Among players who were not traded this offseason, few found themselves in more rumors than Ketel Marte. Arizona general manager Mike Hazen maintained throughout the winter that a trade was unlikely and said last month that talks never got close to a deal. Nevertheless, the D-Backs took calls from various teams who had interest in their star second baseman.
The Mariners were among the clubs that checked in as they pursued a high-impact infielder. Seattle surely had some interest in Marte, who began his career in the organization before being traded to Arizona over the 2016-17 offseason. Adam Jude of The Seattle Times reports that conversations about bringing Marte back to the Pacific Northwest didn’t progress far. According to Jude, that’s at least in part because the M’s balked at including second-year infielder Cole Young in a deal.
That aligns with a December report from Jude’s Seattle Times colleague, Ryan Divish, that the Mariners were reluctant to trade off their major league roster. The M’s wound up landing their preferred target, Brendan Donovan, in a three-team trade with the Cardinals and Rays. It required them to part with one big leaguer, third baseman Ben Williamson. Williamson was a secondary piece in that deal, which was headlined by Double-A pitching prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje. A deal built around Young would have subtracted a higher-upside player than Williamson from the MLB team.
Donovan is a more versatile defensive player than Marte. He’s expected to kick over to third base to begin the season. That’ll open the path for Young to win the second base job. The 22-year-old struggled as a rookie, batting .211/.302/.305 with four home runs across 257 plate appearances. He showed an advanced plate approach but didn’t hit the ball hard enough consistently to do damage.
Young lost playing time down the stretch and was left off the playoff rosters. Jorge Polanco was the starting second baseman in October, while the M’s felt Leo Rivas provided a better contact-oriented infielder off the bench.
Jude’s reporting suggests the Mariners haven’t lost any faith in Young’s upside. The former first-round pick was an excellent hitter at every minor league stop. He’d posted a .277/.392/.461 line with more walks than strikeouts over 54 Triple-A games. Young still didn’t put up huge home run tallies, but he hit the ball harder with more consistent gap power against minor league pitching. Although he has exhausted his prospect eligibility, he remains one of the organization’s most promising young players. He’s under club control for six full seasons and would be a borderline candidate for Super Two eligibility over the 2027-28 offseason if he sticks on the MLB roster.
Young hit a HR 114 mph, anyone else see that fangraphs (?) article about how max exit velo is the most predictive stat rookie year for hitters? Young also passed the eye test for me at the plate at least.
Even then Marte is probably worth it
Young struck two balls above 113mph — baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=dacfde… and baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=eae5f8…
It should be noted, these were both pulled. Young has yet to demonstrate power to other fields. The standard power metrics EV90 and the like aren’t thrilled with Cole Young yet. The maximum velocity probably indicate he can belong and has the potential to stick around.
Thanks for the rec
Video suggests there’s a correlation; in this case, Young will have at least one (1.2) seasons of .800 OPS/300PA. The catch is that it could happen but no determination when.
I stand corrected, it should have said “could have” instead “will have”.
Hard to say because it wouldn’t have been a 1 for 1 swap either. Marte has a much higher floor. I think if the Mariners were closer last year they would do it just because having him as a switch hitter in the heart of the order makes the whole lineup better.
How much closer could they have gotten aside from playing in or winning the world series? At that point I think it’s more than justified to take the swing.
Depends on who else the Snakes were asking for. Marte’s contract is providing a bunch of surplus value at the moment. As noted by @DynamiteAdams, it wouldn’t have been 1-for-1.
No and I get that, but at some point you need to bite the bullet no matter how painful. With that pitching staff and the lineup already in place, adding Marte makes that a very very formidable team with a proven guy. If you have to give up an unproven guy or two and they hit that’s just the cost of doing business. But the Mariners with Marte in that lineup would be my pick to come out of the AL and I don’t think it’d be an unpopular choice.
I don’t think the Mariners are coming out of the AL and into the World Series.
Astros71
He was saying if they had added Marte they would be a popular pick, not with the current roster they ended up settling on
If you add Marte to that lineup and the staff and lineup can stay healthy I don’t think you’d find many teams better.
This is correct.
Astros
“I don’t think the Mariners are coming out of the AL and into the World Series.”
Fangraphs gives the Mariners the 3rd highest World Series odds – 8.8%
So, no, they probably aren’t going to the world series.
But you can can say that about literally every team
You believe in statistics and I respect that. Who has the 2nd highest and I expect the Dodgers to have the highest.
Astros
Braves 9.2%
Dodgers 27.2%
fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/fg/div
“You believe in statistics”
I think projections are better than guessing, yes.
He thinks projections are statistics. Don’t waste your time arguing with him. You won’t get through.
I don’t trust those projections at all.
You mean the best roster in the American League by a larger margin? And easily the best lineup and rotation in the AL West.
You’re in the minority With that flawed opinion. The Astros are on the way down same with Texas. No one in AL West has a starting rotation anywhere close to as good or with the upside of Seattle.
RE Astros
It’s so hard to have an intelligent conversation around here
Astros: “I don’t trust those projections at all”
Astros: “I expect the Dodgers to have the highest.”
The projections: “Dodgers 27.2%”
Only because your horse is finishing second.
Dodgers are easy World Series champion favorite. The Braves in 2nd place? That’s what really shocks me. I can see why they put Seattle ahead of the Yankees and Blue Jays, but I still expect the East teams to be better.
Sure, on paper your rotation looks better. But I think it’s not like anyone doesn’t have the same upside as Seattle.
Hunter Brown, Tatsuya Imai, Cristian Javier, Mike Burrows, Spencer Arrighetti, and for a 6th man Lance McCullers Jr.
Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom, MacKenzie Gore, Jack Leiter, and whoever the #5 starter is doesn’t have upside?
Okay, I don’t put much trust in the Angels or A’s rotation.
Texas and Houston have an high upside rotation. Brown is a proven ace, Imai has great upside and could potentially be a steal at 18 million (and then he opts out), Javier, look at 2022, Burrow’s stuff is just nasty, Arrighetti has swing and miss stuff, and McCullers Jr… I’m losing hope. But others like Ryan Weiss, Kai Wei Teng, AJ Blubaugh, etc. all has a ton of upside.
Eovaldi and deGrom are proven aces, Gore’s upside is off the charts, Leiter is a former top prospect that has potential too. You can’t go to bad with the #5 starter.
Astros Lineup:
SS Jeremy Pena
2B Jose Altuve
DH Yordan Alvarez
3B Carlos Correa
1B Christian Walker
C Yanier Diaz
LF Zach Cole
CF Jake Meyers
RF Cam Smith
Not the everyday lineup. Altuve and Correa are old and aging but still have some gas left in the tank. The outfield isn’t good on paper, but all have a lot of potential. Walker could bounce back and is a power threat. Alvarez and Pena are possible MVP candidates. Diaz is good offensively.
I don’t know Texas or Seattle’s lineup.
Marte is a great player on a pretty reasonable deal -not really an under pay or an over pay-but at this point he feels like one of those players viewed as a 4-D chess move if a team did acquire him.
TTO
“Marte is a great player on a pretty reasonable deal -not really an under pay or an over pay”
BTV has him with $78 million surplus value
That’s underrating his value. In other words, Duran and Early would be overpay.
That should have been an easy deal to make, but we’ll see if Cole Young has what it takes this year.
The only issue with Marte is he’s already 32. and they’d be acquiring his downhill years. id rather bet on C.Young.
“The only issue with Marte is he’s already 32. and they’d be acquiring his downhill years. ”
ZiPS 3-year projections
YEAR wOBA, WAR MARTE / YOUNG
2026 .356, 4.1 / .295, 1.7
2027 .339, 3.1 / .293, 1.7
2028 .329, 2.4 / .295, 1.9
ZiPS Projections
N.Arenado
Age – YEAR wOBA, WAR / ACTUAL
32 – 2023 .353, 5.5 / .327, 2.7
33 – 2024 .333, 3.4 / .314, 3.2
34 – 2025 .320, 3.1 / .287, 0.9
I couldn’t find a “3yr” projection made back before the 2023 season, but one would assume ’24 and ’25 would have been better than the 1yr projections each year as he dropped off.
In other words, projections mean ZiP.
Bob
“projections mean ZiP.”
Wrong.
It appears that your understanding of projections is zip
For anyone who’s not like bob here
2022 ZiPS projections review
Looking Back at the 2022 ZiPS Projections | FanGraphs Baseball share.google/iUpufVWd5JJCHA7We
“Models aren’t right, they’re useful”. In the same vein, they aren’t wrong either.
Also
“ZiPS underperformed its usual matchup vs. Vegas, only going 17-13 in over/unders as of the date of release (April 6); historically, ZiPS has averaged 19-11.”
But, come on
Let’s hear from everyone who topped out in understanding middle school math on why these mathematical models are so bad
JuanUribeJazzHands
ZiPS 3-year projections
YEAR wOBA, WAR MARTE / YOUNG
2026 .356, 4.1 / .295, 1.7
2027 .339, 3.1 / .293, 1.7
2028 .329, 2.4 / .295, 1.9
====================
That sounds about right. Seattle gets the advantage in 2026, breakseven in 2027, and loses on the final four seasons.
JB
I don’t see how 3.1 and 1.7 are breakeven
The 1.4 WAR difference costs you $18M. So while that favors AZ slightly, it was too small to worry about.
There were other pieces involved no doubt
He is very young with a mature approach at the plate. I get not trading him but that’s tough because Marte would make the team damn near flawless. But that’s only for a year or two.
Since this was a Seattle based leak, I’m prone to believe that this is an attempt at a boost of confidence fore Cole Young. He’s still just a kid and probably came up a year too soon. But have you seen him in camp? He looks tremendous. Hoping for the best here. (Meanwhile, Michael Arroyo is outplaying all of them).
Really didn’t benefit from trading him in the first place.
BTV values
Marte $78 million
Young $24 million
BTV does a poor job with long-term projections. Based on your previous post:
2026 .356, 4.1 / .295, 1.7
2027 .339, 3.1 / .293, 1.7
2028 .329, 2.4 / .295, 1.9
we can say that Ketel is more valuable in 2026, and less valuable in 2028. The additional 1.4 WAR probably favors Young, since Ketel get paid about $18M, but let’s call it even.
If those are the WAR values you are sticking with, then there is no chance that Ketel projects to $54M more valuable.
Or just from a 3-year cumulative projection, Ketel is worth 9.6 WAR for $54M, while Young is worth 5.3 WAR for $2M. I could make an easy argument that the extra 1.4 WAR/year is not worth the extra $17M/year.
Ketel is a great player, when he’s healthy. That second part is the key. He’s been injury prone for years.
He hasn’t had under 550 PA’s since 2021.
gomer, don’t ruin his narrative with facts.
He’s averaged 137 games over the past 4 years. Add in 2021, and he’s averaged 128. Over the past two, he’s averaged 131. That’s injury-prone.
He has a chronic hamstring problem bad enough to cause team doctors to basically require him to take frequent days off to manage it. The Mariners have the middle infield depth to weather him missing at least a month per year but at age 32-onward it’s only going to get worse. Not to mention that you have to factor in the potential acquisition cost, which in this case almost certainly started with Cole Young + whichever top prospect(s) the DBacks wanted. It wasn’t gonna happen anyway, and I’m glad they traded for Donovan instead.
I think right now I prefer having Young over Marte.
I would do young for marte 1 for 1. It really depends what else they were asking for. Was it Kirby + young? If Kirby isn’t re-signing with the team I would do that package for Marte.
Good thing you aren’t running the Mariners baseball ops.
You’re a moron if you would do that. Kirby could get you something/someone better then Marte on his own.
BTV
Marte $78 million
Kirby $68 million
Young $25 million
@JuanUribeJazzHands
You were just arguing that zips projections are holier than thou and that only idiots with a sub middle school education could possibly not take them for gospel and now your using BTV in this argument?! WOW!
Jerry, I wouldn’t have said that out loud, especially to a reporter on the record. That’s a lot of pressure on a 20 year old. “Hey I said you were going to be better than Ketel Marte don’t make me look stupid.”
22.210 years old.
It’s called having confidence in your guy. Young isn’t under a ton of pressure, he could be the worst hitter on the team and they’ll still be fine because there’s 8 other everyday players on the field who are already awesome. This isn’t at all like the 2021 Jarred Kelenic situation where they needed him to be great right away to end the drought.
They had Ketel but traded him away. Maybe they should have kept him??
Nah, I doubt it would have made a difference. Besides, they don’t get JP Crawford without Jean Segura.
From the Dbacks’ perspective, this report makes absolutely no sense. The ONLY reason Marte might get traded would have been for pitching. Young might have been a throw in piece, but the focus would have been on starting pitchers or a Closer. There would have to be a 3-4 player package in return. Otherwise, the Dbacks would never trade Marte.
So Seattle fans can focus on the potential loss of Young in this supposed deal, but I guarantee if included he was nothing but a throw in because there wasn’t enough value in the pitching return to justify trading Marte.
@Scott, I think you are misrepresenting a bit here. Depending on the timing of talks throughout the offseason. what Arizona wanted for Marte changed. Early on, it was MLB ready pitching with control and upside. But as the winter progressed and they made other moves, those desires changed (if never the overall price).
The goal in trading Marte would have been to restock the MLB team and backfill some pipeline needs. What specific players or positions were discussed depended upon other moves made. It’s also been reported that Boston balked at Arizona asking for Mayer. In that scenario, he would likely have bene the headliner with “lesser” arms filling in the rest of the trade. Perhaps Young was not the headliner in this particular deal, but he was never going to be a throw in as you suggest.
They wanted
~2 MLB pitchers
~2-3 prospects
~1 replacement for Marte
That’s why the Dbacks said no because the Mariners wouldn’t give up that much
@mikey, I’d quibble a bit about a Marte replacement since AZ had plenty of capable prospects (Lawlar, Troy, Blaze, etc.), but yes. No one should’ve paid that price. It was steep because he is a top player in the entire league, still in his prime on one of the most affordable contracts in the sport. That type of deal never ends well for either side: Arizona could never recoup enough value and the buying team would receive all his father time years.
Spencer
On your last point about trading Marte for “restocking” and “backfill”. Put yourself in Hazen’s shoes and ask yourself if it is at all feasible that Hazen would make the move a team in total rebuild would make, i.e. restocking and backfilling, weakening your team by trading away a key offensive position player from a team that is intent on competing for the playoffs in 2026. You wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it, Hazen wouldn’t do it.
So no, Marte would not be traded for any reason other than getting a frontline starter and /or closer in a significant package of players.
Spencer
The only way Marte would have been traded was for pitching. Yes, after Hazen took Marte off the table the direction changed, but the change did not effect Marte, since he was no longer on the trading block.
Look at the trades Hazen ultimately made, all for pitching. Free agent signings were to plug holes on the offense and the big resigning of Gallen. I like Gallen a lot, but he was Plan B. Trading Marte for pitching—starters and a Closer—was Plan A. Once Hazen couldn’t get the pitching he wanted for Marte, they took Marteoff the market and pivoted to Plan B.
Scott, I’m going off reports from pundits like Michael McDermott, Jack Sommers and Jesse Friedman. The asks changed as other moves were made. There was always going to be pitching involved, but the level of pitching might’ve been different depending on the week the conversations were happening. It is what it is; Marte is now a Diamondback for life*
*We can ignore that blip in Seattle.
Probably wanted Cjintje AND Young, and the M’s weren’t willing to part with Cole.
We’re talking about a gamble, and money that interferes with any informed decision. What is gained may also bring lost.
It’s still weird to hear so much hype from this Mariner front office about their own hitting prospects when a chance to acquire the best in the game at the keystone was possible, especially considering they have still only developed two hitters to date.
But of course Arizona needed pitching and Young alone wasn’t going to get a deal done. If they were asking for Anderson as well, for example, the Donovan deal suddenly doesn’t look as expensive.
Seattle was closer than ever to their first World Series. What I hate about reminders of deals that could have been like this is that Seattle never seems to be willing to go for the best in the offseason. They’re still banking on their farm. I certainly hope it pays off, but falling short yet again would justify the questions about moves they could have or should have made.
InSeattle has been about pitching so the hitting takes the back seat to accomplish both in a meaningful way. In most cases the drafts does not allow for targeting. One good prospect at a time. Since the M’s have now the pitching it seems that hitting should be prioritized if you don’t mind.
Young MIGHT be good. Marte is the best second baseman in baseball and one of the best overall players, locked into an extremely team-friendly contract for years. And the Mariners A.) are built to win right now and B.) have several very good middle infield prospects (Emerson, Arroyo). I think if it was Young and a couple more alright prospects, the Mariners should’ve pulled the trigger. They would still have a top 5 farm system even if they traded Young.