
The Seattle Mariners have three starting position players headed to free agency, and they only seem to have a clear plan for one of them.
Seattle's brass has repeatedly expressed an intention to keep first baseman Josh Naylor. That leaves second baseman Jorge Polanco and third baseman Eugenio Suárez in more uncertain positions heading into their free-agent windows.
If Naylor re-signs, there might not be room left in the budget to bring back one or both of Polanco and Suárez. But if all other things were equal, it does seem as though the Mariners would want to get the full band back together.
In his recent end-of-season comments, Mariners general manager Justin Hollander talked free agency, and although he didn't address Polanco and Suárez by name, he said the team would look to re-sign as many of its own impending free agents as it could.
“You can never have too much talent,” Hollander said, per Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. “You can never quit trying to find pieces to add. That’s where my head is going to be, probably in 48 hours or so, once I get a chance to decompress a little more.
"What does this team need going forward? It starts with the guys who have a chance to be free agents in a couple weeks, and seeing if we can bring as many of those guys back as possible.”
Suárez projects to get more money than Polanco, considering his 49-homer, All-Star season. Much of that work was done with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the Mariners also have top prospect Colt Emerson waiting in the wings as a third-base option.
So if Naylor is almost a definite yes and Suárez a more likely no, that could mean Polanco is squarely in the middle. He'll decline his player option for $6 million, and the Mariners will have to decide what he's worth in the context of his other offers.
Seattle won't bring back the exact same roster no matter what, but how similar next year's group is to this year's will be an interesting variable to track against its eventual success.
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