Seattle Mariners: Offseason Trade Grades, Part 1

No team has been busier than the Seattle Mariners this offseason, and for good reason. You can’t rebuild with a ton of dead weight tugging at your ankles, and the M’s have successfully shed some the past month.

It’s been a bittersweet Winter to say the least. Aside from the joy and excitement brought by the Mariners finally acknowledging their place as a middle-of-the-road organization and putting a plan in place to ascend that, fans of the team have had to witness many of their favorite players head off elsewhere.

It’s a tough pill to swallow having to witness the departures of Robinson Canó and Edwin Díaz, but ripping off the band-aid is never painless. It makes it even harder considering this team’s history, especially when they were on the brink of ending the longest playoff drought in major professional sports.

For better or worse, this offseason has stung in ways while delivering hope in others. Some trades have hurt more than others, and some have been absolute home runs on paper.

Today, we’re going to look at the first half of deals made by Jerry Dipoto and company this offseason, grading them individually. Later on in the week, we’ll take a look at the latter half of deals, including the most recent Edwin Encarnación for Carlos Santana swap.

Per tradition, the first trade of the Mariners’ offseason involved the Tampa Bay Rays. In it, Seattle shipped 2012 first-round pick Mike Zunino, outfielder Guillermo Heredia, and pitching prospect Michael Plassmeyer to Tampa Bay for outfielders Mallex Smith and Jake Fraley.

Coming off yet another disappointing season, Zunino is entering his third year of arbitration and did not fit the Mariners’ window of contention. While Zunino established himself as a defensive wizard behind the plate, his consistent poor performance at the plate was just too much to withstand.

While the Rays appear more as the buyers in this deal, Smith is definitely the best player switching hands, at least on paper. With four years left of club control at just 25-years-old, Smith is an impressive commodity that could stick in Seattle for quite some time or be flipped for better value down the road.

Grade: B+

With just two years left on his contract, James Paxton was no longer a fit for the direction the Mariners are going in. As the offseason started to kick into high gear, rumors swirled around Paxton for a good week or so before the Mariners finally pulled the trigger and executed a deal centered around the 30-year-old Canadian southpaw with the New York Yankees.

Paxton, coming off a season in which he accrued a 3.8 fWAR in 160.1 innings, headlined a depleted Mariners rotation for the past two seasons and now slots right in the middle of a World Series contender. Perhaps the biggest winner of the deal is Paxton himself, being given the opportunity to pitch for a championship-caliber club rather than carrying the complete weight of a rotation.

As for the Mariners, they received one of the best pitching prospects in baseball with Justus Sheffield, who immediately comes in as the top prospect in their farm system. Sheffield may never reach the ace status that Paxton held in his time in Seattle, but could be a solid secondary or tertiary option in Seattle’s rotation for years to come.

The M’s also added right-handed pitching prospect Erik Swanson, who fits the Trevor Cahill mold of an above-average fourth or fifth starter, while also posing the potential as a late-inning reliever. Dom Thompson-Williams is an interesting piece, developing a significant amount of power last year to complement his above average glove in the outfield.

However, the additions of Swanson and Thompson-Williams are a bit on the light side and it would have been nice to get a bit more value on the back end, but that shows you just how valuable Sheffield was to the Mariners.

Grade: C+