Episode 105: This Is As Motivated As We've Ever Seen Julio And The Mariners

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode number 105 of the Marine Layer podcast.

[00:00:04] How good do we think Julio Rodriguez will be in 2024?

[00:00:08] We'll talk about that.

[00:00:09] We'll take a look around baseball with our MLB wraparound

[00:00:12] and close out the show with Speak Your Mind.

[00:00:15] Your reminder, before we start the show,

[00:00:17] if you're listening, make sure to download our episodes,

[00:00:19] rate and review, five stars.

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[00:00:25] where the video podcast is and follow us on social media. going to sit here and say, Teosuar is going for 35 and 100 with the Dodgers as he's a postseason hero for him leading him to the World Series. And there was a what a breaking ball in the inner half that with the bases loaded here nearly muscled out to dead center field straight away in Peoria showing that, you know, just great plate coverage, not whipping at a spinning pitch like we saw all of last season and well,

[00:01:44] really, really looking good in that Dodger uniform. While I gotta say in left field, second base, third base, DHM2, 15-20 homer power. Incredible. Sounds like someone the Mariners could use. Well, remember how they almost re-signed Chris Taylor, which would have been so ironic if they had signed him back a 10 year deal in Anaheim instead of going up the road to go to the Dodgers. But we can get into that in our wraparound. However, we do still have some mariner topics today. I want to start off with Julio Rodriguez in his 2024 season. He just had his presser on

[00:04:23] Tuesday, came back, looked fresh, looked energ it's as scary as it could possibly get. And I loved this quote from him. Nobody wants me to be as successful for this team as I want to be successful for this team. And it all started in this offseason. Scott service said that Julio had as

[00:05:41] structured an offseason as he is seen Julio had while Julio has

[00:05:45] been under the big league umbrella. It's all part of growing up. Remember, he's 23 years old. My life wasn't that structured when I was 23 years old. But now that he has reached the top level of his profession and now is in year three, he has that mindset that we were gonna carry a whole city on our back. I think we were sitting around saying, yeah, remember when we had our graduation on Zoom a few months back and now, well, are there any jobs out there?

[00:08:20] And like, that was basically the extent of it.

[00:08:22] Julio's like, I'm gonna go work my tail off

[00:08:26] to bring a championship to worry about. In the three hole hitting behind Julio last season a 725 OPS. In the cleanup spot two spots behind Julio a 699 OPS and in the five spot a 689 OPS. Now when you see those three OPS listed out behind Julio Rodriguez and your pitcher

[00:09:41] on the mound there's nothing to be he is. Talk about more lineup protection. Julio should see way more pitches to hit this year. He shouldn't be like guys are still going to pitch him pretty carefully,

[00:11:01] but he's probably going to see a lot more pitches this year.

[00:11:04] And then you've got an offense something. Something needs to happen. Something needs to change this roster. Last year's roster was not good enough. And. It has all of these all the makings around this of a team that is actually serious about winning the division. It's even as like Cal was right for doing that. But still the fact Cal had to do that. Then the 54% comments, then the regional sports network stuff. Look at where we're at right now. The vibes in that period of time, really bad. And 2022, that team didn't have bad vibes.

[00:15:01] When they went on that 14 game win streak in 2022, it was pretty good vibes

[00:15:04] only as Gino likes, likes to say from there on out until the end of the year.

[00:16:05] opening like truly eye opening the stuff they learned and told him about his swing. And so he said he added three and a half miles an hour of bat speed on his swing.

[00:16:10] Do you want to know some ballpark math on what the equivalence of that is?

[00:16:17] That is Thai France going from David Fletcher bat speed to Jose Altuve.

[00:16:22] So no power to 30 home run power. Can it be 140? Seriously, why can't it be 135? Maybe a more realistic ballpark range is 120, 125, which 125 is about what he did in 2021 when he was awesome. There's no saying that's similar to how Julio skies kind of the limit for him. Tae France isn't that type of player, but we know when he's at his best, he can flat

[00:17:40] out hit.

[00:17:42] Don't be surprised if he really bounces back.

[00:17:44] You heard Caravas on Wednesday say, I I am so excited to see what he can do when games start even when spring training games

[00:19:00] start just to see how different he looks because I really think you're going to see it. His WRC plus was there it was top 10 in baseball back then so he can get there He didn't sustain it for the for the full year But this is what I'm talking about like tie France the hitter at his best Can be one of the best hitters in baseball now? He's coming off a year. That was not all that impressive in 2023 He knows that he went to drive line to go make improvements

[00:20:21] But when he's at his best he can get back to that look out dude hmm

[00:21:23] to be on all the hope and the high and the high clouds and all that stuff

[00:21:25] saying this guy's looking great and this guy's looking great. And obviously we still have a while till the regular season starts, but man.

[00:21:29] It's exciting right now.

[00:21:31] All right.

[00:21:31] Before we get to our Emily wrap around, let's take a quick pause.

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[00:23:06] so there's no. Like, there's other things in my life that I can do instead. Do you want to read the actual response to that question from one Anthony Rendon who's due $38 million this season? I will give you the honors. You can read it.

[00:24:20] Okay, so Anthony Rendon, when asked this week if playing Major League Baseball is a priority 200 games in the last 3 years total and you have just had example after example after example where you put atrocious PR on yourself and basically turn the entire baseball world against you. When you walk into the clubhouse when you're on the IL, refuse to talk to the media for weeks and walk in there and say no Abla in Glace today and then walk out, I'm sorry I'm

[00:25:44] not giving you the benefit of the doubt on this especially because you make 38 million

[00:25:48] dollars a year. the amount of money they're paid, they'll put that much effort into the job. And that's fine, no one has a complaint about it. Think of Nikolayokic. Is there a better comparison? Nikolayokic makes a fuck ton of money. He is a two-time NBA MVP. He is an NBA champion. He makes it very clear that he doesn't have fun playing basketball.

[00:27:02] As soon as the season is done,

[00:27:04] he gets on a plane, flies to Serbia, Made a really good point that If you go around and you poll a bunch of major league clubhouses You're gonna find a lot of guys who think this way and that doesn't shock me Think of how many Mariners from 2005 to 2013 hated playing baseball We could probably make a starting nine of it easily the results on the field said everything we needed to know

[00:29:41] But the fact that he couldn't a just PR nightmare for yourself, time in and time out, says all that needs to be said. I don't usually go to Jonathan Papelbon for reliable, thoughtful, well-reasoned answers, but he made a good point. Like, why would you want to suit up next to this guy if he's not trying that hard?

[00:29:43] Like, if you're the, I don't even know

[00:29:44] who the shortstop for the Angels is gonna be this year.

[00:29:47] Exactly. television and tickets and food and beer and all this to fund the product down the field and the product Couldn't care less that you're there and probably doesn't like you anyways What we haven't talked about yet about these quotes is he went out of his way to say this Media follows up with him reporters followed up with him and then he goes well

[00:31:01] I don't want to be sitting here talking to you guys at 7 in the morning

[00:31:03] It's like dude you started this quote you put it out there because our next subject's a guy that is basically polar opposite to Anthony Rendon. So Mike Trout also spoke this week in our second wraparound topic. Says he doesn't wanna ask for a trade because it's quote, the easy way out, and that he's been pushing Angels owner, Artie Moreno and General Manager Perry Menasian

[00:32:22] to sign one of the remaining big free agents.

[00:32:25] He's almost too loyal.

[00:32:28] Almost actually sorry, dude. I know you don't want to be a villain. You don't want to be the bad guy. You probably like living in Orange County. Just demand the trade. You know who's going to put you in a bad public light if you do? Angels fans for maybe a couple weeks.

[00:33:40] And then eventually they'll move on.

[00:33:41] The rest of the baseball world will say, thank goodness he did it.

[00:33:46] Do you know how much he could save his legacy? It's all yours and you have funny thing. You have enough money where you can buy another house or and another one and another one and another one. But that's besides the point. Like legacy is kind of a, baseball legacies are kind of fickle because baseball is such a random and weird sport. But sure, yeah, I would really love to see Mike Trout

[00:35:01] hit a walk off home run in a playoff game.

[00:35:04] I think he needs it.

[00:35:04] I think he deserves it.

[00:35:05] I think he's certainly obviously way I could describe this. Jay Gould And you didn't even throw into that equation of all the things Mike Trout's going to have to deal with. You didn't even throw in continuing to have to deal with Anthony Rendon,

[00:36:23] which cannot be any fun. Just yeah, like you said Mike Trout can go live in Orange County when his there would be a decline in second half ticket sales. Only for Shohei to be hurt most of the second half anyway. Hmm. Mm hmm. Like, imagine the trade package they could have gotten back for even half a season of Shohei. It would have changed the course of their franchise. But there's a reason bad franchises stay bad and good franchises stay good.

[00:37:43] Dodgers and Angels.

[00:37:45] It writes itself.

[00:38:45] Like it's on Twitter now, like who was it Casey Schmidt of the Giants who had his photo shoot and there's all these replies and quote tweets that are like what in the world is

[00:38:50] going on.

[00:38:52] You cannot.

[00:38:53] You can serious dick.

[00:38:58] I forget what the photo was.

[00:38:59] They took a photo of someone from behind and you could literally see his you could see it.

[00:39:04] Like just what are we doing?

[00:39:07] What are we doing? teams to pick up some traction with these jerseys. The Mariners are at it again by no fault of their own. Michael Chavis, the ice horse, as Jared Kravitz likes to call him, he's got an invitation to spring training with the Mariners. He took a photo of his jersey, he put it on his story, and all of a sudden a lot of Mariners Twitter picked it up saying,

[00:40:21] this again looks atrocious, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen. and something that kids buy on DHgate. If you don't know what DHgate is, it's a Chinese website where you can buy knockoff Americans and other sports jerseys for like 10 bucks. They take a month to ship, but you get them, they're knockoffs, but people buy them all the time. This looks like MLB went to DHgate to shop for jerseys,

[00:41:42] all of them.

[00:41:46] You know what's crazy?

[00:41:47] Call this a hot take. and like we were not suiting up in these. This is embarrassing. This is like, this is, why can I see the fact someone is wearing like, is wearing slider shorts and his jersey is tucked in down to his mid thighs? Why do I, why can I tell that? Dude, if they're gonna keep these jerseys,

[00:43:00] players need to start wearing underwear

[00:43:01] with just hilarious messaging underneath it,

[00:43:03] whether it's SpongeBob boxers or whatever.

[00:43:07] Like imagine if there was, in college. Wearhams technically not even on the cape and that is the biggest disgrace of a field you will ever find. The infield is no joke. Gray gravel. I'm not making that up. And guys would rip their pants all the time sliding on that. Those are normal pants they wore. On these, even on big league quality dirt, it's going to be even worse. Here's another just like if you think

[00:44:22] about it this way, it's mind boggling have all of your Pacific Northwest sports gear you could want, Huskies, Kraken, Mariners, Sonics, Seahawks, whatever you want. Go check them out at simplyseattle.com. We have you covered with a 15% off code. Use code Marine15 at checkout for 15% off your order at that's a nice idea. I never really gave it much thought. But actually sitting and thinking about how it all works, it's made me realize all of a sudden, like, whoa, it's real. In fact, it's a lot closer than six with a lot more people than you might think. I'll give you a couple examples.

[00:47:00] I'm just going to rattle a few off.

[00:47:02] So like Jared Carabas, for example, we just had him on Wednesday.

[00:47:05] Think of all the people you know as a result of that. That's like two connections away or somebody I connected with today, like today, like to just give you one, I guess pop culture example, he works at overtime his name's Alex

[00:48:23] Day. He's a sports content creator and he knows see some of these people that's like, you know, I would never know them in a million years. But then when you sit and you break it down, you're like, well, they're not as far away as you think. Not that I ever meet most of these people. But it is kind of a funny mind twist to actually sit and think about it and say, yeah, that six degrees of separation thing is real.

[00:49:44] And we just think about all the people we have on have had on this podcast and how many degrees of one point or communicated to somebody within that circle, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess that's probably true or if somebody in the sports world knows, again, if you go back to like the Odell connection, like I know Jack Settleman who's at Snapback Sports, like he knows Marlon Humphrey, who then knows Odell, who then knows a ton of people like you could say Tom Brady or whoever, maybe there's somebody in the next line of

[00:51:01] connections who knows Dennis Rodman and then Dennis Rodman, well, that's right, Jim Jong-un.

[00:51:06]