I asked y’all in the FEED for a bumper crop of hot takes on this subject and the LL hive mind did not disappoint! Thanks to everyone who weighed in. Since there were many similar answers, I’m going to start with the top three players that were named and then I’ll break it down a bit more with my Trademarked Mariners Hot Take Ranking System:
Okay let’s break it down by the numbers here.
Your third most popular response for which Mariner won’t bounce back this season is….
A 3-way tie between Victor Robles,
Luis Castillo, and….THE ENTIRE BULLPEN.
I honestly give this one an Iwakuma. A good and hot take, not absurd. Not many lies detected here, although throwing the entire bullpen in is a bit a cop-out answer. I will go on record once again, though, and insist that Castillo is not yet washed, even after whatever the hell happened yesterday in the frigid Twin Cities.
Moving right along.
Your second most popular response for which Mariner won’t bounce back this season is…..
Logan Gilbert
Logan looking like how that take makes me feel. This one is also an Iwakuma because…..yeah, I’m worried about our boy. He has simply not looked like himself and watching his starts has felt particularly frustrating because we know he’s better than this. He is too young to be this rinsed. I firmly believe he can bounce back, but the struggles have been real and not fun.
And finally, your most popular response for which Mariner won’t bounce back this season is…..
An impossible 3-way tie between Josh Naylor, Andrés Muñoz, and Bryce Miller!
^That’s Naylz responding to his doubters. Y’all, Josh will be FINE. He is a menace. He is a baseball sicko. He has only begun to fight. Also, the disrespect to Muñoz! Audacious. That and Naylor gives this take a scorching hot Brash ranking. These are some fighting words. Our cat-loving flamethrower will be fine. You know what would help him be fine? The Mariners offense not producing so many one-run games. That would be cool. The only one here that is very justified is Bryce Miller, sadly. We just don’t know what’s going to happen if and when he returns to the rotation. The AquaSox start was fairly encouraging, but that’s High A batters. I hope he proves us all wrong.
Now to highlight a few other choice takes!
Poster YaSureYaBetcha says: “Dan. Look, he’s managed better than expected. Someday he may even get a World Series win, hopefully will the M’s. But all of pinch hitting and batting order oddness reeks of inexperience. Dan was called up too early. Send him to Tacoma to manage for a couple of years, and get all of those youthful managing mistakes out of his system. Spicy take: hire Don Mattingly off the Phillies bench as a replacement.”
Yowza! Betraying their mild Midwestern handle there with this extremely BRASH take. Listen, Dan Wilson has the room. He has the players. Unless he loses them, he’s doing a fine job as a manager. The in-game decisions, as has been documented elsewhere, do not seem to be entirely his doing. Some pinch-hitting choices have been very questionable, but it’s April and I think he/the FO need to shake out the roster as much as possible to evaluate what they truly have. On the subject of Donnie Baseball, obviously that ship has sailed as of this morning, but I also think Mattingly would not fit in here with the Mariners at all. He comes from just a different baseball world and wouldn’t understand how we do things here in the quaint Pacific Northwest. Also, every time he fucked up, we’d all accuse him of being a Yankees sleeper agent seeking revenge for 1995. Only kind of kidding.
Poster ASURay says: “Naylor and to a slightly less extent Cal. Neither of those guys have ‘I’m going to age gracefully’ physiques and both have recently gotten paid. Neither seem like the ‘cash checks and take it easy’ types, but you never know. At least Cal should have at least a couple more years as an average+ defender in him, so that sets his floor pretty high. I’m always worried about Julio as I have never liked his hitting profile — slow starter, doesn’t always seem to have a plan at the plate, etc. — but his speed/defense at least make him useful even when he isn’t hitting. Not sure how long that will be the case, though. The things he is best right now tend to age like cottage cheese.”
Giving this one an Iwakuma as ASURay managed to doubt all three main cornerstones of this Mariners roster in highly questionable ways. They hit ‘em with that Contra “spread gun” power-up. First of all, Naylor does stand the most risk of falling off the steepest age cliff, but at 28 years old, I really don’t worry about an significant drop off in skills until the fifth year of this contract. But, if we get four seasons of roughly career average performance, then the fifth year is house money. Whatever. (it’s all house money, it’s not mine).
Cal……c’mon now. He’s gonna be fine. He’s not going to catch forever, but I feel pretty confident that when he transitions to full time DH, he will still slug. He will not fade like Joe Mauer did. Joe Mauer is also notably in the Hall of Fame, so there’s that.
Julio is 25. Twenty-five! At worst, we have at least 3 more seasons of him playing an above replacement to elite center field. After that, yeah he will certainly start to decline in terms of speed and injury-prone-ness. Look at Mike Trout. Yeah, he has no business playing CF anymore, but that no-neck mf can still slug! I firmly believe that Julio will not hit the career stats peaks of Trout, but will have a longer career and have his production more even spread about his 20 seasons or so. Oooh yeah that’s right, I’m dropping my own fairly BRASH take here.
ChicagoMariner says: “The Game Thread commentariat has been struggling since spring training, with truly witty comments well below the Mendoza line. Some will clap back by pointing out that key commenters are currently underperforming their expected wittiness, and that we’re just waiting for a few excellent LLurkers to earn their promotion to everyday commentary, but I remain skeptical. This might just be a lost year for us.”
Oh this is HOT. This is SCALDING. This is PERSONA(LL). Yeah, this gets a CLIFF LEE rating right here. I believe the LL Commentariat is in Peak Posting Form (PPF). Why? Because we’ve weathered an influx of new posters given the team’s success, which something that always happens here at LL following a fairly successful Mariners season or whenever hype builds from big free agent acquisitions. But LLers have perservered. The Mods have put in more OT than we can ever hope to pay them for (check’s in the mail, babes). And the result has been bustling, vibrant, and most importantly FUN game threads. Most of the time, anyways. There will always be a few stinkers here and there. Overall, though, I see the veterans out there guiding the new posters, I see staff participating in levels not seen since the Sullivan days, and I see a lot of thoughtful and intelligent discussions being had in the non-GT comment sections, as well. So what we need here, is a new name for posting above the Mendoza line. Let’s leave poor Mario Mendoza alone finally. Do we call it the Corco Line? The Chris from Bothell Line? The old wisdom line? Who is out there putting the work every day on quality posting? Sound off in the comments.
All right, thanks for all the participation, friends! I’ll be back with another prompt in the FEED soon. Go Mariners.
