 All right, a little bit different of a breakdown today because there's no game footage dissect, but it's still wildly interesting and bizarre and big news in the sports world. Seattle Mariners president, and I think co-owner, part owner, partial owner, he did a appearance with a Rotary Club, and he just was as honest as honest gets, which is bizarre because he said a lot of things that you shouldn't say. In his opening remarks, these were not questions that people asked him, just his opening statements. He said that they survived COVID better than most because of their low payroll and because their TV deal is so good for them, bad for the other side. Our payroll was as low as it was going to get, thank goodness, and we also have a television deal with Root Sports, and we punch well above our weight on the television deal. We got a lot more than we probably deserved as compared to other similar-sized markets. All right, so clearly the Seattle payroll is low. It's not a secret. That's not a surprise. Even him saying it isn't that big of a deal. Everyone knows that they reset or tanked or whatever you wanna say, but openly saying that you get more money than you deserve on the TV deal. I'm sure future negotiations are gonna be pretty fun when the TV guys can be just be like, uh, we're gonna do less than last time because that guy said we should. So, easy negotiations for Root Sports. Let's move on. There was no chance you were gonna see these young players at T-Mobile Park. We weren't gonna put them on the 40-man roster. We weren't gonna start the service time clock. You might have seen my big tummy out there in left field. You would not have seen our young players, our prospects playing at T-Mobile Park. So, if you don't know anything about what he's talking about here, the way baseball works is there's a service time timer. As soon as a young guy gets called up, there's like three years of controlled cost. They make the minimum, and then there's three years of arbitration, which means they go to an arbiter and they figure out a salary based on how that person has performed and how the people close to them form. So there's like six years of control. Once that service time clock starts, that starts winding down. So a lot of the owners and GMs manipulate that by refusing to call up players until they want to start paying them, I guess. Even if they're crushing the minor leagues, we've seen it a lot. Chris Bryant, Glebert Torres, a lot of teams do this, and a lot of people have tried the file grievance, and usually the GMs are like, no, he needed to work on his defense. No, he needed to work on off-speed pitches. He needed to see more, and they win the grievance. Tough for him to win the grievance now because he's saying no matter what, there's no way we were gonna start that service time clock. He used the exact honest words. It's bizarre. And he does this multiple times throughout the 45-minute session. I have a couple more queued up. Down in April, you won't see him on April 1st, but by mid-April, you will see a young man. So that's a picture he's talking about saying you won't see him on April 1st, but by mid-April, because once the service time clock gets to the right place, they'll call him up. So, I mean... On the mound in April, you won't see him on April 1st, but by mid-April, you will see a young man named Logan Gilbert. So Logan Gilbert, file grievance. He's the real deal. He's atop of the rotation pitcher, and I can't wait to see him at T-Mobile Park. And there's a certain pitcher that I won't mention who was in the bullpen at T-Mobile Park during our summer camp. And this is... All right, so this is what I found super interesting. The dude did have a bit of a conscience. Like, he's so open and honest. When he got to this part, and he says, "'There is a pitcher that I'm not gonna mention.'" I was like, what? You're mentioning everything you shouldn't mention. How is this line drawn when all the other lines haven't? Cause it gets crazier as we go. He gives enough clues to figure out he's talking about Sam Delaplane. He's telling a story about how Evan White got this huge contract, and the union said he shouldn't have signed it, and then he says this pitcher that I won't mention, but we invited him to camp, and he's gonna come up in 2022, so basically they have his clock figured out. Doesn't matter how Sam Delaplane pitches this year. There's no way he's gonna crack the team, what he's saying right now. And he says that Sam Delaplane, AKA the kid he won't mention, said this. And this was reported by one of the coaches. The players were sitting around talking about Evan White, and he made a mistake signing this long-term deal, and this particular pitcher, who is going to be here in 2022, he said if somebody offers me $23 million guaranteed, find me a pen as fast as you can, I'm signing. So we're gonna do that. Our ownership is committed. We're eager to sign these players up. We're willing to take that risk. So there you go. I mean, Sam, congrats. You might have a contract coming your way. And that's their strategy. It's kind of interesting he's openly talking about it. Everyone knows it exists, but just openly talking about it. Just like service time manipulation. Everyone knows it exists and they do that. That's not the shocking part. The shocking part that is on video and audio that he knows is being recorded. He just doesn't dance around at all. He just straight up says it. The union has hearts in their eyes right now about all the grievances and all the things they can bring up at negotiations. Let's keep going. Jared Kalanick, we've been talking about him for a year and a half now. He will be in left field in April. He's a 21 year old player who is quite confident. We offered him a long-term deal, six year deal for substantial money with options to go farther. And after pondering it for several days and talking to the union, he has turned us down. And in his words, he's going to bet on himself. He thinks after six years, he's gonna be such a star player that the seventh, eighth, ninth year options will be undervalued. He might be right. He might be right. We offered and he turned us down. I mean, the insight that this Rotary Club is getting is awesome. If you're in Seattle, I mean, our Rotary Club membership is just gonna boost up because you get all the inside goods. I mean, that's just him talking about contracts that none of that was public. I don't believe. Kyle Seeger, this is problem. This stuff's good. He mentions Kyle Seeger a couple of times. Kyle Seeger has an option next year. They're not picking it up. Kyle Seeger, this is probably his last season as a mariner. Okay, I don't think they knew that. Kyle Seeger's wife tweeted out, I guess we should put our house on the market because we're not coming back. Really motivating Kyle Seeger to keep playing. He brings up Kyle Seeger later in the Q and A and he brings him up to talk about how good of a leader he is, but he opens with this. And I have to compliment, Kyle Seeger is a veteran player. He's probably overpaid. Why even say that? Why even say that? Like there's no need to just throw that dig there to the fucking Rotary Club next. We lost $2.9 billion last year and we have taken the position that there are 180 free agents still out there on February 5th unsigned. And sooner or later, these players are going to turn their hat over and come with hat in hand looking for a contract. So just actually gets the hat out to use it as a prop. I don't know who the we is because he says our industry lost 2.9 billion and we is we the mariners or is we all the owners because if it's the latter, that's crazy collusion. If it's the former, it's just like, dude, you're the loosening, losingest franchise. You haven't seen the playoffs in forever. Why are you bragging about low balling players? Doesn't seem that just bizarre to put that on record. Just bizarre. Yeah, we're going to get the scraps at the end when they come groveling because we refuse to pay them what they're worth. Rotary Club just claps. Hell yeah, fucking players. It frustrates me. For instance, we... Oh, here we go. This is the good stuff. This is what's getting everyone mad. He was asked about players learning English and what are they doing to help players learn English? And here's just a delight of an answer. We just rehired Iwakuma. Iwakuma was a picture for us for a number of years. Wonderful human being. His English is terrible. He wanted to get back into the game. He wanted to, and he came to us and we quite frankly want him as our Asian scout interpreter. What's going on in the Japanese league? He's coming to spring training and I made the same... I'm tired of paying his interpreter because when he was a player, we pay Iwakuma X but we also had to pay $75,000 a year to have an interpreter with him. His English suddenly got better. His English got better when we told him that. Ugh. So... All right. One, the whole fucking press conference is him bragging about being cheap and how cheap the Mariners are. They could pay millions of dollars for players with $75,000 for an interpreter to make that player perform better and feel as comfortable as he can. Terrible. They're bragging about undervaluing, getting more money, getting less money. The whole thing is about business and not baseball and getting cheaper dollars which it is a business and I understand that but like to be this upfront about it it's just kind of just bizarrely honest. Anyway, this dude needs a dumb interpreter. Like the foreign players, they may be able to speak English in conversations but they don't want to use broken English in their second language to be put on record when people are recording them so they'd rather have an interpreter say, reword things. Uh-uh, don't say that. We should say this instead. Help them out to make sure they don't make a fool of themselves. This dude needs a dumb interpreter. Imagine if this rotary club spoke Japanese and he had an interpreter there helping him. That interpreter would be nudging him and being like, hey, probably let's not say this. I'll change it and make it much better in Japanese. He needed a dumb interpreter. So here he is fucking up in his native language talking about how he's pissed at players for fucking up in their second language. Tell us about Julio Rodriguez. Julio Rodriguez has got a personality bigger than all of you combined. He is loud. He is, his English is not tremendous. Why? Why is that a point of emphasis at all? They literally just said, can you tell us about this young stud you got in the minors? Yeah, his personality's a lot. His English sucks. No need. They didn't ask how his English was. Him and Kelleneck are very good friends. He's a year behind Kelleneck. He will probably be here in, everybody says 2021. He won't be here till 2022 or 2023. No, we're not gonna start that service time on him early. Everyone says he's ready for 2021. Hey, Julio, no matter what you do in the minors this year and maybe even next year, we ain't bringing you up. It's, no, it's not, you don't get to earn it. It's just kind of how we feel about it. There's not enough parking. So I can get away with charging $30, $40, $50 to park in my tiny little parking garage across the street. So I don't let my employees park there. I have them park down on the other side of a century, I guess. So this question, they asked like, what's your biggest concern right now? What's a pain point for you, Kevin Mather? And he said that the neighborhood surrounding the field isn't great. And because there's limited parking, he gets to charge a lot of money for parking, which you can see makes him smile. And because he can charge a lot of money for parking, he makes his employees park on the other side of town in an area that he doesn't think is safe. So he, so that's his biggest concern. You can let him park closer. You can let him park closer. Marco Gonzalez. Oh, here's a good little drama beef story that he tells us about Mike Leek and Marco Gonzalez. Is, has really taken a leadership role in 20, good story. In 2019, we had a veteran pitcher that we have since traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks. We wanna figure out who it is. Just say it, man. You just say it. You just gave, I'm not gonna tell you what number I'm talking about, but two plus two equals said number. Like just say Mike Leek. We know who you're talking about. Who had, you know, attitude. He, he'd been around. He'd been there, done that. And our bullpen coach was talking to the starting pitchers about, this was in spring training. And he was talking about, you know, when you go out and throw your bullpens, you know, it's only 20 pitches. Let's make sure it's quality. And he was giving this speech and the pitcher who's no longer with us kind of rolled his eyes and said, don't tell me how to throw my bullpens yet. And as the meeting broke up, Marco Gonzalez with the help of a couple of bullpen guys pushed this particular pitcher into the locker and said, listen, if you wanna be a dick, be a dick, but be a dick quietly. And, you know, for a young kid to do that, good for him, good for him. It's a good story. Again, Rotary Club memberships gotta be booming. Baseball fans joining left and right. This is the type of insight they get. This is like a podcast episode that should have been released in the year 2040. And then it would make sense. Statue of limitations kind of up. Right now, not great. I got another bull, Ted Bowen, even know what this one is. Let's see. Kellanuck is not happy that he's the fifth highest prospect on baseball America and Rodriguez is the fourth highest prospect. Little things like that bother Kellanuck. Wow, earlier they said they were best friends. Even though Rodriguez supposedly doesn't speak or English. What a mess, man. What a mess. His mug says something like, his mug says women's lives, our passion. Same dude that's got a bunch of sexual assault allegations against him. So there's your Seattle Mariners. I mean, dumb enough to say these things in front of a mic. Just so honest, it's crazy. Valuing being cheap more than anything. Like this dude went to the Rotary Club and he was like, what can I do to impress these people and let them know the Seattle Mariners are doing good things? Are we winning games? No, but we're saving money. That'll impress them. Honestly, every point he had, he thought the most impressive thing was how they save money. So he apologized, I take that back. Someone wrote an apology on his behalf and he probably said, yeah, send that. And I don't know, that's where we're at. So it's great insight. The union is probably salivating. It's great insight. If you're a Mariners prospect, you're probably like, hey, all that kind of sucks. Now you guys know, Kevin Mather, president of the Seattle Mariners and pressing the hell out of the Rotary Club, giving them all the secrets. Dumb.