Grade a Trade: Mariners trade two prospects for Joaquin Benoit

It didn’t take Jerry Dipoto long to start making trades after he was named general manager of the Seattle Mariners. Today, we look back at his second deal with Seattle.

This shutdown sucks. It is the smartest and most responsible route to tack, but it does leave us with a lot of time to kill and an opportunity to look back at the Jerry Dipoto regime with some hindsight. So today, we break down his second trade as Mariners GM.

But before we do, let’s remember that in this series, we will tackle all the trades that involve at least one player exchanging teams and on a rare instance, we will look at some of the deals that were for cash or international slot money. While a deal may have made sense at the time it was made, a lot of these deals have tangible results we can grade the deal on.

Some will be great, others okay, and some will be bad. That is the nature of the beast. And while we don’t have enough data on a lot of these trades to accurately decide whether or not it was good, we still should be able to offer an opinion on each and every one. So with all that in mind, let’s get started.

Seattle Mariners trade Enyel De Los Santos and Nelson Ward to the San Diego Padres for RHP Joaquin Benoit

Remember that when Dipoto first arrived with Seattle, it was his job to keep the Mariners competitive. So, with a need for a late-inning, high-leverage reliever to help anchor their bullpen. So he sent two minor-leaguers to the Padres for just that.

Joaquin Benoit was coming off a 3-year stretch where he posted a sub-2.00 ERA, a 192 ERA+, a 3.02 FIP, a 0.911 WHIP, and more than a strikeout per inning. At the time, Benoit was one of the best and most underrated relievers in the game.

To acquire Benoit, Dipoto parted with De Los Santos, who has had a couple cups of coffee with the Phillies, and Nelson Ward, who has never appeared in an MLB game and is a journeyman minor league utility man.

Unfortunately, Benoit wasn’t good in Seattle and was shipped off at the trade deadline for Drew Storen. In 26 appearances, covering 24.1 innings, Benoit posted a 5.18 ERA, a 4.95 FIP, and a 5.5 BB/9.

The process behind the trade was sound. The players Dipoto gave up haven’t gone on to have amazing careers. Sometimes, a trade just doesn’t work out, no matter how sound the reasoning is.

Final Grade: C

We will continue to look back at these deals and do our best to breakdown the best and worst deals of the Jerry Dipoto era. And as we wait for new baseball games to start, we are forced to look to our past.