Huge loss? Why Kris Bryant’s Best-Appointed Seattle Shore Originally Appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
CARLSBAD, Calif. – Former Cubs star Kris Bryant’s next baseball stop, if not his biggest payday, could boil down to a penchant for lattes and clams.
Emphasis on mussels.
Because if there’s one thing Seattle Mariners President Jerry Dipoto has this winter, it’s plenty of clams, for the first off-season since the club’s recent rebuilding process began three years ago.
And Dipoto’s goal is to pass a lot of it off as a hitter who sounds a lot like Bryant.
“Right now we’re more looking for marquee players or guys who can become drivers or hitters,” said Dipoto, who will be spending this winter aggressively to bolster a young team with 90 wins with maybe two starting mugs and a big racket to go with defensively versatile skills.
Sound familiar?
“He’s a great player, which proves his career so far,” said Dipoto, speaking at the Omni La on the first full day of the annual general manager meeting on Tuesday. Specifically asked about Bryant, a four-time all-star, was at Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California.
“We have different options for addressing our team,” he said. “We’re most interested in players who have the versatility to do a few different things because we can be as creative with how we fill in those gaps. But at the end of the day we want to improve our talent base and we want to improve our running hitting skills. “
The West Coast always seemed an ideal match for Bryant, a Las Vegas native who went to college in San Diego and who said after the Cubs swapped him for San Francisco that he was a Giants fan as a kid and loved the chance to play there.
The Giants have signaled that despite an All-Star 2021 season of 25 homers, 0.353 and 0.835 OPS percentages, they will not be in the market as a free agent this winter, with a broken hand during the 2020 season shortened by the pandemic.
Bryant’s agent Scott Boras said during the season that he believed Bryant would be one of the most valuable free agents out there, given his “diverse” ability to play five different positions that come with his bat.
Given the departure of longtime Seattle player / third base player Kyle Seager, Dipoto’s newfound editions, his desire for versatility in a new hitter, and his intention to compete in 2022, Boras may only be left to find this year’s “secret” team ”to advance the tender.
“We’ve developed a young core at the major league level, and we believe there’s more to come,” said Dipoto, who is trying to end a Seattle baseball curse that could be as big as anything has to do with the billy goat curse end.
Keep in mind that the Mariners are the only one of 30 teams in the majors that has never reached the World Series in 45 years of existence and is faced with the worst travel schedule in the sport every year.
Can Bryant play a big part in ending another long curse?
“We intend to build around our young group, but we want to complement them with real talent and we believe we have the flexibility with payroll and frankly the obvious needs,” Dipoto said, “if this is a position in the back office, which forms this list. “a little longer and a couple of arms for the rotation.”
5 years? Six or seven – $ 100 million, $ 150 million? More?
Certainly difficult to predict.
But go ahead: try to find another MLB area with better and bigger clams than Seattle.
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Why Former Cubs MVP Kris Bryant Linked Strongly to Seattle Mariners