In Toro, Seattle gets top prospect, but the timing couldn’t be worse
Updated Friday, July 30, 2021
A baseball team that hadn’t appeared in the playoffs in 20 years seemed on the verge of a breakthrough when the Seattle Mariners rallied from a 7-run deficit to beat the Houston Astros 11-8 Monday night in the opener of 3 games in T-Mobile Park. The big blow was utilityman Dylan Moore’s grand slam in the 8th inning. It was the Mariners’ fourth consecutive victory, and it advanced them to within one game of a wild-card berth.
Under the poised leadership of manager Scott Servais, former Astros catcher, they had a winning formula: keep the game close, roll in an excellent bullpen and launch a bomb to win it late. The later it is, the better they are: 10-2 in extra innings, and they’re 23-8 in one-run games.
Mariners fans were hoping general manager Jerry Dipoto would seize the day as Friday’s trade deadline neared. Kyle Seager, their clutchy third baseman, observed: “We’re right there on the edge of this thing, so certainly you would like to have them make moves and get the team as good as we possibly can.”
Instead, the Mariners once again were sellers. They traded their best pitcher, Kendall Graveman, to the leaders in their own division, the Astros. I think there’s some sort of unwritten rule on that.
Graveman, 4-0, has the lowest ERA (0.82) and batting average against (.136) of all big-league relievers. His sinker at 96 mph is all but unhittable, Charlie Morton at his best. Graveman is just what the Astros need, someone other than Ryan Pressly to get batters out in late innings.
The Mariners always look to the future. In exchange for Graveman, Dipoto acquired 24-year-old Abraham Toro, who runs fast and plays all infield positions. In fact, his fielding percentage at third base exceeded that of injured All-Star Alex Bregman: .969-.955.
Unfortunately, Toro hasn’t established that he can hit big-league pitching well enough to stay in the lineup. He had three tours with the Astros and never did better than a .218 batting average, 385 slugging. He can play outfield, so at worst he’s a standout utilityman.
I spoke with an Astros scout who said, “We did not want to give up Toro. He was our best minor-league player in 2019, but he was one of the guys who didn’t respond well to the Covid chaos of 2020. You gotta throw that out and look at his skills and his age. You can’t get a pitcher with Graveman’s stuff without giving up one of your top prospects.”
Toro had just finished his pregame meal in the visitors’ clubhouse at T-Mobile when Dusty Baker summoned him to the manager’s office. It was bad news/good news: You’ve been traded from first place to third, but it’s a quick commute. All he had to do was cross the field to jump on board with the Mariners. And now he will be living much closer to his homeland of Canada.
“I guess it’s good news that they want me here,” Toro said. “I feel like I can help this team win.”
So far, he’s doing his part. He homered, with a runner on, in his Mariners debut Tuesday night. He hit another 2-run dinger on Wednesday. But it seemed irrelevant to Seattle, which lost both games to Houston and dropped to 2 behind Oakland, the team that holds the AL’s second wild card. There was insurrection in the clubhouse, and Dipoto heard about it. “We have some more moves coming,” he said, “that will make a little bit more sense to the guys.”
He insisted he wasn’t giving up on the postseason, and he backed that claim on Thursday by trading Tampa Bay out of one of its best pitchers, Diego Castillo.
The Mariners gave up a capable middle reliever, 30-year-old JT Chargois, and a Class AA third baseman, Austin Shenton, 23, ranked by Baseball America as their No. 12 prospect.
Dipoto is thinking pennant with Castillo, who has a 2.72 ERA and 14 saves this season. He’s thrown 10 consecutive scoreless innings. He was 3-0 last year and had a memorable postseason: 1-0, 1.64 ERA, 12 strikeouts in 11 innings.
Yet the future is not necessarily compromised, with Castillo being 27 and bound by arbitration next season. Dipoto can make the case that it’s better to have Castillo than Graveman, who’s set to become a free agent at the conclusion of this season.
At any rate, Seattle’s latest trade was not popular in the Tampa clubhouse. Reliever Ryan Thompson tweeted: “DEVASTATED.”
