Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 8-14-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 4 - Kyle Seager blasted 3 Home Runs, and a look around the AL West

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

Andy Patton talks about Kyle Seager's three home run game last night against the Tigers, and how quietly excellent he has been against left-handed pitching in his career. Then, Andy discusses the rest of the teams in the AL West, before finishing up with an anecdote about former third baseman Alex Liddi, who turns 31 today.Intro: The Funeral - Band of HorsesOutro: Foxey Lady - Jimi Hendrix 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.

What is up Mariners fans? I am Seattle Sports Media's utility infielder Andy Patton, and you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. The Mariners once again manhandled the Detroit Tigers last night, winning 11 to 6 behind three home runs from Kyle Seeger. We'll talk about that, and then coming up in our second segment, we're going to take a look at what's going down in the AL West,

which will be a new weekly segment on Wednesdays. Since it's the first one, I'll provide my thoughts on how the division has played out so far this season, and what's in store for the future of each different team. Finally, we'll continue our daily tradition of celebrating birthdays for former and current Seattle Mariners. There's only one to celebrate for August 14th, but it's a player I have a story about, so stay tuned. The Mariners continue their dominance against one of the few teams

in the American League struggling more than they are, the Detroit Tigers. If you remember their four-game series they had in July, the Mariners won two games in blowout fashion and two games on a walk-off. I don't know about you, but I can't think of worse. way, if I had to rank the ways to lose a game, I think that getting blown out is the worst, getting beat on a walkoff or in extra innings is second worst, and then your typical seven to four kind of loss, that's the least bad of the ways to lose a game.

So Tigers have just been given all the worst ways to lose a game by the Mariners. Malick Smith had the two walkoffs in the first series in July, and I think the other games were, it was eight to one, and I think 10 to two or something like that. And then, you know, here we are today. The Tigers managed to score six runs against the Mariners, which is their highest offensive output against them this season. And the Mariners went ahead and scored 11 runs and ended up kind of taking it to the house on them. So this game is all about Kyle Seeger, though.

Kyle Seeger had three home runs. If you saw it, it looked more like two and a half home runs. His third home run bounced off the glove of Nico Goodrum and went over the wall for his third home run with two outs in the ninth inning. So he barely snuck that one. He didn't even sneak it over. He snuck that one. over for a home run, I guess, we'll call it that. The first three home run game for the Mariners since 2010,

so it's been nearly a decade since the last time that happened. So really good to see for Kyle Seeger. You know, he had a rough start to the season. He's always kind of been a slow starter in this case because he was hurt until June. His slow start made it seem like, you know, he didn't really get going until July. But since July 1st, he's been hitting great. It's been really, you know, Kyle Seeger is a guy you want to root for, you know. he's done everything right and the Mariners, you know, yeah, he's on a big contract and I know some

people are a little frustrated with that. I remember when he signed it, it was a couple years ago, seven years, $100 million that really isn't that bad. It looks a little bad now because of how he's played, but when you look at other contracts that have been out there, I think the Mariners are content with what happened with that contract. I don't think that that's one that they're really deeply regretting. It's certainly not as bad as Felix Hernandez's contract or Robinson Cano's, which they were able to move, thankfully. But Seeger is one of those guys. You're just always going to remember him fondly for his time here in Seattle.

What I've always liked about him is that he always set out to, I remember it was three years in a row. He would say, this is my off-season goal. This is the improvement I'm going to make. And he would do it. He said, I want to become better at fielding. And he became a gold glove caliber of third baseman. He said, I want to work on bunning against the shift was a more recent one.

I want to figure out how to beat the shift. And he's done that a couple of times when they're, the situation called for it. He's bonded over to try to beat the shift, and it's worked. But my favorite one, and the one I want to talk about today, is when he decided, I'm going to become better against left-handed pitching. And not only has Kyle Sager become better against left-handed pitching, he has become elite at it.

He has been one of the best left-handed hitters against left-handed pitching in the league. In fact, this stat showed up on the broadcast yesterday, for those of you who are watching the game, you might have seen it. With his two today, or yesterday, excuse me, he had two off Matthew Boyd. That gives him 66 home runs against left-handed pitchers since 2012 when he debuted. That's the most in the league by a fair amount. Next is Chris Davis with 57, J. Bruce 55, Anthony Rizzo, 51. So, I mean, Kyle Seeger's got more home runs against left-handed pitching than all of those guys,

than Joey Votto, then Bryce Harper, then Robinson Canoe, then David Ortiz. I mean, he has really, really pitched, hit well against left-handed pitching. And that's something that it's not often talked about how hard that is. You know, everybody notices like, oh, lefties never hit well against lefties. Well, it's because when you come up, you don't see a lot of lefties when you're in middle school. You might see a few more when you're in high school. You see a few more when you're in college. And obviously you start to see them more in the minor leagues because there's more of them pitching at each level, you know.

And in middle school, just about everybody plays baseball. So 9% of the world is left-handed. so maybe 15, 20% of the guys you face are left-handed. It steadily improves, and now in the major leagues, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it's about or a little slightly over 50% left-handed pitchers. And left-handed hitters see them a lot, you know,

because they bring in lugies to specifically face them a lot of the time, and it's because they're just not as used to seeing it. Right-handed hitters grew up seeing right-handed pitching, so they're more used to it. Left-handed hitters didn't, and it's a challenge for some of them. Some of them never get over it. I mean, we've seen entire careers where guys who were very, very good hitters never really hit left-handed pitching.

And Kyle Seeger went out and said, I don't want to be that. I want to fix that. I want to do something different than that. And he has. I mean, I'm still looking at this. He has 24 more home runs against left-handed pitching than Robinson Canoe in that same amount of time. You know, they've played around the same amount.

Kyle Seeger's played 746 games in that time, and Cano's played 753. and he's just been better at hitting left-handed, you know, hitting home runs. Their batting averages are about the same, but that, to me, that's an incredible stat, and that's one that I really wanted to highlight today, and Kyle Seeger gave me a great opportunity to do so. You know, his third home run was against Arreidy, but he took Matt Boyd deep twice. And on any other day, literally any other day, this would be a Tom Murphy podcast, because he had two home runs today.

He followed Kyle Seeger on both of them in the fourth and the sixth inning. He ran Matthew Boyd out of the game. but you know you got to talk about the guy who hit three home runs so maybe we'll have another podcast where we talk about tom murphy because i think he's been one of the best backup catchers the mariners have had in a really long time um and he kind of unheralded you know he was a guy he came from colorado maybe we'll talk about him today who knows we're already doing it um tom murphy is a guy that i've enjoyed watching him for the mariners he's been kind of a breath of fresh air The whole catching position, Omar Narvias has been great.

Tom Murphy's been great. It's been fun to see them get some production out of that position. That's not an intentional knock on Mike Zanino. He was the guy I was really rooting for, but you can blame it on the development of the Mariners front office. They rushed him to the major leagues. I do believe that that's probably the case in some degree. But you see him over in Tampa Bay. He's hit that home run against the Mariners a few days ago.

But catcher's been a pretty weak position for the Mariners for a really long time. And it's nice, even though these guys are probably both temporary, I don't know who the Mariners catcher of the future is going to be. Cal Rally is having a good year in the minor leagues. I don't know if he's necessarily the guy, but it's nice to see Narvaez and Tom Murphy put together a battery combination that is among the best in the American League, maybe in the entire league. You know, I don't have the numbers right in front of me here, but I would bet that their combined production is pretty good. You know, it's up there with, you know, Gary Sanchez or the Yankees is clearly the best when he's healthy.

Tarras on the Cubs. But yeah, I like what the Mariners have gotten out of the catcher position this year, and I bet they do too. So good to see Tom Murphy have a good game. Great to see Kyle Seeger have a great game. It wasn't all great. You say Kikuchi did not have a good game. We just talked about him on the podcast on Tuesday.

He was one of the mailbag questions that I got, and he, or on, excuse me, Monday. And yeah, you know, his slider's great, but he's got a home run issues, which reared his head again today. And he's just, he doesn't look like himself. You know, he was strong to begin the year. I think his delivery was deceptive. His slider was great. He was locating his fastball better. And it's just, it's not there right now.

You know, gave up a lot of doubles in this game. Round tripper to John Hicks, who I believe has a batting average around 400 against the Mariners. I don't know if that's revenge for him since he came up with the Mariners. Actually played third base in his first major league game with the Mariners for those who who may remember that before he ended up over in Detroit where he's a catcher slash first baseman for them. He's not having a good year, but he's having a good year against the Mariners. So anyway, Kikuchi is a guy that I just, I hope he can finish out the year with a couple of good

starts, give him a little confidence. He's got a lot of work to do. I think there are things he can do to fix what's going on. It's fixable. I talked about that on Monday, but he's got some work to do. It's not just a tiny little tweak. I think there's, he's got to really learn how to control his fastball and put it in spots that are better suited for what his breaking ball can do. And again, maybe he'll get there. I hope he gets there. I don't think we're looking at a future Masa Hiro Tanaka or Dice K. Matsuzaka or U. Darvish type guy.

But he could be solid. I think he could be a decent mid-rotation arm with some work. And we'll see what he's able to do this off-season. But like I said, hopefully you can have a few nice starts before then. Brandon Brennan, that was the other kind of bad news from the game. He exited after two pitches. He was kind of shaking his arm. Didn't look good.

Hard to say what it was. As of this recording, there's not been any news about what the situation is with Brennan, by the time you're listening to it, that may have come out. I will make sure to post an update on my Twitter account. You can follow me at Andy Patton, S-E-A. If you're listening to this in the car, please don't grab your phone and go to follow me right now. When you get to work or when you get wherever you're going, go ahead and check, and hopefully I'll be able to get an update to you guys as soon as possible.

But this, yeah, it's hard to know. It could have just been discomfort and he'll be ready to go tomorrow. It could be a DL stint, or sorry, an injured list, IL stint. I'll try to get used to that. That sends him out for the rest of the year. It's, you know, he's just coming off a shoulder injury. So I would guess that the Mariners are going to be more cautious than anything. There's not really any reason to rush him back.

There's zero reason to rush him back. So my guess, if I had to guess, is that this could be rest of the month, probably at a minimum, potentially just shut him down for the rest of the year and try to get him healthy for spring training. So we'll see what happens with that. Mariners have called up a whole lot of relievers so far this year, so I'm sure they'll find somebody else to come up and take his place. But yeah, you never want to see a guy get hurt, especially when he just came back from the injured list. So that's too bad.

Final bit of news before we get into our second segment, Felix Hernandez is expected to make a rehab start with the Everett Aqua Sox this evening. So for those of you who live in the Everett area and want to go out to an Aquasox game, and they're playing the Tri-City Dust Devils, excuse me, and King Felix will be on the mound. I don't know how long he's going to go. I would imagine he's not going to throw a super long time.

He's just trying to get healthy. He's rehabbing, obviously. But for those of you who've missed watching the King pitch, that's a great opportunity to get out to Everett. And it's a cool little park out there for those of you who have not been. It's a lot of fun. It's a great way to spend a win. Wednesday evening hanging out with King Felix and watching some minor league baseball.

So coming up next, I'm going to take a look around the AL West and how they've performed this week in what will be a weekly segment. I'll also give a quick rundown of how they've done this season and what is in store for the future for each of the four teams. Only one former Mariners birthday today, but I have a fun story to share about him. Before we do that, though, let's talk about the AL West. All right, I'm going to talk about each AL West team in, I guess, the power rankings order. I'm just doing it by the order of the record right now,

but I suppose this would be the, if I were to do a power rankings weekly, weekly, then this is the order that I would do it in. So obviously Houston's first. They split a double-headed with the White Sox today. They won six to two and lost one to four. They're now 78 and 42 on the year. They have a comfortable lead in the AL West.

They didn't need to go get Zach Grinkey to win the ALS, but man, it's sure nice for them to have him. This is the Astros year. I think it's, I mean, the Dodgers are great. The Braves are good in the National League. The nationals could surprise some people. Obviously, the Yankees have had a monstrous year. But Astros have just such a balanced team.

Everybody wants to talk about their rotation. And why wouldn't you want to talk about their pitching rotation? It's got Justin Verlander is having a phenomenal year. He's the ageless wonder. Him and Max Scherzer, which I just don't want to keep dunking on the Detroit Tigers, but man, oh man, the fact that they had. both of them is a bummer. But Verlander has continued to be absolutely dominating.

If there was ever any doubt about his Hall of Fame credentials, there no longer is. He has been one of the best pitches in his 30s that I have ever seen in my life. Garrett Cole is arguably better than him this year. He is the first to reach 200 strikeouts. He did it in June, something just absolutely ridiculous. He's having a tremendous season as well. Probably the favorite for Sy Young, unless I'm not thinking of anybody,

but it's probably between those two guys realistically, and that's just absurd. Wade Miley, if Mariners fans probably remember him, Wade Miley is having an outstanding season as well. And so they have these three guys who, two guys who are legitimate bona fide aces, and then one guy who is pitching like an ace. And then for the heck of it, they're going to go out and get Zach Grinkey, too. Why not? You know, they had to give up a fair amount of prospects, not in either top two guys. They parted with Seth Beer and Joshua Rojas and a couple other guys.

I don't have it up. But, yeah, again, Granky's obviously phenomenal. He's having a phenomenal year. He's one of the few other pitchers besides Scher and Verlander, who is continuing to be excellent into his 30s. You see a lot of pitchers fall apart at that time. We just talked about one, unfortunately, with Felix Hernandez, but these guys have not, and they've been pitching outstanding, and there's clearly something the

Astros are doing. Some people think it's maybe malicious in the sense that these guys are all of a sudden getting really high spin rates on their fastballs. I think they're just, it's good coaching. They're seeing something that some of these guys are doing, and they think, hey, we can turn that into, you know, we can make you into something better than what you've been. And the great example of that is Aaron Sanchez.

Obviously, Mariners fans saw him recently. He was having a real tough season with the Blue Jays, ERA about six. And the Astros acquired him, and he threw six no-hitnings against the Mariners in his first start. He threw a career-high curveballs, I believe. It was the highest percentage of curveball that he'd ever thrown in a start, which is something the Astros.

have always preached is going away from, they don't like sinker ballers or two-seam fastball throwers. They want guys to throw four-seam fastballs and a lot of breaking balls. And it clearly worked for Sanchez. It's something that would work from early in his career. He'd gone away from it a little bit. He was kind of an inconsistent sinkerballer with the Blue Jays for a while and the Astros, apparently he hasn't been there very long, so who knows, it might, you know, could backfire on them here soon. But for now, it's like, hey, we want you to throw a lot of four-seem fastballs, when you threw a lot of breaking balls, and it has worked so far. He's kind of pented in as a nice number five starter.

Yeah, all that is just their pitching rotation. Their bullpen is solid as well, and they're hitting line-up. I mean, now that everybody's healthy, Carlos Corre as a stud, Alex Bregman is a little bit of a rough start to the year, but he's been great lately. Same with Jose Altovae. Yule Griel is having a fantastic season as their first baseman. George Springer is a, you know, perennial all-star,

MVP candidate if he can stay healthy. The Indians were so desperate for outfield help this year, yet for some reason they let Michael Brantley walk, and he's having a great year over in Houston. He was an all-star as well. Josh Reddick. And then, of course, your Don Alvarez, who is your AL rookie of the year at this point, I think. He's having a fantastic season, one of the best young hitters that I've seen in a really long time. So yeah, sometimes it just doesn't feel fair. You know, the Astros took their lumps for years about six or seven years ago. You know, they were bad. They had a lot of early first round picks. They hit well on a couple draft picks.

And now here they are. They're 78 and 42 with the best pitching rotation in baseball. One of the best lineups in baseball, an above average bullpen. I have a hard time seeing anybody be able to beat them in October. I mean, realistically, you're going to need to get past Verlander, who's an outstanding playoff pitcher. Garrett Cole, who's the best pitcher in the American League right now, in my opinion. Zach Branky, who, you know, he doesn't have as much playoff experience, but he's extremely solid.

Wade Marley's having a great, yeah, it's just, it's going to be hard. It's going to be really, really hard to beat them. Anyway, that's Houston. Moving down the line, Oakland A's. They are losing to the Giants at the time of recording this. It's 3 to 1 in the 9th inning, so I don't know exactly what the final score is by the time you're listening to this, but there's 67 and 51 on the season. They're two games out of the wild card right now, so this game has big renter.

as do pretty much every game from here and out for the team. So there are two games behind the race, and the Indians are in first place in the wildcard race. There's a whole bunch of teams right there. I'm looking at it. So yeah, Cleveland's in first, Tampa Bay, and then Oakland's two behind them. Boston's six behind Oakland. Texas is two and a half behind Boston.

So it's really probably going to be two out of the three between Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and Oakland. I wouldn't completely count out Boston yet. obviously they have a very talented roster. They have not had a good season. They're pitching, particular, their bullpen has been bad, but a nice hot streak at the end of the month, and all of a sudden they're going to be right in it.

But yeah, the A's have been another team that I'm kind of not sure how they're doing this in a way. You know, I mean, they have a lot of talent, obviously, but, you know, Matt Chapman and Matt Olson are great. First baseman Mark Kana is having an excellent year in the outfield for them. Marcus Semyon is really, really good. he does not get nearly enough credit. He came up as such a bad fielding shortstop, and now he's borderline elite as a defensive shortstop,

and that's kind of a pretty shocking transition for him to make. So he's been very good. Chris Davis has been okay. He hasn't been quite the player they wanted. Same with Jerks and ProFar. But for me, I'm just, I'm looking, here's what's listed as the rotation on their death chart. It's Mike Fires, Brett Anderson, Chris Bassett, Homer Bailey, and Tanner Roark.

I cannot imagine that rotation winning them a playoff series. And those guys have been good this year. I'm not trying to dunk on any of them. I think Brett Anderson's having a good year. Tanner Work's been okay. Homer Bailey's been surprisingly good. They obviously, they did have, Frankie Montes was having a really good year.

He got suspended for PEDs, so he's taken up a good chunk of starch for them this year too. But I don't know. I think this team has enough magic around them to sneak into a wild card spot, but they're going to face, say they face Cleveland in a one-game playoff, and Cleveland throws pick anybody. They throw

Mike Clevenger, they throw Shane Bieber, they throw Carlos Carrasco, or excuse me, they can't throw Carlos Carrasco, unfortunately, but they throw Kluber, if he's healthy. They're going to throw him against two Mike fires. I think the best case scenario for Oakland is to sneak into that wildcard game, and then after there,

just hope somebody breaks down and hope they can sneak a win out of it, but still a heck of a year for them. You know, they've been doing their moneyball thing for a long time. Now they've got a team full of some young budding superstars. And Matt Chapman and Matt Olson are great, great players. I really think that they're, you know, a bit underappreciated around the league. And, but yeah, this is a team that's done a lot of good this year.

And I think there's a good chance to sneak into that wildcard game. But I don't see a whole lot beyond that. Next is the Rangers. They lost today to the Blue Jays to go just to. under 500. They are now 59 and 60 on the year. The Rangers confuse me. I don't know what they're doing exactly. They have a kind of a weird mix of young talent that they could potentially build around. And then a lot of veteran guys, they signed every starting pitcher who had had injury history in the past and hoped they would hit on one of them. They did. Mike Minor and Lance Lynn

have both been having good years. They tried it with Drew Smiley and Shelby Miller. It didn't work. I would take two for four any day of the week if you're going to sign four kind of has been injured starting pitchers. So it's worked out pretty well for them. Hunter Pence has been phenomenal for him this year. Shinsu Chu is having a good year. They had a lot of guys who kind of veteran guys in particular who really had really strong starts to the year. And for a while it looked like, hey, man, they're going to go for it. They're going to try.

And then they didn't really do anything. They've kind of, they've faded now. You know, they're pretty far out of the playoff spot. it's not really in the cards firm right now. And so they're just kind of here. You know, they have, Joey Gallo is hurt, and that sucks. He's been one of their best players. He's having a really good year as well.

And so, but they, you know, they were talking about platooning, Nomar Mizarra, and then they, Willie Calhoun is the guy that they've just jettisoned between the AAA and the major leagues for years now. He's actually played well when he's been up, but they just, they don't ever want to commit to giving him a full-time job. They have now, but that's mostly because of the industry. injuries. They've kind of had to give him a full-time job. I don't know. It's a weird, they had his Rubel Cabrera. They cut him. They didn't trade him at the deadline. They just cut him shortly after

the trade deadline. I'm not sure what they're doing, and I'm not sure they know what they're doing. Their young core that I talked about earlier isn't as young as it used to be. No-Mar Mazar as in his mid-20s. Willie Calhoun, I think is 23, 24. Rooknet O'Dewer is no longer young. Elvis Andrus is no longer young. Their rotation, they have a couple young guys who are okay. They traded for Colby Allard. And I like Colby Allard. He is a left-handed prospect for the Braves, but he's, you know, he's not an ace. He's a three, four, five type starter. He's had a couple good starts since he came up, or since he's been up with them. But I don't know. I'm, I'm curious the direction this team takes because I think it will have a pretty solid impact on what the Mariners

kind of win the Mariners choose to really throw all their, put all their chips on their table and go for it. If the Astros are going to be good for a long time, you kind of just have to expect that. The A's, it's hard to tell. I think they're going to be good for a while. They have a young core. They seem pretty committed to at least not completely rebuilding. So I think they're going to be in the mix for a while.

But if the Rangers are also going for it, it might make the Mariners a little bit more hesitant to push all their chips in. But if the Rangers scrap everything and start rebuilding in a year or two, that might be when the Mariners say, okay, we're going to push for it. Because we may not be able to beat the Astros, but we can at least push really hard for a wildcard spot. and maybe sneak our way in that way, or hope that maybe, you know, an injury bug gets the Astros

or they start to fade a little bit and you can kind of push for it then. But I don't think they're going to push up against everybody, the Mariners, I mean. So they may have to wait and see what the Rangers are going to do, and that's kind of up in the air. Nobody's quite sure what the Rangers are going to do, including, I think, the Rangers front office. So we'll have to see. They're a team I'm very curious about going forward.

Finally, we have the Angels who are 58 and 62 right now. They are losing to the Pirates. I don't know the final result of that game, like I said, but they're same type of thing. They're right behind the Rangers. They're out of the playoff picture, fighting for a 500 record. The Angels have got to be a frustrating team to be a fan of. You have the best player on planet Earth on your team, Mike Trout.

You have a superstar in Shohei Otani. I know he's not pitching this year, but his hitting numbers have been astounded. roundingly good, far better than anybody, I think, could have projected when he was coming out. He was always a, hey, he's a great pitcher and an okay hitter might be a good platoon-type bat, and he's been an elite hitter, and he was a borderline elite pitcher when he was healthy, but obviously, you know, he's missing the entire year with Tommy John surgery, so we'll have to see what they have out of him next year.

But a team with Trout and Otani, and, you know, they have other good guys, too. Justin Upton's having a bad year, admittedly, but he's solid. Andrelton Simmons is all-star caliber player. Cole Calhouns had his ups. and downs, but he's solid. And they're just, they're bad. I mean, they're a middling team and they kind of always have been a middling team and they just haven't quite, I mean, they tried.

Obviously, you don't go sign Albert Pujols when you're not trying. You don't go sign a Justin Upton when you're not trying. You don't go spend however godly amount of money they spent to get Chohayotani. You know, they are making an effort, but they can't, they cannot keep pitchers healthy. I was going to say they can't develop pitchers, but that's not true. Andrew Haney is a guy, he didn't come up in their system, but they kind of developed him, and he's been solid. Patrick Sandoval has pitched a few starts for him recently. He's looked pretty solid. Griffin Canning is going to be very good. He pitched today. He didn't pitch great today, but he's a young man who I think is going to be a very good pitcher in the major leagues, and they developed him.

Jose Suarez is okay. He's in their rotation right now. They can develop pitching okay. They cannot keep it healthy. And their free agent signings last year were absolutely atrocious. I mean, I get the decision-making behind what. they did they wanted to patch together a rotation for a year similar to what the aes have been doing because they knew that shohay otani was going to come back next year so they could sign guys on one-year contracts and then let them go in the offseason and then have a spot for otani and then have a spot for patrick sandoval and griff and canning those were guys that they thought well we won't need them until 2020 so let's sign some veterans kind of go through this year with those guys hope they turn out really hope they turn out good have rebound years and then we'll go with canning and

Otani and everybody in 2020. Not a bad plan. But Trevor Cahill and Matt Harvey were the two guys that they signed, and they, it did not work out well at all. Those guys have been beyond bad. Harvey got cut. Cahill is still on the roster. I believe he's just permanently in the bullpen.

So, you know, you got to make moves like that. You got to try. There's a reason that teams are always hesitant to sign veteran pitchers. You know, when you see veteran pictures on the market and you're like, why didn't that guy get signed? You know, why didn't Dallas Keikl side? and why it's because this happens a lot, you know, and Keichael's not a great example because he's actually been pretty good for the Braves,

but yeah, it backfired on him. And the Angels, I don't know what it is, whether it's a training staff issue or just really unfortunate luck, but they have not been able to keep pitchers healthy. All right, my friends, we are running short on time, so I'm going to keep this quick. Thankfully for segment three, we only have one birthday to celebrate today on August 14th. That is former third baseman Alex Liddy.

Liddy is turning 31 today. You may remember Alex Liddy. He played briefly for the Mariners a little bit in 2011 through 2013. He was kind of an up-and-coming promising guy. I think they really wanted him to be third baseman of the future. Fortunately, they found a guy named Kyle Seeger. Liddy hit three home runs in 2011 and three home runs in 2012, which is a fun reminder.

That's how many home runs Kyle Seeger hit yesterday. So that's exciting. He played 61 games overall for the Mariners. He hit 208 with a 266 on base percentage, obviously the six home runs. So clearly he didn't quite pan out. He bounced around for a while. He was actually still playing in the Mexican League right now. Not sure if he's trying to get back to the major leagues or just wanting to still play baseball.

Obviously, he's only 31 as of today. So who knows, maybe he'll make it back. For me, I just wanted to share a quick story with you all. One of the games I went to, I'm guessing it was during 2011 because I remember it was when Alex Liddy was kind of a guy that people were talking about. I was standing out in left field with my dad. We were behind the bullpen in that little area kind of underneath the stairs. For those of you who've been to T-Mobile Park, you kind of know what I'm talking about. And Alex Liddy hit a batting practice home run ball, and I looked up, and it was coming right at me.

And I reached out, and I got ready to catch it. And it had a little tail on the end. For those of you who've tried to catch a home run ball or a deep fly ball, you know what I'm talking about. And it ended up tailing just out of reach of my arm and just drilled the guy next to me who was on his phone and not paying any attention. so I still managed to get the ball, and I thought about giving it to him because I felt kind of bad, but he wasn't looking. So I took it. So that's the first. I have a couple balls now, but that was the first batting practice home run ball that I never got. So it was definitely hoping Alex Liddy would turn into a little bit more than he did. But you know what? He played in the big leagues for a couple years. He's still playing the game he loves. He just turned 31, so good on him.

So happy birthday to you, Mr. Alex Liddy. Tomorrow's podcast will recap tonight's game against the Detroit Tigers, and we will have our first. throwback Thursday segment in Lockdown Mariners history. 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, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, and go Mariners.