00:00:07
Speaker 1: Howdy, there's the splash. You're back here with Splash Hit Territory. I'm your host today, Scott Osler, and I'm with Susan Slessor, our frequent contributor and our wheelhouse person and do-everything person.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Our MVP, really, let's say it.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: And I love Jeremy, and I love myself, but we don't multitask like you do and do all the technical stuff, too, along with the expertise.
00:00:29
Speaker 2: So, good to have you, Susan.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: We'll see how Jeremy does when I'm in the UK, because I'm going to be ceding many of those duties to him, so any Any screw-ups from here on? They've all been my screw-ups to date. I will just blame on Jeremy even if he's not there that day. That's my plan.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: Well, I hope he's a lot slicker than I am with the technical stuff. I'm sure he is. Being 40 years younger or whatever. We've got kind of a theme we're going to work on today, at least to get started. And it's like we're looking at the playoffs and we're looking at the teams that are being successful. And if you're a Giants fan, what team or teams– would you kind of like to see your Giants emulate in their style of play, the way they build the.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: Team, that kind of stuff?
00:01:11
Speaker 1: Who are you looking at? What team are you looking at saying, that could be us in a year or two or three if we do things the way they did? As you look at it, Susan, is there a team or two that stand out to you?
00:01:24
Speaker 3: Well, I think the Giants are always like the Brewers. I think the Brewers have been a little bit of a model, especially this last two years, Zach Manazian worked for the brewers. You know, he came up working under Doug Melvin with the brewers. So certainly I think there as a look, the giants aren't a small market team. The brewers are a small, literally a small market team. That's not a huge TV. So why are you looking at the brewers? Well, the brewers are sort of in the middle of the spending consistently. They probably could spend a little bit more, but you know, they do have some legit budget constraints. The giants could spend much more. But the Brewers do it so, you know, they're so smart about what they do. And they're very no fuss, no muss, no drama. They have a manager who came from the college ranks. Now, he obviously had quite a bit of pro experience already in Pat Murphy, who's fantastic, really suits them well. So you could go like, well, maybe a little crossover there with Tony Vitello. They're friends. And I know he picked Pat Murphy's brain. So I kind of like that. I just personally, I always like watching the Brewers. I like to watch the way they play. And I think Vitello would very much be on board from what we saw this last, maybe in the last month or two with pushing the action the way that the Brewers do, you know, small ball and running and all that kind of doing things well, doing things the right way. And that's sort of one of the consistence, like the other one you could point out really obviously would be like the White Sox. Everybody now wants to be the White Sox. Like, wow, you did this pretty quick turnaround rebuild, and you got a smart young manager in Will Venable. Maybe we could be like you. Now, they were in the bottom of spending, kind of the bottom three, just two years ago. They're back up kind of toward the middle also. I think they, you know, I'm not sure where they thought they were in their rebuild, if they thought that this was a year that they would go. But this does show with the White Sox that teams, if you play well, If you eliminate mistakes, if you throw strikes, you can catch fire. Now, the American League Central, American League in general, I'm not necessarily sure. Any team should be emulating anybody because the American League was just not great this year. But the White Sox have something. So I do like that. And plus, it's always just fun. This time of year, Scott, when you get the playoffs going on, to see like the former giants guys. I mean, certainly they traded so many guys.
00:03:57
Speaker 2: Mauricio Dubon is doing pretty well.
00:04:00
Speaker 3: I was going to say Mauricio Dubon has really just been one of the absolute delights of this post season is seeing how well he's done now. Obviously he was like, what last with the team went 2021. So it's been some time, but wow, he's really come into his own and he, you know, he had so many people in the organization who really believed in him. And I hope those people sort of retroactively are getting a little, you know, kudos to, to them for, for always believing in Dubon. It just took, sometimes it takes guys a little longer. I always wonder about those guys. Like sometimes they just don't ever get the right opportunity to grow, you know, much later in their career like that. Yaz, same thing. He's there.
00:04:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: That's kind of a fun team to watch really for, for people who pay attention to the Giants is to watch, the Braves. Obviously, I think Giants fans, most of all, when it comes to this time of year, Scott, they are probably hate watching the Dodgers more than anything. I would, I would say that is my number one thing.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: Well, that's always, but even more so now to see them going, see them going for three in a row.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: And with Otani, the guy they stole from the, from our Giants, you know, and just, it just, it's kind of galling, you know, but it's weird.
00:05:21
Speaker 2: It's, Yeah.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: And that's a team you can't emulate. That's a team you can only hate. You can't emulate.
00:05:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't emulate them because you can't spend that much money because they have all the money in the world.
00:05:32
Speaker 2: There's no money left over.
00:05:34
Speaker 1: And like the Brewers, I was looking, the Brewers spend $ 125 million in salary. And, wow, and the Tampa Bay Rays are $ 90 million. So $ 215 million between those two teams. There's nine teams in baseball that spend... more than both those teams put together. So it's weird because you got, you would think that money can buy a championship, which it did for the Dodgers the last couple of years. And yet you get the teams on the other end of the spectrum that are proving just the opposite.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: I don't know what to believe. I, I used to believe that money was bad, but I don't know the Dodgers. I mean, the brewers and stuff are making it look good. One thing about the brewers is they're, they're not necessarily just a big star driven team. Like I was looking at most of the teams that are in the playoffs have, four, five, and, and, and six all-stars on their team. And the, and the Brewers have, I think two.
00:06:27
Speaker 3: So yeah. And they're not.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: A big star team.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: So you can, you can do it with some kind of esprit de corps and scrappiness and everything, which is, I think what the, what the Giants fans would like to see. And I think that that's one of the reasons why a lot of Giants fans would like to see some of the young kids come in because they see them as bringing that, that energy and scrappiness and, and future, you know, their, here comes the future as a dragon through the past.
00:06:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker 3: One of the things I like looking at is, is how teams were assembled. SportTrack actually has a really interesting, it's very easy to find on the website, SportTrack. And under each team, there's a tab that I can't remember exactly how they term it. Like, I don't think it's like how they were built, but acquisitions, something like that. The brewers are half homegrown, which was, it's on the high side. Yeah. And I, you know, the giants could do that. Certainly the Dodgers are always, uh, more homegrown than you think. However, even though like you go like, Oh, that's maybe not as many free agents as I thought, you know, there are six free agents are always our guys are making two 300 million or whatever. So that throws that out the window for me and trades, you know, it's re it's really most of these teams. it's the draft and trades and the draft comes into play there too. So the fact that the Giants farm system, and I do think this goes under the radar still too much. I wish it didn't. The fact that the Giants farm system is so much better than it was. And I think that they have actually been a little better than they were rated for quite some time, but they've really taken a step forward. Clearly Giants fans know now that, you know, that these young outfielders coming and all the young shortstops in the lower levels. There's an enormous amount of talent there. The affiliates all did very well this year, which you also like to see sort of instill some winning and camaraderie. But by the end of the season with the Giants team, you know, it's sort of half river cats and half flying squirrels. And you could really feel like these were guys who have come up through the levels together and, you know, really gel, really mesh together. So maybe you do have the start of something there with guys from the system. But to me, Scott, the main thing that giants have to do is add pitching and you're just not going to do, you're not going to add some premier starters or premier closer backend guy, you know, without either making a substantial trade or two or signing a free agent. So they're in a little bit of a, I don't think they could fully rebuild. They certainly can't have, you know, it's sort of payroll. I think many, you know, we're looking at the, the giants out already blow the brewers and the white socks out of the water when it comes to payroll. So unlikely.
00:09:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:09:22
Speaker 1: I know one thing if they, well, they will go out and get some free agents of some kind. And if they get a really good free agent or two or three, it's going to appear on paper that, oh, they wildly overspent for those guys. Cause that's always the way it is. Oh my, I can't believe they got that guy, but he's not worth that much. Well, that's what you have to do. You have to spend and they're going to have to spend. They're going to have to be a little bit more free spending. They're, Rank in terms of the worth of the team is what, number four or five or something in baseball. And their rank in spending is down 11, 12, 13 or something like that. So I think they're going to have to bring that up more. I don't think the fans are going to continue to be okay with the team and the new investors and all this stuff raking in all this money and losing out on a top free agent because you wouldn't go an extra $ 5 million or an extra year or something like that.
00:10:12
Speaker 2: Overspend a little bit. That's what you have to do in baseball.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: The Dodgers certainly can pick out any of their top guys, even Chitwell, not Shohei, but probably overspend on everybody, but you can never overspend.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: On a guy like Shohei.
00:10:23
Speaker 3: No, no.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be definitely a clamor for the Giants to, all right, you know, I know we always want to spend their money and the fans want to spend the owner's money, but it's, I think it's time for the owners to spend a little bit more of their, of their money.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:10:41
Speaker 3: Shohei would have been a bargain at a billion, which is insane. Exactly.
00:10:45
Speaker 1: It's like he's doing a Steph Curry, uh, a category of, sorry to me, if you paid him, if you gave him 10 times as much as if you gave Steph Curry a trillion dollars a year, you'd still say he was underpaid.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: So same with Shohei.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't know.
00:10:59
Speaker 1: But we're not getting Shohei. The Giants are not getting Shohei, by the way.
00:11:04
Speaker 3: No, sadly. I would love to, at some point, not on this show, but in the future, look at the Japanese market. Cause I do think that Giants, I would love to see the Giants make more of a splash in the, in the Japanese market.
00:11:18
Speaker 2: We tried to get a pitcher last offseason.
00:11:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, they always do. Yeah, they have yet to really make inroads among the top free agents. And that's something I think kind of low-key would be very nice for them to change. And there's some decent pitching there this year. And the pitchers that have come from Japan seem a little bit more projectable sometimes than the position players. So that could be fun. I would be all in favor of that.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Is Shinjo still available? I guess he's retired.
00:11:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe. Yabu.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker 3: They had some really fun guys. Keiichi Yabu was a delight.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: And it shouldn't be all about marketing because we have a heavy Asian population in the Bay Area, which is great. And so there's nothing wrong with kind of going in that direction for that reason. But that shouldn't be the only reason. But it's an untapped market for the Giants.
00:12:17
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: It's something we got to, you know, Giants started that with Murakami back 60 years ago or whatever.
00:12:24
Speaker 2: So it's time to get back on that train.
00:12:26
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Lead the way on that.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: Okay. I kind of, you know, I kind of look at the Padres too. Like, again, I think the Padres would be tough for Giants fans to watch in the postseason and root for. Although Robbie Ray was certainly a media favorite while he was here, so I really had hoped to see Robbie Ray at least perform well, whatever the game outcome is. I don't really care. But the Padres being in the NL West, they're a little instructive too, except for they have a top baseball executive in A.J. Preller, who I think operates very differently from most others and certainly different from Buster. he will do anything at any time. I mean, he will just make moves like crazy. He's happy to spend money. He is incredibly proactive. I'm not sure that necessarily always translates into the results he's looking for, but they seem to compete. So I don't know. That's a little bit of a roster churn kind of situation there sometimes, but he's bold. And we've seen Buster can be very, very bold. So I'm going to be really curious to see how Buster handles this offseason, given as we'll come in out of the break and we'll do a quick break. But coming out of the break, we'll talk about the CBA. And I wrote about it the other day and ways the Giants could approach things and kind of the way I think maybe they should approach things. But we will be back right after this.
00:14:01
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00:14:28
Speaker 3: There's no bad seats in Milwaukee because the stadium is right on top of the field.
00:14:33
Speaker 4: It feels like You're in the grass.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: And you know what?
00:14:36
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00:15:03
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're going to talk a little bit now about the labor situation in MLB. As I'm sure everybody knows, coming up is going to be a battle, a fight. December 1, the contract between the owners and the players expires and the negotiation has already started. Things don't look good. I've not seen or read or heard any expert that doesn't predict gloom. The best case scenario, people are saying, oh, maybe only lose a couple months of the season. many people are saying the whole season is going to get wiped out. And if that happens, then everything's off the table. So it's, it's yeah, it's really kind of unpleasant. I will say this though, and this is not a commercial for the Chronicle, but you folks read Susan, you know, she knows her stuff. Go, if you want to kind of get a primer on the primer, however you say that on the upcoming strike and all the issues and everything, read Susan Slusser's story in the Chronicle. It was two or three days ago, but it's still online. And it gives you all the kind of the nuts and bolts, and it's really a good breakdown, especially for the people like me who are not so deep into all this stuff. I just don't, even I've been around a long time, and I don't understand all the nooks and crannies of all the negotiating and all this stuff. And the bird rights, that's NBA. So read Susan's story, and you'll kind of get an outline. But you were saying that there's something the Giants could do.
00:16:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, look, there can be strategy in and around labor negotiations when it comes to acquiring players. There are certainly a lot of players who would like to rush and get a contract signed before there's a stoppage. Because what happened last time, you know, that teams came out of the agreement and look, it was March and a shortened spring race. You know, there was sort of like a week long frenzy. You know, some teams are smart and found some bargains there. But players don't want to have to have that, oh my gosh, where am I going to be? Do I have to go to Florida? Am I going to go to Arizona? I'd like to know who my teammates are and my manager. A lot of guys like to sign early. And I kind of went, did a deep dive and looked at a lot of the deals from before and after. I'm not sure that there was necessarily any sort of huge difference in how much teams were saving or whether they were getting shorter term deals or more team favorable deals, but maybe slightly, but I think, you know, Buster being bold and really knowing, obviously they've identified very clearly what they need. They need backend bullpen help. Absolutely. And they need at least one top flight starter in my mind, maybe two. Now, oh, I was going to mention this, this complete aside, so sorry, but in our first segment, I'm like, Giants to watch, former Giants to watch in the postseason. You know, Buster keeps talking about, like, the bullpens on me. I recognized it. People go like, well, what about starting pitching? First of all, there are all those Tommy Johns, which, you know, that happens to everybody. But second, Adrian Hauser, besides that first month, was pretty good. And Tyler Malley, besides his kind of rough start, was very good and has continued to be very good. So, but... Last offseason, I thought you need to do more than Malley and Hauser. I would still argue that. I think they need something, a more significant addition to the rotation. So, you know, they do have Hauser coming back along with, of course, Webb and Landon Rupp and some really interesting younger guys, but they need more than that. So that's what I would say. Get some stuff, get as much of this housekeeping done before the stoppage.
00:18:52
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree with you that if there's two strategies, get them now or wait until afterwards and see what's out there then. It's definitely for the Giants, it's got to be get them now. I don't think, not only strategy-wise, but appearance-wise. People don't want to be thinking, hey, Buster's sitting back again, he's not doing anything. They want to see some action. And I think it would be really wise, Buster, stock up now, whatever you can. You can't Do all the deals right now. You can't solidify your team right now, but you can make a start. You can make a couple significant moves, possibly. I think that'd be a nice moment.
00:19:29
Speaker 3: This is, of course, once the postseason ends and then business can begin. They'll have about a month or so to get... Last time, during that time, before the contract expired, they added Di Sclafani and Alex Cobb, and then coming out of you know, going into that little signing frenzy before spring training, they signed Alex Wood. So they did a little bit of both last time, obviously a different front office. But that kind of shows you, you know, you have your checklist and maybe you don't quite get it finished and maybe you can find something coming out of it. Yeah, so the CBA does have a lot to do with what we were talking.
00:20:10
Speaker 4: About with the Dodgers, especially, and O'Connor.
00:20:13
Speaker 3: You know, teams feel like they can't compete with the Dodgers. Certainly, the Dodgers have a huge media contract, and, of course, they bring in tons of people from overseas.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: Fair play.
00:20:26
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons they have that kind of money. I have no problem with that. Local TV revenue right now is shared, but only up to, I believe it's 48%. It goes into a pool. I think one thing that needs to be done, no matter what the other issues on the table are, pool all of the TV money. Don't make it like a half-half thing. That's where so much of the inequity comes in is the TV money. The TV model is obviously not necessarily the end-all be-all now anyway. Streaming is huge. They have to figure that all out. And to me, that all needs to go in the same pile because it's such an unknown. The old model... You'll get $ 100 million from your local regional sports network. That's broken. So they need to figure out a way through that. Right now, what Major League Baseball seems to be doing is attaching the salary cap to any proposal. So, oh, you guys want this one? Salary cap. The players aren't going to go for a salary cap. So as long as the players insist on the salary cap, we will continue to have a work stoppage. It's just, you know, that you look at what's happened in other leagues with salary caps and the major league baseball players hear from the other unions from, you know, especially the NHL, which has been like, don't ever do this. Don't add a salary cap. Baseball's held firm. Last time salary cap was not on the table. And we still lost, you know, a little chunk of spring training and it got rushed and all that. And that wasn't on that table. So this could be a very long thing unless baseball comes to its senses and says, you know what, salary cap. One thing I think everybody would like to see is some sort of spending minimum.
00:22:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:22:18
Speaker 4: 100%.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker 3: MLB says you can't do that without a salary cap. Of course you can do that without a salary cap. You're making rules. So I don't know.
00:22:29
Speaker 2: We'll call that the.
00:22:30
Speaker 3: Consequences with things. But I just don't see where the players have a very big war chest. They have kind of the fact that they could survive a full year without playing. Major League Baseball is looking at record profits, record franchise valuations, which just keep going up. We saw the Angels and the Padres going for record amounts. Do they want to interrupt this with another work stoppage all in 1994, which took years to come back from and took two guys having extraordinary, whatever you want to say about those home run seasons. It was fun to watch at the time.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: It was very juicy. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker 3: I'm not sure any of those conditions exist for baseball to get kind of a quick turnaround and come back to the profitability that the owners are seeing now. Everyone's making money. Don't mess with it. Let's just bring it back. What I hate most, and I'm sorry, I feel like I'm going on this rant, but people lose their jobs and sometimes forever in these things. You know, whole departments, teams wipe out whole departments that are already teams that are getting rid of scouts. It's just, it's really astonishing. Your minor league operations keep going. Your development keeps going. But you don't need stuff at your own ballpark. You don't need, you know, a lot of your sort of other community relations, public relations, ballpark operations, all of these things, these people are getting laid off and let go.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: And like you point out in your story, even the, like the ushers and the people that clean the restrooms at the ballpark and the concessions, people and all that stuff.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: Those are the people that really need the money. They can't, they can't afford it to lose the season.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: Baseball players can, and owners for sure can, but those people, man, they're, you gotta make the rent.
00:24:20
Speaker 2: So it would be kind of sad.
00:24:21
Speaker 3: It's millionaires arguing with billionaires. I'm always going to side with the labor.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: I know.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: Look, I'm in a union, I'm for the labor, but, uh, but the people that really get hurt are neither the billionaires nor the millionaires. They're the other people in the game. And some people just never, I know plenty of people that got laid off and never got, never came back from even going back to 94. Um, but certainly from the last one and some really, really good people, of course there were, um, good people that lost their jobs and never got back to baseball. So that just give up the salary cap thing. Get it settled on other things. Maybe you get some sort of big other concessions for dropping the salary cap somehow.
00:25:01
Speaker 1: One thing I'm kind of sensing, though, is that the fans may be kind of taking a turn. I think in recent decades, fans have been basically on the side of the players in these disputes because they see the owners getting richer and richer. And we're seeing with the Giants, they're bringing in these trillionaire guys, investors and stuff like that.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: But I think some of the fans are saying, oh, you know, why can't we have a salary cap?
00:25:22
Speaker 1: So some of the players are going to have to do a good job in the players' union of selling it to the fans. This is why we don't want a salary cap. They're going to have to explain it in layman's terms. They're going to have to break it down because the fans are sitting back there saying, well, you know, it works in the NFL.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: It works in the NBA. It works in hockey. Why can't they have a salary cap?
00:25:42
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, baseball actually has had– Except for the last couple of years, the parody in baseball has been just fine. But you can still look at this year and go like the Rays show. Look, you've got the opposite, right? The Mets payroll is actually more than the Dodgers right now, partly because of all the deferrals to Shohei, which yet another, that's a thing that definitely has to get decided in the CBA. No more massive deferrals. He's getting $ 2 million a year. Are you kidding me? So the Dodgers have plenty of money to spend. Their most expensive player is costing them nothing for like, I don't know, whatever it was, 10 years. Insane. So they have to get away. They have to do away with that. But parity in baseball is pretty good. But the Mets, the Mets cannot buy a championship. They keep trying. Every few years, they threw tons of money at people and it winds up backfiring. So it's being smart. And honestly, I look at all these owners and rich capitalists, and I'm not, again, going to go on some sort of political thing, but... it seems to me not to be necessarily capitalism at its most pure when you're limiting how much teams can spend. Isn't that the whole idea is it's a free market? How is it a free market unless it's costing billionaires a little extra?
00:27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:27:03
Speaker 1: I think that's why one of the reasons that Florida would be so important is to weed out owners like John Fisher and the guys who seem to be in it just for the money. If you get them out and you get, bring people in, bring owners in. I bet Joe Laker would buy a team. I mean, probably by the age it was offered. I'm not sure he played in Vegas.
00:27:22
Speaker 3: He's offered numerous times, yeah.
00:27:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: And I think there would be buyers for some of these low-rent teams. Bring in owners, guys, women, owners that really want to win, and they would start spending some money too because, you know, these people have money. Has any owner ever lost a penny in baseball and owning a team? Nobody's ever lost a a dime owning a baseball team. On the contrary, even a guy like John Fisher, his fortune has skyrocketed while his team sucked year after year.
00:27:53
Speaker 2: And just, no, yeah, it's, but it's going to be tough. I do have a quick solution.
00:27:59
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll discuss it more at some point. You get rid of all the, you get rid of the owners, the players, union, all this stuff. And you say, we're going to handle this. We're going to, we're going to appoint a five person board of financial experts, people who have great ethics and all this stuff. and who are kind of moderate, middle of the road, each politically and all that stuff. In those fights, people are going to sit down and go with the premise of, we're starting from scratch. We're starting the sport of baseball from scratch. What would be the best system that would benefit the players and the owners? Maybe it would be not even having owners, but some sane people who could come up with a middle ground, some mediators, I guess you'd call them, but it's going to be a while before we get to any kind of sane solution like that.
00:28:44
Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot of fighting, I think.
00:28:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at some point there have been mediators that have been appointed in these things. The current political climate, I do wonder how much involvement the administration might take in this and how that might certainly be unlikely to be I mean, if you look at millionaires versus billionaires, the billionaires probably get a boost there is my guess. That would be the amount of involvement would be, you know, it would have to be kind of minimal. I think you can appoint like a mediator or an arbitrator, but I can't imagine besides eyewash how much would necessarily be affected.
00:29:30
Speaker 1: But you make a great point and not to get into any, But I would be surprised if the top, let's say the top level of government doesn't at some point become involved. in this whole dispute, at least trying to weigh in or trying to make some pronouncements or rulings or judgments and stuff like that.
00:29:47
Speaker 2: And if that happens, I think we know which side they're going to weigh in on. So that's another thing.
00:29:52
Speaker 3: To look out for. It feels as if a major topic, contentious topic in sports is, these days, they do seem to get more input from that area.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: From the big commissioner-in-chief, yeah. Hey, should we talk a little bit about the season closeout? Buster and Tony came in, and I guess Zach was there too, right? And to talk, kind of wrap things up to the final press conference. And to me, that's kind of awkward and tough after a season like this anyway. There's no real way, there's no way that Buster and Tony leave that meeting and everybody says, oh, man, we feel.
00:30:31
Speaker 2: A lot better. Now we understand why everything. Now they explain it and we feel great. So it's a lose-lose proposition.
00:30:38
Speaker 1: But just from outward appearances and from reading your stories and everybody else's and seeing the accounts and all that stuff, I'm not giving Buster and Tony super high grades for their closeout performance.
00:30:53
Speaker 2: What do you think?
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're kind of right. I mean, those things are a little bit formulaic. But after a bad season, there's always just some typical sword following. Buster has been very clear and very genuine in the fact that he did not provide the best bullpen. You know, the questions, the obvious questions about things in the future that, say, maybe journalists and fans want to know, they're not necessarily in a position to answer right now. coming back on the coaching staff. How are you going to approach free agency? What's your budget look like? Things like that. You know, two days after the season, they're not going to be out, but we get some interesting answers. They said pretty firmly, Willie Adamas is back at shortstop. I'm not convinced that that's a long-term proposition, maybe even a switch next year. So that's one Harrison Bader is back. That's one where I honestly, I think contractually, That is accurate because he is under contract for next season. I honestly would be very surprised to see him play in a Giants uniform again, however it happens, whether they just have to eat the contract, trade him, or other. I think they might be out of avenues for suspension because I think he's beyond the point where he maybe injured himself further through his actions, which is kind of what the suspension was for. But those are the only things we really got in contact sort of answers on so they always wind you up you wind up kind of feeling like oh I would have liked a little bit more but I just don't know how that necessarily would be the case we spend a lot of time asking a bunch of questions that don't really get answered but yeah I mean I think generally of course disappointment after a very bad season it's hard to get away from that fact and nobody's happy with it and they conveyed that.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's what's tough to do. It's tough to explain.
00:32:55
Speaker 1: Away a bad season like that and to explain to everyone's satisfaction every mistake that was made and how it could have been different and all that stuff.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: So there's no way of, like I said, there's no way out of that.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: But, you know, Tony and Buster, I don't think that's their specialty. I don't think, you know, Buster can wheel and deal and we're going to find out more. He's made some good deals and all that stuff. But I don't think Buster's specialty is just being super glib and sharp and With.
00:33:21
Speaker 2: The media, you know, that's not his favorite thing.
00:33:24
Speaker 3: He's definitely not glib. No, he's not glib. But I felt like he comes across as genuine and honest.
00:33:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
00:33:33
Speaker 3: And when he said that he thinks the Giants can contend next year, you kind of go like, I don't know. I think he very much would like to. I don't know if they've necessarily stumbled across the magic formula to do so. But I do think he likes some of the talent they have. And he certainly needs to believe in Tony Vitello. But we got some pretty classic Tony Vitello. I will say that because we got a Terminator 2 reference in there. We got bees can smell fear. So we got some little charming folksy-ish kind of insights into Tony's, the rambling mind and sayings of Tony Vitello. Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we didn't. So in general, it was, you know, it sat into a bad season, but.
00:34:22
Speaker 1: But we had a lot of things to talk about. We're going to be back later in the week with Jeremy. And one of the things we'll talk about is I think it'd be interesting. What do the players do now in the off season when all this stuff is going on? They don't just go home and sit and look for the thing to be cleared up. And I think a lot of them are going to be scattering to the winds, playing baseball in other places and be interesting to get Jeremy's take on what, what players do.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Do they play winter ball? What do they do? You know, so.
00:34:48
Speaker 3: No, they don't do anything different until they have to try to start preparing. I can answer this one real quick. They're under contract, so they're pretty limited in what they can do. Some guys play winter ball anyway, but that seems to be going away for injury reasons. Not a lot of guys are doing that, but they'll probably just be the regular free agent camps for guys who are free agents and then kind of work out camps where guys just go and work out like they did last time. The agents seem like they organize the union camps. helped organize a big one in Mesa last time around. So they find a facility where a bunch of guys can go and throw pitches and get in pages and stuff. Like all the stuff they probably do at the, whatever the workout facility is that they frequent in the off season.
00:35:35
Speaker 1: And then the owners will just go away and count their money for a while and come back when the Dutch settles, you know?
00:35:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:35:42
Speaker 3: They just need to start instituting artificial deadlines on these things to try to start going. Cause my impression is they talk every week, but really no, there's no, there's just nothing that is even significant to report yet with that. So, oh, well.
00:35:58
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: It's, it's grim, but maybe it'll work out. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker 1: Anyway, so let's wrap it up and we'll see you folks next, later on in the week. We'll bring in Jeremy and, Susan will be back behind the scenes for a little while, but we're going to keep doing this for a while. We'll get everything straightened out. We'll get the giants straightened out. We'll figure everything out. Any problems, come to us. We'll get them straightened out.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Okay. Susan and Jeremy. Okay. But thanks for being with us on Splash Hit Territory, and we'll see you folks next time.
Speaker 1: Howdy, there's the splash. You're back here with Splash Hit Territory. I'm your host today, Scott Osler, and I'm with Susan Slessor, our frequent contributor and our wheelhouse person and do-everything person.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Our MVP, really, let's say it.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: And I love Jeremy, and I love myself, but we don't multitask like you do and do all the technical stuff, too, along with the expertise.
00:00:29
Speaker 2: So, good to have you, Susan.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: We'll see how Jeremy does when I'm in the UK, because I'm going to be ceding many of those duties to him, so any Any screw-ups from here on? They've all been my screw-ups to date. I will just blame on Jeremy even if he's not there that day. That's my plan.
00:00:44
Speaker 1: Well, I hope he's a lot slicker than I am with the technical stuff. I'm sure he is. Being 40 years younger or whatever. We've got kind of a theme we're going to work on today, at least to get started. And it's like we're looking at the playoffs and we're looking at the teams that are being successful. And if you're a Giants fan, what team or teams– would you kind of like to see your Giants emulate in their style of play, the way they build the.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: Team, that kind of stuff?
00:01:11
Speaker 1: Who are you looking at? What team are you looking at saying, that could be us in a year or two or three if we do things the way they did? As you look at it, Susan, is there a team or two that stand out to you?
00:01:24
Speaker 3: Well, I think the Giants are always like the Brewers. I think the Brewers have been a little bit of a model, especially this last two years, Zach Manazian worked for the brewers. You know, he came up working under Doug Melvin with the brewers. So certainly I think there as a look, the giants aren't a small market team. The brewers are a small, literally a small market team. That's not a huge TV. So why are you looking at the brewers? Well, the brewers are sort of in the middle of the spending consistently. They probably could spend a little bit more, but you know, they do have some legit budget constraints. The giants could spend much more. But the Brewers do it so, you know, they're so smart about what they do. And they're very no fuss, no muss, no drama. They have a manager who came from the college ranks. Now, he obviously had quite a bit of pro experience already in Pat Murphy, who's fantastic, really suits them well. So you could go like, well, maybe a little crossover there with Tony Vitello. They're friends. And I know he picked Pat Murphy's brain. So I kind of like that. I just personally, I always like watching the Brewers. I like to watch the way they play. And I think Vitello would very much be on board from what we saw this last, maybe in the last month or two with pushing the action the way that the Brewers do, you know, small ball and running and all that kind of doing things well, doing things the right way. And that's sort of one of the consistence, like the other one you could point out really obviously would be like the White Sox. Everybody now wants to be the White Sox. Like, wow, you did this pretty quick turnaround rebuild, and you got a smart young manager in Will Venable. Maybe we could be like you. Now, they were in the bottom of spending, kind of the bottom three, just two years ago. They're back up kind of toward the middle also. I think they, you know, I'm not sure where they thought they were in their rebuild, if they thought that this was a year that they would go. But this does show with the White Sox that teams, if you play well, If you eliminate mistakes, if you throw strikes, you can catch fire. Now, the American League Central, American League in general, I'm not necessarily sure. Any team should be emulating anybody because the American League was just not great this year. But the White Sox have something. So I do like that. And plus, it's always just fun. This time of year, Scott, when you get the playoffs going on, to see like the former giants guys. I mean, certainly they traded so many guys.
00:03:57
Speaker 2: Mauricio Dubon is doing pretty well.
00:04:00
Speaker 3: I was going to say Mauricio Dubon has really just been one of the absolute delights of this post season is seeing how well he's done now. Obviously he was like, what last with the team went 2021. So it's been some time, but wow, he's really come into his own and he, you know, he had so many people in the organization who really believed in him. And I hope those people sort of retroactively are getting a little, you know, kudos to, to them for, for always believing in Dubon. It just took, sometimes it takes guys a little longer. I always wonder about those guys. Like sometimes they just don't ever get the right opportunity to grow, you know, much later in their career like that. Yaz, same thing. He's there.
00:04:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: That's kind of a fun team to watch really for, for people who pay attention to the Giants is to watch, the Braves. Obviously, I think Giants fans, most of all, when it comes to this time of year, Scott, they are probably hate watching the Dodgers more than anything. I would, I would say that is my number one thing.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: Well, that's always, but even more so now to see them going, see them going for three in a row.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: And with Otani, the guy they stole from the, from our Giants, you know, and just, it just, it's kind of galling, you know, but it's weird.
00:05:21
Speaker 2: It's, Yeah.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: And that's a team you can't emulate. That's a team you can only hate. You can't emulate.
00:05:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't emulate them because you can't spend that much money because they have all the money in the world.
00:05:32
Speaker 2: There's no money left over.
00:05:34
Speaker 1: And like the Brewers, I was looking, the Brewers spend $ 125 million in salary. And, wow, and the Tampa Bay Rays are $ 90 million. So $ 215 million between those two teams. There's nine teams in baseball that spend... more than both those teams put together. So it's weird because you got, you would think that money can buy a championship, which it did for the Dodgers the last couple of years. And yet you get the teams on the other end of the spectrum that are proving just the opposite.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: I don't know what to believe. I, I used to believe that money was bad, but I don't know the Dodgers. I mean, the brewers and stuff are making it look good. One thing about the brewers is they're, they're not necessarily just a big star driven team. Like I was looking at most of the teams that are in the playoffs have, four, five, and, and, and six all-stars on their team. And the, and the Brewers have, I think two.
00:06:27
Speaker 3: So yeah. And they're not.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: A big star team.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: So you can, you can do it with some kind of esprit de corps and scrappiness and everything, which is, I think what the, what the Giants fans would like to see. And I think that that's one of the reasons why a lot of Giants fans would like to see some of the young kids come in because they see them as bringing that, that energy and scrappiness and, and future, you know, their, here comes the future as a dragon through the past.
00:06:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker 3: One of the things I like looking at is, is how teams were assembled. SportTrack actually has a really interesting, it's very easy to find on the website, SportTrack. And under each team, there's a tab that I can't remember exactly how they term it. Like, I don't think it's like how they were built, but acquisitions, something like that. The brewers are half homegrown, which was, it's on the high side. Yeah. And I, you know, the giants could do that. Certainly the Dodgers are always, uh, more homegrown than you think. However, even though like you go like, Oh, that's maybe not as many free agents as I thought, you know, there are six free agents are always our guys are making two 300 million or whatever. So that throws that out the window for me and trades, you know, it's re it's really most of these teams. it's the draft and trades and the draft comes into play there too. So the fact that the Giants farm system, and I do think this goes under the radar still too much. I wish it didn't. The fact that the Giants farm system is so much better than it was. And I think that they have actually been a little better than they were rated for quite some time, but they've really taken a step forward. Clearly Giants fans know now that, you know, that these young outfielders coming and all the young shortstops in the lower levels. There's an enormous amount of talent there. The affiliates all did very well this year, which you also like to see sort of instill some winning and camaraderie. But by the end of the season with the Giants team, you know, it's sort of half river cats and half flying squirrels. And you could really feel like these were guys who have come up through the levels together and, you know, really gel, really mesh together. So maybe you do have the start of something there with guys from the system. But to me, Scott, the main thing that giants have to do is add pitching and you're just not going to do, you're not going to add some premier starters or premier closer backend guy, you know, without either making a substantial trade or two or signing a free agent. So they're in a little bit of a, I don't think they could fully rebuild. They certainly can't have, you know, it's sort of payroll. I think many, you know, we're looking at the, the giants out already blow the brewers and the white socks out of the water when it comes to payroll. So unlikely.
00:09:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:09:22
Speaker 1: I know one thing if they, well, they will go out and get some free agents of some kind. And if they get a really good free agent or two or three, it's going to appear on paper that, oh, they wildly overspent for those guys. Cause that's always the way it is. Oh my, I can't believe they got that guy, but he's not worth that much. Well, that's what you have to do. You have to spend and they're going to have to spend. They're going to have to be a little bit more free spending. They're, Rank in terms of the worth of the team is what, number four or five or something in baseball. And their rank in spending is down 11, 12, 13 or something like that. So I think they're going to have to bring that up more. I don't think the fans are going to continue to be okay with the team and the new investors and all this stuff raking in all this money and losing out on a top free agent because you wouldn't go an extra $ 5 million or an extra year or something like that.
00:10:12
Speaker 2: Overspend a little bit. That's what you have to do in baseball.
00:10:15
Speaker 1: The Dodgers certainly can pick out any of their top guys, even Chitwell, not Shohei, but probably overspend on everybody, but you can never overspend.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: On a guy like Shohei.
00:10:23
Speaker 3: No, no.
00:10:24
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be definitely a clamor for the Giants to, all right, you know, I know we always want to spend their money and the fans want to spend the owner's money, but it's, I think it's time for the owners to spend a little bit more of their, of their money.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:10:41
Speaker 3: Shohei would have been a bargain at a billion, which is insane. Exactly.
00:10:45
Speaker 1: It's like he's doing a Steph Curry, uh, a category of, sorry to me, if you paid him, if you gave him 10 times as much as if you gave Steph Curry a trillion dollars a year, you'd still say he was underpaid.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: So same with Shohei.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't know.
00:10:59
Speaker 1: But we're not getting Shohei. The Giants are not getting Shohei, by the way.
00:11:04
Speaker 3: No, sadly. I would love to, at some point, not on this show, but in the future, look at the Japanese market. Cause I do think that Giants, I would love to see the Giants make more of a splash in the, in the Japanese market.
00:11:18
Speaker 2: We tried to get a pitcher last offseason.
00:11:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, they always do. Yeah, they have yet to really make inroads among the top free agents. And that's something I think kind of low-key would be very nice for them to change. And there's some decent pitching there this year. And the pitchers that have come from Japan seem a little bit more projectable sometimes than the position players. So that could be fun. I would be all in favor of that.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Is Shinjo still available? I guess he's retired.
00:11:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe. Yabu.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker 3: They had some really fun guys. Keiichi Yabu was a delight.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: And it shouldn't be all about marketing because we have a heavy Asian population in the Bay Area, which is great. And so there's nothing wrong with kind of going in that direction for that reason. But that shouldn't be the only reason. But it's an untapped market for the Giants.
00:12:17
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: It's something we got to, you know, Giants started that with Murakami back 60 years ago or whatever.
00:12:24
Speaker 2: So it's time to get back on that train.
00:12:26
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Lead the way on that.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: Okay. I kind of, you know, I kind of look at the Padres too. Like, again, I think the Padres would be tough for Giants fans to watch in the postseason and root for. Although Robbie Ray was certainly a media favorite while he was here, so I really had hoped to see Robbie Ray at least perform well, whatever the game outcome is. I don't really care. But the Padres being in the NL West, they're a little instructive too, except for they have a top baseball executive in A.J. Preller, who I think operates very differently from most others and certainly different from Buster. he will do anything at any time. I mean, he will just make moves like crazy. He's happy to spend money. He is incredibly proactive. I'm not sure that necessarily always translates into the results he's looking for, but they seem to compete. So I don't know. That's a little bit of a roster churn kind of situation there sometimes, but he's bold. And we've seen Buster can be very, very bold. So I'm going to be really curious to see how Buster handles this offseason, given as we'll come in out of the break and we'll do a quick break. But coming out of the break, we'll talk about the CBA. And I wrote about it the other day and ways the Giants could approach things and kind of the way I think maybe they should approach things. But we will be back right after this.
00:14:01
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00:14:28
Speaker 3: There's no bad seats in Milwaukee because the stadium is right on top of the field.
00:14:33
Speaker 4: It feels like You're in the grass.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: And you know what?
00:14:36
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00:15:03
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're going to talk a little bit now about the labor situation in MLB. As I'm sure everybody knows, coming up is going to be a battle, a fight. December 1, the contract between the owners and the players expires and the negotiation has already started. Things don't look good. I've not seen or read or heard any expert that doesn't predict gloom. The best case scenario, people are saying, oh, maybe only lose a couple months of the season. many people are saying the whole season is going to get wiped out. And if that happens, then everything's off the table. So it's, it's yeah, it's really kind of unpleasant. I will say this though, and this is not a commercial for the Chronicle, but you folks read Susan, you know, she knows her stuff. Go, if you want to kind of get a primer on the primer, however you say that on the upcoming strike and all the issues and everything, read Susan Slusser's story in the Chronicle. It was two or three days ago, but it's still online. And it gives you all the kind of the nuts and bolts, and it's really a good breakdown, especially for the people like me who are not so deep into all this stuff. I just don't, even I've been around a long time, and I don't understand all the nooks and crannies of all the negotiating and all this stuff. And the bird rights, that's NBA. So read Susan's story, and you'll kind of get an outline. But you were saying that there's something the Giants could do.
00:16:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, look, there can be strategy in and around labor negotiations when it comes to acquiring players. There are certainly a lot of players who would like to rush and get a contract signed before there's a stoppage. Because what happened last time, you know, that teams came out of the agreement and look, it was March and a shortened spring race. You know, there was sort of like a week long frenzy. You know, some teams are smart and found some bargains there. But players don't want to have to have that, oh my gosh, where am I going to be? Do I have to go to Florida? Am I going to go to Arizona? I'd like to know who my teammates are and my manager. A lot of guys like to sign early. And I kind of went, did a deep dive and looked at a lot of the deals from before and after. I'm not sure that there was necessarily any sort of huge difference in how much teams were saving or whether they were getting shorter term deals or more team favorable deals, but maybe slightly, but I think, you know, Buster being bold and really knowing, obviously they've identified very clearly what they need. They need backend bullpen help. Absolutely. And they need at least one top flight starter in my mind, maybe two. Now, oh, I was going to mention this, this complete aside, so sorry, but in our first segment, I'm like, Giants to watch, former Giants to watch in the postseason. You know, Buster keeps talking about, like, the bullpens on me. I recognized it. People go like, well, what about starting pitching? First of all, there are all those Tommy Johns, which, you know, that happens to everybody. But second, Adrian Hauser, besides that first month, was pretty good. And Tyler Malley, besides his kind of rough start, was very good and has continued to be very good. So, but... Last offseason, I thought you need to do more than Malley and Hauser. I would still argue that. I think they need something, a more significant addition to the rotation. So, you know, they do have Hauser coming back along with, of course, Webb and Landon Rupp and some really interesting younger guys, but they need more than that. So that's what I would say. Get some stuff, get as much of this housekeeping done before the stoppage.
00:18:52
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree with you that if there's two strategies, get them now or wait until afterwards and see what's out there then. It's definitely for the Giants, it's got to be get them now. I don't think, not only strategy-wise, but appearance-wise. People don't want to be thinking, hey, Buster's sitting back again, he's not doing anything. They want to see some action. And I think it would be really wise, Buster, stock up now, whatever you can. You can't Do all the deals right now. You can't solidify your team right now, but you can make a start. You can make a couple significant moves, possibly. I think that'd be a nice moment.
00:19:29
Speaker 3: This is, of course, once the postseason ends and then business can begin. They'll have about a month or so to get... Last time, during that time, before the contract expired, they added Di Sclafani and Alex Cobb, and then coming out of you know, going into that little signing frenzy before spring training, they signed Alex Wood. So they did a little bit of both last time, obviously a different front office. But that kind of shows you, you know, you have your checklist and maybe you don't quite get it finished and maybe you can find something coming out of it. Yeah, so the CBA does have a lot to do with what we were talking.
00:20:10
Speaker 4: About with the Dodgers, especially, and O'Connor.
00:20:13
Speaker 3: You know, teams feel like they can't compete with the Dodgers. Certainly, the Dodgers have a huge media contract, and, of course, they bring in tons of people from overseas.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: Fair play.
00:20:26
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons they have that kind of money. I have no problem with that. Local TV revenue right now is shared, but only up to, I believe it's 48%. It goes into a pool. I think one thing that needs to be done, no matter what the other issues on the table are, pool all of the TV money. Don't make it like a half-half thing. That's where so much of the inequity comes in is the TV money. The TV model is obviously not necessarily the end-all be-all now anyway. Streaming is huge. They have to figure that all out. And to me, that all needs to go in the same pile because it's such an unknown. The old model... You'll get $ 100 million from your local regional sports network. That's broken. So they need to figure out a way through that. Right now, what Major League Baseball seems to be doing is attaching the salary cap to any proposal. So, oh, you guys want this one? Salary cap. The players aren't going to go for a salary cap. So as long as the players insist on the salary cap, we will continue to have a work stoppage. It's just, you know, that you look at what's happened in other leagues with salary caps and the major league baseball players hear from the other unions from, you know, especially the NHL, which has been like, don't ever do this. Don't add a salary cap. Baseball's held firm. Last time salary cap was not on the table. And we still lost, you know, a little chunk of spring training and it got rushed and all that. And that wasn't on that table. So this could be a very long thing unless baseball comes to its senses and says, you know what, salary cap. One thing I think everybody would like to see is some sort of spending minimum.
00:22:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:22:18
Speaker 4: 100%.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:22:20
Speaker 3: MLB says you can't do that without a salary cap. Of course you can do that without a salary cap. You're making rules. So I don't know.
00:22:29
Speaker 2: We'll call that the.
00:22:30
Speaker 3: Consequences with things. But I just don't see where the players have a very big war chest. They have kind of the fact that they could survive a full year without playing. Major League Baseball is looking at record profits, record franchise valuations, which just keep going up. We saw the Angels and the Padres going for record amounts. Do they want to interrupt this with another work stoppage all in 1994, which took years to come back from and took two guys having extraordinary, whatever you want to say about those home run seasons. It was fun to watch at the time.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: It was very juicy. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker 3: I'm not sure any of those conditions exist for baseball to get kind of a quick turnaround and come back to the profitability that the owners are seeing now. Everyone's making money. Don't mess with it. Let's just bring it back. What I hate most, and I'm sorry, I feel like I'm going on this rant, but people lose their jobs and sometimes forever in these things. You know, whole departments, teams wipe out whole departments that are already teams that are getting rid of scouts. It's just, it's really astonishing. Your minor league operations keep going. Your development keeps going. But you don't need stuff at your own ballpark. You don't need, you know, a lot of your sort of other community relations, public relations, ballpark operations, all of these things, these people are getting laid off and let go.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: And like you point out in your story, even the, like the ushers and the people that clean the restrooms at the ballpark and the concessions, people and all that stuff.
00:24:07
Speaker 2: Those are the people that really need the money. They can't, they can't afford it to lose the season.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: Baseball players can, and owners for sure can, but those people, man, they're, you gotta make the rent.
00:24:20
Speaker 2: So it would be kind of sad.
00:24:21
Speaker 3: It's millionaires arguing with billionaires. I'm always going to side with the labor.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: I know.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: Look, I'm in a union, I'm for the labor, but, uh, but the people that really get hurt are neither the billionaires nor the millionaires. They're the other people in the game. And some people just never, I know plenty of people that got laid off and never got, never came back from even going back to 94. Um, but certainly from the last one and some really, really good people, of course there were, um, good people that lost their jobs and never got back to baseball. So that just give up the salary cap thing. Get it settled on other things. Maybe you get some sort of big other concessions for dropping the salary cap somehow.
00:25:01
Speaker 1: One thing I'm kind of sensing, though, is that the fans may be kind of taking a turn. I think in recent decades, fans have been basically on the side of the players in these disputes because they see the owners getting richer and richer. And we're seeing with the Giants, they're bringing in these trillionaire guys, investors and stuff like that.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: But I think some of the fans are saying, oh, you know, why can't we have a salary cap?
00:25:22
Speaker 1: So some of the players are going to have to do a good job in the players' union of selling it to the fans. This is why we don't want a salary cap. They're going to have to explain it in layman's terms. They're going to have to break it down because the fans are sitting back there saying, well, you know, it works in the NFL.
00:25:36
Speaker 2: It works in the NBA. It works in hockey. Why can't they have a salary cap?
00:25:42
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, baseball actually has had– Except for the last couple of years, the parody in baseball has been just fine. But you can still look at this year and go like the Rays show. Look, you've got the opposite, right? The Mets payroll is actually more than the Dodgers right now, partly because of all the deferrals to Shohei, which yet another, that's a thing that definitely has to get decided in the CBA. No more massive deferrals. He's getting $ 2 million a year. Are you kidding me? So the Dodgers have plenty of money to spend. Their most expensive player is costing them nothing for like, I don't know, whatever it was, 10 years. Insane. So they have to get away. They have to do away with that. But parity in baseball is pretty good. But the Mets, the Mets cannot buy a championship. They keep trying. Every few years, they threw tons of money at people and it winds up backfiring. So it's being smart. And honestly, I look at all these owners and rich capitalists, and I'm not, again, going to go on some sort of political thing, but... it seems to me not to be necessarily capitalism at its most pure when you're limiting how much teams can spend. Isn't that the whole idea is it's a free market? How is it a free market unless it's costing billionaires a little extra?
00:27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:27:03
Speaker 1: I think that's why one of the reasons that Florida would be so important is to weed out owners like John Fisher and the guys who seem to be in it just for the money. If you get them out and you get, bring people in, bring owners in. I bet Joe Laker would buy a team. I mean, probably by the age it was offered. I'm not sure he played in Vegas.
00:27:22
Speaker 3: He's offered numerous times, yeah.
00:27:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: And I think there would be buyers for some of these low-rent teams. Bring in owners, guys, women, owners that really want to win, and they would start spending some money too because, you know, these people have money. Has any owner ever lost a penny in baseball and owning a team? Nobody's ever lost a a dime owning a baseball team. On the contrary, even a guy like John Fisher, his fortune has skyrocketed while his team sucked year after year.
00:27:53
Speaker 2: And just, no, yeah, it's, but it's going to be tough. I do have a quick solution.
00:27:59
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll discuss it more at some point. You get rid of all the, you get rid of the owners, the players, union, all this stuff. And you say, we're going to handle this. We're going to, we're going to appoint a five person board of financial experts, people who have great ethics and all this stuff. and who are kind of moderate, middle of the road, each politically and all that stuff. In those fights, people are going to sit down and go with the premise of, we're starting from scratch. We're starting the sport of baseball from scratch. What would be the best system that would benefit the players and the owners? Maybe it would be not even having owners, but some sane people who could come up with a middle ground, some mediators, I guess you'd call them, but it's going to be a while before we get to any kind of sane solution like that.
00:28:44
Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot of fighting, I think.
00:28:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at some point there have been mediators that have been appointed in these things. The current political climate, I do wonder how much involvement the administration might take in this and how that might certainly be unlikely to be I mean, if you look at millionaires versus billionaires, the billionaires probably get a boost there is my guess. That would be the amount of involvement would be, you know, it would have to be kind of minimal. I think you can appoint like a mediator or an arbitrator, but I can't imagine besides eyewash how much would necessarily be affected.
00:29:30
Speaker 1: But you make a great point and not to get into any, But I would be surprised if the top, let's say the top level of government doesn't at some point become involved. in this whole dispute, at least trying to weigh in or trying to make some pronouncements or rulings or judgments and stuff like that.
00:29:47
Speaker 2: And if that happens, I think we know which side they're going to weigh in on. So that's another thing.
00:29:52
Speaker 3: To look out for. It feels as if a major topic, contentious topic in sports is, these days, they do seem to get more input from that area.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: From the big commissioner-in-chief, yeah. Hey, should we talk a little bit about the season closeout? Buster and Tony came in, and I guess Zach was there too, right? And to talk, kind of wrap things up to the final press conference. And to me, that's kind of awkward and tough after a season like this anyway. There's no real way, there's no way that Buster and Tony leave that meeting and everybody says, oh, man, we feel.
00:30:31
Speaker 2: A lot better. Now we understand why everything. Now they explain it and we feel great. So it's a lose-lose proposition.
00:30:38
Speaker 1: But just from outward appearances and from reading your stories and everybody else's and seeing the accounts and all that stuff, I'm not giving Buster and Tony super high grades for their closeout performance.
00:30:53
Speaker 2: What do you think?
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're kind of right. I mean, those things are a little bit formulaic. But after a bad season, there's always just some typical sword following. Buster has been very clear and very genuine in the fact that he did not provide the best bullpen. You know, the questions, the obvious questions about things in the future that, say, maybe journalists and fans want to know, they're not necessarily in a position to answer right now. coming back on the coaching staff. How are you going to approach free agency? What's your budget look like? Things like that. You know, two days after the season, they're not going to be out, but we get some interesting answers. They said pretty firmly, Willie Adamas is back at shortstop. I'm not convinced that that's a long-term proposition, maybe even a switch next year. So that's one Harrison Bader is back. That's one where I honestly, I think contractually, That is accurate because he is under contract for next season. I honestly would be very surprised to see him play in a Giants uniform again, however it happens, whether they just have to eat the contract, trade him, or other. I think they might be out of avenues for suspension because I think he's beyond the point where he maybe injured himself further through his actions, which is kind of what the suspension was for. But those are the only things we really got in contact sort of answers on so they always wind you up you wind up kind of feeling like oh I would have liked a little bit more but I just don't know how that necessarily would be the case we spend a lot of time asking a bunch of questions that don't really get answered but yeah I mean I think generally of course disappointment after a very bad season it's hard to get away from that fact and nobody's happy with it and they conveyed that.
00:32:50
Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's what's tough to do. It's tough to explain.
00:32:55
Speaker 1: Away a bad season like that and to explain to everyone's satisfaction every mistake that was made and how it could have been different and all that stuff.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: So there's no way of, like I said, there's no way out of that.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: But, you know, Tony and Buster, I don't think that's their specialty. I don't think, you know, Buster can wheel and deal and we're going to find out more. He's made some good deals and all that stuff. But I don't think Buster's specialty is just being super glib and sharp and With.
00:33:21
Speaker 2: The media, you know, that's not his favorite thing.
00:33:24
Speaker 3: He's definitely not glib. No, he's not glib. But I felt like he comes across as genuine and honest.
00:33:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
00:33:33
Speaker 3: And when he said that he thinks the Giants can contend next year, you kind of go like, I don't know. I think he very much would like to. I don't know if they've necessarily stumbled across the magic formula to do so. But I do think he likes some of the talent they have. And he certainly needs to believe in Tony Vitello. But we got some pretty classic Tony Vitello. I will say that because we got a Terminator 2 reference in there. We got bees can smell fear. So we got some little charming folksy-ish kind of insights into Tony's, the rambling mind and sayings of Tony Vitello. Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we didn't. So in general, it was, you know, it sat into a bad season, but.
00:34:22
Speaker 1: But we had a lot of things to talk about. We're going to be back later in the week with Jeremy. And one of the things we'll talk about is I think it'd be interesting. What do the players do now in the off season when all this stuff is going on? They don't just go home and sit and look for the thing to be cleared up. And I think a lot of them are going to be scattering to the winds, playing baseball in other places and be interesting to get Jeremy's take on what, what players do.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Do they play winter ball? What do they do? You know, so.
00:34:48
Speaker 3: No, they don't do anything different until they have to try to start preparing. I can answer this one real quick. They're under contract, so they're pretty limited in what they can do. Some guys play winter ball anyway, but that seems to be going away for injury reasons. Not a lot of guys are doing that, but they'll probably just be the regular free agent camps for guys who are free agents and then kind of work out camps where guys just go and work out like they did last time. The agents seem like they organize the union camps. helped organize a big one in Mesa last time around. So they find a facility where a bunch of guys can go and throw pitches and get in pages and stuff. Like all the stuff they probably do at the, whatever the workout facility is that they frequent in the off season.
00:35:35
Speaker 1: And then the owners will just go away and count their money for a while and come back when the Dutch settles, you know?
00:35:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:35:42
Speaker 3: They just need to start instituting artificial deadlines on these things to try to start going. Cause my impression is they talk every week, but really no, there's no, there's just nothing that is even significant to report yet with that. So, oh, well.
00:35:58
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: It's, it's grim, but maybe it'll work out. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker 1: Anyway, so let's wrap it up and we'll see you folks next, later on in the week. We'll bring in Jeremy and, Susan will be back behind the scenes for a little while, but we're going to keep doing this for a while. We'll get everything straightened out. We'll get the giants straightened out. We'll figure everything out. Any problems, come to us. We'll get them straightened out.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Okay. Susan and Jeremy. Okay. But thanks for being with us on Splash Hit Territory, and we'll see you folks next time.
