{"id":8645,"date":"2017-08-30T13:06:53","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T17:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/\/?p=8645"},"modified":"2017-08-30T13:06:53","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T17:06:53","slug":"st-louis-deals-mike-leake-to-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2017\/08\/30\/st-louis-deals-mike-leake-to-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis Deals Mike Leake to Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On December 8, 2016, the St. Louis Cardinals signed Mike Leake to be a consistent rotation piece for the future of their franchise. On Wednesday, the Cardinals dealt his future to the Seattle Mariners.<\/p>\n<p>After signing Leake to a five-year, $80 million deal, the Cardinals have traded Leake, along with $750,000 and international bonus pool money for infield prospect Rayder Ascanio. Seattle will pay the remaining $55 million left on Leake&#8217;s contract through 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Ken Rosenthal of the Atlantic was first to report the deal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Mariners?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Mariners<\/a> getting Mike Leake, sources tell The Athletic. First to report <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/STLCards?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#STLCards<\/a> were moving him: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BNightengale\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@BNightengale<\/a>. About $55M left on deal.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/902914539100008448\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 30, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1>St. Louis Deals Mike Leake to Seattle<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; color: #222222;\">The fact that St. Louis is trading Leake just over halfway into the first year of his contract is relevant to how poorly he&#8217;s pitched since the All-Star break.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; color: #222222;\">Leake was the best pitcher in the Cardinals rotation through April and led the National League in ERA until mid-May. Yet, in his last nine starts, he has undoubtedly been the worst pitcher in baseball. Through his first ten starts, hitters amassed a 57 OPS+ against Leake. In these last nine, hitters are producing a 150 OPS+. This result combined with a 6.94 ERA and 1.90 WHIP have driven his season ERA to 4.31. It also resulted in St. Louis abruptly ending the future of Mike Leake in the Cardinals rotation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Seattle is trying to boost its playoff chances and adding to a depleted rotation is the best place to start. Four-fifths of the Mariners&#8217;s opening month rotation is gone to injuries, yet they still sit only three game behind the Minnesota Twins for the second Wild Card spot, as of Wednesday. Leake will join a cobbled rotation beside Yovani Gallardo and Ariel Miranda as he aims to get his season back on track.<\/p>\n<p>The Cardinals receive Rayder Ascanio, a 21-year old Venezuelan infield prospect. Ascanio is slashing .217\/.295\/.355 with nine home runs and 25 doubles in 111 games in Advanced-A Modesto.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"oWmfu_ywQxxj7MJKvwxcmg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/832070432\" 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:'oWmfu_ywQxxj7MJKvwxcmg',sig:'N2VfvCVWSFH9f8kOlvUEcYF_szxFlsSaVwnj0hEWutI=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'832070432',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>On December 8, 2016, the St. Louis Cardinals signed Mike Leake to be a consistent rotation piece for the future of their franchise. On Wednesday, the Cardinals dealt his future to the Seattle Mariners. After signing Leake to a five-year, $80 million deal, the Cardinals have traded Leake, along with $750,000 and international bonus pool [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":8648,"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":[1,2,1071,35,17,25],"tags":[68,1653,69,158,168],"class_list":["post-8645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-featured","category-mlb","category-news","category-mariners","category-cardinals","tag-baseball","tag-mike-leake","tag-mlb","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"modified_by":"Brandon Murphy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645","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\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}