After the 2023 season, when the Seattle Mariners narrowly missed out on the playoffs despite having 90 percent odds of making it at the start of September, Jerry Dipoto traded Eugenio Suárez to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for relief pitcher Carlos Vargas and White Sox legend Seby Zavala. The decision was, ostensibly, to trot out a lineup that struck out less often—Suarez's 214 strikeouts led the league. A fine explanation. Without it, the trade would have resembled a salary dump. Unrelatedly, this was also the offseason when Dipoto set his famous goal of winning 54 percent of games in a season.
Never mind that strikeout rates aren't correlated with raw offensive production. They certainly don't look very nice, and why not build a team for aesthetics if you aren't going to build one to win? If cutting down on strikeouts was the goal, trading away Suárez didn't immediately do the trick. The Mariners' overall strikeout rate went from 25.9 percent in 2023, or second-worst in the league, to 26.8 percent in 2024, which tied for worst in the league. At least the Mariners have improved in 2025: Their 23.0 percent is only ninth-worst in MLB.
Meanwhile Suárez became, without exaggeration, one of the best hitters in MLB, thanks to some mechanical adjustments in his stance. So far this season, Suárez ranks third in the National League in home runs, and boasts a 145 wRC+, which is ninth in the NL. He's slashing .248/.320/.575. He's pulling the ball in the air a lot, which is good for my new affection for pulled fly balls as an indicator of power. Perhaps most importantly, he's dropped his strikeout rate from 30.8 percent in 2023 to 26.8 percent in 2025, which would pull the Mariners' average up a little bit, but not as much as it may have before. All of this made him one of the most sought-after bats at the trade deadline.
The good news is that Dipoto clearly is not one to hold back on a trade despite the possible embarrassment of having to admit a previous mistake. Say what you want about his management skills, but Dipoto is at least trying to prove himself as the sort of person who, when he realizes in the middle of the sidewalk that he's walking the wrong way, would feel no shame in pivoting right back around. On Thursday, Dipoto went back to the tried-and-true Diamondbacks-Mariners pipeline to return Suárez to Seattle. This time the price was three prospects, none of whom crack into the top 20 of Mariners youths, per FanGraphs. It isn't too shabby a price to pay, so long as you ignore the fact that Dipoto traded him away in the first place.
This was perhaps bound to happen eventually, given Dipoto's natural affection for what can be qualified as "moderate, sensible" trades, especially when factoring in John Stanton's finances. He's no AJ Preller, who will always Go For It; he is the anti-Preller, clinically incapable of truly Going For It, which provides, oddly enough, an element of takesies-backsies. Trading away a beloved starter might eventually see that starter turn into a bonafide hitter once free from T-Mobile Park (and, again, multiple adjustments), and in that case, why not accept him back when his new team is looking to sell? It certainly doesn't hurt that both Suárez and his Diamondbacks teammate Josh Naylor, who was acquired a few days earlier, are on contracts that will expire at the end of the year. Now that's a Dipoto deal.
But it's not just a good deal on the scale of typical Mariners deals, which have generally been along the lines of trading away closers while in the midst of a playoff hunt. Again, Suárez was a high-priority target for many contenders. Suárez and Naylor are welcome additions to a team that, despite the best efforts of 2025 Cal Raleigh, is constantly on the hunt for more offense. Suárez is a straight-up upgrade to Ben Williamson, the 24-year-old third baseman who has been struggling offensively (an unfortunate 76 wRC+) since graduating from Triple-A.
Last night, Raleigh, who declared, "We have to commit to winning," after the Mariners missed out on playoffs in 2023, became the first switch-hitting catcher to hit 42 home runs in one season. He is now just six from matching Salvador Pérez's total of most home runs by a primary catcher in MLB history. Absurdly, August has only just started. It's enough to make you into an optimist: The AL is wide open this year, and the Mariners, who already have a 77.5 percent chance to make the playoffs according to FanGraphs, are straightforwardly improved post-deadline. As we all know, the Mariners have never thrown away a 77.5 percent chance to make the playoffs.
