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The Mariners Sign Kyle Waldrop To A Minor League Deal
Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto looks like he’s trying to fit in a couple more deals before the end of 2016. Today he went about signing outfielder and pinch hitter, Kyle Waldrop, to minor league deal. While this may seem like a minor deal (pun intended) Waldrop fits the M’s in a multitude of ways.
Leave it to Jerry Dipoto to continue his pre-holiday moves. Sure, this signing of Kyle Waldrop is not as exciting as the Mariners getting Jean Segura, which Dipoto did on Thanksgiving Eve, but this Christmas Eve announcement could pay dividends for the M’s in the long run.
Waldrop is a young, left-handed talent that will have time to continue to develop his game at the minor league level this coming year. At the moment, he can’t play at the major league level because the outfield is already jam-packed with other promising prospects.
Nevertheless, when the time comes, Waldrop should be a positive contributor to the Mariners lineup.
Going through the minor league ranks over the years, Waldrop showcased his speed and power. Since 2011, Waldrop busted out more than twenty doubles in all but one year. He also pounded fourteen or more home runs in back-to-back years in 2013 and 2014.
Better yet, he used his speed on the base paths to leg out a minor league career total of twenty-six triples and fifty-four stolen bases.
Now those may not seem like high numbers, but when you compare it to his competition in the outfield, Waldrop has had more minor league triples and stolen bases than Mitch Haniger, more minor league stolen bases than Guillermo Heredia and more minor league triples than Taylor Motter.
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This is not to say that Waldrop is faster than those guys, although a foot race between them would be fun to watch, it just means that he produced more at the bus league level.
Waldrop does have some major league experience, but the sixteen games he’s taken the field in the big leagues is not a fair indicator of what he could do in the future.
In those games, he had a .227 batting average with a double and a RBI.
His batting average has taken a hit as the talent he’s faced has gotten better. After hitting about .280 up until triple-A ball, he then saw his average plummet down to .226 at the triple-A level. As you can see, that number is on par with his current MLB average.
If he does get a call-up to the big leagues, this is something that he could work on with one of the greatest hitters the game ever saw in Edgar Martinez.
All in all, the Dipoto and the Mariners have picked up a solid soon-to-be MLB-ready talent in Kyle Waldrop. While he is a future and/or backup plan, if he dazzles at the minor league level this coming season, maybe we’ll see him in an M’s uniform in 2017.
