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Strong core simplifies offseason agenda
- Updated: October 3, 2016
SEATTLE — Jerry Dipoto has built a deserved reputation as a general manager who likes to wheel and deal, but even he admits this offseason shouldn’t be quite as busy as last year, when the Mariners made more moves than any team in baseball in restructuring their roster.
The Mariners’ core certainly will remain intact around the quartet of Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, Kyle Seager and Felix Hernandez, but Dipoto and manager Scott Servais now have a much better grasp of their players and what they’ve got going forward.
“I feel great about our team,” Servais said. “I like the makeup of our club, I like how we play — certainly the competitive fire we played with at the end was great to see, and that will carry into next year.”
• Seattle’s resurgent ’16 ends just short of playoffs
Dipoto certainly won’t be idle this winter, but will look primarily to upgrade where possible and continue building the roster depth that proved so necessary this past season. He noted that this year’s pitching staff had one of the lowest ERAs in the American League despite using a record number of hurlers.
“We didn’t do it with performances from one star, we did it with contributions from 31 guys,” he said. “We’ve built depth, and along the way we came up with a younger foundation of players to start building with for the next generation of Mariners teams.
“Guys like Ben Gamel and Dan Vogelbach and the progress made by Taijuan Walker in the last month really can’t be undersold. James Paxton on the year in general, Mike Zunino overall. There are so many positive things that happened over the course of the year that to focus only on the fact we fell a game short of the playoffs wouldn’t be fair to the season we had in total.”
Arbitration-eligible: CF Leonys Martin, RP Vidal Nuno, SP Paxton, RP Evan Scribner, C Jesus Sucre, RP Nick Vincent, SP Walker, RP Tom Wilhelmsen.
Free agents: OF Franklin Gutierrez, 1B Adam Lind, RP Drew Storen, OF Norichika Aoki, OF Seth Smith (club holds $7 million option), C Chris Iannetta (club holds $4.25 million option).
Rotation: The five starters who finished the year for Seattle will all return next season, barring trades, as Hernandez is under contract through 2019, Hisashi Iwakuma pitched enough innings this year to have his option for 2017 automatically renewed and Paxton, Walker and Ariel Miranda still have at least four years of team control before they come free agents.
Nathan Karns, who started the year in the rotation, will also return after closing out the season on the DL with a back injury. That gives Dipoto a strong foundation and while he’ll likely add organizational depth to that mix, he won’t need to expend big resources toward starting pitching.
Hernandez no longer was a dominant ace at age 30, but he and Iwakuma give the Mariners a pair of experienced veterans atop the rotation. Paxton and Walker both have the potential to be No. 2-type starters if they can perform more consistently at their top level.
Bullpen: Edwin Diaz’s emergence as a flame-throwing closer certainly bolsters the bullpen situation going forward. The …
