Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 8-22-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 10: The real reason Edgar Martinez took so long to get into the Hall of Fame

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

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What is up Mariners fans? I'm 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 luck ran out for the Mariners yesterday as they dropped a heartbreaker to the raise. I'll talk about that, and then coming up in segment two, I'll talk to you about the real reason it took Edgar Martinez so long to get into the Hall of Fame, and it has nothing to do with him being a designated hitter. Finally, we'll continue our daily tradition of celebrating birthdays for former and current Seattle Mariners.

There are five birthdays to celebrate today, including our first two active mariners. Stay tuned to 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. All right. So if you had told me coming into this week that the Mariners would take two out of three from the Tigers, two out of three from the Blue Jays, and two out of three from the race, I got to tell you, I would have been ecstatic. But man, man, oh man, was it frustrating to not get that third win against Tampa Bay. The Mariners lost six five last night. In case you didn't see it, it was a day game. So some of you might have been at work and might have missed it. That's okay. There was some excitement. Jake Fraley made his major league debut. He made a diving catch playing center field, which was awesome. It was great to say he came millimeters. millimeters away from a two-run double that would have probably given the Mariners a win in this game. But former mariner Guiller made an incredible catch right in the right field corner, robbing Fraley of his first big league hit and likely robbing the Mariners of a game. If that wasn't enough, Haridia also hit a home run. He broke what I believe was a two-for-20, one-for-23 slide at the plate,

and of course managed to hit a home run off Wade LeBlanc, and that helped give the raise a win. But the real reason Tampa Bay won was not Guillermo Heredia. It was the bullpen. I just got done telling you how great the bullpen had been pitching over the last couple of days, how exciting it was to see the team have some options in the ninth inning. And then this happened. The Mariners took a lead in the ninth inning.

They were up, I believe, six to five going into the ninth inning. And then things went south, really, really fast, unfortunately. The Mariners brought in Matt McGill, who had been, I think he had two saves just over the last week or so. he'd clearly been the guy that they were preferring in the ninth inning. He wasn't necessarily the guy that I preferred in the ninth inning necessarily. I'm not going to say I predicted this because I did not, but it was really hard to watch. McGill loaded up the bases and then the rays ended up scoring a walk off on a wild pitch. Willie Adama's made it all the way to third base and he scored on the wild pitch and that gave them the win. This was before this, Kevin Kiermeyer hit a

home run. So Kiermeyer homered to tie the game. at 6 to 6. Then McGill loaded the bases. They left him in the game, and then he threw a wild pitch, and the Mariners lost. It was devastating. It was heartbreaking. It was hard to watch. But, you know, that's what happens.

I guess all good streaks have to come to an end. Speaking of, Kyle Seeger, 14-game hit streak, he went 0-4, snapped that. So a lot of unfortunate things. Austin Nola, who'd been on fire lately, he went 0-4. I'm not sure how big of a hit streak he had, but, you know, 0-4 for him on that day. so it was a tough one. There were some good things. Dan Vogelbach hit his 28th home run of the year.

He had that in the ninth inning to give the Mariners a lead. It all was well with the world. They were coming back. They had a chance to win this thing, slammed the door on the ninth, and it just didn't happen. The rest of the pitching wasn't so bad. Cody Gereen started.

He gave up a run in the first inning. He didn't give up a hit. He gave up a walk and he struck out too, but it was kind of back to those old woes that the Mariners have had in the first inning with the opener. Apparently they need to stick with Matt Whistler in that role because he has been fantastic at it and the rest of the guys have not been as great.

After Cody Gehrin, Wade LeBlanc threw four and a third innings, he gave up seven hits, four earned runs, two strikeouts. Not a great outing for LeBlanc either. His ERA is now 5.52. The magic from last year is gone. There's really no other way to put it. He's not the same guy that he was before. But he's still laid up some decent endings to give the Mariners a chance.

to win. Reggie McLean, one in two-thirds innings, didn't give up any hits. He walked one. Taylor Gilbo, one inning, one hit, one strikeout. So he's looked very solid. I think I want to get to him eventually, maybe not today, but I want to talk a little bit about what I've seen out of him so far and kind of what kind of pitcher he might become. I postulated when they first got him that he could be kind of the next rowingus a lias as a reliever, not the rowingus alias that started, but he could be kind of a nice left-handed swing guy out of the bullpen who could pitch his way into being an actual late-ending reliever as opposed to just being a specialist. So far so good for that. He has not thrown enough to really, you know, to make any concrete decisions about that, but he's got good stuff.

I think maybe he'll be one of my next stat cast Friday. I'll take a look at him a little bit deeper and we'll kind of see what's under the hood for him. But so far so good. So that's been good. And then McGill, he didn't get a single out. He, you know, he gave up the solo home run to Kier. Meyer, like we said, load of the bases, wild pitch, boom, ball game. I'm sure there are people out there who are saying he should have come out.

They should have pulled him. I get it. It's hard, you know. They could have tried to take him out, bring in another reliever. I just, I don't know that they had a lot of fresh arms. You know, the third game of a series is hard. So I think that they kind of were like, well, let's just, let's hope you can get through this. And we'll see.

They got an off day today. So they'll have some more fresh arm for their upcoming series, which is good. but yeah, this was a tough one. It's never fun to lose like that. Never fun to see a hit streak broken. It was fun to see Jake Freley's Major League debut, so we can try to focus on that. Freyley was the 63rd Mariner to play this year.

That is one away from the Major League record, which was set by the Texas Rangers, I believe, a couple of years ago. I don't actually know the exact year. But the Mariners will break that. There is no doubt that that's going to happen. they're going to bring out multiple guys, I think, for the September call-ups, as they usually do. We should see some more guys making their big league debut in due time.

I don't know if this is – it's not necessarily a good record. I don't think it's that bad of a record either. I think most people will see it and assume, oh, it's a team that just didn't have any talent and just kind of had to shuffle through everybody. And, yeah, I get that. I understand that thought process. The Mariners have – especially in the bullpen, they've kind of shuffled through just about everybody. Some of that's been injuries. Some of that's just been, you know, the difference between

their Major League bullpen and their AAA bullpen wasn't huge. So they were able to just kind of shuffle through all of them on both levels and kind of see which group fit. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, especially when you're a team that is really deep into the rebuild, which is where the Mariners are. I think given a bunch of guys to play is not a bad thing. You know, again, some people see this, they're playing way too many guys. They're just, you know, they're given more guys chances to play in the big leagues. There's nothing wrong with that. These are guys who, you know, maybe wouldn't have gotten a chance if they'd been in Houston system or the Dodgers system.

You know, the Astros won't even call out Kyle Tucker, who is an incredible, you know. So I don't know. I guess that that's maybe an optimistic way to look at a team that is just throwing crap at a wall, you know, in a sense. But I like it. I'm excited about it. I'm excited for them to break this record. Maybe they'll get to 70. Who knows?

I think that'd be kind of fun. Fraley is certainly going to be one of the more exciting. ones that comes up. Even just watching this game, you know, again, he struck out, he flew out, he had the line out. But he had the diving catch, which was nice. I don't think he quite has the sprint speed that Malik Smith does, but I also don't think that Malik Smith makes that play necessarily. And Freley did. And that hit, I mean, again, I said it millimeters away from a double off the wall. It takes an incredible defensive right fielder to make that play, and Haradia did. But, yeah, I'm excited about Jake Frey. I'm excited about the rest of the prospects coming up. I'm bumming.

about the way that this game went, but that's baseball. And they get a day to recoup, and then they get a three-game series against Toronto coming up next. Speaking of coming up next, I'm going to talk to you about the real reason Edgar Martinez took so long to get into the Hall of Fame in our second Mariners Throwback Thursday segment. 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 service. all year round. Anything you're craving, Postmates can deliver. They're the largest on-demand network in the U.S. and offer delivery from all the restaurants, grocery, and convenience stores and traditional retailers you could possibly want or need. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Postmates

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has already in the Hall of Fame. Why does this matter? Well, it's throwback Thursday. and I only started this podcast two weeks ago, and I didn't get a chance to talk about Edgar Martinez. So I'm going to talk about Edgar Martinez. Specifically, I'm going to talk about something that I just don't think gets brought up enough about Edgar Martinez's career with the Mariners, and it's a big, big reason why it took him so long to make the Hall of Fame. It would have been a great podcast to do as an argument for why he should be in the Hall of Fame, but no longer matters, which is fantastic. Edgar absolutely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I could not be more excited that he's finally there and getting the recognition that he deserves.

But everybody says, oh, it's the designated hitter. He was a DH. He didn't play the field. He only played half the game, blah, blah, blah. He didn't hit 500 home runs. He didn't have 1,500 RBIs. He didn't have 3,000 hits. Therefore, he shouldn't be in the whole thing.

That was people's argument. Obviously, eventually the analytics went over and the fact that he had a 300, 400, 400, 500 slash line for his career and that he was the best designated hitter of all time by a pretty tremendous amount. He won batting titles. You all know this. If you guys are listening to this, you know why Edgar Martinez is in the Hall of Fame. Here's why he almost didn't make it. And again, it has nothing to do with him being a designated hitter.

It has everything to do with Jim Presley. Some of you know who Jim Presley is. Some of you maybe have never heard of Jim Presley. And that's because Jim Presley wasn't very good. But what Jim Presley was is he was a third baseman in the 1980s who hit a lot of home runs. and therefore the Mariners played him way too long. And that was at the expense of Edgar Martinez. Edgar made his major league debut at age 24, which is fine.

You know, that's a little later than he probably should have, but whatever. But the problem is that was in 1987, and he only played 13 games. His age 25 season, which is the start of your peak, in a lot of people's minds at least, he only played 14 big league games. And then in 1989, at age 26, Edgar only played in 65 games. That's 92 games for three seasons between 24 and 26. He didn't hit great.

He hit 268 with a 336 on base percentage. He only had two home runs, 30 RBIs. Yeah, I'm not going to pretend that he was hitting fantastic. He had a 93 OPS plus, which is a little bit below average. But in that same window of time, 1987 to 1989, Jim Presley was the Mariners starting third baseman. and he played 419 games, and he had an 81 OPS. The dude wasn't very good.

He had 50 home runs in that time, which is fine. He had 24 his first year, and then he only hit 14 and 12 the following two seasons. But he had a 238 batting average, a 285 on base percentage, which is atrocious. He struck out a bunch. He didn't walk all that often. He had five stolen bases, but he also got caught stealing five times. The dude wasn't very good. Edgar was 12 points, I guess.

better according to OPS Plus, even though that was some of Edgar's poorest hitting. But Presley stayed in there because he was an all-star at age 24 in 1986, even though even that year he wasn't very good. He had 27 home runs and 107 RBIs, but he hit 265 with a 303 on base percentage. He had a 105 OPS Plus, which again is above average, but barely. So Edgar didn't finally, he finally got a chance to be the full-time third baseman in 1990. The Mariners got rid of Presley. He ended up playing in Atlanta.

He only played two more big league seasons. This is another thing. Edgar and Presley were about the same age. Edgar in 1990 was 27 years old. Presley in 1990 was 28 years old. He was out of the league by 29. Edgar was out of the league at 42. Anyway, so Edgar finally got a chance in 1990.

He was the Mariners' full-time third baseman. He played 144 games. And he did what you would come to expect from Edgar Martinez. He had 302. he had a 397 on base percentage. He had a 133 OPS plus, which is way better than anything Jim Presley ever did in his career. He only had 11 home runs. It took him a little while to find that power.

But this was Edgar. He was here. He was here to stay finally at age 27 in 1990. 1991, he hit 307 with a 405 on base percentage, 14 home runs, and then boom, 1992. That was the year that he won his batting title. He had a blistering 3-43 with a league leading 46 doubles. He was an all-star first of six, seven, excuse me, seven all-star game appearances, first of two batting titles, and the rest is history, obviously.

As we know, he won numerous awards. He had the designated hitter award named after him, blah, blah, blah, blah. You all know this. But Edgar, outside of the designated hitter argument, which, yes, concede, even though my teasers made it seem like there was another reason he didn't make the Hall of Fame. The DH argument is the primary reason it took him so long to get into the Hall of Fame. But I really think that if the Mariners had, even if they just replaced Presley with Edgar in those three seasons, 87 through 89 when Edgar finally came up, instead of Edgar getting 13 games played and Presley getting 152 games played,

which is what happened in 1987, let's flip them. If we were able to do that for those three seasons, I'm wildly curious, what could have happened to Edgar Martinez's career. Again, he was a bit of a slow starter we saw in those seasons, so I'm not going to project that he would have hit 310 with a 415 on base percentage like he did later in his career. But I do think that we're looking at a guy who certainly he would have been better than Presley. I have no reason to debate that.

Presley hit he hit 247 the first year, 230 the second year, and 236 the third year. Yeah, he hit 50 home runs in those three years. I don't think Edgar was going to get there. I do think Edgar would have hit somewhere 35, maybe 40 home runs in that time, but he would have hit probably 280 is what I would give him, 270 at the lowest. And I think he would have hit above replacement level, at least for OPS plus. He would have been somewhere around 100.

And for me, the war is the big thing. A lot of people try to you'd war against Edgar. Edgar had a 68.4 career war. That's really good, really, really good. ahead of a lot of Hall of Famers. Edgar's offensive war is 66.9. His defensive war is negative 9. That's not surprising.

Playing designated hitter inherently punishes you for a defensive war standpoint, which I am willing to accept. But in 1990, that first year that Edgar was a full-time third baseman, he had a 1.6D war. That's good. That is very good. It steadily went down after that. And even in his first three little tiny cameos, he combined to have just a point to war, but still positive. He's still out of positive defensive war. So I'm willing to believe,

I'm willing to stake my claim that if Edgar had been the full-time third baseman from 87 to 89, he would have at least been average as a third basement. I'm not going to pretend that he was going to be anything beyond average at third base. I think he could have been a capable defensive first baseman for his entire career, but that's neither here nor there. He would have been an average third baseman for those three seasons that would have bumped up his war to probably over 70. This is baseball reference war. Fangrass has a different stat for war, but for baseball reference standards, he would have probably bumped his war over 70, I think easily, because we were talking about three additional full seasons. I mean, his 1990 season, he had a 5.6 war.

1991, it was 6.1, and 1992 it was 6.5. So if you assume he wouldn't be that good, maybe you give him four war for those three seasons. That's 12. Now you have a guy with an 80 war. That's maybe we're being a tiny bit generous, but I am willing to believe that that could have happened, that Edgar could have had an 80 war for his career had he actually started playing full-time at age 24 when I believe he deserved to be there, certainly over Jim Presley, who did not deserve to be there. I don't know. It's an interesting debate. It doesn't matter anymore.

It mattered a little bit before Edgar was in the Hall of Fame, but it still didn't really matter. It definitely doesn't matter now. But hopefully we thought this was fun. think it's fun. I mean, maybe fun's not the right word. It's also a little sad. It shows a lot about how we've come a pretty decent ways in terms of analytics. We've learned that the mistakes that were made, I think that now this wouldn't happen as often. Edgar's minor league numbers were very good. It's not like he wasn't performing in the minor leagues. They just, they wanted the guy with power. Presley could hit 20 home runs. Who cares that he's batting average is low, that his on-base

percentage is non-existent. Like, he can hit home runs, so we have to keep him in the lineup. Edgar didn't hit a lot of home runs, but what he did was immensely more valuable. And it took the Mariners too long to figure that out, and it almost cost him a chance at the Hall of Fame. Thankfully, thankfully, it did not. All right, everyone, per tradition, we're going to finish up this podcast with the look at the Mariners' birthdays for today.

So today is August 22nd. There are five Mariners who are celebrating a birthday today. Two of them are currently on the Mariners' 40-man roster. I believe these are the first. first two players to come up that are actually on the roster. So that's, that's exciting. First up, happy 24th birthday two, Shed Long. Shedlong is not currently on the 25-man roster. He was battling an injury, but he was up earlier in the year. He played in 19 games. He had 2.32, a little disappointing, but he did have a 3-29 on base percentage. He had a home run,

three steals. I'm really excited about Shedlong. I could honestly talk about him for way past the time that I'm supposed to be on this podcast. I won't. We'll talk about him some other time, hopefully when he comes back up. I love the trade. I was excited about getting him. I see a guy who could really do some damage in the near future. He's got a lot of pop. He's got some speed. He's a decent defender. That's where he needs to grow, but I'm excited about Shed Long. He's only turning 24. He's still very young. He's going to be with the Mariners in September, and I'm really excited to see what he brings. Next up, Braden Bishop, Happy 26th birthday. Another guy who is on the 40-man roster. He's coming back from an injury as well, and he should be back with the

Mariners very soon. I like Bishop. He didn't fare well in his first chance at the big league. He only played in 10 games. He went two for 24. Not good, obviously. Still maybe needs a little bit more seasoning. Again, he's 26, so he's kind of past the point of being like a real prospect

in a sense that he still technically is. But I kind of see a future for him as a fourth outfielder type guy who can be adequate in that role. He's a great dude. You know, he's got an awesome charity for his mom has a, all-timers and he's got a really good charity about that. He went to University of Washington. He's a local kid.

I hope all the best for him, and I'm really excited for him to get back up here in the big league soon and maybe prove me wrong. Maybe become a starting outfitter. That would be awesome. So either way, happy 26th birthday to Braden Bishop. Next up, happy 34th birthday to Ryan Ferreriband. Do you guys remember Ryan Ferrerbent?

He played for the Mariners from 2006 to 2008. He was 20 through age 22. He was a young gun. He did not do well. He really did not do well. Two and 11 with a 7.22 ERA in 106 innings. It's kind of amazing that he kept getting opportunities to pitch. I mean, in 2007, he went 1 in 6 with an 8.03 ERA,

and then the Mariners gave him eight starts the next season. Those were not good Mariners teams, and that is pretty astounding. But the cool thing about Ryan Ferrerbend is he never gave up. He kept trying. So he was out of baseball for 2008, and then he did not resurface in the major leagues until 2014 when he was 28. Six years later, he only threw in six games with the Rangers, and then he didn't resurface again until this year.

33. It has been 11 years since he was a 22-year-old with the Mariners, and he is back in the major leagues. He only threw 5.2 innings with the Blue Jays. Didn't do well. He's got 11.12 ERA. But that is perseverance right there. I commend him for never given up on the dream.

I sincerely hope he can find some success in the big leagues. I'm not going to put a lot of stake in it happening necessarily. He wasn't good when he was 22. I'm not confident he'll be good when he's 34. But kudos. Kudos for continuing to try. And happy 34th birthday to Ryan Ferrariband. Next up, Jeff Weaver.

Jeff Weaver is going to be considerably more remembered as a member of the Detroit Tigers. He was also on the Dodgers for a while. But he did appear with the Mariners in 2007. This is odd. he he wasn't good with Seattle that year he had a he went seven and 13 he had a six point two zero ERA excuse me one point five three whip I mean for all intents and purposes he was bad but but he led the league in shutouts I this is very strange he had two shutouts and three complete games in 27 starts but he had a six point two zero ERA so the rest the other 25

starts must have been outstandingly bad for him to have two shutouts and then just horrible numbers the rest of the time. That's baseball though. It's weird. That's how it goes. We ended up playing 11 years in the major leagues. He had a 4.71 ERA for his career. He also, he led the league in shutouts in 2002, weirdly enough. He split that year between the Tigers and the Yankees. So he actually led the league in shutouts twice, but also hit by pitches three times. So I don't know exactly what to make out of that. Other than I guess he had a durable arm, we'll say. Sure. Why not?

Anyway, happy 43rd birthday to Jeff Leaver. Last but not least, Milt Hill is turning 54 today. Milt Hill had a very brief four-year career. He finished it with the Mariners in 1994, 23.2 innings pitched. He had a 6.46 ERA. He's possibly one of those guys whose career kind of got victimized by the strike. Effectively Wild has a podcast, and they talk about this, and it's a very interesting topic of guys who probably would have made it back to the major league,

or would have, who never even got to debut because the strike happened and they got that September was lost and the World Series was lost. Again, this guy had had a 5.08 ERA and 117 big league innings and he was 28. There's a good chance that his career was over regardless, but it's an interesting thing to talk about. Either way, happy 54th birthday to Milt Hill. The new Locked-on NFL is on fire. Last week was one of the most listened to NFL shows. With expert analysis of former NFL scout Matt Williamson and hosted by Brian Peacock,

Lockdown 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 preview the upcoming series against the Blue Jays and then the Yankees after that, and then we will do another Statcast Friday segment. Once again, I'm Andy Patton. You can find me on Twitter at Andy Patton, S-EA. You can find the Locked-on Mariners podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and go Mariners.