PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - But wait, there’s more: What additional rule changes are coming to MLB in 2024?

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Major League Baseball implemented big rule changes in 2023, but it appears that more changes are coming. We’re talking about Rob Manfred and company’s latest round of proposals, whether Jordan Montgomery could be a fit on the Diamondbacks, how much money D-backs players are getting from their postseason run and more.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/Go to https://saturdayneon.com and use code PHNX for 10% off your order today. Free shipping for orders over $200!Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Pins & Aces: Check out https://pinsandaces.com and use code PHNX to receive 15% off your first order and get free shipping.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!: Score 25% off a bag of your favorite OGeez! Fruits or Creams. Go to https://zenleafdispensaries.com, add a bag of OGeez! to your cart, enter promo code “PHNX” and pickup at a local Zen Leaf Dispensary. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow them on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! 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.

Hello and welcome in to another edition of the PHMX D-BACs podcast right here on PHMX. My name is Eric Montaia. This is the Nana. Of course, I am occasionally known as your mayor of PHNX. This band is your vice mayor. Your Thunder State. The one and all. Jesse Freeman.

Jesse, are there more rule changes coming for MLB? Is that really going to happen? Why? Did you think they didn't do enough in 2020? I think they. Clearly, clearly they need to do more, Derek. Clearly. Everyone understands this. See, this is what happens. I said it was a slippery slope.

You start fiddling with the rules. Next thing you know, we're only going to have eight men on the field. Only half of them are going to hit. There's going to be, you know, booby traps in left field. Like, things are going to get crazy. But, of course, there are more additional rule changes potentially coming to MLB. And they're, of course, just testing them, just thinking about them. But what are these rule changes that they're?

they're thinking about implementing. Yeah. So there's a number of things to varying degrees of importance. And these are just proposed changes as of right now. Nothing has been made official. But the one that is widely expected to be implemented for the 2024 season is a reduction in the time on the pitch clock while men are on base. So currently 20 seconds, right?

And the proposal has that going down to 18 seconds for the 2024 season. and likely beyond. It's interesting. I know I've heard a number of players say that, you know, maybe you make both of them 20. I think maybe some people have proposed making both of them 15, whether there are men on base or not. But this would be, I guess they're saying that the difference between them is too large.

And we want 18 seconds with guys on base as opposed to 20, just to make sure that pitchers don't linger too much in those situations. I guess maybe they felt that there was a little bit too much. much time. I don't know if that's necessarily consistent with my experience. It's also hard to, I don't know, it's only two seconds. Like how much are we really impacting game times by going from 20 seconds to 18 seconds? But I feel like people said that about the rule changes this year though, right? Like I feel like there was this case to be made before they were actually implemented that, you know, is it really going to shorten, you know, baseball games that much? Is it really going to

have that big of an impact. And it absolutely did. Yeah. It absolutely did. I felt like you could count on your two hands the number of three hour plus games the Diamondbacks had this season where it felt like in the past, uh, it was more of the case with anything under three hours was was more of the of the case where you could count it on two hands. Right. So like, uh, it immediately impacted the game and it and, you know, for the most part, everybody feels like that that was a better change. People like shorter baseball games. Baseball is a game that can, you know, it's a game that can, intend to linger, you know. There was a very funny video.

You just want the game over in an hour and a half, Derek. We get it. No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. You're putting words in my mouth. But Rob Friedman, I sent you the video earlier, posted a hilarious video of essentially an entire half an inning taking place during a regular season game. Meanwhile, on the other side of the video was a single pitch being thrown by Pedro Baez.

And the entire half an inning took place before Pedro Baez threw a pitch and that's what this was to illustrate. That is definitely. But I think it was, I think it was a spring training game on the other side, you know? Yeah. I think it was comparing a spring training game. Yeah, it wasn't apples and oranges or it wasn't apples and apples, definitely.

But it just, it was a funny reminder of how much faster the game moves with the pitch clock than it does when you just allow a pitcher like Pedro Baez to just completely monopolize your time and steal your day. Your time is important. Gabriel Frere in the comments says, I took a couple of friends to watch a game than hadn't been in a couple of years. And their reaction was, oh, wow, it's the ninth already.

Yes. And I mean, in some cases, we both agree that some games just move too fast. There were times where we didn't even have time to get our work together before. We're used to having a nice three hours for our post game shows. And we did not, we did not have all of that time. There are a couple of metrics that Major League Baseball is pointing to when proposing this change. The average game time in April. was two hours and 36 minutes, according to this article from the athletic, but peaked at two

hours and 44 minutes in September. So as the season went on, games got a little bit longer, presumably, because pitchers kind of adjusted the clock and maybe they weren't quite so careful. They settled in a little bit more. So, you know, those two and a half hour game times that we saw early in the season were maybe a little bit indicative of the players kind of over-correcting maybe a little bit. And whereas the more realistic game time in the long term was maybe more like two hours and 40, two hours and 45 minutes.

That's more like what we saw at the end of the year. The other thing that Major League Baseball is pointing to is that pitchers with runners on base through delivered the pitch with an average of 7.3 seconds left on the clock, which is a decent amount of time, right? I guess you can make a case that that suggests that there's 20 seconds is more time than you actually need. And if we're going from 20 to 18, that still should be perfectly comfortable for pitchers if they're starting their delivery with 17 or with seven seconds on the clock anyway. So you can you can understand where they're coming from here. I do think on the pitcher side of things, like from the player's perspective, there's some concern about pitcher injuries.

That's been a topic of conversation quite a bit recently. And, you know, do we really want to do we really want to implement more changes to. reduce the amount of time that pitchers have, you know, just to save a handful of minutes, if that, when it's all set and done. And that's the thing is, yeah, like all of this just kind of shave some time. Like you said, the batter timeouts timed would go on a 15 or 18 second timer. Yeah, battered timeouts were not timed at all. Right.

Which I did honestly always think was a little weird. It was like you've got a timer on, you've got a timer on like the game itself. But when you take a timeout, then there is no timer in that situation. Yeah, pitchers too, right? when sometimes when they walk off the mound or whatever, that's going to be reduced. They're no longer to delay the start of the clock by walking around the edge of the mound after a ball is out of play. There's just, like you said, pitchers adapted. They found ways that they could do things that were within the rules that still gave them that little break.

Max Scherzer was on foul territory yesterday, foul territory, of course, friends of the show. And he talked about his concerns with pitcher injuries. And like, it's, you know, he's not wrong, right? I mean, there is. Well, it's hard to say. I think the data there is a little bit inconclusive. If you just look at like, you just look at like the number and duration of pitcher injuries this year, they're on the higher end, but they're not, they're not so much higher than we've seen in the past that clearly indicates the pitchers were more prone to injury just because of the pitch clock. What Max Scherzorz talked about and he was referencing some comments from Dr. Neil Trash, I'm hopefully.

It's definitely not. No, it's definitely not. It's definitely not L. Tresh. Yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right. I would change my name if I was Dr. L. Trash. It's like James Outland being a position player. It doesn't make any sense.

It's terrifying. Yeah, there's another, there's another doctor name that he was also quoting, which I don't have, I don't have recorded here. But suffice it to say, these are these are doctors who perform. some of the most important surgeries on pitchers. And yes, you're right that I'm completely butchering that name in this moment. But what those doctors were saying was that the severity of the injuries that they encountered when doing these procedures was more significant than what they've seen in the past. So maybe the volume of injuries hasn't changed, but the severity of the injuries maybe has changed.

And that's what Max Scherzer was pointing to. And there's also been this conversation about how we want to preserve starting pitchers in this game. Fans don't like bullpen games, right? There's the sense that like we really have this degree of appreciation for pitchers who can go, you know, six innings every time out. And why would we want to endanger those same guys by making throw pitches more quickly than is ideal for them? So Max Scherzer expressed some concern along these lines. It's hard. Like I said, with the data, I don't.

I don't know that there is conclusive data on this, and that's what Major League Baseball's come back with, is that we don't have any data that actually says that, you know, the pitch clock has an impact on pitcher injuries. The idea here is that I think a pitcher has to throw the ball before they're ready in some cases and they're putting some stress on their arm, whatever part it may be if they are, you know,

they're experiencing some sort of discomfort, right? Which happens because it's hard to throw a baseball 100 times at like 95 miles an hour and not have your arm ache a little bit at times during the game and not go through those ups and downs and sometimes a pitcher just needs a moment, right? And I think that's kind of the idea there is that now you're forcing them to not give themselves that moment

because they don't have it because the game is taking that out. Whether or not that actually impacts if a pitcher was going to get injured or not is a whole other thing, right? But it could be just the idea here of that rapid repetition that could put the strength. on arm and we could see an increase in pitchers being injured, but we, we won't know that until we have some conclusive data and that takes time, right? That takes time to show that, right? So, but I mean, the reason why I say it's a, it's a valid concern because logically it does make

sense what he's saying, right? But I mean, honestly, I feel like they've tested that and I feel like because they do have a vested interest in the health of these players, that MLB wouldn't be putting the risk out there if they wouldn't have already had these conversations with medical professionals. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, and this is not the only, the 20 to 18 seconds thing, is not the only proposed change.

And again, these are just proposals as of right now. Sure. So none of this stuff is officially, you know, locked in for 2024. It sounds like the reduced pitch timer with men on base is very likely to have. happen from what we've heard. But yeah, there's the battered timeouts thing that you already mentioned where that would be on a clock. There's a rule that pitchers must work exclusively from the stretch with runners on base.

Apparently, there were some issues with pitchers doing kind of a hybrid between the windup and the stretch. And that created a little bit of confusion as it relates to the pitch clock. And so Major League Baseball wants to limit that. I don't think players will like that at all. Reducing mound visits from five per game to four per game. That's an interesting one. That one's interesting, yeah.

You feel like that, I mean, there were definitely times this year where the Diamondbacks were sort of running low. I mean, that is something you don't see often where teams run out of that, but it does, it does happen in certain situations. The timer resetting to two minutes rather than 215 when a new pitcher is entering the game. Pitchers no longer being permitted to delay the start of the clock by walking around the edge of the mount. after a ball is out of play. I think you alluded to that one earlier. And then this one is especially interesting to me a requirement that a pitcher who warms up,

like on the field, not a pitcher who warms up in the bullpen. Okay, I was wondering about that because I was like, what are we doing here? Any pitcher who warms up in the bullpen has to face at least one batter. No, that is not what this rule says. But it does say that if you bring in a pitcher who warms up on the field in between innings,

that pitcher has to throw out. at least one pitch or has to face at least one batter, I guess is what this says. And is that to keep from like the kind of chess game that Tori was playing with Pave and Smith, for instance, where you would put him out there? Yeah, it would prevent pitchers or teams for having pitchers come out to warm up and then wait for the opposing teams hitter to be announced and then deciding, oh, wait, we actually want to have so-and-so come in and pitch instead. I think Major League Baseball cited like 20 or something situations of this.

where pitchers came out to warm up, but then did not face at least one batter, and each of those resulted in like three minutes of dead time. And you know three minutes of dead time. I mean, Rob Manfred, like majorly, like they just, they cannot have that at this point. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Yeah. Time is money now, Jesse. It's like Elise says, I love the pitch clock. I would watch the games without it. But man, what an improvement it made for the pace. And the Diamondbacks kind of benefited from the rule changes, you know, here after that first year, right? Am I wrong?

I mean, the Diamondbacks definitely had more picks from timer violations than any other team, right? And not to mention the fact that we saw the chaos created, you could attribute a little bit to the pitch clock, a little bit to the bigger bags, a little bit to everything. But it seemed to kind of work out in the Diamondbacks favor. And, you know, we also saw them have less errors than they've ever had in a season and some other things there that felt like just overall that the Diamondbacks were one of the better teams as far as taking advantage of the rules last year. Yeah, they really were. Yeah, you said it earlier. Kind of funny. They had more pitch timer violations committed against them than any other teams.

So they were in that sense, the new rules were a net positive for them. They committed 34. And I think they had something in the mid-50s committed against them. So they were, yeah, they came out way on the positive. We're fucking dangerous when it comes to knowing the rules. It was somewhat interesting to look up which Diamondbacks players committed the most pitch timer violations.

This wasn't really something that I knew off the top of my head going in. But Merrill Kelly, Merrill Kelly had the most of any pitcher with four. That doesn't surprise me one bit. Merle Kelly is the, he was the most vocal opposer of the pitch clock in the first place and continued to be all season long. And he had less time to adjust because of the whole WBC.

Yeah, that's good point. in spring training. Of all the D-backs hitters, this one was really interesting to me. Manuel Rivera had more pitch timer violations than any D-Backs hitter with three. It was only three. We Staniel? We-Staniel? What happened?

Yeah, I don't really remember those. Like, that didn't really stand out to me. But apparently, Merrill Kelly and Emmanuel Rivera, where your two worst pitch-timer offenders on the Diamondbacks. I'm a very professional hero. I want to say he had two and like one at bat or something weird happened at one game, maybe two in one game. But yeah, no, I do remember I'm having a couple. But yeah, not very many. Diamondbacks committed 34 as a team, which ranks 16th in baseball.

The Mariners had the fewest with 15, which is impressive. They had way fewer than any other team. That's crazy. I think the next lowest was 25 and the Mariners were way down there 15. Then the Mets had the most with 55. You want to guess which player? It's a pitcher. It's a reliever.

I'll give you that hint. Which reliever and baseball committed more pitch timer violations than anyone else? Craig Kimberle. Craig Kimball. I think he had like three in one inning in one save situation against the Diamondbacks. That was in the regular season. I think it was at Chase Field. There was one, I think he still got the save, but he committed multiple, I think it was three pitch

timer violations in that one appearance. So yeah, he had a, he had a bit of. of a bit of a problem there. But even he had 13, I think, in the entire season, which is a lot. I mean, that means on average one out of every five or so appearances, four or five appearances. That is on the higher end. But, yeah, I mean, like, DBAX committed 34 of these violations the entire season. You're averaging, yeah, about one every five games as a team.

That's not super prohibitive or disruptive to the game, right? I know a lot of people were concerned about that going in. Pitch timer violations had really faded off significantly by the end of the year bordering on being pretty much non-existent. So as far on that front, it seems like the rule changes were a big success. Everyone, I think, really liked the pitch clock, at least the vast majority of people like the pitch clock and the violations really, really, you know, just weren't that many once we got close to the end of the season.

You and I attended a meeting with MLBA at the beginning of the year to discuss the rules. And one of their big focuses was the fact that this wasn't going to impact the game as much as people thought it was going to other than making the game move quicker, making the pace move faster. And honestly, I've never seen this many rules implemented into a sport all kind of at once that really did change it. That really didn't like have a lot of blowback, didn't have a lot of blowback, didn't have a lot of. lot of pushback after a while. I mean, you still had people like Kelly, you know, who had some negative things to say about it and just Max Scherzer who refuses to kind of accept it and want to, you know, blame injuries that probably most likely would have happened anyway on the rule changes. But for the most part, I feel like they accomplished their goal extremely well. And I think that this

was actually a very smooth transition so much so that now, look at, they're continuing to tinker and they're trying to see what else they can do. They're not even, they're not even trying to give it multiple seasons before they're considering additional more changes, right? And that's where there's some controversy because I think some players are like, if this was such a, you know, raging success in the first year, why do we have to go through and make eight different changes, you know, for the next season?

I can sort of see MLB side of, you know, like if there are changes that we can make that we feel wouldn't really disrupt things, but would just are small changes that would still make things better. I can understand the desire to do those things. But yeah, one year does seem, it's pretty fast. Like there's already been so much change.

Maybe you leave it alone for a few years and then circle back to to what people like and don't like once you have a little bit more data and people have had more experience with it. But that's not the way that Rob Manfred and company have been operating, right? I mean, they see changes and they want to, they want to execute them immediately. The shot clock's been 24 seconds in basketball for how long, right? I mean, they're going to completely ruin rap songs from the 90s if they go and change that and alter it. But like the point is, is, yeah, they probably could move basketball games along a little faster or whatever if they made those twigs. But why? It works.

It gives them the proper pace of play and that's it, right? And I feel like that's what baseball achieved. Baseball, in fact, achieved a way of making the sport better without really impacting it a whole. lot as far as the product on the field. If anything, they achieve their goals of increasing offense. They achieve their goals of shaving down game times and averages across the league. You know, there's a lot of things here that were positive. Stolen bases were up, things like that.

Like everything they wanted to do worked. You know, just let it play out for more than one season, you know? And I mean, then maybe, I get it. It's easier probably to make the changes like now and try to get it to where they want it to be rather than continuing to tinker with it over a 10-year period of time. But I don't see really a reason at this point to change it much because I've actually had some people say, like, wow, that game went really fast. And that's not something that you typically heard about baseball in the past. I mean, an actual time of game of like two hours and five minutes is kind of crazy.

And there are some people that might like baseball enough like this guy over here that don't want to see those games that's short. But well, I mean, I'm not I just am not unilaterally in favor of everything that makes the game shorter because I like I like baseball and I don't need it to be over after 60 minutes or something. It's kind of like it's kind of like the DH for me, right? Like I liked the strategy of pitchers, right? I like the idea of having a shitty hitter in your lineup that you have to account for. But you know, it's like I knew the whole time that having a DH was going to make the game more fun and better and increase offense. and do all of that stuff. It's just I like the strategy of the pitcher being in the lineup.

I like good hitters that are pitchers. I liked all of that stuff. But it doesn't mean that I wasn't accepting of the rule change to the DH. And deep down inside, like I said, I knew it was better for the game. And it was, you know, it's better. We want to see a guy that can hit in there rather than a pitcher struggling to lay down a bunt or, you know, basically get struck out on three straight pitches when the team has a rally going. And now this clowns up trying to head, right?

So it is what it is. But don't forget, I'm not forgetting about you, Craig Kimbril. You're getting our OG's performance to forget just for the season of... I feel like I should get the OG's performance to forget for my pronunciation of... Yeah, Jesse. We'll throw Jesse in there too for Dr. Neil L. Trash. What's driving me nuts now, I've heard that... I've heard the name pronounce before.

And I know it's not L. Trash. But I can't figure out what it is. So in my head, like L Trash... Like, I can't come up with any alternatives. I will lie. Is it like, is it like attache? Is it like El-A-Tresche? L-L-A-Troche?

No, I mean, you're just trying to say trash with a little acronym E over the end, but it is. See, if you're like Jesse and you don't know how to say names, you know, a good place to start is with OGs brands because then you can blame it on the OGs and say, that's why I call you Dr. L. Trash. But again, Craig Kimbril, performance to forget, OG's brands will help you forget some of those bad.

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We have some more free agents to talk about. But one of the guys we want to talk about just got picked up today by the St. Louis Cardinals. Kyle Gibson, I'm not going to attack him for his age, but let's say a veteran in the league who was the Baltimore Orioles signs a one-year deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. So the players are on the move. Things are happening. We're getting to that time of the year where these free agents are all starting to sign. We talked a little bit about a lot of major deals maybe not happening until the winter meetings.

But those winter meetings are right around the corner here in December. So once those happen, we can really see some of the big names start to move. But that doesn't mean we might not see some names come off the board early because some of these teams are looking to secure these deals with these guys. And in some cases, the talks might have been going on for a while. But yeah, Kyle Gibson's signing with the Cardinals. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think Kyle Gibson is pretty underrated generally across the game.

I mean, last season with Baltimore, his 473 ERA is not not inspiring necessarily, doesn't jump off the page. But he gave them 192 innings. And there's a lot of value. And there's not that many guys who do that at this point, right? it is kind of funny that Aaron Nola had a 446 ERA last year and almost the exact same number of innings is Kyle Gibson and Aaron Nola gets 172 million and Kyle Gibson gets I think it's 12 million for one year with a team option even though their ERAs

like weren't actually that different last year. Yeah, Kyle Gibson's 36. He is significantly older than Aaron Nola. Obviously that's a big part of that and Nola's track record is a little bit better. But yeah, he's just been a solid pitcher in this. for a long time. He had a 4.13 FIP in 23.

I think he's better than that high fours ERA indicates. And I mean, you look at his last few years. I mean, you know, 2020 wasn't great. But again,

he had a relatively low FIP. 2021. He had a 371 ERA in 30 starts over 180 innings that season as well. So yeah, just a solid, solid pitcher.

I think a guy who, you know, doesn't get his flowers as much as he probably should. if you're a St. Louis Cardinals fan, you may or may not be excited about this. Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson are not, it's not exactly the-

Don't look at the stats. Don't go to the baseball reference page. Don't go to the baseball's suburb page. Just trust the process. At this point, the Cardinals, I think, really need to get one of the headliner starting pitchers that's on the market because they came into the off-season

and it certainly looked like they needed three guys. That's, I believe, what they said, that they needed three guys in their starting rotation. Yeah. And they have two of them. And neither of those guys are the kind of needle movers that get you from, you know, the kind of season that the Cardinals just had back to where they want to go. I'm not going to, I don't want to knock either one of these guys,

but I didn't really even want to do a free agency frenzy piece on either one, to be honest, because they weren't exactly the kind of guys I wanted the Diamondbacks to target. Sure. We knew both of them would kind of be on a short-term deal like they got, and we knew both of them were not exactly the best fit with the Diamondbacks plan. You know, we were hoping, especially to go in the direction of younger, if we're going to go like a longer term, especially maybe try to get a pitcher in here for a number of years

that can help this team compete over this, you know, next five-year span, right? But yeah, it's not to say that Kyle Gibson doesn't still have something to offer, but it does feel like the Cardinals who were last in their division last year need more than Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn for sure in order to help them get out of where they're at. They're not exactly rebuilding. They have a, they have a team,

a solid team offensively. They just need to try to bring in some pieces here to help them, you know, pitching wise. And I don't know if these guys are the answer. Yeah, I mean, they traded away,

right, Jack Flaherty and Jordan Montgomery. Right. And so far, they've replaced them with Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson, which, you know, I know Jack Flaherty didn't have a great season,

but yeah, they haven't exactly moved the needle, you know, significantly in their direction at this. point so I still think the Cardinals will probably get one of the headliner guys and this will start to make a little more sense but is it bad that I hopefully know there's a bad that I just want them to sink to the bottom of their division for multiple years I think that's exactly what I would that's exactly what I would expect from you would be

completely out of character if there's anything else so that's fine but hey speaking of guys that the Diamondbacks moved on from they at one of those guys happens to be or not diambacks but the Cardinals moved on from that happens to be a person who We both fail that the Diamondbacks should target but might not really be in the market for because his services are going to be in high demand and there's a good chance he is going to receive a considerable amount of money. That pitcher would be Jordan Montgomery, who is from the World Series champion Texas Rangers, and that made me almost throw up in my mouth a little bit. What's your deal, man? I don't know why. I don't know why.

Why did I do that? Why did I do that? I don't. Oh, I feel bad. If I had said that, you would have gotten so angry. I would have demanded that you leave the studio. I feel like I should demand that I leave the studio. What are we even doing here?

But let's take a look at Jordan Montgomery and if he would be a good fit for the Arizona Diamondbacks because he did have kind of a... He had an up and down season just because his season was a bit erratic with the St. Louis Cardinals and then being moved over to the Texas Rangers through a trade and then kind of blossoming there with the Rangers. It's not to say he didn't have good numbers with the Cardinals, but he really fit in there with the Rangers

and ended up becoming a extremely valuable piece for them during their postseason run. Yeah, I mean, 188 and two-thirds innings. Another guy like Gibson, like Nola, you know, one of those few starting pitchers that really can, you know, is pretty durable and has a track record of being able to give you some real innings. A 3-2-E-R-A, a 1.19 whip in 2023. He was especially good after the trade to the Rangers in the middle of the season.

I think get a 2870. and 11 starts with Texas down the stretch. So he certainly made himself some money with the second half that he had. And as you said, the way that he pitched in the postseason, he wasn't all that great in that start against the debacks. The debacks had some success against him. They got four runs on nine hits against him over six innings. But prior to that, he was a really big part of why the Rangers were able to win the World Series,

a 263 ERA in the postseason overall. This is a guy who's going to get, I think it's pretty clear he's going to get nine figures. It's just a matter of, you know, what exactly that number is when all is said and done. Yeah, he is one of the best left-handed pitchers available on the free agent market, if not arguably, potentially. Not the best, but he's right. Blake Snell is probably number one. Blake Snell is number one. I mean, we got E-Rod as well, but I mean, there's not a lot of lefties available on the market.

Imanaga, another one that Jacob was a big fan of. We talked about that the other day, but Montgomery is a Boris client, which means, of course, that he is going to fetch a high price. They know how to negotiate. Aaron Nola got seven years, 172 million. Chances are that this will be Jordan Montgomery's final contract, right? Like, final big contract. He's 31 years or he will turn 31 on December 27,

so it'll be 31 prior to next year. So this is absolutely one of those cases where after appearing in the World Series and after having the season that he had, this, I know for me personally as a player, this would be the year I'm looking to really get that big contract. Should we be concerned that Craig Morgan

just like that? He just came in here and he took a picture of us. And he just walks out. Like, should we drag him back in here and make him explain himself? Is that a threat?

It's a fucking weird thing. Like, it puts you in an awkward position. My hands are tied. He knows I can't go over there and physically assault him right now, right? So it's a great time to take a place. picture of me. I'm kind of held captive here. But yeah, now I got to get my, like, I'm just going to

sit here. I can't think about Jordan Montgomery, because I'm just going to wonder what Craig is doing with that picture right now as we speak. So, so Montgomery, or so Aaron Nola got seven years, 172 million. Yeah. You think he'll get more? I don't know. Montgomery will not get more than Nola. I feel pretty confident about that. He just doesn't have the track record that Nola has. Five years? I think five, yeah, five years is, is kind of what I'm expecting. I could maybe see six happening. I feel like the AAV would be a little bit lower than what Nola got,

which is like 24 and a half-ish, 24.7, something like that. So, yeah, you're looking at, for Jordan Montgomery, you're looking at 5 and 110, maybe, six in something similar, six and 130-ish. Yeah, I think that's probably along the lines of what you're looking at there. you think you have enough in your

wallet, Derek. I'll stop by the ATM on the way out, but we can make this shit happen. Five and 110. Yeah, no, I'm down for that. I'll pull it out of the base right now. I'm sorry, Derek. It's million. I should have a million million.

Yeah, you're right. No, I don't have that cash on me or in my account. But the D-BACs have some money to spend. Yeah. I think Gambo on Burns and Gambo the other day said that he wouldn't be surprised if the D-Backs wound up north of a hundred $150 million in payroll, which they only have about 100 on the books right now, including Madison

Bumgarner. So that's a lot. Yeah. I would personally be maybe a little surprised if that happened. I was a little surprised that your gamble say that. But if the debacks are in fact going to spend $50 million this winter, you know, like on an annual basis, you probably could find room for a guy like Jordan Montgomery in there if you wanted to. That doesn't seem very expensive.

This seems like that's like what, you know, JD Martinez was going to get and then we turned that down and then it ended up seeming ridiculous that we did that after he left right so I think to add somebody somebody for the next five years that could potentially help this Diamondbacks team have a

substantially good starting rotation that would be four strong and then you can find a lot of options for that fifth starter but those four that's that's a strong starting rotation yeah gallon Kelly Montgomery and and Brandon fought so I feel like he's

more of a he's more of a mid-rotation guy for me than like a top of the rotation guy after kelly probably like brand and he would slide in pretty well as a number three starter and there's some consistency here like he had a three-two oer a this year he had a three-four-eight last year he had a three eight three the year before that um he had some uh didn't have a good year uh during the pandemic but you know that's sort of whatever uh dealt with some injuries the a couple of years before that. But yeah, he's had a pretty decent track record of being a solid starter, not an ace, but a solid starter in this league.

Do you want to give a solid non-ace starting pitcher $120 million or whatever it winds up being? I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no for the diamondbacks, even if that's money that they could theoretically afford to spend. A not insubstantial amount of money. It's not an insubstantial amount of money. It is not insubstantial amount.

Imagine once you teach him to Robert Bessian's football slider, Jesse, he'll be unstoppable. Get them into the system. Just get them into the system is all I'm saying. Well, of course, we thank you guys for being here in the PHANX Sports YouTube channel. If you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, make sure to do so now. Sign up for notifications. That way you don't miss when any of our shows go live. Leave us a thumbs up.

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Heather Room Resorts and Casinos. I planned my own boys trip and I'm not including Damon. That's the way it works. But I am stealing Jesse and we're going to go and have a great time. And you can too. Jesse, how could you try your back on me like this? He does. He's a popular guy.

He's fantastic. What the hell, man? I thought you turned your back on me. I thought we were doing this without Derek. I'll still go with you. He has no loyalty. I'm just. I thought this was an us thing.

not like a Jesse gets to go. You made it into a selfish thing. I wanted to go with everybody. I wanted to go with all the boys. You know, but see, this is what happens is now we've just, we got multiple staycations planned at Rehila River Resorts and Casinos. And that's what we live here. So we can do that.

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But of course, the DeBacks made it much more enjoyable for members of their staff. to enjoy their holiday season. The debacks receive their share of the World Series postseason, I guess you could say player pool, right? It's a total player pool of $107.8 million that is shared amongst all of the teams that made the postseason. Bob Nightingale reported that this is the amount

that the Rangers and the Diamondbacks, who made it the furthest obviously, will share with their players and their staff. Now, this amount, the Diamondbacks have a National League pennant share of $313,634, and that's 71 shares of that, right? So that is that amount, Jesse, $313,000 that they are able to essentially share with their staff, clubbies, chefs, people in the organization, coaches, right? And that's a lot of money for some of these guys. That's an incredible amount of money for, I mean, it's even good for some of the players that don't really make that much money, you know, by comparison to some of the superstars. But man, that's life-changing money for some of those guys within the organization.

Yeah, it's kind of cool that, I mean, the way the process works is the players basically get to decide how they're going to distribute that money. Right. So I think you saw the Rangers had 61 shares, the full shares that were distributed. The Diamondbacks had 71. I don't know exactly, you know, how many of each type of person got this money, the clubbies and the staff and the coaches and all that. Right, because they can, from that point, the team ends up creating the shares and then each player will get like a full share, but then they can like break the shares down and the half shares, maybe clubbies and for team chefs and coaches and stuff, right? Yeah, it is interesting that it appears that which player you are doesn't have any bearing on this process at all whatsoever. So whether you're Corbyn Carroll or, you know, you're Jace Peterson.

Like, it appears that everyone gets the exact same share of this money, which is interesting the way that the process works. But, yeah, it's also really cool that, you know, some of those staff members that you talked about. Saul, where's saw, well, Saul's leaving right now. I was just going to ask him, Saul, where's our bonus share for how far the Diamondbacks made it? That's a fair question.

In the playoffs, I mean, apparently, according to this, people on the team get $313,000. So how much of that money are we seeing for bonuses for me and Jesse? You get a share per supplemental content, so there's not much. Oh, no. Oh, my God. That was a burn, Derek. That was a sick bird, right? I don't like that at all.

But there's some supplemental content we can find out there, right? One share per supplemental content? I could find something. I think we might be rich. Yeah, I'm saying. I'm saying. But also, maybe not we. because you just said for you and Jesse right there.

As if I'm just not a part of the team. I really did leave him out, didn't I? And Patrick deserves a little bit. Yeah, well. We'll give him a quarter share. Yeah. Yeah. We'll give Damon a little half share.

Yeah. A little half share. Quarter share for Jesse Jr. I was thinking an eighth. We'll figure it out. You're feeling generous. Yeah, it's fine. But yeah, I mean, like I said, like, of course,

it's not even going to say like a full share to some of these players of 313, thousand dollars is insignificant by any stretch of the imagination because yeah that could be what some of the guys on the lower end of the pay scale receive uh an annual you know in annual income but for some of these guys uh that's just an incredible you know got to be an incredible you know feeling to have your organization share share some of that with you yeah especially if you know your your job might be seen as less significant and you don't really feel that love all the time yeah and i mean of course this is this is all the player pool that we're talking about the diamondbacks as an organization also gain a substantial amount of money yeah this isn't there's nothing to do with the

economic windfall that they're talking about for appearing right in the world series this is merely just the player pool that is directly for players and like jesse said they absolutely determine how they how they split it up how many shares there are and then even there beyond that how the shares potentially are split up and and who they go to within the organization but yeah it's for staff, it's for players, it's for coaches. It's for, like I said, team, usually, like they said here, clubbies, trainers, team chefs, etc. It's cool. People in the organization like that. Yeah, yeah, it really is a, it really is a game-changing experience for them, not just, you know, this financial bonus that they get here at the

end and, but also just the process of getting to this point. I mean, a lot of these people have been working for the Diamondbacks for a long time and have been through, you know, some pretty rough seasons to get to this point. Because we know a lot of people in the organization have been there the entire time we've covered the team. I've been around for a while myself. So I know that some of the clubbies and some of the people have have been there the entire time I have. And also half a share is still over $150,000. Yeah, I'd be perfectly content with half a share. Yeah, that's crazy. But of course, yeah, we don't see any of that money, as you saw from a saw. We'll have to figure that out. I'll get some lawyers involved or something. But I do implore.

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And like I said, we might have a sale coming up for you. As you know, it's Black Friday right around the corner. But if you're not a diehard member yet, sign up today, you'll get a free t-shirt of your choice over at the PHNX Locker.com. And of course, you have to pick a Diamondbacks one. That's the way it works. If you heard it here, you're obligated to pick a Diamondbacks one. However, we won't get too mad at you if you pick any other shirt in the locker.

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Well, that's all we have. Of course, we will still be here keeping an eye on this free agency market and seeing how things change as the options continue to get more and more limited for the Arizona Diamondbacks. But you can follow us in the meantime. I am at Kapp underscore Cidman with the K.

This maniac next to me is at Jesse N. Friedman. Of course, the people's producer is Damon. He's a Damon dog. that's DAWG. We are Damon's dogs. Arf, bark, bark, bark. All right, that's what we're doing today.

Of course, our shows at PHNX underscore D-BACs, but all roads do lead to at PHNX underscore Sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We thank you guys so much for your time. We appreciate you stopping by and remember kids, baseball is fun, but it is so much more fun when you stop changing the goddamn rules on me.