A FanSided Mock Trade: The Mariners and Orioles Swing a deal

Throughout the entire month of June, I’m going to be trying to put out a trade a day. It’s a fun way to look at a bunch of the players that might be available for the Mariners, and trying to get a decent value on what the market holds. Usually, I end up working a bit with the other FanSided sites, or with the contributors here at Sodo Mojo to put something together that seems fair.

Sometimes, I screw up (sorry Marlins fans… I was rusty), but a lot of the time, I am putting good thought into trying to find a deal that is going to make both fan bases mad at me. Usually, that means that I did a good job.

However, there are times when Sodo Mojo will actually work through a trade with another FanSided site to come up with a deal, so it ends up being a FanSided mock trade proposal. It’s what I did for the Mariners today with the Orioles, courtesy of Birds Watcher. And no, just because JP Crawford is in the picture, it doesn’t mean he is involved in this trade. It’s the other guy.

We went back a forth a bit on Twitter, and here is what we came up with for a Mariners and Orioles trade

Going through it, there was some talk of possibly including Edwin Arroyo, but we moved off of that and went with more players instead of the newly minted top 100 prospect. Zach Deloach was brought up as well, as were Michael Arroyo, Kaden Polcovich, and Gabriel Gonzalez.

It is a lot of pitching to send over, as the 4 of the 5 players the Mariners would send over in a deal like this would be pitchers. They are also getting zero starters in return. However, they do get Lopez, who has been dominant in the bullpen this year after being moved to a reliever role instead of a starter.

Sometimes a move like that is what it takes to unlock a pitchers potential, and the Mariners could use him to further solidify what is becoming a pretty darn good bullpen, moving it back into a top 5/8 bullpen in all of baseball. With how well the starters have been doing, having one more weapon that you can deploy from innings 6-9 gets the Mariners even closer to having a real shot at one of those WC spots.

It’s also worth noting that Lopez does have a fair amount of control left, as he will not be a free agent until after the 2024 season. So he’s not a rental, but a piece the Mariners would have for 2.5 seasons.

Mancini would be the one who comes in and plays a bit of a power-hitter utility role. He can play first, and either corner outfield spot. Jerry has talked about versatility in the past, and how he values it. The Mariners would have one more guy with nice power potential to bounce around the field. If injuries keep happening to those spots for the Mariners, having a guy like Mancini would be nice, especially if he finds the power that’s been missing a bit this year.

The Mariners would get an extra year out of Mancini if they picked up the mutual option for $10 million that he has. Based on his averages since 2017 (.271/.335/.463, 22 HR) it seems like a darn good deal to have him at that price.

What do you think about this deal? Is it something the Mariners (and Orioles) would be interested in? Make sure to head over to Birds Watcher to get their take and view of the deal. As always… Go Mariners!