The Mariners Found A Keeper In Washington’s Refuse
The Seattle Mariners inked outfielder Victor Robles to a two-year contract extension on Monday. This was not big information, besides presumably for Robles. The deal covers the 2025 and 2026 seasons, and provides the Mariners an choice for a 3rd season. The framework of the deal fully fits the preferences of—and the cheapo team-building limitations imposed upon—compulsive dealsmith and meandering moneyballer Jerry Dipoto: Robles, pulled off the scrap heap again in June, has been productive for Seattle at a place of want, and is getting into his athletic prime, and can make solely a bit bit extra in whole wage over the following two seasons than retired Oriole Chris Davis made in deferred money for this one.
Nonetheless loath I’m to get pleasure from any of Dipoto’s handiwork, as a not too long ago heartbroken Robles sentimentalist I am going to decide on to think about his sudden landfall a cheerful improvement. Earlier than he bombed out of the Nationals group, Robles was as soon as a high prospect in baseball, and a really, very cool one. Not some four-year LSU man with an annoying mustache-haircut combo with a swing straight out of a Tom Emanski advert and a drearily optimized relationship to balls and strikes, however a zany, free-styling teenager with a giant creativeness for baseball and for his personal capabilities. As a uncooked and scrawny 17-year-old taking part in within the low minors, he developed a status for believing maybe an excessive amount of in his personal pace, for insisting upon grabbing an additional base out of each ball in play, and for swiping bases with hysterical abandon. He made appearances with the large membership as a 20-year-old after which once more as a 21-year-old, after which caught in heart the next 12 months, which occurred to be 2019, the 12 months the Nationals lastly received the entire shit.
The stuff that Robles did effectively in Washington was additionally, weirdly, the stuff that he did very poorly. He was quick and daring, and so he bumped into a number of outs on the base-paths and took wacky routes within the outfield. He developed an infuriating obsession with bunting, in all of its varieties, associated to his persistent perception that he can outrun something. In 2022 Robles completed second within the Nationwide League in sacrifice hits, which may be very a lot not what you need from a beginning outfielder. He was, fairly often, an infuriating participant to have on a group you care about. None of this was helped by a set of garden-variety tender spots widespread in a replacement-level major-league participant: Robles was weak each to excessive fastballs and to low breaking pitches, and had hassle distinguishing one from the opposite. Like numerous younger gamers, his swing selections may very well be baffling: He’d work forward within the depend however then his mind would go See Pitch Hit Pitch mode on some piece-of-crap get-me-over curveball and earlier than anybody knew what had occurred he’d thrown a depressing contact swing at a pitcher’s pitch and popped out to second base, for the fourth time in a recreation.
This behavior of compulsively placing the ball in play was not aided by a specific and confounding bodily limitation: Even at the moment, in his renaissance season, Robles’s common bat pace is a grandfatherly, Jeff McNeil-like 69 miles per hour, per Statcast. This shocking deficit in such an explosively athletic participant, plus the compulsive bunting, goes a way towards explaining why Robles has by no means ranked above the primary percentile in MLB in common exit velocity in any full or near-full season of his profession.
The Nationals, who lastly gave up on Robles on the level when accidents made it unattainable for him to win a place and hold it, bear some duty for all of this. For one factor, however a notable run of MVP-caliber place gamers who’ve cycled by means of city, they have been considered shitty and backward of their developmental program for many of the final decade. Associated: Nationals hitting coach Darnell Coles observed in 2022 that Robles’s batting stance had modified over time, coincidental to Robles going from a man with doubles energy who might sock the occasional dinger to a man who sincerely struggled to get the ball out of the infield. What sort of time-frame are we speaking about? How about 9 whole rattling years. Robles had risen by means of Washington’s farm system and made the large membership and began at a premier place in a World Sequence after which had his profession begin to erode out from beneath him, all beneath the eyes of a corporation that thought-about him its future, and it was in 12 months 9 of this development, beneath the tutelage of a 3rd hitting coach, earlier than anybody observed that Robles’s fingers have been in a markedly completely different place in his batting stance. I’m not bitter about this in any respect!
Maybe not coincidentally, Robles began the next 12 months batting .299 with a 112 OPS+, earlier than a again damage worn out three-fourths of his season. He opened the 2024 marketing campaign wholesome however in a contest with Jacob Younger, a light-hitting Gold Glove-caliber heart fielder whose average exit velocity, hilariously, is within the league’s second percentile. Robles was clearly already on the again foot—two in any case is one hundred pc larger than one—after which he was injured once more. Issues have been going fairly poorly, however a few of what had been encouraging about Robles’s aborted 2023—pitch recognition and plate self-discipline being the essential ones—appeared to have survived into 2024. Robles had two hits and a pair of spotlight defensive performs in a win on Could 10, and after the sport gave his first ever live interview in English. It appeared like issues have been going to be good, however they tremendous duper weren’t: Robles was caught stealing the following recreation, had a sloppy error within the following one, didn’t register one other hit till Could 26, was injured in that very same recreation, and 5 days later was designated for project, successfully ending his time in Washington.
I’ll admit that I had no perception that issues would work any higher in Seattle. However they’ve! Robles is hitting .303 with an .850 OPS for the Mariners, and has performed fairly effectively in any respect three outfield positions. He is doing good Victor Robles issues—he is swiped 12 baggage in 12 tries—and he is even proven some energy, socking three dingers in 42 video games, half as many as he hit in 132 video games in his final almost-full season in Washington. On a Mariners group with a dominant pitching employees and an incredibly underpowered offense, even the unhealthy, tragic, comprehensively brain-boomed model of Robles would’ve been one thing, a hard-driven used pocket-rocket with tires price kicking; as a substitute, what Dipoto hauled out of the dumpster out again of Nationals Park is one thing like what Nats followers spent the higher a part of a decade imagining, after which mourning. The Mariners have largely arrested their slide down the standings, and at the moment have received 4 in a row to remain a half-game again of the Astros within the American League West. After an energetic commerce deadline, they have Robles, Julio Rodríguez, and Randy Arozarena of their outfield; if it is an erratic trio, additionally it is about as stocked up on coolness as is feasible within the sport.
Smile for this man!Photograph by Brandon Sloter/Getty Pictures
There are most likely disillusioned and scoldy Nats followers—innocent, defensible, but additionally annoying—who will wish to say that what lastly labored for Robles was the comb with oblivion, one thing superficially close to sufficient to meritocratic accountability that finally noticed him out on his ass after years of underperformance. However Robles is a sweetie and baseball is famously exhausting as hell; you may be higher at this sport than most individuals are or ever can be at something they ever attempt for so long as they stay, and nonetheless be made to appear to be an absolute clown on a major-league subject. Robles was ok to play up the center on a World Sequence-winner, after which a number of issues went mistaken, a number of of them fully out of his management, and now he is someplace else, getting one other shot, and making the perfect of it. That is one thing to be ok with, even to the extent of ignoring Dipoto’s fingerprints throughout it.