Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Jerry Dipoto Talks Mariners Offseason, If They're Done Adding, Future Payroll, Draft and Much More

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

It's the biggest show in Locked On Mariners history! Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto joins hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode for a nearly hour-long discussion, going over the addition of Tommy La Stella, if the Mariners are done adding this offseason, future payroll, having three picks in the top-30 of this year's draft, who to watch for in Spring Training, which prospects received the most interest in trade talks and much, much more.Be sure to follow or subscribe to Locked On Mariners wherever you prefer your podcasts! For questions and other inquiries, email: [e-mail] the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11For more of Ty and Colby, check out their Patreon: patreon.com/controlthezone/Join our Slack!FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Place your first FIVE DOLLAR bet to get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Free Bets – win or lose! Visit Fanduel.com/LockedOn today to get startedFANDUEL 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.

Chills. Jerry Depoto joins the Lockdown Mariner's podcast for an exclusive interview coming up. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. It is Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. This is Tadie Gonzalez for the Lockedon Mariner's podcast. brought to you by Fandul, the official sportsbook of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Make every moment more. Visit fandul.com slash locked on today to get started. Thank you so much for making us your first listen. Subscribe, like, and turn on alerts if you're watching on YouTube, or subscribe and leave a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform if you like what you hear.

And if you want to hear from us even more, please consider signing up for our Patreon. The link as well as our social accounts is in the description below. This is our biggest episode of Locked-on Mariners yet. Mariner's president of baseball operations, Jerry Depoto, will be joining us here in just a moment. We'll be asking him about the off-season. the Mariners are done adding or not? What is philosophy with things like extensions and weighing production over potential is and so much more.

Should be a really fun discussion. But real quick, be sure to stick around until the end of the show for the winner of our $50 Mariner's gift card giveaway. It might just be you. All right. No more delay in things. Let's talk to Jerry.

All right, folks. The big day is here. The man is here. Mariners president of baseball operations and Tom's River Hall of Famer. Jerry Depoto joins us now on the law. on Mariner's podcast. How's it going, Jerry? I wasn't expecting the Tom's River Hall of Fame or that's pretty good. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time out to join us today.

I really appreciate it. I know a lot of our listeners are really excited about this. So let's just hop right into it. So outside of the press release, we haven't heard much from you on the Tommy Lestella signing. So what about Lestella made him a good fit for your ball club? And what gives you confidence he can get back on track after the last two. years. You know, Tommy, a couple of things. One, we pursued Tommy as a free agent a couple of years ago when he signed with the Giants. And, and during that time, we got to know Lestello. You know, we spent numerous Zoom calls like this. We spent numerous phone calls, myself, Scott, Andy McKay, I guess most prominently getting to know Tommy a little bit. And ultimately, he went to the Giants

and did not have a very healthy stay, particularly last year. And I don't know what I don't know it would be like to play with a bad Achilles, but to play with two bad Achilles that is probably really difficult to manage. And, you know, his on-base ability, his ability, especially versus right-hand pitching, has always been appealing to us. The last time, Tommy was fully healthy and ready to go, I think he's about 20, 25 percent better than the average hitter in the league. And if you, you know, kind of win over that down to what he did against right-hand pitching, even more of an advantage. So we've always kept, you know, a tab on him, so to speak. The thing that that stood out to us mostly was his makeup, you know, who he is, what he's about, he's played in

winning environments, and it's been a consistent theme of ours through this offseason with Lestella, with A.J. Pollack, with DeAosk, with Dasker Hernandez, with Colton Wong. I think just that quartet of players alone is I think it's 21 different playoff seasons that they have taken part in with various clubs and and you know some that led to a world series so we thought that was an important element to add to our team and we might we went in heavy on the guys with with postseason experience. Jerry do you do you think this is what the 40 man roster is going to look like when you guys head to Arizona in a couple weeks? Yeah, it's tough to say I actually did a a group meeting here with our Mariners employees, which is, you know, a rundown that we do on a monthly

or bi-monthly basis. And I said that to that. This could be our team as we head into Peoria. You know, we might wind up, you know, coming up with a late trade like we did a year ago with, Gino Suarez and Jesse Winker by way of Cincinnati. We could pick up a couple of extra NRIs, you know, the non-raster invites, some of whom you may have heard of. We're constantly trying to add to the the depth of what we go to spring training with. But if I had to bet on anything major happening before we step foot on the field, I bet against it at this point. And we're comfortable with that. We feel like the team is, we have improved this team from where we were at season's end. And very encouraged by, you know, giving some of the young players, again, opportunity to step forward.

As we've kind of shifted away from the rebuild, we've come out of the rebuild. early on in the process, you guys seem to place a really having emphasis on club control, as you know, you naturally would. But this offseason, you kind of shifted and we've seen a lot of one year type of deals. Is that a byproduct of just this market and this offseason? Or is that something we might see a little bit more of, you know, in the coming years? I think it's probably a byproduct of having what we think is a pretty stable, you know, foundation. We are a constant. The way we build our team is to look over a six-year horizon. And so you mentioned club control, and six years is roughly the length of time that you're

going to have control over, you know, the youngest or least experienced player on your roster, assuming that that player doesn't get options somewhere along the line. So we're always looking in a six-year block. And part of that six-year block is, is some type of forward planning for when you're going to be able to introduce the next wave of young players. And so this is the intersection between, you know, the, what we talked about a lot during our rebuild phase, you know, which was to give young players, athletic players, opportunity and watch them grow. We also want to make sure that we maintain, you know, the opportunity.

Because if we don't consistently inject the next wave of young talent, even if that wave is one or two players big. You know, it's, it's a, if we're not consistently conscious of introducing that, then we run the risk of aging out and running, you know, effectively running the camel into the desert floor, which we don't want to do. We're, we're all about, you know, creating something that has sustained value in our roster. And we have a group of young players that really give us a chance to do that. So kind of going off of that, you've spoken in the past about being a draft, develop and trade ball club. And a big part of making that work really is the ability to also retain your own. And for guys like Teoscar Hernandez, for example, who are just now entering

your organization with a year left of club control, is it important at all for you to see a player in your clubhouse before exploring a longer term commitment with them? You know, ideally, yes, you know, but we do so much recon on these players, you know, before we acquire them and to the extent that that information is good. You, you, I feel very comfortable with TASCAR Hernandez, with Colton Wong, with Trevor Gott who, it was the first of our additions, AJ Pollock. Some of them I'm comfortable with, like a God or a Pollock, because, you know, I personally know them or have had relationships with them and, you know, in past stops.

You know, with others like a Wong or a Tosker, they've been around for long enough and they've played in winning environments where we have good relationships with the people they were around, be it teammates or staff members or front office personnel. So we feel like we know them walking in and who might fit best in our clubhouse. You know, we made a big investment in Robbie before he ever stepped foot in our clubhouse. We made a big investment in Luis Castillo after he did. And, you know, similarly, we had a pretty good read on what the Rock was about before I ever stepped the foot in our clubhouse and then it was even better than we thought it would be in terms of, you know, the personal fit. So ideally you'd like to have them in your clubhouse and to spend time,

but if there's a, if there's a deal to do and the player fits from an on-field talent in the lineup, in the rotation, whatever it is, talent, and we have good recon on what is makeup's about, we're not afraid to take a chance either. Now, looking a few years down the road, you'll have Julio's money kicking in, and a lot of your young core will be approaching free agency around the same time. Because of this, would it be fair to anticipate more off-seasons in your contention window that look similar to this one with more of a focus on shorter-term commitments? Or do you believe it's possible to both simultaneously maintain your encore while swimming in the, maybe not the deepest ends of free agency, but the deeper ends of free agency? You know, I think it's always going to be some combination of all of those things. And, you know, it so happens that in doing the deals for Robbie, Louise, for Cullio, we have over the course of, I think, just over the last calendar year. So we'll date it back to, you know, the signing of Robbie Ray in what would have been like the final day of November 1st of December in 21 before the lockout that. that ultimately led to the 22 season.

Since that time, I think we're seventh among all major league teams and the amount of money we can have contributed towards signing players, be it free agents, you know, or in-house extensions. And I think that sneaks up on people. We've spent $501 billion on signing players. We just didn't do it in the way that maybe most would deem more conventional. So it's we went out and we did add big impact. And what that led to is a, you know, a CBT or a tax, you know, payroll that is approaching $185 million.

And why that's significant is that what you just talked about, the Cal Raleys, the George Kirby's, the Logan Gilberts, those who are not signed to extensions, they're going to hit arbitration at about the same time. that a lot of those, the bigger numbers in these extensions, and that's not just Julio, who jumps from, you know, minimum to $4 million to $10 million like that, and then it's $18 overnight. And, you know, as similarly is Luis Castillo, who went from, you know, as we acquired him last summer, we did this extension.

The extension, you know, really ramps up in terms of rate of pay for the 24 season. So, you know, we're conscious of where our payroll is now. You know, we're, I guess, cautious in not putting ourselves in a position that once our highest ceiling players escalate in the arbitration process, that we don't cut off the full impact of what our rebuild should produce for us, which is an extended period of content. And, you know, but I say that. And if there's the right short-term fits, if there is the right long-term fit, who fills a hole for us that we really feel like is meaningful, then we'll pursue that. But, you know, we've talked pretty openly about what we want to do. And as I've said before in settings like this, we don't really keep a lot of secrets.

We just tell you what we want to do. And it's your choice whether you think that that's a good plan or not. Yeah, yeah. Real quick on that, I just, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask this follow. up. You said that, you know, maybe there is the possibility. You left the door open there. Do you have the freedom to do any of that stuff? If that opportunity presented itself to you. Yeah, I think part of my job is to go to go next door to John's office, to talk with our ownership group, which we have a monthly meeting and talk about future plans. And what I just laid out

for you, you know, that's like any other team, we're working with a budget, you know, and our, our budget is going to be a little bit different than maybe you'll see you at the, you know, the New York or the LA club, something like that. But right now our CBT payroll is on par with what we think, you know, is our position in the market. It's not terribly distant from where the Houston Astros are. It's on par with teams like the Cardinals that we feel like our, our market and stylistic matches for what we're trying to create. But, you know, like those teams and like has been the case, when we wanted to do Julio, when we wanted to do Julio, when we wanted to do Luis Castillo when it was time to do Robbie Ray, just walk next door and talked about

how this fit into our six-year plan and pretty quickly got sign-on. You're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen. More from our interview with Jerry DiPoto in just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Fandul. The NFL playoffs are here and we're really excited about our new sports betting partner for locked on because they're the number one sports book in America, Fandul. And if you're new to FanDuel, that's even better.

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win or lose at fandul.com slash locked on. that's LOC, KD-O-N. Make Every Moment More with Fandle, the official sportsbook partner of the NFL. Now back to our conversation with Jerry DePoto. All right, well, that's it for the payroll stuff. I know you're tired of answering stuff about that. We're tired about talking about it. Colby, what do you got for him?

Yeah, you know, we've seen a little bit more trade activity over the last few days. And obviously, Jerry, you know, Ty and I spend most of our offseason talking about trades and listening to trade ideas from fans and kind of, pooh-poohing them for lack of a better term. But the trade market really hasn't gotten going to any real extent this offseason. Do you have any theories as to why the trade market has just been pretty cold this winter? I think it's probably because our roster is more mature than it's been in all the years since I've been here. And that sounds weird with a young team because if you take maybe us, the Yankees, the Dodgers out of the equation,

the trade market is usually closer to a snail than a rabbit, you know, but then you add, you know, those three teams into the mix, or maybe you could throw a fourth team like the Padres in there, that's usually what gets the trade market roll and makes it feel like there's a lot of activity. But, you know, by and large, this is the Yankees did a lot of damage at the between last year's trade deadline and this year's free agent market. that similarly, the Padres, similarly with the Dodgers who have generally been, you know, focused on the same things as those other teams. And it's just built out more mature rosters. And when those, you know, four teams aren't really pushing the trade market, it tends to move a lot slower.

And, you know, I've been like you, I've been following along with it and probably living vicariously through the Minnesota. Soda Twins as they do their business. But it's, you know, it's funny how it works. You'll see a small flurry and then you'll see nothing at all. And then we're going to go to spring training. And what I think is going to be more and more common is continued chatter about players that might be moved in the spring when we're out on the field. Whereas in years past, that wasn't a common thing. that that might be more of the spring rhetoric, that players could still get moved during those months based on what the teams are trying to achieve.

I'm curious about left field in particular here, but how do you, as a team that has, you know, aspirations to win the World Series, how do you balance potential of a young, up-and-coming player versus the likelihood of production with a more established vet? How do you walk that line? You know, I think while going into last season, and I say this, I don't know if every team in baseball could enter every year. For instance, you know, we didn't enter the 2019 season with the belief that we were likely to win the World Series.

You know, every team should have that as a goal. And, you know, and it's our goal. We would like to do that. We also know that if we want this to be sustainable, that you have to start growing a lot of those impact or everyday players. at a fairly regular rate. You're not going to be able to inject one young player every six or seven years and get by. So you have to reserve playing time for those players.

And we did it a year ago. And some worked, you know, like we saw Cal Raleigh take off. We had the opportunity for George Kirby and he hit the ground running. And others struggled, you know, like JK didn't hit the ground running. And, you know, as a result, As a result, you know, we go into this season with a little less certainty and what's going to happen in left field. Some of it due to underperformance, some of it due to injury, you know, with a guy like Taylor Tramel who, through no fault of his own,

he's performing very well. And then he hit the IL and circumstance happens. But our general opinion is that it's the opening day isn't the end of the season. It's the start of the season. And, you know, we would be. be we're putting ourselves in the most advantageous position we can to build up the most robust roster we can while still providing opportunity for our young players. And then as we start getting into the waters of the competitive season, determining whether we need to add to backfill our roster or to replace a player because it's just not clicking for them. And I think, you know, last year is a great example of that when, you know, we started and it was working out for some and not quite for others, you know, we're pretty aggressive and going out and filling those holes and we went out and filled them. And when we saw opportunity, we did. But we think

starting the season, particularly in left field, we are a much better long range team with a chance to win, you know, world series, you know, plural. If Jared Kelnick or Taylor Tremel turned into the types of players, we think they have the potential to be. And if we don't give them the chance to do that they certainly won't you know opportunity is is required you're currently slated to make three picks within the top 30 of this year's draft and one of those picks is even tradable historically speaking how rare of an opportunity is this for you guys and what kind of advantages does having those three picks give you so i think that i this is my 12th year as a as a baseball operations had you know whatever that is title wise.

The in those years, I've never actually had a comp A pick. And that's, first of all, it's really rare to get them. You know, generally speaking, we are, we are typically somewhere between, you know, the 14th and 17th in terms of market size, which is how those those picks are determined. You know, and we typically wind up right about 15 and when you're 15th, you don't get an A pick.

You get a B pick. And typically we wind up toggling back and forth with somebody like St. Louis, who historically gets more of the A picks. And this is the first time we've ever gotten an A pick. So that's a real positive. And then this year with the benefit of having Coelio win the rookie of the year and the pick associated with that,

and understand. that that was actually part of our calculus when he made our opening day roster. First of all, it was really easy when you watched him play in the spring. And we got very comfortable with the idea that he could play center field. But, you know, the attraction of if Julio does what we think Julio can do, and it turns into another first round pick, now we wind up looking at the situation we're in. We graduated a ton of talent over the course of the last two years. you know, our system went from consensus top five in the industry.

You know, some would have it at one or two at the tail end of that three years. You know, three consecutive years inside the top five is rare. We knew we were going to fall out of that range as these players all graduated. But with the work we've done in the draft and international space, you know, pretty quickly replenishing the system, already have a couple of guys showing up on the back ends of top 100 prospect lists. And if you're picking three players in the first 30 of a draft, I've been doing it a fairly long time. I've never had that opportunity. You know, picking two in that space is a rare thing.

So to have three is just unheard of. And, you know, we think this is a deeper draft than in recent years. It's a particularly appealing college class as opposed to the last few. And, you know, we've done some damage in the high school ranks in the last, you know, a few years, especially the last two drafts. So pretty excited what our amateur groups, Scott Hunter, and a group who I think has done a wonderful job of cultivating talent can do with three picks.

And as important as any of that, what we as an organization can do creatively with the pool money that is associated with those picks because that's something, you know, it's a you have the ability to do very interesting things like we've watched in recent years with teams like the Astros or the Orioles, when you have those extra picks and you get the associated slot value for that pick, it doesn't mean you have to spend it on that pick.

You can distribute it however you want. You can buy players down to your pick. You can promise exceedingly high bonuses in later rounds. And, you know, that was a change in the process in about 2012 that I think has led to a lot of creative teams being able to do wonderful things in the draft pool. We've never been among them because we never had the picks to do it with. So when we would go, you know, when we would go over slot, say for a Sam Carlson, you know, back in 2017 or, you know, in more recent time with some of the high school kids that we picked in the 2021 draft after Harry Ford, when we went

with Edwin Royo and Michael Morales, all of them were overslott signings. But effectively, we were Robin Peter to pay Paul. We were oversloting rounds two and three, and we were going to have to save our money on the back. And if you have that big pool of money that's associated with these three picks, now you can do very creative things and potentially attract more impactful players than you might otherwise. So, Jerry, I'm actually headed down to spring training. It's my first time.

So I'm really excited to head down there. But is there maybe a player or two that outside of the obvious, you know, Julio Rodriguez types. Is there maybe a player or two that fans aren't talking enough about that you're really excited to go down and put your eyes on? Yeah, you know, we sent out our invitations to spring just last week. So right now, we will sign more in our eyes. But right now we have about 74 players coming to spring,

which is one of the bigger spring training camps we've ever had. Part of that is because it's a WBC year and we're going to have players leaving and we want to make sure that it provides, you know, opportunities for looks for others. And, you know, another part of it is we have a lot of good young players at the AAA levels of our system who really think deserve the chance to be seen in a spring training camp. The guy that I think many don't recognize is as good as he is, is Brian Wu.

You know, Wu is he was a guy. He was our sixth round pick in the 2021 draft, which is going to wind up going down as one of our most productive drafts. And we've had some good drafts over the last seven years. But this is, you know, that 21 class with Harry Ford and Brian Wu and Edwin Arroyo and, you know, we talked about Michael Morales. Bryce Miller is going to be in that group. You have, you know, with Wu, we drafted him as a recovering or rehabilitating Tommy John.

And once he came back from that Tommy John, We've got a mid-upper 90s fastball with what I think is, you know, potentially elite level command. He can really ride the fastball at the top of the zone, creating that backspin. He's got above-average secondary weapons. His change-up just leaps off the board, and it's kind of stunning. When you see this kind of pitch mix and this kind of polish for a guy who just hasn't pitched that much. If you remember, 2020 is a lost season in college baseball. 2021, he's injured and didn't pitch.

And then we signed him and rehabbed them. And I think the return is going to be great for the Mariners and for Brian. He was one of the most hit on players in our offseason. Every time we talk to a team about a possible fit, one of the, now it was probably 50-50, Bryce Miller and Brian Wu, the play. that they're trying to hit on. And I don't think many would put Wu in that rare air. Another guy, and he'll be in our mini camp setup,

is Michael Arroyo, who was, Michael was part of our international signing class in 2021. He is, he's going to play this season at 18 years old, exceptionally gifted bat to ball skills. He was part of a very good international class, led by himself. and Las Montes were the real standouts. You know, Martin Gonzalez is another. But Michael might be like among the best bat to ball, spray it around the field, field to hit hitters that we've added to our system

in my time here. And, you know, really there's no telling what he could turn into offensively as he matures bodily because he can hit now and he can hit stuff and he can hit it over the fence. There's a lot of, you know, traits of that kind of, of that, the guy that would traditionally hit two, three in a major league order if he continues to develop physically the way he already has from his motor skills in the box.

Okay, so I don't mean to interrupt the flow of this. I'm so sorry, this is so embarrassing, Jerry. I bought a Zoom license, but it didn't register, and so now it says we have five and a half minutes left on the recording. So can we take a brief pause on this? All right. So, Jerry, I think it's, I think it's pretty hilarious before our little break that you mentioned Brian Wu and Michael O'Royo. Ty and I have been big Wu guys for a while now.

And yeah. And there's kind of an inside joke with Michael O'Royal we like to make. But I do, you know, since you mentioned Brian Wu, I do want to ask you about some of the arms that you've brought in this winter. not a lot of big names obviously got being the biggest name but you brought in some really interesting arms who have some major league experience although not a ton of it jesson topa uh Gabe spire jb bucowskis is is a really interesting arm like what what do you expect from them and how do you go about identifying these type of arms this is I think this is an area over the last handful of years, and this, you know, maybe starts back as far as five years ago or so.

But definitely since 2019, an area where I think our group has done an excellent job is first identifying, you know, pitchers who have the stuff, the physical traits, the stuff traits that we feel like we can amplify in our bullpen. And not just as simple as, you know, maybe what it was like for us five or six years ago in just shifting usage patterns. Hey, throw more of this, less of that, you know, more along the lines of finding something that these pitchers do well, that we feel like an extra quarter turn of dial can really, you know, can really help them pop. And, you know, I feel like the most extreme examples of that in recent years have been guys like Andres Munoz, and Paul Seewald. You know, it's tough to imagine what, you know, Andres Munoz had the ability to be successful

without the quarter turn of the dial. But the quarter turn of the dial with Mooney wound up being phenomenal, like to the point where I don't even think it's arguable that last year he was one of the best relievers in our league. And he's got the physical stuff to be, you know, elite for a number of years. If he stays healthy and continues to improve the way he did. And, you know, Seawald, it wasn't as simple as, hey, throw more sliders. It was, you know, drop the arm slot, refocus where your fastball locations lie.

And, you know, this group is very similar. They all have, you know, what we, we tend to call them pitch grade poppers. You know, we have, our analysts have developed an internal metric that we call pitch grades. And, you know, it's a pretty sophisticated name. But, you know, we do measure the various things that, you know, the thrown ball, the ball in flight does. And, you know, all of these guys do something unique. And the guy that really jumps out, even in a group of guys with really good arms,

who've not yet had the major league success to match up with their physical stuff, the guy who really jumps off the page if he's healthy is Justin Topa. If you watch video of Topa's stuff, it's your first reaction is, wow. It's why have I never heard of this guy? And, you know, he first came onto our radar a handful of years ago. And it was, you know, as we were transitioning our roster through the rebuild, we, you know, we had Omar Narvaez as one of our catchers. And the brewers had contacted us about Omar, who ultimately we did trade to them in return for, you know, minor league pitcher and a draft pick, you know, a comp beat, not a compact, because we don't get those. But, you know, we, we did at, we did. turn that comp comp B pick into Isaiah Campbell, who were very excited about coming into spring training as a as a reliever for the first time. And coming off a great year where he was healthy. But during that, the inquiry on Omar Narvaez, one of the players that we got to scratched

out was Justin Topa. And, you know, when we asked and they declined, and that was our first real introduction to Topa. And then he was, you know, shortly thereafter, he went through an injury, an elbow injury that kept him, you know, off the grid for a while. But we think that the ability to unearth real impact is with Topa is very, very real. And it's a matter of him being healthy. And some of that we're going to have to see, you know, obviously he's not, he's not 22. It's not a guy that, you know, is experienced in terms of major league pitching. I think he's on 17 or 18 innings at the big league level or something like that. And he's already in his 30s, but he does maintain options and the physical stuff is so big that we feel like it was very much worth the

potential risk of losing a player to acquire. Yeah, the reaction that we had, and this speaks to the reputation that I think you and your organization have built for yourselves. You know, we were like, Justin Topo, who the hell is this? He's probably going to be a top 10 reliever in baseball next year. that's just how it is right so speaking about pitching i want to get into this number five starter competition that it seems is going to be happening here in spring between chris flex and marco gonzalez but is there anyone else that could factor into that competition specifically someone like bryce miller you know brice miller emerson hancock you know brice brian wu those are you know taylor that quartet of pitchers

are kind of next up in our prospect group. I would say it's unlikely that we would break camp with either of the four as our fifth starter, primarily due to, you know, in Marco's case, his body of work with the Mariners. Last year was not his best year, obviously, and I think he'd be the first to tell you that. But, you know, from 2018 through 2020, you know, that three-year stretch, he was as dependable as you could imagine a guy being in terms of quality starts. And despite the fact that last year, a lot of the metrics went upside down on him, he still gave us, you know, close to 20 quality starts, which is, you know,

that's a contributing factor that oftentimes you can't really rely on first year pitchers to deliver. And Chris Flexen is a year removed from a three-win season. And, you know, it's a part of the benefit. or the good thing about where we are in our growth is that we feel like the first four of our starters could pitch in the top two of most rotations. And then the guys that are hooking for that fifth starter spot for us are guys that a year ago were pitching in the middle of a rotation of a 90-1 team. And we were excited about them. So I don't want to undersell what we feel

we could get out of Marco and Flex. But you're going to show up in spring training, you're going to watch Bryce Miller throwing a hundred with a slider, and you're going to watch Brian Wu command three pitches. And Taylor Dullard is about as, as, let's call it, has as much moxie as you're ever going to see from a pitcher who has yet to pitch an inning above double A. But because none of them has pitched above the AA level, I think it's more likely that we would start them in the minor leagues. And if one is to make the team, it's probably because either Marco or Flex, you know, something happened.

There was some type of injury there, and we had to tap into our depth early. We don't foresee that happening, but I can't imagine a scenario where we break camp without either Marco or Flex taking a turn in our roster, or rotation. Now, with both of those guys,

whoever potentially loses out on that battle, are you open to the idea of one of them going to the bullpen, or are you open to the possibility of opening the season with a, six-man rotation. You know, we haven't really talked much about the six-man rotation to this point. We are generally open, like we were last year after acquiring Luis Castillo, when we sent flex down to the pen. We generally, we sent flex to the pen last year just to see what would

happen with the stuff tick up in the bullpen. You know, believing that Marco, you know, Marco every fifth day, the value in Marco is the long season. It's the bulk. It's the, it's the 20 quality 18 quality starts. It's the 180, 210 innings. That's the, that's what Marco delivers over the long haul that most guys don't. And, you know, there's real value in that. So we were loath to take the chance because we didn't think that Marco was a guy that was going to tick up in the bullpen. We wanted to maintain, you know, the thing that Marco does best is he's like a metronome. You know, every fifth or six day, he's going to take the ball. And, and you're going to turn around and look up. And while occasionally you're going to, you're going to get the clunker,

so many times you're going to look up in the sixth seventh inning and he's going to have delivered a quality start. He's a competitive beast. And, you know, I do think either one of them could serve as the long or swing man in a bullpen. You know, we've still, and we've talked about this as a possibility in years past going with the six-man rotation. And I guess that's a possibility when you consider the young guys and, you know, the escalation of their innings over the last year and a half. But with how they finish the year and with where we see ourselves in the competitive window, I think our preference would be going traditional five-man rotation with a longer swing type reliever. Gotcha.

Do you have an update on Tom Murphy's recovery? Because this is obviously a really difficult injury to recover from, from both an offensive and defensive perspective. So I'm curious, what are your confidence levels he can fill his role right away? Pretty confident. You know, it's Merv's full go from a health perspective now. He comes in, you know, all baseball activity is in play now for Tom. And his workouts have gone extremely well. I don't know that there's another guy in baseball that works any more intently than MIRF does.

You know, he's a maniac in the world. wait room. I mean, it's a, it's, he, he gets after it. So he seems like a maniac out of the weight room too. He's got the good eyes. You know, it's, it's, we missed for us last year. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, he's, he's just such a, he's such a big part of our clubhouse. And, you know, every team has personality. And, and the, you know, we are, our, our roster is like an ongoing story. You know, we're telling a story with our roster. And MIRF's part of our story. You know, his intensity, his, his attention to detail, particularly in our game planning. I know last year, while he was, you know, before he, he left the club to go on the bulk of his rehab, he was critical for the next

step, you know, in Cal Rale's growth. And, you know, the power that he provides in our lineup versus left hand. He bangs left hand pitch and has done that consistently through his career. And if we have the ability now with Cal Raleigh, the switch hitter, he's, Cal's, you know, good from both sides, particularly as a left-hand hitter, Murph's ability to knock the lefties around and remain detailed behind the plate, you know, how he's going to feel throwing, I'm not entirely sure. But, you know, right now the feedback is good and we'll see where it goes, but we're excited that back. Lastly, Dylan Moore, you said underwent core surgery was about to undergo core surgery in early December. How's his recovery going? Is he still on the timeline that you set out of

about six to eight weeks? Yep, all of those things. He did have the core surgery. It did spring up. It was during the winter meetings, actually. The first time we heard of it. And shortly thereafter, and by shortly, I mean, within, I think, 36 hours, he was undergoing a procedure. It was going to be a six or eight week process. He will come into spring training a little behind the other guys in terms of his preparation. But similar, Dylan's one of our most athletic players. Also another guy who works his tail off and we'll get after it. So while I wouldn't say that he will be back in six weeks definitively,

I'm betting if it says that, you know, guys like Tom Murphy and Dylan Moore will find ways to make it six or something close. answer to that. Well, Jerry, I got one last question. Yeah, go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it. I'm really interested in Cade Marlowe. You guys added him to the taxi squad late in the year. I don't know. Was that a direct, you know, result of Sam Haggardie's late season injury or what? But, you know, Cade really popped last year. And the numbers in the high minors are kind of hard to ignore. So what do you think Cade Marlowe is or? can be for you this year. So, you know, every system, and we've been, you know, I get very age-phobic. You know, when I'm looking at prospects, obviously, you know, the first thing you train on is their physical ability and the next thing you recognize is their birthday. It's, you know, baseball has, you know, every generation that has players that pop through late, that late bloomer, the guy who, you know, the senior sign, who entered a system late and really surprised.

You know, Cade Marlowe has been that since the day he put on American uniform. And, you know, he got a little bit of a late start. He had the additional, I guess, misfortune of not being able to play the 2020 season. So by standard measure, he's a little older for prospects at the levels he's played through. His physical ability across the board, Cade's but five-tool guy. And it's hard to find five tool players in any area. But when you find five tool player with great makeup, who can play all three outfield positions,

and he does it with a combination, a performance combination of power and speed that's been among the best in the minor leagues over the last two years. And it's hard to say that that's not going to result in an everyday player. And part of the reason why we brought Cade, on as the to add to the taxi squad like we actually had conversation about adding him to the active roster you know so he was going to be part of the the the taxi squad regardless uh we had conversation

about adding them to the active roster because when you go into those short playoff series you don't really need the the 13th pitcher you know you can find which we we evidenced you know you can you can shorten that roster up, you can do really interesting things with your bench and create advantage. And, you know, when Hags went down, you know, with Sam, we or Swags, I guess, depending on the list of you know, with Sam, Swaggarty. Yeah. He's, you know, between, between Sam and Dylan Moore, you know, with the obvious exception being Julio, those were our impact base runners. You know, the guys who could make things happen. And you get in tight poste. season games. And you know, you're in a in a one run game, let's say down one and you're in the

eighth, ninth inning, and you need a run. You got to scratch something out. There's one out, and you need somebody to go steal a bag. We felt like Cade Marlow taking up, you know, eating up two bases at a time, you know, going first to third, going second to home on a short hit, stealing, stealing a base was just a huge advantage. And, you know, and not knowing what our outfield defensive situation was going to look like. We felt like he was as good a bet defensively as anybody we could put in the field outside of Julio. So we were really confident in his maturity and felt like that he was prepared to do that. I think the experience or exposure was great for him. He's going to get another long look in spring training because we're

going to be short a couple outfielders due to WBC. And now as a 40-man roster player, it's no longer a matter of if he's going to play in the big leagues. It's a matter of when he will get his first official shot. Well, Jerry, unless Colby has anything else, Colby, no, you go. I'm good. You good to go. All right, cool. Well, I appreciate you taking the time out and also dealing with some of our technical

issues. You got the full locked on Mariners experience today, Jerry. It was a pleasure, and we'd love to do it again sometime. Best of luck to you this year. Anytime, guys. Just let me know. Thank you again to Jerry Depoto for joining us. I hope you enjoyed our discussion as much as Cole.

And I did and we really have you to think for it because without you and the amazing growth we've seen over this past year, we simply wouldn't be able to do stuff like this. And we're hoping to do even more cool stuff for you guys in the future as this community grows and grows. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the support you've shown us. Now, before I let you go, let's announce the winner of our $50 Mariners gift card giveaway. And the winner is at Ryan Hanna. 6513 on YouTube. Ryan, congratulations. Feel free to hit me up on Twitter via email at Lockdown Mariners at gmail.com and I'll get you hooked up with some new Mariners gear. And thank you to everyone who subscribe to enter

and be sure to stay subbed because we're going to be doing more giveaways like this in the near future. All right, that's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the biggest episode of Locked-on Mariners yet. And for Colby Patnode, I'm Tiding Gazales.

be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez. That's D-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-Z, and Colby at C-P-P-A-E-T-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first listen. Now make your second listen, locked on MLB prospects. Host Lindsay Crosby is a prospect encyclopedia, and he's going deep on the MLB stars of tomorrow.

It's free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. And with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you on Friday. Peace. Chills. Chills.