Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Could Target These Four Hitters Right Now

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode discuss Emerson Hancock's return, four hitters the Mariners could target via trade and preview tonight's matchup between Logan Gilbert and Jose Berrios.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.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. 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.

For the first time in three years, I got to see the Mariners in person yesterday. And that's the extent of our discussion about last night's game. Instead, let's talk about some trade candidates on today's episode of Lockdown Mariners. Colby, hit it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. It is Tuesday, May 17th, 2020, and this is Locked on Mariner's podcast.

Welcome to the show. for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. I am your host, Hiding Gonzalez, reporter and editor over at all seehawks.com. Join as always by my co-coast. Colby, Pat, Pat, know. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-U-N-Rerner. You can follow me at Dan Gonz, Z-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-E-P-E-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-A-L-L-E. Be sure to also check out our Patreon where we talk about the Mariners even more and also get into some non-baseball talk twice a week. Visit patreon.com forward slash control the zone for more information on that. If you are interested in one more of us, and if this is your first time joining us here

on the Lockdown Mariners podcast, welcome to the show. If you like what you hear, give us a follow or subscribe, wherever you listen to this. And if you're watching us on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, turn on the notification bell and give this video thumbs up. We greatly appreciate it. We're going to be not talking about last night's game, because I already had to sit through that pain with 20,000 screaming Canadians all around me.

So I've lived through that enough as much as I want to. So we're going to be talking about some trade candidates because Colby, I think you and I can both agree here that the Mariners need more probability in their lineup. We're also going to be previewing tonight's game because that one's set up to be a little more fun than last night. We got Logan Gilbert on the bump for the Mariners going up against Jose Barrios, who's been struggling.

So there might be an opportunity there for the Mariners. But first, we're going to actually talk about Emerson Hancock, who is making his season debut in 2022 after dealing with a lat injury that had held him out for a while. He's going to be making his debut tonight in AA Arkansas. saw. Colby, you know, obviously this guy, just a couple years removed from being a top six pick in the 2020 draft. A lot of high expectations for him. Some people around the league, we've talked about this during the offseason, have kind of tempered their expectations with him now.

He's starting to get that reliever tag, the lazy, lazy reliever tag, of course. But remind us, who are we getting in Emerson, Hancock and what should we be looking out for? Yeah, so with Hancock, you're getting a soon-to-be-23-year-old who was entering the 2020 college season was the consensus number one overall pick. He didn't throw particularly well for Georgia. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't as elite as you would like. And then COVID shut the whole thing down. He fell to the sixth pick where the Mariners took him, largely based on. for so-so starts at the beginning of his draft year,

and also some concerns that the fastball wasn't going to generate enough value at the major league level. But ultimately what Hancock is, he's a 6'4, about 220 pound. He's a good size, good build. When he's right, he throws plenty of strikes. Fastball is velocity-wise, it's fine. It's 93 to 97. there are some concerns about the shape of the pitch.

It doesn't have tremendous rise or run to it. It's not a pitch that is going to dominate for, like, for example, Logan Gilbert's fastball can. But it should be good enough. The Mariners might try and maybe do a two-seamer. They need to generate some kind of value off the fastball. But velocity is there, and he throws it with enough command that it should be an above-average pitch, at least.

What kind of separates Hancock is, or at least what did, is that he has two, I would say plus off-speed pitches. The slider is probably his best. It's right up there with anybody's in the organizations, not named Matt Brash. It's a pretty good pitch last time we saw. The change-up is a pitch that could become a legitimate third plus pitch. It has good fade. He throws it with good arm action. He needs to control it a little bit better.

but it could end up being his best pitch when all is said and done. And honestly, the curveball, not too bad. It's probably about fringe average. But when you look at Hancock overall, what you see is you see a guy who is, you know, good build, athletic, should be able to throw strikes, not going to be a huge issue for him. Basketball is going to be in the mid-90s. We'll see if they can add some run or some kind of deception to it. The slider and change-up are both going to be above average and change-up.

probably the best chance to be the plus pitch here. And the curb ball is going to be at least average, I believe. Like I said, he's going to throw plenty of strikes. It's probably 55 control, 50 command when all of a sudden done. And if he can stay healthy, it's hard to envision him not being at least a mid-rotation starter. He's got all of that working for him. Yeah.

So that's the key, though, right, is if he can stay healthy, which has been an issue for him over the last year or so. you know, and it's really, really impeded his, uh, his start to the, uh, you know, to his professional career. So, um, my question then really going off of that, because this is a guy that, you know, there was some talk that maybe this would be the year that he would make his major league debut. Obviously, that's not going to happen this year, considering that he's just now starting his season in double A. Um, when do you think we could see him? Assuming that he stays healthy and everything kind of comes along for him as a

expected. And he stays in the organization. That's true too. Little T's there for the next segment, right? I don't know if you had anybody on your list. That did not. Byre Anderson Hancock. No, I think I still think next year is a very real possibility. It could be as soon as May. If Hancock can string together and stay relatively healthy over the next, you know, for what, four or five months, whatever's left in the minor league season, he's probably going to start

next year either at AAA or with an outside. side shot to make the big league roster. Like I said, it's not going to take him long to get to the big leagues if he can just sustain his health for a lengthy period of time. The stuff is already really good. Well, the last time we saw it, the stuff was really good. We'll see how he pounces back from the two injuries. It might take him a few outings to kind of get his feel, but there's no really long-term

concerns that I would project right now. So I still think, you know, sometime next year is a very realistic possibility. I wouldn't say it's out of the question that he's, you know, depending on how he's feeling and if he has innings left, maybe he's a, maybe he gets called up in September to pitch out of the bullpen. It's an outside shot, but I don't think they're going to, I don't think they're going to run that risk of, you know, putting him on the 40 man before they have to. So, yeah, I would just say that I think, I would say May, June of 2023 is probably the earliest we're going to see him. But again, he can move very quickly. He's already in AA. He's an advanced pitcher.

He was advanced when they drafted him. He was probably a double A quality starter when they drafted him. Just injuries have really gotten in the way. So I still think next year should be the expectation. And he could move pretty quick. I think he's probably in the big leagues. If not before he turns 24, pretty soon after he turns 24, which will be May 31st of 2023.

Cool. All right. So let's talk about some trade candidates, because again this Mariners lineup as we saw last night just needs more probability it needs you know some guys there towards us back into the lineup that can pick up the slack when the top of the lineup isn't really you know doing the job so yeah we're gonna we're gonna try to figure this out because it's still very early and the trade market is not going to be busy whatsoever it's not going to be very fruitful for the Mariners so we got to be pretty selective here

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Again, that's LOCKED-1-5 for 15% off your order at Bilt.com. You're listening to Lockdown Mariners. Thank you again for making us to your first list of the day. For your next listen, check out the Lockdown Now podcast with recaps of MLB games with analysis from our local experts, taking fans through. the season like no other network. It is free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. So Colby, you and I, we love talking about trades.

That's probably our favorite thing to do. Our favorite thing that we have done together for the last, I don't know, four or so years of podcasting and writing together. And the Mariners are in desperate need of making a trade. So while the product on the field has been frustrating to watch, this is actually kind of exciting for us, because we actually get to look into some trade possibilities earlier than maybe either one of us expected. And we're going to be strictly looking at players that can help boost this lineup.

And like I said earlier, the market is going to be vastly limited at a time like this. Probably only a couple teams if that are going to be interested in actually selling off major league pieces right now. So again, very limited group that we're pulling for. from here. So you mentioned the Ben Gamble, Chris Stratton idea that you had on an episode last week. And that was kind of your version, like the 2022 version of the Alex Colomé and Dinarz Span deal

that the Mariners made in May of 2018. So maybe that's an angle that we could take with this. But overall, you know, I've pulled a few names that I like that are on bad teams or teams that maybe they're they're not really bad right now in terms of the standings in terms of the win-loss column but the likelihood of them competing is just non-existent so it would be wise for the you know a team like the pirates right or a team like the the Orioles who you know they're winning some ball games right now but considering where they are in their divisions the competition that they have just their ceiling in general right

So I'm going to start here with Robbie Grossman, who's on the Tigers. And the Tigers, surprisingly, have really underachieved, at least relative to expectations going into the season. They're 13 and 23 right now. They're at the bottom of the AL Central. 13 and 23, like I said. Grossman got off to a pretty good start, but has fallen back quite a bit. lately. He's just hitting 204, 33, 241. 241 slugging is gross. That's terrible. 84 WRC plus 14.4 walk rate though, but a 13, or sorry, a 31.8% K rate. So some really

bad notes on Robbie Grossman, to be certain. But again, we're working with a very limited group here and we're looking for some sort of upside. Grossman last year, however, slash 239, 357, 415 with a 114WRC plus. The year before that, his last season with the A's, of course, this was short in season, 2020, but he slashed 241, 344-482 with a 127 WRC plus. So this guy has shown the ability to hit. He's familiar with the ALS. Also, I believe the last time that I looked at his baseball savant page,

he was 89th percentile an outfielder jump, which that's better than Dillamore and right field. Just going to say that. Yeah. Unfortunately, only 21st percentile and outs above average. But this is a good speed guy, so that would be nice to add some speed to the lineup. But this is very much a CTZ guy.

Chase rate 98th percentile, walk percentage, 93rd percentile. He's going to take walk. probably strikes out a little too much to be super high on the on the CTZ scale or whatever the mariners use when evaluating hitters, whatever they call it. But yeah, there's certainly some upside here. He's better than he's performing right now. He's a switch hitter, which helps quite a bit. And he should play a decent enough outfield that he's not going to absolutely kill you. and honestly, you know, you're running Jesse Winker out there every single day.

Do you really care about outfield defense that much? Sure. Yeah, he's an interesting guy. Well, and this could also present an opportunity where maybe you can get Winker in the D.A. spot a little bit more. Put Grossman out in left field. I would say, you know, even though that I pointed out Dillon Moore's defense earlier, I would say that Moore is probably a better defender out in the outfield than Jesse Winker. Maybe more Rodriguez Grossman outfield wouldn't, it wouldn't be terrible.

Also, you know, Adam Frazier has been okay out there so far. So that's obviously another possibility. And if they want to put Frazier out in the outfield more, that actually kind of leads into my next player, Ramon Urius, who is struggling this year, to say the least, again. Keep in mind here. We are picking from a very limited, He only has a WRC plus of 60.

He's slashing 210, 257, 290. But he's just a year removed from slashing 279, 361, 412, or 115 WRC plus, and then the year before that, short and season, again. Oh, wait, that was only in 10 games. So we're actually going to just ignore that, and we're going to completely move away from that. But last year was pretty good for Urius. And we were told last year that the Mariners at one point

checked in with the Orioles about infield help. and I would presume that Urius was one of the names that got mentioned. This is a 27-year-old guy who can hit for some power a little bit and gets on base, walks quite a bit, and doesn't chase at all. And this hits the living hell of the ball when he does make contact. Ninety-second percentile right now in hard hit rate this year. So again, this is kind of the same idea as Grossman where you're buying. You're buying very, very low on someone that's really struggling right now,

but has shown some signs of success the last year or two. What do you think about Urius? Yeah, I like the player. Like he said, he doesn't really chase. You know, it's a 92nd percentile in average exit velocity, 76 percentile and X batting average. So, you know, the batte ball profile suggests he should be hitting a lot higher than 210. And he's not a great defender really anywhere, but he's not terrible anywhere in the

infield. You'd like to avoid using him at shortstop if you can. But that's true of basically everybody who's not a pure shortstop. I mean, you'd like to avoid using Dillamore at shortstop if you can. And he's probably fringy at second and third base. But what you're buying here is the bat rebounds and that the underlying numbers of the low chase rate and the high, uh, uh, uh, uh, the high exit velocities indicate that he's going to break out, so to speak, and he's going to produce at least, you know, league average numbers down the line. Yeah. He's also been a reverse splits guy this year.

He's hitting 232 against Ritey's, just 161 against Lefties, which, let's see here. Is that the same for him, 2021? Yes, it was. He hit 315 against Ritey's in 2021 and 235 against Lofties. lefties in 2021. I mean, this year, Jesse Winker and JP Crawford have fit better against lefties and the Adlerides, so it's weird, but it happens.

Yeah, it's a weird year. So the last name that I'll mention and Colby, I think you have maybe at least one name to go over, but the last name I'll mention here is Michael A. Taylor of the, of the Royals. And the Royals are kind of in a tailspin right now. They're 12 and 21. They just fired their hitting coach.

They might entertain. trading a guy or two off of their roster at this point. Taylor is 31 years old. He's going to be a free agent after this season. No, he's not going to be a free agent after the season. Sent an extension. Yeah, you signed an extension. Okay. Yeah, I was going off of spot track at first, but Fangraph says the actual stuff here. All right, so Taylor has been slashing 229, 330, 323. Obviously, you know, 323, slugging. doesn't really jump out, but he does have some sneaky pop here and there. So I wouldn't completely discredit that.

He's also a, you know, a sensational defender. And he gives you another option in center field. He could just straight up boost your, you know, right field defense or your left field defense, what have you. Because I assume that they're probably not moving Julio out of center, considering the way he's playing. And why would they right now? He's playing, you know, pretty good ball out there. But Taylor, you know, he gets on base. He's walking 13.4% of the time.

He's only striking out 20 and a half percent of the time. And he's also a threat to steal some bases. He stole 14 last year. He doesn't have a steal this year. But he had a career high 24 steals in 2018. So that gives you a bit more of a base path presence. And he's graded out positively as a base runner as well, which base running has kind of been an issue for the Mariners this year at times.

So, yeah. So I think, you know, you upgrade defensively, you get someone that can get on base pretty consistently, and someone that's actually going to run the bases properly and probably avoid some of the boneheaded mistakes that we've seen, some of the two blends that we've seen over the last few weeks. It will probably cost the Mariners a little bit here. This is probably the most expensive guy that I've mentioned on this list because of the extension now, you know, taking that into account.

He's also been basically a league average hitter, 99 WRC plus, 100 is the average mark. So, yeah, that's going to cost something, especially this early. But I think they could pull it off. I think this is also a good opportunity here because the Royals have a pretty solid bullpen where they could actually do a Dinarz-SPAN, Alex Colome, type of thing here with Taylor and one of the rate laborers, rather that's Barlow or whoever. What do you think about Taylor, though? my concern is that Dayton Moore is going to ask for Jared Keldick,

which we know is apparently the move for Dayton Moore, is just to ask for ridiculous prices for good players. By the way, what do you think what Merrifield will cost right now? Because he's running a WRC plus of 42, which is actually a significant improvement from where he was. Because he had a WRC plus of one the last time I looked, which was like about a week ago. Yeah, he's turning around a little bit.

Probably, though, because he's, you know, got a few less years of club control at this point, I'm going to say probably get him for George Kirby. Yeah, yeah. I just, I can't, I can't take the Royals too seriously when you hear that they were asking for Julio Rodriguez for Whitmerfield last year. Yeah, so Taylor's a good player, though.

He would be a really nice fit at the bottom of the lineup. Like you said, he gets on base a fair amount. You know, he's actually been pretty good this year, Axwova at 63rd percentile. It doesn't strike out a ton. He will strike out some, but it's still about league average. He walks a lot. He's very fast.

Good defender. He's probably going to be one of the best right fielers in baseball if you wanted to use him there. He's actually got a little more power than people think. I mean, he's got a 450-X slug this year, 391 the year before, 480 the year before. So there's some pop here. It's, you know, it's a lot of slap singles and a lot of, you know, there's been a few infield singles this year.

Sure, absolutely. But there's some power. He does have two home rounds. He has a triple. He's got a double. And he's a good defender. So, yeah, I mean, I would prefer Andrew Benatendi, but he's probably going to cost more, even though he is a rental.

Yeah, Kansas City is one of those teams where they may think they're in it right now they don't want to quite sell yet, but I think by June 1, reality is going to come crashing down, and they're just going to have to accept that. They weren't as close as they thought they were when they spent some money last offseason. Yeah, you know, they're 12 and 21. Like I said, they're seven and a half back right now in the central. The twins are playing pretty good ball right now. The White Sox are starting to turn things around after they're, you know, awful starts of the year with all the injuries and everything.

So if I'm the Royals, I'm looking at that and going. Yeah, it's probably not the year. So I don't know. If the Mariners came to them with, I don't know, who would be someone that you would be willing to part with for Michael A. Taylor? I don't know if I'd be willing to part with them, but I would guess that the Royals would ask for somebody like Bryce Miller. Yeah, that's kind of what I was, thank you.

Yeah, I don't think I would do that, but also I wouldn't be super upset if they did. Does that make sense? It would make sense if they did it. If I saw it, I'd be like, wow, that hurts to lose Miller, but also I get it. I get it. I think that's, yeah. So, yeah, I think that's probably what realistically they would ask for. But again, it's Kansas City.

You never know what they're going to do. So, yeah, just real fast, my guy, teased him on Twitter last night, at Control the Zone on Twitter. I think it's time to bring Daniel coordination. Neely is Vogel back, back to the Seattle Mariners. He's sending 252, 339, 476. This year he has a 130 WRC plus in 30 games. Six home runs so far. He is running a 12% walk rate and a 24% K rate.

Again, X Woba of 386. He's been worth half a win already. And again, nobody is significant. suggesting that Daniel Vogel back is a long-term fix. We're not looking for long-term fixes here. We're looking for Band-Aids. And, you know, when you kind of look at what the Mariners are running out there right now, Mike Ford is kind of the primary DH.

That's, that's, that's. Hey, he worked a walk last night. I was proud of him. No, I mean, like for, he had, he had a nice hit. Like, like, you know, I'm a Mike Ford guy. Yeah. But no, like, like, come on. let's let's do better you look like uh like obviously these names that we're talking about

they're not going to excite a lot of people but it's it's going for someone that offers you maybe a bit more upside than someone like stephen susa junior or mike ford you know they're still band a band aides but band aids with upside well it's just it's one of those things like right like a lot of mariner fans think that the team needs surgery so they don't want a bandaid it's like well yeah but if you don't put pressure on your your wound and you just wait to get to the hospital before you try and do anything, you're going to bleed out. Yeah.

Sorry to use a gruesome metaphor, but I think it makes sense. You got to put pressure on it to kind of stop the bleeding. And then you can kind of address the bigger issue. I just wrote this out real fast and only got to run, but I just wanted to throw this, just to let people know the difference that these minor moves can make in the lineup. So on the 15th, which is kind of the last regular lineup that the Mariners use against the Mets, It's very similar to today's lineup as well. They went Frasier, France, Crawford, Winker, Rodriguez, Ford, Toro, Susa, Jr. and Cal Raleigh.

If they make a couple of these moves here. We're talking about Frazier, France, JP, Winker, Julio, Vogel back hitting sixth. Whoever's playing third base hitting seven. Ben Gamble is the guy I put Michael A. Taylor in there, whoever, is hitting eighth, and then you have the catcher spot. which maybe Murphy pretty soon. It sounds like there's a shot that it's Murphy. And what this does is that it moves,

you know, Susa Jr. to the bench until Kyle Lewis is ready to go, which hopefully is in a couple weeks we'll see. And it just moves everybody down. And now in the six hole, you have a guy who's a career 105 WRC plus hitter instead of Mike Ford. And in the eight hole you have Ben Gamble, who is a career 99 WRC plus, instead of Steven Susan Jr., who is frankly, not been good since he was called up.

So that's a sizable difference because basically what you've done is you've added two league average bats. You've added some power, some lefty power into your lineup with Vogelback. And you've added kind of this high probability gun hit for some average, going to draw some walks guys towards the bottom of your order, which is perfect because Fraser, France, JP and Winker right now, kind of your whole offense and Julio. So, yeah, adding guys in the back half of that to kind of, again, boost power but also on base skill, huge. So just even those making two of those small moves, if it's Vogelback and Taylor, you have a lineup that one through, or I would say, what, seven or eight of the nine, you feel pretty good about on an app app, on an app per app app app app basis.

Yeah, for sure. All right. So we're going to preview tonight's game, got Logan Gilbert versus Jose Barrio. so I'm going to be heading to the game after we're done recording and getting this thing posted. But real quick, before we get into all that, got to remind you that today's 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 auto parts store to stock all the parts you need. Wyandr are often pointless or seemingly intimidating questioning,

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Right, locked on in there. How did you hear about a Spock so they know we sent you amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts you car will ever need. Rock Auto.com. So again, we got Logan Gilbert, Jose Berrios, going up against one another in Toronto tonight. Adam Fraser back on the starting lineup for the Mariners after going two for two for two as a pinch hitter last night and driving in one of the Mariners two runs. So that's good.

Abraham Toro is out of the leadoff spot. That is very good. And look, I am not a Toro hater, like some of you weirdos on Twitter, but the guy absolutely should not be hitting leadoff. He should not be guaranteed the most at bats in a lineup that has Julio Rodriguez, Thai France, Jesse Winker, a Eugenio Soros, etc. And at J.P. Crawford. Yeah, absolutely yesterday, just to make one comment on yesterday, if I had to change anything, I would absolutely put J.P. Crawford in the leadoff spot instead of Abraham Toro there. Jesse Winker, really. It doesn't matter.

But either one of those guys would be much better than Toro. Just imagine that at bat with one out, runners, or sorry, bases loaded, one out. And instead of Toro, you have Jesse Winker or J.P. Crawford up in that spot. Like, we might be talking about a different ballgame. White Mills probably doesn't come in the next inning. They probably go with someone, you know, a little more high leverage there in that situation. And who knows, right? but they end up losing 6-2.

Anyway, so let's talk about, you know, how they can potentially bounce back here with Gilbert on the bump. Gilbert has struggled last couple of outings relative to his standards, of course. And he's, he obviously got, you know, pushed around a little bit by the Blue Jays last year, the last time that you faced this team in Seattle.

You mentioned it yesterday that, you know, Blue Jays love hunting the fastball and that's Gilbert's best pitch. Sometimes it's his only pitch. So how would you like to see him attack the Blue Jays tonight? Yeah. So the one area where Gilbert could take advantage is that the Jays are going to be aggressive on the fastball,

but they also are willing to expand the zone. So you can get them to chase off the zone. The slider is going to be huge for Gilbert tonight. He has to throw it often. It's not a pitch that he can just, you're not going to just blow the first pitch fastball by these guys and then set up everything off of that first pitch fastball. You have to throw the slider. It's got to be good.

And if you can spot the slider, if you can even throw a couple for strikes early, then you have a chance to dominate this lineup because Gilbert's fastball slider change up against a righty-heavy lineup has been the ticket to his most dominant outings. Do you remember the Yankees start last year, the Red Sox start last year? That's what it all comes down to. the fastball control, which he's had issues with over his last few starts. We'll know how it is. He misses arm's side when he's not feeling right. And the slider just off the outside corner, maybe even spot a couple of them,

throw a few, you know, get me over curveballs and changeups to kind of seal a strike early. That's what it's going to be about. Can Logan Gilbert pitch backwards? I don't know. Can he pitch backwards relative to the way Gilbert normally pitches? I hope so. And if he does, and he has a shot to be successful tonight, assuming that the fastball control is good.

But if it is what it's been for the last three, four starts, it could get pretty dicey. But if he has the fastball control, if you can dot the fastball and then throw the slider near the strike zone, he has a chance to have a very good outings night. On the flip side, Jose Barrios going for the Blue Jays. He's struggled mightily this year. Last two starts, the first of which was against,

The Guardians, he only went four and two thirds, gave up six earned runs, and didn't strike out anyone in that, which is pretty abnormal for him. Strikeouts have been pretty low for him this year. Then against the Yankees in New York last week, he goes five in a third and gives up five earn runs, only striking out four, gives up a home run in that game. You go to his baseball savant page is a lot of blue. I was also at his first start of the year on opening day and he I believe didn't even record a single out before he came out of the game

he gave up seven runs to the Rangers so this is definitely a guy that the Mariners can jump on now what it really comes down to is will the Mariners lineup show up tonight because they really didn't last night nine left on base you know the story

it's just been it was one of those games it was one of many that we've seen this year that pretty much went along the same script um yeah i mean do you just going off of what you saw last night are are you uh are you still hopeful that they can uh get something done here against burrios because i mean they go in against kikuchi who yeah has been better as of late but it's still i mean we know who you say kakuchi is you and i both uh everyone watching this knows who you say Kikuchi is. Couldn't do anything against him, haven't been able to do anything against other struggling pitchers.

Brios is struggling, but he has good stuff. You know, this kind of seems like another frustrating outing for the Mariners' offense on paper to me. It's certainly geared up to be. Yeah, I mean, Brios doesn't have a pitch so far this year.

That has been good. The curveball has been his best pitch, but even that he's had some hard hit ball issues with that pitch. It's not even quite as good as the raw numbers indicate, but it is still a solid pitch for him. He's going to throw out 30% of the time. You know, he's going to get some whiffs on it, sure. But you really have to gear up for the fastball and the sinker.

That's what he's going to throw, you know, roughly 60% of the time. So you have to gear up for that pitch. You have to be ready to hit those pitches. He's had a hard time getting the fastball down in the zone, but he's also had a hard time getting the fastball at the letters or higher, which is an issue. You either have to be at the knees. You have to be at the letters with the fastball.

He's kind of been in the middle of the plate, and that's been a big issue for him. It's not an overpowering fastball. It's 94 miles an hour. It's not a high spin rate fastball. It's 41st percentile in spin. Brrios doesn't really spin the ball that well. Curb ball has always been pretty low spin.

It's got wicked movement to it. It's a fun pitch to watch, but it's not insane spin. Like so, the velocity is not overpowering, although he does. It is a slightly above average. But he's going to throw strikes for the most part, always has. So you've got to be ready to hit it. And we've seen Brillo pitch against the Mariners, and he's been, there's been times where he's unhittable for three, four innings.

And then the Mariners put up a four spot on him, one inning, because he just kind of loses it. So, yeah, you know, I would like to say this is a great opportunity for the Mariners to kind of get the bats back to where they were in New York. But, you know, you see Mike Ford, you see Steven Sousa, you see Cal Raleigh at the bottom of the order, and you're kind of like, it's tough to predict any kind of outbreak coming on a night-to-night basis. So we'll see. But, yeah, this, I mean, it feels like one of those games where either Burrios is going to go. go seven shutout or the Mariners are going to drop, you know, one of their like six run innings on them in the second or something like that. So yeah, we'll see. This game, I can see this game being a shootout, like a seven to five, seven to six type of game, or I could see it

being like a two to one game. That's incredibly frustrating to watch for both sides. Yeah, and I'm going to be sitting front row out in right field. I'm literally front row. First, first row, right field, right by the foul pole. So check me out. Not like the Mariners are going to be hitting any balls out there anyway. So you probably won't see me on TV. But yeah, I've gone full cynic the last day or so, considering how my night went last night.

Ty is going to catch a Mike Ford home run tonight. All right. I'm done on the board. By the way, it's your fault that Matt Chapman won't day or last night. But it's your fault the Mariners couldn't hit. Yeah. We're both at fault though. I just want the record to show that photographic evidence of you cursing the Mariners. That's all I'm going to say That is true. Oh, man, that that picture

I don't think I'm ever gonna take that off of my Twitter by the way. I made that my Twitter header I don't think that's ever going away because I think that that pretty much Perfectly summarizes my experience as a Mariners fan All right, well I got to get down to the Roder Center. So we're gonna hop off here that's gonna do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. For Colby Pat Nod, I'm Taday Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dame Gonzalez. This is D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat-E-L-L-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-PAT-E-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode.

And thank you again for making us your first listen of the day, just like you do here every day. Now, make your second listen in the day, Lockdown MLB. That's where Paul Francis Sullivan and please call him Sully brings you his unique perspective on the major League's president passes free wherever you get your podcast just like us so have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we will see you tomorrow peace