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It's a two year extension and we're going to build up that and look at some other front office groups that might be on the hot seat as this season winds down. And as we look ahead to 2025 for some teams that look like they're going to be on the outside looking in at playoff spots this year. So we begin today with the aforementioned Yankees nationals series. Now Dylan Cruz's arrival is something we talked about from a skills perspective yesterday. And I think when you look at the big picture and you see the lineup as it's written out, you see like half of a really good big league lineup or at least half of a lineup you can get excited about. CJ Abrams looks like a great piece from that Juan Soto tray. We talked about that a lot. James Wood looks like a potential superstar, having a great rookie season so far. It's great to see him there. You add Cruz, you have your catcher and keeper Ruiz. You're starting to find some secondary pieces that might be around that young core. And there's still more to come in that system Brady house isn't far away from joining them. So it does feel like everything is trending in the right direction though. I think the last time we talked about the nats we said, hey, their rebuild might be ahead of schedule. I think ever since then they've played about 400 baseball. So we've really put the clamps on what looked like a promising season. All this is to say, when you tune in to watch a nats game right now, how do you feel compared to how you felt at the end of last season, Brit? You're around this team a lot. Have the vibes changed at least in terms of this is going to take a long time to, hey, we've got something here. And even if we're not a playoff team in 2025, we're going to be a lot more competitive and our next great core is coming together. Yeah, I think the vibes are really good. And no, I kind of disagree with it. I think the rebuild is ahead of schedule. I don't think we talked on the show like they were going to make the playoffs this year. The people that I talked to were always pretty bullish on the fact that even when they got up to a hot start, people in the organization are like, listen, we've got a whole bunch of young guys who have never pitched this deep into the season who have never pitched this many innings like they're pitching early on is I think what surprised a lot of people. And that was never going to hold up over the course of a full big league season. But they saw a lot of encouraging things. Kate Cavalli is another big guy for them who should be back at some point next year. He's a guy by Tommy John surgery, a top pick of theirs. So you are seeing these pieces come together. A lot of this was the Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, Trade Turner trades. So I think that this team is headed in the right direction. I think they are a team that needs to now this winter go out and spend some money in free agency, go out and convince the fan base that we are trying to win. This window is starting and a lot of that comes back to ownership and ownership group that was selling the team now isn't sounding the team. I think this is a pivotal winter in DC to kind of show that, okay, the young guys are here. Now, how are we going to supplement them? How are we going to help them? Because even if you said, even if they're not a playoff team next year, they're going to be a competitive team. They should be a competitive team. The parameters are in place for them to be one and you would hate to see them squander away another season because ownership doesn't think they're quite there yet and doesn't want to dip a toe in free agency. Yeah, I agree. I think that they're, I think they're actually set up in a funny way to, with the same plan as last time, you know, like, if you look at this team, you're like, Oh, I don't want to. You have everything you need except for maybe frontline pitching, you know, like I like DJ Hertz. He has a nice change up. Command. That's so great. I like Mitchell Parker. He's fine. You know, I think Josiah Gray is a good backup, a back-end guy. I cake of Ollie things break right could be, you know, more of a maybe even a one, but like the command wasn't great the first time we saw him. So I think that there's enough flaws and then Gore, I like him a lot, but the secondaries that haven't come together, they're all like sort of they could really slot in two through five, you know, like this would, this team would look so much better, like a Strasbourg at the top, you know, like I think it would make so much sense for them to, you know, throw a bunch of money at one of the best starting pitcher candidates that's out there. What's nice is $35 million comes off the books in Patrick Corbin alone. And they're not their, their young guys are so young that they're not about to get expensive. You know, I guess CJ Abrams is going to go into the first year of arbitration, but he's not that he's not going to get, he'll get like three million or something, you know. So it's not, you know, they're not going to get super expensive and they could surprise people this offseason by getting a frontline starting pitcher and people being like, Oh, are they ready for this? But I think they absolutely are. The only really whole that I see offensively when I look at their depth chart is maybe third base. And you know, they could maybe put to put together a third base when that works or also address that in free agency or maybe put a veteran there. Otherwise, you know, I know Cabot Ruiz hasn't hit like he want to and Jacob Young is probably not a big hitter. But Jacob Young is great defensively and, you know, I don't really see a big problem anywhere offensively and then bullpen's just come together when they come together. So this is, this is a team that is, you know, is ready to spend on a frontline starting pitcher just like they did before, I think. Yeah, actually the player I didn't mention is part of that core is Luis Garcia having a great year. He's been a three war player. I mean, 15 homers, 20 steals, like everything seems like it's working for him. It's one more guy they can look at as kind of part of that every day group. And I think the temptation to follow the template that worked last time is absolutely there. And the appetite for spending is a bit of an unknown. We don't know if the pocketbook will be as open as it was before, but in an off season where you're going to have Corbin Burns, Max Freed, probably Blake Snell opting out. rookie Sasaki could leave his team in Japan, although I there's there's still some questions as to whether that happens this winter or next winter and then it's is he actually going to go to the that's already going to place more like the Dodgers, like all those questions. There will be some pitching available if they want to do this. It's just a matter of how much they want to spend to make it happen. So yeah, it looks like pieces are coming together and as Britt said, the pitching was great to begin the year, at least a lot better than we expected it to be. But we kind of wondered at the time like, okay, is this going to work all year or a team's going to catch on and similar to what we saw with the Red Sox, like teams adjusted to what the Nat's pitching staff was doing and started to put some runs on the board against them more consistently, not not at all a shocker, but I think an organization is doing a lot of things right right now. On the other side of this, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto just continue to do amazing things and it's easy to look at any teammates, any two teammates, three teammates, look at the Dodgers currently in great cores around the league and just think, they're all, they're all kind of similar, right? Like they're just all stars, they're, they're perennial all stars, plenty of teams have multiple perennial all stars. But I think we're losing sight of just how good Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have actually been this year. So, you know, you did some digging, historically speaking, are we seeing something special from Aaron Judge and Juan Soto in 2024? Oh, 100% and, you know, one way of saying this, well, look at the top 200 baseball seasons of all time, you know, just the top top 200 baseball season. Right now, Aaron Judge is like in the top 15 of all time and Juan Soto is a lowly like 140, still one of the top 200 baseball seasons of all time. So if you look in the top 200 baseball season of all time, you look for people who are on the same team, you get this list. And it's amazing because you see Aaron Judge and Juan Soto at the bottom of the list 2024. The last time anybody has been as good as them on the same team was 1942 when Ted Strong and Bonnie Sorrell on the Kansas City Monarchs beat the grays in the world's use with satchel page pitching in every game, you know, does 1942. And before that, you have Josh Gibson, a buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, one consecutive triple crowns and they were called the black babe Ruth and the black Lou Gehrig or the dynamite twins. So like they are, you know, the second coming of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig who did it in 1930 and 1931 and 1928 and 1927. So, you know, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto are kind of the second coming of Ruth and Gehrig. But there are also a lot of really fun names on this list in 1921, Oscar Charleston won one of his three triple crowns, which is the most in baseball history and he and Charlie Blackwell both hit over 430 for the same team. In 1927, Ed Ryle and Turkey Stearns, they had better names back then. Ed Ryle's hit over 400, but he also went 11 and 6 with a 243 ERA for the Detroit stars. My favorite factoid is Mule Suddles on a team where they had three guys in the top 200 ever, the St. Louis stars in 1928. Mule Suddles used a 50 ounce bat and hit 500 foot homers and hit a ball out of the stadium and into the ocean in Havana one time. So it's just a really great list of players, mostly Negro League and then Babe Ruth Lou Gehrig and then Aaron Judge and Juan Soto 60 years later. And this is, you know, the age difference, the year gap, that's free agency. It's really hard, I think, to get two guys this good in the prime of their career on the same team and free agency like this. And so I think that's, you know, that's a sort of an asterisk on this, which is like, wow, like that's why it's so hard to do this. Right. I mean, other seasons that are really good combinations of guys with like 140, 150 WRC pluses, but you're saying multiple teammates having top 200 all time seasons. That's the emphasis here. Basically 180 plus WRC plus and for Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, they combined for 207 WRC plus. That's better than Babe and Lou Gehrig in all but one seasons. They're basically tied right now for the best, you know, like American or National League duo of all time. Wow. And basically also like we're talking about two players that are number one and number two and war and all the baseball. So how often does that happen, right? Or the two best players in baseball are up there. So you're right. It's hard to think about how rare this is and then you hear some of those names on those stories and you're like, Oh my gosh, like, you know, I think it's rare to have one of these seasons. What Aaron Judge is doing without Juan Soto, Juan Soto is without Aaron Judge is a season where we'd all be, you know, chasing, you know, what was going on. And Judge certainly on nights he does at Homer like last night, but he takes away at Homer. It still feels like, Oh, he's stuck at 51 because everyone is now involved in this. So I think what we're seeing right now is so cool, even if you're not a Yankee fan, even if you're just a baseball fan, if you hate the Yankees, I think you have to appreciate what these two guys are doing in terms of, you know, getting into relatively uncharted parted territory and baseball. And also for a guy like Judge, like if he comes near this record again, if he breaks his own record again, I mean, where are we ranking this guy on the all time? Great. Is he already on the Yankees Mount Rushmore? Is he just outside of that group because it feels like as much precious as he's getting, we almost don't really appreciate how good he is. He's now got to be considered among the Yankees all-time greats now, especially if he makes a real run at that record again. Yeah. I mean, he's already hit 50 homers for the third time being a 51 this year. Injuries have kept him from maybe making a run at that more than he has, but the career numbers now for Aaron Judge are 288 405 606. It's pretty amazing to see it laid out like that. I think for the Mount Rushmore question, that could be a whole episode unto itself. But I think he's starting to put together a resume where he has a place in that conversation. And even two years ago, that may have been laughed at. So that gives you an idea of just how amazing he's been to play up to that level and do even get on the wrong side of 32, right? Like this is this is a part of a career where a lot of players are beginning to decline. And Aaron Judge seems to be living right in that peak, which is huge for this Yankees team, right? I mean, part of what I think people lose sight of too is because the Yankees aren't running away with the AL East. I think there's this misconception about just how good those two guys are. If those guys weren't playing at the level they were at, they wouldn't be flirting with best record in baseball, right? They've got one more loss in the Dodgers entering play on Tuesday, same number of wins. They're in that conversation anyway. It's the supporting cast that's been a little bit inconsistent, right? We know Stanton missed time with an injury. When that happened, we talked about how he's been their third best hitter. He's important to them. Austin Wells has been a pleasant surprise, but we've got guys like labor Torres and Anthony Volpe, Alex Verdugo, even Anthony Rizzo, even if he wasn't going to be great, was supposed to be good. He's been hurt. Hasn't been that guy. The supporting cast has been a bit of a problem. I think Jazz Chisholm back quickly from that elbow injury is interesting because if he's the guy he was, post-trade, and even before they acquired him, that's a huge lift for a lineup that needs just a little bit more from its supporting cast to be completely problematic top to bottom. The other part of this too is I think people are wondering, well, how much does having Soto on the roster with Judge help Aaron judge, because a lot of the conversations in our circles have been about lineup protection and not being able to really quantify how much it matters, right? That's sort of been the question, but there was another presentation at the Saver seminar you went to this weekend that started to point toward the possibility of there being a way to actually prove it. Yeah. It was a great presentation that looked into the question of lineup protection in a way that I hadn't seen before and they found that lineup protection exists and it doesn't exist. The reason I think that people haven't found it in the past is that it doesn't really exist for like 80% of baseball. And if you think about it, that makes sense. If you're pitching to Alex Verdugo and Glabertores is behind him, like, how much are you thinking about Glabertores? You're just like, let me get Alex Verdugo out, right? You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't exist for those guys. But what this study found was that it does exist for the very elite and that the difference between the batter who's batting and the batter behind them, if it's large and the player themselves is sort of a top five, top 10% player, then it does matter. And that lines up with our intuition, right? Like, if you're pitching to judge and Alex Verdugo's behind him, yeah, you're thinking about Alex Verdugo a little bit. And you're just like, I'm not going to throw to him so much. So I'm trying to find the piece here, but I thought it was a really good way of looking at it because, you know, that makes sense that, you know, we've seen some other studies that say line up protection comes from the guy in front of you. And so it's easier to hit with men on base. There's defenders can't defend you the same way. And then also what we've seen even from this year is that when runners are on base for Aaron judge, he gets 20% more fast balls down the middle. You know, so when's Juan Soto getting on base is helping Aaron judge the people behind him and Aaron judge is helping Juan Soto because nobody wants to pitch around Juan Soto and get to Aaron judge. But what's amazing about what Aaron judge is doing is he's not being protected. And it looks like there's research that suggests that, you know, that matters now. So, you know, I think that that just makes it even better that that he's doing this. Alex Opel, OPPEL did a thing on it. It was great. And I think I think it lines up with what we think intuitively. So judges so good, even when they're trying to pitch around and he's hitting homers. Yeah. And it's even when you think about it, like I mentioned the Stanton injury. Can you name the seven cleanup hitters that the Yankees have had behind Aaron judge because it's been Soto judge two, three as the default all season, but seven different players have been in that number four spot stands obviously one of them. Pretty much. Yeah. I was really surprised when we were getting ready for this Alex Verdugo with 49 starts in the cleanup spot has been used the most in the cleanup spot of any Yankees player so far this year. More recently, it's been Stanton has been healthy around Stanton's injuries. I think Austin Wells started to get those opportunities. I think that's why Stanton's health is actually an underrated part of this team's future in the playoffs and the rest of the season because I think it is a little bit harder to pitch around judge if you got to get to Stanton. It's not like Stanton is, you know, judge, but he's you don't really want to now face Stanton with like two or three men on base, you know, yeah, yeah, because Stanton still just hits missiles. He still owns the the stack cast era in terms of just top end power production. But yeah, those seven hitters Alex Verdugo, Giancarlo Stanton Austin, well, Torres is Torres even on their Ben Rice and JD Davis Austin Wells, 19 times labor, Torres, Anthony Rizzo JD Davis even a handful of times JD Davis who was on the team for like a week. Yeah. That's been a problem. The Verdugo Wells combination has been a problem as of late for Yankees fans. Like it's just not they need like you guys are right. They need like one more hitter to really I mean, I know you'd ideally like just a deeper lineup in general, but just one more hitter would extend them. I think enough that they weren't just a team that was like Josh and Soto, if Josh and Soto don't perform, they have a hard time winning. I'd love to know their record when Josh and Soto have like one hit between the two of them or no hits, right? They do seem like they have that one if they stretch that line of just a little more and you mentioned Stanton like he's capable still now of like going on tears. He's had little mini tears here. So and I'd like I'd like Torres is showing some signs of life. He's a little bit better recently. But there's been like Yankee fans have been wondering like, no, should you have Dominguez up here or like what should, you know, I think yeah, I do too. Anthony Volpe's been, you know, I think a little bit of a disappointment that they were hoping he'd take a bigger step forward this year offensively. So I think that they've really gotten lucky with these two guys and then everywhere else that seems like these guys have not been able to meet those expectations at all and they've only been able to cover for it. Like you said, Derek, I think they wouldn't even be a playoff team if you took judge and and Soto out of this lineup, forget the best record in baseball. I don't think they'd be a playoff team. They'd be a fringy wild card team at best if those two guys were not on the team right now. I mean, what do they struggle to score runs? Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, how many, how much more did these two combine for? I think they'd be totally out of the playoff race. Yeah. I think you're like 16 wins above replacement combined with those two guys right now. I do think Jason Dominguez should be a part of this sooner rather than later. I mean, there's reasons to like Volpe. There's reasons to believe Torres could rebound. There are a lot of things you can look at and say that could also get better. What if you had one more dynamic guy? I mean, I like Volpe 2, but like if it's going to happen for him, it's not necessarily going to happen this year. But that's jazz for me. I think jazz could be that dynamic piece they had and they have them beyond this year too, which is really nice. Like they wasn't a rental was an actual move to help them beyond this season too. So really like, yeah, keep forgetting about jazz. I think it was the injury and stuff and he's just not been a Yankee guy. And he got back quicker than expected to with the time of the injury happened, you know, we didn't know if he's even going to come back this year. So I think that's been the pleasant surprise. One other thing is the Yankees are one of two teams averaging more than five runs per game this year. So despite all of the shortcomings of the guys behind Soto and Judge, the second highest scoring team in baseball, the Diamondbacks are the only team that have outscored them. Every time I look at Arizona's run production stats this season, I'm surprised. This is yet another time even with all the previous times been surprised, I'm still surprised to see them atop that list. They're the opposite two of the Yankees, right? Like I mean, I guess Katello Marte is like a he's going to get MVP votes, right? But you know, it's not like a dynamic duo or whatever. I mean, the two leaders in WRC plus are Katello Marte and Jock Peterson, you know, instead it's more the fact that they are a non like a no zeros offense, you know, they have among their top players. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to shoehorn Corbin Carroll into league average. She's at 97 WRC plus. Let's give him league average. He has been more like that. He's been better than league average recently. That gives them one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 regular players with a better than 100 WRC plus. And if you count Josh Bell, who's been that while he's been there, that's 11. So that's just a lot of depth. It's a lot of good players. They kind of paper cuts you to death, I think. Right. Without anyone in the top five, right? I mean, they just really, yeah, they're very, very deep line up. I think we, I mean, we did this last time when we put together the NOS talk and then we totally forgot about Arizona like it's, I mean, could they win the West? They definitely could. They pitched, they hit their pesky team. I think they just don't have that star power, which is why we like, they never register on the national consciousness, right? They're in Arizona. One, they're in a smaller market, a market that's not quite as rabid and they get overtaken by the star power of the Dodgers and certainly, you know, the Padres as well. So they, that's a really interesting point, how deep that lineup is because you, if you were to ask me, I mean, we talked about this yesterday, but had I not known, would you guys have guessed Arizona? I'd have like three or four teams ahead of them before I went to Arizona. Now, I was showing my, my 12 year old son and he was like, what? And he's like a big analyst fan, like, and he loves Corbin Carroll and it's like, he was so surprised. Yeah. We've been proven wrong by the Diamondbacks a half dozen times at least on this show and still wouldn't have been guessed that they were the highest scoring team on a per game basis this season. It's just one of those things, but that depth is huge. It's kind of like what the Orioles do. And I think if Corbin Carroll gets back being the player he was for last season, which is absolutely possible. If he's that superstar, it's a lot like the Orioles build where Gunnar Henderson, sort of your superstar standout guy, and then you've got that great supporting cast behind him, right? Just no easy, no easy at bats for opposing pitchers to try to navigate that lineup. You know we love talking stats here on the athletic baseball podcast. 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Go to indeed.com/hire right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, indeed.com/hire terms and conditions apply. To hire, you need Indeed. Let's move on to the bad place. It's not bad in the sense that Parryman Asians necessarily bad but it's surprising I think to some that Parry was given a two year extension with the Angels. Now, I think the Angels are a very difficult team to evaluate a GM for. They've burned through a lot of GMs in the arty Moreno era so Parry getting two more years right now. I think making the longest tenured GM of anyone who's started and finished in the arty Moreno ownership era for the Angels for five years tends to be the norm so he'll go longer than that if he's there for these next two years. That's what you get. But what if you know that also like you know that going in if you take that job that means that you're not on any sort of six year plan. You're on like a three year plan because you're like I'm not I need to get re-upped again and here for. Yeah, I think what's probably challenging about the Angels job aside from never feeling like you have the full support of getting the resources you want for player development coaching and certain aspects that make an organization consistently better is that you get a pretty good payroll most years and I think that elevates the expectations from arty. If already has a top ten payroll most years he's going to expect big results and if you don't get big results then you lose your job. So I do think what's what's tough is you know Perry's there in the era where Shohei Otani leaves you a free agency. I don't think that's Perry's fault. I think any reasonable person would say well sure Perry would have given a Shohei every single dollar the Dodgers did if he could and it wasn't it probably didn't come down to his final say right it was just something that was out of his control. The Mike Trout injuries are not the fault of any person in the front office just something that's happened it's unfortunate right. So then you start looking at the bigger picture and say okay well what about like trades and drafting some of the strategy and philosophical approaches of this front office do we think there's enough good there to believe that in these next two years with typical resources there are a few moves that can be made to get the Angels contending in the AL West again and possum back into the postseason is that unreasonable because there's some things that have worked right. The Brandon Marsh trade to get Logan Ohapi was a really good trade. On the flip side making that push last year for Lucas Geolito and giving up Edgar Caro Kai Bush that wasn't great because they ended up purging the roster and they were pretty far out of the time right. So you have some good you have some bad the rushing players the big leagues approach with Zack Netto looks like that's worked really really well with Nolan Shenuel I think the jury's probably still out and I think you know I've talked about the ceiling being probably a little lower than we'd like for a player at first base but you can at least see glimmers of like good decision making and the possibility of a core coming together and then you just have this open question much like you do in DC of is this team going to spend like it has historically this season opening day payrolls down around 170 million usually going back to even just one year the angels in the top 10 and spending they were at like 212 in 2023 so is Perry going into this offseason with a chance to make a run at top end pitching or some of the free agents that could bolster this roster in a hurry. I think it's possible for them to be competitive I don't know if it's sustainable unless they are investing under the hood they to me are very similar to the White Sox in that Jerry Ryan store who owns the White Sox will invest in the Big League team the White Sox have carried payrolls before what he won't invest in and what already we know doesn't like to invest in is the stuff under the hood the minor leagues right they were the angels were one of those teams that during COVID remember didn't want to pay their minor leakers had to be shamed into paying the minor leakers furlough their employees almost right away you know player development is has been an issue there so I think the problem is you see this big fancy house that they built a.k.a. their big league payroll over the years and it looks really good but it's built on a shaky foundation and then we wonder why you know the first storm comes along and the house just gets leveled I think that is what the Angels organization has been now I don't think that's necessarily on Perry I think a lot of office executives want to start there know that you have to start there gone to the days where you can't have where you where you can just will your way in free agency to a good team we've seen that crash and burn we've seen a crash and burn many times my question and I don't know you know if you've done digging on this is like is there player development better are they putting resources into analytics down there into better coaching down there are they starting to innovate and not just trying to play catch up which is what the White Sox do like oh all other 30 you know 29 other teams are doing this I guess it's time for us to start doing that that's not how you win you win by pushing the envelope you win by investing in the infrastructure and you win by doing those little things right in the margins because that is what pays off and that's what keeps you know the injuries that always happen at the big level that's what keeps these organizations going is having that kind of death and the Angels haven't had that over the years so I think they can get lucky and stumble into you know winning season here and there and a lot of that is that division Seattle's MS Oakland's MS right Houston it feels like you know has been the only sustainable winner out of there in a while and they're not very good they're still probably going to win the A.L. West I feel like the Angels could stumble into a year or two but we're not going to see that consistent success until they apply that to the the real you know stuff that people don't see that foundation of the organization it has to be a place where people want to go where new ideas are accepted or they take care of people that's how you change a culture I don't know if that's being done in Anaheim yeah and I you know given Perry's you know history which is really interesting just coming all the way up from being like a clubby I think he I think he you know he's close to players and scouts and I think that's his strength but at the same time when you have players in Anaheim that have won there who have an outsized voice what happens what ends up happening is they want to make the organization in the shape of the last organization the one there you know and it's that becomes a little bit retrograde my example for this is just that they did hire some really interesting names and they had a couple of guys Dylan Axelrod and I forget the other name they had two two kind of pitching directors that were a little bit more progressive were more about the numbers and that I personally had plenty of players reach out to me and say you know those guys were the best coaches we had they were let go because a former player said why is everybody on their laptops you know why is there all this data and tech let's just get outs you know and so you know if you if you get if you just let that voice determine too much of your future then you're just not going to be on the cutting edge when it comes to player development that's that's been the long term thing and I know that they've been trying to change that but when you have you know they'd make these little forays into it and then they just give up really quickly it means to me that you know I don't really trust their minor league so they're minor league development and so when you say like you know it's easy for me to say like okay the angels they're good up the middle you know they've got Zack Netto they've got Logan O'Hapi like they've got you know potential center fielders that can play well like they've got they're good up the middle they've got some pieces Christian Moore's raking in double a like they're going to push him and all of a sudden hey you got a Keystone combo that's pretty good and like you could see it you get all you can Dana Kaden Dana is pitching you know he's got a two 52 year a double a and striking out 27% of the guys but I don't know if Kaden Dana's stuff is actually major league ready and I don't trust them you know to produce an ace if they did if they produce an ace you'd be like oh what if they drafted the next Paul schemes and out of that to their Kaden Dana and all of a sudden they have pitching and trout has like a resurgent year and it's healthy for a year you could kind of like tell a story where the angels are good for a year but I you know I don't I like I agree with you on that I don't I think there's like there could be a year there's a good but I would say that this this organization is still you know you know on the hot seat I mean if you if you were gonna talk about GM's on the hot seat I think you would you would kind of include Perry because you knew he needs to be changing things on the player development level and and and I think like sort of pointing to netto and pointing to more is more like well you scouted those guys and you gave them really high picks so it's not necessarily that's not a development win where are the like relievers that you turned out of nothing where are the like you know pitchers you claimed on the waiver wire that you turned into you turned into a third or fourth starting pitcher you know that's that's player development that's coaching and I haven't seen as much of that and that's where I think just using the gnats as one of the other comparison I do think Brits call like angels white socks a lot of similarities in terms of ownership relative to like what ownership thinks and what ownership wants to do and then what constraints you have to kind of work with to make it happen there but even with the nationals I think we're seeing a little bit of growth in terms of their ability to turn out some other big leaguers even if they're not taking fourth round draft picks and turning those players into stars they are finding ways to develop pitching in ways they haven't in the past right that's where I think you're seeing that improvement DJ Hertz came over for two months of oh man yeah they're they've been trading guys away and they like they've been turning them those guys that they get back into players which we know that 80% of the guys that get traded at the trade deadline don't turn into players I think Sean Doolittle has been really good for the nationals and kind of bridging the digestible like taking like the whole I pitched with like I'm really into the analytics because the gnats were late to that game I think Sean Doolittle has done a nice job at the big leg level helping those guys where they didn't have that resource before but yeah I think I think plus I think the gnats are in a much better situation both organizationally and from the ownership level than the wide socks that the angels are I mean those are those are jobs that unless I think ownership changes hands it's going to be almost impossible to feel a sustainable winner because you're talking about you know too old guys who own that team who just like aren't going to change you're not going to change how you feel you know for the angels it's like what is it oh two that they won and they kind of celebrate that team and then for the wide socks it's like 2005 and you know you have all these people that are still in the organization and that ownership surrounds themselves with that say like well we did it this way and we won we can do it again and you can't the game has changed too many people are innovating it's you know the equivalent of you know I had a major like manager float to me like it's like imagine being in the SEC and saying like we're not going to change anything we're in your new school you get in the SEC and you're like we're not upgrading our facilities we're not going to upgrade our coaching staff we're going to do it like this because we won 10 years ago like this people would riot like you have to be innovative you have to at least do what your competition is doing and the teams that don't are so far behind the eight ball you know can you win without good analytics yes but it's a lot harder why would you want to make it even harder to win consistently at the big league level yeah all right there's a there's a quote out right now that uh um chris grads thinks the uh the bullpen is a priority and i don't i always want to give i want to give everybody in a front office a little bit of grace when they're asked questions that they don't want to answer and they have to say something there must be sometimes you just think something out and everybody just goes with that that's what you said i think that can happen sometimes i don't know there must be some other like maybe he's just listing them among the many priorities but it it shouldn't be top five or six anyway um you know this is kind of i think we're laughing about that with white socks the angels are a little bit better team yeah much better big league roster right now and that's in a year where they've had like trout missing a lot of time again but in the time that he was healthy showing that he least still has some game-changing power and if they can find a way i don't know if it's possible but if you can find a way with the dh we've talked about this before to get 130 140 games out of my trout in a few of these upcoming seasons that goes a long way towards pushing you back toward a a level of respectability that if you then tack on the right combination of couple free agents and a trade or two you actually could be pretty decent again but it it's not going to be as easy as it should be for a payroll that size for the reasons we outlined and by the way that trade wasn't cj Edwards it was jimmer candelario but a rental you turn a rental infielder into a long-term possible starter that's a pretty huge trade just to then start fixing your flaws yeah the uh and the crion tells me that i should be talking about will the angels return to the 2023 spending levels and i have been thinking about this i've been looking at their payroll page and my guess is that if you were going to return to not necessarily peak spending levels because that might be aggressive considering i don't know if you think this team is is at that level but if you return to previous spending levels they might have 30 million dollars now you know to spend this offseason maybe 40 i don't know the 40 million dollars turns this team around i mean what do you do with your 40 million dollars i think you you really want to focus on pitching so let's say they may have seen you listed some of the names free snare yeah let's say you let's say you let's say you went to the mat and and got one of those guys for 30 million dollars for five years five and 150 or something maybe you you went to that for snow because you're like that you know the other guys might take more you know so there goes 30 million dollars what are you what are you doing with the other ten um you need a second baseman no they're gonna play they're gonna play first and more second base for i think most of the next season all right all right so let's you play and i guess you'll just play rendon you know and oh hoppy and shane roe so you can play a rend handful teller ward's pretty good i guess you could you would buy an outfielder right now their dh is nico kavana's or brandon jewellery like buy one more bat because the bull pen could come together joece's good contrace is better in the bull pen you just hope your bull pen you put some guys in the bull pen they get better so i i guess a 10 million dollar bat but what's a 10 million dollar bat it's not even nothing necessarily a league average like a jamer candelario if we look back at last winter signed justin turner oh man another how many years do you we're going to squeeze out of justin turner what the guy retired let him move on to the next phase of his life jadie martinez for d at jadie martinez for like four million yeah i mean that's probably the the bin that'd be shy if they land a big picture and follow the script you're talking about as far as having about that much to spend yeah that's the that's the level of how are they then and how good are they then how you know where would you put them like they you wouldn't project them first in the division would you even protect i would project them in the same place that a bunch of other teams with front offices on the hot seat are living right now like outside of playoffs but like having aspirations of being there and having payrolls of like needing to be there right like that's that that's what i keep thinking about when you say what other teams are in this situation like a two-year extension is nice but yeah it's not that's not five a lot of times when someone's safe they get about five years and we have a few teams that are nearing the end of those five-year deals with the with their either president-based operations their gm titles vary of course from organization to organization but i came up with five other teams that i think are probably thinking real hard about this next year as a critically important year to evaluate front offices and maybe make some changes so let's see we agree with this list i have the blue jays the mariners the giants the cubs and the cardinals and the cardinals are only kind of written in pencil on here because i i realized john moselach his contract is up at the end of 2025 and he's already publicly expressed an intention to retire at or near the end of that contract so i mean i don't know if you're really on the hot seat if you say i'm leaving soon the buzz of the seminar was that he's going to retire a year early and that's going to be the the transition this off-season but then the question would be would the replacement be someone like hi and bloom who joined the organization this past off season or to be someone in-house who's been there longer i think that's the kind of relative hot seat question you'd ask given some of the issues that have happened there but is that about right as far as the other teams that you'd look at and say lofty goals haven't quite been hitting them the last couple of seasons and contracts on a lot of key people in those front offices running out either after 2025 in the case of jedd hoyer or i think 2026 for Ross Atkins in in Toronto i can't find jerry depotos contract situation i'm sure it's out there somewhere all public well out of one more quote yeah i think so i think if we're talking about just this winter yes i think there are a few if you go back like to pittsburgh maybe is a year away from us having that conversation too right um i don't think maybe this winter but i think they need to they keep showing flashes um and not being able to sustain it over the season so i'll be really curious next winter uh how we view pittsburgh and what they're doing but i think the rest of those for sure um and see it looks Seattle i mean you can make the case you know just getting rid of your managers clearly not enough i mean jerry depoto has a lot of blame for what is happening in Seattle so um i would put that at the top of the list like if we're ranking it as like a you know hot meter that's gonna have a lot of in my opinion a lot of a lot of smoke there versus i think yeah i think that's the most you know that's the toughest one seattle because i agree with you but then i did this last three years wins so that's last three years we're not i'm not doing a big long one you know yes the Dodgers always number one um Seattle has one more win in the last three years than the guardians it has seven more wins in the last three years in the twins it has 11 more wins in the last three years in the diamondbacks i think the difference for me this is awful because now i'm like thinking like an owner of a team which i don't really want to think like a team owner they haven't made some more money than all three of those teams though too uh yeah and what if the twins accomplished as of late playoffs last year i mean it's it's just like the 10th best record in the last three years but they never win and they never go anywhere what are the guardians done wins per dollar they've done really well they're having a great year this year don't get me wrong but it's not like you named the Dodgers and the Yankees but i i did name some teams where the front offices aren't in trouble no true so it's like it's one of those things where i think he can make the case at least for one more year well we're getting better we didn't make it this year but jerry depoto i i don't think he's even won that 54 percent of his games that he claimed is their goal over his time there i've got that right there in front of me 244 and 211 like there's not the goals any 54 is 54 the big the big percent 53.6 that he said was the big point of the you know i don't think somebody winning 50 percent of the time he was i mean he's you rounded up it's 50 more that's what he said he wanted and people crushed him for that because it's like a ridiculous goal but i mean it also means that you know on some level ownership agrees with him and he could say well i'm i've got you you're 54 percent and nothing before the the photo era goes back to the start of 2015 so it's a long window for him and i guess that's the other question is like even if you have the regular season success quantified similar to the way you know laid it out there where it's like okay yeah 53 54 percent of your regular season games over a long window that's only three years you're talking about but let's just say it's about that over the life of a 10-year window i do think after 10 years if if they don't if they aren't doing it sooner they're definitely looking at your playoff resume in a window that long like yeah you sustained regular season quality one playoff but one playoff appearance in 10 years isn't going to get it done for any organization that's that's when just about any ownership group is going to say all right it's time for us to make a change because we need to have more success that at least leads us into october and then the next frontier beyond that is winning in october but winning in october yeah yeah like i guess i don't understand either you know like they haven't even had regular season success it's not like they've won the al west every year it's not like they're the braves they keep winning the division and they can't go deep a lot of the times they finish second every year their average start for him is their average finish is probably second somewhere between second and third i don't even think of them as a regular season success club it's not like they've raised eight al west banners over that stretch fair point now here's the other question if you happen to be in a division with a team that's historically at least very good and maybe better than that i don't know how you want to contextualize the astros or the dynasty you get pretty big i mean that i think they're pretty darn good astros team that they've had to deal with for the last decade like you do have to factor that in a little bit right like if the other organizations just flat out better than you and you're stuck in that wild card race because you just happened to exist if you were if you were in the same division as the 90s braves that mean you were bad or you just in the wrong place at the wrong time for 10 years though you'd think you'd break through one year i mean we get the same question even the year that made the playoffs they didn't they on the like the last day lose first place but i think this is the same kind of thing you'd have to have when you're grading the front offices of the nl west looking at the dot the comparing them to the dodgers over the last decade almost like when you compare the pod race to the dodgers compare the giants the dodgers and the giants are in that that tricky spot where it's like they won three titles in five years another 10 years removed from that last title so it's it's pretty far back in the rearview mirror the expectations are still high in the fan base but everything's changed since then and you had one really great season you can compare the dodgers though you're saying they spend more than the guardians yes but they're like a 140 150 million dollar team like this is a very middle yeah they're not they're not absurd they're not spending 200 million every year and finishing second either but i just think when when you have other teams around you they're spending a lot less and winning as much as you then you have to look at the post season if you're not getting the post season of winning there that's that's where i think the mariners would be in trouble because they don't have that success as you've probably heard by now we've teamed up with bed mgm this season we'll be using bed mgm lines to make all of our picks and we'll have special offers for our listeners each week if you haven't signed up for bed mgm yet use bonus code the athletic and you'll get a one-year subscription to the athletic plus up to a fifteen hundred dollar first bed offer on your first wager with bed mgm here's how it works download the bed mgm app and sign up using bonus code the athletic make your first deposit of at least ten dollars place your first bed on any game and claim your voucher for a one-year subscription to the athletic seabed mgm.com for terms us promotional offers not available in d.c mississippi new york nevada ontario or portareco gambling 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This episode is brought to you by Honda when you test drive the all new prologue EV there's a lot that can impress you about it there's the class leading passenger space the clean thoughtful design and the intuitive technology but out of everything what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda visit honda.com/ev to see offers. The blue jays we've talked a lot about in this show I mean I I think knowing that Ross Atkins contract runs through 2026 makes me think 2025 is the let's run it back with this core try to tweak it try to get it right one more time that's what their trade deadline suggested they're doing too so I mean that's kind of where we landed on that previously but what about the cubs what do you make of the cubs jed hoyers contract runs through 2025 and we've talked about the quality of their near MLB ready prospects we're seeing Picro Armstrong already make an impact as a great defense center fielder got speed showing a little more at the plate recently but do you feel like it's going well enough overall where you'd say jed hoyers not on the hot seat or do you think they need a postseason appearance either by some miracle rallying this year or in 2025 or jed to continue heading up that front office beyond next season they may move it just got great counsel so if they hire somebody else that person's not going to get to pick their manager for how many years to crack counsels have for a million million yeah it's a lifetime deal roughly a million in manager land and and I just think that when you look at cubs ownership they haven't been like a knee jerky we must win were the cubs team lately so I think jed hoyer will get more time they're probably the lowest on my list when we're talking about urgency I disagree with you guys on Toronto um I don't I think wait what do you think about Toronto you think they might make a move in the soft season even yes I do um I don't think that having a year left matters that much that happens all the time yeah that's what I was gonna say that yeah it is two years yes to twenty six I even think I think two is still actually in the realm it's when you get it that's what I was gonna say about Paris deals you get a two-year deal we can still fire you next year yeah far hon we haven't gotten the Giants but far hon got a two I think a two-year deal last year and he could still get fired this offseason yeah I don't think that matters quite as much I think the cubs are maybe in the safer I know cubs fans are upset but they did kind of try this winner um they spent a lot yeah there's such a weird team when you look at it and they were in town I don't know about a month ago and I saw them and you kind of look around you're like where are the stars right they're just like a it's a very interesting team how do you get to 230 million dollars and your stars are are Bellinger and Swanson it seems a little weird I guess they what they did was instead of buying the very best free agents they bought like the second and third best for you so they do that a lot of time yeah and it's still very expensive right I mean that's that's just the way it works so even if you can't get to the very top to say a Suzuki good player it's like 17 million per 18 million per I think something in that range Ian Hap retaining him over 20 million AV so yeah it just it adds up I think it's it's okay like we talked about this earlier looking at the differences between just like the Yankees versus the Diamondbacks what if there's another notch kind of closer above you're above what the Diamondbacks do in terms of spending and the quality of your players but you're not at the top heavy level that we are accustomed to right like that's kind of where I think the Cubs live and that could work they might have I'm guesstimating here they might they might have some money to spend actually I'm seeing them at about 70 million dollars short maybe 60 million dollars short of luxury tax and they spent right up to the luxury tax this year so if you had 60 million dollars I think you could probably turn this team around I mean again we're doing the same thing top end starting pitching you know could make this Cubs team better I think in terms of when you look around the Diamond the lineup looks like at least they have representative people at every position right yeah there's not a there's not glaring weaknesses up and down the roster for the Cubs maybe it would make sense for them to get a top end closer I think that would help I think it's it's amazing how many games they have thrown away so I think it's easy it's easy to look at them and label them as a colossal disappointment given they made the splashy council move they added shota you know they did a bunch of things right and yet it didn't pay off in year one so I think they're gonna keep being pretty aggressive this winter and I just wonder will they will they go to the top of the free aging class and then it's like what as far as relievers go like what elite reliever is available in this year's class I don't know if that option's even even out there yeah I know all the top end starting pitching but we are we're trying to award that stop and top end starting pitching to every team we've talked about yeah there's only there's only so many of them to go around let me see here relief pitching Kenley Janssen is a free agent Ryan Presley vested Craig Kimbrel has a club I've done that before a rolled us jazz guys are old too yeah there's not Paul Seewald now but there's not there's not a hater or an Edwin Diaz or someone on that trade for Devin Williams trade what are you doing to me here you know that Devin Williams and the and the brewers are going to part ways before his contract they would trade him to the Cubs though I'd play holes okay but to your point like they're not necessarily going to find that elite closer on the free agent market maybe they trade for them or maybe they that maybe they show us they can develop one you mentioned Porter Hodge as someone you're picking up in your leagues I like him but do you know you know your your bullpen needs to have like yeah you need a lot of guys like that yeah exactly but yeah you know the other one that's uh I think I'm local here so San Francisco I think seems like the hot seat is on fire you know and that was absolutely a discussion at Savere Simmons and I was like what is it that the Giants are missing because they spend money but they kind of do the Cubs thing where they spend money but don't get the top end guy right you know and they mix and match I mean everybody was in agreement that Farhan is amazing at roster slots 20 through 40 you know and I think that is true like he's really good at waiver pickups he's he's made something on nothing with like Blake Sable and you know the Giants keep picking up like sort of Tyro Strata was like a waiver claim you know so it's like they they keep coming up with like waiver claims they're good at combing through what's available you know they're good at mixing and matching they've done some innovative things in player development I think maybe scouting has been a problem but Bryce Eldres looks good and is coming back and coming up but you can't give them credit for Elliot Ramos because he was like a step away from being DFA like he was available in trades is what I hear you know like you could have just gotten Elliot Ramos anytime Tyler Fitzgerald was a guy that they were like okay fine you know we got no other shortstop we tried every other shortstop okay fine you're our shortstop so you know they there's something missing there and I think that the expectations in San Francisco are similar to the expectations in Chicago which is you know make the playoffs a bunch you know when the division sometimes like you know we're not scared of the Dodgers like we're we're supposed to be the Dodgers rivals you know we're supposed to go toe to toe with them so you know I think that the 107 win season is very far in the posts in the in the in the in the rearview mirror and I'm if I wouldn't be actually surprised I made a change and if Farhan gets another year I just wonder what kind of conversations they're having about if you've got a guy who's in the last year of his contract and he says well can I can I go sign you know max read for you know two hundred million dollars in the last year my contract or you know what I mean like what's who's the big uh like can I go get one so do can I can I just like throw five hundred million dollars at one so do or where are we in our in our relationship can you already see the Giants taking the bronze in the off-season Juan Soto sweepstakes right and what is bronze metal like they're not they're not oh they're gonna go to the runner I yeah they'll be one of the runner ups if we we offered him 400 right and that's not to blame Farhan it's just like it seems like that's been that their foray is to the very top of free agency have been a lot of runner up and that's gonna happen because you can only sign with one team it's the only way it's gonna go I did think one more year make some sense but I look at it and like what is going to be different about that Giants team in 2025 what if you put Pete Alonso on that team that's nice they had a little more power but does it completely change their fate does it make them a wild card team instead of a fringe wild card team that's probably about as much as it can elevate them they're gonna have to either re-up Blake Snell because I assume he's gonna opt out or find those inning somewhere else yeah I have to spend some money they've done well in that regard though right they had the the short deal short deal with Carlos Rodan like they've they've had a couple of hits there Gossman so that that might be more place pictures like to sign there so like you know it they can easily get a bounce like bounce back guys love to sign there so I don't know who the bounce back guy is right now off the top of my head but we'll find one don't worry we got time we'll not today but we will find on we will sign that player to the Giants many many times over but yeah I think that's a it's a pretty good group of teams that are likely in a pivotal year for their front offices as 2025 approaches Shane Beaver to a two-year 30 million dollar contract or 40 million dollar contract something like that I think it needs to be someone who can pitch right away though next year so it might be more of a gamble where it's you know one guaranteed year and you get an opt out and if you get hurt then you can opt in and interested to see what kind of deal Kukushi gets fun for yeah maybe that's the level they can get to in San Francisco this offseason we are going to go on our way out the door a reminder you get a subscription to athletic it's two dollars a month at the athletic.com/rates and barrels you can find Eno on Twitter at you know Sarah's you can find Britt at Britt underscore Julie find me at Derek van Riper Brits okay by the way or something happened with her microphone like 10 minutes ago so she had to just drop off we'll try to figure it out we're not just ignoring her yeah Britt's not trying to like get takes off about the giants and being muted her microphone just stopped working and we don't know why but that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back on Thursday at one o'clock eastern on YouTube thanks for listening [Music] College football is back like never before I'm David Oven and I host until Saturday the athletics leveled up college football podcast three times a week you'll hear me and my co-hosts fellow athletics senior writer Chris Benini and two-time national champion Damien Harris embraced the sports new madness with you we're also just gonna have a ton of fun enjoying all the things that make college football great check out the brand new one till Saturday every monday, wednesday and thursday this fall you can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts
