While most of the hubbub yesterday was deservedly about the Josh Naylor signing, the Mariners also made a smaller move, trading RHP Tyler Gough to the Dodgers in exchange for LHP Robinson Ortiz.
The move increases the depth in Seattle’s bullpen options and also brings in another lefty arm, and one with options. Ortiz is yet to make his major-league debut despite being in the Dodgers organization for nine years—although he only pitched in six of those seasons thanks to COVID followed by Tommy John.
The Dodgers had just added Ortiz to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft but are facing a roster crunch; trading him for Gough, who doesn’t need to be protected, gives LA some more flexibility. Mariners fans who follow the minor leagues closely might be familiar with Ortiz, who played for the Dodgers affiliates at Double-A and Triple-A this year, both of which share a league with the Mariners’ affiliates.
For the Mariners, they gain an MLB-adjacent arm in Ortiz, who has flashed well when he’s been healthy. Though he’s thrown a changeup in the past, he’s predominantly a sinker-slider pitcher now. Ortiz’s fastball sat at 94-97 before the injury, and he can ride it up in the zone, but he’ll also work the edges of the zone, having it tail away from lefties or in on righties. This scattershot approach can cost him, though, as walks have been a nagging issue. Ortiz also features a slurvey slider with a ton of break that bores in on righties but freezes lefties. Both pitches create weak contact in the form of groundouts and infield pop-ups as batters chop up at the fastball up and pound the slider into the ground, but he also generates a fair amount of swing-and-miss.
Going over to the Dodgers is righty Tyler Gough, one of the harbingers of the Mariners’ willingness to draft prep pitchers when they took him in the ninth round in 2022. Gough just missed our pre-season prospects list for 2025, as he struggled with walks at times and didn’t have eye-popping velocity on the fastball, but we liked his strong frame and fluid mechanics, and felt bullish on his opportunity to figure out the command issues. The analytics-heavy Dodgers must have, like us, liked Gough’s Stuff+ metric, the highest of any pitcher his age in the minor leagues, and looked past both his numbers and the fact that he missed all of 2025 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. While it stings to lose a young arm and one that was ranked within the Mariners’ top-25 per MLB, Ortiz is in a position to help the Mariners much sooner. Also, it wasn’t that long ago he was ranked within the Dodgers’ top-25, prior to his own TJ injury.
