The Seattle Mariners and the Atlanta Braves started the wheeling and dealing in MLB before the beginning of the Winter Meetings.
Late on Sunday, they agreed to a trade that sent outfielder Jarred Kelenic, left-handed pitcher Marco Gonzales, and first baseman Evan White to Atlanta in exchange for right-handed pitchers Jackson Kowar and Cole Phillips.
Kowar and Phillips are talented, yes, but it was shocking to see the Mariners trade Kelenic so easily.
In a span of a couple of weeks, the Mariners traded two everyday players: infielder Eugenio Suarez and Kelenic.
The lefty-hitting Kelenic started off the 2023 campaign looking like he finally had broken out, but faded a bit and then suffered a self-inflicted injury in the dugout.
He is still just 24 and has top-prospect pedigree, so the Braves have every intention of making him an All-Star eventually.
Kelenic wrote a farewell message in which he thanked Mariners fans for having his back through thick and thin, the Braves organization for giving him a new opportunity, God, and his family.
See a notable omission there?
The Mariners, as an organization, weren’t mentioned.
Jarred Kelenic thanked everyone except the Seattle Mariners organization pic.twitter.com/IeEqPxx2Ux
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) December 4, 2023
The M’s notoriously manipulated his service time when he rejected their extension offer, which might have caused a sour relationship from the start.
Things apparently didn’t get better from there.
Kelenic struggled for years before finally settling down in 2023, when he finished with a career-best .746 OPS in 105 games.
He is now a Brave, and the past doesn’t matter but we won’t deny that seeing him snub the Mariners in his farewell message caught our attention.
Now, he is expected to be the Braves’ left fielder against right-handers, while the Mariners are probably engineering another move with the salary they have liberated.
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