The Baez Blunder: Zack Scott Explains Trading Crow-Armstrong | Sal Licata

WFAN Daily

Audacy

Sports

4.4 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a revealing conversation, former Mets GM Zack Scott was pressed about the infamous 2021 trade that sent a young Pete Crow-Armstrong to the Cubs for Javier Báez. Scott candidly explained the front office's thought process at the time, admitting that while they valued Crow-Armstrong's defense and makeup, they fundamentally missed on his offensive potential, specifically his power. He detailed how the team, in a "win-now" mode under new ownership, prioritized a veteran bat for a playoff push, and how the industry as a whole underestimated Crow-Armstrong's future stardom. This discussion offers a rare glimpse into the complex and often unforgiving world of baseball front office decision-making. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:36.5	Got to know Zach a little bit and think you have a fantastic, interesting perspective from a former GM's perspective. Figure to have you on here and have some fun talking about both these two teams. How are you, Zach? I'm good. Thanks for having me. All right. So you want to get into the hard stuff first? Whatever you want to talk about them. Why did you trade Pete Crow Armstrong? What's wrong with you?
0:39.3	Yeah, he'd fit pretty well right now.
0:55.3	Yes. hard stuff first. Whatever you want to talk about. Why did you trade Pete Crow Armstrong? What's wrong with you?
0:57.4	Yeah, he'd fit pretty well right now.
0:58.7	Yes, he would. I'm sure people are not happy to hear me say that.
1:01.1	But yeah, I mean, there's, you know, I grew up learning from people like Theo Epstein,
1:08.5	Dave Dombrowski, you know, future Hall of Fame executives that you kind of figure out who are your core prospects that you think are going to be huge parts of your kind of future, your next great team that you want to build.
1:22.4	Everyone wants to build a sustainable winner.
1:24.7	And, you know, obviously incorrectly, he wasn't one of those guys at the time.
1:28.8	And a lot of the guys that were guys that are in the big leagues now. And some of them have
1:32.9	disappointed. Some of them have been okay. But yeah, we had him, and quite honestly, so did the
1:38.0	industry. Had him probably as like our fifth, sixth, seventh best prospect at the time. And
1:43.4	what wasn't a strong, wasn't a deep system.
2:03.6	It's fairly top heavy with Alvarez being number one at the time. And this is your first year there, right? This is 2021. I came on first as assistant GM and then slid into the same year. Right. And then Porter got in trouble. You slid up there. Yeah, I slid into that seat. and Pete, you know, he had been the first round pick the year before. Love the defense, loved the speed.
	...

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