Episode 28: Andrew Urrutia (TrainKicks), J-Rod's Struggles, And A Dazzling First Week For Bryce Miller

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number twenty eight of the Marine Layer Podcast with TJ. Matthewson and Lyle Goldstein. On today's pod, we welcome on Andrew Rudia, the founder of train Kicks. If you happen to go to the Mariners City Connect event this past weekend, he was painting a Julio Rodriguez MROL. That's him the second consecutive Lake Washington kangaroo we've had on this podcast. Lyle is Proud made the connection, got him on here make some custom cleats for some athletes around baseball and some Mariners as well as a different kind of conversation. But it was good to have him on to talk about, you know, some equipment of Major League Baseball that's he's super good about. We have our three Mariners storylines of the week. We take a look down on the farm, Lyle and I each you'll pick out our standout prospect performer of the week and take just take a little bit of a look at that. We take a look around baseball with our MLB wrap around another Russell Wilson Umpire of the Week, and we close out the show with Speak your Mind. Let's get it rolling, and we welcome you onto this episode of the Marine Layer podcast here on Monday, May eighth, than Lyle, we've done this again, but it seems like we have some more big news. 00:01:23 Speaker 2: We got Eric Badard coming on the podcast. 00:01:27 Speaker 1: This is got? Is this like the first podcast he's ever done? 00:01:32 Speaker 2: I feel like it would have to be one, because podcasts weren't that big back when he was with the Mariners. Are playing in general? And two, I mean, the guy hated the media, so. 00:01:41 Speaker 1: What do we think? So we're gonna need to ask Ryan Davish first what questions we should ask him. I don't think anyone knows better knows what we should ask him more than Ryan Davish. It seems like he probably give us some pretty good questions if we were to come up with some. 00:01:58 Speaker 2: He probably have a few. But we're sitting here kidding. No, our big news is not that we're getting Eric Badard on the podcast, although maybe. 00:02:06 Speaker 1: Eric, if you're listening, man, I don't think you do many of these. We'll give you a platform, We'll do it. 00:02:14 Speaker 2: We'll happily give them a platform. No, But our real news is we've got some advertising all of a sudden, So we're pretty excited about that. And we've got some advertising partnered with a company that goes by the name of in the Clutch. They're a sports apparel company. They sell a lot of really cool baseball t shirts and you're going to be seeing us wearing some on their social I should say on our social media pages here in the next week or so, our shirts are on the way. We're really excited about them. But in the Clutch Clothing Company is an official partner of the Marine Layer podcast. In the Clutch is the ultimate fan site for Seattle Baseball merchandise, including the Celebration Trident official I'll BEPA shirts for j Rod, Jared Kellnick, cal Rally, and Los Bombarros. Guys, I'll just give you a spoiler here. I had to get the Jared Kellnick shirt, right, I mean I had to. I had to. So that's on the way. No nobody is shocked. It's a cool shirt. It says just killing it, like you know, to play on with his name. Of course, you'll see it again if you go to our social media pages this week, you'll see it. TJ got the Los Bombaro shirt, which, by the way, if you saw Matt Brash last year wearing a shirt that said Los Bombarros in some interviews postgame on TV last year. That was a shirt from In the Clutch, So players are wearing this stuff. Brash loved the shirt and we're all about it too. So if you guys are interested in some in the Clutch clothing apparel, you can go to the site, go to inthclutch dot com and use code marine layer Pod to get ten percent off and currently every shirt on their website ships within the US free, So again, that's code marine layer Pod on in the Clutch dot com for ten percent off of any of their Seattle apparel. Along with that, guys, just as an introduction to the company, we're gonna be doing a little bit of a giveaway here as well. So for you guys to win a free shirt from in the Clutch, you just have to do two things. You have to be following us on Instagram and you have to be following In the Clutch on Instagram. So find their Instagram, go give them a follow, give us a follow at Marine layer Pod. We'll keep this open for two weeks and then we'll pick a winner at the end of those two weeks. So we're pretty excited about this partnership. I certainly can't wait to get the shirt in the mail. And they've got some really cool stuff, so we would highly highly recommend you guys checking it out. 00:04:46 Speaker 1: Think about it this way. Summer's coming up. I mean, we're gonna lose the hoodies, it's gonna get warm out. You're just gonna want to be rocking a T shirt and some shorts, whether you're going to a baseball game, whether you're going on vacation, whether you're going to the beach, whether you're just you know, you just going for a walk around, and you want to stand out in something and show something a little different than something from the official Mariners team store. I would really recommend giving these guys a look. They have some really cool shirts and it's gonna make some people stop and look at your shirt. I'm sure you will show it to you on our social media pages. We get them. You can go check them out in the clutch. Just give them a search and Google you can. You could you find their website and take a look at some of their Mariner shirts. They got some really cool ones. I'm really excited for my low spaw barrow shirt. That thing is sick. It's it's pretty good sh it's they're they're good shirts. They really are, so hey, upgrade your style for summer that I'm I'm just throwing some free advice at you right here. Go go do it. Go give them a follow on Instagram, Go find some shirts, use our code marine layer Pod for ten percent off. You won't regret it. 00:05:51 Speaker 2: And again, you want to follow our social media accounts Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod. Again, you'll be seeing us wearing them. You'll be seeing us wear it on some shows too. Believe me. In the coming weeks, you're going to see us wearing it on the show. Getting away from that TJ, because we are very very excited about the partnership, but starting to dig into our last week here before we get to get to our Mariner storylines, we got to be at the ballpark again this past weekend, or I guess I did. I know in the coming weeks you'll be up here as well, And I just thought i'd give a quick little recap again kind of giving a plug to our social media channels here. I'd say we took another big step this weekend because this past weekend we got some player content and I think we were pretty excited to do it. So we grabbed Taylor Trammel, we grab Bryce Miller, each of them for about just thirty seconds. That's all we needed of their time. And if you go on to some of our social media pages, you'll start to see us doing some of these fun, engaging interviews where we just asked these players some fun questions and really we're just trying to get some personality out of them, because these guys are all interesting and they certainly all have personality. We're just trying to kind of quarterback that in a little bit of a way and bring some of it out of them with some of these fun questions. So if you want to go check that out, along with more that we're going to be trying to do throughout the year, go check that out too. But yeah, I was. I was pretty excited to kind of grab these guys when they were walking by on the right field line, and certainly gracious that they had some time because I got it turned into some cool stuff. 00:07:22 Speaker 1: Didn't realize Penn Murphy was a quite the stylust be trusted enough to plan it an entire wedding. I mean, Taylor Tremael, you have to think about it for a second, but he was pretty confident Pens the the right guy to plan a wedding, and like, again, these are the type of things they don't come up in press conferences. Maybe you know, the off the record conversation. You'll you know, shoot the ship with a beat rider in the in spring training or something when the when the vibes are really low key. But in season, it's you just don't really get these kind of personal answers out of players, and it's it's nice to just like say, hey, like you get you get You feel the same questions every single day for six seven months a year from media. You're getting asked about the same thing, getting asked about tonight's starting pitcher. You're getting asked, why'd you go for three yesterday? All these things, and then us for a lyle to start goes up to he is like, okay, anyone on the team who's planning your wedding boom get him to crack a smile. 00:08:22 Speaker 2: Man. 00:08:22 Speaker 1: Taylor was half laughing the whole time. He's trying to answer that question. And it's good, right we have we mentioned multiple times we have a good friend who works in the Rainiers organization as of right now. And you know him and Taylor, you know, hit it off pretty well. So it's like it's a pretty easy introduction to shout out to you, Jeremy Bush for helping us out in that retrospect. The mustache really does some wonders and he made a good impression on Taylor Tremmell. And I think Lyle did a good follow up there as well. So go check that out on our social media, Go Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod well worth your time. It's funny, about thirty seconds total between Bryce Miller and Taylor Tremmel But it's a good chuckle. It's good chuckle and Logan Gilbert also a good wedding planner apparently. 00:09:08 Speaker 2: Big Chipotle guide his wedding apparently according to Bryce Miller. Again, guys, this is the stuff you're not gonna find just listening to press conferences. Were Again, we're trying to bridge the gap here, get to know these players a little bit. And I'll give you guys another little spoiler too. We're trying to get some of these guys on the podcast. Yeah, big spoiler. We want some players on the podcast. But you know, what an idea behind this is we're trying to show these guys with these questions not only is it fun, but you know, we're not sitting here, sitting here trying to dig inside information out of them. We're just trying to get to know them and have some fun. And we're trying to show them if we can do that in thirty second intervals, and we could do it on a podcast with them too, So fingers crossed. It's all a process here, but we are certainly working to get some players on and hopefully this is another step toward. 00:09:53 Speaker 1: That building trust thirty seconds at a time. It you know, takes some of these riders years to build these relationship chips with these players, and we're just you know, we're we're new on the block, so we gotta we gotta, you know, we're we're we're working our way in. We're but I'm proud of all the work we've done. Great job to you for being at the ballpark. You've only been at the ballpark four days and already got an interview with the player. I mean, like, think about that four days. 00:10:18 Speaker 2: Well, I have pretty good I appreciate it. Buddy. Well, again, we're trying Hopefully as time goes on, we'll start to get more and more. Hey, the real test is if I could ever get Jared for thirty seconds, and can I keep my composure when when he's there? 00:10:31 Speaker 1: That's gonna be you went, you went to Jay's school. You better be able to keep your composure. 00:10:35 Speaker 2: No, I'm I'm mostly kidding. I would. I would. I just you know, that'd be a cool one to get. 00:10:40 Speaker 1: You know, hopefully i'd be there too, and right before you're about to interview, and I could whisper and jersey or and just like just like give him a like go like this, like give you like a like a cup check, really catch you off guard. Oh god, I think that would be funny. 00:10:54 Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to do the interview. Then I'd probably like, I don't know, like a. 00:10:57 Speaker 1: Fake one, a fake one. 00:10:59 Speaker 2: Oh, I was gonna said, I'd probably fall to my knees all of a sudden or something. 00:11:03 Speaker 1: Well, I don't need Jared to like suck or punch you on camera. I'm not I'm not trying to shed that kind of bad line on them. I just think personally it'd be funny because you know, we got the whole Jared Kunich. But I know the real white Well for you to talk to is stillan more. I mean, that is a that's a long term project. That's like Dylan Man, I believe in you and no one else did. 00:11:25 Speaker 2: Oh. If he's ever down, if he's ever around for a little mini mic interview, well well we'll try and grab him. But hey, first and foremost, get yourself healthy and get back because the Mariners do need you. 00:11:38 Speaker 1: He's not getting back on a rehab assignment yet. 00:11:40 Speaker 2: No, I think he's I think he's still down in Arizona. I think he's still trying to get right and get back healthy. But speaking of the Mariners here, let's get to our three storylines. First one TJ. I mean, I think this is the headline of the last week. Strikeouts on this team are through the roof right now. 00:12:01 Speaker 1: They have a strikeout problem. It is bad. It's getting a little frustrating to watch. They currently if you just want to look at the raw numbers, they are the excuse me, while I burn the second highest strikeout rate, tied for the second highest strikeout rate in baseball. They're only behind the Giants in terms of strikeout rate, and if you look at just the last two weeks as a team, they are striking out twenty eight percent of the time. That is a recipe for failure every single time. Recipe for failure. You cannot go to the plate over a quarter of your times and strike out and be a successful offensive team. It just cannot happen. We just watched the game here time. We're sitting here recording on Monday following Monday Monday's game, ninth inning, three consecutive strikeouts, not even a glimmer of pressure put on put on the Ragers bullpen. It just kind of kind of it just irks you because we expected the team to strike out lyle but they're not doing the other things alongside striking out that would make a team more valuable. 00:13:06 Speaker 2: They're not. And strikeouts are a part of baseball now. Strikeouts are up. They're always going to be up because pitching's just that much better and the stuff is that ridiculous. That being said, you cannot strike out this much and have success. You just can't do it. You look up and down this lineup with the starters. Ty France is striking out under twenty percent of the time. That's ty France. He doesn't strike out. He makes a lot of contact. Everybody else in the starting lineup is striking out over twenty percent of the time. I mean Taoscar's through the roof. He's striking out over thirty percent of the time. He's right up around thirty three percent. Gino, Jared cal and Julio are all hovering right around the thirty percent mark. Even JP Crawford and Colton Wong, two guys that pride themselves on making a lot of contact and not swinging and missing a lot, They're well up over there career averages because both those guys are almost always under twenty percent per season. In terms of their strikeout rate, they're both over it right now. Everybody is swinging and missing way too much and way over their career average. 00:14:15 Speaker 1: You can cancel out a lot of strikeouts by doing a couple of things. You can walk a bunch. They are not as high up on the leader boards in terms of walk right as they were last year. Last year they were third in baseball and walks. This year they are not. You can also balance it out by hitting for a bunch of power. They are bottom half of the league in power like overall, so if you look at isolated slugging, they are eighteenth. If you look at weighted on base average, which again weights the difference between a single, double, triple, and home run, they are twenty third. In baseball, you cannot mix the combination of not collecting extra base hits and not driving in runs on top of striking. You cannot have not great contact on top of too many strikeouts. It is an awful combination and it is a huge reason why the Mariners have really struggled to score some runs over the past few weeks. I mean, you cannot can you cannot keep the lineup churning if you're you're getting all these guys to strike out of the plate. 00:15:20 Speaker 2: It is. 00:15:21 Speaker 1: It is among the most frustrating things to watch, especially to Oscar thirty three percent strikeout rate, two point eight percent walk rate. This was your premiere offensive edition, this offseason premiere, and he's running a thirty three to two strikeout rate to walk rate that like, you can look up any hitter in baseball history, there wouldn't be a single, probably above average hitter that ran those two numbers. It is physically impossible. 00:15:56 Speaker 2: Just too many strikeouts. How else can we say you cannot swing and miss this much, and it's gonna have to come down over time. I think it will, but right now, yeah, it's incredibly frustrating to watch because you just talked about it. Look how far down the totem pole they are in isolated power. This is the lineup that's supposed to thrive on hitting the long ball JP Colton Wong. Those guys don't have a ton of power. Most of this lineup is supposed to hit the baseball over the fence and they're not even at league average doing so right now. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: And if they don't, they won't be a successful offensive team. It's pretty simple, right are there. Strikeouts either need to drastically come down, or they need to hit for a lot more power. Otherwise the recipe's not gonna work with whatever they got. Stole a lot of season left, but the early results have not been good. And it's not like they've exactly faced Murderer's row of pitchers either. They've had some think back to the A series this week, I mean just to like, just too many strikeouts against Ace, I think, and then the Blue Jay series, especially where they struck out I believe forty two times in three games. Just can't like, you can't do that. You can't do that. So that's something you're gonna have to keep an eye on. I'm sure people are well aware of the fact they strike out way too much, just too uncompetitive, too often. Our second storyline this week plays off of the strikeout the broader strikeout total. We're not necessarily worried about Julio Rodriguez, but he has been in a slump in his that for what we've seen in his brief time in the major leagues, we haven't seen this yet. We haven't seen this version of Julio, and it's pretty frustrating to watch alongside the rest of the offense. 00:17:43 Speaker 2: Every star goes through slumps. Mike Trout goes through slumps. You're seeing Juan Soto get off to a pretty bad start here in twenty twenty three. It happens, right, But the fact that this team's motor is Julio Rodriguez. When he goes, the team goes. And when he's struggling the way he has the last two weeks, we've seen the results be pretty up and down, and a lot of it has to do with his strikeout rate. I mean, first off, he's just chasing too many pitches. He's ranking in the seventeenth percentile of baseball in chase rate. I mean that's not that's really not great. It's lower than it was last year for him. He's just swinging and missing a lot. It's a lot of breaking balls off the zone. Like and we just haven't seen this again. Like he strikes out a decent amount, that's part of his game, but this much chase is something we haven't seen. 00:18:39 Speaker 1: I'll push back on that a tiny bit. His If you go click between his two Savant pages this year and last year, there's pretty similar among most among most measurables. All right, let's look at this last year sixteen sixteenth percent tile and wiff rate, nineteenth percent tile and chase rate, twentieth percent tile and strikeout rate. Let's go to this year twenty eighth percentile on wifth rate better, seventeenth percentile and chase rate two points worse, twenty fourth percentile and k rate better. Like, those are just a couple things. The main thing I think for Julio this year, on a purely rate basis, we could go in and dissect all of his at bats and see where he could do better in each at bat Sure, think that's great, but we don't have time to do that. Do it in this segment. His expected stats for most part across the board are at the same level or better than they were last year. Believe it or not, that is the case. If you go check his Baseball Savant page, it's pretty similar across the board. If you look at his expected batting average, expected slugging percentage, his ex WOBO, which is quality of contact, pretty similar across the board. The one thing that he's really struggling with this year, which was his moneymaker last year's fastballs, He's stunk against fastballs this year, easily his worst pitch across the board. I'll debut a new stat here, lal you ready ready for this. I know we love our stats here on this podcast, so I'm going to I'm gonna use this fangraft stat which is not new. It is called weighted runs above average, which, as it sounds, is essentially measuring how good you are against a pitch. For example, Huio against fastballs last year. That was his best pitch against US plus sixteen and a half against fastballs, easily the best pitch he would hit against across any pitch that he was thrown last year. This year, fastballs are his worst. He is at negative three point seven weighted runs above average against fastballs this year, and all of his other pitches against are all about probably tracking towards where they were last year like normal. So he's been just as good, I would say, against all sorts of breaking pitches and just atrocious against fastballs like that. That is, I think it's as simple as that. 00:21:06 Speaker 2: And a lot of those fastballs are coming inside. I think pitchers are starting to learn a little bit of a hole that he currently has in his game where he seems to struggle with fastballs in on the hands, because that's where he seems to be getting attacked a lot these last couple of weeks. Now, look, you're right that in the grand scheme of things, his strikeout numbers and swinging miss numbers aren't that different. What I was really trying to get at with that is the chase. And okay, it's a little bit lower, but it's lower, and the amount that it's occurred in the last two weeks is a lot. He has chased a lot of breaking balls out of the zone. Now, the fact the whiff rate is a little bit better this year is a positive sign, but we've also seen in the last week he's making more contact, but it's leading to a lot of balls in the dirt that have turned into double plays. So grand scheme of things, yes, we're not worried. Do we think Julio's going to end the year with an OPS over seven or under seven hundred, Of course not. But when the team needs to win games early right now, early in the year, he's struggling and as a result, the team struggling a little bit. 00:22:07 Speaker 1: And you think about this as a lineup construction, like lineup construction wise, he's your lead off hitter, he's been your lead off hitter all year, and he's like just not doing much with the ball at all. So when your lead off hitters not getting on base and not making most of the opportunities. By the way, the bottom of the order has been ginning on in front of him a bunch and he has not been able to do anything with that. So the biggest thing in summary, Julio is not doing damage with pitches. He did most of his damage against last year and that needs to change for him. And the other thing with him, we expect that we coming into this twenty twenty three season, expected improvement across the board for Julio, especially with chasing out of the strike zone, especially with swinging and missing at breaking pitches and you know, continuing to crush fastballs. We haven't seen that yet. That's a real fact that that improvement factor has not been there through the first month and change of this season, and for the Maritors to take that next step, he has to do the same thing. 00:23:09 Speaker 2: I will give him credit on this. In the Astro series this weekend on Friday and Saturday, he hit four balls that were one hundred miles an hour or harder and none of them went for hits. So, yes, we've seen him strike out a decent amount. We've seen some double plays, but it's not like he's never squaring up the ball again. Like there's been some games where he looks a little lost, and that happens to players from time to time, right they just get overmatch. But there are a lot of games where he's gotten a little bit unlucky too. His babbitb is not incredibly high right now, so there's plenty of reasons to believe that this is all going to be put in the rear view mirror here in the coming weeks. But again, the point we're more trying to make is, no, we're not that worried about Julio. It's just that right now when they need to win games, it's just a little bit of of a scuffle. Right now. 00:23:57 Speaker 1: They need they need him and Jay. They like really want to start chugging offensively, like him and Jared at the same time, just like catch fire. Like just think of the possibilities that they're both able to consistently put bet on ball together at the same time. That's what you've always that's what you've we've been dreaming about for years, is for the two of them to do that at the same time, and that really haven't been able to do that so far, not and not in not in synchrony to do that together. It doesn't help the less rest of the lineup hasn't really been there to bail out Julio. It's only been essentially only been Jared. 00:24:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, the middle of that order really has to step up. I mean, Geno's not hitting for much power right now. Ta Oscar we just talked about it has to strike out a lot less. They need Cal to be cal. Again, we've seen spurts of it, but he hasn't hit his stride yet either. I'm gonna throw you this one question though, because I've seen some discourse about it on Twitter. Would you actually move Julio out of the leadoff spot? My answer is no, I wouldn't you. 00:24:57 Speaker 1: Rather put JP? Where are you? 00:24:58 Speaker 3: So? 00:24:58 Speaker 1: Where are we sliding? Where we putting him? Five? Move JP up to lead off? 00:25:04 Speaker 2: Could you really slide Julio down that far? Though? I don't know, like, like that's my thing. If you're gonna move them all the way down, where are you gonna put him? I mean, are you gonna put Ta, Oscar and Gino up higher on the lineup? Because again, those guys are struggling right now too. I understand peoples worry with Julio, and there's been some talk like, oh, let Jared hit lead off for now because he's the one that has been putting together the best at bats and that's fair. But I just think in due time here, Julio's gonna put this all behind him. 00:25:33 Speaker 1: How many more weeks his struggles before you'd actually consider that? Because at some point, I mean, you do have to start producing, not that he doesn't. 00:25:47 Speaker 2: I'll give it another two weeks, let's call it that. I believe in two weeks will turn it around. 00:25:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, But in two weeks if he continues to scuffle, I mean, you can't have your lead off hit or doing that. It's pretty plain and simple. And JP Crawford first match discourses that position, and he got this offseason bat his like offensive profile right now is perfect for batting the off. I mean, it is just perfect for that spot. Walking not striking out a whole bunch, like he said it, striker rates up a little bit, but he's walking a lot and he's making really solid contact. So you know, I don't know if I would necessarily hate that decision. 00:26:31 Speaker 2: To be fair to JP, he's crushing fastballs right now. I'm not saying he's hitting him out of the yard, but we talked about his run value against fastballs this offseason and how he's really struggled against him over his career. He's crushing fastballs right now, so that is a welcome sign. So sure, if at some point you decide to move Julio out of the one spot for the time being, you do have somebody to put there, I would just pump the brakes on that for now. 00:26:54 Speaker 1: I agree. Yeah, let's get to our third storyline of the week. Well, let's get to a little bit more of a positive note. We've seen two Bryce Miller starts and he was really, really, really impressive. When we recorded last week, we had yet to actually see him pitch. Now we've seen him pitch twice. Man, that was fun to watch from from the ridy. 00:27:18 Speaker 2: This has been ridiculous. I mean, you look back at Logan Gilbert and George Kirby's first two starts, and Kirby had that unbelievable start in his debut, which actually a time of recording, I think it's a year ago today that Kirby did that. 00:27:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, it was yep. 00:27:33 Speaker 2: That he spun that gem against the Rays. His second start was more up and down, and Logan's first couple starts were up and down. Bryce Miller just buzz saw it through the World Champs in a second start. I mean, check this out for Bryce Miller. He's got one walk and fifteen strikeouts in his first two starts. 00:27:53 Speaker 1: Ready for a couple of Alex meyerstats. 00:27:56 Speaker 2: I'm always ready for Alex mayerstats. Who, by the way, that's another person we hope to get on this podcast. If you don't know who he is, go follow him on Twitter because he'd be a perfect guest because he's a baseball nerd like we are. 00:28:07 Speaker 1: He works for the Mariners' Stats and Information department. He like the stats. He'll throw out like the ones I'm about the list there. He does this for every single game. So Bryce Miller is the first pitcher in Major league history with a sub one ERA fifteen strikeouts an equal to or less than a walkover pitcher's first two career games. Pretty good. 00:28:28 Speaker 2: That's pretty good. 00:28:30 Speaker 1: Bryce Miller's the third pitcher in MLB history with ten strikeouts and no walks in his debut, joining Johnny Kuito and Steven Strasburg. Pretty good. Strasburg was probably arguably the best debut of all time. So that's a pretty good company. 00:28:46 Speaker 2: I would agree, no complaints here. 00:28:50 Speaker 1: So let's like, here's something I want to dive into a little bit with Bryce Miller. Like, let's look at, like, really the profile of how he has attacked hitters on the mound so far. He is thrown fastballs seventy percent of the time in two starts. I will note I went and I checked, like the pitch percentage leaderboards. There's not a single starter that has thrown more fastballs more often than Bryce Miller did in his first two starts. Like across the league, all the guys who have thrown that many fastballs, all relievers, and Bryce Miller is sitting there at seventy percent four seam fastballs and all those fastballs, lyle he has thrown sixty six of them that a pitcher that a batter has swung at it has resulted in one single total against the against his fastball this year, when he throws at seventy percent of time and. 00:29:42 Speaker 2: They're hitting oh thirty three against it. To throw a fastball at that much volume, to just give up the hit the one hit oh thirty three batting average, that's nuts. I mean, we've heard how good this fastball was supposed to be. You've heard multiple people on this talk about it might be the best fastball in the minors. I mean, it might not be long before it's up there for best fastball in the majors. Check this out. He's made two starts. His run value on that fastball already negative five, negative five in twelve innings. 00:30:16 Speaker 1: What Bryce does so well? Like he has such a high spin fastball and good. It's not the gyro spin. It's an active spin. So like he was spinning the ball twenty seven hundred RPMs at his peak on Sunday, Like that's elite, elite level of fastball spin. And when it spins that much, it fights against the force of gravity, makes it almost seem like the ball is rising and guys continue to just swing under it. He's thrown the pitch down the middle and guys are still struggling to even put a barrel on it. And here's here's a fun comp. I forget if the comp was made on this podcast or we saw it on Twitter. I think it might have been Joe Doyle. Shout out Joe Doyle, first first guest on the podcast. We're gonna have to get him back on suit, probably around draft time because he's he's awesome. But he kept throwing around this comp, which eventually proved itself statistically, so we know how good Spencer Strider was. Last year, lyle with his fastball, which is a top two three fastball in all of baseball profiles, very very similar to Bryce Miller's fastball. Check this out most strikes thrown in a twenty twenty three Major League Baseball game with ten inches of drop or less AKA fastball that fights against gravity and seems like it goes up one, two, three, four. Five of these are Spencer Strider and the other one is Bryce Miller. It's pretty good. 00:31:43 Speaker 2: You're talking about Strider being good last year. He might be better. He might be even better this year. I think he is better this year. And yeah, he's a guy that basically throws two pitches for the most part. So does Steve Miller do that and get compared with Strider? 00:31:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, And it makes you think like if, okay, if Spencer Strider can have a fastball with that kind of profile, that that's that good, that's that hard to square up, and Bryce Miller profile is very similar to it, then how much of a second pitch? Does Bryce Miller need more than a second pitch? If that's the case, because the Strider can do it and people can't hit his fastball and people can't hit Bryce's fastball, well, Lane's like, well maybe they don't not as much. Maybe he doesn't need to spend as much time on that. 00:32:28 Speaker 2: I think you do need a second pitch. I don't think he can just throw one pitch. I mean, like Strider throws a slider that's pretty good. I think Miller needs the second pitch. And we've talked about that. He throws two different sliders and if he absolutely needs it, at the back of his arsenal, he has a change up. But I think you're gonna see him throw a lot of fastballs. Now. His next starts against the Tigers, they hit up. They hit high fastballs terribly, so it's probably another start that favors him, especially since it's in a pitcher's park like Detroit. The start you should really circle. If everything stays on schedule, he will face the Braves in Atlanta. Now, the Braves kill high fastballs, so that'll be a real test for Miller to see how how he does one against the lethal lineup like that, but to a team that thrives on hitting high fastballs. 00:33:15 Speaker 1: And how to he adjust against that if a team's actually starting to square up his fastball. Because as we said, no one squared up his fastball, so he had no reason to go away from it. What if guys start put a barrel or two on his fastball? How is he going to adjust to that? So here's some stuff numbers on his other pitches lyle, so they meant this. This blurb here mentions you know, he's throwing his fastball seventy percent of the time, but fangraft stuff plus has his sweeper, which again is more of his loopy breaking which I believe it was named the cannonball slider has one hundred and nineteen stuff plus like well above average. His first his cutter slider, which is like the shorter, tighter break that Chef talked about last week. Go check out episode twenty seven with Matt Cheff last week talked a little bit about these two pitches. His shorter sliders at a one fourteen stuff plus. Those are both quality above average secondary pitches. His change ups at one thirty eight, but he only through two of them, so I don't think that's quite quite a good measuring stick there, But his two sliders both measure as decently above average to go along with a one thirty one thirty seven one thirty five. I wrote it down here. I think it was his no. Sorry, one thirty seven stuff plus on his fastball. So you have a one thirty seven fastball and then a one fourteen short slider and a one nineteen sweeper. That's quality stuff from Bryce Miller and makes you think, yeah, okay, So the in terms of pure stuff, the secondary stuff is there for. 00:34:50 Speaker 2: Those who don't know what stuff plus is. It basically just measures how nastier stuff is. Chris Langon talked about it with us a while back. That's another interview you can check out. But it's measured in the same way that WRC plus is or OPS plus in the sense that one hundred is league average. Anything above that is percentile above or below that's percentile below. So TJ just mentioned his fastball has a stuff plus rate of one thirty seven, So he's thirty seven percent above league average with his fastball, and he's above average with the other pitches too, So that signals that this stuff will play at the big league level. We've seen it through two starts, and it seems like, at least to some extent, it's gonna be pretty efficient as time goes on too. Okay, can I can I throw go ahead? I'll let you go and then I'll throw this. 00:35:37 Speaker 1: I was gonna say one last thing from this blurb. They did note that he wasn't really getting many swings of misses on a secondary which we could see. This blurb did note that his arm angle was changing a little bit with his breaking balls, which definitely like big league hitters will pick up on that right away and they know what's coming. So that's more of a tunneling issue. 00:35:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, there will be hills and valleys in his rookie season. It's natural for rookie pay I'm sure there will be starts where he gets hit around a decent amount. But you know what, I think what we've seen in his first two outings is we sat here on this podcast and talked about what are they gonna do without Robbie Ray? Do they have to go make a trade elsewhere something like that. Well, again, we'll see how the rest of the year plays out, but it seems like Miller may just slot right in and pick up right where Robbie Ray left off because he's looked awesome. Okay, I've got to throw this one stat out there before we wrap up this Bryce Miller talk. You haven't, by chance looked at his era plus have you? 00:36:34 Speaker 1: Uh? It is a small sample. 00:36:36 Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I know, And I was gonna preface it with that that this is two starts and it has no chance to stay like this, can I guess, But just looking at it, I was gonna ask you again, we're just having some fun early on, but it did pop up. It did pop out to me, So I'll let you guys, five. 00:36:55 Speaker 1: One hundred and thirty three, that's actually is it kind of close? 00:37:02 Speaker 2: Five seventy seven so you were still too low. 00:37:05 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:37:05 Speaker 2: And for those who don't know what ERA plus is, again, same thing we just talked about with stuff plus, with OPS plus, with WRC plus. This one measures how good of a picture you are. It takes a lot of things into account. One hundreds league average, anything above percentile above, anything below percentile below. So through two starts, Bryce Miller has been four hundred and seventy seven percent better than the league average pitcher. Now, again, there is a negative percent chance that that stays anywhere near that number all year. It's not going to, but it's still fun to look at through two starts and say, oh, yeah, he's been that good so far. 00:37:45 Speaker 1: To be fair, he's only faced one big league lineup. 00:37:49 Speaker 2: Well, that's true. He basically faced a high a lineup in his debut against a crowd that was three times smaller than what he was seeing in double A. 00:37:57 Speaker 1: But so we did cash that in from last week. Yeah, there was absolutely no chance the crowd in Oakland was bigger than the one he was he faced in Arkansas the previous week. 00:38:07 Speaker 2: But point being again, take the era plus thing with many many grains of salt. I just thought that was a fun thing to throw out through two starts. But what it all concludes is you should be really excited about Bryce Smeller going forward because he can make a real impact to this team. 00:38:24 Speaker 1: And hey, I thought he was gonna be in the bullpenny he throws two starts, I'm like, you know what, No, he shouldn't be in the bullpen, just kidding. 00:38:31 Speaker 2: I was with you on that. And same thing. I've redacted that take very very quick. And hey, he likes Chipotle. He wants Chipotle in his wedding. Maybe that's the most important nugget of all. 00:38:42 Speaker 1: What are you putting on your plate at that wedding? Low if you swung an invite? 00:38:46 Speaker 2: I mean, am I not just getting Chipotle? Am I not making a burrito? 00:38:49 Speaker 1: Ravel? 00:38:49 Speaker 3: Like? 00:38:49 Speaker 1: What are you putting on there? 00:38:50 Speaker 2: Oh? I honestly might go steak? And I mean I was gonna say steak and chicken combo. I don't think i'd combo it. I'd probably go steak. 00:39:00 Speaker 1: It's a wedding. Come on, what's that it's a wedding. 00:39:06 Speaker 2: Oh okay, So you're saying, go steak and chicken in the Yeah, okay, so steak, chicken, rice pico, probably guawk, lettuce, you know, all the good stuff, right. 00:39:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. 00:39:18 Speaker 2: Is that what you're getting? 00:39:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably probably along the lines of what I'm getting. Yeah, there's no don't they don't charge you for guak at a wedding, think thankfully. 00:39:26 Speaker 2: No, So maybe Zach Grenk you'll be there. 00:39:29 Speaker 1: Oh i'd be down. 00:39:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. We've got a cool interview coming up with Andrew Rudia. He is another longtime friend of mine. He's a couple years younger than we are. I went to high school with them, grew up playing baseball with him, known him forever, and he has created a really cool business of his own where he's now the creator of a Kleets brand. And it's not just some cleats brand. Oh. In his spare time, he likes to kind of sit around make some designs. No, he's designing cleats for professional athletes, including a ton of high caliber and high level Major League Baseball players, and it's all over his social media pages. So along with that, he's doing cleat stuff. He also painted a Julio Rodriguez mural this past weekend down at the City Connect event at Pike Place Phenomenal Artists. He did a great job on that, and we sat and talked with him about it, because, look, we've had some great people on. We've loved all our guests. It's a little bit of a different perspective, but a pretty interesting one because we kind of get away from the usual media player side of things. 00:40:37 Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I wonder what he could Is he going to make a mural of of what do you think he's putting on your mural? He's painting one of you? Is he putting an l Doub logo on there? 00:40:49 Speaker 2: Oh? I wonder if you would well, maybe somewhere in the corner. Although I was gonna say if he made a marine layer podcast mural, I don't know if the purple would fit in there. You need more, you know, he put the Valor beaver logo in there, though, What color is that? 00:41:04 Speaker 1: Red? Contrast. 00:41:07 Speaker 2: Well, so you're putting red with teal and navy blue but not purple. 00:41:12 Speaker 1: Hmm, can find a way to mix the man. 00:41:15 Speaker 2: Okay, point being Train, which is his nickname. Andrew is a phenomenal artist. I mean again, this is not just some random cleats company. He's got thousands of followers on social media. He's partnered with Stadium. He's done this for years now and he's killing it. So we got to sit and talk with him about it. It was really cool and we'll let you guys hear it. So with that, let's get to our interview with Andrew Erudia. All Right, we welcome on Andrew Erutia. He's the creator of Train Kicks cleats. He was also painting a Julio Rodriguez Murrol this weekend during Mariner's City Connect weekend. Train, It's great to have you on. For those who don't know, Okay, that's your nickname is Train. Why do you tell us how did you get the nickname? 00:42:03 Speaker 4: I mean, then you know you and I both grew up in Kirkland playing baseball, and I'm sure you know Mike would when I. 00:42:09 Speaker 3: Was when I was eleven in Little league. 00:42:11 Speaker 4: I'm for sure, Mike Wood gave me that nickname and it. 00:42:15 Speaker 3: Kind of just stuck ever since. 00:42:16 Speaker 4: I guess it's been you know, twelve years with the nickname, so you know, just been rocking with it. 00:42:22 Speaker 2: I mean, i'll tell you what. I think, everything happens for a reason, right, And look where the nickname's got you now, because I mean, Andrew Kicks might have worked, but Train Kicks, Like that's a real name, dude. 00:42:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:42:34 Speaker 4: And I think you know, when when I first made the name, and you know, it goes for a lot of companies. When you first make the name of the company, you know, sometimes it sounds stupid, you know at first, Train Kicks sounds stupid, But I think it's one of those things where you make the name. A name doesn't define you, and I think you know, it goes for a lot of things. 00:42:50 Speaker 1: That's something you came around it. Yeah, that's something you came up with on your Did anyone like suggest, hey, that would actually be a good name for it, or did like, did someone have to push you towards are you you on your own were like yeah, this is it. 00:43:02 Speaker 4: I think it was just kind of like I don't know if it was a temporary name, But it was just like an easy like, oh, like my name is trained, like my nickname is trained. 00:43:09 Speaker 3: Then I'm going to try to sell shoes. 00:43:11 Speaker 4: So we'll call it kicks, the train kicks, and then I just you know, I just kept that. 00:43:18 Speaker 2: Okay, So we want to get into your entire cleats brand here in just a couple of minutes. But before we do that, you were just painting a Julio rodriguezmirol this weekend out at Pike Place for Mariners City Connect weekend. You were brought on and hired to do that. Can you take us through some of the weekend? Well, first off, hey, how did they find you? And how did they bring you on to do this event? 00:43:39 Speaker 4: So they they reached out to me a week and a half before the event, and basically it was the Mariners, like director of marketing and special events, you know, reached out saying that I had been recommended to the Mariners by a former vice president of marketing for the Mariners who is my neighbor. 00:43:58 Speaker 3: His name is Bill Knutson. He you know, we've been really good friends, you. 00:44:01 Speaker 4: Know, my whole life growing up there in that neighborhood. So he he actually reached out to the Marriners a few months ago recommending me. He sent them a lot of my work, so they kind of reviewed that. And leading up to the event, you know, fanatics reached out to the Marriners and they said, hey, you know, we we typically have a live artist or muralist in every city. Do you guys know of anyone you could bring in? And you know, luckily is great timing with you know, my neighbor recommending me, because you know, the director of marketing for the Marriners right now said hey, yeah, we have we have a guy in mind who you know. 00:44:33 Speaker 3: Does this type of work. 00:44:34 Speaker 4: And at that point they reached out to me, and so I was super excited to see that email. 00:44:39 Speaker 1: For sure, you can go check out the piece. I believe it's on your Instagram right Andrew dot you you can go see at least a little little snippet of it. It's a it's a really cool piece of art. And I gotta say, I mean there's some pressure there because there's some pretty high profile maritors there, you know, around you watching you paint that. And obviously for a miur like this, you get like you get one chance to paint it, and you absolutely nailed it. That thing is that thing is awesome. Is there anyway where people can get like a super clear visual of it and see actually like the full painting of what you what you did. 00:45:12 Speaker 4: Yeah, I was planning to post it today on my on my art account train Kicks. 00:45:17 Speaker 3: But yeah, thank you, thank you for that. Yeah, it was. 00:45:20 Speaker 4: It was a super stressful week leading up to it, because you know, I there's there's some things I didn't really like express to the mariners. You know, I kind of just said, yes, I'll do it, but there's some things I've never done before. I've never painted on canvas, I've never painted live in front of people, you know, with a very small time constraint. And then you know, I had to use a specific type of paint because we're on the water, and you know, there's some environmental issues or whatever. So there's a lot of factors that made a really tough and challenging on me. And on top of that, you know, having to paint a realistic, uh portrait of Julio's you know, something else I had to worry about in terms of, like, you know, laying that out because it's hard to get proportions right. Actually when you know, people are standing behind you the whole time, but you know, in the in the actual moment, they're Actually I didn't feel any stressed because you know, I felt like right back in the zone. You know, I think we're just overthinking the whole week. But it was super fun having you know, uh, you know, Mariners executives, root sports people, fanatics people, as well as just all the Mariners fans that came through to kind of like stop by and you know, talk to me for a little bit. It was really fun experience for sure. 00:46:31 Speaker 1: How much pre planning goes into something like this. 00:46:36 Speaker 4: So like I said, like, I've never done something like this, like a live portrait on canvas, so I'd say the next time I do this, there will be a lot less planning. But I will say that I spent maybe like eight hours in total on photoshop. I spent you know, maybe like four or five hours, you know, getting materials and supplies together. I had to build my own easel, put the canvas together, you know, by all stuff. So maybe like fifteen hours of prep and then the actual work actual painting was five hours. 00:47:11 Speaker 3: But yeah, it definitely was a long time. But you know, as you go on and do things more times. You know that you can. You can cut down the prep time for sure. 00:47:19 Speaker 2: Here's the real question. Did you have any hecklers out at pipe place this weekend? 00:47:25 Speaker 4: Well, luckily I was able to have a close to like it was around twenty twenty friends and family members that came out to see me. 00:47:33 Speaker 3: And I did have a couple a couple of. 00:47:36 Speaker 4: Boys come out, and you know, during the early stage of it, when it was just the yellow outline of the portrait and they they started laughing and clowning on me, saying, it looks like Jordan Poole on the on the Warriors. It looked like Jordan Pool for a little bit. But I told them, hey, come back in an hour and then and then we'll be rocking with the Whio. 00:47:56 Speaker 2: Here's the follow up to that is I saw at the end you're splashing the white dots on the end of the painting, like around the Julio piece. Is there any pressure when you're doing that where you're like, Okay, I better not spill this white paint on Julio. I've got to get it right in the right spot. 00:48:14 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:48:15 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's there's some like sequences of moments where you know it's you can't mess it up because you got like one shot that one that you know, the paint splatter part is not too bad because you know, if I if I actually mess it up deck and just paint over it with blue, which is a nice thing about canvas. Like the thing about shoes is that shoes are way harder to paint, like, way way harder. So like if I did this on a pair of shoes, it might have taken like eight hours instead, because there's certain things that you can't undo on shoes, like painting on fabric. You can't take like blue paint off of white fabric. Think that there's a little more pressure with shoes. On canvas, it wasn't much pressure in terms of making a mistake that you can't fix. It was pretty pretty chill in that in that sense. 00:48:57 Speaker 1: So I think what you're telling us is that All Star Week rolls around your painting a mural somewhere, And I. 00:49:04 Speaker 4: Mean, I don't want to talk too soon that I'm you know, I'm hoping that the Amerita is gonna reach out again for that. 00:49:11 Speaker 1: Well, like what's the scale, Like what scale do you think you'd be comfortable doing? It's like actually because like that's something that's probably gonna happen when All Star Week rolls around, and so there are gonna be some unique things. All Star related things are gonna pop up around the city. And you know, it might be you wanting to they want to paint a twenty foot wall of Julio or Jared or whoever makes the All Star or both, right, and and that could be you, And you could be painting someone who's four times as large as you. 00:49:36 Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so MLB will be putting on that event. 00:49:39 Speaker 4: So so like Fanatics put on this event, and what they've always what Fanatics has always done for the City connect events is pretty much the same roughly the same size canvas with an artist doing like a similar type of you know, city connecting. What MLB usually does during All Star Week is, uh, they actually bring in a couple like shoot customer to like customize cleats live at MLB Park, you know what I'm talking about, how they're going to kind of create a whole area for activities. 00:50:10 Speaker 3: And yeah, so center, yeah. 00:50:14 Speaker 4: Yeah, so they usually have a couple artists painting live custom cleats and I I have not I have not been invited in the past to do that. 00:50:23 Speaker 3: They've kind of usually had their own I don't I don't really know. 00:50:26 Speaker 4: How they've found people, but I'm hoping that when they come here, maybe I could try to squeeze my weight in, you know, saying I'm a local artist and you know, a local customizer might be good for the event. 00:50:40 Speaker 3: We'll see. We really don't know yet. 00:50:44 Speaker 2: You know what, train And I'll tell you this, if you get invited to paint something for All Star Week, you can let us know. We'll come around with our phone and our mic or whatever, and and and we'll follow and we'll cass you up and support you or whatever. So at the very least you have a couple of people there that will be promoting your work and kind of getting the ball rolling for you. So then hey, maybe more people kind of flock over. Hopefully we have a little bit of social media pull by that time where we can get some people over to your stuff. But yeah, if you get if you get invited to paint something during All Star Week, that'd be awesome. So let's keep our fingers crossed for that, right. 00:51:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be super cool. I'm definitely gonna make a bunch. 00:51:22 Speaker 4: Of cleats for for players, for that, for that, for All Star Week two. But yeah, that's a little different because that's kind of just doing it in my own space and then delivering at the. 00:51:31 Speaker 3: Hotel or whatever. But yeah, live live art would be pretty would be pretty pretty sick to do. 00:51:38 Speaker 2: So let's get into your cleats brand a little bit here. Train Kicks, which if you think if you're a listener and you're sitting here thinking, oh, we're just having some guy on who likes to design some cleats for fun. No, Like, Andrew's got a huge following. If you go on a social media page, you'll see it's thousands of followers. He's sponsored by Stadium. He makes them for handfuls and handfuls of MLB players, and his art is awesome. So let's take it all the way back to when this thing started. What inspired you to start this whole thing? 00:52:09 Speaker 4: So, you know, me and Lyle went the same high school, so Lake Washington High School in Kirkland. Both played for the Kings, and I guess my junior year, I was really excited to get out there and I also kind of saw on social media, you know, there are custom cleatsworth thing. 00:52:25 Speaker 3: It was starting to be a thing at that time, and I thought like, hey, what if I bought, you know, a. 00:52:29 Speaker 4: Pair of Jordan's and painted them purple for our school, And so I did that. You know, I thought it would be crazy, and you know, I started making more and more parish for myself. I did some for teammates and then for guys and other teams, and then I guess slowly, over over the course of two years, I was able to reach out to the Mariners on social media. I actually reached out to all the players on the roster at that time. In twenty nineteen, I got seven players to respond, and then I closed the deal with three players, Domingo Santana, Matt McGill, and Brandon Brennan, who ended up ordering at that time. 00:53:05 Speaker 3: So those were my those were my first major league clients. 00:53:08 Speaker 4: I considered Domingo Santana my first, very first client, but that that was that was surreal being able to work with the Marigors at that time. And then, you know, yeah, ever since kind of just been keeping it going, you know, meeting new players and and doing some projects for them. 00:53:25 Speaker 2: Okay, so if people still aren't sold on you here, if people still aren't sold on your Cleats brand. You've got a trip plan this week. Why don't you tell people a little bit about what you've got happening this weekend? 00:53:38 Speaker 3: Oh man, Yeah, So the plan is that so Miguel Cabrera ordered ordered eight. 00:53:45 Speaker 4: Pairs of cleets from me, and the plan is that I'm supposed to receive them today, but I'm gonna paint maybe a couple pairs by Friday, and on Friday, me and my friend are going to fly to Detroit and through through Stadium custom Kicks, we can actually get you know, some media passes, so we'll kind of hopefully, you know, get on the field and everything meet Meggie. 00:54:11 Speaker 3: It should be it should be a fun weekend because. 00:54:13 Speaker 4: You know, for me and for a lot of other baseball fano I'm sure Meggie is a you know, a staple of your of your childhood, you know, baseball fandom. 00:54:21 Speaker 3: So, uh yeah, he's a legend. 00:54:24 Speaker 4: So I can't even I feel like I'll be at a loss for words, you know if I if I see him in person. 00:54:30 Speaker 1: Can you take us behind the scenes and just tell our listeners how long does it take to truly customize a pair of cleats? I mean, where, like, where do you start like how are you how are you ordering these cleats in? And then what like what kind of like you probably have a parameter of what design you're going to go off of baseball what the player wants, but how do like, how's the process of getting that stuff on the cleat and the way they want and the way you think is a good job? 00:54:56 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually I'll try to run through as fast as they can, but yeah, it is a very intricate and complicated, you know process for a lot of people to understand. It's such a niche industry. It's it's kind of like a weird little thing. 00:55:11 Speaker 3: Like I'm like, no, I'm not selling cleats, I'm selling a service. But so here's how it usually goes. 00:55:16 Speaker 4: You know, we'll be talking with the client and then you know, they'll be saying, like what shoe model they need, and then we might make some mock ups and we will basically figure out the design and at that point they place an order and either they'll send they'll ship the cleats to me, or I can order the cleats for them and then just add the cost of the cleats to what they pay me. And so yeah, at that point I'll get the cleats in my hands. They'll generally take between five to ten hours. It's a pretty big range, but it depends on the design. But yeah, it's all of the cleats and the reason that this is such. 00:55:49 Speaker 3: A it's like a hard thing to do. 00:55:51 Speaker 4: You don't see as many customizers out there because because it's hard to make the paint not crack off, and and so for six years, I've really you know, developed a refined process of making it durable so guys can wear multiple games and it lasts long. So basically I'll go through my prep process of basically stripping down the clete standing I'm doing whatever I need to do with you know, chemicals and all that for an hour or two, and then you know, I'll get it taped up masking tape, and then you know, start painting it whatever design and then you know, it depends on what the design is. You know, it'll take it'll take a few hours. And then once that, once that's all done, take all the scraps off, put the laces back on, spray finisher, pack it back up, take pictures, and. 00:56:39 Speaker 3: Then send it back out to the client. 00:56:41 Speaker 4: So yeah, that whole process will take like five to ten hours. 00:56:44 Speaker 1: And these cleats are not meant to last longer than a few games. 00:56:49 Speaker 3: No, No, they can last a really long time. 00:56:52 Speaker 1: But that's good. 00:56:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, at the same like, I've had players that wear them like like almost every game. 00:56:58 Speaker 3: But uh. 00:57:00 Speaker 4: About custom cleats is the will never last as long as as the factory as a just a regular cleat. It can't because there's a there's a there's a layer of paint over it. Like it's just not physically possible for that to be more durable. But my job is to make it as durable as possible. And uh, you know, if you, uh, I guess you. If you watch the Mariners this season, Jared Kalenick probably in probably more than half the games, has been wearing wearing my cleats, and so whenever you see him wearing Jordan One cleats, those are made by me. 00:57:31 Speaker 3: He's got four pairs. He's got an all Navy pair, He's got. 00:57:33 Speaker 4: A he's got the Sunday pair, which it seems to be everybody's favorite. 00:57:37 Speaker 3: It's it's a cream, yellow, and blue. He's got a white pair and a gray pair. 00:57:42 Speaker 4: But those, you know, I've been looking at pictures and videos that those seem to be holding up really well. And as you can see, you know, he wears them multiple days and they still look fine. There might be a tiny paint kacking here and there, but you can't see that on TV. 00:57:58 Speaker 2: Okay, you bring up Art Kellnick. I always knew you were good at designing cleats, and I knew you had made some for a handful of players over the years. The first time I realized that your whole brand was totally blowing up, aside from having a good social media following and all was so. Jared Kelnick for a while was making a lot of YouTube videos and he was trying to give people a little bit of a peak behind the scenes about his life. And he made a video right before he debuted, and in the video, his whole group of people they drive up to a house, they get a box. They then go back to his apartment. They open it up, and they had gotten him a gift right before his debut, and it's these just sick teal and navy blue cleats. It's got his number ten on it, it's got his walk a Shot Area code on it, It's got all this cool design. And then I see I look a little closer, and I realized, oh those are trains cleats, like you made those, and everybody was tweeting them out that day. I remember of his debut, I mean it blew up on social media. What was your reaction to how every everybody else kind of reacted to those cleats. 00:59:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, it got a ton of social media. Both MLB and Manners both both posted those you know on their Instagram and Twitter. The Mariners actually made a whole art. They wrote a whole article about just the cleats, and so that was crazy, all that, all that attention. But in terms of in terms of making the cleats, you know, he was the top prospect at the time, and as a Mariners fan, I was so so excited to make cleats, you know, for the biggest prospect we've had, you know, fifteen years or so, and so I I, those are one of. 00:59:33 Speaker 3: My favorite cleats. 00:59:34 Speaker 4: And I put in, if I remember correctly, like fifteen or sixteen hours. Not that it needed that many hours, but I just wanted to make sure these were perfect. 00:59:42 Speaker 3: Every square millimeter had to be perfect. So went and did that. It was his girlfriend place to order for the cleats. 00:59:50 Speaker 4: So yeah, when she came to pick him up, I was unaware that he was in the. 00:59:55 Speaker 3: Car until I saw the YouTube video. 00:59:59 Speaker 4: It was it was cool that you know he I guess Jared Kellner technically came to my house, but yeah, never never really met him though. 01:00:08 Speaker 3: Maybe one day. 01:00:11 Speaker 1: Were those your favorite cleats you've ever made? Or do you have another pair that really sticks out? 01:00:16 Speaker 4: It's it's so hard because I made like four or five hundred pairs at this point, but those are those are definitely in the top five. Yeah, it could, it could be my favorite. I'd have to really look back through something. It's definitely top five. 01:00:33 Speaker 2: I feel like his reaction has to play a part to it, too, because you obviously watched the YouTube video and when he pulls those cleats out of the box, he's fist pumping, He's talking about how sick they are. He's like those are so clean, dude, or whatever his exact words were. I mean, I feel like his reaction has to play some part in that, right along with the fact that you did a great job with the design. Yeah. 01:00:53 Speaker 3: It always feels so good when you see like a like a video of. 01:00:55 Speaker 4: A of a guy's reaction, or even better if you see a live reaction and you know you can really tell that they're that they really like the clats that they ordered, because it means you. 01:01:05 Speaker 3: Know that they'll probably order again maybe. 01:01:07 Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, it's great to see reactions. But I guess I guess you get a little little tone deaf at times. The longer you go, you know, you're a little less starstruck. Still super appreciative of you know, all these guys coming, but it's not as it's not as stressful, I guess, just like the painting thing, you know, the first pair for Domingo Santana, super super, extremely stressful. But you know, the more you guys you work with, it's just it's another project. You just trying to do your best work for them. 01:01:41 Speaker 1: Who else on the Mariners should people look out forward to see some of your other work. 01:01:47 Speaker 4: Dyl Moore's coming back from injury. I just made him five pairs. They'll be rocking those. To be honest, I don't I don't do as many clatus as I as I used to a couple of years ago because I'm in the heat of my senior year of call, which but uh yeah, it's there. Might probably by the end of the season, I'll have like maybe like four or five players that will probably might create on occasion, but I guess in total, I think I've done cleats for around twenty to twenty five Mariners in the past four years, which has been just so so incredible As a Mariners fan, you know, a Marina's fan above everything, So those clients. 01:02:26 Speaker 3: Do mean a little more to me than some of the other guys. 01:02:29 Speaker 4: Unfortunately, are not hate to be biased, but I have to be, you know, staying true of the blue. 01:02:34 Speaker 3: Here we're on the Marine Layer pod Man. 01:02:38 Speaker 2: We're biased. We're the host of the podcast. We're biased all the time. It's a Mariner's podcast. You can be biased all you want. 01:02:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I will not hide it. I am a Marion's fan to the core. 01:02:51 Speaker 2: As are we. I mean we look, look, we try to be unpartial, impartial, I should say, but we're all Mariners fans here, so I can't blame you for like getting more excited for these Mariners. Guys get excited about your cleats. It's only natural, especially when you grew up a fan. If I've got one last question for you here as we start to wrap this up, I know, as you're graduating, you never know what your life's gonna kind of hold going forward. But in a perfect world for you, what do you want to continue to do with train Kicks and with your whole Cleats brand, if you wanted to keep growing it. 01:03:23 Speaker 4: Yeah, in a perfect world, I want to, you know, keep doing keep doing Cleats obviously, but kind of kind of see if I can kind of build something you know, bigger off that. 01:03:34 Speaker 3: And I think I think doing murals and canvas paintings. 01:03:37 Speaker 4: And stuff like that. You know, some some live art painting events. You know, that could be a great avenue to pick up because you know that that actually makes a lot more money, uh than cleats sometimes, you know, if you're if you're working with a big, you know, big corporation, you know, the invoice will be pretty large usually. 01:03:56 Speaker 3: So yeah, in a perfect world, kind of kind. 01:03:58 Speaker 4: Of just trying to build off off the Cleats you know in a way, but still staying within the scope of you know, sports and all that. 01:04:08 Speaker 2: Well, we can't wait to see what you continue to do with it, because I've been a fan of your work forever, and not just because we're friends, because genuinely, all your designs are really cool. Clearly players think the same thing, so training we appreciate you hopping on with us today. This has been awesome. It's really cool to get a little bit of a different perspective of somebody here on the show. We've got a bunch of media people on, but to do what you're doing, it's pretty awesome and we can't wait to see you keep doing it. And hey, let us know if anything happens during All Star Week because I would love to stop by and see it. 01:04:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on Loyland Tjay. 01:04:39 Speaker 4: This is I Actually I have been listening to this podcast while painting cleats. Like all of Dylan Morre's cleats, I painted while listening to this podcast. And even before I was listening, before. 01:04:53 Speaker 3: I even told Lyle that. 01:04:54 Speaker 4: I told Yle that like less than a week ago, like, oh hey, I've been listening to podcasts recently and it's really good. 01:05:01 Speaker 3: But yeah, so you guys got to keep up the good work. This is sick and I'm sure you guys are both going to go far. 01:05:07 Speaker 1: We appreciate it, but I'm glad you could also draw the Dylan Moore inspiration right out of Lyle's voice and put it into the cleats. So yeah, he's proud. 01:05:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, train I don't know if I've told you, I'm like the world's biggest dyllan more fans, so to hear that, that's full circle right there. Oh yeah. 01:05:23 Speaker 4: Also, I want to say, you guys have some of the best breakdowns of the analytics and like pulling out the stats that actually matter, the stats that can kind of sway people's opinions on players. 01:05:33 Speaker 3: I think that that that is really sick. You guys got to keep that up. 01:05:36 Speaker 2: Well, we appreciate it trying. We're going to do our best, and we know you're going to keep doing your best and we can't want we can't wait to watch you keep killing it. 01:05:42 Speaker 3: Awesome, all right, Well, appreciate you having me. 01:05:47 Speaker 2: All right. 01:05:48 Speaker 1: That was a great conversation with Andrew Erudia, the owner of train Kicks. Just some awesome designs. Really appreciate Lole making that connection and really a different perspective for what we've had on this podcast before. Able to hear a bit of what he does in connection to the Mariners in the city of the of Seattle. It's great stuff. Again, you want to go find more of his stuff, you can go look at his Instagram at train kicks. He's got a lot of his work on there. Okay, low, let's go down on the farm. All right, lou What are you looking at? This week? 01:06:23 Speaker 2: There's been a couple of promotions, which is much earlier than it was last year. If you go back to twenty twenty two, the Mariners were pretty cautious with a lot of their call ups. It was much later in the season they started to bring guys up. Now Here we are sitting in early May. They've made promotions and probably the most notable one, Jonathan class is going up to double A. And you're talking about a guy that is twenty years old. He's not even twenty one. He crushed the Northwest League in Everett. He's getting the call up. One Mercedes is getting the call up to double A right handed pitcher. Also, pitcher Porge Benitez is getting called up to double A. Stephen Cole is going from Double A to triple A. So it's not like it was just one guy. I mean, they're making some real promotion through the system this week, and probably the most notable one being class A getting the College is twenty years old to go to double A. 01:07:11 Speaker 1: Have we given the context yet of which others under twenty one year olds have played significant time in Double A. Have we said did we say that last week? 01:07:21 Speaker 2: I think it's just Julio and Jared if i'm if I'm remembering right. 01:07:26 Speaker 1: Or well, it was Tyler O'Neill and Tyler O'Neill and O'Neill. 01:07:30 Speaker 2: Okay, I was gonna say Jared was nineteen in Double A in twenty nineteen. Yeah he was, yeah, yeah, So it was just those just those big leaguers, three big leaguers and then Class A. It's pretty cool, and that means they've got a lot of faith in him. So what class turns into moving forward, we don't know. But like we talked about on the last show when we highlighted him, Mariners are pretty high on this guy, and he's probably got a chance to be a top one hundred prospect next year if he really hits the ground running in Double A. 01:08:00 Speaker 1: I'm going to pick another young guy in the system part of really this young wave of batch. Gabby Gonzalez now two levels down from Class A, down in low A modesto, but he's the number seven prospect on the Mariners Top thirty and he's really gotten off to a really hot start. This year. Besides the fact he's you know, he's hitting for a good average and he's slugging a decent amount as well. This dude just really does not strike out as well, which is a really good trade after looking at the Mariners lineup last few weeks, having a guy in your system who strikes out is striking out twelve percent of the time this year at the lower levels of the Miners. He's controlling the strikes sown well. It doesn't walk a whole bunch, but he does not strike out, hits the ball pretty hard, sprays it around the yard, and is really a speedy tools. The outfielder that I know, like our friend Jeremy works in the Mariners system, is a huge fan of this guy. Thinks he's a stud and he's He's having a good week and a good season overall as well. 01:08:55 Speaker 2: For those maybe not familiar with strikeout rates, like the back of their hand, twelve percent is really low. You're not going to see many players striking out at a twelve percent clip. Gabby Gonzalez is doing it. Though. Guy makes a ton of contact. People love his power. I think the question with him is just going to be can he stick in the outfield and can he find a position for himself long term, because if he can, that's a bat to dream on. A nineteen year old kid who's crushing it in modesto and has middle of the order potential. 01:09:25 Speaker 1: Here's this group he's along with. We're talking about the young group of Mariners bats. It's him, it's it's Gabby Gonzalez, it's Harry Ford, it's Cole Young and then Jonathan Class say that like, that's the group you want to pay attention as, Hey, like this is a very young group of hitters. But man, the upside of those guys, and we've talked about now, I think we've covered all of them here in our segments doing on the farm since the season started, we've covered all of them, and they're all, you know, they're all off to really good starts as what the Mariners really like to see because above them there's not much, there's no bats, there's no bats above them, so they're what the Mariners are lying and it's really good to see, you know, all those guys going off to start the season and showcasing all those tools. All very different too, all very different flavors of hitter. But it's still very impressive to see. 01:10:15 Speaker 2: And there's probably another wave of bats even behind those guys Lazara Montes, Felonine Cellisten, maybe Michael Arroyo. But you're right. The next real wave of bats are the four guys you just highlighted, because they may be a ways away, but they're gonna be reinforcements that the Mariners rely on down the road here in two, three, four years. So just to reiterate what you said, if you're a Mariners fan, pay attention to the guys and the miners and keep tabs on those hitters. It's worth it because they're gonna keep shining all year. 01:10:44 Speaker 1: Pay attention to them. But they like these guys like they're good enough where they could honestly get traded, like the Mariners will be buyers at this deadline. I would be shocked of all four of those guys that are in the system at. 01:10:56 Speaker 3: The end of the year. 01:10:57 Speaker 1: I would be unfortunate. As unfortunate as it is, like we want all those guys to succeed, I have a tough time seeing all four of those guys staying unless they're you know that they would probably feel more comfortable dealing with some of the pitching they have, which would be a little bit more valuable or sorry, a little more comfortable giving those guys away a little bit farther away from the big leagues than some of the more immediate help arms that they have hiring the miners. So just a warning, just a warning. Temper temper yourself. 01:11:26 Speaker 2: That's probably right, especially if the Mariners go out and get somebody with real impact, but still keep an eye on them, because hey, if you're somebody that's circling a couple of impact bats somewhere across baseball saying hey, the Mariner should go target those guys, well, then these guys playing well has an impact on that. So just keep some notes. That's all we're saying, keep some notes. Okay, let's get to our MLB wrap around here. First topic, the Cardinals to La Saint Louis Cardinals, one of the sturdiest franchises in baseball, one of the most historic franchises in baseball. They're not playing like it these days. They have been scuffling, and that's an understatement. 01:12:13 Speaker 1: I believe they're playing right now as we're recording this on a Monday, but they are as of now with today's outcome not final yet. They are eleven and twenty four. They are three games worse than the next closest team in the National League. They're not as bad as the Royals, they're not as bad as the A's, but they're pretty bad. And there's this pretty stark difference between the A's, the Royals, and the Cardinals. We're pretty sure the Royals and A's would not be great. The Cardinals are supposed to win arguably the softest division in baseball, the one that probably invests the least amount of money in player capital, the one that you could argue it's like, well just not like, don't know if I trust all these organizations in here except for the Cardinals, and the Red Birds have been just awful. They have been bad in a number of ways. Twenty third in ERA, they're the worst base running team in baseball. Nolan Aeronauto has been ice cold, and maybe the biggest story level to come out this week is that they signed prize catcher Wilson Contrares to a five year, eighty seven and a half million dollar deal this offseason to replace YadA Air Molina. It took him a little over thirty games for them to say yeah, you're not catching for us anymore thirty games. 01:13:25 Speaker 2: Well, in what world are you signing a guy that's tabbed as a premier catcher to a five year deal and then saying, yeah, go play the outfield. Look, I know the main reason they signed him as for a bat, but you know what, he has a good arm. He might not be an elite glove or an elite framer, but he's serviceable. Back there. There was certainly never any problems with them in Chicago. Now you have all these guys complaining about his catching. You've got the Cardinals trying to make him play a new position on the fly. What is going on? These guys are usually on top of everything. 01:13:57 Speaker 1: They had a summit for his his position change. Listen to this tweet from today. Wilson contrasted Adam Waynwright and Jack Flaherty were part of a recent part of recent discussions regarding his position shift. He didn't elaborate on what was said during the summit with the front office, coaches, pictures, and himself. Like, you've gotta be kidding me here. First, Like I get Adam wayn Wright's like like a legacy guy, but at this point your curer. You can't be having like your pictures, like you can't have it, Like that's just kind of kind of absurd. It seems like the pictures were doing some complaining with Wilson Contrerass behind the plate. He's not a great framer, but he's like, by the numbers, an above average catcher for his career. He's plus nine defensive run said for his career behind the plate, like there is good in there. Maybe it won't be great in the future, but I have a hard time believing he is the sole purpose that Cardinals' pictures have been horrible this year. 01:15:01 Speaker 2: Who else did they want? They signed the top catcher on the market. Contreras is a bona fide star at the position these guys are talking about. Well, when YACHTI was here, we did it differently great. Yatti's a legend. He's also retired. He hung it up, he was done with his career and he had a really good one at that. But there's not many better options out there than Wilson Cantrera's. Like, I don't know what these Cardinals pitchers want. Instead, I don't get. 01:15:28 Speaker 1: Like, how do you not You can't blame your pitching struggles on a retired catcher leaving, Like, what does that say about your development and your organization, your organizational pitching philosophy. If one player can send your whole pitching staff off the rails. 01:15:46 Speaker 2: Incredible. 01:15:47 Speaker 1: Here's here's another thing. Here's another thing for the Cardinals to front office to chew on. I mean, are we really expect like now that you like, look at this rotation? Are you like kind of shocked at a rotation of Miles Michaelis Jack who, by the way, has now not been good in about four years. Adam wayIn Wright, Steven Mattz, and Jake Woodford are underperforming. Like, are we surprised. 01:16:12 Speaker 2: Their best arm has been Jordan Montgomery and he's actually been good. That trade so far for the Cardinals is working out. The rest of the staff is not. I'm gonna be honest. I liked what the Cardinals were putting out in their rotation on paper when the season started. I guess, look, it's been a long time since Flaarty's been good. You're right. I also just think the pure talent and stuff that he has when he's at the top of his game is peak stuff. And I bought that he was now healthy and maybe I'm not saying he was gonna go win a cy young, but I did think he could have a really good season. Michael has has been pretty sturdy a lot of his career. Again, Montgomery's been good. I thought they would be perfectly serviceable. Well I was wrong. They have not been like Adams. 01:16:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a disaster. And I was trying to find the quote before we started recording. I couldn't. I couldn't find it. But like Jack Flairdy got to the point where he was complaining that they were that the pitches called with two strikes by Wilson contrast was all his fault and he had no control over like what to throw with two strikes, which I think is total bogus, because you know what happens when a pitcher gets a pitch that he can't he doesn't like and doesn't want to throw two strikes. You know what you do? You shake them off, you say no, you say no, and you throw what you want. But apparently that's too hard, So I don't know. I guess it's all Wilson Contrera's fault that you know, they don't want to shake anyone off who knows it's just it's so puzzling the fact that the Pirates, who we enturing the season thought was probably a bottom three organization in baseball, have turned around and stacked a ten game lead on the Cardinals through a month. It's absurd. 01:17:49 Speaker 2: I don't know if this Cardinals six or sorry, I don't know if this Pirates success is going to last. But the fact that they've made up or not made up, created ten games of space on Saint Louis. There's not a bet in the world that had that before the season started. 01:18:05 Speaker 1: Also, like I mentioned it quickly at the beginning, like where's Nolan? What's he doing? 01:18:12 Speaker 2: He's got a seventy ops plus? What is going on? Look, I know there's guys out there off to slow starts. This guy has done nothing but play both sides of the ball at an elite, elite level throughout his career. He has mashed the ball every single season, and he has played elite defense every single season. He's not hitting right now, and that's something that this team banks on. If he's not hitting, of course they're not going to go anywhere. 01:18:40 Speaker 1: A savant page stinks too. It's not like he's getting unlucky. He's just been he's been bad. There's a lot of blue on a savant page. Lyle likes to say, on a good savant page, it looks like a nice glass of red kool aid. No one Ernato's looks like a glass of blue kool aid. And if that's the case, that's not the territory you want to be in. Like, there's nothing pausive to take out of. 01:19:01 Speaker 2: That note at all. Okay, second storyline here, Bryce Harper's back and he's back in the blink of an eye for the Tommy John surgery that he just had. Here we are in early May, way ahead of the timeline. He's back on the field and he's back to being Bryce Harper in just five games. 01:19:19 Speaker 1: What's really incredible? Did you know that this is the fastest player's ever recovered from Tommy John surgery ever, one hundred and sixty days. 01:19:31 Speaker 2: So I thought Shohey missed a little bit less time than this, because when he got his Tommy John surgery, they had to shut him down from pitching, but he was still daching. But he missed more time than Harper. Harper's time away from baseball and off the field was less than a Tawny's that's pretty crazy. The dude is a cyborg. 01:19:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred and sixty days. He broke the record. Tony Womack had the record one hundred and eighty two days. Jay Buhner shout out two hundred and seven days, Carl Crawford two hundred and twenty one days. Those are all position players. It's not physically possible for a pitcher to come back from Tommy John surgery in one hundred and sixty days. But Bryce Harper is a position player. Think they're going to try and move him to first base when he gets a little bit healthier with his elbow and doesn't have to throw quite as much. Well, REYE. Hoskins is out for the season, so they kind of need a first baseman. They haven't gotten a whole lot of production from first base in general, so if Bryce can slide into that spot, they can fill the DH spot with something else. But it's good that he's back because the Villis have been kind of mediocre, and you know, as much as their postseason run was fun last year, I mean there was a lot of Bryce magic sprinkled in there, and a lot of a lot of fortune to go along with the World Series run. 01:20:44 Speaker 2: At the time of recording this, they're sixteen and nineteen, So if they want to make another run again, and I'm not sure they will because again it's an older team, Like we'll just see if it clicks for the second year in a row. We'll see if the pitching holds up, especially in the rotation again. But if they want to do something like that again, they need Bryce Harper and they need Bryce Harper to be Bryce Harper. So the fact that he only missed a month of time is a blessing. Beyond belief for the Phillies. 01:21:12 Speaker 1: There's some optimism too. I mean, you met like Bryce is already hitting pretty well, and there's some optimism that his injury is not going to prevent him from hitting well. You use the Show Heyo Tani example, So Show Hey in twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen, he took two hundred and eighteen days to recover from Tommy John surgery. He came back in twenty nineteen and had a pretty typical show Hey year. He slugged five hundred, he hit two eighty three, got on base thirty four percent of the time, hit eighteen home runs. Like it's all there, Like the it's there's not I guess there's not a thought that the Tommy John will will prevent him from being able to be a good hitter. And also in a left handed swing, the front elbow, which which is the one Bryce hurt, it requires less a little bit less torque and a less stress on the on the UCL So that leads to a little bit more promising for Bryce. But it's gonna be exciting to see me and you have mentioned this, but like we've both come one hundred and eighty degrees around on Bryce Harper. Throughout his career, his walk yere was awful. There were some times the Nationals he was just so manningly inconsistent. But when he's been a Philly, he's been worth every dime of that contract, doesn't matter who's miss time with Tommy John surgery like stuff like this shows he really fucking cares about playing baseball and really cares about winning. So that's why he decided to come back so clearly, I mean, he blew off a rehab assignment to just come back and play for the Phillies. 01:22:37 Speaker 2: When Bryce Harper signed that contract back in twenty nineteen, I don't think there was anybody out there less of a proponent for it than me. I thought that if a team was smart, they should give Harper like a three to four year deal for twenty to twenty five million a year, because again, he'd come off a season where he put up less than two wins above replacement. His defense wasn't good, he'd been inconsistent at times, like he had the one huge season in twenty fifteen, but after that, there was a lot of what if in his career. Well, I've done a full one eighty on that. You fast forward to now, my opinion on him has totally changed. If he retired today, he's he's a Hall of Famer. Yeah, he's a Hall of Famer already, and he's only gonna keep adding to that career as time goes on in Philly. And the dude's one of the best hitters in baseball. So yeah, like I had my time where maybe you could call it a hot take, you could call it a lukewarm take, where I said, eh, I wasn't all that sold on Bryce Harper at a point in his career. Yeah, that's out the window. 01:23:36 Speaker 1: Now, let's move on to our third storyline here in the MLB Wrap Around Luis Garcia, who famously pitched the final five innings of that memorable eighteen inning game at T Mobile Park last October, is on the shelf. He's gonna have Tommy John surgery. Exited last Monday's game with elbow discomfort after only eight pitches, and the Astros announced on Fry that he will miss the rest of the twenty twenty three season with Tommy John surgery and if they hope he's gonna be back for the twenty twenty four season. Pretty good stalwart in that Astros rotation they will no longer have. And hear this Lyle, He's not the only one out at the Astros rotation force. Whitley, he got his last scart start skipped. He's down in triple A with the Astros. Or Key has shoulder discomfort. He's on the shelf. Lance mccullors has a forearm stream. He's on the shelf as well. This Astro's rotation is thinning out quickly. When they were going down the stretch last year or the World Series, he kept saying nobody can match their depth. Well, that depth is gone. It is one thousand percent gone. 01:24:42 Speaker 2: Garcia was what their seventh starter last year, either their sixth or seventh guy. 01:24:47 Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, I think he was. Pavier was. Yeah, if Xavier was six, then Garcia was seven. 01:24:55 Speaker 3: Oh. 01:24:55 Speaker 2: I think Javier was even pushed up further than that because I was thinking of Arkety and Garcia as the six and seven guys. I think they had even more before that, or maybe it was five and six point being We're just we're just getting into the like the nitty gritty numbers here in the details, but pois being the Astros depth last year in the rotation was absolutely unmatched and basically like nothing we'd ever seen. It's not like that right now. You lose Justin Verlander to the Mets, you have all the injuries. The TJ just outlined there's a reason the Astros are hovering by right around five hundred these days. They just don't have the depth on the field right now, and it's showing because they're they're not playing elite baseball. 01:25:36 Speaker 1: And another thing for this this Astro's rotation, they decided not to sign anybody this offseason after losing Verlander. I think they made Verlander an offer, but they didn't sign anyone else to supplement this rotation. And they trust to a depth, and that's where trusting your depth can I guess come back to bite you. If your depth goes away, then all of a sudden, you got guys that you have JP France, who I guess he looked good against the Mariner. They have a very they ever get pensiant for making guys look good in their major league debuts. But you know, I don't know if the Astros really want JP France starting, you know, for the rest of the season in the rotation. They might go make a move, but at as it stands now, that's what it's gonna be. And that was just a decision they made and now we're gonna have to see how it works out. 01:26:21 Speaker 2: So I think they banked on Hunter Brown being good, and that part they got right because he's been awesome. So you've got Hunter Brown, You've still got Frambert, and you've still got Christian Hobvier, which I mean, you put that one two three up against any other one two three in baseball. It's not the best one, but it's still up there. So we're talking about the Astros depth here, but it's perspective because there's still one of the most loaded teams in baseball. For a reason. But I think the reason they didn't sign anybody is because you take those three guys and then you add a healthy mccolors, you add a healthier Kidi, you add a healthy Luis Garcia. At least they thought at the time. I think they still felt pretty good about the rotation. But they have had the injury bug hit them like a train here in twenty twenty three. And that's not even including out two they and in the lineup. 01:27:07 Speaker 1: And you could look at their lineup too, and it just we saw it didn't didn't look like the Astros we saw towards the end of last season when we went the past series. This past weekend didn't look the same. That's just just all part of defending your World Series title. 01:27:23 Speaker 2: One note on that the Houston Astros in their starting lineup currently have three guys with an OPS plus above one hundred. One of those Jeremy one of them he is He is at one two, so barely career average. Then again, he got all this hype last year, and yes, he's a great defender, but it's not like he was some elite bat just in the postseason. He was league average as a hitter last year anyway, point being, he's been about league average again this year as a bat, maybe slightly above. The only two guys hitting in the lineup right now are your Don and Kyle Tucker. The rest of the guys are not, including Alex Bregman. So look, people have had their worries about the Mariners through the first month or so, and some of them are fair, but they're not the only team struggling. Like teams like the Astros have their things to figure out right now too. 01:28:12 Speaker 1: It doesn't help that the Rangers are there off to a really hot start. They look good, and they have had Jacob de Grom about half the time, right that's something that they're gonna have to keep an eye on. 01:28:26 Speaker 2: And they haven't had Corey Seeger Nope. So yeah, the Rangers, they'll be a team to circle to see if they keep this up. Okay, our favorite segment are Russell Wilson Umpire of the Week and boy do we have a good one this week. Just as a quick reminder, to win this award, you either have to miserably fail to see over the middle, not let a play develop, or be downright and sufferable. Somebody met those requirements this week, TJ. I'll let you tell everybody who was. 01:28:56 Speaker 1: It wasn't just somebody, it was multiple. I giving this award this week to the entire umpiring crew of May Forth's Raised Pirates game. This is especially going to crew Chief Adrian Johnson because he's in charge of the whole crew. But this was a crew decision. In that May fourth game, Zach Efflyn was pitching on the mound for the Tampa Bay Rays. He wears a wedding ring. He's a right handed pitcher, and he wears a wedding ring on his left hand, his left ring finger, which is as you would guess, in his glove. Now, the lovely men in black decided that he should not be allowed to wear that ring while pitching. Note that since he got married in twenty twenty, he's worn this wedding ring for every single start since twenty twenty one, every single one he's worn the wedding ring. The umpires have seen it before and they've said, huh okay. But now we have a group of men who've decided that he should not be allowed to wear it. Why I don't know. And they threatened him and said, hey, listen, it's gonna come down to this point, you're either gonna get ejected or you're gonna have to take the ring off. And he's like fine, puts them around his neck in a necklace. But I can't say I've seen an umpiring crew threatened to toss someone for wearing a wedding ring before. 01:30:25 Speaker 2: That is a first, Like, who cares. I don't know what these guys are going on about. Like so, so Eflyn talked about this after the game, right, he said this umpiring crew was a little more on edge. They seem to have an issue with it. Then adding I have never been asked to take this thing off in any of my other starts. I mean you just kind of outlined it there. 01:30:50 Speaker 1: Said yeah, he said, I've seen other pictures wear it. Position players can call time out, get pine tower, whatever they want. They can wear all these bracelets and stuff, but I can't wear a ring on my gloved hand. Gloved hand like not touching the ball, like not like no way to make contact with it. But still it's you're getting tossed if you wear this. 01:31:13 Speaker 2: Have these umpires actually talked about publicly what this specific issue was that he was wearing it. I haven't heard it. 01:31:21 Speaker 1: Probably thought in some way it could doctor the baseball and give him an advantage. I don't know. I don't see how that's physically possible. You can always take the ring and expect it and say, okay, there's no problem with this. You can always do that. There's always an option, like you can expect whatever the pitcher's wearing. But they decided to just a levy an injection against him instead, just like the fine men. We know we do love that. Okay, Wow, let's wrap up the show with Speak your Mind. 01:31:52 Speaker 4: Speak your mind? 01:31:53 Speaker 2: Spot that would be any wise necessary is never unwise? 01:32:03 Speaker 1: All right, what's on your mind this week? 01:32:07 Speaker 2: It's actually a little interesting. My speak your mind this week is I'm not sure if I have one. And the reason is because over the last week, I feel like I've been doing a ton of stuff revolving around this podcast. And I mean, both of us always are, not that that's all that different, but with stuff this week, I feel like I was really busy and kind of had my head down with a lot of stuff trying to get things done for this podcast, and I was kind of sitting this week thinking saying, man, what's been on my mind this week? And There wasn't that much other than I I'm trying to you know, we're trying to make stuff happen with this podcast. We've got a laundry list of things that we're still trying to get done and goals we want to accomplish. So I'd say it was mostly revolved around that, I will throw this one thing in there. However, shout out to Seattle cracking five goals in the second period on Sunday. That was something. I'll tell you what. I didn't think there was any what's up. It's a big seat. 01:33:00 Speaker 1: It's a big Seattle over Texas week this weekend. 01:33:04 Speaker 2: Yes it is, because I didn't think there was any way in the world they were putting up that many goals on the Dallas Stars. I think Dallas is better than them on paper. I think most people do, and I didn't think there was an I didn't think there was no chance that they could win this game at home, especially with the electric crowd. But to score seven goals that was insane. 01:33:25 Speaker 1: Without your top two goal scorers playing correct the way, you're probably your top two score I don't know if it was final goals, but you're missing your top two scores and Burk Howsky and Jared mccannon still putting up seven goals with seven different guys, which is absolutely insane. They do probably have the best depth of any team remaining. This is our my deeply nuanced like I've been watching hockey since I was three years old. Like information takes analysis. I know that's why you come and listen to this podcast to hear me talk about hockey. Yeah, it's it's been fun to watch. I can't I want to go to a playoff game. So like I enjoyed the game I went to regular season, it felt like maybe a time like the environment was a tiny bit like like brought down a little bit. But I'm sure in the playoffs it's it's probably it's absolutely electric. It really is my speaker mind this week it is baseball related. Unfortunately, because this happened on Sunday, there was a baseball rule I did not know and I was flabbergasted. I was at the Oregon State Utah game on Sunday. Did you know there's a concussion protocol in baseball? 01:34:32 Speaker 2: I guess it doesn't shock me that there is. I don't know that there's a rule behind it. So you might have to enlighten me on this. 01:34:38 Speaker 1: So it went this kid for Utah. The catcher got beamed in the head in the first inning, went down the first base, then got taken out of the game. He was replaced, but top of the bottom of the first inning comes around, he comes back on the field and starts catching, and we're all in the press box thinking, well, you just got taken out of the game. You can't do that. So the sid scramble and they go down and check the rules, and the rule is that you can you can get taken out of the game to get evaluated for concussion. If you don't feel like you have one, you can re enter in that spot. So he re entered. It's like, huh okay, And the guy who entered for him can only re enter in that spot as well, so he is the backup catcher can only come in in that spot in the order replacing him. And then about an ending later he got taken out permanently. So it was just like it was just kind of a weird situation. But there were some pretty good baseball minds that have seen quite a lot of baseball in that press box, and nobody had heard of that rule before. Nobody just it was. It was kind of puzzling. So shout out to the utah Utes for memorizing the NCAA rulebook on what you can do with injuries, because I certainly have not. 01:35:53 Speaker 2: Is that a college baseball rule or does it apply in the big leagues too? 01:35:57 Speaker 1: Probably, I don't know. Yeah, i'd say probably, I'm not I'm not totally sure, so I don't know. So that's probably off the top of my head. And now I guess my second speak your mind this week is now that summer is coming up. And while honestly didn't think about this till thirty seconds ago, we were just discussing this before recording this. It's summer. So I'm gonna remind all of my listeners. You have paid timed off, please take it. Go on vacation, spend spend yours, go outside, go go go hop on a flight, go book it. Use Google Flights, it's great. Use the explore tab on Google Flights. You can go fly wherever you want. Probably get a pretty good deal. 01:36:35 Speaker 2: Maybe we'll have to do something like that this summer to get to a road series. Yeah, Theredith do some content. I mean, I've had that idea now for a couple of months saying we should do something like that over the summer. I know we were talking about this before getting on here too, but now just talking about it here with everybody, I think that'd be really fun to get to a road series for the MS this year, so we can. 01:36:54 Speaker 1: Go to Oakland we need Yeah, well so we're going overhead. 01:36:59 Speaker 2: No. So so I've been to O dot Co once and that will be the last time I ever go there unless it's an extenuating circumstance. I have no interest to go back to that stadium ever. 01:37:11 Speaker 3: Again. 01:37:12 Speaker 1: All right, we'll try and pick a good spot. If if we can make it work it out schedule wise, then I think Lyle and I will jump with that opportunity. But even if you're not going to see a baseball game like book that flight, I mean, you only you only live one time, so please please go go live it. Unless yeah, unless you're allow want to go to Europe, but that's that's another case. 01:37:31 Speaker 2: Get out and travel this summer, no matter where it is. Traveling is fun. So like TJ said, you got paid time off, take advantage of it for us this week. I think that'll just about wrap up this edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. You guys know you want to listen to the full podcast. We're on Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. We've got video podcasts on YouTube. Go watch us on YouTube. By the way, we've got an awesome new setup. Our friend Victor Wren made us some nice graphics in the background, so check us out if you're listening right now on YouTube as well social media Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube shorts. All the apps for those are at Marine Layer Pod. Subscribe give us this five star review, and for t J. Matthewson, this is Lyle Goldstein. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in and we'll talk to you next week.