Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Finish June in Style, Who Was MVP?

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

For the second game in a row, the Mariners gave themselves enough cushion to withstand another underwhelming performance from their starting pitcher and defeat the Athletics by a score of 8-6. Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode reflect on the game, look ahead to the weekend and hand out some team awards for the month of June.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 | @CPat11 | @InsideMarinersFor more of Ty and Colby, check out their Patreon: patreon.com/controlthezone/BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! 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 second game in a row, the Mariners gave themselves enough cushion to withstand an overwhelming pitching performance from their starter. But will the bats continue to stay hot this weekend? Let's talk about it here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby, hit it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day.

What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. It is Friday, July 1st. 2022 and thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. I am your host, Tiding Gonzalez, joined as always by my co-covee, Colby Patnode. We cover the Mariners over at Inside the Mariners.com for fan nation over on the Sports Illustrated Network. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. Follow Inside the Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez, the C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-A-T-1-1.

Be sure to also check out our Patreon over at patreon.com forward slash control the zone. We post two additional podcasts on there every single week. 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 follower, subscribe wherever you're listening to this. And if you're watching us on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, turn on the notification bell and give this video a thumbs up. We greatly appreciate it. We're going to be talking about the weekend to come as the Mariners continue to look for their fourth consecutive series victory. We're also going to be looking back on the month of June, handing out some awards, some

MVPs, some Syungs, et cetera, et cetera. But first, let's look back on last night's eight to six win over the Oakland Athletics to start this four game set with the A's down at T-Mobile Park. The bats were explosive once again for the second day in a row. Julio Rodriguez went 416 feet to deep center field. Very, very impressive, especially it was a sinker on the end. outside corner. Really, really impressive home run by Julio. Cal Raleigh had a little league home run as well. His first career triple turns into a little league home run. He drives in three on that. He also added a double to his day. But Logan Gilbert wasn't very good in this one. Ten hard hit balls. He struck out just three, walked two. What went wrong for Gilbert in this one?

Colby. Yeah, he just didn't have the fastball command. He came out throwing it a lot. First one was a bad side miss and then, you know, it looked like he'd started to settle in, but he was very clearly going to go right after them with his fastball. And that's fine, but it had a little bit more run to it than it normally does. And unfortunately, Logan didn't know how to deal with that. And he left a lot of fastballs in the middle of the plate. And, you know, kind of the thing about Gilbert is, is if he's not getting value out of the fastball, the rest of his, you know, his arsenal doesn't play up as well. He needs the fastball. Logan Gilbert doesn't have like insanely good stuff.

And I think we all know this. It's the fastball is his best pitch. And then the slider can be pretty good sometimes. The change up can be pretty good sometimes. But neither of those pitches are consistent, you know, 65s on the, you know, 2080 scale. Most of the time they're 55s. And the fastball allows them to play up because of the extension he gets on that pitch. Well, you know, they're doing damage on your fastball.

and you're kind of leaving it in the middle of the plate, they don't have to respect the other stuff because it's not good enough for them to respect. So what we saw last night was what Logan Gilbert looks like without his good fastball control slash command. And we saw some good velocity early. And then by the middle, it was down to 94, 95, and it was middle of the plate.

He just couldn't get to his off-speed stuff the way he wanted to. And it results in a pretty bad lineup, you know, doing some damage off of him. and blistering a lot of baseballs. So, you know, it happens. It is kind of the downside to having, like, the one elite pitch followed by a bunch of, if that elite pitch doesn't work, you're in trouble. And so we saw it with Gilbert.

It looked a lot like Gilbert, like in his first couple starts from last year, where it was, he's just throwing the fastball and he couldn't land anything else. And so it was just, guys just sitting on the fastball and doing damage against. it. So it was, it's sad. It all starts with the basketball for Gilbert. Didn't command it. It was in the middle of the plate a ton and he got hit hard and he doesn't have the secondary stuff right now to kind to counter a bad basketball command night. Yeah, so he gave up the three run shot to Luriano and the hard hits just kept on coming and, you know, he got through a clean sixth and they, they brought him back out for the seventh. He was up, you know, eight to four at that point. I figured, you know, might as well

just try to get the most out of him as possible. He was still under 100 pitches at that point. But he loses the first guy after going a one, two on Sheldon Noisy and ends up walking him. And then there was the Allen Bunt, swinging button, whatever it was. And then he made an interesting throwing decision, I was just say. One of the least athletic things you'll ever see somebody do on a baseball field. Yeah. That was bad.

That was bad. Yeah. Fortunately for him, though, Andreas Munoz came into the game with second and third and no one out. He gets Tony Kemp to hit a short pop-up to Auh, Hennino Suarez. He strikes out Lauriano on a really nasty slider and then gets Seth Brown to ground out to Carlos Santana on the first pitch of the third bat there to hold the A's scoreless. And that honestly proved pretty critical in this game because the A's went on to score a pair runs in the eighth and ninth inning. off of Diego Cassio and Paul Seawald and Luriano was a was a thorn in the side of the Mariners in this one. He gets two home runs, including a solo shot off of Seawald there in the ninth to bring things a little bit closer. Ultimately, the Mariners still won fairly comfortably, thanks to the cushion that they did give themselves.

But yeah, they were kind of trying to hand the A's this game back at times, it seems. just kind of sloppy game from the Mariners, right? Yeah. Some defensive miscues, you know, oddly enough, both of them by Logan Gilbert. You know, there was an instance where Winker kind of kicked a ball in left field. It didn't really make a big difference, but it did happen. Yeah, there was just some, you know, there was a ball that it looked like Suarez probably should have been able to get to, but for some reason he didn't.

it just they didn't make a lot of the plays that they normally make and it showed up and it did have an impact you know the the two buntz that gilbert failed epically on you know the first one ended up costing him a couple runs the second one didn't cost him but that's because andres munoz was that good so yeah it just it was a pretty sloppy game uh defensively pitching wise a lot of guys left stuff in the middle of the plate. It just wasn't a very good night. And this team is going to lose most of the games where they give up six runs. So for them to steal one like they did, it's pretty good.

And it does help that it was against Oakland because it feels like if they played like that against Houston last night, they probably would have gotten, ran out of the building. So we'll see. But yeah, it was pretty sloppy. And honestly, the A's had a few sloppy moments as well, too. and it's kind of more understandable from the A standpoint because they were flying across the country from New York and Seattle does not have that excuse.

So they were at home. So yeah, we'll see. The long plane trip typically hits on the second day or so I've been told. So we'll see what kind of energy Oakland comes out with today. It would be nice if the Mariners could score a couple runs early and just kind of put them down and keep them down for a little while. Yeah, we'll have to see if the bats can stay hot, because they've been hot last couple days.

They've scored 17 runs combined over the last 18 innings. So certainly not sloppy offensively. And I'd be remiss not to mention that Dylan Moore also had a two-run shot last night. How did you feel about that one? You know, Del Mar hit a pitch down the middle of the play. It's what he does. It was actually on the inside corner of the play. I would say middle in.

I'll go halfway with you. It was pretty good I can get the receipts I got game day I got MLB game day There you go No yeah it was it was a nice piece of hitting Against a really bad pitcher so yeah good for him

By the way Quick quick side note here Billy Hamilton is making his 2022 debut with the Marlins So there you go Billy Hamilton back in the big leagues Yes

You know The Marlins gave Marlins gave Billy Hamilton a chance before the Mariners, huh? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I mean, hey, man, when you can have Justin Upton, like, you got to do what you got to do it.

You got to do it. It's not like Billy Hamilton gives a veteran presence or anything. Just saying. Just saying. All right. So I would rather Billy Hamilton go up there and just try to bunt for hit every single time. Your, your team would be better with that. having Justin Upton up there trying his best because wolf that guy that guy's yeah yeah yeah

it's sad when you see you know a historically really good player at the at the end of his career just really starting to fall apart and that's kind of what we're seeing with Justin Upton unfortunately and this this doesn't even just talking about what he's done at the major league level it's also what he was doing in AAA before he got activated it's not great anyway Moving on, we're going to be talking about the weekend to come for the Mariners. Hopefully they're able to win tonight. But I mostly want to talk about the Saturday and Sunday games. Both are going to be day games, rare Saturday day game for the Mariners.

It's going to be on Fox Sports 1. A couple of big pitching matchups in those games. So I'm going to be focusing on that in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode, Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by BetOnline. Betonline.net is your number one source for all your betting needs in sports. Info, find all the latest sports developments, league reviews and news, including this year's NHL playoffs and Major League Baseball. Bet Online is your continued source for all your sporting wagering information, including live

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So Colby, knowing the injuries and the suspensions that the Mariners have sustained up to this point, particularly on the offensive side of things, or well, exclusively on the offensive side of things, really, you know, they're going to face Frankie Montes again on Sunday. It's going to be Robbie Ray versus Montes again. And we saw what Ray was able to do against the A's the last time these two squared off. And Montes, of course, no hit the Mariners through, I believe, seven and a third, seven and two thirds of work.

And they ended up winning in the craziest, craziest way. How good is Robbie Ray going to need to be on Sunday for the Mariners to win? Pretty good. Pretty good. Unless, of course, Jerry acquires Frankie Montas in the next two days. Not impossible. So, yeah, he'll have to be pretty good. Montes is, he was great in that start.

Interestingly enough, he's been, he's been kind of, he was kind of bad in June until that last start. Not terrible, but, you know, kind of bad. He was going through some struggles. And what we saw in his last start was 98, 99 and a wicked, like, splitter. I mean, it's going to be tough. And you're not going to have JP in the lineup, which, based on how he's been swinging, the last few weeks. But it's still a lefty that you could, you know, it just, it's, it still hurts, but

not as much. Ray's going to have to be very good. It's tough for me to imagine the Mariners scoring more than two or three runs off of him. Their best bet is probably to try and jack up his pitch count, get to the, the A's bullpen and see if you can get him out of there after six, keep the game close. So Ray's going to have to probably go. you know, six, seven,

innings give up no more than two or three runs if he wants to give the Mariners a legitimate shot at winning this game. Yeah, going to need him to be what he's been over the last four starts, you know, continue to work in that two seam fastball. And, you know, we'll see what his plan is going up against the A's now for a second time

because the first time he went pretty, you know, slider heavy and then mixed in the two seamer. And then he also threw 12 curves, which was kind of an anomaly for him this year. So we'll see if that's kind of a similar game plan or maybe he switches it up. He goes to seamer heavy again or just kind of balances it out between that and the slider. And maybe we'll see the curve again. Who knows?

Because it was effective for him, even though that he only threw it 12 times. It did work out pretty well for him in that game. And then, you know, Paul Blackburn going on the bump for the A's on Saturday. And he, you know, obviously got off to a pretty good start to this year. but the Mariners handled him really well the last time they saw him down in Oakland. You think they can repeat that? Because the last time they faced Blackburn in Seattle, he was very good against them. He shut them down.

Yeah, Blackburn's one of those guys who maybe is turning back into a pumpkin a little bit because he's, I mean, the ERA's back up over three now. And he was very, very good. He was a legitimate All-Star candidate, let's say. for a little bit there. And, you know, I know that he didn't give up a ton of hits and runs, but he did walk, I think, five Mariners in that last start. They just couldn't get that one big hit to kind of get to him. So I think they'll be okay against him.

It's the third time they've seen him. I feel like they kind of have a good idea about how he's going to try and attack them. So I feel okay about that matchup. But obviously, I wouldn't expect, you know, whatever, what was it, five, six runs. Like they put up, like three or four hours. They're going to have, yeah, they're going to have to grind through a little bit. But I would suspect that he is going to,

the Mariners are going to have a much better game plan against him this time around than they did last time. And in five starts in June, you know, he had 513 ERA, gave up three and, you know, nine walks and 26 innings. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that's one of those ones. I'm not quite sure what to explain in. If I had to guess, I would say the Mariners are a pretty good plan against him. And they did a nice job in both starts and not expanding the zone to help him.

So I have to throw strikes. And if the Mariners can make him do that, then I like their chances. But you never know. All right. So calendars flipped to July now. It was a pretty good month of June for the Mariners. They clinched a winning month. A lot of guys offensively had some great success.

We saw Jesse Winker finally break out a little bit. We saw Cal Raleigh have a great month. Julio continues to be great and he's probably going to be the AL Rookie of the month again. And then we, of course, saw, you know, some great things out of Robbie Ray and Logan Gilbert, you know, aside from last night's start was, you know, still really good. So, you know, a lot of positives here for the Mariners, despite, you know, losing Thai France. and having these suspensions happen or having the brawl happen that is going to lead to all these suspensions. And, you know, there were certainly some things to kind of feel sour about. But ultimately, it was a pretty good month for the Mariners, all things considered.

So let's hand out some awards here. Let's start with your MVP, Colby, for the month of June. Boy, that's a tough one. I think I'm going to go Julio. I know. A bit of a dark horse here. But dude was really good because while his batting average 30 points between May and June, his on-base percentage went up of 30 points.

He started drawing more walks. Slugging went up, so it's not like it. The average was at the expense is power or anything like that. He played very good defensive center field, stole plenty of base. I think he had seven home runs in June. There are, it's nice that, you know, that it's obvious, obviously Julio, like it wasn't made. Because I think you can't make a legitimate case for somebody like Jesse Winker, Cal Raleigh, and even Robbie Ray, to be kind of the team MVP, the team player of the month.

So, but Julio, I mean, it just, the dude's 21. years old. Like, how are you not impressed by Julio at this stage? Yeah, I mean, he had a 160. He finished the month with a 162 WRC plus. It is the second month in a row that he's been over 150. And he only appears to be getting better. Strikeout rate stabilized. It was at 25.4% in June, 25.2% in May. And the walks went up 4%. The on base, the batting average went down 29%.

ironically the on base went up exactly 29% or 29 points so and he 15 and his slugging went up 15 points so yeah it i think julio was probably better in june than he was in may and if it was obvious in may that he was the guy it seems only fair that he's the guy in june yeah absolutely and obviously he's got you know i mean jerry beania gave him a pretty good run for his money in may and then this month you know adly rutchman and bobby wood junior have been pretty decent but i think it's it's pretty clear that it should be Julio for the Yale rookie of the month again this month and he's he's my MVP

as well for the Mariners in the month of June 280, 3601, 542, 162 WRC plus as he mentioned he led the team in F-4, he led the team in every major, you know, offensive category, seven home runs, 16 RBI, he had five steals. Actually, Dylan Moore had more

stills in the month of June. He had seven, Julio had five, but still, uh, Julio just across the board was fantastic. Do want to give a shout out to Cal Raleigh, though, because Raleigh had a really, really good month of June as well. 163 WRC Plus, 250, 337, 558, 1.3F4, 23.9.9, strikeout percentage, and then walked 10.9% of the time. He had six home runs, 14 RBI. And, I mean, you know, who doesn't love watching a guy nicknamed Big Dumper run around the bases on a low league home run.

So a pretty cool way for Cal to end the month. Yeah, thank you, Skybolt. Interesting. Yeah, very much so. And then, yeah, so. But hey, you know, it counts. And Cal, I think he put one to the warning track in his first at bat too. So he was pretty locked in last night, but he was locked in all month.

I do want to give some love to Jesse Winker here. Yeah. After struggling a ton in April, he was okay in May, put up a 92 WR. you can kind of see things starting to slowly turn in May and in June all he did was at 277 424 468 yeah 167 WRC plus he walked 19 and a half percent of the time yeah yeah he struck out 22 percent of the time which is a little high for him but he walked almost 20 percent of the time so basically I mean he's as many walks of strikeouts and when you do that yeah the 424 on base is I mean yeah that that's huge and so

We're starting to see a little bit more power from Winker as well. I think that's going to come here. So I feel like Jesse is mid breakout, but like, obviously, if he does what he did in June for the rest of the year, he's, you know, going to be a 1.305, 140 WRC plus. Already up to 113 despite finishing April, I think at 65. So, yeah, yeah, Jesse is certainly turning things around. kind of becoming a bit of a team leader as well and he's certainly a Mariners fan favorite. So June probably couldn't have gone any better for Jesse

if you kind of ignore the whole punchy, punchy thing. But yeah, I mean, we'll see how many games he gets. Yeah. E. E. Hennio Suarez also had a really good month of June, 257, 359, 422, 133WRC plus. He was worth 0.9F4. he had four home runs, 14 RBI. Did strike out 13,

or 32.8% of the time, but also walked 12.5% of the time. That will certainly play. He continues to have a really strong season. So let's move on to the pitching here. I think the answer is pretty obvious, but I'll let you answer here. Who's your Sy Young for the month for the Mariners?

Diego Castillo. No, it feels like it has to be Robbie right, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know statistically, I believe Chris Flexen had the better month, but let's use our eyeballs and our brains here for a minute, guys. The run that Ray went on in the last two weeks, last three weeks of the month is, you know, one of the better runs we've seen from the Mariners pitcher since Felix Hernandez. So it was important, too.

You know, he stopped the bleeding in a lot of cases. He was just, he was great. And it's not quite Sy Young, Robbie Ray. Like we didn't quite get last year's version of Robbie Ray, but we got a pretty good version of Robbie Ray. And if that's who he is the rest of the year, you know, Gilbert can kind of bounce back after last night, which I fully expect him to.

Same with Kirby. I mean, if Ray can do that, then you're one like Montess or Castillo addition away from having a rotation that could compete with anybody in the American League. So I got a month like that and because of it he should get the

the pitcher of the month award let's call it yeah yeah he was incredibly impressive 37 strikeouts 25 hits nine earn runs four home runs 13 walks in 37 like I said at 37 innings pitch

219 ERA and then over his last I believe it's 29 a third innings pitched he's only given up two runs he's been incredible, just absolutely sensational. He's been worth every single penny of the contract now, you know, in the month of June. So that's great.

Hopefully that continues. Hopefully it continues to be a top of the rotation, you know, kind of contributor. Because, you know, like we said before or right after that Astros start on June the 6th, you need better from him. And so far, he's given you better. And of course, the opponent quality hasn't been great aside from the Red Sox. when he faced the Red Sox on June 12th. You know, he faced the, after that, he faced, uh, an Angels team without Shoea Oatani or Jared Walsh in their lineup.

Then he faced the Orioles. And he, or, and then he, or sorry, then he faced the athletics and then face the Orioles. So, um, you know, it's, uh, not great, um, not great examples of like, you know, or not really, uh, great opponents to base success off of, but certainly, uh, you know, a good sign that things are starting to swing in the right direction for Ray. You know, we should also talk a little bit about the bullpen here because the bullpen was great. And by the way, Ray is also, if it wasn't clear, Ray was also my, you know,

Salyang. But the bullpen was really good. Andreas Munoz had a really good month. 203 ERA and 12, 12 appearances, 13 in a third innings pitch. He gave up four runs, three earned 20 strikeouts and just walked two. The two walks is a pretty big deal for Munoz. Penn Murphy continued to be really, really solid. Paul Seawald, you know, had some hiccups here and there, had another hiccup last night,

but has been been solid, you know, across the board. Eric Swanson still hasn't given up a run. Diego Castillo was, you know, aside from giving up a run last night, which, I mean, whatever, he's been fantastic pretty much since. that met's outing. So the bullpen's starting to level out. And you're also, you know, you're getting some contributions from the likes of Ken Giles. You know, what we've seen from Giles this far looks like he might actually be able to give you something.

So better days seem to be ahead for the bullpen here, for the Mariners bullpen. And yeah, I mean, this pitching staff is starting to become a real strength of the Mariners. And that's going to be huge once the offense starts to get a little bit more healthy and hopefully add some pieces from the outside as well. So a lot of good things here in the month of June A lot of things to be positive about And hopefully that just carries over into the month of July Because this is going to be huge for the Mariners We've been saying this for the last few weeks on this show

Is that the Mariners have to continue to rattle off winds here They need to take advantage of these favorable matchups And try and just be able to survive these suspensions And injuries as best as they can Until they can add reinforcements So any closing thoughts before we sign off for the week. Go into the next three at least.

And yeah, go do that because, again, we know that you're going to be facing the Padres and probably the Blue Jays without Jesse Winker. So, yeah, go do that. Go get two out of three. Or heck, you know, get greedy. Go take the series. And that way when you go two and four

against the Padres and the Blue Jays, hopefully, it's not that big of a deal. you've already you you're back in a good position so yeah you know sweep the series you get to one game under and and at that point you're probably a buyer uh even if the unless the podre you go oh and six you know which possible is possible so let's avoid all that let's go get four uh this weekend and uh we'll come in on monday or tuesday uh we'll have fun and we'll Yeah, so scheduling a good team maybe. So scheduling wise, we are planning on doing a crossover with Javier Reyes, the hosts of lockdown Padres.

That should be Monday's show barring any sort of scheduling conflict. So be sure to be on the lookout for that. And then we'll be back to our regular show on Tuesday, barring any unforeseen issues. So yeah, just to let you know, that's what's going down. next week. And then next Friday, we are not going to be recording a show. So it's going to be a four show week here

on the Lockdown Marriors podcast next week. So that's going to do it for us here. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. For Colby Pat node, I'm Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow inside the Mariners at Inside Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez,

S, D-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 listen of the day, just like you do here every single day. Now make your second listen to the day, locked on MLB prospects.

Host Lindsey Crosby is a prospect encyclopedia, and he's going deep on the MLB stars of tomorrow. It's free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. And with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball weekend, and we'll see you on the other side. Later.