Thanks to baseball’s new tanking era, teams are more willing than ever to trade impact at the MLB level for bulk in the minor leagues, counting on their player development system to produce cheap producers. The Mariners find themselves walking the fine line of this new system.
They aren’t choosing bulk over potential impact, but there were some instances where the team either took a little bit less at the top to get more in the middle or simply refused to give up its impact for bulk(Mitch Haniger didn’t get traded to the Braves for a reason).
But when we think trades in 2019, we often think of the selling team offering a major leaguer for a group of young prospects.