There may be no team in baseball that needed the All-Star break more than the Seattle Mariners.
Just a few short weeks ago, the team led the American League West by ten games and seemed on the brink of winning the division.
Flash forward to the All-Star break, and that lead is down to one, thanks to an offensive that has collapsed beyond all believable bounds and a resurgent Houston Astros team. The Mariners bellyflopped into the All-Star Break by losing three consecutive one-run games to the moribund Los Angeles Angels and have now eclipsed 1,000 team strikeouts before the season’s halfway point.
The Mariner’s +19 run differential is by far the lowest among any division leader, and despite being in first place for the bulk of the season’s halfway point, their playoff odds are now down to 57%, less than they were on an opening day, and lower than the odds of the Astros. Now, the Mariners find themselves in a position where they could be out of first place as soon as the end of the weekend as they play a critical three-game series against the Astros starting today.
The Mariners spent last offseason shuffling their roster to reduce the number of strikeouts. Instead, the team is on pace to shatter Major League records for the number of strikeouts in a season. To make matters worse, one of the players they jettisoned to cut down on those strikeouts, Teoscar Hernandez, started in the outfield for the National League All-Star Team on Tuesday night and won the Home Run Derby earlier in the week.
With their division lead shrinking by the day and their offense stuck in neutral, what can the Mariners do to shake up their fortunes before the July 30 trading deadline? They have three paths open to them.
- Hold on and Hope for the Best: Last month I recommended several levers the team could pull to try and improve without making a trade. They’ve already tried several of them with mixed results. If the team goes this route, they have two weeks to hope that backup catcher/designated hitter Mitch Garver, second baseman Jorge Polanco, first baseman Ty France, outfielder Mitch Haniger, and centerfielder Julio Rodriguez spent the all-star break figuring out what happened to them in the first half of discovering a way of making quick adjustments. Without any big moves, the team can let it ride right up to the deadline and then decide if the time has come to sell off pieces or if the ship has righted itself that no big changes are needed for the second half of the season.
- Push all the chips to the middle: Both General Manager Jerry DiPoto and Manager Scott Servais are on thin ice. After making the playoffs two years ago, they fell flat last year, and ownership has made clear the expectation that this year’s team is good enough to compete for the playoffs. If DiPoto is feeling the pressure, he may be inclined to leverage the team’s stocked farm system to try and add a high-profile bat. The problem is that such additions are few and far between this year. In the American League, maybe six or seven teams could be considered to be out of playoff contention, and some of those, like the Texas Rangers, don’t figure to be trading impact pieces in favor of simply trying again next year. In the National League, it’s even fewer, with only two or three teams being out of the playoff chase. It is definitely a seller’s market, and the cost of the pieces that are available figures to be high. The Mariners certainly have pieces, like No.1 prospect 2B Colt Young, No. 2 prospect C Harry Ford, and No. 3 prospect 2B Colt Emerson, to bid for impact bats, but improving in the present will mean mortgaging a significant part of the future.
- The future is now: Interestingly, many of the team’s top prospects all play positions where they could use help, and several of them are close to Major League ready. Emerson likely would not be ready until 2026 and is coming off a significant injury, however Young and Ford have torn through the minor leagues and have been wrecking AA pitching this year enroute to being named to the Futures All-Star Game. Both are young, with Young just 20 and Ford 21. However, neither has anything left to prove, and a promotion to Tacoma for both may be coming in short order. Interestingly, the Mariners may have telegraphed their intentions before the All-Star break, saying that Ford may be coming up sooner rather than later if he’s not part of a trade. Last week, he played his first professional game at left field, a move I recommended last month. You don’t move a player to a new position in the middle of the season without a reason, and it just so happens the team has a black hole in the outfield that needs to be filled but doesn’t need another catcher. If neither are traded, it would not be shocking to see Young and Ford promoted to Tacoma just after the trade deadline, with a potential callup to the big leagues shortly thereafter. The team’s No. 6 prospect, first baseman Tyler Locklear, is currently obliterating the ball in Tacoma after a brief call-up to Seattle in June.
The third route is possibly the most exciting for the Mariners. It involves the least risk of having a traded prospect turn into a superstar on another team while buying the team time to improve around the margins before the deadline. Certainly, Young, Ford, and Locklear could fall flat on their face being pushed up the majors … but so have literally every other player the team has put at the positions they would play. When all the team has left to power its playoff chase is hopes and dreams, what’s the harm in dreaming a little?
