Mariners Acquire 3B Jack Hannahan From A’s; Brandon Morrow to AAA

General manager Jack Zduriencik continued with his method of slowly improving the team today, sending double A pitcher Justin Souza to the Oakland Athletics for left handed hitting third baseman Jack Hannahan.

Hannahan isn’t much of a hitter, but he’s a rock defensively, and he hits left handed, which is something. With the recent acquisition of Daniel Cortes, our farm system could afford losing Justin Souza.

Jack Hannahan may not be our long term thid baseman, but he is a significant improvement over Chris Woodward, both offensively and defensively, and is really a better option than anything else we have.

He is also a very patient hitter, averaging four pitches per at bat in both his minor and major league career, and he has a nice 17% line drive rate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make a whole lot of contact, and has a very low BABIP of .268.

Since we only gave up a double A pitcher, we certainly still have the pieces necessary to make more trades. We still need a shortstop, and it would be nice if we could acquire a bigger improvement at third base – maybe a Garrett Atkins or a Kevin Kouzmanoff. I have heard a little bit about the Rockies being interested in Miguel Batista. Hannahan will be in uniform and with the big league club for tonight’s game.

The other big news of the day was Brandon Morrow being sent down to Tacoma. According to Mariners skipper Don Wakamatsu, this move was made so that Morrow could work more on his secondary pitches, and continue to work on pitch efficiency.

It looks as though Garrett Olson will slide back into the rotation in Morrow’s place, which is too bad, because Olson has looked significantly better out of the pen. I would have preferred to see Ryan Rowland-Smith get the call up.

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