The Seattle Mariners announced Monday that they’ve acquired infielder Carlos Santana from the Kansas City Royals.
The 36-year-old Santana, in his 13th season, is hitting .216 with four home runs and 21 RBIs this season. He is in the final season of a two-year contract that he signed with the Royals in 2021.
The trade sends right-handed pitcher Wyatt Mills and minor league righty William Fleming to the Royals.
Mills, 27, has a 4.15 ERA in 8⅔ innings for the Mariners this season but is 1-0 with a 1.83 ERA in 19⅔ innings for Triple-A Tacoma.
Fleming, 23, is 6-6 with a 4.92 ERA in 14 starts for the Mariners’ Single-A franchise in Modesto.
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1. Hombre BrotaniMeanwhile -- those sound like actual potentially useful baseball players in exchange for Carlos Santana. Lo and behold, bWAR tells me he's been league average this year with good defense. What's happened to the world that 36-yo 1Bs can play good defense. Then I thought maybe his statcast numbers are better than the results ... and they are but they aren't any better than the last couple of years and we're now at 1000+ PA with a 86 OPS+.
A very fine player with a very fine career (32 WAR) but an odd acquisition for a 34-40 team. I see Ty France is on the IL, is that a serious injury?
Anyway, all-Carlos team ... the OF can go get 'em, you decide who plays CF ... this is one fine team. The bullpen needs work but they've got plenty to trade to the all-Trevor and all-Jesse teams. (Really shows the influx of Latin/Hispanic players as nearly all of these guys are from the last 30 years.)
C Santana
1B Delgado
2B Baerga
SS Correa
3B Guillen (183 starts)
OF Beltran
OF Gomez
OF Gonzalez
backup C, would start on most teams: "Chooch" Ruiz (22 WAR)
DH, bench bat, would start on most teams: Pena (25 WAR)
OF, bench bat, would start on most teams: Lee (28 WAR)
OF, bench bat, would start on some teams: May (10 WAR), Quentin (10 WAR)
bench IF: Garcia, Febles (man that didn't last long)
SP Zambrano, Carrasco, Martinez, Rodon, Silva, Perez
RP Marmol, Torres, Villanueva, Reyes
EDIT: Actually Carlos Lee has 4 more WAR than Gomez or Gonzalez
I'm thinking that the entire reason for the trade is insurance for the France injury. The injury is described as a "sprained elbow" (it looked awful when it happened) and officially France "is optimistic he won't need more than the allotted time." But with injuries such as this, you never know. With Evan White also being unavailable, the Mariners are exceedingly thin at first base right now, and they're just getting insurance in case he's missing for a few weeks...
Still seems like a pointless low risk/low reward trade for a team 7 games out and 4 teams behind a playoff spot. Contra Walt, the 2 pitchers do not strike me a potentially useful, but you never know with pitchers. One is a 27 YO with 21 IP and a 54 ERA+ in the majors, and the other is a 23 YO 11th round draft pick struggling in A ball. Santana is signed only through this year and will be paid about 6 mil by the Mariners.
The injury reminds me of two things:
Classic moment in the movie "Moneyball" when Beane is trying to convince Scott Hatteberg to join the A's, and play first base.
"But I don't know nothing about playing first base?"
"Aw, c'mon Scott, playing first base is easy! Tell him, Wash!"
"It's incredibly hard."
Secondly I was watching the game live on tv in a pub on May 15, 1995 when Cliff Floyd got his wrist broken by a running batter as he reached for a throw. I immediately paid my tab, and I think I threw up on the walk home. Cliffy was the Expos regular starting 1B on their magic 1994 team at age 21, but he was real reluctant to play 1B ever again after that injury, he may have done it only 10 or 11 times the rest of his career. (I'm not saying that will be France's fate, but the injury reminded me of Floyd's)
I hope the Mariners get everything they want from him, because I have been ready for the Pasquantino era for a long time now.
There hasn't yet been a player named Michelle Branch, either
Mills and Fleming isn’t that much to give up. They’ll draft 3 or 4 more promising pitchers in July.
There was a time when an overexposed Mary Tyler Moore would have been very much to my liking. Perhaps I digress (and show my age!)
Santana naturally raises the specter of (the very much still alive as far as I know) Eric Hosmer. (And Mitch Moreland and Mark Reynolds and too many players to count without a stathead sub.) There are always, always, always somewhere in baseball, one or more 1Bs with league-average bats holding down starting jobs and, as demonstrated by Moreland and Reynolds, they aren't all there just because their team signed them to a dumb long-term contract. When Hosmer signed it I did say "lots of reasons not to like that contract but he's got a very good chance of still holding a full-time-ish job through to the end."
Hosmer's deal has 3 more (pretty cheap) years after this which will take him through 35. Santana is 36, played all 60 in 2020, 158 last year and this year is finally seeing some bench time but still about 70% of games. Nobody ever thought Moreland was any good and he had become a part-timer but was still in the majors for ages 33-35. Reynolds was full time at 33, half-time at 34 and in the majors at 35. Adam LaRoche had 1650 PA (and 2.4 WAR) from 33-35.
These guys hang on for the same reason anybody manages to hang on. Teams need somebody over there and there are probably only 10 guys who are actually better than average (and they're expensive and/or controlled), 10 guys who are average (who somebody offered more money) and you'd rather have a 1 WAR vet that you know can handle the position than some 28-yo AAAA guy whose upside is probably 1 WAR. 0 WAR guys are at least theoretically "free" but 1 WAR guys are not (but they are usually cheap). So the Ms are trying not to suck as badly as they could -- we should applaud them for caring about as little as 1 win.
But my read on Santana the last two years hasn't been a league average bat.
Joan Baez
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