ORLANDO, Fla. — If you saw the broad strokes of the Mariners’ trade of young catcher Harry Ford and your immediate thought on the return was “Huh? That’s it?” — well, that’s a justifiable reaction.
To the average M’s fan, a prospect of Ford’s pedigree — a former first-round pick consistently ranked among the baseball’s Top 50 talents — probably should have netted more than little-known relief pitcher like Jose Ferrer from the Washington Nationals.
Spend just a few moments perusing Ferrer’s profile, though, and you’ll discover this realization: This has a chance to be a big win for the Mariners.
Ferrer, with a fastball that touches 100 mph, has all the tools to be Seattle’s next great success story out of the bullpen, a left-handed version of Matt Brash whom the Mariners envision as a seventh- and eighth-inning setup man.
And if any organization deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to bullpen acquisitions, it’s the Mariners.
And the reality is, Ford wasn’t going to have a prominent role with the Mariners anytime soon, if ever. Cal Raleigh just completed perhaps the best season by a catcher in MLB history. Raleigh, 29, is in the prime of his career, he just signed an extension to stay in Seattle long-term and he wants to catch as much as any catcher in baseball.
That made Ford nothing more than a backup catcher for the Mariners. And if there’s an opportunity to trade a backup catcher for a potential closer, that’s a trade any team would make any day.
Ford is entering his age-23 season. He’s a good athlete with an intriguing offensive upside, and the Mariners have lauded his overall makeup at every opportunity since they drafted him in 2021.
He has a chance to be productive major-league player, and the Nationals will presumably give him something the Mariners couldn’t — a chance to be an everyday catcher.
Industry-wide, though, questions about Ford’s defense began to arise over the past year, and some have wondered whether he will stick behind the plate.
“His athleticism just hasn’t translated behind the plate,” said one National League scout who has evaluated Ford closely.
The success rate for catchers drafted straight out of high school is low, and the Mariners knew that when they drafted Ford. (Dave Valle, a second-round pick in 1978, remains the only catcher the Mariners have drafted out of high school to emerge as a regular major-leaguer in Seattle.)
The fact that the Mariners also had to throw in a minor-league relief pitcher (right-hander Isaac Lyon) in the deal tells you something about how the Nationals view Ford, too. He’s hardly a sure thing.
To be fair, there are no guarantees with Ferrer, either.
Ferrer, entering his age-26 season in 2026, does not have overwhelming surface-level numbers. He posted a 4.36 ERA in 142 appearances for the Nationals, with a below-average 20.3% career strikeout rate.
Look under the hood, though, and Ferrer looks a lot like the other under-the-radar relievers the Mariners have polished in recent years.
He’s devastating against left-handed hitters — holding them to a .186 batting average and a .521 OPs — and his 64.3% groundball rate in 2025 ranked among the best in the majors.
Ferrer’s sinker averaged 97.7 mph, complemented by an effective changeup. He also has a little-used slider, a pitch the Mariners pitching lab will want to tap into, much as they did with Andrés Muñoz and Brash, among others, in recent years.
The timing of the Mariners’ trade Ferrer is interesting when juxtaposed against the club’s departure with Gregory Santos, another intriguing reliever with high-end “stuff” they acquired in a winter trade two years ago.
It was just a couple weeks ago that the Mariners cut ties with Santos, with whom they elected not to offer a contract, despite his minimum salary.
The Mariners had high hopes that Santos could be the sort of high-leverage reliever they could combine with Muñoz and Brash to form a dangerous back end of the ‘pen.
The Santos experiment was a failure. And yet, for every Santos-type, the Mariners can point to four or five other success stories — Paul Sewald, Erik Swanson, Justin Topa and, now, Muñoz, Brash, Gabe Speier and Eduard Bazardo — that have defined Seattle’s bullpen the past five years.
One of the Mariners’ goals this offseason was to create greater depth in the bullpen and to ease the burden on Muñoz, Brash and Speier, especially, late in games. Ferrer accomplishes that, and he has the potential to be the Mariners’ next diamond in the rough.