Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Back Home, Mariners Enter Must-Win Series With Nationals

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

The Nationals, who enter Tuesday with the worst record in baseball, comes to Seattle for a two-game set. Ty and Colby tell you why the Mariners need to take care of business, nominate two players who need to have big homestands and tell you what to watch in scoreboard watching this weekend.Be sure to follow or subscribe to Locked On Mariners wherever you prefer your podcasts! For questions and other inquiries, email: [e-mail] up to date with all things Mariners at Inside the Mariners - a FanNation website covering the Seattle Mariners on the Sports Illustrated network.Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11 | @InsideMarinersFor more of Ty and Colby, check out their Patreon: patreon.com/controlthezone/LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Did you know every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONMLB. 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.

The worst team in baseball comes to Seattle tonight and the Mariners need to take care of business. Let's talk about it here on the Locked on Mariners podcast. Colby, hit it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Locked on Mariner's podcast. It's Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022.

And thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms with new episodes dropping every Monday through Friday. I am your host, Taday Gonzalez, joined as always by my host. Colby Pat Node. We cover the Mariners over at Inside the Mariners.com for Fan Nation over on the Sports Illustrated Network. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. Follow Inside the Mariners at Inside Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez, S, D-A-N-C-L-Z, and Colby at C-P-E-E-N-C-L-E.

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We're going to tell you our thoughts heading into the Mariners two game series with the Washington Nationals two players. The Mariners will need to produce in order to have a successful. home stand and what to watch for in the AL wild card standings this week. But first, Colby, again, the worst team in Major League Baseball is coming to Seattle for a quick two game set. The Mariners, of course, swept this team in Washington last month. And in that time, the Nationals, of course, traded Juan Soto and Josh Bell. And Juan Soto was really the only guy that did a significant amount of damage against the

Mariners the last time these two teams met. So a lot of firepower missing from this National's lineup. Of course, they have been awful. How do you feel going into the series if you're the Mariners? That I need to take both of these games. You know, it's hard to beat anybody twice in a row. You know, sweeps are hard, but this is a bad baseball team that got a lot worse since the last time you saw them.

You need to take both of these games. Is it a disaster of you split? No. Is it a big missed opportunity? Yeah, I mean, we're 40 games to go here. We're at the end of the line. You just can't afford to punt games against bad teams like this. So, yeah, I think you have to go into this thinking that you need a sweep.

The pitching matchups certainly favor you. You're the better team on paper. There's really no question about it. But, you know, you got to, you still got to play well because the Audres, they did not fare too well against the Nationals in their four-game set this last weekend. They were able to barely split the series with a two-to-one win on Sunday. So the Nationals playing some decent baseball right now. Again, they still have, you know, Seizor Hernandez, I think.

Nelson Cruz. Khybert Ruiz is a pretty good player. So they still have some pieces here and there that you have to be careful with. But ultimately, this is a team that you just, you have to beat them twice. And hey, you know what? Why not just beat them badly? How about that for a nice change of pace? Just, you know, inferior team, put them to bed early, put their fans out of their misery.

They're going to stay up until 10 o'clock to watch this game. I don't know, maybe, but don't ever give them a chance. Don't ever give them a chance. Just put them down early. you know, hopefully Robbie can go, you know, six or seven look pretty good tonight. And then maybe save up the bullpen for tomorrow. You got a big series coming up against the Guardians. So you don't want to overlook the nationals, but you want to go into that series with some momentum.

So I think it's pretty important that they win both of these games. Yeah. And the pitching matchups line up favorably for the Mariners. Robbie Ray going on the bump tonight for the Ems. And then George Kirby tomorrow against Annabal Sanchez tonight. It's Eric Fetty on the bump. for the nationals. Fetty actually gave this offense a little bit of trouble last time they saw him. What's the plan of attack for the Mariners against Fetty? Well, Ty, I mean, last time they faced Fettie,

Kyle Lewis, and Mitch Anaker weren't healthy. So clearly, that's all that needed to change. They're both back and ready to go. No, I think you have to have better at bats. It really is that simple. You know, the Mariners have been prone to throw up a lot of, you know, innings where they have zero good at bats. It's one of those things where this lineup is inconsistent. It's why we talked about them needing to add a bat. At the deadline, they really didn't. They said Mitch Hanigur was our ad.

Mitch Hanigur's been good. The offense has still been wildly inconsistent. So you've got to attack the guy. I mean, you can't let him get into a groove. You've got to get runners on early. you got to pressure him to make pitches, good pitches, quality pitches. And when he makes a mistake, you have to punish it. You know, that there's just really no way about it.

Fetty is a number five at best. And those are the type of pitchers you have to be. It's very unlikely that he's going to just, you know, show up tonight with amazing stuff. And you're just, you know, we didn't see that coming. You know who Eric Fetty is. you have to attack him, you have to hit them hard, and don't let him get comfortable. Score early, get guys on base early,

put the pressure on him to be perfect with his pitches. And, you know, if you mix a couple of good pitches, find a way to spoil them, get him in the zone, attack, and score some runs. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when we talk about the Mariners path to finally ending this drought being easy the rest of the way, it's because a series like this, right?

You have to be able to win both of these games against the worst team in major league baseball can't have a repeat of your weekend in Oakland can't have that have to take advantage of this opportunity because you need to keep on you know staying in line with the other teams that you're in the mix with in the wild card race and maybe even gain some ground here give yourself a little bit of of a cushion even more cushion especially you know from the first team out of the wild card race so got to take advantage of this big series for the mariners and a big hook homestead in general for the mariner's we're going to be talking about two players that need to have

a huge huge homestan in order for this team to come out of this homestan successfully uh having winning at least you know three four five games that would be nice that'd be nice if they could uh be able to come out of home with quite a few wins in their pocket we'll be talking about that in just a moment but real quick a reminder of this episode of locked on mariners it's brought to you by linked in as you gear up for fall, you need the right people on your team to help your small business fire on all cylinders. LinkedIn Jobs is here to make it easier to find the people you want to talk to you faster and for free. Create a free job post and minutes on LinkedIn jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network over 810 million people. Then add your job on the purple hashtag hiring frame to your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring so your network can help you find the right people to hire.

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We greatly appreciate your support. So Colby, fill in the blank for me. In order for the Mariners to have a successful homestand, blank has to be huge. I'm going to go with Jesse. Yes, the Mariners are facing a ton of right-handed pitching on this homestand. I believe all six starters are right-handed. So Winker, this is when he needs to shine. You know, he's been a lot, he's been a lot better for the last month or so.

Still some, you know, some bad games here and there, some truly bad at bats, particularly against Velocity. And he's still, while he's getting better at hitting that pitch, he's still popping that, you know, middle in basketball at 93, 94 up quite a bit. So Winker really has to step up. You know, Julio started to get it going again in Oakland. So that appears to be something that's, you know, figured out. Thai France, I would say France, but I have no confidence that he can actually do that right now.

So I think for me, Winker needs to have a big week because I think he's going to have to pick up the slack for Thai France. And obviously, you know, everybody else has to contribute. But I think Winker is the difference here in the middle of the order facing all these right-handed pitchers. Yeah, for me, it's France. Because, you know, the thing that we talked about yesterday, with potentially moving him down the lineup. Who knows if that's actually going to be the case going into the series. I know you have some doubts.

I have my doubts. So, you know, we'll see how that goes probably by the time that this episode is out. We'll know what the lineup is looking like. But if Ty France is still in the two spot, he's got to produce no way around it. Have to get him,

you know, to produce here. And also, as you mentioned, right, you're going to face a lot of right-handed pitching, all six starters in the, in this home. stand or right-handed. And plus you're going to see guys like Shane Bieber. You're going to see

Zach Plessack. You're going to see Aaron Savali. You're going to see some more. Tristan McKenzie. You're going to see a lot of good pitching coming up, especially in that Cleveland series. And Thai France has been your best hitter against right-handed pitching. 289 average this year. He's got to be able to produce here. If not, this offense is going to slump once again. And you're, you know, it doesn't matter how good you're pitching is because you can't win games, you know, zero to negative one. didn't do it. So you have to be able to score runs here, especially against Cleveland, because they have a decent enough offense that they are going to be able to score runs off of your pitching

staff. And you're going to have to be able to keep pace with them. Plus, you got Marco Gonzalez pitching in one of those games in the series, like against Tristan McKenzie. Logan Gilbert, who's struggled as of late. Again Shane Bieber. Again Shane Bieber. So yeah, you're going to need to be able to score runs here. Tie France is a huge piece of that. They're going to need him to get off of the side here. I don't know if he's actually capable of doing it, but I think in order for them to have a very successful homestand, Ty France has to be a big piece to it. Yeah, you know, it's, again, you got to get through Washington. You don't overlook them, but there's really not much to talk about with them. If you play well, you will win both of those games. It's really that simple.

The Cleveland series, you know, Cleveland's hot right now. They're kind of starting to run away with the Central. You're going to get their two best arms and you're going to get two guys who are quality major leaguers, but they're number fours. You know, they're not special, and you're going to counter those guys with year one and your two. So, you know, Cleveland is a dangerous team. They pitch very well. They have a good bullpen.

They make a lot of contact. So while the offense isn't prodigious, there's not a ton of home run power in this lineup, aside from, you know, Jose Ramirez, who's great. And obviously guys like Josh Naler have tremendous power as well, but it's a lot of contact. put the ball in play. So your defense is going to have to be sharp as well. So with that being said, maybe Jesse Winker at DH is six times this week. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world or five times.

And, you know, maybe you try to get away with one start and left field. But you kind of want your best defense out there. That means hopefully Haggerty is available and ready to play in the outfield. You know, hopefully that means that, you know, Adam Frazier remembers how to field a ground ball this week. I still have not forgiven him for that disaster in Oakland. At least squat down. That's all I'm saying. So the defense is going to have to be better because they will put the ball in play.

And if you give them extra outs, you know, you're not going to get a ton of second and third against Cleveland with one out. And you're going to get that key strikeout. They're going to put the ball in play. And runs are going to be at a premium all week. So I think it's important for somebody on this offense to step up and have a big week. And I just feel like with all the righties in there, It's probably Winker. But hey, you know, it needs to be somebody other than Julio,

somebody other than McChanniger, basically is what I'm looking at. And, you know, ideally it would be somebody who hits somewhere at the top of the lineup so that you can really put the pressure on these guys. You know, maybe it's Cowellie. Maybe it's J.P. Crawford, who, you know, been better recently. But I just think Winker carries the most upside and the most impact in his bat. So if he has a really big home stand, I think the Mariners are going to do pretty well. The other name I would throw out here is A Eugenio Swaras, who's been slowly but surely coming out of his slump here as of late.

The issue, though, a lot of right-handed pitching coming up. So who knows if that's actually going to be able to continue. But he's had some better success as a late. So we'll see. Hopefully he can be part of this too because they need, like you said, they need someone. They need at least a third guy outside of Julio and Mitch. because I think you can count on Julio and Mitch to have decent series here at least, if not better, but you're going to need at least a third guy here contributing with some sort of regularity over the next six games.

Let me ask you this. With all the Ritey's coming up and with September call-ups eight, nine days away, would you consider demoting Dylan Moore and calling up Taylor Tremel and then just recalling Demo on on September 1st because we know he's not going to get a ton of bats against all these righties. There's really no lefties in the pen of Cleveland in particular that are worth worrying about. It's Claucet. It's Karen Schack.

Is that how you pronounce? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's to me, I think I would consider calling up, I would consider calling up Taylor Tremel for this week. And that also helps me defensively as well when Cleveland. again, puts the ball in play a lot. So what do you think? Would you do it?

Or do you want Demos like speed and versatility off the bench a little bit more? I mean, I know this isn't necessarily what you ask me, but I'd rather just DFA Carlos Santana and call up Taylor Chamele. Yeah, but we know that's not going to happen. Yeah. So. Santana is. Santana shouldn't play much either.

He's bad against right-handed pitching. Yeah, he is. Well, and that's another reason why I was saying that, too, is, you know, if we're sending Dimo down for the right-handed, you know for the handedness sake why not you know or at least partly for the handedness sake why not just dFA carlo santana is pretty much as useful as demo is against right-handed pitching so uh i would say hmm that that's a good question uh so you would have to be without demo for three more games i believe after that as well uh before the the rosters expand so

hmm i could use the left-handed hitting i could use the left-hand hitting i could use the left-hand a bat right now honestly you know taylor chamelle would be huge he's having a good time right now in triple a and uh you know it's only for a little while that you have to deal without demo and you still have you know someone that can play a few defensive spots and sam haggerty so you're not uh entirely missing that if you're dealing with without demo for the next week i don't think the mariners would do this just to answer your question though but i would do it personally yeah yeah the mariner seemed to care about having a backup shortstop on their roster, even though they have Adam Frazier. And hey, if something happens to JP, you can just call up Dylan Moore.

He's right there in Tacoma, right down the highway. So, yeah, I think I would do it. And also, I think kind of the X factor here is what's going on with Sam Haggarty, right? Right. He got scratched on Sunday. He was able to run, but he didn't get in that bat, so he didn't get it. get to see if you could swing the bat. He wasn't the, you know, defensive replacement in left field. They actually put Jesse Winker out there, which yuck, which immediately backfired too, by the way.

So it's just one of those things like if Haggerty can't play, if he can't swing, are you really going to have two guys on your bench, or really three guys on your bench that you're just never going to use unless you want to run? You know what I mean? It's just, so if Haggerty might get put on the I.L. And that might be how Tremel comes up. So we have to wait and see. of Haggarty's in the lineup tonight or, you know, we just really didn't get a very good update from service on what was wrong with Haggaret. So we'll see, you know, we'll monitor lineups will be probably be out by the time you guys are listening to this. So we'll, you'll have an idea of what's going on. But yeah, I think I would consider Taylor Trammell,

finding a way to get him up here. It's just Demo, you can do that without having to DFA anybody. not that I'm opposed to DFA and Santana or Lamb, just that the Mariners probably want to keep them. And if you could just send a guy down for, you know, 10 days instead of DFA and somebody, I think that's probably the route you should go. So, yeah. All right. So let's switch gears here.

Let's do a little scoreboard watching. What's going on right now around the league? What should Mariners fans be keeping an eye out for right now? The Mariners trailing the raise by half a game for the first wildcard spot there. kind of tied with the Js for the second wild card spot, but there's that like 0.5% winning percentage thing that's keeping them in the third wild card spot right now. Nevertheless, they're right there in the mix. So what should Mariners fans be looking at right now?

Yeah, so it's, you know, again, you guys may or may not know this. I don't know if I mentioned this on the show. My philosophy is to worry about the Mariners. I have a number. I think they need to hit to get into the playoffs. my number is 88. So for me, I'm looking for 22 more wins here in the next 40 games. But if you're a more traditional scoreboard watcher,

and at some point we all will be, you have some interesting choices to make this week, but we'll start with Tampa Bay, since that is the team you're chasing. The Angels are in town into Tampa Bay. So you're for the Angels, even when they're playing in Tampa. No, for me, go raise. But, you know, whatever.

I'm cynical. So that's one there. So I guess if you really care about that wildcard one, you have to root for the angels for at least another two days. So that's fun. Then you have Toronto is actually in Boston, getting ready to play the Red Sox. Yeah. Probably not going to get a ton of help from Boston.

But you never know. They're in Fenway. Crazy things happen in Fenway. So you're definitely going to want to root for the Red Sox in that series. Houston at Minnesota, sorry, Minnesota at Houston. Yeah, you got to kind of swallow your pride here and you got to root for the Astros in this one. The twins are fading pretty fast here. And obviously playing Houston is a bad draw for them.

I think they have to play them six more times after today as well. So they're going to see a lot of the Astros. And hey, what do you know? Justin Verlander is going up against some dude with a seven and a half ERA. So kind of like those odds. So, you know, go Astros. then kind of a really a fun one actually. And I believe this is the free game of the day

if you have an MLV TV subscription. Cleveland at San Diego. San Diego struggling pretty heavily. I believe they are five games under 500 since the Wonsoto trade, classic Padres. But again, obviously here you're rooting for the Padres. You know, Cleveland, I think they're probably going to end up winning that division anyways, but still, you want them to lose just in case it comes down to a

wild card spot. So yeah, you have some interesting choices there. I think probably the one that's most interesting if you're trying to pick and choose who you want competing against you in the wild card. You have Baltimore at, or sorry, Chicago at Baltimore. So White Sox, Orioles, both of those teams kind of fading lately. You know, the Mariners do have the tie breaker over Baltimore that that's going to factor into your your decision making at all but uh yeah that that's an interesting one uh you can get basically you can root for baltimore to essentially finish off the white socks in this playoff race or you can root for uh the white socks to kind of kill any momentum that that Baltimore might be looking to uh add here and that that matchup is

dylan cease versus awesome both so advantage white socks but we'll see It's been a crazy year for Baltimore. So that's what you're looking at right there. Chicago, Baltimore, you're probably rooting for the Angels. You're probably rooting for the Red Sox. And you're probably root for the Astros and the Padres. So, yeah, let's talk about the Chicago Baltimore series. Like, should we be rooting for there?

What's the best outcome there in your mind? I guess the bigger question really is like, who are you more concerned about? in the playoffs, Baltimore, knocking me out of the playoffs, Chicago. So, yeah, Chicago's probably more talented. It's closer than you think. But the one thing that's a huge benefit to Seattle here is that they do have the tiebreaker over the Orioles. So any question to playoff seating, Seattle has the advantage there. So it's just one of those things where you can kind of, you know, pick and choose whatever scenario,

you want to focus on here. To me, I'm probably rooting for the Orioles just because I feel like they're still going to fade at some point and the Mariners have the tiebreaker over them. So I'm probably running for Baltimore to try and bury the White Sox. It's not going to happen entirely. Like they can't eliminate the White Sox, but every loss that Chicago piles up right now is just a huge obstacle for them to overcome. They have to jump over. I think five teams right now or five teams for the number one wild car they'd jump over three teams i think for that for the uh to get into the wild card position so uh i think you know bearing chicago is probably the best thing for mariners for the mariners uh because again you do have in your back pockets

a tiebreaker over baltimore and baltimore is going to play the american league east which they're good against don't get me wrong but that is a more difficult schedule than chicago who's you know playing the central most of the way out for sure Lots of good baseball just going on in general now right around the league. So lots of fun stuff to watch. Of course, we're going to be keeping a close eye on the Mariners and what they do tonight, gets the nationals, hoping for a win, hoping that they can take care of business against the worst team in baseball. Got to do it.

Got to do it. Got to do it. Got to get these wins. So that is going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the lockdown Mariners podcast. For Colby Pat note, I'm Tiding Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L.O. underscore Mariners. You can follow inside the Mariners at Instagram.

Inside Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. It's T-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-Z, and Colby at C-Pad 11. That's C-PAT-1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode, and thank you again for making us your first listen to the first listen to the Lodon MLB podcast. MLB-L-B-L-B-L-B brings humor, passion, and unique perspective on every team and the biggest stories around the league. Follow the number one daily league-wide podcast, Locked-M-L-B on the Odyssey app, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcast just like us. And with that, have yourself, a beautiful baseball day. And we'll see you tomorrow.

Peace.