Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Our 2024-25 Mariners Offseason Plan

Starting point is 00:00:00 So if we were in the shoes of Jerry Depoto and Justin Hollander, how would we attack this offseason? Well, today we're going to tell you just that. Our Mariners' offseason plan is coming right up. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Ahoy, Sailors.

Starting point is 00:00:27 It is Wednesday, November 6th, 2024. This is Tedding Azales and Colby Patnaud for the Lockdown Mariner's podcast. part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team, every day. And today we'll be unveiling our 2024-25 Mariners-off season plan. If you're a member of the Patreon, you got to hear us create the plan and work through all of our ideas over the last few weeks. Now we're ready to show off the final product to the public. But before we do that, shout out to our title sponsor today, Fandual. New customers can place a $5 bet.

Starting point is 00:00:58 And you'll get started with $150 in bonus bets if you win your first $5. bet visit fanduel.com to get started. If you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, check out our Patreon. All you have to do is click the link in the description of this episode. So Colby, how many years have you and I been doing this exercise together, the off-season plan together? It's got to be like six now.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Dating back all the way to our days at Soto Mojo. I'm trying to remember when you hijacked your way into Soto Mojo. stole half my money so much money um yeah so much money i think this is at least year five it could be six um i don't even be said i don't know 2017 i feel like it was 2018 was probably the first year we did this might have been 2019 so yeah had you done one before you and i did one together i don't recall uh so i'm not 100% sure about that um but yeah it's been at least five of these that we've done. And I would guesstimate probably six total, would be my guess.

Starting point is 00:02:11 So if you've been following our content over the last few years, you've listened to the show, you know what the deal is here with the offseason plan. But if you're new to this exercise, basically we try to balance reality and fun. So like we're not going to, you know, sign Juan Soto and sign Alex Bregman. We're not going to do that. but we also want to be able to have at least some fun. So we've given ourselves maybe a little bit more room with the payroll than maybe Jerry DePoto and Justin Hollander actually have to work with.

Starting point is 00:02:44 So, Colby, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so it's all about, you know, trying to be a fun exercise for us and also give you guys some names, but trying to be somewhat realistic with the payroll. Last year's 40-man payroll ended at 148, I believe, after the in-season trades and whatnot. And so, you know, they're already going to be at one, what is it? $1.24. Well, after, you know, you tender the obvious guys, right?

Starting point is 00:03:17 Kirby, Gilbert, Rosarena, and Raleigh, you get to $1.28. That's factoring in Mitch Hanager, who already picked up his player option. Yep. the, you know, declining Jorge Polanco's club option, which adds a $750,000 buyout. And obviously, all that stuff is now official in the real world. But at the time that we're making this plan, it wasn't. So we already had accounted for that. So, yeah, we started essentially at 128 after factoring in the four obvious tenders.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Right. You kind of look at the past this last year or this last offseason. then payroll only went up by $1 million, fulfilling John Stanton, you know, or fulfilling Jerry DePoto, aka John Stanton telling Jerry to Poto. That payroll would go up. It did by about a million dollars,

Starting point is 00:04:09 which honestly adjusted for inflation. Payroll went down last year. But before that, it was going up pretty steadily, $20 million increments, give or take. So, you know, trying to work within those parameters. We settled on a hard, hard cap of 165. but realistically we're trying to shoot for somewhere closer to the 160 million and that that's really the goal which you know stinks because it eliminates so many options

Starting point is 00:04:37 just right off the right off the jump but you know trying to be somewhat realistic but still give us enough of wiggle room in our budget that we can do some fun things that maybe you guys haven't seen elsewhere so at the end of this we wound up at a hundred and $60.5 million. And that's after counting the pre-arb guys that would make our 26-man roster. You don't factor in the pre-arb numbers of the guys on the 40-man roster who are not on the major league roster because that is pro-rated when they are not on the major league roster, right? So we also, in general, added $26.84 million with the additions that we made. And by the way, you can see all of this. We're going to have a spreadsheet in the description.

Starting point is 00:05:23 of this episode that you can click now it's going to spoil everything that we're going to talk about here but if you want to follow along we have projected lineups we have the names of all the guys that we considered both the trade and free agency and speaking of free agency we didn't add a free agent every single acquisition is a trade today folks unfortunately unfortunately we did talk about a lot of free agents but again money is a factor and free agents are unfortunately too expensive for for John Stanton. So let's just get the first moves out of the way. We are DFAing and releasing Mitch Hanager.

Starting point is 00:06:06 He doesn't fit our roster. He doesn't fit the vision that we have for the roster. We are also non-tendering Josh Rojas, Trent Thornton, J.T. Chagua, Austin Both and Sam Haggurdy. And we're making a couple of minor league additions. to the 40-man roster, just to fill out the 40-man roster. We're acquiring utility man Tim Tawa from Arizona. He's a Rule 5 eligible player who hit pretty well down in the minors this past year.

Starting point is 00:06:35 And then we had to add a favorite of Colby's Austin Shenton, who has some major league experience, about 16 games, I think, major league experience. Former Mariners prospect, of course, was traded in the Diego Castillo trade. We are re-acquiring him, just like we did last off-season plan as well. We are acquiring him from the raise for outfield prospect Carlos Jimenez. Yeah. We had two open 40 man spots we wanted to fill.

Starting point is 00:07:00 Those are the two. Now, as it turns out, the Mariners really like Blas Castano. But we didn't know that when we made this deal when we made these this plan. But yeah, those are back in 40 man guys. Like we just think Austin Kitchens is still on our 40 man in our plan. Well, I made the I made the executive decision to add Castano to the 40 man in the spreadsheet and move. kitchen off of it. So, yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:25 So see, it's fine. It still works. Yeah. So, all right, we got time here in the first segment to at least go over one trade. So let's do it. We're acquiring Brandon Lowe. We acquired Brandon Lowe, I think, two offseason plans ago or maybe it was a trade deadline plan.

Starting point is 00:07:40 I can't remember. But we really like Brandon Lough. We are trading Jeter Martinez and Tyler Guff to the Tampa Bay raise, a couple of pitching prospects who are a little ways away from the bigs. Martinez more than Guff. but yeah. Lowe obviously gives us a solution at second base. There are injury concerns here, but he's a guy that provides power that you typically don't get at the second base position. You get him for $10.5 million this year. There's another club option next year as well.

Starting point is 00:08:11 So he doesn't just have to be a stopgap. This is kind of a similar idea to Jorge Palanco. We're basically trying that again because options are very, limited as we've talked about on this show at both second base and third base and you'll see what we're doing about third base here in a little bit but yeah brandon low seattle merrier yeah um you know tie pretty much said at all but uh yeah we've been after low for a while now the rays are going to trade him this winter they're not going to carry his 10 million dollars uh they picked it up simply because they knew they could trade him uh he might cost more than this uh i mean we're just guessing but again the raise typically they prefer bulk uh to just kind of like one you know, one true, like, you know, name prospect, essentially. So, yeah, this might cost a little bit more, but I don't think it's going to cost a ton here because, again, he's making $10 million.

Starting point is 00:09:06 He could be, I mean, he has two years of club control technically, but he's making $10 million. He's kind of a platoon bat. There's a lot of injuries here. So, yeah, if it ends up costing you about the Hory Polanco package, I think you should do it anyways, because I think Lowe is that type of guy. We talked about this. There's just not a lot of options at second base and third base. So you kind of have to take a shot on something.

Starting point is 00:09:30 And so in this case, you're taking a shot kind of on Lowe's health, understanding that he's probably going to miss some time. But when he does play, he's going to be an above average offensive player. So there you have it. Brandon Low fits pretty well for the Mariners. It fits pretty well for our vision for this roster. We're going to get into the rest of our trade ideas in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode is a lockdown.

Starting point is 00:09:52 on Marr's podcast is once again brought to you by Fanduel. Get ready to tackle the NFL action with Fandul, America's number one sportsbook, because right now new customers can bet $5 and get $150 back in bonus bets if you win. The Fandual Sportsbook app gives you everything you need to place live bets on the NFL all in one place. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play, and so much more on the same page where you place your bets. Just visit Fanduel.com to join today. You'll get started with $150 in bonus bets if you win your first $5 bet.

Starting point is 00:10:31 That's Fandual.com. Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with Fanduel, an official sportsbook partner of the NFL. And you're listening to the Locked On Mariner's podcast. We are unveiling our 2024-25 Mariners off season plan. So we just went over some house cleaning items like releasing Mitch Hanager, non-tendering, a few guys, all of that, a couple of minor league trades. We also unveiled our first major league trade, our first big trade for Brandon Lowe of the Tampa Bay race.

Starting point is 00:11:06 So we have our second baseman. Now let's move on here to another pretty interesting trade. Now, when you see this trade, you're going to think, oh, so that is what they're doing at third base. Nope. This isn't the third base solution here, folks. We are acquiring Jake Berger from the Miami Marlinson. along with right-handed reliever Anthony Bender.

Starting point is 00:11:27 But Burger, not good at third base. He has played it a lot. He's not good at third base. He is going to DH and play first base for us and maybe occasionally stand at third base. But he's going to play there very rarely. And we are trading Thai Pete, Ben Williamson, and Brock Rodin, recent gold glove winner, to Miami for Bender and Burger. And burger is pre-Arb still, which was very important to us.

Starting point is 00:11:54 While there are a ton of options at that position that we could have gone after and not traded prospects for, we wanted to spend our resources at second base and third base because the options are so limited at both of those positions. Right. Could we have gone and gotten Justin Turner? Sure. That would have cost us $7 million. And we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have the $7 million that we did end up spending to upgrade the team somewhere else, which I think we're going to get into here pretty quick. But, yeah. So you'll see why we'll see why we.

Starting point is 00:12:24 We didn't just go that route. And if the Mariners do go that route and they just want to bring back Turner or Santana, like we're totally fine with that too. It just eliminates one of the things that we wanted to do, which it ended up costing roughly about the same amount that Santana or Turner would. So we decided to go a different direction. And we also get a really interesting reliever and bender out of it as well. Yeah, burgers, you know, going to hit 250.

Starting point is 00:12:51 His on base percentage is going to be in the low 300s. He doesn't walk a ton. Strikeouts aren't a huge problem for him, but he will strike out some. And he's going to hit, you know, 25 home runs. That's pretty much what he does, 250, 300 with, you know, 25-ish home runs, maybe 30 in a good year. So, yeah, he's first base DH type. He's very Ryan Healy-like. So you guys remember Ryan Healy.

Starting point is 00:13:19 You know, he's just a good solid hitter. Probably one him hitting six or seventh in a good line. lineup. But yeah, he's going to DH mostly. He's going to play some first base as well. And occasionally third base, you know, part of the plan is to have some flexibility here. And at least his ability to go stand at third base for a game or two a month is is somewhat valuable. And then Anthony Bender is just kind of your prototypical like seventh inning guy with a pretty wicked breaking ball. Ironic since his last name is Bender, he's pretty good at it. So this is the guy that I think the Mariners are going to have interest in.

Starting point is 00:13:55 In general, he's only making $1.1 million this year. He helps, you know, give some middle, like middle leverage impact to this ball club. What you could need or what you could use in the sweeper again, pretty good pitch, not an elite pitch, but a 31% whiff rate on that pitch. And opponents hit 163 with a 272 slug on the sweeper. So Bender again, kind of more of a seventh inning guy, but maybe he pushes Colin Snyder down to a more regular role. He's not the guy we need to add to the back end of the bullpen to really help out Andres Munoz, but he is a guy who lengthens the bullpen,

Starting point is 00:14:35 gives you some insurance in case of, you know, a step back from Snyder or another injury from, you know, Gabe Spire or whatever. And, you know, you guys remember, we non-tendered most of the middle relief options. So we needed to find one. and Bender is making less than all three of the guys that we non-tendered. And he's probably about as good, if not a little bit better than those guys. This is going to be maybe a controversial trade for some of you. It's certainly pricey.

Starting point is 00:15:03 This is our biggest trade of the off-season plan. We are acquiring Utility Man, Brendan Donovan, who is going to play third base for us. He played mostly outfield this year for the Cardinals, but can play second, can play some third. we're also acquiring Ryan Helsley who's on the last year of his club control projected to make $6.9 million.

Starting point is 00:15:26 Donovan is projected to make 3.6 by the way by MLB trade rumors. We are trading Cole Young to the Cardinals. We are trading Gregory Santos to the Cardinals and we are trading Logan Evans to the Cardinals. On the Cole Young front, essentially our thought process here is

Starting point is 00:15:46 don't you kind of hope that Young ends up becoming Brendan Donovan? At least with the bat. Yeah, more or less. Yeah, so you're trading some club control here. Obviously, you're giving up six years of, you know, Evans and Young, both of whom could and probably will make their major league debut at some point in 2025 and you're giving up four years of Santos for just one year of Halsley.

Starting point is 00:16:15 But this is the type of move you make when you are trying to win a division. when you're trying to go to the World Series, you go and you trade what a player could be for what a player already is. And you make moves like this. So, you know, we saw at the deadline. Teams were not willing to trade top 100 guys. Cole Young is very much easily in the top 100, pretty much every publication. And he is close to Major League Ready.

Starting point is 00:16:40 So if you're the Cardinals and you just kind of want to reset the clock, you get a guy who could be Brendan Donovan, you know, as soon as 20, 25, 2026. but you don't have to pay him what you're going to pay Burn and Donovan for at least three more years, probably four, because it's not likely young is going to be on their opening day roster. Evans is a pretty interesting pitching prospect. The Cardinals need pitching more particularly. They need young cheap pitching. They're already looking to shed some payroll.

Starting point is 00:17:08 We know that. They're kind of doing a soft stepback thing. They've been shopping at Aronado. Good luck to them on that front. They've shopped, you know, they're shopping. sunny gray. So if they trade one of those two guys, if they're able to move one of those contracts,

Starting point is 00:17:23 it doesn't make it less likely that they would move Donovan and Helsley. Yeah, probably, but that's why you have to be somewhat aggressive, at least to start to grab their attention. So do you want to trade six years of maybe Brennan Donovan for three years of Brendan Donovan?

Starting point is 00:17:38 Yeah, if you're a World Series contender, if you think that's what you're going to be this year, yeah, you probably make that trade. And then Helsley is just the, you know, he is in that Andres Munoz tier. And you give two of those guys in the back end who, you know, a little bit safer than Santos. So you're trading some club control for safety and just a better pitcher overall.

Starting point is 00:18:00 So, you know, Helsley and Munoz and the back end of that bullpen. And then hopefully at some point next year, you can also add Matt Brash. Now you've added Anthony Bender. You have Snyder back. You can kind of start to build out this bullpen in the back end and go like, huh, this is a legitimate, you know, one, two punch in the bullpen. bullpen, potentially a one, two, three punch in the back end of the bullpen by the middle of the year. And that's not counting guys like Troy Taylor, who you think could take another step forward.

Starting point is 00:18:25 So yeah, this is about building a really good bullpen and putting some high floor guys around the infield who, you know, help you right now. And you're going to sacrifice a little bit in the future to do that because six years for Cole Young for three years of Brennan Donovan in a vacuum, you'd probably rather have Cole Young. But we don't operate in a vacuum. We're trying to win baseball games in 2025, 2026. Donovan is much more likely to do that for us than Cole Young, even though I like Cole Young quite a bit.

Starting point is 00:18:52 Look, this team, as you're going to see, is going to crush right-handed pitching. Lefties is kind of a wait-and-see, but we do have an answer to that a little bit. At least we think so. We really like this next guy here, Nick Gonzalez, who we are primarily looking to platoon

Starting point is 00:19:14 with Brandon Lassie. at second. Lau's numbers against lefties. Very inconsistent. He has had some success against lefties. He had some success and limited opportunities this year against lefties. But overall, he's probably a guy that needs to be platooned with. And so our weak side platoon option here is Nick Gonzalez.

Starting point is 00:19:34 And we are trading Tyler Locklear. So we're trading something pretty nice here for Nick Gonzalez. But he has five years left. So you have to come to the table pretty serious here. And Locklear was someone that, especially after adding burger, we felt we could part with pretty easily. And also kind of fits what the pirates need right now as well. Yeah, the pirates, they're starting first baseman right now, like the season started tomorrow, is the guy who probably should be playing like second base or center field, like a freak athlete.

Starting point is 00:20:05 It just doesn't profile there. And there's really nobody in their system that makes a lot of sense. The pirates do have a lot of particular second base prospects that are pretty interesting. Gonzalez being one of them. So I don't think that you're going to, you know, like you might make this offer to the pirates and they might say no. Nick Gonzalez is our second baseman in the future because he did some nice things this last year. He had 270. He was a former first round pick.

Starting point is 00:20:29 He was linked to the Mariners pretty heavily back in that 2020 draft. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a 2020 draft where Hancock happened to fall to them and they went that route instead. But, you know, this guy, he hits or he has. has hit pretty much everywhere. It took him a little while to get going in the big or in the in the in the pros. But he's a good solid player now. Again, he could become your everyday second baseman. Like there's absolutely a path where he places his way into being that for you.

Starting point is 00:20:58 And maybe he's so good this year that you look at Brandon Lau's option. You go like, well, we could just have Gonzalez play second base next year at a fraction of the cost. And so, you know, I just, I like a lot of his profile. There's still some things to work on here. Last year, he didn't hit the ball very hard. He chased a lot. Swung and miss was a bit of a problem. Didn't strike out a ton, but he did swing and miss quite a bit.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Didn't really walk at all. So there are some, you know, interesting things in the numbers about Nick Gonzalez. There are some things that aren't so great that you probably have to protect yourself from. But it's just hard to know if the pirates think of him as, you know, a useful player or if they think of him as a key part of their future, we don't know. no, but they don't have any answers at first base right now. Tyler Locklear would have a good chance to, you know, start for them for a good chunk of 2020 or 2025. And again, it's six years of Locklear for five years of Gonzalez.

Starting point is 00:21:57 You know, you might have to add a player to, you know, even out the positional, the positional value, because obviously second basements much more valuable than the first basement, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I like Nick Gonzalez quite a bit. I feel in the Mariners do as well. But we'll have to wait and see what they do at second base. But because we're moving Cole Young in the Donovan deal, you know, it would be nice to also add somebody who could potentially be your second

Starting point is 00:22:25 basement of the future. And Nick Gonzalez could be that guy. And if nothing else, he's a pretty solid platoon bat who, you know, pretty good speed, has some pop can do a lot of nice things for you, even if he is just a bench player.

Starting point is 00:22:38 So we have one more bench trade to go over and then we'll go over 26 man roster, some minor league contract offers, all that in just a moment. But first a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Marys podcast is brought to you by Hems and Arena Club. All right, fellas, you ever feel like you need a little boosts in the bedroom? Well, if you do, you know what I'm talking about here.

Starting point is 00:23:04 It's time you stop worrying about your performance and get hymns so you can feel confident knowing you can get hard and stay hard. whenever you're in the mood. Hems is changing men's health care by providing you with access to affordable sexual health treatments from the comfort of your couch. Hems provides access to a range of doctor-trusted ED treatments like chewable hard mints and Viagra and C-Alas and their generics for up to 95% cheaper. Start your free online visit today at Hems.com slash locked on.

Starting point is 00:23:32 That's H-I-M-S.com slash L-O-C-E-D-O-N for your personalized ED treatment options. Hems.com slash locked on. The products mention are chewable compounded products which are not approved by or verified for safety or effectiveness by the FDA. Prescriptions require an online consultation with a healthcare provider who will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for details and important safety information.

Starting point is 00:23:57 Subscription required. Price varies based on product and subscription. For most of us that like collecting cards, the idea of spending two grand or more on Luca Donchich, Ellie De La Cruz, or Patrick Mahomes, rookies just isn't in the cards. Now, I love collecting, but that's some serious, serious money to drop. Thanks to Slab Packs from ArenaClub.com, though, it is now possible to score Jim Mitz for a fraction of their retail price. Every card that I listed was hit from last week's Arena Club's Slap Pack drop.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Arena Club is the only repack that provides real value, a complete view of all possible cards and clear hit rates for each one. Arena Club slab packs are revolutionizing the repack game with transparency. After your polls are revealed, they'll immediately be placed in your showroom for safekeeping, selling, trading, or auction. The Arena Club grading process is accurate, fast, and transparent, with a full grade rationale provided an explanation of how your card was scored. Whether you're buying, selling, trading, or displaying, Arena Club is the card collecting platform you have to check out. Right now you can get 10% off your first slab pack or card purchase by going to arena club.com slash locked on MLB and use the promo code LOC, KED, O NMLB. That's

Starting point is 00:25:15 ArenaClub.com slash locked on MLB promo code LOCKD ONMLB for 10% off your purchase. And you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. We are wrapping up our 2024, 25 Mariners off season plan. We have one more. trade to go over. We wanted to add another outfielder, especially because with the way that we have this roster constructed, Luke Rayleigh's probably going to play some first base and DH. That's probably going to be his primary role, along with Jake Berger, of course. Those guys are going to kind of switch off between first and DH over the course of the year. So we wanted to add a left-handed hitting outfielder. We went over a lot of names, folks. By the way, we had

Starting point is 00:26:03 an ideal profile in mind. We wanted someone with like speed and athleticism and can play some defense. And well, the guy we wound up landing on doesn't really provide that. But he's a good hitter. And he's had two pretty good seasons with the Chicago Cubs the last two years. That's Mike Talkman.

Starting point is 00:26:24 It's a veteran left-handed hitter. It's going to get on base. He's going to hit for average. We're trading Ash and Nizzi to the Chicago Cubs, right-handed pitching. prospect for the merrers. Tell us a little bit about Talkman, Colby. Yeah, you know, it's kind of Seth Smith Ian. Like it's, it's there. He's going to be behind, you know, like he's not going to get as many at-bats as Luke Rayleigh. He is very much much a bench guy who's going to kind of rotate in when needed.

Starting point is 00:26:57 But there is the possibility that, you know, if, for example, Victor Robles falters or whatever, then maybe Rayleigh plays more outfield than we thought or maybe Talkman plays more outfield than we thought. So, you know, Tockeman is kind of part of the Victor Robles insurance plan along with Luke Rayleigh, which, you know, by kind of extension kind of makes Jake Berger part of the, the Victor Robles insurance plan. So, yeah, you get a guy who at least pretty high floor.

Starting point is 00:27:27 Like, he's going to get on base, he's going to draw a walk, he's going to hit for a pretty decent average. We can pretty much bank on those. and then he pairs with Rayleigh, who's more of a power guy, more of an athlete. But yeah, I think most nights, assuming Robles is pretty good. Obviously, I don't think he's going to be as good as he was last year. But assuming that he's pretty good, most nights, the outfield will be what you think it is. And either Burger or Rayleigh will, D.H.

Starting point is 00:27:59 And the other one will play first base. And Tockeman will be on the bench most nights. but again, you know, Randy Rosarin is not going to play 162 games. Victor Robles isn't going to play 162 games. Julio's not. Rayleigh's not. Berger's not. And so you're kind of looking for something to rotate this through.

Starting point is 00:28:14 And it's like, do you want that to be Dominic Canzone? Do you want to go down that rabbit hole again? Or do you want to have somebody who is like legitimately solid and has done it? He has a floor that you can sink your teeth into. Right. And yeah, you know, and if, by the way, if Dominic Canzone does end up, you know, winning that job or whatever, he just wows you at some point during the season, it's not like you can't just move on from Talkman pretty easily. So yeah, it doesn't necessarily block a guy like Canzone.

Starting point is 00:28:43 It just kind of forces Canzone to beat somebody instead of being handed the job. So there's a lot of little things to like about talking, but he's, he's, you know, he's the guy on the bench, you know, late in the game, you need a homer. You're probably going to pinch hit him for, you know, for a guy like Robles. You're probably going to do that or you're going to pinch hit him. Like he's going to be a guy you go to off the bench to face Mason Miller instead of, you know, asking one of the righties, instead of asking Jake Berger to try and hit a home runoff of Mason Miller, it's like, hey, you know, let's go for, let's get a guy on base here. Let's go for Talkman. So, yeah, Talkman is a bench player. He's not really even part of a platoon quite yet,

Starting point is 00:29:22 but he does fill in a couple of different gaps if slash when the Mariners need to move guys around to cover for injury or poor performance. So he does fit pretty well. So all of our major league additions are Ryan Helsley, Anthony Bender, Jake Berger, Brandon Lowe, Brennan Donovan, Mike Talkman, and Nick Gonzalez. And you can also throw Austin Shinton in there as well because he has major league experience. So before we get into the 26-man roster, we do this every off-season plan where we look at major leaguers who we think might sign minor league deals. We just throw out a bunch of offers out there.

Starting point is 00:30:00 like these are just guys we're not saying we're signing all of these guys it's just these are the guys that we would send out minor league offers to that we think could actually sign minor league deals this off season so marco gonzalez why not patrick corbin caleb tealbar geogaiagos yani terrinos adam cimber john brebia uh right of ryan justice for rider ryan mckel castro sean armstrong alex jackson bobby dollback tyro estrata joey gallo Nick Gordon Ben Gamble Edward Oliveris Willie Calhoun, Mariner Killer and Sam Haggurty. Why not bring Sam Haggurdy back? So let's get into the 26-man roster. Our pitching staff, we are

Starting point is 00:30:44 keeping Gabe Aspiring Taylor Sossato. We did tender them contracts because look, they're barely projected to make more than the league minimum, so why not? Then obviously Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Brian Wu. Rotation stays intact. And then the bullpen, the rightease on the bullpen, that is.

Starting point is 00:31:04 Edward Vizardo, Anthony Bender, Troy Taylor, Colin Snyder, Ryan Helsley, Andres, Munoz. It was very important for us to get that second real high leverage, established high leverage dude in Halsley. And I'm glad that we're able to make that work. As for the position players, Cal Raleigh, Mitch Garver, Brandon Lowe, Nick Gonzalez, J.P. Crawford, Julio Rodriguez, Randy, Rosa, Rana, Victor Robles, Mike Talkman, Luke Rayleigh, Jake Berger, Brennan, Donovan, and Dylan Moore. Do you have any lineups in mind, Colby? It's lefties against righties. I think Robles is probably going to get the first crack of being the lead-off hitter against both sides to start the year.

Starting point is 00:31:47 And then I imagine Julio probably slides in and hits second. And then after that, it's kind of, you know, do what you want. It could be Brandon Lough could hit third. Cal Raleigh could hit third. but more than likely one of those two guys is hitting third. And then Rosarena, well, we don't know exactly how Dan's going to like to do his lineups quite yet, but we know that Scott really liked the balance left, right, left, right, or right, left, didn't really like to stack more than two same-handed bats in a row.

Starting point is 00:32:18 If you could help it, we don't know if Dan's going to do that or not. But I think something like Robles, Julio, Lau, Raleigh, probably Randy at that point, hitting five, and then six is probably Rayleigh, seven is probably Burger. Eight is Donovan, and JP's probably hitting ninth most nights. That would be, I think, a pretty standard lineup against righties and against lefties. You know, Lough probably finds the bench for either Dylan Moore or Nick Gonzalez. I think Berger probably plays first base.

Starting point is 00:32:58 So Rayleigh's out of the lineup. So the DH then is probably, well, I mean, it could be, it could be, you know, Gonzalez or more, or you could have Dillmore play left field and Randy at Rosarine is the DH that night. Or Mitch Garver. Right. So there are a lot of options or you can just tough lefty on the mount. Hey, Cal Raleigh needs a day off. Put Mitch Garber in there.

Starting point is 00:33:19 So, yeah, there is a lot of versatility here. but there's not a lot of like you have to platoon this guy like dillan more doesn't have to hit for brinan donovan donovan donovan's not great against lefties but he's just a little bit below league average so he's not a platoon bat uh but if you want to give brennan donovan a day off against the top lefty fine you put dillamore over there but you don't have to is the point uh i think you know we have two guys who you almost certainly don't want to face many lefties and that's rayley and low and i think that's like the most you could ask you can reasonably put together because last year the Mariners at times were running like four

Starting point is 00:33:56 platoons like at one time and that just you don't have that kind of versatility so yeah i think you know it's going to look very similar to what it did last year uh i think you know honestly lao probably just hits where polanco was supposed to it which is third uh most games um and then burger is kind of you know going to hit six or seven for you depending on how the rest of the lineup goes and that's where you should be i think that's where you want a guy like jake burger you want to hitting six or seven. That's probably where you want a guy like Luke Grayley, as good as he was last year.

Starting point is 00:34:26 You probably want that type of guy hitting six, seven. And if you're going Julio, Lowe, Raleigh, Rosarena, somewhere in the middle of your order, or somewhere in the middle of your lineup in that order, you have a chance to do some real damage. And obviously it's going to depend a lot on Lowe's health and Robles' ability to repeat a little bit. But for the most part, I feel pretty good about that lineup producing,

Starting point is 00:34:48 at least at an average clip. So there you have it. The off-season plan, 2024, 2025 off-season. What did you guys think? Let us know down in the comments below. We will be back tomorrow. We'll talk a little bit about Heissong Kim, this Korean second baseman,

Starting point is 00:35:09 who the mayors are apparently looking at, doing some work on. We'll talk a little bit more about the moves that have been made. And we'll see what else we get into. 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 Taday Gonzalez.

Starting point is 00:35:25 Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Marrers. You can follow me at Tyane Gonzalez and Colby at C-Pat-11. We're also now on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG and Colby at MLB Colby. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace.

Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Our 2024-25 Mariners Offseason Plan

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.