Seattle Mariners: 3 reasons why bringing back James Paxton makes sense

After being traded to the Yankees from the Mariners, James Paxton’s career in New York looks to be over. So, should Seattle consider bringing the fan-favorite lefty back?

On November 19th, 2018 the Mariners traded their ace James Paxton to the New York Yankees for Justus Sheffield, Dom Thompson-Williams, and Erik Swanson. It was a move that signaled the beginning of the end for the core group of Paxton, Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, Felix Hernandez, and Jean Segura.

It was a simple “competing team gets a star” type of move, while the rebuilding team gets top prospects. The trade looked to be in the Yankees favor towards the end of 2019, but after failing to make the World Series despite Paxton’s great year, and then a 2020 that saw very little of Paxton due to injury and a lot of great outings for Justus Sheffield, it looks like the Mariners won the trade.

Paxton will now hit the open market in a few days and he carries an impressive resume with him. In 6 years with the Mariners Paxton never had an ERA over 3.76 and only had a FIP over 4 once. Then he had a masterful 2019 with the Yankees starting 29 games with a 3.82 ERA playing in one of the worst parks for pitchers.

However, Paxton only pitched 5 games in 2020 due to injury and had a 6.64 ERA in those 4 starts. Paxton’s 2020 got off to a rough start when he had a microscopic lumbar discectomy to remove a peridiscal cyst in February and his recovery time would have kept him out until May or June if there were a normal baseball season. He then had a grade 1 flexor strain that kept him out all of September and the Playoffs.

So with all of this going on in the recent past for James Paxton, why should the Mariners consider bringing him back to Seattle?

His injury will lower his price tag

As I just mentioned Paxton only pitched 5 games in 2020 due to injury as he had a microscopic lumbar discectomy to remove a peridiscal cyst in February and then had a grade 1 flexor strain that kept him out all of September and the Playoffs. So, he went into summer camp off of surgery and then only was able to get in a month before missing the rest of the season.

This will obviously lower his price tag as teams will be hesitant to throw a ton of money at a soon to be 32 year old. However, his agent is Scott Boras, who doesn’t really deal in the realm of lowering price tags. Boras said that Paxton now feels like his 2019 self and just needed more time to recover from his back surgery. It is also reasonable to believe that Paxton did not want to rush himself back from an injury to his pitching arm when he is set to hit the open market.

So because of all of this, the Mariners could take a risk that other teams will not take, and trust Boras while trying to lure Paxton back to Seattle for a deal that he would not have signed after 2019, but is better than other offers. A deal for 2 years at less than $20 million per year could be possible, and the Mariners should definitely consider it if they can get the price down that low.

He can help this young team try to win now

Mariners General Manager Jerry Dipoto has made it seem like the Mariners will try to go for it in 2021 while working on the rebuild. So, as the lineup seems to be set for the future with a wealth of outfield and infield prospects, and the pitching being what will hold Seattle back from competing next year, why not go after a temporary problem solver while the pitching prospects work their way through the minors.

In a perfect world, the Mariners starting rotation in a few years will be 5 of the following: Marco Gonzales, Logan Gilbert, Emerson Hancock, George Kirby, Justus Sheffield, Yusei Kikuchi, and Justin Dunn. However, only four of them have pitched in the majors and Kikuchi had an ERA over 5.00 once again while Justin Dunn had a sub 100 ERA+ (100 is the MLB average) and his baseball savant page is terrifyingly bad.

So while Seattle waits on some of the younger pitchers to make their way to the bigs in a couple of years, a rotation of Gonzales, Sheffield, Kikuchi, Gilbert, and Paxton could be a playoff quality rotation for 2021, and one of the best in the league for 2022.