Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Seattle Mariners Are TIED For FIRST PLACE in the American League West!!

Episode Date: August 26, 2023

With another wild victory over the Royals, the Mariners have slid into a tie with the Rangers, who've now lost eight games in a row, for first place in the American League West. This is the latest in a season Seattle has led its division since all the way back in 2003, so of course we had to do a postgame show. But with Colby out of town, Ty brings aboard Ben Ranieri of Sea Level to help dissect the action at T-Mobile Park and discuss how the American League playoff picture could all fall into place.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 | @CPat11Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!IbottaDownload the free Ibotta app and use code MLB for $5 off when you register. eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.BunchesDownload the Bunches App today and when you do, our friends at Bunches have featured the LOCKED ON MLB Bunch in the “Discover” tab. Find the Locked On MLB bunch HERE. NutrafolTake the first step to visibly thicker, healthier hair. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com/men and enter the promo code LOCKEDONMLB. GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl Winner, you can GET BONUS BETS EVERY TIME THEY WIN IN THE REGULAR SEASON! FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.SleeperDownload the Sleeper app and use promo code LOCKEDON and you'll get up to a $100 match on your first deposit. Terms and conditions apply. See Sleeper’s Terms of Use for details. Currently operational in over 30 states. Check out Sleeper today!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) 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.

With a 7 to 5 win over the Kansas City Royals, your Seattle Mariners are in first place in the American League West. Ben Renary of C level and I will break down the game coming up here on the Lockdown Marries Postgame show. Let's get into 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 Friday, August 25th, 2023. This is Tiding Gonzalez and Ben Reneery for the Lockernery for the Lockeroy. on Marr's postgame show brought to you by Sleeper. Swing for the fences on Sleeper picks and you can win up to 100 times your money. Download the Sleeper app and use promo code locked on. That's L-C-K-E-D-O-N. You'll get up to $100 matched on your first deposit. Terms of Conditions Apply.

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The link as well as our social accounts is in the description of this episode 7 to 5, the final score from T-Mobile Park. The Mariners survive yet another nail-biter against the Royals. And with this win, Mariners are now tied with the Texas Rangers for first place in the American League West. This is the latest they've been in first place since all the way back in 2003, folks. It was a long time ago. Pretty incredible stuff. Ben, I want to thank you for hopping on here on such short notice with Colby out of town.

It wasn't pretty, but the boys got the job done tonight. How you feeling? I'm feeling good, man. Thanks for having me. Everything just continues to kind of come up Mariners. It felt good, obviously from the opening pitch, JP, jumping on it. I love to see him kind of get back in the swing of things and kind of be a tone setter for this offense that just continues to roll even when the pitching staff is kind of questionable. Thank you drive line.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Shout out. Shout out. Shout out. I believe that was the longest home run of J.P.

Crawford's career. Yep. Correct? Wow. That is, that's nuts. I mean, felt like the juice balls were present tonight, you know? Apple TV game Friday night, you know, looking good in the city connects, seemed like, you know, we were trying to get some offense going there. And the Apple TV balls were certainly in play, especially, yeah, that Josh Burahas had almost like three home runs and one at bat.

So, yeah, and got zero out of them, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, Kyle Isbel is a war criminal. And he should be charged for his, for his crimes against the Seattle Mariners tonight. yeah thankfully the mariners were able to yet another wild game against the Kansas City Royals Andreas Munoz had an interesting ninth inning we'll say another one but this time at least kept the royals off the board

I want to get your thoughts on him real quick because obviously he's been the story of the last couple days with what happened on Wednesday in Chicago what did you think about him tonight he had the couple walks I mean one of them was an intentional walk but he also had the he gave up a hit

load loaded up the bases it was it was an adventure right it was an Andre Smoonio's as of late type of outing so what did you think yeah man I think it's just he just is struggling so hard in those leverage counts those O2 counts those 1-2 counts

I mean it just comes down to the slider he needs the slider and for a late inning reliever like you need that confidence. The guy that we saw last year that was just, I mean, we all had the same confidence that it looked like he had when he took the mound. It's just like, this guy's going to throw a squirrel's frame every single time.

And he just doesn't quite have that right now. Just a lot of, and it doesn't help when you're going deep and counts and these long 25 to 30 pitch outings for him and Brash. Yeah. They're just going to wear down at some point. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing. Yeah, we also saw Matt Brash in this game for the first time in a little while. He gives up a two-run, home run to Kyle Isbell, of course.

Of course, right, Kyle Isbell, of all people. He had like three incredible catches within the first three innings of this game. He has a two-run, home run. I'm over Kyle Isbell. I'll just say that. Yeah, so what did you think about Brash tonight? Just kind of the same thing. I mean, he's given up three home runs.

in his career as a reliever. Two of them are in the last two weeks. He just, I don't know. I mean, judging by the comments from Scott Service and some of the reporting around him, it seems like he's feeling some arm fatigue. I mean, Velocity was there. I didn't think the slider looked as sharp tonight.

But I think just with the royals in general, they're just kind of an interesting matchup because they just don't swing and miss. Yeah, they don't. It's annoying. Even off of Brash, like it was another long inning, and it just looks like those guys are fatigued.

So whatever they need to do to kind of reshuffle this thing, if they need to kind of put Brash maybe back into this old role and kind of move Topa into his current role or whatever it may be, I think they just need to figure out how to take some pressure off of them. But I thought he was okay. Velocity was there. But yeah, just looks like he's kind of wearing down to me. The bullpen overall had to take on five innings of work in this game.

Bryce Miller only able to go through the first four. He was really good in the first inning. And then after that, just kind of lost control. Six strikeouts, one walk, three earn runs, all coming in the second inning off of six hits, five hard hit balls on the night in total. What did you make of his night? tonight because again like it started out so well it looked like we were going to get a really nice start out of bryce and then all of a sudden just the wheels kind of came off yeah that first

fitting was was so encouraging the velocity was up and it's just kind of the thing for bryce miller and his bad starts i feel like he just doesn't get as many whiffs um he'll miss in the middle of the play with the slider and he just again at some of it you got to give credit to the royals every once in a while you just got to tip your cap, like, that team doesn't swing and miss very much. Those at-bats were super long. It's hard to throw 30 to 40 pitches in an inning. I didn't think he was terrible, but if you throw 30 pitches in the second inning, it's probably going to cut your night pretty short,

especially for a guy who they're trying to limit his innings a little bit and his exposure. So I didn't think he was incredibly sharp, but he had a couple good innings mixed in there with some good Velo. It's just that roller coaster of Velo for Bryce Miller just kind of continues. Yeah, and I want to tip my cap here to Scott's service for, you know, looking out what Miller was tonight and going, you know what, let's not push it. Let's go to the bullpen here. Let's try to salvage this game and not try and force the issue here with Miller and try to force another, you know, three or so outs out of him for really no good reason. And the, uh, the bullpen for the most part came through aside from, the two-run homer off of

a brash from Isbell. So overall, good night. You know, on the pitching side, even, you know, giving up five runs against this team. It's still a pretty solid night for what this bullpen do. And then, you know, a couple of those innings from Miller as well, like you mentioned, were nice. But obviously, we'd like him to get deeper into the game

because this bullpen has obviously taken on a lot of work, especially as of late. And so any sort of reprieve that they can, it would be nice. But yeah, we'll see what that means for the rest of this series. So we're going to turn our attention to the offense and then we're going to talk about what happened around the league tonight. In just a moment, but first, a reminder, this episode of the Locked-on Marys podcast is brought to you by Sleeper. Want the chance to win more money with less picks. Head on over to Sleeper, where you can win up to 100 times your money on just

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You'll get up to $100 matched on your first deposit. Terms of conditions apply. See Sleeper's terms of use for details. Currently operational in over 30 states, check out Sleeper today. And you're listening to the Lockdown Merritts podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen after the Marr's 7 to 5 win

over the Kansas City Royals at T-Mobil Park. You can catch game two of this series on the Marri's hometown broadcast of SiriusXM via the SXM app as always. Check it out. And with that win, the Mariners are tied with the Texas Rangers first place in the American League West.

How about that, folks? How about that? I'm here with Ben Rennery of the sea level substack. You guys might know Ben. He was on here once after the Luis Castillo extension all the way back last year. This has been well overdue getting him back on the show. Ben, before we continue talking about this game, tell the fine folks where they can find your work.

Yeah, so you can follow me on Twitter at Ben Renary 10. And you can go subscribe to my substack. It's c-level BR.com. You can subscribe for free. I do a bunch of, I'll do a podcast on there. They're free that show up every once in a while. I do some free columns as well. Other than that, if you want to support,

you can do a monthly or a yearly or if you're feeling generous, an MVP subscription. So, yeah, go ahead and go check that out. Yeah, do it, do it for sure. Ben has dope content over there. He's interviewing guys. He's got great insight on the team.

Check it out. You definitely want to give him a follow over on Twitter. Check out his substack for sure. All right. So Ben, this offense went off tonight. I mean, they only scored seven runs. And when I say only, I mean, that's because they had 16 hits in this game. They had three guys with three hits on the night.

They also had two guys with two hits on the night. They had a lot of traffic on the base pass. They end up finishing five for 15 with runners in scoring position. And that's fine overall. 10 men left on base. You can live with that. but they definitely missed out on some opportunities. What did you think about the offense overall tonight?

Yeah, I mean, they didn't get a ton out of, like, guys like Julio or Typh Brants tonight, but I think tonight just showcases how important it is to get J.P. Crawford back. Three hits. Shout out to my guy, Tanner Stokey over at Drive Line. JP with the leadoff bomb, you love to see him kind of getting back in the groove, because for those that haven't gone through this, like I had a concussion in college as a player, it's as a hitter specifically,

it can be really, really hard. So it's really, really good to see JP, kind of getting back into form. And then my guy, Gino, just a really big night. And he's kind of struggled, and I'm sure he's a little bit frustrated with the lack of kind of over-the-fence power. But, man, he's come up big in some situations recently.

for them. And then other than those two guys, those two guys are kind of their, two of their emotional leaders in the clubhouse, but you kind of got to give a shout out to Jerry DePoto once again with the Dominic Canzone and Josh Rojas, those two guys just continue to, they've added this nice balance to the lineup with a couple left-handed sticks that both of those guys seem like they're kind of coming into their own. I know Rojas, if you listen to his interviews this week, on 7-10, he's kind of been making some adjustments. He made some adjustments right before he was traded over. And they're certainly paying off.

Both of those guys, I really like the way they're swinging it. And you have to be excited that you're going to have those guys for years to come now. Yeah, we talked about this during our prospect re-rank episode earlier today with Canzone. It's really the most impressive thing for me with Canzone is the plate coverage. He gets to a lot of pitches. And he's able to foul off a lot of pitches. He really just shouldn't be. He shouldn't be getting to some of those.

And, yeah, he's going to be a good player, man. I think the, you know, I said today, I think the athleticism aspect is a little overblown. But overall, like, I think he's a good player. And, you know, Rojas, again, tonight, three hard hit balls. Like, he's on another level right now. So, yeah, it looks like whatever changes he's made, those are working, and he needs to stick with that.

So, yeah, good night overall for the office. offense gets the job done and most importantly got that insurance run in the in the bottom of the eighth which was huge right the the royals didn't end up scoring on the top of the night but I definitely felt a lot better about things especially when it was second and third and when that all right it's at least tied if they you know park a ball in the gap here or something you know it's yeah um so that was that was good uh good night overall for the offense um all right so Ben, the first place Seattle Marrars. The first place Seattle Marys.

It is August 25th, well, now August 26th here in my neck of the woods. It is, for those listening or watching right now, it is 240 in the morning. The things I do for you guys. But yeah, your first place, Seattle Marys. How does that sound? It feels good, man. It's been a long time coming. I tweeted this out earlier, but it's really, really cool.

to see i've been saying for years now that seattle's a it's a sleeping baseball giant like they've been waiting for this and it was so cool to see a sell out this late in the year um especially for any of us that have followed this team for 10 15 20 years like to have a sell out this late in the year for it to be that meaningful and to jump into first place um especially with the the mountain and the deficit that they've had to overcome it's just it feels really good It was really good to be able to say first place. I can't believe we're in this spot. I can't.

I can't. You know, covering this team every single day. I mean, a lot of the days kind of blur into, you know, one. But, and I kind of, like, I'll admit it, I probably have forgotten a lot that's happened during this season because so much has happened. And it really has been a tale of two seasons, right? I mean, what is going on with this team right now? And yeah, the schedule has lightened up a lot as of late. But what they've been able to accomplish is nothing short of remarkable.

I mean, it's incredible what we're seeing. I mean, this is quite frankly an even more insane run than anything they went on last year. Like even the 14-game win streak. Like what they're doing right now is we don't really see this. We really don't see this ever. I mean, they're breaking records. They're doing things that haven't been done in like 30 years. Like with the, you know, two eight-game win streaks in the month of August.

like it's insane. And the other thing that I was thinking about today, it's easy to forget that this is now three years in a row that they've done this. I mean, obviously it didn't go their way in 2021. But it's three years in a row where they've been essentially middling until the middle of July.

And then I've just been like, yep, it's time to play baseball now. And it just turned it on. Like, I don't know. And for this? We just can't have any early season. and freakouts anymore. I don't know. Well, and for this to also coincide with the Rangers losing eight in a row.

I mean, the time, like, it feels like there is a higher power that is controlling things here. The baseball gods, if you will, are Mariners fans this year, right? Like, it just, it kind of feels that way, especially with what happened tonight. you're listening to the Lockdown Marrace podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen after the 7 to 5 win over the Kansas City Royals again. You can catch game two of this series on the Marriott's hometown broadcast tomorrow night

with SiriusXM via the SXM app. Yeah, so what happened around the league was pretty awesome as well tonight. The Astros were no hitting the Detroit Tigers through seven. They were up one to nothing. And then they messed around and Parker Meadows walked them. off three right shot i got a confession to make about that all right i actually watched that entire game

until there was two outs in the ninth and miggy was up and i was kind of like uh ryan presley miggy um and then all of a sudden like probably like seven or eight minutes later i get a tweet notification from ryan davish that parker meadows had walked him off so uh pretty good start to the night there yeah but yeah watched uh 26 outs of that And then, yeah, good finish there. The Ben jinks, right? There's the Colby Jinks. There's the Ty Jinks.

Now there's the Ben Jinks. Yeah, hopefully. I mean, so far so good, right? So after that, Rangers got dog walked by the Minnesota Twins, which is awesome. So again, they've lost eight in a row now. They're in a dark spot right now, which finally, right? I mean, look, I think they were a good team.

I was wrong about them before the season. I thought that they weren't going to be anywhere close to this. You know, I didn't think that they were even going to sniff the postseason still. I still felt like they were at least a year away. So I was wrong about that. But what they've been doing this year, like too many things have been going well for them. I mean, Travis Jankowski, for Pete's sake, is like a 120 WRC plus guy this year. Like, dude, what's going on?

Like, there's like some crazy. voodoo going on down there. I know that the injuries have started to mount up for them, but also like some of their guys are starting to regress. The pitching's starting to regress a little bit. You know, guys that have just gone on to have career years this year, they're finally kind of coming back down to earth. So that's nice to see because I'm just like, dude, when is, when is this going to give? When is this going to give them? So finally, that's happening. And the Blue Jays also lost tonight to the Cleveland Guardians in Toronto. And they're kind of stumbling a little. little bit right now but they are also going to hit their by far their easiest part of their

schedule coming up here they they are going to play the nationals who are hotter lately they've been i think one of the six or seven best teams of baseball since the ulcer break or maybe even before then so that's not going to be necessarily a walk in the park but they should be able to handle the nationals uh they got the aes i think they have the rockies they have a couple of fairly easy teams coming up. So I'm sure that they're going to be able to stack up some wins here. But now you're putting a little bit of a cushion between you and the Blue Jays. And obviously, you're not the first team or the last team in right now. That's the Astros. So more so Houston has to worry about Toronto right now. But still, it's, it's nice to see because now it's, they're up two games,

but it's technically three because they're going to have the tiebreaker over them because of the intra-divisional record. So yeah, what do you think about all this that's going on right now? What do you think about the standings in the race right now? Yeah, I find it pretty hard to believe that this isn't going to come down to that last week. To me, it's just you're hot right now. Stack as many wins as you can in these next. Well, you got two more with the Royals, then three with the A's, and then the Mets. Yeah, I think it's Mets, Rays, Reds.

Yeah, three last place teams. and then the rays kind of had their number for a little while. And then the red. So I think it's just kind of how many wins can you stack before you get to the really tough part of the schedule. And I mean, I think they play the Angels one more time. Obviously, we know what's going on with them. But they're always kind of pesky. And so yeah, it's just kind of how many wins can you stack over the next couple weeks and try to build that cushion like you said.

Yeah, yeah, they have to do it, right? because we've talked about on this show that they're going to have a bad series. They're the hottest team of baseball right now, but they're going to have a bad series. It's just baseball. That's the way that it goes. It doesn't really mean anything in one direction or the other. It's just,

you know, it's going to happen. And, you know, like you mentioned, right, they're going to play the race. They're going to play the Dodgers. They're going to play, you know, obviously they got the couple of series against, you know,

Texas and then obviously the one against Houston at the end of the season. I mean, playoff baseball for the Mariners is this going to start on what, September 22nd, September 23rd, whenever that first of those three series. begins. But yeah, you know, we talked about this. Colby and I talked about this a little bit on our Patreon yesterday. But I also want to, you know, get your thoughts on this here and just kind of talk about this a little bit before we wrap things up.

I think it's crucial for this team to win the division because of, again, how early they're going to start playing, playoff baseball. It would be nice to get those three to four days off after all of that madness to kind of reach. charge and get ready for the actual postseason and also be able to host some playoff games to start things off here as well um so you know how do how do you think this is all going to finish out oh man i don't know i think i mean i think winning division is obviously the ultimate goal like it's the jb inner thing um forget the wild card go win the division like that's what you want to do that'd be a huge milestone for this team and this franchise. I don't know.

To me, preseason, I thought it was the Astros. It's still hard for me to believe that they won't win the division. It seems like a really good team, but they're not playing well right now. So, I mean, it's going to come down to those last few games or those last few series, like I said. But, I mean, I think it's just get in the dance. and let your pitching do the work. Yeah. If they can get in the dance,

I think they have as good a shot of anybody. I think Wild Card 3 would be playing against Minnesota, who I know is an excellent matchup for the Mariners, with all those left-hand hitters and stuff like that. But, I mean, that's not a bad matchup either. But yeah, you certainly want to win the division, and hopefully they could pull it off. Yeah, because, I mean, you don't even have to play in that series.

Because, like, the twins aren't going to finish better than you. you're going to get one of the buys if you if you win the division so yeah being able to just avoid the wild card series entirely would be massive that would be massive obviously want to put a banner up in the in the right field you know stands but also would like to have those few days off after you go through that gauntlet to end the season so we'll see how it goes but we're looking very far in the future we got to take this one day at a time then Stack as many wins as you can. Tomorrow is a championship opportunity,

Ben, I don't know if you know that, but it is a championship opportunity. We got to take it one day at a time. We are still on to Kansas City right now. So see how these next two games go. Tomorrow, if they went, I don't think we're going to be doing a post game, but maybe Sunday if they went.

I think Ben and I will get back on here. Maybe Colby as well. He said that he would be back in town around the afternoon on Sunday. So we'll see about that, but Ben and I will definitely be on here Sunday if the Mariners beat the Royals. So, yeah, keep an eye out for that.

Again, Ben, let them know where they can find you real quick before we get out of here. Yeah, follow me on Twitter at Ben Renary 10. Go subscribe to C-level. It's in the link in my bio. You can just look it up at c-levelbr.com. Yeah, go ahead and subscribe. It's free to subscribe, or if you want to upgrade, that's totally cool, too. that's going to do it for our show.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners Postgame show for Ben Renary. I'm Taday Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You follow me at Dane Gonzalez, this is D-A-N-E-G-N-ZL-Z. You can follow my co-host, Colby Pat Note over at C-P-A-T-1-1. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well over at Locked-on Mariners. That's one word, Locked-on Mariners. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode.

Thank you again for making us your first listen after the the Mariners 7 to 5 win over the Kansas City Royals. You can catch game two of this series on the Mariners hometown broadcast with Sirius XM via the SXM app. Have yourself a beautiful baseball evening and we'll see you next time. Peace.