Fair Territory: Pirates make offer to Kyle Schwarber, Tigers strategy, Jeff Kent elected to HOF, Bonds & Clemens out for good?

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Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Monday edition of Fair Territory, the Winter Meetings edition of Fair Territory. We've got a ton to get to this morning. Hall of Fame things happening at the Winter Meetings. Not too much happening just yet, but I would expect over the next couple of days we will have some action. The expectation is that, yes, some deals will go down, trades, free agent signings and the like. So let's get right to the news of the day, which is the Hall of Fame vote from last night, the Contemporary Era Committee electing Jeff Kent to the Hall of Fame. He is the newest Hall of Famer and it was an interesting ballot, to say the least, the eight names. I had no problem with any of these guys getting elected, but of course Kent was the only one who ultimately received twelve of the sixteen votes seventy five percent from that committee, and that is why he will be the inductee from this group going into the Hall of Fame. Carlos Delgado nine votes, again needing twelve. Mattingley and Murphy got six eighth. You see the vote totals right there, Kent with fourteen, Delgado nine, Mattinglee, Murphy six, and then Bonds, Clemens, Sheffield and balance Well all less than five. And what that means is they will not be eligible those guys with less than five votes in the next cycle three years from now, and if they get less than five in twenty thirty one, the next time they are eligible, they will not be ever on the ballot any ballot again. So for Bonds and Clemens in particular, they're in real peril here of not getting into the Hall of Fame. We've seen this now through ten years of BBWA votes. We've seen it through two committee votes now is not surprising. And at the same time, I know there are certain people who are good with this and there are certain fans people who are not good with it at all. When they were on the bout the BBWAA ballot, I did not initially vote for them, but once I felt that there are other Hall of famers who were getting elected that had used performance dancing drugs. I'm not gonna mention names, but once I felt that it'd been happening, that line had been broken, then I did vote for Bonds and Clements. I don't vote for guys who tested positive or were suspended by Major League Baseball after Firmer rules were in place, a Rod and Manny, but the ones before that, generally, yes, I do vote for them, not all of them, so side didn't get to in time, Maguire, etc. But enough about that. The real question here is how do we deal with this era? And it's still the question, and unfortunately the BBWAA and these committees don't have great answers because we know there are Hall of Famers who used peds. It's a reasonable assumption at this point there are some players who have been linked to peds in one form or another. And then we know also that Bonds and Clemens, arguably the greatest hitter and pitcher of this generation, are not in I'm not sure what the right answer is. There really is no right answer. And yes, if you're a fan and you see contradictions, you're absolutely right. There are contradictions. But these are the votes. And if you look at the committee, the guys who rejected Bonds and Clemens this time, it's interesting because there were seven Hall of famers on that committee, players who are not exactly contemporaries, all of them with Bonds and Clemens, but certainly players that had some familiarity with them, to say the least. Fergie Jenkins, Jim Cott, Juan marischal Tony, perez Azzi, Smith, and Alan Trammel were the players on that committee, along with Robin Yeat. Then there were five executives actually six and three researcher writer types, So that is the group that decided no. And again you're not seeing any greater support on these committees, which are comprised partly actually the majority or not the majority, but of good number of Hall of Fame members. They're not giving Bonds and Clemens anymore quarter than the writers did when they were on the Writer's bout. One other thing I want to mention with the Hall of Fame, and it's interesting, Jeff Kent certainly were the most home runs ever by a second basement. I voted for him when he was on the BBWAA ballot. But when you elect guys then people often say, well what about this guy or that guy? And I want to show you a comp with Lou Whittaker, between Kent and Lou Whittaker, because Lou Whittaker fell off the bout in his first year. And I am hopeful that one day a Veterans Committee or one of these committees is going to recognize him as the rightful Hall of Famer he is along with Alan Trammel. You see this graphic here, the comparison from Statthead Baseball that CJ. Nikowski posted last night. They're very comparable players. Yes, Kent had more power, but Lou Whittaker in his day was every bit the player. Jeff Kent was a different kind of player perhaps, but man, it's pretty close. Lou Whitaker should be in. This should be good news for Chase Utley as well going forward. So that's the Hall of Fame vote. We can debate it all day long, and I'm sure people will, but that's where we are with that as of Monday, December eighth. Now, Winter Meetings last night reported something that I thought was pretty interesting, to say the least, and I was surprised to hear it that the Pirates have made a four year offer to Kyle Schwarber. Now, do I expect the Pirates to sign Kyle Schwarber, Absolutely not, but the fact that they're in there swinging and I imagine and I reported that this offer almost certainly is for more than one hundred million otherwise why bother. That is a major step. And I've been reporting all winter really or all off season about how the Pirates are being more aggressive, how they finally are trying to put a team around Paul Skeins that would be worthy of contention. Schwarber is at the top of their list. They know he is probably going to be someone who gets a better offer from a better team. But at the same time, they're in there, the Cincinnati Reds are in there. There are other big market teams in there, like the Boston Red Sox. So Schwarber, it's not clear exactly when he's going to sign yet. Maybe it will be at these meetings, maybe not, but he clearly is in demand now. I also wrote today about another team that is somewhat in a comparable position to the Pirates because they have a great picture their own sy young winner. That's the Tigers with Trek Scrubel. Now, what I wrote about the Tigers was a column. It was opinion, and at the same time it was something I felt strongly about because to me, if the Tigers are going to keep Trek Scruble not trade him, which appears to be the case, you never know, but certainly it appears to be the way they are leaning. Unless they get overwhelmed, then you've got one year of Schooble left. In my view, you've got to take your best shot. And I'm not talking about doing something stupid. I'm talking about putting the best team possible around him. Tiger's President Baseball Operation, Scott Harris, in my view, has been pretty risk of a verse in his time for reasons that are understandable. He was trying to build up a team that had fallen apart. But at the same time, here are a situation or here is a situation where it seems to me it's time to go. And again, I don't know who the players are that they should get. Necessarily, they can certainly use another bat. We know that. We also know that they could use a number two starter behind Schooble, someone who, if they signed long term, could be Schooble's replacement. Should he leave as a free agent, Yes, I expect him to leave as a free agent. He's represented by Scott Boris. He's one year away. He's going to hit the jackpop probably break yamamotos three hundred and twenty five million dollar record for a pitcher. As a free agent as long as he is healthy, and if that happens, the Tigers are left with a draft pick and only a draft pick in return. That said, I like that they're pretty stubborn right now about keeping him. They want to keep him, they want to win with him. Well, okay, but if you want to win with him, then you've got to do some things around him. And I mentioned some name Calm Gregman. Obviously, they made the six year, one hundred and seventy one point five million dollar offer to him last winter. He didn't take it. He took less from the Red Sox. I wouldn't expect him to necessarily choose Detroit over any of the teams that might be interested in him this offseason when he already rejected them once when they had a higher guarantee on the table. Boba Schett would be an interesting player for the Tigers. Hashan Kim would be an interesting player for the Tigers. The pitching market is not quite as impressive as you would want it to be, and the executives keep telling me and others that they're not all that impressed with the remaining group, which is Ranger Suarez and Sachua am I and fromber Valdez. The good pitchers, no question about it. But I don't know that anyone is overwhelmed by their abilities on a long term, not the way they would be with perhaps a schoobl next year or Paul Skeens once he becomes a free agent. So here are the Tigers. They're in an interesting spot here, and I get that they don't want to block younger players. I get that with javieror Bayez a few years ago it didn't work out for them, but it shouldn't prevent a team from trying again. It's not easy. But at the same time, we have seen with the Orioles, keep playing for next year, keep waiting for these prospects. It doesn't always go in a linear fashion. So from that perspective, I'm concerned with the Tigers. I want to see them do something this offseason. A few things really show up their bullpen as well, to ensure that win, to ensure that in their final season, what likely is their final season with Trek Scubel, they take their best shot. All right, That is if for the first segment, We've got a long way to go here. We've got inside dish coming up, catch foul Territory live from the Winter Meeting in Orlando later today through Wednesday one pm Eastern on the FT YouTube channel, Ali Marvel, Terry Franconis, Steven Vote, and Paul Taboni our schedule to join Scott Braun, Aj Prasinski and Eric Krafts today. That's a really good guest list. Subscribe on YouTube and rate five stars wherever you get your podcast to the entire Foul Territory network. We'll be back with the Inside Dish right after this.

00:10:24
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00:10:47
Speaker 1: Well, all right, Time out for the Inside Dish, the part of the show where I go inside a story, ever written, a trend in the game, talk about something else entire and today I want to talk about what it's like to cover the Winter Meetings. Now, I've been at this a long time. I'm a little older than some of the other writers right now, Okay, whatever, And I try very hard not to look back and say, man, it was better back then. But you know what, covering the Winter Meetings was a better experience earlier in my career, and even before I started covering. It's gotten more buttoned down over the years, more conservative in what teams do and all of that. I'm not saying teams shouldn't act as efficiently as possible. I'm just saying that back in the day, and I'm going to give you some stories to show you what I'm talking about, there were some wilder things going on than there seemed to be at the meetings in these last few years or so. So there's one story. I have my favorite Winter Meeting story that I'm saving for my book if I ever write a book. It's too good to talk about here. It's too good to write for the Athletic. It's for a book. Not going to get into that. But I want to go back in time a little bit. Now. I'll go back to start with before my time, nineteen seventy five, the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. Rowand Heeman, general manager of the Chicago White Sox, the late rowand Heeman. I covered him with the Oriols, one of the great people in our game. He was working for Bill Veck and Rowan Heeman set up a table in the lobby of the Diplomat Hotel, put up a sign and said open for business. The White Sox then made four trades in I don't know, a span of an hour something like that. Big trades too. Mickey Lowich was involved in one rusty stob Ralph Gorr. That was maybe the peak winter meeting's craziness moment. You don't see GM's in the lobby today. They're in their suites, they're huddled up, they're texting. There was no texting back then. There were phones. There were actual phones that worked. But that's how rowand Heeman did it. All right, that's nineteen seventy five. Now let's go back a little bit closer to the current time. My start in nineteen eighty seven, and some of my favorite Winter meetings have been in the last I don't know, twenty years or so, two thousand and six, right here in Orlando, legendary winter meetings, different Hotel. Jim Hendry, then general manager of the Chicago Cubs, he's now working for the Yankees for Brian Cashman. Jim Hendry signed Ted Lilly to a four year, forty million dollars deal while hooked up to an EKG. He was having heard trouble and it turned out he needed a procedure at another hospital later during those winter meetings. But he did sign Lily even though he was hooked up to an EKG. Incredible story and luckily Jim is still with us and survived that whole affair. That's one of the crazier things that I can remember now twenty twelve. I wait, two thousand and seven. This is one of the bigger ones I've ever broken. Back in the day before Twitter. There was an Internet in two thousand and seven, but if you were going to break a story back then, you had to do it in written form on a website. So that was the Miguel Cabrera Dontrelle Willis for Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin and four others. Remember that Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins, maybe the Miami Marlins at the time, I don't remember which Marlins they were, but whatever, I had it, and I had it pretty good. I had the biggest names I didn't have the secondary names, but I had certainly Willis and Cabrera going to Detroit maybe and Miller going back to Miami. And I remember reporting it working for Fox sports dot Com at that time, and I remember also seeing the Detroit writers, many of them who were my friends, kind of just messing around in the media room, and I'm waiting for the story to post, and I'm thinking, oh, man, they're not gonna be happy when they see this, And it was a big deal. That was one of the bigger trades honestly that I can remember at the Winter meetings. And of course Miguel Cabrera goes on to a Hall of Fame career with the Tigers. All right, final story in this one is a doozy twenty twelve. The Rangers, Rays, and Diamondbacks pull an all nighter. They're trying to make a trade in which Justin Upton would have gone to the Rangers, James Shields would have gone to the Padres. It never came to fruition, but JP Brossi and I were both working for Fox Sports dot Com at the time, and we decided, all right, let's divide this up. We know they're going to be at it. Let's have JP work. I don't remember what it was eleven to four am, and I get up at five am because I had to do hot store for MLB network, and we'll just cover it and monitor it, monitor it that way. So we did that, and the next morning I see Kevin Towers, the Padres GM strolling through the lobby. This was in Nashville, I believe, and I know he had stayed up all night and he's looking fresh as a days, fresh as a daisy. Kevin Towers. Unfortunately, Kevin no longer is with us. He was one of my all time favorites, everyone's all time favorite. He had dodible energy. He had an incredible, infectious personality. And that's one thing I remember from that night. And then that night was memorable for other reasons. Evan Granted. The Dallas Morning News later wrote a story about just what happened in the suite when the Rangers, Rays, and Padres were trying to work out these deals that night. Kirk Gibson was the manager of the Diamondbacks at the time, and John Daniels was the general manager of the Texas Rangers. They were going back and forth drawn each other and Gibson basically was saying to John Daniels, I'm gonna mess you up. And according to Evan's story, what happened was Gibson headbutted John Daniels. He body slammed them to the carpet, and then he put them in a choke hold. And I guess the game was, see if John Daniels can survive twenty seconds, and then maybe it gets another player in the deal. Well it didn't work out that way, but it's a hilarious story. And again, the thing I remember most the next day, after staying up all night, Towers strolling through that lobby, chested out, held head held high, or held as high as possible, and just kind of savored the moment, even though nothing turned out happened. Those are the Winter Meeting stories that I cherished, that I love. There was another one one year when Geene Watson of the Kansas City Royals Rockuball Deli then with the Rays they were working on another James Shields trade, the one that came to fruition. They were negotiating in their pajamas in the hallway. I didn't see this, I heard about it later. Those kinds of things don't really happen anymore. Everyone's kind of holed up in their suites. But I'm not gonna say it was better back then. It was certainly different. It was a little bit more fun, but still fun. The transactions that keep us all going, keep us fired up. And I'm sure we're going to see some more this week, if not necessarily here in Orlando, the big ones in the days that follow. All right, that's it for the inside dish. Now let's break for grilling Ken, which is coming up next.

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00:18:22
Speaker 1: All right, time now for grilling. Can the part of the show where I answer your questions? Let's get to them first. One comes from d Gobble two kind of appropriate de Gobble. With the recent thawing of tensions between the O's and Nats, would this make a gore trade more possible than before? Good question, and tensions have thought between the two teams. One reason. Peter Angelos and his sons no longer own the Orioles. They had the mass in dispute, remember the regional network dispute with the Nationals, and it went on forever and ever it's finally settled. The Ools are under new ownership. I see no reason why these two teams could not make a deal at this point. Now, whether michae Elias wants Mackenzie Gore and is willing to meet the Nationals price, that remains to be seen. That's a separate question. But that would be a normal negotiation as opposed to the Cold War that existed before. Gore is attracting a lot of interest, obviously two years of control. The Nationals want to move him, They're going to make a pretty good trade for him, I would expect. Will it be the Orioles. It would be great if the Oriols for them. If they did it, I'm not sure they'll be ultimately the team. All right. Next question, This one comes from Mike, who asks, can you please ask Jed Hoyer if he's aware that Zach Gallan gave up the fourth most homers last season thirty one time? That showed it in Managa. Could the Gallon rumor be I can't read the rest of it, but anyway, on Zach Gallant, now, I understand people might look at the ERA and say, whoa, he wasn't good, But in the last two months of the season he was really good. Three point three two ERA I believe looked much more like Zach Gallen, much more in line with his career numbers. He is still a quality major league pitcher. He's made twenty eight or more starts each of the last five seasons. He's a good guy to sign. If the Cubs get Zach Gallen, they should be happy about that. Now. I know it depends on the contract and all that, but if you're a Cubs fan, you want Zach Gallen on your team. Okay. I know about the home runs. That's an issue, of course, but he had a rough four months to start the season or really good two months to end it, and based on everything he's done before, I would trust the final two months. All right. Next question from Matt Lana, who asked, what is your percent right now Schwarber signs with the Reds? Any other moves are you hearing for the Reds? I would say ten to fifteen percent. I still really believe Schwarber is going back to the Phillies. Now. The advantage of the Reds have over, for example, the Pirates, another small market team. Is that Schorber is from Middletown, Ohio. It's about thirty five miles north of Cincinnati. If he wants to do a hometown thing and go back and maybe take a little bit less, the Reds would be a team the team to deal it with. He could also justify it by thinking, Hey, I I'm gonna be playing for Terry Francona, a Hall of Fame manager. I'm gonna be the centerpiece of a lineup with a young group of talented hitters that need me to be part of them. Pirates can make the same argument. He can make the same justification for them. I just think in the end, my expectation is the Phillies beat whoever else is in the mix and ultimately end up with Schwarber. Just my feeling. If it doesn't happen that way, it would be big news, for sure, it would be crazy. But I just think those teams are long shots right now, both the Pirates and the Reds. The Reds less so because of the hometown connection, but both still long shots in my estimation. All right, This one comes from Tyler Max Smith, who asked yesterday, and Thopolis said, you have to work with what's available, even when it's not the cleanest fit. Could we see an unexpected deal from AA Marte would certainly be an upgrade over Albi's. Good question, because Alexanthopolis has made a lot of unexpected deals in his career, and we certainly can see another one. And it's an interesting thought on Marte because Albi's has declined. He's not the player he was three, four or five years ago. And yes, they picked up his option and I expected that, but could they do better and could they maybe trade Albis somewhere else if they got Marte, or even put Marte I'm sorry, put Albi's in the deal. Sure will they be the high bidder for Marte? I don't know, but he is a really good player. The Diamondbacks are getting hit on him by a number of clubs. Mike Hays in their GM has said it's unlikely Marte will be traded, but it's all unlikely until it actually happens. I know they want a lot, they want to reinforce their pitching. They reached agreement with Mike Soroka earlier today on a one year deal. They need better than that as their injured pitchers rehabilitate and they wait for them to return. So I think Marte is a more likely guy to be traded than many. But will the Braves be the team that? I can't tell you? I don't know? All right, here we go with another question. This one's from SS Curtis fifty nine. Do you think the Padres will dump some payroll? Dennis Lynn of The Athletic wrote about this today. It certainly is possible, and the problem they have is who they dump now. Paveta's name has been bandied about. It's at least out there, but Aj Preller always listens on all of his players, and I don't know that it's likely he's going to be traded. They need Pavetta after losing Michael King and Dylan Cease to free agency. They need Pavetta, who was their best pitcher last season, to be their anchor going forward. They still want to compete, but they have had payroll issues. Jake Cronaworth would be one guy they could trade. His deal is a pretty good deal for a player of his caliber. Five years sixty million left, but they don't have many options to trade. So could aj Preller be really creative and do something maybe with Paveta to get younger starting pitchers in return. It's conceivable. I don't know that it's likely, but the Padres are a team to watch because they do have payroll concerns. All right, with that, I want to thank you everyone for their questions, everyone for following along. We've got a big week ahead on the FT Network, so stay tuned. You've seen our schedule. We return my show on Friday this week, not Thursday. We're going to be back Friday at twelve thirty Eastern. The winter meetings will be concluded by that point, but we'll have a lot to talk about. I am sure have a great week. Everyone will be back twelve thirty Friday with Alana. Thanks again for joining us.