Muse

Hey Lloyd, do some delivery for the truck to the airport.

This is a simple game.

You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.

You know you rock when you roll with the Seahawks. Marshawn Lynch, Beast Moe with his dreadlocks. Rolls and passes the ball to the end zone. touchdown you know we're gonna get the crown in super bowl 24 team we get the ring the bling listen to the crowd sing seahawks seahawks seahawks we block that offense to save a loser such an offense and nonsense we got the best defense being the other quarterback comes with the expense of the actor being sacked to hope the broncos have enough time to react to the level of game the hawks are bringing that evening a super bowl sunny because they're gonna go all the way for the win Starting when the game begins All the way to the end of the game And to go down in fame As the Super Bowl champions of this year This team should be feared

You better saddle up when you roll With Seattle Brock will seem like some old cattle Left in the field after cutthroat Alright, here we go Every week that we do this

It cannot be more absurdist To be playing this rap song About the Seahawks When what we're really here to talk about is The Seattle Mariners breaking the dry spell of 21 years of not making it to the postseason. By the way, this is the no point conversion. I'm Luke Burbank right over there. My friend Andrew Walsh, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you already know that. But we don't usually record this on a Friday, but it just seemed like probably something that is worth noting. That the Mariners, even maybe as you're hearing this, depending on when this actually hits your feed or when you get to it. may already have locked it down. All they need is, we're recording this Friday morning, all they need is a win tonight against the Rangers. By the way, guaranteed by Scott Service. Did you see that tape?

No. Oh, wait, yeah, no, no, I was watching, I thought I'd get into too much detail here. I drank a Red Bull during the game yesterday because I was starting to, like, get that real, I had eaten too much for dinner during the game. I was getting glassy-eyed or whatever, and I was like, oh, I should have a Red Bull. The Red Bull started to kick in right around the time the game ended. So I was up all night just, like, listening to, like, the live press conferences. And I believe that's when Scott Service said that, yeah, we're locking it in today. And we're not done. Also, he's not getting distracted by just getting into the playoffs. He says we want to win the World Series.

I got to tell you, I mean, you know, it's funny how winning a game, like, you know, we won last night. What was it, 11 to 10 or something? like winning a game and then seeing you know baltimore lost and then like it's like the swagger from scott service guaranteeing that uh we are going to win tonight and therefore qualify for the playoffs and that he thinks we can go win the world series it all just kind of like works for me right now meanwhile when we're like dropping you know four out of five games to sub 500 teams it's like nothing scott service says means anything to me you know it's a total just kind of mood

thing you know made me feel really good um and of course we're listening to the hometown broadcast and they will always want to kind of spin things in the most hopeful way possible uh and i'm fine with that by the way um but they were talking about you know this the the mariners are closing out the regular season with a real slump um and it looks like they're kind of crawling their way out of it now with these two last wins uh the last two days against the rangers but they were comparing that to the other teams that are in the same wildcard race and like their slumps the people were competing with their slumps are worse they're like on average like three and seven where we're actually pulling up to like five and five over the last ten i know that i'm always in our

text chain unless i'm having a moment of a darkness i'm generally i feel like my role is to always be like it's gonna be fine which as carrie used to tell me only works when it's fine like i told her was going to be fine at the 2016 election and like election night i was like telling her all the ways that it was going to be fine and then i literally never got her back never got her back on my side in terms of believing me so when you say it's going to be fine it needs to actually be fine but i was like look d it's other teams have way harder records scheduled than us this is when we were starting to kind of fall apart and i think dftb was like somebody talked me down from thinking that you know baltimore is going to catch us and i was like they're not going to catch us because they're a worse team than we are and they're playing a much harder schedule and, you know, we're going to be fine. But thankfully we were fine or I would have lost what last tiny bit of credibility I have within our text chain.

Well, you started to say this before. So here's the scenario now as we record this. And I'll just say, I'll timestamp this. It's about 12.30 on Friday afternoon. At four o'clock our time, the Baltimore game.

begins and i believe they are playing the yankees some team out of new york um i think they have a good player or something this year i'm not sure i haven't heard much about that but so the orioles are going to start playing the yankees at four o'clock our time the mariners game begins at 6 40 our time now here's the deal if the orioles lose their matchup boom that's it that's all the mariners need that'll clinch it but if the orioles win then the fate is still sort of in the mariners hands and then they have to win tonight to clinch it tonight in front of a hometown crowd and i've heard a lot of people kind of saying like what do we want here because obviously we want the drought to end we want we want to lock it in but it would be a lot more fun actually if the orioles make it more interesting they stay in this race for what for a few more hours while the mariners can actually get their final out in front of a home crowd and then boom that's how we lock it in And T-Mobile Park just goes bananas. And literally 40,000 people gather on the field in a circle and do the dance. They let everyone come down and do the dance. Knowing your personality, I feel like you'd be rooting for the Orioles to make it more interesting by winning today so that the Mariners can do it in their own way. And I think that that is, I mean, yeah, if they win. I mean, the only irony would be if this has to go to tomorrow, if the Orioles both win and the Mariners lose, which would be kind of a bummer. But we still have time to win it in front of the hometown crowd.

I'm big on kind of, you know, pageantry, if you will. Yeah. And there's something that will feel less exciting if the Orioles lose and then we lose, but we still get in. And it's just like, you know, I don't know. Kurt Casali weakly grounding into a double play to close out the Mariners hopes in the bottom of the ninth. But the fireworks go off. By the way, I predicted literally exactly how the game will end. You know that. I've just created that. I manifested that reality. Right, yeah. It would be so much more fun if... Now, if Baltimore wins, I just don't want the Mariners to win. Really what I want is the Mariners to win tonight. It's less for me about what Baltimore does. What I would like to not see happen, if possible, is the Mariners lose but still have to have their celebration after not beating the Texas Rangers.

Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, and the way these games should overlap is it'll be sometime during the Mariners game, Like probably within the first four innings when we'll find out what happened in Baltimore, unless they're on the road in New York. I'm not sure where they're playing.

But now I know you've got a couple of kind of things, various things that you wanted to talk about. And I just saw one on the list that jumped out at me because while we were recording TBTL, I saw the update from like the Seattle Times, which is that Jared Kalanick, JK, has made the playoff roster.

Oh, really? I didn't know that that was breaking news. I didn't even know that they would have to set up their playoff roster, but I guess that makes sense. Okay, good. Well, I mean, he's, I mean, that is a story that, and I think we need to keep this relatively short today, but I feel like we could do four hours on the Kellanick adventure alone, right? Like he, we brought him up to, I want to say, was it last season where we brought him up and put too much pressure on him and put him at the top of the order because we needed a spark. But he was like a super young player who had never played in the major leagues before. And it really sort of seemed like, you know, he had some streaks. He was good late last year. But it really seemed like we might have also sort of broken him a little bit. He's a fabulous player and has just dominated all of the lower levels. But for some reason has not been making it work with the Mariners. And it even got a little bit ugly with some just bullshit social media drama or whatever.

He stopped following all Mariners related things on his Instagram.

Yeah, removed any mention of the fact that he's a mariner on his Instagram page because he he didn't make the expanded roster for the later part of the season. And he was just like struggling at the plate. And here's the thing with him, though, like he's got this real intensity at the plate. He does not seem like a fun guy. Like he seems like the last guy in the world that you'd want to hang out with because he he's like a meme of a guy who's too intense. but like when you see him really struggling at the plate with that intensity it is terrible to watch it gives me a panic attack i hated seeing him up there just sweating as somebody said yesterday it looked like it's nice to see him walk up to the plate not looking like he just chugged a red bull on his way to the plate um but now he's you know in this i don't know fourth trip up to the major leagues we really needed him here to close out the season with a bunch of injuries and boy has he delivered and my god it is so i mean i had really sort of not given up on him as a player but i just had a feeling like he would never be a good mariner i've had a feeling that he would get a fresh start somewhere else have a shake up and be an incredible ball player with a different club but i am so excited to see him be clutch these past two days luke or three games i think Like, it is, could we? see him in the future of the mariners well if he keeps playing like this he hit three home runs since he's been back up and a double um i mean i think he's gotten some other hits too but those were the memorable ones it's i think like his for one of his first games back he got a home run and a double that were both clutch and then you know last night had two home runs um the other thing that's just this is the the perhaps principle of of sports but maybe in particular baseball which is like obviously we were super bummed when julio you know was having his back spasms and we were suffering through other injuries where people were going on the il left and right and it was like are you kidding me this is really happening at this juncture of the season well remember that's what necessitated them bringing kalanick up yeah he was not part of our plans and i was with you i was like here's what's going to happen we're going to trade him for some magic beans and he's going to go and he's going to become a perennial all-star for the mets like he's going to go somewhere else and then his head's going to be right and he's going to live up to all the potential that made him was he the number one overall pick or very close i think he was whenever that year massively high draft pick yeah so it was like he's going to be good at baseball probably just not as a mariner but think about it if we don't if it ends up that he now gets his shit together and becomes a productive mariner and maybe even a really good player for years to come it will maybe be because of these injuries that opened the door to bring him back up because he was not on our radar as a team anymore the other thing that i think is fascinating is jesse winker may not make the playoff roster i didn't see jesse winker stinks on ice yeah he can't field now i will say this

even when kalanick is not hitting he is a decent outfield oh yeah his defense is very good yeah And as we saw with Winker, there was a game that we lost because Winker booted a ball in left field. It's like if honestly, if Kalanick, you know, is not if Kalanick can hit as well as Winker was, which, by the way, is not hard. I think Winker's been batting like a buck 08 over the last month. If Kalanick can just hit like 200 and play solid left field, I'll take him for the playoffs over Winker any day.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Winker is I mean when we started the season I almost don't even want to waste too much time talking about Winker it's such a disappointment when we started the season I had Winker on my fantasy team and we knew we had early struggles at the plate he's a new acquisition from us from Cincinnati um but everybody said no no he is good he just he's got a good eye he's taken some bad calls at the plate but he's staying disciplined he's going to come around like be patient with him on your roster he will come around he will come around and he just sort of hasn't he's had a couple of he's had a couple of streaks where he pulls it up and I don't know what his you know average for the season is right now I'm guessing around I don't know if I saw this flash last night I'm guessing low twos 219 yeah that's kind of my guess as well yeah um and so he'll go but I mean he's just been and he's just been not good and not good in clutch situations too and I just want to

because he was an all-star yeah like that was a big acquisition for us he and a eugenio and i honestly thought well at least we got winker and who knows if gino's got any gas left in the tank and boy was i uh wrong about who was going to become the standout for us of all of our big

acquisitions during this season and during the offseason i'm i correct you know somebody can correct me if i'm wrong about this but suarez was always seen as the also ran sort of i don't know if that's the right phrase there but it's like oh yeah we also got we also got this third baseman he'll be pretty good he's not a golden glover but you know he'll he'll swing for the fences he'll get a lot of strikeouts he'll get a lot of home runs but like we would not be where we are today without Suarez Suarez has I mean like footprints in the sand Suarez has carried this team uh at times when we didn't have a chance of winning and it's so funny that he was sort of the oh yeah we also get this guy where winker is just like might not make the playoff roster wow that's that's kind of

shocking to hear basically but it shouldn't be we have two former all-stars who have both i think really disappointed one is adam frazier and the other is jesse winker it's just interesting because neither one of them have made any meaningful contribution this season and they were both supposed to be like gets you know like if you get somebody who's coming off an all-star season you should be you know expecting good things from them then you got we have these other people that i thought i remember when we picked up santana and i was like boy is this ever a absolute desperation it's like getting close to the trade deadline and i'm wanting them to go out and get like you know bryce harper or something not that he was on the market but like go make a play for somebody get soto and instead they're like well we've got this dude who's definitely his best years are you know behind him and then he just kind of it reminds me of when we picked up vince Coleman this was back in the 95 I've been watching some I've been watching him as I'm watching these old 95 games yeah and like uh was he third base or was he outfield i feel like maybe i i i can't i remember he was a

um he was a saint louis cardinal and he was the like king of the stolen base i'm forgetting what his fielding position was but that was another one where like he was really on the back nine we picked him up but he just had enough gas in the tank to like steal some bases and get on board and just kind of mess with pitchers and it was like we got the last best years of vince coleman And, like, I feel like we're getting the last best years of somebody like Santana, which, again, it's just funny because I had high hopes for Winker, and he's not done a lot. And then Santana has actually been really clutch. Like, Santana's, like, high leverage home runs are just, like, off. He might lead the majors in high leverage home runs based on total appearances.

What do you mean high leverage? You mean, like, clutch situations? Is that what high leverage means?

It's like every home run that he has hit has been critical. It's like he's not hitting a home run when we're already winning nine to two or when we're losing two to nine. He's like he's got like whatever, 10 home runs. And all of them have been like home runs that have put us in the lead on the game. And I always hide a game.

I always worry talking about these things that I'm just parodying. I'm sorry, not parodying, but parodying things that I hear on talk radio. But I mean, it sort of sounds like his just like his experience, the fact that he's a veteran and is just so comfortable at the plate is what is striking everybody that like, first of all, he can hit from either side of the plate and also just like he can also take walks like he's just super smart up there and calm. And it's that kind of presence on a pretty young team that has been that is kind of like that has gone towards the success that he has had at the plate, just like a stability and and whatever comes with that experience.

The other thing that's very encouraging right now is that we locked Castillo up. Yes. And that was notable because that gets to chemistry. And I think I'm probably on the record as saying I think chemistry is overrated sometimes. I feel like maybe in football it is. I don't think it is as much in baseball. I think it actually matters. And Castillo could have gone out and tested the market to see if he could have gotten more money somewhere else or been offered more money and then leveraged it against the Mariners. but he said he just really likes the team and wants to just play here a lot which is very heartening as a fan it makes you think okay there is something special happening yeah because then

that affects the the next negotiations that the mariners go into with the next big name that's already like established or establishing themselves right like because i think i yeah no i'm pretty sure castillo we when we brought him over um you know right before the trade deadline i'm pretty sure that we had him locked in for all of next year too and then he would go on on the market right and so like he had plenty of time as you were saying to like you know kick the tires on this mariners organization but like no we now have him in his prime we have julio locked up until he's 72 years old i believe and so if we keep these people healthy it's like roughly santana's age but look how productive santana is exactly exactly whatever happened to upton by the way Because I remember we brought in Santana and Upton, and I sort of compared them as both like veteran presences that we might get a little bit more out of. Oh, yeah, Justin Upton? But where's Justin Upton right now? I don't know. Also, where's Kyle Lewis? Is he just like done for the season? Oh, I think so, yeah. But anyway.

That's a bummer story in that that guy was rookie of the year, and now he's just not been able to really like get it together.

Yeah, because you want to talk about chemistry. I feel like he really fit this era of the Mariners chemistry-wise. He's just really beloved and you could, you know, kind of came into the Mariners with some of these other players like JP or what have you, although there's an age difference there. But anyway, I do think that it really speaks to like the Mariners locking up these two incredible players who are at different points in their career. But like it sends a message that I think can help the Mariners as they try to gain more talent. Right. Like, again, I was listening to some folks talking about this, I believe, on the Locked on Mariners podcast, which I've been enjoying. Thanks to our friend Durs who hit me to that. And it's just like it really sends a message like, no, no, no, we will pay. It doesn't mean necessarily that the Mariners are going to be making stupid moves and just throwing away money. But we're maybe shedding that reputation of a cheap organization that doesn't know how to spend their money but actually building something. So, like, I'm pretty bullish. I actually think we're going to make it out of the first round. I think we're going to make it out of the wild card round. I don't know why. I just think that, well, this leads to something else on my list, which is I just feel like, and I know that I haven't been watching baseball my entire life, but I've been watching it for a while now, and I feel like there are streaks. Baseball is obviously a streaky game, but I feel like the Mariners were especially streaky this year, going on almost unprecedented winning streaks and then going on almost unprecedented losing streaks. And we just came off of a losing streak.

that we shouldn't have gone on we were playing terrible teams and losing series to them if not all the games in a row but i just feel really good about if we're getting some more spark again and we're going to start winning games right now i honestly think we could almost win out to the end of the regular season and carry that momentum into the postseason i'm just like pretty pretty bullish right now and maybe i'm being crazy but i don't care it's fun i feel i actually feel very

sanguine because here's my thought just making the flip in playoffs will be such a relief psychically to this team and this city and if we you know it just means that we never have to have the conversation for a long time about like the longest play out playoff drought in pro sports of like any kind if we go and we actually represent ourselves well and we get a couple of wins we don't just get swept out and then we just have a taste for it and guys like julio and cal raleigh have actually gotten to take meaningful swings in a playoff game i just think it sets us up so well for next year um so i just think getting to the playoffs and just ending the conversation about the drought will be very important to us just from a you know going forward standpoint but also yeah i mean we could get having castillo is the only reason i think we might be able to get out of actually get through a series because castillo is the only true lockdown number one you can't score on this guy pitcher we have although don't forget i mean and i'm not trying to be negative

here but you never know what's going to happen either it was his he was the starter in the game we ended up losing 11 to 13 or whatever that was the bullpen that was the bullpen although he started that inning right i was half i was mostly watching the football game at that point but i'm pretty sure castillo started the sixth and then gave up some runs and then brash i want to

say came in but i think brash yeah gave up a a substantial portion of it too yeah but i guess what i mean is the i feel like castillo to me feels like a true number one robbie ray doesn't feel like a true number one even though he won the cy young last year yeah because i feel like robbie ray he can look good if he's got that whatever fourth pitch working but like ray can also get touched up he also can just like like he's not a dominant pitcher in the style of like shohei otani where you just i mean you're just if you get two runs on the guy you're so lucky like we don't really have anyone like that other than i think castillo can be that person i think if castillo is on i think he's pretty unhittable and so i you know i think if we get if we can get a first game with castillo pitching and get a really good and then who would our number two

be probably ray ray would i think it'd be castillo ray and i was gonna ask you who the third one is is it gilbert kirby probably you think kirby over gilbert i think gilbert oh okay definitely not i

don't know definitely not what you just go you just go back to the bullpen marco we'll let you

know when we need you yeah marco's uh yeah that's a interesting that's an interesting um scenario there because yeah he won't he won't be certainly he was he started the season last year too i think right he kind of took the mantle from oh he was our number one yeah he was supposedly our number

one but i i feel encouraged that we have in let me put it this way if they get hot for some reason and if there's like if things are clicking for us we have in castillo logan and or i guess i'm going to throw ray in there we have in castillo ray and whether it's logan or george three pretty solid pitchers who are capable of really dominating the other team if things are going well honestly in that of those four i feel the least strong about ray honestly uh yeah well no i i mean i

don't i feel like robbie is a strong number two there but you're right like he will just he's he can be infuriating to watch because he is good until he's not right and so if he has one of those if he has one of those innings or two of those innings in cleveland where the wheels come off the bus it would be it would be scary but i would still put him at number two before the young guys i think um because you know gilbert the other thing too and again i'm just like listening to a lot of this stuff but like the thing about um gilbert and kirby is they're also younger and so their arms this late into the season they're not used to playing this late into the season and there's something that goes into that as well and which is probably why we're starting to see gilbert come down to earth a little bit in the past month and i think that's actually contributed

i know that this maybe doesn't uh the eugenio thing doesn't really make sense on this but like julio and even cal raleigh i think you know we have some we have a lot of young players and to be playing really hard really meaningful 162 games a year you know i think it takes a toll and i think as you get older you learn how to how to you know sort of i don't know just your durability kind of goes up a little bit so i think that attributed also to this

little we got lucky though i think in that and you know knock wood like a eugenio seems like he's fine um and all accounts are that julio is going to be good that it was really an abundance of caution thing to hold him out so i mean we're it seems like we're going to get everybody we're going to go into the postseason pretty much hitting on all cylinders yeah that's right because

we're going to get julio back right for the last four game series against detroit right You know, I was texting with you guys yesterday I was just a little flabbergasted to see But I guess I was flabbergasted Because I didn't see anybody else talking about it And I was confused about that Later on, actually, I listened to that podcast That I just referenced And they were talking about it a bit But Eugenio, I thought they had said He will not be playing third base anymore The rest of at least the regular season Because he can maybe bat with this broken finger Or this healing finger But he can't necessarily field and throw So I was just sort of surprised to see him in the lineup at third base yesterday. I was keeping an eye out for it. I don't think he had to actually field anything yesterday. Oh, really? Not that I remember. I mean, it was a long-ass game, but I was kind of keeping an eye out for that. So I just hope that I was a little bit like I hope they're not going to, like, re-injure him or something as he's, like, fielding a ground ball because it's his throwing hand, right? It's not the hand that would be in the glove. I'm pretty sure his finger is that he's right-handed and the injury is on his right hand.

I believe so, based on the sliding mitt he was wearing when his first game back, like when he actually went three for three, which is pretty dope. They're like, okay, I guess you're all right. Now, Andrew, I want to throw out one other thing really quickly. Obviously, we're all excited to make the playoffs. we've already everybody knows we're playing you know sub 500 teams the rest of the way i'm looking at toronto two games ahead of us with is it how many games left in the season

six games five games we have four with detroit and three so seven i think seven games i think

and we're two back they've lost two we've won two i don't think it is out of the question for us because remember we were slumping and now we seem to be kind of getting our mojo back i do not think it would be out of the question for us to potentially overtake toronto which would be massive in the words of um who it's the um uh what's the the uh uh character that um sasha baron cohen does the like kind of weird like british hip-hop guy oh oh yes sorry it took me a second um because it was a really good impression that's why it took you so long because you were just like sitting and listening and reflecting on how good my impression that's what i always do yeah i can't think legy yeah massive i mean because like to me it's like if we if we were to overtake the blue jays that means that what that means tampa is coming to

seattle you know what i'm just realizing here is yeah i've been talking as if we're in the third slot i kind of forgot that we we skipped over tampa bay yesterday or jumped over tampa bay so i've been saying when we go to cleveland but actually right now if everything were to be locked in the way it is now i could be wrong about this but right now would mean we're going to toronto which takes robbie ray out of the lineup which means it's i think they changed that rule didn't they oh they did oh i didn't hear that oh okay i saw a headline a couple weeks ago but maybe they

were saying if it changes i don't know so don't quote me on that but like i'd rather go to cleveland than toronto either way oh a hundred percent i mean that's this weird kind of netherworld we're in currently like it would be way better to go to cleveland yeah which is you know theoretically oh you got to go play a division champ no i like our chances against cleveland so much more than in they don't call it skydome anymore but like whatever they call the the toronto stadium i mean that place is insane in the post yeah i remember the days of every canadian baseball fan right in Joe Carter and Andre the I didn't know it was Andre Dawson was a was a cub I guess but Joe Carter certainly clubbing him for the Blue Jays I mean it was just like those were crazy games up there and I would very much like us to not have to go to Toronto so I guess we need to either just

win out or lose out yeah I know it's kind of funny like it's like oh my favorite scenario is actually Well, I guess Toronto here in Seattle is definitely better than going on the road, obviously, to Cleveland. But, like, the M's have just had kind of good luck with Cleveland this year.

And good luck with Toronto, which kind of scares me because it's hard to beat a team. They say in football it's hard to beat a team three times in the same season. And we, like, we throttled Toronto. We took four in a row from them in Seattle. Remember that? I totally forgot.

I totally had forgotten about that. So you're right, actually. That gives me more faith than in a Seattle-Toronto matchup if it were here.

in seattle less faith oh for you used up because those were all like those were all like five to four games and like i remember texting you all saying it just couldn't happen to a nicer fan base peace and love to bill in toronto if you're listening but like all those blue jay fans that just come overrun our stadium and then just to have four just gutting losses to the mariners um that was like really uh rewarding um didn't there no their manager did not get fired over that i think we got another manager fired though i think by taking four games off of someone was

that joe madden yes i think that was that was angels right is that yeah but um like wouldn't

it be i mean andrew mariners toronto in seattle sold out oh my god so the blue jays fans can't just yeah half the stadium right exactly gone that's that would be amazing dynamic and you're

right um i i don't think it's out of the question and again just echoing what i said before for better for worse as far as matchup is concerned i think the seattle's boy knock on wood but i think seattle's gonna is just beginning to go on a run here so i i would not be shocked if seattle

ends up uh in the first wild card slot i mean that would be cool i really do feel i mean talk to me once we start playing the postseason i really feel like anything any and if we get past the first round it's just total gravy to me which feels great it just feels like um we sort of for me we can't lose because just getting there is going to be huge it's also a little bit i mean this is how it works if it were 20 years ago we wouldn't even be going to the playoffs because it would just be the division winners but um i was going to say it's a little bit of a bummer these are three game series uh initially not five games because there's just no margin for error

really yeah that is true um but they're also the fact that it's a three game you're not you're not bouncing back and forth between um you know going on the road between stadiums or or whatever i

don't know i feel which i the idea that it all gets played in the same stadium i don't love you don't love that unless it's the mariners and then i love it right right right but three games i don't know this is all new to me because the mariners have not been in the playoffs since the advent of the wild card so this is a completely this is completely uncharted territory for me and

you mentioned that like if this is a different time we wouldn't be in it for the wild card and then i raise again that if we were in what the al central we'd be the division leader right isn't

our record well no actually cleveland's got 88 wins so they've actually got a better record than

us now okay all right never mind but for a while that was true yeah and it by the end of the season

i mean again we are i'm hoping anyway that we although i mean another here's another thing i don't know is scott service going to start resting people like if we qualify yes does scott service start just trying to like rest everyone that he can since we're in the playoffs one way or the other and i mean would do you think scott service would ever low-key try to tank once we're once we're in to try to get a matchup with cleveland versus a matchup with toronto i don't think so

i think especially where we are now i think shooting for that home field advantage would be where their mentality is i mean i'm just totally speculating here but just based on everything that you said about where we are we're not that far behind there's still seven games to play um the resting is an interesting question though because again this is far outside of my knowledge or experience but like experience as a viewer i even mean like how much rest is too much rest too like the mariners were on an amazing streak before the all-star break and i remember just having i mean you could say it's just because i'm a negative nelly but i remember just having like a pit in my stomach being like god they're on fire now can we just not have an all-star break now because i feel like the break really kind of cooled them off remember and they came back really i mean they were hot as hell and came back kind of stumbling um and and didn't break the streak record so i i don't know like when you're managing a team like that you probably want people to have a little bit of rest but you also want to make sure that they're still in the zone which is why i think they want to make sure that julio is coming back for the last few games right yeah i

mean i'm figuring that they've given it a lot of thought and will the management that is and we'll try to do whatever it is i think positions themselves the best but uh yeah it's it's uh it's really really uh it actually feels better than i expected it to uh that they are making

it in considering that they were 10 games under 500 yeah i know i mean just we saw some shit this

year man we really did i mean it was like high hopes going in and then like just what is happening who are these people uh and how are they so bad and like we're out of it like we're just done like i remember thinking unless we go on like a 15 game winning streak this is over and then we go

on what like a 14 game right right exactly didn't you just quote a cairo radio uh promo rejoin who are these people what is going on and how can we steer clear of it all um uh

But but yeah, like it's been a journey this season. But again, I really feel like I feel like it has really positioned what's happened is that the promise of the Mariners that was happening preseason has been paid off in that. They're going to the playoffs and that B, they're good and that C, they're getting better by acquiring people like Castillo. Yeah. And locking them in and showing and Julio locking Julio and Julio like completely exceeding, I think, our expectations for his rookie season. and now even I don't want to famous last words but even the Kalanick thing like if Kalanick gets his head on straight and can play like a solid left field next year it's like it's a pretty good team that was the other thing Scott Service was saying which I really liked I mean Scott Service is on something in this press conference I can't find the audio from it I got on some weird sports website that's like was trying to make me look at a bunch of real housewives of Atlanta gifts or something but like scott service was like i'm excited they were like are you excited to go to the playoffs he was like i'm excited because we're a really good team he was like we can pitch we can hit i think that we can hit part is i wonder i should look at where do the mariners rank in terms of like offensive production because it always feels like i think what stings the most is when we have an anemic couple of games in a row and it's just like ty france just waving at a pitch and winker just like grounding into double plays it feels to me like we don't have enough offense but i actually don't know if that's the reality or just well if how it feels and again

we're not playing really good teams right now but i mean the weird thing i don't know if it's even worth analyzing this these parts of the games where we are now because it's a bit of a bummer but some of these big losses that we had or even the fact that yesterday was a bit of a struggle against the the rangers is interesting because like our we're we're scoring runs as you said the beginning we got 10 runs yesterday across 11 innings you know like we're hitting it's weird to see in this phase of the mariners a couple of uh pitching collapses both at the starting position uh with with marco yesterday which i don't know if you'd call that a collapse it was just unusual to have three uh home runs in a single inning from him um so that part was a collapse i guess i don't know how much he ended up giving up all told yesterday but i'll move on But anyway, and then you look at you look at the huge bullpen collapse of last Sunday and you're like, we scored 11 runs like it was just like that was not a scenario that we've been dealing with this season. It's been, well, really good pitching. But then when we are going through the losing streaks, it's been really anemic at the plate. But like, I don't know, man, they're swinging the bats and some unusual hitters are getting it out of the park, too. You know, the people that we don't rely on as much. But it's like, what's going on with our pitching? And I almost wonder if this, like, let's clinch the playoffs is mentally weighing on the pitching staff more than the, you know, offense. And that I'm wondering if just once we get this thing locked in, if everybody will just start having a little bit more fun on that side of the game.

For what it's worth, our batting average is we're tied for 28th out of 30 teams. Oh, shit. At 229. now the thing is the highest team is the blue jays at 260 so it's like there's no team that's got a 300 average the the top is 260 the bottom is 217 the oakland athletics but we're kind of

bringing up the rear at 229 ourselves yeah that's not that's not fantastic but it's like i don't know it's just when everything works together right hey let me ask you this if you don't mind me getting off of the the actual nuts and bolts of sports for a second but i really did want to talk to you about this like what is your plan for watching today like i part of me is like all geared up to have like you know popcorn or peanuts or whatever here at my house and like watching the game but then i'm like wait a second this is historic i should probably be around mariner's fans and go to a sports bar or something i don't know what is your plan

i'm gonna be wine tasting andrew because i'm an incredible boyfriend and i didn't really plan this very well and this is like somebody it's one of becca's friends having a birthday in wine country and i said i would i said i would go to it i probably said i would go to it three months ago i had no memory of agreeing to it until this week yeah and you

never knew when the day was you know what exactly it was gonna be and i kind of had i was having

this feeling i was emotionally detaching from them a bit because i was like i know they're going to get to the playoffs but like it's going to be kind of ugly getting there and i don't need to get all torqued up over just like wake me up when we're you know wake me up when baltimore is lost enough that we're going to the playoffs was kind of what i was going with therefore i wasn't really clocking carefully when are they going to do have the big night but i am i am dvr-ing it as i dvr every game which is why my dvr is always 100 full because there's always like There's like 180 Jeopardy. episodes roughly 12 all in with chris hayes and then like 75 mariners games but um so i will be dvr-ing it i will be monitoring it on my phone i will probably lay a few bets down i did okay last night because i did my favorite move which was i bet when the mariners were losing so i was getting really good odds like i bet for them to win yeah when they were behind that's like the most for me that's the most satisfying way for a i don't i would rather they never fall behind but if they do that's when i like try to karmically like jiggle things um so that like i don't know so i can be more sad if they don't come back but anyway um so i will come home and watch it unless they lose i guess i'll be monitoring it wherever i'm in wine country on my phone like i'm in a commercial uh and then i will come home and if they win and it's fun and dramatic i will watch the entire game uh and drink um some whiskey uh and in me and bubbles will enjoy it tonight but maybe just a little on delay now you got to do stuff too i mean that's the thing you can't

just kind of like say hey i'm uh you know just block out all of the last two weeks of september because at some point the team may come through and you know what i mean you just got to do stuff

that that's what i'm trying to i'm i'm this the seahawks are really helping me with this by not being very good this season per our predictions or mine anyway so it's helping me a little like be less obsessive about that and i've been trying with the mariners to i mean whatever i don't know why i'm getting realer than real here at the end of this emergency no point but it was something that like carrie did not totally adore that there was like 162 evenings of my life per year where i just needed to be staring at a tv screen or listening to a radio for four hours like it's a big hit on someone's time and i really when i moved down here and i thought you know i still care deeply about this team but i'm going to try to find a way to enjoy them without it literally taking up every night for four months of my life or six months or whatever the hell it is

that's what i'm trying to do with football this year too now that i'm down to watching one team anyway and like and also just like more and more more and more creeping guilt out of my fandom of of the nfl which just proves itself to be a pretty rotten organization through and through like and we knew that we know that and i know it now and i'll continue to watch the seahawks but i just have like the blinders that i've been building for years so that i can myopically enjoy a game on a thursday night or a sunday but you have to like block out so much shit my blinders are getting so big I can barely hold my head up but I still I still am addicted to the NFL and I'm trying to enjoy those Sunday games but you know that you know I have obligations on on Sundays with my volunteer group that I usually just abdicate during the winter and this year it's tough like we're really low on volunteers and this last week when we had an afternoon game and I had a I had plans with friends to watch the game we're getting the old gang back together and so I was really excited about that but like we had volunteers who were getting ill and dropping out at the last minute we had volunteers who could just couldn't do it it was just such a tough week last week that I realized like I was walking to watch this game thinking like I am so anxious about everything that's going on with my volunteer group right now and that I should be there but instead like I'm just like no I'm going to have fun at this game and and I did but i need to do less of that so i think like me too like this sunday like i'm not building my entire day around football the way i used to i'm gonna watch it in the morning while i do some prep and then i'm just gonna try to have a more i think if not casual a more maybe hopefully healthy

relationship with football this year i will say that my enjoyment of baseball has not been diminished by the fact that i will often just not even watch the game i'll just look at the score on my phone there's this game day thing on the mlb app that just literally shows you an animation of the pitch and i'll just kind of monitor it that way and then like you know i'm again i'm recording the game so if i need to watch it i can if i want to go you know if there's something really exciting that happens and like so i probably watch about half of them in real time and i still feel very connected to the team i'm still having a fun time but i'm not it's it it does feel a little freeing to know that i can like not watch them and then just figure get the summary of the game and go back and watch the highlights and like i still feel like i said i don't i'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of this baseball season even though I'm not just planting myself in front of the TV

the way I have some years you know I just realized I should do I don't know if I will do this I might it's so easy just to stay at home and control my environment and get a pizza or whatever but what I really should do especially if the Mariners end up like if the Orioles win and so we go into this game thinking the Mariners could have a moment where they lock it up tonight with their with a victory I should probably go hang out with my old buddies at head. Teddy's, huh? I haven't been there in a little bit. I think it's okay for me to say this. I think that we're down to a matter of months now of that place existing. And so, so much of my marriage. It's really just about making Teddy's comfortable.

Hey, can you get my dad's sign back?

Fridays with Teddy. Show title? Baby. So, anyway, that would be probably the right thing for me to do if I can get my ass over there.

You know what kind of sucks about being in Portland is because stupid Root Sports, you know, it's a whole extra package to order. The Mariners are never on in any bars in Portland because it's not Seattle. And so if you're going to get Root Sports down here to have the Mariners, you have to buy a package. And there's just not enough people that care. So, I mean, I have them at my house, so I guess I'll just be watching them here. but like the idea of just going into a bar now maybe those games are different because i don't know does fox like pick up all of the playoff games like are they on a different i might those might be on a different network completely yeah but as far as this this season has gone it's like i'm never even like monitoring the mariners i'm having dinner at a bar but i can see the game is on like that's not a thing that they do which is kind of annoying yeah i mean obviously i'm sure

you could seek it out i'm sure there are like specifically mariners bars in the city because you're kind of in the core of the city right um what's your address again occurred to me to um

uh to actually google that but maybe i should because it would be fun to go watch these playoff

games surrounded by other insaniacs yeah exactly i'm looking here for the for the i'm on a reddit thing oh you're you're on you're looking for i was looking for the wild card series yeah so it It looks like ESPN will be broadcasting the wild card games.

Now, meanwhile, somebody said, best Mariners bar in Portland, Oregon? Read it. I'm tired of going to local bars where there are no other M's fans and no one knows anything about the team or cares how they're doing. Can anyone recommend a Portland bar that caters to M's fans? And then the highest voted response is, haven't found one yet. Hard to find a lot of baseball fans around Portland, it seems.

oh man um i'm gonna encourage my you know my friend hannah is way into the mariners and she's

oh yeah let me see if she has a bar that she goes to yeah um i know i have been in one it's like the rialto which is like a pool hall slash video poker room you know i don't like those kind of places obviously um so i probably won't go to that one no it's like i i want to go to a bar that's like that place they'll have it on but like no one's watching it everyone's just playing billiards it's like i want to go to a sports bar where everyone is like wearing mariners shit i won't because i can't ever give in on that front but just like everyone's just like freaking out about everything

that's happening in the game yeah exactly and the person next to you with a somewhat thick tongue starts uh just starts pulling on the string a little bit of mariners talk and the next thing you know it's three hours later your best friends and you both have mariners tattoos talking about

gorman thomas um i just want to i just want to wrap this up andrew is there something anything

else that you were keen on discussing no i wasn't sure if we wanted to talk at all about the seahawks but we're going kind of long and i got to get tbtl posted here so we do i mean look here's what i'll

say about the seahawks after that loss to atlanta it's like between getting atlanta and detroit back to back if you don't pick up two wins if you don't bank two wins there you have no chance against the los angeles ramses of the world etc right yeah like i don't see us like we're in the easiest part probably the easiest part of our schedule like once we get into the nfc west once we're actually playing the the rams and the cardinals i know the cardinals don't have the greatest record right now but like and start playing other mark i don't know our whole schedule this season but it's like i'm not feeling bullish if we win if we beat the lions and we go to two and two i guess that's better than nothing but i just feel like losing that game to atlanta that

really let the air out of the balloon for me that really sucked and a year and then the the lack of offense in the second half of the game was a real bummer but really to me and again i'm watching this at a bar while the mariners are imploding on a tv over my back like behind my back and then i'm trying to and i'm talking to friends and so like i am not a student of the game as as you well know but like it's really the the defense that is just really frustrating to me because i am not totally done with gino yet like i know that some people are calling to see drew and like has better numbers than russell wilson for the record oh right he's really wilson's really struggling but like gino like yes he throws uh he he did a kind of a classic like very a very bad interception at a very bad time of the game and i know that that's his rap but like he also like when he's when he he's playing well and when he's in the zone he actually i'm impressed with his comfort back there and some of his comfort under pressure until suddenly he's really not comfortable under pressure but for the vast majorities of games i'm i'm actually happy to see him back there i and i'm glad to see rashad penny like just not getting injured so far knock on wood and and pulling off some great runs which i love to see it's just like it's this porous run defense it's just like we could be winning these games like to me that's that's the thing that is just absolutely killing

me yeah our our defense is terrible just absolutely terrible right now and i don't know how you fit i mean i there's one thing i will say is last year our defense was historically bad for like the first six games of the year and then did something where they actually statistically were a lot better for the last half of the season i don't know how you do that but they should try it because you can't win games when you're just like letting the Atlanta Falcons shred you I mean that was just that's depressing Marcus Mariota yeah it is not a high quality quarterback in this league anymore and you just cannot let him make you look that foolish I mean they were just moving the ball at will so yeah that's now here's where I want to wrap this up Andrew and this is really kind of crossing this is jumping over from the TBTL timeline to the no point timeline right so while we've been talking i apologize if i sound a little distracted uh one of our producers at livewire has was dropping something off for me and um i was trying to coordinate i thought i was actually going to be done i can come downstairs and get it but then we were recording the no point so i said hey if you just hit this number in i can buzz you in on my phone and then you can just leave it in the mail area and my colleague heather said okay well i guess she just got in someone was walking in the building but this is the text that i got from her um she said uh i got here i'm parking and then i said okay and then the next text i get from her she goes it's with

the dude at the front desk the grumpy guy this motherfucker i wonder if he said what when she

it's not just me yeah i i was thinking about this today as i was as i was coming back in after my jog and i walked past him he just looked at me like a death stare jesus and i was because i'm not going to live in this place forever i'm eventually either going to move somewhere else or move to the other house that i'm working on and um i wanted to say to him you're not well suited for this job yeah like this is not a good fit for you customer service is not your thing and that's okay it's probably not my thing but it's very much not your thing yeah yeah that's rough he just has a scowl on his face all the time i mean this is somebody who i work with who has literally no context for this does not listen to tbtl i would i did not say be careful the guy's a grump complete double blind survey finds that this guy sucks wait why doesn't heather listen to tbtl

it would make her so jealous at the level of production okay okay all right that's fine then because i was about to i was about to have a new enemy i don't understand why somebody wouldn't listen to this why somebody couldn't get enough of you luke as i said on tbtl today we agree we

both like me yeah right exactly all right all right uh that we should probably wrap it up you've got you've got teddies to visit and newsletters to send and yeah i gotta write something for the newsletter i think i've got i've got wine tasting to go to just a hundred percent the thing i should be doing when the mariners are about to end their 21 year playoff just release desire go have a good

time don't let this nag at you you will you'll end up you'll end up ruining your own experience

No, I'm I'm I'm I'm actually fine. I'm playing it up a little bit. And so. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. I don't know when we're going to do this again, but well, probably if the Mariners do anything in the playoffs, I'm sure that we'll pop back up like a like a gopher in the movie Caddyshack. So we'll see you then. Until then, as we usually say, when wrapping up this here program, there's when we're doing the no point, absolutely no tangent too long or detail too wrong. No matter what you are

I will always be with you Doesn't matter what you do