Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 8-26-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 12: The Mariners nearly swept the Blue Jays, and Andy talks about Ryon Healy's future in Seattle

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

The Mariners nearly swept the Toronto Blue Jays at home over the weekend. Host Andy Patton recaps the series and answers questions about Ryon Healy's future with the team and the base-running gaffes from outfielder Mallex Smith. 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'm Seattle Sports Media's utility infielder Andy Patton, and you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast, part of the Lockdown podcast network. Full disclosure, I am camping this week. So if there's any extra background noise or anything, just understand that I'm in a very different place this week. But I'm still here.

I'm still happy to report about the Blue Jays weekend this week. The Mariners took two out of three from Toronto over the weekend with both Justice Sheffield and Felix Hernandez doing some really good things in their first Mariners outings in a long while. I'm going to talk about that in segment one, and then coming up in segment two, I'll answer two fan questions in our mailbag Monday segment. Finally, we'll continue our daily tradition of celebrating birthdays for former and current Seattle Mariners. We have seven total birthdays to celebrate from over the weekend. Stay tuned to find out who. But first, the NFL season begins next week, which means crossover Wednesday will be back. For the entire regular

NFL season, you will get a special episode every Wednesday as the host from opposing sides meetup to preview the excitement of the games happening that week. Find your favorite NFL team wherever you get your podcast and be sure to not miss the NFL listeners' favorite segment. As they so often do, it felt like the country of Canada made their way to Seattle, Washington, to watch the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Seattle Mariners over the weekend. The Mariners managed to win two out of three games, continuing their torrid hot streak in the month of August. And there were some fun things, fun things over the weekend. I previewed it last week, but Justice Sheffield took the bump for the Mariners on Friday.

It was his second appearance in a Mariners uniform. He'd had a bit of a rough go of things. He only threw one game with them. He went down to AAA and was atrocious. He was walking over six guys per nine. He just didn't look good. And then he went down to AA and he looked a lot better down there. And the Mariners thought, okay, we're going to give him another shot.

So there were some good things and some bad things. He only threw four innings. His overall line doesn't look great. Four innings, seven hits, three runs, three walks, three strikeouts. That's not really what you want. But he gave up runs in the first inning and then settled down after that and actually looked pretty good for the next couple of innings. But he got his pitch count up pretty high, and the Mariners just didn't, you know,

there was no reason to let him go out there and throw a whole bunch of pitches. So they pulled him after four innings. The Mariners ended up winning seven to four, so it worked out. Sheffield didn't get the win, which would have been nice. that's okay. You know, I watched the start. I was relatively encouraged by what I saw. There's still a lot of rawness in Sheffield's game. I don't know how else to describe it. He just, he needs to refine some of his pitches. Obviously, the control is an issue. Three walks and four innings is not great. Seven hits in four innings is also really not good. I think there's still reason to be

optimistic. I still like Justice Sheffield. I still think that there's some good things, but I'm not you know, I wouldn't, like, I know this isn't a fantasy podcast, but if I was given fantasy baseball advice, I don't really want Justice Sheffield for the rest of the year. I'm not very confident that he's going to string together multiple good starts. I think he could have one or two pretty good starts that'll kind of remind Mariners fans, oh yeah, this is why we traded for this guy, but I think it's going to be a while until we see a pretty consistent Justice Sheffield arm for the Mariners. I would like to say it'll be next year, but it might take a little bit longer than that, but he's getting his feet wet. He's showed that he's got the ability.

ability to do good things. He just needs to show some consistency. I think he'll get there. The rest of the game was pretty solid. Obviously, the Mariners put up seven runs. J.P. Crawford went deep. Omar Narvarez went deep. D. Gordon had a double and a triple, so he had another, actually he had a double triple and a single, so he was a home run away from the cycle. So that was a good game for D. Gordon, who's been struggling a little bit. Malick Smith stole a a couple of bases, which were actually going to talk a little bit about Malick Smith and base running later on in the podcast. And then the bullpen looked really good.

The bullpen gave up one run after Sheffield came out. It was an unearned run. So that was really good to see. Again, we're going to get to bullpen. Did not have a great weekend overall, but they were good in this first game, which was good to see. I think they seemed to pitch a little bit better when they have a break. So they had an off day on Thursday and then came out and looked good on Friday,

which was nice. But then when we get to Saturday, which we'll talk about now, they did not look so good. I feel terrible with this joke, but like it really was kind of vintage Felix on Saturday for the Mariners. He was the first outing since May 11th. He came out. He didn't look, you know, he wasn't 2010 Felix out on the bump, but he had a solid outing. Five and two thirds innings, two earned runs, three walks, four strikeouts. He gave up a couple of home runs, but other than that, he really didn't have too bad of an outing, but the bullpen blew it.

And that's just something that, you know, Felix has not had a lot of luck with. the Mariners in that regard either his offense doesn't give him enough runs or he the bullpen doesn't get the job done and Matt Whistler gave up three runs in a third of an inning reggie mcclain gave up a run anthony bass gave up a run and all the sudden the lead that felix left with was gone and it was a bummer it was hard to watch i'm not going to lie it felt kind of you just saw it start to unravel and kind of knew oh oh no this is it's happening to felix again i was happy to see him pitch well i would rather i would much rather have seen felix throw well and the bullpen blow it, then Felix come out and look bad.

I think that there's as not confident as I was about Justice Sheffield for the rest of the year, I do have some level of confidence that Felix will look pretty good for the rest of the year. He's healthy, he's pitching well. He seems to be motivated to look good, whether he's motivated because he wants to be on a different team next year or whatever it may be. He's looking good right now, and I was encouraged to see him pitch pretty well against a decent hitting team, even if the bullpen didn't do him any favors after that. The offense was pretty good in this one, too.

I know we're focusing a lot on pitching today, but Omar Narvae has hit a home run in this one too. Kyle Seeger had a couple of RBIs. Kyle Seeger also stole a base, which is fun. So good game from the offense, good game from Felix, bad game from the bullpen. And then Sunday, Marco decided, you know, I don't want to have to leave this game in the arms of the bullpen. So he didn't throw a complete game, but he threw seven families.

fantastic innings. It's as good as he's looked in a really long time. He only gave up three hits. He only walked two. He gave up one run, struck out five. It was an awesome outing. Marco's now 14 and 10 on the year. That's a career high 14 wins for him. You know, it was a weekend where we were focusing on Justice Sheffield and Felix, and Marco is the guy he really stole the show. And I love that. I love to see him pitch well. Sam, Tuvi, Villula, and Matt McGill closed that thing out, and they looked good. So the bullpen only really had one bad game. It just happened to be, Felix's game, which is a bummer. But, you know, taking two out of three from the Blue Jays twice

in two weeks is a good span. Dylan Moore had a home run in this one. So he had a nice game. Kyle Seeger had an RBI. Omar Narvaez had an RBI. He had a really, really, really solid weekend at the dish. He went over two in this one, but still had a good series. So it's fun to see, fun to see him hit well, fun to see Marco pitch really well. Jake Frey is another guy that I wanted to talk about, but unfortunately he didn't give me a whole lot to talk about. He only got one hit over the weekend. He's hitting a buck 33 at this point, but still a guy I am optimistic about.

I don't think that struggling in your first four big league games has remotely caused for concern. Just excited for when I get to talk about him for doing good things in the near future. All right, coming up, I'll answer a pair of fan questions about Ryan Healy's future with the team and Malick Smith's base running gaffes

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All right, so we're going to get into our Monday Mariners mailbag segment. We have two questions that I'm going to answer today. The first one comes from Twitter user at Caleb Janowski, and he asked, should the Mariners cut ties with Ryan Healy? Um, so the short answer is not yet. No. Um, I'll get a little, get a bit into it more. Excuse me. Uh, Healy, obviously, for those of you who haven't been paying much attention this year, uh, he's, uh, was been here for almost the entire year. Uh, he played 47 games earlier in the year. He had a 237 batting average with a 289 on base percentage. He had seven home runs. Uh, he was looking decent, but I mean, he's been in the league four years now.

his numbers have been frighteningly similar pretty much every year. He's about a 240 hitter. He's sub-300 OBP. He's got some pop. I mean, he hit 25 home runs in 2017 and 24 home runs last year. So there's definitely some oomph in his bat, but there's really not a whole lot else. He's a bad defensive player. He's a bad base runner.

He's really just a guy. He's right-handed hitter, pull home-run power. That's about it. And so for the Mariners, when you look at positionally, they don't have a lot of have a lot of room for Healy, I assume that that's why this question comes up. Healy came up as a third baseman. He was defensively horrific at third base, and so they've been moving him over to first base. For the Mariners, obviously, Kyle Seeger's not going anywhere anytime soon, unless they can unload his contract. And even if they do, I don't think that Healy is a guy that

they want to play at third base, really at all. That leaves him over at first base, and that's where he was playing earlier in the year. And they could play Healy at first base. Dan Vogelbach is obviously the future first base slash designated hitter. It might make sense for the team to just keep Vogelbach at DH because he's not a great fielder, although defense statistically, according to Fangraphs and some of their defensive metrics, Vogelbach's actually better than Ryan Healy. I know it doesn't always look like it on the field, but Ryan Healy's not a good defensive first baseman, and he's, you know, he's not young anymore.

He's so he's 27, so he's not super old, but he's not super young. he's a pretty known commodity at this point, which I think is, it kind of works in both favors. It means that the Mariners probably don't need him because they know what they're getting. Players like this don't age exceptionally well into their 30s, so they kind of make sense to unload him and try to get maybe a lesser-known commodity who could surprise people. But on the other hand, teams aren't flocking and knocking down the door to go acquire a 27-year-old corner infielder who can't play defense and doesn't hit exceptionally well outside of 25 home-run power, which in today's baseball with the juice balls, 25 home runs without a whole lot else is kind of

not worth anything. I mean, in 2018, Healy hit 24 home runs, but at a negative 0.8 war. Like he was a below replacement player, even though he hit 25 home runs. From a contract perspective, Healy is just entering arbitration. So he'd be under the Mariners team control through 2022, which is his age 30 season. so there's not an incredible incentive to move him right away. Like he's not about to become a free agent. He's not going to, you know, they're not going to lose the ability to trade him later on. Coming off a season that he missed almost entirely,

I don't really see a compelling reason for the Mariners to trade him this winter unless they get an offer that I would be surprised as coming. I don't see why a team would trade for him coming off a pretty major injury and not really displaying anything noteworthy. So, I guess to answer the question, like, no, the Mariners should not cut ties with Ryan Healy because the value isn't going to be worth just holding on to him and hoping that he can give you something next year. But he's definitely not a part of the team's future. I can tell you that right now. And I don't envision him being around beyond maybe two more years if they really just need somebody. again, they could plug Vogelbach in at DH. They could plug Ryan Healy in as their consistent first basement or flip them.

It doesn't really matter. But I think Domingo Santana should probably play a lot less of the field. And if you want to have him be more, you're more consistent DH. Like Dan Vogelbach's a guy that I think they do want to be around in a few years when Julio Rodriguez and Jared Kellanick and their big prospect group is up. I think Vogelbach's a guy that you want around, you know, and you would ideally like him to be around and capable of playing first base. which kind of means that maybe they do want to push Ryan Healy out,

but I don't think that they do anything with him until his value is up. So maybe he gets traded next year at the deadline if he has a hot start to the year, and there's teams that are just desperate for corner infield hitting. You know, maybe the Yankees this year, you know, they came after I went in Carnacion, who's considerably better than Ryan Healy, but they came after him because they were just desperate for some oomph in their lineup. And if that happens again next year, and Ryan Healy is one of the better bats,

then you bet that Jerry DiPoto is going to get rid of him. with his contract for a couple more years and coming off a pretty ugly season, I don't really think that Ryan Healy is going anywhere anytime super soon. All right. The next question comes from David on Facebook. David asked, is there any way to make Malik Smith a smarter base runner, or is this just something that kind of comes with Malick Smith? That's an interesting question.

You guys know me. I'm an analytics guy. I'm really into being able to analyze some of that stuff. And this question kind of cuts at me in a way because it's hard to analyze. mental mistakes. From a pure base running perspective, Malik-Smith's numbers are good. Fangraphs does value base running as a specific stat, and they can spit out a number, and this season Malick Smith has a 7.7 statistic for base running. That's his value. That's the highest of his career. So theoretically, if you were to trust this stat, Malick-Smith is actually

one of the better base runners on the Mariners and having one of the best base-running seasons of his career. But, you know, we're talking about the eye test here, and not just the eye test. We're talking about Scott Survea's straight up saying Malik Smith got benched this week because he made base running mistakes. So it's not, these things are clearly happening and they're clearly, at least according to the coach and a lot of the players, I imagine, costing the team game. So it's not, it is a problem and it is something that needs to be addressed. Do I think that there's the ability to make Malik Smith a better base runner? Yes, I don't think that he's like so stuck that he can't become a good base runner. But it's not, it's not that he's a bad base runner, I guess.

that he makes a lot of mental mistakes. And I don't know how hard, I don't know how to coach that out of somebody, you know? I mean, it's, I, I struggle to think that Malik Smith is making mistakes because he doesn't know what to do, you know, I don't think that's the situation that's happening. I think Malick Smith is making mistakes because he is forgetful or because he is panicked or he's stressed or he just, just makes mistakes. He's just mistake prone, you know?

And so it's hard to, to, to evaluate and kind of, of, and look at that and say, is there a way to tangibly make this better? I don't think that there is necessarily. I do think that Malick Smith's base running as a whole has been considerably better than it may seem because Mariners fans and all sports fans will remember negative things much longer than they'll remember short-term things. So to kind of answer the second part of the question, like yes, I think this is just something that you get with Malick Smith. And it's something that you kind of just have to accept that maybe these kind of things are going to happen. These things did happen in Tampa Bay.

It's not like these are brand new things to him just this year. So I don't know. I think that I don't know that Malik Smith is a huge part of the team's future, and that's definitely a conversation for another podcast. But I think that, yes, as long as Malick Smith, you're every day center fielder, you're going to take the fact that he's going to steal 35, 40-ish bases, and you're going to take the fact that sometimes he's going to screw up on the bases, and it may cost us innings, and it might even cost us games,

and that's hard. But I think that's just kind of a part of being on the Malik Smith tree. train, I guess, if you will. All right. So for segment three, we are going to talk about Mariners' birthdays, like we always do. Because it's Monday and because we didn't record over the weekend, I'm going to just briefly go over the guys who are celebrating birthdays on Saturday and Sunday. I know that that's not fair to them to not go over them as in detail as I do with the guys

over the week, but life's not fair, and that's what happens. So here we go. There were two former mariners who were born on August 24th. That would be Archimedes Pozo, who was celebrating his 46th birthday. and Tony Bernazard, who was celebrating his 63rd birthday. So happy belated to them. And then on Sunday, August 25th, there were three former Mariners, Adam Warren and Logan Morrison, who were both celebrating their 32nd birthday,

as well as Dave Heaverlo, who celebrated his 69th birthday. All right, on to today. Today has two birthdays to celebrate. The first is not going to lie, pretty sad. It's a bit depressing to talk about this one, but it's Greg Hellman, for those of you who remember Greg Hellman, today would have been his 32nd birthday. He played briefly for the Mariners in 2010 and 2011. He was kind of a bright young prospect, and unfortunately he was actually killed by his brother in a fight that happened over in their hometown of the Netherlands, their home country.

Very, very sad story. He was only 23, I believe. Or excuse me, he was 24 when he passed away. Yeah, very sad story. A big what could have been for the Mariners. Yeah, so not the happiest one, but this would have been his happy 30 seconds. So rest in peace and happy happy 32nd birthday to Greg Halman. And our last one is Chad Cruder.

Chad Cruder is turning 55 today. Cruder spent a lot of time in the Big League. He actually had a very lengthy 16-year big league career. Most of it was not with Seattle. He only played with them very briefly in the 1995 season. He had 227 in that time. Just one home run, eight RBIs, not a lot of success there. He came up with Texas, played with Detroit,

ended up bouncing around for a while. I was with the White Sox, the Angels, the Royals, the Dodgers, back to Texas. Long career, didn't have a ton of success, really, was kind of just your run-of-the-mill backup catching prospect. But, you know, I'm not going to knock anybody for spending 16 years in the big leagues. That is not easy to do, especially behind the plate. So happy 50th birthday to you, Mr. Chad Kruder. All right, coming up on Tuesday, I will recap Seattle's opening game against the New York Yankees.

Once again, I'm Andy Patton. You can find me on Twitter at 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.