Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Will the Mariners Take Another Crack at Externally Solving Second Base?

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner has been a hot topic in the Mariners fandom on Monday, so Ty and Colby why they're intrigued by him as an option to replace Jorge Polanco. Then the two answer some listener questions, once again going over what will fix Seattle's offensive struggles and more.Ask us questions!Follow the show on Twitter: @LO_Mariners | @TyDaneGonzalez | @CPat11Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Tax Network USA Reduce your tax debt and get help from a team of licensed tax professionals call 1-800-549-1000 or visit TNUSA.com/lockedon. Booking.com The right stay can make you a fan of any US city - even your rival’s. Book today on Booking.com on the site or in the Booking.com app! Booking.com, Booking dot YEAH! LinkedIn Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDON. PrizePicks Go to https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONMLB and use code lockedonmlb for a first deposit match up to $100! SupplyHouse SupplyHouse.com is the reliable way to get parts fast. Shop for your next plumbing, h-vac, or electrical job and get fast shipping from coast to coast. eBay Motors From brakes to exhaust kits and beyond, eBay Motors has over 122 million parts to keep your ride-or-die alive. With all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to bring home that big win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. FanDuel FanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook. As playoffs wind down, the sports stop sporting like we want them to. But this summer, FanDuel is hooking up ALL CUSTOMERS with a boost or a bonus, DAILY! That’s right, there’s something for everyone, every day, all summer long! Visit FANDUEL.COM/LOCKEDON and add a big win to your summer bucket list! 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.

What's good, y'all? It's a new week of locked on Mariners. And as we all know, second base has been a massive problem area for the team for the last few years. And they thought they finally found their solution to that problem in Jorge Polanco this winter. But that for whatever reason just hasn't worked out whatsoever. So I know we have some Ryan Bliss fans that listen to the show, but they might have to go outside the organization to figure that out. And the answer might reside on the Cubs roster. So Colby and I are going to talk about that and then answer some of your questions for Mailbag Monday.

You are Locked-on Mariners. Your daily Seattle Mariners podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Ahoy, sailors. It is Monday, July 1st, 2024. This is Tadding, Gislandl. And Colby Patnaud for the Locked-on Marers podcast. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day.

Welcome to Mailbag Monday. The show will re-answer your Mariners questions before we get into this week's batch. Shout out to our title sponsor today, Tax Network, USA. Did you know that it's never too late to result? your tax issues with the IRS, don't wait, reduce your tax debt and get help from a team of licensed tax professionals by calling 1-800-549-1,000 or visit TNUSA.com slash locked on. And if you want to hear from me and Colby even more and help support the show, check out our Patreon.

The link is in the description, and you can sign up for a free seven-day trial. So we're going to answer some of your questions a little later on in the show, but we're actually going to start here with some. It's not news. it's not even a report, even though it's been kind of framed as that. It's just speculation from John Marosi, who of course had a really bad winter this past winter with the show Hay Otani stuff and even some of the Mariners-related things that he talked about that didn't ever even come close to come into the light. But he was on MLB network today and talked about the Cubs and talked specifically about second baseman Nico Horner and said, the Merrers could be a team that that's interested in Horner.

That's a lot different than, again, the way it's been framed on social media today, specifically from people on the Cubs side of things. The first time I saw anything about it, I saw someone from the Cubs sphere saying, oh, the Merrers and Cubs have talked about Nico Horner. They've talked about a trade involving Horner, and that's not at all what Morosi said today on MLB Network. But this is an opportunity to talk about a player that we haven't really talked about much.

And on the surface makes some sense for the Mariners. And obviously it's also a better topic to talk about than, you know, for the millionth time talking about, you know, how bad this offense is. And how are they going to fix it? Well, Horner could actually maybe be part of that solution, even though that he's pretty much hovering around a league average WRC plus right now. But relative to what the Mariners are rolling out, one through nine at the moment, A league average bat would help. He's also an elite second base defender, a really good base runner. And the mayors also need that.

They obviously need offensive production first and foremost, but they also need to get better defensively and they need to get better on the base pass. They need to get more athletic. Horner would help them in all of those departments. He still has two, a little under two, or by the deadline, we'll have a little under two and a half years left of club control. He's making $11.5 million dollars this year. which of course will be pro-rated, cut a little more than half by the time you would theoretically acquire him.

Then he's making $11.5 million next year as well. And then $12 million in 2026. It's kind of an interesting situation here, though, with the Cubs specifically because they've kind of been in Win Now mode. Obviously, they went big and signed Dansby Swanson a couple of off seasons ago. They brought back Cody Bellinger this past off season. So I would think that if the Cubs were entertaining, trading Horner, that they would prefer players that are relatively close to the majors, if not already ready for a taste of Major League Baseball. So that to me would potentially put guys like Tyler Locklear, Dom Canzone, Ryan Bliss, et cetera, and play here. What do you think, Colby?

Yeah, Horner first and foremost, is a very good. player. Is he like the perfect player? No, if he was, he wouldn't be available. Uh, but he is a guy who plays elite defense. He is a very good base runner. He stole 40 bags last year. He's also a guy who doesn't strike out. He doesn't swing and miss. Like that is and when I don't say like he doesn't, when I say that, I don't mean like, oh yeah, he's like league average strikeout guy. He doesn't strike out. Like no, like he is 98 percentile and strikeout percentage this year. He's only striking out 11% of his at-bats. He's only swinging and missing 13%

of the time. And you even look at his chase rates, he'll chase. He'll expand the zone, but he's so good at making consistent contact. Sometimes that's all we really need from the hitter at the playoff. We saw this weekend. Sometimes you just need contact and you can score runs.

So Horner gives that to you in spades. He's a really good base runner. He's an elite defender at second base. Can you even play a little shortstop? I mean, you don't really want him to. It's not the best arm in the world, but he can play a great second base. The money, I'm not really, that's not really concern of mine. I think that the Cubs have deep enough pockets that they would entertain a contract swap of maybe Jorge Polanco.

And then obviously you'd have to add to that to get them to eat some money, blah, blah, blah. But him and Polanco are pretty much making the same amount of money. So that would be as far as just 20, the rest of 2024 goes, like you would essentially just be swapping the exact same dollar figure there. Right. And so yeah, so the money thing, I don't think that's going to be an issue. So if you're like, oh, the Mariners are going to pay $11 million for another second basement. I don't think they're going to have to. I think Polanco could be involved in this deal. I think Thai France could be involved in a deal. Like the Mariners have ways to make that money not an issue. And I don't think the money is going to be an issue. You know, for any player that they could reasonably acquire this summer, but not a guy, especially not a guy making, what, $6 million for the rest of the year? They'll figure that out. less than that actually. But yeah, Horner is interesting.

The Cubs are interesting. We talked about them on one of our shows last week. I don't know if it was the Patreon show or here. I think it was CTZ. Yeah. Right. And we talked about like, hey,

they might be a sneaky. Could they trade Cody Bellinger? Could they trade Sayas Suzuki? Could they trade, you know, Ian Hap? They have Pete Crow Armstrong coming up. They got to open up a room in the outfield.

So maybe we just missed, you know, we talked about the wrong guy. Nico Horner makes a lot of sense. He's very, well I don't see very because he chases but you know CCTZ he puts the ball in play he knows what he does well and and so I think that he would be a fine addition I think the way I would look at it is that Horner can absolutely be the best player that you add at this deadline he can't be the best bat that you add at the deadline though and there is a difference there so you know adding a four win player kind of regardless of how he does it if you can afford it if the cost makes sense. sense, you should probably go ahead and do that because 401 players don't grow on trees. So I think Horner is, you know, I would be perfectly happy if they brought in Horner.

The price, you know, for two and a half years of a 401 player, it's going to cost you something, but it's not going to cost you Colt Emerson. You know, it might maybe it costs you Harry Ford or maybe it cost you Cole Young or maybe it cost you, you know, Farmello or maybe there is something where it's, hey, well, we like Dominic Canzone or we like Tyler Lockley or we like Ryan Bliss. those guys are close to the big leagues or they're in the big leagues. They could help us really soon. And so maybe instead of, you know, that, it's more like, hey, how about you just give us Aidan Smith, Ty Pete, and then Ryan Bliss or whatever.

So we get one guy who can kind of help us now. And then we get a couple lottery tickets who can really explode over the next couple years. So I do think that there's a possibility here that if there was a deal that would be reached, the Mariners could afford Horner in a way that wouldn't prevent them from going out and getting a better bat like a Vlad Jr. or Luis Robert or Issaq Parade is like I think they can still go get the bat that they need

but you shouldn't discount Horner just because he's not you know the elite hitter that you want added to this lineup you can do both go get Vlad Jr. and Nico Horner you can do both. Yeah you need to get better in other areas of your roster as well because at the very

least you know the problem with this roster at the moment is not just that they're not hitting it's that some of the guys who are not hitting don't even offer you anything else of value in other areas of their game. They're just a complete black hole across the board. At the very least, with Horner,

even though he's just a league average bat, which again is better than quite a few of the guys that you're running out in your lineup at the moment. He's an elite defender. He's a great base runner. He gives you value in other areas of the game. That's what's really important here. And yeah, I think it's going to cost you something nice,

but it's not going to cost you anything that should prevent you from going out getting a Vlad Jr. or Luis Robert or maybe just a couple of other like solid 120 WRC plus bats, right? So, uh, Horner would be a really nice addition. Again, that, that helps you in a variety of ways. I'm totally on board with that unless, you know, the cost just gets to an extreme, uh, we're talking Colt Emerson or we're talking Harry Ford and Cole Young, then you're out. That's fine. I think the Mariners and the Cubs actually line up pretty well. I think Ryan Bliss would make a lot of sense here in this deal, one, to kind of reset their timeline at second base.

Like, he's not going to be the headliner, but I think he could be a legitimate piece of it. Yeah, I think he could be a legitimate piece of a Horner deal for the Cubs that they would really like and actually put quite a bit of value in. So I think this could actually work. I think there's a lot of different avenues that both of these teams could go down where Nico Horner ends up being a Seattle mayor. And again, I think he would help quite a bit for what. what this roster really needs right now. I would classify it as highly unlikely, but yeah, he makes sense. All right, we're going to answer some of your questions here in just a moment.

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Thank the heavens. But they're back at it tomorrow against the Baltimore Orioles. And if you dare, you can catch all the action on the Marys hometown broadcasts serious xm via the sxm app all you have to do to find that is search the word mariners so now we're going to get into your questions here on mailbag monday and we're going to kick things off with a question from mark who wants to know what do you truly think the mariners need to quote unquote fix this offensive problem feels like the number of impact bats needed has swelled to three i think it's always been three now the question is you know you might add three position players

but are they all actually going to be bats in the true sense of the term? One of them, maybe two of them, ends up being more like defense first, which again, you need some of that. You need to get better defensively. You need to get more athletic on your roster on top of, obviously, the biggest issue here, which is the lack of offensive production. You need to be able to produce more offensively.

So what fixes this offense? I mean, we have to start with Julio. We have to. Julio, if he figures it out, would be more impactful than anyone you could realistically acquire at the deadline. More impactful than Vlad Jr., more impactful than Luis Robert, more impactful than Pete Alonzo, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Have to get Julio going.

Have to just get the core in general going, right? JP has to be better. Cal has to be more consistent. At least Cal has produced, you know, at times he's obviously come through with some huge home runs, some huge hits in general. I don't want to lay into Cal as much as, you know, JP and Julio. I don't think he simply fits in that same box as those guys, but he's been pretty streaky this year.

So those guys have to be better. That's what's ultimately going to fix the offense. Nothing else, really. I look at the trade deadline as a means to manage what the issue is, to cover up some for some of the flaws of this offense. but you are absent of elite level production from the face of your franchise at the moment and you're not even getting anything close to that

you're not even getting league average production out of him at the moment which is a massive massive massive problem and JP is obviously significantly regressed from what he was given you last year and just the top of your lineup in general is just not getting the job done right now you look at that first Miami game on the road trip

The eight and nine hole hitters get on board. No one out. JP then strikes out. I forget what Rojas did. He was the two whole hitter that night, I believe. And then Julio grounded out or whatever. They weren't able to convert, basically. That's the point, right?

The top of your order has to be better. We're seeing that portion of your lineup, which has to be the driving force of this thing right now, consistently fail. Yeah. The bottom of the order has actually been fine. Like you're you're totally getting enough from Rayleigh. You're even getting enough from Canzone.

It's it's hideous to watch. But when you use Canzone against Rides, he's fine. Yeah, doesn't he run in like a 120 WRC post or something against Rayleigh's? He's fine. You should still look to upgrade there, but he's fine. Like he's been fine. Rayleigh's been probably your most consistent hitter from start to finish. You know, Josh Rojas has been totally fine.

You know, you've gotten pretty good contributions from role players like Tyler Locklear and and Ryan Bliss and Victor Robles like you've gotten the contribution so you bottom of the order is is fine it's the top of the order it's the top sometimes you know we try very and even you want to say okay take Cal out of it and it's like oh JP's having a 99 WRC plus if anything last year's the outlier and this is just who he is like okay fine if JP's hitting sixth he's fine he's hitting lead off if JP's going to hit lead off he has to be he has to be better right then league average. He has to.

That's the guy's getting the most at-bats. The guy who's getting the second most-at-bats on this team, he's also below league average, and it's Julio. Julio has to get to his pole side. Flaring singles into right field is fine, whatever. There's certainly a time and a place to do it, but he's getting middle and fast balls, and he's pushing him out to right field.

He's like a full 9% lower from his career average and pull rate. Right. Right. He is getting beat bad, and that's a problem. Count Raleigh is not consistent enough. which is going to be part of his game. So it's fine. So even if you want to say like, oh,

well, Cal and JP have been good enough, like, okay, fine. You can't say that about Julio. You can't say that about Polanco. You can't say that about Garver.

And those are the three guys that are supposed to be the 125, 135, 130, 140 WRC plus guys in this lineup. They're not getting it done. And it starts and ends with Julio not getting it done. This is basic. It's easy to say.

it's something we can all agree on. Julio Rodriguez has not been good this year, and he has to be better. And even if the Mariners go out and they acquire three bats, and one of them is like Julio level. And the other two are like solid role players. If Julio doesn't figure it out, you're still two bats short in this lineup from being a like legitimate one through nine.

So at the end of the day, there is no fix to like Julio's problems from outside the organization. Julio has to decide that he needs to make the adjustment and he has to figure out how to do it because Luis Robert Jr. is not coming in to save the Seattle Maritors if Julio is a sub 100 WRC plus guy the rest of the way. Not going to happen. It's Julio. Like stop overlooking what what's the problem with the office? It's Julio. It is Julio Rodriguez, the $200 million guy. The guy that you banked on, rightfully so, by the way. Right. Well, it's not like you And it's not like you're baking on him to do anything that he hasn't done before.

Julio has to be better, period. And even if Julio is better, you're still three bats short. And I think you always were three bad short. The unfortunate thing is that maybe if Julio took another step forward, which wasn't going to be something that was outrageous to ask, maybe if Cal took another step forward, which again, that's not outrageous to expect that he would do that, then maybe you only need one and a half two bats.

But they didn't. So now you need three. Next question here from Kyle. What do you think about instead of getting bats at the deadline, we should just lean really heavy more into pitching, strengthening the staff since we won't be able to fix this lineup in one deadline. We only have so much ammo and limited time to make additions. How does that help you score runs?

You can't win games zero to negative one. You still have to score runs. And you need some offensive help of some kind, right? And again, it doesn't have to be Vlad Jr., Luis Robert, Pete Alonzo, whatever. It'd be nice if they got one of those guys. But even if it's just a couple of

WRC, you know, 120 WRC plus bats, 115 WRC plus bats that are, you know, on expiring deals that are going to be free agent, you know, Christian Walker, Markana, etc. Like, even if it's a couple of those guys that significantly helps relative to what else you're running out there right now offensively.

Yeah. If you can prevent more runs, that's fine. but you have to score more runs too. Like you have to score more runs. So what's more likely? You're going to win more four to three games or you're going to win more one to nothing games.

Right. So like your pitching can only be so good. And by the way, not for nothing. Pitching, more expensive to acquire than hitting at the deadline. The Mariners have scored five or more runs and 29 out of 86 games this year. So that's 33.7%. So in other words,

two thirds of the time, Marrish pitchers have been required to have a quality outing in order for the team to win. Three runs or less. Yep. That's a lot to ask. Over 162 games. Yeah. So, like, would it be the worst thing?

Like, if one of their significant trades, instead of getting that Mark Kana, they go get the Paul Seawald or whatever. No, you could sell me on that. Fine. Like, cool. But you can't just go, like, ah, screw the offense. It's going to suck no matter what. It's never going to be great no matter what, but you need it to be average. an average offense

with this pitching staff is going to win a lot of games. Yeah. Think about how many games they've lost by just a couple of runs. You know, and think about how many games the mayors have had opportunities

like yesterday, plenty of opportunities where they've had traffic on the base pass and all they needed was to make contact and they didn't. They struck out two times in a row or they struck out to create the second out and then there was a pop-up or it was a ground out or whatever. How many times have they had runners in scoring position

with one or fewer outs and they haven't been able to convert just because they weren't even able to put the ball in play? All right. So we're going to answer more of your questions in just a moment, but first a reminder, this episode of the Lockdown-Arens podcast is brought to you by Fandul. I know I'm saying the obvious here,

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making the most out of your summer fan Daniel, official sports betting partner of Major League Baseball. And you're listening to the Lockdown Marers podcast. Once again, you can catch the M's on the Orioles tomorrow and all the way through Thursday on the Marriss Home Town broadcast of SiriusXM via the SXM app. All you have to do to find that is search the word Mariner's. All right. Let's get back into your questions here.

Junior Vela Vaya. Apologies for not being able to pronounce your name right. outside of the obvious answers Colt Emerson Young Harry Ford Las Montas and Felon Selison who is a marriage prospect Do you think another team

could potentially value more than what you would expect? I think Michael O'Royle because he started a hit for power so I think that's answered quite a few questions around him where I think I've talked about this before I definitely talked about it on the Patreon

I don't know if I've talked about this before on lockdown, but I kind of viewed him in a similar light to how we viewed Gabriel Gonzalez before he was traded in the Polanco deal this winter, where it's like, yeah, he can help you get a guy like that, a guy like Pori Polanco, but you're also going to have to throw more in on top of him. But maybe a team views Arroyo in a similar light

to how a team would view Johnny Farmerlo and Las Montes and kind of like, he's not Harry Ford, he's not Cole Young, he's not Colt Emerson, but he's in that, He's firmly in that second group of guys. He might be a year from now. He continues to produce like he has been. He just made the jump to high A and he's looked totally fine at high A.

Yeah. It seems pretty likely at this stage he's going to be able to play either second base or third base. There's very little risk that he's got to move to the outfield anytime soon. And so, yeah, he's pretty good athlete, pretty good solid hitter. And now he's developing into power, which has kind of always been the profile. It's going to make contact. He's going to hit doubles. he's going to hit line drives.

If he can turn into some power, then he makes a lot of sense as a third baseman. And he's starting to get there. And I think he's 20 years old, if I'm remembering correctly, it might be 19. Like he's still young. He's not 24 years old,

just now figuring this out. So, Arroyo to me is probably the guy that has more value than people think. I'd also throw Michael Morales into that mix. He has just been promoted to AA. he was a third round pick oversawed third round pick a few years ago he kind of stagnated at modesto for a couple years but this year he took a big step forward uh the velocities up a little bit the stuff is just a little bit crisper he's always been a good athlete repeats his delivery well i think somebody will look at at michael morales and be like hey that's a guy who could be in my rotation in a year uh it could be like get big league hitters out in a year and is he like a mid rotation guy probably not but how valuable is it to have six years of a major league starting pitcher.

Yeah. Like kind of regardless of like if you think that he can get go five, six innings for the next four or five years for you and consistently help you win games, that's going to be valuable. So I think Morales is a guy kind of further down the ranks a little bit. But I think in terms of like the top 10, I think Arroyo is probably the guy that people are sleeping on in terms of what potential value he could bring or what he can account for in a trade. Next question here from D. Panky, how big. of a factor do you think both the Astros' schedule of playing 39 games with only two days off

from August 16th through September 25th and their lack of prospect capital to trade will be going forward. I mean, pitching is the hottest commodity. It's the most expensive commodity in baseball, no matter what the context of the market is, no matter what the context of, you know, how many playoff spots there are, that will never change. Starting pitching is always going to be the most expensive, the most sought after commodity in the sport. And that's what the Astros most need right now

because of all the injuries they've suffered in that rotation. With how rough that farm system is, they're not going to be able to swim in deep waters for starting pitching. Yeah, I mean, they still might be able to go get a, I mean, well, maybe Jack Clarity. Maybe, but,

that's I mean they're going to have to kind of empty what's left of their farm system to get that done which I mean they could but that's one guy they probably need three starters and right now they're kind of hoping that Lance McCuller's junior comes back at some point this year and it's like okay and what if he does what if he doesn't like yeah yeah I think the Astros I think there's a lot of focus on the Astros the last 10 games and kind of ignoring the previous 75 that they played where they were terrible and they couldn't pitch. And now people are just kind of like, oh my God, they've made up so much ground in such a short amount of time.

They're back. They're back. It's like, are they? Are they just in a hot street right now? Like, it just feels worse. It feels worse because it coincides with arguably the worst run of the Mariners season so far. Right. It's the worst run since the first 12 games of the season. Yeah. Like they played really solid ball for two months and now the last two weeks have been bad. Yeah. And the Astros have happened to be really good in that two months fan.

So, you know, their schedule, their, their limited options to go out and make their team better. I think those are going to be a factor. Is it enough to, you know, for me to completely write them off? No, but then again, I don't think Ty or I were writing them off when they were 10 games back a couple weeks ago. Like even we were like, yeah, we're not we're not calling the Astros dead yet. No. Like, no. So this is why we talked about that buffer being so important, right?

It wasn't important to maintain it because we knew they weren't going to maintain it. because we knew that there was going to be a stretch like this for the Astros. We knew there was going to be a stretch like this for Seattle. That's why the buffer is important. That's why it was. That's why you still have it. Right. So yeah, I think the Astros and their schedule, whereas Seattle pretty much gets a day off every week in September.

I do think that that will factor in a little bit here. But ultimately, Seattle still has to go out and get better. Yeah. Because the Astros' offense is good. And it can carry them for a while. So the mayors have to go out. they have to make their team better. And maybe just maybe, you know,

the Astros making this a race here over the last couple weeks. Maybe it puts just a little more pressure on that front office to go and be aggressive on something that if they had an eight, nine game lead, maybe they'd be like, you know, I think we can we can do less here and save some, some, you know,

talent down the road. So we'll see. But yeah, I do think that the, I don't think the Astros are going to make a huge move at the deadline. I don't think they actually can, even if they wanted to. Yeah.

But they're absolutely going to try and add. Right. And you have to add two, but I still think you're a better team than Houston. So yeah, I think on August or I guess the deadline's on July 30 on July 31, we'll look at this and we'll be like, oh, the gap between the Mariners and the Astros, talent-wise, got bigger. Well, because you have a significantly better farm system, right? The Astros have one of the worst farm systems in baseball. You have arguably the second best farm system in baseball behind the Orioles. So that gives you a significant leg up. in the trade market and just your ceiling is a lot higher as a ball club right now than they are one because you can theoretically

add significantly more impact than they can but also because your pitching staff is significantly better and look at who's not producing for you right now what if those guys actually start producing like what if Julio does figure it out like that significantly changes you

like the fact that you've been able to win as many games games that you have in spite of all of those things is you know one it's scary and it makes you worry about the sustainability of things of course but the other way that you can look at it is wow if this you know if a couple things go in the mayor's direction eventually like this can really pop off all right last question of the day from darren mccacken enjoyer how about a fun question Depending on when he retires, is Mitch Hanager, a Mariners Hall of Famer. His career is so split into two and it has been plagued with freak injuries.

How much does 2018 and 2021 impact as well as his missing time? We love Ty and Colby. Not Darren McCacken. Ty and Colby. Is Ravel Le Bonnier's a Mariner's Hall of Famer? Probably should be. But is he? No.

Is Mike Cameron a Mariners Hall of Famer? He should be. But is he? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think you can justify it until you get those guys in and until you get Kyle Seeger in. Yeah. Having, just because you've been here for six years, if you only have two great years out of the six or seven, you're here, it's just not a Mariner Hall of Fame. Now, ultimately, do I care?

No. I'd be fine with it. I'd be fine with it. It's a team Hall of Fame. Put whoever you wanted it. Yeah. Mitch was at the forefront of a very important time in Mariners' history. Sure.

But like, I totally get it. if they wanted to do it. Adam Fraser had one of the biggest hits in Mariners history. Should he be in the Mariners Hall of Fame for that? But Hanager's impact, his importance in this organization's lore goes beyond what he did on the field, of course, as well. And I think that that has to be taken into account here.

Is he more deserving than Nelson Cruz, than Mike Cameron? No. Then Rowley Bonyes. Those guys would have to get him first before you could justify putting Mitch Hanagra in. Absolutely. But if they did it, if they, if that happened,

they put all those guys in and then they put and they put Mitch in? Yeah, 100%. I'm totally fine. I'll go. Absolutely. I love Mitch. I just, you know, to me, is one of the best players in franchise history, which is I think what the Hall of Fame should be,

your team Hall of Fame should be. No, is he one of the most important? Still no, but he's certainly more important than he is like good at baseball. That makes sense. But to me, the answer is no. He's not a Mariner Hall of Famer, especially as long as guys like Cruz and Cameron and Ibania's

aren't in yet and as we always say, Rick Riz. And that's going to do it for our show. But before we get out of here, a reminder that Lockdown has launched the first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube. And now it's also available on Amazon Fire TV and the free Fire TV channels app. Locked-on sports today is here for you 24-7 covering the top sports stories of the day with the local experts of Lockedon, plus our national shows covering every league. Find Locked On Lockdown Sports Today now available on the free Fire TV channels app.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the Lockdown Marrers podcast for Colby Patnode. and Gonzalez. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at L0 underscore Mariners. You can follow me at Ty Dane Gonzalez and Colby at CPAT 11. That's CPAT-1. You can also find all that stuff in the description of this episode. Have yourself a beautiful baseball day and we'll see you next time. Peace.