Rangers, Mariners swap Leonys Martin, Tom Wilhelmsen in five-player trade

The Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners announced the completion a five-player trade on Monday night. Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports first reported news of the deal. 

The Mariners acquired outfielder Leonys Martin and right-hander Anthony Bass from the Rangers in exchange for right-hander Tom Wilhelmsen, outfielder James Jones, and a player to be named.

Seattle has been extremely busy this offseason, new GM Jerry Dipoto's first at the helm. 

The team has acquired the likes of Joaquin Benoit and Nathan Karns already this offseason. They also re-signed Franklin Gutierrez to a Major League deal. 

The Mariners have wanted an athletic center fielder for quite some time now but have not found one until now. They deployed Austin Jackson there in 2015, but he is a free agent this offseason.

The Rangers found Martin to be expendable after the emergence of Delino DeShields this season and the soon arrival of Lewis Brinson from Triple-A.

The 27-year-old Martin hit just .219/.264/.313 with five home runs and 26 RBIs in 310 plate appearances last season. Martin had never been an above-average bat, but his 50 wRC+ was by far the lowest mark of his career. In 2015, he made just 71 defensive starts, which could have attributed to the lack of offense. 

Texas was able to net themselves a solid return for the outfielder. They added a hard-throwing relief pitcher in Tom Wilhelmsen, a piece that nicely goes along with Sam Dyson, Jake Diekman, Tanner Scheppers, Kelone Kela, and Shawn Tolleson out of the bullpen. All of them are hard-throwing relief pitchers. 

Wilhemsen's fastball averaged about 95 mph last season, according to Pitch F/X data. His maximum velocity on the heater was 98. 

Other than throwing hard, Wilhelmsen was a solid relief pitcher last season statistically as well. 

He went 2-2 with a 3.19 ERA in 53 games (62 innings) last season. He posted a 60 to 22 strikeout-to-walk ratio and allowed just three home runs. Wilhelmsen registered a 3.33 FIP, 4.22 xFIP, and 0.8 FanGraphs' Wins Above Replacement in 2015. 

​--Devan Fink

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