Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Bryce Miller Sets Mariners Record in Spectacular MLB Debut

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

The Seattle Mariners called up their best pitching prospect and DFA'd fans' least favorite player in a matter of hours and then went out and won a ballgame. On today's episode of Locked On Mariners, Colby and Ty discuss what they saw from Bryce Miller's MLB debut. Plus, the guys actually defend Tommy La Stella and kick around the idea of claiming Seth Beer on waivers before looking at the key matchups for tonight's game!Be sure to follow or subscribe to Locked On Mariners wherever you prefer your podcasts! For questions and other inquiries, email: [e-mail] the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11For more of Ty and Colby, check out their Patreon: patreon.com/controlthezone/RocketMoneyStop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions -- and manage your expenses the easy way -- by going to RocketMoney.com/lockedonmlb. SorareHead to sorare.com/lockedon to draft your free team of player cards, set your lineup, and start competing today to win epic rewards. 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.

Bryce Miller got the full Mariners experience in his major league debut last night. He threw five perfect innings set a franchise record, but of course, didn't get any runs to port. Nevertheless, the Mariners won and we are happy about that, though. We're even happier with what we saw out of Miller last night. We're going to be talking about his brilliant start and more on today's episode of Locked on Mariner's. 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 Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. This is tidying Azales and Colby Patinev for the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you so much for making us your first listen, subscribe, like, and turn on alerts. If you're watching on YouTube or subscribe and leave a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform, if you like what you hear. And if you're part of the crew and rock with us every single day, let us know in the comments below.

We want to see all of you down there. Say what's up. And if you want to hear from us even more, please consider sending up for our Patreon by skinning the QR code right above my head. The link as well as their social accounts is also in the description of this episode. And on this episode, we'll be diving into the sensational major league debut of one Bryce Austin Miller. We'll also be talking about Julio's lingering back issue and Tommy Lestella getting DFA to make

room for Miller on the 26 man roster. Also, Seth Beer was DFAed by the Arizona Diamondbacks this morning. We'll be talking about if the Mariners could possibly kick the tires on him. and we'll get you set for game two of this Mariners A series, which you can catch on the Mariners hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app. But first, Colby, let's talk about the man of the hour, Bryce Miller, 10 strikeouts in his Major League debut. He goes six innings strong,

gives up his first hit of his major league career, five in a third innings deep. That's right. He was perfect through the first five and a third innings of this game before Tony Kemp singled. Of course, it was Tony Kemp. It had to be Tony Kemp. It's always Tony Kemp. He also later scored on a Nisteri Ruiz double,

but that was all the damage done to Miller, who set a Mariners franchise record for most strikeouts in a major league debut. He also walked a none and didn't get the win, which is very important to note here, because that's also a major league record. Of course it is. Bryce Miller became the first major league pitcher

ever to make his debut. strike out 10 or more, walk none, and not get the win. And it feels very fitting that it was a Mariner's pitcher that landed that record. But nevertheless, Mariner's did win. Like we said, two to one. They finally got their act together a little bit on offense. Thank you, Jerry Bonds, Jerry Kellnick, for coming through with the game winning RBI double. But Miller was still the story of this game for the Mariners.

Fantastic start. What did you see? Yeah, I know. It's three minutes. It's a plus intro. I'm kicking it over to you now. I know you're getting impatient. All right.

Talk about Bryce Miller. No, I'm fine. No, you can do it. You got it. What we saw for Miller was a lot of fastballs, which is what we expected.

We were going to see and what we told you guys we were going to see. It was a ton of fast balls. 81 pitches, something like 60 fastballs. And, you know, that's not, I don't want to say that's not sustainable,

but in a way it's not. But let's just talk about. about last night. He was really good. We saw it from the second batterer of the game. The fastball elevated, you know, just at the top of the strike zone or slightly above. He is going to get a ton of swings and misses on that pitch. And if you can't lay off that pitch as a hitter, you've lost. You're not going to hit that pitch with any regularity. And the A's didn't. But it wasn't just the fastball at the top of the zone. We also saw him be willing to use the fastball in all four quadrants to both lefties and righties. It's a pitch that he's not afraid to throw in any, you know,

situation in any count. It doesn't matter if it's a predictable fastball count. It's such a good pitch. It has such a high spin rate. It has such low vertical drop that it just kind of seems to almost rise because of the spin rate. It's a very tough pitch to square up. He still has to command it. You know, he still has to stay out of the middle of the zone. These are professionals. And if he leaves too many, makes too many mistakes with that pitch, it will be hit far. But last night there were very few mistakes. The first time through the order, it felt like he threw 30 pitches and 28 of them were fastballs. And then the second time through, we saw a nice little adjustment where he actually started

off the second time through the lineup with a couple sliders in a row to get ahead and then finish the guy off with, of course, a fastball. So, yeah, it was, you know, 81 pitches. He threw one change up the entire game. It was for a called strike three. So it's not a pitch that he really likes to use all that much. Conner Cable has to be big mad. I mean, I would be, right?

You're gearing up for 95 with, like, like insane spin and rise in the zone and you're getting ready to hit that pitch. And then he just drops an 87 mile an hour batting practice fastball down the middle of the plate and you take it for strike three. And he just pulls it out of thin air that late in the game. Yeah, it's like 65, 70 pitches in. And he's just like, and here's the change up. Like, oh, sure.

Why not? Why not? So yeah, it's a good thing that he hadn't thrown that because that was a hangar. And he just froze cable. So, yeah, Miller was really good. he threw a lot of strikes. Again, the fastball is going to eat. He threw the cutter more than the slider according to Stacast. But again, sometimes Stackass has trouble differentiating between those two pitches. And Miller himself has said that he now has three different sliders. So of course he does. Because why, because why not? Why not? Why not? Yeah. Three slider grips. Why not?

Sure. Let's go for it. Absolutely. So yeah, we talked about how Oakland was a really good landing spot. for him just because there wasn't going to be really any atmosphere. And Miller said himself, like the atmosphere really helped me settle down. And, you know, it's probably a little tongue in cheek considering that the pay of attendance was 2,500 people. Most of which Channing sell the team yelling at the owner. Fisher, Fisher. Bryce Miller had 13 people at the ballpark for him.

And that represented half of 1% of the entire total, which is insane. I mean, I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but imagine going to T-Mobile Park when it's sold out and having, you know, 250 people there to root for one player. That's the equivalent. So, yeah, the lineup is a little bit better than most people gave it credit for. At least they were swinging it better than most people thought. But it was also very right-handed heavy, which we know that Miller stuff is going to play better against Ritey's. So overall, it was a good outing. Yes, you have to take into account the, you know, the atmosphere or lack thereof you have to take into account the the quality of the lineup that he was going against blah blah blah and yes he'll have to be even a little bit sharper in his next outing assuming he gets one against the astros on sunday i think it's probably safe to say he's gonna get a second yeah yeah yeah yeah it seems likely but you never know so you know you know what we should do after a guy has like an historic major league debut let's like chris flex and throw against the astros instead thinking Darren McCacken.

Darren McCacken's never lost to the Astros. Just saying. You're trying to appeal to a very small group of people. And by small group, I mean one person on YouTube. Yeah. Hey, man. Does this one person happen to work at a Mariners team store? And am I hoping to happen to get free gear out of this?

Maybe. I will not. You're angling for a free city connect jersey, huh? I am. It's $175. That's ridiculous. But Canada, it's even more. Yeah, but that's Canadian.

So, but yeah, Miller was really good last night. There's just no way around it. It'll be, again, it'll be really interesting to see what he does in his next start at home. It's going to be against the Astros. Atmospheric is going to be a lot different. Lineups going to be better. I mean, we'll see who limps into Seattle wearing an Astros uniform. It's rough for them right now on the injury front, mostly on the pitching side, though.

so yeah but we'll see miller miller was really good very good uh like you mentioned fastball 40% called strike plus with rate on that pitch high high spin rates uh where did he rank and spin rate on that fastball uh yeah so the qualified leader right fastball average fastball spin according to stack cast is jacob de graham who was at 2550 last night brys miller's average fastball spin fastball spin rate was 2575. So if Miller, Miller has at the very least one of the five best spin rates on this fastball. I think he maxed out around like 2,800.

2,800, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he spins it really well because it has the high spin. It doesn't dive as much as other pitches does. It has a tendency to stay online a little bit more, which makes it look like it's rising as it comes to the plate. and that's how you're going to get a lot of swings and misses on that at the top of the zone, even when hitters know it's coming.

It's great stuff, man. Looking forward to his next start. Again, that's going to be the real test for him against the Astros this Sunday. He's going to be going up against Hunter Brown. That's a really fun pitching matchup, and I'm looking forward to previewing on Friday when we get you set for that series. But yeah, amazing start for Miller. Have to be over the moon with what you got out of him last night.

Great beginning to his major league career. And by the way, in order to make room for him on the 26-man roster, Rejoice Mariners fans, Mariners DFAD, Tommy Lestella, it finally, finally happened. We're going to be talking about that some more in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and it helps you lower your bills all in one place. Over 80% of people have subscriptions they forgot about, and chances are you're one of them.

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And you're listening to the lockdown Mariners podcast. And you're listening to the lockdown Mariners podcast. and you're listening to the Locked-on Mariners podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen. Again, you can catch tonight's Mariners' A's game on the Mariners' hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app. It's a great app. Check it out if you don't have a chance to watch the game tonight and just want to listen

along. So, Colby, the Tommy Lestella era in Seattle has finally come to an end. We can all breathe. We can all collectively. breathe. Our national nightmare is over, folks. We did it. The Mariners did him so dirty. It's so they did not set him up to succeed. Let's put it that way. We're going to get into that, right? Because I actually do agree with you. I want to make something clear here. I've talked to a lot of crap about Tommy Lestella over the last month and deservedly so, but not from a not from a personal level.

I don't blame Tommy Lestella himself for the struggles. I just want to make that clear. My frustration is with the front office, is with the Mariners and coaching staff, whoever is making these decisions to both keep Lestella on the roster and then not play him with any sort of regularity to get him in any sort of rhythm. And that's part of the reason why you're saying

that the Mariners did him dirty, right? and we're going to get into that some more. But really, my beef here is with the fact that he was just anti everything that Topoto and company have championed with roster construction. After they brought him in and he was coming off of a couple down years in San Francisco, suffered a couple of, you know, Achilles injuries and then comes in the spring training and misses a significant amount of time with an arm injury that has basically forced him to be a full-time DH who doesn't hit for power and hasn't been. put into any sort of rhythm here to even just hit with any sort of consistency and when he has hit whenever he has found grass it's been little flare shots it hasn't been anything of quality and there's been some really bad swings as well it just didn't make sense it really and it really restricted

the mariners in terms of what they could do what their flexibility was with their position players over the last month and after a while it became clear that they weren't going to use him and there were going to be less and less opportunities for them to use him to get him into any sort of rhythm. So I just felt that, look, we're belaboring the point. You know, just DFA him. Get someone up here that can help you a little bit more like a Mike Ford, like a Colin Moran, like whoever, really.

Anyone that can just play in the field was going to be more valuable to you, in my mind at least, I wholeheartedly believe this, more valuable to you than whatever Tommy Lestella could give you just as a hitter strictly. So that's ultimately where my frustration came from. Let's talk more, though, about how this team really did or failed to put Tommy Lestella in a position to succeed this year. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think you go back and you look at the game log starting around the second week of the season. Tommy Lestella was in the lineup once a week at most, and he would pick up, I think since April,

the 15th, he had like 11 at-bats in a three-week stretch. It's not fair. That's not fair to give anybody, you know, one at-bat every four days and expect him to produce and develop any kind of a rhythm to see because you have to see pitches. Remember, Tommy Lestella missed most of spring training with his new injury. You have to track pitches. You have to look, you have to get in the box, and you have to see these pitches and you have to work on your swing decisions. Like, This isn't something that you can do in theory, and it doesn't matter if you have, you know, no plate appearances in the big leagues or 10,000 played appearances in the big leagues. It takes a little bit of time to kind of build up your offensive profile. And they just really didn't give it to him.

Now, even if he wasn't physically able to take those at-bats, more at-bats than he did, that's still the Mariners' fault for not DFAing him or placing him on the IL. So, and the fact that they didn't place them on the IL or that Tommy Lestella maybe didn't want them to tells you that he thinks he was healthy enough to go out there and play more than he did, at least get more at bats than he did. And the Mariners disagreed. And so either they thought that Tommy Lestella wasn't good enough to give those at bats to, in which case, DFA him. Or they didn't think he was healthy enough to give those at bats to, in which case put him on the IL. but only throwing him out there every, you know, four or five days to watch him go O for two and have the fans just latch on to him as like the biggest bum in the history of the world. That's unfair.

The Mariners put Tommy Lestell in a no-win situation because they didn't, they wouldn't use him. They needed to stick with him. And you didn't need to play him every single day. But hey, you know what? How about you give him 50, 60 plate appearances in the month of April to kind of see what you have? And then you could DFA him at the end instead of, you know, giving him 10 in the first week and then six in week two and then one each in week three and four like yeah that's not fair that's not fair to to tami lestella and it's not fair to a guy who's had a really good major league career and you kind

of just turn him into public enemy number one because either you didn't want to put him on the iL or you didn't think he was good enough to play but you just refuse to dfam for reasons yeah right so it's just they put him in a no-win situation to basically be a villain that that didn't need to exist. Yeah, it's not Lestella's fault at the end of the day. And I know this is crazy for for me to come to the defense of Tommy Lestella. But like my issue was never with him because really like, all right, if he is washed, that's not really of his fault, right? He's had multiple significant injuries over the last three years that have potentially sapped his talent. And, you know, at the end of the day, that's, I mean, we were told by a source that the coaching staff felt that he

was done, that he was washed, that he couldn't play, especially after the arm injury, that he was having pain while he was swinging and all this stuff. The Mariners just forced the issue with him. And then they refused to admit their mistake. Really, I think that's what it was at the end of the day is that they just tried to hold on for dear life for some inexplicable reason by keeping him on this roster when he was just flat out restrained. restricting them in a multitude of ways, right? Because look, again, you don't want to have a backup first baseman slash DH, really, like in terms of healthy roster construction.

But even then, that player, if you just had a glove first, quote unquote, first baseman on your team, that would have been more valuable to you than Tommy Lestella because that's someone that can actually play in the field. And then you're not putting, you know, a guy like Sam Hargity at first base for a couple days in the row who's never played first base. And he handled that overall fine, but that's still unfair at the end of the day to Haggerty. And that's not where you want to be.

That's not where you want to end up, no matter if it's early on in the season or whatever. It's just Tommy Lestella's presence had a trickle-down effect on the rest of this roster and the flexibility of this roster. That was just, it was undeniable and it was unignorable. Right. I just, again, at the end of the day, there was just no. reason for the Mariners to keep him on the roster. Because, even if they tell you, like, well, we thought maybe, you know, we give him some time,

he can kind of, you know, rebound and go back to what he was, but you didn't give him time. So you thought it was possible that he could still be a good hitter for you, but you weren't willing to give him at bats. That's either a dumb plan or you're lying. You knew that you weren't going to get anything from Tommy Listell and you still refused to make a move. Now, you could sit here and say, well, it's not like there was. was a lot of moves that they could have made. Tramel was hurt. Marlowe was heard.

And Ford's not, it's not like Ford's like this great major leaker. And it's like, true. That's all true. But they're still more valuable to you than Tommy Lestella if you don't think that he's any good. Because you know what? Colin Moran can do,

even if you don't think Moran is better than Lestella, Moran can play first base and make a throw. Yeah, I would rather have the defensive versatility than the off chance I might get a single and maybe a walk out of Lestella. like yeah especially if you're not going to use him on a day you couldn't even commit to giving him three starts a week yeah you didn't want to either because you he was too hurt to do that in which case put him on the iL or you didn't think he was good enough to do that in which case you

dfam so no matter what any way you try to spin this around the mariners essentially made tommy the stella an enemy of the fans for literally no reason and the thing too is like all right if you want him to still be around your organization dFA him he's going to clear waivers no one is picking him up no one is claiming him and as long as he's willing to accept the assignment reassign him to triple a tacoma and get him those at bat so he can get into a rhythm and show you if he's washed or not truly and then that and then at that point you make the decision it just the whole process behind it made no sense to me. And that's why the frustration continued to boil over over the course of the last few weeks for me with Tommy Lestella's presence on this roster because it just made no sense

from an organizational standpoint from, you know, a Jerry DePoto, Justin Hollander standpoint. And I also do wonder if, you know, what we were told was true and that the coaching staff felt that he was washed. Clearly, I mean, obviously I would assume that feeling didn't change over the course of the last few weeks. So if they felt that way, I'm sure that was communicated to the front office. And then again, that's on the front office for not doing something about that.

If they felt that, hey, this guy is not going to be able to contribute to us at the major league level. You needed to get someone else on that roster, whether it's Mason McCoy, whether it's Mike Ford, whether it's Colin Moran. It doesn't matter. Anyone with a pulse and a glove, someone that can just even shake it at a position on the field

is more valuable to you, really, than whatever Tommy Lestello was going to give you offensively. So, yeah, it just drove me mad. And so, but I also do think that it's unfair for, to point the finger at Lestella specifically, because again, a lot of the stuff is just out of his hands. You know, he didn't get, go out there and purposely, you know, get injured, right? Like, that just, that stuff happens, unfortunately.

And it will sap your talent after a while. And so if that's what's happened, then, you know, that sucks. It really sucks. But it's, you know, it also means that he is not a major league caliber player anymore. He's not someone that, at least not for a contender, at least not for a team that has the aspirations that we all think the Mariners have this year. So, yeah, that's just that's just what it is at the end of the day. So it sucks, but, yeah.

All right. Seth Beer was DFAed by the Arizona Diamondbacks this morning. He has a couple of minor league options. So it doesn't have to be a major league move for the Mariners if they were to kick the tires on him. We're going to be talking about that possibility. We're also going to be talking about tonight's game. And if Julio is going to be in the lineup after missing the last two games and after being scratched late before yesterday's game. But first, a reminder of this episode of Locked on Mariners is brought to you by So Rare.

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And you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen. Mariners and A's get underway tonight at the Oakland Coliseum, I think, at 6.40 p.m. Pacific time. And you can catch that game on the Mariners hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app. So, Colby, before we recorded, we hit record on this episode, do you let me know that Seth Beer has been DFAed by the Arizona Diamondbacks. And I said, why the hell not? Let's talk about him a little bit on the show.

So should the Mariners kick the tires on Seth Beer? Former Astros, top Astros prospect who went to the Diamondbacks and what the Zach Granky deal? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you do have Miller on the team and then you could add someone named Beer. Sure. You just need a guy.

And at that point, you just need a guy named Bud on your team. and you should be good to go. Sure. So here's just kind of the breakdown of Seth Beer. Former first round pick. We know how much Jerry loves that. Former top-ish prospect. He was never top 50 or anything,

but he was a back and top 100 guy. But he is all bad. Like you are not getting anything from him defensively or on the bases. He's pretty much, he's slower than Thai France. And he's about as good. as I don't know, tire I would be at first base. You know,

and he stands in the outfield, but he's worse than think of the worst outfield you've ever seen play, Mark Trumbo, and understand that this guy's twice as bad. So, yeah, it's all about the bat,

so you have to believe he can hit. And, you know, for a while there, he was torturing the minor leagues. He was putting up pretty good numbers, but you look at what he did in AAA in 2020, or sorry,

2022, 242, 361, 435. That's pretty good, but you have to consider the PCL as a hitters paradise, and if you're only slugging 435 in the PCL, that's not great. And then you look at what he's doing this year so far, 200, 266, 314. That's not going to get it done. He's a power bat, first base power bat, first base DH only power bat, whose game power hasn't really shown up all that often. I think his career high for home runs in his season right now is 25.

He does draw walks. He doesn't strike out a ton, except for this year. It's gone up. Yeah, I don't know if there's an obvious fit here. I think because he has options, you could claim him, put him on your 40 man. You have the 40 man room. You can send him to Tacoma, and you can just see if there's something there. But you have to believe in the bat because he's going to hurt you every time he's on the bases.

And every time he's in the field. So it pretty much comes down to do we think Seth Beer can be a, is he good enough for us to be to consider him as a full time DH? Maybe they think so. Maybe they do. But for me, this isn't one of those ones like they should jump all over this. But if they put a claimant on them and they get them and they put him down in Tacoma, he's worth monitoring. Sure. Yeah.

I mean, again, you know, there's little to no versatility. But the bat has more upside than I would say Tommy Lestellas does right now. So I feel that that's worth exploring at least. I mean, maybe there's some power there that you can tap into, you know, and get some sort of production out of, out of the major league level. But overall, I mean, first base CH types don't really excite me. I could take it or leave it, really. I mean, there's still levers that you can pull on the 40-man roster where I'm like,

I don't care, you know, put Seth beer on the roster. Yeah. Yeah, the most obvious one being just transferring Robbie Ray to the 60-day IL. Right. He's still on the 15, so you don't even have to lose anybody to claim him, but. That's interesting, by the way, that they haven't made that move yet when they've made a couple of 40-man moves. Yeah. It's 40-man moves are probably things they wanted to do anyways, like DFA and Lestella.

So, you know, it's just nice to have one in your back pocket. Yeah. So we'll see. if they do pick up beer we'll hear about that tomorrow Friday I think they technically have a week so okay so maybe we don't hear about it until next week so moving on here

Julio missed yesterday's game as well he was in the lineup and they had him hitting one with Kelnick hitting two behind him then they rearranged the order Kelnick ends up hitting three and he was, of course, the offensive hero of the game for the Mariners last night. But Julio missing another game after getting a day off the last two days, a bit of a concern. And this, of course, isn't the first time that he's dealt with some lower back tightness or issues overall. So is this something to be concerned about long term for him, concerning this is cropped up now twice within the last, what, nine months, eight months?

no I don't think so it's interesting here is that he apparently heard it sliding head first on a stolen base attempt and we talked about this in the past Julio's steals probably aren't going to be as high as they could because do you risk more injury when you steal and I don't know like I don't know why guys are so obsessed with sliding head first in the second base now

like what's wrong with feet first like, oh, I might twist an ankle. Well, you might jam your wrist or hurt your back if you slide head first. Or, yeah, so I don't know if this is a concern yet per se, but we'll see. It's definitely something to keep an eye on because, like you said, this is the second time that he'll have missed a handful of games with the back injury. I think last time they put him on the IL, right? In September. Yep.

So, yeah, you know, Julio made a couple. He missed 30 games last year with a bunch of little nagging injuries, the biggest one being the biggest one being the the wrist in the back. So yeah, the wrist, by the way, last year also happened sliding head first into second base. So yeah, I think, you know, if it's just because he's stealing bases and he just needs to stop or he needs to go into feet first slide or whatever, then I don't think so. But they, they obviously did a really extensive physical when they, before they gave him, you know, the biggest extension in MLB history. So I don't think this is anything to be concerned. with long term yet, but if these things keep cropping up, these small little nagging

injuries keep cropping up, then I think eventually what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to really, you know, shut him down on the bases and move him off his center field too, because the bat is too valuable to lose. So we'll see if he's in the lineup tonight. I would assume that he'll be in there at least, you know, a couple hours before the game. And then if he can't go, you know, they'll find that out during warmups and all that and then make the, you know, an appropriate move. But, yeah, we'll see if he actually takes his first abat tonight and see how he responds.

But this is, at the very least, a good series, you know, or it should be, in theory, a good series to rest him for a few days. You are going up against the worst team, Major League Baseball. And, yeah, the offense was atrocious through the first seven innings last night. but you should be able to beat this team with or without Julio on paper. So we'll see. And you got a big series. Yeah, I know. I know.

Don't tempt fate. But you do have a big series coming up against Houston. You would really like to have Julio for those three games this weekend. So if that means sacrificing him for the next couple, and so be it. If it guarantees you a shot to have him in the lineup on the weekend. So let's talk about this game. Logan Gilbert, J.P. Sears. The last time we saw J.P. Sears, he was going up against the Mariners hangover lineup after they clinched their first playoff birth in 20 years.

So first recommendation, first key to the game, don't get no hit through the first seven innings of the game or six innings of the game, however many it was last night. Don't do that against this pitching staff. Don't do that. I would also recommend scoring more than two runs in a game. That would be preferable. And I would recommend not having to protect a one-run lead in the ninth inning. That would be preferable. Those would be my recommendations.

It'll be interesting to see Logan tonight. They pushed him back because of the shoulder thing before his last start. And then in Philly, he wasn't very good. So keep an eye on it. Velocity was fine in his last start, though. So I don't know if that was just the shoulder was bothering him or he just didn't really have his command. It's tough to say. So it'll be interesting to see how he attacks this lineup.

It's going to be a pretty similar look for these guys to what they saw from Miller, with the notable exception that Logan Gilbert has a splitter, which he kind of needs to get back to throwing a little bit more. But maybe that's related to his shoulder. Maybe he's got blisters. Who knows? So yeah, it's, we'll see. Sears has got some pretty good stuff.

So you do have to go up there and you do have to put together good at bats But obviously the pitching matchup greatly favors Seattle as it will Tomorrow as well but yeah you got to watch Logan pretty closely tonight See where the fastball command is and see how often he's using his off speed stuff Yeah and just you know score four runs you should be good because even if Logan is a bit off against the say his lineup He should be able to get it get through it let's make it six Yeah let's make it Hey, let's make it 20.

Let's get 20 runs. I don't want to be, I don't want this game to be like nine hours long, so. I mean, there's no cracking game tonight, though, so I'm cool with it. Six hour game. 30 runs. Let's do it. Let's do it. I sat through a six hour game.

It's not as much fun as you think. I mean, when it's zero, zero, but when the Mariners had like, you know, 10 home runs tonight, I'm down. I mean stat padding. I love stat padding. Oh, boy. You know, could use some stat padding right now to Oscar Hernandez. Yeesh.

Yeah, yish, indeed. That was not great. Hey, by the way. Jose Cabiero against the righty, not Colton Long, after a day off. It's weird last night, right? It was pretty weird considering that Wong, you know, has been better at the plate the last few days. Yeah.

He's been better at the plate than Caviero. I know Cabiero had the devil yesterday, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, scored. Cabiero's last two appearances, he scored the go-ahead run and the game-tying run. So was it the game-tying run? No, he scored on Raleigh's home run, so never mind. But whatever, Cabby keeps on chipping in. But, yeah, it was weird that, you know, no Wong last night.

I assume we're not going to see him again tonight. Maybe that's just a way to try and, you know. Yeah. give him a couple extra days. Maybe he's slept on it. Maybe he heard his neck sleeping or something. We don't know. Or maybe they're punishing him for his base running gaff,

which probably doesn't carry as much weight after an off day, the day after you can originally happen. But who knows? We'll see. But I assume Cabiero will be in there tonight. Or maybe the plan tonight is to give JP Crawford a night off. And Cabiero is playing shortstop and Colton Wong's playing second or something. Who knows?

We'll see. And hey, finally. Finally. AJ Pollock got a hit off of a lefty and it was a home run a game time home run last night that was awesome that was so nice to see imagine that

yeah thankfully he he also had another ball that I think he hit around 90 miles per hour that looked like it had a chance he hits the ball fairly hard it's just he's not finding grass with with any sort of consistency

I think those numbers are gonna yeah I think those numbers are going to go up though eventually here for for Pollock. He's getting good contact. He's just needs to level the ball out a little bit more. Him and Wong look like they're really close right now.

Yeah. So we'll see. All right. Well, that is going to do it for our show today. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. For Colby Pat Node, I'm Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez.

It's C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-E-E-E-E-T-1-1. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well over at Locked-on Mariners. That's one word, Locked-on Mariners. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first listen. Catch us after the game tomorrow for a post-game recap of the Mariners A's series finale. But for now, have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you tomorrow.

Peace.