PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - BREAKING: Diamondbacks sign left-handed starter Eduardo Rodriguez to four-year deal

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

WE GOT OUR GUY! The Arizona Diamondbacks sign free agent LHP Eduardo Rodriguez to a four-year, $80 million contract with 2028 vesting option. We discuss the impact E-Rod will have on the starting rotation, his stellar 2023 season, and if this means the Snakes are done spending. An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to D-backs Takeovers, Knockout Nights & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/phnx-56002330273 Desert Financial Credit Union: Open a free checking account online with Desert Financial Credit Union and get $200 in bonuses https://www.desertfinancial.com/200Get 10% off your first order of Hero Bread at https://www.hero.co/ by using code PHNXSchedule a free in-home estimate with Empire Today! All listeners can receive a $350 OFF discount when they use the promo code PHNX. Restrictions apply. See EmpireToday.com/PHNX for details.Sign up for Gila River Resorts & Casinos $1,000,000 Big Red’s Showdown! Stay in the game and get rewards; it’s that easy! https://www.gilamilliondollarshowdown.com/Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Circle K:  Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: OGeez! is not your average cannabis-infused gummy. Head on over to https://www.ogeezbrands.com to find out where you can purchase. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow them on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. WYNK Seltzer + THC: Go to https://drinkwynk.com/ and use promo code “PHNX” for 50% off. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. When you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

fucking go jesse we got our guy the diamondbacks got our guy let's go welcome in to an emergency podcast of the phnx d-back show uh right here on ph and x my name is derrick montia occasionally known known as as an elated man i am an elated man tonight i'm joined by my vice mayor your thunder stick jesse friedman uh and here we are jessie we were we were craving big news. We were we were desiring big news. We wanted the Diamondbacks to go out there and hit a home run and free agency. And boy, did they ever. They bring Eduardo Rodriguez from the Detroit Tigers here on a four-year deal worth $80 million. I'm not really up to date on everything. I was watching a movie about the Von Eric brothers like 10 minutes ago in a movie theater. And now I'm here doing this

podcast with you. Four years, $80 million. There's also a vesting. option for the fifth year that brings it up to $99 million potentially. That's the upper bound of this deal. Yeah, we didn't we didn't like totally call this Derek. I don't want to take like total credit for this. Do it anyway. We did on the show. We did talk about Eduardo Rodriguez.

We did talk about John Heyman, his report that there were two teams remaining. And at that point, there was no mention of the diamond backs being involved. But it just made sense for the diamond backs to be involved, coupled with our, uh, uh, uh, tinfoil hat club theory about Mike Hazen's comments earlier today and how it sort of seemed like maybe behind the scenes there was actually something going on there. But we also said, we also said that he was only geographically opposed to traffic, which disqualified Los Angeles from the equation. But by comparison, you can get around here easily.

And yes, Sean is here. We are a wagon. Ski to you, Sean. We got our fucking guy. Let's go. Do we have the stat graphic of Eduardo Rodriguez? I look at his numbers here for 2023. Yeah, he was pretty good.

13 and 9 with a 3.30 ERA, 152 and 2 thirds innings pitched, 1.15 whip, a strikeout rate of 8.4 Ks per 9 and a walk rate of 2.8 walks per 9. Just some scintillating numbers there. In fact, he had the best year of his entire career last season with the Tigers. It was a phenomenal season, absolutely. I mean, a 3.30 ERA, that is better than Zach Gallen in 2023. Zach Gallen finished the year with a 3.47 ERA. Obviously, it gave you 2010 innings.

There was still a ton of value in the season that he had. But yeah, I mean, you look at this rotation now, Derek. You've got Zach Allen at number one. You've got Merrill Kelly backing him up theoretically. You've got Eduardo Rodriguez now slotting in at the number three spot. You've got Brandon Fott, who looked really good in the postseason, slotting at number four. And as of right now, we know we talked the other day about how the Diamondbacks did want

two starting pitchers theoretically, did want multiple. I would sort of suspect that given how much money they spent here on Eduardo Rodriguez, that that is probably not an option. We'll see what happens. But yeah, if it's those guy, if it's those four guys plus the fifth slot being occupied by one of the young starters, whether Tommy Henry, Ryan Nelson, you know, Slade Sikoni, Bryce Jarvis, Blake Walston, potentially, and that makes as well. You've got five guys competing for one spot.

There's a heavy level of competition there. On paper, this is a pretty good starting rotation. This is a substantially better starting rotation than what the Diamondbacks had in 2023. I think it is easy to look back at the season that they just had and think of their starting rotation as being pretty good just because we saw so much Zach Allen and Merrill Kelly in the playoffs. We didn't have to see, right? The number four, the number five pitchers, uh, pitch in any of those playoffs series.

Some people might have forgotten a little bit how rough some of those games actually were. This adds just so much, so much depth for the diamond backs, right? I mean, it was basically Zach Allen, Merrill Kelly and then three kind of revolving door question marks throughout the season. You throw a guy in there in, in replacement of one of those spots in your rotation. You replace that with a guy who had a 3.30 ERA in 2020. your rotation's looking pretty darn good right now. So far, the Diamondback's biggest needs were starting pitching and third base.

And Mike Hazen has nailed both of those. A Heueno Suarez comes in here and Gino is a guy that played all 162 games completely eliminating the Diamondback's biggest problem with third base, which was they didn't have a guy over there consistently playing the position every day like they do with most of their positions. Right. And then you factor in here now, bringing in one of the top free agent starting pitchers. And like you said, I'm fine. I am fine with the starting rotation going forward with those young guys competing for that spot. I mean, we saw a lot out of Ryan Nelson last year. We saw a lot out of Tommy Henry. And that's not even really to factor in the other guys like Bryce Jarvis and Slade and even Blake Walston, right? there is a lot of have very healthy competition going on for that final position should they not go out and and acquire another arm and honestly like you said it really comes down to what we just went through in the playoffs and trying to set yourself up in a better position should you make another playoff run like that you don't really need five starters you really don't as much as you just need for really good starters and then someone else that that you know can can go out there and win games for you and can

compete, right? Like that and that fifth starter isn't a necessity when you get into the postseason. But what we have now is the main items crossed off the list. And honestly, I know that there's still some positional needs. We talked earlier today about the Red Sox being very interested in Lordus. And we know that's an inevitability as far as him going somewhere else. This is just the first viable suitor for him. Yeah. Other needs. But at this point, Should they come up short? Should they go after a guy maybe that we don't get as excited about? I'm fine with that now that they were able to get a solid piece of their starting rotation.

And Geno over there at third base, like those felt like the biggest needs. And now that those have been satisfied in a really, really good way with really good players, I mean, yeah, like DH would be great. It would still be great to bring in, you know, Justin Turner or J.D. Martinez. but that seems less likely to happen now with the amount of money they've committed to Erod. It still could happen because like we said earlier today also that that the amount of money that they spend is still up to the Diamondbacks to decide that nothing is set in stone as far as what their you know, what their payroll is going to be next year.

I think there's more coming. That's my personal opinion right now. Let's go, Jesse. Let's go. That's exactly what I wanted to hear out of you. This just feels like a move. the diamond backs decided to kind of go for it a little bit. This is, and I know, I think by and large,

there's been a pretty positive reaction to how much money the diamondbacks are paying here. Four years, 80 million in the current market, I think is reasonable. But I also have seen some trepidation out there of like, Eduardo Rodriguez, I know he had a, you know, he had a 3.30 ERA in 2023. But his track record, he hasn't really been that guy consistently. He's been more of a mid-rotation type. starter, are we really in an era where a mid-rotation starter costs $20 million per year?

And as unfortunate as it may be, the answer is yes. That is simply the cost of doing business right now in majorly baseball. I mean, we're about to, you know, probably see Blake Snell get a guarantee of, I don't know, twice the dollar amount that Eduardo Rodriguez is getting here. It's probably going to be well into the 150s north of that in guaranteed money. and you know we're talking about Yamamoto getting 300 million dollars now at this point 80 million dollars as much as it might be kind of unfortunate you know for people who remember like the days where a mid-rotation starter costs like six or seven million a year or whatever

that's just not the situation anymore and i do think it is i think it is important for diamondbacks fans to understand that at least in my opinion i think what the debacks are getting here is a mid-rotation starter i would i would be yeah i would be cautious to look at at the 330 ERA and expect that Rodriguez is going to do that again. I don't know if the back end numbers really support that. So I think it's important for people to understand what they're getting. But on the other hand, from a result standpoint, if you compare Eduardo Rodriguez and Merrill Kelly in 2023, it is remarkable how similar their numbers were. If we go over it one more time. So Eduardo Rodriguez was 13 and 9, Merrill Kelly was 12 and 8, Rodriguez at a 330-0-E-R-A,

Merrill was 329. You can see the numbers here. Rodriguez didn't throw as many innings as Merrill, but he had four fewer starts. He missed a little bit of time with a left index finger pulley rupture, I believe it is, which is a lot of words.

But he missed about a month with that during the 20, 23 seasons. That's why I didn't make quite as many starts. Rodriguez had a 1-1-5 whip compared to Merrill Kelly's 119. He had a 225. It's not listed here, 225 opponent batting average. Merrill at 222, both of these pitchers average 5.9 innings per start on the dot. There are just a lot of, a lot of similarities here in terms of the performance.

And again, I think projecting moving forward, I do think Merrill Kelly is a better starting pitcher, but just knowing that Eduardo Rodriguez at his skill level is capable of giving you a season like this, if kind of enough things go in his favor, like this is sort of within the reasonable range of outcomes for him, given where his town. level is. You know, the fact, if he's your number one, then, you know, you maybe don't feel so good about things. But with Zach Gallen and Merrill Kelly ahead of him, it really slots in, it really slots in nicely for the Diamondbacks. There's a lot of positives here, though. I mean, like you said, there's a lot of similarities between him and Merrill Kelly. But this was

Erod in his best season on a pretty bad Tigers team, right? There's a difference to coming over and competing here on this team that, you know, we play in the desert. We play for rings. in the desert. I'm not sure if he's familiar with that, but he'll learn. And hopefully he helps them play for rings in the desert. But you get him, like known baseball GM, Elise said in the comments, you get him around Strom, get him around Brent Strom, you get him around this coaching staff, and you don't know. Like, yeah, what you're saying is very true. It's hard to expect those same numbers out of him. But the Diamondbacks don't necessarily need him to be as good as he was last year for him to still be a tremendous asset to the starting rotation and to be a huge

upgrade versus what they currently had and what they dealt with all last season. You also factor in that now the Diamondbacks don't have to worry about a slow start of uncertainty when Madison Bumgardner is part of the starting rotation like we did this same year. That happened in 2023, folks. I know it's hard to remember that, but like this is a completely different team that is playing with a different level of confidence. And now pieces are being added to it that are simply without a doubt making it a better team. Obviously, the games still need to be played. The players still need to perform. We've

experienced this as fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks, where we've brought in guys via free agency or a big trade, and those guys weren't the players that they were elsewhere, right? Brad Boxburger. But I will say that when it comes to Eduardo Rodriguez, there was, you know, I'm sure if Sean is here in the chat, he can attest to this as a Red Sox fan, but there were times that that he frustrated Red Sox fans quite a bit when he was part of Boston. And like, yeah, like he's not coming in here to be the team's ace. Like Mike Hazen said, though, that's not what they were looking for realistically. They were looking for some guy to slot in at three or four. And I mean, based on some of the names we were discussing, this is a much better get than what we saw possibly

being the outcome. You know, this is, this is a big step in the right direction versus the unknowns of like Lucas Gialito or even Seth Lugo, who had very good numbers last year himself. This is, yeah, I think this is about as good of a starter as I realistically saw the Diamondbacks acquiring. I'm being totally honest. Like the best case scenario. Yeah, like the Jordan Montgomery thing,

I know we talked about his name a little bit, that always seemed a little bit like a stretch to me. You know, Yamamoto, Snell, Nola. I think those guys were honestly kind of off the table, at least in my head from the very beginning of the off season. We know that the diamondbacks made a run at Sunny Gray. Maybe, I mean, I guess this deal and Sunny Gray's deal, not all of that different. Three and 75 compared to four and 80.

I imagine the diamondbacks like saving that $5 million per year, knowing that they can, you know, they can spend that. They can spend that elsewhere. We'll have to see if they spend, you know, I do, as I said earlier, I think that there's going to be more coming. I would think that the diamond backs are still going to find their right-handed bat and, you know, try to find someone who's going to be a difference maker in that role, despite the money that they, that they spent here.

But, yeah, this does feel like kind of a, you know, as high as they were going to shoot outside of, you know, trading for a Corbin Burns or a Dylan Cs, obviously going that route, you know, you could really wind up with a, you know, with a starting pitcher who's gotten Cy Young votes or whatever. But in that case, then you're paying Drew Jones. then you're paying, you know, significant assets from your farm system. In this case, you're not doing that. You still have all those guys in your farm system, and you also have a starting rotation that looks pretty formidable.

Of course, if you guys are here in the PHNX Sports YouTube channel, God bless you for being up after dark for this news with us tonight. Make sure you subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. Leave us a like. Gabby would definitely request that you do that. Also, make sure you sign up for notifications. That way you don't miss one any. of our wonderful shows go live.

If you're listening on the audio podcasting side, I will be posting this. You will be listening to this. I hope you're listening to this right now. I hope you're subscribed. And we would love it if you leave us a five-star review in honor of Mike Hazen being a five-star GM and making some five-star deals.

But of course, the chat is all over the place. I think Elizabeth is broken. She's capitalizing all of the ease in her comments. I don't know what that's about. I'm sure I missed something. But I'm excited. the beginning of the show. Oh, God, Conner's on it.

Why is it? Oh, everybody's the E? We're doing E's for Erod. I love it. I love E for E. This episode of the show was brought to you by the letter E. By the letter E. Someone said that at the top of the show.

For energy. The energy I have after watching a two and a half hour movie about a tragic, tragic family in pro wrestling. And now it was weird, Jesse. You know, there's all this bad stuff happening in the movie. I'm fist pumping and screaming about. We got him. We got him. It was very awkward, but still, I don't care.

I was very excited because this is just huge, right? This gives you something to be excited about. Going back to what I was saying earlier, I don't even care what else there is. This is like Christmas morning. I opened up my PlayStation 5 from Santa. I opened up Spider-Man 2, and that's all I need. They're like, there might be more presents under the tree. I'm like, I don't care.

I got the presents I wanted. This is it because, my God. I mean, at the start of this, when the Diamondbacks, you know, went into free agency, when they went into the off season once their magical run in the postseason ended, that there were a lot of question marks about what are they going to do? How are they going to move this ball forward? How are they going to make this team better and build on the success that they had in this playoff run? And so far, you can't argue that they are one of the most exciting teams right now,

Major League Baseball based on the moves that they've made. They really are. Yeah, I mean, the Diamondbacks given their World Series run very much became, I don't know, they're, they're kind of like a darling, I think, in like the national view. People just like them. And I've seen nothing, you know, looking at what some of the national analysts have to say about this deal just on Twitter. People do people are like, yeah, that's fun. Like Eduardo Rodriguez, you know, just seems to be a good fit for the Diamondbacks, both in terms of the player and also the personality. there are some there are some things to unpack i think as far as rodriguez's personality

will maybe get into that more on future shows but it's pretty well documented and i know people in the chat will very much enjoy this that edwarder rodriguez rejected a trade to the los angeles dodgers uh at the 2023 trade deadline now he's a member of the arizona diamond backs he's a fucking hero jesse he's a living legend and he's an absolute hero hero not all heroes wear capes Some of them wear the name Rodriguez on the back of their baseball jersey. It is evident that his family is very important to him. And you can understand why you would maybe not want to pick up and move all of a sudden in the middle of the summer, you know, knowing that that's going to have really big ramifications for those people. If you go back to the 2022 season, he missed about two months of the 2022 season on the restricted list, which is basically where you're not paid.

You're not getting any service time. he was there for personal reasons. To my knowledge, those reasons were never actually unveiled to the public, but it was some sort of a family matter. And it was something that, you know, he just felt like he needed to take care of. So, you know, hopefully, hopefully whatever that was is resolved and, you know, won't interfere with anything moving forward. But yeah, clearly his family is really important to him.

The other thing I want to mention is that there are some ties here. Mike Hazen was in the Boston Red Sox organization throughout, you. know, basically throughout Eduardo Rodriguez's tenure there. Tori Lavello, I believe, also managed Eduardo Rodriguez for a short stint when he took over, when he transitioned from bench coach and managed the Boston Red Sox down the stretch. I want to say that was in 2015. So, yeah, there's some familiarity there between Mike Hayes and Tori Lavello and the Diamondbacks new starting pitcher. And there is something to be said.

And I have no idea. This is pure speculation, which I'm really. really, really good at. I'm good at speculating with no facts or no, nothing to actually base this on. But if you are a person that truly cares about your family and, and you want to go to an organization that, that you feel like that is something that they care about and that they care about their players, seeing what Tori said and did during the postseason run has to make him very likable and attractive to a lot of players that want to play for an organization and a manager like that right like there's there's got to be some clips that that even even even the even the guy that's

that's going to garner the most money even an otani out there even some of these guys you know like blake snell have seen clips of tori that they've probably found to be favorable and be like i like that guy in a lot of cases that's not going to be enough to move the needle to get them to come here but it's just a nice thing but when a deal is close like tonight it came down to the Diamondbacks and the Reds. And that, well, I don't know. I don't know that it did. Oh, oh, why is that?

I know, maybe you didn't see the full story because you were watching, you were watching a movie. I was watching a movie, yes. This is one of the few. I was just getting your text messages and such, Jesse, that's all I was getting. This is one of the few times in human history where Ken Rosenthal has reported something and then retracted it. He tweeted out that it, that the Diamondbacks and the Cincinnati Reds were finalists. shortly thereafter his name is alluding me

but there's a Reds beat reporter who I believe works not it wasn't it wasn't Trent it was it was someone else in the market I want to say for the inquire he tweeted out that according to a source that report was false that the Reds were actually not a finalist and shortly thereafter

Ken Rosenthal wrote a correction and apologized and said that the Reds were actually not finalists I don't know what the deal was there but the but the the deal was confirmed as being with the diamondbacks within fairly short order. So maybe the Reds were involved. And then they bowed out sooner than some reporters realized. I don't know exactly what happened there.

But it was really weird how all of this went down. It seemed to it seemed to escalate really quickly from the report earlier from John Heyman of there being, you know, two teams, it being down to two teams and that Rodriguez would decide within the next day. We talked about that on our afternoon show. there was J.P. Marosi reporting that the debacks, you know, were deep into discussions about this move. And then there were various reports about two finalists, you know, involving the Cincinnati Reds and then not involving the Cincinnati Reds. Very bizarre how all of this went down tonight.

I mean, look, if you're deciding in the middle of winter, whether you want to spend your time in Ohio or Arizona, that's pretty much a no brain. So if that was the case, I could see how just looking at a simple weather report might help you lean. more in one direction than than Ohio. But shout out to Ethan Dumpet in our chat with the super chat. He said, rah, let's go, Otani, who? We don't need Otani. We have a guy that's actually going to pitch next year, right? We're going to win the World Series next year.

We need an arm next year. We can't have some guy just deaching for us. We also have Ryan Baker. Ryan, thank you for your super chat. He says, not sure if possible, but can they backload the deal to pay most of it in a year three to four when Kelly Gallin and Mad Bunn's contracts expire so they can spend more this year. They could potentially do that. That's a great point. That is a very good. Yeah, I'm going to be very curious to see the year by year breakdown. That's something we haven't seen yet. I wouldn't be

surprised if maybe maybe at least the 2020, this year, the 2024 figure is a little bit lower. But yeah, we'll have to wait and see. It's interesting. And that's the big question on everybody's mind, Jesse. The question in the chat, the question of the day now that Eduardo Rodriguez has been essentially the bag is is sealed for that. What are we doing about the rest of the spending? Do you think that you, I mean, earlier you said you don't think that they're done. And that's the big question is people are asking that. Obviously, how they structure this contract could impact how much they spend. But like I said earlier, also deciding on how much they spend can impact how much they spend because it purely is a decision that can be

made internally within the organization that they want to spend more money. They don't have to have a set amount. They can go up, you know, I'm sure that there's an amount that they don't want to surpass. And, and yeah, that would be nice. I would have liked to not spend more than $500 on Christmas. That's laughable. I have a daughter and a wife. And they both wanted eyewatches or Apple watches or whatever the hell they're called. That's a lot of money right there, Jesse. So like sometimes you just got to, you just got to say, screw it. It's this time of the year. I'm in the mood. I'm in the spirit. I'm going to spend some money. on JD Martinez.

Yeah, I don't know what it's going to be. I mean, I don't want to come out and say that the debaksers are going to shoot really high in that regard. But yeah, I mean, you know, we spent a good while talking about this $20 million figure of, you know, if the debacks have $20 million left to spend, how is that going to look? I mean, frankly, they're just not going to be able to get what they need, what they very clearly need offensively if they only spend like $2 or $3 million. plus there's also the backup catcher thing. It just seems to me that this is the reality of the situation.

The moment that you committed to giving Eduardo Rodriguez $20 million a year was the moment that you were probably willing to push the budget a little bit past that $20 million figure. Granted, going back to what we were talking about earlier, maybe Rodriguez is only making $14 million in 2024, in which case, you know, maybe that $20 million figure still does have some sway. but I do not see the Diamondbacks punting on the right-handed bat. I think that is clearly a need.

And they can't just go out and get, you know, like slightly below out. I know CJ Cron was thrown out at one point. I just don't see them going out and getting C.J. Crone and calling him their DH, you know, full time in 2024. I think it's really clear that this team has some motivation here, has shown some willingness here to really push the chips in a little bit on at least the 2024 season. If you're going to do it on the pitching side,

I think you probably are going to do it on the hitting side too. Maybe not to this extent. I'm not saying that they're going to go sign someone for $20 million. But I think that you're still going to be looking for a difference maker there. It does feel like they are potentially out on a lot of guys. Someone brought up Lucas Gialito. That's not happening. He's going to get,

he's going to be very expensive. He's going to be way more expensive than he should be. And in this case, he might get. much as Erod. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'd say four and 80, but like I've seen predictions for Gialito of four and 60, maybe even higher than that. Yeah, yeah.

So that's not going to work. That's not going to happen. But, and I don't know. Can Solerre fit a lot of their needs in one guy instead of having to get essentially multiple guys to, to fit some of those needs? I think he'd be, he'd be one of the guys that makes the list, right? It's all of the right-handed hitting outfielders slash designated hitters out there. So Justin Turner, J.D. Martinez, Jorge Soler. Mitch Garver is a guy that I know a lot of people like as well.

I don't know if they're going to wind up shooting quite that high. I don't know what it's going to take to get Mitch Garver. I think it might be more than 10 million a year, maybe 13, 14 million. I don't know if the debacks are willing to stretch quite that far for a guy like Garver who doesn't have a great durability history has really struggled to stay on the field in his career. So there's a number of different directions that they can go there. But yeah, I mean, really any guy who bats right-handed and is, you know, not great defensively or can place them outfield, I mean, really anyone in that pool, I think, is on the table here. I also don't think that it's completely off the table that they wouldn't acquire someone via a trade. Yeah. I know that they've said that they're going to try to go through free agency and, you know, Gino was acquired through a trade. And now we have, you know, the key piece, the big, I think the big focal point was adding to the starting rotation.

So it's not to say that those other guys are priced out because like we said, this is all about budget and all about decisions on how much you want to increase that budget. But this is a team that has a lot to build on right now. And this is a, I feel like a pivotal offseason for them. We really, they received a lot of criticism. There was a lot of people standing around saying, well, now what are you going to do? Are you going to actually spend money? And they are.

They are doing the thing. And they're doing it seemingly in the right way, right? Like it's not going out there and getting the biggest name on the market because, you know, you think that that big starting, you know, pitcher that Blake Snell is where you're going to throw all your money and like spending it a little bit more wisely and getting a guy like this that's, you know, going to bolster your starting rotation and make it, you know, make it formidable from top to bottom is is a really good start. But again, with the other positional needs they have, I like everything I'm seeing. I really do. It's hard not to be excited about what they're doing and the moves they're making. I think I do. I know people are going to get angry at me for this, but I do want to acknowledge that there is some risk here if you're the debacks.

We've seen you've got the base. You've got the base of that all load up and ready. We're not. I'm not going to let you do this on Erod night, Jesse. You're not going to start talking about risk and bad things that could happen. And what if they did? doesn't do this. I don't care tonight. Tonight is not a night for that. Tonight is a night for celebration because my God, we did it. We did the thing. We got the, I mean, again, like I said,

I know that there's still more, like you said, it's hard not to get a right-handed bat, but we just, we got to take a moment just to be excited, just to be happy that they were able to accomplish something that this team that was not at all being considered a contender at the start of last season, not only appeared in the World Series last season, but now so far has had arguably the most exciting offseason so far. You could maybe say the Yankees have obviously had a very exciting off season, but they're so far away from being where they want to be that it doesn't feel like what they've done is nearly enough to get them back on top of their division,

whereas meanwhile, the Diamondbacks kind of hung in there and were close all year long, but definitely had some depth issues. big part of those depth issues was, you know, the starting pitching, the starting rotation. Yeah, people are getting mad at me. So, yeah, maybe I'll table the risk conversation. No, you fucking keep that for another day. You keep that for another day when I can have this bat and you and me could be in the same same room. Yeah. Yeah. See, everybody's saying, let us have this one, Jesse. Let us. Can we just have one night? Can we just have nice things? I just want nice things. But yeah, no, there is. A lost highway says it. Yes, there. Sure is hell is risk. They got by with pitching last year. The offense was the problem. And losing Guriel is a big problem right now.

And, yeah, you're not wrong. Like this team definitely, like, Lourdes is one of those guys that we're definitely going to miss. We are definitely going to miss him, you know, next season. But if they can get somebody that at least helps us miss him a little less, it helps me miss him a little less, then I'm good with that. But we have so much more to talk about tomorrow. We'll be back at one o'clock. I don't know if Jesse, Jesse, where are you going to be brought?

broadcasting from. You have to check out of your Airbnb at 11 a.m. So what are we doing here? Are you just going to be on a park bench somewhere broadcasting? Yeah, you know, I'm hoping that I'm going to hit Broadway and I'm going to see that I'm waiting for. This is our moment. My trusty microphone to try to make it so that you hear some semblance of my voice when I'm in there. No, we'll see. There's a couple different options on the table. Negotiations are still being had. I'm proud of you.

Don't take your first option. Don't take your first option. You know, make them work for it. Make them pay you that money. But of course, like I said, we will be back tomorrow at 1 o'clock, our normal showtime. So make sure to join us for that. Of course, in the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter. I'm at cap underscore caveman with a K.

This absolute maniac next to me is in Nashville. And he is at Jesse N for Nashville Friedman. Of course, our show is at PHNX underscore D-Backs. Damon's here, by the way. Damon, whose work like 15 hours straight, is still the people's producer. You can follow him at Damon Dog. That's D-A-W-G. We are Damon's dogs.

Oh, wait, it's on this side. We are Damon's dogs. Bark, bark. Park. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, come on. Damon doesn't work this hard to not be barked at.

Of course, like I said, our shows at P-H-N-X underscore D-Backs, but all roads do lead to at P-N-X underscore sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We appreciate you guys so much for joining us tonight. You guys make this all. worthwhile and a big ski to you all, a ski to Eduardo Rodriguez. And man, we're excited. We are pumped. We appreciate you guys for stopping by.

We thank you so much for your time. And remember, kids, baseball is fun. But God damn it, it's so much more fun when you get your guy. Let's go!