Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Taylor Trammell, George Kirby Lead Mariners to 10-0 Shutout of Orioles

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode recap the Mariners' 10-0 shutout of the Orioles, discuss why Justin Upton's fit in Seattle could get complicated and what to expect from Robbie Ray on Wednesday night.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/Blue NileMake your moment sparkle with jewelry from Bluenile.com, and LOCKED ON SPORTS listeners get $50 off purchases of $500 or more using code LOCKEDON. BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! 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.

Thanks to some big performances from George Kirby and Taylor Tremel, the Mariners kicked off their road trip with a 10-0-0 shutout of the Orioles last night in Baltimore. We're going to recap the action and also talk about why Justin Upton's fit on this team could get complicated on today's episode of Lockdown Mariners. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners, your daily Seattle Mariners podcast, part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day. It is Wednesday, June 1st, 2022, and this is the Lockdown Mariners. podcast brought to you by Blue Nile. Make your moment sparkle with jewelry from Blue Nile.com and Lockdown Mariners listeners get $50 off purchases of $500 or more.

This podcast exclusive includes engagement jewelry as well. Use promo code locked on at checkout. Thank you for making us your first listen of the day. We are free and available in all platforms. I'm Tideane Gonzalez. He's Colby Patnode. We cover the Mariners over at inside the mariners. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez, it's D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-A-11, that's C-P-A-T-1-1. Be sure to also check out our Patreon at patreon.com forward-slash control the zone. We typically post two additional shows on there every week and get into some bigger ideas and bigger topics, whereas Lockdown Mariners covers more of the day-to-day with the M's.

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We greatly appreciate it. So again, as I mentioned in the cold open, we're going to be talking about Justin Upton and his fit on this team, which could get a little bit complicated with Taylor Tremel and Kyle Lewis as well. We're also going to get into Robbie Ray, who is starting tonight for the Mariners as they look to secure their second consecutive series victory. But first, let's get into the last night's ball game. Again, the Mariners win 10-0 over the Orioles. It's their second shutout victory in three games. And that was thanks in big part to some pretty big performances from George Kirby and Taylor Tremel.

Kirby goes six scoreless, eight strikeouts, and Tremel goes three for four with a pair of doubles and four RBI. And let's start with Tremel here, because arguably this was his best game at the Major League level ever. What did you see out of Tremel? What have you seen from him thus far through 22 plate appearances since he was called up? Yeah, I mean, aside from the obvious caveat that it's 22 plate appearances, and that's, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless. One of the obviously biggest and most obvious improvements that he's made so far is that he basically cut his strikeout rate in half over what it was last year.

And he's walking more, believe it or not. he is walking 13.6% of the time. Strikeout rate down to 22.7. That's right at about league average. And that's kind of what stopped Tramel from being a bigger factor in last year. And last year's team is the strikeouts were so high that you just couldn't justifiably keep him on the roster any longer. So that's kind of what it is right now is he seems to be making more contact. He's walking.

even more than he was last year. The expected numbers are still pretty good. 254, 450, 450 slugging. So even though his current numbers are insane, even his expected numbers based on batted ball data, suggests that he's been good. I mean, he's been fine. He's been a quality major leaguer through 22-plate appearances again.

I don't mean to keep hammering that home, but we do have to... It is the smallest Samson. sample size of small sample sizes there is really yeah and one of the things that right now looks pretty good um is you look at his his his uh his spray chart um last year he was 52 percent pole this year he's 36 percent so far um so yeah he's using the whole field a little bit more uh still you know hitting with some power his pop up rate last year 16.9 percent the batting average on pop-ups is basically indistinguishable from the batting average on strikeouts.

And the batting average on strikeouts, a few you guys didn't know, was zero. So basically pop-ups have like a 50 batting average, like 0.0. That dropped from 17% last year to 7% so far this year. You know, hitting more fly balls instead of pop-ups, line drive rates down. But he seems to be making better swing decisions. He's not whiffing nearly as much. Still struggling with off-speed stuff. And at some point, Tramel has to go back down.

He's just not quite a big leaker yet. I don't think. But it's been an encouraging start. And, yeah, you know, three hard hit balls last night. He's definitely, you know, been an upgrade over Stephen Sousa. And we'll see for how much longer he can keep this up and how much longer the Mariners are going to ride the hot bat. Yeah.

So the Mariners get 10 runs, of course, 13 hits, 17 hard hit balls in this game. They had 11 hard hit balls that went over 100 miles per hour, just ridiculous stuff from the offense. Six extra base hits. Interestingly, none of them went over the wall, though. They were doing all of this completely just by moving the line on the base paths. and the Orioles, of course, not really at full strength. They had played five times and four days down in Boston,

and they were opting to go for a pseudo bullpen day with Brian Baker getting the opening and Zach Lothar getting called up from AAA to kind of piggyback off of him, and it just did not go well whatsoever for the Orioles. And this one, the Mariners just jumped on both of those guys really early. You know, of course,

Julio Rodriguez with the RBI double, which we talked about it yesterday. This would have been a home run at Camdeniards last year, but because the wall is being moved back, which are really, really ugly and watching them for nine innings last night. That just confirmed my priors on that. Yeah, so they got that first run and then just exploded from that point forward and, you know, tie France with another big game. Cal Raleigh had a nice game.

Yeah, pretty much everyone is, Aside from J.P. Crawford and Ehuehino-Swarres contributed last night. Crawford was the only hitter in the Mariners starting nine last night who did not get a hit. It was just a complete performance for the offense. Now, let's talk about George Kirby, who has had a couple of lackluster starts over his last couple of outings. But he got back after it in this one. Had some shaky command in the first inning, but was able to work through that and just cruise. for the next five innings to go six scoreless.

What did you see out of Kirby? Yeah, it's probably the best fastball we've seen since the first start. Generated seven whiffs on 29 swings. That's not an ungodly percentage, but it is going to be important for Kirby to get value out of that basketball. So it was a good pitch for him. It wasn't a great pitch, but it was definitely the most value he's gotten out of it

since that first start. Slider was pretty sharp. a lot of swings and misses, five whiffs on it, but I think all five were for strikeouts. It was just a nasty pitch, particularly to lefties last night. It was probably the best we've seen the slider all year. And then just kind of mixed in. 14 curveballs didn't generate any whiffs on those. But he did throw, you did get, you know, three swings and four called strikes.

So about a 50% strike rate on the curveball there. And then he mixed in seven changeups. wasn't really a factor of a pitch. In fact, the one that he threw that got put in play, he threw seven changeups. Only you generated one swing. That one swing was put in play. And it was for 106.5 mile per hour, exit below. But, you know, he did, he did throw two changeups for strikes, called strikes. So he got something out of that pitch. But it was mostly fastball slider from him and it just so happened to be the best slider that

we've seen from Kirby so far and it was the closest we've seen since start one to start one. So it was a good night for Kirby. Wouldn't classify it as great but the last probably four or five last three or four innings he looked very, very good. I mean

it's not a good lineup but it's not there's some headers. There's some headers though as we talked about yesterday. You got you know, know, Anthony Santander, you got Austin Hayes, you got Trey Mancini, you know, Cedric Mullins, et cetera. There's talent in this lineup for the Orioles. So it's a, it's definitely not a walk in the park, and it was certainly an impressive outing for Kirby and one that was certainly needed for him coming off of the last couple starts, as I mentioned. So we're going to be going back to the Trimel discussion a little bit and how that kind of ties into Justin Upton,

as well as Kyle Lewis. Just a moment, but real quick, a reminder. this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Blue Nile. Whether you're ready to pop the question or you're celebrating a milestone moment, find jewelry as unique as them with the modern convenience of online shopping at Blue Nile.com. Blue Nile has simple online tools that let you choose the diamond shape, size, and clarity, as well as setting style. Blue Nile's bench jewelers will then handcraft their perfect engagement ring, and each ring is one of a kind.

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Thanks for your help. So, we have, by the way, we actually have some news here. Abraham Toro has been activated after just one rehab game down in Everett, in which he went two for four with a pair of singles, a pair of RBI singles and a walk. And Kyle Lewis has unfortunately been added to the, I would assume the seven-day injured list for concussion protocol, and that is retroactive to Saturday, which is the last time that he played.

He was, of course, hit in the left shoulder by a slider from Jose Orkid, and that ricocheted off to the side of his helmet. And so now he is in the concussion protocol, and we'll be out for at least a couple more days before he can be eligible to return to the field. Sucks, but that kind of ties into our decision. discussion here a little bit as well with Justin Upton, who is about to join AAA Tacoma after getting some time in extended spring training after signing with the Mariners a couple

weeks ago. And according to Scott's service, when Upton is elevated to the active roster, he's going to be playing right field pretty much every day. But as we talked about earlier, Taylor Tremel has been pretty good, again, through 22 plate appearances. But let's just assume here for a moment that. that Tremel is good, that he actually is going to be able to contribute to this team for an extended period of time and that Lewis isn't going to be on the aisle for too long. I mean, that creates kind of some complications here for the Mariners, right?

Especially when, you know, if you do have a young player like Tremel playing well, why would you suddenly cut his playing time down to give that to Justin Upton, who's a veteran who's been declining over the last three years? Right. Well, you can make it work. The Mariners have been really hesitant to use Tremel against lefties. Anytime there's been a lefty, you know, late, they pinch hit for him. And it's not like they're pinch hitting to go to Justin Upton, who's been okay against lefties still. They're pinch hitting to go to Dylan Moore. And it's just like, yeah.

Now yesterday they did let Tremel hit against lefty, and it worked out fine. so we'll see what they want to do there. But they can make it work, but it is tricky because Tremel is undoubtedly the better defender. That's not even a question at this point. And honestly, he might be a better hitter. We don't know because Upton hasn't been a major league quality hitter for the last three years, give or take. And obviously Lewis has to DH. He's not going to play the field anytime soon.

So can you kind of platoon where, you know, Upton gets to start against left D.S. and Tremel gets to start against Ritey's. You could, and obviously there are going to be days where Kyle Lewis, even with a favorable matchup, isn't going to be in the lineup. You can't trust him to be in the lineup every day. It's a day-by-day trial, basically, with Lewis. So if it's, you know,

I assume Lewis is only going to play three, four times a week, so there are going to be three other days where you need a DH and keeping Tremel up and using him in the right field and using Upton as your primary D.H, that makes a lot more sense. then, you know, Tremel or then Upton and right field and Mike Ford as the D.H. You know what I mean? So they can make it work, but it is a little tricky,

and you do want Taylor to continue to get at that's fairly regularly because he is a young player and he is a player who still carries enough upside that you shouldn't just sacrifice his development, you know, just to have a guy, basically. So Tramel also comes with the ability to play all three outfield spots. he's more than capable in center field. So something happens to Julio, like maybe he gets ejected. Or, you know, something worse happens. That's right.

We didn't even talk about that in the last segment, Julio getting injected. That was very Itiro-esque of Julio. Very passive, aggressive way to get kicked out of a baseball game. But also, you know, screw the umpires. Anyways. Yeah, Lance Barrett decided that he needed the attention on him. Yeah.

Sorry you didn't get the attention you needed as a child, Lance. but I'm glad you got it last night. Anyways. So they can make it work. They can because, again, there are going to be days where Lewis just is not going to be available. And you want Tremel, you want Upton, because those are better options right now, at least,

than Dillon Moore or Sam Hagarty in the outfield. So we'll see what they decide to do. But yeah, it gets a bit tricky because I don't think Upton's going to want to accept a pure platoon role. But if you're facing, you know, two lefties in a week and then Lewis just can't go against two, you know, two other starts.

There's four starts right there that you can give to Tremel or you can give to Upton. So I think you can make it work. It just, it's going to be tricky and it'll be interesting to see how the Mariners play it. Haggerty and more both have options. And frankly, Tremel is going to help you more

than either of those guys right now. Yeah, the main concern for me really is upton being in right field because he hasn't played in right field since 2016 he hasn't registered a single inning out there in in over half a decade uh that's partly concerning you know especially when you have jesse winker in another corner yeah he was never that good out there either by the way yeah yeah yeah the arm strength uh not great nor is the accuracy nor is really His legs either, but hey, you know, the Mariners this year and this past off season made it clear that they really care about outfield defense. And it's honestly nothing short of a miracle here that Julio Rodriguez is turned into a well above average center fielder defensively, which none of us could have projected at the time.

So, you know, it's, yeah, they basically thrown that out of the window. And so, you know, it's really isn't much of a surprise, but it's definitely a concerning aspect of this ball club. If, you know, your everyday corner outfielders are going to be Justin Upton and Jesse Winker. Because at least, like, here's the thing with Mitch Hanager as well as like, at least with Hanager, he has the arm strength, right? Like that kind of gives you some value out of there. Yeah.

Upton gives you literally not. nothing in right field he gives you there is nothing that just not upton offers you in right field that is any sort of positive at least one that's noteworthy right and like it could very well just be that the mariners don't care what tremel does uh they're going to send them down regardless um but again i i think that the defense you get from tremel laid i think that the the fact that lewis is only going to play three or four times a week if you're lucky yeah i think you can get enough at-bats for both Tramel, Lewis, and Upton, that you don't need to send Tramel down.

I mean, the plan is for Tramel to be the bench guy and play once a week, then you should just send him down. But I don't think they have to make that decision yet, but we'll see what they do. I mean, it's, I'm not a huge fan of the Upton thing anyways. I would just much rather trade for, I mean, maybe not Tommy Fam now, but, you know, Tommy Fam, Ben Gamble, Tyler Naquin. I mean, just don't let him get in.

involved in any fantasy football leagues in the clubhouse and hey hey hey honestly we've all been there i'm curious as to how much money it was do we know significant but for those guys that's like 100 grand maybe i don't know whatever whatever it is what it is and uh yeah we'll see what happens with upton but uh you know i i i kind of doubt we see him on this road trip i think he's probably going to need a week or two in Tacoma. So probably the start of the next homestand. We'll have to have a real serious discussion about what the Mariners do. And by that time, we should have another 50 plate appearances from Tremel to kind of give us an idea.

Yeah. So a little bit of a surprise there that Toro's back, but that's good because he was starting to get hot before he got hurt. And then Eric Swanson is about to start his rehab assignment. He had a live bullpen yesterday. and Scott Service yesterday actually said that he believes there's a chance that Swanson could rejoin the team before the road trip ends. So getting Swanson back would be huge for this team, especially for this bullpen, which since Swanson has been out since May 14th has been running an ERA of 543. They are tied 20th in F4 right now. So yeah, any help that that bullpen that unit can get is certainly welcome.

So we're going to be talking about tonight's game in just a moment. We've got Robbie Ray going on the bump for the EMS tonight as they look for their second consecutive series victory. That would be the first time they've won back-to-back series since mid-April. It's been a while. So we're going to be talking about that in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder to this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by our friends over at BetOnline. Our partners at Bet Online continue to be the number one source for all your betting needs and sports info. Find all of the latest odds news and sports.

developments, including this year's basketball playoffs, major league baseball scores, fights, and even next season's NFL futures. Bet Online is your continued source for all your sporting, wagering information from live betting to playoffs, e-sports, and more. Head to the website today, or use your mobile device to learn more about the trends and action. Bet Online is where the game starts. So Robbie Ray has, he hasn't been great over his last three starts, but he's been a lot better. He's generated 20 or more swings and misses.

in each of his last three starts. And he's had better feel for his slider as well. And against the A's in his last start, he pretty much avoided the big inning. He just got got on a couple of home runs, the big one being the two run shot by Elvis Andrews. Because Elvis Andrews, of course, in 2022 is doing damage against the Mariners.

But I digress. We're not talking about that. I am not reflecting on that series. I am not dooming on this episode. But let's talk about Robbie Ray here, who again has been, you know, kind of underwhelming. Let's just say it since, you know, to start the season. But again, like I said, some positive signs here as of late. What are you hoping to see from Ray in this game against the Orioles?

Which, again, by the way, Camden Yards is a place that he struggled at even last year in his Syung Award winning season. So, you know, and home runs have been a big issue for him. I believe he's given up 10. but of course with the walls move back hopefully that cuts down on that a little bit some in this game but yeah again what are you hoping to see out of Ray tonight I mean I would like to see him

just kind of continue what he's been doing minus the beginning that would be great but yeah like you said he's he's striking out a lot of guys right now in the month of May it's funny he threw to the exact same number of innings as he did in April he threw to only one extra batter in April

So April and May, basically the exact same sample size. He gave up six home runs in May, and he gave up four more earned runs in May in the same number of innings. So ZRA is higher. But when you look at it, he walked fewer guys, he walked nine guys in 30 innings, and he struck out 42. His whip went down to 1.15. He was better in May than he was April minus the beginning, or the big inning issue. And I know those count. You can't just take them away.

But I think Ray's been pretty good, not relative to what he was last year, but relative to who he's been most of his career. I feel like the Mariners are basically getting that guy right now. He's running a 418 FIP. He's running a 362 XFIP. His case per 9 are back over 10. His walks per 9 are just over 3. All those are perfectly fine.

So he's kind of has to avoid the beginning. and I feel like he has a chance to be very good tonight against this Orioles lineup. They chase a lot. They strike out a lot. You talked about the ballpark and how the threat of the home run is significantly reduced so Ray can be a little more aggressive in the strike zone. So I feel like this is a good start for Robbie to go six, seven innings,

give up two or three runs at the most and strike out 10, 11 guys. It sets up nicely for Ray to have a, I don't want to say dominant start, but to have a start that, you know, can kind of start to turn the tides on his season. And he started to do that already. So I expect Ray to have a pretty good game tonight.

I think he'll rack up a ton of strikeouts. It's just going to be, can he avoid the walks and can he avoid the home run? Can he avoid those three one counts where he has to throw a fastball to Trey Mancini and Mancini destroys it after he's walked two guys? Really, that's basically what it is with Ray. avoid the big inning and avoiding the big inning typically comes down to avoiding walks and

it's not that Ray is walking a ton of guys it's just that when he does walk them they tend to score often so yeah it's just about working around those and he started to do that in the Oakland series we saw him work around some traffic the andrus home run was kind of chintzy it was kind of a cheap home run they were definitely using the juice ball that inning but yeah I think Ray has a good chance to go out tonight and throw well and give the Mariners a really good shot to to take the series so orioles are countering with Kyle Bradish uh who's been bad this year let's just say it he's so seven three one ERA um in six starts uh 21 in a third inning's pitch he struck out 29 batters uh over that time uh running a 1.5 whip so you can uh you can definitely uh you can definitely get to

him. He's also, when I was doing research for the left field wall stuff for the Orioles, by the way, he's given up two of the three homeruns that have gone over the effective walls. So, yeah, he's, he's had a home run problem. Yeah. He's a 23.3% home run to fly ball rate this year. Yeah, he's averaging two home runs per nine. And you look at his, his case and his walks, doesn't walk a ton of guys. more than a strikeout per inning.

Like this guy's the number 10 prospect in a pretty decent Oriole system. Like there's some tools here. So it's really just been about the home run. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing that you mention the home run stuff though, because it leads into my prediction for this game.

Mike Ford is going yard tonight. It's going yard tonight. He's absolutely going yard tonight. The walk god is going, yeah, yeah, at Oriole Park tonight, uh, to you know and plus if for left-handed hitters going yard to straight right right field over that big wall

not too difficult if you can get some elevation on the ball and hit it pretty hard you got a good chance of uh of living the ballpark so yeah i'm going mike ford as my pick-to-click if you will though every time we do pick to clicks uh picks to click oh for three they don't pan out super well Well, it started out great for me this year. I think I picked Toro and I picked someone else and that worked out for the first two times that we did it. And then from that point forward, we have cursed the Mariners. So maybe I just curse the Mariners again, unfortunately. Maybe.

By the way, I think there's a, I think Braddish should probably come into this game and just throw its slider almost exclusively. The fastball, you look at the heat, the heat map on the fastball. it's like the entire middle of the plate is red everything else is blue so yeah he seems to have a hard time not throwing his fastball right down the pipe slider the heat map on the slider is like dark red on the lower outside corner

to left to righties so yeah he seems to command the slider just fine it's the fastball that sucks so if I were the Mariners I would hunt the fastball yeah yeah I would say though, but your recommendation to Kyle Braddish would be B-Matt Whistler, basically.

Yes. Be Matt Whistler. All right, well, on that note, that's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. For Colby Patnode, I'm Tad de Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. Follow inside the Mariners at inside Mariners. Follow me at Gane Gonzalez's T-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-E-P-E-E-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. Now make your second listen to the day, locked on MLB. That's where Paul Francis Sullivan, and please call him Sully, brings you his unique perspective on the major leagues president pass.

It's free wherever you get your podcast just like us. So have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we will see you tomorrow. Peace.