Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Just How Good Is the Mariners' 2023 Rotation? w/ Alex Fast of Pitcher List

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Ty is joined by pitching savant Alex Fast of PitcherList.com to discuss Seattle's 2023 rotation. The two go over Logan Gilbert's new splitter, the differences between Cincinnati Luis Castillo and Seattle Luis Castillo, Robbie Ray's rocky first year in the Pacific Northwest, the exciting upside of George Kirby, how the gap between the Mariners and Astros has closed, and 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/FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.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.

Just how good is the Mariners rotation? I checked in with Alex Fast at PitcherList.com to get his thoughts. Let's get into it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. It is Thursday, March 9th, 2023. This is Tiding Gonzalez for the Lockdown Mariners podcast.

Thank you so much for making us your first. Listen, subscribe, like, and turn on alerts if you're watching on YouTube, or subscribe and leave a five-star review on your podcast. preferred podcast platform if you like what you hear and if you want to hear from us even more please consider sending up for our patreon the link as well as our social accounts is in the description below on the show today alex fast of pitcher list.com joins me to talk about the mariners rotation we get into logan gilbert's new splitter the differences between cincinnati louise castillo and seattle louise castillo robbie rays for a season with the mariners and of course george kirby i think you'll

like what alex has to say about him be sure to stick around until the end of the show i'm giving away two main level tickets to one of the Mariners value games in April or May. I'll tell you how you can win those, but let's check in with Alex Fass and talk some Mariners pitching. Joining me now on the Locked-on Mariners podcast is the VP of one of my personal favorite baseball resources on the internet. It's called Pitcherlist.com. Check it out if you haven't. His name is Alex Fass, and he's here to talk about this exciting Mariners pitching staff. Alex, first, thank you for hopping on. I guess we'll start there with a very broad question. Just how do you view it? How do you view Seattle staff and particularly its rotation relative to the rest of the league right now?

Well, first of foremost, thanks for having me. If there's one team that I'm excited to come talk about their rotations, Seattle Mariners, I think there's a lot to be excited about. And as an Orioles fan, I empathize with any organization that is really starting to put it together, you know what I mean? Like seeing them in the playoffs last year obviously didn't end the way that people wanted it to, but like, man, what an exciting team and fan base. be a part of right now so i'm very excited to be here thank you for that um my what was the question

so the thoughts on the rotation all good hey i'm equally as excited to have you on the show as well um so yeah the question was generally like how do you view this team um or this pitching staff and particularly the rotation relative to the rest of the league like where do they rank in the overall hierarchy of major league baseball rotations right now I think there, I can't believe I forgot the question. I've never done that. I was just so excited looking at the roster resource page. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.

Couldn't believe it, dude. I think it has honestly the potential to be a top 10 rotation in baseball. I mean, there's so much upside. There's so much upside one through four. I don't want to dig on Marco Gonzalez because he's a very good standby, but I think he's kind of number five in that rotation for a reason. There's obviously a lot of great talent in the minors for you guys, with the ability to even have Chris Flex and come and be a number five there.

But overall, the one through four, I believe could arguably, like, there's, that's a lot of depth there, right? There's a lot of depth when like theoretically your one through four could any of them could ostensibly be an SP1 or have been. Aside maybe Logan Gilbert, right? Like I'm a firm believer in George Kirby and we'll get to him momentarily. Robbie Ray can be an SP1, right? Don't think he will be, but has that potential upside. Castillo has been and can be a continuous SP1 for that team. So when you're dealing with so many potential guys like that, so late into your rotation,

that's dangerous, man. That's really good. That's really exciting to watch. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of really good depth in that rotation. I'm excited to watch it work. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on here was, excuse me, I saw you quote tweet that video of Logan Gilbert working on his new splitter. He seemed pretty excited about it.

So if that pitch proves to be a viable option in major league games this year, what do you think that does for Gilbert moving forward? Yeah, I mean, Gilbert's a very exciting pitcher. And I always like to caveat by like I made like a little meme this year of Bart Simpson drawing on the chalkboard that said essentially like I will not fall for new pitch types. Like I just will not fall for new pitch types because here's the thing about new pitch types. Spring training is a very exciting time for every single fan base, right? because hope springs eternal and we're building off something.

And when we see a new pitch that's incorporated into an arsenal, we think about all the juicy upside that's there. And we see it in spring training games. And we look at the spring training data and we say, oh my God, he's throwing it 30% of the time. Can you imagine what would happen if Logan Gilbert threw a splurter 30 goes out of the time? The thing that people, myself included, need to pump the brakes on is they're throwing it

that much in spring training for a reason. And that's because it's a new pitch and they're trying to see if they want to incorporate it into their arsenal, right? seeing how it plays off the other pitches, seeing how it plays, you know, getting real-time feedback from batters. What can often be the case I find is they'll come into a game that matters and they'll throw it and it'll get hit. And they'll be like, nope, never mind. You know, like they will very quickly go back to the security blankets that were there.

Now, that's not always the case. Lance McCullors Jr. is a perfect example. Lance McCullors Jr. debuted a slider and was like, hey, you know what? I'm going to this pitch more so than often. So I did want it to provide that caveat. With that said, giving him a pitch that plays off of what his arguably, unarguably really, his best pitch in his foreseamer in that way is very, very exciting. Right. Obviously, I made that overlay that I tweeted and you get to see the capabilities of it, right?

You get to see what happens when you have a pitch that's kind of going down and away. And you can see that there's a lot of swing and miss there. You can see that it tunnels very effectively with the foreseamer. So on the one hand, if I'm being a practical baseball fan, I'm taking a step back and saying, okay, great, maybe this is a new third option that he could throw to get more swings and misses and increase his K rate, maybe jump it up to 24, 25 percent like we saw on that smaller sample in 2021. But I'm also saying, okay, maybe he doesn't really throw it at all. And then on the other side, I'm saying maybe this is, maybe he's a four seam splitter guy. So at the end of the day, it's an exciting new pitch for him. And I'm excited. to see how he actually incorporates it into the arsenal. The Splitter has apparently become a popular pitch to learn this one,

or not just Gilbert, but a few other mariners like Robbie Ray and even some other guys, you know, outside of Seattle. Do you think there's anything more to that? Because it doesn't seem like just a coincidence to me. No, I don't think it's a coincidence either.

I mean, I think some of the dudes are, I don't know if it's, we know it is with Logan where it's like a drive-line thing. And maybe, you know, these guys are going and they're finding that that is the pitch that helps them unlock the other, you know, it helps them play to their strengths and unlocks other things in their

arsenal. Anecdotally, I don't know, truly, let me underline the word anecdotally. Pitchers get together and talk, right? Like, they're like, hey, show me that new grip that you learned. Like, oh, I'm going to give that a shot. Sometimes it's led by a front office. I think we saw that last year in New York when all of a sudden these dudes were thrown cutters left and right.

Tyone was throwing a cutter. Cortez was thrown more of a cutter. Cole was throwing a cutter. So I think we've seen that. Cutter's been a big thing in Seattle too. Yeah. Yeah, cutter. And I know the sweeper too, right?

to feel like, it felt like everyone at some point in the bullpen was like throwing some version of a sweeper. So I think that was kind of big there too. I don't know if it's necessarily that one pitch type in particular. But I, you know, I imagine just like with Logan, there are opportunities for pitchers like Ray, who's another great example where it just could be something that standalone is good, but also, you know, kind of like a rising tide lifts all ships kind of thing in terms of the arsenal, right? I want to talk about George Kirby. You mentioned him, yeah because dude i i think the sky's the limit for this guy even this year especially after what he did against the astros in that playoff game when you have that kind of elite command with that

kind of repertoire i mean that's just this is different so how do you see his 2023 going oh baby i'm with the sky's the limit very excited um i find you know obviously during the off season he spent a lot of time researching you know making your plans for if you know in my shoes what your top 100 is going to look like, and I felt like every time I was Googling a stat or savanting a stat, Kirby always showed up. He just like always showed up in like the top 10 of something. He was looking at my notes over here. I always want to caveat that. Like when I look over here, I'm looking at notes. I feel like such a jerk,

just like not looking at the person I'm talking to. I'm just so anxious that I have to say that. Okay. Give people the real insight into my character. I like that you came prepared. You got numbers. You got it all. Yeah. I do it all for you, Ty. I die for you. You know what I mean? I just met you. But that's what it is.

I see the PlayStation thing over your top right. There we're. There we go. So here's some of the ways in which you appeared. One of four, one of four pitchers with five pitches, five with a pitching plus grade over 100. Pitching plus being in, you know, you know, Saris and some others contributed to that metric. But pitching plus, the higher the better. One of four pitchers with five pitches over 100.

Fifth on four seam. in zone swinging strike leaders, uh, leaders, love that stat, right? If you're going to put a four seamer in the zone and you're going to get swings and misses,

what more can he ask for it, right? You can locate it for a called strike and you're still going to get a whiff. So the fact that he's fifth on four seam in zone swinging strike, great. Fourth on a list of pitchers that batters are most aggressive against, which I also love, right?

Because he played against that aggression. They said, you know what? I'm going to sit fastball and I'm going to knock it out of the park. And what do they do? They're swinging this. And they can't knock it out of the park. because he had the lowest Woba on hard hit four seam fly balls.

That is exactly almost zero. I think he had one in the second half, right? It's insane. It's insane. I mean, obviously that park is going to help. Yeah. But for people who are listening being like, great, another nerd who's talking about esoteric stats that I don't care about, all I'm saying is he does not give up hard hit fly balls.

You don't want hard hit fly balls. Those are what home runs are. He mitigates that. He doesn't do it. And that's in what his freshman year doing this, his rookie year, whatever rookie sophomore you're doing this. I love it. I'm all about it. I'm excited to see how he grows in the next year.

Yeah, that's the first 130 innings of his career. Unbelievable. That's just ridiculous. Yeah, I don't want to spoil anything. We're going to be doing predictions here in a couple weeks, including league-wide predictions. George Kirby and Cy Young might go together here in the next couple weeks, because I just, I'm so stoked. And the more that I think about it, and the more that I think about that start against the Astros in Seattle,

I just, I can't help myself. I really can. More from my conversation with Alex Fast and Just a moment, but real quick, a reminder of this episode of Locked-on Mariners is brought to you by Fandul. The midway point of the NBA season is here, and now is the perfect time to download Fandul,

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Eligible series for this giveaway are the ones with the Angels and Brewers in April and the Rangers and A's in May. All you have to do to enter is subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a comment on any of our episodes from this week. We will randomly pick a video and a comment from that video to determine a winner next week. Good luck and go M's. Alex fast of pitcherless.com is here on the lockdown Mariners podcast. Alex, how do you assess Robbie Ray's 2020?

two season because obviously there was a slow start and then some incredibly rough moments in the postseason but he was also you know 10th in case per nine 20th and exfip like you know he's proven in the past he can be one of the baddest dudes on the planet and we saw that in flashes last year but just not over a consistent stretch and we get a lot of comments about him on our shows and you know frankly just some mirrors fans have already grown impatient with him obviously he's you know the biggest free agent signing jerry depoto has made since coming to seattle so naturally there's going to be a lot more scrutiny there than most i understand that but But would you say his struggles have been a bit overblown?

Um, overblown. I mean, yes, solely because we as baseball fans can be so reactionary, right? And, um, I, I had a, uh, so not, I had a very good conversation with Paul Sewell. We were fortunate not to have a conversation with him, a pitch list for this thing that we do called pitchcon, which is a fundraiser that we did for ALS, um, not, not to plug our own stuff, but he was like, uh, go ahead. Plug away. plug away. Do you have a minute to talk about one of the best baseball websites out there?

So he talked about just, you know, one of the things that he really opened up, but was just about like, we're human beings, right? And the kind of death threats that he receives after he blows particular things. And it's like, I always want to like bring that up on podcasts to be like, their human beings, chill out. The last thing they want to do is go out and blow a game in front of 60,000 people and everyone watching on TV. Like, trust me, that's not their plan. It's really not their plan to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when it came to Ray, like, I understand why there can be some concern, because there's concern on my end, too, about what that ceiling looks like, and if he can achieve that again. We saw the walk rate jump up, right? We saw the sinker get some

whiffs, but we saw it get hit hard, right? 4.06 Woba last year is really way above league average, right? Not a lot of hard contacts, but not great to see. Michael Aheado. who's, I'm sure you know, who's a fantastic writer for baseball's perspectiveist, huge Mariners fan, made a really good point in his baseball prospectus article, I think it was this year. He was missing locations, and if you're going to miss your locations, velocity, velocity is going to make up for that, right? But the velocity dropped, right? And I don't know what happened there. I haven't seen, have you seen what his spring below has been?

I was trying to find it before this and I couldn't really find anything. No, and part of the issue with that is like Roots Sports has been barely broadcasting any of the games, so it's been very difficult to even just get eyes on the Mariners this spring so far. Why would a fan base with a bunch of young people want to watch their favorite team in spring? Especially why would they want that? Especially when you own the network as the team. All right, we're not going to get into that.

Yeah, it's a whole thing. But that's a very good point. And until I see that that Velo has returned, I don't see like a Siong season repeat. I don't see something really close to that. Robbie is still a very good pitcher. He doesn't need to have that to be extremely dominant. But if he's going to express that upside,

I really would like to see that velocity back. And that's why too, when I see the splitter, I'm like, that's a fun, that's a fun new toy. Like maybe it's maybe to get you some more whiffs here and there, but like Velo is important for that game. The last thing I'll say about him too is like that 93, 94 mile an hour threshold for four seamers is so, important. It's theoretically when you see the largest difference in performance from a pitching

perspective, or from a hitting perspective, I should say, where you see like real impactful change start to happen. I thought maybe that would creep up to 94-95 with the way that Velo's going in the game right now, but it still seems like 93-94 is that really important mark. So him kind of dancing back and forth between there is not great to see. But if you can find that Velo again, I think he can return to his success. What have you seen out of Luis Castillo going from Cincinnati to Seattle. So the Mariners iteration of Castillo, because I don't think we've seen the best out of that change up thus far.

Okay, so that's a great point. What I've seen is a shift to a fly ball pitcher. What I've seen is like a crazy renaissance for a pitcher that you don't really get to see that often, and it speaks to Castillo's ability to pitch. As you very aptly mentioned in Cincinnati, change up all the time, right? Dominant change up, giffable change up, pitching ninja change up, right? then again, not to keep plugging ahead of his work, but wrote a great article about how maybe the feel for that pitch is starting to go away, right? That would concern me a lot if the slider wasn't as dominant as it was.

It wouldn't surprise me to look at his stat line this year and see a low 3ERA led by a lot of flyballs that are not leaving the yard and a four seam slider approach with a few changeups mixed in. he doesn't need it really anymore, which is so you cannot say that about many pitchers, that they don't need what was previously their best pitch. I don't know if we could say it's definitively gone. That changeup will be there, but it's important to remember that all of these pitches are contextual, right? You don't add a cutter without impacting your foreseamer, right? You don't make changes or benefit your slider, maybe without in some way impacting your change up. The correlation between four seam and cutter, obviously a little bit more linked than it would be between

slider and change up. But still, it's all contextualized. So while the changeup might not be the width pitch that it once was, the gains that he has made with the slider make me think, man, he could be really good in Seattle this year. Fantasy baseball is obviously a big part of what you do over at pitcher list. So out of all the guys, we've talked about who has the highest fantasy upside this year. Is it just as simple as Cassidy or do you actually really like a Kirby or maybe even a Ray or Gilbert more from this perspective. I'll give you a Locked on Mariners exclusive.

Because my, when does this podcast come on? Does it come out actually today or in a day or two? Yeah, it's coming out literally today. Yeah. Oh, okay. Like an hour or two after this. That's very funny. Okay, so later on today I'll be talking with Nick about my top 100, which comes out

tomorrow. The first podcast will come out today. So Luis Castillo is my 12th overall pitcher. So I think he will have the highest. fantasy impact but not far behind him in the high high high 20s is George Kirby so I would say that Castillo I believe in the most overall if I were a betting man about who would be the most impactful fantasy pitcher in the upcoming season but almost just as pertinent is George Kirby might not be too far behind him nice lockdown

Mariners world premiere right there for you guys so of course boring world premiere Ever, sorry. Flah, Flah, Flah, Flah! Luis. Luis Castillo is 12th on Alex Fass's rate. It was like unsubscribe.

So, of course, you know, a big discussion in baseball right now is the pitch clock. And I'm sure you've talked about it at nauseam at this point. So I'm not going to linger on it for too long. But I am curious to hear your thoughts on how you think, you know, pitcher and team strategies might develop over time. And what kind of loopholes do you think might be exploited as everyone grows more comfortable working with in it?

God, I loved watching Max Scherzer do this, but I also hated it because Max Scherzor reminded me of the guys who are in my home fantasy league who read our home constitution and then find whatever way to manipulate what they're doing to like, they like, game the system to the best of their ability. and as a fantasy league commissioner, I hate it, but as watching Max Scherzer do it, it cracks me up. So kind of what I'm referring to is he's been sort of gamifying it a bit or trying to see where he can push the boundaries where he knows that a batter has just stepped out because he gets his one time out per at bat, but he doesn't have to do anything. He can stay ready. So as soon as the pitcher, the batter gets back in the box, he can pitch, right?

That cracks me up, but I also think that it's like, one of those frustrating exploitations of the rule. These rules, I genuinely believe, are mated with the best of intent. I firmly believe that. Like, I think they are trying to benefit the game. We could talk about whether it's good or bad, but I do believe it's an attempt by the commissioner's office to be like, we know what the numbers look like, and we got to get this backup.

You know what I mean? We got to get the pace of play going. We got to get that. If we're going to attract a younger audience, blah, blah, blah. We got to figure this out. So I will say this. I like the notion of it. I do like that.

it increases the pace of the game. There's a big difference between watching the spring training games and watching the WBC and being like, oh, wow, yeah. I do get frustrated by some of the smaller things about, like, the batter being alert, right? To me, I saw a great counterpoint yesterday. It's like, well, why does the batter need to be alert at eight seconds? Like, the pitcher could throw the ball whenever, right?

Like, we don't need to do that eight-second thing. I also think that early example, which I think was the league's worst nightmare, of seeing a game end on that was super frustrating. I think there are way, I would hope that the league learns from it and says, okay, we tried it, it works, here are the small tweaks that we're gonna make.

Like that I would read like. Before opening day, yeah. Either before opening day or even if they give it, like, I don't think it's something that you could, would be too impactful if you changed it even before the All-Star game or anything like that.

It seems malleable enough that they could make adjustments quick. the adjustments that I think that they should make are like actually we don't need it in the ninth inning like I think that's fine I think it's okay to like take your time in the ninth inning yeah I think high leverage endings in general like 789 would be like let's just go just normal baseball we talked about this my co-os and I a couple weeks ago and that's kind of what we landed on same thing with like the automatic runner thing like let's just do normal extra inning rules for like the first couple of innings and then like all all about it yeah if we get to like the 12th 13th whatever all right sure put the automatic runner on. Fine. Started on the 12th. I'm with you. Started at the 12th. Give them two innings of quote-unquote real baseball because the whole point is like we don't want to like get into the pen and exhaust these guys and I get that. Although I was talking to a pitcher who made a good point who was like, man, for minor

leaguers, that sucks because they loved those games because they're like, I'm coming up. They just had an 18 inning game yesterday. I'm coming up to pitch in the big leagues. Obviously a small use case. But like, yeah, bring it in the 12th. I'm all about that. Right. Before you go, I want to ask you about the the team that the Mariners are chasing the defending champion Astros. First, you know, from the outside looking in, how much do you think the gap has closed between these two teams just with the departure of Justin Verlander and the injury to Lance McCullors?

And secondly, what should expectations be for Hunter Brown in his first year in Houston's rotation? Wow, I didn't even know you were allowed to talk this in depth about the Astros on the Mariners podcast. Oh, yeah. We're doing, we're doing AOS, you know, previews and all this stuff the next week or so. Yeah, we're doing it all. We're covering all the bases.

Do I need to get in like a dunk to solidify myself with the fan base on the Sros? Yeah, yeah. I mean, go for it. I would love that. I agree that. Let's talk about these losers. Yeah, listen, anytime you're going to lose a picture of Justin Verlander's caliber and not make up for it with another bona fide Hall of Fame ace, you're going to take a step back, right?

one of the things that is so incredibly impressive to me about Houston is that unlike I believe any other team in baseball. If you go to their roster resource page right now and you go to their rotation and you look at original signing info, you'll see which team originally signed that pitcher, right? All five of them, entire rotation, signed and developed by the Houston Astros. That's remarkable. Like that is absolutely remarkable and almost unprecedented. to see a full rotation with a competitive team, right?

We're not talking about like the Pittsburgh Pirates who said, yeah, we're just going to call up a bunch of slubs from the minor leagues and see what we got. We're talking about a World Series champ, perennial World Series contender, and they have all in-house developed talent. So while people may look at it and go, what is a Jose or Kiti again? Like, like, a casual fan might look at it. What is Hunter Brown? I wouldn't sleep on him because Christian Javier could be another Cy Young contendant.

Framber Valdez, you know, an insane amount of quality starts last year. Luis Garcia and Jose Ricitti, a little bit of warts for sure, but great high in talent. Hunter Brown, as you mentioned, end on him. Just a fantastic foreseer, right? I don't know what his full season is going to look like, obviously, because we, you know, there have been some conversations about, I don't know if it was Brandon Bylack or another starting, yeah, it might have been Bylac. Oh, Brian Garcia.

They were like thinking about maybe stretching out Brian Garcia, I think. Lance McCulloch is not out for the year, but Brown is going to get some appearances, and the four-seeing curveball combination is very, very good. The command is probably going to take a step back, but that's a lot of fun upside from a young dude who's slotting in a year number five. So where do you think the Mariners are right now in comparison to the Astros? I still think that there's a fairly clear divide, but I do feel that the gap has closed because I'm the high man on what the Mariners have done this off-season. Obviously, I think that they still needed to add another bat on top of what they they did with Wong and

Tay Oscar but I think that they got better I mean second base was a black hole for them they got better there they didn't necessarily go out and get the big free agent right but Colton Wong's an upgrade there Tay Oscar gives you more dependability and Mitch Hanager and obviously you know at his hundred percentile he's a you know fringe MVP candidate yeah and obviously you know you're getting a full season out of George Kirby and Luis Castillo and Cal who's now good you know so you know and and obviously the asteros of you know they brought back Michael Brantley they added Jose Abrae you but again they lost a Hall of Fame surefire you

know ace so what do you what do you think I'll say those two teams right now if I let's break it down strategically we'll talk about bullpen and rotation and offense and maybe I don't know if I can speak to defense as well I can do a quick look but um a bullpen I'll give to Seattle. I think it could be a top bullpen in baseball. Rotation I think is super close,

but I might edge out to Seattle just because there's a little more surety there. Wouldn't surprise me if that gap was actually closer than people think. Offense, I think, is pretty handedly Houston, right? I mean, it's even just York and Alvarez alone, right? If he's healthy, his hands fine.

He's maybe the best pure hitter in all of baseball. So did the gap close? Yes, I think it did close. Do I still give the advantage to Houston with that offense? I think overall I do. Yeah, I think the AL West is still theirs to win, but it's a perfect time for there to be a more balanced schedule, right?

Because those teams aren't just going to be beating up on one another anymore between Houston and Seattle, right? It's not just about, you know, oh, well, Houston took a bunch of the series from us and that's super frustrating. It's not that anymore. I will say, though, love a good rivalry. And I think with the way that the playoffs went, right, it's even hotter than ever, right? It's even another great sound clip from Alex Fast. It's even hotter than ever.

Dang it. I'm going to be clipping that posting that on Twitter. That's going to be the tagline for the whole episode. It's hotter than that. What does Alex Fast think is hotter than ever? It's going to be a YouTube short. It's going on our TikTok. People are like, yeah, I was excited to hear Alex fast on the pot, and then I listened to it and unfollowed.

Yeah, so yeah, I'm excited to watch them compete this year. The Gap is closer. AOS is still Houston's to lose, in my opinion. But Seattle can be right behind them. Well, Alex, thank you again for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it. Like I told you, off air, big fan of what you and. Pollock do over at pitcher list. It's great stuff. Anyone that hasn't checked out pitcher list,

check it out. It's a great resource. Tell us what you got going on. Anything you want to plug? Obviously pitcherless, but you got anything else going on as well? Yeah, big, big week. I'm launching my top 100 fantasy starting pitchers today, which is great. And then been doing a very interesting study that I'm talking to as many people about as possible about the impacts of finger pressure on baseball. It was partnered with Drive Line to do a study. Spoke at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference about it. So really excited about that.

Hopefully we can have an article coming out in the coming weeks about some of the findings. But yeah, I think there's a big opportunity there. So excited to talk to any and all about it. But yeah, man, thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, awesome. That was great. And looking forward to seeing that project that you're working on.

Let's do it again sometime. Yeah, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks again, Alex Fass for joining us here on the Locktime Mariners podcast. that's going to do it for our show. And thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. I've been your host, Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-U-N-Rerrinars.

You can follow me at D-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-Z, and my co-Oz, Colby at C-P-A-L-E-P-A-T-A-1. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Locked-on Mariners as well. That's one word, Locked-on Mariners, and you can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making us your first. Listen. Now for your second listen, check out Locked-on Fantasy Baseball. Win your league by listening to Matt and Dom every day as they bring you the best fantasy draft strategies. It's free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. And with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.