Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - We Tried to Build the Seattle Mariners Into a WORLD SERIES WINNER | 2026 Offseason Plan

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

It's that time of year again! Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby Patnode put themselves in the shoes of Jerry Dipoto and Justin Hollander to craft their 2026 offseason plan for the Seattle Mariners, making several major trades, retaining multiple key pieces of the 2025 ballclub, and more in hopes of building a World Series winner. Check out our Patreon!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Follow the show on Bluesky: @lockedonmariners | @tdg | @mlbcolbySupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!PrizePicksDownload the PrizePicks app today and use code LOCKEDONMLB to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.PrizePicks — Run Your Game.Click Link Here: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONMLBGametimeDownload 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.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA and NFL seasons are here, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.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.

On today's Locked-on Mariners, we're going to step in the shoes of Jerry DePoto and Justin Hollander and try to turn the Mariners into a World Series winner. 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, and it's Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. you're listening to the Lockdown Marys Podcasts, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. My name is Tiding Gonzalez, and I'm joined, as always, by my co's Colby Patnode. We've been covering the Marys for over half a decade now, and today we're doing something

we've done since the beginning. We're unveiling our off-season plan, which usually doesn't come out this late, but the Marys have never played as late until the playoffs as they did last month, so, you know, we were focused entirely on that. The Marys have also never beaten us to the punch on making a big move before we drop our off-season plan, but that changed the other night. So we'll talk about that here and a few as well. But before

we do, I want to shout out our title sponsor today. FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you'll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the Fandual app today. So what is our budget for this exercise? $170

million is the answer. Jerry DePoto saying shortly after the season ended that he views where they ended the 2025 season as a starting point for the 2026 payroll, which would be about $166 million, which is what we've been working off of the last few weeks and just all of our offseason talk. So we gave ourselves a little bit of wiggle room here with 170, but where are we starting? That's really the biggest question, right?

Like how much money are we actually going to be able to spend over the course of this exercise? So the combined guaranteed salaries for 2026 of Luis Castillo, Julio, Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh, J.P. Crawford, Andres, Munoz, and Victor Rublis, equal $80.9 million. And the combined 26 arbitration projections, which come via MLB, trade rumors.com. Like we always say, they're very accurate with that stuff. And usually if they're off, they're only off by maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, really. So the projections of Randy Orozorana, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, Matt Brash, Luke Raleigh, Gabe, Spire, Gregory, Santos, and Jackson Coar equal about $42.9 million, which leaves 11 roster to account for on the major league roster that are making the league minimum, which is $780,000 each. And that equals $8.58 million.

Then there's Mitch Garver and Jorge Polanco's buyouts, which equals. $1.75 million combined, which brings our starting payroll to $134.1 million. So we have about $36 million to spend in this exercise. Some housekeeping notes here, just to get out of the way before we get into the meat and potatoes of our offseason plan. We are, of course, tendering contracts to Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, Matt Brash, Gabe, Spire, Gregory Santos, Jackson, Coar. Randy, Rosarena, Luke Reilly, and of course, all our eligible trade acquisitions that we make in this exercise.

We are non-tendering Taylor Sossetto and Trent Thornton. And over the course of this exercise, we had to designate Blas Castano, Jonathan Diaz, Domingo, Gonzales, and Troy Taylor for assignment. We're also protecting Tyler Cleveland from the Rule 5 draft. And then all real-world transactions have been accounted for as of yesterday, which means, that Robinson Ortiz, for example, is on our roster here. So before we get into the moves, Colby, any thoughts about the off-season plan you would like to share? Sure. Lots of players were discussed that ultimately we did not go with.

That could be a whole separate episode if we wanted to do one. Also, you know, the AAB thing can get a little tricky. It's real easy for somebody like us who's doing this exercise to be like, oh, well, I'm only going to pay Player X $2 million this year. And that's going to give me $20 million because we don't have to worry about 20,29 in our offseason plan. We don't do that here. So whatever the contract is that we give a player or that we offer a player, we just assume it's a straight deal. So their AAV is what they would be making in year one. it just gets too tricky to do any other kind of like loophole or anything like that.

So we play pretty much straight up here. We know that, you know, teams will backload deals. But just for our purposes here, we just treat every deal as if it's a straight AAV deal. So, you know, could the murderers get the guys? We have backloaded deals in the past. Sorry, I interrupt. But we have backloaded deals in the past. But we try to do it within reason.

Like, we don't try to do anything insane. Mostly, though, like the fanciest stuff we'll do is like options. And buyouts. It's really good. Right, which the Mariners like to do the few times they hand out, you know, contracts. They do like to have options in them anyways and opt-outs and whatnot. So, but yeah, we try to play it straight up. Again, we're not trying to trick anybody and be like, oh, well, you know, Josh Naylor signs 92 million.

Well, we only pay them $1 million this year. Then we can go get Alex Bregman. And it's like, no, because we know that in 2029, that means you have to pay Josh you know, they're $36 million or whatever, and obviously that's not going to happen. So we did to try to play this one straight up money-wise. And we actually came in a little bit under budget, which is fine because you have to account for, you know, emergency call-ups during the season and trades and all of that. And, you know, being off here and there in our estimates.

So, yeah, I overall, I think it's a pretty good plan, but just know we talked about a ton of players that did not make this plan. And we're not trying to get cheeky with the whole opt-out. or you know backloading of contracts or anything like that we're trying to play it pretty much straight up and uh if you want to hear the process of us putting this all together uh you can head on over to the patreon we did that over the last few weeks worth of episodes over there um and we tried to keep the offseason plan discussion off air to a minimum so most of our planning for this did happen on record so if you want to hear that all

that's uh that's over on the patreon patreon patreon.com forward slash control the zone all right let's uh get into our our moves here and the first move should be pretty obvious let's just get this one out of the way because it happened in real life the mayor has actually beat us to the punch on something uh thankfully there isn't too much of a difference here at least uh as it's currently being reported and uh he he was in our off season plan to begin with so we didn't really have to change anything here uh we're going to plug in the real world deal here which is uh five years 92 and a half million dollars for josh naler our initial offer was four years 76 million dollars with a 20 million dollar fifth year option so again we don't know if this deal is backloaded or

anything like that in real life those contract details have yet to come out we just know that it's a five year 92 and a half million dollar deal now but that is if it's just straight across the board that is an 18 and a half million dollar a v our initial offer was $19 million A.A.V. So there you go. I guess we could use this time, Colby, since we've already talked a lot about Josh Naylor and his fit and why you had to get this done and all that a couple days ago, I guess we can just take this time to, I don't know, get your reaction to the specific contract that was reported yesterday after we recorded on the Patreon. Yeah, I mean, it's right in line with what we thought, maybe a little bit under, but not significantly

so. I mean, there's really not anything to dislike about the deal. It's five years. I'm sure the Mariners ideally would have liked to have gone for, but again, they didn't want to mess around with this and you give them credit for that. Just get this done. I don't try and get the best deal you possibly can. Just get the deal done. Who cares if you overpay by a year or buy a couple million bucks. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, the contract is right in line with what we've kind of. assumed it would be all along we never bought into the whole like oh he's going to make a hundred and thirty million dollars like no no that was never going to be he might get six seven years no no he wasn't going to so yeah i mean it's right in line with what i thought um i am interested to see the structure the no trade clause um you know it sounds like it runs through the full five years we know that the mariners when they give out five your contracts. I like to, you know, have a sunset on those, on those no trade clauses, usually about three years into the deal. But it doesn't sound like that's the case. But again,

we don't have the full structure yet. We don't know how much this is backloaded. We don't know if the no trade clause is, you know, for all five years or if it expires after year three like the Mariners like to do. But just even if it is just a full no trade for five years and it's just a flat 18.5 AAV across all five years, it's really good value. And it's right in line with market value. The Mariners didn't have to overpay to get Josh Naylor to come here. And, you know, that that's good. I mean, that's, that's what you want. So there's really nothing to complain about in the, uh, the Josh Naylor deal. So we're trading for Brendan Donovan, which shouldn't come as, as much of a surprise. We've talked about Donovan a lot. We've talked about, uh, us wanting a traditional lead off hitter, uh, wanting to add someone like that to this lineup, uh, this winner. And so we're doing. that here with Donovan. So we're sending Michael O'Royle, Durangelo Sanger, and the 2026 comp round B pick that the Mariners are expected to be awarded.

They haven't been officially awarded yet, but they're expected to be awarded that next month. I think that's around the one Armenian so that happens. Yeah. So we're sending that to them for Brennan Donovan and old friend Riley O'Brien, who's figured out some things in St. Louis to help beef up our bullpen a little bit more here. So what do you think about this deal, Coley? Yeah, I think it's aggressive.

I think it's an offer that is much more based in the realm of reality than some certain Cardinal fans want to believe Brennan Donovan is worth. And I think it's, again, ultimately, I think it's very aggressive because, you know, Brennan Donovan is a good player. He's a three-win player, you know, he's an everyday player who can play multiple spots, including some. you know, premium defensive spots. But ultimately, his value, any way you want to shake it down, is roughly that of Randy a Rosarena. And Randy had, you know, two plus years of club control when the Mariners acquired him. And Donovan only has two.

And yet we're paying more for Donovan than we did for Randy at Rosarena, at least on paper. So I think this is a totally fair and legitimate offer. I think this is one I can see the Mariners making. I think it would be one, the Cardinals would frankly be stupid to turn down. So you want a player that's going to be in demand on this market, you have to pay up for him. And I think we did that. So this is a good, aggressive offer. Again, it's more than we gave up for Randy.

And it might not cost this much, honestly. But again, if you want to outbid somebody, which you're probably going to have to do for a player like Donovan, this is how you do it. You get aggressive with it. You don't try and sneak out every single dollar, ring out. every single prospect you can say look does bernand donovan help us yes and we get him for two years does riley o'brien help us yes and we get him for five years like and so yeah does it stink to lose sangea and erroyo yeah i mean those guys could help you this year probably more likely next year for sanger but uh you know they they could help you but you're trying to improve your squad

this year that's the goal of our offseason plan it's to go to the world series and we don't have a, as, you know, before we made this deal, we don't have a second baseman or a third basement. Now we have at least one of those spots filled at the very least. And it's with a guy who is incredibly consistent, pretty much puts up the same stat line every single year. And if, you know, Cole Young pops or whatever, I can move Donovan to third. If Ben Williamson or Colt Emerson pops, I can move Donovan until a second. I could put Donovan in right field. Like he just checks so many boxes for me. He's kind of the perfect player here to go out and get, and he gives me a true lead-off hitter, particularly against right-handed pitching.

So I can put Randy back down in the five or the sixth spot. And I don't have to put Julio in a position that he doesn't like to be in. So, yeah, to me, again, this is aggressive. It is pretty darn good haul for the Cardinals. And that's what you have to do to get players like this in the offseason. So don't worry about, you know, if you can get them for Arroyo in the comp round B-pick alone, great, do it. If you can get them for Sanja and Arroyo.

Roy like fine do it whatever but we wanted to be aggressive on this because we would rather overpay in these simulations than be like we see this all the time be like oh well you know you just give up Tyler Guff and Emerson Hancock that they want young pitching give up Logan Evans and Emerson Hancock that'll get you Bernard Donovan and it's like no it won't so we'd rather overpay in these scenarios than underpay and I think this is about what it's going to cost and again the Riley O'Brien thing is not just a throw and he's a legitimate part of this trade. If you guys aren't familiar, go watch some of him, go look at his savant page.

Dude can throw. He's nasty. And we wanted to add to our bullpen. So we kind of knock out two birds with one trade here. And I like it. All right. We're going to go over more of our moves here as we unveil our 2025-26 Seattle Mariner's off-season plan in just a moment. But first a reminder of this episode of the Locktime Marrars podcast

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Thank you so much for making us your first listen and also thank you for making lockdown the number one sports podcast network. we're unveiling our 2025-26 Seattle mayor's off-season plan, something we've talked about a lot, not just over the last few weeks, but really since the build-up to the trade deadline, Luke Rayleigh and Dominic Canzone are very redundant with one another on this roster. They both really cannot coexist on the same roster together.

One of them has to go, unfortunately. And so we made that decision in our off-season. season plan. We're trading Luke Rayley to the Cleveland Guardians. And we were wondering, like, is there a relief version of Luke Rayleigh out there? And I think we found our answer. It's Tim Herron, who had a great 2024 and sucked in 2025. So it's a challenge trade, right? The guardians are hoping that they get a bounce back from Luke Rayleigh. They need offensive help. The mayors need bullpen help. They need left-handed bullpen help. specifically. They've outright said that they would like to add a lefties of the bullpen.

And they're hoping that they get a bounce back out of Tim Heron, who is pre-arbed. This actually saves the mayor of some money because Luke Rayleigh is projected to make about $1.8 million in arbitration. About a million bucks. It's really not consequential on the money front. But no, sure. I should say for the record, if I were going to trade one of these two guys, I would much rather trade Dominic Canzone. I'm a big Luke Rayleigh fan. I think he's just a better player than Dominic Canzone because he can help you in so many different ways. And it's real easy to see Canzone or to see Rayleigh bouncing back in a pretty sizable way. He was really good in 23 and 24.

So I don't make this trade lightly, but, and again, I would rather trade Canzone. But I think most teams would also rather have Luke Rayleigh than Canzone as well. So it's kind of tough. If I can make this trade and swap out Canzone. hand zone for Rayleigh. I would do it in a heartbeat. I don't think Cleveland would, though, and that's kind of the point, although Cleveland definitely needs help in both center field

and the corner outfield. So maybe, maybe they do it like that. But yeah, this trade, I think it's a fun challenge trade. I think it's interesting. Heron gives you something that you don't really have out of the bullpen, and that's a big curveball. The Mariners are very much sinker slider heavy

in the bullpen. Heron is more four-seam curveball, which is big. I mean, you still throws a sweeper. I mean, so you still have that help. He gets a lot of whiffs on the curve, too. Lots of whiffs. Even this year, by the way, in a bad year for him. And the fastball video is fine. He's a lefty throw in 94, 95. Like that, that'll play. That's legit. But it's the curveball is the big piece here of Heron's, you know, Arsenal. And it's his go-to pitch. And it's still thrown from a pretty low arm angle, like the Mariners like out of that bullpen. So it's a similar arm slot to a lot of

guys out of this bullpen but it's a lefty instead of a slider it's a curveball so it really is a unique different look it gives them a second lefty out of the bullpen it's one that they can save money with and it's also one that has a very high upside out of the pen so i like heron again i wish i could get them for can zone i just i don't think you're going to be able to do that but if you could great absolutely but raley i think would be very enticed into a team like cleveland i think he makes a lot of sense so again it's a bit of a challenge trade But I just don't see any way that you can not move on from either Rayleigh or Kanzone this winter. It just seems impossible to have them both on the roster.

So Rayleigh had back-to-back-29 WRC plus seasons in 20203 and 24. Heron coming off of a 932 case per 9, 343 walks per 9, 192 ERA, 286 FIPP season. In 2024, he was worth one F4 flat over 65 and two-thirds innings. And then this year, 949 case per 9, 633 walks per 9. So it walks big issue for him this year, 485 ERA 508 FIP, negative 0.4F4. The big difference was opponents started crushing his fastball. Opponents were hitting 189 against his four seamer in 2024. That jumped up to 378 in 2025.

Marys are taking out bigger challenges in their bullpen and made it work. You know, honestly, you might be able to even get like a small lottery ticket from Cleveland on their end of the deal because Rayleigh has been a better player and he's a, you know, a strong side platoon guy who can play multiple spots. That's more valuable than a lefty reliever, especially when coming off the area. So you might actually be able to get a small little bonus in this deal, but the crux of it is one of your lefties that you don't really have room for for, you know, their left-handed bull up an arm i think it's a deal that makes sense for both sides so this one is not going to be popular at all because we're just outright salary dumping louis castillo uh we're sending castillo to the giants along with 12 million dollars which will be paid out over the next two years for hayden bird song and and trent harris couple of right-handed pitchers that we're going to stash down

on the miners bird song with some starting experience so he's uh he's another guy to kind of fall into that group with like emerson hancock logan heavens etc trin harris i think 27 years old uh reliever big time yeah just an interesting guy to take a shot on but make no mistake this is a salary dumping trade we wanted to save as much money as possible as we could on uh on louis castillo and so uh we are saving 18 million dollars as far as 2026 is concerned we felt that was fair for a giant's team that is looking to add rotation help Castillo while there are splits concerns and the stuff just isn't as good as it was you know even just a couple of years ago still had a really

solid year this year he goes to a pitcher-friendly ballpark in san francisco felt like that was a pretty decent fit and maybe that's that's a shot that the giants would be willing to take on for 18 million dollars per season rather than the 24.1 yeah again this is why we've talked about this. We talked about it a lot while putting this plan together. It's just very difficult to improve your team off of where it ended last year without either spending more than the $166 million that they say is their starting point or trading a big contract.

And the Mariners really only have two. And it's either Luis Castillo or it's Randy Roserena. And we talked a lot about, Luis, you know, we're not even sure what we can, you might actually be able to get something legitimate for Luis, I don't know. Or you might just have to salary dump. I mean, this is a little better than the, than the Gino's salary dump. I actually like Harris quite a bit, and Birdsong's flashed at the big league level.

Those are two guys that kind of go into the bullpen pile. And Birdsong maybe, you know, is in the rotation in AAA and is that guy that you go to. He's the Logan Evans or whatever, and he certainly has a higher upside than those guys. So you're not getting nothing for Louise, but you'd probably rather just hang on to Luis in an ideal situation. But again, that would require either, A, we're basically done if we don't make this trade. And B, are you actually better? If you just bring back Naylor and Donovan, are you actually significantly better than you were last year? It's hard to say.

So it really is not an easy decision to make. and there's just not a lot of teams when you kind of go down the list like, okay, who's willing to take on salary, who needs starting pitching, who pitches in a pitcher's ballpark, and all of that. There's really not a ton of options. Like San Diego is one, but they're trying to, like, remove salary. You know, San Francisco is probably the best one. Maybe the Yankees down the line, maybe the Red Sox,

but there are a lot of, you know, big-name pitchers that are expected to move this winter. Kodai Senga is apparently being shopped heavily right now. like that's that's surprising and obviously terrick scubel's out there and freddie peralta is probably going to get shopped especially of woodruff accepts his qualifying offer today like which he probably is going to like there are a lot of big name starters out there who are making less money than louise we're going to be out there and trade and that makes things difficult that muddies the waters a little bit so yeah this is the best we can come up with it's not a good situation either way but i do think this is kind of a good middle ground on what you could get for louise depending on how much money you you eat while saving the Mariners enough money for us to do other things with that money. So it's kind of trying to, you know, thread the needle here a little bit. I don't mind if Luis is here next year. That's probably what's best. But I do think ultimately it's just really hard to actually build a better team with the budget

restrictions that we are working under if you're not going to trade Luis and you're not going to trade Randy. So after the first three moves that we made, Nailer, Donna, Dono. and heron our payroll was at 156.2 this trade now brings us down to 138.1 in payroll so what are we going to do with that money well we're going to repurpose most of castillo's money into bringing back wari palaco on a two-year 28 million dollar contract which includes a 15 million dollar 30 year option with a two million dollar buyout so he's guaranteed 30 million dollars over two years he's going to do what he did last year for us he's going to mostly dh and then if we need him to he'll play some second base we're hoping cole young really steps up and takes that job but if he doesn't we wanted to make sure we had a viable backup plan at second or third which is a why we traded for donovan but also you know you get to a point where hey polo can play second and if can zone is really hitting well he can dh primarily like they did basically to to wrap up this season that's a real possibility they have to do

do that again. And so we wanted to bring Polo back to make sure that, you know, hey, if Cole Young does take off, great. We have a, you know, primary DH who can move around a little bit, give guy certain guys days off and whatnot. But we have a primary DH and, you know, now we've added Donovan on top of retaining, you know, Nailer and Polo. So we feel like we've replaced the three big bats that the Mariners have, you know, are going to or would have lost. Two of them are just resigns. That's fine, whatever. But the other the one is Donovan, who, well, very different from Gino is still a valuable offensive piece because he gets on base a ton and he doesn't strike out and the

defense is probably improved. Better fit for the ballpark probably. Right. Also saving about $15 to $20 million in payroll space if you're going to try and sign Gino. So yeah, we feel like we've replaced the bats pretty well. And we did it with, you know, without having to trade a top four or five prospect in the system and without having to spend as much as we would have if we just brought back, you know, Polo or just brought back Gino as well. So I think there is a big plus here. And, yeah, Polo just still makes a ton of sense. We'll probably talk about Polo. Well, I don't know we will this week, but obviously there were some news about him this morning that came out and he's willing to wait out

the market. I just say I'm not willing to wait out polo. So like, I'm not holding off on any moves until January when Polanco decides to sign. But I do think that this is ultimately about where he's going to end up in terms of AAV, whether or not he gets a third guaranteed year. I don't know. But I do feel like our AAB and our structure is pretty close to on point. And you're listening to the Locktime Airs podcast for the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. As always, if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, we have a Patreon. It's called Control the Zone. And on there, we talk Marron and Seahawks, all that good stuff. For more information, go to patreon.com forward slash control the zone link in the

description. And like I said earlier, if you want to hear the process of putting together this offseason plan, all the names we threw out there, all the ideas we threw out there, you can hear pretty much all of that stuff on the last few episodes of CTZ. that have come out over the last few weeks. So, yeah, so to recap again, you know, Josh Naylor's back, obviously. Brennan Donovan, we acquired him via trade, and we're bringing back Hory Polanco as well on the offensive side of things. So I guess we'll quickly just tell you what our plan is there in the infield.

So again, like Polo is primarily going to DH and then he'll play some second base. He is an option to play more second base if need be. but right now Brennan Donovan's going to be our third baseman which he hasn't done a lot but he should be fine there and we're going to give some runway here to Cole Young

to try and take that job and run with it and like we said over the last few weeks if you're going to hand the keys to one of Ben Williamson or Cole Young at either second or third base we'd be far more comfortable doing that with Cole Young because obviously he has the prospect predicate

pedigree and we think he's going to be a pretty good player eventually so we're going to see if he if he can be a pretty good player right now and if not you know by that point cole emerson should be ready to get his first cup of coffee in the big leagues and see if he can stick uh we can move brennan donovan's second base again horay could go play some second base as well so we have some safeguards uh for cole young and there's another one that we'll talk about a little later on that we'll put in place. But for now, I want to talk about the Luis Castillo replacement because we've talked about this since last year.

Like if you're going to trade Luis Castillo, you need to go out and properly replace them, which makes the whole situation, you know, complicated. Like how much money, you know, how much of the money that you're saving on a Castillo deal are you going to be reinvesting and just backfilling his spot in the rotation? so initially we were going to trade for geoffrey springs of the a's we had that written down like we sat on that for a few days like we thought that was going to be a part of the plan uh springs that was making like 11 million dollars and you know over the course of the time that we had you know made the springs deal or at least you know like we had that written down

in pencil and our plan to the time that I decided to, you know, we decided to pivot. You know, we had done another fan fiction Friday or a mailbag Monday or something like that. And, you know, we're getting Terrick Schuble questions or trade proposals. We're getting Joe Ryan question and trade proposals. And I'm like, why is no one asking about McKinsey Gore? because I think there's some people in the industry that think, you know, if you laid out all three of them, they would say Gore is the likeliest to move this winner. Now, Gore isn't as good as Joe Ryan or Terrick Scoobel right now, at least. Probably never when it comes to school.

Maybe he's got a shot to catch, yeah, maybe he's got a shot to catch Joe Ryan. But yeah, probably, probably not when it comes to school. um and then i looked at his arbitration projection and he's only projected to make 4.7 million dollars so i'm like why not just make a better trade offer for gore because like our are our uh geoffrey springs deal was like it wasn't anything insane but it would sting a little bit but why not just beef it up but yeah but why not just beef it up and go get a a best better pitcher with much higher upside who is under club control not just this year but next year and McKinsey Gore and fits perfectly for what like we need in terms of like the payroll and

all that he works perfectly so we're trading for McKenzie Gore and we're sending Harry Ford Logan Evans and Tai Pete to the national to get it done and so we used two trades as kind of like a baseline to just kind of get the ball rolling because both of these pitchers had two years left of club control at the time that they were traded just like McKinsey gore the Dylan C steel uh going from the White Sox of the Padres and last year is hazus lazardo uh trade from the marlins to the Phillies those two trade comps are not perfect Dylan sees had a couple of four win seasons under his belt he was coming off of a three and a half win season before he was traded um McKenzie gore's never had a four win season before in his life right

but he's also coming off of a better year than Lazzardo was coming off of last year by far Gore is coming off of a 2.9 F4 season I think 2.8 somewhere in there Lizardo was like he posted like a 5 ERA I think he was a sub 1 F4 pitcher last year so we kind of wanted to split the difference on that so Starlin Caba and there was an outfield prospect that went from Philly to Miami in the Lazzardo deal and then the Padres White Sox deal was Drew Thorpe

who had just come over in the Juan Soto deal he was a pretty big name and a couple other guys that were in the top 10 for the Padres farm system so that's a little too much but again like Dylan sees far more accomplished pitcher at the time that he was traded than the McKinsey Gore is right

so yeah so Gore coming off of a nice season obviously I think we all remember what he did on opening day against the Phillies when he struck out what 13 Phillies hitters dominated the Mariners for six innings a team mobile park yeah but in the end

you know wrapped up his year 417 417 ERA rather with a 374 FEP 10 4 3Ks per 9 361 walks per 9 it was a step back year from what he did in 2024 though

I would say the the strikeouts went up but everything else kind of got worse numbers-wise. And he started giving up a lot of hard contacts, which was kind of the big issue. And, you know, McKinsey Gore, out of all qualified starters over the last few years, has the highest batting average on balls put in play. Which is often misintributed to being unlucky,

but when you also have some of the highest exit veloos against you, it's not all that unlucky. Yeah. So it's command, command and control. Yeah. Mostly command when it comes to Gore. But also, you know, pitching in T-Mobile Park helps a lot of pitchers. It does.

And, you know, Nationals Park, I don't know if that's what it's called or not. I don't know what its technical name is. But it's, I believe it grades out as pretty neutral. So it's a big upgrade park-wise. And obviously the Mariners pitching development has, well, just proven to be significantly better than that of the Nationals. And I do think that Gore is a good fit here. and I actually think the Mariners are a good trade partner because they have the one thing that the nationals desperately need

and that is a warm body who can actually play catcher at the major league level. Yeah. Because the Nationals had by far the worst catcher situation of baseball last year. Khybert Ruiz is a bust. They know it. And neither of them are very good defensively. Neither of them can really hit all that much.

you know, they don't have a guy in their system that's ready to go to take that spot. So they really could use catcher help. Now, they're obviously kind of doing like a soft reset of their timeline. They're trying to push it back a couple of years. And it'll be interesting to see what they do or how they kind of handle it because they have talked about, you know, we do need to, you know, amass as much talent as we possibly can. And it's very clear that they want to, you know, they're moving their timeline from like being ready to compete 2026 to like 28, 29, somewhere down. that range but they need to do it before James

Wood hits free agency so do they want players who are major league ready or do they would they prefer maybe a a you know felon celestine who's a couple years away and he'll be up when this team is ready to start competing or do they want to you know get a guy like

like Harry Ford who is going to be their opening day catcher and they can groom along the way you know get him a couple of years of major league experience before they're ready to compete and they can decide there. So, yeah, there was kind of that conversation, like, which way did the nationals go? I don't know, but I know their catching situation is so bad that Harry Ford is going to be incredibly interesting to them.

He has to be. Yeah. So, and I also think you also kind of get a little bit of a, of the ladder there when we gave you tie Pete in the deal is you get kind of this lottery ticket who's a couple years away from even sniffing the big leagues, but the tools are loud and massive and he could be a part of this thing. And obviously Logan Evans is just kind of there to help them backfill that rotation. But I think this deal is kind of right in the middle of the cease and the Lazzardo trade.

I think it's reasonable. I wouldn't want to give up much more than this for McKinsey Gore, quite frankly, because I have doubts that he's anything more than a pretty good number for who will miss bats. But it's there. We know it is. And one other thing to keep in mind with Gore, and this is also pretty major red flag, He has a pretty consistent trend of getting worse as the season goes. Like he really struggles in the second half of seasons.

He's never thrown more than 160 innings. So there are some durability concerns here as well. And that is a red flag. So I think that's why he's not going to cost multiple top 100 prospects. I see like the Rosenthal's of the world be like, oh, yeah, he's a top of the rotation arm. it's like he's not he is not the top of the rotation arm he is a mid rotation arm at best right now he might have the upside of the top of the rotation arm and i'm sure that's how the nationals will try and shop him all i would say to the nationals is good luck with that maybe you find a sucker

but it's not going to be me i harry ford is a perfectly good offer uh when you add in tai p and logan evans as well it gives them a legitimate shot to be in these conversations and that's about as much as i would be willing to risk on on a guy like mackenzie gore because the upside is real it's very real but the down the down the down the down side is has won out consistently over his entire career so you know we flip-flopped on that for a while the Harry Ford fell in Sallison thing landed on Ford which means that we now need to go get a backup catcher so the resigning that everyone everyone was waiting for everyone was anticipating Mitch Garver is back folks on a

one year three million dollar deal now pump the brakes there is an asterisk on this move we don't want to assume what other teams are going to do independent of like the mariners involvement right obviously this exercise is about assuming a lot but like for things like other teams non-tendering guys we're not projecting that for this offseason plan we don't feel comfortable doing that But if Jonah Heim gets non-tendered by the Rangers or if Luis Torens gets non-tendered by the Mets, we would rather give this offer to those guys. So that's the asteros here. But in general, Garver, very familiar with your pitching staff.

He has been able to stay healthy over the last couple of years. He's been fine behind the plate. And he's been a fine hitter relative to how backup catchers hit. right he just out a league average bat who's a back catcher yeah he just you know obviously wasn't anywhere close to the guy that you thought you were acquiring a couple years ago he wasn't worth twelve million dollars is he worth three or four million dollars yes so we uh we still had a bit of money to play around with uh we actually had more than we thought uh at the time that we were doing this uh but um we're sending uh an old favorite of ours willie castro utility man to a one

year seven million dollar deal now cashro someone we talked about a lot in the buildup to the trade deadline when he was still with the twins he did get traded not to the marries but to the chicago cubs and he was god awful it was terrible uh yikes yeah but we're going to take the shot on him bouncing back here it's a one year deal seven million bucks whatever gives me versatility you can play a bunch of different positions uh he hit lefties well this year at the very least maybe not over his entire career but this year he he was a you know an above average hitter against the left-handed pitching and the mariners frankly needed to get a better right-handed hitting option off of their bench

against left-handed pitching and this is another safeguard potentially in place in case you know Cole Young doesn't work out right so it's another guy that could fit in there basic also play some third you can play some right field play some left field and there's a bunch of different stuff that we can we can do with willy cashier and we felt with the money that we had available that was the best use of it we did way instead giving this money to a reliever talked about like the michael copex of the world and the hobi milner's and the danny coolums and guys like that uh but uh but yeah we wound up giving the money to willy castro Yeah. Again, this is a hedge against Cole Young. It's kind of a hedge against Emerson and Williamson because he can play both of those spots. But also, and perhaps most importantly, it's a major hedge against the right field platoon of Canzone and Robles because, you know, there's a possibility here that Willie Castro can handle one side of that platoon. There's really no splits in his career. He's been the same hitter, W.R.

RC plus-wise against righties and lefties. So there's a chance he's a switch hitter. He can handle one of these two sides if Canzone should fail or if Robles should not get back to what he was a couple months ago, that he can handle that position. Or maybe he just wins it outright and he is the right fielder and Robles is the true fourth outfielder and Canzone is a bench piece for you. Like there, there is a lot of possibility here, you know, last year before he was traded, he had 245, 335, 407. It's really good. That's really solid, you know, especially for a guy who can play multiple spots and it has

some pop and can steal some bags. Like, that's a really good solid utility guy, which is kind of what we're assigning him to be, a high-end utility guy. But after he went to the Cubs, he had 170, 245, 240. So which one is the real Whitley Castro? Well, it's certainly closer to the first half. than the second half, and I think something that really caught my eye and is something that we talked about this summer as well. The dude really hits well at T-Mobile Park for whatever reason.

He's 351, 451, 429, 541 at T-Mobile Park. Now, that's only in 41 at-bats, our plate appearances, so it's not a ton, but it's something and he's produced here. So I really like Willie Castro. I still think he fits. That's $7 million, $8 million, whatever it's going to be. be, I think he is a perfect replacement for Dylan Moore, and he is yet another player on this roster. You can play multiple positions to give me as much flexibility as possible.

And if it doesn't work out, it's really not that big of a gamble because I don't need him to be an everyday player. If he can take one of those jobs, great, I'm happy, but I don't need him to do it. If he does, it's just a bonus. All right. So last trade here, a small one, this guy's not even going to make our 26-man roster. It was just something that we wanted do just kind of on the back end um we're trading for david hamilton uh the red sox utility infielder uh we're sending them ricardo cova uh we know that the mayor's had interest in hamilton last year during the uh louis castillo trade talks he's one of the fastest runners in the game uh he's still got a minor league option left so decided to take the shot there on someone to uh you know

just get in the mix there with leo rivasus um willy castro brock rodden eventually uh for you know some of those utility spots on the Mara's roster so yeah and then we do this every year with the offseason plan we just offer a bunch of minor league deals with spring training invites to guys that we think

are like maybe on the fringe of they might get a major league deal or like it's pretty clear that they're going to only get a minor league deal if they do sign with a team so we just throw out a bunch of these and it's like if they accept them they accept them if not but these are just guys

that we have interest in on my early deals basically so that's andrew nardy it's taylor saicato uh dain dunning jonathan loy siga colin schneider who's uh officially a free agent again uh trent thornton hose erkeedy tom murphy uh matt murvis jonabride brendan rogers uh... el demar vargas and garrett hampson so that is the plan and it all comes out to a final payroll of a hundred and sixty three point six million dollars so we got him well under budget there some of that is because i i miscalculated initially whoops uh but also that gives us room in case you know we're off on some things and you know maybe the mlb trade rumors projections are a little bit off all that stuff so uh so an explanation of

the final payroll uh so between josh nailer hori polonka willie cash row bernan donovan mackenzie gore and mitch garver we added 52.6 million dollars in 2026 payroll all other players acquired are pre-arbitration And again, you know, some of these numbers are projections by MLB Trade Rumors.com. So that could fluctuate a little bit. And again, the Giants are taking on $36.2 million of Luis Castillo's contract. We retained $12 million paid out in $6 million increments over the next two years. And then of his option vest or whatever, that's up to them. That's up to the Giants to figure out.

So our projected 26-man roster consists of Brian. I'm Wu, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, McKenzie Gore, Bryce Miller, Andreas Munoz, Gabe, Spire, Matt Brash, Edward Bizarro, Riley O'Brien, Tim Heron. And then the last two spots here, we have Carlos Vargas and Gregory Santos, but they both have asterisk next to them because they're just placeholders for competition. There's going to be a bunch of guys competing for that spot. Burr-Song Harris, yeah, Birdsong, Harris, Ortiz, like Amina, Kowar, et cetera,

like a bunch of guys, Tyler Cleveland, another one, Emerson Hancock. So, yeah. Cal Raleigh and Mitch Garber are the catchers. Josh Naylor, Cole Young, Brennan Donovan, J.P. Crawford, Horri Polanco, and Leo Rivas are the infielders. Julio Rodriguez, Randy or Rosarena, Victor Robles, and Dominicanzone are the outfielderers and our utility man is Willie Castro. The rest of the 40-man roster on the pitching side,

Hayden Birdsong, Tyler Cleveland, Emerson Hancock, Jackson, and Coar, Casey Legamina, Ryan Lutos, Robinson, Ortiz, and Cole Wilcox, and the position players, Ryan Bliss, David Hamilton, Miles Masterbony, Ben Williamson, Samad Taylor, and Rylan Thomas. Coar, Legamina, Master Boni, and Taylor are all out of options. So they have to make the club out of spring training. We could have, like, gotten super in the weeds and, like, traded those guys, and then added some guys to the 40 men, but we'll let the be.

real life mariners worry about that stuff indeed and then we got some projected lineups here this was just something that i threw together uh last night uh just to give you kind of an idea of like how things could look uh i got one versus right hand of pitching one versus left hand of pitching uh against right hand of pitching brendan donovan leading off playing third cal julio josh nayler hori polanco d a hian randio rosarena out left dominic end zone right cole young at second jp crawford to round things out and then against left-handed pitch and got randy leading off got cal uh hitting second hulio hitting third hori polanco hitting fourth and daching josh nailer hitting fifth got willie castro hitting six and playing second pace uh bernan donovan

hit in seventh victor robles playing right field hitting eighth and then uh jp two round things out once again so there you have it the offseason plan what did you guys think let us know down on the below what would you do differently what would you do with that extra 6.4 million dollars that we didn't spend probably on a bullpen arm that's probably like my biggest regrets i guess if you want to talk about that like the thing that we wish that we did or or what have you let me spin it for you this way tie tie and i decided to carve out about seven million dollars for the locked on mariners community addition so you guys tell us we gave you seven million dollars you guys put the finishing touches on this plan and let us know how we are spending that last

seven million dollars in the comments section down below thank you so much for listening tie take us home yeah it was all planned it was all planned all along so there he goes let us know down below what you would do with that extra cash all right well that is going to do for our show thank you so much for joining us here on the lockdown airs podcast part the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day for Colby Patnode. I'm Tiding Azales. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Tiding Azales and 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 in the show at Lockdown Mariners. You can also find us on Instagram at Locked-on Mariners. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace. Thank you.