Most Mariners fans definitely remember having Taijuan Walker for part of the 2020 season. It’s a good story: hometown-ish boy working to rebound in MLB comes home, does well, and then is traded to Toronto for their playoff run (and is criminally mismanaged by the Jays during said playoff run, but that’s another article). What many Mariners fans might forget is the return that came over for Walker from the Blue Jays—a then-19-year-old outfielder named Alberto Rodríguez.
To be fair, Rodríguez is easy to overlook, given that he has fewer than 200 stateside at-bats, all coming for Toronto in the Gulf Coast League in 2019.