Quotes from Jack Zduriencik on Mariners trading for Mark Trumbo

Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik joined “Danny, Dave and Moore” Wednesday afternoon shortly after the team acquired slugger Mark Trumbo and left-hander Vidal Nuno in a trade with the Diamondbacks for catcher Welington Castillo, reliever Dominic Leone and a pair of prospects, Gabby Guerrero and Jack Reinheimer.

You can listen to the interview here. Below are a few quotes from Zduriencik.

(On why the trade was made) “We’ve liked Mark for a long time. We coveted him as one of the legitimate power hitters in Major League Baseball. We had talks with him several years ago with Anaheim; it just didn’t work out. I think you look at our ballclub right now, anytime you can add somebody that has the opportunity to be the kind of offensive force that he can become and that he can bring to the table, I think is important. So when the deal looked like it could happen, we were more than happy to try to make this thing get to a “yes” and we did.

(On when the deal began to come together) Probably about a week ago. We had some discussions. All general managers have a lot of talks going on, so it’s not a secret. You never know when one of them is going to click and all the sudden pieces come together. But after we made the Welington Castillo trade, (D-Backs general manager) Dave Stewart called me. They’d lost a starting catcher down there, Tuffy Gosewich, and he said they’d have interest in Welington and would we be interested in talking about a deal. When Trumbo’s name came up by me to him, he said he would entertain it. Again, this thing went on for about four, five days and took a full head of steam yesterday morning. We worked on it all day and this is where we got to a point this morning where we both went home and slept on it, and have a deal.

(On where Trumbo will play) He’s played a lot of right field there in Arizona. He’s played first base in Anaheim, he’s played left field. Obviously we have the DH here so he can do that as well. But I think you’ll see him playing all over the place. I would say more than likely he’ll get a lot of ABs at the DH spot, give a chance to get (Nelson) Cruz’s legs a rest when Trumbo can play the outfield, he’ll also have first base as an option to give (Logan Morrison a rest) and then he can go to left field.

(On whether it was tough to give up one of the organization’s top prospects in Guerrero) Sure. It’s tough to let any of them go. And that’s not an easy decision to make. Any time you trade young players that you like — and we did like Gabby and we did like Jack Reinheimer — but you also have to say in the big picture it’s the scouting department’s job to replenish the system. So any time you trade a player they’ve got to go out and do their job and bring in players of the same ilk. … You can’t be afraid to trade players, especially when you bring in someone that you think can help your big club immediately and be a force on your club. So again, it’s always a juggling act, and in a perfect world you’d like to keep all your players, but when you can make your big-league club better, there’s times you just have to do it. And then the pitching part of it, with the injuries we’ve had to two starters going down — and we had a young kid start last night who did a really nice job — Vidal Nuno can be a swing guy, he can be a fifth starter, he be a bullpen piece for you. So now as you look at it, we now have three left-handers in our bullpen, which is pretty unique. So we’ll watch it unfold.

(On what kind of impact Trumbo can make) Mark Trumbo is not the savior. Mark Trumbo will come in and add a real nice piece and maybe give you a spark. But the biggest thing we need is we need for the players that are not performing to their level to perform to their level. If they do that, and then the addition of Trumbo, then that’s wonderful. So he helps, he’s going to be a nice piece going forward, but there are players that are not performing to their level that need to step it up and perform to their level.

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