Episode 469: How Do We Grade The 2026 Mariners Pitching Staff?

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number 469 of the Marine Lair podcast. It's our 2026 Mariners pitching grades. So we'll look at the Mariners pitching staff and hand out grades for the 2026 season. 00:00:12 Speaker 2: Your guys were minor. Just before we start the episode, do us a couple of big favors. Make sure if you're watching on YouTube that you go hit subscribe, go download these episodes. If you're listening on the audio platforms and if you're downloading, just leave that five-star review while you're at it too. It really does help. You can check everything out on our website, which is marinelayerpod.com, including our merch, which go get yourself some merch if you haven't already. And then find us on social media at marinelayerpod. 00:00:36 Speaker 1: Let's get it rolling. 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 early on Thursday afternoon, October 8th. I will be on the East Coast when this episode comes out, so that's why we're taping this early. But the season's over, so we can record this early. We're not going to have as many grades with the pitching staff as we did with the position players, Lyle. Five starters and two relievers. Just Mooney and Inspire. 00:01:22 Speaker 2: There's just not that many different grades to give out. I'll say this. If people actually want us to sit there and give grades and evaluations of Edward Bazzardo and Jose Ferrer, which I can't imagine anybody out there is that interested to hear. But if you are, then send us a mailbag question about it. I just, as I said during our position player grading episode, I just have so little energy to continue to rehash the 2026 season that we're just going to do these grades and then we're going to move on. But if somebody really wants to hear Bazzaro and Ferrer, then fine. Then you can send us a mailbag question. That's what it's for. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: I'll just say this. Much like the position player episode, if you're not featured in this episode, there's a very high likelihood your grade for the season is an F. 00:02:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a couple exceptions to that. I mean, Cade didn't have enough starts to really give him a true grade. He's an incomplete because he came up late in the year and had a mixed bag. He had some good starts. But yeah, guys not on here. I mean, Michael Rucker, F. F. 00:02:23 Speaker 1: Luis Castillo. F. 00:02:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, are we going down the list again? I mean, Pizzardo. F. F. I mean, you can certainly argue F. He was one of the 10 worst Mariners on the team this year by F war. So, yeah, F. 00:02:37 Speaker 1: I mean. Carlos Vargas. F. 00:02:41 Speaker 2: Well, he didn't pitch that much, but he drives me crazy watching him pitch, so sure. 00:02:45 Speaker 1: Alex Hoppe. F. Josh Simpson. F. Hobie Milner. F. Oh, here's a couple of arms on here that I'm looking at. 00:02:59 Speaker 2: Leo Rivas. Well, he was on the mound when Julio chucked the ball into the stands. I don't know. Oh, I mean, if you're a position player pitching, you probably get an F. 00:03:14 Speaker 1: Leo Rivas finished the season with an ERA of 63. 00:03:16 Speaker 2: Oh, so F. 00:03:20 Speaker 1: And this is the last one. Weston Wilson. 00:03:24 Speaker 2: He pitched? Yes. F. Yeah. 00:03:31 Speaker 1: And on that note, let's move on to the grades. Let's get into the grades. Okay, let's start off with Brian Wu. Lyle, how are we grading Brian Wu's 2026 season? 00:03:42 Speaker 2: I gave Brian Wu a B minus. And I got to tell you, before we get too far into this, what an interesting profile. Because my opening statement on this is essentially, the numbers would tell you he had a phenomenal year. The eye test would not back that up. 00:04:01 Speaker 1: And the eye test is why I gave him a C +, not that far away from your grade. But when we watched Brian Wu this year, I thought we had plenty to complain about when the results were what the results were. So that justified, it felt more like a C grade to me than a B grade to me. for Brian Wu, who had some very dominant outings, but then he would turn up on the road and he'd be about as uncompetitive as any starting pitcher in Major League Baseball, despite the stuff still looking really, really, really good, and Brian Wu being at a prime age for pitching. So it just kind of left me confused. 00:04:38 Speaker 2: And that's what's going to be the biggest takeaway from this profile, is The 2.64 ERA at home and the 5.22 ERA on the road, which is such a drastic difference. There was points this year where it was more drastic than that. You were talking four total runs of difference at points with Wu. And I just feel like we've talked about this before. I feel like it was mental and I feel like something was going on between the ears. There's no way to quantify that or to know that for sure without talking to Brian, but He's just never had those issues in the past. He was always the one guy that ended up putting up pretty good numbers away from T-Mobile Park. But for whatever reason, this year it fell off a cliff and there's no real quantifiable reason why. 00:05:21 Speaker 1: It probably leaned into his overall trends where he wasn't missing bats as much. He did walk more batters as well. And then the dominance of his fastball fell off this year. Listen, here's a couple of stats here about his fastball. The batting average against his fastball rose by 100 points. The slug on that pitch rose by 80 points. And the strikeout rate dropped by 8 points. So, he's not as accurate. And he's not getting the swing and miss with that pitch either. And it's a pitch he still primarily throws in the strike zone. So, if he's not throwing it outside of the zone, and he's not getting swings and miss, that means the ball is going in play to the worst defense in baseball. Which definitely... hurt him, and it hurt every single Mariners starter this season, which is probably why his expected stats look pretty good despite an ERA over four this year. So, like, a 3-2-5 fit suggests a great season for Brian Wu. He was 14th in F4 among all starting pitchers in baseball. But I watched Brian Wu this year. I didn't think he was a top 15 pitcher in baseball. 00:06:25 Speaker 2: Well, it's funny. Just by F4. 00:06:29 Speaker 2: It would tell you he was a better pitcher this year than last year. And I just don't know how I could sit here and say he had a better season in 2026. Last year, last year, Brian Wu felt like a top 15 pitcher in baseball. It didn't feel that way this year. But by war and by some of the numbers under the hood, it says he was fascinating. Now, all right, let's be fair on a couple of things. You said Brian Wu walked more guys. He did, but not at a rate that was anything crazy. In fact, by walk rate, Wu was still in the top 10 percentile of the league in terms of good walk rate. Like, he wasn't giving up free passes. He was still throwing a bunch of strikes. And the fastball value dipped for him this year, but overall still graded pretty well. Now, when you're as fastball reliant as Brian Wu is, you have to have those pitches on your A game constantly. And that's where this gets into more of a gray area. The actual value of the pitches from Wu this year still graded out pretty well, just not as well as it has in years past. And when that happens, you have to rely more on secondaries. And Wu doesn't do a whole ton of that because he's so fastball dependent. 00:07:35 Speaker 1: It's like Andres Munoz's slider. It still could be a pretty good pitch if it regresses. But if it's by far your most dominant pitch and the main reason you're as successful as you are, well, if you're going to take 30% of the effectiveness away, then that's probably going to reflect in the stats. And it did reflect in the stats for Brian Wu this year, especially like during his stretch on the road this year. Like the thing that was most damning and I think brought his grade down the most is that in the middle of the season, for whatever reason, Brian Wu could not do anything on the road as you meant that you thought it was mental, right? Absolutely correct. Seven starts in a row on the road this year in the middle of the season where he gave up at least four runs. And, We were calling this guy an ace last year. I mean, aces don't do that at all. Definitely not in their prime as well. So Brian, we've got to get that figured out for next season. If he's, if he's going to reclaim dominant status, I mean, he's got to find a way to get over whatever it is that makes him struggle on the road. 00:08:34 Speaker 2: Do we think he adds another pitch? 00:08:38 Speaker 1: He might try how effective it might be. That's a great question. I feel like if we were to see a very, very effective off-speed pitch from Brian Wu develop, we might have seen it by now. Some guys just don't have a feel for a great off-speed pitch or a breaking ball. Like George Kirby. George Kirby hasn't done that. And Brian Wu also has a bit of a unique slot from a lower angle. So maybe that limits what can be effective out of that slot. And he's tried two different sliders before. Has he tried to change up? 00:09:11 Speaker 2: Yes, he has. Yeah, I was going to say, if he's going to do anything this offseason, if it's not going to be adding a new pitch, I would hope him and the Mariners pitching group get together and have a serious talk about upping his changeup usage. Because for a pitch that wasn't utilized heavily, man, the results on it were good. He wasn't throwing it a ton, but the results in a small sample were really, really good. It's not a huge swing and miss pitch, but he gets outs. I think he gets a lot of outs on the ground with it. I mean, Brian Wu, when he threw his changeup this year, opponents both hit and slugged 135 against it. So that means, if I'm reading this right, he didn't give up an extra base hit on his changeup this year. So if that's the case, man, I would look at upping that usage more. Because it did seem like at points, while a lot of the numbers under the hood say that Wu was still a really, really good starting pitcher, it did feel like there was a lot of points this year where the league just figured him out. And if he has to readjust his game a little bit to get other hitters off balance more often, man, I would look to upping that changeup. 00:10:16 Speaker 1: His value this year, when you look at it on the stat page, felt very similar to George Kirby earlier in his career, where he was racking up a ton of war, but it wasn't always just pure dominance. So I would love those numbers. I would like the eye test and the numbers to match up a little bit more for him. 00:10:34 Speaker 2: Let me say this. If this is Wu's floor for a bad season... I think you take that. If this is truly where it gets low for Brian Wu, man, am I looking forward to what a high can look like if he bounces back next year? Because if his worst year is putting up a war of four, then let's see what he can do when he makes some adjustments this winter. That's what I think. And I'll say one last thing before we move on. Again, if this is his floor, I would extend him in a heartbeat. 00:11:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. This doesn't change my mind about extending him. Yeah. Like he's still the one he's probably always been the one to extend. As you'll know, as we walk through the other guys, there are reasons why we wouldn't extend some of these other guys. Let's go to Logan Gilbert. Logan Gilbert for me, got a B grade for the 2026 season. 00:11:29 Speaker 2: What about you? I gave him a B plus. I think anywhere in that range is fine. Logan, for the most part, had a very good year. The bookends of his year, were really what cost him April and September. But everything in the middle, he was a top 20 pitcher in baseball by ERA. What he did from May 1st to August 31st, he had a. 324 ERA, and that was top 20 in baseball. 00:11:54 Speaker 1: And that was his 2024 season. That's exactly what he did that year. That exact stat line, essentially. And Logan did what Logan does for the most part. He was top 10 in innings this year. He was top 25 in ERA, and he was top 10 in total strikeouts. Logan Gilbert throws a lot of innings, and he strikes out a lot of batters. How efficient he is usually depends on the year. And his off-speed pitches weren't quite as consistent. He's seen a drop-off in the effectiveness of his split finger, which was among his most dominant pitches in 2024 and in 2025. But this season, it was not quite as effective. And then there was another big negative for Logan Gilbert. He gave up 29 home runs this year. That's a lot of home runs. 00:12:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, that ain't going to cut it. And Logan's always gotten hit hard in his career. It has been one of his Achilles heels of his profile that's just costing him at times is he can get hit pretty hard when somebody gets a hold of him. It's just always been one of those things that he has struggled with. And even more so this year, it would cost him with the long ball. 00:13:01 Speaker 1: He was almost backwards, though, to Brian Wu because he actually pitched considerably better on the road than Brian Wu did. I mean, he had a 2-7-2 ERA on the road, but then at home, Logan had a 4-4-2 ERA. But we know Logan can pitch at home. He's been dominant at home in the past. And while 4-4-2 ERA isn't great, it's not the worst stat in the world. It's not like he has an ERA over 6 at home. I think there's a pretty considerable difference there. And then another thing I remember we were concerned about last year is that his efficiency deep into games had just evaporated in 2025, whether it be injury or something else. But this year he completed six innings 18 times, which is exactly what you want. Right. 00:13:48 Speaker 2: Doesn't that feel fluky, the home road splits, by the way, for Logan? Because that's just so weird. Probably. Four ERA at home and sub three on the road. 00:13:56 Speaker 1: Especially when you give up 29 home runs, he might have Like, it might just be home runs. Home runs kill pitchers. And it's not always, like, a problem with them. For example, do you remember in 2019 when Justin Verlander won the Cy Young? I think he had an ERA below 2. He led the league in homers allowed. I think he allowed 31 home runs that year. 00:14:18 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:14:18 Speaker 1: Let me look this up. Must have been a lot of solo homers. Exactly, because he had a whip of, like,. 7. So if you have a whip of. 7 and then you lead the league in home runs allowed... Well, you're going to allow, how many home runs did he allow? Yeah, he struck out 300 batters. And, God, where's the total home runs on here? 00:14:39 Speaker 2: While you're looking at that. 00:14:41 Speaker 1: Wow, he gave up 36 home runs that year. 00:14:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, with a sub-2 ERA. So that must have been a lot of solo shots. Exactly. 00:14:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a 2-5-8 ERA, but still crazy. 00:14:54 Speaker 2: So Logan's number is the third time through this year. You mentioned pitching six innings. They were better than they were in years past. They weren't phenomenal, but they were better. He had a 771 OPS allowed the third time through. That's fine. I mean, it didn't kill him like last year, the way it was killing him and Kirby in 2025. But being able to work deeper into games this year and be more efficient to some extent third time through is a decent sign. 00:15:25 Speaker 1: And while he's a very productive member of the Mariners rotation, This is another one of his pitch decks to the Mariners to sign him to an extension and pay him more money. I'm not quite sure he did that this year. Because I'm sure there's a financial gap between what the Mariners would want to pay Logan Gilbert and an extension into his 30s and what Logan Gilbert would want. And again, this is a very good season, but not a great season. It's not an all-star season. Maybe right on the border of that. 00:15:56 Speaker 2: I would still extend Logan, but yes, there was some to be desired this year. 00:16:02 Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, before we get to our next pitcher grade, I want to tell you guys about Emerald Queen Casino's upcoming lineup of shows. WFC 199 is at EQC on October 17th. Bear Grease is there on October 23rd, Patti LaBelle on November 7th, and then Dwight Yoakam on September 14th. 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 the BetMGM Sportsbook. 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How would you grade Kirby's 2026 season? 00:18:26 Speaker 2: Oof. I gave him a C minus, and the only thing that's keeping it at a C level is the fact that he objectively put up a two and a half war season, which is not over the moon, but two and a half war suggests to some level it was productive. Aside from that, we'll get into it, but man, that is what we call a tough one. 00:18:49 Speaker 1: George Kirby was worse on the road this year than Brian Wu was. Yeah, it was bad. George Kirby gets a D plus for me because while two and a half war is valuable and 174 innings is valuable. George Kirby's continuing to get worse every year. You look at his, look at baseball reference page, look at his fan grass page every single year it's going down and it shouldn't be because he's getting into his prime and I mean, George Kirby threw 174 innings and had the fourth worst walks and hits per innings pitched of any pitcher in baseball. Where he's just allowing base runners. A guy who never walks anyone is allowing the fourth most base runners in baseball. It's the antithesis of what he should be. 00:19:36 Speaker 2: Which, by the way, speaking of his walk rate, his walk rate reached a career high this year. It's going up. And we said at points... Does George Kirby need to walk more batters? Does he need to throw more pitches outside the zone to be more effective? Well, in theory, that should work to some extent, but the idea there is your strikeout rate has to go up along with it, and your efficiency has to go up along with it. That didn't happen. His walk rate reached a career high, and his strikeout rate reached a career low. Other than that... It was the same old story with Kirby this year, man. Same thing we've been talking about for year after year after year, where numbers under the hood would suggest he's been valuable. Things like his fifth suggests he's been unlucky. The two and a half wins above replacement suggests he was productive enough. But then you look at everything else. I mean, he got crushed on the road again. This is the second year in a row he's put up a five ERA on the road. He still does not have an out pitch through five years in the big leagues. I mean, besides the improvement on his two-seam fastball, which was marginal, none of his pitches got better in 2026. And despite that two-and-a-half win season, by baseball savant, if you look at how they evaluated him, they said he was in the 11th percentile of the league in overall pitching run value. 11th! I mean, that puts him among the group of guys that are borderline five starters to six starters. That's not good. 00:20:57 Speaker 1: That's not good at all. I was going to say, do the numbers under the hood... Favor him? I don't think they do. Technically, yes, his expected ERA and his FIP are lower. They're not that low. 00:21:12 Speaker 2: Lower is what I mean. His ERA this year was 4.33. 00:21:16 Speaker 1: His expected ERA was 4.2. Sounds about right where it should be. 00:21:20 Speaker 2: I'm talking about his FIP. FIP was lower. 00:21:22 Speaker 1: 3-9. Not that far. 00:21:23 Speaker 2: Not that far off. No, but that's a sub-4 if you measure it by ERA. And then you could say, oh, well, Kirby should have been more of a 3-8 pitcher this year, which is more along the lines of what he often is, etc., etc., which is, again, more plateauing rather than rising up. But no, Kirby in 26 continued to get worse. 00:21:42 Speaker 1: This is when he should be peaking as a pitcher. He's 28 years old. Instead, we're seeing regression across the board, and it's just not as effective. The run value on all of his pitches, none of it exceeded plus two on any of them. It's just not producing value in any which way. I fear he's trending closer to like a Miles Michaelis type than he is to a Jacob Mizorowski type, and that's not the direction you want to go. 00:22:09 Speaker 2: He throws nearly 100 miles an hour with pinpoint command and still has no out pitch. He's striking out like seven batters per night. That ain't enough. 00:22:19 Speaker 1: Oh, and also, you know how we've said that, like, kind of like Bryce Miller, George Kirby is significantly more effective when he throws harder. Like this year, he threw the hardest out of any year in his career and still put up career worst numbers across the board. The fact George Kirby had a 20% strikeout rate for an entire season, that's bad. It's below average among major league starters. It just doesn't seem real for someone who has as many breaking balls and off-speed pitches as he does while throwing hard and throwing strikes. The math just doesn't really add up. 00:22:51 Speaker 2: I'll go back to that line that Hembo dropped on us about two years ago, and I think it's been very true ever since. George Kirby is a strike thrower. Logan Gilbert's a strike creator. One's a middle of the rotation starter. and one's much closer to a top-line starter. You know what's crazy about Kirby, man? Just looking through more of the numbers, what did we spend essentially nonstop time on last year, last offseason, parts of this year, just grilling Kirby about in terms of his production when he'd face an order? It was what he'd do the third time through, right? Or lack thereof. That is the whole thing that goes into the Kerry Carpenter at-bat and the Carpenter meter and me absolutely ripping my hair out at Dan Wilson and everybody involved that let that at-bat take place, right? It's that Kirby had no business facing an order the third time through because he gave up a 900 OPS, right? 00:23:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:23:44 Speaker 2: So this year, his numbers the third time through were more manageable. He wasn't always reaching the third time through the order as... consistently or efficiently so that plays some factor into it but the numbers were better the difference is what he'd do the first two times through the order which he's essentially almost always seeing most starting pitchers are going to see a lineup at least twice george kirby the first time through the order this year the first time seeing a lineup gave up a 307 batting average against with an 811 ops the second time he faced the order he'd give up a 304 average with an 829 ops against So essentially, in almost all of George Kirby's starts, on average, he's letting opposing lineups hit over 300 against them and OPS over 800 against them. All the time. That can't happen. 00:24:35 Speaker 1: No. George Kirby really does embody what the Mariners want in a pitcher, which is also kind of the reason why I was not against the Mariners bringing in some outside voices in their pitching department going forward. 00:24:49 Speaker 2: Because if. 00:24:50 Speaker 1: like the ultimate strike thrower in George Kirby is really what the Mariners want. And this is the kind of progression we're seeing here in year five forum. And the Mariners pitching staff regresses really hard in the second half. Then maybe there does need to be some like outside thought into like, into what the Mariners are going to, are going to do going forward. And speaking of the Mariners, by the way, They also failed George Kirby because George Kirby allows a ton of contact in play based on how he pitches because he throws in the zone so much, which is, again, why it doesn't really feel like the pitching philosophy and then everything else completely lines up. There's balls that get put in play, and the Mariners feel by far the worst defense of the StatCast era behind him. Like, what is Kirby supposed to do? He's doing what he's told, right? I mean, he strikes attack the zone and the Mariners are like, yeah. Uh, so we'll just put like a bunch of very, very, very below average defenders behind you. If not worst in baseball and good luck. 00:25:59 Speaker 2: I mean, dude, in the second half of the year, if you were a starting pitcher, giving up a ground ball to the left side game over Weston, Wilson and JP Crawford over there, that's a combined negative near 20 outs above average. 00:26:14 Speaker 1: Terrible. 00:26:15 Speaker 2: It, ultimately, man, I just think this isn't working out through five years. And I don't know exactly what the roster is going to look like on opening day next year. But this is why I ultimately think they have got to start shopping George Kirby around this winter. and ultimately trade him with two years of control if you have to. Go get something back for him that is of significant value. Find a team that still values him and says, hey, we know we can get more out of him than this because you see the physical tools and you see the pure stuff and you see the arsenal and you see the strike-throwing ability, and you say, okay, find a team that really values him even more and go get something back for him because Ryan Sloan's going to need a spot in the rotation. Logan Evans will be coming back. That gives you a lot of depth. and you need other pieces of your roster filled. And I just don't think Kirby's giving you enough bang for your buck at this point. I just don't. 00:27:09 Speaker 1: Let's go to the next pitcher. That would be Bryce Miller. How would you grade him? 00:27:15 Speaker 2: I mean, Miller in my book also got a C-, but you could argue to bring it down lower. 00:27:21 Speaker 1: I gave Bryce Miller a C-, but it's really hard to grade Bryce because we saw two completely different pitchers. You can look at the Bryce Miller who got hurt in spring training, came back late. And then before July, I mean, this is up to July 2nd, had a 171 ERA with a 33% strikeout rate and a walk rate below 3%. And then you have the Bryce Miller after that, where he had a 614 ERA, a 19% strikeout rate and an 11% walk rate. His whip tripled and his fastball dipped in velocity by over a mile an hour. That tells me he's hurt again. So Bryce Miller has essentially pitched the last two seasons hurt in a Mariners uniform, which makes him hard to evaluate. Like what version of Bryce Miller could you throw out there? He pitches and he doesn't get hurt. Then how good is he? Because he's ramping it up early in the season and dominating, and then he gets hurt. And it's like, all right, well, I'm glad you could dominate, but not if you can't sustain it. 00:28:28 Speaker 2: And it's just too bad because he was so good in the first half of the year. He was so good. And then it all fell off a cliff. Overall for the year, it's funny. A lot of his pitch values actually took a jump back up. Remember how badly his four-seamer was getting just pulverized last year? I mean, it got crushed. It actually jumped back up this year. Now, most of that is going to be because of a product of what he did in the first half. 00:28:51 Speaker 1: Which is, again, why I just, it's hard to grade. Right. Because it's almost lying to you. 00:28:58 Speaker 2: I mean, it's essentially this, right? And this is why we landed on a C minus. First half of the year, he gets an A. Second half, he gets an F. But the second half, he was also probably hurt. Right. 00:29:08 Speaker 1: So it's like, are we going to get a healthy Bryce Miller? What does a healthy Bryce Miller look like? How hard can Bryce Miller throw and not hurt himself? Right. 00:29:15 Speaker 2: I guess Splitter found life again, too, this year. I'll say it again, most likely from the first half results. But that first half just gave you so much excitement and confidence on what he could be because you saw the 2024 Bryce Miller back in action this year. You saw it for the first couple months where he was back on the mound because he got back on the mound about May. And once he did, he was great up through about the All-Star break. And then it all fell off a cliff. 00:29:42 Speaker 1: And the reason they need to find a healthy version of him and him bouncing in between healthy and not healthy is not going to work because if you look at the last two seasons combined for pitchers that have thrown at least 200 innings in those two years, he's the 12th worst by war. 00:29:55 Speaker 2: 12th worst. 00:29:57 Speaker 1: 12th worst. Out of 123 pitchers. 00:30:02 Speaker 2: I just wonder if there's something that he keeps trying to pitch through. And now we're getting into the speculative medical field, which we don't have any business being in. But I just don't know how you don't help but wonder. Because again, you know he's better than this. He's shown he's better than this. 00:30:18 Speaker 1: But. 00:30:19 Speaker 2: he doesn't look like himself when he struggled. It's not like when Wu or Kirby struggled this year and you say, okay, this is who they are as a pitcher. You're seeing their stuff. They're just not getting the results. With Bryce, I mean, you see that something looks off. 00:30:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. Something is definitely off. Can't tell you what. We didn't get an update when both Cal and Naylor had their surgeries earlier this week about Bryce Miller also getting a surgery. He did also admit this year he was pitching hurt. He didn't tell us what. Or maybe it was a lat. 00:30:52 Speaker 2: I think so. And then, again, there's no way to know, but you still have to wonder about the elbow he was battling from last year with the bone spurs. Like, he said this spring, or this past spring, that it got cleaned up last offseason, but you don't know if it popped back up during the year. There's no way to know. We don't have his medical records. Nope. No, we do not. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: Which is why Bryce Miller's going to get a C- for this year, and it's going to be hard to grade him unless we know he's pitching healthy through a full season. Yeah. Because pitching through injury, again, is not an option. It really did happen way too much with this team, where X player is trying to pitch through injury and happens to be, all of a sudden, a bottom five player in baseball. 00:31:38 Speaker 2: Well, you said pitch. I would just say play. Play. 00:31:41 Speaker 1: Sorry, play is the correct term. 00:31:43 Speaker 2: Cal. 00:31:44 Speaker 1: Bryce Colt Naylor for a long time. 00:31:48 Speaker 2: Bad. Yeah. Well, those are, those are four big ones and there's probably others. 00:31:53 Speaker 1: I mean, JP. 00:31:55 Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, Donovan was playing through something clearly until he finally decided to hit the IL when he had the, the oblique, the sports hernia. There was a lot of playing through injuries. There just was. 00:32:09 Speaker 1: Yes, there was. Next up is Emerson Hancock, Lyle. 00:32:18 Speaker 2: Shout out to Emerson because it truly was a breakout year. Overall, I gave him a B. 00:32:23 Speaker 1: I gave Emerson Hancock, graded on a curve, an A- because we entered the season not expecting Emerson Hancock to be a regular starter in any way, and that his best path to being productive in the big leagues was in the bullpen. Then he took the ball in the starting rotation and and performed really well. He threw almost 140 innings with a three and a half VRA, about a league average strikeout rate and a below league average walk rate. Your sixth starter. 00:32:51 Speaker 2: It's pretty good. Very, very good. There was a point earlier in the year where we thought he could go to the all-star game. That's how he was pitching. When he punched out 14 against the Royals in May, we were like, oh my God. And yeah, if you want to grade Emerson on a curve, I think that's fair. And if you grade him on a curve, I would have given him much more like an A-minus. But compared to the rest of his peers and the rest of the rotation, I sat at more of a B. And part of that was because his second half wasn't the same as the first half. And Emerson had struggles at points the third time through the order. But ultimately, the overall picture here is this is a guy who ranked, this is a guy who set career highs or career bests in just about every category for himself this year. Established himself in the rotation. pitched through basically a full season until he had to miss his last couple starts, and was such a beacon of consistency for a Mariners pitching staff that really needed it at points this year. I mean, he set career highs in ERA, or yeah, career bests in ERA, innings pitch, strikeout rate, walk rate, home runs allowed per nine, war, I mean, everything. It was awesome. 00:33:57 Speaker 1: The biggest win for him this year, besides the overall production, is just how good his fastball was. He had had a productive fastball in the past. But as he dropped his arm slot this year, his arm slot had taken this progression down from an angle here if you're watching on YouTube. It went from like 23 degrees to 18 degrees to this year like 11 degrees. So almost horizontal this year. And with that, he has been adding velocity to his fastball. Every year he's been in the big leagues. He's essentially added a mile an hour to his fastball each of the four seasons he's pitched for the Mariners. This year, it finally all clicked for him because do you want to guess the only four pitchers in baseball who had a better fastball run value than Emerson Hancock this season? That would be Jacob Mizorowski, eventual National League MVP. Cam Schlittler, eventual American League. Sorry, did I say MVP? Cy Young. National League Cy Young for Jacob Mizorowski. American League Cy Young for Cam Schlittler. Parker Messick. one of the big breakout stars of this year. And then Eduardo Rodriguez for the Diamondbacks, who had a sub-3 ERA pitching at elevation. Four pretty good arms to be mentioned there with for fastball value. 00:35:11 Speaker 2: That is awesome. Paired with the fact he wasn't walking anybody and was so in the zone, he's got his bread and butter now. The ability to command and throw a dominant fastball while throwing a bunch of strikes with it, he's got it now. That was part of Emerson's crisis when he was in the big leagues and made his first few handfuls of starts over the first few years is he didn't really have an identity as a pitcher. That's what it felt like. He didn't have one pitch that really stood out. He wasn't throwing a ton of strikes. There was just a lot to be desired at points. Now he has got his model. He's got his bread and butter that works and you saw it all year. 00:35:48 Speaker 1: It's because he couldn't throw his fastball got by guys as consistently wasn't throwing it hard and it wasn't at a good angle for him. To miss bats. So he would tinker with a sinker and try and be a ground ball pitcher or junk it up. And it just wasn't really working. And then all of a sudden he's throwing his fastball past guys' bats. And it's like, oh, this makes things a lot easier to manage. So for me, that's why he gets an A. And he's done a marvelous job this year. And also so happy for him because he is the nicest guy ever. 00:36:22 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:36:22 Speaker 1: Literally. They say Southern nice. Emerson Hancock epitomizes Southern nice. Anybody he will talk to, he always has a smile on his face. He could not be better. 00:36:32 Speaker 2: He's the best. I mean, couldn't be more thrilled for him. Now, there will be some things to just watch for how much of this he can repeat next year, and I think a lot of it he can, but there's areas I'm sure Emerson wants to improve on, and there will be some areas for him to improve on. Can he be a little better in the second half? Can he have splits that are a little more level home versus road? How does he continue to find a way to be effective the third time through? But Again, those are all things that he can really target in the offseason and spring training. To set up the foundation he set up for himself this year and to have the year he did, it was awesome. 00:37:06 Speaker 1: Let's get to our final major pitcher that we're going to grade here today. Andres Munoz. 00:37:11 Speaker 2: How would you grade him? C-. I mean, kind of like Wu, there were things under the hood that were good. Results weren't. 00:37:20 Speaker 1: Andres Munoz gets a C for me. There are, there's the fact he had a 37% strikeout rate. That's great. Highest strikeout rate since 2022, which we both dub as his best season. And a season we very much want back. His expected numbers were all great. His FIP was 2-3 this year. But then there's also the fact he was 58th this year in reliever war. 58th among all relievers, qualified relievers this year. That number is almost hard to believe. He gave up nine home runs this year. He'd given up 10 home runs in the last three seasons combined before 2026. And I'd say, frankly, he blew 10 saves, which was the most in Major League Baseball. And Andres Munoz, his job was to pitch in the ninth inning with a one-to-three run lead because that's what the Mariners and, frankly, Munoz deemed was his best role for him. And he didn't get the job done as often as he should have. 00:38:26 Speaker 2: Well, maybe he needs to not only pitch in the ninth inning. Maybe he needs to move around and do what a lot of modern age teams do and use their closer in a bunch of different spots, like high leverage in the seventh or the eighth and just piece it together as you go. Because he wanted to throw in the ninth all the time, but that didn't really seem like it worked out all that great. The other thing with Mooney is he lost the effect on his slider again last year. In 2025, he gained the slider back to a level that was about as close to 2022 as he had ever gotten again in his career. I don't think anything will ever come close to 22 and the way he punched guys out with his slider that year. But last year, I mean, guys were not hitting that slider at all. He gave up a slugging percentage to opponents of 133 against the slider. It was dominant. But this year he didn't have it again. I mean, it was back to getting slugged close to a clip of 350. It's getting hit a lot harder. And you pair it with the home runs. You pair it with the blown saves. And it just spits out a season that leaves a lot to be desired. There are things there to take away to be happy about. I love the fact that he was walking less guys this year. I like the fact that his strikeout rate jumped up again this year. 00:39:41 Speaker 1: Kind of walking less guys. 00:39:43 Speaker 2: Well, more than years past. Less than years past, I should say. 00:39:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, I would prefer it not to be 10%. 00:39:49 Speaker 2: Oh, same. But the last two years, it had been in the 11th and 13th percentile of the league. It did jump up a bit this year, which you'll take something. It is somewhat of an improvement. However, you need the results. And I would love to see Mooney take some of the pieces that he put together from this season in terms of, again... throwing more strikes and the strikeout rate being high and take that into 2027. But ultimately being a high leverage reliever means you're getting results and you're getting outs. And he didn't get enough outs this year. 00:40:23 Speaker 1: How the typical 2026 Andres Munoz sequence seemed to go is he would have three just dominant outings in a row. And then there would be an appearance where he would walk two batters and give up a three run home run. And you know what that equation spits out? Not a good reliever. Like, you can almost throw the dominant outings out because you allowed a three-run home run out of your four innings. And it's just not good enough. No. 00:40:50 Speaker 2: No, it's not. They need a lot more from him. And truthfully, as we've talked about, they need to build a hell of a lot more around him. They need significant leverage arms in that bullpen next year. You don't want to pay some batter, some hitter an eight-year deal? Fine. But you were okay giving out a five-year deal to Naylor... Go look on the reliever market for some of these arms that are going to be available this offseason that are not going to command eight-year deals because relievers don't do that. Look long and hard at Adrian Morjone. I will bang that drum until the end of time. Look down that path very, very heavily. And you want one more name? Trevor McGill is a free agent this winter too, Teej. They better be looking at him. 00:41:32 Speaker 1: He's been really good. 00:41:33 Speaker 2: They better be looking at him. 00:41:34 Speaker 1: It's not a problem to have more good relievers. I think Mooney would appreciate it too because that means not all the pressure is on him. Meanwhile, in the back half of the year where every Mariners reliever is either hurt or really, really struggling, then yeah, maybe there's a lot of pressure when it gets to the ninth inning and you've somehow managed to hold on to a lead and he feels it, you know, everything pressing in around him and then gives up home run. Yeah. Yeah. 00:41:58 Speaker 2: Agreed. 00:41:59 Speaker 1: So the only other guy we can quickly mention is Gabe Speyer. given that he was hurt this year. This is a bit of an incomplete grade, but given what Gabe was asked to do, he gets about a B from me. 00:42:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, he got a B. A sub-3 ERA is awesome. Just on the results, he prevented runs. Some of the stuff under the hood wasn't as great this year. I mean, more walks, less strikeouts, expected numbers suggest he benefited from some good luck. But again, he also had to battle injuries, which is more of what he ran into in 2024. He ran into more of a degree of it two years ago where he really, really couldn't get back to his full self. And this year he was still able to pitch effectively through a lot of that. But that wasn't the best version we've seen of Gabe Spire. Again, sub three ERA, great. But Gabe Spire is at his best when he's getting ground balls and not walking guys and also punching out a lot of batters. And he didn't do that at quite the same level this year. 00:42:57 Speaker 1: No, he wasn't quite as dominant this year. Like now we hold him to more of a dominant standard, which is why that number comes down. If Gabe Spire hadn't pitched for the Mariners before the season, we'd say, oh, pretty good. But at his best, he struck out 33% of batters. And this year he struck out 23%. It's a pretty big drop. And then when his walk rate doubles, that's a little concerning to me. It kind of lined up with the problems the Mariners had this year. 00:43:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. Adrian Morajone, Trevor McGill, look down those alleyways, Mariners, please. 00:43:28 Speaker 1: How about both? 00:43:29 Speaker 2: How about both? 00:43:30 Speaker 1: Sounds fine to me. 00:43:31 Speaker 2: Well, if you're not going to spend on position players and the position player market's down, fine, go build a dominant bullpen. God forbid, right? 00:43:39 Speaker 1: It's one way to win a game. 00:43:41 Speaker 2: It is. Look at what the Padres did this October. I know they didn't win at all, but their strategy was essentially you can make games five innings long because then you take it to the bullpen and it's just one alleyway. alpha after another it's jason adam it's bradley rodriguez it's yuki matsui and then you get to miller and then you get to morahone and maybe there's even other names i'm not throwing in there but there's just so many dominant arms in that pen so many yeah it's crazy one day lyle maybe they will that'd be great anyway 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 if you're listening that you download these podcast episodes, and please make sure to go leave that five-star review when you do so. It helps a ton. Hit the subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube. You can also check all of our stuff out over at our website, which is marinelayerpod.com. You can find our episodes there, our Patreons there, podcast merches there. If you want to go get yourself some merch, we absolutely hope you do. That's marinelayerpod.com. And then find us all across social media. We're posting content every single day at marinelayerpod. That's TJ. I'm Lyle. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.