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Hacksaw’s Great Sports Weekend Podcast
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
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‘CLEANING OUT A BUSY NOTEBOOK’
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PADRES…Quite a week…the AJ Preller extension and the 1-year low cost rentals to sign all these pitchers..Preller’s wheeling-dealing, though expensive, has made San Diego a destination point for late signing free agents with something to prove.

NICK CASTELLANOS…Will need an attitude readjustment, not to be an everyday starter, but more likely an everyday DH or platoon guy.  He hit 250 HRs, but that was in the cozy confines of a HR hitting paradise in Cincinnati and Philadelphia.

TY FRANCE…Homecoming for ex Aztec…Now a multi position guy who can play 1B-2B-3B, has hit for average in the past, with a little bit of pop in bat too…See how he holds up as  a part time player, but an insurance policy guy.

WALKER BUEHLER…A firebrand of a starter, who was vibrant before he suffered his first elbow injury and then fought back and was pretty fierce post-surgery before running out of gas and getting hurt again.  What he did the first half of the season in Boston last year, after the second surgery, was impressive too, then he hit a wall.  He finished strong in Philadelphia and learned some different off season training techniques.  He could be a lottery ticket acquisition.

GRIFF CANNING…Was a decent back of rotation starter for the Angels, changed his repertoire and arm slot with the Mets and had a really solid season till he went down with an Achilles injury.  Totally healthy, we see if he can repeat what he did in NY.

GERMAN MARQUEZ…Was a workhorse starter for the Rockies, then had forearm-elbow surgery…Had a strong mid season of starts then a setback late in the season…A (3-16) record on an awful team does not tell the story of his abilities if he is totally back healthy.  Wait and see.

MARCO GONZALEZ…Pitched pretty well in Seattle before the forearm surgery…Sat out a year and will comeback hoping to be a crafty-lefty…Only time tells here.

TRISTAIN MC KENZIE…Part of a bunch of young arms Cleveland developed…Some panned out…Some flashed…Some got hurt…He is part of all that…Electric stuff when he ffirst broke in, then health, control, maybe maturity problems…Still has live arm, has added a slider, and we see if he can reclaim what he was just 3-years ago in Cleveland.

Play ball-let’s see where this goes.
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Hacksaw’s Thursday Podcast-1:30pm
You Tube..Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
Hot Topics-Stay for Fans Forum
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“COLLEGE FOOTBALL-ABSURD”
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I cannot wait for the next great West Coast football rivalry.

Forget about the history of USC-UCLA, the Civil War (Oregon-Oregon State) , the Apple Cup (Washington-Washington State) and even The Game (Cal-Stanford-in ACC) etc.

Park the limited interested in the Oil Can Trophy (Aztecs-Fresno) over there.
No more Holy War (BYU-Utah).

Make your plane ticket reservations early to see….Sacramento State-vs-Akron Zips…Mid American Conference football next fall.

This after you make reservations to see North Dakota State meet Hawaii in Mountain West play.

It goes on and on.  Schools leaving where they were to try and be somebody they cannot be, a big time player.

None-the-less, everyone has an opinion on Sac State, which hasn’t won anywhere, joining a league in the Midwest.

An essay from Front Row Sports.com on the ever changing adversity of it all.
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Sacramento State joined the … what?
The MAC, a conference mostly based in and around Ohio, is adding Sacramento State from the FCS’ Big Sky Conference, as announced yesterday. It’s doing so on “a five-year term,” whatever that might mean. The Hornets seem to believe they’ll be in the NFC West by then.

 

As with Mountain West newcomer North Dakota State, Sacramento State’s move is happening immediately for the 2026 season, meaning it isn’t allowed to play in the FBS postseason for two years.

 

But unlike NDSU (and successful FBS newbies like Appalachian State and JMU), the Hornets were not big winners during their 33 years in FCS. Only two playoff wins, though both were in the 2020s. No semifinals since 1988, in Division II. After last season’s 7-5 finish, head coach Brennan Marion left to become Colorado’s OC. Local rival UC Davis has long been a superior program.

 

All realignment moves are ultimately about money, but this move is extremely about money. Sac State is expected to pay $18 million to join the MAC, $16 million more than Northern Illinois is paying to join the Mountain West. A key seven words: Yesterday’s MAC statement touted Sacramento State’s “record of investment” and “commitment to continued growth.”

For years now, Sacramento boosters have heavily promoted those investments, at one point trying to tempt the Pac-12 with talk of an Ohio State-sized NIL budget.

This week, school president Luke Wood claimed the MAC move will deliver “an estimated economic impact of $975M and national broadcast value of $675M over the next five years.”
(Joining the NFC West would add eight figures to the Hornets’ value, sure. But the MAC’s current ESPN deal reportedly pays about $8M per year … for the league’s 13 teams to split. Elite teams in the Big Ten and SEC might fall halfway short of $675M in five-year TV money.)

 

Beyond that diamond-eyed math, I can see some logic. Stakeholders believe they have the financial power to create a champion where there isn’t one, and they believe their metro population of 2.4 million people will begin falling in love with it. (Over the last few years, the Hornets have ranked around 12th in FCS in attendance, rarely selling out their 21,000-seat stadium.)

 

Neither the Pac-12 nor the Mountain West were interested enough to add Sac State, and the NCAA declined its request to join FBS without a conference invite. (In 2017, it approved such a request for Liberty, a program that had won a bit more consistently in FCS.)

 

So the idea appears to be: Buy a ticket into the weakest FBS conference, flood the field with NIL cash and quickly springboard into the Mountain West or Pac-12 and beyond. Money powered JMU’s rise, after all.

 

Sure. There is a dollar amount that could convince any five-star to move to the radiant city of Sacramento. And sure, gathering enough of those players on one roster would mean dominating the MAC. Maybe the Pac-12 and Mountain West will look silly for not buying in, then watch as the NFC West bids against the Premier League and Marvel Cinematic Universe for the Hornets.

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“BASEBALL UNION..IN CRISIS”

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The Cactus League and Grapefruit Circuit open this weekend.
There should be excitement.
Pitchers-Catchers reporting.
There should be excitement.
Last second free agent signings in the headlines.
There should be excitement.

Not at this hour.

Instead of ‘Play Ball’ in the conversation, we get words like ‘Bloodbath’…’All Out War’…’Salary Cap mandate’.

And on top of the excitement to see the Padres-Mariners-Dodgers-Angels opening weekend games, we have to deal with what happened with the Union.

MLBPA Tony Clark, removed from his position after 12-years on the job amid a black cloud of allegations.

A federal probe of Clark’s leadership and handling of funds from the ‘1-Team Partners Licensing Group’.  The MLB Union and NFL Union formed an NIL partnership that has raised (2B) in a short amount of time.  There is evidence that Clark created a ‘Profit Unit’ for himself as part of the deal.

The same movement by NFL Union chief Lloyd Howell led to his resignation-ouster months ago.  Now Clark is out too.

On top of this is the allegation that Clark tried to use his power to crush a probe of the 1-Team Licensing Group, and tried to intimidate the NFL not to cooperate.

Add in the allegation of nepotism, that Clark hired his sister-in-law for a Union job and had affairs with her.

This chaos comes as baseball heads into the 2026-season, the final year of the CBA.  Negotiations could begin as early as March to avoid a lockout-shutdown, but Clark will not be there at the table.

His point man negotiator Bruce Meyer will be there.  His reputation is checkered.  He tried to block a deal in 2022, but then watched the Players themselves override his veto of the Rob Manfred offer.

Meyer is viewed as militant, and willing to ‘die on the hill’ if the owners try to impose a Salary Cap in the next CBA.  Meyer is also viewed as a ‘Yes Man’ for super agent Scott Boras.

Meyer got his traits from Donald Fehr, a Union militant from back in the day.

The Players should be concerned with whom to trust.  The fall of Tony Clark is shocking.  The rebuke of Meyer’s work was stunning.

Of course Rob Manfred and the owners need not to celebrate.  They have their own Oil Fire to deal with.

Check these boxes off:  Gross disparity in payrolls in baseball; the collapse of TV revenue for more than 20-MLB teams; the need to redo revenue sharing; the critical aspect of getting the big market teams to increase their share of TV contributions to a central fund for revenue sharing.

The Seidler’s and everyone else has a real in-house problem to deal with before they ever get to the negotiating table with the other side..

So instead of celebrating the Padres 6-free agent signings over the last two weeks, the AJ Preller extensio,  or the Dodgers desire to ‘3-Peat’, we are dealing with statements like bloodbath-militancy-civil war and more.

Baseball looks like it’s in a crisis, the union’s house on fire, the owners’ solidarity filled with its own in-house cracks.

‘Play ball’ on the field.  Yes starting this weekend.
‘Play ball’ you wish leadership on both street corners would do that.
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Hacksaw’s Monday Bonus Podcast
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
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“NBA-NOTHING BUT ANGST”
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Lakers fans probably won’t like this.
Hard core basketball fans won’t likely agree.

Burg if you listen closely to all the things Adam Silver, he NBA commissioner had to say, he has problems in every corner of the world.

Everyone in the league is making 40-50M a year-hard to identify with the kind of money in today’s society, but the players think it is normal.  Some world they live in.

The NBA just came thru the Trade Deadline, some 27-deals in all, where there was more contract dumping and draft pick swapping as a way to get players off your roster.

The brand of NBA basketball is hard to watch.  No commitment to defense, and more fringe players on each roster than stars on rosters.

The new byword in the league is ‘tanking’, giving up on the season so a team can get a very high lottery draft pick.  As of this past week, 7-to-10 teams appeared to be in tanking mode with half a season to play on the schedule.  That sure looks like a betrayal to fans, season ticket holders, corporate sponsors and media partners.

The Draft Lottery needs to be re-worked but how?

The All Star weekend was just completed, with the game replaced by what looked like school yard pickup 10-minute basketball scrimmages.  Really weak.

TV ratings for the All Star festivities have plunged 47% to the 2nd worst in NBA history.

The legendary LA Lakers and NY Knicks are not the franchises they used to be.  Bad leadership (Jeannie Buss-James Dolan) has alot to do with that.  Ditto in Sacramento, 20-years without a playoff game.

The most important part of the season is months away, the playoffs, which means there’s still more time for star players to go down with catastrophic injuries, because there are too many games, not enough recovery time.  Just think of Ty Haliburton, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis, Damian Lillard among the many.  And don’t you dare bring up ‘Load Management’ either.

Solutions?

Cut the season back to 72-games.

Make the All Star Game..Team USA-vs-Team World matchup-big money prize to Feed the Hungry.

Unweight the lottery…1-ping pong ball for each team.

Make the playoffs…a play in series…best of three..best of five…best of seven.

The NBA has  lots of problems to solve.  Adam Silver, the Commissioner, has a mess on his hands.

NBA = Nothing But Angst.
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Hacksaw’s Monday Bonus Podcast…1:30pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
Hot Topics on Table..Stay for Fans Forum
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“PADRES…COMPLETE TEAM?”
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A most interesting first weekend of spring training camp for the Padres.

A silent off season of uncertainty-became clearer in a snap of the fingers.

The Padres filled out their roster overnight, getting home runs and some insurance policy pitching, without big expenditures or strip mining what is left of the farm system.

GM–AJ Preller-working with a limited budget despite losing 4-key veteran players, has had a strangely quiet off season, despite all types of roster needs.

Not any longer, and not of his doing.

Here comes Nick Castellanos, Griff Canning, German Marquez.

The trigger points for the weekend started in Philadelphia and spilled into Arizona.  It became time for Preller to make moves with the nickels and dimes he had left in the bank account.

Castellanos, a career (.270) bat with 250-home runs, hitting in bandbox stadiums, was released by the Phillies, in part because of 3-seasons in a row of declining stats, an angry dugout blowup, and defensive deficiencies.    He still has time left on the clock and it will take an attitude adjustment that he is moving into the sunset of his career, and will be asked to play some OF-1B-DH.  But he comes at a minimum price of (780,000) with the Phillies paying him (19.2M) to leave.

A soid veteran, on a 1-year deal, with something to prove.  An add on with some power, to a good lineup.

Meanwhile the scene shifted to Arizona where the Diamondbacks re-signed strong armed starter Zac Gallen, to a (1Y-22M) deal, similar to the qualifying offer they made in December.  They let Gallen talk and take offers, but teams were not willing to give up draft pick compensation and international signing bonus money to get him on a multi year deal.

The Padres were in the collection of teams trying to do a creative deal, but. the budget would not allow a (22M) deal even with deferred monies.  He was the last big name to come off the free agent board.  When that happened, the Padres shifted into Plan B to go find arms.

The Padres added two starters,  in recovery  and additions to its wafer-thin starting rotation.  Yes, both Griff Canning and German Marquez are coming off rehab off seasons, but both have track records, and come in with history, contacts, and at inexpensive costs, the new way of Padres doing business.

Canning had an achilles injury that derailed his NY Mets season last year.  But before he went down, he had grown from the pitcher who struggled with the Angels.  The (32-37) career mark is one thing.  but the (7-4) record after he reinvented himself in New York.  This sure feels like the Michael Wacha signing a couple of years ago.  HIs free agent workout a week ago was convincing.

Marquez was a workhorse in Colorado, becoming the ace of a Rockies staff that provided little support.  Decent years, no runs, pitching at altitude, bad team, was a bad combo.  Then he got hurt, like the other young Rockies starters, Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, Austin Gomber.

Last year was horrid from the outside looking in, (3-16) on a talent destitute franchise.  But lost in that (6.78-ERA) season was the fact he had weathered a year and half of rehab from forearm surgery and started to come around mid season.  He had 8-quality starts in 11-outings at mid season, till he went down with a second injury.

The Friars are banking he is healthy, and his (68-72) record in pitcher unfriendly Coors Field means pitching at sea level and healthy will make him a contributor.

And there are 2-intangibles at work here.  Bud Black knows all things Marquez from the 9-years Black spent as Rockies manager.  And there is the Ruben Niebla-effect, here’s your next project, work your magic.

So Preller has added some form of power with Castellanos and Miguel Andujar.  And he got two innings eaters he believes are healthy as insurance policies to the rotation.

There are 39-Padres pitchers in camp at this hour who have pitched at the MLB level as starters, relievers, setup guys, insurance policy pitchers.  Strength in numbers.

1-thing we know, Preller has yet to get us into a World Series.  The other thing we know, Preller and his people know how to find pitching.

Part of me says, this is not the same franchise as last year, no Dylan Cease, Robert Suarez, Luis Arraez and Yu Darvish..But part of me also says, new opportunities mean you can find guys to plug in and make a difference.  And the Preller Plan does have history to back it up.

Interesting weekend for sure.  Better team on Monday morning, that it was on Friday morning
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