I'm Daniel Kramer, coming to you from the lobby
of the 2023 winner meetings in Nashville. And here's
what we're tracking for the Mariners, Jerry Dipoto and
the Mariners wasted no time getting into high gear upon
arriving on Sunday afternoon, executing the first trade at
baseball's premier off season event that saw the club depart
with three well known players and what the front office
later called a move to create more payroll flexibility.
Jared Knick is the key return for the Braves who
are clearly banking on him finally realizing his potential that
he's flashing spurts in Seattle and they were willing to
absorb the contracts of Marco Gonzalez while doing so,
but it sounds like Gonzalez won't be part of Atlanta's
long term plans for Seattle. This deal along with
the trade that sent a A and Suarez to Arizona
. Two weeks ago, the Mariners have trimmed roughly
42 million in future commitments. They also opted not
to extend the Oscar Hernandez a qualifying offer which given
how the rest of the off season has progressed in
line with the club's strategy to clear more payroll.
So what's next? Seattle sits around 115 million for
2024. And De Poto told us shortly after the
trade that the Mariners will very likely have a higher
figure than last year when it was around 140 million
. If so, that leaves them room to go
back and add because so far it's been addition by
subtraction and they're clearly in the subtraction phase. And
GM Justin Hollander also recognize that they're not a better
team than they were on the final day of last
season. Bluntly saying, no, not today when
asked. So then the next question is how they
can shift their focus from trimming the budget to reinvesting
in an offense that was far too inconsistent last season
. Now without their two corner outfielders that they used
most regularly last year and the run producing third baseman
, the photo said that the club wants to add
multiple bats and the track record with this front office
has been very aggressively via the trade market. There
are a lot of viable partners out on that market
. Many of whom have matched up with the Mariners
in the past. There's a lot left to do
this winter perhaps even more than when they fell just
short of the post season and there's still plenty of
time to do it, but they put themselves in
an awkward and potentially uncomfortable position the rest of the 00:02:06.049 --> way