Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Win Back-to-Back Series, Julio Rodríguez Named AL Rookie of the Month

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode recap the Mariners' 7-6 win over the Orioles, discuss Julio Rodriguez winning AL Rookie of the Month and preview the team's upcoming set with the Rangers.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/LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Did you know every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONMLB.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order. 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.

The Mariners have won back-to-back series for the first time since April 23rd. Julio Rodriguez has taken home some hardware and the EMS begin a three-game set with the Texas Rangers tonight. It's going to be a good show 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. It is Friday, June 3rd, 2022, and this is the Lockdown Mariners podcast.

Thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all. platforms. I'm Tiding Gonzalez. He's Colby Padnode. We cover the Mariners over at Inside the Mariners.com. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dain Gonzalez. It's D-A-N-ZL-Z and Colby at C-E-Pat-E-T-L-ZE and Colby and Colby and Colt11. You can also follow Inside the Mariners over at Inside Mariners on Twitter. Be sure to check out our Patreon at patreon. Patreon.com forward-slash control the zone. We typically post two additional shows on there every

week and get into some bigger ideas and bigger topics whereas locked-on Mariners covers more of the day-to-day with EMs. We also get into some non-base discussions on control the zone as well it's a fun time so be sure to check it out again that's patreon.com forward slash control the zone if this is your first time joining us here on the lockdown mariners podcast welcome to the show if you like what you hear give us a follower subscribe wherever you're listening to this and if you're watching us on youtube hit the subscribe button turn on the notification bell and give this video a thumbs up we greatly appreciate it so as i mentioned in the cold open the mariners have won their first back-to-back series since april 23rd we're going to be talking about

that in just a moment we're also going to be talking about julio roe Rodriguez who took home some hardware earlier today. And we're going to be talking about the Mariners upcoming three games set with Rangers this weekend and later on in the show. But first, let's get into last night's ball game. The Mariners win seven to six over the Orioles and take two or three from the O's in Baltimore. And it took an additional inning to play for them to get it done. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of couple blown leads by both teams in this one, some bad baseball in general. from both teams. And this game did not get off to a great start either for the Seattle Mariners.

Jesse Winker roping a double into the left center field gap to start this game, tries to leg out a triple and is unfortunately thrown out trying to do so. But he did have a good game overall. It goes three for five with a pair of doubles and gets an RBI as well. Chris Flex has started this game and was pretty shaky. Just 18 of her, sorry, 14 of his 76. pitches went for called strikes or whiffs. That's not going to get the job done. And then Matt Festa, unfortunately, helped the Orioles get back into this game

after the Mariners took a six to three lead. They gave the lead right back. It was 6'6. And thankfully, Diego Castillo, who struggled mightily to start this season, came in in the ninth and worked two scoreless innings, one in the ninth inning to keep the Orioles from winning this game

and then to shut the door in the 10th. after Abraham Toro hit a game-winning RBI triple. Colby, I mean, it's just, it's kind of nice to talk about back-to-back series wins here for the Mariners, because, again, this is the first time they've done this since April 23rd. That's when they won three straight series against the Astros, Rangers, and Royals. I was on that great homestand, back when everything was looking a lot better for the Mariners when they went seven and two on their first homestown of the year. But, yeah, I mean, how huge is this for the, for the Mariners to get the series went?

Yeah, it's a series they needed. It's obviously no such thing as a must win on June 2nd, but you have to start kind of pushing yourself back up the mountain. And in order to do that, you have to win these series against teams that are less talented than you. And Baltimore, while they are a team on the rise, is at least a year behind you. So you really didn't need to win the series.

It kind of prevents you from having to sweep the Astros. depending on what you do in the Texas series, of course. But you do have to start putting these kind of streaks together where you're winning, you know, five out of six series and maybe one of them is a sweep. You have to start doing those things because, you know, it's 110 games until the end of the year, but it's only about 50 until, you know,

Jerry and his front office have to start making decisions about which direction the team is going to go. So you have to, you have to, you have to, you know, push back here. You have to start climbing to 500. And, you know, this team, it just doesn't seem like it's going to come in the form of a nine-game winning streak or anything like that. So you just got to keep winning series. And, you know, Scott certainly acted like yesterday's game was a huge must-win.

He went to Seawald in the sixth. You know, he pushed, you know, he pushed Castillo for two innings when he's always been a one-in-in-in guy. And he was very aggressive with the bowl. pin. So didn't let flexing go back out there even after it was six to three. So he was very aggressive with his bullpen. He went to his probably got his four best guys. Didn't work out for Festa, but the other three were really good. And so Scott certainly treated this game like he needed it. And, you know, as a result, the Mariners win seven to six. And then they get out of Baltimore for the year. And then they win a series that they needed to win. Yeah, if you're Scott's service, you know,

you have one of the most struggling bullpins in baseball right now where you have really maybe two, three guys that you can rely on at the moment. And you use Seawald in the sixth, as you mentioned there. And unfortunately, Seawald isn't able to get the job done. Obviously, wasn't put in the best situation to succeed, of course. But, you know, you really don't have anyone that you can rely on there. And you go Castillo in the ninth. And he has his longest outing of the season thus far.

and to be able to face the minimum in both innings to keep the Orioles off the board there in the ninth and then come back in the 10th and shut things down. He had three strikeouts, and I mean, Castillo's put it together here over the last few outings. Now it's been seven outings. He gave up two runs in Boston, but that's it. That's all he's allowed so far, just two hits.

He struck out 12. He's walked two in that time, and this really started with his appearance back in New York when he came in with runners on second and third, just one out, and he struck out Starling Marte and beat Alonzo. It's huge. Cassio being good would be very beneficial for this team, quite frankly.

That would be massive for this team. So Jesse Winker and Luis Ferenz, the number nine and number one hitters for the Mariners in this game, did the bulk of the work, six hits, three runs driven in between the two, and both of them also had some base running miscues trying to leg out an additional base, than they could have.

But yeah, overall, a really good game for both of these guys who have been struggling. Winker, of course, has been underwhelming since coming over in the trade with Rids. He's had some good games here and there, but overall, you know, he hasn't been able to sustain that over the course of any given stretch. So I'm not going to ask you if he's going to be, if this is a sign that he's turning things around. But I will give you the view of the floor here as the, resident Luis Terenz Stan to go ahead and gloat a little bit here. Yeah, I mean, just confirming priors,

Luis Torens is better than Cal Rale. He's better than Dylan Moore. He deserves to play more as a result. But, you know, Cal's already back in the lineup today because it doesn't matter what happened yesterday, apparently, which goes against everything you believe in, Ty. So that's kind of weird that you've been pretty silent about. Yeah, it was a good night. It was one he definitely needed.

We saw him go up the middle. We saw him go the other way. You know, and that's kind of what we want to see from Terenz. That's how we know he's going pretty well. But, you know, to be fair, Luis has been pretty good over his last 11 games. Granted, this is over the course of about two weeks because he somehow lost his job to the inferior Cal Rale. But over his 34-played appearances, Terenz is hitting 321. with a 441 on base percentage.

So we're starting to see it a little bit here from Luis. His batting average is up to 222 on the year. Certainly not good, but it is turning in the right direction. So I would like to see him play a little bit more. I don't think he needs to be in a true timeshare with Raleigh. I think he's legitimately better than Cal Raleigh, so he should be getting a bulk of the work. But it's not really what the Mariners want to do right now.

So nobody ever. accuse the Mariners being smart with their catchers. So who knows. But no, Turenz was really good. And obviously, you know, him hitting nine and then Winker coming up and hitting leadoff, that kind of wrap around really is what saved the Mariners because Ty France had a rare, terrible night at the plate. Yeah, that's the big thing here, right? Is France goes 0 for five with a strikeout, which this was just any other hitter.

I mean, whatever, we probably wouldn't even talk about it. We wouldn't even acknowledge it on the show. but Ty France has been so damn good this season that he goes 0 for 5 and it's like the sky is falling. So I'm sure he's going to get back after it tonight. Probably have a three hit game or something like that. That's just kind of what Ty France does. But yeah, I mean, you know, I would play the hot hand here with Torens and at least DHM tonight. But I know that they're using the DH spot right now for Frazier and to get Toro in the lineup and all that.

But, you know, I guess that's just that's just what we're. doing tonight. We're going to be talking about that series in a little bit later. But first, we're going to be talking about Julio Rodriguez who took home some hardware earlier today in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder, this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by LinkedIn with spring in the air. It's a time of renewal and growth personally and professionally. As your small business grows, LinkedIn jobs is here to make it easier to find the people you want to talk to faster and for free. Create a free job post and minutes on LinkedIn jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 810 million people.

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To take our audience survey, go to Lockdown Podcast.com slash survey. Thanks for your help. All right, so Julio Rodriguez had an incredible month of May. He hit 309, 339, 527 with 156 WRC Plus. He hit six home runs, including his first career home run on May 1st against Sandy Alcantra. He had 17 runs driven in overall, four doubles, a tributtal. Ripple, six stolen bases. And of course, he was also playing a plus center field.

He's 94th percentile on outs above average this year. The dude is just the complete package. And for his efforts, he barely edged out Jeremy Pena of the Astros for the American League rookie of the month award earlier today. Pena, of course, pretty much matched Julio's numbers, but did miss a few games with right knee discomfort in the middle of the May. but yeah, Julio has been spectacular, but I will ask you this, Colby, do you think this is the peak for Julio this season? Of course, I think we all expect that he is going to be kind of at that level

eventually in his career consistently throughout the course of a season. But in terms of just rookie Julio Rodriguez this year, at 21 years old, first year at the major league level with just 200-something played appearances above high A. Do you think, think this is the best we're going to see from him this year? Maybe in the power department. You know, six home runs in a month is pretty impressive. I mean, heck, if you do that every month of the season, that's, you know, 36 home runs. So it was pretty impressive.

I don't know if this is going to be his best. I don't want to put anything past Julio. He's incredibly talented. And he's off to a good start here in June. I mean, it's only eight at bats or nine plate appearances, but he does have three hits. and, you know, a couple doubles, a stolen base already. So we'll see. But Julio, you know, the only thing I can really nitpick that might get exploited here in the coming weeks.

He's just not willing to take ball four. He's chasing pitchers pitches in, you know, 3031 counts, which has led to some soft contact and some poor outbats here in the last week or so. Hasn't hurt the numbers yet overall, but that is something that major league pitchers are going to exploit. until Julio fixes it more or less. Now, he's still hitting the mistake pitches. He's still doing damage to them. So it's not something that is easily noticeable.

But, you know, and it is something that you do admittedly have to kind of nitpick at when you're trying to find something, you know, in regard to what Julio can do better. But that's one of those things. And, you know, his splits, there's definitely a pretty big split against lefties and righties. And part of that is the right-handed slider that Julio, took pretty well in the last few weeks of April. And then in May, he got Uber aggressive. And, you know, he started to chase that pitch a little bit again.

But the strikeouts are manageable. He struck out 29 times in 115 plate appearances. It's a little high, but it's not, you know, ungodly or unworkable. Unfortunately, he walked just five times. So I'd like to see him walk a little bit more, be a little bit more selective on these borderline pitches, particularly when you're in a hitter's count. But as to whether or not Julio can have a month as good as that again this month,

he certainly can. Would I expect it? I don't know. That's expecting an awful lot from a 21-year-old kid. Yeah. I mean, just considering what he was able to do in the month of May, that's pretty extraordinary. I mean, he was one of the 20 best hitters in all baseball for the month of May.

I, you know, considering the cat and mouse game that happened. with every single prospect that has ever come up through baseball, through over the course of baseball's existence of, you know, the league figuring him out and adjusting to him and then him figuring the league out and adjusting to them and back and forth and back and forth. He's going to go through some struggles. He's going to go through all of that. But just because he maybe doesn't match the numbers that he posted in May for the rest

of the year doesn't mean that he's necessarily struggled either. Because again, he was just that extraordinary in the month of May. But overall, just looking at Julio, I mean, I would still say that right now, Peña has the upper hand and the AOL Rookie of the Year race still. But that gap is starting to close. And with another really good month from Julio, things could quickly change in that race as well. Plus, Stephen Kwan fell off this past month as well. So it looks like it's just a two-man race there with Pena and Julio. There's obviously a couple of other names that are going to be involved as well.

Yeah, Joe Ryan, of course. But, yeah, it's been a great start for Julio, especially after the struggles that he dealt with in April. I mean, they were pretty severe growing pains. And again, this is a guy that's only had 200-something-plait appearances above high A before he started this season. But he is, I mean, you just see him. Everything that he does offensively, the fact that he's been a plus defender in center field as well. I mean, that kind of came out of nowhere. And him being great off the field, he's the complete package.

I mean, you just see it. You see it the way that he interacts with, you know, young fans at the ballpark. You just see it in the way that he just carries himself, the smile, even when he got ejected the other night for his first career ejection. He was kind of smiling and laughing about it as well. He just, he has fun playing baseball. That's what baseball players should be doing, having fun. It's a game. And Julio embodies the best of baseball, quite frankly.

And it's good to see him being recognized on a national level. So the Mariners are heading down to text. and going to be playing the Rangers. They're also going to be playing the Astros here before this road trip ends. But first up, the Rangers, we're going to be talking about this series that's coming up this weekend in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Built Bar. Don't you love a chewy chocolatey brownie? What about a caramel brownie with caramel swirled on top?

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Field. Which one is Park and which one is Field? Is Park the old ballpark and Field is the new one? Doesn't matter. It looks like a toaster. That's the one that looks like a toaster. That's the one that we're talking about. We got Logan Gilbert versus Dane Dunning tonight. Should be an interesting matchup. Gilbert's been solid, not as good as he was in April, but he's still been solid here over the month of May and now going into June. What are you hoping to see out of Gilbert tonight? Yeah, I'm hoping to see the slider working quite a bit. We know the fastball. We know what we're going to get. There are some dangerous left-handed hitters Nathaniel Lowe struggling a bit right now, but still we know what he's capable of.

Pretty good hitter. Cole Calhoun, doesn't matter what his numbers are. He's going to do something against the Mariners. And Jonah Heim, yes, that Jonah Heim is in the lineup tonight as well. So we'll see, obviously, Corey Seeger, who's been, yeah, okay. And Simeon hit his first home game home run the other day. So maybe he's starting to turn things around. But Gilbert, we know we're going to see the fastball.

We know he's going to get pretty good value off of it for the most part. everybody has bad days, but I feel pretty good about that. So it's going to come down to can he have the slider or the change-up or both or neither. And if he doesn't have any off-speed pitch, then Texas is probably going to put up some runs against him. If he has one or the other, then he's got a good shot. And it would really be who the Mariners of Gilbert could go six or seven. Robbie Ray just went five. Chris Flex and just went five.

Diego Castillo and Paul Seawald probably not available tonight. which, you know, means that the next highest leverage guy available to you, Munoz maybe, if he's available, and Rowanus Aaliyos, like, ooh. So every out that Logan Gilbert gets you is huge. And so I'd like to see him go six or seven tonight, you know, two, three run ball against a lineup that's not deep, but does have some potentially dangerous hitters, including one of my favorite players, Adoles Garcia. Yeah, and then Nathaniel Lowe's been great over the last couple weeks.

Cole Calhoun, obviously a thorn in the side every time that he plays the Mariners. He's been great over the last couple weeks. Yeah, they have some guys that are popping off right now. And in their last 30 games, they're 18 and 12. This team is only two games under 500 right now, and there are only two games back of the third and file in wild card in the AL. Obviously, it's way too early to worry about that. But that's just trying to give you an idea of where they kind of fall in the standings here in the American League as a whole.

And so this is not going to be a walk in the park for the Mariners. The Rangers have been legitimately good right now. Since, you know, in this stretch that they've been 18 and 12, their pitching staff, fourth in F-4. Like, they have some guys. here both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Martine Perez is going to be a guy that the Mariners see on Sunday. The veteran lefty is having arguably a career year right now, 1-4-2-E-R-A.

He's been spectacular. So this is going to be a very difficult series for the Mariners, but if they could win this series and get three in a row here, I mean, it would be massive for their chances to dig themselves out of this hole that they unfortunately created with their disastrous month of May. and it would also help them climb up the ALS standings a little bit as well. And they do have a chance here. Very small chance,

but they do have a chance here to surpass the Rangers in the ALS standings with a sweep. So we'll see how they goes. But yeah, I mean, anything else we should be looking out for here with this Rangers team? Anything else that stands out to you about them? Just that they have some nice athleticism. Eli White's one of the fastest guys in baseball, Garcia, plus defender in center field. He can really run. We know about Simeon and his age, yet he's still a pretty good runner.

You know, they're a team that is playing well, but they're not a good team, if that makes sense. So, yeah, it's going to be pretty important for the Mariners to play well this series. And if they don't, then they could just as easily get swept as easily as they could sweep. And you really like to win the series because then you do go to Houston and then you kind of enter the last. I don't say the last, but you kind of enter like the last gauntlet of your schedule for a little while. You play the Red Sox for three, the Twins for three, the Angels for five before you go back out on the road to play Oakland. Now, obviously the Angels are struggling right now. The Red Sox are struggling right now.

But we also know that doesn't matter for the Mariners to just flip a coin. And you never know what Mariners team you're going to get. So winning two of these three would be huge. And, you know, they'll have to play well. Dunnings on a nice little run. And Perez probably the Rangers all-star rep right now. And you have to face both of them in this series. And also, you know, late arriving playing last night.

You didn't get the getaway day game. You had to play at night. And it was kind of a long game. Texas was done at four o'clock their time. and they're going to be well rested. So it's not, there's a lot of little factors that aren't boating well for the Mariners in this series. So winning tonight would be huge and kind of, you know, buy you a margin of air similar to what they did in Baltimore. But yeah, they got to find a way to win the series because things start to get harder pretty quick.

Yeah. Unfavorable circumstances to be certain. But this is a very big series for the Mariners and a good test for them as well. well. So we'll see how it goes. That's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast for Colby Padneau. I'm Tadangz. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow our website inside the Mariners at Inside Mariners. You can follow me at Dame Gonzalez. That's D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-E-E-Pat-E-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making

us your first listen of the day, just like you do here every day. Now make your second listen of the day, Lockdown MLB. That's where Paul Francis Sullivan and please call him Sully brings you his unique perspective on the major leagues president past. It's free wherever you get your podcast just like us. So have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we will see you on Monday. Peace.