David Samson on Rays sale, Dodgers owning Lakers, Devers saga, Royals Jac Caglianone call-up debate

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I was not in any way saying that he's bad.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: I was saying that you've got to be careful how you allocate your money when you have a limited payroll, which I think he'd agree.

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Kansas City does.

00:00:14
Speaker 3: Hey, we've got David Sampson back on the show, looking good, like the I like the jacket.

00:00:20
Speaker 4: David, Good to see you.

00:00:22
Speaker 3: And before you even say anything, I just want to make sure I get some plugs in there. Nothing personal with David Sampson. He's on every day, he's streaming live in the mornings. He's on the network with LeBatard on that show as well. I listen very frequently, especially when there's juicy business talk.

00:00:35
Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, let me see what.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: David has to say about this first before I make my opinion.

00:00:40
Speaker 4: Heard on FT, how you.

00:00:41
Speaker 1: Doing, I'm doing well, Thanks for having me.

00:00:45
Speaker 4: All right.

00:00:45
Speaker 3: So I want to start with the major sale that lets us know that it is still very healthy to own a franchise. And I know it's the Lakers, but they sold for ten billion dollars to Mark Walter in Company, the Dodgers owner, So we have done a pretty nice job with the organization.

00:01:04
Speaker 5: We're talking about the Rays being sold.

00:01:07
Speaker 4: Sorry, well we're going to do that too. That's two. I figured I would start with the bigger said.

00:01:11
Speaker 5: The Baseball show, though, Scott, you can't talk about other sports, but.

00:01:13
Speaker 3: It's a baseball owner now who's going to dip into the Lakers world.

00:01:17
Speaker 4: So what were your thoughts when you saw that news?

00:01:21
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I thought ten billion was a pretty healthy number, and then I realized that we really don't know what the final number is because it weighs how much debt is on the team, how much is Mark Walter going to buy.

00:01:33
Speaker 1: He already owns a percentage of the team.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: You can peg a value at a number that has the wow factor, but you really have to dig into the agreement to see exactly where he's investing at what number. But it is pretty sexy to say ten billion dollars, There's no doubt about it. And Mark Walter owning the Lakers is going to be interesting because he's going to be knee deep in a salary cap league where he's lived in a baseball world where he can outspend everyone and use his money in a way that is almost like a bully, and in basketball that just is not the opportunity.

00:02:08
Speaker 4: That's true. That's true. Basketball is much less.

00:02:13
Speaker 5: Lebron, and Lebron's the greatest player. He's not anymore.

00:02:17
Speaker 4: Wait, but also we can do this. We have a photo to show David. I mean, make him a three way player. He probably can heo. I bet you he can dunk.

00:02:31
Speaker 5: I don't think so.

00:02:32
Speaker 6: Now I'm gonna say no, because he's never he didn't grow up doing it. I grew up playing baseball in Japan.

00:02:37
Speaker 5: Think of dunk?

00:02:37
Speaker 4: I bet, but yeah, you can dunk. He can jump.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: All right, anyway, let's let's get to the juice here. You got something, and then we'll get to we'll get I would say that.

00:02:45
Speaker 2: One of the prohibited activities in Otani's contract is likely professional basketball. Put that along with racquetball and skydiving. But I would say that him in a Lakers uniform, he has a better chance of being a cheerleader than he does of being a NBA player.

00:03:01
Speaker 4: True, no ATVs either. All right, get to your state.

00:03:05
Speaker 6: Let's talk Florida. Let's talk Florida baseball here. Not do you know anything about that? You never owned, you were never around in owner of a team of a team in Florida. Right, you didn't know anything about that. What's the deal with the letter of intent? Does that mean they signed to go to college, they get a good dorm their first year? What does this mean for the rays in Patrick Zolowski.

00:03:25
Speaker 2: So, when you're going through selling your franchise and there's a bunch of different groups who are bidding on it, sometimes you enter into an exclusive negotiating period with one of the parties, and that doesn't mean that's the party that will end up buying the team. As a matter of fact, when the Marlins sold to Jeter back in seventeen and Bruce Sherman, there was an exclusive negotiating period with a totally different party and during that period, that's the only people we negotiated with, Wink Wink. That's the only people who had access to the books at that time, Wink Wink. And then when that period ends, either there's a breakup fee involved if a deal doesn't happen, where one side or the other gets a payment for having that exclusive period, and then you move on to the next group. So I don't know that it necessarily means that a deal is set in stone, as opposed to what you said, And I haven't read that an actual letter of intent. There are two kinds of those, one that's binding and one that's not binding. If you have a binding letter of intent, there's an argument to say that that really is a purchase agreement. That's the beginning of a purchase agreement, and that's not an exclusive period. That's a hey, we're gonna not date, we're getting married. A non binding letter of intent means let's go to a movie, maybe dinner, see what happens on a random Thursday, and then we'll decide if we're gonna get married.

00:04:50
Speaker 7: Does this mean Stu Starnberg's just like saying, Hey, I want to talk to you and see how you would run the team, to try to get ideas on how to do stuff. Or is this a moving to they want to have a second date.

00:05:06
Speaker 2: Oh, I would say, when you're an exclusive negotiating period, you are definitely having second and third dates and you're not digging for information. I really didn't care how new owners were going to run the Marlins. I knew they'd have to trade stanton, etc. But it didn't really matter to me. I was focused on the total price, meaning the entire enterprise valuation, which like in the Lakers cases rumored to be ten billion, and then what gets subtracted from that. So in a negotiation, they may look at a contract and say, well, we don't really want to pay for that, We don't want to pay for that person or this player or that item, and then you subtract that from the total amount of what's called the enterprise valuation. So this is just a lot of negotiating that goes on back and forth. These are long, complicated documents, hundreds of pages, and it's just starting. So for me, both the Rays and the Lakers announcement was not anything that's ready to be approved by owners in each specific sport. This is sort of the beginning of getting to that point.

00:06:08
Speaker 5: How will the new owner make it work?

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Speaker 4: How?

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Speaker 7: How how is he going to make it work in an area that it hasn't worked? Does he have to change locations?

00:06:20
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:06:20
Speaker 2: From where I'm sitting, I don't see how anything works in Saint Petersburg, and I think they'll be out of Saint Petersburg. I know that Rob Manford, the commissioner, has said he wants a team in Tampa. He told Ron DeSantis, the governor, he wants a team in Tampa. But with that and a dollar, you know, you have a dollar. So I think that if a new owner can get a deal done in Tampa, that would be preferable.

00:06:42
Speaker 1: But you don't know right now.

00:06:44
Speaker 2: But in order for a new owner to be approved, there's going to have to be some sort of stadium plan because remember the Rays are time certain out of the drop. They have a lease that's expiring, and so they've got to get going on some construction.

00:06:57
Speaker 1: So all of this is related.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: And a quick example, if a new owner has to pay a disproportionate amount for a new ballpark in Tampa, dollars are fungible, he's going to offer less for the franchise. If it's a really fully publicly funded ballpark, that leaves free cash to offer more for the franchise. So there's a lot of negotiating left.

00:07:20
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00:07:29
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00:07:43
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00:07:44
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00:07:45
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00:07:50
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00:08:21
Speaker 6: My thing is David. Listen, get a bidding war going between Orlando and Tampa. I mean I live in Orlando. I can throw in a dollar then they are already a dollar ahead of what you're gonna throw in for Tampa, so we're up a dollar already, we win, Okay, right, That's that's what I would do if I was the owner, if I was trying to do this, because Orlando clearly wants a team, would like to have a team. Tampa Bay wants a team, but I don't think Saint Pete works. It's gotta be in Tampa proper. So get a little bitting war and see who wins and they take the But it's got to happen fast, right, because like you said, the Trump is gonna be gone soon and so I don't know.

00:08:53
Speaker 5: We'll see what happens. It's gonna be fascinating.

00:08:55
Speaker 6: We're gonna have to have you on talk about this a little more because I'm fascinated by this whole thing. Now, let's talk about you and Whitman, Harryfield, how you guys are best friends, and how you guys are talking about going on your date, like you said, to the movies and all that stuff. Because you listen. I'm a Gator fan. I've watched Jack Cagle on for years. I was like, great, call him up. You had a call had you had a contrasting argument, saying like you should have waited ten to fifteen days or whatever it is.

00:09:17
Speaker 5: Can you explain why that makes more sense than just calling him up when they did.

00:09:21
Speaker 2: Well, I like, wait, by the way, so if he wants to go on a date, I am all for it. And I think people misunderstood what I said because I think Jack is going to be a great player. And if I thought he was going to stink, then who cares when you bring him up because he's not going to make it. But if you have a player who's going to make it to arbitration, if you give that player Super two status, what that means is they have an fourth year of arbitration. What that means, instead of being paid the minimum just call it a million dollars, they're being paid four million dollars. And that's three million dollars spent on a player that you could spend on other players.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: And that's only year one.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: Then year two becomes your second year of arbitration instead of your first. That's another four million extra dollars. So by calling them up when they did, they're risking losing like eight million dollars. And if you're a team like Kansas City, frankly, if you're a team like Boston anybody. You don't throw away that kind of money for an extra two weeks. It just does not make sense. But with I think misunderstood. I was not in any way saying that he's bad. I was saying that you've got to be careful how you allocate your money when you have a limited payroll, which I think he'd agree Kansas City does.

00:10:36
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, here's my argument. As a player, salary and service time manipulation. You just called it.

00:10:42
Speaker 6: As a former president owner of a team, you just nailed it to Wait, I thought this never happened though.

00:10:47
Speaker 5: Wait, you just said that they should have done it.

00:10:49
Speaker 6: So you're all for service time manipulation and holding guys down.

00:10:55
Speaker 2: There is not one year or one day I didn't think about service time manipulation. And listen, presidents lie about it because they feel like they have to. And I lied about it when I was running a team. The reason why I don't lie about it now is I don't want to run a team again. Did it for eighteen years. But you say manipulation, and that has such a pejorative connotation. I say budget management, and budget management. I guarantee you do it on your show, in your business, in your household, as do all your listeners. We all have to work within a budget and figure out how to make every dollar stretch and go longer.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: The rules are the rules.

00:11:34
Speaker 2: Man, I'm not breaking any rules. I'm just telling you that I'm paying attention and that to me, Man, I would be in violation of my fiduciary duty if I didn't do that.

00:11:44
Speaker 6: Okay, listen, I'm bougie, so I only take Uber blacket so I don't count the pennies and I let other people do that.

00:11:50
Speaker 5: Trust me.

00:11:50
Speaker 6: My boss is yell at me when we take road trips. You know, you got to take the Uber whatever, the Uber with three wheel Uber normal two dollars cheaper. So listen, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm all about I'm all about taking the Black hundred.

00:12:05
Speaker 5: But oh totally.

00:12:09
Speaker 2: But maybe that's why you only have a dollar to invest in the Orlando team.

00:12:13
Speaker 5: Mmm, that's true. True, I would have two dollars if I didn't take.

00:12:17
Speaker 4: That fancy cars holding. Yeah.

00:12:20
Speaker 3: Wait, I have a follow to this, so I know that he hasn't performed well. But let's say he did, right, Let's say they called him up and he was on a absolute tear. And the Royals had a big run over these last couple of weeks and they end up making the playoffs by a game. How much more money could the Royals make if they had an extra playoff series R two? And I know that's not usually the case, but I remember even going back to like Will Myers when he was first called up by the Rays, we were having this discussion because I'm like, this a fringe playoff team. If they hold him back for too long, what if they missed the playoffs? Does that get balanced at all? Where ownership might be like, what if we missed what if we win eighty four games? We missed the we could have made it to the Alcs this year and jack Hags hit ten homers in the first three weeks.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: Listen, if my grandmother had four wheels, should be a bus. You'd be silly to budget. Not one team budgets playoffs, and you really don't make money unless you have a bit of a deep run. If you make the wild card and losing the wild Card round A, you may not even get a home game.

00:13:20
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind, because the way.

00:13:21
Speaker 2: They do it is all three games are in one facility. And the way you really make some bank is when you get to the LCS and then of course to the World Series, because not only do you make money in the current year, but then you get a tail that lasts to the next season with more season ticket holders and more corporate sponsors. So making the playoffs very good. But in baseball, it's not like basketball. It's not like where you bring up a guy and that's going to be the difference. Now, is it possible that that player could be the difference in a couple of games, for sure, but two weeks I'm just not with you. I think the risk is far too great. But we evaluate that kind of stuff. So with when we won a World Series, you guys may remember we waited till June twentieth or nineteenth to bring up Miguel Cabrera and still won the World Series. Other years we brought up young guys early and we didn't make the playoffs. So it's really hard to predict. As you know, you guys are players, it's hard to predict.

00:14:24
Speaker 7: I need to hear your viewpoint on the Raffie Dever situation, how it was handled, who handled it the best from both sides and how you would have handled it.

00:14:35
Speaker 2: You've been in a Major league clubhouse, and I know you have, and you're a clubhouse guy. How would you like it if a guy came in the highest paid player and was not willing to do what the team wanted in terms of playing a position. How would you like it if you had the highest paid player who was sort of a turn in the clubhouse. How would you like it if then the player gets traded and ten minutes later said, oh, I'll play the no problem. It's really not great. And the truth is it's auditioned by subtraction for the Red Sox and it's auditioned for the Giants, which is why the trade happened. Because the Giants get a left handed bat where they haven't had a thirty home run hitter since so for they've an opportunity to be in a division where they're fighting against the Dodgers and the you know, spend like drunken sailor padres hoping for one or two playoff spots, and they needed that sort of bat. And I understand Red Sox fans who are despondent beyond repair, but I'll tell you the Red Sox to me, have a chance to be better in the long term if they added the deadline so that proves they're not giving up on this year, and they reallocate the dollars that were given to Devors over all those years for just a dh I think if they do that, then the Red Sox end up on the better end of this.

00:15:52
Speaker 5: Oh.

00:15:52
Speaker 6: It's almost like you work for a team that won a World Series and had star players and traded them all away the next year.

00:15:58
Speaker 5: It's like you've done this.

00:15:59
Speaker 2: Hold on, hold on, hold on. You know what happened. We won ninety seven. I wasn't there, so don't blame that on me. Three I was there, And in four we lost Pudge because Detroit offered him that forty for four. We weren't going to do that because we thought there was a chance for some weight loss before the next season. And two, Derek Lee got expensive, so we moved Derek Lee and brought in heasop Choi and we had a good year.

00:16:28
Speaker 1: We just didn't make the playoffs.

00:16:29
Speaker 2: The next year, we signed Delgado, we signed Lighter, we had everybody from three and it just didn't work for us. Then we traded everyone away before six, and that Ugla Hanley run of four years. So I understand that you're saying that, but it's not totally true.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: Ninety seven was the true fire. Yeah, but that was that's fair, that's fair.

00:16:52
Speaker 1: That was not me.

00:16:53
Speaker 2: And if you remember, I was not even in baseball at the time Wayne heising I was working at Morgan Stanley, and I remember Wayne Haizinger saying, and he said it publicly, I don't care if we win the World Series or don't make the playoffs. We're getting rid of all these players if you do not give me a stadium. And Miami did not give them a stadium. They did win the World Series, and he did get rid of all the players.

00:17:15
Speaker 4: Hey, man of his word.

00:17:16
Speaker 5: He also owned Blockbuster Video one time.

00:17:18
Speaker 3: He owned all the dumpsters right the garbage. Wasn't a waste manager.

00:17:23
Speaker 8: Blockbuster for a long a lot of he did raved before you go real quick, it's a yes or no answer as a player ever made you so mad as a as an executive that you traded him?

00:17:36
Speaker 1: No, released, not traded.

00:17:39
Speaker 5: Can't release Rai Devers though.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: Nothing personal that he was either going to get traded or DFA. The minute John Henry got on that plane to Kansas City. It was O V E. R. John doesn't want to fly to Kansas City to meet with Devers. I can promise you that.

00:17:54
Speaker 4: No, he's not a barbecue guy. It is. Kansas City has got some sick food. David.

00:17:59
Speaker 3: This was awesome. Always always enjoy it. Welcome back anytime.

00:18:02
Speaker 4: Check out.

00:18:03
Speaker 3: Nothing personal with David Sampson. Give him a follow on all the socials too. He's great with fan Q and A, just like we do here. Thanks David, good catching up man.

00:18:10
Speaker 1: Have a great day.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: Thanks guys, you too, appreciate you.