Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - How Concerning Is the Mariners' Infield Situation?

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Ty and Colby continue their 2025 Mariners position preview series with look at Seattle's infield.Participate in our Mariners preseason survey!Check out our Patreon!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Follow the show on Bluesky: @lockedonmariners | @tdg | @mlbcolbySupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Wonderful PistachiosLooking for a snack that’s both delicious and nutritious? Get snackin’ and get crackin’ with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more. SelectQuoteGet the right life insurance for you, for less, at SelectQuote.com/LOCKEDONMLB.  FanDuelRight now, new FanDuel customers can get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Bonus Bets if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins!Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.  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.

The Mariners' biggest position will need this off season was, of course, their infield, and well, you know how that went. But now that the deaths is settled on an underwhelming off season to say the least, it's time to talk about these guys and what they can do in 2025. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Oh, Hoy, Sailors. It is Tuesday, March 4th, 2025.

This is Tadang Gazzalus and Colby Patnode for the Lockdown Merr's Podcasts. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Today is our in-field position preview. We'll be going all around the diamond for the merrars. But before we do, as always a reminder of that if you want to hear from me and Colby, even more, and help support the show. You can check out our Patreon. All you have to do to check that out is click the link in the description of this episode.

So before we get into the specifics here, Colby, just to get the ball rolling, what is your confidence level, scale of one to two? 10 in the infield as things currently stand. That face doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Well, it's not, it's not high. Scale of 1 to 10, which is not really the scale we use here, but whatever. All right. 2080 scale then.

35, 40. Like, definitely not like 50, which is like, well, okay, you know. Yeah. It's definitely below that. so yeah at 35 probably a 40 it's firmly below acceptable

but I guess there's just enough upside that you're like maybe yeah yeah yeah I don't want to regurgitate our whole you know offseason discourse that we had over the last few months really

but uh you know it's pretty much the same infield as they had at seasons in last year, right? You replace Donovan Solano with, or you replace Justin Turner with Donovan Solano. You bring back Polanco. Josh Rojas is gone. That's it.

That's all that happened in the infield this off season. And they added a couple of marginal pieces here and there, like the Miles master bonies of the world, right? My concern here, and I'm in agreement with you as well on my, you know, on the confidence level in the sinfield. My concern really lies at third base. They're going to have Hori Polanco playing there. He hasn't played there yet.

He still hasn't been cleared to do so. Apparently he's confident that that's going to happen here in the next few days. He's going to get Greenlit to do that. But he hasn't yet. He did make his first game appearance of the spring yesterday as a DH. Went 0 for 2. But you got a guy coming off of a very serious injury that you try. to play through last year.

And obviously, you know, you can look back on last year and point to the injury as, you know, maybe a big reason for the struggles that he endured. But he had a really bad year last year by his standards and just in general, really. Now he's being asked to take on a position that he's only played a handful of innings at in his 11-year career coming off of this serious injury. It's one of the more difficult positions of baseball to play. And on top of that, he's going to try and rebuild his value and, you know, produce offensively once again. And he's trying to do that again in Seattle.

And this is a very important year for him because he's going to hit the market again next winter. And this could determine if he is actually going to get a real deal next winter or maybe he's a guy that ends up signing a minorly contract. If things go as sideways as they did this past year. So there's a lot on Jorge Polanco's played. And I'm just not really sure how this is going to play out. I'm really concerned about the defense. I'm unsure what kind of level of production you're going to get out of the bat. Where are you with Jorge Polanco right now?

Not overly confident. I think the optimistic person would say that, you know, well, he played hurt all of last year and, you know, obviously that takes some adjusting hitting in T-Mobile Park. And just naturally, your numbers are going to be a little bit worse if you play half your games at T-Mobile Park. So he's going to be healthy this year. There were some stretches last year where he was actually really good

and just wasn't able to sustain them. And it felt like every time he started to get. get there, you know, the hamstring would pop, would pop up, or there'd be a wrist thing or something. So you hope that he's healthy. I guess that's the optimistic take. I think the realistic take here is that this is a guy who, you know, didn't have much of a market this winter. He was coming off of a knee injury, something, you know, we were told he was going to be ready to go, you know, on day one. and he wasn't.

So at the very least, that was the stretching of a truth from the Mariners side of things. So, yeah, I mean, like the fact that he hasn't played third yet, he's gotten one D.H. Day so far. And now he's, I mean, I know he's like taking reps, right? He's not taking ground balls and all that, but it's just different, you know. And there are certain plays that he can't make yet. Like, you can't even really practice them yet. yeah they don't want them coming in they don't want him planning on that leg yeah and it's like okay well those are pretty important things that you have to do to play that position and

you know i don't think you want them to try and do that stuff for the first time in the regular season like especially it doesn't have a lot of experience there so i'm concerned uh about polanco uh it is a pretty big question mark there uh just just across the board. Can he run well? Not that he's ever been a burner, but can he move pretty well? Can he defend?

Can he throw? Can he make throw consistently? Can he hit from the right side to the left side? Can he hit a T-Mobile Park at all? I don't know. There's a lot of question marks there. Now, I guess the good news is that there is also a 10-year track record

for this player that shows him as one of the more, you know, underrated hitters in all of baseball. And so you kind of hope that that is, what you see this year. And it's certainly, you know, within the realm of possibility that you get Polo and he's, you know, 250, 340, 450, 20 home runs, that type of thing. And you're fine, if that's the case. And the defense, as long as it's not a disaster, you've still upgraded at that position because Rojas gave you nothing all last year. But yeah, I'm concerned about Polo.

he's the most problematic seems like a like a negative kind of it I'm more concerned about polo than any of the other players uh who are slated to be you know everyday guys uh so yeah he's my biggest concern and and I don't know if they have a ready and available replacement for him if things go south it so that's that's also fact you know baked into my concern with third base in general. Yeah, I mean, right now it's probably Dillamore and then Ben Williamson. End of list. Yeah. I mean, maybe Austin Chinton, even though he's probably should play. And obviously, Solano, who's played there in both of the games that he's appeared in so far in the spring. We'll talk about Solano in a moment, but yeah, that's, that's really it.

So, yeah, there just isn't like a clear answer that, you know, you could see at least like down the road that you feel pretty decent about, like how we do with second base and Cole Young. eventually it feels like second base will be in at least a decent spot because cole young will eventually be ready or at least we think so but when it comes to third base there just it really isn't like the the cole young there i know for some people it's ben williamson right now but yeah i mean yeah and ben williamson could be that after six to eight weeks of triple a like if he's tearing it up there you're like okay well yeah we'll just we'll take that shot but right now i i don't think you should feel that way about ben williamson so uh yeah it We'll see how Polo does. I do hope that he gets into a game at third base this week. But they kind of, they're running out of time a little bit. It's getting pretty close to, you know, can you get enough live reps with, you know, three weeks to go until opening day with the, you know, kind of limitations that Polo is working with right now.

I don't know. I'm a little bit worried about that and how it's, you know, going to impact. him, you know, also being ready at the plate. So we'll see. But yeah, it doesn't appear that he was as far along in his rehab or whatever you want to call it as we were kind of led to believe when he signed with the Mariners. So yeah, that is also a bit concerning. I'd be more on board if the bat was more of a sure thing. But I'm just not sure if it is right now. Like he says that he feels his legs better, that he can feel the ground better. I read his interview that he did with Ryan Divich after the game yesterday. He says that he feels overall better, that he felt really unbalanced last year, that the pain was manageable at times during the season, but sometimes it was really, really awful and severely impacted him.

And he says that he feels healthy now. We'll see, right? Players say a lot of things. So we'll just have to see how that goes over the course of the regular season. But, you know, I don't have an issue with them moving on from Josh Rojas in a vacuum, but I do wonder if this is going to wind up being a negative. If the third base situation overall regresses in 2025 from where it was in 2024, because at the very least,

while Josh Rojas was a massive negative pretty much from May onward with the bat, he's really good defensively. There isn't a tool right now with Horace Polanco that I feel great about. No, it's the big risk. And, you know, like I don't know that they have enough. you know, tranches built into their infield depth that they can just be like,

yeah, you know, Polo doesn't work, we're fine. We have a backup plan. It's like, yeah, not without subtracting that

from other areas of your ball club. You really don't. So, and I don't know if you can replace that in the middle of the year. So we'll see. But I am pretty concerned about Polanco. He is, he's the guy I'm far and away the most concerned.

Over the guy we talk about, over the next two days, all the guys we talk about, Polanco is the guy I'm concerned about the most by far. And you're listening to the Lockdown Marreras podcast. So let's talk about Donovan Solano, who again, has played at third base the two times that he's appeared in a game this spring. He, like Polanco, had a delay to the start of his spring,

but only because of visa issues. And he's looked pretty much as advertised at the plate so far in these two games. And at third base, he looked fine. It's only been a couple of innings, but whatever. It does seem like them deploying him at third base is a, real thing that we're probably going to see over the course of the year. And again, if Polanco doesn't work out or you just straight up just can't handle playing at third base this year, Solano's probably the first choice, if not Dillamor.

And we'll get to more in a moment here. But yeah, I mean, Solano, he's been a guy that we've obviously talked about for years now. He, you know, at least found his way into the conversation of all of our offseason plans because he's just he's been a great value for whichever team has has signed him over the last few years. He's obviously a part-time player, but he's a high average hitter is a couple of years where he's put up, you know, 125 WRC plus, 1-18 WRC plus, 1-16 WRC plus. That 116 came in 134 games with the twins. But again, he's probably a part-time player. But even then, this guy only signs for like, you know, two, three million bucks every single off-season.

The mayor has got him for what, three million bucks this year? Yeah. I've seen teams spend a whole lot more on a whole lot worse. I mean, the Cubs gave Justin Turner $6 million. Is Turner twice the player that Solano is? No.

No. No. And that's pretty much the idea here is that Donovan Solano is Justin Turner. It is what Turner gave you in those two months. And you could see the, I mean, it's not going to take long. Four Mariners fans to watch Solano and be like, oh, yeah, that looks like, you know,

what Justin Turner did last year. I don't think he's going to be too impacted by Team Mobile Park. He's a veteran. He stays up the middle. He does what he does. Like, he's not, he's not trying to hit home runs. He's not, you know,

swinging out of his shoes on every pitch. He's just going to make contact. He's going to find some holes. He's going to, you know, shoot the gaps every once in a while. He's like the offensive philosophy that Edgar and Kevin Sites or have talked about personified.

Yeah. He checks a lot of those boxes. So, yeah, Solano feel like he's a pretty safe bet. I mean, he's 37, I think, 37, right? So like, you never know. The cliff might come, but it's not like he's a guy who relies tremendously on bat speed right now anyways. And, you know, bat speed isn't everything.

Turner doesn't have bat speed. And he was still very good for Seattle down the stretch. So, yeah, just the guy kind of understands. who he is and the cliff might come this year that that is the risk with Solano but really based on the evidence we have we have no reason to think that that's going to be the case there's just nothing in his game that indicates that he's just not going to hit for the first time in like what seven eight years now he's just not going to hit this year really don't have any evidence to suggest that he's probably going to hit at least you know 260 and that's baking in some

regression for the age because he's been what a 280 hitter for the last five years like It's just kind of he is who he is. And what he is is a good hitter, a limited hitter, somebody who probably shouldn't get 600 plate appearances. But, you know, if you kind of maneuver him right and you kind of deploy him in the right situations and all that, you can give him 400 plate appearances and he'll help your ball club. Absolutely. So before we wrap things up here on the corner infield section of our preview,

let's talk about Luke Rayleigh. He's lined up to be the primary first. baseman, Elisa gets Ritey's for the Marys. See how much DH and outfield time he gets. But a great first season with Marys for Rayleigh last year. A high-energy dude who produced at a 243, 320, 463 clip, 129 WRC Plus, 22 home runs, some of the most impressive bombs you saw all year long from Mariner's hitters last year. 58 RBI, 29.7% K-rate, 5.9% walk rate. he was a 2.3 win player last year.

I know you're a big Luke Rayleigh guy. So what are your expectations for Rayleigh this year? 35 bombs. You remember Prime Anthony Rizzo? That guy. No, Rayleigh's going to strike out. That's just part of this game. And you're fine with that because he does hit tanks.

He's a good athlete. He'll steal some bags. He's not going to steal 20. I don't think he might be able to, but I don't think he's going to try to. but yeah i i think he's probably going to primarily face right he's like he is who he is at this point and that is a a strong side platoon guy a very good one who you know might have found another gear against right handed uh pitching uh and from august first on i believe rley finished the year

with a 190 wrc plus uh there was a span i forget exactly when it was it was like a two week span or something where he was like the second most valuable hitter in all of baseball yeah uh but i am pretty sure from August until the last day of the season. He was a 190 WRC plus guy. And he's still striking out, but he was walking a little more. The power is evident. It's obvious.

You see it right away. Yeah, Rayleigh, I feel totally comfortable with in the role that he's playing right now, which is just mash righties, dude. And then, you know, anything we get from you defensively, he's a pretty athletic dude. He's probably about an average outfielder. So, yeah, last year at first base, there were some mistakes. hadn't played it in a while. He should be fine there.

I'm not worried about it. And even if it is below average first base defense, you're fine. That doesn't hurt you that much. So yeah, I feel totally fine with Rayleigh. I think he's going to, you know, $250, $350, $450, $500, somewhere in that rate.

I think he's going to be a $120 plus, you know, WRC plus type of guy. And, you know, depending on how many played appearances he gets, because these are counting stats. I could easily see him hit in 20, 25 homers and driving in 70, 80 runs. So, yeah, I am really comfortable with Luke Rayleigh.

And I think he's a really nice player to have and kind of an underrated player when we kind of build out this Mariners lineup. I think that obviously, you know, Cal and Julio and Randy and Robles for what he did last year. But Rayleigh was right there with Robles. So as the Mariners best hitter for pretty much the last, you know, 60, 65 games. So yeah. I'm pretty excited about Luke and I feel really comfortable with him right now. Yeah, you remove his PAs against Lefties last year. He was a 255-3333-497 hitter.

That's a 142 WRC plus. Yeah. Yeah. Any thoughts that you want to quickly share on like Tyler Lockley or Ben Williamson, some of the other guys that we might see on the corners this year? Sure. Williamson's off to a hot start in spring. Good for him.

He's certainly turning some heads. It's worth noting that his opponent quality is a 6.6. Alas check, which is, you guys don't know, that is just based on the arms that you're facing in spring training because obviously if you, in spring training, you might face Roki Sasaki one day or one inning. And the next inning you're facing like Walter Ford, you know. So a 6.6 is roughly between high A and double A pitching.

Williamson was in AA last year. He should be performing pretty well against them. And he is, like nothing against the guy, but he's not crushing major league pitching right now. I think he needs to go to Tacoma and earn a call-up because his numbers in Arkansas, particularly the power, were bad. Everything else is pretty good, but no power whatsoever in Arkansas for a third baseman. I think he needs to go to AAA and hit a little bit more. And we'll see what he looks like in, you know, at least. least a month, maybe two.

Locklear, obviously, a cup of coffee last year. I'm still really concerned about whether or not he can hit velocity, particularly in or above the belt. So I do have some very real concerns here. The Mariners seem to think that, well, privately, I guess. They seemed to think that last year there were some really good encouraging exit bellows down in Tacoma and some good batted ball data. And there was also apparently a wrist injury that kind of hampered him towards

into last year. So they're kind of counting on some underlying numbers and a healthy Locklear. And Locklear is as flashed, certainly, in spring training this year. But yeah, he should be in Tacoma as well. And then Austin Chinton, I mean, you might factor in at third base. He might factor in at first base. You know, he's probably going to start in AAA like he should. And I'm sure he'll be one of the first guys called up if there's an injury.

And he is the guy who actually has some major league success. out of that trio in very limited plate appearances, but still, like, you know, Locklear struck out, what, 40% of the time in roughly the same number of played appearances. So, yeah, yeah, Shenton is, is probably the guy I'd go to at third or first base before I'd go to Williamson, maybe Locklear, kind of depending on what kind of start Locklear gets off to. We'll have to see how real the Mariners prediction that the rich, injury was a factor is. But I would also point out, how many times did we hear Jerry and Justin talk up Tyler

Lockler this winter? Zero times. So. Yeah. It's up to buy in when the GM and the president of baseball ops with two positions that Lockler has played being positions of need and positions the merits tried to upgrade this winter. And they still never talked about the guy.

So I feel like maybe they're telling you what they think about Locklear without telling you what they think about them. but guys pop all the time, even 25 year olds. So we'll see what he does. But yeah, I mean, they're covered at first base. If Rayleigh goes down, it's like, okay, they have some legitimate options at first base. Third base. Yeah.

Yeah. So we are going to talk about the middle infield for the Mariners coming up here in just a second. It's primarily going to be a second base conversation. We'll talk a little bit about J.P. Crawford as well, just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Marys podcast is brought to you by Fanduel. When the game tips off, the NBA action is just getting started, and there's no better place to get in on it, the Fandul, America's number one sportsbook. With Fandul, you can place live bets throughout the game. So even if you miss the opening tip-off or want to bet on a fourth quarter comeback, you can stay in the action.

And if you're looking for a bigger payout, you can even combine your live bets into a same game parlay. I love using Fandual's live betting feature because it keeps every moment of the game excited. Whether I'm backing my team for a late game rally or picking a player to hit a clutch three, I never feel like I miss my chance. Plus, the app is super easy to use. And when you win, you get paid instantly. Right now, new Fandual customers can get $150 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. Just visit Fandual.com to join today.

That's Fandual.com for your shot at $150 in bonus bets. make every moment more with Fandul, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. And you're listening to the Lockdown Airs podcast. So let's talk about the middle infield here. And the biggest topic here is second base. So we're probably going to spend a lot of time on that. So let's talk about J.P. Crawford first. JP coming off of a really disappointing year.

89WRC plus. Significant, what, 47% regression for JP going from. 2023 to 2024 yikes also dealt with multiple injuries over the course of the year but that wasn't exactly the reason like it certainly didn't help but it wasn't exactly the reason for his struggles like he he struggled out of the gate before he even got hurt and then he got hurt and just things continued to snowball so uh yeah how are you feeling about jp right now coley definitely a you know, what we call a swing player, right? If he's really good this year and he regresses positively,

positive regression, then he can add a couple wins to your win total. And as we know over the last couple of years, a couple wins really does matter to the Mariners because they seem to want it to matter that much. But yeah, and if he's really bad like it was last year, that's disappointing. And you really don't have kind of a replacement on hand to, you know, managed that. Even last year when he got hurt and he was bad, like, Demo couldn't do it every day. And now Dylan is going to be factoring in significantly at

second. So he might not even be your first option there. So Crawford is, is interesting. I mean, he's, he's an important player for multiple reasons. I feel reasonably comfortable that he is going to be at least a league average bat. It's pretty much what he's been his entire career. Just the last two years, we've kind of the outliers in both directions for J.P.'s career. So, yeah, I don't think we're going to see 2023 Crawford again. Was the 139 WRC Plus, whatever it was? 136, yeah.

136, yeah. I don't think we're ever going to see that again. I don't think we have to, though. I think JP, if he is a 100 to 105 WRC Plus, he plays the type of defense he did last year. We know he's a good base runner, not a good base stealer, but a good base runner. so he's going to provide value for you there. I think he's a three, three and a half one player still. So I still feel reasonably confident that JP is going to be a net positive for the

marriage in 2025, which means he's going to, you know, perform better than he did in 2024. So I feel reasonably good about JP at short. It'd be incredible if you can get another, you know, 260, 380, 400 or whatever it was in 2020, the 19 bombs. Like, if you can get 80%,000. that along with the defense that JP played last year, he's probably a five-win player still. And so that that's a big difference there.

So, yeah, I feel okay about JP. I just, I think I have, I think the key to JP is to have reasonable expectations, which is be a league average bat, be average to slightly above average defensively. And you're probably going to be a three-win player. Yeah, this year is just all about finding the middle ground for JP Crawford. And he's gotten to work this off season. So we'll see if that pays dividends. but yeah if he can just be that 105 110 WRC plus guy

you know that he was in 2022 it's more than acceptable or even a 103 like he was in 20201 he was a 3-1 player that year that would be great that would be that would help a whole lot especially now that he has at least for the time being been supplanted in that lead off role now he's the guy that turns the page in the lineup you know he'll be the eight or nine hole hitter for the mares

at least to start things off. That's a role that's better suited for him. And if he's able to give you just league average to slightly above league average production out of that, out of that spot, that's going to be huge for you. So, all right. So let's talk about second base. We kind of talked about this on the Patreon yesterday, Colway, that really any, any spot that may or may not be up for grabs in the mayor's position player group over the next few weeks, kind of all ties back to what happens at second base. And who essentially wins that job.

Justin Hollander said that, you know, before the spring, that Dillamore is going to be the starting second baseman, but that Ryan Bliss would get some time there. And Bliss has been very impressive over the start of the spring. Now, you don't want to overreact too much like we talked about yesterday. Don't want to overreact too much to the spring performances. But it seems like he's made some adjustments over the course of the off season. and so far the results have been really, really good.

And on the flip side, you know, Dillmore hasn't recorded a hit and, you know, a spring ball yet, 15-plated appearances, whatever, right? But I brought this up to you yesterday that, honestly, I kind of want them to just hand-bliss the keys and see what he does with it. And that way you put more back into the role

that you would prefer him to be in. And he's still going to get a lot of playing time at second base with just the way that the roster is constructed. But with Dillamore basically designated as your primary utility player, now you don't need Master Boney, you don't need Rivas. And you can give that roster spot to someone that's, for lack of a better term, just more exciting than those guys, right? And that player doesn't really need to play a specific position.

It could just be anyone. It could be Domkan Zone. It can be Austin Shenton. It could be Samad Taylor. It could be Ben Williamson if you actually want to give him a shot. at the major league level whatever right yeah but but could be any of those guys right now it all comes down to like how much are you actually going to play that player whoever it is right for obvious reasons the bears would probably feel a lot more comfortable just having miles master bony play once a

week you know instead of like their actual like high potential higher potential players that they have right so those guys can actually get consistent playing time down in tacoma or even ark off, right? So I don't know. How do you feel about the second base in general what Bliss is doing right now? And who would you name the starter? Or would you even name a starter? Yeah.

I still think Dylan's ultimately going to get first crack at it. I think Bliss should. And not because of what Bliss is doing, you know, in the cactus. league right now, although he's been good. And Dylan Moore has not been. I think it is primarily because Dylan is the veteran. And he's the longest tenured mariner, believe it or not. So I do think he's going to get first crack at this thing.

I don't know how long of a leash he's going to get. But yeah, I do think that Dylan is going to be the second baseman. But like you said, the benefit to the mariners who have been oddly very outspoken about this, they haven't exactly given Dylan a like ringing endorsement. They've talked openly about like, boy, it sure would be great if Demo could, you know, slide back into that role that he's played so well for the last, you know, six years. Like that's not a ringing endorsement of a guy who is right now slated to be your everyday second basement. It sounds like the Mariners are looking at us being like, boy, we sure would like somebody to just beat Dylan Moore, you know, for the job.

And then Demo kind of slides back to the role that he's accustomed to. And that makes your bench better. That makes, in theory, that makes your starting lineup better. So I do think that there is more of a shot now than there was a week ago. But, yeah, I still think it's ultimately going to be Dylan. Although I think it's going to be a pretty even split, would be my guess, between Demo and Bliss. So, yeah, I feel with Dylan, you know, I know I'm going to get defense. I know I'm going to get stolen bases.

I know I'm going to get occasional power. I also know I'm going to get the more than occasional O for four with two strikeouts in a pop-up game from Dylan Moore. That's just kind of what it is. He's going to hit 200. He's going to walk a lot. He's going to strike out a lot. He's going to steal some bags and he's a pretty good defender. With Ryan Bliss, it feels like there is a better shot at an everyday bat there.

And that really has more to do with the fact that Dylan Moore has. never proven with any consistency whatsoever that he is an everyday player we talked about it he's gotten overexposed in the times that he's essentially had to be an everyday player i mean just when he took over for jp last year for the first couple weeks he was great and then you know the last two or three weeks he was your worst hitter and demo is is a streaky hot cold hitter uh he's either on fire or he's bad like there's very few uh you know instances where you look at and he's like oh yeah he's swinging the pad okay it's kind of he's really swinging it or he's not.

So there's a lot of inconsistency there. But the glove will travel. We know that. The speed will play. We know that. So yeah, there are positives to both guys' games. I think if I were picking,

I would rather have Bliss just so that I could have Demo and basically free up an extra spot on my bench. I don't have to carry a backup shortstop. Not that they necessarily have to if Demo is a starter, but they probably would want to. And so, yeah, I think I would prefer Bliss. I think it will ultimately be Dylan getting the opening day start, which, you know, is, I guess, cool, but also ultimately doesn't really matter who starts opening day in the long run. So, but yeah, I would say Demos probably going to get first crack.

Bliss is going to be on the opening day roster. I do believe that. And I do believe you will play quite a bit early on as well. and they'll just kind of, you know, try and let this competition play itself out over the course of April would be my guess. But, you know, it remains to be seen. Still three weeks to go down in the Cactus League, a lot can change. But yet, the way things are right now, I would say DEMO is still the favorite in my eye. Yeah, like I said yesterday when we pretty much got asked this question about the state of second base.

If I had to put money on it, I would still say that Dimo is the primary second base. Maybe starting second basement is the wrong term to use, but the primary option at second base But to me I don't know. I think I think there's just more upside and seeing What Bliss does with it and Having more float, right? Especially if like Polanco is unable to handle third base, right? Now I can have Demo play some third base You can play shortstop when JP needs a blow. He can even play in the outfield a little bit and that if I need him to, right?

Bliss, meanwhile, cannot do that. Like, no. It's not a reversal of roles here where it's like, okay, more is the primary. And now Bliss is that guy. And so you still don't need Master Boney or Rebus. No, no, no, that's not how this works. There's, there's an arm strength issue. So second, so shortstop and third or not, you know, long term.

Like, again, if you have to put him out there for a couple of innings because somebody got hurt or whatever, then like, fine, whatever. But even then, you'd probably just stick him at second and move Dylan over to the position of need. So, yeah, it's not like just, like you said, it's not a role reversal, which is like, oh, well, you know, Bliss will just take the Dylan more role. He's not really built for it. Yeah, where it's either way, you don't need Master Boney or Revos. So, yeah, it's just like if you are planning on Demo is the guy at second base, whenever he plays, he's playing at second base, then you probably need Master Boni or Revas on your roster to start the year. but if you give Bliss the keys or it's more of a time share

than we're kind of being led to believe right now or at least entering spring training then yeah you can just use that roster spot on really whoever and maybe it still is masturbation or Revos because you just don't really plan on deploying that player a ton on a week to week basis but it just it gives you an opportunity to really feel the best roster possible and I just with Demo as the primary second base

option. I just don't think that you're able to fill the best roster. I mean, yeah, it's like part of it is, is do you want more or bliss? But the other part is it's like, okay, do you want master bony or can zone to be on the opening day roster or Shenton or, I mean, uh, Locklear or Williamson or whatever, right? Because like it's, if more is on the bench, the versatility of that last player doesn't matter quite as much. Uh, but with Hanager and and garber probably on the bench most nights you're already pretty limited so yeah yeah you could have some fun with that last spot uh if dylan can just be the true utility guy uh so yeah we'll see that's really the only spot let's up for grabs but like you said it's pretty much 100% dictated on like

who can win that spot is pretty much going to be dictated by who wins the second base show and that's going to do a first show thank you so much for joining us here on the lockdown Marrers podcast. For Colby Pat node, I'm Tiding Gazzalas. Be sure give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Tading Goulby at C-Pat-11. We're also on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG, Colby at MLB Colby, and the show at Lockdown Mariners.

Have yourself a beautiful baseball day. We'll see you next time. Peace.