Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Mariners Will Pursue Roki Sasaki and Have Their Eyes on a Former Top Prospect

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Per Adam Jude of the Seattle Times, the Mariners are preparing a recruitment pitch for Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki once he is officially posted. Ty and Colby give their thoughts on that, as well as the team's reported interest in former top prospect Yoan Moncada and Justin Hollander's comments about Justin Turner, Mitch Garver, and Mitch Haniger at the GM Meetings.Ask us questions!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11For your next listen, check out the Locked On MLB podcast. Prepare for the Fall Classic with Sully, who has it all covered every single day. Click HERE to listen now. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your Team. Every Day.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!SelectQuoteGet the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at SELECTQUOTE.COM/LOCKEDON.SelectQuote - They Shop. You Save.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.FanDuelYou can start the season with a big return on FanDuel. New customers can place a FIVE DOLLAR bet and you’ll get started with ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS - if you win your first FIVE DOLLAR BET ! Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. 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.

All right. So the Mariners are reportedly set to make a pitch to Roki Sasaki once he's posted this winner. Plus, they're apparently keeping an eye on a former top prospect out on the free agent market. That of more coming up here on the Lockdown Marries 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. Ahoy, Sailors. It is Wednesday, November 13th, 2024.

This is Tuning as Ellis and Colby Patnode for the Lockdown Marys Podcasts podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. So we got a lot to talk about on today's show. We're going to be talking about Roki Sasaki. We're going to be talking about this former top prospect, free agent. The Marys have been linked to by the guy that broke the Randy of Rosa Rana trade. So that's pretty interesting. We also have this article from Daniel Kramer. His takeaways from the GM meetings, which has some stuff about.

Mitch Hanager, Mitch Garver, Justin Turner. So we'll get into that a little later on. But before we do that, shout out to our title sponsor today. FanDuel, new customers can place a $5 bet. And you'll get started with $150 in bonus bets. If you win your first $5 bet, visit fanduel.com to get started. And if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, check out our Patreon.

All you have to do is click the link in the description of this episode. So we talked a lot about Roki Sasaki. on Monday's episode, we got a ton of questions about him. So if you watch that episode, you guys know how we feel about that. But if you missed it, Roki Sasaki, Japanese starting pitching Phenom, he's about to get posted. He's going to make his way to the majors a lot sooner than a lot of people expected. And because he's going to get posted a lot sooner than people expected, he is basically an international free agent, which means that he is subject to just bonus pool money, which means that once he signs with a team,

team, he's going to be making the league minimum, like any other prospect in Major League Baseball, which is obviously enticing to not just the Mariners, who obviously have their own budget restrictions, self-imposed budget restrictions, but any team in Major League Baseball. So it really is just the bare minimum to be involved here. All 30 MLB teams should be involved in Sasaki's market to some degree. But we do have confirmation here, which is exciting nonetheless that the Mariners are going to prepare a pitch. a recruiting pitch to Sasaki's camp once he has posted per industry sources to Adam Jude of the Seattle Times.

So it was reported that development is important to Sasaki and a smaller market might be important to Sasaki as well. I'm still firmly in the camp that he's going to land with the Dodgers of the Padres. But there is that report. We acknowledge that on Monday. So who knows? Maybe. And look, when it comes to development, no team has been better at pitching development than the Seattle mayor is over the last. few years. I mean, they have arguably the best rotation in baseball and four of those five guys are

homegrown. So right there, you have all the proof of concept. You really need to Sasaki that, hey, we can get the most out of you here in Seattle. Plus, obviously, there's the ballpark, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's the complete opposite conversation that we have about hitters in Seattle. It's just, you know, there's tiers to this, right? And the top tier is the Dodgers and the Padres. And until I see more that contradicts that, I'm just going to assume that he's going to L.A. or San Diego, but this is exciting nonetheless. Like we talked about Colby, it was very important that the mayors at least get this out in the public. Like, yeah, they are going to try for Sasaki.

Yeah. You know, the Mariners are a team that largely adds players via trade. And while that's fun and exciting, we don't hear about most of the work that goes on with trades and all that. So we don't know, like, it's a lot of. harder to sit here and be like they're not even trying when you know they're out there making it publicly known that they're talking to this free agent and this free agent and this free agent like they're not going to make those same kind of statements about trades right they're they're not going to sabotage themselves and we talked about you know how important it is to buy a little

goodwill you've already shot yourself in the foot multiple times this winter uh because signing won soto you know isn't a good strategy and all that garbage um we're not going to to pay for free agent hitters. That's not a good strategy. All the garbage, even going back to last year, the 54% blah, blah, blah. Like, they're really bad at this. One way that you can kind of, you know, buy yourself a little bit of credit in the fan base is by not sitting on your hands when there is a potentially generational talent coming over to the majors because he happens to play a position that you feel pretty good about your guys. Like you don't feel like you, you, it'd be really easy for them to be like we have our five starters it's not even worth our time yeah you you

don't want another situation like last year when jeff pass and reported that the mayor is balked at the money on otani like you you can't let that happen again no i mean in particular when a guy's not going to cost you any money but yeah yeah yeah so i mean you know good for them getting this out there early in the process to uh you know again we'll see if sasaki even takes a meeting with the mariners i don't see i would assume so i don't see why you wouldn't hear them out. But, you know, this is not that the Mariners are going to talk to them. This is not that they have a meeting set up.

Not that they could say that right now because he hasn't been posted yet. I'm sure there's some kind of tampering concerns there. But yeah, I mean, like, we talk about this. Like just in terms of like who has the best sales pitch for Sasaki, if we assume that everything that's been reported by one guy is accurate, you know. But that one guy being a reporter from Japan. sure sure like it's not like you know some random twitter account it's like a legit and he's like a credible writer like well yeah yeah yeah so like but it's still it's just him and everybody else in the game

is saying like it's the dodgers uh so like it's already basically done it's the dodgers um so yeah you know you have to weigh that a little bit but if we're just talking about like hey here's the plane the playing the playing field's level here's what he wants the mariners have one of the best pitches that they can make of any of the other 30 teams in baseball my only concern And the only reason I'm not really buying into this, you know, getting super hyped about the possibility is that what the Mariners can't do is say we have Shohei Otani and we just won the World Series. Yeah. We also have Yamamoto. Yeah.

Like that's a great pitch. Yeah. And while the Mariners can say like, yeah, we're really good at pitching development. And hey, you know what? Our guys stay healthy. The Dodgers seem to have a problem keeping their guys healthy. we don't. And look what we've done for Brian Wu and Bryce Miller and George Kirby and Logan Gilbert.

We know how to bring young arms along without, you know, injuring them in the long term and all that stuff. We don't push guys beyond what they're capable of, blah, blah, blah, the history, all that. You guys know the pitch by now. The ballpark, you know. The history with Japanese players, all that. All that stuff. Yeah. Right.

And so, you know, and so while, you know, you don't have Otani, you do have each hero who might be able to help you out here. you do have Julio who might be able to help you out here. You do have Iwakuma who's still involved with the organization. So you do have a good pitch. If the playing field was level, you have a good pitch. I don't think it is. I think it's already tilted heavily towards the Dodgers with a slight possibility if the Padres can get involved here.

But again, if we just take the reporter at his word that, you know, a smaller market, not small, but smaller market, the key on development and all that, then Seattle would be a fantastic pitch to make him. Well, like we talked about, that quote from that article, from Jim Allen's article, you know, it comes from a source close to Sasaki, right? And it says, we prefer that he play in a smaller market,

some along those lines, I'm paraphrasing, but we that sounds like an agent or something like baby right but it's like so that's that's kind of interesting right just a random family member it's like his cousin right right right so yeah i mean we'll see ultimately we don't know what sasaki wants we'll see if he takes the meeting with the mariners we'll see if seattle can even make it dense in what seems like a foregone conclusion but again the fact that they're at least you know they're going to make the effort and they've already made that effort publicly known that they're going to do this.

You know, it's it's exciting because it gives us something to keep an eye on here for however long this is going to take. Right. And while you don't want to give them like credit for doing the bare minimum on this, which is what they're doing by trying to have a meeting with them, it's more of a step than they took to her with the show Hey, Otani last year. It's more of a step they're willing to take

with then with Juan Soto this year. I mean, obviously those are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of millions of millions of dollars. I don't get me wrong. I'm not giving them too much credit. But like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, look, they this is probably the second best player on the, on the free agent market. The Mariners are interested and they're telling us they're interested, despite the fact

that this guy plays a position where the mariners really don't need to pour a ton of resources into, not that they would have to to get Sasaki. I know blah blah money. Of course they only go after the good player when he's cheap. Right. Yeah. Your jokes are all hilarious. We've never heard any of them.

Congratulations. Yeah. Like we talked about on Monday, though, you know, there's a possibility of a six-man rotation or this does, you know, make you feel a bit more comfortable about trading, you know, one of your starters. Because, again, the ceiling for Sasaki is sky high. This dude has insane stuff, right? You know, the only concern here is like he has had some injury issues on the

pass and he's only thrown a career high of 129 and third innings of the season. And obviously the workload is a lot more demanding in Major League Baseball for starting pitchers than it is in Japan. Once a week in Japan, once every five days in Major League Baseball. And that's why a six-man rotation

could be the most beneficial route here for both the Mariners and Sasaki. And that might be appealing to Sasaki as well, especially if he's going like, yeah, six-man rotation and I got these five guys that I'm pitching alongside. That sounds fun. Sure. I mean, I think the Dodgers would probably be really open to a six-man rotation, too, since they can't keep their guys healthy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I said, it's not going to be a problem with the sales pitch. It's just that you're pitching against the Dodgers, which is a team that reportedly he's wanted to pitch for for the last, like pre-O-Tani signing, he's wanted to be a Dodger. So yeah, yeah, you're just up against it. You're not starting off on, like I said, you're not starting off on a level playing field. You have to scale a mountain. The Dodgers, already at the top of the mountain. So we'll see what happens. I would be surprised if they landed him. But I'm open-minded to the possibility here. Because again, they have a very strong pitch they can make on a bunch of different angles. So I think it's real.

I think the possibility is real. I just, you know, at the end of the day, I feel very confident that he's going to be a Dodger or a Padre. Possibility is real. I win the lottery tomorrow and you guys never hear from me again. But sure. Sure. you know, is that real? But yeah, it gives us something fun to talk about here for the next, however many weeks until it is all resolved.

You know what they say. You can't win the lottery if you don't play. Hashtag not gambling advice. If you have a gambling addiction. Ah, man, I wish we had Fanduel coming up here on the ad read, but that's not until the second segment. So we're going to be getting into another interesting report evolving. the Mariners and involving a former top prospect here in just a moment. But first, a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown Marries podcast is brought to you by

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So we just talked about Roki Sasaki, but that is not the only player the Marauds have been linked to today in the media. Francis Romero, who, uh, You might remember broke the Randy a Rosarena trade. He was the first one to have that when the mayor has swung the deal for a Rosarena. He's reporting that Yohan Mukata, former top prospect of the Red Sox, the big piece traded to the White Sox and the Chris Sale deal from Boston, is generating interest in the free agent market. And more than five MLB teams are interested in Moncada.

and among those teams that have monitored him are the Blue Jays, Yankees, and your Seattle Mariners. So again, Moncada, former number one prospect in all of baseball. He was the prize of the Chris Sale deal. He's had some pretty good seasons, but he's dealt with injuries, and he just had his club option declined by the White Sox after a year in which he only played 12 games. He had an inductor strain that had put him out for pretty much the entire season. He was good in those 12 games. But in 2023, he was basically a league average bat.

263.05, 425 with 11 homers, 40 ribs. 2022, he was just fly out bad. 76 WRC plus and 104 games. 2021, he was actually really good. 120 WRC plus, 263, 375, 412, 2020, the shortened COVID season, 94WRC plus. And then 2019, he was amazing. 315, 367, 548. That's 139 WRC plus with 25 homers in his age 24 season.

But that was a long time ago. And a lot of stuff has happened. And he's gotten banged up along the way here. So it's 29 years old now. Switch hitter, obviously. It's a pretty swing from the left side. It's a really interesting play here. But the risk here is Luis Arias.

So what do you think about the Mankata possibility here, Colby? You know, I think he's interesting. Like you said, he's had a couple of really good seasons. And he's had a couple of bad seasons. He's battled injuries off and on throughout his entire career. And typically they're pretty serious injuries. So Mankata's interesting, again, at the right price. If you're talking, you know, one and a half, two million dollars with some incentives, fine.

Like, that's totally fine. That's worth the risk. if you're talking like $8 to $10 million, no, no. If you're talking about a guy who's going to cost more than Josh Rojas, I'm probably out. I'm not really interested in that idea. I don't think he's going to be. But I do understand why the Mariners would want to take a look and just be like,

you know, let's take a shot here because a million and a half or two million, it's not that big of a gamble to take even for the Mariners. It's really not that big of a gamble. And if you do hit on this guy, If you do get maybe not 2019, but can you get 2021, Yon Moncada, like the 120 WRC plus with, you know, fringe average defense. Can you get that from a switch hitting third baseman? He was a four one player that year. Yeah.

Like if you get that, like keep it. Think about as like Jemir Candelario, right? Like the nationals take a shot on Candelario. Was it the nationals who signed him? Yeah. Yeah. And he was really good. And they flipped him.

They end up flipping him at the deadline. He gets a big contract. Like, that's the show. shot you're taking here, right? Is that like, hey, this guy who has a bit of a track record, has produced at the big league level. So has some obvious red flags, but we can get them super cheap. Let's take the shot and see what happens. That's what you're kind of doing. And do you want to do that if you're the Mariners, like if you're a Mariners fan? Like, no, you'd probably rather they just go get Alex Bregman and go get Christian Walker and all. But we have to live in the reality

that we, you know, currently reside in. And is that the Mariners are probably going to have to take a shot like this on somebody in their lineup this year. unfortunately. But that's the reality. And Munkata, decent guy to take that shot on because there is track record there. There is, you know, prospect status there. Like, there is, uh, the path to him being an everyday player and third base not being a black hole for you. And if you can get, you know, third base figured out for two million dollars. Do you have more money to spend at first base and and second base in D.H? Yeah. In theory, you do. So it's an interesting shot to take. I wouldn't be excited, right?

But, you know, I'd be intrigued and see what they have planned for them. So we'll see if anything comes to that again. They might have just checked in and like, hey, you know, what's up? And, you know, maybe they were looking at a minor league deal or whatever, like you said. And the interest just

kind of died there. You know, maybe they're just keeping an eye on them and seeing where things go. Yeah, you actually want the Mariners to be making calls like this to just about every player. That makes sense for them. Just check it. Why not? Why not? Yeah.

You never know what can happen. Yeah. Due diligence, all the good stuff. So, yeah, again, we'll see if anything comes from it. All right. So let's get into this Daniel Kramer article that he posted on MLB.com. Yesterday, his takeaways from the GM meetings. Got some interesting information in there about Justin Turner, Mitch Garver, Mitch Hanager.

We'll go over that in just a moment. But first a reminder of this episode of the Lockdown Merritt podcast is brought to you by Fandul. Get ready to tackle the. NFL action with Fandul, America's number one sportsbook, because right now new customers can bet $5 and get $150 back in bonus bets if you win. The Fandual Sportsbook app gives you everything you need to place live bets on the NFL all in one place. So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, you can check out the latest stats, view

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So yesterday, Daniel Kramer, Mariner's reporter for MLB.com, posted his takeaways from the GM meetings that happened this past week with some quotes, some new quotes that we haven't seen yet from Justin Hollander, Mariner's general manager. So let's go over those. First, let's talk about what he had to say regarding Justin Turner. Hollander said, quote, we've already had discussions with J.T. and reiterate our interest that we expressed at the end of the season.

He's a player that connected with a lot of different parts of our clubhouse and really did make a connection with our team, with our coaches, and with our front office. We'd love to have JT back. So just reiterating what they've already said and what we already knew that they would like to bring up. bring Turner back. And Turner has said that, you know, he would be interested in coming back as well. And he absolutely wants to play in his age 40 season. So we'll see. I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of players came out after the season was over and

said, like, we really like Justin. And we feel that if Justin was here the whole season, we would have been in a better spot. So, yeah, seems like there's quite a bit of interest in bringing back Justin Turner. And then the quote that's been really making the rounds here and just the note here from Daniel Kramer that's been making the rounds here is about both Mitch Hanager and Mitch Garber. We anticipate both those guys bouncing back and being better than they were this year. Both those guys, huh?

Mitch Garver, sure. Yeah, like I can wrap my head around that. Absolutely. And plus, you know, Garver, like we've talked about, he has a defined role on the roster. He's your backup catcher. Man, he's had multiple really good seasons. So, yeah, yeah, it's feasible that he can bounce back. But Mitch Hanigers also mentioned here.

Well, he's on the roster right now. He is on the roster right now, Chloe. He is. But, you know, it does make me a little concerned that because Mitch Hanager is making $17.5 million that they're just going to keep him on the roster, even though you might get more value out of that $17.5 million by telling him to just go away because he was literally worth negative value this year. He hurt your team.

He was worth negative. 0.6 F-4. So, yeah. So obviously there's that concern that just kind of lingers over your head because John Stanton's calling the shots, right? And is he forcing this front office to keep a player who doesn't help them at all

on the roster just because he's making money? Maybe it's not all the question. So yeah, so that quote, while it's probably just GM speak, it does send up you know, signals a little bit. No. I know.

All right. All right. It's November 13th. Like, he's not going to be like, like it'd be, it sent up signals. They're like, yeah, Mitch Hanager sucks, but we got to keep him on the roster because, you know, guaranteed money and all like, oh, cool. That that's the level of transparency I can get behind. I mean, it sucks to like call out Mitch publicly like that. But like, yeah, that's the truth.

Mitch Hanigar is cooked. We all know. Yeah. He's not going to say that. Of course he's not going to say that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

This is nothing burger. like sure sure sure of course he's going to say it these guys are making 30 million dollars we know garver's almost certainly going to be back next year although again if they can trade them like it's it's not like they're like oh no we really think garber is going to be good next year and then like they get offered something decent for them it's not like they're going to be like nope nope nope we really think garber's going to be really good like no they'll trade them if the right deal comes along um so yeah i mean until hanager's on the opening day roster i really don't care

if he's around. But yeah, we've always known that the possibility that John Stanton wouldn't just eat that money and allow the front office to replace Hanager with, what's a nice way to say this, a major league player. Like, yeah, we've always known that was a possibility. So the fact that, you know, what, four months before,

four and a half months before opening day, Justin Hollander is saying, we expect Mitch Hanager to be better than he was last year. And Mitch Garter, well, yeah, they couldn't be much worse now, could they? So. Especially garre. Yeah, just like, no, I couldn't care less about that comment.

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. Now, I'm Taday Gonzalez. Be sure give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Marys. You can follow me at Tiding Gonzalez in Colby at C-Pat-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 Locked-on Mariners. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you next time. Peace.