Mariners: Trades they could make to upgrade the Pitching Staff

The Mariners are in a peculiar, and not enviable, situation this year. They are just above .500, and have to decide if they want to become buyers or sellers at the deadline. They could always hold (good idea), or do a mix (best idea), but what would happen if they became straight-up buyers?

The starting rotation is a spot that they would definitely need to look at. Yeah, the team has a lot of interesting pitchers. Ones with high upside or ceilings. Or even strong sentimentality. However, those aren’t necessarily the things that win championships. Or playoff games. To be honest, that’s all most Mariners fans want. Can’t we just make the playoffs?

If they were to go out and look for a starter, who could they go for? Would it be a young guy that is coming into his own and has that potential for a true ace instead of a number 2/3? Or would you go for a Vet who’s been around for a while, one that you know has a handful of years left under his belt?

Or, and this is the toughest, do you try and move that window up a lot and get an older guy who only has a couple of years left? All of them are going to be on the market this summer as we get past the midway mark of the season. We will use the values over at baseballtradevalues.com, just like we did in the first base article from earlier this week. If anything seems off, we will make a note of that as well in our trades.

Let’s get to it. Here are four trades that the Mariners could look to in order to buy an upgrade to their starting rotation heading into the trade deadline.