Do The Seattle Mariners Have Any Extension Candidates?
With the Cactus League scheduled to kick off tomorrow, player contracts aren’t exactly first and foremost on most baseball fans’ minds. Yet, as MLB Trade Rumors reminds us, March is a prime time for teams to hand out extensions. Last year alone saw eight players receive new deals during spring training.
The Seattle Mariners have already given Kyle Seager a $100 million extension this winter, but that’s not to say they’re done. With the news of the Twins and Brian Dozier reportedly getting close to a long contract, the spring extension season is seemingly about to kick off. Who could the Mariners be working to keep around?
This is a contract year for Jackson, and so it’s reasonable to start speculating about the team’s desire to keep him around. However, given his lack of production in the second half last year, it’s unlikely that now is the right time for the Mariners to extend him.
Coming off a pretty abysmal stretch with Seattle, the M’s are most certainly not willing to pay Jackson anything close to what he could earn as a free agent if he has a better go of things this year. So while this may be a relationship worth continuing, the timing is off for a spring deal.
Another pending free agent, Iwakuma will be 35 when his deal expires. That’s the biggest thing working against him, and something that will surely be a sticking point in negotiations. That being said, there really ought to be negotiations. It’s just a matter of when.
Iwakuma is one of the best pitchers in the world, and that makes him an attractive fit for the M’s. But if it’s a lot of years he’s after, the team might as well just wait until next offseason, which is set to feature one of the strongest free agent classes in years. If there’s a fit, a deal will get done, though the team really shouldn’t feel any sense of urgency.
Here’s where things start getting interesting. Every once in a while, a talented young player will sign a long-term deal in order to secure himself for years to come. They do this despite the potential to earn much more down the road simply because health concerns could de-rail their careers at any point. This should ring true for Paxton, who has dealt with serious shoulder ailments his entire career.
Seattle can offer the lefty starter enough money to make his grandkids rich, while Paxton can gain some security in case his shoulder ever bothers him again. If Paxton continues on the trajectory he’s on, a deal now could save Seattle tons of future dollars. That’s hugely important for sustaining a winner.
Same deal as with Paxton, except Walker is younger and thus more likely to be a good investment for the team. He’s seemingly more willing to talk about a deal, given his age and his less complicated draft history (Paxton was taken by the Blue Jays but didn’t sign before the Mariners swooped him up a year later). It’d be a classic Rays contract, but with the Mariners.
These deals don’t just make sense for small-market teams. The M’s may be all the way up to 11th in spending, but that doesn’t mean they should stop looking for bargains. A spring extension for Walker or Paxton could give the team an advantage for years to come, even if it might be seen as a premature strike by many.
Andrew McCutchen signed a below-market extension and now credits it with allowing him to just play the game. These guys are signing for many, many millions, even if they are risking many more millions by opting not to wait around. There’s absolute upside for young players in signing these kinds of deals. It’s not just teams trying to blindfold the kids.
Perhaps the timing isn’t right. The eight players who signed last March were all stars of some sort, and they were all at the right point in their contracts to start talking long-term deal. There aren’t any such obvious fits in Seattle right now, but a creative extension could still work for some of the guys listed above. Nothing seems likely, but we’ve been surprised by this team before.