It's not can Seattle be good, it's how good will they be

The Cincinnati Reds sold off to key contributors to their offence to Seattle, who now may be the team of the AL West.

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The Seattle Mariners were in a playoff fight last year. Their fans embraced it, putting a new meaning on the ‘believe’ sign from the hit show Ted Lasso. Naturally, any fan would believe for a team that hadn’t made the playoffs for 21 years, most of those campaigns lost and high draft picks were earned. That all paid off, and it seems to be culminating this year. Maybe the best prospect in all of baseball, Julio Rodriguez, will likely earn a call up this year, while a couple of other Seattle young guns in Jarred Kelenic and Kyle Lewis are so close to breaking out.

In the offseason, the Mariners cemented their status as a playoff contender by signing defending American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray to a five year, $125 million contract, keeping things good in their rotation. (Yusei Kikuchi recently left in free agency.) Now, Seattle needed to build a bit more on pitching while maintaining a lineup of big hitters. And not just hitters that are young and unpredictable.

They get that in a trade with the Cincinnati Reds, a club destined for the cellars of the National League Central. The Mariners get both Jesse Winker (OF) and Eugenio Suarez (IF) while Cincy received Justin Dunn (RHP), Jake Fraley (OF), Brandon Williamson (LHP), and a player to be named later. What’s crazy about this is that Williamson wasn’t one of the Mariners top five prospects, they traded none of their most coveted pieces, and still got two of the most consistent and best offensive players in the game in Suarez and Winker. The Reds are sellers. Let’s face it, owner Bob Castellini is bad for the game. He just doesn’t want to spend money and isn’t crazy about baseball as a result of that. No, he shouldn’t be the owner but he realised he can still make bank off the team due to it’s fabulous fan base. However, will they come to watch a subpar club?

Jesse Winker became one of the best offensive players in baseball in 2021. He’s also good at flips, evidence being this one in Milwaukee (Sam Greene/Imagn Content Services)

First of all, Winker. He blossomed into an All-Star in 2021. His wins above replacement went from 0.9 in the last full season, 2019, to be 2.7 in 2021. Sure, that’s not the largest number, but consider the jump, very few players can do that, but then again, he is now 28. Still very young, right now entering the prime of his career. Winker hit 24 home runs, which you may look at as not All-Star worthy, but he missed 52 games and those 24 home runs were often grouped into twos or threes at once. (Another reason his WAR is a little smaller, those taters weren’t spread out.) He had a .556 SLG and an OBP of .394. The one bad number of Winker’s 2021 is his strikeout rate of 15.5%, which comes when you swing for the fences, but it still is detractor.

It seems that teams are going after players who hit the ball hard. 47.5% of his hits had an EV of 95 or higher. It’ll be interesting to see how Winker does end up doing when hitting a ball to deep centre is three feet shorter for a home run. T-Mobile Park in Seattle is barely hitter friendly, since the dimensions are strange. (Not even the length to the foul poles are the same.

As for Suarez, he broke out with 49 home runs in 2019, and has definitely regressed. In 2021, he hit 31 dingers and 100 hits with a slash line of .198/.206./.328. It’s not the best numbers for someone who recently almost managed 50 home runs, especially the 170-strikeout part, but you shouldn’t be too worries, the AL West isn’t exactly a pitching hotbed right now. Suarez is an add-on piece in this, as it came out he was also going to Seattle after the deal was announced. If the Reds are tanking (yes they are), Suarez is a good drop off at $10 million. Mariners fans, meanwhile, should still be happy they got him.

As for the Reds, well as I said and will reiterate, Castellini is why the CBA took so long. You can tell he hates the game, since he refuses to spend money on it, thus gathering worse players, thus paying less, thus refusing to win for the baseball-mad city of Cincinnati. Since the Bengals made the Super Bowl, Castellini has real competition. But no, he trades some of his studs for a no. 7 prospect, a subpar pitcher, an unproductive outfielder, and someone who will likely be nothing. It’s no surprise players want to leave, and that’s quite sad for the reputation of the Reds. Castellini needs to wake up and realise that those fans will not give him money for a bad product. It’s time the Reds spend money. ‘Small market’ is no excuse anymore. There is quite literally nothing to talk about on the Reds side of this trade other than losing. It would be no shock if we saw reigning NL Rookie of the Year Jonathan India traded for a bad package.

If Carlos Correa does indeed leave Houston, the Mariners will be a popular pick for the AL West crown. If more pieces are traded, well, it’s hard to be worse than Pittsburgh, but the Reds might just do that. Two teams going in very different directions.