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Deep dive into Pirates finances · Foul Territory

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Speaker 1: The skies opened here above Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The angels played
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Speaker 1: their harps, the choirs began singing, and Paul Schemes was
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Speaker 1: bequeathed to our city.
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Speaker 2: All right, here we go.
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Speaker 3: We've got Dayan kovid Chevitch joining us for the first
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Speaker 3: time on the show. Hopefully I nailed the pronunciation, but
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Speaker 3: he'll tell me in a moment, he writes for DK
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Speaker 3: Pittsburgh Sports and Dan, great to have you on the show.
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Speaker 3: First of all, we're very excited to dive into this article.
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Speaker 3: You did an insane amount of homework on the finances
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Speaker 3: of the Pirates. So how are you and do you
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Speaker 3: feel like you're capable of running this team now?
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Speaker 1: I appreciate that. A couple of things to say. First,
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Speaker 1: hello to a couple of former buccos over there. You
0:43
Speaker 1: don't think we don't remember who it is that we
0:46
Speaker 1: cover over the years. And the other is I couldn't
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Speaker 1: agree more strongly about Opening Day in Cincinnati. I actually
0:51
Speaker 1: tell the writers on my staff the only time you
0:54
Speaker 1: ever capitalize Opening Day, the O and the D is
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Speaker 1: when you're in Cincinnati, because it's the only place where
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Speaker 1: it's an actual holiday. It's an amazing scene going up
1:02
Speaker 1: through downtown Cincinnati into Fountain Square and all that stuff.
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Speaker 1: Just beautiful. What it is that they do, kids get
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Speaker 1: the day off school, that there's nothing like it. You
1:11
Speaker 1: guys are going to absolutely love it. I know I'm
1:14
Speaker 1: preaching the choir, especially with Todd there on that one
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Speaker 1: since he left through it in many years. There's just
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Speaker 1: nothing like it. Am I ready to run the team? No?
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Speaker 1: I can tell you that we went into this process
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Speaker 1: five months ago looking to try to figure out basically,
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Speaker 1: you know, everybody's been accusing Bob Nutting and the ownership
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Speaker 1: for years, myself included of you know, profiteering, of taking
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Speaker 1: money and just you know, running off to the hills
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Speaker 1: with it or in his case where his ski lifts
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Speaker 1: are to the east of Pittsburgh. And so, you know,
1:49
Speaker 1: we go into it. We're digging, We're finding these numbers,
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Speaker 1: and as of about a month ago, we start looking
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Speaker 1: at him and going, wait a second, what's going on here?
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Speaker 1: This doesn't add up at all, Like not that we
2:01
Speaker 1: were not finding major profit margins, we weren't finding any.
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Speaker 1: And so finally, the way these things go is you
2:08
Speaker 1: go to the team. Last, you go to whoever it
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Speaker 1: is that you're investigating last and we go to the
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Speaker 1: pirates and like, you're losing money, aren't you? Well do
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Speaker 1: dot Okay, so you're like, well, wait a second, no,
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Speaker 1: you're losing money. We've heard that you've taken not one,
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Speaker 1: not two, but three loans through MLB's m MO ability
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Speaker 1: has as a kind of a credit union. You guys
2:33
Speaker 1: probably are aware of it. That came out of the
2:35
Speaker 1: COVID period and there's still some teams in it. The
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Speaker 1: Braves just lost forty four million at least, you know,
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Speaker 1: that's what they put on the paper, so the like
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Speaker 1: are you in this? Are you do? And because I
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Speaker 1: don't think they wanted, they were actually more embarrassed, if
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Speaker 1: that's the right word for it, by having any law
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Speaker 1: at all. Then they were, you know, when people were
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Speaker 1: telling them that they were making a fifty sixty million
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Speaker 1: dollar profit. So that was what we put out to
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Speaker 1: everybody yesterday and to the fan base. I got to
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Speaker 1: tell you, I'm surprised the reaction has been mostly oh really, gee,
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Speaker 1: maybe we got to think about this all over again.
3:22
Speaker 1: So it's it's a it's been a strange forty eight
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Speaker 1: hours in that regard. There's obviously some people that aren't
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Speaker 1: going to believe it, because it's hard, especially in the
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Speaker 1: current social climate, for anybody to ever admit that they're
3:35
Speaker 1: wrong about anything. But that's kind of what's happened here,
3:41
Speaker 1: and you know, how does it happen. There's a lot
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Speaker 1: of specifics to that. There's a lot of intricate stuff,
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Speaker 1: but i'll tell you what. The story's been out for
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Speaker 1: forty eight hours and there is nobody. There's nobody down
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Speaker 1: here at one fifteen Federal Street on the North Shore
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Speaker 1: that's that's denying it or rejecting it. And they can't
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Speaker 1: because they already confirmed it for us.
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Speaker 4: You said the Braves lost mine? Did you mean the
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Speaker 4: race just before we get on to the rest of
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Speaker 4: the pirates, Because the Braves are a publicly traded company,
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Speaker 4: and I thought it should.
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Speaker 3: Got it forty mil profit for twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 1: Forty Oh all right, then I have that backward in
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Speaker 1: my head here. The other thing about the Braves. You're right,
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Speaker 1: you're right, Eric, the publicly traded company. But what happens
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Speaker 1: with the Braves is they also have you guys have
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Speaker 1: been there. That whole battery park or whatever, everything that's
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Speaker 1: around the stadium is all part of their books and
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Speaker 1: part of everything else, so it gets kind of confusing
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Speaker 1: with that stuff. But yeah, I saw I saw a
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Speaker 1: set of brackets in a set of a minus.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: No, anyway, so let's let's get back to the pirates.
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Speaker 4: Does this make them look inept? Does this make them
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Speaker 4: look like they can't run a team like because they
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Speaker 4: lost a few million dollars? Or are they because it'll
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Speaker 4: kind of get to my next question after after you
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Speaker 4: answer this one.
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Speaker 1: Well, it does. I think this is just me now
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Speaker 1: in this sense that here's how I see this. The
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Speaker 1: Skies opened here above Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The angels played their harps,
5:10
Speaker 1: the choirs began singing, and Paul Skeens was bequeathed to
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Speaker 1: our city.
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Speaker 2: All right.
5:17
Speaker 1: I don't think they did anything right to get skiings.
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Speaker 1: I think thirty out of thirty general managers draft schemes,
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Speaker 1: and you can't make money, Like you can't build up
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Speaker 1: your season ticket base, you can't get your ballpark even
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Speaker 1: to sell out when Skimes is pitching. Look over the
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Speaker 1: individual numbers for their attendance figures in twenty twenty four. Sorry,
5:45
Speaker 1: we heard from people who were coming to Pittsburgh from
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Speaker 1: other cities from sometimes from Canada, just to see him pitch.
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Speaker 1: This should be treated here in our city like a
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Speaker 1: rock concert when he pitches. Now, I know it's not
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Speaker 1: the same because you can't set the date automatically and everything,
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Speaker 1: you know, because you don't know exactly when it's going
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Speaker 1: to be his turn. But people were buying two three
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Speaker 1: games and you can't sell this out. There's such distrust
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Speaker 1: between you and the public that you can't build up revenues.
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Speaker 1: And Eric, that was the main point that we were
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Speaker 1: making in this and that I made near the end
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Speaker 1: of the piece, which is you have to build that up.
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Speaker 1: You have to build up that positivity between you and
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Speaker 1: your community, something Clint Hurdle used to refer to as
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Speaker 1: rebonding with the city that the pirates need to do.
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Speaker 1: There's no trust. There's no trust here the way there
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Speaker 1: is with the Steelers and the Penguins. There's no trust
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Speaker 1: here between the public and the pirates, and yet they
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Speaker 1: have schemes. They have to figure this out. They have
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Speaker 1: to start being honest with people. It can't be me
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Speaker 1: going in and banging down their door to find out
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Speaker 1: what's going on.
6:55
Speaker 3: Ft fam Arena Club is the modern way to collect
6:58
Speaker 3: cards or buy or sell, or or even grade. And
7:01
Speaker 3: we're highlighting slab packs because this is the new way
7:04
Speaker 3: to rip open a pack and get a really good card.
7:06
Speaker 3: Aj But also if you're not into the card, like
7:09
Speaker 3: I know you pulled a Bob Gibson card recently, you
7:11
Speaker 3: can get an offer of ninety percent of the estimated
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Speaker 3: value and just accept it on the spot and give
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Speaker 3: it right back and maybe try again with another slab pack.
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Speaker 5: I ain't getting rid of my Bob Gibson autographed card.
7:22
Speaker 5: Bob Gibson ain't card signing cards anytime soon, so I'm
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Speaker 5: keeping this one. It gets graded for you. There's no mess.
7:27
Speaker 5: The only thing I wish they had bubblegum. Can they
7:30
Speaker 5: virtually send me some bubble gumps cut? Other than that,
7:32
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7:35
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7:37
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7:39
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7:41
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7:44
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7:46
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7:47
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7:50
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7:56
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Speaker 6: Well, it's funny all this is coming out, like you
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Speaker 6: think just the regular fans like, oh, that every team's
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Speaker 6: got to be making money, Like what you know, they're
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Speaker 6: making profit this team, even the worst teams are making profit. Now,
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Speaker 6: my question to you is they're so in the red
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Speaker 6: like Bob Nutting, Like, why wouldn't he try and sell
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Speaker 6: the team if they're not making any money?
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Speaker 2: You know?
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Speaker 1: That's actually, you know what's funny, Todd. That's actually been
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Speaker 1: the most common question that we've gotten after this, which
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Speaker 1: has surprised me a little bit because I didn't necessarily
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Speaker 1: see the link. I could get technical and I could
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Speaker 1: say something like, listen, when you buy a team, I'm sorry.
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Speaker 1: When a team is bought, one of the things that
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Speaker 1: happens invariably is that whoever buys it buys up all
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Speaker 1: your debt, so you don't really sweat it much. You know,
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Speaker 1: the Celtics sold yesterday for was it six point one billion? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I guarantee you guarantee you the Celtics aren't walking away
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Speaker 1: with any debt, meaning the people who sold the team. Okay,
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Speaker 1: So on one hand, you don't sweat it much. On
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Speaker 1: the other hand, I'm going to share something here here
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Speaker 1: with you guys. It's more about Bob Bob nutting than
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Speaker 1: it is about the Pirates themselves. He wants to see
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Speaker 1: baseball move toward a salary cap system, okay. He wants
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Speaker 1: to see a system that's similar to what the Steelers
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Speaker 1: and the Penguins enjoy in their leagues in the NFL
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Speaker 1: and the NHL, which are both tight cap systems and
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Speaker 1: full revenue sharing. And by the way, people hear the
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Speaker 1: word salary cap and they get it wrong all the time.
9:27
Speaker 1: A salary cap system has a ceiling as a floor.
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Speaker 1: It's automatic, you never have to say it. It also
9:33
Speaker 1: comes with a greatly expanded revenue sharing so that everybody
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Speaker 1: can afford to be in that range whatever it is,
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Speaker 1: it's usually around twenty or thirty million, is pretty tight.
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Speaker 1: He wants that, he sees the future, especially if that
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Speaker 1: happens as being really bright. So Todd, He's got no
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Speaker 1: interest in getting out of that now when it might
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Speaker 1: just get good. You know what, I'm saying, Also, the
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Speaker 1: debt that we're talking about here, by every accounting that
9:59
Speaker 1: we had in and what they came back with is
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Speaker 1: not something that's super serious. Is not where you go,
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Speaker 1: Oh no, I got to get rid of this, you
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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely follow what you're saying, and I'm gonna
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Speaker 4: come from a player's point of view. You buy a
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Speaker 4: sports team to win championships. You buy a sports team
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Speaker 4: to sell your stinking newspapers, which he's run other newspaper
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Speaker 4: companies into the ground. So if he's profitably losing money
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Speaker 4: for this team, it's pretty much on point from where
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Speaker 4: he's been. And yet somehow Bob Nutting continues to grow
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Speaker 4: out of these companies that he quote unquote I read
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Speaker 4: an article runs into the ground or gets rid of.
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Speaker 4: But he knows the profitable side of this. So to me,
10:44
Speaker 4: you buy a sports team, how are you like You're
10:47
Speaker 4: not buying it solely for a monetary gain, You're buying
10:52
Speaker 4: it for the victories in the city. And then all
10:55
Speaker 4: of a sudden, all of Pittsburgh wants to go to
10:57
Speaker 4: Seven Springs on vacation. Because that's the pirates connection, which
11:01
Speaker 4: you had mentioned before. About his ski slope.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I can tell you've been up there.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And.
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Speaker 4: He's very generous to his players to be able to
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Speaker 4: go there for a weekend on the All Star break.
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Speaker 2: And anyway, that's a whole nother story of excitement.
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Speaker 1: That's actually a good one. You need to tell it
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Speaker 1: on the show someday. I'm aware of that one when
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Speaker 1: you're talking about what it is that he's looking at
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Speaker 1: from that standpoint. The number one criticism that I've had
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Speaker 1: of him, and you guys should know that, I did
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Speaker 1: an article last a column really last October, that called
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Speaker 1: for him to sell the team, just publicly. Just get
11:37
Speaker 1: out of here, go away. Okay. The Pirates, the Pittsburgh
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Speaker 1: Baseball club, the franchise of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargel, and
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Speaker 1: Hanness Wagner, would be better off without you as the owner.
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Speaker 1: This is one hundred and forty forty years now. We
11:50
Speaker 1: were talking about the Reds and their tradition. Pirates aren't
11:54
Speaker 1: far from that, Okay, one hundred and forty fourth opener
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Speaker 1: next Thursday in Miami for the Pirates. This is a
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Speaker 1: civic institution around here. This isn't some expansion club. And
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Speaker 1: to have a steward who does do exactly what you
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Speaker 1: just said there, Eric, He prioritizes something other than winning.
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Speaker 1: He prioritizes excessive caution. He is risk averse to the extreme.
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Speaker 1: And when you're linking it to his other businesses that
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Speaker 1: you just did, that's the commonality. It's not that they
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Speaker 1: lose money, it's not that they profiteer or anything like that.
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Speaker 1: It's that he's just afraid of his own shadow. And
12:36
Speaker 1: when you have I'm going to say this again, you sign,
12:39
Speaker 1: which they did to their credit. Brian Reynolds got a
12:42
Speaker 1: big contract. Okay, Mitch Keller got a big contract. Brian Hayes,
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Speaker 1: if he can ever keep that back healthy at third base,
12:50
Speaker 1: he also got a big contract. These guys were all retained.
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Speaker 1: These are young pieces that you want to see teams
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Speaker 1: like the Pirates retaining. They did that right. Okay, here
13:01
Speaker 1: comes Skeens and you know what he does. He messes
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Speaker 1: up the whole vibe. He just does schemes, puts them
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Speaker 1: in a position where they go, oh, geez, this is different.
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Speaker 1: What do we do with this one? Well, I'm not
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Speaker 1: even talking about signing him. They own his rights for
13:18
Speaker 1: six years, you know that.
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Speaker 2: Or five.
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Speaker 1: Actually, with the way the arbitration thing goes now, it's
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Speaker 1: that he forces them to think differently. Every year that
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Speaker 1: Schemes is here is a year that you should be
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Speaker 1: pursuing everything. Okay, because you have him here at this
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Speaker 1: crazy bargain rate. Think about what he's going to make
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Speaker 1: on the open market, right, and you should be putting
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Speaker 1: everything that you have into this. He won't. He will
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Speaker 1: spend what he seas in front of him. He won't
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Speaker 1: spend further.
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Speaker 3: Right, And that's the thing to win in this game.
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Speaker 3: You need to invest in your product that has not
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Speaker 3: been done for such a long time. And as I
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Speaker 3: always like to say, it's a smack in the face
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Speaker 3: to your fans. They're not expecting you to do this
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Speaker 3: every single year. But when you tank for a long
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Speaker 3: period of time and you don't reinvest at that time,
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Speaker 3: you are going to pay the price financially. That's the
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Speaker 3: thing that I always find so stupid. You think you're
14:14
Speaker 3: just going to wake up and the money's going to
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Speaker 3: come through. I know you put it in your article
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Speaker 3: how the Phillies are making so much more money at
14:21
Speaker 3: their ballpark than the Pirates. Is their ballpark triple the
14:24
Speaker 3: size of Pittsburgh. Will Pittsburgh not support the team like that?
14:27
Speaker 3: I know it's a different market size, but my point
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Speaker 3: is if the Pirates had a powerhouse, would they not
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Speaker 3: be making much more money from the gate concessions? Jersey
14:37
Speaker 3: sales go down the line. The other thing I just
14:39
Speaker 3: wanted to point out is, and I loved your homework,
14:41
Speaker 3: I read every morsel of it, right, I do know
14:44
Speaker 3: there are also little bonuses that come through every once
14:47
Speaker 3: in a while, like the sale of BAM, which got
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Speaker 3: each owner about fifty million dollars. Was that reinvested into
14:52
Speaker 3: the team at the time. No, they could have put
14:54
Speaker 3: that in the bank and freaking had an extra ten
14:56
Speaker 3: million dollars a year to spend if they had their
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Speaker 3: losses Here The risk averse part is what's holding this
15:02
Speaker 3: team back. They haven't rebuilt, you know, an instant like
15:05
Speaker 3: Orioles type of playoff contender either in a division that's
15:08
Speaker 3: not great. So my point is, again, how come they
15:12
Speaker 3: feel like they can operate like this and just wake
15:15
Speaker 3: up and it's all going to be better? Are they
15:17
Speaker 3: waiting for a CBA to change? Because I read your
15:20
Speaker 3: story and for me, I didn't feel any differently at
15:22
Speaker 3: the end, I felt like, cool, this validates everything for me.
15:25
Speaker 3: If you came out and said, oh, they're losing fifty
15:27
Speaker 3: million bucks, I would have been like, whoa, whoa. I
15:29
Speaker 3: got to go back and call my sources and do
15:31
Speaker 3: my homework again. I'm like, they're basically breaking even from
15:34
Speaker 3: the stuff that we know.
15:38
Speaker 1: The one thing that I think both Todd and Eric
15:40
Speaker 1: I'm confident can speak to. And Todd wasn't here for
15:43
Speaker 1: very long, but he played at PNC Park. He played
15:46
Speaker 1: at P and C Park as an opponent as well.
15:50
Speaker 1: And when you see what the Pirates did in twenty
15:54
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty fifteen in their playoff years. So if
15:57
Speaker 1: you remember the unbelievable game that we still call the
16:00
Speaker 1: blackout because Andrew McCutcheon wanted everybody to wear black against
16:04
Speaker 1: the Reds, You'll be hard pressed to mention any baseball
16:10
Speaker 1: scene anywhere in North America over the last twenty years
16:13
Speaker 1: that would top that event. Okay, it was a generational thing.
16:17
Speaker 1: You had children bringing their grandfathers who'd never seen the
16:21
Speaker 1: Pirates win. Okay, I'm gonna say this again. This is
16:25
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty four years the Pirates course through
16:29
Speaker 1: this city's veins.
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Speaker 2: Okay, there's no.
16:32
Speaker 1: Amount of losing even forty years of this now that
16:36
Speaker 1: stops that. Neil Huntington, to the former GM once said
16:41
Speaker 1: to me, he said, this just feels the whole thing
16:43
Speaker 1: feels like this big sleeping giant here. And so there's
16:47
Speaker 1: no doubt that in one of the smallest ballparks in
16:50
Speaker 1: America that you will see absolute maximizing. But they haven't
16:56
Speaker 1: made that happen. Bob Nutting hasn't made that happen. But
17:00
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect, a divide in trust, and there's there's
17:04
Speaker 1: people that just openly brag about how long they've been
17:06
Speaker 1: boycotting the pirates. That's a common thing here. Oh yeah,
17:09
Speaker 1: well I'm in my seventh year. Oh yeah, i've been.
17:13
Speaker 1: I haven't been there since you know, Brian Giles hit
17:17
Speaker 1: that home run against Billy Wagner twenty five years ago.
17:20
Speaker 1: And it's like that, that's how these conversations go. That
17:24
Speaker 1: has to change, and the only person who's empowered to
17:27
Speaker 1: do that is Nutting. But I'll ask you guys back,
17:29
Speaker 1: and I actually don't have this answer. So this isn't rhetorical.
17:34
Speaker 1: How does he do that? Because one of the things
17:37
Speaker 1: about him is that he's under capitalized. Do you guys
17:39
Speaker 1: talk about what he owns and you talk about newspapers.
17:43
Speaker 1: This isn't exactly the rising stock in the business world. Okay,
17:48
Speaker 1: where does he get that money from? Does he go
17:50
Speaker 1: and take more loans? Does he say, you know, heck
17:53
Speaker 1: with it, We're just going to go into you know,
17:55
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy debt. Or does he do what
17:59
Speaker 1: his actual approaches, and that is he opens up a
18:03
Speaker 1: restaurant and he says, hey, my food kind of sucks
18:07
Speaker 1: right now, but if you come and eat here, oh man,
18:11
Speaker 1: we're gonna get the best chef. Okay, you guys just
18:14
Speaker 1: have to come and eat here and eat our crappy
18:17
Speaker 1: food more often.
18:18
Speaker 2: No, that, well, that's not gonna happen.
18:21
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you the only way that Bob Nutting
18:23
Speaker 4: brings a championship with his with his mindset, it would
18:26
Speaker 4: have to be a complete, life changing, life altering mindset.
18:30
Speaker 4: The only way he brings a championship to Pittsburgh or
18:33
Speaker 4: a consistent winning team selling s E L LL sell.
18:40
Speaker 1: It has to be winning. And there's it goes even
18:42
Speaker 1: beyond that. It can go into baseball stuff too, which
18:45
Speaker 1: is you have to have a sense of accountability. You
18:48
Speaker 1: have a management team here right now that has done
18:50
Speaker 1: some really awful things, okay with a major league roster
18:54
Speaker 1: with the drafts. Other than the guys that have been
18:57
Speaker 1: you know, the ones coming through the clouds, you're not
19:00
Speaker 1: you're not seeing the results that you need to see.
19:03
Speaker 1: They fired their Latin American scouting director after seven years
19:05
Speaker 1: of absolutely nothing from that part of the world. This
19:09
Speaker 1: is stuff that people never talk about, but this is
19:11
Speaker 1: stuff that you know, you guys mentioned some of the
19:13
Speaker 1: better teams that that that get results, that don't have
19:17
Speaker 1: as much revenues. Where do they get in that talent from.
19:20
Speaker 1: Look at what happened in Cleveland. Cleveland's no different than Pittsburgh.
19:23
Speaker 1: I think we can agree on that. In a market, Yeah, stadium,
19:27
Speaker 1: whole thing right there.
19:28
Speaker 3: Now, that's we asked him about it about a month ago.
19:31
Speaker 3: We're like, what I saw it?
19:34
Speaker 2: Terrific.
19:35
Speaker 1: It was a terrific show. Yeah, Neil, Neil let it
19:37
Speaker 1: all out, which is not very Neil like I saw it.
19:40
Speaker 1: And for you know, when you look at Cleveland and
19:43
Speaker 1: you look at the guys they're bringing up one after another,
19:46
Speaker 1: you know, Latin American guy you know here comes a
19:48
Speaker 1: Dominican here comes to Venezuelan. You look at the Pirates lineup.
19:51
Speaker 1: You know how many guys they've had come out out
19:53
Speaker 1: of the Latin America. They've made an impact in the
19:55
Speaker 1: last ten years. I'll give you a hint. He's still
19:57
Speaker 1: playing and he's really good. Start Martine, Well, where's from?
20:04
Speaker 1: Cruise came from the Dodger system. Oh right, I'm talking
20:07
Speaker 1: about guys they got. They traded out Tony Watson to
20:11
Speaker 1: LA for him. Uh, Starling came. I actually met him
20:15
Speaker 1: as an eighteen year old down there. I went down
20:17
Speaker 1: there to do a story because wow, look at this kid.
20:19
Speaker 1: You can tell right away you know the whole athletic
20:22
Speaker 1: build and everything. Right, that's it. In ten years, I'd
20:25
Speaker 1: say again the franchise of Clemente. You can't walk around
20:29
Speaker 1: anywhere in Latin America without seeing Pirates hats.
20:32
Speaker 2: You guys know that, am I right? Damn?
20:36
Speaker 4: I can't, like we can keep you on for three
20:38
Speaker 4: hours here because there's so much being in the organization
20:41
Speaker 4: and also being part of players union that I saw.
20:44
Speaker 2: You're talking about, not not building.
20:46
Speaker 4: Up the d R like they put of that bad money,
20:50
Speaker 4: of that of that they put this huge, beautiful campus
20:54
Speaker 4: down there, so they could build Dominican Republic system that
20:59
Speaker 4: would just pump out craters and they get zero players
21:03
Speaker 4: out of it.
21:04
Speaker 1: That's not an exaggeration. Zero players from there. The one
21:09
Speaker 1: actually the one who's in the majors right now other
21:11
Speaker 1: than Marte, I should be respectful. Here is Luis Ortiz,
21:14
Speaker 1: who they just he's now in Cleveland. It's part of that.
21:17
Speaker 2: They just shipped them Outland Cland this year.
21:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, because Cleveland, because Cleveland oneted a one of a
21:27
Speaker 4: starting pitcher, which they've been elite with producing starting pitching,
21:31
Speaker 4: and so they're like, oh, well here's one from the
21:33
Speaker 4: pirates organization that we could just poach.
21:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is your point. Dan, we gotta
21:37
Speaker 3: jump because we're keeping Kenny ballgame. Rosenthal waiting to but
21:41
Speaker 3: this was awesome. Really appreciate this. And also to the
21:43
Speaker 3: point too, is for everyone that's watching and listening right now,
21:46
Speaker 3: you can get the article. You're not paying anything for it.
21:48
Speaker 3: Go online and check out this article and give it
21:51
Speaker 3: a good read. But the last point, we're not asking
21:53
Speaker 3: them to be the Dodgers. We're asking them to be
21:55
Speaker 3: the guardians. But that's what we're really learning here too,
21:57
Speaker 3: is it's not impossible to do this, and even the Guardians,
22:00
Speaker 3: you can definitely pick up things there too. But the
22:02
Speaker 3: fact that you know the Guardians, we say, hey, they
22:04
Speaker 3: should push chips in a little more when they're here.
22:06
Speaker 3: Alc us here, pirates, we're still we're still in the
22:09
Speaker 3: Stone Age when we're talking about what's happening. So Dan,
22:12
Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us. We'll definitely have
22:14
Speaker 3: you back this season too. Okay, this was great.
22:16
Speaker 1: All right, guys, good to see you about the old
22:18
Speaker 1: buckos over there. Good to see you