This is Walk Off Slams with Greg Zahn on AM 1150. Welcome inside the beautiful downtown Kelowna studios of AM 1150. I am your host, Greg Zahn, and you are listening to Walk Off Slams. As you know by now, the Yankees and the Blue Jays split a series in New York, and Spencer Miles was amazing again. And I'm telling you, Jays fans, he's going to create some major problems for the Blue Jays. He's rocking a 255 ERA, 19 innings pitched. He's doing it in long relief. Looking like a bona fide candidate to be a starter. So what's the problem, you ask? Well, uh Spencer Miles had 14.2 cumulative professional innings in his entire life coming into this season. So you're thinking to yourself, well, how does this guy get to the big leagues? Well, clearly the stuff is there. The scouts are looking at it, I'm sure they're looking at spin rate and vertical break and all these other things. I'm just looking at the way hitters react to him. Um but that 14.2 innings that includes the Arizona Fall League. So we're not even talking about regular season action. We're talking about winter ball or fall ball, so to speak. I think, you know, when the Jays picked up Spencer Miles in the Rule 5 draft, they were looking at him going, Yeah, we love this stuff. We'll keep him on the roster, we'll hide him for, you know, six months. That way he becomes ours because if you don't know the rules surrounding the rule five, is somebody else is looking at Spencer Miles and saying he's not good enough to be on our big league roster all year, and we we need to keep him in the big leagues because he's out of options. Okay. So if the Jays pick him in the rule five thinking this guy's got great stuff, and he does, they've got to keep him in the big leagues all year. So they're thinking, yeah, we can hide this guy, which is typically what they do. It's very rare for a Rule Five pick to become an integral part of a major league roster. It's usually a guy that's on the cusp of being good, doesn't quite have the experience, needs a little seasoning, you don't think there's much left for him to prove in the minor leagues, but you don't want to put all your hopes and dreams organizationally on this guy. So you bring him to the big leagues and you put him on the roster and you keep him. Well, because of the injuries to Scherzer, to Barrios, to Bieber, uh Trey Yesavage to some degree now that he's back, but you got a guy like Spencer Miles who's thrust into a situation uh that pretty much makes the whole idea of hiding him a moot point. So they put him in the ballgame. And now he's he's pitching three, four innings at a time. And you know, he's got an injury past. This guy's had surgery, uh, you know, and the Jays are likely sitting there going, Well, we got to protect this guy. Well, I'm here to tell you, you know, take the gloves off. This guy, he's attacking the zone with good velocity, good movement. Uh in a four-inning stretch against the Yankees the other night, he was pounding the zone, especially strike one. And if you know stats, and most of you do now, when you throw strike one, you go 0-1 on a major league hitter, the batting average drops to below 200. That's how amazingly important first strike is. And he's doing it against a really good team in a small ballpark showing no fear. Now, I I get it. It's it's a short sample. But I'm watching with trained eyes. These are educated eyes here, gang. This is not a stat sheet, this is not a computer program. I'm looking at this kid and I'm thinking to myself, if this guy's got the stones to go into Yankee Stadium and attack these hitters, not afraid to throw strike one, I love it. Let's just keep it going. I mean, but I get it. You you you have to try to be a little careful with your expectations given his lack of experience and his medical history. The last time Spencer Miles got any sort of significant work, he was in college. He threw 145 innings and he had an ERA over six, almost just shy of seven. Those aren't great numbers. But I'm here to tell you, he's here now and he's getting it done. Um, let's hope it continues. I mean, look for the Jays to manage the workload. Uh, they have to, but they also need to not be too protective of him. Uh, they need to let him go, and they need to trust their eyeballs. They can't cookie-cutter this. If they want to be relevant at the all-star break, it's all hands on deck. In my opinion, you treat this kid like anything else. Anybody else, it's okay, we're gonna try to build him into a starter. He goes 50 pitches this outing. If it's drama-free the next outing, we try to get 10 more out of him. If it's drama-free the next outing, we try to get 10 more until you get him to where he's at that 85 pitch threshold, and you think to yourself, all right, uh, we're ready to let him go. I know it's risky, but I'm here to tell you that most of the time when guys have surgeries, they either blow out again or they don't. I mean, there's really not much in between. So given the fact that you have a situation where the Jays have to win. They've got to win. They got to keep pace with the Yankees, the Rays, they got to keep pace with teams that, you know, in other divisions if they want to be relevant with the wild card. I mean, I don't think there's any chance, and I've been wrong, I've been wrong a lot already this year, but I don't think there's a chance they're gonna win the division. They just don't have enough coming back. Now, could they get hot again like they did last year? Sure. Does it happen two years in a row with teams that are, you know, not ridiculously talented like the Yankees? No, it doesn't. Um, if he's gonna blow out, he's gonna blow out. You know, you pulled him off the scrap heap. Uh, so it's kind of like found money. Ride the momentum till it bucks you. You know what I mean? Let it roll. Uh, you're looking to build him up, let him get to 100 pitches, and then let him go. Uh the knee-jerk reaction based on what we just learned about Barrios having to have Tommy John surgery, he's gonna miss the rest of 26 and likely a massive chunk, if not all of 27. Um, they got to resist the urge to be too careful with this kid because, like I said, you found him on the scrap heap, rule five draft. Go ahead and, you know, just ride it out. Be careful. Don't be throwing, you know, caution to the wind, reckless abandon, but also don't be overly protective. And that's the the the knee-jerk reaction, the mo of major league baseball would be to overly protect this guy now that he's pitching well, kind of the way they did with Trey Yusavits. I don't I don't understand. Like, why was this guy not ready to go opening day? So what? He pitched more innings last year than he ever did before. Isn't that the point? I mean, I've been arguing for years that kids should come to the big leagues ready to give a team 200 innings, not five years into their career. You know, when you don't you want the best that you got on the mound more often? It's part of the argument for hitting your best guy, I i.e. Shohei Otani leadoff. You know, typically he does steal bases, but he's a power guy. You want him driving in runs, but they want their best hitter at the plate as many times as they possibly can. And over the course of 162, if he's hitting leadoff, that's probably an extra hundred at bats, 100 plate appearances over the seven-hole hitter. Um, you know, and and going back to the rule five, the whole idea is that you found treasure in someone else's trash. The stuff is undeniable, so let's just roll and find out what it looks like. Moving on, Louis Varland is now closing for the Jays, which begs the question, what do they do with Jeff Hoffman? I know we talk about this guy a lot, but we have to. Because, you know, short of the Jays going on a massive run, there's not a lot, not a lot we can talk about. So my question is, can he be rehabilitated? Can he be effective in high-leverage situations again? Or do you trade him and address some of the concerns about the offense? Because the offense is a one-trick pony, minus junior. It's the hack attack. It's affectionately known in my house as the Toronto Hack Attack. Um to me, it's going to take a lot for this guy to regain his confidence, and he needs confidence in order to pitch in big situations. I'm not seeing good body language right now. He needs a new plan, in my opinion. If I were the Jays, I would look to trade him or commit to getting him better fastball command. I'm sorry. He's predictable. He might even be tipping pitches, which without the benefit of all the technology available to major league teams, I couldn't say for sure. I can't, I can't tell from the angles that I need, which is you know right in his face from home plate. Um he gave up more runs than a typical closer last year, even though he can converted 82% of his save opportunities. I don't understand why pitching today, why across the board, why are they so comfortable getting beaten with their off-speeds pitch, but you rarely see 95 getting squared up. You see the hanging breaking balls get torched all the time, and for some reason they're okay with that. I mean, I don't know if it's still the fastball being, you know, equival equivalent to their manhood or whatever, but you just don't see guys who throw as hard as Hoffman does getting squared up consistently with the fastball. I mean, but I when I watch the game, I can pretty much predict what he's gonna throw. Um, if I was facing him, I would have zero respect for his fastball because I know that if he throws me one, he's probably gonna go to the slider. I'd be dead red off speed every single pitch until I got the two strikes, and then I'd just be backing him up. Um, you've got to throw enough fastballs in this game if you want to make hitters cheat. You've got to you've got to cheat to hit 95 plus. You've got to get the barrel ready for that kind of velocity, and that makes you vulnerable to off-speed. And Jeff Hoffman and the Blue Jays, they want to get people out with their off-speed stuff, which is, in my opinion, ridiculous. When you throw 95 plus, you know what? Let's go ahead and work the fastball. And there's more multiple ways that that work. Okay, let's take the fastball changeup combo. Fastball is traveling at 95. Good changeup will get there 87 mile an hour or slower. The speed differential alone is enough to fool hitters with the change. Uh, as long as the arm speed's the same, uh, and the pitcher throws 95 at the bottom of the zone. The bottom of the zone, not down the middle, the bottom. Think Trey you savage. Okay, we're gonna talk about him next, but think about him. His fastball, he commands it at the bottom of the zone, and it gives hitters the impression, I've got to get ready to hit this thing. It makes them engage on the hitter. Then he starts to change up in the same spot, and two things happen. It doesn't get there as fast as the hitter is thinking that the fastball is gonna get there, and they're out front. Or they swing over the top of it when it dives and fades below the zone. So you see, it's really important to carry the bottom of that strike zone with the fastball. It sets up everything. And I'm here to tell you, the only pitch in the history of baseball that was ever meant to be thrown for a strike was the four-seam fastball. Everything else, the two-seamer, the cutter, the sweeper, the 12-6 curveball, the changeup, they all work off of establishing the bottom of the strike zone with your fastball. It's the foundation of everything. If hitters can cross off weapons, they get really tough to beat. They eliminate pitches, they eliminate parts of the strike zone, and that's what they have done to Jeff Hoffman. Every time he misses in the zone, it gets crushed. So he's either tipping pitches or they've eliminated parts of the zone and parts of his repertoire. Hoffman needs to clean out, he needs some clean innings right now, okay? But I'm not sure he can have any lasting success without an overhaul in the approach. That takes a lot of time that the Jays don't have. Now, I believe in his stuff. Can't argue it. I just think his approach is wrong and he needs to get better fastball command. Now, going back to Yusavage, he's a prime example of throwing enough strikes with the fastball to get hitters engaged and sped up. They need to get the barrel ready to hit his 94. So then he throws the split with the exact same arm speed as the heater and the bottom drops out. So not only is it slower by the requisite 8 to 10 miles an hour that makes an off-speed pitch truly great and truly effective, it changes planes as well, so making it doubly effective. But playing devil's advocate, if I'm hitting against a savage, I'm eliminating the breaking ball because he rarely throws it. Anything that only occurs 10 to 13% of the time in a baseball game, it's not even worth my attention. I'm not even going to pay attention. I'm throwing it out the window. Okay, my approach against a guy like him is going to be looking shape. I'm looking for a straight pitch because he throws a straight pitch 80% of the time. In fact, 87% of the time. Fastball or split. Both pitches are straight, but the split is three feet later getting there. Okay, picture that. It's three feet shorter than the fastball in the same amount of time. All right? Now, my questions to me, to the inner me, the hitter me, if I'm up there, am I looking to do pull side damage early? Meaning doubles are better. If I am, then I'm vulnerable at off speed. Well, so what? Swing and miss early is only strike one. I'll take my chances. Okay? But once I get to a two-strike count, I look to hit the fastball the other way, contacting it deeper in the zone, basically taking away two and a half to three feet of the front to back part of the zone. I'm not trying to hit his fastball at the knees because I'd never really want to engage there. And I certainly don't want to hit the split. Okay, by zoning up, I lay off the split, the finish is in the dirt. No big deal. I'm looking fastball down the middle, looking to hit it deeper in the zone. No problem. That's what having a plan looks like. It's called having a plan, gang. Something very few hitters in the Jays lineup have. Watch the at-bats. Understand counts. Okay, hitters counts. Uh-oh, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1, and sometimes 3-2. Okay, they're all counts where hitters have the luxury of being way ahead in the count, and they can swing at what they want to swing at without the penalty of a strikeout. Okay, so when you're sitting on a pitch or a location, you should never be late. And these are counts where you should be looking to do extra base damage when you're way ahead. Pitchers know it, but they still miss in the strike zone all the time. Watch the games through that lens. Watch where catchers set up, watch where the ball ends up most of the time. Of course, now they just set up down the middle and they let it eat, so to speak, or let my stuff work. Give me a break. All right. You need to be ready to execute when the pitchers make mistakes. You should never be late on a fastball in the middle of the zone in hitters counts. Shouldn't swing at pitches in the dirt in hitter's counts either. You shouldn't be looking to go the other way in hitters counts unless you have Aaron Judge's power. All right. Most guys are pullside power guys. You should be should be looking for a pitch to drive in the pull side gap, be on time for it, and have the discipline to lay off anything else. Okay, so when you watch the Blue Jays at bats through that lens, what does the situation dictate from the hitter? What pitch should they be looking on based looking for based on the count? Okay, I promise you. You're gonna throw things at the TV and wonder if there's any plan at all. Is it fluid? Can it be altered pitch to pitch, sitch to sitch? That's what I call it. You adjust as a hitter, pitch to pitch, situation to situation. My guess is there's no plan, okay, other than going up there to swing to a predetermined area. We think he's gonna end up here and we're gonna swing no matter what. Um there's no explanation other than that for what I see. I watch these guys go up there with something to do and act as if their only plan is to swing the bat. They get pitches to execute moving runners on and don't swing. They swing early when they should take a strike. They're timed up to pull when they should be trying to go appo. They go appo because they're late when they should be looking to pull. Uh, they swing at low strikes when they should be looking to hit the ball in the air. All this lack of preparation and a demand for management to be professional. It has to be demanded from the management. Okay? If you're not telling these guys, I don't like your approach, forget about the mechanics of the swing. More than one way to skin a cat. Okay, everybody swings a little bit differently. But the approach is so bad. It's just mind-numbing to see. It's like it's literally like situational hitting has been thrown out the window. Swing to a spot, swing in these counts. And I'll tell you, the pitchers aren't even better. They're not any better. Their plans are all wrong as well. You'd think these guys are really just throwing it as hard as they can. Uh, hitters, whatever. They just throw it down the middle and and hope that they can overpower out talent, out velocity, out movement. Um, if I knew that the hitters didn't have a plan, I'd be able to exploit it all day long. But, you know, and and I always come back to the velocity, the the nonsense, the the BS of these radar guns nowadays, telling us that everybody's throwing 95. Really? If everybody was throwing 95 plus miles an hour, then why do why are the ERAs so high? Why, why, why are they higher than they've ever been? The hitters aren't that much better, trust me, I'm telling you. Okay, they have no plan. They swing up on everything. They can't, most of them can't hit a fastball belt high down the middle and square it up, even in hitters counts. Just lies upon lies. The truth is, these kids aren't equipped to handle the responsibility of actually game planning for themselves, so they let all the nerds do it for them. They're literally going up there with with cue cards in their back pocket, being told what to do, with little to no room for adjustment. And you see that they don't make adjustments. These guys are feast or famine. They get three hits on five pitches or they go 0 for 4 on six or 10. It's awful. Absolutely awful. When I come back on uh Walk Off Slams, we are going to be talking Major League Baseball news, and there's some really, really juicy topics going on there this week. You're listening to Walk Off Slams with Greg Zahn on AM 1150. Welcome back to Walk Off Slams. I'm your host, Greg Zahn, and we are once again coming to you from the beautiful downtown studios of AM 1150. And now comes the part on the show where we take a deep dive into some Major League Baseball news. Leading off the latest MLB news. Well, the California Angels, as I grew up knowing them, or the Angels of Anaheim, or the Los Angeles Angels, whatever you want to call them, they are 17 games below 500 already. 17 games below 500. Everybody's going to Mike Trout and they're asking, hey dude, are you going to waive your no trade clause? Um, well, that's a whole conversation that we're going to get into, but let me just dive into the Angels organization first. Okay. Since Perry Manassian took over in Anaheim, they have yet to play 500 baseball. Five straight years of losing baseball. I'm not even counting the 2020 season. Okay. A couple of those years included a lineup that boasted Trout and Otani. They've missed the playoffs 11 straight years and are consistently ranked in the bottom three when it comes to minor league systems. So how on earth did Perry Manassian get an extension? And who is advising Artie Moreno? I mean, who's the guy that told him not to trade Otani for prospects? Wondering. They just hired former Major League catcher Kurt Suzuki as their manager, and they gave him a one-year deal. I mean, who does that? Like, talk about lame duck, like right, hey everybody, I don't trust this guy enough to give him a two-year contract, but I want you to trust him. I want you to believe in everything he's saying as your big league manager. Like, talk about a contradiction in terms. I mean, even the college guy, the college guy that they hired up in San Francisco got a multi-year deal. Are you serious? An ex-big league catcher like Kurt Suzuki can't get a multi-year deal? Wow. I mean, how is Trout not screaming from the mountaintops about a trade? I mean, let's get into it. Well, okay. Um, I'm not sure he wants to, you know, be the guy that says, hey, uh, I don't believe in this club anymore. You know, let me go someplace else. Um, and I want to I want I'm sure he's the kind of guy that says, you know what, I I want to make sure that I see who has a chance to win it all before I waive this no trade. That'd be what I would do. I would wait till the very last minute before I'd even think about it. Because you've got to believe that unless the Angels organization is well, okay, I'm not going to give them any credit for anything. Um, they should be talking to him already. Okay, let's say it's happening behind closed doors. If I'm trout, I'm gonna wait and see who's got the best chance to win. And then and only then am I going to even talk about it. But Probably not going to talk about it in public. Um, where does he want to be? Who's it gonna be? What's gonna be the best for Mike Trout in his career? Is it disrespectful for him to talk about it publicly? Well, the answer, in my opinion, is yes, but so is what's been done to the Angels organization. I mean, that's that's disrespectful. But, you know, Mike Trout, he's gonna carry on being classy. Uh, it's too soon for him to even entertain the idea, but it's coming and it's gotta be done. The first thing I would do if I were the Angels is I'd start looking for Manassian's replacement, and then I'd fire him about a month before the trade deadline. His replacement, gotta be a proven baseball guy, preferably someone with ties to the organization. Um, you know, enough of these dudes that went to scouting school. It shouldn't even exist, in my opinion. Men, men hired as scouts should just know from their own experience what baseball players look like. I heard Joe Madden's, he's probably looking for a job. Joe Madden, uh, one of the best baseball guys I've ever known. Um after Manasseh and goes, I'd fire most of the decision makers in the player development department and the scouts. None of these guys have been able to figure it out. Uh, no winning formula. They've drafted poorly, they've developed poorly, and I wouldn't want them to screw up the trade of Mike Trout or make really poor choices with regards to the prospect haul that they're gonna get in return, or they could get in return for a guy like Mike Trout. Um the guys that they get in return got to be camp miss dudes uh who can help the organization reset. Uh, and it has to be completely reset. You can't be a sub-500 team in the big leagues for five years in a row, miss the playoffs for 11, have the third worst minor league system in baseball year after year, and heads not roll. They all got to go. Anyone Manassean hired, in my opinion, has to go. They stayed the course and it led them to ruin. They've got a future Hall of Famer under control for a few more years, and the value of that on the open market is astronomical. I mean, that to whatever team trade for him, it sends a clear message to the fan base. We are all in on winning right now. I mean, that's that's huge. Uh it's really valuable to an organization like Philly, where Trout's from. I'm not sure if they even have a combination of prospects or big league ready guys to send the Angels, but somebody does. Don't even rule out the fact that there might be a multi-team deal out there. They can piece it together and get enough prospects and maybe a big league ready player right now to go to the Angels. Um, Artie Moreno and the Angels, they're already on the hook for $426 million. So they have absolutely got to get value for what they're already mandated to spend. They got no choice. They got to pay. Uh, especially given the fact that there's a work stoppage on the horizon. Can you imagine dumping a $426 million contract on the on the the eve of work stoppage? You know, that that's that's definitely something that is gonna come into play. Now, I don't envy Mike Trout at all. He can't talk about being traded because then he looks like he isn't invested in the Angels. He looks like he's given up on the team. But can you blame him? Instead of going all in on Otani, they let him walk and got nothing for him. They haven't developed enough talent from within to be a contender, let alone make trades at the deadline to supplement a good lineup, which they don't have. But you remember when the Angels had the two best players on the planet in the same lineup and they played sub 500 baseball and missed the playoffs every year? They haven't invested in the team at all. Unless you, of course, you know, you count the Rendone contract. You know how that one worked out. Um, if Trout doesn't address a trade and waive the no trade clause, he looks like a guy who doesn't care about winning. So he's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. So timing's gonna be everything, and he's gonna have to address it at some point. Uh maybe the organization will say thank you in a proper way and just address it for him. Because honestly, like I said, he's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. You know, the looming work stoppage in Major League Baseball is going to affect everything. It's going to affect the trade deadline, options and contracts, 26 uh free agency class. Major League Baseball's uh ownership, they're out to implement a salary cap and a salary floor. Because they know that they're never going to get a salary cap from the union as beleaguered as they are without some sort of guarantee that the common man in the big leagues, the middle class in the big leagues is somehow going to make more. So uh when you look at the union itself, though, uh in my opinion, for the first time since its inception, they're they're weak. They look weak. And they're weak because the the membership is weak. They've got weak leadership at the top, they caved in on a bunch of core issues uh in favor of creature comforts, like traveling massage therapists. Are you telling me guys that are making $10 million a year can't afford to hire a massage therapist on the road that they need the team to put them on the on the the charter? Like, come on, guys. Like what do you what do you think you're supposed to pay for when you don't even pay clubhouse dues anymore? You know, all the meals are you guys are eating three meals a day at the clubhouse. They don't pay clubhouse dues anymore, if I'm not mistaken. You got massage therapists and and and and chiropractors and and all these different things, um, nutritionists. I mean, you name it, there's somebody to be doing something for somebody. And all these creature comforts that they negotiated in the lack the last collective bargaining agreement, it ate away at their credibility, it ate away at their at their strength and their position of power. And to me, that that's that's an indictment on the the generation. They're more worried about you know how comfortable they are than respecting the men that came before them that fought and bled and starved to set this system up so they can all make piles of money. They're the only sports league left without a salary cap. The owners smell blood in the water, and they're gonna play hardball with the union, pun intended. Okay? A salary cap, in my opinion, it's it's little more than communism and sheep's clothing. Teams like the Pirates, holy smokes, they're already getting rewarded for mediocrity through the luxury tax payments. They never reinvest in the team, and instead of instead of putting it back into player development or better situations for the players, something to increase the the level of play on the field, go buy better players, they pocket the money. They do exactly what all the small market clubs do. They put it in their pocket. Because they know that if there's not a team on the other side of the field, the game doesn't happen. And I get it. But at the end of the day, like it's it's really, really difficult for me to feel sorry for a team, an organization that doesn't reinvest in the ball club. I mean, they're never gonna have as many fans as the big market clubs. Fans don't root for perennial losers unless they're, of course, the Cubs. Um, but even now they're good. Uh they put money into the organization, they've done it right the last few years. They're they're a playoff contender every year now. Uh and and honestly, the players, they don't want to play in places like Pittsburgh, let alone put down roots or live there, unless they have nowhere else to go. They want warm weather year-round, pretty landscapes, and above all, tax-friendly domiciles. Why should the players reward owners and franchises for being bad at business by imposing further spending limits on those who are good at it? And the ones that have been good at it for decades. If you want a level financial playing field, here's an idea. Offer Major League Baseball players tax breaks in places like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee. Come to think of it, how about the whole National League Central? Pretty much nobody wants to play in any of those cities, except for maybe St. Louis. You know, give them incentive to sign with small market clubs like Minnesota long term by waiving the state income tax for athletes. Okay? They're already gravitating towards proven winners like the Yankees and Dodgers, you know, and when you're playing for the Yankees or the Dodgers, you don't care how much money you're paying in taxes. Uh, if you do, you just get creative like they did with the Otani contract and they defer. But teams are gonna, you know, attract players when they win, when they're a top-level organization, when they treat the players right, when it's a fun place to live, when you're an organization like the Cubs and you win the World Series, and now everybody that was on that roster can basically roll out of bed and make five to ten G's a day signing autographs. I mean, where are you gonna get that in Pittsburgh? Milwaukee, Cincinnati. You're not. Like these places are not attractive to Major League players. And so you're gonna penalize guys who have to get six full years to become a free agent. That's a minimum of 1,080 days on a roster. 1,080 days of service before they can say where they want to work. And trust me, you're not gonna want to play and put down roots because baseball players, when they sign their first big free agent deal, they want to put down roots, they want to buy a home, they want to put their kids in school, they want to start a foundation, they want to be a part of the community. Well, they're not doing that in in in the places I mentioned before. I'm sorry. Heck, I mean Toronto's a great city, but the players they don't want to do it in Canada because it's so daggum expensive. And well, it's a foreign country. You know, there's no breaks. There's no breaks for them. They can they could they could take less money on the AAV on the gross side and net a heck of a lot more through teams like the Mariners, the two teams in Texas, the Florida clubs. Uh they they don't pay state income tax there. Or they just stay home in California where they were raised, or they move to Arizona. But if you want to make it fair for everyone, get rid of the state income tax and all the small market clubs, and then all of a sudden, financially, they'll start attracting some more players. You're they're still going to get second tier because players want to win. But who knows, maybe if you're getting the creme to the creme of the second tier for long enough, all of a sudden you put together a winning squad back to back to back years, and now all of a sudden, not only do you offer financial incentive to be in that small market situation, but they're playing for a winner as well. But you can't continue to penalize people in the business world for being good at their job. That's just ridiculous. A salary and a floor, you know, and the salary floor rewards players who don't deserve it. Imagine you're the class of a player who would otherwise be making, you know, below league average. And then all of a sudden, because of the salary floor, you get an extra 500 grand, an extra million to bring salaries up to the requisite level of the floor. You want to see some union disintegration? Watch the cat fights. Watch the cat fights when guys who deserve the money can't get it because there's a salary cap. They played all those days on the roster to get to the point where they felt like, you know what, I'm finally in control of my own destiny. I've did I've earned market value, and now their market value is artificially deflated. I can almost hear the meetings right now. There's going to be guys throwing stuff at each other, if not going to fisticuffs in some hotel ballrooms here shortly when they start to negotiate this stuff. Because even though we love each other and there's a whole lot of slap and tickle going on around the batting cage now, it's all about, you know, getting what you deserve. And players get paid based on what they do individually, not what the team does. Okay? So I'm going to tell you right now, uh, they come up with a situation where there's a salary cap and a salary floor, it's a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, go ask the other sports how they feel about their collective bargaining agreements compared to Major League Baseball. Unfortunately for them, they can't put those horses back in the barn. The genie got fat. It doesn't fit in the bottle anymore. So sorry. Okay, it's not going to happen. And if the union has to, you know, regrow a pair and suddenly regain their toughness, they better do it now. There's going to be a work stoppage. I can tell you that right now. I'm not a very good prognosticator of prognosticators, but my guess is you're going to see some sort of work stoppage go into the season next year, into April. And teams like the Angels should be looking to cut bait right now. They need to be dumping that Mike Trout contract because they don't want to get stuck with it, because he's going to have to get paid. He's going to have to get paid. Speaking of teams that aren't on the bottom, let's uh have a look. And I'd be remiss in not pointing out the fact that the Sacramento Athletics are in first place in the AL West. Like, what is going on? Uh Seattle's still under 500. The Angels, as we've been bashing, they're horrible. Houston Astros, uh, 10 games below 500. 10. It's unbelievable. Chicago White Sox are a game above 500. They're 7-3 in their last 10. And they're and they're in second place in the central, even with a minus 12 run differential. It's it's insane. Um baseball is on its ear. The entire NL Central is above 500 still. Uh the Dodgers, you know, my Dodgers are still, you know, waxing that behind a little bit. They're still thrashing. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, uh, this is why we play baseball, gang. This is why it's 162 games in 180 days. You absolutely never can predict what is gonna happen. I said the Tigers were gonna win the Central. They're 11 games below 500. Tarek Scuble is still on the disabled list, although he's been throwing a little bit. He's been on the bullpen mound. They're one and nine in their last 10. The Royals are 10 games under. They're one and nine in their last 10. Like, like some really bad baseball. But as we have pointed out on previous shows, yeah, you reap what you sow. You reap what you sow. You you hire, you know, when you hire unqualified people, when you don't scout well, you don't draft well, and I mean scout in person, and you know, and you don't draft well and player develop. Uh you let spreadsheets dictate mechanics, approach, etc. You kind of get what you deserve. Look at the teams that are in first place. Cleveland, Tampa, New York's nipping on their heels, although they're four and a half back right now. The A's started swinging the bats. That's plain and simple. They pitched, they're pitching pretty good and they're hitting some jacks. Um, the Braves are a well-rounded ball club. Milwaukee's fundamentally sound, the whole that whole division, even though I said nobody wants to live there. Um, and then the the NL West is the Dodgers and everybody else, in my opinion. So uh buckle up, gang. It's gonna be a pretty interesting season. And when I come back, your favorite, my favorite, probably tuned in just for the few minutes of the Sunday roast. And now, the Sunday roast with grades on. The game of baseball today is run by stat rats. I'm not a fan of them making baseball decisions, and I've said it before and I'm gonna keep saying it. Stats, analytics, and actual in-person scouting are invaluable tools, but tools belong in the hands of skilled, experienced artisans. If they don't show up and use the tools, nothing gets built. The Dorkdom thinks they're smarter than us baseball lifers and that data should drive the bus. But how smart can they be when they don't read? You ever watch baseball and hear a former great like John Smoltz talk about how no one reads bats anymore? I wonder how many people know what that even means. It certainly isn't something you see on paper or a computer program. In baseball, there are certain counts that we consider hitters counts. They are 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, and 3-1, and sometimes 3-2. A hitter should be dead red fastball most of the time in these situations. In today's game, they should be likely dead red whatever the guy throws the most, because guys would rather walk someone than give up a hit. In my mind, that's absolutely ridiculous. The fielding percentage on a walk is 0-0-0. Uh, the fielding percentage on a on a strikeout is zero zero zero. It's because of that mentality that they never really give in. Nevertheless, reading bats can tell you exactly what a hitter's looking for or how they feel in the moment. When the hitter is way ahead in the count and he's late on a fastball, you know he's sitting soft, not feeling well, he's stupid, or he just got a slow pole. Regardless of why, there's information to be had. I was watching the Mets nationals game the other day, a couple hours I'll never get back, because I wanted to see who was going to win the battle of really bad teams, and I found myself screaming at the Mets pitching approach, wondering what on earth they were doing and why they didn't see what I saw. They threw C.J. Abrams three cutters in a row in his first at bat, and the third one left the yard. I'm sorry, CJ Abrams, he's a pretty good hitter, and he should not see three sliders, cutters, whatever you want to call it, in a row without changing speeds, moving his feet, or changing his eye levels. Your analytics department may be convinced that the slider's the right pitch, but real baseball experience will tell you that you can turn a really bad slider hitter into a good one if you throw too many of them in a row. In the next at bat after the Homer, they threw Abrams a first pitch slider. Did you think it was a fluke that the last one he saw got smoked, or does the data say keep doing it regardless of today's result? In his third at bat, he took two fastballs down the middle like he wasn't even considering the fastball and hammered a slider oppo 3-2 for another knock. He was clearly sitting on the slider the whole at-bat. In his last at-bat, he faced Craig Kimbrell. And Kimbrell threw heater, heater, and I'm sitting there thinking, okay, finally, someone old school, an old school closer who was watching the same game that I'm watching, and he figured out that Abrams was sitting soft all day. But when he throws slider and then curveball, what do you think the result was? Line drive at Simeon at over 100 miles an hour, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, is there no room for interpretation to what you're seeing? Or is the game now following the spreadsheet blindly and basically going to the well until it runs dry because the data says CJ Abram can't hit a slider? Well, in case you're wondering, Abrams is hitting nearly 300 against all braking balls, so I fail to see what the data is saying now. As far as I know, the Mets aren't calling pitches from the dugout like the Rockies or the Marlins. So what exactly is their excuse? It's Sunday. Can you smell that roast?