A potential Mariners trade for Jake McCarthy from the Diamondbacks

It came out earlier this offseason that the Diamondbacks were open to trading away some of their outfielders. Whether it be Daulton Varsho, Alek Thomas, or Jake McCarthy, they were open to sending one of them out in a trade.

For the purpose of this article, I'm going to make Alek Thomas and Jake McCarthy interchangeable. Everywhere I look, they seem to have similar values. So, I don't see a point in writing something about one of them, and then writing another article about the other one the next day. I personally like McCarthy better, so I'm focusing on him. That's who I want. If you like Thomas better, just swap the names in your head and voila, problem solved.

Also, no Corbin Carroll is not available. We aren't writing on it, and they wouldn't trade him.

Here is what I think a trade would look like. The Mariners get Jake McCarthy, and in return, they send Taylor Trammell, Bryce Miller, and Hogan Windish to the Diamondbacks.

The Mariners are going to have to give up some good assets to get McCarthy. I don't think of this as a good destination for Flexen, so he is out. Instead, we move to either young players with control, or minor leaguers. This is where Trammell comes in. He's been moved around a ton, but is still only 25. He could play sparingly and as needed in the Arizona outfiled, filling in with former teammate Kyle Lewis in a fight for the 3rd/4th spot.

After that, we have to move something impressive, so we send Bryce Miller there, unfortunately. I love the kid, and he definitely seems like he could be ready soon for that last Mariners spot in the rotation. Since we have a fight for that spot, let's fix a spot of need at the MLB level instead. Lastly, we add in Hogan Windish. He's a powerful second baseman who projects for 20+ homers, but has work to do in the other aspects of his game. The bat plays, and if he makes it at second, it's a win for Arizona.

McCarthy is a good young player. He got a taste of the bigs in 2021 and then played about 100 games in 2022. He impressed enough that he finished 4th in NL ROY voting behind Michael Harris, Spencer Strider, and Brendan Donovan. The line was impressive, slashing .283/.342/.427, with a 118 OPS+ and a WAR of 2.4. He struggled a bit on defense, but I'm fine with a speedy youngster learning the OF at an MLB level.

Did I forget to mention the speed? While he only had eight HR and 16 2B (still pretty impressive for just 321 AB), he swiped 23 bases on just 26 attempts, finishing T-13th in all of baseball.

If the Mariners could make something like this work, all of a sudden they have a dynamic outfield combo in Julio and McCarthy that would be just 22 and 25 when the season started, respectively.