Jarred Kelenic, Seattle Mariners.
With the recent acquisition of James Paxton, the Seattle Mariners shifted their rebuild for a moment. Paxton is a proven winner when healthy, and should he find a way at age 32 to have his first fully healthy season, the M’s should be able to win more often than they lose.
Pitchers and catchers report midweek with the rest of the Spring Training invitees joining the club over the upcoming weekend and into the start of next week. All eyes will be on two of the high-level prospects in the camp who have a chance at making the club early in the season. Logan Gilbert and Jarred Kelenic.
The Mariner’s GM has been all over the place and non-committal at the same time about everything related to Kelenic and Gilbert. In fact, in Dipoto’s weekly chat with 710 ESPN’s Danny and Gallant two weeks ago, he said in regards to timeframe:
“It could be a very short period, it could be one that takes a little bit longer, but we want to be prudent in how we make that decision because we are so much more concerned about the big picture development of Jarred in his career as well as the long-term outlook for the Seattle Mariners.”
Also, Dipoto has been very open about bringing in a left-handed bat that could play the outfield and possibly second base. While he hasn’t really discussed how he would go about acquiring said hitter. It’s assumed that it would be through free agency.
There isn’t much left on the market. The remaining left-handed bats still available include Shin-Soo Choo, Josh Reddick, and former Red Sox Gold Glove centerfielder Jackie Bradley Jr.
If we take a trip in the ‘Way Back Machine,’ you may recall that Trader Jerry hasn’t always been forthcoming in interviews. He refused to call the rebuild an actual rebuild initially, only to embrace it once it became evident that it was a rebuild. Dipoto has continued his ambiguity by remaining non-committal with the prospects that are in or near the Majors.
Part of this is by competitive design. By doing so, he can continue to set players’ value and not have his own words held against him. Another reason for being tight-lipped is to ensure that decisions are made with the most information available. But this is baseball; front office people are always discussing plans behind closed doors.
For example, the Mariners management can’t feel confident about a multi-year deal with Kelenic (agent Brodie Scoffield), or they would be all-in on starting him on opening day. Without a multi-year deal, like the one with Evan White, the Seattle Mariners will want to capture as much service time as they can. This means that the Mariners have to make a Cubs-like 2015 decision.
Cubs third baseman, Kris Bryant, was the second overall pick in 2013. In his first full season of professional baseball (2014), he hit .325 with a 1.098 OPS across AA and AAA. He hit 43 home runs and was the second-ranked prospect coming into the 2015 season.
The Cubbies made it very public that they intended on holding off on bringing Bryant up to Chicago until the end of April. By doing so, they could keep team control of his contract through 2021. The first day Chicago could bring Bryant up, without giving him an extra year of service time, they did.
Bryant’s agent, Scott Boras, suggested that the Cubs weren’t trying to win by sending his player to the minors. It was an effort to try to get him, Bryant, to free agency a year earlier. The Cubs stayed disciplined, and while Bryant won the National League Rookie of the Year in 2015 and 2016 MVP, he has lost a step statistically in nearly every category.
One hundred seventy-two days with the big league club are needed for a player to gain a year of service time. The Cubs are hardly the only team to ever manipulate the service time clock on a player. However, they were the most public about doing so. Dipoto has continued to use phrases like confidence and player development as a veil of secrecy over his intentions with Kelenic and Gilbert.
The MLB service time clock starts on April 1st. Seattle gains an extra year of team control out of both Kelenic and Gilbert by waiting to bring them up after April 16th.
In an interview on Saturday with MLB TVs Harold Reynolds and Greg Amsinger, Kelenic said emphatically and confidently that he would be helping out at the Big League level early this season. While that should get all Mariner’s fans excited, players don’t get to make those decisions; management does.
Dipoto hasn’t ruled out that Kelenic could join Seattle early in the season either. In fact, his implication of wanting a left-handed bat in the outfield would be the exact excuse for bringing Kelenic up on April 16th. Dipoto could be setting the stage with this kind of rhetoric. After all, the Seattle Mariners missed their opportunity to sign Kolton Wong and have stayed away from Reddick. Maybe those were intentional.
Gilbert has come up through the Mariners system with Kelenic and is in the same situation. Though, with pitchers, that first 172 days is a bit different. It’s rare to hear about a club manipulating service time on starting pitchers. This is mostly because the gamble in the first 172 days is a bit more predictable. Gilbert will likely spend more time in the minors during his rookie season than Kelenic.
In addition, Gilbert turns 24 on May 5th. That’s important because it means that he is under Mariners’ control through his baseball prime and up through his age-30 season. He’s a good candidate to be on the opening day roster because of his age and ability.
If the make-up is there for Gilbert to compete at the big-league level, the M’s signing James Paxton might actually accelerate their need for Gilbert. Seattle is lefty-heavy in the rotation. A hard-throwing righty fits in nicely.
Without adding a free agent bat, the Mariners could still be in a position to compete for the playoffs. That’s another reason why they signed Paxton. His presence can be enhanced by adding Gilbert to the rotation on opening day and then Kelenic to the roster in mid-April.
At the start of 2022, Paxton will be gone, George Kirby and Emmerson Hancock should be competing for opening day rotation spots to give Seattle three lefties (Marco Gonzales, Justus Sheffield, and Yusei Kikuchi (final year of contract)) and three power righties (Gilbert, Hancock, and Kirby). Then service time manipulation conversation will start again, this time with Julio Rodriguez. It will be the same discussion about Noelvi Marte in 2023.
There are strategic advantages to holding Kelenic back for two weeks to start the season this year. The biggest one is so Seattle can keep control of him through 2027. By doing this, Dipoto sets a time-table for the other top prospects.
Having these prospects as the core of Seattle’s future is vital to sustained success.
I think every fan can appreciate what is hopefully coming down the pipe. It’s what they want more than anything else, a winner. The Mariners have had two massive playoff droughts. The first one led to rumors about Seattle leaving for Tampa Bay or other cities, but they stayed.
Then from 1995-2001, the team had moderate success. Since 2001, the M’s struggled again through another drought. It will end in the next two years based on the talent they assembled. Seattle looks like they are in line for a multi-year run on the American League Championship.
Joe Swenson is a lifelong Seattle sports fan, President of Broken Arts Entertainment, a full-service production company featuring the Quarantine 2038 project, streaming to a device near you in May. www.brokenartsentertainment.com