Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - The Ups and Downs of the Mariners' August

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Join Locked On Mariners hosts Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode as they go over some offensive numbers from the Mariners' first half of August, what's come in the team's road series with the Rangers and take a trip down memory lane with a fun bit of trivia.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: http://patreon.com/controlthezone/BetOnlineThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Wild Alaskan CompanyUse the URL wildalaskancompany.com/mlb for $15 off your first box of Wild Alaskan Company high quality, sustainably sourced seafood. 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.

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You're home for Daily Seattle Mariner's News and analysis. My name is Ty Dan Gonzalez. Let's join, as always, by my co-host, Colby Patnode. On today's show, we're going to be getting into some offensive numbers from the first half of August for the Mariners and see who's trending up, who's trending down and who's kind of in between. Then we'll get into this upcoming series with Texas Rangers down in Arlington. The Mariners starting that one tonight, their final series of the year against the Rangers. And finally, we'll wrap things up with a little bit of trivia, I'm sure, to the delight of my co-host. But first, if you like the show, make sure to follow or subscribe to it wherever you prefer your podcast.

We greatly appreciate it. All right, Colby, let's get into these numbers. Overall, it has not been a very good month for the Mariners. They are 26th and batting average with a 235 average. 24th in OPS at 691, 20th NWRC Plus at a clip of 96, 24th of run scored with 53, but some good. good news here. They have the eighth highest walk rate in the league, 9.4%. 13th lowest strikeout rate, 22.6%. 13th highest hard hit rate at nearly 40%.

And they're tied with the White Sox for the 25th lowest batting average on balls and play at a 280 clip. So when you combine that in their hard hit numbers, it seems like they might be getting a little unlucky this month. Overall, though, this team has mostly been unable to convert in key situations. That was a big story of their road series against the Yankees last week. So, you know, I'm wondering, what have you seen from this offense as a whole? And what do you think has led to some of these issues for them? Yeah, it's, there has been a bit of bad luck.

There was the game in Texas, you know, a couple weeks ago where they lost three to two. It was the game Swanson blue. And it just seemed like everything was hit on a line or the game Castile blue. everything was hit on the line. It was just Adoles Garcia was just making catch after catch after catch. It was a very annoying series. So yeah, I definitely understand the unlucky part. You know, a big part of it is that guys who were hitting for pretty much the entirety of the season have kind of gone into the tank.

Jake Braley's been bad since his return from the COVID-I-L. Mitch Hanager hasn't been good. And he looks like he's trending worse. he's chasing a lot more pitches. He's not, doesn't really have any plate discipline right now to speak of. So, yeah, it's those two guys who have been, you know, really carried your,

your offense in June and July, they've been bad the last few weeks. And you're not getting really anything out of Cal Raleigh right now. So left field is kind of a black hole because you're not getting anything out of Freely and Dylan Moore is still too inconsistent to really count. on anything. So you just have a couple of holes in your lineup that, that, you know, you can't fill. So it's, it's a bummer, but it's really comes down to Hanager, uh, really, really falling off the table here. And Jake Braley ever since his return from the, uh, the COVID aisle, those two guys

have struggled. And, uh, it's not, uh, it's not, it's not working. Particularly for Hanager, he struggled with in the power department. He's, getting a fair amount of hits, but he's not really, you know, home runs, doubles. And your offense doesn't have a lot of that, right? It doesn't have a lot of home run power and double power. So you kind of have to string hits together. And when, you know, three to five guys in your lineup are struggling at the same time, it's really hard to string hits together.

So you're kind of in this weird, uh, where you really need Hanneker, uh, in particular to, uh, to start driving the ball with some more authority. So you mentioned a few guys there. Let's get into some individual numbers. And we'll start with the good. There are four hitters on the Mariners right now that are hitting for a WRC plus over 100. That's the average. Tie France with 160, Abraham Toro at 157, Jared Kellnick at 139, J.P.

Crawford at 110. France and Kellnick especially are leading the team and slugging percentage this month at a clip of 527 and 521, respectively. and some more numbers on Kellnick here, 14% walk rate, just a 15.8% strikeout rate and a 42.5% hard hit rate. It certainly looked like he's turned things around, and the numbers here confirm that.

Is this Kelnick's ceiling for the season, or do you think he's only going to get better over the final six weeks? I feel like this is probably, you know, as good as we can hope for right now. You know, because this type of player is an all-star, you know, so it would be a, it would be a little bit of a stretch to expect him to get any better.

Because, you know, he's playing a damn good center field as well. I think he's ranked eighth now and defensive run saved in centerfield. So the defense has come in, too, and, you know, he's sitting. He's taking a ton of walks. He's not striking out. Kelnick is, you know, if this is what he is for the rest of the year, you're really excited about that because that's an all-star, you know. And I think expecting anything more is is a bit unfair, really.

Sure. Yeah, you hope, you know, if this is what he is for the rest of the year, that's great. If he, you know, goes down by 20% or so, that's still really good. So, yeah, it's, I wouldn't, I would not be expecting another step forward. I think we're in the middle of his, his biggest step of 2021. And then we'll, we'll see. Sure. All right. And then let's, you know, just get into some of the bad here.

You mentioned Mitch Hanigar. He's slashing 246, 286, 351. He's striking out 25.4% of the time this month. Jake Fraily, you mentioned as well. He's slashing 188, 297, 313. The walk rate is still pretty good, but he struck out 35.1% of the time this month. Dillamore, just 27 plate appearances, and you probably can figure out why. He's slashing 130, 259, and you'll like this, 130. with a 29.6% strikeout rate in that time.

And finally, Luis Terence, you know, the hero of Saturday Night's game has hit the ball hard and had some unfortunate luck. But this month overall, he's hitting just a buck 76 with a 200 on base percentage and 294 slugging percentage with a strikeout rate of 28.6% and a 2.9 walk rate. Which of these guys do you think is going to pop and maybe get back on track? here over the next week or so, if any. It feels like it's Terenz because, like you said, he is hitting the ball hard. You know, it was pretty bad for, I think he went two for 30, you know, before the single, the walkoff single against Texas. So he was in a pretty bad slump, but, you know, in Toronto, you was hitting the ball hard

more than once or twice. So, yeah, it feels like he's, he's pretty close. Freely seems to get worse every day. So I'm not feeling too confident about that rebounding anytime soon. You know, Dylan Moore, the contact issues are still very real. So yeah, it's you hope it's Luis Turenz, but obviously if it could be anybody, you would want it to be Mitch Hanigar. But I just, I'm seeing Hanager chase sliders off the plate way too much. And he's also, you know, going after those fastballs that are about three inches.

off the inside corner and he just he can't he can't do anything with those especially in the power department like maybe he fights one off and bloops it into left field for a single but he's not turning on that pitch and hitting it you know 380 feet so yeah you want it to be hanniger but based on what we're watching right now turenz is really the only guy that i think is is all that close to uh to breaking out yeah uh hanniger has been worth negative 0.1 war um in the month of August it's just been and that's by fan grabs by the way he's just been really

rough to watch at the plate and it kind of really you know came to a head there in that Texas series the first game at home you know having the bases loaded and striking out there just you're not getting those

clutch hits out of the you know the usual suspects right now you know the the frailies the the handagers you're not getting those guys that are really that were the driving force of your offense for so long. Ty France has been the one constant, right? Feels like other than when he was dealing with that wrist injury, Thai France has been good throughout.

But everyone else has just, it's been up and down. And Hanager certainly had quite a few ups and downs this year. Overall, just kind of a streaky player in 2021. All right, coming up, can the Mariners finally win a series in Texas. That more, but first, I want to remind you this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by Bet Online. Bet Online is the fastest and easiest way to bet on all your sports action. Baseball season is in full swing and you can track all the action at BetOnline.

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night's matchup between the Mariners and the Rangers. But right now we're going to take a more broad approach to the series, look at it as a whole and see exactly how these two teams stack up against one another going into this three game series. In game one, it'll be Tyler Anderson for the Mariners versus Taylor Hearn of the Rangers. Then in game two, Marco Gonzalez coming off a complete game against Texas in Seattle last week. He'll be scoring off with Mike Fulton Nevich, and finally in game 3, a day game, Chris Flexen against Spencer Howard. Colby, you know, we were just talking about the offense and who you think might pop.

The Mariners facing one lefty, two righties. So who do you think could have a good series at the plate in this one? Probably Ty Pranson and Abraham Toro. Yeah. And Jared Kelnick. Maybe JP, we'll see. But yeah, it's not, it's Texas. So you would think you'd feel pretty good about going down there,

scoring some runs. But, you know, they were just down there. And in the last two games, they scored, I think, five runs. So, yeah, it doesn't seem to matter where they're playing. They're not going to hit. So, yeah, it's probably going to be the usual suspects. And then you're hoping that it's one more person. Um, you, it's in Texas.

So you kind of, you know, you can play the Kyle Seeger, uh, you know, in, in Arlington card. Um, sure. And that's, that's certainly something that that's on the table. And Seeger's been, he was okay, you know, in late July and early August. He's kind of fallen back a little bit here. So yeah, it feels like it's going to be, you feel pretty good about France and Toro and Kelnick.

Um, and then you. hope it's one more guy and kind of the guy who hits, you know, in between all those guys is Kyle Seeger. So you'd like to see him step up here in the series and, uh, and do some damage. Yeah, I think Seeger is a pretty good call. Kelnick going up against a couple righties, uh, should be interesting. Um, we'll, uh, we'll, we'll see. Uh, you know, for me, you know, it really comes down to the pitching for the mirrors, right?

Um, we know that it's going to be solid. We know that it's going to keep them in the game. Um, you know, We talked yesterday about, you know, we've kind of lost some confidence in you say Kikuchi. Logan Gilbert right now is really going through through it. You know, of these three guys right now, Chris Flexen, Marco Gonzalez, Tyler Anderson, I assume one of these guys are the pitcher or the starting pitcher that you trust the most, but which one is that?

Is that Anderson? Is that Flexon? Is that Marco now that Marco's been good for the last six starts? Yeah, it's it's Marco Um Okay He's just he's got the bigger track record You know Anderson's been okay

Prior to this year And this year was kind of a You know a breakout year If you want to call it that And it's still you know Number four FS stuff Probably number five Marco is is you know on on track

He's trending very well right now And you know really again There was the first two starts of the year He was awful And since then, if you take out the one awful start against Texas at home, and his first game back from maternity leave, he's been good. He's been 2019-ish, Marco. And that's better than, you know, 2021 flex in 2021 Anderson.

So, yeah, it's still Marco. If, you know, Seattle somehow sneaks their way into a one-game playoff, and they get to decide who's going to start that game by some fluke. I would want Marco to get the ball. So that's the guy I trust the most right now. Yeah, I think for me it's between him and Flexen, but Flexen hasn't been great on the road, right? Most of his success has come at Team Mobile Park this year.

So in terms of just this series in particular, yeah, I'm probably right there with you on Marco. Marco's obviously has the track record, as you mentioned. The last six starts have been really solid. he's looked like vintage Marco, and he just pitched against this lineup, you know, six days ago and had a complete game, held them to just two hits,

a home run from Charlie Culberson being the only run there for Texas. So, yeah, I'm probably leaning Marco as well. And leaning Marco in terms of just the entire rotation right now. You know, Kikuchi, as we talked about yesterday, has been bad since the ulcer break, you know, a little bit before that even. um you know flex and like i said has been inconsistent in his splits and uh tyler anderson is fine

right but he's not you know he's he's he's the number four and um you know and logan gilbert has just been rough as as again as we talked about yesterday it's just been uh really rough to to watch him with the um the fastball usage and all that but um you know i'm gonna call my shot here a little bit though all right i think Cal Raleigh is going to have a big series. There's nothing that indicates it. I have nothing to go off of. There's no signs pointing towards it. But I just kind of

have a feeling that this might be the Beef Boy breakout. Well, I mean, that's definitely your usual method for picking these things. No evidence. Sure. Max. Just throw it out there. And hope it's right. Yeah, throwing it out the wall and seeing what sticks. Sure.

I mean, there's literally, no evidence to suggest that that Cal Raleigh is close to any kind of breakout right now, but. Nope. Nope. But, but I'm just, I'm, I'm pointing to the fences right now, you know, call on my shot. And, you know, we'll, we'll see. Hey, you know, it doesn't usually go well for me, right? I believe this year, uh, I said Evan White was going to be an all star as my bold prediction.

that did not pay off very well for me. But hey, you know, persistence is key, and I'm just going to stay at it. I'm not going to give up, and I'm just going to throw this out there again. Cal Raleigh is going to hit two bombs in this series from the left side. We're going to see that Jim Tomey-esque swing from the left side, and Cal Raleigh is finally going to get on the left side.

the horse, even though he has shown no signs of doing that whatsoever in the buildup to the series. Yeah, okay. You let me know how that goes. Do you have a bold prediction you would like to share for the, uh, I know you're a huge bold prediction guy? I am indeed, except for mine are usually right. So, um, uh, yes, big caveat.

But that's because I don't make bold predictions. I use, you know, backs and analysis and I test. So my bold prediction is that Cal Raleigh goes one per 12 with six strikeouts. Uh, no. Oh, very bold. Yeah. Never said I had to be positive bold. Um, no, I, I, I think, um, you know, I, I think Dylan Moore has, uh, a home run in the

steel in the series. Okay. I like that. Off of Hearn? Sure. Tonight? Yeah, why not? Yeah, he's been pretty good against lefties this year.

So if that's, if he's going to hit a home run, pretty good shot that it's going to happen against Hearn. So, you know, just as much as you like bold predictions, right? I know you really love trivia. And in just a moment, I'm going to be putting Colby's Mariners knowledge to the test. I'm sure he's just absolutely thrilled about this. But real quick, once again, this episode is brought to you by Rock Auto. With the ever-increasing numbers of makes and models, it's now impossible for your local chain auto parts store

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Wildelaskin company.com slash MLB. Make sure to use our URL to let them know that we sent you. This is locked on Mariners and it is time, Colby. The moment you have been waiting for, I'm sure you were just over the moon that I'm doing this to you on the air and forcing you to answer some Mariners trivia. And I'm going to try to keep things fairly recent, though, all right? And by recent, I mean, like, within the last 13 years. So definitely within the time that you've been consciously watching the Mariners.

And I think you will get this one because it involves a player that you could say has some meme value. Are you ready? Sure. All right. So on this day, in 2008, August 17, 2008, the Mariners were in Minnesota. at the Metrodown. And in the fifth inning, a Mariners pitcher through not one,

not two, not three, but four wild pitches tying the league record for most wild pitches in one inning. Who was that pitcher? That's supposed to be memeable? Yes.

You want me to remember who's thrown four wild pitches in an inning? Okay, so 2008. I'll start giving you hints if you can't figure it out. But I want to see if you can think about 2008. Think about the pitchers that were on that team. Wasn't that like the, oh,

was that Carlos Silva and Jared Washburn? Or is that even? Your first hint is that at the time of the setting, it was 6-0 Minnesota. Okay. So, hmm. So it wasn't a good pitcher.

Was it a starter at least? Can you give me that? It's a guy who has started, but was a reliever in this game. Oh, it was. Okay. That's what the 6-0 hint was, but it wasn't the starter.

Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. So 2008, late in the season, team was pretty bad that year. Really bad. They were 47 and 76 at the time. Ooh, who, okay. So I'm trying to think of a player who may have played for the Mariners,

pitch for the Mariners specifically, who didn't, I can't imagine this as somebody who stuck around with the Mariners for a while, but I also imagine that it's probably somebody who caught traction somewhere else, which is why this is notable. Am I right? Yeah. Okay.

2008. Pretty sure Brandon Morrow wasn't here yet. Um, I'm going to, I'm going to say, oh, who, who, who, who, let me, let me ask you this. Uh-huh. At any point in his career, was he famous for a unusual pitch? Ah. It's possible. Was he?

It's, it's certainly possible. It's R.A. Dickey. It is R.A. Dickey. Pre-knuckleball R.A. Dickey, right? And as if the four-wool. wild pitches weren't enough. There was also a pass ball. Do you want to take a swing at who the catcher was that was credited with that pass ball?

Miguel Olivo? No. Kenji Jojima? It was Kenji Jojima. And by the way, despite five balls getting to the backstop in that inning, the twins scored just two runs and both were on two of the wild pitches. So it wasn't even that bad of inning. I mean, that's pretty bad. Banner Day for R.A. Dickey, apparently.

By the way, real fast, Jojima, very underrated player. Good player. Yes, good player. And we'll talk about him in a second again. Oh, okay. The Mariners ended up losing that game 11 to 8. The starting pitcher was Ryan Furibin.

Oh, okay, lefty, sure. Who gave up five runs in the first inning of this game. Ouch. The Mariners were down 8 to nothing after Dickie's inning, but they actually mounted a comeback late and totaled 16 hits. Adrian Beltray went deep. Latimer Ballantine went deep. There it is.

And Kenji Jojima made up for his pass ball with a solo shot the very next inning. There we go. By the way, Colby, do you remember Brian LeHare? I do. Yeah. Did you know that heading into this game, he was hitting 296, 352, 407? I did not know. He was quite literally one of the best hitters on the Barroner's side here.

And he had an RBI double in this game. Brian LeHare, Mariner legend Brian LaHare. Doesn't seem good. It was a pretty bad year for the Mariners that year, for sure. that was one of the last years for the Metro Dome as well that was 2008 this was 2008 yeah I honestly didn't remember that Joe Chimo was on the team that late I thought he was like 2004 to 2007 anyways I think he made it till 2009 oh okay yeah um but yeah that I saw that today and I was like all right we have to talk

about this on the show there's just too much crazy stuff in this game not to talk about this. Ryan Fierrevent. By the way, did you know that Ryan Fierrevin made a return and started a game for the Blue Jays in 2019? Yeah, I didn't know that.

With Vladimir Guerrero Jr. At first base, yeah. He came back as a knuckleballer. Yep. I remember that. I didn't look up the numbers on that, but I assume that it did not go well for Mr. Fierrevin.

I guess they probably not Yeah Especially against the White Sox Now of course that's that's pre You know break out like White Sox I don't think they were really that good in 2019 If I remember But I mean they still had Jose Arbrew

Tim Anderson etc So I'm sure it did not Go super well For uh Roll Ryan Uh But a Mariner legend nonetheless Did you just have the one question

yeah that was just the yeah that was the trivia question of the day just one yeah just just one for today I didn't want to overwhelm you considering I nailed it I thought maybe you'd have a backup but no no no no no I had my other facts I had my other facts I wanted to talk about because it was more about the game itself than the actual trivia question I just thought it was incredible that this how crazy this game was the twins had 17 hits right the Mariners had 16 and the mirrors were down 8-0 and they would have tied the game had they been able to hold it down through inning 7 through 9 it was 8 like I said it was 8 nothing through the 6th inning and they ended up scoring 8 runs they would have had an incredible comeback against a pretty decent twins team that year I mean that was you know Joe mauer that was Justin more no that was all those guys denard span was leading off for the twins there's a lot of a lot of good players on that Twins team. So, yeah.

So tomorrow, I think we're going to talk about these new jerseys that like these player weekend jerseys that have come across Twitter. I don't know if you, the listener, have seen them yet. I think they're pretty cool. But we're probably going to get more into that because maybe it's a little preview into what's to come for a possible jersey rebrand that we've heard about from time to time over the last, what, year or so. These rumors have been out there about the Mariners getting new jerseys. it's been a while now. For New Mariner, jerseys.

Yeah. Yeah, the rumors. Yeah. It's been like a year or so now that these have been rumored, right? Yeah, but we always kind of pegged, you know, this winter as kind of the reveal day. And I mean, it's, it's, it's been heavily hinted by, you know,

none other than Kevin Martinez himself, that that's what's going to happen. Right. It just, you know, it makes all the sense in the world to do it this winter. Yeah. So we're going to. talk about that tomorrow. We're also going to get into tonight's action and

what's to come tomorrow. So that's going to do it for us today, but feel free to keep the Seattle sports vibes going, of course, because, I mean, if you're a Seahawks fan, today is a pretty big day for you. Jamal Adams signing an extension with the Seahawks. So if you want to get caught up on that, check out locked on Seahawks with

Corvin Smith, Rob Rang, and Nick Lee. They're going to recap all the action from Saturday's preseason opener between the Seahawks and Raiders. They're also going to get you ready for the Saturday matchup against the Broncos and talk about the Jamal Adams extension, of course. So for Colby Pat note, I'm Ty Dan Gonzalez, and this has been Locked-on Mariners. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-U-U-N-Sor.

You can follow me at Dame Gonzalez. That's D-A-N-E, G-N-Z-L-Z, and Colby at CPAT 11. That's C-P-A-T-1-E. Have you self a beautiful baseball day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Betting on Major League Baseball doesn't have to be a guessing game. If you listen to the new Lockdown Betts podcast hosted by your boy Q and handicap and expert, Sterling. Get daily picks, blowout specials, wrong team favorite picks, and Lee Sterling's lock of the day. Follow the lockdown bets podcast brought to you by bettonline.A.g. wherever you

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