00:00The Nats play day baseball today at Coors Field in Colorado, looking to win a series.
00:06Boy, would it be a damaging blow if he lost this game, lost two of three in Colorado on the
00:12precipice of the trade deadline here.
00:15Paul Taboni has acknowledged many times over that every day, every game matters in their decision, which they have not
00:20decided yet.
00:21They're prepared to buy. They're prepared to sell. They're prepared to stand pat.
00:24My prediction is they're going to do a little bit of both buying and selling and kind of be smack
00:29dab in the middle of both.
00:31But they're waiting to see how the week ahead plays out, and we're not at August 1st yet.
00:38So let's go through some of the things he told the junkies. He was on 106.7 The Fan.
00:41He's got a weekly Wednesday appointment at 9 a.m. every single week.
00:45You should make sure you listen to the president of the Nationals with the junks.
00:48The first thing he said that I thought was actually really, really interesting, Danny, was that they have already been
00:53trying to trade for relievers.
00:54This is something he has not said anywhere else.
00:56Yes.
00:57This is revealing because while he acknowledged they could sell, they could buy, what have you, they could do a
01:04variation of both, like I'm predicting.
01:06He has not anywhere essentially said, yeah, we've been looking for relief pitching on the trade market and trying to
01:11trade for a guy.
01:12That is a tell. That's very interesting.
01:14That tells you that they will be in the market to try to trade for a reliever, which they should
01:18because they have a bullpen that right now is preventing them from winning streaks
01:22and actually getting going and getting into the wild card spot.
01:25But this was to Boney today on the state of the bullpen and their attempt to improve it.
01:30Yeah, I mean, I think you guys have probably seen it, right?
01:33Our bullpen looks completely different than it did just two weeks ago.
01:39You know what I mean?
01:39So we're turning it over and trying to figure out how to get the best of these guys.
01:47Like I've told you guys in the past, though, that it's tricky to do it at this time of the
01:52year.
01:53And there have been some guys that have been traded that we've been deep in conversations with to try and
02:00go get.
02:00But it hasn't worked out to date, and we're still going to be active in those conversations and try and
02:06upgrade in any way we can.
02:09That was something.
02:10How about that?
02:10So they have been close to trading for a reliever or two, only a few have moved.
02:15So pretty easy to try to figure out recently who those guys might have been.
02:18But that answer suggests the first part we've known.
02:21Look, we're churning through.
02:22We're churning it over.
02:23We are overturning every stone.
02:26They're calling guys up and sending them out.
02:28They're claiming Jags off waivers as back-of-the-roster guys and running through a litany of the players that
02:33are available.
02:34But they're available for a reason.
02:35The way to get better is to add stuff, to add a quality option you can rely upon.
02:40And he acknowledged they have been trying to do that on the trade market.
02:44That's something.
02:45That is absolutely something.
02:46So I thought that gave kind of a pretty good clue to not necessarily their plan overall, but these are
02:53the lower-cost, lower-impact type moves.
02:56Like, if you want to trade for a starting pitcher, be prepared for sort of a more major transaction one
03:01way or the other.
03:02This is that, yeah, we're going to try to find somebody's sixth-inning guy who will probably be our eighth
03:06-inning guy because it's a downward scale.
03:09But it's still the around-the-margins kind of stuff.
03:11It doesn't preclude them from selling something, buying something bigger, et cetera.
03:14But this is just the, we've got to get through next week.
03:17We've got to get through this series kind of a trade.
03:19And I think that's, again, instructive as to maybe kind of gives a tell as to what's in their hand.
03:24When I say they're going to do a little bit of both, I think it's possible they trade Foster Griffin
03:28or Luis Garcia or make some trade where they subtract from the big league team.
03:33But I will be shocked if they don't add a major league reliever or two.
03:36Like, I think that that will be the attempt.
03:39You can do that on the cheap.
03:40It's not going to be Mason Miller.
03:43It's not going to be a closer who comes in here who's a recent all-star.
03:45It's not a role that's Chapman walking through that door.
03:48But I'm just throwing a name out there because he pitched against them yesterday.
03:51Victor Vodnik of the Rockies is available, a guy that throws an average of 99 miles an hour.
03:57He'd be the hardest thrower in their bullpen.
03:58He's had his tough times this year with a whip over 1-7 and an ERA over 5.
04:03But he's controllable through 20-30.
04:05He throws hard, and he has a fairly bright future.
04:07It would appear in the pen.
04:08He closed last year for a bit.
04:09It's a bit of a down year this year where it's a bit of a birdbath.
04:12He's sprained it everywhere.
04:12But you get a different set of pitching coaches, different set of eyes.
04:15Maybe you could harness the lightning there.
04:17Again, stuff is not the issue.
04:19No doubt, and he's not going to cost a ton.
04:21So that's the kind of guy maybe that they'll be in on even if they are selling a bigger piece
04:26possibly,
04:27reshaping things moving forward.
04:29This was to bony bigger picture on the deadline and the fact that it's not really going to heat up
04:33legitimately
04:33until the final 72 hours.
04:36It's the 22nd right now.
04:38For people that aren't aware of how this calendar is going to work,
04:41the deadline is Monday the 3rd at 6 p.m.
04:44So we're talking about still 11-ish days away from the trade deadline for Toboni to be working the phones.
04:52And he's basically continuing to say a lot of teams just don't know if they're buying or selling yet,
04:56like Washington, and so nothing's materializing.
05:00Heating up is probably a little strong.
05:01I think it's just, at this point in time, casual check-ins.
05:04But I think once we get three, four days from the deadline, I think it will start to heat up.
05:11But I think right now it's just teams are checking in and staying in touch.
05:17To be candid, I think there are a good amount of teams that don't exactly know what they're doing yet.
05:22So I think these next, whatever it is, 10, 11, 12 days will be really important.
05:27And then we'll have more specific conversations as we get closer to August 3rd.
05:33You guys win nine in a row, I won't have a choice.
05:36You lose six in a row, you're going to make my choice really easy.
05:40But the key there also is, remember, you're not trading with yourself.
05:43You're not talking to another person in your org.
05:46Other teams need to know what the hell they're doing too.
05:48And half the league, numbers approximate, are in a similar boat.
05:51Not in terms of where their rebuild is and new regimes taking over,
05:54but just, you know, two steps forward, two steps back, one step sideways.
05:58I'm not really sure what we are.
05:59We're right around 500.
06:00We're two or three games out of the wild card.
06:02Everybody's in the same boat, and no one knows what they're doing either,
06:04which makes it hard for you to be able to figure out what the marketplace is.
06:08This was, to me, the most interesting thing that Taboni said today,
06:12the clip I'm about to play.
06:13He talked about the timeline, and it was a great question by Eric.
06:19EB asked this about, you guys are clearly ahead of where you might have thought
06:23you were going to be.
06:24Does that change your plan and how you feel?
06:27Something you and I have talked about constantly over the last few weeks.
06:31Are they going to change the vision slightly?
06:34This is what Taboni said about that.
06:36You know, what I keep going back to is it's this line that I really believe in,
06:41which is that we should be stubborn on the vision of what we're trying to achieve,
06:45but then flexible on the details of achieving it.
06:48And, you know, if we're projected to lose 100 games this year, yeah,
06:54that's a different dynamic than if we're doing what we're doing right now.
06:58So, yeah, I think you have to be flexible.
07:03You know, how much does it accelerate it?
07:05You know, those are conversations that we'll have, but I just, you know,
07:10I think it'd be foolish to say that it's not accelerating our timeline by some amount,
07:16but we also want to be really disciplined so we do this right, right,
07:19so we're not winning one year and then losing 90 games the next year.
07:24And you should be disciplined.
07:25Yeah.
07:26And you want to be sustainably good.
07:27Everything you're saying is correct.
07:29But this quote, my friends, should give you a little bit of hope.
07:34There's a gleam, men.
07:38There's a gleam.
07:39He says, and I quote,
07:41it'd be foolish to say that it, it, by the way, is this season and being over 500.
07:47Uh-huh.
07:47Now 500.
07:48That this season is not accelerating our timeline by some amount,
07:52but we also want to be really disciplined so that we do this right.
07:57There's a gleam, men.
07:59There's a gleam.
08:00We're not winning one year and then losing 90 games the next year,
08:04but he said,
08:05I think it'd be foolish to say that this season is not accelerating our timeline
08:09by some amount.
08:10There's a gleam, men.
08:12There's a gleam.
08:15I agree with everything he said, by the way, big picture,
08:18where it's like it doesn't mean you do feeding frenzy.
08:20We're, you know, we've landed on the moon.
08:22You kind of go nuts.
08:23It also doesn't mean that you're silly, right?
08:26It also doesn't mean that you kind of throw caution to the wind.
08:28It also doesn't mean that you do nothing because, well,
08:30the timeline's the timeline.
08:31Things have changed.
08:32It's worked out better than you thought.
08:33When you say silly, do you mean like sell?
08:35Sell.
08:35Or do you mean silly like?
08:37Silly like a goose.
08:38Okay.
08:39Silly like a goose.
08:40So what's sell?
08:41Sell, it would just be like they go on a little wind streak
08:43and like somehow a starting pitcher emerges
08:45and they've got a good bullpen.
08:46It has happened before.
08:48It is.
08:48I wait.
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