Episode 84: Geoff Baker (Seattle Times), And Analyzing The Trade Fit Of Max Kepler And Jorge Polanco

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode number 84 of the Marine Layer Podcast. We welcome on Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times. You know him for his Kraken riding, but he's also well versed in the sports business world

[00:00:10] and a former Mariners beat writer himself. The timing worked out really well to chat about some RSN stuff and root sports with Geoff. So we're happy he was able to take some time to join us.

[00:00:20] Also take a look at a couple of players made available by the twins Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco and see if they would fit with the M's. Here's your reminder before we start the show that if you're listening on our audio platforms, make sure to follow the show,

[00:00:34] download the episode, leave us a five star review. The reviews and the downloads always help us out. So wherever you get your audio podcast, go and do that. Like, comment, subscribe on

[00:00:43] YouTube where we do the full video podcast. Go watch us over there and follow us on social media. We're on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube shorts at Marine Layer Pod. Let's get it rolling. And we welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just

[00:01:09] Baseball podcast network recording here on Tuesday afternoon, December 19th. Note the date, Lyle, because I have a stat for you, a very specific stat. The offseason in Major League Baseball has been going on for exactly 49 days now and your Seattle Mariners have acquired

[00:01:31] one external big league player to add on to their roster for next season. In a crucial offseason of additions, Lyle, it seems like we do this every week now, but 49 days in, there's been one player.

[00:01:47] Are you not entertained? I'm not. We keep pushing these episodes back farther and farther and recording later and later all out of love, of course, but just so we have time to react

[00:01:59] to stuff. It has really been all for naught. I mean, we could have recorded all these episodes on Sunday, Lyle. We should start the count honestly moving forward with these episodes. So we're at 49 days. Let's just start the count every Wednesday and Friday episode. We're at 51

[00:02:15] days. We're at 56 days. We're just going to keep going because we're waiting here. Should we set an over-under? Yeah. What do you want to set it at? I have a hard time seeing it go past 60. So 60 would be before the new year.

[00:02:34] So, hmm, man, shall I say 59 and a half? Is that good? I like that. I like that over-under. Now, what do some of the soon to be ex-Mariners feel about that? Because the other thing we were going to touch on before we really dove into the

[00:02:49] show was that Paul Seawall was on foul territory this week and he talked about the golf trip he had with some of his old Mariners teammates over this off season. And he's like, yeah,

[00:02:58] I was golfing with some guys, some of my former teammates and soon to be some former or soon to be some ex-Mariners. So you put that right on foul territory through a very, very not so

[00:03:11] humble or not sorry, not not humbles. That's not the right word. A very, very. Not so slight? Yeah. Not so slight shade. Piece of shade at the Mariners organization, which he has every right to do. You think he was sitting on that?

[00:03:25] It felt like he was trying to cook up something with that statement. I don't know, because that totally just came out of left field. They were kind of just asking, oh, did you, what have you done this off season? It looked like, oh, they asked, have you spent

[00:03:37] more time with the Mariners guys or the Diamondbacks guys? And yeah, that one was just right out of Paul Seawall's mouth, just kind of right out of nowhere. And it's like, well, I think he had some things to say. And I'll say this, the guys he's mentioning that

[00:03:51] he means soon to be ex Mariners. I will say in that photo that Paul Seawall took golfing with some of the Mariners guys, there's still only three current Mariners in that photo. And it's Cal Raleigh, it's Matt Brash and it's George Kirby. Think of what you will.

[00:04:06] Yeah. And those are three kind of important guys. This is what happens though. You know what happens when you put together an uninspiring off season and get a lot of people mad? You're going to, that reaction triggers down to a lot of different places. And guess what?

[00:04:21] The words of your friends and your good friends are going to start to rain very loud in people's ears. So if Paul Seawall is saying certain things that may very well be justified to Matt Brash,

[00:04:31] to George Kirby and Cal Raleigh, like that might be very, very much between their ears right now about what happened to Seawall. I'm not going to spoil too much of our conversation with Jeff

[00:04:41] Baker, but it, with those words coming out of Paul Seawall's mouth, I don't think Jeff necessarily disagreed with that sentiment of what the future would look like. But we'll get into that a little bit more as we get closer. Paul, not totally out of left field.

[00:04:58] No, he wasn't. But then both our interview with Jeff and what Seawall had said, it kind of contradicts this report that the Mariners are the most interested team in Jorge Soler, which is our last piece of housekeeping thing here. Because again, like what's the story

[00:05:12] been all off season? It's been that, well, they're not going to do anything and they're saving money because of all the root sports stuff. But there's all of a sudden this report out there saying they're very tied to Jorge Soler, which would be great as we talked about.

[00:05:24] But it doesn't really fit the narrative of what ownership has tried to push out this winner. We want to say we're in a results-based business and that's where I think I'm going

[00:05:33] to stand on this. I'm going to wait to see a result of this. And I'm just going to tie this around. What is interested mean? Have they talked numbers? Have they talked years? Have they talked future commitments? Have they talked about what Jorge Soler's role would look

[00:05:47] like on the team? What does that mean? If they're the most interested team or along the lines of how that tweet was put out, it makes it sound like there's at least been some at least discussion if not serious discussion. Now again, it could be stretching the truth.

[00:06:03] Nobody knows except the sources, what the level of interest is. You're right. But they just made it sound like when that tweet was put out that maybe there's something there. Do you know what that could be? It could literally just be agent negotiating that they

[00:06:19] want Soler to go to a different team. I don't even want to be a pessimist here, but if you're an opposing team, let's say you're second in the Jorge Soler sweepstakes, wouldn't you want to leak something out there that another team has been having these

[00:06:31] fantastic conversations with Jorge Soler just to make the other team? Oh, I think we should put in a little bit more effort in this case. Right? Yeah, that's probably fair.

[00:06:43] And for all we know it could be the same level of interest as that tweet last year saying how the Mariners checked in on Trey Turner. So great. Checked in. Trey, what's your price?

[00:06:53] Oh, it starts with a three. Okay, nice talking to you. As they say on Shark Tank, I'm out. Yeah. And also, let's consider the source dog. What? You don't trust the source?

[00:07:08] Of John Morosie tweeted that right? No, no, no, it wasn't. So it wasn't one of the big national reporters. It was I'd have to find I'll have to find the tweet, but it was it was not one of

[00:07:19] the it was not one of those guys. It wasn't Morosie. Here I've got it right here. The guy who tweeted it out yesterday was Frances Romero. Okay, so not Morosie. You know what? I've come to

[00:07:31] realize this offseason whenever John Morosie tweets, I'm just going to scroll past it. I might not want to read it. I'm just going to scroll past it. He has tweeted a lot and

[00:07:46] it is very much along the lines of interest and checked in on and I believe was the one who tweeted that the Mariners checked in on Trace Erner last offseason. His track records

[00:07:57] not has not been very good this offseason. No, it's been a tough offseason for John Morosie. And the thing about him is he got the Teosca Hernandez thing right last year. He was a few

[00:08:07] days ahead of everybody else with the Mariners and Teo. So for a while that held over where especially early in the offseason when he was saying, oh, the Mariners are linked to certain people, you'd see some response of things along the lines of, oh, well, Morosie,

[00:08:21] he's pretty plugged in with the Mariners. He knew about the Teosca Hernandez thing. What do we know here? And now the narrative here in mid to late December is John Morosie has tweeted every single person linked to interest in the Seattle Mariners or the Mariners linked

[00:08:37] to having interest in every single free agent. So now people are like, yeah, I think this guy's tweeting just tweet. Yeah, he's got content to fill. I mean, this is a guy who went on MLB

[00:08:48] Network and said it wasn't like direct interest in Yamamoto, but you know, considering so the numbers thrown out there for Yamamoto and some of the stuff we're hearing on the contrary yet, I'm like, where does he get this? The Mariners maybe made one phone call and say, hey,

[00:09:08] Yoshinobi Yamamoto. Hey, each role played here. It's like, or they say, hey, we really like what you can do is agent says our starting point is 250 million bucks and Jerry hangs up the phone

[00:09:23] because like, well, I wish ownership would give me the reins to do that. However, this is where the conversation ends. Here are two guys, Lyle, and in our first segment here today that are available, we have two kind of matching franchises here dog that could do a transaction

[00:09:40] here as we propose in this episode. The twins are doing much what the Mariners are doing this off season. They're trying to shed payroll. They've lost, I believe their Bali sports deal, and they're trying to shed 20 to $25 million off their payroll, and they're listening to

[00:09:57] soon to be free agents and Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco as casualties of that both of them cost around $10 million each. And again, both are free agents after the 2024 season. Let's start with Max Kepler. I think he's the favorite among both of us. I think he's the

[00:10:15] better defender of the two. He's an outfielder you have a need in the outfield right now. And he's coming off his best offensive season of his career. So Lyle, what do you think of the

[00:10:28] German Max Kepler? Does he fit on the Mariners? He does because they need outfielders. As we've said, the corner outfield spots right now are totally up in the air and Kepler is not just a

[00:10:39] proven big leaguer but a big leaguer who has had a track record of some success. Now, he's not going to be the flashy guy that you could go out and get. He's not Randy Rosarana, but he would help the lineup. What do we say back when we highlighted

[00:10:53] Lourdes Guerriel, who by the way is now off the board. We said if Lourdes Guerriel is about the third best bat they'd sign all winner, we'd say great sign us up for that. That's about how I feel

[00:11:02] about Max Kepler. Now it's probably not going to happen now as we've seen the way this offseason is gone. But if it was good to go our way, I would say if Max Kepler was the third best

[00:11:11] bat they signed all winner, great sign us up. His Savant page was really good this past year. He hit the ball very hard. You mentioned it was his best offensive year 24% above

[00:11:20] league average as a hitter. He does have some power and he doesn't look like the world's greatest defender just off like your first look, but he does play good defense in the corner outfield

[00:11:30] spots. He can really defend out there. So if you want to take all those things into account along with the fact he shouldn't cost a whole ton in a trade. Yeah, I'd be interested. Again,

[00:11:40] this is not the flashy move. I don't think this is going to inspire World Series confidence into the fan base, but it would be a move that makes them better. It's not the flashy

[00:11:49] move, but it definitely is a move that makes you better given what the Mariners have in the outfield. He made a significant emphasis this past season to hit the ball a lot harder. He used

[00:11:59] to be a guy who would make a point to walk over 10% of the time and then he'd keep his strike out rate well below 20%. Well, this past season he essentially sold out for a little bit more

[00:12:11] power and it benefited his offense as we mentioned. He did have one of his better WRC pluses of his career 124 and more importantly, he did it outside of the juice ball season. He's

[00:12:23] really only had two good offensive seasons and one of them was 2019. And for some of these guys, you can just throw 2019 out the door like Max Kepler who hit 36 home runs in 2019. You're

[00:12:34] like, Max Kepler hit 36 home runs? Yeah, maybe there was something up with the ball there, Rob. Rob. Anyways, but he made an emphasis. He hit the ball harder. He had better expected numbers this past season than he did in 2019 and it was by a pretty significant margin too.

[00:12:52] And you have all that on top of the fact he doesn't have the Teosca Hernandez strike out problems or the Teosca Hernandez walk problems. Like his quote unquote down walk gears are 9%. Like you take that that's still above league average. Oh, you 100% take it.

[00:13:09] I will say when he hit the 36 bombs in 2019, that was part of that twins team that was just mashing homers left and right. You know what Mitch Garver did that year? The guy hit 31 bombs in

[00:13:20] just over 90 games played like talk about a juice ball. But there's nothing wrong, nothing was up with the ball. No, no, they didn't do anything. And then Oh, home runs magically went down. I'm sure it was a coincidence. The only thing about Kepler is again, we talked about

[00:13:38] he's really only had two good offensive seasons. He had one other year where his WRC plus was just under 110 which is a fine year offensively. It's not the world's greatest season, but it's not. Yeah, it was above average. But he also has some years where he's really

[00:13:52] struggling. When we say struggled, his WRC plus sits in the 90 to 95 ish range, which is not great. That's not what the Mariners would be signing up for. However, we will say if Max Kepler came

[00:14:03] to Seattle and put up a 95 WRC plus, it is a lot better than what AJ Pollock did. So in some ways that's an upgrade. It's just the bar is not set very high when you're looking at it that

[00:14:13] way. And he's not going to cost that much. He really won't. He's plus 30 with one year of control. And the Mariners would not probably give him a contract beyond. I doubt it. I really

[00:14:25] doubt they would give him a contract beyond next season if they were going to trade for him. So the trade package would be appropriate for that. So if he gives you a 95 WRC plus, the capital you gave up for that really isn't that bad.

[00:14:42] What do you think they give up? Because it's certainly not one of the young arms. And by that, we mean Wooh or Miller. Honestly, I don't even think it would cost Emerson Hancock

[00:14:50] because that's still a starting pitcher who's pitched in the big leagues with six years of control. I don't think that's what the twins would get back for Max Kepler. I think you're getting some guys

[00:14:59] deeper into their pipeline out of the minor league system for them or maybe like a fringe big league or maybe, I don't know, Cade Marlowe. The twins do need pitching because they lost

[00:15:08] my Aida and Sonny Gray in this offseason. So if they were going to stick to their guns in pitching, like you said, the Mariners are not going to offer big league pitching. They would,

[00:15:17] they're going to offer pitching. I mean, they might just go way down in their minor league system and trade a lottery pick, like a trade a lottery chip for if they, you're like, hey, you want upside? Here's some upside. Here's Cole Phillips. Have Cole Phillips if you want.

[00:15:34] If you want a true like, like, hey, he could work out for you really well in like five seasons, but the Mariners are not going to trade big league pitching for Max Kepler because I really

[00:15:45] just don't think Max Kepler is worth that much as productive as he is as a hitter. And what's really odd about Max Kepler's profile is he's only worth about in his peak seasons about two

[00:15:54] and a half wins, which when you're like, okay, so that must mean he's a, that must mean he's a bad defender. No, he's graded out plus actually in all three, all three outfield spots.

[00:16:07] He's got some holes in his offense of game. Well, when he clicks, not really. He doesn't really have issues there. If there's one place you could poke a hole in, he was a dog shit based

[00:16:17] runner this year. I mean, terrible. So in that case, I mean, you really wouldn't be that much change room to ask Hernandez. I was going to say he'd fit right in with this whole team.

[00:16:27] There we go. They could all learn together. Yeah. I don't think this second guy would cost all that much in a trade package either. Before we get to that guy, let's hear a quick word from our friends over at Pagotches Pub 85, that's Pagotches Pub 85 in Kirkland,

[00:16:42] one of our favorite places to go to hang out with our friends to eat some food, drink some great drinks and watch the games. It's a great spot to go watch all the football games going

[00:16:52] on right now. We know December is winding down, meaning the NFL season's getting more and more juicy as every week goes on. We got the college football playoff coming up. We got bowl season coming up. You can sit, hang out at a great spot with your friends,

[00:17:04] watch the games there. And if you pick the key hours, you can get some really good deals on some drinks. What are they? It's Monday through Friday from two to six PM to half the hours over at Pagotches Pub 85 and it includes $3 domestic beers, $4 mani's

[00:17:19] blue moons, $4 Mackinjacks, $4 Wells and $4 house wines. Try some of that. Any of those drinks you might desire. Try some of their great pizza. Go hang out with your friends over at Pagotches Pub 85 in Kirkland. Second guy, also a Minnesota twin,

[00:17:35] Jorge Polanco, guy who would fit some infield needs for this team, also one year left on his contract. How do you view him? I view him. You're going to get a good amount of power

[00:17:46] with him if you do trade for him. He is going to be someone who brings thump into your infield. And I think that's probably where you got to sit at because he's not going to come in and

[00:17:57] be an all-world defender in the infield. He's been a pretty poor defender for his career, but with one year of control at $10.5 million, if you're trying to dig into his offense and you

[00:18:08] can look past the strikeout trends a little bit from last season, I think it could be a true impact that in this lineup. Is he my preferred of these two? Absolutely not. I told you at the beginning 100% take Max Kepler over him,

[00:18:23] but his quality of contact is good. His exit velocities are fine, but he barrels the ball a lot and he lifts it a lot. He's made much more of an emphasis in the last couple of seasons to do that

[00:18:34] as well as getting on base a whole lot more which they could also use on that infield. That walk rate the last two seasons for Polanco has been very, very good. And the Mariners want to

[00:18:43] think that they'd be getting Polanco on a little bit of a discount. He missed a lot of time last year with hamstring injuries and a knee injury that they think perhaps affected his season

[00:18:54] and in fact let his strikeout rate balloon up a little bit which has actually been one of his strengths for his career. So, I mean the price would be very similar of Max Kepler for Jorge

[00:19:05] Polanco. You're buying probably a little bit more upside with Polanco and expecting that he will have a very good offensive season somewhere in the middle of your lineup, maybe not smack

[00:19:17] in the middle but maybe in the back half of your lineup and could be a very, very solid contributor for a not very high price. Yeah, maybe a guy out of the sixth spot which you look at his strikeouts

[00:19:29] if you really believe injuries played into that and you take out 2020 sorry 2023 where, okay, he struck out more than he has in his career but it wasn't astronomical. He struck out about

[00:19:39] 25% of the time which is a lot less than a lot of guys on this team were doing last year. Other than that, he's never eclipsed the 20% mark in any full season he's played in in the big league.

[00:19:51] This is not a guy that strikes out a lot and a lot of ways he fits what the Mariners would be looking for combined with the power, combined with the ability to play infield. The only caveat

[00:20:01] here is like you mentioned he's just not a very good defender but there are things to like about Polanco and if you need offense and a guy that's not going to strike out a ton

[00:20:09] you could fit those needs. He's consistent four seasons in a row of a 118 WRC plus. There's not a guy on the Mariners roster who's done that. No, no, not at all. And like again, he didn't

[00:20:21] have the greatest 2020 but what do we say? We throw that out the window for just about every guy. Other than that most of his career he has been pretty consistent at the plate and consistency is

[00:20:30] something this team needs very badly on the offensive side of the ball and yeah, has some power. You don't find that many second basemen with real power like Jorge Polanco has had a year in his career where he popped 33 home runs. That's pretty good.

[00:20:43] So that was and that was just a year ago too in 22. So I would sign up for that guy. It would probably mean you swing Rojas over to third and you split time with Urias there instead of those

[00:20:55] two platooning at second base, you platoon at third and then you have Polanco play second base. But there's a way to work that out and improve your offense if you were to be interested

[00:21:04] in Polanco. So I think they should be interested in both guys. I'm probably with you that I'd prefer Kepler but my ears are open to either. And Kepler's got a clear spot now. Like there are

[00:21:14] wide open spots for Kepler to play every single day in the outfield. Polanco is a guy you go for if you truly don't think Ryan Bliss should be playing in the big leagues this season.

[00:21:24] Flat out. They've talked quite a lot about how they're expecting Ryan Bliss to be a factor in this 2024 season at the big league level. But there's no spot for Ryan Bliss if you

[00:21:36] trade for Jorge Polanco because Ryan Bliss does not play shortstop, not at the big league level and he's not going to play third base at the big league level either. He's going to be a second

[00:21:44] baseman when he's in the big leagues. And Polanco is good defensive position is at second base. It's not short and it's not at third. He's been a very subpar defender in his career on the left side of the infield. So you probably want to keep him

[00:21:59] on the right side. And that $10.5 million for Polanco for that offense you're going to get. It's really not that much money, not for some of the numbers we've seen in this offseason.

[00:22:09] And Bliss might get up mid-season. I don't think he's going to be on a team opening day. I just don't. I think he struggled into coma a little bit. I think he still needs some time

[00:22:17] to develop. But he could be up mid-season and if that happens you figure it out then because if he's truly ready that's a good thing. But yes, I think you'd make this trade on the idea

[00:22:27] that Ryan Bliss is not going to start the year on the opening day roster, which is what I'd figure anyway. I think he'll spend some more time down into coma before he gets up to the show.

[00:22:36] But hey, you want to throw out some optimism. Polanco is another guy with only one year left on his deal. Is it a one-year stop gap for Munitakamura Kami? Do you want to push

[00:22:47] that narrative? Do you want to push it a little bit further? Do you want to listen to our Jeff Baker interview first? No, I don't because after people listen to that they're going to say, wow, what the hell are you talking about, Munitakamura Kami? They're not going to

[00:23:02] give him a fraction of the money he's going to be looking for. Could we offer him root sports? He could be the sole owner. That sounds great. If he's going to- Big upside by. Yeah. Hey, put it as a clause in his contract. They say, listen,

[00:23:16] if Murakami hits 40 plus bombs here at T-Mobile Park, you get full ownership stake in root sports. Again, there's escalators in the contract. Yeah, escalators in the contract and think of it as a growing investment. It goes nowhere but up.

[00:23:30] Yes. I like that idea. They need somebody to sell root sports to, and they also seem to be unwilling to put talent on the field. What if you just combine the best

[00:23:40] of both worlds? You offer it to a player, and if he plays well, stake just goes up. Team plays better. Everybody wins. I like your thinking, Laoh. Let's fly over to Japan. We'll vlog the whole thing. We'll do some content for the podcast.

[00:23:56] We'll bring that to Murakami's people and we'll see how the idea resonates. That sounds great. Listen, I don't know who else is going to be offering him ownership in a regional sports network deal or a TV deal. Listen, Murakami, you're not getting a better

[00:24:14] deal than that. You might as well take it. Don't ask if we have the legal authority to dish out either the Mariners' money or root sports. Don't ask that. Just trust us. I think you could trust

[00:24:27] us. Before we get to this interview with Jeff Baker, let's hear a word from BetterHelp. Is something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals? Regardless, if you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety

[00:24:41] or a human who lives in this world who's going through a hard time, therapy can give you the tools to approach your life in a very different way. That's why I'm excited to tell you about today's sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp's mission is to make therapy more affordable and

[00:24:54] more accessible. This is an important mission because finding a therapist can be really hard, especially when you're limited to options in your area. BetterHelp is a platform that makes finding a therapist easier because it's online, it's remote and by filling out a few questions,

[00:25:09] BetterHelp can match you with a professional therapist in as little as a few days. It's easy to sign up and get matched by a therapist with a therapist. There's a link in our description. It's betterhelp.com slash marine layer pod. That's better H-E-L-P.com slash marine layer pod.

[00:25:24] Clicking that link helps support this podcast but also gets you 10% off your first month of BetterHelp so you can connect with a therapist and see if it helps you. If you're struggling, consider online therapy with BetterHelp. Click the link in the description or visit betterhelp.com

[00:25:39] slash marine layer pod. I'm glad that ad was placed there because something I took away from this conversation with Jeff Baker is that after reading what Jeff has written about the Kraken and their television struggles and what Ryan Davis and Adam Jude wrote about

[00:25:57] this week in the Seattle Times about the Mariners ownership of Root Sports, Jeff echoed a very ominous dark cloud over the future of the finances of the franchise and over the future of Root

[00:26:10] Sports as well. There are some very damning things he said. So the reason we had Jeff on this week is because what has been the biggest story unfortunately of this Mariners offseason? It's the fact that their regional sports network is falling apart and as a result they're not

[00:26:24] spending money. Jeff seems to understand the intricacies of all this RSN stuff with Root Sports about as well as anybody in the market like he's written some great stories on it, he seems to go

[00:26:35] in detail on it so we said look let's have him on and he gave some very detailed outlines of what this will look like going forward and what it means right now for the team.

[00:26:45] So he was very very informative and we learned a lot listening to him but we would we're we're going to warn you here and warn you here to proceed with caution because if you want to keep

[00:26:57] your positive outlook of the Mariners going forward we probably advise you to ease off listening to this interview. It might not be what you want to hear and I just want to remind

[00:27:08] people if you forgot Jeff covered the Mariners as recently as 2013 and wrote a lot about their eventual acquisition of Root Sports I think before then it was Fox Sports Northwest and the Regional Sports Network. So like he knows this stuff and the potential money making aspect of

[00:27:27] all of it and for how it's sort of unraveled here over the last few weeks or month or year or so and not looking good. Okay so we're not going to keep you any longer let's get to our

[00:27:39] interview now with Jeff Baker. Alright we welcome on Jeff Baker the Kraken writer for the Seattle Times. He's also an author and sports enterprise and investigative reporter. Jeff we appreciate you taking some time to hop on here with us today. Wanted to start out with one of your

[00:27:58] towards the tail end of your your beat writing career covering the Mariners with the Seattle Times before shifting into more of your current role in investigative reporting and eventually writing about hockey as well where we were going back and reading a story you did about

[00:28:14] the front office dysfunction for the Mariners back in 2013 with Eric Wedge and Jack Z and we're reading some of those clips and in that article getting ready for this interview I'm like wow

[00:28:27] I mean people should have been just over the moon pissed about this and here we are 10 years later and people seemingly are more pissed than they've ever been about the Mariners and reading some of your stuff back 10 years ago Jeff I'm shocked that did not top it.

[00:28:42] Well I mean you know people should have paid more attention 10 15 years ago I'm kidding I'm kidding about that. No I mean I think I think what's happened since is the fans have had another

[00:28:55] decade I mean look hindsight's always 2020 right you know a lot of this stuff we were writing about the team back in let's say 2009 2010 11th and I would say you know in all fairness

[00:29:08] looking back some of it was a little ahead of its time in anticipating what was going to happen with this franchise I mean you know look it didn't take an expert in economics to realize that the

[00:29:20] Mariners were not spending as liberally as some franchises in baseball and let's face it there's no there's no hard salary cap in baseball right so the object is really to spend whatever it takes

[00:29:33] to win and in the Mariners case they weren't spending enough you know you'd have people arguing well the Oakland A's they spent far less with Billy Bean and they were able to do far more well that's

[00:29:42] great but these are the Mariners they're not Billy Bean they're not the Oakland A's the Mariners for years had problems it struggles developing young talent and identifying young talent to begin with and then developing it afterwards that was tough and so what do you do what's

[00:29:59] the one thing you can do in baseball if you're a franchise that doesn't necessarily develop the best young crop of talent well New York Yankees did it for years just spend your way out of trouble

[00:30:08] and the Mariners you know they would spend money relatively though to other teams and relatively to some of the resources at their disposal and this is back when I was covering them they weren't always doing that in fact sometimes they were spending far less than

[00:30:24] they were capable of spending and you know I think people were willing back then the fans I'm talking about were willing to and some media members were willing to give them the benefit

[00:30:34] of the doubt you know they said hey they're doing it the right way they're they're drafting young they're going young uh going cheaper which is great but you know eventually you have to bear

[00:30:45] fruit with that you have to get results pro sports are results oriented business and the reason they are is because you're asking people to pay full freight to see your team whether they're developing young players or whether they're putting superstars on the field to try to actually

[00:31:00] win something you're still paying the same amount for your tickets you're still paying full price and so it has to be a results oriented business it can always be about the process

[00:31:10] and I think it took people um some time to to to figure that part out I like to call it the market maturing a little bit the sports market here in Seattle maturing a little bit

[00:31:20] over the past decade not just in baseball and other sports as well where people sort of realized that they sort of came to that conclusion on their own and they said you know you know why aren't all other markets waiting 20 30 50 years to get major pro sports championships

[00:31:37] they're not in some cases uh it's okay to push a little harder it's okay to demand a little bit more and I think we've seen that with the baseball team now especially the baseball team over the last

[00:31:47] 10 years I mean now it's fashionable to call them out for not spending money uh back when I was doing it it was very controversial at the time and I think the sports fans have now had 10 more years

[00:31:58] in hindsight to see where things are going they've seen certain patterns and they're at the point now where they've hit their saturation with the Mariners they they don't want to hear anymore excuses uh about why they can't spend why they can't go for it you know they've waited

[00:32:14] they've put in the waiting time and now even though the Mariners probably have a bit of a legitimate excuse for for putting the brakes on and for being a little more fiscally conservative

[00:32:24] the fans don't want to hear it because they've heard it now going on you know past the 10 15 years ago when I was writing about it I mean they've heard about it going on a quarter century and

[00:32:33] they still have nothing to show for it and I think here we are 10 years later and I think that's why things are at the boiling point that they're at I don't think anything's changed

[00:32:41] all that drastically but I think that that the fans patient level patients level for it has changed part of the reason we wanted to have you on here is you two weeks ago wrote about the

[00:32:51] Kraken and their future on Root Sports and how the viewership has been very flat for them and they're now third year of existence and playing primarily on Root Sports and now talked away on

[00:33:01] the highest tier of cable packages and you suggested hey if they really want to make this work they should broadcast all their games for free they should if they get the opportunity

[00:33:11] leave their Root Sports deal and then go for free and essentially just try and reach as many people as possible how does that affect the Mariners and their financials with how Root operates

[00:33:23] because now I would imagine now they're not getting their money's worth on Root for those Kraken broadcasts well I mean it depends how you define you know how does it affect them and it also depends on how much longer you think this regional sports network has to survive

[00:33:39] look obviously if you take the Kraken off and you take the Portland Trail Blazers off as well then you're going to be down a one entity basically which is the Mariners and you know some

[00:33:48] secondary football being played out in Idaho and Montana and those places I mean that's not what you would call a prime content for any regional sports network I thought you know when the

[00:34:00] Kraken came on board and the Blazers as well it made Root Sports a lot more interesting as a destination for viewers to go to so you lose those it's obviously taking away from it

[00:34:10] that said there's the bottom line consideration and look I had a very different opinion about this a year ago today you know back then it looked like RSNs might have another three to five years

[00:34:20] to run before they would really start to be where they're at right now and I told fans I wrote a call I'm saying look like the future is in your hands if you don't want to watch pro sports

[00:34:30] you don't want to pay for it I mean somebody's got to pay for it because all these salaries aren't going away so so you got to make up your mind you know if you don't if you want

[00:34:38] to see your team you're going to have to pay the freight the thing is a couple of weeks after that is when we first saw the bankruptcy start to happen we first saw Warner Brothers Discovery walk away

[00:34:46] from all their RSN commitments including you know this one now that they're a minority stakeholder in with the Mariners and so that changed the ballgame dramatically that accelerated the timeline for the depth of the regional sports network model and so here we are today

[00:35:02] and and so if you're the Mariners and you want to bleed as little money as possible you know you're going to be bleeding money or there's no there's no two ways about it but do you want

[00:35:10] to be gushing that money out into the street and so you know let's say they're paying anywhere from 15 to 30 million a year that's the going rate for NHL teams I'm told that the Kraken they're

[00:35:21] paying the Kraken somewhere up in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars you know it might be give or take a couple million but but that's a lot of money to spend to get the ratings that

[00:35:29] you're pulling in right now which is something like a 0.7 rating for the Kraken um yeah that that's not that's not giving you bang for your buck if you're the Mariners and so what's changed

[00:35:40] dramatically now from you know where my opinion was a year ago is the Mariners might be willing to let these guys out of their contract they got two more years left to run and honestly from what

[00:35:50] I'm hearing on the street that that's exactly the direction things are going to head in uh they're very likely to head in now especially with the Blazers as well that situation's not going great down in Portland um and so the Mariners you're spending all this money to

[00:36:02] get ratings that aren't worth the money uh why would you keep these teams around for for two two more years in the Kraken's case when you know it's not going to get any better because

[00:36:10] Comcast just put them on the highest tier so you're still going to be losing viewers you're not going to be gaining that the operative what what Comcast did Comcast didn't tell the Mariners anything they didn't already know and it's finity hiked the prices to watch read sports

[00:36:23] the Mariners knew this was heading in this direction a year ago that's why Shoah Ohtani was never going to the Mariners doesn't matter if the crowd was chanting for him at the

[00:36:30] All Star game that made for a nice little feel good story uh made for you know some nice things to talk about but it had no foundation in reality he was never coming to Seattle the Mariners knew

[00:36:40] this was going to happen with their network a year plus ago um and that they were going to be in this situation they've been trying to figure out ways out of it so the last thing you're going

[00:36:49] to do is go throw five seven hundred million dollars at a player uh for the next 10 years when you don't know what's happening with your big financial asset and so so that was off the table

[00:36:59] and so here we are now uh they know that what they learned in September with Comcast's finity was that any chance they had of growing those Kraken numbers through you know through through more popularity with the hockey team through the playoff run last year that's out the window

[00:37:13] because they're going to lose readers uh viewers in in any case and so you're at that situation now if you're if you're the Mariners why would you want to keep the Kraken on your

[00:37:21] airways and so the Kraken that's that's a chance for them to get out and do this kind of thing this free TV that other um that other hockey teams have tried the Vegas Golden Knights

[00:37:30] are doing it the Arizona Coyotes are doing it and both of them report a lot of success in their initial efforts and then if you're the Kraken it's not only about the money

[00:37:40] you know you can try to break even on that 20 million try to get it somewhere close to that a year in in in selling ads through your partners over the free uh the free airways

[00:37:51] but the bigger thing is you're going to grow your viewers you're going to grow your fan base and uh you know the Kraken needs more fans they need people that are going to be willing to come

[00:38:00] and and pay for their tickets and fill their arenas and uh you don't attract bigger sponsorships for the team and so um now that's an option for them a year ago it wasn't an option because

[00:38:10] they still had two and a half years to go on a five-year deal but if you're if you're RSNs willing to let you out of that deal which you know this is what I'm hearing on the

[00:38:19] street that that the Mariners are going to be very inclined are going to be very persuaded to kind of look at that route going forward because uh yeah it's a lot of money to be spending for the ratings

[00:38:29] that they're pulling in. Is part of that reason because they also now don't want to foot the operational costs for two separate sports? That mean that that's possible look I'm not sitting

[00:38:41] in on the Mariners ownership meetings with them um but you know and this goes back to when they bought the RSN ten years ago I remember Chuck Armstrong telling me at one point you know it goes

[00:38:52] everybody thinks it's very easy to just flip a switch and build your own TV network. It goes it's not you know he said like we're not in the television business you know if it was easy to run a

[00:39:02] network you would be doing it I would be doing it we'd all be running networks and printing money but you know it took a lot of planning to do that and so now here they are that part of that

[00:39:11] planning was partnering with Warner Brothers Discovery which used to be known as a bunch of other entities but first it was direct TV then they changed it to AT&T sports it's it keeps changing

[00:39:21] names every every six months which is probably part of the problem with branding um the but that was their partner and they did all the infrastructure for them so the Mariners didn't have to worry

[00:39:31] about that so now you know are you going to want to go into the TV business by yourself and do that for other sports or do you want to simplify things since it's going to be

[00:39:41] difficult to begin with do you want to simplify things by uh by limiting it to your own in-house broadcast uh or do you want to just get out of the TV business entirely and go under

[00:39:52] major league baseballs umbrella and sell yourselves in a national package with a bunch of teams that are linked together I think everybody's still trying to figure that out right now um but but certainly doing it for multiple sports would probably be more difficult than trying

[00:40:06] to produce their own broadcast and I say that as a layman who doesn't you know know a thing about running a TV network but that's that's what I'm told the other thing that they could look at

[00:40:15] I mean there's people they could get from their former partnership to serve as consultants to them people who work for Warner Brothers Discovery and the executive ranks they could come over and work as consultants for the Mariners to try to help them out in fact I'm told that

[00:40:28] that Warner Brothers have been trying to point um point the Mariners in in the right direction they've done that with all the other deals that they've walked out on in other markets such as Vegas or Colorado they've done that as well they've tried to consult with them

[00:40:41] and help them kind of transition into the next uh the next reality that they had to that they had to go to do you think they should have seen this coming like with how

[00:40:51] rsn's are starting to trend we've seen other teams lose them over the last year or two and these are people that are they're billionaires right these are supposed to be really smart business people they're supposed to be very good at making business decisions do you

[00:41:03] think they should have seen this whole collapse coming well before it started to really happen I think in fairness I think they have seen it coming I was writing columns for the The Seattle Times back in 2015 2016 about you know fears that that court cutters were

[00:41:21] going to eventually erode the rsn market um over the next decade and that's in fact what's happened here we are almost nine years later eight nine years later uh and and and it's finally come to fruition I think they've been trying to look at different things you've

[00:41:35] seen the mariners have done experiments on youtube tv they've shown games in in different capacities through streaming the problem is and everybody says oh yeah it's simple just just have a root sport streaming app and voila your problems are solved and just do a streaming

[00:41:49] app strictly for mariners and cracking and i'll take it or do it only for the mariners and i'll take it problem is it's not as easy as people make it sound it's a very expensive

[00:41:58] thing to do and there's no guarantee that there would be enough people in the seattle market and really that's that's what you would need is the seattle market to buy and not not the multi-state

[00:42:09] territory you really would need the core of people in seattle to really buy into this thing there's no guarantee that that would happen um especially not at the prices that they were

[00:42:18] looking at and I think you know they've done it to a limited extent to a limitedly successful degree in in boston with the new england sports network but that's a network that's had a long standing sports tradition and long standing followers multiple successful teams on their

[00:42:34] docket and I can't remember what they were charging I think it was 20 30 a month for for a stand alone app um and I know that the mariners were looking at at that at one point

[00:42:46] in and running tests to see whether or not it would that thing could fly in the seattle market in all fairness I think what happened a year ago really did speed things up

[00:42:58] quite quite dramatically uh not a year ago it happened 10 months ago in february of last year where where all these bankruptcies started happening and and and Warner Brothers started walking away but I said earlier in your show the mariners have known about this for a year plus so

[00:43:13] I think they had an inclination that that Warner Brothers was going to start walking away before the official announcement at least I would hope so that a partner would hopefully tell uh it's partners

[00:43:23] what it was thinking of doing and that's why I said it from the outside outside there was no chance shoyotani was ever coming to the mariners at any point this year regardless of what happened at

[00:43:33] the all-star game and so I think they were well aware of it by then but but it's like being on a ship with a giant iceberg coming your way you know and you know you can't steer the ship

[00:43:44] out of the way in time you know what do you do I think they're in a mode uh the last year or two the mariners probably in a mode where they were just trying to steer the ship enough so they would take

[00:43:55] a glancing blow and not maybe have an entire shipwreck happen when the iceberg hit it's just one of those things you know you you see it coming and you're looking for ways out of it

[00:44:06] but but the answers aren't always there all that's there is cord cutters cutting cutting not wanting to spend what it costs for sports and we still don't know what the answer is to it now

[00:44:15] you know we still know there's a lot of people that don't want to pay for sports but they also want to watch sports they want to watch them for free but that's not how it works you know when

[00:44:23] we had teams on for free 30 years ago when I was growing up and going to high school and stuff we saw them once a week if we were lucky once maybe twice a week we weren't seeing every

[00:44:32] single game shown for free and so people are still trying to figure out that model okay so off that you're talking about you don't think the Mariners ever really had any

[00:44:42] intention to sign show hey based off what had happened with their tv deal my follow up to that is I'm certainly not sitting here saying they're losing no money off everything that's going on

[00:44:51] around the rsn's but that being said I guess I look at teams like the diamond backs and the Padres who have lost their tv deals Padres are top five in payroll diamond backs have added

[00:45:00] a bunch of players this winter already and I know you're not covering the Mariners beat anymore but do you feel like they truly have no money to spend because I guess from where I'm sitting

[00:45:09] just as a fan and somebody who does a podcast it's it's hard for me to believe they truly don't have any resources to spend no I mean that's a very good question um and I will I will fall back on

[00:45:21] this so for years I have written and you go back you read my stuff and it's been pretty consistent on this that sports fans have to be aware of what they're buying into as sports fans

[00:45:31] and what I mean by that is this is exactly why fans should be very hesitant when teams come to them asking for public money when they come asking them to build a stadium when they come asking

[00:45:42] for money to maintain that stadium uh and all kinds of other stuff when it comes to public dollars you got to be very leery of that because those teams are then going to turn

[00:45:51] around and they're not going to spend any of their own money to make their teams better they're only going to spend the money that other people give them and that other people make for them and that's that's been the way pro sports have operated for for generations now

[00:46:05] they will take all the money they can from everybody else and and you know privately behind the scenes these teams will will tell each other that that's why we became billionaires in the

[00:46:14] first place you know we're not stupid we're not going to reach into our own pockets and fund a team when when the going's tough we're going to get everybody else to do it and so

[00:46:23] I'm not saying the Mariners have done that consistently but look they got a stadium that was two-thirds subsidized by taxpayers they've uh they they then went back and got another hundred million plus commitment from those taxpayers about five years ago to continue the

[00:46:37] ongoing maintenance of these supposedly public facility that was built uh safe cofield now team mobile park um the problem is the Mariners have been the ones reaping the profitable gains from that ballpark since it was built it's not the taxpayers that are making that money and

[00:46:54] so there there is this sense in Seattle that the Mariners owe people something that they owe it to themselves to reach into their pockets and fund the bill and we can have that philosophical

[00:47:03] discussion and it has been held by economists far more sports economists far more intelligent than me when it comes to money but that's at the crux of these things and so when we look at Seattle

[00:47:13] and you've got Chris Hansen wanting to build an arena right next to the ballparks and he wants 250 million in public bond funding to do it my first reaction would be to tell people

[00:47:23] well we've got to look and see whether there's an alternative situation where we can commit less fewer fewer I should say public dollars than that and they did low and behold they actually uh

[00:47:33] they actually looked and they found a hockey group that was willing to come in uh sorry the oak field group came in and they spent 1.15 billion of private money on it so we're not on the

[00:47:43] hook if the crack can go belly up something happened I mean taxpayers aren't on the hook for that um you know in the Mariners case it's a much more public trust and so there's people

[00:47:52] that believe that yeah John Stanton you know and all his friends who put together are worth probably multiple billions of dollars should be able to reach into their own pockets and fund some stuff

[00:48:04] and when the going gets tough but that's that's not how pro sports works so as fans you have to be very careful when you're considering big public investors in pro sports because this is

[00:48:14] the reality of the situation now that said if you're running a business I mean I've seen the valuation of root sports you know by people again more intelligent than me saying uh you know I know

[00:48:25] that for the purposes of their sale a few years back to Stanton's group I think it was evaluated at it was valued at 170 million or something like that for the purposes of the sale now that

[00:48:35] doesn't mean that that's what it's worth I've heard people say it's worth 300 million some have said it's worth even 400 million based on a subscriber per subscriber rate now that's gone down clearly because subscribers are logging off of RSNs like nobody's business but I mean even if it's a

[00:48:51] 200 million dollar asset still or 100 million dollar asset that's a lot of money to just write off your books um and and that's that that's problematic especially if that's the way you've

[00:49:01] been funding it now do you want to have a cash call if you're the Mariners and go to all your other owners and say hey you know we told you folks you weren't going to have to reach

[00:49:08] in your own pockets but now we need five ten million a piece from each of you for this year so that we can fund the the shortfall in our TV revenue I don't see that happening that's just

[00:49:18] not the way pro sports work and so fans are upset about that obviously yeah fans are getting a real education right now about professional sports they say college folks they say in high school these are professional sports teams money is all that matters in professional sports

[00:49:32] and so you might think this is how our team should operate this is why like why are they doing this why didn't they sign othani why why are these because it's professional sports

[00:49:41] you know and we can look at the Padres Padres did go out and offload a big asset to the New York Yankees just last week because of their situation with their TV shortfalls when you're talking

[00:49:53] about baseball I mean baseball teams I can't I don't know their meteorites off the top of my head but a lot of those teams are bringing in 70 million dollars plus a year in TV money if

[00:50:04] that's going out the window you can't just replace that kind of shortfall overnight it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire that's a lot of money we're talking about and so I think the Mariners do have something legitimate to complain about here with their finances I

[00:50:17] think they have something legitimate to be concerned about that said and I know I'm talking a lot but that there's a lot going through my head here but but that said when they were making

[00:50:29] a lot of money hand over fist from the RSA from Rootsports you didn't exactly see them jack and payroll up to 200 million plus so you know you take a little bit with a grain of salt I think they

[00:50:39] have a reason to be concerned could they be overstating their concerns just a little look the history of the Mariners has been to be cautious financially they've been very cautious as an organization when it comes to fiscal spending and I think that's been proven year after

[00:50:54] year with Forbes valuations and the lack of debt load that they've carried I think that's the way they operate and so now it's being exposed to a point that fans don't like and you know it's easy

[00:51:06] for me to tell other people how to spend their money and that's the way the Mariners have chosen to do business were they making more money before they added on the Blazers and the Kraken

[00:51:16] on on Rootsports I don't know I'm not I'm not privy to their financials I know they were doing very well so the best the part when they bought their RSN a decade ago the big sales piece of

[00:51:28] that the big attraction for baseball teams to own their own RSN is it's a license to print money and why I say that is because teams typically have to share their their all their revenue from

[00:51:38] media rights with the other Major League Baseball clubs is written in their in their agreement with each other and so the difference is when you own your own RSN as the Mariners do

[00:51:50] there's a calculation that's made as to what your media rights are worth and I can't remember off the top of my head with the Mariners were worth I maybe 80 million dollars something like that

[00:51:59] I could be wrong about that but but they they assign a figure to it so after that any money the Mariners make beyond that they get to keep and they get to keep it because they just run it

[00:52:09] through their TV network they say now this is all network expense network revenue it's all network generated it's got nothing to do with our MLB media rights and so and that's the way

[00:52:18] it works the Yankees made you know hundreds of millions of extra dollars on that kind of stuff through yet it's through the yes network and so that's how you know good teams are able to stay good

[00:52:29] because spending is not an issue for them and and I said teams don't like to spend their own money they like to spend other people's money so as long as they're generating it through the

[00:52:38] network they got lots of money so it was probably very reasonable to expect the Mariners to have spent more in the years that things were going well with Rude sports definitely up until yeah right before probably the cracking came around right before the pandemic I should say

[00:52:56] and so the pandemic hurt a lot of sports teams because it knocked the content off the air and so they have to absorb those losses as well when you're the Mariners so I couldn't tell you whether they were making more I would say they were probably making

[00:53:08] more than when the cracking came on because you know the whole landscape around sports changed after the pandemic so I would say their heyday with the network probably would have been like 2013 through 2019 for the Mariners but again that's somebody that's not been privy to any of their

[00:53:24] private filings or or discussions or anything like that but I would say things were going pretty well because you did see them lift payroll incrementally throughout that time until they started going in their rebuilding phase but they were spending for a while a little bit more

[00:53:40] probably not as much as I would have liked or as some fans would have liked but they were spending more could it be as simple as them in a year or two years just folding the network and

[00:53:50] liquidating it can is it that simple and do they get any extra money to spend out of that I guess the answer would be who they would uh I mean I don't think they would sell it to

[00:54:02] anybody I don't know who's in the market right now to buy an RSN because the model is collapsing so if they fold it if they don't have any if they don't have any obligations to

[00:54:15] anybody if they don't owe people money when they're folding it if they don't have any long term advertising that's committed to the platform then I guess theoretically they could fold it and

[00:54:26] they'd be in a better place the problem is they probably do have some some some deals that are longer term look the big thing I would think to cost cut I mean if you were to get the the

[00:54:37] kraken off the air and you were to get the the blazers off your airwaves that would probably save them a lot of money in the short time as far as folding it up how much that would cost

[00:54:47] and whether they would make any money on that I you know I'm not in position to say as a layman my first thought would be no because you still have to show your games right you

[00:54:58] still have to make money for your games so how are you going to make money off your games where's your tv revenue going to come from are you going to jump in with mlb into a broader venture and

[00:55:07] how much is mlb going to pay you as opposed to what you could have made before um so you know I don't know that there's a situation where they would really come out ahead in the short term I would

[00:55:19] think if it is going to be better for them it would be a very long-term prospect I don't I don't see this if you're asking the question I don't see the situation resolving itself in the

[00:55:28] next season or two to the point where all of a sudden they're going to have this this influx of cash to spend on spend on people if they're not spending it now I don't see it being a scenario

[00:55:38] where they're going to have the cash to spend in two years from now but again I'm not privy to all these things behind the scenes this is just me making educated guesses based on what

[00:55:46] I've seen and based on how they've operated until now now if I can just make another point when I talk about hockey teams going and doing free broadcast it's a lot easier for hockey teams to do

[00:55:58] that so if you're them if you're the kraken and you're pulling in I don't know let's just say 20 million from rude sports can you get close to that through selling on on on tv maybe so I'm told the

[00:56:08] Vegas Golden Knights had a tv deal worth about 14 million 15 maybe just south of 15 million wasn't it the greatest tv deal uh before Warner Brothers walked away so that's that that's you

[00:56:21] know not a huge amount of money compared to a baseball team so yeah you could throw your stuff for free on the air and probably get something close to that or even make more than that it's

[00:56:29] different with a baseball team if you're talking about 100 million in media rights you know you can't just replicate that overnight by putting your stuff on free tv that's why this is a very

[00:56:38] difficult time if you're the Mariners because you have to come up with some solutions if you don't want to reach into the owner's pocket which no sports owner really wants to do you

[00:56:46] don't want to reach in your own pocket your own bank account just start funding this uh the operations of these things then you got to figure out a way to make that media rights money back and

[00:56:55] it's not like you can make wave a magic wand and have that happen and this has been and this is something sports fans have to come to grips with too um you know it's okay to brag about

[00:57:05] court cutting and oh yeah I would never pay for this I'm not it's so antiquated they have to figure it out well they're trying to figure it out but you can't just like I said wave a magic

[00:57:13] wand and create 100 million a year in tv revenue so you know court cutters have played a part in this they you know and and I don't blame them I'd want to get the cheapest deal I could get too but getting

[00:57:27] that cheap deal and then expecting your baseball team to go out and spend you know 500 million on a player for the next 10 years that doesn't necessarily go hand in hand and so you know a

[00:57:37] lot of sports fans aren't going to want to hear that so what I would suggest is if you're going to save your money by cutting the cord and doing all that stuff stuff that I would

[00:57:45] I would do as well uh maybe don't brag about it so much and then expect to yell at your sports team when they don't go and get your favorite player afterwards because these are all real life problems

[00:57:55] and it's not like they're incompatible with each other they're all very compatible with each other and one feeds off the next so baseball has to find now its next revenue generator that's going to sustain them through the next 20 years because the regional sports network thing

[00:58:09] I think it's just about run it's just about hit its apex and it's pretty much going to go away so based off that last part of your statement there Jeff the last question I have for you is

[00:58:21] and maybe you'll just have to take your best guess at this but how long do you think root sports has left? uh as long as the Mariners want to keep it going I would say a year

[00:58:34] I'm just throwing it out there I mean I've heard they could be they could be done by the end of next year and next year is coming up really fast so I would say

[00:58:43] and a year even seems too long I would say through the next baseball season maybe they want to uh if they want to put the Mariners on the airwaves through their own in-house broadcasts of root

[00:58:53] maybe minus the basketball team and minus the uh minus the Kraken I could see that happening and then figure out a long-term solution while you're in the process of doing that uh it's again John Stanton though came out and said I told our reporters Ryan Dibbush and Adam

[00:59:12] Jude last Friday when they wrote their story he said that he's going to have an answer for some root sports staffers about staffing and about lay possible layoffs by mid-January so that tells

[00:59:23] me they're on the cusp of making a major decision as to how they're going to proceed for the next baseball season so I would think you know they're probably wrestling with that

[00:59:33] question right now you know how long do we want to keep this going how much money is it worth to try to do our own in-house broadcast if we're only going to do it for a year or two so we'll see

[00:59:42] so you're asking my opinion I'd say I'll give it a year and then uh I think root sports might go away last thing for me Jeff when you were throwing out the 80 million ballpark 80 million a year for

[00:59:54] for major league baseball media rights worth is it well tell me if you've already already mentioned this but would that number not be a little inflated based on the fact that when these

[01:00:07] networks were at their peak and the teams are raking in all this cash off of it like they're making money on sports fans but they're also making on money on every person who's not a sports fan

[01:00:17] and who's still paying for the network and now everyone's realizing well I just don't have to pay for that network now why would I give give them my money is it possible that number is

[01:00:26] just artificially inflated in that we're going to see a sharp market correction across baseball oh yeah it's very possible and in fact when I use the Mariners as an example saying if you're

[01:00:37] the Mariners you have to figure out where that money is going to come from I'm in no way saying the Mariners are necessarily going to make 100 million or 80 million on media rights

[01:00:44] in the next year or two or that they would have kept doing so I think they were very real risk of making zero zero dollars in a couple years if they kept going with the status quo and so

[01:00:57] no obviously if readers are bailing left and right I mean there's only so much you can keep jacking up the rates and in fact when Comcast Xfinity did put them on their highest tier the

[01:01:06] Mariners didn't get any more money for that Rootsports didn't get paid any more money for that and so yeah the viewers are going away and and that's uh that's it's not a good thing

[01:01:16] um so so yeah they were going to have to figure out a solution regardless uh because yeah I think those figures were going to be very inflated uh you know a year or so down the road uh where

[01:01:28] where they basically they're probably born over resemblance to reality uh after a while so they were going to have to figure out a solution but what I'm saying is you know a couple years

[01:01:36] back when they were making that kind of money now they got to figure out you know how they're going to replicate it because I mean they signed contracts they signed players to deals based off

[01:01:45] of that and and we've been writing this for years for for good five to ten years that there was going to be this crunch time and now it's here where teams all over sports are gonna have to they're

[01:01:54] being going oh my god how are we gonna ever afford to pay these hundred million dollar players that we've racked up because we thought that that this TV money was going to be flowing in uh

[01:02:04] you know forever um no forever is now here it's done um and it's now they're on finite borrowed time when it comes to this so they're either gonna have to reach into their own pockets their

[01:02:15] own bank accounts and keep funding it or they're gonna have to find another way for that money to keep rolling in well Jeff we appreciate you taking some time for us on a game day I'm sure a very

[01:02:25] busy day for you at the Kraken uh at Dallas tonight but I appreciate you taking some time I'm sure all of our listeners have learned a lot about this root sport situation because you

[01:02:33] and we learned a lot as well so we appreciate you taking some time to join us here today I appreciate you folks having me it's a very complicated issue and I believe me I don't pretend

[01:02:42] to have all the answers and uh you know I don't envy the situation the Mariners are in right now it's not a it's not one that any sports team wants to be in well there's certainly a lot

[01:02:53] to take away from that interview what of all the things we heard from Jeff stood out to you who that I mean first off the it sounds like the business deals with the Kraken and the trail

[01:03:08] blazers have been like some of the business worst business mistakes you could make as the operator of a regional sports network that's like that's number one number two the fact that that might

[01:03:20] now cause it might be a reason to cause root sports northwest to not exist in a year not exist period fold a multi hundred million dollar company just potentially cease to exist in a year

[01:03:35] because of the current landscape of sports consumption and how about the fact Jeff also mentioned that he wouldn't be shocked if they don't spend at all in free agency for the next

[01:03:47] two off seasons let alone this one I think that's what stood out to me the most is we think this off season has been pretty disappointing from the start

[01:03:55] is this what it's going to look like for a while moving forward I did not like the sound of that and he was he was pretty flat out and he said he was never buying any of the otani stuff he knew

[01:04:05] at the the all-star game when we're sitting there in the crowd and otani's name is being chanted and everyone's getting so excited and Jeff knowing all of this is like what it like I will caution you of getting excited for anything just knowing what is coming

[01:04:20] and the fact that a lot of this has been known about for years a lot of the financials in the future of how this is all trending has been known for years and just the fact that

[01:04:34] as soon as like two years from now we like the maritas don't even know how they're going to broadcast their games period yeah can they just sign Jorge Soler we need something positive

[01:04:46] to talk about like something there's been so much negativity in this off season I just want to hop on one of these podcasts and be excited about something I like like like I said this to you

[01:04:58] before we even did the interview this is what I'm about to say has nothing to do with Jeff because Jeff was fantastic again he was very very informative he knew he knows about as much as

[01:05:07] anybody about this stuff but I also hate at the same time we had to do this interview at this point in the off season because all I wanted to talk about this winner is how can the Mariners

[01:05:16] sign some impact guys and marquee free agents to make this team better and instead we're sitting here talking about the intricacies of a TV sports deal I hate it Jeff also brought off

[01:05:28] one more really good point that I think I will finish here with he made it a point to say like listen to talking to fans like you want to see your sports team you're going to have

[01:05:40] to pay whether you walk through the gate at T-Mobile Park or you want to watch them on television somehow you're going to have to pay to watch them because that's how the business works and that's

[01:05:51] how a lot of the most successful teams have worked getting enormous TV deals with lots of cable subscribers on top of enormous amounts of gate revenue I'm talking about the Yankees

[01:06:03] Dodgers Mets etc etc etc large large brands and and saying for Mariners fans like part of the financial slump of all of this is they're not being enough demand for the Mariners the Mariners product itself

[01:06:22] to to sustain through paying people people wanting to pay for cable subscriptions wanting to pay for tickets wanting to like help provide other options where if Rootsports wanted to go to

[01:06:33] like a digital only strategy they had built up this this fan base of people willing to pay money to watch the Mariners and pay a direct fee directly to them to watch well that's not only like

[01:06:46] so I'm just thinking of it in that case and and to go balance on the other side of this it's like well Mariners fans also now realizing have never had the equity built within them to want

[01:06:59] to do that and thinking of the potential repercussions of 47 years of this coming back around and smacking the Mariners what are the Mariners have been an ideal franchise for the first 45 years of their existence they spent a bunch of money they invested in growing multi

[01:07:16] level generations of fans time after time after time and they captured an entire region and made themselves a can't miss product but instead Lyle they've done the exact opposite and they've given people no reason to cling on to the thing that made them the most money

[01:07:33] which is a cable subscription to Rootsports Northwest and now the other options people would be like well I'm probably good probably good now and now it has all come around into a whirlwind of financial freefall I'll say it again can they just sign Jorge Soler from everything

[01:07:51] we just heard from Jeff it doesn't sound like they're going to do that if it's really going to be a somewhat substantial cost but I'm just tired of talking about all this stuff all I want to have

[01:08:01] is some positivity and hear how again with a team that still won 88 games last year and wasn't all that far off in fact there were one game off from getting into the playoffs why they can continue to build on that not about why everything's falling apart I just

[01:08:15] again this is draining me it's tiring me out the gap between the top teams in baseball and the mariners of baseball is going to grow larger and larger and larger by the year I think

[01:08:29] that's my final thought here it's a sad thought but it's probably not an untrue thought so we'll leave it at that let's speak some positivity into existence hopefully there's something much more upbeat to talk about on Friday and something that can get everybody in a better mood but

[01:08:47] we still do appreciate the time Jeff gave us to be as informative as he was and give us all the information he did so with that that'll just about wrap up this edition of the marine

[01:08:56] layer podcast you guys know the drill you want to listen to the full form podcast you can do so wherever you get your audio pods and if you do that make sure to download our

[01:09:04] episodes leave us a five star review follow the show those reviews and the downloads do help us out a bunch watch on youtube go like comment subscribe over there full video podcast and follow us on social media on instagram tech talk twitter youtube shorts at marine layer pod

[01:09:20] that's tj i'm lial as always we thank you guys for tuning in we'll talk to you soon