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Seattle To Host All-Star Game In 2023

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TODAY: The league officially announced that the 2023 game will be in Seattle.

SEPTEMBER 14: Major League Baseball is finalizing plans to host 2023 All-Star festivities at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. MLB has yet to make an official announcement on the news.

Seattle has twice before hosted the All-Star Game — at the Kingdome in 1979 and at T-Mobile Park (then called Safeco Field) in 2001. The National League won the 1979 contest by a score of 7-6, while the American League took the 2001 game by a 4-1 margin.

Next year’s event will be hosted in Los Angeles. The Dodgers were initially announced as hosts for the 2020 festivities, but those were canceled during last year’s shortened season and will instead be made up in 2022. As Passan notes, the only other future All-Star host site known at this time is Philadelphia, which will get the event in 2026 as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

AL West Notes: Calhoun, Yordan, Murphy

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Rangers outfielder Willie Calhoun missed nearly three months of the 2021 season after suffering a broken arm upon being hit by a pitch, but he’s expected to return to the lineup this week, per Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. The club has 18 games left to get a look at Calhoun before determining whether to tender him a contract in arbitration this winter, and manager Chris Woodward offered no certainties when discussing Calhoun’s future. “Unfortunately, he hasn’t played enough for us to really evaluate him,” Woodward said (via Grant). “So, we may have to make a really tough decision one way or the other. We’re going to have to kind of go out on a limb.”

Calhoun, 27 this offseason, was the headlining prospect the Rangers received from the Dodgers in 2017’s Yu Darvish trade. He’s yet to establish himself as a consistently productive hitter, however, and was batting a rather pedestrian .254/.323/.385 in 226 plate appearances before heading to the injured list. Calhoun’s lack of playing time and career .248/.304/.418 batting line to date will limit his arbitration price. That, coupled with the fact that he has a minor league option remaining in 2022, could be a saving grace. So long as the Rangers don’t mind carrying him on the 40-man roster, there’s little downside in tendering him a contract, but Woodward’s mention of a “tough decision” appears to indicate that there’s at least some debate on how to proceed.

Some more notes from the division…

  • Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez is getting increased defensive reps in at first base and could begin seeing time there in games, manager Dusty Baker told reporters this week (link via Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle). Alvarez, 24, played some first base in the minors but hasn’t appeared there in the Majors yet. He’s only played 317 innings of defense since debuting in 2019 — all of which have come in left field. The ’Stros have Yuli Gurriel as their everyday option at first base, and his $8MM club option for the 2022 season is a no-brainer to be exercised after a terrific 2021 season. Still, getting Alvarez some work at first would provide a safety net should Gurriel need to miss time and would also give the Astros an option on days where they hope to rest Gurriel, who’ll turn 38 next June. Looking beyond the ’22 campaign, at which point Gurriel will be a free agent, it’d obviously be a bonus if the ’Stros felt comfortable playing Alvarez at first base on at least a part-time basis. Given the knee troubles he’s already had in his career, Alvarez might not be a full-time option either in left field or at first base for Houston, but the more ways they have to keep him and his outstanding career .293/.375/.584 batting line (906 plate appearances) in the lineup, the better.
  • Mariners catcher Tom Murphy chatted with Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times about his rebound from an awful start to the year — a stretch he called “the lowest point in my baseball career.” Murphy’s roster spot looked to be in jeopardy at one point, but he’s rebounded since mid-May, hitting .236/.346/.408 with eight homers in his past 208 trips to the plate. His season line still rests at an ugly .205/.304/.373, but that’s weighed down by those first six weeks. Murphy didn’t play in 2020 after fouling a ball into his foot and suffering a fracture during Mariners “Summer Camp,” so the slow start after such a long layoff is somewhat understandable. He’ll be arbitration-eligible for a second time this winter, giving the Mariners three potential options behind the dish alongside Luis Torrens and prospect Cal Raleigh. Had Murphy’s struggles continued, he’d have been a clear non-tender candidate. That possibility can’t be expressly ruled out even with the rebound, but the forthcoming raise on his modest $875K salary figures to be relatively minimal. Murphy hit .273/.324/.535 in 281 plate appearances with the Mariners back in 2019.

Mariners Notes: Kikuchi, Anderson, Gilbert

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The Mariners are poised for one of their most active offseasons in years, with their recent retooling effort having reached its conclusion. Before turning their attention to outside acquisitions, they’ll have to determine whether to retain a few of their own key players. This morning, MLBTR’s Steve Adams covered their looming decision regarding Kyle Seager, and Seattle will also have some notable calls to make on the pitching side.

Yusei Kikuchi, the team’s All-Star representative, could hit the open market. The team has to decide on a four-year, $66MM package deal of conjoined club options this winter. If the club declines to make that long-term commitment, Kikuchi will either exercise his own $13MM option to return in 2022 or choose to test free agency.

Entering the season, the team exercising the options looked like a long shot. Kikuchi then got off to the best start of his three-year MLB career, seemingly making that a tougher call for the front office, as Steve explored here in early July. Over the season’s first half, the 30-year-old worked to a 3.48 ERA across 98 1/3 innings, en route to the aforementioned All-Star selection. He’s struggled mightily over the past couple months, though, with just a 6.04 ERA in 47 2/3 frames. The southpaw’s strikeout rate has dipped a couple percentage points relative to the season’s first few months, while his walk rate has spiked. He’s also been tagged for eleven home runs in his last ten starts as his rate of hard contact allowed has ticked up.

Given those recent struggles, the odds the club picks up Kikuchi’s options look to be dwindling, writes Corey Brock of the Athletic. That’s not particularly surprising, as the southpaw now owns a 4.32 ERA with league average strikeout and walk rates (24.3% and 9.3%, respectively) over the course of the season. Paired with his subpar showings in 2019-20, making that level of long-term commitment to Kikuchi would seem quite risky, even for a club with ample payroll space.

Declining the options would give Kikuchi the chance to become the third Mariners’ starter to hit the open market, joining James Paxton and Tyler Anderson. Seattle could be motivated to bring Anderson back, as he’s fared well since being acquired from the Pirates in a midseason deal. Over eight starts, the southpaw has a 3.83 ERA, offsetting a below-average 18.1% strikeout percentage with a very low 3.7% walk rate. Anderson tells Brock he’d have interest in re-signing with Seattle, and M’s manager Scott Servais said he’s “very intrigued” about the possibility of a reunion, opining that Anderson “would be a good fit going forward.”

Anderson has posted back-to-back reliable seasons. Since the start of 2020, the 31-year-old has a 4.25 ERA in 207 2/3 innings. He hasn’t missed many bats, but he throws plenty of strikes and has done fairly well to avoid damaging contact. It’s possible he and his representatives look for a multi-year deal this offseason, but Anderson was limited to a one-year, $2.5MM guarantee last winter and has split this season between two clubs with pitcher-friendly home ballparks.

In addition to augmenting the group in free agency, the Mariners could look into a long-term deal with one of their pitchers already under team control. Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reports that Seattle offered righty Logan Gilbert an extension last September, which the former first-round pick declined. Rosenthal doesn’t suggest there are any plans for a future offer in the near future, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the front office decides to make another effort at some point.

Gilbert had yet to make his big league debut at the time of the M’s offer, but he’s since made his first twenty starts. While the 24-year-old only has a 5.10 ERA, his peripherals have been far more encouraging. Gilbert’s 26% strikeout rate and 5.1% walk percentage are each a few points better than the league average, as is his 12.7% swinging strike rate. The front office is likely as bullish as ever on the young starter’s long-term outlook.

While Gilbert reached the majors this year, his mid-May promotion was late enough in the season that he won’t accrue a full year of service time. He won’t reach free agency until after the 2027 season, although his promotion should enable him to qualify for early arbitration as a Super Two player over the 2023-24 offseason (assuming the existing service time structure survives this winter’s collective bargaining negotiations). No starting pitcher in the 0-1 year service class has signed an extension since Chris Archer’s April 2014 deal with the Rays. With nothing of recent precedent, it could be difficult for the sides to line up on a mutually agreeable price point.

Price Of Kyle Seager’s Club Option Has Increased

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4:10 pm: Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times reports that the value of Seager’s option has actually escalated all the way to the maximum $20MM figure. According to Divish, Seager needs 37 more plate appearances through the end of the regular season to push the value of the buyout from $1.5MM to $2MM. With 22 games remaining on the schedule, Seattle’s regular third baseman shouldn’t have much difficulty reaching that mark.

9:25 am: Kyle Seager has been a Mariner since the club selected him with the 82nd overall draft pick back in 2009, but the Mariners will soon face a decision on the former All-Star who’s held down the hot corner at T-Mobile Park/Safeco Field for the past decade.

Seager is in the final guaranteed season of a seven-year, $100MM contract extension signed back in December 2014, but that contract holds a club option for the 2022 season. While the option was originally valued at $15MM, Seager’s extension included escalators that could boost the option value up to $20MM and trigger a buyout of as much as $3MM (as MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes reported at the time of the deal). Seager hasn’t reached the full weight of those escalators, but Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic now reports that he’s boosted that option value up to $19MM and hit enough of the escalators to tack on a buyout in the $1.5MM to $2MM range.

Triggering the buyout means that regardless of the Mariners’ decision, Seager will walk away from the deal with at least $101.5MM to $102MM in guaranteed money. For the Mariners, what was previously a net $15MM decision is now a net decision in the $17MM to $17.5MM range.

Seager, 34 in November, has become an increasingly difficult player to value. His .213 batting average and .290 on-base percentage are both obvious eyesores, but he’s also slugging .455 and has clubbed a career-high 34 home runs in 2021 with a few weeks of games yet to play. His 23.7 percent strikeout rate is a career-high, but the league-average strikeout rate has soared in recent years; he’s only one percent north of the 22.7 average for non-pitchers.

Seager has also had at least some degree of poor fortune on balls in play, although perhaps not as much as his career-low .218 BABIP would suggest upon first glance. Seager’s career .272 average on balls in play is already lower than that of the league average (about .300), so we can’t simply assume there will be positive regression all the way up to the league norm.

This version of Seager is naturally going to be prone to a low BABIP due to his pull-happy (45.5 percent) and thus shift-prone approach, a huge 51.6 percent fly-ball rate (including a 13.6 percent infield-fly rate) and his decreasing speed. Statcast pegs Seager’s “expected” batting average at .225, which would be enough to narrowly push his OBP into the .300s assuming the rest of his profile remained the same. Seager, like so many other players in the league, has taken some steps toward a three-true-outcomes style at plate — albeit not to the same dramatic extent as three-true-outcome kings like Joey Gallo or Miguel Sano.

On the defensive side of things, Seager remains a solid option at third base. Both Ultimate Zone Rating (4.0) and Outs Above Average (5) grade him as an above-average defender. Defensive Runs Saved has him at minus-4 this season, but Seager has a long track record of quality DRS marks. His 13 errors have him on pace to finish right around his full-season totals from 2017-19. He’s not Matt Chapman or Nolan Arenado at third base, but most clubs would likely consider him anywhere from serviceable to above-average, which has value in its own right.

The Mariners, at least to some extent, will also have to take into account Seager’s status as a foundational piece for the past decade. Back in February, now-former Mariners president Kevin Mather made a buyout of Seager’s option sound like a fait accompli, indicating that the 2021 campaign would likely be his last as a Mariner. Mather, of course, is no longer with the club and Seager has gone on to belt a career-best 34 dingers — albeit with concerning declines in OBP and average, as previously highlighted. FanGraphs values Seager at 2.6 wins above replacement, putting him on pace to finish as a 2.9-WAR or better player for the ninth time in his past 10 full seasons (i.e., excluding 2020).

The Mariners could simply buy Seager out and slide Abraham Toro (and, on occasion, Ty France) over to third base in 2022. However, both players are capable of playing other positions. Toro has been lined up primarily at second base since being acquired from Houston, and France is capable at both second and first (with more than enough bat to simply DH, as well).

Ultimately, a net price in the $17MM range seems steep for Seager, but the Mariners also only have $19MM in guaranteed salary on the books next season, with a fairly light arbitration class to boot. Combine that with Seager’s career-best power output, solid glovework and legacy status in Seattle — and it’s enough to at least make this a closer decision for the front office than most would expect.

Mariners Shut Down Kyle Lewis For Rest Of Season

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The Mariners are shutting down center fielder Kyle Lewis for the remainder of the season, the club informed reporters (including Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times). Lewis recently suffered a bone bruise in his injured right knee.

It’s not a particularly surprising development, as the team revealed last week that his rehab had been halted because of soreness in his knee. Still, it’s surely a disappointing outcome for player and team alike. Lewis had been hoping to embark on a minor league rehab assignment and make it back this year. And with Seattle three games back of the Red Sox in the race for the American League’s final Wild Card spot, they could’ve used a late-season jolt from the reigning AL Rookie of the Year.

Given Lewis’ long history of trouble with the joint, the club’s caution is understandable though. The young outfielder tore his ACL not long after being drafted in 2016 and continued to be bothered by intermittent knee issues over the next couple seasons. He finally seemed to put them behind him by 2019, when he stayed healthy over a full season at Triple-A and earned his first big league promotion that September. He built off the promise he showed that year during the shortened 2020 campaign, when he hit .262/.364/.437 en route to the aforementioned Rookie of the Year selection.

Lewis’ knee troubles unfortunately cropped up again this year. He missed the first few weeks of the season with a bone bruise in the area. After returning to log a little more than a month’s worth of action, he suffered a meniscus tear in early June. Coupled with his recent setback, those injuries conspired to end his season after just 147 plate appearances.

Center field has been a problem area for the M’s since they lost Lewis. Top prospect Jarred Kelenic has gotten a lot of run there lately, but he’s struggled in his first taste of the majors. The 22-year-old is hitting just .158/.238/.281 over his first 281 MLB plate appearances. Even if Lewis had made it back, Seattle could’ve also bumped Kelenic to left field and displaced the struggling Jake Bauers/Dylan Moore pairing. Instead, they’re left to rely on those underperforming options as they hope to track down Boston or the Yankees over the season’s final four weeks.

Lewis will turn his attention to next Spring Training. The 26-year-old figures to again assume his role as the Mariners’ regular center fielder if healthy. Seattle still controls Lewis for four more seasons; he’ll be eligible for arbitration for the first time during the 2022-23 offseason.

AL Notes: Mariners, Lewis, Castillo, Misiewicz, White Sox, Giolito

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The Mariners were hopeful that reigning Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis would begin a rehab assignment on Friday, but those plans were dashed by soreness in his surgically-repaired right knee, per The Athletic’s Corey Brock. Lewis went under the knife in June after just 147 plate appearances. His offense was down a little to a .246/.333/.392 triple slash line, but even ignoring the small sample caveat, that’s still good for a 107 wRC+.

Lewis’ delay is unfortunate, especially given the struggles of Jarred Kelenic in center.  Jake Fraley and Taylor Trammell have helped out in center as well, but Fraley is on the injured list and Trammell is in Triple-A. Somewhat improbably in the playoff hunt, the Mariners could certainly use better than the 50 wRC+ that Kelenic is providing, but given this latest setback for Lewis, any improvement will likely have to come from Kelenic himself. In other news…

  • The Mariners expect bullpen reinforcements soon. Diego Castillo and Anthony Misiewicz are on their way back from the injured list, per Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times (via Twitter). Misiewicz has been one of their more reliable relievers on the season, and Castillo was intended to take over the closer role when he was acquired at the deadline. Paul Sewald has claimed that job for now, so it will be worth watching where manager Scott Servais chooses to work Castillo back into the mix. [UPDATE: the Mariners have officially reinstated Castillo and Misiewicz from the IL.]
  • Lucas Giolito’s hamstring strain may ultimately be a good thing for the White Sox righty. A short stint on the injured list will allow him to reset and adjust some of his mechanics, per Bruce Levine of 670 The Score. On finishing his delivery, Giolito said, “When my finish gets violent, I am recoiling on the pitch and my leg stiffens out. It’s almost like I am falling backwards. I don’t want to be there. It’s a bad habit. When I am strong on my front leg, even with a little bend, it allows me to get through the pitch, which leads to more extension going forward. I feel I am more consistent when I am more athletic and stronger through my finish.”

Mariners Are In Position To Be Active In Free Agency This Offseason

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Despite generally modest expectations coming into the year, the Mariners have remained in playoff contention all season. Seattle enters play tonight with a 72-62 record, three and a half games back of the Red Sox for the American League’s final postseason spot (with the A’s also ahead of them). That’s in spite of a fairly youthful roster that many onlookers didn’t believe capable of sticking with the best teams in the AL over a 162-game campaign.

Regardless of whether the Mariners make it to the playoffs, the upcoming offseason will be pivotal. The franchise has reached the end of its recent retool, and expectations will certainly be higher entering 2022 than they were coming into 2021. It seems the time has come for the front office to more aggressively supplement the young core that has already cracked or will crack the majors in the near future.

“We will be more active in free agency than we have been in years past,” president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto confirmed to MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM this afternoon (Twitter link). Seattle’s front office leader pointed to the franchise’s ample long-term payroll space, as well as the club’s ability to target more specific areas of need now that they’ve had certain players emerge as internal building blocks.

The Mariners have almost no guaranteed money on the books for next season. Only Marco Gonzales ($5.75MM), Ken Giles ($5.25MM), Chris Flexen ($3.05MM) and Evan White ($1.4MM) are locked into the ledger at the moment. Seattle will have to decide on options for Yusei Kikuchi (whose complex contract situation MLBTR’s Steve Adams explored in July) and Kyle Seager, and players like Mitch Haniger, J.P. Crawford and Diego Castillo will be due raises via arbitration.

Even in the event they bring back both Kikuchi and Seager and their arbitration class lands solid raises, the Mariners are likely looking at commitments in the $60-65MM range upon turning their considerations to external upgrades. Before their recent rebuild, the M’s ran player payrolls at and above $150MM, in the estimation of Cot’s Baseball Contracts. Assuming ownership is willing to greenlight spending at a similar level moving forward, there should be plenty of room for the front office to make multiple notable additions.

Dipoto unsurprisingly didn’t tip his hand as to where the front office might look to upgrade, but bolstering the lineup figures to be a priority. Despite their team-wide success, Mariners’ hitters rank just 25th out of the league’s 30 clubs in park-adjusted offense (excluding pitchers). Seattle position players have a .222/.299/.380 line, with particularly weak production from each of catcher, second base, left field and center field.

That’s not to say all of those positions will be target areas. Jarred Kelenic and Cal Raleigh have started their big league careers slowly but are both highly-regarded prospects who should continue to get opportunities in left field and at catcher, respectively. Julio Rodríguez is tearing the cover off the ball in Double-A and doesn’t seem far away from getting his first call. When healthy, Kyle Lewis is a good center fielder. And trade deadline acquisition Abraham Toro could be a long-term answer at second base, particularly if Seattle brings back Seager at Toro’s more familiar third base spot.

There are internal options around the diamond, but at least one acquisition on the position player side seems likely. Adding a first baseman could push Ty France back to second. Signing a quality multi-positional player (old friend Chris Taylor is slated to hit free agency, as one example) could give manager Scott Servais added cover all around the diamond. Adding a corner outfielder like Kyle Schwarber could help solidify left while offering the flexibility to move to DH if Kelenic and/or Rodríguez seizes an everyday job in the grass.

The upcoming free agent class features plenty of high-end starting pitchers too, many of whom are young enough to project as solid contributors over the next few seasons. Kevin Gausman, Robbie Ray, Marcus Stroman, Eduardo Rodríguez and Max Scherzer should be near the top of the market, with Anthony DeSclafani, Noah Syndergaard, Justin Verlander and Alex Wood among the other options.

Starting pitching isn’t necessarily a need for Seattle, particularly if they bring back Kikuchi. Gonzales, Flexen, Logan Gilbert, Justus Sheffield and Justin Dunn all remain under team control, and prospects George Kirby and Emerson Hancock are moving closer to the big leagues. There’s always room for extra starting pitching depth, and the M’s could have the resources to add a middle or top of the rotation type in free agency and improve that group’s overall floor.

The Mariners’ combination of payroll space and flexibility to pursue upgrades at various spots on the roster has the potential to make for Seattle’s most exciting offseason in recent memory. Dipoto, who signed a multi-year extension and earned a promotion from GM to president yesterday, is in position to add to the core the organization has assembled in hopes of building the M’s first perennial contender in two decades.

Mariners Outright Jimmy Yacabonis

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The Mariners announced that right-hander Jimmy Yacabonis has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Triple-A Tacoma. Yacabonis has the right to elect free agency as a player who has previously been outrighted in his career, although the team didn’t indicate he’s planning to do so.

Yacabonis saw brief big league action for Seattle last season but hasn’t yet appeared in the majors in 2021. The Mariners outrighted him off the roster last winter but brought him back on a minor league contract. He has spent almost the entire season with the Rainiers, working 31 1/3 innings of 1.72 ERA ball with fine strikeout and walk rates (23% and 7.1%, respectively). Seattle selected him to the big league roster last weekend but designated him for assignment a couple days later without his making an appearance.

Between 2017-20, Yacabonis pitched in the majors with the Orioles and Mariners. The 29-year-old owns a 5.71 ERA/5.56 SIERA over 104 frames at the highest level. Even if Yacabonis accepts the outright assignment, he’ll reach minor league free agency this offseason if not selected back onto the 40-man roster.

Every Team’s Initial September Callups

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The limit on active roster players expanded from 26 to 28 today, as the calendar flipped to September. Every team announced at least two additions to the big league club (some teams made three or more due to injured list placements). Here’s a recap of today’s spate of transactions:

Mariners Extend Jerry Dipoto, Scott Servais

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The Mariners announced Wednesday that they’ve promoted general manager Jerry Dipoto to president of baseball operations and signed him to a multi-year contract extension. The club has also announced a multi-year extension for manager Scott Servais. The length of the contracts were not specified.

Jerry Dipoto | Jennifer Buchanan-USA TODAY Sports

“Jerry is a creative, passionate leader with a clear vision for our franchise,” managing partner John Stanton said in today’s press release. “Following the 2018 season, Jerry came to us with a plan for how to compete for and win championships. He was transparent on the difficulty, but also clear on the goals and milestones. In the two-and-a-half years since, he has led the baseball operations group through challenges on and off the field, while executing on the timeline he laid out.”

Stanton points out that the Mariners’ 91-76 record since the midpoint of last season ranks sixth in baseball, praises the “first-class operations and analytics team” built by Dipoto, and expresses pride in a farm system that recently topped Baseball America’s midseason rankings. The Mariners are also just three and a half games back in the American League Wild Card race, outperforming broad expectations in what most expected to be another rebuilding season.

The 2021 campaign is Dipoto’s sixth full season with the Mariners, who hired him as general manager on Sept. 28, 2015. He’d previously served as interim general manager of the Diamondbacks and spent nearly five seasons as general manager of the Angels before leaving the organization after a public rift with manager Mike Scioscia. Dipoto then served as a special assistant in the Red Sox’ front office before being tabbed as Seattle’s new head of baseball operations.

Mariners ownership brought Dipoto aboard in the midst of a win-now push. At the time, Dipoto was stepping into an organization that had a bloated long-term payroll and one of the game’s worst-ranked farm systems. Seattle posted winning records in two of Dipoto’s first three seasons (2016 and 2018) but did not reach the playoffs. With several aging veterans and little help on the immediate horizon, Dipoto set out to “reimagine” the Mariners’ roster and farm system following an 89-win 2018 season.

Over the next two seasons, he traded away the likes of Robinson Cano, Edwin Diaz, James Paxton, Jean Segura, Austin Nola and many others as he sought to replenish the minor league system and bring about a youth movement. His efforts continued all the way through the current deadline, when Dipoto somewhat controversially traded closer Kendall Graveman to his chief division rival for five years of control over young infielder Abraham Toro. (Toro hit a grand slam off Graveman last night.)

That youth movement has begun to arrive in Seattle, led by names such as Toro, Ty France, J.P. Crawford, Luis Torrens and others. Some of Dipoto’s early acquisitions, such as Mitch Haniger and Marco Gonzales, have become mainstays on the roster and played key roles in the team’s emergence. Free-agent additions such as Chris Flexen and Yusei Kikuchi have been vital to the team’s 2021 rotation.

A new multi-year extension gives Dipoto the opportunity to see a rebuild he initially pushed for all the way through to its culmination. While the Mariners have begun to see some of the fruits of those rebuilding efforts, the club hopes there’s more on the horizon not just via the young big leaguers who’ve struggled (e.g. Jarred Kelenic) but also the numerous top prospects still on the farm. Outfielder Julio Rodriguez, right-handers Emerson Hancock and George Kirby and infielder Noelvi Marte, among others, could all reach the Majors by 2023 — many of them as soon as next season.

The rebuilding effort has also left Seattle with a squeaky-clean payroll outlook. The Mariners have just $19MM committed to next year’s payroll (before arbitration raises and decisions on options for Kyle Seager and Kikuchi). They’ll take that minimal level of financial commitment to a free-agent market that is deeper in talent than any we’ve seen in recent memory and look to augment the young core with some veterans to take the team to a new level in 2022 and beyond.

The sheer volume of trades made by Dipoto, who has more than earned his “Trader Jerry” nickname since taking the reins in Seattle, opens him up to some criticism and has created his share of detractors. However, it’s tough to argue that the team’s farm system, payroll outlook and current big league roster paint anything other than a bright future that is largely because of its current baseball operations leader’s doing.

Scott Servais | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Servais, like Dipoto, is in his sixth season with the Mariners. He’d worked as an assistant general manager in the Angels front office during Dipoto’s time as GM there, setting up a strong foundation for the two to build upon in Seattle.

“Scott has done a terrific job in defining our team’s culture as one that is driven by process, hard work and heart,” Dipoto said in a press release announcing Servais’ new contract. “That has allowed us to bring young, talented players to the Majors over the past three years and see them adjust and succeed as we build towards a team that competes for championships on an annual basis. The resiliency our club has shown in overcoming challenges on, and off, the field over the past two years have been a direct result of Scott’s leadership of the team and coaching staff.”

The Mariners are the only club Servais has ever managed, and through his six seasons he holds a 419-422 record. That’s skewed largely by a 68-94 record in 2019 — the first season of the club’s rebuild. Servais has a pair of winning seasons on his record and ought to add a third to the ledger in 2021, barring a seismic September collapse.

The larger question isn’t whether the Mariners will finish the current season with a winning record but rather whether they’ll be able to close a 3.5-game Wild Card deficit, thereby snapping a two-decade playoff drought. Even if a return to the postseason doesn’t happen in 2021, it would surely be viewed as a disappointment among fans, the players, the front office and ownership if a return to the playoffs doesn’t come to fruition over the life of these new contracts for Dipoto and Servais. Their ability to push this club from a young, up-and-coming club on the rise to bona fide postseason contenders will determine whether future extensions are in order.

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