The Mariners are 56-51 and tied for a playoff spot, so it might be hard to believe it, but their offense is bad. Not just bad for a playoff team, but 28th in baseball in runs scored bad, .300 OBP and that’s the good part of the offense bad, put Victor Robles at the top of the order because he’s the only one who’s been hitting bad. They already did a little to address that deficit by trading for Randy Arozarena, and now they’re doubling down on righty AL East bats by acquiring Justin Turner in exchange for RJ Schreck, as Ken Rosenthal and Ryan Divish reported.
Do you know who the Mariners have been playing at DH this year? It reads like a cautionary tale. Kids, if you come into the year trying to win only 54% of your games, you might give your DH at-bats to Mitch Garver, Mitch Haniger, and Jason Vosler. It’s not a lot prettier at first base. Ty France played so badly that he got DFA’d by a team desperately in search of offense. Tyler Locklear got the next shot, and he is hitting .163/.234/.326 so far. Those two lineup spots have combined for a .211/.304/.369 line, and that’s with some juice from Cal Raleigh when he gets a break from catching.
At 39, Turner isn’t the same middle-of-the-order force he was in Los Angeles. He’s settled into a savvy veteran hitter role, and started playing first base in 2023 to give the Red Sox more flexibility when he was in Boston. He’s continued to alternate between first and DH in Toronto, with a splash of emergency third base thrown in. He’s still absolutely a useful player, but he’s just not the Turner you might expect if you’ve tuned out for the last two years.
You can see the effects of aging plainly; he still has a great approach at the plate, still takes his walks and doesn’t strike out much, but he’s just not hitting for power the way he used to. His exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are all on a steady downward trend, which is putting a ton of pressure on his on-base skills. He’s an impressive 39th in baseball in OBP+; no Mariners regular comes anywhere near him in that regard. He’s 146th in SLG+, though. There’s just no extra-base thunder to be found this year.
That works out to a batting line that’s 9% better than average. Across the majors, DH’s have put up a 111 wRC+ this year, and first basemen check in at 104. Turner’s basically average, in other words, even if his production is strangely shaped. As it turns out, that’s an incredible fit for the Mariners, because average offense has been frustratingly out of reach all year.
Maybe Locklear will start hitting better as he acclimates to the majors. Maybe Arozarena’s acquisition will let Luke Raley play first base full time. Maybe Vosler’s better than we all think. Maybe Garver will rebound. But those aren’t things that a playoff team should have to count on. This offense is simply not playoff-caliber at the moment, and raising the floor is a worthy goal.
In an ideal world, Turner might not have a full-time starting role by year’s end. Various options on the Seattle roster have higher upside. But the Mariners got into this offensive mess with thinking like that. “Surely one of these guys will work” is a reasonable stance in April. By July 29, the holes in the lineup are less explainable, less hope-away-able. Adding Turner means that the team can get by with fewer of its hitters working out the way it’d hoped. If he’s his regular steady self and the rest of the team catches fire, eh, he still wouldn’t be Seattle’s worst hitter. In scenarios where the rest of the lineup doesn’t rebound, he might be an offensive focal point. You could convince me that Turner is worth a full win upgrade, a huge number for a partial season from a DH.
To get that upgrade, the Mariners didn’t have to give up much. The market for corner-only defenders who aren’t huge difference-makers on offense just keeps heading down; modern GMs don’t give up much for offense-only players unless they’re transcendent hitters. That development is great for Seattle, though; they needed to upgrade their offense with a league-average option, and luckily that just doesn’t cost as much as it used to.
Specifically in this case, it cost them Schreck, a ninth round draft pick in 2023 who demolished High-A this year at age 23. As Eric Longenhagen noted in his Seattle prospects writeup, Schreck’s lefty fly ball swing and contact skills were a perfect fit for the Everett stadium, and while this is his first full year as a professional, he was a senior signee who was just too advanced for the competition there. He walked more than he struck out and generally wasn’t challenged. He got promoted to Double-A two weeks ago and hasn’t found his footing yet. How he handles the rest of the minor league season will give us a better read of his skills; crushing folks in A-ball clearly wasn’t enough of a test, so I assume the Jays will give him all the competition he can handle and see what shakes out.
That’s not a huge return for Toronto – Eric would give Schreck a 35 grade, organizational depth without much chance of contributing in the majors long-term — but like I already mentioned, the market for average hitters has cratered, and Turner’s contract, which the Mariners will pay the remainder of, limited his market even further. I think the Blue Jays did fine on this trade; they were never going to get much for Turner, and they’re almost completely out of the playoff race, so at least they got an interesting lottery ticket in exchange.
On the other hand, I love this trade for Seattle. One underrated part of having huge holes in your lineup is that they’re easier to replace. If everyone’s good already, it’s tough to upgrade. Because only the highest few bidders determine the cost of a trade, competing for players that everyone wants can be expensive prospects-wise. It’s a lot easier on the old prospect wallet if there’s a player whom not many teams want but whom your team desperately needs. It’s hard to have an offense that’s so clearly in need of average hitters and also be in playoff contention, but the Mariners have managed that trick, and now they’re reaping the benefits: solid veteran hitters at reasonable rates.
