The Mariners are now in the midst of a full-scale rebuild, and former shortstop Jean Segura appears to be extremely excited to be on his way out of Seattle.
#Mariners are in agreement pending physical review to send Jean Segura to the #Phillies for Carlos Santana and J.P. Crawford. There will be other prospects involved. I believe @Ken_Rosenthal was 1st to say this was close to happening.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 3, 2018
Segura was officially traded to the Phillies on Monday, and he’s now on his way to a contender, which happens to be in the mix for both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. That’s a sizable upgrade over being stuck on a team that is parting ways with all its veteran talent and completely starting over, similar to what we’ve seen the Marlins and Royals do recently.
And Segura seems to be aware of the opportunity he’s been presented with. It’s almost as good of an opportunity as being able to buy wholesale college baseball jerseys. Check out how excited he was in reacting to the trade during a recent Instagram live stream.
Jean Segura looks pretty excited to be leaving Seattle for Philadelphia pic.twitter.com/ssOrTGLy9q
— Kyle Bennett (@KBizzl311) December 3, 2018
Segura, who has four years and $58 million remaining on his contract, will be an immediate upgrade for the Phillies in a number of ways. One of the first things that comes to find is his offensive ability, which includes being difficult to strike out.
Although the 28-year-old has never struck out much over the years (his career-worst strikeout rate was 15.9% in 2015), he took it to another level for Seattle last year. In what ended up being a 3.8-fWAR performance, Segura posted a .304/.341/.415 triple slash (111 wRC+) with a career-low 10.9% strikeout rate.
As NBC Sports’ D.J. Short notes, strikeouts were an issue for Philadelphia in 2018:
Jean Segura struck out in just 10.9 percent of his plate appearances last season. Only Victor Martinez, Michael Brantley, and Andrelton Simmons struck out less often among qualified hitters in 2018
The Phillies had the third-highest strikeout percentage among MLB teams in 2018
— D.J. Short (@djshort) December 3, 2018
The Athletic‘s Jayson Stark takes the same approach to display Segura’s aptitude for putting his bat on the ball by looking at counting stats.
Hitters with 600+ PA in 2018 & under 70 strikeouts:
Jean Segura 69 (632 PA)
Michael Brantley 60 (630 PA)
Andrelton Simmons 44 (600 PA)— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 3, 2018
Nice.
Through more than 1,200 innings at the position last year, Segura glove work was worth 5 Defensive Runs Saved.
What’s the most interesting of all is that while both of these organizations are heading in different directions, they’re each far from finished with executing their respective offseason plans.
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