Fair Territory: BOLD hires, Twins/Rangers plans, Pitch rigging case

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Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to another edition of Fair Territory. We're coming to you live from the General Manager's meetings in Las Vegas. Before we get started, I want to mention Veterans Day and thank all the veterans, of course for their service. I know this is the day we always thank them and take a day to do that, but really it's every day that we should be thanking the veterans their sacrifice. It cannot even be described in words, So Happy Veterans Day to all. Now, as for baseball, it's been quite an interesting week already because of something that happens off the field, and of course I'm talking about the indictments of The Guardian's pitchers Emmanuel Class and Luis Ortiz on Chargers. They took bribes from sports vetters on to throw specific pitches that would trigger prop bets, basically doing things that were anti integrity, if you want to call it that. We've talked a lot about what this means about the gambling aspect, about all the companies, including ours, including everyone I work for, that is in partnership with gambling companies, Baseball's partnership with gambling companies. We've also learned Monday yesterday that Major League Baseball has worked with the sportsbooks to institute a two hundred dollars limit on pitch level micro bets and to also exclude them from parlays. I've obviously the idea is to kind of prevent this from happening in the future, or at least take a step to help prevent this from happening. What we haven't talked much about is the actual effect on the Guardians themselves as a baseball team. You see there this story from Zach Mizel, really good story explaining everything that's in the indictment and all that it came to pass with these two pitchers the Guardians last year, Remember, they did not have these two guys for their stretch run. Luis Ortiz did not pitch after June twenty seventh. Emmanuel Classe did not pitch after July twenty sixth. They both were placed on nondisciplinary paid leave while the Major League Baseball investigation was going on. What happened, the Guardians did not fall apart without one of their starting pitchers and their premier closer. They went nineteen to four down the stretch to win the Al Central in shocking fashion. Now they lost to the Tigers in the wildcard round. Now the question becomes, all right, what about this season? What do they do about these guys? I assume, but perhaps I should not assume that they will remain on nondisciplinary paid leave. That's a problem for the Guardians, who are a low budget team and classeas do six point four million in twenty twenty six, or Tea's would be right around the minimum salary seven hundred and eighty thousand. He is not yet eligible for arbitration. The Guardians certainly can use that money. My understanding is as of right now that money is not available to them, but we should learn more about that in the coming days, so we'll have to see how that all plays out for the Guardians. Clearly they can figure things out either way. But if they got some clarity on what these guys will be paid or not paid, it certainly would help them as they go forward in the off season. Now, also in the Al Central, I wrote a notes column to them, my first one of the off season, and I led with the Twins, and the Twins are an interesting team because if you look at them and you go back to the deadline, they traded everybody, well pretty much everybody their entire bullpen for sure, and a number of others. So the assumption would be, well, of course they would continue on this course and trade Pablo Lopez and more importantly trade Joe Ryan, who was in demand at the deadline. But the Twins did not get an offer they liked, and yet there is another way for them to go, And in talking to some people yesterday I learned that at least this way is under consideration, and that way is to compete. It's to keep those two guys and build around them in what is every year a winnable al central. The Twins are not like the Rockies kind of bereft of talent. They've got talent Byron Buxton, Ryan Lopez, some younger players around on them, Royce Lewis, Viever stays healthy. They're not a team that is necessarily going to be an awful team next year. If they actually built around these guys, they might be interesting. Now, Remember, they were not sold as they wanted to be, or at least the poll Out family intended them to be for one point seven billion. They did not get that price, and ultimately the family took on two minority investors, it seemed for the main reason of paying down their debt, which was around four hundred and twenty five million. Well, how about putting some money into the team. That might be an interesting reversal, especially when you've got a new manager, Derek Shelton, and especially when you've also alienated your fans the past several years. So this is something to keep in mind. I'm not saying the Twins are gonna go one way or the other. My understanding is they don't have a direction yet from ownership on just how much they could spend. But that's going to be something to watch. Another team in a similar boat, another team with a new manager, the Texas Rangers. Skip Schumacher is their new manager. They're coming off a disappointing season eighty one and eighty one. We know that their payroll is not going to be as high they pushed it after winning the World Series. Actually to win the World Series, and then after that they're going to go backwards a little bit. It can do some things to lower the payroll and create some flexibility for some offseason pursuits. They've got a Golis Garcia who is a potential non tender. They've got jonah Heim, who is a potential non tender. Garcia is at about twelve point six million. I believe Heim six billion. I've got this in the column. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head. So most likely one of them will to be non tender. Can they go further? I don't know that they would go further. Could you trade Marcus Simon and save some money that way? I don't know that anyone would want Simeon. He's in decline, he's thirty five. But this is a team that's going to face some interesting decisions again, because they have a new manager, you would think they don't simply want to go backwards. In fact, there a very competitive group. Chris Young, their general manager, former pitcher, he wants to get back into the mix. So the Rangers are going to be an interesting team to watch as well. They need another starting pitcher, back end guy. Most likely they will need a catcher if they non tender him. They obviously need to fix their bullpen and rebuild that, and maybe they'll need a right handed hitting outfielder as well. Can they do all that within the financial constraints they're going to be under. Well, we're going to find out. And finally, in this segment, I want to talk about Kyle Hendricks. Kyle Hendricks announced his retirement yesterday and he is such an interesting player in so many regards. First of all, congratulations to Kyle on a tremendous career. He's a guy that my producer Jeremy Meyer pointed out today would maybe not get signed as an amateur if he was coming up through the ranks. He's in throwhard. He is a guy that thrived on pitching, not just on velocity, and today, of course the great emphasis is on velocity and making your breaking pitches spin as fast as they can and break as hard as they can. Kyle Hendricks was not that guy, and yet he had a wonderful career. Of course, it was highlighted by the twenty sixteen World Series, in which he started Games three and seven for the Cubs and allowed only one earned run in nine innings. You see there, Patrick Mooney, he describes Kyle Hendricks as an under the radar prospect out of Dartmouth who developed into a World Series champion and one of the most consequential Cubs pitchers ever. And he's exiting the game the way he came in with zero fanfare. Kyle Hendricks one of the more modest guys you will ever meet. He was never about himself. He was always about the team. That is why he was a beloved teammate. And you go back to that twenty sixteen World Series, well, Game three, four and a third scoreless innings Cubs lost, that won nothing. If you remember, they fell behind three games to one in this World Series before winning the final three with Kyle Hendricks starting Game seven, pitching four and two thirds innings, allowing two runs, just one was earned. The Cubs, of course went on to that dramatic eight to seven victory with the rain delay, the Jason Hayward speech, and they broke the Guardian's hearts. They were then the Indians, and that World Series was so meaningful for so many because of the fact the Cubs had not won since nineteen oh eight, not two thousand and eight, and the Guardians have not one and still have not one since nineteen forty five. So again, great job his whole career. To Kyle Hendricks, congratulations on your retirement once more. And you were a pleasure to watch man, a pleasure to cover, a pleasure to watch We'll be back with the inside Dish after this.

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Speaker 1: Out for the inside dish, the part of the show where I talk about maybe something i've written, a trend in the game, or sometimes a combination of both. And that is what I'm going to do today. On Friday, I wrote a column about the managerial hirings all that we've seen so far, the traditional the non traditional, And in that column I questioned some of the teams for maybe getting too cute, trying to be too creative in outsmarting their opposition and figuring out the next big thing. Now, this column got a lot of reaction, as columns often do. That's kind of the idea when you write something. And I wrote it because it was bugging me what was going on. And sometimes the best columns come from when something is just bothering you. Now, what was this about. It was about the hirings of for managers from non traditional backgrounds. Of course, Tony Vaytello, college coach from Tennessee being first and foremost among them. He is a guy who has never been in professional baseball. Then there was Blake Bututera, at thirty three, the youngest manager to take over a team since nineteen seventy two. He's a guy who's never managed above a ball, never been in the major leagues either. And then there was Kurtsuzuki with the Angels and Craig Stamon with the Padres. Former players, guys who are serving as special assistance with their teams but never coached or managed. Now there were four other hires, or have been, four other hires from the more traditional path that we normally see from coaching staffs in Major League Baseball or previous managers, guys who are getting a second chance. Three of those guys qualified in that regard, Skip Schumacher with the Rangers, WoT Weiss with the Braves, and Derek Shelton with the Twins. And then there's Craig alban As with the Orioles. He was a bench coach with the Guardians for two years under Steven Vote, and of course before that a coach with the Giants as well. So that's the traditional path. So I wrote this questioning the new ones, and of course the Rockies still linked to hire a manager, and their hire as a President of Baseball Operations, Paul the Podesta was perhaps the most surprising hire of all, considering that the Podesta has been out of baseball for about a decade. He was in the front office of the NFL Cleveland Browns, So you might ask, and people did ask, Ken, why are you all hot and bothered about this? Anytime you hire a manager, it's a risk. And I thought about this after I wrote the column and gave it some more thought, and I thought back to my own career, in my own start in baseball writing, and I was hired at age twenty four, without any experience covering Major League baseball on a regular basis by the Baltimore Evening Sun. The sports editor was Jack Gibbons, and he took a chance on me, but as these teams are taking a chance on these managers, and basically his thought was that I could grow into the job. And I guess that's what happened. I would hope that people think that's what happens. I've been doing it long enough now. But at the same time, I still see this situation in baseball as different. And I see it as different because at that time when I was hired, while yes I'm sure Jack Gibbons snubbed a lot of more qualified candidates, those guys were getting jobs elsewhere, it was not a There were a lot of baseball writing jobs, and this was kind of an unusual circumstance. Today in baseball, when the unconventional hires are made, it's not so unusual. We've seen that. And my concern again is the teams get too cute. They try to show how smart they are. And we see this not just in their hirings. We see this with player acquisition, we see this with in game strategy, and yes, we see this in the way they go about picking their new managers and sometimes their new coaches as well. And here's the thing. The managing job is extremely difficult. It's a lot harder than being a twenty four year old baseball writer. It's a lot bigger risk to take a chance in a multi million dollar business with someone who has not done the job before. Not quite the same as what I was experiencing, or what the Baltimore Evening Sun was experiencing when they hired me in nineteen eighty seven. So during the off season, I'm sorry, during the postseason, when I was with the Blue Jays for in the entire post division series LCS World Series, their manager John Schneider, spoke often. We met with him every day as a broadcast group, and he spoke often about how much he has learned in his time as a manager. He was a minor league manager for eight years, he was a major league coach for three plus seasons. He followed that traditional path, and yet when he got the job, he still had a long way to go to become the manager he is today and potentially the American League Manager of the Year, which will be named tonight, and Steiner spoke about how he needed to evolve, learn from his mistakes, learn to adjust to situations, exercise, feel, read and react. He's done a better job of that than he did earlier. All of these managers who are coming in for the first time, they're going to need how to learn to do the job first of all, and they're going to need to refine themselves over a matter of time as well. It's not easy. So that's my concern now. The same thing. At the same time, the other part of this is that, again, as I mentioned, quality people are getting overlooked. We have David Ross and bread and Hyde, guys who deserve a second chance. Were they great managers in their first shots? Maybe not, But we've seen managers grow a lot in their second jobs. We also see and know managers in minor leagues, managers even in who well coaches in the major leagues. These guys are waiting, and they're waiting for their chances, and they feel, hey, what about me. So it's a complicated discussion. And for all I know, maybe all of these guys that I'm talking about will prove major successes. When I wrote this column, I cited my original column when Aaron Boone was hired by the Yankees, and I said that maybe I was being too alarmist in that column because I was critical of that higher I don't recall too many people being critical of it, but I was because he had no coaching or managing experience. Obviously, Aaron Boone has proven to be a great success. I was wrong on him, and I said as much in the column. And if I'm wrong on all these first time managers, I'll be happy to say as much again. But I just have a hard time that all of them are hard time believing that them are going to succeed. In my view, experience in this position still matters well, at least it should. All right back with Grill and Ken right after.

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Speaker 1: Time now for grilling, can the part of the show where I answer your questions. Let's get right to them. First. One comes from Richard Proctor, who asks which team do you think is most likely to part with their prospects in order to better their major league roster? Always a good question, and one Richard that is kind of difficult to answer because I don't know what teams exactly you're thinking, But I would say this, the Mets are a team that have built their farm system in recent years, especially under David Stearns. They're in a position now where they can make some trades. The Dodgers have a strong farm system. They certainly can make some trades. But what would be more intriguing would be if we saw teams like, for instance, the Marlins and the Pirates do some things to better themselves by trading from their depth of prospects. And I do believe that is possible. Yesterday, and talking to some people here just the first day of the GM meetings, actually it wasn't even the first day. People were just getting in. I heard that the Marlins and Pirates are telling agents, Hey, we'd like to be aggressive, we'd like to spend a little bit now. That can be in free agency, or it can be in the matter of taking on salaries in trades. So I don't know the exact answer to your question, Richard, but I do expect that we're going to see some of this kind of activity, and not just from the big spending teams that have tons of prospects. You may see it from some other clubs as well, next question, This one comes from Peter Ross nineteen oh seven. Peter asked, what do you think the Yankees are doing this off season? Starting pitcher would be one thing. Joel Sherman what an interesting Colmum New York post today about how while the Yankees will have Rodin coming back and I'll have Cole coming back at some point, maybe even early in the season, they need to protect themselves. They need to get another starter, Max Fritz coming off a big workload. They've got obviously a good group, but you always need more. So I expect starting pitching to be one thing, and then the outfield going to be really interesting. So Trent Grisham got the qualifying offer. We don't know if he's going to accept or not. Obviously, if he accepts, that's one spot. They do want bellunder back. They've talked about that, but Kyle Tucker is someone who might fit even better than Bellager in some ways. Chris Kershner of The Athletic has written about that he believes that Tucker is a better fit. Either way, one or both of those guys probably will be a pursuit of the Yankees, depending on Grisham. And they still got Jason Domingez of course, and they've still got that Aaron Judge character. But I do expect them to be somewhat active in the outfield. And then of course bullpen. Devin Williams a free agent. Luke Weaver is a free agent. They're going to have to do some things there. So the Yankees, like always as always, will be busy this offseason. All right, Next question from Pilot twenty nine to fifty. Even though they made the playoffs last season, do you think the I can't read this? Hold on, help me out here. Let's see. Oh, there it is. The Guardians will trade Kwan or other big pieces. All right. Stephen Kwan is a guy who was in serious demand at the deadline, and the Dodgers were one of the teams trying to get him, and I expect those teams will renew their pursuits. The Guardians are a team that does make trades, but other teams will tell you they're really difficult to deal with. They set their price and they don't come off it. People can be critical of that, but that's the way they operate and they're pretty successful doing it. They did trade Baber at the deadline last offseason. A little bit of a different case. He wasn't active for them at that moment, certainly was. I don't expect that they're going to trade Kwan. They view him, I believe, as something of a centerpiece, a key part of what they do. But they're gonna have to be creative and flexible as they always are in how they reshape their roster. They need offense, they need outfielders. We know that, and I'm not exactly sure how they're gonna go about getting it all right. Next question, let's see what this is. This is from Jim Jim Jim Huerte, who asked what's more realistic from the CBA AHA, A cap floor or a massive restructuring of revenue sharing? Great question. I still believe a cap floor, salary cap and a salary floor is not realistic. The players will fight it. It will require the league to miss time and eat into the twenty twenty seventh season, and as successful as the sport is right now, as much of a positive wave it is riding, that to me does not seem to be the best solution now. Restructuring revenue sharing is one way to obviously address the inequities that exist in revenues between the teams, and that's something I've talked about a lot. We've all talked about it. It's real. It's a problem for the sport, and it's getting to be a bigger problem each year as the Dodgers go this way and other teams stay at this level. Down here. Restructuring revenue sharing is one solution. You can also do some things to enhance competitive competitive balance in other ways, more draft picks for low revenue teams. You can also do some other things as well. It's kind of eluding me right now, but I've got some ideas about what this sport could do to benefit those clubs, and there are ways to go about it. You can tax the player, tax the teams more heavily at the top of the luxury tax scale. There are all kinds of levers that can be pulled here short of a salary cap, and if that is necessary to keep the sport going and make it fairer. To me, that is the way the sport should go. All right, more, I think maybe one more, maybe two before we go what team is more likely to trade for Schooble as of right now, JJ and Alaska, I would say no team is likely to trade for Schooble. My understanding is the Tigers want to keep Schooble, and while teams will come at them, and while they will listen their job to listen, their idea is to compete next year and be a really good team around him. They've been a really good team with him, obviously. Now do I agree with that idea. I'm torn because, on one hand, if you trade Schooble, you get something in return that will be greater than the draft pick you might get after making him a qualifying offer next offseason. On the other hand, trading a pitcher who likely will be a two time Cy Young winner, and you're kind of ripping the fabric of the team apart at a time when you don't necessarily need to do that, When you have a chance to go back to the playoffs for a third straight year and win with Trek Scuble, that seems to be the Tiger's preference. We'll see how hard they get pushed. You're asking which team would push the hardest. I would expect the Mets would be one, badly need a starting pitcher, and the Dodgers another. But because Google has only one year of club control remaining, who knows what the returns might be. The return for Corbyn Burns that the Brewers got two years ago was good? Was it awesome? No? So this is a situation that will play out this offseason. But again, as of right now, my expectation is he stays. All right, one more question before we go, Let's see what we got jj Olasco again, what do the Pirates need to do to be successful next year? I want to see Skians in the postseason. A lot of us want to see that. And what the Pirates need to do is find some offense. Balance their roster. They are good with pitching. They're really good with starting pitching. They've got depth there. They can trade a starting pitcher, not Skiings, but another starting pitcher, maybe Mitch Keller, maybe someone else to get the bats that they need. They've resisted doing that, and I understand you've built this pitching. You don't want to break it up when it's so fragile. But at the same time, the Pirates obviously need to get more offense. Their general manager Ben Sherrington, Pirates owner Bob Nutting kept him well. Now he's got to do some things to improve this team in a way that like the Tigers with Scooball, you would want to take advantage of having schemes and you've got them for longer than the Tigers do with Scooball. All right, that is it for today's show. I want to thank everyone for watching, for listening. Foul Territory is coming up. It's Jace Tangler, new Giants coach, Chris Kershcher of the Athletic Ryan Divish from the Seattle Times and you're going to join Scott aj and Eric Kratz. Fair Territory returns Thursday again from the Jam Meetings live at twelve thirty Eastern. I'll talk to you then. Thanks everyone,