Randy Arozarena shows the value of just…going and getting good players

They will let you do that, actually. If you want to.

Three years ago, the Mariners traded for the best pitcher available at the trade deadline. One season ago, they swung a deal for the best hitter available. If Mariners execs were to go back and do it over, would they do more—go bigger?

If that’s the lesson from an ALDS exit in the former and not even making the Posteason in the latter—and it should be—then the Mariners better get going.

For now, the recent run from Randy Arozarena should underscore how good an idea it is to just, uh, go out and get good players.

It was July 25th last year when the Mariners landed Randy Arozarena for a trio of prospects. The expense was outfielder Aidan Smith and right-handed pitcher Brody Hopkins, along with a player to be named later—who ended up being right-hander Ty Cummings.

Honestly, they’re all having solid seasons this year. Not a single under-performer in the bunch.

And yet, none of the trio manage to make MLB Pipeline’s latest top 100 prospects list. They’re not on Baseball America’s, either. Baseball Prospectus had Hopkins all the way up at #57 in their offseason Top 101 but he’s not on their Midseason Top 50. He’s headed to the Futures Game, though.

Any one of these three could still burn the Mariners, for sure. Or, minimally, they could lead to M’s fans wishing they were on whatever theoretical future roster they’d most aid.

Still, even if one of these guys does hit their 85th percentile, the Mariners will have simply taken the value that’d provide and moved it up into their team’s current window.

Here’s what that value looks like for Randy Arozarena and the Mariners:

• He’s hit .241/.354/.417 for a 128 wRC+ since the trade.

• That 128 wRC+ is top 30 in baseball (28th) over that span.

• Since the move, he’s produced 3.3 fWAR, making him a top 50 player by that metric (48th).

• Looking specifically at time spent in left field, where he Mariners have primarily stuck him, only James Woods has been better there by fWAR this year.

• As one might expect, the Mariners have gotten more production from left field (2.4 fWAR) than almost any team this year—third in league with only Washington (2.9) and Detroit (2.7) ahead.

It cost the Mariners those young players and, where it really counts, about $4 million last year, $11.3 million this year and, assuming he’s here, probably north of $15 million next year.

It’s real money, yeah. And in return, you get a real player.

Is it an elite player? No. But he’s a good one. And he’s been the difference in a stretch when the M’s really needed a Jeff Kent to Cal’s Barry Bonds. They don’t win some of these games without Randy.

There’s this thing with the Mariners fans, and you can’t really blame them, where they don’t really expect their club to have multiple good players.

That sounds bad, let me explain.

Up until this recent hot stretch, Randy Arozarena had fallen prey to what Julio Rodríguez has often faced—doubt or vitriol caused by outsized expectations.

Julio’s supposed to be a superstar and he’s a star. Randy’s supposed to be a star but he’s just good. Well now he’s at least somewhere in-between the two, but before he was only good.

Blegh, still a struggle to put into words. Those words sound like Bill Simmons.

The biggest point is that it’s all a numbers game, a broader and less individualistic numbers game.

If your roster contains enough players with high ceilings and high floors, you’re more likely to have at least one who hits that high ceiling. And when you have handful of guys whose 50th percentile outcome is pretty good, odds are you’re gonna end up with a club with a lot of pretty good players.

It sounds like it should be easy to go out there and scrounge together 2-3 wins in left field but, if it were, a third of the league wouldn’t be at replacement level or below at the position.

The Mariners, as currently constructed, don’t have enough good players. They don’t have enough pretty good players, either. Not to get to where they should want to go.

Could they have added some in free agency this winter? Or the offseason before? Or the offseason before that? Yes, yes and yes.

But, as much as we all loathe the strategy, it makes some sense why they focus mostly on the trade market. It’s usually a different class of players at a different point in their careers.

These are prime or pre-prime players on, effectively, two- to four-year deals at real-but-reasonable money. They’re not post-prime players on big-time money.

Most importantly, money is only money and burning seasons is riskier than big contracts—but if you are only going to rely on trades for the reason mentioned above then you better do a lot of it. And do it well.

The Mariners have the prospects to get any player hitting the market. They should have the urgency for it, too.

But will they have the capital? Will they expend it?

It’s always the question.

Time for them to answer, for once, with authority.

And with multiple meaningful acquisitions.

Go M’s.