This surely was a first. A front office reaching an agreement on a trade while being honored by a state legislative body.
It happened Monday, while Seattle Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander were in the gallery of the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, Wash.
The senate was adopting a resolution celebrating catcher Cal Raleigh and the Mariners’ 2025 season when Hollander suddenly got a text message that jolted him to attention.
Manager Dan Wilson and longtime broadcaster Rick Rizzs were on the floor, closest to the action as the resolution was read. Hollander and Dipoto, watching from the balcony, were on a group text with two presidents of baseball operations, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Chaim Bloom and Tampa Bay Rays’ Erik Neander.
The message from Bloom was one the Mariners had waited for all offseason. They had a deal for superutility man Brendan Donovan. They could start the medical review process necessary to finalize the three-team trade.
Dipoto was signing autographs and posing for photographs. Hollander scrambled to leave the gallery, only to find the door was locked. Someone buzzed him into the senate offices. Hollander apologized, explaining he had to make a call. From a break room down the hall, he phoned the Mariners’ medical team in Seattle and told them to start poring over Donovan’s file.
The trade, which sent Donovan to Seattle, third baseman Ben Williamson to Tampa Bay, and three prospects and two draft picks to St. Louis, was on the verge of completion. The Mariners were giving up a highly-regarded prospect, switch-pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje, plus Williamson, outfielder Tai Peete and a Competitive Balance Round B pick, likely to be No. 69 overall.
Donovan, though, is a significant prize, a left-handed hitter who will bat leadoff and play third base and other positions for the Mariners for at least the next two seasons. The Mariners began pursuing him in November. The Athletic’s Katie Woo reported in mid-December that the Mariners and San Francisco Giants were the front-runners to acquire him.
However, the deal ultimately required the involvement of the Rays, who converted Williamson into extra value for the Cardinals by sending them outfielder Colton Ledbetter and a Comp B draft pick, expected to be No. 73 overall.
The Rays entered the discussions earlier in the offseason, according to people briefed on the conversations. In start-and-stop negotiations, the teams struggled to find a fit. But talks accelerated after the Rays re-engaged in the middle of last week.
The familiarity between the clubs helped. The Rays and Mariners are frequent trading partners. The Cardinals’ Bloom began his career working with Neander in Tampa Bay. And the Rays are the industry’s leading practitioners of three-team trades.
The Mariners’ contingent planned to leave Seattle for Olympia at 10:30 a.m. (PT) Monday. However, at the time, Dipoto was discussing the trade with the team’s chairman, John Stanton. Mariners vice president of communications Tim Hevly, Rizzs and club counsel Christian Haliburton took off in one car. Dipoto, Hollander and Wilson left about 10 minutes later in another vehicle. The drive would take about 1 hour, 15 minutes to complete.
Hevly joked with the group in his car that, because Dipoto had once been a scout, racing from one game to another, he would beat them to the state capitol. Sure enough, when Hevly and Co. arrived, Dipoto’s group was already in the coffee shop of the Capitol, eating sandwiches.
The fun was only beginning.
“The coolest part of the day was sitting at the state capitol while they were reading a resolution honoring the Mariners. Which really was something I had never before experienced,” Dipoto said. “Then we got the deal done, which makes our team feel more complete.”
To top it all off, Monday was Dipoto’s 35th wedding anniversary.
“It was a good day … like most other groundhog days in my adult life,” he said.
Hollander, too, will never forget the wild turn of events.
After the ceremony, he and the other well-known members of the Mariners’ contingent mingled with aides and some of the state senators, taking photos and talking baseball.
“So many people came up to us and said, ‘We’d love to get Brendan Donovan,’” Hollander said. “They thought I was kidding when I said, ‘Working on it.’ ”
They were working on it, all right. Working on it with such diligence, the senate might want to add a new ending to its proclamation:
“WHEREAS the Mariners acquired Brendan Donovan to top off their offseason;
“NOW, THEREFORE IT BE RESOLVED, that the Washington State Senate congratulates the team’s front office on a job well done.”