David Samson, Former Marlins General Manager

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Additional terms and fees apply. David, how are you? I'm doing well. How have you been? Very well.

Thank you for taking the time to hop on. I guess the first question, and this is why it's important to talk to you, to see someone be banned from the game of baseball, an active player for the first time in 100 years, is pretty wild. We know about the rules that get posted in clubhouses. Is this an anomaly or are we in store for a whole lot of disaster moving into the future, David? You know, it's a great question. I covered this a bit on this morning's Nothing Personal, a show I do every day. And let me tell you, when you say something hasn't happened for 100 years, you have to think about what that means and whether or not this is a one-off situation. This is a player who's on the injured list, who made hundreds of bets on his own team. And that is an absolute no-no. The question is, with gambling legal in so many states, are there more players gambling now than there were? And my view is no. And the reason my view is no is that players have access to legal bookmakers always have. Players have access now to legal gambling sites because you can get it on your phone. But the overwhelming majority of players understand that they don't want to be suspended and banned for life because there's no way to make the kind of money either gambling or in any other job they would have. So they don't want to risk it.

And so I don't think that it is something that you have to worry about. But MLB coming down hard on those who do is important to the integrity of the game. David, do you see any other actions from Major League Baseball? Are they going to make players sit through seminars in spring training or is this kind of hey, you saw what the punishment is. Everybody else falling in line.

Yeah. In collective bargaining, you go through this stuff and they're under an agreement now and there are rules against gambling that the union agreed to. We read the rules to the players every year at spring training and they don't pay attention because they know the rule. There is no player who can claim that they think that gambling on baseball is acceptable. I don't care what language you speak.

I don't care how old you are. There is no one in Major League Baseball in that clubhouse who would say, oh, my God, I didn't realize I can't do that. So it's sort of like the sticky stuff. Those pitchers know exactly what they're doing when they're mixing sunscreen and rods and doing something that they shouldn't do. Marcano David is 24 years old. Does he have a future in baseball and another league in South America?

Would Asia touch him? What's the future for this guy who's 24? This is all he knows. Well, he's going to have to learn something else because he's not good at gambling and he can't play baseball anymore in Major League Baseball.

That is for sure. He is not going to get reinstated. It would be an absolute affront, not just to Pete Rose, but to this game and to it. It would be a terrible precedent for him ever to be reinstated. He absolutely could play in other leagues.

There is no prohibition against it. It's just a matter of whether he has the ability to do it or whether any team would sign him. But his Major League Baseball career is over. And David Sampson is joining us, host of Nothing Personal on a daily.

You can catch him on CBS Sports HQ. Shohei Ohtani, certainly in the news again today, said he has some closure with Ipe Mizuhara deciding to plead guilty, potentially facing 33 years in prison. What are your thoughts on Shohei Ohtani saying the book is all closed on this?

Well, I guess that when you when you want the book to be closed and you get MLB to close it and then you release a statement saying that's it, I'm moving on, you have that power. I would only mention that Ipe, when he pled guilty, which he did, he knows what his sentence will be. So that is part of a negotiated plea deal.

So he's not going to walk into sentencing in October and sort of wondering what it will be. That would be my view of this. And it is as far as MLB is concerned, they closed the investigation, which means they found that there was no betting on baseball and nothing unsavory done by Ohtani. And it's a good thing because they didn't want there to be. So they're very happy with what they found. Well, David Shohei Ohtani certainly hasn't seemed to be distracted having another all star solid season too early to get into the MVP stuff.

We know he's likely to be there at the end. What are your impressions on on how the Dodgers have handled what if really was a distraction to start the season on the other side of the world? Well, I'm trying to think about the number of distractions the Dodgers have. Remember, that's the same team that had the whole Trevor Bauer situation.

So they are used to distractions. They're really focused. They need to win a World Series other than in the COVID shortened season when they won it in 20. And I don't view them as the best team in the National League, and I didn't win the season started. There's question marks on their pitching staff. Their lineup is extraordinary at the top half, but the bottom half is ordinary. And you saw last year, Arizona swept them because their top of the lineup, the top of the Dodgers lineup just got cold for three games.

And that can happen. And I don't think that Betz, Ohtani and Freeman are subject to zero slumps. So I think that Andrew Friedman needs to improve his team. And I think you're going to see them add to their team before the deadline on July 30. And David Samson is here with us the JR Sport Brief Coast to Coast on the Infinity Sports Network.

You mentioned the name Trevor Bauer, and we talked about a guy who's been banned and Tusa Peter. Do you think that somebody will go ahead and give Trevor Bauer a chance at some point as we, you know, get to the stretch run in the dog days? No, his career is over. His major league baseball career is over. There is not one team that will ever sign him. It is simply not worth it.

It's no collusion against him. There's no written mandate from baseball. But the juice is simply not worth the squeeze with him.

It's an impossible press conference to have that you agree to sign a player like that. So as much as everybody needs pitching, nobody needs Bauer. Nobody needs Bauer, said by David Samson. You talk about the National League not looking at the Dodgers as at the top of the heap right now. The New York Yankees are bludgeoning teams with both Soto and Judge just lit it up this past month of May. What are your impressions of the New York Yankees as you talk about an ace? They've missed their ace in Gerrit Cole. Boy, I'll tell you, when the season started, I thought that they'd struggle without Cole. I was very concerned about them. Their starting pitching has been great and their hitting has just been superb.

It's hard to have any complaint. And remember the back of their bullpen with Holmes with lights out for a long period of time. They're just firing on all cylinders. And what's fascinating is the off-the-field intrigue with Steinbrenner and the possible resigning of Soto or not. You know Soto wants to get paid because you know his agent Scott Boris wants to get him more money than the Dodgers gave Otani. And you know the Yankees may not do that. So it's going to be interesting how that unfolds. But meanwhile they've got a really good chance to not just get to October but to actually make some progress in October which they haven't done in a super long time.

Yeah, haven't even hoisted that championship since 2009. A lot of Yankee fans are worried, David, about what you just said. What happens with Juan Soto? I'd be surprised if he took a contract in the course of the season. We know that Shohei is making $700.

He's making it because he eventually is going to pitch and hit. What type of deal, realistically, could Soto get? Are we looking at a $500 million player?

A half-billion guy here? Well, I think that the way the league looks at Otani is that it's about $462 million over 10 years. That's the present value of it. So I don't think that anyone views $700 as the real number for Otani. And Soto turned down $440 from Washington but there were a lot of deferrals in that.

So that $440 would sort of compare with the $700. I do not believe that Soto will sign during the season. Boris wants to take him to free agency because Boris needs a win. He got crushed this past year with his free agents, with Bellinger and Montgomery and Snell and Chapman.

And it turns out that they still may have been overpaid given their performance this year. So Boris really badly needs a win and he thinks Soto is the best horse he has. So he's not going to sign Boris before getting a lot of media attention for some sort of free agent journey. So I would look for that after the World Series.

And baseball expert David Sampson is joining us here on the Infinity Sports Network. When you take a look at free agency, even over the past few years, we can we can line out the huge deals that have been handed out. But then you talk about some of the smaller ones, whether it happens to be a Bellinger or a JD Martinez, there's still these small prove it type deals.

Is there a larger market correction outside of anything that's happened with just Boris and his clients? Well, I think that owners realize that long term deals you end up really it doesn't work at the end of those deals. And the other thing is you're looking for smart deals. I like to talk about this.

I'm nothing personal. And here's what I say. I don't need my GM to tell me to sign Shohei Ohtani. I want my GM to tell me to sign Seth Lugo. Find me a guy for 45 over three who's going to outperform. Find me a guy for two years who's going to outperform. Don't bring me the top of the free agent class because I'm probably just going to be disappointed at the end of the day. And so I think that the real value in a good baseball front office is finding those players that the media or the fans and even other teams don't view as Type A free agents. But man, when they perform well, they are. And look what, for example, Lugo is doing with the Royals this year.

David Sampson host of Nothing Personal here with us. You talk about an owner looking for something, looking for a deal. It looks like Jon Fisher, owner of the A's, has been looking for quite a few deals over the past several years.

What's what's the latest? Now we get a few words and it could be much to do about nothing. It's like, hey, we don't want to play all our games in Vegas and we don't know what the stadium status is. Like, how the hell did we get here?

Well, I don't know if you can have me on for the next hour because how we got here is a long and winding road that would make the Beatles blush. But the update today that you're referring to is something called a non relocation agreement where when you get public money and I negotiated one and find one, you are promising to stay in that city for that period of time. But there's always caveats in the agreement. So we had in our agreement that we could play a certain number of international games because we need to be available to play in, whether it's London or South America, wherever, Asia, wherever.

So that's very normal. What struck me, though, is the number of games in this draft. It is very, very unlikely that any team let me say it better. There is no scenario that a team plays 10 percent of its home schedule as part of MLB's international play. So what does Vegas have in mind?

It's not a split city like Tampa and Montreal. It can't be that because, of course, that was never going to work. So what is it? John Fisher's thinking? My view is that this is a negotiation and that the final number in the agreement will not be 10 percent of the games. It may be a starting point in the negotiation in order to get to a number like four every other year or something like that. So that's my view.

All right. Well, we'll see everything that takes place with that team. Just I'm just real interested to see what happens over the next several years.

David, the last question for you. The two teams that were in the World Series are currently under 500. The team that won the World Series in the Rangers are under 500. Is this good because it means that there's more parity in baseball or one of these teams going to go on some hot streak at the end of the year again?

Well, it's still early. And I think no one last a year ago, you would not have said Arizona and Texas were going to be in the World Series. Nobody would have guessed that, although I'm sure someone bet it.

But it's unlikely that you thought that. And in terms of parity, there's been no repeat champion since the Yankees 98 to 2000. So since 2000, it's been a different first team winning the World Series every year.

I don't think that Texas will be able to repeat. And that doesn't take away from their championship because it's amazing. And Arizona added their team. But the guy, the main pitcher they added, you remember, I think they gave Eduardo Rodriguez like 80 million dollars over four years. And the guy hasn't pitched an inning. So, you know, they tried to add and get better, but it's really hard to be good for a sustained period of time when you're not the Dodgers or the Yankees.

And Texas and Arizona are mid to high mid revenue teams. It's hard to be good year after year. That means there's even hope this season for the White Sox, right? Right. No, no, no. Come on. Let's not get crazy.

Oh, I don't know. I'm going to lose the hundo and they're going to end up by. Yeah, they're just a bad team. They were bad from the start. They need a another managerial change. I think you're going to see that happen. And they there was a GM change, but Reinsdorf kept it in house with a guy named Chris gets because he wanted there to be a shorter period of getting to know the franchise.

Well, there's plenty of people who know enough about that franchise to know that they got to make significant changes. At least the manager staying awake this time, David. At least he's not feeling nothing wrong with that. OK, I'm trying to have some of those bar. Well, listen, David, we'll end on that one because I got jokes lined up for days. You do so much.

You got so much in your brain. Where can people follow you and all your great work? Tell us, David. I please go to David Sampson podcast dot com. And that's when you're find that you can go see me live. I'm going to be in Chicago on July 1st.

St. Louis on June 25th. You can listen to shows and buy merchandise and just enjoy what we do. We love doing our show every day. And we're thankful to our audience. Hey, David, we appreciate you for dropping the knowledge and the expertise when you come down to Atlanta. I did a show in Atlanta and I should have reached out and I apologize for that. I did a live show as part of the tour in April and we had a fun time. And I'll come back to Atlanta. It was great. I was probably stuck here in the studio for March Madness and championships and all that stuff.

You were working for a living. I like it. How about that?

More than Tony La Russa. David, I'll see you later. OK, take care of yourself. Thank you. You could spend the weekend doing the same old whatever or you could conquer the weekend in the all new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com for more details. Hyundai. There's joy in every journey. The right ones can help. Visit LegionAthletics.com. Go to LegionAthletics.com to get 20 percent off your order now.