Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz explain why Brendan Donovan is the perfect fit for the Seattle Mariners. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
…this is a move we have all been waiting for.
This was one of the most heavily rumored trade targets of the entire winter.
Brendan Donovan, who has very quietly had one heck of a start to his career.
I mean, this is a, a former seventh-round pick who hit his way to the majors, and I don’t think I quite registered how good his- He’s really good …uh, rookie season was.
not just particularly his rookie season.
Since then, his bat has been more good than great.
He does struggle against left-handers.
He doesn’t have a ton of raw power, but he is an elite contact hitter.
His strikeout rates have been, you know, among the five to ten lowest in the league.
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He walks at a solid clip.
He has just enough power to rack up enough doubles and homers to where your infield, or sorry, your outfield cannot play all the way in the way you can against Luis Arraez.
And he’s just been a really complete baseball player who’s been able to handle second base, left field, third base.
He’s seen some time at shortstop, played some first.
And with Seattle, he was a perfect target because of their needs in the infield at second and third.
By acquiring Donovan, who can handle both positions, they’ve effectively now set up a pos- a position battle.
I mean, it’s kind of two different positions, but for Jung and Emerson to battle it out to either start at second or third, and Donovan handles the other spot, which is a cool way to, to handle this and gives you kind of rare versatility as opposed to shoehorning either of these guys into one spot that maybe doesn’t fit for them.
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I think that makes a lot of sense, but that’s why he just made so much sense.
The fact that he only making five point eight million dollars this year, under team control for twenty twenty-seven.
The fact that he’s one of just the most bankable on-base guys in the whole league, all of it comes together to make him the perfect target, and they had the farm system depth to deal from to get a deal done.