It’s been a busy off-season for John Smoltz.
The Hall of Fame pitcher and TV analyst has been working extra hard on his golf game ahead of the 30th annual American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe, NV. At the age of 51, Smoltz won the celebrity division at the inaugural Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions in January and last year was a surprise qualifier for the U.S. Senior Open.
As an occasional playing partner with Tiger Woods, Smoltz recently committed to three events as a sponsor exemption on the PGA Champions Tour circuit. Since 2000, Smoltz has played at Lake Tahoe nine times, where he’s finished in the top 10 every time.
But his main gig is covering Major League Baseball for MLB Network and FOX Sports. It’s that role which has him captivated about the Toronto Blue Jays‘ current rebuild and the cultural changes we’re currently witnessing in baseball.
Smoltz discussed all of that and more in a Q&A with Sportsnet’s Donnovan Bennett.
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Sportsnet – Your off-season is not really an off-season as you’re going to be competing again as an athlete but in a different sport. What about the Century Championship is appealing to you?
John Smoltz – It’s the best we have and what I mean by that is celebrities. We get together in what is one of the greatest venues, the best time of the year, temperatures that are usually phenomenal and we’re in one of those fields where you know, it’s electric. It’s the closest thing to what PGA Tour or Champions Tour guys get a chance to experience, when they’re going at their pinnacle of their sport. It’s a must for me in the calendar. It’s not the perfect timing for me, but it is what it is.
I’ve been playing really good. I’m getting closer and closer to where I want to be. I’m physically in a position that I haven’t been in 10 years. I’m excited about that all due to having competed in last year’s Senior Open and realizing where I want to be.
It’s not like I’ve got unlimited time. It’s a balancing act and I’m excited. I really am excited about tournament play whether it’s in Tahoe or the Champions Tour coming up.
I do my All-Star game for Fox. Jumping on a flight cross-country, get over there, try to squeeze in golf real fast and then try to compete at the highest level on a three-day tournament. It’s been a good result for me to this point.
SN – What is the level of pressure like standing over a 20-foot putt on 18 in relation to when you were pitching and trying to get out of a jam in the World Series?
JS – God, pitching I feel like I can compete a lot better than when you’re trying to do something that you’re not accustomed to. The pressure of all of the tension that’s just you and this golf ball and nothing else. Nobody can come in and tap you and say ‘I’ll take it over for you.’
It’s pretty unique, you and mother nature. I always think about golf as ‘this might be the day where everything is aligned and I play my best round ever.’ But as far as the two, they couldn’t be farther from each other. I get the ball on the mound, I can do what I want to do. I’m confident in what I’m going to do. I release the ball and, even though I don’t have control of the outcome, I can dictate the tempo of which I go about it. In golf you’re at the mercy of your competitors and how the flow of the game is going.
Baseball, there’s a team concept. You have other ways to be compensated.
SN – Is there any athlete, with golf as their second sport, that you think if they actually dedicated themselves they could play on the big tour and compete?
JS – The PGA Tour is also a whole different animal. I think Mark Mulder is the closest that I know of, Tony Romo is outstanding as well. But I just think that’s a tall task, that is dropping everything.
I think if they dropped everything and their family life. The greatest players in the world have been able to do this their whole life. If anybody has a chance, even you’re talking about Stephen Curry man, he’s been awesome competing with sponsors exemptions.
It’s daunting. It’s a great challenge and what you really tried to do in my opinion, I can’t speak for everybody else. I want to see how great I could get. It’s not that I’m going to compete on a yearly basis. That’s not even in question. It’s what level can I get to and how far can I take it.
SN – Let’s talk about your main sport. What do you think of the proposed changes to the MLB game?
JS – Look at all the sports. Basketball is played with a clock. Hockey with a clock, football is played with a clock, you know soccer.
Baseball’s one of the most unique and more historical games that is always played nine innings or until it ends and everything’s been good up until the point where it’s the data showing that the games are taking longer and longer on average.
Naturally, in the position of the commissioner’s office, they’ll want to look at that, and with information coming in the game at an alarming amount, where players are processing the game a little bit slower because of the information, because of the technology and sophistication. Sign stealing and, you know, trying to decode your sign.
There’s a lot of factors in why the game has slowed down a little bit when some of these athletes have been so gifted and are so talented. But we have to process the game maybe in a different way.
SN – You mentioned sign stealing, something that the commissioner has vowed to try and crack down on. Is it an actual problem that needs addressing?
JS – It is. On second base if your able to get pitches, I don’t think anyone has a problem with that. But when you’re utilizing technology or you’re being able to do things that are unnatural to the game, that I think causes teams to be a little paranoid, causes them to be more secretive.
SN – Tony Clark talked about the owners colluding and maybe there isn’t just a market correction on why we’re not seeing the big ten-year deals for guys, and then all of a sudden Manny Machado signs for $300 million. What have you made of the last two off-seasons for free agents and the big paydays not coming as much?
JS – Well, I think if you look at it in a vacuum, it has been a little bit unusual in the way the last two years have gone. Everybody’s been given new analytical information and technology that all exists so that you’re going to get closer to the same kind of numbers and same kind of assessments from a club standpoint.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying collusion, that’s the easy answer. You have to look at the market, read it in different ways and be creative. If we all knew what everybody turned down or wasn’t offered, then we can make an educated guess as to why these things are happening.
But because we don’t know that it’s all speculation. Certainly, from a player’s standpoint what you’re used to is things that used to happen from outlier owners. Different people that would stray from the pack. From an information standpoint that may not be the case moving forward.
I think time will tell, and how it self-corrects or how it gets to a point where you could at least get more guys signed before spring training gets too far.
SN – The other kind of tug of war for agents and front offices is the front end of the career. We saw before Kris Bryant that whole debate around service time and playing games to get that extra year of team control. The most recent case is Vladdy Guerrero Jr. Where do you stand on that debate?
JS – When you step away and you’re unemotional, and I’ve been away from the game for 10 years, there was an opportunity to address that when the collective bargaining agreement was discussed and signed, sealed and delivered. The things that were discussed in the previous one were all done under the pretence of [what] they thought that was best for what their needs were. And when these things always come up, you can’t really blame a team for taking advantage of the rules that exist currently in the sport, and it makes more financial sense for them to be able to do what they feel is best for their ball club, much like the Bryant contention with the Cubs, and it might cost you the pennant.
With everybody else who’s gone through it, it’s all worked out pretty well for those players and you might get an exception or two that says we got a chance to win and we’re not kidding anybody, we’re going to find a way to have this kid make the ball club.
I understand the fan standpoint, but I certainly think when the players have an opportunity to address it they either have that as a priority or not to find ways to fix that part of it moving forward.
SN – Marcus Stroman opened up spring training with comments about wanting to be a Blue Jay long-term and the organization not looking to compete because they’re not bringing up Vladdy and not bringing veterans into the clubhouse. If you were a veteran in that locker room what would you say to him?
JS – So he was being honest for certain, but I’m not sure if he helped himself. I signed back three times with Atlanta. And the last time it didn’t work out and I signed with Boston and then went to St. Louis, and I think by me coming out saying I wanted be a Brave, I hurt myself negotiation-wise, but to the degree of how much?
It was a win-win, but most of those deals didn’t get done the way I wanted it to get done, and that’s not up to me. It’s only up to whether it works both ways for a club, just like a player kind of hard balling for something, or [when] a player demands a trade.
I never quite understand that one. If you can work that out with the club without ever being public, that would be the best. Demanding something without having any control of the demand doesn’t seem to work. My advice would be, as time goes on, if it works out that the club would be willing to extend and make you a Blue Jay for life, that’s awesome.
But as a player you control what you can control, and going out to perform at the highest level is really all that you can do. I learned that early in my career because those desires didn’t match up with reality ultimately.
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SN – What should the future expectation of the Toronto Blue Jays be?
JS – The situation is they’re going to rely heavily on Charlie Montoyo, a rookie manager, and their young talent who will be comprised of rookies.
You just hope, as a fan base and as a player, it doesn’t take six or seven years. You hope that the model can be reproduced to a point where they can get the young players to be ready faster and more mature playing beyond their years. And so they’ll know, if those things happen, the direction of the club can change mightily.
Their expectation to win might be in three or four years. Maybe they get sped up. But anytime you go down a new road and you embark on a new direction, there’s going to be some patience that management’s going to ask of the fanbase. They’re going to say ‘look at what Houston did look, at what Chicago did, and look at whatever example they use.’ The problem with that is most people don’t investigate how long that took for each one of those clubs to get to that point.
And so that’s the issue, how long does it take to get back to that level? Everyone talks about the window of opportunity in baseball. Now the opportunity of a 14-year window doesn’t exist anymore, like we had in Atlanta. So now what is that window? Especially in the AL East, trying to get any window, never mind a long one, is tough.
