Episode 81: Reacting To Shohei Ohtani Signing With The LA Dodgers

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode number 81 of the Marine Layer Podcast. You know what we're talking about today. I'm gonna try to sound positive for this part before we start the show, your reminder. Follow the show, download our episodes, leave us a five-star review if you're listening.

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[00:00:39] And we welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just Baseball Podcast Network. Recording here on Saturday afternoon, December 9th, and the Shohei Ohtani Sweepstakes are over. He has signed with the LA Dodgers. Cups of the Rose.

[00:01:01] Should I put a music bed when I eventually edit this podcast here after we're done recording? Should I just put that under that? Should this whole episode just be the instrumental of Marvin's room? Yes.

[00:01:15] Okay, listen everybody. For everybody that's tried to give us a hard time on social media the last few days, of course we never actually thought the Mariners were the single favorites to land Shohei Ohtani, but you know what? There's two things with this.

[00:01:27] One, how is it any fun to just have given up hope months ago? That's no fun. I don't think that's a fun way to be a fan. It's fun to believe you've got a chance to sign the greatest player ever until it is physically

[00:01:39] not possible anymore. And two, there are some reasons to get excited. I'm not saying you should believe every single leak that was out there, but again, there were some reasons to get yourself pumped up a little bit and we tried to do that, but unfortunately didn't work.

[00:01:55] And it's more entertaining for us and more importantly for you listeners. I think it's more entertaining for you guys as well. After all of this though, he assigned a 10 year, 700 million dollar contract with the LA Dodgers.

[00:02:10] A lot of that money is deferred, but that's the number because of that number we know there was never a chance from the beginning. It was never a possibility. As Daniel Kramer wrote

[00:02:21] and reported at MLB.com, the Mariners did not see this as a realistic option. And that was true. That was 100% true. This was not ever realistic in this point. I'll say this again. I think if they wanted to pay that money, they could have paid that money,

[00:02:41] but realistic in the sense that ownership would not have ever forked it up, 100%, they never would have forked it up, which is unfortunate to say, but that is the state and reality of being a Mariners fan with this ownership group.

[00:02:52] They're just not going to pay a contract like that. You've got to realize that number is bigger than almost every single ownership stake in the franchise. Like actually, I don't know the number exactly that John Stanton owns.

[00:03:06] I think it's what? It's somewhere in the ballpark of 35%. I think 35%. The Mariners are valued at $2.2 billion with the last update. That would put John Stanton's stake in the Mariners at a little over $600 million. That's less than the amount of show he just got, by the way.

[00:03:27] That's less than the valuation of Root Sports and that's less than the valuation of the other 16 or so owners that are below John Stanton. Not above Chris Larson. I think Chris Larson's

[00:03:39] number exceeds the $700 million mark, but just to put it in context of how much money that is, I mean, he would be pushing the top, top people in this franchise. That's why we just don't think this number was realistic and sure the one for $65 million

[00:04:01] idea was a fun idea to think about and as we said, the chances of it being true were pretty low judging that we scooped it off of Reddit. Like wow, we did try and talk ourselves through it like okay, it would make sense

[00:04:14] at this point, this point, this point, this point if the number for Shohei because of his elbow would have been around $500 million. Hey, let's go above that. Turns out the elbow was not an issue at all. If the elbow was an issue,

[00:04:26] Shohei would have not gotten $700 million and if the Mariners actually offered one for $65 with the LA Dodgers offer on the table, Shohei Otani's agents were like, yep. Thanks for talking. That's it. That was a very short and efficient discussion.

[00:04:42] Well, you're right about that. This contract is going to pay for itself. That's what I keep coming back to. Yes, this is an absurdly high dollar figure that he's going to get. He's worth it,

[00:04:53] but he's going to get a ridiculous amount of money in this deal. But again, he's going to double the Dodgers the money that they're paying for them. You just said it. Have you looked at the Dodgers Instagram accounts since Shohei signed?

[00:05:04] I mean, their followers are off the charts. Shohei Otani is such a moneymaker, not just because of what he does on the field. Everything he can do around it too with bringing in fans and TV revenue and ticket sales,

[00:05:19] jersey sales, everything, whatever team he was going to go to, he was going to make them a ton of money. Now, he's going to make the Dodgers a ton of money and way more money than they're going to end up paying him.

[00:05:29] What was your favorite moment of this whole saga? What? We really in the last 36 hours, let's say 48 hours, last 48 hours had an NBA off-season. We have been begging Major League Baseball's off-season to be more entertaining. And finally,

[00:05:46] in the last two days we got private jets being tracked. We had a Yusei Kukuchi reservation at a sushi restaurant in Toronto. We had a private jet, apparently since deleted tweet this morning about a private jet flying from Orange County to Boeing Field today.

[00:06:12] Just so many things on top of John Morosie's inaccurate reporting yesterday into which my heart goes out to the entire country of Canada. So with all of that, Lyle, what do you think was your favorite moment of all this?

[00:06:26] Well, first I want to say that to the point of Blue Jays fans being disappointed, we know exactly what this feels like. You know why? Because we went through this six years ago. Now, there were no

[00:06:36] reports about Otani hopping on private jets or anything like that. But it felt like he was destined to be a Mariners six years ago. It felt like just the way everybody thought he was going to the Dodgers in these sweepstakes, everybody thought he was going to be a

[00:06:47] Mariners six years ago and it didn't happen. So I understand all of a sudden why Blue Jays fans got their hopes up saying, oh, this is going to happen and then they get burned.

[00:06:54] So I get it. My favorite moment of the sweepstakes, like my favorite leaked moment about a potential source. The private jet thing falling through is pretty funny. The fact that he like again, some a big reporter definitively reported this and then it got debunked and proven to not

[00:07:15] be true is hilarious because I'm just picturing the mind of Shohei seeing these reports. Oh, he's on a plane to Toronto right now. He's probably kicking back on his couch. He's looking at the streets like I'm not on a plane. I'm hanging out here in my own house

[00:07:27] and in Orange County. And the fact that the person who got off that private jet is like, everyone knows who he is because he's on Shark Tank. Everyone runs to the airport is like,

[00:07:39] oh my God, who's getting off this jet? Who's getting off this jet? And then you see, I forget his name walking off the jet and they're like, oh, here's the other part that I would answer your question with. And this one was not public and maybe internally,

[00:07:53] this was part of the reason I got so excited. What I will say is I do know somebody who tip me off on a potential, now I don't want to say scoop, but just some information that said,

[00:08:07] now before I say this, I want to say it could have been at any point in time. This could be because he trains a driveline and was looking for a second house, anything.

[00:08:13] But we did get tipped off to tip off to some information saying, oh, I know somebody who had Shohei Otani have a realtor call our family about a potential house in the Seattle area. And I was

[00:08:25] like, oh, oh, you're lying. Oh, you're lying. But again, it could have been for a number of reasons. It could have been because he was lightly likely looking at the area. It could

[00:08:34] be because he was looking for a place if he's going to train a driveline. So again, it could have been a number of reasons. And for all we know, this is totally untrue. Like it never got confirmed. It never got proven. But the fact that we heard it,

[00:08:45] and I was already so on edge with these sweepstakes to begin with, I was like, well, maybe there's a shot, but evidently it ended up not going anywhere, which is exactly why

[00:08:58] I know I made a joke to you. I made a joke to some of our friends. I would be like, could you imagine if we tweeted this out with all the chaos going on in these sweepstakes

[00:09:05] and everybody getting things wrong, just adding fuel to the fire? But that's exactly why I didn't do it. We obviously had no idea for sure if it was true, and we didn't want to look like morons

[00:09:14] or tweeting out something that was so just out there and could potentially be have no validity whatsoever. But just the fact we heard it and the emotions in me started to say, like, oh, like maybe there's a shot here. So just talking you through it.

[00:09:28] He could still buy that house. Yeah, especially with that contract now. He could buy as many residences as he likes in the Seattle area. If he could have multiple houses in the Seattle area, which

[00:09:41] switches up his routine going from drive line back to one of his two estates. Maybe he wants two separate houses on two different bodies of water. He's got all the options in the world now. What a tough 48 hours for John Morose. My goodness. I mean, this dude,

[00:10:00] I mean, we rag on Bob Nightingale all the time. And John Heyman and John Heyman. But Morose with the biggest free agent of all time in Major League Baseball tweeted very inaccurate information about Shohei Otani's whereabouts and what he was

[00:10:18] planning on doing and essentially duped the entire country of Canada into thinking Shohei Otani was going to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays. And instead it turns out that Bob Nightingale

[00:10:31] was the first one on the other side to say Shohei is not on that private jet. And then John Morose had to come out later in the night and said I tweeted inaccurate information and the Tom

[00:10:41] Brennan gift was flying wild. And it was a very easy joke to make. It's a tough stretch here for John Morose. Now, not something we normally see that wrong on this level really.

[00:10:57] Yeah, it's not. Again, it just felt like, I mean, we went to journalism school and what do they teach you? You better be damn sure about your sources and you better have multiple people confirming it firmly before you're tweeting it out and sharing the information anywhere.

[00:11:13] That's exactly why I never tweeted this thing about the house. Like again, I can hope and believe all I wanted it to be or I can hope and believe all I want internally

[00:11:21] for it to be true. But again, we had no idea the me getting excited about that was just the fan thinking in my brain saying, oh, well maybe, but if you're John Morose and it's your job

[00:11:31] to report information like again, you'd think you'd be absolutely sure especially with something like this. If it was some mid tier free agent and he was reporting things of that regard, like it still would have gotten some attention if it was wrong, but nowhere near the level

[00:11:46] of Shohei Otani, like everybody knows the weight of the baseball world that they hold in their hands. If they're going to go and tweet out potential information about where he may or may not be

[00:11:56] signing. So I figured when Morose tweeted that it had some real credit to it. Man, yeah, he's not his best couple of days. This is going to be up there with arson judge.

[00:12:06] Oh, it'll be up there arson judge the private plane. Yeah, what a what a couple of days. And I will tell you again, this podcast has basically just been a bunch of letting emotions

[00:12:18] out and talking through how we felt through this whole thing. And if we're going to continue to do that and being transparent here, it's been a tough week for me dog in the span of seven

[00:12:27] days. I've seen the Mariners lose Jared Kelnick and not sign Shohei Otani. So those two names may not correlate at all in the brains of most people, but in my world, oh, that's like

[00:12:38] a big deal. Jared is my favorite Mariners or was he's a brave now and then no Shohei. So yeah, I've been I've been put through the ringer this week. And I'm serious when I say that it's been

[00:12:49] some tough days. You can do something to blow some steam off now. But now again, the worry of you mentioned on Friday's podcast, oh man, I'm going to have to sit around my phone all

[00:12:59] weekend. I got to be on top of this. But now you can you're freed up. Oh, that is true. There's no more stress. There's no more worrying. There's no more let's get it over with like now we know he's going to play for the Dodgers. That team's going

[00:13:13] to be amazing. It's the best one through three in baseball by far. And now for the Mariners, we see what comes next. To all those listening to this, if you actually showed up to the

[00:13:25] team, sir, if by chance you actually showed up to a Mariners team store today, can you please let us know I am I will say I'm flattered by the amount of response we got on our episode of

[00:13:35] people saying, yeah, I'll go show up to a Mariners team store and see if Shohei is there. Did you actually show up? Did if you did, let us know what it was where there are other people around,

[00:13:47] etc., etc. Were they shuttered? Were they being secretive? I think it ended up being just like a new IT system going in the Mariners team store, which makes sense. But I think people

[00:13:57] people did dare to dream and I'm sure people were out there dreaming on the street waiting to see that that limousine or something drive in with Shohei Otani in the back and to peek through the blinders

[00:14:09] of the of the of the team store to see Shohei walking through looking at all the jerseys. All for nothing. Yeah, that would have been great. I will say if you actually saw us

[00:14:19] talking about this on the Friday podcast and you actually showed up to the team store, like TJ said, let us know. And if you do, we'll meet up with you to game this year and give you a

[00:14:29] firm, hearty handshake saying, you know what? That is dedication and we respect you for it. We wouldn't meet up with any fans at Mariners games anyway, if people actually said, oh, I want

[00:14:37] to meet these two morons at a game at some point, like we love to meet up with people at game. But if you actually showed up at the team store, we're going to give you a hearty

[00:14:45] handshake and say that is dedication. So yeah, let us know. I'll say thankfully for us and for this podcast and for Mariners fans now that this signing is out of the way and all the

[00:14:55] all the market which was held up to see the valuation of this contract for Shohei Otani now can get the rest of the gears going. We can finally start seeing the rest of those free

[00:15:05] agents, especially some of those blue chip guys that the Mariners think they might be in on and being a little more realistic of their price point in their ballpark that we can get this rolling and the Mariners can start making some tangible additions in this offseason

[00:15:19] like Jerry DePoto said. There's enough waiting around, there's enough speculation, there's enough us talking about rumors and ifs and splits like it is time now for action to happen. The action is going to start now if the Mariners are serious about contending in 2024. As we've

[00:15:37] said, they've put themselves in a precarious position and now that the market has shown the first free agent through the door, the rest of them can continue going and that can

[00:15:47] open up the trade market as well and teams that thought they had a shot at Shohei Otani didn't want to add just quite yet because obviously that was a big number but now that big number is gone

[00:15:56] and we're back to all the now I guess quote unquote regular price free agents. We can get this thing moving along and we can bring you more great content when the offseason moves start coming in.

[00:16:08] Let's see him do it even if it's not going to be Shohei, there's guys out there, Blake Snell as we know is out there, Yandee Diaz is out there, the other Reys are out there.

[00:16:15] Who else do you want to throw into the mix? Jorge Soler is out there. The Mariners can still go and make moves to make this happen and as we talked about about the whole payroll thing, the regional

[00:16:24] sports network thing, forget about that, put this team over the top and give them a chance to win. I will say back to the John Morosy thing really fast. I think Mariners fans are getting fed up

[00:16:35] with him because he is reporting every single free agent on the market as a fit for the Mariners. He said it about Cody Bellinger, he said it about Mitch Garver, he said it about who else? He said it about Soler, he said it about a bunch of people.

[00:16:47] In the past I mean he's done it about Trey Turner, etc. It's like yeah that would have been nice. Yeah that would have been nice but for the Mariners let's see him turn the page now. We

[00:17:00] will try to turn the page with everybody. I'm sure I'll take a couple days to get over this but let's see the Mariners move forward and save this offseason and really turn this

[00:17:10] team in the right direction because they can still do that. Let's just see him actually execute it. How about that? I wonder how fast this will go. The market pick up instantly, I mean

[00:17:21] I was thinking as we're recording this like what if someone signs during this wouldn't that be fun? But I don't think we're quite at that point. I do hope the market picks up fast though. I

[00:17:30] hope there are some pre-negotiated deals that if and but show hey now that that is done that it can get rolling now. Oh here's another idea by the way now that show hey is a Dodger,

[00:17:41] Mariners should be in on JD Martinez. Yes yeah well he's not going back there now. So yes. So exactly what I'm saying that's another name you can throw out there but let's hope the Mariners get it going as the offseason moves along and let's hope we can walk

[00:17:55] away from this offseason when March early April comes and say you know what they did enough they had a good offseason and everybody is sitting here happy with that. I think that'll just about wrap up this short edition of the Marine layer podcast you guys know the drill

[00:18:10] you want to listen to the full form podcast you can do so wherever you listen on the audio side if you do that make sure download leave us a five star review follow the show the reviews

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[00:18:30] TikTok Twitter and YouTube shorts at Marine layer pod that's TJ I'm Lyle as always we thank you guys for tuning in we'll talk to you soon.