Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 8-21-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 9: Tom Murphy and Kyle Seager continue their torrid home run pace

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

The Seattle Mariners beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 7-4, behind home runs from Tom Murphy and Kyle Seager. Host Andy Patton talks about their ridiculous performance lately, and also provides a look at the rest of the team's in the AL West as the playoffs draw nearer.Intro: Can't Hold Us - MacklemoreOutro: Peaches - Presidents of the United States of America 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. Tom Murphy and Kyle Seeger continued their ridiculously hot hitting, leading the Mariners to a 7 to 4 victory in Tampa Bay. We'll talk about that, and then coming up in segment 2, I'll talk about the state of the American League West in our Wild Wild West Wednesday segment. Finally, we'll continue our daily tradition of celebrating birthdays for former and current Seattle Mariners. There are four four birthdays to celebrate today. Stay tuned and find out who. Fantasy football players. Make sure you listen to Vinnie Iyer and Locked-on Fantasy Football. Vinny gives you the edge with over 20 years covering fantasy football. Don't listen to the same stuff as everybody else. Then you are the same. Get the edge from Vinny that will put you ahead on draft day and put you ahead all season long. Locked on fantasy football available on your favorite podcast provider. You know, if the Mariners hadn't started this season 13 and 2 and hit home runs and nearly every single game for the entire year.

I would call this stretch the most fun stretch of the entire season. After starting out the month of August 1 and 7, the Mariners took two out of three from the Tigers in Detroit, two out of three from the Blue Jays in Toronto, and now I've taken the first two from the Rays in Tampa Bay. Obviously, Detroit and Toronto are not exactly powerhouse teams in the league, but Tampa is. They're a very good team. They've been on a little bit of a cold streak lately, and obviously that has continued with

two losses to the Mariners. but this has been a lot of fun, and it's because of two guys. Everybody's been playing well, but realistically, this stretch has been two guys. Tom Murphy and Kyle Seeger. Tom Murphy has now hit a home run, has now hit six home runs in his last four games, whereas Kyle Seeger has hit eight home runs in his last 14 games. These guys are absolutely crushing the ball. It is, I mean, we've seen success from Seeger in the past.

Now, I don't think that I'd have to look at the numbers, but I'd be surprised if he's hit eight home runs in a 14-game stretch very often in his career, if at all. But we've seen him at least. He's got a 30 home-run season. He's got multiple 20 home-run seasons. The power is real with him. Murphy, this is pretty unprecedented. I talked about it on the podcast yesterday. It feels like we're turning into a Tom Murphy podcast at this point.

But we talked yesterday about he's got a 2.5 fan grafts war in 53 games. This was as of yesterday. He had 81 career games coming into this season, and he had a 0.0 war. So he's just, he's completely turned it on. He's a whole different level right now. He had another one today, or excuse me, yesterday. He's carrying this team. It's unbelievable.

He's got 16 home runs on the year. Omar Narvayas has 17 home runs. The Mariners catcher, I mean, that's 33 home runs between the two catchers. That's far and away the most in franchise history for a, a do, a backstores. off duo. You know, this team has never really had a whole lot of power from their catching position. Mike Zanino was an exception. He sacrificed power for not a whole lot else. You know, Dan Wilson is probably the best catcher in franchise history, but he was never a big power guy. Neither was Dave Valley, neither was Kenji Jojima. It's been a lot of fun to watch Tom Murphy

hit the ball. So Murphy and Seeger were heroes yesterday, but they weren't the only guys who had good games. Austin Nola went one for four with a run in an RBI. He's now hitting 318 on the season. He's been a revelation for the Mariners as well. He's been hitting in the third spot. In this game, their 3-4-5 was Austin, Nola, Kyle Seeger, and Tom Murphy, which a few months ago would have looked really bad before the season when the team had Edwin and Carnacion and Domingo Santana and J. Bruce, I think it'd be hard to imagine a team with Nola, Seeger, and Murphy hitting 3-4-5 being the kind of team that would beat a playoff contender in August. But here we are. Here we are. Here we are. Here we have.

are. Tim Lopes went two for four with a run. Keon Broxton went 0 for four with two strikeouts. His reign on this team is nearing an end. Jake Freley did come up for this game, but he did not play. Manager Scott Surveas indicated that he would play on Wednesday, so I think that fans are going to get to see him today, which is fantastic. Just another player to toss into this kind of really fun mix of guys that they have right now. I think I talked about this again on the podcast yesterday. I think he's going to get a good shot to play. You know, Malick Smith is not playing exceptionally well right now. Keon Broxton is playing horribly. Tim Lopes, he did have a good game, and I think they're going to give him a good look, too, but he's not really an outfielder.

Dylan Moore should be playing the infield. He came in for Lopes yesterday and played some left field as well. I think they want those guys to play some more infield, so I think we're going to see, going to see a little bit of Fraley going forward. So yesterday's game, Matt Whistler started. He's been great in that opener role. So that's been good to see. Tommy Malone came in. He got the win. He's now three and seven on the year, but it wasn't a great outing.

Five innings, four runs, one walk, four strikeouts, six hits. Yeah, I mean, this is kind of, I talked about this last time you pitched. This is kind of what you expect from Malone. He's going to be okay. You know, he's not going to blow up too often. He's going to get through four, five, six innings. He's not going to give up too many runs. But, you know, you're not going to see a whole lot of seven-inning shutouts from Tommy

alone. So in this case, because the Mariners' offense was on fire and remained on fire, they got it done. Sam Tui-Valula came in after that. Anthony Bass played the pitch the eighth, and then Matt McGill through the ninth. He now has two saves. Again, talked about this earlier in the week. I'm not sure exactly what the Mariners are going to do in the ninth inning going forward, but the fact that Matt McGill has gotten the last two save opportunities is certainly telling. If you play fantasy baseball, he might be a guy to look at. But I don't see any reason for the Mariners to commit to anybody my guess is that they would have done it with tui volula he's younger he's doesn't you know he's he's he's the guy that might actually be around

for the for the rebuild uh he's only 26 he's got a 1.59 a array on the season that's in very few innings because he's been hurt most of the year but you know they brought him in the seventh in this one so i i don't know that there's any plan to have him pitch in the late innings maybe they're letting him get a little few more innings under his belt before they do that maybe that's just not in the cards um so for right now matt mcgill's the guy I think, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Bass in there. I wouldn't be surprised to see Tui Valula down there eventually. Cody Gehrin through the ninth inning yesterday or two days ago,

but granted, that was a blowout. So don't count on anybody for consistent appearances in the ninth inning in close games this year, but let's just enjoy the fact that the bullpen has pitched well lately, which has not the case for, hasn't been the case for most of the year. And then the offense is turning it around, and they're taking it to a Tampa Bay team that it's pretty surprising that they're taking it to. so it's a fun time right now. Jake Frey is going to be up.

And then really exciting, Justice Sheffield is expected to pitch on Friday for the Mariners. So they're going to bring back up. Sheffield, who he struggled early on in the year. You know, he came over from the Yankees in the James Paxton trade, struggled in the major leagues for a little bit, really struggled in AAA. Ended up going all the way down to AA, Arkansas.

He had a lot of success there. Now they're planning to bring him back up. I'm excited. I'm curious to see how he does. He was a prospect that I know when they got him in the Paxton trade. I was a little less enthused than I think a lot of other people were. He had a lot of control issues. And when you see big left-handed guys with control issues, just to me, those guys end up in the bullpen a lot. And I was worried that that may be the case

with Sheffield. He's really turned things around in AA. I think there's a good chance for him to come out and do really well and pitch well down the stretch for the Mariners. And that would be huge. It would be huge for Seattle. It'd be big for everybody. And I think getting a chance on Friday, there's no reason to not give him a chance. His service time has already started. I think that having him pitch in the big leagues for the rest of the season is great, and I'm excited about that. So Sheffield on Friday, and then you get Felix Hernandez on Saturday.

His first outing since May 11th for the Mariners, that's in the cards right now, barring some kind of dramatic change. He should be pitching on Saturday, so the Mariners will get to see the king back in action. This does mean that you say Kikuchi is going to get skipped. According to Survea, this was part of the plan before he threw his complete game shut out last week. So I know it seems like the timing is kind of odd, but they've been indicating for a while that they're planning to kind of limit Kukuchi's innings this year. They don't want to risk him getting hurt. So he's going to get skipped.

They're going to go with Sheffield and Felix over the weekend, kind of a new school, old school type thing, get to see, you know, an up-and-coming prospect and then an aging veteran. So it should be a fun weekend, a baseball. Have to wait a little bit on Kikuchi. but yeah, like I said, if the Mariners didn't start the season 13 and 2, I would genuinely believe that this is the most exciting time of the season for the Seattle Mariners. And here's to hoping that it continues. Coming up, I'll talk about the rest of the American League West on our Wild West Wednesday segment. Guys, let's talk about sex.

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They lost two to the White Sox and three to the A's before they finally beat the A's and avoided the sweep, and then they've got the tigers right now, so they've gotten two victories against them. But they got some bad news. They're going to be placing shortstop Carlos Correa on the injured list for what I actually believe is the third or fourth time this year. That sounds like I'm just being facetious, but no, he's been on the injured list three or four times this year. The guy has struggled his entire career to stay healthy, and this year has been no different, which is really unfortunate for him. I'm not sure what the aster's are going to do.

They could bring up Miles Straw. He played some shortstop when Correa was. hurt earlier in the year. They could move Alex Bregman over to shortstop and find somebody else to play third base. They have plenty of options. This is an incredibly deep, loaded team. One thing to look out for potentially is top prospect Kyle Tucker, who has kind of been buried in AAA for, he's had really small cameos in the big leagues, but he's one of the top prospects in all of baseball. They refused to trade him at the deadline, even when they were looking for guys, you know, obviously they got Granky, but they were looking for high end starting pitching.

they refuse to trade Cal Tucker, yet they refuse to promote him to the big leagues. And he recently asked if he could start playing first base in the minor leagues to try to advance his flexibility. And now with Correa out, if they do move Bregman over to shortstop, they could move Yuli Grisle over to third base, and that could open up a spot at first base. I don't know. I don't know if they're going to do that. They really don't need to mess with their team right now. If they feel like Tucker isn't worth bringing up right now, then they may not make that decision.

It's hard to say. He's clearly better than whoever else they're going to bring up. If Miles Straw is getting regular at bats and Kyle Tucker is still in the minor leagues, that's just them just not carrying the best 25 players that they can. And I don't know why they would necessarily do that. But we'll see. They also lost Aaron Sanchez, who Aaron Sanchez, you folks probably remember, they acquired him at the deadline from the Blue Jays.

He'd been having a terrible season. He went out and threw six no-hit innings against the Mariners in his first start. He hasn't been great since then. Now he's hurt. they have plenty of depth in their rotation. They could bring up Jose Orkidi. They could bring up Brad Peacock. They have some options there.

The Astros have so much depth that injuries like this don't cause nearly as much of an issue as they would for some other teams. Clearly, they're not going to want to go into the playoffs without Carlos Correa. That would be problematic. But even if they do, they're probably going to be okay because that's just how good this team is. So moving on from the Astros, the next team is the Oakland Athletics. They are 72 and 53. They've been playing really well as of late, as we talked about.

They took three out of four from the Astros. They split a series with the Giants. They just beat the Yankees yesterday. Matt Olson and Markana hit back-to-back home runs in that game. They've been on a tear lately. I think this Oakland team could, I think I talked about this last week, too. I think that if they do manage to squeeze into that wildcard game, I'm just worried about them from a pitching perspective.

Their pitchers have been pitching pretty well, but I mean, their starting rotation is very uninspiring. Right now it's listed as Mike Fires, Brett Anderson, Tanner Rourke, Chris Bassett, and Homer Bailey. And I would bet that that's probably the worst starting rotation of any playoff team if they were to make it. But those guys have been pitching better than expected. They've had some issues in their bullpen. Blake Trin is not having nearly the year that he did previously. They did just call up one of their top prospects. His name is A.J. Puck.

He was a top, I think, 30 prospect in all of baseball at one point. He's the number two prospect in the A's system. But they're going to call him up as a reliever. He'd had some injury issues earlier in the year, and they don't want to stretch him out as a starter. So he's going to come up. He's going to be a middle reliever for them. I'm really excited to watch him pitch. I think he's got the chance to be very, very good.

But we're not going to get to see him stretched out as a starter until 2020. There's still a chance, Jesus Lazzardo, who's their top. pitching prospect who's exceptionally good. He's another left-handed who throws really hard. There's a chance we'll see him this year, but he's been dealing with some injury issues as well, and unless they need him, I don't see why Oakland would push for him to be up necessarily anytime soon. Maybe let him pitch out the year in AAA and then get him rest over the offseason and

see if he can compete for a rotation spot in 2020. So we'll see. I think they're real close to that playoff spot, but I'm not, I think they could get there, but I'm not super confident in their pitching in order for them to advance beyond that. Next to the Texas Rangers, they are 62 and 65. They're in the middle of a four-game set with Angels right now. They've won two out of the first three.

They got swept by the twins right before that in a four-game series. Texas is kind of been odd all year. They've held down some prospects in favor of veteran guys, and then when it was clear they weren't going to make the playoffs, they didn't trade those veteran guys, and then they started threatening to send down minor leaguers and keep those veteran guys playing, even though they weren't really playing for anything. It was kind of odd. I'm not really sure what they were doing. They seemed to have committed more to the youth movement now. They just called up a prospect Nick Solac, who they got in a trade with the Tampa Bay raise. Solac had a home run in his

first game. He took the place of Nomar Mazar, who went on the injured list. I don't know. Texas is in an interesting spot. They're clearly not in the playoff push for this year. I'm not sure what they're going to do going beyond this. You know, they lost Joey Gallo to an injury. but they have a fairly young nucleus. Mazar is still pretty young. Joey Gallo is not that old. Bruchnetto doer is young. Elvis Andrus is old, but I don't know if they're going to try to tear it down, trade some of those guys rebuild,

or if they're going to just retool a little bit and go for it. I don't know. They're in a weird spot, which is a spot the Mariners have been a lot, where they're just, they could go for it. They could try to tear it down. and I think they've seemed to have settled on not really doing either, which as Mariners fans have seen, kind of just keeps you in the middle for a long time. So hopefully they'll make a decision one way or another,

and that might end up pushing the Mariners to make a decision one way or another as well. So that'll be something to look out for in the future. Last and least, barely, is the Los Angeles Angels. They are 63 and 66, them and the Rangers, their series right now is them battling for third place in the AL West. Again, neither of those teams, excuse, yeah, third place in the ALS. Neither of those teams are really competing for, they are not competing for a playoff spot at this point. Before the Rangers series, they took three out of four from the White Sox. They've been okay lately.

Andrew Heaney had a fantastic game. He struck out 14 against the Rangers in a win. Mike Trout blasted his 42nd home run of the season yesterday, which is his career high and is leading the American League. Might be leading the entire league. I think he's been tied or right around Cody Bellinger and Christian Yellich and Pete Alonzo, those guys are all kind of in that range. Trout is currently on pace for 53 home runs, which is just ridiculous. He's on pace for 53 home runs.

He's got a 444 on base percentage. He's hitting right around 300. I mean, the dude is an absolute monster. I saw a stats a day that showed the difference in war between him and second place in the American League, which is Zander Bogart's is 2.8. And the difference between Zander Bogartz and the 24th. fourth ranked player in war was 2.8. So that's how high above everybody else that Mike Trout is this year.

But as we've seen with the Angels pretty much his entire career, he needs a team around him. They don't have it. They don't have the pitching. Shohei Otani's a stud, but he's only hitting right now. I'm curious to see what they do, because if the Rangers, especially if the Rangers decide to rebuild and the Mariners are clearly rebuilding, maybe the Angels will just say, screw it and go in 100%. I don't know.

I'd like to see it. I think it'd be more entertaining for the league to see Mike Trout in the play. playoffs. It might push the Mariners to try to compete a little bit sooner, which would be fun as well. So we'll have to see. But for right now, the angels are just kind of floating in that same la-la land with the Rangers. And we'll see with one of those two teams decides to kind of push for it a little bit in the near future. 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 round. Anything you're craving, Postmates can deliver.

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That's a name that I know a lot of Mariners fans are going to remember. Clement was the third overall pick in the 2005 draft out of USC. He was a bust. There's really no other way to put it. He ended up reaching the big leagues in 2007 with the Mariners. He had 375 in just 19 played appearances, again, giving fans a glimpse of what could be. And then in 2008, he played 66 games, and he had 226. with a 295 on base percentage.

He ended up never making it back to the big leagues in a Mariners uniform. He played briefly with the Pirates in 2010 and again in 2012. Just didn't make it. He was a surefire thing. Every scout, everybody said this is the guy the Mariners should take. Reminds me a little bit of Dustin Ackley in the sense of like, you know, it wasn't that they made the wrong pick, you know. But Clement, he was picked over guys like John Lester, Andrew McCutcheon.

There was a ton of guys who, yeah, it's a bummer. It happens. You know, it is what it is. The Mariners survived. They rebounded. But yeah, happy 36th birthday to Jeff Clement. Next up is Ramon Vasquez. Happy 43rd birthday to the former Mariners utility infielder.

He only played for the Mariners in 17 games back in 2001. I do distinctly remember that the game that I went to that season was September 7th against the Baltimore Orioles. And that was Ramon Vasquez's major league debut. I distinctly remember that. I always pay attention to when I go to a player's first big league game. The most recent one that I remember was Scooter Gets. which was fun because he actually ended up pretty good.

Ramon Vasquez did not. He played parts of nine seasons, so you can't knock him for that. He had 254 in his career, but he was just your glorified utility infielder bounced around to a bunch of different teams, ended up leaving the league at age 32 in 2009, and is now celebrating his 43rd birthday, so good for him, and happy birthday. Next up is Ismail Valdez. Valdez had a very lengthy 12-year career as a starting pitcher from 1994-2005. he bounced around to a bunch of different teams,

which included a brief stop with the Mariners in 2002. He made eight starts for them. He had a 4.93 ERA, and he had 27 strikeouts and 11 walks. Nothing special, kind of like he'd been his entire career, a middling starting pitcher. He had some good years early on in his career, but was kind of just your veteran back end of the rotation starter.

You know, nothing wrong with that. He made a lot of money in 12 years pitching in the big league, so happy 46th birthday to him. Last but not least is Jim Bollinger. Happy 54th birthday to him. He pitched a part of, well, he pitched seven seasons in the big leagues, most of them with the Cups. He did appear with the Mariners in 1998 for just one start, two total games, 5.2 total innings.

He gave up 10 runs in those 5 and 2 thirds innings. He had a 15.88 ERA. That's not what you want at all. He only had four strikeouts and two walks compared to 10 earned runs. So that was it. that was the last time you paid it in the big leagues. So yeah, happy, happy 54th birthday to Jim Bollinger. The new Locked-on NFL is on fire. Last week, it was one of the most listened to NFL shows. With the expert analysis of former NFL scout Matt Williamson and hosted by Brian Peacock,

Locked-on NFL is your daily national podcast on all things NFL with Matt's unique take on the game. Follow Lockdown NFL now on your favorite podcast provider. Coming up tomorrow, I'll recap tonight's game and we'll turn back the clock for another throwback Thursday segment. 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 Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and go Mariners.