Episode 237: Mariners Win Their Eighth Series In A Row + J.P. Crawford Is A New Hitter In 2025?

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode number 237 of the Marine Layer Podcast. The Mariners continue to roll. They have now won eight series in a row. There's a number of reasons why they've done that. And we'll talk about all of them. The offense, Brian Wu, J.P. Crawford. There is a lot to touch on on this episode. We'll get into all of it.

[00:00:20] If you want to stay on top of all of our stuff, guys, and we hope you do, there's one spot you can do all of it. Over at our website, MarineLayerPod.com. It's got everything. If you want to watch and listen to these episodes, you can find it all over there. If you want to review, you can find it all over there. We're asking you guys, we're hoping from you guys, you want to both get some merch because it's really rolling these days and go sign up for our Patreon as well if you want to do both of those things. Again, all over at our website, MarineLayerPod.com. And follow us everywhere across social media at MarineLayerPod.com.

[00:00:49] MarineLayerPod.com. Let's get it rolling.

[00:01:31] 22 of 25 games and 14 games in a row. That's going to feel pretty good. It's awesome. How could anybody not be having a blast watching Mariners baseball right now? You can't. For all of the uncertainty that was going into this season, whether you still feel some reservations or not is totally up to you. I'm sure the two of us still have some, but it's, I don't know how you couldn't be bought in right now.

[00:01:57] Games are fun. Teams fun. Offense is rolling. They're playing through all the injuries they've endured and playing well as a result. Yeah, it's, it's really, it's really easy to get fired up right now. I mean, this is all we've been asking for. Offense. Offense. Please just score some runs. Please just score some runs. Someone, someone scores some runs. Put together a lineup and an offense.

[00:02:22] Here's the offensive stats. As we can, we continue to update this every week. I can't believe we update this in a positive manner every single week. But here we are since April 9th, Lyle, the Seattle Mariners in all of Major League Baseball are second in runs. They're first in WRC plus. They're first in homers. They're first in wins above replacement. They're second in walk rate. And they're second in slugging. You've got to be kidding me. First and second.

[00:02:52] And first and second. Yeah. And that's with Julio not reaching a hot streak yet. That's without Victor Robles. We continue to say this stuff. And yet this offense just continues to absolutely mash. And it's all led, by the way. Well, it's led by a bunch of guys. This weekend, it's hard not to look right at Cal Raleigh. Dude hits a dinger and a grand slam in a couple of his first at-bats of the series. Basically puts that game out of reach in the blink.

[00:03:23] Dude, he's leading the league in homers. We knew he was going to get hit home runs, but leading the league in home runs. And you look at some of the other things he's doing, too. I mean, the average is up. I don't know if it's going to stay up. The one thing we've talked about with Cal Raleigh, it's like what he does right now is incredibly valuable. What if he does make more contact? How does that change if Cal Raleigh steps forward and makes more contact as well as becoming a better right-handed hitter?

[00:03:51] Like what this dude does, man. I mean, he's on the ultimate positive PR blitz. He signs the extension, and then all of a sudden he's at the top of the league in all of these categories. How fun is that? As a Seattle Mariner, dude. I mean, Bryce Miller said it a couple weeks ago in a presser, right? He's like, well, the Marins are probably happy they paid Cal when they did because his value is only going up. Yeah. It's – look, I think there is more in the bat of Cal Raleigh in terms of batting average.

[00:04:20] I'm not saying he's going to hit .300, but we've talked about this with some people in the past. Cal Raleigh isn't necessarily going to be locked in as a .210 hitter every year. Not the batting average matters. It doesn't. We say it a million times, which is why we almost never use it on this podcast. But if you want to look at Cal Raleigh specifically for somebody who could actually lift his batting average a little bit, yeah, I think he can. And we're seeing it right now exactly what that looks like. And, man, he's like everything Cal's doing right now.

[00:04:49] You didn't think it could get that much better. It's getting that much better. He's actually barreling the ball up a little bit more than last year. He's hitting it even harder, striking out less, like continues to walk. That's a profile that continues to ascend. If you were to sit here right now and put together a one-month American League MVP ballot, where would Cal be? It's going to look like this for me.

[00:05:16] Aaron Judge is still number one, and I don't think anybody's going to dispute that too hard. Cal Raleigh is number two on that list right now. You're talking about a guy that leads baseball and homers, second in the American League in F-War, third in the American League in WRC+, top five in OPS. These are all the things you have to do to win an MVP, and he's doing it. A lot of these categories, he only trails Judge. So I'm putting Cal at two. I'll put Alex Bregman at three because he has been red hot in Boston.

[00:05:46] I'm putting Jorge Polanco at four because I don't know how... Somebody's got to give this man his respect, and we're going to. Not Major League Baseball themselves. We'll get to that in a minute. Polanco's going at four, and I'll put Bobby Wood at five. That's my ballot. That's a pretty good ballot. Two Mariners. Two Mariners. We're talking about the Seattle Mariners. Deservingly so. Offensive players in an MVP ballot.

[00:06:16] It's all warranted. All right, let's call out Major League Baseball. Dude. Major League Baseball puts out their American League Team of the Month for April. MLB Team of the Month. Oh, no, Major League Baseball Team of the Month. Right? Yeah, it was Major League Baseball because he got replaced by a National League player. There. Somehow, Jorge Polanco wasn't the DH. So, Judge gets his spot in the outfield. That's perfect.

[00:06:43] Surely, they would pick someone with an OPS over 1,000 to replace Jorge Polanco at DH. No, they replaced Jorge Polanco at DH with Pavin Smith of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Now, that just doesn't seem right. No, it doesn't. And Cal didn't make this list either, for what it's worth. To be fair, Carson Kelly's been very, very good for the Cubs. So, I'm not going to get as mad over that one. There's still some dispute you can have.

[00:07:12] The real one here is DH. Because when I see that, I think to myself, how many things can Pavin Smith possibly be leading Jorge Polanco in? So, naturally, you pull up StatHead on Baseball Reference and do the comparison between the two players. Jorge Polanco has the edge in. War. Hits. Home runs by 5. RBIs by 16. They're tied with one stolen base.

[00:07:38] He leads in batting average for the month of April by about 60 points. He leads in slugging by 200 points. He leads in OPS by over 150 points. And he has an OPS plus of 60 points higher for the month of April than Pavin Smith. Jorge Polanco was 60% better as a hitter than Pavin Smith. And Major League Baseball said, you know what? No.

[00:08:08] I don't even know what to say. I thought it was a joke when I saw it. I know what to say. I'll say the same thing I tweeted. I tweeted the screenshot of the two players and their compared numbers through a month of April. And I said, when literal MLB doesn't know ball. That's what that was. I'm going to take a guess. Whoever made that list yet doesn't really watch Mariner games. No. No, I don't think they do. No.

[00:08:35] You would have thought at least they would have given it to someone on the East Coast so we could say, oh yeah, the person lives on the East Coast. They don't stay up for West Coast games. Right. So we could at least give them that excuse. But no, they picked someone on the West Coast. Doesn't make any sense. Jorge Polanco is our all MLB DH for April. Stamping it. Do we call Arizona the West Coast? Side note. Sure. Close enough.

[00:09:03] There's so much empty space between us over here on the coast. And all the guys, all the people on the East Coast. So, yes. All right. I'll qualify it. It's close enough. I don't really call Colorado and Denver the West Coast. So I was just curious. It's like a tweener at this point. In the western part of the United States, close to the West Coast. I'll say. In the same time zone. Yeah. So you can kind of loop in it at this point. Yeah.

[00:09:30] Let me say something about the Mariners' current winning stretch before we dive into some more specific topics. And we got to talk a little bit about this series as well. So the Mariners have won eight series in a row. And you might, you'll sit there and you'll look at it and you'll say, wow, like so, so, so, so impressive. It's great they did that. Like, this is what hot teams do. But there should be some context behind it as well. Because as I mentioned at the start, the Mariners had not won eight series in a row since 2022.

[00:10:00] In that stretch in 2022, right in the smack in the middle of the summer, you remember the start of that stretch, they were flailing. They were 10 games under .500 on June 19th, if I remember that correctly. It was June 19th. They were 10 games under .500. They'd just been swept by the Angels at that point. Season was bottoming out. There were people that were about to be fired at that point if they weren't going to turn it around.

[00:10:26] And then, and then you had Trevor Ploup himself over on John Boy and on Talkin' Baseball say the Mariners' season's dead. He said, it's over and they're not going to recover. From that point on, the Mariners went and they won 22 of 25 games, including winning 14 games in a row going into the All-Star break. An incredible stretch. Just a mind-numbingly good stretch of baseball.

[00:10:52] If you remember that 2022 season, and by the way, if you need a shorter version of this, I mentioned it in our social post that came out here on Sunday and the reaction to the Mariners winning the series against the Rangers. Outside of that 22 of 25 stretch, the Mariners were essentially a .500 baseball team. The rest of the season, they were .500. But that one, essentially one-month stretch, they went 22-3 in that stretch.

[00:11:18] And essentially sealed themselves a playoff appearance by having one incredibly white-hot stretch to the season. So just when you think about the Mariners winning 16 of 21 games, and understand at the end of the season, yeah, you can have some shitty months between now and then, but understand how much work this 16 of 21 can be doing for you between now and the end of the season. And that this right here, like winning the series against the Rangers, winning that Saturday

[00:11:48] game, which was tied at one going into the ninth inning, and the Mariners needed to manufacture a run in the ninth inning, but based on the way they're playing right now and based on the way they're hitting, they get a couple of clutch pinch hitting opportunities. One from Jorge Polanco, who fortunately had Adolis Garcia drop a ball in the outfield. And then Rowdy Tellez comes up and knocks him in from third base after Ben Williamson didn't go to the plate and strike out. He moved the ball over to the right side of the infield, which allowed Polanco to move up, and they end up getting Polanco in from third base.

[00:12:17] Like something as small as that when a team is playing well and they're that confident can be the difference between the Mariners missing the playoffs by a game and the Mariners making the playoffs and everyone's finally can stop complaining about things because they're in the playoffs. Like little things like that. And I thought that was very, very relevant today when we're having this discussion. Let me ask you this. If the Mariners play 500 ball the rest of the way, are they in the playoffs?

[00:12:45] No, because they're only eight games above 500 and that would be what? 84? I'm not saying they stop winning now because, like I said, 22 of 25 is not 16 of 21. So that exactly was my point right there. They're about an 84 win team if they play 500 ball the rest of the way. What I'm highlighting here is the Mariners don't even have to do that much more than play 500 ball now the rest of the way to get into the playoffs.

[00:13:11] Look, the way the American League's shaping up this year, there could be an 84 win team that gets in. Not for sure, but there could. So what I'm highlighting here is how important it has been for them to get off to this start and get off to the season on the right note and on the right foot because it's setting themselves up to have some leeway the rest of the year if they need it. This is what I've gone back and forth with Salk a little bit about in the mornings on the radio.

[00:13:37] Salk really, really does not like the narrative of it's early and that early season results make or break a year. They don't. But this is why I like to go to that line of you can't win a division in April. You can absolutely lose one in April. You can get really far into a rut and into a gutter early in the year that you have to dig yourself out of. That makes it a lot harder. You start on the right note.

[00:14:04] The Mariners cannot win the division and coast the rest of the way being 20 and 13. But what they have done now is set themselves up for what can be a really, really good rest of the year and set themselves up in a way that they don't have to. I hope they do. I hope they go win 100 games. They do not have to play like record pace baseball to go on and make the playoffs at this point. If you play slightly over 500 ball the rest of the way, you're getting in.

[00:14:34] They could win 10 of their next 12 and then play 500 the rest of the season. They'd be in the playoffs. There you go. At that point, because that would be. So let's do some math here. That would be 26 of 31. Yeah, that would get you in. Yeah. Yeah, man. Again, look at how different it is. Rather than 2022 when the Mariners really had to miraculously dig themselves out of a huge hole that they created that they created for themselves.

[00:15:02] Now they've set themselves up in a position where they're out in front. They can either continue to win at an awesome pace and really pull ahead of the pack. Or if they level out a little bit, they're still in a great spot. Early season results matter. They really do matter. So this is where Salk would push back on you. And it's easy when you just go and look at last year because our listeners, Salk, whoever,

[00:15:30] could say like knock on my door here and say, I hear you guys talking about this. Weren't the Mariners 10 games up in the first half of last year? They were? Yeah, they were. You can't play like shit in the second half. Well, and that's the caveat I was going to tie into this once you started to rebuttal, which is, yeah, you can't collapse. You can't do what the Mariners did last year. I mean, we saw that 10 game lead evaporate in what felt like one night of sleep.

[00:15:59] It was like you turned around and the lead was gone of 10 games. They lost it in record time. You can't like you cannot do that. Like, let's be very clear. That is exactly what cannot happen. But you can give yourself a little bit of leeway to work with where if you do have a stretch where you lose four of seven or you lose seven of 10, you're not dead in the water. You haven't dug yourself a hole that you have to further dig yourself out of.

[00:16:30] You can think of it in the sense of pressure. There's not pressure on the Mariners right now to win 16 of 21. But if you got off to a slow start in September, there is pressure for you to win 16 of 21. And it can work. Think of the Tigers from last year. The Tigers were, what, 500, below 500 at the deadline in cellars. And then they go on and they rip off an essentially perfect stretch down the stretch of last season and they end up making the playoffs.

[00:16:59] I'm sure at some point they didn't feel like they were playing with pressure because they were playing so well and you just kind of play freely at this point. But if a team like objectively sat there and looked at it, you would look at the standings and you look at the playoff field and it's like, all right, well, we got to be perfect if we're going to make this thing. The Mariners winning 16 of 21 now, they're not looking at the standings. They're not looking at the division standings. They're not looking at the American League. They're, you know, they're looking at the next game in front of them. They don't have to worry about anything else.

[00:17:28] What they're worried about is winning the next series. They're worried about going to Oakland. God damn it. Who cares? The only people that don't want you to call it Oakland is the A's themselves in Major League Baseball because they don't want to have it highlighted that they acted in terrible faith and, you know, totally like ran the team out of the city like malpractice, all that stuff. You're right. You're right. You're right. Okay. They're going to play in Sacramento when this episode comes out on Monday.

[00:17:54] What they're focused on is winning the series against the A's. If this was August or September, the Mariners would be worried about winning the series against the A's and scoreboard watching, but they don't have to scoreboard watch right now. And that's, that's the real beauty of it. And it's, it is a fun product to watch right now. And if you said that and you walked us through what their pitching stats were right now and said, you guys are still going to have a ton of fun watching this.

[00:18:21] I'd say, yeah, that doesn't make any sense because the pitching stats right now are not great, but man, dude, the offense is making this so worth it. Shout out to shout out to everyone who's made this offense click so far. You know what I actually really loved about this series? The Mariners absolutely throttled the Rangers on Friday. That was an offensive surge 13 to one Cal Raleigh hit two homers, including the grand slam, all that stuff. They did not play their best game on Saturday by any means. Last year.

[00:18:50] I think that's a game they lose, but they didn't collapse. They didn't falter. They found a way to win it. Not only did the offense not have their best stuff on Saturday, but even the bulls, bullpen guys didn't have their best stuff yet. They still found a way to, to claw themselves to a win. Like the offense only scored two runs. They didn't get a lot of guys in from scoring position, but the fact that you used all your

[00:19:16] leverage guys, which by the way, welcome the hell back, Matt Brash. Hell yeah. How good did it feel to see the names of Castillo, Brash, Spire, Munoz in a row for a game? Awesome. And that's all you need. So, and that's what I was going to get to here. Awesome to have him back. Could not be more fired up. He's back. But the fact that look, his first appearance back, I think it's fair to say he didn't have

[00:19:43] his A level stuff, his absolute best stuff in the world. Although a couple of those sliders were fun to see again. There's no doubt. But both are all of Brash, Spire and Munoz clearly didn't have their best stuff on Saturday because they all gave up either gave up a little bit of hard contact or struggled to throw strikes a little bit, but they all bulldog their way out of it. That is a game. Last year, I do not think the Mariners win.

[00:20:08] And it's a game where it gets circled a lot of the times, a lot of the time in games they should have won. You look back on it at the end of the year. But despite not playing their best game, they found a way to win that one. And they need games like that. It's the old KD line. Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. When you have a night where you're not at your best, you've still got to find some ways to win. And on Saturday, they did that to get a really crucial series win. You know why they would have lost?

[00:20:36] Because Patrick Corbin was starting. And I think back to the 2023 series with the Nationals. And I think Aaron Goldsmith puts it the best where I think him and Gary were talking about the subject. At some point, I couldn't. I think they were doing a radio segment on it. And they think it's like, yeah, it's like, you know, you think of it like as rock bottom, right? It can't get worse than this. And then you face Patrick Corbin in the Nationals. We're playing terribly. And Corbin's been seven shutout innings against you.

[00:21:06] It's like, oh, no, sorry. This is rock bottom right here. Yeah, Mariners probably would have gotten shut out and struck out 13 times. against Patrick Corbin last year. But that's not what they did this year. And again, it was just, it's so much different than what they did on Friday. On Friday, the Mariners put their foot on the gas and they smacked the baseball all around the yard. They looked like an elite offensive team. And then you get to Saturday and not everything is clicking. And you get to the ninth inning and you have Dan Wilson push the right button. Someone whose decisions we've been critical of this year.

[00:21:36] Push the right decisions for guys to come off the bench and use their roles as in that game. Bench players. Polanco facing a righty finally out of the Rangers bullpen and Chris Martin. And then you have another lefty coming off the bench and Rowdy Tellez who does what he's supposed to do on this roster and come up, comes up and hits. Like that's what you want. You got, you just got to find, find a way to be productive and get those games as opposed to finding a way to lose those games.

[00:22:02] That on top of the pitching sequencing we saw, which you'd imagine that group in August will deliver significantly more impressive results than they did, despite the fact they only allowed one run. It's so encouraging. You know, I have to say it, right? I have to. Rowdy got the game winning hit on Saturday. He drove in the winning run. So TJ, I asked you over the course of this weekend, have you said thank you once? I will say thank you again to Rowdy Tellez.

[00:22:33] That was awesome. He's got a handful of great game winning hits now this year. I know he does. He's over the last couple of weeks, Rowdy Tellez has played probably more of the way that people would expect him to know. Nobody's saying he's going to be an all-star or anything like that. But after getting off to a really slow start, this is more of the Rowdy Tellez that you can expect and say, yeah, this is somebody who's going to give us production in the lineup. He's done that.

[00:23:00] Let's talk a little bit about Logan's outing here on Sunday before we dive into the specific topics. It didn't go quite as smoothly for our guy Logan Evans here on Sunday against Jacob DeGrom. Quite the opposition for your second career start. You're like, oh yeah, he's won two Cy Youngs. It didn't go quite as smoothly, but I think you and I see this equally, Lyle. I don't pin much of this on Logan Evans.

[00:23:26] Like the Rangers made a bit more contact and even a bit more hard contact than the Marlins did in his opening debut. But I didn't think it was bad by any stretch. It was a lot of bad luck. Really bad luck. And some defensive miscues that Logan cannot control. It started off with that blooper out to left field, which by the way, there is a Twitter

[00:23:51] account that tracks these fly balls and things that should be outs versus shouldn't be outs, etc. And it showed that Andy should have caught that ball in left field. That is a ball that absolutely should have been caught. It was very clear him and J.P. Crawford probably didn't communicate who should have taken charge on that ball. And as a result, it drops in for a hit. If you want the exact result on that Josh Smith single, it said that the catch odds on that play, 93 percent.

[00:24:20] Randy Rosarena has to catch that ball. Like, and we've talked about his defense in the past. I know he can't really DH at this point because you need Polanco there. But this is where some of the opposite side of Randy comes into play here. When for all the theatrics and all the late game moments and everything he can do with the bat when he's hot is great. Then sometimes you run into these miscues on defense where he he just doesn't quite make

[00:24:49] the play and then it comes back to bite him. I think this was a combination of two things. I think they let me reword that. Actually, I think this was just sort of a miscommunication on this play because you remember the play. It was a bloop in a short left field. J.P. Crawford ran all the way out to the catch spot with Randy Rosarena. They were both there at the exact same time. I don't believe either of them called for the baseball and that makes it a lot tougher

[00:25:18] where Randy is sort of pulling up so he doesn't ram into J.P. Crawford full speed and J.P.'s kind of doing the same thing. If someone I think if someone calls for that baseball, Randy had a better shot at it than J.P. did. But if someone just called for that ball, I think the ball gets caught regardless. I think the bigger swing in that inning was Ben Williamson at third base. It was a hard hit ball down to him that he tried backhanding, but Ben showed us he could make that play.

[00:25:47] It would have been a double play ball and the inning would have been anywhere near as bad if he just makes that play. But the ball kicks off the heel of his glove and there was no out recorded and Logan has to continue on and it doesn't work out. Which, by the way, two things. One, the expected batting average on that play, 170. Yes, it was hit. Randy's. No, on the Wyatt Langford ball to Ben Williamson. Oh. The expected batting average on that play to Ben Williamson, 170.

[00:26:15] That is a ball that should be turned for two and end the inning. And look, I know Ben's a rookie. He's not perfect. We know he's a good defender, but he might have some miscues here and there. All that being said, like, yeah, that's a play you have to make. So those two things happen. Three things that really should have accounted for three different outs on its own. They didn't. For some reason, the official scorekeeper ruled that a hit, which I'm not sure how. So now you've got... They're just guessing. They are guessing.

[00:26:45] So now you've got some unfair earned runs being accredited to Logan Evans on two separate balls that really weren't on him. And then after that, like you mentioned, look, there was a hard hit ball that was given up to Corey Seager for an RBI hit. But there were also three separate ground balls after that given up or three ground balls in the inning that were given up that had exit velos of under 90 miles an hour. It was not great. So... And he walked a couple guys in that inning too. So that was where the command... Command came back to sort of bide him. Sure.

[00:27:15] A little bit. But all I'm highlighting with those three ground balls is where the bad luck comes into play here. Because there's plenty of... There's plenty of plays where those three balls easily get recorded for outs. Because they weren't bad pitches. They weren't hard contact that was given up. Hell, the single that Josh Young hit, that ball was six inches off the plate inside. And somehow that turns into a hit. So look, I'm sure Logan would tell you like it wasn't my best outing and I have things I need to work on.

[00:27:44] But this is not a Logan Evans did not pitch well outing. This is in one inning things got away from him and he got some bad luck turned on him. I heard... Changing the subject briefly. But related to this. I was watching a YouTube video from someone we both have watched a little bit of YouTube on making the case that ERA is a fake stat because of the official score. Well...

[00:28:11] Because I'm like a Ben Williamson play where they're totally guessing on what it is. By the way, Polanco's double the night before on Saturday was in Adolis Garcia's glove. Fully. Mm-hmm. And they ruled it a double. So the official score is just kind of like... Shrugging his shoulders because a hit, I'd say, is not clearly defined enough to them. So when you see like Logan's ERA is going to look like crap after today because of that hitting.

[00:28:41] Like, is it a real number? Eh. That's what I say. Right. It's something to think about when you look at someone's ERA. It's like, yeah, well, it's pretty... It's for the most part being determined by someone who's totally subjective. Right. I mean, these are people that are hired as hourly paid workers, essentially. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, look, if Logan had had an inning where he had given up the six runs because it was

[00:29:10] three balls in the gap at 110 miles an hour and two homers, then we'd say, yeah, he didn't have his best outing. And even though it might not have been his single greatest performance in his career or anything like that today, I would not hold much against him at all. Because, again, I think this was some very bad luck that went against them and some luck that finally went the Rangers' way after two games where they could not get anything going. And I'm sure we'll hear what he thought about his start. We'll see him on Friday.

[00:29:39] Because he'll start on Saturday against the Blue Jays. We'll be there. If you're at the park this weekend, be sure to come say hello to us. We can love to say hello. Even if you're Canadian, we'd love to have you. It'd be fantastic. Blue Jays weekend coming up, Lyle. It is Blue Jays, which I'm sure we're going to get to plenty throughout the week. But yeah, it'll be interesting to hear about it. Look, the only other thing I'd say is, I'm sure there's things he wants to work on moving forward.

[00:30:07] Like one thing I think we've talked about is, can we see some of the swing and miss go up in his game as he moves forward? It's only been two starts. But that's something to watch because there wasn't a ton of that in this start. There wasn't a ton of swing and miss. But again, two starts and in this one in particular, I don't really think it's fair to put much blame on him. So we have two bigger overarching storylines we'd like to get to. But before we get to that, let's talk to you guys about our friends at Rhythm. Let's be honest.

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[00:31:31] really stuck out to me that I wanted to talk about here on this Monday episode. The first one is right up your alley. Mr. Brian Wu. Where would this rotation be without Brian Wu's early season performance? It's crazy to say, but bottom third of the league? It wouldn't be good. Let me throw a stat at you. Brian Wu has five quality starts this year.

[00:31:56] The other six Mariners pitchers, seven Mariners pitchers that have had starts around him. Oh, six actually is the number. Six around him that have started have six total quality starts. It's pretty vital. That is pretty, pretty vital or vital for a guy that early in his career had never worked into the seventh inning and had trouble getting through four or five at times.

[00:32:23] We know he battled some minor injuries early on in 2024. He's just a six inning plus merchant at this point. I mean, he's going six plus every time out and he's doing it with total efficiency and total dominance. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I was so I went and I was digging at fan graphs. I was expecting to see more of Wu right at the top in baseball in some sort of categories. I did not see that full transparency.

[00:32:52] But what I did see is that he was consistently around eight to 12 and a lot of the categories like his expected stats are really good this year. He's got a two six five X era is FIP is two seven. His era itself is is phenomenal and his innings pitch would be among the top in baseball if he had seven starts. But since he pitches at the back of the rotation technically in terms of the turns, he is still right below the other guys who have gotten seven starts so far this season.

[00:33:21] But that's not to say like Brian Wu last year, his his war was a little bit over two. He's already at one right now. One month into the season. It could not be a hotter start for him. He's really doing again like consistently everything. Well, except, you know, he's not getting a ton of ground balls. But otherwise, man, it is it is like he picked off where he ended last year and he's just continuing his role on.

[00:33:51] It's just like it is constant. Mm hmm. Well, first off, just to highlight the innings thing again really quick in his six or in his handful of starts so far this year. This is how it's gone innings wise. Six, six, seven, seven, six, six and a third. Imagine saying that about Brian Wu at this time last year. Awesome. No. Yeah. You would say you'd say no way. Awesome stuff. And then to pair it all, you're starting to see a combination of a few things for him in year three.

[00:34:21] Year one. What did he do? We saw the ridiculous stuff. We saw the arsenal. But we also saw he walked his share of hitters. He could get some swing and miss. And we said, look, there'll be things he has to work on in year two. We said lefties also hit him really hard. That'll be something to watch for. Year two. I mean, once he got rolling, I mean, he was dominant. He pitched well on the road. He totally neutralized lefties. But he did become a little bit more of a ground ball pitcher, which isn't wrong by any means. He was more efficient in that way.

[00:34:50] But in year two with Wu, you saw the whiff go down a little bit. You saw the strikeout rate go down a little bit from year one. And that was partly because I think he was okay with throwing more ground balls. Well, now in year three, I know you said the ground balls have gone down a bit, but I still feel like you're seeing a little bit more of a combination of both because you are seeing the efficiency continue to stay on par from where it was at the end of last year with the strikeouts and the swing and miss going back up.

[00:35:19] So from last year to this year, strikeout rate in 2024, 36th percentile. Through a little over a month this year, 72nd. That's a huge jump from a year ago. And it's an even bigger spot than he was in in year one. So the strikeout rates have gone way up. Whiff rates jumped up. So you're seeing now in year three of Brian Wu, the combination of efficiency and the swing

[00:35:45] and miss and the big arsenal all kind of formulate into this one perfect bubble. And I hope it keeps up because he looks like a legitimate all-star right now. And it helps because his pitch mix hasn't really changed to that much. I was expecting to see a little bit of a different, like a little bit of a tinkering, I guess, with Brian Wu. His pitch mix is almost exactly the same. It's fastball sinker 75% of the time.

[00:36:12] He sprinkles in his other breaking balls or off-speed pitches in the single digits, maybe low tens for his slider. But that's it. It's been the exact same. The difference is that he has been seeing much better results on three pitches. His fastball and sinker are the two most important ones because he throws them by far the most. He has seen more swing and miss from those two pitches, which is, I would guess,

[00:36:39] most directly led to the increase in strikeout rate in his overall season. But then on top of that, you mentioned this to me, his slider itself, it's not getting that many more strikeouts, but it is not getting hit at all. It got hit a little bit last year, but this year it's not getting really hit at all. So you kind of love to see that. I keep waiting for Brian Wu to evolve. I keep waiting for that, you know, the extra thing to come into play

[00:37:04] where he takes the Logan Gilbert, like, junk it up a tiny bit more to get some more swing and miss and get some more bats and get the innings that Logan had last year. But Brian Wu essentially said, I don't need that. I don't need to change anything, and I'm just getting better. That's such a rare thing to have in baseball because these hitters are so good that they'll adjust if you're only throwing straight fastballs. But man, this fastball they can't hit. Isn't it wild how different this rotation is?

[00:37:31] You've got people like Logan and Bryce who, every offseason, they've got a trillion new things they want to try, and they come into camp throwing all this different stuff. And like you said, Logan likes to junk ball it up, and he's trying to throw a Paul Skeen splinker in spring training, only for, I think, Cal to essentially put the hand on his shoulder at the end of the spring and say, hey, buddy, that splinker's not leaving Arizona or whatever. So I think that's essentially how it went. If I heard somebody tell that story right, I forget who it was.

[00:37:59] But you have that facet of the rotation, and then you have Brian Wu who I'm not going to call him stubborn by any means, but he's just kind of like, yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I don't want to add anything else. And you know what? I don't really need it either. Look at the results. I remember when I heard that for the first time, I'm like, he doesn't want to try anything? It's like, really? Because you hear everyone else doing it, and especially when those pitches have been such a success in a given year of Bryce Miller's splitter, Logan Gilbert when he introduced his splitter,

[00:38:28] or his cutter, or his reshaped slider, like stuff like that, you think, why wouldn't you want to tinker? And then Brian Wu goes out and does this. You're like, no, that's why. Yeah. It works out pretty well. Can I give you context of Brian Wu's performance within the innings compared to like, just comparing like the state of the Mariners rotation this year versus last year. Because everyone seems to be dealing with something, right? We had highlighted Luis Castillo's early season struggles, so I'll give a shout out to Luis. He's looked significantly better each of his last two starts.

[00:38:58] He's gotten a quality start in each of his last two. Keep it up, Luis. That's been awesome. That's exactly what they need while Logan's out. Bryce Miller is dealing with, he said back issues on Friday. I mean, Friday, or whenever he pitched last. He was, you know, 92 in the second. Back was locking up. We were worried it was his shoulder. Like, he's dealing with some things right now. Emerson, Hancock, and Logan Evans are clearly working into their big league form as they get more and more

[00:39:27] big league starts under their belt, and they get more experienced and more comfortable at that. And George Kirby's not even healthy yet this year. So they got to rely on somebody in Brian Wu. Given the fact the Mariners last year, they were first in the league in quality starts by 12. They had 92 quality starts. The Phillies had 80 last year. This year, the Mariners are, sorry, they're middle of the pack. I misplaced the number. Middle of the pack in quality starts.

[00:39:56] And this year, they're 21st in baseball in innings out of their rotation. Where would that be? That's with Brian Wu, by the way. But he's very important. It's a severely underrated national storyline right now about what Brian Wu is currently doing with this Mariners rotation. That reputation is being held up right now by one man. Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I'll tell you, maybe it doesn't get talked about enough nationally,

[00:40:24] but I think every star that ends up facing Brian Wu walks away being like, man, I do not want that matchup. You remember when Cal was on Mookie Betts' podcast? I want to say it was last year. And they were talking about the Mariners rotation. And Mookie said, man, that dude Wu, like he throws you that fastball and it looks like it's here and then it's here if you're watching on YouTube and you can see my hand motions. Where if you want me to explain it vocally, Mookie's essentially saying, yeah, it starts on one plane and then it's like it jumps up is what he was essentially saying.

[00:40:54] And Cal was like, yeah, it's crazy. So I think Wu has some real respect around the league at this point. And yeah, hopefully nationally, people start to highlight him more and more and more. And we'll keep saying it. There's nothing in my brain right now that says he's not an all-star. Now we've got two and a half months till the game, but he keeps us up. He looks like it. So in order for Mariners all-stars right now, Cal's one. Well, it's between Cal and Munoz, to be honest.

[00:41:22] Those two are probably equal plane of excellence at this very moment. Munoz leads the team in baseball reference war as a reliever. Yeah, we're not going to have enough time to give him a full warranted segment on this episode, but we might need to find some time here at some point soon to give him a full segment because he still hasn't given up a run. I know. So Cal and Munoz right now, I would say are on same plane of excellence. I think Wu is right underneath them. If this were the Yankees,

[00:41:51] Wu's an all-star. But unfortunately, this is not the Yankees. This is the Seattle Mariners. Two-thirds of North America doesn't stay awake to watch their games. Therefore, won't watch Brian Wu. So we'll see. And that includes the managers and general managers and players who vote on this thing to get the pitchers in. You don't think Brian Wu has John Heyman's stamp of approval? I know he has Bob Nightingale's stamp of approval because Bob was watching the games this weekend. Yeah, he was.

[00:42:20] He gave a nice tweet for the Mariners. That was nice. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I think that's right. And then you could probably put Polanco fourth because as good as he has been at the plate, you get into a big kind of cluster of just hitters or DHs that are going to be fighting for a spot. And we'll see what happens with that. He deserves it. But it is a little bit different than Wu, who is in a rotation that is nationally recognized as being great, even though he's not a Yankee.

[00:42:48] So, and if his name was Logan Gilbert, who had already made an all-star game last year, it would give him that extra boost. But since it's the first time and the Mariners don't need a token all-star, just be a little trickier. Yeah. Let me say a couple more quick things and then we'll move on to our final subject here. Speaking of the lefties with Brian Wu, in year one, it killed him. Year two, he totally fixed it and did a 180. And you wonder in year three, what's that going to look like? What's he going to, what's it going to look like in year three? Can he keep that up?

[00:43:18] Was it sustainable to pitch the way he did against lefties last year? Lefties this year against Brian Wu are hitting 191. For whatever issues he had in year one against left-handed hitters, it seems like it's pretty much gone. It's evaporated. Is that good? Oh, that's pretty good. And the OPS is hanging around 550 against left-handed hitters. So yeah, pretty good. He's unreal. Have I not been preaching this dude and preaching his name since like the day he was called up?

[00:43:48] I've been fired up about it. You have? Yeah, you have. So I'll give you... I know. Round of applause. The other thing I'd say, just to hit on a couple of notes before we get to our last subject here, just so we mention it. Logan Gilbert was throwing a baseball in Dallas this weekend. Shannon got the video of it, Shannon Dreyer. And Logan was playing catch. And you think to yourself, well, that hasn't even been two weeks. It's been a little over one week. So look, we're not out of the woods yet, but that is a very, very,

[00:44:18] very encouraging sign. Now I'll be the pessimist here. He was throwing very softly. He was. It was... It was the motion, essentially. Yep. Now I've got it. However, the original note and plan was he will be shut down from baseball activities for two weeks. So you would assume back when that report came out that, yeah, he's not going to pick up a baseball until they get back home from the road trip. And he did. Does that count as a baseball activity?

[00:44:48] Again, like, do you want him throwing at all if he's supposed to be shut down for two weeks? We're arguing semantics here now, but... We are. I take it as him, like, stretching, essentially. The point being, and along with the messaging saying, look, we hope to have Kirby and Logan back by the end of the month, seems like there is some optimism around the organization that they may have dodged a bullet here, which is great. Again, they thought the same thing for a bit about Robbie Ray, and we're going to have to see how it all works and how he responds.

[00:45:17] So we'll see, and we'll see if he's really back by the end of May either, if it kind of goes into mid-June and the Mariners are being a little bit optimistic with the timeline. But, again, I think most of the signs you can take away from that this weekend are positive. Yeah. So that's good. He clearly feels good. He wouldn't be doing that if he did not feel significantly better than he felt when he exited the game. Right. Which is, that is a real positive. I will personally feel better about it when he actually steps on a rubber.

[00:45:48] Sure. That's what I would like to see. Because that's the real hurdle. Right. When he gets up there and he is trying to throw, 90 miles an hour instead of 48 miles an hour that he was throwing today. Sure. Let's get to our final subject. Well, I had a couple other quick hitters I wanted to get to. Go ahead. Sorry. Just to update the people. That was one. George Kirby threw a rehab start. I feel like we should at least mention that. In his first one, yeah, he looked great. He made one mistake pitch that got taken out of the yard for a home run. But aside from that, three innings, one hit, one run, no walks, shocker,

[00:46:18] and four strikeouts. That looked very encouraging. And he looked like he was really ramping it up too. Yeah, and he's up to 98. All the signs coming from him is that he's going to come back. He's going to be, outside of innings buildup, it's going to be full go. It's going to be full velocity, full health. I think he feels good. Which, that's what he's given off. Which, credit to the Mariners for slow playing this a little bit. As nice as it would have been to have George Kirby for the first few weeks of the year, I would much rather

[00:46:47] have him full systems go and pitch it in October if he had to miss the first few weeks. Personally. And I think most people would agree. So, shout out to Kirby. And then we think Dylan Moore should be back by the end of this A's series, roughly. And if not quite by the end of the A's series, then I would assume during the Blue Jays series. So, he's getting close and that 10 day IELTS stint was never supposed to be very long. It was going to be 10 days about, exactly. Because he said he felt good two days after he got put on the injured list.

[00:47:17] That he'd be like, arguably ready to go. But I think they just wanted to be able to have that roster spot instead of waiting for him to be healthy. So, we're going to be excited to see Dylan Moore back. AEL player of the week, Dylan Moore. So, that'll be good to see. Alright, let's get to the final Crawford. Speaking of an infield mate of Dylan Moore's, it's J.P. Crawford. He has really, the last few weeks, has really stood out to me. He, I feel like is a little different after digging into it for this year. I think he,

[00:47:45] I think he's approaching things a little bit differently this year. Because I initially see J.P. Crawford in this lineup. He's crushing it, by the way, right now. He's got a 16% walk rate, a 150 WRC plus. He's getting on base 41% of the time. Elite stuff from a shortstop. Elite for many hitter, but really elite for a shortstop. He's already got 1.1 F4. He was worth 1.6 total last year. Just crazy to say. To think of how productive he's been offensively so far.

[00:48:15] But he has changed a little bit after diving into the numbers a little bit and looking at it. But, man, how nice is it, Lyle, for the Mariners? They lose their leadoff hitter in Victor Robles, essentially, for what feels like it could be the season. And they just have another one they could perfectly put right into that leadoff spot. And it's seamless again. Yeah. No, it's great. You've upgraded, in a sense. Now, where he's not

[00:48:45] going to need surgery, it shouldn't end his season, he should be back at some point in the summer, which is good. But, the point being, you've lost him for a real amount of time. And given the year that JP had last year, was there real concern about how the top of the lineup would fare? Yeah. But he hit so well toward the bottom third of the order that they said, yeah, we have to move him back to the top. And here we sit recording on Sunday night on May 4th, and he is, well, leading all shortstops in WRC+. All of them. He is number one.

[00:49:15] Maybe he's taking after Mitch Garver. Odd year Crawford. Sign me up for that. That's fine if he's going to do this every odd year. You know what I remember? When I'm sitting here and I'm looking up these numbers, if our listeners remember what Jason Churchill told us, when we say, oh man, church keeps us accountable for so many things. When we had church on the Monday before opening day, Tuesday before opening day, we had him on.

[00:49:46] Do you remember the conversation we had about JP? You might have to remind me a bit, but just between him being on the podcast with us then and us spending some time with church away from the podcast setting as well, between meeting up for lunch with him every so often when we do just to catch up and talk ball, I always say, and I tell him, you're too logical for this podcast. You keep people too accountable, and if we had you on every week, it'd be a disaster because we don't get to let our takes run free. You keep people

[00:50:16] too in check. So anyway, go ahead. What I remember for the general premise of when we briefly talked about JP Crawford in that conversation is that he was never one to buy that JP had just lost it. A few things you point out, if you just go and look, like you have to look a little closer at JP's savant page from last year, but there were some numbers last year, despite the bad overall results numbers, that suggested JP actually got kind of unlucky last year. He had a lower barrel rate. He had a lower

[00:50:45] barrel rate in 2023 than he did in 2024, and he also had a lower hard hit rate in 2023 than he had in 2024. That doesn't make any sense because JP Crawford was an American League MVP candidate in 2023, and he stunk in 2024, so that shouldn't be right, but yet he still managed that even with a walk rate almost at 12% last year. So you look at those stats, and even though the results were bad, you're like, already was injured a couple times, but there were

[00:51:15] some things he was doing well last year, so why does that just tell you he's washed? And I'll call myself out for this. First 10 days of the season for JP Crawford sucked. He was bad. JP would tell you he sucked, and we said it here on this podcast, man, he doesn't look very good at the plate the first 10 games, but since that point, after the first 10 games, Lyle, he has a 179 WRC+. Talk about a turnaround at this point. I'll get into a

[00:51:45] little bit specifically of why I think he's changed up a little bit and what's been good, but just reading off his stat line here this year, man, he's got a 16% walk rate and an 18.5% strikeout rate. There are not many players in baseball. Sans Juan Soto that can say they have that. Yeah, it's nuts. And he's cut the strikeouts down so far this year, too, because they actually climbed a little bit back up last year, not to a point where it was unmanageable, but just not the J.P. Crawford we're used to. And the fact he still walks

[00:52:15] a ton, and he's cut the strikeouts back down, and he's making some really good contact. Yeah, awesome. And I think a lot of this has to do with, look, we can't confirm this for sure because we're not a hitting coach, and I guess we have not asked Kevin Seitzer about it specifically, but you look at all the savant numbers, and it does make it seem like he's made a few changes. I'll tee you up for this because I know you had a bunch to say about it. So the first thing I'd like to mention is that in terms

[00:52:44] of the direction of contact, it's much closer to this 2023 season than it is last year. Like last year's ground ball rate spiked, which is never good for someone with not a ton of power, not a ton of raw juice in your bat, it's just going to lead to a lot more outs. But the biggest takeaway I had when I looked at it, if you look at his swing data, we have swing data going back to the 2023 season on Baseball Savant in terms of length of the swing, in terms of swing speed. JP Crawford I think

[00:53:14] has done a couple of things to sort of modify how he's going about approaching his offensive offense at the plate. First of all, he's swinging a little bit more. He's swinging more often. He's chasing a little bit more. So he's being a little bit more aggressive. He's also slowed down his swing a little bit. He's not trying to swing as hard. If I can explain it in a baseball savant term, they have hard swings or I think they call them bolts where you're swinging

[00:53:44] over 75 miles an hour over 70 one of those two numbers. You're trying to swing hard. For example, you're up there at the plate and you're trying to swing hard. The percentage of that for JP has gone down. So he's in 2025 as opposed to 2024 and 2023. So those two years he was trying to swing hard and he's trying to do damage. Clearly in 2023 that worked. 24 did not work. But this year he's shortened up his swing a little bit in terms of swing length as measured on baseball savant. He has shortened he has

[00:54:14] brought down the percentage of time he's swinging hard at the plate and it seemed to have led him on top of swinging more and chasing a little bit more to that prototypical hey I'm going to defend a little bit more at the plate I'm going to stay alive I'm going to still use my great eye I'll do damage when I have to but I'm also going to fillet some pitches off a little bit I'm going

[00:54:58] about the kind of outs he's making and what the process is at the plate one last stat to throw it at you before I'll let you digest a little bit this too savant measures where you on average make contact with the baseball the last couple of years JP was out in front over the plate like two to three inches this year it's almost dead even with the plate it's like two tenths of an inch so he's noticeably letting the ball travel a little bit more as

[00:55:46] hard which seems to be benefiting him because it doesn't always correlate when you try to sell out for power with how hard you're swinging but often you see the two kind of line up right now you're not seeing that I don't think it's a coincidence that the swing and miss and the strikeout rate have really taken a nice drop down from where it was a year ago I don't think

[00:56:16] drop off like that unless you really tried to tweak something sometimes age will catch up with your bat speed and catch up with how hard you can swing it but to have a drop off like that over the course of

[00:56:46] watching the games is yeah not swinging as hard seeing the ball a little bit deeper into the zone and having success what it sounds like is that Kevin Seitzer is making his impression to me that's what it looks like would love to get some more clarity on this but it feels like is the Mariners messaging of taking better advantage of a player's strengths is resonating on someone like JP Crawford he knows he can pull the ball in the air and hit it out of the ballpark he knows he has a great eye at the plate but he's also shown in his career

[00:57:16] he can make contact as well as anyone on this team and hitting hitting at the plate this team needs it if they're going to keep up their current pace offensively he's great the defense though I'll notice has not

[00:57:46] gotten any better it in 2023 we said man he could have finished top five to seven in MVP voting I might be saying the same thing right now

[00:58:16] if the defense was a little bit better now to be fair defensive metrics can be a little bit fluky and early on in the season it can get skewed very easily so we can see what it looks like in a month to six weeks from now to and compare because sometimes these things kind of balance out and early season samples can get very kind of oversaturated but the early signs are yeah defense hasn't been great yeah six weeks even

[00:58:45] checking in August when we actually have to see where the MVP race is at that point if JP keeps this up it I mean oh my god talk about worth this contract we sat here early in the season Lyle talking about well what if the Mariners don't decide not to pick up his contract next year well if he does this they're paying his contract next

[00:59:15] year yeah for sure like no questions asked to say the six months yeah that would be unbelievable especially because like you said his first half of the year in 23 did not go great it was really propelled by an unbelievable

[00:59:45] second half now you've got me curious because I do just want to contextualize for people what the like he had a by month it was 730 in April it was 698 by OPS in May and 718 in June so

[01:00:16] even the elevated first half OPS number in 2023 was anchored a little bit but what he did in the final couple weeks leading up to the all-star break that year too because the first three months specifically were far less than what he did from July and on it was 850 and above every month yeah it's pretty crazy and if this would be a good start to doing that yeah how about the Mariners Lyle in the first month the worst month they hit at

[01:00:45] T-Mobile Park are doing this how about it who would have thought it's like we're sitting what's that gif or isn't the is it hot ones is that it oh at the what Idris Elba's coughing on the wing like that one no no no it's like who would have thought about who would have thought this is us I

[01:01:31] they're doing this at T-Mobile Park in April what could they do in June July and August when you would expect Julio to also heat up to hey have we checked the

[01:02:03] best record in the American League how sad oh only 606 hey look at us preaching what needed to happen for the Mariners we said hey for for the 54% formula to work you gotta win 60% of your games one season maybe it can be this year I'm down also shout out to the American League for being absolute garbage this year so it's a big help when the Detroit Tigers have the

[01:02:34] shout out it's been a fun week of baseball again everybody so hopefully you guys are kind of floating on air a little bit we know we are because it's been really fun and let's hope it all

[01:03:04] it's right over on our website marine layer pod dot com if you want to listen to the episodes if you want to watch the episodes if you want to review or subscribe on youtube that's all over there make sure to go get your merch you guys make sure to subscribe to our patreon and sign up over there we'd love to have you get involved again you can find all that over on our website as well it's marine layer pod dot com and if you want to find us on social media we're everywhere instagram tiktok twitter youtube shorts at marine layer pod that's tj i'm lyle

[01:03:34] as always we thank