Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 9-2-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 15: Discussing which September call-ups will have the biggest impact this season

Episode Date: September 2, 2019

The Seattle Mariners crushed the Texas Rangers, 11-3, on Sunday afternoon. Host Andy Patton talks about that beatdown and how crucial it was for Daniel Vogelbach, and he takes a mailbag monday question about which September call-ups will have the biggest impact for the team down the stretch. Finally, Patton goes over the 13 former/current Seattle Mariners who celebrated birthdays over Labor Day Weekend. 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 and happy Labor Day 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 Lockdown podcast network. So I've mentioned this on the podcast a few times before. One of the reasons I call myself Seattle Sports Media's utility infielder is that my primary job is covering the Seahawks as a beat reporter. So this weekend was a little bit insane.

With the Jadavian Clowny trade and all the other moves the Seahawks made to change their roster. It delayed me considerably from getting this podcast to you, which is why I'm recording it during the Mariners Day game at Beautiful Wrigley Field in Chicago. This podcast is going to cover yesterday's beatdown of the Texas Rangers, but I'll have regularly scheduled podcasts go up tomorrow morning about Seattle's first game against the Cubbies. So anyway, we will go over that game, the Rangers game in segment one, and then in segment two, I'll take a pair of fan questions for our weekly Mariners Mailbag Monday segment. Finally, we are a little behind on our birthday coverage, so we have 13 Mariners' birthdays to celebrate from over the weekend and today.

Stay tuned to find out who. First, a quick note. This podcast is brought to you by bambas. Bombas are what your feet daydream about, and with every pair of socks purchased, one pair is donated. Buy your bambas.com slash locked and get 20% off your first purchase. By the time you're listening to this, the Mariners will already be in the midst of a game against the Chicago Cubs,

but I want to focus on their absolute beatdown against the Texas Rangers on Sunday afternoon. Holy cow. Kyle Seeger continued his ridiculously hot hitting. He has always, always done well against Texas, especially at Globe Life Park. In 153 career games against Texas, Seeger has 28 home runs and 99 RBIs, his most against any team. That's not super surprising. Obviously, he plays the Rangers a lot, but 28 home runs and 99 RBIs over virtually an entire season is pretty darn good.

It's clear that he enjoys playing against the Rangers. The first Homer of his career was at the Rangers Stadium, a stadium that's going to be a lot different next year. They're doing some climate-controlled changes to the stadium. So, yeah, Kyle Seeger is absolutely killing it. He had one of the best months of August I've ever seen, not just from him, but any mariner. It was an unbelievable month.

He seems to be kind of just. roll right through it in September. Hopefully you can have a great series against the Cubs because they're really going to need him in that really short porch in right field in Chicago. Hopefully you can get a couple home runs out there. It was also really, really nice to see Dan Vogelbach wake up a little bit. For those of you who may have missed it, Dan Vogelbach had a pretty awful month of August. He hit a buck 30. He only hit one home run the entire month.

But, or excuse me, he had three home runs in August. So not that bad. Three home runs, but he hit 1.30, not very good. He went two for three with two walks, two RBIs, and the home run. What I loved was his postgame quote where he said, quote, when I'm walking, I'm hitting. My approach is going and I'm seeing the ball the right way. It's just a matter of time until things start to go.

I love that Dan Vogelbach is present enough and aware enough to understand this process for him. He needs to be seeing the ball really well. He's not just a dude who goes up there and swings as hard as he can to hit home runs. It looks like that. And it really feels like that sometimes. And I know that, you know, he doesn't spray a lot of singles the other way and doesn't do a lot of the things that, you know, maybe are more traditional baseball type things. He looks like he either walks or hits a home runner strikes out. And that's okay because he understands that when I am taking walks and I am patient at the plate and I'm seeing the ball the right way, I'm going to start to hit more home runs.

And that's exactly right. He's taking that Adam Dunn approach, the Jim Tomey approach. You know, there's a lot of guys who have done this. those are two of the most notable ones. But I think for when you look at that are called three true outcome, that three true outcomes are walks, home runs, and strikeouts. And I think when you look at those kind of players, the ones who succeed versus the one who fails are the ones who really understand

the importance of the walks. And that seems kind of obvious. If you're just striking out and hitting home runs and you're not drawing any walks, you're not doing your team a whole lot of good. Whereas if you're walking a lot and hitting a lot of home runs, even if you're striking out a lot, it's not so bad. So I appreciate that Vogelbach understands that. I appreciate that he understands that his home runs are a direct result of how he's plate discipline is,

which is how he's doing drawing walks. So that's really encouraging to me. I'm willing to accept that he's probably not going to hit 130 with three home runs again in the month of September. So looking forward to a hot month for him to kind of finish out the year on a more positive note. Tom Murphy hit another home run, which is just ridiculous. He has 17 home runs on the year. him and Omar Narvaez both are in the top, I believe, sixth now for single season home runs for a Mariners catcher, which is absurd because they're splitting the position. They're in first place in virtually every category for Mariners combined catchers in a season.

I think by a landslide in pretty much every single category. It's the best season we've ever seen for Mariners catchers ever, period. There's no other way to possibly look at this. I love Dan Wilson. I liked Mike Zanina when he came up. Kenji Jojima was okay. Valley, but this is the best season we've ever seen for Mariners catchers, and it's not close. I sincerely hope they can find a way to maybe bring both of these guys back next year.

At least one of them, hopefully keep that position going. I think it's really critical to have veteran catching when you have a young team. I think when you look at teams that rebuild, I think having good catching really does matter. And obviously, if you have young catching that you want to have come up with your young pitching, that makes sense. to me. And I think the Mariners will have that in a couple years when Cal Rally comes up. He's been so experienced catching a lot of the Mariners' best young pitching, and I think that having him debut at a similar time to those guys would be really important. But until then,

have some veterans, have some guys who are good pitchframers, are good at working with pitchers, are good at calling games. If they can hit, great, have that too, which this is what's great as the Mariners have found that. But I think it's critical to have that because otherwise you're just hurting the development of your young pitching. Anyway, the game was awesome. You say Kikuchi threw, he threw pretty well. It wasn't a great start. He only had one strikeout.

He didn't walk anybody, though. Only gave up three runs and five innings pitched. The bullpen was fantastic. They threw four combined innings, one from Dan Altevia, one from Sam Tui, Valula, one from Bannon-Brennan, and one from Austin Adams. All of them looked good. The hitting was obviously great. We talked about Seeger, Vogelbach, Murphy all hit home runs.

Tim Lopes had a double. Vogelbach scored three runs. Malik Smith scored three runs. Tim Lopes scored a couple of runs. It was just an awesome game. Braden Bishop went 0 for four, which was a bit of a bummer. I'm really hoping that he can get going here in the near future. He's only hitting 0.071 with the Mariners.

Obviously, that's a tiny sample size, but I'm not confident that he'll ever be a consistent big league starter. But I do think he has the potential to be an adequate fourth outfielder, and he has not looked like that yet. so hopefully he can kind of get going here in the new future. But hopefully that was a good enough distraction for you during the Cubs game. And now we're going to answer some questions for our Mariners Mailbag Monday 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,

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the Postmates app. Anything you need, anytime you need it, postmate it. Download Postmates and save with code locked on today. All right, welcome back to our Mariners Mailbag Monday segment. I got two questions I'm going to address today. The first one comes from a Facebook reader Jim who asks, which of the players called up in September will have an impact? Well, first of all, it depends.

The Mariners have already called up five players in September. They called up Austin Adams, Dan Altevia, and Brandon Brennan, and then two outfielders in Braden Bishop and Ryan Court. All five of those players have already been in the big leagues this year, so we kind of already have a sense of who they are and what kind of impact they could potentially have. They also don't count towards the Mariners who are barreling towards the record for most players in a season.

So I think they're still going to get to that record, but these five did not count for that. Adams, Altavia, and Brennan are all relievers. They're all fine. The Mariners have a whole group of relievers that kind of feel like they could interchange between AAA and the big leagues. I like Brennan. I do like Dan Altevia stuff a lot, but neither of them have had a ton of success in the big leagues.

I think there's just going to be bullpen arms. Maybe occasionally they'll start a game as a false starter. Maybe they'll get some chances in the late endings, but I don't think that any of them are going to have a huge impact. Braden Bishop, I talked about a little bit earlier. He's fine. He's older guy. I know he's a prospect a lot of people are excited about.

He went to Udub, but he's already, I think, 25, and he's not hitting at all on the big leagues. I think he could become an adequate fourth outfielder, but I wouldn't expect some monstrous turnaround from him this year as much as I would like to see it. I just don't really see it happening. Ryan Court is 31. He was playing in the independent league because it's not that long ago.

Another guy who's just a, he's kind of just a body. play a couple different positions. He's okay with the bat, but he's not going to be anything more than just a utility guy that they run out there when they need somebody in a different spot. So none of those five guys are really people that I would say will, quote, have an impact. But that doesn't mean they're done calling people up. I do think that they're going to wait until the Shannon Dreher of the 710 ESPN wrote an awesome article about this topic. So I'm kind of looking off that a little bit. But I think they're going to wait until the Arkansas Travelers, as their AA team until their season finishes up before they make any of their other call-ups

because a lot of their really talented prospects are in AA. They're not going to call up any of the super huge names that I don't think you're not going to see, obviously you're not going to see Kellanick or Julio Rodriguez or any of those guys. They're way too young. Evan White is a guy a lot of people want to see, but I don't think that that's going to happen either. But two names that I would keep a close eye on are Kyle Lewis, who was the Mariners 2016 first round pick.

Outfitter has been hurt a lot. and a guy that I know people are really excited about. I could see them giving him a shot this year. He hasn't been extraordinary this year. He's played the entire year at AA. He played 121 games, which is great. He's been healthy. He looks good running around, which is awesome.

But he's hitting 260 with a 341 on base percentage, a 397 slugging. He's only got 11 home runs, which is a career high, but it's 11 home runs in 120 games. Three stolen bases. He's got a really good walk rate. 10.9%, but he's striking out 29.4% of the time. That is really high for being in AA, really high. And that concerns me a lot, not just for him this year, if he were a September call-up, but going forward, he's a prospect that I'm a little bit worried about. I'm not going to lie. But I could see them giving him a shot, maybe letting him play some center field,

see how he looks defensively, maybe see if he can kind of cut down on those strikeout issues. So he's a guy that I think that if they do give him a chance, Scott Surveas had a quote in this article from Dreyer where he basically said, he said, you can't play them all. Quote, it leads to too many guys on vacation and sitting around. That's not what we want. We've got a lot to do over the next five weeks. So what he's trying to say is he doesn't want to call up guys who aren't going to play very much.

So I do think if they do give Kyle Lewis a chance, he's going to get a fair amount of time in the outfield, which is fantastic. And so I think that he is a guy who could have an impact because otherwise they're not going to call him up. The other one is Justin Dunn. He's the guy that I would definitely keep an eye on done was one of the other prospects in the really ridiculously one-sided Robinson Canoe Edwin-Dia's trade. Not only did they get Kellanick, they also got done, who was a first rounder in 2016 as well. He's a great starting pitcher.

He's made 25 starts this year in AA. He's got a 9-and-5 record, a 3.55 ERA with a really good 10.8Ks per 9. The problem here is that he's thrown 131 innings this year. that's barely a career high, but it is a career high. I don't think they're going to have him throw a lot more innings. You know, there's no reason to risk hurting a 23-year-old for a team that's well out of contention for a playoff spot. So I'm not sure about it. I would love to see him come up and get a shot in the big leagues.

I think he's going to be really good. I know a lot of people think he's got future bullpen kind of written all over him because he's got a great fastball, a great slider, and his other stuff is only okay. His numbers up to this point indicate that he could be. be a starting pitcher. I think the Mariners, like most teams, would start him as a starting pitcher, give him a shot to do that. And if he struggles, then push him into the bullpen eventually, which is why I don't think that we'll call him up this year. I'm not confident because I don't think they'd call him up to start because they don't want to limit his innings. And I don't see why

they'd call him up as a reliever if they're planning to make him a starter all along. Some teams do this. The White Sox are very famous for calling up like Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Carson Fulmer. Almost all of their pitchers have come up as relievers. And then transition to starters. The brewers do it as well. So maybe the Mariners will try it with Justin Dunn, but I kind of think that he's going to finish out the season in AA. He's going to throw one or two more games with them, and then that's going to be it for his season. But if he does come up, he would be an answer to that question. I'm already running a little bit long with the last guy that I wanted to talk about on this one with Shedlong. Shedlong came up with the Mariners

a little bit earlier in the year. He looked okay. He didn't look great, but he was adequate. But there's been some reports that he may not come up. He's been really hurt this year. had a fractured finger, he had some other injuries, he only played 53 games in the minor leagues. There's a chance that they just rest him and just try to let him get healthy. If he does come up, I'd like him. I'd like to see him do well as well. J.P. Crawford is getting a hamstring strain examined, so there's a chance that if he's going to be out for a while, and obviously Tim Beckham is not around, they could call up

shed long and let him try to play in the infield of fair amount. Donnie Walton, I guess I have one more. Donnie Walton is the Arkansas shortstop. He's hitting 298 with a three. 389 on base percentage as the leadoff hitter for the Arkansas team. So he could get a chance as well, although he's not on the 40-man roster and not really a guy that they had pegged as a big-time big league contributor. But, you know, when you're, you got a 389 on base percentage in the minor leagues, you're going to get a shot. So hopefully they can maybe take a look at him as well.

All right. I know I said we were going to get to two questions, but I ran quite a bit long on that question. So we're just going to call it for that for Mailbag Monday. Stay tuned to listen for our 13 Mariners' birthdays that we're going to be celebrating. today. All right, it has been a few days since I recorded, so we are a little bit behind on our birthdays. I'm not going to go into as much detail as I normally would for these guys today, so I apologize to them if they, for some reason, happened to be listening. But anyway, August 30th was last Friday. We missed that. There was three birthdays on Friday. One of them was

left-hander Cliff Lee, who's turning 41. The other one is first baseman, Bucky Jacobson, who turned 44. I loved Bucky Jacobson as a kid. I remember the season that he can. came up and I absolutely crushed it. I am sorry I can't dedicate more time to talking about him. Maybe we'll have him as a throwback Thursday podcast someday, but anyway, happy 44th to him. Last for that day is catcher Henry Blanco, who turned 48. August 31st was Saturday. There was quite a few birthdays on Saturday.

First up is John Hicks, who turned 30. John Hicks is now on the Tigers. You may remember he was a catching prospect, who came up and played third base for the Mariners. And then he absolutely crushed the ball against Seattle. He was about the only good Detroit hitter in the series against the Mariners at home. Anyway, happy 30th to him. Next up is Steve Johnson, who turned 32, followed by Juan Naccio. You may remember him.

He was on the team a few years ago. He turned 33. Another former Detroit Tiger, Ramon Santiago, he turned 40. He was famously traded for Carlos Guienne. That was not a good trade for the Mariners. The last three are Jack Percante, who turned 65, and two players celebrating their 66th birthday, Bill Nahardoni. Apologize for if I mispronounce that.

And Juan Bernhardt. September 1st, that was yesterday. We only had one birthday to celebrate. That was former Mariners outfielder Trayvon Robinson. It seems like forever ago that he was making his debut with the Mariners and kind of had a really hot start and then faded away, but he's only 32. And then finally, we have two birthdays to celebrate today. Former infielder Rich Aurelia, who turned 48.

Aurelia was a stud for the San Francisco Giants. He played a little bit for the Seattle Mariners. I think he got a little bit of help from Barry Bonds and whatever he was taking during that time. But regardless, happy 48th to him. And last but not least, happy 54th birthday to Jose Melendez. All right, coming up on Tuesday, I'm going to recap Seattle's series opener against the Cubs, which is probably happening right now as you're listening to it. And we're going to talk a little bit about minor league baseball.

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, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening and go Mariners.