Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Backflips and Nerds, the Baseball podcast
Speaker 1: with the British Twist. I am your host this evening,
Speaker 1: Russell Lisam and I am delighted to be back in
Speaker 1: the UK and talking to my baseball friends about baseball. Firstly,
Speaker 1: we have the man who has some serious opinions about
Speaker 1: John Henry and others.
Speaker 2: So John, how are we doing?
Speaker 3: I'm all right, I think yeah, you're teasing. I think
Speaker 3: that's called the segment of the podcast. Let's see if
Speaker 3: it lives up to billing.
Speaker 1: And also with John today, as the viewers on YouTube,
Speaker 1: we'll see as we have the man who can give
Speaker 1: us all of the fields for the world of Rocky fandom,
Speaker 1: Ben Carter, how are you doing today, man?
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But last time we recorded, I said the Rockies
Speaker 4: a hit rock bottom and the very next night they
Speaker 4: lost twenty one nil and then sacked two very important
Speaker 4: people on their team. So I'm not going to do
Speaker 4: anything like that this time because they can always get worse.
Speaker 3: Is that way You've come in Tiger's full kit?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 3: Hope you're hoping to divert the Whodo onto a different franchise.
Speaker 4: YouTube viewers are going to be confused. It's Royals last week,
Speaker 4: Tigers this week. Just a big AL Central.
Speaker 1: Fan me, now, yeah, and the one who supports the
Speaker 1: Al Central team is wearing a bunch of angels.
Speaker 2: Geary picked up on the West Coast.
Speaker 1: So yeah, before we get into the musings of my
Speaker 1: trip that I've just been on in California for three weeks,
Speaker 1: I think we have to talk through a couple of
Speaker 1: key topics, which I've hinted on two of them already,
Speaker 1: but I think we do have to start with the
Speaker 1: latest I think episode of the telenovela that is Raphael
Speaker 1: Devers and the Boston Red Sox.
Speaker 2: Like this is just it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Like we we chatted at the start of the season,
Speaker 1: how like, how do you not have a conversation with
Speaker 1: your player before that player then says something out in
Speaker 1: public and be like, hey, don't say this, And we thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they will have learned from it. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: the answer is they haven't. We've had the wonders of
Speaker 1: Raffie Devers basically telling the whole entire public that he
Speaker 1: does not want to play for a space. I think
Speaker 1: there was a definite level of mistranslation. Again, as we've
Speaker 1: had with some of this before from him stayings in Spanish,
Speaker 1: just not saying he doesn't want to do it, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he doesn't know how to do it
Speaker 1: and it's a difficult thing to do. But John, who
Speaker 1: is most in the wrong here devers Breslo. John Henry like,
Speaker 1: how much should a player bend for a team?
Speaker 3: Well, I think first things first is I'm going to
Speaker 3: doff my cap for the culturally appropriate reference they're telling novella,
Speaker 3: very very very nice.
Speaker 2: It's a really good barbecue boys, So that's fine.
Speaker 3: I did you. Oh well, there you go, Jake and
Speaker 3: Jordan always splicing the trail for us. As Ever, it's
Speaker 3: a good question, Rouss. I don't really think I have
Speaker 3: a straight answer to it. Unfortunately, I have been I'll
Speaker 3: be honest, quite surprised how much blowback there's been on
Speaker 3: Devas in the Boston Red Sox fan base. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: this is a fan base that likes to beat people
Speaker 3: up unnecessarily, so you know that point. Notwithstanding, I feel
Speaker 3: genuinely quite sorry for him, like I think in the summer,
Speaker 3: in the off season, sorry, he was treated really poorly.
Speaker 3: I think the decision to prioritize Alex Bregman for the
Speaker 3: good of the team was probably the right one in
Speaker 3: baseball terms. But as you said in your intro, there's
Speaker 3: no way that he should have been hung out to
Speaker 3: dry as the leader of the team, the face of
Speaker 3: the franchise, and asked questions about how he felt about
Speaker 3: that possibility, he should have been guarded away from it,
Speaker 3: and he just wasn't. And obviously there are really difficult
Speaker 3: circumstances with Tristan Cossus. It's difficult. It's the worst possible
Speaker 3: injury that could happen to the Red Sox. You know,
Speaker 3: they have two of the best prospects in baseball ready
Speaker 3: to play, and they can play basically every single position
Speaker 3: apart from that one. Well, they could play that position,
Speaker 3: but why would you want them to be an entire,
Speaker 3: entire waste of their talent. It's the worst possible injury
Speaker 3: for the Red Sox, and there is an obvious solution.
Speaker 3: Like Raffield Evers is a decent third baseman, he's not
Speaker 3: fielding at all. He could fill in that position. But
Speaker 3: I think it's totally understandable on a purely human level
Speaker 3: that he is rightly, righteously angry and feels like he's
Speaker 3: been totally jerked about. I don't know Craig Breslo personally.
Speaker 3: He seems like he's a smart guy, a very good
Speaker 3: baseball person, a good baseball player, and a great baseball mind.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't seem to have a great deal of
Speaker 3: emotional IQ and I think to approach Devers given the
Speaker 3: circumstances and sort of expect him to toe the line
Speaker 3: in a way that fit for the team immediately off
Speaker 3: the bat was just a lacking an entire lack of
Speaker 3: emotion like you. Contrast that to how Alex Koorra approached it,
Speaker 3: and he basically said right away, I don't think he's
Speaker 3: going to play first base. He completely protected his player.
Speaker 3: I just feel really sorry for him now. I do
Speaker 3: understand why John Henry went to Kansas City and said,
Speaker 3: pull your finger out. I'm paying you thirty million dollars
Speaker 3: a year to do this. You will be doing this
Speaker 3: for the good of the team. I also find the
Speaker 3: reporting of that really stranger. That he's gone there to
Speaker 3: read the riot Act. I would imagine he's probably gone
Speaker 3: out there to put an arm around him and try
Speaker 3: and talk him around to it. I think he probably
Speaker 3: will do it eventually. I just think it's been managed
Speaker 3: really poorly, primarily by Craig Breslo. And what he said
Speaker 3: was right, he's never done it before. It's not the
Speaker 3: optimal solution. So yeah, it could have been handled a
Speaker 3: hell of a lot better. And I find myself not
Speaker 3: for the first time disappointed in the Boston fan base
Speaker 3: that they have not been able to recognize first and
Speaker 3: foremost that although these guys are athletes, although they're paid
Speaker 3: a hell of a lot of money and they should
Speaker 3: suck things up, I'm not saying that's not a tree point,
Speaker 3: they are human beings, and that human being has been
Speaker 3: treated pretty poorly for the last six months by the
Speaker 3: team he's contracted to. So yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: he deserves a bit of a break.
Speaker 1: I think from my point of view, and I'll come
Speaker 1: to you next Ben quickly, is that we saw him
Speaker 1: then have the worst start to the season that is
Speaker 1: probably imaginable, and everybody was just like, oh, you see, look,
Speaker 1: he's not even going to give it anything to the team.
Speaker 1: Since what eight games into the season, he's probably been
Speaker 1: the second best player in baseball. He's been on an
Speaker 1: absolute tear, and that seems to have earned him nothing
Speaker 1: with with the fandom, which I can't understand. Like Ben,
Speaker 1: if this was your franchise player of this was Chris
Speaker 1: Bryant and he wasn't performing A wait, that is the truth,
Speaker 1: how would you feel all?
Speaker 4: I think it's a very strange way to treat your
Speaker 4: franchise player first and foremost, Like I get wanting to
Speaker 4: fill a gap at first base, and the results have
Speaker 4: been a very unique position. Where as John said, they
Speaker 4: aren't short of hitting talent, they are just short of
Speaker 4: hitting talent that can play first base right now, which
Speaker 4: is not a position made teams find themselves in. But
Speaker 4: usually the first person you are protecting our situation is
Speaker 4: your mega superstar on the big contract. He wouldn't be
Speaker 4: the one that you'd be like, right, you shove over
Speaker 4: and play that position now because we need you to.
Speaker 4: And I have a lot of sympathy for Devors for
Speaker 4: the reasons that John outlined, Like he was jerked around
Speaker 4: a bit in spring training where I don't think he
Speaker 4: gave a great account for himself. He sucked it up
Speaker 4: play DH as you say, has now been their best
Speaker 4: player and one of the best hitters in baseball for
Speaker 4: the last month and now is being sort of jerked
Speaker 4: around a little bit again. So yeah, look I'm inclined
Speaker 4: to take his side more than the Red Sox side.
Speaker 4: Do I think he should have handled it differently, Yes,
Speaker 4: of course, like airing us out in public in a
Speaker 4: pretty explosive press conference not the best way to go
Speaker 4: about it. But ultimately, it is difficult to play first base,
Speaker 4: and we've seen guys try and do it. I Meank
Speaker 4: Carle Shauber with the Red Sox right was an absolute
Speaker 4: disaster over there. And look, Devers is a better defender
Speaker 4: than Shauber ever has been. I'm sure he do a
Speaker 4: better job at first base. You can see why he'd
Speaker 4: want to protect himself a little bit from being lambasted
Speaker 4: by fans in the media when he turns out not
Speaker 4: to be a gold glove first base first time paying
Speaker 4: the position. So ultimately I think he will give it
Speaker 4: a go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bloody.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, and I think he will give it a go,
Speaker 4: and I think he'll probably end up perfectly serviceable there.
Speaker 4: But the whole thing, presumably is that's a pretty nasty
Speaker 4: taste in his mouth, and it feels like it has
Speaker 4: the potential to spiral in a bad way for the team.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we'll see. It's a strange drama.
Speaker 3: He's got ten years left on his contract, and after
Speaker 3: five games of the season, we were all laughing and saying,
Speaker 3: oh my goodness, that's a terrible contract. But now we're
Speaker 3: kind of laughing at it for a completely different reason
Speaker 3: because Russell rightly points out if it wasn't for our
Speaker 3: and judge, he'd be the best hitter in baseball nor
Speaker 3: injudges as you just go last week, arguably the best
Speaker 3: righthanded of all time. He's been ridiculous since like eight
Speaker 3: gomes into the season. His ops is like almost a thousand.
Speaker 3: It's absolutely stupid. His ops last week was about eighteen
Speaker 3: hundred in a week. And he's doing this whilst all
Speaker 3: this guff is going on. Just pissed that guy off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: put some love on that guy's name right now, please.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think we've got I got two quick
Speaker 1: questions which.
Speaker 2: I want to answer, ask you both about this.
Speaker 1: When do we think the redfield devis first plays first
Speaker 1: base for the Boston Red Sox.
Speaker 3: I think it's probably going to be in June. I
Speaker 3: think he's probably working out with them now quite quietly
Speaker 3: behind the scenes. They're on the road at the moment,
Speaker 3: so it's a little bit more difficult to do it with,
Speaker 3: you know, outside of the view of Pete Pete Abraham
Speaker 3: and his pals in the press box. But I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be surprised if he's he's already taking reps with that
Speaker 3: met Yeah. I mean, he shifted to dh immediately after
Speaker 3: that whole fury broke out, didn't he. I'd set the
Speaker 3: over under around June first, and honestly, I wouldn't surprise
Speaker 3: me if, like next week we start seeing him taking
Speaker 3: a few reps there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think he does come around eventually, but
Speaker 4: what a weird way of getting there when they do.
Speaker 1: And the one that I think is funnier. Who will
Speaker 1: be a Boston Red Sox part or the Organization for
Speaker 1: Longer Raffiae Evers, Craig Breslo or John Henry.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a really good question. I think in
Speaker 3: this order it'll be John Henry, Raffie Devers, and Craig Breslow,
Speaker 3: to be honest. And we're also overlooking the real victim
Speaker 3: of this scenario, which is none of those three. But
Speaker 3: it's mass attacker. Yes, he's the real victim.
Speaker 2: He's taken a lot of black hathn't.
Speaker 3: He Because that guy, that guy really is the odd
Speaker 3: man out if we're talking about people being the odd
Speaker 3: man out, and he must have seen he must be
Speaker 3: the only person who was happy to see Tristan Cossis
Speaker 3: go down. It's my time. Wrong, you're staying on the
Speaker 3: phantom il Son say you whenever?
Speaker 1: Okay, So talking about something else that's probably quite phantom
Speaker 1: to some of us. The pope is a Chicago White
Speaker 1: Sox fan. This is something that we all seemingly found
Speaker 1: out over the weekend. A little bit towards the end
Speaker 1: of last week, there was some initial rumors that he
Speaker 1: was a Cubs fan, and then it came out that
Speaker 1: he was a Chicago White Sox fan, and then beyond that,
Speaker 1: there's evidence of him going to White Sox games, even
Speaker 1: going to the World Series like in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: All of this to me is like, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hilarious that like we now live in an age that
Speaker 1: like anybody becomes pope and you can go back and
Speaker 1: be like, what do they do for the last twenty years, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, they're a White Sox fan. This is
Speaker 1: the most amazing thing in the world. Have you seen
Speaker 1: the tops Now card for the Pope? So they released
Speaker 1: the tops now card, which is what Tops seemingly have
Speaker 1: done to become even more ridiculous with cards than possible.
Speaker 1: Whoever created the tops Now I need to like tip
Speaker 1: the cap like you guys. The person is an absolute genius,
Speaker 1: just being like something happened to megacard about it. People
Speaker 1: will buy a ton of them because it's only available
Speaker 1: for three days. The Pope one has sold over one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand copies. It is basically the best
Speaker 1: selling tops Now card of this year, and it's the
Speaker 1: highest selling tops Now card for a non sport ever.
Speaker 3: Is it the Pope at the World Series or is
Speaker 3: it you know on on the Balcony St Peter's him
Speaker 3: on the balcony in the side by the side by
Speaker 3: side of him, him and the miter and him in
Speaker 3: the in the White.
Speaker 1: Sox probably come out sooner we might have been able
Speaker 1: to get that, But I think then being on the
Speaker 1: on like the on on on the kind of the
Speaker 1: money when it came out, they went straight away with
Speaker 1: that card and I'm just like to me, it's just
Speaker 1: everything that's American like thrown together like into one thing.
Speaker 1: It's like something that's overly religious. It's baseball. It's not
Speaker 1: only just baseball fandom, it's baseball cards. I just can't
Speaker 1: think of anything that is just more encapsulates America in
Speaker 1: like one thing than a Pope baseball card.
Speaker 3: It's also very Chicago as well, right, Yeah, there this
Speaker 3: Catholic guy who's from the South Side who's a White
Speaker 3: Sox fan because he's and also like if you read
Speaker 3: anything about him, he's like notoriously for the little guy, right,
Speaker 3: he was a bishop in Peru and stuff like, of
Speaker 3: course he's a white Sox fan. Although my favorite thing
Speaker 3: that I saw about this in that sort of twelve
Speaker 3: fourteen hour inter regnan where we thought he was a
Speaker 3: Cubs fan, someone had mocked up the white smoke with
Speaker 3: the blue w on it, which was I was genuinely
Speaker 3: laughed out loud at that. So when I found out
Speaker 3: it was a White Sox song, like, oh no, that
Speaker 3: was such a good joke. Yea fly the w from
Speaker 3: the chimney of the of the Sistine Chapel. But yeah,
Speaker 3: very very lovely slice of Americana. And yeah, well the
Speaker 3: White Sox needs something, don't they.
Speaker 4: We've got to get the Pope into that is the
Speaker 4: leaked City Connect jersey that looks just like a Bulls jersey,
Speaker 4: like that thing that tops card is going triple platinum
Speaker 4: when we can get the Pope mocked up in that jersey.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean it's It was a great day
Speaker 4: to be on well just you know, social media generally,
Speaker 4: but certainly baseball social media when we discovered that the
Speaker 4: Pope is not only from Chicago but an avid baseball fan, seemingly,
Speaker 4: although for which team. Yeah, I was unclear for a while. Yeah, delicious,
Speaker 4: And I think it was assessed with as barbecue boys
Speaker 4: who pointed out the clip of him out the World Series.
Speaker 4: Someone found it. It was two outs in the ninth inning.
Speaker 4: So some poor soul watched three and a half hours
Speaker 4: of a twenty year old World Series game hoping I'd
Speaker 4: be on hope to see the Pope at some point
Speaker 4: in it. And in the final up that of the game,
Speaker 4: his lid pops up on screen. That must have been
Speaker 4: a euphoric moment when you're like.
Speaker 3: There he is, I've got him. There he is total
Speaker 3: Leo the fourteenth as I live.
Speaker 1: I think the one thing that this hopefully cement is
Speaker 1: that I think that we'll go to have a more
Speaker 1: international baseball in Europe. Think we're going to definitely now
Speaker 1: have the White Sox versus the Cubs having an international
Speaker 1: series with the Pope throwing out the first ball somewhere
Speaker 1: in in Rome. I think that like MLB will be
Speaker 1: all on that if they can. Got to kind of
Speaker 1: work out that SEO as best.
Speaker 3: As you can, getting sent Peter Square set up for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Dingers into the basilica or whatever and just
Speaker 1: like damaging like one hundred thousand year or like a
Speaker 1: two thousand year old architecture.
Speaker 2: I think it's a.
Speaker 3: Some of fun. Robert Harris, I've got an idea for
Speaker 3: Conclave too. I'm city.
Speaker 4: I can't believe Vatcan City is getting a baseball team
Speaker 4: before roy Utah.
Speaker 3: This is outrageous, okaylight sightly different denomination that Ben. That's
Speaker 3: true big rivalry actually.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that I alluded to in our
Speaker 1: opening was the potentially expected, if not then still surprising
Speaker 1: firing of the Rockies manager.
Speaker 2: Ben.
Speaker 1: I think we have to go to you first. Was
Speaker 1: this unexpected? Was this expected. Did we think that, like,
Speaker 1: because there was only a season left, he was probably
Speaker 1: gonna survive the entire time period.
Speaker 4: This was pointless, is what it was. I get it
Speaker 4: because like they had to do something. You know, the
Speaker 4: Pirates went and fired Derek Shelton. As we discussed, they
Speaker 4: were the first to move. And I guess when you're
Speaker 4: on pace to be the worst team in history and
Speaker 4: you lose a game twenty one nil, you kind of
Speaker 4: have to do something. I don't think Bud Black is
Speaker 4: at fault here. I think he's a pretty good manager.
Speaker 4: I think he'll get a job somewhere else, maybe not
Speaker 4: as a manager, but certainly he's well respected within the league,
Speaker 4: and I think the team liked him. But you do
Speaker 4: have to do something right. I don't quite know how
Speaker 4: Bill Schmidt as GM has kept his job. I guess
Speaker 4: he's not been there that long. But this is clearly
Speaker 4: an issue of roster building, right. This is not you know,
Speaker 4: on field decision making. It's letting the Rockies down here.
Speaker 4: You know, I have many ballpen moves poor Buddy Black
Speaker 4: or line that moves he could make, and again he's
Speaker 4: made some questionable ones. Certainly, you are the lineup, but like,
Speaker 4: this is a roster building problem. So this is yeah,
Speaker 4: shoffing the deck chairs on the Titanic. This won't make
Speaker 4: any difference really in the outcome of this season for
Speaker 4: the Rockies. But I also get optically for fans who
Speaker 4: traveled to the game every every night and try to
Speaker 4: cheer for this team, you do have to do something
Speaker 4: and that is probably the easiest leaver to Paul right,
Speaker 4: is going to the manager bring someone else in. We're
Speaker 4: not happy with the level of baseball we've seen so
Speaker 4: far this season. This doesn't represent us as a franchise.
Speaker 4: We want to be better. It's not gonna change anything,
Speaker 4: but at least it shows you're trying to do something
Speaker 4: in a sort of superficial way.
Speaker 3: Has anyone read the piece that Jakement's right second mention
Speaker 3: for Jakements in this podcast about how the Rockies are
Speaker 3: it's well worth. There's a good one in the Athletics
Speaker 3: this week as well. Yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely ludicrous.
Speaker 3: Like the paragraph that blew my mind the most is
Speaker 3: like the list of how long the tenure is of
Speaker 3: all of the senior executives. Yeah that I can't remember
Speaker 3: exactly which one of them. But there's one of them
Speaker 3: who's been there since the founding of the franchise, who's
Speaker 3: like a VP of baseball ops. Schmid has been there
Speaker 3: since nineteen ninety nine, so you know, you could say
Speaker 3: he's not been the GM for that long. He has
Speaker 3: been the gym for four years, right, and the team
Speaker 3: has got worse in every single one of those four years.
Speaker 3: But he's been there since nineteen ninety nine. Yeah. The
Speaker 3: fundamental point here is that, as a load of people
Speaker 3: have said before, other people have said it better than us.
Speaker 3: There's a brilliant David Roth tweet about this. It's about
Speaker 3: five years old, and it's still entirely relevant. They're not
Speaker 3: actually trying to build a baseball team. They're just having
Speaker 3: a nice time with their friends. That is literally what
Speaker 3: they're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, vibes, and isn't it a nice ballpark? And shall
Speaker 4: we watch a game? Oh? We lost so well?
Speaker 3: I mean beyond I mean yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: The tenure of some of the guys there, it's unbelievable, Like,
Speaker 4: why does the same thing keep happening to us? We
Speaker 4: should keep those guys in their jobs store for other
Speaker 4: twenty years and see if things change. Same with I
Speaker 4: mean Dick one for his son is currently the head
Speaker 4: of I think it's pro scouting, like unbelievable. And I
Speaker 4: read an article about how you know, it's not like
Speaker 4: you just got given the job, but come on, the
Speaker 4: owner's son having such an important baseball position.
Speaker 3: That's not how good franchises are run.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it's unbelievable that there hasn't been more wide
Speaker 4: scale change in the history of this franchise given a futility.
Speaker 4: But that is just the Rockies, right, and I don't
Speaker 4: see it changing anytime soon. And part of the thing,
Speaker 4: you know, I think, but Black was only the fifth
Speaker 4: or sick manager in history. They don't tend to make
Speaker 4: big changes, so this is quite a big change for them.
Speaker 4: But like, at some point just tear it all down
Speaker 4: right and restart. What you're doing isn't working. But I
Speaker 4: have no faith in ownership to actually do that at
Speaker 4: any point. So we'll see where this goes from here.
Speaker 4: I think it just peters out and goes nowhere.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the other amazing thing in Jake's piece is that
Speaker 3: they have like no proprietary pitch modeling at all, Like
Speaker 3: they have no model for what pitches are going to
Speaker 3: work in their park. Who's got good stif off that
Speaker 3: might work and they are probably the team that needed
Speaker 3: the most. There have it. Never mind firing Bud Black
Speaker 3: employee like Enosyrus or something, do that.
Speaker 1: I think the thing to me is like I wonder
Speaker 1: if someone basically tried to do it, decided basically that
Speaker 1: it's basically a possible, So why bother and let's just
Speaker 1: have fun like.
Speaker 3: Everyone everyone's everyone's still turning up having a lovely time,
Speaker 3: sucking down on a blue moon. Keep it going.
Speaker 4: There's got to be a mass nerd somewhere who sees
Speaker 4: it as a really cool challenge and wants to at
Speaker 4: least try something different rather than like, let's just give
Speaker 4: Carl Friedland a ten year extension and hope that works.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I realized it's not a great gig,
Speaker 4: But there's got to be someone out there who can
Speaker 4: try something that you know involves using data or analysis
Speaker 4: of some kind, rather than that man got a base hit, yes, Soday,
Speaker 4: let's give him a start again.
Speaker 2: It ain't broke, don't fix it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's broke.
Speaker 4: It's so like John said that having fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who are we to young? His young yeah, quite okay,
Speaker 2: So those are our hot topics.
Speaker 1: As I briefly mentioned at the start of this podcast,
Speaker 1: I have been in California for three weeks and I
Speaker 1: watched a few games of baseball, so I have some
Speaker 1: West Coast wisdom that I wanted to pass on to
Speaker 1: you and Ben and John to see what their thoughts on.
Speaker 2: From what I've seen.
Speaker 1: Part one is a fairly simple one, which is just
Speaker 1: if you get the chance, go watch college baseball.
Speaker 2: Like it was.
Speaker 1: This is not something I anticipated I was going to do.
Speaker 1: I bought tickets to go watch Major League baseball, but
Speaker 1: my partner was like, oh, well, while we're there, like
Speaker 1: can Parley, which is the team that the university that
Speaker 1: she went to, we're playing in UC Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2: When we were right next to Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1: So for a ticket that was less than ten dollars,
Speaker 1: we went to watch a college baseball game. There's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, two hundred, maybe five hundred people in
Speaker 1: the stadium, all enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon to
Speaker 1: just watch a game of baseball, which, if I'm on it,
Speaker 1: these are two reasonable D one teams. There's not much
Speaker 1: like the quality isn't how much lower than what do
Speaker 1: you want at a major league level? Like, it's actually
Speaker 1: like a really entertaining game to watch, and it's just
Speaker 1: so much fun, like to be part of that, to
Speaker 1: see have the casual conversations with people around, to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: what you're from, like the UK, like amazing, like what
Speaker 1: are you doing here?
Speaker 2: It was honestly, it was so much fun.
Speaker 1: And I think kind of I've wanted to get to
Speaker 1: like minor league games before, but like college has always
Speaker 1: just been a bit of baseball that I've never really
Speaker 1: kind of put my attention to, just because I'm one.
Speaker 1: There's just even more than there is of like baseball.
Speaker 1: It's like so much more to kind of like you
Speaker 1: dip your toe in. It's even scary than the concept
Speaker 1: of dipping your toe into like major league baseball.
Speaker 3: But it was such fun to watch like a college game. Great,
Speaker 3: I'd really love to do it. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it's on my baseball book at list to go to Oberha.
Speaker 3: I mean that's obviously the big Daddy, But yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a really good tip. And it sounds like I have
Speaker 3: been to minor league games. I've been to a couple
Speaker 3: of minor league parks, and it sounds like a similar experience.
Speaker 3: Like when you're walking around with this accent, people are
Speaker 3: just like, the hell's this guy doing? Everyone wants to
Speaker 3: talk to you, don't like Yeah, so strange.
Speaker 1: I walked in and I was like, you've got like
Speaker 1: a just a ticket like and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: where can I sit? It's their areas that I can't
Speaker 1: sit or not sit. And I woke to the security
Speaker 1: guard to ask you where I could sit, and it goes, well,
Speaker 1: as long as you don't sit with the opposition fans
Speaker 1: over there, everything will be okay. So straight away off
Speaker 1: the security guard.
Speaker 3: That is where I want to sit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, because there's not many people there, you can
Speaker 1: hear everything. Like you can hear all of the players cheering,
Speaker 1: what's going on. You could clearly hear when some of
Speaker 1: the coaches went out and had discussions with the umpires
Speaker 1: what was going on. Hey, in college baseball, there is
Speaker 1: umpire reviews. So in D one college baseball, so there
Speaker 1: was a couple of reviews where like the the umpire
Speaker 1: has to come out and then basically shout to basically
Speaker 1: everybody who's watching what happened. He has a Mic, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really work that well. So he's just shouting
Speaker 1: as loud as he possibly can to basically tell everybody
Speaker 1: what the result of the replay was. And there was
Speaker 1: a couple of plays overturned and it was like big
Speaker 1: cheers as like as he was kind of walking up
Speaker 1: to say what he was saying, some people started like
Speaker 1: stamping on the ground like it was like a freaking
Speaker 1: like seeing like Hawkeye in a tennis match. It was
Speaker 1: just like utterly ridiculous fun. So, yeah, I really do
Speaker 1: recommend it. There is so many college and there is
Speaker 1: a lot of D one college teams out there. You'll
Speaker 1: be surprised basically how easy during the summer it would
Speaker 1: be to kind of catch a game.
Speaker 4: I'd love to go go catch one. Yeah, similar to John.
Speaker 4: The only story I was going to add to this
Speaker 4: is about a month old now. But friend of the show,
Speaker 4: Michael Claire, I'm sure you guys read his amazing article
Speaker 4: about Yashida University Siva University, Big Apartment playing Laming college
Speaker 4: to two teams without the longest losing streaks in college baseball.
Speaker 4: Went head to ahead and obviously in a double head
Speaker 4: and ended up splitting, but It's an amazing story all
Speaker 4: these fans who were going along to see history knowing
Speaker 4: one of the teams had to win. I think one
Speaker 4: was a ninety nine game using Street the other was
Speaker 4: a bit shorter than that. But yeah, that was really fun.
Speaker 4: Obviously a much lower level than d one, but a
Speaker 4: really fun story about like like that they take this
Speaker 4: really seriously. They just happened to be the worst team
Speaker 4: to ever play, So that was that was a fun story.
Speaker 4: But it's just they made the atmosphere seemed fun there
Speaker 4: and it sounds like your experience was. It was also
Speaker 4: pretty fun cool.
Speaker 1: My second talking point was I was after watching two
Speaker 1: games live back to back between I watched The Angels
Speaker 1: versus the Pirates and then I watched the Dodgers versus
Speaker 1: the Pirates, and I was thinking about like how people
Speaker 1: viewed baseball. Like in the past, they would have basically
Speaker 1: only been able to kind of like see games, and
Speaker 1: their opinions on players would be based on basically what
Speaker 1: they saw. They might have read some articles and seen
Speaker 1: other things. But the two games that I watched, the
Speaker 1: players that the players who were outstanding in those games
Speaker 1: were not really players who are outstanding, and it really
Speaker 1: got me thinking, like, have you when you've gone and
Speaker 1: watched a game, who are the players that if you
Speaker 1: had no knowledge going into the game, you would have
Speaker 1: come out basically said this guy is a superstar because
Speaker 1: for Game one, for me, it was a Neil Cruz
Speaker 1: and he's a good player, but like, he's not a superstar.
Speaker 1: In Game two was Andy Parteres, Like I watched Schemes
Speaker 1: pitch against Yamamoto and nobody in that top one of
Speaker 1: that Dodger lineup got it hit par Has went three
Speaker 1: for three, and it was like you were just like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's obviously like much better than some of these
Speaker 1: other guys. They're just hitting pop ups all the time,
Speaker 1: Like why is he about nine? Like so I wondered,
Speaker 1: like for you guys, and I would love for if
Speaker 1: we can will push this out to listeners if they've
Speaker 1: got their own opinions of their own based on it.
Speaker 1: I think if I probably asked my sister, she'd probably
Speaker 1: say they Degorious is one of the best players of
Speaker 1: all time. From watching the from the London series, like
Speaker 1: the first time round, I've.
Speaker 4: Got one from the first game I ever saw live,
Speaker 4: which in San Francisco, it was Giants Mets with my
Speaker 4: family and I dragged them along to see it. And
Speaker 4: here's a good remember some guy's name Marlon Bird I
Speaker 4: think hit a home run and had like four RBI
Speaker 4: for the Mets, the only home run of the game.
Speaker 3: He was the standout player on that day.
Speaker 4: Obviously like a decent player, but very much a journeyman,
Speaker 4: especially at that stage of his career. So yeah, that
Speaker 4: was one where everyone was like, wow, oh by found it,
Speaker 4: Like wow, that guy's really good, and I was, uh,
Speaker 4: not really, but yeah, like you said that, that's a
Speaker 4: beauty of baseball. And it works the other way too,
Speaker 4: right where you can go Stidger Stadium, hear all about
Speaker 4: the show here Tani guy watching him go over four
Speaker 4: with three k's and think like, what were you talking about?
Speaker 4: Like he was rubbish. That's both, Yeah. That the great
Speaker 4: and the terrible aspect of it, I suppose is that
Speaker 4: on any given day, anyone can kind of do anything.
Speaker 4: So so yeah, I put forward Marlon byrd is my suggestion.
Speaker 4: But I do think that's, like you say, part of
Speaker 4: the beauty of watching the games live is you get
Speaker 4: a perspective on these guys are all really good and
Speaker 4: actually it takes a whole season to figure out the
Speaker 4: elite from the average.
Speaker 3: So I've actually got like two or three that sprung
Speaker 3: to mind right away, and I'll just touch on them
Speaker 3: all quite quickly. It's like Ian Happ at the London
Speaker 3: Series just then, he hit like three home runs in
Speaker 3: his face of two days. So like, yeah, I if
Speaker 3: you were at that series and that was the first
Speaker 3: live baseball that you ever saw, you probably still think
Speaker 3: that Ian Happ is the best player in baseball. He
Speaker 3: was brilliant that weekend. It was in the middle of
Speaker 3: a hot streak for him. Then I saw hundre and
Speaker 3: Reu pitch for the Dodgers against the Giants again in
Speaker 3: San Francisco in the very last game of a regular
Speaker 3: season about six years ago. It was that season when
Speaker 3: he was really good a right, So like he was
Speaker 3: very good at the time, but he was unhittable, like unhittable.
Speaker 3: It was just like that was before he got the
Speaker 3: contract with the Blue Jays. So yeah, if you were
Speaker 3: a novice baseball fan, you'd be like, yeah, hundred Reeu
Speaker 3: is the greatest pitch of all time. But my personal
Speaker 3: favorite one. I've talked about this on the podcast a
Speaker 3: couple of times. Is I went to the first game
Speaker 3: where Chris Sale pitched at one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 3: So if you weren't coming away thinking Chris Sale is very,
Speaker 3: very good at baseball from that game, then then then
Speaker 3: you there was something quite wrong with you. But Chris
Speaker 3: Sale lost that game one zero, and the guy pitched
Speaker 3: on the other side who pitched eight shutout innings was
Speaker 3: Dylan Covey, who owns a MLB e r of over eight.
Speaker 2: So there you go, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think like the when I went to San Francisco
Speaker 1: with Meta, I took a load of people to watch
Speaker 1: a game for the first time in load load of
Speaker 1: Brits and watching an acty barn stormer of a game
Speaker 1: between the Mets and the Giants, and John Petterson hit
Speaker 1: three home runs and they were all coming out going
Speaker 1: like Jock, Jock, Jock, just load tomorrow.
Speaker 3: He's gonna go over four with four k's.
Speaker 2: Thaus.
Speaker 1: Also, he was the fielder like front of where we
Speaker 1: were seeing as well, so like the fans will loving
Speaker 1: him as he was coming back out, and then obviously
Speaker 1: like everybody's getting involved. It's just it's just the wonders
Speaker 1: of like actually watching games live. Really obviously it's a
Speaker 1: very simple to tell people. Please go go do it.
Speaker 1: It might make a massive difference. I'm looking forward to seeing,
Speaker 1: especially what happens to Jed when he goes to Detroit
Speaker 1: in I think it's only a couple of weeks time now,
Speaker 1: so to see what his thoughts when he finally comes back,
Speaker 1: whether it'll be as a verbally say, persuasive in person
Speaker 1: as he is, or Twitter he's.
Speaker 3: Going to get. It's going to be like, you know,
Speaker 3: have you buyers in person? Particularly in this little purple
Speaker 3: patch the grind man's having.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I can kind of understand watching baseball live, Like why
Speaker 4: for such a long time the sport probably overvalued power
Speaker 4: and speed, right, because when you're watching a game, those
Speaker 4: are the two immediately noticeable things. It's like that man
Speaker 4: just hit a ball a long way, Well, that man's fast,
Speaker 4: look at him run. Whereas like drawing a walk, having
Speaker 4: a great eye other things like that. It's kind of
Speaker 4: boring when you're sat in the ballpark, right, You're not
Speaker 4: going to go home being like did you see that
Speaker 4: eight pitch ut back? Or he draw a walk that
Speaker 4: was amazing whereas you are going to say that guy,
Speaker 4: you got to second and stole third and then came
Speaker 4: home on a shallow fly ball.
Speaker 3: That was really cool.
Speaker 4: So I feel like that does feed into our internal
Speaker 4: biases around baseball, just things that look cool versus like
Speaker 4: well actually provides value to the team, not to get
Speaker 4: too nerly with it.
Speaker 2: I think that's perfect.
Speaker 1: My next thing that I noticed, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: this going in before, and I thought I planned for it,
Speaker 1: Dodger's parking is an absolute fucking joke. Like I don't
Speaker 1: think I've come across something more utterly ridiculous in my life.
Speaker 1: We were like a twenty five minute drive away from
Speaker 1: the stadium. We planned to leave two hours before the
Speaker 1: game because we knew that the traffic was going to
Speaker 1: be bad because it's LA and I don't know if
Speaker 1: any of you have ever driven in LA, but they
Speaker 1: are absolute nutters, like some of the most ludicrous driving
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my entire life. And we knew
Speaker 1: the journey was not twenty five minutes, it was going
Speaker 1: to be like an hour because the rush hour.
Speaker 2: Got there, got to.
Speaker 1: The field actually like forty minutes before the game. But
Speaker 1: when you get to Dodge a stadium. When you get
Speaker 1: into like the car park, you then have to kind
Speaker 1: of go up the hill. It's very very very slowly
Speaker 1: because there's like five lanes of cars like all trying
Speaker 1: to gop the hills the oame time, and then when
Speaker 1: you're in the car park, you get sent on this
Speaker 1: really long, securitous route before you finally actually park your car.
Speaker 1: So we literally left to do a twenty five minute
Speaker 1: journey two hours before the game, and we got into
Speaker 1: the stadium basically just after first pitch. It was so
Speaker 1: ridiculous that it's just like I thought it was bad,
Speaker 1: and I thought I planned for it. No, you need
Speaker 1: to give it like even more time. It is utterly ridiculous,
Speaker 1: Like and then finding out from talking to locals to
Speaker 1: be like, ah, what you should have done is you
Speaker 1: should have like parked over here and like walked or whatever,
Speaker 1: and like might being told that like, yeah, you would
Speaker 1: to just want to walk up the hill. It definitely
Speaker 1: would have been faster, And it's just like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, walking up the hill in like twenty plus
Speaker 1: degree heat or whatever to go to a baseball game
Speaker 1: while there's cars blowing exhaust in your face, like no,
Speaker 1: I don't really fancy doing that. I was just like
Speaker 1: a far more organized place that has something l I know,
Speaker 1: like a mass transit system that allows you to get
Speaker 1: to places like easily and available. Hey, La, you might
Speaker 1: want to do something you have the Olympics. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: you're just going to put more buses on, aren't you.
Speaker 2: It's just a nightmare.
Speaker 3: Good quality urban planning, mass urban mass transit, good ideas,
Speaker 3: good innovations. Guys. Look at look at almost every other ever,
Speaker 3: almost every other bullpark in the country, which is in
Speaker 3: the middle of the city. They're doing it correctly. Even
Speaker 3: the Rockies got that right. Yeah, which isn't.
Speaker 4: Sorry, not entirely intentional. But I went to Dodger Sam
Speaker 4: last year and we did like park and ride, So
Speaker 4: got a bus in from about I don't know, thirty
Speaker 4: minutes space and went it by and that actually was
Speaker 4: really good. I was quite stunneder because we gave like
Speaker 4: like you did, two.
Speaker 3: And a half hours.
Speaker 4: Three hours before first pitch. We set off because I
Speaker 4: knew it was going to be a nightmare, and actually
Speaker 4: it was. It was a breeze in the end, and
Speaker 4: obviously we left the game a lot after the last pitch.
Speaker 4: I don't want to try and rush out, so that
Speaker 4: was probably helped as well. But actually that seemed to
Speaker 4: work okay, But like you say, just general traffic in
Speaker 4: LA is a nightmare. And I can imagine like like
Speaker 4: you say that that worked okay for us because probably
Speaker 4: because we left so early, But that's not a very
Speaker 4: efficient way of getting fifty thousand people into a stadium. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it blows my mind. They don't have a better transition
Speaker 4: than that, but good luck to them.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful stadium, like utterly, like you get there,
Speaker 1: you look back up the city.
Speaker 2: It's stunning you sit in the stadium.
Speaker 1: The fact that like when you get into the stadium
Speaker 1: that it's actually like below you, so you kind of
Speaker 1: generally come in at like the second tier, so kind
Speaker 1: of like your first view of the stadium is like
Speaker 1: you can kind of like see it all absolutely stunning,
Speaker 1: like beautiful design, all of that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: But like, hey, like.
Speaker 2: It's the modern time. Maybe like a train station nearby
Speaker 2: or all these sorts of things. But hey, ho, like
Speaker 2: who am I.
Speaker 1: To tell Americans how to deal with their public trying importation?
Speaker 1: They just want to make the roads wider and and
Speaker 1: that's their approach. The final thing I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about that I the ballparks is stories I overheard at
Speaker 1: the ballpark. Like I know I'm a loud talker, and
Speaker 1: I know that like if I talk, people will hear
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. But gee, wish at like ball games
Speaker 1: do you hear some of the most bizarre stuff I've
Speaker 1: ever heard, just over hearing kind of like four very loud,
Speaker 1: slightly drunk Americans discussing kind of things in there, sometimes
Speaker 1: quite personal life going on around them and other ones.
Speaker 1: I heard some very interesting business propositions like that when
Speaker 1: we were at the Angels game, seemingly behind us, there
Speaker 1: was about twenty people who were there for corporate seating.
Speaker 1: Seemingly their company had some bought some sort of like
Speaker 1: sponsorship into the Angels, and so they had a bunch
Speaker 1: of seats that they could take whenever they wanted. And
Speaker 1: they've spent a very long time talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that we should get dispense series into MLB stadiums, and
Speaker 1: how much better it would be wanted if they could
Speaker 1: like just tooke up and watch a game at the
Speaker 1: same time, or take some gummies and watch the game
Speaker 1: at the same time, and I'm perfectly honest, I was
Speaker 1: very brought around to their idea. By the end of
Speaker 1: hearing the thirty minute discussion between basically ten like drunk
Speaker 1: white dudes.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, was it David Lties.
Speaker 1: And these guys seemingly were trying to become like the
Speaker 1: Amazon of weed. Seemingly that's like what their company was
Speaker 1: doing or something like that, and I'm just like, this
Speaker 1: is just this is time magnific, just like hearing this
Speaker 1: stuff is just like, this is why I love going
Speaker 1: to the like sporting events just out there, because you
Speaker 1: would just hear the most like insane stuff.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely incredible. I don't think I don't even get
Speaker 3: anywhere near that. Definitely not beat it. That's that's brilliant.
Speaker 3: I did once, when it was at a Red Sox game,
Speaker 3: sit next to a guy who probably means going about
Speaker 3: maybe six to seven years I'd say he must have
Speaker 3: been about maybe ten fifteen years my senior, and he
Speaker 3: was with two two young, youngish kids who probably didn't
Speaker 3: want to be there, and they definitely did not want
Speaker 3: a very long explanation of who Carton Fisk was. When
Speaker 3: he came on the field. They were already not into it.
Speaker 3: And after twenty minutes of this guy getting increasingly wrap right, quite,
Speaker 3: you've got to understand he did.
Speaker 4: He did.
Speaker 3: He was doing the arms and every staying in. I
Speaker 3: was like, mate, just give up. This girl is six.
Speaker 3: She doesn't care. She was not alive in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, like, that's what I heard of it,
Speaker 2: gors No.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, that's what I heard of the
Speaker 1: Angels game, and I did not think it could be
Speaker 1: topped by what I heard at the Dodgers game. All Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not certain whether this beats it, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was pretty close. So they ended up being like
Speaker 1: a group of four guys that were sat next to us,
Speaker 1: like behind a couple of rows. To start off with,
Speaker 1: the game at the stadium was not fall even though
Speaker 1: it was like a sellout, because people had to take
Speaker 1: a lot of time to get in there, and seemingly
Speaker 1: their friends had tickets in different areas, but they basically
Speaker 1: chose to sit next to each other until people with
Speaker 1: the tickets actually came and then they would go piss
Speaker 1: off back to their own seats. And hearing some of
Speaker 1: the discussions between these guys. They were talking, not particularly fondly,
Speaker 1: of a certain woman that all of them seemed to know,
Speaker 1: and it was like I couldn't quite work out, like
Speaker 1: what was going on, whether this was like and I know,
Speaker 1: like one of their brothers or or like one of
Speaker 1: their sisters or something like that, because it was a
Speaker 1: very like familiar kind of like discussion, and towards the end,
Speaker 1: I pretty certain three of them are ex husbands of
Speaker 1: like the same woman and they all go to baseball
Speaker 1: games together now and have effectively bonded therapy that they
Speaker 1: are the ex husbands of a certain woman.
Speaker 4: I really can't compete with that. I was gonna say.
Speaker 4: I was sat last year at a Padres game behind
Speaker 4: a woman that I couldn't confidently described as the world's
Speaker 4: biggest Dreks and profile fan. And this was a little
Speaker 4: bit before he had really broken out last year, screaming
Speaker 4: at him in left field for basically the entire game
Speaker 4: and only him as the Padres won the game. And
Speaker 4: I'm now thinking she must be in a bad way
Speaker 4: given the news that he got last month, never mind
Speaker 4: the fact that he left the Padres, so that, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe not the place to to be.
Speaker 3: She's not having a great time.
Speaker 1: Iss she no, not till so yeah, that is my
Speaker 1: my dismatch notes on on baseball in on the West Coast.
Speaker 2: Thoroughly worth it, obviously.
Speaker 1: I think most people would know that it is definitely
Speaker 1: worth to kind of like get out and see those
Speaker 1: sorts of games. But it's just it's so much fun,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, like the baseball games in themselves
Speaker 1: weren't even that entertaining. Schemes dominated, which is just like
Speaker 1: it was a three nail game. Dodgers didn't really look
Speaker 1: like doing anything. The Angels game has a bit more interesting.
Speaker 1: They went three nil down and came back and took
Speaker 1: the lead in the ninth, and that was like a
Speaker 1: fairly interesting game. But there was also like I don't
Speaker 1: know about a tenth of the people in that stadium
Speaker 1: as there was for the Dodger stadium.
Speaker 2: So it looks like, la, if you've.
Speaker 1: Got good baseball to watch, people choose to watch that
Speaker 1: instead of watching the bird baseball.
Speaker 3: Weird?
Speaker 2: Yeah, weird?
Speaker 3: Who knew?
Speaker 1: So to finish as we almost always do two good?
Speaker 1: Too bad? John, do you want to start us off with.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the bad so we can end on goods.
Speaker 3: Okay, right, so, I think it's quite bad that we
Speaker 3: now have basketball injuries in baseball, by which I'm referring
Speaker 3: to poor old Tristan Cosslas, who we've already discussed, but
Speaker 3: also as Waldo Cabrera, both of whom have really quite
Speaker 3: sickening and horrible injuries to their knees, legs, ankles when
Speaker 3: base running. I know that this is just a freak
Speaker 3: coincidence that both of those injuries have happened within a
Speaker 3: fortnight of one another, and it looks like it's a cluster,
Speaker 3: and it looks like it's a problem, like it's it's
Speaker 3: not elbows. But yeah, it's just really horrible. Two fun
Speaker 3: players doing well in good teams suffering quite seemingly quite
Speaker 3: similar and season ending injuries, both of which look like
Speaker 3: potentially been quite limiting on their career. You know. The
Speaker 3: cost us one to tell attender, and that's notoriously difficult
Speaker 3: to come back from. The and the Cabrera pictures, I mean,
Speaker 3: I have not seen the pictures of the actual injury,
Speaker 3: because rightly, those have not been shown everywhere, but those
Speaker 3: pictures that have been cradled by the Yankees medical staff
Speaker 3: were absolutely heartbreaking. So yeah, I don't like and yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean literally that we're recording this to day after
Speaker 3: something similar happened to Jason Tatum. Right, this happens in basketball,
Speaker 3: it doesn't happen in baseball. It probably won't happen again
Speaker 3: this season, but yeah, those two clustered with Tatum, just
Speaker 3: maybe be like, oh God, I hope this isn't the
Speaker 3: start of something that we see seeing the hoops with
Speaker 3: people's ankles and knees exploding on contacts. Don't want any
Speaker 3: more of it.
Speaker 4: Something worse about a non contact injury, isn't there where
Speaker 4: Like just immediately you're like, well, that is probably season ending.
Speaker 4: And then, like you say, the one last night seemed
Speaker 4: to be particularly graphic, which yeah, is awful to see
Speaker 4: at any time, but like you say, when players are
Speaker 4: rounding the bases, that would you would hope be a
Speaker 4: particularly safe time for them on the field. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it mnice to have a couple of those in pretty
Speaker 4: quick succession.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the cost is one just a total fluke right,
Speaker 3: just run through the base and his knee called.
Speaker 4: The bag Weirdly, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always see this and kind of obviously we didn't
Speaker 1: watch it when it happened, but it always takes me
Speaker 1: back to is it Dave Dravecki who like broke his
Speaker 1: arm pitching, and you're just like, it's like it just
Speaker 1: these these are horrible and you don't want to watch them,
Speaker 1: and you you you feel sympathy for all those players
Speaker 1: because there's almost literally nothing they could have done to
Speaker 1: to kind of do this.
Speaker 2: These are those those freaking accidents. Okay, so we're.
Speaker 1: Moving swimply onto Robbers. I managed to put in our
Speaker 1: call sheet today. I do apologize Ben, not that.
Speaker 3: One didn't change.
Speaker 2: It is one of Rob's bad brought up.
Speaker 3: Brought up. Utah.
Speaker 4: I'm not thinking I should do like a rob impression
Speaker 4: for my bad and talk about how I don't know
Speaker 4: my bad is not enough backflips on the bases or something.
Speaker 4: But my bad, unfortunately, is Jordan Walker of the Cardinals,
Speaker 4: who is just bad. And it's kind of sad to
Speaker 4: see because it feels like not very long ago, he
Speaker 4: was kind of universally a sort of top ten, top
Speaker 4: twenty prospect in the game, one of the Cardinal's most
Speaker 4: exciting young talents, and it's basically all gone horribly wrong.
Speaker 3: Since I think he's.
Speaker 4: Basically got worse consistently each year since he got to
Speaker 4: the Majors, and this year he has been particularly bad.
Speaker 4: His k rate is through the roof, his barrel rate
Speaker 4: is down, like he very much looks like someone who
Speaker 4: kind of has forgotten how to hit. He's been usurped
Speaker 4: obviously in the lineup by I think it's Victor something
Speaker 4: Scott who.
Speaker 3: The Cardinal's doing well.
Speaker 4: But I mean, he is no part of it right now,
Speaker 4: and I feel like it's got to the point where
Speaker 4: he probably he gets traded in the next couple of
Speaker 4: months because the value is just completely shot for the Cardinals.
Speaker 4: I presume he's out of options. Maybe he can be
Speaker 4: optioned and they can try and figure this out in
Speaker 4: the miners. But it's just weird to see a player
Speaker 4: who was so promising for a team that is usually
Speaker 4: very good at developing young talent just completely fizzle out
Speaker 4: in the way that he has. So I kind of
Speaker 4: hope he does get traded and finds a new start
Speaker 4: with a new team and can figure it out from there.
Speaker 4: But I remember being very excited about him making his
Speaker 4: debut and what he could potentially be in the majors,
Speaker 4: and it just has not worked out for him at all.
Speaker 4: So yeah, fingers crossed that he can figure out whatever
Speaker 4: it is is going on, whether it be physical or mental,
Speaker 4: and get back to sort of the player we thought
Speaker 4: he might be. He's not the first top prospect to struggle,
Speaker 4: but yeah, given how he was seemingly going to be
Speaker 4: sort of a key player for the Cardinals for years
Speaker 4: to come, this has all gone pretty hardly wrong for him.
Speaker 3: So I have two observations on that. Obviously, I'm sad
Speaker 3: because Jordan Walker was a lot of fun when he
Speaker 3: first came up. The first is that he is I
Speaker 3: think probably the biggest human being I've ever seen in
Speaker 3: the flash. He is just so big, ludicrous, like this
Speaker 3: is it when you see athletes up close, which we've
Speaker 3: had the privilege of doing at the London Series. You
Speaker 3: don't you take for granted that they are absolutely stacked
Speaker 3: and some of them that they're like make Tautman just
Speaker 3: couldn't believe how big he was, But Jordan Morker was
Speaker 3: something else. He was enormous. The second thing even more asine,
Speaker 3: and it's just because it like immediately popped into my
Speaker 3: head as soon as you mentioned it. Have you have
Speaker 3: either of you seen what Victor Scott's middle name is.
Speaker 3: You're You're not gonna You're not gonna get it. You're
Speaker 3: not gonna get it because because it's ridiculous. His middle
Speaker 3: name is is not Dwayne, like that's an almost normal name.
Speaker 3: His middle name is a kid, You're not nine d
Speaker 3: w A N y n E nine hey.
Speaker 1: Maybe like in one of his grandpa's is called Dwine
Speaker 1: and it's it's he's named after someone.
Speaker 3: But Victor Dwan nine Scott. The second they go want
Speaker 3: a name only in America Russell?
Speaker 1: Okay to me, I think might have a spicy one
Speaker 1: here one day. Ceremonial contracts, I absolutely hate them, Like,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to make this person like end on
Speaker 1: your team, you should have signed them to a proper contract.
Speaker 1: You should have forced them onto your twenty five man
Speaker 1: roster and actually be forced to kind of put somebody
Speaker 1: else back down if you want to kind of sign
Speaker 1: someone and claim that they ended their career on your team.
Speaker 1: This stuff with Eva Longoria being like, oh, he's ended
Speaker 1: his career as a Ray No, he didn't, bollocks, and
Speaker 1: so like there will be nobody at any point in
Speaker 1: the future who will remember that he had this ceremonial
Speaker 1: thing that allowed him to be a Ray in his career.
Speaker 1: His Baseball reference page, his Fangrafts page will see he
Speaker 1: ended his career with somebody else. This is just utter
Speaker 1: lunacy for the sake of something when you, if you
Speaker 1: really cared, you could have signed him to a contract.
Speaker 3: What I'm taking away from this is Russell hates the
Speaker 3: late right Oliday solom hearing. All right, PIERROI big tragic accident,
Speaker 3: but fuck it, you signed that one day contract with
Speaker 3: the Blue Jays and I don't care anymore.
Speaker 4: This is an amazing take. I hate it, but it's
Speaker 4: an amazing take. Ross I would have accepted if you
Speaker 4: said they've gone too far. I feel like some play
Speaker 4: to sign one day contracts. I'm like, eve An't even
Speaker 4: that much of a legend for that team. Do you
Speaker 4: really need to go back there just to sign a
Speaker 4: one day contract. I do feel like Evan Longoria reaches
Speaker 4: the threshold of one team legend to be able to
Speaker 4: do this for the Rais. But no, if you're going
Speaker 4: to go all in on the take, I'm glad you
Speaker 4: went all in on a take. You've got a bet
Speaker 4: of a player which says more about the rais than anything.
Speaker 2: But you've got to do a leacher roll.
Speaker 1: You've got to resign, you've got to go back out,
Speaker 1: you've got to be awful in front of your home crowd,
Speaker 1: and then when you actually were nowhere near good enough
Speaker 1: to be playing baseball at that time, you've got to
Speaker 1: go whole hog if you want to still basically be
Speaker 1: finish your career as another as a player on a
Speaker 1: certain team.
Speaker 3: Where's the line as well? Like why Evan Longoria? Why
Speaker 3: not like Carl Crawford, Why not Ben Zobrist or David Price?
Speaker 3: Why this guy? I agree all of that, all right, whatever,
Speaker 3: don't care, and I agree with you. I'm quite surprised,
Speaker 3: even though you hate Roy Halladay.
Speaker 2: Alright, all right, John takers to the good world of baseball.
Speaker 5: Absolute schemes, as darn our friend, the Mets fan from
Speaker 5: from up in the northeast of England would probably have it.
Speaker 3: Paul Skeans is pitching in the World Baseball Classic, injury
Speaker 3: and roster scheduling permitting, of course, just great in it,
Speaker 3: you know, Iron Judge and Paul Skeans. That's not going
Speaker 3: to be a bad roster, is it. I think it's
Speaker 3: I think we probably had the same conversation when Judge
Speaker 3: announced that he was playing the WBC just brilliant for
Speaker 3: the tournament. Absolutely what you want to see. You want
Speaker 3: to see a US team taking it as seriously as
Speaker 3: as the Dominican team in the Puerto Rican team and
Speaker 3: the Venezuelan team and the Japanese team in the Korean team. Brilliant.
Speaker 3: I'm so so stoked. Yeah, absolute schemes, Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: So I think we need to get our guess is
Speaker 1: in as early as possible of which random British player
Speaker 1: is going to take Paul Skeins deep. And I know
Speaker 1: people have already joked Harry Ford in our in our
Speaker 1: in our chat group, but I think that's that's not
Speaker 1: niche enough. We need to be working out like who
Speaker 1: who else is? It's going to be like, is make
Speaker 1: Coperniac going to finally have his like WBC kind of
Speaker 1: like success or first w B s.
Speaker 3: A hit is going to be a dong off Paul Skins, Boye.
Speaker 1: Trase Thompson coming back, obviously Boston Red SOXS legend now,
Speaker 1: but ye, it's.
Speaker 3: Going to be someone we don't even know qualify Brad
Speaker 3: Marcelino is currently like got pinned in a corner of
Speaker 3: some double A clubhouse somewhere in the Midwest. Just do it,
Speaker 3: think about taking full schemes deep. You could be the
Speaker 3: next just In Wiley.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All we know is that like somehow Lian Carroll's worked
Speaker 1: out that Roman Anthony has some sort of like British
Speaker 1: connection as well or something like that.
Speaker 3: I mean that guy, Roman Anthony, he's playing for the
Speaker 3: Popes Tea. That fella, come on all time.
Speaker 2: Great, Ben, give us another, give us another. Good.
Speaker 4: I know we just discussed injuries in the bad section,
Speaker 4: but I'm gonna mention some players who are actually coming
Speaker 4: back from injury soon Touchwood, which I think is a
Speaker 4: good We've got some high profile guys who are getting there.
Speaker 4: I think today Ronald A Kunya Junior is starting his
Speaker 4: rehab assignment and we obviously haven't seen him play in over
Speaker 4: a calendar year now, so it's great that he's getting
Speaker 4: back towards the level where he can contribute for the Brads,
Speaker 4: and that'll be a big shot in the arm for them.
Speaker 4: I think Brandon Woodruff also has been out for over
Speaker 4: a season over a year now, possibly hasn't pitched its
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: He I think is coming back to the majors on.
Speaker 4: Friday for the Brewers, which is great. George Kirby a
Speaker 4: couple more weeks, but oh he did no brilliant while
Speaker 4: that ruins that George Kirby nearing his return unless he's
Speaker 4: also had a set back. He probably has, hasn't he
Speaker 4: Why did I make this so good? And Clayton Kershaw,
Speaker 4: he is also nearing a turn. He made a sick
Speaker 4: play in the miners and as rehab a sign and
Speaker 4: if you saw us. If not, I'm sure we can
Speaker 4: get out on the socials. But it was like a
Speaker 4: proper one of the best players you'll see a picture
Speaker 4: make from like thirty nine year old half broken Clayton Kershaw,
Speaker 4: which rules. So I'm excited to see him back on
Speaker 4: the mound if indeed he does make it back. So yeah,
Speaker 4: touch wood Woodruff does make a full recovery. But yeah,
Speaker 4: a few guys who at least are nearing their return
Speaker 4: after long absences.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It's also it's always also good to see that I'll
Speaker 1: quickly jump onto a player which I think was slighted
Speaker 1: by the top ten last week.
Speaker 2: Pete Crew Armstrong.
Speaker 1: How can you not be telling me that this guy
Speaker 1: is not one of the top ten players in baseball.
Speaker 1: The boy can hit, the boy can steal. The boy
Speaker 1: is probably the best defensive center field that we've seen
Speaker 1: in years. This is like the second coming of Ken
Speaker 1: Griffy Junior. Okay, Like, how can you not like love
Speaker 1: pikro Armstrong, Like honestly, like I hate the on pay
Speaker 1: stats as a thing to say what it is, but
Speaker 1: he's on pace for fifty stale and bases thirty nine
Speaker 1: home runs and potentially have like a kind of like
Speaker 1: defensive and offensive runs where both of them are like
Speaker 1: thirty plus, which is things that kind of like only
Speaker 1: the likes of like Kenny Lofton and Ken Griffy Junr
Speaker 1: Have done.
Speaker 2: So he is playing like what the.
Speaker 1: Peak of Hall of famers, and it's just amazing to see.
Speaker 1: Like there's been I think in all of MLB, there's
Speaker 1: been nineteen catches which they class as like a five
Speaker 1: star catch. So far this year, Peter Armstrong has four
Speaker 1: of those nineteen. Like it's utterly unbelievable what he's doing
Speaker 1: and people should be dropping what they're watching to go
Speaker 1: watch pc A play because it is just unbelievable right now,
Speaker 1: and we don't know how long it will lasts, so
Speaker 1: let's just enjoy it while it's bloody amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fun.
Speaker 3: He's also just like really weird well and I love that,
Speaker 3: Like I can't I can't find it now. But there
Speaker 3: was a video that MLB put out a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks ago about the type of stuff that he's into
Speaker 3: and here's a different cat, and I love that. I
Speaker 3: love when you have people who just are unapologetically themselves
Speaker 3: in sports. You know, it's not just the blue hair,
Speaker 3: and it's not just the sort of the albino look
Speaker 3: and the and the over the top histrionics on the field.
Speaker 3: He's a either a bit like jazz Chisholm Right, He's
Speaker 3: a real individual and I love that. Yeah, he's he's great.
Speaker 3: Got a lot of time for him. Yeaholm.
Speaker 2: He rules.
Speaker 1: After we've gone for some great stuff, John brings down again,
Speaker 1: what's awful off?
Speaker 3: Christ's like Rich Hill's back?
Speaker 2: The Dick Mountain has written why.
Speaker 3: I Mean, we've been doing this podcast for eight years
Speaker 3: and I feel like this has been a segment in
Speaker 3: every single one of them. Why is Rich hillback? He's
Speaker 3: forty five years old. Just give the man a rest
Speaker 3: for goodness sake, talking about one day contracts. His Sayonara
Speaker 3: absolutely should have been pitching in the premiere twelve. I
Speaker 3: loved that for a sort of a tale of adversity.
Speaker 3: Here is the chapeau at the end of a brilliant
Speaker 3: career in the face of adversity, where you reinvented yourself
Speaker 3: and you were a wonderful story. But he just risks
Speaker 3: becoming an absolute like the butt of a joke, Like
Speaker 3: all of that goodwill that there was for him when
Speaker 3: he came back for the Red Sox and he had
Speaker 3: that season with Oakland and that Dodge's contract and he
Speaker 3: cried at the press conference with his little boy there.
Speaker 3: Now he's just like bloody clown car Foddiff for which
Speaker 3: a team will take him in like June because they
Speaker 3: need a ninth picture. So it's the It's it's the Royals.
Speaker 3: This time. He's going to have two starts with the Royals.
Speaker 3: He's going to be absolutely awful.
Speaker 5: Rich I'm begging you, man, stop, but John, don't you
Speaker 5: do it anymore.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be the fourteenth team, John, Like this could
Speaker 1: be like we could get the Rich Hill like heel turn.
Speaker 2: Come on, think about it from the sena perspective.
Speaker 3: He's got to get the record, man, he's gonna get
Speaker 3: the look Edwin Jackson deserves that. That's Edwin Jackson's record.
Speaker 3: Rich Hill's got his own story. The Rich Hill story
Speaker 3: is he was absolutely hopeless until he was thirty six.
Speaker 3: He shouldn't be. He's the new Edwin Jackson. Don't do it, Rich.
Speaker 4: He's got five more good years in HM. I'm not
Speaker 4: worried about rich Hill. If Jamie moyleer could pitture fifty,
Speaker 4: why can't Rich Hill?
Speaker 3: So he just started. Jamie Moyer couldn't pitch at fifty.
Speaker 4: Ben Richell can't pitch a forty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mothers can't picture thirty.
Speaker 3: But okay, Chill was a little bit better than you, Russell.
Speaker 3: I will say that much outrageous.
Speaker 1: John My probably like eleven Era and single A British
Speaker 1: Baseball will have words with that.
Speaker 2: Ben give us another bad second bag.
Speaker 4: Whether I have, oh I had, I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys saw this. There was a perfect game in
Speaker 4: the minor leagues. I don't know if you saw how
Speaker 4: this happened. But that's why it's in my bad the
Speaker 4: way it happened. First of all, it was in a doubleheader,
Speaker 4: a double A, and it was a seven inn game,
Speaker 4: So was it really a perfect game?
Speaker 3: Now? Probably not?
Speaker 4: Also the picture Jonah Toong, I think he's the Mets
Speaker 4: number six prospect.
Speaker 3: He pitched six and two.
Speaker 4: Thirds perfect innings and was then pulled for the final out.
Speaker 3: Are you winding me up? What are we doing here?
Speaker 4: If we're gonna call it a perfect game, which again
Speaker 4: I'll take the argument that maybe it isn't, then at
Speaker 4: least let him finish the seven innings. Why has he
Speaker 4: taken out of this six and two thirds but the
Speaker 4: final out throwing a perfecto. That's the kind of thing like,
Speaker 4: even if it's a double A, even if it's seven innings,
Speaker 4: that's the kind of thing you can tell your grandkids about.
Speaker 4: I pitched a perfect game. There it is, there's the
Speaker 4: box score.
Speaker 2: I did it.
Speaker 3: Now. He can't really say that.
Speaker 4: He can say I pitched six and two thirds innings
Speaker 4: and then my mate Josh came in and got the
Speaker 4: final out and we got a perfect game together. I
Speaker 4: think that sucks, and I get it. He's a prospect.
Speaker 4: There are bigger things than the double A game against
Speaker 4: the Binghampton Rumble Ponies. But a perfect game is the
Speaker 4: kind of thing where like, pitch can't be damn to
Speaker 4: let this man finish it. He was at ninety nine pitches.
Speaker 4: He wasn't like one hundred and forty. He's at ninety nine.
Speaker 4: Should have been given a chance to finish it off.
Speaker 4: That's a bad but you know he congrats Joonah. Great
Speaker 4: pitch and formance. I guess also he pitches a bit
Speaker 4: like lyns Kim, so you're looking forward to seeing him
Speaker 4: in the majors. Well, ninety nine of those that he
Speaker 4: definitely needed. Pull Ben, Now that.
Speaker 3: You've given me that tid, I'm not letting you get
Speaker 3: away with it. Think of a stress on that guy's tex.
Speaker 4: What, Yeah, it does not look healthy.
Speaker 1: Was it Michaels who got a seven inning no hitter?
Speaker 1: Somebody got a seven inning no hitter when we had
Speaker 1: the in the major leagues during the COVID season. I
Speaker 1: can't remember who it was now, and they said it
Speaker 1: didn't count, so assuming yeah.
Speaker 3: But on the on the other hand, friend of the
Speaker 3: podcast rich To easily got a nine inning perfect game
Speaker 3: for the lot for the cinrset Patriots against the Long
Speaker 3: Island Ducks in the Atlantic League, and his team got
Speaker 3: walked off in extras in the tenth and he claims
Speaker 3: he pitched a perfect game, so you know, come see
Speaker 3: he comes out, it's all mine. Inning's perfect game. Mate.
Speaker 3: Whatever happened after that.
Speaker 1: Don't get amazing. So I will go through my last bad.
Speaker 1: I got the chance of what a lot of baseball
Speaker 1: when I was in California on TV as well, just
Speaker 1: because surprisingly when you're in California there are games that
Speaker 1: like start at sometimes at like ten o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: so you can watch like two or three games in
Speaker 1: a day and still do other things with your life.
Speaker 1: So I saw a couple of Yankees games, and I
Speaker 1: then had to do some research afterwards. But Jason Domingez
Speaker 1: is an awful field. Like some of the balls that
Speaker 1: he's let drop in front of him, I thought was
Speaker 1: some of like the laziest plays that like I've seen
Speaker 1: in like in a long time, and then I went
Speaker 1: to look at them, and it's like he has like
Speaker 1: the exact opposite PCA has like zero star catches that
Speaker 1: he's not got ninety nine per plays where he's taken
Speaker 1: like there's the wrong route or not running hard on it,
Speaker 1: and it's just bounced in front of him. And I
Speaker 1: remember all of the Yankees fans being like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that we've got rid of Soto, like his defense
Speaker 1: was bad, Well, you got exactly the same. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, now, obviously he's a twenty two year old
Speaker 1: player or whatever he is, like in his only second
Speaker 1: major league season and has the chance to improve. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't look good when this was supposedly like at
Speaker 1: some point the best prospect in baseball, the probably most
Speaker 1: talked about prospect in baseball, and he might not have
Speaker 1: a defensive position at the age of twenty two, Like
Speaker 1: how long can you actually do h in a career?
Speaker 4: He's also not that good a hitter, an hotel, a
Speaker 4: free home a game, but like he's on the Jordan
Speaker 4: Walker path of this might flame out quite quickly.
Speaker 3: I hope it doesn't.
Speaker 4: He's a very exciting player, but yeah, you're given the
Speaker 4: hype he had this this has the downside of going
Speaker 4: wrong very quickly.
Speaker 3: It's Yankees prospects, isn't it. This always happens with Yankees
Speaker 3: prospects like Cabrera, bless him, not having the best week,
Speaker 3: but Cabrera Volpi I means be better this season. The
Speaker 3: mingez they're never as good as everyone says they're going
Speaker 3: to be. I mean, this is a particularly egregious example,
Speaker 3: but Yankees prospects just always all right.
Speaker 1: So let's end on some goods. John, give us your
Speaker 1: last good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. See, this is straight off the bat. This might
Speaker 3: sound like I'm being a little bit edgy and actually
Speaker 3: that I'm trying to make a bad into a good,
Speaker 3: but I think this is, in my opinion, just unequivocally good.
Speaker 3: It's the Detroit Tigers fans booing Alex Bregman when he
Speaker 3: came up for his first at bat in ca America
Speaker 3: Park as a Boston Red Sox. You will all recall
Speaker 3: famous Detroit Tiger Alex Bregman for his shenanigans as a
Speaker 3: multiple World Series winner with the Houston Astros. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: if you were, if you were asleeper the off season,
Speaker 3: Bregman did get very close to signing for the Tigers,
Speaker 3: and yeah, and the Red Sox piped them at the
Speaker 3: last minute because he was basically holding out to join
Speaker 3: the Red Sox all along and very very nearly joined
Speaker 3: the joined the Tigers and then literally I think it
Speaker 3: was in the space of about five minutes Jedge's mind
Speaker 3: and came to Boston. I love this level of pettiness.
Speaker 3: I absolutely love it. This is probably because I'm a
Speaker 3: big fan of professional wrestling, but this sort of heel
Speaker 3: heat for baseball players. If you go away and watch
Speaker 3: the clip, it's absolutely tonic. Like it's it's much much
Speaker 3: heavier than you know John Cena or gunther A getting
Speaker 3: or seth rollins in the WWE. Right now, there's a brilliant,
Speaker 3: brilliant message on Blue Sky and Twitter from Jason Beck,
Speaker 3: who covers the Tigers that you could stomp on a
Speaker 3: Detroit style pizza, downs a coney dog in ketchup, and
Speaker 3: spit a can of Werner's while wearing an Ohio State
Speaker 3: National championship t shirt and not get booed atk America
Speaker 3: Park like Alex Breckman just did. Amazing. Just more of
Speaker 3: this absolutely churlish pettiness.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 3: He's done basically nothing wrong to the Detroit Tigers. He's
Speaker 3: taken a better contract to a team that he thinks
Speaker 3: has got more chance to win. He's turned out at
Speaker 3: this point of the season to be entirely wrong, and
Speaker 3: they are absolutely right to harag him for it. Yes,
Speaker 3: please love it.
Speaker 2: We'll wait for the point.
Speaker 1: That's the point at the end of the season where
Speaker 1: it becomes whether like them booing him becomes a freezing
Speaker 1: cold takers, the Red Sox will win the World Series,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna go well.
Speaker 3: I should point out that that was in a in
Speaker 3: a game that the Red Sox absolutely got absolutely drum
Speaker 3: rolled because Tanner Hack was awful, so that made it
Speaker 3: even better.
Speaker 2: To be fair, was an early list for my bad.
Speaker 1: But I think enough's been discussed about Tannahu in other
Speaker 1: places that I don't think.
Speaker 3: He was rich. Rich Hill saved him rich. At least
Speaker 3: she did that.
Speaker 4: Ben Tiger's rundf Friendshi was jumping about ten runs every day.
Speaker 4: At the moment, they're having a great time of it,
Speaker 4: And yeah, I agree, I love this. It's a proper
Speaker 4: pantomime stuff doing him. Imagine trying to explain someone with
Speaker 4: no context why they're doing him. Oh well, he almost
Speaker 4: signed there but then didn't, and now they really hate
Speaker 4: him for it. Perfect. The best thing about baseball is
Speaker 4: these kind of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not seeing the Tani like that? Are we what
Speaker 2: have you got for us?
Speaker 4: My final good is Charmer Simpson of the Tampa Bay Rays.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you guys have seen. Made his debut a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks back. Now is immediately basically the fastest
Speaker 4: player in the sport and can basically do nothing else
Speaker 4: apart from run seemingly, which rules. Congratulations, Billy Hamilton, you're back.
Speaker 4: This is great. I mean I'm doing a bit of
Speaker 4: a disservice. He is making some contact with a ball.
Speaker 4: He's not hitting it very hard, but he's getting single,
Speaker 4: he's getting on base, and he's causing absolute havoc on
Speaker 4: once he gets there. He turned an extremely regulation single
Speaker 4: into a double the other day. He's already wracked up
Speaker 4: I think seven or eight steals. Like he is a
Speaker 4: genuine menace at any time. He's running, and he gets
Speaker 4: to run a lot, and that's awesome. So yeah, look,
Speaker 4: I don't think he's going to be a Pete row
Speaker 4: Armstrong level game changer, but I think he's fast enough
Speaker 4: and got enough contact skills where he will be a
Speaker 4: pretty good player for the Rais and maybe they can
Speaker 4: do some developmental magic and turn him into a better hitter.
Speaker 4: But there's no denying He is absolutely electric to watch.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a highlighted night with him right now.
Speaker 4: So excited to see how this plays out, if he
Speaker 4: can sort of find his feet against major league pitching
Speaker 4: and turn this into, you know, more than just a
Speaker 4: speedy guy who's a bit the gimmick and become a
Speaker 4: real sort of difference make at the major league level.
Speaker 4: But he's very, very fun to watch.
Speaker 1: That's that's awesome. I think I did see that his
Speaker 1: is his WRC plus and single figures though irrelevant.
Speaker 6: The man's fast, all right, and we'll end with me
Speaker 6: on our final good do either of you two know
Speaker 6: who Ayami Sato is?
Speaker 3: I do not.
Speaker 1: Aamisato is a Japanese female baseball player, and she became
Speaker 1: the first woman to play in Canadian professional baseball over
Speaker 1: the weekend. So she pitched two shutout innings for the
Speaker 1: Toronto Maple Leafs. Not the one that you actually could
Speaker 1: think of, but somebody who has exactly the same name
Speaker 1: in come on, yep. It was in the intercounty baseball
Speaker 1: leagues in Canada. Like the first picture she threw was
Speaker 1: was basically a soft grounder. Back to her, she wasn't
Speaker 1: the soft one, but she basically made a play and
Speaker 1: threw straight out to first to get the out immediately
Speaker 1: to rapture as applause of all the fans who were
Speaker 1: there watching. It's just a Yamisoto is has effectively been
Speaker 1: the best female pitcher in Japan for probably ten years.
Speaker 2: She's now in a mid thirties.
Speaker 1: She's responsible for Japanese the Japanese women's team winning like
Speaker 1: the equivalent of the World Baseball Classic multiple times in
Speaker 1: history in the last kind of like decade, and so
Speaker 1: seeing these sorts of things continue to break ground, we
Speaker 1: saw like it was seeing it like getting D one
Speaker 1: D two pictures kind of like happening with that. There
Speaker 1: is kind of like this growth of women in baseball
Speaker 1: and not just being like, hey, you know what, women
Speaker 1: play softball. Hey, there are some amazing women who do
Speaker 1: play softball, but it's awesome to see that, like we're
Speaker 1: continuing to break ground for women's baseball.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that great story, hard degree.
Speaker 3: I know you did want to end on a really
Speaker 3: nice note, but I've just made the mistake of looking
Speaker 3: at a notification of my and I'm afraid we're going
Speaker 3: to have to have three bad because Pete I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've seen it. Pete Rose has been reinstated
Speaker 3: and it's now re eligible for the Hall of Fame,
Speaker 3: and it just sucks on every single level, on a
Speaker 3: on a on the level that he broke the cardinal
Speaker 3: rule of baseball that he is a miserable was a miserable,
Speaker 3: terrible human being who abused women and committed crimes at
Speaker 3: a federal level and at the political level, which you know,
Speaker 3: I won't go into in greater detail, but if you've
Speaker 3: been following, you know why this has happened and it sucks. Sorry,
Speaker 3: Ayami Sarte, I really want to cheer you, but I
Speaker 3: felt like I just had to mention that. So yeah,
Speaker 3: Russell's reaction is just looks disconsolately, it's trestfalling.
Speaker 1: It's just like we get why, we get that obviously
Speaker 1: where Baseball's position sadly is in the political spectrum.
Speaker 2: But it's just like it's the.
Speaker 1: Same of just posthumously trying to wipe over some of
Speaker 1: like the terrible things that somebody did, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: well to come out with I'm just prickly reading here
Speaker 1: that just regarding the phrase permanent and in eligibility to
Speaker 1: kind of even then just kind of come up with
Speaker 1: like a default way of changing what that means, not
Speaker 1: kind of like even like un like banning the person,
Speaker 1: just kind of saying, you know what, it just depends
Speaker 1: over like I'm just kind of like finagling the little
Speaker 1: rules around it to kind of be that, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna be go out there and with my
Speaker 1: pot my bad take and own it. I'm gonna come
Speaker 1: up with some kind of technicality to kind of get
Speaker 1: what we all know the President of the United States wants.
Speaker 3: So it sucks, and Pete Rose sucks. He is one
Speaker 3: of the all time historic worst people that will never
Speaker 3: not be the case, whether he's a Hall of Fame
Speaker 3: or not. He's a Hall of Fame asshole as we'd
Speaker 3: call it over here in the UK. And yeah, this
Speaker 3: doesn't change it, So what a sad way. Sorry, I
Speaker 3: had to say it because I'd literally just read it
Speaker 3: and it was in my head.
Speaker 1: Anything about it, John, If I had waffled a little
Speaker 1: bit less, we may have been able to get through
Speaker 1: this podcast where without doing that and had to given
Speaker 1: ourselves a whole week before it became around towards recording
Speaker 1: a podcast again and now we.
Speaker 3: Don't ever have to mention him for the rest of
Speaker 3: the season. It's done.
Speaker 2: Now, it's done.
Speaker 1: I always thank you to John and Ben for joining
Speaker 1: me today. Thank you all for listening or watching on YouTube.
Speaker 1: As always, we have great articles going out on the site.
Speaker 1: Please do go check that out at bout flipsandds dot com.
Speaker 1: Please do go to We are a YouTube channel. We
Speaker 1: are putting out original content.
Speaker 2: There is a The.
Speaker 1: First episode of The Baseball Beginner's Guide to Baseball Statistics
Speaker 1: is out there. There will be a second episode hopefully
Speaker 1: coming in the next week or two. And now I'm
Speaker 1: back from my holidays, so do get out there. We
Speaker 1: are trying to do more with baseball this year, and
Speaker 1: hopefully it'll all be in a much lighter position than
Speaker 1: how we ended this podcast. John, Ben, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Dear, sorry about that.