John Smoltz talks Braves’ slow start, Juan Soto’s unfair expectations and Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame

John Smoltz spent parts of 21 seasons in the majors, making the All-Star team eight times, winning a Cy Young, winning a World Series and, ultimately, making the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. He’s been retired since the end of the 2009 season, but stays in the game as the lead color commentator for Fox baseball broadcasts. 

He’s also an avid and excellent golfer. This summer, Smoltz is planning on qualifying for the U.S. Open and winning the American Century Championship, an annual celebrity event at Lake Tahoe, this year taking place July 11-13. He’s finished as high as second in his 15 times playing to this point. 

Anything but a victory now won’t be good enough. 

“Every year” his goal is to win. “I put too much pressure on myself because I want to win so bad.” 

He feels good this time around due to being fully recovered from replacement surgery on both hips. Still, at age 58, he knows he won’t be close to his prime much longer. 

“Time’s running out. I gotta get it done.” 

Former tennis star “Mardy Fish is the guy to beat,” Smoltz said. “Tony Romo is tough to beat when he’s on.” Mark Mulder, Derek Lowe, Jeremy Roenick and Steph Curry are some of the other tough competitors he’s got his eye on. 

CBS Sports caught up with Smoltz in advance of the tourney to talk baseball. 

Though Smoltz also spent time with the Red Sox and Cardinals, he played for the Atlanta Braves for 20 seasons and gathered all his individual and team accolades there. The Braves started this season 0-7 and have climbed back to within striking range of playoff position here before Memorial Day. 

I wondered if, as a veteran team with lots of playoff experience and even experience coming back from huge regular-season deficits in the standings, are they better equipped to deal with a bad start than other teams? 

“Yes and no,” he said. “The yes part is once you’ve done this before and chased down the Mets and had success in the postseason by getting there the last seven years, you have a DNA about your club, but it shocks your system when you start out 0-7. You’re like, ‘what in the world’ and search for your first win. It’s a long season.”

“This is what I always say about baseball: If your strengths are working, then you have a fear factor for the other team. If your warts are showing, then you have a weakness that the other team can prey on. You’ve really gotta be good at showing what your strengths are and hiding your warts. Unfortunately that has worked backwards for them. Their warts, their inefficiencies have come out of those close games they’ve lost. They’ve struck out too much in those games. But their strengths, when they have the fear factor of their offense and Acuña comes back, then all of a sudden you play to your strengths and the other team is fearful of it.”

“Baseball is too long of a season — you can’t hide your warts forever. They’re gonna be there. When you leave spring training, every team knows their strengths and their weaknesses and the goal is to hide the weaknesses as long as possible to where you can cover it up and make the changes so they’re no longer a weakness.” 

“There’s very few perfect teams in baseball, because health destroys that and the Dodgers are the perfect evidence of that right now. They’re really good, but they’ve got so many guys on the injured list that it’s only because of their payroll that they can sustain that right now.”

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Also in the NL East, there are the Mets and Juan Soto. The four-time All-Star and 2019 World Series champion was AL MVP runner-up last season with the pennant-winning Yankees. He then signed a 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets. He hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t been great and — given the contract — the discourse is picking up. I asked Smoltz about it. 

“This game and this league is a copycat league,” he said. “Like, it’s gotta be a 13-, 14-year deal because somebody else got it. This is a league of the one percenters. But what you’ve gotta understand with these deals is we haven’t seen many work out. We just haven’t.” 

“[Shohei] Ohtani could be the outlier. Even Mike Trout, I don’t know how many people are looking at that deal now and seeing Mike Trout and his unforeseen injuries and his lack of getting on the field, does that look like the greatest deal and the greatest player in baseball?” 

“So you gotta look at this thing in periods of time.”

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“The other thing is I think it takes a special player and special personality to go from a really great player to, you have to be beyond great to meet the expectations of everybody else. When you sign a contract like that, fair or not, you’re no longer given the freedom of having bad moments. You’re just not.” 

“It’s not fair, it’s not right, the season is too long.”

“He can make the adjustments like they were doing with Francisco Lindor for the longest time and now look at the player he’s become. He’s back to where he should be. These megadeals, clubs take a big-time risk, unless it’s their own player that they’ve known that they’ve signed, that they know the track record, you’re taking a huge risk. You’re putting out your best PR feelers to show your fan base what you’re willing to do and willing to spend, but then there’s an expectation that goes through the roof. Some guys’ personalities handle it, some guys don’t. That’s the nature of the game.”

And of course, the big news so far this May was the reinstatement of Pete Rose and a group of other now-deceased players who had received permanent bans from baseball. I asked Smoltz is Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. 

“I think this is the track that everyone thought would happen,” he said, meaning that now in death the path is cleared for Rose to make the Hall of Fame. “I think that while he was alive, there was probably zero chance that this was ever gonna happen, but now the veterans committee has it. The veterans committee for that era will be able to vote, will be able to decide.” 

“I personally think what he did on the field was untainted and was absolutely deserving, a no-brainer.” 

“I think from the standpoint of the Hall of Fame and everything that it was intended to be, people are gonna disagree with things. I don’t like the argument and people are gonna try to draw a parallel between steroid guys and Pete Rose and I don’t think there’s any parallel. I don’t think it’s even close. They’re gonna say some guys have already gotten in the Hall of Fame who did steroids so why not put them all in, again, I don’t agree with that line of thinking.”

“And I don’t agree with the fact that we’re dealing with people getting suspended today. It’s an embarrassment to baseball. It’s an embarrassment to our sport to have this still be a lingering problem. I’ll say it every time, the risk/reward, it’s not enough of a deterrent. The reward is still too great. I hope one day we never talk about it again.”

“To answer the question on Pete Rose, we all read the rule, we all know that it’s a no-no, that was his sentence while he was alive and I guess time will tell as far as the vote and how it goes down, but there is nothing that I know of that has ever been associated with his playing being tainted on the field.”