Mariners Acquire Justin Turner

The Mariners have acquired Justin Turner and cash considerations from the Blue Jays, per announcements from both clubs, with outfield prospect RJ Schreck going to the Blue Jays in return. Turner was playing for the Jays at the time the trade was reported but was removed from the game.

Turner has remarkably continued to be an above-average hitter as he approaches his 40th birthday, which is in November, though he has unsurprisingly tailed off a bit from his peak. With the Dodgers from 2014 to 2022, Turner hit .296/.375/.490 for a wRC+ of 137. He signed with the Red Sox last year and slashed .276/.345/.455 for a 114 wRC+, a noticeable drop-off from his work in Los Angeles but still 14% above average.

He signed with the Jays coming into 2024, a one-year deal with a $13MM guarantee plus bonuses based on plate appearances. His offense has taken another small dip but is still decent. He is drawing walks at an 11.2% clip this year while limiting his strikeouts to a 17.2% rate. His .253/.348/.370 batting line translates to a 109 wRC+.

The Mariners are 56-51 and battling the Astros and Rangers in the American League West. Their pitching has been great this year but the offense has been a disappointment. Collectively, they are hitting .218/.300/.368 for a wRC+ of 95, which places them in the bottom third of the league. Their 27.7% strikeout rate is easily the worst in the majors. On top of those season-long struggles, they recently lost Julio Rodríguez and J.P. Crawford to the injured list.

The club has been actively trying to reconfigure the offense in recent days, acquiring Randy Arozarena from the Rays and now Turner from the Jays. Given the club’s punch-out problem, it’s perhaps not a coincidence that Turner has always been tough to strike out. He has a 15.4% strikeout rate in his career and has never been higher than 17.6% in a full season. For context, the major league average is 22.3% this year.

Turner has played all around the infield in his career but the expectations of his glovework have naturally diminished as he has pushed further into his late 30s. He has dabbled at second base in recent seasons but the Jays haven’t put him there this year. He’s still made some appearances at third base this season but only five starts, with his last regular playing time there coming in 2022. He only has 11 starts at first base this year but that might just be because Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is there most days, as Turner got into 41 games there for the Sox last season. Divish relays on X that Seattle manager Scott Servais said Turner will likely play first in Seattle more than he did in Toronto.

The Mariners recently traded Ty France to the Reds, opening up their first base spot. They’ve been using Tyler Locklear and Jason Vosler there in recent days, but now Turner could jump into that mix. The club had initially planned for Mitch Garver to be something close to an everyday DH this year but his underwhelming season has nudged him into more of a traditional backup catcher role. That means there could also be DH at-bats to be shared between Turner, Vosler and Locklear.

The Jays have been in sell mode for a while, having already flipped Yimi García, Nate Pearson and Danny Jansen in recent days. Now they have flipped Turner for Schreck, a 24-year-old who the M’s selected in the ninth-round of last year’s draft. He started this year in High-A and performed very well at the plate. In his 344 plate appearances, he drew walks at a 16.6% rate while only striking out 13.7% of the time. He also hit 12 home runs, leading to a slash of .261/.401/.464 and a 148 wRC+. On top of that, he added seven steals while playing all three outfield slots.

He then got bumped to Double-A and has a brutal slash of .143/.294/.250 there, but in a tiny sample of eight games with a .190 batting average on balls in play that is surely not sustainable. The Jays will perhaps bring him over to their own Double-A club in the coming days and hope for better help from the baseball gods.

Beyond the prospect, the Jays are likely happy to unload some of of Turner’s contract. There’s about $4.3MM left to be paid out and some part of that amount will be subtracted from the competitive balance tax calculation. The Jays are reportedly paying down $2MM in the deal.

With the trades of Turner, Jansen, García and Pearson, the Jays have made significant progress towards ducking under the tax line this year. RosterResource estimates that they are currently just under $242MM, putting them less than $5MM away from the $237MM base threshold, though the cash going to Seattle in the Turner trade should alter that calculus.

Between now and tomorrow’s deadline, they could still move rentals Yusei Kikuchi, Kevin Kiermaier and Trevor Richards. They could also consider deals for guys like Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Chad Green or Chris Bassitt, who are each making notable salaries through 2025. If they manage to reset their CBT status this year, it would mean they could pay the tax in 2025 as a “first-time” payor instead of a “third-time” payor while also having lower penalties for signing free agents that rejected qualifying offers. MLBTR explored Toronto’s CBT situation a couple of weeks ago.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported on X that Turner was going to the Mariners. Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times first relayed that a prospect was involved that it was Schreck (X link one and two). Ronald Blum of the Associated Press reported the cash considerations.