The Mariner Monitor

The Mariners shored up their offense at backstop today when they traded Josh Lueke and a player to be named later to the Rays for John Jaso.  Jaso is a left handed hitter and it’s expected that he’ll be platooning with Miguel Olivo in 2012.  His season was partially cut short because of an oblique injury and while he struggled at times at the plate, he still hit five home runs and he hit .224 in 246 at bats.

Jaso does have some potential though.  He hit well enough to finish fifth in the ROY voting in 2010 so you’d hope he might bounce back.  One thing Jaso is good at is making contact.  He has 84 career walks to go with 77 strikeouts and he has been used as a leadoff hitter so the Mariners could be getting a really nice table setter.

It looks like it’s finally a done deal.  The American League and National League are going to have 15 teams a piece and the Houston Astros are going to move to the American League West.  There’s no word on how the schedule is going to work but I’m assuming we’ll be going with unbalanced schedules so we’ll be seeing them quite a bit starting that year.

The Astros should be bad again but it’ll be interesting to see if that changes between now and then.  Of course the Mariners need to shore up their offense before they can talk about competing.  Hopefully they’ll be able to capitalize on a weak Astros team and pick up some extra wins.

With the offseason we get the prospect lists and Kevin Goldstein recently put out his Mariners list.  There’s some talent and you have two five star guys and two four star guys so there’s plenty of talent up at the top.

The Mariners first round pick in 2010, Taijuan Walker tops the list.  He had a really nice season at Low-A and while he’s still a few years away, this guy is a potential ace in waiting.  He had 113 strikeouts in 96 2/3 innings and he turned 19 in August.  Not too shabby.

Number two is the Mariners first round pick in 2011, Danny Hultzen.  The left handed pitcher didn’t play because he signed too late but with him coming out of college and having a really nice time in the Arizona Fall League, he should start the season at Double-A and we could see him in the second half of the 2012 season.

James Paxton (LHP), Nick Franklin (SS) and Jose Campros (RHP) rounds out the top five.  All of these guys are at least a year or two away so there’s no immediate help but just wait a couple of years.