Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 272 | Trever Bauer Signs with the LA Dodgers! (INSTANT REACTION)

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

Jomboy, Jake, & Plouffe react to Trevor Bauer's 3-year, $102M deal with the LA Dodgers! 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 to talking baseball. Trevor Bowers going to the Dodgers. He got paid big. Let's talk about it. I was all early. Hello and welcome to talking baseball. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Jimmy. Sitting in California is Trevor Plouffe. Behind the dish is Big Baby David. And on the phone, we have Jake Storelli, who's in the middle of changing apartments. Usually they call that moving, not changing. Jake, how you? you doing jimmy i'm doing well i am currently changing apartments uh jess does not know i'm on the phone for this uh and if he finds out i will probably get in trouble but this is the big fish boys we've talked about this for months power's going to the dodgers they poo poo the whole podre's off season and uh what a video huh listen no bad video bad john hayman this should not be about of that. We can do that at the end. All right. The deal is, Jake, do you even know the details of the deal yet? I know, I know most of it, but please. It's a three-year deal with the Dodgers,

$102 million guaranteed. 40 million in the year 2021. He has an opt-out after that. If he decides to stay with the Dodgers for the second year, he's going to get $45 million in 2020. that'll make him the highest paid baseball player in 2021 and the highest paid baseball player in 2022. If he has a terrible 2022 and wants to stay with the Dodgers, he gets, what is it, 13 million for year three? Or 23 million? 17 million in year three?

What a math pod. I think it's 17 million in year three. If he pitches really well, he'll probably opt out after two years and go get another another big bag. I mean, this contract is crazy. It's breaking records. It's going to make him the highest paid pitcher for two years.

He gets the opt out after year one in case he thinks he can go get more than 45 mil in 2022 or maybe he's like, you know what? Now I want my long term contract. Maybe he'll opt out. But first thoughts for me is I just audibly went, fuck and then I thought agent luba just did really good job here and she gets dragged everyone kind of in the bower camp gets dragged a little bit because they present themselves and allow themselves to be hated

but this is a huge deal this is like everything bower wanted he gets he gets the highest pitcher from aavie his college rival garrett cole said it last year and i bet you getting higher than what garret cole which was 37 a year was a priority for him i really do he wants to be the highest paid pitcher. He gets the opt out after year one. He gets a ton of fucking money. And he's on a contender that just won the World Series in his hometown. Literally, Trevor Bauer got every single thing he wanted in this deal. And I'm impressed by that. Jake, what do you got? I mean, everything you just said, Jim, I think it's a win for Bauer. I think it's a win for the Dodgers too. They just won the World Series. And now they're bringing in the NLSI young winner for last year.

that starting pitching staff is insane. I mean, they can go seven deep with really good guys. I mean, Tony Gonsle and my guy, he's a side piece right now. I'm happy for Bauer. I'm happy for Lubba. And, you know, don't want to go MLBPA, Trevor Plouf on you. But, hey, we just raised. We're going to get the highest player AAB ever.

I, part of me hopes contracts start going this way. Instead of the way of the Albert Poole host and Miguel Cabrera, I mean, you know, a little ad for our upcoming team profile and projections where we do every team. We started talking about Miguel Cabrera today. And like the image of Miguel Cabrera has been lost because now he's getting paid so much money and he's not the player he was. Let's get these players paid big money while they're in their prime. And I mean, Bauer gets L.A. in the market. It's, I'm wins all around unless you're a Padres fan. I mean, you guys did a great job explaining that right there.

But that's something that no one will ever say about Jake. You can go seven deep that will never be said about Jake. I do think that if you got that operation because you know there's a little more inside of you and they can like do a little surgery pull it out. I don't know if he'll get there still. Anyways, look, this is this is like you said, this is perfect for Bowler. It's exactly what I said should happen. Pay the guy big money for one or two years. That's what he wants.

He said that from the beginning. He wanted to go year to year. and then obviously coming into his platform here, winning the Salyang, that changes things. Now you don't have to go year to year. You can say, do what they did here. Let me go two years, three years, opt out after each year. The ball's in his court totally. I do think he opts out.

If he goes out and has a good year this year, I do think he opts out after year one because it's only two years 32, or, excuse me, $62 million after that. I think he can go out and get more than that. So there's a lot of things we can dive in and see, But I do think they crushed it. Just an all-around great job. And like you said, the Dodgers, too, they said they don't care about a salary cap. Your self-imposed cap.

We'll go over it. We don't care because this is guaranteeing us a real, real shot at going back-to-back. And they realize the value in winning a World Series when a lot of teams don't value that anymore. So I love this move for the Dodgers. Thank you, Lubah for the Dodgers hat. I knew this was coming. She sent them my way. Thank you for that.

what the fuck i don't want to wear a dodgers hat i'm just kidding she did it but how cool is it that would have been awesome if she did clayton kershaw walker bueller trevor bower uriots and david price unless they make unless they trade some away now to offset dodgers don't care about your luxury taxes they're going over damn jake you got anything else or you want us to let you go yeah i mean uh you know jim i think again you said those names did you say duffin may there i mean Trez got him as the next Cy Young candidate. So with May and Gonsland, I mean, the pitching is so deep. And I, you know, although what Trevor said was true, I will know never go seven deep.

I do like what he said about power doing the one-year opt-out. I mean, hey, if he shoved again, which again, you know, it's not that easy to replicate. It was a short season last year, blah, blah, blah, we'll see. but hey if you were growing a multi-media conglomerate and you wanted to hop from L.A. to New York for a year or something like that, the dude's got options. So again, I think Bowers Camp killed it. I think he killed it.

Happy for the Dodgers. Sorry for my Padres fans. Sorry, I can't go seven deep, but that's kind of because of my dad, I guess. So I don't know. I got to keep moving. I love you, boys. Have fun.

Be strong. Enjoy moving. Love you, Jake. See ya. Love. Bye, Jake. Jim, this is incredible. And I got to ask you, I know we don't always want to bring it back to the Yankees,

but like when you see this deal done, I got to imagine other fan bases are like, why couldn't we do that? Like, why couldn't we go out and pay for one year? These teams that, you know, are an impact starting pitcher away from being legitimate World Series contenders, not just make it to the playoffs. Why couldn't they go do that? I look at the Yankees as one of those teams. obviously the Mets were in on this.

They were bidding. So I don't really lump them into that category because they were bidding. But teams like, let's see, I mean, the Yankees, the twins. I'm giving you my answer, but it's a bad excuse that I don't fully believe. The Dodgers made money last year. They're probably one of the only baseball teams that made money last year. If the Yankees had won the World Series last year, their purses probably wouldn't be as tight this year. Yeah, I don't really believe it because there's not there they can so short they think short man

It's so short but yeah so they they could have the Mets offered more money the Mets offered Bauer more money than this just not fully I don't think it was as front loaded and Bauer wanted to go to a contender now when we all guessed angels on the not you I you didn't and Jake didn't but a lot of people guessed angels trev and then I I heard from people that kind of were would know more than us that said there's no way he's going to a place that isn't a contender like there's just no way and i was like ah okay then i heard calloway was at the angels and i was like fuck there's a zero chance he goes to the angels so he he wanted to go to a place he got like i said the front of the show he got he got everything he wanted with this deal it's a really good job by his camp and everyone in there and the dodgers are going to be fine that's the thing uh the dodgers will be fine and they'll pay the two years and then they'll move on. So it's just I know that every baseball team operates differently and each operates in their own world.

But I think fans accept those worlds too much. The race lost the World Series. And instead of making moves to double down, they shipped out the people that helped them get there and are like kind of starting over. The Dodgers won the World Series. And people are going to be like, well, Dodgers have more money. Every team has money. every ownership has money but it's wild to me and i do feel a little bad for metz fans because they got really excited and uh a lot of the reports said metts and i guess there was a deal the

metts gave him a dot a deadline and he said no but um i wonder if they were feeding you know our friend boob bob nightingale i don't know i'm very curious to see the behind the scenes of this did someone feed bob that how did john get the scoop John Hammond. I think I know the answers to all of this, but, you know, I love to. Why, who do you think? It's, it came from the Dodgers side, if anything. Of course, he's got people there.

I don't know what compensation. I'm allegedly, listen. Want to hear the most, want to see the most pathetic tweet of the day? It's John Hayman tweeting Bauer to the Dodgers, like one minute before Bauer's going to tweet his announcement video. It's so stupid. Whether, whether you're a fan of Bauer doing his announcement video and like, breaking it on his own or not. How sad is it that John Heyman was like racing to to scoop the scoop from the fucking

player, not just another reporter who said it all wrong. If Bauer goes around says like, hey, I want to break this myself. And John Heyman just like, listen, I texted you guys on the side. I don't follow John Heyman because like I think he's bad for my mental health. And I think he's bad for baseball fans to follow on Twitter. I don't, everything else about his coverage. I have no opinions on, but his Twitter account, I think is a bad for baseball fans. And I was in a tizzy reading his people kept retweeting it.

But this is me and Heyman situation. No one. I agree. You know him on your side. You know him on your side. Every player is. Whenever I ask him, I go, what are you got in Hayman? They don't know who he is.

His Twitter's the worst thing in the world. I think it's a sad, sad, sad, sad man that he is racing to beat Bauer, to punt to the punch when Bowers trying to announce his own signing. I just think it's a sad. It's sad by whoever's in the Dodgers organization too that lets him do that. Who gives him the info, who says, yeah, he signed off on it. That's you, you're a joke. Stop that. Like, look, if you want to scoop other, if you want to scoop other reporters, I get it. But like, how, I mean, this is all just selfish. This I had it first thing. It's just selfish. I've been part of it. We've all done it. We want the credit too. But just admit it. It's a selfish play. You want

get hype bro but this is in this instance bower said i'd love to announce it myself he did everything all off season long saying that and then like you said a minute before you want to do it to get some followers bro yeah and i don't think his video was amazing but it wasn't as obnoxious as i thought i didn't watch it i haven't watched it yet should i go watch it no i scrubbed through it so i can't be really i just like i didn't have the sound on so i don't really know what happened i just i thumbed it all the way across till i saw how he revealed it I want to reiterate. And then my first thought was like, is that a real Dodgers jersey?

Because it kind of looks like a Dodgers jersey. You buy it like a fan shop. He probably did. Yeah. He did it. He bought it with like crypto on the black market. So nobody knew. And then here comes John Heyman.

You know what I'm jealous of, Trev? You know what I'm really jealous of? Padres and Dodgers fans relations for the next three to five years. That is going to be what Red Sox Yankees was. from 2000 to 2005 height of the rivalry. And I, and who knows, I mean, Dodgers may just stomp them on the field, but the pot or the Padres might win. It's going to be very fun.

But the dynamic, the anger, 14 year olds are going to get in fights in, in high school hallways. Like that, that feeling is what I had when I was in high school when it was like, you know, a rod slapping Aurora and, um, 2003, 2004. that was when I was like freshman sophomore in high school. That shit was fun. I'm super jealous. I hope it becomes that.

I hope it becomes that because obviously the Dodgers natural rivals, the Giants, and they've kind of, you know, obviously they're not the Padres. I still think that rivalry would be really good. The Dodgers have won the division titles and the Giants had the World Series. Now the Dodgers finally get the ring. So that's awesome for them. But I can't wait for these matchups we're going to see. I mean, the Padres, I think that's a great thing to talk about.

right now. The Padres did everything right this offseason. Everything you could do. They got Darvish. They did everything you could do. And now, they're still going like this. Oh, fuck. Like, but you know what? Jim, I'm going to say this.

I think the Dodgers are overwhelming favorites. They were probably favorites before this signing. They're overwhelming now to win the World Series. Yeah. But this is baseball. This is baseball. And we still have to play. play it out. And this like race for this division title to see who gets the buy is going to be

awesome. I think these teams are a lot closer than people are going to give the Padres credit for. So this is going to, I mean, look, man, this is what we're going to be baseball is hot. It's going to be fun. So hot. Cleb and Bauer are going to have a lot of banter. They're going to secretly start actually hating each other. And you know what? The angels, the angels. what are you guys doing i i i there's a tweet from brent mcguire he's an angels i don't know the correct word people used to call me a blogger and i would get upset about it because i'm like i've never written uh he covers the angels on twitter brenton mcguire he he he quote tweeted the dodgers rotation and said damn that's almost as good as and that's almost as good as dylan bundy adjur haney

Jose Quintana, Griffin, Canny House cop. Angels, dude, what were you doing? How do you not walk away with the premier pitcher? Anybody, there was plenty of people to get, dude, fucking trade trout, trade Rendon. Trade them.

Trade everyone, angels. You're not competing, if anyone. It's such a, it's like, it's like they had no plan. They've had no plan. They go out, you sign some really, really, really, good players. You drafted possibly the best player to ever play the game of baseball and you have them in your system. You extended them great, but you surround him with no pitching.

With no pitching. I don't get it, man. I don't get it. The Dodgers are the class organization in baseball, maybe in all of sports right now. They're the best run, most consistent organization in all of sports. I mean, I guess you could talk about the Golden State Warriors, maybe the lake. I don't know. L.A. is hot right now. It's so hot. It is so hot, man. Is Bauer a number three? We'll see, man. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what he is. I love it. I love everything about this. I mean, could it be more excited. Yeah. It's fun. And it was, you know, it was, it just felt bad for my Mets friends. I had Mets friends that were in a group chat with. And they were like, what are one of my met friends say you had to have warned him about bob right you you didn't let him

believe that everyone knows about bob they're they're baseball fans so they know about bob but everyone else was kind of like you know dancing around it there's a deadline all this trying to find it he said uh he's not even officially signed and i'm already done with bower and his nonsense now you're now you're fully done listen i'm curious there's some the chat is popping right now I'm kind of glancing over at it, and there's a lot of people talking. We said he got everything he wanted. Yeah. One thing he said he wanted you.

I'm not sure he's going to get is pitching on four days rest. I wonder what conversations were had. There was a little baseball reporting on that. He wanted teams to be open to the conversation about him pitching four days. So the Dodgers were probably like, yeah, we're open as you sign. We'll have this conversation. And then they send in like the water boy. and they're like, you pitch it to him.

And then, and then he'll tell the water bottles. I wonder if there's going to be any instances. We're like, you know what? So-and-so needs a day of rest. Treve, how you feeling?

I don't know, man. Probably not, right? Not when you front-load it like this. Who cares? I mean, that's a short contract for them. Dodgers can bark. If the Dodgers,

if he wants to burn out his arm to help the Dodgers win, the Dodgers only have them for three seasons. It's not like a 10-year deal, like Garrett Cole. The Yankees aren't going to burn coal because they got them for 10 years. If the Dodgers don't give a fuck, sure, you want to pitch every four days? Go ahead.

It'd be sick if you put a bullpen day and said, fuck it. You're in the bull. You're in the bullpen. Yeah. Hey, you want a high leverage ending? Let's see it. They're never going to do that. I'm just going to say that.

How cool would that be? And if there was a team to do it, it'd be the raise first and then the Dodgers because the Raids or the Dodgers are the raise with money, essentially. Dodgers are the raise. with money. Yes, smart and spend money. Yeah. I had one other thing I wanted to say, Jim, and now I totally, totally lost it. Okay. Totally lost it. It was about sticky stuff, gophers. Sticky stuff is interesting. Doesn't matter because everyone still uses it. So what does it matter? If he continues to use it and put up the numbers, whatever. Someone in the chat said

John Boy is big mad. Some people read into my feelings in it very much confuses me. What am I mad about. Awesome. Yeah, I don't know. Uh-oh. What, we got more news? Not a big one, but Fulte went to the Rangers, which is kind of annoying because we did that TPP this morning.

God damn it. It's a problem for it. That hurts. That hurts. Oh, big, bad. We're going to have to redo that? Does that change? Fulte doesn't change anything for them.

You're not big mad. You also had a really tough tweet, though, towards, uh, Rachel. Yeah, that was bad. What do you call that? I felt bad. Punctuation. I felt bad because she might have read it like that. I just said,

I meant to say, both times. I meant to say, fuck, Rachel Lubba, amazing job. But instead it said, fuck Rachel Lubba,

which is not what I meant to say. I saw the deal and I just said, fuck, she crushed it. I love it. I think they did a great job. I don't think they were like as annoying as people made them out to be.

I mean, I was pretty much ingesting most of their content, you know, we're friendly, we do stuff. I've been on their podcast. I think they handled it perfectly, man. And they're giving other guys platforms too. Like, if you, if you're not liking it, don't watch it, but they're promoting the game of baseball. They're growing it. This was great. I really wish. I really wish. Not a Super Bowl commercial, Jim. I really wish they would have said half-time Super Bowl, I'm announcing. But, but, you know, John Haven had to ruin it. Jake probably wishes they didn't announce it while he was moving.

Like the one day, the one day. He's got no work. I'll say that about Jake. His work ethic is bad. The one day all off season where Jake's like, I can't work today. And we were scheduling around it. Bauer drops it. So maybe Jake's just crossed over the bridge and gotten home.

I was pretty mad. What happened, BPD? I had just gotten home. Yeah. It's like the worst traffic. It's been in a long time over here. Traffic was brutal. Yeah, so I just drove through it twice.

I'm going to do it again in half hour, I guess. I think this is our last emergency show of the off season. I mean, we can, unless there's like a flurry, like all in once, like Odo or Paxton signed at the same time or Turner and someone else sign at the same time. But if it's just a single player, I think this is our last one. If this is your first time listening or watching every Monday, no, that's wrong. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you can watch live on YouTube or listen on podcast app. And then starting in like two weeks, we're going to be live every single day as we start our mini episodes for every team.

Like February 17th until opening day, there will be an episode, a day. day. I want to make another point because I remember what I was going to say. You talked about him wanting to beat Garrett Cole in his, you know, he didn't beat him in his AAV technically, but per year he crushes him. And I don't necessarily think he wanted to beat Cole, but, you know, as a player, you're always told, go out and do it for the people behind you. he set the market high and I think a lot of the players even if you don't like what he does you got to applaud that

and as the teams the teams have gone away from those long long-term deals we know that they don't like them we see what Miguel Cabrera's owed and Pujols and how these things turn out towards the end of that contract so the teams countered that by not signing those long-term deals and by basically trying to lock all the young guys up early because if they hit on a few of those guys, that was key. That gave them financial flexibility. This is a genius deal for players moving forward. Take that big money up front. The team wants that.

You want that. This counters that and maybe moves us forward. We were maybe at a stalemate with contracts. I think this has moved us forward. I think the whole team needs to be applauded. I know we've said a couple of different times now. but I think they did a great job. I wonder if this changes it, Trev, if the next guy to hit, if they do this,

if this is the new wave of contracts or guys are okay with it for sure. Or if Bauer is just going to be the only guy that was like, no, I want to bet on myself. And you do like a lot of props to him for, he said he only wanted to decide one year deals. Well, this is a three year deal, but they put the opt out after the one. So if it, if he wants it to be a one year deal, it is. If not, he'll stay and he'll make $45 million in year two. The Dodgers enticed him to not opt out after one by giving more money in year two than year one.

So I love it by the Dodgers strategy and I love it by Bauer strategy. And I think this is just a, if anyone that's listened to the show, I love unique contracts and contract structure because it just blows me away that they can get so creative. It's not incredibly creative, but I think it gets both teams what they want, which is the best where to look at it. A ton of money. If you want to yell overpaid, yell whatever you want.

Who cares? Let me ask you this. But could very much be worth it. What is worth it? Besides a World Series. What's worth it? What's a year? It doesn't matter what kind of year he has.

What if they don't win a World Series, but he has a good year. What's the bar? No. But, you know, it's World Series for the Dodgers. It's just won. They want to have a little dynasty here. I agree with that.

That's the type of pressure they want to have on themselves. If they got to win the World Series and Bauer's got to be part of it. And then it's worth it. Year one or year two. If he doesn't opt out. It's not like we're going to laugh and point and say, ha, ha. We will.

But it's not like a colossal damaging fuck up. You know what I mean? No. It's not like 10 years to Jacoby Ellsbury. And now he's out. Or Miguel Cabrera. old still owed 30 million next year in the next year you're not really going to have that that's why the short term helps out the dodgers like i don't i don't see the way where you're

unless and you don't even want to say this so cross my fingers or whatever unless he gets injured and then he's like has Tommy john halfway through and he's out for both years that's the only way you'd be like not worth it you're fucked up if he's healthy in pitches and you're never really gonna this isn't going to crush the dodgers I guess is the point. And then the real question now is we have the L.A. San Diego rivalry brewing. It was okay last year. It's going to be big this year, possibly the next year as well.

The real question is, who has better tacos? And that's a huge debate. It's a huge debate. When life gets back normal. You like a wet burrito, Treve? I'm not a brie-a-a-a-a. Like the street tacos. Seeker with tacos.

Don't fill them up too much. Don't, not too much stuff in your taco. I like a wet burrito. Meat, your protein, onion, cilantro, a little salt. Shout out tequila's in Livermore, California.

Wet burrito. Bronco burrito. That's my spot. They won't care. All right. Thank you guys very much for tuning in. I was talking about me, Trev, not you.

I'm sorry. See you later. I had to go to dinner. sister's birthday.