Transcript of Did The Miami Marlins Trade Ground Beef For Ham? | Local Hour

You gotta put your headsets on there, Greg, so that you can hear them counting us in so that you know that we're starting and we're on the air and you don't say anything inappropriate with a hot mic on. Do you feel like you're ready now? You feel like you're ready to go?

Born ready.

He's in the 2-seat today. This is big.

Wow.

He's calling it the Zazz seat, and I don't know what kind of pressure he feels sitting in the Zazz seat.

Is that what it's called?

You called it that. I didn't call it that. You called it— you said you got up with a harrumph from your seat. What is your seat? You got up and you said they want me in the Zazz seat.

Yeah, well, that was a mistake. I should have said the number 2 seat.

Do you feel any extra pressure? Does the job feel any different to you in that seat?

I feel light. I feel like I'm floating on air.

You feel like Travis Hunter? You're lighter even though you're heavier?

Yes. Exactly.

Where is Amin? Amin is supposed to be here today.

He had travel issues. I saw him documenting. It seemed like it was a pretty nightmarish travel situation over here, but he'll be here a little bit later.

Did he have an issue flying in this morning or flying in last night?

He tried to take the red-eye and there was issues there.

It seems to be not the best way to do this show after flying all night on a red-eye and then just bombing in in the middle of the show and trying to catch up. That seems like a a group of ingredients that are not good to prepare the gumbo.

Especially when last week he was here mocking people for traveling early in the day, saying like, "Oh, you think you don't get like—" and then he gets delayed on a later flight. Yeah, I—

pretty funny. I disagreed with that. Now, Amin is a very seasoned traveler. He's taken a million more flights than I have, but I always try to take the first flight out in the morning. I was in D.C. over the weekend and I got burned with a midday flight. You do it in the morning because if there are delays, you still arrive reasonably early. I always try to take the first flights out. Those are the flights that I feel like I can depend on the most.

I was of the belief that it was a fact that the earliest flight of the day is the least likely to be delayed. I thought that that was not an opinion. I didn't think that was a judgment.

I look for flights where the plane is in the gate overnight.

And Ameen claimed last week that that's just when the suckers travel. It's not anything to do with avoiding delays, just that's when the suckers travel.

Well, we had a period of flying that had just a great deal of unrest in it and felt like systems failing throughout America where you couldn't rely on much of any flight to leave on time, where airports were jammed and everything else. And yet leaving on the first flight every time. I've suffered no delays. I've had no experiences in the last 5 years that would suggest to me that there are any airport problems because I always fly out on the first flight.

It's axiomatic because the first flight isn't waiting on a previous flight to get there.

Sort of have to be cleaned and everything else as people scurry in and out.

Axiomatic, great word. Thank you. That's not two-chair behavior. That's a lexicon that two-chair is not used to.

That's actually an Edwin Pope word. That's a word that I learned from him. And I say it in homage to him.

Homage, also not a word that usually can be found in the two-seat. Is that what we're going to get from the two-seat today? A bunch of vocabulary that we've never heard before? Word. You should try to do that as a theme in the show. You should try to use as many words. Let's count them. Let's have a sound, Roy. See if you can find some sort of sound that would indicate, just like a little ding or something, that would indicate every— and we won't even acknowledge it, just a little ding that acknowledges every time he uses a word in the Zazz seat that has never been used before from that An auditory device that is not acknowledging it.

You are listening to the Dan Levitan Show in partnership with the DraftKings Sports App, now live in all 50 states.

Greg, I have a number of different things here locally that we could start with. You tell me what you think is the most interesting. We've got a surprise extension of Mario Cristobal's contract that I don't think anybody sort of saw coming. Uh, there wasn't anybody reporting that there was a great need to re-sign or extend a coach who had many years left on his contract, although he probably deserves a raise. We've got Mike Ryan again frustrated, uh, with the Miami Heat. Uh, we've got Luis Suarez serving a 6-game suspension for biting someone when he was in his 20s. And, um, we also have your son trying to figure out how to watch the Dolphins. He's trying to enjoy this season beyond just, you know, scoreboard. And so he wants a way to watch the Dolphins. Which of those things would you like to start with? And also the Marlins made a bunch of moves, but no big ones.

I would— I might start with the Marlins since it's, it's trendy. I mean, it's topical. It just happened yesterday. They made, they made 4 moves. I don't think any of the moves they made were particularly significant. I don't think they got enough for Liam Hicks, actually. In a trade, in Bendix trading with his former team, because he is a catcher, and catcher's a pretty high-demand position. So I didn't think they did well there, but I think— I give the Marlins credit for the trade they didn't make, which is Otto Lopez. Boston wanted him really badly, but to their credit, the Marlins set the asking price so high that it would have taken a real windfall to get him, so I thought that was smart.

A toast to Jeremy Taché, who has been a really good info guy. On this show when it comes to the Miami Marlins. He's been telling us all year Sandy wasn't going anywhere, steadfast in his resolve, and he ended up being right.

He ended up being right on most of everything, including them trading high on Hicks because they've got an answer there. They have somebody that they like better, and you know what Hicks is, and you're getting him having a season that is not likely to be recreated very much. And so it's exactly the way that this front office is going to make trades. They're not going to fall in love with Cabrera having one good pitching season and then slot him in at the number 2. They're going to trade him to the Cubs and then watch him get hurt because he just had their— his best season on, on their dime at value. But before we get to more of your thoughts here on them not doing anything, because I believe it's not the Otto Lopez not being traded that was exciting to me. It's, it's Sandy not being traded that's exciting to me because I thought all season that it was pretty obvious that they were going to trade him. The conversation during the offseason made it seem like they were almost sure to trade him. Jeremy, what did you make of what they did yesterday based on being around the team all the time?

This is exactly what Peter Bendix's front office is always going to do. I mentioned it yesterday, being positioned to be both buyers and sellers, right? And so, no, they didn't make a huge splashy buy. I would have loved if they could have added a controllable young starting pitcher. Because of the injuries that they've faced. It could have bolstered their playoff race as they head toward the wild card. But outside of that, everything they did made a lot of sense. Trading Liam Hicks, who is one of the best contact hitters in baseball, like if you look at all of the Statcast numbers, he hits the ball when it's thrown inside the strike zone and he's been really effective for them all year. That fits that Tampa Bay Rays model. Chandler Simpson is another one of the guys right at the top. Luis Urias, who I thought the Rays might trade for, ends up going to the Phillies. Another one of those guys right at the top. But everyone looks at Liam on the surface and says, oh, he leads the Marlins in RBIs. Surely this is a power-hitting catcher. But he's played 101 games. In the first 51, he had 11 homers and 44 RBIs.

His OPS was .843. In the next 50, 3 homers, 18 RBIs, OPS down to .752. The hell was that sound back there?

Trending in the wrong direction. Yeah, I mean, he's been a—

he's a really good player. Like Liam has turned into a really good player. But when you can acquire a guy straight from Double-A as a Rule 5 pick last year and turn him into this, which then gets you 3 prospects, a few of whom join your top 30, a couple of whom are former first-round picks, including one drafted in the first round in 2023 by Peter Bendixen.

What did you think of Greg Cody's analysis of them not getting very much? Because I thought they did do fine in getting something because catchers are valuable. Yeah, fine is the right word.

I don't think this was like a, oh my God, blockbuster home run of a deal because they acquired some superstar that you can't believe. I actually ironically felt that way about their Braxton Garrett trade with the Cubs because Braxton Garrett was not going to pitch for the Marlins again. They did not like the underlying metrics of him. They didn't feel like he threw enough strikes considering the stuff that he has. The couple of times he came up this year, he was dreadful. And they acquired a guy in Jonathan Long from the Cubs who a lot of people wanted in that Edward Cabrera trade. He'll now be a guy who hits against lefties. This, this opened up the ability to play Owen Casey, Griffin Konine, and Kyle Stowers every day against righties without a redundancy of skill sets and acquires guys for the future.

I don't believe they got a top 15 prospect from Tampa, did they?

Who's the best? 16. Number 17. Who's the best Rule 5 player ever? Dan Uggla? Is it Dan Uggla? Is Dan Uggla the best Rule 5 player ever?

Certainly in Marlins history.

He's the only Rule 5 player I could have named.

The, the Rule 5 appraisals are such that basically it's the entire sport telling you someone's not that good.

Jeremy's got a better one. Yeah, I believe it's Johan Santana.

Ironically, by the Marlins. He was then traded to the Twins.

But for the record, just so you understand everything it is that just happened here, because I don't know that I agree with Jeremy and I don't know how it is that you're arriving at you would have liked them to do something splashier when Jeremy says I would have liked for them to have a another, uh, young arm under, under contractual control. Um, their pitching's good. They're, they're really good. Their starting pitching is good. I mean, Meyer, Perez, Junk, like, and, and Sandy. Like, maybe you want somebody better than that, but you've got not just— you've not just got good pitchers, you've got value. You've got pitchers that, you know, Sandy's the only big contract there. So I'm not actually sure how much better you would have liked them to do. Was there somebody out there that someone else got that you wanted, that you thought would fit better with the Marlins? Because I didn't react to yesterday as anything other than, oh, that's smart, that's wise. And sure, I'd like a name player too, just like anybody else would. But it's not like they're missing any great thing. They missed out on any great thing.

Chris has a better one than Johan.

I see here, Johan, and I raise you a Roberto Clemente. Okay.

What? Wow. I didn't even know they had that. Are you sure about this? We ran the search and there was an AI overview, but then we clicked the MLB.com link.

Wait a minute. I said what I said.

Yeah. Hey, don't do the thing where we give you a great answer and you say it's not good enough.

I don't— it is good enough. It's too good is the problem. It's not that it's not good enough. It's that it's too good. I just said the Rule 5 draft is something that the entire league tells you someone can't play. And you counter me with Roberto Clemente. There was racism back then. Chris, look up for me when the— it's gone. When the Rule 5 draft— no longer here. When did that begin? Because I would have guessed, I simply would have guessed that the Rule 5 draft was something that didn't even start until the '80s.

I've got here Christy Mathewson selected by the Cincinnati Reds from the Norfolk Phenoms in the 1900 Rule 5 draft.

Wow.

We are dialed back here today. That's a Clemente challenger. Christy Mathewson.

Didn't he win? How many games did he win? How many games? Greg, you were there.

I was there.

Christy Mathewson used to pitch 550 innings a season. Back then. Everybody started 45 games and completed 38.

Career 373 wins and a 2.13 career ERA. Woo!

Okay, so I'm very wrong on what the Rule 5 draft is historically, but I'm promising you that I thought the Rule 5 draft was something that existed only the last 40 years. I did not think it was something that was 100 years old.

To your credit, it has evolved a lot. Like the Rule 5 draft in the '50s when Roberto, it was more common for a better player. Like nowadays with the evolution of the rule, like good players aren't really being moved as much.

This may be a dumb question. Is there a Rule 4?

It is a dumb question. You're right.

Great. Brilliant question.

Prior to its current incarnation from 1959 until the creation of the annual amateur Rule 4 draft in 1965, top first-year prospects of teams were exposed to the Rule 5 draft. What's Rule 3?

Shit.

You have a cough button in the Zazz seat if you want to use it, Greg.

In the number 2 seat?

Don't hold your left arm like that.

You could also turn off your microphone at any point. Can you hear me now? No, we can't hear you when you press the cough button.

Hey, hey, let me try that again. Perfect. All right, done. Noted. That's not me doing that. Dan Levitar.

Hello, this is not Greg Cody. Greg Cody. That kind of thing.

And you know it. This is the Dan Levitar Show.

What did you want them to do yesterday?

I wanted them to get like a big right-handed bat, like a powerful add to the offense. I don't know who that would have been. That's Bendix's job, not mine. But I thought they did fine. Look, I didn't mind them trading Liam Hicks because they have Joe Mack. And by the way, Joe Mack is one of the top 10 catcher names of all time. It's the perfect name for a catcher.

What's your list look like?

Let's do this. @LevittardShow, is Joe Mack one of the top 10 catcher names of all time? Top 5. It's pretty good. I'm going to open the bidding with Yogi Berra. Mack Truck.

Joe Mack Truck. That's not a— A Mack Truck signifies what you want in a catcher.

Make your top 5 catcher names of all time.

Okay, I'm going to. Yeah.

So when you wanted a bat, you wanted like Luis Garcia. That would have been good. Who the— you wanted them to steal like I would have. Sure, sure. You give me an ideal. I would have liked Scubal for the last couple of months of the season. Sure. Let me go into a series with Sandy and Scubal in my rotation and see if I can knock off. Yeah. Okay.

Way to be fanciful. Look, we all agree they didn't need starting pitching. They do need another big bat, unless I'm alone on that. But I thought they did fine. They made 4 small deals. And if you look at the 4 deals they made, you'd be hard pressed to, to decide whether that meant they were selling or buying, because I don't think they, they got anybody in return. That's an immediate fix. But I'm glad they weren't sellers. And you never know with the Marlins. Because, you know, one of our problems with the Marlins is that they're building toward a future that never seems to get here. They're always recycling toward younger, cheaper players. In this case, they keep Otto Lopez, which I thought was major, because I was totally prepared for the Marlins to give up Otto Lopez in fear of the contract he may get someday for a bunch of prospects. I'm glad they didn't.

You tell me whether you feel like yesterday was this: for the Marlins. You wanted them to go out and get a big purchase like an automobile, and all they did was— because Bendix enjoys doing this— is go to the grocery store on a day that their fridge was already fine and they didn't have to be at the grocery store. So they just went milling about and they returned a couple of things and they got a couple of things, but they weren't big players. They were just enjoying the browsing, the shopping, the activity.

Dangerous game. You always end up wasting money that way.

Don't you guys ever end up at the grocery store on days— yeah, you can't go to the grocery store when you're hungry. I think it's best to go to the grocery store on the day that you don't really need very much.

Kill time, do a nice little graze. You know how that ends? It ends with like, uh, sun-dried tomato hummus in the back of your refrigerator for 6 months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't remember it's there, and then you have a bite and it's awful, and then you throw it out. They traded ground beef for ham. You know, they— there wasn't any sirloin here, no lobster being traded, but that was fine.

Put it on the poll: did the Marlins trade ground beef for ham? Which is the better of those two? Like, which is— are they the same? Like, is what—

for me, I— ground beef is great. I love ground beef. I'm a man of the people. I'm a small private individual. Um, but I'm very versatile. Ground beef. Ground beef is very versatile.

Pasta, burgers, picadillo.

Yeah, I'm not a huge ham fan, quite frankly. You tell me I you can't eat ham for 2 years. I'm like, fine.

I'm asking you, basic— put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Are you fine if they tell you you can't eat ham for 2 years?

If I had a hammer— that's 2-seat behavior right there. If I had a hammer is the song you're singing about?

I said ham.

It needed to be said. Oh really? You think I didn't get the joke that you were making? You think it was so sophisticated that I missed that you had turned ham into hammer, right? Please answer my original question. Anybody here answer my original question. When he makes the analogy and he says it's trading I'm trading ground beef for ham. Is he saying that I'm trading things that are worth the same for each other, or is he saying that ground beef is worth more than ham, or is he saying that ham is worth more than ground beef?

Well, he's trying to say it's pretty much the same thing, but then our show did its thing and started parsing ground beef and its versatility.

Yeah, I think they're comparable, uh, and I think yesterday what we saw is the Marlins are trading, uh, a pound and a half of ground beef and getting 3/4 of a pound of ham. Because one team sees ham as superior, the other has a need for ground beef. You know, so that's the way that works. All in all— And some teams are Jewish. Yeah, that's right. All in all, I think that it was an okay day for the Marlins. If you're a Marlins fan, Jeremy, I'm going to use you here because you're part journalist and part fan, right? That's right. When it comes to the Marlins. Okay, that's fair. Is it a day that makes you disappointed or excited? Or is it just a day in between?

Yes, it's a day where they're smart.

Yeah, it's nice. It's nice when your front office feels like it knows what it's doing. Look, if you want to be a, oh my God, I'm so excited they added all of this stuff for the playoff run, that, that's not what yesterday was. They potentially evened out what their lineup looks like. You would anticipate that against right-handed pitching, Owen Casey, Kyle Stowers, Griffin Coney are going to be better for the rest of the season in terms of producing power. Than Liam Hicks was, but he also was their leadoff hitter. Like, you're disappointed that a guy who had a really strong start to the season and helped you get off to the start that you saw at the beginning of April is no longer there. If you're watching sort of casually, you hear, oh wait, I thought that guy had a really great start. He did. He was a piece of what they were doing. What they added helps not only for the short term, potentially in adding a guy in Jonathan Long who has an .860 OPS at AAA against lefties. So evens out what you're doing. A team that's struggled mightily all year against left-handed starting pitching, but you also get better for the future, and that's what this team is always going to have to do.

Greg, you owe 2 fines now for your computer doing that twice during the segment. That's, uh, that's $10 you owe. You only mentioned one though, so I owe 5. Well, uh, I— but you know what happened earlier as well, right?

That's the first time I heard it.

I immediately jumped into action. No, you did immediately jump into action too late after it had happened twice. Uh, Chris, do me a favor, check in with the chat and get them to to give you the names of athletes, please, that most connote ham throughout history. Athlete names who most connote ham.

You'll be happy to know they've already beat you to it.

That's fine. I knew they would. Ham Newton. There we go. I want you to play that game for a little while.

I got a good one.

You usually don't start with the puns, though.

Usually you go— Yeah, well, they were right all over Dorvin Ham. I think the game's over. Yeah, Mia Ham. How's that a jack?

Josh Willingham. I want— but then you can go with the puns. Then after that, you can go Ham Newton. But the other question I want to ask you ask you. Jack Ham. Yeah, we've— we've closed the ham category. We already did that. Okay. Josh Hamilton.

If I Had a Hammer.

You've already sung that.

I know, but now I stated it.

All right, let's move on to ground beef names.

Uh, the thing that I wanted to do is, uh, outside of filet mignon and the higher echelon steaks, I want to see what this meat trade sounds like. If I were to say to you, you traded ground beef but you got back bacon, you would clearly say I got the bet— you got the better deal because you got back bacon, right? You love bacon more than ground beef. Uh, if we're talking about non-elite meats, what is the one you value the most receiving it in a trade? If you have ground beef and you're trading for a non-elite meat. Is there anything better than bacon that you're trading for?

Oh, wow. Well, it better not be Canadian bacon, which shouldn't even call itself bacon. Really? Yeah. Why not? Well, because it's not bacon. Come on, when you think of bacon, you think of what's the love of my life, which is the classic strip of bacon that you hold and it's straight. It's not droopy because it's been cooked perfectly. You don't get, you know, and then You, you have a Canadian bacon. It's not even bacon. Canadian bacon is the round little piece of ham. It's Canadian ham is what it is. I don't know why they call it Canadian.

Put it on the poll at Levitar Show. Should Canadian bacon even call itself bacon? Denny Hamlin.

You know what's underrated is the pork shoulder, the Boston butt. I think that's— you've said this before. You said you like butt. Oh, I eat butt all the time. Everybody knows that. You gotta cook it low and slow, that's the problem. You're gonna invest 5 or 6 hours of a day, maybe longer, to cook the butt properly. But it's a great inexpensive cut of meat. You can buy a 6-pound Boston butt for $12, $15.

Let me do this, Mike Ryan, I have bacon, you have chicharrón, are you willing to trade with me?

I mean, they're all derivative of the same thing, right?

Well, no, but I'm asking you—

No, I love chicharrón. I'm not, I'm not trading Chicharrón.

So what do I need to have in order to get you to trade Chicharrón? Like, what do I need to have for you to—

I don't know if you listen to the internet, but somewhere around 2020, I began being Hispanic and I made Chicharrón my identity way back then. Now I was white the entire time, but in 2020 I decided I was going to be Cuban and then I became a Chicharrón guy.

Congrats. Not an answer to my question.

And not many things that I traded for. I love steak. I'm a red-blooded American, except for when I became Cuban in 2020. But I love steak.

Yeah, but there's all different kinds, you know, like I love a ribeye, not so much a New York strip, you know. I mean, there's— to me, there's a lot of— I love a filet mignon, a ribeye, but, but not some of the other cuts of meat. I, I don't love picanha. Is a, is a cut of steak Christopher loves. I don't love it as much.

Brazilian steakhouse, picanha, salty. Elite meat. Yeah, well, elite meat.

There aren't many elite meats, and ground beef and ham are not two of them.

Mike, you have chicharrón, I've got churrasco. Are you trading with me?

Yes or no? Both are Hispanic and both played at My Identity since 2020.

I got that, but you didn't answer my question. You continue to answer your own questions and give your own answers, but you're not answering my question. Glad he admitted it finally. Uh, bistec empanizado. I don't think I'm trading anything. I actually have some of that in the fridge.

That's the good stuff, right?

I don't think I'm trading anything for bistec empanizado. But it is a cheap piece of meat. It is. That's correct. It's not an expensive— but this is where we started when he's like, uh, ground beef for ham, and I thought he was going to go Spam, the cheapest of the meats, right? That if you're talking about Rule 5 draft, worst of the players, like, it's worst of the hams is Spam, right? Worst of the meats is Spam. Put it on the poll: is Spam a Rule 5 meat? Because I think that's That's universally considered the worst of the meats, is it not?

It is by reputation, but I think Spam gets a bad rap. I think if you cut Spam the right way and cook it the right way, it's beautiful. It's like ham, but incredibly even saltier. I don't mind Spam, quite frankly. Had it a couple of weeks ago for lunch.

Wow, you're really holding back that belch there. Still burping it up.

Yeah, and you're right, you do belch after Spam. I don't want to eat a can of sardines.

If we're going low as fuck on protein— We're not doing that. That's not a meat. It's a fish. It's not a meat.

Okay, you don't think a fish is meat? Fish is meat. It is. Got you on that one.

That's not the category we're not doing.

So we're only doing red meat.

We're not doing organ meat, right? Not liver, not chitlins or anything like that.

You know about the chicken?

Awful.

We're not doing chicken and fish. I thought I was clearly doing meats. I thought you—

I wasn't doing proteins.

See, that went right past everybody, okay? And that I should get credit for using an unusual word correctly. Nobody understood what I said because I— when you were talking about organ meat, I said awful, and it's both A-W-F-U-L and the word awful, O-F-F-A-L, which is a word that encompasses organ meat like liver, like heart. Nellie Dugger used to eat heart all the time, as an example. It was awful.

Dawn Levitar. Is there Back in My Day?

There is, actually. What? Were you not going to tell anyone?

Wait a minute, you guys, guys, it's a Tuesday. Greg Cody, here's your guy, Greg Cody with Back in My Day.

Okay, here it is. Sorry. Adultery.

Oh yeah, wait a minute, we're waiting for this one.

This is the Dawn Levitar I'm sorry, but, but, but chicken is not meat.

I mean, you're only talking about beef and pork, so chicken muscle is not meat to you?

It's very obviously meat.

Guys, I was doing— because he traded ground beef for ham, I was not doing sardines. How—

which part do you—

I'll trade ham for turkey. You guys are— I'm not doing—

I appreciate your level of indignance here.

I am not doing chicken. I'm not doing fish.

I thought we were just hanging out.

I'm not doing turkey. I'm clearly doing red meat. It seems obvious that everything we were doing— I think everyone listening to this, when the starting point was—

Wait, do you think pork is red meat.

It's famously the other white meat. Salmon is actually reddish.

Look, you want to come at me guns hot, I'm gonna call you out on your BS. Tuna! I'm not doing tuna.

I'm not doing tuna steaks in here. This is not— it is a reddish meat.

It is a reddish meat, but it's classified as a white meat.

The fact is, okay, this is a fact what I'm about to say here, and I'm gonna say it indignantly. Everyone listening to this, although they may not have expected this to end up in a conversation or an argument or any kind of indignance that jumped from ground beef being traded for ham. That conversation can't meander over to sardines as a meat. I'm sorry, I'm just sorry. That's not— however it is that we get there, it can't be. It's just not allowed. It's not allowed to be where we go from trading meats for each other and talking about the most valuable of the meats and ending up at a can of sardines.

So anchovies are not doing anything for you?

Correct.

You know, Big Dog was at the IPF today.

It ain't birds, it ain't fish, it's the big cattle. It's the stuff that's got to be taken from the big boys. Not any of the in-a-can tiny fish. Not tiny fish in a can. We were not talking about tiny fish in a can. We were doing— we went from ground beef and ham to bacon, and that's the family of stuff we were in. And I'm telling you, if a cow's there and it's looking at sardines, he's like, you're not from the same family as me. And he's looking the same way at turkeys, and he's looking the same way at Spam, frankly. But I'm allowing it because it's the worst and the cheapest of the meats. That was the lowest. You can't go from Spam to sardines.

I would. We were talking about marlins earlier. I mean, that's a meat. That's a fish. I think fish is a meat. Come on. It's a protein. You can— you cut it with a knife if you want to. Cole Hamels.

Mario Cristobal gets an extension that I thought was out of nowhere. Did you think it was out of nowhere?

Well, he's in the middle of a 10-year contract. I don't think it's unheard of that you would extend a guy with 5 years left. He's still a young man. He's a Canes lifer and they want to make sure that he is. And look, he's had an arc. He's gotten better. His teams have gotten better every year. And if they continue that arc They will win the championship. I think he has that much faith in himself and his program, and I think U-M has that much faith in him. I think it's well earned, the contract extension. I'm glad he got it. It's the right thing to do.

I'm just not used to corporations when they have something at value just doing the right thing, like there's no risk of losing him.

Well, in that industry, they always market correct. It wasn't a surprise at all. You can't have Eli Drinkwitz making more money than Mario Cristobal. So that's, that's just a market correction that anybody could have seen coming. It's not about risking losing Mario Cristobal. It's not about keeping him until the end of his term. No one does that in certainly college head coaching. It's about making sure Mario Cristobal gets his fair market value.

When I say— I'm sorry, Greg. When I say that it came out of nowhere, no one was reporting that they were in negotiations. No one was reporting that there was an extension in play.

I'm sorry, that like it was, it was a well-known thing that this was bound to happen.

I'm not saying that it wasn't a well-known thing. There is no urgency to do this, just like there wasn't an urgency to originally give him a 10-year contract. Like, that was something that was super unusual given the place that they were in, to extend to him a 10-year contract and then extend it again when he's not even halfway through it.

Like, it's not easy getting him from Oregon. Morgan. Like, the 10-year contract was, was necessary. The deal was necessary. Like, he was very close with Phil Knight. It was, and it was a, it's still a premier job. It was, it was hard to get him to come to Miami because he needed to know that Miami was going to be right enough. He's certainly the right guy. The question for Mario Cristobal was, was this the right time? And I'm glad he decided because it's a home run I think it's probably already a top 5 coaching hire in the history of the South Florida market when you consider where we were to where we already are, which is not all the way back, but pretty damn close.

And when you consider what he's accomplished and the recruiting he does and the portal that he wins every single year, especially at the most important position, $10 million, $8 million a year seems seemed super expensive only 5 years ago. 10 years, $80 million seemed like a lot to get Mario Cristobal to come home. 5 years later, it seems like a bargain. So when you talk about market correction, I think that's the entirety of the timing of this is UM realizes, man, we're getting this guy on the cheap.

And one of the benefits of being a private institution is you don't have to disclose what he's making. And I think the plan is to keep that number internal. I imagine a lot of that salary is going to go back into the program because Mario Cristobal is a Canes lifer. He's not going to go anywhere. This is all about market correction.

My point is I'm not used to anything in corporations or in sports when they have something at value doing something just because it's the right thing to do, because there is zero risk of losing him. All the other market corrections are because you're afraid of losing the coach. In fact, I I would say that among major programs, this is the program where they're least likely to lose the coach for any reason because of his allegiances to the sport. And while I think it is the good thing and the right thing to do, I'm still surprised that before they have to do it, they're doing it just because it's the right thing. That's not, that's not normally the way corporations do things when they have someone at value.

Not the corporate world though. College head coaching. I mean, I think Nick Saban had a contract provision famously that anytime someone became the highest-paid head coach, he automatically became the highest-paid head coach. Kalen DeBoer got $12.5 million over the summer.

I'm under no confusion about that. But Nick Saban was always a risk to fly.

Like, no, but why? Why? Yeah, but what you're saying is like, be a dick and hold it over him just because he's got 5 years left on his contract. Like, why rock the boat? Whoa.

Who in our audience has 5 years guaranteed and thinks that you're holding anything over somebody when you've You've got 5 years left on a contract.

I— 5 years left on a contract and I got to watch Eli Drinkwitz make more money than me? Like, that's just not how this goes. And it's such an incestuous business. Like, the agents represent so many people. They represent assistants, they represent administrators. You don't rock the boat with the agent either.

I think this is just a guarantee that Mario is a lifer at the U. You know, had they not done this and 5 years from now he's won a championship and all of a sudden the bigger programs than Miami, and there aren't many but there are a few, are coming after him with, in what, 5 years is a $30 million a year offer or whatever. I think this is a show of goodwill by the university just, that just ensures the guy who wants to be a lifer is going to be a lifer.

The thing that he brings that is the most valuable thing is that he gets the players. There is nothing more valuable than that. The amount The amount of 5-star recruits that he has gotten is extraordinary. And he has rebuilt the program and he deserves a raise and he deserves to be paid like some of his best contemporaries because of how valuable all of that is. But you don't rock the boat with the agent. Like, Miami's back. And if Miami wanted to be assholes about being back, they wouldn't care very much about what an agent thinks about much of anything. When you have a person who, because of his love, is not someone who has any leverage because he's not actually leaving, and everyone knows he's not actually leaving. So to have everyone do the right thing just because it's the right thing— color me still surprised after seeing the World Cup trying to be sold seconds after it expired, because I always expect the people with the money to do the wrong thing, to do the cheap thing, to do the thing that keeps the money for themselves instead of sharing the money. So I'm just— I, I will remain surprised about the fact that this was not a flight risk of any kind and they just did the right thing just because it was the right thing.

If I was going to go down a hypothetical, because I'm with you, no one expects Mario Crispo to ever leave, but if I was going to go down a hypothetical of what would make him leave, it would be being disrespected with contracts after all this success. And we're not going to give you raises that every other coach— okay, 100%.

Okay, but you guys say this, but hold on a second, okay? Because a 10-year contract is a fairly amazing thing when the 10 10 years are all guaranteed. And the other thing that I would say about that, that I don't think is totally irrelevant— disrespect. Like, what the hell are you guys talking about? He signed the contract, and if he had done poorly, they weren't going to cut his salary. Like, they could have fired him, but he was going to get his money. He was— they could have fired him, and he has to get all 10 years. Like, what are you talking about? The national championship game?

I don't I don't know what this is. Disrespect? You want to like weaponize his loyalty?

If he has 4 seasons in a row that are getting better and better every year and then he comes to like, hey, let me get a little bit more money and they're like, no, you ain't going nowhere. Yeah.

And also I do think that yet there's cold-hearted corporations out there that'll be like, no, we got them at value. We got them locked up in 5 years. But typically if you outperform your contract in many walks of life, they don't hold your loyalty against you. They— you can go back and say, hey, the comp, Kalen DeBoer is making, you know, 1.5 times what I'm making. That isn't right. And you can work stuff out. And he's got good relationships with people. You're absolutely right. What he brings to the table is talent acquisition. That is an A-1 skill. It's elite. It's probably the best in the nation. But he also was a huge culture change. And that culture, that rigidity, getting the right guys in the room room, um, and learning from his mistakes. Like, those are all really good assets that he has too. And this was going to happen. It was going to happen the second he got to the CFP. It only became— probably became more expensive with each win, an incredible run in the, in the CFP. But yeah, Mario's a freaking man and he deserves to get paid, and nobody disagrees with it.

I would put it in the most simple term possible, which is Mario Cristobal earned a raise, deserved a raise. That's it. And, and the university saw that, and there was no need to make it contentious by having him spend another 5 years making $8 million and seeing more and more and more less qualified coaches getting a lot more money than he's stuck at. And, and I don't want to make it sound like $8 million a year.

You guys are making it sound like that when you say weaponizing his loyalty, disrespect. Like, what you guys are making it sound like at return is that it's some sort of affront to merely guarantee him the next 5 years.

No, it's an affront to have Eli Drinkwitz make $2 million more than you annually.

Right, exactly, exactly. Schuble is going to demand $400 million from the Dodgers. I mean, times change. You gotta, you gotta keep up with the, the rate, the going rate.

So we feel good about the Marlins trades, or