Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Mariners' Magic Number Is...

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Ty and Colby discuss the Mariners' big 9-6 win over the Padres and their improved playoff odds, as well as Bryce Miller's shaky start, and more.Check out our Patreon!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Follow the show on Bluesky: @lockedonmariners | @tdg | @mlbcolbyLocked On Podcast Network listener surveySupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!5-Hour ENERGYTime to fuel up and turn it up with 5-hour ENERGY®️ Transfusion! Go to https://5hourenergy.com today and use my promo code LOCKEDONGOLF to receive 20% off your order. This offer is only valid until September 30th on one order and cannot be used with other promotions. The code is not good on subscription orders.  Supply HouseJoin the TradeMaster program today at SupplyHouse.com/TM and start ordering plumbing, HVAC, and electrical supplies with just a few clicks. Plus, use promo code S-H-5 for 5% off your first order. That’s SupplyHouse.com!OpenPhoneStreamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/lockedonmlbGameday HueLet your colors talk—because colors speak louder than words. Right now, you can get 15% off with code MLB15 at GamedayHue.com. Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONMLB at monarchmoney.com/lockedonmlb for 50% off your first year.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when 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.

For the first time in two weeks, the Mariners have a winning streak. 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. Ahoy, Sailors. It is Tuesday, August 26, 2025.

This is Tuddin, Gazzalus, and Colby Patnaud for the Lockdown Marys Podcasts podcast. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network of your team every day. This episode is brought to you by Fandul. Football season is around the corner. or visit the Fandual app today and start planning your futures bets now. And as always, if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, you can check out on Patreon. All you have to do to check that out is click the link in the description of this episode.

Mariners beat the Padres 9 to 6 last night. We'll talk about the offense. We'll talk about Bryce Miller and get you set for the final two games of this series. The Mariners have scored 20 runs combined in the last two games. They actually have a winning streak for the first. time in two weeks. It's two games, but we'll take it. It's better than the alternative. It's better than

anything we saw over the course of that road trip. So, yeah, the mayors are in a much better spot. Seems like they're finally getting back on track. Seems like this offense is finally getting back on track and looking a bit more like that first homestand that they had together after the trade deadline. Cal Raleigh

hits the Big 50 oh yesterday. He is the first catcher to hit 50 bombs in a single season continues to extend his record in that department. He also becomes the first switch hitter in major league history to hit 20 plus bombs from each side of the plate in a single season. So yeah, like Mickey Mantle didn't do that.

Carlos Beltran didn't do that crazy, crazy stuff. How many other switch hitters can you name Ty? How many can you name Colby? Carlos Gian. Okay. Eric Ibar. Boom. Solid.

solid. Yeah. Hori Polanco, who got to 20 yesterday overall on the season, but 20 nonetheless. Big game for Polo goes three for four. Big two run double down the right field line. Big two run home run to get the Marys back into this one because it was four to one at one point in the Padres favor. They hit a trio of home runs off of Bryce Miller in the second inning and kind of seemed like a recipe for disaster. seem like things were getting out of hand very quickly there for the mariner's, but Polo strikes back immediately with that two-run bomb, brings the marers within one to make it four to three. And it was pretty much all Mariners from that point forward.

The Padres did threaten towards the end of this game. They did pick up a couple of runs to bring it within three. But the marers, again, like I said, they wind up winning 9 to 6. And again, really nice to see some consistent production out of this Mariners offense, which we haven't seen much of. Now it's only been two games, but still, it's nice to see them blow up for 11 on Sunday

and then come right back to the ballpark and put up nine on the scoreboard. So yeah, a big night for the offense. Thoughts. Yeah, it was kind of a weird night for the offense because they weren't just, you know, torching the baseball. They had a couple of bloopers and a couple of CNI singles

that just kind of found their way through and they led to runs and they scored runs on those for the most part. So again, kind of a weird night. Typically when we see the Mariners explode for, you know, 7, 8, 9 plus runs, it's with a ton of extra base hits. It's with a ton of home runs usually and a lot of walks and a lot of hard contact and things like that.

And last night it was more of a kind of, you know, hit them where they ain't type of situation. And it led to nine runs. I mean, you just think about the kind of the CNI single that gets by Machado that scores the go-ahead run early in that game or middle. of that game from Naylor. You think of the the base hit that Randy had that literally hit off the first base bag and bounced back to the pitcher. Never seen that before.

No. You think of JP Crawford's two RBI single that just barely out of the reach of the platinum glove winner Fernando Tatis Jr. in shallow right field. Like that's runs. And it turns out you needed a lot of those, you need pretty much all those runs to have any kind of safety in this game. And so, yeah, it was kind of a. a weird game overall for the offense.

I mean, they had 10 hits. They scored nine runs, right? They shot out seven times. Like, that's a good night. Anyway, you slice it. It just looked different than what we've seen in the past when the Mariners explode. Like, you know, when they did it yesterday against the, against the A's, it was just loud contact for the first three continuously.

And remember, you go back to the one game they won against the Mets where they scored 11 runs. It was, what, eight, nine doubles? and they were just torching the baseball all night. And then, you know, last night, nope, not so much. Not a lot of hard contact, but good enough contact to score nine runs

and to take game one. And yeah, kind of hopefully continue a trend of your offense scoring runs at Team Mobile Park. So it turns out you needed those runs too because Bryce Miller wasn't all that sharp, the bullpen, really weird night for the bullpen, in addition to a weird night for the offense. but overall, much like the offense,

fulpin got it done. So it was a weird game, but yeah, Polo, obviously the star of that one. A huge night for him. JP had a couple of hits as well. Yeah. Naylor had a couple hits. He's been in a little bit of a mini slump recently. So good to see that the Mariners were able to produce

without getting much of anything from Julio or Gino in this one. And, you know, on the road trip, they didn't get anything from, they got stuff from those guys and they couldn't win those games. and now back at home, not really getting much from them and they're winning games again. So I don't know.

Maybe this team is a, maybe this offense is T-Mobile Park merchant. I don't know. It was fun watching. It was certainly good to see some, some fight in this game. Very easy to have ended after the second inning. They produce runs in a ton of different ways.

It's nice to see. And it's nice to see that they can, you know, figure out different ways to win ball games. and so, you know, that's obviously going to be very important once October comes around, assuming that you get there, which you got quite a bit of help last night. Yankees and Red Sox did win, but Royals lost last night. So you have even more ground in between you and them. The Guardians lost again.

They're kind of six in a row. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're kind of out of it. Yeah, they're pretty much out of it at this point. I think really it's the Royals that you have to worry about at this point. And, you know, it's not September yet, but screw it.

The magic number is 27. Just putting that out there. A combination of 27 Mariners wins and Royals losses to guarantee yourself a spot in the playoffs. So just something to keep an eye on there. Yeah, the way I've kind of been looking at it is I've hit a number that I think they need to have to make the playoffs. and I've been looking at that as kind of their magic number, although I think I've overshot it, what it will take because the guardians have since fallen off significantly.

I originally said 88. Now it kind of feels like 85 probably get you that wild card spot. 88 might be enough to win the division. And right now they're at 70. So they win what? There's somewhere. 71. So they win 17 of their last, what is it now, 30 games, 29 games.

they do that then they have a real good shot to win the division if they go 500 the rest of the way they have a pretty good shot of winning that division especially if they can take care or winning a wild card spot especially if they can take care of the Royals you know in Coffin Stadium

here in a couple weeks but we will cross the bridge when we get to it yeah so you might want to create a big buffer zone so those three games don't matter all that much like let's be up by like six by the time that series starts shall we? But you also have the Guardians before that,

and, you know, they could get back in it, I suppose, they sweep you too and maybe even Tampa. So you do play a lot of those teams that are just below you in the playoffs or in the wildcard standing. So you can put all those teams to bed while continuing to kind of try and track down the Astros and you're back to a game and a half behind them. So, yeah, it was a, you're also, what, half game back in the Yankees for the five seed and a game back of the Twint or the Red Sox for the,

a number one wild card spot, which would give you a home playoff series. So yeah, I mean, it's still all there in front of you. And, and you just, you got to win, keep winning games. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't expect to pick up much more ground on the Astros here in the next few days. They're playing the Rockies at home. So, yeah. Yeah.

Thankfully, you actually got help from the White Sox last night, though. They're the ones that beat the Royals. and beat them handedly. I think it was 7-0-0 was the foul score. I think they got one hit. Yeah. And yeah, like you said, yeah, the Guardians are now 64 and 66.

After being one of the hottest teams of baseball. Yeah. They've really fallen off a cliff here, and they are now tied in the wind department with the raise who they're playing right now. So it actually, the first two teams behind you might wind up being the Royals and the Rays. Where are the Rangers out right now?

I think they're up 500. I think they're five and a half back of you, but keep in mind, you have the tie breaker there. Okay, so then the Rangers are part of the first two teams behind you then. But yeah, you have the tiebreaker.

You're up five and a half on them right now. It's technically six and a half because of the tiebreaker. They have to finish with a better record than you, not just the tie, which is why it's six and a half. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's the Royals on the Rangers

that are the first two. behind you but yeah it's really the rose are the only thing that I'm super concerned about making a potential run here right concern maybe not the right word but concern well and that's the biggest threat to you missing the playoffs and that's all related to what you do right yeah you have to fumble the bag pretty pretty bad to uh let's not put a pass this franchise to do so though yeah but but you have to fumble the bag pretty bad to allow the it's less about the royals and more about you yes that's what i'm ultimately trying to see if you go 500

if you go 500 the rest of this year you're probably going to especially if you win that series in kansas city as part of you going 500 you're going to be in the playoffs you just probably going to be the sixth seed and have to go to houston for uh you know three games two games so uh yeah still focus on that division but uh yeah i i still feel like that division's going to get

determined by that three-game set down in Houston in the last week of the year. So we'll see how it goes. But yeah, everything still in front of you, except for probably winning one of the top two seasons, getting that by. I think you probably blew that opportunity when you went two and seventh on that road trip. Yeah, we'll see. I'm still waiting for the blue days to go on a little bit of slump here.

I mean, it's been a hundred thirty games and they haven't yet. So, yeah. But yeah, so 27, the magic number. So basically any Royals loss from this point forward should be viewed as a win because it just lowers that number and it gets you one step closer to making the postseason. So keeping an eye on them. And obviously the mayor just need to keep on winning and stay relevant in this division race and all that stuff because the goal shouldn't just be to get into the dance. It should be to put yourself in a really nice position to get far. And securing a home playoff series.

Securing a home playoff series, especially in the wild card round would be huge. especially with how much better this team is playing at home. Right now they are 40 and 26 at home. They're 31 and 35 on the road. So you want to try and play home games in October. All right. We are going to switch gears here. We're going to talk about Bryce Miller,

who made his first start at T-Mobile Park in a little while last night. Go over that in just a moment. But first a reminder of this episode of the Locktime Airs podcast is brought to you once again by Fandul. August 26 is officially FanDuel Futures Day, a brand new holiday for football fans who live for bold predictions and preseason hunches. For just 24 hours, Fandul is giving you deals on NFL season predictions. So whether you're calling your MVP, I'm a long shot division winner, or ready to crown your Super Bowl champ before week one even kicks off,

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Crawford available on both the Lockdown Merritt's YouTube and podcast feeds. Lockdown has also put together a survey to learn more about our listeners and make your favorite podcast even better. Go to Lockdownpodcast.com slash survey to get started. Everyone who completes a survey will be entered for a chance to win one of $10, $100 Amazon gift cards. Link in the description. So Bryce Miller goes five innings last night, gives up four earn runs on three home runs,

six hits in total, four strikeouts, one walk, some good sprinkled in here, but for the most part, not a great start by Bryce. Yeah, not a lot of good sprinkled in. gave up a lot of hard contact, obviously the three home runs. The fastball was just getting newked, really in that second inning in particular. We saw him make an adjustment. He ended up throwing more splitters than any pitch, which I don't know if that's great for his elbow, but it was easily his most effective pitch.

The slider was pretty good. Got good results on the slider as well. So yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, people talk about the VLO and how it's up. So that means, you know, he must be healthy enough. And it's like, I mean, yeah, Velo's great and all. But when you're middle, middle with your most important pitch, which for Bryce is the four-seem fastball, it doesn't really matter. Like so I think they made a mistake or Bryce made a mistake.

I don't know how it worked out. But in not getting the surgery and just getting ready for next year, I think they made a mistake and not acquiring a number five starter at the deadline for specifically this. and we'll see how it goes. The nice thing is is that the Mariners have a bunch of days off here in the last five weeks of the season, four weeks now. So Bryce is going to be pitching with an extra day's rest

somewhat frequently, but it didn't seem to matter. He had an extra day's rest here, and it didn't seem to matter. It was kind of very similar results to what we saw in his last outing. It's very similar results to what we've seen for most of the season. Even good Bryce Miller this year is still

a guy who's struggling to go five and keep you in a ballgame. So it's an unfortunate thing. I think you just kind of have to chalk this up to a lost year for Bryce. And, you know, again, the other good news is is when you get into the playoffs, you only need four starters and you really only need four if you get to the LCSs or the World Series. Other than that, you can survive on three. And you'd stash Bryce in the bullpen. And I think the splitter combo, splitter slider, four-seamer combo for an inning or two out of the bullpen.

could play up very nicely. So there's still a chance for Bryce to give you some value out of this year. But he just doesn't look 100% healthy to me. And we know he's going to need some kind of surgery that would probably derail most of his offseason work. So, you know, it's kind of a weird night for Bryce where, yeah, I really like Bryce Miller, but I don't have any confidence in him whatsoever, regardless of opponent or where he's pitching. I just can't trust him because I don't trust the fastball command right now.

I don't care about the VLO. Again, if everything's in the middle of the plate, throw 120, eventually you're going to get tagged. Yeah. So the few positives that we saw last night, like you mentioned, got six whiffs on 19 swings on the splitter. It's 32% whiff rate. And then an 80% whiff rate on the slider,

four whiffs on five swings. his first inning was pretty good was pretty encouraging he did give up the double to a rise but that pitch was at the eyes you know that's just classic arise hit yeah it's just one of those things where it's like okay whatever but he was able to work around that

and so yeah that's kind of what made the the second any even more disappointing because the first inning actually looked pretty promising then it just kind of went off the rails but hey from that point forward he locked in enough

was able to get through the next three innings clean, relatively clean, didn't give up another run. And, you know, I'm glad that Dan didn't try to squeeze any extra outs out of him from that point forward once it was nine to four mariners. He just called it at that point. We're putting in Caleb Ferguson, you know, against the, you know, the two big lefties in O'Hern and sheets. But yeah, this is just kind of the reality of Bryce Miller in 2025.

five and what you have four more starts for Miller the rest of the way five about five unless they want to skip them which they might but yeah they might and like you mentioned earlier they do have quite a few off days coming up so it's possible they might do that especially depending on you know matchups all that I don't know if he would be lined up to pitch in the astro series but maybe they would change things around so he doesn't pitch on that series who knows but yeah it's just you just kind of hope that it doesn't completely blow up with Bryce and he's just able to give you five maybe occasionally you can get six out of him of you know three to four run ball and just hopefully your offense is pretty good that night it seems like that's kind of just the situation that you're going to be in whenever Bryce takes the bump and if you get better great but that's kind of just a bonus all right so the Mariners and the Padres wrapping up the series the next two days. we will go over the next two games in just a moment. But first a reminder,

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for sure. And then Darvish, his overall numbers kind of ballooned due to an eight run outing that he had. But as of late, he's actually been pretty good. So that's going to be a tougher one. And that's obviously a guy that has quite a bit of experience pitching in Team We'll park all that. But you got Wu to counter him. Wu has obviously been your best and most consistent guy. We'll see if he can continue that streak of six plus inning starts. That's obviously at 25 now.

So we'll see if he can make a number 26. Give him there a good chance to win tomorrow. But I'm fascinated by this game tonight. And I'm really fascinated to see Luis Castillo. Because again, I don't think that his struggles on the road were just, oh, he's not pitching that T-Mobile Park. related. He also needs to get his mechanics under control here a bit because it's not going to matter wherever he's pitching if he's throwing the ball like he did in Philadelphia and New York.

Yeah, you'd like to see the VLO sit more 95 than 93 and you'd like to see the, you'd like to see the arm side misses be measured in an inch or two as opposed to half a foot. you know and so that's really the the tell for for castillo is he's missing armside because once he starts missing badly to the arm side with his two seamer and his four seamer it's pretty unusual for him to find it in the middle of an outing so typically it's the hard stuff he misses arm's side the soft stuff he misses glove side and again the misses are bad they're not just missing the inside corner or anything like no they're they're seven eight inches off the strike zone and that's that's a problem because you can't even entice guys to swing at that

so yeah it'll be all about command and control for him tonight hopefully you can go at least six or seven you know you had to use your four of your big five guys in that game yesterday and you know Munoz pitched a little bit uh you know in that A-C or series, but he should be fine and good to go tonight as well. Brash, they probably not available, but you should have Spire. You should have Bizarro and all those guys. So hopefully he can give you a six, seven good innings, and the offense can get to work a little bit off of Cease,

who's nasty stuff, but, you know, is who he is at this point this season. He's a guy you can score some runs off of. He's probably going to rack up the strikeouts, though. So, you know, be prepared for that. But, yeah, you just need Luis to be solid, give the offense a chance to win it. and the offense hopefully can carry a lead into the sixth, seventh inning, because as we talked about earlier, you don't want to face, you know, you don't want to go into the eighth inning against this bullpen,

trailing by a run, because the game's probably over at that point. But, yeah, go out there, win a game tonight, win a series, and then have some fun with some, you know, with some house money on Tuesday, or sorry, on Wednesday before he head out back on the road for an interesting road trip. Yep. Before we wrap up here, the merits have dropped their 2026 schedule. There is one weird little quirk with with this schedule,

well, two, but the biggest one here being that they are playing a scheduled doubleheader in Seattle on Saturday, what is that, June 20th? Yeah. They are taking that Friday off because there is a World Cup game

happening at Lumen Field that day. yes that is also why second weird thing they have that random off day in the angel series july first uh i think it's just what a random they play two games and they have an off day and then they play the last game yeah they played monday tuesday and then they're off wednesday and then they play the series finale on uh thursday right that is also because of the world cup matches happening at luma so gotcha yeah yep also don't look at the august schedule you'll want to cry, especially if you're using 2025 winning percentages.

And you're kind of like pushing that over. Well, they'll be roughly this good in 2026. Don't look at August. Yeah. Hopefully some of those teams are nowhere near as good as they are right now because yikes. Yeah. This is, yeah, just for those of you curious, it's the tigers.

It's the Yankees. It's the Astros. It's the Brewers. It's the Cubs. It's the Phillies. It's the Blue Jays. you have two games against the twins three against the raise and one game against the red sox in that month yeah let's not pretend we have any idea how you know oh the raise will probably be bad you sure about

that chief yeah yeah sure yeah so yeah it's i think they only have two off days the entire month too so yeah we we won't worry about that too much until you know like july of next year but Yeah, it's on paper right now. It's a terrifying gauntlet in August. You know, we'll see. Who knows? I mean, for all we know, the Mariners are the best team in baseball next August and it doesn't matter.

Or for all we know, the Mariners are 10 games under 500 by then. And we've already sold it to deadline. And we're like, yeah, whatever. At least we can see Colt Emerson play, you know. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We won't have to worry about that for another 11 months. So cross that bridge when we get to it. But yeah, weird, weird schedule. That's going to do it for our show.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Marrars podcast for Colby Pat. Nodeota. I'm Tad and Gazzalus. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L.O underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Tedding Gazzalus and Colby at CPAT 11. That's C-PAT-1-1. We're also on Blue Sky. You can follow me at TDG, Colby at MLB Colby and the show at Lockdown Mariners.

You can also find us on Instagram at Lockdown Mariners. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace. Thank you.