Episode 467: How Do We Grade The Mariners Position Players For The 2026 Season?

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number 467 of the Marine Layer podcast. It's the start of our 2026 Mariners grades. We'll hand out season grades for every Mariners position player for the 2026 season. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: Reminder to you guys, before we start the podcast, just do us a couple of big favors. Make sure to download these podcasts. If you're listening on audio, go rate and review. And while you're at it, if you can leave a five-star review, that would be most appreciated. If you're watching on YouTube, just go hit subscribe. You can also check everything out at our website, which is at marinelayerpod.com. And then find us across social media. We're everywhere at marinelayerpod. 00:00:38 Speaker 1: Let's get it rolling. And we welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just Baseball Podcast Network, recording here on Tuesday evening. 00:01:00 Speaker 2: October 6th. 00:01:01 Speaker 1: I'm sure these grades will be so positive, so warm, so much uplift for the future. Just looking through these, honestly, I'm expecting the best. 00:01:16 Speaker 2: Does this look like a face that thinks this is fun? No, I can't even keep a straight face. I was going to say, does this look like a joke to you? But, no. These grades are going to be... I mean, they're not all bad, but there's going to be some tough conversations throughout these grades. 00:01:31 Speaker 1: Most of them are bad for me. Yeah, there's not a lot of great ones. 00:01:37 Speaker 2: Now, I will say, sometimes we do these great episodes and stretch them out into four different podcasts. We're doing them in two. We're doing the position players and we're doing the pitchers. You know why? Because I have so... little interest to continue talking about the 2026 Seattle Mariners. I said, let's do the grades. Let's keep our tradition. We do it every year, but let's get it through with and move on because I don't know who needs to hear four different podcast episodes talking further about the 2026 Mariners. 00:02:08 Speaker 1: Yeah. I think people might just rip their hair out or unfortunately skip the episode, which we don't want you to do. So we'll we'll keep it. We'll keep it to two episodes. What's funny is I was pulling up the Mariners baseball reference page and I was picking out, I picked out, we picked out nine position players to give grades to. Cause frankly, there's just not enough storylines to give grades to, uh, to more of them. Would you like to give out any more honorary grades before we dive into these? 00:02:38 Speaker 2: Let me basically put it like this. If there was a player that we're not giving a grade to on this episode, that's a position player. They probably got an F. Seriously, here are some of the guys we won't be giving grades to. Taylor Ward's not on here. If you want us to grade him, F. Weston Wilson, F. Rob Refsnyder, F. Leo Rivas, really like him, really nice dude. But unfortunately, his play on the field, F. Mitch Garver, somewhere from F to D. Like, pick your lane. 00:03:12 Speaker 1: Brock Rodden. 00:03:14 Speaker 2: I mean, Brock Rodden in 30 games had negative five defensive runs saved at short and an additional negative two at third, hit under 200, and had an OPS plus that was in the 60s or 70s. So unfortunately, F. 00:03:26 Speaker 1: Patrick Wisdom. F. 00:03:30 Speaker 2: Any others? 00:03:32 Speaker 1: Stuart Fairchild. 00:03:34 Speaker 2: He played one game, so like whatever. I guess we didn't put Luke Raley on here, but his grade's not going to be very high either. 00:03:44 Speaker 1: Victor Robles. 00:03:45 Speaker 2: Robles F. I mean, he wasn't even playing in the final month of the season. We never even talked about this. Anybody notice how Victor Robles essentially went about a month on the active roster without getting a single at bat? 00:03:58 Speaker 1: Well, yeah, he was active the whole time. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yep. I mean, it was almost like it was a waste of a roster spot, but yeah, like he was just active, not playing, getting four and a half million dollars and He got. 00:04:10 Speaker 1: Benched, but everyone realizes the season is cooked and they're like, well, we're not going to DFA someone who's making four and a half million dollars. So he's just going to sit there. Yeah. 00:04:20 Speaker 2: I mean, if you want to give Luke Rayleigh a grade, 95 games by baseball reference, he put up exactly zero wins above replacement by OPS plus he was at 105. He hit 15 homers. So he was probably on pace for 20 to 25 home run season. But his defense was awful, and he continues to not hit lefties. If you want a grade for Raley, C, C-. Probably C-. Yeah, there's your one guy we left off this list that isn't a straight F, Luke Raley. 00:04:52 Speaker 1: Not a lot of positives on the position player side. What about the coaches? 00:04:57 Speaker 2: Oh, well, they're all getting A's. They're all coming back. No, Dan Wilson, F. And as we can, I mean, we're not even, what, you want to do a whole coach is great episode? I think we can spare people, dog. 00:05:08 Speaker 1: That would be a waste of time. 00:05:09 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:05:11 Speaker 1: Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, F. 00:05:15 Speaker 2: Like Perry Hill, unfortunately, you ran out the 30th ranked defense in Major League Baseball by a wide, wide, wide margin. So maybe that's partly on the players, but unfortunately, some of that reflects back on him. 00:05:27 Speaker 1: So. 00:05:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we can stick with the players that we kept to that we're going to talk about, but that doesn't even mean those grades are going to be all that great. I will say before we get going on these grades, watching the postseason, it is clear as day, even more so now than it was before, how badly the Mariners have to upgrade their bench. These bench players that shine in the postseason are imperative. The Dodgers are a $ 1 billion roster who essentially won tonight because of Quique Hernandez, again, shining in October. And Quique's kind of in his own bucket. For whatever reason, that guy just finds a way to show up every October and propel the Dodgers to wins when he's called upon. But I even mean more a couple of the guys I talked about on social media. One, Samad Taylor, which, God, what an eye roll that he's not here anymore. I mean, the guy that would have been a literal perfect bench player for this team, Had an awesome year for the Padres. Short sample, but awesome year. And tonight so far in the Padres game, he got a hit, stole second, scored from third on a short, chopping infield ground ball, which not every guy scores on from third base with the infield in. Helped manufacture a run for the Padres. Right-handed bat, fast, athletic, plays all over the place. That would have been a perfect Mariners utility guy. No, they let him go. Mauricio Dubon, I said it before, I'll say it again, they better be looking to sign that guy this offseason because another perfect right-handed hitting utility player who plays everywhere, phenomenal defender, legit everywhere. And again, you want to look to the postseason, how he impacts games? He robbed a home run today. Like, the Mariners look at their bench, it's like, well, we have Weston Wilson and Rob Refsnyder and Patrick Wisdom and Mitch Garver. It's like, well, are any of those guys doing what Dubon, Hernandez, and Tavon Taylor are doing? 00:07:19 Speaker 1: No. The Mariners could start by just not having an atrocious bench, by not having their bench lose them games. I think even that would be fine. I'm down to have a good bench, but given that the Mariners don't usually want to make the investment to make all 26 players on the roster really good, I'll take replacement level. I'll take slightly above replacement level. I think that would be a huge win. We talk about the impact of replacing your negative one more players with a zero or, or half war player. That's, that's one and a half. That's a pretty significant amount right there. 00:07:55 Speaker 2: I mean, I'm looking right now and just to use an example of four guys, Weston Wilson, Mitch Garver, Rob Ref Snyder, and Leo Rivas, guys who significantly made up your bench at points this year, put up a combined negative six or sorry, a negative 1.6 wins above replacement on baseball reference. That's an extra game and a half that your bench, not, won you, but lost you or not even neutralized, but actually lost you. 00:08:22 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:08:24 Speaker 2: Mauricio Devon's a two win player this year as a bench guy. 00:08:28 Speaker 1: I do also think some of that comes with culture because bench guys usually aren't as talented as the guys who play every single day. So you need to find a way to get more out of them by instilling the, the work ethic, the focus, the attention to detail to like, have the edges like even if you have let's say Mauricio Dubon on this team Lyle given that he doesn't quite have the talent level of a Cal Raleigh or a Julio Rodriguez if he's out there getting caught on the base paths as much as they are but doesn't have the talent to make it up otherwise then maybe he's not as valuable I do think culture matters in this part I always think back to the 22 Mariners team that a team that had a good a good bench and one of my favorite parts about that team is how fast they would get late in the game and when both Dylan Moore and Sam Haggerty would sub into the game, both guys could hold their own at the plate, but they could also steal bases and run around on the base pads, which made the Mariners very flexible late in a game. And four years later, the Mariners are the complete opposite and pose no threat when guys come off the bench. 00:09:39 Speaker 2: I think I said this before. I'll just say it again. 2022 is officially my favorite Mariners team of my lifetime. I don't remember enough of 01 and 2025 was good. I mean, obviously they made it much farther in 20 or not much farther, but farther in 25 than they did in 22. But just the vibes of that team. I loved the bench was really good. It was such an upbeat team. You had your perfect mix of the young core and the veterans you needed. Yeah. Like I really liked that team. So yeah, And to your point about 22, part of that was, yeah, when you needed role players, they would come in and do their job. Mariners need to get back to that because I'm sorry, like I'm sure he's a nice guy, but any more Weston Wilson next year can't happen. You cannot have that guy running out 54 separate times for you in 2027. That's what happened this year with Weston Wilson. He played 54 different games. 00:10:41 Speaker 1: And he can't be on the roster. No, that's what I mean. 00:10:44 Speaker 2: Like either he's in AAA all year or he's just somewhere else because he's, he's not a great athlete. He doesn't hit, he doesn't feel, he doesn't run. Like what is he doing? He's not hitting lefties. 00:10:56 Speaker 1: He's he's 32. 00:10:58 Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, no, no, no. 00:11:01 Speaker 1: If it was going to happen, it would, it would have happened. 00:11:03 Speaker 2: Correct. No, no more. No. 00:11:07 Speaker 1: Okay. Let's get into these position player grades. We are grading the nine main position players in, on this 2026 Mariners team, I will say, buckle up. Let's start off behind the plate with Cal Raleigh. My 2026 grade for Cal Raleigh is a D. He slashed 182, 296, 368 with a 95 WRC plus, 1.9 F war and 23 home runs. He had a career low and batting average on base percentage, slugging WRC plus and war. And I will say no one, Lyle, let the Mariners down more this season for what you were expecting to get from them, like the median outcome for Cal Raleigh. And then what he actually put up was the thing that crippled the Mariners the most this season. 00:12:00 Speaker 2: So I went C minus and part of what I did with a lot of these players is tried to grade them among their peers, because obviously just in, in a tight nutshell from watching the day-to-day and being as close to it as we all are as Mariners fans, it's easy to get caught up in the emotions, and we do that plenty throughout the year. So as we gave out these grades, I tried to use a little more logic and actual data with it. And among catchers in Major League Baseball, Cal ranked 15th in F4. Now, that's not even close to what the expectation was for Cal this year. So if you're grading on a scale of expectation, then absolutely, you can give him a lower grade than a C-, and you gave him a D. I don't totally disagree. But among the league, he was right about in the middle, which would come out to, just by war, and there's more that goes into this, just by war would be about a C-grade, but then I knock him down another letter because ultimately he was an A-plus grade last year and was supposed to be the best player on the team, and instead he wasn't even close to that. So... In a nutshell, he's probably about a C graded player because he put up just shy of a two war season and had a six week stretch where he was on fire at the end of the year. But overall, I mean, not even close to good enough. And when you drop off from an A plus to a C minus, I think that's going to show in discrepancy in terms of what happens in terms of how you affect the team, which Cal affected the team in not such a great way this year. 00:13:33 Speaker 1: I feel like once you hit 60 home runs in a season, you no longer get graded against just other standard catchers because that doesn't really feel fair to the catchers or to Cal that that is how he's measured because clearly he's better than the rest of the field by a pretty considerable amount. And it's not like there was a number of factors that went into Cal's season that he for some reason could not hit fastballs this year. He made such a huge stride against heaters last year. It was the most successful pitch by run value and a big contributing factor to him hitting 60 home runs was his ability to do damage on heat. And then he essentially 180'd and was atrocious against heaters this year. And on top of that, he was chasing so much. The way I look at this is that When the Mariners needed Cal Raleigh the most in the first four and a half months of the 2026 season, he was one of the worst players in baseball. And ultimately, that's where a lot of this weight of this grade falls for me. Was he hurt? Yeah, he was hurt. Hurt his oblique. He had shoulder surgery two days ago, both him and Josh Naylor, that clearly playing through things that needed surgical repair at the end of the season. But, I mean, Cal did decide to play through the injury and ended up, outside of six weeks, being just, frankly, really, really, really bad. So that's it. That's on Cal if that's the decision he made. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: I mean, are you still grading him among all players in baseball after 60 homers? There's an argument for yes. There's also the argument of I don't think anybody expected him to do that again. So if you don't and you expect him to be more of the Cal Raleigh that he was in 22, 23, and 24— then that is more grading among catchers. Cause he's not far and away the best catcher in baseball in those years. There are, there are years where you can definitely argue he was the best among catchers, but not far away. 00:15:31 Speaker 1: If I said Cal Raleigh had a one 20 WRC plus 35 homers in four war with his normal catcher defense, like that's an a minus. Yeah. 00:15:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:15:41 Speaker 1: Right. 00:15:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:15:42 Speaker 1: That's an a minus. But the problem is that like, he wasn't even close to that. Oh, and his defense regressed to pretty, pretty significantly. 00:15:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you want to just look at offense among catchers, that's where this gets worse, is he ranked 26th in WRC Plus among all catchers, and that is not what any person on earth expected going into this season. So, at the end of the day, there's not one perfect grade to Cal Raleigh's season. It's not going to be a good grade, that's for sure, but I guess I looked at the fact that It's funny. I mean, he actually took a big jump in his blocking this year. The throwing and the gunning down runners is what significantly dropped off. And I wonder how much that has to do with the injuries, both the oblique and the shoulder. I would bet you it's something. 00:16:32 Speaker 1: I'm sure it is something. We're also now going to be looking at a 30-year-old catcher next year making $ 18 million. So that's a real thing. 00:16:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not that worried about him for next year. Again, if you want the numbers, August 15th and on, he had a 158 WRC plus and an OPS over 900, which is a pretty good sign, especially if he was still playing through an oblique and a shoulder at that point. I'm not that worried about Cal for next year. But yeah, in terms of his season grade, you're not going to hear me sitting here and arguing that he should get a B plus. No, it's anywhere from a C minus to all the way down to a D or D minus like you had him at. 00:17:13 Speaker 1: We could talk about next year when next year gets closer, whenever next year decides to start about the feasibility of playing Cal Raleigh every day. I will just say he's been used more than pretty much any catcher in Major League Baseball, and he's about to hit age 30. The math tells you that these injuries aren't just like flukes. They're not just going to go away. It's because Cal Raleigh has so much wear and tear on his body that stuff like this might just happen to him from now on. And we've seen that can pretty significantly affect him in the season. So it's going to be up to him to fix that going forward. But yeah, the D is my grade for Cal Raleigh. It is not very favorable. 00:17:55 Speaker 2: No, I will say it's interesting when you bring up the point about him hitting fastballs last year and then dropping off again this year. I'm sure we've talked about this in the past, but oddly, even in some of Cal's really strong years, 22, 23, 24, he never really had much success against four-seam fastballs before except for 2025. I think that's odd. Like he just didn't hit fastballs. He hit everything else. 00:18:20 Speaker 1: If someone wants to go find the video, I know our friend Aram Layton made a video about Cal's mechanical changes to do that and why he was destroying fastballs last year. Maybe 2025 and every reason will be an anomaly for Cal Raleigh, but he did proof he could do it. So once he's shown he can do it, then yeah, we kind of expect him to at least not suck against fastballs. Right. 00:18:44 Speaker 2: Agreed. Agreed. 00:18:46 Speaker 1: Okay, before we get to our next position player grades, I want to tell you guys about Emerald Queen Casino's upcoming lineup of shows. Gary Allen visits EQC on October 9th. WFC 199 is on October 17th. Bear Grease on October 23rd. And Patti LaBelle on November 7th. Get your tickets today at emeraldqueen.com. Emerald Queen Casino is the entertainment capital of the Northwest. And while you're there, you can check out Slough Hall Steakhouse. Rooftop dining at EQC gives you mountain to sound views paired with premium steaks and creative cocktails. You'll just have to see it to believe it. Come by Friday and Sunday from 4 to 10 p.m. and Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m. Get your reservation today on OpenTable or by calling 253-441-3101. That's 253-441-3101. Next up on the position players is going to be Josh Naylor. Lyle, your grade for Josh Naylor in 2026 is? He gets a D and we can dive Up on the position, players, is going to be Josh Naylor. Lyle, your grade for Josh Naylor in 2026 is? 00:19:48 Speaker 2: He gets a D, and we can dive into it. But short and sweet opening sentence on Josh Naylor, when you get near $ 100 million and you don't put up any of the power production that comes with being a $ 100 million first baseman, you're going to get a pretty bad grade. 00:20:05 Speaker 1: He had about as bad of an offensive season as he's had in his career. You could argue it's the worst. The fact that a first baseman in Major League Baseball who hit for a high enough average to hit 261 and didn't slug over 350 is really, really, really bad. And it crushed his offense this season. Like, you see the difference between And Josh Naylor, what happens when you don't hit for power? So Josh Naylor had, Lyle, six less doubles and ten less home runs than he did last year. That made his WRC Plus drop by 33 points. That's an enormous amount for just a handful of extra base hits that he couldn't muster. 00:20:54 Speaker 2: So I went and looked at all the first basemen in baseball that had 200 plate appearances or more this year. Would you like to guess where Naylor ranks among those first basemen in WRC plus? Oh boy. 00:21:06 Speaker 1: Uh, it is probably 10th or lower. 00:21:09 Speaker 2: Uh, that would be 45th. 00:21:13 Speaker 1: 40. 00:21:14 Speaker 2: What? Uh, yeah, there are enough different first basemen that had 200 plate appearances this year that at least qualify as first baseman within that sample that have an And 44 of them rank better than Josh Naylor. Yeah, he ranks 45th among all first basemen in WRC Plus that had 200 plate appearances or more. And by the way, while we're at it, in F4, he ranked 39th. 00:21:45 Speaker 1: He was barely worth more than half a win. You know what's going to make the Mariners not spend money on free agents? 00:21:53 Speaker 2: This. 00:21:53 Speaker 1: This. 00:21:55 Speaker 2: Okay, but if I hear that one year of Josh Naylor has now negated any of their incentive to sign free agents, then I'm going to throw a full-out tantrum on this podcast. Because as the Mariners have very well learned through their decade-plus of this regime, front office and ownership, you can't let one bad decision or one bad player... throw everything down a well and take everything south. Okay. There's the chance that this free agent signing doesn't work. That doesn't mean every guy's not going to work. So don't give me that. If your Mariners ownership is like, well, we tried signing Naylor. It didn't work. Well, guess what? There's a lot of other guys you tried not to sign who would have worked. 00:22:37 Speaker 1: That's totally right. But again, you're asking the Mariners to operate with logic and they don't. 00:22:44 Speaker 2: No, they don't. 00:22:45 Speaker 1: And they're cheap. So they'll look at any excuse not. to spend this kind of money. And that's not to say Josh Naylor's contract is a sunk cost yet. If he turns around and has like a one-war season with a 105 WRC Plus next year, then you wonder whether or not you spent your money wisely. But next year still does need to happen for Josh Naylor. And I'd say there's some reason to believe he could. It's very clear he was hurt because same day Cal got surgery, Josh Naylor got surgery on his right wrist. And he was sitting front row at the Kraken game, with a bandage on his arm. So yeah, he was definitely hurt. And if there's one thing that's going to totally sap your power, is if you're swinging for five months in the season with a bum wrist. Could just be as simple as that. It didn't affect Josh Kneeler's ability to steal bases, which he still did very well. His defense was whatever. He's not a great defender. He's not the world's worst defender. He never has been the world's best or worst defender in his past. So I don't think that impacted anything that much. The story about Josh Mueller's 2026 season, in my opinion, all comes down to power. And you need to see next year for this grade to rise above a D some more power, significantly more power. 00:24:07 Speaker 2: Oh, I'd say his defense was a problem. You don't get to put up nine or sorry, negative nine defensive runs saved at first base and be like, oh, his defense was fine. Now, by outs above average, it was fine. I don't really know how much you can judge the range of a first baseman. That's why outs above average for a first baseman feels a little fluky. Yeah, he lost the team nine runs this year. And that actually checks out with what we watched on TV or at the games on a regular basis with the way he played defense. No, I think Naylor's defense needs significant cleanup next year, in my opinion. Negative nine defensive runs saved is not what you paid this guy to be. I know you paid him two hit. but he can't be like that. Even if he's not going to be Evan white defensively, you can't do that. 00:24:52 Speaker 1: No, you can't. But if that's not who Josh Naylor is, is that really a, is it a fair expectation? Like, is it a real, sorry, fair is the wrong word. Is it a realistic expectation? 00:25:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, because he wasn't that bad defensively last year. He's never been like that. There are years where he hasn't been great. He has never been at negative nine. Negative nine is yeah. You're, You are a bad defender. You're costing your team runs. 00:25:18 Speaker 1: What was his defensive run saved in 2025? 00:25:23 Speaker 2: Less than that, I promise. I'm sure it was less. 00:25:26 Speaker 1: I mean, it's probably hard to get worse than negative nine. It was, let's see, it was negative one. So, like, look, in the last three seasons at first base, he's been negative six, negative one, negative nine. 2026 was the worst, but it's not like he's going to go up to plus five. Fine, but he needs to get back to negative one. He needs to be a league average first baseman and hit. You can't be one of the worst offensive first basemen in Major League Baseball and then also carry out atrocious defense to the field. That's how you get a D grade like he got in year one of this $ 92. 00:26:02 Speaker 2: 5 million contract. He's not being paid for his defense. I get it. You also cannot run that out there. the Mariners infield defense has enough problems. Your first baseman shouldn't be in that group of discussion. First baseman defensively should usually be close to a non-story, especially when you're 29 years old, like Naylor. Negative nine defensive runs saved. Yeah, that ain't cutting it. 00:26:28 Speaker 1: Given the Mariners are going to have quite an overhaul in their defensive coaching staff next year, I'd say I feel a little bit better about Josh Naylor's defense improving given the standard is probably going to be a little bit higher than it was last season. So I think that's kind of fair. And also it's not like Josh Naylor had the world's most accurate throwers throwing at him. I mean, for a good portion of the season, he had guys we will get to JP, not an accurate thrower. Colt Emerson's defense graded out very poorly this year. And Brendan Donovan's defense also graded out very poorly. So does take two to tango. 00:27:05 Speaker 2: It does, but how much do picked balls at first base factor into defensive runs saved? That I honestly don't know. 00:27:13 Speaker 1: That's a great question. We'll have to ask someone smarter than both of us who would know that. 00:27:18 Speaker 2: Let me say this. In terms of Naylor's power, all the things that would signal an injury showed on paper this year. I mean, exit velocities dipped. Hard hit rate dipped. Bat speed dipped. Everything that you would expect to see from a first baseman in terms of generating power... weren't there and all of it dipping signals to he was injured. And very clearly as the news came out this week, he is and was because he had to get surgery on his wrist. So you would hope that being healthy just helps him get back to normal in 2027. But we got to see it, man. We got to see it play out on the field because you just can't have your near $ 100 million first baseman finishing the year with 10 homers, especially when two of them come in the second half. Two! He had two homers in the second half and they both came in one game. That can't happen. He's in the middle of your lineup every night. He's got to be better than that. 00:28:11 Speaker 1: Let's move on to second base. Cole Young, Lyle, earned what grade for 2026? All right. 00:28:19 Speaker 2: This was one of the more difficult grades to give out, in my opinion. I thought he was a pretty complicated player to give a grade to because there's a mixed bag here. I gave him a B. 00:28:30 Speaker 1: I gave him a B minus. It was... A fine season, I thought, for Cole Young. If you came to us in March and said this is what he was going to do, it's alright. That looks pretty good. There were some very, very good positives from Cole Young's season. At age 22 going into 23, Cole Young had a WRC plus of 100. He nearly hit 20 home runs. He was a top 10 defender by defensive runs saved. He had the same amount of defensive runs saved as Pete Crow Armstrong. He didn't look Totally overwhelmed at the plate from a strikeout-to-walk perspective. I think we would have both said, yeah, that's pretty good. 00:29:11 Speaker 2: When I saw that stat today, that he had the same amount of defensive runs saved as PCA, that he had 16 defensive runs saved for the year, I was like, whoa. Look at how far he came from last year to this year defensively. I mean, that's just wild. The funny thing about Cole Young's grading is you see the difference in the way baseball reference weighs players versus fan graphs, and I think fan graphs points a little more accurately to the season Cole Young had, because baseball reference says Cole Young had essentially a four-and-a-half win season, and that just felt a little heavy to me. Fangraphs said he was a two-win player, and I said, that feels about right. And look, he played phenomenal defense in a lot of aspects, but four-and-a-half wins is a lot. 00:29:55 Speaker 1: He also racked up most of that defensive value in the first two months of the season. And then after that, it didn't accumulate quite as fast. I'll say this. He had a couple of poor months offensively, but overall he was pretty consistent. He had, I think, four good offensive months and two bad offensive months. The bad offensive months were bad. I mean, his WRC plus was in the 60s or 50s in those bad ones. But then he was always bouncing back to have multiple consecutive good months after that. He never really had a prolonged slump, which is what you would worry with younger players. Cole Young did not have that at all. That's why I'd say overall this season is a win for Cole. I'd say in terms of his offensive profile right now, I can't believe I'm saying this for him. His offense is relying on home runs, his production. Mm-hmm. Cause he only hit two 46. He didn't reach base at an insanely high clip. It's a below league average on base percentage of three 12. The whole reason is WRC plus is 102 for the season. It's because he had 17 home runs, like a, a not even six foot tall second baseman whose power tool is not even one of his five best overall tools as a player. is the reason he has an over above average offensive season. It's probably not something he can rely on going forward. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: I would say, I don't know why he can't be an 18 to 20 home run guy. I mean, he proved he could do it at essentially 22 years old. 00:31:33 Speaker 1: But that was the entire reason he was productive offensively this year. So the walk rate wasn't insane. He didn't strike out, but it's, you look at his profile. There's just not like not everything else there. And again, he's 22, 23 years old. So that should come. But at least the initial look, you're saying like, okay, the best part of Cole Young's offensive season this year is the fact he's hitting home runs. And that's it. 00:31:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, that can't be the constant. That's for sure. There needs to be more to his offensive game than just leaving the ballpark, which is what he did in the minors. He was just a good hitter in the minors. 00:32:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something you want to see from Laz, not Cole Young. Right. 00:32:14 Speaker 2: And Cole, among his peers, ranked about in the middle of the pack in terms of offense. He was right in about the 15th to 16th spot in terms of WRC Plus among second basemen, which is good. It's just not over the top. Like, if you were to use his baseball reference page to grade out his whole season, you'd say, oh, he was one of the best second basemen in baseball. He was a good second baseman. I don't think he graded as one of the best. I think the two-win season says a lot more about who he really was this year, which is he had a good season. But he's still got more to build on. And I would say if there's one thing he still has to continue to build on more than anything is he just has to continue to prove that he can be an everyday player. And what I mean by that is he has to prove he can do something against left-handed pitching because he had a 595 OPS against lefties this year, which was always going to be the concern for Cole when he became an everyday big leaguer. And he's still got a lot to prove in that regard because they need more from him than that against lefties. He doesn't have to be Dom Canzone. He doesn't have to be Randy Rosarena against lefties, but he's got to be more than that. 00:33:21 Speaker 1: It's pretty wild the difference of how baseball reference and baseball savant look at a season. Baseball references four and a half one year. Baseball savant says that Cole Young ranks in the bottom 25% in baseball in batting, fielding, and base running this year. Yeah. 00:33:41 Speaker 2: And in fielding, if you look at baseball savant, they didn't love his range. Like, outs above average, he didn't rank very well. Fielding run value, he didn't rank all that great. This is what I mean by he was a complicated player to grade because there's a mixed bag of things here in terms of Cole Young's tool set and what he produced in 2026. And it kind of depends on what outlet you prefer to use in terms of your evaluation. If you try to combine everything— and I think the three of us looked at everything— feels like about a b to b minus player he had a good year Cole Young's perfect role on this team is to be the number nine hitter if he's hitting ninth and playing a good second base that's perfect but you shouldn't have to rely on Cole Young hitting at the top of the lineup like they were doing at points this year you shouldn't have to rely on him to be much more than your number nine hitter And he'd be a very good number nine hitter. There could be years where he's a three and a half win second baseman on fan graphs and ranks within the top eight in the league in terms of his overall value among the position and hits nine. But he shouldn't have to be asked to do that much more than that. You need that from other guys. 00:34:47 Speaker 1: The most important trait of Cole Young's 2026 season, I think, is that he was never something to complain about. 00:34:56 Speaker 2: Right. 00:34:57 Speaker 1: Everyone else, almost everyone else on this list, on these grades that we're giving out, absolutely a reason to complain about them at some point. In a season full of complaining, Cole Young had the one moment in Miami where he totally forgot that he had a challenge, didn't realize it until he walked back into the clubhouse and checked his phone that he didn't have a challenge. That sentence alone is just so bizarre. But anyways, besides the point, um besides that like there was no real like wow cole's just like clueless out there never once said that this year. 00:35:33 Speaker 2: No why do you think he didn't know until he got into the clubhouse about the challenge something about the culture again f culture that's an f oh culture absolutely gets an f let's keep going. We can start to rip through a couple of these. I don't know how much I'm going to have to say on the two shortstops, but if we're going to start with JP Crawford, my grade for him was a C. What was yours? 00:36:03 Speaker 1: I give him a C minus. It was a fine season, but we're seeing what old JP Crawford looks like. He's injured a lot. It has already bad defense gets worse because he has throwing problems on top of his range problems. And the offense just doesn't have the upside that it had in 2023. There were things that dropped off significantly across the board for his offense that just kind of limits his ceiling. Like his doubles. He had half as many doubles this year as he did last year. The 14 home runs in 100 games looks good, but then you look at everything else and it's just not very good. 00:36:41 Speaker 2: And a decently strong September actually helped save a lot of his season. If he didn't have that good September... He finishes with a WRC plus below 100. Through August, his WRC plus was 99. He was not having a good offensive season. He was the worst shortstop in Major League Baseball defensively, which is what ultimately got him moved off the position once Cole Demerson was ready. And there's still some things that haven't moved off of his game. Like he still has a good approach. He still draws his walks. He doesn't strike out much. But ultimately, J.P. Crawford's just nothing to write home about at this point. He doesn't move well. His athleticism is going the wrong direction. He doesn't play his natural position anymore. He didn't hit lefties like crazy. Like, there's been some years where J.P. 's really held his own against lefties. This year it was pretty mediocre. I just think, ultimately, his season as a whole was fine. He was ultimately an above-league average hitter. 00:37:38 Speaker 1: But. 00:37:39 Speaker 2: I think this just needs to be the final chapter in J.P. Crawford's time with the Mariners. They gave him the nice send-off. They gave him the ovation. And that was right at the end of the year. And that was nice to see because he's been here a long time. But moving forward with J.P. Crawford from a baseball perspective, I just don't think makes much sense at all. I mean, again, you have got to get more athletic next year. You have got to hit lefties better next year. And you have to do a bunch of different things next year. And I just don't think what he brings to the table at what's going to be 32 years old fits what this team needs going forward. Because ultimately, he's probably going to be looking for some okay money. And I think the only role he really fits at this point is a bench player. And even with that, I don't think a declining athletically, like a declining athlete who's already not that fast isn't a right-handed hitter and isn't playing good defense. I don't really see how that makes sense for a bench player for the Mariners at this point. 00:38:35 Speaker 1: As long as he stays healthy, I think he'll be productive offensively for another team. I do think the injuries impacted his offense. So he could be a solid offensive player, but for someone else, given that he stays healthy. Because I'm with you. I just don't see how J.P. Crawford being on the team next year does benefit to this team at all. Fine player, but just does not fit at all what they need. And yeah, a lot of things they said they need to get better at. He does not help them get better at that. So if you think, you know, we're down on JP Crawford's grade, I'm going to apologize in advance to Colt Emerson. Lyle, what is your grade for Colt Emerson this year? 00:39:16 Speaker 2: Okay. I want to preface this with something. What we're about to say does not indicate what we think Colt Emerson is going to be as a player moving forward. This doesn't indicate what we think Colt Emerson could do in 2027. This is simply about what he put out on the field at the big league level in 2026. And unfortunately, the grade I gave Colt Emerson is an F. Because there's just nothing he did well at the big league level after the first week or two. There just isn't. 00:39:49 Speaker 1: You said... This isn't to project how he'll be in 2027. You didn't mention the fact he can't hit in the offseason. And he's going to have to go back to AAA. 00:39:59 Speaker 2: I don't know if he'll start the year in Tacoma or not. He probably should. Maybe. 00:40:06 Speaker 1: Lyle, next year for him might have to be like what this year was supposed to be. 00:40:12 Speaker 2: More time down in the minors? 00:40:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, like back in Tacoma. Oh my God, he's crushing Tacoma. Time to come back up. 00:40:19 Speaker 2: Give him two months in Tacoma and then reevaluate something like that. Yeah. 00:40:22 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: I mean, if he's not going to swing a bat essentially until February and by February, there may not be baseball back yet. And then he's not seeing live pitching and then he's already behind. I think it is a real conversation because unfortunately when you strike out 34% of the time as a 21 year old rookie, your OPS is five 81. Your WRC plus is 67 and, And then defensively, which was supposed to be a pretty big upgrade over J.P. Crawford, which I guess if you just look at J.P. 's defensive run save compared to Colt's, it's a lot different. But Colt Emerson didn't grade as a plus defender in his rookie year. He was negative two defensive runs saved, and he was negative two outs above average. All of that says a player who may have just been injured, and it is possible that the wrist injury affected everything, and he would have been much better if he hadn't been injured. But it's also possible this was just a player that was overwhelmed in his first stint in the big leagues and needs more development time before getting back to the show. 00:41:23 Speaker 1: A hundred percent. My grade for Colt Emerson is just one step above Lyle's. I give Colt a D minus. And I honestly might just be because he was a top 10 prospect entering this season. And he gave me hope when he hit the home run over Jared Kelnick's head and signed his contract extension. Everything else was bad. And next year for Colt is essentially, I think it would just have to be a repeat of this season. Except with better performance on if he's hurt, he should probably just tell somebody that he's hurt. 00:41:55 Speaker 2: Well, and maybe his president of baseball operations doesn't have to publicly throw him under the bus either. That'd be nice. 00:42:01 Speaker 1: I think both things can be true. 00:42:02 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 00:42:04 Speaker 1: Agreed. Because it's just bad. I mean, I don't know how else you could sugarcoat a season that probably should be graded for me as an F and for you was graded as an F. 00:42:12 Speaker 2: I mean, in May, he put up good numbers. Hell, he put up an 853 OPS in the month of May and got people really excited for good reason. Unfortunately, from June 1st and on, his OPS was 517. That's just not a big league player. It's certainly not a top-five prospect, and that's just not really a big league player. I mean, again, Weston Wilson became the whipping boy of the Mariners this year, him and Ref Snyder, and Weston Wilson had an OPS higher for the season than that. 00:42:40 Speaker 1: That's crazy. 00:42:41 Speaker 2: Well... Okay, Colt Emerson's OPS for the year was still higher than Weston Wilson's OPS, but Colt Emerson's combined OPS in June, July, and August was lower than Weston Wilson's OPS for the year. 00:42:53 Speaker 1: Speaking of dealing with injuries, the mayor's third baseman dealt with injuries this year, Brendan Donovan. What is your grade for Brendan Donovan? 00:43:01 Speaker 2: He has got the most unique grade on this entire list for me because the grade I gave Brendan Donovan was an I for incomplete because Brendan Donovan was exactly who he was supposed to be. when he was on the field. In his 39 games, he had a 780 OPS, he had a 125 OPS +, he hit at the top of the lineup, he looked like he was going to be a staple, and then he wasn't on the field. So I don't really have a proper evaluation for Brendan Donovan as a Mariner because we barely got to see it. Sure, you could argue he didn't hit lefties because he didn't. He didn't really do that in St. Louis either. Didn't play strong defense at third base, but it was only about 39 games, and I don't think he was expected to play third all year. So honestly, the most fair grade I felt like I could give Brendan Donovan was incomplete. 00:43:45 Speaker 1: I gave Brendan Donovan a C because you had the positives of his offense and being as advertised as a player playing all over the place and having a one 31 WRC plus. And then you have the negative. So Brendan Donovan, which is being injured, both unintended and, and, and, unintended. Yeah, I guess unintended injuries, uh, some in his control, some not in his control. And that's why I ultimately had to give him a grade. And I decided to give him a C grade. 00:44:16 Speaker 2: Well, missing the last six weeks because he wasn't wearing a helmet in the batting cage. Wasn't great, but that's, that's on him. Yeah, of course it is. 00:44:24 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:44:24 Speaker 2: The other one's not, not entirely. If that's going to knock your grade of Brandon Donovan, I don't think that's unfair. Yeah. Like, That was a preventable injury that he did not prevent. Yeah. 00:44:36 Speaker 1: The groin injury, though, and when he was dealing with the sports hernia, that he can't control. He's been trying to recover from that all offseason, and it did not make its way into the season very well either. But, yeah, there's just not a lot to talk about with Brandon Donovan because he did not play all that much. Right. Randy Rosarena played quite a bit. What is your grade for him? 00:44:57 Speaker 2: Well, finally, we're going to get to some more positive grades. Randy gets an A, flat A. When you are one of the best offensive players in baseball, you are going to get an A. Randy ranked third in WRC Plus among all qualified hitters. I mean, isn't that nuts? The only two guys who rank ahead of him, I'm sure you know this because I know you looked at it earlier today, but the only two guys that finished ahead of Randy by weighted runs created plus are the two guys that are going to win the MVP. Jordan and PCA. That's it. 00:45:26 Speaker 1: Players are outfielders. 00:45:28 Speaker 2: Everybody. Wow. Outfielders and players, because I guess technically Jordan's an outfielder. PCA is an outfielder. Yeah, everybody. Randy ranked third in baseball. I guess he was tied with Wilson Contreras for third. But yeah. 00:45:43 Speaker 1: Randy also got an A for me. And given he led the Mariners in homers, doubles, average, on base percentage, slugging, OPS, walks, war, the best strikeout rate and walkout rate of his career. Strikeout rate and walk rate of his career as well. Makes that a very, very, very easy decision. And he was so consistent too. He hit every single pitch tight. He had a 145 WRC plus in the first half and a 160 WRC plus in the second half. He had a balanced home and road split. He had a 128 WRC plus or higher in every single month this season. He literally did not have a cold month at the plate at all. incredible year from Randy Rosarena. This is like the poster child of walk years by Randy, like very good before that, very consistent. And then he's like, all right, I'm going to be the third best hitter at baseball this year. 00:46:42 Speaker 2: Isn't it crazy that his worst month, he was 28% better than the league average at the plate. June was his worst month and he was still incredibly good in the month of June. And you know, what's, Maybe the biggest saving grace for this team that Randy brought to them this year. While the rest of the entire team couldn't hit lefties, Randy was the only one that could. That man OPS 954 against left-handed pitching this year. Nobody else hit lefties. 00:47:13 Speaker 1: Well, Dom. 00:47:14 Speaker 2: Dom and Randy. That's it. And Randy torched left-handed pitching. 00:47:20 Speaker 1: This season by Randy is probably right inside the top 10 of Mariners' offensive seasons of all time. Maybe? Maybe top 15. That sounds more like it. 00:47:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds more like it. I mean, he was the best left fielder in all of baseball by war. 00:47:37 Speaker 1: It's definitely the best corner outfield season, or second best corner outfield season behind Ichiro's 262 hits that the Mariners have ever had, probably. 00:47:47 Speaker 2: What about Ichiro's MVP year in 0-1? 00:47:50 Speaker 1: But the 0-4 year was better. 00:47:53 Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, does a Jay Buhner year outshine Randy? Maybe. 00:47:58 Speaker 1: Probably not. Not era-adjusted. 00:48:01 Speaker 2: There's years where Buhner hit more home runs, but yeah, if you just want to use OPS +, Buhner's best year as a Mariner. 00:48:08 Speaker 1: Like when he hit in the Kingdome against guys who were not as good. 00:48:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, his best year by OPS +, was 1-38. So yeah, that is much worse than where Randy was. 00:48:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, like raw numbers, Buhners were better, but also given the era he played in, of course they were going to be better. So best left field season, second best corner outfield season, and probably top 15 overall offensive season in a Mariners uniform. I don't know if it's going to get the same amount of lore, though, given the team he's playing on. given that this team had so much bad PR around it, including some from Randy himself, which is why he doesn't get an A +, because there were still things that drove us absolutely insane about Randy this season. But overall, this season should be talked about in a historic positive light in Mariners franchise history, and it will earn him quite a big paycheck in the offseason. 00:49:07 Speaker 2: I was actually hoping you wouldn't get to any of the negatives yet because I was hoping you'd just end on a really high note and a positive note, and I was going to respond by going. And all of that being said, we still wouldn't bring him back. 00:49:18 Speaker 1: Still would not. Standing on business with that. 00:49:21 Speaker 2: Yeah. I am not convinced that this type of production is going to continue really at all once he signs that contract. And by the way, why is he not an A-plus grade? Why is he only an A? Because his defense is awful. 00:49:34 Speaker 1: His defense is awful, and he has these gaffes that just drive you insane. And then there's starting drama with Cal, and there's loafing it after a ball in the outfield and then saying you're just looking after yourself. I just can't give an A to someone who says that. Randy had a historic and great year, but he is not getting an A-plus for me. And I don't know how you argue against that. 00:50:02 Speaker 2: I'm half laughing at that and half laughing in real time at how the hell is this team going to fix their problems against left-handed pitching? Randy OPS 954 against lefties this year. They were still arguably the worst team in baseball against lefties, and they're going to lose him this offseason. How are you fixing this? 00:50:23 Speaker 1: It's a great question. 00:50:26 Speaker 2: And John Stanton's going to sit there. John Stanton and Chris Larson are going to sit there and say, well, we don't want to sign free agents. Well, I got bad news. You don't sign Seiya Suzuki, you might as well not show up to the park as owners anytime there's a lefty on the mound because the baseball team that you're going to put out there is going to drive you up a wall. 00:50:47 Speaker 1: Let's move on to our final two grades of this episode. And this one might generate the most conversation. I'm curious what you're going to grade him. 00:50:58 Speaker 2: Lyle. 00:50:59 Speaker 1: How would you grade Julio Rodriguez for 2026? 00:51:03 Speaker 2: I don't know how to give a perfect grade for this one. I really don't. The grade I came up with, C minus. 00:51:13 Speaker 1: I gave Julio a D plus because his season compared to Cal, slightly better. And the grade reflects that. Otherwise, both of them are incredibly disappointing and Probably the two biggest reasons the Mariners failed this year. 00:51:31 Speaker 2: I'll rank Julio among his peers like I've done with some of the other guys. Among all center fielders this year in WRC Plus, a position that normally does not have many superstars at it anymore. Where do you think Julio ranked? 00:51:48 Speaker 1: I got humbled with the last one. I'm going to say Julio ranks 25th. All right, you undershot this one a little bit. 00:51:54 Speaker 2: 19th. Julio ranked 19th among all center fielders in WRC +. If you want some context, he had the same WRC plus this season as Drew Gilbert. That's not good. If you want some further context, Jake McCarthy and Cole Kerrig, Kerrig who is a rookie by the way, both of whom play on the Colorado Rockies, put up higher WRC pluses than Julio. By the way, playing in Colorado does not elevate your WRC +. It's park-adjusted. 00:52:27 Speaker 1: No. 00:52:28 Speaker 2: Hurts you, actually. Those two were better offensive players than Julio Rodriguez, and that just can't happen. Julio gets graded on a curve at this point, not just because of the expectations, but because of the absurd contract that he signed. You sign a deal like that, you're going to get graded on a curve. And when you grade as a worse offensive player than Jake McCarthy and Cole Kerrig and are an equal offensive player to a rookie in Drew Gilbert... you're not going to get a good grade. Even though he put up a two and a half war season, and even though he had a 2020 season for the fifth year in a row, there's a whole lot more to the story than that. And while a two and a half war season could warrant other players anywhere from a B plus to a C plus grade, like if Cole Young had had a two and a half war season by fan graphs and have been just a little bit better, could we have given him a B plus? Sure. But Julio's two and a half war isn't the same as Cole Young's two and a half war. And that paired with the offensive numbers and certainly the defense, which we'll get to. C-.. 00:53:30 Speaker 1: Tells you all you need to know that you mentioned the 20 home run, 20 steal stat, and I don't think anyone cares. 95% of fans, if you told them that, they'd have been like, it didn't seem like he was that good. 00:53:44 Speaker 2: I agree. 00:53:44 Speaker 1: It did not seem like he was that good. He had a really good May, and then otherwise, he just wasn't a very good offensive player. The fact he was even close to Cal at the end of the year, was tragic. Honest question at the end of the year was who was going to finish with a higher OPS? Who's going to finish with a higher WRC plus? The answer was Julio slightly, but he, this year he couldn't hit on the road. His chase rate was the worst of his entire career. His quality of contact was also not good. All this in his fifth MLB season at the age of 25. It's just, it's really frustrating. And we talk about the Mariners needing an audit. Julio also needs an audit on how we're going to keep things from trending backwards. Where we're getting his OPS back into the 800s. Where his defense, the question gets answered. There's some people out there talking about him moving to a corner within the next couple of years. I don't want to see him do that. The sprint speed surely is not that far down. Not when I checked earlier. So it shouldn't be the case that he should have to move to a corner outfield spot already. But like, the defense was also not good. Rated the worst of his entire career by both defensive runs saved and outs above average. And when you're making the salary that Julio's making, and because the ownership decides not to spend money on free agents, and their highest paid player is putting up replacement levels, their average stats, that's it makes it tougher on everybody. 00:55:23 Speaker 2: Let's say it again. Teach being a bad defender is a choice. Jerry said a lot, has said a lot of things over the years that make people roll their eyes for good reason. That was a pretty good line. He put out in his presser, being a bad defender is a choice. And when you are as gifted and as talented as Julio is, and he's had four straight seasons where he's among the league's best defensive players and a magically and 2026, it falls off a cliff. I don't think that's physical. I just don't. Unless something was really ailing him that we haven't heard about. And so far, we haven't heard about any off-season surgeries for Julio regarding a knee or an ankle or a shoulder, anything like that. No, there hasn't been that. Is it possible that concussion really weighed on him? It is, but there's no way to know. So we're grading off what he put out on the field, which wasn't good enough, which included a lot of defensive gaffes. and the production out there that didn't even come close to his first four years. 00:56:22 Speaker 1: Well, and when he forgets how many outs there are, or in the middle of an inning, playing catch with a fan and causing a pitch clock violation while your season's going down into the drain, not a great look either. 00:56:33 Speaker 2: Well, that's kind of what I meant by the gaffes. There was the production that was bad out there, but the gaffes, yeah, chucking a ball into the stands and misplaying the ball in Boston and playing catch between innings and You know, not getting to the plate on time. I get he was probably chewing out Randy, who also was playing lackluster defense. But, yeah, this is supposed to be one of the leaders of your team at this point. You heard the Mariners talk about as Julio started to play more and more big league innings that they want him to develop into more of a leadership role and become one of the louder voices on the team. But you can't do that putting up a season like that. It's similar to Cal. There's going to be imposter syndrome. You're not playing well. People aren't going to rally around you. Again, you talked about at the start of this year how at age 25 you see so many guys really have their career year and just start to take off. You saw it happen with Acuna at 25. You saw it happen with Machado at 25. Others too. Well, instead of comparing Julio as we sit here in October to Acuna and Machado in their primes, we're sitting here talking about him in the same sentence as Drew Gilbert, Jake McCarthy, and Cole Carrick. I'm sorry, man. I said this a couple weeks ago, and I'll say it again. The Mariners can no longer use the crutch of, well, we don't have to go out and add this offseason because we have Julio. We have a star center fielder. No, you've lost the right to use that crutch. You've lost the right to use that as a defense for how you build your team in the offseason. Go build your team as if Julio is going to be a 110 WRC plus hitter or 115 WRC plus hitter And if he's more than that and the defense improves and he actually takes off next year, then great. You go from what can be built as a 90-win team that turns into a 98-win team. Instead, what you're doing is building 84, 85-win teams and continuing to hope that Julio ascends to a level that he hasn't done since his rookie year that turns them from an 84-win team to a 91-win team. His second half in 2025 did that, but his first half didn't. His first half, they were a league average team, and he played a part in that. And aside from his rookie year, basically the rest of his big league career, he has not been the player that they try to market him to be. Nope. And you certainly saw it this year. You didn't get anything close to that. That second half surge never came. Julio in the second half of the year put up a sub-700 OPS. From June and on, he had a 656 OPS. Second half surge never came. Everybody waited for it. Didn't come. 00:59:09 Speaker 1: There are a lot of things I hope just gets fixed when the culture of this team has changed. I honestly feel like it'll be, I hope, I don't feel, I hope it will be a tidal wave effect that will stop the snowballing negativity around all of these players. And... whether it be motivational or whether they're inspired by somebody or something, that will cause, will stop that. Will stop Julio from having a 650 OPS in the second half when there are positive reinforcements around him to stop that from happening. 00:59:47 Speaker 2: And more belief. 00:59:48 Speaker 1: And like foundational belief, not blind belief, like we heard out of the dugout so many times this year. Like actual, legitimate, factual belief. in being able to turn it around. And I hope we see it soon. 01:00:00 Speaker 2: I think one of the questions that this front office has to ask their new manager when they're interviewing all these candidates is, how do you get the best out of Julio Rodriguez? I think that has to be one of the questions you ask. Because frankly, as we've talked about, while this team needs to build a whole lot more around him, you also can't get to the mountaintop without him. So this new manager better have an idea of how to get through to Julio and get the best out of him. And one more little note on Julio, too, before we move on. The one thing that's often saved him from even further snowballing is his ability to hit lefties in the past. He OPS 676 against lefties this year. Yet another thing that can't happen. If Randy's going to leave, you need Julio to go back to mashing lefties. And a sub 700 OPS against Southpaws, yeah, that's not going to cut it either. 01:00:53 Speaker 1: Let's close out this episode on a high note with Dominic Canzone. What is your grade for him this season? 01:01:01 Speaker 2: This is a breath of fresh air to end the podcast. Yeah, Dom gets an A. You put up the year he had offensively in what was a true full breakout season rather than half a breakout season like last year. You're getting an A. 01:01:13 Speaker 1: I also gave Dom Canzone an A. 01:01:16 Speaker 2: And he had. 01:01:16 Speaker 1: Career highs across the board. A little bit different of a hitter than he was last year. Average was a little bit lower, but the on-base percentage on a rate basis was just as good. The slugging percentage went up as well. He was making contact, which is good. And most importantly, he hit lefties. Not only did he hit lefties, he hit lefties significantly better than he hit righties. A 147 WRC plus to a 129. WRC Plus, can you believe they evaluated this guy and said he can't hit lefties? 01:01:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems like a whiff. Yeah. 01:01:57 Speaker 1: Seems like something they missed during this season, but that's not exactly shocking given all that has unfolded. But it's a testament to Dom Canzone who did not fall under the lefty stereotype and came out and proved he could hit left-handed pitching, which is very important. Maybe there's your answer. Lyle, Dom Canzone's just going to go left on left against the toughest lefties in baseball next year and mash them while everyone else struggles. 01:02:25 Speaker 2: Well, that's not an answer, because then you're going to be an awful team against lefties again. Dom will hit, and nobody else will. Yeah. Let me say this on a positive note for Dom. Again, I really enjoyed looking at where some of these players graded out among their peers. And among qualified right fielders this year, in WROC +, Dom was... Third, the guys that ranked ahead of him were James Wood and Bryce Harper. That's not bad. That's a hat tip to Canzone because that's a good year. That's a really, really, really good year. Again, that's more than half a good season. He proved it in a full six months this time. 01:03:03 Speaker 1: He still does have some chase issues. He still does have some swing and miss issues, which probably correlates directly with the chase. But that's always been the case for him, and he's proven that he can be productive even with it So I honestly don't chalk that up as too much of a red flag. I'm not expecting Don Kenzo to all of a sudden pop out and have a 15% walk rate next year and turn into Juan Soto. So it's fine. The reason he doesn't get an A-plus is because he doesn't play defense. I have a hard time giving an A-plus to a 134 WRC-plus DH, but I can give an A to that. 01:03:41 Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of an interesting conversation here as we wrap this up. Do we give his defense too harsh a time? Because if you look, he finished the year with zero defensive runs saved, zero outs above average, and a zero fielding run value. And what that means is he was a totally league average defender, which is actually an improvement on where he's been in years past. And if the Mariners feel like they need to get offensively much more improved while also gaining athleticism... Is there a world to make an argument where you can just say, you know what, Dom improved a little bit on defense this year, and he's perfectly fine and serviceable in right field? Where you can say, okay, you can just throw him out there regularly, and he'll be okay? Because if you accept that you're not going to be an elite defender in right field, and you're not going to have elite defense in right field, but you have league average defense, can you go sign Seiya Suzuki, and he's essentially your DH most of the time? And then Brendan Donovan moves around and you sign somebody to play left field. That's more athletic. Or you sign somebody to play third base. That's more athletic and Donovan's in left field. And then you have Julio in center. Like it is. If you put can zone at DH, there's more positions to fill and it gives you less versatility. If you make him your right fielder, does that actually open more options? It could. 01:04:59 Speaker 1: There's also a chance though. It does go downhill defensively. If that really is a priority. And the guy you end up signing, for example, if you sign Ian Happ or Seiya Suzuki, I mean, both of them actually rate positive as defenders. So would you want them out there instead? 01:05:16 Speaker 2: Do you actually think Seiya's a good defender or did he just happen to grade well this year? 01:05:21 Speaker 1: But then ask yourself this question. Are you saying Dom Kinzone should start every day in right field because he played 353 clean innings when guys usually need to play like 1,200 for a full season? 01:05:34 Speaker 2: More what I'm getting at here is they need to go hard after Seiya Suzuki, and he probably is not going to be a plus defender in the outfield. I understand he graded well this year over, let's call it a five-year stretch. I have a hard time believing he's going to be much more than a DH, but that's fine. That's what you'd be signing him to be. You'd be signing him to hit. So if you sign him to just be your DH... And you understand his limitations. And maybe every now and then, once a week, you play him in the outfield. But otherwise, Canzone's in right field. Does it leave you other spots to say, okay, we can get more athletic? Again, you can sign Dubon. And then you could bring in maybe one other athlete. And you are more versatile. But you don't have to worry about right field and DH. And you say to yourself, all right, Seah and Canzone can split time there. Like some days one of them will DH. Some days one of them will play right field. And those other positions we leave to get more athletic. 01:06:28 Speaker 1: I think it's fine if you're just okay playing Seah and Dom in the outfield when you need to. I don't know if there's any reason to just assume the role to one or the other. 01:06:40 Speaker 2: I guess what I'm more getting at here is I don't know if I want Canzone penciled in as your DH moving forward because that essentially handcuffs you from going after the best hitter on the market in Seah. 01:06:53 Speaker 1: Fine. So like Dom can play the outfield, but that doesn't mean you need to trot them out there every single day. All right. I mean, I think it would be fine if they split it. 01:07:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine with me. But if you hammer down that, then you leave your other spots to say, let's get more athletic. If Donovan's going to play mostly third and sometimes mix in and left field, then again, maybe left field's a spot to go after Dubon. And then on your bench, you get one more really good athlete to make sure you have athletes across the board. So then you have Guys on your bench, and you have, yeah, Dubon, you have Donovan, you have Colt, you have real athletes. And Julio. I mean, you have to be more athletic next year. 01:07:32 Speaker 1: They also never rock with a permanent DH. Last time they tried that, they got a historically bad Mitch Garver season. 01:07:39 Speaker 2: They did, but Say is a little different. 01:07:42 Speaker 1: He is a little different, but again, why does he need to be a full-time DH? 01:07:46 Speaker 2: No, he doesn't. Him and Dom can switch off. That's fine. 01:07:50 Speaker 1: Back to my original point, Dom's defense, not enough to get him an A +. 01:07:55 Speaker 2: Sure. 01:07:56 Speaker 1: That's not the end of the world, because Dom Canzone doesn't need to get an A +. If Dom Canzone is getting you A grades, then that is as win as wins get, in my opinion. 01:08:04 Speaker 2: Agreed. If he does this every year, he's doing everything that you could ask for out of him. Yeah. 01:08:10 Speaker 1: Very positive episode. Lots of positivity to throw around about the position players from this past year. 01:08:16 Speaker 2: Again... There's a reason we're doing two of these, not four. We're going to do them, and then we're going to move on to other things. Because talking about the 2026 Mariners is, at this point, one of my least favorite things to do. 01:08:31 Speaker 1: Going to slam the book shut and throw it off the roof of my apartment building. 01:08:36 Speaker 2: Good. Yeah, that sounds about right. 01:08:37 Speaker 1: Never to see it again. 01:08:39 Speaker 2: Sounds great. Sounds awesome. 01:08:41 Speaker 1: Honestly. 01:08:42 Speaker 2: All right, that just about wraps up this edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. You guys know the drill. If you want to listen to the full-form podcast, you can do so wherever you get your audio pods. Make sure to go download these episodes if you're listening. Go rate and review. Please leave it five stars when you're leaving your review. It really helps a ton. If you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. subscribe button you can leave a comment on the video everything find us at our website marinelayerpod.com where you can find all of our episodes you can go get your podcast merch especially as we're getting into fall season you can find our patreon there that's all over at marinelayerpod.com And then find us on social media. We're posting content every day across all of our platforms at MarineLayerPod. That's TJ. I'm Lyle. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.