Rumors: Texas Rangers, Cole Hamels Linked with the Seattle Mariners

Early Friday morning, Jon Morosi tweeted out that the Texas Rangers have had conversations with the Seattle Mariners about ace, Cole Hamels.

Just a few hours after Jon Morosi tweeted out that the Texas Rangers were gaining traction in the market for Cole Hamels, he dropped another rumor tweet. This time, Morosi, of MLB Network, said that the Rangers have had a “dialogue” with the Mariners over ace Cole Hamels.

As you see in the tweet, he follows it up with some unknowns like whether Seattle is the team most interested and involved. Immediately following his news, Morosi also let us know why Seattle may be a landing spot for Cole.

What This Means

Now that you’ve gotten over the initial shock of sending an ace to a division rival, this deal starts to make a little sense. After all, Hamels is going to be traded this summer. As Morosi mentioned, Hamels does have a no-trade clause that allows him to block deals to about 20 teams. However, Seattle is not on that list meaning the Rangers can negotiate without fear of Cole rejecting the move.

Of course, this doesn’t signal some impending deal or anything like that. As he notes in the first tweet, nothing is close at the moment. However this does seem to confirm the idea that the Rangers are willing to move players they’ve made up for grabs earlier than the July 31st deadline.

A Quick Look at the Return Value

Interestingly enough, a day before this news broke, our friends over at SoDo Mojo took a look at what a Mariners/Rangers deal could look like. To summarize, the writer, Ty Gonzalez, rightly asserts that the return for Hamels could be smaller than maybe his worth if the M’s take on his whole salary and buyout for 2019. His idea of prospects headed Texas’ way include their 19th ranked guy, RHP Rob Whalen according the MLB Pipeline. Whalen is an intriguing prospect. At 24 years old, he already has accumulated some time in the majors. Along with Whalen, Gonzalez could see RHP Seth Elledge and OF Dimas Ojeda come our way. Elledge is actually ranked 17th in the system by MLB Prospect Watch.

I disagree slightly with this deal partially because I don’t think the Rangers will be all that high on an outfielder prospect. Their top 5 non-pitching prospects right now are all outfielders and they have a considerably young outfield in the Majors already. I could see Texas nixing OJeda and Whalen to grab somebody a little bit higher in the Mariners system. In addition to Elledge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Texas Rangers high on Anthony Misiewicz currently in Double-A Arkansas.