Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Mariners Want Kodai Senga, But Who Is He?

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Yesterday, Seattle Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto spoke to the press at the GM Meetings in Las Vegas and made some interesting comments. Perhaps the biggest news was the confirmation of the team's interest in top international pitching free agent Kodai Senga. Who is Senga and what does he bring to the table? Colby and Ty discuss. Plus, Mitch Haniger won't be getting the qualifying offer, but does that mean he's played his last game for the Seattle Mariners? Finally, Prelander Berroa is getting added to the Mariners' 40-man roster in the coming days. Why and who else might join him? All of this 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/ SimpliSafe With 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. 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.

The Mariners have their eye on the top international free agent pitcher in this year's class. Plus Mitch Hanager is officially going to test the open market. We'll tell you our thoughts on that and more of Jerry DePoto's comments down in Las Vegas here on the Locked-on Mariner's podcast. Colby, hit it. You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day. It is Wednesday, November night, 2022.

This is Tyne Gonzalez and Colby Pat node for the Lockdown Mariners podcast. 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 today's show, the GM meetings are underway in Las Vegas and Jerry DiPoto met with the media yesterday. We're going to focus on three big topics he discussed, including the team's

interest in Japanese pitcher Kodi Senga, Mitch Hanigur's qualifying offer, and who the Mariners plan to protect from the Rule 5 draft, amongst other things. There were some other interesting notes from Depoto's media appearance. But Colby, let's start with Senga because this is really interesting. It's not very often that you hear from general managers or just any representative from a major league baseball team, just outright call out a free agent by name and say, yeah, we're interested in this guy. We want to bring this guy here.

But that's exactly what Jerry Depoto did yesterday in talking with the media. He just outright said that he views Senga as an impact pitcher in Major League Baseball. He, according to John Marosi, confirmed the Mariners have done their due diligence on him and plan to contact his representatives at the appropriate time. So when is the appropriate time, right? Because things get confusing when it comes to international free agents. especially when the posting system gets involved from Japan and all that. But the good news on this with Senga in particular is that he's already accrued 9 plus years of service time in MPB

and therefore cannot be posted. He is free to explore opportunities in Major League Baseball and other leagues around the world. But specifically in his case, his contract with SoftB has an opt-out for. for this season that allows him to explore those opportunities in major league baseball specifically. So he is going to be free to sign with a team as soon as tomorrow when free agency officially opens in major league baseball. So that's really exciting. Now, we need to say that just because Jerry Depoto outright said, hey, we're interested in Senga, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to land him.

Ross Atkins of the Blue Jays, the Blue Jays general manager also said we really like Senga and are interested in them. So that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but let's get into the numbers here for Senga, who's pitched in MPB since 2012. And in those 11 seasons in his career, as I need to bring up his career in numbers here, he's posted a 242 ERA. He's averaging exactly 10 strikeouts per nine innings pitched over 1,300 innings of work. And then specifically this past season, a 189 ERA. He struck out 9.7 hitters per 9 over 148 innings pitched in 23 starts. That's 159 strikeouts to 50 walks. He features a fastball and a splitter, which is.

often referred to as a ghost fork it is absolutely nasty if you can find it on pitching ninja's Twitter account I also posted a video of one of Sanga's last starts in Japan on my Twitter feed check it out because that pitch is disgusting then there's also two breaking balls that leave a little bit more to be desired and we'll see how that kind of how how teams in major league baseball approach that whichever team eventually Lance him approaches that. But it does seem like there is some faith that he can start, even though that there's really only two pitches that teams right now feel good about. What else can you tell me about Senga, though, learning a little bit about him here?

Yeah, upper 90s fastball, which plays very well at the top of the zone, thanks to the splitter. So he's, you know, a fact of that way. So it's a little bit concerning, at least for me, three, three point four based on ball per nine in Japan. that's, I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not ideal. You probably want him lower than three in an inferior league. So it'll be interesting to see because we know that strikeouts are probably going to go down when he comes to Major League Baseball, which is the way it typically works, especially when you consider the stuff that he has.

And so if he's, you know, walking three and a half guys per nine and he's only striking out eight and a half, that's, that's, you know, a pretty potentially, damaging situation. But this is being factored into his market already. There's nobody really out there that thinks that Senga is, you know, a number one, number two type of pitcher. He sees a four, probably a very good four. You know, if he's got the, if you can figure out one of the breaking balls, maybe make that a 55 great pitch, then he might be a three. But the lack of like great command is going to hold him back from being a top end guy. But he's very good pitcher and his market's probably going to reflect that.

Fangraphs along with a few other places seem to be projecting him pretty comfortably in the four to five year range at roughly between 14 to 16 million per year somewhere in that range. So it's $15 million year pitcher for four or five years and he's entering his age 30 season. So yeah, there are some other things. There's some durability concerns. you know, we don't need Ty to go over all the things that made you say Kukuchi a little risky in his first year. But they pretty much all apply to Senga as well. So the one thing we know about the Mariners is that they're not afraid to go into this market,

particularly for the arms. They did it with Kikuchi. They did it with Flexen. They appear very willing to do it with Senga. And we know that they have pretty good roots, pretty good boots on the ground covering the Japanese leagues and the in league in terms of scouting. So, yeah, I think it makes some sense here. I think, you know, if you're paying him 4 and 60, I think that's fine.

You could probably make that work. And that's, it's a pretty solid ad just based on stuff. You never know how it's really going to play. It's a big league level, but I feel pretty confident. This guy's at least a number four starter. Yeah, it's a really, really interesting opportunity here. And Senga is 29 years old as of now, but will turn 30 on January 30th. So you are paying for his age 30, 31, 32, 33, potentially 34 seasons at roughly, as you mentioned,

it seems like he's going to get about $14 to $16 million per year. So what this really, for me, what this really does is bring up an interesting question that is this just an exception? is saying it just an exception for the Mariners because there's so much unknown about him and the stuff is really interesting and especially that ghost fork and all the things that you can do with that.

Or is this actually an indication that the Mariners are willing to spend some money to round off their starting rotation? Because we've heard from Depoto that Chris Flexen keeps getting called on that maybe even Marco Gonzalez could move here. There are teams showing interests in their pitchers right now.

And with him saying that too, kind of feels like a deal might be close, but that's a conversation for a little later on. But does this mean that the Mariners are actually willing to pay 15-ish million dollars to round off their rotation with another free agent pitcher? Because that could put in theory, guys like Nathan Avaldi, Taiwan Walker,

James and Tyone, Martin Perez on the table. Yeah. It feels pretty likely that Chris Flexen's going to get traded this winter. It feels like there's enough interest in him. Maybe it's not a one for one. We've talked about different package ideas on yesterday's show. So it feels like Flexen is definitely going to get traded.

The interesting thing here is that what do you do with Marco? Jerry seemed to indicate that there was some interest in Marco as well. We did hear the rumor in July, or was it July, that the Phillies were interested in Marco Gonzalez for some reason. So maybe you could trade Marco. Maybe Marco is a salary dump type of thing. And maybe it's, you know, Marco for Max Kepler, you know, blah, blah, whatever it is. So maybe that's a possibility as well.

It feels like you have to trade Marco to not justify saying it, but like you can't pay Marco $7 million to pitch out of. your bullpen this year. It's not a skill set he has and you have to figure out what to do with them. So if they think they can move him and flexing, and it sounds like they'll be able to move flexing pretty easily, then yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense because also moving those two guys, if you can move those two guys, you're going to clear, you know, about $15 million off your budget, which is about what you're going to need to get Senga or Evaldi or Taiwan. So yeah, I think it makes sense and we're talking about the Mariners if they did something like this talking about a rotation where somebody like Senga would probably be the number five starter at least you know in practical

terms so yeah it's something that we've talked about how you know the mariner shouldn't ignore the rotation the only concern here is that is this money going to prevent them from going out and signing the second outfielder that they need the second bat that they need I don't know. We'll find out, but Seng is a really interesting player and it's a fun it's a fun idea because it does show that the Mariners are thinking about just getting better

in general, not just specifically we have to get a left-handed hitting left-fielder who's at least above average defensively and opposed to 335 on base. Like, no, they're just looking to get better in general. Yeah, yeah. All right. So we got news on Mitch Hanager and what the Mariners plan on doing with him. Are they going to accept his qualifying offer? Are they going to decline it? 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 SimplySafe. If you thought about securing your home with home security but have been putting it off, you'll want to listen up. Right now, Lockdown Mariners listeners can order the number one rated Simply Safe home security system for 50% off. This is their biggest offer of the year and you won't want to miss it.

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This is their biggest discount of the year, so don't wait that's SimplySafe.com slash locked on MLB. there's no safe like simply safe you're listening to the lockdown mariners podcast thank you so much for making us your first listen so we now have some clarity as to what the mariners are going to do about Mitch Hanager and as expected as i talked about on friday show when i went solo it just didn't make sense for the mariners to essentially give Mitch hanager $20 million for one season, which is what they would be doing with the qualifying offer. I believe the qualifying offer is set at $19.2 million, $19.3 million this year. So, yeah, essentially $20 million for a guy who unfortunately has really struggled to stay healthy and did not perform particularly well towards the end of the season after he returned from

injury. And Jason A. Churchill, Prospect Insider, today also saying that he's been hearing that Hanager is potentially going to be somewhere in the range of a one year nine to $12 million contract. So why would you give him 20 if you could potentially get him for 9 to 12 for the same duration? And that's essentially what Jerry DePoto said yesterday as well. He said, you know, I would say over the years, over the last couple of years that this is escalated for Mitch, that he likes where our team is now. He likes our team. He likes where we are.

He likes how our situation has evolved. I think he appreciates playing in Seattle. But there was a, it's actually a partner in here that speaks specifically about payroll flexibility. Yeah, here it is. We have a lot of needs that we would like to fill this. This is Jerry Depoto speaking. And we'd like to have as much payroll flexibility in doing that as we can.

That would be a sizable one-year commitment when we would prefer to work out something that makes a little bit more sense for us and for Mitch too. So do you think maybe that hints at a multi-year deal in terms of what makes sense for sense for Mitch as well? Because that's what it seems to indicate for me. Maybe it's an option, something like that. What do you think?

Yeah. For me, it's some kind of besting option with other options built. It's a very bonus driven type of contract, I think, is what Jerry's getting at. you know giving Mitch eight nine million bucks on a flat rate is fine but I think what you're really looking at your Seattle is you don't just want to hand out nine 10 million dollars when you don't have to just for fives just to reward somebody so you want him to have to earn that but you can't trust him to just give him you know 16 17 18 million dollars and be like, well, here you go. We know we're going to get this money back. No, you don't, not with Mitch Hanager.

So I think what he's getting at here is that like, look, if Mitch Hanager was healthy, would he be one of those guys who could fill the hole and be one of those impact bats that we're looking for? Yeah, but we can't trust him to be healthy. We just can't. So what we're not going to do is we're not going to give him $19 million when we can get him for, we feel like, probably nine and some incentives, or maybe like two and two and like 18 or something like that instead of one at 19. So yeah, it just made no sense to give Mitch Hanager the qualifying offer. He's not trustworthy enough. I do think that ultimately it makes the most sense for Mitch Hanager to sign in Seattle,

even if he has to leave a little bit of money on the table, not millions and millions of dollars. but if Seattle's offering him one and nine with some incentives, I could take it up to one in 12 and say Arizona's offering him one in 10.5 flat, it probably makes sense for him to come back to Seattle. So I still think that there's a really good chance Hanager comes back to Seattle. The decision to give him a qualify and offer that, that ship sailed probably in early September. It's just he's not stayed healthy and he hasn't really produced aside from, last year when he was he was incredibly healthy but he wasn't very good in 2019 he wasn't very good in 2022 and obviously he missed all of 2020 and most of 2019 so yeah it was just never going to happen

so it's like to give Mitch Hanager the qualifying offer essentially reading is Jerry it sounds like Jerry basically saying like if we gave him the qualifying offer we'd basically be giving him 10 million dollars for free yeah we're just not going to do that that's what I read into those comments yeah also said, you know, we've been in touch with Mitch and our hope is to work something out to have him come back as we expected. Obviously, he's now a free agent and we knew

that was going to be a part of this before you ever reach free agency. We will continue to be in contact throughout. Our goal is to bring him back. It remains to be seen whether that's a reality. And now, you know, Depoto has outright acknowledged like, if we don't land Mitch, we'll have two

outfield needs to fill. And so that's good, right? Because that means that he's, not satisfied with the left field situation. I think you and I both thought that, yeah, for sure, they're going to do something about right field, whether it's bringing Mitch back or addressing that, you know, with someone else.

But left field was a little bit of a question mark. Were they just going to come back into, into 2023 thinking or saying, you know, hey, like we still have Jesse Winker. We have Jared. We like what we saw, you know, that Jared did over the last month of the season, which that would be incredibly scary.

We think that Dylan Moore can play there more, you know, that would be incredibly scary, right? You know, and so ultimately, though, Jerry has said, like, that's something that we are interested in and interested in addressing. So that's good to hear. I thought that that Jerry said all the right things yesterday. He also talked about the willingness to move J.P. Crawford off a shortstop. Again, reiterated that, that, hey, if, you know, we end up landing a shortstop,

who doesn't want to move off a shortstop, doesn't want to go to second base, we will have those discussions with J.P. Crawford. Just getting that out of the way and letting people know, like, you know, we are open to that possibility. We would like to keep J.P. at shortstop, but if we have to move off of them, we will. So good to hear those things still, which also in turn kind of reiterates that they're interested in the shortstop market still, that they haven't been completely turned off of that because things can change, right? The end of season press conference was a couple weeks ago. Now more discussions are being had.

The season has actually ended. You're now in Vegas at the GM meetings where there's agents there and you're talking to guys. And once that picture starts to clear up a bit, you know, it starts to for some teams make it clear that, you know, you're not really actually going to be involved in this market the way that you were hoping to be. But so far seems like the Mariners still like where they're at on that front. And so, you know, we'll just have to see how it all kind of goes. But to me, judging by his comments about the pitching situation in particular and how they've already received calls and how he's just outright kind of saying like, yeah, Chris Flexson is being called on. There's a lot of interest in Chris Flexen feels like he knows like, okay, I'm going to get a trade that I like for him. We're pretty close.

I think that the first move of the offseason really for the Mariners at this point is probably going to be a Chris Flexent trade. You getting that same feel? You know, it's interesting. There's a lot of, you know, rumors flying around right now, not rumors, but vague, like, ideas being thrown around, which is what the GM meetings are always all about. Just like, hey, this guy might be available. Oh, this team feels like they need to move this guy. And that's really what the GM meetings are about. You know, it's interesting.

I think it was Morosi might have been Rosenthal was talking about how there's a sense that the raise are really motivated to get something done at these GM meetings because of their 40-man crunch. And they have to add, you know, a handful of guys to their 40-man to protect him from the Rule 5. And they don't have the room. So it's still like maybe the Razor or a team. that maybe makes a non-flexen move with Seattle. But yeah, I feel like if we're laying bets, like what's the first major domino to fall for the Mariners this off season,

I think it's probably a flex-in trade. Yeah, yeah. It's just, it seems the most obvious, especially like, again, when you hear a GM just outright mentioning players that are potentially going on the move, that means that something's about to happen or close to happening. You know, that's just because they feel good about it. Yeah, because, you know, that's a whole leverage situation.

That's a thing that compromises leverage for you as a team when you just outright start mentioning guys who are on the block, right? So you only say that when you know for sure like, oh, yeah, I'm going to get something that I like for this guy. So what's, what's kind of interesting about that too is that like if hypothetically they trade flex in for one of those outfield spots, you know, conceivably that's not going to be for a lot of money, which would in theory mean that they added to their outfield without adding significant salary, which means they can pay a little more to the shortstop.

So if you're really hanging on for that Trey Turner dream and you're not sure how they're going to come up with that money, you know, trading flexin for a corner outfielder or part of a quarter outfielder trade, you know, is a pretty good way to add impact to your lineup without adding significant payroll along the way. So, you know, if you're rooting for Trey Turner or Xander or one of those guys, you should really be rooting for Chris Flexen to be traded for somebody like we talked about yesterday, like Teoska Hernandez, somebody who fills a need for you who isn't going to cost 50, 60, 70, 90, $100 million.

Ryan DeVis said that it seems likely Flexen could be moved in a package of players to get a position player. So there you go. Yeah. DePoto also said that the Mariners are planning on protecting Perlander Barroa, the right-handed pitcher that they acquired from the Giants

for Donovan Walton last year, or earlier this year, rather, by adding him to the 40-man roster. And said that there are also a few other prospects that they plan on adding to the 40-man roster in order to protect them from the Rule 5, though he has not spoken to those players yet.

So we don't know who those guys are just yet. There's been a lot of rumblings about Joseph Hernandez, the right-handed reliever down in AA. Travis Coon, also a right-hand reliever down in AA. Pretty much no, Cade Marlowe is going to go ahead. Yeah, Cade Marlowe for sure. So that's about it, right? Oh, well, Isaiah Campbell as well,

who's finally healthy and pitching pretty well and could be a factor coming out of the Mariners. bullpen at some point in 2023. So any other guys that we should be looking at potentially as maybe surprise ads to the 40 man? I don't think so. I think what you're probably looking at, I think what we're probably looking at is obviously Borough, since that's been confirmed. And then Campbell, Marlowe, and Coon, I feel like those are three pretty obvious fits.

to be added to the Ford of Man Fernandez is kind of an interesting one but I really think that's it I don't think we're going to see like we're not going to see like Sam Carlson like we're not going to see that so I think it's pretty much those five guys

that we just talked about I can see all of them being added I think for sure Marlow will be I'd be pretty surprised if Campbell was left off I'd be pretty disappointed by that too I think he can really help this Mariners bullpen. Coon probably should be at it, especially if you're thinking about trading from your reliever stash

to help get that bat. So, yeah, I think, you know, Fernandez, I'm kind of on the fence about, I don't know if anybody would actually take him and carry them all year. But we'll see how the Mariners feel. And, you know, sometimes there's a surprise in there that we don't think about. And honestly,

Cain Marlow might have been that surprise, if not for the whole playoff. off, you know, taxi squad thing. So, yeah, I feel pretty good that Marlowe's going to get added. Burroughs is going to get added. And I really hope Campbell and Coon are both at it. Fernandez, we'll see. So lastly, DePoto said Matt Brash is going to be ramp back up as a starter going into spring

training and they'll adapt if he needs to go back to the bullpen. basically it's as insurance as a form of insurance if there's injuries to the starting rotation to me colby i think this is a way to sell matt brash as a trade ship hey guys look he's getting uh ramped up uh as a starter again you know he's a starter we're we're going to sell him to you as a starter not a reliever as a starter yeah and that is how the Mariners acquired, Randy a Roserina. I think what that's more about is I think that's actually more about, hey guys, we're pretty darn sure that we're going to be trading Marco Gonzalez and Chris Flexson.

So we don't want to go out and have to sign, you know, Michael Paneda types as like our sixth starter type of arm. So we want to have Brash and we want to see where Miller and Hancock and Dollar at are. and so we'll stretch brush out and all that. But to me, it's just kind of dumb. I think he's going to be a reliever. If he's pitching for you next year, it's going to be out of relief. It's just hard to imagine that he's figured out his control enough

that he's going to pass guys like Dollard on the depth chart if Dollar's survive. So I think for me that's more about like, hey, yeah, you know, we're going to trade flexing and Marco like guys in spring training or at least capable of going five innings because we're not going to go and give, you know, the Michael Panetta types or the Danny. We're not going to give them $4 million to be our number six starter if we signed like Senga. You know what I mean? So I think that's what I think that is what that is about. Yeah.

And it's probably a little bit of both, right? You know, because I think Brash is going to be someone that gets. Of course. I think Brash is going to get asked about a lot. in trades this this off season. That's going to be one of the hottest names that gets talked about between Jerry DePoto, Justin Hollander, and other teams. And the Mariners are going to hold on to Brash very tightly.

And they are not going to sell him as a reliever, right? If they are going to trade him, the other team, the team that's acquiring him better be paying starter costs. And that's how I feel the Mariners are going to be viewing that as well. I think like obviously it's different because the team's in different situation but they're going to look for like an Edwin-D-S type of hall in return just not prospect it's time, major leakers, but yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going to do it for our show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. For Kobe Pat node, I'm Tadang Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dane Gonzalez,

and C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat-11. that's CPAT 1-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first listen. For your next listen, check out the Lockdown Sports Today podcast

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