The Winter Meetings are underway, and Jerry Dipoto just won’t stop trading players. On the very first day of the meetings, the Seattle general manager filled the Hisashi Iwakuma-shaped hole left in the rotation by trading Roenis Elias and Carson Smith to Boston for pitchers Wade Miley and Jonathan Aro. I imagined Jerry Dipoto staring at a twitter feed full of angered Mariners fans and yelling, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”
As you’ve likely heard by now, Iwakuma signed a three-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Mariner’s fans everywhere lost their minds about it. In the end, it reportedly came down to Iwakuma wanting the third year included and the Mariners wanting to stick at two years. I liked Kuma a lot, and with his skill set being that of a control and finesse pitcher, he shouldn’t be as affected by age as a pitcher who’s dependent on being able to reach back and find 95 mph stuff when he needs it. He will be missed.
Jerry Dipoto stuck to his guns though and I’m inclined to agree with him that giving three years to a player who has missed so much time with injuries over the last two seasons would be a risky move. It quickly became apparent, though, that Dipoto can find quality pitching elsewhere.
Wade Miley is under contract for the next two seasons with a club option for a third year. He’ll be paid $6 million in 2016 and $8.75 million in 2017. The 2018 club option is for $12 million. If they had signed Iwakuma they would have had to pay him around $45 million over the next three seasons. If Miley’s option gets picked up, his contract will max out at $26.75 over that same period of time.
Wade Miley is 29 years old, left handed, consistently throws around 200 innings per year, strikes-out three times as many batters as he walks and has put up decent, but not great numbers, at the hitter-friendly Fenway Park. In a small sample size too small to rely on at Safeco Field, he’s pitched very well.
While Iwakuma almost never allows a walk, he also managed to pitch only 129 innings last year.
A lot baseball fans around the internet have been framing this trade a big win for the Red Sox, and I think they came out with what they needed, but I also believe this was a good trade for everyone involved.
The Red Sox signed David Price before the Winter Meetings got underway, leaving them with an over-crowded starting rotation and a much lighter wallet. They needed to move a pitcher, and preferably get out from underneath a contract in the process.
The Mariners needed to find a veteran pitcher to add to their young and somewhat unproven pitching staff, and after losing out on Kuma, had a little money lying around to put toward that cause.
As we know, Boston’s pitching staff is crowded, so they’ll have zero interest in adding Roenis Elias to their rotation. He’ll either be in their bullpen or starting in AAA. Carson Smith is a fantastic, young, contract-controllable pitcher and is the reason some would have you believe that the Mariners lost out on this trade, but I think that’s missing the point.
The M’s basically filled their biggest need by giving up two bullpen pieces. Good arms? Sure. But at the end of the day, that’s an area of the team you can keep working on thru the offseason and even into spring training.
Bullpens are a tricky thing. Sometimes a team’s bullpen will be great one year, then the same group of pitchers can be absolutely terrible the next. It’s such a delicate puzzle, finding the right mix of young talent, crafty veterans, lefties, righties and the kind of guts it takes to come into a tie game in the eighth or ninth inning and shut down the best hitters on the opposing team.
Most teams go into the regular season feeling pretty good about their bullpen, and yet any one of those teams could be scrambling to replace half of their relievers by the beginning of May.
Dipoto has said he’s done adding any starting pitching of note, though a few minor league contracts or invites to spring training are likely. But for all intents… here’s your 2016 Opening Day rotation.
Felix Hernandez
Taijuan Walker
James Paxton
Nathan Karns
Wade Miley
Here is the some in-house options for their Opening Day bullpen.
Joaquin Benoit – RH
Charlie Furbush – LH
Anthony Bass – RH
Justin De Fratus – RH
Tyler Olsen – LH
Tony Zych – RH
Jonathan Aro – RH
Mike Montgomery – LH
Vidal Nuno – LH
I’ve left off a couple of names, but I wanted to illustrate that while Mariners bullpen certainly will need an addition or two, it’s not exactly like there’s no talent there. We gave up two relievers today for a starter and a reliever. Carson Smith might turn out to be a dominant closer in the AL east for years to come, but so might Tony Zych. Relief pitching really is incredibly hard to predict, and I can promise you that of the players in our bullpen on opening day, many will not be there come season’s end.
It always baffles me a bit when fans are shocked that the team they root for has to give up good players to get good players. It’s as if they were hoping Jerry Dipoto would call another team and say, “Hey, I heard that you’re willing to part with one of your starting pitchers. Can we like, just have him?”
A good trade isn’t reflected by one team getting fleeced and the other walking away the victor. In that scenario, you’ve just created a bad relationship with another team whose decision-makers now don’t trust you and will be suspicious of working with you in the future. That’s just bad business.
A good trade should be mutually beneficial, and I think this was a good trade.
Fear not, though, if you think Jerry Dipoto is done making moves. The Mariners still have work to do, as there is a big empty spot in this team’s line up. So, Mr. Dipoto, I pose to you one of the most storied questions in sports. Who’s on first?
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