Mariners To Sign Víctor Robles

The Mariners are signing outfielder Víctor Robles, per Ty Dane Gonzalez of the Locked on Mariners podcast on X. The Mariners optioned Jonatan Clase earlier today, opening an active roster spot for Robles but they will need a corresponding move to open a 40-man spot.

Robles, 27, was once a top prospect with the Nationals but has repeatedly struggled in recent years, both with underwhelming performance and injury absences. The Nats finally decided to move on last week and designated him for assignment. They seemingly explored trades but couldn’t find a deal to their liking and eventually released Robles. The Nats remain on the hook for his $2.65MM salary, meaning the Mariners will only have to pay him the prorated portion of the $740K league minimum for any time spent on the roster, with that amount subtracted from what the Nats pay.

That makes it a fairly low-risk move for the Mariners, who will surely be hoping Robles can revert to his earlier career form. A few years ago, he was one of the top prospects in the whole league, with Baseball America giving him the #5 spot going into 2018 and the #11 slot the year after.

He seemed to be delivering on that prospect hype in 2019, when he was just 22 years old. He hit 17 home runs for the Nats that season and stole 28 bases while also providing elite defense in center field. FanGraphs considered him to be worth 3.7 wins above replacement that year and his strong performance helped the club reach the postseason, eventually winning the World Series.

Unfortunately, his performance slipped after that season and he hasn’t been able to get it back on track. He hit just .220/.293/.315 in the shortened 2020 season and produced fairly similar numbers in the two full seasons that followed, leading to a batting line of .216/.291/.306 over the 2020-22 period.

The fortunes of the club also faded in that time and the Nats entered a rebuilding phase. That should have left Robles with plenty of chances to turn things around but his health didn’t cooperate. He only got into 36 games last year due to back spasms in the lumbar spine and missed about a month of the current campaign due to a left hamstring strain. He managed to show some encouraging signs last year, hitting .299/.385/.364 despite the back problems, but has produced a brutal line of .120/.281/.120 so far this year.

Despite all the struggles, Robles is still young and could engineer a comeback. As mentioned, he was hitting okay last year. That didn’t carry over into this season, but he won’t maintain a .176 batting average on balls in play and it’s perhaps a good sign that he has drawn walks at a strong rate of 15.2% this year. That’s in a small sample of 33 plate appearances but it’s more than double his career rate of 6.2%, so it could be a nice step forward even if it regresses a bit.

The Mariners currently have an outfield/designated hitter mix consisting of Julio Rodríguez, Luke Raley, Dominic Canzone and Mitch Haniger. It’s possible that Robles will be utilized in the short side of a platoon. The right-handed hitter has slashed .262/.353/.373 against lefties and .226/.293/.349 against righties, leading to respective wRC+ counts of 101 and 72. Both Raley and Canzone are lefties with notable platoon splits. Raley has a 119 wRC+ against righties and 84 otherwise, with Canzone’s numbers at 86 against southpaws and 65 versus righties.

The M’s can use Robles to shield Raley and/or Canzone from some lefties while also perhaps using Robles for pinch running duties or as a late-game defensive replacement. For his part, Robles will get a chance to reinvent himself with a chance of scenery before he’s slated for free agency this winter.