Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 9-19-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 27: Let's Remember Some Guys

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

The Seattle Mariners once again defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-1, on Wednesday. Host Andy Patton talks about the excitement of he game, including home runs from Kyle Lewis and Tom Murphy, and great pitching from prospect Justin Dunn and veteran Tommy Milone.Then, in segment two, Patton uses throwback Thursday to reminisce about some of Seattle's greatest short-term power hitters, guys who never quite turned the corner into legitimate MLB players - but who had prodigious power. 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 made it two great games in a row against the Pirates, winning 4-1 yesterday thanks to a pair of home runs and excellent pitching. I'll recap the game in segment one, and then coming up in segment two, I'm going to reminisce about some of Seattle's short-lived but not-forgotten power hitters

of the last few decades here on throwback Thursday. Finally, we have three Mariner birthdays to celebrate today. Stay tuned to find out who. But first, let's talk about the Vivid Seats app. Make a memory that lasts a lifetime and let the Vivid Seats app helps you get to your favorite live event. Go to the app now and enter promo code kickoff at checkout to receive a discount of up to $100. Now, I'm not saying the Mariners are going to finish this season 13 and 2 like they did to start the season. that's mathematically possible, but it sure is fun to see them playing well at the end of the year.

After beating the Pirates 6 to 2, 6 to 0 two days ago, excuse me, they won 4 to 1 yesterday and now outscored them 10 to 1 in the last two days. They got one more tomorrow. Hopefully they can complete the series sweep against Pittsburgh. Yeah, it was a fun one. Another good game. Kyle Lewis continued to be just astounding in his opening month with the Big League club. He had his fifth home run in the fourth inning. he's been it was an absolute rocket blast this time it's to the opposite field 100 something miles an hour off the bat the dude absolutely rakes you know if you've listened to the podcast before you know my concerns about him are still legitimate if you haven't listened before first of all welcome second of all the strikeout concerns are there

the defensive concerns are there just because his knee injury was so dramatic i'm not sure if he's going to carve out a career as the kind of all-star that he's looked like in the first month of the year but right now we're enjoying the heck out of it and it was fun to see him in number five he's already had you know a month that he'll never forget and he's kind of having a um opening start to a career that we've seen before from guys in the past some guys who really panned out and some guys who really didn't and we're going to get to that a little bit in segment two which i think will be fun i'm not saying i think kyle lewis will be one of those guys i do think he will have a lengthy big lead career um and yeah this has been a great start um tom murphy hit the other home run tom murphy now

has 18 home runs as the Mariners backup catcher. The Mariners' starting catcher is Omar Narvaez. He has 22 home runs, which means Mariners' catchers have combined to hit 40 home runs this year. Now, some of those home runs came when one of either Narvaeas or Murphy was deaching, so they don't quite have 40 combined as catchers, but that's still really darn impressive. And they continue to have the best season by Mariners' backstops in the franchise's history by a pretty tremendous margin. No disrespect to Dan Wilson or Dave Valley or Kenji Jojima or even Mike Sinino, but this has been as good as we've ever seen Mariners catchers do. And it's been a lot of fun to watch. Murphy had another great game in addition to the home run. He scored two runs. He had a pair of

walks. He's now hitting 284 on the season with a 327 on base percentage and a 564 slugging percentage. Really, really nice day for him. Obviously a nice day for Mr. Lewis. Dylan Moore drove in the He had her two runs. He had a two-run double. More started in Centerfield, which he's played just about everywhere for the Mariners, but Centerfield's not a spot. He's played a ton of. It was a little interesting to see him out there.

They were giving Malick Smith the day off. We didn't see Keon-Brockston. We didn't see Braden Bishop. He did come in later in the game, but he didn't start. Yeah, they have a lot of center field options, and they went with Dylan Moore. I'm not sure if that was just kind of because they really wanted to get his bat in the lineup and they didn't have anywhere else to put him, or if they're going to try him out there as a potential option for the future.

I don't think he's ever going to be a big league starter. I think he's too valuable to this team in that utility role. But it's worth noting he's had a really nice string of success lately. His month of July was really solid. He hit 250, which is okay, but he had a 357 on base percentage thanks to an 11.9% walk rate, which is extremely good. He also struck out 40.5% of the time, so it wasn't perfect. He's been even better. He was even, well, he wasn't quite as good in August.

8.9 walk rate, which is still very good. His strikeout rate came down a lot, but he only hit 200. But now things are back up. September, he's 265 batting average, 359 OBP. Those are both season highest for him. 10.3% walk rate is very, very good. 30.8% strikeout rate is still a little bit concerning, but the dude is probably always going to be a high strikeout guy,

but if he can hit 250, 260 with some pop, with some steals, you know, he's got nine home runs and 11 stolen bases on the year. the Mariners are going to take that really happily from their utility infielder. I think the Mariners have a pretty strong history of having high-quality utility infielders. They've had Mark McLemore, Willie Bloomquist was a great one, Sean O'Malley. They've had a lot of guys that I think they kind of really like in that role, and they try to keep them around for a couple of years if they can. And I could really see Dillenmore being that guy.

I was a little bit weary of him when the season started, and I wasn't sure that he was going to stick around much. but he's 27. He just turned 27 last month. So he's got a little bit of potential to potentially stick around for a few years. So yeah, I'm kind of intrigued by Dylan Moore as in that role. I think that if he were to ever acquire a bigger role than that, that could potentially be problematic.

That would mean that something is wrong somewhere else. But for the next couple years while they're rebuilding and even potentially into the rebuild a little bit, I think Dylan Moore is a really high-quality guy to have in that spot. Turning to the pitching, Justin Dunn. started, it was his second major league start. It went considerably better than the first one, although it would have been hard to do worse than that. He made it through two innings in this one. He only gave up one hit. He struck out one. He did walk three, so the walk issues are still there a little bit concerning because I think in his first start, which only lasted two-thirds of

an inning, he walked five, and a lot of people thought, oh, that's probably just nerves. It's definitely possible of this with still nerves, but he's going to have to start figuring that out. He can't keep walking guys at this rate if he wants to stick in the big leagues. Now, he was only supposed to go a couple of innings as a starter, so it wasn't like he got pulled after two innings because of poor performance or an injury or anything like that. Tommy Malone came in after him, and Tommy Malone was awesome. Five shutout endings, only gave up two hits, no walks. He only struck out one, but that's never really been much of his game.

Taking a look at his pitch chart, I mean, he was perfect. You know, his fastballs were up, his breaking stuff was down, his change-up was located perfectly. He threw a good chunk of change-ups in almost all of them. were low and away to right-handers, which is exactly how he should be attacking them. He only threw a few of them, but he did get a called strike on them. His slider got a few called strikes as well. He had a nice day.

Again, nothing elite necessarily, but he got the job done. And, I mean, you can't argue with five scoreless endings, certainly. The rest of the bullpen, Anthony Bass gave up a run, but Matt McGill got the save. It's his fifth save on the season. It's been nice to see the bullpen throw fairly well recently. And yeah, and obviously the offense was good. 10 to 1 in the last two games against the Pirates, they get them again tomorrow for a day game,

or today, excuse me, for a day game. So should be another good one. Hopefully they can complete the series sweep and have a little bit of momentum going into the last couple weekends of the season. All right, I'm going to bring in a fun little trip down memory lane in our second segment, talking about four unique power hitters

who never quite lived up to their expectations in the Emerald City. All right, for those of you who are readers of the site Deadspin. They have a series that they do semi-regularly called Let's Remember Some Guys. And the whole point is that they pick a theme and they just talk about guys that played X number of years ago, you know, depending on the theme. And kind of just people that may have gotten forgotten or slipped under the cracks a little bit. So I'm going to adopt that theme and talk about some guys who used to play for the Mariners. Obviously, it's a Mariners podcast.

This is, I thought of this idea because of Kyle Lewis. I'm going to go out and say that. Kyle Lewis has gotten off to a really hot start. He's hit a bunch of home runs. He has strikeout issues. So there are some similarities to him and the four guys that we're going to talk about. I already stated this in segment one, but I do believe that Kyle Lewis has a much higher potential than these guys.

And when we talk about them, you'll understand why I'm saying that because most of them didn't make it past their first year. If Kyle Lewis finishes out the season and never plays in the major league against again, hopefully that's not the case. But if it is, he would definitely be lumped in with this group of guys. Anyway, as you guys know, I'm a big statistics guy. I'm going to be more anecdotal in this segment than typical.

A lot of these guys are guys that I remember for one reason or another, and I'm going to just kind of talk about my experience with them and then kind of back it up with some stats as well. So hopefully, hopefully it's a good time. First guy that I want to talk about is outfielder Carlos Pagero. Carlos Pagero was a big hulking, left-handed swinging outfielder. He was listed at 6-5-2006. He played for the Mariners in 2011, 2012, and a tiny, tiny bit in 2013.

He hit nine home runs for the Mariners in just 65 games played. He had monstrous power, but he only hit 195 with a 242 on base percentage. Ended up playing a little bit with the Royals and then played a tiny bit with the Rangers in 2015, four games with Boston, and that was it. He is still playing ball. He's playing an independent league and stuff now. He's over age 30, probably not. not going to make it back to the big leagues, unfortunately.

But I loved Carlos Biggero. If you were a Mariners fan at this time and you watched them, you probably loved him, too. The dude was huge. He had a violent swing, and he had some of the hardest home runs that ever seen. I distinctly remember a home run at Safeco Field at the time. I usually make that mistake, but now I can actually call it Safeco Field, because this was in 2011. He had a home run that just wrapped around the right foul pole. And I think they, I don't remember exactly what the time was off the bat, but it was like

the shortest distance from contact with the bat to being called a home run in Mariners history. It was an absolute rope off the bat. And he had a tendency to do that quite a bit. But he struck out way too much, as it's going to be the story of a lot of these guys we're about to talk about. In that first season, when he played 46 games, he walked eight times and struck out 54 times. That's just not going to cut it. So his career was understandably shortly. of you only ended up hitting 13 big league home runs in parts of five seasons.

Didn't even play a full, barely played a half season. He only had 319 career played appearances. His 162 game average had he made it that long, suggests he would have hit 20 home runs. So he did have some pop, but, you know, even in today's game, we may not value batting average that much. But when you hit 194 for your career, you tend to not last very long. So that's my first guy. My second guy is probably the most well-known of the group, at least, uh, through the rest of the big leagues, although he is not known for his career with the Mariners.

And that would be Eric Tims. Eric Tims is still on the Milwaukee Brewers. He actually had a pretty solid year. Well, the year's not over, but he's hit 21 home runs with a 251 batting average in 138 games for the Brewers. So certainly not a completely unknown guy. He had 30 home runs back in 2017 with the Brewers. But he had been out of baseball, out of Major League Baseball for five years. He last appeared in the major leagues in 2012 with the Seattle Mariners.

There are probably some of you out there who maybe don't remember that Eric Timps is a member of the Seattle Mariner's, but he was. He played with them for 40 games in 2012. He hit six home runs in just 40 games, which is fantastic, but he had a 220 batting average, a 256 on base percentage, similar to Bigero. He walked six times and struck out 47 times. That wasn't his first in the major leagues. He'd spent a little bit of time with Toronto, Before that, he'd actually hit 15 home runs with them in just under a full season's worth of work. So he came to the Mariners after that, hit six home runs in just 130 plate appearances.

And that was it. He told it around the minor leagues for a while before he ended up going over to the Nippon Professional Baseball League and crushed it. Absolutely crushed it. He won MVP's over there. He was the best player in the entire league. And that's why the Milwaukee Brewers called him and said, hey, maybe something changed. You know, you were 25 last time you were in the big leagues. Now you're 30.

maybe you've grown up a little bit and kind of figured out how to hit major league pitching. And they were right. I think he kind of set a precedent of guys who go over there instead of just trying to toil around in the minor leagues or even going to independent league ball, which a lot of guys have done and very few have made it back. He's like, I'm going to go over to Japan and I'm going to crush the ball over there. And they pay pretty handsomely. You know, you get good money. And the stigma has always been that once you go over there, you never come back. And he's one of the first ones who really did.

And so I kind of think that he could be somewhat of a trend that, or it hasn't happened a ton since then. So maybe it's not a trend that's going to happen right away. But it was an interesting career path that really paid dividends for him. Next up, actually, this guy never officially played for the Seattle Mariners. So don't hate me for including him, but I have to include Jabari Blash because Jabari Blash was one of my favorite minor league players for the Mariners. I distinctly remember going to a game. it would probably have been in 2011, is when he played in short season ball.

So he would have played for the Everett Aqua Sox, and they were playing the Spokane Indians, and my friend and I went to a game in Spokane, and we were cheering and jeering for the opposing team, who at the time was Everett, obviously. And I remember distinctly we were talking to the left fielder as much as we could and kind of chirping at him, and he had a couple of home runs

and threw out a guy at the plate and kind of had this monstrous game and was kind of flexing on us a little bit. And we looked him up, and we thought, oh, that's a weird name. Jabari Blash, I wonder if he'll ever be anything. And he came really close to be in something. We almost got to tell what would have been a much cooler story

had he developed into a true superstar. But the power was extremely real. I mean, he hit 32 home runs in 2015. He hit 18 home runs in 2014. He had some very serious power. And he never got to the big leagues with the Mariners, and he ended up getting picked in the Rule 5 draft by the San Diego Padres. So the Padres put him on their Major League Rock.

He had three home runs with them, but he only hit 169. They ended up returning him. I think the Mariners ended up saying, no, it's okay. You can hold on to him. He went down to the minor leagues with them. Hit really well down there again and then spent part of the next season in the Padres system again and just never made it back, unfortunately. So he's still playing.

He was in the Angels system for a little bit. He actually did reach the majors with Angels again, excuse me, in 2018. He hit 103, so it wasn't a particular. memorable trip back up to the big leagues. But he spent all of 2019 playing foreign baseball with the Rakuten Golden Eagles. So he kind of took that Eric Tim's route. And he had 32 home runs with a 263 average and a 398 OBP. So maybe he'll be back too. He's already 29. So I think if he's going to come back, he'd have to do it in the next year or so. But another one of those dudes with tremendous raw power who just couldn't quite turn the corner and become the productive

major leaguer that he could have been. Last but not least, by a long shot, because this guy is my favorite out of the group. Some of you might know where I'm going with this if you've kind of followed the trend. That would be former first baseman Bucky Jacobson. Bucky Jacobson was a longtime minor leaguer. It looked like he was going to be a career minor leaguer. He spent a bunch of time with the Brewers. He was with the Cardinals briefly, and he just crushed it in the minor leagues.

You know, in 1998, he had 27 home runs. 2001, he at 22 home runs. 2003, he had 31 home runs with 84 RBIs. He had 298 that year. I mean, that's just a monstrous season in double A with the Cardinals. Then he came with the Mariners in 2014. They put him down in their AAA system. He had 26 home runs with 86 RBIs, 312 batting average, 422 on base percentage.

I mean, at some point, you've got to play a guy. Like, you can't be that good in the minor leagues and not get a shot in the big leagues. So the Mariners finally called him up partway during the 2004 season, and Bucky Jacobson was freaking awesome. He played in 42 games for the Mariners that year. He had nine home runs. He had 28 RBIs. He had 275 with a 335 on base percentage.

He was awesome. I know they just talked about Kyle Lewis's career trajectory is very similar to what Bucky Jacobson did to start his career, which is a little concerning for some fans, but Bucky Jacobson was a 28-year-old who'd been in the minor leagues for seven years. Kyle Lewis is considerably younger that, considerably higher-rated prospect. So I don't think that the comparison of Bucky Jacobson and Kyle Lewis is fair. Bucky Jacobson himself does not think that he even tweeted about it recently.

But yeah, if you remember how fun it was, I do, I was 14 at the time, watching Bucky Jacobson hit a bunch of home runs was fantastic. That was a really, really, really fun time for what was not a very good Mariners team. I was always so stunned that he never made it back to the major leagues. Even now looking at his numbers, I do get it more now, obviously I'm older and more rational. his 2005 numbers in the minor leagues were pretty bad. He hit 136 in AAA Tacoma. You can't really call a guy who was hit in 136 in the minor leagues.

He had some injury issues, which obviously slowed him down a little bit. Then he was out of baseball. He played in 2006. He played in the Independent League. He played with the Long Island Ducks. He did have a great year with them. He hit 21 home runs. He even stole six bases with a 291 on base percentage,

but, you know, teams aren't really calling up a lot of guys from the Long Island Ducks. It's just not happening. He played nine games in the Mexican League in 2007, and that was it. He's now a radio host with KJR in Seattle, so Mariners fans can still hear his thoughts and interact with him a little bit, which is great. But Bucky Jacobson was one of the ultimate what-ifs for me, and I know realistically that the odds of him ever really panning out to a multi-year successful player when he'd already been in the minors for so long were probably slim.

But I really wish he'd gotten a little bit more of a shot. I think that he could have done some really fun stuff. But who knows, maybe being the guy who had one great partial season and nothing else, maybe that's a legacy he's okay with. He certainly seems like it the way he talks about the Mariners now, and I'm certainly happy to talk about him on here. So all good. All good, Bucky Jacobson.

All right, so now we're going to transition into our birthday celebrations, which is going to sound a little bit similar because I talk about guys and talk about their numbers. But we have three birthdays to celebrate today. All three of them are around the same age, which is kind of interesting. The first one is left-hander Anthony Vasquez. Anthony Vasquez threw for the Mariners in the 2011 season. He is turning 33 today. Vasquez was a 2009 pick out of USC.

He was an 18th rounder. He was kind of quick up to the major leagues, but he did not have a lot of success there. He went 1 in 6 and 29 innings pitched with a 8.90 ERA. So that was it for him in the big leagues, but he has not given up. And I commend the heck out of him for this because he is still pitching. in the minor leagues. He has been on, he's with the Mariners, then he was with the Orioles, then he was with the Phillies, then he was with the Tigers, then he was with the Diamondbacks. He's not made it back to the big leagues. He's been pitching almost exclusively at AA and AAA in AAA.

Last year, or this year, 2019, he's with the Reno Aces in AAA for the Diamondback system. He's thrown 65.2 innings. He has a 6.99 ERA. I will never tell somebody that it's time for them to hang it up if you still enjoy playing baseball and you still want to keep playing, you should keep playing. That said, I'm not sure the guy who hasn't played in the big leagues in eight years and has a ERA just under seven has much of a chance of getting back there. But you know what? You never know. And as long as he keeps trying, I would love to read the headline where he makes it back to the big leagues after 8, 9, 10, 10 years away.

Regardless, happy 33rd birthday to Anthony Vasquez. Next up is Danny Valencia. Danny Valencia is celebrating his 35th birthday. Last year was his last year in the major leagues. Valencia did play with the Mariners in 2017. He hit 256 with a 314 on base percentage. He had 15 home runs and 66 RBIs. He was their primary first baseman.

Valencia spent his entire career being really, really good at hitting left-handed pitching and being pretty bad at everything else, including being a good teammate. He was not known for his – he did not have a very sparkling reputation as a person. But the Mariners needed him to play way more than that, and it didn't work exceptionally well. The Orioles brought him in the next year, and he was kind of just out of juice. His numbers actually were pretty similar to the year before that, but he just didn't have it in him anymore, and he was done.

So happy 35th birthday to Danny Valencia. Last but not least, celebrating his 36th birthday, like I said, they're all very close. That would be former catcher John Jaso. John Jaso only spent one year with the Mariners, but I think he was pretty well remembered, just partly because he was the catcher for the six-pitcher, no-hitter, that happened in 2012, which was very exciting. He also had a really good year.

He hit 276 with a 394 on base percentage, 10 home runs, 50 RBIs, five stolen bases for a part-time catcher. Obviously, he's no Tom Murphy, who is now the benchmark for backup part-time catchers for the Mariners, but he was one of the best before that. Really solid year. He was finished second and rookie of the year voting a few years before that with the raise. He ended up bouncing around quite a bit after he was Tampa

and then he was Seattle, then he was Oakland for two years, back to the raise for a year, and then two years in Pittsburgh, and he kind of fell apart that final year with the Pirates, and that ended up ending his career after the 2017 season. But a nice little career. He only played nine years, but I think he will be well remembered by the teams that he played for. So anyway, that's going to do it for the birthdays. I'm going to recap Seattle's final game against the Pirates tomorrow,

and we'll once again do a deep dive using advanced analytics for our Statcast Friday segment. All right, once again, I am Andy Patton. and 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.