Episode 362 - Talking Front Off with Zack Scott

John and Russ are joined by Zack Scott, the former Acting GM for the New York Mets and Assistant GM for the Boston Red Sox. We get a bit of John fan girling over Koji Uehara to the man who brought him to Boston before they get on to the main topic of how a front office works in the offseason.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hello, and welcome to Backflips and Nerds, the Baseball podcast
with a British twist. I am your host today, Russell Lisam,
and I am joined by my interview partner of the hour,
John McGee.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
How are we doing?

Speaker 3 (00:32):
John?

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Very well, Russ, I'm very well excited about this one.
Can't wait to get going.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yes, we have been hitting twenty twenty five with a
force that we haven't seen in a while. But we
have another great person to go with us, and those
who have viewing us on YouTube, we'll see that we
have Zach'scott here.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Welcome Zach.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hey, guys, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
No, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
And for those who don't know Zach, Zach worked from
all the Boston Red sots from twenty four to twenty twenty,
going from an intern to the assistant GM, with many
jobs along that journey. He spent two years with the Mets,
including seven months as the acting GM, and he's gone
on to found a consulting firm, the Four Ring Sports Solution,
which has worked with multiple MLB franchises and other American

(01:16):
and major sports teams. But we brought Zach, as John said,
to discuss about the front office like what would be
the teams be doing during the off season to get
ready for the next season. We're going to chat about rosters,
We're going to check out the front offices. But before that,
John has a very important question for Zach about his
favorite player.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, so, Zach, I have a confession to make you
are you are wholly responsible for one of the most
hideous man crushes of all time. So my favorite player
of all time, I'm a huge Red Sox fan. I
want to see if you can guess who that is.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
First off, your favorite Red Sox.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
And it's pretty niche, it's pretty nice.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Going to say it's not David Ortiz, then if it's.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Neat, I mean I love him. I love him. But
you know, I'm thinking very much in your wheelhouse. I'm
going I'm going to put you out of your misery
because it would be pretty bad audio if I was
just asking you to name any player in the sixteen
years that you were with the team. So, my favorite
player is Coji San. I adore him, so I wanted
to And obviously, you know you were pretty instrumental as

(02:17):
that great article by Tim Britton when you were with
the Mets about how he was one of the guys
who you were pushing to bring to the Red Sox.
And you know, I'm not going to have another opportunity
to ask you about what it was you saw in
this sort of you know, mid thirties Finesse Japanese picture
and what you guys did to unlock the phenomenon that
became became Cogi time in twenty thirteen.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
I don't think we did anything that you know, I
think it was all him, But we did identify that
he may be an undervalued player for a couple of reasons.
One age you mentioned health. He had had some health
issues in the past, so that took care of the
market a little bit, and you know, we ended up
getting him on one year deal and then retained him

(03:01):
for longer than that. But the reason he was available
was because he doesn't light up a radar gun. So
he's someone that I think people now you know, have
been able to quantify more than they could at that time.
He's the kind of guy that has that special fastball
that plays faster.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Than it actually is.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
You know, he'd throw in the low nineties, but it
played more like ninety five ninety six because he just
could really backspin the baseball, and so it had that
that rising effect of hitters. It looked like, you know,
they thought it was going to be in one place
and they'd swung in it. They'd either hit the bottom
of the ball and pop it up or swing and miss.
And then he had a devastating splitter to go with that.
So he had this, you know, what's very common in

(03:43):
Japan actually at least, was this North south way of pitching.
And so he had that fastball that played up in
the zone and that splitter that played below the zone
that would get swing and miss.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
So and he just pumped strikes.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
He just attacked hitters, which is always my favorite kind
of pitcher, especially closers. And when we at the Red
Sox had really good teams, we won championships with closers
that were similar I'd say Keith Folk and four was
actually kind of similar to Cogi in that he had
the devastating change up instead of a splitter. But he
didn't throw hard, but he got you know, that pitch

(04:17):
played up. He also got a lot of pop ups,
just like Cogie. They were both very extreme and there
if you looked at their rates of strikeouts and pop ups,
they were unusual in that way, so it didn't give
up a lot of hard contact, got a lot of
swing miss in the fastball, and then the change up
played down and Jonathan Papplebond was the same way.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, where he had you know.

Speaker 5 (04:34):
He had the velocity on the fastball that was more
what you see these days, but he also had that
extra explosion on it because he backspinned it, and he
had a devastating splitter. So it was interesting that three
of the championships that we won were very similar style closers,
and they all three of those also just attacked, attacked attacks,

(04:57):
so they threw strikes they weren't. You know, we one
and eighteen with Krek kimberl is a closer who was
a different kind of you know, more of a slider
fastball slider guy with some control issues at times. And
obviously we actually ended the eighteen World Series with Chris
Sale on the mound. But those three guys were I
think were actually very similar in a lot of ways,
and today those are the kind of pictures when people

(05:18):
look at the metrics, that's what they're looking for, is
those fastballs that play that way, and you know, obviously
a secondary pitch that's as good as what they had.
So yeah, Cogi, And you know, besides that, Kogi was
an awesome guy and a lot of fun, a very
funny guy and someone that we just loved having in
the clubhouse. So yeah, we thought it was a bilow opportunity,

(05:39):
and you know, he delivered way more value than we
could have actually expect ever expected.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Yeah, one of those that I guess from your perspective
as someone who's gone in there making the case for him,
was like a slam Dunknden. So that twenty thirteen series
season was just astonishing, Like his pitching line is almost
unprecedented in recent Red Socke history. And then, as you said,
you know, he becomes this sort of larger than life
character in amongst those all those you know, burly bearded men,

(06:07):
You've got this little, tiny dude who's just joking around
and then he grows a beard and it looks stupid, right,
I mean, that's why I absolutely love him.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, I know, he was.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
He was a lot of fun and sometimes, you know,
as an organization, you got to get a little lucky
to win championships, and definitely that year we had a
lot of good things go our way.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Including his incredible performance.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
Right, So I mean that that had to be that
had to be done. Thank you for humoring me, Zach.
If if you listen to the podcast before, as as
many people will have, it's not the first time that
I've been indulged on that, So thank you Russell for
allowing me to start the conversation in the appropriate way.

Speaker 5 (06:48):
So So's He's one of my favorites of all time
that we ever had, So I'm happy to always talk
about Cochi.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think I have a thing for
relief pictures. You know, you're talking about Jonathan Paplevon and
Keith Foka was definitely get me there as well, I
have to say. I mean I could go on. We
could do a whole two hours about Red Sox relievers
of your tenure, if you like, but probably that would
be a pretty niche concern. So we'll get onto some
more general stuff about print offices and yeah, we brought

(07:16):
you one, Zach to talk specifically about being in a
front office during this period of the year. Right, every
part of the inner baseball front office is intense, but
this one is the one that you're really earning your corn, Right,
This is when there's roster turnover, there's loads of moves
at the margins, but there's some really big set piece
events where GM's assistant gms and other members of the

(07:40):
front offices are effectively the stars of the show. You're
the only story, right, You're keeping Jeff Passon in a job.
So we wanted to get your insight as someone who's
worked in those environments for such a long time as
to what the sort of rhythm and the pace and
what you guys are doing. And it felt like the
right place for us to start is not act at

(08:00):
the start, it's it's in the middle, right, It's at
the winter meetings, which to fans on the outside is
a set piece, right. We're also out there waiting for
our alerts from from Jeff Passon and Ken Rosenthal and others.
They're really mysterious. So I wanted to get a Frint
office perspective at the outset of this conversation about how

(08:20):
they felt for you, like whether whether you dreaded them,
was that was that your version of you know, being
on the diamond or and kind of what goes on
in those you know, it's not on the diamond, but
in those enormous enormal dome, hotel complexes that you all get,
you know, air conditioning sickness in over the course of
six to eight days in December.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
Well, there's a lot more of people in front offices,
you know, checking out Twitter and waiting for Jeff pass
and then you know, you think we drive all the actions.
That's true, but it's not happening constantly. So there's a
lot of you know, refreshing of MLB trade rumors and
looking at Twitter and staring at each other sometimes, but

(09:02):
there's also a lot of work that The Winter meetings
has definitely changed over you know, the twenty years that
I've been attending, although I haven't actually haven't attended in
a few years, and you know, it's it's been a
nice break because they are pretty intense and they can
be counterproductive because you can feel a momentum or some

(09:25):
sort of pressure to get something done that could lead
to a more emotional decision than is ideal. But for
the most part there, I mean, that's what I did
this job for, right like the times of the year,
the trade deadline, and for me mostly my career is
focused on the major league side of it, towards the
end being leading and analytics. You know, there was a

(09:46):
draft component. I was always in the draft room at
different times in my career. But you know, so that's
a huge moment for baseball together, but for me, it
was the trade deadline and the off season and specifically
the Winter meetings that that's our opportunity to make an
impact to build that next team, and that's the excitement.
That's why I got into sports, and and that's the

(10:07):
fun part. So the Winter meetings is kind of the
key point when you get everyone together. It used to
be more where you had a lot of meetings in
person at the Winter meetings with agents. You know, the
GM meetings happened in November. That's a little too early
to get things going with free agents. So a lot
of the you're in the peak part of free agency
at the Winter meetings and so there's a lot of

(10:29):
conversations with agents. Same thing with teams. You'd meet with
teams to talk about trades in person. There Over the years,
there was a lot less of that, to the point
where we're like, why are we here all together if
we just texting each other anyway, But it's also an
opportunity to see people, you know, friends that you have
in the industry that you only see a few times
a year maybe, So that's it's a fun there's a

(10:52):
fun part of it too, and it's you know, it's
it's a great development experience for your younger people on
your in your baseball operation staff to kind of just
just observe and see how things kind of go down.
But yeah, no, it's i'd get an adrenaline rush leading
into that. I mean, a lot of my time was
spent on being the person in charge of making sure

(11:14):
our decision makers had the most important information at their
fingertips so we could move with agility if necessary at
these key points in the off season altogether, but also
at the winter meetings and so you know, the weeks
leading into it, there was a lot of preparation going
on to make sure everyone had everything they needed before
when we got there. And then being there was a rush,

(11:35):
it could be exhausting. You're, like you said, you're you're
in a hotel room a lot. There is a lot
of time where you can't control the action, so you're
waiting a lot and it's a high anxiety level because
you really want some stuff to happen, but there's only
so much you can control, and you're you. You try
to eat healthy, but there's we always have like you'd

(11:57):
always have like a bunch of snacks in the room.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Some would be some years we'd try to be healthy.

Speaker 5 (12:02):
Other years, you know, we just cave and just go
all junk food. And there's a lot of good conversations
going on. There's people sometimes at the winter meetings that
you weren't normally in the office, scouts, people like Bill
James that would be there that weren't in the office
all the time, that you'd have good conversations with and
be able to catch up, but also talk baseball.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
That's awesome, y Gun Russ.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
I mean, I was gonna say, like just the quick
thing that you talked about there is that the front
offices sometimes get are living on those tweets of paston
and stuff like that. Did you ever have occasions where
either when you were at the top level, that your
team found something out due to or your front office
found something out because Jeff pass and tweeted it and
not because you actually told them that something had happened.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
About our front office or about other.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Either way like this, Yeah, I think obviously, like sometimes
what happens to other teams that's maybe actually the source
of themes. But did you ever happen that, Like you
would just done something and there was like three or
four or if you knew about it, and then suddenly
before you could tell everybody else what happened, there's a
passing tweet.

Speaker 5 (13:05):
That would happen, and it was frustrating because you really
want the people in your organization to find out first
what's going on. If we could get to a place
it was almost like a competition within ourselves to like
could we get a press release out of a move
before it gets out there on Twitter from a reporter,
Like I think you did it? Like five percent of
the time you could do that, and if you did,

(13:27):
it was like this great feeling of accomplishment. Now part
of that is because all these moves have like you know,
if it's a trade, you're doing medical assessments, if it's
a if it's a free agent signing, it's there's a
physical that has to happen, so like you're not going
to announce anything until it's official, but oftentimes you have
an agreement pending physical that will leak out either from
the agent or someone from the team, and all of

(13:50):
a sudden, it's out there, and it's like, well, we
can't really comment because what if something happens during the
physical which has happened, and you have to, you know,
either renegotiate the deal or back out of the deal
altogether because something's you So.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, that definitely.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
I always hated when that would come out before we
could communicate it internally, even if it's not the press release.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
It's like we would send.

Speaker 5 (14:08):
Out an internal email to our entire baseball operation communicating
something we had done, and if it wasn't pending physical,
we might send it to a smaller group, so we're
not blasting it out to you know, a couple hundred people.
It's just like a smaller in the office thing, so
people would be aware just in case someone reached out
to ask them about it. But yeah, it was always
a great feeling of accomplishment if we could keep something

(14:28):
out of the media. And again, we could only control
so much of it. There's another team involved in a
trade or an agent involved in a free agent signing,
so you know, we we could only do our part.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
I've kind of got this idea in my head, so
I spent a lot of time working in the government
here in UK and if things get out, it's like
the worst thing that can happen, and you have something
called a leak inquiry and you get like dragged in
and you get pulled over hot calls. Is there a
version of that where like who told Jeff you go
around there, get everyone's phone. Who's got Jeffs number in here? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (14:56):
Well so everyone has different feelings about that. It's funny
you mentioned the government because I always say we need
to not take ourselves so seriously, like we were not
holding Pentagon secrets, you know, like we're It's not government secrets.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
It's baseball. It's entertainment.

Speaker 5 (15:14):
So if something gets out, you don't want it to
You want everything to be confidential until it's appropriate to
put it out there. But it's not the end of
the world. Ultimately, this is entertainment. Let's you know, chill out.
You do want to make sure that you don't want
to upset players a bunch stuff coming out or agents,
but you can only do so much. So I have

(15:36):
always felt like it's not worth the effort to try
to track down leaks. I'll say this, like I definitely
believe in some instances the leaks come from above the
GM's head anyway, when it comes like ownership might put
stuff out. So they're the owner, they can do whatever
they want. So I'm not going to all of a sudden,
you know, try to investigate my baseball operation to figure

(15:58):
out who's leaking what. But I've heard stories that other
gms are very different, and I've heard stories that people
have gotten fired for being found out as leaks. I
think that's extreme, and you know, I think there should
be conversations about it. Maybe, you know, you get only
a certain number of chances, and maybe that happened in
those instances.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Maybe it's just a rumor.

Speaker 5 (16:20):
I don't know, but I think that intensity is a
little much and it's a waste of time. We have
too much to do to be tracking down.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
A leak of a baseball move. It's just not the
end of the world.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I can see trying to get a
bit of perspective in those situations is exactly the right
way to be. But similarly, if something's gone against you,
the temptation is going to be there, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
No, I think you know, the way I look at
dealing with that was to try to be proactive. I
feel like people within your organization, if they're going to
leak something, it's often because they don't feel connected to
what's going on, and so when they get a nuggative information,
they're more likely to share it because there's maybe an insecurity.
They want people to know they're in them No, they
know what's you know, they're in the inner circle if

(17:10):
they're not, or so you have that if you make
your people feel more connected to what you're doing, like
I was. I was incredibly transparent with the Mets and
with the Red Sox to the extent that it could be.
I wasn't in the GM seat there, but my teams.
I would always tell my groups, the people I was
leading what was going on because part of that that's

(17:30):
why they work in baseball, it's the exciting part of it.
Part of it's I want some different opinions on things.
If we're working towards it, they may have a different
perspective because they're not as close to it as maybe
I was in the moment. But I also felt like
if we were very transparent about what was going on
and shared things, people were going to feel like you're
empowering me with this information, So I'm going to keep

(17:50):
it to myself. If you're not doing that and they
get a piece of information, they may be in my mind,
it's my theory is that they'd be more likely to
actually put it out there.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
Yeah, that makes total sense. So sort of circling back
to the Winter Meetings as a set pieces, is there
any sort of move that you recall being involved with,
either one that came to fruition or one that didn't,
that that was was that sort of this is what
I'm here for. This is you know, back to the
point that was that was when you were in your element,

(18:18):
That's when the adrenaline was flowing. What was what was
an event? Assigning a trade that during that period either
did or didn't come to pass for you. That that
sort of sums up what that feeling's like.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
There's so there's a lot, There are a lot. We
did a lot of things at the Winter Meetings. You know,
you mentioned at the top twenty thirteen we signed most
you know, I think we signed seven free agents that
off season. We were very fortunate we hit on all
seven at least for year one, which led to the championship.
You know, for some of those guys that had multi
year deals. They didn't hit after that, you know, like
Shane Victorina was great in year one but injured the

(18:54):
last couple of years and didn't really contribute. But we
got our value because we won a World Series. But
that meetings we signed like four or five of those
guys or agreed to terms with four or five of
those guys, which is to me, that's by far the
most that we've ever done in one winter meeting, and
so it was incredibly productive, and so that's memorable because

(19:16):
it was just like, wow, we're we were just really
good at jumping the market on some of these players.
Like that was our It was one of the times
where we executed our plan exactly the way we wanted to.
We wanted to bring in guys. You know, we had
gone through a lot of turmoil. The year before the
Bobby v year. The year before that was the year
we had the historic collapse in twenty eleven and the

(19:37):
chicken and beer narrative around some of our pitchers, and
you know, each year it you know, we the last
couple of years had been pretty negative in the clubhouse,
and so we went into that off season with a
focus on improving our club us culture and bringing in
good players. But we had just if you recall, in

(19:57):
twenty twelve unloaded a lot of money to the LA Dodgers,
All Crawford, Josh Beckett, the Nick Punto trade. So there
was that we didn't want to then jump right back
in and make the same mistakes that we did by
giving two large contracts to players that didn't you know,

(20:20):
one of them especially didn't work out, and so we
wanted to go shorter term. So we had this plan
and then we pretty aggressively we recognized that there was
an inefficiency in the market of these players who weren't
top tier free agents, you're kind of second tier or
even in some cases like a Johnny Gumes, more of
like a you know, depth piece. And we decided, okay, well,

(20:42):
the market's kind of underpaying them relative to their production.
Top of the market's always getting paid well, so we're
going to actually it's going to probably the trend is
that it's going to go up eventually. Let's jump the market.
Let's be aggressive on those guys and lock him in.
And we locked in David Ross really early, and then
Johnny and then the rest of those guys were some
of them were opportunities, but also they were more like

(21:04):
second tier guys, and so we were just more aggressive.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
But it was just one of.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
Those times where we really executed on our plan going
in and it's hard to do that because there's so
many other variables and factors that can influence what you do.
So to do that and kind of check all the
boxes on what we wanted to do was a good feeling.
And so much of that happened at the winter meetings.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Did you have one that came out of nowhere?

Speaker 1 (21:29):
You talk about having a plan and going into it
being like these are maybe our targets. You've probably done
that work on a lot of people because you still
need to know like are we going to make offers
or even have conversations about pretty much most of the
free agents or the people that you think are trade available.
Was there ever a moment where somebody became available that

(21:49):
you hadn't even thought about and then there was a
lot of effort to be like, oh, this is this
something we should we do?

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Can we get this over the line?

Speaker 5 (22:00):
And I can't really think of a time where we
ended up getting very involved in something like that that
we're a player.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
We didn't think.

Speaker 5 (22:08):
Usually, you know, like you have before those meetings, the
GM in assistant gms are typically you know, you divvy
up the teams and you call your counterpart at the
teams and you're getting a feel for what they're looking
to do. So it's rare that you have a surprise
because usually they're very transparent and say, hey, you know,
we could really use a first baseman and some bullpen help,

(22:30):
and you kind of share what you're looking to do,
and you're trying to find where you may match up
on things you know, and you're also by doing that,
gathering information about the market. Now, maybe they're not completely
forthright and that who knows, there could be some games
and ship some strategy going on. But I think for
the most part, people are pretty open about what they're
looking to do, so there aren't that many surprises. I

(22:50):
will the one thing that comes to mind that we
didn't get involved in, but it was one of those
things where we were really unhappy about the fact that
this player got moved and we weren't involved, which is
when the Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera to the Tigers. That
was something that was like, well, I wish we knew
that they were actually willing to move him. I mean,

(23:11):
we you talked to all the teams, and you know,
it's just it's one of those things that you expect
if someone's going to make a move that large, that
they're going to make sure they know what everyone's willing
to pay before they'd sell, right before they sell a
player like that. And from what I could tell that
that was actually done fairly quietly within the industry, and

(23:32):
so we weren't alone in that, but it was kind
of like, you know, wouldn't you want to see what
we'd give up for?

Speaker 3 (23:37):
You know, maybe they.

Speaker 5 (23:38):
Just were, you know, in love with Cameron Mayman and
Andrew Miller and what they got in that trade, those prospects,
but it was one of those things we were like,
a player of that caliber, you know, you want to
be involved in.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
And so I remember us being pretty unhappy about that.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
Now you go, Russell, that's a slam dug for my
favorite player and yours in the same podcast, Andrew Mill,
that doesn't happen very often. Just sort of fast forwarding
it to the present day, Zach. I mean from an
outside observer, and I know some people have tried to
push back on this narrative a little bit. This year's
Winter Meetings did feel really important and like a lot

(24:16):
of business got done. So maybe sort of winding back
some of what you said earlier about it it feeling
like you needed to be in person. It's not all
texts or or certainly that's how it felt looking from
the outside. Was that your perception and from your perspective,
why do you think that might be? Is it just
the sort of Soto factor because you had free signing,

(24:38):
the crochet trade loads happened over the course of those
few days.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, I think. I think the timing of it.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
So I think when you have a solo situation you
have a player of their magnitude represented by Scott boris
m the most predictable thing, so that this is not
the kind of player that's going to have a have
to wait too long on the market, right and pretty
quickly compared to some other guys, And so it was
one of the most predictable things at the start of

(25:06):
the off season that this is going to happen right
around the Winter Meetings, either at the beginning or the end.
But like there's going to be a big press conference
for this player involving Scott Boris because he does that
a lot, He's got a pattern.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Of doing that.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
It makes sense, that's around the timing that getting a
deal done will make sense for a player of that caliber,
and so that didn't surprise me that that's when it happened.
I think you see a lot of deals like that
happen around the winter meetings, the top of the market,
where they just don't need you know, you get enough
interest in enough people putting their best foot forward pretty
early that you don't have to wait and drag it out.

(25:41):
That said, there's still this pattern here we are, you know,
end of January, there's still some good players out there
and free agency, there's still Bragman and Alonzo and Flaherty, like,
there's still some very good players available. And so that's
kind of the thing that I think we used to
not see earlier in my career. We'd see almost like

(26:02):
you get to around Christmas and almost everyone would be
off the market. And now this is more normal where
there will be some big signings around the winter meetings
and some big moves usually at the top of the market.
Trades are a little different because you know, teams kind
of they're especially a crochet trade that is the same

(26:23):
thing like top trade piece on the market. You're pretty
quickly going to get the potential teams to ante up
as soon as possible. Now, there can be some dependencies
on other free agent things that they're doing that may
impact timing there, but I think that this is fairly
normal for what we've been seeing recently, some big moves
at the winter meetings and then some guys just hanging

(26:44):
around till the start of spring training or maybe even later.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
And just moving on to that, I did want to
ask you about Bregman and Alonso. So this is a conversation.
The conversation, the narrative that we're hearing now is that
there's a mile get consensus on these guys. Everyone knows
who they are, and a lot of people are starting
to insinuate that this is because of sort of group
think in the way that for an office is a run.

(27:10):
I just wanted to get your sense on whether that's
the case. I mean, you guys had a situation in
twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen with with J. D. Martinez where
you successfully waited out of the market. But it's a
little different then, right, you were probably his only suitor
in that situation.

Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah, and I think that's the fear that teams have
if you're the New York Mets and you know you're
Steve Cohen have all the money.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
You could have met.

Speaker 5 (27:35):
The downside of that is that you know, people want
to hold your people on the other side of the
agents want to hold your hostage because.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
It's like this guy's going to cave eventually.

Speaker 5 (27:42):
He's shown to be a little emotional and wanting to
get things done at times. Obviously, the SODO thing was
a different scale. So I think that's a dynamic that
exists where it's like people.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Don't want to bit against themselves. So with the JD.

Speaker 5 (27:59):
Martinez, it was like we got to a place where
we're like, we think we're confident we're the highest bid.
We don't know for sure, you never know. It's blind,
but we're pretty confident we don't. You know, it's at
the time there was he's seen as a DH. There
were there was no d H in the NL, so
it was different. So his market was limited organically by that,

(28:19):
and so we were willing to wait it out. Waiting
it out's hard because you can't like he went into
you know, well into spring training before we got a
deal done, and that was hard. That was hard for
you know, Dave Dombrowski is someone that's still does his
work primarily before Christmas.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
You know, he's very aggressive.

Speaker 5 (28:39):
Right right now is when Browski does physically exactly, So
for him to wait was not his normal move. And
we joked that we've had to tie Dave up to
make sure we didn't you know, bit against ourselves. But
I think that's what's going on. But I think to
your point on the group thing, I do think there's
this effect that most those teams in baseball are using

(29:02):
the same kind of analytical tools and so pretty much
every team, if not every team, has you know, what
you might call an asset value model. They're putting dollar
values on these guys, and those are useful, but these
decisions are not formulas, right, Like, there's context involved of
where your team's are, where you know, your roster of players.

(29:25):
If you want to stick with the kind of financial
you know, way of view in the world, that's your
portfolio roster.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
It's your portfolio.

Speaker 5 (29:31):
You want to have some guys that are young players
that are making, you know, earning far less in salary
than what they're producing. So then you can take those
bigger risks in free agency where you know you're going
to be paying most likely going to be paying more
for what they're going to be producing.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
So I think that.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
Because everyone has these kind of similar tools, you get
to this point where an agent needs someone to really
very you know, veer off those things. What those what
the model's telling of this player is worth, and I
think everyone's are probably roughly this are roughly the same
when you're talking about major league players, and so you

(30:10):
know that you need to find the one team if
you're an agent that's got Pete Alonso value significantly higher.
And I think the types of gms that exist in
the game are less likely to stray too far off
of that. They will stray, but I don't think that
they're they're definitely not ignoring things like that. So there
is this fine line between you know, if you're using

(30:31):
if you have a tool like this, but you're just
like arbitrarily giving a guy, you know, thirty million dollars
more than what your model says he's worth, then are
you actually using a tool to help you? But I
don't think these things are formulaic and that you should
use them as frameworks to inform you. But there are
appropriate reasons to stray away from that, but it's also

(30:52):
good to have those tools. So they're kind of a
they're an objective anchor, right, So if you're you know,
I use our Pablo Sandoval with the Red Sox. We
valued Pablo Sandoval objectively at the start of the off
season around forty five fifty million dollars, which, by the way,
in hindsight, that was wrong too. He didn't provide that

(31:13):
kind of value. But somehow we offered him ninety five
million dollars. And you know, I was involved with that,
so I know how, but I do and I don't
when I look back at it's like, God, how did
we go from all?

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Right?

Speaker 5 (31:27):
This this guy doesn't have much of a market. You know,
we're hearing maybe the giants are around forty million, so like, okay,
maybe we get him for his market, like what we
think is fair market value. Somehow the momentum got away
from us and it just turned into this thing where
you know, some of us were out after it got above.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
A certain number.

Speaker 5 (31:45):
But somehow we just kept We bought into this guy's
You know, championship pedigree or or you know, we had
a good meeting with him. I don't know what it was,
but the power of momentum just kept us bidding up
and bidding up up, and you know, it got away
from us and ended up being obviously a bad contract

(32:05):
for us. But I think there is something to the
group think because everyone's using similar tools.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
And do you think the reason people using similar tools
is that we've now had fifteen twenty years of analytics.
We've seen three, four five teams be known to be
like the best, and then everybody gets taken away from
them and they probably share their knowledge to all the
other teams that they go to, and we see cycles

(32:33):
about like it was for the Red Sox for a while,
and then you can see this happening with like the Dodgers,
or you can see it happening with the Rays. Does
that basically just bring the ideas that exist in the
league all together and then you almost have to be well,
we roughly know what everybody else is doing.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
How do we zag when everybody is zigging?

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (32:56):
I think every sports league is a copycat league. And
my theory on why, and I don't mean this in
a pejorative way. I think owners that make these decisions,
especially of who's at the top of their baseball operation,
they they're just they they don't have a deep level
of knowledge of how everything works, right, It's like fairly

(33:18):
high level. And that's fine, Like, that's that's why they
hire a GM, right, is that persons supposed to be
have the knowledge at a very deep level. But but
their knowledge is somewhat superficial. That so they go based
on narratives or results, and so it's easy to see, well,
you know, the Tampa Rays consistently get more out of

(33:43):
their you know, get more for less, right, Like they
they are so efficient in their payroll, and you know,
we know they have the heaviest investment in analytics. You know,
so this is a way to do it. So I
think that makes sense for teams like the Marlins hire
Peter Bendix from the race, that makes a ton of
sense because they're in a similar market, in a similar

(34:03):
payroll situation. I think on the other end, you know,
the Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman away from the Raise and
that worked out great because Andrew was able to make
an adjustment. I think for some other teams it doesn't fit,
you know, like him, Blum struggled, I think in Boston
because I think it was just a different set of
circumstances and wasn't really kind of what he was used

(34:26):
to at the Rays. And how to you know, the
understanding that when you are a big market team, you're
not getting a trophy for having the most efficient payroll.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
You sorry, just on him, Zach. It was interesting that
where him did succeed was in the stuff that he
would have been good at at the race in the
amateur draft and players at the margins. Right, absolutely, but
again it doesn't work in every single circumstance.

Speaker 5 (34:50):
Well, and that's how the Rays had to do things
because of the constraints. When you go to a team
like the Red Sox or the Dodgers or the Yankees,
you don't have those constraints anymore. But so that what
does that mean? It means we by definition, are going
to be inefficient on how we spend. And that means
we're going to go into the highest risk pool of players,
the free agents, and we're going to take some big risks,

(35:14):
you know, and and those are the kind of things
that can make you sink or swim with those deals,
right Like, that's how does a big market organization kind
of fall apart? Well, oftentimes it's over committing to too
many dollars, right, Like, we were looking at that in
twenty twelve. You know, all of a sudden, it's like,
oh my gosh, what did we do with Carl Crawford

(35:35):
and Adrian Gonzalez and you know some other players were
We were looking at it thinking we are stuck. These
guys need to perform or we are stuck for several
years and we just as a team that always valued flexibility,
we just killed our flexibility. How are we going to
get out of this? And we got very fortunate that
new Dodgers ownership wanted to bail us out because they

(35:57):
wanted to bring in, you know, some star names. And
so that's that's the hard part of going And I've
heard Andrew Freeman talk about that, that's the hard part
when you go from you know, the Rays, where you
have a very limited pool of players that you can
focus on, you can really drill down on those players,
to a place like LA where you have access to

(36:18):
all the players. You know, David Stearns is going through
that now with the Mets, and so I think. I
do think though, that's what's happening with owners is that
are looking at who's had success. You know, like you said,
there are a bunch of guys I worked with at
the Red Sox that became GMS, and you know, Cleveland's
always the team. I think owners love, especially the ones
that come from the financial background, which was most of them, right,

(36:40):
They love the efficiency. They even Steve Steve Cohen told
me at one point, you know, I want to be
like the Rays. And then when I told him what
I thought the Rays were like, he was like, Okay,
maybe I don't want to be the Raise, and I
was like, you do to an extent. We will do
things that they do and we will do them well.
But you know what that really means is you're aggressively

(37:03):
churning your roster. You're trading a Blake Snell with three
years of control left because you're if you're looking, everything
is how to turn value into longer, you know, focusing
on future value and always kind of doing that. That's
the best way to do that. And where the Rays
actually have had the most success is in their trades.

(37:25):
You know, they've been good in international, their drafts, results
have been just okay over the years. But what they've
been great at is their trades. And sometimes you know,
they've missed on some but most of the time they
do a great job of trading their major league players
at their peak value and then getting a lot of
future value. And so you know, sometimes I think that's

(37:48):
what owners get excited about. They want the Cleveland model,
the the Tampa model. But it doesn't mean just because
you're poaching someone from those organizations that you're going to
get the same thing. And you know, they all have
to keep in mind who the people are that are
actually you know, making those decisions, because sitting in that
seat is very challenging, and not every number two could

(38:11):
be a number one.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
It's really interesting you talk about that last point because
we just interviewed Cale Body a week back and he
was very much talking about the cultural side of how
you kind of introducing analytics. But I mess and it
works the same way in that front office. That is
that when you're near at the top of that front office,
you have to build a culture and an infrastructure that

(38:34):
will survive any one person being taken out of that system,
and that you need to be able to be like
we have built this system that will work almost without
any of the key people being here in three or
four years time.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, we'd always at the Red Sox focus on.

Speaker 5 (38:54):
You know, we'd say, if you're in a position that
people where people report to you, your jobs develop someone
to replace you, not because we're going to fire you,
but because hopefully our success leads to you getting an
opportunity somewhere else, or we can provide the opportunity here
and you get promoted here, and then that person can
step up into that role that's been left vacated. So

(39:15):
I do think that's really important, and I think, you know,
some teams are great at that. I will say, you know,
especially as a consultant these last few years, culture is
a big part of what I focus on, both in
the analytics space because you know, I'll go back to
the Rays because I do think they're the gold standard
in sports. I actually call them the platinum standard across

(39:36):
all sports of analytics. And I don't think it's because
they have better tools than everyone else. They have great tools.
They have great analytics, you know, data scientists building those tools.
What makes them so great is that their process from
going from analyzing the data, identifying the insights and then delivering,
communicating those insights and executing on them to actually make

(39:57):
players better or to make better decisions than player acquisitions.
They're a well oiled machine that no one else is
as good as them at doing that, so you know,
I could use it. A good example of that was
that the Red Sox we acquired jeff Springs, Jeffrey Springs,
and we and then the Rays, and then I was
gone and this happened, but they traded him to the
Rays and he ended up having this breakout season with

(40:19):
the Rays. And it was interesting because we were looking
at the same thing, the same attributes that the Rays had,
and you know, him was there and we talked through
and I was like, Yeah, this guy, we like, this
guy's got a lot more upside. Here are the things
that he would need to change in order to tap
into that potential. The problem that we had we didn't
have good infrastructure in place to actually execute on that.

(40:44):
Whereas then he goes to the Rays, who are looking
at the same thing to identify him as a potentially
undervalued player, but they now have the systems and processes
in place where they can just get it out of
him as quickly as possible, and that's a huge advantage.
And part of that advantage comes with, you know, good people,
really good communication and in good culture cultural alignment, but
also stability. You know, yes, Andrew Freeman left the Rays

(41:08):
and went to the Dodgers, but they promoted from within
multiple times, and really since like two thousand and six,
it's been the same front office and the same philosophies
and the same processes in place, with making adjustments as
time goes on and evolving, but everyone knows when you
work for the rais what's expected, they know how they're

(41:30):
going to do things. There's no real mystery there, and
everyone can pretty quickly get aligned and focused on achieving
that common goal. At the Red Sox we had a
different GM every four years and in some cases big
swings in philosophies, and so that's really hard and so
I think the challenge what was really hard for him

(41:51):
was to try to do the things that made the
Rays so good in a culture that wasn't used to that.
And there were some of us, like, you know, especially
in the analytics side, like yeah, we get that, we
speak that language, but it wasn't how we were doing
things on the player development side and the major league
coaching side, and so there was going to be this
you know, prolonged learning curve to get there, and that's

(42:14):
challenging and getting people on the same page. So when
I work with clients on that analytic stuff, I always
tell them it's twenty percent technical and eighty percent cultural
because you know, having the greatest tools and finding all
the important insights is one thing. But actually being able
to you know, make better decisions or get more out
of players by using it, that's a whole different story.
And that's really the challenge because you have so many people,

(42:35):
so many touch points with the players, both in your
organization and outside it, with their own hitting gurus and
pitching gurus. That's a very challenging thing.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
I mean that sort of touches quite nicely on some
of the conversation that we had with Kyle, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
Russell.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
So he was talking about his experience with Craig Breslo
and how that's a lot of what he's focused on,
like building that culture and building that architecture that can
get them start with every player. And this is a
trend that we've seen quite a lot recently. So you know,
we've got Craig breslo in at the Red Sox Buster
Posey and at San Francisco, and I got it. There

(43:12):
are others that just not springing to my mom to
mind the guy who's Dave Dombrowski's number two, Samfold at
the Phillies. So there's more and more, you know, past
players that that seems to be like a very recent trend,
I mean an old trend that's come back. You know,
there's no new ideas under the sun. Do you think
that that might be why? Zach in your opinion that

(43:32):
you know, clubhouse culture is is something that these guys
understand and you can project that into a front office
in But I mean you need the right guy, right,
You need a samd Fold or a Craig breslow who
understands the real complexities of the strategy and the analytics.
But perhaps that is that. Do you from your perspective,
is that why we're seeing this trend come through recently?

Speaker 3 (43:51):
I think possibly?

Speaker 5 (43:52):
I think there's some you know, I had the opportunity
to work with the Texas Rangers in twenty twenty three,
and Chris Young is one of those guys who played
obviously and it was great working with him. I loved
seeing that balance play out because I had never until
working with Chris, I had never worked for someone that

(44:13):
had been a former player, and so that was a
new experience for me, and I saw the real value
in it. Now Chris is his own person, Like I
know Sam Fold really well. I don't know Craig very well.
I know him a little bit as a player when
we had him. I know Sam pretty well.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
Sam.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
Just use Sam as an example. Sam and Chris Young
are completely different personalities.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
You know.

Speaker 5 (44:35):
I'd say Chris is probably more prone to getting him
fired up and emotional, which you know, is great, but
also something he knows he has to keep in check
at times, so he doesn't you.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
Know, I can't imagine what a six foot ten guy
getting fired up looks like. Terrifying.

Speaker 5 (44:51):
Oh yeah, he's a very smart guy and he know
what he's great at. Is this guy who's had a
very good big league career. He's very humble. He knows
what he knows and what he doesn't know. And I
think that's what makes him really good, is that humility
to know, you know, It's one of the reasons I
was working with him, is like, I don't know I
don't know what a good analytics department looks like. I

(45:11):
don't know how, you know, how best to use this
in my decision making, and so he wanted some advice
from someone from the outside, a different perspective, who'd been
in a different organization that obviously we.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Had success, so but I did.

Speaker 5 (45:24):
I think there are a lot of benefits to having
been a past player, especially your interaction with players, and
I think sometimes it's hard to relate to major league players,
whether that's you know, real or imagined, it's just can
be you know, there can be a disconnect there. And

(45:48):
I was in a position at the Mets. I was
not there very long, and part of it was COVID still,
so there was a lot of challenges as far as
even just being in the same room with people for
a certain amount of time. I'm but yeah, you know,
I think as someone that wasn't a player, I viewed
the major league clubhouse as you know, their space. I'm

(46:11):
going to be down there, but I'm not going to
be down there all the time, and you know, I
have to have conversations with the manager. I want to
have some conversations with players at times, but I want
to give them their space, and you know, maybe that's
wrong that I did it that way, but that was
kind of how I handled it and what my philosophy was.
I want to be available to them. I want to
be approachable for them and I and I would kind

(46:31):
of do that and not have office hours, but kind
of informally, you know, post up at times that you
know as clear at an open door if players wanted
to talk to me, and sometimes they did. But yeah,
with Chris, it's like he's completely comfortable in the clubhouse
and it's not. It's probably not as odd for people

(46:54):
to see him in the club as the players the club.
So I do think there's an advantage and I but
I also think part of that is just going in
opposite directions, right, Like the Giants had far Han as
their president of Baseball option, Farhan is like one of
the few actually true analytics guys that's been in that position.
We love to talk about all the gems that are
analytics guys, whatever that means to people, but the reality

(47:16):
is the only people with that background that have been
in that seat are far Home, James Klick, and me briefly,
most of the Jeff Leunau, to some extent, although it's
more of like a management consulting background than analytics. But
you know, it's more that people that value analytics are
in those jobs that can apply it, but they're not
not their expertise. But so they had kind of more

(47:39):
extreme on the analytics spectrum, right, They had someone that
was their background, and so you know, it didn't work.
He obviously lost his job, and then they go in
a completely different direction. And I think you see that
and I lived that with the Red Sox. To go
from Dave Dombrowski to hind Bloom is two opposite ends
in the spectrum. And it doesn't mean it can't work.
It's I just think that there can be real action.

(48:00):
And that's also when we talked about Copycat League. It's
also reactionary too. This didn't work out, so I'm going
to go in a completely different direction now. I actually
think Craig Breslo, it's more like my senses, he's more
like high Bloom than he is Dave Dombrowski, you know, thoughtful, measured,
you know, he's he's an intellectual player. You know, he's

(48:25):
he was, you know, always the smartest guy in the
clubhouse type of thing. Because of his background. So he's
not your typical he's not your typical player in that sense,
doesn't mean he can't relate to players. He's been there,
obviously he's got that built in credibility, but he strikes
me as a different guy. Like I said, they're all
different people. And I think that's how how owners need
to evaluate these these things is to get to know

(48:47):
kind of what's going to work, both on how they execute,
how they make decisions, but also culturally. And I think
that's the challenge because there's two cultural issues. There's kind
of what you touched on and what I touched on before.
There's the getting everyone on the same page the architecture
of what we want to do, what we're about, getting
everyone to say, this is what's important to us, and
in Red Sox case, it's you know, we're going to

(49:09):
measure you know, these are going to be our our
key performance indicators that we're going to focus on for
player development plans and for decision making, and how we're
going to you know, measure success. There's that piece of
it and getting alignment and clarity to everyone who so
they know this is what we're about. But there's also
the human culture part of it, and when you work

(49:30):
in an industry that's very demanding, I think it's important
that people are motivated and inspired when they come to work.
I mean, you work for a baseball team because it's
exciting and fun. You don't work for a baseball team
to get rich. You know, there's so many people, especially

(49:51):
on the analytics side, that you know they could go
work in a lot of interesting industries and probably make
a lot more money. But it's the excitement of trying
to build a championship team. It's that the mission of
a sports team is so clear that you can feel
attached to it, whereas most corporate environments, the mission is

(50:12):
something you often don't care about. So having people recognizing
they're going to sacrifice a lot to work for a
baseball team, having them be excited and motivated to come
to work all the time is a key thing. And
I unfortunately think and I blame myself to some degree
for this analytical movement. I think part of one of
the negative or unintended consequences of becoming so analytical is

(50:35):
that we've almost become a little too clinical at times
and have lost a little bit of the people.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Part of it.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
And part of that is just tremendous growth in the
size of baseball operations that's created a management challenge, but
and also people feeling that they don't have enough time
to kind of think through these things. And so there
haven't been a lot of teams that have tried to think, Okay,
as we've grown, like, how are we going to.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Actually keep people engaged? How are we going to keep
people motivated?

Speaker 5 (51:02):
How are we going to keep people feeling like this
is not only, you know, a place I want to
work hard for, but it's interesting and fun place to work.
And I think that I found from talking to a
lot of people with different teams that that's kind of
declined a little bit. And so, you know, that's another
thing I focus on as a as a a leadership coach,
is trying to help leaders, you know, not forget about

(51:23):
certain things like that, even though I know they're overwhelmed.
I know they're pulled in a bunch of different directions.
But the things that tend to go when you're overwhelmed
and pulled in directions are communication throughout your organization and
kind of checking in with your people, caring about their
career paths and their development, Those things tend to go
by the wayside a little bit sometimes, and I think
it's important that that teams remember that.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
No, that's that's great to hear.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
It is like working anyway like that cultural side makes
a massive difference. I think now what I'd like to
do is you're probably going to go a bit more
quick fire through some other things that we think the
front office like might actually do during kind of this
this time period, and you can give us like does
this happen all the way through the year? Is this
focused kind of like mainly during this offseason? How many

(52:08):
people like this is a big effort, small effort. So
I feel like the start of the simpling one is
like in my head, like extending players is something that
usually happens more in the off season than during the season.
But are you almost like constantly working on what we
think that value should be?

Speaker 5 (52:25):
Well, I think, for in my experience, most contract extensions
conversations happen in spring training after the off season's kind
of dad down. Sometimes it's other times, but that's most
of the time that's been the case. But you're working
on there's always someone that you have working on figuring
out what that could look like, and those things can

(52:46):
change based on how the player performs from year to year.
You know, Mookie Bets, we made him a contract off
for every year for like three years to try to
lock them up, and each year it seemed like he
had a better year, so the number grew by like
one hundred million each time. It is kind of crazy.
So but yeah, that's usually the time that that happens.
But there's always someone, you know, keeping track of what
it could look.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Like cool qualifying offers for the for free agents that
are going out the door.

Speaker 5 (53:14):
I mean, that's something you know, you do. You talk
about the off season. You know, you're always mindful of
it during the season, but you know you want as
much information as possible, so you want the season to
close out. Part of that is obviously health related, so
I think the timing of that is as late as possible.
But you're thinking about it. You're always thinking about these things.

(53:36):
You think about your roster, you know, your current roster,
and then the roster over the next like three years.
Maybe you're always trying to think about because they're related.
You know, you if you sign a guy to a
big contract, you're taking away an opportunity for something maybe later,
So you always have to be mindful of the short
and long term.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
So yeah, I feel like one of those like arbitrary
moments and time we have is with that forty bine
roster around, like the Rule five draft, Like how how
almost like there's seemed to be a certain a moment
of finality there, Like do you feel that that is
the case or is that something that we see from
like the outside perspective might be a bit more.

Speaker 5 (54:12):
I'm not sure I completely understand your question, but I
do think there's a point there's this period during the
off season where you kind of have to freeze your roster, right, yeah,
and so there's a lot of strategizing and maneuvering before
that period kicks in, and then there's a sense of
relief after that period's over because then you can do
some things and then you know, if you need to

(54:33):
take a guy off, you can take a guy off
through a DFA. Certain guys, some guys you can't because
they have to be on. It's based on the rules.
So is that is that what you're getting now?

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Is? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Yeah, I think so something yeah, Because then you have
the Rule five draft, which is then like anybody that
you've left unprotected, then come can be like like nicked
by somebody, And maybe for you, has there been anybody
that like you left unprotected and gottennabbed, then you maybe
read the decision.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
Absolutely, he was just traded at the Cubs, Presley, and
there were two actually right around the same time, Presley
and Josh Fields, who was later traded by the Astros
for Alvarez, which is crazy trade. But those guys we,

(55:22):
you know, and why it frustrates me in particular, is
we weren't where we needed to be analytically with pitch
tracking data. And that's on me and other others in
that area, but you know, I take ownership of that.
If we were, we would have known that those guys
had certain qualities if they're pitches, that would have clearly

(55:43):
indicated that we should add them protect them from the
Rule five draft.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
And we didn't.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
And obviously Presley's the bigger one because of the career
that he's had. But you know, at the time, if
you're not looking at that stuff, you tend to have
a bunch of relievers or pictures that you think are relievers,
and it's hard to separate them. And a lot of
them kind of fall in the same value area, and
if you don't, if you know, if you're not using
all the information that you have, you're increasing your chances

(56:09):
of making a bad decision. And that to me is
as a perfect example of you know, where a team
that was using that stuff would have an advantage, and
you know we whipped.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
On that one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
I think the next one, which I think really goes
back sometimes can maybe come back to the cultural question
is arbitration. It feels like a really weird thing that
exists in baseball that not many people really see outside
side of this, and so you're left it this viewpoint
that is like, oh, I don't know how I would
feel at work if someone based I said, I feel
like I'm worth this, and then my boss told me, no,

(56:45):
you're not, and then spend maybe thirty minutes to an
hour telling somebody independent exactly why I'm not worth that
amount of money. Like, do you find that sometimes you've
gone through philosophies of avoiding the arbitration as much as possible,
or like I think we've heard of more people now
just be kind of it's like there's one offer and

(57:06):
it's basically taken or leave it, or we'll go into obitration.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
Yeah, more teams have adopted the file and trial. If
we file numbers, exchange numbers, we're going to a hearing.
I actually think in some ways that's helped that more
teams have done that, because now it's like purely you know,
I talked about being clinical before, it's purely this business equation,
like if we don't have an agreement here, then we're
going And it's not a personal thing, it's just the

(57:30):
way it is. And you see some teams go over
really for really small amounts because they have to stay
consistent in their philosophy or else no one will believe
them next year if they say that they're going to
be a file and if we don't have an agreement
by this date, we're going to a hearing. So but overall,
it is an awkward process. It is designed that way.
It's designed for people to want to avoid it, both sides,

(57:53):
the team and the player, so it's unpleasant. I do
think there's a way, and I do think at the
Red Sox we were pretty good at this of I've
sat in on some hearings where they were just the
team side was just brutal. Like I sat in on
k Rod the year after it was his last year
and he had the year before he had given up
at Homer to Many Ramirez. That was the walk off

(58:15):
of the series against the Angels, and they basically, with
him present in the room, walked through that scenario that
at bat to Many Ramirez and basically blamed the entire
season on him for blowing giving.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Up that home run. That.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
Yeah, it was like I was sitting in that just
as a as an educational purposes, and I was just like,
oh my gosh, like and I'm looking at Caro and
he's looking around like is this really happening?

Speaker 3 (58:44):
And it was funny. It was his last year with
the Angels, and it.

Speaker 5 (58:47):
Was like, well, he's not going to sign with them,
you know, like he's and maybe they didn't want to anyway,
and so they didn't care. But you know, so people
are really brutal. I always felt like at the Redzecks
we went we never went with few Epstein. He did
not want to go in the US for a long time.
When he went there, didn't go, but then they did
because they adopted the file and trial approach. We did
go after THEO multiple times, first with a reliever to

(59:11):
kind of test the waters, a Fernando Abad. It was
like a small number deal, but it was like, we
need to show that we're willing to go because no
one believes us. So we felt like we had to go,
and we went on a low risk guy like that
and we won that hearing. We eventually went with Mookie Bets.
We had a three million dollar separation and really we
didn't have much of a choice there because I think

(59:32):
the agent was trying to, you know, make a bigger
market point on superstar players, and probably the union was
someone involved, and so there wasn't much negotiating. They just
they were just sticking to this really high number, and
it was like, okay, like we don't really have much
of a choice. We don't want to go in a
hearing with Mookie Bets. But there it's like if we
don't go give them their number, they're not going to move.

(59:53):
So at some point it just becomes a simple risk equation.
It's like, well, they're so far on their side of
the middle of the mid point of these two numbers
that we may as well go.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
What do we have to lose?

Speaker 5 (01:00:03):
Because if we say yes, you know, we have a
chance to actually save significantly, so at some point it
becomes that equation. And so we went and and I
think we we did a good job of saying, like
a Mookie Bets is great and this number would make him,
you know, be a record number. Why should he get
that plus three? You know, it was basically the armists.
It wasn't to say that Mookie Bets isn't a good player,

(01:00:24):
but to your point, inherently you are saying you're not
worth your three million worth three million dollars less. And
he won, And there were some moments where was uncomfortable,
but he's the kind of guy I don't felt like.
I didn't feel like it had any influence on our
relationship with him. He was very You came up from
the through the organization, had great relationships with a lot
of people in it, and it didn't feel like that change.

(01:00:45):
There was some narrative that maybe it was wasn't gonna
sign with us anymore after that. That wasn't true at all,
and we felt like that didn't influence And he went
out and won the MVP in the World Series that year,
so it clearly didn't affect his performance.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Cool, I think the last fun one, maybe for me,
is that we see sometimes that teams are constantly looking
to actually change the dimensions of the field. We've obviously
seen it in the last couple of years with the
Baltimore Oriols, with what we's been called Waltimore being moved
out and moved back based on the construction of that lineup.
Is that something that is happening across the board? Are

(01:01:20):
you thinking about that regularly when you're at Boston or
the Mets, to be like, hey, if we just adjusted
this wall slightly by ten foot, that would actually be better
for us than our opponents.

Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
I didn't think about it in Boston because you're not
going to touch Fenway Park, right, it's a landmark. You're
not going to do anything significant there. I mean, putting
seats on top of the Monster was like a big
controversy at the time and now everyone's happy they did it,
but it was like, oh, the sacred, it's sacred the Monster,
and it's like, no, this just makes more sense and
now it's cool people can sit up there. But with
the Mets, I thought about it because City Field is

(01:01:54):
a really hard place to hit and they had been
one of the teams that made your adjustments after they
first opened. What I found funny in my career, I've
never understood how certain ballparks like city Field, pet Go
when it first came out, Call America and Detroit, the
dimensions that when they were designed were so huge. It

(01:02:17):
was very obvious that they were going to be graveyards
for baseballs. And then they you know, like just they
should have been able to figure that out through physics
and just understanding the game. And then they come out
and they play and everyone, you know, David Wright's complaining
about City Field. He drops his home runs get cut
in half, and you know San Diego is more extreme,

(01:02:40):
and then it's like, oh, I guess we got to
adjust this, Like it's two big. I don't understand why
they can't figure that out beforehand, Like it should be
pretty for Baltimore when they when Baltimore moved their fences,
it was like, what are you do when you're going
too far? You know, those things we were consulted and
we built in Boston. When they moved TRIPAA from pot
Tucket to Worcester, they were building a new ballpark and

(01:03:03):
they actually consulted someone in baseball ops who as an
expertise in physics and asked about, you know, fence heights
and dimensions and how it would play, and he gave them.
It was fairly easy for him to say, this is
what you can expect in terms of home runs and
blah blah blah. You know, you need to know wind
patterns and other things like that. But whether but it's

(01:03:26):
always amazed me that people haven't been able to stay
ahead of that. And then you have fences moving in
and out all the time. But that's been going on
since you know, the eighteen hundreds in baseball.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, one little question to that, it is like we've
seen some teams that have made their dimensions in their
minor league parks similar to like their major league parks.
Do you think that's a pro or like getting people
to overfit to where they may end up and eventually playing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Well, we did that in Boston.

Speaker 5 (01:03:54):
Greenville is like a little Fenway Greenville here. Yeah, you
know down four Myers that's another kind of Fenwly it's not.
It's very different actually, because there's seats in the wall
and it's a higher line. It's a higher wall than
fly And we did that for defensive development, right, if
you're going to come up to Fenwick Park. We have

(01:04:16):
this unusual ballpark with this thirty seven foot high wall
that's only three hundred ten feet away. I mean it's
it's so so extreme and unusual that we felt it
would benefit our players to get more reps off of
something similar.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
So that was the motivation behind that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
So I don't know, I don't feel strongly either way,
but I understood where we were coming from when we
built Greenville that way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
No kids, I think that's amazing, John, Unless you have
any final questions, I mean I have dozens.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
I could sit un tik to Zach for hours. I
mean it just just for my own amusement. But I'm
conscious that this man has a life. He's got to
go and own corn, he's got a family, so I
think we should probably just release him to have the
rest of his day.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Zach.

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):
It's been an absolute pleasure and an honor to talk
to you as a Red Sox fan. No least, thank you,
thank you for all the rings it's been. It was
all yeah, well yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
It was all you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Well with you and what zero in one hundred years
without you? So yeah, it was all you.

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
I mean, yeah, you know some guys called Dustin and David.
They may claim all the credit, but it's all down
to you. So thanks so much for your time. I
know that you do loads of media work yourself with
with s N. Why you're you're a regular with with
Albuddy Rob Bradford on baseball is boring. So if people
want to hear more of this, this, this, this, gold
where's the best place to be following you Zac to

(01:05:40):
make sure that they keep up with you?

Speaker 5 (01:05:42):
Sure, I'm on pretty much all the social channels at
Zach Scott sports Zach with a key, so yeah, that's
pretty much where you can find me most active, probably
on on X, but you can find me on pretty
much all the channels at Zach Scott Sports.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
Zach. Thank you so much for your time today and
hopefully we can speak again sometimes soon.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
I enjoyed it, guys, Thank you. Cheers all right, take care,