Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Get K'd 18 Times, Still Win Regardless

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

The Seattle Mariners made history on Sunday, becoming just the fourth team in MLB history to win by four or more runs while also striking out 18 or more times. But at the end of the day, Seattle put up five runs to secure its second straight series win, wrapping up the homestand with a 4-2 record. Colby and Ty discuss the offense's weird day, and the solid outing from Bryce Miller, and take a quick look at the upcoming six-game road trip against Baltimore and New York.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 | @CPat11eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. 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.

Both of the following statements are true. The Seattle Mariners struck out 18 times on Sunday. They also won by four. Baseball. Let's talk about it here on the locked on mariner's postgame show. Colby hit it. You are locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast.

Part of the Locked on podcast network. Your team every day. Ahoy, sailors. It is Sunday, June 18th, 2023. This is Taddy Gonzalez and Colby Patnaud for the Locked on Mariners Postgame show. 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 signing up for our Patreon. You can now get a free seven-day trial to check out the show. The link as well as our social accounts is in the description of this episode. Five to one, the final score from T-Mobile Park. The Mariners take the rubber match against the White Sox. going to talk a little bit about Bryce Miller. But first, let's start with this offense, Colby, which set a little bit of major league history today.

The Mariners became the fourth team in major league history to win by four or more runs while striking out 18 or more times. So a lot of ugly. But then Jared Kelnick busted things open with a basis clearing triple that made the overall score look a lot better, a lot more favorable for the meritor. Because as we all know, wins only count if they win the right way. You always knew this team was going to be historic and record breaking. Right.

Yeah. So the key in your little stat there was the word win, which is the only thing that we care about, especially when you consider how rough of a weekend it was for teams ahead of you, like Toronto, like Baltimore, like the Houston Astros, like really, you picked up a game on everybody except for the Angels at some point this weekend. So yeah, it's a pretty good weekend. It's a good caper to a pretty good homestan. And I already saw the comments like, yeah, well, they could have swept.

They could have won both of these. Yeah, they could have. You know, who else could have swept? Pretty much every team in baseball is going to play, you know, three game series. And there's going to be one game that they lose that they really could have won. I mean, you mentioned the Angels. They had a complete utter meltdown yesterday in Kansas City. Right.

So happens. Baseball is hard. Baseball is very hard. Some days you strike out 18 times and win by four or more. That's right, baby. And that's all that matters. Because at the end of the day, regardless of the strikeouts,

regardless of the fact that they only had two hard hit balls the entire game, they put up a five spot, a five spot. just imagine like imagine two weeks ago complaining that the mariner scored five runs now thankfully i haven't seen a lot of people complain they're taking the win they're running with it fine whatever good good that's the right attitude to have absolutely because a win is a win is a win doesn't really matter how you get it and hey you know what at the end of the day the reason you won this game was because of Julio rodriguez Jared kelnick and bryce miller how fun is that your three like three of

your big young guns and hey you know what let's get you give some credit. Ty knows where I'm going with this to Colton Wong, who finally on June 18th, contributed in a big way to a Mariners victory by being the guy who chased Lance Lynn out of this game with a bunt single, which really set up everything for Kellnick,

because, you know, after that they get him out of the game. You know, JP and Julio, Not great. Not great. I can't. Did JP?

No, JP didn't walk against Lopez. He struck out, right? Against Lopez. He grounded into a force out. That's right. That's right. Julio then strikes out. And you're like, oh, boy, it looks like it's going to be two to one.

And then walk, walk. Trio walked again. Tio walked again. Chills. Teo walked again. And what we've been asking for really in the entire series since the last game against Miami. Sammy, can somebody please, when you get guys on base, can somebody put one in the gap so you can score multiple runs in an inning?

We've been asking for that, the entire, especially with two outs, especially with two outs, find a way to put a ball in the gap, get multiple runs. And today, it just so happened. The Mariners only got themselves two really good opportunities to score runs in this game. And what happened to the two opportunities they had? They both put, they put balls in the gap. Oh my gosh, imagine that. And they score five runs essentially off of those two hits. This was not the game.

I would expect them to do that in. No, because I'm sitting there in the entire time after the, after the two run Julio double going like, can they win this game two to nothing? Can they win this game two to one? Because they are not scoring again. It turns out the answer might have been yes, because they got to the eighth up two to one.

But, you know, obviously it's much better that Jared Kelnick found a way to have the hardest hit ball of the day, did Kellnick after he was having just a rough game struck out a couple more times. Just, just not looking good for Jared. He comes up,

lines it right over the short stops head, right into the gap, RBI triple, game over, essentially at that point. And yeah, it's fun. It's Julio,

who Ty spent a good majority of today, treating like he was Colton Wong for some reason, who came up. Julio, big two RBI double, also had a stolen bacon. and a walk.

Pretty good day for Julio. He read my tweets. Sure, sure. Not a good day for Thai France, but well, you know. Or Teosker. Or Gino. All those guys have been good lately.

So yeah, you give him a pass. Everybody can have a bad game. Cal Raleigh had a nice game too. A couple hits. Nice. Mike Ford is turning back into Mike Ford. Surprise. And Colton Wong, baby.

The biggest hit of the day. That wasn't a. an RBI. That's right. The Bunt single, Colton Wants. Of all things. Yeah, I know. No figure. Beautiful bun. Beautiful bun. Sure. But yeah, you know, you do what you got to do. And such a great

such a great bond. It would make Dave Sims blush. I'm a little sad. He wasn't on the call today. He's on the TV side of things. So. Because I'm sure that was his favorite play of the entire game. I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. I'm sure it was too. But again, at the end of the day, this was kind of the outlier from the Mariners offense. And really, It went back to yesterday's game.

After they chased the starter after five, you're like, this is great. The Mariners are, they're putting so much pressure on these guys. It's a continuation of everything we've seen since the San Diego series. And then after the fifth inning, after you got into that mediocre white socks bullpen,

you just slammed on the brakes and you couldn't do anything. Even when you were given the Phantom Runner at second, two innings in a row, you couldn't score a single run. Yeah, can we not talk about that anyway? Yeah, but I'm just saying it was kind of, it looked like it was a continuation of that. Yeah.

Yesterday in your city, you're going like, well, here we go. We had our little, you know, we had our little two-week run on offense and we couldn't do anything more than 500 with it. That's a bummer. And then, you know, thankfully, Colton Wong stepped up, bunt single. You know, JP didn't do his job, but whatever, you know, ran hard for a double play, I guess. And then, yeah, you just praised Jerry Kellnick on that like two days ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, I expect more from JP. he ruined Colton Wong

Should have scored a run there That's all I'm saying Right But you know It is what it is And at the end of the day The mayor has put up five And nobody cares about the strikeouts

And kind of the one thing that the Mariners did do To set themselves up to win That the White Sox did not do They didn't walk anybody The Mariners only had Seven strikeouts today They walked nobody Second game in the series where they had zero walks

The two that they were, one. And so, you know, the White Sox, despite their 18 strikeouts, they walked four, which isn't too bad. It's not too bad of a number until you consider that all four of those walks came around to score. Right. And that's the ball game.

So, yeah, a weird game, certainly for the Mariners and one for the record books and in a kind of, you know, just like head tilting way. But at the end of the day, it's a win. And the Mariners win both series, you know, at home before they go off. on this tough road trip so you take it you bank it you don't apologize for it and you picked up a couple games on some teams that you're chasing in a while you're only three games back right now of a playoff spot baseball so did boston beat new york i it's one to one so gotcha you could be oh sunday night baseball of course it's boston versus new york even alix cora doesn't like that

he said it's getting to be a bit much like yep i would love to play on a sunday night baseball game but have the mariners done that since we started recording together i don't think they've done it since the cubs game the steve czechic wild pitch game which is 2016 i think that was sunday night baseball right that wasn't like another like primetime ESPN game i'm pretty sure that was sunday night baseball yeah i think that's the last time i think that's the last time like they've played on ESPN since then but that's like opening night whatever i mean teams 1.99 games and back-to-back ears you think you can find them one slot on sunday night baseball but whatever yeah especially early in the season like when the hype was still like very very much present yeah

uh yeah so in conclusion the destination great the journey pretty ugly this is definitely not the formula moving forward this is not it but we will take it everybody knows the destination is the prize it's not the journey. Come on. Sure. Come on. Tell you what, if I told you the mayor's, we're going to score five runs every single night, but strike out 18 times every single night, you take it. Sure. Yeah. You take it. So yeah. Yeah, it was ugly, but dubs for days.

I should probably start trashing players more on Twitter. And by trashing, I mean just saying like the facts, you know, the facts. In your own, you know, biased way, sure. I mean, literally just posted numbers with the Julio tweet. Just numbers. Numbers that exist that you can find. You take away the best week of his year and he's not been very good. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you know, which we do. One week out of three months. One week out of three months. You just take that out. Yeah. One week out of, you know, 12. Totally fair. Totally fair.

Did you take out his worst week, too? Didn't think so. I could. I could. If you want me to, it's still look bad. It probably looks like his normal slash line if he did that. So like his actual slash line. line right now. Oh yeah yeah which is yeah it's about lead average yeah yeah slightly above league average yeah

hey good day for Julio though uh parking that ball in the gap that was massive um and that seemed like some of the mirrors desperately needed like that that was all they were going to get uh fortunately jerry comes through with the basis clearing triple and uh they're able to pull away there and possibly save paul sewald from a third straight day pitching so that was that was huge as well you know he was already up and hot so kind of counts as using them anyways but whatever yeah i mean i guess no no stress of the the actual high leverage pitches but yeah yeah yeah after he had a rough one yesterday yeah yeah so that was that was pretty big all right um we're going to stick with pitching here we're going to talk about bryce miller he was uh really really solid today so

we're going to go over his start in just a moment but first a reminder this episode of the locked on mirrors post game show it's brought to you by eBay Motors. For a championship team, it's all about making sure every player is a perfect fit. It's the same when it comes to your vehicle. Every part needs to fit just right. So the next time you need parts and accessories, head on over to eBay Motors. With eBay guaranteed fit, you can be sure every part you need fits right the first time around.

Just add your ride to my garage and look for the green check to know the part will fit or your money back. Because just like in sports confidence is the name of the game when you shop on eBay Motors. And with over 122 million parts to choose from, you'll be back in the game. no time. After all, it's easy to bring home a win when the right parts are guaranteed. Get the right parts, the right fit, and the right prices on eBay motors.com. eBay motors.com, let's ride. eBay guaranteed fit, only available to U.S. customers, eligible items. Only exclusions apply. And you're listening to the Lockdown Marys Postgame show. Thank you again for making us. You are first, listen after the Marys 5 to 1 win over the Chicago

White Sox. Colby, are you frozen or are you just sitting still? I cannot tell and I'm incredibly concerned that we've lost connection with one another. Do you have disconnected? Or maybe you're lagging. I hear you now. I hear you. You're making noise, but you are not moving on my end.

So I'm going to try and ramble here for a quick second and hope that your internet figures itself out. Let's go over Bryce Miller's numbers as we hope that. that Colby's connection gets its stuff together. All right. So Bryce Miller today, and that's amazing what I just did. I just went on Friday's game. So we're just all over the place right now on the Lockdown Mariners Postgame show.

However, I am getting today's game up so I can read you, Bryce Miller's stat line. All right, here we go. I got it. We're good now. Seven innings pitch. Four hits allowed, just one earned run, six strikeouts, just no walks. He did give up quite a few hard hit balls 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 hard hit balls.

But he was able to get through this thing relatively clean. And Colby, I think you're back now. So, yay, we did it. You just heard the numbers that I listed here from Miller. What did you think about his afternoon today? It was interesting. I don't want to say that he was really good. But then again, that might just be because I'm comparing.

him to Lance Lynn, who was incredible. But just eight whiffs today from Miller, although he did get six strikeouts, which is a pretty nice number for him. What was interesting about Miller is that we talked about this after Friday Nights win that the Mariners very clearly had a plan that they were going to try and slider the Chicago White Sox to death. And tonight was really the first game that Miller was successful.

where he didn't, I don't want to say overly rely on the fastball, but he only threw it 59% of the time tonight. The slider was his number one secondary pitch. He threw 26 times, 31% of his pitches were the slider in this game. He also threw what is credited with five sweepers. And so at the end of the day, essentially Miller was 59% fastball, 40% you know,

breaking ball or off speed. So it was much more of an off speed mix today from Miller. Didn't get a ton of wifts. He did get, you know, seven wifts on the fastball, but on 32 swings. Nine called strikes. It's a pretty good number on that pitch.

And as has become the case with Bryce Miller, a lot of foul balls. That is the, that is the kind of side effect of throwing this high, high spin rate fastball when hitters know it's coming. is they're not really going to be able to square it up much, but they are going to be able to foul it off.

And today Miller was able to use his off-speed stuff to kind of put hitters away, avoid the long at-bats, which has sometimes been an issue with Miller. You only threw 85 pitches through 7. I thought maybe there was a shot they put him back out there for the 8th, considering how tough the bullpen has had at the last few days. Obviously, Munoz is not at a spot where they're going to use him three days in a row.

And I don't think they want to do that with Brash still. They were apparently willing to do it with Seawald, which I think speaks to how important the Mariners thought this game was for them. Thankfully, they didn't have to. But yeah, the bullpen wasn't in great shape. So I thought maybe they might push Miller out there for the eighth with 85 pitches. They didn't. It ended up being the right decision.

And Miller's day, stats wise, really good. A few too many hard hit balls, sure, but he didn't walk anybody. That's the big one. Didn't get a lot of whiffs, which is kind of. of like our go-to. He only had a 15% whiff rate today, which is very low. But he did get, you know, a handful of called strikes and foul balls, while they're certainly not whiffs, they're not all foul balls are created equal either. If you foul pitch straight back, obviously that's different than if you barely get a piece of one and you nub it down the line.

But foul balls are at the end of the day, they are strikes without consequences. They are, you know, strikes that cannot possibly hurt you. So foul balls are, uh, are always, always going to be part of Miller in his profile until he sharpens up those sliders or the curveball and he can get more whiffs on those pitches. But overall today, I thought he was pretty good. Fastball velocity right where you wanted it to be. And it was just more of a mix. It's kind of funny here. Apparently, Bryce Miller threw a curveball that had a maximum of 61 inch vertical break, which I'm not sure how that works. it's apparently one below like one inch below his his average for the year so I'm not sure what's going on with that but yeah I thought the the slider today was actually pretty good it was out of the middle of the plate for the most part and again no walks that's the key for price Miller he's probably not ever going to be well at least not until he gets the breaking stuff ready he's not going to be a nine k per nine type of guy against most teams so six strikeouts

through seven innings is a pretty good number for him. And the fastball was what you wanted it to be out of the middle of the plate. And we saw more of the slider and the sweeper than we ever have. So overall, you know, it's tough to call it a great night when you watch what Lance Lynn did on the other side. But also, we could just call it straight up right now. Bryce Miller outpitched Lance Lynn. As crazy as it is, that is the case. Let's be fair here.

I mean, Lynn was great. get me wrong. The mayor has also helped him out a little bit, at least a little bit today. I think it's fair to say that the mayor has helped him out a little. Lynn was really good, though. He was really good. Like he was on the corner. He was looking to trading for him by him. By the way. Yeah. I'm going to continue to pound that table. But yeah. All right. In my panic that I thought we were going to lose our recording here with your whole internet situation. I forgot to mention the mayor is going out on the road. they begin with the Yankees

starting tomorrow, Yankee Stadium you can catch all the action on the mayor's hometown broadcast with Sirius XMVee, the SXM app. I was really interested to see if Miller would end up throwing more sliders in this one because again, we talked about it on Friday about just how bad

this White Sox team was against the slider. But we've seen in the past where it would make sense for Miller to throw more breaking balls, but he's just like screw you, I'm throwing the fastball. And so I thought maybe we were just going to get that again today. So I was pleasantly surprised to see him use the slider and use it effectively today as well. So that was good.

Like you mentioned, all the hard hit balls, that's not really typical for him. You know, we've seen him somehow find a way to generate a lot of weak contact, especially with that fastball despite the high velocity they throws it at. So that just seems like, you know, a good, day overall for the white sox offense they weren't able to you know score runs but they uh they did have some pretty good at bats against him and they were able to you know put together some good contact here but uh you know fortunately it didn't hurt the mariners in the end so um you know overall i i feel pretty good about miller's start i feel about it i feel roughly the same way i felt about his

last start against miami where good could be better six blocks last time out so well yeah the zero is the big number. That's obviously the, you know, that's the big difference here. But still, you know, a situation where it's like,

good, could have been better, but we'll absolutely take that, especially for a rookie making what his ninth career start at the major league level. So, yeah. Yeah,

he was solid. Justin Topa, kind of the, the forgotten guy and all, all the, yeah, the hoop lot of day. He was really good.

Here's my favorite little number for you. He threw just three fast balls. three two seamers all were for called strikes they didn't swing at it they were all strikes every time he threw that pitch it was a strike including a pitch that ended up on pitching ninja a two seam fastball to ben attendee that had a 21 inch run to it that I kid you not started right at the inside corner and was on the outer third of the plate before it hit as or as it hit Raleigh's glove. So yeah, go go check out that pitch. If you guys haven't seen it on Pitching Ninja's Twitter feed. Topo was really good today and continues to be just a really solid find. And, you know,

we saw Munoz looked really good since his return. He's Prash is getting there. He's getting a lot better. He's walking fewer guys, certainly. And Seawald, you know, minus the hiccup he had yesterday has just been all-star quality for the entire year. So, yeah, can we real quick, real quick, Can we not blame yesterday's loss on Paul Seawald? Oh, absolutely not. It's on the offense. Yeah, yeah. 100%.

Seawald shouldn't have even been in that situation to be going with. So it's a bummer. It happens to the best of them. But yeah, the Mariners bullpen appears to be in pretty good shape as they head off on the road. They have the off day tomorrow, which can really help. And again, they didn't use Munoz brash or. Oh, sorry. They're off tomorrow?

Yes. My bad. Okay. So Tuesday through Thursday, you can catch the Mayors and the Yankees on the mayor's hometown broadcast with serious x-em-v yeah yes correct didn't want to derail the entire show for that but yeah sure um so yeah obviously the mayor is uh they're gonna have all their high leverage guys when they go to new york so that's going to be great uh they'll all have multiple days off uh when they get there as well thanks to the off day and thanks really to jason topa and you know jared kelmock so uh it was uh it was a

good day for the mariners pitching staff overall and just a pretty good home stand so uh Yeah, you know, they've won two series in a row. That's great. They're going on the road here. I think we're about to talk about, you know, what our expectations are for that in just a minute. But yeah, overall, it's still a really good homestanding. Yeah, it's a little frustrating that they could have won, you know, one of the two games that they lost or maybe probably even both of them. They could have won or should have won.

But at the end of the day, it's four and two against, you know, one of the better teams in the National League right now. and you took care of business against a bad Chicago White Sox roster. You did what you had to do there. And he went two out of three. So yeah, you do that the rest of the year. You're going to be in the playoffs. So we'll see what kind of steps they can make on the road. You're listening to the lockdown Mariners postgame show.

Thank you again for making us your first listen after the mayor is five to one win over the Chicago White Sox again starting Tuesday. Not tomorrow. Tuesday you can catch the Mariners and the Yankees on the mayor's hometown broad. with Sirius XM via the SXM app. This is a big road trip. This is a very big road trip. Do you have a disaster? Could derail things completely.

Because we're now at the point where every win, every loss matters in the grand scheme of things of how you approach the deadline, which the Mariners, if, even if they get on a nice little run here, they are going to need some help. and depending on if there is a run, how good that run is, that'll determine how aggressive they get at the deadline

and addressing some of their needs. So we can talk all we want about what we hope happens on this road trip. But Colby, what needs to happen on this road trip? Well, the first thing that needs to happen is you guys need to send us your all-star ballots voting for JP with the hashtag, JP 4 ASG You can send it to us on Twitter or email And you will be entered to win

A lovely Luis Castillo autograph card And if JP actually makes it to the All Star game Even as a replacement Then we will be given away Kind of a team box type of thing That's going to be fun to put together The second thing that needs to happen Is we need your questions for Mailbag Monday

Send them to us on Twitter After I sent out the tweet Or via email We're going to get a special priority To the email questions since you guys have rocked out the JP All-Star vote via email, which is a bit surprising. So yeah, we'll make sure you send us those questions.

What we, as for what needs to happen on this road trip or what we think will happen, you have to win one of these series. Like that's just, you have to win one. It doesn't matter much which one it is, but you have to, you have to. Like, you can't go one and two and one and two in these series. You have to find a way to go three and three on this road. trip and you know you can sit it's three and three two and four what's the difference well it's two

games under 500 as you come back home versus being 500 again um that could you want to go four and two or five and one or six no those are all bonuses those are great but you have to find a way to win one of these series and you can't get swept um i i guess you could get swept and then sweep the other series but at the end of the day you have to go three and three um to kind of build any kind of momentum and And the road has been really tough for the Mariners. You know, in the last home stand before the last road trip, they won seven of 10. This last time they won four of six. They're starting to play better at home.

That's great. And then they went on the road and it was a disaster. You have to avoid it, especially since you're chasing these teams. You can't afford to hemorrhage games against them. And you want to keep your momentum going. So I think you have to go through your three. I just, I think you have to find a way. Have to.

Absolutely have to because, you know, you had an opportunity here. you maybe be six and a half back of first place exiting this weekend and instead you are eight and a half back which is where you were entering this weekend series you did pick up a couple games on houston but again you know can you get to five back before they all start break i think that would be huge there's still a chance but you're going to have to do some damage on this road trip um yeah i mean like look, if they go two and four, they're not out of it. No. But you're at the point now where it's not enough to just, you know, win series.

Because it's not like if you just win series for every series for the rest of the year after this road trip, you're still going to end up with 90 wins. Fine, cool, whatever. But you might not end up with the best team you could possibly have because Jerry and Justin are going to look at this squad and say, look, we got to be realistic about where we are. We could catch fire. We could, you know, If we don't win,

eight in a row or something like that. Let's not beat around the bush here. Being able to feasibly compete for the division changes things a lot. Yeah. If you can justify that, if you can talk yourself into still making a run and winning the division,

that changes a lot of things. That changes how you approach the deadline as opposed to just going for another wildcard birth, which still matters, but it might not incentivize the mariners to maybe pay a dollar, 10 on a player instead of just a dollar on another guy. It also eliminates rentals because why on earth would you go pay the $130 or $1.30 on the dollar for Jock Peterson, even though the Giants are on fire right now, they're

certainly not selling. They're not trading. Yeah, yeah. But just hypothetically, just because it's a name we've talked about. You're not going to go do that if the payoff is maybe you get the last wild card. You're not going to make that type of move. now if it's we feel good we're going to get into the wildcard game and we have a shot to chase down the the rangers or whoever it is right then maybe you do go home and you pay that a little bit extra to go

get a rental like that so yeah it's an important road trip because i'll tell you what if they go four and two somehow if they win both of these series the narrative flips so much from if they go two and four and even if they go three and three because now you're two games up you're coming back you get to play washington i think it is uh before you play tampa who certainly slowing down based off of where they were. Still a very dangerous team, but nowhere near at the pace they were in April and May. So you have a shot there to kind of build momentum towards the All-Star break before you go back out on the road. So the difference between three and three and three and three is safe, right?

It's where you need to be. And it's a huge difference between two and four and four and two. It's a two game swing. And two games could make the difference between the Mariners, like you said, being aggressive at the deadline. or kind of being a little bit more cautious than we want them to be, particularly on the rental market. So we'll see where it all goes from here. But yeah, it's a big road trip, certainly.

And again, I think you have to avoid disaster, which means you have to go three and three. Again, two and four doesn't knock you out, but it's another uphill climb because now you have to win two series or sweep the nationals to get back above 500. And you don't want to keep playing, you know, yo-yo with this 500 mark because it's going to put you in an awkward position where maybe we buy, maybe we sell, maybe we do both, maybe we only go a little bit forward.

We just stand pat. Yeah, like you have to clear this gap here between you and 500 and it's going to be tough to do it on this road trip, but you can't go back down the hill and then have to go back up the hill to get back to 500 every single time you go on the road. That's just not going to work. Yeah, being 500 is the worst possible place to be. you know, approaching the trade deadline. So, you're 500 and your three games back of the wild card, but you have four teams to pass

like they do right now. What do you do? Yeah. Yeah. My focus is, and maybe I'm playing a losing game here, but my focus is still the division right now. I think it is attainable. I think they can get on a run and compete for it.

Sure. But that run has to start soon. It has to start soon. Right. And again, what really matters here is, you know, building enough confidence that you can do that, that you can make that run, that you can make that comeback and chase down the Rangers and the Angels and the Astros, because that completely and ultimately dictates your aggressiveness or lack thereof at the deadline.

Yeah. And in the meantime, the wild card is keeping you right where you're within shouting distance. And playoffs are better than no playoffs. So would you like to win that? the division, sure, where we kind of hoping this would be the year you take that jump? Sure. Is it any of the world of you don't take that jump? No. Is it a bit disappointing? Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, again, it's important for me, to me, to get in the wild card, you just have to play good ball. 500 on the road when your series at home. To win the division, I think you're going to have to reel off an eight, nine game win streak or something like that at some point. And I don't know if they're capable of doing that, but I also don't know if they're not

capable because this team continues to just absolutely flummox me I think the thing that we should just stop doing with this team is assume right because like you know this weekend right we assumed that or at least

I did that they they had it figured out offensively you know we had seen a good you know week and a half two weeks of this and then you know the last I don't know before that triple the last 14 innings had looked terrible.

It looked like they were back to ground zero basically. And then the triple happens. And now we feel a lot better. And we'll see if they can maintain that momentum going into New York. Now, Aaron Judge is not supposed to play in this series. We'll see if he magically appears somehow. I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah.

Same, same, man. But there's an opportunity there. um, Aaron, the Yankees without Aaron judge is a lot less scary than with Aaron judge. So I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that. So this time you get Cole where you didn't last time, but whatever. Marrizona Garrett Cole.

Sure. Especially six innings in the first. Jared Jared Jerd Jernickhones. Oh, you know what? We're probably going to get an appearance from the Seattle Marinus guy again. Uh, your favorite. it. That'll do it.

Thanks for following. Thanks for joining us on Locked on Maraniz. I hate you. Yeah. So, you know, that guy to do our outro. I'm good. I'll pass. I'll pass. Let us know in the comments if you want us to get the

guy with the Seattle Marinas thing to get him to do our outro. Please let us know. Please don't. Let us know. Keep your comments to yourself. That's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us on Lockdown Mariners. Colby Paddode.

I'm Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez. This is C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pad 11. That's C-P-A-T-1-F. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well at Lockdown Mariners. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making us your first listen.

Be sure to get us your questions for tomorrow, Mailbag Monday. Email us at Lockdown Mariner. at gmail.com tweet at us at lo underscore mariners have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you tomorrow peace go mariners