Dipoto foresees less active winter in Year 2

SEATTLE — It’s been just more than a year since Jerry Dipoto took over as general manager of the Mariners. One very busy year indeed.

Since Dipoto replaced Jack Zduriencik in late September 2015, he’s engineered 27 trades that sent away 34 players and brought back 25 new ones. He’s signed seven Major League free agents and claimed six others.

He’s churned the roster so much that many of the new players he acquired have since been dealt away — of the 46 players currently on the team’s Major League roster, only 22 are holdovers from Zduriencik’s regime.

Which raises the question: Now that Dipoto’s had a year to make his mark, will the tide of turnover continue or will this winter be a little calmer?

“Last year, there was a lot of turnover, and I think the turnover was largely because of how we wanted to play the game,” Dipoto said. “It’s very easy in hindsight to look back at single trades and say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that for that.’

“I’m not a moron. I know which ones you shouldn’t have done after looking in hindsight, but the reality is that in aggregate, what you’re trying to do is build enough organizational depth and controllable pieces to move forward with, and in order to do that, sometimes you rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Dipoto inherited a roster locked into existing long-term deals with Robinson Cano, Felix Hernandez, Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager, so he worked around the fringes with the goal of making the team deeper …

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