Football is over Baseball is up to the plate! This week in baseball - Ep. 647 2.9.26

aseball season starts today because yesterday was the Super Bowl. We're recording this episode of Almost Cooperstown from sunny California. We take a little time out here. It's zero degrees back east. It's been a tough month. We're here to bring you sunshine and baseball. It's this week in baseball. We have here in California something called the California Winter League. We came upon that.

Your mom and I when we were at a street fair last week. Yeah, I'm not gonna get a chance to go on for no No, but they know so these two young guys, know, we're talking to them and I say we have a podcast and Logan Albright so they Rigged the wheel so that we would get tickets for there. So you gotta come to the park You really got the primo invite. Well, not only is the premium this weekend coming up is the are the playoffs and there are so it's four teams and it is basically ex college players

and amateurs that are trying to get back, you know, to go to some baseball. yeah. They're young players though, that's the point. And the Padres, the Dodgers, the Giants and the Athletics are the teams that are represented and I guess they have a guys there interested in, right. they have California Winter League, who knew?

I mean, it's nice to see that, know, something we talk about is, the death of amateur baseball in a sense, and you know, how it's so much less than what it used to be and how even the minor league programs, but you still have leagues like this and there's a lot more of them out there than I think people really realize. I'm not tempted to bring my glove down there just in case. I might be sure about that. think they're looking for young players. That's right.

Anyway, in real baseball, because as we record this, did not, we have not yet watched the Super Bowl, so we're gonna watch that later on. So we're gonna look completely at baseball and we've already seen pictures and video of pictures, been watching lots of met pictures thrown in spring. Everybody looks like they're in the best shape of their life. Like they've been working all winter. So the official reporting dates are this week.

Almost Cooperstown (02:00.951)
We've got about little over 50 days till opening day. that may be after that, should be before that, we're gonna have the world baseball classic. So we've got a lot to look forward to, as you said in our last podcast.

And there was some interesting news of obviously the biggest news was I think both both really the two biggest pieces of news were both tiger related in a sense in that first off they went out and they signed frame Rivaldo's to an enormous contract making him the highest a AB pitcher three year 115 million dollar deal which is more than Blake's now is getting right now

But then interesting also, the Tigers finished their arbitration case with Tarek Schubel and he's gonna get about $12, $13 million more than whatever they were paying him. So they're putting a lot of money into their pitching staff this year. And there was some talk that Schubel's $32 million that he's getting. Okay, now we know what he costs. So if we trade him.

you which I don't think they're going to do. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. You you at least know what the cost is for the player, you know, so they basically signed Framber first. And I thought, ooh, does that mean they're going to let the guy go? Because they kind of have a backstop here now. I think if you're the Tigers, I can't say that they're for sure not going to trade him. Because if I think of the Tigers get off to a terrible start this year and they're like not in the A out central somehow, they're like 40, they're like 30 and 50, you know, trending towards the trading deadline.

I could see the moving scoobble in that case. Everything that I see is says the Tigers have to go for it now in a weak AL center. It's weak, it's weak, it's weak, it's weak. And this is why they should not. That's why I'm saying they're going to go for him. But the only reason they do train him is for some reason they in the weak central are part of that and they have a bad year, which to be fair, I don't think it's going to happen. The team is just kind of too good for me to really, but if the wheels fall off the bus, then I could see that's really the only way I see scoobble moving.

Almost Cooperstown (03:49.172)
this year and then next offseason it'll be really interesting to see whether or not Tarek Scoob will get signed or get a lockout. Wow, then that's true and then I don't know that you know that could be why they don't do anything at this point because not knowing is going to happen next season now. Obviously if you're locking the players out you're not paying them so he could be on your team and you're not right exactly. Tarek was incentivized to keep them in that situation. So Scoobles are a couple interesting things about I thought the arbitration that that raise is

$22 million from his $10 million salary this year. The biggest raise, know, in an arbitration settlement that's ever happened before. And what I didn't know about arbitration is, so the very narrow definition is the fourth through six years of a player's career, unless they set an extension, teams and players have to agree on one year salaries. And so this is the stage that you get. And most of the time these things are settled.

But as we said in our last podcast, when Scoob will submit a 32 million and the Tigers for some reason or another submitted 19, they had to know they were going to lose. Why would you want to piss off your play? But I don't think that's I'm wrong. I don't think it's not about that. It's not about that. I don't think Scoob will look at their offer about them lowballing him because it's not about because you can't really lowball him because either he gets his offer or not. And I almost think in a way, if you're the Tigers, you're better off putting in an offer that you can't possibly get because what's worse.

is if you put an offer for like 23 million and the judge gives it to you. And now all of a sudden Scoob is really mad because now he feels like he got gypped and he's suddenly like, wait a second, I'm like $10 million underpaid. Now his desire to be treated skyrockets because he feels like he's being underpaid. At least now he's like, okay, you know what? I'm getting what I deserve. I can't be mad at them. They didn't stand in the way of that. He's sort of a unicorn that we used to turn obviously with Shohei Otani playing, but because he's young enough.

and is a free agent at this point in his career when he's at his very best. Right, not a lot of guys become a free agent. Not a lot of guys have the body of work that he has at this age where you can say, hey, whoever is signing him is signing a year in, year out Cy Young contender. And that's an unusual thing, which is why I think that he is going to be a big, he's gonna be the dominant story pretty much the entire year. And I think that if you're gonna give any pitcher seven years, this is the pitcher.

Almost Cooperstown (06:09.515)
I would give seven years knowing full well and you gave Max Fried got like eight from the Yankees. You're knowing full well that probably he's not going to pitch one of those years. Right, right. You have to accept that you, you have to think about it. eventually get injured. Right. It's coming. And you know, that those weren't the only moves we didn't see a few other moves as well. So like we saw Brendan Donovan get traded. I think that's a bigger deal then.

Like that's a good player going to the Mariners who needed help offensively. Well, they they they flipped Polanco to the Mets, you know, and so then they get a guy, you know, who is, you know, a good fielder and I really like that player a lot. And so certainly the Cardinals are capitulating here in February. The Cardinals have finally done what we all thought they needed to do, which is actually commit to doing a rebuild. And probably no team benefits more from this than the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yeah.

because the Pittsburgh Pirates love They won't finish last. Right. They won't finish last. And they're a team that kind of needs to have a year where they're at least in the wild card discussion going into like August, September. They don't have to make it. But I feel like if you have another year where you're out of it by like June, July as the Pirates, I don't know. Something's stinking there.

And the Pirates, you know, they did bring in a few players and we've talked about that already. I like the vibe I'm getting from the Pirates better than the best because they spent some money and they brought in a couple of players. And I think they don't seem like the same old Pirates to me right now. I think the Reds, you know, they're going to have a tough division because the Reds also didn't stand that while the Cardinals were moving off of players in the Anaheim Central. The Reds are adding them as they went out. The other four teams are tough. And so those, the three...

The top three teams in that division between the Cubs, the Brewers, and the Reds are all good, so the path is not easy for what we like to think of as an upstart pirate team. I read a story on the center fielder, O'Neal Cruz, and how his defensive abilities in center field, I he's got the arm, we all know that, but that he might be better served actually being a right fielder ultimately for the Pirates.

Almost Cooperstown (08:14.377)
The problem is they don't have a center fielder and they don't really want to play Brian Reynolds there because they've tried that before. It didn't work. It didn't go so well. So I think for a dynamic player like that, know, it worked for Tatis Jr. We talked about him. Well, but that's in short, but that's short to right field. But he started from short to outfield to right field. That's what happened to Tatis Jr. He was the same thing. So I think there's a path there and Cruz has got so much talent. They have to find a way and I guess he's working.

you know, better at reading the balls with, know, Kevin Kiermaier. There are other things that, you know, worry you about O'Neill Cruz as a prospect and a long-term player, because as hard as he hits the ball, he hits the ball on the ground a concerning amount. And it doesn't really matter how hard you hit the ball if you hit the ball into the ground, because 100-mile-an-hour ground balls are way easier to field than 100-mile-an-hour line drives and fly balls.

And so when you have a ground ball rate as stark as his, he needs to have a sort James Wood improvement where James Wood last year specifically really cut his ground ball rate. He still hit a lot, but it was down from what he had been doing previously because a guy like him who has prodigious power is always gonna be hampered if you hit the ball on the ground a lot. was the season before that O'Neil Cruz had the...

two hardest hit balls in baseball or something like that for exit velocity. Right, he hits the ball, his exit velocity is crazy, but because he hits the ball on the ground so much, 114 mile an hour ball on the ground is either an out or a single most of the time. Yeah, yeah. These guys, they feel those things. Right, they feel those, and they have lots of time to throw it the first. And even if they don't, it's just a single most of the time, because you have to hit it up the lines for it to be any kind of, down one of the lines for it to be any kind of extra base hit. So I think that that's a concerning thing.

for O'Neill Cruz is what is he? He's such an interesting potential player, but at a certain point I need his potential to start being an actual good player. Being six foot seven, he's hard not to notice on the field because he's really tall. him to be good, but I feel like him, Ellie Dayla Cruz at least is a little bit better about getting on base. He plays a better defensive shortstop. He does? Not by a ton, but he plays a play shortstop. He plays a play shortstop, and he steals.

Almost Cooperstown (10:27.912)
way more bases than O'Neill Cruz. So that's the difference between those two players. And you might not think of that's a lot, but in terms of being an everyday contributing ball player, it is. You know, I don't know why I'm on pirate talk right now, but I saw something else that the Pirates hit 31 fewer home runs than any team in the major leagues last year. We just inherently as baseball fans know, they don't really have a power hitter on the team, you know that. Right, right. And I got to think, you know, just keeping it in El Serencho, the team that's going to probably be that this year is the Cardinals because

It was left on that team once. yeah, yeah. Even though even though in our data they traded, it wasn't hitting a lot of home runs when he was there. Harris is gone now. Brendan is gone now. mean, what do you have kind of Jordan Walker hitting 30 bombs? They might not have. I 20 next year, so I felt that they could have signed, you know, Swarons, you hang your Swarons, but if I'm the Cardinals and they're clearly capitulating this year, they're clearly starting to go with their being the first revenue sharing for the first time in 25 years.

It seems like they're expecting to have not a great year after having a very low attendance year last year. And for the greatest fans and they're the best fans in baseball, cannot be fun to all of a sudden be like, what is the direction for this team's future and what is ownership's plan? Because that's something we've had a complaint about a lot of teams. know what? Say what you want about the Mets and how it.

didn't work last year. It's clear at least ownership has a plan for how they're going to win. The Dodgers have lots of money. Ownership. The teams that are spending money and trying to win are putting in moves in. The Brewers are a team that's trying to win even though they don't have a lot of money. And so when you look at the teams that don't have a lot of money and then don't make any moves to get better, it's much more frustrating. And you always go back. I think it's sort of like the fault back now is that, well, just look at the Angels.

You can spend a lot of money and spend it unwisely like Arnie Moreno. And so that's your your fail safe. think, well, that's why you shouldn't necessarily spend money because you can spend a lot of money and have it not work out. One team is going to win every year. The issue is not necessarily spending the money, but how the angels spend their money.

Almost Cooperstown (12:29.16)
because they spent a lot of money, but the issue wasn't spending a lot of money, it's that they spent their money in very bizarre and very always seem to. And then not that Mike Trout is a bad guy to spend money on, the Rendon thing was just an abject disaster. their pitching development has been awful, their ability to go out and find free agent pitchers, they chase veteran free agent pitchers every single year for a long time. It is their MO. And it never worked. So how much can I really, I'm not gonna criticize that on money, I'm criticizing that on how you use it.

Yes, yes. Well, you know, we didn't come here to talk about the Angels, but I did want to talk about another tiger as it links to the WBC. And that's Javier Baez. have a we had a lot of WBC disqualifications in a sense this week with Baez potentially being the most amusing. Yes, for marijuana, which I guess is not allowed in the WBC. But does that mean it's allowed in Major League Baseballers? I don't know. They just don't test for it in Major League Baseball. And also, I'm pretty sure WBC was just thinking, you know what, that we might

help Javi Baez with the discipline. Otherwise he's gonna be too stoned to take the discipline. He won't be getting hurt and Puerto Rico's got a problem because they've had some insurance problems with some of the players. Yeah, Lindoor is gonna be sitting out, Carlos Correa is gonna be sitting out and I do understand fans complaints in saying, wait a second. You put all the tickets on sale for all these games and sold me these tickets telling me, yeah, these guys are gonna be on the roster. I bought it because Francisco Lindoor is my favorite player. I want to come see him play.

wait, insurance is gonna not let him play anymore. I don't get a refund by ticket. No, no, you're going to the game and you're not gonna see the team you thought you were gonna see. Right, and so I do understand the frustration. As a Met fan, I am very sad that Francisco Lindon will not be playing. Why are you smiling so much? I'm very happy because he's getting to be an older player. He's not young anymore, certainly. He had a year injury where he was unusually banged up last year. And as a guy that tends to play most games throughout a season,

him not playing the WBC is not the worst thing in the world and it gives the US a better chance to win. Doesn't break my heart and the Mets, I think when Lindor was part of it, had the most guys in the WBC, 17 guys on the Mets or the WBC. So, you know, that's a lot of guys. Somebody's going to get hurt out of one of those guys. That's a mark of an organization. think players will like that. Players do because the players, as much as we talk about the fans, the players more than anybody else are the ones that really care about.

Almost Cooperstown (14:55.751)
And if your organization is known as one that hey, if you go there, they'll let you play for your team. That's gonna matter if Japanese player is coming over. You're gonna wanna go back and play for Team Japan. And if you think there's teams out there that are more likely to not let you play, you might not be willing to go and play for them. And the same thing has sort of happened with the Olympics because you've got guys saying, want to play in the Olympics trying to work something. think school worked out playing the Olympic team with Mark DeRosa in 2028 in Los Angeles.

Yeah, they do love playing for their country and it's going to be unfortunate because Puerto Rico, if everybody was playing, that's a loaded team. That's a loaded team. I mean, another guy that will definitely not be playing in the WBC or the major leagues anytime soon will be Emmanuel Classe as it got worse somehow. You know, we thought it was bad, but we didn't realize it was 48 different games or he is suspect of throwing a pitch that was influenced by betters. And here's the thing. OK, so the guy was making 10 million.

Almost Cooperstown (16:20.995)
Perhaps prospects from America, most likely. He probably came from, and all of a sudden you have a way to get all these people from your home paid in a way they could never get paid. Because yeah, sure, and just give them the money. You don't have to do that. You have to throw one page and all of a sudden all of these people make, and especially $500 to them is so much different than $500 to you. And so that's how you can get influence to do it. And it's so easy to sell yourself on.

Who's going to do it? think that in his mind, he didn't for 48 games before somebody noticed. Yeah, well, like you said, he's never going to play in the major leagues again. Like this has gotten gone from bad to worse. And I just I want to hear him at some point explain. Here's what I was thinking.

I think don't have that in you know what's gonna be. Tommy last offseason you've had a manual class right now you had you've had Terry Rozier you had Chauncey below Chauncey bill of situation and the NBA is different but Terry Rozier the same way you've now had multiple players in different leagues getting caught influencing outcomes of games because of betting

and it is only a matter of time before there is a scandal in one of the major sports that is too big to ignore and they're gonna have to put the cat back in the bag. Because all it's gonna take is somebody is gonna get busted for potentially influencing the outcome of a playoff game or a championship. There's gonna be somebody found on the tape for one of these, eventually. I don't see any way that gambling ever is not part of it now that it's there. They're gonna be, but I'm sure that all of a sudden, I bet the sponsorships would drop off.

Suddenly you're not gonna have ESPN Sunday night baseball bought to you by fan drill. I hope that doesn't happen. I really don't. So I guess keeping in sad news a little bit because we had a couple of players for a major leaguers pass away last week. On the one side, Bobby Shantz who pitched in the mid 40s for the Yankees and I think it was the Red Sox, might have been 100 years old.

Almost Cooperstown (18:14.02)
and he was just interviewed by I think Tyler Kepner last year and a very very interesting thing to hear him talk about. The little guy and he died at 100 and unfortunately a 34 year old man and Terrence Gore who most recently I think everybody's been playing him for the Royals. I remember him playing for the Mets even as a speed guy who would come in and steal bases late in the game and unfortunately passed away during a routine complications during a routine surgery. Routine surgery, mean that doesn't sound good and I saw something about Terrence Gore just here.

16 major league hits in his career and he had more stolen bases than he had, you know. I would believe that. So, yeah, it's an unfortunate thing, very sad and shocking when a guy, a young guy like that goes.

I saw and I wanted to ask you about this because NBC is going to be covering Major League Baseball in place and everybody who was doing ESPN Sunday Night Baseball was like, wow, NBC has everything. They basically get an old Sunday for every sport. They got the NBA. They have football. They have baseball. They've got baseball. So basically all year long you've got NBC. They've announced their new coverage lineup and they've got three former leaders coming in to be their analyst crew and Joey Votto, Kershaw and Rizzo.

And I know between Fado and Rizzo, that's two very personable and likable guys. And Kershaw's a very personable They're all left-handed. What is up with that? It's gonna be interesting who they decide to put sort of as the leader of that group because I can see immediately NBC has a chance to replicate the success of Inside the NBA with, you know, you Shaq and you had Ernie and that has been such a big, Shaq, Ernie and Charles has been such a...

prominent show in the NBA. would not be surprised if they're hoping they couldn't recreate a little bit of that magic. That's interesting because like who's your booth is, know, I know Bob Costas is going to do some stuff. Right. don't know who's going to be doing pregame. These guys aren't going to be the booth, but they're still going to be there every week talking about baseball. And if they can make that into a watchable important show, I think that would be really good because baseball fans don't have that as sort of a sit down appointment viewing each week of the this is who talks about the week in baseball. Maybe even if it's only 30 minutes or an hour, if they can

Almost Cooperstown (20:25.448)
come up with some funny bits and some stuff to talk about people will definitely tune in. Yes, yeah. And then, you know, I wanted to ask you about Bob Costas because I'm trying to, you know, I met Bob Costas a few times when I was working in New York in the early, we used to come over and listen to the music that the guy I was working for had put together. Very nice guy. He's been obviously, you know, he's a Hall of Famer and all, but I think, you know, as a guy who's in his early seventies, how do you think about the relevance of a guy who you remember seeing him in Ken Burns' baseball?

Let's put it this way, I remember his performance last year during the playoffs and that was rough. I I remember there'd be games, entire like portions of games where it felt like he was having... I don't know that he's doing play-by-play, I think he's doing studio work. Right, right. In that case, I'm much more okay with it because he clearly loves baseball and I think his style will actually fit better for studio work because he can lend a gravitas and I think he's gonna be... That's a point.

for talking about, because he really loves talking about the imagery and wistfully about baseball. And I think he will be very good in that respect. So the last thing I wanted to talk about, and you mentioned Joey Votto. And so we kind of got off on a conversation this week, you know, and we'll talk about Votto for the Hall of Fame. And then Goldschmidt, we mentioned him in this podcast, he sides with the Yankees and say, you know, well, I always look at Goldschmidt and I'm coming out with a post that basically all the Hall of Famers you're going to see.

playing this season and Goldschmidt is like right there on my list. He was right there but when you look at the stats that Paul Goldschmidt has and you compare him to Joey Votto and Freddie Freeman either one of them is a Hall of Famer. All of them. None of them are Hall of Famers because they're all virtually the exact same. So you can go into stat head and do the versus finder and get the three guys next to each So Freddie Freeman's career war, B-War is 64.2.

He's played 2,179 games. Joey Votto is 63.6, a little less. He's played in 2,056 games. if you hear games, Goldsmith 2,074 games, so about the same, 63.8. I mean, that's unbelievable. They're not separated by more than like half a point. It is basically this across all of the statistics. If we read them out, then most them- They all have 300 home runs. They're all hitting like, they all have basically a 140 OPS. They all have batting average that's within like,

Almost Cooperstown (22:35.202)
10 or 12 points of this. Freddie Freeman have a gold, a gold glove in his Freeman has won. Vato has zero zero zero gold. That's the biggest outlier is Vato has is Goldschmidt has four gold gloves in comparison to everybody else who just does not have that does not have that now. Freddie Freeman has one has one right here. He Freeman each have one. Goldschmidt also has five silver slugs. Yeah, you know, I guess I would have I'm surprised that

Vato, guess, Goldsmith was doing it when Vato was in it, so that's the unfortunate thing, you play at the same time. They've each made a ton of All-Star games. Freddy's just the winningest player of the three, because he's got three World Series. know, none of them even have one. Vato barely stepped a play on. Well, not only is Freddy the winningest player of the three, he did big things in the World Series, and that counts in our book, right? You know? I think most people, you really, you know, if you talk to fans of all three, I think you would probably get the biggest pushback.

from Red's fans about who's better between Vato and Freeman. But I think, nah, I think most people would acknowledge overall, especially because Freddie, he's put up these numbers, he's still likely to play at least one or two more seasons, whereas I can only see Goltron being a limited player this season. I can't imagine he's playing fast. Freeman might have two or three seasons putting up Sasslap, and in that case, when he's done.

he will have put himself in a tier above the two of them that's more clearly delineated. And because Goldschmidt and Varo had, I don't know, I guess Goldschmidt probably had more post-season experience than all of success. But And Varo didn't get that. Maybe more than once. Maybe one time, I think, maybe 2015 or something He made it at least twice. So, you know, it's hard to be a stud in the playoffs. So don't think you're ever playing in the playoffs. Right. But yeah, first base is another position where, you know, we've got three of the...

If you've got three Hall of Famers that played together very recently. you have to think about it. These are the three guys that are the post-Pool Hosts first baseman. Pools is gonna go in a couple. The Ann Miguel Cabrera to that too? Yeah.

Almost Cooperstown (24:32.225)
But compare, don't know, people think of him as much as a third baseman. You played more games at first. Right. I think, I don't know, I never think of Me too, me too. It looks like he was a great fielding for his I think of him as a third baseman DH. So yeah, first bass has got, you know, has had a lot of stuff. Third bass, we talk about it all the time. And maybe in a future broadcast, we'll kind of put the guys out there because there's some pretty darn good third baseman playing right now.