Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Mariners Dodged a Bullet With Frankie Montas

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

On today's episode of Locked On Mariners, Colby and Ty discuss the unfortunate news of Yankees starter Frankie Montas getting season-ending shoulder surgery and if this could open the door to a trade. Plus, Jacob deGrom is out for a couple of days with "left side discomfort," which leads the guys to the discussion: are the Rangers overrated? Finally, it appears Logan Gilbert may feature a splitter in 2023, but will that actually help?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/Join our Slack!FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Place your first FIVE DOLLAR bet to get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Free Bets – win or lose! Visit Fanduel.com/LockedOn today to get startedFANDUEL 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)  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.

On today's episode of Locked-on Mariners, how a couple pitcher injuries around the league could impact Seattle. Plus, Logan Gilbert has a splitter now? Let's talk about it. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's up?

It is Wednesday, February 15th, 2023. This is Tadning Gonzalez and Colby Paddened for the Lockdown Mariners podcast, which is brought to you by Fandul, the official sportsbook of the Lockdowne podcast. network make every moment more visit fanduel.com slash locked on today to get started thank you so much for making us your first listen subscribe like and turn on alerts if you're watching on youtube or subscribe and leave a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform if you like what you hear and if you want to hear from us even more please consider signing up for our patreon the link as well as our social accounts is in the description below on the show today we'll discuss how the baroners dodged

a bullet with frankie montes and of his injury now opens the door for say a chris flex and Marco Gonzalez trade with the Yankees. Jacob de Grom is also dealing with an injury at the start of Rangers camp. And finally, Logan Gilbert has apparently been working on a splitter this offseason. We'll talk about how that could fit into his repertoire a little bit later on. And be sure to stick around for the midway point of today's show. We'll tell you then how you can enter for a chance to win a signed Walter Ford card from Colby's collection. But Colby, let's start here with Frankie Montes.

It's the big news of the day in the baseball world. Jeff Passon tweeting out a couple hours. hours ago that Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, has confirmed that Frankie Montes will undergo shoulder surgery that may very well end his season before it even begins. Obviously, he was on and off the injury report throughout the course of the 2022 campaign. And amidst that was a pretty big trade target for the Mariners for quite some time before they ended up pivoting or, you know, ended up trading for Louise Castillo at the deadline. And I think, you know, looking back on him, retrospect now, especially with the context of Montes's surgery, upcoming surgery, rather,

seems like the Mariners made the right decision there. And the Yankees right now in some pretty big trouble and they're a rotation at the moment with Montes being out for the year. And this easily could have been the Mariners at this point in time. So yeah, looks like chills. DePoto did it again, right, Colby? No, I refuse to acknowledge that sentiment. But, uh, Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that we knew Montes had a little bit of a shoulder thing at the time of the trade. So this really didn't come out of nowhere. You remember he made the start against the Mariners and he left after the first inning because the velocity was down and it was a shoulder issue. And he got back and he pitched a little bit before he was traded.

But this is, you know, this is why you don't want to make a desperate trade, right? When the Yankees missed on Castillo, they felt like they needed to make a trade for a, let's say, similar. or pitcher. So they went out and they made it. It's a pretty reasonable deal, but they did give up a lot of potential starting pitching options for them, like Waldichuk and Sears. And to make matters worse here is the fact that they then went out

and they traded Jordan Montgomery for Harrison Bader, a trade that didn't make any sense to me at the time. And now in retrospect, looks even worse because for Montes, they traded Waldichuk, Sears. and they traded Montgomery because they acquired Monta. So that trade really costs New York three potential legitimate, you know, back-in starters or in the case of Montgomery, you know,

a mid-rotation guy. And Walde-Chuk certainly has the ability to be, you know, a mid-rotation or better. So, yeah, it was a very costly trade. The rotation was already a bit of a question for the Yankees, particularly the back-in, mostly because of Montes' injury, concerns. But now that we know that he's not there, it's a pretty sizable hole that they have to fill. They do have some options in house that are, you know, more than capable of giving them innings.

But it is a big blow. And, you know, it's why you really don't want to risk major assets on players who are hurt. And as much as Montes came back and he pitched, clearly that didn't get any better because he wasn't very good for the Yankees down the stretch. and now he's presumably out for the year. I think they said the earliest he could possibly be back in September, and they're just not going to do that. And if your Montes, why would you do that? You're about to be a free agent. So essentially, the Yankees traded, you know,

a really, really good prospect in Walde Chuk, a pitcher who shows, you know, some real promise in Sears and others, and the trade costs them from their own choice, Jordan Montgomery, and they ended up getting about, what, 10 starts out of Montes? before he's going to hit free agency. So yeah, Jerry, pretty good. Pretty good at his job. And apparently so is Justin Hollander. I have a feeling that he's the one who negotiated that trade. And that's why you pay the premium, right? You pay for the sure thing instead of pay the extra. Yeah, instead of, you know, diving into a pool of uncertainty here with someone like

Montes who, again, like you mentioned, had the shoulder thing was a, it was a public, you know, was public knowledge at that point. He was on the IL just before he was traded. Right, right. He literally had to have a start right before he was traded just to prove like he could throw. And so, yeah, so, I mean, just looking back on that, obviously the trade for Castillo is huge in itself, just in a vacuum, but also adding the context of not trading for Montas in that situation either makes that even bigger of a decision by the Seattle Mariners. Right. So props to them.

Right. And like you said, that's why you pay the extra, right? You pay the freight. Because if the deal, if they had done the deal for Montes, my guess, and this is purely speculation, is that it would have cost them probably no LV, Marte, and Bryce Miller, and maybe even somebody like Emerson Hancock to kind of compensate the A's for not having that major league ready starter. And now we look at it and we say, well, not only do you, you know, have Castillo instead of Montes, but you also got to keep Bryce Miller and you also got to keep Emerson Hancock. you're in a position where Miller might be a huge piece of your you know your division attempt your attempt to win the division here so yeah uh yeah sometimes it's just worth it just to pay the little bit of extra to get the better and safer player and then you know jerry and justin and

the mayor's front office they deserve a lot of credit for recognizing that and just doing it so naturally this begs the question now whenever uh you know rotation loses a a pretty notable piece uh from it that uh you know could this open the door for our Marco Gonzalez or Chris Flexen trade specifically here with the Yankees. I mean, you know, on the back end of the Yankees rotation, they still have Luis Severino and Domingo Hermann to go along with, you know, Carlos Redons, who's the new edition, Garrett Cole, Nesser Cortez.

But again, you know, one of those guys on the back end, I would assume Hermann was going to be the odd man out unless they were going with a six-man rotation unless that was their plan if Montes was healthy. so it seems like they would like someone else involved there. So do you see a fit there with flex in or maybe Marco? And by the way, we should mention, you know, Ryan Davis reported a couple of months ago that the Mariners were close on a three-team deal

with the Yankees and Phillies that involved Marco Gonzalez. However, Marco was set to go to Philadelphia in that deal. The Mariners were set to receive Joey Gallo in that trade. But maybe the Yankees would have some interest in Marco as well. What do you think with that? I don't think there's much of a shot. Like you mentioned, the Yankees have some viable options on the back end. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think kind of like, I haven't seen it yet,

but I'm going to guess that part of the thing that Mariner fans are going to start to throw out there is probably going to be something in the neighborhood of like flex in for Glaber. And no, that's not going to happen. In fact, you could probably still trade for Glaber Torres, and you do have the at-bats, to give right now at third base, second base, D.H. But essentially, I think what you have to look at is you have to look at flexen as you have to look at flexen as just being part of that deal and not providing much value. So like what would Glaber Torres cost you without flexen, right? That's probably what you're going to have to pay.

And then you're just going to throw flexin on top of that. So I really don't think they're interested in Marco. He's got two years left. I mean, they're not expensive, but they're not nothing, you know, $6 million this year, 12 million next year. And flexin's just a one year guy. like he's a rental. So I really don't think there's much. I think they'll just roll with Hermon.

And they have some, you know, some interesting arms that they can roll with too. It's kind of a bummer, you know, that Waka sign with the Padres, you know, just a few hours before this news broke. But I have to assume that the Yankees knew that Montes was probably headed to the IL for a long time before that. So we'll see what they do. I think they just kind of roll with their in-house options because. I, it's hard for me to imagine that they think that Chris Flex and or Marco Gonzalez is an upgrade. And that they would be willing to pay the Mariners enough for Seattle to jettison pitching

depth right before the season starts. And so, I mean, that's the thing too, right? These players are still valuable enough to the Mariners, Marco and Chris Flexen, that you just don't want to give them away because you might need both of them as soon as opening day. So, yeah, you got to kind of be careful here and walk a fine line. And so I just, to me, I don't think they, they match up that well on the trade right now. We get to the end of March, maybe. But right now, I just don't really see a path to a deal.

Nevertheless, you know, while you don't want to root or celebrate, you know, injuries, one of the teams that you're going to be competing with, you know, towards October, just got worse. And so that that does help the Mariners. And there's another injury that's cropped up here with another big name pitcher that could help the Mariners in the immediate future. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Fandul. The midway point of the NBA season is here and now is the perfect time to download Fandual, America's number one sportsbook

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Thank you again for making us your first listen. So before we get into this other big starting pitcher injury, Colby, let's tell the folks here how they could win a sign Walter Ford baseball card. Yeah, so we're doing a giveaway this week, guys. I'm giving away, unfortunately, because Ty picked it. I'm giving away my autographed Walter Ford, the vanilla missile. card here. It's numbered. It's autographed. It's in great condition. And I'm sending it to one of you guys to enter. It's very simple. All you have to do is make sure you're subscribed to this channel,

the YouTube channel, and make sure that you leave a comment on any of the videos this week. If you leave a comment on every video posted this week, your odds go up. But if you left a comment on either Monday or Tuesday's episode already, then you are entered still. But entering or leaving a comment in every single episode does increase your odds so on monday sometime during the show i will pick i will have the random generator pick a comment from a random video uh from the last week and that person will have a couple days to respond uh to me and and we'll get this card shipped out to you uh we're also doing a little bonus here uh if we get to 650 500 uh youtube subs by the time we pick the the walter ford card winner i will give away an additional card that tie will

randomly select some of the options to forgive away. I have Matt Brash, Cal Raleigh, Mike Cameron, Colton Wong, Jared Kellnick. Tyler, Tyler, I have a Tyler O'Neill. Mariner's prospect, Tyler O'Neill autograph card. So, and future Mariner. So, yeah. So yeah. So there's quite a few options.

Ty will randomly pick one of those and we'll give that one away. If we get to 6,500 subs, we're about. 300 away right now and so we have what four days five days so go ahead and subscribe to the youtube channel and you'll be entered to win the bonus card sweet well uh you you guys should do that because it's a walter ford card it's the vanilla missile and i mean you need to get in early here this is a great opportunity for you to get the assigned rookie card of uh the guy who's eventually going to become the greatest pitcher in all of baseball history i mean how could you ask him if you ask him at least if you ask him yeah all right so um one guy who a lot of people refer to as the greatest

pitcher of all time or one of the greatest pitchers of all time jacob de grom who just recently made his way into the al west is dealing with a what the rangers are calling a minor injury just some left side tightness but we've seen this story for the last few years with jacob de grom where it starts with something like left side tightness then it snowballs into a two to three to four to five month type of thing. And I mean, this is what we had talked about when DeGrom signed with the Rangers. A lot of people went nuts over this. They were like, oh, this makes the Rangers a legit contender now.

And we were over here like, it's okay. You know, good for them. Makes them better. Yeah. Yeah, they got better. But yeah, I mean, you know, we'll see if this is actually a serious thing. you know, there's been some reports out of a lot of the spring camps in Arizona about how cold it is right now down in Arizona and how weird that is and the field conditions and all this stuff. So, you know, they're probably just taking it, you know, taking the precar leaning towards the precautionary side of things here.

But still, it's concerning when the biggest addition of your off season is already dealing with some stuff, especially when he has a history. like the one Jacob deGrom has. So yeah, the Rangers, I mean, even with DeGrom, right, the Rangers aren't like, what do you think the Rangers ceiling is this year? Realistically, Colby, because I see a lot of takes out there, even from Mariners fans themselves,

saying the Mariners, or the Rangers, rather, are better than the Mariners after the off-season these two teams have had. I don't buy that at all. I think I've gone on record on this show, maybe it was our Patreon show, that I just, I don't get it with the Rangers. I still think,

that their bullpen is a mess, that they still have holes offensively that need to be filled, that they're at least a year away. So really losing DeGrom or having DeGrom doesn't move the needle for me much. Is that the same for you? Or how do you feel about DeGrom in this team? I think the Rangers are at best, like an 83, 84-win team. And that's if everything goes right. And that's if, you know, you get 25 stars from DeGrom and you get, you know, 25 stars from from Andrew Heaney and like he continues to do what he did last year and he doesn't regress back to what he was with the angels like the I don't like the Rangers build at all it feels like they tried to make a bunch of shortcuts and they haven't built the foundation

for a winning team and they've just kind of started to put the walls up already it's you know I have a friend who always talks about you know do you build your house on a solid foundation or do you build it in the sand? And it feels like the Rangers are building their house, you know, in the sand. Because not only is it reliance on some injury prone pitchers, staying healthy and performing really well for you, but it's also you're kind of racing the clock because Corey Seeger is getting older. Marcus Simeon is getting older and worse.

He had a nice year last year, but Marcus Simeon's not a superstar. We're never going to see 2021 Marcus Simeon again. You know, and you just kind of start to look around. you say, well, okay, Seeger's got a back thing already. He's going to move to 30 eventually. That's a lot of money going to one player. There's a lot of money going to a second player in Simeon, who's kind of starting a slow decline.

You've spent a ton of money on a pitcher who hasn't made more than 20 starts in like three years. You're just kind of built in around them. You're not really putting quality major leaguers now. Jonah Heim and Nathaniel Lowe are certainly Lowe. I always get those two mixed up. I think it's only Lowe for Brandon Lowe. I don't, yeah, I think all the other LOWEs and baseball are low. But yeah, I mean, like, I don't want to say the Rangers don't have talent because Adolas

Garcia is a nice player, Lowe's a nice player, Hymn is a nice player, Simeon and Cerebral still really good. Martine Perez certainly had a great year last year. Can he repeat it? I mean, we'll see. It's been a while since he has. So we'll see in the bullpen is an absolute mess. They do have some prospect depth, which is nice. It's a pretty good system still. but they haven't shown that they can develop that system into anything yet. So all their good players right now, aside from Hime, kind of developed elsewhere and acquired by the Rangers. So we'll see what we'll see how it looks. I certainly could be wrong.

There's a lot of talent in Texas and bullpins are fickle. You never know, you know, it could look like a terrible bullpen on paper and then just be one of the five best in the American League. We don't know. That's certainly a possibility. But I think there's a lot of, there's a house of card quality. to the Rangers. And I think I think we're only just seeing

like a small fraction of what could go wrong right now and how flimsy the card that House of Cards is. They just seem like the flavor of the month to me. You know, they spent more money, you know, after spending a lot of money last offseason,

they spent more money to get someone like Jacob deGrom who, again, when healthy, is not only one of the best pitchers in today's game, but one of the best pictures of all times. Yeah. Yeah. But still, it's, again, that is a huge question mark because, you know, I'm in, you can say that with, with everyone, right? You can concern troll with every single pitcher there is out there.

But with DeGrom specifically, there's a history there. There's actual tangible evidence that this guy might not be able to stay healthy for the course of a full season because he hasn't been able to the last few years. So that, you know, along with them, you know, banking on the upside of Andrew Heaney. which we still really haven't seen. We've seen a lot of strikeouts, but we haven't seen him be a mid-rotation starter. If anything, he's been a number four really at best. You know, John Gray had a decent enough breakout this past year.

He's pretty good pitcher, someone that we liked for the Mariners last off-season. Yeah. You know, but overall, you know, I see so many holes still on this roster, and I just can't wrap my head around anyone thinking that this is a wild-card contender unless everything goes right.

And we know that everything is not going to go right. and so, you know, unless they get off to a hot start to the point where they can use one of the better farm systems and all baseball to help them go get better and go get, you know, legit major league pieces at or around the deadline, unless they position themselves like that, you know, to be able to justify doing something like that, I just, I don't see it. I don't see it at all for that team. I don't see them as a real threat for the Mariners. Maybe we roll this tape back in, you know, four or five months and I look like a complete idiot. I hope not. But, you know, I just, I do not see it from the Rangers perspective. Maybe next year. Just not this year. I see, you know, obviously the Astros are the big threat in the AOS. But I even see the Angels right now as a bigger threat to the Mariners than the Rangers right now, just going off of what the Angels did this offseason.

Sure. I mean, again, it's not just a grom either. It's Martine Perez who has a pretty sense of injury history. It's John Gray who's had one really good year. And I like John Gray. So I don't want to talk too much smack about it. about the guy. I think he's a good pitcher. It's Nathan Avaldi, who we know is hit or miss, literally, both on the mound and in terms of health and performance. And Andrew Heaney, who, you know, his best season was with the Dodgers, which, not to take away from the season he had last year, it was good. The Dodgers also turned Tyler Anderson into an all-star. So can they repeat that? I don't know. We'll find out. And even when I read off this lineup, like, it's solid lineup, but it doesn't scare me. Simeon Seeger low.

Good. Yeah. Really good. One, two, three. Adola Garcia. Not terrible. He's fine. He doesn't get on base,

but he hits for a lot of power. No, strikes out a lot. Yeah. He's a good player, though, still. Yeah. Jonah Heim. The Mariners figured out how to pitch to Heim. Like, he was a non-threat last year.

After he destroyed them two years ago, they figured out how to pitch to him. Velocity up. Heim can't touch it. Josh Young, Brad Miller. Laota Stavaris, Josh H. Smith. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Any team that's starting Brad Miller in the year 2023, and I'm sorry, Colby, I know you love B-Rad, but anything that is starting Brad Miller in 2020, that's not a team that I look at. Imagine starting Brad Miller and not Tommy Lestella as your D.H. And I know that I'm going to get comments now. They're like, well, your team is starting Jerich-Kelman. Whatever.

There's more upside there with Jerichelnik than Brad freaking Miller. All right, anyway. We will not have a smirchmer. Brad Miller on this I need to buy his card. Yeah, you should. And then we'll give it away, obviously. All right. Let's move on here.

Last thing that I wanted to cover today, not a lot to talk about today, admittedly. We were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for topic ideas today. But there was a very interesting video that came from driveline last night featuring Logan Gilbert, who was throwing a splitter. And it looks pretty good. I mean, we only saw one throw of it which had

14 and a half inches of horizontal movement and then minus 3.9 inches of vertical movement. It's pretty nice for a splitter. And of course, you know, Logan's featured a change up a little bit, but it's also been I mean, it was his fourth most used

pitch this past year. I think it was around 200 or so attempts. He actually found some success with it, though. I think it generated like a 31 and a half percent whiff rate. But what could switching over to a splitter do for Gilbert? Nothing. So, yeah, the thing with Gilbert's changeup is when he got it near the zone, it was a very good pitch, particularly against lefties.

The problem is getting it near the zone, like close enough that people would swing at it. Um, the splitter is a pretty tough pitch to control. It also, I believe, uh, puts some, some reasonable strain on, on the elbow and the shoulder. So it's kind of a dangerous pitch. Um, I do wonder too, though, Gilbert's a fastball up type of guy. And the splitter is usually better tunneled with a low fastball. Uh, so I, I wonder how effective this pitch could be for him.

Um, again, if he's, if it's his fourth pitch and, and, you know, he's throwing it fairly, in as long as he doesn't overuse it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It should be fine in terms of shoulder and elbow injury risk. So to me, it's cool. Gilbert is a tinkerer. Like he's in the lab all the time. He's a thinker. He really does, you know, think of pitching as a bit of a science as well as an art.

So it really shouldn't surprise us that Gilbert's been tweaking grips and trying different things. So, yeah, you know, it's tough when you, when you get one splitter in a controlled bullpen and drive lines picking the one that they get to show you. Like, we don't know if that's a viable pitch or not. For all we know, that's just Gilbert threw one for fun. And they're like, oh, yeah, let's put that out there. So. Right. Yeah, we'll see if he features it in spring training. It's one of those things, you know, do you want to keep it in your back pocket for the regular season? Well, probably not because you got to throw it to get, you know, used to it and understand how to use it. So, uh, I would.

imagine we'll see it at some point this spring. But until we see it against major league hitters, until we see it against, you know, Otani and Your Don and all these other guys, right? Until we see it against actual major leaguers, it's tough to get too excited about it. But, yeah, it's that time of year, right? We get to see Matt Brash's cutter. We get to see Logan Gilbert Splitter. We get to see Diego Castillo wear a black t-shirt.

And everybody's like, oh, my God, he's lost 15 pounds. And you're like, hmm. just kind of looks like Diego to me. So, you know, we get to see Tom Murphy's crazy hair like, and everybody like it's, it's fine.

Like I get it. I can't believe that he's able to grow hair like that as well. I don't think he was naturally, but also I don't care. Like do whatever makes you happy, chief. Um, because yeah,

that flow is ridiculous now. And, and we've only seen Tom with like, like one like a buzz cut. So, uh, yeah, I think he had a grown out like,

like when he was rehabbing and he was in the during the playoffs or something. I think he had like some like curly locks going on or something. Oh, okay. Nice. Nice. Nice. Good for Tom, man. Good for Tom. It looks good. It looks good. It looks good. I'm jealous. Look good. Feel good. Play good. All that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's that time of year, right? It's going to get ramped up a little bit in the next few days when more position players come in. You know, we'll get the report on Kellnick and like, I can see Kellnick. Who do you think is going to be a who do you think is going to be in?

the best shape of their life. If you had a guess, if you just wanted to throw one out there. Like we're going to hear about this guy being in the best shape of his life. Yeah. It's usually a vet. I would say Colton Wong, but he's there.

And nobody said that. Wong showed up a little early. So yeah. And he's working with Perry Hill already. Yeah, I know. Everybody thinks Perry Hill's like a god. The wizard's going to work, man. Sure.

trying to think of like somebody who's not in camp yet also don't besmirce the great name of Perry Hill Perry Hill Perry Hill is God Perry's great you know he left us on red but it's you know like three years ago before this show you know whatever whatever before we have a cloud oh yeah we have cloud okay um that's that's a tough question uh because I'm trying to think like who hasn't shown up yet right because i feel like if they've shown up then we already would have heard that but also maybe not because there's not a lot of reporters down there yet um jp is just going to look skinny no matter what like jp could spend 20 hours a day in the gym and he'd still look like he was six foot three 160 so yeah probably not i think we are i think we are going to hear some things about jp

though yeah yeah like in the next couple weeks where they're like oh yeah he's changed his swing a little bit and blah blah blah and it's like he still wraps the bat over his head before he's like yeah yeah we've seen the videos from drive line and i mean like we're not i don't notice a difference we're not swing experts obviously but it looks the same to me it looks and that that's kind of a problem so we have a theory about his swing but you can only find out what that theory is on patreon dot com for it slash control zone check it out i'll be interested to hear this theory too um so we've already talked about this theory i don't remember anything i say um it's my theory. It's my theory. And it's very, uh, it's very serious. And I definitely don't remember that.

It's a very serious theory too. By the way, Sam Haggertie taking ground balls off the wall. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. It's interesting. We'll see. They avoided, they avoided playing him in the field like the plug last year. So, uh, in the infield in the infield rather. Yeah. Um, Leonis Martinez is going to come in just like, like, like you're going to see his abs through his baggy t-shirt. Um, I will say, did you have somebody for this best shape of your life thing? I think, I think it's going to be Kellnick. Do you? I think it's going to be. That's hard to be.

That's hard to beat, man. That's hard to beat because Kellnick has always been in great shape. Um, I am going to say, I got nothing. Or Robbie Ray. Or Robbie Ray. We've seen Robbie Ray, though. He looks. I'm surprised Robbie didn't throw his bullpen and jorts, honestly.

Um, I think they should allow that. Uh, I will say, I think I'll just guess Taylor Tremel. He's going to come and looking a little bit more swole, I guess. Like I don't know exactly. I don't know. He's been lifting a little bit, yeah. Sure, because the Mariners don't have anybody who's just like out of, like Jose, uh, Jesus Montero, right?

Like there's nobody who needed to lose 40 pounds and like Calcy comes in like really skinny all of a sudden like. Yeah. And like flexible. like so yeah I think we'll hear like different like regiments like oh he switched this up he did this but I don't think we're going to be like we're not going to look at somebody and go like holy cow that looks like a different person Cal Raleigh is coming to camp after losing 25 pounds your god please don't medium dumper size 36 waist dumper um no I think yeah you know honestly

I bet Kelnit comes in like a little bit bit like I don't want to say slimmer but like sleeker I guess is like yeah yeah I think people are going to look at Kelling be like oh that's a little different he I'm more so picked him because he just feels like the guy that the the PR team is going to want to pump up a bit sure yeah I mean because as we know best shape of your life guys always have great seasons we it would be funny to go back and try there's there's no way to do that and I'm way to way to do that but it would be funny to go back and track like

which players got referred to as being in the best shape of their life and what they went on to do that that you remember like in 2019 like Felix came in and they're like oh Felix is trimmed down a little bit and it was like no he didn't like all we saw from Felix where his skinny chicken leg calves and people are like oh my God it looks like he's dropped like 30 pounds and it's like, he looks the same.

The Felix, a man of my heart, chicken legs. Yeah. I mean, yeah, Seeger had a like a big drop. And then Seeger got hurt that first year.

Late in spring, you remember that? So that kind of, you know, torpedoed everything. So was that 2020? Or was that? That was 2019,

right? 2019. Yeah. Yeah. It might have been 2020. Either one. Whatever. Yeah.

I think Kellnick is, probably one of those guys. I could see, you know what? Actually, George Kirby. I think Kirby looks really slight. I think he's going to come and he's going to be a little bit more beefed up. So I'll say George Kirby. And that will end the worst six minutes of podcasting we've ever done on the show.

No, no, we've done worse. We've done a lot worse than us. All right. Lastly, well, speaking of spring training, Speaking of players that are in the best shape of their lives, we'll be talking to someone that's down there already tomorrow. We're going to be talking to Mariners broadcaster Gary Hill Jr. on tomorrow's show. It's going to be fun to catch up with Gary.

Haven't talked to him since I ran into him at the wild card game in Toronto. So looking forward to catching up with Gary, talk about his offseason, talk about what he thinks about this offseason for the Mariners and what he's seeing so far down in Arizona. So look forward to that. 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 Tidane Gonzalez.

Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. It's D-A-N-ZLZ and Colby at C-PAT 11. That's C-PAT-1-1. Thank you again for making us your first listen. Now make your second listen. Lockdown MLB prospects. Host Lindsay Crosby is a prospect encyclopedia,

and he's going deep on the MLB stars of tomorrow. It's free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. And with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball day. And we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.