Seattle Mariners Trade Partners
by Jeff Sullivan on Jan 31, 2012 9:32 PM PST
in Seattle Mariners History
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PrintI'm going to tell you a little story. It is a little story about how much I love Baseball-Reference. Not long ago, I was screwing around on Baseball-Reference. Ms. Jeff and I had plans. I got a call from Ms. Jeff, saying she would be later than anticipated. I was happy, because I got to screw around on Baseball-Reference for longer. That is how much I love Baseball-Reference.
Baseball-Reference has this tool. It actually has a zillion tools, but it has this one particular tool that allows you to look at all the trades ever made between two teams. You can play around with it here. I'd seen it before, but not for a while, and I was re-introduced to it today. It is an excellent tool, and pasted below is a table in descending order of how often the Mariners have traded with each other team since they came into existence. I believe it only tracks Major League trades, but we only really care about Major League trades. Off we go!
| TEAM | MOVES |
| Indians | 17 |
| Padres | 17 |
| Tigers | 16 |
| Mets | 16 |
| Pirates | 16 |
| Red Sox |
14 |
| Yankees | 13 |
| Twins | 13 |
| Phillies | 12 |
| Royals | 11 |
| Rangers | 11 |
| Nationals | 11 |
| Astros | 11 |
| Giants | 11 |
| Reds | 10 |
| Dodgers | 10 |
| White Sox | 9 |
| Braves | 9 |
| Cubs | 9 |
| Blue Jays | 7 |
| Orioles | 7 |
| A's | 7 |
| Rockies | 6 |
| Brewers | 6 |
| Rays | 5 |
| Marlins | 4 |
| Cardinals | 4 |
| Angels | 3 |
| Diamondbacks | 2 |
It's hardly a surprise to see the Padres at the top. There was a phase where it felt like the Mariners only ever traded with the Padres, and they made a new trade every month. The Padres are tied with the Indians, which is a little more of a surprise, but still not a big surprise. One of those trades brought the Mariners Jason Davis. Remember Jason Davis? I do, now.
Thanks to this exercise, I learned about the following pair of transactions:
June 27, 1993
Mariners trade Jeff Darwin and Henry Cotto to Marlins for Dave Magadan
November 9, 1993
Mariners trade Dave Magadan to Marlins for Jeff Darwin and cash
And that's how you turn Henry Cotto into cash.
The Diamondbacks are at the bottom. One reason that the Diamondbacks are at the bottom is because they just haven't been around that long. But then, the Mariners have swung five trades with the Rays. The last move the Mariners made with the Diamondbacks was dealing Ryan Langerhans for cash considerations. Before that, the only other move the Mariners have made with the Diamondbacks was dealing Greg Colbrunn and cash for Quinton McCracken. The Mariners gave up a first-round draft pick to sign Greg Colbrunn. Greg Colbrunn was a 33-year-old bench bat. The Mariners signed him when they already had John Olerud and Edgar Martinez.
Finally, the team the Mariners have gone the longest without trading with is the Angels. The Mariners have made a trade with every other team at least once since 2006. The haven't made a trade with the Angels since March 25, 1996, when they acquired Ricky Jordan for cash considerations. Jordan was a roster casualty in spring training. He was sent to the Mariners by general manager Bill Bavasi. He would bat 31 times with the Mariners, providing seven hits and a walk. He would never play in the Majors again.
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The first thing that came to mind
when I saw the Indians was the two separate trades for their DH platoon. Then Guti. Good thing we got Guti.
Mike Leach + Marquess Wilson = Heisman
And cash.
Never forget the cash. It’s what allowed them to sign Greg Hibbard!
I don’t know if I hated the 94 or the 96 preseason more.
--------------------------------
Just North of Wrigley Field
by jameslcrockett on Jan 31, 2012 10:05 PM PST up reply actions
But no Grady Sizemore.
Don’t tell me I am irrational! Dont remind me he was a free agent and went back to Cleveland.
Considering all my favorite players are injury risks, I just want Grady to be on the DL for Seattle dangit…
by John Parish on Jan 31, 2012 10:03 PM PST up reply actions
How many Henry Cotto Marlin's exist?
Probably just one.
by Eric Wedge's Mustache on Feb 3, 2012 8:58 PM PST up reply actions
For a time, we were quite miffed about signing Colbrunn when the compensation pick was used to select Conor Jackson.
Conor Jackson hasn’t been relevant since 2008. But as an alternative, we could have had Chad Cordero (oh wait we did), David Aardsma (check), Brandon Wood (mentioned purely for the laughs), Daric Barton, Carlos Quentin, Jarrod Saltalamacchia…
What I’m trying to say is that if the Mariners knew who all the best players in the draft would be and then selected them, we would have won a World Series by now.
I still can't believe how many draft picks we gave up during the last few years Gillick was the GM.
I don’t take much stock in the “we could have drafted ____” meme, but the team did give up a lot of picks and the picks they did have in the later Gillick/early Bavasi years seemed to miss a lot. I don’t know if it was scouting, not looking at the right numbers or just bad luck.
A combination of factors.
It didn’t help that we were losing a lot of picks each year because part of the Gillick model was Free Agents > draft picks, but we were making a killing on the international market at the time. The model we implemented for the draft seemed to be a whole lot of pinning our hopes on athleticism for hitters and pitchability for pitchers (god that sounds dumb) in the hopes that the potential boom on return would yield something. It didn’t, because it neglected skills from the hitting end of things and talent from the pitching end, but that was just how things seemed to go.
In some cases, I would say that it ended up being a lot worse in practice due to factors that were largely outside of our control. If we had signed John Mayberry Jr., that might have been something. If we had been able to get Clint Nageotte to throw his slider less often than nine times out of every ten pitches, that would have been something. If Rett Johnson’s conditioning hadn’t fallen apart on a level rarely seen in professional sports, that might have been something. If Casey Craig hadn’t been such a jackass, that might’ve been something. If Jeff Flaig hadn’t completely screwed up his shoulder to the point where he couldn’t really hit for power anymore, that might have been something. Granted, we did trade the good players from that era (Choo, Soriano, Asdrubal Cabrera, Adam Jones), but that was a good number of things to screw up in there.
That’s actually just the Gillick era for draft picks. If we’re going into the Bavasi years, I could talk about stuff like Jermaine Brock squandering his signing bonus, or us not signing Arencibia and Hagadone, or how Jeff Clement was one of the worst picks of the first round in 2005 (haha Garrett Olson was still worse). I could go on, but we all know that.
I've always thought that it wasn't just Bavasi's time that Z had to correct but later Gillick as well.
I mean, holy shit that’s a lot of things to go wrong starting in 2000 to attribute to bad luck.
Drafting Michael Garciaparra to play baseball instead of soccer was more idiocy than bad luck.
I mostly isolated the cases in which we had players that showed the potential for baseball competence which were then derailed for whatever reason. That’s not something that includes drafting two-sport players for their inferior sport, or spending high picks on guys like Lazaro Abreau and Tim Merritt, or any number of other inexplicable overdrafts. I’m just pointing out that there were a few isolated instances in which there could have been some good that could have come of it and it very clearly didn’t. I could add to that the weird little blips like Aaron Jensen, who was very well regarded as a prep player and just never amounted to much of anything.
I'd expect a certain level of attrition through injuries or just unfullfilled promise, but the front office actions puzzle me.
This might be simplistic, so correct me if I’m totally wrong, but….
It sounds like the front offices were somewhat stacking the deck against any internal development through a lack of draft picks, poorly placed priorities (i.e. what you mentioned about athletic hitters and pitchability) and with trading away the few guys who did start to show some promise. I know that draft picks and younger players are more highly valued now then they were even 10 years ago, so it’s not like the Mariners were the only team to operate like that. When you look back at the last 10 years it wasn’t ownership’s lack of will to win or that “they always get better”, but rather a series of transactions that might have kinda been defensible at the time but when looked at in total make it a wonder the team wasn’t in a bigger hole. It makes me appreciate the methods and process (no strike that, I’ve heard enough about the process here the last couple years) of Z that much more.
You have to be careful there.
Because the few players the Gillick front office developed successfully, the Bavasi office traded, often in short-sighted moves. Conflating the two as a unified whole creates some scary logical issues. Fontaine also had a completely different draft method, which while overrated was at least somewhat better than what had been the case when Mattox was at the helm.
The basics are that Gillick was in a win-now mode, which could work so long as the acquisitions were good and not entering decline. If it sacrificed draft picks, it was no big loss to him. Bavasi entered with a decent farm system, more due to international acquisitions than drafting, and followed bad drafts with mediocre ones while trading away what little showed process in exchange for short-term solutions. The long run was not something of great concern to either, Gillick because he expected to win and get out as was his tendency, Bavasi because of the much talked about “hot seat.” I don’t know that it was the perfect storm to send the farm system into the pit for a few years, but it was a pretty good storm at the very least.
Good point.
I didn’t mean to make it sound like Gillick and Bavasi ran identical front offices. However, I’m wondering if the win now method had worked so well for Gillick the ownership group wanted to maintain that philosophy with Bavasi figuring why change a method that had brought so much success. I think the team crashing down to earth in 2004 should have been a signal to rebuild with the talent in the farm, but the win now philosophy forced Bavasi into trades and some (not all!) regretable signings leading to what seemed like an annual hot seat. Win now clearly wasn’t Bavasi’s strength and that was what he was being asked to do. Based on comments from Bavasi after he left, it sounded like he wanted to rebuild, but was told otherwise. I don’t want this to sound like an indictment on Lincoln/Armstrong, because they obviously recognized where they went wrong and here we are with Z. I guess it’s all a moot point now. The 2012 Mariners are who they are and I think the organization at this point has Z’s stamp on it, which is a good thing.
That bit is a little hazy.
Whether Bavasi actually wanted to rebuild or not, I don’t really remember that part of the discussion. Even if it were, I don’t know that he really had the track record to stand on that argument as he presumably had some rebuilding leeway on entering and didn’t capitalize on it (though I don’t think any of us could have predicted the exact degree of Clement’s bust as a prospect).
What I do know is that Zduriencik tried to sell them on the idea of rebuilding, got the job, and had a track record that suggested that he could manage a rebuild.
by JY on Feb 1, 2012 12:23 AM PST up reply actions
I remember reading it after Bavasi left.
I found this from the PI. He doesn’t go into great detail, so I guess I was making an assumption which was wrong, so apologies there.
I am glad the team has finally embraced a rebuild (and even openly used the word on the record!) and that ownership seems to have Z’s back and the willingness to see it out.
It depends partially on what you mean by rebuilding.
I do remember the whole “no five-year plans” thing though.
by JY on Feb 1, 2012 12:45 AM PST up reply actions
I saw Conor Jackson play in A-ball
I always love seeing guys I saw in the low minors make it to the Major Leagues. The best player I saw at that level was probably either Ted Lilly or Dan Uggla.
Potential B-R fallibility alert
I went looking for the Lou Pinella (Antonio Perez) for Randy Winn trade, and they have Chin-lung Hu as one of the six Tampa Bay-Seattle transactions. I’m no sabermagician but that doesn’t add up right.
We may not trade with the Angels
But we sure as hell covet their players. And look how well they’ve turned out for us!
Hahaha remember when Matt White fell off the mound the first time he pitched for us in 2003?
Determined, Jonesing Commentor
I think the blogosphere totally missed the Koplove/Benitez trade with the Pirates when it happened
I just assumed Koplove was a minor league free agent
Determined, Jonesing Commentor
Ricky Jordan just goes to show you
that Bavasi was screwing the M’s even before they hired him.
by Bald Eagle 1313 on Jan 31, 2012 11:11 PM PST reply actions
Mariners Baseball
Getting screwed by Bill Bavasi since 1996.
Dave Magadan seemed like a good hitter to me for a while,
though not in Seattle.
Now he passes on whatever passes for his wisdom as the Red Sox hitting coach. A life in baseball. There are worse fields of endeavor. Like waste management… though I don’t know.
ignacio
Baseball Reference is amazing. I love the oracle that links players.
Apparently Jack Cust is the last link in the chain between Old Hoss Radburn and Dustin Ackley.
There's a Ms. Jeff?
She must be a saint.
"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring". ~Rogers Hornsby
In the world of trades, what's the difference between 'cash' and 'cash considerations'?
“Yeah, I’ll give you some money” vs. “I’ll think about giving you some money later”?
Who am I confusing for Greg Colbrunn?
I thought Colbrunn had a short stretch for the Mariners when he was just ridonkulously good (like, batting over .400 good) only to be DFA’d when someone who was terrible was coming back from injury. I pulled up Colbrunn’s baseball-reference page, and he was statistically pretty good in his short time as a Mariner, but I think I was thinking of someone whose numbers were even better over an even shorter period of time. My next guess was Joe Borchard but he was actually terrible and then some.
Ahhhh, this is gonna bug me, I know it. Unless I’m just remembering Colbrunn wrong.
I looked it up, but the overall numbers were pretty bad.
He was good early on. Then Hargrove refused to use him.
by JY on Feb 2, 2012 11:15 PM PST up reply actions
Aha, I think I figured it out
Greg Norton DFA’d in favor of Jeff Clement. He was hitting .438 at the time (only 6 games, though).
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