A six-game winning streak this week and the re-emergence of Adley Rutschman – and better pitching – all have the Orioles pointed in the right direction. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the current state of the Birds and the bizarre first-time appearance in rented Sacramento to play the scuffling former Oakland Athletics in a minor-league stadium.
Nestor Aparicio and Luke Jones discussed the Baltimore Orioles’ recent six-game winning streak and the encouraging performance of Adley Rutschman, who had two or three-hit games and hit a crucial home run. They highlighted the Orioles’ need to sustain this momentum, with a focus on improved pitching and the return of key players like Cedric Mullins and Grayson Rodriguez. They also critiqued Major League Baseball’s leadership, particularly the relocation of the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, and the broader challenges of maintaining fan interest and financial stability in the sport.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Orioles, Adley Rutschman, winning streak, pitching, Sacramento, A’s, Las Vegas, baseball attendance, salary cap, competitive balance, streaming services, MLB leadership, minor league stadiums, fan engagement, player development.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones, Speaker 1
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. We’re positively into a beautiful weekend here. Finally got some summer esque weather. I’m looking forward to that. I had a great day out of green mount station, tore up the gods country, up Carroll County, up near where Luke lives. So brought to you by our friends at Liberty pure and our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratch off. They were very popular. Greenmount station in Hampstead had some great guests. We’ll be back out next friday at fade leaves in Lexington market. I have put together 16 Maryland crab cakes tour stops this summer. Going to be at readers crab house up in Reisterstown. We’re going to be at the Y in Randallstown at the pool in a couple of weeks. We’re also going to be getting to the new Costas at the racetrack in Timonium. And I made a commitment to my pal Mike McKelvin out at 1623, brewing out in Eldersburg. Will be out there in early July. This guy has been in Owings Mills. He’s been up late out early with the Seattle Mariners and the Baltimore Orioles and will be up late in Sacramento, California this weekend as the Kansas City Oakland A’s of Las Vegas play in Sacramento. Luke joins us now. The Orioles have won six games in a row. Don’t look now it is this is a full fledged comeback to 500 but what is a Sleepless in Seattle sweep full in Seattle this week?
Luke Jones 01:26
Yeah, some good baseball, certainly some encouraging signs. I mean, look, they’re still 11 under 500 they still have a long way to go to continue to play the kind of baseball that they’re going to need to play to get back to 500 to dare I say, get themselves back in the wild card race. But this is good to see. This is encouraging. I think no matter what your expectations are the rest of the year, and understanding the reality of where the math is when you bury yourself in mid May, the way that the Orioles did, this is encouraging. And I think specifically we’ve talked about the fact that they’ve pitched so well, are they going to continue to pitch with their starting rotation to this degree? Who knows. But I think the biggest takeaway from Seattle was Adley rutschman. I mean, Adley rutschman with two, three hit games, a couple home runs. Hits the big home run to tie the game on Thursday afternoon. I mean, we’ve seen Adley rutschman Have good games here and there. I mean, opening day in Rogers Center comes to mind. But it’s been very fleeting. It’s been he looks good for a day. He looks good for a couple games here or there, and then it’s right back to whatever it’s been over the last 11 calendar months, but he’s made a couple adjustments. And I mean, two, three hit games in a three game series, the long ball, a big time long ball on Thursday afternoon. I mean, we’ll see. But well, he’s capable.
Nestor Aparicio 02:59
He has all the skill set. He’s 26 year old, one one, unless he’s hurt, and that’s something we talked about all last summer. And,
Luke Jones 03:10
yeah, I’m not, I don’t want to hear about health anymore. I mean, if it’s health for all this time, then he shouldn’t be playing. But, yeah, he’s 27 years old. He shouldn’t be washed up, you know, I mean, we’re not talking about a 33 year old catcher who’s who’s caught too much. So it’s encouraging to see. I know some people on social media. I know Andy Costa. Costa, of the banners, talked about maybe him eliminating the toe tap. I mean, he’s made adjustments. I know one thing that it’s been studied is what we’re saying. Yes, right? I mean, I think everyone’s been confused as to why the struggles have endured to this degree for this long, and I don’t think anyone has really come up with a a reason justifying that, but it’s not been a lack of of effort. It’s not been a lack of troubleshooting behind the scenes. I mean, I don’t think as much as maybe the we could say the Orioles have maybe been in denial, or maybe have shown too much confidence in him, keeping him in the number two spot in the order. For example, behind the scenes they’ve been doing work. It’s not as though they’ve recognized and said, Oh, nothing to see here. He’s fine. I don’t think that’s the case at all. So you’re hoping that some of these adjustments, maybe the fact that he was back in the Pacific Northwest, of course, he played at Oregon State. He’s from that part of the country, maybe that helped him as well. But you just want to see him keep that going. Because we’ve talked about it. I’ve talked about this a lot, in terms of where the Orioles are in 2025 and where they’re going this off season, next year beyond, it still comes back to their young core, and I mean Adley rutschman and gunner Henderson and, of course, Gunner, they go back to back on Thursday afternoon to turn a two run deficit into a one run lead, and they win the game to to get the sweep. But it begins with those two guys. But it really begins with Adley. Lee. I mean, this is the guy we were talking about months before the Orioles even drafted him, when the Orioles completely fell apart in 2018 there was already talk at that point that, hey, Adley rutschman, the Oregon State catcher that that’s, that’s the guy that’s going to be the one one. I mean, yes, people talked a little bit about Bobby Witt, but it was Adley rutchman, because he had been the golden boy in college baseball for two years. So this was the guy that was the face of all that hope that Mike Elias was trying to sell at that point in time, because this team had completely cratered under the previous regime. So well, we’ve just been
Nestor Aparicio 05:38
hearing about him longer. He was the first great hope, right? Yeah, exactly. So Ben McDonald was 35 years ago, right?
Luke Jones 05:44
No doubt. And look, I mean, the decision of rutschman over Bobby Witt, that ship sailed, right? I mean, I think we all understand that even if Adley rutschman being the best version of himself, what Bobby Witt has become, that that was the Orioles lost that in that sense. But that doesn’t mean that Adley rutschman can’t be a very valuable player and a very important player moving forward. So I’m not fixated so much on that decision anymore, as much as just get this guy back on track, get this guy looking like he’s a valuable commodity, again, an all star caliber catcher, because we saw it for two years. If you can win a World Series
Nestor Aparicio 06:20
with Adley rutschman and Jackson holiday and Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westberg. Then you didn’t miss out on drafting a shortstop. You know, like exactly, I look at it and
Luke Jones 06:28
again. I mean, it’s, it’s very easy to look at these things with with hindsight. I mean, we all have 2020, vision when you look back, but you can’t have it be what it’s become over the last year, which is Bobby Witt MVP candidate in the American League, and Adley rutschman replacement level hitter going back to July of last year. So look, it’s a it’s a few games. He’s looked better at the plate the last couple of weeks overall. But he’s got to sustain that. He’s got to continue that. But we can only go off of what we’re seeing right now. And it’s the same thing with the Orioles. Collectively, they’ve won nine of 11. They’ve won six in a row. It’s been largely the starting pitching. It’s not as though they’ve scored a ton of runs in these games. So that’s where, to me, you look at it, one of two ways you can say that. You know, this is part of the the ebb and flow of the season that even bad teams are going to play well for stretches. And you know, you can look at it and say, Well, you know, they’ve been a lot of one run wins. I don’t know how real it is. Or you can say maybe they are trying. They have found some footing from a pitching standpoint. Maybe they’re not going to continue to have a two starter era the way they have over the last better part of the last two weeks, but it can be better. And oh yeah, Colton cows are back now. Jordan Westberg could be back this weekend, if not this weekend, very soon thereafter. And looking at some of the other guys that are going to be coming back as well. So you say, All right, if they get the pitching to a certain level, which isn’t going to be dominant by any means, because they just don’t have dominant arms, but better, more consistent than it was the first two months of the season, and their offense starts seeking its level of what we’ve all expected it to be, or close to it, then you are talking about a team that’s playing better baseball. And then, you know, you get to the point where you say, all right, you’re 11 under going into this series in Sacramento. I don’t know if you’ve looked at what the A’s have done over the last month. I mean, we’ve talked about the Orioles burying themselves. The A’s were 22 and 20, and then they went, proceeded to lose 20 of their next 21 games before they won on Thursday. They’ve been an utter disaster. They went from 22 and 22 to what they are now, which is just absolutely hopeless, you know, 24 and 40. So at a minimum, you have, you have to win two out of three this weekend. If you don’t, then, you know, there’s a nice winning streak. But I’m starting to wonder if it was just a nice winning streak, and that’s it. So you have a chance this weekend. You can get to within single digits of the 500 mark, and then you come home, and you’ll have a big test after that, of course, with the Tigers coming into town. But you know, you just have to take it. I’ve said this going back to probably April, when we started talking about the Orioles being under 500 you can’t make it all back in one night. You can’t make it all back in one series, but you
Nestor Aparicio 09:26
win six in a row. It helps. Oh,
Luke Jones 09:28
no question, no question. But how you do that isn’t, isn’t going into the mindset and saying, oh, let’s win 12 in a row.
Nestor Aparicio 09:36
Well, you’re also doing that, trying to get guys back, right? So you know, first things, first, getting healthy players, getting cows are back, and then Westberg back, you know, Eflin came back a couple of weeks ago. These guys that were out that I don’t know where Grayson, Rodriguez, or, you know, any of the other saviors coming across the hill, but they were a well constructed team before. Opening Day, other than starting pitching, like just in a general sense, we were a little worried about their pitching. Who were the five guys going to be, who are the eight or nine guys going to be? That’s going to get them through the season? We learned that Kyle Gibson wasn’t one of those guys, right? And you look at Povich, I mean, it feels like a guy like Povich is going to get a whole season where the starts out of this, there’s a guy there that should be the number seven or eight starter in the organization. He might wind up making 28 starts this year. Yeah,
Luke Jones 10:26
and you’re hoping that along the way, he might look like someone that you is going to stick around. I mean, I’ve said to you, going back to last September, I think there’s the makings of a decent major league pitcher in there. I like, I’m not saying he’s going to become an ace or anything like anything like that, but he competes. I know the numbers aren’t fantastic, but I mean, what he did the other night in Seattle that that was good enough, right? I mean, he got into the sixth inning. It wasn’t dominant. He’s good enough
Nestor Aparicio 10:53
is getting into the sixth inning with three or four runs. If he would have had that all year, the team would be two games under 500 and not correct.
Luke Jones 11:01
And probably even better than that, if they swung the bats in any shape or form the way we thought they were going to. But here we are, right. I mean, there’s nothing you can do to change that, but you can play better from this point forward, and that’s what’s been encouraging the last couple weeks. I mean, they’re what they’re now a couple of games over 500 under Tony mancellino, and I’ll give him credit, right? I mean, as much as people have poked fun at some of his, you know, comments that he makes, or it feels like, even if you watch some of the pre and post game pressers, it feels like he’s a little more comfortable in that role. And that’s not to say that I think he’s going to be the permanent manager, or should be, or anything like that, just he looks more comfortable now than he did two and a half. He’s got a better record than the last guy so far. Sure, sure. So, so, you know, they’re playing better. It’s it’s not perfect. They still have a long, long, long way to go, dude,
Nestor Aparicio 11:51
they get back into the pennant race with Tony mancellino. He can’t get fired, right? I mean, seriously, I mean, I don’t know, they get back into Penn race. He’s 1520, games over 500 Yeah. I mean, I’m like, Hey, I haven’t talked about that out loud, but they are winning games with him. So while they are, I gotta say
Luke Jones 12:10
that would be a good problem and a good debate to have, right? I mean, you’d love to even have that discussion, right? I mean, two weeks ago, we were thinking, is this team going to avoid 100 losses? And now fans are starting to get excited again and look, it’s a long way to go. I mean, you still look at it. I was just crunching the numbers before we started. You know, when you’re talking about a team that’s 25 and 36 even after winning nine of the last 11 to finish 85 and 77 they’ve got to go 60 and 41 the rest of the way. That’s a 96 win pace over a full season, to go 88 and 74 which then you’re talking that’s a sweet spot for a wild card spot. You know, if you look at the last several years, they have to go 63 and 38 that’s 101 win pace. The rest of the year even, to go
Nestor Aparicio 12:54
80 go 63 and 38 to get to 88 wins. Wow. Stop. Stop the stop. The music. Call a cab as Charlie. I mean, that’s, that’s
Luke Jones 13:02
daunting. I mean, that’s what happens when you fall 18 under 500 I mean, you’ve created a mountain of work to, you know, to accomplish, even to go 81 and 81 you’re still talking about a 56 and 45 finish. So they’ve got a lot of work to do before we even start talking about the trade deadline dynamic, or anything that had that happens. But as I’ve said for a while, getting
Nestor Aparicio 13:27
a full team back by the all star break, or by the trade deadline, that would include, what westburg That would include, Mullin,
Luke Jones 13:34
Tyler O’Neill, Cedric Mullins, Ramon Laureano, I mean, by, by the all star break. I mean Grayson Rodriguez has started playing catch. I mean, I don’t know. I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 13:46
that might be radish is going to pitch in late August, right? Yeah,
Luke Jones 13:49
Bradish. I mean, Bradish, from, by all accounts, it sounds like he’s doing well, like it doesn’t sound like it feels like he’s made really good progress with Tommy John, and you don’t want to do anything foolish with him. However, if he is ready by August, regardless of where the team is, but if, if you genuinely feel like he’s ready to pitch by August, man, you’d love to get him five starts, six starts before the season ends, to then go into next year with him. You know, really not having many limitations, in the same way that we thought of Batista the first month and a half. And a half, two months. And now we look at him where he’s pitching back to back days, and they’re kind of treating him like a regular reliever again, even if he’s not doing the the multi inning stints that that he would have a couple years ago, which he may never do that. And they might say, hey, we shouldn’t do that with him, because his elbow blew up then so but, but the point with that is you do have some reinforcements that could be coming later in the season that either bode well for next year, or if you do find yourself in that space that somehow you get back in the race. And again, I’m not, I need to see this. And people are going to say, well, they’re playing. Better. Yeah, they need to play better for a long time. I mean, that’s, that’s the truth here. I mean, they could win 11 more in a row and have a 17 game winning streak, and we’re still talking about a team that is just at 500 then. So, I mean, God bless. I mean, it’s, it’s been fun to watch them play better. You definitely get a different vibe to them. I mean, look at Thursday’s game. Cal Raleigh hits the home run. You decided to pitch to him. You’re thinking, Ah, man, that that’s a deflator. I mean, they could have walked him. I mean, the rest of that Seattle lineup struggling, and then they come right back. I mean, how many times going back to last, last year, the second half of last year, have we seen this team just kind of deflate as the game goes on, and if they’re trailing, they just kind of want to say, lay down, but just they look defeated. I mean, we talked about that over and over and over, and yet now the vibe feels a little more like what we saw a couple years ago, where they’d have come back wins, and they’d win close games, and they’d score late in games, and they do just enough to figure out how to win. They’ve got that vibe going for them right now. They don’t, if nothing else, you know, forget about the math, forget about playoffs or anything like that. They definitely have a different mojo to them. The last week, week to 10 days, it’s felt different. They’ve had a different vibe. It feels like they’re having fun again. Obviously, winning produces that, you know, I you know, it’s the whole, does winning breed chemistry or vice versa? You know? I think it’s yes to both at times, but you got to win. You’re not going to have fun if you’re losing to the degree that they were losing for the first two, you know, eight weeks of the season. So, you know, you’ve got a great opportunity this weekend. Like I said, the A’s have been an absolute disaster. I mean, they, they had lost 20 of 21 before they won on Thursday,
Nestor Aparicio 16:51
by the way, this when I put the television on and I’m going to be watching triumph sing the free game songs for before game two of the Stanley Cup Finals in Edmonton, but I put a game on in Sacramento, and I’ve seen this Tampa Bay thing, it’s spring training, but, but beyond that, we’re 21 years out on the expos, playing in San Juan. And you know, we’ve had other circumstances, whether the Blue Jays played in Buffalo during the plague and different things that baseball could do. It really. Whenever I talk to Mari brown or I’m talking to Barry bloom, talking to baseball, I talked to Tim kirkian Last week, just people in the baseball space, this just smacks to me of inconceivable poor leadership, like just the fact that all those years I went out to that dump in Oakland, they could never figure it out. I remember going out there like six, seven years ago to see, five years ago, see Pearl Jam at the the arena that’s in the parking lot, and just walking around the outside of the baseball stadium at that point, you know, rats and broken things and just, I can’t begin to tell you what a disgrace the Oakland A’s were the last 10 years. And I’m thinking the only thing more disgraceful is moving them two and a half hours to the east to be rented by the people of Sacramento to have this Las Vegas thing. This has been going on 20 years. Luke like and the Expos thing felt like at that time, whether it was contraction and Bud Selig and we’re going to contract Montreal and Minnesota and this and that, getting Jesse Ventura was on my show, your buddy, you know, at that time, at the turn of the century, trying to keep the twins in Minnesota. This is, you know, we watch the games for three days. I just don’t want to lose sight of when you think the people in baseball might know what they’re doing. They don’t. Because if they had any foresight, any clue, any strategy, they would not allow this to take place. They just wouldn’t.
Luke Jones 18:56
Yeah, I mean, I try to have a little bit of understanding with the race situation, from the standpoint of a hurricane blew the roof off the trop, but at the same time, to your point, the A’s, I mean, that’s been talked about since I was, I mean, barely out of college, you know, and I’m 41 years old now. I mean, you mentioned the
Nestor Aparicio 19:21
expos, the fact that the A’s couldn’t play dates at the San Francisco stadium that’s four miles away that they could not figure out as Major League Baseball to play in a major league Stadium in a market.
Luke Jones 19:32
Well, think about that part, part of that, I how much of that was just the hostility of the BA area toward the team at that point in time. I mean, we saw, we saw how ugly
Nestor Aparicio 19:40
it was with only him, anywhere there, there. Nobody’s gonna come, yeah? Well, not just that, but
Luke Jones 19:44
people are gonna protest. I mean, we saw that outside the Coliseum the last couple
Nestor Aparicio 19:49
good for them as a guy, the birds one time, good for them. I’m not,
Luke Jones 19:52
I’m not disparaging that. I just think that was kind of the reality of where they were. I mean, they were persona non grata, where it’s like, no, we don’t, we don’t want. Here, get out. I mean, so, so, so that’s, you know, that’s a but, but it’s funny because you mentioned the expos. I mean, you know, I mean, we all remember 1994 I mean, I remember, even though I was, you know, not quite 11 years old, but how great the Expos were that summer and and what they were and what the possibilities were before the strike. And then you think about it, 11 years later, they were in DC, and they were the Nationals. So you think about and that felt like those were a long 11 years, dude. No, it was, it was, I agree, but even that was resolved in a decade’s time where, you know, and really, I mean, it wasn’t 9495 I mean, but post strike. I mean, that was the death now for for Montreal baseball. I mean, I think we all understand that, but even that was resolved much more swiftly than what we’re seeing with the A’s. I mean, the A’s don’t have a city name attached to their, their, their officially the athletics. I mean, that’s embarrassing, right? I mean this,
Nestor Aparicio 20:59
you know? I mean, it just shows that Rob Manfred should not be the,
Luke Jones 21:04
I mean, it’s just, he’s just one of the, I mean, it’s one of these deals where, again, the rays with Tampa and a hurricane, and obviously their complications there with thinking they maybe had a stadium deal, but Not really, and, and obviously their future is as murky as ever. But at least there was, there was some Mother Nature, you know, some. So the reason
Nestor Aparicio 21:29
these futures are murky is no one wants these teams. If Nashville wanted a team, they’d have one. If Austin, Texas wanted a team, they’d have one. I had Maury brown on from Portland, they’re never getting one, right. Like, you know, Buffalo’s never getting the team. Louisville’s never getting the team. You know, I’m going through these Birmingham, these places that have kicked tires in the WFL and the USFL, and, you know, thoughts I’ve been to these places. You know, Phoenix couldn’t support a hockey team, so now Salt Lake City has one. I just it’s ill conceived. And the thought that they’re going to be the third team that goes into Vegas and play 100 games a year, 80 games a year, baseball in the heat, and people are going to come to the games, and people are going to go to Vegas and want to go to a baseball game. I don’t know. Dude. I mean, you know, I think the whole thing’s ill conceived. I
Luke Jones 22:23
think it’s a model that can work well for a certain amount of time, you know, because every everyone would say, hey, the Orioles gonna be in Vegas. Let’s go to Vegas for a four day weekend or something like that. That sounds great the first time you do it, maybe the second time you do it, you know, in the matter of a few years. But after a while, you’re not going there anymore, right? I mean, it’s the same, same idea. For anyone who loves visiting other ballparks, you’re only going to
Nestor Aparicio 22:46
go to all the Red Sox and Yankees fans don’t come to Camden Yards anymore. It’s not right. I mean, you’re only going to do that for
Luke Jones 22:51
so long, unless they end up becoming a really good team. And then there’s a little bit of a, you know, a different factor there. But, yeah, it’s a shelf life idea. It’s something that has some appeal in the short term, but you’re not going to do that year after year after year. I mean, you’re going to go see other ballpark.
Nestor Aparicio 23:10
I’ll say this about baseball, and I’ve learned how different, how old and how white, and how horrible the people that run it have been over my lifetime, and the arrogance that comes with every Greg Bader that I’ve ever met, every Katie Griggs I’ve ever met, in regard to what they think they are and what they’ve become, what the sport has become. And I even run into that with you, who is like into it, always, into wherever, that there is some sort of denial about how empty all of these stadia are like, I saw Seattle the last couple their first place, there’s nobody there. It’s like Ken Griffey never played there. It’s like they never won a World Series because they didn’t, um, and and then I see you trying to start something in a place like Las Vegas, where I’ve been going for 30 years. I know how transit is. I’ve seen it grow. I’ve got friends that live there. I got media friends that live there. The whole deal, the thought that low baseball is local. You’ll agree with that, right? Baseball is, yeah, is the most local of local things. That’s
Luke Jones 24:12
why national TV numbers don’t do much for me. Because I’ve said it all the time. Look at the time, the time requirement it takes to be a fan of a single team. So no, I’m not going to watch a whole lot of other baseball when I’m not watching my own team, because I don’t have enough hours in the day. Go ahead. Well, when
Nestor Aparicio 24:28
I was 12, I collected baseball cards, and I could tell you all that right now, as a grown person, where there’s a million things going on in my life, and a baseball team that clearly doesn’t care about me, you the community. I mean, these people are, they’re like, they’re like the Cowardly Lion. There’s no heart. There’s no heart in what the Baltimore Orioles have done or become under Angelo’s or this. That’s why the stadium is empty. That’s why, when I go out in the community, people tell me about how they don’t go to games and they don’t give them money, and when they want to give them money. Mean it feels like it costs too much, or it feels like too much of a pain in the ass, or let me check the weather, let me check the standings, like it it’s a decision to go to a baseball game, it’s a financial decision, and it would be in Las Vegas too. And the only reason I’m bringing this up about Las Vegas is I know how hard the Orioles should be working to get every Baltimorean into the Orioles, because that’s all they’ve got. They got. They got Roy Firestone, my buddy Hell’s down in Arkansas, Joel poorly, down into they got a handful of scattered Oriole fans that live other places, but their primary focus should be 35 miles from the ballpark and in and get everyone there to love the team, because they have to. That’s who’s going to come to the but that’s who’s going to fundamentally support the team. And it’s such a local issue, trying to go into Las Vegas with a baseball team nobody cares about and do it with an old name and an elephant and go in there and build a stadia and say the tourists are going to go see the lousy A’s play the twins on a Tuesday night when no one likes baseball that much, in a general sense, you have to be old and white to like baseball. That’s just kind of like, I go stick, I hit the clicker in the Turner, and I go around. It’s old. It’s very white. And I don’t think they’re going to go into a market where the Raiders have sucked a lot of money out, where the stars have sucked out that thing in Vegas that has become the local they were the first local team. They sort of came in first, gave out swag, first went to the Stanley Cup Finals, first won the cup for they, you know, doing all of that stuff. And now you’re going to bring a baseball team in third at this point in the game. It’s a disaster. I mean, it’s going to look like expos games. There’s going to be 3800 people at every game, and people have other things to do in Vegas. Vegas is stupid expensive to think. If you’re an Oriole fan, I’m going to spend a weekend in Vegas or in San Diego. You’re going to go to San Diego, because it’s going to be a third of the price. So I just, I have all sorts of reasons why this is terrible, but watching this this weekend, I just wanted to talk about it. By the way, I invited Charlie finley’s daughter on. She wrote a book on the A’s. I have the other book written on Charlie Finley, the Jason turbo wrote, you know, I have some A’s fascination and and the affinity of Billy ball and Reggie Jackson and like all of that. But what this is tonight is disgraceful. And watching this, and by the way, I did a long interview this week. You’ll hear it. Guy named Tom Cousins doesn’t mean anything, but he was a longtime sports editor to the Sacramento Bee. He was one of my bosses at the news American in 1984 in sports first. I’ve known him 41 years. He went to Sacramento in 1986 and he’s been there his whole life, and he’s a lifelong Oriole fan. He grew up here. Grew up. He grew up motion city, but spent his time in Baltimore. He’s real Baltimore. Got a Baltimore accent, and I had him on for an hour, and he said, the minute that the team was coming to Sacramento, he, like, bought the tickets for the weekend, paid $85 a ticket for the whole weekend is sitting right field now. Tickets are 20 bucks. Of course, it’s like the concert rip off, but they all went guns blaring into Sacramento, thinking people were going to show up in these minor league ballparks and that people were going to embrace Major League Baseball. And they think the same thing in Vegas. And I just think this is a product of their incompetence and their arrogance. And I it’s, it’s just a it’s a disgrace after San Juan and what they did with the expos, the fact that they’re still playing that game 22 years, 23 years later, it just tells me how bereft of leadership they are and ideas. Well, look,
Luke Jones 28:33
I mean, I’m not going to sit here and defend Major League Baseball’s leadership, because I certainly don’t think too much of it, but what I’m looking at Vegas nights in the NHL there were 13th in attendance last year. I mean, it’s expensive to go to hockey games. It is, but it’s now. It’s helped that they’ve been good. I mean, they’ve kind of bucked the trend of, you know, what you expect an expansion team to be so but trying
Nestor Aparicio 28:59
to sell 2 million baseball tickets in Las Vegas in the summer, or thinking that you’re going to do that. I don’t know. I don’t know well, but
Speaker 1 29:07
they’re having a there’s going to be a retractable roof, though, right? I mean, that’s about the weather. I’m just what people want to do local Las Vegas. People falling into going to 30 baseball games a year and thinking that, but how there are, but how’s that 45,000 people that want to be there? But how’s that different from hockey? Though? You know what I mean? Like, I if it supports hockey, I mean, I don’t know why they wouldn’t support let me be clear. This isn’t me saying they’re going to lead the league in attendance, but, you know, I’m just trying
Nestor Aparicio 29:35
to figure out if it’s a good idea or a bad idea, or a money idea. And I remember playing these games in Sacramento, if they’re going to play minor league games somewhere, just moving play them in Vegas, you know, like, I mean, get the team there. I mean, I remember watching the Oilers play the Houston Oilers of Tennessee, of Nashville, playing in Memphis, and nobody there. Yeah. I
Luke Jones 29:56
mean, I suppose you know you don’t want them playing. And out outdoors in a minor league Stadium in Vegas, I guess. I mean, if there were, if there was a compromise to play at the Raiders stadium, you know, to, you know, some ill conceived Park dimensions. Something
Nestor Aparicio 30:12
even more ill conceived, thinking of how, like
Luke Jones 30:17
the Dodgers, played at the Coliseum before Dodger stadium was built, you know, when they moved from Brooklyn to LA, I’ve seen
Nestor Aparicio 30:22
those pictures of Louis Aparicio there in 59 at the world the best is the left field fence looks like it’s about 212 feet. It’s, they
Luke Jones 30:29
had a net. You you had to hit the ball over the net. Or it was a, what a ground rule double. I think it was, or it might have been in play. I’m trying to think it was wild, like, it’s,
Nestor Aparicio 30:37
it was like, rob the bill uses backyard that we had, yeah, it was
Luke Jones 30:40
literally, like, it was very, they had very odd ground rules with that. But, yeah, I mean, look, I mean, it’s, I think so much with baseball is going to hinge on this next CBA and their next TV deal. It feels like five today in Vegas. You’re already, you’re already having people talking about that there’s going to be a work stoppage now a couple of years out, you know, I’ve
Nestor Aparicio 31:06
already heard that Maury Brown said, end the next year. It’s shut down. I mean, it really feels
Luke Jones 31:10
like this could be the time when a salary cap actually does come now that’s going to, don’t lose games in order for that to happen. You know, not saying it’ll necessarily be a full season, like trying to
Nestor Aparicio 31:22
think in the modern era, who’s going to fight against the salary cap and well,
Luke Jones 31:26
and I think, but, but I think that’s the key for the players. And maybe you know how much of this has been delivered by MLB owners. I mean, certainly you could be cynical and say, yeah. But there is the sense of, you know, you already kind of have, it’s not a hard cap, but it’s acted, you know, when the Yankees have even reined in their spending, you know, the Dodgers are the and the Mets are the exceptions. But some of these other teams have reined it in a little bit because of the luxury tax thresholds. You do wonder if, if the Players Association, and, you know, there’s all kinds of stuff. Now with Tony Clark, I mean, there’s a lot of unrest with the union, but you do wonder if they see the writing on the wall and they say, look us fighting a cap is kind of a losing battle at this point. Let’s get a floor. Let’s make the Bob nuttings of the league spend money, actually, you know, some money at least, rather than what the pirates have done for 30 years now. Let’s, let’s get, let’s improve things on that end of the spectrum. And, you know, but that is
Nestor Aparicio 32:29
no different than the fire sale of the San Diego Padres in 1993 when the all star game came here, and Fred McGriff and Tony Greiner running around answering questions about the great sell off, and then the great Montreal sell off. And there have been, you know, there have been implosive sell offs, Florida, Marlins. My God, after winning two, sir, world, World Series, right? Like all of this has happened in the 35 years since, I’ve been on the radio, documenting it every single day. And bro, no offense, man, I was here every minute of every day before the strike in 93 talking about it during the strike in 94 talking about it the day after the strike in 95 and talking about it with Mike Messina and Jim pool and Mark Williamson. I’ve had Don fear on the show back then, and Marvin Miller has done my show a dozen times, you know, all during the course of my life. So I have studied it as much as anyone the I was. It didn’t make any sense to me as a young man, when I was 25 on the radio, it didn’t make sense to me that the players would be so dug in to be against that system. And now those players, and I’m talking about Pete Rose and, you know Mike Schmidt and Brooks Robinson, the guys that fought the original fights back in 81 in the 87 in those years that created that fu we will never have cost certainty for you people. We’re we’re Wild Wild West. You guys are all liars. You all colluded. You know Flanagan was involved in the collusion thing in 86 and 87 right? And costing them money. And the old owners, the George Steinbrenner, the Charlie finlays, the, you know, the when teams were owned by baseball oligarchs, back in the day, pocketing money, things weren’t out in the up and up. Nobody knew where the money was going or what the money’s pretty well documented now in all of these sports. I mean, you Kurt badenhausen from sportico finds the money and lets people know the Packers money’s all out in the open. The Atlanta Braves are a publicly held company, so the money is sitting there, and you see the wide disparity of all of it, you really would think that they would look at football, they would look at hockey, they look at basketball. And now a lifetime of of study that was done for how the NFL has become the dominant League, how the NBA has become and it’s awful. The NBA just it’s. Awful sport. It’s just, it’s an unwatchable game you’re watching seven foot. You think that? I just don’t think it’s interesting. I don’t find basketball interesting, right? The public anymore.
Luke Jones 35:11
The public would suggest otherwise. Fair enough. NBA is doing better than Major League Baseball. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 35:15
the reason the NBA is doing well other than Ted leonsis, is that they have the ability, the Oklahoma, whatever the hell they are, have the ability to have the best team. The Pittsburgh Pirates do not have the ability to have the best team.
Luke Jones 35:31
Pittsburgh Pirates don’t try. Man, don’t don’t give the owners a complete pass, because that’s I’m not giving them any pass. But they haven’t tried his pocket. Bob Nutting and and owners of that ilk have pocketed so much money over the last three the LA Clippers guy did that for 40 years. Carry water for them. That’s pathetic,
Nestor Aparicio 35:50
like, I’m not carrying water for them. I’m saying the players carried the water for them by not making those SOPs, including Mike Brown in Cincinnati and Al Davis, when he wasn’t spending to the cap because he didn’t have any money in Oakland, they didn’t make any of them. There’s no qualification for Nutting or for John a you know, when we’re rebuilding, where we’re you know, we’re rebuilding, we’re retooling. No, dude, you’re pocketing money. Is what you’re doing. That’s what you’re doing. And the players should understand that enough to say, you know, like, we’ll meet you halfway. I’m telling you the rock heads of the baseball union, because they had destroyed the owners for 20 years, and they really controlled the game. You know what I mean? Like, they stopped the game, they pissed everybody off, and they still didn’t get what they should have gotten, which is what they got is great players get 700 million, and the pirates don’t play the game, and the rays can’t play the game, and these other teams don’t play the game at all.
Luke Jones 36:55
Play the game. They they can play it. They don’t.
Nestor Aparicio 36:57
But there’s not revenue across the board the way there ought to be, because there’s not competitive balance across downward. Well, we’re on your chicken and egg. We really are right in Sacramento for three days. It does stem back to the fact that if there were a salary cap in baseball, and they would have figured that out in the 90s, and they didn’t. And it’s a long time going and it’s further down the road, and they’re so far down the road that the stadiums are all empty. And the NBA, which is to me, an awful sport, is thriving because they have competitive balance, except in Washington and other but they have competitive balance to the point and a great player can sign on a bad team and still get commensurate salary. That is not possible in 18 places. In baseball, two thirds of the sport will not sign a $30 million player will not sign a $200 million deal, and therefore the sport is bereft of competitive balance. It might as well be European soccer, and you might as well have first, second, third division, because the baseball players fought against that. And I don’t fundamentally it never made sense to me in 1996 that if you’re pissed about the Padres selling off and you’re pissed about the Florida Marlins selling off at the time, then do something to work on the integrity of owners who have none that. That’s what I would have said. And
Luke Jones 38:26
I don’t disagree with you. And you know, because I pushed back a couple minutes ago, for me, it’s more so it’s not that they can’t, they won’t, they don’t, they don’t have to. They can pocket money. They all have been capable of spending more money than they have in many cases. I mean, it’s just, it’s just the truth. I mean, the Angelo’s
Nestor Aparicio 38:47
family and but I buy a mass in in the Orioles took 10s of millions of dollars every year and put it in their pocket, 10s of millions every year. For 30 years they put in their pocket. And that’s their right as an owner, but the product was shit, and everybody knew it. And in the end, they pocketed 1.8 billion off of a $44 million investment in 30 years, and they still could manage to pay Chris Davis and whatever the bobby Bonilla day, taxes and whatever other expenses that they may have had somewhere along the line, the Angelos family, despite what they paid Adam Jones, despite what they paid Nick Marquez, despite whatever money they gave Palmero and rip get along life’s highway, little five or $10 million at the end of the table they just built everything and everybody on the way to the bank with billions of dollars, and all of that came off of your money, my money, cable TV money, and players didn’t get it, and competitive balance didn’t matter. And on the years, last place for the. Mean, we’re gonna draft, look over there. Look over there. While our payroll is 48 million, look over there. Because, like, we can stadiums empty, we can’t own any money, and they were pocketing. And I knew that all along. I wrote about that all along. Why that you had a press pass? And I didn’t, because I knew what they were doing the whole time. And I talked about it, and now, in retrospect, I can look at it and you say, Don’t carry the water for the owners, the owners are playing baseball in Sacramento tonight. Now you know what I mean, like they’re still making these decisions, because people are accepting of it. And my buddy Tom in Sacramento has waited his whole life for the Baltimore Orioles to show up in Sacramento. So he paid $100 a ticket to sit in the outfield because that’s how desperate he was to want baseball in Sacramento. The problem is, there are 30,000 people in Sacramento feeling
Luke Jones 40:45
that way. Yeah, I will say this because I don’t want to make this completely pro management, because salary caps are pro management. I mean, you know, because players would also point out and say, Well, then why doesn’t Lamar Jackson have a $700 million contract in the NFL, when the NFL is far more lucrative, far more profitable, far more rich than Major League Baseball, where Shohei Otani and and Juan Soto have $700 million contracts so
Nestor Aparicio 41:12
but they can only negotiate those $700 million contracts with five teams the other 25 teams can’t play. That’s not the way it is in the rest of in modern sport, in modern sport, but
Luke Jones 41:24
we also know the upper class drives, drives the the bus and and there’s your argument against the salary cap, because then the best players, I mean, in the NFL, but
Nestor Aparicio 41:34
if you’re looking after the sport, you know you have Bob nuttings and you know you have John Angelos is and problem
Luke Jones 41:39
is No one, no one truly looks after the sport collectively, right? I mean, everyone’s, I sat with
Nestor Aparicio 41:45
the horse racing people all day yesterday. Yes, you know, I mean, and
Luke Jones 41:49
the NFL is going to find that out at some point in time, right? At some point in time, even though Mark Cuban was no, nowhere close on the whole, you know, pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. Thing that he made, you know, that comedy made, what, 2011 I think that was during the off season lockout that year. And obviously we’re going on 15 years after that, and it’s still showing no signs of slowing down. But at some point in time, it’ll be too much. And it’ll
Nestor Aparicio 42:16
be too much in baseball when your mother doesn’t buy the package. You know when, when the streaming, when the revenue really starts to dry? They’ve got to figure that out, because the money’s not falling off the side of the boat like it did for John Angelo’s. The Angelo’s family had to figure out how to sell cable TV, TV television. Figure how to get their games on cable television station they owned. Television
Luke Jones 42:38
in general is fig is having to figure that out right now. I mean, it’s just the truth. Cable and satellite is going the way of the dodo. It’s going to
Nestor Aparicio 42:46
but that sports is problem, though.
Luke Jones 42:48
It’s, it’s television. I mean, all these streaming services are hemorrhaging money at this point in time because they’re not finding enough people that want to subscribe to them consistently,
Nestor Aparicio 42:59
because they’re making bets they can’t cash. Sure, and that’s what Sinclair people over every time you drive by Sinclair up here in Warren Road, like they put all that money out on those Fs Fox Sports net and all of that the RSNs, and we’re going to have baseball all summer for everybody that nobody’s going to watch and nobody’s going to want to sponsor, and people aren’t going to want to pay $29 a month for to have the Orioles, or to have the Indians, or to have the reds. There’s going to be a price point. I don’t know what that price point is. They think it’s 1999 a month. Now they think it’s a season long pack. I mean, I don’t know when next March, when the rubber meets the road and it’s opening day. How many people are going to put the 129 159 189 on their credit card. And how many people are going to do what I do on Apple Friday night and say, Yeah, I just watched the game on monitor the game on my phone. I don’t think I mean that money.
Luke Jones 43:50
Look, at some point people have to pay something. You’re not just going back to 1975 or not even then, because then they didn’t show the home games. But what is going to be user supported, like the NHL has been, I mean, you’re not just, you’re not just showing games on free team. Now, I think there’s a balance where it would probably be hoove teams to show a couple games on TV a month, you know, broadcast TV, and you view that as a commercial, right? No different than HBO having a free weekend on direct TV twice a year, you know, in the way that they or cable, you know, twice a year, the way they used to do it. But at some I will say this, I have, you know, I think I told you, I now have massen separately. I’m saving a ton of money 1999 look, the app stinks, but in terms of, like, I can’t pause and rewind. I have to view it like an over the air channel. But I will say this, the feed the stream has been excellent. Like, I haven’t had issues where it freezes, things like invaders, involved. It’s half assed. But my point, it needs to get better. I’m saving a ton of money a. Ton of money from where I was paying, I forget what I was paying for DirecTV when, before I found but it was closer to $200 than $100 let’s put it that way. So it is, it is. It’s been life changing in terms of saving me money, you know, to be able to stream watch last place baseball. That wasn’t the plan. Well, but yes, I’m just talking about the financial part of it. So look, I don’t expect to get it for free. No one should expect to get it for free. It is a business at the end of the day. Yeah, what is the price point? You know, I think $20 a month. I think that’s reasonable. But at the same time, we’re in a different world than when everyone in the market was paying two or $3 a month to have it on their cable package or their satellite package. So, you know, you kind of do the math there. It’s like you kind of need one out of every seven people who previously had massen to then subscribe. You know, that’s kind of a rough way of looking at it, but yeah, they’ve got to figure it out. That’s why baseball in general has to figure this out. I mean, you know, it’s funny because I’ve cited apple with MLS, you know, Major League Soccer, you know, the model that they basically all of their TV is kind of carried through that, you know, as far as their, you know, like my brother in law watches the Philadelphia Union. You know, he subscribes through Apple TV and can watch every single game, although I’ve heard recently, MLS isn’t happy with that model, so I don’t know. Well, they’re probably not making a lot of money. And that’s the thing. I mean, a lot of this is they were happy to get
Nestor Aparicio 46:36
the distribution that Apple offered them to grow their base, and said, We’ll kick the can on that, and later down the line, yeah, we’ll make money on it. We’ll charge people more money once we get them under the tent. Baseball has done that. They’ve had a lifetime of you and your mother and your sister and me and under the tent of this cable television thing for all of our lifetime. And now they’re going to hand us a direct bill, and that’s going to be directly about how much I care about them, as to whether I’m going to give them money or not, right? And that’s where I think you’re going to see and that’s going to be true in Las Vegas too, when they’re trying to sell baseball in Las Vegas locally to A’s fans to buy it. You know, I’m saying how many people in Sacramento would subscribe to A’s games right now, you know,
Luke Jones 47:21
for me, and that does, that doesn’t move me, because, you know, you’re a tourist in a minute, right? The Savannah bananas coming in for a couple games at Camden Yards, it’s fun to go, you know, it’s fun to go, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a novelty, but you’re not going to invest in it. You know, I wouldn’t invest in a team that said, Oh, I’m, we’re coming to Baltimore, but only for a year or two, right? I mean, you’re not going to invest in that. I mean, so. But I think again, this, this is all TV, you know, right now, I was just seeing, I think it was Disney, plus, I can’t remember if it was their CEO or someone kind of talking about streaming. It’s not profitable in the way that they have these budgets for these shows and even movies that they’ve tried to stream and like, change the model of how people view and and they’re finding they’re not making enough money. So, like, they’re probably going to go away from doing as much of that, and go back to the idea of big theatrical productions that you go to the theater, right? I mean, it’s just they’re all trying to figure it out. Sports is a major part of what’s propping up so much of it, the NFL, specifically, but the other sports, because it’s content, and that’s where that is. The one saving grace that baseball and the NBA and the NHL look at is there is still a demand for it that doesn’t necessarily exist for other genres of TV in the same way that it did, but they’re all trying to figure it out. They’re all trying to figure out what the price point is. They’re all trying to figure out what’s going to be profitable and sustainable the NFL at some point in time, it might be another 20 years, they they will get to a point where they’ll reach a threshold, and they’ll say, Okay, we need to kind of settle into this for now. They can continue to push and do Christmas games and games every day of the week or whatever they are ultimately going to try, but it’s a new world, because you don’t have that the big safety net and the comfortable pillow of everyone subscribing to your network, because that’s just how it is. And you know, we’re going to see a lot of cable networks in general go away in the next five to 10 years, because that’s just how it is. You know how many networks that have always been on cable that you’ve never really watched, but they’ve existed because of the ESPN of the world, basically, and now they’re all fracturing and going off on their own, and a lot of it’s going to die out. So I, you know, I I don’t have any doubt that Major League Baseball is going to survive, that the NBA and the NHL will survive, but are they going to have the same profit margins that they had 10 years ago, 20 years ago? No, I think you’re going to see a. A different world. And that goes back to your point then about salary cap, salary floor, trying to have as much price certainty and stabilization as you can. But, you know, figuring that out exactly, I’m not smart enough to know exactly what the best answer is going to be, but there’s certainly going to be a fight over it, and that’s coming in a couple years for Major League Baseball, that’s for sure. Do
Nestor Aparicio 50:22
you are green today to support Carney Lansford or Joe Rudy, you know, like that. We haven’t talked as much about the winning streak of the Orioles. We did that a little while ago in the segment baseball all weekend from Sacramento, California and minor league ballpark, and we were just discussing how and why. I’m glad we had that conversation, because, like, it should be had over the backdrop of the A’s playing minor in a minor league Stadium and the Orioles visiting playing in a minor league stadium. All of that. Luke will be watching baseball all weekend. We’re going to talk some football before it’s all over with had some great, great conversations this week, including with some friends at Green mount station in Hampstead. I had these scratch off the Back to the Future Maryland lottery scratch offs our friends at curio wellness as well as liberty, pure solution, putting us out on the road. Will be at fade leads next Friday at Lexington market in the afternoon, Orioles, keeping us up very late from California this weekend, we are wnsta in 15 70,000 Baltimore, and we never stop talking baseball and Baltimore positive we.
