Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners Win Fourth Straight, But Rain May Further Complicate an Already Tough Road Trip

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Ty and Colby react to the Mariners' 5-1 win over the White Sox, including Luis Castillo's strong start, then discuss how a potential rainout tonight could both help and hurt Seattle.Check out our Patreon!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Follow the show on Bluesky: @lockedonmariners | @tdg | @mlbcolbySupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Wonderful PistachiosLooking for a snack that’s both delicious and nutritious? Get snackin’ and get crackin’ with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more.Supply HouseJoin the TradeMaster program today at SupplyHouse.com/TM and start ordering plumbing, HVAC, and electrical supplies with just a few clicks. Plus, use promo code S-H-5 for 5% off your first order. That’s SupplyHouse.com!UpworkVisit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free to connect with top talent and grow your business today! Just IngredientsVisit JustIngredients.us/Bryce-Harper and use code LOCKEDONMLB for 20% off your order! And for more wellness tips, follow @just.ingredients on Instagram.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with MonarchMoney. Use code LOCKEDONMLB at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLBfor $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thanks to Julio Rodriguez and Luis Castillo, the Marrars have themselves another four-game win streak. We'll talk about the win and more coming up here on the Lockdown Marrars 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. Ohoy, Sailors, it is Tuesday, May 20th, 2025. This is Tanya Gonzalez and Colby Patnode for the Lockdown Marys Podcasts. part of the lockdown podcast network, your team every day.

As always, if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, you can check out our Patreon. All you have to do to check that out is click the link in the description of this episode. Mayors beat the White Sox 5 to 1 last night. We'll get into all of that, including Louise Castillo's performance. We'll also talk about the Marin's plan for tonight's game, which could very well wind up being played tomorrow. High chance rain tonight in Chicago.

We'll talk about the possibility of a double header a little later on in the show. Well, let's start with last night's game and let's start with the offense. Five to one. You hear that final score and you go, man, the Mariners really handled the White Sox, right? That wasn't really the case. I mean, there wasn't really a point in this game where I was scared they were going to lose because the White Sox are just that bad. Maybe you felt scared, but you're the guy who says that it's ball game after someone hits a lead off home run against you. So I have not said that.

Yeah, you have. You literally did on Sunday. We have, we have no, no, no. On Sunday I said like, that might be ball game, L.O.L. And whatever. Yeah, okay. You're going to interpret tone. Cool.

Good for you. I'm just, I'm just saying what everyone, how everyone reads your tweets. Maybe that's a you problem. I was like that's a everybody else's problem. That sounds like maybe a you problem. Sounds like everybody else's a problem to me. So, yeah, so the bearers, they only get one. off of Davis Martin while he's in the game.

He actually gets technically tagged for two runs in this game because he gives up the first single in the eighth inning that wound up scoring on Julio's second career Grand Slam. But yeah, the offense for the most part looked pretty lethargic last night until Martin left this game. Then Camboozer comes in with runner on first, ends up walking J.P. Crawford,

then Mitch Garver gets a single. It's a low of the bases. Also, by the way, that pretty much confirms there with Garver pinch hitting for Jorge Polanco that something's going on with Palaco and he once again is not able to swing from the right side. So that's unfortunate. But Garver comes there with a single to load the bases, which is nice. Good to see. Good last couple of days for Garver at the plate.

And then again, yeah, Julio hits his second career grand slam to pretty much put this game out of reach. Yeah, things got a little dicey there in the ninth inning, but whatever. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit later on. But yeah, overall, not a great night for the offense. It's a good thing that they were playing against the White Sox, right? Yeah. The Mariners answered one very important question. It's, you know, can they sleepwalk their way to a victory?

And apparently if you're playing the White Sox on a, like, chilly, windy night on the South Side, you can. So long as your starting pitcher, like, you know, is pretty darn good. And they're using the heavy medicine balls that aren't. traveling at all and all of that good stuff. Sure, you can beat the White Sox. Cool. But for the first, what, seven, eight innings, seven innings of that game, it was an embarrassment to anybody who's ever worn the Mariners uniform, including the guys who couldn't hit

like Brendan Ryan. He was embarrassed for them because that was awful, just awful. Like, Davis Martin's having a pretty good year. He should not be dominating you like he did. There's no way he should. He was thrown 92 to 94, a lot of piped fastballs, and you were just rolling over, not that many hard hit balls. Samarren only had, I believe, nine hard hit balls in the entire game.

It's really weird that the one guy that seemed to have him figured out is the guy that's been arguably your, what, second worst hitter, third worst hitter, Ben Williamson. He had three hits last night, which good for Ben, a couple of hard hit balls. That's nice to see. One of them was an infield single, but like, three hits. Yeah, but a bit weird. that he was the guy of all

the guys in this lineup to kind of figure out Davis Martin. Yeah. I mean it is sometimes sometimes it be like that but you kind of look at baseball right. Right. You look at the wrap and then the top of the order like everybody had a hit. It was four,

five, six, seven that did nothing for you yesterday. But Dylan Moore had a hit. Didn't make a huge difference. But Ben William then had three hits and then you wrap it around. JP had a hit and walk twice. Polo had the early RBI.

Mitch Garber had a hit. And then obviously, Julio hit the Big Grand Slam. Just barely. Just barely. Not to take anything away from him, but I looked at the batted ball data before we started. Wasn't hit 100 miles an hour.

It was only a home run in three ballpark or like seven ballparks. One of them teams. Yeah. Yeah. So didn't exactly crush it. But it was going to be at least a sack fly and probably at least a double. That's what I thought was off the bat. So either way, really good at bat for Julio, attacked the first pitch, didn't try to do too much.

It was just a nice smooth swing. And, you know, it just so happened for whatever reason that the wind did knock that ball down or whatever. It sailed where, you know, we saw Luis Robert and Joshua, like absolutely crush baseballs that just died. at the warning track. So just kind of a weird whatever. Sometimes that's baseball. Sometimes, you know, major league baseball likes to substitute in these cue balls that they claim are regular baseballs. But for whatever reason, it worked.

And the mayor scored for there. And they needed that big hit. And Julio, another big hit for Julio. He's gotten a couple of them this year late in games to kind of turn the tide for Seattle. So that's good to see. But, yeah, the offense was absolutely dreadful. like unwatchably bad for seven innings. And, you know, they grind it out and they find a way to, you know,

score on the dumpster fire that is the White Sox bullpen, good on them. But yeah, it's, it was gross. It was really gross to watch that game for seven innings. It just. Yeah. It's like I said on my short,

reaction last night like that's the benefit of playing against the white sox we'll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about louis castillo's start but uh yeah uh again for me i i wasn't really concerned because it's the white socks and they just they'll give you so many opportunities to beat them just figured eventually that would come around and sure enough it did there in the eighth inning third night in a row that the uh marins were able to play add on late though uh saw them do that uh in San Diego and again last night with the 4-1-8th. So that's nice to see them, you know, put things a little bit more out of reach for the teams that they're playing against.

They should have saved Andres Munoz from pitching in this game. But unfortunately, Troy Taylor looks all kinds of broken right now. I assume, and this probably will have happened by the time that you're watching this, I assume he's going to be the corresponding move for Casey Lauren. getting added to the 26-man roster tonight. So, yeah, I mean, it might be Jonathan Diaz, but I think they might hang on to Diaz, especially because they're going to try and bullpen this game,

whether it's played tonight or tomorrow. But anyway, we're going to talk about Luis Castillo's start in just a moment. But first, a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Merritt's podcast is brought to you by Monarch Money. Ever check your bank account and wonder, where did all my money go between dining out, online shopping and entertainment, it's easy to lose track. That's where Monarch Money comes in, your personal CFO giving you full visibility and control

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than ever. You can track shared and personal accounts, set goals, and stay on the same page without the stress. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use promo code locked on MLB at Monarch money.com for 50% off your first year. That's Monarchmoney.com promo code L-O-C-K-E-O-N-M-L-B for half off your first year. And you're listening to the Locked-on Mariners podcast for instant reactions following every Mariners game be sure to tune into the Mariners postcast with Anderson hurst and Christopher Crawford available on both the locked on on Mariners YouTube and podcast feeds so the Mariners off to a four and oh start to this road trip and per our friend Alex mayor from the Mariners the

mariner's are setting a little bit of a history on this road trip the mayor's pitching staff according to Alex is the first to allow no more than one run and no more than two walks and four consecutive wins on a road trip since the 1943 St. Louis Cardinals. Yeah, the Marin's pitching stuff has been really good. We talked about how this was the best turn

through their rotation on yesterday's episode. And Luis Castillo continued that last night. Go seven scoreless, just three hits, five strikeouts, no walks for Louise. A lot of hard contact against Luis, though. He was middle of the plate a little too much. But that's the benefit. of playing against the White Sox.

They didn't make him pay for any of those mistakes. I mean, there was the one ball that Luis Robert hit that, I mean, it was hit harder into the same place that, that Julio hit his Grand Slam. I have no idea how that ball didn't leave the park, but whatever, baseball, right?

29 degree launch angle, like barrel. It's a barrel. Yeah. And I don't even think it made it to the warning track. Yeah. But seven scoreless for, Luis, no matter how you slice it, that is great. That is huge. What did you make of his night? Yes, kind of a tale of two halves for Luis. The first time through the lineup, he was not good.

He was getting hit hard with consistency and really fighting command of the fastball and just, you know, ran some deep counts. I think he gave up 10 hard hit balls. I believe five of them were against the first seven hitters that he faced. And then he started to dialed in. At one point, he threw 24 consecutive fastballs. And you remember he did that against the White Sox. I don't know if it was last year or the year before, but he threw like 48 straight fastballs against them a few years ago. So, yeah, that's something Luis will do.

And he was really feeling the fastball last night at the four-seamer in particular. He threw 53 four-seemers, 25 swings, eight whiffs, 32%. That's a really good number. anything over 30% on a four seamer is really good. So 32%. He was feeling good with the fastball. Again, he threw 56% of his pitches were four seamers. Another 19% were sinkers.

So 75% of the pitches he threw yesterday were fastballs. And he started to find that top rail just above and right at that top rail, which led to a lot of swing and miss, a lot more swing and misses the game went on. And yeah, you know, when he did get into trouble, a couple times he did early in this game. He was able to get the big strike out. And this is kind of something we've seen from Luis's last couple times out. He's getting into trouble, but he's finding a way to get out of it without any damage or limiting the damage, getting a key strikeout.

And in those spots, his velocity tends to jump up to a little bit. So last night, he maxed out at 96.4, the, sorry, 96.7 on the two seamer. And the velo was up slightly, but nothing too, you know, incredible. but he threw strikes and after the first, you know, I would say the first 10, 11 hitters, he really settled down and found his groove, found his fastball on the top rail, and just let it eat. He was not intimidated by this lineup. Why would you be?

And he went just right after guys. So it was a very aggressive Luis Castillo. Again, it took him a couple inings to kind of dial it in. And those are dangerous times for a pitcher before he really finds field. But he eventually did find it. And then he just pretty much set it on cruise control. and he just took advantage of the ballpark conditions, took advantage of the ball that they were clearly using,

and took advantage of this really bad lineup and just was like, yeah, here's the fastball hit it. I bet you can't. So again, he was just going right after these guys, just pounding the strike zone, especially with the four seamer and the two seamer. Yeah, and he only threw like five changeups last night. And yeah, 25% of his pitches were classified as off speed or breaking ball.

He's just, here's the fast. ball hit it and the white socks even the couple of times they did manage to square it up for whatever reason the ball wasn't flying yesterday so uh good on louis that's a veteran guy who knows the conditions knows the lineup and and knows exactly what he needs to do and uh he you know i don't want to say exactly carve them up uh because again 10 hard hit balls is is a lot uh for a pitcher to give up but at the end of the day he gave up what uh three hits yeah uh didn't walk anybody like Yeah, he was free-down. What more can you ask?

Yeah. Yeah, like this is where the box score scouting isn't like 100%. Like Brian Wu was significantly better yesterday than Castillo or on Sunday, than Castillo was yesterday. But who cares? They were both good. And, you know, Castillo just happened to be good against a really bad team. And that makes the numbers look all that much better.

So good on Luis. This is what, three in a row now for him? Two in a row? Two in a row. Yeah, the really good start against the York. What was this start before in New York? It was the Blue Jays start, which wasn't good. No, yeah.

So it's been two in a row. Yeah, yeah. But I believe his ERA now is down to 320. And his, I believe his FIPP is like 3-6 somewhere in that range. So, yeah, is he worth a win yet? Looking that up right now. He is, yep, right on the dot, 1F4 right now. Yeah, 358-8.

3-2-0-E-R. The XERA and the X-E-R-A and the X-Mip still in the fours though right now. Yeah, he's on pace right now to be a three-win pitcher. Yeah. Which is a really good number four. Yeah, absolutely. Pretty much what Luis is right now, I would say. Occasionally looks like a two or three.

But mostly he's a low three high four. That's all he ever needed to be. So good on Luis. I thought Colin Snyder looked really good last night. No, obviously you kind of have to grade all these pitching performances on a curb because you're facing the white socks they suck um but two strikeouts last time for colin this series probably yeah um yeah there there's the curse right there uh but yeah two strikeouts and his inning to work 18 pitches pretty efficient just kind of shredded right through him it's

nice to see from colin uh that was one of the the better outings that we've seen from colin this year i thought yeah i mean at that point it was five to nothing right so he felt pretty good he just throwing strikes, like whatever. I'm not worried about you and in this offense with a five-run lead. I'm going right after guys. Unfortunately, not a lesson Troy Taylor picked up. But, yeah, no, he threw 18 pitches, 13 were strikes. He had three whiffs on eight swings.

Velo's down again today or yesterday for Snyder. About half a tick on everything. The festival Velo, he was 95 last year. He's mostly been 92, 93 this year. So I don't know what's going on there. That's a conscious choice. He's also is kind of trying to work through something. I don't know.

I mean, last night kind of feels more like it's cold, a little wet, you know. So maybe it was that. Police was able to throw a little bit harder, but he was pretty much right in line and not as hard as he was throwing in his last start. We did see some 97 from Louise. So that was nice. Yeah, he threw, I think, two pitches at 97.

Both of them. Yeah, the one that 10. 96.7. The one that's been going around on like pitching ninja, I think that was to Slater, the one that got really in on him. Pretty sure that was 97 or, you know, 96 points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we round up. We round up around these parts. Yeah. So Snyder, yeah, I thought he was really good. And Snyder's been really solid to shine. He's not been the sub two ERA guy he was last year, but he's totally perfectly capable middle relief. He's a middle guy.

Yeah, he's a bridge guy. He's fine. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, a bit annoyed that Andres Sounios had to pitch in this game. He only needed four pitches. Got to strike out into the game.

Cool. I mean, that's not what Andreos does. Once he got into the game, I wasn't worried. Like, oh, he's going to make a mistake and,

uh, it's going to be tied. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't worried about that. The way the ball was carrying last night, probably not. But it's always just one like,

yeah, of course this is the one where like, it's against the white socks and Munoz is, he has to get ready in a hurry. And it's just like, I'm just a bit. more of an optimist than you are sure okay whatever uh but uh yeah but yeah so so it's a little annoying that mooney had to pitch last night you know we talked about this available today

well it might not matter because again this game yeah might but i like it's a game is played yeah like i know he only threw four pitches yesterday but like yeah but we talked about this on yesterday's episode that he had to get up to throw in all three of the the padre's games he only pitched in one of them but he had to you know get up and throw now in four consecutive days. So I have to think that that might lead to him not being available tonight. Matt Brash didn't have to pitch last night. He did get up to throw last night,

but he didn't wind up pitching because the grand slam. He was going to take the eighth if things stayed at 1-0 or at least a little bit closer. Yeah. It's a bit of a delicate situation in the bullpen right now because they're going to, the plan is they're going to bullpen tonight. Casey Legamina is going to get the start. He's pitched his way into some high leverage situation, so that's one high leverage arm gone.

And then, you know, Lawrence is going to get the bulk. I don't know, is that four innings? Is that five innings? Is it three? But either way, you're going to need your middle guys to pitch tonight. And if you need that, then you probably need your high leverage guys. But is Brash available? He had to get hot yesterday.

Are they going to do that back-to-back days? Like, the pitching could, get a little dicey tonight and again you don't have an off day until Monday. So maybe a rainout's not the worst thing, although it would cause some trouble later in the week. I'm fairly certain. So I'm sure we'll talk about that. But yeah, the bullpen once again, really good.

It has been since the, what, the second game against the Yankees, bullpen's been rock solid. And the weak link in that pin is clearly Troy Taylor. He shouldn't sniff the big leagues for a couple months. new he's got some stuff to work through uh so if tonight got rained out it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world because again you know you're on a 10 games and 10 days road trip so it would be nice to have uh an off day that you weren't expecting but the price that you'd have to pay for that is you have to cover 18 innings at least tomorrow with this pitching staff and then you have to go

to Houston the next day. For a game on Thursday that is likely going to be started by George Kirby, they haven't officially confirmed that, but it seems like that's what's going to happen. And Kirby might be short scripted. So you might need the bullpen to cover five innings, four or five innings in that game at the very least, assuming that it doesn't go to extras.

Yeah, the game doesn't go to extras. And as we know, the Mariners and Astros never go to extra endings. Right. So never sat through 18 innings of those two teams before. I don't know if Houston has Well Houston they wouldn't have a Wednesday off So Houston, are they at home? Do they have to travel back?

Like I don't know They're playing Tampa right now in Tampa. So yeah, they'd also have to travel back But again, they'll have only had to cover nine innings versus the Mariners who have to cover 18 And yeah, you know, obviously you get the nice You get the updated day, which would make Munoz available tomorrow But if you throw Munoz in both games tomorrow

then he's definitely not available on Thursday, maybe not Friday. It kind of there's a snowball effect here that a double, like having a double header would be bad. You would much prefer that they say, hey, we're going to make this game up later in the year. We're going to find a spot that makes sense. And so I looked at it, there's a spot that seems to make sense in June

because the Mariners are playing the Cubs on a weekend series, and they have that Thursday off. So in theory, they could play there. Now, do the White Sox? I don't know. That's the problem. The White Sox and the Mariners. What day? Did you say that is again? That is June 19th.

Okay. The Mariners are flying from Seattle to Chicago to play the Cubs on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah, they're playing the Cardinals that day. Yeah. So that doesn't work. And also, the other problem with that is that if they did play that day, the Mariners would then be playing 24 consecutive days, which is dreadful. And the only other day that works seemingly is August 11th.

The Mariners are flying to Baltimore to start a three-game set. The White Sox are playing that day. The White Sox are playing that day. Yeah, they're playing the days. How about August 21st? They're not playing that day. The White Sox aren't? Yeah.

Yeah, the Mariners are flying. That's supposed to be a travel day. They're going from Philadelphia back home. So in theory, they could go from Philly, pit stop in Chicago, play the game and fly back. So the White Sox are, the White Sox would be flying from Atlanta back home to start a homestown. So that's probably the day. So that's probably, yeah, they're going to move it. Again, the downside there for the Mariners is that they lose an off day.

That's supposed to be for a cross-country flight. especially late in the season. Right, in August. And that would lead them to play, let's see, 24, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 games in a row. So, like, yeah, it's kind of a tough spot where it's like, look, in the short term, you'd rather this game get pushed off so that we could be as close to 100% for an Astro 4-game series against your division rival.

Yeah. But in the long term, the only places you can kind of put this, you're going to turn, you know, 10 game road trips into 15 straight games and 15 days. And the mayor has already have two different stretches starting in June, where they play 17 plus games in a row between days off. That's the downside of having all these days off early is they come back to get you on the back end. Yeah. So you're in a tight spot if they do reschedule this game. You're in a tight spot if they just do a traditional double header. Like it's just not great.

It's really bad timing for the Mariners. but I think if you're looking at this in the big picture, I think you probably would prefer they just do a double header on Wednesday. And, you know, maybe you go down a little bit tired for the first game or two against the Astros. But I think that's better than trying to start, you know, a 24 games and 24-day thing or 15 games and 15 days as you get into August and September when those dog days really start to wear on you. So yeah, it's really bad timing. But we'll have to wait and see what they do. And I think they'll try to get the game in tonight,

but there's only so much you can do. It's rainy, it's sloppy. Again, as much of a benefit as it would be for you to just keep your schedule as is right now. You don't want guys getting hurt. You don't want guys sliding around on that grass and, you know, tweaking ankles and all that. So, yeah, there's just really not any good. options here for the Mariners. I think the best of a bunch of bad situations is that tonight's either the rain clears tonight somehow and you play tonight. That'd be incredible.

But if it does continue to rain throughout the day, then I think your best option is unfortunately to just suck it up, play the doubleheader tomorrow and take your chances with Houston over the weekend. All right. That's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the lockdown Marrars podcast for Colby Patnode. I'm Tadine Gazzalas. Be sure give us a follow on Twitter at L.O. underscore Merrers. You can follow me at Tadding Gonzalez and Colby at C-P-E-P-E-E-T-1. We're also on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG, Colby at MLB-Colby,

and the show at Locked-on Mariners. You can also find us on Instagram and TikTok at Locked-on Mariner's. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you next time. Peace.