Mariners shore up their bullpen with a trade and a waiver claim
Let’s talk about depth, bay-bee.
The Seattle Mariners have added some depth to their beleaguered bullpen in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, Seattle acquired RHP Mike Baumann and veteran C Michael Peréz from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for minor league C Blake Hunt. Additionally, Seattle announced following Thursday’s game that they’ve claimed RHP Eduardo Salazar off waivers from the Los Angeles Dodgers, clearing a 40-man roster spot by designating minor league LHP Sammy Peralta for assignment.
Most well-known of the bunch is Baumann, who actually pitched against the Mariners both a week ago and last August, and made his M’s debut this afternoon in the club’s 5-0 loss to the New York Yankees. The 28-year-old started all the way up through the minors but debuted out of the bullpen in long relief for the 110-loss 2021 O’s in the final of their five truly catastrophic seasons. Though Baumann came up as a four-pitch pitcher, he’s leaned primarily on two or three in the pros, working a pair of breaking balls that have blended into a bit of a morass in the last year or two. At its best, Baumann’s breaker is a nasty knuckle-curve with exceptional late vertical drop.
He’s upped his use of a slider/cutter variant that is, well, present. The best variation of the off-speed is a slider that pairs much of the knuckle-curve’s bite with some sweep and a slightly higher average velo.
Baumann has been tinkered with (or has tinkered) for most of 94 appearances in 127.1 innings thus far, but with upper-90s heat and a feel for spin, there’s some cause to think Seattle can find what they seek in a tweak. If nothing else, those usage numbers indicate what Baumann has largely done as a big leaguer: covered innings, albeit with middling command.
He’s joined in the fresh M’s pen by Salazar, a 26-year-old Venzuelan with a mere 14.1 IP as a big leaguer between the past two seasons. He’s a more true groundball pitcher, having come up with the Cincinnati Reds and then earned a call-up this year with the Dodgers after signing in L.A. as a minor league free agent this past winter. The Dodgers were starting Salazar in Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he’s been shellacked due to a lack of strikeout stuff. However, L.A. also appears to have moved him to pitching purely out of the stretch, encouraging Salazar to shorten what was a long-action delivery that led to middling command. He’s only thrown sliders and fastballs in the pros, with the slider in the upper-80s showing light sweep and middling drop and the sinker at around 94 being rather hittable. Both pitches feature enough downward movement that, should hitters get on base, Salazar can eke out of trouble with double plays. However, Salazar has, frankly, not been particularly effective at any level since High-A, making him a curious target without a shift in style.
Last to join is Pérez, a veteran backstop who spent his developmental years with the Arizona Diamondbacks before getting fliiped to the Tampa Bay Rays for RHP Matt Andriese. Pérez has played 202 games over the past six seasons in the bigs with the Rays, Pittsburgh Pirates, and New York Mets, but has yet to feature in a big league game in 2024 due to being a hitter in the literal sense but not a functional one. The 31-year-old will take Hunt’s spot in Triple-A Tacoma, while Hunt gets to occupy functionally the same spot in Triple-A Norfolk, staring up at his big league club’s star primary backstop and offensively destitute veteran backup. I do not have anything personal against Sammy Peralta, but his has been the least explicable 40-man spot for some time now, as the soft-throwing southpaw has been getting predictably eaten alive in Tacoma. He seems likely to clear waivers.