Montero will set foot behind the plate…at least in the near-term.

I’m going to bet the Mariners have Carp play some LF, and end up with Carp/Gutierrez/Ichiro in the OF, and 3B/Ryan/Ackley/Smoak in the IF w/ Olivo/Jaso/Montero doing some catching…and Montero also getting ABs at DH, and possibly mixing in some 1B.

I think this deal speaks to 1.) what the Mariners think of Montero’s bat and 2.) how badly the needed some offense (and especially a RH bat). I like Jack Z, and hope this works out well for him.

It will be interesting to see Pineda pitch in NY though…SAFECO to Yankee Stadium…something is going to give (I’ll bet it is his 9% HR/FB ratio).

I don’t think they should let Ichiro hold back any kind of decisions like this. He appears to be in a pretty steep decline from the past 2 years. To be honest, I kind of like the move for both teams…the Mariners have some pretty serious pitching coming thru the pipes with Hultzen and Walker. And their offense is god-awful terrible. So they got a potential cornerstone bat, even if he plays 1B or DH. As far as the Yanks, they got a young, cheap, hard-throwing starter to go behind CC. Hard to argue with that.
Side effect: the last 2 years the Yankees have been beating down the M’s door for Felix Hernandez. This basically stops that.

If he was a serviceable catcher, than he’s the top prospect in baseball (and probably not traded). By the way, last year in the minors was by FAR his worst year…so I wouldn’t necessarily take that too seriously.

after the all star game he put up a .909 OPS in AAA (.558 SLG), not including his numbers with the NYY.

I view Montero much the same way I do Pedro Alvarez — you keep trying them at C and 3B, respectively, until they absolutely FORCE you to put them at 1B (and then to DH if necessary). Their bats just have far too much potential value at those positions.

and then caught fire down the stretch. Obviously he’ll have to hit more as a DH than a catcher to be a “star” but his bat does seem pretty special to me.

He outperformed his numbers last year, and between moving from the AL East to the NL Central and from Yankee Stadium to PNC, I think he could bounce back and be pretty effective.

Everyone is ignoring that Pineda faltered pretty badly down the stretch from July on. Now, I know he’s a rookie pitcher, they’re allowed to struggle, and so on. But I also read he’s primarily a two-pitch pitcher which makes me a little nervous. I think starters can get by on two pitches, provided those 2 pitches are very good, but it does leave little margin for error. And while everyone is pointing out that Montero’s numbers will suffer by going to Safeco, what about Pineda’s numbers coming not only to Yankee Stadium, but to the AL East?

This is also where I think draft picks traded wouldn’t be an entirely bad idea; if a team traded 2 big prospects and their pick in the next year’s draft to get him. Also having a star like who might walk away is Exhibit A as far as why you shouldn’t scrap compensation picks completely.