Mariners Moose Tracks, 7/28/24: Jorge Polanco, Jazz Chisholm Jr., and Kodai Senga

It’s Sunday, and if it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Links

In Mariners news...

• The ArozaEra has begun.

• A little extra digging on this by my friend Brian Schlosser turned up that only two players have ever homered and walked against Kirby in the same game, Rafael Devers and Mike Trout.

• Jorge Polanco morphing back into his former self could end up being one of the Mariners best deadline acquisitions this year.

• Death, taxes, Bryan Woo with discomfort.

• Fangraphs has finished their 2024 trade value series and Julio was ranked fifth, joining teammates George Kirby and Logan Gilbert (22nd and 23rd, respectively) in the top 50. If you’re unfamiliar with this series, it seeks to standardize all thirty team’s understanding of player value and rank players according to projected true talent and guaranteed money.

Around the league...

• The New York Yankees made a big splash yesterday by trading for Jazz Chisholm Jr. and finally adding another bat to support Judge and Soto.

• The New York Mets acquired known pizza enjoyer Jesse Winker from the Nationals.

• The Phillies and the Angels agreed to a trade to send righty reliever Carlos Estévez to Philadelphia for a strong pair of prospects.

• The Brewers also added some relief depth yesterday, acquiring right-hander Nick Mears from the Rockies. There is every reason to believe that the vaunted Brewers pitching development machine can turn Mears into a force to be reckoned with,

The Blue Jays activated sell mode yesterday, trading catcher Danny Jansen to the Red Sox.

• As well as right-handed reliever Nate Person to the Cubs.

• A bat that I have been watching very covetously this season is Brent Rooker, and unfortunately the A’s have made it clear that they are not eager to move him this year. Maybe they’re really hoping to make the prophecy in that early Vegas stadium rendering come true.
• Kodai Senga was officially added to the IL yesterday after leaving his first start of the season after 5.1 innings Friday night. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza indicated to the media that the injury will likely end Senga’s season, a tough blow for a surging Mets team that was really hoping to get Senga as a mid-season rotation reinforcement.

• Ryan Prager, the Angels third-round pick in this year’s amateur draft, announced on Thursday that he will not be signing with the Angels, and instead returning to Texas A&M. This decision is costly for the Angels, who will lose nearly $950,000 in bonus pool money, as well as missing out on their third round pick. The pre-draft process done by every team is intended to avoid situations exactly like this one, and this is a pretty damning organizational failure by the Angels. Thankfully for the Angels, the Estévez trade might go a pretty long way towards covering up this gap.
• Blue Jays number one overall prospect Ricky Tiedemann will miss the rest of the 2024 season and likely all of the 2025 season to Tommy John surgery.
• Mike Ford in the NPB could be one of the greatest fits of all-time.

Nick’s pick...

• Upon learning that the players on the U.S. women’s water polo team were forced to work multiple jobs in order to afford themselves the opportunity to train and compete in the Olympics, in spite of being on a run of three straight Olympic gold medals, Flava Flav began sponsoring the team directly. The team won their first match of the 2024 games in convincing fashion over Greece yesterday, 15-6.