Episode 138: Joe Sheehan (Joe Sheehan Newsletter), Analyzing Mitch Garver's Scorching June, And Andres Munoz Carrying The Mariners Bullpen

[00:00:00] At Parker, our purpose is simple. We want to make the world a better place by working more efficiently, by using more sustainable practices, by developing better technologies. We keep moving forward. With each new idea, innovation and partnership, we're one step closer to fulfilling our purpose

[00:00:20] every single day. To find out more, visit Parker.com slash purpose. Parker, engineering your success. Welcome to episode number 138 of the Marine Layer Podcast. We welcome on baseball writer Joe Sheehan to talk about MLB's offensive environment, what he's seen in the Mariners and what potential all

[00:00:42] stars could be on their roster. We have our two Mariners storylines. We'll talk about Mitch Garver's June success and the bullpen carrying performance of Andres Munoz here in 2024. Here's your guys reminder. Stay on top of everything we're doing. If you want to stay

[00:00:56] on the podcast, download the episodes on the audio side, leave that five star review. You can rate and review too. If you're watching on YouTube, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, leave us a comment and follow us on social media. We're posting every day, multiple

[00:01:10] times a day on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod. Let's get it rolling. And we welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just Baseball Podcast Network, recording here on Monday evening, June 17th.

[00:01:39] Here about Lyle 48 hours before this episode releases. The Mariners looking at the current Rangers score tonight could be nine games up in the division by the time this night is out. Nine games up in the division. I'm honestly not sure what to do with myself.

[00:02:02] We've never been in this position ever. No, not in the time we have memories at least. I know in oh one we were obviously alive, but I don't have memories from the old one season. We were too young. So this is uncharted territory for the both of us.

[00:02:18] Did you think they were going to sweep the Rangers this weekend? No. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't think so. The Rangers off. I know the Rangers offense has been scuffling, but as a whole they're usually just too good. I know the Mariners have been

[00:02:32] phenomenal at home this year, but I just didn't think that they were going to have the Rangers come into town and walk out with a sweep. We were very, very happily proved wrong. Pretty stress free sweep. We literally mostly stress free like Friday might have been a little

[00:02:51] stressful. Were you, did you really have any doubt Saturday or something? Well, considering how things unfolded in the ninth on Saturday, you weren't nervous. Okay, outside of that, that's 17 of 18 innings where you felt pretty good. All right. There. Sunday was for the most part stress free. Although honestly,

[00:03:14] that game stayed close for a while too and then the Mariners pulled away late, but the way Logan Gilbert was pitching it didn't look like anybody was going to square anything up against them on Sunday. So in that sense, yeah, there were times where

[00:03:26] this series felt a little bit close, especially again at ninth inning on Saturday, but to be eight and a half games up and what feels like it's about to be nine games up by the end of

[00:03:36] this Monday night. It's crazy. They are in we said winning the series two or three could do a lot for them, but once they won the first two games, I tweeted out on Saturday night

[00:03:47] I know it's mid June, but Sunday's game is as important of a mid season game as you're going to find for the Mariners. They won it. They put themselves eight and a half up.

[00:03:58] They don't play the Rangers again until September. They have got a firm, firm grip on this AL West and for now, I'm not even going to go into the negative territory. Let's just,

[00:04:10] let's just say they have a firm grip on the AL West and this has set them up as not only their division to lose, but to do some damage in the American League period. Like we talked about

[00:04:23] trade plenty, but there is no reason now to not get aggressive at the deadline. No reason to and with this important series coming up with Cleveland, the updated standings today and then check exactly how many games back would it be of Cleveland for the number

[00:04:38] two. So right now they're game and Cleveland played less games. This is where explain to me this as they head into the series Lyle, the Mariners have 43 wins, 31 losses, 12 games over the guardians right now in the two seed,

[00:04:56] 44 and 25. So one more win in six less losses. How does the math is that, is that two and a half? We're not good at math. We went to AFU. What are you asking me for?

[00:05:09] Well, here. So let's, let's put it like this. Here's what I do know by the end of the season, every team is going to have played 162 games. So it'll balance itself out eventually. If you want to look at winning percentages, the Mariners are at 581, the guardians are at 638

[00:05:24] and the Yankees are at 676. So the Mariners still have some ways to go to make up for some ground against Cleveland. But if you want to talk, talk about series importance all the

[00:05:35] sudden again here in mid June, not only could they set themselves up in the tiebreaker over Cleveland for a potential two seed if they can take care of business this week, but they

[00:05:44] could make up some ground too. And that number two seat has never been more valuable than it is now because no wild card round. If you get two seed, you get a first round by

[00:05:53] no Mickey Mouse three game series like legitimately just know even at T mobile park with this pitching staff, anything can happen in three games. Legitimately anything can happen. I want to touch on the aspect of the team they just beat this past weekend. It was an absolute

[00:06:10] damn nightmare facing the Texas Rangers last year. I dreaded every single game the Mariners played against the Rangers because I'm going to be honest, I expected them especially after the first two series they played against the Rangers last year to lose every single game

[00:06:25] they played against the Rangers because they just were not good enough. Everything's changed and yet most of Texas's roster is either hurt or largely unchanged or just not playing as well. I remember you and I sitting here on this podcast about exactly a year ago and talking

[00:06:45] about how in the hell are the Rangers doing this? Why are they doing this and the Mariners are not? Well, it seems like that has finally come full circle as we explained in that

[00:06:58] episode. Seems like a lot of guys are having outlier career highs all at the same time and what do you know? A lot of those guys this year have come back down to earth and

[00:07:09] the Rangers I think since May started have scored less runs than the Mariners have. If you just want perspective on a Marcus Simeon and Corey Seager led offense being worse than what the Mariners currently have. I think the Mariners WRC plus in that time is better

[00:07:22] than the Rangers too and if you, is it actually better? It might be better for the year. I know it's better since May 1st. It might have passed them this weekend. Right, so we knew last year right that there were some guys doing some outlier things.

[00:07:38] I didn't, I don't think either of us thought Ezekiel Duran was going to keep up what he was doing long term. I don't even think we thought Leody Tavares was going to keep that up long

[00:07:44] term despite once upon a time being a pretty good prospect. I don't think we thought Josh Smith was going to keep that up long term but now you look at 2024 even some of the bats

[00:07:55] they expect to be great have not been great. Adolis Garcia since May has been a nightmare. Yeah, great April since May has been a nightmare. Corey Seager and Marcus Simeon have not quite been themselves. They haven't been bad but they haven't quite been themselves.

[00:08:10] Josh Youngs hurt. Langford's still a rookie. Jonah Himes injured and that's a Rangers team that again that's their whole collective offense as a unit last year that set the world on fire especially in the first half. Now everybody has regressed and do I think there's

[00:08:27] some middle ground to this? Yes, Marcus Simeon and Corey Seager are elite baseball players when they're at their best. I don't think this is going to keep up for them long term

[00:08:36] but do I think the Rangers are going to get back to being the offense they were last year? No, there are guys in that lineup doing unsustainable things that we're not going to carry over. Again, guys like Duran, Tavares, Smith, that was not going to

[00:08:53] sustain long term at least it didn't seem like it and we were right. Here's one last thing on this. Marcus Simeon was very nice and gracious to us when we asked him to do a social media clip this weekend. We published it today here on money

[00:09:06] if you haven't seen it go check it out it's everywhere on our Twitter account, on our Instagram account, on our TikTok account, on our YouTube account. You can find it there. Did he predict the Rangers own downfall this weekend based on on tough pitchers to face?

[00:09:21] Well, so we'll give people a spoiler. We still recommend you go check out the clip because it is cool and Marcus Simeon again for somebody that's on an indivision rival really really good dude. He could not have been nicer. Yeah, he's known for having

[00:09:37] a very good reputation around the game and just the 60 seconds we talked to him we saw it up close. Anyway, we asked him the three toughest pitchers mariner's pitchers he faced in his career. He said Iwakuma so he had a little bit of a throwback from the early

[00:09:52] time in his career but then he said Logan Gilbert and George Kirby. Well, Logan Gilbert and George Kirby carved the Rangers up this weekend so maybe he did predict it. Especially Logan. He put Logan up. Logan was the first guy out of his mouth

[00:10:07] and Logan goes out and has his best start of the season. All of his secondaries working his fastball Simeon struggled against Logan Gilbert on Sunday and well Marcus it's almost you're almost like God who are those people who see a future?

[00:10:22] Like a messiah who sees the future? Sure let's go with that. Psykick? Yeah, Psykick. Yeah, Psykick saw the future he did a little bit of that so shout out to you Marcus for being nice to us but also for predicting

[00:10:34] good Mariners pitching performance this weekend what a performance by them off day to day and it continues on the road upcoming. At Parker our purpose is simple we want to make the world a better place by working more efficiently by using more sustainable

[00:10:50] practices by developing better technologies we keep moving forward with each new idea innovation and partnership we're one step closer to fulfilling our purpose every single day to find out more visit Parker.com slash purpose Parker engineering your success

[00:11:12] so here's a guy as we get into our Mariners storylines Lyle who's been a key on the other side of the ball for the Mariners in having a good June Mitch Garver's flying under the radar

[00:11:23] right now the way his June is playing out he is playing he is the way he is playing right now he is going to give the Mariners front office a real headache when it comes to what

[00:11:37] they're going to do if Tyler Locklear also continues to hit because I'll tell you what Mitch Garver is no longer at the status of where you think okay he's going to be the backup catcher that's that should be his role because he hasn't hit enough offensively no

[00:11:53] Mitch Garver right now with Ty France out is the Mariners singular best hitter. How does an 893 OPS in the month of June sound? How does a 159 WRC plus in the month of June

[00:12:05] sound? How does a 22% walk rate in the month of June sound? He's turning it around and we've seen him do it month by month only to explode in June and I don't know how much of this has

[00:12:18] to do with new team new setting new ballpark and getting adjusted but I hope that's what it is because he if that's the case he now seems adjusted Mitch Garver had a 66 WRC plus in April

[00:12:30] he had an 88 WRC plus in May now here we set 159 he seems like he's arrived. It's almost like an out I don't want to say it's an outlier month because he's a good

[00:12:42] hitter but it's almost an outlier in terms of what the results are he legitimately has never walked as much in a month as he has this month he's still got some time left in this month for

[00:12:53] that number to normalize and potentially go down I think his other career high walking in a month is like I think it's 21.9 it's not 22 so the current 22% mark yeah maybe it's a little high and maybe that'll that'll come down but I'm just guesstimating here in terms

[00:13:10] of his offensive approach we've highlighted a few weeks ago now when we did our third of the way through the season player evaluations the two guys we spent the most time on it's Mitch

[00:13:20] Garver and Jorge Pelago and what we ultimately got to with Mitch Garver is especially facing right-handers breaking balls have killed him this year is he to the point now in June where he has decided that he's just not going to swing at breaking balls as much because

[00:13:38] he knows he's not having success against them and that therefore leads to this higher walk rate I feel like that could be a possibility here in how his offensive performance has

[00:13:50] evolved and then if you add on top of that so it's like okay well I'm not swinging at breaking balls which means I'm only swinging at fastballs I'm only seeing it swinging at sinkers and I'm only swinging at change-ups and all those pitches he's hit pretty well

[00:14:02] this year especially now going through June and it's helped out it has led to less ground balls it's led to about the same amount of fly balls and it's led to a lot more line

[00:14:12] drives where when he does swing he's making a lot more damage he's swinging to missing less he's chasing less his strikeout rate now in June is 20% that's incredible from for him going through the first two months at about 32% that's a remarkable improvement last time we

[00:14:31] talked about Mitch Garver we said what does he do best in his career hits the fastball first couple months of the year him and most of the Mariners offense to be honest wasn't capitalizing

[00:14:42] on fastballs well let's look at Mitch Garver now because his numbers against four seam fastballs feature a 600 slugging percentage and if you wonder if that's sustainable his expected slug against that pitch 601 in other words it is very sustainable what he is doing against

[00:14:59] fastballs now is very real and it has done a total 180 for where his season has gone he was not crushing fastballs like this the first couple months now he is and everything has flipped

[00:15:11] for him in a very very positive way he started to hit fastballs he started to produce what have i told you is also a little unlucky this month his babbitt this month is 180 see it's a little

[00:15:23] low for that and based on the type of hitter he is he could have a lower babbitt because he hits a lot of fly balls he's trying to hit a lot of fly balls and fly balls are the

[00:15:33] worst type of batted ball event for babbitt because it's most likely Lyle it's either an out or a home run and out goes against your babbitt but home run doesn't count so it's

[00:15:44] gonna be lower but the fact that he is 15th this month in baseball and isolated power yet having a sub 200 um a sub 200 iso leads a little a little unlucky he's almost you know he should be hitting better than he is ultimately but stuff like that will normalize

[00:16:06] if he hits more line drives as well here's another thing i want to throw at you before you respond so Mitch Garver caught his first baseball game he caught George Kirby for the

[00:16:15] first time in a Mariners uniform on May 29th since that point hasn't been exactly his June but it's been a 345 on base percentage a 455 slug a 135 wrc plus a manageable 25 percent strikeout rate and a 20 percent walk rate is that the fix i don't know but he sure has

[00:16:41] been hitting well since that point you thought it could ignite his bat and it has listen as long as he stays healthy and they're not running him into the ground behind the plate back there

[00:16:51] if getting him on his feet more and having him move around more and also having him be more occupied during games rather than just focusing on his four at bat tonight is actually going to

[00:17:01] help then great stick with it because what they're doing right now seems to be working they have Mitch Garver almost strictly catching George Kirby right maybe every now and then they'll throw him back there a little bit more often but it seems like that is their plan right

[00:17:16] now they have Garver connected with Kirby i'm not saying it's a total personal catcher thing but that's the route they've chosen to go for now and you just outlined it it's helped them so if

[00:17:26] they think they can manage this and this can still keep Garver healthy and he's going to be in the lineup and ultimately still gives his bat all the opportunities that he needs great if

[00:17:37] it ain't broke don't fix it because this Mitch Garver since he started catching is the Mitch Garver they signed up for when they signed him to the contract this winter and this is so important we talked about who is the most valuable bat behind Julio Rodriguez pre-season

[00:17:54] you said Polo i said Garver Jason Churchill also said Garver we're now seeing it that's what's crazy about what the Mariners did through the first two months they were in first place for

[00:18:04] the majority of that time with so many of the expected anchors in their lineup not doing what they were supposed to be doing now Garver's really gotten going and you know what when

[00:18:14] Jorge Polanco comes back which is going to be in the next couple days let's hope he's finally ready to unlock all the potential he has in his bat too i don't know if you've realized this as

[00:18:24] well so there's 24 games before the all-star break if Mitch Garver played every single one of those games he would have now at that point only played two less games than he did

[00:18:35] all of last year he's been on a knock on wood knock on one find some wood he's been on a pretty good run of health here and if he makes it to the all-star gram say he only plays

[00:18:45] in 20 of those games well then he would be six games away from the amount of games he played last year again one of the best off offensive years of his career last year in texas he played

[00:18:55] half the season he just like he will if he gets here through the first half this will be one of the most healthy stretches of baseball he's played and then you feel like i guess

[00:19:06] you're playing with house money in the second half because he's legitimately never done it i've never done that 103 games is the most he's played in his career and so far it looks like

[00:19:15] he's going to break that that's what it looks like and if so if he can combine games played and offensive performance yeah that 12 million dollars looks like a bargain right not a waste here's our reminder to everybody again and most you know this our listeners are smart people

[00:19:31] but this is exactly why you do not use batting average to judge a player when you outlined his babbitt and how he could actually be better this month he's hitting 205 for the month batting

[00:19:41] average wise but has an 893 ops and a 159 wrc plus this is why you don't use batting average to judge a player yeah notice i didn't use the batting average since he started catching he's hitting 182 since but his wrc plus is what really good 135 and he's got a 345 on

[00:20:00] base percentage like he's reaching base that's what you want yeah stop using batting average people most of you know that if you're if you're a batting average person listening though stop using

[00:20:09] it okay before we get to our next storyline here let's take a quick pause we're going to talk to you guys about our friends at pegaciaspub85 mariners are hot i know you want to get out

[00:20:19] watch some games with your friends have some community outings head over there and do it if you head over during happy hour two you get great drink specials for three and four dollars that's from two to six pm on monday through friday get there early get some great

[00:20:32] prices on drinks hang out with your friends watch all the sports you want there's more than 20 tvs in the place there's also pool darts and some great food all of that is over at pegaciaspub85 in kirkland storyline number two another positive i always like when we have positive

[00:20:48] storylines makes the podcast a lot more fun andres muniz is unbelievable you all know that we know that but we have not dedicated a true segment to andres muniz so far this year

[00:21:00] and it's time we do so he has been putting the bullpen in a backpack with his bad back by the way in running diamonds over and over and over it's like high school conditioning all over

[00:21:12] again lial everyone's jumping in andres muniz's backpack and running home plate left field foul pole right field foul pole home plate and then again and again and again and again because

[00:21:24] that's what this dude is doing this is with all respect to the rest of those guys the most sure and probably the only sure three outs in that bullpen the only one because he is that

[00:21:36] unbelievable of a baseball player we're talking about right now he is on pace to set a career high in era or career low in era at 155 right now the expected numbers back that up all below

[00:21:49] 25 i mean we're talking about expected fit and x-fifth his strikeout rate is back up 36 percent the walk rate is good manageable not quite what it was in 2022 i think we'll have some 2022 comparisons in here because that is the standard andres muniz set in his first whole

[00:22:07] season but regardless lial i mean this dude is i think we're going to talk more about all stars on friday's episode but and we can make more of a case then but in terms of what he is doing

[00:22:19] on the diamond and the importance the importance he is to this mariner's bullpen it cannot be understated probably the most valuable reliever in baseball based on what has happened around let me respond with two things number one like like you said with all respect to this

[00:22:37] bullpen and not that there aren't other guys in this bullpen like we talked about i know there's some guys injured right now but even of the healthy guys like taylor salsito has been great trent thorton's been great like they're very good at least they're making

[00:22:48] guys that have really stepped up in the bullpen and are very dependable but when you talk about surefire three outs the guys in baseball that you can say that about are the game's elites the

[00:22:59] guys that when when they come into the game it doesn't matter if it's a one-run game in your face in the heart of the order you're not worried you're not sweating it you know

[00:23:08] they're going to come in and slam the door that is andres muniz he is one of the game's relievers elite closers however you want to draw it up and number two i don't think war does him

[00:23:21] justice here because he's got an 0.9 f war that's in the top 15 among relievers in baseball but i don't think that does him justice to what he's meant to the ball club so far

[00:23:32] with a bad back like you just mentioned he has been one of the game's best relievers if he was not on this team right now i don't want to think about what their win total would be

[00:23:43] i'll tell you this if muniz was not on the team and all the injuries that still occurred they're not 12 games over there there's no way they're 12 games over there they've been great at they've been great in all these one-run wins so much of that has to do with

[00:23:56] andres muniz so i like we are pro war on this podcast of course but for what muniz does i don't think him ranking in the 10 to 15 range and f4 among relievers justifies or highlights just how important he's been yeah and yet again for another year i think we'd

[00:24:16] envisioned this and we commented on it when the season's gone along how he's evolved sort of yet again 2022 breaks in fastball slider that's it last year works the sinker and the sinker is fine it's another pitch it's not a great pitch but he works it in last year

[00:24:35] this year while legitimately you can make a case of sinkers better than a slider is now that slider that devastating pitch which you could argue is one of the best pitches in baseball in 2022 now might be the second best pitch in his own arsenal here's why i

[00:24:50] think andres muniz unlocks another level with this pitch this pitch his sinker this year you're always he gets more swings and misses on that pitch than he does on a slider crazy yeah more more swings and misses and he is allowed just four singles on that pitch this

[00:25:11] year okay so if you're telling me you can cook up a pitch in a lab that has a 46% whiff rate and the best you can do against it is pounded into the ground four singles

[00:25:22] allowed the average launch angle against that pitch is negative six degrees sure gets hit hard hard quote unquote hard right into the ground to one of your infielders that's if you don't swing

[00:25:35] and miss at it oh by the way he throws it 98 miles an hour good luck right good luck so the pitch is either going into righties and you're pounding it into the ground or it's

[00:25:46] going outside the righties and you're probably swinging to missing it good luck guys andres muniz has refined another one of his pitches and it has allowed him to reach a new level dude i think it's almost physically impossible to hit a home run against that pitch it's just

[00:26:02] it's like you'll put it into the ground but i don't know how a hit how a hitter could elevate that thing you just outlined all the numbers to back it up it is so so tough to

[00:26:15] barrel up and honestly another reason he's taken a step what are most relievers known for two really good pitches usually they have a really good fastball and a wipeout breaking ball there's some guys like mariano revera who got away with one pitch their whole career like

[00:26:28] cutter andres muniz is now a three pitch closer you know how hard that is to prepare for when when oh by the way he mixes them all in a lot he uses his slider the most but he uses

[00:26:40] his fastball and his two seamer about 25 percent of the time each so the fact you're mixing all three of those pitches in at a healthy rate and making hitters prepare for three deadly pitches with a fastball that's 100 102 miles an hour brutal a brutal task for opposing hitters

[00:27:03] so yet another reason he's leveled up again his fastball his pure his four seam fastball not a sinker is four seam fastball this year has also been better but i think a lot of what that

[00:27:12] pitch to all the success that pitch has now is because hitters are expecting a sinker and don't know what to expect so the run value of the four seam fastball is better than the

[00:27:23] sinkers but i think the sinker is actually doing more work to benefit andres muniz than just as four seam fastball because that four seam fastball if you remember in 22 had a

[00:27:33] negative run value because it got hit pretty hard it was a hard fastball but it was a hard mostly straight fastball that guys would foul off and then eventually hit and that would be

[00:27:43] most of the damage andres allowed that year well this year like it's either barreling in under your barrel or it's going over your barrel and you got to make a decision which

[00:27:54] one you're swinging at and you have very very little time to swing at it so it's really it has benefited all of his other pitches to make it that much more valuable and it's more

[00:28:05] comfortable to him if he doesn't have the feel of one of his pitches if he can't command his slider okay he's only throwing hard stuff if the sinker is spraying out of the strike zone

[00:28:16] well then i'll just do what i did in 22 and throw 60 percent sliders it's really it's really not that big a deal i'd say there's only one thing here on andres muniz on the negative side i'm i'm yearning for the command he had in 2022 his 2022 command was

[00:28:34] immaculate i've mentioned this before i think when we did our bullpen preview go onto baseball savant go to the heat maps and click the year 2022 and you get a bright red circle of location

[00:28:50] on both his fastball and his slider his fastball was perfectly located on the top rail of the strike zone that red circle the heat map which is where he threw most of his pitches

[00:29:00] was right in the set up the center of the upper rail of the strike zone perfectly and his slider if you're thinking about it to a right-handed hitter was perfectly nestled on the lower outside

[00:29:12] corner to a right hand hitter he has yet to regain that he doesn't have that this year he's still spraying his pitches around a little bit and he had a big problem with that last year

[00:29:21] just so i got hit a little hard so that's probably the one thing could just be that pitches move too much that could be it that's a thing called is a hot take i like 2024 andres

[00:29:33] muniz better than 2022 andres muniz i'd like to see him get his i do that yeah that's kind of a hot take so i'd love to see him get his command back to 2022 form sure he didn't have

[00:29:45] three pitches back in 2022 number one and number two what you just outlined with the run value he had a 20 run value on a slider that year and a negative five run value on his

[00:29:55] fastball what hitters were doing was they essentially gave up on trying to hit a slider so he would just gear up for his fastball and try to time it up well they can't do that anymore

[00:30:04] his fastball doesn't get hit like that anymore because not only does he have a third pitch but he mixes everything in a lot more now so it's way harder for hitters to try to time

[00:30:13] up what he's doing if you look at the efficiency of each of his pitches it is much more balanced than what it was in 22 where he had one elite elite pitch and one pitch

[00:30:23] that was getting hit pretty hard now that's not happening now he has three pitches that he can use basically at any point that are not getting destroyed this is a good uh good subject

[00:30:34] to please leave a comment down in the description send us an email send us a dm which version of andres muniz is better do you think it's better order that you trust more 2022 or 2024

[00:30:44] i think this is actually a very interesting discussion on this so andres muniz i'd say in 2024 is he is more protective of damage i'll say that because he has the sinker he is less prone

[00:30:58] to giving up a home run which is the ultimate damage for relievers in 2022 when he threw a straight four-seam fastball a little bit more prone to that so like i'd say that's the the take i'll have on that here's my last thing on andres muniz

[00:31:13] he is his performance against lefties this year is interesting to say the least because when i go back to 2022 for example he was dominant against left handers and he was actually worse against right-handers than he was against left-handers last year it was about even this

[00:31:27] year lefties are hitting him significantly better i mean his fit against lefties is five runs higher than it is against righties this year it's pretty stark splits and he has pitched about even against both so he has been a much more mundane reliever this year against

[00:31:47] left-handed bats which for the success he's had in his career is a little bit puzzling and that's something he's going to need to get sorted out could it be a little bit fluky just the first half

[00:31:57] thing it so there's a couple things that jump out yeah it could be fluky because he has given up two home runs to lefties and none to righties those skew numbers immensely and that

[00:32:08] could just be chance that could be just one bad pitch but he's also walked a lot more lefties as well so the command and the damage have both not the the damage have not been the damage

[00:32:19] control have not been there against lefties sure it could probably normalize i wouldn't be shocked if it normalizes but the the the numbers do say in the first half so far he's been pretty bad against lefties they uncharacteristically bad against lefties not throwing enough strikes

[00:32:36] not limiting damage and really not just not being that effective against left-handers righties good luck lefties it's not that easy let's see what his numbers look like in the second half against lefties because that'll give us a better idea of whether this is fluky or whether

[00:32:51] it's something to really monitor going forward in his in his career yeah so the the overall breakdown against lefties strikeouts are down walks are up his whip is triple of what it is against righties his FIP is five runs higher and then he's allowed the two homers tonight

[00:33:09] so that's that's ultimately the breakdown it would take some serious work to normalize that and balance it to what right-handers do but it's something to something to look out for for for andres to me that's probably about it because otherwise what i said at the beginning

[00:33:26] with the backpack that is what this dude has been doing for this mariners tool and the lefties thing again i i think he faces more righties than lefties period and while it's

[00:33:36] something to monitor in the end dude still got a 155era he's got a 226 xera he's got a 239 FIP or sorry 236 FIP i'll take that any day of the week right yeah yeah yeah i would think so

[00:33:52] too remember as a throw-in for a trade throw in for an austinola we'll take it we'll take it so speaking of uh speaking of bullpens and offense uh andres i don't think we no we didn't talk about

[00:34:06] andres with joe sheehan but joe sheehan who we talked to earlier today here on monday publishes his own newsletter at joe sheehan.com longtime sports writer formerly a baseball perspective really smart dude when it comes to baseball so what i'm why i'm glad we had

[00:34:22] him on is because we made it a point at the beginning of this interview we want to get we wanted to try and get an answer of what we have talked about multiple times on here

[00:34:32] of why the environment offensive environment in baseball is down and joe had an idea had some thoughts on it he's written about this extensively in his newsletter uh that you can go subscribe

[00:34:43] to he also offers free versions i think once a week that you can go look at on his website but trying to like trying to dive into this issue i thought was very interesting he watches

[00:34:52] a lot of baseball had some comments on the mariners as well so it's good overall analytical and also a little bit umpire critical interview which which we always approve of always we learned

[00:35:04] a lot i i enjoyed just sitting here and getting to listen to them dive in on some of this stuff because there were things that i either hadn't thought about or hadn't dove in on and

[00:35:15] i think you're the same way for the offensive environment in baseball so there's now a lot more the two of us have learned after listening to him talk and i think all of our listeners are also

[00:35:25] going to pick up on some knowledge from listening to joe talk so we won't keep you any longer let's get to our interview with joe sheehan all right we got joe sheehan on with us he is

[00:35:36] the founder of the joe sheehan baseball newsletter you can find it at joe sheehan.com joe thanks so much for taking some time to join us i i think the subjects work out of what we're

[00:35:47] trying to talk about today and the subject of what our podcast is about and what we want to lead this conversation off with i feel like the mariners play the the ultimate brand of baseball in 2024's version of major league baseball really good pitching not a lot of

[00:36:06] runs and i think as you like to frame it mushed balls so if you're gonna if you're gonna when you're looking at the league right now what is up with this offensive environment

[00:36:17] what does everyone play like the mariners it seems like well the mariners have a 300 obp which is terrible except it's only about 10 points lower than the league obp so they're not that

[00:36:27] far even with what we consider normally to be a bad they're not that far from the medium and this is one of the issues now baseball has baseball's been an under 320 obp environment

[00:36:36] for a long time now and when you're not getting runner that when obp slips that low it just becomes very hard to keep the engine of an offense moving and you become more and

[00:36:45] more reliant not on small ball which is what people think happens but on the long ball you're trying to score as many runs as possible and as few at bat as few at bats as possible that

[00:36:54] means hitting home runs so the more the lower obp gets the more you can rely on scoring quickly the mariners do fit that they're kind of built for this low obp high homer environment

[00:37:04] a little bit hasn't performed for them this year i want to be obp is excuse me the slugging is 380-390 somewhere in there so again right around league average i mean you mentioned bushball you know the baseball mlb's been trying to control the baseball right now it's

[00:37:18] certainly more consistent but if you look at performance on contact with some of the numbers i like to look at batting average on contact is as low as it's been in 30 years slugging

[00:37:28] on contact is as low as it's been in 10 years so you have a ball that when you hit it doesn't go quite as far uh tod zola at rota wire has talked about the average distance

[00:37:37] the ball flies about four years excuse me four years four uh four feet less than it did last year that doesn't sound like a lot but if you think about the margins on some of these hits

[00:37:47] though ball getting over a glove or not a ball getting over a fence or not four feet on average makes an enormous difference so we've looked at things in the past like the drag signatures on

[00:37:56] the baseball dr meredith wills bradford william davis rob arthur have all done some great work on that still waiting to see what they say about the ball's actual construction but what

[00:38:06] we know from the performance is that the ball isn't flying as far which is why we have a league that's hitting two part of why we have a league that's hitting 240 with a 310 obp and a sub 400

[00:38:17] slug so what's the solution to all this like in 2019 home runs were flying out of the yard left and right right and people thought or figured it was because of a juiced baseball that's obviously not the case now is it something like bringing back a baseball like

[00:38:32] like do you think baseball would ever go back to something like that i think we can focus on the baseball because that's something that mlb does control they bought rollings a couple of years ago this is something they've tried to do is get control of the

[00:38:44] baseball talking a little bit remember a couple years ago we had the sticky stuff controversy pitchers were using all of these substances get a better grip on the ball mlb put a keep

[00:38:52] put the kibosh on that we see the umpires you know play patty cape pitchers now at the end of every inning uh good grip on the baseball is another issue that pitchers talk to

[00:39:00] you about the baseball is part of this but let's not forget we're still at a 22 strikeout rate which is right around the all-time high it actually leveled off a couple years ago the mlbs finally we seem to have reached uh peach excuse me peak strikeout uh about 22

[00:39:16] um you get the issue of defenses being better last year there was a jump in batting average on balls and play owing to the elimination of the ship but a year later teams have gotten better about positioning their defenders brussell carlton at prospectus did a really good piece

[00:39:29] last week about outfield defense and how that's gotten so much better teams teams don't shift in the infield anymore they're not allowed to but they can put their outfielders wherever they want it started with playing outfielders deeper a few years back because everybody hits

[00:39:43] for power now and now teams are actually even better about laterally positioning their outfielders so when you look at i mentioned on contact if you look at doubles and triples you know outfield fly balls uh that normally become extra base hits they're becoming extra

[00:39:58] base hits at a much lower rate than ever before it's not just the home run rate it's doubles and triples being taken out of the game it's doubles and triples being turned into singles so that's

[00:40:07] part of it as well and then you know a lot of things to talk about this year is how everybody nobody's throwing fastballs anymore right the red sox were on uh sunday night baseball

[00:40:15] and they've been kind of the they're not carrying the coal mine the giants were in recent years but they've gone extreme away from the fastball well all of the offense in baseball happens on the four seam fastball if you break it down it's four seam fastballs guys

[00:40:29] hit very well and everything else guys don't hit very well at all so the more fastballs that get exchanged for breaking pitches and for off-speed pitches talked about the splitter coming back this year well every fastball that leaves the league takes a little bit of offense with it

[00:40:43] so lial what i would say is there's no unfortunately there is no one solution here and there's actually no action because it's hard to find an actionable solution you can't tell pitchers don't throw your best pitches you know fastballs get hit non-fastballs don't i don't

[00:40:56] know how you legislate against that without saying you have to throw 50 fastballs every game that's not gonna work um so yeah baseball better defense a different pitch mix are all contributing to uh to to offense being down you know i've talked about moving the mound back in the

[00:41:10] past um that's gone nowhere they tried that the atlantic league there was too much pushback um i'm writing a piece this week about the strike zone i think an automated strike zone that calls a strict 17-inch plate would go a long way towards balancing the pitcher-hitter relationship

[00:41:25] because right now hitters have to protect two inches off the outside corner it seems if you look at the way umpires call the plate i think forcing pitchers to throw actual strikes would make a difference but this is going to take a while in terms of the

[00:41:37] difference between last year and this year so last year they banned the shift and we see the uptick in offense and i and baseball gets i think they have the idea they get what they want

[00:41:46] but like you said they've they've adjusted this year is it just the defensive positioning that has taken away some of the offense this year or as the the pitchers made a one-year adjustment on

[00:41:58] the default on pitching to this defensive strategy as well i think with any rule change it's going to take a little bit of an adjustment remember they didn't change they didn't officially announce the shift rules i want to say until late in 2022 they were

[00:42:11] gonna ban the shift and you know it takes a year to figure out okay what what are the limits now even we saw last year short stops playing within an inch of the bag second baseman

[00:42:19] playing within an inch of the bag they've actually tried in the minor leagues a rule that it keeps the middle infielders further away excuse me farther away from the back um so worked on that

[00:42:27] but it probably took a year for teams to figure out what is the optimal defensive positioning just short of breaking the rules that are in place remember depth was an issue too in

[00:42:35] addition to keeping two infielders on on each side of second base you were no longer allowed to position your second baseman or your shortstop in some cases on the grass so that was actually

[00:42:45] one of the factors last year so teams have figured out how to work around that but mostly though i think when you look at batting average on balls and play which say 288 i believe so

[00:42:53] far this year more like it's been prior to 2023 2023 really does look like just a one-year fluke and all of these other factors i'm talking about outfielder positioning um and pitch mix are driving that down um historically badbip has been if you go back

[00:43:08] to the 50 60 70s that was in the 270s and 280s the difference is now strikeout rate is much higher so you're rely more reliant on batted balls to to uh you need more batted balls to generate offense

[00:43:19] and also guys hit the ball harder than they ever have before you know you don't have larry boa and dave concepcion all these weak hitting second baseman and short stops and center fielders kind of slapping the ball the average we don't have stack cast data for 1978

[00:43:33] lord willing if we did um but basically we would expect more balls to be getting through because they're just being hit harder and it's improved defense that's keeping that from happening

[00:43:44] you actually answer one of my questions in your last answer that i had for you because i had a follow-up about would baseball ever consider something like moving the mound back which i

[00:43:52] know and and you know that they've talked about or maybe lowering the mound as a way to give a give hitters some advantage because there has like i always think about there has

[00:44:00] to be something in terms of balancing out where the league's going and i know part of this right is the fact that guys are throwing harder than ever breaking balls are tougher to hit than

[00:44:08] ever and there's being less fast while thrown than ever and you highlighted all that so from what it sounds like you said though there's no chance of doing anything with the mound in the near future i want to address lowering the mound first um i did a piece

[00:44:23] six seven years ago now because so 1968 they lowered the the rule book mound from 15 inches high to 10 inches high at the same time we expanded by four teams and what you found is

[00:44:32] that if you look at offense from 69 through 72 the effects of moving the mound down really kind of washed out it was really an expansion effect more than it wasn't moving the mound down so

[00:44:42] you also modified the strike zone in 69 as well so a lot of changes happen at once but when you look at it the mound moving didn't seem to really have the effect it was the expansion and

[00:44:50] it was the uh the strike zone there's also less room to move the mound now it's listed it's a you know 10 inches high you're gonna lower to eight seven um you're not going to

[00:44:58] get that big a bounce the way you did back in you know whatever bounce you got in 69 you're not going to get it again um i want to move the mound back they put them out at they put

[00:45:06] the rubber at 60 feet six inches in 1893 that was i think i was two years old then uh and it's just you can't have you can't look at the pitchers with the stuff they had in 1893

[00:45:17] beside of the pitchers the extension they got then and think that pitchers should be in the same place 125 years later um that's my biggest and best argument is that if you were starting baseball today you would never put the pitchers 60 feet away from the header

[00:45:29] you'd back them up a little bit more now again they tried to experiment the atlantic league there was a lot of resistance to it um and then basically they've abandoned the idea but right now the single biggest problem with offense in baseball is the pitchers are too close

[00:45:42] to the hitters everything else we're trying to talk about is getting is avoiding dealing with the fact that the pitchers are too close to the hitters so we've talked about how much better pitchers have gotten year over year over year is it is there any next step that

[00:45:58] hitters can take to get better like are we going to see hopefully in 20 years that the hitting is finally ahead of the pitching and it swings back to the offensive side i think

[00:46:09] hitters have adapted by trying to hit the ball as hard as they can and hit the most productive type of hits if you see some of the older fans will complain about well guys don't hit like

[00:46:18] scott fletcher anymore and they don't because that's not a very productive way of hitting so the better pitchers are now you kind of can see that you know we're going to swing

[00:46:26] and miss a lot but when we hit the ball we want to have the most productive hits we can which means hitting pulled fly balls you can't design baseball i mean you could deaden the ball until

[00:46:36] it's a mush but short of that a pulled fly ball is always going to be the best thing that a hitter can do so you really have to radically change the game to change that

[00:46:44] and hitters just know that that's been the adaptation tj and the catch is a lot of fans don't like it now i've had this fight before like you know hitters don't adjust yes they

[00:46:53] did you just don't like the way they they adjusted so you kind of have to redesign baseball to make you know pulled fly balls be less valuable and that's really hard to do even if you said well

[00:47:03] let's move all the fences back well you can't move all the fences back the green monster is not going anywhere i mean some of these ball parks you just literally can't move the fences

[00:47:10] so now there it's a challenge uh but i do think hitters have adapted now one of the things you could say is that with this the backtracking technology we have now and teams have you know there's been this stuff for your guys who wear the wearables um they've

[00:47:22] got the sensors they put on the bats i do think there's a hope that technology which has largely helped pitchers to date will help hitters to hit us to adapt right it's a hope the thing is

[00:47:33] pitchers act hitters react you're never going to be able to get away from that so pitchers are always going to have a greater control over the pitcher batter matchup so could hitters catch up a little bit yes but as long as pitchers are still witches

[00:47:46] hitters are going to be at a disadvantage i'm curious to talk about seattle and its lack of hitter friendly environment for a minute here because even with offense and baseball going down seattle is still arguably the toughest place to hit for any hitter in the game and

[00:48:03] a lot of the talk as well the marine layer takes the baseball down fly balls don't travel as well is there more i have a follow-up after you give your first answer but is there more

[00:48:12] to it than that you believe or is it or are we right on the money here about this is why it's so tough to hit here versus other places yeah when you're talking about hitters and pitchers

[00:48:23] parks you're talking about visibility you're talking about fall flight the ball just doesn't isn't going to fly in seattle it's just the nature of the atmosphere san diego has got a similar problem um yeah altitude affects it obviously course field being the best example

[00:48:34] but also uh chase field in phoenix uh atlanta is one of the higher uh ball parks in baseball so that makes a difference but you know i've never heard complaints about the visibility

[00:48:44] that's we still call it safe co i forget the t-mobile now yeah i i can't keep up with sponsorship changes um yeah i've never heard complaints about the visibility at t-mobile so i don't think that's actually the problem it's just the ball doesn't fly as well

[00:48:59] um and we get pretty good measurements of that i mean how well the ball flies in different parks and you know altitude and uh proximity to sea level and ball does fly better in

[00:49:09] humidity then it doesn't this is kind of one of the myths you think about heavy air you think all the balls not going to fly through because water is less dense than air the ball actually does

[00:49:18] fly better in humidity than it does otherwise you mentioned the visibility thing and you might not have a perfect answer for this but we've now heard a couple people talk about over the

[00:49:28] last year or two that i never really thought about this but the batter's eye at t-mobile park actually is a little bit tough for hitters to pick up just because what we've heard some people

[00:49:40] say is it's a little bit slanted it's not that close to the fence it's pretty pushed back and for a few hitters it's actually messed with their eyesight a little bit so again you may

[00:49:48] not have a perfect answer to this but is that a real gripe this is the first thing i'm hearing about it lial i apologize if this has been in the water supply and i just haven't picked up

[00:49:59] on it so i would say that you know it's possible and it's certainly possible because the batter's eye is an issue um san diego a couple years ago had an issue they grew some trees or something

[00:50:09] i want to say you know sorry something athletic has written about this you can mess up the batter's eye some of the speculations that changes in the at the rogers center for recent years have to have to do with the construction they've done they've changed the hitters

[00:50:19] background so it absolutely can be a factor for hitters there's no question especially to go back to what i just said given what pitchers are able to do right now even if you change the visibility a little bit that's going to tilt the batter picture matchup

[00:50:31] i fortunately though i hadn't heard this about oracle or steam global but i won't get into it thank you for letting me know yeah i was gonna say i don't think it's been nationally talked

[00:50:41] about or anything like that we just heard a couple people talk about it in kind of minor detail i would say so you're not missing anything nationally or anything but we were

[00:50:48] just kind of curious to pick your brain about that because we just heard a little bit about that was all can absolutely be a factor and what's curious about all that is i think of parks that

[00:50:59] would be difficult to see the baseball fenway would be at the top of the list i mean you look out straightaway center it's green and it's slanted and there's seats out there and there's

[00:51:08] fans out there and you would think that would make it a little tougher to hit but you know the red sox don't seem to have trouble hitting it fenway park so i will say that we looked

[00:51:16] very carefully about this stuff now because again you know it's not even just a performance issue it's a it's a safety issue and i think about you know reading about games in the 50s yankee

[00:51:27] stadium and guys having to hit against the background of white t-shirts and trying to pick up the ball coming out of that they don't set that up anymore every ballpark is constructed

[00:51:36] with a batter's eye of some kind but you know some of them are more easy are easier to hit against than others but there's this is absolutely something that all 30 ballparks have. One last thing for me on the the offensive environment issue and it's so polarizing when we

[00:51:54] look at the difference between the pro game and the college game when it comes to how the game is played i don't think like there were some definitely some peak days in the 90s especially

[00:52:05] of college baseball and offense just being absolutely absurd but seeing where like how the college game is currently being played currently being played baseball wise i mean just shattering home run records shattering offensive records with you know still some pretty talented

[00:52:22] pitchers because a lot of these pitchers will come up and then dominate in the big leagues once they get into a pro system do you have any sense of why the two versions of the game

[00:52:31] are so different when the same players come up through college and they play a different game when they get to the pros? Yeah it's memory of the 1990s before they changed the

[00:52:40] bats in college i want to say my s.e trojans played a 21-14 final baseball not football overall asu thank you yeah so i don't follow college baseball closely enough to say exactly what their problem is this year whether it's the bats the baseballs the players

[00:53:00] um i wish i did we have a the newsletter has a slack attached to it and there are people in there who really love college baseball that's where i get most of my information from

[00:53:08] but obviously this has been a very big year for offense and college baseball whether it's you know a talent mix thing which can happen you can have a year where you have more hitting

[00:53:15] talent than the pitching talent but of course this has been across the across the country so it's probably an equipment thing is it a one-year fluke um go back to lial mentioned 2019 you know the baseball can bounce around if you go from you start in 2016 and you go

[00:53:30] from 17 18 19 in baseball the baseball performed wildly differently so this could just be a fluke of that the year one of the things we know is that the nc2a controls bat performance more so than mlb does um this goes to having you know artificial aluminum bats or

[00:53:46] composites whatever they're made up now um and that was what emma and the nca got nca got control of back in god guys what was it you might follow it more closely than i do it was

[00:53:55] like the 2000s it was after i think that fc game where they were like hey we gotta change this so the bats don't perform as well so maybe there's been some changes in the

[00:54:02] tolerance there i'm kind of throwing out a lot of ideas because i don't know why the nc2a game has changed so much this year and i'd want to see a couple years of this before the center

[00:54:10] gets a trend we could go back get to next year and the game looks like it did you know 21 22 so you know let's see what happens next year that's it yeah i like that and i feel

[00:54:21] like we sample sizes are important when when analyzing these kinds of things so i'm with you on that but i'm never one to be against home runs so i'm not complaining i'm honestly

[00:54:31] not complaining about it too much let's get to like baseball and say how this american league stacks up when you look at the the american league right now and we as mariners people

[00:54:41] are just amazed that they've had a they have a net right now as of recording have their largest division lead since 2001 and we can really talk about how they stack up against the rest of the american league and the american league leader so when you're looking

[00:54:53] at the ao right now joe what what do you see how do the teams stack up next to each other yeah the orioles have set a standard i mean they're still behind the yankees but to me they look

[00:55:03] like the best team in the league at the start of the year i thought that was i thought there was going to be a lot less separation at the top i've had the jays orils rays mariners

[00:55:14] rangers and extras all within like four games of each other and we've seen the mariners and the orils kind of separate from that group uh i've had the mariners on a tier the yankees

[00:55:22] we saw some of the flaws in boston over the weekend you know there's some real depth issues in the lineup uh they worked the bullpen very hard they've been fortunate in the early going in terms of sequencing and leaving runners on base pitching's probably not going as good

[00:55:33] as it looked of course they're going to get gary coldback so that's going to make a difference there to take some of the pressure off some of their starters um i think i see a

[00:55:40] gap between the oros and the yankees i see a gap between the yankees and the mariners but it's less than you would think from the standards um the one thing i've said about mariners and this is an original it's just how impressive they're starting rotations

[00:55:52] um at the start of the year i had them second behind the phillies if you look at the statistics some teams have been a little bit ahead of them some of that is emerson hankox taking some starts

[00:56:00] inside of brian woo but the front four has been completely healthy they've gotten 59 starts from those four guys and they've basically taken every turn and kirby pitching last night excuse me yesterday afternoon um that's the strength of the team and brian woo we keep

[00:56:14] getting these scares with his elbow is he going to be able to pitch is he not going to be able to pitch um but even then you're talking about your fifth star so if they can keep

[00:56:22] hilbert castillo kirby and uh miller healthy taking their terms there's no reason they can't maintain this this lead in the division the astros look a lot different than they did to start the year losing your key losing hobby and not getting those guys back now

[00:56:36] um you know talkers missing time they don't have a very deep offense so i think just on talent there's a gap between the mariners and the the astros and the rangers you know they

[00:56:45] mariners look great this weekend i think it's hard to judge the rangers not only did they start the year with a bunch of starting pitchers on the il pretty much by choice you know but

[00:56:53] they treated they traded inside fragile guys but you know they had some offensive injuries as well so eight and a half back 90 games to play that's still plenty of time nothing's been locked up yet some head-to-head games left that make a difference but right now you

[00:57:07] know the mariners not only are in position to win this division but to possibly get the number two seed in the first round by so with all that what do they have to do come this trade

[00:57:18] deadline i think it's been made pretty clear by most people they're going to have to go out of bat but in your in your eyes joe what type of bat could they add that could really change this

[00:57:28] lineup and level them up let's say closer to where the orioles are the nice thing about having you know i think their 17th and weighted runs created is that when your office

[00:57:39] is not that good you can add just about anything i do think the corners you know are going to be the real problem you know france he is not the driveline machine that we hope he might be coming

[00:57:49] out of the going after going down this winter he's hurt right now um but i think he ends up being somebody you don't have to replace but if you look at the corners uh dominican zone's been

[00:57:58] okay um you know mitch hanniger hasn't worked out very well mitch garver hasn't worked out very well just don't sign mitch's i guess is the lesson here but i just i that's going

[00:58:06] to be where you're going to focus and it's hard because you've either traded for or sign these veterans and it's hard to say you're not going to play as much now because we have gotten somebody

[00:58:15] better so there's a certain amount of um it's not just a baseball thing we're not dealing with track cards uh you kind of have to go to your veterans say you're not hitting well

[00:58:23] enough we got a replacement for you that's going to be on jerry and it's going to be on scott service kind of manage that now um yeah where do you add these guys i mean

[00:58:30] you know rally's gonna play julio rodriguez i mean even no matter what he hits he's going to play you're not benching julio rodriguez still a plus center fielder as well so it would

[00:58:38] have matter what he hits is helping you so you've got to really find guys on the quarters um a month ago i would have said you know just go out and get the best bat you can figure it out

[00:58:47] left field dh first base france hanniger and garver have hit better over the last month so it's not as big an upgrade the other problem guys it's hard to find grades out there we have a situation right now in baseball where there are only five teams that are

[00:59:00] clearly sellers right now and one of the problems with them is that they're five bad teams they don't have that much to say um i think a good fit for the marines might be ryan mcmahon

[00:59:10] of the the rockies but he's a good fit in a lot of places the catch the mariners have a lot of frontline talent you know i know emerson's hurt right now but you look at henry

[00:59:19] ford you look at uh the other middle infielder guys i'm blanking um thank you um they have high end talent to trade like they could trade for a true five win player who they could

[00:59:32] retain for a couple of years the teams that are likely sellers right now don't have that so you're kind of competing with your advantage that you have really good prospects to trade might not be as much of advantage because there isn't a justin verlander out there

[00:59:45] there isn't a big harry bat mining machado a couple of years ago trey turner a couple of years ago a true impact player it's going to be hard to find that kind of hitter in

[00:59:52] this particular trade market now it's july 17th let's give it five weeks let's see which of these teams in the wild card races maybe fall out and see what that might become available but

[01:00:03] if i'm depoto right now i've got the rotation i can fake the bullpen we're getting they're getting gergari santos back um grave spire probably back in the second half i don't think

[01:00:14] the bullpens going to be the big concern but man if you could add two hitters to this team and again if one of them is an obp monster if one of those sluggy monster great

[01:00:21] if you can combine those into the same skill set great uh but it's a hard market you know ryan mcmahon taylor ward um if the marlins had any good hitters they wouldn't be in

[01:00:31] the situation they're in right now the national similarly like yeah you want to go maybe get jesse winker back i know he had such a great experience in seattle i'm sure he's eager to

[01:00:39] come back yeah yeah they would gracefully take him back wink wink uh joe i didn't hear you mention cleveland we're talking about contenders are you buying them i'm shocked by the offense and some of it is changes to the ballpark it's gone from being a

[01:00:56] pitcher's park to a hitter's park construction they they changed the upper deck and right field took out some party suites and it's changed the way the ball flies so evaluating their offense

[01:01:04] is difficult are they this good or is it just that the part changes um i do think steven quann emerging is kind of the you know gen x or the gen x or millennial millennial uh brett

[01:01:15] butler has been fascinating just a contact hitter who makes so much contact and draws so many walks it actually doesn't matter how little power he has he's plus he's also the best defensive

[01:01:23] left fielder in baseball when you get a guy like that on top of your lineup it makes everything else work but you know they got a lot of dead bats at the bottom of that lineup bone nailer

[01:01:31] hasn't developed so the nailer hedges platoon has been really bad at catcher they've worked with tyler freeman and center mixed bag on his offense but he's been a league average hitter so that's helped them um i'm concerned about the pitching depth member beaver's out

[01:01:43] they haven't gotten gavin williams to the majors yet they had a tough prospect and daniel espino is probably probably never going to reach the majors now so this is real depth issues tristan mckenzie pitching through an elbow injury i i doubt they're pitching in a way

[01:01:55] that makes me think the twins are going to catch them um and it also makes me think that the al central team will once again be the number three so another mariners question i have

[01:02:05] for you and as we start to kind of wrap this thing up all-star games in about a month the mariners are eight and a half up like we've talked about but you look up and down the

[01:02:14] roster and i wouldn't say there's one guy that stands alone of this is their all-star at least the time of recording it's not julio right now it's probably somebody in the rotation andres

[01:02:23] munoz probably has a case at least if you're asking me but if it were you who's got a chance to be the mariners all-star or all-stars right now i mean logan gilbert is a chance

[01:02:33] to start the all-star game if you look at the mix of pitchers and you know whoever starts the sunday before can't pitch and there's all that nonsense but i think gilbert's

[01:02:39] going to guess is anybody for starting the game um george kirby has a higher e.r.a than the group but you know fib is two two nine or something and you know nine walks in what is it for 15

[01:02:49] starts now he's just been incredible so um i think you could take all four starters legitimately um i'm a louise castillo honk so maybe that's uh that's a stretch but yeah i

[01:02:59] think you could take two to four starters from this team as far as the hitters you know ale catching is so bad that i think you make a case for cal rally um i think you put him on

[01:03:07] the all-star team if julio you know has a good couple of weeks here maybe you put him on the team but this is the nature of baseball i mean it's a team effort and i know that sounds like

[01:03:17] a cliche but it's very possible to have like three all-stars and be a sub 500 team and the converse of that is you can have a very good team that just doesn't have a lot of

[01:03:26] obvious all-stars i mean the yankee dynasty never had a you go back to the 90s yankees they never had an mvp uh jeter got the closest but you know the team depth is what

[01:03:35] got them there so yeah i think mariners at least you're starting pitchers probably rally or are on the all-star team when you watch that mariners rotation what is it that jumps out to you the

[01:03:45] most on how they pitch and what they do so well in command mostly um you know kirby's kind of the the poster child for throwing strikes but you look at gilbert i mean this is

[01:03:56] something he's had since he came up he's really good command of his stuff brice miller is power i can see him up close guys remember the game in uh baltimore he started giving five runs

[01:04:05] in the first and he hung in there for the next five innings he gave the mariners six good innings that night well five good innings and the one bad one um but you know just be able

[01:04:12] to get like hey i'm getting knocked around here but i'm going to give my team the innings that was really impressive to me um it's a mix of really good raw stuff and really good

[01:04:21] control of it um you look castillo is kind of almost a kitchen sink guy at this point at one point he was a fastball guy then he was a change-up guy he's just he's had been a couple

[01:04:31] of different things over the course of his career so it's a mix of talents they work deep in the games i believe the mariners are just shy of six innings per start um and nope they lead

[01:04:40] the league and start our innings they lead the league in innings per start that's a big factor too because you look at i mentioned earlier the bullpen injuries you know brash is out for the year santos hasn't pitched they're missing spire getting through six as

[01:04:52] opposed to getting through five that's an inning every night you don't have to fill for the bullpen so it's a little bit of everything even with you know i curvy for al saiyang which

[01:05:00] wasn't an original thought i think everybody did but even with not having anybody who's really in that saiyang mix right now except maybe gilbert they've all been very good pitchers if you look the highest the array in the rotation is like three five the highest dip is

[01:05:14] like three six and again i mentioned the innings that kind of depth in a game that's crying out for good starting pitching has been their big advantage joe i want to end this on a fun note because on this podcast we hold umpires accountable every

[01:05:29] single week we sit here and we hold them accountable the worst performance of the week gets highlighted they get called out and you do that quite a lot as well so i want to give

[01:05:38] you this opportunity can you name your top three favorite umpires to not watch because they're that bad cb buckner alfonso marquez uh i wouldn't say angel obviously but in fact just

[01:05:56] to complete the segment i'm gonna say angel yes he almost has to be on there well even though he's only gonna umpire essentially like a month's worth of games this year he still probably will end up with the most notable ball strike at bat probably the decade yeah

[01:06:13] i mean just this year i'm thinking of the wyatt langford one i think he was behind the plate for that um but yeah i mean the one thing i want to say here is i know you guys are having some

[01:06:22] fun with this but focusing on any one umpire is the is the the problem they're all just guessing they're all flipping coins back there because when the pitch is coming in at 97 with

[01:06:32] some spin and some break all you can do is guess based on what the catcher's done major league umpires now aren't calling pitches they're calling catches so angel hennessy b buckton all these guys we can talk about or even on the other end you know pat holberg was

[01:06:44] obviously the news for different reasons um they're all just guessing and we've got an automated system in place yeah and the the other thing too is the percentage wise they're actually calling strikes at a higher percentage than they ever have it's just now that we have

[01:06:58] the technology to see that they're actually wrong and and also too i think we underestimate the impact of missed calls um if you flip i was watching a pirate's rocky's game don't

[01:07:08] judge me um a three two pitch well off the outside corner got called a strike so the pitcher threw a ball cabrion hayes can correctly ascertain that it was a pitch off the plate

[01:07:19] and the umpire turned it from a walk to a strike up that's an enormous flip in run in run expectancy and win expectancy you know you look at change in one take a one one

[01:07:27] pitch off the plate it's a ball the umpire calls it a strike that's an that's like 500 points of ops and a given at bat so if you tell me the percentage is high that's great

[01:07:37] but the mistakes are huge yeah they are they are enormous and hopefully hopefully they get it to it i think the the are you so are you full automated or are you challenge system because

[01:07:48] i think lao and i are to the point where a challenge system i think makes the most sense well a challenge system is just the illusion of agency right oh you know you're going to be

[01:07:57] able to do something about this and it's a way of kind of soft launching maybe yes but if the system is good enough to call a percentage of pitches it should be good enough

[01:08:05] to call all the pitches all a challenge system does is game of the process and i've been there i've seen it now i will say that people who watch more minor league baseball than i do

[01:08:16] have a better sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the of the automated system i completely concede that i want to make the point that i who watches an obscene amount of major league baseball have a better sense of how bad major league umpiring is

[01:08:29] so i think there are two people kind of talking past two sides talking past each other right now where i'm just saying the system is better than what we have the system is flawed

[01:08:36] but it's better than what we have and i think we've been better off within the in major league baseball i think one of the problems with challenge system is that it puts the players

[01:08:44] in position of officiating the game and i hate that i think the system or the empires one of the other should officiate the game and the players should play the game i'm against challenge systems in all sports i think they're mistakes the nfl started with it a thousand

[01:08:56] years ago and everybody just said well the nfl is doing it let's do it i would really truly think the game would be better off if you just had a fully automated system that not only got

[01:09:05] the calls right but beyond right called the pitches based on where they cross the plate as opposed to what the catcher did afterwards and finally called a consistent 17-inch plate that made it more fair for the hitters well i think we can yeah we all agree though this

[01:09:20] the current system is not good enough and it needs it needs to get better because it's just ridiculous that in a major sport these types of things continue to happen joe this has been

[01:09:29] great people all of our listeners go check out your work on joe shein.com he writes a great newsletter you can get a full year subscription you can get a lifetime subscription go help him

[01:09:37] out joe thank you so much for taking some time to join us here today we learned a lot and it's been great hope to have you on again thanks fellas we certainly hope you guys enjoyed

[01:09:49] that conversation with joe shein he is such a smart dude we had a blast listening to him hopefully you guys learned a lot from that conversation and again go check joe go check

[01:09:59] out all of his work you'll learn a lot every time you read him he is awesome with that that'll just about wrap up this edition of the marine layer podcast you guys know the drill you want

[01:10:08] to listen to the full-form podcast you can do so wherever you get your audio pods make sure to download make sure to leave a five star review leave a written review if you're watching

[01:10:16] on youtube make sure to like comment and subscribe and check us out on social media we're on instagram tiktok twitter and youtube shorts at marine layer pot that's tj i'm lyle as always we thank you guys for tuning in talk to you soon