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The Mariners have 3 or 4 upper-minors bats to consider in the next couple of years: Seager and Catricala and maybe Liddi at 3rd, and Franklin at short.  The holes that need patching are 3B, LF, DH, RF after Ichiro (potentially), and CF (potentially).  They can get by with a Josh Bard/Miguel Olivo catching situation, IMO.  SS is no longer a bitter hole so we don't have to have Franklin ready next year.
But if I have up to 5 holes dragging my team down, what do my internal options look like for the 2012 team?
3B: Kennedy, Seager, Liddi, Catricala (if he keeps up his blistering pace).
LF: Carp, Peguero, Halman.
CF: Halman
RF: see: LF
DH: see: LF
And all of a sudden, even if you list SS and put Franklin/Triunfel next to it, it seems obvious that we need to address the outfield.  We have 3 options there, for 3 or 4 positions (including DH).  Tenbrink has a broken arm now, I think, and Poythress has a season in the toilet.  Raben's knee is junk so he's a DH only, though he's having an interesting season in High Desert as well.  I still don't think he's a 2012 option.
In the most recent draft we picked one (1) 1B/DH clubber in Cron (a kid I am praying we sign) and then a bunch more infielders.  Our top dozen picks or so went 3B, SS, catcher, SS, 2B, another catcher, more catchers, CF...
We took glove positions.  Not the worst thing in the world, but we stayed away from anything resembling LF/RF/1B/DH, with Cron as the notable exception.
If those hitters can stay at those glove positions that could still be really interesting, but it won't solve our corner power issue.  The next closest thing to corner power we have is in Pulaski, 5 levels away from the bigs.
If I assume that Halman can be my backup CF (or worst-case, my STARTING one) and default 4th OFer, then the question is whether I trust Carp or Peguero to be my starting LFer next year.  If I don't, then I need one, and I don't care about hurting their feelings by signing some 100 OPS+ hitter to play there in the meantime.  Competing this year can have a nice effect on next year's box office, remember - gate receipts are a lagging indicator, and if Jack ever wants more budgetary flexibility he needs to get butts in the seats soon.
The idea that, "well Bavasi totally screwed up the club by trading away talent and getting little in return, so no one should ever be allowed to trade any minor leaguers unless we're 100% sure of a pennant to help assuage the loss of the next Shin-soo Choo" is just fear talking.
We've seen Jack trade for two and a half years already.  Whom do you feel has gotten the better of him?  What talent has he let slip away?  Phillippe Aumont has had a good half-a-season as a reliever - I'd take Justin Smoak instead, thanks. Brandon Morrow is still running his usual 4.50 ERA with lots of Ks, after starting the year with an injury.  If there's a third bit of trade bait out there doing well at a high level I can't place em off the top of my head.  In 3 years Brett Lorin might work out for someone else, but Jack has a ton of arms he's stockpiling.  Aumont's getting a shot, which is great, but he's not better than any of the guys pitching for us.
Jack didn't always come out right in his trades - Jack Wilson was not what we'd hoped, and neither was Ian Snell, but we didn't give up too much either.  When he's wrong, we haven't lost talent in the process. 
The options are not binary.  It's not, "hold on to all your cards and you can build from within without needing outside help" or "trade away The Future and every all-star you'll get in a decade in a futile attempt to compete this year."
Holding on to the minor leaguers might just mean they drop in value because they're not as good as you wanted them to be or you can't keep them all on your 40 man.  Sometimes a bird in the hand is NOT worth two in the bush, and it's Jack's job to figure that out.  Trading high on a guy like Gillies is brilliant.
I could easily see us making a major trade, or a minor one.  Ryan Ludwick isn't gonna cost us Nick Franklin, after all.  I don't see us making no trades at all. 
Here's the list of guys available in free agency next year:
http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2001/04/potential-free-agents-for-2012....
You tell me, which of those guys are you counting on to lift this offense?  Now, which ones would the Ms be likely to shell out significant cash for?  Maybe we do buy in to free agency, but if we did we wouldn't need some of the guys we've got still hanging around.
I've been on the "Don't Trade Our Future" bandwagon for forever, but that's not something Jack has ever done or threatened to do.  He's traded high-round picks without the requisite results or career-year guys to get back pieces he likes better for the Mariners.
If we trade for a minor, reliable upgrade at LF or DH I will expect it to be for a piece we won't miss.  If we trade for a long-term upgrade at one of our positions of need, then I expect to swap from a position of strength (ie, pitching) to improving our hitting need.
Neither option is abandoning the rebuild, IMO.  Part of rebuilding is knowing what you have...and what you need to go out and get.
~G