Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Could the Mariners Trade Luis Castillo AND J.P. Crawford This Offseason?

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

In addition to the obvious issues presented by ownership's unwillingness to spend and the front office's shortcomings identifying offensive talent, the Mariners will have several hurdles to overcome this upcoming offseason. Ty and Colby decide to take a break from the current Mariners team to address some of those hurdles, which may result in one, if not multiple, core pieces being traded away. Ask us questions!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!TonaITonal is the world's smartest and most effective strength training system that helps get you stronger. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your Tonal purchase with promo code LOCKEDONMLB. That’s Tonal.com, and use promo code LOCKEDONMLB for $200 off your purchase.   Liquid IVNo more thirsty summers when you indulge in hydration with Liquid I.V. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to LIQUIDIV.COM and use code MLB at checkout. SupplyHouseSupplyHouse.com is the reliable way to get parts fast. Shop for your next plumbing, h-vac, or electrical job and get fast shipping from coast to coast. PrizePicksGo to https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONMLB and use code lockedonmlb for a first deposit match up to $100! eBay MotorsFrom brakes to exhaust kits and beyond, eBay Motors has over 122 million parts to keep your ride-or-die alive. With all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to bring home that big win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. FanDuelNow through September 22nd, ALL FanDuel customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get a THREE WEEK free trial of NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Visit FANDUEL.COM/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ownerships, sudden willingness to spend big dollars in the front office's issues identifying offensive talent aren't the only hurdles of Mariners will have to overcome this off season. Colby and I will discuss how difficult this winter might be considering Seattle's specific needs coming up here on the Lockdown Marries 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. Ahoy, Sailors. It is Friday, September 13th, 2024.

This is Tadang Gonzalez and Colby Pat. And out for the Lockdown Marriott's podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Today, we're going to talk all about this upcoming off season and how difficult it will be for the Maris maneuver for a multitude of reasons. Now, some of you are probably going, you know, why the hell are you talking about the off season? You'll have plenty of time to do that here in the next couple of weeks. And I mean, one, you really want us to talk about what? happened last night. I mean, really? Do you? And judging by our views the last couple days, uh, the answer seems to be a resounding no. So we're going to talk off season. Deal with it.

But before we do, shout out to our title sponsor today. Price picks. Go to price picks. Go to price picks.com locked on MLB and use the promo code LOC, KED, O NMLB. That's all lowercase to win $50 instantly when you play $5.00. And if you want to to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show. Check out our Patreon. The link is in the description. And you can sign up for a free seven day trial. So Colby, as I outlined in the cold open, there are some obvious hurdles for the

Marriors to overcome this winter and some not so obvious hurdles for the Mariner's to overcome this winter. So where do you want to start? I feel like we kind of have to start with ownership. And we'll keep it brief because I think we all know and recognize. Yeah, we all know. At least, you know, the rational, reasonable people in this fandom know that the biggest problem with this franchise is ownership and it's not close.

I know that everybody wants to throw Jerry and Justin under the bus for, like you said, there are difficulties identifying offensive talent and all that stuff, which is fair. But also, we need to reiterate this again and we'll continue to reiterate this. Jerry and Justin, as far as we know, have had zero opportunities to work. off their plan A, their plan B, because what happens and has happened for the last three winters, we have been told is that they're given one number when the season ends and says, this is going to be your payroll, work within this next year. And then before free agency starts, so by the time, the end of the season and before free agency

starts, that number gets cut significantly. So what starts out with, this is what we want to do as they plot it out and they graph it out, you know, pretty much once the season ends until free agency starts. at the 23rd hour, they get told, you can't do any of that because your budget's actually this much. And it's significantly lower. So now what you have to do is not only are you on to plan C, D, E, whatever, but you're also looking at completely different players.

You can't even. So you're just looking at a completely different, you know, set of players and set of rules right before the game starts. That's incredibly difficult to do. So ownership is the biggest problem. We can all acknowledge that. And I think it's fair to sit here and say like, hey, look, if, you know, we can, we can say that Jerry and Justin have to work better or they have to be better at finding these offensive players that fit. And working better with the resources that they do have available to them.

Sure. Yeah. But again, imagine playing a game in which your life literally depends on it. Your job depends on it. And then the rules change an hour before the whole thing starts. And you have to come up with a completely new game plan. Like, we have to acknowledge. And the excuses have very.

buried, right? It's, you know, more recently, it's been the TV uncertainties. Right. You know, before that, it was COVID and the impacts of COVID and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. So what is this year's excuse going to be? Probably more TV related stuff, right? Probably. And by the way, so on that, I want to ask you, if you are Jerry and Justin, even if ownership comes to you, if John Stanton, Chris Larson come to you and they're like, yeah, we're going to give you this, right? We're going to give you this much of an increase and pay,

role. This is what you're going to be able to spend. You can't take them for their word. I thought you would be a fool to after three years of this happening consistently. So do you do you plan for just having nothing and then whatever you get is a bonus? Well, I think at this state, you have to have two plans. Basically is what it is. Is that like because if they do come through with that money, you don't want to be in the same situation where you're changing your plan. Like obviously this is an easier change because you have more margin for error. So this is a better change. then when you start high and you get, you know, the rub pulled out from under you. So you kind of have to make two plans. And this is a difficult enough situation and job for anybody under normal circumstances. But when you have to come up with like two completely separate, because, again, we're talking about like the difference between like here's 150 and here's 175. Like that's not nothing. That is a, you can swim in significantly deeper waters if your payroll is 175.

And I'm just using that as an example because Arizona. Arizona right now, the payrolls at 170. The Maryland is at 147 roughly. Seattle and Arizona, roughly the same market size. Seattle's actually a little bit bigger of a market share than Arizona's and the Phoenix. So they should be spending at least as much as Arizona, at least. But they're not, they're $25 million short right now. So it's just such a big difference between those two landing spots that it's really difficult of your front office to just, you know,

kind of look at and be like, oh, well, you know, whatever, we'll plan for in the middle and then we'll see what happens. It's like, you can't really do that.

You have to essentially make two separate plans and you don't know what plan is going to be put in motion until like the night before free agency starts. Sometimes even later than that. So it's a very difficult thing for, you know, Mariners front office to do. I think the best way to do it is just assume that you're not going to have any

extra money to spend based on where you're at right now. So just assume your payroll next year is going to be about one 47. But you don't want to be, okay, it's going to be 147. It's going to be 147. And then Stan says, hey, it's 175. And we're sticking to it this time. And you're just like, oh, well, now we have to basically do the opposite of what we did last year. We have to tear up our plan that we spent the last six weeks working on. And we have to build a new one. So this is why the uncertainty of the number, like Jerry and Justin should know the number right now. There is no reason for John Stan to not give them a hard number and say, this is what it's going to be. This is what you're working from. And he's done that the last three years, only to literally wait until the EVA free agency last year and be like, hmm, actually it's a lot less. In fact, basically last year your payroll was 140. This year, apparently the max were willing to go is like 147 to 148 somewhere in that range. So instead of $30, 40 million, the Mariners got eight, which is why they had to trade Gino, which is why they had to trade Marco and Kalkanick and all this stuff so that they could have the money they needed. And keep in mind, like, that was just to get back to where they were at.

The $7 million, that's pretty much accounted. The extra $7 million they, you know, added to payroll this year pretty much is accounted by Randy at Rosarena and, you know, Garcia and Turner. So. Yeah. Yeah. This is, it's a difficult job. And it's made even harder by ownership.

So without any question, the number one problem with or the number one difficulty this offseason for the Seattle Mariners run office is going to be dealing with ownership. unfortunately. Yeah. Again. So if payroll stays roughly the same, look, only two guys are coming off of the books, guaranteed. That's Justin Turner. That's Jimmy Garcia. You're only paying them like a third of their salary. Yeah. Mitch Hanager is going to take his player option. Yep. And then there's the question about what you do with Jorge Polanco. I flip flop a lot on that. At times I felt very confident that no, you don't pick it up. At times I felt very confident that, yeah, you should pick that up. Now, I'm probably a no again after what we've seen in the last few weeks from Polanco Right. So that frees up about $12 million

in expected payroll But now you also have guys that are going to increase in arbitration And Julio's going to get slightly more expensive as well I believe like a $7 million increase If I'm not mistaken Here let me let me double check on that Real quick just so we have all the The accurate information here

yeah, Julio is going to jump up from $11.9 million this year to $19.9 million in 20, 25. So now you're at the highest point of Julio's contract. Guys are getting more expensive in arbitration. We're talking about the Cal Raleys and the Logan Gilberts and the George Kirby's of the world. Right. So. Right. Just what do you do?

Right. To put into perspective here, just overall. And Polanco is kind of going to be an important. part of the next biggest difficulty the mariners have to endure and we'll get to that in a second but just to put where they're at right now the mariners have nine players under contract for next year including the hanager option which we assume he will pick up and for now including the uh horace polanco player option so seven players under contract for next year plus the two options we'll assume they get picked up for now uh those nine players combined will be making roughly

$100 million. Then the mayors have 12 players who are arbitration eligible. They'll have to obviously pick and choose who they want to tender, and some of those are going to be more expensive than others. They have eight players who will be making the minimum next year, or roughly the minimum. There might be some bonus incentives and stuff like that, but those eight players are going to make roughly $6 million. So before you even get to ARB, you're talking about a payroll of 105.

Arbitration includes guys like Logan Gilbert, Cal Raleigh, George Kirby, Randy, Rosarena. So already, you're probably looking at $130 million in payroll just to bring back what you had last year, minus the two free agents, Turner and Garcia. So yeah, and if you're only going to spend $145, 147, somewhere in that range, and you're going to start by bringing everybody back and that's going to cost you $130, 135, that's where you're starting. So just keep that in mind. Nine players under contract, including the two options, being picked up at $100 million. And then, you know, 12 arbitration eligible players. You don't have a lot of wiggle room right now if you're not going to make some more, you know, moves to trim budget, essentially.

Looks like if they don't add significant payroll, if ownership doesn't do it, Jerry's going to have to find another, a E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. Hino Suarez trade. He's going to have to find another Jared Kellnick trade to dump some of these salaries. So, you know, again, as much as we talk about, you know, hey, Jerry has to be better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look at what I just laid out for you. If he has $15 million, right, if that's his total to add on, we're going to look at the free agent class in a second. How does he make that work? Like, how does any GM make that work? It's tough. All right. So we'll keep looking at this thing in just a moment, but first, a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Airs is brought to you by Tonal.

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All you have to do to find that is search the word Mariners. All right. So let's continue our discussion here about the off season. We just laid out how payroll is shaping up here. So how do you attack this, Colby? Especially if they aren't going to see a significant increase in payroll from ownership, they're going to have to make some room here themselves. They're going to have to manufacture some breathing room like they did this past off season.

Now, they did that this past off season. And with the resources that they created for themselves, they didn't do a particularly great job. You know, you look at Mitch Garvey. You look at Horri Polanco, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you're entering pretty scary territory there. And when we're talking about the guys that you would potentially dump, we're talking Mitch Hanager.

We're talking Mitch Garver. And then, you know, if we're not talking about those guys who, you know, I don't think anyone would lose any sleepover, you know, the mayor is moving on. from just in a vacuum. We're talking about, you know, Luis Castillo, right? We're talking about Randy or Rosarana,

trading one of those guys who, I mean, that just feels counterproductive. Like, you need to get better. You need good players. Those are good players. Why are you trading away good players when you need good players? You need as many good players as you can possibly get right now. And that just creates even more work for you down the line.

So let's start with Hanager and Garver. trading those guys. Is that even possible? I mean, I would assume it is possible, but like it gets to irresponsible levels probably to make that possible, right? Like, is there a reality that you see where you trade at least some of Mitch Hanigers contract and you're not giving up one of your more noteworthy prospects? No. Yeah. Same with Garver or is, is that slightly better?

Yeah, because that is it's less money. He can catch all that, right? Right. He's honestly more likely to stay healthy, even though both of these guys ironically have stayed pretty darn healthy this year, which turns out to not have been a very good thing. But yeah, it's a little bit more likely with Garver because, again, it's $12 million versus 17.

The fact that Garber can catch a little bit, the fact that, you know, Garver is closer removed to like an actual, like, everyday player role than Hanager is. It's been a couple years for Hanager. It's been just one year for Garber. So yeah, I think Garber's more likely. You're still going to have to attach a pretty decent prospect,

but I think to trade Hanager, you're like legitimately, if things go really well for you, you might be able to attach like Tyler Locklear and clear a good chunk of that salary, not even all of it, but a good chunk. And, you know, I like Locklear, but would that be the end of the world to me? No, but wouldn't you rather have Locklear to use an

other deals that actually make you better instead of just dumping a salary. So, yeah, I'd say Hanigar is basically like you're eating that $17 million. To me, the conversation on Hanager is whether or not you just DFAM or you, you know, release him this winter and just eat the money or if you just bring him back for spring training and see what happens. Like that's, it's not can you trade him. That's not the conversation for me. Garver, you know, because it's $12 million, the mayor's might be willing to eat like half

of it. And then Garver at $6 million bucks, a backup catch. who has a history of hitting, like that's going to have some value. So you might only have to eat like half of that money. But either way, at their full price, you have to attach a really good prospect, I think, to Hanager to be able to move him and at least a pretty decent prospect to Garber to be able to move them. Either way, the mayors are going to eat money on those two players, regardless if they can

trade them, or if they're either going to eat money or they're going to eat prospect capital to move those guys. So I'd much rather they eat money. So like if you're telling me like, hey, you can get rid of all of Hanager's contract, but it's going to cost you Michael Arroyo or you can eat half of Hanager's contract.

You can get rid of all of Hanager's money, but it's going to cost your royal or you can get rid of half of Hanigers money and it's only going to cost you, I don't know, you know, Brandon Garcia or whatever. It's like, okay, well, I'd rather trade Brandon Garcia and $9 million or whatever

to get rid of Hanager than I would trade, you know, Michael Royo. So yeah, those two guys, a good chunk of their money is going to count against your payroll next year, whether they're here or not. And then Luis Castillo, someone that I talked about, the possibility of trading in the solo show that I did on Wednesday. And that's obviously very complicated because he still has a year left with that no trade clause intact. Yeah. So that limits the waters that you can swim in. though I do think that the teams that would be interested in Castillo would be willing to take on at least most of that contract are probably the same teams that he would waive as no trade clause for.

Now, again, I'm not Luis Castillo. I can only assume here, but you would think that if a team like the Phillies or the Dodgers or whoever, who is definitively going to compete for a championship next year comes calling, that he'd be willing to waive as no trade clause to join that team. And I think those teams as well have some interesting pieces for the Mariners. You could also get a third team involved on that front. So obviously we've talked a lot about the possibility, and this dates back to last off season, of course, possibility of trading one of your starters. Well, trading Bryce Miller or Brian Wu makes no sense.

One, because you're probably selling low on both of those guys because they haven't still reached their ceilings yet. And there's obviously the concerns about Wu's arm still, even though he has been able to get deep into games as of late, and he's been really, really freaking good as of late. And two, those guys are cheap, right? Those guys are even more affordable than Logan Gilbert and George Kirby are at this point. Right.

You're not trading those guys for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., right? You're trading those guys for lack of a better name, Jaron Duran. Right. Like if you're trading five years of Miller-A-Woo, you want four or five years of his offensive equivalent, essentially. Right. So you can do it. But it's just you can't really do it for anybody making money because that doesn't solve your problem. So it has to be essentially the Miller Wu equivalent.

Yeah. So with Castillo, I see the potential. I don't know if this is likely, but I see the potential to, excuse me for not having a better term to use here, killed two birds with one stone, right? You can free up some payroll and also potentially address a need or two by trading Castillo. because he's still, even at $24.1 million a year, this is a guy that has been at least a consistent number three level pitcher. And up until this past Sunday has been fully healthy.

He's made every single start that the mayors have asked him to make leading up to, well, tonight when Emerson Hancock is going to go in place of him. So there is a lot of value in that. That, to me, seems like a potential. potentially beneficial path. I don't know how you feel about that. It could be, but here's the problem. You have to replace Castillo.

And it's not that you have to replace him with somebody as good as Castillo, but you have to replace it with somebody who's pretty good because you don't want to go from, you know, Castillo to Emerson Hancock just because he's cheap, right? Like that's not a good tradeoff. So you have to spend money to replace him. So if you're trading Castillo and it's more of like a salary swap where you find some relief, for example, if you're trading Castillo to the Red Sox for Masataka Yoshida, right?

And it's like, okay, well, Yoshida is making $17 million a year. It's like, cool. Okay, I save $4 million. And, you know, I kind of have my DH now. He can play a little left field. He doesn't strike out a ton. He hits right. He's really like, okay, cool.

Well, now how am I plugging that gap in my rotation? with $4 million that I just created. You're probably not. So if you're trading Castillo, you probably want it for guys who are making, you know, six million bucks because part of the, part of the valuation for Castillo is the money that I free up by trading him,

I probably have to use to replace him. Because going at it and saying like, we're just going to use Logan Evans. We're just going to use Emerson Hancock for that spot. No, you didn't get better. You didn't. You just rearranged where your strengths are. But overall,

you're probably about the same in terms of talent level. right and that's not what you're trying to do if you're trading louise castillo you want to get you know you're you're willing to sacrifice some starting pitching for some offense but you're not willing to trade a three one pitcher for a three win hitter if they're making the same amount of money because cool i just stay the same i'm still an 85 win roster because i didn't add any wins and now i have to go and get this thing is there more pitching in free agency this year sure is pitching expensive in free agency? Yeah, it really is.

So now if you want to cheat, and by the way, getting a pitcher who's a good pitcher who's making less than $5, $6 million, we know how expensive that is. Look at what you're asking for Brian Wu and Bryce Miller. Well, yeah, I think at that point you're looking at and I don't know who this is.

I don't know if this guy even exists this year. There usually is a guy like that or two heading into every offseason. But I'm talking about like, you know, the Eric Fettys of the world, the Chris Flexens, like you're looking for a guy like that who maybe, you know, has pitched in Major League Baseball, went to the KBO or went to the MPB or whatever, right? The MPB, he went to MPB, you know, and pitch well kind of revitalized his career.

Now he's going to come back to the States for another shot. Maybe I think that's, I think that's probably what you're looking at in that particular situation, because that guy is probably only going to cost you like three to four million bucks. And there might be some upside there. Sure. Or you're looking for a kind of like, Reclamation one-year Prove-It deal, which is going to be a lot easier to convince a pitcher to come to Seattle and try that than it is a hitter.

But still, even that guy is probably going to cost you $10 million. You're talking about Sean Mania, Luis Severino, maybe Nick Povetta is the guy I have my eye on this winter, you know, guys with good stuff who have some, have done some good things at the major league level, but they haven't quite put it all together. And they're looking for a big year before they cash in kind of like Nathan Avaldi a few years ago, right, where he had the one prove it year. and then you cashed in big. You're kind of looking at that guy,

but even that is going to cost you at best or at lowest, 10, 12 million bucks. So yeah, yeah. It's, it's a very difficult needle to thread when you're talking about the Luis Castillo trade. Totally get it.

But to me, it almost has to be for a guy who's like R one. Otherwise, you're just not clearing enough money for it to be worth it. I feel like at that point, your number five is going to be Hancock. It's going to be Garcia. It's going to be Evans.

Or you're getting, or you're getting a guy that's kind of in that range back in the trade. Right, which it feels like you're just robbing Peter to pay Paul. You haven't actually plugged a hole. You just moved it. Which, you know, I mean, again, if you're going to trust this organization to plug a hole in the rotation or in the lineup with an unproven player, you're probably going to pick the rotation. But still, it doesn't mean it's a no-brainer.

All right. So let's talk about the infield situation. Let's talk about Jorge Polanco. Let's talk about some of the corners. The Mariners might have to cut to, you know, work within these confines that we've laid out over the first two segments of the show. All that in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of the Lockdowner's podcast is brought to you by Price Picks and Fanduel. Prize Picks is the easiest, the most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports.

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All you need is a Google account. account in a current form of payment and you can cancel any time just visit fanduil.com slash locked on that's l o cd on to download america's number one sportsbook and you're listening to the locked on mariners podcast once again you can catch all the action tonight between the merrers and the rangers on the merriest hometown broadcast with serious xm via the sxm app all you have to do to find that is search the word mariners so the infield is the biggest question mark problem area, whatever you want to call it, heading into the soft season for the Mariners.

Not just because of the fact that they at least have to address probably two of the spots, maybe three of the spots, maybe all of the spots within the infield, but also because free agency, once again, not particularly good, really in most of those areas. First space is pretty solid, but outside of that, it gets pretty shaky.

And that's pretty much the case every offseason, by the way. That's not really unique to this one. But yeah, so let's start here. Jorge Polanco. Where are you out with that? To me, again, like I said, I think I'm a no again on picking up that option. So here's my thing is the Mariners need one new member of their middle infield.

That's where I'm at. Okay. That could be J.P. Cropford. Yeah. That could be Jorge Polanco. Now, Palanco is the easier one. You just decline the option.

He goes away. Boom. So JP is obviously more complicated. He's more of a fixture in the community and in the clubhouse. You know, he's coming off of a terrible year. It's been a bad year for J.P. Crawford, we can acknowledge that. But also, you know, the idea that last year is who J.P. should be is not true. I think we all knew last year was the outlier.

So what is J.P. Crawford? He's a guy who's approaching 30, who is a average-ish shortstop. This year, he's graded out pretty well in the past couple years. He's been below average. So we'll call him an average glove at shortstop. who has traditionally been about a 100 WRC plus bat. So you have a guy who is average hitter, average glove, good base runner, doesn't steal bags,

but, you know, good base runner overall. Has clubhouse, you know, value, you know, leadership value in theory, as far as we know, he has those things. And he's under contract for two more years. I think he's making 11 this year and like 12.5 next year. So very reasonable amount of money left. to O to J.P. Crawford. And as we mentioned, this is a bad free agent class, particularly in the infield.

So a guy like Crawford with multiple years of club control, a good contract, a good number that a lot of teams can absorb, average glove, average bat, good leadership skills, you know, good clubhouse guy. Again, we're assuming on the last few things based on everything we know about J.P. Crawford. We're not in the clubhouse. We can't confirm that one way or another, but seems to be, you know, really good dude and good leadership, all that stuff. So that guy can get you something. Now, is he going to get you like a ton?

Probably not, but I honestly think that the Jorge Polanco swap that the Mariners made with the twins, kind of in the same alley, right? They're both middle infielders. They're both, you know, approaching 30. Polanco was, Palanco is coming off of a down year largely because of injury. But, you know, both are good, solid players making about 10 to 12 million bucks. Like I both have two years of club control if you want it. So I really do think that the Polanco trade and the Crawford trade are pretty good like comps for each other.

With the notable exception, that Crawford could play shortstop. And Polanco can barely play second or third. So you might actually get a little bit more for Polanco, but for JP. But again, if you're trading JP, who play shortstop? Right. Right. if you're moving on from Jorge Polanco, there are more options.

But it's kind of the same. Essentially, what I'm saying is that you have to pick one. You can either get something for JP, but deal with the fallout of having moved on from, you know, a guy that many fans consider to be the captain of the team. Or you can just wipe your hands of the $12 million of Polanco. And either way,

you have a hole to fill at second base, which right now probably leads to a, Cole Young conversation. Yeah. Either way. Yeah. No. Cole Young is probably going to make the opening day roster and probably going to be slated as the starter at one of these positions.

I feel pretty confident about that because I just, this is what I was talking about when I was referring to cutting corners to work within these confines. That's all about Cole Young. Because when I look at the situation that's presented to them right now, it's like, okay, well, how are you going to make this work with what I would assume is going to be limited if not basically zero resources at hand and putting Cole Young on the opening a roster seems like the just the obvious solution to at least one of these problems right and I use and I still use the word solution very generously here by the way sure because again using young at either

of these spots is going to save $10 plus million. I'm going to say the mayor is $10 million this winter. And, you know, is Cole Young absolutely definitely ready for the big leagues? No, no. I don't think we can say that. Is it far-fetched to think that he could, you know, put in the work this offseason, have a really good spring training, even if, you know, Palanco and Crawford were both back? Is it impossible to say that like there's no shot he would make the opening day roster

anyways. No, this is a big winter for Cole Young. It's going to be a big spring for Cole Young. So it's definitely possible that he could make the opening day roster, even at both of these guys, remained on the roster. But if you think that's a possibility, why not save 10, 12 million bucks, move on from Young or sorry, move on from Polanco or Crawford. And you just kind of have to roll with this unproven guy at second or short. He can play both. He'll be a, the way I've heard is that he would be totally, you know, average at shortstop, you'd be about what JP's been this year, maybe a little bit better. At second base, you might be a gold glover. So, you know, why not go do that? So you can put Cole Young, let's just hypothetically, as things stand right now, I think

what's most likely to happen, they don't pick up Polanco's option. Col Young is a second basement. They give JP another shot one more year at shortstop, which happens to go inside. by opening day 2026 Colt Emerson might be ready the way that that guy's developing and if not then Cole Young can still be your shortstop and you can just find a second basement next year

so I think the way that's shaping up right now is that you know Cole Young at second JP at short that would be my prediction for what the opening day double play tandem would be right now yeah so let's just go through each free agent class here at first base

second base third base and shortstop And then I think that'll just clear up a lot of the picture for you guys at home. So at first base, Paul Goldschmidt, maybe you want to take a shot on Goldie. I'd rather get the job to Rayleigh. Sure. But Paul Goldsmith's there. Pete Alonzo, we all know about him. Anthony Rizzo has a $17 million club option.

We'll see Josh Bell, Christian Walker, Wilmer Flores has a $3.5 million player option. Carlos Santana maybe Joey Gallo Ryan O'Hern has a 7 and a half million club option Routi Teles Yule Juryl. So that's first base And that is by far the best class Out of the four that we're going to talk about here

Second base. Labor Torres Maybe I guess Brandon Drury The Marys have had multiple opportunities To acquire him in the past. They have no interest in Brandon Drury. Move on. Yeah, yeah. Obviously, Palanco, you know, we'll see.

Adam Frazier. He has an $8.5 million mutual option with Royals. Brandon Lau has a $10.5 million club option. That's it. Third base. Alex Bregman, free agent. Not going to happen. Yohamukata, $25 million club option with the White Sox.

They're going to decline that. It's kind of the Glaber Torres thing, right? Like, this guy's had good years. He's been good recently, but do you want to bank on that? Gino Suarez Obviously was really bad for about half of this season And then has gone Super Sand 3 Over the last two months

Basically been Otani for the last two months And there's a non-zero chance The Diamondbacks just pick up that $15 million club option At this point And look, Matt Chapman's off the board now That's created even more of a headache here at third base And that's kind of the biggest area That the mayor is need to address here ultimately

Because Josh Rojas That ain't it and, you know, Luis Arias, he's going to get non-tendered for sure. And Rojas might follow him on that front as well. And then lastly, Gio Rochella, right? So slim pickings there. Then it's shortstop.

Willie Adamas, right? He's going to get a ton of money this off season. He's going to get, think Danzby Swanson money. If you're thinking Adomis is a reasonable, you know, yes, like I like the player, but I think he's going to take 7 and 175 from Seattle when he can get that from somewhere else.

No. Hotsung Kim has a $7 million mutual option. I think he probably declines his end of that and he'll end up going into free agency. Maybe, but that's a guy that's probably going to make considerable money as well. Then we get into Kyle Farmer who has a mutual option. Miguel Rojas, who has a club option, Kike Hernandez, Paul DeYoung, maybe. He's having a pretty good year. Nothing says fix the strikeouts like Paul D. Young.

Right, right, exactly. we know that the marrists have had interest in him in the past so maybe a med rizario is another guy who the marries have had interest in in the past he's hitting free agency uh jose a glacius kevin newman that's it right some stopgap guys there yeah mostly so like maybe it is a med risario right maybe that's someone that you can get for like three or four million bucks this off season sure and when you look at what the mariners are at right now you look at where they're going to be this winter Jorge Polanco, right now, like if the Marys were playing a game in 2025 and they had to choose who was playing in that game today, it's really at first base, Polanco at second, Crawford at short, and Rojas at third. Well, Palanco's got the $12 million option.

We know that the Marriers are going to be, you know, looking for ways to create cash. So probably not. Probably not going to pick that up. So second base becomes open. Josh Rojas, he's going to make a bout. It's his last year of ARP. he's going to make about five, six million bucks next year. Do you want Josh Rojas?

Is your everyday third baseman? Like, forget about the money. Do you want that to be the case? No. Okay, well, do you want Josh Rojas to be the utility guy? Well, you're already paying Dylan Moore three, right? You know, you have Rivas who's shown some nice things. He's making the minimum.

So do you want Rojas to be the utility guy? Maybe. Do you want to pay him $6 million to do that? Probably not. So Rojas is probably getting on tendered. So just right there, and that's if they don't consider bringing back, you know, that's if they don't, or that's if they don't consider trading J.P. Crawford, they have two openings in their infield right now.

And possibly three, because while Luke Rayleigh's done some nice things this year, Luke Rayleigh also figures to, you know, be a part of the outfield mix a little bit. So you very well could have been in a situation where the Mariners, if they so choose, could be looking for a brand new infield or they could need a brand new infield. and they'll have, you know, assuming they, assuming they don't pick up Polanco's option, they trade most of JPM's books, they'll need four new infielders,

and they're going to have $20 million to get it done. One of these spots is going to a rookie. Yeah. And that's almost certainly going to be Cole Young. Raleigh is still making the league minimum next year. So my guess is first base is Luke Rayleigh. So because of that, that leave shortstop and third.

We've just laid out who is available at the shortstop market. So if they trade JP, then I guess they probably go and try and get DeYoung as a stop gap there. Or maybe Rosario as a stop gap, even though Rosario is not good there. But then they still have third base. Like the Mariners probably need two infielders. Yeah. This winter. Look, they're making trades, right?

Which, I mean, even if they had all the money in the world, Jerry DePoto and Justin Hollander, they're still going to make trades. Right. That's just a foregone conclusion, right? but yeah that's how they're going to have to attack this thing because one they don't have they might not have any money to spend and if they do it's probably very minimal and two the free agent market just sucks at the areas that they need to get better at like you think you're going to get think about how much more money you're going to have to give Alex Bregman or Willie Adamas to get them to pick you the worst ballpark to hit in in baseball

you know, how much more money are you going, you don't have more money. I mean, ownership won't give you more money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you're not going to get them. So the only guy that we talked about, the only corner infielder, not first baseman, because that's not the highest priority right now because you have Luke Grayley, the only guy who might be willing to take market value to come play in Seattle is the guy who's already hit in Seattle and has, you know, track record here and has kind of a following

built up here. And that's Gino Suarez, who, probably isn't getting to free agency. And does he want to come back? Right. And if he did hit free agency? Well, I think you, I think you'd be more open to it than say like a pregnant because

Gino's been here. He's hit here. Like he's had a good year here. But Scott Service isn't here anymore. Is that going to factor in his decision? Obviously, you know, and then there's the risk to the meritors of bringing back Svarez too where it's like, okay, cool. Gino had a great second half.

He was off. He got benched in the first half. He's another year older. the bat's another year slower and he still strikes out a lot. So like you're in a very precarious spot right now if you're the Mariners because I think you look at your outfield and you go Robles, Julio, Randy Roserena, Rayleigh. Yeah. Feel good about that. It also seems like you might have to take a shot on one of these guys that's already on the roster to be better than they have been this year.

Right. And that might be Rojas. That might be Polanco. Right. Or J.P. Crawford. Or JP. Yeah. Right.

But I think what you can't do. Or two of those guys, by the way. Right. Well, I don't, what I think you can't do is you can't say like, well, we're just going to bank on three of these of our current infield to come back next year and produce. Like, so if you want to bank on Rayleigh and and JP, fine. You need to go get a second basement and the third basement. If you want to bank on Polanco and JP to bounce back, fine. I mean, it's the easiest way to clear 12 million bucks is Polanco. But whatever. If you want to bank on those two guys figuring. it out next year. Fine. Now you need a third basement in the first basement. Right. So any way you want to try and spin this, the mayors need to add at least two infielders. And oh, by the way, they still have lots of, lots of DH app bats they can give as well. So they are going to need multiple bats. And that's without subtracting anybody, they still need multiple bats. And we know that

they're probably going to have to subtract some players to get the money to go add the players that they already needed. So the mayors are in a very tough spot because basically, there's no there's no path i can see right where they aren't going to count or give you know serious playtime to unproven player or a player coming off of a bad year who's trying to reestablish some value serious at bats are going to go to a player like that unless unless possibly you trade one of kirby gilbert woo or miller at which point now all you've done is your your your your issue, your problem area has just shifted to starting pitching. You have a hole to fill there.

So it's a very tough spot to be in. And it's a spot that they don't need to be in because if you give Jerry and Justin $30, $40 million, which isn't a ton, it really isn't. It just puts them up to spending about $175, $180 million where they should be anyways. If they do that, they can do all these things and more because they can get creative with money and they can, you know, take on expensive contracts. They can look and say, oh, you don't want to pay this guy $17 million? We'll take him.

Right. Then at that point, they can do what we talked about on Monday. I think it was Isaac who asked us that question about, you know, in a perfect world, if ownership is willing to take on contracts, who would you target? We talked about like Matt Olson and Marcus Simeon. Like, maybe they could actually do something like that if they had the money. Oros-Corea, Brandon Nimmo. Yeah.

Yeah, you could go do stuff like that and take those shots because you know they, you have a margin of error. So no matter what we talk about this off season, it's always going to circle back. How committed is ownership to winning? Because they're not committed if they're going to tell Jerry, you get $5 million to work with this winner, figure it out, trade whoever you have to trade,

but we're not adding to the payroll. You need $34. There's zero reason that this Mariners team right now shouldn't be pushing at least, at minimum, $180 million in payroll. Zero. They're in their window. They still have time.

They still have a young core. this is the time honestly you're lucky that I'm only asking for 180 I should be pounding the table for 200 million because that does that barely get you in the top 10 right now it's like we talked about on our Patreon earlier this week like how ignorant to their

situation is ownership truly right because like look they had an absolute PR nightmare of a year and attendance stayed roughly the same does that happen for yet another year do they think they they can get away with it for yet another year of putting minimal effort into

building a winner and still profiting? Basically. At a certain point, like the buck has to stop. Right. We've seen it. We've seen it. We sit here and we talk about like, oh,

the Mariners fans, they just, they don't care about winning because they keep showing up. It's like, yeah, the 2010 Mariners, those Safeco Field crowds, where they were getting,

you know, 19,000 on a Saturday night against the Yankees, they'll stop showing up, right? So, and by the way, that doesn't do anything.

but give ownership an excuse to lower payroll. So pretty much every PR disaster of the Mariners hit this year is directly linked to the decision of this ownership group to tell Jerry, you have X amount to spend. And then the night before pre-agency says, actually it's X minus 30%. Everything goes back to that. Everything. So if you want to avoid that, and by the way, buy yourself some goodwill with this fan base, give Jerry the money.

Give Jerry the ammo. give Jerry and Justin, heck even be like, you know what? Hey, guys, we are going to make a splash this winter. Like, you tell me what Alex Bregman or whatever, right, pick your guy. Maybe there's somebody coming. It's not one Soto, folks. It's not. Obviously, you know, come on. Again, we work in reality on this. But hey, maybe it's like Tony Taters, right? Yeah. Maybe it's like, oh, hey, you want to Santander wants $100 million. Screw it. Give it to them. Like, we don't care. Like, bring them in. Maybe it's like, oh, we have to trade like Logan Gilbert for Jose Ramirez. But, you know, this pitcher says he'll sign here for $100 million also.

Why do it? Like bring them in. Let's do this thing. So hopefully ownership is smart enough to look at this and be like, it's time. We tried the nickel and dime stuff for the last three years. We found one year successful. Our PR is in the, you know, in the, you know what? We're screwed.

Like we have to do something. to build some goodwill with this fan base. This is the winter we're going to do it. Hopefully that's what we see. I'll believe it when I see it. So that is going to do it for our show. But before we get out of here, a reminder that Lockdown has launched

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now available on the free Fire TV channels app. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Marrars podcast for Colby Patnode. I'm Tiding Gazzalas. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Merrers. You can follow me at Tiding Gizales and Colby at C-Pat 11. That's C-PAT-1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day.

And we'll see you next time. Peace.