Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - What to Expect From Bryce Miller's First Start in a Mariners Uniform

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

It's time for Mariners Mailbag Monday... on a Tuesday! First, the guys discuss what to expect from Bryce Miller tonight as he makes his MLB debut against the Oakland A's and then they tackle the mailbag! Do the Mariners have enough ammo to buy pitching help? Who are they competing against? The middle ground between electronic strike zones and the status quo, and is it time to consider changing the hitting coaches? All of that and more on today's episode of Locked On Mariners!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/GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase.SorareHead to sorare.com/lockedon to draft your free team of player cards, set your lineup, and start competing today to win epic rewards.BetterHelpThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who can take you on that journey of self-discovery from wherever you are. Visit BetterHelp.com/lockedonmlb today to get 10% off your first month. 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.

Tonight, Bryce Miller will make his major league debut in Oakland. We'll tell you how we think his night could go and answer some of your questions here on the Locked On 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. Ahoy, sailors, and happy Bryce Miller day. It is Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023.

This is Tiding Azales and Colby Patnaud for the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Brought to you by Game Time. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use promo code Lockdown MLB for $20 off your first purchase. Last minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. 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're part of the crew and rock with us every single day, let us know in the comments below. And if you want to hear from us even more, please consider signing up for our Patreon by scanning the QR code.

That's right above my head. The link as well as our social accounts is also in the description of this episode. And this episode is a half mailbag, half Bryce Miller preview. We'll get to your questions a little bit later on in the show. But first, Colby, what should fans know about the Mariners' newest starter making his major league debut tonight at the Oakland Coliseum? He throws hard. Yeah.

What to explain to the listeners real quick? quick why you don't sound super excited about one of the mayor's top pitching prospects making his debut tonight. We've had this conversation three times in the last 10 minutes mostly. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously some technical issues we've been working through. But yeah, Miller throws a really good fastball.

And that's basically 90% of his game right now. So, you know, Miller, he's a tall, athletic. kid and it's fastball slider cutter change up the it's really more two distinct sliders one's more of a sweeper one's more of a traditional slider so but a lot of different you know pitch trackers will refer to one of those sliders as a cutter so we'll see I don't know exactly what Miller calls it doesn't really matter there are two separate pitches and Miller's off speed stuff is really inconsistent right now. You never really know what type of slider you're going to get from him on a night-in, night-out basis, and that's really the pitch that he needs. The change-up,

it's never been much of anything more than fringe average at best. So you really need the slider or the cutter if you're Miller to get through a lineup, you know, two, two and a half, three times. But the fastball is legitimately good. It's probably the best pitch in the Mariners' entire system. it's right up there with, you know, it's right up there with Luis Castillo's fastball, just a little bit more consistent velocity. It's 96 to 99. Extra life at the top of the zone, but it plays plenty well in any quadrant of the zone. He spins it really well.

It's kind of got some run to it. It's just a bowling ball of a pitch at 97, 98, 99 miles an hour. So if he ever has that going and one of his sliders or his cutter, he could be a really dangerous pitcher, particularly against right-handed heavy lineup. So we'll see what happens with him. It's not pinpoint command. He's not George Kirby out there, but he does, in general, throw enough strikes. Walks aren't going to be a big issue most nights.

But again, it's really good stuff. It's more control over command right now. He's an athlete. He is pretty much by far out of the, well, out of the three guys you may be were considering calling up here. in terms of your top pitching prospects. He's by far the most stretched out. He's got the most innings under his belt.

He's the most experienced at the minor league level. So, yeah, he's a really good prospect. Kind of taking some steps back this year. Again, it's only been like three, four starts. But slider hasn't really popped like they were hoping, at least not that we've seen. And the change up hasn't, the change up is what it is. Forget about it.

It's the fastball in the slider form. So if you're trying to gauge, Is this going to be more like George Kirby's debut season or Logan Gilbert's debut season? It's probably going to be a lot closer to Gilbert than it is Kirby. On yesterday's episode, we talked a little bit about how this was the softest landing you could possibly give Miller to make his major league debut because he's going up against the worst team in baseball and the worst atmosphere and venue in baseball. There's going to be little to no pressure whatsoever put on him by the home crowd by this offense in general. though this offense isn't a walk in the park.

Brent Rooker is off to a great start. Start 238 WRC Plus, 353, 465, 779 is what he is slashing. Ryan Noda is off to a pretty good start in his major league career. Carlos Perez, Jesus Aguilar, Ramon Luriano, Shea Langelliers, and Connor Cable all have a WRC Plus north of 100, which is above league average. So this is not going to be.

going to be necessarily an easy lineup to eat through, but there are a lot of righties there. So what are your expectations for Miller heading into his first career start against this lineup? Yeah, I think it's probably pretty fair to expect him to go four or five innings, maybe six, depending on how the pitch count is. And I think this lineup is it's so right-handed heavy that a Miller has even a decent slider. Tonight he should be able to keep his team in the game. and go, you know, four or five, give up two or three runs

and just kind of let the offense go to work against a really bad pitching staff. It'll be interesting to see where his velocity is at tonight. There's going to be a lot of adrenaline going, making his major league debut. And it'll also be interested to see where his command and control is tonight because as we know, you know, you get a little tense. You tend to grip the baseball a little harder,

and that's not good for your control or your command. So you never really know how nerves are going to play into a guy's major league debut for some people like George Kirby. he goes out and he has an amazing debut, right? But for some guys like Logan Gilbert, he flashes, but he gives up four runs and five innings, and you're just kind of like, well, you know, better things are to come.

So we'll see what kind of debut Miller has tonight, but the lineup itself, despite the high WRC pluses, it's actually a pretty good matchup for Bryce Miller, just in terms of lineup quality, handedness, and then obviously, as you mentioned, the atmosphere or lack thereof. it'll be interesting to see how he handles all that yeah if anything the fans they're probably rooting against the a is because of uh everything that's been going on with their perspective move to

las Vegas which is uh incredibly unfortunate um estuary ruiz is another guy to keep an eye out for in this aes lineup he's a guy that can make a lot of stuff happen on the base pass r a 11 stolen base is a really quick dude uh that can give miller some issues if he gets on base so definitely don't want him to get a board. And then, yeah, Rooker and Noda are the guys that they definitely, are that he will definitely try and need to avoid in this one as well. But if he can give you five innings and gives you a chance to win, then you've got to feel pretty good about where he's at and where you're at

before he makes his next start, which is the real test against the Houston Astros on Sunday. But for now, we got some questions from you guys. We got some questions via email. We got some questions via Twitter. We're going to answer those in just a moment. but real quick a reminder, this episode of Lockdown Mariners is brought to you by GameTime. Buying tickets to your favorite events shouldn't be stressful.

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you're listening to the Lockdown Mariners podcast. Thank you again for making us your first listen. So we weren't able to do a mailbag yesterday because we had a lot of Mariners news and notes to catch up on. But we're going to make up for that with a few by answering a few of your questions. Now we got a few questions via email that have been sitting in there the last week or so. So we're going to catch up on those first. And then we'll get into a few questions that we picked from our Twitter.

All right. So this one, a little hard to read because it is very tiny on our screen here. I will try my best. After reading Ken Rosenthal's article about Jared Kellnick in the athletic, detailing how Kellnick asked and was allowed to reach out in the offseason on his own to experts outside the organization to both get his head right and fix his swing, does it bring up doubts about the hitting coach, conditioning coaches, and sports psychologists within the Mariners organization.

As the Mariners now lead the American League in strikeouts and have shown significant declines in the consistency of once consistent offensive players, is Kellnick's recent success outside the organization. proof that changes need to be made immediately at these coaching positions within. This comes from Charles. Colby, what do you think? It sounds like Charles really wants to fire the hitting coach, but needs a justification. So he's reaching a little bit here.

No, this isn't proof of anything, except for the Mariners are willing to do whatever they need to do to make sure their players are, feel like they're being taken care of and feel like they're being heard. There's nothing wrong with, with players going outside of the org to get help. every team in baseball does this. Every team allows this. And also I find the thing about like, oh, they lead the league in strikeouts. That's a little disingenuous because it's really been the last week that they've struggled with strikeouts. And honestly, when you look at their roster construction, they're going to be up there in strikeouts.

A. Eugenio Suarez strikes out. Cal Raleigh strikes out. You know, you look at Julio right now is striking out quite a bit. So no, I don't think this is an indication that the Mariners hitting coach. sucks, which is essentially what the question is asking. So, Charles, I get what you're asking. I get why you're asking it. It's fair.

You know, it's been really rough to watch this offense, particularly the last, you know, four or five days. But no, it's not because at the end of the day, the hitting coach really doesn't have all that much control. He doesn't have all that much power. You know, at the end of the day, Eugenio Suarez needs to stop chasing sliders 15 feet out of the strike zone. So does Teosca Hernandez.

So, yeah, it's, it's not one of those things to me. that is indicative of anything relating to the mariner's hitting coach. So, yeah, look, at the very end of the day, right? If the Mariners fire their hitting coaches tomorrow, would Teoscar Hernandez strike out less? And would it be because they fired the hitting coaches? No.

Yeah, I think, you know, hitting coaches in particular have more of an impact on younger players than veteran players who have a set approach that they've been working with for years and years like Tay Oscar Hernandez. Ultimately, within the case of Tay Oscar specifically, that's up to Tay Oscar to figure it out. Now, as far as

younger guys like Jared Kellnick and Taylor Tremel, et cetera ago, that some more of the responsibility does fall on the coaching staff because they can have a bigger influence on guys like that. But again, you're not going to change who A. E. E. Hennio-Swarz is.

You're not going to change who Teoscar-Nandez is. You're not going to change really even who, who, tie frances at this point and it's not like you know all the guys that i mentioned either are having particular issues or things that stand out a ton right now some negatives that stand out a ton right now i just think you know guys are slumping right now it's the start of the season things like this happen guys that you expect to be good don't hit for inexplicable reasons and then start to turn things around over the course of a season we see a year in and year out it's not just the mariners this

this happens on every team uh that's not to excuse the issues that have happened this year. I just don't think it's as simple of a fix as firing coaching staff, because there are some guys on this team that it doesn't matter what you say to them. It doesn't matter whose coaching staff has them under their wing. They're going to be who they are. And it's ultimately up to them to fix the issues that they have right now in their swings. All coaches can do is make suggestions.

Ultimately, it's the players who have to accept them. And if the player is established, they're less likely to accept them. But even the young guys, they all have their own private hitting coaches. So it's just a different game than it was 20 years ago. So no, I don't think firing the hitting coach is going to do anything. And no, I don't think that the Mariners are bad at teaching hitting because they had a rough last week of April. So, no. You know, we get into June, July at some point, you scapegoat or not, you kind of have to shock the system a little bit.

fine but right now no I'm not buying the premise yeah you know another thing to note as well is like Kellynick's not the only one that went outside of the organization this off season to seek help Taylor Tramel went to drive line J.B Crawford went to drive line those things

have been well documented and so far I mean it's been one game for Chamell but with Crawford those tweaks that they've made have worked so far so we'll we'll see how that continues to go but you know so far so good so good on that front and hey you know the bearers don't have to let their players go outside the

organization to get help so i'm not saying that they deserve kudos for that but um it's good it's good that they're at least not impeding that in any sort of way from you know players going out and search and seeking out help outside the organization all right next question comes from john who says ty and colby since listening to your show i don't ever remember listening and hearing you talk about the strike zone and using electronics to help out the umpile For me, I, for me and I am sure many other fans as well, we are fed up with home plate umpires helping decide close games. Besides having a million base runners stranded on base is the most frustrating part of baseball. All I hear about is the pitch clock and the shift rule changes.

We have the tech to do it. Why didn't things change? Please give me your take on it all, John Patrick. All right, John. So I'm all in favor of a automatic strike zone as, as well. or an automated strike zone rather as well. I know there's some people out there that are like, you know, it's just part of the game, the error, the human error is part of the game,

et cetera, et cetera. I don't. I don't. I think that's stupid, frankly. I want balls and strikes to be called right and fairly and correctly because a lot of the times it is lopsided. It is a lopsided thing that does heavily favor one team or the other over the course of a game. So it's not, it doesn't.

balance out the way that people like to pose it, right? Where, oh, human error is part of it. And, you know, for as many bad calls as one team will get, the other team will get the same over the course of that. That doesn't happen. That's not correct. And it impacts a lot of, a lot of games in a very significant way. You just look at the MLB umpire scorecards bot on Twitter. And you can see the evidence of that. So yeah, I think it's something that absolutely needs to be implemented and something that needs to be addressed over the next couple years. The last thing that I remember reading was that they were going to have that discussion before the end of the CBA, the current CBA. And this is something that they have tested out

at other levels of the sport. So they have the data for it. They have the infrastructure for it. So I think it's something that does desperately need to be put in place in Major League Baseball because the umpiring in general is also just getting worse by the day. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think before we see a full electronic strike zone, I think what we're going to see is a challenge system. They're testing this out in AAA on the weekends, actually, and essentially the way that they are doing this as far as I'm aware is that you get one challenge per at bat, so you can't challenge every single pitch that the Empire calls. You get one challenge per at bat, and the only people who can challenge are the pitcher, the catcher, or the hitter. So the manager can't look at the

screen and challenge it. No, it has to happen right away. And I think we're, I think we're going to see that implemented in Major League Baseball before we get to a full, you know, electronic strike zone. But I do think that's coming eventually. It's just, you can't get in the way of technology. And the, and the harder you try to hold back, the more you're getting lapped by other leagues who are embracing this technology. So, yeah, you know, is the technology going to be 100% accurate? No. Is there going to be a Glitcher, is it going to mess up sometimes? Sure.

But Major League average right now is about 91% correct calls, 92% correct calls on balls and strikes. Why would you not want that to be 98, 99, 99.5? Like, just do it. Forget about the whole human element thing. The players are the human element. Nobody goes to Major League Baseball games to watch Angel Hernandez throw up on himself and the player.

Las Diaz make the entire game about. him right nobody's going to the games for that they're going to watch mike trout they're going to watch ulio let those guys be the story not your horrifically bad umpires and you know it's a bummer that guy's like uh what's it pat holbert um i think it's the best umpire in in baseball he's at like 96 percent or something like that it's a bummer that he gets that he just gets lumped in with all these horrible umpires but i don't care it's about the players and it's about the fans it's not about the umpires and at the end of the day umpires are still going to have jobs right Right. They're still going to need a guy behind home plate.

There's someone down on home plate that, you know, I guess he'll have an earpiece or whatever that, you know, tells them striker ball. It'll make the call. Check swings, fair foul, safe out at home. Yeah. There's going to be base umpires still. You need guys to make safe and out calls, all that stuff. So there's still going to be a place in baseball for umpires. But as far as the strike zone goes, it needs to be automated.

It has to because it is severely swinging games into the direction of one team or the other. that's a problem it's a real problem and it's it's taking ultimately the the skill the talent out of the game a little bit it's sapping the game of that and for a casual baseball fan why would you want to watch that how why would that um you know why would that inspire you to to go watch a major league baseball game right now if you know that most of these calls are going to be botched unless you know you got pat hober behind the plate and uh you know Why would you want to watch a product like that that allows for the Empire to take so much control over a game? Because it can change the absolute face of an abat of a game.

It doesn't matter. So that does need to be fixed by Major League Baseball as soon as possible. All right. We got more questions coming up here in just a moment. But real quick, a reminder of this episode of Lockdown Mariners. Let me see. What do we got coming up here? Ah, yes, better help.

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It can empower you to be the best for. version of yourself. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. And if you don't feel that your match is suitable for you, no worries. You can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Discover your potential with better help. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Lockdown MLB today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Lockdown MLB. And we are back to the Locked-on Mariners podcast.

By the way, tonight you can catch the Mariners and A's game from Oakland on the Mariners hometown broadcast with SiriusXM via the SXM app. So check it out. Now let's get back into these questions. This one comes from Luke who says, Hey, guys, everyday Spotify listener and non-tweeter here. I listen to your episode about the Mariners options to deal with the fallout of Robbie Ray's surgery.

trade options seem intriguing. However, the Mariners pitching needs don't exist in a vacuum. There are surely other teams that will be looking to upgrade their rotations this summer as well. This leads me to two questions. First, who will the Mariners' biggest competition be in trying to land these quality rotation guys? Second, what do you think Jerry and crew will do to make sure the Mariners have the most attractive trade offer? Go M's. Luke. So, this is a boring answer. It's still so early to tell you who the Mariners competition is. We don't even know the Mariners are going to actually be looking to add the deadline. I mean, right now they're four games under 500. Maybe that does continue.

Maybe we were wrong this off season. The Mariners are just bad, right? So that can happen. We don't know what teams are going to be competing, contending, you know, looking to add and get better at the trade deadline. And we don't know, you know, which teams are actually going to be looking for starters. We don't know if injuries are going to strike, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right now, though, I would say, you know, look at the,

at the Astros, the Astros have a lot of homegrown starting pitching talent, but they just lost Jose or Kiti. They just lost Luis Garcia. Maybe that's a team that looks to upgrade in its rotation. And their farm system is getting, it's still not great, but it is getting better. And so they do have some pieces that they could offer to potentially land a starting pitcher at the deadline.

Colby, I'll ask you the second, or I'll let you answer the second part of this question, though, what could the Mariners offer? What do the Mariners have to offer to land a starting pitcher that, I mean, we had this conversation back on Friday show about Robbie Ray and who you should replace Robbie Ray with. I think that you need someone that's at least close to Ray's potential or it's really not worth addressing it.

So what's it going to take to land that guy? What do the Mariners have to offer to land someone like that? Yeah, a lot of factors here like how much money is. the player owed, what's left on the contract, how many years of club control am I getting? But when you look at what the mayors have to offer at the minor league level, they're in luck. It's pitching, which is the number one commodity teams look for at the deadline. So they have plenty of pitching, you know, is would you like to hold on to Brian Wu and Emerson Hancock? Yeah, but would you be willing to trade one of them for, you know, a year and a half of a mid-rotation starter?

Also probably, yeah, depending on where you are at the standing. So they have plenty of pitching. They also have some, you know, pretty interesting guys. Probably not, they're probably not headliners, but maybe you can package together a group of like Jonathan Clase, Tyler Locklear, and Cade Marlowe. And maybe you can kind of go bulk and go get Eduardo Rodriguez or Lance Lynn or one of those guys we talked about. Maybe you probably don't need to pay that much for Lynn.

But, you know what I mean? Like so they can kind of do one of each, what they really can do or what they probably. we really shouldn't do is go offer up Miller, Young, and Ford for a pitcher. I just, I don't think you can afford to do that this year. I also don't know that there's going to be a guy out there that's worth doing that for. And that's part of what Ty was saying. We just don't even know who's really available.

So I mean, like the Cardinals, they're pretty bad right now and they might need pitching, but what if they stay bad? And then all of a sudden, Jordan Montgomery is available and then Jack Flaherty is available. And like, are those guys interesting? Yeah, kind of. So I think when you're looking at what they have to trade, they have enough to just answer the question. They have enough. And then the price of that pitcher comes down to the individual pitcher you're trying to acquire.

But, yeah, most teams they're going to ask about Wu and Miller and Hancock. And do they have other guys to offer instead of those guys? Yeah, they do. But there's a pretty steep cliff between those three and what's coming up after that. so we'll see but yeah they have enough to pretty much go out and get anybody except for i mean like in theory could they go forward another louise castillo if he became available yeah they could doesn't make a lot of sense to go do that that's kind of a debate for you know july it feels like a massive luxury but again you know let's say that they go on a huge win streak and suddenly

they're leading the division by seven games and it seems like you know again this is a very outlandish, you know, dream here. But again, if they were to do that, if it gets to a point where you're really serious about trying to win the World Series, then yeah, you do that if it makes sense. Like you know you're going to the playoffs and you have a really good shot of winning the division and therefore the World Series. Like that, then you might make sense to go leverage Miller and Ford and Young and go get that guy.

Yeah. All right, we got Twitter questions now. This one, if it will come up. Comes from Christian. Directed more towards Ty, but for both of you anyway, what came did you leave early that you regretted the most after seeing the end result? Any live professional sporting event?

What happened on Sunday? The game that I left on Sunday. Yeah, that's the answer. Because that's the only time that I've ever left a game early where they come back and won, where they actually done it. That isn't something that I've made a habit out of, though. I've only done that a handful of times.

Usually if I left a game early, it was when I was a kid and because we needed to take a ferry back home. We lived like an hour and a half away from Seattle. So like if they if my parents wanted to beat the traffic, then yeah. But other than that, I haven't typically left games early except for Sunday, unfortunately. So yeah. I have never left a sporting event early. That's a fact.

Okay. So there you go. Some of us care more. Daisy and the dingo ass the mayor is currently ranked 29th in K percentage and 22nd and based on balls to K

ratio last year they were 14th and 6th respectively do you think this will regress back to the mean or has their lineup become too prone to the strikeout? I mean that goes back to the question that we had about the hitting coach and all that stuff that

you have guys that are just going to strike out you are going to be near the top of the league in strikeouts because Julio strikes out, Kelnick strikes out, Ehuenio strikes out, Tayasker strikes out, all these guys, they strike out. Now, some guys on the team are striking out a lot more than their career average. And so that's going to regress a bit like Colton Wong is striking out like 8% above his career average or something crazy like that. So is J.P. Crawford right now.

But there's also guys that are walking a lot more or a lot, or sorry, a lot of, a lot more and a lot less than their career averages as well so like te oscar's on the low end right he's not going to walk 1.6% of the time all year i don't think that's going to happen i mean his career average is like 7.6 which is fine which that's fine it's a little bit below average but it's fine yeah it's fine for him it's fine for a hit or like him uh and then there's like jp u's running like a 17 percent walk rate right now like that's going to go down a little bit as well so i think on some of those fronts yeah that's going to regress back to the mean but also this is just kind of the nature of the roster that you built that you are going to have a lot of guys that are boom or bust bats sure i mean

let's not also let's not ignore how big those numbers can be skewed when you strike out 35 times in the two game stretch right so like yeah and and course of regular season that that type of stretch isn't going to hurt you too bad but when we're talking about 25 games like that can tip the scale pretty seriously but yeah like tyson there there are guys on this roster are just going to strike out and that's part of the trade off you make for the power that they generate so the guys who don't strike out and have tremendous power they're going to the hall of fame like they're you know MVP candidates and and even mike trout strikes out a little bit here so i mean like i'm not worried about it um it'll all even out

eventually and yeah the Mariners are going to walk more and then you even see guys like jared calnick the k percentage is coming down uh you know just because in the first two weeks he went had an 0 for 10 where he struck out like six times okay yeah yeah tayo just struck out like nine times and ten of bats like yeah yeah colton wong strikeout number is going down he's putting the ball and play more so yeah no i i don't think they're going to be the worst strikeout team in major league baseball uh i think they're probably going to land somewhere in the middle and then yeah the walks. We'll see. Last year it was certainly helped that they had

Carlos Santana in the middle of the year. That's true. It's good point. All right. Last question here comes from Peter. Which player's slow start are you least concerned about and which player in general are you most concerned about for the rest of 2023? So for me, least concerned, Julio.

It's Julio. Julio is going to figure it out. Unless he gives me a reason to believe otherwise, Julio's going to figure it out. Most concern probably Colton Wong he's starting to get some hits now he's starting to collect some hits over the last couple days I think he had like what two on Sunday So the balls you know the the hits are starting to fall for him a little bit The problem is his defense has been not good had some pretty big mental gaffes on the defensive end and on the base pass

He almost got doubled up at first base on a routine fly ball to left field on Sunday as well like he does seem a little like he's in two in his head or absent-minded or something, I don't think that's going to last long term, but it is fairly concerning because he was supposed to be such a big part of this thing. And it just hasn't panned out so far. And it's not going to be, I mean, there's going to be options at the trade deadline,

but it's not going to be particularly easy to upgrade second base if Wong is just bad. So what's your answer? First of all, I'll trade for Adam Frazier. Boom. looking for this. The Slotton. Yeah.

Slafton America on the 19 and 9 Baltimore Orioles because why not? Why not? I thought the Orioles were going to be good, honestly. They were going to be fine. Like, they're going to win 84 games, which I still kind of think they will. But like, yeah, I thought they would be roughly as good as they were last year, despite not adding anybody of significance. Anyways, that's not what we're talking about here.

Who am I least concerned with? You know, probably Julio, but just to be different, I'll say Tay Oscar. Um, not really concerned about that whatsoever. We've already seen Teo put together a couple weeks of really good. Offensive production and now just kind of a rough three days, but stuff happens. Um, most concerned with nobody. This teams run on the table. Um, I don't know.

I'm really not all that concerned with anybody per se. Like obviously Tommy Lestella, but who isn't? I guess. Yeah. I think you're, I think your concern has to be more so with someone that is like, like you're feasibly be on the team for the whole year. Yeah. I guess I would say I'm a little concerned.

I'm not really, but just to pick like, Gino's power. Where's the power? A. you know, you like, we didn't, we don't pay to hit singles, right? If you're going to hit 260, you better be hitting at least 20 home runs. And right now he's not on pace to do even that. So, uh, a little concerned about that. Thai Francis looks so bad the last 10 days.

at some point you trust the back of the baseball card, but it's not like we haven't seen France struggle for months on end before. Usually it's injury related, but we still seen it. So yeah, I guess if I have to pick one player that I'm a little bit concerned about, maybe AJ Pollock. The interesting thing about Pollock is that the batted ball data, it's fine. You look at his numbers on Stackass,

but really seems to change is the launch angle is too high. A lot of weak a lot of fly balls are going straight up instead of out. So yeah, there's just a few guys here and there. But for the most part, I'm just, I'm not that concerned because we got a hundred and thirty five odd games to go. This is a really good question for like three weeks from now. Yeah, Pollock is really interesting because like you said, the bad of ball data is actually not bad.

And on top of that, does he still not have a hit against a lefty? Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's not going to last long. Like you can't convince me that AJ Pollack. is suddenly just he just can't hit lefties like when that was like his one strength when he did struggle last year when he did regress last year like he still was really good against lefties so now you're telling me that's just gone right yeah i i i just i i don't buy it i'm sorry i just

i don't i think pollock's going to be a lot better than we've than what the results have shown so far so i'm not too concerned about him he's certainly not at the top of the list Colton Long for me is at the top of the list because he was such an important piece here off season and that's ultimately why he ends up there but seems like he's starting to turn things around a little bit

so hopefully that's a sign of what's to come here and hopefully you can have a strong month of May or else you know after the month of May I think we have enough of a sample size to start having conversations about you know the roster and so if it's if it's another rough month for for wong then the mariners have a problem like a legitimate problem that needs to be solved sooner rather than later um so yeah and like he said he's already slowly trending in the right

direction he just has to continue to do it yeah so there's no magic number like wong has to hit be hitting 2 30 by the end of may like it's just about the at bats is he you know putting the ball and play hard as he you know running into some bad luck yada yada but yeah to me a memorial day is is around the time where I could start to say, okay, this might not be working. You might consider a change here. So we're about a month away from that. All right. Well, that's going to do it for our show.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Mariners podcast. And thank you all for your questions. For Colby Pat node, I'm Tadangazas. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at LO underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Dan Gonzalez. It's D-A-N-Z-L-Z and Colby at C-P-E-E-G-N-L-Z and Colby at C-Pat-E-E-T-E-Pat-E-E. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok as well over at Locked-on Mariners. That's one word, Locked-on Mariners.

You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. And thank you again for making us your first listen on tomorrow's show. We'll recap Bryce Miller's major league debut. Hopefully it goes well. But for now, have yourself a beautiful baseball day. And we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.