Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Mariners Covet Kolten Wong and Masataka Yoshida?

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

A day after the Seattle Mariners acquired an All-Star hitter, some fans are furious that they have been linked to yet another good player? Colby and Ty discuss the links to Kolten Wong and Masataka Yoshida and why fans who are upset about Wong are missing the point. Plus, we break down the benefit to the Mariners of Julio Rodriguez's AL Rookie of the Year win and Ty is upset that Scott Servais finished third in the Manager of the Year. All of that and more on today's episode of Locked On Mariners!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/SimpliSafeWith Fast Protect™️ Technology, exclusively from SimpliSafe, 24/7 monitoring agents capture evidence to accurately verify a threat for faster police response. There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. Visit SimpliSafe.com/LockedOnMLB to learn more.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.

Hernandez ate up our show yesterday, but we're finally going to talk about Julio Rodriguez winning an A.L rookie of the year and Scott Service getting hosed on the voting for AL manager of the year. Plus, we're going to take a look at reported Mariners targets. Colton Wong and Masataka Yoshida here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby, head it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. Yo, what's up, everyone? It is Thursday, November 17th, 2022. This is Tadang us and Colby Patnode for the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you so much for making us your first

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today, we'll talk about Julio Rodriguez when an A.L. Rookie of the year and how that benefits the Mariners. They reported interests in Colton Wong and Masataka Yoshida. And we'll have some closing thoughts at the end about Scott's service finishing third and AL manager of the year voting and the fan response to the Mariners interest in Colton Wong today on social media. I know Colby has some things that he wants to say about that. But before we talk about Julio here, I just want to give a

special shout out and thank you to our listeners for helping us smash the second tier of our multi-tiered giveaway that we're currently running. So we are going to be given away. the Taylor Tremel autograph card now that we have moved past 4,500 YouTube subscribers. So next up on our goal sheet here is the Jared Kelnick autograph card. So we have the 4,500 YouTube subscribers. For that, we also need 3,000 Twitter followers. And what are we at right now at L.O. underscore Mariners right now, Colby? 2640.

Okay. So we need 360 more followers on Twitter. order for us to give away this Kellnick autograph card by the end of the winter meetings, which is December 8th coming up. And then after that, the Cal Raleigh rookie autograph card, that's at 5,000 YouTube subscribers. So we might actually reach that goal before we reach the full goal for Kelnick. So help us get to both. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell all those out there who are Mariners fans, or even if they're not Mariner's fans, just tell them to subscribe, tell them to follow at L.O. underscore Mariners on Twitter.

We greatly appreciate it. So, Julio Rodriguez is the American League rookie of the year. Really no surprise there. He gets 29 out of 30 first place votes. And Ben Nicholson Smith, a Blue Jays writer is the only one that gave him a second place vote in favor of Adley Rutchman.

We might talk about that a little bit. But I want to start here by talking about how this benefits the Mariners as an organization because earlier this year when major league baseball and the major league baseball players association agreed upon the new cba one of the changes that they implemented was a system that is meant to discourage teams from service timing their prospects so a quick explanation of how that essentially works is that if a if a team allows one of their top prospects who is in the preseason top 100 of at least two major outlets, top 100 prospects. So we're talking to ESPN, MLB pipeline, all those outlets. If they're in at least two of those and they get added to either the opening day roster or at least get added to the point where they can accrue a full season at the major league level, they will be eligible to win their team a first round draft pick,

whether they finish first in the rookie of the year voting, finished in the top three of MVP voting or finished top three in Cy Young voting. And so Julio won the rookie of the year. And now he's essentially landed the Mariners, what is basically going to be a first round draft pick, because it lands after the first round, but the Mets and the Dodgers who are both over the luxury tax threshold, as per Major League Baseball rule,

are going to have their picks, their first round picks, drop 10 slots. that pick slots in at number 29. Thanks to Joe Doyle of Prospects Live for explaining that. There's a full breakdown of all of that on Prospects Live.com that you can check out. But so, Colby, this is a huge boon for the Mariners to have because not only does it give them what is essentially a second first round pick, they also get the bonus pool money that comes with that. And that's going to be huge for them.

They can get really creative with that, right? Yeah, they can. In essence, you know, last year the 29th pick was worth or was slotted at 2.5 million and some change. So that's significant. That's, you know, going from a bonus pool of about 7.5 million to probably around 10 million. That's pretty significant. And when you kind of look at just the timing of it, it's really good timing because the Mariners farm system has done its job. it has provided major league talent both in the form of, you know,

Julio Rodriguez and George Kirby and Cal Raleigh and Logan Gilbert, but it's also brought in guys like Jesse Winker and A. E. E. E. E. Hineo Suarez and Luis Castillo. So when you look at it, the farm system has done exactly what it was built to do. It's supplemented the Major League team. But as a result of that, it's taken a bit of a hit. And when you look at where most of the top talent is in the Mariners system right now, it's, you know, 16, 17, 18, 19-year-olds. there's not a next wave coming in the next year or two,

at least not in the next impact. Now, this draft, it's not like they can just draft a guy who's going to get, you know, major league ready in a year that that's not going to happen. But it's just about adding more players, more skill sets that your farm system, that your player development guys think that they can turn into big leaguers. So anytime you get an extra pick, it's a pretty big deal. And like you said, they could go really creative with it. they can try and force, you know, a top 12 to 15 prospect down to them at 23 and overpay them,

or they could just go slot in both spots and overpay in the second and third round, maybe try and get, you know, three or four, you know, fringe first round pick type of talents with this bonus pool money. So traditionally, Seattle has been very slot oriented. typically the first round picks get slot and occasionally they get a hundred grand more, but it's usually right around slot. So it'll be interesting to see what they do with the two picks. They've been prep heavy the last few drafts. Maybe this is the year with the extra picks.

They go back to the college ranks. We'll see. But the Mariners have done a nice job drafting. They've certainly taken some chances early. Some of them have worked. Some of them haven't. So it's just nice to have this little extra pick here. it's really more about the money that they can now spend than the actual pick itself.

But we shouldn't overlook the pick because it can be a very good player. I mean, and I know 22, I think it is in 29 doesn't sound exciting. But, you know, look at George Kirby was picked in the 20s. You know, they got Cole Young in the 20s. You know, these are really good prospects and turned out to be really good players. So, yeah, I feel like the Mariners are going to take advantage of this. And it comes at a really good time. and it's probably the most crucial draft they're going to have because, again, you have to keep supplementing your minor league system because that is where you produce big leaguers either via trade or development.

So it's a really good timing, and it's a nice perk. And I don't think the Mariners would have put, would have kept Julio down if, you know, if there wasn't this draft pick compensation. But it does appear to have done a good job. And by the way, we should mention Adley Ruchman, not eligible to get the, Orioles a pick, but he did earn himself a full year of service time. So, you know, the Orioles don't even get the benefit of, you know, the extra year that they would have had this not been implemented. So the system so far was working pretty well. And the Mariners are kind of the first big beneficiaries of it. Yeah. So the Mariners will reap the benefits of this new system next summer.

2023 is going to be a big year for this farm system in general because they're expected to add felon celestine in january he might immediately become the top prospect in the mariner system despite being 17 years old uh so that's really exciting and then you get to add you know two first round draft picks on top of that uh that's good stuff uh i believe stepan was also not eligible right because he wasn't a top 100 guy right anywhere yeah so so julio was really the only guy that could take advantage of the system because also Michael Harris was not eligible either correct didn't get called up soon enough

and Spencer Strider wasn't in enough wasn't in enough top 100s or any I don't think so yeah really the only person who could have benefited the only team that would have benefited from this was the Mariners yes so

ultimately at the end of the day congratulations to Julio well deserved win for Julio an amazing year for him doing stuff that, you know, we've never really seen a rookie do before 25, 25 season. That's incredible. And so it's really cool to see him being rewarded for that. So, all right. So coming up here, we're going to be talking about a couple of Mariners targets, one free agent target and one trade target of theirs that has been reported. Colton Wong and Masataka Yoshita. We'll be talking about

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Get 50% off any new SimplySafe system at SimplySafe.com slash Lockdown MLB. This is their biggest discount of the year, so don't wait. That's simplysafe.com slash Lockdown MLB. There's no safe like SimplySafe. You're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you so much for making us your first listen. So a couple days ago, John Marosi of MLB Network, 710 Seattle Sports, all that, reported that the Mariners have a very strong interest in Japanese import, an outfielder, Masataka Yoshida, who's been an absolute star over there. And he is going to be posted by his team, the York's Buffaloes.

I believe that's who it is, right? I'm correct on that. I believe it's a lot. They were the blue waves, but I think they, I think you're right. They blew, blue, whatever. I think they used to be. No, they are the buffaloes. So, yeah, they are going to be posting him.

That became official yesterday. MLB trade rumors reporting it. So he is going to have an opportunity to explore a chance to make it over to Major League Baseball. And again, the Mariners seem to have a pretty strong interest in him. So let's talk about him a little bit here. is a career 327, 421, 539 hitter over in MPB in seven seasons. He has 133 home runs, 21 steals, 421 walks to 300 strikeouts. I mean, these numbers are ridiculous.

This is video game-like. So it's clear to see why the Mariners like him. But why else should the Mariners like him and have interest in him and also, you know, and I want to bring him to the Pacific Northwest? Yeah, for the record, they did used to be the orix blue wave. I just looked it up, and that name sounds familiar to you guys. That is the team each hero played for. So anyways, I was looking that up.

I didn't listen to your question. What was it? You just want to know about the player? Yeah, no, no, no. Why should the Mariners like him? Why should they want to bring him here? Yeah, it's a very CTZ skill set. And we know that that's not everything to the Mariners.

they just brought in Teosker, who is not typically a CTZ guy. Yoshida, Yoshida, not quite sure I'll pronounce it, he is. He walks a ton, he makes a ton of contact. There's very little doubt amongst the baseball community that he's going to hit for average. The real question with, you know, the players who come over from the Japan League is often, you know, how does the power translate. You know, Matsui, Hadeki Matsui, I think he came over after hitting like 54 home runs in a year. And he was a 25 to 30 guy, which is still very good.

But, you know, obviously not 50. So it'll be interesting to see how the power translates, but the swing is very good. It's a very quick swing. There's not a lot of moving parts in it. He should be able to make consistent, you know, contact, even against big league pitching. So there's very little doubt that he's going to hit for some average. He's going to draw walks. He's going to get on base.

The question really is probably over the fence power. So if he's 25 home runs, then, you know, that's a great hitter. If he's 18, you know, 14 to 18, that's still a very good hitter. But, you know, obviously, like a little punch, especially coming from a corner guy. Defensively, he is not good. He is not good defensively. I think if you're a team like the Mariners, who's bringing him in, I think your goal should probably be for him to play left field twice a week, maybe three times a week, and DH, the majority of his games.

Like, he's not very good. So, also on the smaller side, he's pretty well built, but he's 5'8, about 185, 190. So he's on the shorter side, which obviously, you know, leads to more questions about the power. I think a lot of lazy comps will turn to like Stephen Kwan, but Kwan's a better athlete. Yoshida probably has more power, I would say, but they're both left-handed. They're both corner guys. They both, you know, high contact, get on base, but, you know, he's not really much of a base stealer either. Yoshida isn't.

So one comp that I did hear that I kind of liked. comes from, I think I heard it from Jason Churchill, Prospect Insider and the Baseball Things podcast. I think he compared him to Dustin Padroia, just in terms of a shorter guy who can generate leverage and hit for a high average. But he swings, apparently the word is he swings quite hard, but it's very smooth.

It's very, you know, it's not like Jared Kelnick swinging hard, right? It's a very smooth swing with plenty of play. covered. So based on everything I'm hearing, it sounds like he's going to hit. He's going to hit for average. He's going to get on base. He's probably going to hit quite a few doubles. The only question with the bat is how many home runs are you going to get out of him? And then the rest of his profile is, it's Jesse Winker-esque, which is, yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, kind of concerning when you just added to Oscar Hernandez, who's an incredible athlete, but is not a great defender, you know, so, uh,

I just, I don't know if you want to bookend Julio with two guys who can't play the field like you have been doing. You know, I think you want to get better there. And, you know, I think because of Tay Oscar's athleticism, there might be some room to grow there and might be some room to improve. But Yoshida seems like he's pretty much set as like a Jesse Winker type. Like that's just who he is. He's also going to be turning 30 soon, I believe. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, this is an older guy. And also I don't think, and because of the age, I don't think that he's going to make, say, a Suzuki money, which was, I believe, five years, $85 million.

I think he'll get somewhere close in terms of Aav. But I think he's probably going to be looking at, like, 3 and 40 or maybe 4 and 60, like somewhere in that range. Yeah. But yeah, like he said, he's an older guy. And then a quick reminder on how posting works. So the Mariners would have to pay 20% of the first $25 million of Yoshida's contract to Orix. Then 17.5% of the next $25 million of that contract. And then I believe 12.5% of the remaining dollars on the contract to Orix. So you do the math. Let's talk about Colton Wong here who John Rose.

There you go. Let's talk about Colton Wong here, though. John Marosi also linked the Mariners to him. I know you have some thoughts on the fan response to that. We'll get to that in a bit. But I just want to ask you about the player here because this is a guy that the Mariners tried to get a couple of off seasons ago. But when Kevin Mather was still involved, they didn't want to go an extra year, all that. We know all about that.

But Wong is coming off of his best offensive season. He's still pretty much a platoon bat, not very good against lefties, but mash his righties. But, you know, this is a former Gold Glover who finished first percentile and else above average this past season. First is bad, by the way, for those that do not know. You want to be 99th. As close to 100 as possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you do not want to be first.

So that means that he was one of the worst defenders in all baseball this past season, which is pretty stunning. And when you factor in that the shift is being banned, you're going to need your second baseman to cover a lot more ground than he typically would. in seasons past. That's a little concerning. Obviously, Perry Hill is a magician, but what are your thoughts on potentially adding Wong? Perry Hill will fix it. He'll be fine.

He'll put up, you know, plus four out's above average, and we'll be like, oh, yeah, no, he's fine. What's weird about Wong's defense in particular is that he used to be like an elite guy. Like, he was premier. And it wasn't even that long ago that he was average. So it just kind of feels like maybe the brewer's shifting was off or maybe, you know, there was something, a nagging injury or something. It's very weird to see the defense decline as sharply as it has. So I don't know that that's something the Mariners are going to have to figure out.

And I'm guessing they feel pretty good about it at the very least. But I think, you know, you kind of hit the nail on the head. By the way, if they gave Yoshida $50 million, they would owe Orix about $11 million. just throwing that out there. So Wong, though, I think is a really good fit in terms of just roster build because I have to assume the Mariners believe that they can get his defense back to what it was or at least get close. And when you look at the numbers overall, he's a pretty good base dealer as well.

I think it was 15 of 17 this last year. He has some, he's developed some, you know, over the fence pop. He's not going to hit 20, but he'll hit, you know, 10 to 15. He's going to make a lot of contact, which we know the Mariners like. He's going to, you know, he's not going to strike out, obviously. And he's not a, not a, he's not, he's not like an elite walker or anything like that. But he makes so much contact and he walks enough that he's going to put up pretty good on base percentages along the way. And the Mariners kind of already have like the ideal platoon partner with Colton Wong.

Do that's something I want to do? And they actually kind of have two guys that could fill that role, Sam Haggarty and Dylan Moore. So I think the fit's pretty good. I think the player is still pretty good despite the defense. He'd be a nice pivot play, assuming they miss out on the short stops, which I think that has been the expectation from most people in baseball for the last few weeks. So Wong had a club option that was picked up this off season for $10 million. dollars and if it means anything to you i've also heard the same thing that the mariners do really

like wong that they're they were hoping that the brewers wouldn't pick up that option but they're still interested in trading for him even with that option and i think with the the decline in defense even though that he's coming off of a career year at the plate the fact that he is basically a platoon bat and has the the rough defense uh the last year or so uh and the 10 million dollars he's probably not going to cost too too much. But, you know, to, and I'm going to let you, you know, talk all about the, the fan response real quick. But I just want to add here before we, we jump on over to that, that, you know, the, the

mirrors wouldn't be doing their job here. Justin Hollander, Jerry DePoto, et cetera, wouldn't be doing their job here if they weren't at least reaching out about other possibilities at second base and shortstop if they don't land the top guys. It doesn't mean that they're out. Nothing that got reported today means that they're out on Trey Turner. Carlos Correa, Zander Bogarts, whatever. And John Morosi even said that the same guy that reported the Colton Wong stuff

last night on 710 Seattle Sports said the Mariners are certainly in on the shortstop market right now. He wouldn't consider them necessarily favorites at the moment, but they are in. They are involved in this. So really, you know, it's just they're doing their due diligence here. And Morosi is reporting that and that's it. This could be as simple as the mayor is just calling up the brewer's saying, Hey, are you interesting in dealing Colton Wong? Yes. Cool. Or no. Cool. Great. Have a great. Have a great day. That's it. That's really all it could be.

And so, you know, you're going to probably hear that the Mariners have also checked in on Brandon Drury or what have you. Because that's just, you know, you got to cover all your bases here to protect yourself in the event that you're not able to land one of these premier short stops. So I'm going to let you talk more about the fan response in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you. by betonline. Betonline.net is your number one source for sports betting info, stats, news and analysis.

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So Colby. Floor is yours, man. What do you want to talk about here with this fan response to the, to the Wong news? Because half of Mariner's Twitter right now is losing its mind while the other half is, you know, telling it to, is telling the other half to calm down.

Basically, one half is being rational. The other half is being irrational. Tell us a little bit more about that. Half of you guys suck. Like, really, truly suck.

The idea. It's November 17th, people. I was about to say that. The off season literally started like a week ago. Yeah. Opening day is,

opening day is 133 days away. No one has signed except for Anthony Rizzo and a couple of relievers. Like, come on. Yeah. Come on. Has a free agent even changed teams yet? Because Rizzo resigned. Tyler Anderson.

Tyler Anderson is the one guy who's changed. Ooh. Yeah, the Mariners are really missing out so far. Yeah, all your concern about the report that they've talked about, Colton Wong, frankly, is stupid. There's no reason to be concerned. Headline, Mariners interested in good player should not elicit anger from anybody, let alone, you know, anger towards the GM and the front office who just ended the 21-year playoff drought. It took them four years, actually three and a half, less than three and a half, because the COVID season. was only 60.

And by the way, the rug got ripped out from under him before the 2020 season and they still won 90 games. So what are you complaining about? Whatever. The team just added an all-star bat.

The team basically added Julio Rodriguez, the hitter to their lineup. Not everything else. But the hitter, very similar hitters. They just added that guy yesterday. And now they're talking about

bringing in another really solid, you know, player at a position of need and you're sitting here going like oh god they're so cheap oh they're so lazy oh they don't even want to spend money how dare you like are are you stupid yes you are stupid what is wrong with the mariners saying hey you know what maybe we don't get tray turner in fact we don't think we're going to we can't sit around and just wait for carlos car yeah to officially turn down our invitation to the prom we got to be retroactive we have to have backup plans Colton Wong is a backup plan and a pretty good one at that.

It's a player we know the Mariners like. It's a player they've liked in the past. It's a player they've pursued in the past. He's a player who, by the way, is going to cost the team $10 million. So shut down your BS. Oh, they're so cheap talk. They also cost them $14.3 million. $13.5 if you take off Eric Swanson from that.

This isn't the Mariners going and trying to trade for Jeter Downs before he's DFAed and being like, oh, well, you know, we'll see if he pops. This is Colton Wong. He's a good player. He's a good player. Teosca Hernandez is a good player. The Mariners don't need star players this offseason. It'd be great if they got one.

There's only three or four available, but it'd be amazing if they got one. But they don't need it. Okay. The Mariners got better yesterday. And if they acquired Colton Wong tomorrow, they'll get better tomorrow as well. So the idea that Colton Wong doesn't pass your test, like Mariner's second baseman last year put up a 74 WRC plus. And if you want to remove Adam Fraser's July.

it was closer to 60. They were bad. They were one of the three worst. Colton Long, by the way, had a 116 WRC plus this past season. Right. They were, the Mariners' second base was so bad last year.

The Mariners had Colton Wong at second base. They probably win 93, 94 games, 95 games. Maybe they beat the Astros. Maybe they pushed the Astros to game five. Like, that's the difference. Adam Fraser wasn't good.

What are you complaining about? Mariners get better should not elicit anger. Calm down. Like Ty said, it is November 17th. We're not even at Thanksgiving, which Ty loves, but we're not even there yet. I love Thanksgiving. Let's calm down.

There's been like one major player traded. There has been one major player that's changed teams. We literally just started the ability to switch teams for free agents literally just happened last week, a week from today. And you guys are throwing fits already. Grow up. I mean, grow up or like grow up or shut up. Pick one. I don't care which one you choose, but pick one.

Yeah. You sound ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But I'm not going to get roped into the foolishness because this happens every off season. I thought, you know, maybe Jerry and Justin and all those guys would have a little bit more leash because they did in the drought. And maybe they would get a little bit more benefit of the doubt. I was wrong on that, though.

But I'm not going to get roped into this. You know, I'm done convincing you. I'm done convincing you. This is me talking to the half of Mariners Twitter rate. now that's that's freaking out that talking to the half of the fan base that's freaking out right now about the mariners merely merely getting linked to a player by john morosi they didn't even acquire him they didn't acquire him they were merely linked to him all the tweets said was they have interest in the guy they have interest that's it that is as simple as i said like eight or so minutes ago

that could be as simple as hey are you uh interested in trading colton long cool Yeah, cool, we might be in touch. Talk to you then. That's it. That might be as simple as it is. Calm down. Relax. Folks, relax. It's okay. It's going to be okay. It's November 17th. And maybe, yeah, maybe they do add Colton Long. Maybe that is their, you know, answer at second base. And, you know, it's not super exciting. But like Colby said, it's a pretty significant upgrade over Adam Frazier. I know there's a lot of folks that are like, well, this profile is kind of similar to Adam Frazier. and he's a platoon bat and all that stuff. I get that, and we will acknowledge all that stuff on the show if they acquire him. But right now, they haven't. Colton Long is still a Milwaukee Brewer.

Chill out. Chill out for a second. Trey Turner may still very well be a Seattle Mariner at the end of this. Zander Bogartz may still very well be a Seattle Mariner at the end of this. Who knows? We really don't know. And so until we know for sure, let's not jump to conclusions here.

Let's give these guys the benefit of the doubt. They're pretty good at building baseball teams. They've proven that. Like, let's show. Now, let's not proclaim the offseason of failure on November 17th because they got linked to Colton Wong. Like, either grow up or shut up. I don't care which one you choose. You know what?

You know who else they got linked to last year? Albert Poolels. Did they sign Albert Poolels? No. No. Come on. Trevor Story and Marcus Simeon. You know who else they've also been linked to?

Trey Turner, Zander Bogartz. Brandon Nemo. Yep. Come on. Come on, guys. Mariners interested in Zander Bogarts. Well, they better be. Mariners interested in Colton Wong.

They've already given up. It's over. I really mean this. I really mean this sincerely. When I say this, I'm going to say it for a third time, because I mean it. Grow up or shut up.

I don't care. I prefer you grow up. But if you don't want to, then just shut up. Because I'm tired of hearing about it. Jesus Christ. You know what else? It is November 17th.

Yeah. You know what else? Colby doesn't care about? Manager of the year. So that's why I'm only going to be talking about this here. Scott's. There goes to headphones. All right, buddy.

So. Look at him. Look at him. So, yeah. The manager of the year was announced on what? Tuesday night, I think. Wednesday night. Doesn't matter.

No, it's Tuesday night. Terry Francona, the manager of the Cleveland Guardians one, which you know, his team won the division. They won a couple more games than the Mariners. So be it. Colby and I, when we first talked about service's potential of winning the manager of the year award, you know, said we, you know, we thought that he was going to get screwed out of it somehow.

And sure enough, he did. What really gets my goat here, though, is the fact that he didn't even finish second. the fact that he only got one first place vote. This is the guy that ended or helped end the longest playoff drought in professional American sports. And, you know,

Brandon Hyde of the Orioles, a team that didn't even make the postseason, got nine first place to votes, finished second ahead of service, and it wasn't even close. He got 79 points to services 43. and I've been seeing, you know, people try to justify this by saying, you know, what Hyde did was remarkable. And yeah, it was because no one expected the Orioles to be anywhere close to that good.

And, you know, I'm seeing things like, you know, Hyde was basically doing, you know, the equivalent of, you know, managing with your arm tied behind your back and all this stuff. So was Scott's service. His team started 29 and 39. only two teams with that same record went on to go to the playoffs before his team did. His team suffered countless, countless injuries and somehow found their way through all of that, managed that, rattled off a 14-game win streak despite that, was able to still secure a wild card birth, the fifth seed. They weren't even assisted by the sixth seed.

They got the fifth seed, which has been available to teams for quite some time now. Despite having Gino Suarez out for a good portion of September, despite having Julio Rodriguez out for a good portion of September. And who was the clue that kept this team together? Scott's service. It's just, it's ridiculous. It's shameful. It's disgraceful. I expected service to not win this award because a multitude of things.

but to not to only get one first place vote and to finish third in this behind a guy who didn't even make the playoffs. And by the way, the Orioles and Guardians when it combined three and ten against the Mariners just putting that out there. It's ridiculous. It's gross. Scott Service deserved better. And look, if he's not going to win it this year, I don't know when he's ever going to win it. I don't think he's ever going to win it. Because like this is it, right?

Like this was one of the best stories in baseball. all year. The Mariners ending their postseason drought. And he gets one first place vote. One? Dusty Baker had more. And Dusty Baker wasn't even a finalist. And he was gifted a championship team and just had to let them coast, basically.

Come on. It's BS. It's BS, folks. At the end of day, you know, because it doesn't really benefit the organization in any way. I don't care as much, you know, in comparison to Julio winning AL rookie of the year. But on behalf of Scott's service, I am frustrated by this. This is ridiculous. And as many people have said on Twitter, manners of the year is usually a joke of an award.

Usually it's never the best manager who wins it in either league. So it's not something to get too hung up on, but it's still really silly that service was disrespected in this way. I know I'm probably, you know, to some, I'm probably wearing the Homer hat, but seriously, let's look at this objectively. Service was the face, I mean, one of the faces, you know, Julio and all that, but he was one of the faces of one of the best stories in all baseball this year. One of the most successful teams of baseball this year.

Well, you know, it's just he deserved better. So with that side, that's going to do our first show, unless you have anything else. add, Colby. I know you have three words that you want to add. I don't care. I just want to say it's really embarrassing how writers like basically hand this award. They're like, who made us look like the biggest idiots?

And that's how they pick manager of the year. Instead of actually looking at, you know, who did the best job, who had the most impact. They don't care. They're like, oh, like, we all thought Cleveland was going to suck this year. So I guess we have to give it to Terry Francona. Why? What did Terry Francona do that Scott's service didn't?

Exactly. He won like two more games and made it to the division series. It's still lost. He didn't get swept, but he still lost. He won an inferior division, a clown car division. Yeah. That's what he did. Mickey Mouse division.

Yeah, how exciting. Brandon Hyde got his team to up just above 500. Wow. So cool. It's a stupid award. It's the only thing dumber than manager of the. year is who they give gold gloves to. That's the only thing,

dumber. Major League Baseball's. By the way, you know what we don't need? A two-hour show to tell us who the managers of the year are. Nobody cares. Oh, my God, yeah. Nobody cares. Yeah. Even the rookie of the year. We had to wait an hour to find out that.

They were like, yeah, it's getting announced at 6 Eastern. I'm pretty sure they announced Julio winning at like 649. Yeah. And then they had to wait until like an hour later to find out Michael Harris won. Two hours for Rookie of the year. Two hours of programming for three fan let's see, three fan bases in the

American League, two fan bases in the National League to watch and wait. Major League Baseball. Like, what Major League Baseball does with the network is a joke. It's a travesty, but that's a different podcast. I watch zero minutes of MLB Network,

and I'm so much happier and so much smarter for it. Yeah. All right. So Colby, you know what tomorrow is? The return. The return of fan fiction Friday. Now, we reached out just to our followers on Twitter for this one. I want to do this with both our mailbag shows and our fan fiction Friday shows where we just let one platform kind of run it each week.

So we'll do one for our YouTube folks as well. And for maybe even for those of you that just email us, we might do one like that as well. but yeah so this week is going to be Twitter submissions only and then probably next week's show will be YouTube submissions only but fan fiction Friday is coming back and if

you're not familiar with what fan fiction Friday is and it's very likely that you aren't because we've added a lot of new listeners over the last year or so we'll explain on tomorrow's show so be sure to tune in but for now thank you so much for joining us here on Locked on Mariners for Colby Pat node I'm tidying and Zales be sure to give us

follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-N-S-R-N-R-N-E. You can follow me at D-A-N-Z-E-G-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-PAT-E-E-PAT-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode, and thank you again for making us your first listen. For your next listen, check out the Lockdown Sports Today podcast featuring the biggest stories of the day, plus instant reactions, big game recaps, and the take of the day. It's available on the Onesie Abbey YouTube, and wherever you get your podcast just like us,

and with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.