Toby bell Ringer. Welcome to Batflip and Nerds. Hello and welcome to Batflips
and the Steve Baseball Podcast with a British twist. I am your host this
evening, Russell Esum and we've had another week of MLB, so it's time
for another recap and I'm delighted to have with me Rob Navera's who has delightfully
called himself potentially John's daughter I La Fisher on our zoom call. Hi,
I don't go by bye. I've dropped the Navera. I'm just Rob.
Now just Rob the Rob, Just just Rob. I no longer have a
location name, okay, and also joining me my follows. That's the Darius
Austin. How are you doing. I'm all right. I'm just wondering if
Robes done that because he's second time of people getting his centem. Now I'm
moving, but nobody knows where. And yes, so yeah, we are
here once again to give you our thoughts on the week of baseball. And
I think there's nowhere we can really start apart from the great arm explosion epidemic
that has fallen upon us, the slow and slowly gains that we were seeing
of injuries seems to have catapulted to the point where cy Young candidates Cy Young
winners are falling left, right and center. Darius, it's kind of I'll
come to you first. It's pretty clear that most of the evidence points to
the fact that below and spin play a massive kind of like impact on this
that effectively, analytics in the last ten to fifteen years of baseball has managed
to show that having a better velo and having better spin leads to higher with
rates, leads to like lower batting averages against, and so players and teams
have pushed towards these these factors over like the last ten to fifteen years.
It's am I oversimplifying it, but're basically seeing like this is something that started
fifteen years ago, and we probably should have been talking about it five years
ago, but maybe it's got a lot worse recently. Yeah, we've had
some confounding factors. Obviously, the pandemic has thrown a wrench into all sorts
of trends, So that's kind of messed up a lot of data, I
think. And yeah, there's always been an element of pictures getting hurt,
you know, I read the book about Old Hoss Radbourne wearing fifty nine games,
and there's a decent chunk of that dedicated to how his shoulder was completely
messed up for the first portion of the season. You know, this is
not a new phenomenon. Pitching is not particularly natural thing to do. But
as analytics has sort of gained pace and the things we know about pitching have
sort of been adopted by all thirty teams or maybe twenty nine and the Rockies,
these things are only accelerated, I guess. And yeah, when you
can tell pitch as well, you know you'll strike more guys out if you
put this grip on your ball and throw with a bit more spin, or
you know, go to drive line and had a couple of miles per hour
or whatever it might be, and then you know that's that's just an arm
dress then isn't it that it's going to accelerate. So yeah, I think
justin Valand had some pretty good comments about it, and you know, having
a fairly nuanced view of it's not the pitch clock, and it's not just
velocity, and it's a combination of all these things. But chasing you know,
triple digits, chasing maximum spin rates, it's not good for your arm.
I don't think so. Yeah, I think I think that's a fair
summary. And Rob like, we obviously there are people that can do this.
We have people like or Oldest Chapman. We have people who have like
managed to maintain pitching at a high velocity for a lot of the time.
But they're the exceptions. When we have people saying like, oh, well,
look at what like Nolan Ryan did or what like Maddox did in the
past. They're the exceptions, not the average, aren't they. Oh?
Absolutely, they're saying now that it's goods in school getting it done. You
know, it's it seems to be everywhere it has been going. I mean
you're talking to a race fan. I mean, no one knows about Tommy
John Surgery is more than a race fan over the last few years. You
know, it's it is. It is kind of crushing to a season as
well. So so yeah, you can point to these one or two guys
who aren't getting it done. We're getting to the point now where we have
to ask, all, right, do we do we just accept this as
part of the game, and this is going to have to happen, and
these people are making these decisions to play anyway knowing knowing the risks, or
does something need to be done about it, because because you're absolutely right,
it's not. It's not contained to a certain type of picture anymore. Either.
You know, you're seeing the finesse guys, you're seeing the velocity guys.
You're seeing the guys are somewhere in the middle. It's not it's quite
indiscriminates at this point that the elbows are blowing up all over the place.
Yeah, And I think, like when I was initially saying that, kind
of what analytics has done is that there are certain things that are easy to
track and certain things that are hard to track. Like people have known that
things like tunneling and control are great for a picture, but it's very been
very hard to quantify those sorts of things, whereas velocity and spin became very
easy to quantify. And that meant that you could see is this good?
Is this bad? Well, this is great. And so people from a
very young age have basically now been seeing that velocity equals money, velocity equals
a contract or, velocity equals going to college. Gove lost Eagles getting drafted,
Velocity Eagles kind of like making it in the Major leagues. So we've
kind of pushed down this road because it's the easiest way to track, I
would assume in your industry, Rabbi, or assuming your industry, Darius.
There are times where people talk about like quantifiable things and unquantifiable things, and
everybody falls back on like, well, we'll make the changes to the things
that are quantifiable because we can actually see that we've made a difference, Whereas
sometimes you actually need to try and change the unquantifiable things and concentrate on those,
but you just don't know actually if you've made the change. Whereas teams,
players, organizations have been like, this is the thing that I can
definitely see that I've changed that's really pushed us down this direction. I think
we may already be a part of the way down that down that path.
I think there is a perception right now because there's been a little clump together
of quite high profile players. But I've just googled it now and you can
get up to the list of Tommy John's surgeries. You can search for them
by day. I'm just on Wikipedia, but I've seen plenty of other players.
You can get this information, and if you actually look at it,
we seem to have peaked around twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
and there does seem to be a slight trend towards slightly downwards in the last
couple of years. Now. Again, absolutely you mentioned the pandemic already and
how that may have changed things a little bit. I don't know. Maybe
that was a bit of a stop. But it may well be that these
forward thinking, progressive athletes and people who look after athletes are actually a few
steps ahead of us. And maybe they're not panicking quite as much as the
rest of us because we're seeing this happening now, but they may already be
a few steps down the line towards getting this sorted. But we've looked at,
you know, the different ways they train and weighted balls and what they're
doing at driveline, and yes, soa but perhaps this is what's causing it.
But equally, perhaps these people who are out in front of these problems
when it's you know, how to make the pitching better, how to bat
better, perhaps the people are already also taking those steps. And this is
more of a media circus issue than it is an actual trend of getting worse
with these with these elbow in possibly, I don't know. Yeah, I
think there's been a couple of articles. I think Bendlenberg put one out that
it's kind of shown that twenty twenty one was the worst year and this is
now looking like twenty twenty four, even as it is so far as looking
close to being out like twenty twenty one's levels. So yeah, there are
there are times where it's it's peaked and like come back up again. I
think that the extra factors that are potentially put into play. I think that
personally think the removing sticky stuff a couple of years back has actually played a
massive thing on this, because players got to the point where either they had
to kind of lose velocity and lose spin rate, which would have shown everybody
that they were using sticky stuff, or they all had to learn to grip
the ball a bit harder and take a bit more stress, like on their
forearms in other areas to kind of keep up with the speed that they had
before. So I personally think that that has probably had a part of it,
But I personally don't think the pitch clock has had a little has anything
to do with it. And the moaning that we've had from the union is
more around the fact that this was something that was unilaterally imposed on the league,
from the league to the players, and not something that was like agreed
upon. Do you see it similarly, Darius, Yeah, as with most
of these things, there's obviously an element of bargaining chip in here. If
the union can sort of leverage this as well, you know, this is
really bad for pictures health, and you need to give us something back in
compensation, then great. But yeah, that BP and Derek Rhad's have recently
shown, you know, it didn't really make much of a difference in twenty
twenty three. Maybe over a long period of time we'll see some trend,
but it's going to be incredibly hard to pick out from anything else. I
think this is much more likely to be a combination of the other things that
we've mentioned. And yeah, maybe there are very specific pictures for whom it
has changed their style of pitching so significantly that it has resulted in them getting
hurt because they've had to take five ten seconds off between pitches. But for
the vast majority, it wasn't that big a change, and we haven't seen
the numbers to back that up really in terms of you know, what what
happened to picture last season? It wasn't such a sudden spike in injuries,
which is what you would expect if it was the pitch clock driving it.
So yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, and the Union is just
trying to jump on this for leverage. So open floor here. Do we
have any short term fixes? Are ideas that we think could actually kind of
can can help here? Yeah, we could make the picture face the other
way and he has to throw it like over his head, like behind him
every other inning, So like he does one overarm where he's throwing it forward,
which is going to have some kind of strain on the arm, and
then every odd number is even number inning. Sorry, to get right,
he has to turn around to face second base and he throws it over his
shoulder, so he's using a different set of ligaments and muscle. Yeah,
so you're you're on load management. That is Rob Navera's here, Darius.
Is there anything that can be done in the short term? I mean people
have talked about, you know, restricting the number of pictures to sort of
try and incentivize starters to basically pace themselves and stay in the game longer.
I think there's something around that, but I think you've also got to do
it quite carefully, and you know, the current restrictions don't seem to be
enough. I don't even think dropping by another picture would really do it.
I think we'd probably just see more cycling in and out of guys. I
know there are restrictions on options now, but you know, we just see
those those last men in the ballpen get dfaid more often, I think,
and somebody else would come in to eat up those innings instead. I quite
like the idea of sort of having a match day squad or something like,
you know, you've got to name your guys. Here's here's the four or
five guys who are allowed to pitch you tonight. And if you want to
take one of the you know, if you reach your limit and you want
to take somebody out, then you know they have to have thrown forty pitches,
or if you take them out before that, you have to put them
on the injured list or something, you know, just so we kind of
like you need to cover these innings with an extremely limited amount of pictures to
what you used to. If somebody goes you know, three and drops out
of the game, then you're in trouble. You know, you've really got
a work card to cover those innings rather than what we've got now, which
is just well, we can pull the picture in the third because we've got
seven other guys ready to come out of the bullpen and cover for him,
limiting the max efforts. Yeah, yeah, just so that so people know,
you know, like we only have this limited pool of people to cover
this game for us today. And if I, you know, only throw
seventy pitches, yeah, because I'm pumping one hundred miles per hour and I'm
gassing the fourth, then We're going to be in trouble basically. No,
it's it's definitely like an interesting idea. I think the worry I have with
something like that is that we're basically already in an environment where we're like four
four and a half runs being scored a game like we make it easier for
the hitters, like that goes up, like and to keep baseball as what
it is that at that like the professional level, we want to there's kind
of some kind of like historical sanctity to kind of like roughly what like a
game level should actually be. Yes, there's been some like various like run
environments over time where it's been vastly different. But I think we'd want to
try and keep it still at like, oh, I don't know, maximum
five maybe five and a half like runs per game. So the A feel
MLB would have to do something else to kind of compensate for, like bringing
in like making pitching less effort and so therefo it would be easier for the
hitters. It was like, if the MLB could do it, you would
I don't know, damn for the ball, or you would increase that's increase
the size of the strike zone or something like that. That kind of makes
it like to compensate with these things across, but we just don't know.
This would take the trial and error to work out, like what's actually a
good combination of things to do? And if you get to that, that
gives you the idea of how do you fix this long term? Because until
you disincentifize players and teams to do this at the M or B level,
everybody who's below that level is still good to be incentifized to throw as fast
as as they can. Right, I totally lost you. Yeah, but
it's like you could also have maybe have something like, hey, if you
get too many Tommy Dron surgeries on your team, like you lose a draft
pick, you lose two draft picks or whatever, where it's like, man,
pitch through it. But that that becomes that historical thing that Darius is
talking about. This comes from what I've been reading about Shane Bieber, is
the fact that he was feeling sore for both of his games that he pitched.
So you're like, he knew something wasn't right, but he was obviously
hoping that it wasn't this, and it wasn't. He didn't think it was
serious enough. And it shows that actually major leaguers can pitch through injuries for
a certain time period. In the past, they would have done that,
maybe for a season or two, and then just their arm would have been
completely interitly blown and they would never would have played again. Yeah, there'll
be lots of guys who just you know, you look at their stats and
they got terrible, you know, in their late twenties, and actually,
yeah, they probably had it to on UCL but they just kept pitching until
they physically couldn't. Instead of but when were men having a surgery that didn't
exist yet? Yeah, well, but in Japan. Am I right in
saying that the rates in Japan are not nearly as bad as they are in
the US. Could be as simple as you're allowed one start per week,
but the Japan has various other issues about how it trains its youth baseball players
and how they come through the koshin and people end up pitching five hundred to
seven hundred pitches in the space of six or seven days, which some of
them blow out their arms and never make it into the professional system. But
the concept of maybe like how they use their starters and how they their system
kind of like rolls out could be something that could be implemented. I don't
want people. I've seen people going like, oh, yeah, but it's
just not the way in Japan, and it's like, yeah, like they
don't get pome John surgery at like high school, Like in Japan, they
just pitch until their arm is basically dead and then they don't get drafted.
They could they go into the same What we could do is just filter out
the week they go like, I'm gonna it's really gon annoy me because I'm
gonna forget the player's name. But effectively somebody like pitch like five to set
with the nearly seven hundred pitches like in a coach in one year, effectively
was injured afterwards, one was injured afterwards. He effectively now has a job
like a corporate job, but he's effectively there just as like a greater at
all of the major business meetings because they're just like, oh my god,
like you won the coach in amazing, Like he's just like almost like an
icebreaker for this business. But he's well paid and gets like endorsements and all
of these other things. But it's just like that's what his world is because
he won coachin but couldn't go on to become like a professionals player. Yeah,
this is the other thing, right, Like the people who is happening
to don't actually care enough to stop it happening. You know, they've made
that choice. Most of them know that they's a pretty good chance that they
will need Tommy John at some point, and they've said, if I made
it to the majors, fine, And you know, we don't want it
to happen because it's bad for us. We like watching the best pictures.
It's not good entertainment. If the guys you thought you were going to see
at the top of the game of set on the injured list all year.
But those guys are making this decision to grow as hard as they can.
Yeah, half a million quid to not play baseball for a year, and
I'm all good. Yeah, And you know, if that's the difference,
if they'm throwing, you know, ninety seven instead of ninety four, is
the difference between them making to the majors a lot, then that's a pretty
big difference to their lives. I said this to Gav when he brought this
up a few weeks ago. But we're not talking about the CDE here.
These guys are not, like, you know, finishing their career, like,
oh, I can't use my arm anymore. Loads of regular people have
torn the UC on. They just don't get surgery because it doesn't matter if
you're not running through a baseball not five miles brow. So you know,
I understand it, like, if that's the choice, I'm going to make
it to the majors or I'm not, and this might be the thing that
determines it, well, you know that's that's fair enough. So that's why
I think the incentives need change somewhat. The way that we're currently incentivizing pictures.
Is just the harder you throw, the more spin you have, you
know, the better you're going to be. Basically, so if we continue
to talk about people who can't play baseball, let's move on to the Oakland
Athletic. That was the other bit of news that we had pretty much just
after we recorded our pod last week. There were some rumblings, and then
the day afterwards it came out that John Fisher has signed a deal with the
Sacramento river Cats owner whose names has left me just right now. But they
are going to Sacramento for at least three years, with a fourth option year
before they go to Vegas. And I will put a question mark on the
end of that statement and we'll come back to it at some point. But
Darius, why Sacramento And this is obviously the final, seemingly the final part
of the the A's in Oakland. Yeah, well, second Rento. Basically,
the A's want to keep some portion of their TV deal and staying in
a relatively local place is going to enable them to do that. I believe
there will be some renegotiation of that TV deal now that they are not actually
in Oakland, but the terms of that have not yet been disclosed, but
this at least allows them to retain a big chunk of that money, I
believe, which is obviously John Fisher's number one priority, so that's why they're
doing it. Obviously, the park is going to be a little bit smaller
than the Colosseum, but they don't tend to use the full capacity these days,
so I think the fourteen thousand is going to be plenty. To be
honest, I kind of hope that the TV people are like, you know,
you know what, John, We're not We're not really interested, Like,
who's really going to miss these baseball on TV? Like we can all
just watch the other feed, can't we? Well, everyone wants to see
Aaron Judge in home runs and what's happening. So that's the second part of
my thought on this. So we had them talking about this, We had
them championing the close nature of the facility that they will be using in Sacramento,
which is like, well, do you do the same championing of your
facility that you play in Arizona for spring training. I'm not saying you talk
about it the same way then, but yes, when he was given a
chance, John Fisher was given a chance to talk to people and about what's
going on and give us the virtues of the baseball that we were going to
be seen. He did not name one of his own players too. He
said, you'll see the Oakland players and you'll see people like Aaron Judge hitting
home runs. Now, I don't know about you, but when I try
and promote something, I generally don't promote it by saying, yes, one
of our people that will compete against will be very good against us. Here
seems like a bit of a bit of another faux par rob Well. Yeah,
either that or there'sn be one head of a trade deadline for them that
we did not see coming. That's a real term for John Fisher. Uh.
I mean the blokes a fool, isn't it. I almost think he's
I'm starting to believe is he doing this like to be funny? At this
point? It's just just what a bumbling oath. He's just an idiot,
isn't he. I mean, the failed son who's done nothing with the business
he's got, And it's just this Every step of this process has been has
been done by moral I mean, I know nothing about big business. I
am not a millionaire. I will never be a millionaire, but I have
a feeling I would not have bogged this up quite as badly as him,
just just if I'd sat down for ten minutes and thought, right, okay,
what should we say? Like just ask the people around you. Ask
the people around you, John, There's no way they're feeding you information this
bad and making you say this stuff, like get a speech writer. You
know you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Don't march up to this
baying mob who you know want to take you down to shreds, and just
open and say the first thing that pops into your head. So honestly,
the blokes and born absolutely idiot allegedly smooth Rob smooth. So the other side
of this theris is that I think I've got his name now, Vivic Ranadivit,
who's probably completely and utterly wrong, who is the owner of the Sacramento
river Cats as well as the Sacramento Kings. He spoke about almost like using
this as a trial run for Sacramento to say we can host an MLB team.
Like that's the kind of little extra twist I think that we're seeing in
this trying to do what Oakland's not what Oakland? Who am I thinking of
what Oklahoma City did when they took one of the basketball teams in from New
Orleans during after Katrina. They effectively hosted a team for a couple of years,
and then afterwards they were like, yeah, you can have an expansion
team. So thoughts on that, Darius, Yeah, there's definitely you know
lines here. He already owns a major franchise. You know, he's had
this minor league team for a couple of years. He knows that expansion is
coming. You don't have to do like a ton of Galaxy Broan thinking to
draw the lines between this and him sort of pitching Sacramento as a proper major
league location. It is already one of the best minor league parks, which
is part of the reason that the A's are actually going to be able play
there relatively so it's not major league stadium quality. But I don't think it's
going to be the same kind of case as what the Blue Jays had to
deal with when they were stuck in the US during the early part of COVID.
I don't think they're going to need to make too many idents to bring
up to major League standard. So yeah, I would be shocked if they
didn't take this opportunity to showcase it as a potential relocation option. And obviously
Manfred was sort of very grateful in his statements when he was talking about this
move as well. So I think, yeah, he's in there now,
he's got his opportunity. He's got three years to make the case for them
hosting an actual major League team, and yeah, providing this isn't a total
disaster, I feel like there's a pretty good chance that he might be one
of the choices for the next two So Rob, as our contributor who knows
most about expansion, please tell us what Sacramento has for us. Well,
I went to I found a piece online. It was sponsored by the Visit
Sacramento Partnership has written in partnership with them Visit Sacramento, and it listed a
number of fun facts about Sacramento which bear in mind. This is this is
the group of people who are trying to get you to come to Sacramento because
it's a fantastic place. So I've got five of them here. What I'd
like you guys to do is rate them out of ten on how how fun
and alluring these facts are so okay, so let's let's start at the top.
Then, So number one, Sacramento has the most trees per capita than
any city in the world other than maybe Paris. But they're not sure.
Okay, they're not sure. We have to hear them on five. And
then aside, they essentially said that said that there was too many trees to
count. But no, no, that one out of ten. How do
you think that one rates is an attractive fun fact to get you to Sacramento
as a city to live in. It would probably make it maybe like city
to visit. I don't know two and I'm not really bothered about there being
trees and cities. O visit ten facts and this is five of them.
So this is one of the top ten things about Sacramento. If they both
count them, I would give it a six or seven. But the fact
that they don't actually know, I'm giving them a one for lack of effort.
Excellent, Okay, all right. The second one was Sacramento has the
oldest public art museum west of the Mississippi. I was waiting for, like,
what like the little addition was going to be what was like the what
was the you said the oldest, and I was like, oh, hello,
here we go west of the Mississippi. You mean the bit of the
US that they didn't really live in for like half of its history. That's
the one. And if you like qualifiers, good news for you. There's
more coming. I do not like qualifiers. And to give that a one
as well, they didn't even say it's good. It's just old. Yes,
it's just old. The thing is that, knowing me on, if
I would, I would probably go to this place, so like it's definitely
like three maybe for me, but it's not like, uh, it's not
it's not really pulling me in there. I would probably go too, But
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna call it a fun fact. I hear qualifiers.
This next one, next one can't even really be classed as a fact.
Parts of the city are said to be haunted. That's the whole that's
the whole fact. Isn't that like every city ever where can you go and
like not find some sort of ghost tour that's a zero to be haunted as
well? Not even saying is it's no example, have got I've got a
famous ghost? Come on, give us something. I got a famous haunted
building that they detail in that in that thing or no, no, no,
there's no there's no. Parts of the city used to be underground,
so they think people might have died down there. Probably we died everywhere people
died. Okay, this one. I really like this one. So it's
the home to the world's oldest and only non swim triathlon, as in,
they don't do swimming one part, I'm curious, but they do kayaking,
kaka the oldest and only. That is quite a combination of like being oldest
and only, like I think, so the newest. Yeah, I wonder
if anybody else tried it, or if they all just thought you idiots and
didn't bother. I'm just thinking of triathlon. I think of the tryat.
I'm thinking of the transition in and out of the kayak right now. That's
why I'm curious about. Yeah, they're getting it out of the kayak and
the chaos that might cause, like with all the boats lined up. I'm
going to give that since the triathlon of it, I'm interested in that.
Yeah, I'm way more interested. Okay, So here's some qualifiers for you.
So this is the final one. Since nineteen hundred, there have only
been three recorded events of significant snowfall. So basically, it's a warm place.
It's a warm place. Yeah, it snowed significantly three times, but
it has They do then further go on to admit snowed many times separately,
just significant. They they don't tell us what significant is either. Yeah,
that's that's a big fat zero. Okay, Well there you go. You
know we can visit Sacramento. You now know some stuff about it. So
I'm not sure that they're going to be leaning too heavily on visit Sacramento for
their application for a major league team. Well I don't know about you,
Darius, but I'm going to be looking up the Sacramento Kayak Triathlon after this.
But our final thing, I think that when talking about the Sacramento Athletics,
it's one that seemingly John Fisher said that they were not going to be
called the Sacramento Athletics. They were going to be called the Athletics. But
they have put in trademarks for Sacramento Athletics, So maybe just covering all their
bases, do we think they will actually ever make it too Las Vegas like,
given the state of everything that has happened with the bumbling Thus so far,
I think I'll start with you, Rob, Do we think that there
will ever be the Las Vegas Athletics. Well, that's my first point is
when you say they've covered all their points allegedly they do not actually have the
rights to the phrase Las Vegas Athletics, that that has already been bought by
another group of people, specifically protest group. I believe, so well done
for them. They So if they do ever, in fact actually managed to
get to Las Vegas, they cannot call themselves the Las Vegas Athletics without paying
an awful lot of money to a bunch of people in Oakland. So well
they get yeah, I mean, flip of a coin. Really at this
point, isn't it. The thing is that they're clearly but the bridges in
Oakland Sacramento. They can end up sat there for a lot longer, I
think than they're supposed to end up sat there. Will they go to Las
Vegas? Possibly? I've got a more of a feeling that John Fisher won't
be the owner of the team when this gets sorted the case. I have
a horrible thought that there's there's probably more chance of the team just folding all
together at some point with a with a one team contraction and then eventually an
expansion afterwards. But flip of a coin mean nobody at this point, nobody
in Las Vegas, nobody in Oakland, nobody in Sacramento has any clue at
this point whether or not there will finally actually be a team in because there's
too many twists and it's coming. So flip of a coin for me,
But I can see a lot of other things going on instead of that.
Darius, are you more than fifty to fifty? Yeah, I'm not.
I'm not confident that Fisher's going to get it done. I think he needs
he needs some outside help that doesn't seem to be there right now. I
think it's like maybe the saving graces, that it's a bad look for Manfred
and the other owners if they let this fall through. But at the same
time, I don't know they're going to help Fisher pay up for his new
ballpark, et cetera. So yeah, I'm not really very confident at all
that they it will get done with John Fisher at the Helm. Perhaps somebody
else comes in who is interested in putting a team in the Vegas area and
makes some offer. You know that I want control of the team and in
Returnal you know, chip in for the ballpark and Fisher gets what he wants
without actually having to look after the baseball team he doesn't like very much.
So but yeah, I would I would say less than less than fifty chance
that just the current John Fisher plan actually happens as it has been advertised.
Yes, so we will see how that one goes. I'm firmly on Hill
balls it up. Then the the MLB will take the club away from him,
the same thing which happened like with the National and all of that.
So we'll look to see if that happens. I feel like we might actually
want to talk about some baseball and not just the things happening in and around
the league. So I like this On a few podcasts that I listen to
sometimes we kind of look at, like who are the leaders like in the
division and basically say does this feel real to you? Like would you kind
of expect this to be something like this at the end of the season.
So we'll start with like the al So we have the Yankees who are at
ten and two, the Guardians at eight and three, and the Angels and
Rangers are both at six and five. Darius, are you taking three for
three or are you thinking there's going to be one at one out of those
three? Are you thinking that's going to be somewhere in between come the end
of the season. I believe in the Yankees as currently constructed. We all
saw what happened to them when Judge with hurt last season. That'sn't great,
and you know Stanton is going to get hurt at some point, so that's
not what you're looking for really, But the current Yankees thing that they are
putting out there, you know, with rid On pitching, well, Cortez
has looked good after a shaky start. Oldpi seems to have got that next
level. Garrett Cole is making progress. It sounds like going to be throwing
again. And if they get him back, you know, I think a
lot of people thought that that was over, but it sounds like, you
know, he's going to be starting to make his roadback soon. So if
that happens, then yeah, I think I'm buying them. I don't think
I'm buying that Cleveland are this good, but the Centrals, so I'm not
definitely not going to be shocked if they win the division. Obviously no on
the Angel I think the Rangers are fine and up there, and the Astros
do not look great right now, so I think they've got a clear opportunity
to actually win the division this time around. Your thoughts are up. I
don't think any of them are going to win those divisions. I think we're
going to be a nil on that one. I think any team in the
American League East is still firmly in it. I think they're all still very
capable. It's surprised by how well the Red Sox are doing. You know,
the Orioles just just before we started recording called up Jackson Holiday, so
you know that that strength is starting the odd timing given that they couldn't.
They're not even manipulating his service time properly, so that's fun. So yeah,
they're still got more to come. I've liked the look of the Tigers
more I think in the central so far, and obviously the Rangers are just
really really lucky. So I don't know what they're doing at the top of
that or so I have heard it said. No, realistically, yeah,
you look at all three of these that they're they're all fine, but it's
just so much of a coin flip. Right now, the American League West,
I think looks at the most the most blown open. To me,
that that one is really interesting. I can't see which way that's going right
now. I think the rest are all steadily sort of starting to sort of
fil trap where they'll be. I mean, you look look at the winning
percentagees and I think a lot of them are like, okay, yeah,
fair enough, fair enough. Yankees are a bit high. But yeah,
that that Americally West is the one that I think is going to juggle it.
Okay. Even I started the season thinking that Cleveland weren't actually going to
be that good, and Biba being injured, I kind of I'm inclined to
agree that I don't think they'll manage to hold this out. But they're actually
been hitting relatively well, which was what I was not expecting, So who
knows. But I do agree that the Tigers as well as the Royals have
actually come out come out strong. I generally think this Yankees team is like
the juggernaut that we've kind of been thinking that it could be for quite a
long time, and this is just the one year where it actually all works
together, and I just think it would be funny if the Angel somehow managed
to make it over five hundred and make the postseason. Now at Andy's gone
and we get like the we get the judge, the judge, the trout,
like fifty homer thirty stolen base season that Darius has always wanted, so
so that I'm inclined to go with one out of these three. I think
the Yankees will still win Cob the end of the season. If we move
on to the NL, I think we might be a bit more optimistic.
But maybe I don't think anybody is going to take a three for three here
because we have the Braves at seven and three, we have the Dodgers at
ten and four, and we have the Pittsburgh Pirates at nine and three.
Darius, what is going on? I know they went twenty and eight to
start the season last year, but they went absolutely awful from then onwards.
Why are Pirates win in games? It's you know, let's not get excited.
Connage does this every single year, like every single year, Like it's
like Connage is having a hot April. Then you just can do nothing the
rest of the year. We talked about the Pirates a bit last week.
We think they have some nice core pieces, but the bottom half of the
roster is not good. And maybe Bob Nothing will do something and you know,
allow them to invest in it. But it seems much more likely that
they'll do nothing at all and they'll fall out of the rest again, So
not buying for me. I think they will be, you know, an
improvement, but I still think there are better teams than that division. Obviously
the Dodgers West that is not interesting. And obviously the Braves are winning the
an Alice soazing. Yeah, I mean, I can't disagree with the Dodgers
and the Braves, but yeah, I'm choosing to believe the Pirates, like
it happened last year, and so like there's a bit of something there,
like that it's happening twice now, you know, lightning striking twice. I
am choosing to get on the Pirates bandwagon. I thought they were really fun
watched last year as well. I really enjoyed watching the Pirates when I saw
them, even if they weren't particularly great towards the end. So I'm just
it's more of a hope than a particular thing. But no, I'm believing
in the Pirates. There's always at least one team that comes out of nowhere
and does a little bit of something more than expected. Will they run away
with a division of the seven to fifty winning percentage? No, they won't.
Will they maybe sneak a wild card? I can see that. I
can genuinely see that with this team. There's decent bits to that, as
you alluded to last week. So yeah, I can see the Pirates winning
it. Why not? You are? Yes, I to sound like a
broken record, but I think I agree. It's gonna take a little bit
longer. It's probably gonna take more than the Pirates being at twenty and eight
come like may for me to actually think that the Pirates maybe will will win
the division this season. But as I think one of us may talk about
and sort of long may it continue, because we're about to get into our
two good too bad trademark BBC Match of the Day, too Rob start us
off with a good good, Well, we've just been talking about the crap
teams are still in it. Literally one of the points I had written down
here. This is the wonderful part of the season where unless you are the
White Sox on the Marlins, you can genuinely look at it and everybody's still
there, Like it doesn't matter who you've you could put on pretty much any
baseball game again unless the White Socks are playing the Marlins, and you can
look at meaningful baseball. At this point, the guys has still got something
to play for and that's just fun. Like any time of the day you
switch it on and sure it could be the Diamondbacks against the Reds. You
know what, the Reds currently they are a winning record despite being in fourth,
and the Diamondbacks are only two games out of five hundred. So like,
that's genuinely great baseball. There's there are There are twenty eight teams still
playing proper baseball right now, and that's that's fantastic. It's exciting. And
you know, we don't like those doll drums when we get to like August,
and it's traditionally recently been you know, the Royals playing the Tigers on
a you know, on a Tuesday night. Ugh, So so right now,
it's all good stuff. It's all interesting, it all means something.
So I'm all about that great loving it. That's awesome, Darius, give
us another good Mike Trout, just Mike Trout. Mike Trout's not currently hurt.
Mike Trout's a six home runs already, Mike Trout's actually standing bases while
Mike Trout is not her. I will continue to enjoy Mike Trout and I
desperately hope that Mike Trout has an EMP level season. I'll probably say this
every week until it gets hurt. I like Mike Trout too, because like
it needs to pull out the kind of like if we were American Starius that
have his Microut, like favorite Baseball or whatever. I don't have a Watch
Out Baseball card, but I should get what good point. Yeah, so
I'm going to stick on a serious similar note to to Darius, and just
that I quickly looked at to see who the top hitters were for the last
like seven days, and it is your Nanne Alvarez Showiotani Aaron Judge. And
sometimes you're just like I quite like it sometimes when baseball plays out the way
that I kind of like anticipate that it should because it makes me feel the
kind of sometimes that there's just a nice swamp, that blanket of like things
that are actually predicted happening. There are lots of things that aren't happening that
like other are happening that weren't predicted and aren't happening that were predicted. But
seeing the three weeks that all of them have given, they kind of all
had a pretty slow start to the season with just like oh yeah there was
there was no doubts anyway, but just seeing a bonds galore from these these
three fine gentlemen was definitely always will perk me up when it comes to kind
of like watching baseball games. So that's where I'm at. As we'll go
into bad, I will double dip and go go again and talk about there's
only one empire we ever really talk about, isn't there? But I think
I think Angel had a moment that I think could be one of his greatest
by beinglish in one of his worst moments that in a game the other day,
but because the Yankees a picture walked and then threw the pitch outside of
the strike zone and Hanandez struck the picture. But the bad are out and
you were like, not only did you do two things, you didn't even
do one thing. More, you did two things completely and utterly wrong,
and it was just it's ridiculous. It shows so many times I'm not necessarily
talking about like we need robot empires, like immediately, we just need to
be able to get rid of like the bad calls. And you're then like,
what, we have replayed, but we can't ask for a balk and
we have replay and we can't see that that was clearly not a stroke and
do anything about it. And you're like, that's what frustrates me about this
game, where you're like, ah, what this game doesn't mean anything,
but it's just so bad. And obviously it was against the Yankees, so
half of Twitter was like ha ha ha against the well, the other half
of Twitter was Yankees fans and very very very very mad at My argument would
be how much enjoyment has angel Hernand has given us over the years at this
point, Like can you like there is just a handful of of umpires you
even know the name of, Like he has made you smile more than you
know, I can't even think of another one off my head right now,
So like yeah, like great, good old angel As, you couldn't remember
the cowboy Joe West, Yeah, when he's insane, but you know,
like I'm looking at that that that bios. Now, let's have a look,
Dan Bellino, how many times have you smiled about Dan Billino? True?
True, exactly, Darius give us a bad the Chicago White Sox,
no, specifically the White Sox. I'm not really sure what they're doing with
the Ruster construction. They seem to be giving Robbie Grossman an opportunity to hit
leadoff for them every day, which he's thirty four. I mean, I
know, like they might think we want a bit of veteran presence, but
like you know, Monkard has been around, Andrew Benintendi's been around. They've
got Martin Maldonardo, for God's sake. They don't need more veteran presence than
Martin Malzardo, are they. Why is Robbie Grossman playing hitting leadoff for this
team that's going to win fifty games. It's just ridiculous. Just play some
prospects. Get over it. I take umbradge to that. I'm looking at
my Robbie Grossman ball that I got from from Tropicana Field. It's one of
my one of my favorite possessions. I like Robbi, Robbie Grosman should probably
be like the fourth outfielder on like a good team. I just want somebody
to get on base. Occasionally. You know, as a pinch hitter,
he should not be hitting leadoff for anybody. That an only team we should
be building into the future. Rob was that your ball which you obtained by
bending down and pretending to be a kid and putting your handover or no,
no, no, this one, this one. I I just screamed Robbie
over and over and over and over and over until he finally kind of threw
it to me, looking really annoyed. That was the logan Morrison with the
kid ball, wasn't it? It was? Yes? I already had that.
He signed my hat. Do you have to say from going to watch
bring training in Arizona? I do not know how any MLB catcher deals with
it, because like you have free access to like the bullpens, like before
the game, and as the games go on, and there are kids just
being like hey catcher, Hey catcher, can have a ball. Please can
have a ball? Please? Hey catcher, can have a ball, can
have a ball? Can have a ball? Please catch you can have a
ball? Hey catcher? Who's your favorite player? And it's like Russell,
how how do you cope like it? Like me and like my friends went
to go down to look at some of the pictures, does this kind of
see how insanely ludicrous the movement on a pitch actually is at at a major
league level and up closed and you're like, oh, you pau, you
pour sons of a gu So rob, oh I have my my first bad.
Actually it's moved back and forth from my good to my bad. The
Rays and the Rockies played a ludicrous game last week in such incredibly high winds
and freezing wins at that that first of all, everyone was balaclaved up,
so you couldn't see who anybody was because all you could see was their eyes
poking through the ballet clavas, especially the poor Floridian team. And secondly,
every single ball that got hit in the air was was everyone was wrong footed
every time, Like we we had infielders catching balls that were that that would
normally be caught by by an outfielder. Like people were running back and then
turning around and running the other way again. So it was it was.
It was a fast. It was an absolute fast of a game. It
made it just a dice roll rather than than than you know, a skill
based competition. But it was quite funny, so uh, you know,
and and there's there's a there's a unique sort of bagginess to an umpire's trousers
that has only shown when it's exceedingly windy in a baseball game as well,
and they sort of, you know, like mc hammer wanted his trousers back
because they were flapping. They were flapping around and I must have put pictures
off. But yeah, that was It was a ridiculous game. I think
there was a second game in that series, but it was ridiculous. We
really need to find a better way of dealing with wind at baseball games.
Some people might think that you have for stadiums that could be closed so that
the roof maybe, especially if you live up in the bloody mountains. Okay,
Rob will switch buck over to you and give us your your second good.
I'm going controversial. I like the Phillies city connects. I think they're
good. I think they're different. I think they're the whole point of these
city Connects is that I don't want to be bored by them. And I've
said it on here before. I want them to make my eyes bleed.
And you know what, these these billy jerseys make my eyes bleed. They're
ridiculous. They got the silly gradient on which doesn't exist in other baseball jerseys.
They got a that makes no sense, and the color scheme is completely
wacky for that team. It follows the flag, it makes more sense rather
than the red they play in. So I'm all about it, Like I
don't want like a cleverly put together sartorial, sartorially elegant jersey, like you
know, I don't want another lost Dodgers where yes, it's a very nice
shade of blue, but it's boring. It's boring, make my eyes bleed.
I want more gradiated, you know, ridiculous sponted fluorescent yellow trimmed jerseys,
please, because because that is interesting, that's something worth looking at.
Only one of these teams has may managed to make one interesting and quite elegant,
and that's the National. The rest of them, the best ones are
the ones where where the colors are stupid and they make no sense, like
you know, since the boring Baltimore boring, God, what's going on in
Wrigley Absolutely boring? But you know, Miamis that's a bit different. Like
that's some silly colors, that's blue and red stripes. That doesn't go well
together. But it makes my eyes be that's good. That's what I want.
It's interesting more of those. I think you make a good point that,
like people in the seem to say that they're boring or that. Yeah,
then it's like the eyes bladed and they're terrible. But this is better.
This is definitely better than just are we slightly resigned our regular uniform,
which, like, what was even the point of doing this activity? Like
I'd rather this, I'm not. I don't love the shirt design. I
think that hat's kind of cool. I think that's the shirt design looks a
bit mismatched to me, especially in the fond but that's cool. And yeah,
I agree with you. Let's have eyes bladed rather than boring. Yeah,
I think these for me personally fall in the Colorado Rockies corporate softball kind
of like level of jersey where it kind of it doesn't feel quite feel professional
enough to actually be like a major league jersey, but it's different enough that
makes me like it. At the same time, I'm definitely with you there,
rob On, I want different from these jerseys. I'm wearing a Spendezzpiendez
hat from the Diamondbacks. I like that because it's like it's it's different enough
to kind up to go with that. So yeah, I it would be
solid mid I think for me. But it's it's good for you to like
it. Rob. I think some of our other members of the podcast will
come down on you strong on social media when they listen to listen to this.
Also, if I was ranking teams in terms of professionalism, I don't
mean the quality of their baseball, I mean literally have our professional I think
of the most people that would probably be last. So well, there's there's
Jokers, Rangers, it is Lucky Darius. Your next good, My it's
good is Ryan Pepio going into cause field striking out eleven no runs, no
walks. First picture ever with double digit strikeouts and their runs or walks at
course field, So hats off Ryan Pepier. Rays have apparently done it again
about the bullpen. Wow, isn't it just so yes? Shame about the
bullpen? Yeah, my next good. I was having a deep think and
then I did my usual thing of let's go have a look at some how
some of the minor league British players are doing. And Chaffez Young has switched
over to the Milwaukee Brewers during being picked up and he's actually having a very
good start to the season that has one hundred and fifty two WRC plus over
only like four or five games, And so me and Gavin watching that man
in a play for GB in the WBC last year was one of the highlights
of probably all of my life kind of like, especially when it comes to
sporting stuff. So seeing him perform so well is pretty pretty awesome. And
also a note on the fact that Michael Peterson, who's now with the Dodgers
and who pitched very well at the start of spring training before being down to
triple A, he has has had a very good start to his kind of
like triple A career. So he's pitched in four games and has like five
strikeouts so far across like three and two thirds innings. So hopefully, I
don't know, Dodgers seem to be a team to me that are willing to
mess around with their relief pictures, so we could be seeing one or both
of those players at some point this year, because I don't think the Brewers
have really got any chance at actually staying relatively good across all of their outfield
for the entire season, So there are some fingers crossed here that we might
see some more GB legends making the Major League this year. About it great
stuff, Bring them on, yes, and then let's have these final rounds
of bads. We always end on a bad. Yes. That's the way
that the phrasing, historical phrasing goes. These are unis. We can't stop
talking about it because they are bad. They are really really bad. I
was watching one of the Yankees games the other day when they were in their
road graze, and every single picture looked like they were one of those kind
of massively obese, overweight guys who just had like their shirts were like dripping
wet that looked like the sweat was not like absorbed or passed out. It
looked like they were all likes were like stuck onto them because of like how
like seemingly it had absorbed the sweat. It looked naff. It looked like
the quality of stuff that you would buy off d H Gate, or probably
this quality of stuff you would buy off fanatics. And it just really kind
of like brings down like the level of like the professionalism of this game.
And then I lost I couldn't find a link again because I saw it.
I think on my real speed today. But somebody slid into home and they're
basically their pants broke, and I was like, what, I don't remember
this at any point, Like to me, this is something that if it
had happened in the last three or four years, Twitter would have exploded with
it, like we would have been laughing and making a joke about it,
like any sort of thing. But now it's just like everybody's just in this
malaise already where it's just like, yeah, they're just they're bad. And
Mets wasn't It was the Mets trousers. I don't know, it was right,
Roddy Green's pants that ripped on the slide in town. Okay, yes,
I've got it here now, yeah, absolutely Green. Yeah, luckily
he seems to be wearing some under trousers he thought ahead. Well, yeah,
generally it's base for the players, you do. But yeah, it's
just oh man, I would have been balls out. I mean, you're
probably the type of person who doesn't wear a cup, So you can take
the a kill Badoo award for continually doing that until you tell what does that
mean? You're the kind of person who probably doesn't wear a cup. What
exactly does that mean, well, you were saying that you weren't be wearing
like under things, just not going to go with anything. Yeah, so
I'd like the listeners to please rank all of the BFM crew by likelihood to
wear a cup, use any criteria you want, Darius, go on,
let's move away from my bad. I'm just taking portrait of Story, who
is once again out for the season after dislocating his shoulder and fracturing his glenoid
apparently. But yeah, just a brutal set of years for Story in Boston.
Seems like he's basically basically hurt everybody part available to him. And yeah,
I was kind of looking forward to seeing him have a healthier year and
it's barely started and now he's gone. So it's been a tough tough start
for the Red Sox injury wise. And yeah, it's a shame that we
don't get to see Story that middle infield is like pretty rough right now.
Glenoid, could you help me out with what a glenoid? It's part of
the laboram in your knee, I think, or it's a specific laborhm in
your knee. I think shoulders, shoulders, the shoulder, the shoulder.
He dislocated the shoulder. Should Yeah, he disslocated his shoulder and then held
his knee, screaming. I know there are labrums in knees and shoulders,
so I just took a guess. But yeah, it's a cavity, a
glenoid cavity. Apparently he hurt his cavity. I know it's the miniscus.
He whoops, I'm getting in my head. Lenoyd, good word there is
hi. Hips have labrums? Do they have glenoids? Though I don't think
so. Hip glenoid? Does Glennoyd Labraam sound like a player that you would
find either in like the nineteen thirties, play baseball in the nineteen thirties,
or is an out of the park baseball region thirties. Okay, Rob,
where are you? Where are you ending up on today? I am ending
on Baseball Zen having lost its way. We all remember when Baseball Zen first
appeared in the adverts MLB TV in between innings, we had uh oh,
we had the bat hitting the ground softly. We had we had slow motion
g man Choi doing the splits like really really slow, and it was it
was his foot slowly scuffing along the floor with a sound, we had the
My favorite was always the line painting machine. You know, it was the
painting the line and you could see it coming out, and then they had
the it was obviously fake noid, but as it gently came out, or
the sprinkler. We had the sprinkler and it was it was just wait for
sort of slow motion going over there. Now we seem to have zen moments
which are like people screaming and dugout, violent home runs and batflet which are
all fantastic things, don't get me wrong, but these zen level to them
seems to seems seems to be missing that. That's not what I associate with
beating zen. So I think I think those zen moments are no longer zen.
They are just highlights. They've they've found a branding they like and stuck
over it. I think it should just be like Tristan Kassa sleeping in the
outfield. That should be bang on there you go, that's baseball zen.
You know, like or you know, a seagull landing next to a discarded
chip, fine, no problem, but but you know, like cruise like
ruining a base. Seagulls are like the least zen bird. Actually I was
totally expecting you to then be like a plastic bag floating in the wind.
All that is great, All that is great, but yeah, no,
I mean there's one where Jazz chiers and breaks his back and it's it's genuinely
terrified moment because there's like literal wooden shards of bats flying through the air and
this is supposed to be zen. Apparently I'm trying to relax. There's bats.
Yeah, they've ruined the zen. I feel for you, Rob,
these were never things that I particularly enjoy it. I kind of find the
whole concept of like ASMR on all of these things more kind of like creepy
than enjoyable. So if you start to whisper into your thing, I will
just mute you. Rob. This is going to be a great podcast with
rusts both of us greatly. Have you like this now? Thank you everybody.
Yeah, so when I do the truncation work, you will have not
realized that those two just spent five minutes doing ASMR to annoy me, and
I I forget the chance to edit and remove it. So obviously, Rob,
Darius, thank you for joining me today. Do you have anything you
want to plug? Darius? Yeah, Me and Robertin to do an ASMR
podcast together next week. No, just just go totall Prospectives dot com.
That said great content there, That's all I'll say, Rob, Have you
even had the concept of writing anything? Or did you just manage to survive
the protests that you're having at work? And that's that's a living protest.
That was it. I'm actually going out to San Francisco and Oakland in a
couple of weeks, So if anyone has any recommendations of things I should go
and see whilst I'm there, other than not the a's, then yeah,
let me know what. I'm still like open for tourism and stuff. So
yeah, let us know anyone, any any giants and as fans who who
have been out that way know some good places. Hit me up, let
me know, because I'm in I will very much recommend you a place called
Takorea, which does Korean like taco food, so absolutely amazing. But the
listeners do give Rob other things otherwise as usual, I would say, please
do, please do, go and look on the website. There's great work
that's been put out there. The series on People's Favorite Players, the preview
series that we've had coming through there is some great pieces that do deserve your
time and attention, and as always, thank you to our contributors and editors
that get that up a running and as always you can find us at backflips,
Underscore Nerds on Twitter and backflips and nerds dot com. Thank you very much