A Clippers Rebrand, an NFL Mini-Mailbag, and Best MLB Story Lines With Rob Mahoney, Anthony Dabbundo, and Billy Gil

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Coming up on this episode at the very top. I'm talking to Rob Bahoney about the Clippers post coitred. What do we do now? What do we do with this Clippers team? What happens?

That's first second. I have a little mini NFL mail bag. I got a lot of good questions and had some more NFL stuff today. I want to chime in on the chiefs game on Monday night. So we have that and then last but not least.

Anthony DiBundo Billy Gill. We haven't talked baseball on a while. We have less than two weeks left in the season. The playoffs are going to be pretty cool. This has been a pretty bizarre, super fun, crazy baseball season.

It might be our last for a while. So we wanted to talk about our favorite things from the season. That is all coming up next.

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Rob Mahoney is here. It's been a while. I just feel like you haven't been on a while. Let's talk basketball, basketball starting in five weeks somehow. I know.

I know. I just feel like I did all my football prep. We only had week one of the football season. MBA's coming. And there's lots of time to talk about where we're going.

Who's going to win? Caleb Brown playing with LeBron, Paul George and the Celtics. Just a million subplots. I got to put the Quipper stuff to bed. I know you already talked about it.

I'm ringer. But just a couple things here. My big question for you is I look at this and I talk to the press Quipper fans and all of us wonder should we keep paying for tickets for them and all these things. Should they just change their name?

Is this in?

“Do you think that would cleanse whatever's going on with them?”

Is it rebrand time? And have we had a rebrand over the years in the MBA that has actually worked? And the answer for that is maybe not. Because we had like the Brooklyn Nets with the New Orleans Pelicans. We had kind of a Charlotte rebrand with the expansion team.

Do rebrands work? Is it just a way like it works with products? Can it work with a sports franchise? The fact that this is the solution. It's like you're out of five first, your owner is suspended for a year.

Half the front office can't even go to the arena. It's like I guess what else are you going to do at this point? Other than shovel some deck chairs around higher graphic designer and call it good? Yeah, and would you call it LA or would you go?

I always thought they should be called the Hollywood Knights even though they're not in Hollywood.

And just have like a Knights with a K or you could just call it Hollywood Knights with an N. But either way like it just would feel completely different. I think they need to do something like that. No, granted everybody who would be involved in that decision is suspended for a year. Yeah.

So I don't even know if they can do it. But I just wonder how we run the course has 50 years of the clippers just being a train wreck and coming up with scandals that we didn't even know could exist.

They didn't have an entire number of rob.

They've never made the finals.

You just reset this right now in some way. Yeah, there's no history to protect. And whatever history they had, they just spat in Chris Paul's face to give Bradley feel his number. So it's just awful. I would do this exercise too because I was trying to think about with all of these penalties.

“When is the next time we will see a relevant clippers team?”

When is the next time they'll make like the second round of the playoffs? And I realize they've done it like six times in 50 years to begin with. So yeah, I guess it's just kind of business as usual anyway, even if they don't have these picks. Yeah, you think like all the terrible and weird and dumb founding thing that's happened to them.

The reality of them having the best team they've ever had during the COVID year. Then getting shut down. And then going into the bubble and being the team that most famously had involved the teams just quit in the bubble. Right? And then the next year they come back and they finally do make a run and have a real chance to make a coagates hurt.

But as that's happening, all their fans are wearing COVID best. In the stands or deciding whether they want to pull them down or up. And that's like the best Western conference finals memory they have. I just don't know what they do. I would vote for a rebrand, but maybe we have to wait a year.

The other question is, what do you do with this team? The coi trade went through, which is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. And I was actually genuinely surprised how much they got for a coi. A guy who was in the 2011 draft who has a pretty checkered injury history who just kind of orchestrated one of the biggest scandals in the history of the league.

And then like, I didn't know. People around me. I didn't know what happened. And now is going to Toronto at age 35 to try to turn them into a container. And they're going to swap.

They get too unprotected first much later.

“I thought that was kind of a miracle for them, right?”

Well, there was all that. I wouldn't even say fuss or hubbub. But like there were there were people wondering if there was going to be a renegotiation. If everything that happened with the penalties would bring both teams back to the table.

I think there's a million reasons why that didn't really happen in that form.

Why it didn't turn into the raptors like squeezing the clippers as hard as they possibly could. But you're right, given who coi has been and the damage he's dealt to now multiple organizations in the process. And the fact that you can't rely on him to be available at basically any time. This was quite a cool under the circumstances. I couldn't decide who should have backed out and had more leverage.

Which is one of the reasons like I didn't think the trade was going to happen. Because I thought you could have made a case for both. Like the raptors could have said, obviously you can't bring him back. Yeah. So for us, this is like a 50% off sale now.

I mean, you've no rusted trade them. You weren't honest with about what happened with us. And we had to postpone it anyway because we didn't feel like, you know, we knew what the suspensions were going to be for him. But how about just the first round or what we'll call it a call to wrap? The clippers could have been like, fuck him.

We're not trading them. Like your final penance will be you're just going to have to play out one more year here. And then not have a get out of jail free card failed like flunk greedy dicks physical. And it's like, sorry, our hands are really tired. Sorry, coi.

It's really here. But if it's only one year, I mean, how bad could it really be for him? How does he get more. He's in complete turmoil and so is the franchise. And somehow fetches more than jail and brown dead will be one of the enduring questions of the entire 2020s.

I can't believe it was too first. Some protected much less to first and a swap. I don't know if there was a little bit of attacks for having brain and

younger men who's basically two years, 81 million in a league where they seem that's kind of the area where nobody is excited to pay that.

Unless you're like an NBA player. But it leaves us with a really weird clipper team where they have Garland for 42 and 44. They have England for 40 and 41. And those two guys are basically locked in for the next two years that about 82 million. I'm going to not put that to some as one of the best two man combos in the league.

Much less one of the best 20. And say that's in the bottom third. If you're just ranking everybody's two man combos. They're best most expensive players. I mean, I'm I think we could come up with 20 teams right now.

That would be better than that, right? You don't think that's in the like the season ticket renewal brochure. Like in the material. I thought those two front center. I don't.

And I mean, it's Blake.

“I honestly even including Brandon Ingram as an any important or relevant part of this team.”

I think it's just not realistic. It wasn't realistic even before all these punishments came down. It's like to me, it's Daria's Garland. It's Keaton Bogler who they just drafted. It's, you know, maybe guys like, you know, Yannick Kona need her house or when he comes back from entry.

And that's kind of it. And then Brandon Ingram.

“Yet again, is at a waste station before he gets flipped to yet another team for a couple of picks.”

He's just going to go around that particular carousel for a long time. And I just don't think he's a solution of any kind for the clippers. Yeah, he's. This is the perfect situation for him because really nobody wanted him for the last couple of years. And then clutch finally found a team for him.

And Toronto actually needed a forward who could score like that. I think he probably served the purpose.

But yeah, there's not a lot of teams that need a guy making 40 million who's like 22 a game.

Kind of a surprisingly solid crunch time. End of the game guy. Who has a couple spots and he can score proven score. But it seems like all the smarter teams were not that enamored by him. No, including Golden State who had multiple chances to trade for him and.

Wanted no part of him, Boston didn't want any part of him in a jailing thing. Garland and Ingram, you have the three young guys. You mentioned Miller, Sanders, and Neeterhouser who I love Neeterhouser. You have the artist formerly known as Bradley Bill wearing Chris Paul's number. You're rolling the dice with Wagner one way or the other now where.

It's weird to say this, but I don't know if any other rookie from that class. Has more pressure on him than Wagner. Oh, really. Yeah, here's why.

Because if he doesn't work out and he feels busty or he feels bad these first two months combined with everything else that has happened in this team.

I just think that will be. Just talk about it already, Chris Paul in fan base. He's the one thing they're holding on to like, well, if he's good. And you know, we'll have cap space and we got some of these Toronto picks, but if he's not good coming out of the gate. Now you're just, this is as big as it gets.

See, I see at the other way where we just need to go and accept that the clippers are cooked for the foreseeable future. Yeah.

“If that's true, keen walklers like found money, right?”

If he turns out to be a really good player, if he turns out to be the kind of star they can build around or at least a compliment other stars. That's a feather in their cap. I don't know that that cap is accomplishing anything because it's still going to be hard to bring for agents or lower other good players to the clippers given their circumstances. But I don't know that there's going to be that much pressure on him because it seems so accepted that this is a death penalty for the clippers. And if that is true, how could you possibly hang anything around keen walklers neck?

Counter. I for the next seven years, when are they have another chance to get a blue chip guy? Yeah. Like, well, that would be depressing. If keen walkler disappoints the clippers and the Pacers, if one ping pong ball had gone differently, could have gotten, you know, a top four pick. Like, the fact that this particular pick and its trajectory managed to disappoint two entirely separate franchises, if it goes that way, would be pretty tragic.

I think he's going to be pretty good, but the bigger point to me is if he's not good. And now you have no draft picks forever. Yeah. And then on top of it, no free agents going to really want to go there unless it's one of those situations where they had the most money and I didn't have a better option. So I'm going to begrudgingly go there. Sure.

Right. Like, Rudy Hatcher Murrah, I just want to stay in LA and also cash a check, which I think there's a not insignificant number of NBA players who do want to do that.

So I think they'll be in the mid level market. It's just how are they going to get the high end guys? That's always the question.

Well, they have 61 million dollars in expirings. Max Drew's Hatchamora, Derek Jones, Lopez, Grady Dick, done. Yeah. Put any sort of combination of them, which leads to my next question for you. Is are the cuppers? With the move, if we're running the cuppers, you and I, because they don't have a GM, they're, well,

I guess I hired an interim person, but no, like, what do you think we should do? We should be to take all those expirings and try to take somebody else's big contract and give me more picks to take the contract, right? So you're looking at somebody like in bead in December if the sixers like, wow, this guy's probably never going to be healthy again. Maybe you're like, well, we're here.

“And, you know, if you want to wet our beak, we're happy to take him for a bunch of expirings.”

Sure. Paul George for the Celtics, coincidentally. But two years left, 54 and 55, could you load all the expirings, get Boston and give you a pick or two back? To basically take the extra year in Paul George. And then if you're the Celtics, you've basically rebooted.

I don't know why they would do that because they seem like they like Paul George. There's a subonus in Sacramento, which would just be two ships passing in the night. Here's the one that's interesting to me, though. There are fox. Oh, you think you think his value was that low?

Yeah. If I'm the clippers, I'm at least calling the spurs.

“Be like, yeah, we have Garland, we love them, but if you want to talk about flipping four years of fox for two years of Garland.”

And throwing some of your stuff at us. Yeah. Like, we're happy to have the conversation. Okay. Right. And then if you're the spurs, you're like, well, we messed up this fox thing. We didn't realize we were going to get Harper when we when we did the, you know, the wink wink with the fox extension.

We were going to have to have money to pay Wemby and Castle and eventually Harper.

Could Garland be a two year stop gap now instead of four and could we use some of our picks and other stuff to to basically get out of those last two years.

The clippers, you're like, well, Darren Fox, veteran guy, who with Wag, they're kind of weirdly makes sense as a combo. We've seen both of those guys play out the ball and we get grab some more picks and I don't know. It was just a thought. This is how bleak it's been because this was the most excited. I was for any clipper idea.

“I mean, I think if you're the spurs, you got me on the phone.”

Like, the Darius Garland pit, I thought you were just talking fox for picks, basically, and salary. But if Garland is involved, I think that's something San Antonio could really think about. I mean, really what the clippers need to do is figure out like what the raptor's were able to do with Ingram.

I think it's very instructive, right? Like, I did not like it when the raptor's traded for Brandon Ingram in the first place.

As a free as an like an expiring contract, gave him that deal, turned him and some some supplementary pieces in picks into Kauai now. That's a great swing for them in the trajectory of their franchise, especially with how impressive they looked in the playoffs. The clippers can have to do both of those things. They're like, they have a Brandon Ingram clearly, but they need the picks to supplement the deal. Like, they do need to reload the coffers in that way. So it's like, even the deals you can conceptualize are like three moves away before you can even get to the move that actually changes what this team is.

Like, they need to get the picks in the door. They need to flip all of that into something more value, whether they get a deer and fox or not and parolea player like that into another deal down the line. It's just like the chain of events that now needs to happen for the clippers to be good is so dizzying that I really can't imagine how they dig themselves out of this in any kind of near-term future. We said that about Brooklyn, right, in 2016, 17 range from Boston at their picks. There was at least an end of the line where it's like, well, well, we have cap space. At some point, we will have our picks.

And for agency still existed then, so it's at least plausible. One of the crazy things with this clippers situation is it's like, they took away five picks, but those five picks haven't even, we're not even in the clock with them yet. Like, I don't understand, okay, see, still has a chance to get more clipper picks, but they do this year they can swap yet again. They can either take their pick or Denver's pick and swap it with whatever happens with the clippers and the clippers will take that worse pick and potentially swap it with Toronto, but somehow this okay seed deal is still going.

I mean, I thought we were done already and we're not and that leads to being my next question for you is, you can't even really tank because you don't have your pick. No.

And I'm not sure why you would want to tank it, but if you wanted a spike tank, which we've never seen before, who we get excited though.

The clippers, if they got into the bottom three, yeah, it's only two ping pong balls instead of three. So you can basically say, well, what do we care? We don't have it anyway. Like, let's like really tank, we'll play all our young guys will do, we'll try to trade. Basically, just walk there. We'll try to dump the rest of the contracts we have and just kind of bottom out. Would be another like meeting I would have if I was running the clippers, like our fan base hates us. We have their money for this year anyway, do we just completely bottom out so we don't get screwed by this okay see pick.

Because the worst case scenario is you end up like seventh. Sure. And now you're turning over potentially the number one pick and next year's draft as the final piece of this. But like that that cost is sunk. Like the ship has sailed you are not getting that pick back.

“It's out of your hands at this point. Honestly, I'm not even sure you need to have that meeting because”

Sitting here today, going into the season, how many Western conference teams are we sure are worse than the clippers? I would say the kings definitively. Other than them are are we sure any other team is worse than this clippers team? No, I would have them. What about in the east? I mean Brooklyn probably, but even then like if you told me they went on a random spirited Julia's Randall run,

that seems more likely than the clippers putting anything together. All right, so these are two separate questions. One is the long term piece. But the other is the short term piece of just who as a worse roster than them.

And I'm just looking at the Fandoids.

The three worst odds are Sacramento, Memphis, and then the clippers. And obviously much rather be Memphis, you much rather be New Orleans. So there are also like not a ton of death. Depth was a 40 inch look. Too much death, frankly. Right. The kings at least like they have Levine on an expiring.

Yeah. Which he might actually play really well this year because he's playing for one more deal. It seems like subonus wants to get out of there.

“But if you're telling me what team would I rather be this year from a talent standpoint?”

I think I'd rather be the kings. This clipper thing, I'm putting all my eggs in the wogler basket. And this is somebody that was not even, I don't think a top 50 prospect two years ago who had a meteoric rise. And I like, oh, I have high hopes for his MBA future. But I don't know what it's going to look like this year.

He's got this whole balldom and hesitation, you know, that kind of the balls on a string.

He's trying to be people. Three's like, that's going to be really hard to do in the MBA consistently night after night. So I'd pleasure playing with Garland and sharing the ball with them. Everything you say is true, but like the alternative is. The Andre Hunter is your starting small forward like demonic subonus works in all.

Is the best player on your team with a bullet? I mean, Darius A. cuff. I know you're a fan. The rookie point guard experience at minimum. He's another one who comes with it's not about sounds. Yeah, we'll see how all that goes, but I just, I'm not signing up for Sacramento's roster against.

Frankly, anybody's except maybe Milwaukee, which is just a collection of. Random guys who don't really fit together at all with no real organizational principle. Those to me are the two worst roster situations in the league, depending on how you want to slice it. I'm not like doing backflips about Brooklyn either, but at least like they have. Guys who in this new format where you don't want to be in the bottom three that have some stat guys.

Yeah, right. Randall will go get some stats at least. He'll put up 23 in 10. And Gagor and Brown, I think, make sense together. Yeah, that's, that's a back court. I think a fan base should rightly be really excited about.

So you think it sounds like you think Sacramento is going to be the worst team in the league. I think Milwaukee will probably be the worst team in the league, but Sacramento in the West feels. It feels obvious to me. Yeah, I'm looking at. So if Fando you the 20 plus win odds.

“Sacramento is minus 140 if you want to bet on them to have 20 plus wins.”

Brooklyn's minus 320. Milwaukee's minus 475 in New Orleans is minus 900. Clippers are 11 to one. So Fando agrees with you. Now Memphis, I actually think could be a little bit better than, you know,

the typical bad young team because they have a bunch of gamers and they're going to have a specific identity. That's a lot of team. That Milwaukee teams, I don't know what to make of that team. There's just, it's like a randomized NBA 2K team that's just like, hey, they're going to have a bunch of centers and a bunch of shooters.

I don't know what to make of it. But you know, we're five weeks away. What are you the most excited about this season? I think it's got to be silly. Every time I look at that, I mean,

every time I'm reminded of just everybody they have on that team, like I have to see it.

“I have to see it in person and you need to see this often as possible.”

I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if Joel is ever going to be healthy, but the the star power, the supporting pit like players they picked up. I mean, is that not your number one?

Where are you starting? I definitely number one from a. I need to see this a few times just to like let this sink into my brain what this is. Right? I think out of all the teams that feel different than last year,

that's the number one. I just don't really fully understand how this is going to work. I'm fascinated by it. The upside is so high. The floor is even fairly high,

just because with their two injured, their and beat as an injured guy in LeBron as an old guy, even if those guys aren't playing a lot, you still have those other three guys that can play big minutes. I think the Celtics piece is going to be interesting too,

because well, you would. Well, but I'm saying from a. Usually they've been more of a feel good team or the up and coming team, but this is a city that really didn't like that trade.

And depending on how those first two, three weeks go,

I think could be a team to watch. Now, they could come out and be great and everybody could like them. And, you know, Paul George could fit in. And, but if they if they start out like seven and eight. And Paul George looks old at the fans are pretty gamey about this trade still.

He's there and I think he's saying all the right things, but it's it's the first really unpopular move of the Steven's era. Well, even if they're, let's say they come out and they're really good. Do you think any of the scar tissue from last season will pop up and be like, you know, this is a really good regular season.

Yeah. Is this real?

“Is that going to be hanging over the mall year do you think?”

I think that I think just monitoring Tatum what we're getting at him for a full year when he didn't even make it through the six or series. And then the thing Steven said about. He said it in so many words. If you'd like to code today, you knew what he was saying. He was like, we ran our course with those two guys.

Yeah.

And we didn't feel like we were in the title mix anymore paying those two guys 130 million hours a year to play basketball.

Wasn't going to work anymore. So it's a pretty big bet. I've announced a couple weeks ago on a few saw. I talked myself into it took took over 50 days. It's impressive.

Yeah. It was, you know, there's a therapy. There was some hypnotic tapes at night to listen to. Yeah. How did we not turn, I mean, you kind of did turn it into content.

How do we not just like lock you in a padded room for 72 hours until you came out ready to believe in the Celtics? It sounds like an Apple TV series. It's like the new Apple TV drama from Vince Gilgain. So Philly in the East. Yeah.

“Who's your team in the West then that you can't wait for?”

Oh, it's going to have soda. Yeah. I'm ready. Lamello and ants. I mean, sign me the fuck up for that.

That sounds like exactly what I am tuning in for. And the process of who they're going to be in the regular season. You're out incorporating Jonathan Kominga being a totally different style of team. Making all these pieces fit together. You know, figuring out how they're going to replace Dante.

Even Chenzos probably going to be out for the year. Yeah. Chris Finch has done this kind of thing many times of like, here's a new formula. Go figure it out since he's been with the wolves.

But to me, this is easily the most exciting version of that. It does feel minutes on.

I feel I have one thing I come and where you're going to catch them on the right night where they look incredible.

Yeah. You know, it would be like game 17, whatever location of like, oh, my god. Minnesota made 29 threes last night. Be a record. They had an interesting summer, though, because it just felt like they were in on everybody.

They were like the guy in your fantasy draft that is just beating on every guy. And you're like, what's your plan? You just, you've gone, you've gone into the 20s on 15 straight guys. Like, did you come in with any sort of plan? I really didn't.

Minnesota was like that too. It's like, coming as available, whoever. Like, Jalen Brown's available. The bronze available is Kevin Durant available. They, they've just were flying around trying to make anything happen.

And as on top of it, going through an ownership change that they kept pretty secret. But isn't, isn't that what a team in their position should do? Like, if you kind of ran into the wall and you have one of the most exciting stars in the league. And of, and a supporting cast that also worked, but also kind of ran its course. Julie's thing clearly was over.

Nas Reed was valuable to them, but they, I can understand why they wanted to diversify their roster a little bit, thin out the bigs. That, that leads you to chase every star on the market. Honestly, kind of what we want teams of Minnesota's market size. This is what we want them to do is to chase after things when they get real. I just would have been.

But if we're in that meeting. Yeah. And it's getting close. And we're starting to really talk about this at some point. You have to look around and go.

Why to share that one and give this guy up. Under contract, pretty fair contract for somebody that is a top 30 guy. Yep. Beloved by the fan base. Kind of the best driver for whatever engine they had for this three point kind of up and down team.

Perfect for that. Why do they want to trade them? I don't know if I would have gotten past that. I understand it as a sticking point and frankly, look, I'm a lamello believer. Like he is as a playmaker.

Very powerful to me. I see the vision. If you'll pardon the pun for me. It's like the health. It's like the ankles.

It's the injuries. Like that's the part that freaks me out more than can lamello ball be a winning player. Because we've seen him have a transformative effect.

Not just last season, but basically every season he's played on Charlotte's offense.

And so that feels real. That is a tangible thing. You can see it in games.

“You can see it if you want to dig into the data.”

I think he can be a serious basketball player in a slightly different context. I'm eager to see if this group can kind of nudge him in that direction. But I just I just need him to stay healthy. Like that that is my biggest concern for the world's for sure. But I mean, that is that's the concern.

Well, but there's a whole different school that's just like skeptical of him as a basketball talent. And I'm I'm saying, like, that's not what that's going to happen. Yeah, you can have both, I guess. Yeah, I'm in both. I actually I'm doing a mail back in the next segment.

The king of the nerds basically sure. Cubies. All their advanced stuff is great. All the NFL nerds are like, even when they have a bad game. There's here.

No, no, it was actually a good game.

“And the question from Brian was, who's the NBA version of this?”

And he said, "My nominee is lamella ball."

Incredible advanced stats has never made the playoffs are contributed to winning.

The nerd community would tell you none of that matters. Despite the fact that its parentheses checks notes about to be year seven for him. So do you think, do you think LaMela was the nerd king of the NBA right now with the NBA nerds? I don't think you can be the nerd king if you're also very popular with like 12 and 13 year olds. No, that's two separate things.

But that can't be the split demographic. That doesn't make sense. I was hit the nerd king. But to me, the nerd king is much more like a Derek White type than it is a lamella ball type. The difference is Derek White is actually one a title doing nerd stuff, right?

Sure. So I was wondering, is it if it's not lamella because he might be in this separate camp. Yeah. Could trade Murphy be our nerd king? Oh, I like that one.

Yeah. The tripe is a great one.

Incredible stats just put him in anywhere he'd be at it if it's like we've never seen him in a winning situation ever.

Why are we so sure?

“Well, and the only thing nerds love more than valuing undervalued players is trying to find the new teams via the trade machine.”

Right. And like, the trade Murphy's been living in it for five years straight. So he feels like a per if not a king then certainly a prince of the nerds. I do think that nerds like I think Zack voted for. That's called Zack a nerd, but he doubles in the nerd stats.

This is a nerds stat thing, not a nerd thing, but. But I think he voted for Lamello 13 on BA or seriously thought about it because of his impact. Just for the 20 minutes whereas I'm a profound durability guy. Yeah. And I just feel like, yeah, I think if you actually had to rely on that dude night after night for 35 minutes like somebody's other dudes.

I don't know if you could do it, but we'll see. That to me is why it's like what Lamello does well is obvious. Like he's a he's a highlight machine. He's not.

“I think to me if you're making the nerd king case, it's always like, oh, the secret value of this player is this thing that you're not seeing in the box score or this thing you're not seeing when you watch.”

Like, you know, your Shane Baddie is your Derek White's like. Lamello is like front and center highlight neon like everything he does is so blatant that I don't think he could take that title. Yeah, because then NFL, the cubies are in your face every play because they don't have face to the team. So that's why Lamello, like a point guard who has the ball over the time is probably a good analogy. Before we go, you've been doing a lot of prestige TV episodes. What's the show of the year so far? We're through mid September. We have a bunch of good stuff going. Is it, is it with us? Whatever.

We don't as what after crushing the Emmys, you can't even get the full title out. We don't as Bay. We don't as Bay has to be the show has to be the show of the incredibly decorated this week, but also just the best show top to bottom. I think the best formulated the best written incredible performances. I think you know, you could argue plural best or you know, the pit still is in that running for me. There's been a lot of really good TV this year, but what does Bay feels the most cohesive. I didn't tell you I was keeping it in a secret for me. I banged out furious. Really liked it. Yeah. I thought it was like an A minus.

It really was the first one in a while. I got to watch the next one. I want to see what happens. I had a really good time with it. I thought it was was there were with there's so many of these that try to do what that show did. And you're like, alright, I guess I'll watch another episode, but parts done in it. That thought was legitimately good. Well, it's it's a little sheetish. It's a little like banking in the silence of the lambs by the end of the first season. Like we're getting into some really exciting places, Furious is very good. If you haven't checked that out.

And let me Ross, I'm basically like a clear dance is the queen of the fucked up female lead character who has to solve crimes or some sort of issue. Yeah. Watch this. Watch what I'm about to do here. Corrected. Do you think, I mean, every Ross, I'm just coming for the crown. She did some things that I don't even know Claire Danes knew or possible. Some faces. Some of the choices that character made. It was all from the Claire Danes playbook. It was funny because my daughter watched.

She saw the beast in me before she started rerunning homeland. She'd never seen homeland.

And they only knew Claire Danes from the other show and then it's watching her in homeland. And she's like, Dad, is this just what Claire Danes does? She plays completely crazy characters. That big bad choices. And like, yeah, that's actually what she does often. So, but until I mean, Ross, him does a full on like whale cry. Then I don't know if we can give her that particular way and just, yeah, what about it? They're definitely head to head in the finals. And me Ross, because she did this in shameless too. I feel like the whole time she's felt like Claire Danes gets all the publicity for this, but I'm right here in here I come.

Like I guess we're kind of waiting to see what hits, but any time slow horses comes back on the calendar. I'm psyched for you. Are you up on that?

“Not up on that one. Come on. Should I be? Yes. Gary Oldman led just too much sports fail spy comedy drama. I think you would love it.”

There's too much sports. The sports, especially the summer with the World Cup baseball was really good football's now back basketball feels like it's around the corner. All right, slow horses. You're like a 19th person and tell me about that one. Rob Money, great. So you can you can watch and listen Rob on ringer MBA plus plus prestige with Joanna who you share custody with with with Malar. I think that's really nice. You guys arrange that. It's an amicable situation. I think I think we've made it work. Yeah. You get every other weekend. You get it. And Wednesdays and some Fridays. All right, Rob, great to see you. Come back with the mail back right after this baseball.

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by a fan duel. Welcome to your most rewarding season ever. And it's only happening on fan duel. How rewarding are we talking?

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It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes like having a friendly little competition with your friends. See as the fastest or we can put better in the back yard or who can get to somebody else's house or the better route whatever it is. Even better. If put some Mikkelob Ultra in the line or refreshing way to up the stakes like me and how they're going to pick games against each other on Thursdays the Senate fell season. Maybe we keep track in ways of Mikkelob Ultra six packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Mikkelob Ultra will make a special BS podcast or ringer six packs.

And then we could we could borrow them back or forth. Whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for Mikkelob Ultra superior light beer and refer a chance to win superior soccer basketball golf prizes at michelobulture.com/superiraccess enjoy responsibly copyright twenty twenty six. And as a bush, Mikkelob Ultra light beer St. Louis, Missouri. All right, so much happened the last few days with football. I had to do a little mini mail bag for the NFL before we get to the last part of this podcast, which is a good old fashioned baseball discussion.

My pyramid of teams after one week, I won't read you all the teams, but I have Seattle at the top with Baltimore and Buffalo underneath them.

“The Niners Rams and Houston and I think that's the top six right now and then we can argue about it.”

Bottom for Atlanta, Tennessee Cleveland and Miami last and I think it's a really interesting argument between Cleveland and Miami both of whom looked atrocious last week. But I actually think there's slightly more upside with Cleveland because of some of their skill players. I didn't see any upside from Miami. Their defense is terrible. It doesn't look like they're going to be able to run the ball and it doesn't look like they're going to be throw the ball. So I have Miami 30 second happily. We'll switch after week two of Cleveland looks as bad as they did in week one.

Some mail bag emails. You can email at BS podcast [email protected]. This first one, the reason I'm putting this up is I got a brown see mail from kevdog in Cleveland who writes as a Cleveland fan the Brown's futility has always fascinated me.

The Brown stadium, which is currently Huntington Bankfield, if you're scoring it on, that stadium opened in 1999 and it has never hosted a Brown's playoff game.

Safe to say it won't this year or next year.

“And here's the thing that stadium is set to close after the 2028 season when the new Huntington Bankfield opens.”

There's a chance I'm interjecting here. There's a chance that stadium will have come and gone for almost three decades without ever having a home playoff game. Kevdog asks what's more unbelievable that Cleveland hasn't hosted an NFL playoff game since 1994 or that Cleveland built a pro football stadium that served a useful three decade life without ever hosting a playoff game in it.

When we were about to knock down the stadium, which was alternately Solomon Stadium, shape for stadium, whatever you want to call it, it had never had a great moment.

And then the last game ever in that stadium was the snow game, which is what the Patriots fans call it, the asshole and a fel fans call it the tuck roll game, but when they beat the Raiders and the Blizzard and that turned out to be one of the most memorable non-super Bowl games in the history of the league and that was the last game in that stadium.

“So Cleveland, I guess, has a couple of years here to have their version of the snow game and my money would be against it.”

Kevdog also, he is a PS. If the Sean Watson makes it to week three, you're going to see something unlike anything in sports, the entire home stadium will boot the starting quarterback mercilessly from player introductions until the games over. Maybe that's your playoff game. The Sean's last start in week three, I can't imagine they'll start him, but holy shit.

If they do, if they're on to and they're like, hey guys, here's the Sean Watson. Good luck.

Joe from Denver said last year, Raiders Patriots gave us the classic Lairlier week one game. Raiders won stunk the rest of the year, Patriots dramatically improved, which week one game was the Lairlier game. We have three candidates and we talked about two of them on the Sunday pod with Sal, Cincinnati 33 Tampa Bay 27 were Tampa just was incredibly sloppy with the ball to the point that Sal compared Baker may feel to the Savannah bananas. That's one, everybody's pretty high in Cincinnati, but we'll see, I mean Cincinnati definitely the defense did look better.

“They want a game where Chase had two catches, but I had my eye on that because I think Tampa is better than that game and Cincinnati's worse, but we'll see.”

Cards, chargers would be the obvious picker because the chargers were terrible and then did the whole. We didn't have a preseason. Maybe that was a mistake, Carba. Maybe we should have gotten our guys some reps.

And the cards look great, but I got to say like Raiders Pats was just a terrible game where the Pats gave up a couple key third down passes that couldn't get anything going on offense.

And it was just kind of an ugly game, but you didn't leave the game like super impressed by the Raiders. The cards were like.

“Putting on drive after drive on the chargers. I think they must have had six 10 11 play drives. They were getting third downs. I kind of do whatever they wanted.”

I don't. I think they're a little more for real. I'm trying not to do the overreaction and being like the cards are good, but I offensively that team was as accomplished is just about anybody I watched on Sunday. I think the liar liar game might be chiefs, Broncos for a couple reasons. One is the Broncos were another team that afterwards they were like, man, maybe we should have cared about the preseason. This is something my buddy Gus Ramsey, die hard Broncos fan, who I wish I had talked to before the game was saying that they have a habit of doing this with Peyton, where the week one they always looked terrible apparently. So kind of wish I had known that.

That was one thing. You know, completely reinvented themselves with Walker who was awesome, their home. It's a money night. Expectations weren't as high as the normal over for the chiefs. We know we're going to get from homes. And they had two touchdowns in this game. It's going to sound like sour grapes. I'll be honest. It's a wee bit sour only because I lost my, my Broncos teams, but. There was holding on the mohomes touchdown. There was a great video of Kelsey just bare hugging somebody as my homes ran in and it gets caught every time it's a chiefs don't get it.

When Kelsey had that long lumbering run near the end and machine rice is basically just bare hugging molling somebody for 30 yards. I haven't seen a holding penalty for that long and my entire life. He's holding the guy for so long that I think the reps just forgot about the holding and just kept running. Those two penalties plus bone mix was just awful and and it just feel like are the chiefs really going to do that every week. Like the amount of time Walker had I think 26 touches. I looked at his touches and his career put four years in Seattle. He's never had more than 250 touches for them.

I just wonder like is that is that one of those. They're throwing us off the Santa little and Denver can't be worse and maybe we shouldn't get to over the top excited about that one. Now the counter would be the chiefs are back and I don't know what to think, but that would be my number one suspect for the liar liar game. I'm not sure the chiefs are as good as they looked in that game.

In from Nashville wanted conspiracy bills take on something. So I brought him in. He said my homes. He's this is after the chiefs came against the Broncos. In the first TD and looking completely normal eight months after tearing both the ZAC on LCL smells fishy. Do you think he faked the December injury when the playoffs were at a reach? So down the line people look at his legacy and think of it as the season. I don't know what he said, but I don't know what he said, but I didn't think my home was good in that game. I thought a couple of the scrimples were good, but he's I thought he missed guys the whole game and then I looked up the stats after I think 90% of his passing yards were yards after catch.

We'll see how he does and obviously he's going to get better as the year went along, but I did not leave that game thinking holy shit Patrick moms is back and if you did you're crazy. Jim from South Jersey was excited that we talked about the Taysham Hill award for most dropped picked up foreign fantasy on Sunday's pod. He predicts dev in single terror will finally take the award home. He sure to be added by millions after tearing apart sales them teams defense last week. Who'd be dropped by millions after he fumbles away as chances coming weeks and then picked up again when Scott above eventually gets hurt dropped again when he has his own midyear injury water with lemon for all he says so single terror he thinks will be the number one.

But I am voting for Don Tavian Wix on the Eagles. So I think a lot of people are going to pick up this week. I think he'll be dropped. I think that'll have another five for 90. He'll get picked up again. I just think that's how it's going to go for him. He's just going to be on and off the waver wire. My backup choice would be somebody named Caleb Douglas on the Miami Dolphins a receiver who was five for 94 last week when we'll get picked up.

“I just think in general the Miami receivers are going to get dropped left and right, but I think it's going to be Wix or single Terry as most added drop guy this year.”

John from Portland, Oregon, asked if Drake may as the next Tony Romo a supremely talented successor to QB royalty, but also supremely boneheaded. That was hurtful.

Tony Romo, by the way, zero NFC title games and finished third in the MVP once in 2014. Drake made a super bowl last year. Just pointed that out in the second season ever.

There are some questions that will hopefully be answered by the Nougat Patriots this week against the Steelers. Speaking of the Steelers, Marcus Reed and Edmonton said, I may a long time, Steelers Spain, who enjoyed your time and discussion on Sunday. I was talking about how much I love how they used time and a half time.

“I've watched nearly every Tom on Tuesday press conference over the years. Tom is greatest strength with his ability to communicate.”

It's not surprising to see NBC figure this out immediately and use in like Jamir Gibbs. I'm an interjecter. It was super surprising because NBC has always botched pre game shows and have time shows and had too many people and they would cut to the field with Jack Collins worth and Tony Dungee and Rodney Harrison. I don't think any network over the last 20 years has made me go the fuck are they doing more than NBC. So I actually think it was surprising. They figured it out and used them like Jamir Gibbs.

Anyway, Marcus says he is getting a lot of touches. Pre game interviews pre game show halftime. How long until he's doing terrible call is refreviews, sideline reporting, maybe even interviewing the coaches between the halves. I like this. So these are like Jamir Gibbs. It's like Dan Campbell trying to save his job, which Jamir Gibbs. He's talking for everything. I would have him coming to the booth for the second quarters.

“I thought he was awesome. I think he's going to get better as a year went along and this is like the first real kick ass studio guy we've had in a long long time.”

And it's pretty rare. Like even in the NBA, I remember Pat Riley, when he was between lakers and necks, and he did NBC way, way back when and he was incredible compared to what we had dealt with with studio shows. And it was like holy shit. Like he's actually staying stuff. He has there's weight behind it, felt the same way about Tom and so hopefully he keeps it going.

Ben writes in, I've always left your theory that sports cities are more in sync than we think as a die hard boss than family being in New York.

And now terrified that I'm watching it happen in real time. Uh-oh. The next finally overcame their demons and one a title and ever since it feels like the entire city sports karma has flipped. Oh no. The jets and giants are somehow both one and oh for the first time since 2009. The Yankees are favored in the AL and the Dodgers seem more beatable than they have in years. My worst nightmare. A Yankees world series win.

Regardless, I'm hating every second of it. So using your sports city theory, what needs to happen to kill the New York vibe?

Ben, I think you and I both need to sit down and relax and have some settled down juice, but you did put the fair god of me here.

I would hate to see some sort of New York shift. And if you look at the giants winning the game, we didn't think they're going to win in week one. And their schedule is actually pretty easy next couple weeks. And if they can keep dart and scat about healthy, I'm actually worried about them winning the division. Jets will be seven and 10 or eight nine. Yankees are a favorite. We're talking about baseball later, but the Yankees are almost favored to win the AL. I think the only reason I'm not favored is because they have the red socks and the best two or three. Maybe the red socks ironically will be the one that can end this.

I'll have to use go to Yankee Stadium and win two of three games with three really good starting pictures. So it's on their shoulders, but Ben, you put the fair god of me with all this.

“Terry New Jersey said, I know you think John Harbaugh's overrated, but as a giants fan, I was thrilled with the performance against the Cowboys. And I think you should have been.”

I spent all Monday talking about how disciplined they were, how they didn't blow the weed and how dart didn't lower his head to take online backers.

True, has there ever been a lower bar for a head coach to clear then, hey, we didn't collapse in the fourth quarter or hey, we didn't make dumb plays that got our quarterback killed. That is from Terry New Jersey and honestly, it's all true. I felt the same way last year with variable. And variable was great obviously in one coach of the year. I'm talking last year regular season made the Super Bowl. Maybe didn't go great after the season, but he followed Jared Mayo. And I was thinking about that and I googled Jared Mayo to see what NFL team he was on.

And he's not coaching the NFL anymore. He works for a hedge fund. So my variable.

He followed a guy who was the Patriots coach for one year and then immediately left football, even though he's like 41 years old.

I don't know if you're ever going to get a wider disparity of former coach, new coach than that. And I said, I don't know how bad dayball was, even though the energy wasn't great, but hardball, if he can do half of that, you know, he came in. He gave them a real identity. They're just big. They're powerful. They're going to run the ball. They're going to not be idiots and maybe it'll work. I might have been wrong about the giants.

“Mike F says, uh, what the hell were Tom Cruise and Taylor Swift talking about at that sheep's game last night?”

It was funny that there were people writing, uh, liberating stuff about this trying to try to decipher what they were talking about. I have no idea what they were talking about. Like part of me was thinking it was like when Anchorman when they're filming the TV commercials, like we're laughing. Now we're serious. Um, or like when they have movie scenes where the extras are in the back and the extras are having a fake conversation behind like our main characters. But I decided I think he was telling her about all the right moves.

And he was telling her about how he played step George of itch. He was just, um, Pennsylvania corner back had a chance to go to college and then rifleman should have, uh, should take in the safety at the end. And the pouring rain didn't hands off to the Italian guy who fumbles. They lose the game. Hands up getting mad at the coach. Probably just told her the whole plot of all the right moves and I don't think she was really listening.

“Um, Andrew from Hartford, Connecticut said, I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan, but I even need, but I even need to appreciate how fucking psycho scatobos.”

Can we start a wing grow award for the most batshit crazy guy in the NFL? Maybe it could be portable across all sports. Maybe it could be an espi. So you get a candidate from each of the major sports. He's by nominee right now for the NFL. That's Andrew and Hartford, Connecticut. The wing grow award. I had to get it on. Uh, it's definitely Dylan Brooks for the NBA and probably Wilson contires for baseball, but that would be a really fun award ceremony and you're right. Scatobos probably winning that. Um, Jim comp wrote in, don't be to pile on in your time.

A morning after the Pat's loss, but Romeo Dobbs was every Packers fan drive to the airport guy. Top 10 and drop balls usually biggest moments consistently got chances to be number one receiver. No, showed his Seahawks performance was something Packer fans are all too familiar with. I didn't even mention him walking in on the team during the season of a contract role issues. The Packers spent big money to extend two other receivers. Not him. Good luck.

That may be a little nervous. Phil and Portland asked in light of recent podcast revelations. I'm thinking Aaron Rogers's new nickname should be Cuck Rogers in the 21st century thoughts. I'm going to move to the next email question. Brian from DMV asked that Justin Herbert Jordan love question.

He thinks it was La Mella ball from the previous segment with Mahoney.

In each Chicago, another MBA question, but tied to the NFL as a Chicago resident entering a season in which the two most talked about players will be Caleb Williams and Caleb Wilson.

I feel like I need some sort of demonic device for remembering which last name goes with which player. If you remember on Thursday, house called Caleb Williams, Caleb Wilson and I can't believe I've done it yet. Unlike minus 450 on Fandel to do it before the end of week three. Andy writes, "As it stands, this is feeling like plugging in a USB cable where it's 50/50, but somehow I get it wrong 75% of the time. Can we get our best minds working on this?"

So when we had the fantasy football show, which was initially a hyphids and Danny Kelly. And we called that the fantasy football show in Craig was the producer and eventually Craig became a co-host and now we call it the ringer fantasy football show. And we called it fantasy and we decided Danny hyphids would be Danny and Danny Kelly would be DK, so that we weren't asking if Craig was talking them. They wouldn't both be Danny and it would be super confusing. And now somehow hyphids as hyphids and Danny Kelly is DK and we don't have a Danny in the show.

Caleb Williams is already there. I think Caleb Wilson has to be called CW or CW.

“I just think that's how it has to play out. It's like when the OKC had the two J.L. and Williams is and one was J.L. and one was J.L.”

I don't think we can have a Caleb Williams and Caleb Wilson as the two identifiable Chicago stars. It's too fucking confusing.

Both cases you just want to call the guy Caleb and I think Caleb Wilson just has to bite the boat and be CW or CW or you could argue these are two separate sports and this will never collide.

But it is. It's already confusing and we're in need of solution. So we're needing both guys to get together and try to figure this out. But I think Caleb Williams should be Caleb Williams and Caleb Wilson should be CW. Kyle from Orlando said there's been a lot of dialogue about Justin Herbert and he said his dad's a long time pass fan who thinks Herbert is the modern day Jew Blitzow.

In saying individual talent, high pedigree, west coast, franchise, savior, destined for greatness, but Blitzow couldn't handle the biggest crunch time moments to net the effect or was never top five player made once or both that's it. Herbert has never won a playoff game or finished higher in ninth and MVP, it's your seven is just Blitzow 2.0. I actually think Blitzow was better. The first seven years of Blitzow I think was better than Herbert and I know that advanced stats will say Herbert was better.

Blitzow took a team of the Super Bowl. Herbert's never won a playoff game. So in a way, I don't think you can call him Blitzow 2.0.

“I think Blitzow is the slightly rich man's Justin Herbert at this point.”

Blitzow was really good for a while and took a ton of hits. And I think by the time we got to the end of the 90s, I just think his is between offensive line stuff and just how many times he threw and how many times he used them. I just think he started to get banged up so that would be my take on that. But APN the ATL said my buddies and I are watching Red Zone. Every time they switch to Jet's Titans, we let out a correct collective grown.

No one wanted an update of this game in any capacity. Is there a way to get a feature added where certain games can be deselected for many red zone updates like a reverse red zone. Can you use your powers that sports our YouTube CMO to get this implemented? So I thought about this. I think there should be two red zone channels and one would be the red zone channel that covers absolutely everything.

And I think they have a fantasy red zone channel just for the fantasy stuff. So I guess we are to have to.

So I think there needs to be a third one where it's just like the best five games of the day.

And you don't have to deal with Dolphins Raiders. You don't have to deal with Jet's.

“Can you remember Jet's Titans? That's how bad that game was.”

And maybe it's like the filet mignon of the red zone. And if you want to watch that instead it's just more updates for the best games. Just an idea. Andrew Grillo. Said that sound I touched about this briefly on the Sunday night pod.

But his biggest takeaway from Ohio State Texas was zero teammate celebrating with arch. It almost seemed like they were avoiding him as he ran around. I like Jimmy V. Questions. This is a red flag for NFL teams. If arch falls in the draft, this is Bo Callan. And then arch had the thing with Hollywood. That wasn't great either. My bigger question for him.

This seems like the most likely candidate we've had in a while to not want to go to the team that draft some. Because I was looking when I was doing the pyramid. And I was thinking about the worst five teams in the league potentially this year. I think it's pretty safe that Cleveland Tennessee Miami or three. Atlanta may be four maybe indeed, but if you go through like.

What would be the perfect team for him? I guess it would be Atlanta, right?

I think he'd be psyched to go there and you know, he's from the south obviously.

“Cleveland, I think you're just bummed out.”

We just did that email before that they have a state in that they're going to have for 30 years. Maybe with no home playoff game Tennessee the additive came word Miami. Maybe you could talk yourself into Miami, but yeah, this this could be interesting. And if he's the clear number one pick and doesn't want to go to the number one team. Tim Gallagher said I just put on hard knocks.

Perhaps the least surprising thing ever in the opening scene. Sam Darnall manages to fumble his Super Bowl ring opening the box. I know you have high hopes for the Hawks this year, but this feels like an ominous sign.

I got this email before the season started and Sam Darnall got hurt in the first series.

Maybe it wasn't ominous side. Two more. Garrett and Oklahoma, my question when are we ever going to zag on celebrity integration? I don't like when the musician show up in WWE. I don't like seeing Jerry Seinfeld 50 times during an NBA game.

I don't give a shit who is the guest picker on college game day. You can't be in the minority on this. You're not. I think the issue is the shows are produced by mid level TV execs for the most part. I used to call them when I was at ESPN the the khakis and blue shirt police. And all they did was come in and they just want to keep their jobs.

And occasionally I have an idea and the idea will be one of the three ideas that people in this exact type of job have had for the last 50 years. Which is let's get a celebrity in here let's add a six person to the table. It's not like they're putting any real thought into any of this. None of them have ever done a TV show hosted a show. Been on anything they're all but they've all been behind the scenes people who worked their way up and now think they know more about TV than anybody else.

And it's a show doesn't work they want to be able to blame the host because they don't want to have any blame.

These panguis who are still there they know who they are it's always the host fault.

It's always we just need this person it's always we just need more gimmicks.

“And that's why we get celebrities at the desk all the time because it's an idea that is born on like a Tuesday and everybody looks around goes that's a great idea.”

And then if it doesn't work it's the celebrities fault not the idea of having a guest picker. All right last question your parent corner contrasting getting a rescue dog or a pure bread dog made me think we need an aspiration type company for rescue dogs. That was that mean aspiration existed so billionaires could pollute as much as they wanted as long as they paid for the requisite amount of trees to be planted. Is that true? I never really fully understood what aspiration was maybe that's what it was anyway says as we need this for pets.

You're in the clear socially to buy a pure bread dog as long as you find housing vaccines etc for 10 rescue dogs just a social pressure get out of jail free card for wealthy people who want to clear conscience for buying a pure bread dog that's from set from Indianapolis. Yep, these are my readers somebody comparing rescue dogs to aspiration. This is this is this is why we go through these emails for beauties like that. I don't mind the idea either by the way. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back Billy Gil Anthony de Bundo and we're going to talk about a pretty fun pretty strange baseball season right after this.

Fandals make it in your most rewarding season ever with boosts and promos and teasers that are new rewards club and so much more. We were so excited we're able to bring back teasers finally on Sunday's minus 110 juice on the ringer 707 the favorite teasers. I think we split this week because the Broncos didn't come through for a couple but I hit mine. I had lions and jacks for lions bills on Thursday night.

“So if you want to do an SGP for this one, I just like this one anyway. It's it's the bills the bills are minus four and a half favorites, but bills money line.”

I think there's going to be a lot of points the over under is really high, but you can do the alternate total of 46 and a half over for that and then Josh Allen just to rush for 10 plus yards. And that is plus 106 on Fandal and you can add all the player boost tokens or whatever they have going on Thursday and I would recommend that one because I don't think the lions are going to be able to stop the bills, especially if you saw their secondary last week. If you like that one go ahead and place this SGP and the Fandal app, don't forget to check it out and use your rewards all season long.

You're not going to do that. You're going to do that. I'm not going to do that. You're going to do that. You're going to do that. You're going to do that. All of a sudden, they're just like a fish with a fish with 10 bucks. Just like a lot of animals. You're going to do that with your hands. Okay, that's pretty good.

All right, haven't done nearly enough baseball on the podcast in the last couple months.

Even though I've been watching a ton of baseball, but now it's been September. We're in the grind six, seven weeks here. And then baseball might just go away for a long, long time. Billy Gillis here Anthony DiBundo is here. I think this has been a really good season. This is the most baseball I've watched really since probably COVID, maybe 2021. To bundle, what is your number one thing you think happened this season?

“If you had to say like, how will you remember this season? What's number one?”

I think we have to talk about Pete Kerr Armstrong. I don't think you could come on any baseball podcast and not talk about one of the best seasons of the century. Right, okay, make the case best seasons as a century of this century. So since since the turn of the century 2000, I pulled up because he just surpassed 10 wins yesterday, fan graphs war. There only 13 position player seasons since 2000 that have had 10 F or seasons. This is the name of players he's with Barry bonds Aaron judge Mike trout. Those guys all did it multiple times.

Wow, Bobby Wit in 2024, Mookie Betts in 2018 Alex Rodriguez in 2002, and then PCA this season. He is lapping the field. He ran away with the MVP as a Tony has kind of fallen off a little bit here, but really like one of the craziest two way seasons we've ever had. And as a Philly's fan, I have reminded every met's fan. I know that yes, they traded PCA for hobby bias five years ago. Oh my god, well, go down is one of the worst trades of the last 10 to 20 years of baseball. And on top of it, traded them to a big market that loves him.

The Billy the Crow Armstrong thing, it's almost like it feels like it could potentially should be bigger. And it isn't, but has he reached the status to you? It's like, oh, the Cubs are in town. I got to go see this guy in person. He's not there yet, right? I don't, I mean, not for me, but I also have bad feelings towards PCA for fantasy reasons where I had him two years too soon. I keep him. He's going to be bad again. Then I let him go and then he turns into PCA last year, then this year he, you know, is on another level.

The best season since the turn of the century is kind of crazy. Like Barry bonds had a 73 home run season since 2000 show. I had a 50 50 season like two years ago. It's he's good, but what was the season when they're in that conversation? Yeah, what was the season when bonds just got on base like 70% of the time.

“Remember that, like, four or five wins? Yeah, 2004 bonds.”

Yeah, that was the, I think the craziest thing. I was almost like his eyesight became 20 zero eyesight.

He just knew exactly where the strength zone. I've never seen anything like that.

What do you, Billy, what do you think the number one thing you remember about the season is? Man, I put together a list of like all of the different things. I feel like baseball this year has been good. And for you, Bill and Particular, we were mentioning it right before we started recording. Timing-wise, it was perfect for you, right? Like you got good baseball and exciting things that you cared about at just the right time. So, start out with the world baseball classic, which I remember you weren't that interested in it ended up being like a really fun tournament.

I got in length. Then, yeah, then things, you know, for you started slowing down on the baseball front. He had March Madness and then the NBA playoffs and at that time, the Red Sox were bad. So you didn't really have to focus on the Red Sox and the World Cup came. And then your Red Sox turned it on, like just at the right time to get you all the way through summer where you're now you're paying attention to baseball. And now, you know, football's here. And unfortunately now, baseball starts taking a little bit of a back seat. So, hopefully you can kind of keep paying attention to baseball on the Red Sox going on run.

But if they fall off, it's the best time for them to fall off too. Well, I also had my fantasy, my al fantasy league that we still have a chance to win. Oh, got me watching games. Like really every night. My wife was like, what's going on? You're having like a midlife crisis. And I was like, no, I just enjoyed the Red Sox and Cam Schlittler's pitching tonight. And I want to see how it does. So it was just a lot of stuff like that. Anyway, I interrupted you.

“No, are these the semis for you? When is the finals?”

We don't. We just go through this primarily. Yeah, we just go through. So we had.

We're in second place right now. We need basically strikeouts. And we need a little bit of a Hail Mary, because Katie Anderson has turned out to be kind of a dud.

And we had to start Patrick's sand of all this week for two games, including, but we're taping this before tonight's games, but in Texas. It's basically the fantasy baseball version of a Hail Mary. We need him to go like six innings, 11k's, like, but that's where we're at. We're probably going to finish second. But I can't tell you how many texts me in my partner handship done about this. It's, it's, if you have my entire chat.

Yeah, I just, yeah, we're just trying to gain the system with this shitty team we had, where we basically had Schlittler and three other guys.

No, it's all good. Don't worry about it.

“I guess stories of the season. I mean, we've talked about this a bunch of times, but I think 2026 is going to be remembered as the season of ABS.”

Like, we introduced ABS baseball is, you know, and their fans are not known to really like change. And you like to kind of keep the traditions of the game and not change things much. And there was some, I think reluctance to change with ABS. We saw a couple years ago when they made the basis bigger and they implemented the pitch clock and it's like, Whoa, this is not my baseball anymore. Right. And then it like wasn't a big deal at all. And all of a sudden, like, wow, these three and a half hour games are done in two hours and 50 minutes.

And now that the bases are bigger, people are stealing more bases. And then it ended up working out. And ABS was the same thing. Like, ABS became an exciting spin on the game. And the implementation of kind of figuring out the results of the challenge live in front of everyone on the screen, figuring it out along with the empire where there's no, you know, two ways about it. I think it was a great thing for baseball. I think it's helped the game. Then you have kind of the dynamics of, to you challenge.

You're not challenged. Who do you allow to challenge? Who's not allowed to challenge? What empires actually don't know the strikes on what hitters have no idea where the battle is. It's been a fun season with ABS. And, you know, this is the year that it started. Well, you also, when you're at a game, it's really fun. If your team challenges and you, like, it's this random crowd reaction you get out of nowhere either way.

But that interesting thing to me is, like, when, when, like, I remember when we first talked about this like two weeks in this season. And all of us were like, this is cool kind of like it.

Now, by September, and you've seen so many of these, you had these instantaneous reactions now where it's a terrible challenge. Oh, you.

“Oh, my god, what a mistake. Oh, this catcher sucks at this. And I think that's been fun too, but though.”

Well, it is the difference between the live experience and the couch experience because when you're on the couch, they have the box. So, whether it's a good challenge pretty quickly, even the broadcast is now like, well, they're going to lose that challenge. But live when you're sitting at the game, especially if you're seeing isn't like right behind home plate. Yeah, I have no idea. We're kind of guessing. And then they show it on the screen and the crowd oozing eyes. It feels like the tennis challenges from from yesterday year.

But my favorite bit of information that I've learned about ABS is actually what happens when a team runs out of challenges. And front offices have found that the umpire will kind of take it out on the team. And the team will get a slightly worse strike zone after you've gone after the umpire and been wrong a few times. That umpire is going to stick it to you. That has been my favorite learning thing. And they noticed it pretty quickly.

This was back in May when a couple front office people mentioned it to me. And I was like, really, I don't, I tried to find the data for it. I couldn't, but I don't. Despite umpiring, despite umpiring. Which was the game a few weeks ago to bundle where there was a, there was an altercation behind home plate. One of the teams ran out of challenges.

And the umpire just straight up called someone safe, who was tagged out by like a foot at the play of the play. And he knew like, they can't challenge it. What are they going to do? Like they could say, hey, can you guys huddle? Maybe have an umpire review and they're like, nope, we're not going to do that. Because despite umpires have been great this year too.

“I think the last stand, CB Buckner, I think was like the first victim, right?”

Of like, just public and bears been, was it like, it was a red. Yeah, I think it was, you had your swars had like three in a row that he got on. It was just like, man, Buckner is just going to retire after this season. If he doesn't murder someone on the field today. I think we should keep going on a circle.

So I'll go with my, my first one.

And I don't know where this ranks, but just for me personally. The AL West dump dumpster fire that we have. And I ran it about the mariners on Sunday. I'm not going to do a second three minute mariners thing. Although it did make me hear on mariners read it.

I was very excited. They ran the clip of me just complaining about the team that Kate Anderson last night sucks against the angels. So don't even have 60 wins yet. They are just a pox on society. But if you think deeper here, like we're again, we're taping this for Tuesday's games.

There's no team above 500 in the AL West. The best team is 75 75 75 Houston, who is minus 44 for run differential. Yeah, so the only time this has come close was the 2005 and OS. San Diego went to 82 and 80. Everybody else was under 500 this year.

Seattle's in third place.

They're 70 and 81. The Sacramento is or 61 and 89. And then the angels are 57 and 93. And what's interesting is the red socks have played all these guys. And I have these guys in different fantasy things.

And you watch these teams and they're not that bad. And maybe there's just a lot of good baseball players down. But like, I don't know, Sacramento. Like they, I call them Sacramento, derisively. But they lost a bunch of dudes this year.

Like they lost Kurds. They lost, you know, their catcher for a while. And just in general, and yet they had these other dudes that will come up and hate game-winning homers. And then I watch the angels who have been stuck with a bunch of times

Even they're not terrible. I don't, the bundle is there any explanation for why this division is this bad. Because like the red socks play the Rangers this week. Their bats are have been hot for like a month. And I feel like they could put it on us these, these series.

But why is this so bad?

“Yeah, I think it's a case by case basis.”

I mean, I think Houston and Texas came in, projected around 82, 83 wins. So maybe they've kind of had normal seasons. You've talked about the Mariners. I mean, I, as a better have been very upset with the Mariners as well. Somebody who bet them preseason, they were the second favorite to win

the American League. And I remember it was around the All-Star Break. Two of my buddies who host a Mariners podcast, Marine Layer. They were in Philly. And we were talking.

And I've never heard a fan base so angry.

You know, there's, there's cynicism. There's despair. There's annoyance. But there was so much anger. I was like, you guys were in game seven of the ALC.

Right. We want the manager fired. We're rooting against them. We're, we're sick of this entire situation. And the irony of the whole thing is that depoto, the general manager,

is the guy who went out and said, we want to be a consistently good team that wins 85-90 games every year, gets into the playoffs and then plays playoff roulette. That's our goal. So we're not going to sell out.

And this year, the irony of that is that they had just been a 52% team and won 84 games. They probably would have walked away with this division.

“And honestly, been maybe the favorite to win that little half of the,”

of the national, or the American League bracket.

The A's ran out of pitching and all their young hitters got hurt and the angels are a dumpster fire. So it is the NFC Southification of American League Baseball. The Central, by the way, is not that much better. You know, like the set, the ALC general is like the east and everyone else,

not to go too deep into Mariners and all that. But that was one of the stories I think also over the season, not to cut the line. But is Cal Rawley just fell completely off. From last year, like, wow, this is like one of the best players in the AL,

to then he goes in the World Baseball Classic, decided that he was going to be the fun police. And he wasn't going to shake hands with his teammates. And then, you know, you go to the regular season. Like, no, there's nothing going on here.

Like, Hulu Rodriguez is like, oh, winning the World Baseball Classic would be more to me than winning the World Series. And you're like, what's going on with the Mariners? Are they going to be okay here? And like, no, no, everything's fine.

Don't worry about then. And here we are halfway through September. There are 11 games under 500. They're going to miss the playoffs. And it's like, whoa, like this team last year looked like

they were going to be kind of contenders for a while here. And it all just fell apart. And part of it is Kyle Raleigh just disappeared this season. And Munoz was the other one. Like, 10 blown saves.

It's pretty pretty hard for a close. Yeah. That's that's it. So 101. Yeah, when you think like the Blue Jays,

“who I think have been another weird story this year where they,”

they actually, they signed Dylan C's who's been awesome. I mean, the three best pitchers I've watched this year, the Red Sox go against where Schlittler sees. And we're the Deppmer on the Angels who's like been lights out for two months. But they nailed the C signing and then they nailed their closer.

Like Barlin came out of nowhere and has been completely lights out for them. And then he looked at Munoz and he's been one of the worst closers in the league. I don't know what to make of anything in this division. Everyone's kind of afraid of the Astros. But you know, how many guys are left from the Astros from eight, nine years ago?

It's a completely different team. It does lead to one other thing. I wanted to mention quick. The Jordan Alvarez with the most half-assed triple crown run of all time. Is it, have you had one conversation about this?

He's leading and batting average. She's two back in Homer's and he's four back in RBI. And like with one good week could be going for the triple crown, which seemed impossible Billy. Well, I pay.

I'm glad you brought this up because I remember when Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown. And I think it was him and trout was going back to back MVP. And it's like, well, all the metrics say Mike trout's had a better season. We can't give it to Cabrera. And it's like, well, Cabrera got a triple crown for the first time in like 40 years,

or whatever it was at the time. Like, there's no way that you can't give it to him. And then all of the metrics, if you were like, that doesn't matter. Like, RBI is not a thing. But looking at the rocks down.

Yeah, like these are the wrong things, these are the wrong vegetables. And then about a month ago, I tuned in and I was watching MLB network. And I was shocked with like refreshing a refreshing take that I wasn't expecting, which was Brian Kenney advocating for the triple crown mattering again with Jordan Alvarez.

And he's like, listen, I know you're going to be surprised by this. I wasn't a Cabrera guy at the time. I thought trout should have won that MVP. But man, Jordan Alvarez gets this triple crown. I think that he should easily win the MVP.

And I mean, he never really went away.

Like you mentioned, if he gets hot here for two weeks, he could end up winning the triple crown on a team that's 500 without him wouldn't even really be in contention. He's probably going to win the MVP. It's him in common arrow, right?

If he wins a triple crown, I think that the old school voters will give him the MVP regardless.

Yeah.

I think he's got it either way now.

By the way, yeah. It's a very quiet anonymous triple crown, which is not that common. And it's been what? When did Cabrera even do it like 2013?

Yeah. In early 2010s. Yeah. I mean, he's definitely the scariest batter in the AL. Like you've just watching all the teams seize the one when he comes up.

You're like, if there's a guy on base or like, Oh, shit. What's going to happen? All right, debundo your next thing. What do you got? Well, I want to talk about.

So you mentioned trout. It actually wasn't debate because trout had one of those seasons. One of those 10 win seasons. Those unicorn years that don't really come around very often. This year, there really isn't that person.

And it's worth saying that even if you take out home runs and RBI an average, the average is 18% better at the plate than every hitter in baseball. Wow. It's it's peak Crohn strong 157 WRC plus you're on 175. So he is way above everybody else at the plate this year.

It's not really particularly close.

“And so I think for that reason, you have to, you have to give it to Jordan.”

I think it's over. Regardless of what happens in the last two weeks. Billy, what do you have for your next one? Okay. So this one.

Let's let's stay in the west because this was a moment of the season. And it happened so long ago. It goes all the way back to April 4th. And at the time, it felt like a baseball is back moment. We had the World Baseball Classic.

We were writing high. Then everyone saw this moment. Everyone reacted the exact same way. The Joe Adele game. We're Joe Adele.

Rob's re-homers goes into the crowd.

Takes that incredible picture.

Steele's one from Cal Rally Josh Nailer. JP Crawford. And then someone with their iPhone just takes the picture of him standing in the crowd holding the ball to finally up in the air. They end up winning that game of one to nothing.

And then after that, like the baseball season just went on. All of a sudden the angels said, you know what? We're going to trade them at the deadline. He's a guardian now. But also we already made these giveaways for him.

So, you know, we're still going to give away the Joe Adele giveaways. So they gave away a Joe Adele Angel's football jersey. August 30th and tomorrow. September 16th. Is the Joe Adele Babblehead commemorating him robbing three-homers.

Wow. He hasn't been on the team for nearly a month and a half now.

“But if you want to remember that moment forever,”

go to the angels game tomorrow. And you can get a Joe Adele Angel's robbery Babblehead. Are you guys aware of the Joe Adele lore like this guy? It's been super crushing fantasy owners for years. He's been the great hope as a Joe Adele fan.

I've been rooting for this guy for so long. I remember when I went to a game, angels fillies. And he had a home run off the fillies. And I was actually excited to the point where fillies fans and angels fans who were sitting around me were like, "Why are you happy that Joe Adele had a home run?

I'm like, you don't understand. I'm here to see Joe Adele do something. He did it." And the three-homers robbery, I'm convinced I will not see that happen again in my lifetime.

No. It's pretty hard to block and skill. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty impossible.

It's got to be one and a million chance.

Do you think if he was Joe, J-O-E Adele different career? Is it intimidating enough to be a Joe with a Joe? I don't know. I love tweeting Joe in all caps. Okay.

He was also by the way like a bad defender when he started like, "Oh, he's probably given away moral runs that he's saved by the bouncing off of him and going over the wall." Well, that happened earlier, a few weeks later, he had one bounce off of his glove out of the park. They said, "Well, he's still plus two." Yeah.

For the season. What was, was it Tampa or Sacramento?

“I think it might have been Tampa where somebody knocked the home,”

not caught the fly ball, but then it knocked it over and became a home run, but it landed in the brunch setup. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was Tampa, right?

It was in Tampa. It was the visiting team. I think it was a ninth inning. And I believe it wasn't a walk off. I think that ended up tying the game.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like Nick Fortes. They're catching something.

Hit it. He catches it. Then he hits the wall right next to the foul ball. And then he hits like this picnic area for like corporate hits. It's like chicken and waffles.

Yeah. What a place for the brunch by the way. Pretty funny. Right. Right in the first row.

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Your hand needs to be a certain length. Without unreliable pictures are for innings. And you look back at some of the knuckleball innings that these guys throw away. Some of them would throw like 270 innings. You know, Wakefield, you're after year was 200 innings.

He could come in. He could there was years where he started. But then also could come out of the bullpen. I don't understand why more people aren't trying this as a way to gain the system. Because even if you figure it out, you have a 40 array. But you can throw 220 innings a year.

And you can pitch every five starts. But then also come out of the bullpen and pitch. Wouldn't that make you insanely valuable by today's pitching standards? I mean, is it just like an ego thing like the granny shot at the free throw line. We're just no one wants to do it now.

Because like, hey, it's not cool to throw knuckleballs. The best knuckleballers were the ones where the catcher had no idea where it was going to go. And the catcher was guessing just as much as everyone else. Just as much as they hit her where it starts up here. It's down here and the catchers like just trying to not have a pass ball on this thing.

Well, that was the red socks Yankees. There was when we had Wakefield.

And he always had the backup catcher was always his knuckleball.

Yeah. But then in this game it had to be very tech. And then there was like guys on base and it's extra innings. And we all knew that Ver attack didn't have a lot of experience catching Wakefield. And it was the most harrowing, you know, ten minutes of that entire season.

I don't know. To bundle, why can't we have a knuckleball again? What's your, do you have a take or you just think we've had bad luck? I don't, I think it's really hard to do. And I don't think if you're coming up now.

You're, you're going to try to bet on yourself to be the one outlier pitcher who can pull off. This incredibly difficult pitch that even when it was in its prime. And even when it was in the game, nobody really understood. Right. The pitching labs, they don't know how to teach it.

It's kind of just like a thing that existed. And there has been talk about like the seams of change on the ball, which makes it less wobbly.

But that was something that was, has been talked about in the past.

But there's basically no, no guys left.

I mean, Waldron from San Diego was around a couple years ago. He kind of threw one, but even his knuckleball was like a part of a pitch mix. That didn't really wasn't like the main offering. More home from the Padre's kind of throws like a knuckle league type change. But there's basically nobody left.

I would not bet on it's return.

“How much time does it take to perfect a knuckleball?”

Do you? I don't know if it's possible to perfect it. Now, I think we've got the closest.

The thing is though, you still need to throw a fastball hard enough to mix it up on the hitters.

So they don't get in the knuckleball, but yeah, I'm looking at Wakefield's career stats. In '05 when he was 38 years old, he threw 225 innings. Right, he had 33 starts. Even in 2008, 2007, they won the World Series. He was 17 and 12 that year.

At 31 starts, 189 innings, and he was 40 years old. And that's the other thing with the knuckleball thing is you pitch forever once you've figured it out, which was the Negroes. Those guys looked like your grandfather when they would come in. So I don't really fully understand it, but it feels like a documentary, somebody would make and then try to sell and nobody would buy it. It's like I'm writing a, it's my documentary about the knuckleball and then everybody turns it down.

So I forgot about this because a COVID, but remember Brian Wilson with the beard from the Giants.

So in 2020, he tried to have a comeback as a knuckleball pitcher. But we all just kind of missed it because he didn't come back and because COVID happened. And it was a forgotten season. But I guess Brian Wilson had the same idea six years ago and it didn't pan out for him. Damn.

My next storyline is just looking forward to the playoffs. And it's weird because the NBA fans are so upset about this clippers bomber thing. Even though the clippers made one conference finals with this quiet thing and it completely destroyed their franchise. They built other contenders, like pretty much every piece of it was a catastrophe.

“Whereas with the Dodgers, this led to them winning back to back world series, right?”

This led to them being able to spend all this money on all these guys overpay for, you know, even some of the guys that got recently who I don't think is exactly turned out well. And it feels like they are now really a super villain. And when we get to the playoffs, unless you're a dot, it's either you're a Dodgers fan or even if like you're an American League fan or you don't really care. Like you're just gonna be like, I hope the Dodgers go down. And I'll be interested to see how that goes for them, like especially like if they play a place like if they're in Philadelphia, right?

And fill the fans are great anyway, but with the combo of that and the super villain Dodgers, there's no feel good left from any aspect of this. Even though they have a lot of legible guys, Latani, Freeman, Betts, people like these guys, but I think the ship has sailed the bundle. Oh, it's totally sailed. And right now, you know, with the way the bracket sets up, they would play in a best of five either at Lanna, who they have a ton of history away from the early 2020s. Back to back and I'll see us as those teams had those crazy wars back then, not as much recently.

And then the Podgers, who were the other team that are sitting there, who they played in back-to-back seasons or 2022 and 2024. Podgers beat him in 2022. Dodgers came back to get him in four. And over a long series, you would certainly favor the Dodgers, but in a short one, with how good San Diego's bullpen is, they're going to be right there.

“So I really think people have kind of given the Dodgers this aura of inevitability because they won the last two.”

But they forget how close they were to not winning each of the last two. And they don't really quite realize how flawed this team is. Kyle Tucker has been below average. Mookie, Betts has been average. They don't have a closer that they rely on right now that they trust. Oh, Tani, San Diego's hurters. Yeah, Tani is definitely hurters.

Dodgers fans are worried about the Dodgers just in general. And then you have, like you had two years in a row where you had to play all the way through October. You know, you got that piece too. What do you think, Billy? How do we think the Dodgers story ends, right? Because like what you're saying is true, there's no real good feel good left with this team even with likeable guys. They clinched the playoffs earlier this week. It was like the most subdued celebration ever where they just like had a toast with champagne glasses.

No one looked particularly happy to be there. Yeah. But when we, when the Mark Walter story kind of came out, it wasn't revolving around the Dodgers. It was okay. He sells the lakers and he goes and then soccer team might be up for sale. And then like the team president Dodgers came out of like, well, we're fine. Like, nothing's going to be for sale here. And then sores are coming out.

It's like, well, this guy owes like billions of dollars to a lot of people. Like, I don't know that we can just take his word for the fact that this team is not going to be sold. And something else isn't going to come out or happen in the off season. And then once that happens, then what happens with Showhio Tani who has clauses in his contract where he can just void his contract.

So there's, there's a lot going on with the Dodgers because they were also kind of like the centerpiece as the example for the lock out. And hey, you can't do this. And then the passenger was like, well, hey, anyone can do that. And then it's like, well, I guess, yeah, anyone can just quit fraud. And you know, sign these crazy deals and like just cheat your way to paying everybody everything that they want and help no one catches up to you. So in that sense, yes, but they get school will let the deadline people are like, what's going on here.

He goes to the team two days before the deadline when it's like, were they're not going to be better in the back for they just decide. And then school will also goes like major villain while also trying to keep one foot in like the good guy pond where he's like, well, I want to end my career as a tiger. It's like, well, that was an option. Like, you could have, you know, re-signed with them if you really wanted to do that and saved everybody to the trouble. So when he leaves, he says, like, oh, you know, I don't like all this hate that everybody's getting people like the Dodgers aren't the villains.

And also he secretly stole an espresso machine that he bought the tigers and put in their clubhouse and took it with them for some reason. Because like, he's not making enough money that he can't buy another one. I don't know why he had to take that. So there's a lot going on with the Dodgers. And I feel like even after the season's done, there's going to be more that comes out here. You would think. Well, especially some of the deals he was making like the deal with the TV station. I'm surprised more people aren't mad at this. I think it speaks to baseball's place as like an internet sport versus basketball football.

Whereas basketball. People are pretty mad. But I think this should be like, we should be should we be having conversations about if they game the system and this guy did all this stuff illegally. What do we do about the two titles they want?

I've never heard that conversation. I think we're distracted, though, because I think there was the crescendo that happened around the deadline when they make the deal.

And then we had a whole week of is baseball ruined over canceled the joke of a sport. Then everybody got distracted, right? Like the clippers thing happens. Yeah. And that fell starts up. People get distracted. But hey, we got about two weeks until the Dodgers play a playoff game. And inevitably, scoobles going to shove, or snow is going to shove, or Otani is going to hit two homeruns in a game.

“And that is going to start a whole new round of discourse as we get into the, I think that's what's coming.”

I'm here for it. I mean, relative to the clippers, I feel like this is kind of a bigger deal. Like the clippers, circumvented a salary cap that was arbitrary and it was made up by the league and like everyone seems like they're doing it. They're doing it. They were just doing it. They were just doing it. They were just doing it. They were the stupidest and they didn't do it.

They got absolutely, they cheated for no reason. They cost themselves all of this money. But the dumbest for the fuckers on the planet. The Dodgers won two world series in a row. Well, and the worst part is quiet now, they're just like, okay, quiet.

You know what? You want to go to Toronto? Like, sure, go to Toronto.

And he gets no, I think you pay like a $700,000 fine for like $60 million he shouldn't have been made.

It's not even like 1% is what his fine was. And then just go on to the next team. Well, this franchise essentially has like the death sentence for like the next five to seven years because they can't do anything about this. Yeah. If I'm a player, I'm trying to negotiate back room deals as much as possible.

Oh, stay on over on the owners. It's no risk all reward. Well, especially in baseball, this is somewhat there's a lot of risk. I wonder like the Dodgers debt sheet is scary. I mean, whoever, if they do end up selling, they owe like a billion dollars to Motani and Tucker over the next seven to eight years. It's a lot of money. Yeah, it's funny. You go to the Dodger games.

The Dodger fans just seem like they hate Tucker. I don't know if that's changed. I haven't been no Dodger game in a month. But this attitude is not great. He seems miserable. They're miserable with him.

It's always funny when that happens.

And it seems like it happens more in baseball than every other sport combined. Where you get this guy that you paid a lot of money for.

“And it just immediately goes bad. And you're like, what the fuck?”

You were like our big fridge. It like this was Bishop with the meds. This was basically everybody the angel signed. Right. Don't ask Robert about this.

Does he count? Well, 500 million dollar extension. And he hit one. He's hit now hit one. So he's been on my hair.

Okay, pertain. He just doesn't get home runs anymore. But he's not 38. He's 27. Like what, and you're looking at him. He seems like he looks the same. I don't understand what happened in his power. Very, very strange.

This next segment is brought to you by PNC Bank. Dynasties are not a flash in the pan. They're more of a log fire. Blazing bright for seasons and seasons. It's hard enough to win one much less to actually become a dynasty. But staying committed to steady smart planning is one of the best ways to do it.

Just like our sponsor for this segment, PNC Bank. All right. So how do you become a dynasty?

“You need to have a principle that you believe in.”

In, like, look at the Celtics with the Red R. Back and Bill Russell on the second

R. Back. He knew he had lightning in a bottle with Bill Russell.

I am going to build everything around this dude. This is the best defense report we've ever had in the history of the sport. It's the best rebound we've ever had in the history of the sport. He's a really good passer. I'm going to build the really fast team about all the stuff he's good at.

I'm going to play through my guards and then Russell can protect the guards the other way. And everybody I bring in are going to be athletic. And they're going to fit in with Russell in the way we play.

“And that's how they did it. And guess what happened?”

By the mid 60s Russell got older. So what kind of team do you want at that point? Well, we got to slow it down a little. Got to be a little more methodical. We need to, we need to be bigger.

And all of a sudden the Celtics guards are bigger. They're playing people like Larry Sikfried at a point guard with Havocic and Sam Jones and Bill Russell. Just more size because they needed to be more physical. That's kind of stuff you do when you think about when you're trying to put together a dynasty. So it's pretty clear that consistency one over the long run in the Celtics case with Bill Russell.

And it's just what you need if you're going to have sustained excellence. It's one over the long run for PNC back to PNC back brilliantly boring since 1865. Oh, my 10 doesn't take me to the school in 4 to 0. The school is still in the school. The school is still in the school.

I'm not sure if I can get all of them. No, you're just a little bit older. Older. Older. They're just like their feet with a footwork. A lot of animals. They're playing with their feet. Okay, that's pretty cool.

More comfort. And dynamic. All of the steps.

“Older. The one is just a little bit older.”

And 5. Ultra. Stay out there. I have one other thing for you that. Oh, that. Just quickly. I know we talked about this before, but I really enjoyed the Sacramento stadium. And I thought that games. They were super fun.

And like when the red sex went there, I felt like I was on vacation from the major leagues. And we were just playing in this goofy thing. And over and over again, it seems like the energy has been really good there. And I just wonder like could this as we start figuring out new stadiums could this be a model. People look at should stadiums just be smaller.

Well, do you do you want to do a thing? Maybe we're once one team of season has to play in a minor league affiliate stadium. So like you can alternate that team a year. Because last year we had it with both the A's and the raise because the trop's roof blew off in a hurricane. So they were playing in the Yankees minor league stadium in Tampa. So we had like similar things like balls are flying like way out.

It's a smaller, more intimate venue and the crowds are into it. I love what's been happening in Sacramento. And I liked when they played that weird series in Las Vegas that they were also playing in a minor league stadium. Yeah, that was fine. And she's been great. That Las Vegas here.

I feel like they were scoring like 15 runs each team a game. Like that was when the highest scoring series of baseball. And it's these stadiums. If you could throw that in there and just alternate like, okay, you know what this year. Instead of like getting the field of dream games like you had the worst attendance last year.

You were in the bottom, you know, you'd have to do it like the bottom. Your stadium gets relegated.

“You have to have some relegation for a year.”

And you do a base on attendance because like you can't do it to a team that sells out 35,000 a night. Right? Yeah. You have to do it like this has to be like the marshlands, the rays, the pirates for the world. Yeah, good. The angels have to go play in some weird stadium and San Bernardino.

We're not going to get into it today, but the angels were soul. Like, I know, I have been on this. John, like one of the villains of the game is now out of baseball. And this is a team that could maybe turn things around with the ownership. I thought the athletics had a big feature about it that had.

I just wasn't following it. I got to say the tidbits about how cheap he was. But then these giant contracts he would give out almost fascinated by those owners. Were they that basically do like three or four splashy things. And then they're just doing dumb shit and trying to make pay roll decisions.

And, you know, driven financially, but basically because of these giant contracts they gave out.

Never understood his game plan.

It's the idea that like people are just going to come see the big star at the game every week. Every night. Right. It's like a movie where it's like a movie. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but they also did a bad assumption. Anthony Reddon, who was not a star.

And that was like. Well, he was when he was one of those. He was one of those. He went to shit deals. He was the best.

Yeah. He was the best. He was the best. He was the best for agent available that year. And they decided to treat him as a superstar in the league, which he wasn't.

And then he just probably didn't want to play baseball.

Like he was getting injured, but like he could never play baseball with any of these

injuries. Yeah. Yeah. That deal. And what you're saying about like the bad spending of money is one of my biggest concerns with the lockout.

And they're just going to be giving dumb money to whoever's available. That offseason just to get them up to the minimum. And then they're going to be handcuffed with these bad deals with people that shouldn't be making that money.

“It's like if you have a golf like a country club membership and you have to eat $250 a month.”

And you go in and you're like, "Oh, have the steak and I'll have a steak." Because you just have to get to the 250 anyway. The angels are going to be like, "Oh, have an expensive outfit or another one." But they are being bought by the cronkeys who, you know, I have been pretty successful as owners across the board.

They'll certainly probably be successful with them. They have a case for best owner anywhere right now. Yeah. They are also in St. Louis. The rams?

Wow. Wow. A little different there. Do you remember when the angels drafted 20 pictures in one season? Yeah, that was in that athletic thing.

I forgot about it. 21. They're just throwing darts open a nail. Anybody? In this murder of them are any good.

Where they'll keep them in, you kind of know to stay away from the angels prospects.

“Because they're like, "Oh, he's the number two prospects on the angels."”

I don't even know what that means.

They never have good prospects.

They can't develop anybody. Yeah. Only got that four made the majors. Sam Bachman was their first round pick. He's basically a bullpen guy that's been injured

a bunch. Chase Silceph. Brett Kerry. Briefly debuted in Kai Bush. Like I said, none of these guys get it.

You mentioned the Padres earlier. I had this written down too because we do this with the Padres. All the time. We get to mid late September and they become the sleeper in the NL in there.

I just was reading a piece on East Pan about this this week. Who's the sleeper in the NL? It was like Padres. Look out for the Padres. Bullpen.

“I think I've lost money on this at least three in the last four years.”

Talk it myself into the Padres. Is there anything that could be different about them this year from a sleeper standpoint? The bullpen's really good. I don't know if you've heard. It's good last year.

It's good every year. I'm David home runs and look, the brewers are making it work. They're one of my storylines. Brewers are 28th in home runs and they are one of the best offers in baseball. But they've done a lot of different things.

Getting on base all the time. They've seen to a broken clutch hitting in baseball. They're kind of like a separate case. The Padres are your traditional like we don't hit home runs. Our hitters are not good enough hitting the bar to the park.

And usually we get to October. And as good as our pitching is. Yeah, that's going to be runs. You do the three one and every once in a while. The three run.

They haven't had it. That's why they lost it. The club's last year. It's a big problem. My fear for this playoffs is that the super smart Tampa Bay raise.

So we thought we had finally gotten rid of. And they had had their little run and it was over. And we didn't have to worry about them being. Basically Sam Presty of the AL. But now all of the sudden they're really good again.

That don't really fully understand it. And then the brewers who have the GM who is the one that's being compared. That's the Sam Presty. And could we have like the smart guy finals billy words. Tampa Milwaukee two teams with all these obstacles and the big markets and the Dodgers spending money.

And these two teams just outthought everybody because Tampa Milwaukee. I'm sorry. Would not be a fun finals.

I mean, I hope it doesn't happen just because Tampa is always used as the example of look.

There is a way to do it on the cheap and not have to have payroll and do it. And we can be the raise and it's like, but you can't be the raise because you're not the raise. And you're not smart enough. You're just a cheap team and also Andrew Freeman was great with the raise. And look how great he is when he has a lot of money.

Right. First opportunity you got when he had the opportunity to either have no money or have all the money to build the baseball team. He said, you know what I'd like to do. Have all of the money to build the baseball team. And I'll spend $60 million a year on an outfielder who hates being here.

And it doesn't really matter whether he plays or not because we'll just figure out a way to plug that whole. Another way. So the $30 million back up outfielder. You know, another thing about the raise of bothers me as like someone down here in Miami, who now has like a bunch of raise like former executives running the team and they're going to be the new raise.

And then like, wow, look, they really know what they're doing because they had a hot June. But since I've had losing months ever since the thing that bothers me about the raise and why I hope the raise never win the world series is similar to my and this is just petty hatred is similar to like my petty hatred of the money ball is where it's like look at this revolution. This was great.

And at the end of the day, they never want a championship.

So this was like a nice theory that worked out that got them through the regular season and only got them so far and it never got them over the edge. And the raise have been to the world series twice I believe and have still not won a world series.

And it's like, except they haven't been able to do it yet. You know, like they have these nice runs in the regular season, but they can't close the deal. And they shouldn't be using example for all the other teams because again, you are not the raise and you do not have that front office running your team. You're just cheap. Well, and then they the Camenaro trade is probably the most one sided baseball trade of this decade.

And it flew into the radar when it happened, but they gave up to bias Myers right handed pitcher who was stopped playing baseball four years ago. The trade was in 2021. And they just stumbled on a Camenaro who at the moment he showed up on the raise if you were watching them or your team was playing them. And you're like, who's this guy? He's terrifying. And he's been terrifying for the moment he showed up.

And now it's probably the second or third most terrifying guy in the aisle.

By far more than any other sport, the star player that came out of nowhere was actually on a different team.

“Bill, do you know who had you were on Alvarez first?”

I was at the Yankees. It was the Dodgers. They traded you're on Alvarez. Billy's got one over on the raise. Chris Sanchez, who's one of the top pitchers in the national league, they got him from the raise for basically nothing. Curtis Mead is now a national slash red sock.

Our worst player was Jeff Bagwell, which somehow my dad was focused on him when we traded him. He was like a double a hitting 320 and they traded him for Larry Anderson for a parent run.

But there's and I'm sure the Metz fans feel this way with PCA too.

And there's nothing worse in baseball than when your guy gives up a guy who eventually becomes the superstar don't. Doesn't really have to think of the sports. Yeah. He's was a white sock too. He went for James Shields. Like in basketball, it doesn't.

It's really hard for it to happen. It's hard to. That's GA. Yeah, SGA would be the closest, right?

“But even when the clippers did that trade, I think they knew like a shit.”

They were on it. I didn't think they know it was going to be what it turned out. Billy, how excited are you for Yankees Red Sox, best of five round one as somebody who lives in Florida and doesn't care about the American. As much as you do, not just three. No, it's a sprint.

Best of three. I'm more excited for Yankees Red Sox, best of three than I am for an Astro's Guardians, best of three. I'm disappointed by the fact that the results of the Yankees Red Sox, best of three leads to a Yankees or Red Sox raise, best of five. And on the other side, we're going to have a White Sox Guardians or Astros, best of five. Like it's kind of a shame that the East have to eliminate themselves and that there's a possibility that one of the teams not in the East will make it to the World Series.

We'll definitely get to the ALCS and may somehow outlast and make it to the World Series just because of how bad the A. I didn't, the AL is so bad. Like the fact that there's only it's a huge client teams that are barely above 500 in some cases.

Well, right now the White Sox and the Guardians are playing a series that's basically probably going to determine something.

The fact that this is a big playoff series or big regular season series in mid September is kind of bonkers when you watch the guys on each team. You're like, really, these guys are battling for the three seed. I can can Joe Adele Robb three homers please do something exciting happen in the series. Well, the Red Sox fans, we can't do this obviously and it seemed like there was an outside chance to catch Tampa, but really a chance to catch the Yankees and they couldn't do it. They would have been better off just being the six seed, right?

And having like five less wins and playing whoever was the three game. Yes, basically like a like in basketball, you would you would probably think about it. We've seen people do it in basketball, baseball's harder. Where does this season for you rank if the Red Sox are eliminated in the first round of playoff in the best of three? Because they gave you a nice fun once you got Mickey gas that you've been very excited about. Do you look back and remember this season fondly or is it just become forgotten?

No, totally fondly. It's like we had a Morgan magic season. There's been a couple of these where the team was just felt like they were going to suck and then all of a sudden magically. It was the most fun two months. You guys were watching from afar. Like every single game was was was like a nine or a ten out of ten, right? It was all these comebacks, late innings, so it was just super fun.

“I think there's real optimism with the fan base with this just it's a three games only. We have three starters, right?”

And we can throw and totally who's been lights out. It's like a question of where he goes, but it's probably going to be sunny gray. Swara's game too, who's been all the Philly fans tell us like what's out as a playoff guy. On four ERA and his career, he is the coolest picture in baseball. Got the best. He's an old school junk ballerman, most part, but he's the best.

Yankee Stadium or you miraculously went into and you can push him over and he can start game one, but you know, they have these three starters and they do have a really good bullpen. It's just the bats. I just don't. Contreras has not been the same since the all start break and Roman Anthony came up. He was a house a fire. Now it's like he strikes out every other time. It seems like so unless we get this magical Mickey gasper, um, Renaissance, the continued Raphael is coming back.

Maybe Contreras who's never been the same since he had the concussion.

But it's going to be looking trash. That's going to be the picture. I'm not. I'm worried about it. I don't like that judge came back like right now and as the two weeks doesn't seem like they're going to get stamped back.

“To have this random jazz got hurt and Volpe came up. I think all the Yankee fans and quit on.”

And it's actually like it'd been pretty good for them. But Schlittner's incredible. I mean, he's going to clearly cruise to the Siang and where they pitch him. Did you know there's a Yankee debate about, do they pitch coal or Schlittler and game one? How do you pitch coal over Schlittner? Like that would be a miracle if they did that for us. It's not going to happen. Yeah, I would certainly would start game one, right? That feels like a WFAN debate. Oh, we got to go with the experience guy.

Even though Schlittner shoved in a game three last year when it really got out. I think the red socks with that play, you know, no one's expecting it. So let's switch up the order there. If it were up to me, I would pitch gray and game one and totally in game two. Because I think totally totally is like he's just a bigger the moment, the bigger he is. Like he was awesome at the Dodger game I went to. He just loved being in Dodger Stadium, trying to shut them down.

So I would do an and out have Ranger in game three as the. All right, show us you're this allegedly awesome playoff guy. I don't think the budget bill. It's just no, I just somehow factual. I know, but he's literally nobody really ever understood it. Right. And then I don't know if the Yankee fans love this team is the other thing that gives me solace. Who loves their team? That's a fun debate.

How many teams love their team? I think they love their team. I would say they're they're a couple of friends. I think they're just like nobody's talking about us like big chip on their shoulder.

“I think the cubs fans have loved the PCA experience, right?”

They haven't had like they had a lot of homers. It's pretty fun to watch. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, for the most part. I'll tell you what. It's not the Phillies. It's not the braves. I don't think it's the Yankees. It's certainly not the Astros, the Rangers.

Maybe the white socks because this is their first year being competitive again.

They should have done a lot of teams. The white socks. Yeah. Like the fact that they are going to win the central just shows how poor the A.L. Central is like they should not have been in it. I will say one thing about the white socks because we've put them a few times. The uh, they have some feisty young guys. Yep. They have like this in and actually is just wants to get in a fight every game.

And I think in the playoffs, guaranteed like he slides into somebody at second base and try, you know, he's just one of those guys trying to get. It's it's a little bit of an irrational confidence young team. Billy, who do you think is favorite of the American League on Fandle right now? Don't know who you think is the American League favorites. Is it not the race?

“It is the race. They're plus two ninety. The Yankees are plus three twenty.”

Um, I personally think the Yankees should be favorite. It's like really that price is probably they're probably not favorite debundo just because of the best of three rest of the race. It's like so scary. You just blow two and you're gone. Um, Dodgers are.

I make the Yankees a favorite over the race. If they played head ahead and I suspect the market would too. And now Dodgers are plus one in twenty five. Milwaukee is plus three hundred. And debundo's fillies are plus seven fifty.

And we're the third favorite.

Well, I land us plus seven hundred. So you're fourth. Okay. The one thing with the fillies there. There is like a Schwarber road map. Because that I would say.

For most beloved fillies, how high is he up there now for talking last 35 years. Uh, he's not on the level of oddly Howard and Rollins. But he's probably of this era. He has certainly passed. He's faster.

He's passed, Bryce Harper. Yeah. It's not even close. Did you listen to the home run Derby? I thought that was telling.

I got a bunch of texts about that when they announced Harper. Yeah. Everybody's excited when they announced Schwarber. It was a different level of crowd pop. And I got a few texts from people saying wait wait.

Schwarber over Harper. I'm like, yeah. This is just kind of how it's been for the last year and a half. He's so lovely. I'm just going to say he's just a lovable fact.

I like respectfully to this forbers. He's slim down this year. He has slim down, which is kind of like you're losing your brand there. You know, he's, I got to say he's a little bit of an artist. That was my takeaway from when we had him.

He's like a restaurant where you go in and it's like,

“they're really awesome at these two things.”

Get definitely get the smash burger and definitely get the chicken parm. Like that's it. Him.

It's like incredible command of the strike zone.

And then this crazy power. And that's really it. But there's like a real presence about him. And in big games, you just feel like. I don't know.

You just have complete confidence in him. So I feel like he could. Fault up. If I had to build so Bill, he has a chance to do something pretty wild this year. What is it?

He's currently the heavy favorite to lead a league in Homer's. He's also 14 strike outs away. So 12 games to go. If he strikes out 14 more times. He will break the MLB record for strike outs in a season.

Oh. What's the number for that? 223. Mark Reynolds. That is unbelievable.

The match in strikeout. He's at 210. He's like he bats at the top of the order. He plays every day. Yeah.

And he strikes out 34% of the time and hits home run about seven or eight percent of the time.

It's pretty pretty amazing.

So if you clinch and it's at home and he breaks the record for strike outs in a season. But you're already in like you're good. You give him the standing ovation. Like, do you commemorate? I don't know.

That's a good question. I don't think there's going to be a commemorate. Rob Deer comes out, presents some of the plaque. Mark Reynolds comes out. He's been traveling around with the team like the mayor's family.

Mark Reynolds pops the champagne and says, "Not me anymore, baby." All right. Let's all make World Series picks and then we'll go. Just for what we think the matchup is going to be right now. Feel free to change this in two weeks.

But right now, knowing what you know, will be a World Series Billy. I'm going to go with... I'll go cubs and Yankees. Hmm.

Cubs and Yankees. Okay. What do you got to bundle? I don't want to pick the Dodgers. I really don't.

Me neither. The Brewers Kyle Harrison just fell off a cliff in the last two weeks. Last month? Last two weeks. It's been the last two months.

Yes, last more than that. But like now I'm worried they don't have enough pitching. And it's like, how did we get here? This was supposed to be their thing. And they have the top two guys, Miz and Henderson.

And then it's like, Dustin May might be the game three starter for the Brewers. So unfortunately, yes, if you give me the Dodgers versus any other team, I'm still going to take him. And I'm going to take him against the raise. Hmm.

I would go Yankees, Phyllis. Ooh. It would be funny. Phyllis fans are in a meltdown right now because they've had a shitty September. Yeah, I know.

How there should be a September since. That doesn't scare me at all. And when they make time for me to get it out. You need to get that shit out before. Get the losses out before.

Yeah, you need to. It's a little different if your team stops hitting and you're not know where the hits are coming from, which is a little bit of the Red Sox problem right now. But. All right.

“So we the important thing was all of us picked the Yankees to make the world serious.”

Hopefully that will probably got the raise. You have the raise. So you have raised and Dodgers. Yep. Oh, the raise, huh?

They're going to out out execute the Yankees in a series and win it out execute. Yep. All the little things, Billy. Every Yankee fan. I can already picture the colors.

I can't believe they struck out 12 times in elimination game. Again. I can't. I can't see it with the bullpen, but maybe I'm just too close to it. Like even we have Kevin Kelly and our team.

He got in the he's been lights out the whole year. He's one of their best setup guys. Got completely sheld. A couple of games. It was like, oh, that's the Russian is cut for the for the raise because they've had all these

relievers just. You know, do their things. So baseball. It's one of those things. Like so none of us picked the brewers either and the brewers of the one seed in the NL.

And I feel like it's kind of like Indiana last year in college football, right? And it's like, I just don't see it happening for them. You know, like I just and until it happened for Indiana, like the whole world. Indiana, like the whole way is like, I don't think they're going to this is Indiana. They're not going to win the national championship with the brewers until they do it.

I feel like it just goes back to like something's going to go wrong for them in the playoffs.

It just always happens and they're just not going to get over the hump.

They're not going to be, you know, either the fillies, the cubs or, you know, the braves or the Dodgers down the road. I don't trust the characters with them. The Dustin made Harrison combo. I just in an actual playoff series.

I don't see it. Where were you going to say, but I mean, they scored four runs in the NLCS last year. And I think people cannot get that out of their heads because like, oh, here's this great brewers team. And we got Pat Murphy doing all the self-deprecating jokes about how they're just the average Joe's. They had that great series win against the cubs in five.

They get to the NLCS. They scored four runs in four games.

“And I think people are just like, well, you know, that's what they do.”

Their offense goes to shit against better pitching. I don't know. Hey, the Dodgers had a leap elite starting pitching last playoffs.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's still was just four games.

We shouldn't overreact to that. Just credit counts will regret that move from the brewers to the cubs. I don't think so. I'll leave you guys with this.

“I think it is lined up amazingly for the Yankees.”

You know, they have a one since so nine. Judges are going to be back in time, which seemed questionable. All their starters that they paid a lot of money for are all going to be there. When they actually have their whole lineup, they're pretty terrifying. I mean, Ben Rice is terrifying.

Judges terrifying.

When they have jazz back, I know he's feast or famine, but he's scary.

Their bullpen's really good. Like they have multiple guys that I would trust and a short series along series, whatever. And it just feels like it feels like this is their best chance, especially with the Dodgers and a little bit of disarray. But I just have to bank on the one and only Aaron Boone.

And some history from the last 17 years screwed up. All right, guys. Billy, give us 20 seconds on the Marlins season before you go. It was a fun season for a month there in the middle. There's hope it's a fun team, like they have exciting parts.

They just want to series against the Dodgers.

So they're young, hopefully, you know, they can hit their stride.

Maybe this whole race thing that we've brought down here with Peter Bendix, running the team for the Marlins. We figure things out. And if there's a season next year, maybe this is a season you build on, but there may not be a season next year.

“I wonder like does the Dodgers dem imploding with some of the money stuff?”

Does that help our hurt the season next year? I'll say no effect. Yeah. It's lame to say that. I just think the issues run a whole lot deeper than just the one boogey man.

Yeah, but then manfred's like, we're thinking about expansion. It's like, can we figure out if we have a season? They need to not expand. Please don't expand. I promise it'll be too small.

Yeah, we have enough. And as a Floridian down here, when you see like Orlando's in the mix, it's like we have two teams right now. We're just fine. Yeah, we're fine with those two.

“We don't need to add another one to the mix.”

They were still figuring that out. Yeah, that would be stupid. Billy, AD. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming up.

Thanks for having us. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks for Rob Mahoney. Thanks to Billy Gill and the Bundow. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo and Chris as well.

I'm going to be back on Thursday night after Bill's Lions. We're going to be live right after that game on Netflix. I want to watch it or you can listen to it later on that night. I will see you in a couple of days. [MUSIC]

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