Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto will be ‘opportunistic’ at trade deadline

As the Mariners get ready to start the second half of the season, we get ever closer to the answer to what has perhaps been asked more about the team over the past two months than anything else.

What will they do at the trade deadline? Will they be buyers? Will they be sellers? Will they stand pat?

If you think general manager Jerry Dipoto will stand pat, you haven’t been paying attention. If the shop is open, Dipoto is buying. We saw this in his first offseason with the Mariners and we will no doubt see this again in the coming weeks. There is always a move to be made.

“We are going to be opportunistic at the deadline,” Dipoto said last week in Kansas City. “That is my way of saying that you always position yourself into the trade deadline to both buy and sell. If you view yourself as having one hole to fill, you are kidding yourself. Nobody has one hole to fill. If there is a move to be made that will help us become a better team in the here and now, we will do that. If there is a move to be made that will better balance out our here and now with our future, we will do that.”

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Moves for the now versus moves for the future. For Dipoto, it’s not an either/or. While the team has fallen off the 86-87-win pace that Dipoto built it to aim for, it has demonstrated that when healthy, it can perform at a pace that could put it on a playoff track. The Mariners’ run differential (plus-51) and Pythagorean record (50-39) would suggest they are capable of stringing together a second-half run that could put them in better position for the postseason. Playing cleaner games will be a huge factor, but there are areas on the field where improvement could go a long way as well.

“Left field has been an issue for us and something we need to improve as we move forward,” Dipoto said. “The pitching staff, we need it to be healthy and balance out, but mostly we need them to go out and do the things they are capable of doing.”

Another area of need: leadoff hitter. The Mariners’ leadoff spot has produced a line of just .241/.316/.312 this year.

“That’s been a real need for us,” Dipoto acknowledged. “We understood when we acquired Leonys (Martin) that he was not intended to be a leadoff hitter, and because we are playing short-manned he was forced in that role, and as a result he has struggled. When Leonys was hitting ninth for us, it was a dynamically different presence in our lineup.”

The answer could be Norichika Aoki, but only if he is able to produce at the rate he did before 2016. Help may or may not be available from the outside, and Dipoto’s eyes will be open for a number of other areas as well. Should the Mariners hit that winning streak they have been looking for out of the gates, will Dipoto have the pieces to make a significant trade, competing with clubs that are richer in prospects?

“I think you always have the pieces to make big trades because in today’s time, big trades isn’t always about prospect value,” he said while pointing out that he believes there is much more talent in the Mariners’ farm system than has been noted by third-party grading systems. “Big trades is about creativity, it’s about prospect value, it’s about payroll flexibility, it’s about options. There’s so much more that goes into it today than even five years ago. We have both attractive prospects and we also have guys we feel confidently we are developing to inject into our own situation.”

The key word here is “developing.” We have seen this. It is reflected in the records of the minor-league teams, a dramatic turnaround from a year ago. Then there are the individuals of note.

Start with Edwin Diaz. As the No. 1 pitching prospect in the organization, he was stalled at Double-A and struggling with a third pitch that is necessary to be a starter. But he’s now perhaps the best arm in the Mariners’ bullpen. Tyler O’Neill is having an MVP-caliber season, showing he’s not a power-only player. Luiz Gohara is starting to progress through the system. D.J. Peterson is buying into “C the Z” and advancing to Triple-A. Guillermo Heredia is quickly making up for two years of lost time while not playing. Alex Jackson is showing significant progress in the last month and is still just 20 years old.

There are pieces, and as we saw in the offseason, it’s not always about the marquee names. Names we don’t know can also net help. If the pieces are indeed there, then what next? One thing is for certain: regardless of what the big club does, we will not see a tear-down.

“The one thing I don’t envision us doing is purging our roster and moving five years down the road,” Dipoto said. “I don’t believe there is such thing as a five-year plan. You’re constantly in a position to be opportunists and if there is a deal out there to make us better now, we will look to do that.”

It comes down to evaluation and balance, with important days to come for Dipoto and the organization.

“What we need to be conscious of at every move – and this is where being opportunistic matters most – is we are always balancing the present with the future, and the present is always going to have a slightly-higher to at times a significantly-higher value. But we can never forsake what happens over the course of the coming days to chase a dream. We have to determine whether that dream is real before we start chasing.”

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