A person with knowledge of the deal says the Seattle Mariners and Marco Gonzales have agreed to a US$1.9-million, two-year contract.
Gonzales is not arbitration eligible until 2021, but the Mariners chose to set his salary for the next two seasons and give him a pay increase after a solid first full season in Seattle. Gonzales will make $900,000 in 2019 and $1 million in 2020, and can earn additional bonuses. Gonzales will be under team control through the 2024 season.
Gonzales went 13-9 with a 4.00 ERA last season. He was up and down, winning five straight starts in June and July when he was one of the top pitchers in the American League, but lost all four of his starts in August as he dealt with a neck injury.
Gonzales, 27 in February, emerged in 2018 as a quality rotation piece for a Seattle team that was in desperate need of arms. While some raised an eyebrow when Seattle traded slugging outfield prospect Tyler O’Neill to St. Louis in order to acquire Gonzales, the lefty delivered plenty of value to the Mariners in his first full season with the organization.
There’s also yet some reason to believe that Gonzales has more in the tank. His pristine control helped to offset his average strikeout tendencies, prompting metrics like FIP (3.43), xFIP (3.49) and SIERA (3.81) to view his 2018 results even more favorably. Meanwhile, he induced swings on pitches out of the strike zone at a whopping 35.9 percent clip — a mark that ranked fifth in the Majors and trailed only Patrick Corbin, Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco and Miles Mikolas. That speaks to the deception that Gonzales brings to the table and suggests that there could eventually be more strikeouts — or at least more weak contact — in the future for the southpaw.
