The Diamondbacks' new front office wasted little time exchanging one of their most valuable trade assets for younger players, probably selling very high on Jean Segura, while the Mariners gave up after years of waiting for Taijuan Walker to develop and used him instead to try to fill their shortstop hole with a player who spent nearly all of 2016 at second base.

Walker is still just 24 years old, which might seem hard to believe given how long he has been in the majors and appeared on prospect rankings. He also hasn't been quite the same guy since he shortened his stride before or during the 2012 season. Since then, Walker has had some on-and-off arm issues, lost his breaking ball, and become homer-prone due to the higher release point. The current version of Walker looks like a reliever to me, a guy who will probably sit above 95 mph with his fastball and should have a hard enough curveball to at least change a batter’s eye level, but if I were in Arizona's front office I'd try to restore his delivery from 2011, when he was striding longer, finishing farther out front, and had better fastball command and what appeared to be tighter rotation on the curveball. He was a top 15 prospect twice on my rankings, and there's nothing so physically different about him now that he couldn't fulfill at least some of those expectations, but currently there isn't enough command or a good enough second pitch to see him as a starter.