The longest playoff drought in baseball might continue, but the Seattle Mariners are slowly ushering in a youth movement that could very soon be complete.
The Seattle Mariners have a plan set in motion and Jerry DiPoto is going to implement that plan to a tee in 2020. This season for mariners baseball will be all about readying the troops to compete in a year or two by testing the waters with each of their prospects except maybe their two most important ones in Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez.
The Mariners lack the talent right now to put forth a winning/playoff season, but they certainly have the young talent to showcase and get reps for.
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If you follow the Seattle Mariners, you know this is a team that has basically blown everything up and started fresh under Jerry DiPoto as General manager. No player has been safe and it has been hard to get a read on what exactly the core of this team moving forward will be.
But we can now start to see who DiPoto has in mind to lead this team into the future, and those guys are Evan White, Shed Long, JP Crawford, Julio Rodriguez, Jarred Kelenic, Logan Gilbert, Justus Sheffield, and Justin Dunn among a few others that can go either way.
With the exception of Kelenic and Rodriguez who are already getting invites to Spring Training, I believe we’re going to see all of these guys in 2020 as well as a slew of other young prospects both on the position player side and pitching side.
What does this mean for 2020? Just get reps. And for the veteran players, up your value to get traded somewhere that’s trying to win now.
The team is already taking measures to make sure this is a team all about young players. Dee Gordon is being moved to play a utility bench role in favor of Shed Long getting the majority of reps at second base.
Mitch Haniger is already out of action until mid-year supposedly and is probably going to start the year on the 60-day IL. Carlos Gonzalez is rumored to most likely miss the cut to make the team out of Spring Training.
As for the pitchers, Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi are at the top of the rotation, but solid years out of both of them could benefit both them and the team as they could become trade commodities or the picture could become even clearer that they need to be on the squad moving forward.
As for guys like Taijuan Walker and Kendall Graveman, their main objective this season should be to re-ingratiate themselves back into the mix. They both have gone through extensive injuries and rehabs and have been out of action for a while.
The bullpen arms are in the same boat. It’s going to be all about trying out to stay on this team or showcasing skills to hopefully get traded to a more win-now environment. Guys like Gerson Bautista, Brandon Brennan, Erik Swanson, Dan Altavilla, Austin Adams, Matt Magill, Carl Edwards Jr., and Art Warren are all firmly in that boat that could go either way for them, so I’m very interested to see how they perform and if anyone can stand out.
I have the M’s finishing this season 63-99 and in last place in the AL West, though that record total could basically fall by the wayside now that I have no idea how many games will even be played.
I believe they have a little more talent than some of the other bad teams in the AL, so they’ll compete, but overall, I just don’t think they’re quite ready to start winning more games and breaking that playoff streak they’re now stuck in.