The Angels Circus: One year deals, Tyler Skaggs trial, and air conditioning

The Angels Circus: One year deals, Tyler Skaggs trial, and air conditioning

The Angels had a press conference with their new manager, Kurt Suzuki, and the president of baseball operations, Perry Manazian. People were wondering why Arty Moreno was not there. Arty Moreno may have been out of town. Arty Mareno may not want to be associated with this. Whatever the case may be, that’s not what you should be focused on with yesterday’s press conference. The number one thing is that in my entire career, I have never seen a new manager hired. I have never hired a new manager and given him a one-year contract. That’s right. Kurt Suzuki signed a oneyear contract to manage the Angels. I’d like you to picture Kurt walking into the clubhouse in spring training. First workout. Gentlemen, we’ve got under 12 months to figure this out. Let’s do it for the Gipper. Is he going to get to hire his own coaches and put them all on one-year deals? Or is he have no power at all? Did Ry Moreno really have nothing to do with the hire of a manager, which would be the first time in the history of the Angels or any team that the owner had nothing to do with the hiring of a manager? Do you actually believe that Perry Manazian was solely responsible for the hiring of Kurt Suzuki? And if that’s true, and if the owner has disassociated himself from the process, do you think that’s Arie Mareno getting smart, finding God? I know I’m going to do something different. I know that we haven’t won anything. Our poor guy Mike Trout’s getting old as f and he hasn’t won as much as a playoff game. We have the longest drought going on right now. I know what I’ll do. I’m going to let my guy Perry who has one year left who has not done one thing positive as the general manager and I’m going to let him hire the manager give them both one-year deals because Perry only has one year left in his deal. And then next year we’ll do it all again. Oh, I know what they did. They didn’t want to pay anybody in case there’s a lockout after the 2026 season. Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, Arty. You may need a better lawyer because do you know that when you’re signing GMs to contracts or managers contracts that you have the right to put in the contract? It’s not a uniform player contract. It is a contract that you write with language that you write. And the language can clearly be and often is that at the end of a CBA or any time there is a work stoppage lasting x number of days that the employee will agree to take x dollars fewer than his contract or the contract can be terminated in the event a work stoppage lasts more than 30 days of the off season or the regular season. You can negotiate anything. So don’t give me the BS that Arty Moreno is doing this so he doesn’t have to pay the manager and general manager in 2027 without a work stoppage. That’s wrong. What else? He wants to check it out. See how they’re going to be. He’s had Perry Manazine in there for multiple years. He knows exactly what he has because doesn’t matter. He’s already Moreno. He’s the one making the decisions. Okay. All of a sudden, you call Perry in and say, “We’re gonna try it. We’re gonna give you the power.” Hey, Kurt, man, I’ve got power. I want you to be my partner. Did you hear Kurt Suzuki during the press conference? He was gushing over Perry and Arty and the ownership and the family and the opportunity. When asked about one year, his answer was, “I’ve been playing on one year deals my whole career.” Kurt, it’s a bit different when you’re the person in charge of the clubhouse and you come down. I never wanted our managers to be on the final year of their contract for fear it would usurp some of their power. The reason why we ended up paying multiple managers all the time is that we would extend managers and then fire them. We see teams doing that at this moment. The Yankees always were the only team that would let contracts expire. I like the concept of matching, but why wouldn’t you just extend Perry Manazian and give Kurt Suzuki a two-year deal? Two-year plus a team option. That would have even passed the smell test to me. But a one-year contract is not a serious contract. The players know it. I’ve got a few other things that ought to be mentioned here which are a little more serious is that one of the other theories around the spending of the angels is that you may have read about what’s going on. There is a trial going on and we haven’t covered it and Kok I could go 10 minutes on this and may do it next week. Uh really I was going to do it after the World Series because I want the focus focus to be on the field, but there’s a wrongful death trial going on where the family of Tyler Scaggs has sued the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and it has gone to trial. There has not been a settlement at all. And there have been many, many people who have testified already. And the crux of the issue is did the Angels employ somebody who they knew was giving illegal drugs to players? There’s already someone in the organization who’s serving 22 years, guy named Eric K. The reason I bring it up is I’ve also read that there are people who are concerned that if he loses this because the family is seeking like $180 million and if the angels lose this that would have a delotterious impact on payroll and also he’d be try to keeping his expenses down. So, I would point out that there is insurance that teams have that helps cover the expenses of trial and verdicts. Number two, there are appeals. There is no chance, and I don’t mean like a 5% chance. I don’t mean a 20% chance. I’m saying there is a 0% chance that in the next 12 months, the Angels will be cutting a check to the Scaggs family for $200 million. Zero. These things once a jury verdict comes, there is an appeals process, then even if you go right to I mean, listen, it’s it can it’s years on a good day. There is the argument and the fight about which entities have money. Do you know Koka that when we built Marllins Park, if you look at the org chart, and I don’t mean the or the people org chart, I mean the corporate org chart, there are so many entities that we controlled. One of them has the concessions, one of them runs the stadium, one of them has the broadcast deals. The reason you’ve got different entities is to protect each entity from exposure. So don’t think that the angels have a payroll issue or a managerial issue because of the SCAGs trial. So we’ve now eliminated any possible explanation. So what is it that Perry Menazian was thinking or that Arty Mareno was thinking? We know Kurt was thinking, “I’ll take anything because I’m so happy to be a manager. You could have given me dayto-day, game to game, pay me by the game and I’ll take it.” The players look at that and say, “What kind of self-respect is that?” But in any case, what would be the one thing if you’re asked today, “Hey, did you hear that manager of the Angels got a year?” Let me tell you what it is. Arty Moreno has some advisor telling him that when he sells the team, there is a better opportunity for him to get more money if he’s got fewer long-term commitments because new owners would like their own manager, their own general manager, and Arty Moreno’s been trying to sell the team for years, but no one will pay what he wants. You want to go with that one? It’ll make you sound smart, but it’s total horse hockey because when someone buys a team and they see, oh, I got a manager signed for three years at $3 million a year. I guess I’m not going to bid $2.4 billion. I’ll bid 2.35 billion. Not once has that happened. Not once. So, if you want to sound the smartest, say, “Oh, it’s because already selling the team.” But just know that’s wrong, too. This is total lack of understanding of how to build a team, how to win, which shouldn’t surprise you because they haven’t been able to build a team and win. And let me tell you, this will not be an exception this coming season. Kok, I’m going to give you an official wait to see. Totally official. Wait to see when we tell you something’s going to happen. If it does, fine. If it doesn’t fine, please go to davidamsonpodcast.com. Check out all the wait to see. We have them all. Get ready, Kok. You’re gonna sweat this one. You’re gonna sweat this one. This is me on the edge of darkness. The Angels will miss the playoffs in 2026. That’s such a cheapy. It’s such a cheapy, but I’m taking it. Let me tell you something else about the Angels that came out that it puts a tear in my eye right here. You can’t see it because I’ve learned to block my tear ducts cuz they’re empty. So, I shut him down. Did you see Kikuchi, their pitcher, who was complaining that air conditioning didn’t work in the wait room? I I swear to God, I can’t make this up. And then another player came out, Kevin Polar, and said, “Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of amenities that stink. The air’s not working.” And then a reporter, Sam Blum, asked Perry Minazian about it. and permanazi and they got into this crazy like abbid and Costello routine. Are you Do you know the air’s not working? No, the air is working fine. No, no. The player said the air is not working. It’s cold in there. Do you know the temperature in the weight room? Yeah, it’s cold. What? Who? Lunacy. When I saw that yesterday, I smiled because I’ve been in our team wait room for sure over 18 years. I wouldn’t say I go in the weight room every day every day, but I’d say out of 365 days, 81 home games, I’m in the wait room, call it 75 times. Would I know as the president if the G if the air conditioning in the wait room is not working? I would know after a day. Do you want to know how I’d know? Because I get a list. Don’t you keep a list? Am I the only one who did this? No. Don’t you keep a list like around your house or apartment of things that you have to call the maintenance man or the super or you have to fix yourself like on a weekend in between jobs. Do you know stadiums have that too? We have lists of things that are not working. We have an organized way for our maintenance people to know what they’re doing every day. There’s an entire department. We don’t need a player to tell us the air doesn’t work. There are clubhouse attendants who work for the team who are in their clubhouse every day. every day, including off days, including when the team’s on the road. If the air is not working in a particular place, if there is a hole in the wall, if there’s a toilet that’s broken, whatever it is, they will put in a work order and stadium operations will take care of it immediately. Not in a day, not in a week, not in a month, immediately. Why? Because it’s the clubhouse. Now, if it’s the visiting clubhouse, I’m not I’m not saying that we wouldn’t put the visiting clubhouse repairs below the home clubhouse repairs, cuz we would. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t put the visiting clubhouse repairs below our front office repairs because we would. What I am saying is the home clubhouse would be above everything including the owner’s office. So I find it to be absolutely ridiculous. And if it’s true, that is a level of ballpark operation malpractice. GM malpractice, president malpractice, clubhouse attendant malpractice, assistant clubhouse attendant malpractice, traveling secretary malpractice, Mike Trout malpractice because he’d be in the wait room. Hey Arty, it’s Mikey. I know likey. The air doesn’t work. Arty would make a call and the air would work. Of course, the story got even better. And this is where Koka Jack and I had a disagreement in our pre-production meeting while the cameras weren’t rolling. We should do Kok one of these days. Side note, you know how Levitar does a shadow show, which you can listen to from like 8:57 to 9:00 and it’s audio except it really is show. If you we let you listen to Jack Koka and I talk for the 35 minutes before we go live every morning at 7 a.m. recently only Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for which I apologize. We’re going to do that again next week. The way the schedule works out with my daughter, etc., etc., this is what works for me right now. I don’t know when that will change or how it will change, but I will let you know. But if we let you listen to what we’d say, they were dead set that what happened yesterday was real. And what happened yesterday is that the Angels posted on their website under career opportunities. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see it right now live. Los Angeles Angels part-time event HVAC technician. I kid you not. Let me explain. Stadium operations has responsibilities. One of them, of course, is to deal with the HVAC. There are people on your stadium operations payroll who are in charge of HVAC and coordinating with the outside HVAC department. They take care of the maintenance, the repair, the updating of your HVAC, both in your offices, in the ballpark, etc. What this job posting is is a job post that I never had in our ballpark. a part-time event HVAC technician posted the same day that players are out there saying your HVAC didn’t work in the clubhouse and you become the laughing stock of the media world. You become the laughingtock of baseball on the eve of the World Series because it’s so absurd

#angels #baseball #MLB

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