Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mailbag: The Mariners' Top Priority and What the Jarred Kelenic Trade Represents

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

The Winter Meetings are underway in Nashville and the Mariners are coming off a stunning trade of Jarred Kelenic, so there's obviously quite a bit to talk about right. What is the Mariners' top priority in terms of how the club operates? What does the Jarred Kelenic trade represent? Ty and Colby answer all that and more here on Mailbag Monday.Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Jase MedicalGet $20 off these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.FanDuelScore early this NFL season with FanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook! Right now, NEW customers get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning FIVE DOLLAR MONEYLINE BET! That’s A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS – if your team wins! Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.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.

It's the day after the Jared Kelnick trade and the winter meetings are underway in Nashville, so there's quite a bit going on in the world of the Mariners right now. We're going to answer some of your questions coming up here on mailbag Monday. Colby hit it. Locked on Mariners, your daily Seattle Mariners podcast, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Ahoy, sailors. It is Monday, December 4th, 2023.

This is titting as Alas and Colby Vanette for the Locked on Mariner's podcast, brought to you by Fandul. Make every moment more right now. New customers get $150 in bonus bets with any winning $5 money line bet. That's $150 if your team wins. Visit fanduel.com slash locked on. That's LocoC-D-O-N to get yourself started. Thank you so much for making us your first. Listen, subscribe, like, and turn on alerts if you're watching on YouTube or subscribe

and leave a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform if you like what you hear. And if you're part of the crew and rock with us every single day, let us know in the comments below. And if you want to hear from us even more, please consider sending a lot. up for our Patreon. You can now get a free seven-day trial to check out the show. The link, as well as their social accounts, is in the description of this episode. This is Mailbag Monday, the show where we answer your mariner's questions, and we're going to start here with Jenny wants to know, hey guys, which do you think is John Stanton and company's top priority? One, being one of the top cash flow positive clubs in Major League Baseball. And if we win while we're at it,

great. Two, building a team and saving their silver bullets, money, to land and extend the right players. Both of those things kind of go hand in hand, right? Like, Stanton wants to prioritize revenue and that directly has an impact on number two, which is more of a front office thing, where

money is a finite resource because Stanton is never going to afford Jerry DePoto and Justin Holland or the resources that they should have. And therefore, the Mariners, their baseball operations, has to be very selective with how they spread out their funds. So I think number two gets impacted by number one,

and both of those things are essentially true. It's just number two is more of a priority for the front office because of their circumstances. And number one is the priority of the ownership because they're greedy. Billionaires want more money. Imagine that. So, yeah, it's definitely number one is the priority, though. Like that is John Stanton's number one priority.

Jerry Depoto and Justin Holliter, they don't care about number one. But unfortunately, their boss only cares about number one. And so they have to act accordingly, which is, which honestly what makes yesterday's trade so annoying and so frustrating. So I guess we shouldn't be all that surprised because, you know, this is a team that, you know, one of the most profitable teams over the last three years. And yet they haven't, you know, reintroduced much of that money into the ball, into the ball club. They made some additions to the ballpark, which most of us will never utilize anyways. But we shouldn't be that surprised because we got to remember. Stanton was part of the old ownership group.

The old ownership group thought the exact same way. And we probably should have realized that John Stanton thought the exact same way when he basically refused to say he would have fired Kevin Mather, who publicly said, amongst other things, our goal is to win 85 games every year, make a profit. And if we sneak into the playoffs once in a while, that's good enough. and when asked if they were if they he would have fired him if he hadn't resigned he wouldn't answer the question which tells you the answer is no so uh john stanton kevin mather said the quiet part out loud we were hoping stanton was different we have zero evidence to suggest he's any different than the nintendo group we have zero evidence to suggest he's going to run this ball club any different than you know howard lincoln and chuck armstrong like we have no evidence zero zip zilch to suggest that he cares about winning like he says he does. He'd like to win, but not as much as he'd like to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars, knowing full well that when he sells this team, he's going to make a billion dollars in profit minimum.

He's not running at a loss here, guys. The root sports thing is not going to cost him a penny out of his own pocket. None of the guys in the ownership group are losing money. None. Maybe they don't make as much as they did the year before, but they're not losing anything. nothing is coming out of their pocket. Yeah, the regional sports network aspect of this is they're not going to make as much

as they would like to as they projected to. But it doesn't mean that they're going to lose money. They're still going to be a profitable ball club because having access to root sports be more of a premium thing. Yeah, that is going to impact quite a few people in the area. But there's still going to be a lot of people that do make the upgrade. So while they are going to lose some people in that, regard they're still going to get a ton of money coming through they're not losing money they're

not they're not going to go bankrupt they're not broke boys all of a sudden they're not like they're just not going to make as much as they would like to and they'll always make it back at the end when they sell the club um by the way the mayors are really concerned about revenue streams drying up you know it would be a great way to introduce new revenue streams sign the guy who played for the angels last couple years who by the way pass and a speculated is the quote unquote mystery team that's suddenly has entered the show a otani talks so we'll see i i wouldn't hold my breath but hold on hold on pat pass and said the mariners are the mystery team or speculating but yes he did say that it's pure speculation on he's he's he's he's he's the one that did the whole blanch set

the money thing though yeah he's the one who started this with that report so okay it's almost like everybody's just speculating about everything and they don't have the actual evidence i'm not giving not any of my energy. Nope. All right. Next question. We're moving on. We're moving on.

Mark wants to know. I know I am minority, but why should I be upset that we traded a guy who can't get out of his own head? Talk about Jerkelnik. I mean, take away the month and a half that he had last year. He has been overwhelmed by big league pitching. I think it's less about the player that you're trading away and more about what the trade represents, which is that Jerry DePoto and Justin Hollander are not going to have the funds

that they need. And as a result, they're having to make business decisions instead of baseball decisions. Yep. And by the way, just for the record, the month and a half that Jared Kelnick had is better than any month and a half. Jackson Coar has ever had or Cole Phillips, most because Phillips has been hurt. But yeah, so you still, I like Jared. I think his fire can be good if it's properly like placed and all that. stuff, and we don't know if it is or isn't.

There's some whispers today, but, you know, after the fact, whispers tend to come out quite often. So we don't know how much of that is true or not, but I don't want to speculate on it. But I like Jared, and he's 24 years old, and, you know, even if it was only a month and a half, he did take significant strides last year. Yeah. And you get him for five years, like, it's a good player. And if a team like the Braves thinks that Jared Kellnick can be a good player, they're pretty good.

They're pretty smart. So, yeah, you know, it, to me, I think most of the outrage is just that like it's it's a salary dump trade. Yeah. And that that's going to be viewed. And that's kind of what it is. I mean, it's hard not to view it like that.

I like the guy that they got back, Phillips. But yeah, it's still a straight salary dump trade. Again, maybe there are some issues in the clubhouse or something. We don't know. Some have speculated.

But yeah, I think it's more, I think, and again, I don't, I don't want to speak for most people. But I do think that a large chunk of people are really more upset about like, like,

Why wouldn't you just keep Kellnick and just eat the, you know, $15 million about what it ended up being? Why not just eat the $15 million and keep Jared Kelnick? Right. Especially. And the reason we know that that's an ownership decision more so than a baseball decision is that if Jerry is so financially restricted, as we are now, you know, led to believe. Jared Kellick is exactly the type of guy he would try to trade for because he's cheap and he's got some major league production. under his belt. So why trade that guy?

That's exactly the guy you need to go out and find if your payroll is going to be limited. Right. And if, and if, all right. So let's say that there are issues in the clubhouse. They did sour on Kellnick's attitude or and or they aren't confident that he's an everyday player or what have you. They can still just trade him on,

on his own. They don't have to attach him to a deal like this. So clearly the driving force here is the money. Now, there could be other issues that are in addition to that, but those are secondary. So, yeah, while they're, like, while a trade of some kind, and I speculated about this last night on Twitter after we did the show that, like, well, a trade of some kind for Kellnick may have been coming all along, the way that it was handled, the fact that he was attached to a couple of bad contracts, and that you didn't get a return that's necessarily. reflective of a guy that still has five years of club control is only 24 years old, has some upside and seem to have finally started to come into his own a little bit this past season.

It's very clear what this trade is, was. So that's what's upsetting about it. It's not specifically about the player. But the other thing that I'm concerned about here is, are they actually going to roll with Dom Kanzone as an everyday player? Like, are they going to write him in Penn as an everyday player in one of the outfield spots? I have to.

I don't know, but I have a bad feeling all my Jared Kelnick autograph cards were bad investments now. So get to 10K, you know, maybe I'll give something away. You got to clear it with legal first, but you know, I guess I could give away the bobblehead. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm sad now. I got over it.

I started feeling better about the trade this morning, but then talking about it again, I'm sad again. Oh, really? So you listen to what I had to say And you kind of let it marinate And all of a sudden you like the trade Imagine that Right It was you, it was all you

I just heard your voice in my head Telling me Ty, you're an idiot Tie, you're stupid for feeling that way You should feel differently And I was like, you know what, Bulby You're right Should feel differently You're welcome

We're gonna answer more of your questions In just a moment But first a reminder This episode of the Lockdown Marins podcast Is brought to you by Fandol Score early this NFL season with Fandul, America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers

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let's see what we got here we got one from max is it possible the merrars add both paratus and a rosarena from the raise probably not without trading logan gilbert yeah um By the way, apparently quick clarification, it was Haman, not Passon, who specified that he. So, yeah, you know, Heyman, great, great nowhere of all things, mariners. Yeah. Didn't he also throw out the Soto thing last night, too? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, never, never, never, never, yeah.

He's always guessing. To be fair, it seems like most people are just guessing about what the Mariners are doing this winter. John Morosi said the Mariners are great fit for, another player this time Cody Bellinger. He's just throwing guys out. Like, don't listen to anything Morosi says. Guys, it's wait till he tweets news, not opinion. Let us know in the comments. Question of the day. Who has John Marosi not linked to the merits this one? Wrong answers only.

There you go. There you go. I think he said something about Sue Byrd coming out of retirement to play right field. So that could be something. But, yeah. So, uh, yeah. So, uh, They could, but yeah, I think it probably takes Gilbert. I don't see a path to a deal getting both of those guys without giving up Logan Gilbert. And, you know, is Paredes, four years of Paredes and three years of a Rosen Arena worth Gilbert? Probably. But are the Ray's going to see it that way?

Probably not. So you never know. You can't rule anything out. But I would say it's highly unlikely that there's any deal that we could. conjure up where both sides are comfortable giving up what it would take to to move those two players. So one of them, yeah, I could absolutely see one of them, you know, and I think both of them make a good deal of sense. I prefer Randy or Rosarena if I had to choose, but I think both makes sense. I just have a hard time coming up with a deal or a scenario in my head where the Mariners get both of them unless it's some kind of crazy three-team deal and like, I don't know, the rays are getting Soto and something.

Like I just I just don't see it. Next question here from Michelle. Do you think Cole Young is our future second baseman? Or do you think JP moves to second base when Young is ready to come up? I think Young is closer to the big leagues than his current, you know, where he ended 2023 would suggest. So I don't think that this is about young being three years away and where's JP going to play in three years. I think this is about young potentially being, you know, nine months away. And at that case, you're not moving JP Crawford.

off of shortstop for an unproven, you know, 21-year-old prospect. So Young's going to play second base, at least for quite a while, you know, unless, again, JP does get traded or something like that, which we can't roll out, unfortunately. But I think it's pretty safe to say that the way things sit right now, JP's the shortstop. Cole Young will be the second baseman. And we could see that double play combo on an everyday basis as soon as August. As soon as August, but more realistically, probably sometime in like,

May or June of 2025. Young is quite advanced for his age. Yeah. It's also up the JP. You know, maybe the mayorers go to JP with the idea and they see what he thinks. And if he's open to it,

maybe. Yeah, I just, I don't think that young is going to be significantly better defensively than JP. Yeah, I agree to. I know the metrics hate JP, but you watch him every day,

just like we do. He's at least average. At the very least, he is an average short stop. His range is poor by the metrics, but overall, I mean, we've seen what JP can do. Like, JP is, yeah, I mean, he's not a problem.

Yeah, he's a human highlight tape at times. So like he, you know, he's, I would, I would consider him to be at least an average shortstop when you consider the high ends of JP and then what the metrics say and trying to balance that out a little bit more. Yeah, and that's, that's about where Young is, is kind of projected to be at short. It's about average, you know, he'll be fine. Next question here from distraught hypothetically

Which current players could you see the mayor is moving Julio out of center field for this obviously isn't going to happen But I'm curious to see who you think might I'll value him if there even is one I don't think there is one no but we've been because we've even said with louise robert Like we wouldn't move hollio out of out of center field for louise robert No, I mean Julio is probably a top five to eight defensive center fielder in baseball right now after the year he just had nobody the answer is nobody i mean like kevin kiramire just won the the gold glove you know so from

from that standard he is a better defensive center fielder quote unquote i'm using air quotes here for those listening on audio uh but even for him right you wouldn't move hollio off a centerfield for kevin kiramire absolutely not so even the guys that might be better than julio defensively at center field those guys are not even in the same area code as julio in terms of super start him and being the face of your franchise and all that, Julio's the center fielder until he says, I don't want to be the center fielder anymore. That's just what it is.

Or until he takes a pretty serious step back defensively, and we have no reason to believe that's going to happen anytime in the next five years. The dude's what, 22 years old. Like, so no, nobody. Julio's staying in centerfield until either his health dictates that he moves or that, you know, he's willing and ready to move.

you're not going to, you're not going to Julio this winter with anybody and saying, hey, would you be willing to move to left field? Have we signed this guy or we trade for this guy? No, no. The guy you acquire is willing to move because he's not Julio Rodriguez. So there's nobody. You're listening to the Locktime Marin's podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen here on Mailbag Monday.

Got a couple more questions. Got one here from Deanna. Explain something I don't understand. An MLB season for an everyday player is about 600 to 700 20 plate appearances. Cade Marlowe had one F-4 in exactly 100-plied appearances. I understand production is an accordion and not a steady

thing. Why can I expect 3-2-6 F-4 from Marlowe? Mass, logic, I test. He's not very good. I mean, we saw, like, I mean, he did the bulk of that 1-F-4, I mean, the entirety of that 1-F-4

in the first two weeks that he was up, and then the final two weeks of the season, or his major league season, we're not good and he got sent down as a result. Right. And never got called back up. So the reason it's not just like, like you said, it's not linear, right? There's ups and downs.

And it's not uncommon for a player to come up to the big leagues, particularly an older prospect, come up to the big leagues, hit pretty well while the league tries to figure out the best way to attack the player. And then once they make their adjustment, the player struggles. and then we have to see if that player can make the adjustment to get back. And so, you know, basically like you said, it's not a straight line. It's not linear. So if he was worth one win over 100 played appearances, he might be worth negative 4 over the next,

or negative 0.4 over the next 100. And then the next 100 is he's plus point two. And it just kind of ebbs and flow. It's just like a regular season. So expecting Marlowe to do, first of all, expecting anybody to be a six-win player, there's like a dozen guys that that's a. reasonable expectation for. So that's an issue.

Expecting him to be a three-win player before he's ever done it before. That's also kind of a risky proposition. So essentially, when you look at Marlowe's war, it's heavily weighted by the first two weeks. And then the next two weeks, he was at best replacement level. But that's why. Because we have just as much evidence to suggest that he's replacement level as we do that he is a three-win player. Yeah.

And then obviously, you factor. and just traditional scouting. Like, what do our eyes tell us when we watch this guy play? Their strikeouts that are an issue here. The fact that he's 26, 27 years old and not absolutely destroying AAA pitching in the PCL, that's kind of a red flag. So, you know, Marlow is still an interesting guy, and he just moved up the depth chart pretty seriously after yesterday's trade.

But the reason you can't expect him to be a three-win player and just, or three-to-six-one player, just in essence. It's because he's never done it before. He's never been that guy. Well, and also, again, he accumulated that 1F4, and I think he went beyond that. And then the struggles in the last couple weeks, Graham drove that number down a little bit.

But he accumulated all that in the first two and a half, three weeks of his major league career. And during that time, he was slashing 326, 42558. It's a 175 WRC plus. So it's unreasonable to expect him or expect that to be sustainable, right? Because that's unfair to expect that of like all but five guys in the entire league to sustain kind of that kind of productive. Next question from D. Panky, this is our final question of the day. Do you agree that it's dumb people always focus on who

won a trade? Shouldn't all that matter as if your team is better or has more potential to be better with increased payroll flexibility? And we say it all the time. The trades ideally, like the best trades are when both teams benefit from them. when both teams win the deal, right? That's what the whole point of trades are in the first place, is that team A needs or wants X, and team B needs or wants Y, and both of those things pan out, both teams.

We usually look at the team that's buying as the winner of the deal, rather than the team that's selling, right? But because the team that bought got the best player at the time doesn't necessarily mean that the team that's sold isn't going to extract more value out of the trade long term. Yeah. Also, it matters where teams are when they make the trade

where they're at in their build. Pretty good example of this is like the JP Crawford for Gene Seguera trade. First couple of years, that seemed like a steal for the Phillies. Now we're looking back and we go, boy, the Mariners are so much better off with JP than they are with with Segura,

but I don't think either team feels bad about that trade at all. Another really easy example of that is the Hanager, you know, the Hanager Taiwan trade. Like they, the, you know, the Diamondbacks got Catel Marte. The Mariners got Gene Segura,

who they then flipped a couple, after an all-star season for JP Crawford, you know, and they got Mitch Hanigr out of that too. So, and that's the other thing, too, is that these trades are all kind of connected and you can branch them off of one another.

So obviously I know a lot of, this probably stems from a lot of people saying the Mets won the trade. The Mariners don't feel bad about that trade at all. Not they, they don't. So I'm, of course, Edwin Diaz trade is what I'm talking about.

They don't feel bad about that trade at all just because none of those guys are still in the org. Because, you know, Kelnick, when Kelnick gave them a win and a half this year or whatever, and then he went out and he got them two players, right? and he also helped him clear salary. They, you know, they, they acquired Justin Dunn in that trade.

Well, Justin Dunn went out and helped them get two pretty good years of A. Eugenio Suarez and one, you know, fringe average year of Jesse Winker. So yes, the idea that like a team won or a loss of trade really doesn't carry any value whatsoever. Like nothing real. It's just a discussion point. Right. And basically we use, they won a trade, they lost a trade. Basically, you use that to try and make a point about the GM. who made the trade.

Right. Sometimes you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose. What's most likely to happen is both teams lose. What is the ideal scenario? Both teams win. That is how it goes. Right.

And again, back to the to the Hanner example, even excluding the JP aspect of that, the Mariners extracted the more immediate value and the Diamondbacks extracted more of the long-term value, like I was talking about. where it turns out both teams won, it's just, you know, the further we get away from the trade, it looks better for the Diamondbacks,

but at the time that that trade was made, and shortly thereafter, it looked like the Marius had police the Diamondbacks. So deals also tend to change in terms of perspective, once we get more contacts with them as well. And so that's why, like, again, when a deal happens right away, and we're immediately saying this team won,

this team lost, etc., etc., it's pointless. It's pointless. Because, I mean, like with the Mariners,

right, with this particular trade, the Jerry Kellnick trade to the Braves. I think it's very much dependent on what they do with that money, if they do anything with that money.

And also, we don't know what Jared Kellnick is actually going to do in Atlanta. We think we know what he's going to do. We think that he's going to pop off in Atlanta. But right now the Braves are outright saying, we don't even think that he's guaranteed the left field spot. So,

right. We also have no, of knowing what they spend that money on because they can they go out and sign like show hey otani or whatever but we don't know that they that we count the 20 million or 15 million they saved as money they gave to otani we don't know right so a lot of the times when we we talk about who won a deal who lost the deal it's really just nomenclature it doesn't carry significant value so we say oh they lost that deal okay so uh they went out and they did this instead and it worked right so um every gm every baseball ops exactly has good trades, they have bad trades, even the really good, like Billy Bean has some whoppers of losing trades. See an awful baseball executive? No, nobody thinks that. Theo Epstein lost trades.

But did they make sense at the time? I think that's the most important thing. Did they make sense for the team who made them at the time? What's the process sound? Did it make sense? Right. And that's why when we point at things like the Austenola trade, like we can call that a definitive loss, not because.

of what all those players became for Seattle and what they what Nola didn't become for San Diego it's because that was bad process that was really bad process by Preller and that's why that's a bad trade because I'll tell you what if Austinola was rolling out three win seasons the mayor still feel very good about that trade but the Padres aren't crying yeah you know they're there they're feeling okay about it too and that's just how it works sometimes so process is is ultimately what matters and that's why it's really hard to go back and like look at a past offseason deals and be like, well, they lost that one.

They lost that one because we often don't remember the process or the thought process that went behind why a deal like that would be made. We just focus on the names and just, yep, that guy was worth two wins. This guy was worth one. They lost. And it's like process matters. Why did they make the deal? Right.

So that's way more important than who won or who lost the deal. All right. Something to keep in mind, but that's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the lockdown areas podcast for Colby Patnode. I'm signing as all. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L. underscore mirrors. You can follow me at Ty Dane

Gonzalez, new app for me on Twitter and Colby at C-P-E-E-E-E-E-T-1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making nice to your first. Listen, have yourself a beautiful baseball day. We'll see you next time. Peace.