Gabe Speier

Andrés Muñoz has outplayed himself this year.

Gabe Speier and Cooper Criswell have really been the bright spots for the team, and you take a look ever since June 1st, the Astros have been a top ten team in terms of bullpen ERA.

They put Daniel De Los Santos on the injured list.

That's honestly a good thing.

However, the real story here is the relief corps.

You've got Andrés Muñoz closing, but also Eduard Bazardo, Cooper Criswell, Seranthony Domínguez, José Ferrer, Michael Rucker, Gabe Speier, and Carlos Vargas.

That's nine arms.

It's a lot of names, but none of them are fresh.

Muñóz is the closer.

He's the guy.

But if the game goes into the eighth inning with the lead still marginal, you might see Gabe Speier or Eduard Bazardo come in.

The manager has to be careful not to burn out Muñóz if there's a game three.

Taylor Sikato, José Fermín, Ryan Watson all give you a scoreless inning, and Logan Gilbert, two runs allowed in six innings, taken deep by Josh Lowe, his 12th home run of the season.

Seranthony Domínguez, Gabe Speier, they both give you a scoreless inning, but by then the damage had been done.

Doing lots of damage, the Colorado Rockies, 9-3.

They take down the San Diego Padres.

On Sunday, we saw Carlos Vargas struggle.

We saw Gabe Speier struggle.

We saw Sir Anthony Dominguez give up a hit, which was a couple of runs.

And then we saw Andres Munoz give up a walk-off.

My name is Tyler Gonzalez, and I'm joined as always by my co-host Colby Patnode.

On today's show, we're gonna open up the mailbag and answer some of your Mariners questions, starting with Switch who wants to know, "Despite how the bullpen has been this season, would you expect the Mariners to deal from it this off-season, whether it's a Gabe Speier deal similar to the Matt Strahm to Kansas City deal or something like Matt Brash for a bat similar to the Eric Swanson for Teoscar Hernandez swap?" I do expect them to trade from the bullpen, but not exactly for the reason that you're talking about.

This bullpen is going to be expensive in 2027 with the way that it's currently lined up.

Because not only do you have Andres Munoz essentially making guaranteed money, like they're not gonna decline that option.

I don't think the Mariners and I don't think this front office or even if it's a new front office, I don't think they're gonna be cool with that.

So I do think a couple of these guys are gonna get traded simply just to reallocate some of the money elsewhere on the roster.

But to address your question specifically, I mean, can they do those things for these guys? Like coming off the years that they're coming off of? Like Gabe Speier has had a, a massively regressive year.

Eduard Bazardo was really good in the first half, but it seems like the, all the innings that he pitched last year and in the first half this year finally caught up to him, and it's been a nightmare of a second half for him.

Sure.

The Mariners are playing well, paying well over $20 million to the current bullpen, and that's not counting the arbitration of Ferrer, Bazardo and Speier.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.This bullpen is gonna be 25, $30 million bullpen.