Between the end of the 2023 season and the beginning of the 2024 season, the Mariners parted ways with Jarred Kelenic, Evan White, Robbie Ray, Marco Gonzales, Anthony Desclafani, Jose Caballero, Tom Murphy, Eugenio Suarez, Teoscar Hernandez, Taylor Trammell, Justin Topa, Isaiah Campbell, Easton McGee and Prelander Berroa. That is...an awful lot of people. Many of which, including Kelenic, Suarez, Ray, White, Gonzales and Trammell, were at one point central to the development of the team.
And just for comparison's sake, the people they got in return for some of these guys? Jorge Polanco, Luke Raley, Luis Urias and Gregory Santos. Santos is currently injured, and the other three have a combined 8 hits and 2 RBIs in 49 at-bats. Meanwhile, some of those other guys are doing pretty well at the moment.
I sort of get the mentality. The Mariners were trying to copy the tactics of one of their trade partners, the Atlanta Braves, who began the offseason by offloading a ton of players they felt would have no chance of starting this year, and just getting smaller pieces in return. This works for the Braves because they have an excellent GM who knows what he's doing. The Mariners don't really have that right now. And as sneaky as they want to be getting Jorge Polanco with about a month to go before the opener, that means that Polanco has less time to gel with the rest of the infield and runs the risk of getting off to a slow start...which he has.
And with three straight years of the Mariners dealing for a solid hitting second baseman and said player just not working in Seattle, I'm beginning to think that position is cursed. I used to think that about the backstop, but now we have Cal Raleigh turning things around. Neither Adam Frazier nor Kolten Wong were able to continue their momentum in Seattle, and now we know that at the very least Frazier can still perform above replacement level for other teams. So Polanco, who at the very least has been around 10 years and is just now playing for a new team, is in danger of being the latest great 2nd baseman to fall victim to this curse. I'd feel worse for him if he hadn't gotten busted for PEDs a while back.
The Mariners themselves are doing...fine, I suppose? France and Haniger are power-hitting, the pitchers are still good despite giving up too many runs, it's a cohesive enough group. But they split a series with a decent enough Red Sox team and got run over by a very good Guardians team. And the only reason they're in third is because the Yankees took 4 from Houston before they had a chance to process their emotions properly. Considering everybody that left this team, the Mariners should be feeling more refined and confident than they are right now.
It would be nice if this team got something together, but I fear their offseason moves sped up the process of peaking too much.
Coming Tomorrow- The inverse of this is a team that responds to success by keeping as many of the people involved around as humanly possible, because maybe if you do re-sign them they'll hit 3 home runs for you in as many games to start the season.
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