Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - MARINERS POSTCAST: Seattle Mariners BLOW LEAD in loss to Kansas City Royals

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Anders and Chris break down the middle game against the Kansas City Royals for your Seattle Mariners. Bryce Miller pitched well after allowing a three-run homer to Salvador Perez. Geno Suarez was excellent, and J.P. Crawford hit a massive eighth-inning homer. Matt Brash did not get the job done and gave up a weird homer to Adam Frazier, and Seattle was unable to continue the winning streak.   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Trade CoffeeRight now, Trade is exclusively offering our customer 50% off your one-month trial at drinktrade.com/LOCKEDONMLB. OpenPhoneStreamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/lockedonmlb Wonderful PistachiosGet snackin' and get crackin' with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more! Supply HouseJoin the TradeMaster program today at SupplyHouse.com/TM and start ordering plumbing, HVAC, and electrical supplies with just a few clicks. Plus, use promo code S-H-5 for 5% off your first order. That’s SupplyHouse.com! Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONMLB at monarchmoney.com/lockedonmlb for 50% off your first year. GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. FanDuelRight now, new customers can get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is the Mariners Postcast. Your instant game reaction for the Seattle Mariners. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome to the Locked-on Mariner Postcast. We go live after every single Seattle Mariner game. My name is Chris Crawford. Anders Hurst will be taken over for me shortly. I got to go.

I don't want to get too much into it, but I've got to go. I just wanted to give my quick thoughts on the game, because otherwise you guys will be bugging me and all that stuff. I thought Bryce Miller pitched well. He was one play away from having a really good start. Five innings of three-run baseball, I would have taken it. J.P. Crawford ends up having some huge moments in this game, but he also has a huge moment where he doesn't make that play in the first inning.

And unfortunately, that's one of the reasons you lose this baseball game. The most positive thing I can say about this game is, number one, you got to lose some time. It doesn't make this any less frustrating. but you had to lose a game at some point. You'll probably lose another one, maybe even two more. Hopefully not, but you're going to lose baseball games. E. E. Oh, Hano Suarez, being back.

And I don't know if he's for sure back, but the game A.ohenio Suarez had today was absolutely terrific, and this could be just me. I'd trade A. Oh, Hano Suarez, getting back for one loss. I wouldn't try it for two. But if you get this version of A.ohenio Suarez for the rest of the year, that's going to be massive. I don't want to get too hyperbolic on how bad Matt Brash was,

but Matt Brash was really bad. The command was awful, awful, awful, awful. Yeah, the Homer from Adam Frazier is the weirdest home run. I've seen it a long time. I have no idea how that baseball gets out, but it does get out. It's a tough loss. It's a really tough loss, and I'm going to let my buddy Anders handle the rest of it. Anders, I love you.

I'll see you soon, okay? Yeah, good to see you. sharing your thoughts, Chris Crawford. Our thoughts go out to you and please get some rest. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I think Chris said it really well there. As he said, I'll introduce the show once again. Welcome to the Lockdown Marriars Postcast, Anderson Hurst here. You just saw Christopher Crawford. He wasn't even supposed to be on today, but he had to get in some thoughts on this game because that's just where we are in the season. So that's how we feel about it. We go live after every single Mariner baseball game. Really appreciate everyone hanging out with us. Big thing for me is the Mariners were bound to lose sometime. And I guess you're not going to win out for the regular season. But man, this seemed like a miss opportunity. This seemed like a game that the Mariners lost and the Royals didn't win.

That's just how I feel about it. Now I realize we're going to look through things from a mariner lens. We are all Mariner fans here. So obviously when something goes well for the other team, we're going to view it from our perspective in weeks. weren't making plays instead of they were making plays sometimes that is the case uh but today it was the mariners that um kind of shot themselves in the foot a little too often um jp's defensive play needs to be better um matt brash just wasn't good enough uh Julio getting picked off in the inning

that jp homer's in can't have that you have a eugenio Suarez at the plate uh on a three for three night ends up going four for four. And it's, it's good to note that he seems to be seeing the ball much better now. I just don't, I don't know, man, Brash is the big thing for me. I realize a lot of people are going to point to the Julio getting picked off because, A, it's Julio, and B, it's a moment in which you can definitely get more out of, but I still pin the loss on Brash. I will take the negative of aggressive base running, whether that's going for steals and kind of going on first move.

They talk about it a lot on the broadcast. I will take the negatives with that and that's occasionally getting picked off, which you saw today. Yes, it's frustrating when you feel like you have a rally going and that may be a situation where, hey, there's two outs. We have a guy that's hot, at least today, at the plate.

Let's not try and run into outs here. This is the situation where we can dial it back a little bit. And that's the next step in terms of the coaching for me. But it's just not a, I don't know, it's not a huge deal to me, but it is frustrating. And you definitely could have gotten more in that innings. I feel like Suarez was going to make something happen there, considering how well he was seeing the ball tonight. But Bryce Miller, as we always start with the start, we'll talk about him. We'll talk about the offense a little bit, which was nothing until the J.P. Crawford

home on really, I guess you could put the Suarez home run in that buck. as well. But overall, Bryce Miller was good. I think he's pretty firmly your fifth best starting pitcher. So if you get what he gave you tonight, five innings of what, three-run baseball, you'll take that for sure from your fifth starter. I do expect a little bit more from him. Hopefully, you know, his last couple starts in this season will prove that to be the case that I should be expecting more from him, but it's, I just, it's fine. Like I said, you were bound to lose at some point. It just, I didn't, I wish it wasn't in this way.

The big story for me is the offense. The offense and Matt Brash, those are the two things, kind of big talking points we'll talk about tonight. Offense just, it wasn't good tonight. E. E. E. Hano Suarez, by the point in which, when the Mariners tied the game at 3-3, with A. Erihanio-Swaris, his leadoff double, and eventually the Mitch Garver sacked fly. He had accounted for basically all three of the Marriers runs.

The two run Homer and then he gets the double and then sets it up with the ground out goes to third. And then of course Mitch Garver drives him in without that double. You don't score that run. So him basically almost literally carrying this offense until JP Crawford's home run tells you A, how good he was and B, how bad the rest of this lineup was. I'm looking through the box score right now. I'm seeing four hits from Eugenio Suarez, two from Josh Naler, which was good.

You get a hit from Luke Rayleigh there at the very end, which doesn't mean much. And then, of course, the home run from J.P. Crawford. No one else did anything tonight. Julio does get a hit and I guess Raleigh does as well. So, I mean, it just kind of seemed like in very minuscule moments. But Suarez was literally carrying your offense today. I'm not going to skip the lead. Let's talk bullpen because honestly up until Matt Brash, it looks like the bullpen was going to be doing its job really, really well. You get five

innings out of Bryce Miller. Eight hits, not great. The three runs all are in, two walks, four Ks. That's kind of a very Bryce Miller start in 2025. Caleb Ferguson comes in, gives up a hit and a walk, but gets out of it for sure. It makes the pitches he absolutely needs to to keep the Mariners in the game. Gabe Spire just comes in and keeps looking like, in my opinion, the second best reliever on this team right now. And then Matt Brash, man, it was, it was tough to watch because, you know, there's a lot of discourse online going about like, oh, you know, I think reliever performances can

definitely get blown out of proportion a little bit. And everyone, everyone thinks that their relievers suck. And no matter where you are, a course. Major League Baseball. It's the nature of being in a high leverage spot as often as you are. You're not going to be 100% successful. No one's going to be Mariano Rivera, right? So you're going to have some innings where you feel like you're bending but not breaking. The Fernando Rodney experience, a lot of people equate that too. And you're going to have some where you do break. You just got to make sure it's not very often. And it seems like Matt Brash has been kind of walking

that line for a while now. I looked up a stat. I was just looking out of his game log. Six of, only six of his last 14 appearances have been completely clean. No, no walks, no hits. Which, it's not an awful number, but I expect better from my pretty assuredly, according to Dan Wilson eighth inning guy at this point. I need better from my best reliever that's not my closer, right and especially from people if you want to put brash in the closer role that people were asking for that earlier this year you're you're going to need better than that and uh again it's not the it's not the only stat to look at with relievers he has a good era his FIP is really good his expected numbers are very good as well due to a lot of the strikeouts but his command when it's off it's really really off

and i would have liked to maybe see a quick hook from Dan Wilson realizing that you know where we are in this season. It seemed like he kind of, I don't want to say folded because at that point, the game was kind of already over anyway. But it seems to me that it's pretty easy to tell when Brash is just not right and he's really not right. It's like, all right, not his day, get him out of there. Let's try and patch up the damage here instead of just letting everything blow up, which it kind of did. So to me, it's a little bit of Brash just being bad. It's a little bit of mismanagement. I'm not going to pin it on Wilson. I'm not going to expect the manager to come and grab your guy. Like I said, nails on eighth inning guy,

at least up until this point. That's been his role. So yeah, you could have managed that a little bit better. But Matt Brash just wasn't good enough tonight. That's as simple as you can put it. and I worry about his, I don't want to say ability, but I worry about his kind of future prospects moving towards the end of the season and hopefully into playoff time as well. Because at least right now, I don't know about you guys, you can let me know. I put Spire ahead of him in terms of just confidence that I feel when he's on the mound.

And honestly, I'd put Edward Bizarro over Matt Brash right now. And I realized that it's kind of stepping on the toes of what I was just saying it's the reality of being in as many high leverage spots as you are, which Matt Brash is in much more high leverage spots than Edouar Bizarro is. But the results lately have looked a lot better in terms of Bizarro's, you know, outcomes. So that's just my personal feeling. It just seems like, and I don't think it'll happen. I'm not saying that they should do that.

But to me, just observation in terms of my confidence in release. It goes Munoz. It goes Spire, Bizarro, and then Matt Brash. So maybe there's a change coming. Probably not, but we'll see what ends up happening with that. I just had to get that out there. Before we get to the unsung part of the program, we'll give some love to our sponsors today. Mariner's end their winning streak at 10 games, lose 7 to 5 to the Kansas City Royals. Tough loss for the Mariners because it was there to be won. and we'll talk about those moments here in just a second. But first, let's give some love to our sponsors, and I'll talk to you guys on the other side. This episode is brought to you by Price Picks. The daily fantasy app or making the right call can actually pay off. And you and I make decisions every day,

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That's 50% off your first year at Monarchmoney.com with code. locked on MLB. There's nothing like catching a baseball game live. The energy, the crowd, the chance to see your team in person, but actually getting tickets is so difficult sometimes. Cues, login screens, surprise fees, it takes all the fun out of it. That's why I use GameTime. Honestly, the app that gives the advantage back to fans.

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Terms apply. Again, that's promo code L-O-C-K-E-D-O-N-M-L-B for $20 off. Download the GameTime app today. Welcome back to the Mariners Postcast, Anderson Hurts here. You heard the comments of Christopher Crawford right off the top of the show. He'll be back with us tomorrow, I hope so. Everything, you know, hopefully he's going to be good with him. He just needed to take today off.

All good. Happy to cover for him. definitely a missed opportunity game for the meritors. There's losses, and then there's losses where you feel like you shouldn't have lost. So put it as simple as possible. This was one of those games. And I get that, like we talked about earlier, the offense wasn't good enough for the majority of this game.

But having a moment like you got from J.P. Crawford, and having it wasted because, unfortunately, of the bottom half of the inning, feels like it was a massive missed opportunity. this team thrives on momentum as much as any baseball team this year or any years that I've watched baseball as religiously as I have lately has. It's important. So this is where I'm going to be really eyeing the next couple of games for the Mariners. And there's no wiggle room for error at this point. You have one more game in the KC series and you have a massive Houston Astros series over the weekend. So it's going to be really important for the Mariners to flush this game. If they do what they did, the last couple road trips,

and when one game kind of goes poorly, they kind of let it spiral a little bit until they come home. We cannot have that happen. That's going to be something I'm going to be watching big time. My unsung moment for today is Julio getting picked off. Now, the reason it's an unsung moment, guys, is because I don't think it's the reason you lost this game. But you can't have that, unfortunately. You had a chance to pad your lead. And we've seen the Mariners do this a lot recently with their 10-game win-street. When they do

make a comeback, which happens every once in a while. In a win streak, you're not going to be leading from the beginning every single game. When you do make that comeback, you're not just settling for a one-run lead, right? And that puts so much pressure on your bullpen. And we've seen them be nails recently. but today they just weren't as good. You have to add on to it. And that's when you start to get those winning streaks because you don't have to use your higher leverage relievers

if you add on and have that big getting. So really, really, I mean, it's not the reason why I lost. I'll say that once again. I'll also put the caveat on that I do personally, I take the minuses with the aggressive base running with the pluses. I like that this team steals a lot of bags. look for that extra base when it's there. The downside of doing that and playing baseball in that more aggressive way on the base

paths at least is that you're going to get picked off every once in a while. You're going to get thrown out at second trying to stretch a single into a double, so on and so forth. So to me it's a process thing. It's similar to a guy that, you know, take Eugenio Suarez, for example, right? You hit 46, 47 home runs, which he has right now. you're going to strike out a lot. But you take the strikeouts with the home runs, right?

There's very few hitters that can hit home runs and then not strike out as well as Ehrenio Suarez. So that's where it's like it's a process thing. You take the good with the bad. I still would rather have it this way than be ultra conservative and not want to steal bases whatsoever. So that's kind of how I feel about that. That's why it's an unsung moment and not a sung moment for me.

But it still is something where, yeah, you can't have that in that situation. So also side note on J.P. Crawford's home run just seems like every one of his home runs come in big moments. He doesn't have that many, but the percentage of J.P. Crawford's home runs being in a high leverage or big moment seems to be pretty dang high. So good for him for getting that, kind of getting the monkey off his back after a bad defensive play today.

And honestly, yesterday as well with the error. So hopefully he can kind of turn it around because we need some better infield defense. moving forward. That'll do it for us tonight. Really appreciate everyone hanging out. Please like the video if you haven't already. Nariners lose this one to end their winning streak at 10 games. 7 to 5 loss of the Royals.

You can still go win the series tomorrow. This is by no means is doom and gloom season. But a couple teams behind you won. So Houston ended up winning and the Guardians ended up winning too. So you're not out of the woods yet. This is why it's so key at this point in the season. So go and win tomorrow. put this one behind you and then get yourself ready for a massive weekend series against the Houston Astros for the kind of final leg of the AL-West crown going into the off or the postseason.

So, okay, really appreciate it, guys. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you guys tomorrow. It's a day game 1110, I want to say, is the first pitch. Let me double check the probabilities for the Mariners tomorrow. I believe we have Luis Castile. Yes, Luis Castillo versus Stephen Colick. It is an 1110 first pitch.

So we'll talk to you guys during the day tomorrow. Have a good one. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Let's just get the win tomorrow. Go Mariners. Have a good one. See you later.