BONUS EPISODE: Teoscar Hernandez Is A Seattle Mariner

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Bonus episode of the Marine Layer Podcast with TJ. Matthewson and Lyle Goldstein. On today's bonus episode, ti Oscar Hernandez is a Seattle Mariner, will break down everything you need to know about the latest trade for the m's club upgrading in the outfield. With that, let's get rolling and we welcome you into this bonus edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. Lyle, Tioscar Hernandez is a Seattle Mariner. 00:00:36 Speaker 2: What a surprise, first really big move of the offseason, hot stove gets hot. It was made by Jerry Depoto, who does not like to waste a lot of time, and he goes out after what is currently a lost Mitch Hannegert a free agency as we stand, he goes out and replaces him with one of the better bats in baseball who can certainly crush and hit the ball pretty hard, to say the least. 00:00:59 Speaker 1: A lot to like here in the profile of Tioscar Hernandez ninety six percentile on the average exit velocity. He hits the ball extremely hard. That's something Justin Hollander said when he was talking about this trade on local radio today. He hits the ball hard, and that's why they like Taioscar Hernandez the most ninety eight percentile and hard hit rate. If you look at all the other contact measures, he is at near the top of baseball, and it's exciting to see what he would bring to a corner outfield spot. Yeah. 00:01:31 Speaker 2: Your top five in the league and hard hit rate, that's going to jump out to any club. How did you react when you saw the trade today? Because I saw it early in the morning, and I was nothing but excited. 00:01:46 Speaker 1: I was extremely excited too. I was a little groggy, So you see it before I do, because I had just woken up my alarm for my current day job here at local radio station here in Corvallis. I wake up at eight o'clock in the morning. The trade dropped around I think seven thirty eight in the morning, so I missed the first twenty two minutes of the trade where you got a fresh reaction. I did not. So I wake up. You know, my hair's a mess. I roll out of bed. I'm groggy eyed, the sun's barely up, and I checked my phone and I shake my eyes a little bit and I look, Oh, I've a notification from Jeff Passing. Oh look at trade. How about that? So it took a little a little while for the cobwebs to shake off. But I have nothing but positive things to say about this trade. My one point, I'll just start. Whatever you can trade a reliever for an everyday All Star player, you do it every single time, every single time, one hundred percent. 00:02:44 Speaker 2: Eric Swanson had a phenomenal year last year and he was part of the two man package that goes back to the Blue Jays. It was Eric Swanson and minor league reliever Adam Maco. So when you look at this trade, Swanson had a phenomenal year last year. As ERA was sub two, his baseball is pretty much all read. But as we know, relievers are fickle. They can be very up and down year to year. There is no guarantee any relief pitcher puts together multiple good years in a row. And like you said, you have the chance to trade for an all Star bat, you do it. 00:03:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, you absolutely do do it. That ERA down to one six or eight for Swanson this year. The ERA plus was even better at two twenty two. But I'm curious did the Mariners see something towards the end of the year they didn't like and shied away from him? In the playoffs because he wasn't really part of the playoff go tos for Scott Servis, which was really puzzling. It puzzled you, it puzzled me. But he didn't pitch in the postseason and maybe a reason, maybe not the only reason, but a reason that they would ship off Eric Swanson to Toronto. 00:03:52 Speaker 2: I feel like that has something to do with it, because you just touched on it. We could not figure out, for the life of us why he wasn't pitching in high leverage situation. He was one of the best relievers all year really in the American League. He was arguably the best reliever in the Mariners bullpen all year. I mean, there were three guys you can basically make an argument for, but he only pitched one time and it was during that eighteen inning game when they had to empty out the entire bullpen and use everybody against the Astros. So that was one of my initial thoughts was despite having such a great year, they must see something internally where they think that year he just had maybe isn't repeatable, because otherwise a guy with three years of club control left like Swanson has seems a little bit interesting that you'd move him even for a guy like ta Oscar. So yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if internally in the Mariners front office they just saw something that said, you know what, I think we can replace them. 00:04:48 Speaker 1: And that's interesting to think you could replace a guy like that, But that's exactly what the Mariners have done really in the bullpen. If you look at the twenty twenty one bullpen compared to the twenty twenty two bullpen, two comple depletely different sets of guys, and yet the same results occurred, if not better, in twenty twenty two, and they feel confident that in twenty twenty three they can replace that with the guy they sign with, a guy from their system. We mentioned just the bevy of pitching in the system. We haven't even talked about a guy like Bryce Miller, the number five prospect for the Mariners, who's I think projected to eventually be a bullpen arm and could eventually, maybe at the end of this year or beginning of next see time in that bullpen as a guy who could potentially replace Swanson. I do know that Justin Hollanders said it was really hard for them to let go of Swanson and I do understand because again the numbers were phenomenal this year. His fastball and splitter were two of the best pitches that any reliever had in all of baseball. The era reflected it, and he will be missed at times, especially about getting lefties out. He was very good at getting lefties out. But I wouldn't get too concerned about that, Lyle, because the Mariners as a whole were very good at getting left out last year as an entire pitching staff, and OPS just over six hundred against left handers opposed to an OPS well over seven hundred against right handers. And if you take a look at all the individual bullpen guys, they were all really good against left handers last year. So I wouldn't be too worried about Eric Swanson going. And for the Blue Jays, if we look at this on the Blue Jays side, they needed some relievers. They couldn't shut down that game against the Mariners in Game two where they had an eight to one lead. They could have used a guy like Eric Swanson, and now they finally have him in a trade. 00:06:33 Speaker 2: Exactly. It works out for both sides and the Mariners. Before this trade, I think most people would say they need at least two outfield bats. Now they've solidified one of those guys with getting tay Oscar. So before we dive into all the positives with ta Oscar Hernandez, I wanted to just highlight a couple of the reasons on the other side where maybe there's a cause for concern, just to look at both sides of this and looking at Taoscar's career and some of his tree. He doesn't walk a whole lot, and he does strike out at a very high rate, making both him and au Hennyosuarez strikeout prone in this lineup. So his walk rate and his strikeout rate are both well below league average. That is one thing to take into account, especially since the Mariners are a team that are very big on their motto, which is dominate the zone. So that is the other side to this. As good of as bad as tay Oscar is, there may be a concern or two. He's not the perfect player. 00:07:31 Speaker 1: There's a couple of flaws in there, Lyle, and I'm curious to the jump and strikeout rate this year. If we look back at last year in twenty twenty one, when he was an American League All Star, four point three fangrafts wins above replacement. He only struck out twenty five percent of the time. For a guy who hits the ball as hard as ti Oscar Hernandez does, that's a great number. He only walks six percent of the time, but when you're only striking out twenty five percent, that's pretty good. That number jumped up to twenty eight percent this year. Being a guy before that, each of the previous three seasons struck out over thirty percent of the time, and thirty percent is where you kind to get a little nervous with a hitter, but he was able to bring that down under thirty percent for his all star season. He was also hurt this past season a stat here in May. Tioscar Hernandez his stats might be a little misleading, so he got injured in April, returned in May, and for the first fifteen games coming back from injury, lyle his weighted runs created plus orus offense was negative nineteen, submitting he was one hundred and nineteen percent below league average as an offensive player. After that, in a one hundred and nine games, which is a really big sample size, a one forty eight WRC plus slash two, twenty eight, three thirty six, five thirty eight. You'll take that line. 00:08:50 Speaker 2: One hundred percent. His ops plus this past year as a whole, which sat for the year at one twenty seven, that ranked third on the Mariners roster. Had tay Oscar been a part of the roster in twenty twenty two, the only guys that ranks behind Julio and then au Heniosuarez, but only by a little bit. So I was gonna say, yes, there are a little bit of concerns with his walks and his strikeouts, but you know what offensive production is offensive production. He's got pop, He hits the ball really hard, and when you look at his ops plus over the last three years, one forty six in twenty twenty one, thirty one in twenty twenty one, one twenty seven in twenty twenty two, you're gonna take that. You'll take some strikeouts in exchange for very very high level offensive production, which tay Oscar Hernandez is gonna give this club. 00:09:40 Speaker 1: And if you're really concerned about the strikeout rate, there's already guys on this roster that they plan on having, like JP Crawford, Ade Toro. Maybe that don't really strike out all that much. So if that's what you're concerned about, there are other guys to sort of offset that a little bit. And I know Julio's gonna improve on this, but him and Julio's strike out and walk rates were pretty similar. Julio's at seven point one percent for the walk rate, Taoscar at six point four. Julio's at twenty six percent k rate, Taoscar's at twenty eight. It's not too different, so you can live with it as long as you're again crushing balls over the wall. So there's just so much here to like for Tioscar Harnanas. I'm so excited to watch the student a Mariner's uniform. He's very much what they needed. They needed some thump in those outfield spots, especially those corner outfield spots. I was just peaking at what the splits were for Mariners outfielder corner outfielders this year, below league average offensively in both spots ninety one in right field by ops plus and then in left field eighty three, so well below average, and that the number at least for right field or left field wherever they're going to put him, will go up significantly. 00:10:53 Speaker 2: And the good news with Taoskar too is he'll give this team a little bit of versatility in the sense of if you need him to play the corner out field spots, he can. But if somebody like Jared Kalniker, Taylor Tremmell really takes off next year, who are better defensively than Taoscar Hernandez, Taoscar can just DH because this team is in need of a designated hitter as well. So that's the plus side is you can add Taoscar, you can still add another outfield bat and be versatile with this team, giving some of the younger guys room to grow while also having solidified spots if you need it. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: And they said Mitch Haniger is still on the table too, which is important. I think you there is a world where you can have Mitch Hanneger and Taoscar Hernandez on this roster, one of them DH's, one of them plays in the field, and then you probably put one of your better athletes in the outfield to sort of offset the fact you have Mitch or Taoskar in the outfield. And I think they were saying today when Justin Hollander was talking to the media that they believe they can improve Tioscar's defense, that this isn't really a this wouldn't be a Jesse Winker situation. Tioscar is only negative too defensive run saved in the corner outfield spots, which is kind of a prizing from some of the wording I saw on his defense. But that's just slightly below average. For example, Jesse Winker was negative seventeen or eighteen I think playing. 00:12:11 Speaker 2: I think it was. I think it was negative sixteen is what I saw today. 00:12:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pretty bad number. And remember Jesse Winker didn't play in the outfield all the time, so it's a really impressive mart to get that that low into the defensive run safe. But ti Oscar doesn't seem like he's quite at that moment. He's not going to win a Gold Glove out there, but he's gonna hit the ball over the wall. That's what they want. 00:12:35 Speaker 2: Can I just read you two stats on ta Oscar Hernandez that just jump off all age to me. Well, first is just his career at T Mobile Park. I know we try to avoid batting average as much as we can on this show, but his career at T Mobile Park He's hit three point fifty seven with three home runs and seven doubles in sixteen games. But the one that really stands out to me, he has the second highest OPS again left handed pitching in all of baseball in the last three years. His ops plus against lefties during that time is ten fifty three. Paul Goldschmith's the only guy who ranks ahead of them. Trey Turner ranks behind him. Aaron Judge also ranks behind them. That jumps off the page. 00:13:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really insane. It is insane how hard this guy hits the ball. Another stat I don't think we've mentioned it yet that I think you and I gushed over this morning. Three players rank in the ninety fifth percentile of hard hit rate and the eightieth percentile of sprint speed in twenty twenty two. Those three players are Taoscar Hernandez, Julio Rodriguez, and Mike Trout. Well take that, we will take that. It's gonna be really exciting to see this dude in a Mariner's uniform. And the thing that made me most excited. We talk about all these stats, all these figures, how many home runs he's gonna hit? They said they love how the addition he's going to be to the clubhouse and how what big of a culture fit he will be in the clubhouse as well, and I'm very excited to see that and embrace a role sort of like what Aohaney O Swarez did this past season. 00:14:16 Speaker 2: I love that the Mariners do that because they're very, very analytically driven. I'd say one of the more analytically driven teams in baseball, but they care a lot about the guys they bring into that clubhouse and making sure the team gels. Because anybody who's watched the Mariners the last two seasons, it has to pop out on the page at you how much fun this team has. And I don't think anything more than the group dance circle both after they clinched a playoff spot and after they won Game two in Toronto when the entire team did the win dance on the infield, which was so awesome. And not every player would buy into that in baseball, some guys are a little more self centered than others. But like you said, it sounds like Taoscar Hernandez is very very bought in on team culture. 00:15:02 Speaker 1: And that's great to hear. And team culture I think is a little underrated when it comes to winning baseball games because it helps everyone really believe in each other. Haven't been in too many clubhouses myself as a part of a team high school doesn't really count as an opposed to being a professional, but regardless, you can just see the impact it has on the field. We're excited to see ti Oscar Hernandez in a Mariner's uniform. I wouldn't be shocked if the Mariners make another trade or two before we record our next podcast a week from yesterday, so about six days from now when the next Marine Layer Podcast drops. But whenever that happens, we'll have plenty of discuss on the next edition of the podcasts Lyle Goldstein, I'm TJ. Matthewson. Thank you so much for tuning into this bonus edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. You can follow us on all of our social media at marine Layer Pod. You can click on the link tree in our Twitter account. We'll take you to all of our platform forms, our YouTube and all forms of social media to follow along with the podcast. We'll talk to you next time on the Marine Layer Podcast. 00:16:59 Speaker 2: M HM. 00:18:00 Speaker 1: M HM. 00:18:02 Speaker 2: Mtal denominatinentin 00:18:19 Speaker 1: Mm HM