The Kevin Sheehan Show - Nats Fire Rizzo & Martinez

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Kevin and Thom today with their thoughts on the firings of Nats GM Mike Rizzo and Manager Davey Martinez. Also, some Terry McLaurin news from over the weekend and a Wizards' weekend trade for Cam Whitmore. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Chean Show. He is Kevin. Tommy's here with me today for obvious reasons. The show's presenting sponsors always, Window Nation, 86690 Nation,

windownation.com if you need new windows. Obviously Tommy is here today because I wasn't going to do today's show without them. Nobody knows the learners and the ownership group and Mike Rizzo and Dave Martinez in this town more or better than Tommy does. And so why don't we just start in this opening segment? We'll do the entire segment on Rizzo and Davey Martinez being fired. Go ahead. Give me your thoughts. I mean, I'm assuming that yesterday when the news came across from Passon, that you were surprised by it in the moment.

Uh, you know, I knew we were on dangerous ground, particularly after getting swept like that by the Red Sox. Uh, I knew those are kind of moments getting swept at home, you know, before a large crowd. And they did have a large crowd because they were Red Sox fans. Right. Are the kind of things that, you know, people wind up losing their jobs for. but I thought a week before the draft, you know, maybe the manager, Davey, but not Rizzo. Not a week before the draft. It seemed very unusual.

Right. You know, so that's what I was taken aback by was that Mike Rizzo included in the firing. Now, both of them have their contract extensions to where the learners would have had to made a decision later this month, whether to extend them or not. Or let it run out. So I'm sure that, right, I'm sure that has come into play as well. But I was surprised much more about Rizzo than I was about Davey. All right.

So give me your thoughts on all of this. Oh, you know, look, I beat this drum, and there's people out, some people out there that I don't want to hear. You know, they look at Mike's record. of drafting, you know, after they got good, and it hasn't been that good in player personnel drafting, okay? And they look at the way the team play sometimes, particularly of late on the field, where they look like they're not disciplined, they're not in the game,

and that reflects poorly on Dave Martinez. I get all that, okay? And that's what fans can see. But to beat a dead horse, they're both operating with both hands tied behind their back. They are literally handcuffed. You know, if there's a town, if there's any town in America that knows the impact of bad ownership, it should be Washington, D.C. I know it's a cliche.

people, lots of people say, oh, it's blame the owners, you know, they don't spend enough money, but that's reality. That's the reality here. And so, you know, the things that Mike has done bad, the things that Davey has done bad, they can't be disconnected to the lack of ability to do their jobs because of the learner's miserly way of doing business. I mean, it's just, you can't I keep saying it, but I can't ignore it. This year they spent $65 million on their active roster. Okay, that's just, that's insane. And think about this.

Think about what I talk about being handcuffed by the owners. There's just one example of, I'm sure, many, many more. Okay. In 2019 after the World Series, Ted Lerner signed Stephen Strasbourg, to his seven-year $245 million contract with Scott Boris. He did so behind Mike Rizzo's back. Rizzo was frozen out of the deal. Why?

Okay. Because Rizzo never would have went for the deal. Mike never would have gotten given Strasbourg a seven-year deal, given how fragile he was. Probably less than half that, if anything. So they went behind his back. Right. And they made this deal.

Now, Steven Strasberg is still getting paid $35 million a year. He's been retired for a couple years and hasn't pitched in a game of any consequence since the World Series. Okay, that's $35 million a year. That's more than half of the entire active roster payroll the team is spending right now. Imagine if they had that, if Mike had that $35 million. to add to the $65 million, and then you're looking at $100 million, still Paltry.

But enough maybe to get a higher level of free agent than Paul, or Josh Bell, you know, guys like that, you know, Michael Soroka,

just to get a little higher level of free agent than that. That's just one example of countless things that, that the learners have done to basically handcuff their baseball operations people. So when we judge the baseball operations people, I don't think you can fairly judge them without knowing that they've got their hands tied behind their back.

By the way, the Nats payroll is 27th in the league right now this year. That's where it is among the 30 MLB teams. And it's specific, though. I mean, payroll can be interpreted. There's all kinds of different figures. Right. Okay. I am going with the active roster payroll.

That's what it is. Active is 27th. Total payroll allocations is 23rd. Okay. Yeah. And last year, it was $60 million. And a year before that, it was $60 million. Yeah.

So I had Chelsea Janes from the Washington Post on the radio show today, and she said something that I thought was interesting. She said that one of the reasons that she was taken aback a little bit about what happened yesterday is that the action was swift and decisive, and that's out of character for the ownership group, at least, you know, these days. And I'm wondering if, you know, any of that played into your reaction, because, you know, because many have claimed that they've been disconnected from the reality of the situation and even their part in it. Did you feel that way at all? Not really. I've come to expect that.

You know, they have not shown, they have not been a very active ownership, except with the occasional statement, the occasional mealy-mouth statement that we get from them. they don't they don't sit down and do interviews okay maybe in spring training mark will do an interview with the post or something like that uh but uh no it that that that doesn't surprise Tommy talk about the ownership because when Ted died Ted Lerner passed away in 2023 you've referred to you know there's several people involved we as fans you know Mark Lerner. That's essentially it. He is the top dog among the ownership group. But just describe the makeup of the ownership group because I think that is a mystery to a lot of fans.

Well, I don't know the exact makeup, but the key decision makers here are Mark is two sisters and their husbands. Okay. So Mark, two sisters and Mark's two brothers. and laws. Yes. And they are all involved in the business? Yes. Well, to some extent.

Okay. They are all the decision makers. I know it's like if anything significant has to be done, it should be done with them involved. And the divide, as I understand it, is between the two brothers and to sell the team, is between the two brother-in-laws and Mark and Mark's sisters have sided with him. Mark's sisters have sided with their brother, Mark. Mark.

And the two brother-in-laws want to sell, and the other three don't? They have been. That has been the position. Okay. I have not had much contact this year with them as to whether that's changed. But traditionally, that has been the way it's been lined up. Why do the brother-in-laws have a say in this? Are they equity holders?

Do they own? Yes. They do. They're part of it. partnership, yeah. All right. So. And that story I told about Strasberg,

okay, there are, there are so many more that we don't even know about. And everyone in the league knows this. Okay, they have as bad a reputation as I make them out to have,

they have a worse reputation inside the industry of baseball. Okay. I'll be real curious how they go about hire a general manager. Look, we know. Somebody will come take the job if it's offered.

You know, people came to work for Dan Snyder. Yeah. So there'll always be somebody to take the job, but you're not going to get anybody good. And anybody who takes the job, it's going to know what Mike knew, that their biggest job every day is to manage upward. That's their biggest job

to manage above them, to manage the family, to manage the ownership. Mike Rizzo's statement in a text to Barry's Verluga yesterday. The sun will come up tomorrow. That's the job. I had a great run. Navigated that ownership group for almost 20 years.

Yeah. And here's the other thing. Yeah. This will be the first time the learners have hired a general manager. Right, because he was on Bowden staff. Yeah. And it was Sancaston. Right.

who brought Mike to Washington. You know, they inherited Bowden. They didn't fire him until he got caught up in the Smiley Gonzalez scandal. And then Stan Kasten hired Rizzo to be the general manager. He had already brought him in as an assistant GM. So they've owned this team for 20 years, and they've never actually had to hire a general manager before. Do they need to hire a team president who hires a general manager? that would probably be a good idea.

Okay, you talked about their reputation within baseball. That leads me to this. They're either going to, I mean, it's one of 30 jobs, so somebody's going to take the job, just like they did with the football team. We understand that. But are they aware enough of the reputation that they have around the sport? And do you think that they'd be willing to change? Are they capable of changing and then, you know, becoming, you know, an organization that could attract the best of the best in terms of general manager candidates and pay them?

And then the same would go for, you know, the open managerial position at the end of this year. I mean, is there any, you know, hope for Nat's fans that this reputation is fleeting? and I know it's been around for a while and that they come to grips with it and change. I would be shocked if they did anything other than what they've been doing. Look, I mean, having a bad reputation in their industry

is not anything new for this family. Right. Okay. In their respective businesses. Right. That's not, so I don't see them saying, oh my God, you know, we have to change our ways. Not these, not these guys.

Not these guys. I mean, the way they've gotten to this point, they're one of the richest owners in Major League Baseball. I don't know how much of a hit they've taken real estate-wise, but I'm venturing it's a lot since COVID. But these guys changing, that would be a dramatic turnaround. I know that we've talked about this in the past, but they did go through a period where they spent money on players.

Yes, they did. And post-19 winning the World Series, we had a pandemic. We talked a lot about that, just the worst possible timing for a franchise that really needed the financial boon that comes with winning a World Series, especially when it's the first. World Series. I mean, you know, it's been nearly 100 years.

They were dealt a bad hand. A really bad hand. Then on top of it, the ownership's primary business was commercial real estate and nobody was going to work. And then, you know, they started to look to sell the team. So we've been in this sort of state of will they or won't they sell the team. Then Ted Lerner passed away. Like a lot of things have happened since 2019, what's the most impactful in terms of what's ultimately led to them being super cheap and six hideous losing seasons? Well, you can't, and you can't deny that when the Nats were drafting in the lower rounds as opposed to the top 10 draft picks, when they were winning, their draft picks would be in the

low rounds. And Mike Rizzo's department did not draft well in a lot of those years. And that wound up hurting them. But, you know, this is what happens. If you're not a small market team, you have the ability to overcome your mistakes. That's why I always say small market teams can't afford to make mistakes. They make a big mistake, and it sets them back for years. But if, if you're at least a mid-market, or mid-to-large market, you have the resources to be able to overcome your mistakes. Right. Okay.

What happened in a couple of bad... Did the NACs have the resources of a big market team at any point? Not the Red Sox. I know. But you know, remember, they had a bad mass and deal, so there was that part, you know, that played into it. But you're suggesting that they were a big announcement. enough market that they could have overcome their drafting and developmental, you know,

farm system mistakes? Yes. The learners claim they've lost $100 million a year. I know for a fact that from 2017 to 2012, they got $300 million in massive money. Okay. I know that period for a fact over that five-year period. That's nothing to sneeze at. Last year, or 2023, they got $70 million in massive money.

That's more than what they spent on their entire payroll. So while it wasn't an ideal situation, to use it as a crutch like they did was disingenuous. So who are they going to hire? They've got this Mike DeBartolo that's going to take over on an interim basis. Let me just start there. The timing of this, people seem to have a major problem with it. How will it impact both the draft and then, by the way, trade deadline, to which Ken Rosenthal said, if they let DeBartolo be bold,

this might be the time to move McKenzie Gore. He's in the same situation, same year of the Soto deal. That would, you know, he makes a good point. He makes a good point, but that would, That would hurt the learners. That the learners, that would be a, the learners have gone on record and say that they think they're close to competing. Okay. They think that they're very close to competing.

And then to trade your best picture when you think you're, you can tell people you think you're close, no, they won't do that. Remember, another example of what they did to handcuff Rizzo. in the 2018 season, Bryce Harper's last year here is a free agent. Rizzo had put together a deal, a good deal with the Houston Astros. For a couple of prospects, a particularly good deal, since Harper would only be a rental for the Astros that year.

Okay? Rizzo had the deal done. He had his hand on the phone ready to dial. the learner said no, don't do it. Don't make the deal. So they wound up getting nothing for Bryce Harper's departure. I would think that Gore leaving would be that Bryce Harper fear. They'd be worried about what the signal would send to their fan base.

They've got very peculiar. They care about what the fan base thinks, but only what they want to hear and a very selective hearing. Yeah, you've said that before. You've said that they do care about what people think about them, but they also kind of lack real reality in terms of how people do think about them.

Like, they only want to hear the things that are nice about them, or that's all they hear. This is what we've encountered with so many other people in positions of power in sports. Snyder. The value of having a voice that will tell you what you need to hear is immeasurable. A few owners in any sports seem to have them. So what are they going to do now?

Mike Rizzo's gone. Dave Martinez is gone. They've got it. They'll have an interim GM. They already have that. They'll have an interim manager named at some point during today because the Nats are off tonight. They play tomorrow night in St. Louis. As of

this recording, they have not named an interim manager. When we get to the end of this season, who are they going to hire? Do you have any names that you you're going to write about or that you've thought about? Are they going to be able to

attract anybody? What are they going to have to pay? Will they be willing to pay it? They'll get somebody to do the job, but will it be better? Or are we doomed to be kind of what we've been here, which is a big market team, not L.A., New York, Boston, Chicago, but certainly a bigger market team that operates

as if it's small, the mid-market. You know, I don't know who they're going to hire to manage the team. Again, the learners are cheap. They don't spend a lot of money on their managers. Okay, so that's going to come into play. uh, and if they do this right, the general manager, whoever it is, will hire the manager. I mean, that's always the right way to do it.

So, uh, and I don't know who, you know, there's a couple of candidates, uh, that, uh, that would be out there who would be, it's, like I said, you know, Dan Snyder got people to come work in Washington. So there's people who would take the general manager's job, who were smart people. think, well, I can manage them. You know, I can handle the ownership. So I have, but as far as candidates, I don't have much to offer you. I mean, this is a future of watching James Wood turn into a superstar and then end up in New York or L.A., right?

Yes. Yes. Scott Bores candidate. Speaking of James Wood, named to the All-Star team along with McKenzie. Yes, that was good. And you're operating on such a thin dime like Mike Rizzo has done putting together the team, particularly this year. You know, you have to have some guys who have career years that you pick up, or at least good years. You know, like a Josh Bell or so many other free agents.

Like Michael Soroka was basically the only starting pitcher. the NAC wanted to add a veteran starter. They could only afford Soroka, who got $8 million for a one-year deal, and they only got him because he wanted to be a starter. He's coming off a series of injuries, had been a reliever for a while in Atlanta, wanted to go back to being a starter,

and nobody would offer him a starting job. The Nationals were the only team to guarantee him he would have a chance to start. So for three innings, and when he starts, he looks good, and then he falls apart. Tommy, how did they manage with the learners as owners to have an eight-year run from 2012 through 2019, where they were in the postseason five times, they won more games than anybody in Major League Baseball, with the exception of the Dodgers, and they won a World Series. With ownership like the learners, how did they have a run like that?

Well, they did have, look, Scott Boris was their, like their adopted son. Okay, they developed a growth relationship with Boris. And Boris saw a place where, you know, his number one draft pick, Strasberg one year, Price Harper, the next, would have a place to basically, you know, become stars. okay and Jason Worth, one of his clients as well, could have a chance to have a big payday and help change the franchise. So Boris and the learners became very tight in the early days of the learners' ownership, and he convinced them to spend money on his clients, I might point out.

You know, that could be an example of another thing that the learners did. I'll forget what year it was. It might have been 2013 or something like that. But it was, I'm looking it up right now as we speak. But in 2013, what's his name? Who was the closer before Drew something? Oh, yeah, the one that melted down in game five against the one from Stanford. Right, but he was their closer going in 2000.

and third meet. Right. Okay. Uh, but he had had a good year. Drew Storm. Melted down. Yeah. But,

but did not close, play well in the post season. Right. Okay. Uh, Ted Lerner called Mike Rizzo one day in the winter, said, I got you closer.

Okay. Raphael Soriano. Yeah. Uh, a, and a, Boris client, made a deal,

didn't tell Rizzo. They're closer. The general, manager had no input whatsoever. Yeah, that's not good. Not good at all. They had something going right there for a while. Rizzo was doing something, right? I remember, you know, this was thought to be a pretty good organization with a good farm system, you know, the likes of Jordan Zimmerman and Anthony Rendon and others and, you don't, you don't end up with the second best record over an eight-year period.

without doing something right there for a while. So it hasn't always been what it's been here in the last few years. You're right. I mean, like they had a lot of things. Like I said, a lot of things have to go right when you're playing close to the vest. Okay, they got Mike Morse for nothing from Seattle. He turned into a big home run hitter. Yeah.

Okay, 30 plus home runs for them. Okay, they got Tanner Rourke for nothing in the trade for Christian Goose. He became a 15-game winner. So they had a couple. He had a couple. The Gio-Conzalez deal. He gave away a bunch of prospects. None of them turned out to be anything.

And Gonzalez wound up to be a 20-game winner. Yeah, right. A lot of things went right. From the A's right. It's like they do for any front office. You know? But they're playing so close to the vest now that everything has to be right.

There has no room for mistakes. and every team makes mistakes. But some teams say, okay, we made a mistake, let's fix it. Yeah, it just, we went from understanding what the pandemic meant to the 2020 and 2021 season, to then, you know, that horrible season where they, you know, won 55 games, but then the Soto trade, which everybody, you know, congratulates. Mike Rizzo on, you know, the players that he was able to bring back from that trade, James Wood, the two All-Stars, for starters, McKenzie Gore and James Wood. And it just seemed like,

starting in 2023, I remember, you know, Rizzo being, you know, on a show somewhere saying, we're two years, you know, we're two years away from contending for a wild card spot in the National League playoffs. And he thought that first year would be 24 and then maybe, you know, this year and certainly wasn't this year. They won 71 games last year. I know. More than what people thought they would with.

Yep, it was. And if they had, the total, yeah. If he had been given the payroll to add a higher, higher level of free agents around those young players, they might want 80 games last year. Okay. Now, but with all that said, this year's roster, You know, the expectations among baseball experts, the next were a 68-win team at the most.

Yep. So, you know, despite the excitement out there, the experts did not see that based on the Ross State put together. The news is broken that the nationals have hired Miguel Cairo as the club's intro manager. Yeah, seeing that. He has been the team's bench coach since 2024. Okay. What do you know about Miguel Cairo? Not much.

Not much. I mean, he's a friend of Davies. You know, he was a bench coach for the White Sox. So, I mean, I don't know much about him. Will Rizzo get hired by somebody? Well, you know, it's interesting. You know, I talked to Mike briefly just to see how he's doing. He really offer anything in terms of what his future might be. Yeah, I think he could get hired to a number of GM jobs if they became vacant.

I also think if he wanted to, he could do well in the media because I think he's pretty good with the media. I wouldn't be surprised to see Mike show up on television and postseason baseball. Yeah, I think he'd be good at that. I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah, he'd be good at that. Yeah. All right.

What else on all of this? Well, you know what? I don't know much about Mike de Bartolo either. That's not a front office guy, the new interim GM, one of those guys, not familiar with him much at all. Well, I'm going to summarize kind of my thoughts here to finish up this opening segment. I wanted to hear, you know, all of what you thought beforehand because this is an area that you are so much more familiar. with in terms of the people and what's been happening over the last many years. But, you know, netting it out, not that I needed yesterday to kind of come to the realization

that this is true, but the arrow is not pointing up for this franchise, despite some decent things that are happening, James Wood, McKenzie Gore, some decent prospects in the pipeline. But as long as the current ownership group is in place, and I don't want to sound like we all sounded for many, many years with Dan Snyder, that as long as Snyder owned the team, they were never going to win. It's not the same thing. I mean, first of all, different people, you know, detestable people in the form of Dan First owned the football team for a long period of time and never had this success

that the learners had for eight years as the owners of this franchise. But I think, you know, you know people that have done business with them. I know people in town that have done business with them. And it's always been about business. It's always been about the bottom line. This isn't always about winning. It is the way that they've run their own businesses. You know, they have counted every single dollar.

And they are very, very disciplined when it comes to, the cost side and running the business and making sure that at the end of, you know, a given business calendar, they made money or they stuck to the way in which they thought they could make money. And I think as long as that's the case, you know, you're going to need that inside straight season. You're going to need, you know, everything to kind of come together for them to, you know, snag a wild card birth, you know, in a given year. I mean, think about the competition.

You know, they are running a business. They are more mid to small market minded. And they're competing with the Mets and the Phillies and the Braves and their own division, let alone the Dodgers and the Cubs and other big spending national league franchises. So, you know, absent that, you know, season in which everything comes to together. And, you know, they get, they're healthy and they have a couple of outlier years from two or three players and two or three pitchers and they win 86 games and they snag a wild card birth. Yeah. Overall, the arrow just seems to be right now as long as current ownership exists.

Not, you know, not pointing up. That speaks to the idea when you're a small market team, you can't afford to make a mistake that'll set you back. Okay, guys, teams like the Royals of Tampa Bay. Right. Do a great job. You know, you can't afford to make mistakes. You know, you don't have that luxury. The nationals aren't the Yankees, but they still should have been in a position to say,

okay, we're not getting our players, you know, from our farm system. Let's go out and spend a little bit more money. Okay, I'm not talking about, you know, Jason Worth kind of money, Bryce Harper kind of money. I'm talking about mid-level free agents, okay? Not Josh Bell for one year, $5 million. Right. Okay, and they were certainly capable of doing that.

Mike wasn't surprised, right? Yeah, I didn't get this from Mike. And I know he really likes living in Washington. Right. He loves the area. Yeah. He's established some deep roots here in D.C. But on the other hand, there has to be a sense of relief for him.

I don't know about Davy so much, but I always thought that there was a sense of fatigue that had set in. Like they were just fighting against their own team instead of fighting other teams. You know, they had to wake up every day to fight against their own team. and I think that took its toll on both of them. Because Davey never gave a hint that he was unhappy with the owners. Once in a while, he would use the word, and here with this was the key word. They both used it, hopefully.

Once in a while, they would occasionally say, hopefully we'll be able to spend money, hopefully this, hopefully that, when it was totally in their control. There was nothing to hope for, except that their owners would do what they're asking. Right. Well, they didn't, and they're gone. Best of luck to both of them.

We certainly like both of them a lot. I know you do, and I think 2019, and actually I think five playoff seasons and eight years overshadows the rest of it for me. Oh, I think so. I think so. Miguel Cairo is the Nats' interim manager for the rest of this year.

And then we'll get to the end of this year and they will be in the market for a new general manager and a new manager unless these guys turn the whole thing around. Who knows? All right, we've got other things to talk about, including the report that came out about Terry McLaren over the weekend. We'll get to that more after these words

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Before we get to the Skins News from over the weekend, we were just talking before we started to record this segment. And I told Tommy, I said, you know, I saw this news break yesterday. And I said, all right, I got to line up guests, you know, to talk about it on radio. I got to call Tommy to see if he'll do today instead of Tuesday. And then I said to you, I go, you know, I thought about something that this is a team right now that has become in town rather. irrelevant. Now, James Wood and McKenzie Gore are having unbelievable seasons. They're both all-stars. That's exciting. Everybody loves to go to the park a couple of times a year. Their attendance is way down like it has been the last few years. But they're a bad team,

and it's been six years now since they were a competitive major league baseball team playing for something, you know, throughout the summer and into the fall. And I said to Tommy, I'm like, you know, the percentage, and we've talked about this as it relates to the wizards sometimes, and even the caps sometimes. Now, there are moments for the wizards, like the draft. By the way, I'm going to talk about the trade they made over the weekend in the final segment. The caps at playoff time, and they're in the playoffs almost every year. But man, the Nats, six straight, hideously losing, hideously bad seasons, losing big time for six straight years, what percentage of anybody's listening audience in sports talk world in this city are really,

you know, reeling today or excited today? Tommy, it's just, they didn't, they weren't in the postseason for three straight years and then have a step back ear and now they're getting fired. This is six years of being completely irrelevant on the scene. Look, in the meters and the measures that we can actually have a sense of what people care about, they've become irrelevant. I know, and they weren't, you know. I mean, and look, it's not only that, it's now,

coinciding with the, you know, resurrection and on the verge of maybe an explosion of crazy Washington football team success. Let me tell you, Kevin, for years. I mean, I have been, I hounded the team occasionally with a column saying to be more, bold when it comes to marketing to be more aggressive when it comes to marketing and promotion to open up windows because they had an opportunity for almost two two decades you know where the team where the biggest thing in town was bleeding from every hole it had okay and and they could have taken that

momentum at that time and not just conducted business the way it's normally done, but really be aggressive. You know, to try to carve out a place in town where people pay attention to them year-round. You know, I mean, if you don't try it, how is it going to happen? And they had the opportunity with the football team in such dire straits. There was a void. It was like, like it being in a battle. And all of a sudden, the enemy that has been, that has been, that has.

crushing you, you know, has fallen into a coma. Yeah. And now, like, the other three teams, the wizards are going through this long process. The caps are going to be at the end of the Ovechkin era here at the end of next year, maybe. The Nats have been as bad as anybody for six straight years. It's going to be really tough because football rains in every town, pretty much for the most part. It's always been that way here.

But yeah, there were opportunities. And by the way, you know, I think a lot, I mean, there were periods with the Nats and the Caps in particular where, you know, people who had turned on their number one, which was the Redskins, were not only following the Nats and Caps, but were going out of their way to almost promote it in a bigger way than they would have because they wanted to stick it to the football team. They wanted Dan to see, we don't care about you anymore, even though they did to a certain

degree. And now, you know, they're in trouble. It's too late now. Yeah. They're going to get table scraps now. Yeah. I mean... I know it's pisses the fans off from those teams. And I love baseball. I know. Okay. I had to adjust the first couple years I was in sports talk radio business to not talking about baseball so much when I realized that the subject that you had to talk about in this town was the football team. Yeah.

Okay. And I don't like it any more than you do. I wish I wish we, I wish the nationals and baseball were a hot topic. You know, that people, but they just don't. Yeah, I mean, it's not there. Baseball's in this town is also, you know, it also has, and has always had, that, you know, 34 years without it, problem, you know, it would have been a completely... Another reason.

Yeah. Another reason I was on the learners to market aggressively. Right. You know, because of that void, you know, of baseball, they had to win fans over. I mean, it just makes me sick. It really does. All right. Speaking of the football team, not that this is like massive news, because this is essentially, you know, a repeat of multiple reports over the last month now, three weeks to a month.

Jeremy Fowler, ESPN's Jeremy Fowler, NFL reporter, reported during Sunday's Sports Center that Terry McClure is, quote, not happy with where things are with an extension, closed quote. We've heard this. By the way, Jeremy Fowler, I trust implicitly his NFL reporting. But, you know, they don't have a deal yet. And Terry, you know, letting out that he's not happy through his agent

or through whomever, you know, I don't know what he's gained. at this point. Here's what I don't know, and I am curious about. I don't know if this is a true divide, you know, a true confrontation and showdown between a team that does not see Terry worth what he's asking for, or whether or not this just might be the style in which Adam Peters and Lance Newmark and company operate. You know, Adam Peters and San Francisco, the 49ers, were very much a weighted out and get it done, you know, at the very last moment with their recent deals.

You know, a lot of people believe, you know, weighting typically benefits the employer more than the employee. Now, that doesn't always work out. It hasn't worked out with the Cowboys here in recent years. And I don't know the answer to that. If it's just, yeah, you know, we're not going to be that far apart when we really sit down and we really get after it here. But we're not ready to do that because we're going to do business, you know, the way that we're going to do business, which is we're going to wait until, you know, kind of deadlines make deals, you know, that time frame. I don't know the answer to it.

It could be this is just the way we're going to see them handle contracts and contract extensions. The only one that we really have is we've got the Sam Cosmi extension from last year, which didn't happen until September 4th. Now, Cosmi wasn't necessarily in need of it like Terry is, you know, with one year left on his deal and being the player that he's been both on the field and off it. But I think that I'd like to know the answer to that. Is this a, wow, what he's asking for, we're nowhere near. And he's not happy, and we don't know how we're going to bridge the gap. Or it's, yeah, we'll probably get there, but we're going to take our time on getting this done. We've got another, you know, two and a half weeks until training camp begins.

Well, I mean, I can't. I still think that he's in a better position than they are. And again, I mean, if we believe that much of the postseason and much of their personnel moves have been geared towards giving their prize quarterback everything he needs to make the most of his time on a rookie contract, then how can you not have his best receiver in the fold? they need him in the fold they absolutely need him in the fold i i my my opinion on this has not changed i think he'll have a new contract you know by the time training camp begins now what would be interesting is if he ends up becoming a training camp holdout uh this will be the most drama contract wise we've probably had since kirk although ben reminded me of the trent williams stuff but, you know, that was, that had a whole other, you know, piece to it, which was the cancer and the way it was handled or the way he thought it had been handled.

But, you know, we haven't had much drama. There's no quarterback thing to talk about. It would be interesting to me if he were a holdout to see which side the fans take majority, team, or. player. I've had and read from several emails over the last couple of weeks from people who say, like, this would be a terrible sign if Adam Peters low balls them or doesn't get it done. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, they just, they just went 12 and 5. Adam Peters did in his first year, and they almost made it to the Super Bowl. Like, I was benefited in the doubt Kev a year ago with Quinn and with Peters and new ownership. I mean, I of course would take the team side in this.

I would absolutely trust at this point until I have reasons not to trust them. And I said right from the beginning when the reports came out that they were far apart and that there was some, you know, angst in this, you know, negotiation, I said, this is not an easy extension. Terry's going to be 30. You don't pay people on what they've done. You pay them for what they're going to do. And the fans, and maybe even Terry and his agent probably believe that he's a top five receiver.

And he's probably not. He isn't. So it was always going to be. And yet what you said is true, they need him. They're in a Super Bowl. window and he's got this reputation that is impeccable. So you don't want to mistreat him or have any sort of perception out there that you didn't handle it the right way with a player like him.

So it is, there's a lot going on here. I still think they'll get it done because I think Terry wants to be here. He should want to be here. And I think the team wants him to be here. But you can't have the team go out. and set a terrible precedent of doing what Dan did in his first 10 years, which is overpaying the market by 20 to 30%. But this is your guy.

You know everything about this guy. True. This isn't bringing in like Adam Archelaide or somebody like that. Right. This isn't bringing in an outsider. You have to get this done. Whose side will the fans take if he's a holdout when camp begins? I think when camp begins it would be his side.

The longer he's a holdout, it would be the team side. Why would it change? Well, because ultimately, dummies who work for management will wind up supporting management. They just will. Okay. All right. The Wizards made a trade over the weekend for Cam. Whitmore. They now have

a lot of first round picks from the last three drafts. I'll talk about that to finish up the show. Tommy might have a thing or two as well. We'll do that after these words from a few of our sponsors. All right Tommy, tell us about Shelley's.

Okay, Shelley's backroom at 1331 F Street Northwest. I always point out when I can the menus of excellence that they have. You know, it's It's really amazing because in a lot of restaurants, they tell you to kind of like streamline choices, you know, choices of drinks, choices of food, or in this case it would be choices of cigar. Shelly's is the opposite.

Shelly's gives you a wide array array of choices. Yeah, they got a lot of choice arrays. Yes, they do. they do so much so that I can't even pronounce the word but I'll give you one example something that's that's near to me is beer okay you know I like a bar that has a lot of choices in beers even though I'm very limited in my choices okay sometimes you know I I like to maybe give a try out to something like that like you know they have they have my favorite which is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Right. And they have Stella. You love Stella? I love Stella. But they also have, you know, they have Budweiser, Coors, Heavy Seas. Have you ever had that? Heavy Seas? I don't know. What is Heavy Seas?

I don't think I've had Heavy Seas. Is that a Lager, Purple Hays. It's another, you see, this is what I mean. Shiner Bach. They've got that. They've got Amstel Light. They've got DeSkees. Heineken, Newcastle, Brown Ale, Paul Anner.

We've got multiple IPA choices on draft. Yeah? Yes. Shimey, Trappistale, Lindemans, Famboyce. I mean, they have exotic. An array. An array of beer choices. It's simple choices.

Yeah. Now, that's just a beer. They have an excellent drink menu as well. Right. And a food menu that's very varied as well. because Shelly's isn't afraid to give you choice. Some restaurants are afraid to give you choice. They don't think you can handle too much choice.

Not Shelly. Shelly's is confident in its customers. You can find out more about their menus at shelley's backroom.com. Shelly's back room, 13th and F Streets, Northwest. Get down there. By the way, would have been a great day to go down there on the 4th of July. Drop your family down somewhere on the cruise. crowded mall and then you make your way

to Shelly's. That was a hell of a suggestion from you. Real quickly, before I talk about this wizard's trade, here's one thing that I did not ask you as it relates to the big news of the last 24 hours.

Where are the learners on selling the team or keeping the team? I don't know if anything has changed. They were had the team on the market in 2022. Then after about 10 or 11 months,

they've taken it off the market. And I think, like I said, there's been a divide within the family as to whether or not to sell. Mark Lerner does not want to sell, and his has been the deciding voice in this. And plus, they're

not nearly going to get the price that the learners would likely seek. Baseball franchises are not raking in the dough when it comes to sales like NBA teams are, it seems, for some reason. Even though baseball revenue is up, attendance is up, viewership is up. You know, they're having a banner year in baseball, actually. But there's not people lined up around the block. You know, we'll want to write a $2 billion plus check to the learner.

which is what it's going to take over $2 billion. So I think that's basically in limbo like the team is going to be. It seems to me like really the only hope is a change in ownership. Yes. Well, this is why in Washington, when people say, oh, you know, you can't blame it all on the owners and all that, well, if there's a town where you understand you can, It's here.

God. You've seen it. We've had it. We've lived it. You know how a poisonous owner can affect the entire organization. Now, I'm not comparing the learners to a low life like Dan Snyder. I'm just comparing the way they tend to create dysfunction in their organization. We've all had our life's worth of bad owners for sports.

teams in this town. I mean, I'm sure we, if we thought about it, we could come up with an example of another city with, you know, four major pro sports teams that have been this poorly owned, you know, the majority of them. I mean, Ted owns the hockey team and the basketball team. Until recently, I like what they're doing now. You know, no one was going to put Ted on a list. of the best owners in the NBA. He would have been, you know, on the list of among the five or six worst in the NBA. Hockey a little bit different because of the results.

But, man, we have had some bad ownership inflicted on us over a long period of time. It's amazing that we're able to do a sports talk show that's got a D.C. sports focus. All right. Speaking of that. So the Wizards made a trade over the weekend. I was actually really surprised at some of the reactions to this trade.

I'll get to that in a moment. But they traded two second round picks. They've got so many picks between now and the early 2030s. Second rounders that they've been accumulating, first rounders, et cetera. And they took two of their future second rounders, one next year, and one in 2029. and they traded it to Houston for Cam Whitmore. You basketball fans certainly know who Cam Whitmore is. He was one of the highly, highly recruited high school players out of this area back in 2022.

Went to Villanova. Maryland certainly was on him early, and there was some disappointment that he ended up going to Villanova. After one year at Villanova was a first round pick of the Houston Rockets in 2023 at number 20 overall. For those of you who don't know, he's 6-7, 225, somewhere around there. A ridiculously athletic player. And the Wizards added, you know, their ninth, their ninth first round pick from the last

three drafts for just two second rounders, including one in the year 2029. They now have, from the 2023 draft, Balal Kula Bali, who they selected, they traded up to get him. They now have Cam Whitmore from that draft. Last year, Alex Sar, Carrington, George, their own picks. Then they traded for A.J. Johnson and Dylan Jones. And then from this year's draft Trey Johnson and Will Riley. Nine first-round picks from three consecutive drafts.

They've got now, they have, let's see, three, They have eight players currently, 21 or younger. Carrington and Trey Johnson and Will Riley are all 19. Saar, A.J. Johnson, Balakula Bali, and Cam Whitmore are all 20. Whitmore turns 21 this month. Kaishan George is 21. They've got a lot of young, you know, talented players, all of whom are first rounders. So on Cam Whitmore, I saw like reaction.

And I shouldn't do this, but before the show this morning, I just started, you know, seeing, I was curious as to what the reaction was. So I checked a lot of my, my responses on Twitter. Man, people are excited about Cam Whitmore. And I do understand why, you know, people know Cam Whitmore. He's a local product, you know, Annapolis, you know, Archbishop Spalding and was highly recruited. And he is a sick athlete, Tommy. me, he is a highlight reel as a dunker. There is no doubt.

He's one of those guys that dunks like he's pissed off, you know, trying to drill a hole in the floor when he dunks. I remember specifically talking a lot about Cam Whitmore prior to the 2023 draft because he was a projected, you know, much higher than even 20. Some people thought top 10 in that draft and some people thought the wizards should take Cam Whitmore. And I, you know, I did a bunch on Cam Whitmore before that draft. I was not a big fan of Whitmore going into that draft. Athletically, you know, lengthwise, there's a lot to be, you know, certainly curious about. But, you know, he was a player who didn't make the players around him better. He averaged less than an assist a game in his one year at Villanova.

By the way, that's translated into the NBA where he, He's averaging less than an assist per game. Now, he doesn't get a lot of minutes, about 17 minutes in his first two years off the bench. You know, playing time, certainly he's not been on the bench, riding the bench exclusively. He's gotten some playing time. I did not love his defense, still don't. And I felt like for a guy who was, you know, thought to be a potential big time score at the NBA level, while he was explosive, his shooting was a slow process.

Tommy, the difference, you can be a great shooter at the college level and then end up not being a productive shooter at the NBA level. And more times than not, it's the process. It's quick release versus average to slow release. The defense is just better at the NBA level. They're better athletes. They're longer. close outs happen in much faster, you know, processes.

And you have to have, you got to have a quick kind of a release. You know, it doesn't have to be super quick. It does if you're smaller, like Steph Curry, he's got one of the fastest releases in the history of the game, which is what, by the way, the year he came out, you could see, okay, he's only six three, but my God, the release is lightning fast. and I remember specifically saying he's got a very slow shooting process. It looks good, comes off fingertips, backward rotation, good arc. He shoots it well, but would he be able to do that at the NBA level?

So here's what I would say, netting it out. I'm still not a great fan of the player. After the radio show today, I watched some of the highlights from some of his good games this year. The threes that he knocked down were almost always wide open threes. he's really athletic. He is an athlete. He also doesn't guard and doesn't seem super interested in guarding. Now, it's hard because he's in games a lot of times in garbage time.

And so that's always a tough, you know, measuring, you know, time of the game because, you know, it's summer league-esque. I like the trade a lot because it's no risk, you know. It's like low-risk, high reward. He's 20 years old and he's talented. But I'm not convinced as some of you are. Like I saw people, you know, some of you said to me, there were multiple tweets that said, oh, Christ, why did we do this?

Now we're going to make the playoffs. And we're not going to have a first rounder next year because it's not protected beyond top nine. They're not making the playoffs because they've got Cam Whitmore people. They're going to win 24 games again, 25 games. Now, you know, I get it. They've got C.J. McCollum on the team. What if Chris Middleton's healthy?

What if Carrington really blows up? What if Saar and Kula Bali and Trey Johnson? There's always a chance the players that they have, but it's going to be young players. But it's not because of just Cam Whitmore. I don't see that at all. personally. I see a guy just like I see Carrington, Trey Johnson, maybe more than any of the young players for me, Kula Bali, but not as an offensive, you know, guy

that has a lot of potential and hopefully out of all these nine first round picks over the last three years, and hopefully with another two next year, you got 11 first rounders in four years, and three of them end up being stars. that's what they're going for here. I think trying to identify which of the players are going to be the stars right now is still hard. I'm really excited about Trey Johnson and what he can become. Cam Whitmore, he's a freaking athlete, there's no doubt, and he can finish at the rim as an offensive player.

And maybe coming back home is going to be great for him. He grew up a wizard's fan. but I don't see right now based on anything that happened in Houston a guy that's going to end up leading this team to the playing round next year. I don't see that. And I don't think we want that as Wizards fans, you know, unless it's like, oh my God, they found him, it's Whitmore, or it's Carrington, or it's Saar. Guy broke out, ended up becoming an NBA All-Star and an MVP candidate,

or it's obvious he's going to be in a couple of years. Absent of that, you know, I see 24 wins and, you know, a very high draft pick in 2026. I know you don't know much about Cam Whitmore, but I do like what the Wizards are doing, Tommy. I really do. This is the way to do it for a franchise like theirs where you're not going to attract free agents. You know, they're doing this the right way. way. And next year, you're going to have nine first-round picks from the last three years on their roster. Look, I agree with you that, you know, to take this scattershot approach to have, you know, enough ammunition and hope that a couple stick is probably the best way for them to do this.

But, I mean, what I don't get is the reaction that people assume this is going to work. Oh, I don't assume it's going to work. I just know that this is... Yeah. That, you know, they're on the right track. They're on the right path. They're on a path that makes sense. Doesn't necessarily mean it's the right path.

Right. No, it's the right path. It just doesn't mean that it's going to work. It's the right path because for a franchise like Washington, this is how you're going to land on, you know, a couple, two to three stars that put you in contention in the year 2028 or 2029. You know, doing it the way they used to do it might, you know, they had a 49 win season in 2017, but they were never better than Cleveland, you know, when LeBron was there.

They were never better than Miami when LeBron was in Miami. They were never a threat to win the title. this is their only chance of getting to a point, which, and by the way, it doesn't all have to come via draft choices. It could come with this trade. You know, when OKC traded for Shea Gilgis Alexander, nobody knew that Shea Gilgis Alexander was going to turn into a superstar. And so, you know, Cam Whitmore, AJ Johnson, Dylan Jones, these were players that were

acquired via trade with all of the pitch. that they've been accumulating. So it's not, you know, it's not that it's just going to be players that they drafted. It's the players that they'll acquire with all of the picks, you know, long before or maybe shortly before it becomes apparent that they've actually acquired, you know, a superstar player. I personally don't see Cam Whitmore becoming that guy. I hope I'm wrong, but I saw a lot more, and I, OKC definitely saw a lot more, in SGA's one year in, in L.A.

With the Clippers, then I think we've seen, I mean, he started, I think, almost every game with the Clippers in his first year there. Cam Whitmore's been deep, deep down the bench, in part because Doca, the coach of Houston is a defensive head coach. and he doesn't defend well enough. Not yet anyway, but maybe he will. He certainly could end up becoming a good defender. He's only 20. But, all right. Yeah, I mean, there are no guarantees of anything.

But it is in three years, Tommy, they have completely, you know, gone down that road. And they've stuck with it. Of lots of draft choices, lots of. lots of draft picks and then using lots of those draft picks to acquire more young talent, more young players who they believe in but still have a couple of years to kind of figure it out. And so these are all low risk, you know, potential high reward moves. I like the move. I'm just not convinced that Cam Whitmore is going to be that guy.

I hope I'm wrong. He is an athlete, that is for sure. there are going to be some highlight you know highlight level dunks he might be number one on sports centers top 10 next year once or twice

all right anything else I got nothing else for you boss I appreciate you doing this today so does that mean I won't my pleasure does that mean I won't have you back on until Thursday yeah I think that's what that means okay

Maybe you'll do three days this week. Really? It's one of the slowest weeks of the year in sports. Not this week, next week is, I guess. Is next week the All-Star game? Yes. Yeah. Maybe I'll have you on three days next week.

All right, see you. Back tomorrow, everybody. Hi, buddy. The kick in here it comes. Swag and abyss! Swag in a mess! Swag in a mess! And a World Series game seven winning Curly W is in the box.

The celebration is on the Washington Nationals or the world champions.