Analyzing the Arozarena trade from all sides

Two familiar trade partners, the Mariners and Rays, pulled off Trade Deadline season’s first big move late Thursday night, with outfielder Randy Arozarena headed to Seattle in exchange for multiple prospects.

While Seattle and Tampa Bay finished Thursday with nearly identical records, the Mariners’ place in the AL West gives them much higher postseason odds, despite a significant recent slide. Arozarena brings to Seattle a hot bat and a reputation for rising to the occasion, thanks in part to one of the greatest postseason performances in baseball history.

TRADE DETAILS

Mariners receive: OF Randy Arozarena
Rays receive: OF Aidan Smith (No. 12 among Mariners Top 30 prospects), RHP Brody Hopkins (No. 22), player to be named later

Here is a breakdown of this intriguing exchange from all angles, via MLB.com experts:

Why it makes sense for the Mariners
Via Mariners beat writer Daniel Kramer

Arozarena arrives at a time with Seattle sinking fast in the American League postseason race, having dropped a 10-game lead atop the AL West as recently as June 18 to now being one game behind Houston and 3 1/2 games out of the final AL Wild Card spot, entering this week’s series against the White Sox.

The Mariners desperately need offense to couple with a pitching staff that has been among MLB’s elite. Seattle’s bats, collectively, rank among the worst in baseball, with a .216 batting average (30th among the 30 clubs), a .660 OPS (28th) and a 28.0% strikeout rate (30th).

In the midst of a down year, Arozarena has turned things around dramatically since June 1, with a slash line of .290/.402/.517 (.920 OPS) after hitting .158 with a .568 OPS over his first 56 games.

“Randy is a dynamic, high-energy all-around player who has excelled in the biggest moments on the biggest stages,” Mariners GM Justin Hollander said in a statement. “He’s going to be a great addition to our clubhouse and lineup.” MORE >

Why it makes sense for the Rays
Via Rays beat writer Adam Berry

The move doesn’t necessarily raise a white flag on the Rays’ season, but it does reflect the reality of where they stand. With Tuesday’s Trade Deadline looming, a 52-51 record and long odds to reach the playoffs, they are in a position where they must consider future seasons as much as the stretch run of this year.

In this case, that meant parting with Arozarena, the fan-favorite left fielder who burst onto the scene and earned his big-game reputation with his historic postseason performance during Tampa Bay’s march to the American League championship in 2020.

Earning $8.1 million in the second of his four arbitration-eligible seasons, with two more raises due in the future, Arozarena’s escalating salary and the Rays’ inability to gain any ground in the postseason race made him an obvious trade candidate. MORE >

Prospect profile
Via MLB Pipeline

OF Aidan Smith (No. 12 on Mariners’ Top 30; No. 11 on Rays’ Top 30)
Age: Turned 20 on July 23
Ht: 6’ 2” / Wt: 190 lbs.
Bats: R / Throws - R
Drafted: 4th round, 2023
MLB ETA: 2027

Scouting grades (on 20-80 scale): Hit 50 | Power: 50 | Run: 60 | Arm | 60 | Field: 55 | Overall: 45

2023 stats
Class A Modesto: .284/.402/.470, 9 HR, 42 RBIs, 28 SB in 77 G

With good balance and a small stride, Smith optimizes his contact and consistently drives the ball to his pull side. Some within the Seattle organization pointed to his mental acuity as an avid golfer translating to his approach at the plate, though he sometimes struggled with high fastballs in the California League. He showed flashes of being an above-average hitter as an amateur, and while he has just solid power now, some of his present doubles could turn into future homers in his 20s.

With an athletic 6-foot-2, 190-pound frame that can add more strength along with strong wheels to go with a plus arm, there’s a good chance he can stick in center field, giving him a solid floor. Moving out of the hitter-friendly California League will test how the rest of his profile holds up in the Tampa Bay system. MORE >

Trade Deadline implications
Via senior national reporter Mark Feinsand

The Mariners were in desperate need of a bat - multiple bats, actually, given the recent injuries to Julio Rodríguez and J.P. Crawford - so while the addition of the red-hot Arozarena will help, Seattle likely isn’t done. First base is a spot the Mariners should still look to improve.

For the Rays, the move doesn’t mean they plan to sell, even though they have already moved Aaron Civale and Phil Maton this season, as well. Tampa Bay was expected to be both a buyer and seller, and while we could still see other Rays players get traded (Zach Eflin? Yandy Diaz?), the Rays could also make moves to bring in talent, as well.

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Diving deep
Via analyst Mike Petriello

It’s easy to look at Arozarena’s mere .211 average and .394 slugging percentage – each by far career lows – and think that the Mariners bought at a low point, but that also ignores the shape of their new left fielder’s season. Arozarena got off to a truly dreadful start, posting a .158/.257/.312 line through the end of May, one of the 10 weakest runs of any qualified hitter. But since the calendar flipped to June, he’s hit a stellar .284/.397/.507, one of the 20 best lines of any qualified hitter, and essentially the equal of Gunnar Henderson or Freddie Freeman in that time.

While you obviously can’t pretend the first two months didn’t happen, you also don’t have to let that overwhelm the three previous years of solid contributions, either. Arozarena cut down his strikeout rate from 28% in The Bad Months to 19% in The Good Months, and he turned a career-worst hard-hit rate in April back to normal after. Whatever it was that caused the season to start so poorly, there seems little reason to worry about it now, and so from here on out it seems reasonable to expect that you’ll get what you always get, which is a 20/20 season with performance about 25% better than league average.

If that’s what Seattle does receive, then it’s a huge win for baseball’s third-weakest run scoring offense and eighth-weakest left fielders. It might not be enough, not with Julio Rodríguez and J.P. Crawford each injured. It might not even be guaranteed, given that T-Mobile Park is a brutally difficult place to hit, ranking last – by a sizable margin – in Statcast’s park factor for right-handed hitters. (Look no further than Teoscar Hernández’s lone year in Seattle to see how that can go.)

But it was also a move that Jerry Dipoto absolutely had to make, given that the offense had failed a solid pitching staff so badly that the Mariners’ playoffs odds have sunk to a mere 39% after being at 92% back in June. We can’t really evaluate the Rays side fully until we know the identify of the player to be named – remember that once upon a time, that ended up being Shane Baz – but the Mariners did well to add a player who is projected to be an above-average bat for each of the remaining 2.5 seasons they’ll have his services.

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Stat to know
Via MLB.com research staff

16: That’s the number of trades completed between Seattle and Tampa Bay since Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto took over at the end of the 2015 season. That’s exactly twice as many Mariners-Rays trades as the franchises executed between Tampa Bay’s arrival in 1998 and when Dipoto took the helm. As a point of comparison, the Mariners and Red Sox (another AL East team) have only collaborated on five trades during Dipoto’s tenure.