3 Reasons why Trevor Bauer might choose the Seattle Mariners

The Seattle Mariners could use starting pitching and Trevor Bauer could fill that need. There are three reasons why Bauer may find Seattle intriguing.

The former Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Trevor Bauer is a free-agent and the hottest pitching commodity on the free-agent market. The Seattle Mariners are looking to fill several needs in the offseason and starting pitching is one area to improve on.

Bauer was recently announced as an NL Cy Young Award finalist which comes with no surprise at all. The 29-year-old is competing against Yu Darvish and Jacob deGrom for the 2020 Cy Young Award but for me, Bauer is my favorite to take the trophy this year.

The former first-round pick of the 2011 draft received a qualifying offer from the Reds worth $18.9 million, but I do not expect Bauer to accept it. The hard-throwing right-hander is set to be paid after an amazing 2021 season and would be wanting more than $18.9 million per year.  Players who received qualifying offers, including Bauer, must accept or decline offers by November 11th.

You may be asking, how good was the UCLA Bruins product was in 2020? Bauer had a league-leading 1.73 ERA, two shutouts, 0.795 WHIP, and 276 ERA+. He also struck out 100 batters and averaged 12.3 strikeouts per nine innings.

Besides his excellent performance in the shortened regular season, Bauer quickly became a controversial player in the MLB. Some liked Bauer’s activity on social media and his showboating, while some disliked it. But when you performed as well as Bauer did in 2020, you could practically get away with anything on the field.

Bauer also told the Twitter world that he is open to any team. This gives Mariners fans more hope that Bauer is willing to listen, and weigh all the options. Seattle has a few good reasons for Bauer to join the Mariners during the offseason.

Let’s look at the reasons why he might be calling Seattle home in the near future.