Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - What Defines a Baseball G.O.A.T. and Do the Mariners Have It in Julio Rodríguez?

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

With the sports world focused on who the greatest basketball player of all-time is, Ty and Colby take on the same topic from a baseball perspective. What defines baseball's G.O.A.T. and do the Mariners have someone with those qualities in Julio Rodríguez? The duo answer that then look back on the "underrated" 2022 season of Robbie Ray and if Seattle won or lost 2019's trade of James Paxton.Be sure to follow or subscribe to Locked On Mariners wherever you prefer your podcasts! For questions and other inquiries, email: [e-mail] the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @danegnzlz | @CPat11For more of Ty and Colby, check out their Patreon: patreon.com/controlthezone/Join our Slack!FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Place your first FIVE DOLLAR bet to get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Free Bets – win or lose! Visit Fanduel.com/LockedOn today to get startedFANDUEL 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.

What defines the greatest of all time in baseball? And could Julio Rodriguez check those boxes? We're going to explore that a little bit as well as talk some more Robbie Ray and reflect back on the James Paxon trade here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Colby, hit it. You are Locked on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day.

It is Wednesday, February 8th, 2023. This is tighting Azales and Colby Petnode for the Lockdowne Mariner's podcast. Brought to you by Fandulandul. the official sports book of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Make every moment more, visit fandul.com slash locked on today to get started. Thank you so much for making us your first listen. Subscribe, like and turn on alerts. If you're watching on YouTube or subscribe and leave a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform,

if you like what you hear. And if you want to hear from us even more, please consider sending up for our Patreon. The link as well as our social accounts is in the description below. On the show today, we want to talk about Robbie Ray some more and why fans might be overlooking just how good he could be in 2023. And we'll also look back on the trade that sent James Paxton to the Yankees ahead of 2019 and tell you how we feel about it now that, you know, Eric Swanson has been traded and Justice

Sheffield is no longer on the 40-man roster. We actually got asked a question about that. A few weeks ago, we were supposed to get to it on a mailbag episode, but I space. And so, but we're going to get to it today. But before we get into that, Colby, I want to start here. You know, last night we saw in the NBA, LeBron James broke the all-time scoring record. it's once again brought up the age-old conversation that we hear every single minute of every single day on sports network of who's the greatest of all time?

As a LeBron, is an MJ, is a Kobe? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I find it very tiring. But I also don't really see this conversation being had in baseball when these two conversations are really not too dissimilar because one of the main driving forces of this debate in the NBA is era, is the difference between eras. And obviously there is a vast difference between eras in baseball. And baseball in general just has a longer history and predates the NBA by decades and decades.

But it's evolved so much over time. So, you know, I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on how much era impacts the conversation around the greatest of all time in baseball. And what essentially you value when you think about the greatest of all time. Is it just the numbers? Is it purely just the numbers? Or does a player have to, you know, maybe do something a little more unique to them? Do they have to set a record or do something like Otani where, you know,

maybe Otani isn't necessarily elite at hitting or pitching, but he's very, very, very, very, very good at both? And that's what makes him an elite player. Or is it, you know, does it even go beyond that? And more so talk about iconography and popularity because maybe the answer there is Babe Ruth or, you know, is it longevity? and staying in power.

And that, of course, can kind of work both ways, or it can be argued both ways as well. Because, like, right now in the NBA, the discussion about LeBron is like, you know, he wouldn't have had that opportunity to break the scoring record if he wasn't playing, you know, 20 plus years in the league. So does that impact the conversation for you as well?

And just to take it one step further here and add a Mariners element to it because, you know, we are a Mariners podcast, of course. Any of those traits, do any of those traits, or qualities that you value show up in Julio Rodriguez? Well, three minutes, 40 seconds, new record. First of all, the correct answer is LeBron James.

But when you kind of discuss, you know, particularly era, like how do you value that? It's different because one thing I'm 100% confident about is that if you picked up Babe Ruth in his prime and you dropped him into the 2023 game, he would not be a major leaguer, let alone in the, discussion for the greatest of all time. The athletes are so much better. The athletes are better now than they were even 20 years ago. It's just insane. The breaking stuff is better. Um, so it's tough. But you still have to consider Babe Ruth as part of the greatest of all time competition, um, because the numbers bear it out. So you kind of have this balancing act of like, is there any chance Babe Ruth is even Daniel Vogel back in, in 2023? No, probably not. I don't think Babe Ruth touches a baseball, but that doesn't. mean that he wasn't great in his era and wasn't the greatest of all time for probably a majority of baseball's history. So you kind of have this balancing act that you're trying to figure out. It's a difficult act to put together. But I think there is something you kind of have to have this persona about you, whether it's positive or negative. You have to have some kind of like, you have to create some kind of like hard feelings either one way or the other.

you have to put up the numbers. That's a big part of it. And I think you have to excel at multiple aspects of the game. You're not the greatest basketball player of all time because you just have the most rebounds, right? That that's not how it works. You have to score. You have to rebound. You have to pass the ball.

You have to play defense. And the same kind of goes for baseball. So, yeah, I would stop well short of saying Julio is on track to be the greatest of all time. But he does have a lot of those. attributes that would lent him some, you know, some paths to get into that conversation. But, A, it's highly unlikely. But yeah, it's a little bit of everything. You just kind of have to take it all in. And really what it's about is it's just personal preference at the end of the day. There is no correct answer, right? You mean, people get up, Brady's the greatest of all time. And then there's

always going to be like, well, actually, it's Jerry Rice. And then it, well, actually, it's, you know, Lawrence Taylor, because you guys are forgetting deep, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, it's really just about preference. What, what do you value? What do you think about? Um, because yeah, you know what? Honestly, the LeBron Kobe, MJ question, there is no right answer. And that's the trick to the whole thing. Right. You know, and that's the thing too, right? That, that I feel a lot of people, whenever we're talking about the greatest of anything of all time, really, it doesn't even just have to be sports. It can be music. It can be video games. It can be what have you, right? Um, that a lot of this is driven by, point of reference and personal preference overall, right? And that doesn't, and that should be separate from objectively, you know, from, from the objective here, from objectively speaking on the topic as well, because, you know, that takes a lot of diving into and that takes a lot of context and that's just such a deep conversation that I think only a really a handful of people are truly capable of having.

And then for the rest, I think it's just, yeah, it's just down to personal preference. Now, you and I have talked quite a bit, you know, on here about, you know, arguably, you know, Shohei Otani is the greatest of all time and Mike Trout is the greatest of all time. And, um, but you make a good point here that, you know, I think these guys need to transcend the game in order for them to be the greatest of all time. And while, you know, at the, at the core of it, Mike Trout might be very well the greatest baseball player of all time for everything that he's done over the last decade plus. But the fact that really, you know, we talked about this during our marketability discussion on Monday that hardly anyone that doesn't watch the game knows who Mike Trout is. But you say Babe Ruth. People know who Babe Ruth is. People know who Barry Bonds is, you know.

Right. And it's whether they have strong feelings of positive or negative about them, they know who they are. We sit here and we say Kobe and everybody knows exactly who we're talking about. We say LeBron. Everybody knows exactly what we're talking about. you know, we say Brady, there's not which one, right? We all know who we're talking about. And so Trout is maybe the most talented player of all time,

considering that he's playing in the hardest era to play in and he's dominating it. But Otani, obviously, you know, with the pitching and the hitting, we'll see how long you can keep that up. And, you know, the one other thing that is, you know, always going to color these discussions is which era did you grow up watching? You know what I mean? So there, obviously, if you grew up, watching and rooting for Willie Mays, you're probably going to say Willie Mays is the greatest of all

time. And did Willie Mays transcend the game? Yeah. Yeah, he did. So to me, the greatest of all time is always one of those things where it's like it's literally a topic that is set up to be divisive. Like that is the only, that's the only value it has. Because ultimately, who's the greatest basketball player of all time could not matter less. Right. Same goes for baseball. They're all great. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we don't need to pick one over the other.

Because like at that point, too, you're nitpicking things because they're so great. You have to. You're choosing. Right. You're choosing what you care about what you don't. And, you know, you're kind of making leaps like, well, Jordan played in this era. You know, he wouldn't be the best athlete on the court anymore. He'd used to be kind of an average guy.

Blah, blah, blah. And, you know, hey, could Babe Ruth hit, you know, an Andres Munoz fastball? Probably not. So it's just one of those things where you kind of have to. to float between realities and you have to make major assumptions, particularly in baseball, when you are comparing guys across different areas and different games with different player pools that they're facing. Like there are so many variables that work both for and against certain players that it really

is just a topic that is meant to be divisive. And I will play my part. Barry Bonds is the best baseball player of all time. I agree. I agree. And that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, the era that you grew up watching, right? I grew up watching that era of baseball.

And yeah, it's the steroid era. And yeah, we're going to catch a lot of flak for saying that Barry Bonds is the greatest player of all time. But you think about someone. Drew more walks, highest on base percentage, gold gloves, MVP. And the steroid note, and the steroid note,

quite frankly, to me is an oversimplification of a much, much, much deeper conversation. One that, you know, maybe we could eventually have on maybe our Patreon show. Maybe that would be a little bit better of a forum for that than, right in here but um yeah you know it's i think you know barry bonds to me checked all those boxes that i want from the greatest player of all time and yeah you know you want to acknowledge the

steroid stuff but also you know just to quickly touch on this a lot of other people in the league at the same time we're doing the same exact thing that he was so the the playing field was more it was more even than a lot of people want to admit right at the time and also there's so much more that goes into making Barry Bonds, the player that he was, beyond just taking steroids. A lot of dudes juiced, and they were not even nearly as good as Barry Bonds was.

And Barry Bonds before the juicing was also a really freaking good ball player. He was going to be a 500 home run, 500 stolen base guy before he juiced. So, yeah, it's just one of those things. But, you know, I think about Barry Bonds.

I think about how he, like, he literally changed how pitchers had to attack an entire lineup. Like, his presence in the, in the, in the middle of that order was so dangerous that people intentionally walked him with the bases loaded. Like that's what we're talking about here.

That's the kind of impact he had on the game. And yeah, you know, unfortunately, he was kind of a hostile, let's say, to the media. And a lot of people didn't like him for that. And obviously the steroids thing also didn't help. But yeah, he does have kind of like, I think the very baseline here. is can you write the history of the sport without mentioning this player? And if the answer is yes, then he's not in the discussion for the goat. And as much as you may hate or like Bonds or not care about him like we do, you cannot,

cannot tell the story of Major League Baseball and not devote a huge portion of it to Barry Bonds. I got one last question to ask you about this. Then we'll get into some Robbie Wray stuff. We'll get into the James Paxon trade and reflect on that a little bit here. But first, let's tell the folks about Fanduel. We're really excited about our new sports betting partner for lockdown because they're the number one sports book in America. FanDuel.

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That's Fandual.com slash LOS. C-K-D-O-N make every moment more with Fandul, the official sportsbook partner of the NFL. You're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you so much for making us your first listen. So the last question that I have on the goat conversation here for you, Colby, is, is it possible for a pitcher to be the greatest of all time in the sport? Not with the qualifier of greatest pitcher of all time, just greatest player of all time in baseball. Is it possible for a pitcher?

No, they don't impact the game enough. They pitch once every five days or if they're a reliever, they pitch one in it. They pitch 60, 70 innings a week. No, it's not possible. It's its own separate category. Yeah, it kind of, it just, it has to be, right? You know, and hitters play every day or they play almost every day, right? And just take the greatest pitcher of all time, whoever you think it is.

Roger Clemens, Pedro, Randy. Maddox, et cetera, yeah. Sure, whatever. whoever, right, and ask yourself, would you trade prime them for prime Barry Bonds for prime Mike Trowell for prime Griffey even? No, you wouldn't because those guys impact the game every single day. All right. So let's talk a little bit about Robbie Ray here. We talked about him on Monday. We got asked how he could get back on track and all those things. And, you know, that was met with some skepticism, I would say, in the common section. some buffoonery sure and especially in the Twitter replies uh yeah specifically in the Twitter replies

I should mention sure um I don't think that people realize just how good Robbie Ray was for a really good chunk of 2022 he was really good from May 25th uh to about September 3rd I was looking at it this morning dude was running like a 261 eras He was striking out 10 guys per nine. He was really good. He was one of the 10, 15 best pitchers in all baseball for really the majority of the season. It's just when he was bad, it was really bad. And that skewed his numbers quite a bit.

He had a, you know, a FIP over four. He had an ERA that was pushing for, you know, all that. You look at the overall numbers. Not a great year for Robbie Ray. But when you really dive deep into these numbers for Ray, he had a much better year in 2022 than a lot of people give him credit for and of course the you know

the image of him giving up that home run to Yordan Alvarez is going to be burned in everyone's minds and then that you know start in Toronto as well but I think you know I just I look at these numbers I think about who Robbie Ray has been over the last few years and how he's been willing and been able to

find success in reinventing himself just kind of on the fly in a way I have a lot of confidence And it's that he's going to be significantly more consistent in 2023. Maybe it's, you know, not a huge change in overall numbers, but I think you're going to see a more consistent ray and that there's just going to be less blowups. You know, there's going to be more outings where he's only given up three runs.

And it's just, you know, he just goes out there and does his job essentially. But yeah, you know, I know you wanted to talk about Ray some more because you noticed this as well with some of our listeners. So what are your thoughts on him overall? past year and how we kind of look at that and then, you know, how that translates to this year. Sure. You know, you talk about the blowup starts. If you remove his three worst starts in the regular season, his ERA is 3.15, which is elite. I mean, it's, I mean, it's maybe not elite, but it's great. I mean, it's legit number two territory. I think when people remember Robbie

Ray, they think of him through the lens of Seattle signed the Sy Young Award winner. And in his first year, Robbie Ray was okay. So therefore he was bad. So you're starting your analysis from a flawed place because even we told you last year, you're signing Robbie Ray coming off of a Cy Young season. You're not signing a Cy Young pitcher. Like that's just not how it works, right? Robbie Ray is going to regress some.

And you could argue very strongly that Ray didn't deserve it the first year he wanted anyways. But regardless, your expectations were too high coming in. But again, you remove the three, the three terrible starts, 315 ERA. And yes, I know you can't remove them. I get that. What I'm saying is is that when Robbie Ray goes out there, there is an 80% chance you're going to get a good start from him. And that has value. I think there's also this idea that Robbie Ray has been bad for, you know, every year of his career except for the year he won the Syhung.

And that's not true because he wasn't bad this last year. but he also had some good years in Arizona. I think it helps to just kind of start with what is Robbie Ray. Like, what is the baseline Robby Ray? In Baseline Robbie Ray is you're getting a guy who's going to take the ball every fifth day. Robbie Ray has posted, you know, every single start for the last four seasons. He hasn't missed one yet in four years. He's really only dealt with injuries once in his entire career.

His numbers are extremely consistent throughout. You're talking about below four fifths or right around four fifths. You're talking about 11, 12 strikeouts for 9. And you're talking about, you know, a guy who's posted multiple three, four win seasons and also happens to have a Sanyang on his resume. When you look at what Robbie Ray did, you know, you brought up the numbers from, what, May 25th or whatever. I had the numbers here from May to September 1, right? So basically eliminating April when he wasn't terrible actually in April. But in September.

There was that monsoon that he pitched in and Chicago and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. a game that never should have been played. But anyways, when you look at what he did, right, from May 1st to September 4th, I think, made 22 starts. He covered 131 innings. He posted a 329 ERA, a 320 X-FIP, and he struck out 10.76 per 9, walked 2.81 per 9. In that stretch, he was 12th in X-FIP, 29th in ERA in all of baseball.

not the American League. Robbie Ray was during that stretch of time, he's a legit number two. I mean, there's no sugar coding. He was a legitimate number two starter. Went out there, took the ball every single day, every single time through the rotation, never missed a start.

He was 24th in innings pitch during that time as well. So he posted, he went deep into games. He struck guys out. The only thing Robbie Ray really struck, struggled with during that time span, which is what five? He struggled a little bit with his, with the home ball, right? Command wasn't quite what it was the year before. We all kind of expected that to be the case.

But when you look at the numbers and you peel them back and you look at the game logs and you go back and you watch Robbie Ray actually pitch last year, he was good for 90% of the year. He was worth his contract for 90% of the year. Unfortunately, because he was bad, you know, in the last, three weeks of the year, everybody thinks that he was bad for the entire year. It's lazy analysis or you're misremembering. It's one or the other, right? You're either trying to make Robbie Ray look worse than he was because you have an agenda and you're trying to put out this

point that the Mariners wasted money on him or you're misremembering because he was so bad in the playoffs that that's all you can think of. And that's not fair. Because if Robbie Ray has these struggles in June and we're talking about how good he was from July through the playoffs, he was as good as he was from May to September, right? If he does that from July on, we're talking about Robbie Ray is a dark horse Cy Young candidate this year. Right. So it's unfair for Mariner fans to sit here and say, Robbie Ray is a bust. Robbie Ray is a bum. He was terrible last year because none of that is true. And oh, by the way, Robbie Ray probably enters this year as your number four starter. Yeah. It's like I can get being disappointed with his year, being under

by his year. Sure. Even that. Seems like a stretch to me, but. But even that, you know, you get into the deeper numbers, right? And it's just, it's a lot better than, you know, it just, it paints a more full picture here, right? Where really the big issues were isolated to a few sporadic instances.

You know, it's just. They, they tended to bunch up to, right? Like if Robbie Ray had a bad start, it was typically he was going to have another one. Right. He would get on these little roles. So it wasn't like one start here, one start here, one start here. It was like, no, he'd have like three mediocre starts in a row. But then he'd be great for 15, you know?

Right. Yeah, especially that, you know, that role that he got on when he re-implemented the two seamer and all that. I believe that was that began against Boston or, well, he started to throw it in that awful start against the Astros. But then he went out against Boston and shut Boston down. Had a couple of nice. What? Do you remember what his, what the final line was? and that Houston start that was so terrible.

I think he only gave up like four runs, right? It was the two home runs that he gave up and that was it. Yeah. So that game that you're talking about was against Houston. I think that was on May. It was on June 6th. June 6th. Yeah.

Terrible Robbie Ray, right? Five innings pitched, four runs. Three of them earned, three walks, three strikeouts, three home runs, three solo home runs. Right. You know, and then, I mean, some of that was like, in Houston. Yeah. Some of what made that worse, though, was like he wasn't able to find the strike zone consistently. And like it was, it was clear that he was.

Oh, it did look right. Yeah, yeah. It was rough. But if I told you that your starter pitcher went into Houston, face that lineup, went five innings and gave up three runs. And I didn't tell you anything else. You'd be like, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not great, but I'll take it. Yeah. Yeah. It was just the path to getting that. It wasn't great. But yeah. No, I get what you're saying, though.

It's just, yeah, I, you know, again, like, you can be underwhelmed buyer or whatever. I you know fine sure I guess you know but that's also goes to the whole expectations conversation and we were telling you last year man that that like that's just not who he is he's not a side young guy like he's not a like he might you know work his way into one at here you know every now and then he might work his way into the sye young conversation he has that potential but he's not a guy that you know with his tool set he's not a guy that can consistently find himself there um he's kind of like a super andrew heney in a way Yeah. Like he's kind of where everyone hopes Andrew Heaney can end up being. Right. Just, you know, he's healthy and he posts. And he goes out there every fifth day. Yeah.

Yeah. And by the way, if you want to get even like more like Meadow with his stats, eliminate the outings he made, he had against the Astros. And Robbie Ray is like a four win pitcher. Like that's how much the Astros dominated him. Now, that is a problem that Ray has to fix because obviously he's going to face Houston. But they clearly have something on Robbie Ray. they have a really good idea and a really good game plan.

Just to kind of, you know, put a bow on it. The Astros against Robbie Ray last year, 442, 509, 865. Like, like. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and so that also plays into why I think, you know,

fans feel a little bummed out about this right now. Sure. The fact that, you know, the big free agent that you sign is really struggling against the team that you're chasing after. The target, your main target is beating up on this dude that you invested pretty heavily in. And so,

you know, for him, you know, this goes into the whole offseason conversation and taking the off season to work on some things. He's got to work on,

you know, how to attack that Astros offense because whatever his game plan has been going into those starts is not working. And now, you know, he's not going to get as many opportunities

this year with the schedule changes. He might face the Astros like three times this year. just depending on how the schedule lines up. But yeah, you know, he's got to figure out how to beat those, how to beat those guys.

Right, because it's, it's not just the regular season. Like, you get three starts in the regular season, fine, whatever. If you plan on,

you know, going to the World Series, that's your aspiration, you're going to have to beat the Astros. Like, you're going to have to be the team that takes them out. Nobody's going to do it for you.

So, yeah, I guess, at the end of the day, I would say, I guess if you're disappointed by Robbie Ray last season, there's nothing I can do to change your mind on that. I think your expectations were too high and I think you're putting an enormous amount

of value on his last five starts instead of the other 27. And that's really, that's just about timing. That's about bad luck. That's really not anything there. But like I said, if you're disappointed by Robbie Ray, fine. I mean, there's nothing I can do to change that. But I think you need to understand that Robbie Ray is entering, you know, this season, presumably as your number four starter, whether he pitches fourth or whatever, it doesn't matter. He is behind Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert. No other team in baseball has a number four with as much upside as Robbie Ray. You're not overpaying Robbie Ray.

Robbie Ray is not hurting the Seattle Mariners in the slightest right now. So lastly here, we got asked a question a few weeks ago when we were doing Mailbag Monday. I was meaning to include it in our show and then I just spaced on it. This came from a listener of ours named Brandon. at Brannon underscore SW4 on Twitter. And essentially his question, I don't have it here, but essentially his question was asking us to reflect on the James Paxon trade. This was right around the time that Justice Sheffield was DFA'd.

Of course, Sheffield made it through waivers and was outrighted to AAA. So he's still within the Mariners organization. But his ability to get to the Major League level is slim to none. Yeah. To be very... Not a lot of paths. To be generous about it. Obviously, Eric Swanson was traded in the Tay Oscar Hernandez deal.

And then Dom Thompson Williams, the other prospect that they received for Paxson and then that deal with the Yankees back in the winter of 2018 was, you know, he got injured. He suffered a pretty big injury. And then it just kind of derailed his career. And he was eventually released as a minor leaguer a couple years back. Looking at the war totals, not a big deal. disparity between what Paxton gave the the Yankees and then what Swanson and Sheffield combined to give the Mariners. 3.8 F4 from Paxon, three flat from Swanson and the Sheffield. This is one of those deals where both teams didn't really get what they were hoping for out of this deal.

Paxson, you know, did pitch in some pretty big games for the Yankees, including a playoff game and had some nice moments. But of course, you know, got injured and eventually made his way back to Seattle and, and you guys know the rest. So how do we feel about this deal now in retrospect? Now that it's more or less complete, we know that the, you know, the Mariners get Hernandez for Swanson. So we still have to see kind of how Tay Oscar goes this year. But, well, here, I'll just, I'll let you go. The Mariners are going to end up winning this trade in terms of just war because Tayasca is going to put up more than a 0.8.

And I know people don't like it when you include, you know, other players that weren't in the trade in your trade analysis. But that's just the reality of it. That's just the fairest way to do it because the Mariners were able to extract value from Eric Swanson, both, you know, on the field when he pitched for them. But then they were able to flip him for something that helps them now. That all counts towards what this trade allowed you to do. because if you don't make this trade,

you don't have Eric Swanson to trade for Teosker. See how that works? But they're ultimately going to end up winning this deal on war alone. But I agree with you. I think neither side really got exactly what they wanted. But I think both sides got what they needed at the time they did, right? Paxton was able to help the Yankees in a playoff chase. Great.

Eric Swanson was able to help the Mariners in two playoff chases, including one where they actually made the playoffs, right? So when you look at it, even if Teosker, even if you want to remove Teosker, right, and you say Paxton gave the Yankees 3.8 wins and Swanson and Sheffield only gave the Mariners three, the Yankees win. Here's the deal, right? That 0.8 wins, how valuable was that going to be to the 2018 or 2019 Seattle Mariners? Nothing. It was worth nothing to you. How valuable would the little bit of extra in 2020 have been to you if Paxton was even healthy? Nothing. Right. Those, those wins. are empty in 2019 and 2020 because the team wasn't built around Paxson to compete for a playoff spot. Those wins don't have value to you in 2019 and 2020, whereas the wins that Eric Swanson were responsible for or gave you or helped you get in 2021 and 2022 were hugely impactful because you were in a playoff chase for both seasons. So again, neither side really gets exactly what they want.

But the trade did help each side make the playoffs once, which is. is pretty fair. And again, because I'm not saying, because I refuse to say that we can't include Tay Oscar Hernandez in this trade, Tosker is going to be involved presumably in another playoff chase. So in reality, Seattle traded James Paxton, right, for two years of James Paxton in two years in which they had no chance to compete whatsoever, for two years of an impact reliever and during playoff chases and an impact bat, one year of an impact bat. So to me, this deal is still a good deal. I would still make it. Now, I don't know what other deals were on the table for James Paxson, right? We don't know. And as much as people want to say, oh, well, that's a bad trade, whatever,

I still consider process at the time it was made. And at the time the trade was made, getting Justice Sheffield for two years of James Paxon, who had an injury history was huge. Justice Sheffield was a legit, top 30, 40, 50 prospects somewhere in that range. Right. I want to touch on something real quick that you said here because I know people are going to hear that and take pause for a second on that

that James Paxton wouldn't have provided value in 2020. The thing that we have to keep in mind here, folks, James Paxton only through 20 innings in 2020, only made five starts. Justice Sheffield through 55 innings, made all 10 of his starts. in the shortened season posted a 358 ERA. It was the one year he was good.

And yeah, he was worth 1.6 F4, which was 1.3F4 better than Paxe in that year. So, you know, context matters in that as well. So, yeah. Right. It depends on how you want to look at the trade at the end of the day, right? If you're just looking at it, like, Justice Sheffield was supposed to be a mid-rotation starter and he's not, So it's a bad trade.

I mean, okay, that's a very... I mean, it sucks. It's disappointing. You know, it's disappointing the way that Sheffield's career went after the promising 2020, but... But at the end of the day, did the Mariners rebuild get furthered and did the Mariners come out on top in this transaction? Yes. Yeah. To me, it's not debatable.

Yes. The Mariners, this is a good trade for the Mariners. Is it a great trade? No. No. Of course not. A great trade would have been Sheffield giving you, you know, you know, you know, it's a mariner's, it's a great trade. know, three win seasons five years in a row.

Didn't happen. But does that mean the trade is a disaster? No. The Mariners salvaged this trade, I think, is a fair way to say it. Yeah, I feel pretty good about the trade overall in retrospect. And, you know, again, I am going to count to Oscar in this whole thing because that's a huge part of it. I mean, you essentially, I mean, yeah, Adam McO is interesting. And the Blue Jays really like Adam McO, but Eric Swanson was the driving force of that deal, was the driving force of that deal.

was the driving force of landing to Oscar Hernandez. And you acquired that amount of club control for Swanson. You know what I mean? So yeah, this is why when we talk about why Jerry valued club control so much early on, this is part of the reason why.

Because you have club control on Swanson still, he has value to a team who has something that you want. They're all connected. I mean, building a baseball team is not binary, right? It's not one plus one equals two. That's not how it works. Sometimes it is. But a lot of the times it's one plus one plus two minus three plus four.

And you just kind of try and figure it out, you know, along the way and you connect the dots. So to me, this trade is like you say, it's not a home run. I mean, yeah. And we all love James Paxton. I was certainly sad to see him go, but I understood why it made a lot of sense at the time. And they were able to reunite with them. Obviously, that didn't go the way that anyone hoped, but, you know. Oh, man. But they were, you know, and I think, there is something to that as well that, you know, Paxton ended up leaving New York after giving them some value, but not a great ton of value.

And then coming back to Seattle at the end of it, you know, and, you know, there was a, there was a chance for a while there to have a rotation that included both Justice Sheffield and James Baxon in it, not even two years later. Imagine like a healthy James Paxton in 2021.

Yeah. That team probably makes the playoffs. Yeah, that probably adds at least a win to their total. A winner two, probably. which is essentially what they needed to bring through there. So yeah, you know, that sucks to think about. Now I'm sad here as we. Good job, Ty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that's going to do a far show. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Locktime Mariners podcast. For Colby Pat Node, I'm Tad de and Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez, this C-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat-E-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode.

And thank you again for making us your first listen. Now make your second listen locked on MLB prospects. Host Lindsey Crosby is a prospect encyclopedia and he's going deep on the MLB stars of tomorrow. It's free and available wherever you get your podcast just like us. And with that, have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you on Friday. Peace.