Episode 97: Mariners ZiPS Projections, MLB HOF Inductees Announced, And Lyle's Fall From Grace

[00:00:00] His karate lessons might not turn him into a black belt, and even after band camp, he

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[00:00:24] you must become a member of PenFed. to buy our friends over at Pagach's Pub 85. Pagach's Pub 85 in Kirkland, guys, you've heard us talk about it a bunch and we're going to talk about it again. This is our favorite place to go hang out with our friends, watch games. You want to go watch the NFC title games this weekend or I should say the NFL title games, AFC NFC. Go over there because you can have some great drinks, get some great food, especially pizza, hang out with your

[00:01:42] friends, play some pool, whatever you might want to keep your hope, you know, about Blake Snell being a

[00:03:00] mariner, you can do exactly that. You? Oh, that would be such an awful look if that happened. Now they probably wouldn't do that, but I will say if that's the plan, those acquisitions

[00:04:24] need to be flipped in terms of the order.

[00:04:26] You better sign Snell first and you have a spot. It makes sense. I just, something in the NBA happening in Major League Baseball is less likely.

[00:05:45] No, but I'm down.

[00:05:47] Hey, I might, I might honestly have to start praising Scott Boris. For those of you that listened regularly, a few weeks ago, I went on a bit of a Scott Boris tangent on here because I truly do hate listening to him speak every year, especially at these GM meetings and the winter meetings when he's just so snarky with all of his comments. But if he

[00:07:02] actually helped the Mariners execute that, I might have to come on here and sing his praises. Marcus Emian is a better second baseman than Louisa rise and yes, just like you I am not happy that he is not a mariner Again, they should that was the easiest signing in the world two years ago It made all the sense in the world and Scott Boris didn't let it happen that being said If they really went and got least Louisa rise they got rid of desk ophani's contract and then they signed Blake Snell I

[00:08:22] Would start saying some things about this mariners team this upcoming 2024 season. So I'm going to throw the floor to you while if you want to start somewhere on Dan Simborsky's zips projections, where are you going to start?

[00:09:43] Where am I going to start or where do I have the whole Mariners starting nine looking out here. There there's a couple of interesting ones.

[00:11:00] First up, you brought up JP Crawford off live up to everything and be healthy, probably the floor. I'm going to say. Yeah. And we should know too that with these zips projections, what they thing would expect. La Haza couple of 80th percentile things he wants to talk about as well. But these numbers that we're presenting to you right now are about the median output of what the computer projects are going to do this season. So let's just run through the lineup real quick and the production. So JP's at the top 108 OPS plus Julio batting second 132 OPS plus

[00:14:44] to Seattle last year. We talked about how much we loved seeing him hitting in the nine spot, especially over that late August, early September stretch where he was really swinging it. I'm not

[00:14:50] saying he's going to be some 130 WRC plus guy or OPS plus guy. I don't think any of us are saying

[00:14:55] that. I don't see any reason he can't be a 105 ish guy at the bottom of the lineup, play good

[00:15:00] defense the way he did toward the tail end of, he's getting older. I, I couldn't, I can't flame anyone too much for thinking that Mitch is going to just go on a slower decline at the plate and zips,

[00:16:24] by the way, doesn't even take into account traded for him. That was he well, he was young. He was, you know, looking to prove himself in a new organization. He was great, but you're right. He was hurt that full season. So 17 or 18 at his peak.

[00:17:44] Sure. Yes. Yeah. But he's not that anymore is not that much higher than what his current output is. 8 OPS plus points is it's kind of marginal. It's like that's within the within the margin of error. That's honestly that's bad at ball luck right there is what you just described. He could have with a 102 OPS plus at you know his 50th percentile outcome. Okay. 8 OPS plus points higher would be

[00:20:01] Give you a 115. Sure.

[00:20:08] Before we get to any of the 20 80 percentile projection stuff, I guess the last guy we should or the last two guys we should talk about who we haven't truly harped on yet. One being Cal and

[00:20:13] I feel like this one will be pretty short. He's projected 231 average 758 OPS 112 OPS plus 3.3 F

[00:20:20] war. That feels about right in terms of a projection, that is a much that is a noticeable improvement from 23. Yeah, and the three 41 on base percentages is good there. I mean, even with all the advanced numbers, 30 doubles and 15 homers is for a first baseman with a 12% above league average hitting profile is good.

[00:21:42] And if Ty is going to hit in the sixth or the seventh spot, that's pretty good.

[00:21:46] Like that is pretty good for a six or seven hitter down there.

[00:22:42] That seemed honestly about right. And again, if he plays better than that,

[00:22:44] he could be more in the 120s.

[00:22:45] I mean, remember how good he was last year,

[00:22:47] especially in the first half.

[00:22:49] Wouldn't shock me.

[00:22:50] Well, I will note to you again,

[00:22:52] I don't want to confuse people too much

[00:22:53] with the two different projection system,

[00:22:56] but this is one where I do actually dog

[00:22:57] want to bring up steamer because when I look

[00:22:59] at that Luke Rayleigh number,

[00:23:00] I mentioned steamer was more optimistic in general

[00:23:04] as a projection system, but they're not with Luke Rayleigh.

[00:23:06] They actually have him six points lower first full season in the big leagues. I think that's a perfectly serviceable year. I think there's absolutely a chance he does more. If you want to talk about breakout Mariners candidates and sleeper candidates on this team, he's basically the guy I'm circling right saying, this could be your breakout candidate. That being said, if this is his floor and if this is what he does in 24,

[00:24:20] I'd be okay with that.

[00:24:21] Those would be some big jumps that he took

[00:24:23] from the handful of games or so that he played

[00:24:25] at the end of last year compared have a down here and an 80th percentile where they say what do they project the numbers to be if they have a really good year. Julio, for example, if he has an 80th percentile season, they are projecting a seven war and a that, unfortunately. So I will note that his 20th percentile season is projected at a 3.2 F four. So that says, even if Julio has a bad year, he's still putting up three wins, which is crazy. It just shows you the floor that Julio has as a player at just 23 years old. But yeah,

[00:27:04] the Mariners are lucky to have that guy. Okay'd be a 25% above average hitter, which we've talked about Luis Urias nonstop saying,

[00:28:21] his team still needs a third baseman,

[00:28:22] they need another impact bat.

[00:28:24] We've said it all winter.

[00:28:25] I still stand by all that.

[00:28:27] I think Urias and Roha should be platooning. 25 OPS plus guy, but okay. Tanzan Borski I'm down. If he wants to go 80th percentile, that would be cool. I'm sure most mariner fans don't think he's going to go 80th percentile season, 80th percentile this season just because of what he did last season. But that's certainly

[00:29:41] optimistic. That's more optimistic than I would'll say when I look at these in-accounts, they're not all that important because in-accounts are mostly dependent on health and it's very hard to project health and the zips projections as we mentioned don't really take into account injuries. They will project you to play a full season regardless of your past history of

[00:32:01] And that's a good start on the way there. And when you're a Cy Young, you usually,

[00:32:03] like any major award need to go up towards

[00:32:05] the 80th percentile or even higher.

[00:32:07] But what we're talking about when your 50th percentile

[00:32:09] is a three, five and nearly 180 innings,

[00:32:13] you know, that's once you get to the 80th, 90th percentile,

[00:32:16] I mean, we're talking sub three, 210 innings

[00:32:20] with a high strikeout rate.

[00:32:21] That usually wins you a Cy Young.

[00:32:23] And the Mariners have not one, not two,

[00:32:27] but three of them there at phenomenal. I just am a little surprised Logan's projected F-4 for the years higher than Kirby's. I think that has a little bit to do with the innings. Logan is projected to throw more innings and Logan's also projected to strike out more guys as well. Yes, more strike outs as well. Both of those are factors and more. Yeah, that's something that will hurt Kirby in his career

[00:33:43] as he's looking to accumulate.

[00:33:44] Or you strike out more guys, your war will go up more

[00:33:47] than if you don go check it out on all our social platforms. You said it, and I'm going to reiterate it here. If George Kirby learns one more true out pitch, this guy, this guy can seriously win a Cy Young.

[00:35:01] He can win multiple.

[00:35:02] If he gets a true out pitch under his belt, especially because they only project him at 116 innings on the safer side. It doesn't help that in the minor leagues. He also didn't throw that many innings and that is baked into the fact he's only projected

[00:36:20] that many innings.

[00:36:22] So Brian was going to throw a little bit more than that and we anticipate he's going to

[00:36:28] pitch a little bit better than that based Guess we'll have to see it. Zip should have been drinking the Kool-Aid. We can look at the relievers too. There's nothing, nothing mind blowing. They're projecting a very, another very good season from Andres Munoz. A 291 ERA. The strikeout rates high just under 60 innings, 90 strikeouts, Matt Brash.

[00:39:01] Little less in the run prevention department, three and a half ERA.

[00:39:05] Significantly more innings at 75, but he's also going to strike out 100 batters again. What are we doing here? This must be the last three years thing because I don't want to quite go to your level for what you said with Robbie Ray last year in terms of his strikeout I was like put some mortgage down on him striking guys out But I'll do it so I get off the hook do it I'll go like one step below that in the sense of

[00:40:24] You want me to tell people to put their mortgage down Okay. Well, if I'm wrong and at the end of the year he for whatever reason has a down here, we

[00:41:41] can circle back.

[00:41:42] Well, if that happens, maybe we'll have to play our clip back to back.

[00:41:45] It'll be like a, maybe we'll have to put Topa has really bad luck or something over the course of the full season, I would certainly hope not. But maybe I should change my argument here because again, ERA is sometimes not a great stat. This is what I'm confident about. I amillo, Gilbert, and George Kirby, they're all projected to be top 15 starters by zip. The other interesting one, which we couldn't find in the table and which I'm a little confused about, but it projects Prolander Barrow if he were to throw a bolt full season at the

[00:44:20] big leagues at a 343 ERA, better than Justin Topa.

[00:44:24] So I thought that was very interesting too. all your favorite Mariners and other Seattle sports gear, simply Seattle dot com. We get to our MOB wrap around. So the Hall of Fame induction or the Hall of Fame vote came to a close earlier this week, and we have three new members of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

[00:45:43] Todd Helton is one.

[00:45:44] Adrian Beltray is another. around because he deserves it. Friend of the Pod Jason Churchill made a great point on Twitter yesterday. He tweeted, he's like, people are saying who's a first ballot, who's not, it's like, you're either a Hall of Famer or you're not. Who gives a shit what ballot it is? Put them on or don't. And it's what? Yeah.

[00:47:00] Or you're saying I should have a different video.

[00:47:02] No, no, not you.

[00:47:03] I'm talking about the public.

[00:47:05] Don't get me started on the Hall of Fame voters.

[00:47:08] Do not get me started. Seven season war is fifth among catchers. So yep, that is a Hall of Famer. As much as you might hate his longevity and the fact he went five years at the end of his career without catching, you know, he's still Hall of Famer. To your point about the voters, I agree with all that. For like, for example, throwing out another friend of the pod, Jason Stark, very, very good Hall of Famer voter.

[00:48:21] I endorse his ballots,

[00:48:24] but some people that vote, But then he was coming off an 80 WRC plus season in Seattle. Like, oh, like, okay, by war, by war, Beltray actually had some decent years and a lot of that's because of defense. If you're talking about his bat in Seattle, it's awful. That could be classic. No, nowhere near good enough. It was not a Hall of Fame bat. I mean, he's in the Hall of Fame because of his batting.

[00:49:42] He has over 80, maybe he has a case.

[00:51:01] Maybe he should get in and let me be clear.

[00:51:03] I think Todd Helton is Hall of Famer.

[00:51:04] I think he absolutely deserves to get in. 698 and obviously didn't He didn't wait. I don't think you want MVP that year his own four season was also like Unbelievably great, but of course that was the greatest hitting season ever from Barry Bonds in 2004 so that didn't help either Yeah, help never won an MVP, but that doesn't mean he's not a Hall of Famer. He is no He played in the wrong league at the wrong time, right?

[00:52:22] That's your class. I cannot like to praise friend of the podcast, Mike Salk on a tweet he sent out, which I think will bring us back to our original point about the voters and a little bit of hypocrisy. And this is going to I'm going to preface this by saying, Lyle and I have the utmost

[00:53:40] respect for the three guys that just made it into the Hall of Famer no matter what. I think he should have been in. I think Roger Clemens should have been in. There's no question in my mind. But if you're not gonna vote those guys in, there needs to be a wing of the Hall of Fame. Because here's what the Hall of Fame is. It is supposed to tell a story. It's not your scripted fairy tale about, here's all the babysitters of Major League Baseball

[00:55:00] and who all the people are that we really like.

[00:55:03] No, it's, these are the in the hall of fame who cheated. That's what I was just about to get to. And there are plenty of guys that were on those Mitchell reports or were had rumors to PEDs that yes or in they just didn't happen to get caught.

[00:56:22] Again, I'm not going to sit here and because of that. And the reputation of baseball was desolate. And all

[00:57:44] of a sudden, once majorly baseball looks and sees, oh, the people who actually brought this baseball fandom to you, no, they're bad guys. Don't listen to them. We're going to pretend like they don't exist. They're not going to be in our, they're not going to get their highest honor just because we don't like them in a sense. It's crazy. We could go on about that forever. I, one day it'll be our generation of people that's

[00:59:03] voting and once that happens, it'll be much very smart baseball person. He understands it for what Ichiro did in his career. You can't quantify it by WRC plus. The guy had 200 hits for 10 straight years. And Luke Arkins came in underneath that in support of Jason and said, hey, actually here's a stat that makes you look totally stupid. He used B-War and he's like, okay,

[01:00:20] Ichiro from his age 26 season on

[01:00:23] for all players in major league baseball history.

[01:00:25] There are 26 players who had more B-War That would be otherwise what is necessary is never unwise. Well Teige on your mind this week is what? I got to give a shout out to my man at LSU that his story came up today. Kae-Shan Bute. I mean, holy crap.

[01:01:42] If you read this story that was dug up league well didn't he's facing charges for it oh yeah

[01:03:02] well that's yeah so that's a whole other because he was underage when he was all pissed off. And now it makes a lot more sense. He's like, I'm going to really need the ball here in the next 30 minutes. It's just so funny. I mean, it's, you know, it's like insider trading with stocks, except it's a player betting on his own stuff. And that's why the NFL has outlawed it. And every major sports league doesn't let you gamble on anything in that sport.

[01:04:24] Cause you have a direct influence on it.

[01:05:29] to make his account names look like that wasn't like telling like the offensive light. Hey, man, I got 20 grand on my over today.

[01:05:36] He what 100% did that. He didn't think he was going to get caught.

[01:05:43] Like is he even going to play in the NFL at this point? I would assume still probably. You don't think so? No. He was I mean, pay off for something. I just didn't know when it was going to be like, okay, I'm going to have to preface this. I don't know if we talked about this on the podcast. The one like big useless talent I have that I kind of like to flaunt out there. And I'm usually not like this. I'd like to consider myself for the most part pretty like, um, like I don't,

[01:07:00] I don't talk about myself.

[01:07:01] Like, yeah, like I, I, I'm just, that's just not really how I am.

[01:07:05] The one thing in my entire life I kind of put out on a limb is like,

[01:08:01] Thursday, I got to do something pretty cool. So I connected with a couple of sports media companies that are here in New York City,

[01:08:05] one's called Snapback Sports.

[01:08:08] It's run by a guy named Jack Settleman.

[01:08:10] He does some really awesome YouTube content.

[01:08:11] He travels around to a lot of NFL games.

[01:08:13] They do a bunch of unique stuff.

[01:08:15] So them, along with a fantasy football content company that's titled BDGE, it's short for

[01:08:21] big dogs got to eat.

[01:08:23] They do fantasy football content, lifestyle content, like it's all across.

[01:08:27] They're big on TikTok.

[01:08:28] They're big and YouTube. That stuff's really popular. And I was sitting there watching them do it. At one point they took a break. A couple of guys asked if they wanted to play ping pong and one of them had to do something else.

[01:09:41] So they turned to me and they're like,

[01:09:42] you play any ping pong?

[01:09:43] I was like, well, maybe a little bit.

[01:09:45] I was like, I and forths of all back and forths. Now here's where I have to preface this again because I talked about how good I am at ping pong. I lost today, which was a big bruise on my ego. So Nick apparently is really good. Like let me sit here and give him this credit. He's really, really good at ping pong. And we had some rallies that straight up lasted

[01:11:00] like 60 seconds or more.

[01:11:02] Like they were back and forth.

[01:11:03] They took a long time.

[01:11:04] They were like, it was a really good game.

[01:11:07] And I lost, But now, now, oh, they got to say, hey, I got some ping pong skills. I can get on that table and give people some work. So little spiel of a story, but I just knew one day, maybe having that useless quote on quote, skill of ping pong might do me some benefit.

[01:12:20] You like that story? That's a pretty good story.

[01:12:22] I wasn't even expecting,

[01:12:24] when you said you wanted to save it for speak your mind,

[01:12:26] I was not expecting you taking't like hold rallies with me. People either just hit it into the net or they hit it out or they get in patience, try to slam one and maybe they'll miss half of them, which leads to me accumulating point. It wasn't happening in this game.

[01:13:41] Like it was a lot of long rallies. So I had to try to grind it out.

[01:13:43] And unfortunately, yeah, it was on the wrong end of it, which again, I don't

[01:13:47] lose often in ping pong table. You need to practice again.

[01:15:00] Like I think you're out of practice.

[01:15:03] I think I might be out of practice again.

[01:15:05] We haven't used our table at our house ping pong table. Sure. You could figure something out. You could put it on the floor. You could, you could do like a half. Well, you'll need a wall anyways. First of all, you don't need a whole table because odds are like, you could have you could, there are two two things you could do. One, I mean, you could get a full table. You'd need someone to play with. Right. That's one.

[01:16:23] Two. What have you set up like a half table the list and aren't Joes that I want to get to, but a couple of them were just like local shops that had good slices and a couple of them that were like,

[01:17:40] I think one was just like, again,

[01:17:41] it was kind of down by Hudson Yards.

[01:17:43] It was just like a, like it was like local cafe and pizza shop.

[01:17:46] There was one in Times Square too, I think they're, I think they're, you could probably find one. Yeah. Here's the last thing I got on speaker mind. This one will be quick, but I did want to bring it up because I always get a laugh out of it. For those who don't know and want a little insight on some of the things that our friends talk about or the TJ and I talk about, TJ loves to try to belittle athletes

[01:19:02] who try to stay in college for seven to eight years.

[01:20:00] What is your left?

[01:20:04] You're telling me if you went to go enter the working world, you'd make, you would be less productive.

[01:20:07] Like nine years in college, like,

[01:20:12] he's the same year as you and I.

[01:20:15] Yeah, that's two lifespans at college,

[01:20:17] which is pretty nuts.

[01:20:18] I'm sorry, dude.

[01:20:19] Like, Coach just got to sit you down and be like,

[01:20:22] it's my guy.

[01:20:24] Like, if you were gonna go to the NFL,

[01:20:26] you would have gone by now. within our friend group of like saying, it's his way of saying just get a job. But no, it's the same idea that applies to these guys to transfer four times or whatever. It's if you have to transfer that many times, your career is probably coming to an end. So it's like JT Daniels like, yeah, four schools like it's time, dude. It's time.

[01:21:40] Like he tried, he was a high prospect out of high school or a high recruit out of high

[01:21:44] school.

[01:21:45] But yeah, it seems like what is the he tried to get some NIL sponsors from retirement homes as a way of like, yeah, I'm in my ninth year of college, but here's where I'm getting my NIL checks from. So he was making like 300 K then I respected if he's not then buddy. It's time. It's time.

[01:23:00] Well, that was a fun speaker mind on all facets.

[01:23:03] I know we went a little bit a little bit long on the speaker mind there, but hope you

[01:23:06] guys enjoyed it and hope you enjoyed this entire episode. His karate lessons might not turn him into a black belt, and even after band camp, he

[01:24:26] might not be the greatest musician.