It’s prove-it time for Mariners’ draft, develop and trade strategy

As injuries mount, let’s see if their stated philosophy is good enough to contend.

Here’s a thought exercise for you. Imagine the current total package of Mitch Garver—his swing speed, athleticism, positional versatility, health and so on—and put all that in the body of a 23-year-old prospect. Exact same skill-set, only a different physical appearance. And then plant that dude in Modesto or Everett.

Does he make it back to Seattle? If he did, how long would it take?

This game’s a classic for me. There’s so many guys you can do it with.

Imagine, say, a semi-reincarnated version of 2018 Andrew Romine grinding it out with the Arkansas Travelers. Or like a 2024 Seby Zavala, exact same skill-set, in the body of an 18-year-old in the Arizona Complex League. What’s their year look like?

I’ll get to the point. I may be wrong but—and that right there should be the tagline for this blog—there are probably players in the Majors or on the immediate periphery by default, because they’ve just been there so they stay there. As an extension of that, there are probably players in the minors who could help their Major League clubs but are still in the minors because that’s the natural progression of things.

With these Mariners, as the injuries mount and performance at multiple positions approaches (or continues past) untenable, the potential exists for the traditional player development track be pitted against what should be a win-now moment.

With that, here’s a good snapshot of relevant storylines in Triple-A Tacoma:

I’m not going to focus too much on the specifics and how all the pieces fit together because I really don’t know. What I do know is the Mariners need to add talent. Add talent and figure it out as you go.

The goal, above all else, is to win games at the Major League level. You don’t have to risk everything now but you also can’t perpetually be looking toward the future.

Here in the present—well, the immediate past—Cole Young hit a 106 mph home run last night.

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It’s the eighth time this year Young has put a ball in play at 106 mph or more. Across Miles Mastrobuoni’s 360 career Major League plate appearances, he’s hit a ball that hard or more twice. It’s just a different level of capability.

Harry Ford isn’t stinging the ball as frequently as Young but the guy did have 109 mph double last week. The two-year anniversary of the last time “Donnie Barrels” hit a ball that hard is coming up on the 31st.

This stuff’s not everything, but it is something.

Obviously, the position they play is relevant, too. But here—the Mariners currently sit at 26th in baseball in Outs Above Average. You don’t want to make it worse but defense isn’t their strongsuit as-is and these guys are athletes.

Harry Ford can’t make it work at first? Go on, tell ‘em, Wash.

Quick anecdote for you.

Last year, as has been the case since dumping Geno to save cash, the Mariners were in desperate need of a third baseman. The Yankees were, too, so they snagged Jazz Chisholm and plopped him at third despite him having never played the hot corner a single inning in his entire professional career. His eight outs above average there last year were fourth-best in baseball among third basemen.

Add talent, figure it out from there.

The pieces on the chess board extend beyond what’s available in Triple-A. Here, I’ll give you one more specific dude—why’s Lazaro Montes still in High-A Everett?

Sure, after his promotion last year, he posted “only” a 120 wRC+—but he’s at a 144 here through 33 games. Why not nudge him up to Arkansas and put one of your highest-ceiling prospects in play for an aggressive call to Seattle at some point in the second half?

Part of it, yes, is the established belief that rushing prospects is bad for them, that if you’re not patient with young players you might ruin them forever. In looking for “proof” of this, for lack of a better word, I found this great post on Mike Zunino from Jeff Sullivan at USS Mariner at the time of the former’s call-up…in which he also wondered aloud what proof there was rushing guys would “ruin” them.

It’s funny we’ve now seen Mike Z’s entire career and if you want to say it all would’ve gone different had he spent a full season in Jackson and then the next one in Tacoma, I can’t definitively say it wouldn’t have. But that isn’t based on anything.

There’s another reason, a bigger reason, teams don’t rush big-time prospects like Montes—and it’s pretty simple.

The 26- or 27-year-old version of Lazaro Montes will surely be better than his 20-year-old self. If, in a vacuum, you had to choose between one year of the two versions, you’d want the better one. This isn’t a vacuum, though. And a theoretical year of Montes now can’t be compared to a year of Montes six or seven seasons from now without context.

Montes could theoretically be called up in a couple of months and hold his own to a level that’s, while not better than prime Laz, is better than what the Mariners are getting from Rowdy Tellez.

You can look to the Mariners’ recent past for potential parallels.

The COVID year was super weird and a playoff berth then wasn’t the same as one now but the Mariners were very much in the hunt for one in 2020 when Jimmy Yacabonis got a start as Logan Gilbert practiced at the alt site.

The 2021 Mariners were eliminated in the season’s final weekend. A 20-year-old Julio Rodríguez finished the year in Double-A with a 184 wRC+.

Obviously, prospects can improve your Major League roster without ever playing on it. The Mariners have nine percent of MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 Prospects. It is a hell of an armory from which Jerry Dipoto can deal.

If the Mariners are able to land the pieces—and impact—they need, it could cost a guy or three who make you wince.

With trades, people often focus on a deal potentially coming back to kill you, the prospect blossoming into a star the team would later wish they had. So the idea then becomes that you’re trying to almost trick a trade partner and ship off the guy or guys who will bust.

And there is an element to that, trying to extract the maximum value wherever possible, but that isn’t everything—or even the core tenet.

With a prospect-for-proven-player trade you’re exchanging future value for present value. It isn’t always going to be 1:1 by fWAR or whatever and it isn’t even supposed to be because a win now is worth more than a win later. Future value doesn’t win divisions, pennants or World Series trophies.

Though it looks less likely than it did at the time of the trade, Noelvi Marte and/or Edwin Arroyo may be better for the Reds than Luís Castillo is or has been for the Mariners but that isn’t the point. Those two weren’t winning the Mariners games in 2022, the franchise’s best season in a quarter-decade.

And really, Castillo’s decline—every player declines with age, that’s how it works—further underscores the need to capitalize on the present.

The Mariners should have already capitalized on their rotation. Pitching is anything but static and when you have a top three rotation in the game, you can’t miss the playoffs in back-to-back years. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

The Mariners aren’t in an easy spot right now. They aren’t in an easy spot ever—due in part to a below average payroll and refusing to pursue elite talent on the free agent market.

They will tell you that’s by design, that doing things the way they do them is competitively advantageous to building a perennially contending roster.

If that’s the case, let’s see it. If you can contend for a title by relying almost exclusively on drafting, developing and trading, then let’s see it work already.

We’re deep in the middle of a contention window pried open with this philosophy but if that’s supposedly all it takes, then prove it.

Frustratingly, it all comes back to the same old question: do the Seattle Mariners really want to win a World Series? The division? Or do they simply want to be competitive from Opening Day through the season’s final weekend?

This is a franchise that hasn’t won the division 24 years and the last time they did was the only time in the team’s entire history they surpassed 93 wins.

They’ve played 49 seasons and won 94 or more games once.

It’s time we see it again. Past time.

If we’re going to see it in 2025, it’s going to take some aggressive maneuvering with the farm.

And like I’ve been saying—there’s no time like the present.