Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 427 | E-Rod, Free Agency, and the CBA with Jeff Passan

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Use code 'JOMBOY' at https://dugoutmugs.com to get 30% OFF Get 20 OFF + free shipping with code 'TALKIN' at https://manscaped.com  Timestamps: 2:45 - E-Rod to Detroit 8:30 - AL Central 10:00 - Justin Verlander 14:15 - Early Signings 22:00 - Biggest Spenders 24:00 - Blue Jays & Angels 29:15 - Kyle Schwarber & Red Sox 34:00 - CBA negotiations 49:30 - Rule Changes & Starting Pitching Presented by DraftKings 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. We have the most special of guests today. My brother, Jeff Passon, formerly of Syracuse University. Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Talking Baseball. We are on the last week of John Boy's paternity leave as he has brought human life into this world. Trevor Plouffe is just AWOL. No, he's actually.

Jeff, you're going to like this. He has now befriended the Stafford family, Matt Stafford, the quarterback for the Rams. So he is in San Francisco. He posted a picture with Gabe Kapler over the weekend, and he's going to the Monday night football game tonight. So he's basically, he's the celebrity of talking baseball has gone to his head,

unlike myself. But Jeff, You're here, and now we can finally talk. How are you? Is, like, the last 15 minutes just gone forever? Yes. So that was nothing. That wasn't live.

I, I'm sorry. I just assumed we were streaming. Jeff. I don't know how this works. I'm a professional. We are peers. And if you were live, I'm going to tell you you're live. I'm not just going to put a mic in front of you.

try to get you. That's not who I am. I'm just a idea. It is. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you literally did that at the winter meetings in 2019. You ran out to the microphone and said, hey, want to talk? I'm going to give you this t-shirt with Ham Porter on it. Let's chat. Okay.

So let's check out a couple things here. Is that all true? Yes. But, I mean, I was totally. holding a microphone and there's a camera there. So that was a little different. No, it's not different at all. You're in front of a microphone right now.

And there's a camera on me. It's the exact same thing. Well, an electric start to the program. The last couple minutes before this were very cordial. We were actually talking about our friendship slash enemy ship, I guess. Jeff, before you broke a little news. Erad, free agency. I want to talk all about it.

Before we talk about that, I want to talk to you about my ED problems in Roman. Sometimes guys don't have their best fastball. You know what I'm saying? Well, Jeff, 52% of guys 40 through 70 experience some form of ED. And here we are Get Roman people. You have to go to get Roman.com slash. talking, talk to a U.S. licensed health care professional, and they'll get you $15 off your first month of treatment. You know, if you're going to a new city, you're E-Rod, you know, you want to have your,

you want to be pumping 94. You don't want to be throwing that, that soft 87. Go to get roman.com slash talking today. If you're prescribed, you get $15 off your first month of E.D. treatment. Make sure you have the confidence to be Roman ready when you take the bump in Detroit. Hold on. Hold on. Can we do this for a second? Can we talk about this for a second? Yeah. So you were prepping me as to what this is going to be like. Yeah. And you said, we're just going to have some ad reads. Yeah. You didn't tell me it was going to be a boner read in the middle of the Eduardo Rodriguez signing. I mean, in a way, it's not a boner read. Well, the two, in my experience, the two are very much tied together.

Yeah. This, honestly, this is very much how my morning went. Hey, we're getting rid of the stigma, Jeff. This is, this can help people. That's what we do here. Are you back? Are you okay? I'm probably lost for the rest of the case.

That's perfect. That's perfect. That's how the show works. Jeff, we get the notification. Everyone has their Jeff pass the notifications on. Sorry. Erod to the Tigers, five years, 77. You had to the 80.

There's some kickers there and stuff. But more importantly, Erod just turned down the qualifying offer. I'm guessing because this was kind of, coming through the pipeline apparently. And I don't know, very exciting news for Tigers fans. All the rumors had been around the Correa Hinch reunion and will they go for it this off season?

What are they going to do? And it seems like they made a little bit of an announcement to the dance. It was a good splash for the Tigers. And I think they probably went a year longer than most people would have liked to have gone. and I think they may have bumped the AAV up slightly. I thought it was going to be four for 60. I ended up at 5 for 77 with an opt-out after two. And let's remember, Eduardo Rodriguez is only 28 years old.

So I think the structure of that contract is going to be really interesting. If it is a backloaded deal, then maybe he stays away from the option if he doesn't think he can get that. But it's clear that the Tigers, with their young starting pitching with Spencer Tor. Rylkelson and Riley Green on to come up and they're probably going to both arrive this year. Like this is this is a team that's got a chance to be something. And there's not a whole lot there on the offensive side of the ball right now. I just don't know how many of the guys they have around even from last year are still going to be there three years down the road. There's not a bunch of core foundational pieces, but you can go get those.

And when you have Scoobel and Manning and Mize and now Rodriguez as well, I mean, that's a really good quartet of young starting pitchers. What do you think, I guess, heavy tigers talk early? I mean, does this make them full players this offseason? Is this the start of five dominoes? Is this, do we think they're done with starting pitching? Because like you're saying, those four, I mean, you know, four pretty young quality pitchers. Everyone's been doing, you live on the social media. I mean, people want the Verlander reunion.

People want the Correa Hinch reunion. Is all that on the table? Or are the Twitter hands going a little too far where Detroit's an organization and they're going to go out and get the best fits for them? I don't think that the Verlander-Korea thing is all that real. Now, I may be getting lied to. So that's a possibility. but I think Verlander probably ends up in a larger market with a team that is potentially near and dear to your heart. Really?

Perea, I don't know at this point. And there was a lot of consternation, let's say, in Yankee Twitterland when I suggested that the Correa Yankees fit probably. isn't great. I could see someone like Trevor Story winding up in Detroit potentially. I don't think they're done. I'm not going to say that they're trying to go from like third or, you know, I think they won 77 game this year. I don't know if they're trying to go from third to first. I don't know if they're going to be right there with the White Sox this year. And I think Chicago's still a pretty significant favorite. That whole division, though, You know, the twins have an off year every few years and then come back.

I still think that the core there is good. Kansas City, you know, once Bobby Witt Jr., Nick Prado, and M.J. Melinda, has come up. I think they're going to spend a little this offseason, too. Like, that's a team you can see contending. Cleveland always has enough pitching. It's just a question of, is the offense going to be there? The AL Central, you know, we're not talking like the Comedy Central anymore. Like I think that they have a chance in the coming years, all five of the teams, frankly, to be pretty good.

Yeah, I mean, the Royals, they made some moves last year that got everyone excited. And you're right. I mean, Bobby Wood Jr. train when that leaves the station, he's going to be one of the real ones. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see where the Tigers land because I'm with like they're going to make moves. But, you know, to picture them, we'll see where the Correa Bidding War lands. And I guess we could talk. You alluded to something with Justin Verlander, and we'll see, I mean, as a Yankees fan,

when you read that there's a former Cy Young pitcher working out at Cressy's place, we've done this. We've lived this. I guess for Verlander, you know, you can talk yourself in any sort of circles. It's an older pitcher coming off T.J. It's also, you know, his last time pitching, he won the Cy Young.

And if anyone has one of those Clemens, Nolan, Ryan, you know, guys that twirled it into their mid-40s, ours is Justin Verlander. So is the next step for him? Is it ring chasing? Is it wanting spotlight? Is it proving he can do it? Is it all that in the pot? I think it's a little bit of everything. And the thing with ring chasing in baseball, it's not like O'Dell Beckham going to sign with the Rams who were probably the most talented team in football.

You can go sign with the most talented team in baseball and still have it best, or a 15, 20 percent chance going into any given season that you're going to be the one who comes out on top. I mean, even like the most overwhelming favorites really are not overwhelming favorites when it comes to winning the championship. So I think New York appeals to Justin Burlander for all the reasons you would imagine because he likes the big city. He likes the intense atmosphere. He likes the fact that the Yankees could and should be good coming into the season. He likes the fact that he would be on a pitching staff with Garrett Cole, with whom he thrived down in Houston. I mean, there are all kinds of things that make sense for Justin. Burlander to go to the New York Yankees.

Now the question is, are they going to be the ones who pony up? And are they going to pay what he wants? And is he going to get a multi-year deal? And if so, is that multi-year deal for Justin Verlander with a dollar figure that's not something you typically are going to be handing out to a guy who hasn't thrown a pitch in a year? I mean, like a really long time. Yeah.

Like we're coming up on well over a year and a half at this point. I mean, it's, I think it's going to be, I don't know. What year is it? Like, I don't remember anymore. It's just been a long freaking time since Verlanders's thrown a competitive pitch. And when you account for that and the fact that if the Yankees signed him, they would lose their second round draft pick and $500,000 in international money, or maybe a million international money, I think. It's a lot. And is it worth it?

And I, like I asked that to you, someone who roots for this team, is that second round pick and $500,000 in international money worth it to go out and pay Justin Burlander $20 million a year potentially for multiple years? Yeah, I mean, me and John did get lost on this on talking baseball for a while. And it's, you talk yourself in circles, man. I mean, if you signed Justin Verlanner for two for 40, which is kind of one of the internet rumors, you're going to talk yourself into it

and you're going to drink the Kool-Aid for a little bit and you'll say, yeah, I mean, it's Cole Verlander Sevi come October and these Yankees. This is going to be awesome. At the same time, like, you know, the Kluber bet was one for 10 and it kind of landed in that range, but it wasn't too much fun along the way

outside of the no-hitter. Yeah, you know, I feel like that was... than verlander was it not i mean we had seen the regression of cluber's stuff before i don't think anyone anticipated cori cluber was going to go out there blow at 96 because corey cluber never did throw 96 even when he was winning si youngs verlander on the other hand is a power pitcher yeah he's guy who has premium stuff and you know the scouts who saw him at his showcase walked away saying yeah the the shit's still there like he's still got good stuff and I mean, that's the guy you can slot in at the top of your rotation

and feel a lot more comfortable, I think, than you did with Cory Klooper there at the beginning of last year. Yeah, it's, if Justin Verlanner ends up on the Yankees, I will be ecstatic. If he ends up on another team, I'm going to tell myself he's going to suck. Fandom. Jeff, I don't know if it was your last article, but it was the, you think teams are,

going to rush to get stuff done before the December 1 deadline. And we could talk some CBA stuff. We are the world's number one CBA podcast in the world. Do you, firm headshake no on that. What's, is that going to happen? Are we going to see, are we going to be coming up to, you know, November 29th? And we're going to see teams really trying to get it done. Who's more incentivized?

the player of the teams because baseball's so weird, man, it feels like there's been this soft handshake, like, yeah, we're going to lock out for a little bit, and then we'll see you in February. What is that? That's nothing. So what should we expect in the next couple weeks? Is there going to be a little bit of a mad dash?

I think there's going to be some action, but I also think that players are going to try and use this as leverage, just as clubs are going to try and do the same. And it's going to be interesting to see how it breaks in terms of which side is likely or to fold. I mean, here's the reality. If I were a baseball player, I know myself that I would want to know where I'm going before February comes around. That's just how I best operate. You know, if I can plan things out, if I can schedule things, if I can make sure to go get a house where I'm going to be living,

If I can do all of just the necessary elements of adulting, it's hard to do those on the fly and to adjust to a new team. And that's what you're essentially asking players who don't sign before December 1st to go out and do. Now, some guys are comfortable with that. And that's great because they may have a lot of leverage when there are teams that on the cusp of spring training do not have their rosters filled out and feel like, well, I don't want to be at one left with no chair when the music stops here. On the other hand, there's the reality that if you are one of those guys who wants to sign before December 1st, then teams might try to squeeze you. And you have to be comfortable enough with yourself and with the market to understand that if I don't sign before December 1st,

it's not the end of the world, but maybe it's important enough for me to try to. and go out and do so and it's not just Eduardo Rodriguez and it's not just going to be Verlander and Cindergaard I mean those are names that are going to go this week you know the question is is it going to be guys like Seeger or Simeon or Scherzer or Robbie Ray you know Stephen Matt's I think is going to be one of the guys who goes like there there are going to be a number of significant free agent signings before the potential lockout. I just don't know how significant they're going to be,

and if we're going to see some of those nine-figure guys go beforehand. Yeah, it's such a silly sport, man. The fact that that's one of the topic of conversations, but yeah. I'm kind of intrigued by it, because there's been the school of thought that, hey, put a winter meeting's deadline in place. for free agents just to see if you can juice the market a little bit early so that free agency doesn't stretch until like the eve of spring training this is almost like a real-life test case of that to see where it goes and you know talking with executives at the GM meetings they were essentially saying hey we're going to players and we're acting like this is right around where the winter meetings would normally That's where we are in our process. We've accelerated things.

And let's remember, winter meetings last time on back-to-back-to-back days, we had Steven Strasberg, Garrett Cole, Anthony Rendon. That was a crazy winter meetings. And it was awesome, except for when you walked behind me on the live shot, which was pretty dushy. But that being said, that being said, if we could have something else like, Oh, did I just get a side eye? I mean, you called me a hard D, which brings us back to another Romanette.

No. I don't, I thought we were past that. That was funny. No, no, we're never going to be past that. We're never going to be past that. I will give you grief about that forever. Okay. That's fine.

When little Jake baby comes around. Yeah. Yeah, kids gonna, I'm just gonna be, no, that would be weird if I text you, I'm not going to do that. Okay, we can, we'll figure out the logistics of that. That winter meetings, that winter meetings was fun. And I forget, it was either you or the great Michael Kay that I originally heard it suggested that they do in early free agent signing period.

You do a little gap and then you do a later free agent signing period, which, you know, I think baseball's been looking for their way. You know, the NFL has the NFL draft, and it is its own sport. It's its own world. NBA, the second that free agency deadline hits, you've got people chasing people in cars, and it's rumor mill, and who's on the jet.

That's the old, was it Chris Broussard, who was chasing DeAndre Jordan, something like that, something crazy. That could be baseball's version, where if you got a two weeks jam pack of signings, and then you got to talk about it for a month, and then another four weeks or whatever. Yeah, I'm down with that theoretically. The problem I have is the reason the NBA's market, I think, works the way that it does is because teams know how much money they have to spend.

In baseball, there's no floor, there's no cap. So when you don't have any idea of how much teams want to spend, what teams want to do is just sit back and wait. They have found that waiting tends to get them the best deals. And so are we going to have one of those things where even though we want a bunch of signings at the beginning, that's just not going to be a reality because teams understand that trying to pick guys against each other with a finite amount of time left before a deadline or maybe even, not even a deadline, but just the beginning of spring training is enough to get better terms on a contract. Yeah. Yeah, and that's everything in this sport because of the divide gets turned into leverage,

which is one of those weird, you become an adult, you get a career in baseball, and you're like, oh, wow, yeah. So that's how this works. They don't just cater to a 13-year-old Jake's fantasy team. which, by the way, the T-Ball and Trojans, they were good. Jeff, so I have another read. I guess I'll pray. It's for dugout mugs, so there's no wiener stuff.

Oh, listen, I have to doubt that you can make a dugout mugs read about weeners if you really wanted to. So we actually had a situation like that during the postseason. I don't even want to say the line. It's so gross. But dugout mugs are fantastic. The guy got a bunch on the desk. They got the metal bat now. They've got the wooden ones that you guys are familiar with.

They're running their Black Friday stuff. Now, they're saying, they're telling everyone they're going to sell out, which is really real peacock stuff. Dougoutmugs.com. Code Johnboy, 30% off. It's the perfect gift. It's, I mean, it is baseball. It is baseball.

Got the Cubs one here, Ian Hap, whatever. That's some of the Braves World Series stuff. Code John. boy 30% off dugoutmugs.com. Go check them out. No penis stuff. Joe, I want to zoom out to a team view of free agency a little bit. Because normally you come into free agency and there's a couple sexy teams making their way. Everyone's always pissed at the Yankees, the Dodgers, et cetera.

You know, people want Seattle to be big movers and shakers this year. People are wondering if, like, the Texas Rangers are ever going to make their franchise appealing? Or who are some of those teams that maybe aren't the standard big boys that are really throwing their weight around this year? And maybe it's started with the Tigers today. Yeah, I think it's the Tigers, the Rangers, and the Mariners. I think you pretty much know. But they're rangers are going to be aggressive. Mariners are going to be aggressive, but the question is whether it's going to be a trade.

or in free agency. Maybe both. I mean, they've been linked to some big names on the free agent market. Marcus Simeon is certainly one of them. I think the other teams to look out for just like would Toronto count in there? Yes, and they, I always catch myself spinning because people, a couple people I've talked to, they're like, you've got to be scared about Toronto. And I am, obviously.

The young core of that team is horrifying. but there's still a chance they're going to lose the Syyong winner from this year and Marcus Simeon who had an otherworldly season. So I assume one of them ends up back there, but I know they have money to spend, and as we've seen with Ryu and kind of simeon last year, Springer, like they will go the extra mile because they kind of have to. Yeah, I think the Jays are going to be very active.

They were not Eduardo Rodriguez, too. Do the Angels count or just because they're a big market and they sign a bunch of guys? No, they count. I mean, it's the, I'll hype another ESPN article. I forget which one it was. I think it was one of the baseball five-by-five things or whatever it was. But, you know, the Angels, it literally is a joke of the industry about their pitching. And I feel bad.

We have a lot of proud Angel fans in here that get mad at us when we reference it. But then I see an ESPN article where they're making the same job. jokes. And I'm like, well, that's get mad at the front office. So like, are they in my head, and BPD actually planted this seat in my head, Cy Young winning Robbie Ray to the Angels just make so much sense in my head. But you could see Strome and you could see so many of the other guys. So yeah, I guess they have to be players. Yeah. They're going to be, I think they're going to be players on guys who are going this week too. So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, could they land a Verlander, could they land

a Cindergarde, you know, are they going to be in that type of territory? And it's interesting just because with the angels, they're in the same boat as the Yankees. You know, I was asking a couple of guys this week, how much is that second round pick value? Right. So you can look at the $500,000 in international money. It is not valued at $500,000.

There's a multi-million dollar valuation on that just because the return on investment in Latin America tends to be Disproportionately better than anywhere in baseball better than the amateur drafts certainly better than free agency You know better than minor league rule five whatever it is International you get typically the highest return on investment But that the second round pick teams assign value of anywhere between $6 and $10 million on it, even though the bonus is going to be only for a million in change, if that. So it's like Steve Cohen said.

There's a reason that his tweet is in a lawsuit right now that players who you get in the draft are worth about five times what you pay for them. And so if you're looking at Noah Cindergarde on a one-year deal, then you are paying the salary plus whatever you value that second round pick or third round pick depending on which team you are at. So it's going to be very interesting to see if he leaves the Mets and if so, where he goes and how much he gets paid. And I guess that's the other, I got a little jazzed up this morning.

Whoa. The pop to Roman. threw it in my dugout mug. Ad, businessman. The big teams are in it, man. I saw a post this morning that was like, this is supposed to be the Mets big year. And I was like, damn, like, that's kind of true, right?

Like, they said last year that, you know, they weren't going all in. But, I mean, Jeff, if they lose Stroman, and it sounds like Cindergarde, everything you're alluding to is that he's going to turn down the qualifying offer in his. it free agency. I mean, it depends on

what the offers are out there. But the way the way the market has gone, if Eduardo Rodriguez is getting 5.15 plus, is someone going to be willing to put 20 out there for no Cindergarde? Yeah, I think that's a possibility, certainly.

So I guess that's what I'm a lot of the big teams, who are normally in it? I mean, the Dodgers aren't getting talked about in free agency, but they are always around. The Yankees, I think Cashman shook Steinbrenner's hand and said, hey, we're going to stay under again, but you got to let us be the Yankees for at least two years. Yeah.

Do you mean stay under this upcoming year? No. Okay, I was going to say, they're not saying under next year. No, I think they stayed under this year because, you know, all the COVID stuff, the Yankees, their family owns the Yankees, not an oil tycoon, blah, blah, blah. But like you're saying with the Blue Jays, the tigers are in the mix. Like the big boys are in. And I think the Mets are too, but you gave me a little head shake.

I don't know. Red Sox, that's an interesting one too. Like they need a starting pitcher. They'd like to bring back Kyle Schwerber. Kyle Schwerber is a fascinating guy for me. I'm genuinely curious to see where he winds up and how much he gets. because he reminds me, and tell me if this comp works. He reminds me of Daniel Murphy in that a guy who always was seen as a hitter and was good,

but was not great, finally comes into his own and just starts hitting bombs in the playoffs and is feeling himself. And he, you know, he can play first base, he can play left field. like there's just a Daniel Murphy vibe to Schwabre right now and as much as I think Boston does want him back Tristan Cassis is like

here and Bobby Dalbeck Bobby Delbeck hit the ball really hard I know that hitting the ball hard doesn't always translate to excellent play but it you know one tends to portend the other so

I just don't know if the Red Sox use of the I would think 18 plus million a year that Chorber is going to be looking for would be best spent on him when they have who they have

and when they have the holes that they have and that's why the Rodriguez deal was a little bit surprising I didn't think that the Red Sox would necessarily hesitate to go up into the range of four times 15. It was

five times 15 and a half. That was just too much. The Red Sox obviously scare me from fandom reasons, but also they have a pretty good poker face. And like what you're saying, they have good youth on the way. And we'd say it on Trev used to say, give Heim some time.

And now they kind of expedited the process a little bit. They were in the mix this year with everyone. So they are the ball. Austin Red Sox, if they want, they can make a massive splash and that one it surprises. Or, like, they could do a couple small things and still be competitive on that timeline. They, uh, no, I have, I have nothing. I mean, I never do, but like, no. No.

No, I don't know. That was a great, a great job by you because you managed to both say nothing and not ask a question. Yeah. That's called show business. this, Jeff. Really impressive. I'm looking at Daniel Murphy's stat page. I think, you know, people might, I think Schwerber gets a little more love

because they picture him coming back for that Cubs World Series and he was supposed to be a mauler. I mean, Daniel Murphy's 2016, 2017. He was awesome. Those are unreal baseball seasons. He was ridiculous those couple of years. And Schwerber's younger, too. That's the thing. I don't even, I don't know.

I think Schwerp I don't think he's 30 yet. So you're still getting, you know, anytime your age starts with a three, all of a sudden you're walking around with a cane and eating metamusal. No, Schwerber's still got a two. So he's hailing hardy and drinking whiskey and hopefully not pounding Romans. The old Jeff Passon. Yeah, that's me.

Yeah, it's, I mean, Schwerber is going to be the case study of when you hit hit free agency because he hits it last year and he's all right you're a guy that kind of doesn't have a position but you might be able to hit you know we think you can hit a little bit and now this year it's wow this guy's you know an o p s maller the d h might be across both leagues and he can play a little left field and first if you need it you like the word maller huh i do i guess i don't know it's not normally a baseball term. It's normally a football O-Lineman term, but why not? It sounds like a

wrestling term. Like, sounds like something Jim Ross would talk about. W.W.E. Passing coming out? What? Do we have a passing? I know you're a W-W-E guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You in the rock. Hit him with the passing button, BPD. That's

one of my favorite pastimes. I was just going to, I was going to try myself. That's a... Hay-assin. Should I make a weird video about you again? Anything? No.

No? The holidays are coming. They are. Uh? Uh. Nothing, nothing in the pipeline, but I'll think. I'll think on it. Um, Jeff, I hate, I want to talk CBA stuff, and we actually have a fan base that likes that.

You're going to think this is a joke. It's not a joke. I'm supposed to do a manscape to read right now. There's no other way to say it. I mean, Jeff, think about... We get boners and then we shave around them with manscaped. Winter's... It was so hard. It broke my chair.

You broke your chair? No, it's just... It was one of those where I leaned back so far. And then the lever stuck down and then I was stuck back. Oh, you were back there. I figured it out Well Figure out your downstairs mix up

With the new lawnmower 4.0 Waterproof, skin safe You don't Do you have any grooming tips You want to give to the people, Jeff? I mean, I don't want to Just take care of your shit Honestly

That's all Like it's easy Fellas That are a thing to do Like some of the expectations Man scaped people Hold on a sec here Here's the advice I can give

I've also been married For coming up on 15 years now And I think that I think that there are people who forget Like you've been married for 15 years You take it for granted Can't take it for granted Can't take anything for granted

Nothing That's a lawnmower That's why you got to take care of your downstairs Go to Manscape Code Talk buy the Kama Sutra. That's what Jeff did. Get 20% off in free shipping at manscape.com. promo code talking 20% off in free shipping.

Manscaped, we love them. Thank you. And Jeff, we're through those. I'm sorry for that. Do you want to talk about getting through 15 years of marriage? You want to talk about CBA? What are you thinking? Listen, your show.

You tell me. Let's go CBA because we, honestly, we go, you know, COVID hits. And all the, you know, we are literally waiting for your updates. Trevor Plouf is spreading misinformation on the internet. We, we tortured him for days about that. Oh, no. We are coming up against it, Jeff.

And I know, again, like baseball, we almost kind of shrug and Bob and, hey, this is, Like you just said, this is a fun experiment for the free agency thing. Or are we not going to have baseball next year? Like, how torturous is this going to be? We haven't had any of the like knockout, dragout tweets yet. Are those coming? Like, what's going to happen? An impossible question to give you.

They're coming. I think it's point. That's sort of been a question that I've been discussing with some of my colleagues saying, okay, when's it really going to turn ugly? Because they've done a pretty decent job of keeping things under wraps. I mean, listen, the phone calls and the Zoom meetings and the face-to-face stuff, it has been contentious, but it's expected to be contentious. It's collective bargaining.

They're looking at the next five years of the sport, trying to figure out what it's going to look like. You've got players on one side who are disillusioned with the, the treatment and you've got a league on the other side that has one and one and one and one and wants to keep winning. You have a league that feels like players are paid enough and you have players who feel like they're not getting their proper cut of the revenue pie at this point. And that I think is ultimately what we have to remember.

It's going to come down to economics. It always comes down to economics. And when there is an economic problem, there is always a problem. There is always a solution. It's just a matter of how many pounds of flesh are you willing to lose in search of that? Right? Like they can have a deal tomorrow

if the priority was ensuring that baseball is on the field in April 2020. But they don't need to do that at this point because they feel like that deal that they could do right now will be there in April 2020. to and they'll try and extract more on their side in the meantime. I mean, that's what this is.

It's a waiting game. It's a leverage game. It's a public spin game. I think all of the people who are involved right now, you know, we want to talk about it being billionaires versus millionaires. I think that's a sort of antediluvian way to look at this. To me, it's more about just how strong are the players. willing to be and what are they willing to lose? Because I think right now that the owners do not,

after going into as much debt as they've taken on during the pandemic, want to lose revenue streams again. And while the players felt it, they didn't feel it quite the same, I think, during the pandemic as the owners did. And because of that, I think they have some leverage on their side that they can use and try and get something out of it. It's just a matter of how much are they going to be willing to take to say, hey, let's go play some baseball. Yeah, I guess I haven't fully, fully flushed out that thought, that the owners, it's everything on a level, whether it's that millionaires versus billionaires thing you said. When there's no baseball, the billionaire side gets hurt more than that.

And we, Trevor. Yeah, but let's, like, this is worth noting. the billionaire side also made way, way more money in the years leading up to the pandemic. So I'm not sitting here talking about biblical losses. There was no such thing. Like, if you want to talk about how clubs are breaking even every year, I'm sorry if teams were breaking even every year, businessmen would not be like clawing over one another to try and,

own these teams. Owning a major league baseball team is a profitable venture. And when we look at the debt, this is an important thing to note. Also, not all debt is bad debt. We have like this idea of debt for the common person, which is generally not a good thing because you're paying ridiculous amounts of interest on it. Debt for rich people is something that they speak out. Like that's something that's helpful to them.

It's something that quite often enriches them because they can get that cash at lower interest rates because of how much they have, because they can leverage it against their, you know, their asset, which is the baseball team. And that's how areas like ballpark village and the battery and all these places surrounding stadiums get built. They get built on the back of debt that's taken against the teams. And then they take that money that they can borrow, build this thing around it. And all of a sudden, that's all of this money that they don't need to share and put into revenue sharing because it's not direct baseball revenue. And it's the brilliant coup of owning a baseball team in 2022, the ancillary stuff as much as it is the actual club. And we're going to see that more, I think, with gambling going forward to and all of the different things that clubs do to try and bring you into the ballpark. and the transformation of a baseball stadium into a casino.

I don't know if we're going to go that far, but it wouldn't surprise me if with a struggling club, we see free parking, lower tickets, just so they can get you inside that ballpark and have you betting in the geocash area. Pump a little oxygen in there, yeah. I think doesn't Wrigley have a sports gambling thing coming? Did I dream that?

No, I think they make. maybe the first. But this is a, this will be 30 of 30 in no time. Yeah. No, it's, it's nuts. I mean, just living in New York, I went to Connecticut this weekend and sports betting is legal there. Go see John in New Jersey, sports betting legal there. So the fact that New York, California, the big boys still aren't in it, it's going to change so much around sports. It's exciting and scary at the same time a little bit. Yeah, we're working on some stuff there. And figuring out how it's going to change sports and what it's going to look like is an awfully interesting endeavor.

Because I think you have people who are good faith actors in trying to regulate this the right way. And then you have people who aren't who understand how much money is going to be in it and who are going to look to grab and claw every last dollar. they possibly can. And that, you know what, in some cases, that might include the teams. That might include the league. And when players can't go out and get gambling endorsements or be involved in gambling in any way whatsoever, you can understand why the union is awfully skeptical about seeing any of this money and recouping these mass riches that could be coming into the game.

You know, they talk about wanting to get their right proportion. That proportion, it's going to be a lot of money. So if Major League Baseball is taking the tack that we're going to pay players the same because we feel like they are fairly compensated right now, you can understand why players are looking at what the revenues are going to be like in baseball and saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. we are not paid what we should be particularly with what's coming. Yeah, that's a man, I don't want to compliment you, Jeff.

But, no, I understand why some of our listeners love the CBA stuff because it really, I mean, you know, we're... Hold on a second. Do your listeners actually love CBA stuff? Dude, like, kind of. I, see, I love that so much, because it's fascinating to me. It's fascinating because it's money and it's power and it's leverage and it's all these things that we see in big business and on succession and in these areas of our lives where none of us or a tiny like percentage of us are ever going to get to be involved in something like that. So you almost live vicariously through these big themes that are being played through this sport that you love.

And it's infuriating because you might lose games on account of it because you look at them and you say, what are you doing? Why are you toying with us? Are you that self-centered to think that there aren't tens of millions of people around this? country who every day invest hours upon hours into your product and you're just going to look at them and say because of what might amount to be a rounding error somewhere we're going to shut down the sport like that would piss me off and I think it I think if it gets to that point it will rightly piss a lot of people off let's let's remember Jake they should play 90 games last year. They played 60 only because Rob Manfred had the ability to implement. So the idea that

this is all going to go away between the first and 15th of February, like everyone thinks, I just want to have my rightful skepticism in place here. These two don't play well together. If they are in a sandbox, they're trying to shove sand down one another's throat. It's not just like tossing the sand with the shovels, no, trying to choke someone out on the sand. And it has a chance to get extraordinarily ugly, and because it's as far away as it is and there's still a lot left to do, I'm just trying to be optimistic that it's not going to get there at this point. But get back to me like mid-January, I think we'll have a better sense of where things are at that point. Yeah, and that's, I think why are people truly do like it, besides your drowning people with sand comps.

You know, that gambling window, or what you said about, you know, the players, how much money is going to be put into from the gambling world into baseball in the next five years? I don't know. That's one of those things that I'm trying to figure out at this point, actually. Because we have to be careful of saying gambling is going to make everyone rich because that's not necessarily the case. I mean, you have to wonder what the license is going to cost and what the Vig that these companies are going to take. And more than that, how's Major League Baseball going to buy customers? right like if if you're in a state where gambling sports gambling exists and you are inside of a

ballpark are they going to be able to cut off your ability to go on to other apps and gamble like when you go into a stadium is the only app you're going to be able to use the one that major league baseball or the team provides and if so how are you going to incentivize customers to come to that stadium are you going to have to give them a little bit of a team Are you going to have to give them an odds boost? Are you going to have to give them a free bet? How do you do that? And the strategy involved there is going to be awfully interesting

and essentially Major League Baseball, trying to figure out how do we get customers gambling on these games in our stadiums? Man, and A, you've got the two kids in the sandbox trying to figure out that money, which I think on the labor side shows how truly difficult it is. we sit here and we talk with our buddies and we're like, I don't know, figure out the new playoff format and let's play ball. They got to figure out some real stuff. And if you screw up, it costs you a lot of money, you know, especially when you look at luxury tax threshold and a

couple things that have happened over the past couple years. I guess is there anything fun that's going to, at the end of this rainbow, whether it's tomorrow or whether it's February or whether it's the February after that. Are we going to hear full-blown rumors about 32 teams? Are we going to hear anything kind of fun baseball stuff that may come out in the coming months or so? I mean, do you like the game of baseball as it's played

right now? This feels like the start of a scary movie. No, I just, listen, I love baseball. I find some of the games and some of the pace to be. absolutely interminable so I think there will be pitching clock coming okay I think that's happening I think it's going to be 15 seconds for when no one's on base 17 seconds for when their runners on base it's gonna be like the minor leagues I

think it's gonna shave a bunch of time off of games that that to me matters I hope I don't know if this is ever gonna happen because I'm not sure the union would agree with it. I hope there is a 11 pitcher limit on rosters. This is something that will probably take a year or two to put into place. The argument's very simple.

I'm not even going to call it the death of the starting pitcher, but the starting pitcher has been severely marginalized as we've recognized third time through the order penalty, just how good relievers have gotten, and how premium stuff is at this point.

And I think, and listen, this may be because I'm an old, but I think starting pitcher matchup is like a real thing. It is. That in a sport that doesn't have all that many stars, when you have two stars starting pitchers going against one another, you want to see them pitch deep into games. You want to see them go a fourth time through the order. You want to see them be like the aces of the past, the superheroes who go out and throw nine innings. I'm not saying we're going to ever be in that place where they're throwing 140 pitches again. But the point is, with an 11-man staff, it emphasizes the starting pitchers that you need to get deeper into games. Because if you have rules in place about optioning guys up and down, so you can't do that to save your, you know,

to essentially have a new bullpen in there practically every day, the starters are going to know, hey, we need to have seven innings as a reality, not just, a far-fetched goal. When you have that in place, you're not going to have pitchers going out there and throwing max effort full tilt on all of their pitches because they know they're going to be somewhere between 80 and 100. No, you're going to have guys who are going to have to take a little bit off their stuff maybe. We're going to have to throw more strikes. You have less stuff in more strikes. You've got more guys swinging. You have more guys swinging. You're going to have more balls in play. That takes care of so many of these problems. And to me, the idea of having a 15-man pitching staff, excuse me, a 15-man offense and, you know, a bench with six guys on it.

And if you have the double-h-rule in place where if you take your starter out, you lose your DH2, suddenly we're going to end up with more pinch runners, more pinch hitters, the sorts of things at the end of the game that brings some intrigue into it. I am I am not a baseball was better back in the 70s and 80s guy. I don't necessarily believe that. What I do believe is that baseball players in 2022 are better than they have ever been before and it's not particularly close. I think they're stronger. I think they're faster. They're more athletic. They know what they're doing. They have this knowledge from this wide base of analytics that the game has gifted us. But the game has also gone, I think, in something of a wrong direction because of the analytics

and the way that they absolutely above all else worship efficiency. And efficiency is good for winning games. It's good for individual teams. It's bad for the sport. And so I think all of these things, when you put the players out there as good as they are right now, in a game that's more conducive to showing off their talents to not just seeing a three true outcomes game. I think it's a complete change in the trajectory of baseball going forward. And I'm not saying an 11-man pitching staff is going to bring us to this point of Valhalla where everything is great suddenly, but I think that the intended consequences of it would work and that the unintended consequences would not be so severe to negate the things that go in

favor of making that rule change. No, there was a couple moments this World Series and Braves fans turn off your ears or whatever. You've won the World Series, who cares? But back to back World Series starting pitchers, it was Dylan Lee and it was who was the other one, Tucker Davidson.

And it's obviously not shots fired at them, but you know, this is, it's the world, the Braves clearly won. They did it right. But the World Series 1 should be one of the best times of year to bring in outside fans and say, look, we've got the best team from here and we've got the best team from here. And they say, okay, so, you know, that kind of the next question is who's the starting pitchers?

And always, always. Like, that's the first question. Or it should be at least. And I don't know. I just, I want starting pitchers to have the resonant. they once did because I don't think there's anything more difficult to do in baseball than go out there and just shove like think about what's starting but like I'm just asking someone who even throws baseball around regularly or does not go out to 60 feet stand on a

mound have a catcher put a glove right there and hit that spot just once just once hit that spot out of 10 throws without the catcher having to move his glove they do that for a 100 pitches every night. And I know they don't always hit their spots, but what pitchers do to me is remarkable. And bringing back this idea of pride in starting pitching where a guy reaching 200 innings isn't some reason to go out and celebrate, but is actually both healthy and safe for their arm and helpful for the team.

I'm not asking you to go back to 300. I'm not asking you to go back to starting every fourth day instead of every fifth day. What I am asking is go deep into the game and save your pen. And save your pen because your pen's not very big. You have five or six guys, and that's enough. That's enough if you don't have guys throwing a third of a name at a time. I mean, if you don't have the bullpen clown car going into a game and just trying to manage every single little platoon split.

I get why they do it. Like, it makes sense. It's the efficient way to do things. It's just not the great way to watch this fan. Yeah, and I think I heard Wayno talk about a little bit. Like, you know, the phrase in baseball for years is the game adjusts. And the game adjust, but it wasn't in addressing the problem. It was you're a minor league starting pitcher.

You know, save your bullets. Like, let's get you through 75 pitches and you're good. It's not. They don't even. want guys to be the next Adam Wainwright. They don't, you're not getting trained to become that. And yeah, I'll give you something you can steal for whatever next article you need. But, you know, at baseball has been looking for the, you know, the equivalent of NBA where

LeBron has the ball in his hands every possession or the starting quarterback. You know it. Like, that kind of was the starting pitcher. I mean, I mean, there is one person, there is one person on a baseball field. who can dictate where every game goes. And that is the man on the mound. And if you have a starting pitcher out there who is capable of going deep into the games,

he can control that game. It's on him. Typically when guys are executing and making the right pitches, they're not going to get tagged around very much. And if you have guys who are going out there every fifth day and doing it for seven or eight innings at a time, I think the game is better. I think the game is better when you can go out.

out and say, I know who's going to be on the mound for presumably a long period of time as opposed to, and this is, I hate saying this, but it is reality. Generally speaking, relievers are failed surres. That's typically the way that it goes. And that doesn't negate how important relief pitching is. Like top end, top flight relief pitching is a joy to watch. their stuff is better than any starter out there. And it's amazing to see them just come in and blow guys away.

I just don't want that starting in the fourth or fifth inning. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, I'd love to see relievers. If you can pitch one inning, can you pitch two? Can you pitch three? You know, we saw that a little this postseason. Yeah.

I mean, we've seen it. And I think a point you brought up that makes total sense. A lot of it is about how we train guys. And I'm not saying you start at the youth level training. any of them that right i think that i think once there are 16 17 you know growth plates have closed and they are at their their man size or at least getting close to it then let him go and challenge him a little bit when they get into the minor leagues you know don't hold them back like the way baseball development works right now is so backward because they manage scared

They manage expectations for a guy. They manage his innings, his number of starts. I don't mind what some of these clubs are doing having guys start and come in in the middle of games just to get them that different type of experience. But if you feel like you've got a starter, stretch them out. Like get them ready for what is to come because there's not a finite number of innings guy has to pitch. Like, you're not going to be losing major league pitches by stretching them out a little more in the minor leagues. I think it's honestly sort of the opposite. I think if you get them ready, not just physically ready, but mentally ready to go deep into games.

How tough it is. You know, we have, I was talking about the scout about this. This was at the GM meetings. There was a scout and an analytics guy. And it was like three guys walk into a ball. Yeah, I was going to say, scout analytics guy and Jeff Passing at the ball. That's right. And seeing the back and forth conversation about this and where we agree on things, actually, all three of us, and I see myself somewhere in the middle, probably leaning slightly more toward the analytic side just in terms of, like, I believe in the math, which the scout acknowledged the math.

He just thought it was completely full of shit. because because he doesn't think that it acknowledges the difficulty in going out there the fourth time through the order when we have been brought up with the idea that even making it too or trying to go through the third time through the order is some sort of Sisyphian feet where you're just you know you're rolling that ball up the hill and oh no the baseball is just going to come and run you over because God help us it's the third time through the order And you know some guys like it's actually true, but to be planting that in the next head, or excuse me, to be planting that in the head of the next generation of pitchers, I think it's a really dangerous thing psychologically because there are guys who can go out there and crush it third time through.

It's just that when you hear how infrequent it is, you're going to start to believe maybe I'm not one of those guys or maybe I'm not special or, you know, who knows? And I wonder if there's a generation of pictures right now being raised with the idea that two times through the order, done. Right. And there's a, like, you can, I'll dumb things down to the scout side. That's where I live. You know, practice, if a pitcher has practiced getting through the third time of the order,

you can learn from that and you can grow from that. set up pitches and it's just not there. And even if you get absolutely shelled, you will still learn from that. I just, you know, I want guys to have an opportunity to fail. Isn't that where we learn? Isn't that where we figure out who we are, what we need to improve on? When you fail at something, if you don't sit there and look at yourself and ask, what did I do wrong?

What can I do better? You weren't going to make it anyway. It doesn't matter how talented you are. If you don't have the ability to self-reflect in the, you know, in the afterlife of failure, then you're going to be lost forever anyway. And some economics, some life lessons with brother Jeff. Jeff, we also, we forgot to mention the first free agent signing of this off season. You re-upping with ESPN.

Congratulations to you. Do you have any big stuff down the point? pipeline anything we should be looking for i know you uh when you had the the tautis article coming out you teased it a couple times you said you had something big coming where uh what should we be looking forward to from this off season i got some things percolate okay he said he said in a serious tone um anything silly you need to get off off your chest in this forum and anything you want to pepper me and bbd with oh i don't know i mean we only uh we only uh we only covered um tubes and boners already so i mean if there's like there's anything else you'd like

to get off your chest we don't we don't have nobody has enough time for that i mean do you have do you have an ad for tank cream like what well it's funny you mention that it's tvs tank cream no um we don't have that yet but our sales team is working on it um Jeff, I think per usual, I gave you short notice, and you gave us basically a full episode as co-host, so you continue to be undefeated. And yeah, we talked beforehand. You said, you know, there's a little bit of a Jake Jeff rivalry. I have no problem with that. I, you know, we talked about that.

I'm a good, easy target. I think we start spinning it to you and Trev. Like, I think you just, you know, you just put out. Like Trev right now is Wally Pip a little bit. Like you just put it on the table. Yeah, it's not a little bit. Yeah, that's Jeff Passon. Jeff, thank you so much.

Truly appreciate it. You've been awesome to us from day one, minus the wine thing in the lobby. But that'll be forever. We already talked about that. And as you know, we will be all over your Twitter waiting for the next update. Who's next to drop?

Verlander? Furlander or center guard probably. Okay. Okay. One of the arms. That's what we'll say. And remember, we also have like the qualifying offer. Right.

So that's, I mean, doesn't that just go to show when you have hard deadlines in place? Action tends to happen. Action happens. With Jeff Passon, breaking news, money, and fashion. Thank you. I tell you to follow him, you already do. We will be back Wednesday. day, Jeff won't.

He'll be somewhere. Somewhere better.