{"id":41072,"date":"2021-02-14T02:28:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T07:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=41072"},"modified":"2021-02-14T02:28:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T07:28:16","slug":"james-paxton-signs-with-mariners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2021\/02\/14\/james-paxton-signs-with-mariners\/","title":{"rendered":"James Paxton Agrees To Terms With Seattle Mariners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new team has secured pitcher <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/paxtoja01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">James Paxton<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s services for the 2021 season. The left-hander agreed to terms to reunite with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/12\/15\/seattle-mariners-acquire-rafael-montero-for-two-minor-leaguers\/\" target=\"_self\">Seattle Mariners<\/a> Saturday night after a rough 2020. He is new contract is worth $8.5 million with another$1.5 million in possible incentives. The deal is pending a physical.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Left-handed James Paxton and the Seattle Mariners are in agreement on a one-year deal for $8.5 million. Has some reachable bonuses that could take it to $10 million.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1360788087958368267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 14, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>James Paxton Agrees To Terms With Seattle Mariners<\/h2>\n<p>Injuries and underperformance combined to make 2020 the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/08\/03\/james-paxton-struggles-again\/\" target=\"_self\">worst season<\/a> of Paxton&#8217;s career. The Canadian southpaw posted a 6.64 ERA with 26 strikeouts in 20 1\/3 innings. Many of his peripherals were as good as they have always been given a FIP of 4.37, but slight increases to hits per nine and home runs allowed per nine hurt the overall picture. However, the Mariners should expect a bounce-back performance given positive underlying numbers.<\/p>\n<p>The Mariners\u00a0originally drafted Paxton in the fourth round of the 2010 Amateur Draft. He debuted in 2013, but his first significant action wasn&#8217;t until 2014. That is when he threw 74 innings with a 3.04 ERA and 1.3 WAR. That was the start of a very good run where Paxton won 41 games in 102 starts with a 3.42 ERA and 10.9 WAR over six seasons. The Mariners traded him to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/mlb-teams\/new-york-yankees\/\" target=\"_self\">New York Yankees<\/a> where he was still good in 2019 before this season&#8217;s unexpected struggles. Overall, Paxton has been a very solid pitcher who usually pitches between 130 and 150 innings when healthy.<\/p>\n<h3>Where He Fits on the Pitching Staff<\/h3>\n<p>His role should really be that of a third or fourth starter at this point. James Paxton has never been a true workhorse in his eight major league seasons. He has just two years of more than 150 innings, which doesn&#8217;t scream top-two starting pitcher. However, a career strikeout rate of 26.5% is a worthwhile investment on top of a fastball that has averaged 95.4 mph. The Mariners could be one of the big winners if he returns to previous production levels.<\/p>\n<p>Main Image: <a id=\"om5gyPC6SUlcyJUarWwTCQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1181937758\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'om5gyPC6SUlcyJUarWwTCQ',sig:'JLPvGcFmKOq-jNjHkty_wfLZAyeyRiVVC0uGUoGTbjU=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1181937758',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new team has secured pitcher James Paxton&#8216;s services for the 2021 season. The left-hander agreed to terms to reunite with the Seattle Mariners Saturday night after a rough 2020. He is new contract is worth $8.5 million with another$1.5 million in possible incentives. The deal is pending a physical. Left-handed James Paxton and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":41506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,35,17],"tags":[1190,941,158,840],"class_list":["post-41072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-news","category-mariners","tag-james-paxton","tag-latest-mlb-news","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-starting-pitcher"],"modified_by":"DJ Kleinbard","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}