Fair Territory: José Ramírez contract extension, Market update, Yu Darvish retiring? SF needs

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Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Monday edition of Fair Territory. I hope everyone had a good time over the weekend watching not just football, but the one hundred and first annual New York Baseball Writers Association Dinner that was broadcast live here on the Foul Territory Network the Fouls Territory Channel. And now we resume our normal work schedule. Now we start off today with something that came out over the weekend that was a bit of a surprise, the Jose Ramirez extension with the Cleveland Guardians seven years, one hundred and seventy five million, with seventy million in deferrals. Now, Jose Ramirez wasn't up until after next year, if I'm not mistaken, so there was no urgency here. But Ramirez over the years has been quite vocal about wanting to stay in Cleveland, wanting to finish his career in Cleveland. He's comfortable there, he likes it there. So we talk all the time in our sport about how little, small markets can never keep their players. Obviously, in many cases that is true. It's not always true though. Now Ramirez in his case, has taken below market value. But we've also seen Corbyn Carroll remain on a long term deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Julio Rodriguez remain on a long term deal with the Seattle Mariners, and Bobby Witch Junior with the Kansas City Royals. Ramirez obviously is an older player compared to those guys, and this deal will take him through his age forty season through twenty thirty two. Obviously, by then, I don't know that Jose Ramirez will be the same player he is today. But this is a player who, in my estimation, is a likely Hall of Famer, honestly, a near certain Hall of Famer. He is likely to end up the franchise leader for the Guardians in a number of categories. But beyond that, here's the thing that stands out to me and really distinguishes Jose Ramirez from a lot of players today. Seven top five MVP finishes. Seven that's astounding. Now, he's never won because he plays in the same league as Joho Tani once did and Aaron Judge now does, but he has been a top five finisher, which speaks to his dominance over the years. Just a wonderful player, a guy that you like to see rewarded and Jose Ramirez. You see the cap or the helmet flying off. Zach Meisel of the Athletic keeps track all year long of the helmet counter for Jose Ramirez, how many times he loses his helmet running the bases. He's a fun player to watch. He is an excellent player. He's the heart and soul of that team. And now he's under contract through the age of forty. Other news over the weekend, a little bit of a different twist here you. Darvish comes out in a San Diego Union tribute and report on Saturday. I believe that he was going to retire, that he was planning on relinquishing the final three years of his salary, and that was going to be it for him. Well not so fast. Darvish's agent, Joel Wolf, immediately issued a statement saying nothing is resolved. Then Darvish followed with a statement. You see his statement right here. You may have seen an article. And although I am leaning towards avoiding the contract, there's still a lot that has to be talked about over with the Padres, so the final details are yet to be announced. I am not announcing my retirement yet. Now this one is a complicated case. You, Darvish is a complicated guy. He indeed is willing to sacrifice money. He did that a couple of years ago with the Padres when he went on a bit of a hiatus for personal reasons. But he has three years left on this deal. Three years left on this deal, and he's currently injured. So from the standpoint of the Major League Baseball Players Association, their stance, I would imagine, as well as his agent stance Joel Wolf is not so fast. Let's see if we can negotiate something here. And I'm not saying this is happening. I don't know, but I imagine this is somewhat of a factor here. He is injured, and an injured player who is covered by insurance, as I would to anticipate, Darvish is can remain active or at least trying to rehab while collecting his salary. Now, will he forfeit some of that salary? Perhaps, and perhaps that will happen, But it's pretty rare when any player walks away from guaranteed money. You Darvish is a rare guy, and he's the one guy probably in the game you could see doing it. But this isn't gil Mesh going back, I don't know, over a decade now, walking away from the final twelve million on his contract in one year when he was healthy, that was one year. This is three years. Darvish is injured. So it's a little bit more complicated than just saying, you know what I'm done, and I'm gonna walk away, give the Padres back their money. Not happening so fast, So the story was premature in the San Diego Union Tribune. Obviously, Darvish and his agent responded and we will see how this ultimately gets resolved. It will get re I anticipate it will be resolved by opening day, but again they're not quite the finish line yet. They're kind of a long way from that. Right now. Conversations have to take place with the Union, with Major League Baseball, and of course with the Padres as well. So that's you, Darvish and staying out west. The San Francisco Giants report by Andrew Baggerley of The Athletic over the weekend that they made an aggressive push for CJ. Abrams, and they would have played Abrams at second base. William Doomas of course, is at shortstop. You have Ralphael Devers at first, Matt Chapman at third. That would have been quite the dynamic infield, but it didn't go very far. And obviously the Giants are still looking. They're in a division in which the Dodgers obviously are a powerhouse. The Padres are kind of a question still. They are trying to do some more things. They want to get one more starting pitcher, probably in the eight to twelve million dollars a year range, that kind of aava to twelve million, and they'd also like to get a hitter. Remember, they were in the Nolan Ornado sweepstakes, but ultimately didn't want to really pay any of the remaining obligation to Ronado. The Diamondbacks took on eleven million of the forty two million, and that's how they got him. But back to the Giants. The Giants are a team that really has had a quiet offseason. And it's curious because here's a team that in recent years has signed Chapman a Damas Endeavors acquired into trade two big deals. Devers was already signed, but the Giants inherited that contract. So they've got those players under contract. They've got them in the primes of their careers for the most part, and yet this offseason they seem to have stalled. They haven't done much at all. They've added to the rotation Tyler Malley and Adrian Hawser, good pitchers, serviceable major league starters, but not guys that are really lighted out by any stretch of the imagination. They're in a position with their payroll where their cash payroll is one hundred and eighty five million and their luxury tax payroll is more than thirty million dollars below the threshold, more than thirty million below. So you would think that they have room to do at least one major thing, maybe even two. But it seems that they're stalled. And it seems that for whatever reason, the aggressiveness they showed in to devonstrate a particular but also last offseason in signing a damis for whatever reason, that has I wouldn't say disappeared, but it's not the same level for sure. So where do they go from here? As Andrew Baggerly mentioned, Harrison Bader is a possible target. Their outfield is thin right now. They've got Elliott Ramos, they've got Jung Huli, they need one more. They could also use a second basement, and I would suggest that they also could use a starting pitcher. Now, Tony Vaiitello is their manager, the new manager, another reason why you might want to support him as much as you can. It's his first year coming out of college. But with Vtello, you have the intriguing possibility down the line of maybe Max Scherzer coming aboard. And as I wrote over the weekend with Will Salmon, Max Scherzer is kind of in a wait and see mode. He's ready to go right now. He'll sign with a team if it's one of the teams he wants to sign with at this moment. But if he doesn't get the right offer from the right team, he's willing to wait, willing to wait until after Opening Days. So I wonder if Max Scherzer is a guy ultimately who ends up with the Giants sometime in mid season. Now, before we end this segment, I want to show you the remaining free agents. The top free agents remaining according to the Athletics Big Board, we had a top fifty. Here's who's left. Frobert Valdez at five a, Johannio Swarez at sixteen, Zach Gallan at twenty one, Lucas Giulido at thirty, Crispasset at thirty one, Harrison Better just mentioned at thirty two Luisa rise at thirty three. Andrew Baggerley and his story about the Giants the other day also mentioned a rise as a possibility for the Giants at second base where they're looking at Casey Schmidt right now. I don't know that I see that happening, but right now the Giants are looking kind of at all available options, that is where they are. So with that we close out our conversation about the Giants. We get ready for the Inside Dish and FP Santangelo hosts splash Hit Territory. So go to San Francisco Giants show in the Foul Territory Network. FP and special contributor Susan Sluster answer your burning questions in the latest episode. Subscribe on YouTube and share with a friend. Rate five stars wherever you listen to the entire Foul Territory Network. We'll be back with the Inside Dish right after this. Well, well, time down for the Inside Dish. The part of the show I talk about something happening in the game, maybe something I've written, and today I'm going to focus on The story that I published this morning in The Athletic one about the new Angels hitting coach Brady Anderson. The former oriol center fielder. Brady Anderson is a guy I've covered virtually his entire career, from the time he was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the Orioles at the July nineteen eighty eight deadline. That was an amazing trade for the Oriols. It was Brady Anderson and Kurt Schilling for Mike Bodeker. Worked out pretty well for Baltimore, but Brady Anderson struggled to establish himself really for three plus years, and it wasn't until nineteen ninety two when the late manager of the Orioles, then Johnny Oates, basically said you're going to be my leadoff man in center fielder that Anderson took off in his career, and at that point he was a guy who could really run, could really defend. He stole fifty three bases that season in nineteen ninety two as the Oriols leadoff man and really took off fifteen year career. Three time All Stars, stole more than three hundred bases career ops nine percent above league average career ops plus I should say the adjusted ops now. As I mentioned in the article, his fifty homer season in nineteen ninety six triggered suspicions of ped Us. There was never any form of evidence presented to show that he did that, and we're not living in a world to hearsay, at least not in my world. So that is that. Now the story is about, of course, how he has been coaching, not formally but kind of informally for many years now, and his last professional season was two thousand and three. He goes to camp with the San Diego Padres on a minor league deal. He gets released in spring training and asks the late Padres general manager Kevin Towers, hey, can I go to Triple A? And Tower said, you want to go to Triple A? You've played fifteen years in the major leagues. Anderson said, yes, I'd like to go there. And while he was there, he actually played pretty well, didn't stay very long, but found himself being a mentor to younger players, and that was really the first time he had kind of done that, and it seems like the light bulb went on. Now years later he joined the Orioles front office. He was very close with the Angelo's family, the owner Peter Angelos and his sons Lou and John, and he joined the Orils in kind of this undefined, vague front office role. Ultimately rose to vice president of baseball Operations. He was second on the depth chart under Dan Duquette, and yet he wasn't really a front office guy. As I said, his role was undefined. He did a little bit of everything, and a lot of it involved coaching. He ran the strengthen conditioning program. He through batting practice, He assisted with analytics, He collaborated with the hitting coaches. In twenty twelve, he was even in uniform and that year he was almost an active coach Major League Baseball of hearst had rules on how many coaches could stay in the dugouts, so he didn't stay then in that particular spot as a uniformed person in the dugout. Buck Show. Walter, the Oriol's manager at the time, loved Anderson, but some players and some coaches were uncomfortable with the fact that a front office guy was always around. And pitching coach Dave Wallace at the time, bullpen coach Don Cheaty at the time, they both felt that Anderson was operating with a lot of autonomy but without accountability, and ultimately those two coaches they left for the Braves after the twenty sixteen season, and in twenty seventeen I wrote an article for Fox Sports dot Com I was not yet at the Athletic detailing Anderson's role and how it was vague and how it was uncomfortable for some people, and Wallace and Cheaty both told me in that story that part of the reason they left was because of their own happiness with what Anderson was doing. So Anderson still hung around the Oils for a few years after that, until twenty nineteen. Mike Elias had taken over as VP general manager. I should say and Anderson was not part of his group, kind of was let go. Still worked with players over the years, so after that he didn't hear much from him. He wasn't active in the game, even though he was still working with players on the side, and when he was named the Angels hitting coach under a first time manager, Kurt Suzuki, I was very surprised, but I was even more surprised to learn that not only was Anderson going to be on that Angel's coaching staff, but Dom Cheaty, one of the coaches who had problems with him in Baltimore, a bit of a contentious relationship with him in Baltimore. He was also going to be on that staff. It raised questions in my mind because I remember that article vividly from eight years ago. I remember the whole situation. I called Cheaty. I called a lot of people, and I asked Cheaty in particular. I said, Hey, what's up here. You told me all those years ago that you left because of Brady, and now you're gonna work with Brady again. And he said, basically that he misspoke, that he was speaking out of frustration back then, that he had no problem with Brady Anderson. Yes, they had some differences, but baseball people, when they have their differences, they express their opinions and they move on. And if anything, actually this was the case, he recommended Brady Anderson for that position. So the story is about not all these conflict that's in there. That's part of it because it's part of the backstory. But really what the story is centered around are three former Orioles who basically credit Anderson with helping save their careers. The three are Caleb, Joseph Trey, man and a picture a very prominent picture in his day, Zach Britton. And the story details how each of these guys was in a bad place in his career, and Anderson, through instruction, and in Britain's case more through encouragement, really played a pivotal role for them. So I found it all really interesting, and I felt that if I found it interesting, the readers would find it interesting too. It's one of the longest stories I've written in a while, but it's a different kind of story. And here's a guy no formal coaching experience, never been a coach at any level, but yet he's been coaching for a long time. You see the story right there. Brady Anderson just landed his first formal coaching job at sixty two. He's been teaching players for years. I encourage everyone to read it. I think you'll find it interesting too, at least that's the hope. And for more on The Angels, Mark Trumbo and Mike Di Giovanna host ain Haylio Territory, I'm sorry, not Angel's territory. Helo Territory. Catch parts one and two of their conversation with former Angels skipper Mike Soshia out now. I actually watched some of this last night. It was rather interesting. Subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast to the entire foul Territory network. Grill and Ken is coming up next.

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Speaker 1: Time now for Grilling Ken, the part of the show where I answer your questions. Let's get going, Let's get right to it. First question comes from armand is amazing grilling Ken. Who has a better chance to return to their former team fromber or Gallon? Wow? Good question. I would say neither has a very good chance of returning to their former team. With Brombert that would be going back to the Houston Astros. With Zach Gallon, that would be going back to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Could I see the Diamondbacks maybe doing a short term thing with Gallen. I could possibly see that. But at the same time, they are a team that, because they held on to Katel Marte, are not maybe as flexible financially as they were going to be if they had traded him. Now, what's interesting with the Diamondbacks. Remember they were in on Alex Bregman for a time, didn't sign him, so obviously their owner Ken Kendrick in special cases will make exceptions. I would imagine Gallon in the Diamondbacks' minds might qualify as a special case. So I'll take back my initial comment a little bit. I would say Gallen has a better chance of going back to his former team than Valdez. Certainly. What are the chances of that happening, I don't know. I don't know what the rest of his market is, Gallen's market, but I would say that there is a slight chance of that happening. Gallen back to Arizona. Next question, this one comes from foul Territory Show our people. Do you agree? And that's with C. Trent rosecrants that Elie dela Cruz could be a billion dollar player. No, I don't agree with that. He's a great player, Elie de la Cruz, but he's still developing, he's still kind of polishing his game. And yes, by the time he reaches free agency. Is it possible that we're talking about a billion dollars When we've got Juan Soto at seven sixty five and Shoho Tani it's seven hundred, that's not that far from a billion. I just don't know that Eli de la Cruz is going to be that guy. At this stage of his career. He could develop into it and if he becomes someone who fu fills his potential, yeah, you can maybe see that. But man, that's a lot of money. But then again, seven hundred and sixty five million is a lot of buddy, we'll see. I'm rooting for him. I'm rooting for anybody to make as much money as they can. All right, let's get to the next question. That's when comes from Cody Klegg who asks what is going on with the Pirates in their pursuit of au Haino Suarez. The truth of that question, or the true answer for me, would be, I don't exactly know. Oh, we do know the Pirates are interested. We do know the Pirates have pursued a number of free agents in this offseason, but landed only one really of their targets, Ryan O'Hearn. That was a two year, twenty nine million dollar deal. Their trade editions were Brandon lab Jake Mangum, both coming from Tampa Bay, and the Password coming from Boston. But they haven't gone beyond that as far as trades just yet, and that is how I expect their next move maybe to come through another trade. I don't know how they're going to do with Suarez or other free agents. They certainly are in the mix for him, but I just don't see the Pirates necessarily being anyone's first choice unless their options elsewhere are limited. And that is what I'm talking about here. That's the problem that they've had with Suarez and others. So we'll see what they do. As far as their offense, they need one more bat at the very least. Andrew McCutcheon had some strong things to say about the team seeming lack of interest in him over the weekend. His comments were on X and I encourage people to check them out. All right, let's get to another question. This one comes from I'm not even gonna say his name. We don't need any foul names here. Are the Marlins going to trade Sandy. They're not going to trade him just yet. And if they wanted to trade him this offseason, they probably would have done it by now, but they've already traded two starting pitchers, Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers. If Sandy al Contra has a great first half and the Marlins are out of contention, certainly I can see the equation turning in the favor of a trade. But I don't anticipate that happening. I don't anticipate the Marlins falling out of contention so quickly. They won seventy nine games last year. They arguably are a little bit better this year. They've got an interesting club that they've assembled. They play the game in kind of a Brewer's esque style. They've got Pete Fairbanks to close. Now. I expect the Marlins are going to be a competitive team. Maybe not a total wild card contender, but it's not out of the question. So if that happens, do you trade Sandy al Contra at the deadline? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe you pull up Brewers and you kind of do that kind of thing, try to get younger players that will be with you longer term. But man, if they're competitive, I would think that they're going to have a hard time doing that, hard time coming to grips with that and less and less. I will say this, their younger pitchers really emerge, and Thomas White's one of them, and they've got some others as well coming and that was one of the reasons they were willing to trade Cabrera and Ryan Weathers to make room for those guys. So we'll see how it plays out, but as of now, I don't expect al Contra to go all right. One more question this comes from Letsheva Jones, who asks Ken on paper, are Reds better than Cubbies? On paper? No, they are not better than the Cubs. The Cincinnati Reds are not. They're still looking for at least one more hitter. Austin Hayes has been on their radar. A oohaner Suarez has been on their radar. As I wrote with Will Salmon last week, one problem for the Reds has been the lack of clarity on their TV deal. They just don't know exactly what that's going to look like going forward. They're hoping for some more answers this week. It's a complicated thing. They're one of nine teams in that mainstream group that is affiliated with that network, and that network is having all kinds of financial issues, so they need some resolution there and then they'll presumably go forward and get another hitter. I don't know exactly how it's going to play out for them, but on paper right now, while they're starting, pitching is very good, and while their bullpen should be okay, I just don't see them quite as strong as the Cubs. All right, with that, I want to thank everyone for watching, for listening however, you enjoy our show. Foul Territory is coming up next at one pm Eastern. It's Jim Bowden and Alex Call. They'll be the guest, joining Todd Frasier, Arik Kratz and Scop Braun. I guess AJ can't work more than two days in a row. We're back Thursday at twelve thirty Eastern with a lama Uso joining us. Of course, talk to you then. Have a great week everyone,