Mariners Rumors: New tease of offseason 'splash' requires crucial disclaimers

The Seattle Mariners are nominally a contender, but also a franchise coming off a 76-86 season that largely destroyed the goodwill that it had at the outset of the year. Being a Mariners fan right now requires a certain level of healthy skepticism, even when insiders are gesturing toward optimism.

Presently, that means Buster Olney and Jesse Rogers of ESPN and their tease of a "splash" to come in the Mariners' offseason. It's a shared response to a question of what the industry expects to happen this winter, and it comes off as welcome news that nonetheless deserves several caveats.

For starters, the Mariners haven't been known to throw their weight around in free agency since the John Stanton-Jerry Dipoto era began a decade ago. There was the Robbie Ray contract (five years, $115 million) and the Josh Naylor (five years, $92.5 million) contract, yet even those hewed closely to the $100 million threshold. And from the horse's mouth, we know that Stanton largely objects to the basic premise of free agency.

"I’d much rather [sign players in their 20s] than sign a 30-year-old or 31-year-old star player who had been a star in their 20s to play through their 30s and maybe through 40 years old," the Mariners owner said back in September.

As for Dipoto, his reputation as a ready, willing and able trader does come with strings attached. He will make trades for which he is clearly in buy mode, but those tend to come during the summer (i.e., Naylor, Luis Castillo, Randy Arozarena, Eugenio Suárez) more so than during the winter. That Dipoto's big offseason trades typically have a salary-dump component complicates whether they can be accurately described as "splashes." To wit, the trades that sent Ray, Jean Segura and Robinson Canó were more so splashes on the other end.

There are ways that the Mariners can deliver a 'splash' on the free agent or trade markets

All of that having been said, if the Mariners do indeed have it in mind to make a splash this winter, they absolutely have the means to pull it off.

There should be room in the budget for a high-priced free agent, and not everyone on the market is subject to Stanton's 30-something third rail. Japanese slugger Teruaki Sato is a prospective fit at third base, and he's only 27 years old. Adrian Morejon is a dream addition for the bullpen, and he's also 27. Even if the Mariners are likely to be outbid on both, they're at least within the realm of possibility.

With six prospects in MLB Pipeline's top 100, the Mariners also have the prospect riches to pull off an impact trade. Any and all options should be on the table, including impact shortstops such as Elly De La Cruz, Gunnar Henderson, Otto Lopez, Jeremy Peña and Zach Neto.

Just as it helps that Stanton hasn't been totally averse to paying nine figures to free agents, it also helps that Dipoto isn't dead-set against trading top-100 prospects in winter deals. He traded two last winter to get Brendan Donovan and Jose A. Ferrer. Even if both trades had more limited ambitions than the ones Dipoto should be seeking now, at least they're there for the sake of precedent.

Further, it sounds as if Dipoto might finally abandon his reluctance to trade a starting pitcher. Olney writes that Dipoto is "poking around to assess how its surplus in pitching might be used to add a bat." A Logan Gilbert, a George Kirby or an Emerson Hancock probably only gets you so much. But if Dipoto puts Bryan Woo or even Kade Anderson or Ryan Sloan on the table, that's across the line into deep-sea fishing for the big ones.

And so, we wait. Fingers crossed. Hoping for a splash.

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