Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Luis Castillo's Changeup-Heavy Gameplan Backfires, Mariners Drop Series in Cleveland

Starting point is 00:00:00 It was a battle between first place teams, but the last two games of the series reminded us once again of how flawed this Mariner's ball club is. Let's talk about it. Coming up here on the Lockdown Marers Postgame show, Colby, hit it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. Ahoy, sailors. It is Thursday, June 20th, 2024.

Starting point is 00:00:30 This is Tyning Azales and Colby Pat node for the Locked on Marers Postgame show, part of the Lockedon Podcast Network. your team every day. Marries drop a series in Cleveland with a 6 to 3 loss to the Guardians. We'll talk about Luis Castillo's rough day. The offensive struggles, the mismanagement of a potential seventh inning comeback. We'll also talk a little bit

Starting point is 00:00:50 about Brian Wu, who made his return to the mound last night. But before we get into that, shout out to our title sponsor today, Tax Network USA. Did you know that it's never too late to resolve your tax issues with the IRS? Don't wait. Reduce your tax debt and get help from a

Starting point is 00:01:05 team of licensed tax professionals by calling 1,800, 549,000 or visiting tnusa.com slash locked on. And if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, check out our Patreon. The link is in the description and you can sign up for a free seven-day trial. So a lot of blame to go around for the loss today. Offense, Scott's service. But I think we have to start with Luis Cascio, who just simply wasn't good enough today.

Starting point is 00:01:35 He goes five innings pitched Eight hits Five earn runs Four K's two walks So he ends up allowing ten base runners in this one A couple of home runs allowed as well What did you make of his day today? Yeah he wasn't very good

Starting point is 00:01:52 A bit of a Different look to Castillo today In an attempt to counter all these lefties in the lineup He threw more changeups in this outing than he has all year he threw 29% changeups. It was actually his most used pitch tied with the four seam fastball. And a couple of the big hits, they were on changeups. And they were just in the middle of the plate.

Starting point is 00:02:15 He didn't have good feel for that pitch at all, which not that surprising, considering he barely uses it anymore. And today he decided to use it a ton. It just wasn't a great pitch. He got 27, 27 pit, he threw it 27 times, 13 swings, only one with, also only one called strike. Just not going to do it. It was only in the zone 33% of the time.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And on those pitches where it was in the strike zone, they only swung at 28% of those. So it just wasn't a threatening changeup whatsoever. They could just lay off of it. It was never a threat to them. What's interesting is that they had an 88% zone contact rate on that pitch as well. So when it was in the strike zone, they were not afraid to hit it. Like they basically just spat on that pitch and it wasn't a threat. Like it was a nothing pitch for Castillo today.

Starting point is 00:03:07 And it's the one he decided to try and use the most, which is unfortunate. So, yeah, he was trying so desperately, especially against Jose Ramirez, to hit that outside corner on the, on the bottom third of the zone. And he was missing it by four to eight inches every single time. Right. And so, yeah, it's just one of those things. The fastball, Forcinger was okay in this one. He got just four whiffs. on 13 swings, though.

Starting point is 00:03:36 So 31% is pretty good for a four seamer. Got five called strikes on it as well. So just three of those fastballs put in play. One of them was a hard hit ball. The other two were not. So, you know, I think what this is is Castillo and the Mariners trying something to, you know, trying to be something he's not against the lineup that presents unique difficulties for a lot of teams.

Starting point is 00:04:01 But today it looked like a day. where he needed to throw the fastball a lot more. The four-seeing fastball in particular. And he just, you know, he decided to stick to the game plan. And it was pretty even-splity through a lot of sliders, too. It's not like he completely ditched the slider or anything like that. He threw 24 of them as well. But just nothing really working for him in this one.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Cleveland fouled off 24 pitches. It just looked basically like a carving poppy of his start at Team Mobile Park against this team. And we know that this particular lineup is going to be a difficult. put one for the Mariners to face. They don't have to face it anymore until the playoffs if, you know, both teams get there. So,

Starting point is 00:04:40 you know, that's a good thing, I guess, but they are going to have to figure out a way to handle all these lefties and a team that just refuses to go down easy. You're going to have to make high quality pitches. And you know what? You're going to make high quality pitches that they're going to foul off or they're

Starting point is 00:04:53 going to hit. Yeah. You know, they're going to float in there for base hits. Like the guardians have the type of offense that I think we would all like the Mariners to build, where it's contact oriented. where it's doubles and triples with a couple of guys who can hit the home run.

Starting point is 00:05:08 And I think it's the type of offense, the Mariners tried to build a little bit this winter. Certainly they were trying to cut down on their strikeouts, but it just hasn't worked for whatever reason. But yeah, I think Cleveland is kind of the model offense for what you want at T-Mobile Park in particular. And Seattle gets to see, you know, what it looks like, unfortunately six times a year.

Starting point is 00:05:28 And they dropped the season series, so no tiebreaker against the Guardians. So we'll see if that comes into play for season. or anything like that. Who knows? I mean, still 84 games left to go or something like that. So we'll see. But yeah, Castillo, just not good enough. He was either missing badly or he was in the middle of the plate. And he had a couple opportunities to put guys away with two strikes.

Starting point is 00:05:47 And he just couldn't get it done. And that was kind of a running theme for all the Mariners, pitchers in this series. Also working with Mitch Garver for the first time behind the plate. This was the first time Garver's worked with any of the other starters besides George Kirby. So I also wonder if maybe that led to Castillo kind of, just sticking to the game plan no matter what over the course of the day. Not a good day for the offense either.

Starting point is 00:06:09 They did jump on Logan Allen pretty early, but overall just couldn't get the job done over the course of this game and couldn't come through in some, when they did have a couple of opportunities as well. And Scott Service also played a hand in that a little bit. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown-Marys Postgame show is brought to you once again by Tax Network USA,

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Starting point is 00:08:45 That's PolicyGenius.com slash Locked-on MLB. And you're listening to the Locked-on Marys postgame show. The Marys are taking their talents to South Beach tomorrow to face the Marlins. You can catch all the action on the Marriss Hometown broadcast with SiriusXM via the SXM app. All you have to do to find that is search the word Mariners. So this offense got off to a pretty decent start. J.P. Crawford gets on to lead off the game. Then Dillamore hits two-run, home run off of Logan Allen.

Starting point is 00:09:14 It's like, all right, we're back. We're back on track after the shutout last night. And then the offense really didn't do much of anything from that point forward. They got a third run off of an RBI double by Ryan Bliss, which was really nice to see. That ball was smoked off of the bat, 106 off the bat, and off of the left field wall.

Starting point is 00:09:33 But that was pretty much it. They weren't able to take advantage of a couple opportunities that they had, and then, of course, they had no shot against a manual class A in the ninth inning. But that was well past the point of this game being within reach, really.

Starting point is 00:09:47 But yeah, overall thoughts on the offense today, Corey? It sucked. Yeah. Wasn't fun to watch. It hasn't been fun to watch for the last couple games. They didn't have five walks. So I mean like if you're looking for a positive, it is a positive that they only struck out five times and they walked five times. Sure. Yeah. It's also probably not a good thing, uh, that they didn't hit the ball hard really much at all today, though. So, uh, you just look at this. They were poor situational hitting. Uh, they just couldn't generate enough traffic early, uh, in, in the inning, uh, although they did once. And, well, twice. One of them worked out. One didn't. We'll talk about the one that didn't work out later.

Starting point is 00:10:32 But yeah, you just look up and down this box score. It's, it's depressing. And I mean, it's really, it was a really tough day to watch Julio at the plate. Now, he salvaged his day by, you know, floating a fly ball into right field to go one for four. But his at-bats were atrocious. Yeah. Ends the day with the comebackers of the pitcher.

Starting point is 00:10:50 I mean, against Logan Allen, that, that is a matchup that he should dominate. That is a soft tossing lefty. And, And Julio couldn't handle his 90-mile-hour cutters that were just off the inside corner. And it's not even that like, oh, he was just ripping them foul down the line. It's just a little bit of a timing issue. Nope. He was getting beat bad by cutters.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Like that were 90 miles. Like not even a good pitch. And he was getting beat bad. He was pushing those balls to the right side instead of turning on them. And, you know, throwing Julio any kind of velocity off the inside corner is just the quickest guaranteed way to get him out right now. And, you know, we're 80 games in or whatever we are, like, you got to make the adjustment. Like, it's not rocket science. Everybody in the world knows how you're going to get pitched and you still haven't figured out how to attack that.

Starting point is 00:11:35 That's on Julio at this stage. You can blame Brent Brown all you want. He's gone. You can blame, you know, anybody on the coaching staff all you want. Julio has to make the adjustment right now because ultimately Julio knows how he's going to get pitched. And it's the easiest way in the world to get him out right now. Throw him something that breaks away from him or throw him something that has some velocity. to it just off the inside corner and he's not going to do anything with it at best he'll hit a

Starting point is 00:12:00 ground ball single whoopty do you're fine with that no by the way Julio hasn't run on the basis for like the last week I still think he's dealing with some kind of knee or hamstring issue that he's he's trying to play through so yeah even if you get to single it's not like he's a huge threat to steal bag right now so yeah Julio's got to be better he sucked he sucked today Garber and Raleigh combined to go 0 for 4 with two strikeouts, they were bad. And then just not enough damage done from the rest of the lineup. Like you said, Bliss had the double, which is really cool. Rocketed it.

Starting point is 00:12:33 I thought it was going to hook foul, but he hit it too hard to hook foul. And then more, obviously, with the home run. I thought Victor Robles actually had some decent at-bats. He seems to be fairly well-suited for the role they're using him in, but whatever. He's helped. He's found a way to help in most of the games he's played in. Yeah, I mean, obviously he had the really bad. start but yeah yeah uh you know he's been he's been he's been fine yeah he's fine he's fine

Starting point is 00:12:58 he had the big walk today to set up the the bliss double yeah i mean like against the lefty but that's fine like he's helping uh throw him onto the list of guys like ryan bliss and jonathan clausay and tie locklear of guys who have like yeah they've helped i mean bliss had it had the double in a walk so i was good bliss had his first good game in a while so you know there were some isolated pockets of fun from this offense today, but for the most part, it was just unbearable to watch. I mean,

Starting point is 00:13:29 anytime you have a soft tossing lefty and he walks four guys and he only strikes you out twice, you should be putting up four, five, six runs against that dude. And they just, they didn't. It was a very mediocre performance after that first inning. Actually, after the first inning, it was a terrible performance.

Starting point is 00:13:46 But you factor in the first inning, at best it was mediocre. So let's talk about the seventh inning. I can't wait any longer. I have to talk about this. I'm so glad that they saved Josh Rojas for a one-out, bases empty at bat in the ninth inning against a top three reliever in baseball. Instead of pinch-hitting him for Dillamore in the seventh inning as the go-ahead run. But Ty, Dillon Moore hit a home run earlier in this very game.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Right. If they kept Tim Haren. You can't take that guy out. If they kept Tim Heron in the game, all right, fine. Let Demo hit against him. But they bring in Kate Smith. They bring in a Ritey. And Scott Service, we've talked about it.

Starting point is 00:14:31 We've complained about it, how much he's relied on handed this. And now, you know, and this isn't the only time he's done this season, where he hasn't played the handedness game. But it's been a rarer occurrence. And for some reason, he decided, yeah, no, let's just roll with Demo here against the Ritey instead of going with Rojas or he could have gone with Canzone or Rayleigh or whoever just a lefty to count or Roley or Rolley. Your entire bench was filled with left-handed or two could ride a fastball out of there. Right. So look, we we don't know how that would have played out at the end of the day, but still, Scott Service didn't put his offense of the best position to succeed in that moment.

Starting point is 00:15:10 Can we just call out what it was? Scott very deliberately decided not to use any of his lefties there because he wanted to save. one of his or a couple of his lefties to hit for bliss and to hit for uh hit for robles okay fine fine but you could still do that because again your your bench was stacked with lefties i know but like that's the reason why like i would no matter what he say oh well we looked at the metric blah blah nope nope nope scott you were planning for an inning that ultimately would not matter if you didn't score in that seventh you have to play the game that's in front of you not the game that you want to play later on. So when you have Dylan Moore up there,

Starting point is 00:15:50 a guy who's been terrible, he's had a nice series, this, you know, this three game stretch, whatever. I guess that overrides the previous three weeks where he was one of your worst hitters.

Starting point is 00:16:00 You have Josh Ross, who's also on a little bit of a heater right now. He's ready to go. Luke Rayleigh has, you know, had a nice series too. He's ready to go. And obviously you have Cal Raleigh,

Starting point is 00:16:08 who's like the king of hitting these big, late inning pinch hit home runs. Like you have options and lots of them. And it wasn't like, oh, well, what are we going to do? Like, maybe if Rojas wasn't available today, he just tweaked his back or something, and it's like, okay, well,

Starting point is 00:16:23 we don't have another infielder. Like, we're just kind of stuck here. So we can't take DEMO out because we don't have anybody to play second base or third base. Fine, whatever. Not the case. Rojas played in this game. Did it cost them the game?

Starting point is 00:16:37 Maybe, probably not, maybe, like, who knows? We don't know. But was it the best use of his players? No. it wasn't it wasn't and that's that's all it is at the end of day he failed to put his players in the best position to win this game not like his players really helped him out either but whatever it is what it is no like i'm not i'm not penning the loss on scott service no no no no because again we don't know if josh comes up there you know maybe josh comes up there and he strikes out or he hits into a double play just like yeah just

Starting point is 00:17:08 like demo did who knows right but he didn't put his best his players in the best position to succeed and that particular moment. But this game, it ultimately falls on Luis Castillo. Yep. And then to a slightly lesser degree of the offense. All right. So not to make this whole episode a bummer, but this is what we have to work with in terms of the day to day of the Marrars right now. Blame the Mariners. Yeah. Brian Wu yesterday after his start and his post-game press conference said he's still feeling not great. So we'll talk about that a little bit more here in just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Marys Postgame show is brought to you by Stitch Fix. You know that instant confidence boost

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Starting point is 00:18:37 Stitchfix.com slash MLB must redeem within seven days of sign up. And you're listening to the Lockdown Marrars Postgame show. Once again, you can catch the Mariners and the Marlins this weekend on the Marriss hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app. All you have to do to find that is search the word Mariners. So like I mentioned a couple minutes ago, Brian Wu said he's still not feeling great coming off of his first start in 12 days. Yesterday, he was only able to go four innings in that one,

Starting point is 00:19:08 had a really long inning to start that game. and obviously the guardians are incredibly annoying as an offense. They fouled off a bunch of pitches and as we know, Brian basically just has fastballs to throw. Yeah, he has two pitches. They're both fastballs. So when the other team, especially a team like the Guardians essentially knows what's coming,

Starting point is 00:19:29 yeah, you're probably going to be in for a tough day if you're not able to perfectly execute your pitches. So and that's what happened yesterday. It wasn't a disastrous start for Wu by any stretch of the imagination. though, but it wasn't great either. But again, the, the biggest, you know, the big concern here is he still doesn't feel great, which, look, they did an MRI last week. They said it came back clean. So what's going on?

Starting point is 00:20:00 I think the actual phrase they used was it came back perfect. So, I mean, like, but, yeah, obviously it's, it's concerning. I saw the, I saw his little post, you know, postgame media scrum. And he just, he looked defeated. He looked like he didn't want to really be there. So body language, language was certainly a, you know, a factor in kind of when I saw that. But it's worth noting Adam Jude followed up with him this morning because nobody asked him to follow up last night. And Adam Jude said that, Wu said that he's feeling just fine physically.

Starting point is 00:20:40 and he's going through his normal off day or his normal day after throwing routine on the field right now. And Jude speculates that he thinks he was just pissed off in general last night. It was particularly, particularly clipped during his postgame interview. Sure. So you hope like the- I've never heard the term clip to describe someone who's pissed off. Okay. But yeah, so you hope it's just like, I mean, how are you feeling?

Starting point is 00:21:04 And he interpreted it as like, like, I'm mad right now. So I'm not feeling great. You hope. You hope. But again, anytime, hey, you just, you haven't pitched in 12 days. You've been battling elbow stuff all year. Yeah. How are you feeling?

Starting point is 00:21:20 Not great. But it is what it is. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I don't know if people are just reading the room there, but it's kind of the media's job to ask the follow-up question. Right. As in, like, you don't feel great physically or, like, elbow? Like, what's, what do you? mean when you say you don't feel great.

Starting point is 00:21:40 So, you know, hopefully things are fine. But it, you know, it's tough. And obviously you threw 30 pitches in that first inning, which kind of sabotaged the whole thing anyways. But his next start will be, I believe he'll start game one against the raise. The raise, by the way, you know, disappointing year for them so far. They just took two or three from Minnesota. So it's still a dangerous team.

Starting point is 00:22:05 And we'll see what, what we can do. And, you know, I think we'll see if he throws a bullpen between starts. That's usually a big thing as well. So, you know, Hancock, Emerson Hancock had to leave the game last night, too. So it looked like a back thing. Yep. I haven't seen an update on that, but that's what he was pointing to last night. If Wu can't go, then it's, you're probably looking at, you're probably looking at Jonathan Diaz again.

Starting point is 00:22:30 So, you know, so far, you know, the follow up that we did get on Wu seems like he's okay. seems like it was more of just in the moment like I'm mad statement instead of I'm mad at with my own performance statement more so than a health statement but we'll see

Starting point is 00:22:48 obviously I think in Miami he would be set to throw a bullpen on Saturday I believe was when he would normally throw his bullpen so hopefully somebody asked like hey did you know were you able to do your bullpen today and that way we have a good idea but yeah it not only was woo

Starting point is 00:23:06 you know, not able to go, you know, not able to pitch that well. I mean, he was okay. He was okay. It wasn't terrible, but it really put a strain on the bullpen. And that unfortunately also carried over to today. So what do we got? Kirby tomorrow? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Right? I hope Kirby can go seven innings because this bullpen really needs it. They need it. You get Kirby, Gilbert, Miller. Yeah. Hopefully you can get six innings apiece from all those guys. But, you know, get greedy. Why not go seven?

Starting point is 00:23:36 eight is also an option just throwing that out there nine too i mean it's not go crazy but sure yeah i mean it's it's i'm willing to look crazy it's in the realm of possibility but you want to get nuts let's get nuts obviously going up against the marlins offense is a significantly better matchup for them than cleveland's offense but uh yeah like i said i'm terrified of miami this weekend this just feels kind of like one of those Washington series or just like, uh, I mean,

Starting point is 00:24:07 to be fair, they are significantly worse than even Washington as right now. I mean, Washington's playing good ball right now. So it kind of skews things a little bit, but all right. That is going to do it for our show. But before we get out of here,

Starting point is 00:24:20 a reminder that Lockdown has launched the first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube. And now it's also available on Amazon Fire TV and the free Fire TV channels app. Locked on Sports Today is here for you 24-7 covering the top sports stories of the day with the local experts of Locked on. Plus our national shows covering every league. Find Lockdown Sports Today now available on the free Fire TV channels app. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariner's podcast for Colby Patnode.

Starting point is 00:24:44 I'm Ty Dan Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby at CPAT 11. That's CPAT-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day. And we'll see you next time. Peace.

Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Luis Castillo's Changeup-Heavy Gameplan Backfires, Mariners Drop Series in Cleveland

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