The Mariners and Cardinals are closing in on a deal to send infielder/outfielder Brendan Donovan to Seattle, per a report from Katie Woo and Chad Jennings of The Athletic. That report adds that a third team may be involved. Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that the Rays are the third team. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports that Tampa is expected to get infielder Ben Williamson from the Mariners in the deal. Switch-pitching prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje is heading to St. Louis in the deal, reports Joel Sherman of The New York Post. The Cards will also get infield/outfield prospect Tai Peete from the Mariners, per Adam Jude and Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. The Rays are sending out a prospect and a competitive balance round B draft pick, per Nightengale. The prospect Tampa is sending out is outfielder Colton Ledbetter, per Sherman.
A Donovan trade has felt inevitable for quite a while. The Cardinals have been leaning harder into a rebuild this winter. They tried to kick off a reset last offseason but struggled to move their veteran players with no-trade clauses and ended up mostly standing pat. With president of baseball operations John Mozeliak ceding the reins to new president Chaim Bloom after the 2025 campaign, it became clear that the club would push harder to focus on the future.
Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras all had no-trade clauses in their contracts and seemed reluctant to approve deals in the 2024-25 offseason. As last year was winding down, they all publicly expressed a greater openness to playing for new teams in 2026. That has now come to fruition for all three. Gray and Contreras were both traded to the Red Sox, while Arenado landed with the Diamondbacks.
Donovan’s situation was slightly different. Those other three guys were all veterans making eight-figure salaries. Moving them out of St. Louis was partially about slashing the payroll and also about opening up opportunities for younger players as part of the rebuild. Donovan, on the other hand, is still in his arbitration seasons. He will make a relatively modest $5.8MM in 2026 and would be due a raise in 2027.
It wouldn’t be necessary to trade Donovan for financial reasons at that price. But with the Cards expecting their rebuild to last a few years, it made sense to make Donovan available since he’s just two years away from free agency. An extension was another possibility but Donovan is now 29, so he’ll be going into his age-31 season in his first free agent year, and it’s unclear if the Cards will be competitive by then.
Donovan was a case where the front office wouldn’t have to worry about the contract and could focus on simply bringing back as much talent as possible. With his modest salary and inability to block trades, the Cards could scour the league to see what teams were willing to pay in terms of prospect capital. Since Donovan can play all over the diamond, with experience at all four infield positions and the outfield corners, almost any contender could fit him onto the roster.
It’s not just defensive versatility that Donovan brings to the table. In his four big league seasons, he has been remarkably consistent with a contact-based approach at the plate. His strikeout rate has been in the 12 to 15% range in each seasons of his career, during a time when the league average is usually around 22% or so. He has also drawn walks at a rate right around league par. He doesn’t have huge power but has hit at least 10 home runs in each of the past three seasons.
Put it all together and Donovan has a career .282/.361/.411 slash line. That translates to a 119 wRC+, indicating he has been 19% better than league average at the plate overall. Each of his four seasons has ended with a wRC+ between 115 and 127. A consistently above average hitter with an affordable salary who can capably play many different positions made Donovan a good fit for many teams and he reportedly received interest from about half the clubs in the league.
The Mariners certainly stood out as one of the best fits, if not the very best. They went into the winter with some question marks in various positions but also some potential internal solutions. They finished 2025 with Jorge Polanco as their regular second baseman and Eugenio Suárez at third. Both became free agents and have since agreed to deals with different clubs, Polanco with the Mets and Suárez the Reds.
Seattle had interest in bringing both back but it also would have been a bit awkward to sign either. Putting Polanco back at second would have blocked Cole Young. He debuted in 2025 and didn’t have immediate success, with a .211/.302/.305 line on the year. However, he may have been held back by a .247 batting average on balls in play, as his 10.9% walk rate and 18.3% strikeout rate were both quite good. The M’s presumably don’t want to give up on him just based on that initial exposure to the big leagues. Middle infield prospect Michael Arroyo is also not far off, having reached Double-A in 2025. Ryan Bliss showed some promise before he spent most of 2025 on the injured list.
At third base, the Mariners already gave some big league time to Williamson last year. He didn’t hit much but got really strong reviews for his glovework, getting credited with eight Defensive Runs Saved in 703 innings. That gave them a glove-first floor at the position. Meanwhile, they have Colt Emerson lurking. A consensus top 20 prospect coming into 2026, he crushed High-A and Double-A in 2025, getting a late promotion to Triple-A for six games. He could be the long-term shortstop but his glovework is considered a bit behind his bat. With J.P. Crawford signed through 2026, Emerson could theoretically cover third in 2026 and then move over to short for 2027. However, he is only 20 years old and has barely reached Triple-A, so there’s no guarantee of that scenario playing out as scripted.
There’s also a bit of uncertainty in right field, where the Mariners have a cluster of guys including Víctor Robles, Dominic Canzone, Luke Raley and Rob Refsnyder. Robles was injured for most of 2025 and struggled when on the field. The other three guys have mostly found success in platoon roles, Canzone and Raley from the left side and Refsnyder the right.
Take all those situations into account and Donovan’s appeal becomes clear. His multi-positional abilities will allow the club to bounce him around depending on who else is healthy and producing. Perhaps he will start out projected at second base, since that is the position he has played most in his career. But if Young breaks out or Bliss bounces back, Donovan can be moved to third. With Williamson now leaving for Tampa, Donovan could cover the hot corner until Emerson charges forth and takes that spot. If second and third are both taken over by younger guys, then Donovan could see more time in the outfield. As injuries pop up throughout the year, the picture will change and Donovan can shift.
Donovan’s contact approach was likely also a part of the appeal. The Mariners had one of the highest strikeout rates in the majors in both 2023 and 2024, with a 25.9% rate in the former and a 26.8% clip in the latter. They made a concerted effort to get that down in 2025, dropping it to 23.3%, but that was still one of the seven highest rates out of the 30 clubs in the majors.
To get Donovan, the Mariners are dipping into their strong farm system. Cijntje, 23 in May, was Seattle’s first-round pick in 2024. The M’s took him 15th overall and signed him with a $4.8809MM bonus.
One of the most unique prospects, Cijntje primarily throws with his right arm but also throws with his left. He can get his fastball to the upper 90s with both arms but his lefty velocity is a tad lower. Basically, he has been working as a traditional righty starter but then occasionally switching to the left side when facing a lefty hitter. The potential outcomes with such a prospect are quite wide, as it’s never really been seen before. Pat Venditte pitched with both arms and was able to carve out a big league career from 2015 to 2020, but as a journeyman reliever.
Cijntje, on the other hand, seems capable of being a big league starter with his right arm. He posted a 3.99 ERA in 108 1/3 minor league innings last year. Baseball America recently ranked him the #7 prospect in a strong Seattle system.
Whether he would still mix in some lefty work in the long run is undetermined. Daniel Kramer of MLB.com reported yesterday that Cijntje would be mostly focusing on his work as a righty in spring training. He was going to still throw as a lefty in some bullpen work but not in games.
Once the trade is made official, the Cardinals will presumably shed some light on what they have in mind for Cijntje going forward. Whether it’s as a switch-pitcher or a traditional righty, he will give them some extra pitching depth, which has been their main target this winter. They also added Richard Fitts and Brandon Clarke in the Gray trade, Hunter Dobbins, Yhoiker Fajardo and Blake Aita in the Contreras deal and then Jack Martinez in the Arenado swap.
Some of those pitchers are immediate candidates for big league work but that shouldn’t be the case with Cijntje. He hasn’t yet reached Triple-A and has only seven starts at the Double-A level. If the switch-pitching experiment were to continue, he should arguably require more development time than a standard prospect, since it would be such an unprecedented path that there’s no map. He won’t be Rule 5 eligible until December of 2027, so the Cards could be very patient if they wanted, especially with the major league club not being competitive in the short term.
Peete, 20, was selected 30th overall in the 2023 draft and signed via a $2.5MM bonus. He has huge tools but also big question marks. In 2025, he got into 125 High-A games. He hit 19 home runs and stole 25 bases but also struck out in 30.6% of his plate appearances. Initially a shortstop who also dabbled at second and third, the Mariners moved him to the outfield last year, mostly in center but also with a decent amount of time in left.
It’s a long-term play with wide error bars but BA recently gave Peete the #10 spot in the Seattle system. The fact that he’s already striking out at such a high rate is worrisome, as hitters generally strike out more as they climb the minor league ladder and face tougher pitching. But his outfield defense is considered strong even though he just moved there, and there’s power in the bat. The ingredients are potentially there but St. Louis will have to be patient since he’s not close to the majors and needs some refinement.
More to come.
