Mariners fans didn\u2019t need another reminder that Seattle\u2019s player development group tends to be ruthlessly practical, but the Cardinals just gave them one anyway.<\/p>\n
The easiest dunk after the Jurrangelo Cijntje trade would\u2019ve been St. Louis immediately going, \u201cCool story, Seattle. We\u2019re bringing the switch-pitching experiment back.\u201d That\u2019s the version that would\u2019ve made the Mariners look like they bailed on the thing that made him special.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Cardinals basically confirmed what a lot of people suspected: Seattle wasn\u2019t trading away a two-handed gimmick. They were trading away a pitcher they\u2019d already started shaping into a right-handed starter,<\/a> and St. Louis appears to agree with that direction.<\/p>\n Cardinals deliver a revealing verdict on Mariners\u2019 Cijntje development call<\/p>\n Cardinals president of baseball ops Chaim Bloom was unusually candid about it. He said that, \u201cbroadly speaking,\u201d <\/a>the Cardinals see Cijntje\u2019s strengths and upside \u201csimilarly to Seattle,\u201d and that it\u2019s \u201cnot a shock\u201d the Mariners were prioritizing the right-handed side. Bloom also made it clear this wasn\u2019t some snap judgment \u2014 it was something discussed over \u201cmonths\u201d of conversations with Seattle, including how the Mariners envisioned his development path.<\/p>\n The good news: Seattle wasn\u2019t blindly selling a mystery. The Cardinals are treating it like \u201cSeattle already had the right idea, now we\u2019ll learn the player and build from there.\u201d Bloom even acknowledged Cijntje\u2019s own preference and routine \u2014 that he\u2019s \u201cpassionate about keeping up the left side\u201d \u2014 but framed it as something that might continue in a controlled practice setting<\/a> while they evaluate him in-person.<\/p>\n The bad news is the obvious one: if Cijntje turns into a frontline right-handed starter, then the trade becomes painful in the exact way Mariners trades always get painful \u2014 not because Seattle didn\u2019t understand the player, but because they did, and still decided the cost was worth it.\u00a0<\/p>\n