Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Kyle Seager vs. Jerry Dipoto?

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode talk about Kyle Seager and Jerry Dipoto's back-and-forth in the media, who the Mariners' reliever of the year was in 2021 and who their best defender was as well.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/Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus. 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.

You are Locked-on Mariners, your daily Seattle Mariners podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome to Locked-on Mariners, your home for Daily Seattle Mariners News and Analysis. Thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. Today is Thursday, October 7th, 2021. I am your host, Taday and Gonzalez, joined as always by my co-host, Colby Patnode. follow us on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-N-S-R-N-Rerrins.

You can follow me at D-A-N-Z-E, G-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-P-A-T-1-1. Be sure to also check out our Patreon where we talk about the Mariners even more. Also get into some non-baseball talk twice a week. Visit patreon.com forward slash control the zone for more information on that. On today's episode of Lockdown Mariners, more season awards are on the way for the 2021 Mariners. We're going to be doing Reliever of the year and defraison. offender of the year today. But before we hop into those, let's get into our first topic of the day.

If you like what you hear, give the show a follow or subscribe wherever you're listening to this. We greatly appreciate it. Jerry Depoto and Scott Service had their end of the year press conferences today. Jerry also appeared on 710 ESPN with Mike Salk today. Talked about a bunch of things. You reflected on the 2021 season and talked about the off season ahead and was asked to course about Kyle Seeger, who depoto has said he has yet to make a decision on his club option. But I think we all know where this is going to end up going. But, you know, of course, Kyle Seger aired out some frustrations towards Jerry this season. When the Kendall Graemean trade was made, there were some anonymous comments in an article by Ryan Divish.

That turned out to be Kyle Seeger talking about Jerry saying things like Jerry is just up there. playing fantasy baseball on his phone, et cetera. And then after Game 162, said that he hasn't talked to Jerry Depoto in a few years. Jerry was asked about that comment specifically and responded, saying, I understand Kyle's emotions, but we had conversations in the spring talking about this season and the possibility that could be his last in Seattle and his legacy.

And DePoto added, frankly, I do communicate frequently with Kyle. agent at intervals. They dictate. So there's a lot of he said, she said going on, which is kind of unnecessary because the split has pretty much already happened. Everyone understands what's going on. And it just feels like both guys are, you know, obviously Jerry is in the right to respond.

But hopefully this is the end of that. And there's no more, you know, Barb's being traded here. It's just let this thing in. Let the, let the legacy live how it is. with Kyle Seeger and move forward. But how do you feel about these comments, Colby, and just what are your thoughts overall on the split between Seeger and the organization?

Clearly it's time, and it's also time for Mariners fans to accept the reality that Kyle Seeger, while beloved in the clubhouse, was going to create some issues there. He probably already has. You can't have one member of the organization just hate the guy who runs it.

I mean, just viscerally hate him. And clearly, Kyle does. We know that from the comments in July. You know, Kyle is either lying or misremembering about talking to the Poto. And besides that, it's not really the GM's job to talk to the players. GMs talk to agents. Agents talk to players. Coaches talk to players.

General managers, they don't really do that all that often. So I don't understand why Kyle would be so upset by, by, this now we don't know what happened behind the scenes and then we'll probably never know exactly what happened it could be as simple as depoto telling kyle hey look we're we're not going to pick up your option like i don't know a year ago or this this spring and just say man it's not going to happen you're a declining player and Kyle took that personally and what do you know jerry was right Kyle is in decline um so it's just one of those things where it's it's kind of a bummer that, you know, he's,

Kyle's kind of going out in a not too flattering way. He's, to me, he's coming off as kind of petulant and acting like he deserves some kind of veto power for any of the moves Jerry wanted to make. Like, he's mad that he traded Kendall Graemean without asking him if he should.

And that, that's not your place. I mean, that's Jerry's job. And by the way, Jerry did, very well in that trade. So yeah, I'm sorry that you didn't like it and he traded some of your friends away, but that's his job, just like it's your job to not make an out 75% of the time. So it's just, it's one of those things that it's, it's definitely time for a divorce and then,

you know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Kyle Seeger is coming out smelling like roses just because I really like him and just because I respect his, you know, his decade plus of service to the Mariners. That doesn't mean you get to kind of, be an a hole on your way out the door and not have me criticize you for and that that's kind of how it's coming off from kyle i feel like this is a PR battle kyle seger is losing it to me now to fans they don't like they don't want they don't care about the gym right they don't care about yeah they want the player and kyle has so much equity built here that you know it doesn't really matter what kyle said Kyle could say pretty much anything about depoto and fans will back him up there not me not this

guy. You know, it's, it's a little Richard Sherman-esque, not quite as vocal as that, but there is a little bit of like, you know, light the, light the bridges on fire. I'm done here, and I'm going to let everybody know about it. But I don't, I believe, I believe to Poto, when he says I talk to him in spring training, and I talk to his agent often, because that's typically what GMs do. They don't talk to players all that often. They talk to agents. coaches and agents talk to the players. So I'm going to side with Jerry on this one. It's just kind of a bummer that Kyle is choosing to go out this way.

And it's kind of out of character, which leads me to believe that Kyle Seeger really hates Jerry Depoto. You mentioned something there that the listener might hear and say, wait, what are you talking about? The guy hit 35 home runs, 101 RBI this year. You know, you were saying that he's declining. Well, let me remind you of the numbers here. This year, statistically, Kyle Seeger had the second worst season of his career.

If you really look at the numbers, 212, 285 on base percentage with a 438 slugging percentage. Yeah, you hit home runs, but he struck out 24% of the time. That is the highest rate he's had in his entire career. He walked just 8.8% of the time, which is one of the lowest marks in his career. and had just a 99 WRC plus, which is pretty much average, one point below the league average mark. He's a fine player. He's not a player that's going to, you know, that is worth the club option,

which is pretty much accumulates to $20 million this year. And with this and with how he feels towards the organization for one way or another, if he's right, if he's wrong, that really doesn't matter. The relationship is pretty much toast, and he's on the decline as a player. Yes, he hits home runs. Yes, he drives in a ton of runs. But that is not a guy that you want to invest $20 million in, no matter really where you are, organizationally speaking,

that you need to do better. You can get younger there and have more upside at that position. And that's obviously something that we have talked about quite a bit on the show. and are going to continue to drive home because this team can and should and probably will get better at third base and or and or second base. This offseason and Jerry Depoto and Scott Service both talked about adding at least one offensive piece to the infield this off season, pretty much confirming everything. You know, we already know they didn't really see anything groundbreaking today. I know some people, you know, saw the. payroll comments and thought that was either interesting or took it as an opportunity to take a shot at

the Mariners for some reason. That's silly. Let's just wait and see what happens, guys. It's, I personally, I think the Mariners are going to be pretty aggressive in both the free agent and trade market this year. And we've talked about payroll a lot on this show and how really it's not about the dollar figure that they get to. It's about the quality of the players that they add. So let's just wait and see, you know, before we pass on judgment about how this offseason is going to go and what Jerry DePoto's plan ultimately, you know, comes to be. So before we hop on over to our next segment, Colby, any other thoughts here on on DePoto's comments? I'm sure we'll get to more of them, more of the offseason related stuff tomorrow's episode. But anything else that caught your eye here that you wanted to cover real quick?

No, you know, just I've seen the same thing you are about, you know, people on Mariners Twitter taking very vague comments from Jerry, which isn't that surprising at the end of the repressor. He's not going to say, well, here's how much money we have and here's how we're going to lay it out. That's that's not going to happen. But they're taking the vagueness of those comments and either, you know, for the most part, they're saying, oh, well, clearly that means he's going to have like $15 million extra because John Stanton, blah, blah, blah. and Jerry set this last year and yada yada. Just let's not do that. Let's just wait and see, you know, because we don't know how much money they're going to have to spend.

You don't know, I don't know. Anybody telling you they know is lying to you. They don't know. Yeah. The only people that know are Jerry and Jerry and his crew and John Stanton. That's it. So just let's let's let's let's let's let's play out before we pass judgment. on anything Jerry does this winter.

Let's see how it looks and let's see what they do and let's see who they're linked to and how aggressive they are in those pursuits. And let's have some fun. Like, why would you start off the offseason being negative? Why? Have fun. Dream. Yeah.

And watch Jerry work. Let Jerry cook. So let's talk about the bullpen that pretty much was the driving force for this team in helping them win a lot of those close games. and getting to that 90 win record that they ended up with in just a moment. But first, I want to remind you this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Rock Auto. With the ever-increasing numbers of makes and models, it's now impossible for your local chain

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You're listening to Lockdown Mariners. Thank you again for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. Colby, let's talk about this bullpen. It was fantastic this year, but we got to whittle it down to just one name to give to our reliever of the year for the 2020.

one Mariners. A lot of good choices here from Casey Sadler to Drew Steck and Rider to Paul Seawald. We'll even throw Kendall Graveman in there as well. Who are you landing on for this award? I mean, Kendall Graveman would finish in a solid fourth place. So got to throw him in there. Maybe even fifth. Yeah. So it really comes down to three. It's it's second writer Seawald or Sadler. You know, each kind of had different roles to fill. you know, but Seawald was used in the most high leverage situations for most of the year. He was pretty good. He did fade a little bit towards the end because, you know, they basically crammed six months

worth of work into about four and a half months. So not all that surprising that he would fade towards the end. But I'm going to give it to Seawall just because the strikeouts were incredibly high. And he was often facing the best that, you know, the opponents had to offer. So because of that, I'm going to give him. give him a little bit of an edge over Steckin Rider and Sadler, who probably had better, you know,

overall numbers. But because Seawald pitched in such high leverage situations as often as he did, and he generally performed very well, I think that is, I think that's why I'm going to give it to Seawald. It just, I think he's earned it. And, hey, you know,

the fact that we have this conversation at all is a huge improvement over last year where we legitimately were probably going to give it to you on Ramirez. So, yeah, bullpen's in great shape still and it should get better. But as for a reliever of the year, I'm going to go ahead and give it to Paul Seawall this year. Yeah, I'm going to follow Sue here and do the same. He was also my surprise player of the year that we picked yesterday. Go listen to that episode if you haven't already. You know, strikeouts are the name of the game, really, with the top relievers in baseball. And Paul Seawall finished with the fifth highest K-per-9 this year.

He was excellent. As you mentioned, you know, they put him in all these high-leverage situations. And for the most part, he truly, truly was able to come through for this team and either keep them in close games or finish off these close games.

And even when he wasn't necessarily on it, he was still able to, you know, escape. You know, there's a couple of instances that come to mind where, you know, maybe he had the bases loaded or whatever, but he was able to get a couple of key strikeouts and be able to get out of that.

and that slider really helped him enough. And of course, it kind of faded towards the end, along with just him in general. And obviously that directly correlates. He needs that pitch, really. And, you know, gave up some home runs, of course, towards the end. But overall, you know, you got to be just absolutely thrilled with what Paul Seawald was able to give you when he just came out of nowhere.

They signed him as a minor league free agent, which the Mariners just continue to do. They continue to find these diamonds of the rough. I say it every single off season now, We have to pay attention to these guys that they add on these minor league deals. You think about Austin Nola. And then, you know, they get guys in the Rule 5 like Brandon Brennan, who helped them for a little bit. And they're able to make these trades for like Austin Adams and Connor Statsick.

And obviously those guys weren't around for a long time, but they helped. You know, Jerry DePud was really good at identifying relievers. I think that's been made pretty clear. And so even, you know, even when you see minor league transactions come across the board here during this offseason, and you have to at least pay attention for guys like Paul Seawald who go from minor league free agent with like two teams really interested. Three teams interested in him.

It was the Astros, the Blue Jays, and the Mariners. And he ends up becoming one of the top five best relievers in baseball this year in terms of K for nine. That's pretty incredible. The guy was just downright awesome this year. And he was a lot of fun to watch. he's a great guy on top of it all from everything I've seen. And Drew's second writer as well.

I mean, you know, Colby, you didn't think that second rider was even going to make it out of spring training, did you? No, but, you know, I also thought Kendall Graveman was going to be a high leverage reliever and get traded. So I guess I'm pretty smart. Well, you know, I called the Kendall Graveman high leverage reliever thing all the way back in 2020. I don't think you did, but I'm not recalling that, but Oh yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, no, it seems Colby's had a decent case of amnesia here today on today's

episode of Lockdown Mariners. I don't think so. I'm just, I'm just saying. Steckenrider, yeah, he was pretty terrifying to watch in spring training. He had a couple of rough outings, but now he made the team. and struggled a little bit in early April, but really found his groove, and Scott knew how to use him,

and he got the most out of him. So, yeah, Stek definitely up there, and Sadler was a guy who came in late in 2020 and really flashed some stuff. And he was no doubt a stabilizing force in the middle innings and exactly what you needed. And hey, you know what, if we're going to throw Kendall Graveman in this discussion,

we should probably talk about J.T. Sharkawah, too, who was quite good before he was traded as well. Yeah, J.T. Shargraw, it was really solid. And then, you know, Casey Sadler, of course, stepped into his role and was brilliant. Just, man, this team continues to churn out some pretty interesting arms in that bullpen. And guess what?

It's going to get better. Ken Giles is going to be added to this bullpen with Diego Castillo now also in it. That's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll see what they do to potentially add more, more arms, more options in there over the course of the winter. But like I said, you got to keep an eye out for everything. Every single transaction that Jerry Depoto makes in regards to the bullpen deserves your attention at this point. I think that's pretty clear now.

So we're going to talk about Defender of the Year, the best glove. And that's another award that has a couple of interesting options. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Bedoules. We're back in better than ever. All eyes are on the gridiron as teams are back on to start another football season. And as always, Bet Online is your number one spot for all the pro and college football action. With a new updated site and interface, even more odds, props and contests, betonline.

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This is Lockdown, Mariners. Thank you again for making us your first list on the day. Every day we are free and available on all platforms. It's time to talk some defense here, Colby. the defender of the year or the platinum glove, gold glove, whatever you want to consider it to be. The best defender on the Seattle Mariners is who, Colby? J.P. Crawford.

Yes. Yeah, Seeger was pretty good too, and so was Ty France. So they're in consideration here, but it's JP, and it's frankly not all that close. JP might be the best defensive shortstop in the American League. he's certainly way up there and it's so hard to even remember any of the errors that he made this year because there were there were so few he's just consistent he brings it every single day and there's just no there's just really no debate for anybody else in my mind it's it's j p crawford sure you know dillan more had a couple of really great plays and then jake frailey with the

insane catch but just the consistency day in day out to play a hundred 160 games and really never have your defense suffer once is pretty impressive. So J.P. Crawford is the Platinum Glove or Best Defender or whatever it is you want to call it. That award belongs to J.P. Crawford. The answer clearly is Louis Terence. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Relax. It's J.P. Crawford, of course. The guy is so smooth over there. I mean, the fact that Perry Hill has turned him into such an incredible incredible defender at one of the most crucial defensive spots on the field, on the diamond. It's insane what he's been able to do with him.

Obviously, you know, we knew about the athleticism. We knew about everything that he brought from a defensive, from a defensive standpoint. But, you know, when he came from Philadelphia, we had no clue that he could be this good. I mean, that was the big knock on him, really was, is he going to be able to stay at shortstop? Is he more of a second basement? and he made it very clear. He is a shortstop. Jerry DePoto said today that he expects him to be the shortstop for many years.

Of course, he only has two years left on his deal, but I'm sure there's going to be an extension negotiated this off season. I'd be surprised if we don't hear something about an extension with J.B. Crawford and especially the bat started to follow through this year as well. He's turned into a really solid player, and he's turned into one of the captains on this team as well. and, you know, just defensively speaking, the guy just, he eats up everything. And obviously he didn't have like one like massive highlight worthy play this year,

like in terms of the, you know, the play that he had against the Tigers a couple of years ago where he was deep in the six hole and, you know, went off of his right leg and made that insane throw over to first base to get the runner. You know, you didn't have a play like that necessarily this year. But also, you know, some of his great plays probably don't even stand out really. because unfortunately he's so good, we take him for granted a little bit. He's just that good.

But I do want to shout out to Ty France here because France was a man without a position for a while there. They tried him out at second base. He was downright terrible. Tried him out at third base a couple of times, but really didn't give him a ton of opportunity over there. It wasn't really that great either. And then they, you know, Evan White gets hurt, of course,

and they put France over there at first base. And again, Perry Hill, the magician, the wizard that he is, just, you know, helps France, you know, just get better and better and better in France, you know, by Fangraph's metrics, which, you know, obviously you don't want to put a ton of stock into because a lot of these outlets, they just really don't know how to grade defense, especially first base defense. But he was the top rated defensive first baseman on Fangraphs this year. And, you know, and it showed through on the field. He was spectacular. and he's also one of the highest-graded for a defensive first baseman on the saver defensive index

which was used to determine all the gold glove awards last year. It's going to be up to the voters this year. Don't know if he's going to get the gold glove over Yulee Guerriel or Matt Olson. But we'll see. He was certainly,

he's certainly deserving of being in the conversation and we'll see if JP wins his second gold glove in a row this, this winner. But, yeah, I mean, the Mariners are in a decent spot right now defensively. Got some pretty solid gloves. And we'll see how much they value that this offseason. Personally speaking, I value that quite a bit.

So we'll see how it turns out. But yeah, these guys were a lot of fun to watch a play this year. Anyone else that you want to talk about here? Nobody in the outfield, certainly. So catchers were pretty medial. yoker this year at best, particularly at the relay throw thing, which continues to annoy me to this day. Yeah. But, yeah, you know, other than that, it's, you know, it's, like I said, Seeger was solid this year.

I made a couple really nice plays, but yeah, it's, it's JP, it's, it's Ty France, it's Kyle Seeger, and there's really nobody else. I mean, if you want to throw Dillon Moore on this list, he was very good when he got to play, but, you know, it just, like Dylan might be the Dylan might be the best defender on this team just in terms of what he can do in the outfield and the infield he's pretty good at every you know everywhere really but because JP and

Ty France and Kyle Seeger did it every single day whereas Dylan Moore for most of the second half of the season was a role player it just it doesn't seem fair to put him in this list. So, yeah, it's JP, it's Ty and it's Kyle and, and, you know,

outfield defense and catching defense continues to be, should be a priority this winter when Jerry goes out and looks for for upgrades to his, to his position player group.

And don't forget about Chris Flexen, who is in the top five of the Sabre defensive index as well. Yusei Kikuchi is also on there as well with a positive defensive SDI rating. Yeah. Yeah.

They're, you know, got some athletes on their team. It's pretty fun to watch. We saw some pretty cool plays out of a lot of these guys this year. And they just made the year all the more fun. So that's going to do it for today's show. Thank you so much for joining us here on Lockdown Mariners for Colby Pat Note.

I'm Taday and Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez. It's D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat 11. That's C-P-A-T-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making Locked-on Mariners. Your first listen of the day every day will be back tomorrow.

Rapping up our season awards with hitter of the year and pitcher of the year for the 2021 Mariners. But now make your second listen of the day Locked on MLB, Rappell Francis Sullivan, and please call him Sully, brings you his unique perspective on the major leagues president pass. It's free and available on all platforms. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Thank you.