Episode 146: Reacting To The Mariners Drafting Switch Pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 146 of the Marine Layer Podcast. We're reacting to the Mariners' first two picks, Jurrangelo Cijntje from Mississippi State and then a high school arm, Ryan Sloan. The Mariners make their first two picks here on the first day of the Major League Baseball Draft on Sunday.

[00:00:18] We'll react. And here's your guys reminder before we start the show. Make sure to download the episodes. If you're listening, leave a five-star review, leave a written review. Make sure to like, comment, subscribe on YouTube, and then check us out on social media.

[00:00:29] We're on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, 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 Sunday evening, July 14th,

[00:00:59] the first two rounds of the Major League Baseball Draft have wrapped up here from Dallas. If you're watching on YouTube, you're wondering what the heck is going on. We made a joke last week when we were hosting on the radio.

[00:01:09] We had never hosted a podcast before in person. Well, now we've made it to where we're sitting here in a hotel room in Dallas, sitting right next to each other on the couch, reacting to the Major League Baseball Draft. Well, quick Dallas review. Very spread out, very hot.

[00:01:27] We'll give a full review on Friday show. We'll talk a little bit more about our week, the all-star week in general, a calm Friday show. But early reviews, it's hot, spread out. Dallas could do a slightly better job with all-star week. We'll get into that more Friday.

[00:01:42] Anyway, the reason we are sitting here in person instead of sitting in our normal setup is because, well, the hotel we're in doesn't have an extra conference room. And sitting in the same room trying to record a podcast on two different computers would be a nightmare.

[00:01:54] So here we are. We're sitting on one screen right next to each other, bringing you guys a podcast because we've got some draft picks to talk about. The Mariners make a couple really interesting ones and we're excited to get into it. Let's talk about the first one first,

[00:02:07] Gerangelo Sanja. Yeah, his name's a handful. If you just look at the English of it and try and pronounce it, odds are if you didn't already know the pronunciation, you'd probably mess it up. Is it a hot take to say he's the most interesting prospect

[00:02:21] the Mariners have legitimately ever had? Ever? It's not a hot take. You're talking about a switch pitcher. The Mariners had Pat Venditti for a little bit of time. Pat Venditti doesn't have the upside of Sanja, not at all. This is a guy that throws 99 from the left side.

[00:02:37] 90, sorry, 99 from the right side, 95 from the left side. Stud in the SEC, second team All-American. Walk, or yeah, walk rate under three, strikeout rate over nine. Yeah, it's an interesting prospect. Most of this ties back to the fact that he's a switch pitcher.

[00:02:53] And the Mariners, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Emerson Hancock, all these guys they've taken in the first round over the years, exciting, but not interesting and intriguing the way that Sanja is. Like this is the coolest draft pick they've probably ever made.

[00:03:07] And here's the interesting about all of this. There was sort of an elephant from what we had predicted. We thought Trey Yassavic was going to be a Mariners. He was sitting there at 15, the profile fit. He seemed like a guy that could be a Mariners

[00:03:20] by this time next year. And I think coming into this draft, you and I wanted that. We wanted somebody who would be almost in the big leagues by July of 2025. I don't know if he's going to be in the big leagues by this time next year.

[00:03:34] He's more developmental. Among all the first round pitchers, he's probably the most developmental. But there's a lot to work with here because they're going to let him continue to pitch with both hands. Just going to be nice. Here's the comp I saw.

[00:03:48] I think the MLB pipeline put this out. It's Marcus Strohman as a righty and a reliever as a lefty. So you take that. You're out here joking. What if he goes out there and he throws seven innings

[00:04:00] as a righty and then pitches an inning of relief as a lefty? Does that, can you do that? I assume you could do that. I'm down. Then guess what? That's the easiest bridge to Andres Munoz in the ninth we've ever heard of.

[00:04:10] Sendry goes seven from the right side, pitches with the setup man in the eighth inning, handed over to Munoz in the ninth game over. So can he actually do that? I don't know because again, how many switch pitchers have we ever seen in baseball? We've seen Venditti.

[00:04:23] Venditti was a reliever. So I wonder if the Mariners have the ability to get creative with Senjo when the time comes that he could be a big leaguer. I guess we'll find out more because he's gonna do some media stuff in the next few days.

[00:04:35] He should be in Seattle in the next week or so to do his media availability, sign his contract, get out on the field, all that stuff, do his photo day. Maybe we'll find a little bit more out about it then.

[00:04:46] But the ideas that you can start to kind of think about in terms of how creative you can get this guy is interesting. And honestly, I bet you that's why the Mariners at least for now are saying, yeah, we'll let him continue to be ambidextrous.

[00:04:58] We'll let him pitch from both sides because I wonder if they're thinking about some of these things too. We don't know all these things yet. Like again, a guy like this hasn't really ever existed in baseball. So we're gonna kind of have to see

[00:05:11] how his development tracks in time. But overall, in terms of the Yusavic thing versus drafting Senjo, I think we both wanted to see Yusavic get picked. I think a lot of Mariners fans wanted to see this before the pick. But here's the thing, the idea is the same.

[00:05:25] They wanted a college arm that can track a little faster and be in that AAAA range to help the Mariners pitching. Cause right now you have the five starters that are all studs. Past them, it's what? You have Logan Evans, you have Michael Morales

[00:05:38] who's starting to throw better and not a lot of pitching prospects past those guys. So while Yusavic seemed like the fit, the idea here is the same. They got a college arm, they got a guy with real upside. And if the Mariners believe

[00:05:51] Senjo's a better pitcher than Yusavic, who were we to doubt them? Haven't they earned people's trust at this point with drafting college arms? And so here's the thing about, about, about Senjo thinking about this. So it's almost a balance of, we heard Scott Hunter talk last week

[00:06:08] and say the idea of drafting high schoolers not, it's not, they're not writing it off. They're certainly not writing it off. And Senjo's a young college player. He's a sophomore eligible, he turned 21 six weeks ago. That's on the pretty young end of drafting a college player.

[00:06:25] So it works out for the Mariners. They get a college player on the younger side who is more developmental, which plays along the lines of a high schooler. Now on the ambidextrous pitching side. So let's note that he's not the ideal pitching build. He's only 5'11", right?

[00:06:42] That's what he's listed at. It's like 5'11", 200. And the note is that there could be some reliever risk. Now, why not if there is any bit of reliever risk with your first round pick, you gotta let him pitch from both sides because it keeps both the options open

[00:06:59] because at the very least, if he, let's play the guessing game here. Say he makes it to the big leagues as a pitcher. He's probably only gonna be a righty, guessing? Like I'm guessing if he's gonna make it to the big leagues and totally focus on one thing,

[00:07:14] he's gonna be a right handed pitcher. He's up to 99 as a righty. His breaking stuff is sharper as a righty. I would imagine his command is also a little bit better as a righty. Funny enough, he's a natural lefty. He's supposedly a natural lefty,

[00:07:27] but his stuff is way better as a righty. So that's why the Mariners are gonna go that. So if he makes it to the big leagues, he'll probably throw us just a righty. But if that reliever risk comes into play,

[00:07:37] the stature doesn't hold up, it's too max effort. He's not able to repeat his stuff as much. It makes a little bit more sense to at least let him try both arms because while we haven't seen that many ambidextrous relievers in Major League Baseball,

[00:07:51] it is valuable if you have someone who can throw in the mid 90s on from both sides, Mariners current ball bin could probably use that. That would be helpful, right? Wouldn't not? Yeah, it'd be a little helpful to have a lefty and a righty with big time stuff.

[00:08:03] Yeah, why not? Now what you were saying about Scott Hunter saying they could draft a high schooler, what Scott Hunter was really kind of harping on was he said high school pitcher, which the Mariners have never done. When he had his pre-draft media session last week,

[00:08:15] he said we are not ruling out the idea of taking a high school pitcher. And I thought to myself, well, are they gonna target Cam Caminiti, the high school lefty from Arizona? Are they gonna target somebody else we're not thinking about?

[00:08:25] But this is kind of that in between. Like you said, sophomore draft eligible college arm fits the college need that they had for getting some arms closer to the double A level quicker but also young with some projectability. You know, his ceiling is not capped. That's for sure.

[00:08:44] Like there's a lot to like about this guy. It almost reminds me a little bit different because he was a proven stud SEC arm. Remember when they took Connor Phillips in the second round a couple years ago? Rather than high school arm,

[00:08:55] it's a Juco arm who thrown one year of Juco was 19 years old. It's not exactly the same thing with Senja but a little bit like that. I think this is exciting. Again, like let's harp on this. This is, I think this is the coolest draft pick

[00:09:07] the Mariners have possibly ever made. Not that Logan Gilbert wasn't exciting, not that George Kirby wasn't exciting, not that Colt Emerson and Harry Ford and others haven't been exciting but like nobody's ever had this profile. So to dream on what he could be is really fun.

[00:09:22] And if he ends up as a reliever and we're not saying he's gonna be, it's just if, I don't wanna call that worst case scenario but if the scenario occurred where that did happen then he has both options like you're talking about. How about let's talk about

[00:09:35] where he fits into the farm system now. So the Mariners, if we're talking about pictures in the Mariners farm system, Emerson Hancock has started number six and he's in triple A. He's essentially a big leaker without a big leag roster spot. So that's where his spot is.

[00:09:48] Then underneath that you have Logan Evans who could probably start a big league game this year if the Mariners needed him to but he hasn't started a big league game yet. They just moved him back into the rotation. And now we have Senja in that spot.

[00:10:02] Probably right after Logan Evans, he out Logan Evans was the 12th round pick but he showed that he deserves that spot above the Mariners first round pick this year Senja will probably, if there's any case where Senja overtakes Logan Evans because Logan Evans for a 12th rounder again

[00:10:16] is as close to the big leagues as you would get a year out of his draft as you could possibly have. So there's that but Senja won't get a full workload in a Mariners uniform until this time next year when they're actually throwing him.

[00:10:30] I think he threw a little bit over 90 innings this year at Mississippi State. Yeah, he's got the wear and tear of two arms instead of one and it could be a little bit less than they could say, okay, because of that

[00:10:41] we can throw him a little bit more here down the stretch. But as the Mariners are cautious, I mean they pulled Logan Gilbert today on Sunday at 87 pitches, right? They're gonna play things cautious. So we're not gonna see that full workload

[00:10:54] and a chance for him to really shoot up the Mariners rankings. I would say until next season, which is fine for a first rounder, it's fine. I mean, when Logan Gilbert came onto the Mariners he didn't come in and pitch a ton after that neither did George Kirby.

[00:11:07] So it's gonna be a little bit of patience. But I think patience is gonna be needed with this pick. This would, while this isn't college pitcher, I don't think St. Je's the guy who's ready to pitch in the Mariners rotation at this time next year.

[00:11:21] I think that's a fair statement. I don't think he would be ready at that point. Which is fine, most college players are not. Some of them are, the special ones are Paul Skeens who's starting the All-Star game here on Tuesday. We'll be ready.

[00:11:32] He was at playing at LSU last year and now he's starting the All-Star game. But not everyone's right that. St. John virtually does not have that kind of stuff. No, he doesn't, but that doesn't mean his projectability is not really good. So, to your point, yeah,

[00:11:45] he might not be a fast tracker, that's okay. It'll be interesting to see how fast tray is Savage tracks with the Blue Jays, which might not have ultimately been the Mariners' number one factor into making this traffic. They might not care about the whole fast tracking thing much.

[00:11:57] They want the best arm. If they think St. Je's the best arm they're taking the best arm. Again, they've earned people's trust at this point with the college arms they took and really the pitchers that they take in general.

[00:12:07] So, in terms of his ranking within the farm system, I think you're right that in the sense of he be behind Hancock, he be behind Logan Evans, in the sense of where he slots in when you rank your prospects.

[00:12:17] St. Je's not starting in the big leagues this year. Like for example, if the minor leaguers and some of the guys in the big leagues have in forbid had a ton of injuries and they needed a starter. For example, like St. Je's not coming up

[00:12:27] to start this year ahead of Revan Scooter. He's not coming up to start this year ahead of some guys in AAA. It's just in the sense of where you rank your prospects. Yeah, that's where he probably slots in right now in terms of like, like you said, behind,

[00:12:41] like well it's actually interesting. I was gonna say behind Hancock, behind Evans. I'll be interested to see where third party outlets rank him. Maybe he's ahead of those guys. I don't know. Yeah, in prospect rankings but in totality like think from the Mariners sense.

[00:12:54] I don't think you'd be in front of those guys at least in terms of getting to the big leagues. We're not talking about upside here. We're talking about are you gonna be able to contribute to a big league roster I think.

[00:13:04] So in that sense, yeah Hancock, Evans, St. Je. Because Emerson Hancock right now is not a top 100 prospect but St. Je would be a top 100 prospect therefore. Right? Yeah. Like that would be it. And we're forgetting guys like, you know,

[00:13:17] Michael Morales has had a really good season this year as a high school arm and they're the same age right now but St. Je's gonna be ahead of him because he'll probably start ahead of it. They might start at the same level briefly

[00:13:27] before St. Je goes to AA but you know, like still based just based on draft position that would be it. I would say this, speaking of where you're gonna start I'm sure he'll throw a few innings down in Arizona here at some point. You have to assume

[00:13:41] he's gonna make some outings in Everett this year. You wanna get out and see him get out to Everett. As somebody who's in Seattle I wanna get out to Everett and see him pitch and imagine that second half roster.

[00:13:52] Imagine a day, let's say the Mariners are on the road you wanna go watch some baseball Lazar Montez is in Everett in the starting lineup Colt Emerson gets up to Everett in the starting lineup and St. Je happens to be starting that day. Like are you telling me

[00:14:05] you're not getting out to the ballpark for that? I am. Yeah, that'd be pretty exciting. That'd be pretty exciting. I'm kinda jealous. This would be kinda jealous but then again, you know they can go on the road and Eugene or Hillsborough can go see him too.

[00:14:16] Let's take a quick pause here. We're gonna talk to you guys about our friends over at Pagotius Pub 85. You wanna go have a good time out with your friends. You wanna have some great food play some games like pool, like darts. It's basically your one stop shop.

[00:14:28] Head over there, head over to watch some games. If you wanna head over during happy hour we highly, highly recommend it because drinks are three and four dollars. Monday through Friday, two to six PM happy hours. Again, it's three and four dollar drinks.

[00:14:41] So all of that games, drinks, fun time with your friends, good food. It's all over at Pagotius Pub 85 in Kirkland. There's one other draft pick today. One other draft pick, Ryan Sloan High Schooler. Don't know as much about him but three power pitches.

[00:14:56] He gets up to, I think, I believe he gets up to 99 Illinois guys. So a Midwest cold weather high school arm in the second round overslot committed to Wake Forest but he was wearing his Mariners cap and his post draft press conference. So that's good sign

[00:15:11] that the Mariners will actually get this deal done. It is believed to be quite a bit overslot to get him signed. So we can't predict what will happen on Monday and then in the latter rounds but there will be some senior signs to offset that as well.

[00:15:24] But so two pitchers. So this is where sort of the projectability factor comes into play and the high school pitcher idea from Scott Hunter. Well, you didn't get him in the first round. In the second round you did and they're gonna expect Sloan

[00:15:38] to have a big part as a second rounder. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. When you overslot a high school arm probably means you believe in them and believe in them a good bit. And like you said, when you have three pitches

[00:15:48] like he has, they're all, I mean, yeah, they're all in on him. They drafted him, they overslot at him. Yeah, it'll be exciting. Like we'll see what he brings to the table. This is a guy where you heard Scott Hunter talk about.

[00:15:59] Again, they were interested in high school arms. They might not have done it in the first round but in the second round they overslot a high school arm which means you're getting overslot money in the second round probably means you had the potential

[00:16:10] to be a first rounder and they wanted to make sure they could get him away from school and sign him as a pro so they overslot him and took him in the second round. All of that is starting to build up the pitchers

[00:16:22] they have in the system because again, you have your stars in the big leagues in terms of the rotation. You have all these star young bats coming up. You guys know all the names. We don't have to run through them all

[00:16:31] but now they're starting to build up minor league pitchers again with real upside cause now you've got, I mean technically Emerson Hancock's in the minors but even him aside, you've got Logan Evans. Now you have Sanja, you have Ryan Sloan, you have Michael Morales.

[00:16:46] Like, I mean if you want to go way down the farm system in terms of guys with upside, Jeter Martinez, like they're starting to build up their pitching prospects again. That's a good sign. I'll be interested to see what the rest of the rounds

[00:16:56] in the draft look like for the Mariners but clearly there was a focus here on day one and they executed it. Yeah, truly exciting. A little bit more exciting than the draft set up here in Dallas. We were really hoping to watch it.

[00:17:07] I mean we were really hoping to watch the draft while we're here in Dallas. Flew all the way down to Dallas for all star festivities. Take a guess, I would guess if you're listening to this and you don't know actually where they held the draft

[00:17:19] in Dallas, picture your mind of the Dallas area. So we have Dallas, Arlington is right in the middle between Dallas and Fort Worth and Arlington's where the stadiums are. That's where we spent most of the last two days getting some fan content. Stay tuned to the YouTube pages

[00:17:33] and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts. We're gonna have all that content out here. So we're sitting there trying to figure out and we ran into a friend of the podcast, Joe Doyle who we'll have on Friday's episode break down this entire draft class

[00:17:46] in significantly more detail than we're doing right now because he's the best and knows way more than we do. So we're sitting there talking to him and trying to scope out a few things about the draft. Like, Joe, where's the draft at?

[00:17:58] It's like, oh it's in Fort Worth. Sorry, isn't the all star game for the Rangers, right? In Texas and Dallas. It's like, well yeah but it's in Fort Worth. Get this, Lyle. What was your reaction when you realized Major League Baseball had the draft

[00:18:12] at a place for a rodeo? And they had all the chairs set up on rodeo dirt. I laughed. I laughed at the fact it's like 45 minutes away from where the all star village is outside of Globe Lightfield in Arlington.

[00:18:26] I laughed at the fact that it's in a dirt circle. I laughed at the fact that part of it looked like a rodeo setup, part of it looked like a high school gym. What is Major League Baseball doing? I'm sure we're a little bit biased

[00:18:37] because of where we're from and the podcast of the team we host for. Again, we'll get into it more Friday. Seattle did so much better of a job. Way, way, way, way better. Way better of a job with their all star week set up

[00:18:49] and execution than Dallas is doing. I'm sorry, like we're just gonna admit it. Again, we don't wanna get too far in detail about that. We'll do it more on Friday along with having Joe on. So again, we're doing this podcast. We're giving you our reaction

[00:19:01] and a little bit of a break down on these two picks. We're gonna have Joe on Friday because he is so good at breaking this stuff down and not just us but all you guys are gonna learn way more about this draft class after that show.

[00:19:12] But there's a little preview of our all star week recap. We're gonna have some good stuff to talk about for Friday's episode two. We're gonna highlight a lot of the positives but yes, Dallas is very spread out. Rangers and Major League Baseball

[00:19:24] probably could have done a little bit of a better job with their execution. And I'll leave it at that. Is that fair? The barbecue was good too. Oh, the barbecue was really good. Yeah, again, there's been good parts about this all star week

[00:19:34] and there's gonna be plenty more. But we've just highlighted a couple of the parts that maybe could have gone a little bit better. I know we're starting to wrap this podcast up. We said it would be about a 20 minute episode and it is.

[00:19:43] I think actually all of you guys here should give us a big thank you before we sign off. Why are we saying that? We went through this whole episode and did not mention a certain series in Anaheim this weekend, aren't you happy? We're not making you do it.

[00:19:56] It's all star week for everybody. We all get some time off to relax and just we're not gonna talk about the big league team for a few days, all right? We're just gonna leave it be. If you really wanna hear about it,

[00:20:08] we did about a 45 second reaction of the series that's on social media, you can check it out there. But we didn't do it. We're just not gonna bring it up. And we're gonna have plenty to talk about on Friday. I know we're having Joe on on Friday

[00:20:19] to talk about the draft, but yeah, we're gonna have a little bit of time to digest what has happened since we left. But because it's all star week, everybody deserves to relax. So we're not gonna bring it up. Okay, I think that just about wraps up this edition

[00:20:34] of the Marine Layer Podcast. You guys know the drill. You wanna listen to the full form podcast, you can do so wherever you get your audio pods. Make sure to download, leave a five star review, leave a written review. If you're watching YouTube, like, hit the subscribe button,

[00:20:47] drop us a comment and on social media, follow us everywhere on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod. That's TJ, I'm Lyle. As always we thank you guys for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.