Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Could Challenge the Mariners’ Stance on ‘Rentals’
The name Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will likely be uttered an infinite amount of times by Mariners fans over the next 11 or so months. On Tuesday, the star first baseman confirmed that he intends to forego further negotiations with the Blue Jays on a contract extension and will enter free agency following the 2025 season.
Let’s get this out of the way: the Mariners are not going to sign Guerrero in free agency next winter. On top of the numerous reasons that makes convincing established big-league hitters to come to Seattle incredibly difficult, the Mariners, by all accounts, opted to entirely sit out the similar free-agent markets of Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto in each of the past two offseasons. Guerrero is a worse player with less positional value than both Ohtani and Soto but is still going to receive a massive payday, therefore it’s reasonable to expect Seattle, whether or not its front office is still spearheaded by president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander by that time, will not make an attempt, serious or otherwise, to bring him to the Pacific Northwest.
The far more interesting conversation here revolves around this year’s trade deadline.
The worst-kept secret in baseball at the 2024 deadline was that the Mariners, even after acquiring All-Star outfielder Randy Arozarena from the Rays, aggressively pushed to pry Guerrero from Toronto. The Blue Jays cut those efforts off at the pass and proceeded to spend the following months not only trying to extend Guerrero, but to build a roster that was both capable of increasing their odds of keeping Guerrero interested in a long-term future with the team and capitalizing on his last guaranteed year north of the border. They were involved to some degree in the market of virtually every big-name free agent this offseason, including Soto, Rōki Sasaki, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, and several others, just a year after finishing second in the Ohtani sweepstakes. But much like their pursuit of Ohtani, they fell short on all fronts and instead signed outfielder Anthony Santander, reliever Jeff Hoffman, and future Hall of Fame starting pitcher Max Scherzer to free-agent contracts, in addition to trading for Guardians second baseman Andrés Giménez.
Only time will tell if those additions will be good enough to help catapult the Blue Jays back into the postseason after finishing 74-88 in 2024, good for last place in an American League East division that features the AL’s most recent World Series representative in the Yankees, a significantly improved Red Sox ballclub, an Orioles team loaded with star talent, and the scrappy Rays. If things go sideways for Toronto and the playoffs look out of reach come July, the organization will be faced with arguably its toughest personnel decision in its 47-year existence: wave the white flag and trade Guerrero or run the high risk he exits in free agency and receive only draft compensation if he does.
Like the Blue Jays, the Mariners carry a flawed roster into the 2025 campaign but will compete in a much weaker division and do so with one of the best pitching rotations seen in the last decade. On paper, Seattle objectively has fewer obstacles to overcome in order to find success in the coming months than Toronto, and the two clubs may very well wind up on complete opposite ends of the baseball landscape by deadline season. If so, would Dipoto and Hollander once again set their sights on Guerrero, knowing that this time around they would only get one bite at the apple with him instead of two, and that it’s all but a certainty the slugger will head elsewhere in free agency just a few months later?
Such a move would go against the stance that Seattle’s front office has evidently long held when it comes to “rental” players. Never has the club during the Dipoto regime traded away significant prospect capital for a rental; the closest it got was in 2022 with the deal that brought Luis Castillo to Seattle, but Castillo, like Guerrero last July, still had another year left on his contract at the time of the trade and eventually signed an extension shortly thereafter. Among the names of rentals that have passed through the Mariners’ clubhouse over the last 10 years are Justin Turner, Matthew Boyd, and Cameron Maybin—players who cost the club minimal returns.
These are different times for the Mariners, however. Not only has the outside pressure on the front office increased tenfold following back-to-back playoff-less seasons, but the Mariners also did not trade away from a farm system that is widely considered to be one of the league’s best this winter. Their prospect pool is oozing with high-end talent, including a league-leading seven players in Baseball America’s most recent top-100 prospects list, and it’s only slated to get even better in the coming months. Seattle has already inked one of the consensus top prospects in the 2025 international signing period, outfielder Yorger Bautista, and was stunningly awarded the No. 3 overall pick in this summer’s amateur draft via the MLB Draft Lottery, as well as a Competitive Balance Round A selection that slots in at No. 35 overall to pair with the club’s native second-round pick at No. 57.
It almost feels like an understatement to call that influx of new talent coming the Mariners’ way significant. It potentially sets them up to have a farm system that could rival or even best the one they boasted a few years ago, which included the likes of Julio Rodríguez, Cal Raleigh, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert. It should go without saying, however, that the name of the game isn’t who can build the best farm system. Creating and sustaining a talent-rich prospect pool is a large part of organizational success, yes, but they don’t hang banners for that alone, and the overwhelming odds are that only a handful of the players that currently and will eventually make up Seattle’s farm system will go on to become quality major-leaguers, and that’s if the club is fortunate.
Dipoto has often cited the long-term health of the Mariners as the primary reason he hasn’t been willing to trade for top-shelf rentals, but for a club that only has two playoff wins and zero division titles since 2001 and an executive who’s overseen nine years of that, the single most important window of contention has to eventually become the current one. Even with the sticker shock that would expectedly accompany a hypothetical trade for Guerrero or someone of his ilk, that is something the Mariners, given the aforementioned state and future outlook of their farm, are more than well-situated to survive. That’s what a great farm system allows competitive franchises to do: take shots that in most years would be deemed “irresponsible” by Dipoto and those who share his beliefs, all for the goal of bringing home the ultimate prize—something Seattle has hardly even come close to accomplishing in its near 50-year history.
If the stars align and the Mariners prove to be contenders this summer, this will dominate the conversation around their deadline approach. Of course, what finances will be afforded to the front office by the time the deadline rolls around is the most critical—and unknown—element to this, as well as the availability of someone like Guerrero, but as far as just Dipoto and Hollander’s process goes, now more than ever does it make sense to swing for the fences. Guerrero might not be cut from the same cloth as the Ohtanis and Sotos of the world, but he’s a bonafide star who can turn a good team into a great team and a great team into a championship team. It would be the long-deserved statement the city of Seattle has desperately craved and one that, frankly, Dipoto and Hollander would benefit from making not just for the organization or its fanbase, but for themselves.
After all, how many good prospects do you really need?
