Mariners acquire slugger Josh Naylor in trade with D-backs - ESPN

The Seattle Mariners acquired first baseman Josh Naylor from the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday night, kicking off Major League Baseball's trade season with a deal that bolsters Seattle's efforts to return to the postseason and signals the Diamondbacks are open for business.

The deal, which sends left-handed pitching prospect Brandyn Garcia and right-handed pitching prospect Ashton Izzi to the Diamondbacks, reinforces Seattle's intentions to aggressively add to its roster before the July 31 deadline.

The Diamondbacks, who entered the season with hopes of returning to their form in 2023 when they made a surprise run to the World Series, are expected to be similarly busy, with a number of impending free agents like Naylor. Among third baseman Eugenio Suarez and right-handers Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen, Arizona has some of the most sought-after players on the trade market.

Naylor, 28, is a slugging first baseman whose low strikeout rate makes him particularly appealing to teams. Arizona acquired him over the winter from Cleveland, where he had spent the majority of his career following a trade from San Diego.

In 93 games this season, Naylor is hitting .292/.360/.447 with 11 home runs, 59 RBIs and 49 strikeouts in 394 plate appearances. Naylor, a 2024 All-Star known for occasional displays of on-field emotion, has hit .267/.329/.444 with 95 home runs and 402 RBIs in 691 career games. He has played 103 career games at designated hitter, where he could see time in Seattle, which ended a 20-year postseason drought in 2022 but finished one game behind the final wild-card winner in the American League each of the past two seasons.

While Garcia, 25, made his major league debut earlier this week as a reliever, he blitzed