Gwynn & Chris On Demand
Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times previews the Padres/Mariners series
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And listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com/audio. Visit IXL.com/audio to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Which is a perfect segue into our guests. Ryan Davis, Seattle Times joins us here on Gwen and Chris. Ryan, how's your day? How you enjoying San Diego? Oh, loving it. Back home in Seattle, it's 95. And they don't handle heat there. Well, they don't handle well and they don't handle excessive heat. A lot of places don't have air conditioning up there. So, you know, I'm enjoying my Marriott lifestyle in this nice 80 degree weather here in San Diego. Like, I don't know why anybody would want me. Yeah, listen, the Marriott lifestyle can be nice, especially when you got some AC that can control everything. I just experienced that a little bit myself. Ryan, I want to ask you a little bit about this ball club about, I'd say a little bit about a month ago. This team looked like it could run and hide in the American League West. That has not been the case. This team has struggled a little bit. The lead they had that was once 10 dwindled down to two. What has happened in that span of time with this Mariners ball club? Yeah, they got a hit in the face by a big slap of reality. They realized that if you average free runs a game, no matter how good your starting rotation is, it's not just sustainable to keep winning baseball against the big league level. I mean, they're starting rotations and outstanding all year. I think they're first or second in quality starts. You know, they go out, they get you six almost every day. But when you struggle to score four runs in a game and it's an ordeal, score four runs. Even in modern baseball, we're batting averages down and strikeouts are up and everybody's relying on the whole runs. You got to find a way to get four. I mean, for the Mariners, it's difficult to do it at times. Ryan, I want to talk about, well, let's talk about Logan Gilbert first. He's pitching tonight and he's had really good success against the Padres. You talked about quality starts. I think he's got 14 out of 18. So it's almost every time out. Yet he's only got five wins, which speaks to what you're saying about this offense. Does the offense simply? Well, I asked about Logan Gilbert. So let's stay there. How good is this guy and how good should he be if he was getting support? Yeah, I mean, like you look at it, there's, you know, in all those qualities starts, I think there's four or five no decisions and like three losses where he gave two of the losses he gave up two runs and they lost. Yeah, it's, he's been outstanding. So he was a guy that they drafted in the first round and you look at him and while I will, you know, as a former college catcher, I will say that no pitcher is athletic ever. He really doesn't look athletic in any way. He's six foot seven kind of walks on his toes. You know, I mean, but he's got the longest arms I've ever seen. He's got the biggest hands I've ever seen. Like a baseball looks like a golf ball in his hands and he's kind of what the modern pitcher is and like, you know, he's got the water ball, the net ball, the weighted bag, all that stuff that he does in between starts and warming up like all schemes. You know, he's gone to a pitching guru since he was 14 years old or 13 years old, like how to build all the stuff. And he's also a guy that like continues to like monitor all the data. So he understands spin rates, pitch shaping, all the tunneling aspects. And what he does is he'll just continue to add his repertoire. When he first came up, he threw a four theme basketball 70% of the time, he had a slider curveball and changed it. We no longer have the change. It's got splitter. He's got a two-seamer, four-seamer, he's got a cutter, slider, curveball, you know, he's got everything because he continues to add because like, as he said, you got to keep adding, you got to keep adding to try and combat these hitters. So, you know, that's he's kind of evolved and that's what made him good. That's kind of like lifted him into the all-star status is he continues to add pitches and refinance repertoire. So like, he's not getting beat up by left-handed pitchers or he's not getting beat up for homers. You know, he found ways to adjust to what hitters are doing to them. First of all, Ryan, you and I subscribe to the same thought in terms of pitchers and never being athletes. They will tell you differently. All of them will. I want to pin you down on Logan a little bit because he is getting better. It seems like I've seen him in the past. I've seen all starts against the Padres. He's been dominant in all. But it seems like this year he has taken another step forward. He's an all-star this year. Is that in part because he keeps adding to his repertoire? Is it that simple? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, the splitter, especially because he didn't have a change-up. So, you know, you get that splitter, which is like kind of the new pitch coming back. I think all the Mariners are doing it. So he has the splitter and it changes the eye level because it's on multiple planes. It's got I think it's an 84. So you're talking about the good V-load difference. And, you know, it has a lot of movement. And you got to have that against lefties. I mean, teams just load up with lefties against them. He didn't have a way to combat it. You know, change kind of the plane on the slider a little bit, all the stuff that continue to evolve. And what it really does is he doesn't have patterns. You know, he's not predictable. You can go anywhere, anyway. And he's shown a willingness to throw any of them. Again, you know, like, he said starts this year where he's throwing his fastball 25% of the time. You know, two years ago, it was 75% of the time. That's a big change in the mentality. You know, these guys go up, you know, pumping heaters by guys at the AA level and thinking that's what it takes. But that's what's going to make you good. And when you get there and you realize, oh, this doesn't happen. I mean, look at Chris Patek. You guys remember that? Yeah. They catch up to the fastball. Good hitters will find a way to hit that fastball. So how do you combat it? And that's what he's done. Ryan Divish Seattle times is with us. Ryan, I want to ask about Julio Rodriguez. That's kind of where I was headed last question before I pulled myself back to where I wanted to be. 16 games. One home run, one RBI. That's unbelievable for a guy of his stature. It's got only 30 RBIs this season. He's only hitting 247. His on base is under 300. I'm telling you things you already know, his OPS is a paltry 632. This is Julio Rodriguez. Now he gets a quad injury Saturday gets a played appearance Sunday. What's the latest with him? And what's been wrong with him? Well, I expect him to play. I don't know if he'll start today, but I expect him to play in the series. The quad injury wasn't too serious that they saw it anyways. It's more precautionary. And I think it's smart. He didn't try and push it and hurt himself. As far as the bad. I don't know if there's what you know, it's it's been a lot of things. It's been approached. It's been swing changes that he made in the offseason that didn't manifest in the success. And you know, and it's all kind of just multiplied. So like he this offseason, he changed up the load in his swing a little bit, used less legs is real, but it was really static looking. And like, you know, like the idea of going back to get forwarder as as you guys know, this guy has a statue with like say you need to get in a good athletic position and get a good pitch to hit. Julio was doing neither. He was he's the best athlete on the team. And he looked a least athletic in the box. And so they've been trying to get back to maybe what he was doing before. But you know, it just hasn't synced up. And then part of the problem with that too, is that they attacked him like he attacked all right handed power hitters, pound them inside with fastballs and thinkers, and then go soft away, soft away, soft away until they chase. And he would chase because he's a guy that put up numbers as you know, his first two years. And when you aren't putting up numbers and you don't understand why, you just keep swinging and swinging more and you're playing right into their hands. So he's kind of gotten better with his approach at times. Sometimes the moment gets a little big for him. You know, he's 23 still, but he'll still get a little swing happy. They brought in his in the Mariners, basically called his personal hitting coach that he works within the off season. A guy down at Tampa flew him in for this last homestead was nine days. They were out there every day because the hitting coach was like, well, we need something, you know, something's got to something's got to get better. So they brought him in and it looked better. You get a homer, had a double and then he got hurt. But he's really just been kind of late with his timing late on the fastball. And then when you're late on the fastball, you're just not hitting good fastballs. You're missing him, put you in a bad position for breaking pitches. So if he plays, that's something you want to watch is just kind of see where his timing's like. If he, you know, they're what they're trying to just impart on him is that it's okay to get started early, get started early and get your foot down and get in a position to hit the ball because before it was like everything was trying to go at the same time and he would follow. So we'll see if it happens. But I know this much, if he doesn't get going, he doesn't kind of, you know, he's not going to get his normal numbers. But if he doesn't start being more productive, you can't go anywhere because we're a ball offensive team as it is. And when he's not going there, they're a horrible offensive team. To every player's crypto night, trying to get more after, I mean, two really good seasons. Tried to win the swing change and it seems like it hasn't caught around. I got to ask, first of all, I've been pretty impressed, but you break down a lot of these dudes, man. I got to ask, I mean, this offense has never been like a juggernaut by any stretch, but they had pockets where they could put up runs. I mean, you start going through the numbers. It seems like everybody is having a down year offensively. I mean, what has been the conversation around the offense as a whole? I know you mentioned they haven't been able to score runs, but they they were pretty content with this group coming in. Why have they performed so poorly offensively? I mean, like, they strike out at just an alarming rate. Back to that. 32%. I think the time and, you know, and really, a lot of the strikeouts aren't even about the swings on strike three. They're missing a lot of fastballs in the zone early, you know, filing them off, not doing damage. You know, they went out and they had some payroll issues, you know, similar to the Padres, you got to maneuver some stuff. So they made some trades, moved some money around. They go out and add Mitch Garver on a free agent's time, and then they trade for Mitch Hanniger to come back and he did success in Seattle. They trade for Jorge Polanco, his former All-Stars, always kind of put up numbers if he's healthy. None of those guys has been any good. I mean, like, if you look at the Mariners offense, they only have one player with an OPS over 750, hence Luke Rayleigh. The rest of them are all below. Tye France has struggled, got hurt, struggled, Julio struggled. JP Crawford, after a year where you hit 270, had about a 390-400 on base percentage, struggling, you know. They've had the collective struggles of this team have been just unreal. You know, they've already fired Brent Brown, who they hired to be the kind of their offensive coordinator hitting coach. I mean, like, everybody wants the other hitting coaches fired, but I think it's just, it's just kind of a mask on them. Guys are struggled at the same time and everybody's trying to figure it out. And a lot of them have just tried to hit their way out of it. I think sometimes when you, in MLB, when you want to get more hits, you need to swing less. And they, they haven't really proven they can do that yet. And so until they do, I mean, like everybody's talking about the trade deadline and they need to add bad, you can go out and Luis Robert. But if these other guys don't hit, it'll just be Luis Robert hitting it nobody else. Because like really right now, you look at it. I, you know, Cal Raleigh has been really good late in games. They know it's at homers, but, you know, 210 batting average, and strike it out at 35%. So they don't, they just don't have any sort of consistency in terms of results. Like it's a struggle for them to put two hits or three hits in an inning together. Sorry to hear that. And hopefully it won't pick up until you guys leave town. But Ryan, it's just Seattle Times, great stuff. I got another minute left, Ryan. If you can sneak in, the trade that took place a couple of years ago around these parts that sent Austin Nola here, and Munoz and France and others there has never really been looked upon too happily here. How about in Seattle? I know you said Ty was struggling a bit and he's our Aztec guy. Munoz with the closer 14 saves. I'm assuming they still feel that was a success. Oh, yeah. I mean, because like everybody kind of knew that Austin, there was a shelf life and how successful he could be because he got beat up so much. He was older. And I think Munoz has just been outstanding. You know, they locked him up to a long-term deal. And really, if you look at it, how do you not strain his back a little bit in that game in Oakland covering home? He would probably be an All-Star. And he still could be. I mean, but you know, he's just dominant when he gets in there. He's got the slider out of the two-seam or at 99 miles an hour and just a good guy. So, you know, even if they just get Andres Munoz out of that deal, they'll keep him. He'll be pretty happy out of that trade. You know, if Ty France is gone and then you've got to remember too, there was that other trade for a player to be named Waiter named Matt Brash. We've had TJ this year, but you know, Taylor Williams from Matt Brash and you get, you know, Brash, that's Tommy John this year. But last year, you know, he had a he was striking out batters at a 40% rate and he'll be back in a year and back on 100 and with a nasty slider. So they did okay in those deals. I mean, they've had some other trades that haven't been good, but those ones have worked out okay. Yeah, losing Munoz hurt my soul for sure. You saw that one comment when that one was happened. Ryan, man, great work, man. Appreciate you coming on Spins sometime. I'm sure I'll connect with you here today at the field, but I appreciate you coming on today. No problem. Take it easy, guys. Good stuff, Ryan. 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