Mariners got worst end of forgotten trade that will echo in Rays-Brewers World Series

Where were you when the Seattle Mariners traded for Edwin Encarnacion back in 2018? It's OK if you don't remember. It's sort of a forgotten trade in Seattle, even if it looms larger elsewhere on the eve of the World Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers.

So, here's a quick trip down memory lane to December 13, 2018:

• Seattle Mariners get: DH Edwin Encarnacion (from CLE), competitive balance pick (from CLE), cash (from TBR)
• Cleveland Indians get: 1B Carlos Santana (from SEA), 1B Jake Bauers (from TBR), cash (from SEA)
• Tampa Bay Rays get: 1B Yandy Díaz (from CLE), RHP Cole Sulser (from CLE)

Here we are eight years later, and two players from this deal are making a case to be the Mr. October of the 2026 playoffs.

There's Díaz, who could have won the ALCS MVP after taking it to his former team for four doubles, two home runs and four runs batted in across six games. It's quite the exclamation mark on his recent four-year run, in which he's been an All-Star twice while batting .300 overall.

Then there's Bauers, who just won the NLCS MVP for the Milwaukee Brewers. He had two of the best at-bats you'll ever see in Games 2 and 3 against Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell, respectively. All told, he took the Los Angeles Dodgers for four hits, three walks and six RBI in Milwaukee's four-game sweep.

Even if Bauers didn't do much for Cleveland before he was traded to Seattle in 2021, there is the Santana angle. He had only just arrived with the Mariners in the J.P. Crawford trade 10 days earlier, and trading him to Cleveland was meant to be a salary dump. Instead, he tied his career high with 34 home runs in 2019, also attaining the best full-season OPS+ of his career at 136.

The Mariners basically got nothing out of the 2018 trade that featured Yandy Díaz and Jake Bauers

OK, maybe it's too strong to say the Mariners got nothing out of this deal. They got salary relief, always a vital component whenever a team decides to do a rebuild… er, sorry, "step back," as Jerry Dipoto put it. They got their payroll down by roughly $11 million from 2018 to 2019.

As far as what else came from this trade, the Mariners did get a 137 OPS+ and 21 home runs from Encarnacion in just 65 games while he was around in 2019. But then they traded him to the New York Yankees for pitching prospect Juan Then. He didn't pan out, appearing in nine games for Seattle in 2023 before washing out of affiliated ball in 2024.

Also in 2019, the Mariners used the competitive balance pick they got from Cleveland to select right-hander Isaiah Campbell out of Arkansas. He had a decent 27-game cameo with Seattle in 2023, and then they traded him to the Boston Red Sox for Luis Urías. His one and only season with the Mariners in 2024 yielded 0.4 rWAR.

So as trade trees go, the original deal from 2018 one doesn't go down as one of the more consequential moves of Dipoto's tenure. Which perhaps isn't surprising, given that it wasn't really meant to be a big swing. Anything beyond the saved bucks would have been a bonus.

Even so, the trade is a fun little artifact in light of what Díaz and Bauers are up to this October. And perhaps that's all it needs to be right now.

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