The South Side Blueprint With Rick Hahn

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome back to Rosters Rings. I'm honored to be joined
again by John Daniels as the guest host. Second segment,
we got a tremendous guest for you. Rick On will
be joining us former White Sox GM twenty three seasons
he worked for the White Sox JAD. It's the trade
deadline season. I thought we would kick this off with
a little conversation about not one situation where we sold

(00:28):
big and one where we bought big. But let's start
with the sale of Mark to Seryck. Can you give
the listeners a little background as to what it went
into that and the negotiation with Hall of Famer John Shirholds.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, so we're we're talking about the summer of two
thousand and seven.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
FED and myself and a number of.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Others had our first year in administration there in Texas's
or running the group in Texas' two thousand and six,
and yeah, we had a basically a five hundred season
in six. Probably made some moves before we were ready to.
You know, we uh a couple of things that I
think we might do over had we had a chance.
And really we looked at O seven as that opportunity,

(01:08):
and you know, Tom Hicks was the owner at the time,
and and uh, you know, we had laid out to
him before that season and hey, if things don't get
off to a good start, this is you know, a
reality that not the reality. You know, it sounds negative,
but it's also an opportunity to to you know, launch
the franchise forward. And so the biggest chip that we

(01:30):
had was Mark to Chera. He had a year and
a half remaining under his you know, the first contract
that he had signed there, and we thought it was
very unlikely that we could extend him. And then we
had some very loose conversations with about an extension, but
he was gonna he wanted to test the market as
as his right and he obviously did very well a

(01:51):
year and a half later with with the Yankees, uh,
and then won a World Series with them.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
But that was the big show.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
And he was a very unique player, was you know,
mid twenties, switch hitting, gold glove, power, hitting patients, you know,
all everything you want out of a player. Very durable
as well, and so there was a pretty robust market Atlanta.
John Scherholtz was the GM at the time, and they

(02:18):
were you know, fourteenth straight Division titles and just an
unbelievable run. And John was very clear that this was,
you know, the player that he wanted to go get,
and he had They had a strong farm system at
the time. If you recall, you know, other people were
telling us be careful dealing with Atlanta. They know their
prospects better than anybody else, and and this, this, that

(02:38):
and the other. And we did a really thorough but
we we had the benefit of knowing early in the
summer that that's the big move we're going to make,
that we're going to sell, So we had our scouts
really canvassing, and I think one of the critical decisions
we made was that we were willing to go, you know,
further down into a farm system that we were not

(03:00):
what we wanted some upper level players, specific players, you know,
we were cognized to the fact that you know, Atlanta
had a you know, a certain group of guys that
they wanted to win with and some young.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Players might help them.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
And and the fact in fact, we're willing to go
to a ball for Elvis Andrews or short season ball
for Neftali Feliz I think opened up some different, you know,
higher end talents that we wouldn't have been able to
get to get if we had you know, only wanted access.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
To you know, Triple A players or double A players.
And so I think Arizona was in Boston, was in
the Yankees.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
The Dodgers for some Anaheim absolutely and for some reason,
you know, the Dodgers wouldn't put the local left hander
in Clayton Kershaw, who was you know, hadn't gotten to
the big leagues yet, uh Ned Colletti was was rightly
uh reluctant to include him in the deal. Bill Stoneman
and Anaheim I remember taught us, taught me a good lesson,

(03:59):
as you know. I told him there's kind of attacks
for dealing in the division, and he said, well, it
shouldn't it be the other way around that. You know,
You're only gonna have to watch mark to share in
your division for a year or so, and I'm gonna
have to watch these guys for the rest of their careers.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
And so.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
But ultimately Atlanta was the most aggressive and and you know,
we got down it was gonna be a four player
deal ended up being a five player deal. Bo Jones
and another left hander got put in the deal because
of a little bit of a medical concern on one
of the players that thankfully didn't didn't play out that way.
But Matt Harrison, left handed starter, played a big role

(04:34):
on our you know good clubs. Jared Saltilamachia, uh, you know,
very good, big leader and ultimately wins a World Series.
And in Boston Elvis Andrews was now Rangers Hall of Famer.
It was a shortstop kind of anchor on that that
team provided energy as well as defense and base running
and all the other pieces. And then f Tali Felees

(04:54):
was was our closers. So really, uh, you know, our
scouts did an unbelievable job ownership supporting us and making
a pretty tough deal to make, right when you're not
bringing anybody back. That's a name brand, so to speak.
But that deal, along with some other really good scouting
and development stories, really changed the trajectory of the franchise.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
You know, JD. One thing I remember about that trade,
in addition to what you're talking about, or two things, actually,
one was Elvis and Andres was available in part because
Atlanta was so deep at shortstop, so it was effectively
like their third best prospect shortstop or they had big
leaguers who were ready, and then so they had a
little surplus there, so we were able to tap into that.

(05:39):
We were very systematic about that. And then two was
we had done our homework on John Schorholds, who as
a Hall of Famer, but one thing that we had
seen as a pattern of behavior was that he was
willing to trade high upside arms provided that he thought
they could only be relievers. Now Tali Folles kind of
fit that profile, so we kind of got him snuck
in as maybe the third or fourth player in the

(05:59):
deal when we were valuing him closer to the second
player in the deal, in part because I think we
had really researched John, and John had traded a lot
of those guys away and they hadn't really panned out
or they had really netted him tremendous returns. But in
that case, I think we were able to enhance the
return in both those guys instances somewhat circumstantially. But also
because we had done a ton of homework through the process,

(06:23):
because I think we recognized this was our best asset
and we couldn't miss on this deal, and we were
fortunate enough really not to miss on the deal.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I think two things that stand out there. One, you know,
you're talking about how aggressive John wanted to be, and
he was very clear from the get go, and so
we were. You know, we had canvassed five or six systems.
There was one other club that came in a little
bit later in the process that made a pretty good offer.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
We just couldn't.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
We were so comfortable with the work we had done,
and we had done some work on this other club,
but not to the same degree that you know it was.
It was also would have been a good baseball trade,
it would have been probably not quite as good.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
It would have been a good deal.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
We just the level of work we had done, the
level of conviction we had, and these players was just
at a different levels. I do think getting in early,
you know, allows the other cloud to do more work
and be more comfortable with that. I think the second
thing that one of the things I learned from it was,
you know, we got a lot of calls right after
that we made the trade on on Salton Lamachi in particular.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
You know, he was again a switch hitting catcher.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
He had a great arm, you know, power from both sides,
patients and and we got probably should have listened you know,
we probably should have been a little more open than
we were. I think you get anchored, you get you
fall in love with these guys. Now you just announced
to the world that we have we traded this, you know,
go glove fall star player, and salt Lamachi was the

(07:49):
closest to I mean he went right to the big league.
He was the closest to being big league ready, so
he was somewhat the headliner. I think we got a
little anchored in that position, and hindsight what it was,
you know, we might have done even better had we
been open to talk about Saltomachia soon after.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
And that's saying something because that that deal in and
of itself totally changed the trajectory of the franchise, and
those guys played and packed that team for the next decade.
I want to shift it to one of our bigger buys.
And most people want to talk to you about Cliff Lee.
I want to talk to you about Coal Hammils and
it's for a few reasons. One is it's the years

(08:29):
twenty fifteen, and let me just paint the picture for you.
The Rangers were three games under five hundred. They were
eight games back of the first place Houston Astros. We
were sporting a negative forty four run differential at the time,
which was the fourth worst in the American League. And
you walk into the war room and say, hey, listen,
let's go get cold Coal Hammils. And then I remember

(08:50):
distinctly when you're talking to the media, the entire nature
of their questions was like, oh, you're building for the future,
because Coal Hamil's we were going to control for the
next couple of years. And you said, no, we're trying
to win the division right now. We just made the
move to do it, get it done. And I think
there was like this amazing ripple through our whole organization,
through our whole clubhouse of oh my god, he believes

(09:12):
in us. And then I remember you just think was
sharing the story about John Hart's influence on you, and
he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but something to the
effect of, if the team is doing its part, it's
up to the front office to do their part of
the trade deadline. Well, you at the foresight to think
almost a year in advance and say I think this,

(09:32):
we have the ability to bounce back. We end up
running away with the division. After that, we end up
going to the playoffs that y're you believed in them,
You believed in the team, you believe this was the
move to make talk a little bit about that if
you would.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, like you said, twenty fourteen was just a Murphy's law.
Anything that could go wrong did. And then fifteen you know,
it starts off in spring training, you know, Jef Banister's
first year with US, and and you Darbush goes out
with TJ and so our ace. We lose and we
get off to the slow start.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
And it felt a little like here we go again
at the beginning. But then you started to see to
John Hart's point, you started this team. Yeah, we were
a couple of games under five hundred, but they were
they were in every game. This wasn't we were not
playing bad baseball. The energy level was was outstanding. You
had some veteran guys like like Adrian Beltra, who you know,

(10:27):
I felt like we owed it to, you know, having
having chosen to sign with US ultimately Hall of Famer
Prince Fielder and others Shinsu Chu and kolbe Lewis, and
it's just there was a it was a nice blend
of veteran guys and younger players, but there was we
were in every game and they played the right way,
and you just felt like we were a little better

(10:49):
than our record, and so I don't think we would
have gone, you know, as heavy, and we didn't go
heavy on on rental players because we were we weren't
blind to the fact that standings were what they are.
But you had somebody like Cole Hamil's who you know,
as decorated occur as he had and still had I
think three more years of control under on his contract.
Then we got Jake Deekman in that same deal. You know,

(11:11):
we made another trade to bolster a bullpen with a
young reliever and Sam Dyson. At the time, it was
kind of a now in future move, right, I mean,
it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
We didn't go.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
All in on that roster so much as we were,
you know, continuing to layer in pieces players clubhouse fits
that you know, felt made us better then but also
made us better the next couple of years, and very
fortunately it played out just like that.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, I just would say from sitting very close to
you through that process, you know, we all aspire to
enhance the sense of confidence in the clubhouse and to
build a championship culture. I've never seen one singular move
volta franchise forward like that one did in that instance,
just relative to how the team was doing. Cliffley had

(11:59):
a profound impact on the organization. But at that time
we were clearly the best team in the American League West.
We were tracking to the playoffs. In this case, I
think that singular move and the statement that made that
move made really propelled the franchise forward to extend what
was already a pretty lofty playoff window. You know, during

(12:20):
that time in which we end up going to the
playoffs I think six of seven seasons. So that was
a tremendous thing to witness, palpable to feel and to
see the results on the field was really incredible. Please
stay with us through the break here at Rosters Rings.
On the other side, we're going to be talking to
Rick Han trade Deadline, his history with the Chicago White
Sox and some of the amazing moves he made along

(12:41):
the way. Welcome back to Rosters to Rings on behalf
of John Daniels. We are delighted to bring on Rickhn
as our next guest. After hitting the academic trifecta of

(13:02):
Michigan undergrad Harvard Law School and Northwestern Business School. In
two thousand, Rick gets his start in baseball, working for
the esteemed sports agency Steinberg, Morad and Done. He then
joins the Chicago White Sox heading into the two thousand
and two season, where he ultimately spends twenty three seasons.
He gets named the team's general manager in twenty twelve,
serving in that role for eleven seasons. During Rick's tenure,

(13:25):
the White Sox win the World Series in two thousand
and five for the first time since nineteen seventeen. They
also set a franchise record by appearing in back to
back playoffs for the first time in twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Rick.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Welcome to Rosters to Rings.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Thanks for having me guys.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Hey, Rick, One of our traditions here on Rosters to
Rings is we share our origin stories of how we
got into the game. So can you give us a
little background on yours.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
You know, my origin story is so dated now because
you know, I was started looking for a job like
the one we all wound up with in the mid nineties.
I was a history major at Michigan, so obviously that
was very well prepared for entering a major league front office,
and there just wasn't a path. This is pre John

(14:16):
Daniels being a GM. This is pre Paul D. Podesta,
Josh Burns, sort of like those of our peers that
were able to make that leap earlier in the early
two thousands. So a lot of my inquiries, I would
be happy if I got like a form letter back
from HR saying they acknowledged my letter. So I started

(14:38):
looking for a job in a front office about ninety three.
Ultimately in ninety eight, you know, it was time to
turn pro. As you said, I had a lot of education,
did in five years what you can do in four
if you have any planning and foresight when planning out
your graduate school. And I figured joining as an agent
was at least a use of my passion for the

(15:02):
game and my education. Frankly, fairly quickly after starting as
an agent, despite how fantastic of a firm Steinberg and
Moreed was and some fantastic clients, it was clear to
me that my passion really was more on the team
building side. I was able to obviously get to know

(15:23):
some team executives and some team owners while working on
the agent side, and ultimately in two thousand, my wife
and I actually sus my fiance. We quit our jobs,
got married, moved back to Chicago, which is where I'm from,
and eventually I got very fortunate in that the transition

(15:44):
from Ron Schuler to Kenny Williams was taking place at
that time, and the White Sox happened to be looking
for someone with my set of skills, so to speak.
So I was able to use that background and persistence
and all it took was seven years for me to
land the job in base.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
You know, Ricky, it's interesting because I think our stories
started around the exact same time I started in nineteen
ninety nine. First season was two thousand, and you're absolutely right,
like the skill sets we had were just not at
all on the radar screen at that time. I joked
that when I first met Dan O'Dowd in my first GM,
he said, give me something about your background. I was like, well,

(16:21):
I have an MBA and he said, you played in
the NBA and I said, no, I have an MBA.
And it's like it just it was reflective of the
fact that front offices weren't really run like businesses at
that time. But when you entered and then you referenced
a lot of the people who kind of came soon thereafter,
between the three of us and Chris Antonetti and theo

(16:42):
Epstein and Mike Chernoff and John Nozaliak was probably already
in the game of that time. Mike gersh like, there
just were a lot of guys who started flooding front offices.
And now you would be surprised to see a front
office that doesn't have multiple people who have you know,
JD's or MBAs, But at that point that was really form.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
You're absolutely right. I feel like the barriers to entry
were obviously quite high, and it was why it took
so long and so much good fortune for each of
us to land in a good spot. But it also
presented opportunity because these front offices were very thinly staffed
at the time, especially compared to now. So I feel

(17:22):
like at that time you needed some level of core
competency to get hired, and mine having the agent background,
supposedly I would know contract negotiation and the CBA and
the Major League rules, and that was sort of like,
all right, this is yours, don't screw it up, and
if you do a good job with that, you know
what you can go along on some affiliate visits and
some amateur scouting and learn to help fill the gaps elsewhere.

(17:47):
Now there's many, many more points of entry. Shoot, you
got websites posting you know that we have a need
for XYZ and to get one hundred applicants for it,
and teams are carrying nine, ten, fifteen interns over the
course of the summer. Once you're in, though, the risk
sort of flips. A little bit of getting siloed and
the ability to grow in a thinner front office is

(18:09):
probably what you have lost. But at least you've gotten.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Me interesting to hear more about that. As far as
your experience at the agency and how that translate. You
touched on maybe some of the skills that you brought
and how it helped you.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Did you feel, you know, being young with the education
background you had.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
I think we all, you know, had some hurdles that
we had to kind of build relationships off that you.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Did the agent piece.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Ever get held against you or were there any additional
hurdles of that that you were on the other side
of these negotiations just a couple of years prior.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Yes, it definitely was. There were benefits to it. Given
the experience, and frankly, I think it gave me a
little bit of heightened empathy for what the player side
was going through in a negotiation, whether it's the pressure
an individual player feels from its family, from looking around
the clubhouse and measuring themselves up against others, to the

(19:05):
players association's influence, to the agent's motivation. So all that
gave me a more complete picture. I felt an ability
to empathize better with the players we were and agents
we were negotiating with. But it's certainly you know, as
you know, as you alluded to, like people with our
background entering the game at the time were looked at
a little askew, like what is this guy doing here?

(19:27):
Does he think he has all the answers? Does he
know what he doesn't know? Like is he going to
look at my watch to tell me what time it is?
Or is he here to you know, get better himself.
Add on top of that the layer for me there
was a little bit of suspicion of like you were
just representing players, like can we trust you with CBA conversations?
You know I was, I was fortunate enough in that,

(19:49):
you know, Frank Cooneley was in a prominent role with
the the labor relations department at MLB. We within weeks
of me joining, we found ourselves in a grievance with
the Toronto Blue Jays. We found ourselves in arbitration hearing
with Keith folks. So it was like baptism by fire,
and I sort of had the opportunities to work with
people at MLB and allay some of their suspicions. On

(20:13):
the player side, it might have taken a little longer
for people to get comfortable with someone who you know,
might know a couple of plages of their playbook. But
wasn't you know, using it for nefarious means? Was using
it to try to get deals done?

Speaker 3 (20:26):
If anything?

Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know, I think one thing that Ricky you hit
on here, which is so enlightening and is such a
change in our tenures, which is at that time you
got your foot in the door with one skill set
that you reference that you were able to be chose
some competency and some capability. But we were all forced
to be generalists, like we all had to do a
little bit of everything because back then, you know, the
average run office was you know, eight ten, twelve people,

(20:51):
and we were all doing twenty five jobs collectively, and
so you had to be able to cross pollinate and
and be there for other people and help them as
much as you are helping yourself. Breaking into the game today,
I imagine, is much different. It's much more about specialization
and can you do one thing exceptionally well. I reflect
sometimes in my career and I found sometimes it was

(21:15):
tough just to find in a sentence or two like
what on Earth we did? But when I ascended to
being a general manager, I realized that title was actually
apt for me. I generally managed pretty well. I didn't
specifically manage all that well. There are other people could
specifically handle, like amateur scouting, analytics or those sorts of things,
but I could generally kind of multitask across a lot

(21:37):
of different platforms and do well. The other thing that
you said, which just really hits home with me, is
this notion of you had to be humble. You know,
you had to be willing to put your head down
and show that your work ethic is what you're leading with.
Because one of the fascinating things about starting in baseball
is that no one wants to retire, So you're working
astride somebody who's like a seventy five year old scout

(21:58):
and he's teaching you the game. And I'm sure we
could all harken back to somebody like that who was
gracious enough to spend time with us and our crews.
But for goodness sakes, they were the age of our grandfathers,
and we were working kind of side by side with them.
And I don't think there are many industries where you
have a twenty six, twenty seven year old first time
employee working alongside of a seventy five year old person

(22:19):
who's literally dedicated their game, their life to the game
of baseball.

Speaker 4 (22:23):
And I think that's one hundred percent accurate. And there's
also was this, Frankly, I think a little bit of
concern or suspicion on the parts of those veteran employees
who had come up through the game and the more
traditional path of sort of like, all right, is this
person going to tell me what I'm doing is wrong
and create almost a there was you had to be

(22:46):
careful that wouldn't create erect walls to keep you out.
Like I remember my first couple of spring trainings. We'd
have our you know, the staff meetings every morning with
the coaches and go over everything for that day. And
I made a point of it every day to sit
next to either Joe Nassik or r Kushner, who are nickname.
Being caveman appropriately was a life life for both lifers

(23:08):
in the game, and it was as much for me
to learn from them about their approach but also to
get them comfortable with me that like I'm not coming
in here to tell you, oh, hey, I you know,
I got all this education and I, you know, can
read a spreadsheet and therefore I know you're doing X,
y Z wrong and frankly your life work has been
misguided and I have the answers Like no, man, It

(23:30):
was more about like how can we round things out?
And to go back to your point is being a
general manager, Like with all due respect to you know,
John Schuerholtz or Ranch Rickie or whomever, Like there's twelve thirteen,
fourteen skills you need to excel at, let's say, or

(23:51):
be good at as a general manager. On the one extreme,
you know, subjective evaluation and at the other extreme, let's
say objective or dealing with the media or dealing with
agents or managing people. None of us is going to
be at the top tier of all twelve or fourteen
of those traits and knowing what you don't know and

(24:13):
be able to surround yourself and trust competent people to
fill those blind spots for you is essential to success
in my opinion. And I think us coming in the
way we did knowing that, like it's a balance between
these veteran lifers who have been there and us coming
off of either small fields or you know, ivy covered

(24:37):
walls of higher education like it drilled home. This was
a way for you got to find balance and respect
and that was that was key.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
So you go through that process, you learn, you develop
after kind of breaking in with the little unorthodox background
and skill set and then the prior job of the agency.
And how fast forward that you guys win the World
Series five and you are now one of the you know,
rising stars in the game, and different opportunities start to
present themselves to you. Loosely, remember two thousand and seven,

(25:11):
I think the Cardinals were were we you were a
hot name then you're still a hot name in my book,
by the way, but you were certainly appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
How did you how did you and.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
The family ultimately decide, you know, staying there in Chicago
is the right move for you, and you talked a
little bit about just those decisions as you ascend to
that point in your career.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, you know, that's a great question, one that we
haven't really I haven't been asked in ten fifteen years.
But at the time, you're absolutely right. You know we
want and O five and you know, my name starts
getting out there in seven and at the time, and
Antonetti was sort of similar on the same path at

(25:55):
the time. So it was always christ and me as
part of a cluster of people potentially being candidates for openings,
and he and I would talk frequently about level of interest,
and both he and I at the time, we're willing
to turn down opportunities. And it was funny. There was
a very clear demarcation in those in my world. And

(26:17):
it's like if you had been in the game less
than fifteen years, you were kind of like, oh, I
get it. You're waiting for the right thing. You're happy,
you're in a good place where you can win. Your
family is an important consideration. I grew up in Chicago,
so that obviously put a big thumb on the scale.
My parents are still around and live nearby. But if
you were in the game more than fifteen years, you

(26:38):
looked at me or Antonetti like we had three heads,
because there's only thirty of these, and what are you doing?
And who are you to be essentially so picky? And
you're fortunate to be mentioned, much less to be offered
a job, so who are you to withdraw your name
from consideration? And both sides are valid, both sides get it.

(26:59):
I turned out very fortunate in that both my children
were born while I worked in my hometown, and both
my children went off to college while I still worked
in my hometown. And really it was important to me
and my wife to not move our family more than
once before high school if we could control it. This

(27:22):
obviously isn't the right industry for that, but that was
my goal, and I was really really fortunate in that
I didn't have to move them ever, like they were
able to grow up normal childhood, et cetera. Professionally, in retrospect,
that might not have been the right decision. There might
have been better opportunities to win along the way that

(27:43):
I turned down to chance to pursue not offers chance
to pursue, but holistically like trying to have a balance
life and what's good for my family, Like, I wouldn't
trade the path I actually wound up on for anything,
even though it might not make total professional sense in

(28:03):
retrospect to others.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Just to give a quick point of education for the listeners,
one thing that is unique about baseball is that when
we work in it, we do not have the latitude
and the freedom to pursue jobs unencumbered. So the way
that that works is when the Saint Louis Cardinals had
interest in Rick, mister DeWitt, the owner of the Cardinals,
would have to call Jerry Reinstorf, the owner of the

(28:28):
White Sox, and ask permission to speak with Rick as
a candidate for the position. And in that situation, mister
Reinsdorf would have the unilateral right to either grant that
permission or to say no, he's not allowed to do that.
And I don't know to what extent Rick, you've ever
felt like you were denied permission. I don't think I

(28:49):
ever was. I hope you never were. But I just
wanted to bring that up because to Rick's point, it's
not as if Rick could make that decision to forego
the Cardinals opportunity and just say, Okay, the next one,
I'm going to just go get that job. You don't
really have that latitude. The other thing I just would say,
as a friend of Rick and somebody who admired him
through that process, is there are two different types of jobs.

(29:12):
There's one in which you would be one of five
to seven candidates to be considered for the role. There
are others where you're actively getting pursued recruited, and maybe
you're not the only one who's getting recruited, but that's
kind of more in line with the situation, and maybe
you have one or two candidates, and by all accounts,
I think Saint Louis was one of those where Rick

(29:33):
was getting pursued. It's a crazy thing in sports, but
there are a lot of top ten lists, and one
of the top ten lists always was who were the
top ten, you know, GM candidates at the time, And
as Rick said, there was an era where both he
and Chris Antonetti were kind of towards the top of
that list of most people's lists at the time, and
rightfully so. They just won the World Series Cleveland had

(29:54):
a ton of positive reputation. But I just wanted to
offer that in addition, you know, staying with one team
is a very noble pursuit. But to be able to
do it for you know, you were there twenty one seasons,
right right, twenty three I'm sorry, So yeah, I mean
that's that's an exceptional accomplishment. And to be able to
do that for your family as a gift most of
us can't give in the game. So I just I

(30:16):
just wanted to make sure we kind of called that out.
You know, it's a I don't know, Rick, if you
look back, because one of the other things about Rick
was that he was so connected to the other gms,
like there there really is a camaraderie, interfraternity amongst the gms,
and so when any of us had opportunities, I know,

(30:38):
I always called you Rick and just asked your assessment
of the opportunity. So when you offered counsel, so aside
from your situation where you want to stay in Chicago
with Gene and with the kids, what was some of
the criteria you you looked at Because I always looked
at it through the lens of like how stable is ownership?
And it seemed as if if that, if that was
a good answer, then you moved to like, Okay, what's

(31:00):
the situation with the manager? Beyond that? Like I was
confident and hopeful we could we could correct any other problems.
If you have issues with the manager and or the owner,
I think it's really tough to succeed.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
I agree, I think I think I think you nailed it.
Eddie Einhorn, who was Jerry Reinser's partner for a real
long time, said to me, right when this process is
sort of ramping up for me in my career, he
pulled me aside and he goes, I understand, we're going
to lose you soon. Probably the only advice I'd give

(31:32):
you is don't go anywhere where the expectation out may
outstraps the commitment. And that kind of goes to ownership
in that what is ownership trying to accomplish? Obviously everyone
wants to win, but the resources and and path to

(31:52):
that victory. Resources committed an ideal path to that victory
homegrown free agents trade can vary, and I do early
on a big part of my analysis was absolutely chance
to win and sort of a rapport with ownership. If

(32:15):
I ever were to return. Now, you know, having the
experience that I've had, I would want to feel philosophically
aligned with ownership, not just on the goal of winning,
but how we're going to win, the type of players,
the type of processes we're going to use. I do think,
and it's something I worry about myself. So I don't

(32:36):
mean it as a criticism of anyone out there. I
worry that your view of how to win and what
is the formula to win can become calcified a little
bit based upon whatever era, either you grew up rooting
for the game or you had success in the game.

(32:57):
And you know, for example, the twenty twenty five World
Series champion, whoever that is, it's probably going to look
a heck a lot different from the five Chicago White Sox.
I mean, our ALCS rotation all four guys through complete games.
I think it's fairly certain that's not going to happen now.
So taking it to the extreme, if in my head

(33:19):
the proper champion going forward looks like that five team
in terms of their traits, it's probably not going to work.
And so having that sort of you know, more commonly
known as a growth mindset and being on the same
page with ownership now would be of the utmost important
as opposed to trying to build an outdated model that

(33:42):
they have in mind is the right one.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
When we ask owners to put their resources behind winning.
When we said that in two thousand and two thousand
and five, twenty ten, it was such a different endeavor
than it is now. These departments are so much more robust.
The resources were trying to tap into the systems that
people the technology is just so vastly different. And I
think always from a leadership standpoint, like it is so difficult.

(34:08):
When you're doing well, you do fall into that trap
of like we kind of have this figured out, we
have a competitive advantage. We want to keep this moving forward.
You're so obsessed with not losing your intellectual capital as
people are trying to hire people away, that almost you
you were fighting for the status quo. It's that challenge
of like introducing a new voice, you know, a new

(34:29):
resource into the decision making process to make sure you're
staying cutting edge because you just so it's so easy
to fall into that trap of like, hey, listen, let's
just keep what we're doing. What we're doing because it's
going pretty well, and you know, I look at it,
you know, Rick Harkening back to the twenty ten, twenty eleven,
twenty I'm sorry, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one seasons. Do
you guys earn the playoffs back to back years? I

(34:51):
was working for Minnesota at the time. We viewed you
not only as the class of the division, but as
the class of the American League. You were a team
you would put together was really formidable. And then it
kind of falls off. Yeah, and it just goes to
show how quickly this can happen, bestlaid plans and how
quickly it can happen. When you guys were sitting there
in twenty and twenty twenty one, how why did you

(35:14):
feel the window was open? And how quickly did you
find out maybe it wasn't as wide as you expected.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Boy, we really felt we were cooking with sauts by
the end of twenty twenty. Obviously it was the shortened
COVID year and we wound up getting bounced out of
the first round of the playoffs under difficult circumstances for everyone,
but we certainly projected off of that team that, Okay,
now we're positioned, we may need this or that. We
added Liam Hendrix, who went on the wind reliever of

(35:40):
the year that next year, so like addressed a need
we needed, and it really probably we had a good
amount of injuries on that twenty one team, which every
team has. Never is a real excuse that because we

(36:01):
actually had like eight different former White Sox first round
picks contribute to that ultimate division winner. We had a
bunch of minor league free agents that we signed, you know,
Jake Lamb Goodwin came in to help us in a
stretch like we were. The pro scouting department, the amateur

(36:22):
scouting department, not to mention the major league staff, like
all really was gelling. It seemed like to fill the
plug the holes in the dam and.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Keep us, keep us afloat.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Even that the injuries and you know, having to get
guys sort of on the fly, didn't make us feel
like that window was going to close nearly as quickly
as we did, even though there certainly were some warning
signs there. Our first half of the season, we were awesome.
Second half of the season, we were kind of five
hundred dish, a little lackadaisical. And I think what you

(37:00):
one of the things you're alluding to is it's such
a deca delicate ecosystem in those clubhouses, and we had swagger,
we had energy. You said you viewed us as the
class of the league. We felt like we were the
class of the league, like we would be there to
beat your ass and like celebrate over it. About midway

(37:22):
through twenty one, we lost some of that, and part
of it was the injuries, part of it was the
down year. Part of it was the clubhouse vibe changed
dramatically over the course of the twenty one season, not
so much that we didn't enter twenty two thinking all right,
we can run this back. And frankly, you know, I
think Joshian wrote at one point in one of his
newsletters during August of the twenty twenty two season, you know,

(37:46):
the White Socks are gonna play with their food for
four and a half months and still win this division.
Because it felt like we were just buttering around, not
excelling in any way. But that really was the precursor
of the of the wheels coming off the thing. So
it you go through the competitive cycle when you get
things lined up, especially the way we felt we did

(38:06):
with signing young players to extensions to extend the control
window of the club. You know, we felt we were
on the precipice of a good, you know, three to
five year heavily competitive, deep in the playoff and sneak
up and win one window. Obviously dealing with you guys
in Minnesota who was you know, for years and earlier

(38:26):
in my career, was constantly taking divisions away from people
on paper, are like, well, wait, we're better, but they're
five games up. Not to mention when you alluded to
what Cleveland was doing, like it was going to be tough,
but we felt we were really well positioned, and frankly
it came apart in two years.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
So Rick, just circling back to your to your origin story,
when when you're dreaming of working for the White Sox,
did you make any forays of joining their organization before
you ultimately got hired and how did that go?

Speaker 4 (38:59):
I did? It went so well that it took another
four years before they actually hired me. I was very bullheaded,
which I'm sure is going to come to a great
shock to those who know me.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Like you do.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
I didn't want to use any help. I didn't want
to use any family connections or so and so know
so and so. Who can get you in front of someone?
I thought, No, I'm going to do this on my own,
completely oblivious or arrogant to the fact that it's extraordinarily competitive,
and just because someone makes an introduction to someone doesn't

(39:36):
mean you're getting hired, like you're gonna there. Might be
nice to you for a little bit, but they're not
going to hire you unless you fit the role. So finally,
after about three years of banging my head against the
wall and like I said, being excited when I got
a form letter back from HR rejecting me, I did acquiesce,
and my dad had a friend who knew Jerry Rhinstorf,

(40:00):
and a friend passed all on my resume, and Jerry
was kind enough to invite me in. And this is
the winner of ninety six. I walk into his office.
He's facing the other way. I still remember it distinctly,
and before he turns around. Keep in mind, Jerry denies
this story, so it's his word against mine. Before he

(40:21):
turns around, he starts letting off a barrage of I
don't know what you're doing here. You're wasting my f
in time. You're wasting your f in time. You need
to go get a real job, not work in baseball.
And you know, having grown up in Chicago Bulls fan,
and you know, just having had the labor stoppage in
ninety four, I'm like, took me a second, be like, wow,

(40:44):
Jerry Reinsdorf is sitting here cursing me out. I was
able to maintain composure, and we wound up talking for
about an hour and a half that day, and I
felt like I made progress, explaining that I thought the
game was changing, and that the profile of those who
were going to pop the late front offices is already
starting to move a little bit, and only more will
more so in the coming years. Walked out of there

(41:06):
feeling pretty good. About two weeks later, I get a
handwritten letter on Jerry's stationary sent to my apartment. My
real name is Frederick. I go by Rick. My real
name is Frederick. So my top of my resume that
he has says Frederick, and the letter starts off dear
fred So, showing that he has already forgotten my name.

(41:27):
Goes on to say, you know, I've thought long and
hard about our meeting, and I continue to believe I
will not help you ruin your life. Please lie down
until you come to your senses. But then at the
end he said However, if you would like to learn
about scouting while holding down a real job, feel free

(41:47):
to contact me and I'll put you in touch with
some of our scouts so you can shadow. So I
did do that, got to know some scouts, many of
whom are actually still with the White Sox, who were
very gracious with their time while I was sitting there
at the as in school, and I spent a good
portion of my spring and summer getting exposed to that.
So it's a long story already, so I can't say

(42:08):
long story short. But at the time I was at
Kellogg Business School, they had a contest for best rejection
letter from the job application process and I won twenty
five dollars to Barnes and Noble. So that was the
first money I ever made in baseball. Thanks to Jerry
again and he denies writing that letter, which is framed
upstairs in my office.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
That is an awesome story. I also I realized, like
when you say that, like you have to accept rejection
if you want to work in professional sports. And I'm
sure that there's no greater time than now to say that,
like the amount of times I got rejected, and just
really categorically I applied to all thirty teams coming out
of college. I got formally rejected by four twenty six,

(42:48):
didn't even respond right, and I was ecstatic. I was
like this, I'm like on the precipice. When I ultimately
got the job. My first job in baseball with the
Colorado Rockies, I got rejected for a marketing position, which
I was grossly overqualified for, and then got hired for
a baseball position I was grossly underqualified later. So you
just never know how it's going to go. Rick, I

(43:12):
want to continue delving into your relationship with Jerry, because,
at least outwardly, it seemed as if it was such
a special relationship. You guys had forged over twenty three
seasons together. So it starts in a kind of like
a funny, avuncular way, and then it matures over time.
You guys get to celebrate the two thousand and five

(43:33):
old series together, you guys get to go to the
playoffs in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one together. Ultimately, though,
as all these jobs do, it winds down at the end.
What were your conversations like with him leading up to that,
and can you kind of share with the listener, like,
how does that go down? Because I think, you know,
we see those things in movies. It's not it doesn't
play out the same way in real life. But my

(43:55):
sense is you had a little bit more of a
hand in that than people would realize.

Speaker 4 (43:59):
Yeah, and look, Jerry Reinsdorf and Kenny Williams took a
chance on me in two thousand when they first hired me,
And again, it sounds silly given the current state of
the game, but as we talked about earlier, back then,
there weren't a lot of people like us getting these opportunities.
And not only did they give me that first opportunity,

(44:21):
but they continue to give me more and more areas
for growth to put me in a position where I
could become a general manager. So I was forever grateful
for that as well as over the years, you know,
the friendship, the counsel, the advice, the antagonism when I

(44:43):
needed it to push me to get better. All helped
form you know, who I was as an executive, but
also like who I was as a man and a
father and a husband like it. I'm forever indebted to
them both, But part of that, I feel comes with
a responsibility to be honest. And you know, as I mentioned,

(45:08):
the twenty twenty two season, we sputtered around, we didn't
fulfill our promise. In the twenty twenty three season got
off to a horrible start, just a disaster. And Jerry
and I think had our first conversation in early May
of that year where I said to him, you know,
the focus of the conversation was what are we going
to do to get out of this? What can we do?
What are their options? But I ended that meeting by saying, look,

(45:31):
you do realize if we can't pull out of this,
you're gonna have to fire me. And he's like, no, no,
that's silly, that's not the case. I have faith in you,
I said. Now, I appreciate that. I said, however, you've
given me and our department the opportunity to rebuild this organization.
And we had some success, certainly not nearly enough in

(45:54):
our opinion, or as much as we strove for. But
if this doesn't work in twenty three, you're gonna have
to reset it again. And it's just the nature of
where this organization is and where our resources is and
where our balance sheets are. And I'm not entitled to
get to do that a second time, like you have
to understand that. I get it. I can you know

(46:16):
it's not going to be ugly. It's going to be
clean if you ever get to that point. We had
similar conversations in June, July, and August. You know, he
really was reluctant to make a change. You know, I
felt it was part of my job as one of

(46:36):
the leaders in the organization to protect others. I didn't
want the coaching staff to feel the eire Kenny, you know,
as someone who had been wonderful to me for over
two decades and had is the GM when we won
the World Series and played a key role in many
of our success of our successes together. You know, he

(47:01):
had a deeper relationship with Jerry, going back an extra
decade plus longer than my twenty three years, and I felt,
as the GM, he could remove me and just me
and things would be back on track. There at least
would be more consumer and fan confidence and perhaps a
different approach that could exceed even the level of success

(47:24):
we were able to rebuild the thing into over the
course the last few years. When it came to the end,
the actual final conversation where he you know, let me go.
You know, it was it was more it was more
me consoling him, frankly, like it was especially him making

(47:46):
the move with Kenny like that he's as well, as
he has said publicly, like Kenny was like an additional
son to him, and that really really hit him hard.
I think he didn't love fighting at me either, but
that one was like family and they remain extremely close
to this day because of that history. And I, you know,

(48:07):
talking with Kenny later that day, like both of us,
I think had similar experiences where it was letting this
kind and generous man who had been good to both
of us understand that we got it. This is you
know is iim ros said, this is the business we
have chosen, like this is part of what comes with
the territory, and it objectively was time.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
You know, first of all, thank you for sharing that
exceptionally personal and candid story. You know, I harkened back
to My first mentor was Josh Burns. He was somebody
who I went to college with. We played baseball together.
He was a mentor and he got me into the game.
And one of the very first things he shared with
me is you aspire to work long enough to get fired.

(48:54):
And what he meant by that was that he challenged me.
He said, there are two ways to go through life
in these positions. One is to just try to survive
tomorrow because the roles are so wonderful. You know, there's
so many things about these jobs that are so coveted.
Very few people get these opportunities. Those who do want
to hold on to them. But he said, don't try
to survive, try to thrive on behalf of the organization.

(49:15):
If you're trying to thrive, you are going to make
mistakes at some point, and the mistakes are going to
mount to the point where you're going to be held
accountable for. So I just want to just pause for
a second in really, you know, recognize how you tried
to thrive throughout your career for the Chicago White Sox fans,
for the Reinestor family, and it was your nobility at

(49:38):
the end where you probably could have eked out another contract.
It sounds like by all accounts you most certainly could have,
and Lord knows where that would have taken you, because
you could have probably turned it around again. But you
were acting in the best interests of the family, the
fan base, the organization. So few people do that. So
I just wanted to tell you, like, I think that's
an exceptional account of your character, in your integrity. I

(50:01):
also want to shift gears a little bit to the
positive side of things.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Is which is right?

Speaker 1 (50:06):
You know you talked about the rebuild that you took on,
and really, I mean, I'm going to miss names here, Rick,
so please fill in where I miss names. But just
as for the listeners to understand, like when Rick had
a chance with Kenny, obviously to rebuild this franchise, you
made some really bold moves and you ended up treating

(50:26):
Quintana Sale and Eaton and I just wrote down on
the back of an envelope, heeriod, here's what you netted.
And I know I'm missing names here, Alloy Whomenez, Dylan Ces,
Michael Kopek, Johann Mancater Raynaldo Lopez, Lucas, Gi Ledo, Dane Dunning,
And just as a point of reference, when we make
these deals and we get multiple players back, we do

(50:47):
it with the hope that maybe one, possibly two will
actually emerge to my recollection. I know there were other
players involved in those deals, but there weren't too many
other players involved in those deals. The hits you got
on that group of players was exceptional. Did some of
them fall short of your expectations, maybe, but as a group,
I have to believe that is one of the biggest

(51:09):
halls anybody's gotten in the context of one rebuild. And
I just like wanted to say that like that it
was incredible. I'm sure a lot went into that, But
if you could share with with the listeners, like, like,
how did you go about doing that? How many I mean,
these are players that every team wanted to get their
hands on. Sometimes when we're making trades, you've got two

(51:30):
or three suitors you guys had to like cycle through.
I can't imagine how many suitors. Do you look back
in that and say, as great as those halls were,
like who we could have gotten so and so, or
what were some of the other, you know, bold statements
people were making, Like what was your recollection of that
time and did you realize in the moment the halls
you guys have received.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
Well, thank you very kind of you to say that,
and I mean it, and it means and it means
you know, it means a lot coming from you having
lived that life and made similar such trades, been on
both sides of stuff like that to know, like, obviously
it's not simply me. It's the pro scouts, it's the analysts,
it's even the trainers, it's the amateur scouts who have

(52:13):
seen these guys back and the Dominicans wining in on
it to line things up. And it was you know,
we had a period of time with the Socks where
we tried to sort of patch things on the fly
and you know, compete for eighty six ish wins, sneak
in the playoffs, jump up and get hot at the

(52:34):
right time, and that just wasn't a satisfying model. I
made the right around the deadline, I think I had
in twenty sixteen, I said to the Chicago media that
we're mired in mediocrity. And then afterwards our head of
pr scout Riifer, it was like, did you have to
use a literation? And I was like, what are you
talking about? And he goes, you said we're mired in mediocrity.

(52:55):
That's going to be the headline for the next three
months here. And I didn't even realize I had said it,
but it was a candidate sessiment of where we were.
So we went to Jerry with a very specific multi
year plan about how we were going to rebuild this thing.
And unfortunately, like the problem wasn't the guys you mentioned,
It wasn't the top five to six seven players on

(53:17):
the roster, it was players eight to thirty five or
whatever you're going to go through that year, that just
weren't enough for us to sustain the least bit of
underperformance or injury. So we had to go about rebuilding
this thing from the from the roots up.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
And fun.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
Basically, the approach was when you have an asset like sale,
a premium type elite probably future Hall of Famer at
that time, and even more even more so now with
multi years of control, we would look at our board
and try to figure out, Okay, these eleven teams want them,

(53:56):
but which three would we feel good about a package
we could make up because not everyone has the kind
of system that's going to make you happy, as you know,
to make that type of deal. And once we sort
of zeroed in on a limited pool of teams that
had that caliber of talent, then we were able to

(54:18):
sort of really drill down on negotiations with those specific
teams with specific targets in mind, and that helped make
what could have been a very difficult process much easier,
you know, apropos of this time of the year. You know,
in the twenty sixteen season, it was pretty clear that
we were going to have to go through that rebuild,
which did not start in earnest till the winter meetings

(54:40):
when we moved Sail and Eat in a couple of
days of succession. But there was a chance at the
deadline that we could have done that in sixteen, especially
with Sale. People really wanted Sale, but we didn't feel
like we were accessing the type of players we wanted
to at that time, and we thought that the pool
was going to be much broad or in the off
season of teams that would be in the market as

(55:03):
opposed to simply the contenders at the deadline. So a
lot of it was timing. And last point I'd make
on this is Quintana. I think I even said and
was roundly mocked because if I used like a nineteen
thirties expression, But after we did this Sale and Eating
trades on back to back days at the winter meetings,
I think I said something like, if we had our druthers,

(55:25):
we would move Kintana. We continue this process with everyone
knowing Kintana was the next and we'd make it another
deal while we're here. Product of sleep deprivation that we
all suffer from at the Winter meetings has me talking
like a you know, an old Carnival Barker, and it
just didn't come together. We moved Quintana the next deadline.

(55:47):
So there was an element of patients, patients from our owner,
patients from our coaches, patients from frankly, the players in
uniform understanding what we were doing and and understanding isn't
going to happen overnight. You can't force that, like to
get the returns that we wound up with on those players,

(56:09):
you had to strike when the market was there. Sometimes
that was in the deadline. Sometimes that was real quickly
at the Winter meetings, right the winter that you guys
moved Eaten and Sale you're just referencing in Texas, we
had discussions about potentially moving some guys then too, I

(56:31):
think Darvish and Cole Hammil's and ultimately that winter we
had received approval financial approval for public financing for the
new stadium, and ownership understandably didn't want to on the
heels of that turn around.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
And break down the club. It just been the playoffs.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
And I'm just curious your experience outside factor, non baseball
factors that maybe aren't normally considered that fans don't think
about any in your experience that affected meaningfully the direction
of your club or how you went about decision making.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
Now you're absolutely right in that. When we started our
process in sixteen, as we laid out for Jerry, here's
what a rebuild needs to look like. Part of it
was we're going to be bad, like that's just going
to happen based on the talent and the maturation process

(57:28):
of what we're requiring. You have to be okay with that. Additionally,
we're going to want to be active and in their
national market, which at the time carried pretty severe taxes
or penalties for going over your pool. You have to
be okay paying a penalty. We're going to want to
make trades in our division. We're going to maybe make
trades with the Cubs, which was kind of taboo back

(57:50):
then for in inner city trades like that, and you
have to be okay with that. And to his credit,
all three of those things that he was ever really
comfortable with, he understood and gave us the latitude to do,
but he easily could have said, no, shoot, you know,
go into the Quintana trade. When THEO and I are
talking it through, both of us repeatedly, especially right at

(58:13):
the start, but repeatedly through the process, said look, just
so you know, I may have to bail out of
this thing at the end, and let's try to do
a baseball trade and let's not hold it against each
other for whatever reason, some you know, BS gets in
the way at the end, and we simply can't close

(58:33):
this trade because again, inner city trades like that weren't
very common. And at the end of the Quintana trade,
we had the deal in place with the Cubs that
we liked, with Eloy and csping the centerpiece. And I
think I've told this story publicly before, but like the

(58:53):
second runner up in the Kintana sweepstakes was Milwaukee and
had great talks with Stearns, but it just wasn't getting
to the level and our opinion of the Lloy and Ces.
So Jerry calls me, you know, or exchange medicals, but
again we haven't committed because of the sensitivity. And he

(59:13):
calls me two three times, and the final time, he's like,
walk me through again why we're sending this guy to
the Cubs and not Milwaukee, Like, I'd much rather send
them to Milwaukee if things are equal, and explain to
him again why it wasn't equal, and here's why what
we think these guys are versus what was being offered,
And at the end of the conversation he goes, Okay, look,

(59:35):
I cannot in my in good faith bless this deal.
I will not give you my blessing for this deal. However,
I will tell you that if you unilaterally decide to
go ahead with it, there will be no negative repercussions
for you. So that's how the Cantonatray gets done and
goes back to that Look, it's it's the owner's team,

(59:59):
it's the owner's toy. They let us. They grant us
the ability to play with it and shape it and
guide it and hopefully win with it, and ultimately they
have final say and if they want to do something
different you, I'm sure we've all been there fight like
hell to try to talk them off of that path.
But at the end of the day, if that's the path,
you either get on board or you get out of

(01:00:21):
the way.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
We had the chairman on this podcast, and his story
was different. He insisted on that deal.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
That sounds about right. That sounds about Ricky shed light.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
On something which I think people may not realize. It's
like the number of times you call another team and
they say, hey, I'm sorry, I just can't deal with
in division, or I need to exact a premium from
you if we're doing stuff in division. I always thought
that was so peculiar, because if I'm selling and I'm
trying to rebuild the team, I actually most would like
to talk to is somebody in division, because I know

(01:00:54):
you're beating me today already. I'd rather help you more
today to hurt you in the future when I hope
to be beating you. So I always thought it was
so short sighted when teams had some of those restrictions,
and to your point, most of those were levied by ownership.
But sometimes I think GM tried to kind of self
impose that One question I just wanted to ask, if
you're willing to share that the focal are at the

(01:01:15):
time when you traded sale and ultimately eaten soon thereafter,
was that the Washington Nationals actually could have ended up
with sale, and that there was a pretty aggressive package
they put together. You guys, pivot at the last. You
go with the Red Sox deal for sale, but then
you quickly put together a deal with Eaton going to

(01:01:36):
the Nationals, and at least the folkalore at the time
was that that was a facsimile of the sale return
maybe less obviously a slightly lesser package. Is there any
truth to that or anything you could share about, like
how close you were to sending sales somewhere other than
the Red Sox.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
That's basically accurate. I remember going to bed. I think
our flight was delayed because the storms and meetings were
in DC and there's storms in Chicago, so we didn't
get there on the first day. We wanted to get there,
but we made a lot of progress on day two,
and I remember going to bed on day two untild
both Dombrowski Dave Debrowski was with Boston at the time

(01:02:14):
and Mike Rizzo with Washington. We're going to decide this
in the morning. Were down to two teams. We're going
to make our choice in the morning. Spent most of
the night, as you guys can relate to debating and
zeroing in on what we wanted to do, and in
the morning decided we were going with Boston. Washington made
an aggressive offer. Just again, you have to make decisions

(01:02:36):
at some point, and we felt more comfortable to Boston offer.
To Rizz's credit, you know, despite what I'm sure was
a great deal of frustration and feeling like you're right
on the doorstep of acquiring a player like Chris Sale
and then it not happening. He was able to pivot
when I raised the idea of you know, what else

(01:02:57):
you guys looking to do, and we talked about outfield,
and then we talked about Eaton, and then we had
a great deal of foundation obviously a number of weeks
talking about their guys, and we were able to very
quickly come up with a you know, package based on
those Sale conversations that we were able to consummate in
the next twenty four hours for eating.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
So you laid the groundwork. And it's amazing because sometimes
emotions get in the way, you know, in those instances
where the GM doesn't get exactly what he wants and
so now they're not willing to work. But it sounds
like you guys picked up right where he left off.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
In that Yeah, and again if for whatever reason he
had told me to take a hike, I would have
gotten it. I think you're right, it would have been
more about emotion. And again to their to Washington's credit,
they kept their eyes on the prize and got a
guy who helped them win a world series because they
able to remain objective when it came to the next

(01:03:51):
time to deal with us.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
If I can have a redo, by the way, I
think no more Mazzara was. I wouldn't include him in
the Chris sale deal when you and I were talking.
If we could go time machine back, I'd like to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Redo there, please.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Yeah, I still managed to get him, And what was
his lack of production for us? Good guy though, very
good guy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
He's something I want to ask both of you guys
to share kind of with with the listeners is like
what does the trade deadline war room look like when
you guys were running shops, Like who was in the room,
what were the conversations, Like how well did you know
the other gms tendencies relative to you need to text
a certain guy versus call a certain guy? Who were

(01:04:34):
on those calls for you guys, and like just just
paint the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
For the listeners.

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
You go JD.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
It definitely changed over the years as far as who
was in the room. You know, we I always enjoyed
having like a big group get together. Probably waste a
lot of we were not efficient with our time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
We did. I will say we did have a hell
of a snack table. We were really crushed it there.

Speaker 4 (01:05:02):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
But you know, we had a mix of you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Know, front office staff, some of your more seasoned, experienced scouts.
We we always had several in the room. And there's
a fine line there, guys, because sometimes guys would bounce
out to go see somebody at target, come back in,
you know, and so some of your your more senior advisors,
guys that you really leaned on, would also be your

(01:05:26):
best evaluators, and so that they were kind of in
and out. Certainly the role of the analysts grew, you know,
during our tenures, and and that you know that piece,
certainly in the number of people in the room would grow.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
But we were very inclusive.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I always felt like, I know, some people a little
worried about information getting out. We kind of erran on
the other side of inclusion and trust. And you know,
I'd rather get burned one time than than to create
this environment or feeling of kind of anxiety, and I
didn't want people worried about that. So it really felt
like a bigger room. Owners would come in and out,

(01:06:01):
depending pint. If the big league team was home, sometimes
the manager would would would poke his head and more
towards the end, you know, more towards the end, and generally,
you know, I didn't want the manager to involve there.
It's just kind of he's got enough on his plate.
But certainly he was getting phone calls and as an
impacted the big league club the last price forty eight

(01:06:25):
seventy two hours or certainly more intense, you know, the
early on it's it's you know, some clubs aren't Some
clubs don't want to engage at all. Some clubs are
waiting for the deadline to really you know, drive, maybe
because they want to see where they're out in the standing,
Maybe because of the psychological impact that deadlines have on
all of us. We tended to be an early start

(01:06:47):
calls earlier. I don't know that we were early movers
so much, but we like to start the calls earlier
in part because I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that part
of the job. I enjoyed talking to our counterparts. I
enjoyed talking to our scouts and our front office guys, and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
It was it was a fun process.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
One thing that we did that you and I were
together that I also enjoyed was when they we would
go take it on the road. When the team was
on the road, we'd set up a war room, you know,
bring out It was a smaller group, but you'd still
have you know, eight or ten folks in the room.
And just being around the team, especially when you're buying.
I think when when you're a contender, being around the team,
having the feel of that, you know, it's it's a

(01:07:26):
rare opportunity for people in our positions to actually contribute
to the product on the field, to feel like you're
part of it, and to deliver something of value to
that group.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
And so, you know, get on the.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Road and you get out of the offices, you get
out you know a little more open and little you know,
you can, especially when we were somewhere fun like California,
didn't get out and walk on the beach in the
morning to our old man walk.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
And talk about ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
So yeah, it was it was a very enjoyable time
and enjoyable part of the.

Speaker 4 (01:07:55):
Job, and only two things I'd add That is, you
can't control Sometimes a call comes in at eleven PM
and you're depending on going to your point of knowing
who you're dealing with. There'd be certain guys who you
know are calling on a fishing exposition, and there's certain
guys who like, all right, if I don't we don't

(01:08:18):
say yes to this, it's going to be gone by morning.
And that sort of fed into one of my regrets
is that as front offices got bigger and bigger, drawing
that line about who was in the war room became
more difficult because you do it at some point it
becomes unproductive to have, you know, forty people sitting around

(01:08:40):
a room. But you also feel terrible when someone who
has spent all these hours and weeks and months away
from their family doing work, whether it's scouting or analysts
or even on the training side, coaching whatever, finds out
about a trade on Twitter like that. You're like, that
just sucks. And sometimes it's don't avoid because it happens
at midnight. You're not going to form a zoom call

(01:09:03):
or something like that. But that was something that I
wish I could have found a better way to make
everyone who contributed to that, which is a massive number,
even more now than obviously was ten years ago, feel
like their input was valued and factored into this acquisition
that we all made, not the two guys who were

(01:09:24):
talking about it at midnight.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
People have such a more greater vested interest in the
outcome when they feel like they contributed to the decision making,
even if it's just on a cursory kind of perpheral way.
I always felt like that was the time of year
where you wanted to create this meritocracy where it didn't
matter what your title was, your experience was, if you
had a good idea, if you had a good brainstorm,

(01:09:47):
let's run with it. Because I also found and you know,
this is something JD did a lot I tried to replicate,
which was having multiple people or at least one other
person listened to trade discussions when you were talking to
a GM, because sometimes you're so fixated on, you know,
making your next point, that you don't hear the entirety
of their point, and sometimes you miss a nuance or

(01:10:09):
some tone. And the reality is, in so many of
these deals, it's so easy to say no and so
I think it was like it took a lot of
work to get to yes, and then determining secondarily whether
yes was someplace you want to get to. But in
the vast majority of trade discussions I've ever had or
free agent discussions, at some point said well, I guess
we have nothing more to talk about, and then it's

(01:10:31):
you almost have to negotiate both sides of the deal
to make sure that they feel comfortable that you can
progress down something other than path A, because I'm not
sure I ever did a negotiation where it was just
one linear path. There was always you know, you're jumping
from from point to point to actually get to a
deal that actually makes sense for both sides. But I

(01:10:51):
also think something that's changed over our careers is you
guys used to be emblematic of who the gms were.
You know, you could have a straight conversation with somebody
in which they were very candid about what they were
trying to pursue. And I think there's a big gap
between when you're negotiating with somebody who's trying to get
a good player versus somebody who's trying to get a
good deal. And I think we've kind of shifted more

(01:11:11):
to people who are trying to get good deals, and
in that pursuit, they're far less willing to share information
because information is worth its weight in gold. And I
often find the most challenging negotiations were with people who
was clear that they were more interested in coveting information
than acquiring your player.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
Very true, And.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
I'd say, in my opinion, like two of the best
people to deal with were always Cashman in Domrowski in
terms of they would tell you I want player X.
You'd ask about player Y and Z I can do,
why I can't do Z? And you'd progress towards either
a deal or a stalemate. And those two are probably

(01:11:54):
headed to the Hall of Fame deservedly so when they're done.
Thet of fishermen so to speak, like that's part of
the gig, Like you want to know what's going on.
There is this fomo element. You don't want to be
missing out on a potential three way if you can
get a little piece here or there, Like I get that,

(01:12:14):
So you have to almost tolerate that. I think as
part of the process. The only ones that I sort
of would get chapped with is is JD alluded to
like There's almost some teams that would have a script
like if the deadline is four pm, then at three
forty five, we will offer this deal. At three point
fifty two, will offer that deal at three fifty five.
If we don't have a deal, we'll came to that

(01:12:35):
And like that isn't like you can easily lose the
deal at three thirty because they're going to go a
different direction. And I just didn't see the the Maybe
maybe it's part of why I'm sitting here in my
living room right now. The gamesmanship side of that I
didn't think serve the club long term. The relationships, the trust,

(01:12:58):
the can't the honesty tunic was where I felt more comfortable,
Like I would much rather do a deal with one
of you guys because of my our history, our relationship,
our trust, how you treat people, how you deal with information,
the lack of things becoming public for leverage in the media.
Then I would someone who I feel like is trying

(01:13:19):
to use game theory on me to manipulate a result
that I you know, they think they're going to outsmart
me into.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
If I recall one of the things that I did
that that would get under Rick's skin was that. A
lot of time we have the give several people in
the room, you know, whether it's one other person just
just that there AJ, or there's five or twenty, and
sometimes you'd have them on speakerphone so other people could hear.
Sometimes you would tell the other guy, hey, just heads up,
I got you on speakerphone.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
I got so and so in the room.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
But sometimes you wouldn't right, it just kind of get going,
and Rick would always be like, you, prick, do you have.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
Me on speakerphone right now?

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
He'd call you out because you can kind of hear
the ten It was either I don't know if you
could hear it, or you could hear Thad with his
bag of chips in the background.

Speaker 4 (01:14:01):
But either way, AJ couldn't stay quiet for more than
three minutes anyway, so eventually it was going to pop
into something.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
You know, Ricky, you said it. But like I feel like,
as a general manager, you owe it to your owner
to be able to negotiate very productively with twenty nine
other clubs. And if you burn somebody for having done
a deal with lacking integrity. Now I'm down to twenty eight,
I'm down to twenty six. I'm down to twenty two,
and at that point you should be replaced, like our
jobs require us such I always my approach to negotiations

(01:14:33):
was that this one should pave the way for a
smoother next negotiation. And while I'm trying to effectively help
our franchise, there's no reason I shouldn't listen to your
needs and be able to deliver a win to you
as well. Hopefully I'm winning slightly more than you are,
but it shouldn't be to the extent to which I'm
vanquishing my foe. I'm costing you your job, and I'm

(01:14:53):
losing integrity with you. I think that's problematic. One thing
I just before we let Rick go, I do deadlines
coming up by by, by and large, and I just
wanted to like touch on a few teams that I
think are unique positions and just kind of get your guys'
thoughts about what direction they're heaving. So to start with,

(01:15:14):
I think it's interesting as we sit today within reason,
the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks are similarly. They
have similar records, there's similar games back of first place,
there are similar games back in the wild card. Yet
buy and large, it appears Arizona is selling and Kansas
City is buying. Like, what what do you guys make

(01:15:34):
of those two teams in very similar positions, behaving in
very different ways.

Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
I think a lot of it. It does harken back
to some of the themes that we've talked about. There
is a ownership level of involvement. There is a window,
like you and I talked about, sort of how you
perceive your window. Excuse me, Arizona has a decent amount
of expiring contracts, especially on the pitching side, and their

(01:16:00):
best offensive player. Kansas City, you know, isn't quite sure
how much longer you know, they'll have Salvador Perez. Let's say,
you know, they had a couple of pitchers get hurt
who are going to be around perhaps later in the season,
but certainly next year, and just isn't necessarily in their opinion,
perhaps the time for a deeper cut, you know, again,

(01:16:25):
whether it's a stadium consideration in Kansas City which could
be factoring in, or whatever else may be on the
owner's mind. I was told once, you know, I presented
three different levels of objective data sewing that we had
between a nine and eleven percent chance of making the
wild card around a deadline, and I don't think Jerry
ever saw dumb and dumber, but he did drop basically,

(01:16:47):
so you're telling me there's a chance and didn't want
us to make certain moves that were going to cut
deep into the competitiveness. I mean, we didn't make the
playoffs that year, it would have been the right decision
to sell. But there's a lot of factors that go
in of these things, as we've talked about for the
last hour or so.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Yeah, I agree. I think I actually talked to one
of our compatriots who works in a Western division, and
he said the Western and Eastern divisions don't have latitude
to make half steps that the Central does necessarily based
upon the payroll beheamless and some of those divisions, And
so I wonder as Arizona's making these decisions. The other thing,

(01:17:24):
I think urgency factors in right, Like they went to
the World Series a couple of years ago, Kansas City
has not been in the playoffs. They made it last year.
There was an expectation of arrow up, but it was
you know, back to twenty fifteen, sixteen, their last playoff run.
Is like urgency matters in some of these cases. One
other thing that I'm noting here is I'm looking at

(01:17:46):
the Detroit Tigers last year at the deadline. You know,
they kind of made news as they were on one
of these lists that the medias want to write where
they always annoint a winner and a loser of every
off season, every deadline. I don't know if they were
on the losers of the buying side or they were
on the winners of the selling side, but they sell
last year demonstratively, they end up winning the most games

(01:18:09):
down the stretch, they end up making a playoff run.
But like now, they're in a different position. Now. There's
a lot of expectations on the Detroit Tigers, and they
were kind of running away with the division but have
faltered a little bit recently. I wonder if that has
something to do with the weight of expectations. But I'm
very interested to see what they do. And also just
like a brief commentary from you guys on this notion

(01:18:29):
of like winning the deadline or the offseason or what
have you, and how infrequently that actually correlates to winning
on the field.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Yeah, I think your point of the Tigers. Sometimes, you know,
what appears to be selling is giving opportunity to maybe
better players or certainly younger players or guys of different
energy and just kind of fit.

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
That the direction of the club.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
That seems to be what Detroit benefited from last year,
and they've obviously rolled into this year having a great,
great year. I think regarding the you know, the winners, losers,
the grades, the you know, you see it at the deadline,
you see it at the drafts, right, which is crazy
when you're you're you're grading out of draft so many
years before you really have any sort of basis to
do it on. But also just that the headlines that

(01:19:18):
come with it. I wasn't with Tampa at the time,
but when Tampa and Saint Louis made the trade, Randy
rose Arena went went to Tampa and Matthew Liberto and
others went to went to the Cardinals, and I believe
reading the headline the next day was, you know, Tampa
trades for first baseman d H Jose Martinez, right, who
was a very small part of it, but he was

(01:19:38):
in the big league. So that's where you know, that's
where the kind of mainstream I went to. And yeah,
it's just a reminder that you know, the the intentions.
Club's intentions are often you know, not obvious at that
these times, and and you know, like you like the
trust that there's a bigger plan in place.

Speaker 4 (01:19:57):
Yeah, I'm saying this is someone who want to un
off seasons, but never a second ring. I get why
it exists. It's good clickbait. It's part of Frankly, what
drew probably all of us to the game initially was
the excitement about a transaction and a team forming itself
and ideally getting better for a stretch run or buying

(01:20:18):
hope for the future, but ultimately, like really something, I
grew up a cub excuse me, I grew up a
Bears fan, a Bulls fan. And what I lost in
this job working as a general manager and a front
office for baseball team, I lost the ability to be
like kissed off about their moves because anytime I'd be like, oh,

(01:20:40):
why they let that guy go? Why did how did
they not trait resign this guy, I would immediately pivot
back to I don't have all the information, Like I
don't know what's going on off the field. I don't
know about the finances, like all the things that factor
into the internal calculus that just aren't part of those
winners and losers grades or the fan reaction is what

(01:21:01):
makes them sort of hollow for me, like you just
can't grade someone without full information. That said, I understand
why they exist. That's what's necessary. It's what makes fandom passionate,
and it's part of the fun time of year. But
Detroit is a perfect example, like, don't bother too much
with those winner and loser garades on Friday, because one

(01:21:22):
of them may wind up one of the losers or
one of the sellers may wind up with a deep
postseason run.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
I think we've all probably seen it too. It's amazing
how motivating it is to a clubhouse when you insinuate
that you don't think they're good enough to win today.
Sometimes that really propels them down the path. And I
think that's what transpired last year. As my guess is,
they were highly motivated by this perception that the front
office insinuated they were further away than one season from winning.

(01:21:52):
They then ran with it down the stretch and ultimately
through this trait. Midway through this season, they were one
of the best records in the game, which is pretty exceptional. Okay,
so the last question I have for you guys today
is just it's on the other end of the spectrum,
which is the Atlanta Braves go into the season fan grafts.
I think we all have respect for their process of

(01:22:13):
how they put their projections together. Had picked them to
have the second best record projected based upon the strength
of their roster. They obviously falter, but actually if you
go to their site today, they're still projected to have
the seventh best record for the remainder of the season.
But they sit seventeen games back in the ANL East
in twelve games back in the Wildcard. So clearly things
aren't going well. But that doesn't necessarily mean as general

(01:22:35):
managers we should blow up the team. We have to
understand what is an anomaly and what is something we
have to act on. And JD I was just going
to throw this to you first, like this reminds me
of the twenty fourteen Texas Rangers. We were decimated with injury,
but we thought that team was really good. We stayed patient,
We made some trades on the fringes, but we didn't
blow things up. We'd gone to the playoffs twenty ten

(01:22:57):
through twenty thirteen. We have the blip on the radar,
twenty fourteen is a disastrous season, but then we go
back in fifteen and sixteen because you kind of had
to wherewithal to realize this was a one year exception,
not something that we should overreact to.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah, I think that kind of even to the previous discussion.
I think the contacts matter, and none of these are singular.
None of these these individual years are disconnected from the
years before and after, and it's a similar group of players,
and you know, we had built that group, they'd had
some success. The fourteen team was decimated with injuries. As

(01:23:30):
you said, I think we at the time we set
records for number of DL days and dollars on the
DL and all back when you called it the deal,
not the ile. But you know, going into fifteen we
got off to a slow start, but there was a
sense around that club that they were capable of more
that you know, there was a the talent we felt

(01:23:50):
was good, but also just the way they played the game.

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):
They were in every game. It wasn't sloppy baseball, and so.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
There were you know, there's some reasons for us to
leave and kind of a Rick's point earlier on, you know,
club with a bunch of expiring contracts.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
We didn't have that at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
We had a group that was under control for several
more years that was going to be together, and we
felt like if we could build on that, that we
you know, we wanted to do that again. That was
our opportunity to contribute to the products on the field,
our opportunity to deliver something to that clubhouse, and fortunately,
you know, for us, they went ahead and ran with
it and we won the next couple of years.

Speaker 4 (01:24:30):
It's the point you made about the message to the
clubhouse like that, that's huge in terms of even in
a year where it's not going to work like as
you alluded to it, the fourteen Rangers or perhaps this
year's Braves, showing that we still believe in what we're
doing here for the long term, I think is a
nice shot in the arm. And frankly, even when you

(01:24:51):
make the moves to the other direction like Detroit did
that last year, as you both said, it provides opportunities
for others in that clubhouse to step up, and even
more importantly, I think highlights you know, how fantastic the
job that aj Hinch and that coaching staff did that
year to keep that group focused on that night's matter
at hand.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
Well on behalf of JD. I just wanted to thank you,
Rick for joining us for this length of time and
sharing your insights into you know, your your robust relationship
with ownership. How you guys built a championship team in
two thousand and five, but then expertly rebuilt after that.
There are very few of us who get opportunities to
excel on both fronts. You did it. You did it both,

(01:25:31):
and also you did it with exceptional integrity throughout your career.
You were always a guiding light for the rest of
us in the game. I truly appreciate your friendship, your guidance,
which is the best of luck in the future. Please
stay with us through the break here on rosters to rings.

(01:25:57):
What an incredible conversation with Rick on JD. I mean,
we can talk about a number of the trades he made,
some of his assessments of this trade deadline, but where
I want to go with you is the amazing reveal
he had about the conversations he had with Jerry Reinsdorf
before he ultimately leaves the White Sox, in which he's
even referring to the fact that he almost was consoling

(01:26:19):
Jerry and guiding him through that process. Well, you also
had a similar situation in Texas, and a lot of
these things are private, so feel free to share whatever
you feel is appropriate. But how is your dismount from
your tenure with the Texas Rangers And what were your
conversations like with owner Ray Davis at the time leading

(01:26:40):
up to that decision?

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
Yeah, the first on Rick three, totally on a tremendous
conversation and not surprised that what he shared so much,
and is that he always carried himself with so much integrity,
and I always felt you were getting a straight shot
with him. If you circle back to summer of twenty
two and you and you and I had some of

(01:27:02):
these conversations, but that it certainly was open with people
I was close with, I was, you know, there was
definitely a level of burnout.

Speaker 3 (01:27:10):
It's it's you know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
I never first of all, I never thought I would
get the GM job to begin with, But seventeen years later, that's,
you know, it was pretty nuts. And it becomes your identity, right,
My kids, as yours have been raised with us in
these roles, and so it becomes more than just a job,
it's it's a lifestyle, it's an identity, it's your family.
You know, you trust a lot of people around you,

(01:27:33):
so there's their emotional ties to it. That being said,
like I, I was not maybe joining it the same
way that I that I had in the past. And
I and I was aware, self aware enough to know that,
you know, it was probably time. So I had communicated
to some people, including you know, see why, Chris Young
and I had had a conversation several conversations where I

(01:27:55):
had told them I was planning on my contract was
gonna up at the end of the year.

Speaker 3 (01:27:59):
I aught it made sense to step away. At that point,
he and I talked about maybe staying on as an.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Advisor to him, and then we we this was a
catalyst for some of these conversations, and we had made
the tough decision to make a change and manager and
so we made the change. Chris and I had those
conversations on Saturday, Sunday. We made the managerial change on Monday,

(01:28:27):
and uh, you know, to my uh, you.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
Know, probably a mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
The one person I didn't tell about my plans at
the end of the year was was Ray Davis.

Speaker 3 (01:28:38):
You know, it was the owner of the club, and
Ray was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
Always very fair with me, and you know, worked worked
for him for a long time since you know, he
and his group brought the team in twenty ten. But
Ray called a meeting with c Why myself on Tuesday night.
I asked us to come in Wednesday morning. I remember
talking to say and you know, it felt a little off,

(01:29:02):
but it wasn't wasn't expecting what happened. And walked into
his room and and and Ray asked see Why to
excuse us for a minute. And then Ray you know,
told us, told me that he was gonna, you know,
making the decision to to move on and that he
was going to elevate see Why.

Speaker 3 (01:29:18):
Into the role.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
And you know, I think Ray asked me, he said,
what what do you need from me?

Speaker 3 (01:29:23):
And I said, I just need I need a couple
of hours before this gets out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
I want to make sure I can, you know, talk
to my family and especially my kids there in school.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
I want to make sure I can tell them in
person and listen.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
I think in if I was advising you know, Ray
at that time, I think there there might have been
a you know, a softer way to do it. You know,
I wasn't gonna you know, certainly run to the media
or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
I I you know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
Hindsight, I would have loved the opportunity to do it,
you know, a little more of a mutual deal or
stepped down at the end of the year, but certainly
his prerogative to do so. You know, I have been
able to still be a friend and advisor to see
why I'll be it from a distance and now with
another club, you know, a little bit of a there's
a little bit of a bridge there. But yeah, nothing

(01:30:12):
but respect and appreciation for you know, the Rangers organization,
Ray and all that they did for me and my career.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
And my family.

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
But it was an emotional time, as you know, you
and I had several conversations at that time.

Speaker 3 (01:30:23):
It's again, it's your identity. It's it's you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
You put a lot into these jobs and they give
a lot back. Don't get me wrong on that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:31):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
This is not me crying about anything, but it is
It's something that fortunately I hadn't had to go through before,
and it was learned a lot about myself and thankfully
my my Robin and the kids actually still like me.
And and so going home and spending more time at
home was a It was a very fortunate thing for me,

(01:30:53):
and I'm, you know, in a much better place now
than I was.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
Yeah, and obviously I'm very close to you, and so
I'm a little bit biased in this, but I'm just
going to say the words is that I think what
you bring up is like, these roles are really public,
and they're also there's a ton of pressure. So as
awesome as these jobs are, seventeen years into your employment,
it does take a toll on you. And as best
we try to be the best people at work and

(01:31:18):
the best fathers and husbands that we can be. Their
sacrifices made along the way, and I know your heart
was in the right place, your head was in the
right place, you would have counseled them in a different
direction at the time. But I do think owners in
these situations feel compelled at times to make public statements
that whatever is transpired in the organization, we need to
make a move. And I always felt as a general

(01:31:40):
manager you needed to be very thoughtful about when you
wanted to replace, let's say a manager, because I think
what you're saying is they're not doing well enough with
the talent that you're giving them, but you're also escalating
the responsibility then to you, because then there's a reflection
on well, are we giving them the most talent that
is appropriate to win. Similarly, when an owner makes this
type of decision and says, hey, whatever you're doing isn't

(01:32:02):
good enough, then I think the pressure has put square
land them. What resources. Additionally, are they prepared to invest
to try to win because they're saying we're not winning
enough with the current resources and the current personnel. But
I think all too often those things are conflated and
we think we have to make a change with the
person rather than just changing some of the processes and

(01:32:23):
procedures were undertaking. I think that was the fork in
the road that you got to. But the contribution you
made in your life to the Texas Rangers, you will
be a Hall of Famer there, very well deserved. I'm
dying to go back to that event and get a
chance to just sit on the field and watch you
get celebrated the way you should. You practiced so many

(01:32:43):
people's lives, their mind included, but a fan base for
generations to come. So congratulations to you, and I know
that was a tough dismount, but it was also one
that if you were able to counsel and it probably
could have gone a little bit smoother than it had.

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Appreciate that man, everything you just said, Uh, you know,
we grew up there in large part right as as
man as As executives said that we learned a ton.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:33:12):
And I wouldn't you know, change change anything about it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
In fact, I think, you know, my wife Robin has
made the point that maybe better off not having it played.
I thought I was gonna maybe stay on there as
an advisor, but maybe everybody's better off. For certainly the
club wins the next year, and maybe it allows c
Y some space to you know, do things his own
way and not worry about, you know, offending his predecessor

(01:33:36):
and his friend. And I got a you know, an
opportunity to come here in Tampa and learn a ton
and be around just a tremendous culture and work with
some outstanding people. So and furthermore, I think I get
more time at home.

Speaker 3 (01:33:49):
Uh you know.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
Uh, My guess is that had I stayed with Texas,
that would have been you know, probably more involved than
I and I was ready to be at that time.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
And so it all's well, that ends well, and I'm
very grateful for my time there.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
Well, thank you again for joining us for this episode.
Tremendous insights from both Ricon and John Daniels about the
challenges associated with being in the seat but also how
you're dismounting from those careers are extremely cathartic. Thank you
again for joining us for yet another fantastic episode of
Roster Syrings. Thank you to John Daniels and too rickcon

(01:34:29):
join us next week where we'll break down the entire
trade deadline on Roster's ter Rings. Please join me host
That Levine, Ryan McDonough, and other general managers every week
for Roster Syrings on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.

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