Kolten Wong and the compounding cost of being cheap

A look back at the wake behind a minor decision.

The Mariners should’ve just signed Marcus Semien. I know this, you know this, everyone knows this. Before you yell, we all know it isn’t as easy as that. Of course it isn’t. So we’ll just let that go, at least for purposes of this post. We don’t want to think our Mariners are capable of too much.

And we’ll even ignore the Mariners missing him multiple times, including the offseason he signed a one-year deal to put up 6.3 fWAR. No, instead, we’ll look elsewhere in that same pre-2021 offseason. We’ll look at iconic Seattle Mariner Kolten Wong.

Reflecting now, the entire Kolten Wong experience was hilarious. Preposterously bad, yes, but humorous still. The funniest part about it, though, is the full context.

Kolten Wong could’ve been a Mariner sooner and, if he had been, he probably would’ve been a better one. And it would’ve saved the M’s in the long run.

2021 – Yeah, they effed that up

In the offseason heading into the 2021 campaign, the Mariners were—as they often are—looking for a second baseman. Wong, like Semien (last mention!), was looking for a team.

The Mariners had been surprisingly competitive in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and looked like they could end their drought in 2021.

They made the decision that offseason that, if they ended the drought, it wasn’t going to be with Wong.

The diminutive second baseman signed with the Milwaukee Brewers, staying in the NL Central, for two years and $18 million—including a club option on the third year.

It’d been reported at the time, and well after, that the Mariners refused to go to three guaranteed years. If they had, they likely would’ve had Wong.

Instead, he went to the Crew. And the Mariners went into 2021 with Dylan Moore as their everyday starting second baseman.

If your memory of how that went is foggy, it’s because it was a forgettable couple months. Or because its torment was so haunting your brain has blocked it out.

Through the first half of 2021 (91 games because of the All-Star Break), Mariners second basemen received 426 plate appearances.

Their line: .184/.253/.350 for a 68 wRC+. Only one team was worse offensively over that stretch at the position. Their -0.2 fWAR was third-worst

Enter Abraham Toro.

It was a moment the current iteration of Mariners Twitter was made for.

Dylan Moore hits a clutch go-ahead grand slam against the Astros—perhaps defining moment of the 2021 Mariners. As euphoric a moment as you can imagine.

The next day, they trade their closer. To Houston.

Days later, they backfill the closer position by adding Diego Castillo at the expense of reliever J.T. Chargois and prospect Austin Shenton.

Helped by a hot start, Toro was fine in that initial stint. For him, a 98 wRC+ is nothing to complain about. For a supposed deadline upgrade? Sure, pretty bad. For him? Not as much.

The bullpen was also mostly fine.

The damage was done, though. The Mariners were eliminated from Postseason contention on the season’s final day.

Kolten Wong wasn’t anything to write home about in 2021, posting 2.5 fWAR and a 109 wRC+ over 116 games—but the margins in this game are small, especially on the fringes of contention.

Having a quality second baseman in the first half would’ve been helpful. It also would’ve been nice to trade prospect capital to add talent, not backfill the spot you used to try to get a second baseman.

Anyway, that’s one season hurt badly by this seemingly minor decision on Wong. Imagine another playoff appearance, one more bite at the apple. Sure would’ve been nice.

2022 — Take two

Alright, let’s try that again.

You know, as I look at it now, the timing is pretty funny. The Mariners probably knew they weren’t getting the guy we all wanted them to get.

• November 27th, 2021: Mariners acquire Adam Frazier in exchange for Ray Kerr and Cory Rosier.

• November 28th, 2021: News breaks the Rangers will be signing Marcus Semien to a seven-year, $175 million contract.

I think it’s fair to say this is the recent offseason our payroll-focused band of fans most wanted to see some significant movement. And the M’s weren’t even close.

This deal for Frazier, though, was basically a free agent signing in its cost outlay of two non-prospects.

The Padres were getting rid of Frazier because 1.) He was abysmal for them and 2.) He was due for (and received) a significant raise in arbitration, almost doubling his salary from $4.3 million to $8 million.

For the Mariners, $8 million is a not-insignificant sum. But in this thought exercise, where they probably should’ve just signed Wong, they’d be paying him about the same amount—so it isn’t as if they’re costing themselves extra money.

But, you have to wonder about this organization’s standing if they manage to make the Postseason a year earlier, bolstered by getting actual Major League performance from the second base position.

Maybe Marcus Semien/Scott Boras give them a more serious look. Or, less dramatic, maybe they have just a little more money to spend thanks to the playoff revenue and bump in season ticket sales—perhaps opening the door to beating Toronto’s offer for Kevin Gausman (instead of landing Robbie Ray) or landing a mid-level piece like Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos or Jorge Soler to bolster the offense.

And of course, they’d again have better output at second.

Despite continued tinkering at the position, Mariners second basemen ranked 22nd in baseball in fWAR with 1.4 in 2022. They hit .224/.289/.319 on the season, for a 25th-ranked 78 wRC+.

In 2022 for the Brewers, Kolten Wong hit .251/.339/.430 for a 116 wRC+.

Admittedly, improvement at the second base position doesn’t change as much in 2022—when the Mariners made the playoffs anyway and still finished 16 games behind the Astros for the division.

Maybe they get the #1 Wild Card instead of the #2 and host more games instead? Maybe Wong, despite not-great Postseason numbers, gets a big knock and the Mariners go deeper in the playoffs?

It’s just harder to define the impact. But it’s still clear the Mariners were demonstrably worse at second base than if they’d just taken the plunge on the third year for Wong.

And that brings us to the funniest part of this whole thing.

2023 – Welp

The Mariners could’ve had Kolten Wong in 2021 and 2022 had they guaranteed the third year of a theoretical deal. They did not guarantee a third year because they thought Kolten Wong may be quite bad in 2023. Kolten Wong was indeed quite bad in 2023. And that is the only year of Kolten Wong they got.

We don’t talk enough about this!

It’s hilarious, and not really in “Haha, dumb Mariners front office!” kind of way, more-so in the way an episode of Seinfeld or Curb may end—with everything falling into place just-so in a perfectly disastrous way.

No matter which route you take to the destination, the Mariners employing Kolten Wong in 2023 isn’t going to go great.

But that’s the thing—even if you had signed Wong to a guaranteed third year, you don’t have to keep him for that third year. The Brewers showed exactly that, picking up his option so they could trade him for something of value.

Their return, Jesse Winker and Abraham Toro, wasn’t anything special but it was still something a team saw value in. Maybe the Mariners move Wong in the same way, adding a couple projects/prospects to get out from the third year they never wanted.

After possible back-to-back playoff berths, maybe they have the money and standing to be a bigger player in the offseason—if not actually engaged on Shohei Ohtani, then perhaps Juan Soto, Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman.

It’s those last two that got me going on this post, which took too long to write and is now coming out at a weird time. Anyway.

On Chapman and the position he’d man—you know who actually had a great year in 2023? Rays prospect Austin Shenton, moved in 2021 as part of the closer/second base shuffle that brought in Toro and Castillo.

The Bellingham product hit .304/.423/.584 (1.006 OPS!) splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A.

He’s entering his age-26 season, so he isn’t a top prospect or anything but it wouldn’t hurt to have him in the mix competing for the third base job.

That’s far from the worst part of this misstep, but it’s part of it nonetheless.

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This has been a long and meandering post that’s going out at a weird time but let’s see if we can sum up the major points.

• Every year counts. All the games in every year count. When you’re “finding out what you have” at a position, you’re playing games—and if you find out what you have stinks, it’s going to cost you.

• You can always trade players. This isn’t relevant only to Wong, but we just saw it with Robbie Ray and Mitch Haniger. You can move deals when you need to.

• Not signing a free agent is often just as risky as signing one.

The last bullet is a point John Trupin has hit on before over at LL that I want to echo here.

When teams sign free agents to anything but an absolute steal of a deal (and I’d call the Chapman and Bellinger deals that), it’s viewed as a major risk.

It could blow up in your face! They could be an albatross! It could cost you in the long run when you don’t have money to spend!

Meanwhile, if a player goes out there and plays terribly but cheaply, that isn’t viewed as having the same level of risk. It’s being creative, shrewd even. You can adjust on the fly.

Well, look at the 2021 Mariners. The second base risk probably cost them the season. An entire season—ended prematurely because they couldn’t stomach going to a ~$8 million third year on a mid-level player.

So they stomached multiple years of poor second base play and continuing to throw more resources at the position.

Sounds like it was risky as hell to me.

You look at the moves this offseason—particularly Bellinger and Chapman, but Soto too—you get super pissed in the moment, but shrug and move on because this is just what the Mariners do and you have these longshots you have to hope on now.

But these decisions, they create ripples. They create ripples that can change the trajectory of entire eras of Mariners baseball.

They’ve set themselves on a trajectory, at third base, not much different than second base in 2021.

Hopefully this one doesn’t cost them a season.