Seattle Mariners reach agreement with Zunino for $2.975 million

The Seattle Mariners avoided arbitration with catcher Mike Zunino by signing him to a one-year contract for just under three million.

The Seattle Mariners have reached an agreement with arbitration-eligible catcher Mike Zunino on a one-year deal for $2.975 million. This is a nice bump from the $570,000 he made last year but a couple hundred thousand short of the $3.2 million projected by MLB Trade Rumors. This was Zunino’s first year in arbitration.

Zunino is coming off the best season of his career. In 2017, he set career highs in hits, runs, homers, and RBI while hitting .251/.331/.509 in 435 plate appearances. Only two catchers in baseball had more home runs than the 25 hit by Zunino. He also had a 126 wRC+, a hitting metric that adjusts for league and ballpark. This means Zunino was 26 percent better than average on offense, good for fifth among catchers with 300 or more plate appearances. He’s also a solid defensive catcher.

The FanGraphs depth charts project Zunino to be worth 2.7 WAR next year. With a free agent cost of roughly eight million per WAR, Zunino should be a bargain on a contract paying him just under $3 million. The Mariners have six players who will make $10 million or more next season, so they need to get solid production from their arbitration-eligible guys. Zunino is one of them.

It makes sense for the Seattle Mariners to reach an agreement with Zunino, rather than go through the arbitration process. In arbitration, the player and team each submit a salary figure and a panel of arbitrators choose one of the figures based on comparable players. It can sometimes be contentious, so it’s always better for the team and player to come to an agreement and avoid the conflict. The deadline for the Mariners and Zunino to reach an agreement was 10 am on Friday.

Zunino was worth 3.6 WAR (FanGraphs) last season, placing him tied for third in baseball, behind only Gary Sanchez of the Yankees and Buster Posey of the Giants. As good as he was, there were some red flags.

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The biggest were a 36.8 percent strikeout rate and a .355 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP). Zunino has always struck out a ton. His career rate is 33.5 percent, which is the highest in baseball for hitters with at least 1500 plate appearances since he made his big league debut in 2013. The strikeouts are not going to go away.

That .355 BABIP is an aberration compared to the rest of his career. Before 2017, his highest single-season BABIP was .267. His career mark is .273. He had the highest hard hit percentage and pull rate of his career, but they don’t adequately account for so many balls landing for hits. The most likely explanation is that he got lucky.

Zunino’s FanGraphs projection calls for a much more reasonable .279 BABIP and a .224/.298/.450 batting line. That would be a league average 100 wRC+. Couple league average hitting with Zunino’s defense behind the dish and you have an above-average player at a bargain price.

Next: Indians dodge arbitration with Cody Allen

The Seattle Mariners are set at most of the positions around the field, ut could use a better bat in left field and possibly first base, depending on what Ryon Healy does. Their biggest need is a starting rotation that has three pitchers expected to be right around league average or better—James Paxton, Felix Hernandez, and Mike Leake—and a bunch of arms they hope can get through five innings before turning the game over to the bullpen. Signing Zunino ahead of arbitration was an easy move to make. Now GM Jerry Dipoto needs to find a starting pitcher or two.