Closing Time: Mark Trumbo heads to Safeco

The Seattle Mariners are currently five games below .500, next-to-last in the American League West, and they were carved up by Masahiro Tanaka on Wednesday. Seattle ranks No. 28 in baseball in run-scoring, No. 29 in team average and No. 28 in on-base percentage. Five players from Wednesday's lineup are batting .245 or less at the moment, including the leadoff and No. 3 hitters.

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Thus, it's not much of a surprise to see the M's visit the trade market, looking to add a bat. When a franchise believes it has the necessary pieces to contend, an aggressive early-season deal is always the right play.

However, when a team's essential problem is that pretty much every hitter in the lineup is an out-machine, it seems strange to target yet another out-machine.

Mark Trumbo is headed to Seattle in a six-player deal, and he's bringing a career .298 OBP with him (.299 this season). Trumbo's one notable skill — legit 30-homer pop — will almost certainly be suppressed at Safeco, a park that squashes right-handed power.

So if you invested in Trumbo for fantasy purposes this year ... well, sorry. He didn't land in an ideal spot. There's really no way we can spin this move as beneficial to his fantasy outlook.

One nice thing about Trumbo is that his typical homer isn't some down-the-line fence-scraper — this guy has serious upper-deck power. But still, as a fantasy owner, you'd prefer to see him hit in a park where it isn't necessary to annihilate a ball in order to reach the seats. Adding Trumbo to the batting order should at least mean subtracting Dustin Ackley or some similar hitter, so that's a real-life win.

On the Arizona side of the deal, the outfield/third base logjam has been eased, thankfully. Jake Lamb is returning soon from the disabled list, and he'll see regular at-bats. Welington Castillo has a relatively unobstructed path to playing time as well; he offers modest power, enough to interest those of us in only-leagues. Gabby Guerrero (Vlad's nephew) was the top-ranked prospect in the trade, but he's off to a slow start at Double-A, not yet ready for prime time.

Again, we should give Seattle full credit for attempting to address a glaring problem as early as possible. (Fantasy owners, take note. No need to wait for a trade deadline when your areas of weakness are already apparent.) But the team also managed to acquire a bit more of what it didn't need.

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In terms of actionable fantasy news, Lance McCullers' 11-strikeout complete game win was actually the big story from Wednesday's action. I'm burying it here in the first bullet, but it deserves better. Check the highlights right here. McCullers mixes a mid-90s fastball with diving breaking stuff and an effective change, and he completely flummoxed Baltimore's lineup, throwing 73 of his 107 pitches for strikes. He's available in roughly 70 percent of Yahoo leagues as of this writing, but he'll be a popular add in the days ahead. His ERA is 1.88, his WHIP is 1.00, he's fanned 29 batters in 24.0 innings, and he's pitching for a first place team. Do what needs doing.

• Phillies third baseman Maikel Franco had a pretty decent day at the plate, breaking up Mike Leake's no-hit bid in the seventh, then launching a game-tying three-run bomb off Aroldis Chapman in the ninth. Franco's season slash is nothing special (.225/.267/.461), but he's homered four times in just 18 games and he sure seems unbothered in big moments.

• Eduardo Rodriguez was great again for Boston, allowing just two hits and one run to the Twins in a Wednesday afternoon win, striking out seven. He's the real deal, you guys. We first discussed him here, in advance of his major league debut, and he's clearly exceeded expectations.

• Javier Baez Watch is back on! This thing is really a cherished annual tradition. The injury to Jorge Soler creates a wheel-play opportunity for the Cubs (discussed here in the Sun-Times), plus the team has road games upcoming in A.L. parks, which means someone has to DH. Baez has been tearing up Triple-A pitching, slashing .325/.404/.505 with seven homers and six steals. He's changed his stance and his approach, with encouraging early results. He makes for a nice speculative add, if your fake roster needs a power boost.