MLB Rumors: 10 Players the Seattle Mariners Should Aim For This Winter
The Seattle Mariners enter the 2010-11 Major League Baseball offseason in dire need of some runs. The team did not merely take up the rear in American League run scoring: They finished with 100 fewer runs than the Baltimore Orioles, who finished second-to-last. The Mariners pitching staff had a 3.95 ERA, good for the fifth-best in the AL, but because of the dreadful, anemic, monumentally inept offense they put on the field, Seattle won just 61 games.
Given that premise, there is a surprising degree of very genuine optimism within the Mariners' front office. Team chairman Howard Lincoln and general manager Jack Zduriencik sent an open letter to Mariners' fans this week, urging them to be patient and promising great things ahead.
As the team's decision-makers note in the letter, the Mariners system is stocked with quality hitting prospects. I have seen, with my own eyes, the tremendous potential of Carlos Triunfel, the team's enigmatic but very young and gifted shortstop. Other top-tier bats on the cusp of big-league readiness include Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, and Greg Halman.
If the Mariners are serious about their commitment to long-term rebuilding, then we ought not to see a hyper-aggressive effort to fill a pathetic lineup with second-rate stop-gaps in 2011. There is clearly a better approach to be had in effecting the sea change this squad of seafarers so badly needs. Here are 10 players the team should target this winter, in order to make a real run at the postseason in 2012 and beyond.
10. Javier Vazquez
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In between stints with the New York Yankees, Vazquez almost made it to greatness.
Here was his average season from 2005 to 2009: 213 IP, 204 hits allowed, 205 strikeouts against 51 walks, and a 1.20 WHIP.
Averaging his two seasons with New York, book-ending those campaigns: 177.2 IP, 175 hits, 135 strikeouts against 62 walks and a 1.34 WHIP. Vazquez has pitched at least 202.2 innings in nine of the last 11 seasons.
Guess which two were exceptions.
There will be no bidding war for the man, but his biggest vulnerability has always been to the long ball, and he could be straight-up lethal in Seattle. In Atlanta in 2009, Vazquez dodged the homers for the only time in his career and posted a 1.02 WHIP with the only sub-3.20 ERA of his career—a 2.87. Among all the other pollution in the Hudson River is some serious Kryptonite to the Vazquez Superman, and if the Mariners can save him from it, they may have the bargain buy of the winter.
9. Carl Crawford
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Thought Zduriencik and Howard seem firmly committed to Michael Saunders as their future left fielder, I would be remiss not to toy with the idea of Crawford filling the current offensive vacuum in left field.
Not only does he not rely on power for his offensive production (though imagine the number of triples he would rack up in Seattle), but Crawford would complete the greatest defensive outfield ever assembled. In fact, with Crawford, Gutierrez, and Ichiro from left to right, the Mariners would have arguably history's best-ever defensive trio (Tinker to Evers to Chance be damned) and one Hell of a crime-fighting team, too.
The notion is so much fun to explore that it might be too easy to forget how implausible it really is. Crawford will make nine figures before the real negotiations start, and the M's just don't have that kind of dough.
On top of that, this Saunders kid, boy...
8. Paul Konerko
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Konerko is a West Coast native, an Arizonan, and has hinted of late that being near his family is growing in importance for him. Seattle may not be right next door, but it's closer than Chicago.
Konerko felt most at home at the plate in 2010, batting a stellar .312/.393/.587 in what was the best all-around offensive season of his illustrious career. He would need to move to DH for the M's, but seems like the sort who would take to the role well.
He cranked 39 home runs this year, and has 365 for his carer. That is the sort of power this team needs. He will be 35 by the middle of Spring Training, but he seems to have plenty left in the tank.
This is another player for whom the demand could drive the cost out of the Mariners' range, but Konerko would make an instant impact on the offense.
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7. Jesse Crain
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Be not afraid of Crain's hideous outing in Game One of the Twins' ALDS against the Yankees: This man can pitch. He will be a Type-B free agent this winter, which means Seattle won't have to give up a second-round pick to get him.
Plenty of teams will want the right-handed hurler with a career 3.42 ERA, especially in light of his career-best 8.21 whiffs per nine innings in 2010. Seattle has to fix its miserable bullpen sometime though, and there's no time like the present. Crain is 29 and as good as he has been since he was 23, and the Mariners could get him with relatively little lost in transit.
6. Chris Young (the Pitcher)
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Young last pitched a full season in 2007, but that year he finished with a 3.12 ERA and 167 strikeouts in 173 innings. This signing would be a pure flier acquisition, the kind of deal Zduriencik could make with no risk of looking like a fool and every chance of becoming a hero. Young won't get a multi-year deal anywhere, and he may even have a tough time finding a big-league contract.
The Mariners could get him for less than $2.5 million, anyway.
What makes Young such a good fit for Seattle? Well, for one thing, he's 6' 10" with a big old saucer for a head: Just think of the photo opp. But furthermore, he is a fly ball maven to rival even Lilly. In fact, when healthy, Young is the most fly-ball prone hurler of any actual skill in baseball. That could spell disaster anywhere but Seattle or San Diego (where he has spent his whole big-league career), but at SafeCo, the only ceiling on Young would be retractable.
5. Adam Dunn
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To me, the Mariners need not commit now. They can spend one more season watching the development of Smoak and Ackley before they decide whether they really need a new first baseman, and then they can add a big bopper like Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder next winter if need be.
I believe that firmly. Many people do not. This is a concession to those people.
Dunn is a great player, of that there is no doubt. He hits for ridiculous power with a frame made to massacre the baseball. As a DH for the Mariners, he would be as good or better than anyone not named Edgar in the franchise's history.
Dunn doesn't seem to want to play DH, though, and that creates a problem, because he's a defensive liability even at first base. Yes, he would add left-handed pop, and he'd do it fast, but it would come at a cost. The Mariners likely won't get very seriously involved, and that's probably for the best. Just don't say I didn't suggest it.
He really would be a hell of a DH.
4. Mark Reynolds
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If Seattle declines its option on Jose Lopez as expected, a void would open up at third base, and Reynolds could be the right man to fill it.
When Reynolds gets into a pitch, the walls could be 450 feet away: It wouldn't matter. Therefore, he is the perfect sixth hitter for a team that desperately needs power. Yes, Reynolds strikes out way, way too much, and yes, his defense leaves something to be desired although he did improve last season, and finished about average in the estimation of advanced defensive metrics.
Ultimately, though, Reynolds has breakout potential, and for the pittance it would cost in trade, Reynolds could be a big upgrade for the M's at the hot corner. The Diamondbacks are looking to deal him and would probably take a pitcher of almost any caliber just to be shot of him after a frustrating season in which Arizona struck out at preposterous rates.
He will make $5 million next season, not a bad rate for a third baseman with his kind of power. It beats paying Jose Lopez $4.5 million, anyway.
3. Yu Darvish
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We may as well get used to it: Every time a Japanese baseball player of significant acclaim becomes available to American clubs, the Mariners will be implicated as bidders. Call it the Ichiro Effect—although there are at least 10 different Ichiro Effects, so that may get confusing.
At any rate, Darvish is expected to be the latest darling to be posted by his Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) team, giving teams the right to bid insane amounts of money on him. Bid they will: Darvish may be the most lucrative prospect ever to emerge from Japan. His numbers (sub-2.00 ERAs in four straight seasons, 14 combined homers allowed in 384 innings since the start of 2009) are better and scarier than anything ever posted by Hideo Nomo or Daisuke Matsuzaka, and he is built more like a "normal" American hurler than either of those two.
Perhaps most importantly, Darvish's repertoire is essentially built around a fastball and power slider, and he uses a very American drop-and-drive motion. American pitching coaches will know what to do with Yu, and that gives him extra potential.
Ultimately, the bidding may get too rich for Zduriencik's blood, but Seattle must and will at least show interest while Darvish, 23, is on the market. He could be a game-changer.
2. Ted Lilly
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Yes, the Mariners posted a respectable team ERA last year, but as it turns out, it's pretty easy to avoid giving up runs when one pitches in front of an all-time great defensive outfield in a ballpark pulled straight out of the early 1960s.
If the Mariners are going to start scoring runs, it will mean giving playing time to better hitters and worse fielders at positions like second base, left field and shortstop. Therefore, the team (which favors offense heavily in its Minor League system) needs to stock up on some hurlers of genuine quality.
Lilly is the perfect fit for Seattle, being a high-strikeout and low-walk guy who loves to induce fly balls. Over the last one, two, and three seasons, no one has done more of their business by air than Lilly. It's not even especially close, in any particular season or in total. A man like that—and a man who also happens to have posted two straight seasons with a WHIP less than 1.10 belongs in Seattle the way funny hats belong in Texas.
1. Victor Martinez
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Having said all I did about the Mariners needing not to pursue stop-gap offensive players, placing a hitter at the top of the list might seem (at best) self-defeating. Not so.
Martinez is a catcher capable of playing first base and willing to slide to DH, thereby making him available virtually every day during the season. He is a career .300/.369/.469 hitter, and batted a studly .302/.351/.493 in 2010 for the Boston Red Sox. Martinez would instantly become the best hitter in Seattle's order, and can do so at a position where the team is badly lacking.
I'm not in any position to accuse Jack Zduriencik of trying to sell a lemon, but when he says Seattle fans should get excited about 26-year-old Adam Moore as the catcher of the future, he is trying to sell them a lemon. Moore is a low-ceiling backstop who hit .195/.230/.280 in 205 plate appearances this season.
He has displayed no power since reaching Triple-A, which conveniently is where Seattle's affiliates cease to be located in hitter-friendly locales like High Desert (Calif.) and West Tennessee, and move into environs more like SafeCo Field (Tacoma, to be specific).
Martinez has extra value for the M's because his value at the plate does not derive from prodigious power or fly balls. In fact, V-Mart hits about as many ground balls as flies for his career, and often has hit the ball on the ground more often. In the cavern that is Seattle's home park, Martinez's predilection for ground-ball doubles would be of tremendous worth.
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