The Seattle Mariners' rebuild continued Monday with a deal in which they acquired J.P. Crawford, an out-of-favor prospect who is just a half-season into his major league career, and sent one of Seattle's best remaining players, Jean Segura, to a Philadelphia Phillies team that had a black hole at shortstop in 2018.
Segura's career has been remarkable. He bounced back from two years as a replacement-level player in Milwaukee, during which time his 9-month-old son passed away, to become a consistent star worth about 4 WAR per season for Arizona and Seattle over the past three years.
The Phillies got less production from shortstop than any other position last year, with a composite line of .235/.281/.370 and below-average defense from almost everyone they played there. Adding Segura addresses both problems; he can play short and he's got a consistent track record of offensive production, replacing Crawford on the depth chart and allowing the Phillies to get Scott Kingery off shortstop to a position he can actually play, which they have to hope will allow him to focus on his hitting after a disappointing rookie season. Segura is guaranteed about $60 million over the next four years, including the buyout on a team option for 2023, by which point he'll be 33 and might no longer be a viable shortstop.
The Phillies also picked up Juan Nicasio, whose peripherals were solid last year but who had a 6.00 ERA because he gave up a .408/.410/.606 line with men on base, which wasn't really a problem for him prior to last year. And they added lefty James Pazos, a solid specialist who killed left-handed batters before experiencing an anomalous reverse platoon split in 2018. He worked almost exclusively with his fastball last year, throwing his slider -- which should be his pitch to finish off lefties -- less than 10 percent of the time.
Both should be useful parts of a rebuilt Phillies bullpen, with Nicasio also serving to even out the money involved in the deal. It's probably a five-win swing for the Phillies, given how little they got from shortstop last year, the two reliever additions and perhaps some ripple effects on Kingery's bat.
For the Mariners, this is a big bet on Crawford's potential with a change of scenery and, perhaps, a wake-up call that his huge natural talent alone, which got him to Triple-A without too much trouble, isn't enough to make him a star in the majors. A first-round pick in 2013 who was nearly the Mariners' selection in that draft class -- Seattle took D.J. Peterson, and the Phillies took Crawford four picks later -- and who eventually became a top-five prospect in baseball, Crawford had his first extended struggle in pro ball in Triple-A near the end of 2016, but did well enough in his second go-round there to earn a call-up to the majors late in 2017, playing great defense at third base and showing he could work the count and get on base.
His 2018 was a disaster. He was hitting .188/.246/.328 on April 28, when he landed on the disabled list with a flexor pronator (forearm) strain; 13 games into his return in June, he was hit by a pitch that broke his hand and kept him out for two more months. After the first injury, he had just 67 major league plate appearances the rest of the year, hitting .245/.394/.472 in that limited sample.
Crawford has a good eye and disciplined approach, but hasn't always converted that into performance, failing to capitalize when he gets into hitter's counts, despite having enough bat speed and good hand-eye coordination. He's a potentially plus defender at shortstop, even better at third, with great instincts and hands and plenty of arm for the left side of the infield. He was a plus runner when he signed, and occasionally you'll see that speed again, but I've caught him quite a few times in the past five seasons and usually get average to below-average run times from him from home to first. There's just too much ability here to dismiss Crawford after half a season of major league at-bats; he turns 24 next month and can be at least an above-average regular if he wants to be.
The Mariners also pick up Carlos Santana, owed about $41.7 million over the next two years, coming off perhaps the worst season of his career (1.7 and 1.9 WAR by Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs, respectively). Some of that drop seems like bad luck on balls in play; his BABIP of .231 was the lowest of his career by quite a bit, even though his batted-ball characteristics should have produced better results. Seattle could flip Santana immediately, but if they keep him and let him DH for the first half of 2019, the odds are he'll see an uptick in his production that might allay any concerns other teams have about age-related decline. Either way, he seems like a Mariner for the short term only.