The Mariners have not had a great decade when it comes to developing their own position prospects into productive big-league hitters. Kyle Seager is the exception, to the tune of a 118 OPS+ over his three full major-league seasons, and now he's going to get paid for his success.
Kyle Seager signs $100 million extension with Mariners
The Mariners found a player who can hit at Safeco, and they are refusing to let him go.
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Seager has agreed to a seven-year, $100 million extension with the Mariners that also includes an option for an eighth year.
Seager will be just 27 in 2015, so even if he plays the full eight seasons in this contract, he’ll still only be 35 when he’s a free agent. That’s not young in baseball terms, but when you consider most free agents don’t even make it to that status until they’re already 30 or a couple years past that, it’s a solid end point. He doesn’t necessarily need to get any better to make this deal work for the Mariners’ either: if he keeps on hitting like he has -- and he’s done a real good job of that in the last two seasons especially -- then he’ll make Seattle happy it offered an extension in the first place.
Seager, along with Robinson Cano, is one of the only useful hitters in the Mariners' lineup. They'll need more if they plan on helping out all of that pitching they have, but locking Seager up now when he's amenable to an extension was a key first step. Third base is a wasteland across baseball, and the Mariners' lineup is mostly awful: locking up your wonderful third baseman before someone else can is a victory, especially for an average annual value of $14 million. That relatively low price tag gives the Mariners room to add elsewhere, and as we cannot stress enough, the Mariners need to add elsewhere if they want anything to come of the Cano and Felix Hernandez contracts.
As Passan noted in his story, Seager is one of just four players to sign a deal for $100 million during their first year of arbitration eligibility, along with Freddie Freeman, Buster Posey, and some guy named Mike Trout.
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