00:00How they go from here will tell us a lot about how they intend to run the franchise and whether
00:05or not they really want to be championship caliber sooner rather than later.
00:10If this team shows up at spring training and we don't feel like it's capable of contending
00:16for a World Series, and I admit that's a bit of a subjective term, a great term, but if
00:21they are not at a point where we all feel like they are ready to contend for a World
00:25Series, I think that's a bad sign.
00:27It means that they're still putting more emphasis on the long term and on the business model
00:33than they are on the short term.
00:35Now, look, at the end of the day, we want them to do both.
00:38The idea is you want to contend for championships and not completely leave your system barren.
00:44But here is Sam Kennedy.
00:46What was rewarding to see this year was these two guys, again, to my right, acting with urgency,
00:52starting with our trip to Dallas and then all the way through.
00:55We didn't get there where we wanted to go.
00:58We all know that.
00:59But we acted with urgency and certainty and aggression.
01:03We plan to continue to do that as we go forward.
01:06OK, so Kennedy uses the word urgency there a fair amount of the time.
01:12And you notice he said to these guys to my right, talking about Cora and Breslow as if
01:18he had nothing to do with it.
01:19And I think that this has to be called out for this reason.
01:23Three years ago, at the end of 2022, Alex Cora sat in this very same press conference
01:29and said, as an organization, we have to have more urgency.
01:33Alex Cora has never been the issue in terms of putting a team on the field.
01:37Cora wants to compete yesterday, let alone now.
01:41So this is not a Cora issue.
01:43Now, there's two ways to interpret what Sam Kennedy said.
01:46Number one is that he is empowering the baseball people and trying to give the impression that
01:52ownership and management doesn't have anything to do with the level of urgency, which we
01:56all know is not realistic.
01:59The ownership and upper management decides how much money they're going to spend and ultimately
02:04whether or not they've gone too far in terms of spending and what have you.
02:07So they ultimately have veto power on everything and anything.
02:12Urgency ultimately has to come on some level from ownership first.
02:16That's where it has to begin.
02:18Now, the other way to look at the comment that Sam made is that he's really crediting Craig
02:24Breslow versus High and Bloom.
