Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Already Time For Changes in the Mariners' Bullpen?

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

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The first series of the year is in the books, which means it's time for our first mailbag Monday of the regular season. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Ahoy, Sailors, it is Monday, March 31st, 2025. This is Tedding Gazzalus and Colby Patnode for the Lockdown Marers Podcast. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.

This episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Now new customers can get $200 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. And as always, if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, you can check out our Patreon. All you have to do to check that out is click the link in the description of this episode. It is time to open the mailbag like we do here every Monday and answer some of your marriage questions following a four-game split with the A's this weekend. OSG wants to know bullpen seems shaky this first series.

any quick fixes from now until brash and Taylor are back. In terms of roster moves, there's one that quickly comes to mind, and it's the move that the mayor is frankly just should have made coming out of spring training. That's DFA Carlos Vargas and get Casey Legamina up here. The other one that I would consider is sending Taylor Saucedo down and bringing up Drew Pomeranz. But I can understand why maybe they would wait to do that. that because pomerans would have to be carried on the 26 man from that point forward you would

have to dfam again if you don't want him on the roster maybe that's not a huge deal to them but yeah uh i would consider doing that as well because pomerans look pretty good especially towards the end of the spring he has track record and all that and the fastball actually grated out really well uh but legamina over vargas i think that's a no-brainer i would also consider fujanami over vargas yeah yeah Fujimi has my early options as well though so

yeah the thing with roster moves is that it doesn't appear barring a setback at least that Brash and Taylor

it does appear they're both going to probably be back by the middle of April yeah so yeah I saw Brash actually throw a bullpen

at T-Mobile yesterday and obviously it's like not like I can see the radar gun or anything like that. And I'm not the guy who stands directly behind home plate and is like, oh, look at the spin. Look at this video I took.

So no, I can't tell you. But we had a man on the scene, baby. That's right. I just saw him pitch. And I actually recognized him, which is unusual for me.

I'm not good with faces. So he is not. No. It's really bad. Yeah. Jersey numbers as well. I feel like I do okay with jersey numbers. Those of you who watch or watch who listen to CTCZ.

Let us know how good Colby is with Jersey numbers. I think you guys know very well at this point. Pretty good. Pretty good. It's the faces. But anyways, yeah, so any kind of like move you make is going to be short term. So like if you hopefully short term. So like you add Pomerantz right now, you probably have to DFAM in a couple weeks.

But not necessarily again. The only guys in the Mariners bullpen with options are Sos Sato and. Santos. Santos, yeah. And you're not sending down Santos. He looks pretty good, although we'll call it effectively wild

in his first two appearances. So, yeah. Who was that paradea yesterday that he nearly decapitated? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Just set the tone, you know.

But yeah, I think honestly, the biggest thing that they could do is start using the pitchers in a role that they're actually suited for. Like maybe don't use your fifth best reliever. in a tie game in the eighth or up by one in the eighth against the middle or the two best hitters

and the other team's lineup. I don't know, maybe use Andres Munoz for that. If you trust Thornton that much, then why not have them pitch to the ninth and, you know, face four, five, six instead.

Just kind of a weird decision there. Also, may I make a suggestion? If you are a Mariners reliever and, you know, there's an infield pop-up, maybe let your third basement or your catcher take it. Yeah, I mean, aside from that,

Snyder looked fine. no that that that's what was annoying about that inning was he actually threw the ball really well it's just you know he made a big oopsie kind of uh kind of a weekend in in totality right there big yeah but yeah yeah not so much you getting beat just you losing like yeah but yeah i'd rather have schneider pitch that inning i would rather have uh you know obviously munio's i'd rather have Santos. So there's right there is three. But I think, you know, obviously, look, they're going to be early in the season. There are going to be days where they're not going to use pitchers back to back if they can help and all that, yada, yada, yada. But yeah, start utilizing

the bullpen in the most efficient way, maximizing the leverages and whatnot. That would also help, as well as, you know, getting rid of the dead weight and bringing up the guy who actually should have been on the opening day roster anyways. You might as well just do that now. So, because at some point, we know. Look at me in our dude, man. I just, and I don't, I don't, I don't, don't see it with Vargas and I didn't see it in the outing that he had the other night where he gave a poem right to Luis Arias of all people. I could be wrong, but I think I remember looking at the at the stack cast data on on Vargas. I don't like he generated a whiff. Didn't generate a single swing and miss.

Which has kind of been his problem since he's gotten to the organization. You throw, you know, 100 miles an hour with like a 94 mile an hour, 95 mile an hour cutter. You should be missing some bats and he just doesn't. So yeah, so get rid of the dead weight, get some actual help here and start utilizing guys in a role that they're better suited to flourish in. Asking, you know, asking Trent Thornton to get out Brent Rooker in a one run game is a mistake. That is a bad idea. Got away with it yesterday, literally, but that's a bad idea. That's a stupid idea.

You have to start utilizing your bullpen in a way that it is built to be utilized, which is your highest leverage guy going in in the highest leverage moment. against their best hitters. That means Munoz has to pitch the eighth, so be it. And maybe just maybe when Brash comes back, maybe they'll feel more comfortable using Munoz earlier or, well, they'll just use Brash probably. But yeah, until those guys come back, you need to actually have the eight best relievers in your organization

on the roster right now. And you need to utilize them the way that they are supposed to be utilized, not the way you wish you could utilize them. Because Trent Thornton has no business pitching high leverage situations against, you know, the other team's best hitters. None. Never should happen. And that's something we saw last year as well.

I just think the organization for some reason really, really likes him. It's another... I like him too. Just solid, like mid-leverage guy. Yeah, I like him in the role that he should be in. Yeah. But they like him more than that, which I think some of that is just due to what other options they have available to them.

right now but also i think they legitimately think he can handle that and i like you can get away with it sometimes like you did yesterday barely brent rucker squares that ball up probably a different story but yeah but uh yeah overall that's just not a guy that i want to throw in those situations unless it's like this guy is down for the day this guy is down for the day so i i just like Thorntons are like our second or third best guy who's available. Like yeah, but yesterday it's like, why are you having Santos pitch the seventh when he's facing like what,

six, seven, eight? Like that's when you use Thornton is against six, seven, eight in the seventh. And you use Santos with a fresh inning in the eighth. And so they don't trust Gregory Santos apparently yet. Well, yeah, so that's what I was going to say is like, I guess that's indicative of,

or more so indicative of how they feel about Santos. right now than maybe yeah i guess Snyder through you know quite a few pitches yesterday so he probably was down or on saturday so he was probably down yesterday like i get it but also just like just flip those two guys

yeah yeah some of the bullpen decisions um particularly on on opening day and then yesterday were a little weird dan had a rough weekend yeah wasn't great um yeah and obviously you know it's a collaborative of effort whatever you know i do think like some of this is

just organization determined because like we saw some of this especially the Thornton stuff under Scott as well yeah didn't see nearly as many stupid buntz though yeah that's a that's a that's all another conversation uh all right shock and get thrown out at home yesterday too we are going to answer more of your questions in just a moment but first a reminder this episode of the lockdown marriage podcast it's brought to you by fanduil All right, folks, it's that time of year again. March Madness is finally here and Fandul is giving you the chance to get in on the action like never before. Right now, new customers can get $200 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. That's $200 to use on everything from buzzer beaters to Cinderella stories and even who's cutting down the nets.

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We are right now at the time of this recording at 12,966 subscribers. So we've hit every single one of our goals. except for one, which is 13,000 subscribers, which will get you a signed Lazaro Montes card. Well, we'll get that card added to the grand prize. So, yeah, all you have to do is comment on one of our episodes between, what, two Thursdays ago and this upcoming Thursday. Subscribe to the channel and you're entered. and we will pick a random video and then have a software

pick a random comment from that video and whoever gets that will win what exactly, Colby. Well, right now, the last thing we can add to this is like Ty said is this Lazaro Montez autograph card and that will come if we hit 13,000

in the next three days essentially. So already in the prize packs. One person is walking away with $125,000. of Simply Seattle gift certificates plus this autograph Victor Robles card this autographed J.P. Crawford card. This autograph A. Eugenio Suarez card.

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etc let's get back into your questions Campbell wants to know what did y'all think of ryan bliss in the first series yeah uh i thought bliss look good uh you know you kind of saw what the floor is with ryan bliss and it's that he's going to take his walks.

He's shown that he's willing to do that. He's going to create havoc on the bases for better or worse sometimes. He's a very good base dealer. And we saw the difference that his range makes at second base. It's night and day. I know what the Mariners have had really since, I mean, Canoe. He's the most athletic second baseman they've had even since then. He's very good defensively.

You know, arm is always going to be a question for him, but he got rid of the ball pretty quickly. And you feel really comfortable when a ground ball's hit to second base. Whereas, you know, the last few years, you kind of now that's just shifted over to third base, unfortunately. But yeah, I thought Bliss looked good. He looked good in the field. He looked good, comfortable running the bases. He didn't seem overmatched in most of his at-bats.

He's got some things to work on the high fastball, so giving him a little bit of a trouble. But yeah, obviously he needs to improve at the plate. But just based on what we saw in the field defensively and on the bases, I think it's safe to say that. Bliss handled himself just fine this weekend. And if he does start to hit, he's an everyday player. So I feel pretty comfortable about Ryan Bliss and where he's at right now. He was probably their third best position player in this series,

which, to be fair, kind of a low bar to clear, given how the team overall perform. If we were factoring in defense too, I'd say you could probably make an argument for second. Yeah, he was pretty. impactful in a multitude of ways. I really like the play that he made going to his left, where he was able to turn and made a nice,

accurate throw to JP for the double play. He had a really good series defensively. So I'm excited to see how that progresses. And again, like, even if he doesn't hit a ton, if he's doing that, like making an impact on the bases and playing defense the way that he did this series, that's an easy to win season. Yeah.

if he can draw walks and he can hit for a little bit of pop, the batting average is kind of going to take care of itself. Yeah. He's going to walk 12% of the time, play that defense, steal those bases. If he even runs into 12 to 15 homers, he could probably hit 200, and you're still going to get a 2-1 player out of that. So we'll see. Obviously, it's a long season.

The league's going to start to get a book on him a little bit, not that he's had a ton of success at the plate this year, but we'll see how they adjust to him and how he adjust to them and all that. That's always the big question. but yeah i thought bliss looked uh you know rock solid uh this weekend and uh he started three of the four games at second base so yeah yeah it it seems like he's you know garnering some trust and it should and it should stay that way yeah i agree yeah r cn nitro wants to know thoughts on randy so far he seems to be squaring up the ball just seems to be getting unlucky yeah um outside of horier polanco

he was probably the most locked in mariners hitter in the series um and he went one for 12 right Uh, but impactful hit though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he made that lone hit count and then some. Um, yes, like you said, he was really unlucky. Six hard hit balls over the course of the series. He had the, the, the one that was rope right to second base.

I mean, he had two of basically the same, uh, out, uh, to, uh, Max Muncie. Um, and I think Friday and Saturday's game, no, Thursday in Saturday's games. And the Saturday one was the most brutal. because you had bases loaded, no outs, and he hits a ball 105 off of the bat right to Muncie for the double play. And then, like, had another one that was, like, 112 off of the bat.

And then yesterday, he hits a ball to dead center that was, like, 105 off of the bat. And apparently the win killed it by, like, 28 projected feet. Yeah. So on a normal day, that ball would have gone over the wall. Yeah. And, yeah, so it was just a brutal, like really good, even great process, just awful, brutal results for Randy.

Yeah, I texted my good friend, Ben Renneri, and I said that, like, Randy has had, like, the best bad series I've ever seen in my life. So he's dialed in. Also made some pretty decent, you know, defensive plays out there in left field, too. And so, yeah, Randy definitely looks like he's seen the ball pretty well. It's just bad luck right now. And that really sucks, not only for Randy, but for the Marin. Aaroners right now because there's only a handful of guys having good plate appearances.

And one of the guys who is isn't producing quite yet. And so, yeah, it's like, you know, as bad as Julio was until his last swing, as bad as JP was, as bad as Cal was. You really needed somebody to step up. And to his credit, Randy tried. Like he had plenty of hard hit balls. He should have better numbers. but again this is why baseball is baseball right it's four games then they'll even out you hope but yeah randy just mostly bad luck i've actually quite excited with what i saw from randy this weekend

side eye dumper at see us dump wants to know in a small sample Mitch garver's bat speed is over two miles power faster than it was a year ago encouraging sign sure uh i thought he actually didn't have that bad of a series um he like randhi yesterday hit a ball that in normal conditions would have gone over the wall, but it was just killed by the wind. And then he had a single what on Friday? Yeah, he had one hit. And yet his expected batting average over the weekend was 405. So yeah, he squared some things up.

It's, again, we are at such a small number of games that it's even too small to call the sample size, a small sample size. That makes sense. So keep that in mind, obviously, here. But you look at his savant page so far. It's a lot of red. It's a lot of red. The bat speed's now about league average. The Ks are fine. Like he struck out, I think twice in nine-play appearances, I believe is what it is.

He also walked. He also drew a walk. Average exit Velo right now, 94.9% or 94.9 miles per hour, I should say. So, like, yeah, he squared it up this week, a bit of bad luck. But yeah, overall, again, much like with Randy, it's like, I think you're pretty encouraged by that. and I would like to see him get even more at-bats. I think nine plate appearances, eight played appearances in a four-game series is a pretty stupid process.

I think you want to see him. I want to see him play like I talked about pretty much every day, either a DH or catcher or maybe even some first base. I mean, if Rowdy Telles can do it, how hard can it be? So, yeah, I think Garber needs to be in the lineup more. I want to see this play out. But yeah, I think you walk away from the series. Pretty encouraged from Garver,

much like you do, Randy, even though the numbers aren't really there. The process, the results aren't there. The process looks better and there was a tangible change to the mechanics that could explain why the success is happening. It's not just luck, right? There was a change that was made. And we'll have to see how it plays out over a bigger sample.

But overall, yeah, I think you have to be pretty encouraged by what you saw from Garber too. You're listening to the Locktime Marries podcast. It is Mailbag Monday. We got a question from Peter who wants to know it's not high on the list of issues, but is there a reason to be concerned about Dylan Moore's ability to square up the 92 to 94 mile per hour fastballs in the middle of the zone that he saw all weekend or is this just typical early season rust? I assume that you're asking this specifically because of the fastball that he missed from Sears yesterday. I think it was like 93 or 93 down the pipe and he just swung right through it. He's always been pretty bad at hitting the fastball, particularly in the zone.

I was going to say this isn't typical. early season, Russ, this is typical Dylan Moore. Yeah. Like, we know who Dylan Moore is now, guys. Yeah. I looked it up earlier because, you know, we were planning on the answer this question and like,

I wasn't able to filter it where I could get in zone swing and miss and like have it like sorted for a leaderboard on the team. But in terms of just Dylan Moore versus fast balls, which you would think a lot of them are going to be in the zone anyway.

He was like he's been second on the team. Second, he's had like the highest or second highest with rate on the team. And like each of the last like three or four seasons, 30%, 29% etc. So he's just been really bad about, you know,

at hitting the fastball. Now when he squares it up, does some damage with it. Yeah. But, you know, and that's, that's what's kind of most frustrating about this.

It's like you know he can do damage with those pitches. So he just can't consistently. get the bat on the ball. No, there's nothing new with Dylan Moore. He's got a groove swing. So when everything goes right and he makes contact, it's going to get hit hard, he's just going to swing and miss a lot.

Yeah. That's just who he is. And again, this is year seven of Dillmore, six of Dillmore. I think this is a seventh season. Yeah, this is a seven season.

Yeah. Like, he's pretty much been the same guy since the day he got here. I don't know why we keep expecting something different. from Dillemore. He is who he is. And that is a useful player who definitely should not be playing every day. And that's who Dillamore is. And so you got to ride the high and you got to, you know, handle the low, but he's still a valuable player. He's still, you know, pretty useful off the bench in a lot of different ways. And you can win a lot of ball games with Dillamore on your roster.

You just can't win a lot of ball games that Dillamore is playing every day. Gameface sports wants to know should some of the bear's hitters try the torpedo bat, Julio hits off the inner part of the barrel off and I'd like to see him try one out. Dude, I don't know about you. I'm already tired of the discourse around the torpedo bats. Like, are they cheating? Are they blah, blah, blah.

I don't care. I mean, for what it's worth, MLB basically came out like 20 minutes ago and just explained what the bats are. So it doesn't seem like they're actually like going to do anything about it. And technically they do, they don't break rules. Like, yeah, no, what we're going to see is just every other team start to use them. I don't know if every single player is going to start to use them. They'll start to have them and then.

Yeah. And by the way, the Yankees aren't the only players, aren't the only team that's using them. Like a lot of players from other teams are using them. Just not kind of like the whole team. Yeah, I expect that we'll start seeing them a lot here in the next couple weeks. Yeah, we'll probably start seeing more Mariners using them. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, but as for the whole, like, is it cheating thing? Like, technically no, they meet the spats. They meet the specs and there's never been a rule about, you know, altering the shape of the bat as long as they meet the specs, right? So it's just one of those things where it's like, I don't care.

I really don't. They look a little silly, fine, but you'll get used to them. And yeah, just the whole week. It's like, hey, you know what? The Yankees, they also saw like a hundred more pitches in the middle of the plate below 90 miles an hour than the next closest team did. And they destroyed them. And it's like, well, I mean, yeah, they have Cody Bellinger.

They have judge. They have, they have jazz. Like, yeah, if you leave 90 in the middle of the plate to those guys, they're going to torch you. Yeah, that's not, that's surprising. So, yeah, I just think this is one of those things where it's like, look, Major League Baseball is kind of already said they're fine. They're signed off on.

And so I think the Yankees get the benefit of being, you know, a couple weeks earlier on this than everybody else. And then the rest of the league will start to see them more and more. again, I'm not saying the rest of the league will start swinging them because some guys won't like the field. They won't like the weight distribution, whatever. And they'll stick to swinging the standard bat, but they will be available to every team. And they already happen. It's just the Yankees.

They went off this weekend on the Brewers. And now everybody wants to call it cheating or they want to talk about, you know, blah, blah, blah. Just the Yankees were just out on front of this. And now everybody else can catch up. And it's fine. Everybody can still have the same level playing field. would it help Julio? I have no idea.

I'm not a physicist. You know, I'm not, you know, I'm not a doctor. So you just play one on TV. Yes. I'm not a doc, not a medical doctor. I'm not a physicist. I don't know, like what this is going to do. Not a mathematician.

Should you try one if he wants to? Like, whatever, man. Like, I don't know. They're just bats. So. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I thankfully avoided most,

of that because yesterday I was at the ballpark and I was trying to be on my phone a little bit less. And so, yeah, but I saw like all the controversy. I saw all the big content creators making videos about it. I'm just like, oh, can we not? Who cares? Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's going to be something that just ends up kind of sweeping the league. And we'll start to see the mirrors use it.

It's kind of like when the bat. I assume it's just going to be how quick can they get those bats custom made. Yeah. Yeah. I think pretty quick. Yeah. But it's kind of like when the, remember when the bat knob, some guys started transition to like the ax handle. Yeah. It's just going to be like that.

And then we'll stop talking. In like three weeks when everybody's swinging them, we'll start to, we'll stop talking about them. Right. Because at that point, what's the whole league is using it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once the whole league is using it, then who cares?

Right. Everyone's on a level playing field at that point. And I'm sure there's already like, I'm sure the Mariners already have a couple. And they're like, hey, try this out. see if you like it blah blah blah so and by the way same conversation well similar conversation to like the steroid stuff you still have to make contact so yeah people are amazed aaron judge hit four home runs in three games or whatever and it's like yeah yeah i know what the guy does so like yeah yeah i mean i don't i don't think it's a big deal but you know to answer

the question would it help julio maybe maybe i don't know though for sure should you try it sure I think everybody should try it. It wouldn't hurt to at least try it, see what happens. Good shot. All right. That's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariner's podcast for Colby Pat Node.

I'm Tadine Gazzalus. Be sure you give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariner's. You can follow me at Tadingazales and Colby at CPAT 11 at CPAT-1. We're also on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG, Colby at MLB Colby in the show at Lockdown Mariners. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace.