← The Windup: A show about Baseball
The Windup: A show about Baseball
The Roundtable | What is going on with the Mets in Free Agency?
00:46:01
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- [00:00]
A
You know how everything's a subscription now? Music, movies, even socks. I swear, if I to continue this.
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B
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Uh, what?
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No.
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Keep the flavor. Ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe.
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B
This thing weighs a ton.
- [00:34]
A
Drew Ski, lift with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?
- [00:38]
B
He's talking to you britches.
- [00:39]
A
I'm not. Of course he did. Right, Santa? You know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list.
- [00:45]
B
An elf? I'm six three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies.
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C
Right, Mrs. Claus?
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A
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B
Nice. My side of the tree is slipping.
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A
Kimber. The holidays are better.
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B
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As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easier easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that can manage all in one place. Here's how it works. Post your job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote Promoted jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants get qualified candidates. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of SMBs using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. You can let your network know you're hiring. You can even add a hiring frame to your profile picture and get two times more qualified candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.combaseballshow that's LinkedIn.com SL Baseball show to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
- [02:54]
A
This is the wind up.
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B
Hello and welcome to episode 196 of the Roundtable. I'm Andy McCullough here with Sam Miller. No idea where Grant Brisby is. Hopefully flying home safely from the winter meetings. Sam, how are you?
- [03:20]
A
I'm good. Andy, how's it going?
- [03:22]
B
It's okay. Are you a person who struggles with fomo?
- [03:28]
A
No, not like the. Just absolutely none at all. That is one of my few superpowers.
- [03:34]
B
Hmm. And is that a lifelong power or something you've developed over the years?
- [03:40]
A
When I was younger, I thought that not being somewhere was like a sign of your status. I was very, very self conscious about the fact that my friends would be doing things on Friday night and I'd be watching Boy Meets World and I liked Boy Meets World. Like I was happy that it was on. I wanted to see it, I didn't have to tape it and watch it later. That was like as far as consumption. I'd found the product for me. I was very neurotic about what it said about me, that other people were doing things and I was alone. I, I aged out of that. And so now I'm just happy to be on my own. Still watching Boy Meets World, to be honest.
- [04:23]
B
Isn't it Girl Meets World.
- [04:24]
A
Girl Meets World. Yeah, yeah.
- [04:26]
B
Now just. I have a follow up. If I am curious, would you receive invitations to do things on a Friday night and say I can't go?
- [04:38]
A
No, no, no. I don't know how much of this I'm remembering correctly and how much of this is like your standard athlet adolescent reliving the trauma.
- [04:47]
B
Sure.
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A
Situation. Maybe I sent signals that I wasn't.
- [04:51]
B
You made clear.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah, yeah, I wasn't available.
- [04:55]
B
Much like the Mets not making Pete Alonso an offer, you made clear that the discussion had Gotten outside of your comfort zone.
- [05:02]
A
This was a very specific time in my life that I'm thinking of it. It was like a two year period in middle school and I was with a group of guys, a group of friends who like, they didn't not like me, but they liked each other more than they liked me. Like I was not a core part of the group. And I was trying to be in that group because it felt like, you know, I, it was aspirational. I didn't have other options. And so we would sit, we would all sit at this like chain link fence at lunch every day. And the conversation, I found I was like always trying to strain to hear what they were talking about. And I'm like, that's because I'm sitting with way down at the end of the line. So I would, I'd watch and I'd be like, okay, that's the center. I'd like find the point in the fence where the center was and then I'd be out there the next day first. And I'd sit right where the center is and they would just line up down away from me. I couldn't get to the center. And that was both like a literal and a metaphorical part of my social experience in like 7th, 8th, 9th. It was more like 8th, 9th. I went to a 7, 8, 9 middle school, so that was middle school.
- [06:09]
B
Okay. Yeah. I would say moving past the phase of searching for aspirational friendships is really freeing. Once you kind of, once you're out of that and you just hang out with the people who you like and who like you or just hang out by yourself, it's better.
- [06:24]
A
I totally, completely agree.
- [06:26]
B
All of this is to say neither of us were at the winter meetings this week, if that wasn't abundantly clear. But we're still gonna talk about some things that happened. Specifically, mostly the New York Mets. David Stearns had quite the week. I sort of have gone back and forth on how I feel about all of it. And I think I've come out on a side that I feel pretty comfortable with. We might, we might get into some stuff the Dodgers did, but that's also tied to the Mets. Because if you only get your baseball news through this podcast, God bless you. Edwin Diaz has signed with the Dodgers three years and 69 million. He turned down or did not request a follow up offer from the Mets, who offered three in 66. Pete Alonso, the homegrown star first baseman for the New York Mets, is now a Baltimore Oriole, which I did not have on My bingo card for the tune of five years and 155 million. And there is a sense that the Mets are in shambles. And my thought is that the winter meetings are a false construction.
- [07:31]
A
Right.
- [07:31]
B
There are no deadlines, there's no reason. You don't have to do anything right now. You just have to get the team there, preferably by the start of spring training, but really by opening day. Yet it's a narrative based sport in a lot of ways and it helps to have the narrative on your side. And that is a real problem that the Mets will be dealing with heading into this season. Kind of no matter what happens. Well, maybe not no matter what, but based on what is most likely to occur in that they will get probably a little more athletic, a little bit more dynamic, but they will not have a 40 home run replacement for Pete Alonso. It's going to be something that they're going to have to demonstrate on the field works and it's not going to be obvious and that creates some challenges.
- [08:17]
A
I feel I have really been captivated by the way that people react, you know, have been conversating, conversing about the Mets this week. It feels like an arc, not archaic in a bad way, but like, it feels like almost nostalgic to have this team treated as some sort of like entity where the parts all made something greater than the whole. Like people are really despairing about the breakup of the Mets.
- [08:48]
B
The core.
- [08:48]
A
These are. Yeah, like it really is as though the Yankees broke up the core four after like 911 in 2001 and like that is how they're treating the loss of the Nimmo Alonzo Diaz. I actually saw in one of the write ups at a very good website, TheAthletic.com described it as entering this offseason, outfielder Brandon Nimmo, reliever Drew Smith, Alonso and Diaz ranked as four of the five longest tenured players in the organization. They are all gone. Drew Smith.
- [09:20]
B
What I thought he left the organization several years ago.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah, one inning, one postseason inning as a Met, but like that's how it feel. Like the Mets fans feel very strongly that this team, that this group of guys has an identity and that it isn't just that the Mets missed out this week on two of the 50 free agents, you know, two of the top 10 free agents that were available because like once they once November 1st hits, these guys are free agents. They're not on your team anymore. So you could sign Diaz and Alonzo or you could have gone and gotten Devin Williams and Kyle Schwaber but specifically the fact that two Mets, two recent Mets signed back to back was treated really as like a chance to process years of feelings about this Mets core. And it's a throwback. I really have like the, as far as the rooting for laundry kind of. I Diago's like, there was a lot of love for this laundry and it came out this week and I was somewhat surprised because this isn't the Core 4. This wasn't a team that, you know, won a bunch of World Series or I mean, they had two good years out of the seven. And so you could imagine that the typical Mets fan being like, finally, like, these dudes were not getting it done. Finally the team is going in a different direction. That's how you would expect in sort of normal times. But the emotional attachment to Pete Alonso, really Brandon Nimmo, a little bit of Jeff McNeil who's probably going to get traded, Drew Smith, who exists, it's like punching up. It's like way more than the average fan outside of New York probably understood or realized, right.
- [11:10]
B
I think from an actuarial standpoint, you look at them losing, you know, Nimmo Diaz, Pete Alonso, and you can say to yourself, my goodness, how will David Stearns and Steve Cohen replace those 10 wins above replacement next year? Right. Like, you're talking about good, but, you know, you're talking about really good players, but players who are not Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, who they have. But I think what is going on with the Mets and sort of the discourse it gets at kind of what I sort of feel like is one of the fundamental questions that I'm often asking myself and then trying to figure out how to ask executives in a way that doesn't make them think that I look crazy, but just basically like, what is the right thing to do? Do? Right. What is the right thing for the New York Mets to do? Now, you could argue, right, the right thing to do is to win the World Series and build the team to win the World Series. But there are a variety of different ways to do that. And if you're David Stearns, he looked at this core that he inherited and made the assessment that I think a lot of rational people would come to, which is just like, yeah, this is not. No, we got it, we got it. No, we can't, we can't run this back. Like, we have to change this. I think that if you are a Mets fan who you know is long suffering, hard earned and long suffering, it's very painful to part ways with Pete Alonso you know, a homegrown star who's been the sort of right handed slugger that they've really been able to follow over this past, you know, half decade. Nimmo has been a good player for them. Nimmo's a good player, but like, he's kind of replaceable. And Diaz is awesome, but he's probably the most obviously replaceable asset in terms of he's a kind of a, you know, a reliever. Like he's some. More than one.
- [12:56]
A
Every team's relievers move on. Yeah, like that's, that's just a fact of life. You, like. Very, very, very few relievers are there for life. You get them and you hope they don't blow up before they're gone.
- [13:07]
B
I personally would rather have Edwin Diaz at 3 for 69 than Devin Williams at 3 for 51. But there are many worlds, including the one we live in, in which the Devin Williams contract will age much better than the Diaz contract. Right? So, like, that's, it's all reasonable. But what is the right thing to do? Do you keep together these players who clearly your fans have a lot of affection for? Your fans showed up and, you know, sort of your attendance was better this past year in part because they love these players, or is the right thing to do to blow it up and try and build something better, I guess, you know, and not just sort of run it back? It's a hard choice. It's a hard, it's hard to figure out what the right, you know, which is the right direction to go in. But clearly, like, Stearns has the vision for what he wants to do and Steve Cohen is letting him do it.
- [14:01]
A
Yeah, I had a tweet about 10 years ago that was the next big thing in sports analytics is going to be hiring philosophers. And this was when I think people, the teams had started signing like mechanical engineers and stuff. And so someone's like, what did you mean by that? And I was like, I meant it was a, like reductio ad absurdium. It was a joke. But like, what did I mean? Like, also, I can make a serious point with it that like, step one is like defining what your desires are, what your needs are, how you define success. Really. Step one is defining how you define success. And that is not as easy as it seems. The goal is to win a World Series, sure, But a World Series is contingent on things that are outside of your control. You know, like, you can have the perfect plan and it's not going to end with the World Series necessarily because, like, so much of it is actually outside of your control. And so, like, a lot of life really is about figuring out what you can control and, you know, doing your, like, you know, breathing techniques because you're in control of that. So when it comes to the Mets, I think a lot of the reaction here was that one of the things you can control is, or at least like, they were blessed to have this, like, relationship between their fans and the product that was kind of has been blessed in the last few years. It's like, better than most teams. Despite the lack of a World series, like the LOL Mets era of like the, the. The 2000s and 2010s has been replaced by good vibes. Richard Staff wrote the Baseball Prospectus annual essay this year, and I'm gonna just quote from it referring to 2024, because this was a preseason essay. Every facet of the 2024 team was handcrafted in a lab to make it the biggest hit at Old timers day in 2040 five decades from now, there's going to be a generation of grandparents telling their grandkids the tales of Lindor, the Grimace, the Polar Bear, Vientos, Candelita, Tyrone Taylor, Timmy Trumpet and Minea. The first baseball team they fell in love with, the Mets, did not go all the way and win their first world series in 38 years. But as more time passes, the less that will matter. And part of the specialness of this team is that it feels like a beginning. And, you know, like, I think that maybe some of the reaction to the Mets, you know, very bad week, that, you know, people have identified it as a very bad week, which I otherwise would not have from an actuarial standpoint, is that it's like a threat to the identity. It's like you had a sense that 2024 was a great year, a great time, partly because it was the beginning. And then just as suddenly they're like, that was an illusion. We're moving on from that quite quickly. So I think that's maybe what the person outside of, you know, Metsdom probably has a little bit of a hard time relating to, because, yeah, to me, and like, this is like, going to be a little bit cold, but like Pete Alonso at 31, to me, like, not that special. It's fine to let that guy go. Nimmo, Diaz and, and Alonso, all of them, they're in their early 30s. Long term commitments have or looking for long term commitments. That's who you move on from when you're in a team that needs a little bit of a reboot. And it also to me doesn't demonstrate any like, I mean with a lot of teams you say, oh God, they're cheap, they're cowards, whatever. But that doesn't really apply to the Mets. Like the, the Mets ownership has demonstrated like a different relationship to money than other teams and an ambition that you wish that other teams owners had a passion for success, an ambition that you wish other teams owners have. And so you're not going into it thinking like, ah, these guys are just like a corporation trying to, you know, like this isn't private equity putting the square squeeze on. This is. Well, actually, is he private equity? No, he's hedge fund.
- [18:09]
B
He's hedge fund, yeah. He is also the sort of guy though who has on several occasions when the team has underperformed has been like, this sucks, I don't like this. I'm tired of losing money on this crap.
- [18:20]
A
I think what we all want is the owner that views it as a passion project slash hobby. Like you want someone who's not going to be doing nothing but nickels and dimes the whole time, but is going to be like really emotional and maybe irrationally so. Now there's a risk there.
- [18:40]
C
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- [20:03]
A
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Keep the flavor, ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com terms for more guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe.
- [20:36]
B
This thing weighs a ton.
- [20:37]
A
Drewski, lift with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?
- [20:41]
B
He's talking to you, Bridges.
- [20:42]
A
I'm not. Of course he did. Right Santa? You know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list.
- [20:49]
B
An elf. I'm six three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies.
- [20:57]
C
Right Mrs. Claus?
- [20:59]
A
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- [21:11]
B
My side of the tree is slipping.
- [21:12]
A
Kimber. The holidays are better.
- [21:14]
B
AT T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 617 on us with no trade in needed. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and 35 device connection charge. Credit balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel finance agreement. 256 gigs830 eligible for in a new line 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit t mobile.com you know the ideal owner or the ideal control person or the ideal ownership group, right? Would be currently what the Dodgers are, which is basically like you want to do something? Here's the money. Go do it. And we trust you to do it. And the Dodgers have gotten to the point where they're like, yeah, let's get the good guys, let's get the good players. Like we should sign them and they'll probably take a discount to come play here. And the Mets don't have that working for them yet. It's not that players don't want to play there, obviously that's very Clear they've created a good environment, they treat their players very well. But there's not guys leaving money on the table to go, you know, playing queens. That could change. But you know, that's kind of part of what makes the Dodgers what they are right now. And so I think that, you know, Cohen has been open about how when this thing is not working as it was like say in 2023 when they signed, you know, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and it just like wasn't effective, he's like, they're not going to keep running that back essentially. And if you're coming out of this past season with the Mets, right, they may. They very clearly identified David Stern's. David Stern said it over and over at his sort of, you know, year end autopsy was like, we need to get better at run prevention. We need to get better at run prevention. We need to get better at run prevention. So then they fired the pitching coach, which a lot of people around the game and maybe you know, were sort of like, wait, Jeremy Hefner's fault? It's like, well, he said they needed to get better at run prevention. So okay, so that's like part of it. Like obviously Hefner was hired very quickly by the Atlanta Braves and will probably do good work there, but that's part of theoretically improving run prevention. They traded Brandon Nimmo, who is a good hitter, not great left fielder for Marcus Semian, who is a good glove, has been a below average hitter, second baseman. So now they have, you know, better run prevention. They are not going to bring back Pete Alonso on a five or six year deal when he's, you know, considered one of the weaker fielders at the position at first base. I mean you at pebble hunting had a incredible sort of post outlining just his weird lack of chemistry with pitchers trying to just make the three to one put out, you know, and like, look again, we don't just speak negatively about Pete Alonso to be rational about his, you know, his value. He's a very, very good hitter, but he's also a very one dimensional player. And there is the concern that when that dimension goes, he's kind of non playable. That's a worrisome thing to invest half a decade into. But they will probably have a better first baseman there defensively next year, which fits into again the goal of run prevention. And that gets back to like what is the right thing to do. David Stearns felt like we need to have a better, more dynamic, more athletic team and we need to we need to field the baseball. We need to have guys who can catch the baseball. So they got rid of two guys who struggled with that and they're going to try and probably pivot towards getting guys who are better at that. Is it going to work? I don't know, but it's a hard thing to sell. I will say it is a hard thing to sell. I mean, I think the Boston Red Sox have really struggled with this sort of mindset. You know, in the post Dave Dombrowski era, when it doesn't work, it like it redounds pretty negatively on the people in charge. I would say it's, it's something that kind of has to, you know, the only rule is it has to work. As a wise man might say, do.
- [24:56]
A
You think that this was a roster that definitely needed not to do like wholesale changes? But they were so, they were in first place at the trade deadline last year and they had two, you know, like, I mean, obviously the two months that, that saw them collapse out of the playoffs, like we talked about it in the time, in real time, like something like truly diseased was happening in that franchise for those two months, but like was the core there. If they'd run it back this year, where would you have put them?
- [25:29]
B
You would have had to spend, it feels like a lot on pitching, specifically on pit. You would have had to just load up on pitching. And those are very risky.
- [25:39]
A
Having your top three prospects like now all with major league experience and like there for the full year. Wouldn't, you know, like, be enough for you to, you know, give me personally?
- [25:49]
B
Absolutely not. I mean, you know, I don't believe in any pitchers. So yeah, I, I, I would think that if you were to keep this position player core intact, you would like have to sign like from ber, Michael King and Dylan Cease or something like the end, you know what I mean? Like, just because the issue was that they just ran out of pitching. Well, there's a lot of issues, but like the thing that was most tangible is the bullpen was getting smoked because the starters were not going deep in the game. So they just did not have enough arms. Along the way, the defense really sort of degraded. It felt like in the second half and so it's easier. Rather than just like throw a ton of money at arms, which are very, very risky, let's get an elite second baseman, you know, like Semian. You can spend money on a Bellinger, maybe a Kyle Tucker. There's no reason they couldn't sign Kyle Tucker even though they're not seem to be considered, you know, favorites for that. Harrison Bader is a guy who can play the field and can hit a little bit. Like, there's, there's lots. It's just easier to augment at some of the. If you just took away the names and the relationships that the players have with the fans, it's kind of an easy thing to fix. But that's not how it works and that's what they're bumping up against right now.
- [27:02]
A
The reaction to this week, a lot of it has focused on David Stearns and treats him as like the main agent involved in these decisions. Like, well, we could have all had nice things, but David Stearns has some like, like wacky plan to ruin our lives. Stephen A. Smith referred to him as a cheap dude. The New York Post.
- [27:28]
B
Yeah, that's kind of the New York.
- [27:29]
A
The New York Post headline, looking inside David Stern's icy baseball soul.
- [27:36]
B
Oh, yeah, Joel. Joel dropped that. Yeah, that was strong.
- [27:39]
A
You were in L. A before the Dodgers had learned how to love life and just go for it. Right? Like I was. Yeah, you were there for those last few years where they were like, smart but not successful or like not successful enough to make everybody happy. And I think like, in retrospect, some of that was just transition. Some of it was learning from their mistakes and some of it was just bad luck. Like they very, very, very easily could have won the 2017 World Series and like, no convos. Right. It seems like now David Stearns is going through something somewhat similar where it's like he's trying to make the right moves. The right moves are not popular. Ultimately, he's still going to be a guy running a smart organization with a $400 million payroll and it's probably going to work. Right. But in the meantime, he's the target of a lot of like, maybe it's like anti intellectual. Maybe it's just like, you know, finding.
- [28:34]
B
Too cute by half. Right?
- [28:35]
A
Too cute by half. Yeah. So from your experience covering, you know, the Dodgers in 2017ish did just ride it out or is he going. Do you see mistakes that he is making that the Dodgers learned from and he's going to learn in time to not make those same mistakes?
- [28:50]
B
I mean, I think that the blueprint is there for how to change it. I mean, I. It's actually something that, like if I, you know, I would like to ask Andrew Friedman at some point, like, hey, the person you are now today, would you just sign Zach Greenke when the. The D backs barrel in kind of last minute with that offer. That's like 50 million more than you're offering. Do you just say, oh, great, okay, we'll match it? You know, rather than what they did, which was let him leave, they replaced him with, like, Scott Kazmir and hope that, like, Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, basically, they were like, well, okay, you got a quarter. We'll replace it with two dimes and a nickel. That's the same. That's both 25 cents. But it's like, it's. It's not. You know, it's not. Sometimes they add up to the same thing, and sometimes the quarter breaks in half because, you know, the US Mint is hard to. Hard to trust these days. You know what I'm saying?
- [29:41]
A
I do have no idea what. The quarter sometimes breaks in half.
- [29:47]
B
So the idea is that if you've got. If you've got a quarter in your pocket, right, and you lose the quarter, the quarter's gone. But if you have two dimes and a nickel, and the nickel falls out of your pocket, you still got 20 cents. You know. You know how people make analogies.
- [30:05]
A
It's like a family that books all their flights separate so that if a plane crashes, only one of them is dead.
- [30:14]
B
That's dark, but fair. So, yes, I think that it's identifying when you can replace a quarter with two dimes and a nickel and when you just need to bring back the quarter. And that's a hard thing to figure out. And, like, they determine that Pete Alonso, they can find, you know, two dimes and a nickel, they can replace that, and they'll probably will be right.
- [30:39]
A
Yeah. Or even like a quarter. Like.
- [30:41]
B
Right, sure. Right. A different.
- [30:43]
A
Yeah, that's a different quarter.
- [30:44]
B
Yeah, that's. That's right. Yeah.
- [30:47]
A
It is really early in an offseason to be freaking out. Like, that's part of what makes the conversation a little bit odd is just that, like, they're shopping. Like, you don't necessarily have to have to sign the first guy who's off the board. I assume they're gonna make a big, splashy move or two still. I assume that. And then that will put the decisions in a lot different context. I mean, already, like, probably, sure, prefer Diaz to Devin Williams, but, like, not by that much. Like, Devin Williams has been better than Diaz over the last few years as many times or as many days as Diaz has been better than Devin Williams. So, like, it's kind of odd how little credit they get for, like, pre replacing Diaz in. In that sense. But anyway, they're going to. So they'll go get someone. They'll get, you know, like, a good player who's as good as Pete Alonso, presumably. Presumably. Okay, but, like, let's say, hypothetically, they don't. I'm going to tell a little story. I used to work at a newspaper, and newspapers were not doing all that well. And we were just. Every. Every six months, a bunch of us would get laid off.
- [31:51]
B
Same and same, by the way. But, yeah, keep going.
- [31:53]
A
And it was pretty brutal. Like, it was a sad time, a miserable time to be in the industry. And then this guy from the east coast who made a bunch of money in, like, greeting cards, I think he's like, I'm gonna save the industry. And he bought our newspaper. This was just after I had left. He said, I'm gonna do it. So he bought the newspaper, and he announced that after years of transitioning to digital subscriptions, he was going all in on print. And so he hired, like, 200 new reporters. Like, it was incredible. Wow. He hired so many reporters. And everybody's like, this is what we needed all along. We needed a rich benefactor who would invest in the product and who would love the product and who would build it up, hire more. And he hired all these people. Great day celebration, everybody happy. And then, like, 14 months later, everybody gets laid off. Everybody, like, the thing just didn't work. And that was the problem of having your entire, you know, company be in the hands of one idiosyncratic rich guy's, you know, tastes and whims. So Steve Cohen, you know, like, signed Juan Soto. He's the guy who went out and got Juan Soto. He's. He's the guy who went out and broke payroll records multiple times. He will spend what it takes to make himself, you know, like, feel like the world's, you know, greatest baseball, you know, owner. Is there any chance that what we are seeing is, like, the pendulum of the rich, fickle owner? And is it conceivable that, in fact, this is just a guy who, like, wakes up and decides whether he wants to spend his money on the ball club or a yacht this week? Deciding for the yacht this week.
- [33:40]
B
Now, are you suggesting that now that the Citi Field Casino appears likely to come to fruition, the man's business interests may have shifted? How dare you not trust our rich benefactors?
- [33:56]
A
I'm just saying that institutional guardrails are sometimes a little safer than having one person in control of everything.
- [34:03]
B
I agree. I don't get the sense that Cohen is. They've done nothing that suggests they're cheap. They've done nothing that suggests they're not.
- [34:12]
A
Well, to a lot of people they have this week. Now, I don't think that's the case. I think we're just gonna wait and see them, you know, like, you know, sign someone else for $290 million or whatever. But like a lot of people's interpretation this week right now is that they're cheap. They didn't even make an offer. Like we're hearing that a lot.
- [34:28]
B
Yeah, and that's a classic, like, well, it'd be insulting if we offered him what we think he's worth, right? Like, you know, it's not like there's some teams who are like, we're not talking to Pete Alonso because we're not going to try and pay him. The Mets are like, I don't want to be rude to Pete or Scott Boris and offer him this two year deal with an opt out when he's got five in hand, you know, from another team. So some of this is just like the sequencing of events, right? Like it occurs during the winter meetings when there's really not much else going on. It starts with Edwin Diaz, kind of fairly shockingly signing for three years with the Dodgers. I think talking to Dodgers people going into this winter, they were certainly interested in Edwin Diaz. It was like, it would love to have Edwin Diaz, but, you know, like everything, they sort of suspected that his market would get beyond what they were interested in. And lo and behold, he took the exact sort of deal that they were willing to do. And that comes on the heels that that occurs. And the Mets were sort of like, well, we offered three. We offered something pretty close. And it's like, well, you're, you're the Mets. Why didn't you offer more? You know, and that again is like a weirder occurrence than Alonzo, which happens the next day. And it's just like, yeah, we're not, we're not doing five years for the 31 year old, you know, bad only first baseman when we need to get more dynamic, more athletic, you know, better at defending. But if that happens a month from now, right? If the way that Alonzo's market had gone the way it did last year, where it drags all the way into February, like it's not as big a calamity because it's not back to back during the biggest event of the off season when not much else is going on. So that's again, you know, the false construct of the winter meetings. It sort of sets the narrative agenda for the Winter At a time when some execs, I would say most of the execs agree that it's like you don't need to act with aggression if the market does not dictate it. That makes sense.
- [36:30]
C
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A
Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.
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Zoe, this thing weighs a ton.
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B
Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you. Bridges.
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A
I'm not that. Of course he.
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C
He did.
- [38:05]
A
Right? Santa, you know my elf, Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list.
- [38:09]
B
And elf, I'm six three.
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C
What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and.
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- [40:07]
A
It's weird because you shouldn't predict unlikely events, right? Like you should think. What is that saying? Think, think zebras, not horses. Think horses, not zebras. Think horses not zebras. Think think it is. Anyway, I think they're gonna trade for Tarik Skubal. Like it just feels like the parts are, the pieces are all lining up. That's where their need is. They just cleared a bunch of, you know, space to sign and sign and extend. I feel like maybe some of this conversation will look a little bit like what were you guys complaining about if that happens?
- [40:40]
B
Yeah, I think that's definitely within, within the realm of possibility. If the Dodgers traded for Skubal, would you just, would you be pro salary cap at that point?
- [40:49]
A
I'm not emotional enough about any of this stuff to to react that way, but I would say, come on, that would 100% be a come on move. Like I have Gotten to come on status with the Dodgers.
- [41:04]
B
It feels almost a little unsporting.
- [41:07]
A
You know, you're playing basketball and sometimes it just so happens that the five biggest guys on the court, like, all made their free throw and now they're on the same team and you're like, come on. Like, it just isn't great if you're.
- [41:19]
B
The Detroit Tigers and they just, they just offered you right now. Tyler Glasnow image and pick one of the five position player, you know, a ball to double A guys. Do you have to take that? Don't you?
- [41:33]
A
It seems like they're going to trade.
- [41:34]
B
Or is that the ultimate. We have a dollar. Don't turn it into a bunch of quarters.
- [41:39]
A
I can't remember if Tarik Scuba was the one that I said this about. It might have been when you were gone. It might have been with Grant. But the word we're not trading Tarek school the way that that the we're not trading Tarek Scubal conversation started at the beginning of the off season. It sounded so much like the first domino in the, like, that's how the conversation always starts. And by mid December, it's inevitable. And the, the Tigers like playing footsie with it. It feels like it's getting real close to inevitable to me now. This is just me, like having lived through news cycles before. But I think the Tigers take it because I think they're looking to move Terra cooler. Yeah.
- [42:20]
B
Now, okay, so here's the question. Is that do you think that's the right thing to do?
- [42:26]
A
Wait, I can't remember. That's right. You were not here. Grant and I had a conversation about whether there was any package that we would not be like, what a stain on the game. Tigers are pathetic. How can you trade him? I think that given where they are in their, you know, winning cycle and given the strength of their team, you know, like the success that they're trying to build on, but also the like sort of like questionable dominance of their next few years. I think you, I think you keep Skubal. I think you go for it this year, bank that success and then you go, well, it's a shame that he leaves as a free agent, but you can't have everything in life. You know, the glass is already broken. He's gone. It's no big deal. I would not trade him. I would keep him. And I would be proud of myself for having a good team in 2026. Now I think that we did. Maybe Grant said, or maybe we both came to the conclusion that, like, there is a package that's so big that, like, it would be malpractice to turn it down. I'm not going to be happy about it if they get that package. I think they will get. I think they're going to get that package, though, and I think it's going to happen.
- [43:28]
B
Maybe add a. A River Ryan, a Gavin Stone, you know, one of those guys. So it's three arms and a. And an. A minor league bat. And it's kind of like, yeah, you know. Yeah, you kind of got to take that.
- [43:44]
A
I feel like, yeah, it's almost a bummer for ball GMs. Baseball GMs. The only sport that's really ball. Because in other sports, your star would have been asking to be traded by.
- [43:59]
B
Right.
- [43:59]
A
And you'd be like, well, what can I do?
- [44:00]
B
Yeah, right.
- [44:01]
A
I don't. Like, we wanted to compete with him, but he wanted to be moved. And baseball does not have the culture of asking for trades. And so anytime a GM trades a school, you're like, you idiot. You so weak. You cowardly. In any other sport, this would all have had four months of the guy, the player, being progressively louder about, like, I'm not happy here.
- [44:24]
B
Right. Baseball has the opposite. They have Bryce Harper going, don't trade me. I don't want you traded.
- [44:29]
A
Yes. What the Tigers need is Skubal to just go out there and just burn down the organization.
- [44:35]
B
I mean, maybe that'd be way too sort of ridiculous, 3D chess to suggest that their refusal to just say, we're not trading him as part of trying to lure him out of the. Lure him out of the foxhole, you know, demand a trade or something like that. Because that's. That's dumb.
- [44:50]
A
But anyway, were you on paternity leave during the Paul Skeens teammates saying Skeens wanted to get traded story cycle?
- [44:59]
B
No, I was at the GM meeting. So, yeah, that. I did read that story. I enjoyed that piece. It was one of the more entertaining ones I've read this year.
- [45:06]
A
I found it really entertaining. I don't know how credible it was or I don't know how credible the teammates were. I haven't dug into it, but the story was basically that, like, Skeen's. Some of Skeen's teammates were quoted, like, off the record on background as being like, yeah, he's always talking about how he wants to be a Yankee. Like, we thought he wanted to be an angel because he grew up there. But no, it's the Yankees. He wants to be a Yankee. And this, these, whatever these Background quotes were apparently persuasive enough or pervasive. Persuasively pervasive enough. Ben Sherrington, like, had to comment about.
- [45:42]
B
Him, and he's like, he did?
- [45:43]
A
Yeah. And he's like, I don't know. I haven't heard that. But we're not trading him. But I. At the time, I thought, is this it? Like, could we be seeing a baseball player with who's like, five years from free agency, has no leverage whatsoever, but does what athletes in every other sport do, which is be like, I don't have any leverage, but, I mean, I have a lot of leverage, really. Like, I can ruin your life. I'm like, you know, I'm the teenager in your household. I can ruin your life.
- [46:12]
B
I mean, Rafael Devers basically did this.
- [46:15]
A
He kind of did, but he. I mean, I don't think that was his fault. I mean, Craig Breslow did that.
- [46:22]
B
Devers, in layman's terms, around and found out, basically, he was like, what are they going to do, trade me? And then they traded him, you know, but again, to your point, Skeens has that opportunity, and then he's just like, we're building a winner here in Pittsburgh.
- [46:37]
A
Yeah.
- [46:38]
B
And we, you know, we want people who want to be a part of this. You know, he's like, there's two kinds of people in this world. People who don't believe in the Pirates and people who do, you know, get to the right side of the street or whatever crazy thing he was talking about. And it's like, okay, you know, that's. That's a noble sort of. That's. I think that is the way that a lot of sports fans would, you know, want their children to behave.
- [47:01]
A
I guess.
- [47:01]
B
Maybe not.
- [47:01]
A
I don't know.
- [47:02]
B
Who cares? But that's like the. The classical style of, you know, bus drivers versus bus passengers, you know, type of thing. Like, you want to, you know, you want to be the guy leading the charge to take your team to the promised land, you know, not jumping on the. The one that's already going there. So, yeah, I mean, I guess they will just trade school, right? It is funny, though. You're right, because it's. It's sort of like a. A news cycle creep. Because when the off season starts, you're like, they're not trading Tarek Skubal. That's crazy. How can you do that? You just won the. Or, you know, you came close to winning the division. You've been in the postseason the last two years, and then, like, two weeks go By. And there's still stories about it, and you're just like, oh, okay, yeah, this is gonna happen.
- [47:42]
A
Well, it's like the Raptors testing the fences, right? Like, someone floats this, and then they see whether. Whether the. You know, they get a. I don't know. If you. If you were to write that the Dodgers were thinking of trading Shohei Ohtani, right, Would someone from the organization be like, would they reach out? Yeah, like, that's crazy. Oh, yeah. Like, this is. This is a thing in, like, in, like, reporting and national security matters, you can, like, like, the CIA can't be trusted, right? Like, no one trusts the CIA. You're, like, in an adversarial relationship with the CIA as a. As a national security reporter. And yet if you're about to go too far, the CIA will reach out and be like, you're about to go too far. Like, for real, this one. You can't do it. And the reporters will go, oh, okay. And they'll, like, back off. Like, do you ever. Or do reporters get the. You're going too far. You need to back off.
- [48:36]
B
Yeah, there's elements of that. I think the thing that would definitely happen, say someone in the Dodgers organization who was not, like, at the top of the organization, right? Like, told a reporter they want to trade Shohei Ohtani and say you were like, hey, someone in the organization told me that they wouldn't just make that up, and you decided to write it without doing the due diligence of, like, checking in with the team president, the president of baseball operations, the manager, you know, if you have a relationship with the owner, all the sort of people, you know, need to do. If you just wrote it, they would very quickly, if you were a credible news outlet, if, say, the Athletic published out of say. So someone with the Dodgers told me that, and I went, if two guys with the Dodgers told me that, and I said, hey, this meets our sourcing policy. And no one at the Athletic had half a brain and wanted me to run it up the chain to actually, like, check it. And we wrote it. There would be a comment publicly on the record from whether it was, like, Stan Cast and Andrew Friedman being like, that's not true. We're not doing that, right? Like, that's not a thing. We're not trading Shohei Ohtani, and you're not seeing that with Skubal. So, like, clearly it's real.
- [49:46]
A
You're getting like, oh, like, when you run these ideas by the Tigers, they're like, oh, interesting.
- [49:53]
B
Well, like, you can look at it with the way that the brewers have been relatively open about Freddy Peralta, where they're just like, we don't want to trade Freddy Peralta, but we're the Brewers. We'll see. Like, you know, someone might offer us something that we think is worthwhile to trade him for, and so we'll do that. And because they have a history of doing that, and because Peralta is, like, a good player, but on a lesser tier than Skubal, it's not, you know, like, groundbreaking news. But when it's someone like a school or a skiing. The difference is that when the skiing stuff comes out, Ben Sherrington is on the record saying, we're not doing that. Scott Harris is on the record saying, no one's untouchable. Which, like, you could say, okay, that's like a negotiating ploy or whatever, but, like, if he didn't want to trade Derek Skubel, he would just say, we're not trading Terry Skubel. We're trying to win the World Series with Terry Skubel.
- [50:42]
A
He could even say it if he was going to trade. Like, yeah, that hot. That happens, too. Like, the fact that, like, he's chosen the, like, non committal staying open script is itself like a very pro trade stance. Like, that's not just keeping our options open. Like, he's got all the lies that he wants to. Yeah.
- [51:05]
B
I do think, in general, if you. If you. If you are deceitful, like, openly deceitful, that tends to go poorly. That tends to play bad, like, in life.
- [51:16]
A
I don't see it.
- [51:17]
B
I would say that in. In the weird ecosystem of baseball transactions, if you are publicly saying, you know, one thing and then telling teams another thing, that's not going to play well for you. That doesn't. That's something that one, your fans are going to hate and to the other executives don't like because they feel like you're not a trustworthy actor, and so they don't feel like they don't like interacting with you. So I think choosing the path of sort of, you know, sort of talking out both sides of your mouth, resistance. Right. Like, that makes more sense than just straight up lying and saying, we're not trading him.
- [51:51]
A
Right.
- [51:52]
B
But we'll see. Yeah, I guess I really thought. I. I guess I. I guess because I've been kind of unplugged, like, you know, on parental leave, like, not really in contact with a lot of people and kind of like following stuff on my phone, but then, you know, like, changing diapers and you know, learning how formula works. Like, I haven't been as, like, locked in on the scuba thing, but it really was this week where I was like, oh, they're gonna trade. Oh, they're like, oh, that's like, if they're actually gonna move them. I just immediately ruled that out in my head a month ago and then stop thinking about it, I guess.
- [52:24]
A
Yeah. It feels like the equation here is much less about whether the Tigers have a price, because they do. This is not a situation where there is no, you know, they've. They've declared him priceless and untouchable. Now the equation is, will anybody else price him? There will. Will someone. And he's way better than anybody else who's available this offseason. And I would imagine that, like, a lot of teams, like, inner monologue is just, like, just saying Tarek school over and over. Like, that's what would get your brain, you know, enthused.
- [52:59]
B
Well, who would be the funniest team to acquire him?
- [53:01]
A
This is a trick question, right? Like, it's. The answer is the Rockies are the funniest team to do anything.
- [53:06]
B
Yeah. I was going to say it'd be very funny if the Red Sox got him, just because the discourse about the Red Sox has been so. Red Sox fans are pissed. They're just so pissed at the front office. So it would just be funny if they just sort of hauled off and brought in Tarek Skubal for one season before he went inside with the Dodgers for $500 million or whatever.
- [53:24]
A
@ some point in the Terek school trade imagination industry, someone was like, yeah, he'd make sense for the blah and the duh and the blah and the Mariners because he went to college in Washington. And I thought, what. How does that. How does that make sense for a trade target? Like, that's pretty thin. But we just went through this whole, like, Kyle Schwaber, like, maybe he'll actually sign with the Reds because he grew up in. Can we just stop? Every player comes from somewhere they don't. Like. I don't think that, like, the chance to live with their parents again is as big a deal as we treat it. I want to start tracking free agents who someone suggests that they might go sign with, like, a team because they grew up near there, and then see if the signing rate is any higher than 1 in 30, because I don't think it is. I think we. We think that that connection is way bigger than it.
- [54:16]
B
Is. There's a lot of discourse about this with the. With the Dodgers, you know, Obviously, because it's like, oh, he grew up in Southern California, you know, he's a huge Dodgers fan. It's like ballplayers come from, like, four places. They come from Florida, they come from Texas, and they come from Southern California. So, like, you're kind of, you know, I don't know. Houston should do better, I guess, is what I'm.
- [54:34]
A
Saying.
- [54:34]
B
More. Houston should try and bring more players.
- [54:36]
A
Home. What's the fourth place, Andy? You only named.
- [54:39]
B
Three. The Dominican, and they don't have a team. Like, there's a non zero chance Jeff McNeil's the third mike on this pod. Next year, they'll just give him away. At this point, if Grant never gets home, it might just be the three of.
- [54:51]
A
Us. Grant and Jeff McNeil do have similar energy. Yeah, yeah, it's.
- [54:56]
B
True. It's kind of true. All right, well, this has been episode 196 of the Roundtable, which Sam did as a kindness because I've been bored in my apartment. We'll be back next.
- [55:07]
A
Week.
- [55:08]
B
Monday. Grant will theoretically be here, and we'll talk about whatever happens this weekend. Maybe Grant could tell us the most fun things that happened at the winter meetings that Sam and I did not feel bad about missing. Have a good one. I was very.
- [55:21]
C
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B
Apply. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Work Life, and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built.
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- [58:12]
A
You want, all while paying no advisory fees under $25k. Invest your money, not your time, with.
- [58:18]
B
Fidelity. Go get started@fidelity.com go Advisory services offered by Strategic Advisors, LLC, a registered investment.
- [58:24]
A
Advisor. Brokerage services provided by Fidelity Brokerage.
- [58:27]
B
Services, llc, Member NYSE and.