Jarred Kelenic is a cornerstone of the Seattle Mariners rebuid.
I’ve written a lot about ripple effects when it comes to baseball, Seattle Mariners, and the rebuild. Let’s do a deeper dive and dissect what is conjecture and what is real. With a little time to reflect and gain perspective, it’s important to understand the facts before we go over the ripple effects.
Kevin Mather said that the Mariners offered Jarred Kelenic a multi-year contract. Jerry Dipoto confirmed that an offer was made that would put Kelenic on the 40-man roster but didn’t guarantee him a spot on the MLB roster.
Jarred Kelenic turned down the offer and allegedly said, “I’ll bet on myself,” to Seattle brass. His refusal to sign doesn’t preclude him from ever getting another offer from Seattle. It also doesn’t change his trajectory.
Jarred Kelenic has 83 at-bats at AA. In that small sample size, he only hit .253 with a .857 OPS. Those numbers are decent. Kelenic did have six home runs, but he also had six home runs in High A against 169 at-bats. He doesn’t have experience against elite arms or against teams that will scout out his weaknesses and exploit them (see Kyle Lewis, September 2020)
If Kelenic were to start the season on the opening day roster, he would earn 2021 as part of his service time. This means that his clock begins immediately, and the Mariners control Kelenic’s contract through 2026.
Should the Mariners keep him out until after April 16th, the organization controls Kelenic’s contract through the 2027 season. That would also be his age 28 season or at his baseball prime.
Baseball teams do this all of the time with big-time prospects. The Cubs were outed by Scott Boras as doing this as a ploy to speed up third baseman Kris Bryant’s clock. Boras alleged Chicago didn’t care about winning, and the war about service time began. For the most part, players don’t air these grievances publicly. Former Seattle Mariners President Kevin Mather opened the door for this to be a public situation versus an in-house concern.
In 2021, there isn’t a combined camp, which is likely why the Mariners have 73 players in spring training this season. Most of the expected AAA roster is in camp because Tacoma begins their season one week after Major League Baseball opens on April 1st.
The minor league camp delay impacts the lower minors and Double-A and any top prospects that weren’t invited to the big league camp.
Essentially Jarred Kelenic is trying to create leverage to speed up the clock on his service time. There aren’t a lot of legitimate reasons to speed up his clock. In fact, there are more reasons to wait and discover than to actually pursue.
What Kelenic is doing, thanks in large part to Kevin Mather’s big mouth, is to pit Mariners fans against Mariners management to put pressure on Dipoto to bring the phenom up to the Majors. Mariners fans desperately want to see a good product on the field, and Kelenic’s agent (Brody Schofield) is using that desperation against M’s management.
Kelenic weighs in as a top-five prospect across nearly all prospect lists. Typically a prospect rated that high is a star in the making. The Mariners have had them before, and fans know most of the names of the top five prospects from the last thirty-five years.
Most importantly for Kelenic, getting to free agency quicker means more money.
Kelenic is loaded with talent. Unfortunately, he is still unproven against elite arms and advance scouting that comes with being at the Major League level. Whether or not Kelenic will be a star depends on proper development and earning promotions based on performance, not confidence.
The Mariner’s would gain an additional year of control with Kelenic by holding him out until the second half of April, but that doesn’t make him any cheaper in the long run. By the time Kelenic hits his arbitration years (’25, ’26, ’27), he should be a star.
Mookie Betts holds the record for the highest salary from an arbitration-eligible player at $27 million. Betts broke Nolan Arenado’s record of $26 million from 2019.
The Mariners also have to consider that they have amassed an incredible wealth of talent down on the farm. They will need to do a financial balancing act through the arbitration years of Kelenic, Logan Gilbert, Emmerson Hancock, George Kirby, Julio Rodriguez, and Noelvi Marte, should they all pan out.
Kelenic is still only 21 years old and turns 22 during the season. Most fans don’t care that it’s a business for the players as much as the team. They also don’t care about the strategies at play, referenced earlier. What the M’s faithful does want is a trip to the postseason. His agent is firing up Seattle Mariners fans based on just a year-and-a-half of minor league experience.
As desperate as they are to make the playoffs, Schofield has stirred some backlash. The service time dispute has turned some Mariners fans against Kelenic. They are reminded of Alex Rodriguez. That in the end, A-Rod wasn’t a team player (despite being part of the last Mariners playoff team). These specific fans cling to the romantic idea that players should want to make Seattle their hometown and stay for their entire career, like Edgar Martinez.
The reality is Schofield has pushed these two versions of Seattle fans against each other in a war of ‘what ifs,’ conjecture, and strategically requiring Dipoto to commit and back that commitment with reason.
This cat and mouse game is likely to be played out again next year with Julio Rodriguez and/or Emerson Hancock. The fans lose because we have this innate desire to want to be on the right side of the “I Told You So” social media circus that exists in our world today.
A classic example of a team that succumbed to a highly touted prospect that never made it to an elite level of play was the Atlanta Braves and Jason Heyward. He was called up at 20 years old on April 5, 2010. In 2010 Spring training, there was lots of noise about a young outfielder who could hit the ball 500 feet. In fact, he smashed the windshield of one of the coach’s cars in the parking lot to prove it. However, he’s never lived up to the hype.
It’s the fans who are caught in the middle because some fans understand the Mariners’ situation. Seattle management is required to reveal their hand, and Dipoto has done that. Kelenic is expected to begin the season at AAA. Not because of service time manipulation, but because of the facts – 21 games played above A ball. That’s Hardly enough time to assess whether or not he’s ready to be part of a big-league lineup.
But other fans believe that Kelenic is a necessary piece to help the Mariner’s contend this year. Having the wonder kid for an entire season will ensure the Mariners have a better shot to end the longest playoff drought in North American sports. Kelenic has to be the answer.
No facts actually support this yet. But fans are so willing to be on this side of “I told you so” that they are willing to express this with the backing of their social media muscles.
There is another fan caught in the middle. That fan is annoyed about Kelenic’s selfishness and that he’s gone public. Although it’s not completely on, Kelenic, Kevin Mather, opened this door by revealing that an offer was turned down.
Still, the fan that hated Alex Rodriguez Seattle departure for a quarter-of-a-billion dollar payout in Texas is the same fan that hates Jarred Kelenic. Unfortunately, there’s no way that Kelenic or his agent could know this fan exists, but they do. These people feel that Kelenic will leave the Mariners at some point in the next six seasons because he’s not a team player.
I will never tell a fan how to be a fan or how to react, but I will ensure that they have all of the information. The ripple effect of Kevin Mather’s irresponsible words is that Jarred Kelenic’s agent feels that they have leverage over the team now. For Schofield and Kelenic, this is a business move.
Jarred Kelenic hasn’t had a chance to fall in love with the team, gel with his teammates, or anything else that has to do with being part of the Seattle Mariners. Could there be some fallout in the dugout, possibly, but highly unlikely? The Major Leaguers are part of the Player’s Association and understand more than the kids that it’s a business.
Kelenic’s own words may come back to haunt him though, “The player’s reaction was like someone farted in church.” (in regards to Dipoto addressing the team).
Sadly a matter that wasn’t that complicated before Mather’s comments is now very complicated. It’s the loyal fans who suffer. It seems that at every possible turn, the fans are the ones who suffer. The part that really stings is that we all know the rhetoric that follows the fallout from a disgraced team leader, and it feels hollow and pathetically short of what is needed.
These are just the ripple effects for the Seattle Mariners organization. Mather opened up a huge can of worms for Major League Baseball as they negotiate the next Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Joe Swenson is a Writer, Director, Producer for Broken Arts Entertainment www.brokenartsentertainment.com. He is also one of the hosts of the YouTube Sports show “In The Clutch” featured here Joe’s InTheClutch – YouTube.