Chapter 1: What are the early season struggles for the Mets, Phillies, and Red Sox?
All right, welcome back to Blair and Barker, brought to you by Capital One. Capital One, giving Canadians credit for 30 years. 707 will be the first pitch tonight. The Jays take on the Boston Red Sox. Peyton Tolley on the mound for the Red Sox. Trey is savage, making his 2026 debut for the Blue Jays. Reminder, tomorrow's game is a 307 first pitch. I like those games, though, at home. It's fun.
I don't like day baseball. We'll ā Blair and Barker will be on from 2 to 3, and then we'll be on following the game with Blue Jays.
I just don't like ā I try to be a company man. I just don't like day baseball.
You know, jeez. I don't like day baseball. What's the matter with you? There's something in that coffee. It's 2026. What are we playing sports during the daytime for? We're not the NFL. Come on.
I mean, I used to like them when I played. Spring of David Sampson.
Spring of David Sampson. There he is.
Still waiting for my glove seat, too. Yeah, you'll be waiting. I'll be waiting for a while, it seems like. Do you like day baseball? You are one grumpy guy, Jeff.
Yeah, you know. And I'm here for it.
No, I just don't like day baseball. It's, you know, it's 2026.
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Chapter 2: Why were Alex Cora and Rob Thomson fired as managers?
Everything should happen at night. Unless you're the NFL.
Why don't you just live in Europe, then?
I mean, he's tried. I've tried. Yeah. He's tried. It may be in the works.
There are some days where... I don't want to pressure you guys, but tonight's a big game. I was thinking about it. And when you're sitting like a half game up on Boston and you're underperforming and you had who should be your number one guy lose a game for you when there's turmoil on the other side, you've got a debut for a solid 2-3. Yeah.
You got to win tonight, and I hate a got to win in April. It's so absurd. But since we last spoke, I've gotten slightly more concerned about the Blue Jays, I must admit to you.
Well, the Yankees are basically having missed a beat, and they're going to get healthier. And if you lose tonight to the Red Sox, I mean, I think you go to last place. Yes, sir. Whoa. In the American League East. No, listen, it's... I know that, you know, John Schneider in the front office, the whole thing is just keep stacking up series wins, try to get back to 500.
But, you know, you don't want to be saying that at the end of May. We're just trying to get back to 500. I mean, you can do it right now. You don't want to be doing it at the end of May. Yeah, I mean, I am with you. You know, you've got the Red Sox coming in town. They...
I mean, God, they had guys take in the field yesterday basically meeting their base coaches as they were running out in the field for the first time. Seriously, and Ranger Suarez comes out and does Ranger Suarez things.
Okay, I got to ask you a question. Since you brought this up and you just come out swinging on this show today, which I like you, that's kind of nice. Okay, when you're on a team, you're running a team that has expectations that are really high, and there's other good teams canning people. Your team that has a lot of expectations is losing a bunch of games. Make you irritable?
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Chapter 3: What impact does a managerial change have on a struggling team?
Like where I've just, you've had enough of seeing it.
Yeah.
Listen, when you're 18 years running a team, irritability is not just about your bowels. Yeah, you're irritable all the time. One of the great lines by Bud Selig, every year you go to bed, minimum 16 nights a year miserable, and that's if you win 100 games. So two months out of your year, every year you're in the game, you're miserable, and that's when you're the best team.
Why would you want to do that and lose money? That was Bud Selig's line to all of us at owners meetings. And I've never forgotten it. Now, did it inform how we operated? It sort of did. Did it change how I reacted to losses? It did not. It's just, I hate losing. To this day, I just have a different game.
Now it's about downloads and clicks and viewers and getting stories and communicating them and being on shows like yours. But the competitive nature of players and front office is such that you're always irritable when you don't win, which gets me to lesson number two. What do you do when you feel worse losing than good winning?
And just think about that for a moment because that's a really tough one.
That is a tough one.
At that point, you would almost say the joy is gone. So this is the issue that you have to think about with your team, and you think about it with your manager, you think about it with your players when you're evaluating them. You know, we've seen a managerial firing today.
We saw that Dave Dombrowski felt that he could not move forward anymore, and he had to try to grab 2022 again, where you fire Girardi and bring in Thompson, and all of a sudden you go to the World Series. And the thought is, can you recapture that, which is what we all do as executives. We're constantly trying to recapture our best moments. And I've spoken to players about it.
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Chapter 4: How does Don Mattingly fit into the Phillies' interim management?
I expected Rob Thompson. I expected Carlos Mendoza. I wouldn't be surprised to see Jim Crane go crazy and fire Espada because when you have expectations that are not being met, you have to find it's like a pressure buildup that requires like release and relief or else you go crazy. And so it is temporary relief when you fire a manager because you think, okay, now we can go.
The Phillies have a pretty decent schedule these next four series. Now I can feel as though I've put our team in a position to go get them. And if you're the Blue Jays, I just don't think that's an option. You're not firing Schneider. You are who you are. You have who you have. And so you're living with no valve that you can press to get relief other than to start winning games.
And when that's the only lever you have to pull, that also makes it hard to get through a season and leads to further irritability.
What are you looking for? I mean, the Marlins famously went to the World Series, won a World Series with Jack McKean after a midseason, not a midseason. When was the managerial change made? May. May. Me, sorry.
Early enough where you can figure out what you are. I love early moves. I love making managerial changes early.
That's what I was going to get to. The idea of doing it now compared to July or just before the trade deadline. But the idea of making a move right now, better to do it early.
It's always better to do, well, almost everything it's better to do early. And I say that because what we're trying to do is establish who is right and who is wrong. Did I evaluate this team incorrectly? The players that we ran it back with, and I'm speaking about the Phillies, did I make a mistake? Did they all get old in such a short period of time that I just wasted money on Schwarber?
And Bryce Harper really is not a lead anymore. And all of a sudden Trey Turner can hit after winning a batting title. Like, did I really get it wrong that quickly? Or did we just need this little, this little thing that we can press relief, release some pressure and then try to win some games. So I like early because it allows for adjustment.
Listen, Philly could still add at the deadline, but they could also subtract the deadline because there's so much time before July 31.
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Chapter 5: Which team faces the biggest challenges: Red Sox, Phillies, or Mets?
Okay, when you fired a manager, did you care what the players thought? My point is, did you, after the firing, did you go have me, not say a team meeting. I don't even know what that does. But did you go like group, like the core group, say, can you guys come and let them ask questions? It's kind of the Red Sox thing. I think it's the Red Sox. Yeah, where the Red Sox didn't allow.
They just basically didn't care what the players thought. I'm firing them because I want to fire them.
Did you care? So I would not care what the players thought, but I didn't want them to know that I didn't care. And what the Red Sox did is they made it known that they didn't care, and that just leads to bad morale. But you know my Girardi story, and it's a terrible story, but we had to fire him in the middle of the season in 06, and then we had to unfire him because the players did a mutiny.
These young players in 06, when we had the team meeting and told them we had fired Girardi, they lost their minds. And we then changed our mind and waited to the end of the season to fire him. But that's because we had an owner who demanded that we fire him because Girardi had lost his mind and yelled at the owner in the middle of a game.
So there's all sorts of things that can happen, but you have to communicate with your players. Not every GM agrees with that. Old school GMs do not. But I always communicated with players, including ones that we were going to trade.
Okay, I've asked you this before. When you start evaluating your team, it's a 40-game mark, that kind of thing. After you wax a manager, how long do you give them? Like, how long is it until you're like, maybe I should start adding? Is it all about winning? Is it about the way they look when they lose?
Like, what do you look... You're smiling, but I would think that's a little... I'm smiling because that's for young players.
You know that, Parker. When young players change their body language or bring their slumps to the field or change their approach or start acting differently than you know them to be, that's when you think about sending them back down to the minor leagues. That's when you think about changes.
When it comes to a new manager, don't believe in all this stuff that, oh, we're bringing in a new philosophy, we're bringing in a new voice. Really, it's change for change's sake because you are not pleased with what's happening on the field because it doesn't match the expectations that you had.
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Chapter 6: When should Blue Jays fans start to panic about the season?
And so when it doesn't happen, you make a change. But you know very well what they announced today, guys. Don Mattingly will be there, but they tried to get Cora already, and they'll try again this offseason.
Okay, I want to ask you about Donnie Baseball and his son being the GM. Any worry in that? Does that matter? Is there any big deal with that? You know Don.
I mean, Don worked for you, did he not?
Yes, he was my manager for years, and I know Preston very well. Preston wanted to get in the game, but don't mistake titles for reality. Dave Dombrowski's in charge of the Phillies, not Preston Mattingly. Preston Mattingly is the GM of the Phillies, that's true, but Donnie answers to Dombrowski. And in terms of the expectation, you're going to read a lot about the father-son dynamic.
Will the son be able to walk into the clubhouse and say something to his father about something he doesn't like or to talk to his father about the lineups or all the things the front offices do? And Donnie is a professional. And he and Preston, I've seen them work together in a clubhouse. It's professional. and I worked alongside my stepfather for many years. You compartmentalize.
There is family, and then there is professional, and you can't let them mix, and the Mattingly's will not mix, I promise.
You mentioned Carlos Mendoza and the Mets, and I think we kind of on the, I was almost going to call it the Mendoza watch. I think a lot of people are. That's awful, by the way. It is, but from your point of view, Phillies, Red Sox, Mets. Right now. The team that has the biggest issue. See, I look at it and I think it's the Phillies because they've got a lot of no trade clauses.
They've got some guys that are older. Kevin will say the older guys are playing well. Or better than the other guys. That's fine. I look at the Mets and I think that, and I don't know why this is, David, you're close to it, but I think that somehow that may be able to work out. The Red Sox, that pitching cannot be that bad.
Somebody's gonna be 30th in the league. So yes, I understand. So let me tell you the difference. John Middleton has a, let's say the number five or six payroll, and they are not swimming in money. He had to sell some shares in the team in order to raise money, in order to pay down debt. He does not have an endless checkbook. As wealthy as he is, there is a limit.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Jonathan Papelbon offer about playing in tough markets?
And I guess we're going to have to wait to see.
David, what's the checklist to hire a manager for big market teams, especially ones that are like New York, Philly, where the media just sticks the microphone in your face and it's Sometimes overwhelming, like you can be overwhelmed by it. If you're hiring a manager, is there a blueprint or a checklist that you would be checking first to say this dude probably can handle this a little?
In this day and age, the number one thing on the list is the ability to manage up to your owner and manage down to your players. That's really the biggest role. It's not worrying about, I laughed, oh my God, when Chad Tracy said, yeah, I was working on the lineup on the plane. Okay, listen. Chad Tracy didn't walk into the clubhouse in Boston and make out the lineup.
It's just, it doesn't work that way in the real world. But it made me laugh. And Donnie will collaborate with Dombrowski, who's more old school, and with Preston. But the ability to deal with your owner and deal with the clubhouse, that is a huge one. In terms of media... I just want people who understand that what a bridge means.
And what a bridge is, is that no matter what the media asks you, whether you're in a big market or small market, you can answer whatever you want to. Whatever we have told you to answer or we want you to talk about, you can answer that to any question that's asked. It's bridging is the concept. And we look at that as a skill that people, anybody in front of the camera has to have.
And then the last thing is the ability to understand what is the reality of the baseball world, which is scrutiny, which is bad press, good press, winning, losing, the ability to understand the the length of the ride and Donnie baseball. Is there anyone who understands better than he does? Jack McKeon, same thing.
They understand the rhythm of the game and baseball is a lot like a symphony in that way. The season has a rhythm and you have to understand the rhythms in order to be successful.
That's a great answer. Yeah, it really is. One of the guys, the former players, whose name has been out there as a potential manager has been Albert Pujols. I mean, there have been some other names as well, but we know Albert's interviewed for jobs. Carlos Beltran is another guy. both of those guys would be able to walk into any clubhouse and probably command respect instantly.
Is that a thing now? And I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of them. I'm thinking of the Mets, for example, you know, you first thing you got to do with the Mets, I would think is try to figure out Lindor and Soto, a guy like Pujols, a guy like Beltran, not just because they're Latino, but because they've got that, you know, they recently played and they've got that, that pedigree about them.
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Chapter 8: How does losing a closer's job affect a player's mindset?
Listen, the driveline is so big in the game right now. And for me, I think it's ridiculous. I love the idea of someone who's hit 500 bombs to be able to talk to someone about approach. But do you know what happens with kids these days? And I say this with all respect to kids. They all think they know more than anyone who's talking to them. And I saw that across my whole career.
Yeah, I know how good you were, but God, things were different. They were throwing 86 miles an hour. I'm dealing with 99 at my ear. So there always is that thought that players have a, you know, the ability to believe. And that's what makes them world-class professional athletes is they believe they can do it. It's really hard to release a player when that player thinks he's good.
That's one of the hardest things in the game.
Absolutely. I never got to hit 210 in the big leagues. I don't have any idea how that feels. I hit 240, got sent to double A. So I have no idea. But I do, David, I want to circle back to the Blue Jays because you started the show by basically saying it's must win tonight. So I do want to follow up on that a little.
As somebody that covers the Jays on an everyday basis and the fan base of the Jays, when should they start freaking out? No, no. I'll just leave the room right now. It has to be asked. Is it that they're in last place? You know, fourth place is not last place. The freak out factor. You know, is it 10 under?
Like when should you start sort of starting to roll up the flag and go, uh-oh, what are we doing now?
Wouldn't it be amazing if people didn't freak out at all? Yeah, that would never happen. I mean, that would just be heavenly. But for me... We'd be out of work. Well, it's funny you say that. Because we trade. Our currency is trading into the freakouts.
So we create them when they don't exist or we remind people that they should feel a certain way so they can hear us make them feel better about feeling that certain way. But for me, I would say that when I said tonight's a must win, I guess what I mean is it would be really super nice for the Blue Jays to win the game today with your Savage going when Cease did not get you a win yesterday.
But does the season end if they don't win? No, of course not. But in terms of freaking out, I think now, for sure, like this minute, Blue Jays fans should be freaking out because look at you. It's total panic time, and it's going to take a miracle to save the season. That's well said.
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