Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mailbag, Part 1: Why Don't Mitch Haniger and Kyle Seager Have High WAR Totals?

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

It's part one of this week's mailbag as Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode answer questions regarding their journey to the Locked On network, how WAR works and how it's applied to players like Kyle Seager and Mitch Haniger, which Mariners player or coach would give the best Secret Santa gift 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/Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order. 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 Mariner's News and Analysis. Thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms, of course. Today is Monday, December 6, 2021. I'm your host, Tiding Gonzalez. joined as always by my co-host Colby Patnode follow us on Twitter and 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-E-P-A-T-1-1. And be sure to check out our Patreon as well. That's where we talk about the Mariners even more. And we also get into some non-baseball talk twice a week. New episode dropping for our tier twos and threes later today. So visit patreon.com for it slash control the zone. if you want to listen to that.

It's Mailback Monday here on Lockdown Mariners. We weren't able to do one last week with the news of Robbie Ray and all that, but now that the lockout is in full swing, we can get back to doing these. And you submitted your questions on Twitter and via email at Lockdown Mariners at Gmail.com. And we're going to answer as many as we possibly can on today's show. And there are quite a lot on tap. So if you like what you hear, give the show a follow or subscribe wherever you're

listened to this. We greatly appreciate it. Let's start with a couple of questions that we got via email. And the first one is kind of a big one, but I think one that we'll be able to answer pretty concisely here. This comes from Kyle Williams, who says, Hello, I am an avid listener to the podcast, and I love your evaluations of the Mariners.

Thank you so much, Kyle. Sorry in advance for the long question, but I will also send in some possible trade request for fan fiction Fridays. Looking forward to that. I was wondering if you would ever consider doing a, segment on what makes a really good contributor to a baseball team statistically. I have been a Mariners and baseball follower for almost 20 years, but I have such a hard time wrapping my head around advanced statistics and how they do value certain players, especially players like Mitch Hanigar and

Kyle Seeger. Both those guys, according to war, were less than three-win players, yet both had 35 plus home runs and 100 RBI. I get it takes into account many aspects of a player's game including the glove, but how can a player contribute that much offensively and still not be considered near elite yet players that drive in considerably less runs and do other things will be a three to five win player. Hopefully you can shed some light on this because it also applies to stats such as OPS Plus, WRC Plus and other advanced metrics. Thank you for the question, Kyle.

Really appreciate it. Colby, you want to kick this one off? Yeah. So the first thing we need to understand about war, in general is that it is free of bias. So it's a statistical formula. There is no input that is based on eye test or anything like that. So it's a purely mathematical formula.

I don't know the formula. I know you can look it up, but I'm not smart enough to figure it out. And also different places use different formulas. Like baseball reference has its own formula. Fan graphs has its own formula. This is why you hear terms such as R-War or B-Wore. That's for baseball reference. F-Wore is FanGraphs War.

And there's also other places that are creating their own wins above replacement formulas. I mean, shoot, even MLB the show has their own formula that they have for their in-game war. So there's a bunch of different ways to go about it. And there isn't really one specific right way to do it either. But anyway, continue, Colby. Right. But again, you just plug in these factors into your own formula, and it tells you what the player is worth over 162 games is basically the idea.

You know, there seems to be some confusion. A zero war player is replacement level. That is the guy that you go get off of your AAA roster to fill a spot for a couple of games. That is replacement level. Two wins is considered an everyday player. that's a solid every day, put them in the lineup, every day type of player. Anything over four wins or around four wins is when you start

kind of getting into the all-star range, give or take, four to five wins. And anything over six plus is a definite all-star and maybe even getting MVP votes. And anything A-plus is generally considered that's MVP quality. So, you know, you have to start with that baseline and you have to understand what zero means, what two wins means.

So when you look at a guy like Mitch Hanigar, for example, Mitch Hanigar had a lot of home runs. Yes, Mitch Hanigar drove in runs. Yeah. He was also a terrible defender and provided basically nothing on the base paths. And those factors are given different weights, right? So it's not like hitting accounts for 33%, fielding accounts for 33%, base running accounts for 33%.

it's not really how it works there's different weighted uh stats like w rc plus is a weighted set um when you look at mcanniger he had a 2.8 f war this year right so that tells us that he is an above average everyday player doesn't that feel like that's what mitch hanigar is i i i don't i don't like it's it's tough for me to sit here and look at that and say well that's just wrong And, you know, by baseball reference war or B-Wore, he was 3.1, which is halfway between an regular everyday player and an All-Star. To me, that feels about where Mitch Hanigar is at this stage in his career. When you look at a guy like Kyle Seeger, yes, he had a lot of home runs, yes, he drove in a lot

of runs. But he was also a terrible base runner who didn't get on base and played average defense. And this is where war can get kind of tricky because defense is still a, an area where statisticians struggle, right? It's not quite as obvious as offense and pitching the statistics there. So there is a little bit of gray area in the war when it comes to defense, when defense, and that's where your eye testing kind of come into play here. Metrics really like Kyle Seeger, his defense at third base,

but I think, you know, if you and I, we watch him and we can look at him and say, that's not the same guy that he was a few years ago. So there's still a lot up in the air when it comes to war in particular. But it's important to know that there are different formulas and it's not perfect. And that's why, you know, Ty and I have never advocated just a straight use of war. But it is something that we do look at because it is it's what Major League Baseball teams use. They have their own war formulas or they use the Fangraph War formula. So it's something that teams are using

So you have to take it into account But you do need to realize there is a little bit of gray area In all war formulas because defense counts And we're not quite sure how to properly value defense right now Another prime example of how defense kind of affects war as well Is Nelson Cruz I mean, you know, who doesn't play defense And I mean really Nelson Cruz has been one of the most productive hitters in baseball

for the last decade plus and he's never eclips more than five war in his career in one season the last three years he's been 4.3, 2.0 2.0 and in that time he's you know he's been hitting

anywhere from 260 to 310 with a ton of power driving in a ton of runs walks a lot doesn't strike out that much gets on base a ton you know, doesn't just hit four home runs, but also hits for doubles. And even with that, you know, he's not at the top of the league in war because he doesn't play defense. And if he does play defense, the few times it's not going to go well for him.

And he doesn't offer any value on the base pass either because of a speed. So that really impacts things. And so that's probably what you're seeing with Mitch Hanigur here is the defense really is greatly impacted. his value because yeah offensively you know and we've talked about how you know he kind of sold out for more power this year wasn't able to lay off some of the stuff out of the zone that he usually uh was you know laid off before the injury and all that so that also played a part but the uh the regression defensively is what ultimately hurt um hanager and then with seeger you know the the guy just he didn't get on base this year right

And so. And that's really what it comes down to offensively is it don't make an out, right? You only get 27 of them. And on base percentage is, I think a lot of people just associate that with like, it's just like how much a guy walks. It's not really what it is. All on base percentage tells you is what are the odds that this guy doesn't make an out. And for Kyle Seeger, the odds that he doesn't make an out were about 29%.

League average is about 32%. So while that doesn't sound like a lot, when you consider it's over the course of 600 plate appearances, it really adds up. Even Mitch Hanager himself finished this year a little bit below league average in making outs at the plate. He was at 318. Now that percentage over the course of 600,

really not that big 0.02%, not that huge, but 3% over that 600 is pretty wide. And so that's going to hurt a guy like Seeger's War because he made more outs than the average player did. And that hurts, obviously. Yeah. All right. So really appreciate the question, Kyle, and wanted to spend a little bit of time on that because I'm sure there's a lot of our listeners out here that are probably confused by the same thing as well. So really appreciate that question. And that's probably something we'll talk about more as the offseason and the lockout goes along because I think these are good conversations to have, especially for as more people start to become interested in this Mariners team and become interested in the the advanced statistics and metrics because, you know, it's a huge part of what Jerry DePoto in the Mariners front office do. So, yeah, really appreciate that question. We're going to

get to more questions in just a moment, but real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by DirecTV. Does this sound familiar? You got one device to let you catch the game live, another to let you stream your favorite shows. You're watching sports highlights on your phone and you've got your neighbor's best friends logging for the good stuff. Well, I want to tell you about a simple way to get all that entertainment you love without the hassle and a great way to finally get your TV together. It's called DirecTV stream and it brings your live TV and on-demand favorites together like never before so you can watch your favorite sports, movies, and shows all in one place. That means no more juggling remotes and no need to buy another device ever again. And the best part, there's no annual contract.

So give rid of the clutter and the confusion and get your TV together. together with DirecTV stream. You can learn more at directtv.com. That's directtv.com. Compatible device required. Content varies by package. You're listening to Lockdown Mariners. Thank you again for making us your first listen of the day.

We greatly appreciate your support. Don't forget, we are free and available on all platforms, wherever you get your podcast. It's all free, wherever you go, no matter where you go. It's all free. So tell everyone you know who's a Mariner fan to come check us out, especially during this lockout. We're going to keep things fun.

We're going to keep things interesting until baseball resumes. Let's continue our mailbag for the week with a question from Curtis Christensen, who's actually submitted quite a few questions and trade proposals on Twitter, but actually submitted this one via email. Hello, Locked on Mariners. Hello, Curtis. I know that you guys started at Soto Mojo of FanCited. That is correct for those of you that don't know.

We did Colby and I. met at Soto Mojo. Colby actually hired me, believe it or not. I recently started there as a contributor as well, Curtis says. How did you two go from there to where you are now at Locked On and having your own thing with Control the Zone? Thanks. Love the podcast.

Thank you, Curtis. We love your support. So Colby, you know, we, I mean, to keep things short here because we want to get to everyone else's questions, but basically we didn't really see eye to eye with the upper management of fan-sided. So we ended up starting our own thing and at Control the Zone and True to the Triton wanted to write about the Mariners, talk about the Mariners and do it without really, you know, having a particular schedule to be on and all that stuff.

And then eventually, Sean Woodley, host of Lockdown Raptors, reached out to us and offered us a position here at Lockdown to host Lockdown Mariners way back in July. And we've been doing that ever since. It's been a lot of fun. And we've been having a lot of fun doing it. So yeah. Yeah. Colby anything you want to add?

Yeah. You know, it's something you're interested in doing. My suggestion would be to write a lot, podcast a lot. even if you're podcasting for nobody. You know, certainly there were times when we were doing the Soto Mojo podcast, which we started before we were asked to leave,

let's say, told to leave, where we would get like 50, 50 listens or whatever. And, and, you know, that's just part of what it is, but it's part of,

you know, building a resume and building consistency and learning the ins and outs and learning how to work with social media. And, you know, we're still learning. But, you know, I feel like we're pretty good at the social media game considering. And, you know, it's just you have to keep writing. You have to put things out there.

You kind of have to promote yourself a little bit. And just keep on putting out quality content. And, you know, you have to love the grind, man. There were months that we're at Soto where I would write, you know, 35 articles, 40 articles. and then and uh you know that's just kind of what you have to do right now um and we're still not you know super we're still not super well known you know we're not like we're not like lookout landing or anything like that but uh we're uh we're making our own way uh in this landscape and there's and there's plenty of plenty of real estate left unclaimed uh particularly

when it comes to the mariners especially in the coming years where they're going to be really good. So, uh, get, uh, plant your flag now and, uh, and start building off of it because there's, there's enough, uh, there's enough fans and fandom for more than one, uh, you know, outlet, what more than one outlet in this big tent that is Mariner fandom. So, uh, just, uh, keep grinding, man. Yeah, yeah, just, um, you know, you got to be passionate about it, right? Like, you got to love what you're talking about. And we love what we're talking about. Like, we would do this for free. I mean, that's pretty much what we were doing it for quite some time. And I mean, even so, you know, we're not making a, like, I don't want to get it misconstrued here. We're

not making a living wage off of what we're doing. But, you know, we enjoy this. We enjoy doing it. And we love talking about this team. We love interacting with you guys. We love the community that we've kind of built with CTZ and now with locked on and getting to know everyone, and getting to know people that are really passionate about this team, just like we are. And hoping to, you know, help you guys understand some things more and maybe learn more from you guys as well. And it's been great.

It's been really great. Honestly, Christian, right? That's who sent the email? Curtis, Curtis. Curtis. Curtis. Curtis. Curtis, grab a buddy or yourself, get to a laptop and just start talking about the Mariners.

And then put it out on YouTube, put it out on, on Spotify. Just start podcasting, man. I'm telling you, it's the first couple are probably going to suck, unless you have experience already, but just keep doing it. I mean,

put it up. Our show still suck. Yeah, that's, yeah, but somehow it works. You just got to be consistent and just do it,

man, just do it. Like I said, there's plenty of space. And we're helping, we are happy to help you out in any way we can. So thanks for the question. But that's two questions out of 10.

or 15. So we got to, we got to move on here. Feel free to keep emailing us if you have more questions about it. But yeah, we got to, we got to move along here. We're falling behind. All right. So thank you for the, for the question, Curtis. Let's move on to our Twitter questions now. And you guys wanted to learn more about us today,

it seems. So let's, let's start with famous James at Eaton underscore Ws, who asked, what positions did you guys play best at in baseball growing up? Did you swing, throw right or left? Did you hit dingers? Crying, laughing, emoji. So, Colby, I don't know about you, but I mostly pitched and played first base because I was like, I was pretty tall as a kid, like of the other kids that I played with. So they mostly threw me over at first base.

But I wanted to pitch. So I worked my way into pitching quite a lot. Yeah, the, the classic put the tall kid at first base. Yeah. Put the big kid behind the plate. Yeah. Thankfully that's changing a little bit, but I, I throw right. I, I, um, I mostly hit right, but I can, I can hit left.

Fine. Interesting. So, um, yeah, my best position was honestly probably first base, but, uh, I played mostly in the outfield, primarily in the corners. I had a, I had a pretty strong arm. So I guess, A, they didn't want to waste me at first base, uh, with my arm. I played a lot of right field through some guys. out. I also pitch some. I'm right. I'm a righty righty as well. But last time I checked,

I can throw lefty at about 58 miles an hour. So yeah, I always throw lefty though. That's that's honestly, that's a lot better than what I can do. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I can throw lefty and accurately. It's not pretty looking, but it gets there and it has some zip behind it. Yeah. I used to practice throwing lefty all the time. Yeah. So yeah, and did I, I cannot throw a baseball or football left-handed. I am completely uncoordinated from that side, which is wild too because my dominant hand when shooting a basketball is my left.

Really? Huh. Yeah. That is weird. So, yeah, I can, I'm not ambidextrous. Like, it's not, I'm not that, but I can use my left hand pretty well in athletics.

Throwing a football, though, I can't do left-handed. Like, if the, my, I have kind of like smallish medium hands, so I can't really like an NFL football, I can barely throw a spiral right-handed. Yeah. But yeah, I'm a righty-righty pitcher outfield,

a little bit of first base back in the day, which was probably my best position. But I got moved off of it. So yeah, did I hit Dingers? No, I actually never hit one. I was a, I was basically pictured D. Gordon minus any speed whatsoever.

I was I was to slap the ball the other way, hit doubles when I, when I, you know, got the extra bases. They were doubles down the lines and whatnot. So, uh, yeah. Mm-hmm. I've had a couple in my time, but I wouldn't say that I just, I, I, you know, I hit dingers, you know, consistently. It wasn't consistent. It was very specific. I was an excellent bunter.

I can tell you that much. Ooh. Yes. Nice. Yeah. I, um, yeah. I, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, was a, I, I was a, I was a, I was. able to hit a lot of

balls down the third baseline. That was kind of my thing. I had balls down the first baseline. I was a pure opposite field hitter. Nice. Edgar Martinez, baby. If I had any power at all. It's very much a pull-hitter.

Of course you were. So let's let's wrap up this segment with a fun question here from Eli Sellers. Is that Eli Sellers-24? Which current Mariner would give the best secret Santa gift. I think if you're just strictly talking about like just buying stuff,

I feel like JP is probably the most aesthetically inclined. Yeah, he's got like that vibe where he would give like a fun gift. Yeah. You know who I bet is a surprisingly good gift giver? Scott Service. Oh, no, I don't think that's a surprise. I think he's like, he's got that dad energy, you know? Yeah.

Well, I mean, but yeah, like a lot of. like the old thing is like dads don't even know what they get you for Christmas because mom does all the shopping. I feel like Scott is the type of guy who like listens all year. And then like in like November he's like, I know. I know what I'm getting. Like I got this. Like I feel like that's Scott. Thai france I bet would probably be pretty good at it too.

I think in terms of just like an absolute like sweetheart who will like make you something or whatever. Paul Sebald. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. You know, you know who else? though, honestly. Perry Hill. Oh, yeah.

Perry Hill is either the guy who makes you something or he just gives you $20. And like either way. I feel like Perry Hill would probably give you $20. You think you give you $20? What about Manny Act? Do you think Manny is handing out 20s or you think he's like, because Manny's pretty, like, thoughtful? I think Manny would be the type that like cooks you a dinner instead of like buys you a gift.

Yeah, I can see that. yeah i think overall the right answer though is probably jp i think when you just combine everything it just seems like it that's jp yeah yeah i feel pretty good yeah jp's got the aesthetic he's got the just like an absolute like he seems like an absolute sweetheart yeah so like the right attitude like he's gonna get a gift with you not just like a blanket gift you know what i mean like yeah like it's gonna be like personalized for you so yeah i'll go jp i think he's probably the best but scott

service probably a close second. I like that question. Thanks, Eli. Yeah, that's a good one. All right, let's answer more questions than just a moment. But real quick, I want to remind you this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Bilt Bar. This holiday season, grab the protein bar that tastes like a candy bar, even better than a candy bar.

Bilt Bar filled with so much holiday goodness, rich with decadent flavor covered in chocolate, but amazingly low in calories, sugar, net carbs, and fat, and high in protein. You get the best of both worlds delicious and healthy. There's so many good flavors to try. You'll have a hard time choosing. Well, you have a raspberry or mint brownie, cherry, or double chocolate, cookies and cream or peanut butter brownie. I mean, that last one sounds especially good to me. And Built Bar gives you that extra fuel you need to bust down those mall doors and battle all the holiday shoppers. or if you're just standing and endless shopping lines, Bilt Bar can give you that extra something to keep you going. So throw one in your jacket or purse.

You never know when you're going to need it. You friends with Santa will tell Santa to throw a few built bars in those stockings. With so many flavors, they'd make anyone's Christmas morning a happy one. Like some of those marshmallow-y treats around the holidays, you need to get your hands on Bilt Bar puffs. They're light, fluffy, and marshmallow-y through and through. Different flavors, all covered in chocolate,

it tastes so good you won't believe that they're filled with protein. Go to build.com, use promo code locked 15 and you'll get 15% off your order. It's LOC, KED, 15% off your order at built.com. All right. So because there are still so many questions left and we wanted to take some time with some of the questions that we got asked by you today, we're going to end to make this episode part one of probably two and answer more of your questions. on tomorrow's show because I mean we don't really have anything else to talk about with the lockout going on.

So let's start with Daisy and the dingo who had a few questions dating back to last week. So we're going to circle back here and start with a fun one here. Home runs over under next year. Jared Kellnick slash Thai France 25. Luis Terence 20. J.P. Crawford 15. So is that Kellnick and France combined? I think he means Calnic and France.

Calnic and France get 20. Like, does Kellnick get 25? 25 each? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, Kellnick hit 14 and 397 plate appearances.

So I feel. Yeah. If he gets 600 at pass, he's going to hit more than 25. So I'll take the over on him. France really started to show power at the end of last year. And it just feels like, it's going to come eventually.

And he basically... I feel like he's going to hit 30 at some point. I think he's going to comfortably be around the 25. I'll take the over this year, but I wouldn't be shocked if he was 24, 23. I don't know if he's got 30 in him, but he did start to show more power towards the end of the year. Well, you're just not a believer.

To me, lifelong Thai France stand believes that he can hit 30 bombs. Which is why you work so hard on that type, Fieva-France shirt that I've kept pitching for months. I'm so sorry. Apparently not. I'm going to take the over on Kelnick. And if I think that France is going to hit 25, is that technically the over? Is that even what would we consider that?

Because I think he'll hit exactly 25. Over unders are half numbers, guys. 24 and a half is what you want, Daisy. I'll say over as well. I think you probably, it's like 26, 27, like. like really close but yeah all right colby i know what your answer is is going to be on this one trends at 20

uh 40 i think is the over under from the least runs um actually i'm going to take the under here because i don't know if he's going to get enough at bats uh to hit 20 um plus he's not a dead pole guy oh please um he's not a dead pole guy either like tie he's not selfish and try to sell out the power so it'll hit double

into the gap and right center field and all that stuff. So I think you'll probably get pretty close to 20. But I think he's only going to get about 400 played appearances. So, yeah. I feel like he gets close to 20. I feel like he hits like 18 or 19. So I'll take the under, just slightly under. JP at 15.

Way under. I'm going to take the under. Yeah. I say he hits like nine or 10 at most. Yep. And that's fine because I would like for him to come back with the same approach that he had this year, right? Like, that's fine.

Just get on base. Just get on base. Get some singles, have some doubles here and there. Maybe the occasional triple. Don't need you to try to put one over the wall. It's totally fine, especially if he's going to be hitting out of the nine hole this year. There's something close to that. Yeah, don't need that. All right.

So Daisy and the dingo also has another question. Is it fair to assume? that the number of large contracts given to free agents this off season signals towards the luxury tax threshold going up in the new CBA. It seems inevitable now that this will be a key concession the owners will have to make this winner. Conversely, do you think that the lack of many notable trades this far could mean that the owners are feeling a bit skittish about service time structure changing in the new CBA?

One year's difference in ARB could drastically change a player's trade value, yes. For sure. So Colby, what do you think about all this? How do you feel, you know, really both sides are feeling about how this could impact things and players value and all that stuff with the new CBA whenever that's eventually agreed upon? Yeah, the issue of the large contract thing is that you look at the teams who have given out the large contracts, not the Yankees, you know, not the Red Sox, not the Dodgers, not the Johnson. not the Giants haven't given out a huge contract yet. You know, you look at the teams that are spending money. It's Seattle, it's Texas, it's, you know, the Cubs a little bit.

Like it's not the, yeah, the Tigers, it's not their traditional, like, big market clubs. And obviously Houston or Texas has as a big market, but I think you guys know what I mean there. It's not like a traditional money spender. So, yeah, I, I, don't know of that points to any kind of, you know, a change in the, uh, in the luxury tax threshold.

It sounds like initially major league baseball wanted to lower it, which would maybe one, make us wonder why, you know, when we wonder why the Yankees and Dodgers haven't really spent yet, maybe that's part of the reason. Um, but it sounds like at least in their next CBA,

they were willing to raise it. Um, but there were strings attached to them raising it as well. Uh, so I don't, I don't know that necessarily signals anything because, the teams that are already pretty close to the luxury tax, they're not spending,

at least not yet. So I don't know if that actually signifies anything there. As for trades, I think there could be a part of that is the, well, we don't know exactly how much club control this guy is going to have. What we do know is that the CBA is not going to make Mitch Hanigar a free agent. Right. They're not going to make ARP three guys free agents this year.

That's totally unfair to the to the teams. So that's not going to go into effect this year. Maybe next year as kind of a at the start of 2023. They can do that. Lack of trades, I think is, you know, just kind of a hesitation about, you know, how much money do we have to spend. And, you know, it's not uncommon to see more free agent moves, you know, early. And then you see trades happen in late.

December and January as teams kind of figure out well we can't get this guy in free agency let's move on to a trade um so I don't know that the trades are down excessively um but yeah there weren't a lot of them and part of that is we don't know if this guy who's r1 right now is he going to be arm two and done and he's a free agent or what's going to happen there so yeah there's a lot of questions up in the air um which is why again you see the teams that had pretty low payrolls last year, they're the ones that are spending money. Not necessarily the big the big spenders. They're not quite spending as much money as they usually would.

So it's kind of a weird negotiation that's happening right now. And we can't even begin to guess what is, you know, what these factors mean. All right. So let's let's move on over here to another question from Daisy. Can you quickly cover each of our top five pitching prospects, Kirby, Hancock, Brash, Williamson, Stout, and identify a reasonable big league comp and ceiling slash floors for each? So the thing that you should probably know here is like, you know, Colby and I don't have eyes on these guys consistently. Like, we're not prospect guys. Like, we're not scouts.

So most of our information comes from other much more smarter people who are. who are watching these guys more on a daily basis whatnot. So in terms of like comps and stuff, we're probably not the best task for that. But just from our knowledge, I think we can at least speak to the ceilings and floors. And I do have one comp for Matt Brash. And it's probably kind of lazy.

But I always, he reminds me of Nathan Avaldi. But yeah, in terms of the other guys, don't really have a comp on them. Do you, Colby? Um, somewhat.

I have upside comps. I don't have, you know, the everyday middle of the road comps. Um, uh, Kirby's closest comp to me is, uh,

is probably, uh, Shane Bieber in terms of upside. Uh, just throws a ton of strikes, good stuff, uh, surprising velocity.

But, you know, he has velocity that, that Bieber doesn't. And he has velocity that his other closest comp. Kyle Hendricks just doesn't. So it's kind of interesting there. Um,

Brash, reminds me a little bit more of Tim Linsicum, just kind of the quick delivery, smaller frame guy. Basketball slider, Linscom had a pretty good change up. Brash's is a work in progress. He reminds me a lot of prospect,

Max Meyer, which might be why I like Brash so much because I love Max Meyer. Williamson, I think his upside is Cliff Lee. Maybe not Prime Cliffley, but early career Cliffley. Pretty good curveball, basketball in the, you know, low 90s for the most part, but he can get it up to the mid-90s.

He's tall. He's got an easy delivery. Levi Stout, I thought of Zach Plesack. You know, strike thrower or not overpowering stuff. Probably not going to miss a ton of bats at the next level, but, you know, at least average major league stuff. You know, the quick way to look at these guys for me is Kirby has the highest floor and probably the second highest ceiling. Hancock has the highest ceiling. I mean, Hancock's stuff is when it, when it's all working, it's, it's number one type of stuff.

Yeah, it's a legit ace ceiling, right? Will you ever get there? Who knows? But like that, if you're looking for a guy that can be a legitimate ace in the future, Hancock is the guy. And maybe Kirby is starting to become that guy, but I would, I'm still not super comfortable in putting that tag on him just yet. I would, I had to have Kirby ahead of Hancock in my ranks,

but I think Hancock has the higher upside. Brash has the best pitch out of the trio. His slider is probably the best pitch in the organization. Williamson, probably the best well-rounded. The best pitches in just in minor league baseball in general. Right. Williamson's probably the most well-rounded when it comes to velocity and stuff and strike-throwing any of the best year of any of the starters last year,

which kind of goes unnoticed because Kirby and Hancock and Gilbert, blah, blah, blah. And Stout is probably just number four, number five, type of guy. He's definitely going to be a big leaguer. Especially with the velocity uptick that we've seen over the last year. Yeah, we'll see if he can maintain it into starts. But yeah, that's pretty much the quick run, quick and dirty run down to those guys. There's a lot, a lot to like in those top five guys.

Yeah, yeah. Really exciting. Also, what's with the Connor Phillips slander, huh? Why is he not in the top five? you heard it there first guys Ty is saying that Connor Phillips is better than George Kirby good one good one alright last question from Daisy

assuming he has a similar year next year what do you expect Hanager to fetch in free agency next off season three years 14 million AV 14 15 like if the defense is the same he pretty much offers only offensive value so yeah i'd say anywhere from 13 to 15 million a three years i'd say probably four and 60 at the most um Nelson Cruz I think got

four and 56 uh when he signed with Seattle but Cruz was still a better all around hitter so Yeah, I think he's probably going to make $13 to $16 million, give or take, depending on what the new CBA looks like. But I still think what's most likely to happen there is that Seattle's going to slap a qualifying offer on him, and he just might take it, assuming the qualifying offer is still a thing. But, yeah, I'm going to guess he makes no more than 15 million AAB, give or take, and probably no more than three or four years. Yeah.

Yeah, at most, he probably makes in 2020, probably makes, you know, $18.5 million if that's the, if the qualifying an offer still exists. But yeah, if not, if he just signs a contract, I don't expect him to exceed 15 million AV, honestly. Yeah, if he repeats what he did last year. If he gets better, we can talk again. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. all right so uh yeah so we're we're pretty much out of time here so we are going to continue answering your questions on tomorrow's show so be sure to tune in and hear us answer the rest of your questions on that one should be a lot of fun we still got plenty of questions to go over sorry we weren't able to get to all of them today but there's still quite a few that I really like so I definitely want to be sure to get those and be able to give those um proper time and proper care. So that's going to do it for our show today. But thank you so much for joining us here on Locked on Mariners for Colby Pat Node. I'm Tidane Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a

follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. This D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-E-T-1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first list of the day, just like you do here every day. We greatly appreciate your support. In the meantime, while you're waiting for us to answer more of your questions, make your second listen to the day, Locked on Betts, your daily one-stop shop for all your gambling needs,

locked on bets hosted by your Boy Q with expert analysis and insight from Lee Sterling. And just like us, their show is free and available wherever you get your podcast. So have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you tomorrow.