Episode 33: Larry Stone (Seattle Times), Mariners' Pitching Regression, And A Surging Teoscar Hernandez.

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number thirty three of the Marine Layer Podcast with TJ. Matthewson and Lyle Goldstein. On today's pod, we're joined by Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, longtime calumnist. We talk about this Mariner's baseball team, a little bit about his book with Edgar Martinez, and a little bit on his career as well. Really insightful conversation that you're going to want to hang around for. We have our three Mariners storylines. We'll go down on the farm and pick out a standout Mariners minor leaguer. We missed some big storylines with our MLB wrap around over the last couple of weeks, so we'll get back to that and take a look around baseball with some of the biggest storylines. We have another Russell Wilson Umpire of the Week, and we'll close out the show with Speak Your Mind. 00:00:44 Speaker 2: Just a reminder before the show gets started, we've partnered within the Clutch Clothing Company. In the Clutch Clothing 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 MLBPA shirts, j Rod, Jared Kellnick cal Riley, and Los Bombarros. You can see TJ wearing his losst Bombarrow shirt for this show. If you're watching on YouTube, which you should be, and if that shirt looks cool to you and you're interested in getting one of your own or any of the other player shirts, you can go to in theclutch dot com and use the code marine Layer Pod for ten percent off and currently every shirt on their website ships within the US for free. 00:01:25 Speaker 1: And this is a reminder, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to check us out on Apple and Spotify. Give a give us a five star review, follow us. Make sure to download our episodes just so you know whenever we post you're ready to listen to it. Same thing. If you're on Apple or Spotify, go check us out on YouTube, Go subscribe, go turn on the notification bill. You won't miss any of our content. And if you want to catch us on social media, you can find us on Instagram, on Twitter, and on TikTok at marine Layer Pod. Let's get it rolling and we welcome youute to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, recording here on Monday, June twelfth, and well, I last weekend was about as low as it possibly could get, so we set the bar extremely low, lyle and it seemed like this weekend it did manage to actually exceed that bar. So congratulations to the boys. 00:02:28 Speaker 2: Yay, it got so much better this week, didn't it. 00:02:31 Speaker 1: It did. It actually did compared to last weekend, which I infamously dubbed the high point of the season at the beginning of last week's episode, I mean, this week it kind of exceeded it a little bit. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: By that standard. Yeah, but we're getting to the emotional roller coaster part of the season where they're they're just tearing me to shreds. Like we talked about at the start of the season, we said that, look, we're fans of this podcast. We're going to break stuff down down the middle and with real facts and knowledge behind a lot of the points we're making during the show. That doesn't mean that when we're sitting there watching games during the week that we're not sitting there getting frustrated, because I am, we're like everybody else. We're kind of sitting here thinking why in the world are we here in mid June and they have not figured it out yet? Because it was another week where they kind of underperformed. But yes, it was better than last weekend in Texas. 00:03:24 Speaker 1: And it's a lot worse because it's the Angels. At least Phil Nevin got tossed. At least we got the luxury of that. 00:03:32 Speaker 2: He is truly the worst. Phil Nevin is truly the worst. Just between basically inciting a bounty last year on Mariner's hitters, including Julio, and then that ejection this past weekend. Yeah, he's just so easy to roll your eyes at. I don't even know if Angels fans like that. 00:03:49 Speaker 1: Guy is even a good manager. No, well, I know he hasn't convinced Showhy to stay. There's been no what a good manager might actually talk to show Hey and show he mett realize. Yeah, you know what, I kind of liked this organization. Doesn't seem like he's quite that way. 00:04:08 Speaker 2: Well, I stood up from this past weekend when he got tossed. I'll tell you what, that was the most angry I've ever seen shoe Hey o Tani after a called strike three And it wasn't really all that outward, and show Hey just doesn't really get angry in general, but you could tell he was not happy about that strike three call, which to his credit it probably was a ball. 00:04:26 Speaker 1: But he dropped an F bomb. 00:04:28 Speaker 2: I believe right he did, and that's what I'm talking about. So he didn't say it to the umpire, but he got caught on camera as he was walking back to the dugout dropping an F bomb, and I was like, oh, that came from show. Hey, Like, he doesn't say stuff like that, at least you don't see him say stuff like that. Yeah, So that was a little out of character for him, But I think he had a right to be frustrated. 00:04:49 Speaker 1: I think the next step for him is to go right out of the each euro tree of disrespecting umpires and not say a word to the umpire. Instead, take your bat and you draw a line in the sand where you thought the pitch was and then get tossed out of the game. I said, sand, it's dirt, but same stuff. 00:05:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like a no no in baseball, isn't it. Any player you see do that gets ejected immediately. Having a Julio last year, he drew that line in the dirt and he got kicked out of the game. 00:05:17 Speaker 1: If he did it, I think the umpire would have made our Russell Wilson Umpire of the Week. It was not him that made it this week, But if Shohy did do that and he got tossed, I think they'll make a pretty good case. 00:05:30 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, if any umpire ever throws Otani out, they're basically automatically getting the award. Because, as we talk about, people are there to see the stars. I think we would call Sho hey O Tani a star if not a transcendent player in the game of baseball. And if somebody pays a ticket to go to a game and watch him only get tossed after half the game, oh, people are gonna be pissed. 00:05:50 Speaker 1: And hey, I know Phil Nevin's gonna go stand up first current guy. We're also going to go stand up for a potential future Mariner. We're making our pitch to show Heyo Tani on the Marine Layer podcast so he knows we have his back if he comes yes show. 00:06:05 Speaker 2: Hey, if you're out there listening, which I have no doubt in my mind at some point you will be. Of course we have your back. In fact, you can come on this show anytime you want. That's an open invitation. 00:06:16 Speaker 1: Open invitation. You don't even have to sign with the Mariners will take you. But you know, if you get ejected, we're standing up for you. We have your back, like we will we will go tooth and nail to fight the Major League Baseball Umpires Union for you and only for you. 00:06:33 Speaker 2: And if you want to get some thoughts out about an ejection again, hop right on with us and talk about it. This this is a safe haven, of course, yeah. 00:06:40 Speaker 1: This is this is an This is a bubble environment, no judgment. You know, maybe a few people might listen, but you know everyone else's is in the trust tree, so don't worry about it. Show. Hey, we got you, uh, we got you covered. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: Well. 00:06:52 Speaker 1: Okay, let's uh, let's stop dodging around the uh let's stop dodge around the tough subjects. Now, we're gonna toss some talks tough subjects. Let's get to our three Mariners storylines. Okay, up, first lyle is there concern with the Mariners starting pitching regressing? 00:07:13 Speaker 2: I think there has to be concern. Maybe they weren't going to keep up the pace they were at where they were the top rotation in baseball. This was certainly possible. I mean, we know on paper this rotations good even if they weren't going to be the top group in the sport, there was no reason to expect they would just drastically fall off. In the last couple of weeks. There's been a little bit of a drastic falloff. I mean, you look at four of the five starters past Castillo and it just hasn't looked pretty. I mean, Bryce Miller's last two starts have been really tough. We'll see what he does tonight. We're recording before Bryce Miller takes the mound Monday against the Marlins. George Kirby two of his last three starts, he's gotten blown up. Logan's two of his last three starts, he has not looked great. Ryan wus second start looked better. He's still a rookie. There has been a lot of ups and downs past Castillo the last couple of weeks with this rotation, and so yeah, it's a little concerning because this is supposed to be the anchor of this team. 00:08:04 Speaker 1: This is supposed to be top five rotation in baseball. You would say, for what should actually be your strength and for what a team, at least at the beginning of the season considered themselves a World Series team, yeah, top five, But if we look at it right now, the Mariners still lead Baseball in war as a pitching staff by nearly a full win. That has not changed. And we'll get into some of these strange oddities with this stretch as well. But regardless, the Mariners over the last two weeks have the worst ERA in baseball, the worst. It's over six and a half. As of right now, their starter sit fifteenth in ERA. The bullpen is tenth in ERA. There's that's not ERA predictors, that's just flat ERA and earned runs. The ERA predictors are a little bit more favorable. Shockingly to this team. I can't I haven't watched this group over the last two weeks and said, you know, they're getting pretty unlucky. I haven't really thought that. It seems like they have got they have they have gotten what they have pitched essentially for in terms of results. Pitching and results has been in line. But the predictors say they're a little bit unlucky, so which I think is is kind of strange, to be honest, but I think it might. It might just be for the fact they don't walk a lot of guys and usually don't give up a lot of home runs, but I mean home runs wasn't even a case over the weekend. 00:09:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, they've given up a lot of home runs the last few weeks. I mean they've just kind of gotten knocked around. So are you not sold that this staff is going to come back down to earth? I mean I look at the numbers and kind of say they should, because when you talk about the ERA predictors with their FIP their x FIP, it says it should kind of slowly climb back down. But you don't sound so convinced. 00:09:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, So overall over the last two weeks, over this stretch, they had a six five nine ear raight, theer FIP was four six five four five six sorry, which is not as bad but not as bad as a six five year and their x FIP is a three nine to two, which is crazy. We've never really used this stat on this podcast because I haven't really dove into Sierra, which is another version of era predictor that you can find on fangraps. I don't know really all the intricacies of it. I know some people really love this stat that was that stat was even better over these last two weeks. It doesn't It's it's kind of puzzling, right, same timeframe, Mariners are across Baseball twenty second and FIP, eighth in x FIP and sixth in Sierra that same timeframe for ERA predictors. Two of those ERA predictors have them as a top ten staff that in that stretch, which doesn't make any sense again because the eye test doesn't really prove that to me. 00:10:47 Speaker 2: So what are these guys have to do going forward to kind of figure it out? I mean, obviously we'll sit here and say the easy answer is just don't give up hard hit balls and throw strikes. But how do they get some of their swagger back? How do Logan Gilbert and George Kirby start to figure it out? 00:11:02 Speaker 3: Again? 00:11:02 Speaker 2: Because I'm sitting here and saying they should. I mean, it's not like George Kirby's not throwing strikes, right, but he's just getting hit too hard. 00:11:10 Speaker 1: For Logan when we're talking about yesterday, he was just leaving his slider right over the middle of the play. That's like a little thing George I thought maybe got a little bit unlucky, especially against San Diego last week. They were most of the balls that that San Diego was hitting was finding holes right, They were getting hit hard, but they were finding holes a little bit more often than not. But I go back to Logan's day yesterday. Overall in the game, the expected batting average for the Angels for the whole game, for all the at bats against every pitcher was four thirty six. That's pretty bad. That's a pretty high mark for a pitching staff to give up. I don't look at that and I say, man, what an unlucky bunch. 00:11:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. I'm with you that maybe Kirby's start was a little unlucky in San Diego, but everybody else, it's just about I think they have to pitch a little bit better. And they have to not just because you need five starters. But there's being a lot asked right now of Luis Castillo, who's been unbelievable and he looked like a surefire All Star to his credit, But Luis Castillo is not going to be perfect every time out. So when he has his off day, there have to be guys behind him that are stepping up and filling his shoes because he is going to have clunkers. Every pitcher has his bad days. You need your Logan Gilbert, your George Kirby's, your Bryce Miller's to step up behind him and make up for some of that when he is not at the top of his game. And right now they just are going through a stretch where it hasn't been there. 00:12:39 Speaker 1: What's kind of funny. During that two week stretch, Logan and George each got chilled twice, but sandwich in the middle, they both had one of their better starts of this season. Logan went seven innings against the Padres with he had pretty like bad command. He was all over the place and still managed to goes seven innings, throwing some really good sliders towards the end of that game. And then George comes out and he's pumping down the Yankees and probably should have thrown a complete game. If the Mariners had scored any number of runs in that game, he would have thrown nine and shut out the Yankees where he looked unhittable. But then around that it was bad. So there's like a little inkling of optimism there because we know these guys are good pitchers, and we've highlighted on this podcast what makes them good pitchers. So Logan and George maybe not as much. Maybe it's just consistency and focus, which Scott Servis said after the game yesterday on Sunday that focus has been a problem for this team. He was mostly referring to the base pads, but I think you can make a case the pitching staff as well in terms of focus and guys not putting pitches exactly where they want to. For Bryce Miller, we're gonna have to see how he responds after his two worst starts of the season tonight. You will know by the time this episode comes out on Wednesday. But what I'm most worried about him would be predictability, because the predictability really kind of got the best of them, and a little thing I guess with his with tipping his pitches as well, which we'll see how he adjusts with. But he's now going to get an extra day of rest for today. So what it's going to have to be a wait and see if this is actually going to be a long term issue. Two weeks is not a large stable size. That's why they play one hundred and sixty two games, so over that full season, the good pitching staves normally pitch well and the bad pitching staves, don't. 00:14:26 Speaker 2: I think that's right. And every rotation goes through its ups and downs during a season, so you have to hope this is just kind of a roadblock in the road so far and they find a way around it and get back to being the rotation that we know they can be, because they're going to have to along with the offense heating up if this team is going to go where it wants to go. Speaking of the offense here, there are a couple positive storylines we can get to this week. Believe it or not, even though it was a tough week, there are two very positive storylines we can talk about. The first one DJ being Taoscar Hernandez is starting to heat up all of a sudden. 00:15:01 Speaker 1: He is looking not all the way back I would say the last year, but the peripherals of his season are looking pretty good. Lots of positive His season WRC plus is now back up to one oh two after his performance yesterday, and there's also some really good things with his with his swing profile as well, which which I really like. He's chasing less, he's making more contact in the zone and his barrel rate is up. I love that. And over his last two weeks, he's walking eleven percent of the time. Eleven percent. Remember you know we're sitting here weeks ago saying like, man, this dude's striking out ten times as much as he's as he's walking eleven percent walk right over a two week span. That's real progress right there. So good job to Oscar, They and they, this is when they've needed it, they really have. For example, if you look on the other side, Cayl Rawley had a crummy road trip. He was just terrible this road trip. He did not hit well at all. But it was Taoscar in that spot, really shining the light on his offensive profile, alongside a really good Julio Rodriguez road trip as well. 00:16:10 Speaker 2: By the numbers, Taoscar Hernandez went eleven for twenty nine on the road trip, so he hit three seventy nine, two home runs, seven runs batted in for the month of June. He's now as a result, hitting three seventy nine and he's opsing eleven ten. Now, small sample size, but for a handful or two of games, that is awesome. And to your point, his batted both his batted ball profile there we go, looks much closer to what it's been in past years, especially the past three years, where he's been dominant compared to what it's been the first two months of the season. So there is a lot of positives with ta Oskar here swinging the other way, which the Mariners have needed. I mean, we've talked about for a few weeks straight. Now. The guys that have to get going tie Tai Oscar Gino. Now, while TI's not hitting for a ton of power still, he is starting to hit just in general offensively. And if him and tay Oscar are going, that's two important pieces of the puzzle. 00:17:05 Speaker 1: Again, with Julio in that mix and Jared having another hot month, that's all of a sudden turns into a half decent offense that me, you and I wouldn't spend all week complaining about, which is nice. Let me read you these numbers on his swing profile the last couple of weeks. I'm going to compare this to his season averages just so you can see how stark it is. Over the last two weeks, he's only swung at twenty four point eight percentage percent of pitches outside of the zone. For the season, he's swung at thirty eight percent of pitches outside of the zone. That's pretty significant right there, chasing a lot less. He's making contact with fifty percent of pitches outside of the strike zone opposed to forty eight point three for the season. Also, improvement inside the zone pretty much the same, seventy swinging at pitches inside the zone seventy three percent of the time seventy two percent for the full season. Zone contact percentage, which is probably the most important stat here, is up five percent eighty five percent zone contact rate over the last two weeks, and he's just sitting at eighty point seven percent for the season. And his swinging strike percentage has dropped from seventeen point three percent for the season to eleven percent over the last two weeks. Tangible, noticeable, healthy improvements for Tioscar Hernandez, both stat wise and rate wise when you look at his swings. 00:18:34 Speaker 2: That's all great. If he can do that the rest of the year, walk anywhere from eight to ten percent of the time, keep the strikeouts somewhat down, and hit the ball as hard as he's hitting it, how much more can the Mariners ask for? Now? The one thing I will sit here and ask for is that he hits a little bit better at T Mobile Park. I mean, his ops at home is six twenty two as we speak, which is not great. But he did just get hot on the road trip, which is what brought his road ops up. So hopefully where he hits when he starts hitting with authority at home, his home ops can go up a little bit too. That would be the one thing I look at. But other than that, you got to be pretty happy with where he's at. I mean that Bally hit on Sunday and Anaheim. It was scorched now. It had big Chris Paul hits huge three to cut the deficit vibes when he. 00:19:16 Speaker 1: Hit it, But you were waiting to put that one in. 00:19:20 Speaker 2: I was, because it just had that feel. They were down six to nothing at that point. It felt like all the air had come out of the balloon. And I felt great for ta Oscar that he hit that home run, because it's great to see him getting back on track. It just felt like the game was so far out of hand by the way. I was thinking about this as I tweeted this out, because we did tweet that exact caption out when he hit the home run. How exactly did this become such a big meme. I mean, I know was posted as a YouTube video, but the guy that posted the video, like, did he do that on purpose? Did he think it was gonna go as viral as it did? Like, I don't even know. 00:19:53 Speaker 1: I couldn't give you a concrete answer on that. I do think the NBA tweeted out a clip along those lines where it's Chris Paul HiT's a three for this to trim the Mavericks lead to lead to forty two. I think it was along those lines, and then people added the Kevin Harlan Kevin Harlan call underneath Paul for three. I gotta think the next step the next time that happens and we tweet something out along the lines of that, I think we need to take the extra thirty seconds, throw the highlight into a video editor and put the Kevin Harlan soundtrack underneath. 00:20:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, or we put an Aaron Goldsmith call or somebody underneath. Like if ta Oscar hits a home run like that again, when it's an eight run deficit and you take that Goldie call of Dylan Moore's Grand Slam against the Astros, you could do that, Yeah, something like that. 00:20:50 Speaker 1: The thing is what's the next step for taoscar is that he needs to now do this multiple years in a row to see the Chris Paul Special, and that's that's what he needs to do. So we'll keep track of that and we'll make we'll look to make some noticeable improvements of that next time we dig that one out. But good stuff from tasker Hernandez and hope that he keeps heating up as they're back at home this week. Another positive storyline for the Mariners. Andreis Munos is back, and thank goodness he's back. He has appeared twice as of again recording here on Monday, and he has looked every bit the part that the Mariners have missed. 00:21:30 Speaker 2: He has as he hasn't missed a beat. He's been putting high leveraged situations, especially that last situation he was in. He's pumping one hundred and one miles an hour slider, looks nasty. He's getting the best hitters in baseball to look silly. He looks like he hasn't missed the beat, and the Mariners need that guy desperately because we have seen the top relievers in this bullpen worked very hard through the first two months They've thrown in a lot of games in high leverage where usually these are spots that Muno's gets much more opportunity, and he just wasn't healthy. Now that he's back, it feels like a lot more pressure can be taken off guys like Brash, like Munyo's, like Topa, like Spire, all those guys. La I said Brash, I said Munyo's in that group, I meant Seawall. 00:22:15 Speaker 1: There we go. So I was gonna say, I'm not gonna include Seawald in this group because we consider Seawald an elite reliever. I'm thinking along the guys of of Brash, Spire, Got and Topa, who we're all very high on. We really like themselves. Well you can throw a sauce ato on there as well. High on their stuff. We think they're really good bullpen pieces. The difference between Andre's Munos and Paul Sewald and the rest of those guys, it's a pretty significant gap. And then the gap between Munos and Seawald is also I would say pretty significant. They're on a tier of their own. But Munos, I mean, I think we can put him on Mars and put Seawald on the Moon and the rest of those guys are on Earth. I love Matt Brash's stuff, and this is what we hope Matt Brash eventually gets to these days. But how refreshing was it to watch Andre's Munya's going and he faced in the spin of two outings, He faced Fernando Tatis, he faced Mike Trout, shohe O Tani and Anthony Rendon. He struck all four of them out and made them all look stupid, all of them. There's just no one close to what Andre's Munos does in that bullpen outside of Munos, in that bullpen, there's no one close. And he and it took him two appearances to say, oh yeah, by the way, I'm a top five reliever in baseball. Hope you didn't forget that. 00:23:28 Speaker 2: Hands down, he's top five When that guy's healthy, he's one of the best on the planet now. Brash last year, in the second half was a little bit closer to what Munyo's was doing. But we know Brash has been unlucky at points this year. His command's been a little bit spotty at times. So yeah, he's more right now in the group of topa Spier, Sacedo God and those guys have all been good, they just haven't been the level of seawal to Munios. But to have that absolute fire breather and alpha in the back of your bullpen, just pumping gas and snapping off ridiculously, Yeah, it makes a huge difference. You could tell that he wasn't back there as good as the bullpen had been. You could just tell Muno's wasn't back there in the month of May. 00:24:09 Speaker 1: How refreshing is it you put a guy in the in the bullpen, You're like, uh, you take a guy to the bullpen, you put him in the game. These three outs are like, you're getting these outs no matter what one, two, three, It's happening. And that's what you feel like when Munos is on the mound. No offense to those other guys is just not as certain. 00:24:27 Speaker 2: For sure. I Mean, there's a reason the Mariners worked him like crazy in the postseason last year because he's that good. They're like, who do we absolutely trust in these gut wrenching situations Munnos? We saw it again, even a couple of situations he's been in so far. We talk about the high leverage thing. I know, against the Padres, the Mariners had a little bit of a cushion, but you could tell Scott's service was not messing around in that game. He's like, we need this win. We have to secure it. We just have to get some momentum going. I don't care that we're up three or four runs. We're getting Muno's in and he's facing the best guys and he's gonna go get him out. That's what he did. 00:25:02 Speaker 1: And yeah, high leverage anywhere from the six to the sixth to the ninth, inc. I mean, he's getting the middle of the order and then Sea Walt's getting the middle of the order the other time. Like, you have those two guys that you can trust instead of just having Paul Seawald take the middle of the order once and then you're like, well, who's going to get the middle of the order the other time? I don't know, but now you have both of them, which is really nice. We have a couple of smaller storylines as well that we'll touch on here very briefly as it pertains to the Mariners this week. We'll start off with one that is relevant as of today, and he might have pitched by the time you hear this. Ty Adcock is going to be on the Mariner's roster today, former teammate of George Kirby at Elon, eighth round pick in the twenty nineteen draft. Fun stat for you, Lyles. When he debuts, this will be the first time in major league history that three Elon players are in the major leagues at the same time. So fun factor that he throws up to ninety nine. He's got a sharp slider. Twenty innings in Arkansas this year, A one three five era. 00:26:06 Speaker 2: Who's the third guy from Elon, I'll be Kirby. Adcock is at Kyle Baranovich. 00:26:10 Speaker 1: John Brebia Hmm, he's a giant. 00:26:15 Speaker 2: Okay, all right, there we go. So three guys from Elon. Well, shout out the state of North Carolina there and Elon's like one of the afterthought colleges in that state too. Between you know, there's a million of them. U NC wake Forest, who's going to the College World Series? Duke NC State. I could go on forever, but yeah, shout out Elon. Look for Ty Adcock. Most of you probably don't know this name unless you really religiously follow the minor leagues, kind of like TJ and I do. He's twenty six years old. He has not thrown many minor league innings. In fact, he's thrown thirty nine innings and affiliated ball because he's been injured and because of twenty twenty. But he's got a one three five ERA and an fifty five whip this year between Hi A Everett and Double A Arkansas, and the Mariners liked what they saw enough to say, let's get this guy up. With Pen Murphy now injured again, this is who they call upon. 00:27:06 Speaker 1: And Pen Murphy injured. 00:27:07 Speaker 3: What is it? 00:27:08 Speaker 1: The flexer mass. It is the same injury he had. He reaggravated it after facing one battery yesterday. Just annoying stuff, but they will call up Ty Adcock in his spot. This does tell us that Perlander Burrow is not quite ready for the major leagues. We thought he was going to be next up out of the minor leagues, but doesn't really think so. I think, yeah, his commands I think still all over the place. But Ty Adcock again, despite his limited his limited inings, he's got good stuff. And we heard about this when he got drafted. It's like, hey, watch out for this guy. I will note you mentioned his pro innings across pro and college He's only thrown seventy and two thirds. That's it. 00:27:53 Speaker 2: I don't think he's going to be starting anytime soon, that's for sure. He is there to be a bullpen arm, so you know, we'll see what he's got. We know he's got good stuff, and you can jump from Double A to the big leagues pretty seamlessly a lot of the times these days, and that's what they were gonna do with Barrowa if he had been the call up. He's not getting innings into coma right now or anything like that. But yeah, with Barrowa, I think they just want him to refine the command a little bit and throw a few more strikes. I still think we'll see him at some point this summer. It might just not be right now. So yeah, ty Idcock, he'll be interesting to watch. Hopefully he's just another good arm in the bullpen. The other piece of Mariners news here very small but could have big league implications. They signed Dede Gregorias to a minor league deal this week. So Gregoria has played about sixty games with the Phillies last year. Longtime big leaguer had some really good years on the Yankees during the late twenty Tens. He's now gonna be in the minors for the Mariners after playing a few months down in Mexico. So far to start this year, I feel like there's some implications revolving around the big league roster behind this signing. 00:28:53 Speaker 1: I think I'm a little bit on the other side of this. I'm not quite sure. I think he might just stick in to Coma and be in a emergency option. But I don't know if they signed him quite with the intention of putting him in the big leagues. If they did, I'm not really sure what the rationale was behind it. Yes, D. D. Gregorias has had a long and fruitful big league career, and he was just torching the Mexican League. He was hitting three fifty nine, four thirty one, seven seventy seven with a league leading eleven home runs in twenty six games. But over the last two seasons with the Phillies, he had an ops of barely over five hundred. His batted ball data sucks. His average exit velocity last year allow was eighty four and a half. That's in the bottom five percentile. He doesn't have he you know, he does have I guess shortstop power, but his shortstop power is dead poll In the last two ballparks he's played a primarily amount of primary amount of games in have been Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Park, two notorious hitters parks, especially for lefty pole hitters like D. D. Gregorias. There's just not a whole lot I like about his profile. But then again, I get it like he's replacing Colton Wong eventually. Okay, I guess you can't get much worse than Colton Loong. I believe it's been the worst everyday player in baseball by war, So I guess. 00:30:17 Speaker 2: That's what I'm getting at. And I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. Definitively, it just seems like between the fact that Colton Wong is basically been relegated to the last guy on the bench and he's barely playing these days, and the fact they went and sign an infielder like Gregorias and it wasn't like they just signed another minor league depth piece. Maybe that's all Gregorias ends up being, But because he has all this big league time, it just feels like he's there potentially to be a bench bat if they're ready to move on from Colton Wong. I don't know if that's what they do or not. It just feels like that's a chance that that's what they're doing in Gregorias. Is that security net? We'll have to wait and see. 00:30:55 Speaker 1: How are you gonna feel when he gets the call up over Jake Shiner? 00:31:00 Speaker 2: Not great? Maybe not great. I'd still love to see Shiner up here. Dog, I mean, come on, the guy is still hitting. He's not my minor leaguer this week, I will say, but he has continued to hit again this week. Did you see the Mariners highlighted him on there? 00:31:12 Speaker 1: I did see that. Yeah, I thought of you. 00:31:14 Speaker 2: I'm glad. I'm really glad because again now other people are noticing. Hey, we'll have to wait and see. 00:31:20 Speaker 1: I'm just curious to see how this will eventually play it with DDI. Even if he does make the big leagues, I'm not sure. I'm not I'm not really just sold. How long? How long? He'll say? Especially again, he just does not hit the ball hard at all. There's nothing in his Maybe most important and glaringly didn't notice this. From his last full season, he was any first percentile of outspoff average. 00:31:43 Speaker 2: That's not great. 00:31:45 Speaker 1: No, that's probably the worst possible thing to have with the bat and ball profile he does. 00:31:51 Speaker 2: Maybe it's just a death beast. Again, we'll see. I just I'm just circling that and saying maybe there's something more here, but again, will tell. 00:32:00 Speaker 1: Right time, will tell. We didn't get to ask Larry Stone about his thoughts on DDE Gregorios, but it was great to have Larry, who I think he might be the most tenured person we've had on this podcast. As a compliment to Larry longtime calumnist for the Seattle Times, author of Edgar Martinez's autobiography Full of Stories. He's a co host of the Extra Innings podcast with Ryan Divish. We did talk about that a little bit, which was funny, but it was really great having Larry Stone on again. He's he has been around this game a long time and is always able to bring a lot of really good insight. 00:32:38 Speaker 2: He was great, I mean, between our mariners talk with them, between the talk about the book. There are some seriously great Edgar stories that he has. By the way, so if you're an Edgar Martinez fan, which if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are, like DJ and I are you're gonna want to listen to that because there are some things that I didn't know about Edgar and his whole Hall of Fame case and growing up that Larry got to talk about in the book that he told us that we're super interesting. So hopefully it intrigues you guys, even half as much as it did us. I mean, really just all around awesome conversation. 00:33:11 Speaker 1: So with that, let's get to our interview and let's hear from this from the Seattle Times. Larry Stone. 00:33:20 Speaker 2: All right, we welcome on Larry Stone, sports columnists for the Seattle Times and co host of the Extra Innings podcast with Ryan Divish. Larry, thanks so much for coming on. We're excited to have you. We wanted to start this off by giving you a chance to refute a certain claim. So when we had Ryan on a couple months ago, he was talking about your Guys podcast and he described podcasting with you and listening to you on the other end as sounding like you're in a cave in Afghanistan. So I just wanted to give you the chance to respond to those claims. 00:33:50 Speaker 3: Well, I'm in a cave in Bellevue. Is that maybe that's closer? To the truth. Well, there's been times when my computer has not been the greatest as far as podcasting and zooming. You tell me, I don't know, doesn't sound okay right now? Or I think it sounds great, Okay, it does. 00:34:10 Speaker 1: Not sound like you're in the Middle East. 00:34:12 Speaker 3: Okay, there you go. I think you know Ryan is. Ryan's a curmudgeon and he likes to make it sound worse than it is sometimes. 00:34:23 Speaker 1: Do you like do you prefer having that distance though with him? Because you realize that when you guys spend time together at spring training in the same condo while you guys are recording like close, it just doesn't feel right when you're not in the cave. 00:34:36 Speaker 3: Actually, I like doing a good person better because then then if there's some technological foul up, we can solve it together and so and I do the dirty little secret. But I do enjoy his company and hanging out with him too, So I spring training is kind of like the highlight of my year as far as works. So it always has been. So don't tell him. 00:35:00 Speaker 1: It's always good because you can hear the best part of that when you guys do those podcasts in person is that I can hear the drinks being poured in the background during the podcast, you guys go for what like an hour and twenty minutes, and you could just hear ice going in the glass. You can hear it being poured, you can hear glasses down on the table. And you know, I think, I honestly don't think there's a better way to podcast than doing that. 00:35:22 Speaker 3: Well, I that's mostly him. I gotta say I eat the bananas, he drinks the drinks. That's our that's our partnership. 00:35:32 Speaker 2: So I gotta follow up with that. And I'm glad TJ brought up spring training because I didn't even think to ask us before getting you on, But now I'm glad I'm going to Can you give us the story behind the bananas and these spring training bananas with you and Ryan? 00:35:44 Speaker 3: Yeah? I can't. So every year we share a condo. He's there for the holes with seven six seven weeks and I only show up for a week or two. And you know, the first day I go out and always buy groceries. It's for to stop up for the couple of weeks that I'm there, and I always buy a bunch of banana and a banana bunch, you know, with the idea that I'm going to eat them all, and then the first couple of years, I would eat maybe four of the six and then leave two and they would disintegrate. And this was not intentional at the time, and he would he would take pictures of it, and it became a kind of a running joke. And then after the first two years it became a shtick and we intentionally would leave a banana there to rock because people seem to enjoy it. So the first couple of years it was totally unintentional and it just happened organically. Maybe not a good word to use with bananas, but then after that it was I got to admit we planned it, and it was kind of a stick. 00:36:58 Speaker 1: What was the latest you've eaten one of the bananas? 00:37:02 Speaker 3: Well, I would, I mean I did it. I'd leave it there when I left. And sometimes they would go for four weeks before he was before he left because I would I often go early in spring and sorry, all of a computer deal here, he would, so they had a long time to disintegrate and get progressively uglier. 00:37:38 Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what, people still enjoy the whole bit of it, because it's still Ryan's Twitter photo to this day. 00:37:43 Speaker 3: Yeah, I know people for some reason, people love the whole banana saka. I hope that's not what I'm remembered for, is the Larry Stone he had the rotten banana. I hope I have a better legacy than that. 00:37:58 Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what, I think people have fonder memories these days of urin Ryan's banana bit than the current version of the Seattle Mariners. So if that's a transition and we were going to dive into the team a little bit here, I know you just wrote a column this week after what was a pretty disastrous weekend in Texas kind of talking about the state of where you feel like the team's at. So with the lack of offense, were you one of those people that felt like they should have been significantly adding through free agency this winter? 00:38:29 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that's a tough question. 00:38:31 Speaker 1: Uh. 00:38:31 Speaker 3: You know, I felt they had a team that could compete for the title even without that going into for the division title going into the season. But I also felt surprised that they didn't go more aggressively. It seemed like a year to be aggressive in free agency because they had one, you know, a playoff series. They had a good young core, they had excitement, they had the budget I think to do so. I mean you look at it case by case, and it gets a little bit harder to, you know, to be critical because you know, they weren't going to give Judge that money or Boguard's money, that sort of thing. And some of the guys that the people clamored for have been really bad. Have you know, Carlos Grea hasn't been very good. But I do feel like they should have addressed the the offense better than just getting you know, a Tommy Lostella, which you know, Ryan and I predicted in spring training that he wasn't going to make it beyond April, and because he didn't, he looks shot in spring training and Pollock. You know, I did think Wong was going to be it was a nice pickup, and I thought ta Oscar was a nice pickup. It's just they they needed somebody, a stronger bad at d H and I think that's that's played out. When your dhs are hitting one fifty in June. 00:40:00 Speaker 1: You send in your column blind faith is never a solid foundation to build upon, is that in the sense of I would say over I don't even know the best word for this, like overestimating. I say, what you currently have, Well, I think that's what you meant by that. 00:40:23 Speaker 3: What I meant was that just because I think a lot of people think, well, they turned it around last year with this amazing stretch, and I think they can do it again. And that's blind faith to me, and as Brian and I both have talked about it a lot of times, it's unrealistic to expect another fourteen game win streak or another stretches. I think it was twenty two out of twenty five wins. You can't dig yourself that deep of a hole. But they are only five games out of the wild Card, so they still can very much capable of getting hot and being in title content, or not title contention, but play wildcard contention. But the difference this year is that there's these these three teams above them that are all headed for ninety seven wins, are above at the pace they're at now. Now you could be skeptical of whether a team like the Orioles can can maintain that, and that's valid, but I do think the Marror is going to have to win more than ninety games to get that spot, and you have to wonder if they're if they're capable of that the way they've started. 00:41:34 Speaker 1: This year, How do you how do you assess blame in a situation like this. 00:41:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I think you give some of it to ownership for that's kind of murky. How you know what sort of parameters they've given the general manager or you know, Depota not officially general manager anymore, but he's still pretty much has those duties. Some are some Stapoto for the guys that he signed, really none of them have hit yet that I think other than I do, you have to give them credit for the bullpen signs that some under the radar bullpen guys that have really been good and has allowed them to to continue the bullpen success they've had in past years. And that's an area where I think he deserves a total credit for turning over that bullpen year in and year out and yet coming up with somehow coming up with arms that there are power arms that are good. But and then you know, you got to give some the service because his job is to get the players to play, and the players themselves deserve some of the blame too for for not living up to their the old saying the back of their baseball chaoskar Fernandez is a better player than he's shown, and maybe he's still to show that now. Yeah, you've had a good stretch here, and if he got hot, you still see what this team could be if you've got Julio and Chaoscar and Kelnick and Suarez, you know, all hot. At the same time, there's the seeds of the dynamic offense there. There's just way too much swing and miss right now, and way too many guys who are inconsistent, and really they haven't been able to have a consistent stretch of production yet this year. 00:43:31 Speaker 1: I would just say, personally, I'm at a crossroads where I'm not sure how much blame actually gets leveled on the players versus based on I guess everyone else around building this team, because at some point, like we've continued to talk about, like these players are all better than they are, and it's so puzzling to watch a group of players who are all pretty good last year all get worse except one, Jared Kelnick, who had set the bar about as low as humanly possible for his career standards or breaking out and looking like a major leaguer this year. All these guys, they you know, they have their own hitting coaches, they train elsewhere in the offseason, they have their own personal hitting philosophies on top of whatever the Mariners do. So you look at that, you're like, Okay, maybe the team wasn't built right right, but you know these players and their I guess execution for how they play baseball. That's like we're relying on them to also show up and do their part as well, and it just doesn't seem like that's happened. 00:44:31 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's for whatever reason, the team hasn't clicked yet. Really this year, I do think they have a sustained run in them. And I thought before they played the Yankees and the Rangers, I thought they were on the verge of that because the one thing that this team had was for starters. I thought, who you could count on to be dominant on any particular day, And that takes you a long way. And then Kirby went out and threw a state and so did Gilbert and Bryce Miller now has had two bad outings in a row. And you know Brian wu who took Marco's place when he got hurt, was lit up. So now you have you have. There's no questions about I never had any issues with questions about Gilbert and Kirby's ability to bounce back. They just had bad starts and it was poorly timed and they've both come back with a vengeance. But I think you have legitimate questions now about both Miller and Wu. And that's forty percent of your rotation. So those the next outings from both of those guys are going to be huge. If Miller has three in a row where he's you know, he's lit up, and WU does the struggles, they're going to have to deal with both of those spots. And I don't know how much depth they have in the miners right now to fill those spots. I guess Emerson Hancock is the next in line, or else Tommy Malone, and I don't think love Tommy Malone, but I don't think anyone wants to see that. So, uh, you know, I thought the pitching was going to carry them on a streak, but you know, against really good teams the Yankees and the Rangers, it let them down. And so you know, you're right. The players they just haven't lived up, and starting with Julio, we anointed Julio as the Baseball's newest sensation, the face of baseball, the superstar, and I think he certainly has that ability and will be, but he hasn't. Uh, he hasn't played to the level that I think we all expected. Even even so so, Julio is much better than most players in the league, and he's still roughly on a thirty thirty pace and and all that, but we all know that that that we we could see, we worth expecting better Julio than what he's given us. 00:46:57 Speaker 2: I'm gonna put you in a time machine here. I feel like the could be a fun exercise if we go back a year ago when you know, it was mid June and the Mariners were way under five hundred before that whole fourteen game win streak and they turned everything around. What was your view on the team back then, back in twenty twenty two when they were at their low point versus now because they don't have as much ground to make up as they did last year. But I was interested to get your comparison on this between what the mood was in your mind last year versus this year. 00:47:27 Speaker 3: I think it was more dire last year, to be honest, you know, it looked like they were dead in the water. There were questions about whether there was going to be, you know, personnel changes. Manjo was going to be fired. All those kinds of questions were lurking, and I don't think anyone really saw. You did the math, like if they play six, if the Astros or whoever was above them, the Blue Jays play five hundred ball, they'll have to play six twenty five ball, And that seemed ludicrous, but that's exactly what they played. You know, they did what they had to do. I think this year, having gone through last year's experience, I think this is a better team than it was last year. More, I think the pitching is better with Castillo there now. I don't know if Castillo was even here yet at the time. You're talking about losing Robbie Ray was a blow, obviously, but Miller for five starts, looked like he was even better than Robbie. He was performing better than anybody. So I do think there's a chance he could get that back, and that would be go a long way. But I think the in the bullpen, I think is just as good, especially with Munio's back, So I think I feel a little bit better about the team, but I don't know if they're if I feel better about their chances of making the playoffs much better because just from what I said, the teams have so many teams above them, and with the with the the age, the Oakland A's factor is that with everybody cleaning up on the A's, the wind totals are going to be much higher. I don't think I think ninety will do it this year. And when you're sitting at five hundred, you need to get above ninety. That's daunted. 00:49:15 Speaker 1: I think in terms of disappointment, I mean we had that. There's the playoff disappointment, there's all the teams in front of them. There's the balance schedule, which now doesn't mean all the teams in the American and League East can can eat up on each other and and and worry about all that. There's going to be less cannibalization, I think at the top. But I think outside of playoffs, the other terms of disappointment with this season is you're hosting the All Star Game. You have a chance to put your franchise in front of baseball and market it to other free agents, which we keep talking about. Why don't players want to sign here. Why don't they have a reason to sign here. You had an excellent you know, marketing and selling opportunity to a lot of players, to see some of your fans, to see the atmosphere, to see the ballpark, to see all of your good players in the All Star Game. And now we sit here and wonder, who, like who from the Mariners is even gonna make the All Star Game. Julio maybe by vote, if he really goes off this next month, perhaps that's a possibility. There will probably be a pitcher there. But it's a far cry from I would say the last time the Mariners hosted the All Star Game in two thousand and one, when they were the center of the baseball world. They had eight All Stars, they had four guys in the starting lineup, everyone you know, all eyes were on Seattle, and it was this magical experience. You were there for that and this, and barring a turnaround, this is gonna be, i would say, a very disappointing performance to showcase yourself and market yourself to the rest of the league in that point, I'm sure. I'm just curious what you think of that. 00:50:51 Speaker 3: Ar Yeah, no, that's a very valid point. I wrote a column to that effect. I believe that they envisioned exactly what you said it was to be this magical showcase as it was in two thousand and one. I've often said and written that I think that All Star Week was the high point of Mariner baseball. They were running away with the division, on the way to a record number of wins. That they had eight All Stars. Lou was there as a coach, so practically the whole team was there. The weather all week was beautiful. It couldn't have been a better atmosphere for baseball in Seattle. And then from that point, you know, there was nine to eleven happened. Two months later they lost in the playoffs, never to return until last year. So you know, kind of if you do a good bell graph, that was the absolute peak and then it went down on the other side. So I think that they envisioned that it would be back at the top there by this year. And you're right when you look at who might make the team, I do think Julio is going to make the team one way or the other. They I saw an article ESPN had a projection of who would be the All Stars. The entire All Star team, and they had Julio as a reserve and what their comment was, Baseball is not going to have the All Star Game in Seattle without Rio at Rigaz, and I believe there's some truth to that, and he's got a month if he gets hot, I think his stats will justify that too. Now, kel Nick for a while looked like he was going to be a slam dunk pick, but he's headed in the wrong direction right now. I think that's borderline. Unless he gets hot again. I think Castillo is going to make it, and suddenly there's a lot of I think there's a lot of support being thrown sea Wald's away as kind of a dark horse, but I think Kirby or Gilbert or possibilities as well. So maybe they'll have three. It's not quite the eighth that they had in two thousand and one. 00:52:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can use all the sales pitching they can get. I mean, and this is probably wishful thinking for Amar's fans everywhere. But to TJ's point, to your point about marketing yourself, well, there might be a guy that's going to show up at the All Star Game that you might want to market yourself to. For next winner, who happens to play two ways, and again it's probably a shot in the dark, but doesn't mean they're not hoping for it and probably want to try for it. 00:53:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if I were in charge, I would throw every resource I had at show Hey. And maybe one way to look at their inactivity this past year was that they were holding their resources for a run at shoh Otani. And I know a lot of people are skeptical, and I hear from them all the time, like give it up. This organization will never do what it takes to get show Hey, Tony. Maybe they're right, but when you look at all the positives he would bring, I mean they're both from every standpoint on the field, which is obvious as a drawing card, as a link to the Asian market, uh, prestige to lure other players here. He would be unbelievable. But who knows how much he's gonna cost. The estimates are like half a billion as a starting point, so that's you have to you'd have to swallow hard to yeh, give that kind of money. But there's gonna be a lot of teams who are going to be willing to do it because it's like getting it's like getting an All Star hitter and an All Star pitcher here getting two players in one. So that has to play into the salary that he gets as well. I mean, maybe maybe you give him a little more and a shorter term deal. I could see that, but I do think I'm not so sure that the All Star Game really matters so much. He's been to Seattle, you know that many many times. He doesn't need to be sold on Seattle as a city. It'll word is that he likes it here, that he likes Seattle, and he's fine of the city. There was there was a school of thought that he did want to come. The reason he did come here in the first place is that he didn't want to be an Eros shadow. I don't think that's a problem anymore because nobody's Inn's shadow, including each bro. So he's carved his own mark in the game of baseball. He doesn't have to worry about each ro's shadow. So I think that may play in the Mayor's favorite But who knows. Who knows what's going to be the deciding factor. I don't think anybody can honestly say they'd known, you know. 00:55:33 Speaker 2: If we were going to transition again a little bit here. I mean going back to the early two thousands obviously well and certainly the nineteen nineties, but just on the point of the All Star Game. You know, it was a team that featured Edgar Martinez pretty heavily. And I know something that you've done in your career that you're really proud of is you helped him write his autobiography, which is pretty awesome. I still haven't had the chance to read it. I'd love to, but I was hoping you could give us a little bit of insight to that on how that idea was formed, kind of how Edgar came to you with the idea and how he picked you, of all people to help him write it. 00:56:06 Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I came to him with the Idea It Company, so you know, I covered him. I came to Seattle in ninety six, so I covered him through the end of his career in oh four, so I had a good relationship with him through his retirement and his return as the hitting coach, you know, and I wrote a lot of articles advocating him for the Hall of Fame. At the time we did the book, he was not in the Hall of Fame yet. He had been he'd fallen short. You know, you're on the ballot for ten years, and I think it was the eighth year and he was still short. But I just got the idea that he was worthy of a book. In two thousand and one, I had gone to Puerto Rico to do That was the year A Road joined the Rangers, and the Rangers opened the season against the Blue Jays in Puerto Rico. It was the first game major League game played Puerto Rico. So the paper sent me to Puerto Rico to cover that game, and I pitched the idea of while I'm there, I'll go to Edgar's town of Dorado where he grew up and do a big story. And Edgar helped me with that. You know, we had an in depth interview about his upbringing. He set me up with relatives and friends in Dorado who met me there and showed me around and turned into a really good story that you know, he liked and all that. So that kind of planted the seed that there's more, that there's even more there, I thought, and I had the roots of his story. So I was in spring training that year. I guess it would have been eighteen twenty eighteen or maybe I can't remember anymore, and I just approached him on one of the backfields and said I was interested in doing his autobiography. I thought it was warranted. And he thought about it for a second said okay, So that was it. That was how it happened, I asked him, and he said he thought about it for about five seconds and said, okay. So all during night year that season, when he was the hitting coach, I wasn't traveling with the team, So when the team was home once a week, I would go out to his house and sit in his living room and turn on the tape recorder and we just talked about his life, sort of chronologically, talked for an hour, hour and a half at a time. That was about as much as either of us could handle. And so we did that throughout the season, and then by the end of the season, I had the story, and I took some a couple of weeks off and just turned it into a book at that point, maybe maybe it took me about a month, and we were working with edge of course, setting him to chapters, but it was his story and and we that's that's how it came to be, and it was published by Triumph, and and then I don't know if it helped him get in the Hall of Fame, but it was he was I think he made it on the next ballot after the book came out. And that was another highlight was that Edgar allowed me to be with him when he got the Hall of Fame ball You know, if he asked me to rate my the highlights of my career, I think that might be number one. It was in New York City. He had gone to New York City because it's his daughter's birthday and she wanted to see a Broadway play. And they also have a big Hall of Fame press conference in New York City for the people who were elected. So they thought, well, if he does make it, and it was looking good because of you know, mister Tibbs. The Hall of Fame tracker. 00:59:44 Speaker 4: Had him of like eighty five percent, but that you know, he's been high on on that tracker before and not made it, so they weren't They weren't convinced completely that he was going to make it, but at least he'd be in New York. 00:59:56 Speaker 3: So I propose I asked him if I could be with and so I was in the you know, the hotel suite when he got the call. It was just met him. His kids is Holly, his wife, a close family friend, his brother, and Tim heavily of the Briners. So you know, to have that privilege of seeing a guy make the Hall of Fame and you get the call about an hour before the show on MLB network, so and you're scorn to secrecy. So I was one of twelve people in the world who knew that he was a Hall of Famer for about an hour and it's just just an incredible, incredible day that I'll never forget. 01:00:41 Speaker 1: You mentioned during the course of this in two thousand and one when you went back to his hometown. I was reading that article before we're doing this interview, and it was really fascinating. So I'm just kind of curious in your stance what really stood out of from that visit about the impact he made on that baseball community while he was there, while he was a youngster and then as he you know, has grown to be a professional and be an all time great. 01:01:06 Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's just how modest his upbringing was. I mean that these were this was not a rich community, and so you know, he came from very humble beginnings, and the whole story about about how he was raised by his grandparents I found very compelling. But I remember going to like the little food stands near his in his town, and and there would be framed pictures of Acker, you know there. That's how much he meant that people had his picture on display at the places of business. And I was in. I interviewed one woman and she goes, wait a second, She ran into her house and came back out and showed me an hotograph picture she had of it, or that she had up so just you could just see what he meant. And everybody unanimously just they just revered him as both a person and a player. Because he'd get he would get back to toder it. We'd always come back. He'd hold like a picnic kind of thing to raise money, that sort of thing. So, no, he never forgot his wos, and they never forgot him. 01:02:24 Speaker 1: What I think is the most fascinating thing about his upbringing was the decision he had to make as an eleven year old whether or not to go to New York with his parents or not. He decided to stay home, And I don't think it's that crazy to think that if he decided to follow the rest of his family to the United States, he probably wouldn't be a baseball player. Is that fair? 01:02:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he thinks for sure, because his brother, who was a pretty good player, went with the family and his career kind of fizzled. And yeah, I mean the whole story of how he kind of hit on the roof when the parent parents came to take the kids back and he didn't want to go, so we kind of hit out until it was too late they had to head back to the airport. I mean, that's compelling stuff. And yeah, I think his baseball career would not have flourished like it did in Doratto, and it almost didn't happen there. He was twenty and when he finally signed, there's not many international prospects that was before now Puerto Rico is part of the draft. Back then, it was sort of like the Dominican You were a free agent and teams found you and signed you. And I mean, if you're not signed by age twenty here, very rarely signed. And he just it's another flukey circumstance. There was a tryout camp and he'd been a lot of tryout camps and hadn't gotten any traction, and he didn't even know about this one, but one of his co workers told them about it. So he went and Marty Martinez, who had been a long time Mariner coach and scout, actually managed him for one game when Dick Williams was when Chuck Collier was fired and Dick Williams was hired, there was one game when they had while they were waiting for Dick the Marty Martinez managed. So he's in the list of air managers. But he's the guy who saw the talent in Edgar and recommended that they sign him for a very modest amount. You know, his cousin, Carmelo Martinez was a was a solid major league player Padre's Cubs, a couple other teams, and Carmelo was already in the minor league system on his way up. But you know, Edgar was been overlooked, and Maris took a chance. He went to Bellingham and hit like one seventy and all and thought he was going to be cut in the head home, but they gave him another chance and he took off from there. 01:04:57 Speaker 1: And he did that tryout after working in over which I think is just crazy. It just crazy. He said he couldn't even swing the bat. 01:05:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it was his defense that impressed Marty Martinez to sign. He was ironic, good defensive third basement until you know, he blew out his his hamstring in Vancouver and that's more part of the Edgar's lore at an exhibition game, and that's pretty much what led him down the path to being a DH because he was really never the same physically after that. 01:05:35 Speaker 2: You know, I want to go back a little bit to when you were just talking about how you were with Edgar when he got the Hall of Fame call, and if you watch his reaction on that MLB Network show, he was pretty stoic for the most part. He was obviously very grateful and you could tell he was happy. But what was it like behind the curtains after the camera turned off, because I mean, I have to imagine there were some real emotions there, especially after waiting ten years. 01:05:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're right, it was. It was. It was really surprising to me how stoic he was. The family was going crazy. But I mean I asked him about that later because I wrote a column about the whole experience, and he said that he had like tricked himself psychology, psychologically to temper down his emotions. That was like a coping mechanism. So I mean he never really broke beyond that. Yeah, being there were there were tears and whooping from the family and everything, but Edgar was pretty low key the whole time, even when the cameras were off. 01:06:39 Speaker 2: Uh. 01:06:40 Speaker 3: There was a cool moment right after where Holly, his wife, gathered everyone and they had a toast to Edgar, and I think he got a little emotional there. And then he had a million interviews to doing, was on MLB network, he was on ESPN, and he was he was doing the car wash as they call it. 01:06:59 Speaker 4: The and. 01:07:03 Speaker 3: But that's Edgar though, I mean Edgar. Edgar never gets uh too high. I think that's why he was able to step in against Jack McDowell with the season on the line and be as the calmest person in the ballpark and get that double. He was he was a master of the mental side of baseball. There's a whole chapter on on that about how his uh, you know, how he trained his himself to seize the moment. It's essentially and I think he used those same techniques when he made the Hall of Fame. 01:07:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny because you you watch Edgar's reactions to all of his clutch moments throughout the years and any really just his whole career in general, and you're right, like he's very, very calm, and we keep using the word stoic, but stoic, he didn't usually show a lot of flair or emotion. In fact, like the one time you saw it a little bit was in ninety he hits that grand slam off of John Wetland, and you see him pump his fist a couple of times, and that was basically the extent of it, at least from what I've seen. That was like the peak of Edgar's showing emotion on the field. 01:08:10 Speaker 3: And the players were amazed by that. And I talked to a bunch of teammates and they all mentioned his outburst after that grand slam is as being very out of character. And that's how they knew how big that was. I mean, he did have a temper. There was an incident in a year, would that have been two thousand or maybe I can't remember what year it was, but they were in Anaheim and they had a lackluster game. It was in the they were fighting for a playoff spot, and Pat Gillick, who was the GM, thought the team hadn't tried hard enough. So he told them to like not they weren't going to get their dinner, to just leave, to get on the bus to go home because they hadn't played hard enough to get a dinner or something like that. And Edgar stood up to him and they had a little bit of a shouting match in the clubhouse. But but they they made amends very quickly. Uh, And both both of them have great respect for the other and that you know, it didn't mar their relationship or anything but that. But that was a side of Edgar that I think maybe people didn't see, was his competitiveness. And that's when, uh, people would say that when when when he did get me mad, you you didn't want to be around. There was also a time that he like charged a picture one of the few times in his career they charged the picture. And I think it was John McLaren who said, like that he was, you know, he was his eyes were crazed. He was there was going to be no stopping. So there was that side to him too. 01:09:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, this has all been really interesting. Stop and for those of you who have not had the chance to check out Larry's book, you can go check it out. It's on Amazon, It's on Larry has it as his pin tweet on his Twitter too, if you want to find the direct link to it. It's awesome. I still need to read it, and it's certainly on my list of books to read. If we were going to transition to one final topic here, I would call it two pretty polar opposite personalities because just going through your career a little bit, you've made a bunch of different stops along your journey, including some time covering the giants in the Bay Area, and you got to cover Barry Bonds. Now, I know, let's call it from two thousand and one on what his personality was, and he was certainly a fiery guy. Was he like that at all when you were there covering him or was it kind of the pre two thousand and one era? 01:10:42 Speaker 3: Well, it certainly pre steroid Bonds, I'm pretty confident of that. When he came to San Francisco in ninety three, I was the beat writer for the San Francisco Examiner for ninety three to ninety four ninety five, So yeah, I covered him as a beat writer for three years and then I went to Seattle and start covering the Mariners, not as a b wrider, but so I'm one of the few people who covered both Bonds and Griffy in their prime, so that that's something that I'm kind of proud of. But Bonds was he was moody, He was incredibly talented. He was the MVP that year and almost the Mariners had been under five hundred. Dusty Baker took over as manager and they won one hundred and three games and didn't make the playoffs because it was no that was the last year pre wildcard, so they lost the last game in Dodger Stadium to not make the playoffs. But it was covering him was a was a challenge because he didn't know what kind of mood he was going to be, and he could be incredibly charming and approachable, and he could be snappy and h gruff as well. So you know, according to the lore, he didn't start the steroids until ninety seven or ninety eight, so and his body kind of reflects that he was. He was on the skinnier side back then, but that's what's so frustrating about it is he was he was a great enough player without the steroids. He was the best player in baseball that year, and he was the best player in baseball most years, so he didn't really need to turn into what he turned into. But that's neither hearing her there. 01:12:30 Speaker 1: Were you surprised when you heard when you when everyone this guest started realizing he was doing steroids? As someone who covered him, were you surprised? Were you not surprised? I mean and not that surprised. It was the era. I think we started. 01:12:46 Speaker 3: Learning more and more that that there were a lot of a lot of players were we're using deeds. So but then, I mean, he was an example of what happens when you take the best player in baseball and give him even more of an edge that in two, the year two, I covered the World Series that year when they lost to the Giant to the Angels, and he was like practically you practically couldn't get him out that year. He was so incredible, and that continued, I think, you know, till the end of his career. Really he looked at his numbers even in his last year when he was forty two or forty three, he still had on baseball standards like four fifty or something like that. I think he could have gone more years. But yeah, I mean he just turned into the greatest force that baseball has ever seen yet, even more so than Babe Ruth. I think in those prime years, those peak years of like ninety eight through two thousand and three or four whenever he retired. 01:13:54 Speaker 2: You know what's funny about that two thousand and two World Series. And I was only about five years old at the time of that World Series, but going back and watching all, I mean, I remember watching that World Series, but I've had to go back and watch the highlights obviously, like refresh a lot of the memories. And I'll never forget seeing Bonds hit that home run off at Troy Percival. It's just an absolute moonshot, right, And I think the camera panned over to Tim Salmon at one point and you could see him, you could lip Reada's mouth saying that's the furthest ball I've ever seen hit. So just to your point, I mean, big League ballplayers in the World Series were just in add during that time of watching him play. 01:14:30 Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Giants, I mean, I had written my Giants finally win the World Series. Story in the they had a lead in the sixth inning of Game sixth six, and that's when Dusty took out Rustler Tez and gave him the game ball, which fired up the Angels and they rallied Scott Spiezio, who would go on to have a really bad Mariner's career. Yeah, and they came back and won that game and then won Game seven, which I knew they would once the Giants blew Game six. I had no doubt that the Angels were going to win Game seven. So even with Bonds at his peak, but I think Bonds was pretty much the team they had. I guess they had Jeff Camp back then, but but Bonds is the reason that they were there, and I thought they were going to win it, but they didn't. 01:15:24 Speaker 1: Two very close friends, Jeff Canon Barry Bonds. 01:15:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if they now have mutual respect, but probably not. 01:15:33 Speaker 1: Was Jeff kenne giant when you were there too? 01:15:36 Speaker 3: He was not. No, I did not cover him. I was there in the Will Clark, Will Clark, Matt Williams, Robbie Thompson, Rick Russell Era. 01:15:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, well that would have been that would have made your beat pretty I would say, pretty entertaining, at least like we don't we the the information is not as easily available back in the nineties, no social media stuff like that. Were people that instantly get you know, team drama. I mean you would be there and you would you would see the fact that they could the two egos could not stand each other, not for a second. 01:16:07 Speaker 3: But I came up to Seattle and I and immediately there was there. I was with Ken Griffy Junior, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson, Jake Buhner, so Edgar Martiuez. So there was a pretty good collection of talent there to man egos. 01:16:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean I guess it never I guess it just kept following you, Larry, wherever you went, the egos solid suit. 01:16:27 Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, exactly. 01:16:29 Speaker 2: Well, this has been awesome. You've certainly had a lucrative career as a sportswriter. This has been a fantastic interview. I know, we've learned a lot and we've really enjoyed talking to you. So we appreciate all the time, and we certainly helped to do it again soon. 01:16:43 Speaker 3: I appreciate it. It's probably the first time that the word lucrative in sports writing has gone together. Thank you, guys. 01:16:53 Speaker 2: Awesome interview with Larry Stone. We really appreciated the time. He is so full of stories. We'll have to have him back on again at some point in the meantime, TJ. Let's go on the farm here. Who have you been looking at over the last week? 01:17:10 Speaker 1: Now? You might have heard this name if you listen to our Chris Langen interview from before the season. Put Riley O'Brien, a guy who came over from the Cincinnati Reds organization, has been killing it in Tacoma over his last eighteen games since April twelfth. Listen to these numbers for Riley O'Brien, one in one with an eight three ERA, twenty one and two thirds innings. He struck out thirty four batters, walk just eleven, allowed a two toh three batting average against. Not on the Mariners top thirty, but as relief farm spent some time at driveline this offseason. Chris Langen insisted he gave Riley a shout out when he was on this podcast. He did, and Riley's now killing it in Tacoma and a guy who in an emergency. I think would probably see the big leagues at some point. The way he's throwing in Tacoma, at least having a sub one ERA over any stretch in the PCL is really impressive, and he's managing it for a guy who hadn't really had a whole bunch of success in the high Miners. His former high, his high mark for ERA and the miners in the High Miners Lole was four five five and twenty twenty one with Louis Felder. That was his high mark, like his his lowest mark. 01:18:19 Speaker 4: It. 01:18:19 Speaker 1: I know that's confusing, and I just tied my words into a knot. His previous low in the high Miners was a four five to five ERA. This season it is down in the ones for Riley O'Brien. That's that's pretty good. So shout out to you, Riley, good job. Stop me if you've heard this before. The Mariners bullpen depth is nuts. This is just another guy that adds to that profile. We've talked about Isaiah Campbell in double A, We've talked about Devin Sweet, Matt Festa's back in triple A now. Because there's so many arms in the big leagues, O'Brien's just another one. I remember seeing him in spring training and he was a little bit shaky in his first couple outings, and I was like, eh, I wonder how long he sticks around. But boy was iron That guy has been just going off, like you said, down into Komas. So it can't hurt to have We'll say that much. The Mariners aren't gonna run out of bullpen options. We can put it that way. The guy I'm gonna highlight is not a bullpen option. In fact, he is another blue chipper in the Mariners system, but he has to be talked about. This week, we're gonna highlight Jonathan Class again. We did so a couple of weeks ago, and there's a reason. This past weekend he swiped his fortieth base of the season on June ninth. That guy stole fifty five bases last year. He's already at forty this year. Oh, by the way, not to mention he has sixteen bombs on the year. Now, this guy has turned himself into a guy that is you're circling his name and checking his box score every night for the Mariners. He is that good and has a chance to be that good all of a sudden in the majors. He's twenty one years old, forty bases on June ninth, he's probably going to be in the top one hundred. When when we're rolling around at the at the mid season update, you would think, right, he might be on Baseball Americas. I usually, I think we both follow MLV pipe points a little bit closer, mostly because it's not mind a paywall easier to track, and he's not on there. But I would I would have to guess with some promotions, he's got to be pretty close to getting on that top one hundred. I mean, this is absurd stuff for a twenty one year old. I mean, Julio did this, I guess. I mean he was in the majors as a twenty one year old, so actually we could throw that out. Never mind, he's in case you couldn't tell that dude. Kid turned out Okay, he turned out pretty well, but as a twenty year old, he was doing those things. 01:20:43 Speaker 2: Class has got an eight to twenty nine oh ps in double A right now for a guy that hasn't been there all that long. He can still get the batting average up and there's still room for his bad in ball profile and just hitting profile to improve down in Arkansas. But the what he's doing right now down there between the base dealing, his defense, his power, it's crazy. Now we had this conversation off air, I'm just gonna throw it out there. I'm not saying it happens. I'm not saying it's sure fire. All I'm gonna tell you guys listening is don't be totally thrown off and shocked if in the last couple weeks of the season, when Arkansas season ends, they consider calling that guy up, especially if they're in contention. Now, I'm not saying it's for sure. Again, I'm not saying it it happens. I'm just saying, keep an eye out and hit his back and his hitting will it have to continue to improve in Double A. But again, just remember I'm saying this now. 01:21:42 Speaker 1: I'm remembering, and I'm gonna respectfully decline that's fine. 01:21:47 Speaker 2: I'm just putting the thought out there. 01:21:49 Speaker 1: That's all my rationale to Lyisle was. I think the things they would need him to do, their are outfielders above him in the organization that would do it better, that are already on the forty Man Cave. Marlowe and Sam Haggerty boom. 01:22:04 Speaker 2: Is there an argument? Is there an argument class A runs better than Haggerty? 01:22:10 Speaker 1: I mean maybe, But does Scott Service trust class A more than he does. 01:22:13 Speaker 2: Haggarty, that's the question. Yeah, So we were. 01:22:18 Speaker 1: Just coming off focus a little bit earlier in this podcast. 01:22:21 Speaker 4: He does. 01:22:22 Speaker 1: I don't know how much you would have to worry about Haggarty's focus on the base pats. We love watching Sam Haggerty run the bases. He was so key down the stretch last year in that exact role running the bases. That's why we're pissed when he got hurt in the last last series of the season running the bases. So if they could have Sam Haggerty healthy, I think that would be the most preferred thing. But in an emergency, sure, why not? And if there are injuries in front of him, in a really really really need a guy, Okay, but I just think if everyone's healthy, I think there are guys about him that will be first and easier to call up. 01:23:01 Speaker 2: Okay, all I'm saying is, like I said, don't count on it. Just remember I'm saying it here in mid June. 01:23:07 Speaker 1: That's all good thing we record all these otherwise maybe you would get lost. Okay, let's get to our MB wrap around now. I'm I'm almost glad that we waited a couple weeks to do this, because we've got some really good storylines pile up for this MLB wrap round. First up, we head down to Texas and as of today, Jacob de Gram has Tommy John. It was announced earlier this week that he was going to miss the rest of the season with Tommy John, and now officially, as of today, he went under the knife and had a successful Tommy John surgery. His initial season with the Rangers over after thirty and a third innings. 01:23:55 Speaker 2: His twenty twenty four may also be over before it starts. I'm not so Sherry pitches next year either. He might not be back till opening day of twenty twenty five. I mean, this is brutal for a guy that's been tabbed the best pitcher in baseball for the last few years. He's going to be out for a year and a half. 01:24:11 Speaker 1: Seventy four million dollars for thirty and a third innings these next two seasons, that's what the Rangers are going to be paying Jacob de Gram these next two years. That's a really high number. I don't know if I can fault the Rangers for signing this. There were the red flags. The Mets, who knew all of Jacob de Gram's red flags, still offered da Gram a contract to come back, and he decided to go to Texas instead with no income tax. But now to Grim, when he comes back, he will be thirty six the next time he steps on a field. I'm pretty confident he's gonna still be good. Fun fact of all the pitchers Lyle Lue through thirty innings this year, we've talked about stuff plus before, just the pure, unadulterated stuff coming out of your hand, not regarding location, not regarding results at all, just how much the ball breaks, how much you know, just how filthy it is. Jacob d Gram had the highest stuff plus in baseball. Anybody over thirty inks. And that includes all your favorite relievers too, who have thrown more than thirty innings, all of them. Jacob de Grim was better than all of them. So the arm is the arm stuff wise age is fine, the arm health wise is not. 01:25:22 Speaker 2: I know you've had some speculation about have all these injuries piled up because of how hard he throws for a while in his career he was sitting mid to upper nineties. The last few he's been in the one hundreds and the triple digit range, and then more injuries have started to pile up. I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking about it out loud, because I know you've thought about it. It is a fair question. 01:25:43 Speaker 1: His average fastball velocity was averaged about ninety six miles an hour in his cy young years in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and then in twenty twenty as well, it was about that because he pitched the full abbreviated twenty twenty season. Well, this fastball jumped up nearly two whole miles an hour in twenty twenty one, which in that small sample of twenty twenty one, if you just purely look at on like on a rate basis, that might be some of the best baseball that has ever been pitched in the over one hundred year history of this game. Is de Gram's twenty twenty one season. I'm really not shy about saying that. I think you would agree with that. But he missed most of that season with injury because he just couldn't stay healthy. And I just can't help but think is all that stress he's putting on his body to throw this hard and to have just this nasty of stuff coming back to bite him. 01:26:39 Speaker 2: It's certainly possible. I mean, we can't know for sure, but it's it's certainly not a ridiculous hypothesis. Let's put it like that, or a ridiculous theory. 01:26:50 Speaker 1: How many other pitchers in baseball history once they get to thirty two and now all of a sudden decide, yeah, okay, I'm gonna sit one hundred. 01:26:58 Speaker 2: It's not a lot. It's not usually a trend, you see. I mean justin Verlander kind of figured it out again once he got traded to Houston. I mean, I think his velow went up a little bit once he got to Houston. But the list is not long. 01:27:11 Speaker 1: Sit one hundred like that's what Debrahm does now, like that is what he does. And I'm curious, how is he going to dial it when he gets there? When he comes back, is he still going to be thrown this hard? Is he going to dial it back a little bit? Is he going to sit ninety five instead of throwing a ninety five mile an hour slider? I think that might be a little smarter. Here's a question I have for you, Lout before we get to our next storyline. Here on the wrap round. Is he a Hall of Famer? 01:27:38 Speaker 2: I was going to ask you the same thing. My vote would be yes, because his peak is as close to the mountaintop as anybody that's ever played in this game. He also has not thrown a lot of career innings. So I think if all of the Hall of Fame voters were within ten to fifteen years of our age, it'd be a no brain. There are a lot of Hall of Fame voters who still like to live in the Stone Age and really care about innings, innings, innings, innings. Now, there is something to be said about longevity and how long he sustained his peak, but I think the fact his peak was as good as it is was enough to say as a Hall of Famer. I mean again, with all the cy youngs he had in such a short time and his pure dominance, he's getting my vote. 01:28:29 Speaker 1: Are you aware of Jaws? 01:28:32 Speaker 3: No? 01:28:32 Speaker 2: As stats? 01:28:33 Speaker 1: The stat So what Jaws does? It is a stat to I guess sort of measure hall of fame. Hall of fame like eligibility or like it's using war to say, like, how how I guess how viable are you for the Hall of Fame. It takes your seven year peak plus your total, like your overall total career, and then it divides it by two, so it gives it rewards guys who had a high seven year peak and maybe not a whole lot after that, while also rewarding the guys who pitched for a long time and continuously did really well, like you know, like Walter Johnson who doubled his career peak after he was done with that. So I have the averages here of sixty six of the sixty six pitchers in the Hall of Fame, seventy three career wins above. Replacement War seven, which is your seven best years of war is forty nine point nine adjusted, which adjusted War seven, which takes all those guys with the massive inning counts early on in baseball and caps them at two hundred and fifty innings, So you only get the first two hundred and fifty innings worth of war of that forty point seven War seven adjusted, and then jaws of sixty one point four, And then there's also adjusted jaws for that second number as well, So Jacob de Gram stacking up against those guys forty four point six career Baseball reference wins above replacement. His War seven is thirty nine point eight. Don't have to worry about adjusted because he's never thrown more than two hundred and fifty innings in a season, and he's at forty two point two jaws, which is, by the way, one hundred and thirtieth overall in baseball. For pictures, there are Hall of famers around him, but more often than not, if we're just looking at War, a lot of those guys around him aren't Hall of famers. Felix is above him. 01:30:28 Speaker 2: I look at the Grom more as the Sandy Kofax of this generation, where Kofax was great for a short amount of time, career ended early, still got in the Hall of Fame. I look at a Groam more like that. 01:30:40 Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw one last thing out at you before we move on. So I looked at all the twenty pitchers with multiple cy youngs. Eleven of them are in the Hall of Fame. We have Roger Clemens, who is a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher who will not get in because he cheated and did steroids. Active guys Hall of Famers Clayton Kershaw, Justin Ferlander, and Max Scherzer. You also have Corey Klueber, who's probably not a Hall of Famer but has multiple syngs. You have Johann Santana who had a case. You have Brett Saberhagen, and then you had Tim Linskam whose career was cut short, and then you have Jacob deGrom. So if you look at overall on that list, sixteen of those guys sixteen. Yeah, I'm gonna say sorry, fifteen of those guys are in the are gonna be Hall of Famers or should be our Hall of Fame talents. Four of them are not. And then we have Jacob de Grom. 01:31:41 Speaker 2: He's getting my vote. 01:31:43 Speaker 1: I think he would get mine too. Having watched him, I would say, yeah, he's a Hall of Famer. 01:31:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll be an interesting case, and some of it will have to do with what he looks like when he comes back, but yeah, you just hope he gets healthy and has a full recovery and is back in time for either late twenty twenty four or early twenty twenty five. Speaking of guys that are looking to get back on the field, here in a bit of a different way. As we transition to our second MLB story here Alec Manila. What a turn of events between last year this year. He's been sent down to the Florida Complex League to basically work on mechanics command get his feelback, because as he sits with the Blue Jays this year, he has been arguably the worst starter in all of baseball. 01:32:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was kind of strange to see that. It kind of makes sense because they have, like most teams, they have a pitching lab down out their spring training complex. The technology down there is better than it would be at Triple A, and he can essentially just work on his mechanics and go throw against minor leaguers to get his feelback, and then eventually probably going to rehab assignment when he needs it and go pitch in Triple A once he works all that out. Very interesting. What's really funny, Lyle, is he had that quote before the wild Card Series against the Mariners, before he gave up four earned runs in five plus said quote, pressure is only something you put in tires. Safe to say he hasn't been the same pitcher since. 01:33:12 Speaker 2: No, he's been driving with flat tires. 01:33:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, could use a little bit of pressure. 01:33:19 Speaker 2: I mean, did the Mariners break Alec Manila storyline that we are gonna hear bring up. 01:33:25 Speaker 1: They might have, They really might have. I mean, I think they live rent free in his head. I'm gonna guess this dude all of a sudden this year. I think it mostly boils down to he stopped throwing strikes. He led the league in walks, his fastball command was all over the place, and his velocity was down. People were curious if it was the pitch clock. You know, he's a bigger guy, wis about two eighty five. If that was wearing him down, I would say maybe a little bit. But you see this happen. Sometimes guys just lose it, and that's why you have these wonderful facilities down and you're or complex league at your spring training facility where guys occasionally might need to rework themselves. And Alec Mineau is one of those guys. But it's just crazy as he's someone who had a two to two four ERA last year nearly two hundred innings turn around and put up a six to three six ERA this year. I mean he's nearly walked as many guys this year. As he did last year. Isn't that crazy? 01:34:22 Speaker 2: It is crazy? And if the RA sits above six point three, I mean, all of his underlying numbers are terrible. All of his peripherals are pretty awful. He wasn't just gonna be a guy that benefited from either working through it in the big leagues or making a couple starts down in the minors with a demotion. No, he probably needed to get down to Florida, get some private instruction and rework some things. That's what he's doing, so you know, we'll kind of see how that works for him. The Blue Days are gonna need him if they want to hang around here this season. I know they have a good offense, but they're gonna need him in that rotation behind Gosman. 01:34:54 Speaker 1: And we joked about the pressure and the tires. There will be no pressure down there, so he doesn't There's nothing else try about. There's no fans screaming at him, there's no nothing. He can just focus and the Blue Jays think that is the most efficient way to get him back on track. Speaking of guys that are off their teams, we'll save probably your favorite storyline for last. Quickly, while Aaron Judge hitting the hitting the injured list. He's hurt crashing making that spectacular catch out in right field at Dodger Stadium last weekend, and he went on the i OL with a contusion and ligament strain, and he's gonna be out for the foreseeable future. And all of a sudden, that Yankee lineup doesn't quite resemble the Bronx Bombers. 01:35:40 Speaker 2: It's from that play at Dodger Stadium where he crashed into the fence making that catch. So as a result, he suffered the toe injury. They say the swelling in the toe's gone down a little bit. So that's good news if you're a Yankee fan or just a baseball fan, because it's we know Judge is phenomenal for this game, but the Yankees are gonna need him. I mean, we saw it in the Mariner series. We saw it a lot last year, and I think it's still range true. When you get past thereon Judge, there's a lot of questions in that lineup. So you're right, if he's out for a long time, how long can this Yankee team tread water? 01:36:12 Speaker 1: And it's not just him. Nestor Cortez is going on the injured list with a left shoulder injury. Baterer has been out with a hamstring injury. Frankie Montass and Carlos Verdon haven't thrown a pitch for the Yankees this season. Those are some pretty big contributors right there that aren't in New York and they as we saw last year, the Yankees without Aaron Judge were not very good. And now we're about to see them with a considerable stretch without him. See, you know, can they hold up? 01:36:41 Speaker 2: From a Mariner's standpoint, they have a chance to take advantage again because not just with Aaron Judge. This wasn't one of our storylines this week, but ord On Alvarez just hit the il too. He's got no bleaku injury for the Astros. So with those two guys out, we'll see what the Astros and Yankees do from here. But for the Yankees, especially, line up just has a hard time sustaining without Judge. It just doesn't look the same. There's nowhere near as much production, and there's not a whole lot of guys behind him that are consistently putting up high, high offensive production. 01:37:13 Speaker 1: Their outfield now consists of Billy McKinney, Jake Bowers, and Willie Calhoun. 01:37:19 Speaker 2: That doesn't sound like the Bronx Bombers to me. Let me tell you what. No, despite Jake Bowers getting some serious revenge against his former team in Americas a couple weeks ago when they were here, but for Judge, you got to just hope he gets back on the field soon. Final storyline here, you know, I'm excited to talk about this one. The debut of one Ellie de la Cruz for the Cincinnati Reds. Some outlets had him, it's the top prospect in all of baseball. He comes up and basically in the blink of an eye, takes the baseball world by storm. 01:37:53 Speaker 1: I can't remember the last prospect that came up like prospect. Besides Shoeyotani doesn't count. He was a sensation already established himself in Japan. What was the last prospect that came up? And you're hearing him on national sports talk radio, going like, Wow, this dude's incredible National sports talk radio. I'm at work at my radio station. We carry Jim Rome, you know, one of the biggest radio shows in America, And what is he talking about on a regular old weekday in the ev and NBA Finals, NFL offseason, all of these other things. Who is he talking about? He's talking about Ellie de la Cruz and it shocked me. It really did shock me. But he's earned it. 01:38:40 Speaker 2: I tried to tell you before it was cool, didn't I that day? La Cruz kid. Yeah, he's pretty good. 01:38:46 Speaker 1: Do you want to hear some of his accomplishments so far? 01:38:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. 01:38:51 Speaker 1: He has already thrown a ball ninety six point six miles an hour from short, the hardest thrown ball in the infield so far this season. Check. He has hit a home run four hundred and fifty eight feet with an eggs of velocity of one hundred and fourteen point eight miles an hour. He has an average sprint speed of thirty point three feet per second in the one hundred percentile of baseball. He reached a peak sprint speed of thirty one point nine feet per second on an infield single. That is the fastest sprint speed on a ball in play in baseball this season. He recorded a ten point eight three home to third on a triple, also the fastest in baseball this season. He already has claimed he is the fastest man in the world. And in summary, lyle I wrote that he in his first week of baseball at the big league level. He hits the ball like Aaron Judge. He runs like Corbyn Carrol, but faster, and he throws like O'Neal Cruz. And he also just so happens to switch hit. Am I missing anything? 01:40:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's six foot five, two hundred pounds. 01:40:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's insane, Like the human body should not be capable of that. 01:40:09 Speaker 2: He's nuts. I mean we say he's kind of like Fernando Tatis. He is his game. There's a lot of similarities between him and Tatis, and we're seeing it here just in this first week. I mean, he's just taken baseball by storm. The Reds all of a sudden have a fire under him. Now they're still under five hundred, but they're playing way better baseball in the handful of games that Ellie de la Cruz has been up and that mL Central it's not that strong either. So what they could do here moving forward with all these young pieces that they now have up in the big leagues, you just never know. And I'll tell you, like this is basically what I saw for half the season last year in the minors, when I was in Dayton and I got the front row seat to broadcasting games for Ellie was exactly what you're seeing now. And it's funny because he wasn't this totally hyped prospect sensation at that point. There was it's starting to be a little bit of buzz built up around him, but nothing like the way it is right now. And credit to Arum, who we've had on this show, and if you want to go back and listen to that portion he talked about it with us, talking about Elie da la Cruz, who he had as his number one prospect basically before anybody else did that. There's just things on a baseball field you watch him do that you don't see many other people do. And I agreed with that speed, power, switch, hitting defense. It's crazy. 01:41:25 Speaker 4: Honestly. 01:41:26 Speaker 2: The craziest thing about him is his right handed swing last year wasn't all that great. Like his left handed swing was way ahead of his right handed swing. When I would watch him last year and I would kind of sit there and talk shop with some of the other broadcasters around the league, and we kind of threw out some takes about all right, is there ever going to be a point where maybe he stops switch hitting where he just hits from the left side and goes left on left since the left he swings so much better. Well, fast forward to this year, and that right handed swing, go watch any highlights of it looks dominant, like as good as the left handed swing. He was hitting out of the yard from the right side at nearly one hundred and twenty miles an hour this year in the minors. Dude, he's a unicorn and he has a chance to be a forty forty short stop. That's real. 01:42:10 Speaker 1: I can confirm that lefty swing is pretty good. Watching that ball leave his bat and nearly sail out of the stadium his first first home run, his first swing. 01:42:23 Speaker 2: He's he's incredible. Dude. Like again, I I'm gonna put this out there. I don't know if it happens or not. Is there a way we can get that guy in the All Star Game? I mean, I don't know who the Reds All Star is gonna be. Maybe it's Matt McLain at this point because he's been so good. Tell me people would not be just licking their chops to see La de la Cruz in the All Star Game. 01:42:46 Speaker 1: They would I think that's gonna be something we'll have to wait until next year to see. However, I know since me and you are gonna be hopefully be at the All Star Game, then that would be pretty cool to see with him against the league's best. 01:42:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was cool, Like when I talked to him a few times last year, he was always really cool, like down to earth. He was humble kid. So I'm certainly rooting for him, like he's probably my favorite non Mariner, Like I'm gonna be watching as at bats all year, and now other people are seeing exactly why all these others were so hyped about him, and why arm was so hyped about him, and why he feels like all of a sudden close to being musty TV if this keeps up. 01:43:26 Speaker 1: He was hitting the smoke stacks in right center field and batting practice as a left handed hitter, which I think is about five hundred feet away, just casually hitting them out to the smoke stacks. Pull up Great American Ballpark if you're not familiar and take a look at it. That's a long way to hit a baseball, and he was doing it in batting practice pretty easily. 01:43:49 Speaker 2: With ease, and you'll see him do it from the right side too. Like Yeah, the fact he plays in such a hitter's park two is only going to be his best friend while he's in Cincinnati. 01:43:58 Speaker 1: Would he compete in a derby? 01:44:01 Speaker 2: I wouldn't be shocked at some point now, I don't know if he'd do like half the round from the left side and half the round from the right side. That'd be interesting if he did something like that, but I would not put it past him at some point in his career, probably on the younger side, to do it. 01:44:19 Speaker 1: That would be pretty awesome. Think about it from T Mobile Park. I mean which direction would you rather hit? You want him to have a chance to hit it over the T Mobile sign and out of the park, or do you want him to park them in the third deck where we saw Shoheyo Tani put it. 01:44:36 Speaker 2: Again? Why not both? He could do half the round. 01:44:38 Speaker 1: From the right side from the weft side, keep him from getting too tired. We're out one side. 01:44:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're not, if you're not watching Ellie de la Cruz yet, you're gonna want to do so because he's he is so fun to watch. I've got his bat back here in my room. By the way, the clubhouse guy and Dayton had an extra because so Ellie broke a bat at some point in the season and he was kind of just gonna get rid of it. My friend, who is the clubhouse guy, took it and he asked me, He's like, do you want this? I looked at it and I see the name day La Cruz on the bat. I was like, yeah, like, I'll take it. So I kept it in Dayton for the rest of the season, like wrapped it up in a couple of towels because the bat was already broken, took it, putting it, put it in the car, car, was shipped home, got back all in one piece, and now it's sitting here in my room. And I'll tell you what, I ain't selling it. 01:45:27 Speaker 1: You got to get him to sign him. 01:45:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be cool. I think he gave me the bat by the time he'd already been promoted to double A. But maybe one day if I have a run into him again, I could ask him to sign it. That'd be cool. 01:45:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be really cool. So I'll have to keep tabs on that. Good job. That's good thinking right there. I never would have thought to do that. But that's pretty cool. Good job. Yeah, all right, let's get to our Russell Wilson Umpire of the week. Wow, I believe you have this one, so take it away. 01:45:55 Speaker 2: So we're gonna go down on the miners in the miners this week, and we're going to highlight a Triple A game between the Indianapolis Indians, Triple A affiliate of the Pirates, and the Omaha Stormchasers, Triple A affiliate of the Royals. So Indie Rodriguez seemingly beat out a ground balls a bang bang play at first inning or at first base in the fifth inning of the game. He was called out. He was pissed about it, chucks his helmet on the ground, and then umpire Lou Williams, who was the first base umpire during this game, tossed him right out of the game. Helmet chucked on the ground, He gets tossed and he's even more furious furious. Then you see the replay of this and the caption shot this dude's entire foot is on top of a pillow at first base before the ball is even in the glove of CJ. Alexander, the Omaha first baseman, like the ball is out of his glove, he's stretching out for it as Rodriguez is foot is fully on the bag. He gets called out reasonably frustrated, and then he gets kicked out of the game. So congratulations to Lou Williams first base umpire in that game down in the minor leagues. Honestly, he might have just hit all three requirements in one play. He didn't see over the middle, he didn't let the play develop. He was insufferable for kicking him right out of the game. Incredible stuff. 01:47:18 Speaker 1: Just can't did he think he must have thought he was showing him up. I like, just let the dude be frustrated. But yes, not congratulations Lou will Congratulations. Yeah, yeah, he did hit all three. I was gonna say definitely the first two, but yeah, I think you're right. I think it's all three pretty easily. 01:47:36 Speaker 2: Like we would have let this one go if he had let Rodriguez just throw his helmet into the ground and be frustrated. But he didn't. He missed the call and threw him out of the game. So impeccable stuff, truly is. 01:47:49 Speaker 1: But do we know if Andy said anything? 01:47:53 Speaker 2: No, it looked like he just chucked his helmet for at least that's what the highlight showed. But you know how empires will be as we highlight every single week, don't we. 01:48:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't even have to say anything. 01:48:05 Speaker 2: No, there's not much more to say. We do have some more to say, however, on speak your mind, So let's do that. 01:48:13 Speaker 3: Speak your mind spoke. That would be unwise. 01:48:20 Speaker 1: What is necessary is never unwise. 01:48:24 Speaker 2: What are you thinking about this week? DJ? 01:48:27 Speaker 1: Well, this week I guess hits a little closer to this show. It was actually announced today that the Athletic is going to lay off twenty twenty riders, about four percent of their workforce, including friend of the show Corey Brock, whose work we really enjoy. So the Athletic laid him off today along with nineteen others. They're shifting I guess to a more national ish coverage. They said mostly the Premier League and the NFL beats are largely unchanged, but that they're going to shift a lot of the local guys into more or national roles, the ones I guess with remaining beats into more national roles. And it just disappointing because the Athletic came in about five years ago and said, well, gonna We're gonna go find those low get these local beats in here that are sorely being missed on sort of a national level, and you have all these in one place with one subscription. And it seems it took five years for them to pretty much abandon that model and go back to pretty much whatever national media outlet writes about any sport, because now essentially for Major League Baseball, they are a national publication. That's it. 01:49:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's terrible. I mean we've talked about it so many times, like the sports media industry just gets worse and worse, Like this happened at the LA Times this week too. They laid a bunch of people off and they're a huge publication now the athletics doing it. I mean, it's just, you know, it can be hard to be optimistic sometimes. I mean, this is part of the reason, like I'm not back doing minor league baseball again. Part of it is because you know, it can be a hard lifestyle sometimes, and part of it is because he's play by play jobs just keep getting cut and cut. We've seen it at the pro level. We've seen it in NHL hockey. I mean, now we're seeing it with writers like you know, it's easy to be cynical. I think that's fair to say. 01:50:18 Speaker 1: And it stinks because now in just the Seattle market alone, they have erased the Mariners, and they have erased the Huskies as well, but two pretty big and significant beats in the Seattle market that are essentially gone. In the athletics only presence in a top fifteen market now is just the Seahawks. 01:50:36 Speaker 2: That's it. Yeah, it's it's awful. And obviously we're wishing Corey nothing but the best. We know he's going to find another good job because he's a phenomenal writer, reporter, everything journalist, and we're rooting for nothing but the best for him. You know, if he ever wants to come on the show and talk ball with us, he is always always welcome to you know, I think we'll always consider him a friend of ours. He's been incredibly gracious to give us a bunch of time. He's always been a friendly face when I've been out at the ballpark. But yeah, it sucks, like it shouldn't have to be this way for him or for a lot of people. 01:51:09 Speaker 1: And this got me thinking, and a lot of other people on Twitter that I agreed with were forming this it says, I feel like the future for those non newspaper local coverages are going to have to be solely independent allah what we do. That's probably what eventually is going to have to be too. I know Christian Caple, who again covered the Huskies since just started his own substack from all the people who enjoyed reading him at the Athletic, and I believe that's still pretty much all he does. So it wouldn't be shocking that a lot of people just take it upon themselves and say, hey, I have a following, why don't I just cut out the middleman and bring the following right to myself and I write my own stuff and cover all these things on my own, And the teams realize, oh, you have your own publication, cool, we'll let you cover that's fine. We know you're a good journalist. So I feel like that might be the road we're heading down. 01:52:00 Speaker 2: I mean, it's certainly not the whole reason. The biggest reason you and I do this podcast is because it's a blast and we love talking about the Mariners and we love being in the Mariners community. But yeah, as two people who are in radio play by play and low level baseball and somebody who's you know, working a job in talk radio and in a smaller market. Not that you're not enjoying it, I know you are, but you know, we can just kind of see where the future of sports media is going. And it's a lot of this stuff. It's a lot of content creation, YouTube podcasting, which is another reason we're kind of we're kind of doing this because you know, we're we're trying to stay with the times and all. 01:52:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you put it pretty pretty well that way. And again, the goal eventually with this is that we can self sustain I mean yeah, maybe not in this exact forum, but in some form and other sure, why not? Right like that, that is the goal with this. And you know, it just kind of it just stinks to see people lose their job. It just stinks because, like you said, it doesn't like it means there are less jobs out there, less job for everybody, And it sucks for all the people who lost a paycheck, and it's going to sting for all those in the future who will lose theirs as well. And it's not like it's not like there's all these jobs to go into in the journal journalism industry. Say we're talking about tech, there are tech layoffs all the time, but there are a lot of tech companies hiring in a lot of roles, and there are a lot of jobs in tech, but in sports not really. It is one thing I have learned in the past, I would say six months especially. It is a small, small industry. It is not very big, and there's a reason everyone knows each other because they can because there's not that many people to know. 01:53:46 Speaker 2: Right. No, it's true, it's true. There's not a lot of jobs out there, and it's terrible that all these talented people are losing them. But it's just less and less jobs. Times go on, so you can only hope eventually more start to open that up again. But you know, only so much of it's in our control. So obviously we wish nothing but the best for Corey, for all the people that got laid off, that they're gonna find another good step in their careers. We know they will. We certainly know Corey well because all these people are so talented. But yeah, it just sucks to see. Okay, on a little bit of a lighter note for my speak your mind here speaking of this podcast. There is somebody we would like to firmly stamp and put in the sand and say we'll never be on this show, and that is one the father of a kid titled the nickname Baby Gronk. So, if you're not following this story, there's this kid. He goes by the nickname of Baby Gronk. He's ten eleven years old. Now, objectively, he is a good football player, Like he's really good. Apparently he's putting up insane numbers in his Pop Warner games. But his dad has been parading him around, taking these stupid recruiting tours to all these SEC schools and trying to get him as much media attention as humanly possible. And this past weekend there was all of these sports media personalities that basically exposed his dad for dming everybody in their mother saying hey, can you repost my son's highlights and then can my son come on your podcast and we can talk, or can I come on your podcast and talk about my kid and how great he is. Where it's getting to the point where it's just out of control. You're hearing about how his dad has basically premeditated him being a superstar since before he was born. You hear stories that he's eating salmon and brian and brown rice on some type of regimen. He's working out six days a week. Again, he's like ten eleven years old, and this dad is treating him like he's gonna be the first pick in the NFL Draft in two months. And I don't know, I think this story is ridiculous. And I think the fact that all these people are exposing him try to just crave and crave for media attention is hilarious. 01:56:00 Speaker 1: Love the tweet that it was every every social media, every team, every account that I've worked for in social media has been DMD by Baby Gronk, every single one in sports, which I think is funny. And we saw, like you said, we saw all these screenshots come out where it wasn't just once. He is very very persistent, I mean three four, five times. Hey, this would be a great time for an interview on your podcast, Baby Gronk, just you know did this? It did that? I was thinking, is this better or worse than that show that's like, uh like teen like kid princesses like that, the kid beauty pageants. 01:56:41 Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is. 01:56:43 Speaker 1: Well, there are shows where like all these all these moms have their you know, five year olds dress up in beauty pageants and are trying to go win win a ton of money, and they're all these just really rich, spoiled kids that like that dress up as a princess and go show themselves up. And it's essentially the same thing with our parents just forcing all these things upon him and saying, yeah, you are going to do this because obviously they're five. And this seems like the like a male version of this. 01:57:11 Speaker 2: I'd say it's pretty similar in the sense that neither should really be happening. And again the fact this kid is being forced to eat salmon and brown rice all the time at ten years old, he's not allowed to eat ice cream apparently, like this is ridiculous. Like I'll tell you what this is the analogy I used. The path him and his dad are going on feels very similar to Andre Agassy, where if you don't know that story, Andre Agassy, who was a world renowned tennis player, is one of the best tennis players to ever live. He's a bad relationship with his dad because his dad pushed him way too hard as a kid when Agassy probably didn't want to pursue tennis to the level that his dad wanted him to, and it created a lot of friction. I don't see how this relationship is going anywhere but there, because eventually this kid's gonna grow up to just resent his dad. It feels like what his dad's doing is essentially trying to live out a dream that he couldn't make happen for himself out of his kid. Again, the fact he said, oh, this has been basically in the work since before he was born, Like that's insanity. That's insane. 01:58:11 Speaker 1: Try to make money off your kid, essentially. 01:58:14 Speaker 2: Like at least with LeVar Ball when that whole show was going on, at least LeVar had two sons who were slammed on top five picks. He made his own media circus, like he generated his own media, and now that they're in the league, he's backed off. Like you don't really hear from him much anymore. It was more just when they were in high school and college. Oh, by the way, LaVar was pretty funny. I'll just throw that out there. 01:58:36 Speaker 1: But he did make some shitty shoes though. 01:58:39 Speaker 2: He did, But listening to his interviews was funny. This, however, is ridiculous. So that's what I've been thinking about this week. I think this story is just a joke. 01:58:48 Speaker 1: What if baby Gronk turns out to only be five foot nine. 01:58:53 Speaker 2: Exactly, then all this goes to waste and the dad looks even dumber for doing what he's doing. 01:59:00 Speaker 1: To put perfectly, there is a specific type of athlete that plays in the NFL. You're not that low. I am not that ninety nine point percent of humanity does not fit that athletic profile to be in the NFL unless Baby Gronk actually hit the genetic lottery. I like all of this will be for not all of it, and it's just gonna look like a gigantic circus for a dad who tried to essentially groom his son to be something that he's not. 01:59:33 Speaker 2: The last bow tile I'll put on this and then we'll wrap this up. Is so Will Compton and Taylor Lewan who are Will Compton's a former NFL linebacker. Taylor Lewan is still technically in the league, is an offensive line Then they do a podcast together this dad DM Will Compton saying can my son be on your show? Or can I be on your show? To talk about my son, and Will Compton told him no, and then he got so sick of the story that he kind of talked about it on a video we put on Twitter this weekend, saying that they what we're saying now, this is ridiculous. The dad turns around and then he DMS Taylor Luwan and said, hey, can we do a one on one interview talking about my son. We don't need Will, we can just do it the two of us and Taylor Luwan of course screenshots it and puts it on Twitter and he's like, dude, are you serious, and him and we'll comm to her laughing about it because like, this is the level that this guy's going to. So anyway, that's your crazy story of the week. If you have not heard about this and yet it's it's ridiculous to put it lightly, just a little bit, yeah, just a little bit, Okay. I think after that that'll just about wrap up this edition of the Marine Layer podcast. You guys know the drill. You want to listen to the full podcast, you can do so on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon. Full video forms on YouTube. Go, give us a like, comment, download, subscribe all that good stuff and follow us on social media on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod for TJ Matthewson. This is Lyle Gold scene. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. Talk to you next week.