Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 8-16-19 Locked on Mariners Ep. 6: Mariners win 7-2, and Andy takes a look at the differences between Dan Vogelbach's first and second half

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

The Mariners won the rubber match against the Tigers, 7-2. Host Andy Patton recaps the game while also doing a deep dive into slugger Daniel Vogelbach, and why his numbers have drastically declined in the second half. Then, we celebrate birthdays for five former Seattle Mariners.Intro: Lost in My Mind - The Head and the HeartOutro: Video Killed the Radio Star - Presidents of the United States of AmericaLink: Dan Vogelbach's chart: https://www.fangraphs.com/zonegrid.aspx?playerid=14130&position=1B/DH&ss=2019-03-20&se=2019-07-07&type=0&hand=all&count=all&blur=1&grid=10&view=bat&pitch=&season=all&data= and https://www.fangraphs.com/zonegrid.aspx?playerid=14130&position=1B/DH&ss=2019-07-12&se=2019-08-14&type=0&hand=all&count=all&blur=1&grid=10&view=bat&pitch=&season=all&data= 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 Locked-on Mariners podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. The Mariners wrapped up their three-game series with the Detroit Tigers with a commanding seven-to-two victory, officially winning the season series six-to-one. I'll provide a game recap of yesterday's game, and then coming up in segment two, I'll host the first-ever stat-cast Friday segment, where we'll use advanced stats to analyze the monstrous season that slugger Daniel Vogelbach is having. Can it continue?

We'll talk about that in segment two. Finally, we'll continue our daily tradition of celebrating birthdays for former and current Seattle Mariners. There are five birthdays to celebrate today. Stay tuned to find out who. Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of King Felix Hernandez's perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays. And while the Mariners certainly weren't perfect yesterday against the Detroit Tigers, they were pretty good. They won seven to two. They had, their Our offense just looked great. It was one of the few times where it seemed like everybody was clicking. Everybody who started got a hit except Dan Vogelbach, who went 0 for four with a walk,

and Keon Broxton, who's been struggling for a couple of years now. He's definitely been struggling this season and may not hold on to his job a whole lot longer here in Seattle. But he went 0 for four as well, but Austin Nolo went three for five with an RBI. He had a great game. Kyle Seeger was once again the hero. He's had a tremendous series against the Detroit Tigers. He went two for five with a run, three RBIs. He got the scoring started with a two-run double.

He's on a nine-game hitting streak now. It seems like Seeger always starts out cool, you know, like we talked about in one of the previous podcasts, it was a little bit more startling this year because he missed the first couple months and then got off to a slow start, so it felt like he didn't really do anything until July. But he's been playing great lately. His batting average is up to 242.

It's going to be a lot of fun to watch him finish out the year. Omar Narvaez, excuse me, He went two for three with a run and RBI and two walks, another great game for him. Malick Smith went three for four with a run and an RBI. He also got his league leading 34th stolen base of the year. And then Dylan Moore, he was hit nine. He went one for four with a solo home run. So just really a strong performance from the offense.

They did strike out quite a bit. Spencer Turnbull from the Tigers. He threw five innings, struck out eight, but they were able to get to him, knock him out of the game, and then continued to pile on runs on the bullpen. They ended up scoring two in the seventh, one in the eighth, and one in the eighth, and one in the ninth to really put the game away. The pitching for the Mariners, particularly the bullpen, looked very good. As projected, Matt Whistler started the game.

He went one inning, gave up one hit, struck out one. Tommy Malone came in after that. He looked okay. His line is maybe a little better than it actually was. He had four innings, two runs, no walks, three strikeouts. He did give up six hits. You know, it wasn't the strongest outing from Tommy Malone, but it's kind of what we've come to expect from him.

He'll eat up some innings. he'll mitigate the damage. He doesn't walk a whole lot of guys, but it doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence either. He hung a change up to Miguel Cabrera that, yeah, I was a little outside, but it was about 80 miles an hour, didn't have a lot of movement on it. And Miguel Cabrera, who, as we talked about before, he hasn't been having that great of a year, but he hit this one 420 feet into the left field bleachers, absolute bomb. Yeah, I think Tommy Malone has pitched better in this long relief kind of false starter role.

than he has as an actual starter. So I think they should continue to keep him there, especially as long as Matt Whistler continues to not give up runs in the first inning. The Mariners kind of whole, we'll have a whole separate podcast talking about the opener in due time. But I think the Mariners had the right intentions for starting to try to do the opener, but they just don't have the personnel for it. And Whistler has looked solid in that the last couple of times he's done it. But you really need to be able to trust one of your better relievers to do it.

it and then it takes away one of your better relievers to use later in the game. In this game, it didn't end up mattering because the Mariners actually use four different relievers after Malone, each of them through one inning, and they combined to do really well. It's Cody Gehrin through the sixth, Sam Tui Villula through the seventh, Matt McGill on the eighth, and Anthony Bass finished it out in the ninth. Those four guys combined to throw four scoreless endings. They only gave up one hit. They did not walk anybody, and they struck out five. So it was really great to see the bullpen pitch well. That hasn't been. the case for a lot of the year.

Pretty much the entire year. Obviously, the Tigers are not a good hitting team. You know, they've been struggling through the entire year. They have a couple injuries right now. They just lost Nick Castiano's at the trade deadline. So I wouldn't put a ton of stock into the Mariners bullpen having a great game against a not-so-good offense. But this is what we were talking about is this is a great series for the Mariners to kind

to build some confidence. They're one and seven coming into this series in the month of August. They're now, what, three and three. eight, so a little bit better. They took two out of three in Detroit. They go to Toronto next. Toronto has played better as of late. Obviously, they have a bunch of really fun young talent

of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Kivan Biggio. They're not going to be nearly the rollover team that the Tigers are, certainly, and probably not as much of a rollover as they have been previously in the year. But for the Mariners to have been able to build up some confidence going into that series is good. That's a good thing, and I hope that it can lead to, maybe split in the series or it's a three game series. So taken two, or at least taken one. So I think

this was a good series for the Mariners. It was great to see Kyle Seeger, his bat come alive. It was great to see some of the other guys come alive as well. Malik Smith had a nice series. Aaron Nola was okay, but he went three for five today. Omar Narvaez and Tom Murphy, the catching for the Mariners has been incredible this year. Narvaeus had a great day to day. Obviously, Tom Murphy had the two home runs against Matthew Boyd earlier in the series. So It's been really fun to see the offense turn things around. It's great to see the bullpen look good. This is exciting.

This is an exciting time again, with the caveat, it's the Detroit Tigers. They're not a good baseball team. They're one of the teams that is worse than the Mariners by a pretty fair amount. The Mariners have 14 more wins than the Tigers do. So they're not even particularly close. So, yeah, fun series, fun time. Other news for the Mariners, they called up, Well, they promoted Julio Rodriguez to High A Modesto.

They did not call him all the way up. He's not ready for that yet. But good to see the outfielers on the move and the young outfielers in the system. Kyle Lewis is coming back from an injury. Jared Kellanick got promoted to AA. Julio Rodriguez is up to High A now. So they're being pretty aggressive with some of these younger position players in the system. And that's fantastic.

That's nothing but good news. If Rodriguez struggles and that's a possibility, fans should not panic. this is a pretty aggressive assignment for him. If he does struggle, there's no reason to not start him out next year in single A and let him continue to hit there until he's ready for a high A. But it's worth the shot right now. If he hits really well, then you know you can start him at that level next year and kind of be aggressive and moving him up to double A.

So I'm excited that Mariners are willing to make some of these moves and start to push these guys a little bit maybe more aggressively than they have in the past. It's tough because the Mariners have also had a history of being not too aggressive. Mike Zunino is a prime example of a player. They rushed to the big leagues and then he needed a lot more time in the minor leagues. And at that point, it was kind of tough, tough for him to, he already had big league experience and now he's back in the minor leagues. And so you have to be a little bit careful with this. But I think aggressively promoting guys in the lower levels of the system is generally a good thing, especially high level talent like this.

I mean, this is not, you know, these are not fringe prospects that they're aggressively promoting, excuse me. These are very, very talented players, and they deserve to get their chance to play against the best competition that they can. So exciting news there. The Mariners also recalled another name that's going to be tough for me. Taylor Gilbell. I'll have to look that up and see. He was a 26-year-old left-handed. He came over from the Washington Nationals in the Rowanus-Alius trade.

He came up for Brennan. Brennan went on the injured list, which is something we kind of expected after he came out of the game with just two pitches a few days ago. So Brennan's out for a while. Gilbo is going to replace him. He didn't have a great, he threw 8.2 innings with the nationals at AAA this year. Didn't look great there, 5.19 ERA, but he had a great season in double A for them. 35 innings with an 11.31 Ks per 9, 2.57 walks per 9 and a 2.31 ERA. So we looked really good at that level.

When he came over to Seattle, they plopped him right into the bullpen at Tacoma. He only threw five innings there, but he looked good. 1.8 ERA, 9 strikeouts per 9, so five strikeouts. You know, and I think he's, they need some left-handers in the bullpen, and I think he's got a good opportunity to kind of strut his stuff. You know, he was a 10th rounder back in 2015. He's already 26 years old, so it's time for him to show what he can do at the major league level.

I don't think that he's going to be, you know, he's not going to be a lockdown closer anytime soon, I don't think. But he's got some, he's got good stuff. He's got a potential to be a decent back end of the bullpen option for a couple of years for this mariner squad. I think realistically his ceiling is probably what row and is Elias was doing this year, but he's a little bit younger than him. And so maybe they'll be able to get three or four good seasons out of him out of the back end of the bullpen. So excited for him. He did not pitch today, obviously, but he will likely make his major league

debut at some point in the series against Toronto, and we will be certainly looking out for that. Coming up next, I'll talk about Daniel Vogelbach's excellent season in our very first stat-cast Friday segment. Plenty of birthdays to celebrate today, although you wouldn't exactly build an all-star team out of these former Mariners. We'll get to that, but first, let's dive into Mr. Dan Vogelback for our very first Stackcast Friday segment. Stackcast Friday is a new weekly segment we're going to do, where we're going to take an advanced look at players on the team kind of based on some of the advanced analytics stats that are out there. I know some people are very familiar with analytics and baseball savant and fan graphs and exit velocity and launch angle and some of the stats that

they pull together. And some people are maybe less familiar with those. So I'm going to try to kind of give a little bit of an overview on some of the stats that I'm going to be using. And we're going to apply them to Mariners first baseman slash designated hitter Dan Vogelbach today. Kind of talk about, you know, he was a guy barely played in his first couple of years, kind of look like he was going to be a quad A guy, never really looked like he was going to be the guy who was going to develop and do a big power hitting, consistent hitting first baseman. And he has. He's got 27 home runs this year for the Mariners. He had an absolutely ridiculous first half of the season. He had a 238 batting average with a 375 on base percentage, a 505 slugging percentage. That was good for a 137 WRC plus.

It's basically, if you have a WRC plus of 100, that means your league average. So anything above 100 is good. 137 is Hall of Fame caliber good. I mean, that there's a reason he was an All-Star. He was exceptionally good. Part of that was because he had a 17.9% walk rate in the first half. That is beyond elite. That is an incredible walk rate. And with that only came a 23.2% strikeout rate.

That's still a little bit below average, but Vogelbach's always going to be a high strikeout guy. So the fact that he brought it down to 23.2 is pretty good. His second half has not been as good. Through 25 games, he's hitting 188 with, the 266 on-base percentage, a 447 slugging percentage, an 88 WRC plus, so a little bit below average right there. Part of that's because his walk rate has nearly, or it's gone beyond half. It's down to 8.5%. And his strikeout rate is way up. It's up to 34%. So we're seeing a guy

who had a really hot start to the year and has really kind of faded since then. And he's only got six home runs in the second half. And, you know, it's been a little tough to watch. You know, you don't Most of you, if you watch the Mariners on a regular basis, you don't need me to tell you these stats. You've seen it with your own eyes that he hasn't been as good. He went 0 for five today. Excuse me, yesterday. He's just, you know, he has not been quite the same player. Now, there are potentially a lot of reasons why things have changed for Dan Vogelbach.

Some of them are analytical. Sometimes some of them are not. Obviously, he lost some teammates around him, J. Bruce, Edwin and Carnacio, and they provided some protection in the batting lineup. They're no longer there. I think that probably had a pretty big difference. It's hard to quantify. I think there's as much as I am a big proponent of analytics and statcast and some of this data that I think teams are potentially underutilizing, there's certainly more to it than that. And it's not necessarily a be-all-end-all situation for players.

But there's more to it than that too as well. I think one thing I was looking at Dan Vogelbach's pitch chart in terms of where pitchers have been pitching him and kind of how that has changed over the course of the season. And there's some pretty noticeable differences. For starters, taking a look at baseball savon, it shows the league swing swing percentage profile, so how often players swing at pitches in certain parts of the zone, and then next to it is a chart of where Dan Vogelbach is. And Vogelbach swings at way more pitches just above the strike zone than the league average. It's separated into little boxes, and Vogelbach swings about 56% of the time on pitches that are right above the strike zone, and 60% of the time on pitches that are considerably above the strike zone.

That's compared to 19% for the rest of the league. So clearly that's a spot that Vogelbach has issues with. He chases high pitches over the plate quite a bit. He also swings way less at pitches low and away than the rest of the league. The low and outside corner to a left-hander is swung at by the 56% of hitters in the league and only 32% by Dan Vogelbach. The spot right above that, 39% for Dan Vogelbach and 61% for the rest of the league. I'll put a picture of these charts in the description of this.

podcast so if you guys want to take a look at them you can but basically Vogelbach chases pitches high and out of the zone and doesn't swing at pitches low and away from the zone so as you would expect pitchers at the beginning of the year weren't his his chart looks pretty similar to the rest of the league he was he wasn't seeing a whole lot of pitches up above the zone he was seen a fair amount of pitches low and away and most of his pitches that he was seen were down the middle or middle low that's that's the most common spot for pitches to be in all of baseball and that's where a lot of his pitches were. But since the All-Star break, he has seen a massive uptick in pitches low and away to a left-handed batter. I mean, tremendously big difference. He's 15 to 20% of all the pitches that

he's seeing are in that kind of quadrant low and away compared to that was six or seven percent for the first half of the season. So if Dan Vogelbach's continuing to not swing at these pitches that are in the strike zone and pitchers are now throwing them 10% more often there, it stands to reason that his walk rate is going to plummet and his strikeout rate is going to go way up because he's looking at pitches that are strikes. The rate of pitches that he sees high and up over the plate, but out of the strike zone has gone up as well because that's a spot that there's data that he's chasing those pitches, so why not throw up there and see if you can get him to swing and miss?

And it hasn't gone up a ton, but it has gone up. So I think that honestly the main thing that we're seeing here, and this is pretty typical across any hitter who has a season like Vogelbach, his pitchers are starting to adjust. You know, before he was a guy, he didn't have a whole lot of big league success. He struck out a bunch. He'd hit a few home runs here, you know, every now and again. But I don't think pitchers were particularly concerned about him to start the year.

This goes back to my original point, which is they were more concerned about Jay Bruce. They were more concerned about Edwin incarnation. They were more concerned about Mitch Hanigar. And so they didn't focus as much on Vogelbach. And he got a lot more pitches down the middle. And then he started hammering them. And after, you know, the All-Star break, when he's an all-star, he's in the game, he's got 21 home runs on the season, and teams started to say, well, crap, we need to figure out a different way to throw this guy.

So they went to the data. They said, well, he's not swinging at a lot of these pitches. When he does swing it, him, he doesn't do a lot of damage. He's chasing a lot of pitches high out of the zone. Let's start attacking him in those spots and see if we can, you know, make some changes. And they have. Like I said, his strikeout rate has gone up 12% in the second half. His walk rate has gone down by about half.

Again, it's a small sample size, and I think with any advanced analytics, you have to take that into account. He played 85 games in the first half. he's only played 25 in the second half. So his numbers could end up regulating and end up back around where they were in the first half. That's possible. It's also possible that he had a great first half and that he's going to continue to struggle in the second half. It could go either way. But I think you look at this data and you see the pretty startling change in how pitchers have approached throwing to him this year.

And you think he's got to make an adjustment. He's got to start trying to figure out something to do with those low and outside pitches. He's never been a guy to hit them exceptionally well and he got a lot of fastballs up towards the middle of the zone that he liked in the first half and he's not getting them in the second half because he did too much damage to him. So we'll see if Dan is able to make some of those adjustments.

I'm sure that there's coaches that are working with them on it, maybe trying to see if he can step into that pitch and go the other way with it. Maybe if you can at least start to foul them off and try to fight longer into it bats and see if he can draw more walks that way. Lots of different options. options here. But yeah, I think, you know, it's funny to be able to look at stats and pretty

clearly see, okay, this is something that has changed. A lot of the rest of his stuff hasn't changed. His hard hit rate is still pretty good. You know, it's the league average like it was. His flyball rate's still about the same. So his second half numbers haven't changed that much, but where the baseball is being pitched to him has changed pretty dramatically. And it's very clear that, at least in my opinion, that that has made a pretty big difference from first half to second have. So we got five birthdays to celebrate today and what promises to be a fun game of, oh yeah, I remember that guy. That'll be coming up next. All right, y'all, today is August 16th, and we have five former Mariners birthdays to celebrate. I'm not going to lie to you. It's not the most

exciting group of former mariners, but there's some names in here that you guys all might remember. First up, happy 31st birthday to reliever Justin Grimm. Justin Grimm threw most recently did throw for the Mariners in 2018, just last year. Some of you might remember him. He threw four and two-thirds innings for the Mariners. Three walks, no strikeouts, no walks. Just gave up the one-earned run, two hits, 1.93 ERA. Journeyman guy bounced around quite a bit in the league.

Not sure where he is this year. Not sure if he's going to make it back to the big leagues. He's only 31, but he didn't really have. He's got a 4.98 career ERA, so not exactly the most inspiring guy long-term, but regardless, happy 31st birthday to Mr. Grimm, and hopefully we'll see him in the big leagues again. Next up is a happy 31st birthday again, this time to J.C. Ramirez. Fans might remember J.C. Ramirez.

He threw a little bit for the Mariners in 2015. Just 8.1 innings with the team. They weren't particularly good. He had a 7.56 ERA in that time. Five strikeouts and seven walks, not particularly good, like I said. He kind of bounced around the league for a while. He's ended up settling in with the Angels. and actually had a really good year in 2017.

They bumped him up to the rotation. He'd never made a start in his big league career, but he started 24 games for the Angels in 2017. Out of 4.15 ERA, the 105 strikeouts and 49 walks. He's back in the big leagues right now. He missed most of the year with an injury. I'm thinking he had Tommy John surgery. I'm not exactly sure,

but he's done eight innings for the Angels again this year. So he's back. Looks like they turned him back into a bullpen piece, probably at least for the rest of this year. Maybe he'll compete for a rotation spot again. get next year. But yeah, happy, happy 31st birthday to J.C. Ramirez. Next up is Quentin McCracken. This is my favorite name on the list because I distinctly remember having a whole bunch of Quentin McCracken baseball cards when I was younger. I don't know why. I don't know how I acquired so many of them,

but he's turning 49 today. He was a little speedy outfielder who played mostly for the raise. It played for the Rockies a little bit as well. I ended up kind of bouncing around towards the end of his career. He had a nice 12-year career. He had 21 home runs. He stole 89 bases. he had 274 for his career. He played part of the 2004 season with the Mariners. Only appeared in 19 games. Hit a buck 50, so wasn't exactly at the top of his game at that time. Spent the rest of that year with Arizona and was considerably better.

He had 288 for them. Couldn't find it for the Mariners for whatever reason. Yeah, it's not exactly the most memorable career, or the most memorable Mariners career, certainly. But happy 49th birthday regardless. Next up, Donnie Scott. He is turning 58 today. He played for the Mariners back in 1985.

He only paid parts of four big league seasons. He actually had the second most at bats of his career in 85 when he was with the Mariners. He had 222 with a 275 on base percentage, hit four home runs, stole a base. Not a particularly memorable career. He played his main season was with Texas the year before. He only appeared in 10 games after he played for the Mariners. Actually, weirdly enough, so he played for the Mariners in 1980. did not reach the big leagues again until 1991.

So he was a 23-year-old with the Mariners, and then he made the big leagues in 1991 at age 29. Hit a buck 58 and 10 games, and that was it. So happy 58th birthday to Donnie Scott. Last but I guess not least is Jim Mailer. He is turning 61 today. Mailer was a first baseman. He was a first round pick by the Mariners in 1978.

He was actually the fifth overall pick in 1978 by the Mariners. He reached the big leagues in 1981 as a 22-year-old and played 12 games and hit 348. I wasn't around back then, but I got to imagine that when your fifth overall pick hits 348 in 12 games in 1981, you probably were real excited about the future for Jim Mailer. And unfortunately, it did not pan out. He played in 64 games in 1982, and he hit 226 with a 274 on base percentage, had four home runs, 26 RBIs, and then in 1983 at age 24, he played in 26 games. He had 182, and that was it.

So, you know, just only played in 102 big league games, hit 226 with five home runs. Definitely not what you want out of your fifth overall pick. The Mariners, as we've talked about before, they have a history of missing on early round hitters. I think a lot of teams you could dig through their draft history and see a bunch of mistakes, so it's not entirely uncommon. This is just another one for the Mariners to kind of lament, especially when, like I said, he hit 348 in 1981. I got to imagine that there was some excitement surrounding him,

and unfortunately did not pan out. So happy 61st birthday to Jim Mailer. Sorry, that wasn't the most positive review of your time in Seattle. All right, Mariners fans, the Lockdown podcast will be back on Monday morning to recap the three-game series against the Blue Jays over the weekend. Then I'll answer some fan questions in the second Mariners Mailbag Monday segment. If you have any questions you'd like to hear answered on the podcast, you can send them to Andy Patton S-E-A on Twitter. You can find the Lockdown Mariners podcast on iTunes, Stitcher,

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and go Mariners.