Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - MARINERS POSTCAST: Seattle Mariners LOSE in extra innings vs Athletics

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

Anders and Chris look at yet another close battle between the Seattle Mariners and the Athletics. George Kirby had to battle through it but limited the damage to one run. Outside of a Randy Arozarena homer the offense was bad. We will talk about it. 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. Why does every team break against the A's and we can't? It's a good question. What? And what is it with soft throwing left handers that just screw with this team's brain? I just, I don't understand.

I really don't. also i really hope that was victor robes's decision to bunt and not dan welson's because of that is a coach's decision that is egregiously bad egregiously bad uh meritor's postcaster anneson hersier chris crawford with you meriders dropped this one two to one um they have scored three runs in the two games all coming on solo home runs so yes you are reliant on the home run ball at this point you get a Good, not great start from George Kirby, but good, should have been good enough, to be honest. But it wasn't, unfortunately. So we're going to talk about it.

We go live after every single Mariner baseball game. We're going to talk about George Kirby's start. Effectively Wild, I think, is a great description. Because it's not something we're used to seeing from him. We'll get into that in a second. Yeah, no offense, three hits. One of them coming from Victor Robles, who you asked to bunt. in the 10th inning.

So we'll get to that as well as I'm sure you guys all know how much I hate bunting. Chris Crawford, initial thoughts on the game tonight. I will just end it with one sentence. They were better than Jalen Milrow. Were they, though? Were they? No, no, honestly, they weren't. This was, these are the type of losses that you can't have right now.

You just can't. And it's a failure in process. It's certainly a failure in results. And yeah, this one has me a little irked. Yeah. To be honest, there's not a ton of moments to go over in this game. It's Jeffrey Springs somehow dominating this Mariners team. I don't get why.

But let's start with George Kirby, and then we'll get to that. What do you think of his start tonight? Go six innings, gives up one run. Or is it two runs? Sorry. One run. One. Just a one.

That's right, because Caleb Ferguson gets the second one. Yeah. What was it? Three Ks. Three Ks, three walks, four hits allowed. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a very aesthetically pleasing start for him.

He just didn't have any fastball command tonight. And I'm glad they finally talked about this a little bit during the broadcast today about the change in his arm slot. and he may never be that control artist ever again because it's just not easy to replicate the success that he had. Now, that doesn't mean he can't be an awesome pitcher. Even with the three walks, even giving up some hard contact, he was pretty dang good tonight, right?

Like, you give, that's a good Oakland lineup. And I'm going to call him Oakland for the sake of this. That's a talented lineup. There are guys that on the, the A's that I would like on the C.I. Mariner's Brent Rooker, Tyler Sotterstrom, Big Amish, as they're calling him. I would love those guys to play for the Seattle Mariners. So holding that lineup to just one run is fine. It's just never going to be the aesthetically pleasing, easy, pound the strike zone,

hit your spots with everything, I think, certainly not for the rest of this year. And maybe not ever again. The secondary stuff is going to become really important for George Kirby. But if you pitch six innings of one run baseball, you should win. Yeah. You win every single freaking time. And as much as it wasn't a fun start to watch, like if you didn't, we've talked about this a few times with a few Kirby

starts, a few Gilbert starts, even a few Wu starts. If you just watched what was happening and didn't see anything after the swing, you wouldn't come away all that impressed sometimes. But the results are usually good enough. And tonight, George Kirby was good enough. if only he didn't play for a team that really can't hit left-handed pitching or soft-throwing pitchers right now. Yeah. George Kirby goes into the story of tonight, so I'll kind of, we'll leave the evaluation at that.

I do have one quick question, though, before we get into other stuff. Is there a reason he did switch his arm angle? Was it injury-related? Yes, 100%. It's 100%. It's totally based on the shoulder. And Ryan Rowland Smith brought this up in his new. roll because this network doesn't know what the hell they're doing, that he talked about that it's

not so much elbows that you have to change your arm slot, but when it's shoulder related, you usually have to drop that arm angle, right? And I believe Mentech mentioned that it was at 37 degrees and now it's down to 29, which it's just a little harder to control your fastball when you have to drop down low like that, right? So that's going to be something that'll be very interesting to watch over these next few games or for the next few seasons, to be honest with you, because he may be a completely different pitcher when he's done with his career than the one that we saw to begin the year. Yeah, I think that's completely fair. And that's kind of what we've been noticing. I didn't notice the arm slot difference, so I'm glad they pointed it out. But we've been

saying that almost every time. It's like, yeah, stuff maybe looks a little bit better, but his command just isn't George Kirby. And unfortunately, like, maybe there's an off-season thing that he can do to get that back. But I don't know. It's, we're not used to seeing that from him. But, again, it's not the story tonight. The story tonight's the offense. Yeah.

What were you going to say about George? Were you going to say something else? The only thing I was going to say also is it probably should have been two walks because once again, the umpiring was just freaking garbage. garbage and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the incompetence. It's so bad. You don't know what to strike from not just inning to inning.

Game to game would be one thing, inning to inning another. It's pitch to pitch. You don't know what's going to be a strike and what's not going to be. Is that the reason the Mariners only scored one run? No, is that completely the reason why Kirby threw 57 of 98 pitches for strikes? No, not really. It didn't help.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the excuses. I'm tired of some freaking nerd telling me that MLB umpires have never been better. And there's some score sheet with your freaking data book. Watch the freaking game and tell me that umpires are better than they've ever been. You freaking liar. Yeah. And it's like it's worth pointing out that it wasn't just against the Mariners that they were bad.

There were some awful calls for the Mariners. It was so bad. bad so bad like even for kirby the yes for jacob wilson on that pitch that he hits into left field he threw him seven straight balls yeah but it was a three two count yeah yeah i hate it it it's frustrating when you feel like you're doing your job and of course there are missed calls and other sports, but it's a different level of bad. I can't explain it in a better way than that. No, it's a great point.

Because it's like, it's because other missed calls most of the time are more subjective. Like I played soccer, the handball rule is always kind of an issue. Like, was he reaching his hand out? Like, you can always kind of understand a referee's decision in that time. For baseball, it's a ball or a strike. There's no other context needed. It is a ball or it is a strike. Like it just doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. You have the technology. We can rebuild him. We have the technology, right? Like, let's just do it. Yep, I'm with you. All right. When we get on the other side of the break, let's talk about the offense because,

boy, it's bad. It's two straight days of bad. I mean, home runs are good and you get one tonight, but let's talk about the rest of it. This is the Merrittor's Postcast. We'll be with you on the other side. Time to fuel up and turn it up with five-hour energy transfusion. This grape, ginger, and lime-flavored shot brings the iconic taste of a golf course favorite

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George Kirby goes six innings of one-run baseball. You'll take that every day of the week, and the bats just don't awaken. You get a couple good A-Bs. I'm thinking of the top of the order. Randy was bad besides the home run tonight. Cowellie was bad all night offensively. Julio had a couple hard-hit balls, but then his third at-bat was bad. Nailer had a hit, I guess.

Gino was Gino. I'm not going to expect him to hit a home run every game. It just is what it is. He had a walk, I think, as well. But come on, guys. I understand, I'm one of the people that have, like, embraced the, okay, hitting home runs is good. Relying on home runs is not a Mariners only thing.

This is the all-around baseball this happens. But, man, like, you've got to get some traffic. on the base path. That's what's going to eventually lead to other ways to scoring runs. It's not like, okay, we have to play small ball now in order to score runs. No, that's not what's going to do it. It's taking good at bats, making the pitcher work. They're like, I think Springs was averaging like 10 pitches an inning for the first four

or five innings. And it was just way too aggressive for these guys. So I'm not even saying that you need to just, you know, string some hits together. I understand it's harder to do, but you've got to have string some at-bats together where you're at least getting on base. I don't know. Like, what was your evaluation of the offense tonight? And honestly, in the last two days. Garbage, just a garbage offensive performance again. And the crazy thing is, is Jeffrey Springs barely lowered his ERA against the Seattle Mariners today. It was like 1.59 coming into today. And you know what? He didn't lower it because

he was at like 1.74 or something like that today. It was pathetic. And, you know, was, I will say there was some hard contact that was caught today. Like that leaping catch from Kurtz was a really nice play. Lawrence Butler chased down a few today, made a nice catch. A couple of balls hit right at him too. There were some Adam balls. You get three hits. and you score one run, and I'm not going to, there's just not enough bad luck in the world. It's not like this dude, like we're facing Jacob Lopez tomorrow. He's been good recently, very good. Jeffrey Springs has been terrible lately.

He has a 4.59 ERA against the rest of the league. He has just pitched really, really well against the Seattle Mariners. And some of that, good for him. Some of that, just crappy offense today. The top of the order, I know Randy clobbers that home run. and that was great. But the other bats were just atrocious tonight. Julio had one of his worst offensive games of the year.

Mitch Garver wasn't very good. He got a pitch. He should have shellacked. He looked pretty frustrated when he didn't do it. J.P. Crawford was awful today. Cole Young does draw the walk. The lineup was just atrocious tonight. Real quick.

I will say, my answer. sung heroes to bullpen bullpen pitched well tonight bullpen pitch that led to the tie game or the Caleb Ferguson leaves a breaking ball up when the zombie runner is there i don't think that i have really any issues with what i will say leaving Caleb Ferguson in for that at bat isn't my favorite that right-hander facing Caleb Ferguson with pop like shay langlears i didn't love that but he did leave a breaking ball up you give up even if he gives up that run i think the bullpen is a positive tonight for sure. Yeah, that's what you pitch. And I was great to see Munoz bounce back. So I wanted to get that out of the way because that's your only positive from this game to me is

Kirby was fine and your bullpen pitched pretty darn well. Yeah. The office was just garbage. It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable to have offensive games like this. And can we just go to the freaking 10th inning, please? Yeah, I want to mention you said you should, you would have taken Ferguson out. I believe Languiliers was his third batter. That's correct. I probably would have pitched around Languiliers is basically what I meant there. Like, yeah, just go after, well, except then Brent Rooker, but I'll take my right hander going up against him over Ferguson, a left-hander facing that situation. I'll be honest. Ferguson hasn't been great since joining Seattle. He hasn't been terrible, but he hasn't been like a superstar, but no, should he be expected to be, right? Like,

I also think he's being misused. A little bit. I really think he should be your true lefty specialist, right? He is so much more successful against left-handed batters. I think Gabe Spire has proven to you he can get both sides out. And I realize you used Spire earlier in the game and he was great. He was really good too. But I still think, especially if you only have two lefties, you've got to kind of like really pick your moments with your usage there.

I get it. Nick Kurtz has very heavy splits. I'm not even saying they made the wrong decision. I just think overall Ferguson could be looking a lot better if he was put in the right situations. Sure. Yeah. No, that's totally fair.

Totally fair. But, and I will say this too, almost assuredly Matt Brash wasn't available tonight. So we're probably looking at, I'd probably still rather have Ferguson pitching than Vargas in that situation or who the hell else is in that bullpen available, right? Like, that's a tough one. Just don't leave a hanging breaking ball there. You know, but here's the other thing. It's great that it was because the Mariners weren't going to score another gosh damn run tonight.

So it was, thank you for saving us some time. I could sort of bet at 10.30 tonight instead of 10.15 or 1115. So thanks. Let's get right to 10th inning because I think that was an opportunity where they. You start with, okay, the lineup comes out. It's going to be Mitch Garver, Victor Robles, J.P. Crawford is the three that's coming, right? Dan does the right thing. An inch hits Jorge Polanco from Mitch Garver.

Horace Polanco works a walk. Excellent at bat. That's kind of what I'm talking about. It's not just getting a walk. It's just like better at that's guys. That's what's going to help you in the long run to be way less relying on these home runs. Victor Olivas comes up.

He attempts to bunt, pops it up, gets it out. Nothing else happens. I really hope. I really hope that was robust making that his own decision. I doubt it too, but I really hope so because that is an awful decision, if that is what Dan Wilson's truly doing. One of the three guys that has gotten your hits tonight, he has been raking in the minor leagues,

has made some great plays in the outfield. You could tell his moment was there. He was excited to be back with the group. Let him swing away. bro like and the thing is it sets it up for jp against a lefty i realized they put in a lefty after that but you've got to see that coming man 100% he knows it he knows it too like and here's the thing number one it's great to see victor robo's back in the seattle merri yeah so much better than dylan more so number two i wish dillan more luck with whatever he does next right it's probably

not going to be a mariner uh he could go on clenobos back in the sial And then maybe you send him to AAA and maybe he's one of the added, like if he's your 28th man and not a big part of it, so be it. Number three, terrific catch in the outfield tonight. Awesome catch. Number four, most importantly, well, actually, no, number four can be tied with number five. It was a terrible decision. It's also a terrible bunch. You have to get that down.

You're a majorly freaking hitter. You are a guy who slugs in the low 300s. excuse me, in the mid-300s, you sometimes are going to have to play small ball. I hate the decision there, but if they tell you to do it, you can't just pop the ball up like that. That's a dreadful play by a major league hitter. That being said, the process of asking him to bunt there is a bad process. It's bad process. He also tried to bunt for a hit earlier in the game, and it was dreadful.

It was a dreadful bun right back to the first basement. So he likes to lay it down. So you're not, it's not completely out of the question that that was Victor Robles deciding to lay one down. Yeah. Jorge and him both have a tendency to, you know, sacrifice on their own. It's terrible. It's terrible. And if it's Dan Wilson's decision to do that, knowing that your next two hitters are left-handers with a bullpen, a lefty ready to go, is horrible management.

It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. And if it's Victor Roblo's decision, it's horrible decision making from someone who might have made a pretty horrible decision, not all that long ago either. This is the thing, man. This team, yes, it's the manager that makes some terrible decisions. The players got to play better than this, too. You can't score one run against the gosh damn AAA Sacramento Athletics. You can't.

You cannot. They lost this game not just because of a bad decision in the 10th, not just because of a poor pitch from Caleb Ferguson, but because, because he scored one flipping run in 10 innings against mediocrity. The players have to play better. And if Victor Robles is told to lay a bun down, he's got to make a better bun than that. Can't be, cannot happen. Yeah, yeah. And this is the thing about bunting with me.

Everyone kind of labels me as the bun hater, which I am, hand up, I am. Oh, dude. First, let me just say this. Anybody who is pro-sacrifice bunt in this era is an idiot. I'm just telling you right now. It's an idiotic thing to be. We have this thing. It's called mass.

We're not as good as it in other countries, but we have figured out that giving up outs is a bad thing, right? Unless the only thing you need is one run. It's not a good decision to bunt. And they needed more than one. Last time I checked, they needed to score two. more runs to win the game. So giving up an out doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense there. This is not a wow, it's crazy for anyone to be anti-bunt. No, it's crazy to be pro giving up outs in the

year of our Lord 2025. Yeah. And everyone just assumes, oh, you know, you can just get a bunk down. It's that easy, right? It's a given. No, it is not. I honestly think it was more likely that Victor Robo swings away and gets a hit there than him. actually laying down the bun. So like... This is a really good question here. If it was Victor's call, is there typically any repercussions by Dan or...

There's usually a pretty good talking to. There's usually a pretty good like, hey, this is not acceptable to do this in this situation. Like, I'm not going to say he's going to get suspended. He's going to get suspended in about a week. But there's not going to be anything like life changing in terms of decisions here. But if Dan really didn't want him to bunt,

Dan will be talking to Victor afterwards. Dan said it was his call post game. Well, there you go. Dan Wilson sucks at this. We've already established that. So I don't know. I haven't confirmed that. I am waiting for my sweater to load.

I will wait a little bit longer. I will trust you, Ryan Bliss. Great name, by the way. I will trust you, Ryan Bliss that that is the case because it's kind of the gut feeling that I had. But I was really hoping it was Victor because then that's an easier fix, honestly, if it's one player that kind of just acted, I don't think of way, but acting on his own, right? And the process of the team is still sound. When your manager is making that decision, not good, not good at all.

I just, I don't understand it. Anyone that's Adam asked for the double steel, not a terrible decision, but you have Jorge Palanco and Josh Naylor, two of the slowest people on Earth. Yeah, and they're paying so much. attention to Nailer now. That's why you haven't part of it's because he hasn't gotten on race all that much. But they're also paying so much more attention to Nailer now. And I don't trust Palank. Langalear says a pretty good howitzer too.

So I get it. Maybe a time where you could consider a pinch runner, you know, something along those lines. So by the way, oh, I got it wrong, by the way. It would be Polanco stealing second and then Nailer stealing third. They just pay too much attention to Nailer now. And it's a good thing and a bad thing, right? but like, dang it.

I hate this loss so much. It sucks. It sucks, man. Like, it's such a winnable game. The athletics are going nowhere. They didn't even take it from me. You just lied over and,

oh, man, I don't even want to go deep into this. Real quick, Claire, first of all, love Claire. Appreciate all the time that you spend in the chat with us.

He got fired when they were 64 and 64. It was game 128 last year. And so Dan Wilson has managed, basically one full season now. And I'm not sure how much better he's gotten at this. I think it's almost the exact same record. Yeah, pretty close. What are they?

64 and 60 now? No, they are 69 and 61. Okay, okay. It's close up. A few games up, yeah. Astros win tonight. I think your three games out at this point. Yep.

So not good. Not good at all in Mariner Land. Hopefully they figure this out. I mean, this offense is better than what it's been doing in the past couple days. They just can't put it all together. And again, I know I'm not someone to just pile on in managerial situations, but my God, it makes it so easy. Bucky Jacobson actually made a really good point about this, that once you start to see the flaws of someone, he's a very anti-Mitch Garver guy on KJR. He hates his at-bats, hates the way it kind of goes about winning a baseball game, right?

So now every time that Mitch Garver comes to that bat, he's just waiting for him to do something wrong. And he was mentioning the same thing with people with Dan Wilson. And I completely agree with that because it's just like now you're seeing every flaw. It's like you're waiting for a terrible decision and then you're just bouncing on it. But it's what this guy does. He hasn't given the benefit of the doubt for where we should be expecting anything different at this point. You know, and here's the thing I'll say too. Like, and that's fair.

We do notice flaws. It's easier to be hindsight, to have hindsight. But I heard, you know, Saris talk about this with Ian. I heard, um, there was a commenter who said, well, everybody's talking about hindsight. Like, it's so easy to do hindsight. What else can we do? It's not like we can just go in and like announce on T-Mobile's thing. It's not like we can go attention Kmart shoppers.

We don't like this decision that's coming up. All we have is hindsight. So, yeah, of course, we now talk about it afterwards because we can't talk about it during. It would be impossible. So of course there's some hindsight to it. But that doesn't mean we don't like what's happening when it's happening to. We just have our platform, oh, I don't know, after the game. Let's call the podcast.

And welcome it. Like the video if you have an audience. And I love, you know, but man, that's a silly thing to say. It's just hindsight. No, it's not bull crap. It's not just hindsight. It's just that's when you hear people mention it. It's hindsight because it has to be.

It's called reaction, right? You're reacting to something that happened. And you analyze every decision. And if you're not ready for that in pro sports, you're not in the right business. You're just not. I'm sorry. Okay, really quick, unsung hero or on song villain. I know you mentioned something earlier, but if you want to say it.

I'll just go with the bullpen. I'll go specifically at Ward Bizarro. I liked what he did against. a very strong part of the lineup. Ooh, I'm trying to think of a better unsung at that point. I'm going to go unsung villain. I honestly don't really have one. It's just, I might just, I'll go unsung hero Gap Speyer.

He's good. There you go. He was great today, too. Yeah. If I was going to go an unsung villain, it'd probably be J.P. Crawford. You know, I mean, he just. Yeah, I didn't think of a specific moment with him. So it was just, he just had a bad baseball game, which unfortunately I'm kind of used to at this point.

So yeah, yeah, all right. All right, guys, really appreciate you hanging out with us. Please like the video if you haven't already. Thank you, Chris Crawford, as Bubbles T. Wrap says. He's always there with the thank you, Chris Crawford, and I can't appreciate it enough, my man. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you, Chris Crawford from Anderson Hurst as well. There you go.

You're welcome. You're welcome. That's perfect. We'll be back tomorrow. We got Logan Gilbert versus Jacob Lopez. Hey, Chris Crawford, guess what we have to look forward to? A left-handed pitcher. Another left-handed pitch. My goodness gracious.

How many? Well, we faced a righty on Friday, and that was 10 pounds of crap and a five-pound bag offensively, too. Yeah. Yeah, Bill and the road is really bad today. Yeah. Yeah. Were the Mariners worse?

You decide. Yeah. Any last words? Play better baseball.