5 deals Seattle Mariners fans wish were April Fool’s Jokes

1. Mariners trade Adam Jones, George Sherrill, Chris Tillman, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio to Baltimore for Erik Bedard

I think we all saw this coming, right? The funny thing about this that Bedard wasn’t too bad for Seattle… at least when he actually did pitch. Bedard made just 46 starts in 2.5 years, but in those 46 starts, Bedard posted a 3.31 ERA, a 3.85 FIP, an 8.8 K/9 rate, and a 4.1 bWAR. But he never pitched more than 100 innings for the Mariners and was apparently a bit of a malcontent in the clubhouse.

Unfortunately for Seattle and their fans, Adam Jones would go on to make 5 All-Star games, win 4 Gold Gloves, and 1 Silver Slugger on his way to posting a 32.5 bWAR. On top of Jones’ success, Chris Tillman would act as the defacto #1 for the Orioles for 2 playoff teams.

It took Tillman some time to click in the bigs, but from 2012-2016, Tillman would make 143 starts with a 3.83 ERA, a 4.27 FIP, a 108 ERA+, and a 12.0 bWAR. Sherrill would lockdown 51 saves for Baltimore and was a solid reliever, though nothing that wasn’t irreplaceable.

What Seattle really lost in this deal was a potential “face of the franchise” offensive player in Jones. Jones would become the face of the Orioles and a true ambassador of the game of baseball. Highly respected around the game and a great teammate, Jones is one of the most popular players amongst players today.

This trade was Bill Bavasi’s crowning achievement of ineptitude and as such, finds itself as a pretty easy number 1 choice for our purposes today.

There we have it, just 5 of the worst deals in Mariners history and chances are, we missed quite a few of them. Especially since we limited ourselves to “just the drought years”. The ’90s saw some truly terrible choices and we will explore them down the road.

But today, I wrap up this article with a question: what do you think is the biggest mistake in Seattle Mariners history.