Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Sweep or Bust

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Join Locked On Mariners hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode as they break down the Mariners' brutal series loss to the Diamondbacks, preview what's to come against the Red Sox and discuss reasons to keep watching if things don't go their way against Boston.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: http://patreon.com/controlthezone/Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Well, that was a disappointing, dreadful, terrible, awful weekend. This is Locked-on Mariners before we get into today's show. Let's talk Locked-on MLB. Join Walking Baseball Encyclopedia Paul Francis Sullivan, and please call him Sully every day on Lockdown MLB

for a unique look at the majors, both president pass. featuring exciting guest interviews and routine check-ins from the Lockdown MLB Network's team of local experts. Subscribe to Lockdown MLB today on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. It is Monday, September 13th, 2021. This is the Lockdown Mariners podcast, your home for Daily Seattle Mariner's News and analysis. I am your host, Tadine Gonzalez. You can find me at Dane Gonzalez on Twitter. That's D-A-N-Z-L-Z.

And you can also find me writing on Seahawk Maven about the Seahawks at s i'm joined as always by my co-host colby patnode you can find him at c pat 11 on twitter that's c-pat 1-1 you can also find him on seahawk maven at s i dot com be sure to check out our patreon where we talk about the mariners even more and also get into some non-baseball talk twice a week new episode dropping today for our tier two and tier three patrons so visit patreon dot com ford slash control zone for more information on that but on today's episode of locked-down mariners we're talking about that absolutely brutal series loss to the diamondbacks we talked about on friday how the mariners needed to sweep the series or at least get two out of three and they just

did not get that done and that makes things a lot harder on them the rest of the way here especially with the red sox coming to town we're also going to preview that series and tell you what the mariners need to get done to stay competitive in the wild car race spoiler alert it's a lot and we're also going to face reality a little bit because the mariners odds of making the playoffs, frankly, took a considerable hit over the weekend. And so if this continues to get out of hand, we're going to talk about what we'd like to see from the team before the season comes to an end. If this is your first time joining us on Lockdown Mariners, welcome to the show.

Please give us a follow or subscribe wherever you're listening to this. If you like what you hear, that would be very nice of you. And we'd greatly appreciate it. Colby, just a bad series all around. And what makes it worse is that it started out so well. On Friday, the Mariners won and pretty much every team they needed to lose lost. They were one game back heading into Saturday. And then everything just fell apart from there.

And now three games back with just 19 games to go, bad pitching, horrendous offense, you name it. It was all present over the last two games of the Mariners paid for it quite dearly. I mean, where do you want to begin with this? probably by not talking about it, but that's kind of our job. So, yeah, it's, it was rough. You know, there's, there's no denying that. It was just a huge missed opportunity. And then honestly, it could have been worse.

But, you know, thankfully the Yankees and the Red Sox continue to struggle. Yankees, by the way, down five to nothing as of our recording this. So it could have been a little bit worse. But overall, it's bad because, you know, even though you pretty much right where you were entering this weekend, that's not good because now there are three fewer opportunities to make up that ground essentially. So, yeah, it was awful. The pitching was pretty bad, particularly Chris Flexson struggling at home. That's not something we see that often.

He just clearly didn't have it. He found it for about, you know, two innings. But, you know, in between those two endings, he was just bad. just didn't have any command whatsoever. Cacucci was okay, really had to battle, get through multiple jams. He gave up a lot of hits, a lot of hard contact, but he did get a lot of strikeout. Unfortunately, you know, Mishavitz comes in and just like four hitters, two doubles, two singles, and through six pitches, and that was the ballgame.

The offense is not equipped to come back from that. So, yeah, it was just a perfect storm of bad baseball. at the absolute worst time against, you know, the worst team in baseball. So it's, it's a bummer. But, you know, it's when you, it just goes to show you when the Mariners do not play well, they can lose to anybody and lose pretty embarrassingly at that. So it's a team that's been playing, you know, with fire in that way for a while. So it's not all that surprising, but it's just a bummer that it happened, you know,

the weekend before what would have been the biggest. series at safe cofield since at least 2018 or T-Mobile so yeah it's just a bummer all the way around yeah it's a splash of cold water it's just an absolute letdown really it's

I don't I don't really know how else to phrase it it's just it's it's a little bit embarrassing it's it's sad because you know we had talked about this and we had said that this was a possibility you know not to sleep on the on the Dampenbacks it's still a team that has some talent and can can definitely take advantage of some costly mistakes and and really what

it came down to was the Mariners in a way beat themselves and you just can't do that against even a team like the diamondbacks uh there's definitely you know more room for error but you know when you're facing guys like to tell martay you know that's not that's not easy that's not you know you can't just they're going to catch you slipping pretty much and uh and that's what happened and it's it's really unfortunate it's really sad and you know hopefully this is a another situation where you know the mariners look dead in the water but somehow come out of that you know as they have done pretty much all year but time is really starting to run out and now they're in a very um an ideal situation now that they got to have to pull them

themselves out of and really play incredible baseball over the next two weeks. And I just, I don't think that they're really all that capable of doing that. But one, you know, bright spot from the series was Jerry Kellnick. He was actually pretty good and has been pretty good all of September. He had a great home run yesterday, awesome home run in the ninth inning that unfortunately did not matter, just brought the Mariners within one. But they end up losing. But he destroyed that baseball.

In September, this is from Adam Gresh, who is the coordinator of baseball information with Mariners and Mariners PR. And he posted that the Jerry Kalnick right now, 131 WRC Plus, 848 OPS, three home runs, 8 RBI, and in September. He's been, he's been pretty solid. Yeah, it, you know, he's basically been the best version of Mitch, Hanager from 2021 in the month of September, which is nice, or it would be nice if Mitch Hanager was also the best version of himself. Unfortunately, he's pretty much the same guy we've seen for the last six weeks, give or take, just a whole lot of nothing except the occasional home run. So yeah, Kelnick having a nice September. It would be great if he can follow that

all the way through to the end. He's got about, you know, two and a half weeks left. And get on a nice little roll here. He might even push the 200 average, get over the Mendoza line. But, you know, it's more important is that he only had two hits this series, both were home runs. But he hit the ball hard, and he only struck out once in 11 played appearances. So, yeah, he's sitting the ball hard. He's seeing the ball pretty well right now. Granted, not the best pitching.

He hasn't seen the best pitching in September, but it's still all good signs, and you hope that he continues it, you know, tonight and starting tonight against Boston and rides it the rest of the way. But, yeah, that is the one positive coming out of this series. He pitched pretty well, or he hit pretty well. Yeah. Well, you said it there. You know, the Red Sox coming to town. That's the team the Mariners are directly chasing right now.

So certainly a chance to turn things around here, but not a super promising one. We're going to get you set for Red Sox Mariners in a moment. But first a word from DirecTV. Does this sound familiar? You've got one device that lets you catch the game live, another that lets you stream your favorite shows, you're watching sports highlights on your phone, and you've got your neighbor's best friends log in for the good stuff. Well, I want to tell you about a simple way to get all that entertainment you love without the hassle and a great way to finally get your TV together. It's called direct TV stream and it brings your live TV and on-demand favorites together like never before so you can watch your favorite sports, movies, and shows all in one place.

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Still a huge series, nonetheless, but the hype for it has, frankly died down quite a bit given what happened over the weekend. The Mariners barely hanging on by a thread now and pretty much need a sweep here to stay in the thick of things. Pitching matchups on this one, Logan Gilbert versus Eduardo Rodriguez. Wow, I can't talk today.

Tyler Anderson versus Nathan Avaldi and Marco Gonzalez against, well, that's to be determined. The Red Sox have not yet announced their starter for that game. But Colby, how do the Mariners pull off the improbable feat they need to have happen here. Yeah, it's basically sweep or bust, right? So, I mean, it's even winning the series only gets you one game net on the Red Sox.

You're three back right now. You also need the Yankees to help you out, or more specifically, you need the twins to help you out. So how do they do it? It starts with pitching. This is a very good Boston lineup. It's getting healthier. Xander Bogartz is back. Kyle Schwerver continues to annihilate the baseball.

Kiki Hernandez is back. It's a really good lineup. JD Martinez, obviously, Rafael Devers, you guys. And Hunter Redfro, having a great September. So, yeah, it's a really deep and talented lineup. It's much deeper than yours, so the pitching has to bring it. We'll see what version of Logan Gilbert we get. Hopefully it's the version we saw against the Yankees,

or at the very least the version we saw in his last start against the Astros, the last two starts against the Astros, then maybe have a chance. It does set up pretty well for that. There's a lot of right-handed bats. It's a pretty right-handed heavy lineup. But, you know, the left-handed bats can do some serious damage. You're talking about Verdugo and Devers and Schwerber. So, yeah, there's going to be a bit of a gauntlet there.

So you have to pitch really well. And then you have to have some kind of offensive breakout. This is going to be pretty similar to the Astro series where you can't expect to win one to nothing, two to one, you know, four to three. You're going to have to score five, six, seven runs in the series. Maybe you win one game. game, you know, a low scoring affair. But you're going to have to score some runs.

And, you know, the Rodriguez star, you get Murphy in the lineup. You get Dylan Moore in the lineup against the lefty. Decent chance you can score some runs tonight. Evaldi is going to be tough. That's probably the game you have to pitch really well in. You get Anderson in that one. So, you know, there's a decent chance. He'll keep you in there for a while.

And honestly, what is going to come down to is keeping this game close until you can get into Boston's bullpen because that's still a problem for them. So yeah, the formula is for beating the Red Sox pretty much the same formula that's been for beating anybody this year. Pitch pretty well, run up pitch counts, get into the bullpen and do damage late in the game. And you have to do that for three consecutive days.

It's a tall task. This whole series and the Mariners playoff hopes in general live and die by their offense. you have to score runs in the series. You have to. There is no excuse for this. You cannot have these opportunities where you have bases loaded, guys in scoring position,

less than two outs. You have to take advantage of that. And they have not been able to do that. They were not able to do that against a bad pitching staff with the Diamondbacks. You have to convert on those opportunities, especially against this team. and you're not going to get many of those against Nathan Navaldi. Rodriguez has been kind of streaky.

We'll see. And who knows who's going to be starting for the Red Sox on Wednesday. But this is a team that you have to absolutely take those opportunities and take advantage of them against. Because if not, you're going to be left in the dust. You're going to get blown out straight up. and that's what I fear is probably going to happen because I don't really have faith in this offense to produce. You know, I think they might get on the board, a couple runs here and there, but I can legitimately see this team losing 11 to 2, 13 to 3. Like the Red Sox lineup is incredible right now.

And it's fully healthy. And, you know, you got to get to that bullpen, like you said. the bullpen is bad aside from Matt Barnes and maybe save Hansel Robles. But other than that, Garrett Whitlock. Garrett Whitlock. Yeah, it's two guys in Robles has been good for like his last nine innings, but I mean, come on.

But I guess the one benefit you do have is that your bullpen, in particular your high leverage arms are all very well rested. Seawald hasn't thrown in three days now, four days actually. So he should be good to go. Stackin Riders should be good to go. Castillo should be good to go. I want to talk about something real quick. Sure.

You're talking about the bullpen. What is the point of having all these relievers if you're not going to use them? Right. And I was just about to get to that. So, yeah. Yeah. You have the off day on Thursday. You see Kikuchi, Chris Flexen,

those guys were struggling. Yep, clearly. You had a chance to stop the bleeding and you have all these arms. So you can cover a whole game without even using your entire bullpen. Yep. With the amount of arms that you have.

And the fact that you're just letting these starters right now a crucial time in the season just try to figure it out is ridiculous. And that can not happen against Boston. If Logan Gilbert struggles tonight, if you're seeing signs of that tonight in the first couple of innings, you have to go get him. Scott Service absolutely has to go get him and take him out of the game and use the

bullpen because there is no other reason to have the amount of arms that they do in their bullpen if they're not going to utilize them. It makes no sense. Right. And I think one of the things that you have to think about of your services is that like hypothetically right, Gilbert gets through the lineup the first time. he looks okay. You get to the top.

Somebody needs to be moving in the bullpen. It doesn't have to be throwing if everything looks okay. But, you know, he walks a guy or he spikes a couple pitches in a row. It's time to get somebody up. And here's the thing, Scott. It shouldn't be Justice Sheffield. It shouldn't be Matt Andrews.

It shouldn't be Anthony Meshevitz. Those three guys, ideally, they don't throw a pitch to the series, unless you're up by 10 somehow. So unfortunately, that means if I have to go to Drew second, rider in the third. If game one and ask him to go through the fourth two, then I have to do that. I have the off day on Thursday. These three games are the most important games of the season. I need to treat each one of them like an elimination game. So it sucks. But again, those guys barely through this weekend. Seawald hasn't thrown in four days. So he's probably getting into

tonight's game regardless of the score. So why not have it be at a time where you can still win the game? You need to use those guys. We know that Seawald can go a couple innings. We know Castillo can go a couple innings. Is it ideal? No, but that's the situation you put yourself in by losing that series to Arizona. You don't get to do this whole, well, we can drop one of these games and still be okay. No, you lost that right. So be aggressive with your bullpen. Use the high leverage guys. Whenever, forget about the inning. It does not matter. Well, who pitches the ninth? It doesn't matter. You have to get to the ninth with the lead before that matters at all. So if you have to use Seawald in the fourth, then so be it. Use them in the fourth. That's the,

position you put yourself in you you've lost the luxury of um you know caring about tomorrow uh when you lost the series to arizona if you had swept it then you'd be tied for a playoff spot right now and you could sacrifice one of these games if if gilbert doesn't have it or whatever you can't do that now you lost that right so unfortunately it's all hands on deck and as the set the second you start to scent you know you catch a whiff of trouble from gilbert you need to get somebody up and it needs to be one of your better guys too. Yeah, absolutely. What was it?

Was it last year that they had the slogan, whatever it takes? Something like that. I think it was last year, maybe the year before. Either way, that needs to be the case, the series. It has to be whatever it takes

to win these three games. You have to do it. It doesn't matter if it goes completely against your philosophy in terms of how you use the bullpen or whatever. There's no excuses now. You have to lay it all on the line the next three days.

You absolutely have to. You have to scrape and claw whatever you need to do to win these games. You have to do it. Because your whole season is riding on this. There's nothing out for this. You lose two of these games. It's over.

I mean, even if you just lose one of them, it's not over, but then you're counting on. mathematically it's not over, but it's, it's not looking great. Two games down. at least with 13 to go. And the Red Sox are going to play the Orioles and the Nationals a lot. Yeah, it's done. So, I mean, you kind of have to sweep and you owe it to the team to give them that opportunity.

So whatever it takes, whatever crazy situation, you know, pinch hitting Jake Bowers for Dylan Moore and the fourth and just hoping that the defensive drop doesn't kill you later, you have to do it. If the situation calls for it, you have to. So it sucks. I mean, that's not the way you. want to manage but it's what you have to do because this is essentially a game five every single night and you lose you go home and if that happens then you can go ahead and you can say okay well you know

what we're going to use mishovets here to see if you can get out of it we're going to use swanson here in this high leverage spot to see what he can do blah blah blah then you can start doing that for the last two weeks but in this series you can't you have to go for it so the Mariners' playoff hopes essentially die by Wednesday. What is there left to focus on? We're going to tell you some non-playoff-related things we'd like to see from this team over the last few weeks of the year. But before that, let's talk Billed Bar. Don't you hate it when you're out and about in hunger strikes,

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and it's looking like that will be the case. And what should we watch for before the Mariners wrap up? What is still going to be a very successful season for them, Colby? Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, you want to see Kelnick continue to hit pretty well. It would be nice to get him on a nice wave of momentum, give him a real shot of success, and then let him feel pretty good about his chances of making the team out of spring train,

which should not be a guarantee right now. You'd like to see Cal Raleigh at that point, pretty much get all the playing time at catcher, as much as any catcher can play, at least. And you want to see him make strides. It looked like he said it that way. He had a couple doubles on Saturday night, I believe it was, but his at bat yesterday was not inspiring at all.

You want to see Logan Gilbert either finish strong or, I mean, do you consider shutting him down? I don't know. That's what I was going to say. I would probably shut him down. I think so. Yeah, he's going to be closing in on 100 innings, which I mean, isn't a ton, but after throwing zero last year.

it's you might be at 100 already but uh yeah so you should probably consider that um you know you just tie france see if you can get to 300 that'd be a pretty cool accomplishment um you know jp crawford you'd like to see him continue to swing a pretty good bat uh it would be nice if mitch hanniger could look like you know anything more than a league average hitter for the next two weeks because i mean his spot on the 2020 trade value yeah that and his spot on the 22 2022 roster. I can speak English. It's not...

Yeah, we're both having a bang up job on this episode today. It was a long weekend, man. His spot is really interesting because you can make the argument for bringing him back. You can make the argument for trading him. I don't think you can make the argument for extending him, but some will. He's one of the more interesting guys to watch this offseason because, you know, whether you trade him or not is going to dictate how you approach the rest of your offseason. So it would be nice to have some idea of what you're going to get there.

And then after all that, it's really just, you know, get ready to say goodbye to Kyle Seeger. You know, I'm pretty sure I'm going to that Sunday game, the last game of the year. And, you know, it's it's a bummer. Some of the things we've heard about Seeger this year. But I 10, what is it, 11 years now with the team. he deserves a nice send-off and so and guys it's the writing's on the wall there

he's not coming back there's a zero percent chance it's happening so start to embrace that and say your goodbyes and you know be respectful about it so just just get ready for that that's what I'm looking for

yeah I know that they you know when we talked about this I think this was on Friday show that we talked about this maybe Thursday I forget when it happened but, you know, we talked about Matt Brash potentially being called up. And obviously the intention with that is, is mostly for the sake of helping your playoff chances.

But I'd still entertain the idea of bringing up Brash and maybe even letting them start, especially if Gilbert gets shut down. You're not into that? No, because Brash has thrown a lot of innings too. Like, Depoto said he's already hit his, like, what they wanted him to get to this year. And so it's, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you balance that. But like it'd be fun for the fans.

I'm just not sure it makes sense for Brash or the team to start that clock unnecessarily. But, you know, I still, I still think there's an outside shot that in like an hour, we're going to get a report that says Brash has been called up. I wouldn't say it's a good shot, but 25% maybe. So we'll see. But I don't really want to bring it. bring him up to start at that point i guess i just go with a bullpen day if i'm shutting gilbert down which you know isn't fun but also doesn't really matter if we're being quite honest

yeah i don't know i just you know for me uh personally i i it would be really fun to see matt brash pitch and and actually get a chance to throw a few innings but um yeah you know like you said it's it's yeah but like you said it you know he's at a hundred plus innings i think now uh down in the minors and yeah you don't want to you don't want to push that and plus you know service time and all that stuff um especially if you might be entertaining the idea of uh calling him calling him up relatively early next year um so we'll see uh but yeah you know another another big one is is jerry kelnick obviously um i want to see him finish strong right you know continue what he's been doing over the last 10 10 days or so and uh and keep that going keep that going keep

that going into next year. So he could take that, have some confidence to build on and, and then work through, you know, the mechanical changes that he needs to make during the off season, because he's going to need that in the off season. That's the only thing that's really going to help him is time to, you know, get himself back to, to what, where he was mechanically, you know, down in high A and double A in 2019, because that's kind of gotten lost. And he's made a lot of different changes this year and he hasn't really stayed consistent with one particular thing and it's led to a lot of inconsistency at the plate and so i'm hoping to hoping that he can uh you know build something here and maybe figure out some things that he likes that he can take into next year

and then he can take into the off season and work on and really get himself back to uh to where he was because we've seen glimpses of it right the power play is at the major league level we know that that's confirmed it's just you know, putting together more respectable at bats, more consistent at bats, not striking out a ton, and taking advantage of those few opportunities that he gets every plate appearance. You know, those pitches down the middle that he's been fouling off a lot, you know, capitalizing on those opportunities.

And I think that if he can do that, then, you know, there's possibility that he could really go into next year feeling great about himself and hopefully, you know, get off to a, to a pretty good start. But, you know, another thing with him next year, though, and I think I saw you tweet this yesterday or maybe the day before or something that I don't want him to be guaranteed a spot in the lineup or the roster in general this year. And that's a whole other conversation about how they approach the off season and everything. but I want Jared Kellnick to go into this off-season

knowing that he has to earn everything because now he's not a he's technically not a prospect anymore he's just he's a guy on the 40-man roster and the Mariners need to treat that as such and he needs to treat it as such and he's got to earn this he's got to put the work in to figure things out and not expect that a roster spot, spot in the lineup is just going to be handed to him

because of his status. So that's really one I'm looking for with Kellnick here and just for the rest of the season here. I just, I want him to continue building on this and maturing at the plate because he

really needs to and we've seen glimpses of it and we know that the final product could be incredible. It's just he's got to put that work in. We'll see. But hopefully you can build some moment. I'm going into the off season. So that's

going to do it for today's show unless you had anything else to add in terms of what you want to see the rest of the way. I mean, no, I'll say this though. A lot of Mariners fans out there are also Seahawk fans. And kind of the thing has always been, hey, the Mariners just

need to get me to Seahawks training camp, right? Like, keep me interested until then. Well, they got you until at least opening day for the Seahawks. And who knows? You know, it's not the one thing we've learned about this team is you never count them out.

And so, you know, it seems unlikely, but hey, you know what? They pull off a sweep somehow or something. They got you another week. And this team deserves,

deserves that chance at the very least to, to keep your interest. So let's see what happens tonight. And we'll talk tomorrow and kind of pick through the debris and see what our tone feels like. Yes. We will reconvene tomorrow and hopefully, you know,

hopefully some smiles to go around. We'll see. All right. So, you know, thank you guys so much for joining us here on lockdown Mariners. For Colby Pat, note,

I'm Tidea and Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-U-N-Rerner. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. That's D-A-N-Z-L-Z-Z and Colby at C-P-E-E-E-P-A-E-T-E-E-A-T-1. That's C-P-A-T-T-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you tomorrow.

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