The Nautical 9

Ryan & Travis
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Baseball

The mics are back on! ⚓️⚾️ After a 15-month hiatus, we’re back with a brand-new podcast and a new mission. We’re shifting our focus from general Seattle sports to the Hometown 9: your Seattle Mariners. Note to our original listeners: If you’re hearing this on the Super Sports Kid feed, head over and subscribe to The Nautical 9 to stay in the loop. Let's get to work!

  1. 9h ago

    We Don't Get Swept, We Just Don't Win Series

    Deadline day, the second of the three real baseball holidays, and this one landed with a thud. Not much moved league-wide, and the Mariners came into it having lost fourteen of twenty, sitting on the worst offense in baseball and the lowest team batting average. The pitching is the only reason this isn't a sixty-win team. Somehow that adds up to three games back in the AL West, because everyone around us is a train wreck too. Since the break it's been 7-9 and no road series win in two and a half months. The Giants series went 2-1 our way after an ugly 7-0 opener. The Reds series was the same movie in reverse: George Kirby and the pen shut them out 8-0 behind a Cal Raleigh grand slam after Cincinnati walked Canzone in a lefty-lefty spot to get to him, then two straight duds. Everybody starts saying we turned a corner, and then Texas happened. Three of four gone, the rotation shelled all week, Kirby giving up four homers, Woo giving up five runs because road Woo has an ERA near eight. We could have left Arlington up two and a half. We left third. In LA we won the opener on five homers, with Cal and Julio going deep in the same game for the first time since April, Canzone hitting two, and Refsnyder off the foul pole. Then one hit in six innings against Eric Lauer. Not Yamamoto. Lauer. The Twins weekend was the whole season in three games. Friday we load the bases in the first, get two on a Raleigh ground-rule double, Cole Young homers, and the offense goes dark. Twins chip away, 5-3, and we drop to 53-58. Saturday was a carbon copy until the ninth, with Logan Gilbert taking a comebacker off the ankle in the fourth and giving us seven quality innings anyway. Then Minnesota pulls an outfielder for a fifth infielder, Royce Lewis tags first before throwing to second and nullifies the force, and Randy scores on a scorched Raleigh grounder. Sunday we build 6-0 behind seven shutout innings from Kirby and a Raleigh three-run shot, and our three highest-leverage arms cough up six runs. Bazardo has the home run bug. Ferrer, who has been so good, gave up a three-run shot. Munoz showed his first crack since June. The offense bailed them out anyway on singles from Naylor and Robles and a Colt Emerson knock through the right side, with Naylor belly-flopping into third and face-planting on his own helmet on the way. Back-to-back walk-offs, same as last year against these guys. Two moves, both the ones we needed. Castillo and the thirty million left on his deal go to the White Sox for Seranthony Dominguez, spelled with an E, plus Nolan Jones and Boston Smith, Chicago's number ten prospect. Dominguez is the guy who served up the Eugenio Suarez grand slam in the playoffs last year, so his last memory of this building is a good one for us. Then Taylor Ward from Baltimore for Alex Hoppe, Brock Moore and Harrison Kreiling. The forty-homer power is gone, but he leads the AL in walks and hits .269 against lefties, which is the exact allergy we've had all year. We're now the only team with two guys sitting in the .300s in on-base. Arozarena stayed, Kirby stayed, Hancock stayed, and San Diego wanted Kade Anderson for Mason Miller. Hard no. Skubal to the Dodgers was inevitable, and the part that stings is there was no fight for him. They just took him. A billion two in deferred money, a luxury tax bill bigger than sixteen teams' payrolls, and Blake Snell working as a depth piece. Give us a cap and a floor and the same money still gets spent, just not all in one zip code. Elsewhere: Houston grabbed Varsho, the Cubs stacked Gausman, Clay Holmes and Braxton Garrett, Baltimore sold everything, the Mets and Giants held fire sales, and Boston walked away with Adley Rutschman and a real catching tandem. That's the deadline winner. Six games left on this homestand, three against a Tigers team that just dismantled its own rotation and three against the Rays for the fiftieth season celebration.

  2. Jul 17

    Five and One, One and Five: Mariners Math

    No competitive baseball since Sunday, and the big first-half takeaway is that this team is actively trying to take away our love of the game. The pitching has been dominant, and yet we can't hit lefties, can't hit with runners in scoring position, and play bottom-three defense. Somehow that adds up to a game and a half back in the West and the third wild card spot while under .500. Sixth best team in an American League where only five teams are over .500. We keep saying "just wait for it to click." Sixty five games left would be a dang good time. The road trip recap: a 5-1 homestand followed by a 1-5 trip, because of course. We should have had game one in Miami before Gabe Speier's rare bad command day, but losing to the Marlins and Rays isn't the crime. Both Florida teams are good. The crime is the Royals sweep, the Angels, the A's, all the series against middling teams we should have banked earlier. Tampa got on us so fast Friday and Saturday that we turned both games off before the seventh. Then Sunday the bats jumped a lefty starter early and the bullpen carried a 6-2 win after Hancock took one off the hand. Hopefully the week off is all he needs. Then the rant portion. Randy jogged after a catchable ball in Castillo's start, let it drop, and Cedric Mullins hit the very next pitch out. Castillo's glare said everything. Randy's hitting .290, but singles to right with nobody on aren't carrying a team his defense keeps costing. And the piggyback six-man rotation has us a man short in a bullpen that's already hurt, throwing the wrong guys in leverage spots. Between those two things we counted about six games gone. Our theory: Castillo stays stretched out to protect his trade value, and we both think he's moved by the deadline. Ryan wants Randy packaged with him and Suzuki brought in. Travis isn't trading the only guy hitting above .280. Either way, we're buyers. This pitching is too good and the AL is too bad to sell. Injury report: more excited for Carlos Vargas and his hundred mile an hour sinker than for Brash, who we love but don't trust to stay healthy. Julio is past the seven-day mark and hopefully in the lineup for the home opener. Donovan is total radio silence since the end of May, no rehab assignment, no 60-day move, which is weird. Maybe Jerry or Hollander tells us something in the dugout presser. Around the league: the All-Star Game was a bore, 27 combined strikeouts and an AL win, though Randy got a knock. The Derby saved the week. The new format, where every swing counts and you have to end on an out, was the right call, and Jordan Walker homering on his final swings to beat Schwarber in a dead-silent Philly ballpark was perfect theater. We also solved international baseball: put it in the Olympics mid-season, because the WBC keeps wrecking stars' first halves. See Vladdy and his four homers. Standings check: Rangers lead the West, we're the only team in the division with a positive run differential, the A's are 1-9, and the White Sox are somehow tied for first in the Central and legit. Up next, Giants and Reds at home, two of the only five NL teams under .500, then the Rangers series that decides who we are. Ryan says 5-1. Travis says 1-5, strictly to reverse the jinx. We'll see you next Thursday either way.

  3. Jul 2

    One Out From Emerson: Another Dan Special

    We came out of the road trip a game under .500 and carrying a franchise record we did not want. Thirteen straight games scoring three runs or fewer, the same mark we set back in 2015 and 2016 when this team was actually bad. Doing it while basically healthy for the first time since early April makes it worse. The only real absence is Donovan, and even he's just taking a couple days. Pitching has been the saving grace. George has three straight quality starts, Luis is sitting around a 1.69 over his last handful, and Woo set a scoreless-innings streak north of 31 at home before the road version of Woo showed up again. Randy's back, Dom's back and fighting a nagging hamstring that kept him out Tuesday. The bats keep getting bodies and keep flailing anyway. Pittsburgh cost us the series, and it stung because we missed Skenes and still couldn't cash. Game one we took 3-2 behind six strong from Kirby, a Cal Raleigh homer, and the storybook one, Cole Young going deep in his hometown with his high school coach in the bleachers. Mooney closed it for save fourteen and finally looks like someone we can trust again. Game two was the 11-1 clunker, three hits and a run in the first and nothing after. Game three was the real gut punch, a 9:30 a.m. getaway where we loaded the bases three times and scored zero, stranding twelve. That is where pinch-hitting a .133 lefty specialist for Canzone or Raleigh becomes exhibit A for why Jerry and Dan are on the list. Cleveland was more of the same, another 1-2. We won game one on the hometown tour, Colt Emerson going 3-for in Ohio and Dom Canzone launching one of his own, with Castillo dialed in. Saturday we lost 4-3, down 4-0 into the eighth before a Randy three-run shot and some good ninth-inning at-bats against a top closer came up short. Sunday was the worst, because we finally broke the three-run wall in the seventh and thought we had a series win. Then Dan pulled Hancock one out early, burned Bazardo for a single out, and let Josh Simpson lose it to the lefties. JP grounded out on the first pitch in the ninth and that was that. It makes you wonder how many of these calls are even Dan's, or a directive coming down from Jerry. Then the Angels flipped the mood. We walked in expecting a sweep, a game under .500 and out of the division lead, and instead took the first two. Game one was the Cole Young show, his first two-homer game, one a lefty-lefty laser to dead center, with Dom adding a lefty-lefty tank of his own. Game two we saw in person, an 8-3 win built on twelve singles and a double, Woo dealing at home, Julio with three hits and his average finally creeping up, Colt with three more. Bryce Miller goes tonight against Ureña looking as sharp as he has all year. As for the piggyback, it got called off the second Logan got hot and we have not heard a word since. It is on the shelf, probably dead, and honestly good riddance to being a man short in the pen. Around the league, the Mets finally cut their manager loose at 34-47, though changing the vibe over there feels hopeless. Misiorowski hit 105.5, which we are rounding to 106, and he had the nerve to say he slipped and left a couple ticks on the table. The Angels fired their GM two weeks before the draft, which barely registers for a franchise that has been in the dumpster for thirteen years. The Yankees are scuffling without Judge while the Rays ripped off seven straight behind Caminero's six-game homer streak. And the White Sox dropped twenty-two on the Royals, almost all of it on homers, on a day the Cubs put up twenty-one and the Rockies fourteen. Tonight it is the Angels again, then a three-game pennant rematch with a Blue Jays team limping in having lost seven of eight. Stay right, don't let anybody else get right, and ride it to October. Ryan says it probably won't happen. He also said that last week.

  4. Jun 23

    Annoying Grind: A June to Forget

    June hit the Mariners in the mouth and hasn't let up. Two weeks off for a graduation and a camping trip, and we didn't miss much beyond an annoying grind. Since the last show we've gone 7-9, two games under .500 after sitting near the top of the league since May 25th. A 4-6 road trip, then 3-3 at home. The wild part: we're a game over .500 at 40-39 and still in first place, because the AL West and the whole AL are that bad. Outside the Yankees and their plus-112 run differential, nobody has separated. We're at plus-17. The division is a blanket, with the A's a game and a half back, the Rangers two, the Astros three, and even the Angels only eight out. The injuries are the story. We had two-thirds of the Opening Day lineup on the IL at some point on the trip, almost all position players this time, which beats last year's run of pitching injuries since the rotation can still carry us. Cal is back behind the plate and you can see his impact on the starters, but the power isn't there yet. Still think he's good for 25. Donovan remains a total mystery, no rehab outings, no updates. Randy should be eligible tomorrow and we need his bat. Julio and Josh both missed time dinged up, and Julio's average has slid to .247, which is starting to scare me. Then Dom pulled up holding his hamstring, called minor and day to day. Somebody get Rick Griffin back in here. Defense got sloppy too. Naylor botched a routine glove flip to Gilbert covering the bag, not what you want from a five-year, ninety-million-dollar first baseman. The bright spot is JP sliding to third so Colt Emerson can play his natural shortstop. The captain gave up his career spot and has looked sharp over there. The rotation question is the piggyback. They went back to it with Miller and Castillo, but it leaves us short in the pen and it backfired Friday. At some point Castillo has to move to long relief or the ninth, though neither of us fully trusts him or a Jekyll-and-Hyde Munoz late. Farm report is the good news. Kade Anderson is 8-0 with a 1.3 ERA at Double-A Arkansas, paired with Ryan Sloan. Dipoto says a callup is coming, likely two-inning spot starts to manage his innings. Road trip in brief: should have won in Detroit but Munoz blew Sunday. Split four in Baltimore after stealing the first two on absurd replacement-level defense. A ten-run explosion in Washington, then the offense vanished, fifteen runs total over the next eight games. Home stand: pitching carried all three wins. Gilbert was vintage in the opener, 97-98 again, seven innings and ten punchouts in a 3-1 win. George cruised then derailed in game two. Woo was dominant at home, nine strikeouts into the eighth in a 3-0 shutout. Then Boston rolled out three lefties, our kryptonite, and ground us down with eighty-mile-an-hour singles while Suárez carried a no-hitter into the seventh. We took the Father's Day finale 3-1 behind another Gilbert gem to stay a game and a half up. Around the league: Schwarber went off, 29 bombs with two in one inning, and Harper cycled the same game. Misiorowski throws 104 every pitch and looks untouchable, even if a couple of Tommy Johns feel inevitable. Skubal trade chatter is heating up, no thanks at his price. The White Sox might be for real, sitting in the second wild card. Up next, Pittsburgh then Cleveland, both middling like us, both winnable if we play up to it. Randy is likely back this series. Knowing us it'll be excruciating, three runs a night, hanging on for dear life. A lot of hope, but a fearful hope.

  5. Jun 5

    Three Series, Two Walk-Offs, One Last Piggyback

    Episode thirteen and finally some traction. The boys capped an eight game win streak with a 5-1 homestand and three straight series wins, the first time that's happened all year. Losing 7-1 to end it barely stung. That's what an eight game streak buys you. Injury news first. Cal Raleigh is targeting rehab games in Everett this weekend, sold out two hours after they announced it, then Tacoma, with a likely June 16 return for the first game back off the road trip. No rush. The point is getting Cal in-game swings he never got in spring while off at the WBC, where the swing and miss was real. Brendan Donovan has no clear timeline, working the anti-gravity treadmill on his groin in Arizona. When he's back the puzzle gets fun. Colt isn't leaving third, JP and Cole stay put for defense, so Donovan slots into a DH or outfield platoon. The dream is parking Randy at DH to hide his glove and his hustle, because if he does his one job everybody wins. Friday we were there in person. JP Crawford led off with a homer, Julio went deep, and then the wave started with runners on and cursed the whole thing. Brash couldn't locate, a 5-1 lead evaporated. Luke Raleigh tied it with a solo shot that landed near our seats. Naylor booted a barehand play, his defense is not great, but Mooney limited the damage and Cooper Chriswell has been absolute dynamite when called on. Then they walked Naylor to set up the double play and pitch to Randy, who lifted a ground ball pitch into a walk-off two-run blast. JP's first career two-homer game. Saturday was a four-homer slugfest with no other offense, which is the whole problem. Nearly seventy percent of our runs come from the long ball, and that backfires in October against arms throwing 97. Luke Raleigh, a platoon bat, leads the team in homers. Colt and Dom both went deep, Dom's getting baseballed hard with no luck. Woo went seven, nine K. Julio capped his best month ever, ten bombs and a .357 stretch in May. That's the Julio we've been waiting for. Sunday in the steelhead unis we survived 3-2 in extras on the last successful piggyback, Bryce and Luis each going five, homers from Cole Young and Canzone, and Victor's first career walk-off infield single. Two tenth-inning walk-off wins in one series. Thin margins, but these are the games we lost all April and May. Then we swept the Diamondbacks. Mets series, and they're loaded with Soto, Bo Bichette, and Semien hitting seventh, yet they keep metting it up. Monday was four hits and a 2-1 grind win, Hancock dealing, Naylor tying it with a back-tweaking homer, Cole Young walking it off after Randy stole third uncontested. Tuesday was a laser show, Patrick Wisdom and Johnny Pareto tanks. Pareto bat-flips singles and has made himself a real tough demotion when Cal returns, a serviceable backup with great energy. Wednesday the streak ended at eight, Kirby got George'd to death pounding the zone too predictably while Peralta shut us down. Around the league: the Yankees hung thirteen in a single inning on the A's, eighteen batters, eleven hits. The Rangers and A's won't go away, both within striking distance. The White Sox are somehow chugging, new management and a better locker room going a long way. And yes, the Pope is a Sox fan. Ten game road trip ahead through Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington. Ryan's high on his own supply at 8-2, the saner take is 7-3. Split Baltimore, handle the Nationals despite James Wood. Just pray it doesn't rain in Camden like it always does.

  6. May 29

    Piggyback Problems and a Platoon That Finally Hit

    Show Notes: The Mariners went on the road and came back 4-2, which sounds fine until you remember how painful the first half was. KC came in on a ten-game losing streak, and naturally, the M's gave them life. Game one was all pitching. Logan Gilbert looked sharp through five and two-thirds, his velo sitting 93-95 now instead of the 96-97 of years past, but the stuff was there. He kept Bobby Witt Jr. quiet. The offense had one productive swing: a Mitch Garver homer in the seventh. Two-nothing. Saturday was a gut punch. Steven Kolek threw a complete-game shutout. The Mariners were so aggressive at the plate it was almost disrespectful to themselves. JP grounded out on the first pitch. Guys swinging at everything, letting a starter cruise when they should have been driving up pitch counts and getting to a bad bullpen. Kolek should have been out by the seventh. Instead he went the distance. Sunday started with a Julio homer two batters in, but Bryan Woo couldn't hold it. The Royals broke through in the fifth and kept piling on. Colt Emerson went 4-for-4 with three doubles, becoming just the 18th player aged 20 or younger in MLB history with four-plus hits and three extra-base hits in a game. The kid has an OBP north of .360 and barely strikes out. Down 8-3 in the ninth, the M's rallied for three and brought the tying run to the plate. Too little, too late, but Ryan saw a spark. He was right. Oakland was the biggest series of the first quarter, and the Mariners delivered a sweep. Game one was Piggyback 2.0. Luis Castillo had his best stuff of the year: four shutout innings, two hits, six K's. Ryan thought he deserved another inning instead of handing it to Bryce Miller. The transition still feels clunky. It didn't matter because the offense hung seven runs on the A's starter with four homers from Raley, Canzone, Crawford, and one more. Nine-two. Game two, the A's called up a lefty throwing 95 with a funky delivery to exploit Seattle being dead last against left-handed pitching. The M's settled in and manufactured all four runs without a homer. Refsnyder and Robles got hits. Emerson Hancock was locked in for seven shutout innings. The only blemish: Andres Munoz giving up a solo shot on that slider he can't bury. It sits around 85, doesn't get down, and lefties are sitting on it. That pitch is becoming a real problem. Game three, another lefty in Jeffrey Springs, and Refsnyder cracked it open with a three-run homer. Emerson drove in three. Julio hit his tenth of the year, eighth in May, off a 97-mph fastball. Gilbert threw six shutout frames. Nine-one. The three starters combined for zero runs allowed across the series. Twenty-two runs scored, 28 in the last four games. First place in the AL West at 28-29, half a game up on Oakland. Around the league, the Astros threw the first no-hitter since 2024 with rookie Alimber Santa finishing two innings in his MLB debut. Jordan Alvarez hit four homers in two games to reach 20. The Cubs remain the most confusing team in baseball: two ten-game winning streaks and a twelve-game losing streak, all before game sixty. Tampa Bay is building around speed, contact, and platoons, doing the opposite of everyone else, and it's working. D-backs and Mets come to Seattle next.

  7. May 22

    Bases Loaded. So What? The Sequel

    The Padre series was the low point of the season so far, and there's no dressing it up. All 27 innings played from behind, sloppy defense, and a Sunday performance on Peacock that the rest of the country got to watch up close: one hit, off a Lucas Giolito who tops out at 90 and made the M's look completely overmatched. Game one, Emerson Hancock was solid and the offense was dog turd. Game two, Logan Gilbert had a good two innings before San Diego got on the heater and the whole outing fell apart in the third. Gavin Sheets went absolutely nuclear on the whole weekend, hitting three home runs in two games. Brutal home stand. Then Tuesday happened. Bryce Miller was supposed to start and hand off to Castillo in a piggyback setup, but Miller went no-hit into the sixth and the plan unraveled. Dan Wilson doubled back to the mound, which you can't do, which let runners on base turn into a double steal, which meant the infield had to come in, which meant soft contact bleeders won the game. Mooney gets a clean inning and it's a different story. The offense left everyone stranded again late, with Rayleigh and Kenzone sitting until the ninth before getting one at bat with the bases cleared against the closer. The debate on how much is Dan and how much is front office direction is alive and well. It's probably both. Monday was a reset. Brian Woo dealt: six innings, one run, eight strikeouts, back to the guy he was before the Missouri teams had their way with him. And the Colt Emerson story is already a good one. Called up that afternoon while suited up for Tacoma, he drove to Seattle and made the Sunday game. His parents missed it, went back to Ohio, and then made it back Monday to watch him hit his first career homer, a three-run shot in the eighth that broke the game open. It barely stayed fair, but it landed in the seats, and that's all that mattered. Wednesday, Hancock got out of a bases loaded jam with nobody out, Pareto hit his first MLB homer, Randy went deep to left center, and Rafe closed it out after working three straight. Series win over the White Sox. Two of the last three series taken. JP Crawford has told the team he's willing to move to third if it means keeping Emerson at short, and that says everything about Crawford's character. He credits the mentality to Kyle Seager and D Gordon. Whether the arm holds up on cross-diamond throws is an open question, but the leadership isn't. On deck: three in Kansas City, then three at Sacramento in what amounts to a minor league ballpark. Ryan is calling five and one. Travis's at two and four. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and the Royals being one-win-in-forever is exactly the kind of thing that makes Kaufman dangerous.

  8. May 16

    This Close. Again. Still.

    The road trip is in the books and the Mariners are still exactly where they've been: right around .500, holding the second wild card spot in the AL, not further along than they should be. Four and three felt like progress on paper. It felt like a missed six and one in practice. Chicago started hot. Raley went nuclear in game one, a grand slam and a three-run homer, seven of the team's 12 RBIs, Naylor added a three-run shot, 12-8 win. Then Saturday: a veteran lefty with an ERA over five shows up and the offense dies. One run. A Refsnyder sac fly. Castillo pitched well enough to deserve better. Sunday they had their shot, bases loaded, one out, Cole pops up and Donovan dribbles one down the first baseline. One out of three in Chicago and it should have been two. Houston started clean. Kirby went five innings, nine strikeouts, one run, and became the 12th pitcher in franchise history to reach 50 wins. Game two was all Canzone, his first career grand slam off Imai, who couldn't find the zone. Randy went four for four with a two-run homer. Woo gave six innings and two runs. Then game three happened. Miller was dealing in his season debut, on pace for six scoreless, until an umpire took a foul ball to the face and got concussed badly enough to still be in the hospital when the team left town. The rhythm broke, the Astros scraped two runs, Julio walked one home to tie it, and then the Mariners lost on a Naylor infield dribbler that was half an inch from a walk-off win. Cal backed up a throw awkwardly, tweaked his oblique, and was on the IL the next morning. Game four, Raley hit a three-run homer in the first, Garver went deep, Donovan went double-triple-single in his first three at-bats, and Castillo went five and two-thirds on 108 pitches. Back-to-back solid outings from the guy who used to be the "oh no, he's pitching today" guy. Four and three. Could have been six and one. Cal is probably done until the All-Star break, but Garver is a proven big-league catcher and Cal hasn't been Cal this year anyway. The bigger question is Raley, the team's home run leader hitting .270, still getting platooned against lefties. It's a Jerry-era roster philosophy, but at some point you have to let the hot guy hit. The rotation logjam is a good problem. Miller looked sharp coming back, Hancock has been great, Kirby is Kirby, and Castillo is in a groove. They're talking stack starts to get everyone their innings. It probably lasts one outing before something else solves it. Around the league: the Cubs have spent 20 of 45 games inside two separate 10-game win streaks. The Braves hit 30 wins first. The White Sox are above .500 for the first time since 2022, two years after setting the all-time loss record. Tatis still hasn't gone yard despite hitting the ball harder than ever. Yandy Diaz rockets, no lift. The Padres are only three wins ahead of Seattle. Flip three of those one-run losses and nobody's treating them like a tier above. Prediction for the homestand: four and two. But Mason Miller is pitching Friday, so the first eight innings of that game are going to matter a lot.

See All (17)

About

The mics are back on! ⚓️⚾️ After a 15-month hiatus, we’re back with a brand-new podcast and a new mission. We’re shifting our focus from general Seattle sports to the Hometown 9: your Seattle Mariners. Note to our original listeners: If you’re hearing this on the Super Sports Kid feed, head over and subscribe to The Nautical 9 to stay in the loop. Let's get to work!

Information

  • Creator
    Ryan & Travis
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Ryan & Travis
  • Show Website
    The Nautical 9