Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - It Was Another Rough Year For Mariners Second Basemen

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Colby and Ty hand out their grades to Mariners second basemen in 2023, including Kolten Wong, Josh Rojas, José Caballero, and Dylan Moore, then discuss Teoscar Hernández's agent and supposed family member hinting towards his departure from Seattle this winter.Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Jase MedicalSave more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.  eBay MotorsKeep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelMake Every Moment More.Make Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS - GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.SleeperDownload the Sleeper app and use promo code LOCKEDON and you'll get up to a $100 match on your first deposit. Terms and conditions apply. See Sleeper’s Terms of Use for details. Currently operational in over 30 states. Check out Sleeper today!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) 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.

Colton Wong was an unmitigated disaster, meaning the Mariners' second base situation was an unmitigated disaster as a whole for most of 2023. Give out our season grades for the position coming up here on the Locked-on Marers 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 Thursday, October 12, 2023. This is Taday Gazzalus and Colby Pat. for the Lockdown Marries podcast, brought to you by Sleeper. Swing for the fences on Sleeper picks, and you can win up to 100 times your money. Download the Sleeper app and use promo code Lockdown. That's L-O-C-K-D-O-N. You'll get up to $100 matched on your first deposit.

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And if you're part of the crew and rock with us every single day, let us know in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you. And if you want to hear from us, even more, please consider signing up for our Patreon. You can now get a free seven-day trial to check out the show. The link as well as their social accounts is in the description of this episode. On the show today, our grades for the 2023 Mariners. continue with a look at the dreaded second base position. And it seems we have even more of an

indication that Teosker Hernandez won't return in 2024. We'll talk a little bit about that towards the end of the show. But, Colby, we got to start here with our second base grades. And we got to start with the guy that held that position to start the season and was supposed to be the full-time guy was supposed to be the answer there at a big problem area for the Mariners over the last few years since Robinson Canoe was traded back in the winter of 2018. That's Colton Wong. Colton Wong was bad. Very, very, very bad.

His slash line with Mariners this year in 67 games, 165-241-227, negative 1.1-4. He was one of the worst players in Major League Baseball. this year. So, gee, let me take a wild guess what grade you're going to give F law. F plus. Okay. Yes. Because let's not forget, he did single-handedly beat Lance Lynn and the White Sox with his heroic bunt single to get Lynn out of that ballgame. He also should have had a game-winning home run against the twins. Thanks, Andres.

but yeah aside from that he was awful he was really bad so it's it's an F you know it's a bummer too because you know by all accounts Colton Wong is a really good teammate he's a really good dude he really worked very hard to try and solve his issues at the plate this year and it just you know the season just kind of collapsed on him and the whole got so deep that he could never really dig himself out. So, you know, it's, it really is a bummer because, again, Wong seemed like a guy who's excited to be in Seattle. He, you know, he was coming off of his best year, offensively, at least at the plate.

And everything just seemed to, everything that could go wrong just seemed to go wrong for him. And it just didn't work out. So it's a bummer. You know, you certainly don't root for guys on your team to fail. But you also don't want, you know, just good guys in general to have years this bad. because now Colton's going to enter this offseason and he's going to struggle to find a major league deal. You know, it's a bummer.

You know, he was able to find himself on the Dodgers playoff roster. So at least there's that. But yeah, it was a bad year. There's no question about it. And it's easily the worst year of his entire career. And it literally came out of nowhere. I know there are some of you out there who are claiming you knew that Colton Wong was bad, but you're lying.

So I'll say that. straight to your face. Your line, if you thought Colton Wong, was going to be the worst offensive second baseman in baseball this year. You're a liar. Yeah. So, you know, we know that he was regressing defensively over the last couple of years heading into the season, but offensively, he had his two best seasons of his entire career. He was a 116 WRC plus guy a year ago in Milwaukee. That's the highest mark of his entire career. He ends up finishing with a 35 WRC plus in his Mariners tenure ended up finishing the whole year at a 48 WRC plus but 35 WRC plus from a 16 from a 116 WRC plus that's an 81% decrease he was 81% worse yeah so if you're saying you saw that coming you're full of something I can't say right because we're a family friendly show you're full of garbage so yeah it's still enough it was a disaster but yeah certainly came out of nowhere i don't think anybody being honest would have said that

you know they expected colton long to be 80% worse than it was last year but that that's the facts you know and so it's it's an f there's really no other grade you can actually give them i mean i don't think even being as nice as you possibly could f plus yeah it's as big of a disaster as you can possibly imagine here. The only thing that keeps me, because I'm giving him an F, but the only thing that keeps me from giving him an F minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, is that he, you know, he at least wasn't a problem off the field as far as I'm aware. So that's the only thing that can make it worse. Depends on who you asked to speculate about that, but no, he wasn't a problem in the clubhouse. So yep, just a real bummer of a situation.

Colton Wong is the guy that you want to root for. And it just, it just didn't work out on any level. and it turned out to be pretty impactful. So it's a bummer, but, you know, it is the reality of what happened in 2023. And then he goes to the Dodgers and in a very small sample size, just 34 plate appearances, he put up a 300 batting average. He was a 130 WRC plus guy because, of course, Dodger Magic, even though that didn't carry over to the NLDS, but that's a whole other conversation. but, you know, why do you think it didn't work out for him in Seattle?

And then all of a sudden he was able to find some offensive success down in L.A. Well, there's a lot less pressure when you're the 26th guy for the Los Angeles Dodgers who's already epically failed in Seattle. And, you know, you can feel kind of the pressure of the fan base starting to cave in on you. So part of it really is sometimes that like the hole just gets so deep that you just can't, get out of it, no matter what you do. And it just, you can't, you can't grip the bat tighter and expect to play better. So, um, I don't know. It's just, I'm not a swing guy.

I'm not analyzing Colton wants long swing. Why would I ever? He's never going to be a mariner again. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I don't feel like his swing decisions were significantly worse. But again, I only saw him play for the one year. So tough to say, but I do think there is, uh, something to be said about just, you know, the mental block of going to work every day at the same place and just struggling and struggling and

letting your teammates down. And then finally being like, okay, well, you go play for somebody else. And then you walk into the clubhouse. It's new. You haven't let these guys down yet. You just kind of relax. There's really not a lot of pressure because, you know, your team's in the playoffs already. Your team's winning the division.

You just trying to kind of, you know, restart your career and put some good tape out there. And so I do think that, you know, there is something to be said about, you know, we kind of overuse. the change of scenery argument a lot. But I do think there's something to be said about like walking into a clubhouse full of guys you haven't disappointed yet with no expectations placed on your shoulders whatsoever. That just kind of allows you to just go out there and just play ball. So I do think that is part of it at least. So we're going to talk about the other guys that made up second base,

especially after it's made pretty clear that Colton Wong wasn't going to be the answer there. We'll go over those guys in just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Airs podcast is brought to you by Sleeper. All right, folks, the MLB playoffs are right around the corner, which means the clock is ticking on your chance to 100 times your cash on daily fantasy baseball. Pick more or less on stats for your favorite players like home runs,

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Terms of Conditions apply. See, Sleeper's terms of use for details currently operational in over 30 states. Check out Sleeper today. And you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen. the other guys that made up second base. We're just going to kind of go in chronological order here. We're going to go with Jose Caballero

because he basically took that position from Colton Wong after it was made very, very clear that Wong wasn't going to be the answer there. Cabiero was, I mean, he was amazing to start things off. I mean, he was hitting, he was stealing bases, he was playing decent defense, he was being utterly annoying at the plate against other teams.

Like, he was a lot of fun. And then he finally came back down to Earth, but he ends up being the fifth most valuable position player on the Mariners by F-4, 2.2F4, which like we said with Mike Ford yesterday, probably says a lot more about the Mariners roster as a parent-in-his lineup than Jose Caballero in this situation. But he ends up finishing with the second-most stolen bases on the team.

He had an overall good year, especially when you consider the fact that he, I mean, you had no expectations for him going into the year. He was, you know, the return in a very, very small trade involving Mike Leak a few years ago. I honestly forgot about Jose Cabiero until, you know, he was mentioned that he was coming up to the big league club. So what do you think about his year overall? Yeah, certainly really important to the Mariners because when he came up, he kind of single-handedly prevented Seattle from having the worst second base production in the history of baseball. So that's where he started.

And then of course he crashed because he's a 27-year-old rookie who's, you know, never played more than 90 games in a season. So, yeah, I don't think that that was too terribly surprising. So kind of like Mike Ford, this is a question of like, are you grading based on expectations or are you just grading based on output and, you know, performance and all that stuff? So it's based on expectations. It's an A plus because you got more from Cabiero and one half of a season.

then you probably thought you were going to get from him in his entire career. If it's just based on what he actually did this year, it's probably like a B plus, like couldn't hit at the end of the year, even struggled to hit against lefties, although he was fine against lefties for most of the season. You know, made a couple major base running blunders got picked off a few times when he really couldn't afford to, but also stole a lot of bags, you know, got on base at a really high clip and played a really good defense at second, filled in a little bit for JP when he on the IL at short.

Like he's a, he's a nice player. And, and, you know, I think the Mariners should reward him by making sure he's in AAA to start 20, 24. But, yeah,

he, it was, it was a good year. I mean, there, there's really no question about it, uh, whether you want to talk about,

you know, just from expectation standpoint or actual production, either way, uh, he helped you this year. I mean, two wins is, is an everyday player now.

Yeah. So is a cabbiero and everyday player? No, I really don't want them to be. but I think he's proven at least that he can provide value to, you know, to Seattle or to a major league team coming off the bench or being, you know, that kind of that kind of taxi squad guy between AAA and the majors. So, yeah, like, I think Cabiero went from, we don't know anything about this guy to

having a pretty secure 40-man spot. I don't think there's really much danger of Cabiero getting. DF8 off the 40 man, even if they have to make moves to, you know, accommodate new players. So that's a really good year for him again. I hope, beyond hope, that he starts next year in AAA. And we really only see him if there's an injury or a short-term call-up. But if that is the case, and that's what happens when he comes up next year, you're going to feel okay. He's going to give you something.

He's going to draw a walk. He can pinch run. He can play everywhere in the infield. Like, he'll give you something, which is. you know, beyond what you could have expected, especially when he was literally just the return in a salary dump of a trade, what, four or five years ago?

So, yeah, it was a really good year for Cabby. He ends up finishing the year with a slash line of 221, 343, 320, that's a 96 WRC plus, 2.2F4, 23.6% K rate, 10% walk rate. Four home runs. He had a couple of bombs, which was absolute nukes that just came out of nowhere. The Oakland one, the one against

He had one against Atlanta. It wasn't a nuke, but Was it Boston? There was one that he hit in Seattle. That was pretty stunning. It was pretty surprising. It was like center field, right? Wasn't it like into the pen?

Yeah, I have it in my head. There's like, it was against a red team, but I can't remember what red team it was. I think it was the Red Sox. That's why I said the Red Sox because I thought it was the Braves. But then I was like, no, they played the Braves in Atlanta this year. he did hit a home run against the Braves it was his first career home run it was a bit of a wall

scraper but yeah the one in Oakland was one of like I think the the fourth or fifth farthest hip ball by the Mariners this year like he 437 feet yeah yeah then it was like a 110 off the bat too like not something that you thought cabby was capable of but yeah he had a very good season

yeah very good year so with the context of like we had no expectations for him whatsoever I think I'm gonna give him like an A minus A just kind of what I did with Mike Ford yesterday as well. You know, I think overall on the whole, if there were expectations with him,

it's probably more of like a C plus, B minus B somewhere in there. but given the fact that, yeah, you had no expectations of getting anything from this guy and he was able to give you a two-win season. Yeah, A for me. So Josh Rojas was added, of course, at the deadline. He ended up becoming the primary second baseman

for the Mariners from that point forward. He was splitting time with Dillamore, who we're also going to get to. But Rojas was pretty good. He was red-hot during that run that they went on during the month of August, especially on that road trip when they went to Houston, Kansas City. He ends up finishing his time with the Mariners.

46 games played 272, 321, 400, the 104 WRC Plus. He was worth 1.2. for it during that span. He, you know, he kind of, he got off to a slow start in his Mariners tenure. Again, like got hot during that stretch in August and fell off a little bit again. And then was able to contribute towards the end of the year.

So it's a mixed bag from Rojas and he had some issues defensively. I mean, that game in Tampa Bay really sticks out. Sure. But mostly isolated issues defensively. He was, he was fine. But he's probably better. suited over at third base. But what do you think about,

or what did you think about his two months in Seattle? Solid B. You know, I don't think you can give me anything less. Hit for average, you know, solid on base. That's about league average with about league average power,

which is not something that Rojas is typically produced. He's not a home run guy. And yet he, you know, was pacing out for about, you know, 15 to 20 home runs somewhere in that range. if he played the entire season in Seattle.

And you talk about the slow start, he was coming off of a long injury layoff. So, yeah, I mean, Rojas, you know, in essentially what, 30% of a full season was almost, you know, a 1.2 win player. So you do the math, he's close to a 4-win player since he got to Seattle. So, yeah, I think it's a solid B. The defense I felt like got better, the more he played over there.

he's not, you know, you don't, he's not a black hole. It's not like you're starting tie france at second base and praying to God. Nobody hits the ball to him. He's fine. He is, you know, probably, probably, you know, fringe average at second right now. He's much better at third.

But you feel fine with him at second. You feel fine with him at third. You feel fine with him in the lineup four or five times a week. Like, and he's going to give you something, you know, he'll struggle like somebody does. But for the most part, he's going to give you a good at bat. he's got some pop that he's finally getting to here. And he's a,

he's a real solid player. So I think there's a, I think there's a possibility, you know, and six months we're talking about like, is Josh Rojas the secret key to the Mariners season? Or we could just easily be like, man,

the Mariners really flipped Josh Rojas for that. Wow. Cool. Like, Ross is a good player. And he had a pretty good run with Seattle last year. So I'm going to give him a B. Yeah,

I'm going to go B plus on him as well. And I think that he can be, a legitimate part of this thing moving forward, either as a part-time second baseman, part-time third basement, you know, kind of been, like ideally I would like Josh Rojas to be what Dillamore has been for you the last couple of years,

because he can also play a corner outfield spot if he need him to. He's played some left field in the past. Marwin Gonzalez. That's who you want Josh Rojas to be. That's his ideal role. So speaking of Dillamore, um, it's,

It's it's hard to assess his year because, you know, he had core surgery during the off season. Then he gets rushed back and then has a bunch of setbacks and finally gets on the field. And really doesn't look like he's in baseball condition. Like he's able to play Major League Baseball. And then he gets really hot there for like a couple weeks. And that's kind of doing the heavy lifting here for his. numbers in total. 207, 303, 428.

That's a 105 WRC plus over 67 games played. 0.7F4. He struck out 34% of the time this year, though. 9.7% walk rate, 19 RBI, 7 home runs, seven stolen bases. Weird year for Demo. And again, I feel like he needed way more time down on the miners

before he was called up. So again, overall, yeah, I, you know, bad year for for demo or at least a pretty mediocre year for for demo but i also blame a little bit of it on the organization for rushing him back i just think the way that they handled him in general and the way that they built their roster banking on him coming back uh was really really really disappointing uh but i i think i'm leaning towards like c minus here for demo d plus he's you've always been a demo simp um long time demo hey here standing up.

Right. Yeah, he went like four for his last 50 down the stretch. I remember how we talked about like how he was going to be really important in those last 10 games because you were facing a ton of lefties. He sucked. But he was bad. So because he had the offseason surgery, I'll be nice and I'll give him a D minus for Dylan more.

The D of course standing for Dylan. The minus of course standing for his overall value to the Seattle Mariners. Right. Right. Yeah, so Yeah, so from from about July 22nd to August 20th

So about a month He was pretty good But outside of that he was dreadful Utterly dreadful You shouldn't be anything more than the 26th man On your team Yeah, this is another reason why I say Like Josh Rojas should be your new

Dylan Moore essentially It shouldn't be Dylan Moore again in 2024 If anything, if Moore's on this roster, he should be what Sam Harroddy has been to you. That should be the role that he's filling. He should be the fourth guy on your bench. Yeah, agreed, agreed. All right, so we have been working under the assumption that Teosker and Nandez was not coming back to the Mariners in 2024 in some capacity, whether they give him the qualifying offering and takes a contract elsewhere, or they don't give them the qualifying offer and just completely wash their hands. of him, whatever.

But now it seems like we've gotten even more of an actual tangible indication that that relationship might be ending this off season. We'll go over that in just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Marys podcast is brought to you by Jace Medical. Modern medical care and treatment are important, but our global supply chains are fragile. Things like pandemics, natural disasters, and foreign travel may cut you off from the treatment you need.

Jace Medical is your solution for that. Just fill out our online forum and one of our board certified physicians will review it to determine whether medications are safe and appropriate. Then they will send your prescriptions to one of our partner pharmacies where your Jace order will be filled and mailed directly to your home. Everyone should feel empowered to care for themselves and their loved ones during the unexpected. That's why Jace Medical offers the Jace case. Save more than $360 by getting these life-saving antibiotics with Jace Medical plus an additional $20 off by using the promo code locked on at checkout on jacemedical. That's j-a-s-e-medical.com. And you're listening to the Lockdown Merritt's podcast.

Thank you again for making us your first listen. So headline, Tay Oscar Hernandez liked a tweet. That's right. We're playing Twitter detective on today's show, folks. You are. Yeah, sure. Tay Oscar Hernandez liked a tweet from what many are assuming is a member of his family.

I'm not sure if it's a brother, dad, or uncle or cousin, whatever. But this tweet from an account with the name Jose A. Hernandez, which said in Spanish, a new house is required. That was in response to a tweet from Tay Oscar's agent, Rafa Nyevas, who posted his home and away splits, which are not good. Like he was bad at T-Mobile Park this year and pretty good on the road.

So the fact that his family is responding to that, the fact that his agent has posted that tweet and has talked about how four he played at T-Mobile Park. And the fact that T-Oskar is liking tweets that are talking about that seems to indicate that T-Oskar doesn't want to play in Seattle any longer, at least to me,

just trying to read between the line. lines. Colby, I know you love stuff like this. Tell us your thoughts on that. What's a five-letter word for one of the Hawaiian islands? Plain crossword. I mean this in the most sincere way possible. I do not care. Like one bit. I don't care. I don't care. I literally, I have nothing else to say. I don't care. Teasca Hernandez isn't going to be here next year. It was probably the case anyways. Who cares? who cares teosker wants to blame team mobile park because he couldn't hit okay fine that's that's a you problem bro i don't know what to tell you like i i don't care yeah i'm sure uh team mobile park

really uh really contributed to the 32 percent strikeout rate that he ran at the ballpark yeah i just whatever you know agents are going to blame whatever they can instead of the player because they're trying to get him the most money uh the player is going to believe it because it's a lot easier than believing that oh no maybe i'm a player who's you know hit 30 and I'm on the decline now. I don't care. I don't. There is nothing about this that we should be talking about.

I hate it when we go, oh, somebody likes so-and-so's tweet. So obviously that means that, you know, I don't care. Stop sending me your screenshots of who like Ty France's Instagram posts.

I don't care. This is nothing. And we're going to do it every single freaking day this year, this winter because you know somebody's going to go to drive line and we're going to go oh my god is he visiting the i'm here stop it i don't need many guys go to the drive line i don't need to know what mark can't what kind of suit mark can't i don't care put the pin to paper then i'll care i this is so stupid i get you guys are thirsty for baseball news but stop have some self-respect for yourself I spent like an hour last night trying to find the perfect trade package for like a fourth outfielder.

Okay. And that's less pathetic than us talking about this right now. This is pointless. We don't even know if this guy's related to Tay Oscar Hernandez. And even if he is, who cares? I don't care. Goodbye, Tay Oscar. I wish you luck in your new stop.

Maybe it's still here. I don't care. Maybe it's somewhere else. Either way, I don't care. This tweet doesn't mean anything. Stop it. Have some self-respect for yourself. Good Lord. This is garbage. This is the worst part of not playing playoff baseball.

It's not that you're not actually playing. It's how we have to respond to stuff like this and be like, oh, man, we need a, we need a breaking news segment. Make some new music tie. We need a banner. Like we'll just, like, oh my God, somebody tweeted something that a player liked. Oh, good Lord. Stop the presses. Who freaking cares? and I'm not saying another word on this episode. That's going to do it for our show.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby Pat Note, 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 D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at CPAT 11. That's C-P-A-T-1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making us your first.

Listen, have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you next time. Peace.