Mariners: Top 5 Players likely to be traded this offseason

Mariners Trade Candidate #5: Dylan Moore

I want Dylan Moore to succeed so badly. I really do. He has so much potential, but things just don’t seem to work out for him. Go back to last year’s shortened season, and you can see what I’m talking about.

137 AB, 8 HR, 12 SB, .255/.358/.496, 0.4 dWAR. The dude can mash and run. He even showed that he could hit.

Unfortunately, it might’ve been a mirage. This year, in 332 AB, he hit just .181/.276/.334. He still managed to hit 12 HR and swipe 21 bags (which, was good for 13th in all of baseball), but the average is hard to swallow.

If, and it’s a big ask, if Moore could hit in the 230s, he could likely put up somewhere around 25-30 HR and 35-40 SB. There is no reason to think he couldn’t do that, given the full-time job in Left Field and earning somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 AB. Shoot, the guy hits homers on 20% of his hits.

He also just turned 29, and is a bit of a late arrival to the game. Sure, there is a chance he could turn it around and have a solid 5-7 year stretch before retiring. It worries me though that he might have too much trouble making enough consistent contact to be effective. When he’s on, it’s amazing.

As a .181 hitter, it just doesn’t happen enough. There are too many guys coming up through the system for a near 30-year-old to be in the mix, so I could see Dipoto moving on from him.