Before the disaster that was the season, we had and the biggest issue was the outfield—namely left field as Brett Gardner missed a majority of the season with a mysterious elbow injury. With Gardner out, Raul Ibanez was turned into an everyday player, and while they still had Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher to even things out, the struggling Andruw Jones proved that the team needed reinforcements, at least as far as defense was concerned.
That year, the Mariners were on their way to a last-place finish in the AL West and were looking to shed some pieces they no longer needed. Seeing that his team was looking to get younger and clearly wasn't going anywhere, he requested a trade to a contender as he looked for a shot at a championship for possibly the last time in his career. With their superpower to absorb any bad contract known to man, the Yankees became the perfect trading partner and they sent Danny Farquhar and D.
Mitchell to complete the deal. At the time, Farquhar was an intriguing year-old reliever who showed that he could strike hitters out 8. He had made his major league debut with the Blue Jays the year before, but in he was picked up off waivers by the Athletics , who in turn exposed him to waivers again and the Yankees grabbed him in June.
Farquhar managed to get into six games with the Double-A Trenton Thunder and one game with Triple-A Scranton before he was shipped off to Seattle and his fourth team of the season. His trip around the league must have been telling of his true abilities as John Sickels of Minor League Ball felt at the time of the trade:.
He likes to alter his arm slots and will throw anywhere from three-quarters to almost sidearm. His curveball and changeup have their moments, and he has a chance to be a useful middle reliever. At only 5'9", Farquhar was never considered very favorably by scouts.
Essentially, he had an intriguing ability to alter his arm slot, but it was more of a gimmick than anything else and it would ultimately make him a mere middle reliever—very replaceable.
Drafted in the 10th round of the MLB Draft , Mitchell was a young prospect in the Yankees' system who got some attention as part of the group of David Phelps , Adam Warren , Brett Marshall , and Hector Noesi that made its way through the system, but was never really considered that big of a prospect in his own right. He produced a decent 3. As Sickels described him at the time of the trade:. He has three secondary pitches with a curveball, slider, and changeup.
None of them are bad, but none of them are excellent, either, preventing him from being consistently overpowering. It seemed that while Mitchell was a homegrown asset, he was distinctly mediocre and only had a future in MLB as a reliever. Essentially, the Yankees ended up giving up two middle relievers for a backup outfielder who offered plus defense. Baseball Prospectus saw the deal as mutually beneficial for both sides.
The Mariners got some potentially useful pieces for the future, and the Yankees received exactly what they needed, even if Ichiro was diminished from his former glory. Does that mean that Ichiro has no value to the Yankees? Ichiro hit. The funny thing is that his walk rate dropped to an A.
Pierzynski-esque 2. Also, ironically, the defensive metrics did not like his fielding. Perhaps he had trouble adjusting to Yankees Stadium. Most likely, though, it was just a small sample size aberration. The Yankees finished the season in first place by two games.
The Yankees went on to have an unremarkable postseason run. Unfortunately, they did not get the player they saw after the trade. In , Ichiro regressed back to his late-Mariners self, hitting. He improved in , hitting. As his defense appeared to diminish, too, so did his playing time. The Yankees let him go in free agency after the season. Ichiro spent the subsequent three years in Miami, mostly in a bench role.
He hit a combined. The Marlins declined to re-sign Ichiro so he is currently a free agent, contemplating a return to Japan. Even though he is 44 years old, he does not seem to have any plans to retire. Out of the two players sent to Seattle, D. Mitchell was viewed as the best chance to be any kind of major league, and even then only barely. To this day, the only major league action he has ever seen is four relief appearances with the Yankees prior to the trade.
The Mariners designated him for assignment in April He landed with the Mets, but he did not last long with them either. Mitchell spent the seasons playing unaffiliated ball in the Atlantic League.
There are no reports of him playing anywhere since then. Danny Farquhar saw a lot more time in the majors. He made 46 appearances with the Mariners in and had an odd season. He gave up only two home runs and struck out an outstanding The reason for that was a low strand rate and a.
He had so much working against him that was beyond his control, which is why his 2. Sure enough, Farquhar enjoyed a lot of positive regression in His strikeout rate dropped to 28 percent, but his run average improved to a 2. It was easily the best run average of his career.
Roster move. Young-talent-related frustration. Of course, that's how it needs to be. The Mariners couldn't just pause the regular season in order to celebrate Ichiro for a week and a half. With games going on, you can't help but focus on the games instead of dwelling on individual players.
A baseball game played with Ichiro on your side looks a lot like a baseball game played with Ichiro on the other side. The differences are subtle and Ichiro-shaped. What it speaks to is that life goes on until you step off. Split up with somebody and you'll still live familiar days, with usual routines and usual concerns. Move somewhere far away and you'll keep searching for the answers you thought you might get from the mere act of moving alone.
That would've been more significant in years past, but even then, he was one player, one part of the Incredible Machine. An amazing, unparalleled part. A part. I can't just assume that the way that I feel is the way that you feel, and certainly there are people out there who are taking this news with great difficulty. There are people, I'm sure, who are absolutely devastated, people who were floored by the news and who can't now stand up.
But the majority of people, I think, have been preparing themselves to move on, and now it turns out moving on isn't all that hard in the day-to-day. There are still the Mariners to worry about, and there are plenty of reasons for worry. It'll feel its worst in the lulls, I'm sure.
I can tell you that I don't think this news has sunk in, not that I know what that means. I don't know what it feels like when something meaningful sinks in, when I finally grasp what's taken place. Maybe nothing ever truly sinks in. Maybe things do sink in and we just feel like they don't because we think we should experience them more powerfully. I expect that I'll feel weirder about Ichiro tomorrow morning.
Over the weekend. During the Mariners' next off day, if they ever have another one of those. And of course, there's the offseason, although I'm not going to pretend like I have any idea what that's going to bring. The little Ichiro-sized box many of us kept in our hearts is going to feel hollow. While we're aware of that sensation, we're going to wonder if Dustin Ackley will figure things out.
We're going to wonder if Justin Smoak simply can't hit pitching that isn't triple-A pitching. We're going to wonder if Jesus Montero thinks that left-handed pitchers and right-handed pitchers are two completely different species. We're going to keep filling our minds with the Mariners, with many of the same issues we've already been thinking about for months, and with new issues we don't even know about yet.
Ichiro's gone and we aren't. That's what this comes down to. And to be completely honest, it makes me nervous about the prospect of a Felix Hernandez trade.
Not because I think the Mariners will swing one, but because all along I've convinced myself that I don't know if I could remain a Mariners fan if they traded Felix away.
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