Waiver Deadline: Early M’s Trade Possibilities

The Mariners may have added a couple of pieces to bolster the roster on Thursday, but that certainly doesn’t mean that Jack Zduriencik is done dealing.

Though a deal before the waiver deadline will be harder to finalize with plenty of teams below Seattle in the standings who could make a claim first, already a few intriguing names have hit revocable waivers.

While the Austin Jackson acquisition takes Texas’ Alex Rios off most Seattle fans’ wish lists, another division opponent may be willing to part with a player in a position of need for Seattle.

Oakland, apparently not certain that they are done making moves, put new acquisition Jason Hammel on waivers. After going to the A’s as the second piece in the Jeff Samardzija deal, he is 0-4 with a 9.53 ERA.

Now that Billy Beane has splurged on Jon Lester, Hammel has become expendable, and though a deal isn’t likely, we’ve seen stranger things out of the Oakland camp just this past week.

In addition to that fact that inter-division trades between contenders almost never happen, the Athletics probably will want an offensive piece in any trade, so the risk would not make sense on any level for Seattle.

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A starter who Seattle could very well target, however, is Wade Miley. Arizona put their 27-year old pitcher on waiver at around the same time as Hammel, and while 2014 has been a regression from the previous two years, Miley has a 4.14 ERA and a sub-4.00 FIP.

He would fit in well as a back-end starting candidate should Seattle have the chance to deal him.

Even better, Miley would only be eligible for his first year of arbitration after the season, so the Mariners could, if they so chose, keep him around at a reasonably low cost.

Again, the probability of him acutally going somewhere else is small, but Arizona already showed other clubs at the non-waiver Deadline that they are willing to give away major-league talent for mediocre returns. At the very least, Miley is worth a wavier claim.

Finally, Ruben Amaro seems to have finally decided that indecision was in fact not the best decision for Philadelphia and started the waiver process on about half of his 25-man roster.

While the exorbitant contracts given to many Phillies such as Ryan Howard will continue to seriously inhibit trade talks, two players of interest to Seattle might be Jimmy Rollins and A.J. Burnett.

While Rollins’ 2015 vesting option did kick in recently, at only $11M he would be a reasonably priced veteran who at least would hit better than Brad Miller if Chris Taylor is not yet ready to take over full-time at shortstop.

Burnett is more difficult to gauge money-wise. He has a $15M mutual option ($1M buyout) for next year that you would expect almost every team to decline given his 4.16 ERA, but he can trigger a sliding player option (now at reportedly $8.5M) if the first is not picked up.

This in addition to a limited no-trade clause makes me question whether Mariners’ management would be willing to pull the trigger with all this uncertainty about his salary next year.

This is just a start to the second round of madness, as we can expect new names to continually go through the August rumor mill as more teams see the writing on the wall for this year and do like Tampa Bay.

Stay locked in with the latest Mariners’ trade rumors right here at SoDo Mojo.