The Mariners and Blue Jays swapped one miserable fucking failure for another.  Both making upwards of $8 million, both on the final years of their deals, both with a recent history of kicking ass, but both with 2016’s that have sucked all dicks around town.

For most of his career, Drew Storen has been a lockdown reliever in the National League (sound familiar?).  He was traded to Toronto for a journeyman outfielder and has been knocked around pretty good.  His velocity being down considerably is the primary culprit, along with a little regression to the mean (as he’d been pretty lucky in the usual batted-ball metrics heading into this season).  Hopefully, it’s a matter of maybe tweaking with his mechanics a little bit to get that velo back in range.  If nothing else, you hope a change in scenery will do him some good.  His confidence has to be at an all-time low since he was DFA’d just prior to this trade.

Joaquin Benoit has had the dead horse beaten out of him all year.  We traded a couple of minor league nobodies to bring him in, but that’s not the point.  He’d been a rock for almost his entire career – and it’s been a LONG one – and was supposed to stabilize the back-end of a bullpen that had struggled mightily in 2015.  Instead, he got injured, went on the DL, and has been the opposite of a rock when not injured.  He just turned 39 years old yesterday, so Happy Fucking Birthday, now get your ass to Canada.

Honestly, the most interesting thing about this trade – aside from the hopeful Change of Scenery theory – is the cash that Toronto is sending our way.  Notoriously tight-fisted Mariners management might not be willing to increase payroll at the deadline for a .500 team with long odds to make the post-season (and too many holes to fill to boot).  I don’t know if we’re talking about a considerable amount of cash coming Seattle’s way, but you have to think it’ll be used in yet another future deal sometime in the next few days.

Shit, at the very least, we won’t have to suffer through any more 45-minute half innings with Benoit huffing and puffing and blowing our houses in on the mound.