Zack Scott

You have to be like, I remember, you know, obviously Dave Dombrowski is a very aggressive general manager.

Oftentimes our teams were pretty much done after the winter meetings.

Like he, he's maintained that while the rest of the industry has kind of been late and doing a lot of things, but he was the,

president when we signed JD.

And I think that was very hard for him.

We used to joke that we got to tie Dave down before so he doesn't just give him more money because it's hard to be patient, especially when you're really excited about an impact player.

It is hard.

And you are playing a game of chicken because there is risk that it goes away.

And then what do you do if everyone else has signed?

And so sometimes you've got to pivot earlier and use your resources to maybe take

you plan B because you're not willing to take the risk of that waiting out plan A. So going back to the JD situation,

Well, we made that decision in December, probably.

I remember being at the winter meetings and outlining the different scenarios.

And it was, okay, we could... There's Hosmer as a free agent, Carlos Santana, Mitch Moreland.

It was like, okay, we could...

We think JD is the best, most impactful player here, but we understand it's going to be a long process.

Do we sign Carlos Santana for 60 million over three years?

Do we get in on Hosmer?

because that may happen sooner.

Or do we go with a budget solution at first base in Mitch Moreland and wait out JD?