The Mariners may have blown up their trade deadline plans with latest addition

Things have been going well for the Seattle Mariners. They lead the AL West with a 22-14 record, have a three-game lead over the second-place Athletics, have been putting together a string of strong offensive showings, and their injured pitchers are slowly but surely making their way back to the active roster.

Aside from all of the winning, the best part is that the front office has been proactive and aggressive, moving quickly to plug the gaps left by injuries and their most recent acquisition from a division rival holds quite a bit of promise. However, there may be some less obvious side effects that could get in the way of any late-season roster plans.

Leody Taveras was seemingly picked up for free after he was placed on waivers by the Rangers and required no players to be sent to Texas in return. Unfortunately, he did carry his salary over to his new squad, amounting to $3.5 million for the season (pro-rated from his $4.75 million salary for the year) which could tighten Seattle's budget even further.

This is by no means a game-changing amount of money, especially in a day and age where nine-figure contracts are all too common, but it could be just enough to cause problems for the Mariners.

The Mariners are already over budget and Leody Taveras's salary leaves even less money for a late postseason push

According to FanGraphs, the Mariners have a 2025 payroll of $155 million, $12 million more than their payroll last year. Cot's Baseball Contracts has last year's 40-man payroll closer to $145 million but the point is that the team is already spending more than they did last season.

The biggest culprit for the jump in spending is Randy Arozarena, who avoided arbitration with an $11.3 million deal, almost $9 million more than the Mariners had to pay him after last year's trade deadline. The rest of the increase came from smaller, but still significant jumps in salaries for players that were finally eligible for arbitration.

If the team keeps playing the way they have been for the past month, the question won't be whether they'll be buyers, but rather how much are they willing to spend. Players who have multiple years of team control remaining will be cheaper now, but will be a drag on the payroll for their entire tenure. Shorter-term rentals that are set to hit the free-agent market this winter (i.e., Josh Naylor and Marcell Ozuna) wouldn't be on the roster for long, but would still have high pro-rated salaries.

So the organization is left with a choice. They can either maintain the time-honored tradition of falling just short of the postseason by failing to improve upon their roster, or they can finally take a step forward into being perennial contenders.

The front office should have been aware of the financial terms of acquiring Taveras, and thus the move signals a broader willingness and initiative to increase spending for the sake of winning. That said, they've prioritized profitability over competitiveness before, so don't get your hopes up until more moves are announced and finalized.