Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Biggest Mariners Takeaways From Spring Training So Far

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

It's Mailbag Monday! Ty and Colby answer Mariners questions from listeners, including what their biggest takeaway from the first weekend of Cactus League play is and much more.Participate in our Mariners preseason survey!Check out our Patreon!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Follow the show on Bluesky: @lockedonmariners | @tdg | @mlbcolbySupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Wonderful PistachiosLooking for a snack that’s both delicious and nutritious? Get snackin’ and get crackin’ with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more. SelectQuoteGet the right life insurance for you, for less, at SelectQuote.com/LOCKEDONMLB.  FanDuelRight now, new FanDuel customers can get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Bonus Bets if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins!Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.  FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Now that the Marrars have played their first couple of games this spring, let's open up the mailbag and see what's on your minds. 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, it is Monday, February 24th, 2025. This is Tiding Azolson, Colby Patnaud for the Lockdown Marys Podcast, part of the Locked-on podcast network of your team every day.

We'll be opening up the mailbag like we do here, Monday and answer some of your mayor's questions. But before we get into those, quick shout out to our title sponsor today. FanDuel. Right now, new Fandual customers can get $150 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. Download the app or head to fanduel.com to get started. And of course, as always, if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, you can check out our Patreon.

All you have to do to check that out is click the link in the description of this episode. Kicking us off here on Mailbag Monday is Angry Eric. Warren. All right. That's a name. With the first weekend of Cactus League play and the books, what are your guys' biggest takeaways? I'll tell you my biggest takeaway from the spring, and it has nothing to do with anything we've seen on the field so far. It's that having statcast

available makes these games a hell of a lot more interesting, which is to say that they're still not super interesting, but they're more interesting than they have been in the past. like, I mean, going from Friday to Saturday's game was a massive difference. Like Friday, we, we had the stat cast data. Then they go to Tempe because, of course, the Angel Stadium doesn't have stat cast on Saturday. And that that game was awful for a bunch of reasons, namely the just the atrocious defense being played by the Angels. Right.

That game, my God. Perfect tactously game, though. Yeah. Still took like three and a half, four hours too to play and it's just like, man. Yeah. But yeah,

but not having statcast data available made that game infinitely worse. And having it again yesterday was, was nice. Yeah. It definitely adds context to things in spring that we haven't had access to in the past. And that might actually lead to some real takeaways from the spring games. But we need more data. You need more reps and all that stuff to really give you some real takeaways.

Because like I'm not like, like I don't know what you would be wanting here, right? Like, oh, Dom Kanzone had a single, a hard hit single off of a lefty yesterday, which was nice to see. But does that mean that Dom Kanzone can all of a sudden hit lefties? No. No, it's one app bad. It's, you know, like what do you think of Emerson Hancock's new sweeper or curb bar or whatever? We saw it like three times. It's like, I don't know.

I saw it four or five times. Like it looked okay. but the data is there's nothing to compare it to also so like but having the data on that pitch was like that's new that's something different like yeah it's it was easy to point out because typically on the spring training broadcast even when it's on route we don't get radar we don't get exaelos like we just have to wait and see if they decide to tell us yeah and with stack cast that stuff comes you know relatively quickly there's a bit of a delay uh yeah you know but as you might expect but yeah it's just far too early to take

have any kind of serious takeaways. Like we can mention that like, well, Mitch Garver kind of lowered his hands a little bit. He did. Had a couple of hard hit singles yesterday. That was nice to see. But did Mitch Garver never have a good game last year? Seems like it.

But he did. So it's just one of those things where it's like, I don't, can I at least see 25, 30 plate appearances? Can I see a pitcher, you know, throw more than 30 pitches before I decide like, oh, this tells me this, this tells me that. I got nothing. So it just, but at least now that we have access to the data,

it should help contextualize things a little bit more than in previous things. We're more likely to have, yeah, uh, takeaways, but it's still going to be another three weeks or so before we feel like, at least for me,

I mean, sometimes very every once in a while, something just really pops. And it's usually just like, Julio Rodriguez is the best player on the field. Like that pops, but that's just very, I would say right now here in the early going,

the data kind of tips me off. to things that I'm going to look out for the next time we see that player. Specifically Hancock, like you said, right? Like we've heard about it. He's coming to camp with three new pitches, one of them being a sweeper. We saw that sweeper yesterday.

It was 3.3 miles per hour lower on the average than his average slider last year, four more inches of horizontal break. All right, cool. So let's see that pitch more. Like we only saw it, I think, three or four times yesterday. Yeah.

So that tips me off to like, all right, I'm looking forward to seeing that pitch again the next time we see Hancock, see what that looks like. And then, you know, same thing like with, you know, once we actually see Munoz and see him throw that change up, what is the data going to look like on the change up?

How much is he actually throwing it? How is he sequencing it? All that good stuff. So, but yeah, it's going to take more reps and more time for us to actually develop some real takeaways from the spring. All right. John Stanton's burner wants to know. Thoughts on Austin Shin.

he looked good today or yesterday some shit and your boy who struck out on three pitches just I don't know five or so minutes ago but uh he had a good day yesterday a couple of hard hit balls a couple of couple of hits

yeah I mean if I had to guess somebody who was going to do really well in the cactus league it would probably be Shinton or Canzone yeah you know um

can zone also off to a pretty good start so yeah it's one of those things where it's like like we just talked about. Cool. I mean, I guess it's better than going over with a couple of strikeouts,

but like what is the quality of competition he's facing? Is he facing double A arms? Like, who cares? Like, who do? Of course, he should be able to get double-ditchie. And Chenton came in during the fifth inning, I think, yesterday. Right. So, you know,

Arizona is kind of running more of their regulars out there for a little bit longer than other teams are right now. So much so yesterday that. I thought, is like, are they playing in that, like, opening series game, like, two weeks before the regular season starts? They're not, but, like, they had guys in there from, like, six, seven innings yesterday, which was kind of weird, but whatever. Yeah, like, when Shinton goes two for two with a couple of hard hit balls, you know, off of Tyler Glass now, you know, like, that is something different than him doing it against double A arms. So just one of those things where it's like, I don't really have any thoughts on Shinton. because again he's got like what four plate appearances five played appearances yeah we've seen him

at third base once right we saw him play first base yesterday just like yeah i mean i can't say i'm encouraged or discouraged because again like i just don't have enough information on him so uh you know obviously i'm rooting for the guy uh but yeah he's still got an uphill battle to make the roster um and he's going to have to continue to you know make consistently hard contact and as the spring goes along he's going to have to do it against major league pitching which i don't i don't remember who he faced yesterday so i can't say for sure one way or another uh but uh yeah he might have faced scott mcuff who was like an actual major league yeah i think one of them was but i think the other one was against like a double a r and so it's just like

you know again we're so early on that any questions about does this guy look good does this guy look good i mean he did yesterday i guess is how i would answer answer that because I don't know how else to answer that is yeah yeah so yeah I think I would just have to say like yeah you look good yesterday yeah again all the anything that happens here in the first few games is just going to tip me off to like all right want to keep an eye on that sure I feel like I need at least like 20 25 plate appearances before I can even be like maybe you know there might be something here. So yeah, it's just one of those things where it's like, am I more excited for Garver now than I was a week ago? No. Is it neat that he's off to a pretty good start and there's

been a tangible change that we can see and we can kind of track? Sure. Yeah, that's interesting. But overall, the numbers right now, they just, they don't tell me anything. Yeah. So Shetton's hits yesterday came against Dylan Ray and Alfred Marillo. So. Never. heard those guys. Yeah. Doesn't mean they're not major leaguers, but it does. Sure, sure.

All right, we're going to answer more of your questions here in just a moment, but first a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Marys podcast is brought to you by Fanduel. When the game tips off, the NBA action is just getting started, and there's no better place to get in on it, the Fandual, America's number one sportsbook.

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It is Mailbag Monday. And hey, here's a great example of what we're just talking about today. Marin is not on TV. And there's no stat cast data wherever the Brewers play. This game is a wash. like we I'm just bawling this game up and throwing in the trash there's nothing that I can glean from this oh why because they're losing this time tie also that yeah yeah uh rich cane wants to know could some mod taylor break camp as an ultimate utility kind of replacing dmo slash haggerty spot

uh I think that spot's going to leo rivas mostly because samad taylor can't play shortstop Revocan. Mm-hmm. So all there is to it, honestly. Yeah, it's kind of where it begins and ends right there. Yeah, Taylor, Taylor off to another, you know, a hot start in the spring like he was last year.

But yeah, they played him at shortstop a little bit in Tacoma, and it did not do well. He had like seven errors down there. Like so much so. It went so poorly that he is now just listed as an outfielder. Yeah. Not even going to play second base. So the only way.

Taylor makes it over a guy like Rebos is if all of a sudden Dylan Moore can go back Yeah, if Ryan Bliss wins the second base job or Cole Young, which he can't throw right now. So I think we can go ahead and cross that possibility off the board. Yeah, he's only DA tuned right now. Yeah. So it's just a sore arm as far as we know. But I mean, these are valuable reps he's not getting.

So I think we can safely assume the one in like 100 shot that he actually made the opening day roster probably more like one in a thousand right now but uh if even that yeah but if ryan bliss does win the second base job and bliss had a good day yesterday looks like get a little bit stronger arm too you made a nice uh throw from kind of deep second base but whatever if bliss wins that job then demo kind of goes back and then you don't need the backup shortstop now you don't actually need somebody to to you know play shortstop on the bench per se because if like something happens is a JP in the fourth or whatever. You just move Ryan Bliss to,

or you just move Dylan Moore to short and you just put Bliss in the game or at second or whatever. So you don't necessarily absolutely have to have somebody who could play shortstop, but the Mariners typically do like to carry that guy. And so, and that's not Bliss. So,

and obviously it's not Taylor. So yeah, I think in order for anybody, I think for Rivas to not make the opening day roster, the Mariners either have to acquire somebody else or Ryan Bliss has to kind of, to win that second base job. I think that's really the way that they can get a little more creative and get somebody, I don't know, better, but like with a more useful skill set than Leo Rivas onto the bench.

Deepakie wants to know what three prospects not ranked in your top 10 would you be most fired up about if they were to make a noticeable jump in your rankings by the All-Star break. There were two, I don't know about three, but there were two that came to mind. Teddy McGraw, if he makes a jump, that would be awesome because that means that he's healthy and he's actually pitching well and probably rising through the ranks. And then Josh Karen, if he's actually able to hit

for at least some average on top of the power and he's still doing what we expect him to do behind the plate. Yeah, if like Josh Karen was able to become like a top 15 prospect in the Marin's Farm system for us, that would be cool. Yeah, I can't really think of a third guy. off the top of my head but McGrath and Karen are the two guys that stand out the most to me. I'll go with my number 11 guy, Ryan Sloan.

I'll go with my number 12 guy, Brandon Garcia, and I'll go with my number 13 guy. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're looking for a little bit of impact here because like, for example, if Hunter Cranton were to explode and just like basically be in, you know, in the big leagues or whatever, be, you know, like a mid-high-level Richard leave her right away. It's like, that's cool and everything. But it's not a super big impact. You know, like it's, by the way, I could say Cranton, I could say locklier, but probably by the time, like, if they, if they do do enough to rise through the ranks, they're probably going to graduate by the time that we re-rank the farm system. So. Yeah. I'm kind of thinking about like specifically, I don't know, I guess my head immediately kind of goes to like, because they're have a chance to help out the 20, 25 team. So like from that angle I would say Ben Williamson

If he shows he can hit and he can hit for power And then all of a sudden you have this up you know plus third basement above average second basement Can even play shortstop a little bit and he hits like that would be a big help I think Teddy McGraw not necessarily for 2025 but yeah like we talked about his upside is immense And if he starts to show that this year then all of a sudden you kind of have like the pitching depth you really haven't had or the potential for like to have replacements for Gilbert or Kirby in your own pipeline.

And then. So I just, I took, I quickly took a look at my list. Gita Martinez is another guy that I'll throw out there. Just if you can start throwing more strikes. That'd be exciting. I think I'd go Brockmore and Ben Williamson because they actually,

I think have a shot to help this, this 2025 team. And then I think I'd probably go with McGraw as just somebody who like, because again, With him, it's just stay healthy and the stuff will play. Assuming he saw the same stuff he did pre-injury, which is not a guarantee. But, yeah, I'll say more Williamson and McGraw.

Okay. And then for me, it's Karen McGraw and Jeter Martinez. You're listening to the Lockdown Merritt's podcast. Hey, we have a poll up right now on Google forms that we would love for you guys to participate in. Colby put it together yesterday and put it up on our. Twitter. We're going to have it in the description of this episode, whether you're listening to it or watching it on YouTube. You can just click the link in the description and it'll take you to the form. You don't have to log in or sign up to do anything with that. You can just answer the questions and submit it. It's a very simple poll. Just gauging your feelings on things like the front office and ownership and all that stuff. And we'll probably take the results of that poll and turn it into an episode or at least use some of the data from it to contextualize some things in a future episode. Like we might use it for when we do our season predictions and stuff like that and look

at what you guys have to say on that front. It's only 10 questions. It'll take about a minute, maybe too. Depends on how hard you really think about them. And it's not that serious of a thing. So go with your gut. Yeah. All right.

Let's get back into your questions. Tyler wants to know, or he wants us rather, to create the best prospect we can using traits of prospects currently in the marriage system. could make this a two-way player with pitch types as well. This is a more interesting conversation on just the position player side of things because there aren't a lot of standout pitching prospects right now in the Maris' system.

I mean, you know, it's gotten better with Sanja and Sloan. And obviously, you know, we like Brandon Garcia and Logan Evans, etc. But, yeah, I really want to attack this from the position player front. So, I mean, Las Montes is power. Duh. Right? Got to start there. Yeah.

Johnny Farmello's speed? Yeah, I mean, there's some options here. Type heat also. But I think Formello pre-injury was the fastest and probably be the fastest once he gets back to 100%. So, yeah, probably like Cole Young's hit tool, which is contact. That's where I was, yeah, that's where I was at with that as well. Ben Williamson defense. Yep.

That's where I was going as well. It was either him or Rodden. Yeah. Arm strength. Sanger, left and right-handed thrower. Sure. Sure. Didn't see that coming, did you?

There you. Yeah, in terms of prospect. Well, like, give Sanja Garcia's cutter. From the last side. Yeah. I got it. If you're just talking about, like, offensive. like or like position player for arm

might be Karen or not Karen might be nip yeah yeah it's not super accurate with it but he's got a rocket Pete might be up there as well very strong arm for type heat so yeah I think you're thinking of like interesting like not on our list Colt Emerson

yeah we're not taking any tool from Colt but he's really good at just about everything he's just really good across the board It's just there are more like standout tools elsewhere. Right. You'd rather have a guy with who's, you know, the five tools are all 55 or 60, as opposed to somebody who's like 30, 30, 70, 40, 50.

Like, yeah. So it's just one of those things. But yeah, I think Las Power, Williamson's defense, Cole Young, hit tool, uh, Sanja Arm. and speed probably far mellow uh jaban johnny wants to know uh sometimes players who have underperform with one team do well with a new team went unexpected like nelson cruz did with rangers

who has been that player in m's history which non-pitcher might exceed expectations this year for the meres i mean victor robles was just that guy right j p crawford jp crawford's another great example to answer your second question what non-pitcher could exceed expectations this year for the mayor is. I'll just go with Mitch Garver because the bar is just so incredibly low. He doesn't have to do too much to exceed expectations, frankly. Right. Is this solely, though, like exceed expectations?

Or do you mean like somebody who could be like, that guy's not really any good to all of a sudden be like Nelson Cruz or you're like, oh, well, I mean, that's like his cruise came up with Milwaukee. A lot of people forget. And he was just kind of like a 4A guy. And then all of a sudden he got traded and he got a chance in Texas. And then he kind of was good. I mean, he was Mariners.

Nelson Cruz good. But he was good. Kind of like Jose Batista, right? And is that what you're talking about? You're talking about that type of guy? Because those guys are not a dime does. So, I mean, it's hard to. I mean, I guess Austin Shenton.

Yeah, maybe. Like could Austin Shenton be? max munsy right i guess it's possible but also like it's just there aren't many guys that even like wire this winter like they acquired like three bats right and one of them was here last year yeah they're just there aren't really any options that even yeah not aligned with the peruse type of yeah yeah but just mean like anybody just like in general this is kind of like a second question for you cheater um yeah i feel like garber is a pretty good one um well Although I do feel like there is some expectation for maybe it's just optimism for Garver.

There seems to be a good deal of optimism for Garver more so than expectation. I mean, there's the whole odd year Garver thing. Yeah. And I mean, people really talked about it yesterday on the broadcast. Well, I mean, and a bunch of people are really excited by how his first game went or his game yesterday went. Yeah. They're kind of dreaming and you don't have to go that far back to remember how good Garber, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, Garver is a popular one.

You know, I don't really want to pick him because he hasn't gotten on the field yet. But Jorge Polanco, like, yeah, I can see Polanco bouncing back in a pretty big way. So, yeah, I think we asked this question on our poll. And let's just say that there's a pretty good mix of the options we gave, except for Mitch Hanigar. Nobody thinks Mitch Hanigar is bouncing back and who can blame him. Although, guess who has a home run? Last question of the day comes from Mitch. If you were guaranteed 10 runs in two games, how would you ideally split up those runs?

If that number went down to eight runs, how would that change? 5 and 5. 5, 4, 4. 4. With this pitching stuff, yeah. You don't win a lot of ball games scoring five and four runs. Yes. The Mariners last year, I looked it up. They scored four more, four runs or more in 68 games, which is not a good number. like let's push that up to 90, 100 games this year, fellas.

Yeah, yeah. But in those 68 games, the Mariners. So close, by the way. So close. So close. They were 56 and 12 when they scored four more runs. To put that into perspective over the course of 162 games, the Mariners scored four runs or more in 162 games last year

and maintain that win percentage. The Mariners would have won 133 games last year with this pitching staff. Four runs every single night is going to be enough most nights. Yeah. If you're giving me five runs a night, this team's going to win the World Series. So how would I break up 10 runs? Five and five, because I'm probably winning both of those games. How would I break up eight runs?

Four and four, because I'm probably winning both of those games. Yeah. maybe five and three and six and four, but I feel really good about my chances of just splitting that evenly. Well, there you have it. And that's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Marys podcast. And thank you all for your questions for Colby Pat Note.

I'm Tiding Azales. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Marrars. You can follow me at Tadigazales and Colby at C-Pat-11. Also on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG Colby at MLB Colby in the show at Lockdown Marys. Don't forget to participate in our poll. Again, link will be in the description of this episode. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Peace.