Mariners pick up new outfielder and third baseman

The lockout is over, and the season starts on April 7. Teams are busy signing free agents and making trades. Yesterday, the Mariners traded with the Cincinnati Reds for outfielder Jesse Winker and third baseman Eugenio Suarez. They gave up pitcher Justin Dunn, outfielder Jake Fraley, pitching prospect Brandon Williamson and a player to be named later.

If Winker can stay healthy, he should be one of the Mariners’ best hitters this year. Last season, Winker hit .305/.394/.556 with twenty-four home runs in one hundred and ten games. Over his five-year career, he has a .288/.385/.504 slash line. Last season he missed almost two months due to a strained intercostal muscle. Initially, it was thought the injury would cause him to miss up to ten games. In the end, he missed a month, reinjuring it in his first game back. Hopefully, he is fully healed and won’t miss any more time.

Eugenio Suarez comes to the Mariners as part reclamation project, part salary dump. Suarez had surgery on his right shoulder after a swimming pool accident in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t been the same hitter the Reds signed to a big contract. In 2019, before the accident, Suarez hit .271/.358/.572 with a career-high forty-nine home runs and one hundred and three RBIs. Last year he hit .198/.286/.428 with thirty-one home runs to go with one hundred and seventy-one strikeouts. He has $35 million owed to him over the next three years. With Kyle Seager gone, Suarez will be the Mariners starting third baseman.

Justin Dunn was the nineteenth pick in the 2016 draft for the New York Mets. He came over to Seattle in the Robinson Cano trade. After a productive 2020 season with the Mariners where he went 4-1 with a 4.34 ERA, he missed most of last season with a shoulder strain developed in mid-June. He came back to pitch in September but was shut down for the rest of the season after facing only one batter.

Jake Fraley played in seventy-eight games for the Mariners last year. He’s best known for his beard and ability to draw walks which he did at a rate of 17.4% of his at-bats last year. With all the Mariners’ depth in the outfield, it makes sense to move on from Fraley, who hit just .210/.352/.369. In today’s game, it is more acceptable to have a low batting average, but you need to hit for power to justify it. Fraley didn’t hit for power, so he was expendable.

Brandon Williamson is the player in this deal that the Mariners may regret trading. The six-foot-six lefty is not likely to make the Reds starting rotation this year but instead spend the year at the Reds triple-A team. After the trade, he slots in as the Reds’ fourth-best prospect.

Overall, this is a good trade for the Mariners as they added a good hitter in Winker to the team without giving up any of their top one hundred prospects.