Business of baseball writer Maury Forbes of Forbes rocks back to the basics of building an enduring MLB franchise as he joins Nestor from the Pacific Northwest to dish on the Mariners, Adley Rutschman’s legend in Portland and the power of AC/DC to put us all on the highway to hell even five decades later.
Nestor Aparicio and Maury Brown discussed the Baltimore Orioles’ struggles, including their recent firing of manager Brandon Hyde and their 18-game losing streak. They highlighted the team’s lack of pitching and hitting consistency, with key players like Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle underperforming. Brown suggested the Orioles might trade O’Hearn for prospects and emphasized the need for a comprehensive rebuild. They also touched on the potential for a work stoppage in MLB due to labor disputes. Additionally, Brown shared his passion for rock music, detailing his involvement in tribute bands and his experiences attending concerts.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Orioles, trade deadline, pitching prospects, hitting issues, attendance, Mariners, ownership, player development, salary cap, work stoppage, rock and roll, AC/DC, UFO, Edgar Martinez, John Mabry.
SPEAKERS
Maury Brown, Nestor Aparicio
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 tasks of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are taking the Maryland crab cake tour out on the road. I am looking forward to get back up to Hampstead on Thursday with our friends at the Maryland lottery. I’ll have the Back to the Future scratch offs. This segment’s going to be a little bit back to the future, back to the past, and hopefully ahead to out of last place at some point, as the Orioles are out on the West Coast, we’re going to be at fade leaves next Friday when the West Coast team from Anaheim, via Los Angeles and Southern California, makes their way to a Camden Yards. Luke will be with me next Friday at fade leaves. We’re doing readers a crab house up in Reisterstown. Looking forward to that. Also confirmed 1623 brewery out in Eldersburg the day after the all star game in July. So just doing a whole bunch of things this summer, looking forward to getting out. We’re having a lot of business people, politicians, baseball people, football people, rock and roll people. My favorite people are rock and roll people. Everybody knows that this guy is a rock and roll person. He does. He wears many hats, and he’s wearing one right now. He also will wear as many guitars. He is a guitarist, and two tribute bands won, an AC DC band called shoot to thrill. Also any scorpions band throwing that, that V neck around and all German up and shankering is what he’s doing in a scorpions tribute band. But when he’s not doing that, he’s covering the business of sports. I got to know him as biz ball. Mari. He is in Portland, Oregon, never Maine, although they have delicious wild Maine blueberries this time of year in Maine. He’s in Portland, Oregon, where the Orioles are going to be in Seattle this weekend. I think Mari brown considers the Seattle Mariners his home team, even though I see you go up there on opening day, and it’s like going from here to New York. I have made that trek right before I when I left you, I think at the at the bus station there at the Mega Bus in Portland, I was going up to Seattle and Vancouver and doing the whole right. I mean, what a beautiful part of the world you live in. And you’re a baseball nerd in Portland, and the only way you can, like, get at the major league thing is to go to Seattle when we’re not sending Adley rushman your way, right? Yeah,
Maury Brown 02:11
yeah. Hey, Adley man, we, we, we still love him here. So, yeah, it interesting time for the Orioles. It’s an interesting time. Yes,
Nestor Aparicio 02:21
it is. Yeah, I’m here, and you know my feet are on the ground, and you know where I was with Angelo some free the I’ve I took a phone call from a listener, Anna. I would call her, Miss Anna, but that would piss her off, because she’s not that old. I hope she’s getting better. She’s a listener of mine, and her daughter and I are been friends. She’s been she tend to bar my old ravens events when I would bring a loadie Nada, when Rex Ryan would come out and not eat vegetables. This is 20 years ago. She called me. She’s, I’m really worried about you, man, I heard you in the air. You sounded so despondent and down about the Orioles. And I’m like, I kind of am, in a way, like I’m reaching to some of you, and just to let you know the like, you know, for lifeline, I said that. John Eisenberg, I’m like, I’ve waited all of these years for the new thing, the next thing. And this guy right now, thumbs down on all of it. Just all of it. Just, you know, they fire their manager on Saturday, and they can’t get behind it. They can’t get in front of it. He’s given his own bobble head out. I mean, it’s just really and their last place, it’s just really problematic. And what’s really problematic Mari is that they’re out on the west coast this week, and they’re playing the middle of the night out in your part of the world. This is where, when it’s a last place team, you just find something else to do, you know, go to bed, you know. You know, you get out of the soap opera a little bit, you know?
Maury Brown 03:41
8Yeah, I would. Okay. So they swept. They have a their first sweep of the season, right? They they take three games, although it’s the White Sox, right? So you can’t really put too much weight behind that, you know, they’ve been hit with a bunch of injuries. Okay? So they’re gonna get cows are back. We’re trying to debate whether Charlie Morton is really the Charlie Morton that we remember. But my expectation as we roll into the trade deadline is that they will be heavy sellers. I just think they’re going to try and wipe this season clean. They’re just going to write it off at this point. I look they it’s always when in doubt, find the manager, right? I mean, that’s the cliche. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 04:27
they’ve already done that, that check. But the issue, the issue, I
Maury Brown 04:33
know they’re talking about bringing John Mabry in because they’re down to coaches. I just that’s not going to solve the problem. The problem is more systemic than that, and I think that they’re going to try, and maybe they’ve got to retool a little bit. It’s interesting about this Nestor, because they’re playing Seattle right? And I think that Seattle actually would become a very good partner at the trade deadline for. Them. Seattle’s loaded with a bunch of prospects. They’re in a very good position after last year, right? The mariners were 10 games up in mid season, and then went into a complete collapse and they couldn’t hit
Nestor Aparicio 05:13
the ball. Kind of reminiscent of where the Orioles are, like, I mean, they weren’t getting anyone on base, right? I mean, like, for for weeks at a time, the Orioles are getting guys on base and they’re going 114 for runners in scoring position and somehow still winning three to two. It’s crazy that
8Maury Brown 05:29
so Seattle’s problem really was a coaches issue. They brought Edgar Martinez back, and they got their hitting turnaround. They led the league last year in strikeouts. That is not the case. This year, their problems now are around pitching which has been dinged up pretty bad. So there the Orioles are going to face George Kirby today, who is got quite a bit of rust, has looked not exactly his pre injury form since coming back. So you go, well, that’s a bonus for the Orioles. You know, maybe they get that they face Emerson Hancock tomorrow before they get to Brian WU which is not good if you’re an Orioles fan. So it’s just weird. I mean, you’re going to go look at the A’s right after this, which for a while there, everybody was going, Oh, the A’s. Now they’re looking pretty good, right? They’re going to be 500 which is like pretty good at 500 right? But they look like the A’s that I think most people expect right now. So if you’re an Orioles fan, right? You go, oh, the, you know, they’ve they’ve got an opportunity here, at least a little bit. The bad news is the mariners are a very good team. I don’t know whether they’re going to win the AOS, but they’re a very good team. Kyle Raleigh has been doing some historic stuff at the catcher position, at the plate, and they’re pitching. If they can get it sorted out, we’ll put them in a good spot so and they’re fighting right? The mariners are fighting for first, get a half game lead over the Astros right now. So back to the Orioles. I mean, it was never the manager at at issue here. It’s a GM ownership thing, and I can’t imagine, or I hope that they go well, this year sucks, right this year off and reload, and somehow next year is going to be better, like, like, the Yankees are going to get any worse. I just don’t see it right now. Mari Brown
Nestor Aparicio 07:33
is our guest. He’s out in Portland, Oregon. He covers the business of baseball as well as auto racing, whole bunch of different things out at Forbes. Said you can follow him at biz ball, Mari as well, one of the voices sits down with a lot of leadership as well, talking about media and money and all of that, the important stuff, all stemming from trying to steal a baseball team into Portland many years ago, and now, you know, the a’s and the rays, and you know these teams are just floating around. And, you know, I, I was joking with Barry Trotz Adam on this week. I said I saw, you know, I saw Utah up and I’m like, Who the hell’s Utah in the NHL? You know what I mean, Oklahoma City, who would have thought of such a thing, especially during a Seattle week here in the NBA Finals. But you know, these, these teams move, and this Oakland thing that we’re going to see in the weekend. It’s sort of indicative of how messed up baseball is right now, and how you know, even in Seattle, like your Seattle guy, they’ve never won, right So, like trying to build tradition, always working from behind. They had Ichiro they had Randy Johnson, they had gang you’ve had these legendary things happen, but there’s nothing as legendary as winning. And I always, I feel sort of sorry for mariners fans. You know, whenever I’ve been out there, I’m like, you know, it’s been good at various points, but you’d like to think at some point there could be a parade there, and the Seahawks kind of brought it home. And before that, the Sonics, before they left, a lot of glory era. It’s a great kind of sports area, but the mariners sort of lag behind always, like The Little Engine That can’t in some way.
Maury Brown 09:07
Yeah, I would say Nestor. I think this is a an issue that for for your listeners out on the East Coast, it’s hard to comprehend. West Coast sports fans are built a little bit different, and it’s just not, it doesn’t have the history that you have on the East Coast, right? You don’t get Major League Baseball out here until 57 right, with the Giants and the Dodgers and so you you really have more of a laid back atmosphere with it, right? The Seattle situation, in terms of T Mobile Park, it’s beautiful. And you go to the ballpark, you look out at the city, you climb up to the back of the ballpark and look out on Puget Sound. It’s amazing, that deck
Nestor Aparicio 09:51
8in left fields. Really, it’s a top 10 thing in baseball. I went to every ballpark like thing you should do, you know, if you pick the right night and. Seattle and go out to left field during sunset. It’s something, man, yeah,
Maury Brown 10:03
it’s so it I joked that for the longest time, they had what they called when it was Safeco Field. It was club Safeco, you know, they opened up the deck. You get a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings out there drinking, you know, expensive beers, sitting there trying to figure out, you know, what’s going on and their life, they turn around and it’s like, oh, now there’s a baseball game going on. It’s just not as hyper competitive. And I think that that is a bad thing. I mean, they’re a expansion team, you know, granted, it’s been a long time, 50 years, man, you know, literally, but you don’t, you just don’t get the vibe like you do with East Coast teams and so, or even, as I would even say, the Royal certainly, you know, the Cardinals, the teams that have been around and have history, you don’t have that now. That said, I think the fan base is just about had enough. Attendance is down again this season for good reason. I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 11:04
these are things I don’t know, because I’m not up late every night, you know, right? Like, attendance being down and stuff. This is every time we get together. And, dude, it’s been almost a decade since we went gallivanting around Portland. You know what I mean, like, and I remember bleeding your ears that night. You remember me is the free the birds guy and whatever. And I’m like, this is, you know, people can make excuses for baseball, but you know, like, I’ve been tech checking the temperature here every minute of every day for 35 years. And the woman running the Orioles, Katie Griggs, came from Seattle, and, you know, has came, came here on a white horse, like she’s going to save everything. And I’m like, Oh, my God, you now have a last place team that you’re admired with in a place that has all sorts of economic challenges, just in a general sense, and real trust problems in the community. I mean, I I can’t begin to tell you, when you have an owner like Angelo’s in a place like this, there’s a broken trust part of taking your credit card. That’s different than I think the mariners deal with, the mariners deal with they just haven’t won. I don’t think it’s been like a broken bond or, I mean, I always feel like the mariners have been trying to win, trying to be cool. They’ve always had cool uniforms. They’ve always had great players. There’s always been a reason to go King Felix. I mean, like, you know, I mean Edgar Martinez. I don’t even, I can’t think of him. I didn’t even mention him as the Mount Rushmore of the franchise, and he certainly is. But like, you know, they, they’ve had a nice thing there. They’ve had moments, but they’ve never had the moment, no,
Maury Brown 12:35
and that is that, I think the issue is that they’re just good enough to break your heart every single season. And so what? What is this? Right? You talk about the Community Trust, right? So it becomes difficult to make an emotional investment when year after year, if you’re hanging around the bottom of the standings, right, the mariners haven’t had that, right? They tend to hang around the middle. They’re They’re like the most middling team in that regard, and they have stars, right? But they just never can seem to piece it all together. And in some ways, I don’t know whether that’s a feature or a bug. In that sense, their payroll hangs around the middle that’s, you know, and never drops down toward the bottom and never reaches toward the top. They act and move like a mid market, you know. And so when’s the
8Nestor Aparicio 13:35
last time they spent money on a player? Well, didn’t they get one of the Mets are Yankees guys a number 15 years ago, didn’t they sign? Well,
Maury Brown 13:43
I mean, they’ve had a number of players that they brought in. I mean, they, it’s,
Nestor Aparicio 13:47
they took Nelson Cruz from us, right, and they signed it, right? Obviously,
Maury Brown 13:51
8Nelson Cruz was, was one of them. They, they’ve had a bunch of other ones that have just kind of filtered through and just not work. You tend to get guys like, more, like Justin Turner, right? Who, at is more at the tail end of their career? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 14:06
it’s like, it’s like the Tyler O’Neill signing here was sort of like, you know, not inspiring, right? That’s,
Maury Brown 14:12
and that’s, you know, that’s the history of the Orioles for the longest time, right? If we go back a decade or more, they tended to go and spend. So I used to spend an awful lot of time looking at how teams spent, from a from effectivity and efficiency, right? So the raise would be the most efficient and effective, right? They spend very little. They perform. They over perform for what they pay. The Yankees, of course, overpay, so they’re ineffective, but for the most part, right? They’re effective in the standings. The Orioles, for the longest time, were both ineffective and just inefficient. They’d overpay and have terrible results. So the. I think what’s happening with the Orioles is they’re trying to get out of that model, right? And granted, you know, you’ve got a new owner in there that’s not exactly making the best impression out of the gate. So what are they going to do about that? Do you sit? I do. I think that you go much like the Mets did in many ways, right? You kind of blow it up. You know, halfway through the season, obviously they’re not spending in the way that you you’ve seen Cohen do with the Mets, right? I mean, obviously nobody’s going to be able to do that with the few exceptions to Dodgers, maybe. So the the Orioles are in a difficult spot, right? I mean, you talk about that trust issue, so cash flow, how things are going, you need to build some good will towards your fan base to get them to come back and consistently invest I always talk about this Nestor, that roller coaster in can sometimes be the worst, right? Like, you’re good and you’re bad. This is what the Marlins did for the longest time. And I said it’s like, you know, like a roller coaster, you get jerked around at the end of the day. You get off the ride, you just feel nauseous. It’s really hard for fans to be invested. Well, this is the worst situation. You’ve been historically bad for a long run, you have your history 20 years ago, right? That’s the last time when Angelos obviously rode in on the coattails. That was 30 years ago now, 30 God Nestor, don’t do that to me, dude, right? But, I mean, you know what I’m saying, 30 years ago, right? So the idea of riding on the coattails of what you had, and then just consistently, just living off the ballpark. And you just can’t do that for an extended period of time. You start to erode your fan base. So they need to do something. And I mean, speaking to what’s going to go on right now, I think there’s going to be a false sense here, whether they come out of this series with the mariners. On the good side of things, you can’t use a three game sweep of the White Sox as your barometer.
Nestor Aparicio 17:08
Well, once you’re 18 games under 500 you are what you are, you know. I mean, you are a dozen under nine, under 50. It doesn’t matter. I mean, trying to dig out well, you know, wake me. If they’re flawless on the West Coast, wake me. But like they don’t want pitching for that, certainly, the hitting has been suspect, but just down the line for how first round draft picks have ascended to the point where they can get to the big leagues and then fail miserably. Kobe Mayo has encouraged that down the line, and then they deal out Stowers, and he winds up hitting the ball in Miami. And your guy, rushman, really sits at the center of whatever this era of Oriole baseball is going to be, because it feels like gunner Henderson is going to be at least a nice player. I don’t know that he’s Mickey Mantle. He looked that way last year. I think westburg might be the best of all of them, if you can get in the lineup and and be healthy. Cows are comes back. He strikes out a lot. It just doesn’t profile like that. And Jackson holiday profiles as, hey, the WoW kind of thing. Watchman was supposed to be the Wow. He was a wall, you know, for a while, and it’s been a year, man. And like, when you’re Portland and you’re, you know, you know him as a kid coming up, and like all that, I you know, there was talk like, give him $300 million Mr. Rubenstein, now it’s like, where’s pasayo, you know. And that’s not good and, and it’s not. Brian Billick would always say the old coach line was, your potential is going to get me fired. It already got it got Hyde fired. And Elias and I know we’re at a point now with Elias, where is he still going to be the grocery shopper when this is done? You can’t fire him now because of the draft in three, four weeks, right, July 13, is a draft at this point. You know, it’s a precarious ownership place for Rubenstein, who is a baseball neophyte, doesn’t know much about the sport, doesn’t know any certainly isn’t evaluating talent. But then has to evaluate who’s going to evaluate the talent. And now I’m like, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Here we here we go again. That’s sort of like a Dolly Parton song, right? You right? Yeah,
8Maury Brown 19:23
and all that suffering is really true Nestor, it’s they’re not in the position that I often see with the Blue Jays, which is this tweener state. There’s certainly the idea that there are some core key pieces, right? Every club has some jewels that either are there in their entirety, or, as you mentioned, holiday like and and rushman like, where is it? Where does it start to come together? Whether it’s a matter of teams being able to figure out that they. Go after guys like that, because the rest of the lineup is just so inconsistent that they’ll they’ll pick and choose where to go after. So hey, if you’re going to beat me, I don’t have anybody behind you in the lineup that’s going to go ahead and basically do the damage. What you see with obviously good rosters, the Orioles don’t have that so well, Santander
Nestor Aparicio 20:21
being taken out was a bit of a heart transplant, kind of like when we lost Nelson Chris, by the way, the guy was Robinson Cano was the big money guy on the Mariner side that it came to me saying, that’s the last time it was 2014 and then two 40 million. It was, you know, one of those deals the Orioles didn’t sign Corbin burns because they kind of could. He just didn’t want to be here, right? But like when you piece this thing together, if gunner Henderson was going to be a 30 home run, 300 hitter, 115 RBI guy, ruchman was going to be a 285 catcher with 25 home run, 100 RBI power. And you know, you go down that list of what’s westburg is going to be a 280 inner with 22 arm runs in 90 RBIs. Like you just put those numbers in racing. Rodriguez going to give you 180 innings. He was going to make 32 starts. He was going to be your 20 game winner. Like none of it, none of the new that’s happened. And Richmond’s not even a major league player. He’s a 200 hitter. He’s a Mendoza, like it’s it’s really problematic all the way and Oh, Hearn’s been great, you know what I mean. And they’ve been a piece of this, and a piece of that, the Sagano has been okay. But like all of their dreams and goals of what they’ve sold the fan base after winning 101 games two years ago, and really, what they sold the owner, who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow, you know that this was going to be put them out on the field. They’re going to win 9095, games. They’re going to be fine, like, and it’s not quickly fixable, to your point, it’s going to take surgery, not just, you know, a quick little, this isn’t a little root canal here.
Maury Brown 22:02
No, and that, that’s why I think that O’Hearn is the main piece that winds up going away. I think the lesson for this season is for everything that you that you mentioned Nestor, it’s just there’s a bunch of open question marks. It’s not like you can go and say, well, there’s just a little bit here or a little bit there that we can go ahead and we can tweak to go ahead and make this work. It’s just
Nestor Aparicio 22:33
8the pitching is too far away. Mari, that’s the pitching suit. The hitting, I’ll buy into. They’ll figure it out, and casual. Figured out Westbrook will be back, and the Kumbaya and all these younger because you got to play them. Mayo is going to hit 35 but I’m sure he is. He’s Dave Kingman, but it was, got him an all in a fight on Saturday, like I like all of these kids that are frustrated now because they’re in last place playing in the middle of the night for nobody in Sacramento, whatever, right? And now they’re playing for their numbers. Holiday feels like he got some game in him. Westburg, to me, is always felt like he’s like a BJ sur Hoff, sort of like he’s going to play 15 years in the big leagues and hit 265 every year, and be a guy you want on your team. You know what? I mean, he’s a Kevin, he’s he’s going to Kevin Millar. He’s going to be that kind of guy for you. But I look at the rest of this and say, the pitching, they don’t draft it. They just don’t draft pictures, right? See, they don’t so then they have to trade and or sign or have money. And they certainly didn’t have any money before money back showed up a year and a half ago, like he built this thing, praying that Rubenstein would come along. And now Rubenstein gave some money in the off season and said, you spent $5 million on Kyle Gibson. And he, like you, gave him away. Now he’s gonna go to Tampa and come back and haunt you. And they gave 17 million to Charlie. More like they just, you know, spent a lot of money in one year. The good news, nothing on the payroll next year beyond the Tyler O’Neill mistake. But I’m trying to figure out one thing Elias has done from a trade perspective. It feels to me like really good scout, architect of 19 year old kids with upside, with bats, with bats, with hitting the ball, with five tool you know, all shortstops draft shortstops, you know, and we’ll turn them into things. But beyond that, when it comes to tactically, Jack Flaherty at the deadline, you have Fuji a couple mean, just really lot, a lot of swings and misses here,
Maury Brown 24:34
yeah, the the core thing is, right, the biggest issue with the Orioles was, is that you’re relying on what you had in that 100 win, right? When, when, when things were going great, right? And so you sit there and because the draft pool is not solid and not very robust, the ability to go ahead and and develop. Um, find your good ones. You know, out of the fluff, you know some, you know, there’s always players where you go, Oh, that’s the that’s the next coming, right? That’s, that’s the one. And then, of course, they get in there and you find out that that’s not the case. The Orioles aren’t unique in that sense. But again, to the team that I know pretty well on the that the Orioles are about to play the the mariners turned around their development and their drafting, and that took a couple, two or three years, and they really leaned into that. And what they’ve done, of course, is that they’ve wrapped up players. I never thought in a million years, Cal Raleigh would get wrapped up. I just the guy could have made an absolute killing in free free agency, and he’s really something special, mostly from the left side of the plate, but he’s a switch hitter, and he calls a great game. He’s He’s outstanding, right? Julio Rodriguez, certainly there. There’s another player right that you know, while we haven’t seen it completely top out in terms of mega superstar, they see that, and I haven’t seen the Orioles really going that route, like drafting, well, doing your player development, and then augmenting with free agency. And if you’re just going to go out there and try to quickly plug holes through free agency to try and write a problem. It’s just when you see the wheels fall off so fast, Nestor, I mean, that’s where you start to go. It’s not the manager and so, okay, alright, I think that that what you’re going to see is, I don’t think your GM is going to get fired. I do think that they’re going to blow it up, or they’re going to have to bring in some prospects. So again, I mean, Mel
Nestor Aparicio 26:51
Castle has no value. I don’t know about their guys in the bullpen having real value to deal Batista and different things like whether that really will be that attractive to bring you things you want more than Batista on your team next year? Eflin, sure, but I you know again. Mari this time last year, this time last year. Bradish, healthy, coming back, right wasn’t going to have Tommy John Corbyn, burns on fire Grayson Rodriguez emerging as the next Jim Palmer, not storm Davis, right? You know. And the notion that they would go out into the market and get a crochet and start to load up and do what the Astros did when the Verlander thing came along, or what the what the Nationals did when the Scherzer thing came up, just sort of like, go get some dudes. Go, you know, go make a deal, and go make a couple of deals. And instead, the Trevor Rogers thing and burns goes out the side door. Rodriguez gets hurt. Bradish is gone. Wells is gone. Just, I it’s, it’s been an astonishing turn, man. I mean, I’ve been watching Oriole baseball here been on the air 35 years, talking about it every day, all the awfulness, all the Angelo’s Dark Ages and bad periods and all of that. There was so much hope built here with ownership, cows behind home plate, the owners doing the papal wave, and all of the Bucha that they were selling and but the young stars in hitting, that’s something that I don’t Luke and I talk about it every day, like the fact that Richmond’s gone from you know Johnny Bench to you know Mendoza is just the guys that are hurt and the pitchers. That’s bad enough for the whole operation, but just having ascending players flop, um, it that that was not on the dance card here, you know, all the rest of this is sort of you can feel, but the guys that aren’t making it that have to make it if you built it that way, because you built it That way, to deal them off, to get the Trevor Rogers pitchers and and dealt off Ortiz, to get to rent burns for six months, and can’t get, you can’t get it to post. It’s really, um, it’s been deflating for a fan base that was already very, very traumatized by the Angelo’s era. Yeah, and that
Maury Brown 29:23
where’s your margin of error? There is none, right? You are. You’re dealing with a situation to where the fan base is so battered and has been battered for so long, and you have all this hope built up. It’s not the same. Certainly, the Mets dealt with this, right? You saw this for the longest time. Cohen comes in, spends incredibly it went completely south. So that would be deflating, but this is nothing like what we’ve seen, I think, in Baltimore, the to. Guys that you mentioned, rushmen, obviously holiday I do wonder again, is this the trajectory, because it fell off so seemingly fast, or is it that the lineup around them? I want to come back to that again, because your ability to go after them right is a lot, a lot easier when the rest of the lineup is so paper thin. Stanton Dara protected
8Nestor Aparicio 30:29
a lot of things in the middle of this thing that I don’t think people felt and certainly Westbrook’s a hell of a player and hasn’t swung the bat right. I mean, cows are for whatever he is, it is really weak in the team to have him not be able to play and O’Neill not be able to play, and curse that to be a thumbs down. And mount castle. Mountcastle has got four home runs in a year. That’s
30:58
That’s horrific.
Nestor Aparicio 31:02
That’s perfect. I mean, like and watchman’s, watchman’s at 200 so and as a unit, as it whomever they put in any of these other Dylan Carlson, pick any of the names of the guys that they never Urias Mateo, these guys getting at bats that they never factored into any of these things because they weren’t front of class, including Kobe mayo, including cursed at to some degree that, the notion that gunner Henderson wouldn’t be available the first month. You know, none of the holidays been really good. O’hearns been really good. The rest of it’s been a bag of donuts, man. Like it’s, it’s really and that’s how their last place, that’s the runners in scoring position. Things been a problem. Strikeouts been a problem. They can’t hit left handers at all, at all in any way. And we’re, it’s June, and that’s how you amass, you know, playing 360 ball, yeah.
Maury Brown 31:56
8And so let’s go back to where we are coming up with the trade deadline. They they have to find some pieces. You can do it all through free agency. First of all, I don’t know whether this is the issue with what has hung over the franchise for so long, you know, or just the fact that you just can’t buy yourself out of a hole that big. I just don’t think you can do it that way. It does take supplementing to do it right. So I do think that you’re going to see some trade stuff. And I do think again. I mean, if they’re, if they saddle up with Seattle and look man, Jerry dapodos, trader, Jerry man. They could get some solid pieces largely through pitching. I mean, the mariners are loaded with pitching prospects, so if you say, oh, Hearn is kind of the key guy that you could use as a trade piece, maybe that’s how they’re going to go about this thing. Can you turn it around? I
Nestor Aparicio 32:59
mean, it really is amazing, because you’re the first one on my airwaves. Talk about O’Hearn being like, he just strikes me getting something back for him that would be big at the deadline, because he would bring a big bad into a lineup. You know, I had, I I’m not poo pooing it. I’m just saying, six weeks ago he was a platoon player, I mean, and a failed first round draft pick that you kind of hope just hit 280 and hit the ball when you ask him to against certain, certain pitchers, you know, I think that you’re going to get anything appreciable for Sugano for, I mean, I go down the list Of all of this. I mean, I you know, holiday you’re not dealing in Richmond, you’re not you’re not dealing the stock, you’re not dealing any of Westbrook’s got to be untouchable. Henderson’s untouchable. I mean, so, I mean, they have the guys that other teams might want and say, I can fix him. I can make cows or strike out less, whatever it might be. They’re not going to give any commensurate value back. And this franchise went from eight weeks ago, being a 90 win team in Vegas, thinking that they were a pitcher away and a bullpen piece away, from being a serious World Series contender to, oh my god, who’s going to be their opening day starter next year, when effluent is going effluent is gone, and Rodriguez in question mark and question mark and question mark and and rushman question mark. And, you know, there’s a lot of baseball to be played this summer, but when you play it from last place in the middle of the night in Seattle and Sacramento, it’s all different. Mojo, man. And it hats off to this holiday kid for like, just saying, I’m a gamer, dude, I you know, I’m going to the Hall of Fame. Give me the ball. Let’s go. And I see that in him. And I thought I saw that in Richmond, but they were winning and winning. Everybody’s a hell of a winner. But, man, when these, when these guys lose two out of three nights, they’re hiding. In the locker room. Nobody can be found. It’s really, you know, general manager fired the manager, Mari on Preakness Saturday morning in a home game and hid on Saturday, hit on Sunday and emerged on Tuesday in Milwaukee to answer questions from a couple reporters in the dugout. That’s leadership. That’s
Maury Brown 35:21
that’s PR 101, when in doubt, fire the manager that is, and hide,
Nestor Aparicio 35:26
not Brandon. Hide, hide, h, i, d, e, yeah, yeah.
8Maury Brown 35:32
So let’s get back to Ahern for a second. What you’re what you’re talking about, right? There are teams out there where you go, Well, I’m not gonna, I can’t see getting any appreciative value out of a guy like that. And there are clubs out there that kind of operate on the fringes of not going after star player Seattle, again, really fits this bill. They got problems at first. Best to last is not really worked out at first. That was kind of a, you know, that was a fill a hole kind of thing. So there are clubs out there in the middle. I think the problem with the Orioles, right, and this reminds me again of the team that I know well in Seattle, is that you operate from at least in the here and now of let’s operate from the idea that there will be regression from others. Okay, so right now the Blue Jays, I think, are sitting in second, probably have no right being there. Right now, they’re operating from a negative run differential, and you go, Oh, well, there’s baseball left. You know, they’re going to drop, and things go our way, and players come off the injury list, and we’re going to get this guy’s bat turned around, and it’s, you know, we’re not even halfway there, and we can come out of the cellar. Okay, you finish third or that’s not what you would be expecting with the Baltimore rose. You’re hoping for the Baltimore Orioles to be challenging the Yankees, and certainly the rays, and they’re not.
Nestor Aparicio 37:07
I’m not under any I watch him play every night. I’m not under any thought that they can go 19 and eight this month or something like I just I don’t have the kind of pitching to do that now. They do have the kind of hitting that we thought when the lineup gets back, get cows are back at Westbrook, back, you know, Mayo curse that whoever these guys are, whoever’s getting the O’Neill, he’s got paid a lot of money to hit 30 home runs this year. Let’s, let’s see where the next 20 coming from, and where are these at bats that there should be some nights they could score seven, eight or nine runs and offset whatever bad pitching they would get. The pitching has gotten a little bit more focused, a little better, but the hitting man and the situational hitting has just been it’s been uncanny. On nights where you look up and they’ve got 12 hits and three runs, and whether they’re winning or losing, it’s been uncanny. Yeah,
Maury Brown 37:58
this is where I don’t know if John Mayberry is the answer to getting the hitting turned around, but it can happen again. Let’s go back to Seattle, because, again, that’s a team I know well, and you’re about ready to see him. They were horrible last year. Nestor. I mean, they just struck out so much, stranding runners in scoring position. They were just terrible at it. And they did. They brought Edgar Martinez back, and once they brought him back, I mean, there was a real difference. And statistically, and you could see it visibly, they were just a lot better at the plate. So it can happen is John Mayberry the answer to these hitting problems, I don’t know, but they’re, look, they’re down staff right now. It’s not good to be down staff. I don’t know if it takes care of this problem in its entirety. I don’t see that. I just, I don’t right. I
Nestor Aparicio 38:55
8think John Mabry would come in and say, they got good ball players here. We got good hitters here. Let’s get into you know what I mean? Like, yeah, everybody loved that. You love this game. I had you on in February. Oh, my God, okay, great. It’s June. It’s they’re still here. Let’s get him healthy and get him Marty Brown is here. He’s with Forbes. He covers the business of baseball. He is out in Portland, Oregon. Covers the mariners, which is why I brought him on this week. Let’s get, let’s get, let’s do more baseball. I’m done with baseball. I had an occasion at Christmas time to go to lunch with friends and other friends. My wife had work friends and we had personal friends. And turned it into sort of, we’re down at amicis, my favorite place in Paul. Have you ever come to Baltimore? Thank you, to meet you, get your paneer rotunda, and we’re having, like, a holiday conversation. Our friend’s daughter was in town conducting this orchestra, and we got talking about my goofy belt buckles, my rock and roll belt buckles, and and the guy said to me, You know what? Tell me about this. And I’m like, yeah, there’s a couple belt bucks, really hard to get. There’s a Blues Brothers belt buckle. There’s a UFO belt buckle. It’s hard. And I just like, sort of threw that out. And I know what a. UFO fan you are, and you’re in a scorpions cover band. We’re going to get to the AC DC thing in a minute. But my wife went to lunch with this guy, again. He’s got a business, and it’s, it’s a thing and whatever. And he got me a gift, and she brought it home for me in in a bag and gave it to me. And when I opened it, it was the UFO belt buckle. Um, so, you know, I got this thing, and I’m, like, it was maybe the nicest gift anybody’s ever given me. It’s a really rare, weird, hard thing to get, and I now own it. So I wanted to show it to you because, like, you’ve got a Shanker thing. I’ve interviewed Shanker, but I, you know, I don’t know if I like your AC DC cover band better, or your scorpions. I mean, you’re in two different awesome bands using this amazing guitar skill set, you have to channel Malcolm young.
Maury Brown 40:47
Yeah, I, I so Malcolm young, right? Is a, I think, super underrated. I mean, as rhythm players go, he’s probably the best ever in my mind, and and I think the critics would kind of say the same thing, but it’s that’s it, and it’s great to do that, but I’ve been a lead player my whole career, so that kind of took a backseat for a long time, and I wanted to dig that back out. Now, granted, I’m not doing all the Matthias stuff, but I’m doing some, I’m doing more, and it’s just more technical. It the the scorpion stuff is, and again, the stuff on the love drive album that we do, I get to, you know, that’s Michael Shanker with the band after, you know, lonesome crow. And so, yeah, I get to do that. And there’s been talk Nestor, if we can find a dog on singer of doing myself, the other guitar player, guy named Mick Caldwell that’s plays in black and blue. Remember the 80s band out of that? He’s in a bunch of stuff. We’ve talked about doing a UFO Michael Shanker thing. And, yeah, that would be like, That would be awesome. Now I’d be doing the Paul Raymond thing. I’d be doing keyboards and guitar, but that UFO stuff. Look, you know how this works, and this happens for anybody that goes to concerts. Your first concert really affects you in a big way. And UFO was the first fan of the first concert that I went to. It was Dan the green in Oakland when Charlie Finley owned it. It was Frampton fluid Mac right after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Gary Wright and UFO.
Nestor Aparicio 42:33
There’s a lot of Fleetwood Mac footage from that show. Correct.
Maury Brown 42:37
That was, it was insane. This was the Frampton comes alive tour. UFO was on no heavy petting album, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. So that always stuck with me. I mean, it’s just really did. So UFO super underrated. They just never got good distribution. They should have been bigger than they were. And then Michael Shanker is kind of, you know, emotionally, was kind of all over the place, like disappear and, you know. But the truth about that band is, while the stuff post Michael Shanker is, I love it, no, I was just no place to run is getting remastered, and it’s a great album. The album that shaker did with them in the 90s, walk on water is fantastic. So it really shows that he, you know, that’s like, peak UFO stuff.
8Nestor Aparicio 43:27
Well, Mark Brown is a not UFO the TV show, or any of that, or even movies, the band UFO, and he’s in a scorpions cover band, love, love drives, name the band, correct? Yeah, yeah. And, and shoot the thrill. AC DC, So, AC DC, I’m going to end with this, and we’ll get together and we’ll do baseball again, hopefully the oils aren’t in last place next time we get together and they’re fixed somehow, um, AC DC goes out on the road, and I saw him playing over in Europe, and I didn’t even click on the videos, because, like, I saw Axel. I know Brian had some. Brian had vocal problems or hearing problems, which was, yeah,
44:02
he had hearing problems. I thought was hearing problems, right?
Nestor Aparicio 44:05
And I thought the band was done and dead, and then I thought they’re resurrecting them. And my wife always laughs. And I love kiss Paul Stanley. Nobody’s ever been kinder to me than Paul Stanley. I’d love to interview him again. I love Paul Stanley. My first love. Kiss alive, right? But we saw him in Hershey couple years ago. A lot of lip syncing, lot of just, like theatrical, not like, not good theatrical, just sort of like, you know, a performance, not a concert. And so at the end with a I saw Guns and Roses two summers ago, and hers should be left, I felt sorry for him, the band he was either tone deaf or has a monitor or like, it just was not any good at all. It was just really after seeing the pretenders be unbelievable warm and, you know, like, I I like, what I like, I can sort of stomach sort of fake foreigner and fake bands to some degree, if sing. Are gone or can’t do it anymore. You know, I’m not mad at journey for having different singers or sticks for having you know, I’m not that guy, but when I go, I better be good. Just make it good, whatever it is. Make it enjoyable. Make it good. Don’t make me cringe. And if you can’t do it anymore, I’m not here for an old timers game. And that goes for Engelbert Humperdinck, who I almost saw, who was 90 years old, who still can do it a little bit. Barry Manilow is running around and apparently still do it. Tom Jones, I almost went and saw him in Vegas. There are some acts I want to see if they can still do it. So Rod Stewart can still do it. Blew me away. Last summer, how good he won. Really entertaining, excellent band. The whole thing were worthwhile, even if not as good as ever worthwhile, right? AC DC was, I thought I was done. I didn’t think I was gonna go my buddy. JT the brick, I’m sure you, you know. JT, hit me in Vegas in the middle of the night. Sent me like a video. He’s like, Dude, you gotta go see AC DC. They’re unbelievable. And I’m like, I love I love you, brick. He’s been wrong before about things, so I’m like, Yeah, you know, sorry. Like, and then they went to like, Minneapolis, or someplace, couple days later, and one of my buddies up there is like, dude, saw AC DC. It was incendiary. You gotta go. And I’m like, All right. And I remember looking and tickets in Pittsburgh were really cheap. And I talked to my wife, I’m like, you want to go to Pittsburgh, cacdc, maybe, and they were in DC. And I’m like, we kind of hate the DC thing. And it was really expensive in DC at the moment, and Pittsburgh was 55 degrees. I’m like, I’m not driving to Pittsburgh and wearing winter coat, and Dave Matthews is here. There’s 51 degrees. I’m like, I’m not doing that. The night of AC DC, it was like, voila. 78 degrees, a little threat of rain. But whatever tickets were like, I paid 20 bucks to see AC DC, so like, I paid 40 bucks to park. We went down there, my wife and I, and for the minute we started, we cranked up Highway to Hell in the car going down. Girls got rhythm, touched your mud, like the whole deal. By the time we got down there, we were pretty cranked up, and we went in, and it was legendarily great. It was just like, from the like, I was texting my rock and roll buddy John Allen from stone horses and Esther, and he actually wrote the song, 1985 shake ass on the white snakes car. And I’m like, dude, they’re great. Mari, they were great. AC, DC was great. It was, you know, I saw him on, you know, back in black. I mean, like, literally, it was great. Yeah,
Maury Brown 47:30
8I I didn’t go, mostly because it was cost prohibitive for me. But I’ve seen him a bunch, I mean, a bunch of bunch I first time was 78 with bond, and then I saw them pretty much every tour after that, and they’re always great. I couldn’t get down with actual rose filling. And I know why they did right? And I know they tried it. I know there was some talk about it, but every clip that I saw and I watched the live stream of the first show that they came back with, and I was like, Okay, you’re tuned down a full step. I get it. You know, your vocal range isn’t as what it used to be to play, to pitch like you did on the albums, it still sounded great. And so, I mean, but this is it, it’s gotta be, there’s no, that’s
Nestor Aparicio 48:28
what I thought I and I almost went to Cleveland the other night, Mari, I swear, I had buddies in Cleveland, munch and Bernardo. And, I mean, I almost, I mean, I had John to say, maybe only get the car got because I thought, man, you know, it’s a little bit like seeing a good player at the end, you know what? I mean, it’s sort of like that. That was really good. Like, we, we walked out of land over that night, really satiated, really, like, wow, that was great. You know,
Maury Brown 48:54
the set list, the set list was really good. I think it’s great. I mean, it’s got a lot some newer stuff, right? But it was, it was, it’s pretty long. And, I mean, I think that’s the thing that’s most surprising. I thought they would mail it in. They do an hour at
Nestor Aparicio 49:11
most, like Aerosmith was doing that at the end, right? Just play. Yeah, they
8Maury Brown 49:16
so. But I think that the core thing for them, and what’s really smart is they’re doing very limited dates, right? They’re just doing a handful, and it’s all stadium stuff that gives Brian time to go ahead and bounce back. And then I don’t know what they did with this hearing. I know that he had something special done. I haven’t seen any pictures. I gotta assume he’s doing in ears by now, because it would just be impossible to just crank wedges at this stage, and the stages are so big you just can’t do floor wedges anymore. So yeah, I mean, it’s weird to look at at Angus, all gray. I remember when Jimmy Page finally said, I’m no longer. To color my hair and went all white, and you just look at him, you go, man, dude’s old, but he’s still Angus Young. He’s still really great. It’s never going to move. 1978 1980 Angus. I mean, to see that was the most frenetic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And like, it’s really hard. I because in my band, it’s like, my guitar players my age, which is, you know, we’re not young, we’re in our 60s. So it’s like, Dude, you gotta keep moving and and he does, but it’s like to try and get to that level. It’s not so I think the thing that’s interesting, I I just picked up, we picked up a couple new songs, and I picked up big gun, right? Which is kind of off one soundtrack thing. And doggone it, Malcolm’s doing this weird stuff, like where you would traditionally do this thing over here, which is, I will get into the semantics of it, but he just adds this little thing in there that you’re like, what’s he doing that’s different there, that should just be a straight A like he’s done on power a chord through this thing here, he’s doing something different there, where he’s layering something over the top. And that’s the thing that I always find, that you could take a formula that has gone on for 50 years, like they never changed, and yet it always seems to work, because they just are so good at what they do. It’s like, why change it? And there’s, I’m glad to see they’re going out this way. It’s not like Rush, where they went out on this super high note with Clockwork Angels, right? Which was kind of a high water mark. They’re, you know, the last studio albums haven’t been fantastic. They’re a couple of good tracks on each one, but, yeah, this is a good way for them to go out. I mean, get the tour out of the way and call it, you know, you’re glad, I’m glad you get to see it. Like I said, I’m not gonna go. It was just cost prohibitive for me. Out here on the West Coast is super spendy, so it
Nestor Aparicio 51:56
was just great. I mean, you know, I’m just and I you could not have told me the last time we chatted, that I would go and be like, yeah, probably, you know, I saw them many times. The last time I saw them, I looked it up is 1991 money talks at the capital center. I caught the Angus dollar bills. I had, you know, I had it in my billfold. And I look back and, like, flick of the switch. And, you know, those kinds of that era there. Let’s get it up and it just yeah, that I like AC DC more than I think I do, and I think that that really came through for me. And my wife really likes ad like AC DC. We just really had a good time. It was like, it was a great night. And I don’t always feel that way about concerts, but I thought of you, Mari Brad and your band. Shoot the thrill. My brown shoots the thrill in two rock and roll bands, one with the scorpions and AC DC. But more than that, he is the Forbes baseball, a guy as well as the business of baseball. You know, next time we get together, I’m, you know, just the business of baseball, just streaming and all the issues and where the money’s coming from. I would just leave you with this. And I’ve told this story a couple times this week, but here in Baltimore, we’ve had this trauma, and the new owner stuff, a buddy of mine, gave them some money on that bird land. It’s, you know, the account where you just give them money and you get the discounts and all that. He didn’t want to use the money on his account because they’re in last place, and it’s June. They ain’t getting his money again. And that’s really when we talk about you, we go back to the baseball thing. That’s the part that frightens me for all of this, when I see them playing in Sacramento with the A’s in a minor league stadium, and sort of like, where is this going? Where’s the next big idea, you know, and that, that’s the part that concerns me. For baseball as you cover it, you know? Yeah, I mean,
Maury Brown 53:45
attendance looks like it’s going to be up again. So I think some changes, obviously, rule changes, make the game a little bit snappier. But the thing that’s the most concerning, and this is, look, I don’t even want it. We could do a whole segment on why. I don’t think a salary cap fixes it, but I think the bad thing Nestor is we are going to see a work stoppage at the end of 2026 into 2027 and I don’t see how we don’t see some games lost. I think the owners are going to go after a salary cap
Nestor Aparicio 54:20
8the end of next year, correct? Yeah. The CBA
Maury Brown 54:23
ends at the beginning of December of 2026 they from now on, every time a labor deal is done, you will see an off season lockout. It’s just going to be like clockwork. They don’t want to strike. They don’t want to put the power in the hands of the players later on. That’s why we lost the World Series in the 90s. So you will see that time and time again, because they use it as leverage, and it’s just a bad place to be right now. I think that everybody realizes it’s going to happen again, like we did last time the bat. You know, last time we had a week, they compressed the season. They got 162 In with one last week of calendar. I don’t see how they don’t lose regular season games this time around. I, you know, I don’t know how far they go. Once you get into June, you’re starting to talk about owners leaving money on the table at that point with summer and the kids. But April, March, May. Maybe.
Nestor Aparicio 55:22
Man, you know, we got enough problems around here without them. Mark Brown is here, you know, I’m much more optimistic about rock and roll saving me than, than, than the Baltimore Orioles. I certainly felt that way with, you know, Mike Peters funeral last week, from the alarm, my buddy, just, you just sort of move my rock and roll soul in a different direction here, sir, uh, Hey, man, take care of yourself. We’ll always have ac dc together. I’m going to get out to your hair fest one of these days and just party down with all those cover bands out there. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore positive. You.
