Trading with the NY Mets can solve a major Mariners weakness

When the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners locked up at the beginning of the month, the Amazins managed to steal a victory in the finale. The one-a-season fight with each other didn’t give us a good enough indication of what they do well or what they don’t. A team that has prided itself on its starting pitching, one of their weaknesses has been right in the middle of the game.

As SoDo Mojo’s Zachary Rymer profiled, the Mariners are one of the league’s weakest in the sixth inning. Those dastardly middle innings aren’t always the easiest to navigate. It requires the manager to know when to hook the starter and which reliever should be the first out of the bullpen.

More than anything, the Mets have an abundance of attractive relief pitchers to trade. From the high-priced and set to expire contract of A.J. Minter to the controllably cheap Huascar Brazoban, there are pitchers for the Mariners to seek out on the Mets roster.

Which Mets trade candidate could make the most sense for the Mariners?

If we’re looking exclusively at sixth inning performance, Brazoban with 1 earned run in 8.2 innings seems to fit perfectly well. His ability to go more than one inning at a time is extremely helpful. Add in the M’s tendency to try to keep the payroll on the lower side, he’d be the one we’d have to expect they’d target most.

Seattle has no shortage of lefties in their bullpen. This drastically decreases the number of Mets pitchers they could target.

Diving a little more into some options, could they do a buy high on Austin Warren? He has hit a bit of a rough patch with the Mets with reality setting in. A pitcher with some unexpected trade value, we’d have to think teams will ask about him especially with a remaining minor league option this season, an attribute Brazoban and one other potential Mariners trade match has.

Currently in the minors, Tobias Myers also happens to feature some of the same abilities as Braozban just without the excellent major league numbers this year. A lot has been discussed about where the Mets could trade Freddy Peralta or what they could receive. What about the other half of their blockbuster with the Milwaukee Brewers?

Brazoban, Warren, and Myers all seem to fit what the Mariners could use to make the sixth inning less of a problem. If they want to go bigger, and maybe add in some Andres Munoz protection, Luke Weaver would fit, too.

The Mets and Mariners have linked up with trade deadline moves in 2023 and 2024. In the former, they bought Chris Flexen’s contract and added Trevor Gott in a last-ditch effort to save the season. All it cost them was a recently DFA’d pitcher. In 2024, the Mets took on Ryne Stanek in a year where the Mariners were actually buyers.

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