Awesome News: The Mariners have traded an All-Star Infielder to the Diamondbacks.
The Diamondbacks and Mariners made one of the first big trades of the offseason on Wednesday, with Seattle moving third baseman Eugenio Suarez to Arizona in exchange for reliever Carlos Vargas and catcher Seby Zavala. The trade provides the Diamondbacks with the power-hitting third baseman they were seeking for, while the M’s gain a controlled power arm, a backup catcher option, and significant payroll relief.
Suarez, 32, has spent the last two seasons in Seattle after being acquired from the Reds in a transaction that also included Jesse Winker and Justin Dunn. While the intention of the trade was for the Mariners to absorb the remainder of Suarez’s contract in order to acquire Winker after a strong couple of seasons at the plate, it was Suarez who rebounded and ended up providing the Mariners with the middle-of-the-order punch they’d been looking for.
Suarez hit 49 home runs in 2019, the second year of a seven-year, $66 million contract extension he signed with the Reds prior to the 2018 season. His bat slowed significantly in 2020-21, and the Reds shopped him around as they sought to reduce salary following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, which was played without fans and resulted in significant financial losses for all 30 clubs.
Suarez was nearly back to his old self when he arrived in Seattle. While still prone to strikeouts, he hit 31 home runs in 2022 and recorded an overall batting line of.236/.332/.459 that was almost 30% better than league average after adjusted for home park and league run-scoring environment (by wRC+). His 2023 campaign was less successful. Suarez had a pretty comparable batting average and OBP, but his power plummeted significantly. He complimented his.232/.323/.391 batting line and 22 home runs from last season with his greatest defensive performance in a long time (at least according to Statcast, who gave him 11 Outs Above Average).
Suarez’s overall approach at the plate, on the other hand, is a profile that the Mariners have expressed a desire to move on from. Seattle president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto stated earlier this month at the GM Meetings that he was trying to add high-contact hitters to his lineup, which is a fair aim given that his team’s 25.9% strikeout percentage this season ranked second in all of Major League Baseball. In that perspective, finding a trade partner for Suarez is addition by subtraction; Suarez fanned in 30.8% of his plate appearances in 2023 and 31.2% in 2022.
Suarez’s $66 million contract has one more guaranteed year in 2024. He is owed a $11 million salary plus at least a $2 million buyout on a $15 million option for the 2025 season. Overall, the transaction saves the Mariners $13 million in guaranteed compensation. However, it leaves a noticeable gap in the heated corner. Luis Urias, a recent trade acquisition, is one possible possibility for the M’s, but he’s coming off a bad season and was acquired on the cheap. A win-now team like the Mariners would presumably choose a more reliable choice at the position. Time will tell whether the Mariners locate that player through free agency or, more likely (given Dipoto’s track record), through trade.
In the meantime, it does fill some needs for the Mariners, who watched Tom Murphy become a free agent at season’s end. Zavala gives them an option to replace him as Cal Raleigh’s backup behind the plate.
The 30-year-old Zavala has 514 plate appearances in the big leagues but has a mediocre.There is a 210/.275/.347 slash in that output. While he has showed above-average power at times in the minors, including a 20-homer performance in 82 games of Triple-A ball in 2019, Zavala’s offensive output has been hampered by his own high strikeout rate. To this point in his Major League career, he has struck out in 35.8% of his plate appearances. He won’t come to the plate as frequently as Suarez, so even though Zavala has his own contact troubles, the swap could help the team’s total contact skills, which is presumably one of their aims.
Furthermore, Zavala is a solid defender behind the dish. Statcast ranks him above-average in dirt blocking, and he consistently receives good framing marks from FanGraphs and Statcast. Zavala’s caught-stealing rate of 14% this season was significantly below the league average of 20%, as is his career mark of 17%. However, he caught roughly 24% of would-be base stealers in 2022, and he’s far from the only backstop who failed to manage the running game in 2023, when MLB’s new regulations governing pickoffs and somewhat wider bases significantly increased stolen bases around the league.
Zavala doesn’t have any minor league options remaining, so he’ll have to open the season on the Mariners’ active roster or else be traded or placed on outright waivers. It’s always possible they add another backup catcher to supplant him, but for now he stands as the clear favorite to back up Raleigh heading into next season.
The piece of the trade with larger appeal for Seattle could very well be the flamethrowing Vargas, who made his MLB debut with Arizona in 2023. Vargas pitched in just 4 2/3 innings (allowing three runs) and had suspect surface-level numbers in Triple-A Reno: 7.02 ERA, 17% strikeout rate, 15.1% walk rate. Grisly as those numbers may be at fist glance, however, there’s also a fair bit of intrigue around the young righty.
Vargas only just turned 24 last month, and in his brief time on the D-backs’ big league roster, he averaged 99.4 mph on his four-seamer and 98.8 mph on his sinker. Per Statcast, only seven of the 851 pitchers who tossed at least one inning last year averaged a better mark on their four-seamer and sinker. Vargas is one of the game’s hardest-throwing pitchers, and his sinker produced a massive 59% ground-ball rate in Triple-A.
When considering the substantial command issues that Vargas has shown not only in 2023 but throughout his professional career — he’s walked 11.5% of opponents in his overall minor league career — he’s clearly something of a project. That said, he’s also controllable for at least six seasons and still has a minor league option remaining for the 2024 campaign. The Mariners could see this as a similar bet to the one they made on Andres Munoz, who was a similarly live-armed but unproven young reliever with command issues when they picked him up from the Padres.
As it stands, the subtraction of Suarez still weakens the Seattle roster overall, so if there’s no subsequent move to add another third base option or at least to reallocate the $13M in savings, this will still be widely viewed as a salary dump — even if there’s some legitimate long-term potential with Vargas. But the offseason is also quite young, and both the free-agent and trade markets have various options to consider at the hot corner or at second base, if Seattle is comfortable sliding another former Diamondback, Josh Rojas, over to third base.
A deal for Matt Chapman would be out of character for Dipoto, who has yet to sign a free-agent bat to a multi-year contract since taking over in Seattle, but the market provides some more affordable choices, such Gio Urshela and Justin Turner. Willy Adames, Jonathan India, Jorge Polanco, Kyle Farmer, and possibly Brendan Donovan are among the shortstops, second basemen, and/or multi-position players in the trade market who could fit into the Seattle infield.
Given Seattle’s strong youthful core and the team’s near playoff exit last season, there’s no reason to believe the squad is ready for a significant step back. When it comes to the trade market, Dipoto has established himself as possibly the most active baseball operations chief in the league, and it stands to reason that more moves will follow. With Suarez in Arizona, the M’s are now projecting a payroll of roughly $133 million, which is about $7 million less than last year’s total and about $25 million less than their franchise record. There should be resources available to supplement the roster in the next days and weeks.
The Mariners and D-backs agreed to a trade including Zavala and other players, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. Suarez and Vargas were swapped, according to Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times.
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