Mariners are running out of trade options after injury to Giants' Casey Schmitt

You'd swear that the baseball gods are trying to tell the Seattle Mariners something. It already feels like their season is slipping away. And even if they do still want a right-handed bat ahead of the trade deadline, it seems Casey Schmitt is about to go the way of Matt Shaw and Spencer Steer.

Shaw and Steer aren't technically unavailable, but both have injuries that will keep them sidelined beyond August 3. And in the San Francisco Giants' game against the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday, Schmitt pulled up lame rounding first base and promptly made an early exit.

As of now, the explanation from the Giants is that the 27-year-old Schmitt exited with left knee discomfort. Manager Tony Vitello says Schmitt was "doing all right," and he's set for an MRI exam on Tuesday. Maybe it will reveal good news.

For now, though, the energy surrounding the situation isn't positive. You can see on the replay how Schmitt's legs buckled on the play. And also how when he walked off the field, it was with a limp. Even Vitello eventually acknowledged that Schmitt “is probably going to miss some significant time."

Casey Schmitt's injury should take him off Mariners' board even if it's not serious

One feels for Schmitt, obviously. He was having a breakout year, punctuated by career highs for batting average, slugging percentage, OPS and home runs. And now this happens.

Yet one also questions where the Mariners go from here, as Schmitt was pretty clearly the next man up among their trade options after bad news on Shaw and Steer came down.

Had the Mariners acquired Schmitt before the injury, they would have been getting a versatile defender whose righty stick has punished lefty pitchers for a .314 average and 123 RC+. But now, he's either injured or at least physically compromised. Even the best-case scenario of the latter should scare the Mariners away from him. Having guys try to play through pain is already a theme of Seattle's 2026 season, and the results mostly reek of failure.

To make matters worse, the Curtis Mead trade between the Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals had set the market for right-handed bats in an unfavorable way to buyers. As soon as that trade happened, the odds of the Mariners getting a good deal on a righty hitter went "poof."

Mariners might have to get creative to save their season at the trade deadline

Given the team's recent slide, Jerry Dipoto should probably disregard rentals like Taylor Ward as fixes for the righty bat problem. It might be better to take a chance on someone like Jo Adell or Heliot Ramos, who at least offer a combination of youth, controllability and real power.

After those guys, you get into long shots on high-priced All-Stars like George Springer, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames and Luis Robert Jr. Some of those guys are fun fantasies… but fantasies nonetheless.

Perhaps the Mariners should read the room and craft a whole new strategy. Maybe they go all-in on pitching, with a Mason Miller deal as the team's deadline headline. Maybe they both buy and sell, followed by a pivot to the young guys in August and September. Recent reporting makes it easy to imagine Emerson Hancock and/or Luis Castillo leaving, and Kade Anderson, Ryan Sloan, Michael Arroyo and Lazaro Montes arriving.

As has been the case for a while, doing nothing is the only bad outcome. Yet since the baseball gods specifically seem to be telling the Mariners that this season is cursed, even that outcome no longer feels like an unforgivable sin.

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