Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Postgame Show: Jarred Kelenic Stays Red-Hot in Win Over Phillies

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Another game, another huge performance from Jarred Kelenic. The 23-year old outfielder has put himself squarely into the Player of the Month discussion after a 3-for-4 day, falling just a triple shy of the cycle. If Kelenic is legitimate, do the Mariners have the best outfield in baseball? Colby and Ty discuss. Plus, how did Marco string together his third straight quality outing against a good lineup? And did Scott get too aggressive with his bullpen?We’re raising money for Feeding America! 34 million Americans are food insecure, including 9 million children. Feeding America turns every dollar raised into 10 delicious meals to feed the hungry. We have set up a direct donation fund you can access by heading to https://teamfeed.feedingamerica.org/participant/13390 If you can’t donate, remember that we are donating 10 cents for every new YouTube subscriber we gain in the next month. By hitting the subscribe button, you’re donating one meal to somebody suffering from hunger!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/FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.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) 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.

Jared Kellnick remains red hot at the dish. Marco Gonzalez steps up once again as the Mariners beat the Phillies. Our thoughts on the series opening victory coming up here on the Lockdown Mariners 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 Tuesday, April 25th, 2023. This is tidying Azales and Colby Patnaud for the Lockedon Mariners post game show. It's sticking around, buddy. Can't do anything about it. This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh, skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit.

Go to HelloFresh.com slash MLB60 and use promo code MLB60 for 60% off plus free shipping. Thank you so much for making us your first listen after the Mariners win. 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 by skin, the QR code right above my head. The link as well as our social accounts is also in the description of this episode 5 to 3, the final from Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, PA. Mariners beat the Phillies on the back of another big game from Jared Kelnick, a two-run blast from Tayasca Hernandez, and another strong start from Marco Gennessee.

Gonzalez now, Colby, before we get into the game, what's going on with your lighting situation over there, man? You're like a giant ball of white light right now. I mean, yeah, I don't know. It's a little bit better. It was crazy before we hit record. Now it's getting a little bad again, but I don't know, man. Like I said, I have a, have an east facing window right in front of me. So the lighting's not great. And this time of day, the little ring light doesn't really. seem to help much so see it looks better and then it chilled out for a second there well yeah you're obviously glowing because the mariners had a really nice game tonight against the phillies right uh jerry kelnick goes three for four in this game he was for a while they're the only mariner's hitter that seemed to have figured out bailey falter he gets the mariner's first hit of the game with a double uh hustle double into left center field and then gets their second hit of the game his next time through the order with a

nuke to right center field on a little bit of a cookie there from falter taking advantage of that to give the Mariners a one nothing lead. He also followed that up with another impressive looking drive to left center field, but Christian Paschay caught that ball.

A nice little diving catch by Paschay. And then finally flipped a single, opposite field single against another lefty into left field for his third hit of the game. and he now holds the American League lead in WRC Plus with a mark of 210. So let's talk about Kelnick first.

What did you see out of Kelnick tonight? Not one of his better games. It's no. I mean, he didn't hit a ball 482 feet. That's true. It was only 424. You know, but yeah, it was interesting to see, you know, the double off of the lefty. and the single off of the lefties.

So clearly, you know, the minor league splits that we brought up a few weeks ago, they seem to be more of an indicator than, you know, the major league track record against lefties, which, you know, as you pointed out, well, they're kind of tough to discern because Kellnick's bad against everybody, or he was bad against everybody. So it certainly looks like Kelnick is not a platoon player. He looks like an everyday bat. He's not going to torch lefties like he has. so far this year. Obviously not. He's also not going to torch right. He's as bad as he has this

year. There's going to be a slowdown period at some point. But right now he's just dialed in. You know, he's not missing, you know, he's not missing really cookies essentially. The home run he hit was just kind of a, you know, hanging slider in the middle of the plate. And he did what you should do with it. And he's just in a really good spot right now. We see him go to left field a couple times today, left center field. You know, he's running well. He's not chasing. He continues to hit the ball hard. And again, you know, we talked about yesterday, you know, Kelnick is, is even when he's not having these monster games like you did today, he's finding a way sacrifice, fly, draw, walk, get a RBI single. Like he's mixing in all these little tiny like bonus performances. And then he'll have this big explosive game like you did today.

Today it was all against Selecties too. So that is, again, pretty exciting to see. Kenick's dialed in right now. You know, it's interesting. The calls for him to be moved up in the lineup are only going to get louder. and you're getting to a point now where it's it's tough to ignore what he's doing right now. It's it's tough to kind of like try and dampen down the expectations going forward because Kelnick right now has a really good shot to win the American League player of the month.

That's what I was going to say, right? He's been statistically the most productive player in the American League and was tied for the league lead, major league baseball lead in WRC plus, halfway through this game with Brandon Marsh going over two to start the game. Marsh ended up getting a single and that put him up to 2.13. Kelnick finishes the night, as I said, at a mark of 210. Matt Chapman went one for four tonight. That dropped him down to 205.

So Kelnick right now has a five point lead in the American League in WRC Plus. And again, he's definitely a strong favorite for American League player of the month. there's still five more games left in the month, but he is trying to finish this thing out pretty strong here. And hopefully you get themselves some hardware because he has earned it. Do they get trophies for that? I think they do. Hmm.

Okay. I mean, YouTube player of the game is like on another level. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If YouTube has a player of the game award, they should have a player of the month award, like an actual physical player of the month award. Sure.

I'm sure, you know, Red Sox fans are screen. mean Devers, not that any Red Sox fans are listening to us right now. But yeah, Kellnick's certainly in that conversation. And, you know, we're going on 80 plate appearances now after to 80. I don't know, this is counting today or not yet. Yeah. But we're closing on that 100 mark.

And for me, you know, about 150 is a trend rather than a streak or anything like that. So it's about halfway there. And again, right now I think he's hitting 342. Like he's not going to hit 342, I think. But he's been very, very good. and it just continues and he just keeps on stacking performances like this on top of each other. He's got to be feeling really good right now. And if you're the Mariners, like this is the dream scenario because you haven't even really gotten Julio going yet.

And when you, if you have two play because right now Kelnick, again, it's 20, what, 24 games in, 23 games in right now. He is in the most valuable player conversation. Yeah. If the season ended today, which we know it doesn't. But again, by W&B plus standards, he is. is statistically the best hitter in the American League right now. And he's a really good outfielder too. So, and he can steal some bases.

He's on pace to steal like 15, 20 bags. So, yeah, Kellnick's been amazing. And it was, it was, it's always, I mean, you kind of stop what you're doing now. When Jared Kelman comes to the play, you're like, let's watch this because there'll be something interesting that happens every time he goes up to the plate. Well, and some days, you know, even tonight before the rest of the offense kind of got going, it just kind of felt like it's, it's felt a lot like it's just. and Jared and then whatever else you can get. You know, you cross your fingers and hope to get something out of this offense outside

of Jared. He's been the driving force of this. He's been, inarguably the Mariners best hitter through the start of the season so far. And it's not particularly because anything has gone super wrong. I mean, there's been some relatively disappointing

starts for some guys like Julio, like Tay Oscar, but those guys have also had some productive outings as well. it's not it's just that it's it's just an example of how good jerry kellnick has really been at the end of the day he's been an absolute monster at the dish one of the best hitters in all of baseball and the stuff that he's doing right now is ridiculous he is so locked in even that little single that he had on a pitch on the outside corner of the plate i think uh flipping that out to a single

again he's just he's not doing too much he's not trying to do too much and he's letting the power just naturally come to him he's getting those cookies he's he's drawing out at bats his K rate is starting to go down further and further and further as we go along here he's drawing out more at bats and he's just waiting for those cookies to come from and he's doing damage with them and when he doesn't get one of those he's still able to find a way on base and that's incredible growth from a guy that was statistically one of the worst hitters in all major league baseball for the last year and a half yeah um with his you know zero strikeout performance today and in four played appearances uh his strikeout rate should

should be down around league average right now. And remember about a week into the season, even though Kellnick was still off to a pretty good start at that point, it was at 50%. So it's continuing to go down. And he just doesn't look like a guy who is going to be prone to, you know, strikeouts. He's not Joey Gallo, right?

He's not one of these big K guys. He doesn't look like. He looks like a guy who's probably going to be around league average. When you combine that with his power and, you know, his on base skills, he's drawing walks, plenty of walks. And it's just, again, we're talking about if, I mean, he has been so far this year a superstar. And the only reason we're sitting here really saying like this isn't sustainable is because it like it's baseball. It shouldn't be.

Nobody is this good for an entire year. Yeah. It's too. It's not sustainable because it's too good. Right. Right. Like this is this is Mike Trout stuff right now that. We're really going to say that Jared Kellnick is as good as Mike Trout?

no because he's better but yeah that like that's just what we're at would you it's just wild because like you never see someone go again from one of the worst hitters in all baseball to this yeah to absolutely like hundredth percentile elite right and again it's very early in the season right that works both ways both with disappointing starts and really hot starts like we're seeing out of kellnick still very early things can change rather quickly the outlook of him overall can change rather quickly but he's showing no signs of slowing down right now. The process is so good. And we've seen the league adjust to him a little bit.

We've seen pitchers adjust to him a little bit. They're throwing more breaking balls. And he's adjusting right back. And he's still finding success, right? Again, he did damage against breaking balls against lefties tonight. That's really, really, like, that's incredibly noteworthy. Ty, think about all the players who might be available at the trade deadline this year every single player who might be traded. Would you trade Jared Kellnick for any of them?

Nope. There you go. If I asked you that a month ago, you would have fanning me a list of guys like, yep, here, here, here, here, here, here. A month later, you're like, no, I'm going to ride this out. Well, like, real quick, and we need to go to our ad break, but real quick, you know, today, Brian Reynolds signed his extension finally with Pittsburgh Pirates. Obviously, we talked about Reynolds a lot. We talked about trading Kellnick is kind of just a throw-in in a Reynolds deal. as well. And, you know, I really wanted to say today that a month ago, that news of Brian Reynolds signed an extension would be kind of heartbreaking. Now I couldn't care less. It's like, yeah, whatever. I have a, we have Brian Reynolds at home.

And he's better right now. He's better. Yeah. Right. Like, it's, it's pretty incredible to see what Kelnick has done over the first 23 games here. I don't know how many he's actually played. in, but let's just say 23 for the sake of it. He's been fantastic.

I mean, he's, again, he's been MVP caliber. He should be very well at the top of the conversation here for A.L. Player of the Month. We'll see how the next five games go. He needs to finish it out strong because, like you said, there's guys like Raphael Devers who are also very deserving. But, man, what a night for Jared Kellnick. Again, three for four with a double, a home run, and a single in the Mariners.

five to three victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. And Colby, I think we're getting close, even with Julio's ups and downs and the, you know, Teo digging himself out of the hole that he created at the start of the season. I think we're getting close to having a legitimate conversation about this team, having the best outfield in all of baseball.

So let's talk about that a little bit more here in just a moment, but real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by So Rare. Our new sponsor, So Rare, is a revolutionary fantasy baseball game and marketplace transforming fans into owners with officially licensed digital cards featuring players from across all 30 major league baseball teams unlike other fantasy baseball platforms so rare managers truly own their fantasy experience collecting buying selling and competing with player cards against global opponents to win epic rewards when or lose you still own your cards

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Now, Colby, like I said, this outfield is shaping up to be with the way that Kellnick is playing. Teo's starting to turn things around. And we know that Julio is eventually going to turn things around. This outfield is starting to take shape as probably the best in Major League Baseball. We talked about, you know, a few weeks ago, I think we had a question about the upper echelon of outfields in Major League Baseball. And we talked about how really every outfield out there in Major League Baseball is kind of incomplete. Like they have two really good guys and then one question mark.

And the Mariners were certainly one of those teams heading into this year with a big question mark, obviously being Kelnik. Now Kelnik is solidifying himself, at least through the first 23 games here, as a star. Finally, we're seeing this out of Jared Kelnik. So what do you think? Do you think that's actually the ceiling now for this team? Do you think maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves? Or does this Mariners team actually have one of the best outfield groups in all of baseball?

It is the greatest outfield of all time. Wow. Yeah. So take that. I don't even know who would be considered. Probably one that had Barry Bonds in it and the other two really didn't matter. But, you know, it's really nice about this outfield right now. And again, we still haven't seen Julio really get it going.

We've seen glimpses here and there, but he's still kind of trying to put it together. Teo is just over the last, well, honestly, it's been the last like two or three weeks. Teo was really bad for the first like five or six games, and since then, he's been just great. So what I like about this outfield, though, they can all run. They all have cannons for arms. And right now they're all really, really good defensively. And it seems weird to say because Teo's missed a play here and there. But when you go and you look at the metrics, he's still the second or third best defensive right fielder in all baseball right now.

Again, it's very early defensive metrics. Even season long defensive metrics are still pretty small sample size. Typically, you want a couple years of sample size on, you know, defensive metrics. And defensive metrics are just never going to be perfected. No, no, no, no. So you have to look at it from your eye a little bit. And Teo has been better than I think most of us would have thought in right field. Kellnick certainly is every bit what we thought he was going to be in a corner.

And Julio continues to be, again, I don't think he's a gold glover out there, but he's definitely not a liability. he's an asset, if anything, in center field. So you kind of combine those three guys. They all have tremendous power. They have excellent arms, accurate arms, and they have very just good, raw athleticism, too. So, yeah, there's certainly a lot of upside here, like we talked about a few weeks ago. But if Kelnick is going to hit, like 75% of what he has so far even, then the Mariners are definitely right there because you do look at other outfields and you say, well, you know,

what other outfield could possibly compete with this. Toronto has Kevin Kiramire who can't really hit. So Varsha's kind of gotten off to a slow start as well. Right. So yeah, I just think that there's not a lot of outfields that are going to compete. Certainly, you know, three deep.

Now the Mariners have some depth issues in their outfield right now that could be alleviated by Taylor Tremel. We'll see. But right now it would be a struggle to say that there's an outfield that you would take over the Mariners. mariners right now, not just even long term just for the 2023 season. Right. And there's so much upside still, right? Because obviously there's going to be some regression from Kellnick naturally. He's not going to keep this kind of level of production up,

like we said. But there's also going to be, you know, on the flip side of that, some positive regression from Julio, who had another rough night tonight at the plate, just wasn't able to catch up to really anything missed on a couple of curveballs pretty bad. struck out a couple times tonight. But, you know, that said, Julio's still in a much better spot this April than he was last April. I posted the numbers over on my Twitter. He's like 30 points higher in WRC Plus.

He's got, you know, a few more home runs, a couple more ribs. He's striking out significantly less, like 11% less than than he was last year. So Julio's going to be fine. And again, like, if he has, you know, the May through October that he had, last year he's a top three MVP candidate yeah with what he's done this april maybe the mariner's up to MVP candidates in the outfield right now i mean marco's pretty good but i don't know if i would say MVP candidate yet we got we got to we got to see marco play some outfield right he's the he's the ball shagger god out there during uh bp tie serious question i know you're going to answer

but i got to ask it anyways okay game on the line you have to pinch hit are you pinch hitting Tommy Lusdella or Marco Gonzalez Marco yeah that's not even my doubt Marka Marco rakes he did in college I think he's got a double hey or hey Justice Sheffield call up Justice Sheffield quick you know Marko's already here so I'd rather have Justice Sheffield hitting for me than Tommy Lasella you heard me you heard me I don't think that's that bold of a statement I think everybody in the comments would probably agree. Didn't Justin Dunn also hit like a double in San Diego or something like that?

I think Don and Sheffield, they back-to-back games. They each had a double. By the way, super off topic here, but Justin Dunn reminded me, did you see what the Reds did to the Rangers tonight? No.

Rangers were up six nothing. Reds came back and won seven to six. I thought they did that last night. No, they did that tonight. Oh, wow. Maybe they did it last night as well. I don't know.

They won seven to six. They won seven to six. tonight. Yeah. Reds are off to a nice little start and the Rangers by the way have played a huge percentage of their games against Oakland and Kansas City. So they're going to fall back to the pack too. The ALS is going to be very competitive this year.

All right. So let's talk more about Marco Gonzalez who had another really nice start in his second start post birth of his second child. Dad strength, baby. It's undefeated. Real quick though, before we get into that. A reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Fandul. Grand slams, no

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Make every moment more with Fanduel, an official sports betting partner of Major League Baseball. And you're listening to the Locked-on Mariners Postgame show. Thank you again for making us your first listen after the Mariners 5 to 3 win. over the Philadelphia Phillies. And again, we will be doing two more postgame shows for this series. So catch us again tomorrow night. And you can catch the game on the Mariners hometown broadcast tomorrow night with Sirius XM via the SXM app. So Marco Gonzalez on short notice, full five days rest,

but still on short notice because Logan Gilbert felt a little something in his shoulder while lifting. So as a precaution, they're pushing to start back to tomorrow. so they bring it, Gonzalez's start up a day, and he goes five innings. Only 75 pitches thrown. We'll talk a little bit about the decision to take him out, despite being on five days' rest.

But another really solid start from Marco against the Phillies. Only gives up the one run, solo home run to Edmundo Sosa that was cranked. But outside of that, didn't really make too many mistakes. Kind of battled, kind of had to battle in the third inning, but got through it, got a nice. strike out of Trey Turner who was rough tonight at the plate. I'm sure

that's going to last this whole series. But it was nice to see that Turner didn't really do any damage. The top of the Phillies order in general didn't really do a ton of damage tonight. And again, that was a big, thanks a large part to Marco. So what did you see out of Marco tonight, Colby?

Yeah, it's pretty efficient. You know, got through five on 75 pitches. He only allowed four hard hit balls. So just two strikeouts. He wasn't the repeat of the big nine strike out performance he had last time out, which we know is always going to be an outlier for Marco. But again, you know, one of the one of the trends we saw going back to his last few starts is he's really ditched the cutter. He's not throwing it really

at all right now. Today he threw five by statcast, which accounts for seven percent of his pitches. It was curveball heavy today, which is a nice little twist. His last outing, Marco was very change up fastball heavy today. It was the curveball that did most of the heavy lifting. And then actually his second most used pitch was the change-up. So he really committed to keeping guys, you know, off on, you know, getting guys on there to their front foot, you know, 66% of the pitches he threw today, two-thirds were off-speed pitches, curveballs and change-ups. So, you know, it's pretty interesting.

He only had three whiffs all game. They were all on the change-up. But he did get 15 called strikes on that pitch. And they just, there wasn't a lot to square up. Marco was on the corners. You know, we saw him not afraid to get into three one counts and, you know, throw a pitch just about the zone. And if it's ball four, it's ball four, whatever. But chances are on a three one count, that guy's going to be aggressive and swing at it.

And we saw him do that a couple times. So this kind of is, what, three in a row now for Marco, four in a row for Marco, where we've seen him essentially ditch the cutter. He's not going to use it hardly at all anymore, which is good because it's not a good pitch. And he is really committing to the change up in the curveball. And just kind of, you know, being the crafty lefty that everybody thought he was. And he's just really committed to it. He's pounding the strikes on right now. So it's great to see because, you know, Marco, again, with the struggles of Chris Flexen and Robbie Ray on the IL,

you kind of couldn't have two black holes in your rotation this early in the year. And Marco, after, you know, kind of a rough start has been anything but he's been very solid this year. And I think you feel pretty good about him, you know, going out there. And he's still going to have a blowup start at some point this year. I mean, it may be maybe multiple. There's going to be some days where his changeup just doesn't have command and it kind of floats in the middle of the plate and it gets hit hard. But right now, this is the best command we've seen for Marco since that 2020 season. And it's gone on about three starts now.

Marco is starting to get to a point where you kind of trust him enough that you don't feel. like you have to rush any of the young arms that we assumed would be up by May. Right now, there's really no reason to call those up, go those guys up for Marco. Maybe there is for Chris Flexen. But, you know, Marco's been great the last few times out. And today was just kind of classic soft tossing, right-handed heavy lineup. We're going to get you out on your front foot. We're going to get you to roll over.

We're not going to be in the middle of the plate. You're going to have to earn your runs. And Philadelphia couldn't. And again, it's a pretty good Phillies lineup. And Marco just kind of toyed with them all day and really did it. It was kind of vintage Jamie Moyer, a comp that both Mariners and Phillies fans should be well aware of. He had to do something, right? Because he was nearing the end of his rope in Seattle.

He had to do, he had to make some sort of tweak. He had to do something here to essentially stay alive in this rotation because, you know, in another universe, he might be making this start for the Phillies tonight, right? the Mariners were pretty close, apparently, according to Ryan Dibbish, to trading Marco to Philadelphia in a three-team deal that would have brought Joey Gallo from New York to Seattle. The Yankees, of course, would have been that third team involved. But Marco survived the trade deadline.

Marco survived the off-season, and he's still in Seattle, and it's paying dividends right now for the Mariners in a pretty tight spot right now with Robbie Ray on the aisle. By the way, he met with team doctors today, and they're going to determine if he can start throwing. If so, he'll go down to Arizona and start ramping that backup. So that's hopefully some good news on Robbie Ray. But with Robbie Ray on the aisle and then Chris Fluxon pitching the way that he unfortunately is right now, the Mariners need Marco to do what Marco is doing right now.

And he's stepped up and then some. He's been one of their better starting pitchers. He's one of the reasons why they are Tops in the league right now. in F-war. So now let's talk about, of course, the decision to take him out after 75 pitches, five innings pitch. I get it from the perspective of maybe not letting him face Turner, Schwabre, Cassiano's again for the third time, you know, but going to Matt Brash in that situation,

with the way that Brash has been thrown the ball lately and it almost came back to bite them in a pretty big way. Brash nearly gave this game back. back to the Phillies. He survived, only given up one run, thankfully, but he allowed bases to get loaded with one out. I hit Schwerber on the foot with a curveball, I think, maybe a slider. And then give a back-to-back singles.

Some couple of good defensive plays, though. We're able to get Brash out of there. But, yeah, I get the idea of taking them out before facing the top of the order a third time, but going to Brash in that situation, no, bueno for me. for me marco's handled uh at least turner and and shorber all night and uh you know again with a four to one lead you kind of have the ability to be like all right go out like scott really loves to give guys clean innings he loves to get his relievers in nobody on nobody out just to start the inning but sometimes you just have to say that's not enough and asking matt brash

to get three outs instead of one is a pretty big difference right now uh even with a three run lead so for me the ideal scenario was you send Marco out there and if somebody gets on then you can go to Brash fine whatever because now you know the strikeout is a little bit more important but Marco was cruising at that point he had a pretty good long third but other than that he was getting guys out quick and he was working really quickly so I like the tempo so I wasn't a big fan of that and Marco again on full rest so there's no reason to worry about his pitch count and but if you don't want him to face the order third time for me right now that's probably where I'm using God or or Topa. Now, Toppa came in and pitched the eighth to the middle of the order. So it was the middle, right? Yeah. Yeah. He faced, did he face Turner? I don't think so. I can't remember it. Either way. Oh, no, no, no. He pitched the eighth. He pitched the eighth, right? Yeah. Spire struck out Turner to end the seventh. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, he faced the middle of the order. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, wouldn't be necessary. Brashed at his job. But. Whatever. It is what it is. So, yeah, it was just kind of a weird decision. Again, thankfully, it didn't backfire.

Tie France showed up today with the glove to make a couple really nice plays, including what might have been a game saving because that ball gets by him. That's a double. And two more runs are scoring at least. So you're probably talking about all of a sudden at least a four to three game, probably a tie game. So, yeah, I didn't love that decision by Scott. if Brash was throwing the ball really well right now,

then I would totally get it. But I think you got to let Marco go out there and give him a batter or two. Yeah, I also, especially with a three-run lead. Well, I also think from a Brash perspective, if you're trying to get his confidence back, why are you doing it against the two, three, four,

in the Phillies order, right? Why not do that when you get to the seventh, right? Why not deploy Spire or Topa in that situation and then have Brash take the seventh where he's going to face, you know, bomb Sosa, Marsh or Riumuto, Baum, Sosa, you know, I feel like that would have been a more beneficial spot for Brash to come in, both for himself and for the Mariners, but I digress. At the end of the day, it worked out. Still don't agree with the process, but it did work out.

So not going to harp on it too, too much. real quick though the so Trey Turner went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts Jose Cabiero and J.P. Crawford combined went two for six with a couple of ribs

a couple walks, a couple stolen bases chills chills that's all we were to say by the way shout out to the entire bottom half of the order you know the top half the top three guys they went

one for 12 with five strikeouts today. Six through nine managed to go, let's see here, six for 14 today. They had, let's see, nine hard hit balls between them in this game. They stole a couple bases. They drew a couple walks. Kelnick at the big home run.

So the Mariners found a way to put up five without much contribution whatsoever from Julio, Thai France, or AJ. Pollock. Teo got the big two-run homer, and Gino did chip in a double. But yeah, kudos to the bottom of the lineup tonight. And, you know, despite some questionable decisions, you know, big kudos to the Mariners pitching staff because the Phillies offense right now is kind of clicking. You look at these numbers. And there's a lot of guys putting up really good numbers in this lineup early in the year. And the Mariners just kind of handled them. It never really felt like this game was going to get away from them aside from the Browsehunting. But no, it was, it's a really good job. from the bottom of the order and the pitching staff in general. And that's a really good win to, you know, you always want to win the first one in a series. It gives you a little bit of wiggle room in game two to set up game through three if you need it.

And with the tough series coming up in Toronto, be very nice to take this series, which you can do by just splitting the next two. And folks, if you feel insecure about how you're doing at your job, just watch Las Diaz call balls and strikes for nine innings. you'll feel a lot better, I promise you. Oh, darn.

I forgot to say spoiler alert at the top in case you guys haven't watched the game yet. Oops. Darn. All right, sailors. That's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Locktime Mariners podcast. You love it.

Just admit it. You love it. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Well, the people said they wanted it, right? We got some great feedback in the comments. We obviously, I mean, it was a, couple of folks idea in our live stream on Friday.

You just want me to get to the wrap because you don't want me to prove you wrong here. You don't want me to make you look like a turk minutes again. And I know you have a tendency to kind of drone on forever. For Colby, bad note, I'm tighting Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez, S. D-A-N-Z-L-Z.

And Colby over at CPAT 11. That's CPAT-1. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well at Lockdown Mariners. That's one word locked on Mariners. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first listen after the Mariners 5 to 3 went over the Philadelphia Phillies. We'll be back tomorrow night after the game. And you can catch that game on the Mariners hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app.

But for now, have yourself a beautiful baseball evening. And we'll see you tomorrow night. Peace.