Is Logan Gilbert the New ACE of the Seattle Mariners?!?

entering into the 2024 season one of the biggest questions surrounding the Mariners pitching staff and rotation was who's going to be the True Ace of this staff the job has kind of been up for grabs a little bit Luis Castillo has been holding it down and slotted as the ace however he did have a few rough starts in September of 2023 and when the Mariners were in the midst of a three- team Race for the AL West and George Kirby has seemed to be the Aira parent in a way with Godlike command and control and showing up for the biggest starts of his career however there's been one name that I think has been underrated in that discussion that being Logan Gilbert 2024 has been a breakout year for Logan he's been showing that his Sai Young Contender ceiling is legitimate but just how good has Logan Gilbert been in 2024 and what if I told you it's one of the better overall seasons for a mariner starting pitcher in Mariners franchise history before I get into that smash the like button you can subscribe to the channel it's free it helps me out a lot but let's get back into talking about our guy Logan aka Walter and the ace debate first I want to take a look at Logan and how he Stacks up in the 2024 season against all the other qualified starters in the league Logan is currently as of August 18th ranked sixth in erra with a 2.96 18th in hits alloud with 113 12th in strikeouts with 155 10th in walks with 29 first in quality starts with 20 and is first in the league in whip at 0.88 now you may be thinking that those rankings for Whip and quality starts are awesome but he's not exactly blowing the league away in all the other categories which is true and TQ scoo ball is probably still going to win the sa young however when we're talking about the Ace of the Seattle Mariners we need to look at where do Luis Castillo and George Kirby rank in those League statistics and as you can see from this chart Logan is pretty considerably ahead in erra hits allowed total earned runs and whip we're getting a bit closer in strikeouts Logan is still leading but Caso is right behind walks is the one place where Logan doesn't lead of course George Kirby is leading in walks which duh and the quality starts are somewhat close but Logan is in the top of the league as I stated before and I want to emphasize that a bit more quality starts if you didn't know is when a starting pitcher throws six or more innings in one game and allows three or fewer earned runs it's basically the epitome of a starting pitcher giving his team the best chance to win and Logan leads that category not only in the American League but in all of baseball right now and earlier I did mention that Logan may be having one of the better starting pitching seasons in Mariners franchise history so let's get into those numbers a bit I looked at all starting pitchers in Mariners history through the first 25 game started in a season with a minimum of 120 Innings pitched Logan ranks ninth in ER second in hits allowed 12th in earned runs allowed 18th in strikeouts 12th in walks second in base runners allowed fourth in quality starts and first in Whip and you might be thinking I'm reaching a little bit by calling this one of the best seasons in Mariners history with him being ranked as low as 18th in one of those stats however I do want to point out that this is out of 147 starting pitchers so each one of these rankings is out of 147 and the fact that he is within the top 20 out of all of these and in the top 10 for most of them I think is a pretty astounding season he's having so far so far I've only addressed the objectivity side of this Ace argument going into stats how they've been fairing this year so now we're going to get into the more subjective parts of this the first subjective conversation I want to have is longivity long long longivity the first subjective conversation I want to have is about long longevity longevity longevity the first okay the first subjective argument in the Ace debate that I want to go over is longevity hey I did it Logan Gilbert is 27 years old and he debuted in 2021 and looking over his stats in the first 25 games of each season season the progression to his current form has been obvious just this year he's knocked off 81 from his erra increased his strikeouts by almost 10 lowered his whip by 20 points and by the way he's done all of that while pitching 13 more Innings than he ever has and for me there's no reason to believe that this longevity and the progression can't keep going for Logan he's been remarked as a tinkerer a guy who is constantly making changes to his game either adding pitches changing grips anything to get that extra Edge the most notable of those changes came in 2023 where Logan added a splitter to his arsenal when he felt like his change up just wasn't doing enough and it became one of his best pitches this year it's sporting a point 108 batting averaged against in a whiff rate of just over 47% which is pretty damn good now this isn't to say neither Castillo or Kirby can't improve and have longevity as well for Castillo he is 31 and been in the MLB for 8 years now so his tinkering is probably minimal at this point and with George we know he's still adding pitches to his game however the jump that people assumed Kirby would have taken in 2024 Logan kind of took that jump instead and when I look into the future and this is totally a personal opinion on my front I think a kitchen sink type pitcher like Logan has a higher ceiling than a command control type like George although George is an a lead strike thrower sometimes that can be his downfall especially for teams that are being really aggressive with him and contact oriented sometimes he can give up a lot of hits and although Logan can have blowup starts as well every pitcher is susceptible to them at some point there's not really a type of offense that he is more prone to it just kind of depends on how he's throwing that day and more often than not clearly it's been very good as for Logan versus Lis in that role there is something to be said about Castillo's consistency and demeanor on the mound he's a true veteran he's called The Rock for a reason however Logan has jumped ahead of him stats-wise this year by a pretty big margin and it begs the question if a 31-year-old Lise can catch back up in the future Seasons the last subjective argument that I want to get into is about how do they pitch in the most important games and for me that would have to be against your division Rivals so that would be the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers not really going to count the Angels or Athletics we're really just going to go at the people you are competing for the AL West for so I looked at how all three have been doing against them this year and we'll start with Luis Castillo uh he's been doing pretty good against Houston two games started 13 Innings pitch she's give up five earned runs but once again that's two games so only two and three runs at those times and 9ks and then versus the Texas Rangers also two games 12 Innings pitched and four earned runs given up so for both he's only averaging about two to three runs given up per start he's not going as long as Logan and Kirby have been but we're about to get into that George Kirby has also been really good against the division Rivals versus Houston three game started he's won 18 Innings given up 14 hits and three earned runs so he's averaging only one earned run per start against Houston and 17 K against the Rangers only one game but he went six Innings pitch three hits one run zero earned and 6K so he's been doing very well against both and as for Logan he's pitched two games against both teams against Houston 14 Innings pitch so he's averaging seven per game and four earn runs so averaging two per game let up on that and versus the Texas Rangers two games 14.2 Innings pitched four hits zero earned runs and 15K so he's been dominating that Rangers lineup so in this case Logan and Kirby are very much similar in their production against those division Rivals Kirby has been known for his big game starts namely game three of the 2022 ALDS and against Baltimore last year so he certainly has that in him and Logan hasn't had it as much but I think this year we're starting to see that I would point to a start earlier this year against Houston where he went eight Innings of just fantastic uh pitching performance there so have to shout that out so I wouldn't say either of them really have an edge in this I mean George has a bit more of the uh resume in those big games than Logan does for sure however they've both been good this year so I'm going to leave that up to your opinion on that so in conclusion when it comes to the ace debate you have to take in a bunch of factors some of them objective some of them subjective objectively Logan has been having the better 2024 and objectively Logan's been having one of the better pitching performances in Mariners franchise history Bon subjective side you have to ask Will Logan have the longevity of George Kirby or Luis Castillo will Kirby take that jump next year and will Logan have regression it's kind of all up in the air but for me personally I just really like Logan and the way he pitches I really love those guys who have that versatility in their pitch mix and more of the kitchen sink type repertoire so personally my vote is I think Logan should be considered the new ace of the Seattle Mariners but i' would love to know what you think you can comment down below how you feel and I would love to read your comments I appreciate you if you watched all the way through to this please once again like the video subscribe to the channel helps me out a lot I would appreciate it very much that's going to be it for me in this one and I will see you in the next