May 23: Baumann reported to the Mariners’ roster today. The team announced that right-hander Cody Bolton has been optioned to Triple-A Tacoma to open a spot on the 26-man roster.
May 22: The Orioles and Mariners announced a trade late Wednesday evening. Seattle acquired reliever Mike Baumann and catcher Michael Pérez in exchange for younger catcher Blake Hunt, whom the O’s have optioned to Triple-A Norfolk. Baltimore had designated Baumann for assignment over the weekend. Hunt and Baumann will each occupy spots on their new teams’ 40-man rosters. Pérez was on a minor league contract and will not assume a 40-man spot. Seattle’s roster is at capacity, while the O’s count is up to 39.
Baumann changes teams for the first time in his career. Baltimore drafted the right-hander in the third round back in 2017. A starting pitcher for most of his minor league tenure, he kicked to the bullpen in 2022. Baumann has turned in solid results over the past couple seasons. He tossed a career-high 64 2/3 innings of 3.76 ERA ball last season and has allowed 3.44 earned runs per nine through 17 appearances this year.
While Baumann’s run prevention marks have been good, his strikeout and walk profile is middling. He had a league average 22.3% strikeout percentage with a lofty 12.1% walk rate in 2023. His strikeout rate is down to 19.5% over 18 1/3 innings this season, while his 11% walk percentage remains higher than average. Baumann’s 9.9% swinging strike rate is a couple points below the league mark for relievers.
That certainly contributed to Baltimore’s decision to DFA him, but the more immediate driver was a lack of roster flexibility. Baumann is out of options, so the O’s couldn’t send him to the minors. He was one of six Baltimore relievers who can’t be optioned, and two who can be sent down (Yennier Cano and Keegan Akin) have been far too valuable to take out of the MLB bullpen.
Seattle has four out-of-options relievers of their own, but they can send down one of Eduard Bazardo or Cody Bolton to plug Baumann into the bullpen. Despite lacking huge swing-and-miss tallies, he should deepen their middle relief group. The Jacksonville product has induced ground-balls at a solid 46.4% clip. He averages north of 96 MPH on his fastball and mixes in a knuckle-curve and slider with regularity. Baumann has between one and two years of major league service. He’s controllable for four seasons beyond the current campaign and won’t be eligible for arbitration until the 2025-26 offseason.
The Mariners liked Baumann enough to part with Hunt, who is a more intriguing player than teams typically land for someone they’d designated for assignment. A former second-round pick of the Padres, he went to the Rays as part of the Blake Snell blockbuster. Hunt topped out at Triple-A in the Tampa Bay farm system. Despite a .256/.331/.484 showing in 2023, the Rays decided not to add him to their 40-man roster last fall. Rather than watch him depart for nothing in minor league free agency, Tampa Bay flipped him to Seattle for recent draftee Tatem Levins.
Seattle added Hunt to the 40-man to keep him in the organization. The 25-year-old has spent the season in Triple-A Tacoma, where he’s out to an excellent .293/.372/.533 start in 86 plate appearances. Hunt has already connected on four homers while striking out in only 11.6% of his trips to the plate. He slots in behind Adley Rutschman and James McCann on the organizational depth chart. There’s a chance Hunt makes his MLB debut at some point this year. Even if he spends the rest of the season in Norfolk, he could compete for next year’s backup catching job if the Orioles let McCann depart in free agency.
Pérez is a 31-year-old journeyman who signed a minor league deal with Baltimore over the offseason. He’s hitting .221/.294/.325 over 21 games in Norfolk. Pérez has appeared in parts of six MLB campaigns and owns a .179/.248/.306 slash at the highest level. Including him in the deal allows Seattle to send an experienced, glove-first veteran to Tacoma after Hunt’s departure. He’s behind Cal Raleigh and Seby Zavala on the organizational depth chart.
Hunt is off to a great start this year, it’ll be interesting to see how quick he makes his debut.
Those numbers are in Tacoma and the PCL with the auto strike zone.
What? Numbers don’t count as much if a human doesn’t call balls and strikes?
Hunt seems like a natural replacement for McCann next season.
Exactly my thought
End of the road for Maverick Handley? Hunt, same age, takes over for McCann when he moves on. Basello and Willems lying in the weeds
Handley will be a minor league FA. He’s done here barring multiple injuries.
The problem is that Willems & Basallo aren’t any good at defense. Decent chance neither one plays there in the MLB w/ any regularity. They’re already getting looks at 1B.
Basallo has a cannon for an arm but is very middle of the road otherwise. It’s not that he can’t play defense. Big difference there.
Willems and Basallo, of course, are very young. Can they improve defensively over time as they progress through the system? Geez, sure hope so. Orioles sunk a ton of signing monies in to both of them.
Basallo is huge. If his bat remains that far ahead from the glove—-I don’t think it’s happening behind the plate as anything like a starter.
Mariner deals make little sense. They gave away isaiah campbell, who was effective for them in ’23 for the shell (and overpaid) luis urias last winter. now go and make a deal for a reliever, probably no better and give up a decent prospect?
The Urias trade made no sense to me either, but I’m a fan of this trade. Hunt is very likely a backup in the bigs and that’s not something the Mariners desperately need. Baumann immediately upgrades a pen affected by injuries.
And how has Campbell pitched with Boston so far?
Seattle has had a knack for selling high on relievers. You could argue Luis wasn’t exactly selling high, but to be fair, he projected better than Suarez and he was probably seen more as insurance, rather than their top target for the hot corner.
Regarding Hunt as a decent prospect, this does feel a little lopsided. But if they get what they expect out of Baumann, it will have been a small price to pay. Keep in mind they didn’t give up anyone significant to get Hunt and he was their number 4 catcher and was about to get passed by Ford.
I agree, with Brash out for the year they need another leverage reliever. Hopefully he will be able to step into that role.
ZiPS projects Isaiah Campbell, who has a 12.79 ERA in seven games with the Red Sox, with 2024, 2025 and 2026 WAR of 0.2, 0.2 and 0.3.
ZiPS projects Luis Urias, who has a 77 wRC+ in 33 games with the Mariners, with 2024, 2025 and 2026 WAR of 1.9, 1.7 and 1.7.
Campbell has significantly more team control but Seattle is unlikely to regret the trade.
Luis urias will be nontendered at seasons end.
I thought Baumann would have for sure wound up in Anaheim as an Angel
Mariners must have needed him more
Kriebel and Voth now Baumann. Who’s the next recent Orioles BP piece to end up in Seattle?
It’s the return from 1998-1999 when the Orioles picked up Charlton, Timlin and Slocumb from the Mariners, helping to make the Orioles’ pen bad like the Mariners were in the mid 90s.
Baumann is decent. Seattle is a good place for him to land. Too many out of options pitchers in Baltimore this year.
That is the unfortunate side effect of successfully building a pen out of reclamation projects. Easy to cycle through if they suck, but for every guy they fixed, they sacrificed flexibility.
your name is full of reclamation projects. Not sure what your point is.
Baumann is a good pickup because of our bullpen injuries but DID WE HAVE TO GIVE A PROSPECT
Would you prefer they trade a starter???
Ford’s gonna be next up so not a real loss……
Hunt could’ve been used in a rental player deal
The Tyson Miller DFA is still perplexing and out of step with how this FO has built the pen up to this point. I know they’re regretting it now.
Miller was the 8th reliever and used situationally. DFAing him looks odd in hindsight, but it’s more about how they felt about his stuff, rather than the small sample size of success.
Point is, I don’t think they’re regretting it.
Thought maybe Big Mike ended up a Twin, given he’s from MN and the Twins probably looking for some sort of payback for the Os flat out pillaging them on recent trades.
What trades are you talking about
Jorge Lopez trade was brutal for MIN
Lopez was terrible. They gave Coulombe away for nothing too.
Long term he’s behind Raliegh and Ford so he’s not in the Mariners plans. Deal from your strengths they always say.
Another Dipoto win in the pen. He’s a master of making marginal talents crucial members of the bullpen.
The bullpen magic has been lacking this year. Given that Blake Hunt is outhitting the rest of the Tacoma line up, regardless of position, I dreamed on a bit more than what looks like a cromulent middle reliever
Cromulent? We not know big words here!
That word is overused on this forum and really should only be used as an adjective to describe food.
In trying to show that his era is misleading it would be far easier to point to his 1.47 whip than the “go to” strikeout rate and walk rate, over 18 innings, which are nearly identical to last year considering it’s 18 innings where one more strikeout would have him basically back to last year’s rate (the BB rate is slightly better). So basically try a new approach for once writers. You overlook the obvious and often point to trivialities.
Welcome to the lab
I still think they traded Baumann too soon. There are multiple older bullpen pieces I would have rather parted with. 4 more years of control shouldn’t have been traded when considering who we kept instead
Thank you O’s fan, we’ll take your cast off with 5 years of team control that throws 98 with crazy secondary stuff. Don’t worry, the M’s staff will teach him how to pitch.
Can’t be sheepish this year. Pile up all the waiver claims, and “minor trades” versus the loss of talent via Baltimore’s DFAs… Elias is still deep in the black.
I wish Baumann well but the only squirrel left dead in the road is the one that can’t decide one side or the other. Glad they finally moved on from McKenna and Baumann not because they didn’t have value but their lack of options hogtied us.
Elias is going to need to do something he hasn’t yet needed to do outside of the trade for Burnes, trade legit prospects for legit pieces that are needed NOW. Basically the Andrew Miller types. I still get a little miffed about losing Eduardo in that trade but it was the right call. I’m going to have to learn to like gaining a lock down, high leverage bullpen piece versus a piece or pieces of the surplus of AAA talent.
The O’s are at the stage of the rebuild where it gets tricky. Beforehand, the goal was just to add prospects and build for the future. Now, they have to transition and it’s no easy feat. San Diego completely messed up this step of their rebuild. The Astros traded for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers.
Buamann is a great pickup for the M’s imo. Firstly, he is nasty when on. The problem has been, he’s not consistent. This is where the Mariners have a strength. They are good at teaching their pitchers how to be consistent. Great pickup imo. More so because Brash is now out for the season. Buamann and Stanik will be leverage arms to set up Munoz. Santos will hopefully be coming in later in the year to bolster the back end.