The Seattle Mariners traded James Paxton to the New York Yankees on Monday. It was an underwhelming trade return to say the least.
The James Paxton trade is officially in the books. Done and dusted. Completed.
Whatever terminology you want to use, the trade is official.
And it means that Seattle’s best pitcher (as opposed to coffee. Thanks for acknowledging my small attempt at humor) is now a member of another organization.
The M’s flipped Paxton to the Yankees for three players, starting pitchers Justus Sheffield and Erik Swanson as well as outfielder Dom Thompson-Williams.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with some facts before we delve into opinion about why this wasn’t the best trade return for the Mariners (which, to be clear—also, spoilers—it wasn’t).
One, Paxton is 30.
Sheffield is 22, Swanson is 25 and Thompson-Williams is 23. Sheffield and Swanson both spent the bulk of the year at Triple-A. Thompson-Williams saw most of his action at Advanced-A Tampa. The Mariners are clearly getting younger with the move, and they’re also saving some money.
Paxton, per Spotrac, made $4.9 million last year.
Sheffield only appeared in three games for the Yankees down the stretch, one of which was his MLB debut. So, there’s some serious savings there.
And that’s before taking into account the duo’s salaries for next season.
Paxton is projected by MLBTradeRumors to earn an even $9 million in arbitration. Sheffield is still years away from even being arbitration eligible. In other words, it’s likely he’ll make close to the league minimum in 2019. The same will be true of Swanson if he debuts at some point next season.
So, the Mariners saved some money. That’s nice.
It’s been an under-the-radar theme so far this winter for Seattle. In addition to seeing a host of players hit the free agent market, the M’s also shed some salary by offloading Mike Zunino and Guillermo Heredia for a pre-arbitration eligible Mallex Smith.
It could be a theme going forward too, as Jean Segura, Dee Gordon, Kyle Seager, Juan Nicasio, Mike Leake and Wade LeBlanc all carry varying degrees of appeal as trade candidates in cost-cutting moves.
(Segura, Gordon, Seager, Nicasio, Leake and LeBlanc all make the list of 301 offseason MLB trade candidates. See the other 295, including everyone from Cy Young winners and elite prospects, by clicking the link in the tweet. You can follow the link to learn more, or purchase the trade guide directly by clicking the green button. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s just $9.99 99¢.)
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But that’s the speculative future.
Back to the present, where Seattle will likely enter 2019 with a new ace.
Who that is remains to be seen. It might even be Sheffield. But one player we know for certain it won’t be is James Paxton.
Paxton has been the epitome of an ace when on the field for Seattle. While he hasn’t always been healthy (his 471.1 innings since 2016 are tied for 61st among 116 qualified starters), he’s essentially been elite.
James Paxton ranks in the last three seasons:
FIP- 4th, 69
FIP: 5th, 2.87
SwStr%: 9th, 13.0%
K/9: 11th, 10.37
BB%: tied for 15th-lowest, 6.0%
What stat perhaps sums up Paxton’s dominance the best is his fWAR.
The southpaw ranks 13th in the league among starters with an 11.8 fWAR. To put that in perspective, that’s a full 1.8 wins higher than Chris Archer’s 10.0 metric despite the fact that Paxton has thrown 133.1 fewer innings.
With a full season’s worth of innings, Paxton could very well launch himself into the Cy Young discussion.
And if that happens, it’ll come in a Yankees uniform and not in Mariners colors.
New York is getting two more years of Paxton, per Spotrac, who isn’t a free agent until after the 2020 season.
And in return for those two seasons, you would expect the Mariners to get a haul in return.
Last year, the Pirates traded two seasons of Gerrit Cole for a group of players that largely paid immediate dividends.
Joe Musgrove delivered 115.1 quality innings (3.59 FIP, 2.1 fWAR) out of the rotation, while Colin Moran provided wOBA and wRC+ metrics that hovered around league average. He also registered a .340 on-base percentage. And Michael Feliz missed a bunch of bats (10.38 per nine innings to be exact) in 47.2 frames out of the bullpen.
That’s all without mentioning outfield prospect Jason Martin, who reached Triple-A for the first time in 2018.
For a hurler in Cole who flourished into a 6.3 fWAR pitcher for the Astros in 2018, it was a noticeably light return. But Seattle’s return paled a bit in comparison in both quantity and quality.
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Sheffield is going to be a Major League starting pitcher, but the fact that the Mariners were only able to land two other prospects with him wasn’t ideal.
Especially considering those prospects weren’t players like Estevan Florial, Clarke Schmidt, Jonathan Loaisiga, Albert Abreu, Chance Adams, Thairo Estrada, Matt Sauer, Freicer Perez or Michael King.
Swanson and Thompson-Williams are certainly from the next rung down of prospects after Florial, Schmidt and others. And while it’s worth noting that New York’s farm system is the definition of deep, the trade return—in a vacuum—isn’t nearly what it should be for an elite starter with two years of arbitration eligibility remaining.
Neither Swanson or Thompson-Williams have made it to the Majors yet.
Swanson pitched at Double-A and Triple-A last season. Combined with a 6.2 inning stint in the New York-Pennsylvania League, the 25-year-old worked to a 2.66 ERA, 139 strikeouts and 29 walks in 121.2 innings.
MLB.com’s MLB Pipeline wrote the following about the right-hander:
“He has a long track record of throwing strikes but his command isn’t as sharp as his control. He could be a No. 4 starter if he continues to refine his secondary pitches, though a big league role as a fastball-heavy reliever is more likely.”
Swanson ranks ninth on the publication’s list of top Mariners prospects, a list that is still recovering from years of trades that sapped it of exciting talent like Luiz Gohara, Tyler O’Neill, Ryan Yarbrough, Enyel De Los Santos, Alex Jackson and Juan Then.
Thompson-Williams ranked 14th on that list. He had a highly-successful 2018, but he did log a .872 OPS as a 23-year-old in the Florida State League against competition that was on average 0.6 years younger than him.
His power and speed give him upside, but he’ll need to continue producing against better pitching in the upper levels of the minors.
It’s also worth noting that the headliner in the deal, Sheffield, might not have the same high ceiling that some of his fellow prospects on league-wide top 100 lists do.
MLB.com’s MLB Pipeline ranks him ahead of the likes of Matt Manning and Alex Reyes on their top 100 list, but the same publication wrote the following about Sheffield:
“His athleticism and durability aid his chances of becoming a No. 3 starter, though he’ll need to make further gains with his control and refine his changeup to reach that potential.”
Similarly, in a FanGraphs article written by Marc Hulet on November 12 showing the updated top 10 Yankees prospects, Hulet wrote the about Sheffield:
“I see No. 3/4 starter potential here and he should be ready to pitch out of the Yankees starting rotation in 2019.”
Mid-rotation starters are certainly valuable and can play vital roles on teams, contending or otherwise. But, when that’s the ceiling of the headliner in a marquee trade, it doesn’t present the rosiest of outlooks.
Of course, Sheffield can’t directly be compared to Paxton and can’t be expected to step in for the ace. That being said, Paxton’s pitching ability and controllability would suggest that Seattle could conceivably have nabbed a prospect with a higher ceiling more akin to an impact player.
Per a tweet from MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, Seattle reportedly had their sights set on a prospect with that kind of upside. Houston’s Forrest Whitley.
Morosi tweeted the following on Monday afternoon.
Source: #Astros’ refusal to include Forrest Whitley in their offer for James Paxton precipitated #Mariners decision to trade Paxton to #Yankees. @MLBNetwork @MLB
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) November 19, 2018
At the end of the day, we don’t know exactly what Seattle was offered by other teams. But what they acquired still isn’t the kind of return one would expect for James Paxton.
The timing of the deal is also worthy of bringing up.
Could Seattle have waited until others deals and free agent signings were made? Would there have been a trade market that would have netted the Mariners a better return if teams were desperate after missing out on the likes of Noah Syndergaard, Patrick Corbin and Dallas Keuchel?
Perhaps. We’ll never know at this point.
And while there’s something to be said for being proactive in the offseasons—the deals you could make in November and December might not be there in January and February—it’s worth wondering if the M’s could have nabbed a better return by holding on to Paxton for a few more weeks. Or even waiting until the early parts of the 2019 season.
Sheffield and potentially Swanson will slot into Seattle’s rotation. Both could be around when Seattle’s sudden rebuild is complete.
But it’s worth wondering what could have been for the Seattle Mariners and a James Paxton trade return.
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