Fair Territory: Red Sox lineup questions, Arte Moreno's "survey", Orioles new development building

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Monday edition of Fair Territory. I'm Ken Rosenthal, and I'm coming to you this morning live from Pirates Camp. You can't really tell looking at where I am, but this is the office of Pirates Media relations director Dan Hart. I appreciate Dan lending me his office for this next half hour. We've got a ton to get through as we meander through spring training in Florida and Arizona. First news this morning from John Hayman, John reporting that Michael Conforto, the outfielder, has signed a minor league deal with the Cubs. Not clear what his role might be yet. If he makes the team, the Cubs obviously have a set outfield. Confordo at one time was considered a really pop prospect and a really good player. And yet it's the time of year now when we see legitimate major league players like Michael Conforto, like Reese Hoskins, signed minor league deals. Ree Hoskins yesterday agreeing on Sunday, I should say to a deal with the Cleveland Guardians, a minor league deal in his case as well, for the Guardians, who had not signed any hitter, not one hitter, to a major league contract. This offseason. This is actually something of a big addition. This is a team that won the Al Central last season in kind of miraculous fashion, right, remember that run down the stretch, and they did it while finishing twenty eighth in the major leagues in run score. They made the playoffs with the third worst offense in the entire league. Hard to do. And then this offseason, as I said, they didn't do anything to upgrade their offense because in part they have a lot of young players coming that they're excited about. Okay, fine, well here's Rhys Hoskins. He steps in. They badly need right handed hitting. He should help in that regard. Even last season he's not what he once was in the Philadelphia Phillies uniform, but last season eight percent above league average in ops plus. That is an above average major league player. So we still have some other free agents out there as well, Lucas Giolito, Zach Lettel, both right handed starting pitchers with teams now incurring injuries like the Atlanta Braves. And you also have Max Schurzer still out there. I wrote with Mitch Bannon of The Athletic over the weekend how he ultimately could end up back with the Toronto Blue Jays, so Confordo to the Cubs, Hoskins to the Guardians, and much more going on in the states of Florida and Arizona. I hope everybody up north is surviving the snow today, but obviously it's been a bad winter. Hopefully the baseball news can kind of warm you up and cheer you up now. I wrote about the Red Sox this morning, the Boston Red Sox, that was my first visit here in Florida the other day. And the question with the Red Sox, and this is the question that I think will define their season is how good can their offense be? We know what has happened with the Red Sox in the last twelve months or so. Traded Ralphael Devers, they failed to re sign his replacement, Alex Bregman, and they're left with a different kind of team, almost like the Mets in that they reshaped their team somewhat for different reasons, different ways, different motivations. But the Red Sox they have a strong rotation. They should have a good back of the bullpen. The offense is what is in question. They've added Wilson Contreras, They've added Chad Durbin to I'm sorry, Caleb Durbin. Two guys who should hit well in Fenry Park. But at the same time, there is a question of whether they will have enough power. And there's a question as well, And this is the one I raised in the column, probably most prominently, are they going to ask too much of Roman Anthony? Now, Roman Anthony is, of course the game's top prospect. Last year, came up, made an extremely impressive debut with Boston before his season ended an injury. But Roman Anthony is twenty one years old, and you're asking him to be the centerpiece of a team that in the past has had great offensive players, a team that should in Fenway Park always be something of an offensive juggernaut. Is Anthony capable of that? Absolutely? He is capable of that. But the major leagues are much different than the miners now. In the miners, as I wrote, they play six games series, stay in one site all week, then they have an off day on Monday. And also most minor league players get a scheduled off day during the week. They are not necessarily prepared for the rigors of major league travel and the major league schedule. So to ask Roman Anthony this year to play one hundred and fifty games. That might be a stretch. Okay, moving on to the other team in Fort Myers, Florida, that would be the Minnesota Twins. Twins had some rough news in the past week, learning that Pablo Lopez will undergo Tommy John surgery, and they had a scare just a couple of days ago when Joe Ryan was scratched from a start. Turns out that he has only inflammation in that or back. He might be questionable for the WBC now, but he is healthy, should be fine for Opening Day. But this raises the point of teams that wait too long to trade their players, and we see this happen all the time in baseball. The Twins are a team that, of course deconstructed in a major way last July at the deadline. You remember all the players that they moved, Carea being the headline, a number of others as well, including really their entire bullpen. At that time, they chose not to trade Joe Ryan, not to trade Pablo Lopez, and I think Pablo might have been heard at that time, but Joe Ryan they kept. And the danger when you do that is you're risking a player or pitcher getting injured or not performing to his previous norms. The Twins in this case with Pablo Lopez, they were probably going to trade him at the deadline if he was healthy this year. Joe Ryan might have been a trade cannon and still might be a trade candidate for them at the deadline. They talk about them competing. The Twins keeps saying we want to compete, we want to be back in the al Central mix and all that. Well, they haven't spent enough money to do that, and now they have this question of their rotation without one of their big premier starters. This team essentially built its rotation around Lopez and Ryan and then his physician group around Byron Buxton and some others as well. So we'll see what happens with the Twins. If you remember, the Miami Marlins kind of did the same thing last year, kept all their starters, ultimately traded this offseason, Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers kept Sandy Alcantra, and they're running the same risk with al Contra that certainly the Twins ran with Pablo Lopez. Now Sandy's coming off as Tommy John. He should be fine, but as you hold guys, you again run the risk of injury or poor performance. I don't expect that to happen with Santa ALCNTRA, and I expect him to be a guy who is a trade candidate. If the Marlins are not in contention, very well might be. But again, this just whole, this whole scenario this weekend just posed the question again about waiting too long for certain players to be traded. You can hold them too far, you can keep them too much, and that point, sometimes you get stuck and sometimes you end up in a bad place. All right, last point before I get to the inside dish. You might have noticed comments from Angels owner Arty Moreno recently about how the Angels took a survey of their fans, and Arti Moreno said that winning for fans was not in their top five things that they really wanted. Affordability was number one. Winning wasn't even in the top five. Now, one, I'd like to see this survey. No one has seemed to have surfaced it just yet. And number two, that is an absurd premise. And I seriously doubt any sampling of Angels fans or at fans in any city would say and winning's not a big deal, not in my top five. I want good concessions, I want cheap parking, I want affordability. I want a good entertainment. No, no, no, no, no, fans want to win. Arnie Moreno should know fans want to win. You see the Samblum tweet there, and he wrote about this as well. And I will just say this about Artie Moreno. Dork of the Week is coming up on Thursday, and I mentioned last week the Red Sox owners were going to be tough to beat, and Tony Clark beat them. Artie Moreno is going to be tough to beat this week unless we see that survey. Let's see it. Let's see the survey says, as they used to say on a certain game show, Let's see exactly what the Angels were talking about here, because I'm not buying that fans don't care about winning Angels. Fans do not care about winning Angels. Fans I am quite sure would love to win. All right, we'll be back with the Inside Dish right after.

00:08:56
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00:10:01
Speaker 1: Well, all right, time now for the inside dish, the part of the show where I talk about maybe a story I've written, maybe a trend in the game or maybe I take a stroll back in time. Now. I don't like to do that. I like to talk about the present and not the past. But I'm going to kind of blend the two this morning on the inside Dish, because I experienced something over the weekend at Orioles camp that just jogged my memory about what it was like when I first started covering the Orioles back in nineteen eighty seven. That's right. This is actually my fortieth spring training, number forty, and my first spring training. I was hired at the age of twenty four in the middle of spring training and went down to Miami to cover the Baltimore Oriols. That was the job I was hired for, to compete against Tim Kirkton now with the ESPN and Richard Justice then with the Washington Post. These were two of the giants in baseball writing at the time and even now, and let's just say that was overmatched. But we digress. What stood out that first spring training was the facility where the Orioles played. It was Miami Stadium, actually Bobby Maduro Stadium it was called. It was in downtown Miami. It was not in a great neighborhood, and it was kind of a rundown facility. The stadium was what it was, and off to the side of the stadium there was what they called the Little Field, and it was basically an infield where they could practice in field in addition to having, of course the major league portion the major League stadium for spring training games. That was the extent of the Oriel spring training facilities. That was it. They're minor leaguers trained up the road at Saint Thomas University that was about thirty miles north, so their minor leaguers were nowhere near there. They couldn't be because there was simply not enough room for everyone to train at once. There was really not enough room for major leaguers to train. All the advanced things you see today. No, none of that existed, and the Oriols for a time were kind of a nomadic team in the spring. At one point they had their minor leaguers in Sarasota across the state on the western side of the state, while the team was either in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, so the minor leaguers and major leaguers were totally separated. And then you also had a situation one year where they played no home games because the entire operation moved to Sarasota, but they didn't have a stadium yet there. So why do I mention all this? I mention all this because the Oriols this spring opened up a twenty three million dollar, forty seven thousand square foot player development facility right at their complex at ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota. Now, their minor leaguers are still in a different part of Sarasota, so it's not all unified as that. Some teams have that situation in their own spring complexes. But here you look at that facility. This is some video that the Oriols supplied of it, and there are some amazing things going on in there.

00:13:02
Speaker 3: Now.

00:13:03
Speaker 1: A lot of teams have these kinds of setups now at their spring training complexes, but with the Orioles, this wasn't even possible until the new ownership led by David Rubinstein took over. Michae Elias President Baseball Operations. He wanted something like this for years but couldn't get the approval. Rubinstein came in improved it right away. And what they have here and I'll try to go through it. You can see it right there. There are four batting cages, and these are the big time batting cages with all the accouterments going on, the high speed stuff, the biomechanics pitching lab. They have that as well, with thirty plus cameras in there. And in the part where the cages are the batting cages, there are four different cages, but if you lift the nets up that separate them, then you have an entire full infield. And this is all indoors, so the Orioles when it rains in Florida, which it does on occasion, they don't have to worry about not getting their working. They get all their working. There were also eight bullpen mountains in this facility, so it's all there. It's all there for them. And during the winter time and also even during the season, players can rehab at this complex in the same way and they can use it for their Florida Complex League affiliate as well. So it's weather protected obviously, and it just gives the Orioles all of the state of the art things that you would need most teams have now, but all under one roof. It's an amazing thing to see this, and it's amazing really how far the game has come in all these years that I've covered it. None of this technology existed when I was first starting out as a baseball writer. Heck, analytics didn't even exist. We're going way back. I know I'm dating myself and all that, but the point of it is the game has come so far analytically technologically, all these different areas, and now the way teams can care for players and treat players and develop players. That's the point of this all. It's just at a totally different level than it once was. In that facility as well, there are conference rooms and there's even a player's lounge, and in that conference center. The conference rooms, I should say, there is one for pitchers, there is one for hitters. When I was there taking a tour of that facility, they were having the catchers all in one room meeting and going over some things through video and other aspects as well. Again, the advances are incredible. They are exemplified by this facility, and good for the Oriols in getting this done. Now. Again, I don't want to just single out the Oriols and have fans come at me.

00:15:50
Speaker 4: My team is doing Yes, all teams are kind of doing this, but this.

00:15:54
Speaker 1: Particular facility it's the newest one and it's a major step forward for the Orioles and Michael Olias, their president Baseball Operations, believe the indoor hitting facility might be the best in the world. I don't know. I don't visit all these different facilities, but again, they've got it all going in there, and it's really impressive to see. Now, how will this translate to helping the team? It certainly helps players get their work in during the spring, and the day I was there, a number of their hitters were taking batting practice inside instead of outside. This is something that happens in major league clubhouses as well during the year because inside you still get the ball flight simulation that you want, you still get the data analysis that you want, and guys, some of them were just more comfortable doing it that way. And I'm sure they'll hit outside as well. But you have these different things you can do, and if it's really hot, you go in there. It's climate controlled. It's just a better way to make players the best that they can be, and that's the goal of all of these advances that we've had in the game in recent years. I know fans sometimes get upset with analytics and they feel it's gone too far. But the point of them all is simply to help players improve. And that's the beauty of analytics too, and that's what it is brought to the game of baseball. And then when you see these facilities pop up with their different avenues of technology and all of that, it just is one other way to make players that much better. So the game is at an extremely high level in every way. Other sports have done the same with their own training methods and nutrition, all of this. It's just all in a different place than it was back in I.

00:17:41
Speaker 4: Don't even want to say it back in nineteen eighty seven, when I got to the Baltimore Sun age of twenty four and started covering baseball at Bobby Maduro Stadium with the little field on the side and not.

00:17:53
Speaker 1: A whole lot else going on. All right, we'll be back with Grill and Can right after this.

00:17:58
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00:19:05
Speaker 1: All right back now with grill and can time for your questions. Let's get right to them. And the update on Giolito and Lttel's markets. Okay, we're talking, of course about Lucas Giolito and Zach Lttel, and it's interesting the way this spring is progressing. Of course, we're going to have the usual share of injuries, and the one team now that has injuries is Atlanta. They lost Spencer showing Back swelling Back, and they lost as well Hurston Waldrop, two guys who might have been part of their opening day rotation. Swelling Back certainly would have been Waldrop as well. And you say, well, okay, why don't the Braves sign one of these guys. It's a valid question. The Braves are in kind of a funny spot because they're sort of jammed up with their roster as far as their pitching is concerned. And in their case, they've got two guys, Bryce Elder and Joey Wentz who are out of options, and the Braves evidently they do not feel that the investment in Gilito or Lttel would be worth what it would take to displace those other two guys. They don't feel Gioledo and Lttel are enough of an upgrade. I guess over Whence and Bryce Elder. That's a debatable point for sure. Giledo really finished the year strong last year and Lttel has been a very consistent starter was for the Tampa Bay Rays. But that's where this is right now. And those guys probably are asking, I don't know, ten million north of ten million each, and you can understand their accomplished major league pitchers. They deserve that starting pitchers get paid. But teams like the Braves, other teams that are facing some losses with pitching starting pitching injuries, they just don't seem, at least right now, to be as intrigued by Giorledo and Lttel as you might expect. So that's where it stands with those guys. Again, as I mentioned in the first block, Schresier is also out there, but Scherzer it looks like looks like he might be headed back to Toronto or Toronto should say, all right, next question, do you feel like the Braves don't have enough power to be a serious contender? Enough firepower? No, that's not the problem with the Braves. I expect that their offense is going to revive this season, and for two years now they've been kind of stalled offensively. But Acuna is healthy. I can't imagine Michael Harris June a second and Ozzi Albi's being as bad as they were in the first half of last year. I expect Austin Riley to finally get it together again. Matt Olsen is almost always good. They've got Drake Baldwin, they have a good offense, Mikeystremsky, Jerks and Profar. It's a lot there, so they should be Okay. That's not the question I have with the Braves. The question I have is if they get one more starting pitching injury, then they're really in trouble, and then the choice for Gilito and Lttel might not be a choice at all. They might have to sign one of them if those two pitchers are still available. Next question, see we're waiting for one right here. Here comes Derek Frasier asked. I asked if the Braves could trade for Buston Lopez Ryan with the Pablo Lopez injury, does this change the Twins tune on trading Ryan and or Buxton. That's a fair question because certainly, with losing Pablo Lopez, the team is not as competitive as it might have expected. But under their new ownership, or I should say, they're shifting control people to a different poll lad he's talking like they want to compete, and he keeps saying that, and he keeps coming out saying we intend to be competitive in the Al Central. So I don't expect a trade of either of those players. Ryan or Buxton to happen this spring. Could it happen down the line by the deadline. Certainly could happen if the Twins don't contend, and I'm still having a hard time seeing how they will contend. Now they're in the forgiving Ale Central that will help. But the Tigers should be really good. The Guardians always seem to figure it out. The White Sox are improving, and the Royals they see themselves as a contender as well. So I would expect are going to be sellers, but not just yet. All right, maybe we've got time for one more or so it's one comes from the wicked better who asks? Are there any names to watch on the trade market over these next few weeks. There have been a few teams that have said they feel they might make another move or two before opening Day. I would say the big name to watch is Ezac Parades. The Houston Astros have a logjam in their infield. There's simply not enough positions to play both Parades and Christian Walker every day. You've got one of those guys at first base, Altuve at second, Paya at short, Correa at third. Okay, there is a DH position, but that belongs to Rodan Alvarez, so Paradis really needs to go. They might not do it by opening day, but he is the big name, of course. And then they're the Red Sox who have a seeming surplus still of starting pitching, and that's after doing some things and trading some pieces during the off season. But they could trade of Patrick Sandoval, even a Brian Beayo. I don't know that I expect it to happen, but it's certainly possible. And then they have again kind of an outfield surplus as well. We've talked about this all winter long. Duran and real you and Rafaela and Yoshita and Anthony. Of course too many guys, so Anthony he's not going anywhere, but Duran, possibly Yeshidah in a salary dump maybe like the Jordan Hicks thing, that could happen. Who knows, but those are some of the names that could get moved, and certainly I would expect there to be a few trades during spring. All right, with that, we're gonna close it out. I want to thank everyone for watching and listening as always on YouTube and Spotify and Apple. It's out Territory coming up at one pm et aj Prizinski live from Brewers Camp. Eric Braun, I'm sorry, Eric Kratz and Scott Braun. Not Eric Braun and Scott Kratz. It's Kratz and Braun. They'll also be hosting. We'll be back Thursday, our usual time, twelve thirty Live Eastern, myself and Alana Rizzo. Hope everyone gets to dig out. Okay, hope everyone has a great week.

00:25:23
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