The Washington Nationals traded left-hander Jose Ferrer to the Seattle Mariners for top catching prospect Harry Ford and minor league pitcher Isaac Lyon, the teams announced Saturday.
The move gives the Mariners, who fell a win short of reaching their first World Series last season, a second left-handed reliever, joining veteran Gabe Speier. Ferrer, 25, has a fastball that averaged 97.7 mph, a walk rate that ranked in the 95th percentile and a 64.3% ground ball rate that ranked in the 99th percentile last season. He finished with a 4.83 ERA in 72 appearances, but his 3.03 FIP suggests he was unlucky. He was projected to become the Nationals’ closer next season.
Ford, a first-round pick in 2021, was 65th in the August top-100 prospect rankings from ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel and fifth in the Mariners’ loaded farm system. He batted .283 with 16 home runs and an .868 OPS in 97 Triple-A games last season. He made his major league debut in September and appeared in eight games, including one start behind the plate, and went 1-for-6 in eight plate appearances.
Ford’s late promotion and limited action illustrated his reality: Despite his prospect status, Cal Raleigh, who was the runner-up for the American League MVP, is the Mariners’ catcher for the foreseeable future, making Ford an obvious trade candidate.
Talent evaluators question whether Ford, 22, has the skill set to remain a catcher in the big leagues, but Nationals president of baseball operations Paul Toboni wanted to bolster the team’s production at the position in the offseason. Nationals catchers ranked 30th in the majors in fWAR, 29th in wRC+ and 29th in OPS last season.
The Mariners drafted Lyon, a right-hander, in the 10th round in June. Lyon, a 21-year-old from Grand Canyon University, recorded a 7.30 ERA in 12⅓ innings across four starts in Low A.
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