Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - MARINERS POSTCAST: Seattle Mariners IMPRESS in Game 1 win vs. Texas Rangers

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Chris Crawford breaks down what an impressive effort for the Seattle Mariners against the Texas Rangers. George Kirby looked excellent over six innings. Cole Young homered and tripled. Eugenio Suarez made an early impact, and Cal Raleigh hit No. 42. The only negative is an injury to Trent Thornton in the ninth inning on what looks like a potentially long-term issue. 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 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. I loved the overwhelming majority of that. I kind of hate the way it ended, but I loved the ever, over, excuse me, the ever-loving overwhelming majority of it. Mariners win six to nothing. They take the first of a four-game set against the Texas Rangers.

My name is Chris Crawford. Normally I'm joined by by buddy Anders Hurst, but Anders smartly went to the game tonight. Anders deserved it. He deserved it. He is a big A. Oh, Henio Suarez fan, and he got a chance to see one of his favorite players, maybe his favorite player,

uh, take part in this game. And let's just get it out. of the way and i don't mean that in a callous way prayers up to trent thornton man so for those of you who missed it thornton pitched really well tonight and on what should have been the final out josh nailer gets a little aggressive and i'm not blaming josh nailer for the injury let's make that abundantly clear but trent thornton makes the move to first base after nailer makes the play non-contact injury. It looked like an Achilles injury to me.

I saw a bunch of speculation in here that suggested the same stuff. It sure looked like it. I just hope he's okay. And a lot of you pointed out, too, that this has been a tough year for Trent Thornton. This is a guy who had his appendix removed appendicitis and, you know, has had some ups and downs pitching-wise. But he looked fantastic tonight. And then it just ends in such a bummer way. It ends in such a bummer way.

So that's out of the way. And again, I don't mean that in a callous way. I just, we got to get it out of our system because this was still a really good win. It just ends on kind of a dour note. We're going to talk about George Kirby. We're going to talk about some dingers, one really long dinger in particular. And then I'll offer an unsung hero. But let's start with the start.

George Kirby. And it still doesn't look like George Kirby. You know what I mean? It's still a lot of three ball counts. It's still a lot of misses that he usually doesn't make. But the stuff looks sick. The stuff looks sick. And it was really good tonight. Six innings, three hits allowed. The two walks, but six strikeouts, he throws 60 of 94 pitches for strikes. I thought Kirby looked really good tonight. night. It looked kind of shaky for a little bit there, but he made some huge pitches tonight. This version of George Kirby will work. This person of George Kirby will work and then some. You know, as a few people brought up, you know, this is perfectly put. Bulldogs start where he didn't have his best, but he still was able to generate that swing and miss. The changeup was really good tonight. Changeup was good. Curfball was good or slider was good, whatever you want to call. that pitch. I thought he did a really solid job. I thought that that was not him at necessarily his best stuff, but certainly not his best command either. He still hasn't had anywhere close to his best

command. But you were able to shut out an MLB lineup, a pretty good MLB lineup. I think this is an interesting point here for my buddy Jonathan. I kind of like the missing out of the zone for Kirby. yes, not his normal stuff, but his bad starts are like this, I am in. Yeah, I kind of like that he's willing to challenge the zone a little bit, or the opposite. The fact that he's willing to work outside of that strike zone, because, you know, the one criticism I think we've had of George Kirby sometimes is that the guy likes to throw strikes. The guy really doesn't like to issue walks. And that's good. You don't want self-inflicted damage, but Sometimes it's okay to nibble, not nibble even.

Like, sometimes it's okay to expand the zone and see what hitters will expand the zone. I thought he did a really nice job tonight. And if you get that version of George Kirby down the stretch, this is going to be a really good baseball team. And let's be honest, for the majority of the year, George Kirby's ERA is extremely misleading. It's 4.13, which is not what he would have signed up for. an ERA is a flawed stat, as you know.

It's really based on two horrible starts and then a couple of bad innings here and there, like the inning against the Cubs and an inning against the Brewers. For the most part, George Kirby's been really good. And maybe we're just a victim of expectations. Maybe we just want him to be perfect. We want to see that guy who has the 120 to six strike. out-to-walk ratio, you know? That version is probably not going to be there this year. It's still pretty darn good. And to think that your fourth best starter is just insane.

Just insane to get that from your fourth best starter. For the bullpen, we talked about Thornton, of course, and again, big ups, man, big ups. I was thinking about going with Caleb Ferguson as my unsung hero, but I just want to get bullpen talk kind of out of the way, to be honest with you. Ferguson looked great. You see that bowling ball, right? You see that bowling ball sinker. It's so hard to square up this dude. I talked about this earlier.

Guys, his sinker has a hard hit percentage of four. Four. Your tiniest little babies can count to what his hard hit percentage is. I thought he looked fantastic. Fantastic job by him. And a nice job of Legamina bouncing back, you know, falls behind 3-0. He does get the K. The strike zone tonight again was kind of shaky.

It's fine. It's fine. Mainly it's fine because they win. All right. I want to talk about this offense for sure. But first, we've got to talk about my good friends a five-hour energy drink. time to tune up and turn up to, whoa, boy, that's not even close right.

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five-hour energy shots today. Boy, I could have used it for sure. I am exhausted, guys. Exhausted. But in a good way, because I just love what the Seattle Mariners have done. And I love this game. I'm just going to really quickly talk about the deadline because I've seen some folks who were disappointed

that they didn't do anything today. To me, that's kind of like getting everything you ask, for your birthday and then being disappointed that you didn't get a car to, I probably would have added another bullpen arm. They still can, by the way. It just becomes difficult. It just becomes a little difficult. I love what they did. I adore what they did. Anything but an A minus grade means that you just probably don't love the Seattle Mariners. And that's fine. That's fine. I love what they did. I love what they did. I love what they did. And I loved what the lineup did tonight.

Let me just give you my unsung hero real quick. And if you want to argue with me and say he didn't make the lineup, okay. Dan Wilson is my unsung hero because I love the lineup that he put out today. I cannot tell you how much I love Randy Oroz Arena in the leadoff spot. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love seeing him hit at the top of the lineup. It's perfect. It's that guy who draws walks, but also gives you the chance to do something special at the plate.

Because a walk is great. A double or a homer is a lot better. When you have somebody that can do both, that's fantastic. I love Raleigh in the two hole. Be mature. I like Julio hitting third. I like Nailer hitting fourth. I love Gino hitting fifth.

this is a good lineup now one through six this lineup competes with a lot of lineups but i love the order and i love j p crawford hitting eighth and it's all due respect to my son that's just where he needs to be right now that's just where he needs to be right now um lineup didn't look great at first. There was some hard contact that kind of went a wanting, but I love the adjustment they make. And what I really love, A. Oh, Hino-Swaris. And by the way, here's an unsung hero for you guys, too. The crowd, the ovation you guys gave good vibes. I demanded it from you, and you listened. You probably didn't listen to me at all. But I was so proud of you guys. Those of you who went to the game to just hoot and holler for that dude. And you said, you

saw how much it meant to him you saw how much that meant to him and then to get the the hit and to score the first run to score that first run but it's only one nothing you know he scores on a wild pitch a good job from him advancing to third on the sack fly is it right but the on the fly out to second base center field i'm tired you get the runner to third and then nice job reading the ball through, get through, and score in that run. But it's won nothing. And then Cole Young, and I'm sure you guys have been waiting for me to talk about it. Holy crap on a cracker.

That ball was mollywopped. If that ball had a family, it's down one member. So they said it's 470, and then they say that it's being investigated. I don't care. mean, I'm very curious how far they actually say it went. It's probably more like 455, something like that. I don't know. But that ball was clobbered. And so the Mariners make the decision to send down Ben Williamson today. It's probably not the decision I wouldn't have, I would have made, to be honest. I probably would have been looking at trading Dylan Moore or I would have been looking at

doing something else. I just think Ben Williams. is a really good bet to be a solid utility guy. But I also understand sending him down to Tacoma to go work at other positions. Okay? Get that out of the way. What? When people ask, what's the difference here? And because, you know, you take a look at the stats between Williamson and Cole Young coming into the day.

You know what the difference is? Ben Williamson can't do that. Ben Williamson cannot do that. and he needs to, Ben needs to go down to Tacoma and work on driving the baseball. Because the average exit velocity suggests that he's not just dink and dunk, but he's got to be able to get the ball into the air, right? There's going to have to be some swing change stuff. And if he can't, then he's going to be a very valuable utility guy who can play at second,

who can play at third, and I think can play shortstop. Okay. So there's value there. But boy, oh boy, Cole Young showed that. that offensive upside and then some. And then the triple, then the triple. A Homer and a triple. Man, that was fun.

And what else was fun was seeing J.P. Crawford come through with that RBI hit and then scoring from first on that play. Boy, he needed that. Boy, he needed that. There were so many good offensive games today. the only guy I think who doesn't get a hit tonight is Julio. And, you know, he does get robbed by one play by Corey Seeger. It was not his best offense game by any stretch of the imagination.

But he also made one of the best catches I've seen this year on the fly ball today. So even when Julio isn't making an impact with the bat, he makes an impact with the glove. Polanco. Oh, by the way. 42. Guys, it's July 31st. it is July 31st, and this guy has broken the record for most homers by a switch hitting catcher. There are literally two months left in the season, and he's broken that record. And that homer was one of my favorites because he crushed that thing.

But he crushed it so high that you just kind of wonder, where is it going to come down, right? where is it going to come down? Thankfully it came down over the Rifefield fence. I mean, this guy hits such wall scrapers sometimes, but they're majestic wall scrapers. It's so fun to watch. This is interesting here. I just saw a post on the same day Judge hit his 42 homers

where he got the record. Yeah, he's right on pace for that A.L record, whether that matters to you or not. I like it. I like it a lot. I love this game. I hate that it ended the way it did. I hate the way that we had to see that injury.

And that's, yeah, that just sucks. It sucks for Trent Thornton. I would imagine that you're probably going to see Jackson Co. R back, that's fine. You know, Thornton's better than CoR, but it's your seventh or eighth reliever, right? If you want to make the argument, that's one of the reasons why they should have made another trade for a reliever. Okay. But I just hope he's okay. I just hope he's okay. Um, this was fun. This, and this is a huge series. I mean, you can't even begin to overstate how huge this series is. Taking three of four here is going to be massive. Got the first step.

You've got the first step. I'd really appreciate you guys hitting like and subscribe. The support has been awesome. 378 of you weirdos in here. That's, and it was higher than that earlier. That's incredible. I've just loved doing this. Yeah, this was a great win. I'll answer this one real quick. What are your thoughts on having Ford instead of Garver? Something I might consider later in the year. I will say that Harry Ford just makes so much sense when rosters expand. But pitchers like throwing to Mitch Garver. And that matters.

That matters. As long as Garver is not an absolute offensive, nothing, he belongs on this team. Really appreciate the support. We'll be back next time with Anders and I. massive game again tomorrow. Let's go get a series win. Let's go guarantee the split tomorrow. Man, this was fun.

But again, get well, Trent. That stunk.