Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 10-1-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 33: The highs and lows of the 2019 season

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

Host Andy Patton wraps up the 2019 Seattle Mariners season by talking about the high points - including Felix Hernandez and Ichiro's sendoffs, the 13-2 start and Daniel Vogelbach's All-Star campaign, as well as the low points - including a 1-18 record against the Astros, Yusei Kikuchi's disappointing season and Mitch Haniger's lengthy absence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Download the app and join the Vivid Seeds Rewards program today. Make a memory that lasts a lifetime and let Vivid Seats app help you get to your favorite live event. Enter the promo code postseason at checkout and receive a discount of up to $100. What is up Mariners fans? I am Seattle Sports Media's utility infielder Andy Patton, and you're listening to the Locked-on Mariners podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. The 2019 season has come to an end for the Seattle Mariners.

While the win-loss record isn't anything to write home about, there are plenty of highs and plenty of lows from this past season. I'll talk about the high points in segment one, and of course we'll get into some of the low points in the second segment. Finally, we have seven Mariner birthdays to celebrate. from the last couple of days. Stay tuned to find out who. Make a memory that lasts a lifetime

and let the Vivid Seats app help you get to your favorite live event. Enter promo code postseason at checkout to receive a discount of up to $100. So the Seattle Mariners finished the 2019 season with a 68 and 94 record. And I know it seems like it would be pretty easy to focus on the negatives.

But I'm going to be honest with you, when taking notes for this, I came up with a lot more highs than lows for the past season. I think part of that is because the franchise went with the decision to pursue rebuilding. They made it pretty clear that that's what they're doing. Now, I know Jerry DePoto has said that it's going to be a quick turnaround, and on some levels I agree with him, I do think that they could do this quicker than some other teams out there. But a team with 94 losses, it's hard to find a lot of positives, but with this team, because that's the direction that they were going, that's what they were trying to do.

And because of how much they turned over their farm system and how successful it has been already, there's a lot of positive things. So I'm just going to go through them. We're going to talk about them. First positive was that amazing 13 and 2 start that this team got off to. And I know that some people will look at that less as a positive because it's really hard to ignore what happened after that and how kind of quickly the wheels fell off for this team. But that was fun.

It was so fun. You know, I mean, they won two against Oakland and Japan. they took three out of four from the Red Sox, they took two from the Angels, went two and one against the White Sox, swept the Royals in four games. Two of them were epic late game comebacks to keep the streak alive. I mean, it was a blast. And I think there was a lot of Mariners fans who maybe thought that that was a sign that maybe the team would continue to try to win games and wouldn't get rid of some of the guys they had.

And I think those Mariners fans were maybe more disappointed. The 13 and 2 start happened. But I think for me, and I think a lot of other fans as well, it was just a, let's enjoy this. Let's enjoy how well this team is playing right now, because we kind of know that the other shoe is going to drop here. And it obviously did. But that was a really, really fun way to start the season. It coincided with another one of the highs, which was Itchro's final game in Japan. That was just so fun for him to be able to do it in front of Yusay Kakuchi, a player who is 27 now and was born when Yitro's career started in Japan.

I mean, that's how long the guy played. And it was just a really cool atmosphere and experience to get to see Yichro's. play his final game in front of his home country, wearing a Mariners uniform, of course. You know, the Mariners had two of these this year. That was obviously one of them, and then they finished the season with King Felix Hernandez's final start, at least this season, potentially for his Mariners career, potentially for his entire career. But that was in their high, obviously.

It was incredible for those of you who were there or watched the game on TV. It was an incredible atmosphere. They had the King's Court was extended to be what felt like the majority of the stadium. just about everybody was out there in yellow shirts, and Felix got extremely emotional. He shed some tears on the mound. It was a beautiful moment. Of course, he pitched well, and the Mariners weren't able to give him the run support to get him a win, which is fitting, very unfortunately, for how his career kind of went for the last 15 years in a

mariner's uniform. But it was still a beautiful moment and absolutely qualifies as a high point of this season, even if it was well after the team was out of contention. Another high point, one that I really liked, Dan Vogelbach's season. You know, he definitely tailed off a lot in the second half, and I think it's easy to remember that and not remember how great he was for the first half of the year. I mean, he was an all-star for a reason. It wasn't just because the Mariners needed a representative.

I mean, he blasted 30 home runs this year. He had 76 RBIs. He only hit 208, but he had a 3.41 on-base percentage, thanks to a ridiculous 16.5% walk rate, which is extraordinary. He's always been known as a guy who's great at drawing walks, but still that's unheard of. He didn't have a 26.7% strikeout rate, which I guess would be a low point, especially because that came up a lot in the second half. But it was really, really fun to see Dan Vogelbach, who is a guy that I will admit to having kind of written off. I wasn't sure that he ever was going to have enough patience at the plate to be able to tap into that power that he had in the minor leagues.

And he proved me wrong, and I'm really happy about it. It was a lot of fun. He's just a good dude. Mariners don't get a lot of 30 home run hitters anymore, and it was fun to see him be the guy to do. that. So another really fun one was the catching duo this year. Omar Narvaez and Tom Murphy had absolutely ridiculous numbers together. They combined for 40 home runs.

They had a 4.7 war, according to baseball reference. It was just a monster season for both of them. You know, Narvaez came in as a starter and played great all year. He's not a great defensive catcher, but he's okay. He gets the job done. He had 22 home runs. He's a great hitter, great at drawing a walk. And then Tom Murphy kind of came out of nowhere.

he was a minor league free agent signing. He'd had a couple okay years in Colorado, but had never really put it together, and he comes in and hits 18 home runs with 40 RBIs and part-time role. Murphy and Narvaeas are both in the top five in single-season home runs by a catcher in franchise history, which to have had that happen in the same season is unheard of. It's absolutely unheard of.

And I sincerely hope that they're able to bring both of those guys back next year. Both of them are not free agents. They're through the arbitration process, so it just depends on if the Mariners are willing to pay. them whatever an Arboretter decides they are worth, but I suspect that they'll try to get both of them back unless trader Jerry Depoto thinks that maybe he can maximize some value on Murphy, which I would understand if he thinks that he can get some prospect capital back for him. He might end up being a trade chip, but for now, I think it would be really, really fun to have

those two guys back for next year. A couple more surprise performers that we just got to talk about that made this season really fun. Obviously, Kyle Lewis, six home runs and 18 games was an amazing. end to the year. You know, he had three of them in the first four games. He was the fastest, tied with the fastest player in history to get to three home runs with Trevor Story of the Colorado Rockies. Really fun story, obviously a first-round pick who had a lot of injury issues that I think made some people concerned that he would ever even reach the big leagues or certainly reach his potential, and he's still a long ways away from doing that,

but the fact that he was able to blast so many home runs in such a short stint in the major leagues proves that the talent is there, the knee is healthy, and he'll get a chance to compete for some playing time right away in 2020, which is going to be a lot of fun. Austin Nola was another really fun guy to watch this year. He posted a 3-42 on base percentage. He hit 10 home runs. A guy he was a minor league free agent signing. He'd been with the Miami Marlins for seven years, had never made the major leagues, came over here, had been a catcher, and the Mariners decided, well, we got to those who are playing pretty good, so we're going to play you around the infield a little bit. He played some second base. He played some first base.

He played a little outfield even. For him to settle in to have a really nice role on this team was was really fun to watch. I don't know how much of the future he will be a part of because he's already 29, but he was really fun this year. And a team that really needed somebody to root for, so that was a lot of fun. Shed Long is another guy I really liked watching this year. He had some injury issues. Wasn't able to play as much as I would have hoped to, but he did play 42 games with the Mariners.

He had five home runs with three stolen bases, had a nice 3-33-on-based percentage. He looks like a future piece for this team. I really think that him and J.P. Crawford could be a future middle-infield that this team could really build around. I think Long has some defensive issues that I think he'll need to work on to become at least above or average or above average defensive second baseman, but he's a great table setter. He's got enough power and speed to be a 15 and 15 type guy, and he's going to get on base. He draws walks well. So I think he's a guy that not only did he have a good year this year, but I think he's a part of the future, and I'm excited about that.

Last surprise performer one that I don't think got talked about enough until he got hurt, unfortunately is Austin Adams. Austin Adams had a 14.8 strikeout per nine ratio this year. He had 51 strikeouts and 31 innings. He looked like a really future stud bullpen piece. But then he went down with an injury that's going to keep him out for six to eight months. There's a good chance he'll miss part of next year. Hopefully he can come back from that healthy. It's an ACL injury. So not on his arm, at least, which is good, but those aren't easy injuries to come back from. So I would love to see him be a big part of the bullpen next year. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the most exciting thing that happened to the year this year. The biggest high for this team is the

tremendous, tremendous growth of the farm system. You can, if you don't see Jerry DiPoto's division right now, I understand it's hard to see when a team only wins 68 games, but the turnover that this team has had in the farm system is unbelievable. They have three guys ranked in the top 50 right now in prospects. Jared Kellanick is ranked 13th. Hulia Rodriguez is ranked 25th. Logan Gilbert is ranked 48th. Beyond that, Evan White is 58th. Justin Dunn is 70th. They have six prospects in the top 70. That is amazing. Excuse me, five prospects in the top 70. Regardless, that is amazing. I really think that I know a lot of people think, oh, well, Dustin actually didn't work. Mike's said, blah, blah, blah. But these guys, this is a different breed. You know,

these are some studs that they have. And they've developed a lot of lot of these guys themselves. Kalanick and Dunn obviously came over in the big Robinson Canoe trade that happened, but Gilbert was a draft pick of theirs, Evan White was a draft pick of theirs, Julio Rodriguez was a guy they signed. So they've started to accumulate really high-quality players on their own while also figuring out how to trade some of their assets to get more of them. That's how you build an elite farm system is when you're capable of doing both of those things. And on top of that, when you can develop maybe fringe your guys who aren't supposed to be high-profile prospects, They did that too. Look at Cal Rally. He turned in. He had a monstrous season. He looks like a legitimate catcher of the future at a position that the Mariners are surprisingly deep at already.

Jake Fraley had a great season. Came over from the Rays in the Maxinino trade. He looked awesome. He didn't look great in the major leagues, but given some time, I really think that he could outperform what many of the prospect systems would have thought from him. So all in all, for a team that lost 94 games, there was a lot of fun things that happened this year. A lot of goodbyes, a lot of hellos, some introductions to some guys, some surprises, some home run records. Really, really a lot to look back on positively from this season. And a lot of positive things to look forward to as well. When you need red wine at 4 p.m., sushi at 9 p.m., a breakfast burrito at 8 a.m. and ibuprofen at 10 a.m., Postmate it. Postmates is your personal food delivery, grocery delivery, whatever kind of delivery service all year

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our listeners $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. To start your free deliveries, download the app and use code locked on. That's code locked on for $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days when you download the Postmates app. Anything you need, anytime you need it, postmate it. Download Postmates and save with code locked on today. All right, I'm, as you probably could already tell, a bit of an optimist. So I tried to look through this season at a lot of kind of the high points that happened. And there were some low points too. And I think when you do address those two, it's hard to not have low points when you lose 94 games in a season. And I think that's kind of the biggest low point is when you're a

rebuilding team, you lose a lot. And it can get hard. I mean, it's really hard. You guys follow this team. I mean, it's tough to watch a team lose nearly two-thirds of their games. And even though the process is there, and even though they had some surprise performers, guys like Nola and Vogelbach and Norvias and Murphy who had good seasons, they also had some kind of, bat seasons from guys that they were expecting to have good years from. They had some prospects who didn't develop as fast as they wanted them to. They had some veteran guys who came in and just didn't perform well. So it doesn't mean that nothing's going to go perfectly,

and this rebuild isn't going to be 100% flawless. It's going to have some building blocks. And so this is kind of a few of them. I think the biggest thing that happened this year that was just tough for fans to swallow as the two no-hitters. I mean, they came really close, really, really close to having a third no-hitter in the same season. Zach Granky got into the ninth inning, but they managed to say Nola got a hit and Shed Long got another hit after that. Or excuse me, Tim Lopes got another hit after that.

But they almost broke the record for getting no hit a third time in a season. And I think that that would definitely have been a low point. Even dealing with two of them was already pretty tough. Going one in 18 against the Astros was really tough. Obviously the Astros are at the other end of the spectrum for this rebuild. You know, they had a couple hundred lost seasons, which the Mariners haven't had yet in this rebuild. The Astros are obviously right now one of the best teams in the league, if not the best team in the league. I would pick them to win the World Series if I had a pick.

But yeah, you still can't go 1 in 18 against the division opponent. It's just embarrassing. It's just really, really hard to swallow that pill. And I think that that's something that a lot of Mariners fans will remember from this year in negative light. The next thing is, as much as we love talking about Felix's final game and how great that was, he was hard to swallow this year. He had a 1-8 record. he had a 6.40 ERA. He gave up 17 home runs.

You know, the king is, his time is up, you know, and he didn't have a good couple years before this. So it kind of just built into, hey, maybe he'll start to turn things around, and he just spiraled and got worse and worse, and this was kind of the culmination of that. And it's hard. It's hard to watch him go out there every fifth day and pitch the way that he was.

And he didn't like it, and the fans didn't like it. And hopefully he can rebound, whether it's back in Seattle again, next year, whether he ends up somewhere else, I'm not sure. But I don't think that this is the end for Felix Hernandez. I really don't think that he's going to retire. But it's pretty clear that he's no longer the pitcher he once was, and it was a hard thing to watch this year. Different end of the spectrum, but a similar issue was with Yusei Kikuchi. I would say he might have been, if I had to pick, might have been my biggest disappointment just in terms of what I expected performance-wise and what I got. It was hard to watch Felix struggle, but I kind of knew that he was going to struggle.

I really didn't pick you say Kakuchi to throw to a 5.46 ERA in his first season. So many of the pitchers who come over from Japan don't struggle that much in their first year, you know. And obviously Kikuchi was never on the same level as Masahiro Tanaka and Dice Kama, Susaka, Shohayotani, U. Darvish, all those guys. He was never expected to be that good. But his numbers in the Nippon Professional Baseball League are so much better than what he put up in this first year. and it was really a bummer to see how much he struggled. I think you saw some outings that indicated that he can pitch. You know, he had the complete game shut out against the Toronto Blue Jays.

But at the end of the day, he made a lot of starts this year. He threw a lot of innings. So that's a lot of data to still be posting a 5.46 CRA. You know, he had a 6.46 strikeouts per 9. That's just not going to cut it at the Major League level. You know, with the juice baseball and how much contact these guys can make, if you can't miss bats at this level, you're not going to succeed. I still believe there's some hope, some optimism for Kikuchi going forward if he can learn to mix his pitches a little bit better, located in a little different spots.

I think we've seen, like I said with the Blue Jays game, we've seen him have some of this success. But at this point, it's hard to imagine him being a part of this team's rebuild, which is a bummer because they have a fair amount of money tied up to him right now. But if he can't figure out some of those issues, he may not be a big league pitcher for much longer. And that's a bummer. That's a tough pill for Mariners fans to swallow. Mitch Hanigar's injury was a huge bummer this year as well. It was really something a lot of people were looking forward to, including myself, to see how he could rebound from a tough year, or from a great year last year.

And he had an injury that was pretty graphic, unfortunately, and it didn't seem like I was going to take him that long to get back, but then maybe there was other injuries that happened on top of that, some frustration on both sides, I think, and now he kind of just had a completely lost season. and I don't know how his relationship with the Mariners is right now, and if it's something where he wants to be a part of this rebuild, if he wants to get traded somewhere else,

of course, his trade value is super low right now, so they're kind of just in this sticky situation with Mitch Hanaker, and that's no fun because he's a very talented player, and obviously seeing Cateel-Marte put up an MVP-calibre season for the Diamondbacks is not ideal as well, because that was a trade that originally looked like it was going to be a clear win for the Mariners, and now is starting to not look that way. as much. Speaking of trades, I think a lot of people are, everybody's really happy about the Robinson

Canoe Edwin-Dia's trade. There's no debate about that. The Mariners look like they're very clear winners in that trade, at least at this point. But a trade that has kind of caused a little bit more skepticism is the James Paxton trade. Remember James Paxton was shipped over to the Yankees. They got three prospects in return. One of them was left-handed, Justice Sheffield. Then they got right-handed pitcher Eric Swanson and Outfitter Dom Thompson Williams. And I, and I'm a I think a lot of people are thinking, oh, we lost that trade, blah, blah, blah. And Sheffield, sure, his numbers in the big leagues weren't great, and neither were Swanson's. And I can understand looking at their ERAs and thinking, well, yeah, of course the Mariners lost the trade.

But I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. I'd love to delve into this trade a lot more on a future podcast. But I have talked about Sheffield's walk issues and how I think if he can correct those, he can be a big league caliber pitcher. I've talked about Eric Swanson potentially converting into a closer, which happened towards the end of this year, and I think if that happens, and he becomes a high, a high-profile closer or at least an adequate closer, that could swing this trade a little bit differently. And Dom Thompson-Williams definitely has his issues, but he did hit 12 home runs with 15 stolen

bases in AA this year. So there's definitely some tools there, some interest that could potentially make him a high-quality fourth outfielder, which would then make this trade look a lot closer. So those are kind of the storylines that I think were low points. There was definitely some performance issues as well. Again, I talked about Kikuchi being the biggest performer that that didn't perform up to my expectation for him. A couple other ones, Wade LeBlanc, obviously coming off a really solid year last year. He had a 5.71 ERA and a 1.45 whip this year. Just didn't cut it.

I think that's probably the spell the end of his Mariners career, and they'll find somebody else who can kind of fill in some of those innings as a false starter. But it just LeBlanc wasn't able to get it done this year. Braden Bishop's a prospect that everybody loves. He's from U.S. He's a really active member of the community, but he hit 107. in 27 games this year. I didn't have super high expectations for him,

but it was a bummer to see him not succeed in the major leagues, and hopefully he'll get another shot and be able to kind of turn things around a little bit. Tim Beckham actually performed about where I would have expected him to perform, but then he got popped for 80 games for performance-enhancing drugs, and he'll miss part of next season, and I'm not sure if he will be back with the Mariners at all. And then the two speedsters for the Mariners, Malick Smith, and Dee Gordon. D. Gordon actually performed maybe about what I'd expect out of him.

He had 2.75. He had 22 stone bases, which is a little low, but he's just costing the Mariners a lot of money, and they're not able to trade him. He was hurt right around the trade deadline, which cost him his value this year. I think they'd love to be able to trade him away and clear some of that money and clear a spot for shed long, but right now he's just kind of in the way. And I feel bad saying that because he's not a bad baseball player, but yeah, he's not a part of this team's future, and the sooner they can deal him to a team that needs him, the better.

And then Malick Smith just hit 227. He had a non-base percentage under 300. you cannot have that from your leadoff hitter. Sure, he led the American League and stolen bases with 46, which is great, but you got to get on base. I mean, you cannot have a leadoff type hitter who hit a sub-300 OBP. And he's not a very good defensive centerfielder. He looks, he fits the bill of a speedy, defensive-minded center fielder with a high-on-base percentage. And he's just not half of those things, and that's a problem.

He's still young. Maybe he still becomes the Mariners' an outfielder in the Mariners' future. but with Jared Kellanick and Huli Rodriguez developing as quickly as they have, I kind of think that Malach Smith is not a guy that they're going to have part of this rebuild anymore, and that's a bummer because they gave up a fair amount for him to get him in that trade, and I'm just not sure that he's going to cut it. All right, running a little bit low on time today, so we're just going to power through our birthdays from the last couple of days.

There are seven total, starting with our Sunday birthday. There was just one of them. It was Byron McLaughlin, who was celebrating his 64th birthday. Then we had four birthdays to celebrate on Monday. First up is Daniel Robertson, who was celebrating his 34th birthday. Followed by Seth Smith. You guys remember Seth Smith, played right field for the Mariners for a couple of years. He was celebrating his 37th birthday.

Following that was 2001 Mariners starting shortstop Carlos Guillen, who's celebrating his 44th birthday. Gien famously went over to the Seattle Mariners, or excuse me, went over the Detroit Tigers in a trade for Ramon Santiago that did not work out well for the Mariners as Santiago ended up back in Detroit just a few months later and again went on to make three all-star games. Last but not least, on the 30th is Dave Magadan, who celebrated his 57th birthday.

And today, October 1st, there are two birthdays. First up is Connor Sadzek. Sajek. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. He turned 28 today. And last but not least is Roberto Kelly, who is celebrating his 55th birthday. All right, check back in later this week as I'm going to begin reviewing the Mariners 2019 season, position by position.

Once again, I'm Andy Patton. You can find me on Twitter at Andy Patton, S-E-A. You can find the Lockdown Mariners podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and go Mariners.