Mariners Non-Tender Carlos Rivero

Tuesday at 9 pm pacific time was the deadline for teams to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players or let them become free agents. Seattle had six such players. The club tendered contracts to all six (Charlie Furbush, Austin Jackson, Dustin Ackley, Michael Saunders, Tom Wilhelmsen and Logan Morrison).

However, the club did non-tender the recently acquired Carlos Rivero. He was not yet arbitration-eligible.

Rivero was claimed off waivers from Boston on November 3rd. It was an interesting move at the time. We speculated that perhaps if Brad Miller or Chris Taylor were traded, Rivero would be used to motivate the other in Spring Training.

But now, Rivero is gone and the 40-man roster sits at 38 pending the Nelson Cruz signing. That indicates that there may be a plan to acquire one more free agent.

As for the tendered players, it should come as no surprise that they were all going to be offered contracts. The only question mark could have been Saunders, whom much has been made of as a trade chip of late.

In the end though, the Mariners either decided that it would be worth it to keep Saunders, or they are still planning on getting something for him.

We’ll get into some of the other non-tender moves across MLB as well as an interesting trade by the Dodgers that could have implications for Seattle, tomorrow.