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I think it will take roughly 15 minutes, maybe less, for teams to find a way around the rule if they want to, and they can just move their outfielders around, or start putting fielders in motion like we used to see with TLR & Co. What concerns me about the shift rule is that ...

Well, to put it bluntly, it's fan service.

It puts players in positions that are aesthetically closer to the position names, but ignores the fact that players have been moving around for history. Ronnie Belliard played second base in shallow right field for the 2006 Cardinals. No one complained. He changed a series. Fans celebrated. In 1946, the Cardinals used the shift to neutralize Ted Williams, and I recently saw article where Williams PRAISED the shift for being an advancement in the game. He responded. In 1982, the Cardinals again used the shift in the postseason. For years and years and years, Dave Duncan kept detailed sheets on hitter tendencies, as did Whitey Herzog. Players would see him working on them on the team flight. Those were used for -- brace yourself -- defensive positioning, and they were celebrated for doing that. We've all seen infielders get a read on a hitter, move, and make the play, and we celebrate their instincts.

Now we want to rivet fielders in certain places, limit where they start the plate, tell them to pocket their instincts or their data -- and we call this maximizing their athleticism? Now starting at shortstop: Harrison Bergeron.

Anyone want to square that circle for me?

Oh, and the goal should be to get more balls in play to get more action in the field. That doesn't necessarily mean hits. That means plays. And you know what a second baseman on the shift scurrying to steal a hit because of his positioning is -- a play. The shift requires what baseball seeks: A ball in play. And now banning these shifts may bring more hits, may not, don't know, but what we do know is we cannot guarantee that it will mean more of what makes the pace of game and style of game and defensive excellence of the game prosper: balls in play.

And if you want make the argument that defensive shifts have neutralized a class of hitters. OK, so have cut fastballs. So has velocity. But we're not telling pitchers not use scouting reports to throw specific pitches into specific zones where a hitter as a hole to be exploited.

So why are we doing that with fielders? It's inconsistent. 

It better work.

You are here to argue, clearly. And you're helping to make my point. No kidding, Ozuna was unlikely to take a one-year deal. That's my point. They cleared him off the books, and they had payroll to spend elsewhere.

A franchise's value is not applicable in this discussion. Sorry. It's only worth what someone is will to sell it for. And since the DeWitt's weren't selling then what's it matter how much the franchise is worth.

It matters how much revenue the franchise is actively making.

And they're in the top third usually when it comes to revenue, and that is directly tied to payroll spending. And where in their recent trends suggests that they would fit an Ozuna extension, a Goldschmidt extension, and the Arenado trade until the umbrella of their post-pandemic spending? Or the Yelich extension. 

I think you're again missing my point -- the chain of events matter. That's how they're connected. The series of decisions the Cardinals made regarding their roster put them in a spot to trade for Goldschmidt and trade for Arenado (with a lot of help from Arenado pushing for that). It's possible Arenado still happens regardless of other moves because of the push Arenado made to become a Cardinal. But there's no guarantee that both of those deals happen.

Finally, if you know the reporting on Stanton then you certainly know that the Marlins agreed to the deal with the Cardinals, and Stanton's agent advocated for him to consider, strongly consider, the Cardinals as a place to play. It would have been a surprise if he accepted it, sure. But this wasn't "due diligence." That's pricey due diligence because there was a moment Stanton had to say yes. 

His agent is also Arenado's agent.

Just FYI.

I think a lot of that comes from three things:

1) So long Zoom. In person interviews are so much better and I think fans/viewers/readers can definitely see that. Plus, Marmol has resumed meeting with the writers away from the cameras, and so what you see there is a chance for the manager to pause, expand on thoughts, challenge writers in ways that don't always come across on camera when any pause in answering feels like forever and any answer feels permanent, with no time to elaborate. That's been a big thing for better understanding the team and his thought process -- those press meetings individually with Tv reporters and then scribes do that.

2) Oli Marmol's approach. He can blunt. He likes talking baseball. (Shildt did, too, but that brings us back to Zoom.) We saw that quickly in spring training when he talked about a young pitcher getting his "teeth kicked in" during a spring training appearance. He quickly told us that he had not said anything to the reporters that he had not already said to the player, so it shouldn't be a surprise when he says it publicly. 

3) And, notably, the Cardinals have wanted to push in a modernized direction when it comes to making lineup decisions, pitching decisions, and acquisition decisions, and that has been happening over the past several years. Several within the organization realized that they did not handle the explanation of Shildt's firing well. Not at all. And they needed to be clearer in their moves, more expansive and candid in their explanations. Marmol has helped with that because he's the one who speaks so often and has articulated clearly how metrics influence his decisions for the lineup and with pitchers and so on and so on.

I have wanted to put a conversation with Girsch on the podcast for awhile because it would give fans a chance to hear more from him outside of a press conference setup, and clearly quoting him in the coverage was not reaching all of the readers in the same way a podcast would.