Randy Arozarena hopefully lowered the asking price for top Mariners trade target

It was only last week that we ran a piece pondering Baltimore Orioles right-hander Rico Garcia as a trade target for the Seattle Mariners. So when he took the mound for the 10th inning of Tuesday's game, there may have been some Leonardo DiCaprio pointing going on.

And then Randy Arozarena took Garcia deep to turn a 4-4 tie into a 6-4 lead and, eventually, a 6-5 Mariners win. Even amid a season in which the former AL Rookie of the Year and two-time All-Star is hitting .294, it was a ridiculous swing.

Slider off the plate flipped over the right-field wall? Be still, my beating heart.

That's one way to knock Garcia down a peg. He's still having a huge breakout year, and he had notably entered the game having allowed just one hit to right-handed batters in 38 at-bats. That line looks a little worse now, and back-to-back outings with a run allowed has raised his ERA all the way from 0.68 to 1.29. For shame.

We kid, we kid. And we do so because we really want the Mariners to trade for Garcia, in which case it would help if some of the shine came off between now and the August 3 trade deadline. What's happening now may well be the start of that, as key metrics (i.e., 2.59 xERA and 94.2 LOB%) suggest his current run prevention norm is less than sustainable.

As it is, Baseball Trade Values estimates the 32-year-old's surplus value at $13.2 million. It's a decent figure for a journeyman who was largely anonymous coming into 2026. In a straight-up swap with Seattle, it would hypothetically make him worth Luke Stevenson.

Mariners fans aren't being too hard on the bullpen despite its good results

Save for maybe Cleveland Guardians fans in 2024, there's no such thing as a fanbase that isn't worried about the bullpen at any given time. Bullpens are just like that, and the pen the Mariners have this year remains a glaring example of why ERA is so untrustworthy as a guiding metric.

Yes, its 3.33 ERA is fifth-best in all of MLB. But it's exactly in the middle of the league in strikeout rate and WHIP, and its win probability added is underwater.

That the latter is mostly Andrés Muñoz's fault could be a permission structure for the front office to leave good enough alone with the bullpen, but Matt Brash's latest placement on the IL is likewise a permission structure for Jerry Dipoto to start working the phones. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this team's World Series aspirations should be cause to leave nothing to chance anyway.

Maybe it should be Garcia. Maybe it should be Aroldis Chapman. There are other options out there, too. The main thing that matters is that the Mariners make some kind of trade, with the second main thing being that they don't sell themselves short.

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