It is hard not to love Daniel Vogelbach. He is a barrel-chested mountain of a man who seems to have a specially-tailored uniform simply because baseball players are not supposed to look like him. He appears to have been molded out of both reinforced steel cables and Play-doh. Vogelbach stands 6’0 tall and weighs 270 pounds. He has the size and girth of a football lineman, professional wrestler, Game of Thrones body double, and other cube-like job occupations.

It is hard to be excited about Daniel Vogelbach, the Mariner, however. Despite appearing in the All Star Game last season because every team is required to have one person represented, Vogelbach’s big bat value has not been on display enough to justify trotting him out there, day in and day out. Even though this season is a lost season, something proactively needs to be done about it.

Vogelbach’s issues began to surface in the second half of last season. Before the 2019 All Star Break, Vogelbach crushed 21 home runs and eked out 61 walks. His ability to work the counts offset the fact he was a boom or bust player. After the All Star Game, the approach at the plate no longer worked. Vogey finished the final 59 games hitting a mere nine home runs. His walk rate plummeted and his strikeout rate went up. The hole in his approach was there for opposing pitchers to feast on.

If you consider his 2019 season a success then you can also acknowledge that there have been 141 baseball players to hit at least 30 home runs and have a batting average under .250. Vogey comes in with the sixth-lowest average there, above such hallowed hitters as Joey Galo, Rougned Odor, Adam Dunn, Dave Kingman, Rougned Odor again, and Mark Reynolds.

Five paragraphs in and we haven’t even gotten to the meat of this piece. The lede is effectively buried, like Vogelbach’s career with the Mariners should be, sooner than later. To open the season, in 42 plate appearances, Vogelbach has generated a stunning wRC+ of 37. Sadly, that accounts for the eighth-highest mark on the Seattle Mariners. Better than Evan White, Mallex Smith, and Jose Marmolejos.

Even on a team with zero expectations and no reason to live, the idea of trotting out a DH in a platoon-scenario in which he can’t consistently do the one job he has to do (hit) means the Mariners need to just tear the band-aid off instead of whatever is happening now. Vogelbach is out of options, so he would have to clear waivers to make his way down to Tacoma again, and there is a good chance some team out there would try him out. After all, when he gets a piece of the ball, the dude can hecking club. 

There is a career to be salvaged here, and considering the reputation of 29 other teams in salvaging former Seattle Mariner careers, it is clear that Vogelbach’s time as a member of the T-MOB should come to a close sooner than later. Rebuilds are painful. The Mariners are going to be very bad this year. There is no reason they should drag down players who clearly do not have a fit in the future of this organization, short-term or long-term.