Typically, when a player is traded twice before making their big league debut, expectations are low for their MLB career. Unfair though it may be, a stigma follows them around: if they were any good, the reasoning goes, why would two teams ship them out of town?

However, every once in a while a player manages to dispel the assumptions and show off their talents for their third team. The Seattle Mariners have got to be thrilled that their offseason acquisition of Mike Montgomery has played out in both of their favors. Montgomery was acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays at the end of March for Erasmo Ramirez, although you may remember him as one of the forgotten men in the Wil Myers/James Shields swap the Rays pulled off with the Kansas City Royals back in December 2012. He usually ranked among the middle of the game’s top 50 prospects, although he found little success in Double- and Triple-A leading up to and after the trades. At 25 years old, there was still plenty of reason to expect him to put it all together, so it made sense for the Mariners to take a flyer on him at the expense of Ramirez, another 25-year-old whose major league stint has been mediocre.

Montgomery made his debut on June 2 and he has proven to be worth the wait; through six starts, he’s sporting an impressive 1.62 ERA, giving up just eight runs in 44.1 innings pitched. His strikeout numbers aren’t dazzling, as he’s only thrown 29 in that span; it’s his apparent durability that’s shining through. In his first four starts he threw six innings or more, but in his last two he’s thrown complete game shutouts against the Royals and the San Diego Padres. He’s the first Mariner to throw consecutive CGSOs since Freddy Garcia in 2001; not even Felix Hernandez has done what Montgomery accomplished in the last week.

While he’s dominating the league, Montgomery doesn’t have a terribly impressive array of pitches. His fastball averages 91.1 MPH and he throws it 57 percent of the time. His changeup has been his main out pitch thus far, but it tends to hang sometimes. His swinging strike percentage sits at a paltry 8.1. So how is he doing this? His .243 BABIP clarifies some things, as does his 83.7 left on base percentage (good for sixth in the game among starters with at least 40 frames thrown). FIP has him pegged at 3.02, a good bit off from that 1.62 ERA. These numbers call for some considerable regression, but Montgomery seems unstoppable as of now.

Long story short: Montgomery should give teams and similarly well-traveled players alike hope for their future, and the Mariners should be doing back-flips because they found a pitching diamond in the rough during a rough season on the diamond. He likely won’t be an All-Star this year, but he’s certainly shown that he can easily run with (and through) the big dogs.

Perry Rosenbaum is a featured writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @PerryFRosenbaum