Folks In Seattle Wonder What Happened To Days Of Drafting Instant Impact
MLBTRivia
With Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez, the Mariners made two of the most successful first-round draft picks of all time. Since then, however, their draft history has been characterized more by its busts than its successes. According to Baseball-Reference, which of Seattle’s first-round picks from the last 30 years has the highest career total in wins above replacement?
Red Sox, Brayan Bello in “Advanced” Extension Talks
The Red Sox and third-year starting pitcher Brayan Bello are in “advanced talks” about a long-term extension, per Alex Speier of The Boston Globe. Bello, who will turn 25 in May, won’t be arbitration-eligible until after the 2025 season and is under team control through 2028, but Speier reports that the two sides are discussing a potential deal that would keep Bello in Boston beyond 2028.
A well-regarded prospect who made his major-league debut in July 2022, Bello led the Red Sox in starts (28), innings (157), and wins (12) in 2023, but I have thus far been underwhelmed by his performance in the majors. A groundballer, Bello has posted a consistently below-average strikeout rate (20.0 percent compared to the league average of 22.6 percent) across his 214 1/3 major-league innings. As a rookie in 2022, his inflated walk rate resulted in a mere 2.04 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He got his walks under control in 2023, but he gave up 24 home runs in just 157 innings, a huge total for a pitch-to-contact groundballer, and he was in the bottom 13 percent of the league in hard-hit percentage, per Statcast. In the second half of last season, Bello posted a 5.49 ERA with diminished peripherals. To my eye, he’s a mid-rotation starter, at best, on a good team. However, it seems the Sox are more sanguine about his potential.
Mike Zunino Retires
All-Star catcher and former first-round draft pick Mike Zunino announced his retirement on Instagram on Wednesday. Zunino, who will turn 33 later this month, had not caught on with another team since the Guardians released him last June.
Selected out of the University of Florida by the Mariners with the third-overall pick in the 2012 draft, Zunino was rushed to the majors by the following June. Aggressive promotions of prospects were characteristic of the Mariners under then–general manager Jack Zduriencik, and Zunino’s was widely regarded as a disservice to the player, though a fractured hamate a little more than a month after his debut didn’t help. Zunino quickly proved to be a two-true-outcome player at the plate (strikeouts and homers), but also an excellent pitch framer behind it. The resulting profile proved somewhat contentious, prompting the social-media catchphrase “Mike Zunino is good” in defense of the generally likeable and occasionally quite valuable catcher, who many dissenters considered yet another Mariners first-round bust.
Demoted at the end of the 2015 season, Zunino opened 2016 in Triple-A but played some of his best baseball after returning to the majors that July. In 627 major-league plate appearances 2016 and ’17, combined, Zunino hit .238/.327/.497 (122 OPS+) with 37 home runs (and 225 strikeouts), compiling 5.2 wins above replacement (Baseball-Reference version) for Seattle. Zunino couldn’t sustain that performance, however. After he regressed significantly in 2018, the Mariners traded him to the Rays in a five-player deal that netted outfielders Mallex Smith and Jake Fraley.
Zunino was even worse in his first two years in Tampa Bay (50 OPS+, though his receiving kept him close to replacement level), but he had a career year in 2021. In 2021, Zunino hit.216/.301/.559 (136 OPS+) with 33 home runs in just 375 plate appearances, made what would prove to be his only All-Star team, and even received an MVP vote (from a Baltimore writer). Zunino was worth nearly four wins (again per B-Ref) in just 109 games that season, but it would prove to be a last gasp, as thoracic-outlet syndrome scuttled his hopes of a follow-up. Zunino would ultimately post a mere 53 OPS+ in just 263 more major-league plate appearances before getting his release from the Guardians last June.
Zunino is a strong candidate for a career in coaching and perhaps even managing and suggested an interest in pursuing such a path in his statement on Instagram. We at MLBTR with him all the best in the next phase of his life.
Injury News & Updates
A’s RHP Luis Medina will start the season on the injured list with a Grade 2 sprain of the medial collateral ligament in his right knee, manager Mark Kotsay told reporters. The team has also shut down RHP Freddy Tarnok due to a “flare-up” in his surgically repaired right hip, per Martín Gallegos of MLB.com.
Pirates RHP Dauri Moreta has a ligament in jury in his pitching elbow, team director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk told reporters. Tomczyk confirmed Monday’s report that Moreta will miss, in Tomczyk’s words, “an extended period of time.”
Royals non-roster RHP Tyler Duffy told reporters he had a cancerous mole removed from his left shoulder last week. Duffy hasn’t pitched since, but subsequent tests have been negative, and he has been cleared for light baseball activities.
Roster Decisions
Dodgers non-roster RHP Daniel Hudson will open the season in the major-league bullpen, manager Dave Roberts told reporters. Hudson has not yet been added to the 40-man roster.
Minor-League Transactions
Nationals signed OF Eddie Rosario to a minor-league contract with an invitation to major-league spring training. Rosario would receive a $2-million salary and up to $2 million in bonuses in the majors, per Daniel Álvarez-Montes of El Extra Base and Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Given how heavily right-handed the Nationals’ outfield is, the lefty-hitting Rosario seems to have an excellent chance of making the team.
From Trade Rumors Front Office
Anthony Franco: The Red Sox Remain Stagnant
In his latest exclusive article for Front Office subscribers, MLBTR’s Anthony Franco directs a disappointed head shake at the Boston Red Sox’s offseason, the weakness of which has been exposed by a potentially season-erasing injury to the team’s only free-agent signing who was expected to have an immediate impact, righty Lucas Giolito:
Even if Giolito’s spring injury was unforeseeable, it’s a cruel reminder of how lackluster the offseason has been. The Red Sox changed front office leaders, firing Chaim Bloom and tabbing Craig Breslow as chief baseball officer. Their basic operating procedure hasn’t seemed to change much in Breslow’s first few months at the helm. The general approach has been to look for opportunistic value plays while scaling back spending without committing to either short-term competitiveness or resetting the roster.
It didn’t work for the final two seasons of Bloom's front office tenure. It doesn’t look as if it’ll work in 2024. The Sox are widely perceived as the worst team in the American League East. Projections from FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus support that idea. If the Sox were in either of the Central divisions, they’d be a legitimate threat. In the AL East, they’re at best a dark horse. There are a lot of players to like, but they’re turning to largely unproven options throughout the starting staff and in the outfield. A middle infield pairing of Trevor Story and Vaughn Grissom could be good, yet it’s also one with clear downside.
Tim Dierkes’ MLB Mailbag: Giolito Injury, J.D. Davis, Joey Bart
MLBTR founder Tim Dierkes’ latest Mailbag column for Front Office subscribers also discusses Giolito and the Red Sox at length, as well as the Giants’ potential trades in the wake of the Matt Chapman signing and numerous other topics. One subject that is increasingly relevant, and that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, speaks to the handful of notable starting pitchers—Jordan Montomery, Blake Snell, Mike Clevinger, Michael Lorenzen, Zack Greinke—who remain unsigned:
John asks: If a starting pitcher signs today (whatever day you answer this), about when will they be ready to start a game? (e.g. Opening Day? April 15? May 5?)
Using our MLB Contract Tracker I found eight relevant examples of notable starting pitchers who signed on March 5 or later. Here’s each with the amount of time between their agreement date and their first MLB game of the season.
Jake Odorizzi / Astros / signed 3-8-21: 36 days
Dallas Keuchel / Braves / signed 6-7-19: 14 days
Jake Arrieta / Phillies / signed 3-12-18: 27 days
Alex Cobb / Orioles / signed 3-21-18: 24 days
Lance Lynn / Twins / signed 3-12-18: 21 days
Ervin Santana / Braves / signed 3-12-14: 28 days
Kyle Lohse / Brewers / signed 3-25-13: 11 days
Roy Oswalt / Rangers / signed 5-29-12: 24 days
Anyone else forget Roy Oswalt was on the Rangers? Anyway, the range on these late-signing pitchers spans from 11 to 36 days, with an average of 23 days and a median of 24. Since a lot of these signings are kind of old, I’d probably just use four weeks as a baseline ramp-up period.
Regular Opening Day is three weeks from Thursday, so if a pitcher signs today, he can reasonably take a team’s fourth or fifth turn in the rotation. If he signs the week of March 11, he’s probably missing a turn.
MLBTRivia Answer
Adam Jones, who was drafted 37th overall in 2003 with the compensation pick the Mariners received after failing to sign 28th overall pick John Mayberry Jr. the previous year. A five-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glover, Jones compiled 32.6 bWAR over a 14-year major-league career, but only 0.9 wins of that came with the Mariners, as they sent him to the Orioles in a five-player package for fragile lefty Erik Bedard prior to Jones’s age-22 season.
In the 20 years since Jones, Mike Zunino’s 9.2 career bWAR trails only Taijuan Walker’s 12.7 (and counting) and Brandon Morrow’s 11.1 among Mariners’ first-round picks, though there is some optimism about their picks from the last half-decade or so, including Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and top prospect Harry Ford.