Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Reportedly Call Up Juan Then Ahead of ALDS Rematch With Astros

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

For the first time since they fell 1-0 in 18 innings in Game 3 of the ALDS, the Seattle Mariners will face off with their division rival, the Houston Astros. Colby and Ty breakdown the weekend matchup. Plus, Seattle is reportedly calling up pitching prospect Juan Then. The guys break down his stuff but ask a more interesting question: who is he replacing? And for what reason? All of that and more on today's episode of Locked On Mariners!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/RocketMoneyStop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions -- and manage your expenses the easy way -- by going to RocketMoney.com/lockedonmlb. BetterHelpThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are. Visit BetterHelp.com/lockedonmlb today to get 10% off your first month. 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.

Well, you're not going to find revenge in early May, but nevertheless, it would still feel really good to take a series from the Astros. The first of four ALDS rematches gets underway tonight at T-Mobile Park, and we got you covered on all you need to know here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day. Ahoys, sailors. It is Friday, May 5, 2023.

This is Tyning Azales. Pat note for the Lockdown Mariners podcast brought to you by BetterHelp. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are. Visit betterhelp.com slash Lockdown MLB today to get 10% off your first month. Thank you so much for making us to your first listen. 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. 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 scanning the QR code that's right above my head. The link as well as our social accounts is also in the description of this episode.

And on this episode, we'll get you set for the first of four regular season series between the Mariners and the Astros. Yeah, that's right. Their first matchup since the ALDS. But first, Colby, we have news to talk about. Friend of the show, Joe Doyle, who broke the news of Bryce Miller's call up, has. more news took to Twitter last night to report that Mariners relief pitching prospect

1-10, who initially was with the Mariners organization, then got traded to the Yankees, then was brought back in the Edwin-Incarnassion deal. It's finally making his way to the major leagues. Now, we'll talk about what that means for the rest of the roster

and who could ultimately be sent down or if someone said in the IL in a second here, but what's your general reaction to 10? making his way up to the majors. It's a little bit of a surprise, to be honest with you. He's only thrown 66 innings since 2019. Obviously, yeah, the shutdown season, which greatly affects you, his workload.

And then he's dealt with some injuries. But he's been in AA. They kept him on the 40 man all last year, which was a bit of a surprise, but they could afford to do it. And he's been okay in the minors and pretty good, but there are some concerns here. So to me, this doesn't scream. you know, short term, like we just need a guy for a couple of days. Because I think if that's the case, they would probably call up Matt Festa.

So I don't, I'm not really sure what to make of this in terms of a long-term roster concern type of thing. But it is, it is interesting, you know, obviously 10 is not the going to elicit as much excitement as, as Bryce Miller. but he's a solid prospect, solid relief prospect, who has some interesting stuff. There's a bit of deception in his game. Fastball is, you know, 94 to 99, mostly 95, 96. He's got some run on it. Slider actually flashes above average, but there's still some command and concern here. It's probably 40 great command, 45 control.

So he'll walk some guys, he'll get behind and counts. and his stuff isn't so good that he can afford to make mistakes right in the middle of the plate. But if he's working on the corners, if he's staying out of the middle of the plate, he does have good enough stuff and he throws enough strikes to be a really solid middle innings guy, six, seventh inning type. And maybe that's all the Mariners need for a little while or a couple days. Again, we don't know yet, you know, what the corresponding move is. There's some obvious moves that could be made, but there's also some murmurs out there that there could, this is. is a little more complicated.

It was the exact phrase than we're thinking right now. So we'll wait and see what it is. We probably won't know what actually the move is. As, until after we're done with today's episode. But just keep an eye out for that. Ten is interesting.

He certainly has majorly quality stuff. He just has to stay out of the middle of the plate. So by the time that this episode comes out, you'll probably already know what the move is. So we won't linger on this for far too long. because we're probably already talking about information that's out there by this point. But what we're hearing right now, as you noted, there are some murmurs going around that a reliever for the Mariners.

We don't know who. No one clarified who it was. But there is a reliever that apparently underwent an MRI yesterday in Oakland. It's not expected to result in an IL stent, but it's possible. And it seems at the very least that one of the Mariners relievers, is going to be out for a few days. But that's the word going around right now. We'll see what the case is.

Best case scenario, though, what we're keeping our fingers crossed for here is tend to just being called up for Taylor Sosato, who hasn't pitched since the Cardinals series, I don't think. It's been a long time. He hasn't pitched in a really long time. I don't know if he's pitched the last couple days, and I just missed it or blanked down on that,

but I don't think so. So it's been a while for him. So that would be the most obvious move there. in the marries bullpen so um colby do you want to we we talked about how much tin has moved around between the uh the marioners and the yankees i said earlier that he was reacquired in the edwin incarnation deal but do you know who he was traded to new york for and with because he he went to new york along with another prospect it's a noteworthy prospect all right Let's see. You could probably figure this out.

All right. So obviously the Mariners acquired Ben Gamble from the Yankees, but you said that wasn't the trade in a lost recording, let's say. Notable prospect, right? So this had to be in 2018? I believe, yeah, I believe that was 2018. So then it had to be the Adam Warren trade. No. Really? Okay. So think reliever. Think reliever.

You're on the right track. Think reliever. Okay. What's this, 2018? I'm going to look that up. Are you sure? Wow. Wait, hold on.

No, wait, that's wrong. Oh, it's 2017. 2017. This happened. November 18th, 2017. Oh, offseason. I thought it was a deadline deal. Okay.

No. No, not a deadline. They would have pitched in the Mariners bullpen, you said, in 2018 then. Is it, let's see, Ben Gamble, Mike Ford, Adam Warren. I think I got it. I think it's Juan 10 and JP Sears for Nick Rumbleau, right? For Nick Rubbleau, that's correct. Yeah, there you go.

I forgot JPCS was with the Mariners for a hot minute there. Okay. Yep. I know you have all that information of the early depoto years stored somewhere in that brain of yours, that big brain of yours. I got to go through the file cabinet in my brain to get to the right file. But yeah, there were a lot of early trades with the Yankees, not so much lately. Yep. J.P. Sears, who owns the Maritors through three career starts.

I'm just going to throw sliders down the middle of the point. they can't touch it. It's a full proof plan. Anyways. Let's talk about another pitcher named JP, who's going to be making his major league debut on the opposing side of things for the Houston Astros, who I'm sure is just going to dominate the Mariners this weekend.

We'll talk about him. We'll talk about the rest of the series coming up here in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder, this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finder. app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills, all in one place. Over 80% of people have subscriptions they forgot about, and chances are you're one of them. Rocket Money will quickly and easily find your subscriptions for you, and for any of you don't want to pay for anymore, just hit cancel, and Rocket Money will cancel it for you.

It's that easy. Rocket Money also helps you manage all your finances in one place and automatically categorize your expenses so you can easily track your budget in real time and also get alerted if anything looks up. off. Over 3 million people have used Rocket Money saving the average person up to $720 a year. So stop throwing your money away, cancel unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way by going to RocketMoney.com slash locked on MLB. That's RocketMoney.com slash locked on MLB. You got that, Coley? RocketMoney.com slash locked on MLB. You need me to say it any more times? Fourth time, fifth time, sixth time, no? Okay. This is a lockdown Mariners podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us here before the Mariners and Astros get underway for a really important three-game series over this weekend. You can catch all the action on the Mariners hometown broadcasts on Sirius XM with the SXM app. Check it out. Tonight, the Mariners are debuting their City Connect uniforms. And it's going to be Luis Castillo,

rocking those bad boys against the Houston Astros. he's going up against the Astros rotation ace Christian Javier or maybe it's Framber Valdez. Who would you say is there ace right now? Framber? Javier? To me, I like Javier a little bit more than Valdez personally. Yeah, but it's probably,

it's probably still Framber, I would say, but. All right. Yeah, that's kind of a one-two punch over there. Yeah. So tough matchup for the mayor's offense. I mean, every pitcher is a tough. match has proven to be a tough matchup for the mayor's offense right now so it does it really matter castillo has been still pretty good but not great over his last couple starts uh really

struggled to find the strike zone in toronto um i was watching that game from the first baseline so i didn't get to see everything that was going on there you were telling me via text that he got squeezed a couple times uh but still just command not really there not where you want it to be for Luis. So how does he bounce back against this Astros offense tonight? Be better. It's really that simple. The Astros are going to come in with a game plan to pretty much hunt the fastball. They have to, right? You have to sit on the fastball. You don't really have a choice. You don't really have a chance. And that's kind of what the last two teams, the last two outings have done, St. Louis and Toronto have really just sat fastball. And they've been

willing to take sliders and sinkers and changeups and, you know, take their chances on him throwing three of those in a row. So yeah, he's going to have to extract some more value from the fastball. My guess is the velocity is going to be up a little bit tonight. It's going to be a pretty packed house, you know, and City Connect reveal and he's facing the Astros. So I think he'll probably be pretty pumped up. But also that means he has to keep himself composed and not overthrow, not spike sliders. Like you have to just treat this almost like another game. So for Castillo, it always comes down to the fastball. Just needs one of them. He either needs the foresemer or the two seamer and then he just needs an off speed pitch to go with it and he can really dominate this

lineup it's it's a good astros lineup but it's not as good as it has been in the past obviously altouvae is out right now um chas mcormick may or may not be back i haven't seen an update on him uh and obviously josea brayu their big offseason addition is really struggling right now no michael brantley uh so yeah i mean it still is painia and bregman and yorda and kyle tucker like it's still a very dangerous lineup but not quite what it was a year ago so we'll see cassio pitch very well against them we know that but it's still a good team and and you're going to have to be a little bit better with your command uh and you're going to have to extract a little more fastball value than you have out of your last two starts um and you know i think tonight is a good night to break out the

slider throw the slider a little bit more um or the change up like just all cassio needs is two pitches and he can dominate one of the fast balls one of the off-speed pitches and you can dominate this lineup. But it's really going to come down to command and control. He's got to be on the corners a little bit more. Yeah, like you mentioned, this offense, really struggling right now. No Al-Tuvay, no Brantley, as you mentioned. They only have four guys right now over a WRC Plus 100.

One of those guys is Chaz McCormick, who may or may not play in this series. The other three, Yordaun Avares, Kyle Tucker. And then Jeremy Pena is right there on the cusp at 100 flat WRC. Plus. Everyone else is below that. Alex Bregman at 98, Maricio Duvon at 97, Cesar Salazar at 97, Corey Jolks at 90, Jake Myers at 87, Martine Maldonado all the way down at 48, and Jose Abraeu, as you mentioned, their big, big off-season addition down at 46. And David Hensley, who has had an increase in his role due to the injury to Al-Tuvai. He's only got a 20 WRC plus right now.

So this offense really scuffling so far for the Astros, and they're dealing with some injuries and their pitching rotation. There's really no better time to catch them than right now. And they're also coming off of a rough series against the San Francisco Giants in which they lost two or three to a fairly mediocre Giants team down in Houston. So hopefully you're able to get back to 500 and then maybe exit the series above 500

with the way that the Astros are playing right now. But pitching matchups are going to be tough, particularly on Friday and today and Sunday when they got Hunter Brown falling for them. I want to talk about that pitching matchup between Brown and Miller a little later on in the show. But for now, it does feel like even with the way that your offense is playing right now,

you should have an advantage on the pitching side. You should be able to win this series. there is a really good chance that you can win this series against this astros team you got to execute ultimately but they're they're hurting right now they're a bit hobbled and they're not performing pretty well so we'll see so the uh the other thing that i want to talk about here i i mentioned it earlier uh the astros it looked you know because they have injuries to louis garcia and jose er kitty uh they had an opening for tomorrow it looked like that was going to be brandon Bylack to make that start. But it said, it was announced today that JP France, 28-year-old Ritey, is going to be making his debut. That's right.

JP France is going to make his Major League debut against J.P. Crawford and Thai France. He offers a low 90s fastball and a 12-6 curve. Those are his two primary pitches.

And Colby, as we know, the Mariners are great at hitting the curveball right now. So I'm sure that's going to go great. They're also great at hitting the fastball right now or the slider or the cutter or the change up. Doesn't matter what you throw up there. Every pitch. I'm not going to hit it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. France is interesting because it's not an overwhelming fastball, but it does have some run to it. He also has a cutter and a change up. The stuff is actually pretty good despite the below average velocity on the fastball. ball. It's actually really good stuff. He was in the top 20 in plus stuff down in AAA. The issue with France right now is the command and control. He just, he will be in the middle of the plate a lot or he will miss a lot. So it's it's incumbent on the Mariners to be very patient, wait for a pitch in the middle of the plate that you can drive. Don't chase. Don't help him out. He's got good stuff. You don't want to get to two strikes against him. So you got to, you got to jump on him early. When he makes a mistake, you have to hit it.

you have to punish him for it because if he gets you to two strikes, he's got a lot of options and the stuff plays up pretty well at the major league level. So, you know, you don't want to be overly aggressive, but you don't want to just take, you know, fast balls down the middle of the plate or you don't want to miss hanging curb balls, which is true of any pitcher. But in particular against a guy like France who has good stuff, you really don't want to fall behind. You want to do damage early in counts because he's got the stuff to put you away.

So it'll be interesting to see he is. He's not like Bryce Miller level of prospect, but he's a pretty solid prospect. So we'll see what happens. He is on the older side, though. Yep. And we know how, you know, stats for older players in the minors really don't mean that much. They really don't. So we'll see how they attack, how they attack JP France, which is weird to say.

But we'll see how they attack him and then how he attacks the Mariners. And hopefully, you know, they don't miss the cookies that they've been missing over the last week or so because you really. you really don't want to, you know, face down this bullpen down by two or three runs. For in particular, when you're facing a guy who will give you opportunities to, you know, hit him hard. Yeah,

it's through 19 and the third endings of work down in AAA this year. 26 strikeouts. 11 walks, though. He's walking a lot of guys right now. So hopefully you can work out some, some long at bats. And even if you, you know, because again,

these debuts can go, in completely different ways, right? You could just jump on a guy, you know, wax them for like eight runs in the first inning, or because you don't have any data on him, really, you don't have any film or anything on him.

He can just chew through you. So if that happens, at least you should be able to work some long at bats here and get him out of the game relatively quick because I assume that he's also probably on a little bit of a pitch count. And the Astros obviously have one of the better bullpins in baseball. so they won't hesitate to go to it if need be. So we'll see.

But that certainly is an opportunity for this team. Now there have been many opportunities like this in the past for this team and they haven't done anything with them. So who knows? It's kind of a crapshoot when talking about the Mariners facing guys like JP France. But in theory, they should be able to jump on him. But we'll see. That's ultimately up to them to perform.

So, all right. I want to talk about Sunday's pitching matchup because that's really exciting. We got a pitching matchup between two of the more exciting young pitchers in the American League West. So we're going to go over that in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mergers is brought to you by Better Help. Getting to know yourself, rather, can be a lifelong process, especially because we're always growing and changing. Therapy is all about deepening your self-awareness and understanding because sometimes we don't know what we want or why we really act the way we do until we talk through things.

BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are. Therapy can be helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It can empower you to be the best version of yourself. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. And if you don't feel that your match is suitable for you, no worries.

You can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Discover your potential with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Lockdown MLB today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Lockdown MLB. And you're listening to the Lockdown Marriors podcast. Again, you can catch tonight's game on the Mariner's hometown broadcasts with SiriusXM via the SXM app. So if you don't have a chance to watch it, you can listen to it on there. All right, Hunter Brown versus Bryce Miller.

That's what's currently slated to happen on Sunday. Hunter Brown off to a great start for the Astros, really making up for the lost talent and the injuries that have happened within that Astros rotation. He's currently leading the team or he's tied for the team lead with Framber Valdez for an F4 with 1.1F4. He's thrown 34 and two-thirds inning so far. He's running a 25.7% K-rate. And he's got a 260 ERA, 284FIP, 3-82-X-FIP. But that's not who I want to talk about.

I want to talk about Bryce Miller, who is coming off of one of the most impressive Major League debuts. You'll see. He set a Mariners record with 10 strikeouts, no walks, and his Major League debut through five and a third innings of perfect ball and then finish it out with six endings of work on one run ball. But this is the real test for him. We talked about this after his start against the A's.

This is a real lineup. This is a big boy lineup. Even though that they're struggling right now, you got Yordon Alvarez, you got Kyle Tucker, you got Alex Breggman, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

What's the plan for Bryce Miller going up against these guys? You got to do what you do best. You know, there's a tendency to try and outthink the opponent and they think I'm going to do this, but what I'm really going to do is this. And sometimes that works,

but is Bryce Miller even equipped to do that? I don't think he is at this stage. So I think you got to stick with what you do best. It's your fastball. Your fastball is your best pitch. You have to focus on locating it. You have to focus on, you know, throwing strikes, as cliches that is. And you can't worry about giving up hits on the fastball.

You can't, now, obviously, you still have to mix in the slider and the change up and all that stuff. So you're not just going to throw 90% fastballs, but I think it's going to be a lot of fastballs. It is your best pitch. It's what you do best. It's the pitch you control the most. So really at the end of the day, if you ask yourself, If you're Bryce Miller, right, and Yordon Alvarez is up with a chance to win the game in the ninth inning, what pitch do you trust that you can throw for a strike and get a guy out with?

It's the heater. So just stick with it. Don't change who you are yet to, you know, just because you're facing the Astros or the Yankees or whoever. You just got to be true to yourself and especially early in your career before you kind of develop these counterpunches. You just got to stick with your best pitch as much as you can, as much as it makes sense. So I say it's a very similar game plan to what we saw in Oakland, maybe a couple more changeups because Yordaun and Kyle Tucker, maybe having a couple of extra big, powerful lefties in there,

makes you go to the change up a little bit more. But for the most part, I think you just stick with what works or what has worked for you. And right now his best pitch by a mile is the forcing fastball. Just roll with it. And it's going to be a while. teams the astros know right the astros know they're going to see a lot of fastballs but until you see the pitch come out of his hand until you see the rise until you see the run until you see the pitch scouting reports really not that useful so first time around especially hammer that fastball

don't be afraid to throw it in fastball counts it's your best pitch trust it let it eat and then make your adjustments off of that but i just don't think you can go in there and be like oh i'm gonna I'm going to throw 40% sliders in this outing. They'll never see that coming. And you're probably never going to see the fifth if that's your game plan. So you just got to stay true to yourself. So some final thoughts on this series before we wrap up here. We talked yesterday about how Tayasca Hernandez is heating up a little bit after being in a really dark place at the plate.

This is the revenge series for him. Technically, he was an Astros prospect when this all began for him. Just saying, just putting that out into the universe. It's more of a revenge series for AJ Pollock, I would say, who we know has no love loss for the Astros. That's true. Yuleiguri-L is gone, though. The one that he infamously chewed out after catching a fly ball against. Yep, yep.

Sure, but anyways. So, yeah, and obviously, you know, there's unsettled business, although winning a series in May means absolutely nothing. means not compared to getting swept out of the playoffs let's let's not act like blue jays fans here this the series no it doesn't it doesn't fix anything that happened in october not at all no not even close so they're not they're not equivalent guys um but no obviously you know it's it's your division rival and and you want to do you want to play well and you really want to take advantage before they're healthy and when they're not playing well but it's a tough matchup for them it really is still particularly sunday because hunter brown throws a lot of

sliders and you know who can't touch a slider right now with a 10 foot pole Julio Rodriguez you know who's only a little bit better right now against the slider Teoska Hernandez do you think you're going to win this series with Julio and Teo being zeros at the plate you're not so we'll see to be fair to no one in this lineup can really touch a slider yeah but nobody is chasing sliders 15 feet out of the strike zone like Julio and Teo right now so yeah it's bad It's so, yeah, we'll see, you know, it may sometimes all it takes is, you know, you, you play the team that you hate or whatever and it just, you focus in a little bit extra.

And sometimes that's all it takes. But for the most part, we, we know the Astros are not going to throw Julio fastball. Like, we know that. We watched them do it last October. He saw like two fastballs the entire series. Those are what he got his two hits on. So they're going to throw them a lot of sliders. A lot of curve balls.

They're going to do that to a lot of the Mariners hitters because right now they're really struggling on the off speed stuff. So we'll see it. I mean, you have to feel reasonably good about the pitching. It's not ideal that you're throwing Marco in this series, but or that honestly you're throwing Miller. You'd much rather throw as weird as it sounds. And I'm sure people in the comments will totally agree with me. You'd rather Robbie Ray be healthy and make this start than, you know, Marco. But Colby, he gave up a home run to Jordan Alvarez, the most of the most.

important point of the mariner season last year. He did. It's almost like he should have been put in that situation to begin with. Hey, you know, you should use Eric Swanson the series. Oh. No, it's okay. We got Gabe Spire. So that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Taylor Sato for now. And one 10 and one 10. Apparently. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see when that officially gets announced two things that i'm i'm going to address here one of them is a comment from our last video which we always appreciate oh here we go here we go and uh by the way nobody seemed to care about my my star wars there are a couple people oh okay i didn't see those but yeah yeah nobody was too upset that i did the the star trek thing at the end um yeah yeah that was

disappointing i wanted i wanted someone to get a little heated over that darn that's star guys, that's not Star Wars. Idiot. Yeah. Oh, man. Unfortunately, nobody took the bait, so whatever. Good for you guys. Good for you guys.

The other one is an interesting DFA. We talked about Seth Beer, well, yesterday. This one's a little even more interesting. Jonathan Daza dFAed by the Rockies. Now, he's not going to fix your offensive problems.

He's, in a lot of ways, very similar to Thai France at the plate. There's not a lot of power. He doesn't hit the ball especially hard, but he does use the entire field, and he does, you know, post a batting average. You know, his actual batting average is always going to be better than his expected because he just doesn't hit the ball all that hard. But 270 right now with a 304 on base, again, not much. But it's better than what you've been running out there, particularly at the DH spot. He's an okay outfielder, really strong arm.

You can play all three spots, but you'd probably like him better in a corner. It doesn't strike out. Doesn't draw a ton of walks, though, either. He was better last year, not a lot of power. He's an interesting guy. So I'd wait and see. That might be something Jerry's interested in. It might not.

But traditionally, he doesn't strike out. He doesn't swing and miss. He puts the ball and play a lot. He's going to hit 270. And you can just get him to walk. I don't know, six, seven percent of the time, then he's probably going to post an above average, above league average on base percentage. It doesn't strike out 16 and a half percent career strikeout rate, but unfortunately

only a 6.2 percent walk rate and that number is 3.8 this year. So maybe on Jonathan Daza, keep an eye on that. He's certainly more valuable to you than Sam Hagridi right now. And speaking of, because in the business, we call this a transition. this comment oh boy left by Berg Berg

yeah Colby is so quick to take a fat you know what on Haggerty we're not going to get demonetize if I said I just don't want the locked on folks let's see I believe he had the second highest batting average on the team last year

prior to his injury the guy needs more at bats in time to find his group he's an ideal utility guy with a good glove great speed and average bat to ball skills. Okay, hold on, hold on, before you get going here, because I know you and you're going to get going,

I just want to let you know you're already at the 31 minute mark. So I'm going to do to you what you always do to me, and you're on the clock now. Go for it. See, I don't think I am because I think you're just going to let me finish because this is a good radio. But anyways, here's the problem with Sam Haggurty. I don't care what his batting average was last year.

year because we saw it when he started to play every day last year when the league got a book on him. He started to tank. Haggerty's a nice player. He's a 26 guy on the roster. He's not a good bat. He's hitting 077 this year. He's a 172 on base. And he's not an above average bat to ball skill guy.

In fact, his K percentage in the majors above league average. He strikes out more than people think. So far this year, 24.1. League average 22.1. Last year, 26.4%. League average again, 22. He doesn't strike. He doesn't make a ton of contact relative to his skill set.

So he's an average defender. Is he? Is he average? I don't think he is, not in the outfield. I think he's fringe average. But I can't definitively say he's above average. Why? Because he crashed into the net last year and didn't make the catch.

Ooh, impressive. I like Sam Haggerty. But stop with this idea. that he's just a fixture on this team that you can't possibly do better then. He's not. He's a bench guy. He's organizational depth. You got lucky last year.

He caught fire at the right time right when he needed him to. And kudos to him for doing that. I think there's a role for Sam Haggurty. Not when he's hitting 077. Not when he's been jumped on the roster by Taylor Tremel and Jose Cabiero. Cabiero does everything Haggerty does, but better. You don't need Sam Haggerty on this roster. It's nothing personal against Sam.

I like Haggurty. He's a fun player. But if you're not going to use him to run the bases, because you can't trust him to get an app bat later in the game, he's your fifth best outfielder, sixth best outfielder. And he's not as good defensively as Jose Cabiero or as good of a hitter. You don't need both of those guys on this roster. You don't because they're already playing Cabby over Haggurty against lefties.

That's Haggertie's role is to play against lefties. they're not letting him do it. Why? Because he stinks. He's not good. Here's the here's the upside though. He has options. You can send him down to Tacoma. You can give him at bats every single day like you want. And then you can reassess. But in the meantime, having a guy on your bench who you're not going to use, we just talked about this with Lestella. It's not helpful for anybody, including Sam Haggrey. Send him down. Call up Marlowe. Call up Mason McCoy. Call it Mike Ford. I don't care. Call up somebody who, even if you don't think they're going to play a lot, then call it Mike Ford. That's what he's for. All right. Call, Call Moran. Not Sam Haggarty. He's not good. And I spent all offseason trying

to tell you guys that Sam Haggurty should not have a guaranteed spot on this roster. Because he didn't earn it last year. He didn't. I'm sorry. He was good for a month. Whoopty do. He still strikes out. There's no power. He's really unusable against right-handed pitching, which is only 70% of the league. Stop coddling Sam Haggurty. he's a nice orc player he's fine to have on your bench for a month he should not be a major part of your plan at any stage of a contention window you should be able to dFA sam haggerty tomorrow and the you know just be like uh well you know oh well but there's just this cult following to sam haggerty we saw with willie bloomquist a decade ago they're not that good

stop trying to protect players who are bench guys. He's a lunch pail guy though. He's a, he's a, gym rat. He might as well go up there with a lunch pail and swing that because he's got a better shot to get a hit with that than he does a bat right now. He is not a majorly quality player at this moment. That's a fact. I agree with that.

Yeah. And I was the one that that defended Sam a lot this offseason against you, right? But I do agree. And I think Kate and okay. Yes. No, I'm not. This is information tie, not affirmation. I'm not doing that.

Cade Marlowe to me would be way more valuable on this roster. And he's showing us some good things down in AAA. Mike Ford would be more valuable on this roster right now because he's also doing some really nice things in AAA, but also Marlowe has significantly higher upside. I would like Marlowe on the roster personally. How do you get Malo at bats? That's the question, right? That's the,

that's why they're probably not going to do it. And that's probably why they're not going to do it. Plus, because if they also don't think that he can hit lefties, then that's incredibly redundant with Tremel at that point. Now you have two strict outfielders who can't hit lefties, or at least in your mind, can't hit lefties. So that probably doesn't work. There probably isn't a space on this roster for both of those guys to coexist.

But just in terms of who the best player is down in AAA, to me, that's Kate Marlowe. So from that aspect, would love him on the roster, but it probably makes more sense to them to go get Mason McCoy or pick up Yonathan Dazza or whatever. How do you fit Taylor Tremel and Cade Marlowe

on the roster right now without an injury? How do you get those two guys, enough at-bats when you're already trying to get Kelnick, Julio, Teo, and Pollock? I feel like you can fit one pretty easily you can fit tremel or marlowe but i think if you put two then you're putting yourself in a situation where one's just going to sit a lot and that's not really good for the player yeah yeah agreed um defensively and you know speed wise yeah there's a lot of value that marlowe can bring at least late in games but is that what's best for him probably not

so yeah i don't know somebody will get hurt somebody will get hurt somebody will get rated, something will happen, and Marlowe will get a shot. Yeah, he deserves a shot, I think. I mean, especially he does this for another month or so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's he's having a really nice time down in AAA right now. And the K rate is starting to get lowered a bit. So that was the one thing that we really wanted to see because he was striking out almost 40% of the time down in AAA last last year. Tie, tie. We're already at 37 and a half minutes, bud.

I know, yeah, no, whose fault was that? I was going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the long. Sure. Sure. Sure it was. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Locked-on Mariners podcast. For Colby Patnode, I'm Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-N-Rerner. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez, C-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-C-Pat-E-L-E. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well over at Locked-on Mariners. That's one word, Lockdown Mariners.

You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. and if you made it all this way, let us know what your predictions are for this weekend series or just say what's up if you're still here. Thank you again for making us your first listen. But for now,

I don't know why I said, but for now, I was just still in my script and I just read everything that's on my script. I'm basically Ron Burgundy. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and a beautiful baseball weekend

and we'll see you next week. Peace.