Mariners Send Anthony Swarzak to Atlanta

Never one to wait, Jerry Dipoto struck hard and fast this morning:

Anthony Swarzak’s time in Seattle is an easy, but painful, story to tell: nothing short of disastrous, he retained his strikeout ability but failed to do, well, anything else very good at all, as his walk problem got worse, he gave up a ton of loud contact, and he ends his time in Seattle with an 8.07 FIP (!!) and -0.7 fWAR in 13.2 IP. Let’s move on quickly from that, like Jerry Dipoto did.

The return? Well, it’s honestly probably more than you’d expect, given everything I just wrote up there and the fact that Swarzak is owed $7mm United States dollars for this season’s performance.

Jesse Biddle

Biddle is a former first-rounder who’s performed in the minors pretty well but has seen all sorts of bad luck as well, from the expected (Tommy John surgery) to the straight-out-of-the-OOTP-files (hit in the head by a tennis-ball sized chunk of hail and suffered a concussion). His four-pitch mix—fastball, curve, slider, change—was beset by command difficulties and after an up and down 75.1 IP in Atlanta over two seasons, he’s a prime change-of-scenery candidate for the M’s to try to squeeze value from.

Arodys Vizcaíno

Vizcaíno is also a former top prospect, but as a free agent at the end of this year, combined with the fact that he’s out for the year after labrum surgery, he doesn’t look like anything other than a salary throw-in from the M’s perspective. When healthy, he’s been an effective but slightly wild reliever for Atlanta. His fastball sits in the high 90s with a curve/change combo in the mid to upper 80s.

Cash

Per Ken Rosenthal, this is just an even money deal.