PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - FOX Sports 910 host Jody Oehler talks D-backs trade deadline deals, long-term vision, and Vegas rumors

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

Jody Oehler, host of "The Drive" on FOX Sports 910 from 4 PM to 7 PM M-F, joins the show to break down the D-backs' trade deadline deals, Mike Hazen's long-term vision, and an ominous report about a potential franchise move to Las Vegas. 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is once again my special honor to welcome Jody Ailer here onto the Rattle podcast. He is the host of the drive, which can be heard from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time on Fox Sports 910 Phoenix Monday through Friday. Another thing I want to give a quick shout out to, which Jody and I were just talking about before the start of this interview. Every Wednesday at 4.30 p.m. You can hear Jody interview Greg Amsinger, who is one of the anchors over at MLB Network does a phenomenal job. 4.30 p.m. Wednesday, that's about as good of a 15-minute segment of radio for baseball fans that you're going to find anywhere in the valley. So I want to make sure we give that a shout out here to be at the beginning of our interview. Jody, once again, thank you so much for joining the show today. We always

appreciate your time. My pleasure, man. If I can be one-tenth as entertaining as Greg Amson is every week, then I will consider it a job well done. Well, we'll jump right into things, Jody, with the MLB Trade Dotline. Obviously, the Diamondbacks, after a very silent few days leading up to the trade deadline, I think they made some headlines. And it was, you know, maybe they're on the wrong side of the headline. Obviously, it was Zach Granky, who was the big fish moving over to the Houston Astros. The Diamondbacks didn't get quite as much of the press, which makes sense.

You know, they're on the selling side of this trade, whereas the Astros were on the buying side. A lot of people are considering them World Series favorites at this point. Before we jump into any of the specifics of any of these trades that went down, though, Jody, I just want to ask up front, what is your trust factor right now in Diamondbacks general manager, Mike Hazen? It's very high. I think, you know, I was really skeptical of the Paul Goldschmidt trade, mostly because I felt like it wasn't a trade that Diamondbacks had to make. They had the money. They could have afforded the contract extension.

And I felt like fundamentally Paul Goldschmidt was integral to everything the Diamondbacks wanted to a I was willing to accept the rest of him, maybe aging poorly at the back end of that contract, just because a superstar homegrown is relatable as a player's like a bet. So at that point, I was a little skeptical of Mike Hazen's strategy of straddling this line of not totally rebuilding, but not also going for it. I feel like in sports, the more you try to straddle that line, you get a no man's land. and mediocrity is worse than being bad. So, you know, eight, nine months ago, I was a little wary of Mike Hazen,

and I thought he probably was shown some of his inexperience. Fast forward to Carson Kelly being very good. Luke Weaver prior to his injury pitching like a number two. It's safe to say, even though I think the diamond back still could have justified keep a Polk, Goldman, that Mike Hazen knew what he was doing when he pulled off that trade, not to mention the compensatory selection and some of the other assets he got in return. Today, Zach Granky trade, it's funny. We talk about Goldschmidt, Patrick Corby, A.J. Pollack, Zach Granky, all gone on Mike Hazen's watch.

Any other sport, you talk about a GM intentionally watching the four corpers of the most successful X-News, the homegrown nucleus ever. And he watched all, he's, well, three of the four, I should say. and Granky, the biggest free agent signing in, you know, Arizona sports history, you would think that a GM would lose confidence. But to me, I think what we've seen for Mikeazen is he does things very deliberately. He does things very consciously. He's not reactionary.

He waits until he gets what he wants. Teams don't call the Diamondbacks looking to get a steel like they do with the sons in the NBA. If you want to take advantage of a franchise in the NBA, hey, we'll take, we'll call the Sun. we'll get a great deal from them. That's not the case with the dimebacks. They get the better end of the deal. And I think that's a huge sort of development for this franchise is that my case in the show, not everything's going to work out perfectly, but I think my case is

shown he is in full command of what he wants to do. And he doesn't capitulate to other teams. He stared down to Yankees. The Astros came and took on 50 plus million of Zach Rankie. So I'm really, really encouraged by my case, and I think it's the time he got hired, I called it the single most consequential hire that Diamondbacks would ever make. And I think this far into it, it's proving as he's remaking this team, but also simultaneously increasing optimism about the team long term,

that he has proven to be a very, very good hire. Let's go ahead and jump into exactly what the Diamondbacks got in return for Zach Rankie. the package they got from Houston infielder slash outfielder Seth Beer. Still kind of looking for a position as far as we know doesn't have a whole lot of defense, but could be a legitimate replacement, kind of a Paul Goldschmidt-esque type, at least from the offensive standpoint. He was the Astros number three prospect or number four prospect. Also came over J.B. Bukkowskis, who a lot of scouts have spoken very highly of,

maybe not as a guy who can stay in their rotation long term. I heard one person compare him to, you know, just kind of the trend that we've had in baseball these days where teams will use relievers for multiple innings and kind of whenever the biggest situation of a game comes up. I've heard Bukowskis discussed as maybe being that kind of a guy with the stuff that he has at some point down the road. Corbyn Martin, the number five prospect of the Astros, also coming over, a guy that seemed to be the headliner in the deal from what Mike Hazen has told us, apparently, I believe Hazen even mentioned specifically that Corbyn Martin would not have been available had he not just undergone Tommy John surgery a couple of weeks ago, which obviously is a big red flag. You know, the Diamondbacks have unfortunately quite a bit of experience with Tommy John surgery.

Taiwan Walker has certainly taken his time this year. We're not really even sure if we're going to see Walker at any point in 2019. Corbin took about a year or two to come around before he fully recovered. covered Daniel Hudson, obviously. There's a storied history there. The Diamondbacks have experience with Tommy John's surgery, and it's not all good, but Corbyn Martin absolutely still a big prospect coming over. I've heard anywhere from a number two starter to a number four starter outlook on the future

of his career. And then the last guy, Joshua Rojas, who I think, Jody, may be the most interesting piece in this deal, because Rojas, I mean, you look at these numbers in the minor leagues. He was hitting well over 300, 20 home runs, 69 RBIs. He stole 32 bases. He's apparently a solid defender, can play multiple positions. He was the number 22 prospect in the Astros organization, came over to the Diamondbacks organization where he is now unranked on their top 30 list of prospects, which, you know,

maybe that just speaks to how deep this system has gotten. But those numbers for me, Jody, are pretty exciting on Rojas, and you look at this package as a whole, and obviously there's no Whitley, there's no Kyle Tucker, the Diamondbacks didn't get one of the two biggest fish over in this deal from Houston, but by and large, this has gotten a pretty good reaction from analysts around the game that the Diamondbacks did pretty well in their return for Zach Granky. I think they did too. As you mentioned, the depth of the Diamondbacks organization.

This helps buoy that. They've got the ability now with just depth with young arms. And I'm sure we'll talk about the Zach Gallant trade here in a moment. but when you add Corbyn Martin, now, granted, as you mentioned, I mean, Corbyn Martin literally still has stitches in his elbow. So the idea, 2020 is probably off the table for Corbyn Martin. We'll probably see Corbyn Martin in 2021. And as you mentioned with Patrick Corbyn and a lot of other pitchers, typically it's the second whole year returning from Tommy John that they sort of show the ability to bounce back to their full self or even to prove on it. So, I mean, conceivably, we might not see Corbyn Martin in what he's capable of until 20, late 2021, early 2022, which is insane to be talking about the year 2022.

And it's like not the distant future. So I understand from the talent perspective that he's probably the headliner, J.D. B. Kalkis is the guy that I am most intrigued by because it is very clear right now with up to nine guys buying for the starting road. and I believe eight of them have control of at least three plus years for the Diamondbacks. Other than Robbie Ray, they're all eight of the nine guys are going to be around for a while. They've got massive bullpen issues. And I know a bullpen is volatile for the best teams that are spending huge sums of money on guys. But J.B. Kalkis may be a bullpen option long term for them. Archie Bradley.

I don't know that anybody wants to put any of their faith. back in Archie, but he's been pitching well a little bit down the stretch. Yohan Lopez. If you could have two or three guys out of that mix that can throw hard, throw strikes, and bring a certain attitude with them, there's a chance that Mikeazen maybe also to successfully reimagine that bullpen. I would also imagine a few of those starters we talked about is John DePlante, now someone they view more as a bullpen arm because he's had durability concerns

at every level of pitching, you know, before he was drafted and since he was drafted. So I think I'm very curious to see how this trade specifically affects the bullpen because to me that is the glaring weakness of this franchise short term and long term. I don't expect the Diamondbacks to get a star out of this. You mentioned Rojas. Obviously there's an opportunity at second base long term for the Diamondbacks, assuming Cotel Marte eventually becomes basically an everyday center fielder for them. Nick Ahmed, clearly with the trade of jazz chisholm, they feel like he's at least a guy

they're capable of resigning for a few years beyond next year. So I'm not worried about them getting a star out of this. They've got $50 million. They've got financial flexibility. As I mentioned, if the dominoes fall and this also helps them solve their bullpen issue long term. It is conceivable that they could be a better team next year than they are this year. I don't think that's out of the question at all. You mentioned the Jazz Chisholm and Zach Gallant trade. I want to jump into that real quickly.

And I don't know if you saw this, Jody, but I thought it was kind of funny. The Miami Marlins social media accounts, I saw this especially on Twitter, not sure if they did this as well on Instagram and Facebook, but on Twitter, when they announced the acquisition of Jazz Chisholm, the graphic that they posted. had a glaring lack of any stats from Jazz Chisholm's 2019 season, only his 2018 numbers in which, I believe he led all minor league short stops in home runs or something along those lines. He had a really good season in single A last year. No, no double A numbers from 2019, though, which, you know, maybe that's telling.

He hit 204 with the Diamondbacks double A team this season. It's been a bit of a rough season for him overall. The strikeouts are way up. The walks are still a little bit lacking. obviously there's the power, there's the tools that a lot of scouts are excited about. I will say on the other side, Jazz Chisholm, I don't know if you heard this as well, Jody, but yesterday Chistholm made his debut for Jacksonville in AA with the Marlin system. He went three for four with a home run, a triple, and a single in his first game in the Marlins'

AA system. But those things aside, this trade overall, I think a lot of people thought it was fascinating. certainly doesn't follow the template of a trade that we're used to seeing at the trade deadline especially. This is, you know, top 100 prospect for top 100 prospect by a lot of accounts. And Chisholm, the guy with obviously the higher ceiling here, he has received comps to Javier Baez for a reason. But he's also really struggled to hit for average this season. And as I mentioned, the strikeouts are way up. On the other side of things, the diamondbacks get a starter in Zach Gallen, who's controllable for, I believe, six years, including this one.

And he's already, he's 23 years old. He's got a sub-3 ERA in seven starts so far at the major league level. Jody, this is a fascinating trade. And when it went down, I was, I was confused. Chisholm was the Diamond Packs number one guy. Zach Gallen was not really touted as having a high ceiling, but he's also already a major leagher and already performing really well. Jody, what do you make of this?

Yeah, you mentioned it. I think for people like you and me and the people listen to this podcast that are just baseball diehards, this was, I think, an even more interesting trade than the Zach Ranky trade. The Zack Rankine trade was more shocking, but this was as interesting of a trade

that we're going to see Mike Hazan to make. First of all, good for Judge Chisholm. I'm glad he went out, and I hope he, you know, regains his lost prospect status. It's crazy how quickly things change in professional sports. a year ago the idea of the Diamondbacks

trading a talent like Jazz Chisholm in a farm system that was relatively barren of high-end talent would have seen sacrilegious. Like, wow, what is? Like Hazen's apparently been abducted by Dave Stewart and now suddenly Dave Stewart's rerunning the team. That's what we would have said a year ago.

But, you know, a little stumble and double A for a young kid and suddenly he becomes expendable. You know, the Marlins posting on social media is hilarious. When he pointed that out on Twitter, I got a chuckle out of it. And then I remembered it's the Miami Marlins.

They could have literally not even announced. They could have posted nothing about the truth. They could have made up jazz chislems stats. And not a single Miami Marlins fan would have cared. They don't care enough to show up for the games. But I think, I think, I think, I think, Zat Gowlin is, listen, he's, he's got, he's got more pressure than any other player the Donovacs acquired for Zach Ranky, my opinion. He has to come in and show that he's better than.

Alex Young, that he's better than Taylor Clark, that he's better than John DePlanteer, that he's better than some of these young arms that the Diamondbacks have, because even before this trade, I think the one area you could say there was some encouraging development over the last few months is that the Diamondbacks do have some pitching depth. Now, they don't have a lot of high-ends, future ace, but there's a lot of number threes in there. Luke Weaver, we're all waiting to see, and I think he's probably got the highest ceiling of any of the players. and we saw it. But Zach Allen's got to be good.

I don't want to see, you know, a Zach Godley 2.0. I don't want to see a guy that is inconsistent. It doesn't have great stuff. All the reports are that I've talked to people is that this kid's a gamer. He throws strikes. He can throw four different pitches for strikes. He's already got some outstanding secondary stuff.

Those are all the hallmarks you want from a young pitcher. But jazz chisole is the kind of lottery ticket, the kind of player that franchises, like the Arizona Diamondbacks should be very, very careful in trading. That kind of talent in Major League Baseball is a $300 million talent if they come to fruition, which I know is a risk, but that's why as the Diamondbacks organization, you're willing to take those risks and keep that player because you would never be able to afford that kind of individual talent on the open market.

If Jazz Chisholm comes to the big leagues and turns out to be an all-star caliber shortstop, putting up huge power speed and defensive numbers, man, that is, even if Zach Gallons of reliable number three, that's a bad trade for the Diamondbacks. So this is risky. I think the diamond backs obviously have a hell of a lot more information that any of us do on what they believe Jazz Chisholm's presence to be. And certainly, right, Alec Thomas, Christian Robinson, the drafting of Corbyn Carroll, him falling in the draft the way he did, probably made them and bolden them a little bit that do have some high-end talent in the system that wasn't there a year ago. But it's fascinating because the way everyone talked about him, you know,

last offseason, Jesse was like, jazz chiseled just is ready to make the lead. And he's going to be, he's a potential star. And so I just found, I mean, look at, look at, we just talked about the Astros. They held off to their top prospects. Kyle Tucker and Forrest Whitley saw a stat that, you know, the Astros have traded for Justin Verlander, Garrett Cole, and Zach Granke, and they didn't trade their top two prospects. New York Yankees reportedly flinched on trading any of their top prospects. The Dodgers wouldn't take on, you know, Felipe Vasquez, who's controllable, who has a reasonable contract, who's filthy from the left side, would have been a dominating one, two punch with Kenley Janssen. They wouldn't trade their top two prospects in Gavin Lux and Dustin May. So

the fact that the diamond backs who don't have nearly the resources that these other organizations do felt comfortable trading a player with that kind of physical skill set is a huge risk. And I think it's going to be fascinating. I have no idea how it's going to play out. But again, I think that Gallen has to be the best player that they acquired on the trade deadline. And he's got to be like Luke Weaver-esque for the Diamondbacks continue that, you know, seven start. sample size for the monies, he's got to continue that with the diamondbacks. Otherwise, this trade could potentially be an awful one for the diamond back short and long term. Jody, you mentioned when you were talking about the Goldschmidt trade near the beginning of our

interview that the diamond backs were in this, kind of this bizarre position where they were in the middle and they wanted to stay there, right? Like they were embracing that mediocrity of being in the middle, not really going for it, but not selling for, you know, two, three, four years down the road. It's a really interesting position. And I think this trade deadline, what they did only kind of furthers that. The Diamondbacks gave up Zach Granky, who of course is a now piece. They got a number of prospects.

So I think most of these guys are probably 2021 type guys with the possible exception of Joshua Rojas. So I think we could maybe see this season as a late season call up. But the deal for Zach Gallen, he's, you know, more of a now. guy than a later guy. So, you know, you gave up Granky for guys, you know, who will be ready a couple years down the road. But then you gave up Chisholm, who's a guy who would be ready in a couple years for Gowan, who's ready now. It's just, it's a bizarre situation and strategy that Mike Hayeson is rolling with right now. Do you think this can work, Jody? Like, we've seen teams like the Astros, the Cubs, it seems like a lot of the teams who are really making waves in baseball right now,

they had to hit rock bottom before they were able to get back up and become a premier franchise again. The Diamondbacks are kind of trying the cheat method of never really selling completely, never really hitting rock bottom, but trying to build a contender out of this anyway. Do you think this can work? I do think it can work. We talked about this earlier. Greg Amsterer joins me every Wednesday. He has coined it a competitive rebuild, which I think is the perfect way to describe what

the Diamondbacks are doing. are rebuilding, but they're not doing it in a traditional sense. What I see across the baseball landscape is you mentioned those teams at the top that had the bottom out before they came back up. But there's also teams like the Atlanta Braves who were bad. But what they all share in common is that they have a depth of talent. It doesn't, name recognition is so far down the charts for Major League Baseball teams. Now, what's important.

Nobody's showing up to games to watch an individual player in Major League Baseball. the way they do in the NBA NFL. And so I think what Mike Hazen is successfully embarking on so far, at least, is you have to have quality depth everywhere. It used to be, and I'm going to age myself a little bit here, you had a starting nine, right? You had your nine guys, your nine starters. And if you could make a trade that would improve the starting shortstop, left field,

or right fielders, you did it. You would make that move. You would sign a free agent. Now, there's probably 15 players on the roster that you basically need to consider starters. They've given platoons and the amount of injuries in the 10-day IL now. So it's about depth. And the Diamondbacks are trying to build that. Clearly, they've decided to build pitching depth in a variety of ways. They've accomplished that, at least on the surface from the starting rotation. They'll figure out the bullpen. I think obviously the key to all of this is going to be

last year's draft, excuse me, this past draft where they need to have nailed a handful of those players because what's missing, and this kind of goes back to a Jeschism conversation is they're still going to need high in town. They're going to still need their Ronald Acuna. They're going to need all those kind of players that can come up and eventually give them star potential, star power, even if we've never heard of them. And I think that's sort of the missing piece here for the Diamondbacks that they're hoping that Thomas and Robinson and Carol and Pineramo and a few of these other prospects could potentially bring. But none of them have generated the buzz of those generational prospects yet.

So I think it can work. I think in a market like Phoenix, it's probably necessary. I don't think anybody's got the stomach for three years of 100 plus losses, the way they did in Houston, even if there's a potential payoff. I understand that from a business perspective. But I do think that there's clearly risk. It's just calculated risk, and I'm okay with that. Jody, last thing for you here before we let you go.

Shall we say ominous, maybe is the right word? not totally sure what the right word is to describe the report that came out of the Las Vegas Review Journal yesterday, which basically details the Diamondbacks going a heck of a lot further into the idea of moving their team to Henderson, which is, I believe they have a population of around 300,000 people, a suburb of Las Vegas itself. Should Diamondbacks fans be concerned that the Diamondbacks may not be in Arizona for too much longer, Jody? I don't think they should be concerned about it. I think what they should be concerned about is being used as leverage.

I think any time a fan base becomes sort of a pawn between owners trying to get more public financing that nobody wins. And I think that's something that Coyote's fans have endured for years and years. And it's just not a good place to be. So I wouldn't be worried that they're going to leave. I think the only time to get worried about that is when it gets real, real, you know what I mean? But right now, I don't think anything is, I think Diamondback fan. the Diamondbacks organization, I should say, specifically, needs to be very careful. They are playing with fire.

This is an organization that has built its reputation successfully. They've done this very effectively with Derek Hall and others in the organization of creating a real bond between themselves and their fan base. Affordable ticket prices, affordable beer prices, affordable kids' activities. They do everything they can in the community. in terms of the four major teams in Phoenix, they're more active in community events than pretty much all the other teams combined it feels like. They've done that very, very successfully. You can flush that all down the toilet if you use this fan base as a leverage to get hundreds of millions of dollars of public tax money,

either from Arizona or from some other location. That is, no one has the patience for that. This is, it's a high-level staring contest between the Diamondbacks in Maricopa County that the sandbase could get dragged into. And it's unfortunate because I've watched this organization slowly but very effectively build the kind of community relationships that have to be present to succeed in Phoenix. And so if I were dare to call as well as he is a captain of ship for so many years for the Diamondbacks, this play for public money here elsewhere. it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a game of russian were left for them and i i would tell them you you you just got to be you can't this can't happen you can't have this come public and you probably i compared it on my show the other day of like if you're happy in a relationship and

you get a text message from somebody you don't have to respond you can just ignore you know for the same thing of your relationship not every email not every phone call that every text message has to be responded because some of those lead down a path that are just going to get you into trouble, whether you're intended to or not. And if I were the Diamondbacks, I take the same approach right now. It's too early. And Anderson, you want us by in Vegas, you want us. We don't want to talk to the fact that Derek Hall is on record in that publication,

at least engaging in some email correspondence with Henderson should be a sign that they need to change the method. But I wouldn't be worried about it yet. Jody, phenomenal stuff as always. Thank you so much. I think Greg Am Singer would be very proud. If only my sideburn could reach up to this level, I appreciate it.