Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Oh, How Wander-Ful

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode react to Wander Franco's extension with the Rays and discuss whether or not it has any impact on Julio Rodriguez and the Mariners moving forward. Then, the duo go over Luis Torrens and if his 2021 breakout is repeatable. Finally, Seattle was apparently in on Anthony DeSclafani before he signed a three-year, $39 million contract to stay in San Francisco. What does his deal say about the starting pitching market as a whole?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/BetOnline AGThere 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. Welcome to Locked-on Miriners. Your home for Daily Seattle Mariner's News and Analysis. Thank you so much for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms, of course. Thank you so much for the support.

Continue to share us with your friends, family, all of those out there who are Mariners fans, who are excited about this team, excited about this off season. We're going to have a lot of fun. especially today here on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021. I am your host, Tadayin Gonzalez. Join, as always, by my co-host, Colby Patnode. Follow us on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-N-R-Rerner. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez,

C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-E-P-E-P-A-T-1-1. Be sure also check out our Patreon, where we talk about the Mariners even more, and also get into some non-baseball talk twice a week. Yesterday was certainly full of that. Visit patreon.com. control zone for more information if you want to hear these two knuckleheads and that's including myself in that conversation uh just ramble on about what have you marvel and uh bad customer

service was a topic yesterday we went on and on and on because you know jerry depoto really isn't doing anything right now and it's kind of hard to come up with topics but we got three topics for you today here on lock dot mariners we're going to be reacting to the news of wander franco's 11 year extension with the Tampa Bay raise. We're also going to talk Luis Terenz. How do we feel about him returning to Catcher in 2022? And can he repeat his offensive performance from this past year when he came back up from AAA? Mariners were also linked to a starting pitcher who recently signed but did not make an offer

themselves. We'll tell you who that was and discuss how the starting pitching market continues to take shape. And if you like what you hear, give the show a follow or subscribe wherever you listen to this. We'd greatly appreciate it. So Wander Franco, Ray's shortstop, who was the top prospect in the game when he was called up, hit 288, 347, 4663 with a 127 WRC plus played good defense, good base runner, two and a half one player by Fangraph standards in 70 games last year. And he earned himself a massive, massive new contract from the Tampa Bay raised today, signing a 12-year contract. Well, really, it's 11 years. There is an option for the last year. It's a $25 million club option.

But overall, this deal comes out to $185 million and it can go up all the way to $223 million. Colby, let's start with this. You know, the raise aren't really known for spending money. Did this deal surprise you? Yes and no, because while the raise don't typically spend money, what they do do is, give their young stars extensions that are below market value. They did with Longoria, they did it with Snell. Now they've done it with Franco. So the total amount in the length is a little surprising. I don't know if I would be interested if I was Wanda Franco

in calling Tampa Bay home for the next 11 years, not only because they might not be playing in Tampa Bay in 11 years. So the length was a little bit interesting to me. But no, I think, you know, at the end of the day, this is going to be a tremendous value for the raise. And probably, you know, when the time comes, the rays are going to be able to trade Wander Franco for a great haul because he's going to be cheap and controllable relative to his skill set.

So a little bit of sticker shock at first, but when you really break down the numbers, it's going to end up being a steal for Tampa and you certainly understand why Wander Franco would take it. I mean, that's $185 million flash in front of your face before you're 21. Like, that's going to be tough to turn down. Yeah, it is really tough.

You know, and I messaged you right after the deal came through and I, you know, it feels though with the trajectory that Wander Franco is on that he's leaving a ton of money on the table potentially here by signing this deal right now but hey that's the risk that a lot of these players assume when they sign these extensions as prospects to get to basically get paid up front to get paid more than the league minimum which is just $575,000 a year so you know he gets a significant uptick but overall when you look at that number of 185 it's only 16 and a half million a year Aavie wise and if

Warner Franco becomes the player that we all think he's going to become. He's going to be severely underpaid. So what do you think about the deal from Franco's standpoint? Do you understand it? Obviously, you know, you understand that. It's hard to turn that number down, but, you know, don't you see the trajectory that he's on? And do you feel that maybe this was a little premature on,

on his and his camps front to jump at the steel with where he's potentially going? in his career. I think from Franco's standpoint, it could be a little bit, a little bit early. I probably would have waited to see how the CBA turns out. Because it's not like Tampa's not going to have interest in negotiating with you after the new CBA comes out. And maybe there's a way that, for example, right now, Franco still has to play six years

before he would have been eligible for free agency. There's a small possibility that, you know, players as part of the CBA negotiation, they might only have five years until they're free agents. So five years of club control. So it's, I, that, that could have changed things because now instead of buying out, you know, five free agent years, four free agent years, you're buying out five. And so that would cost them more money. So I probably would have waited there. And, you know, Franco signed in, in 2017, uh, for 3.85 million. dollars. So I don't he's not that he is like or he shouldn't be desperate for money. He got a hefty signing bonus as a 16 year old, but we don't know what his family situation is. We don't

know what you know what his financial situation is. And again, you wave 185 million dollars in front of anybody. They're probably going to take it. I guess the beauty of this deal is that he's going to be a free agent again, I think at 31, 32. So he's probably going to get another rather large contract. But no, I get it. I'm not going to blame a guy for getting his money. It's nowhere near as egregious as some of the other deals we've seen, like for Whit Merrifield or Ozzy Albies.

Those are two of the ones that come to mind immediately for a really bad extension. So, yeah, I probably would have waited until at least after the CBA. Might it could have maybe squeezed a couple million more out of Tampa, but it's hard to walk away from 185 million. and potentially as much as what they say 224. Like, yeah, that I completely understand why you would take that. So let's talk about the Mariners and how this kind of, this may or may not impact them as well,

because obviously they got a couple of young players that are of a similar status to Wander Franco. Jerry Kellnick, Julio Rodriguez. Kelnick obviously didn't have the year that Franco had. really struggle did come on as of late in the month of September, but still some struggles there, obviously. But Julio as well, let's talk about him here in the event that he has a year that is similar to Franco's, right?

Because that's some people have that expectation. Obviously, you don't want to put those expectations on any young player. We saw it with Jerich Kellnick. He struggled despite being fantastic at every single level of baseball he'd ever played. and the same has pretty much been the case for Julio as well where he's never really struggled either wherever he's played but assuming that he comes up and he has a year like Franco

now that the CBA now that there will be a new CBA in place and all that let's go let's fast forward a year from now and talk about what a potential extension for Julio Rodriguez could look like and how this might impact that I don't see it happen I mean, there's a couple of differences here.

And, you know, let's start here. And I don't know this wasn't exactly your question, but Wander Franco has a track record of being a successful major leaguer. It's a small track record, but he has it. Julio does not. But like you said, assuming that he has a relatively good first year, would they do this? I don't think so because I don't know that they're going to go 11-year deals on anybody.

If they were going to go on anybody, I would say, like, if you told me they're absolutely giving a 10 plus year deal to somebody, I would say it's probably Julio. But I don't think he's going to get $200 million for a couple of reasons. Number one is that, you know, the odds that he's as good as Wander Franco as rookie are pretty small. But number two, Wander Franco is a shortstop. Julio Rodriguez is a rightfielder. No, he might play some center field, but we know he's a corner outfielder. So, yeah, there is a big difference between paying a shortstop and playing a corner guy. Short stops make more because they're more rare.

They're harder to find. So I think those two things are going to be working against him here a little bit. You know, it's, look, am I going to be mad if the Mariners cave, Julio Rodriguez, the same deal? No, of course not. I don't, I don't care. It's a pretty safe bet that you're going to get your money back. I just don't think that the Mariners are going to be interested in an 11, 12-year deal. And I don't know that Julio would be either.

You know, again, Julio is another guy who got a pretty good bonus. He's not hurting for money or shouldn't be. But, yeah, you know, he's just, he's only a couple months older. And he is kind of in that same prospect pedestal. But again, doesn't have the track record as Franco probably is not going to. Non-zero chance he does, but probably not. That's expecting a lot from him. And honestly, I think Seattle might just wait a couple years and see where he's at.

And I think that's probably the smarter way to go. All right. We're going to talk about Luis Terrans in just a moment. But real quick, want to remind you this episode of Lockdown Mariners is not only brought to you by bett online. AG, but also DirecTV. It's Thanksgiving. And we all know what that means football. And nothing goes better with football than turkey and betting.

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who check us out on whichever podcast platform they prefer. We're on Apple. We're on Google. We're on Spotify. We're on all those great platforms out there. Now talking about Luis Terence, the Mariners catcher who, of course, came up in June after being sent down. He really struggled in the first couple of months of the season. Came back in June, figured some things out.

in Tacoma, found a lot of power down in Tacoma, and that translated to the Major League level. Since coming up on June 15th, he slashed 266, 326, 477 with a 121 WRC plus. He had 13 home runs, 41 RBI. He even had two triples, wheels to runs, if you will. But the problem was he did not really catch since he came back up, and he had some struggles, pretty big struggles, catching in his first stent at the major league level to start the year. So Colby, it seems that Terence is going to come back and try to catch the, that's what Scott Service said at his end of year press conference,

that that was the plan that Terence is going to catch again in 2022. So let's start off. Obviously, we know all about the bat, but can Luis Terence be a viable defender? at the major league level? I think he can, and also I'm not sure how much it matters. Like, obviously you want Terence to, it'd be great if Louis Terence was an average catcher,

probably not ever going to be an average catcher defensively. But there's really no reason to believe that he can't handle first base on a pretty regular basis. There were some murmurs and whispers that he was taking ground balls at third base all season, and he was working with Perry Hill there so I wouldn't be too shocked if he gets some time there in 2022. Remember the random lineup against Tampa,

the random lineup against Tampa Bay that came out where he was listed as a third baseman and we all kind of freaked out for a minute and then they changed it to first base. I don't think that was a mistake initially. So I do think they want to play him some at third. So can he be a viable defender? I mean, viable enough?

Sure, because, I mean, you'd live with Thai France at second base if you had to with his bat, right? I mean, it's not ideal. You don't want it, but you'd live with it to get the bat in the lineup. So it really comes down to the bat to me. Do you think the bat is mostly for real? Then, yeah, then he's going to be viable enough. If you don't think the bad is for real at all, then he's probably not going to be good enough defensively.

So really, the glove is kind of secondary almost to how do you feel about the bat? If you buy the bat, the glove's going to be fine. If you don't buy the bat, then he's not, basically he's not a major leaguer. Or he's a bench guy at best. And you, Colby, you love the bat. So what is it in his offensive profile that you saw in his second stent this year that makes you think that his bat and his plate approach is sustainable moving forward? One of the things that stands out immediately is the opposite field power.

you know, it's not, it's not rare for a right-handed pat to have opposite field power. But it's pretty rare for a 25-year-old who has some pretty inconsistent major league playing time to show the amount of opposite field power that he has. He's not afraid to hit the other way. He hits the ball hard with authority. He was in the 79th percentile on average exit velocity. This year, 66 percentile on hard hit rate, 68th percentile in barrel. and pretty good strike zone judgment.

62nd percentile in chase rate. It doesn't draw a lot of walks, still strikes out a bit much, swings and misses. It's part of his game. But again, the power that you saw, the raw power, the ability to hit the ball hard consistently, those are two things that and the ability to not chase egregiously outside of the zone. Those are two things that really make me kind of buy the bat here.

And again, Luis Trens is 25 years old. He's young. I mean, and we know all about his track record, his history as a Rule 5 pick, who kind of basically had to sit in the majors before he was ready to for a whole year. And that kind of threw off his trajectory and all that stuff. So there's a lot of good things happening here. And honestly, you couple it in with what we saw last year, again, in only like 18 games.

But he was a solid hitter last year, too. So I buy the power. I buy the opposite field, I buy the approach, and I'm buying the age. And I think it's possible we have not seen the best of Luis Turenz. I really buy what he did in the second half of last year. I mean, he was on pace for 25 to 28 home runs, you know, since when he was recalled. That's legitimate. And if that's, you know, a DH or a or a first baseman, that's plenty good enough.

Yeah, I think what you saw last year as well was, you know, there wasn't a ton of home run power, but a lot of contact. He was in the top 100 hitters in contact last year. He wasn't striking out a ton under 20%. He was walking nearly 10% of the time. That diminished a little bit in

2021. He struck out more 26.5% of the time. He only walked 7.5% of the time, which is still fine. It's not terrible. But yeah, he you know, with the added power on top of that, you know, maybe if he can cut down the strikeouts a little bit more.

And obviously, that's going to happen. You know, the strikeouts are going to come a little bit more as he hits for more power. That's just kind of what we've seen in today's game. But I think with what he was able to tack on this year, and if he can mix in some more of that contact stuff that he was doing in 2020, I mean, you got a really, really good hitter there. So I think from what you've seen over the last two years, for him or well you know two years is used lightly here you know the 25 games that he played in

2020 and the 108 that he played in 2021 you uh you saw some good stuff you saw some some stuff that's going to uh to make you feel pretty good about the repeatability of that and i think that's really the concern here with from a lot of people is is is what louise turenz has done repeatable and i think it is i think everything that we've seen over the last two years is that he is a far more advanced hitter than he was when he made his little cup of coffee in 2017, which was, you know, he was forced to be up at that point.

And because he was a roll five pick, right? Yep. Yeah. And out of New York and then 2019, obviously only played seven games and, you know, very young and just inexperienced. And he's worked on things now.

And it's starting to show through. And so yeah, I think he's I think he's going to at least be an average big league hitter in 2022 at least. The question ultimately is the defense and how that all gets handled. And to a certain degree, it really doesn't matter like you said, but also, you know, Jerry Napoto has preached roster flexibility as well. But there's definitely a way to get Terence in the lineup consistent. And ultimately, if he's playing, look, the guy is not, he's athletically inclined, right? Like, he can play for a space. You could put him out there for 20 games and he'll be fine.

He'll be serviceable. I think with his arm, there's a potential that he could survive at third base. And catching wise, he was pretty good behind the plate in 2020, which is what made the start to his 2021 season so strange, so bewildering. anyway, you were going to say something just a second ago, sorry? Oh, no, it's just, it's really not that hard because look, if you get 30 games in the field, and that's including catcher, first base and third base, and you DHM 70 games, which isn't an outrageous number, you're getting him 400 plate appearances.

That's a pretty good bat to have around. And, you know, honestly, I know we got to run here pretty quick, but if you squint and you look at Louis Teren's, when he returned from, from AAA Tacoma, you could kind of see a little bit of Nelson Cruz. I'm not saying he's going to be as good as Nelson Cruz. Cruz is a borderline Hall of Famer, but you can see it.

The opposite field power, the line drives, the approach, yeah, kind of a strikeout here and there, but really nothing too, you know, unbelievable or nothing that's totally unsustainable,

but just the right-handed opposite field power and how a lot of his home runs are line drives, not necessarily the high booming fly balls. that's a lot of Nelson Cruz right there. So I'm willing to give him a shot. And again, I only need him to catch for 25, 30 games and play first slash third base for another 20. And then I'm going to have an easy time getting him 60 games, at least as a DH.

And probably another 50 at batts as a pinch hitter, first guy off the bench. Like, this is a valuable player, regardless of how, you know, how often he plays the field. It'd be better if he could, but it's not required for him to be a useful, major leaker. So the starting pitching market is really starting to heat up here. Stephen Matt seems to be close to making a decision. The Giants made a plethora of moves and continue to be involved in the market of Alex Cobb. They also are in agreement to bring back Alex Wood. It was a pitcher

that we thought the Mariners could be interested in as well as Cobb. And it turns out they were also actually interested in one of the other pitchers of the Giants sign, Anthony Descliffeani, who signs for a three-year, $39 million deal, $13 million, AAV for Descalfani, who I'm bringing up his numbers now. At a 317 ERA last year, 362 FIPP,

he struck out 8.16 batters per nine, walked 2.25 batters per nine, in 167 and two-thirds innings pitch. It's a good pitcher. Made 31 starts. He stayed healthy. and he was a big part of that giant's rotation. And he only gets $13 million a year for the next three years,

which is pretty surprising considering some of the other deals we've seen and how this starting pitching market was supposed to take shape. And really, it doesn't seem all that too unreasonable, right, Colby? No. The AVs have come down a little bit lower than I would have expected. Not that I thought Desclafani was going to get 20 million. but I thought he was probably a pretty good bet to get $14, $15 million.

I thought Rodriguez was probably going to get closer to $20 million. I would I thought was probably going to get closer to $12, $13 and he got $10. So it's not like these are outrageous underpays based on what I expected, but overall the market is I would say favorable to teams right now. Just for the simple fact that it appears they're not overpaying. for pitching, which is kind of an annual winter tradition, is that you overpay a little bit for pitching.

The only overpay so far has been the angel signing Noah Cindergarde. And I mean, if Cindergarde is as good as he usually is, that's not going to be an overpay. So, yeah, it feels like pitching is being valued about how we would normally expect, meaning, you know, teams aren't paying a premium for it. Now, to be fair, we haven't seen, you know, Scherzer hasn't gotten a deal yet, but that doesn't really affect the Mariners. So who cares. So the guys who the Mariners could be in on, the guys who are like Wood and Descliffeani and even Rodriguez, they're going for prices that are insanely reasonable.

And so, yeah, I think that votes well for the Mariners. And it also votes well for the trade market for the Mariners as well, because there isn't going to be as much desperation. there isn't as much leverage because the market is playing out the way that it is. So teams are not going to be able to put just any sort of costs that they want on their pitching. So let me ask you this because obviously with the report from Daniel Kramer, MLB.com, Mariner's beat reporter for MLB.com, saying that the Ms obviously, you know, were in contact with Desclofani's team. with his with his camp that never made the offer a lot of people have reacted by saying well oh the the mariner's front of office is already doing the well we tried thing what's your response to that colby shut up like how about we wait how about we wait until after the offseason's over before we say how their offseason went like would i have like desclifani of that number sure i mean would i have like wood at that number yeah rodriguez

yep, but there's four months left at the offseason. And I know the lockout is coming and that's scary a lot of people. And it's, I don't want to say it's scary, but it is annoying. We all agree that it's annoying. But there's still four months of the off season people. And maybe they like Descliffeani, but they didn't love him. Maybe they were working on something else and Desclophani was going to be their second guy. You know, we just don't know.

Maybe Desclophani talked to the Mariners and the Mariners talked to him and they're just kind of like, yeah we'll see like you know what like the giants love descliffeani and they know who they know what he's about they know who he is as a person and disclphani knows what the you know what the giants are about as an organization so there's a possibility that seattle could have offered them 15 million dollars a year and he would have said no i'm staying in san francisco so those are the conversations we're not privy to so i'm not worried about it really at all and and if you are you I think you're you're freaking out too much about the upcoming, you know, labor stoppage. But we're still a long way from opening day, guys.

So take a breath. Let's see what it looks like at the end. And then if at the end they were in on a bunch of guys but didn't land any of them, then you can go ahead and talk about the same old mariners. But until then, just shut up. And on that note, I think that's going to do it for our show. I think that's a pretty good spot to stop things. So appreciate you joining us here on Lockdown Mariners for Colby Pat Node.

I'm Tidane Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez. St.A.N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat 11. That's C-P-A-T-1-1. 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.

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