Mariners add Austin Jackson, win the trade deadline

Before the trade deadline, the Mariners were in the news for all the wrong reasons. Look at this danged headline:

Trader Jack? As Seattle’s GM struggles to complete deals, some rival executives wonder

Damning. The article was a profile of a mixed-up GM who was somewhere between indecisive and deceptive, which frustrated rival GMs. Then the Mariners pulled off the best trade of the deadline.

It might not be the most important trade of the deadline. It’s not the one that Joe Buck is going to talk about before every World Series game, and it doesn’t make the Mariners favorites. In that sense, it’s not the best trade, not even close. But the raw player-for-player swap was outstanding, considering what the Mariners had to deal and what they needed.

They needed a major league hitter or four. The Mariners were (still are) carrying too many below-average bats in the lineup. They jettisoned Justin Smoak to make room for Logan Morrison, which is the organizational equivalent of pounding on an unplugged keyboard when the boss walks by your office so he thinks you’re doing something. The offense was Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager, then seven spots of echoless quacking, give or take.

Jackson isn’t great, mind you. This isn’t Cano, Part II, in which the Mariners import an upgrade from the outside world because they’re incapable of keeping their own prospects out of the black hole of offensive death. But Jackson is good, capable of putting up league average production with the bat and playing a marvelous center field. He’s under contract for next year, too, which is still in the Cano-isn’t-old-‘n’-busted-yet window. This makes them better this year and next.

Here’s what they had to trade: oodles of young pitchers, some close to majors-ready, some with major league experience. Their ability to field a cost-controlled rotation behind Felix Hernandez for the next six years is one of the biggest reasons the Mariners felt comfortable signing Cano to a deal for far too long and far too much. Once they were in this deep, they could have abandoned the plan and traded those young pitchers for a short-term boost like David Price or Jon Lester. No one would have blamed them.

Here’s what they actually traded: a player they had no room for.

Nick Franklin is an ex-shortstop for a reason, so he was never going to push Brad Miller to the bench. Only Brad Miller can push Brad Miller to the bench, which is one reason the Mariners really promoted Chris Taylor to the big leagues. Kyle Seager is one of the most underrated players in the game, if not the most underrated, and Cano is Cano is Cano. Barring a move to the outfield, which would sure seem like a waste of a competent middle infielder, Franklin had to be traded at some point. The only question was for what? They got a year and two months of Jackson, which, when you put it that way, isn’t a ton. But it helps now, and it helps next year. The odds are good that if they can’t sign Jackson, they’ll get a draft pick out of him, and the cycle of prospect life will begin anew.

This is the perfect deal for a team looking to kinda/sorta win now, providing immediate help with an eye on 2015. It’s what the Mariners should have done. It’s what I would have never figured they could have done after reading the feature on Trader Jack cheesing everyone off.

Reminder, though, that Jackson doesn’t come with a 10-game winning streak with proof of purchase. This isn’t exactly a deal to make the A’s and Angels throw things and curse. But the Mariners had an asset they couldn’t really use, and they swapped it in for an asset they most certainly could. There were a lot of huge deals made, with a lot of far-reaching implications for this season, this postseason, and the next 10 years. The Mariners kept it simple. And they might have made the least confusing deal of the deadline, which might make it the best, too.