Mariners are in a free fall, the brothers analyze how we got here, and what needs to happen to turn the ship around.
The Collins It Like It Is Podcast is two brothers talking Seahawks and Mariners. Get ready for WAR, trying sorry receivers, and breaking up family feuds! Like, subscribe, and follow us on X @collinslikeitis
Collins It Like It Is
35. Freeeeeeee Fallin'
Mariners are in a free fall, the brothers analyze how we got here, and what needs to happen to turn the ship around. The Collins It Like It Is Podcast is two brothers talking Seahawks and Mariners. Get ready for WAR, trying sorry receivers, and breaking up family feuds! Like, subscribe, and follow us on X @collinslikeitis
- Duration:
- 49m
- Broadcast on:
- 30 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[Music] Welcome back in to the Collins It Like It Is podcast. My name is Stephen Collins and I'm here with my brother Sean Collins. We got the two brothers. We got the bash bros here ready to bash on the Seattle Mariners. Holy smokes. Guys, vibes were high. We had a 10 game lead. And then, you know what Sean, here's the deal, we're both fans of classic rock. We both can get down with some Americana. We enjoy the classics, if you will, and my favorite classes in college, History of Rock and Roll, because I went to a serious university, actually, state man. And here's the deal, the Seattle Mariners have gone full, Tom Petty, because we are free-fallen. We are free-fallen. Fire up the song, man. We don't have the rights. We don't have the rights. We don't have the rights. We don't have the rights. We don't have the rights. This is Mickey Mouse Productions, those other rights. Holy smokes. 10 games up. We are, the vibes were high. We were talking about things from our childhood. We'd the Mariners have done things they haven't done in 20 years. Ah, we were flying high. And then, the Holy smokes, the bottom fell out and we're sitting here. Sean, what in the world has happened to our Seattle Mariners? What happened, man? We've gone full, Tom Petty. What happened to this team? Well, if you remember back to our previous episodes, I was all over the schedule and just like, oh, man, this opportunity is here. We can bury the Rangers. We can bury the Astros, leave them in the dust, start looking ahead to the two seed. And I think what happened was we crossed an imaginary finish line that didn't exist. And we, and I mean, if I'm a fan, you know, it's not my job. This isn't our job. You know, this is a hobby. It's just a hobby to look at the schedule and do deep dives into the schedule and analyze things like that. You think the players weren't aware of that? You think the players weren't aware of the opportunity in front of them? They crossed the finish line. They swept the Rangers. They set up all their chips to do that. We accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish, one, three out of four, started hand-cocking game four against the White Sox, set everything up for the Rangers, crushed them. And then it was like, all right, we did it, but you didn't do Jack squat. You got to finish the race. And now we're sitting here in the month of June. And that opportunity that you had is, is over. Like it's gone. You had them in the dust. All you had to do was, you know, win a Marlin series and a Ray series against teams that aren't very good. And here's the thing, I can handle the loss to the Guardians. I can handle the loss to the Twins, you know, you salvage the series. You stop the bleeding to a certain extent. But the opportunity that you had against the Marlins, against their B squad, that still cuts so deep. That still cuts so deep. I'm still not even over it, but I think that that's what happened. I think that you, I think that you took your pedal off of the metal and you got complacent. And the energy, the intensity isn't there. And we've seen the strikeouts jump up to the levels they were at in the Brant Brown era. I mean, there's nothing, you can't fire them anymore. I mean, what are you going to do? Like, go. Get back in here. So you're going to fire you again. You're going to go TP his house. Like what are you going to do? Yeah. There's nothing else. So I've got some, some numbers about like this goes to me. This feels to me. John, what you're describing is, is a tale as old as time when it comes to sports. You can picture the sports movie, you know, you're riding high, feeling good. And then you lose to that, you know, nobody school, you lose to that, nobody squad. And you can picture the coach out of you. You think you won something even when you've won nothing, you know, like the goal wasn't to make the playoffs. The goal is to win the playoffs. The goal isn't to, you know, get a team, 10 game lead. It's to finish with a lead, right? And in some level, I love that image of the imaginary finish line. You can just picture those fail mon, like a montages where it's like somebody celebrating way too soon at the finish line, like the marathon or something like that. And they're, you know, high five and an act in the person runs past them and Houston sure feels like that right now. Now they haven't passed us. Still, I don't know. Was it three and a half four games back or something? Yeah. Three and a half. That stings man. Oh geez, but it feels like we're in the, like that's what we're watching right now. Is the Mariners gave themselves a whole lot of high fives and, you know, we're drinking a beer out of clubhouse, you know, is it not realizing, wait, the race isn't over. It's, it's frustrating, really, really frustrating. I think a couple of things can be true though. Like let's be real. I'm, I'm pretty disappointed in this last basically week and a half. I mean, I think in our last 12 games were four and nine or, you know, it'd be four. What would we be? Well, no, we, we won one game in each series. So yeah. Yeah. Brianna. Yeah. Well, no, if we go back to the Cleveland series, anyways, that's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is we've had a disaster stretch here and basically the last week and a half. Meanwhile, the Astros are nine of their last 10 and that makes it feel a lot worse than it actually is because every team, it's 162. You're going to have stretches like this and I betcha if I'm betting person, I bet you we're going to look, you know, at the end of July and we'll probably have a stretch where we're seven and three over over 10 rather than a three and a seven, seven stretch. It makes it feel so much worse because the Astros have gone on this heater and essentially taken our down, you know, basically couple of weeks here and made it feel so much worse because they've been so on fire. So yeah, because like Texas is still eight games back, you know, you can feel very different if Houston was seven and a half games back instead of, you know, three and a half. I agree with you, Sean. And it also stings who's catching us, you know, like the fact it's Houston, you know, this was the angels coming back, you know, but like it's Houston. It just stings. And I think it also stings the way we're losing. Listen, I feel like I'm watching the Seattle Seahawks get run all over again. And it's like, can we just lose a different way? Like I'm sick of losing these demoralizing, you can't stop the run and you can't run the football. Like I hate watching that brand of football. You've heard previous podcasts when we talk about that, watching a team that just strike out after strikeout, after strikeout, after strikeout, solo home run, walk, strikeout, strikeout, Brown in a double play, like just it's so maddening within making bonehead, you know, base running decisions and, you know, starters being good, but not great, you know, watching, it's just, it's such a maddening form of baseball to watch teams lose three to one, three to one, you know, two to nothing like six to six to three and you just don't do enough. It's just at some point the offense not being able to do much of anything in this stretch. Just gets old. If this was one year anomaly, it'd be something, but we've seen this movie so many times and we've seen them try to address it in so many ways. It's just demoralizing at some point, like watching baseball right now. If you're a marathon is not fun, it's not fun. It's a chore. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you're feeling that you're like, I'm kind of checking box scores. I'm not watching the whole game anymore because it sounds like a chore. And that sucks. If this should be a really fun seat, like if you were told me right now, like preseason and hey, guess what? On July 1st, we're going to be three and a half games up on the Astros with an eight game, you know, over 500 record. We probably feel like, you know, I'll sign up for that sure. You know, like if you just zoom out of everything that's happened, but because of what the last week and a half has been, that feels horrible. And in the way we're losing feels horrible. Sean, you're going to talk about, I think, strikeouts and what's going on there because it's not just that it feels like we're striking out a lot. The data says, holy smokes. Yeah, we've been talking a lot about intangible things and feelings and vibes and all that, but the reality is we struck out 39 times against the twins. Oh, that's 13 strikeouts a game. I mean, that is, yeah, that's crazy. I mean, what in the world? That's like Brent Brown on steroids. You know, that era is what I'm talking about. We had 126 strikeouts since the Rangers series. I'm just going to pause for a second, 126 strikeouts since we face the Rangers. And that's facing the Marlins B squad. That's facing a pitcher like Tristan McKinsey, that's facing guys that in that stretch that aren't very good, you know, like that's just, that's just a dark place to be 126 strikeouts. We are, I would say, 11 per game. Yeah, it's 10 and a half. It's 10 and a half per game in that stretch, which is just ridiculous. That's just one problem though. I would also say that just not executing with runners in scoring position is maybe an even bigger issue in that same stretch. So since the Rangers series, so starting Cleveland in game one with against McKinsey, were 19 and 101 with runners in scoring position. That's a buck 88 average. Our season average is actually fine. We're 250 in that stretch. So like that's, that's you want to put a tangible reason. I mean, when you're free falling at the team effort, it's everyone, you know, it's the Bryce Miller's getting lit up. It's the Brian Wu's getting pulled after three innings because you get some soft tissue thing that he's always dealing with. It's bullpen guys getting blown up. It's, it's Stanek and Thornton giving up home runs. It's not just one thing that's causing a free fall, but if you want me to put the blame, you know, we, we talk a lot about blame pies. The blame pie goes to the offense, striking out and not being able to put the ball in play with runners in scoring position. Yeah. And the whole thing that we've been watching since probably like 20, basically since COVID, 2020 season, this, this mayor's team has embraced us like chaos ball mindset and this mentality, which is, you know, hey, you might strike out a bazillion times, but at the end of the games, we're going to be clutch with runs in scoring position late in the, you know, late innings. We're going to be chaotic. There's crazy stuff's going to happen. And you know what, for years, that, that mind, we're going to keep the game close with great pitching. We're going to play smart. And you know, we're just going to find a way to win and we're going to be scrappy and we're going to, you know, embrace the chaos ball and the fun differential and all that stuff. And that doesn't work. If you're batting a buck 88 with runners in scoring position, like at some point, Sean used this illustration, you know, in the past this season, like the music stopped, you know, like we were playing jazz and, you know, all playing off of each other. We were vibing. We were in the groove, you know, there was a sense of we're all just kind of playing off of each other. And then somebody tripped and fell and spilled their drink on the pianist and all of a sudden, you know, there's a bunch of feedback on the microphone and ain't nobody vibing anymore. And so that's what this feels like that there's, you know, you're talking about J.P. Crawford at one point. I don't know if he's changed us. He hasn't got a hit in the ninth inning all season like that's true like we're talking about like at some point, the blame. I love those two stats because it's these are that gives data points to stuff we're all feeling. It feels like we're striking out like crazy. We are. It feels like we can't get clutch hits. We can't. And that's the season, you know, right now. That's not the season. That is this free fall that we're in is that explanation. So that those are great polls, Sean. If you're feeling like we're striking out a lot, we are. If you feel like we can't get a hit in the clutch, we can't. That's why we've blown a 10 game lead to a three game lead, essentially. So well, we just lost a series of twins that have three straight series. So Miami to Tampa Bay to Minnesota. So losses, the guardians before four straight, four straight series losses. Two of those, you know, you're not going to lose too much sleep over if you told me, you know, we lose a series versus the guardians and twins, you know, I'm not signing up for that. But it's also like those aren't embarrassing like the Marlins. So now it's a B squad. That's a categorically different series loss. But anyways, twins, we lose the series, Sean, can you just give us like a big picture recap of some, some stuff that I don't nobody also game by game to this? I'm going to, I'm going to have in this zoom call. If you try to go game by game to this thing and put us through that. But he does just like what, like high level view, what do we need to catch from this series? Yeah, I would say that Gilbert is on a young tour. He still, you know, put up a quality start, even when he didn't have his best stuff, he's still able to grind through and give you six innings, two run runs. They're both off a Korea home run on a pitch that I wouldn't even say it was really like that bad of a pitch. If I remember correctly, I think it was a ball that he just kind of pulled, yanked out of the, out of the ballpark. But regardless, Gilbert, I don't know if there's an American league starter I'd take over him. He may start the all star game if it lines up that way, you know, I know the all star game starter, it's all kind of luck of like, when did you pitch last, but Gilbert might get the first crack at it, you know. So he's been fantastic, Munoz, another all star that should be there. He really struggled in the race series, couldn't find the strike zone, could tell his back was hurting, his fastball was only sitting at like 94 when it usually sits at like 98, 99, sometimes even 100. So Munoz came in and threw an inning in this series and looked like Munoz, which is huge. We can't afford Munoz being a shell of himself. That ain't gonna fly. Yeah. I also thought that both and Snyder, I thought that they both look really good and they both pitched an inning and locked down their innings. So that's, that's encouraging stuff too. bullpen has been so shaky lately. I shouldn't say so shaky lately, but it's been a problem all season. And, you know, to have both step up, it's been a big development. And then Snyder, he's, you know, kind of been up and down all year. I don't know why he was called on when he was called on because he was, he was called on in pretty leverage situations and he came in and looked great. So I thought that was pretty encouraging. I'll also give some love to Stanek. As far as I can tell, unless something happened in the last two games, maybe I'm just missing something he has not given up a run since Friday, June 7th, almost it's almost been a month now against Kansas City. He gave up a home run today. I'd say again, I had stuff going on this afternoon, so I didn't catch the play by play. So, you know, again, we're not, we're not professionals here. So even having a, even having a really good run, I guess is my point. He's having a really good year, the home run given up. Well, we, we record these on Sunday nights. So they usually come out Monday morning, but Stanek, he's had a good year. It's a good signing, good value. There's, there's nothing, you know, he's not the reason that we're in this free fall. That's for sure. You've been, he's been part of the solution. So yeah, I really have nothing bad to say about Stanek. He came out the gate. A little shaky and it was kind of a Stanek experience, but he's been, he's been really good. You give up one run in a month. I'm going to take that. Like, you know, at the end of the day to go from basically, you know, June 7th all the way. I mean, you go all the way back to June 1st, I mean, he had two outings where he gave up a run. He gave up one game in Kansas City and one game today and shoot. I mean, I'll take that in a month to give up, you know, two runs. Sure. That'll work. The not so good. So those are kind of the highlights of the series that not so, not so highlights. The dim lights were buckle up buckle up. This list. Yeah. Mitch Garver. Yeah. Mitch Garver goes 0 for 7 with five strikeouts. You also got hurt this series. We'll talk about that in just a second. France goes 2 for 11 with four strikeouts and Julio had a really weird series. So Julio goes 1 for 14, but only has one strikeout. So like, I don't really know what to feel about that. I mean, do you want to talk about Julio an hour later? Hmm. Hmm. Do what do you, you, you make that call. Let's just talk about him. Okay. Let's just, let's just talk about him, man. I mean, the other stuff happened, you know, Buxton, who he's one of those guys, just hyper athletic, that is just a monster, he had a, he had a really good game, you know, game too. But dude, let's talk about, let's talk about Garver, just real quick because yeah, so many fans were talking about how when Garver got taken out of the game, we lose our DH. So we had to have Castillo hit and people were getting upset that he wasn't laying down a bunch. This is the most absurd thing I've heard in a long time. I don't even know like where to start with this. Like dude, that's like talking about the houses on fire and you're worried about like the interior decorating. Like your stinking house is on fire, like, what are we talking about? You're worried about the upholstery, like that's going on inside or what about your roast that might be burning, you know, it's like, we have such big problems. Then Castillo laid down a bunch. If this game was determined on Castillo laying down or not laying down a bunch, that'd be fantastic. I would love that. I would love that to be the actual issue that we're talking about is, you know, all our hitters are just dialed in and you know what, bummer, Garver got hit by a pitch. We're in a bad spot. And Castillo, we need you to put down a button. I can name about 15 hitters that are a bigger problem than Castillo not putting down a stinking bunch. Like, what are we talking about? Like what frustrating, like, whatever, like, I don't even care about that part. Like this is such a minor thing on the actual problem of this team. Like, what are we talking about? He hasn't picked up a bat in three years. You think that he can just lay down a bunch after not seeing a fastball in three years. You think that it's that easy. There's a way better chance. There's a way better chance that he takes a fastball off the teeth because he hasn't seen a sinker in the fall ball that just ricochets off his bat and just takes one off the chin. That sounds great. Or if you want him out there hacking. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. What are we talking about? And here's the thing too. We saw a Garver take a fastball off the wrist. You want him out there swinging? He doesn't even know how to read a sinker versus a fastball versus a slider series who can be up there flailing. Fastball comes up and inside. He's just going to break his hands. What are you talking about? You wanted them up there swinging or bunting. Totally. What are we talking about? Well, guess what? They're striking out 10 and a half times a game. So guess what? Him striking out. That's just par for the course. You know, he just looks like everybody else on the Mariners right now. So you know what? I don't want to hear it. The bigger problem is not Luis Castillo stinking striking out. The problem is everybody around him striking out. The problem is that nobody could do anything after he struck out. Like the problem is no one who actually gets paid to hit can hit. Like that's the freaking problem here. What are we talking about? Luis Castillo, when it comes to pride, if you want to critique that he hasn't been sharp, you know, and various outings, that's fine. Go critique that. Like he has not been he's been actually for the last three years steadily declining. Like if you want to talk about like, that's a fine conversation to have. That's a legitimate thing to get frustrated about. And I was looking at his stats. Yeah, he went from like a four and a half war season down to the three and a half. And now he's on pace for like a two and a half like, sure, let's get frustrated about that. Him not laying down. Bunce is not something you're frustrated about like who he's talking about. They're on the flag on that one. Yes, like they're legitimate things to get frustrated about this ball club. And I'm frustrated about him. We're going to fire up with Julio's one of those guys like we're, we're going to go there. Castillo not laying down Bunce is not something you're frustrated about like they're real problems here. And one of them, I'm just taking this there, man is Julio Rodriguez. Yeah, man, we were, we were just texting about this, Sean, and we said, we got to talk about this on the podcast is I'm, I'm going to tell you where I'm at. And then you do have some data to help me with this. Okay. I am, we've watched superstars decline and it can happen for a lot of reasons. You can have guys who, you know, you just get older and you, you lose it. That's okay. You know, you watch an album or something like that where it's like, Hey, you just age. You know, that's right. Or you get a mic trout who, you know, you just get injured too much and that happens. Like that's a bummer. What happened? But it happens. Julio's 23. He should be not even to his prime yet. He should be ascending into his prime. And sadly, it looks like this dude has peaked and I, what's so perplexing to me is not as average going down from 284 in his rookie season down to 275 now down to a low of 247. What's, what's crazy to me is not even his own base percentage dropping from 345 down to 333 down to 297. What's crazy to me is this dude's slugging percentage going from 509 to 485 to three 27, almost 200 points down from his rookie season. What's so confusing to me is what happened to Julio Rodriguez's power? Like, oh, if you're not seeing the ball, like, okay, you know, like your average goes down and you have a bad year. We've seen that happen. But like this dude hit 28 home runs as a rookie last year at 32 home runs. He had 75 RBI. This is rookie season 103 last year. So we go from 28 and 32. He's all pays for 14 home runs, maybe 13 home runs now. He was he was 75 RBI has 103 RBIs. He's on pace for 58 RBIs. I don't know what to do with that, man. Like, but the strikeouts are right. I mean, he went from 145 strikeouts to 175 strikeouts and now he's on pace for 200 strikeouts. I mean, you know, it is just baffling to me that he's a he's a slap hitter that bats for 240. Like, what are we like, what is Julio Rodriguez turning into as a hitter? To me this is the most concerning thing about the Mariners right now is if Julio Rodriguez is a mediocre hitter, which is what he is right now. He's a mediocre hitter. His real asset right now is his speed and his defense like what like, I don't know he had Billy Hamilton as our, you know, as the middle of our lineup right now, like it's shocking to me. What? Dude, what is going on with Julio? Because I'm really, really confused as I watch a guy who's got all the tools in the world. Hasn't suffered an injury. He's not old. What's going on with Julio, man? Like, he's a shell of himself and we have half season sample size. This isn't a bad slump. Every month he's actually been very steady, steadily bad. What is going on, man? Well, I guess I'll tell you first what's not going on because I see a lot of people say like, Oh, he's striking out more than ever. Well, that's true. But the difference between this year's Julio and last year's Julio isn't 25 strikeouts. Like, yeah, I think he'd be the first to admit that we're talking about a 3% strikeout increase from this year to last year. That's not the difference between this year's Julio and last year's Julio. That's not the difference between MVP number four versus a guy who's like Kevin Kirmeyer. That's just not the difference. Yeah. A lot of people are saying, Oh, well, he's not hitting the ball is hard. You know, his, you know, he's just not hitting the ball firm. Not true. His hard hit rates exactly the same. So it makes me do it, you know, it forces me to do a deep dive like, okay, what is actually going on and what is the, what is the cause of all this? And the real difference is, if you look at his fan graphs page, the big glaring differences are he's not hitting the ball to the pole side. So his pole side hits are down just about 10%. And that may seem insignificant to you, but his home run per fly ball rate is cut in half. So essentially what that means is he's hitting the ball to center field or to right field. And when he pulls the ball, he's pulling it on the ground. And when he's hitting the ball in the air anytime, it's going to center field or right field. It's really hard to hit home runs when you're hitting the ball to the deepest part of every ballpark. So what Julio needs to get back to, he has to, there's no other, there's no other like option here. He has to start pulling the ball. And I think a lot of people are getting confused and saying, like, Oh, well, he's striking out more. He's chasing more. He's expanding the zone. He's more difficult than ever to pitch to, or, or sorry, he's easier to pitch to than ever before. Nope. Strikeouts rates are pretty much the same. The strikeouts are almost exactly the same and his walk, like how many total walks is down this season? Virtually identical. And you look at what, what pitchers are doing to attack him. It's the same, like literally to the 10th of the decimal, exactly the same as last year. The difference is he's hitting the ball, opposite field, he's, he's timing is off. He's, he's late on everything and he's going to have to get that figured out. If he can't get that figured out, we are, for lack of a better word, screwed. Oh, we're toast. I just want to, I want fans to be perfectly clear with that. We can, we can sit here and we can do mock trade episodes and talk about our prospects. And we can analyze, should we trade woo? Should we not? Should we trade for parades? Should we trade for Luis Robert? It all doesn't matter at us, not matter. If Julio is this version of Julio, everything that we do, everything that we talk about, everything that, everything that is relevant on this show, when it comes to the Seattle Mariners, it all pivots off of Julio when we talk about the offense. If he can't be at least as good as his rookie year from the, like in the future, we have to restart, like that's the, that's the bottom line. That's also why we're very hesitant to trade guys like Colt Emerson or Valneen Celestine. So Celestine, I always get his name, uh, he's the, he's the, he's the running joke. Oh, dude, I, I totally agree with you, man, because right now, Julio was sitting over the 625 OPS and he's sitting here with a projected to less than a two and a half war season. Yep. It's like you said, that's a fine player that is, that is a fine guy to have in your eight spot in the lineup, who is going to, you know, that's fine. That can't be the face of your franchise. That just can't be. And it doesn't matter. Like he's exactly. He said, Sean, it doesn't matter if you bring him Vlad Jr. It doesn't matter if you bring in Robert, it doesn't matter if you bring in Peter Lonzo. It doesn't matter if you bring in Aaron judge, like at the end of the day, and obviously there's not a world you're bringing an air judge, you get the point. It doesn't matter who you bring in. If Julio was going to be 625 OPS Julio, it doesn't matter. It does not matter. We need Julio to be Julio. And there's nothing we, and here's, I guess what's encouraging to me is if you can read a fan graphs report and if, you know, the professional hitting coaches can too. And so I got to believe that Julio is too good, that Julio has too much talent, that there is too much in the tank for him, did this just be the new normal? You got to believe this is just, it happens to be a down year, a down half of a year. And that the turn is coming, but I love what you're saying. He's got to start turning on the ball. Yeah. I think that for both of us, we always are, you know what, expected averages and all that stuff that people dive into, it's all kind of whatever to us. You never really deep dive into that because your average is your average. You've got a 300 plate appearance sample size. I don't want to hear about what your expected averages are because that's, that's a thing that a lot of people get tied into is, oh, well, Julio should have had a 700 expected batting average on that last hit and it goes for a line out. Things like that. I don't really care about any of that, but, so I guess let me preface by saying that, that his expected slugging, his expected weighted on base, his expected average really should make him without going into too many, you know, boring details. It really should make him about a 120 to 125 OPS higher than he actually is. If we are to, you know, dive into those expected numbers. And I do think that that's significant because that's a huge number. That's bigger than normal. And it does show that he is hitting the ball hard right at people and it's more than a few times. And if we were to sit here and talk about Julio the 750 OPS player versus the 620 OPS player, we're talking about a whole different conversation. And if you look at it from that light that does give you hope that, you know, we should make deal like we should make a trade. We should go out and try and make our team as good as possible for this year without giving up, you know, the top three, four players in our system. It does lead me to, I think that that player is still in there. I'd still bank on it. I would still plan for it because those expected numbers are right. You have to. There's no other solution. Yep. You have to, I mean, you can't, you can't go about this any other way. You have to assume that Julio is going to turn this around. You have to plan for it. You have to assume it. It's painful to assume it. It makes you nervous, but you have to, especially when you're talking about Scott and Jerry having no leash left, they are, they don't have a contract for next year. This has to work and you have to go about it that way. So the thing that you mentioned a few episodes ago that I would love to see them do is put them back in the lead off spot, JP, to me, again, with him not having the speed to be able to be a threat on the base path to me. And it was the one time, like you said, that he had some success. I will give you one comp to me that is interesting. I think about a player who is too much talent, too good, but had a kind of inexplicably bad year that is not only injury related. So obviously, Ronald LeCunha, Jr., right now is injured. And if you go down just his OPS seasons and wars, you know, from his rookie year, he had a very good rookie year. He had a four. He only played, this is in 2018, he only played 110 games and actually had a four-war season. So he would really have been more on like a six-war, you know, kind of trajectory there. 9/17 OPS next year, 883, COVID year, almost 1,000, next year after that 2021, 1,000, you know, OPS. And then he had this random year in 2022. He had some injuries, but it dipped all the way down 200 plus points lower to 760. He had this random down here, random down here. And then he had his MVP, you know, 1,000 OPS, 8-war season. I mean, just was the best player of baseball, basically, him or Aaron Judge, take your pick with Otani. And then obviously this year, he got hurt, but he wasn't playing well. He was down to 7/16. So you wonder about somebody like him, who would be a comp? Now Julio has never had a 900 OPS season, much less, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of them. So, you know, so I think that's a, you know, who has got a lot to prove to get there. But you see a guy who inexplicably dropped 200 OPS, you know, points kind of out of nowhere and then bounced back. So I do think like you're saying, Sean, I'm not off on, I'm not out on Julio by any means. I'm just, it's shocking to me. It's surprising to me. It's confusing to me because you look at him and it's like, I don't get it. Like I don't get how you're performing so poorly. It should be like this. And also rub salt in the woods. And I know you're not a big fan of this, but I, whatever, will make a good content to argue about it is to watch Jared Kellenock having a good season at Atlanta. You know, that was my biggest off season regret. You know, that was the one move I would change. Jared Kellenock, I'm not saying he would have done this in T-Mobile. But I'm just saying he's back in 278, got nine home runs, got a 781 OPS. That's a bummer. We could use that. And I get it. He's in a much better system that really helps him. I get all that. But you know what? We could use that right now. We should really, really use that right now. So that one stings. I'll just be honest. That one really kind of stings right now. Yeah, it does. I think that if we had Kellenock, we wouldn't have Rayleigh and Rayleigh has been really good. I don't know if we look at war and, you know, expected averages and all that and arc factors. Who would be the better player? I don't know. It's close. It's conversation. And there's just the reality we would never have. Luke Rayleigh, if we didn't have Kellenock, Kellenock's got a much higher ceiling, much, much higher ceiling. But Rayleigh is a really good player. He's been really productive for us. So it's kind of, you kind of got to view it in that light as well, as much as you are viewing it in the negative, you know, Rayleigh has really, or yeah, Rayleigh has really stepped in and been the left fielder we've needed for a long time. So they have very similar stats with OPS. And if you're, if you're saying, like, what are you talking about, Kellenock versus Rayleigh, just in a bottle, like just in a vacuum here, just looking at it. Very isolated. Luke Rayleigh's got a 1.2 war and Kellenock has a 1. So Sean, what you said is accurate. So yeah, I mean, if you're telling me who would I rather have for the next 10 years, it's Kellenock. Who would I rather have for the next three? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. So anyway, what do you want to go from here, man? It's, it's, uh, the whole talk about JT, let's do it. Let's do another guy who's been, who's been frustrating. He's, he's way up there. And him batting lead off to me is getting to the point of, I don't even run. I just said, I put Julio there, but it's not like we have a plethora of hitters. So I get that if you're screaming, well, that's what you put there. It's like, there's no, that doesn't mean you just leave him there. He's been, he's been horrible. And I like JP. I like him, but then it's been, it's not been good offensively for him. Yeah. Well, that's what you, you made a good distinction there because who, uh, JP weirdly enough has been really good defensively when he was kind of bad last year, which is, I don't like it. I don't understand that. Like, how did that even happen? Like he does one year, he's like, Oh yeah, he can't go, you know, he can't arrange to third base in this year. He's phenomenal at it. Like I don't get how that happens. I guess it's the magic of Perry Hill. I don't know. He puts something in the water, but, you know, JP, here's my thoughts on JP. I'll, I'll spoil it alert. Let's jump here first. I don't think that there is another option that you have at, at lead off, like legitimately. And I know I said that in the last episode and I kind of want to retract that a little bit because there is no other option. And let me, let me just preface by, or let me give you reasoning why. I think the number one thing you need to have as your lead off hitter is you need to get on base. Like that's, that is number one, like that is the, that is the number one thing that you need to have then after that, no strikeouts or, or, you know, minimize strikeouts and then you need to have some speed. But if you don't have on base, it doesn't matter. And as bad as who, as JP has been compared to those worst, everyone's worse. Everyone's worse. But Rojas, how dare you put not say Tye France. How dare I not say Victor Robles. Yes. Exactly. Okay, so your, your options are JP or Rojas essentially if we're, if our number one thing is on base. Yeah. We already tried Rojas at lead off. That didn't work. We, at least we've seen JP have success in the lead off spot, but it's been a disaster. I mean, JP has, it's, I mean, JP and Julio carry the bulk of the blame. There are best two players, you know, certainly Rojas isn't the problem. You know, that there's, there's, we could go down the line, even, even if we look at Garver, like he's been bad, but he doesn't share equal blame to JP and Julio, JP and Julio get the most at bats. They're the most important pieces we have. They both been bad this year. Yeah. To highlight that, Sean, if you could pull a lever and say, give me five war season out of JP Crawford, how different does the team look radically different? If you could pull a lever that says give me six war season out of Julio Rodriguez, how different does this team look radically different? If you give me Mitch Garver career average, how different does the team look? Not that different. Like there's, there's a reality here of if JP Crawford and Julio, if you can only pick a couple of guys to play to the back of their baseball card, Mitch Garver is not one of the names you're, you know, and whatnot, one of the leverage you're pulling here, Julio and JPR. They just categorically are different make difference makers if they are, you know, playing to their potential. We're, we're also talking about premium positions. It's impossible. Like literally impossible. If you want to get a new shortstop at the trade deadline, like who the heck are you calling up to get a new shortstop? Who are you calling up to get a new center fielder? I mean, I guess Louie's Robert, but you know, that's not a, yeah, you get what I'm saying. That is infinitely more difficult than finding a new DH, you know, and here's one thing I want to say too, because you could be looking at JP and going like, well, I mean, his stats aren't that different from like who he was previously. You know, if we think of last year as an outlier and you'd be looking at his OPS, if you're looking at his OPS going like, well, it's not that different, Sean, what are you talking about? This is where I really want to talk about OPS and why you have to look at the whole picture and not just isolate one stat. And I will say this concept really has come from the locked on Mariners. So I don't want to hijack anybody. I want to get full credit. Ty and Colby on, on locked on Mariners really kind of shine the light on this and made me realize it. And JP is just a great example of what they're talking about. So OPS is a flawed stat because it weighs on base and slugging equally. And let me ask you, what's a better player, the 340 on base percentage guy with a 336 OPS or a 313 on base percentage with a 361 OPS? What's the better player? Who would you rather have? I mean, I'm assuming I want to have the guy who gets you said a 313 that's like a percentage. No, no, 313 on base versus a 340 on base, but they have the same OPS. Who would you rather have? Oh, obviously the higher on base percentage. Right. Sorry. I was misunderstanding the question there. Yes, it's clearly you want the guy who gets on base more. I mean, money ball, he gets on base. Why do you like him? He gets on base. Exactly. And so JP has gotten to the same OPS he's always had, but he's not the player we need. We need the guy who gets on base and he's not the guy that gets on base. He's striking out. Yeah. I think it was when I looked last, he's striking out about six or seven percent more than he has in his career. He's walking less, getting on base less. We need the guy that's got the 340 on base. I don't need slug out of JP Crawford. I need him to get on base. And here's another point of why OPS is a more or why on base is more productive than slug. This is straight from locked on. So I don't want to hijack them or steal their thunder, but I want to. I think it's a great point. If you have a thousand OPS and everyone or sorry, if you've got a thousand on base percentage and everyone in your lineup has a thousand on base percentage, how many runs are you scoring that game? Infinite. It's like, what are you getting it out? Exactly. The game's infinite. You're scoring infinite amount of runs. If you've got a thousand slugging percentage, I mean, that's better than peak Barry Bonds. But there's a cap to that. And that's just like, that's really the exercise here. You cannot weigh those two things equally. Now, if we're looking at a player and going, oh, well, he's got a 500 OPS, we don't need to look into that too much. That's a terrible player. And if a guy's got a thousand OPS, we don't need to look into that either. He's a Hall of Famer. But when we get into nuances of 700, 750 OPS guys, we need to look at it and see what's going on. And JP is not getting on base. That's a problem for your leadoff hitter. Yeah, especially compared to last season. He was a 380 on base percentage last season, and I was 313. And so significant difference. If you said what's the difference, if you're newer to on base percentage, think about a batting error. It said if you were going from 70 points lower, going from 280 to 220, that's not the same hitter. If you go from, there's just a reality there, if they're not even close to the same guy. And so it's confounding. And we need him to get back to who he's been. And like we said, this team is not, we're not a Luis Robert away. We're not a Vlad junior away. We're not. No one's coming in to fix this. Like we need this lineup to turn it around. It's been the same story since, I mean, the opening series versus Boston, man, we've had the same conversation over and over again until these guys play to the back of their baseball card. And they're having such bad first half, so they're not going to be able to get to it for the rest of the season. I get that. But at least put together a second half that looks like that. If we can do that, well, we just find throw in any of these guys we're talking about in the middle of this lineup. If, you know, Crawford and Julio and Mitch and Polanco and you know, Mitch Garver, that is. If any of these are literally all these guys, if you can just be who you've been, then getting a Vlad, getting a Parades, getting a Robert, getting a, getting a, getting Renevo, you know, like there's a, all these guys would be helpful if you can, but you got to have, we talk about the cake versus the frosting. Like we've used that illustration many times here. We don't have a cake right now. So I don't care if you have the best frosting in the world. Like we have to bake a cake and I think we have the ingredients to do it to make a great one, but we don't have it today. And until we actually bake the cake, it doesn't matter how good frosting is. So yeah, leads us to our last question and I think you answered it. Can the Mariners win the ALS or make a deep playoff run with this version of JP and Julio? The answer is objectively no. No. They have to be who they are. And we've said it before, but I'm going to emphasize it again. We have to proceed as if they are who they are yet we have to. There's no other option. You have to proceed as if Julio is Julio and JP is JP. They will never get to the back of their baseball card stats. I think that was a great point to make. I'm going to emphasize it again. Julio's not going to have a 900 OPS. He's not going to have a 50 OPS. It's impossible. Rest of the season. He could have an 850 OPS from this point forward. That's what we need. JP could have a 350 on base from this point forward. That's what we need. And we're not going to go anywhere unless those two things happen, but we have to assume that they are going to happen. Otherwise, you might as well be sellers and we may as well kick the can down the road. You may as well trade Castillo. I mean, honestly, but we're not going to do that. We got to go for it. We got stud pitching. We got to we got to proceed as if those two things are going to happen. It's the only way forward. I agree. I agree. Let me just ask you this on the fly. We don't necessarily plan for this question again. You put on your GM hat. We did all of our trades a little while ago. Let's assume Julio JP turned around. Again, there's not another option. You just have to assume they're going to turn around. Who? What do you want to see Jerry do? You mentioned when we did the you want to go get Robert and I was joking around with Winker. I would say parade is I agree with the dad said there. If I really had to think of a guy, I want the last strike out right. Anyways, over over a guy like Robert, but today, what would you do? Man, well, I would go and get the best player that you can without touching Celestine, without touching Cole Young, without touching Colt Emerson. I would hang on to Lazaro Montes, so that would really free up Johnny Fermelo. Dad would really push back on that. I'd be willing to trade Tyler Locklear. There's the next tier down where time I might roll it. Do you say Harry Ford or no? I would be, well, depends. That's kind of the tier for me where I would consider it. Yeah, I think that there are guys, there is a hall that you can get. There are impact players you can get without touching the top four or five prospects in our system and I'm really not willing to go there with what's rumored to be on the market this year. It's a seller's market. I'm not going to overpay. If that's what it takes, then I'm out, then I will pick the can down the road. But I do think that there are impact players you can get and heck, tie France has been so bad. What's my next move? It's probably getting Tyler Locklear up here for tie France because tie France has been abysmal and I don't care about, you know, oh, well, he had a good May. Well, we see his floor. May was a long time ago. The roller coaster is so up and down. I don't need that out of my first basement. I don't, you know, well, what's my next move? My next move is getting Ryan Bliss in the lineup and getting Tyler Locklear in the lineup because they were your hottest hitters and you need a jolt, you need a spark and they'll provide it. Yeah. So in the immediate, that's my, that's my next move. Yeah. There's just guys that he just got to stare down Scott and Jerry and just say Mitch Hanneker is not the answer anymore. And just just name that and just say, I don't need to keep watching those about and I like Mitch Hanneker a lot. You know, I like tie France a lot, but those guys are not the answer, like those guys aren't the answer. I wish they were. They're not. You know, I you keep, we keep banging on the drum for, you know, Palonco, but at some point he's going to go into that category too. At some point. Oh, we're in his bank or like at some point these guys, you just have there's something called a sunk cost for a reason. Like you just, you've just got to move on. Yeah. And a lot of those guys are getting to that point. Yeah. I had a pretty lengthy conversation last year on Twitter about tie France with Shannon Dreyer and one of the big points I made and I don't think she necessarily disagreed with it. We can, I can, or if you go and do us Twitter search, you could find it. But my main point that I made was tie France is going to go up and down and he's going to have high months and he's going to have really low months and I'm terrified that we're going to get into the playoffs rolling with tie France and he's going to turn into this version of tie France because there's a coin flip shot of who he's going to be. And there's a more than decent chance going to come up tails and we're going to get the 100 average with the 500 OPS high France and he's going to be right in the middle of a lineup just sinking the ship. We need something way more steady out of our space because it's a position that you can upgrade fairly easily. So that's my thoughts. Is there a chance that tie France goes on a run here and in July, you know, he has a, you know, 280 average with a, you know, 350 on base and we're sitting here going, all right, first base is good. I guarantee you August first is going to roll around and tie France is going to go right back down the roller coaster. Yeah. That's who he's been for the last two years. This highlights a big problem across the board. I know we got to land the plane here, Sean, is that we have a lot of players that are just like that. They're very streaky. That's the nature of a lot of our players is that the highs are highs and the low lows are low. And that's kind of been what this office has been. There's moments where it all comes together and it looks amazing. And there's time to, it looks unwatchable and that, and we're in the unwatchable streak. And the really bad news, the Mariners fans is we probably have our hardest stretch of schedule for the rest of the year, like right, right before us and maybe not the hardest, but if not one of the artists because we got Baltimore Orioles coming to town and we got the Toronto Blue Jays coming to town and those are basically away games. If you've been at those blue Jays games, you know, they're basically away games here because this place is going to be build the Blue Jays fans. So we got Orioles, Blue Jays, then we go to play San Diego, we have the Angels, which that should be, you know, easy, but it's on the road and the Mariners on the road who you never know. And then we're hosting the Astros. That's the next four. Let me see if they all start. That might be the All-Star break is that then the All-Star break? Let me see. Oh, yeah, the all star the All-Star break is between the Angels and the Astros. So have the lead going into the All-Star game. If we have that, then I, it's disappointing that that's where we're at, but just do that. Just have it up. Have the lead going into the All-Star break and then you go out of the All-Star break playing the Astros. That's got to be the goal. If you can do that, cool, not holding my breath, but that's just where we're at. It's unfortunate. Yeah. The Mariners have one job for me. Make me not turn my eyes to the Seahawks. That's just what you want. I tell you what, man, for the last stick in 20 years, almost. It has been, you know, but not quite that long. Last like 10, 12 years has been, it's come July, training camps about the start. Thanks for, thanks for handing off the season to the Seahawks. I'll take it from here. Mariners make me care about you. Make me care. Make me not want to watch training camp. And there's a lot of storylines we can into another podcast. Mariners make me care because the Seahawks, there's some exciting stuff going at the pipeline there, but Mariners make me care, turn it around. So thanks for listening, guys. This has been a fun episode, even if the content is, I don't think we're being pessimistic. I don't think we're being optimistic. I think we're being realistic to the situation and I don't think anybody wants to hear a podcast. It's going to be fine. Just on faith. They're going to turn around here. That's not really that bad. Like, come on. We've got a eight game. It's over 500. Like, come on. Like, no one wants to hear that. Also, nobody wants to hear it. Sky's falling. It's over. Like, Julio is a boss. You try to, you know, it's like, nobody wants to hear that either. Go down. Fix it. I'm watching bat 750 with a 1400 OBS, that'll work. That's going to help everyone. No, but we're trying to be realistic on here and call it like we see it and we hope it's helpful for you. Thanks for listening. Give us a like, a share. You know, it's been fun. We got over a hundred followers on X, which is cool. Go find us at Collins like it is and reach over a thousand downloads. So thanks for giving us a listen, guys. Those numbers don't feel insignificant. We're a new podcast to have a thousand listens to have a hundred people wanting to give us a follow over there. That's cool stuff. So thanks for giving it a listen, guys. It's actually 1100 downloads. Hey, look at that. 1100. Seriously, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, we've had some fun guests on. Give this thing a subscribe so you don't miss the next episode and we'll catch you on the next one, which hopefully, you know what, the little coaster has been going down. It's got to come up. And what better time to have it. Come on up versus the Baltimore Orioles. You know, the other. Yeah. The Astros swept them. Okay. Let's go. Let's go. Let's catch a bunch of suckers. All right. We'll catch you on the next one, guys. Thanks for listening. continue. We'll catch you on the next one. in the next one. a. We'll catch you on the next one. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]