Welcome to Rates and barrels.

It is Tuesday, December 5th.

We're in Nashville for the winter meetings.

Together. All here together. We've never all been in the same Nashville for the winter meetings. Together.

All here together. We've never all been in the same place at the same time. At least to do a show. We've all been here before, but I don't think I knew Britt back then. I was probably looking for a job the first time I came out here. That didn't work out, actually, even though I'm here. So I guess things worked out in the own way. Cool to look at you guys in the eye

I want to doing this.

You're like,

I'm always looking at my other eight tabs. Wait, should I not have a minute? Thank you. I mean, and also like usually I haven't brushed my hair. So I have I have brushed my hair this morning for you guys because other people are going to see me. We're three for three on showers today. Yes. We're dressed much nicely than we

usually are as well. So things are going great for us as a group. Now, it's been a quiet winter

meeting so far. And we spoke on the three-o show last week. You predicted this. You thought this

might be a clunker as we move into the middle of day two. That has been the case so far, Britt. So the question is,

what's holding everything up? Well, guys, I think there's two big dominoes that everyone knows about.

One is Shoah Otani, who's not even here. Is Agent Nez Vallejo also not here? They're conducting

these super secret off-site meetings. And, you know, until he signs, it would almost be foolish for

AJ Preller to deal Juan Soto. Because whoever loses out on Shohei Otani is going to be under the gun

to make a big move. So I think what they're hoping for, and certainly with what has been leaked out

of what the Padres are asking of the Yankees, they want that big

return. And the best chance to get it is to get a lot of teams bidding against, you know, the Yankees and whoever else and to get somebody that's desperate. And, you know, the Padres, no, because they were on the other side of this when the Nationals were trading. Now, the Dodgers were in it very heavily, and the Padra just kept throwing prospects in that deal.

And we'll get to that a little bit later in the show.

But I think that is really what's holding everything up right now. And you can say, well, what about the pitching? Well, what, Otani pitches? And two, we just haven't seen a whole lot of movement because I think all those guys are still waiting for these dominoes to go down.

I really do.

I think it's fair because it's such a money outlay. It's going to be, I mean, even if it's, even if it's, even if it's off and it's not 450 and they're worried about the arm and it's more like a 350 plus incentives, that's still a lot of money. And if you're going to put that money out there, then you can't go get Yamamoto too.

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