Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - M's Survive Ump Show to Stave Off Sweep in New York

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

New Locked On Mariners hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode talk about the good, bad and ugly from the Mariners' disappointing four-game series against the Yankees, whether or not the series was a breakout for outfielder Jarred Kelenic and preview what's come in the team's upcoming home series against 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] us on Twitter: @danegnzlz | @CPat11 StatHero, the FIRST Ever Daily Fantasy Sportsbook that gives the PLAYER the ADVANTAGE. Go to StatHero.com/LockedOn for 300% back on your first play.Built 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.There is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus. 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.

You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. This is Locked-on Mariners. And before we get into our show, let's quickly talk about Locked-on MLB. Join Walking Baseball Encyclopedia Paul Francis Sullivan. And please call him Sully every day on Locked-on MLB for a unique look at the majors, both present and past, featuring exciting guest interviews and routine check-ins from the

Lockdown MLB Networks. team of local experts. Subscribe to Lockdown MLB today on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. It is Monday, August 9th, 2021. This is the Lockdown Mariners podcast, your daily home for Mariners talk and analysis. On today's show, we'll be going over the good, the bad, and the ugly from the Mariners disappointing four-game series against the Yankees in New York. Later on in the show, we'll talk about if this was Jared Kelnick's breakout series, as well as

what's to come in the Mariners upcoming home series with the Texas Rangers. But first, I believe introductions are in order. My name is Ty Dan Gonzalez. I am one of the new hosts here on Lockdown Mariners. I'm also a reporter and editor at Seahawk Maven on S.I.com, where I cover the Seattle Seahawks, alongside Locked-on Seahawks host Corvin Smith. And I am, of course, joined by my co-host, Colby Patnode. You may be familiar with the two of us from our Mariners Centric podcast Control the Zone on Patreon and our live show CTZ Live on YouTube, as well as our website True to the Trident.com, where we write all about the Mariners. And if you couldn't guess by now, we not only cover the team, but we're fans. We're still going to be recording episodes of

Control the Zone and releasing them every Monday and Wednesday on Patreon. So if you want to support us, visit patreon.com forward slash control the zone for more details. And of course, support locked on Mariners as well by giving it a follow or subscribing wherever you may be listening to this. Colby, we've been podcasting together for quite some time now. So, you know, we're used to this, but for the listener here who may not know who we are and what we're about, the floor is finally yours. And I can finally take a breath. Yeah, this is an exciting time for us. We've been podcasting together now for about three years, maybe four years now. I think in total, we've probably done about 500 episodes together. So yeah, this is an exciting new

venture for us. You know, we used to be the site experts over at a website called Soto Mojo. We used to do a weekly podcast there. And then Ty just gave you the rundown of what we've been doing since then. So, yeah, we've been chatting about the Mariners for, like I said, almost four years now, getting there, maybe three and a half four years. So, yeah, it's been an interesting journey, but I'm excited to be here. And I'm excited to talk about this Mariners team that continues to find ways to

to both surprise and anger us. So I'm looking forward to this, this inaugural episode here of kind of a revamped, revamped locked on Mariners podcast. Well, you talked about how it kind of surprises us. It kind of angers us. And it was more so the latter over the weekend in the Bronx against the Yankees. The Mariners dropping three or four against the yanks.

They're now five games out of a wild card spot in the AL wild card race. They've fallen behind the Yankees and the Blue Jays now in the standings. chasing those teams chasing the A's chasing the Red Sox who've kind of fallen off of a cliff lately But overall fairly disappointing series in New York actually pretty disappointing series in New York overall dropping the first three games they end up squeezing one out there at in on Sunday By a score of two to nothing they shut out the Yankees you say Kikuchi not super great But gave them five innings scoreless ball against a really good lineup and that stadium. Overall, Mariner

starters in the series, 21 and two thirds any is pitch, only gave up five earned runs, 22 strikeouts, only eight walks. Let's talk about the good. Let's talk about a little bit of the bad. Let's talk about the ugly. I'm sure we're going to be getting into some of the umpiring stuff, some of the offensive

struggles. But where do you want to begin? Let's start with the good. Let's always start with the good. And the good of this last series as you literally just rattled off. Want to be hashtag positive here on lock on almost always yes um but you know as you as you already mentioned and pretty much stole my entire stat line uh yeah the mariner starting pitching in this series was quite good it was i would say it was

i don't know if i would say great because unfortunately only marco gonzalez was able to get through six full innings but you look at what you say did going five scoreless endings against that lineup in yankee stadium regardless of how you do it it's pretty impressive especially considering the last time Kikuchi faced the Yankees, they absolutely destroyed him. So it was a good, solid effort from the four pitchers. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see Logan Gilbert in this series. But hey, you know, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But like you mentioned, 21 and two-thirds innings pitch, five earn runs, 22 strikeouts,

just eight walks. All four pitchers win at least five innings. And, you know, a 206 ERA in Yankee Stadium. that is that is a fantastic work and Tyler Anderson man he seems to be somebody that Jerry maybe isn't getting enough credit for because when we talk about deadline additions we talk a lot about Abraham Toro for obvious reasons and Castillo is is obviously a very important player now and in the future but Tyler Anderson continues to impress he continues to be very

Tyler Anderson-y. I mean, I don't really know how else to explain it. You're going to get five solid endings and maybe six. And he's going to keep you in a ballgame. So the Mariners starting pitching the series was excellent. And really, the entire pitching staff was pretty darn good overall. So that is certainly a positive to take into this next series.

Yeah, Anderson, you know, going back to the deadline, you just needed a guy that could fill in that fifth spot. you were running out bullpen days for the most part there. And now he gives you a little bit of a bridge to hopefully, you know, generate some more potential to, you know, rattle off four straight, five straight, etc., which they're going to need now at this spot where they are in the wildcar race if they want to stay in it because there's very limited games left now.

They're, you know, we're getting to mid-August here. They're running out of time to get involved in this. And they're going to have to leapfrog at least three. three teams to get in. And they need someone like Tyler Anderson to help them rattle off, you know, some wins in a row. So overall, good returns on that as it just so happens, though. They've lost both of those games.

It just really hasn't been Tyler Anderson's fault. You mentioned Abraham Toro, who just continues to hit for this team. He's gotten on base in every game still, right? Yes. Yeah, he's been something else since coming over in the trade with the Astros for Kendall Graveman, of course. Right. I saw a note real fast here, just not to interrupt, but I saw a note that since that trade, Abraham Toro has been the most valuable player in baseball.

He's been worth, I believe, 1.1, 1.1 F4 since that trade already. I mean, that's, you can't have a better. He's actually, he's actually been 1.4 of 4 now. My apologies. My apologies to Abraham Toro. I don't want to short sell him. But yeah, he's for the last 10 days, he's been the best player in baseball. And that's that's not hyperbole. I mean, it's it's statistically speaking, he has been the best offensive player in all of baseball. So that's that's he goes.

He goes five for six, 16, two walks, one strikeout, one double two RBIs in the series against the Yankees. Hit a little bit of lead off there with J.P. Crawford dealing with an illness. JP did come in into the Sunday game late as a defensive replacement made a pretty cool play right away, even though he was under the weather. So, you know, obviously the umpiring was both bad and ugly and also a little bit suspicious for being real. It was a very interesting strike zone for pretty much the whole series. and it just felt like every time something happened with the strike zone, it always worked against the Mariners. Yeah, the tracking team at, I believe it's MLB umpire grades on Twitter.

They tracked every game like they do. And it's interesting to have a thing where they will grade like the biggest game-changing strike calls or biggest strike zone decisions in every game. They give you the top three. And in this four-game series, 11 of the top 12, went in favor of the New York Yankees. So yes, the umpiring is definitely going in the ugly category. That is 100% fact.

It was not good. And then the bats overall, a lot of close games in New York that they end up losing. We obviously talked about the starters, how good they were. But they still, you know, lose three or four here to the Yankees, despite the pitching matchups in general,

lining up really well, for them in their favor. Jordan Montgomery and Garrett Cole, the Yankees' two best starters this year were landed on the COVID-I-L. So they didn't pitch in the series. And yet pretty much because of the offense, you weren't able to win most of these games, despite pretty much outperforming the Yankees from a pitching standpoint.

Yeah, it was frustrating to say the least. the offense scored 11 runs in four games against, you know, the Yankees third through seventh best starter or whatever. So it was, it was certainly frustrating and definitely belongs in the ugly category. But, you know, Seattle plays better at home. And hopefully they get some home cooking against the Texas Rangers beginning on Tuesday. So, you know, one more good thing to come out of it was Jared Kelnick. He went five for 15 with a home run, two doubles, struck out just three times, how to walk in the series. We're going to be talking about his series

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we're going to be dissecting all the action from their upcoming homestand over the next week. So be sure to tune in every day. But now let's talk Jared Kellnick, who's had himself a pretty good last couple of weeks, making that swing change on the last homestand. Since July 27th, he's slash 261, 333, 5. 500 with three home runs, two doubles, and a reasonable 21.6% strikeout rate. What have you seen from Kellnick so far?

And do you think what we saw on this last series in New York was somewhat of a breakout for him? Yeah, it appears to be more of a continuation of what's beginning to happen. It kind of started, you know, throughout the entire road trip. He's been really good. He's been what we kind of expected. obviously he made the stance change. He's more upright. He's not moving his shoulders as much pre-pitch.

He has said that that helps him identify the breaking ball, particularly from a lefty, and we're seeing him chase that pitch a lot less. And the Yankees threw a lot of lefties at him. You got at bats against Eraldus Chapman. He faced Lucas Litke, I think, a couple times, Andrew Heaney a few times. And they all tried that curveball.

And he didn't chase. He was very disciplined. And you could tell you was reading that pitch quite well. Even the outs were better. They were hit hard. They were to the opposite field. The outs were better. The out bats were better.

He's not chasing nearly as much. Like you mentioned, he only struck out three times in a four-game series. In this day and age, for a guy with his power, that's pretty huge. So Kelnick is certainly in the midst of some kind of breakout or some kind of return to norm, whatever terminology you want to use. But he certainly is beginning to look like the player we all expected him to. And that's obviously great news for Seattle because this offense needs all the help they can get. I don't know if you knew this tie, but they scored 42 runs total on the 10-game road trip.

17 of those came in just two games, which means in the other eight games, they averaged about three runs per. Yeah, that's not going to cut it. No. that's not going to win you. That helps you go four and six on a road trip. That's what we like to call suboptimal, Coli. Not ideal, not ideal. So, yeah, they need Kalnick to step it up.

And so far he has and you hope he can carry it forward at home. But yeah, bats look so much better. He's not chasing particularly left on left. He looks better and, you know, feasible in those matchups. So, yeah, you know, you'd like for him not to get kicked out of the game. when they have a short bench and all that stuff. But I mean, Kellnick's with 21, 22 years old,

he's already got a temper. We know that. So not going to, you know, ream the kid over the coals for that. And he was right, by the way. That was not a strike. So. Yeah. And also, you know, that frustration had been built up over the course of the whole series,

right, with the empowering. Like that was all coming to add. You knew that that was going to happen. I'm surprised that he, that nobody got tossed before the eighth inning. of the final game of the series because right that strike zone it was legitimately bad and it was pretty fairly one-sided uh particularly in those big you know game altering moments so yeah it's

pretty good restraint actually by by service and in kelnick to to wait that long even yeah scott service you know obviously going out there uh for his guy uh sticking up for him and uh letting that crew have but late in that game. Obviously, you know, it was the, it was the end of that series. Kind of disappointed in general that there was no real carryover from the ending of the Yankees Mariners series in Seattle where DJ LaMayhew and Ruehne Ado took exception to Kendall Graveman's inside pitches. And obviously, Greveman no longer a member of the team, but I thought maybe there

would be a little bit more beef between the two teams. That didn't really come about. It was more so the Mariners versus the umpiring crew in this one. but going back to Kellanick here since he made that swing change and obviously you talked about how he's more upright he looks more how he was down in Arkansas

and West Virginia and Modesto when he was at the low A through AA levels. He's gotten back to that now his eye level has changed and it's helping him see the breaking stuff a bit better and now he's not chasing as much like you said and you know he's been

pretty solid with his pitch slug in terms of stuff outside the zone. He's taken quite a few close pitches, and that's led to some strikeouts looking. He's also taking some pitches right down the zone, which is not good. But overall, I mean, even when he was struggling, and you and I have talked about this for a while

amongst ourselves, that he's at least been able to come up with some pretty clutch walks over, you know, the last couple of months since he's been called up. So that's been nice. to see some growth on top of that, to see him go from, you know, at least being able to give you a walk to now,

we're starting to see more of what we were hoping to see out of Jared Keltnick, which is some power, right? And you're seeing quite a bit of it over the last couple of weeks. It's hitting doubles. He's getting some home runs. He's just hitting the ball a lot better. He's seeing the ball a lot better. And he's getting his pitches now.

He's taking advantage of those pitches that he's getting because he usually gets at least one, every at bat. He had been getting at least one, even when teams were pitching away from him, when they were bringing in lefties to face him, et cetera. When they were going after his weaknesses,

they were still at least giving him one opportunity per at bat to do some damage. He just really wasn't. He was fouling off those pitches. And now you're seeing less and less of that, and he's striking out a lot less. Yeah, he looks comfortable. He looks like a big leaguer now.

And it took him a little while. Like it takes a lot of really talented young players but, you know, we know that Kelnick works hard. We know that he, you know, keeps his body in impeccable shape. And he was going to grind through this. And he'll probably end up better for the struggles that he did have. So, yeah, it's, I think we're in the middle of a breakout. I don't know we've officially seen the breakout series from Kelnick quite yet.

But it seems like we're certainly building up to it. And it gets better and better every day. Yeah, it's really nice to see, really encouraging. The Mariners starting a homestan. Tuesday, three games set against the Rangers, then they play the Blue Jays over the weekend, then they go back on the road and go back to Texas. We're going to be talking about this Rangers series, but first, you know, Colby, we've been asked a few food questions on our other show at times.

You know, we've talked about our favorite restaurants, our favorite breakfast foods, our favorite snacks, you know, but, you know, as much as I love the occasional overpriced hot dog at a ball game, and you do know how much I love an overpriced hot dog at a ball game. I've, you know, been trying to eat a bit healthier, particularly with my snack cravings. That's why my go-to in those moments is now Bilt Bar. Did you know that Bilt Bar has so many delicious flavors, Colby? I did not. There is something for everyone, man.

I especially love the salted caramel because I can still get a little bit of salty and a little bit of sweet and not feel so guilty about it. There's also coconut, cookies and cream, and so many other. tasty options and like I said, they're healthy. One bar contains 17 to 18 grams of protein with calories as low as 130 and as high, if you want to consider it, that is 180, which is really low still. There's only 4 to 5 grams of sugar and 45 grams of net carbs as well. And Built Bar is even the official protein bar of the U.S. Track and Field Team. Order today at built.com and use promo code Locked 15 for 15% off.

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as teams prep for their runs to the playoffs. Head to the website or use your mobile device to sign up today and receive your 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit with promo code locked on. That's LOC, KEDON. Bet Online, your online sportsbook experts. So the Mariners are back home in Seattle. They will begin a six-game homestan on Tuesday,

starting with a three-game set against the Texas Rangers who they recently just dropped two or three against. They're eight and five on the season against, them in total, but the Rangers have been pretty bad. And the Mariners have been not super great against them. They've handled them most of the time, but there have been other games where they could have put them away, of course, especially on this last road trip, Jonah Haim just destroying the Mariners for some inexplicable reason.

But they need to win these games pretty much to stay in. going into that huge series against the Blue Jays over the weekend. What are you looking for in this series against Texas against the team that this team absolutely needs to handle? Yeah, you know, for me, it starts with the offense. The offense cannot do what they did on that road trip. They need to be better. They get, you know, they're facing Mike Fultenevich on Sunday for, I think, the fourth time

this year. They get Colby Allard tomorrow, who's not. Allard, you know, Seattle handled him pretty well in his last start so he hope you can do it again. And then they get to see in the sandwich game, they get to see a talented young righty Spencer Howard. So Seattle has an opportunity here. They get, you know, a lefty who's not all that great and two righties. So their left-handed bats should be able to handle those two guys. So you would hope that they're going to score some runs here.

Texas is bullpen not too good. And, you know, aside from the one series against Seattle, Texas has, struggled. So you would hope that the pitching continues to do what it has done and the offense wakes up a little bit here. You never want to expect a sweep because that's, I mean, it's so hard to win three games in a row against anybody. So you need to take at least two out of three though here. You need to win this series. It's crucial, especially with Toronto coming in. You need to get off on a hot start. It'd be nice to win on Tuesday to kind of get this momentum building up. You know, they've won one in.

a row. Let's get to two. Then we'll go face the young Spencer Howard. We'll see what he's got and we'll take our chances in game three. So you want to see them win the series. But more importantly, you want to see the bats start to pick up. You want to see Kellynne continue to hit. You want to see Jake Fraley snap out of whatever, whatever funky was in in New York. Louis Terence had a rough series as well. So you want these guys to hit, just hit. And your pitching is probably going to be good enough to get you those wins. Score five or six runs. You're probably going to win all three games. Yeah. And I mean, you really need it right now because like I said earlier in the show, you're five back right now. You don't play tonight. So it's possible you end up going five and a half

back heading into the series. You need to win these games. If you don't win these games, you know, if you don't win games like this in general, especially, you know, you still got teams like the Diamondbacks and the Royals on the schedule as well. You're going to need to handle those teams if you want to stay relevant in this wildcard race. So to me, I look at the series as kind of a must sweep for the Mariners. Gotta have that momentum going into the Toronto series.

It's just, I mean, you can't drop these games because you're probably going to at least drop one to the Blue Jays. Probably too. For being honest, the Blue Jays are really hot right now. We'll see how they, we'll see how they do going back on the road. Obviously, there is a lot

of emotion here in Toronto with the, you know, Rogers Center reopening and everything and the fans coming back, but this is a, this is a Blue Jays team that has been playing some really, really good ball lately. And you don't want to go into that series dropping another two or three to Texas. Just can't. And I feel like even dropping one of them, it's not great. It's not great right now for where you are.

You got to make up some of the losses that you had on the last road trip because there were games that they should have won. and they just didn't. They ended up going four and six. Honestly, realistically, you could say that they could have gone nine and one on that road trip. 10 and no, really. Yeah.

But losses are losses, wins are wins, and they didn't get a whole ton of them. And so they need to make up for that. And I think right now where they are in this race, if they stumble again against Texas over the next three days, I don't feel very confident about where they are in this race. Right.

You start to run out of, you know, games to catch up. Like it's, it's, at some point, you're so far out of it that even winning, you know, eight out of 11 really isn't going to do much for you. And we're getting pretty close to that point. So yeah, these games are huge, but hey, you know, you can't sweep Texas until you win the first game on Tuesday. So that's the one that matters the most right now. hopefully coming off an off day, you know, well-rested coming off a big win.

The Mariners can kind of go out there and attack this Texas team and put them down like they're supposed to be put down. But we'll see. It's baseball. You never know. Things get weird. Colby Aller could go out there and have, you know, just great stuff for the first time in his career and just shut you down. It's totally possible.

So, yeah, you have to, you know, watch out for that, but find a way to win. you're running out of time to to you know oh we'll just get the next one that opportunity is quickly evaporating so beat teams that you should beat and you might stay in this long enough to make things interesting in September yep

well we're going to dive deeper into that pitching matchup and what we expect from tomorrow night's game on tomorrow's episode of Lockdown Mariners but I think that's going to do it for us for our first episode of Lockdown Mariners. We appreciate you guys tuning in and giving us a listen. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you can follow me at D-A-N-E-G-N-Z-L-Z. That's D-A-N-E-G-N-Z-L-Z. You can follow

Colby at CPAT 11. And if you want more of us and more Mariners talk, we are going to be recording an episode of our Monday show on Patreon. That's for our Tier 2 and Tier 3 subscribers. on Patreon. So check out patreon.com forward slash control the zone if you want to listen to that. And of course, be sure to subscribe and follow Lockdown Mariners wherever you're listening to this. And if you're like me and you're trying to get into hockey before the Cracken hit the ice this

fall, check out Lockdown Cracken where Erica Ayala is breaking down all the latest news coming from the NHL's 32nd franchise. For Colby Patnode, I'm Tidey and Gonzalez. This has been Locked on Mariners. Have a beautiful day. see you tomorrow. Betting on Major League Baseball doesn't have to be a guessing game if you listen to the new Locked-on Betts podcast hosted by your boy Q and handicaping expert Lee Sterling.

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