Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - 9-9-19 Locked on Mariners Episode 20: How should Mariners fans feel about Danny Hultzen reaching the big leagues?

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

The Seattle Mariners got absolutely worked over the weekend, losing to the Astros in all three games - with a combined score of 30-6. Host Andy Patton talks about how disastrous the series was, although he finds a few bright spots in the play of Daniel Vogelbach and Yusei Kikuchi.Then, Patton takes two fan questions; one about the MLB debut of Danny Hultzen, a longtime Mariners farmhand who came up with the Cubs, and another about the juiced baseballs and what kind of impact they will have on major league baseball. 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 were outscored 30 to 6 by the Houston Astros over the weekend in an altogether embarrassing display of September baseball. I'll regrettably be talking about that here in segment one before moving on to our Mariners Monday mailbag segment in segment two, where I'll be taking questions about former Mariner Danny Holson's big league debut.

with the Cubs and the legacy that will be left behind by the juiced baseballs of 2019. Finally, we have nine Mariner birthdays to celebrate from over the weekend and today, including a franchise icon. 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'ixtaping, is giving our listeners $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. To start your free deliveries, download the app, and use code locked on. Man, all right, I knew when I started doing a Mariners podcast that we might have some days like this where we have to talk about things that aren't the most fun thing in the world. And getting outscored 30 to 6 by the Astros over the weekend is one of those things. It was, the first two games weren't so bad.

For those of you who didn't happen to watch and are just catching up over the weekend, the first game was 7 to 4. It wasn't a great game by any means, but it was passable. The second game was 2 to 1, really solid pitching on both sides. Justin Verlander got the edge over Yisei Kikuchi. And then the last game, things really just fell apart. The final score was a horrific 21-1. On the first NFL Sunday of the season, it certainly looked like part of a football score. Obviously, you can't score one point in the NFL, but 21 certainly looks like what you'd expect to see from a Seahawks game, not necessarily a Mariners game.

So that was a bit unfortunate. I'm going to go through each game one by one, just give them each kind of a couple minutes to talk about what happened, what we saw, maybe some, hopefully some good and bad. At least I'll try my best. Like I said, first game was seven to four. The starter for the Mariners was they went with an opener. They went with Reggie McLean. He was bad. It was kind of reminiscent of earlier in the season when their openers were really.

struggling. They've been doing a lot better lately, but didn't work out in this one. He gave up three runs. He walked two, three hits. Not a good ending for him. Tommy Malone came in. Wasn't a whole lot better. He gave up three earned runs, four total runs, three hits, one walk, five strikeouts, gave up a home run to Josh Reddick. Malone has been fairly inconsistent for the last couple months. He had a solid start to the year, but has not looked as good lately. I think this is just kind of Tommy Malone, you know. He's a guy that I would love to. He's a guy that I would love to not see pitch that much down the stretch, just because he's a veteran guy, he's the soft lefty, a lot like Wade LeBlanc. We kind of know what we have in Tommy Malone. I don't think he's

a part of the future. I certainly hope that he's not a part of the future. So, you know, 4.98 ERA, 3 and 9 record, just kind of a guy that I think once the Mariners, now that the Mariners have a deeper bullpen, they should, you might as well give it to younger guys, let them throw. If they throw bad, at least they're ideally developing and going forward. Whereas with Tommy Malone, and if he throws bad, it's kind of just, you know, a veteran guy having a bad outing, and it doesn't really do a whole lot for your team's future. So anyway, that's kind of how that game went. Dan Vogelbach homered, he hit his 30th home run of the year.

That was probably, if not one of the best, maybe the best thing that happened over the weekend. You know, it's really great to see him get to 30 home runs. He absolutely deserves it. He's had a fantastic year, even if he's fallen off pretty significantly in the second half. His September has been better than his August, and hopefully he can finish strong, maybe even get up to 33, 34, maybe even 35 home runs. Malick Smith stole his 40th base, I suppose that was exciting as well. Tim Lopes had a solid game.

He's looked pretty good since he came up. Other than that, not a whole lot to talk about in this game. It was the Mariners scored two in the first, but gave up three in the first as well. So just their struggles in the first inning kind of continued in that one. But the second game was significantly better. The Mariners didn't, the offense didn't show up. It was better pitching-wise, I guess, we'll say. The offense did not show up at all.

They only got six hits. They struck out ten times. They only walked once. Dee Gordon had a great game. He went three for three with a triple. He stole his 22nd base of the year. He had a fantastic game. The rest of the offense combined to do almost nothing.

Tim Lopes got a hit. Shed Long got a hit. Omar Narvae's got a hit. That was it. Justin Verlander pretty much shut him down. He threw seven innings. Only gave up one run, seven strikeouts. is the RA to 2.52 and he has an 18 and 5 record on the year. He was pushing hard for a

Sy Young. He got out-duled by his teammate Garrett Cole in the Say Young vote. We will get to that in a second. But you say Kukuchi, the reason I wasn't sure that Verlanders, or excuse me, Vogelbott's 30th home run was the most exciting thing that happened over the weekend was because I was really excited to see Yusay Kikuchi throw well. He's been all over the place this year. I really thought that a date with the Astros when their lineup is pretty well healthy. They played most of their studs. Obviously, they did not play Carlos Correa, who's still hurt, but everybody else played in this one. Ellen George Springer, he's hurt, too.

But still, it was nice to see Kikuchi, five innings pitched, only gave up five hits, walked two, struck out five. Only gave up one run, which was a home run to Alex Bregman. Nothing wrong with that. He did labor a little bit. He threw 92 pitches in five innings. That's not great, especially when you only strike out five and walk two. He just kind of struggled to get through at bats a lot in this one. but it was encouraging to see him throw well against a really good offense that's clearly

peaking right now as we'll like I said get you a little bit on the following game but he's still got a 5.24 ERA on the year on the year still a disappointment in his first season in Seattle I think it's hard to argue with that but especially down the stretch when he's been struggling presumably because he's thrown more innings than he should it was nice to see him come out and have a good start this was probably the best thing I saw this weekend he was doing what he did in his complete game shut out against Toronto Fastball's up, breaking balls down, keeping hitters off balance that way. He's never going to overpower people with his fastball, but if he can locate well, he can be a successful big league pitcher,

and the fact that he did it against a hot-hitting Houston team is proof of that. All right, let's talk about Sunday. For those of you who watch this game, I'm sorry. I hope you switch to football sooner rather than later. For those of you who are not football fans, I'm sorry if you labored through this one at all. The only solace was that Shedlong prevented it from being a perfect game, a shutout, and a no-hitter. He managed to eliminate all of that by hitting a home run. Barely a home run.

It was 338 feet. Barely cleared the wall. But you know what? That doesn't matter. He hit a home run. He prevented it from being any of those things. I was one of those games where Garrett Cole didn't need to pitch that well because his team gave him an ungodly amount of run support. And the Astros didn't really need to provide that much run support because Garrett Cole pitched

really well. They just happened to do both things in one day and just kind of absolutely flummoxed the Mariners. Garrett Cole, eight innings pitched, one earned run, only one hit, the shed long home run, no walks, 15 strikeouts, eight absolutely phenomenal performance. Very unfortunate it was against the Mariners. The Mariners have not hit the Astros pitching very well. Obviously, they got no hit by Aaron Sanchez and company a few weeks ago. Yeah, the offense just was absolutely not there. It was embarrassing. And not just not from that perspective as much. The Mariners

have had games where their offense didn't show up before, but to do that on a day where you also give up a 20 spot to the other team is less than ideal. King Felix is on the bump. It was tough. It was depressing to watch. He only threw two innings. He gave up seven hits,

seven earned runs, 11 total runs, but a D. Gordon-Air kind of helped mitigate the damage to his ERA, I guess. He walked two. He only struck out one. He gave up a home run to Jake Mariznick. Weirdly, the Astros only hit two home runs in this one. Jake Mariznick hit a home run and George Springer hit a home run. That was it. And the rest of the runs were scored more organically than that. After Felix came out after just two innings, he threw 63 pitches. Eric Swanson gave up two runs. Wade LeBlancke

came in. He gave up three runs. Reggie McLean continued his horrific weekend. He gave up five-run runs. Zach Gratz was the only pitcher in the game who did not give up any runs. He lowered his ERA to 3.09 and probably moved himself up a little bit on the list of relievers for Scott Surveus to go to. Yeah, it's just one of those days. I mean, I guess I'd rather it all happen in one game if it means you're going to bounce back. Clearly, it didn't help the Mariners much because they didn't win either of the other games either. Looking at the Astros box score is just kind of jaw-dropping.

Yordaun Alvarez went four for six. with six RBIs. Miles Straw came in as a pinch runner and went three for three with three runs scored. Jake Mariznick, three for six. Abraham Toro, two for five. You guys don't need me to go through all of this. It was not pretty, not pretty in the least. But it's over.

They got a day to recover. They don't have a game today. They will take on Cincinnati for a three-game series after this. We're going to talk about that a little bit tomorrow. But, yeah, not a fun year for the Mariners against the Astros, which I guess is to be expected, but it was even uglier than I think anybody could have imagined. All right, we can move on from that. And coming up, I'm going to answer some fan questions about how Mariner fans should feel about Danny Holtson,

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For those of you who don't remember, he was kind of one of the trio of it was Holton, Taiwan Walker, and James Paxton. And the Mariners kind of had this vision of those three being their next kind of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder-type trio at the top of their rotation. Obviously did not work out that well. Holton never made it to the major leagues with the Mariners. Taiwan Walker had some success, was traded in that big deal with Mitch Hanager and Cotel Marte, had Tommy John surgery.

He, I think, will be a solid big league pitcher eventually. He's still pretty young. I do think he's got some potential, but obviously is not going to happen in a Mariners uniform. And James Paxton was the third piece. He obviously was the success story. He had a great couple years with the Mariners, got traded over to the Yankees in the trade that brought them, Justice Sheffield, Dom Thompson, Williams, and Eric Swanson. So the Mariners hit on really only one of the three, but all three of them have now officially made the major leagues.

Danny Holtzun debuted with the Chicago Cubs yesterday. He struck out three batters. He did give up a hit by pitch and a hit to put two runners on base before he struck out the next three guys. He looked good. 94 with his fastball, breaking stuff looked good. I mean, he's not the starting pitcher, obviously, that the Mariners had hoped he would become, but he looks like he has the potential to be a big league caliber bullpen piece for maybe eight to nine, ten years even.

I mean, he's only 27 still, so despite the fact that it feels like he's been around for literally ever, excuse me, he's 29. So he has a little bit less time than I would have expected, but he could still be a solid big league pitcher for five or six years. And that would be great. I personally am absolutely rooting for Danny Holson, and I believe that every Mariners fan should root for Danny Holtz. That's not what the question was.

The question was should they question it? And I suspect that what the Twitter user means is, was there something the Mariners did or they didn't see or some kind of fault for the Mariners for letting Danny Holtzum go and now he's up and healthy in pitching? I obviously don't know the answer to this definitively. There's not any way for me to know that. I tend to not fault the Mariners in this specific case.

For starters, it's not like Danny Holt. Holton is going to go out and win a Syung. The best case scenario is he's a high-quality lugy, which I'm not saying the Mariners couldn't use that. But, you know, the Mariners' contention windows looking like 2021. Danny Holtson will be 31, 32, and at best case, he's a quality lugy. If that's all they gave up here, I think that's okay. Holton, his minor league career was very good. His numbers were exceptional.

He was just hurt so much. He had two season ending surgeries. He had Tommy Don surgery. He missed the entire 2017 season. He missed the entire 2014 season. Between 2015 and 2016, he only threw 10 innings. So we're talking about a guy who, after the 2013 season and before the 2018 season, that's a span of four complete seasons, Danny Holtzson threw 10 innings.

Two of them were in rookie ball. Eight of them were in AA. That's it. That's all he threw. It's really, really hard to believe that a guy is going to make some kind of comeback after missing that amount of time. It's sad. You know, I felt for Danny Holson quite a bit, especially because the innings that he did put in for the Mariners were really good. 2012, he threw 25 starts.

He threw 124 innings. He had a 3.05 ERA. You know, really solid stuff. He threw 35 innings in 2013 with a 2.02 ERA. That was between AAA and rookie ball. He had stuff, you know. There was a reason to believe he would be very good, but his arm betrayed him. You know, I don't fault any team for giving up on a guy who threw 10 endings between four combined seasons.

You know, and yes, it's not like the Mariners had a ton invested in him, you know. They weren't paying him any more than you pay any other minor leaguer. He already had earned whatever signing bonus he got from being grafted in 2011. It's not like they could recoup that by cutting him. So I could see the argument to be made of like, well, why even give up on him at all? Like why not just keep him on the payroll since it's virtually nothing and see if he can make a comeback? I mean, obviously the Cubs took a chance on him. He didn't even look that great in the minor leagues for the Cubs, to be honest.

But he pitched well enough that they were like, okay, let's give this guy a shot. And now he's up, and now he's conceivably going to be a part of their bullpen for the rest of the season. I would be shocked if he makes the playoff roster unless there's some injuries or he pitches extremely well. But, yeah, so I can understand that argument of like why not just let him. try, you know, like you've invested so much in him already. Why not let him keep going? But again, from the Mariners' perspective and for the future of the franchise, he doesn't fit in anymore. You know, he didn't, he didn't reach his peak at the time that the Mariners were kind of hoping that he would through no fault of his, you know, it's just what happened. But I think that now

it's time to let him go. And honestly, I think this is a good thing for Danny Holson. I don't think that the Mariners intended, like, let's let him go to a contender and pitch well. I don't think that they necessarily wanted that. because I think if they thought, oh, he's going to come up this year and be an effective pitcher, they might have kept him. But instead, he's over there. He's got a chance to contend for a playoff spot. And his window is not very long, and the Mariners don't really, you know, they don't have a spot for him. So I think it worked out for the best for Danny Holtson, and I don't think it's a huge loss for the Mariners.

So I'm not going to say that they're at fault or that Mariners fan should be upset that this happened. I think you should be happy for Danny Holtson. I think it's just a thing where him being selected didn't work out for reasons that were kind of outside of everybody's control. And now you just kind of move on. All right. So the second question is a long paragraph. It's a whole bunch of questions. I was going to take some out, but I'm going to try to just address all of them one by one.

So it's from Doug on Twitter. And Doug asked, You mentioned the juiced baseballs a lot. Do you think they are juiced enough that there should be an asterisk next to players' names if they are breaking records or have an inflated batting average? Do you think pitching stats are inflated so a high ERA is more normal? Do you think they should fix the baseballs or maybe expand the strike zone to give pitchers a better chance? Or do you think it's more fun seeing more home runs or is it a small enough difference that it's just worth mentioning the juice baseballs? So there's a lot there.

I'm going to go through them one by one here kind of quickly because we're running a little bit long on time, which if you listen to the podcast, you're kind of used to hear me say that. But do I think they're just enough that there should be an asterisk next to players' names? No. Well, no, I don't think there should be an asterix next to players' names. The balls are hilariously juiced. I think it's very obvious that that's happening. The home run numbers are absolutely obscene this year. It seems like everybody who's decent already has 30 home runs.

But Asterix should be reserved for when there are players who have an unfair advantage over other players. That's not the case this year. Catele-Marte has 32 home runs. Eugenio Suarez has 44 home runs. Jorge Saler has 40 home runs. everybody's hitting a whole bunch of dingers. And so I don't think that there needs to be, like, you'd have to, like, mark off the entire era. And there've been so many weird eras of baseball.

There was the deadball era. There was the first live ball era. There was the year of the pitcher. Like, this has happened so many times in so many different eras. And we don't asterisk any of them. You know, we acknowledge it. You know, Danny McLean went 31 and 6 with an ERA under two. Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA.

But the mound was a freaking cathedral on top of the, field. It was like 15 feet high, you know, so they, obviously not that high, but it was way up there and they lowered it and then hitting became big again. Like it, the steroid era is a little bit different because there were players who had a distinct advantage over other players. We'll never know the extent of how many players had that advantage versus how many didn't, which makes that era much murkier and harder to read. This era, we know everybody has a juice ball. So it doesn't change it to me, in my opinion. The next part was, do you think pitching stats are inflated? so a high ERA is more normal. Yes, I mean, that is the case. There aren't guys with ERAs.

You know, very few guys have ERA below three, Verlander and Cole or two of them. But everybody's ERA is up. And then so yes, that's a case. I think that that, again, because all the balls are juiced, it's affecting everybody. Some pitchers are being affected a little bit more than others just because they're more flyball pitchers. And that's a little bit unfair, but it's, you know, I don't think that that's such a devastating issue that it needs to be changed. I don't think the strike zone needs to be expanded. I don't really care if they fix the baseballs. I do think they're a little over the top, and I wouldn't mind them in changing them a little bit so that it's not quite this ridiculous, and I think that they will make some adjustments.

Baseballs tried weirdly to defend that this isn't a thing that's happening, which is bizarre because the baseballs are very clearly altered. But I think that they'll change it a little bit to try to find more of a balance, but I think that you just kind of have to accept there's going to be a few years here where the the numbers are just super inflated and it's kind of unfair and it will affect some pitchers paydays you know pitchers won't get as big of contracts because they had high airs because of the juice ball and that sucks but it's just a thing that happens and so that kind of the last question is is it a small enough difference that it's just worth mentioning yeah that's what i think i think you just mentioned that

hey that was the juice ball era and that's why this guy hit so many home runs and that's it and you kind of just move on from there uh baseball's not perfect this is kind of what i love about the game is like I grew up learning about the dead ball era and the live ball era and the era, the year of the pitcher on the big mound and all those eras. And like, now we get to live through them. I've lived through the steroid era. And now I'm living through the juice ball era. And so I kind of just think it's fun.

I get that Justin Verlander and other pitchers don't think it's that fun because it's affecting them and it's affecting their career and their payday. And that's a bummer, but that was going to happen. It's just kind of how baseball works. Verlander cannot put up numbers that Bob Gibson put up because he doesn't pitch on a huge mound. That's a bummer. But that's just how it goes.

So anyway, those are kind of my takes on those two questions. We're going to get into segment three here in just a second, where we're going to talk about the nine upcoming birthdays. All right. So as usual, we are running a little bit short on time, and with nine birthdays, I'm not going to spend the normal amount of time on all of them. I'm just going to say their name and how old they're turning. So we'll start with September 7th, which was Saturday.

We missed the three birthdays from that day. Those would be Aaron Looper, who is turning 43, Darren Bragg, who is turning 50, and Rick Sweet, who turned 67. Then on Sunday, September 8th, we had one active birthday, that was Dan Altavilla, who was 27th birthday will be forever associated with a 21-1 deficit against the Astros. We also had a birthday for Chance Ruffin, who turned 31, former right-handed pitcher Gilmesh, who turned 41, and Bob Wolcott, who turned 46. Finally, today's birthdays, there are two of them.

One of them is former left-hander Mike Hampton, who is certainly not known for his time with the Mariners, because he had a very productive career as a left-handed pitcher and slugging hitter throughout the 90s. And the last one, and certainly not least, in this case is Mr. Mariner himself, Alvin Davis, the Mariners' first superstar. He was the 1984 All-Star Rookie of the Year, one of the best players in franchise history, and he is celebrating his 59. birthday. All right, coming up tomorrow, I will preview Seattle's upcoming series against the Cincinnati Reds, and we will talk about one of my favorite Mariners prospects, right-handed pitcher

Justin Dunn. 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 Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, and go Mariners.