Mariners make long-awaited Brendan Donovan trade thanks to unexpected tactic

The Pacific Northwest's long regional nightmare is finally over. Brendan Donovan is going to be a Seattle Mariner, and the trade that made it happen feels like the best possible kind of bait-and-switch.

Mariners fans had been hoping for (and certainly reading plenty about) a potential Donovan trade for what felt like months. That's probably because the game of chicken between the Mariners and St. Louis Cardinals did last for literal months, before finally culminating in a three-team trade with the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday.

Katie Woo and Chad Jennings of The Athletic first broke the news, with Adam Jude and Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times eventually reporting more details:

The 29-year-old Donovan has enough OBP acumen to be the leadoff man that the Mariners never really found in 2025. He also offers defensive versatility as a primary second baseman who has ample experience playing left field, third base, first base and shortstop.

The 2025 All-Star's ability to play second and third loom especially large. The Mariners can go into spring training knowing that he'll be their everyday player at one of those jobs, with the keystone representing his most likely home. Regardless, whatever job he doesn't get can go to whoever has a better spring between Cole Young and top prospect Colt Emerson.

Ben Williamson's inclusion in Brendan Donovan trade reveals Mariners' unexpected tactic

If there's a surprising element to this trade, it's the inclusion of Ben Williamson as the big get for the Rays.

That's partly because nobody had the Rays being involved on their Bingo card. It's also because the Mariners had been hyping Williamson as a capable everyday third baseman up until…[checks notes]…literally Sunday at the club's annual FanFest.

“We know what Ben can do on one side of the ball, and that’s elite,” GM Justin Hollander said of the 25-year-old, per a report by Jude. “It’s so good that it brings a floor to his overall contribution that if we can marry that with some of the things we saw in the second half with the adjustments he made [with his swing] in Triple-A — that’s a really good player.”

There were kernels of truth in there, starting with how Williamson is a legit Gold Glove-caliber defender as a third baseman. He also did find something with his swing toward the end of 2025, as he slashed .327/.417/.510 in the last two months of the season for Triple-A Tacoma.

Even so, Williamson had a rep as a light-hitting infielder even before he debuted for the Mariners and hit one home run in 295 plate appearances. Before anyone asks, none of his under-the-hood metrics suggest he was the victim of bad luck.

For all the Mariners' talk about Williamson as a quality two-way player, actually using him in an everyday capacity never felt like a real hope on the club's part. Whereas they're still high on Young and very high on Emerson, their energy vis-à-vis Williamson was more like, "Eh, he might be good."

But, hey, at least the organization was intentional about selling that idea with more gusto in public. If the idea was to boost (or at least not undercut) Williamson's trade value, it clearly worked — at least on the Rays, anyway.

With Junior Caminero standing in his way at the hot corner, what will become of Williamson in Tampa Bay is an interesting question. But with Donovan finally in hand, that is obviously no longer the Mariners' concern.