s lost revenues. The Mariners still spent some money, but the majority of their investments were on affordable one-year pacts. Exceptions included affordable two-year deals for KBO returnee Chris Flexen and Tommy John rehabber Ken Giles.

Flexen, guaranteed a total of $4.75MM on the deal, tossed 116 1/3 frames of 3.01 ERA/2.74 FIP ball in South Korea last year, notching impressive strikeout and walk percentages (28.1 and 6.4, respectively). Those 116 1/3 innings are 30 more than any big league pitcher threw in 2020’s shortened slate of games, so his workload will be less of a concern than that of the Mariners’ other starters. Giles, meanwhile, won’t pitch in 2021 after undergoing Tommy John surgery last summer, but he’ll be expected to hold down a key bullpen role in 2022.

The most notable addition to the pitching staff, of course, was James Paxton, who returns to Seattle after spending two years in the Bronx. Paxton will slot into the rotation alongside the pitcher he was traded for, lefty Justus Sheffield. The 32-year-old Paxton missed most of the 2020 season as he battled injuries — February back surgery and an August forearm strain. He pitched with greatly diminished velocity in 2020, but Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto said after signing Paxton that “Big Maple” had recovered the lost zip on his heater by the time he threw for scouts over the winter.

A healthy Paxton is the Mariners’ best starter — probably one of the best 20 or so starters in the game. At a year and $8.5MM, he’s an affordable and sensible gamble for Seattle even after last year’s injuries. It seems that a return to the Mariners was always something of a best-case scenario for Paxton; he was reported at multiple points to be seeking more than the $11MM that fellow injured ace Corey Kluber received from the Yankees in free agency, but Dipoto said after the contract was completed that Paxton gave his club a “some form of hometown discount,” adding that he “wanted to be a Mariner” again.

With Paxton and Flexen now penciled in as part of what’s expected to again be a six-man rotation, the Mariners have a fairly interesting starting staff. Marco Gonzales has been nothing but solid over the past three seasons, pitching to a combined 3.85 ERA in 74 starts. Sheffield was knocked around early in 2020, but his final eight starts looked an awful lot like the solid starter he’s long been projected to become: 47 1/3 innings, 3.58 ERA/3.17 FIP, 50.6 percent grounder rate, 20.7 strikeout rate, 8.6 walk rate.

The 2021 season will be a critical one for 29-year-old southpaw Yusei Kikuchi, whose contract allows the Mariners to extend him for four years and $66MM at season’s end. If the team declines to do so, he can exercise a $13MM player option. Based on Kikuchi’s track record, it’s unlikely that the M’s would pick up their end of that deal, but the lefty showed some interesting signs in 2020. His average fastball spiked from 92.9 mph in 2019 to 95.2 mph in 2020, while his strikeout and ground-ball rates soared by eight percent apiece. Kikuchi’s walk rate rose from 6.9 percent to 10.3 percent, which is a notable red flag, but if he can get back to his previous control while maintaining some of the other positive gains, he could yet be a quality big league starter.

Right-hander Justin Dunn, meanwhile, outlasted Nick Margevicius and Ljay Newsome in the spring battle for the sixth starter’s role. While he’s yet to find much big league success, Dunn was a top 100 prospect when the Mariners acquired him from the Mets, and he’s still just 25 years old. He could very well just be keeping a spot warm for top prospect Logan Gilbert, but Dunn has at least one more chance to show he can stick in the rotation.

As is the case in the rotation, there are some new faces in the bullpen after Dipoto and his staff brought in a trio of inexpensive relievers. Former Mets top prospect Rafael Montero had a resurgence in the Rangers bullpen over the past two seasons, pitching to a 3.09 ERA with a strong 28.6 percent strikeout rate and a terrific 5.9 percent walk rate.

Montero went 8-for-8 in save attempts with Texas last year and will close games for the Mariners in 2021 following a trade that sent righty Jose Corniell to the Rangers. Corniell received the largest bonus given out by the Mariners in the 2019-20 international free agent class ($630K), but he’s yet to play a pro game. The Mariners will also send a PTBNL to Texas to complete this deal at some point in the coming months, but for two years of control over Montero, the price tag seems reasonable for now. Corniell currently ranks as the Rangers’ No. 30 prospect at Baseball America.

Seattle also re-signed righty Kendall Graveman to a one-year deal and will put him straight into the bullpen role in which he thrived last year. The Mariners initially tried out the former A’s starter in their rotation before he went down to an injury. When he returned in September, Graveman went to the ’pen and saw his average sinker velocity jump from a career 93.2 mph to 96.3 mph. He didn’t miss many bats but posted a sizable 55.2 percent grounder rate with strong control. For a $1.25MM base salary with incentives to take the deal to $3.5MM, the Mariners will see if he can sustain that output.

Hard-throwing righty Keynan Middleton gives the Mariners another former division rival to count among its setup corps. The Angels non-tendered Middleton despite having three years of control remaining and an arbitration projection around $1MM. The 27-year-old missed most of 2018-19 due to Tommy John surgery early in the ’18 campaign, but when he was healthy he looked like a solid late-inning option in Anaheim. From 2017-18, he logged a 3.43 ERA and 3.73 SIERA while punching out a quarter of his opponents. There was some improvement needed, but for a young pitcher with a heater that averaged 97 mph, the results were encouraging. He was cut loose despite regaining that velocity in 2020, and the Mariners will now hope to benefit.

There won’t be many new faces in the Seattle batting order. The Mariners didn’t add any position players over the winter, due in no small part to the growing number of prospects they’re seeing rise to the big league ranks. Evan White struggled to make contact in 2020, but when he did he was among the league leaders in exit velocity. Strikeouts were never a major issue for him in the minors, either, and he won a Gold Glove at first base in his rookie season, so expect to see plenty more of him.

Kyle Seager returns across the diamond, and the Mariners had a second Gold Glover at short in J.P. Crawford, so he’s locked in there. Dylan Moore gets the first look at second base after a breakout 2020, but Shed Long Jr. will also be seeking a rebound after playing through a stress reaction in his tibia last year. Behind the plate, the Mariners will lean on Tom Murphy and Luis Torrens, both of whom have shown they can provide solid offense. Catching prospect Cal Raleigh will continue to rise through the upper minors as well. Ty France, acquired from the Padres alongside Torrens, figures to see plenty of work at DH and also fill around the diamond. He’s done nothing but rake in Triple-A, the big leagues, and Spring Training. The Mariners are aiming to get him 500-plus plate appearances between DH and spelling White, Seager and Moore.

Things get more interesting in the outfield. In right field, the Mariners are set to welcome back Mitch Haniger after an arduous two years of rehabbing a chain reaction of fluke injuries that began with a ruptured testicle after a woefully placed foul ball. Now 30 years old, the 2018 All-Star will look to round back into form after missing the past season and a half. Reigning AL Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis opened the year on the IL, clearing a path for top prospect Taylor Trammell to make his debut in center. Lewis isn’t expected to be out long, so the Mariners could soon see an alignment of Trammell, Lewis and Haniger.

Of course, all eyes are on uber-prospect Jarred Kelenic, who was the subject of numerous headlines after now-former Mariners CEO Kevin Mather blatantly indicated the organization planned to hold him in the minors until late April. The words “service time” weren’t directly used, but the implication was clear, particularly given that Mather also revealed in that Q&A with his rotary club members that Kelenic rejected a contract extension prior to the 2020 season.

Kelenic and agent Brodie Scoffield told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale in the aftermath of the interview that the organization made clear to him at multiple points that he would’ve made his MLB debut in 2020 had he signed the extension offer — a six-year pact with a trio of club options to buy out three free-agent seasons. While Scoffield told MLBTR at the time that Kelenic is still open to extension offers, a spotlight has been shined on the situation. Kelenic missed time this spring with a minor knee sprain, which made it easier for the Mariners to send him down to begin the year. But if he’s called up in late April just as Mather said he would be, the organization will have a hard time claiming that it was a strictly development-driven decision to send him out in the first place. Kelenic went 6-for-20 with two doubles, two homers, four walks and just one strikeout in 25 spring plate appearances.

To be clear, the majority of big league clubs play service time games. It’s not that the Mariners’ plan was necessarily nefarious or previously unheard of — far from it — but such matters simply aren’t discussed publicly, as teams don’t want to give players and their agents any fuel for possible grievance filings. Mather’s indication that late-April promotions were likely not only for Kelenic but the aforementioned Gilbert broke the norm of making such manipulation a poorly kept but still-unspoken “secret.”

Had Mather’s service-time comments been the only questionable moments in his Q&A, the fallout probably wouldn’t have been so great. But he also made disparaging comments about foreign players’ English skills (or lack thereof), lamented having to pay translators and rattled off various negative comments about established players on the big league roster. It wasn’t much of a surprise when Mather resigned from his post in the days after the interview, and chairman John Stanton revealed later that Mather also gave up the minority stake in the club he received when initially being elevated to CEO.

Turning back to the on-field product, the Mariners very much have the look of a team that is on the rise. It’s a matter of “when,” not “if” Kelenic makes his Major League debut in 2021. Fellow outfield wunderkind Julio Rodriguez isn’t too far behind him, and we’re already getting our first look at Trammell. Gilbert is the first in a growing line of high-end pitching prospects funneling through the system, with recent first-rounders George Kirby and Emerson Hancock both on the horizon.

Each of those prospects could be in the big leagues before midseason 2022, and as previously noted, the Mariners’ long-term payroll is squeaky clean. They have just $15.45MM in guaranteed salary committed in 2022 (not including the $3.75MM they owe the Mets as part of the Robinson Cano deal).

Considering the Mariners had a franchise-record $158MM payroll in 2018 and averaged a hefty $150.25MM payroll from 2016-19, a spending spree during next year’s free agent mega-class seems eminently plausible. Contending in 2021 is long shot but not impossible with enough breaks from their young big leaguers. However, even if the Mariners extend a two-decade playoff drought this season, the future in Seattle is brighter than it’s been in quite some time.

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