BREAKING: SEATTLE MARINERS TRADE HARRY FORD FOR JOSE A. FERRER

BREAKING: SEATTLE MARINERS TRADE HARRY FORD FOR JOSE A. FERRER

The Mariners have made a significant move for a bullpen arm and it cost them one of their better prospects. We’ll talk it through coming up here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby hit it. You are Locked On Mariners, your daily Seattle Mariners podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. Ohoy sailors. It is Saturday, December 6th, 2025. You’re listening to the Lockdown Maris podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. My name is Siding Gonzalez and I’m joined as always by my co-host Kobe Patnode. We’re two lifelong Mariners fans who’ve been covering the team for over half a decade. And today we’re talking about a pretty substantial trade for the Mariners who’ve acquired left-handed reliever Jose A. Ferrer from the Washington Nationals for prospects Harry Ford. That’s right, Harry Ford has finally been traded and Isaac Lion. We’ll get into the fit, the cost, and the upside of Ferrar, and why we think the mayor has paid, what it took to get him. But before we do, I want to shout out our title sponsor today, Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use the promo code locked on MLB. That’s LC K D O N MLB for $20 off your first purchase. So, this episode coming out a little bit later than I uh would have hoped. Uh, but I was out when the trade broke. Uh, Colobby called me and told me about it. And my first reaction was not not great. I’m going to be honest with you. Uh when I heard the the cost uh for for Ferrare. Um mostly because I mean look, we’re we’re big Harry Ford guys here. Um but I I’m glad that I actually had some more time than usual to kind of sit on this trade uh and to think about it more uh because there is kind of like a a personal side of this. Uh, now we we’ve never met Harry Ford, you know, we we don’t know the guy, but like we’ve been big fans of him uh since he was drafted. His dad’s been a big supporter of ours as well. He’s shown love uh quite a bit over the years. Uh and uh you know, we just really we really like Harry and by all accounts like Harry’s a great dude. Um, and uh, you know, while we’ve, you know, had him in offseason plans, like traded him in offseason plans, we traded him, funny enough, to the Washington Nationals in our most recent offseason plan. Uh, and, you know, we’ve talked a lot about him on Fan Fiction Friday and all that stuff. You know, there was still a part of us that wanted him to be a part of this thing, uh, long term. Uh, so that aspect of it, uh, is sad uh, for us. Um but on on the flip side, uh this is obviously something the Mariners uh needed. You know, another uh left-handed reliever. Uh we know that that is something that they identified and targeted uh heading into this winter as something that they wanted to add alongside Gabe Spire and you know, someone better than you know, Caleb Ferguson, who they paired alongside Spire uh in 2025. Uh Ferrer is someone that we’ve talked about quite a bit over the course of the winter. Uh we talked about him a couple of days ago when Adam Jude mentioned him uh in his article on the Seattle Times about all the relievers that the mayors are interested in. Uh and um you know he’s probably not going to be the only reliever that the Mars bring in. Uh but there is a lot of upside here. Uh there’s also some concerns, some I don’t know if I would necessarily call them red flags, maybe like orange flags. Uh, but you know, all off seasonason you have famously or maybe infamously said that you want a daddy in the Mars bullpen. You want the Mars to add a daddy to their bullpen. And while Ferrer is definitely not that right now, there might be the potential for him to be. So, what do you make of this deal, Coley? Yeah. Um, you know, it is a deal that is, you know, bittersweet for the personal reasons that you mentioned. Uh, it’s a deal that is really quite fascinating. You know, if you just zoom out, uh, and just look at it from a baseball perspective. It is, uh, a deal that is largely, you know, a one for one. No disrespect to Isaac Lions, but ninth round pick. Where’d he go to school, Tai? Do you remember? I bet most people don’t. So, you know, whatever. He’s he’s a part of this deal, but we’re not talking about him today. So, just like in the grand scheme of things, it’s an interesting deal. Obviously, our uh you know, again, not personal relationship, but you know, with with Harry and his family, great dude. Rooting for him all the way down there in Washington. He’ll get to play every day. So, that’s exciting. Yeah, that’s really cool for him, man. Like, he’s going to get an opportunity to really carve out a a role for himself and a little closer to his dad as well. So, like that’s awesome. And his from Georgia. So, you know, there are, you know, while it’s bittersweet, I am happy that Harry will get an opportunity that he just unfortunately was not really going to get here in Seattle. Uh, yeah, we talked about he was he was going to have to, you know, learn how to play in the outfield or learn to play some third base or some second base if he was going to get regular plays on. We’ve been talking about Harry Ford being a trade target for or a trade, you know, asset for a while. That got ramped up even more. Yeah, they got ramped up even more when they took Luke Stevenson in in the first round this year. So, uh yeah, it’s not surprising. It is a little bittersweet. And it is interesting because, you know, if you just want to look at the surface numbers of Ferrar and by that I mean erra, which is kind of the go for, you know, the average Joe baseball fan. Um, this is a weird trade and it doesn’t make a lot of sense and and you could see some of the vitriol online which I mean people being you know mad online that’s not that’s unusual. People mad online about a baseball move that that’s unusual. Yeah. So yeah it it is interesting uh for again not a daddy uh you know trending towards dog but probably more of a dude right now. I think he’s probably as he sits right now, just based on his production only, he’s the fifth best guy in this bullpen. He’s behind your big four guys. Uh, and it’s really not up for debate based on ceiling and when you kind of dig into the numbers here and you kind of look around and and you, you know, you do some deep dives instead of just looking at the surface number, the surface area numbers. Uh, he could be one of those guys. He could be the second best guy in your bullpen. could be get better than Gabe Spire. Uh he could be better than I mean it’s possible that he’s better than Muno or Brash. I kind of doubt it. Those guys are really good. But uh yeah, there there certainly is a lot to like here. You have to dig a little deeper which we’re about to do. But uh yeah, on the surface I understand the the sticker shock almost of this deal. And Harry Ford’s been here forever and he’s been, you know, on our top prospect list forever. Uh, but I I think when you take a step back, you kind of examine the whole landscape and you really dig into beyond the numbers or you look at more numbers than just what’s on the back of a baseball card on Ferrer. Uh, you can certainly see the Mariners’s thought process behind making a deal like this. Yeah. So my first two thoughts uh which I shared on Twitter uh shortly after the the trade broke um were one bit nervous about this deal uh quickly going sideways just because you know it’s a reliever um you just you never know with relievers um you know and and Harry Ford’s going to be an everyday guy there at least to start in Washington. We’ll see if he can actually, you know, produce like an everyday guy. But, um, yeah. Um, you know, we didn’t think that Gregory Santos was already going to be out of the Mars organization by this point. You just, you never know, right? Uh, when you trade for guys, especially when you trade for guys that you’re more so banking on the upside rather than the actual production so far, which is what they’re doing with with Ferrer because like uh, you know, it’s 448 RA, but a 303 FIP. So, you know, we’ve talked about this over the the off seasonason that the Nationals have had just a terrible uh defensive group uh that is, you know, substantially hurt their their pitchers. And so that shows up there in the fifth. Uh but also, you know, righties crushed him. Uh 323, 380, 422, and 214 played appearances this year. He was great against lefties, murder against lefties, 186, 217, 304. Uh but you know the inability to get out righties and the damage that righties did against him that’s that’s a pretty big concern and and the sinker specifically this year 2024 it was fine but this year it got smoked and we talked about that quite a bit on Wednesday like if they trade for Ferrar do they either have a tweak to get the sinker back to what it was doing in 2024 or was the issue with the sinker because the sinker itself like the the metrics on the sinker pretty good. It just it got crushed for whatever reason. Is it just a matter of good process, bad results? Like what was going on there? Or are they going to get him to throw the slider in the change up more? Or do they ask him to add back the four seam fast, which he had in 2024 and it was pretty good, and then he shelved it last year. So, so that was my other initial thought was, well, if they’re willing to pay Harry Ford for this guy, do they think that he has an extra gear? And I don’t mean that in terms of stuff. I just mean that in terms of getting him to that next level of actually producing, right? And so that goes into what I just said, like what’s the tweak here? What is the thing that they want him to do more of or do less of? Like how do they think that they’re going to get Jose Ferrer to that next step? Yeah, we don’t know. We can take some pretty good guesses and and I’m imagine we’re about to do that here in just a second, but you know, right now we don’t know what the tweaks are. We can guess and we can again look at the numbers and and come up with our own ideas of what tweaks should be made. But it’s, you know, it’s worth noting that for Rare, if you look just at the RRA, he did not have a good year last year. If you just look at the strikeout per nine, he did not have, you know, an incredible year on that front. But just in general, what does FR do? Well, he throws incredibly hard. His stuff grades out very well. Uh, he gets a ton of ground balls, like elite amount of ground balls. And he’s pretty good at avoiding the barrel. Like, it’s hard to do, you know, home run damage off of this guy. So, those are just where the what you’re starting with. And then when you kind of dig more into those numbers on the secondary pitches and kind of, you know, where this guy could end up, it’s really easy to see the path to being, you know, a dominant lefty out of the bullpin and even a way to to manage righties like with how much he dominates left-handed hitters. He only needs to be good against righties. He just can’t, you know, have a 380 on base against him. And part of that profile, by the way, is that he gives up a lot of ground balls, which means he’s going to give up more hits than other relievers because he’s not going to strike out as many guys. You know, it’s easy to say, well, Washington’s infield defense was terrible last year, and it was. So, some of those balls should have been outs. They turn into hits. Then you remember the Mariners infield defense. And so, I can’t say that that’s going to get much better for him right now. Should be better with Ben Williamson currently pencled in as a third baseman. That will help. But JP Crawford, one of the worst defensive shorts stops in baseball. He’s written in pen to be the starting shortstop in 2026 for the Mariners. Cole Young was obviously hurt last year. How much did that impact him defensively? He was obviously pretty disappointing defensively. Uh but right now he’s written in pencil as your second baseman, but if he doesn’t play second base for you this year, seems like it might be, you know, Jorge Palanco. The favorite. Yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, things don’t get better on that front either. So, you know, it’s possible that the the Mars infield defense and obviously like Josh Naylor will help with that having a full season of him that helps. Uh but it’s possible, you know, the the Mars infield defense will be better. Will it be better enough though for them to take full advantage of the extreme ground ball rates that Ferrer offers? I don’t know because that was the that was the big, you know, thing with Caleb Ferguson, right? He has these extreme ground ball rates. Well, you couldn’t really take advantage of that because your infield defense kind of sucked last year. So, um, and obviously there were other things with Ferguson that made that whole thing go sideways. Like that that don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that that was the reason that the Ferguson thing didn’t work out. But, you know, it’s just it’s hard for me to look at that as like a super positive. Mhm. With what the Mars infield defense was this past year and sure how right now I’m not sure how much better it’s going to be in 2026. Right. If you want to look at 2027, which we could because Ferrer is under club control for the next four seasons. Yeah. assuming he gets tendered contracts and AR two and AR three which for relievers is dicey sometimes but yeah we didn’t expect that Gregory Santos like that the whole thing was going to fall apart so as quick as it did if you want to look at 2027 Colt Emerson’s going to be the shorts stop that’s going to be a massive upgrade as things stand right now Ben Williamson’s going to be the third baseman that’s a massive upgrade and Cole Young I refuse to believe Cole Young is a terrible defender there’s nothing about him that suggests he should be that had and I think it was pretty clear that he was dealing with some kind of issue last year. No, he was dealing with a shoulder issue uh from spring training on. But yeah, we’ll see how it goes. But yeah, the whole like oh well for rare like I I know a lot of people bip is a big thing and it’s like yeah bip is could help but it’s you have to have context as to why somebody has a high BABIP or why somebody has a high expected batting average. It’s not always just a bad luck factor or a good luck factor. Uh so yeah, just keep that in mind. Uh but there are things that Ferrar does well right now that that you don’t have to make any changes to uh to extract value out of him. Uh but there certainly are some changes you could make. Yeah. So we’ll dive into that more in just a moment, but first a reminder, this episode of the Lockdowns podcast is brought to you once again by Game Time as well as Doer. The World Cup is coming back to North America for the first time since 1994. And with 48 teams for the first time ever, it’s going to be massive. But let’s be honest, getting tickets is usually the hardest part. That’s why the Game Time app is clutch. Finally giving fans a real advantage when it comes to snagging seats. 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That’s shopd.com/lockedon seattle for 15% off. shopder.com/lockedon seattle and you’re listening to the Lockdowners podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Thank you so much for making us your first listen as always for all things Mariners and also thank you for making Lockdown the number one sports podcast network. So, the Mariners have acquired Jose Ferrer, left-handed reliever from the Washington Nationals. Talked a little bit about what we like, what we don’t like about him. Let’s get more into that though. What What do you like the most about Rare? What do you think the mayors could really work with here? And then what are some of the concerns that you have about him moving forward? Not just with what he’s done so far in Washington. Sure. I think, you know, the the best thing or, you know, the thing that I am most certain of is that this guy’s going to throw strikes. And a lot of times that’s a big issue with and the Mariners when they take shots on guys like this typically their problem is that they don’t throw a lot of strikes and you try and get them to throw enough strikes that it’s not a problem. Ferrer is an elite strike thrower. 95th percentile base on ball percentage. That’s not going to be an issue with him. He also gets a ton of ground balls. 64% ground ball rate. It’s 99th percentile uh in all of baseball. Uh the X is very good. He throws very hard. two seamer that averages 97.7 miles an hour. Uh he also has a four seamer that he didn’t throw in 2025. Uh that you know is 98 to 100. Like he this is a live arm. Uh and when you take a deeper look at the stuff, it’s not like he doesn’t have an effective change up or an effective slider. Uh by the way, the slider is relatively new uh for him. He only threw 26 of them in 2024 and last year he only threw 90 of them. But when you look at the numbers particularly of this last year, he only threw 90 sliders, but opponents hit 105 off of that pitch with a 158 slugging percentage. And he generated a 52.5% whiff rate on that slider. Uh so you figure another year more comfortable throwing it. That’s an easy fix that the Mariners could implement. Hey, let’s throw that slider a little bit more. It’s really pretty good. Uh, but that’s not it. Because when you look at his primary offspe pitch, which is his change up, opponents hit 221 with a 324 slug. And the change up itself had a 47% whiff rate. Those are two elite whiff rates on two different offsp speed pitches to go along with a blazing fast ball from the left side. So when you kind of look at like, hey, how could the Mariners possibly get more swing and miss? It’s right there in front of you. Throw more sliders, throw more change ups. And for a guy like Ferrer who just kind of started throwing the slider recently, that’s an easy thing to fix. It’s, hey, throw the more. Trust it. Throw it more. You know, obviously he’s probably not ever going to be a heavy slider guy. These guys have to feel comfortable with the pitches you’re calling, but the Mariners are absolutely going to ask him to throw more sliders because the Mariners have to get more swing and miss out of him. if Ferrer is just a ninek per nine or if he’s a 10k per nine which by the way he was in the second half of last year his uh strikeout rate jumped from 20% in the first half to 26% in the second half uh which is I didn’t know that that’s interesting and if he just does that for the entire year this guy might be a win and a half two- win reliever again and you have him for four years he’s not making any money this year uh so that’s nice it’s It’s a potential high not not yet, but it is a potential high leverage option that appears at least to to me. Uh might just be a usage tweak that needs to be made. There’s no mechanical change you have to make here. You throw strikes. He throws hard. The stuff is already good. There’s nothing to change there. Throw a few more sliders. Throw a few more change ups. Maybe reintroduce the four seam fast ball at the top of the zone to try and get more value out of the two seamer at the bottom of the zone. Uh there’s a lot to like here when you when you really dig into the profile and and you know you look at the trends uh of his offspe stuff and next year maybe it’s hey we’re we’re only going to throw you know 60% uh sinker and we’re going to throw 25% change up and we’re going to throw 15% slider. That would double his slider usage. Uh and that’s a way to generate more strikeouts, more whiffs. And that’s what you need to be a high leverage reliever. You know, you can’t really be a high leverage guy if you only trust the dude to come in at the start of an inning, right? Which with Ferrer and his current profile is kind of how you have to use him to start an inning because he’s probably going to give up a hit. And you know, when you have runners on second and third and one out and you’re up by one in the seventh inning, you kind of can’t give up a hit. You can’t let them put the ball in play. And Ferrer is not the guy that you go to to get that strike out yet. But when you look at the change up, when you look at the slider, there is potential for him to be that guy. And it may be as simple as just throw your off speed a little bit more because statistically speaking, it’s great. It’s elite off speed stuff. Trust it. Throw it. Uh so that is more off balance rather than just constantly attacking them, right? And you know, that seems simplistic and maybe there’s a little bit more to it from the Mariners side of things, but it is not out of the realm of possibility. That’s all the Mariners ask this guy to do and he immediately improves uh because the Mariners have done it in the past. And by the way, the Nationals not exactly known for player development over the last four or five years. So well and this to me this this just screams that the Mariners think that they can turn this guy into a legitimate a daddy if you will, Kobe. Um because they love Harry Ford. Yeah, love him. And while they have included him in some other discussions and all that, he was included in the Don discussions, which obviously Don’s one of the best relievers in the game. Um, they have been for the most part unwilling to part with him unless it really unless they felt that it really made them better. Yep. and essentially having this be a one for one, no disrespect to Isaac Lion, like that says a lot to me about how they feel about Jose Ferrer. And I’m glad that you mentioned the the club control and you know how he’s not making any money yet. Uh so yeah, four years of club control he’s pre-ARB. Uh which means that all the money the front office had available to them before this trade, they still have available to them now. Now, they’re going to have to go out and use maybe some of that to go get a backup catcher. We’ll talk about that a little later on. Uh, but that allows them to do, you know, whatever else they want here within reason, you know, to go get Por Blanco back or trade for Catel Marte, uh, add another reliever. Maybe they actually spend legitimate money on another free agency. Yeah. Yeah. On on another reliever. Um, so you know, this trade checks off a significant item off of their to-do list and it also doesn’t limit them at all. Gives them the same flexibility, if not more, than they had, you know, a couple hours ago. Yep. Yeah. It’s again, you have to you have to think ahead uh with trades like this because the sticker shock is a real thing. I think also what we might have learned here is that, you know, Harry Ford just didn’t have as much trade value around the league as we thought. Uh that that’s a distinct possibility. Uh again, we we’ve talked about this. And the other and the other thing, too, is like how did the Mariners feel about him play in other positions? So, they actually think that was a real possibility. You know, for us, we look at him and we go, well, that’s a highly athletic dude. Surely, you know, he can play left field or he can play second base. But we’ve seen a lot of highly athletic dudes try and play on the outfield and they’re terrible at it. So maybe they feel like that wasn’t a realistic option for him. I don’t know. Sure. I mean, and again, one thing we always say, and specifically about Harry Ford, we’ve mentioned this every single time we’ve brought him up in trade talks, is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in these trades. And Harry Ford is one of the more polarizing prospects in all of baseball because there are still some people out there who don’t think this guy can catch, which I think is absurd, but whatever. uh they don’t think he can catch and they don’t think there’s any power there and so they think he might just end up being a part-time slap hitter, you know, and and obviously he didn’t steal that many bases last year and and blah blah blah. Like there are some teams out there who just look at Harry Ford and be like that guy’s a fringe major leager. He’s not a great prospect. He’s not a good prospect. There are some teams Yeah. JJ Cooper of uh Baseball America said he’s not he’s not one of the 10 best catching prospects in baseball according to him. According to him. Right. And that and that’s just to illustrate that there is a sentiment like that around the game on a more national scale about Harry Ford. And that’s probably how some teams view him as well. We talked about this when people, you know, bring up Laz Montes as like a trade partner or as a trade chip in some of these Fanfiction Friday deals and we certainly talked about it whenever Harry Ford was brought up as a trade chip in the Fanfiction Friday trades or even in our own trade discussions uh that we like to have. like we think he’s worth this but we don’t know because we don’t know if that team likes him or not because we know that there is a large chunk of of teams that just look at Harry Ford and go nah we’re not that interested in him. So it’s just one of those things where I don’t think the Mariners like a lot of people say oh they left talent on the table they could have gotten more for Harry Ford. You’d think but we don’t know at all. Like the Mariners have had trade talks for how many years with these different front offices. They kind of have a good idea of what Harry Ford is worth to them and the market and they felt like this is the best that they could get. So I I can tell you how I feel about the trade they just made. I can’t really say like I know for sure they got the most they could or I think they could I know they could have gotten more or I don’t know. I don’t know because I’m not privy to those conversations. All I can do is try and provide context for why the Mariners would make a trade like this. Uh, and judging by a lot of people’s reactions, or I will say judging by people’s on Twitter’s reaction, which I know is doesn’t always represent the majority of people. Yeah. Uh, this is the worst thing Jerry Dotto’s ever done. And I just want to sit here and look at it and be like, no, like it it’s I I get it. I get it. You can look at the process. You can understand why they would want to make a trade like this. And you can do all that. by the way, and also say I’m wellelmed. I’m sufficiently wellelmed, and that’s where I’m at. Like, I don’t love this trade. I don’t hate this trade. To me, it’s just it it’s okay. It’s okay. I understand the process. I get where they’re going. Is it likely that they got better in 2026? Yeah. That’s really what I care about the most right now. Uh, but overall I’m just like, you know, four years of a of a reliever who’s good but not really close to great, you know, at least in their current production. And you had to give up Harry Ford, you know, who at the very least was going to be a highv value backup catcher for you for the next couple years at the league minimum with upside for more who’s only 22 and is a freak athlete. Like, yeah, I look at that and I go, yeah, it’s okay. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it, but it it it’s, you know, I I understand the surprise. I guess I guess my initial reaction was when you told me, did you have to do this? Couldn’t you get similar production not having to give up Harry Ford? Sure. You know, so that’s valid. We’ll see. I think this trade ultimately is dependent on where they can take Ferrer from here. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. Like I think Harry Ford for the guy that Ferrer has been. Just production-wise, not just talking about the stuff, just production, just what he did on the stat sheet. I’m not a huge fan of that. Nope. Agreed. But there’s obviously a lot of upset here and getting in early on Ferrer, you know, cost you Harry Ford. And if you’re right, then I think this is a banger deal, right? I mean, I I would just say this, even like even though I understand the process of it, I can still nitpick the process by simply looking at this and being like, “Hold up a second. You gave what might end up being your best trade chip this winter that you’re actually willing to trade. You gave that guy up for a project that you hope will impact your bullpen. two or two months, six weeks after you finished eight outs shy of going to the first World Series in your franchise’s history, you gave up, you know, this trade asset that you could have used on a more sure thing for, you know, a project for a chance at a really good player instead of an actual really good player that we that we think you could have used on a more sure thing. Right. Right. Right. And that’s that’s part of the thing. So again, like overall I I look at this deal like for me it’s a 45 currently you know uh if Yeah. If we’re grading this on on fanfiction Friday it’ be like a 45 maybe a 50. Yeah. Because again like it really does depend on how much you like Ferrer and how much you and and ultimately this trade is as successful as how much more swing and miss the Mariners get out of Ferrer and his profile. And there are reasons to be optimistic about that. There are also reasons to be a little bit concerned about that. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out. Unfortunately, we won’t know if this is a thing until next year, you know, middle of next year. But, uh, again, there are some some positives. He was really good in the second half, particularly on the swing and miss front, which is exactly what the Mariners need uh to have this deal pay off for them. So, the Bears now need a backup catcher. Who could that be? We’ll talk about that in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of the Locked Ones podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. NFL Sundays move fast. One big play and suddenly everything feels different. That’s what makes live betting with FanDuel so exciting. You’re not just watching the game, you’re reacting to it in real time. With FanDuel, you can place bets as the action unfolds. Every drive, every momentum swing, every highlight moment. 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So, while Harry Ford is still a prospect, the Mariners did trade from their major league roster today to address their bullpen. So, now they need a backup catcher. Harry was written in pencil uh entering this off seasonason as the backup catcher. He’s now in Washington. So, uh yeah, there really isn’t another option uh for the Mars right now in their organization. Um, I don’t even know if because I know a bunch of guys opted for free agency out of the minors. I know like Blake Hunt’s no longer in the organization. So, I don’t even know if they have a guy that’s like a French major leaguer who would who could even be thrown into the mix here. So, they need a backup catcher. Uh, and Adam Judah, the Seattle Times has already thrown out Mitch Carver’s name uh as someone that could potentially return. We had him in our offseason plan after we again, funny enough, traded Harry Ford to the Washington Nationals. Uh, and uh, you know, I I I know that’s a name that makes a lot of fans cringe, but look, Mitch Garver making $12 million a year. It’s a very different player than Mitch Gar uh, making three million a year, $4 million a year. It’s not going to cost that much. Mitch Garber as a backup catcher on a true backup catcher contract is fine. I’m just going to say that now. Yep. It is fine. He knows your pitching staff. He was basically a league average bat when he did hit. I know like he didn’t hit for the power that you want him to and all that stuff. Like he’s I’m not trying to say that Mitch Garver is a good player. I’m just saying that for a backup catcher he is fine. Totally fine. that would be acceptable. Works in the clubhouse. Works well with Cal. Knows your arms. Like provides some right-handed thump off the bench. Uh yeah, I honestly I would be borderline shocked if Mitch Garver is not back uh next year as your primary backup catcher. Um again, would I prefer somebody like Luis Torren? Yeah. But Torren is a trade and you have to go and you have to make a trade and you just give you know Mitch Garber somewhere between my guess three to five million dollars to play you know 50 games a year. You’re fine with that and you know you can still go out and maybe you give Tom Murphy like a minor league free agent deal and you kind of see what you have there and there are some options here but I I honestly I would be very surprised if Mitch Garver wasn’t back and I’m totally fine with that. Like Garver is a perfectly good backup catcher. There’s nothing wrong with that. By the way, if you were curious, roster resource currently has the Mariners backup catcher as Nick Raposo. Yes, Nick. Yeah, he’s still in the Oregon. Yeah, I couldn’t remember if anyone was left or not. Um, Garver would be totally fine. No issue with that. Uh, I wouldn’t like Garver to be my primary right-handed hitter off the bench, though. I would still like them to go get a right-handed, you know, bat or right-handed bench bat. I still really like the Edmundo Sosa idea. Uh but as a pure backup catcher, yeah, I’m not I have no issues with that whatsoever. Yeah. So, uh obviously they could go trade for a guy uh if they don’t bring back Garver. Uh but there’s there’s some free agents out there. Um Jonah, Reese Maguire, Gary Sanchez, Elias Diaz, MJ Melendez. Um not even a catcher. Yeah, he he doesn’t even catch. They have him listed as a catcher here though. Um Tom Murphy get to Karantini. That’s probably going to be too expensive for the Mars probably. But that would be great. Christian Vasquez, Danny Jansen. Jansen’s going to be too expensive. Yeah. Uh yeah. I I think I would lay down the most jelly beans on Mitch Garver being the uh the catcher, backup catcher. Uh, I would probably put down the second most on Tom Murphy, uh, believe it or not. And then like a strong possibility that they trade for like a 4A catcher type who has an option that they could stash in Triple A. Um, there maybe there’s somebody coming up in the rule five. Like I don’t know, but um, yeah, Matt is Matt Thice still in Tampa. Like maybe they I think so. Yeah, maybe they like trade for him because they they went out and got Nick Forz. Yeah. Uh, no, he’s a free agent, so I don’t know. Maybe they go like Simon Bat Dice or something. Sure. Again, we’re talking about a guy who unless disaster strikes, which possible catcher is not exactly the safest position on the diamond, but unless disaster strikes, you’re asking that guy to play max 45 50 games uh all year. I mean, the one thing I was hoping with with Harry was like maybe Harry proves that he can actually produce and that means that, you know, the Bears would actually be willing to get Cal off of his feet some more and either DH him or just give him more true off days which he could really use. They have to do that anyways. That’s I don’t know now that feels like that’s not going to be the case. But I will say right now on December 6th, yeah, I don’t care who the backup catcher is. Cal Raleigh needs to get off his feet more in 2026 than he did in 2025. I don’t care if it’s Nick Raposo. Raposo needs to start 35, 40, 50 games behind the plate and you have to live with it. So go spend some money on a decent backup catcher. Well, and now you can because you know, you addressed one of the bullpen spots that you wanted to or one of the pricier uh uh one of the pricier uh openings you had on your roster because we know bullpen arms even just like the good not great ones get seven eight million bucks. Backup catcher is only going to get four or five. Yeah. So, so yeah. So, my guess is Garver. Um I don’t know when we’ll hear about that. I don’t know, you know, Yeah. what his market looks like, if there even is a market there for him. Um right. But yeah, that’s my guess. And then uh you know, winter meetings start tomorrow. Um so we we’ll see if maybe the mayors cuz you know Jude mentioned a few other guys. Uh maybe they they’re still in on those guys. Um heading into the winter meetings. Um you know, you could have more than two rel two two lefty relievers in your bullpen and it would be totally fine, especially if it’s someone like Bat Stum who gets out righties even more than he gets out lefties. So and just something to keep in mind. I’m not saying it always happens this way, but it has happened in the past. Jerry is somewhat known for lining up dominoes and then knocking them down in quick succession. He he gets lines up the deal he wants and then he has another one lined up after that that he gets done pretty quick. Happened a few uh winters ago, the winter, ironically, they traded for Gregory Santos. They they kind of had these on just you know January 1st it was the hannburger trade and then it was late January it was Polo and then early February just a couple days later it was Santos like he kind of gets on a roll. So it is possible I’m not saying it’s likely but it is possible that the Mariners could make another significant or somewhat sign significant move in the next day or two. That is that would be following you know a pattern that we’ve seen in the past. Uh, so can’t rule it out, but yeah, I I think this is probably the biggest move they make this week, maybe even for the rest of this month, but can’t say for sure it will be. But, uh, yeah, it’s the winter meetings, and it sounds like there’s going to be a lot of action at these meetings. So, it should be a fun next couple days. Whether the Mariners make a move or not, we’re going to have a lot of, uh, movement, which is great because the the winter meetings used to be cool. Like it used to be pretty busy and then it kind of died out for a while and then last year pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Last year was pretty good. Yeah. The Kyle Tucker trade like Yeah. Yeah. A lot of stuff got done. So yeah, it kind of feels like the winter meetings are back and we heard reports that the the trade market is going to be hotter this winter than it has been in recent teams are like more willing to talk about some guys and all that. So with the pending lockout, they’re not sure about investing long-term money, blah blah blah. So that would seem to benefit the Mariners if they really want to be aggressive. And for the last two winters, they told us, “Well, we wanted to do more, but the trade market didn’t really exist.” Well, now it exists, Jerry and Justin. Now it exists, and your farm systems even better, even after you traded, Harry for. So, what we’re saying is that Catel Marte needs to be a Mariner by Wednesday. What I’m saying is you’re not going to appease me with Jose A. Ferrare. Okay, get to work. So, now that you’ve heard us talk about it, let us know how you feel down in the comments below. That’s going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Marers podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. For Kobe Patode, I’m Teddy Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at l_mmers. You can follow me at Tedy Gonzalez and Kobe at CPAT1. That’s cpat11. We’re also on blue sky. You can follow me at TDG, Kobe at MLB Kobe on the show at Lockdown Mariners. You can also find us on Instagram at lockdown mariners. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we’ll see you next time. Peace.

Ty and Colby react to the Seattle Mariners acquiring left-handed reliever Jose A. Ferrer from the Washington Nationals for prospects Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon.

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Seattle Mariners, Mariners Podcast, Mariners Trade, Jose Ferrer, Harry Ford, Isaac Lyon, Gregory Santos, Gabe Speier, Caleb Ferguson, Luke Stevenson, Ben Williamson, JP Crawford, Cole Young, Jorge Polanco, Josh Naylor, Colt Emerson, Mitch Garver, Tom Murphy, Luis Torrens, Nick Raposo, MLB Rumors, Mariners News, Mariners Bullpen, Mariners Prospects, Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners Offseason