Mariners narrow focus on World Series with Josh Naylor blockbuster trade

The Seattle Mariners have struck for the first big trade of the final week before the July 31 deadline, and they have struck hard with a weakness-busting deal for Josh Naylor.

The deal, which was first reported by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, has the slugging first baseman coming to Seattle from the Arizona in exchange for two pitching prospects. Here's the full agreement, according to Jeff Passan of ESPN:

• Seattle Mariners get: 1B Josh Naylor
• Arizona Diamondbacks get: LHP Brandyn Garcia, RHP Ashton Izzi

This is about as clear cut a case of a team getting its man as there can be. The Mariners were connected to Naylor even before he went to Arizona from the Cleveland Guardians in an offseason trade, and even that only quieted down speculation of the 28-year-old All-Star being a future Mariner for so long. The further apart that Seattle and Arizona drifted in their respective playoff pursuits, the more sense "Josh Naylor, Seattle Mariner" began to make.

Now that it's reality, the ceiling on what this 54-48 Mariners squad is capable of just got a hefty raise.

The Mariners are a step closer to a World Series-caliber team with Josh Naylor

After the Mariners missed out on Naylor in the offseason, any reasonable fan could have hoped that some sort of pivot would be in order. If not to, say, Pete Alonso, then surely at least to Christian Walker or Paul Goldschmidt.

None of this happened, of course, and the end result was the first base spot getting handed off to a cockamamie combination of Luke Raley, Donovan Solano and Rowdy Tellez. If you're just now joining us after a long nap, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the position has produced just a .711 OPS, 16 home runs and -0.3 rWAR.

It's one of relatively few stains on an offense that has been better than advertised. It's mostly Cal Raleigh's doing, sure, but Julio Rodríguez and Randy Arozarena have also helped boost Seattle's scoring by 0.44 runs per game over last season. It is a legitimate top-10 offense.

And now it has one of the best offensive first basemen in the big leagues.

Naylor isn't quite on track to match the 31 home runs and 108 RBI that he produced last year, but his 124 OPS+ is in line with his recent track record and his .292 average and .360 OBP alone represent gargantuan upgrades for a first base spot that is at .233 and .298 for the season, respectively.

Indeed, the rep as a tough out that Naylor brings to the table is very much welcome. He is one of the hardest guys (i.e., 92nd percentile) in the league to strike out, and the Mariners need a guy like that for an offense hasn't fully kicked its strikeout habit. Their strikeout rate is the eighth-highest in MLB.

The change would be welcome even if Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto had to sever a limb or two to make this deal happen. Yet even if Naylor is set for free agency at the end of the year, getting a hitter of his caliber for two guys who had been Seattle's No. 13 and No. 16 prospects for MLB Pipeline feels like a proper fleecing.

The Mariners probably aren't done trading yet, even just with Arizona. Rumors of them possibly reuniting with Eugenio Suárez have been coming fast and furious, and Adam Jude of The Seattle Times reports that Seattle is planning to "remain engaged" on the NL home run leader.

It's important not to get too carried away, but FanGraphs already had the Mariners' odds of making the playoffs (71.7 percent) and of going to the World Series (11.4 percent) higher on Thursday than they had been on Opening Day. Even in the year that the Mariners returned to the playoffs in 2022, the regular-season peak for their World Series odds was only 10.7 percent.

Go ahead and be excited, in other words. Though the Mariners making it to the Fall Classic for the first time in nearly a half-century of existence is still the stuff of dreams, it's perfectly within reason to think it might actually come true this time.