Former GM Dan O’Dowd's Trade Deadline thoughts, Breslow v. Posey, Rockies rebuild abyss

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I mean, your credibility with your fan base begins to erode to the point that it may not be salvageable if you keep going back on the things that you.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: Promised longtime Rockies GM.

00:00:16
Speaker 3: Former GM Dan Daud joining us back on the show here on Foul Territory, and we're excited. He's got some great news. He's going to share with us about Win Reality, which he's a big part of as a founder, and how they bought Blast Motion, a personal little trade talk to get the people excited.

00:00:31
Speaker 2: Dan, Great to see you. How you doing.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Hey great, Hey, Before we get started, I just want to I didn't know what was gonna be on the show until I actually read the email here a little bit ago, and hey wait, I just want to congratulate you. You know, I don't know if you heard yesterday on air, I also congratulated you on the network just for an incredible career. I mean, I just loved watching you play a ninth round draft pick. You know that just got so much out of your ability day in and day out. You did every thing right in the game, and I just want to make sure that you know, I just want to let you know the man you were really a pleasure to watch compete.

00:01:09
Speaker 4: I don't thank you, Dan, I appreciate that.

00:01:10
Speaker 5: That means a lot.

00:01:12
Speaker 6: All right, Scotti, fire away at your trade questions. Guys, go ahead, what do we got?

00:01:16
Speaker 2: All right? What do we what?

00:01:18
Speaker 5: No, before we get into trade questions, I got to ask about the Rockies because I don't know how the heck you work for them?

00:01:23
Speaker 6: Am you do that every time I get on air? You asked me.

00:01:25
Speaker 5: I know, because because there's seventeen fifty one or whatever they I got to look what they are. But they got like seventeen wins.

00:01:32
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, who do you least for their worst start after that many games with? I think the Washington Club in nineteen oh four. So it's it's been a while since the team had this bad.

00:01:44
Speaker 6: Of a start.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, I think when you look at the Rockies, I haven't been there ten years now. So although I was a former GM, it was a long time ago former GM. So I think when you get to this position one, you've had a lot of bad luck. The game is based on skill and luck, but the reality of it is they've made a lot of bad decisions over a long period of time to put themselves in the position and they're in. I don't think it's one decision in particular. I think it's layering decisions, because that's kind of what a front officer's role is all about. Is you just try to make good decisions every single day, and then you layer those good decisions on other good decisions, and then you look up and you've got a good team with a well run organization. I think they just have made a jay a ton of bad decisions over a really, really long period of times. And I don't think it's an easy fix in any way, shape or form the position they're in.

00:02:38
Speaker 3: If you did have to try and fix it, Dan to try and put simple terms, because I know you could do hours on this. Do they need to find help from other places? Do they need to do?

00:02:53
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, I think it's good to refresh.

00:02:59
Speaker 6: Your people. I just think it's healthy.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: I mean, I probably in reality should have left ten years into my job. I think I outstayed it by five years, and I think that hurt me within the game from a availability and a reputation standpoint. So I do think there's like expiration dates with jobs. So I do think it's good to get best practices outside of your organization. It's that you're just dealing with such a unique environment there with altitude unless you've lived it and understand it, like you can conceptually think you know it, but until you working in it day in and day out and see how that particular environment affects every aspect of personnel decisions and the way the game's played out in the field. So ideally you find somebody that had experience in it then left and learned a bunch of things and best practice wise somewhere else that would be available to come back and now run it. But I think even the best gms of the game that recognize would have a significant learning curve going in there from scratch and taking what their best practices are to an environment where some of that might be applicable, most of it would not be.

00:04:18
Speaker 6: Is that Does that make sense to you?

00:04:21
Speaker 2: No doubt? Yeah, it's still right no matter what to me.

00:04:24
Speaker 3: Like to simplify, it's not a quick fix to go back to what you're saying you want to you want to get outside else still going to take a long time to get adjusted to a place that Yeah, I look.

00:04:32
Speaker 1: At it now, you know, it's like an expansion you're taking over like an expansion situation. Hey, maybe they're wonderful opportunities. They just come with you know, you're gonna have to be very patient, and you're gonna have to look at victories in a different way, and you're just gonna have to be really understand what you're getting yourself into. And I think it could be a great opportunity for someone if they just and if ownership and the people involved really understood what they were buying into.

00:05:01
Speaker 4: Then you talked about the altitude. I got a question on that. When you look for players, how does that affect the type of player that you're looking to sign, especially when it comes to pitching.

00:05:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, well let me just jump in the position players first win, because I think it's really fascinating discussions and guys, I'm on no time frame here. I got plenty of time as long as you guys do, because this don't think could take the rest of the afternoon. So you're playing an environment with where you say you play a six game home stand, you get a lot of that bats in that place because of the ballpark. So you get five at bats a game, you're going to see maybe thirty forty to fifty pitches a night, you're going to swing at fifty percent of those. And so hitting is a muscle memory sport. It's a part of your cerebellum that you wire every time you see a pitch over and over again, so you're recognizing specific patterns of ballflight.

00:05:51
Speaker 6: That's how you hit.

00:05:53
Speaker 1: Now you go on the road and you see the same pitches, you take the same swing, and the ball is now moving millimeters differently because there's no movement at home. So now there's movement on the road because movements created when you throw some kind of object against mass air. Well, there's no mass in Colorado because you're a mile above sea level, but when you go on the road, you're now hitting in mass.

00:06:17
Speaker 6: And so.

00:06:19
Speaker 1: I think that's where like guys who have elite at the ball skills, guys that can use the entire part of the field, guys that have good pitch recognition skills, and players that aren't gonna like take like I give you. I'll give you an example. And Jeff Cirilla's retired, so I can hammer him a little bit, but he's really dear friend of mine.

00:06:38
Speaker 6: I love a guy.

00:06:39
Speaker 1: Jeff was an incredible hitter in his career. When I acquired him from Milwaukee was for that same reason, and he came to our place and he raped. But then as the season went on, when he tried to make that transition from raking in cores to hitting on the road, mentally, it became a real, real struggle for him. And they isn't pretty by the end of the year. So you just never know how a player is going to react to failure in a way that he can't control the failure. It's just a human dynamic of where you play, same dynamic as exists for pitching. So you need strike throwers. Guys that can have power. Sinkers are certainly good. Guys that command vertical fastballs upper good. Guys that have really hard sliders are okay, breaking balls not good.

00:07:25
Speaker 6: There.

00:07:26
Speaker 1: Change is for okay there. Cutters can work there, But again, you're not going to get movement at home, and then you're gonna get maybe twenty five percent more movement on the road. So a starting pitcher has to adjust this repertoire between pitching at home and pitching on the road. And it's a physical issue that quickly become a mental issue because the game is so challenging mentally.

00:07:52
Speaker 5: Dan, No, Dan, You're good this.

00:07:56
Speaker 6: Would you rather have guys, Dan?

00:07:58
Speaker 5: Would you rather have guys that those sinkers or guys that can get fly balls in weak contact up in the zone?

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Hey, Jay, as long as the sinkers are power snickers. It's like Eric Cook who had a lot of success there. I mean when he was right and healthy.

00:08:13
Speaker 6: It was.

00:08:15
Speaker 1: Ninety four ninety five with really late tunneling sinker movement that works. And then you had a kid like Jeff Francis. Not that necessarily Jeff threw hard, but he was very deceptive, and he lived at the type of the strike, the top of the strike zone, and then he worked a slider off of that same line. He had success there. So I think you want both. You just don't want guys that live in the middle of the plate in that place.

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00:09:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I fig you're I picked him to win the division. So that shows you how smart I am. You know, I thought, you know, it's a really interesting question. I think that's kind of in a big picture of the story of the entire trading deadline. For me is that what which clubs are going to do? Why separate from their records telling him to do and so like I'm not sure. I mean, you know, maybe Ryan o'hearne because he's a free agent at the end of the year. But I think what a GM's job, guys, amongst a lot of different things, is that you kind of always have to have a great feel for where your club is and why, and that then let me lead you to understand what you need to do with your current situation that can help with your future situation. And so the Origan's decision for me is this is just a blip, one of those years where they take a step back to take a huge step forward, and then how do they line up better next year to take that huge step forward. So the easy decisions are, you know, the move players like Zach Flynn who's a free agent at the end of the year, and Ryan O'Hearn who's a free agent at the end of the year and then try to, you know, augment they're terrible against the left hand pitching, so they don't have a ton of right handed bats. I'm not sure world's right handed bats are going to play and they're starting. Pitching is major to be concerned about, and so I'm just really so the answer should be yes, gott it. I'm just not sure it's going to be that simple, because I don't think in their mind they think they're a bad club, even though the record says that they are.

00:11:31
Speaker 3: Okay, it makes sense, here's another one for you, and obviously we can get your take on this situation, because I'm curious, where do you think the Red Sox do right they're five hundred is they're actually worse than the Angels, and after getting.

00:11:42
Speaker 1: I think they screw themselves with their comments after the rough Devers deal. I don't think they're a good team. I think that some of their parts does not equal their bigger part, and so I think they should be sellers at the deadline because I do think they got good young talent. It's just had a difficult time transitioning to the big like but I think they should be looking to see, Okay, the Atlanta Braves have interest in Trevor's story, maybe had a reduced salary rate, but maybe thinking there's a change of scenery and then they move Mayor back to his natural position at shortstop. I mean they should be active. They've got enough talent to actively put themselves in a position to be a Mets better team next.

00:12:19
Speaker 6: Year than they are this year. It's just said.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: When you come out publicly and you say, hey, listen, we're not taking a step back after the Devers deal.

00:12:26
Speaker 6: We're all in.

00:12:26
Speaker 1: We're going to try to win this year, I mean, your credibility with your fan base begins to erode to the point that it may not be salvageable if you keep going back on the things that you promise.

00:12:36
Speaker 6: And they've got a real issue with that.

00:12:42
Speaker 3: Okay, So when they made that move, Dan, would you have done it then or even despite the drama, if you really decided or you were instructed by ownership, I got to do this now.

00:12:51
Speaker 2: Would you have waited until after.

00:12:52
Speaker 3: The season, because this team could have contended for a wild card spot they got rid of their best bat.

00:12:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would have waited to the off season. I don't know that the Dynamics internally that were going on in the organization. I just I mean, I've been around the game a long time. I've never I mean, I've had a couple of players that were really disruptive that caused problems. I just never got to the point where I felt like it couldn't have been managed with the right set of manager and coaches within the clubhouse and the right set of leaders around them in the clubhouse. So I'm just perplexed by the whole I don't even know how they ended up in the position they ended up with there. That had to be such a breakdown of communication. And I mean, should he have moved the first base? Maybe should have, But you know, I think sometimes the front office, and I think that front office in particular, players aren't robots or human beings, and they need to be communicated to in an open and trustworthy way. How they respond to the news, you can't, you know, that's not for you to decide, But you can be open and honest with them, and you can contistally tell them the truth so when it does come down, they know that, you know, whether they like the news or not, they were spoken to in a way that was respectful and direct, they did.

00:14:02
Speaker 5: Not do that any in that what's surprising dan is Craig Brezlo is a former player. You would think that he would know that.

00:14:08
Speaker 6: He doesn't act like one. To meaj it's perplexing to me.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: It's just it acts like a lot of current gms, which his players are part of a portfolio that they buy and sell and trying to put the better value on the entire market value of the portfolio, and stocks are one way. Players are just not wired that way. And you know, RAFFI didn't handle it maturely, But I don't think the expectation was that you should have expected he was going to hal that maturely. But if they have flown to the dr and they had looked him in the eye and they have said, listen, you're not a real good defender.

00:14:40
Speaker 6: We got a chance to sign.

00:14:41
Speaker 1: Bragman or trade for Aronada, We're going to do that, so let's talk about what the transition is for you. I think they should have immediately put a first base glove on him, and I think Raffe should have recognized that his long term value in the game or even getting into the Hall of Fame someday, it creates way more value if he's playing a position than DH and so I just I don't know how it ever got to this point. I'm just totally perplexed by.

00:15:05
Speaker 6: The whole thing. Oh great.

00:15:07
Speaker 5: Agreed On the other end, though, Buster Posey is acting like a former player, and a former player that's one and was brought up under Brian Sabian who said, I have a chance to go for it, I'm going to go for it. So what does he do. He goes out and gets a player like RAFFI divers And I love this move for the Giants because I think over the long haul, not only this year, but in long haul, they have the star that they've been looking for, and they have a dude they possibly can hit him thirty plus homers, which they haven't had twenty plus years.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know it's funny you read all the articles about it, and everybody's congratulating for Red Sox for getting out of all that future commitment because you know he's going to decline over age. We just have this hypothesis within our game that every player who gets into their mid to late thirty is going to think like they're all not created, you know, differently, and they all don't have a unique set of skills, and they all look at the game differently, and their motivations are all differently. We just have this hypothesis that age regression is going to take place, so if you get out of the money, you're better off. Well, there's no guarantee they're going to spend that money in a better way on players that fit ideally within the ages that everybody seems to come it within this game, and you have no idea what the future is gonna hold. That's where you take everything in the game one day at a time and you do your best each in each and individual day, but you have no idea what's gonna happen in the future. I find some of these, you know, these statements just comical by people that really, for me, don't have a clue about what's.

00:16:22
Speaker 6: Going on in the game.

00:16:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm with you some of I mean, there's some you know, anonymous people chiming into and some of these stories like oh, I can't believe they got such a return the Red Sox. I'm like, yo, a bat in his prime who caused half the amount of Vladdie Junior just got moved over to an NLS team.

00:16:40
Speaker 2: From a big market Boston team.

00:16:41
Speaker 3: I'm like, uh, sometimes you know the the am I winning every trade at every margin, and the computer model kind of system that's going here.

00:16:49
Speaker 2: Dan, you know me, I.

00:16:51
Speaker 3: Worked with you for a while, Like I love a good a good look into you know, a team analytics wise and get deep into numbers, but sometimes you got to take a step back and be like, it's a top ten bat in the sport.

00:17:02
Speaker 1: I think the perfect organization Scotti that are running the game combine the human analytical side of the game with the data side of the game, and they do that in every decision that they make. I think those are the best run organizations in the game, because you know, the data tells you a predictable part of the player's past, but it doesn't predict what's going to happen in the future. I kind of look at it. It's like a GPS system and it gives you some directions on where you might go, but you know you may have to take more left or right turns to actually get to your destination. And I think the game is just really trended itself too much in one way and not enough in another way.

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00:18:44
Speaker 2: That stands out really.

00:18:46
Speaker 6: Crazy to me. This team that I think should be active is the Minnesota Twins.

00:18:53
Speaker 1: I just watch them play and I go, man, that's a talent. They have talented players, but it just doesn't seem to add up. And so maybe because they're in the midst of a sale, maybe because I don't think the gm IS is hyper aggressive to do anything historically, but I mean, Brian Buxton's having a monster year, but he has never stayed healthy.

00:19:16
Speaker 6: Like to me, it's the perfect time to look to move him.

00:19:18
Speaker 1: With teams that are desperate right handed bats, desperate percenter fielders at this trading deadline with not a lot of offensive impact players available, and so I mean, and I would look to move Joe Ryan. I mean, he's twenty nine years old, he's got three years of control. He'd be the most coveted pitcher in this year's deadline when nobody is available, And then I would look to move their closer. And I think he's got great arm. He's also cost control for three more years. And I realized, Wow, that's going to really hurt them, And honestly, I probably try to eat as much money as I had to to move Korea. I don't think he's going to be a good player in Minnesota. And so whether that's playing third base for the Yankees or shortstop for Atlanta, I think that experiment it's just not going to work.

00:20:03
Speaker 6: It's not going to get better any any moving forward.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: I know none of this is probably going to happen, but if I'm running the Twins, I look at this trading the line because of the really little available talent that's out there at this point in time, I would look to take advantage of these teams that you know, think they're going to win that really aren't and try to reboot my whole organization because that club now for two years that it just doesn't it.

00:20:28
Speaker 6: Just hasn't worked.

00:20:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great call.

00:20:31
Speaker 3: Thirteen game win Street kind of smoking mirrors in terms of what the record looks like, because besides that little two week run, I mean, it does look like a subpar non playoff team.

00:20:40
Speaker 2: So we'll see what happens there. All right, let's finish with this.

00:20:43
Speaker 3: So a win Reality, which you founded and you're a big part of for a long time as a leading VR training tool for baseball and softball. Tons of major leaguers use it and then go down miners, college kids, et cetera. Right, your company acquired swing sensor technology Blast Motions, So I'll let you let us know how big that is for the world of baseball and tech training.

00:21:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, we think it's gigantic, honestly. So we have one hundred million swings sanalyzed within our platform, and whin VR they have four hundred million, so a little over four in a million, so over half a billion data set now to work with, which gives us great insight. And though Blast was certainly a technology company, we're a baseball company. BLASTS will become a baseball company. It will be run separately in the short term. We'll see what happens over the long term. But if you think about what the capabilities they have with our VR training platform Scotti, we have a new swing a eye product out that is killing the market, you know, to be able then to capture their their ability to track backpath and contact point that fits perfectly into our win VR training and then to take their blast motion biomechanical analysis that they've got, which is great, and put that into our swing AI. We just consolidated the industry dramatically, and now we have a chance to actually simplify things, uh for the end user and you know, hopefully make it a much easier transition and process for everybody that you know wants to get better in the game of baseball, which is ultimately, at the end of the day, why we started the company and why we continue in this day is to try to make players better and that we have to do it via technology. I just I mean, people think we're a tech company more we really aren't. We're just we're baseball men utilizing a tech back platform trying to figure out how to do some of the things in the game that's really hard to do at all ages.

00:22:38
Speaker 6: And simplify it.

00:22:40
Speaker 4: I remember when this came on this when when when reality came on the scene, goy, I guess it was over COVID when when we started using it, Yeah, in Kansas and Kansas City. And now with this, I mean, it's got to be just exploding with with with youth baseball, doesn't it.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy with our product is basically all in the youth space. Blast Motion is really just all in major league teams and in colleges and they have a great, great golf product too. We're certainly going to take that downstream itself into the youth market to where there's just, you know, fifty million users that aren't being tapped, and so we think there's an unbelievable opportunity for us because it's a really good product to downstream that hold on to the big league team. I think twenty seven out of thirty teams use Blast. I think there's three hundred colleges that's fully onboarded into their system. So we think it's a great opportunity because we've now figured out I don't know if we figured it out. We're still in the process of learning how to actually capture that youth baseball base and so we'll put some of our best practices into trying to take that down the downstream. I mean, we have other things guys that were still looking there's one of the company that we're still looking at acquiring two that will help us fill another bucket, you know, just trying to consolidate a very unique space within the game that's you know, trying to organize it in a way that just makes it a lot easier for people to use and understand why they're using it.

00:24:07
Speaker 3: It's very cool. Obviously, I've been a big fan for a long time. Congratulations on the acquisition. Thanks for letting us know about it, Dan, and you know we'll be following all that age. Obviously too knows that scene well with his son now transitioning to the college game, so thanks for sharing Dan, appreciate it.

00:24:23
Speaker 2: Congrats again, great guy.

00:24:24
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks for having me on and I wish you the best of luck as you go through the training. That should be fun time.

00:24:28
Speaker 7: In here for you.

00:24:29
Speaker 2: Thank you of course, this was great. Good to see you Dan.

00:24:32
Speaker 6: Okay, see you guys. Bye bye.