On July 3rd, the Mariners stood at 55-31, a healthy 8 games ahead of the Oakland Athletics. Seattle’s +25 run differential (RD) up to this point put them on pace to be the luckiest team in baseball history according to Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan. After July 3rd, the Mariners went 34-42 with a RD of -59. Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics went a whopping 50-26 with a RD of +127 to run away with the second wild card, only to lose to the New York Yankees in a one game playoff.
Seattle’s second-half collapse resulted in a -34 RD on the season, good for 18th in the league yet somehow still good enough for an 89 win season. With the 2019 outlook for a playoff spot looking bleak, Jerry Dipoto decided that re-imaging the roster for a run at the playoffs in 2020-2021 would be Seattle’s best bet at ending the longest playoff drought in the 4 major professional sports. Dipoto’s goal is to bring a World Series championship to Seattle as soon as possible, and taking a step back in 2019 to take two steps forward in 2020-2021 is the goal. A problem with this strategy is that a weak farm system makes building for the near future difficult and accumulating depth nearly impossible. This leads to questions about whether a re-tooling would succeed or if a total rebuild is necessary.
Fangraphs placed a $ value on the top 800 prospects, from which they created a Farm System Ranking, to value each team’s farm system. The results following the 2018 season, ranked the Mariners dead last at $43M in value, less than 1/3rd of the value of the 24th ranked Colorado farm. For more perspective, Houston’s farm was valued at $212M, with Los Angeles, Oakland, and Texas at $177M, $176M, and $171M respectively. Of course, the James Paxton trade bumps the value of the farm significantly (around $35M), but it still only puts them $1M ahead of the 29th ranked Orioles, and still $90M short of the middle of the pack.
Seattle of course still has trade chips to push them up the farm system spectrum, but how far will that get them? Few trade chips exist as Leake, Gordon, Cano and Seager either have negative value based on contract or will bring back nothing of significance in a trade. Jean Segura obviously has value, as does Edwin Diaz if Seattle is willing to deal him. A Haniger or Gonzales trade seems unlikely, which leaves Alex Colome and perhaps James Pazos, Ben Gamel and Ryon Healy as other trade chips.
Let’s take a look at what a 2020-’21 depth chart could look like:
Catcher: David Freitas is nothing more than a backup catcher and Seattle will need to add a starter, whether that be through free agency or the trade route which seems more likely. The organization has little to no depth at this position. The future of this position is very much to be determined.
Infield: At 1B, Seattle has Ryon Healy and Dan Vogelbach, who are anything but stable options at the postions. Recently DFA’d 1B C.J. Cron would be a big upgrade, albeit at a higher price than what Seattle has in-house. Prospect Evan White should be ready around late-2020 and should push for a starting role. Robinson Cano will be a productive, but expensive player at 2B, but questions remain about whether he will need to DH or move to 1B in the future. If they plan on keeping Dee Gordon, he can be an option at 2B. Jean Segura, if he isn’t traded, has tremendous value on a team-friendly deal at SS. At 3B, who knows how good an expensive Kyle Seager will be in his age 32-33 seasons. He is untradeable unless Seattle eats a big chunk of his contract, and even then wouldn’t fetch anything of note in a trade.
Outfield: Haniger has firmly entrenched himself as the right-fielder of the future in RF. Mallex Smith is a solid option in center, and Kyle Lewis could perhaps be the answer in left, but is far from a sure thing. Braden Bishop and Ben Gamel are more likely to be depth pieces than starters, and there is always the possibility that Evan White moves back into the OF.
DH: Cano will likely fill in here, as could Vogelbach. Maybe Seattle brings someone in to fill the position, but it seems more likely that they rotate Cano in and out of the position and don’t have a set
Starting Pitching: Newly acquired Justus Sheffield and Marco Gonzales headline a future rotation, but outside of those two the rotation is murky at best. The farm system has few options, first round pick Logan Gilbert could be ready for big league action around 2021, and will get his first action in pro-ball in 2019. Rookie-level prospect Sam Carlson won’t even pitch until 2020 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and won’t be an option until much later. Erik Swanson, acquired in the Paxton trade, could be a #4-5 starter, but is more likely to end up in the bullpen. The Seattle farm system is very hitter heavy with just 4 starting pitchers in their top 20 according to mlb.com. Clearly, this will need to be a target for Dipoto in future trades in re-imagining the roster. Looking at the veterans, Felix Hernandez is unlikely to be part of the picture and Mike Leake will likely be traded (maybe even before I finish writing this). That leaves Wade LeBlanc, who is likely to be nothing more than a #5/swingman type in his age 35-36 seasons. Adding rotation pieces and depth to Sheffield and Gonzales to build a contending team that can compete with Houston will be a tough task for Dipoto to meet by ‘20 or even ’21.
Bullpen: Edwin Diaz will undoubtedly be the team’s closer until further notice. Bullpens are incredibly difficult to project due to their volatility, but the Mariners do have options. Prospects Matt Festa, Wyatt Mills, Art Warren, Nick Rumbelow and Joey Gerber could factor into the bullpen picture. James Pazos, Sam Tuivailala should be part of the ‘pen and Chasen Bradford and Shawn Armstrong also deserve mention.
The Mariners projected depth chart for 2020-’21 has more questions than answers right now, and no apparent depth outside of the bullpen and maybe the outfield. The lineup has some serious question marks, most notably at Catcher, 1B, LF and DH- unless they opt to keep Gordon and Cano. Meanwhile the rotation has no clear options outside of Gonzales and Sheffield. Unless Seattle plans on spending heavily in free agency, I just can’t see how trading the remaining chips: Segura, Colome, Gordon, Leake, and even Edwin Diaz would fill these holes, and that doesn’t even address the question of depth. Of those players, Segura and Diaz are really the only guys that have trade value of significance, and trading them would create a need at their current roles.
Trading Segura, Colome, and Diaz would go a long way in improving the farm, but that wouldn’t make up the $90M excess value needed to create an average farm. Even if those trades happened, that would leave the core for 2020 to be Haniger, Gonzales, Cano, Mallex Smith, whomever we acquire via free agency, and then our still below average farm system. This is still a far cry from the Astros’ quality farm system, and core of guys like Correa, Altuve, Bregman and Springer.
It stands to reason that given our farm system is around $90-100M behind Oakland, Texas, and Los Angeles, and $134M behind Houston, Seattle should be aiming at a competitive window later than the 2020-’21 range given by Dipoto. Dealing Paxton brought back roughly $35M in farm value, so dealing Haniger, Segura, and Diaz would undoubtedly put us ahead of TEX, OAK, and LAA, but still behind HOU while degrading the core pieces to just Gonzales, Cano and Smith. Before we can build a contender, we need to build a strong farm. Just look at how much prospect value teams like San Diego ($458), Atlanta ($405), CWS ($369), Toronto ($298), Cincinnati ($256), Detroit ($250) have accumulated in their rebuilds compared to Seattle’s present value of $78. If Seattle chooses not to go this route, they are setting themselves up to be playing .500 baseball in the future and delaying the inevitable drop-off.