Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Get Set For First Showdown With New-Look Rangers

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode preview the Mariners' upcoming series with the Rangers and tell you all you need to know about new Mariners RHP Riley O'Brien.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/BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!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.

We're back at it. Mariner's kicking off a three-game set against the Rangers tonight at T-Mobile Park. Will Robbie Ray get back on track in his third start as a mariner will discuss and also take a look at new M's pitcher Riley O'Brien here on today's episode of Lockdown Mariners. Colby hit it. Locked-on Mariners, your daily Seattle Mariners podcast, part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day. It is Tuesday, April 19, 20, 22, and this is the Locked on. Mariner's Podcast. 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, Taday Gonzalez. Join, as always, by my co-host. Colby Pat. Now, be sure to follow the show on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-Norsor-N-E and you can follow me at Dan Gonzalez at C-A-N-E-N-Z-L-Z. And Colby at C-Pat-E-A-T-1. Be sure to 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 and if this is your first time joining us here welcome to the show if you like what you here give us a follow or subscribe wherever you're listening to this and if you're watching us on youtube hit the subscribe button turn on the notification bell give this video a thumbs up and tell your friends to come check us out we greatly appreciate it so again i am on my wife's laptop i'm so haven't gotten a charger for my laptop. So it's just sitting here dead and you're going to have to deal with the audio quality again today.

Hopefully, hopefully, if Amazon actually, you know, gets their stuff all in order here, we might actually have a normal sounding show for you tomorrow. But for now, going to have to deal with this. With that out of the way, let's get into this upcoming three games set with the Texas Rangers, who are two and seven after a pretty big offseason. and for them, obviously, they added Marcus Simeon and Corey Seeger and John Gray, who we're going to see tonight. But right now, the Rangers are actually being led by Jonahheim, resident Mariners Killer, who right now is hitting 400, 471, 800. And Nathaniel Lowe is also off to a strong start.

He's hitting 371, 421, 429. Pitching hasn't been great for the Rangers this far, but, yeah, they're going to be. They are a talented team who are probably going to give the Mariners some fits over the course of this year. They gave them some fits last year, and they've obviously improved quite a bit this year. Colby, what are you expecting to see from the Rangers to start this thing off? I would say I'm expecting the Rangers to be pretty annoying more than anything else. Obviously, again, Seeger and Simeon, it's a great start, and Lowe is certainly a really interesting player. Of course, fan favor, Brad Miller will be back in the ballpark.

you know, the underrated Brad Miller. And hey, let's not forget about Mitch Garber, who's a very dangerous catcher. And I don't think we have to remind Mariner fans about Jonah Heim after last year. So this is a team that you can get to them, if you can get to their bullpen. It's been a rough go of it so far for the Rangers bullpen. John Gray, who gets to start tonight, he's making a second start. When four innings in his first start, kind of struggled with. control a little bit.

The underlying numbers in that start work better than the overall numbers. And Gray has very good stuff. So that'll be a bit of a challenge for Seattle. It's, gray might have the second best stuff the Mariners have seen so far this, this year behind Burlander. But it's still hitable. It's nothing the Mariners haven't seen yet.

but I would still expect the Rangers to score some runs in this series. I would expect them to be annoying and play the Mariners very, very tough over the next three games. Thankfully, the Mariners do have their top three guys slated to start these games. And, you know, hopefully they can come away and take two out of three at least. But hey, maybe get greedy and try and go for a sweep here. Yeah, it's certainly a sweepable series. It's certainly a winnable series. at the very least.

But like you said, like I said, the Rangers can tend to be very annoying. The Mariners, correct me if I'm wrong, went 13 and 6 against them last year, and it still felt like they didn't really beat them as much. It didn't really feel like they dominated that series as much as the record indicates. But hopefully, hopefully those results follow this year and start with a good series starting in the night. Marcus Simeon, who the Mariners obviously coveted quite a bit this offseason. He was kind of their first big target of the offseason.

They made a formal offer to him of five years. Roughly around $125 million, I believe, was the word. He ended up signing a seven-year deal with the Rangers instead. This is a guy that, of course, you know, finished top three in MVP voting this past year with the Blue Jays. Off to a slow start right now, though. Through first nine games of the year, he is slashing 161, 128, 190 with a WRC plus of eight. That ranks second to worse on the Rangers right now.

So, semi-in off to a slow start. Corey Seeger's been a bit better. He's been pretty much Corey Seeger for the most part. 294, 351, 412. He has one home run, striking out less than 20% of the time, it's Corey Seeger. He looks like Corey Seeger. And Mitch Garber has been solid as well. This is actually a team that's hitting quite a bit right now. You look at their lineup right now. They have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight guys right now with a WRC plus over a hundred.

So this offense, at the very least, is going to wreak some havoc for the Mariners. But like you said, if the Mariners can get to this rotation and if they can get into the bullpen, most importantly, they should be off. to a pretty good stuff. Yeah, you know, the Rangers bullpen has already accumulated a negative 0.7 more. They've almost been worth, they almost cost Rangers a win by themselves, just, you know, a few games into the season. Most surprisingly, they lead major league baseball in home run to fly ball rate by a pretty astonishingly high number. 25.6 of the fly balls allowed by the Rangers bullpen have left the ballpark.

Second place in the, in Major League Baseball are the Los Angeles of Anaheim, of course, 18.9%. So the Rangers have given up a lot of hard contact. The Rangers bullpen has given up a lot of hard contact, giving up quite a few big flies. It's not very good. It's not very deep. This is one of the things we talked about when we kind of previewed the, the Rangers in our ALS round table. Yeah, they did a lot of heavy lifting,

but the fringes of this roster are not very good, particularly the bullpen. You can kind of work your way around this lineup without too much issue as long as you're smart with your, with your pitches. So yeah, it's just, it's one of those things where the Rangers are certainly going to be better than they were last year,

but it's not a series that you can just assume anything. You're going to have to, you know, play, you're going to have to play well because the Rangers are probably still a 75 win team, but it's, I mean, it's a dangerous 75 with the offense and with some of the guys in the rotation. They do have some decent arms in the rotation. The Mariners are going to see that their top three. But it starts tonight with John Gray, maybe get him out of the game a little early. Go to work on that bullpen and set yourself up for game two and three.

So we'll talk about tonight's game in just a moment. him what, you know, Robbie Ray is going to bring to the table, hopefully, and his first home start as a mariner and, you know, how the Mariners are going to attack John Gray, etc., etc. Just a moment, real quick. A reminder, this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by betonline.net. Betonline.net is your number one source for all your betting stats and sports info. Find all of the latest sports developments league reviews and news, including this year's basketball playoffs and the start of the major league.

baseball season. Bet online is your continued source for all your sporting wagering information from live betting to playoffs, e-sports, and more. So head to the website today or use your mobile device to learn more about the trends in action. Bet online where the game starts. You're listening to Lockdown Mariners. Thank you again for making us your first listen of the day for your next listen. Check out the Lockdown Now podcast. There are recaps of MLB games with analysis from our local experts, including myself, taking fans through the season like no other network. It is free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. So let's get into tonight's game.

We got John Gray versus Robbie Ray. What is the stat that Alex Meyer of the Mariners Data Department? What was that stat that he read off? Tonight will be the Robbie Ray versus John Gray matchup. will be the first Seattle Mariners game since 2016, where the starting pitcher's names rhyme. The previous matchup that met that criteria was Wade Miley versus Drew Smiley back in May of 2016. So yeah, historical night.

This isn't something you see very often. Very big, very big. Yes, Miley versus Smiley. Two Mariners legends, of course. as we all know. For different reasons. Legends of the Depoto era. I know anytime that someone says Drew Smiley's name,

you get a little bit sad. Just a tiny bit. Freaking Jim Leeland. Yeah, soggy arm. Shout out to Alex Mayer, though. Some of the numbers and some of the stats that he posts are something that you just wouldn't think of, right? You wouldn't think to ever search that,

including what you just read off. Check him out. Alex Mayer 34 on Twitter. He's the baseball station coordinator over there for the mariner. So let's get into Robbie Ray. Obviously, you know, he pitched in the cold in Minnesota and then pitched in the middle of a typhoon in Chicago. And it hasn't gone so well for him, of course. What are you hoping to see out of Ray in his first home start as a C.L.

A little more velocity would be nice. It's not a concern yet, but 90-91. is not who Robbie Ray is. And it really puts more emphasis on that slider, which hasn't been as sharp. It's more of a control thing with the slider right now. I know Ray has offered explanations as to why the velocity and the command aren't quite where they need to be. Call them excuses, whatever you want to call them. But yeah, obviously, you know, the cold and the short and spring training and then obviously the typhoon in Chicago that he had to try to pitch through.

I mean, those are fairly legitimate reasons. So tonight I'd like to see the velocity more 93, 94. And honestly, more than anything, I want to see him avoid walks. You know, it was a big reason for his breakout last year. And this year, it hasn't been a major issue for him. But it hasn't been as crisp as it was last year. year. So I want to see him pound the strike zone with a little bit better velocity. Maybe get a few of those backfoot sliders to actually land. I think he's only gotten two of

that particular pitch to land for a strike three this year. And again, so it would be nice to see Ray go out there tonight and just kind of give six innings strike out more than a batter per nine with some decent velocity. Because, you know, so far, Robbie Ray has been okay. But he hasn't been what he was last year and not really all that close. So it would be nice to see him get a little bit closer to that. And I think improved fastball velocity and a little bit better slider command. We'll take care of everything else. Yeah, it would be nice to see a tick up or two on the velocity and see that slider start to work a little bit more. What about the Mariners' offense going up against John Gray? Obviously, this team scored 18 runs in two of its last

three games. Do you think that's going to continue against Gray and this Ranger's staff? Yeah, it's a little bit tough to say Gray has really. good stuff. We've talked about this in the first segment. Yeah, he's got really good stuff. He not a huge strikeout guy despite the stuff, but he is a pretty, you know, hitable pitcher, let's say. Not that he won't strike anybody out. It's a little bit above league average, but it's nothing remarkable. The fastball is kind of his go-to. He's a fastball slider pitcher. at least he wasn't his first start. That's kind of what he lives on.

It's, you know, 85% of his pitches last year were fastball or slider. That's what he likes to work with. The slider got hit a little bit in his first start fastball, not so much. So when you're going up against this guy, it's a low spin rate fastball, too. There's not a lot of jump on it. So you really want to get after the fastball. It's a hitable pitch. It's pretty straight.

The velocity isn't anything incredible. So you want to hunt the fastball early and try and avoid the slider. But those are really his two pitches. So you want to kind of keep your strategy, your game plan that you've used for the last week or so. But you have to be ready to jump on the fastball. He's going to give it to you early in the count. And Gray will do that. So it's a pretty good challenge for the Mariners because, like I said, the stuff is fairly good.

But it is hitable, particularly if Gray does not have pinpoint control, which is never really been his forte. He throws strikes, he throws strikes, but he doesn't have great command, right? It's just different. So you want to jump on that fastball if you get it early. And, you know, stop, don't chase, don't chase. Make him throw strikes to you, and he will,

and just jump on that fastball. Don't miss the fastball. Yeah, absolutely. You got to take advantage of those opportunities that he's ultimately going to give you. Dane Dunning versus Logan Gilbert in game two, Marco Gonzalez versus Taylor Hearn and game three. Let's get your take to Rake tonight for the Mariners.

Who do you feel? I'm going to go. I think Jesse Winker is getting his first one tonight. He's pretty close the last few days. You know, been a frustrating star for him, but he got the day off yesterday, kind of clear his head. Gray's a pretty good matchup for him. We're going to go with Jesse Winker.

I think he gets his first ball with the year tonight. Nice. I like it. That's who I was going to go with if you took my guy. But I'm going to go Jared Kelnick here. That was my second choice. Yeah, yeah. He's been having better quality at bats.

He's, you know, he's taking unfavorable pitches. He's, you know, just kind of throwing those in the trash and take him what the, what the opposing pitcher gives them. And he's taking advantage of those balls a little bit better. now and making some better contact. So I'm looking for Kelnick to have a pretty big night tonight. Obviously missed that home run just by a few feet off of Verlander. I think he's going to get into one tonight, maybe also out of double.

So I'm going to go two for four for Kelnick tonight. What is he hitting in the seven hole tonight? He's got Julio in front of him and then Toro and Murphy behind him. Kind of a interesting lineup. It's a little bit of a different lineup. You want to read that off real quick? Because I know that you don't like the Julio in the sixth spot idea right now. Yeah, it's just there's a lot of swinging miss right now in that 6-7 spot.

It's Frazier hitting leadoff playing second. France, Winker, Suarez is at third tonight. Crawford's playing shortstop. Then in the 6th, we have Julio Rodriguez, 7 we have Kelnick. Toro is D-A-ching and hitting eighth and Tom Murphy is hitting ninth. Yeah, that's a lot of, you know, swing and miss right there with Julio and Calmic right now. So I would have hit Toro between at least one of them to kind of try and have some contact odds in there. But, you know, the Marys might just like the matchup or they might like what they saw from Julio and Jared and they're going to jump them.

And it's not like Toro is hitting a ton right now either. So, I mean, maybe even put Murphy ahead of Toro. I don't really care all that much. It's just I wouldn't, I don't like the high strikeout guys to be bunched together. And when you talk about Suarez being broken up by Crawford before he gets to Julio, I feel like they should have done that with Toro hitting between Rodriguez and Kelnick. But it should be fine. The Mariners certainly know more than I do.

And they probably have some numbers and some analytics that suggest that Rodriguez and Kellnick should have some success against John Gray. Yeah. And Julio is making a lot of hard contact right now when he is getting the bat on the ball. Ninety-th percentile right now and hard hit rate. And striking out a lot too. Striking out a lot as well. Some of those, not of his fault, of course. But there's also been some pretty big bad swings and misses, yeah, as well.

Yeah. It's been the typical abs and flows of a rookie. Still a lot of 02-1-2 count. for yeah yeah it would be nice to see him get into more favorable counts we'll be able to work those and do some damage out of those yeah because we know that the uh the power is there yeah absolutely side note um i know we got to run to our third segment but side note on julio i think one of the things that's a good sign that we're not talking about is that despite the string of bad calls going against him julio has not chased that pitch he's been very disciplined yeah he's not swinging at it

he's not expanding his zone to try and get it. That's pretty impressive for a young guy in his first big league stint. He's, you know, he's kind of getting screwed over on some of these pitches. They're just off the outside corner, but they're pitchers pitches. And Julio can't really do a ton with them. So he's not swinging at them. And I think that's a pretty good sign for his long-term success, that he's remaining disciplined, even in the face of adversity. Yeah.

It's, he's shown some nice growth, some nice maturity here through the first week plus. And so I think the results are eventually going to come for Julio. Maybe tonight. Maybe tonight. We'll see. All right. Well, chills. DePoto did it again.

He made a trade over the weekend. And we haven't had a chance to talk about it. So we're going to talk about it. The Mariners acquired Riley O'Brien from the Reds will tell you all you need to know about him in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder. This episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Rock Auto. With the ever-increasing numbers that make some models that sound impossible for you,

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yesterday, but we are getting to it now. Small trade. Small trade with the Cincinnati Reds. Man, DePoto had never made a trade with Reds, and now he's made, what, two? within the last, what, month or so. So look at that. I think there's only three teams now or two teams left that he hasn't traded with, the Rockies, the Angels. Am I missing anyone? Do you know off the top of your head?

Not off the top of my head, but I am surprised that they're even two. Yeah. He's made a lot of trade. It's kind of crazy to think that it's not, that all 30 teams haven't been covered yet. But yeah, so Mariners acquired on Sunday, right-handed pitcher Riley O'Brien from the Red. for a player to be named later or cash.

O'Brien last year in AAA, 100 and 12.2 innings pitch, 9.67Ks per 9, 4.39 walks per 9, 455ERA, 477EERA. He is mostly a fastball curveball guy, 93 to 95 with the fastball, which tops out at 97 curveball. According to Prospects Live, shout out to Joe Doyle. is a 55 and it's arguably his best pitch. Colby, what do you like about the steel? You know, because obviously Jerry Depoto, you know, in these midseason, well, it's not even the midseason, early season, random reliever slash starter acquisitions, at least one of them pops every year.

Do you think O'Brien could be the guy? Yeah, maybe. I mean, he's 27 years old. So he's kind of a little bit too old to be a prospect, but he's got pretty good size. Like he said, the fastball curveball, they're both, they both flash above average. There's some control command issues here. But for the most part, he does a pretty good job with throwing strikes. It's more controlled than command right now, unfortunately.

I know he's a starter, or he was, for Cincinnati last year in AAA. But he is going to be a bullpen option for Jerry Depoto going forward. for Scott's service going forward. He is on the 40-man roster. They did not have to make a move because Mitch Hanigar is on the COVID-I-L, but they are going to have to make a decision when Hanager is back. They'll need to DFA somebody. I don't think it'll be O'Brien.

I can see why Jerry and his analysts are intrigued. There's a little bit of Tomlal-Holmson here. And it's, you know, we'll see. It's one of the shots they take, right? But again, Jerry doesn't take shots just to take shots. There's something about O'Brien that he likes, that somebody in his front office likes. And again, the Marin's track record is so good on the shots that they do take,

particularly in arms like O'Brien, that they're probably not going to be willing to give it up. So I think you might see Matt Cook. He might be the DFA guy. There are some guys that could be transferred to the 60 day IL to clear a spot. nobody all that serious is in danger of losing their 40-man spot for Riley O'Brien, maybe a Donovan Walton type, or, you know, there's a few different relief prospects. Juan Tane could be a guy who's DFA as a result. But, yeah, they liked them enough to trade for them.

They didn't want to try and get them on waivers. And, yeah, there might be some middle relief value here, seventh inning medium leverage type of value here and you never know i mean it's there's a little bit casey sadler here too so uh we'll see what they want to do i'm sure they have an idea in a plan of attack and i would suspect we probably see o'brien at some point this year um if for no other reason then just to cover some innings on maybe on a double header or uh you know you have a little run where a couple of starters only go four and a third on back-to-back days um There is some stuff here to work with.

Yeah, I mean, you definitely have to pay attention now. Whenever Jerry Depoto adds a reliever, whenever he adds an arm of any caliber, you have to pay attention to it because you just never know which of these guys are going to pop. And like you said, he does this for a reason. He doesn't just throw darts aimlessly. It's just that's just not his MO.

That's never been his MO. And clearly the Mariners feel that they've identified something, thing with O'Brien that's going to help take him to the next level. And look, the thing with O'Brien is he only has an inning and a third worth of Major League innings to his name right now. We haven't really seen what he looks like at the Major League level, and they haven't really seen him in a reliever's role. So what does that look like?

What is, you know, can they get more out of the fastball? Can they get more value out of the curveball as a reliever? Because I would assume he's probably not making any starts for the Seattle Mariners unless it's in AAA. or something's gone terribly wrong or something has gone terribly wrong yeah indeed uh local kid by the way born and raised in washington shoreline graduate uh he was drafted by the uh the Tampa Bay raise and ended up making his way over to Cincinnati last year not really sure how that actually happened um but he he was only with the Reds for for one season and now he makes his

way over to the Mariners is a interesting DFA flyer, really, that the Mariners were taken here. He was DFAed on April 13th. And we'll see if they get anything out of him. I wouldn't worry about the player to be named later. If there is a player to be named later, there's also the possibility that's cash. And the cash could be, I mean, you know, we've seen the Mariners acquire guys for $1 before. So who knows what the cash could be on that. Shout out to Tony Zick.

the way. Yes. Tony's like they also got, they got like a day I think they got for a dollar. Yeah, David McKay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the player to be named later is going to be no better than Damien Cassetta Stubbs type of guy. They traded for Jake Bowers or maybe a Nick Wells who they traded for Austin Adams. It's going to be somebody who's probably a little bit advanced in age for the current

level they're playing in. or it's just lost some of their luster. So it's not going to be anything too big if it is a player. Fun note, you wondered how he got to Cincinnati. He was traded by the race to the Reds on August 28th of 2020. He was one of the last waiver-wire August trades in Major League history, at least for now. And he was traded for Cody Reed. Cody Reed.

All right. Yes. So that's how he made it. I believe. Interesting. Interesting. What does Cody Reed doing for the race? Is he still on their roster contributing?

He is not on the roster right now. He is a career negative one pitcher, war pitcher, B-war. But last year, he appeared in 12 games at a 372 ERA. Only nine innings pitched. 5.6 based on ball per 9 is 6.5 strikeout for 9. It has been a struggle here. 2018 appears to be kind of the outlier for Cody Reed. Yeah.

But you didn't think we were going to talk about Cody Reed today. No, no, most certainly not. But you know us. We love talking about trade trees here on Lockdown Mariners and CTZ. We love that stuff. We were complete dweeps. That is going to do it for our show, though. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast.

We will be back to normal tomorrow. It's been an annoying last couple of days. But hopefully audio and everything will be back in its normal state by tomorrow afternoon, when we will reconvene here on Lockedown Mariners. Hopefully we'll also have an episode of Control the Zone out on Patreon for those of you who are subscribed. And if you haven't subscribed already, go to patreon.com. forward slash control the zone for more information on that. So for Colby Pat node, I'm tiny Gonzalez.

Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez. That's D-A-N-E, G and Z-L-Z, and Colby at C-P-E-Pat 11. That's C-P-A-T-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 of the day, Lockdown MLB, where Paul Francis Sullivan and please call him Sully brings you his unique perspective on the major

league's president pass it's free wherever you get your podcast just like us so have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we will see you tomorrow peace