Seattle Mariners Trade of Randy Johnson in 1998 Reminiscent of Mookie Betts Trade
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Over the last few days, I've gone down memory lane with regards to Randy Johnson and his Seattle Mariners tenure. This all stems from the team's announcement that they are going to retire his No. 51 during a ceremony in 2026.
Specifically, I've tried to go over the ending to Johnson's tenure as well, which he claimed this week he wished would have been handled differently. Johnson was traded during the 1998 season but said that he wished the team had brought him a new contract rather than sending him to the Houston Astros.
As I've thought about it more, I've tried to find a modern comparison to the whole thing, and I think I've found it: Mookie Betts getting traded from the Boston Red Sox to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.
The following came from our Refuse to Lose podcast this week:
The Red Sox had offered Mookie Bets a contract, and he had rejected it. They had lowballed him and ticked him off, and he had rejected it, as I recall. They had taken him to arbitration, and he wasn't happy about it. And when the 2020 season came, pre-Covid, like before, we knew what Covid was, but we're heading into the 2020 season, it was very clear that Mookie Betts was not going to re-sign with the Boston Red Sox. So the Red Sox came out and they traded them. They basically were like, 'look, we have no choice.' You know what? I think they were right. But it didn't have to get to that point, because all of those steps that led up to 2020 were avoidable. The same thing, I think, was probably the case with Randy Johnson.
When it came to 1998, the Mariners probably didn't have a choice. They had missed the chance to re-sign Johnson and since the team wasn't competitive that year, it made all the sense to deal him midseason. However, could they have come to him earlier, after the 1997 season, to get something worked out?
That's the answer we'll never know, but it didn't seemingly have to get to the point where it soured like it did.
You can stream the most recent episode of our podcast below, which includes a lengthy talk with former Mariners' catcher Scott Bradley, who caught Johnson's no-hitter on June 2, 1990.
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