Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Sweep Royals, Take Over Sole Possession of First Place in AL West!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Your Seattle Mariners are all alone in first place in the American League West. Ben and I will give you our thoughts on the Marys 3 to 2 victory over the Royals coming up here on the Locked on Marys Postgame show. Let's get into 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 Sunday, August 27th, 2023. This is tiding Azales and Ben Reneery for the Lockdowne Marys.

Starting point is 00:00:31 post game show. Thank you so much for making us your first listen. Subscribe, like, and turn 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. You now get a free seven-day trial to check out the show. The link as well as social accounts is in the description of this episode.

Starting point is 00:00:54 Three to two, the final score from T-Mobile Park. Mariner sweep the Royals. And on top of that, the Rangers lost to the two. twins and extra innings, which means your Seattle Mariners are in sole possession of first place in the American League West folks. That's right. That is right. I've got Ben Rennery of C level back with me today with Colby out of town.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Ben, the scenes at Team Mobile Park were electric this afternoon. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this one, give us your initial reaction to today. Yeah, it's just awesome, man. said last time Seattle's been a sleeping baseball giant for a long time and it's so cool to see him get 38,000 people on a Sunday with that much on the line. You could kind of see as they were panning across and from the people that I knew that were at the games, people were watching the Twins game on their phone, which is pretty cool. Like that's what you want to see in August baseball. It means it's meaningful and it's just really cool to see Seattle show out like that.

Starting point is 00:01:59 yeah i admittedly i was paying way more attention to the blue jays and rangers games through the first half of this mariner's game than the actual mariner's game itself uh and and that's weird right because yeah shout out to the guardians the marinas now have a four game buffer essentially of completely falling out of the playoff race now uh so that's massive and and that's wild that you know i was more so paying attention to those other two games uh because this Mariners game was incredibly close. It was one nothing for most of it until Julio hit a two-run bomb

Starting point is 00:02:35 to make it three-nothing. And then they were pretty much cruising until Gabe Spire gave up a two-run home run to Nelson Velasquez. And then there was some more danger there. Things got really dusty. Runners at first and third with Salvador Perez up to bat.

Starting point is 00:02:52 And then it was second and third after Bobby Witt stole second base. And so a single likely would have made it four three royals but justin topa through a nasty change up the only change up he threw all day to salvador Perez and got him for strike three and then andres mounios came through he looked really good this is a pretty easy ninth inning very electric ninth inning shout out to dave sims who once again in the big moment just kills it absolutely kills it he does not miss in those

Starting point is 00:03:29 Moe. That's insane. He was awesome as well. I want to talk about Luis Castillo, because without Luis Castillo being as good as he was, this might not have gone as well for the merits today. He goes seven scoreless innings, six strikeouts, just one walk, just one hit allowed. I think of just four hard hit balls, maybe five heart hit balls. What did you think about his day? Yeah, he was basically a three-pitch guy today, fastball, two-seam slider. and he had awesome, awesome command today. We talked about how the Royals just don't swing in this a lot. I thought this was probably his best outing of the year,

Starting point is 00:04:10 like where he wasn't really pitching like a power pitcher. I think he had six strikeouts. He was consistently on the edges all game. And when he gets in trouble, he's in the middle of the plate a lot with the slider specifically or the changeup specifically. And he just kind of stuck with this bread and butter. was fastball two seam, dotting the corners. And Scott Service was just talking about it on the post-game interview,

Starting point is 00:04:37 but it just never seems like he breaks a sweat. He's the same guy all the time, whether it's going really good or really bad. And he's the rock. Like, that's exactly what you want at the top of your rotation. Yeah, got to give one of these here for Luis. That was a great performance today. And not without some help from his defense as well. I got to give a shout out to Dom Canzone.

Starting point is 00:04:59 You know, I've been ragging on Dom Canzone a little bit on this show. The last, yeah, exactly. I've been ragging on Dom Canzone's athleticism the last couple of shows. He made a pretty spectacular diving play out in right field. It was apparently a bad route, according to Ryan Divish, but he recovered nicely. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's, it was a bad start and a really, really impressive recovery. I mean, that, yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:25 we talked the other day about how he might not be that athletic but that was a really really athletic play after a bad read off the start i don't know i mean who knows it was probably a really difficult ball um but just a phenomenal play yeah yeah it still takes a good athlete to uh to make that catch for sure to make that recovery and then gino swars man what what else can you say about this guy he should be the gold glove right yep um exactly something that i wanted to get into he's got service just said he thought that was the biggest play of the game to get that first out and the eighth inning it's a ball off of a lefty's bat going away from him diving stop gets the runner at second base like it's coming off on my Twitter account all the time give this guy the gold glove he has been so good and for whatever he hasn't really done offensively this year he's been okay but man he makes so many plays that keep them in these games especially with how many sinkerballers they have now on this team and how many are coming up it's so important that their infield defense is good and Gino's got my vote and he should have everybody's vote for third

Starting point is 00:06:39 day school glove yeah to eliminate Blanco on the base pass too was massive because that dude can jet so yeah that was just a huge huge play and they nearly turned the double play there too which which would have made things a lot less interesting there in the game. But yeah, nevertheless, Topa able to clean up Spires mess. And spires obviously been really good as of late. So, you know, we'll let that one slide. But yeah, man, huge win today for the Mariners. We're going to talk more about it in just a moment.

Starting point is 00:07:09 But first a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Marrars podcast is brought to you by Dave. No, not Sims or Neathouse. Dave is the banking app that's leaving the financial field. At one time or another, we've all needed a little financial help. That's why Dave is great. Dave can get you cash between paychecks and can help you build credit by settling extra cash advances on time. When you download Dave, you get up to $500 in five minutes or less. No credit check, no late fees.

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Starting point is 00:08:19 of first place in the American League West here on August 27, 2023. Incredible stuff. The Mariners going to face the A's coming up here. You can catch all the action on the Mariners hometown broadcasts with Sirius XM via the SXM app. So Ben, Julio and Teo doing all the work here for the Mariners' offense was kind of a

Starting point is 00:08:44 disappointing day for the offense. I thought they rolled out the best possible lineup they can right now. and they ended up only scoring three runs and all three of those runs came on two swings of the Vat one from Teoscar Hernandez and one from Julio Rodriguez with the two run shot. Teo is red hot right now. And that's huge, right?

Starting point is 00:09:06 Like that's massive for this team. Yeah, I mean, those are the two guys coming into the year that we kind of thought could be aircraft carriers for this offense. And we didn't really see it for most of the year, which probably coincides with why this offense wasn't that great or was kind of middling until

Starting point is 00:09:23 this last month. Julio's got a 209 WRC plus in August. It's ridiculous. He's going to be the American League player of the month. Yeah. It's pretty safe to say. Mateo's got a 178 in August. So, I mean, it's pretty easy to see

Starting point is 00:09:40 why this team has been so hot. Those guys have been carrying the load and it was basically just those two doing the job today. Yeah. Julio continues to pull the ball in the air, which is something that I've been talking about with him for a long time. I did a longer piece on that with actually J.P. Crawford's hitting coach. It's like this guy can hit 40 home runs every year if he just pulls it in the air. He hits the ball so hard.

Starting point is 00:10:09 And whatever adjustment he made with Jared DeHart, it's made a huge difference. shout out to Jared DeHart who Josh Rojas has attributed to for a lot of his success lately I want to talk about that a little bit here because Rojas made some more comments after the game yesterday about what he and DeHart have done and

Starting point is 00:10:30 this is a testament to the Mariners and what they've been able to do with a lot of these players that they've targeted that are struggling at the time that they've targeted them and ended up trading for them and that's that they actually have a plan in place before they even get these guys in right They're not just looking at buy low opportunities on guys with a lot of talent and just figuring it out from there.

Starting point is 00:10:51 It's they're identifying, hey, what can we do with this guy? And this has been more so the case on the pitching front. But what do you think about what they've been able to do with Rojas and just their process with how they've identified these guys like him. Yeah, it's been super interesting for both of those guys. I know Rojas kind of talked about in that clip, how you want to be able to pull the fastball without cheating. it. And in an interview with Nick Swisher, I believe it was, after the game on Peacock, Domitkenzone said the exact same thing. It's trying to get to your pole side in the air. You're staying on the fastball. And it's really working. I mean, that's what you got to do.

Starting point is 00:11:32 This team wasn't, this team hadn't been hitting fastballs all year pretty much. If you kind of go back and look at it until about July and not that many people were talking about it. And it's, it's something that's kind of niche. Maybe if you haven't played a lot of baseball or you haven't, if you don't really pay attention to that side of it, but you need to be on the fastball to be on everything else because then you just end up in between, and there's soft contact and you get jammed. We're seeing it with Julio getting to his pull side, able to pull fastballs. And since Canzone's been hot, a lot of the balls he's been hitting have been pull side in the air,

Starting point is 00:12:10 and then he'll shoot an off speed the other way. So I love it Shout out to Jared DeHard And the Mariners' play development staff at the big league level Just really getting these guys dialed in Speaking of Canzon He could have easily had an RBI double But Ty France is incredibly slow

Starting point is 00:12:28 Incredibly slow Now they showed on the replay They did review it And it looked on the replay that he did get his hand in there Before the tag was applied But they ended up saying that it stood What did you think about that whole thing? thing. I think it's just one of those things where the call in the field stands. Like it's, it's just,

Starting point is 00:12:48 I don't know. I don't know if that's what they said, but there's just not a lot of situations. And you can, you can kind of see where there's some gray area. Like, did he maybe graze his hand? Probably not. But I understand why they made that call. I kind of thought after the first two times I saw the replay that that was probably going to be the result. So, Ben, before we move on here, you kind of reintroduced yourself to the locked on mariners community here but for those that missed out on friday tell us a little bit about yourself and what you got going on yeah so you can go ahead and follow me over at on twitter or x or whatever it's called at veterinary 10 and then you can go subscribe to my substack. It's clevelbr.com. You can do a free subscription or if you're

Starting point is 00:13:43 feeling generous. You can get access to all my content with a paid subscription. So go ahead and go over there and check it out. I got a bunch of cool features. One with Pitching Ninja. I got some features with Sam Hagridi, Tai Pete, a bunch of different guys, Riley O'Brien. Kid Marlow. Go ahead and yeah, Cade Marlowe, which is a really good one that I had some fun, So go ahead and go over there and check that out. Really appreciate. Yeah, definitely check them out. Ben's a great follow over on Twitter and on his substack.

Starting point is 00:14:15 You definitely, definitely want to go give that a look. Colby is going to be back tomorrow for Mailbag Monday. We're going to put out a tweet over on Twitter. So if you have questions, send him on over there. And we're definitely going to have to get Ben back on the show as well. I really appreciate you hopping on here. while Colby's out of town this weekend. All right, so we're going to be talking about what happened around the league

Starting point is 00:14:39 that benefited the Mariners today. It was a pretty good day. The Astros won, but the Rangers and the Blue Jays lost. We're going to go over that just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Mariners Postgame show is brought to you by Sleeper. What the chance to win more money with less picks. Head to Sleeper where you can win up to 100 times your money on just two or more fantasy baseball picks. All you have to do is choose two or more players.

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Starting point is 00:15:23 Terms of conditions apply. See sleepers terms of use for details currently operational in over 30 states. Check out Sleeper today. Do it. You're listening to the Lockdown. Marriss Postgame show. Thank you again for making us your first listen after the Marys 3 to 2 victory over the Kansas City Royals. That is the first place Seattle Marrars, folks. First place Seattle Marys not tied for first. No, sole possession of first place.

Starting point is 00:15:50 That's because that's right. That's right. And that's because the Texas Rangers blew a 5-0 lead in Minnesota this afternoon. The twins tied it up 5-5 in the 9th. Rollis Chapman blew the save. I read somewhere that I think the Rangers are like 24 or 48 and save opportunities this year. That's crazy. That bullpins in a dark spot. Jonathan Hernandez ends up walking in the game winning run in the 13th inning. That's right.

Starting point is 00:16:23 They got all the way into the 13th inning. And again, I was mostly focused on this game and the Blue Jays game during the Mariners game. So I watched a good amount of this And the twins did not want to win this game But thankfully the Rangers also did not want to win this game And that's the same Jonathan Hernandez That the Mariners traded for Justin Topa? No, no, no, no, no, Joseph Fernandez.

Starting point is 00:16:47 Joseph Fernandez, Joseph. Joseph Hernandez, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was trying to remember what they traded. Yeah, I was like, wow, that would have been Jerry's playing 70 chess right now. Yeah, so that game was insane, right? The Rangers didn't score in the top of the 10th. Twins had a prime opportunity to walk it off. They didn't even move the runner over to third.

Starting point is 00:17:11 In fact, it took them until the 12th inning to move a runner over to third. Not even score. Move a runner over to third. I think they had like seven outs before they moved a runner over to third. Thankfully, they were able to tie it after the Rangers took. took a 6 to 5 lead in the top of the 12th. And then once again, they were able to keep the Rangers scoreless in the 13th.

Starting point is 00:17:37 And it looked like they were going to mess it up again. They had a prime opportunity to walk it off. They weren't able to move the runner up to third until they had two outs because Hernandez walked three straight batters. Yeah, it wasn't anything the twins did themselves. It was just terrible control from Hernandez. And the twins win.

Starting point is 00:17:57 And so this feels like a vibes killer for the Rangers. I mean, they just lost eight in a row. They finally ended that losing streak yesterday with a pretty convincing win, feel good win. And then they got off to a five nothing lead today. And it was like, all right, we're back. But then they blow that lead. They go 13 innings deep.

Starting point is 00:18:22 They basically deplete their entire bullpen. And they loops. like that's hard to recover from mentally if you're a ball club given everything that's happened leading up to today so my question to you is this should we be more worried about the Astros than the Rangers right now yeah absolutely and I've been saying that all year long but Astros I've never really wavered off my my pick of the Astros I thought they were going to win the division most of the year I think I mean, they know how to win. They got Burlander back. Like, that's going to be a really tough team. We know that. Yep.

Starting point is 00:19:02 We know they were going to be a roadblock. And we've known that the Rangers have a good offense. But we've also known that they have some cracks. That bullpen and that pitching staff is kind of shaky. Yeah. So we've known that they have cracks. And that's a really, really deflating way to lose over and over and over again. When your bullpen can't hold leads, it's stressful on your offense.

Starting point is 00:19:26 And it's not very sustainable. You need to be able to close games out. You need to be able to keep games where they're at. So, yeah, I definitely think the Houston Astros are the better of those two teams, but all three of these teams seem to be barely evenly matched. Yeah, they're pretty much in line with one another. So we'll see how it all comes together here. But the Rangers have to stop the bleeding here.

Starting point is 00:19:51 It is snowballing. It is snowballing bad. And if they continue to let the snowball, I mean, they're going to have to be fighting for the wild card at that point. Like they're in a dark place right now. They're in a dark place. I'm not ready to say that it's over for them, but they got to get it together. They got to get it together and quick because they are running out of time here.

Starting point is 00:20:12 All right. So on up north, back in my neck of the woods here in Toronto, the Blue Jays lost a back and forth game with the Cleveland Guardians. the Guardians ended up putting up four runs in the 11th because like the twins, they did not score in the 10th, but the Blue Jays also did not score in the 10th. So they were able to survive that. And yeah, they went off a little bit in the 11th and end up winning 10 to 7.

Starting point is 00:20:39 So now that essentially gives the Mariners a four-game buffer with the Blue Jays and essentially gives them a four-game buffer from just falling out of the playoff picture entirely, which is amazing if they can sustain that or make that even larger, Marin as I'm talking about here, over the next few weeks, because once you get into that gauntlet

Starting point is 00:21:00 of the Rangers, Astros, and then Rangers again before the end of the season, if there's less of a chance of you just completely falling out of it, I mean, I think that takes a lot of pressure off of you, right? I mean, you still want to win the division,

Starting point is 00:21:13 but you're mostly, like, those series might just be for seating rather than your playoff live. So, the other thing, here too, right, is Boba Chet left today's game with

Starting point is 00:21:26 quad tightness. I didn't see that. Yeah, he left in the sixth inning with quad tightness. Obviously, he's been dealing with that knee injury. He came back pretty quick after the knee injury, so it doesn't seem like it's anything with that in particular, but still he's hurt again. So we'll see how that goes. Matt Chapman

Starting point is 00:21:42 also left this game. I don't know what he left with, but he also exited this game. Cabin Bizzio took over at third. So if those guys missed an extended period of time, and they're scuffling right now in general. I mean, that would be, again, that would be huge if you really don't even have to worry about the Blue Jays.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Now, obviously the Red Sox aren't going away either. So maybe they factor into this thing a little bit here. But yeah, the things are looking up Mariner's right now is pretty much what I'm saying here. And it's really good that the Mariners are able to create a little bit of that buffer that you're talking about too because the Blue Jays are going to run into kind of a similar stretch of teams that the Mariners are playing right now.

Starting point is 00:22:25 Their schedule is pretty soft the rest of the way. And, you know, if you create that buffer and you keep playing well, you're going to have a better chance to end up on the right side of it at the end, especially if they have some of those important guys missing some time. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. All right, anything else you want to add before we get on out of here, Ben? Yeah, one more thing. Shout out to Andre Smunios.

Starting point is 00:22:52 today. He's been having a really, really rough go of it. And I just kind of wanted to talk a little bit about him. Sometimes as a leverage guy, you kind of just need to remember, and a guy like Munoz, you kind of just seem to remember that you're in control. And he's got probably some of the best stuff on the planet. And he just threw it right down the middle today over and over and over again. Sometimes you just need to remember how dominant your stuff is, stop nibbling. and just kind of throw down their throats and see what happens. So it's really, really valuable and important to see him kind of gain some confidence back today. So that was another huge takeaway that I had today as well as Justin Topa,

Starting point is 00:23:38 just continuing to be awesome, like you mentioned earlier, with the change-up in that situation, like how impressive it is to throw a change-up and for Cal to call a change-up. in that situation, just throw a beauty was so awesome to see. So big shout out to the bullpen, those leverage guys getting it done. Ben, want to thank you again for hopping on here while Colby's been out of town. Guys show Ben some love down in the comments below. Show him some love over on Twitter. Give him a follow over on Twitter at Ben Renerey 10 and give his substack a look as well over at c-levelBR.com.

Starting point is 00:24:16 That's going to do it for our show. so much for joining us here on the Locked-on Mariners postgame show. Ben Renerey, I'm Tidane Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-U-N-S-Rerner. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. It's D-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-Z, and my co-host, Colby Pat-Node over at C-Pat-E-T-1-E. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well at Locked-on Mariners. That's one word, Locked-on Mariners. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Thank you again for making us your first listen after the game. Again, you can catch the Mariners and the athletics this week on the Mariners hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app.

Starting point is 00:24:52 Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace.

Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Sweep Royals, Take Over Sole Possession of First Place in AL West!

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