Mlbtr
Mariners’ Offseason Trade Acquisitions Off To Slow Starts
May 11th, 2023 at 3:20pm CST • By Anthony Franco
The Mariners mostly shied away from the free agent market on the heels of their drought-ending playoff berth. Instead, Seattle turned to trade to add to a lineup that had been a bit top-heavy in 2022. Their two most notable transactions took place within the first few weeks of the offseason: reliever Erik Swanson and pitching prospect Adam Macko were shipped to Toronto for slugger Teoscar Hernández, while the M’s dealt Jesse Winker and Abraham Toro to the Brewers for second baseman Kolten Wong.
Both Hernández and Wong are in their final seasons before free agency. Milwaukee had exercised a $10MM club option on Wong before trading him in what amounted to a roughly cash-neutral deal considering they took back Winker’s salary. Seattle took on a decent chunk of 2023 money to accommodate Hernández, who’d earn $14MM for his final season of arbitration eligibility (compared to the $1.25MM Swanson is making in his first of three arbitration years).
Hernández, in particular, could eventually net the club a compensatory draft choice by rejecting a qualifying offer and signing elsewhere next offseason. Yet both trades were primarily about bolstering the lineup in 2023 while avoiding the longer-term downside associated with a multi-year free agent deal.
To this point, neither player has met Seattle’s expectations. Hernández is sitting on a .215/.260/.396 batting line over 154 plate appearances. That’s nowhere close to the .283/.333/.519 line he’d compiled between 2020-22 to pick up a pair of Silver Slugger awards and down-ballot MVP finishes. His raw slash stats always seemed likely to dip somewhat with the move from Rogers Centre to T-Mobile Park. This has been a far more significant drop-off than is solely attributable to park factors and Hernández is performing worse on the road than he is in Seattle.
Hernández has popped seven home runs, putting him on a 27-homer pace over 600 plate appearances. He’s still barreling the ball up and making hard contact when he puts the ball in play. The middle-of-the-order form he’d shown for years in Toronto still looks to be there. Yet his plate discipline has been rough thus far, resulting in a career-worst 3.2% walk rate and a massive 35.1% strikeout percentage.