Heston Traded to Seattle for PTBNL

Rick Scuteri - USA TODAY Sports

The San Francisco Giants have traded right-handed starter Chris Heston to the Seattle Mariner for a player to be named later, as first reported by Jon Morosi of MLB Network on Twitter, to create room for the recently acquired free agent Mark Melancon, who inked a four-year, $62M deal with San Francisco on Monday

According to Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area, the Giants would have designated Heston for assignment if San Francisco and Seattle did not agree to the terms of a trade. In turn, San Francisco will net some return, and Heston will have a new opportunity to pitch in the Emerald City.

Bruce Bochy’s rotation, composed of Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija, and Matt Moore, is almost entirely set in stone, but there is a question mark swirling around the final spot and Heston was rumored to be in competition to take on that responsibility, alongside Matt Cain, Ty Blach, and Albert Suarez.

Heston impressed in the first half of his rookie season, posting a 3.39 ERA over 111.2 innings and generating talks of possibly snatching a couple of Rookie of the Year votes. Unfortunately, Heston faltered in the latter half of the 2015 season, posting a 4.91 ERA over 66.0 innings and allowing ten home runs, compared to the six he allowed in the first half. 2016 was not friendly to Heston either as he spent a majority of the season on the disabled list with an oblique strain.

A silver lining for Heston is that Seattle recently traded their former highly touted prospect in Taijuan Walker to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange, meaning he’ll have a shot at replacing the former-Mariner in Scott Servais’s rotation.

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