
Hooks & Runs
Hooks & Runs is a podcast about baseball, music and culture. Our podcast includes interviews with news makers in the sports and music world plus commentary from the co-hosts on interesting current and historical events. Hooks & Runs releases a new episodes every Thursday (more or less).
Hooks & Runs
Ep 54 - The Seattle Mariners & The A.L. West w/ Ryota Nishino (1st Anniversary Show!)
There are no mushy retrospectives for Hooks & Runs' 1st Anniversary episode. That would take foresight and planning -- nobody's got time for that! Instead Eric and Craig dove right in to current events -- the Grammy Awards, Stephen Strasburg on the shelf (where else?), Luis Guillorme's 22-pitch Spring Training at bat, MiLB experimental rules, the NCAA brackets and MLB stadium capacities -- Eric and Craig offered opinions on them all. Some are half-baked; others are a bit over done. YOU be the judge which are which.
In Chapter Two, Eric and Craig welcome Ryota Nishino, Site Expert at Sodo Mojo, Fansided's Seattle Mariners blog. The AL West is the podcast's favorite division and the Mariners our second favorite team in that division. The Mariners are knee deep in a rebuild with one of baseball's best farm systems. Kyle Lewis claimed last year's Rookie of the Year Award and the team as more than one candidate for the honor in 2021. Nishino gave us a tour of this year's squad -- still at least a year away, but poised to make a move, possibly challenging for third. The team's achilles heel appears to be its shaky rotation and an unsettled bullpen -- not a recipe for long-term success, but hey, it's early, right?
As for the division, Nishino likes the Angels. The consensus picks are the Astros closely followed by the A's with many picking the Angels as best of the rest, so this is something of an outlier pick. You never know with those Pacific Northwest guys. We all agreed the division lacks a dominate team -- 90 wins may well win this division outright in 2021.
The podcast's series looking at each division continues next week.