Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 9-11-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 22: Kyle Lewis hits his first career home run!

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

The Seattle Mariners came from behind to defeat Trevor Bauer and the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3, on Tuesday night thanks to a two-run home run from veteran Kyle Seager and the first career home run for Kyle Lewis. Host Andy Patton talks about how great it was to see Lewis make his debut, and then gives an update on the rest of the American League West as the postseason draws near. 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. The Mariners defeated the Reds on Tuesday thanks to Kyle Seeger's two-run home run in the eighth inning and the first career home run from Kyle Lewis in his major league debut. I'll go over all the fun facts from the game in segment one. And then coming up in segment two, I'm going to talk about the ridiculous Astros,

Oakland series, while giving an update on the whole rest of the American League West with just three weeks until the regular season is over. Finally, we have six Mariner birthdays to celebrate today. Stay tuned to find out who. Anything you're craving, Postmates can deliver. They're the largest on-demand network in the United States and offer delivery from all the restaurants, grocery and convenience stores

and traditional retailers you could possibly want or need. For a limited time, Postmates is giving our listeners $100 of free delivery credit for your first. seven days. To start your free deliveries, download the app and use the code locked on. How fun was last night's game, huh? Mariner's not only won it in an exciting fashion by a two-run, home run from Kyle Seeger in the bottom of the eighth inning, but we got to see two players make their major league debut. One of them was Kyle Lewis, who is one of the most exciting prospects the Mariners have had in a really long time. You may remember him. He was a 2016 first round

pick. I think he was fifth overall. Kind of hailed as the next superstar for the Mariners. He was a center field prospect. He had power. He had speed. All of that. Unfortunately, he suffered a couple of really debilitating injuries and kind of looked like at one point that he might not even get to this point. There was some discussion that his career was going to be over before it even started. His knee injury was really tumultuous. It was very unfortunate. It probably means that he won't be a center fielder anytime soon. He's probably limited to playing the corner outfield spots, but he's here. He got to face Trevor Bauer in his first game out, which is no easy task.

Bauer was throwing a no-hitter into the fifth inning. Kyle Lewis not only broke up the no-hitter with his first career hit. He hit at 426 feet out into the bullpen area and left center field. It was a truly magical moment, one of those moments that I think will be remembered, you even though this season might be somewhat forgettable, I think it's hard to not, you know, especially if Kyle Lewis becomes a kind of a stalwart for the Mariners going forward, I think this is the kind of game that people will remember.

Not a lot of guys do this. In fact, Kyle Lewis is the fifth mariner ever to hit a home run in his major league debut. He is the first since 2006, and that was Kenji Jojima. And while I'm not going to discredit that, Kenji Jojima was technically making his major league debut, but in the similar fashion to Ichero and some of the other guys, he was kind of a seasoned professional by that point. So Lewis is in very rare company in that regard.

It was awesome to see him absolutely hammer a high fastball from Trevor Bauer, not an easy pitch to hit. I think for fans who maybe don't know a lot about Lewis, they kind of got a pretty good picture of what kind of player they're getting. For better or worse, I think. It was great that he, I believe he did not strike out. I could be wrong on that, but Lewis does have strikeout concerns. That is an issue of his.

He did strike out, sorry. He struck out in the seventh inning, but he grounded out and then hit his home run. I think Lewis's, he had a 29.4% strikeout rate at AA this year, so expect to see him striking out quite a bit. I think he's going to hopefully not Keon-Brockson levels of bad, but I think there is going to be some games where he's going to go 0 for 3 with 3 strikeouts, and it's kind of just kind of be something that, will be a bit of a growing pain for him.

I hope sincerely that he can work on those issues, but the power is very real, and not a lot of guys can hit a ball that far. So I think that the Mariners are very excited about that. He also made a couple of bad plays in right field. He dove for a fly ball that he should have not been diving for. It led to a triple from Philip Irvin, and Irvin ended up coming around to score on a lazy single.

Had Lewis let that ball bounce in front of him and picked it up, probably would have been limited to a double. maybe the run still score, it's hard to say, but that's tough. You can't be given away free bases like that, and I think that Lewis will learn that in time. You know, it's just a learning curve for him. So it's not this big, huge, disastrous issue, but, you know, it's something he's going to have to work on a little bit. The Mariners will happily take a few miscues in the outfield if he's hitting 430-foot bombs, though I can promise you that. The rest of the game was great as well.

Obviously, Kyle Seeger hit a home run off a lefty, which I talk about, I feel like every time he does because I think it's incredible how well he is at hitting home runs off lefties. I haven't checked an updated look at the list, but I have a feeling that he is still first in the major leagues as a left-handed hitter in home runs off left-handed pitching since 2012 when he debuted. He was in first place by a considerable amount last time I checked, and he has continued to pad that lead, hitting a home run off Amir Gareth in the eighth inning. Seeger's having a monstrous season. We're going to talk about him a ton on Friday. I'm going to tease this a little bit early, but we are going to have a guest speaker on Friday. Mikey a Yeto.

He's a writer at Pitcher List. He wrote a great, great piece on Kyle Seeger a few days ago. We're going to have to update some of the numbers on that piece, but we're going to talk about it a little bit on Friday and kind of some of the things that he's been doing that have led to a lot of his success. So I don't want to focus on him too much today because we're going to get to him later, but obviously couldn't have been – couldn't have hit a home run in a more convenient time for the Mariners today. Anthony Bass was able to come in and shut the door on the game, and the Mariners got themselves a win, which was fantastic. Just as Sheffield was the starter, it feels crazy that I'm just now getting to the pitching, because that's usually my focus, but not on today when the Kyle's decided to go deep together.

But Mr. Sheffield, six innings pitch, one earned run, seven hits, three walks, four strikeouts. Labored a little bit through this one, 91 pitches through six isn't great. Neither is 10 base runners. Seven hits and three walks is almost never going to lead to. just one run. He was fortunate to get three double plays, which is a little bit of obviously him pitching well in the situation, but also a little bit lucky. He's going to need to limit base runners going forward. Looking a bit as his pitch chart, he was kind of all over the place. The command is just not there yet. He had, he was left a lot of fastballs up and out of the zone,

a lot of fastballs into righties. His slider was all over the place. A lot of times just right down the heart of the plate, which you cannot do. Change up. barely found the strike zone at all. He was just a little all over the place. I don't want to be too critical because six innings, one-earned run, put his team in a chance and an opportunity to win. You can't call it a bad outing by any means, but I would like to see him kind of tighten up a little bit. And I think that he's got it in him. I don't think he's ever going to be a high command pitcher because he's just never displayed incredible amounts of command, but I think that if he is able to work the zone a little bit better as

he gets more familiar with MLB umpires and MLB pitching in general. I think we're looking at a guy who could be really good. But it was encouraging to see him get out of jams. I think there is skill in that, and he did do it successfully. So it was nice to see that. The rest of the bullpen pitched well beyond him. Austin Adams had a rough outing, but Taylor Gilbo, Dan Altevia, and Anthony Bass shut the door for two and a third innings. Only gave up one base runner between the three of them.

So it was really nice to see that. Alta Via got the win, and Bass obviously got the safe. So the Mariners, oh, before we move on, Donnie Walton also made his big league debut. He came in as a defensive replacement in the ninth inning, so nothing super exciting. But the exciting thing about him coming in was that it was the 65th different player to play for the Mariners this season, which broke the Major League record. So officially, the 2019 Seattle Mariners have played more players in any single season than anybody ever. So that's take that fact, as you will. a fun fact. I would imagine that the 65 players who got a chance for the Mariners would

consider it a fun fact, but it might not be the most fun fact for the fans because it kind of indicates what we've seen throughout the year, which is that the Mariners are rotating through a whole bunch of guys through AAA. They made a lot of trades. They picked up guys on the free agents. So they've just kind of tried a whole lot of different guys. And it's hard to say that it's been successful. But I think the rest of the guys we'll see from here on out are going to be guys that hopefully we'll have a future with this team. So I'm excited to see the new debuts from this point forward and curious to see if we'll get to 70. Guys, let's talk about sex. Good sex. Remember the days when you're always ready to go?

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So, as you can imagine, not a whole lot has changed in the American League West. The Astros are still sitting on top. They have the division all wrapped up. The A's are still in the wild card race, and the Angels and Rangers are still just kind of floating along. Both teams are around 500. The Rangers are actually very close to 500. The Angels are a little bit below. Both teams have kind of fallen off a little bit lately.

Yeah, it's been a pretty predictable. season in the American League West up to this point. I think ever since the Mariners 13 and two start and they're starting their impending collapse after that, I think the division is pretty much gone as one would expect. The last weekend was particularly insane. Obviously, those of you who follow the Mariners, which I would imagine is most of you, remember the four-game series against the Astros. It did not go well for the Mariners. There was a ton of offense, catapulted by the ridiculous 21-1 game on Sunday. But it hasn't stopped for the Astros since then. It's been absolute lunacy, for lack of a better word. They won 21 to 1 on Sunday against the

Mariners, and then on Monday they finished that with a 15 to nothing victory against the A's. So we're talking 36 to 1 was the score of those two games. Absolutely ridiculous. As if that was not enough, they went out and played Oakland again yesterday and lost 21 to 7. So three consecutive of games where one of the teams scored 15 or more runs. The A's scored 43 runs in that time. So they scored 43 runs across three games and only one, two of them, which is kind of absurd. Obviously, there's a headline here from David Schoenfield who's writing about the game,

and he said, what is going on with the balls in Houston? Which I think is a funny way to start the article, because it's not the balls in Houston. It's the balls in general. The baseballs have been juiced all season. That's nothing new. still particularly ridiculous that, especially when football season starts, that the Astros put up three football-looking scores. 21-7 is an incredibly common football score, and it looks much more like a Raiders-Texins game than an A's Astros game, but that's how it goes sometimes.

The Astros are 95 and 51. There are going to be contenders for the World Series. Their pitching staff is absolutely ridiculous. Again, if you watched the games, you saw Garrett Cole and Justin Verlander do their thing. It was ridiculous. Garicol struck out 15 with one hit. Verlander threw a no hitter earlier in the year. I mean, they just, those guys have been insane. Wade Marley has gotten blown up in his last couple of starts,

which I think will probably make some cynical Mariners fans a little bit happy, since he did not have the most successful stint with the Mariners, but the rest of the rotation with Granky is insane, and I fully expect them to be, if not in the World Series, at the very least, in the ALCS. and I think that they have a really good chance of winning it all. We've kind of touched on Oakland a little bit already. They split the first two games with the Astros.

They took two out of three from the Tigers before that, and then they took a three-game sweep of the Angels before that. They are now 85 and 60. They're still right in the mix of things in that. A.L. Wildcard battle. I'm curious if they're going to get there. I would love to see the A's in a wild card battle. They seem like they're in there every other year or so.

They challenge for that. Mostly I'm curious because I want to see who there. going to throw. Their pitching rotation has kind of been, it hasn't been bad, but it lacks an ace, I guess is the best way to put it. Mike Fires has 18 quality starts on the year. He's 14 and 4. Those sound like ace numbers, but he has a 3.97 ERA with a 1.22 whip. That is not great. Frankie Montes was their ace, and he is back from his suspension that he got served back in probably May or so, but he's not eligible for the postseason. so he will not be able to play in that situation.

Chris Bassett and Brett Anderson are the only other pitchers with more than 90 innings on this team, and neither of them strike me as the kind of guy you'd want to throw out there in a game 163 situation. So I'm curious. I'm curious whether they're going to just let fires do his thing, the guy who's given up 29 home runs this year, if they're going to go with, you know, Homer Bailey, Tanner Rourke, neither of those seem like exceptionally good options. They could go with Sean Mania, who missed the majority of the year coming off of Tommy John surgery,

but he's thrown two starts, 12 innings total. He's got a 0.75 ERA. So maybe they go with him. Maybe they give him a shot. I don't know. It'll be an interesting thing. Their offense is obviously great. Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Marcus Semyon have been awesome.

Chris Davis is actually not having that good of a year. And the fact that they're still putting up as many runs as they are, despite that, is pretty impressive. So I'm curious to see. I want to see them begin that game just because I want to see who they're going to throw and kind of how they're going to approach that. But I'm also not exceptionally confident in their ability to win that game. So we'll have to see. Next step is the Rangers. They are, like I said, 72 and 74.

Part of that is because they just had a nice four games stretch against the Baltimore Orioles, which they won all four of them. I've been a little flummoxed by the Rangers throughout the season in terms of whether they were trying to contend, whether they were trying to rebuild. it seemed like they were pretty content not doing either, and the fact that they have a 72 and 74 record tells me that they kind of get what they deserve. If you're not going to try to win and you're not going to try to lose, you're not going to do much of either of them, and that's where they are. If they're content with that, awesome. I wouldn't be, but that's not my decision.

So I do like some of the young guys that they have on their team. Willie Calhoun has had an awesome last couple of weeks since he's been called up. Hopefully that means he's up for good, as the team has enjoyed sending him down unnecessary. Nick Solac was a guy they traded for from the Tampa Bay race. He's up. He's contending with Rooknet O'Dour to be their starting second basement in 2020. Announcing that and kind of putting the pressure on O'Dur has been great for the Rangers

because he's hit a whole bunch of home runs and Nick Solac has hit a bunch of home runs. So both these guys are really trying hard to win that job for next year. I'm kind of curious to see how it plays out. The Rangers still owe O'Doo or something like $35 million. So I don't think they want to give up on him. but, you know, there's a good chance he doesn't even hit 200 this year. So at some point, you kind of got to cut the cord. So last but not least, because unfortunately the Mariners are least, is the Los Angeles Angels.

They have had a rough go of things lately. They are two out of their last nine. They won two against the White Sox. They lost all three to the athletics. They're now down two games to the Indians. It's been a rough go of things for kind of the entire year for the Angels. a little bit similar to the Rangers in the sense that they I don't know, I guess they are trying to go for it.

You know, they went out and got obviously Poo-Hulls and Upton and re-brought back Cole Calhoun, and they tried to sign a bunch of starting pitching this offseason. I think they, you know, they know they have the best player on Planet Earth on their team and they want to win, but, man, they're not good at it, so are they? 12 games out, 12 games below 500, well out of the playoff picture. Mike Trout's been a superstar.

He's a little bit banged up right now, but when you don't have anybody around him, there's just not a whole lot you can do, and their pitching staff is a mess. You know, I think they got some good young guys that I like. Griffin Canning was fun to watch this year. Patrick Sandeval has been fun to watch lately. He's their left-handed pitcher.

I just, I don't know what this franchise can do. They need to do something. You know, they just committed nearly a half a billion dollars to Mike Trout, so you've got to commit to try to building a team around him. And I haven't seen enough evidence from them to support that that's something that they're capable of doing. All right, as always, we will finish off our podcast talking about the former and current Seattle Mariners who are celebrating a birthday.

Today is September 11th, and we have six former mariners to celebrate today. First up is Sean Armstrong. Sean Armstrong is turning 29 today. Armstrong played a little bit for the Mariners last season and a little bit this year as well. He had vastly different results in each season. He threw 14.2 innings last year, and he had a nice 1.23 ERA with a 0.81 whip. That is lovely. This season, he only threw 3.2 thirds innings, but he undid all of that with a 14.73 ERA and a three whip. Not so good there. He ended up making his way over to Baltimore.

Ended up briefly was their closer for a while, just for like a week or so, but he's got a 4.70 ERA on the year for them. So nice 2018, not so nice 2019. Still got some time to hopefully turn things around and write the ship. But happy 29th birthday to him. Next up is pitcher Tom Davy. Tom Davy is turning 46 today. Davy threw a little bit in the major leagues from 1999 to 2002. He appeared in 16 games for the Mariners in 1999.

He went 1-0 with a 4.71 ERA, a 17-14 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and a 1.7. and one whip. So happy 46th birthday. Next up is big Eduardo Perez. You guys might remember Eduardo Perez. He's turning 50 today. Perez played briefly with the Mariners in the 2006 season. He didn't fare.

It was his last stop in the major leagues. He debuted in 1993, so he had himself a pretty solid 13-year career. He hit 195 with a 304 on base percentage, one home run and 11 RBIs in his 43 games with the Mariners. he was kind of a utility infielder slash outfielder at that time. It was known as a very accomplished pinch hitter in this career, actually, kind of one of the quote-unquote better pinch hitters for his career,

which is a kind of dubious accomplishment, but still, you know, an important role, especially in the National League. So happy 50th birthday to Eduardo Perez. Next, we had a lot of kind of older guys who played a while back with the Mariners. The next one is Quinn Mack. Quinn Mack is turning 54 today. Mack only appeared with the Mariners. the 1994 season.

He played in five games. He did hit three doubles with two RBIs, two stolen bases, a 238 on base percentage. And that was it. One of those guys who I think perhaps would have gotten more of a shot in the major leagues had the strike not happened. It's impossible to know for sure, but I always kind of wonder about guys who didn't play past 1994 if the strike was kind of the end of their career. Regardless, happy 54th birthday, excuse me, to Quinn Mack. Next up is Larry Cox. Larry Cox is turning 43 today. Cox was a catcher in the big leagues for parts of nine seasons. He had two different stints with the Mariners. First was in 1977 as a 29-year-old. He hit 247 with two home runs. Then he bounced around. He played with the Cubs a little bit in 1978, and then he came back to the Mariners for both the 1979 and 1980 seasons. Didn't have a ton of success. Pretty prototypical backup catcher at two-fifference. and 202 with four home runs in each season.

But, you know, sometimes you're not counting on a whole lot of offense from your backup catcher. So as long as they can stand back there, Tom Murphy aside, obviously. The Mariners have an elite backup catcher this year, but usually that is not the case. Last but not least is Dave Roberts. And no, it is not the Dodgers manager, Dave Roberts, who infamously stole a base in the 2004 ALCS against the New York Yankees. But it is Dave Roberts, the pitcher who lasted 13 years.

in the big leagues from 1969 to 1981. He actually finished sixth in Sayyung voting in 1971 as a member of the Padres. He was kind of an original Felix Hernandez, if you will, maybe not original. I'm sure this has happened before, but Roberts had a 14 and 17 record with a 210 ERA. That is magnificent. So unfortunate for him, had the Syung voting been as progressive as it is now, where pitcher wins is not necessarily a stat that's taken. into consideration. I imagine that Roberts may have fared a little bit better than just sixth in the

voting, despite having pretty marvelous numbers. Anyway, he didn't end up pitching with the Mariners until 1980 as a 35-year-old. He only appeared in 37 games for them. He had a 2-and-3 record with a 4.37 ERA and a 1.41 whip. He appeared in 15 innings for the Mets the following year, and that was it for him. All right, we have an exciting podcast coming up for you guys on Statcast Friday this week. We will have a special guest pictureless staff writer Mikey Ayyto. He will be on hand to discuss his recent article about Kyle Seeger. Don't miss out. Once again, I am 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, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, and go Mariners.