September 14, 2022 • 29 mins
In a New York Baseball double-header John Gonzalez first sits down with Tom Verducci who got a rare interview with the history-chasing Aaron Judge. Will he hit 62 HRs? Will he resign with the Yankees? Then Stephanie Apstein joins the show to explain why this year might just be the year the Mets don't well... Mets. Can New York's second team shake off years of disfunction and make a push for the World Series?
Follow @podcasts_si | @JohnGonzalez
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, we have a
New York baseball doubleheader. Later in the show, a s
I Senior writer Stephanie Apstein takes a look at how
the Mets turned their team and their culture around to
produce a surprisingly good and surprisingly functional season so far.
But first, s I Senior writer Tom Verducci joins me
to discuss his sit down with Yankees slugger Aaron Judge
(00:26):
during his history chasing season. I'm your host John Gonzalez
from Sports Illustrated and iHeart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Tom Verducci, Welcome back to Sports Illustrated Weekly. Hey, good
to be here. All right, So you wrote a fantastic
(00:48):
piece on Aaron Judge, who's having a really excellent season.
The Yankee slugger is chasing home run history. You start
the piece with an anecdote on August twelve, and at
bat facing Red Sox petcher Nathan of All the changeup
on ball one, we judge to lead it off as
we go to the third, one to nothing. Tell us
why that pitch on that at bat was so important
(01:08):
and how it helps explain the season Judges having well.
First of all, Aaron Judge was really gracious with his time.
Doesn't do a lot of sit down interviews, so given
that opportunity, my challenge was to really, if you will,
kind of get inside of his head. Right. We can
all see the physical ability that he has, but what
is it about Aaron Judge that's making this season so special?
(01:29):
So I chose that pitch because to me, it's the
intersection of all these experience in the major leagues, everything
he's done physically to prepare himself. Now he's in a
situation where everybody knows he's the most dangerous hitter in baseball.
He sees so few actual good pitches to hit. An
amazing thing is when he gets them, he's hitting him
for home runs. So this was kind of entree into
(01:50):
the mindset, the preparation, the intuition, if you will have
Aaron Judge to figure out, how is it that this
guy still is hitting home runs when pitchers know they
can't afford to make mistake as So that was a
window up against Nathan of Aaldi the Red Sox where
he did take the split figure change up for ball
one down and away and his sense and it's a
little more than sense, but I'll say, his sense told
(02:11):
him the next pitch was going to be a fastball
up and in. That's exactly where it was. Swallow there,
deep west center field. Hit us hot, let us far,
let us got out of the ball park, and once
again he didn't miss it. I mean, sometimes hittors get
pitches they're looking for and they foul it off, they
popped it up, they hit it hard to the shortstop.
(02:32):
This guy hit it on a parking garage in the
left field. Yeah, he hit that pitch thirteen point eight
miles prior, harder than any ball hit all season by
any right hand batter on up and end fastball. And
as you said, he crushed it out of Fenway. And
it's so cool that you got to sit down and
talk to him about how he studies the game, how
he does his homework on pictures like this, and I'm
(02:53):
sure for him it was nice for him to do
that against the Red Sox in Boston. He gets a
little extra enjoyment out of that. At the time that
we were recording home runs through the first games, so
he's chasing this record. He had some thoughts on the
record and who holds the real one? Right? He did
and question all of us as fans of the game,
really ask ourselves all the time, ever since the steroid
(03:13):
era kind of blew up the record book, what is
the record? What the official record obviously seventy three home
runs by Barry Bonds. But it's interesting since testing for
p E. D s has been a place since two
thousand three, no one has even hit sixty home runs.
So in the minds of a lot of people, the
authentic record, if not the official one, is the sixty
(03:35):
one by Roger Marris in one. So I was curious
to think, what does Aaron Judge think about what the
record is? And listen, he grew up as a fan
of the Giants, but he said, seventy three is seventy three.
It was done. Whatever that arrow was, that's what it was.
You still have to go out there and do it.
So in his mind that is the record. But he
(03:58):
was quick to point out, have to bring this up.
The American League record is sixty one hit yet way
back there, and he said, I've got a shot at that.
And boy does he yeah, he really does. There's so
much going on for him, Tom, and as you said,
(04:20):
he doesn't do a lot of these interviews. I think
it's really cool that you got him to sit down
and and discuss this, because there's the on field component
where he's chasing this record or records depending on how
you you know, what your perspective is on it. And
then there's all the stuff swirling around him and the
club and the contract extension that he was offered started
this season, turning down a massive contract extension that created
(04:40):
some tension between him and the Yankees, right because the
Yankees went public with the terms, which it seemed like
Judge was not exactly thrilled about. No, you're absolutely right,
and that's what Judge told me, he said, Listen, I
thought those conversations talking about the contract negotiations were private.
And as you mentioned, right before Opening Day was played,
the Yankees not only announced that Judge had turned down
(05:02):
this contract offer, but they gave the terms of that deal,
and it was about thirty and a half million dollars
per year over seven years, would have made Aaron Judge
on average annual value, about the highest paid player. Obviously,
he found that unsatisfactory, but he didn't like the fact
that this offer came in at the last minute and
then was made public. Now, he said, told me, Listen,
(05:25):
I had a chance that I wanted to to make
a big deal out of that and go all negative
on team dates, front office, fan base, he said, But
you know what, I decided, I want to turn that
into a positive. I'm still playing for the New York Yankees,
no matter what the contract situation is, at least for
two I'm gonna make the best for this. And he's
done nothing but add to his value and who knows
(05:47):
how much farther north that number is going. But there's
that phrase, Hey, he bet on himself, He's gonna cash
it big. Yeah. I love that you bring up the
better on himself part, because everybody would think about it
that way, at least those of us who follow sports
that are not professional athletes would say, oh, he he
bet on himself. But you talked to him about this
and you wrote that the easy angle is that he
(06:09):
bet on himself. But Judge told you he doesn't see
it that way, right. Yeah. I love that response. I
thought it was really interesting. He said, it wasn't a gamble.
I'm not betting on myself now. It speaks to his
supreme confidence. But he said, listen, I'm still playing for
the Yankees. Whether I signed a deal or not. Talking
about two season that didn't change. And I think he's
at a point in his career where he is so
(06:31):
confident in himself. And the one thing I have to
point out here is that one of the reasons the
contract offer wasn't bigger was because Aaron Judge has been
hurt a lot in his career. But Aaron Judge went
a great detail explaining to me why that no longer
applies to him. He said a lot of things with
his training, both before games and after a games, and
(06:52):
he feels like his body is very different from what
it was in his younger days. So part of his confidence, Yeah,
he's a great hit or he knows it, but it's
also knowing he has a lot of confidence in the
way his body now is responding to the grind of
a season. Because he said, yeah, he's some people would
say you're taking a gamble, what if you get hurt,
But it seemed to me and Aaron explaining this to me,
(07:14):
that he's so confident in his routine right now, he
wasn't worried about getting hurt at all. So he's staying healthy.
Obviously a big deal for him and his season, and
it's going to help with the contract and those numbers,
as you kind of alluded to, or just ticking up,
ratcheting up. Another thing I found really interesting about the piece,
and it was so smart that you pointed this out,
is that he's having this historic season and he's staying
(07:36):
healthy and he's hitting the ball crushing at a time
when it's become really hard to hit a baseball. Through
three quarters of the season, the collective league batting average
is the fourth lowest since nineteen hundred, which just like
absolutely blew me away. Tom. Did you spend much time
reflecting on that or did Aaron Judge spend much time
reflecting on that with you? That he's having such a
successful season at a time when many of his peers
(07:58):
are not. Yeah, we talked the law about, especially the
velocity in the game that you see on a nightly basis.
That used to be maybe the closer for the other
team was a guy who threw really hard upper nineties.
Now you see it from one through nine. In terms
of the innings of a game. The number of pitches
thrown a hundred miles or more just in the last
three years has tripled, and a swing in a miss
(08:21):
one the two again for strike three, and the amount
of spin in the game today has gone up. There's
more breaking pitches now than fastballs. That's the first time
it's ever happened in baseball history. As you mentioned, it's
harder to get a hit in today's game that it's
ever been since the mount was lowered back in nine
So judges doing this at a time where I think
it's harder to hit than ever before. Now. One thing
(08:43):
he did tell me about how to combat that. A
lot of times before a game, he'll go in and
hit against a high velocity machine. This is a pitching
machine that cranks the ball up as high as a
hundred and ten miles per hour. And what they'll do
is they'll put some softer, dimpled baseballs in there, because
you're gonna get jammed. And even as good as error
judge is coming in that hard, you're going to get jammed.
(09:05):
So you get in there or train your eyes and
your muscles to hit against something that's actually even faster
than what you'll see in the game. And he said
that's really helped him. He's done this the last couple
of years to help slow down this extreme velocity we
see in the game. You mentioned that he doesn't give
a lot of these interviews, and yet he gave an
(09:27):
interview to you, and you've got so much good stuff.
I mean, all these anecdotes that you were throwing at
me right here are fascinating for me. Not to do
the like two inside baseball here, but get a little
inside baseball on the media with me. Like what was
he like to interview as a subject? Well, he was great,
first of all, because he's a very him. He's a gentleman.
He talked to me about his parents, both of whom
(09:49):
are school teachers, and he said that's where he gets
this really incredible respect he has for other people, even empathy.
He's he's great with kids. He has a foundation that
reaches out to a lot of kids and provides education
opportunities for them. But it's I'm all about just treating people.
And I think Aaron Judge, especially this year, has so
many demands on him, yet I think it doesn't really
(10:12):
affect who he is as a person. Yeah, I don't
think he loves talking about himself. It's probably not his
favorite subjects. So I'm glad he gave me that opportunity
to kind of dive into what makes him tick. Um,
but he's more about team and again about really other
people rather than talking about himself. If you want to
sit down and talk to Eric Judge about his teammates
(10:32):
with the team, he'll go out all day. So I
was happy he gave me this time because he is
a fascinating study. Uh. And one of the things I
really wanted to get into is the fact that you know,
it wasn't like this guy came out of the gate
like some phenomen You know, he had won seventy nine
his first year. He struck out almost half the times
he came to the plate. So what you're seeing now
is the evolution of a great hitter, not one who
(10:55):
is necessarily born from day one of the big leagues
that way. Yeah, from a reporting perspective, From a journalism perspective,
I love that you got this access, but just also
from a fan consumer perspective like this is this is
a really fantastic piece and you've got some really good
time with him. I want to ask you, though, where
you think all of this ends up on two different fronts.
Let's start with the record or records your perspective, where
(11:18):
do you think he ends up home run wise this season.
I think he does hit number sixty two. He's not
gonna get seventy three. But at first I was very
skeptical because I thought the closer he got, and the
more there is less help than the Yankee lineup for him,
the fewer pitches he would see to hit, which is true,
but I'm continually blown away by the fact that when
(11:40):
he does see something, he's hitting it out of the
ballpark field. Going back looks number Nickels, it is sort
of Barry Bonds esque, maybe not quite to that extent,
but his ability not to miss the rare pitch is
(12:01):
just incredible. So that's why I think he could still
get this done. I think the longest he's gone this
year without a home run is nine games, so he's
been very consistent. Listen, I think it's not a done deal,
but I think he does wind up hitting number sixty two,
And obviously that's American League record, the Yankee franchise record,
and especially in this day and age, that should be
celebrated big time. It will be celebrated, probably by his
(12:27):
bank account as well. I'm wondering what you what you
think happens there after the season. As you wrote, the
Yankees offered him thirty point five million per year, which
sounds like a ton to me. But then, as you know,
did eleven players make more, including two on his own team,
he's gonna get paid. What kind of numbers do you
think he's looking at? Yeah, and also I think you
have to besides all the home runs he hits, talk
(12:48):
about the impact that he has at the gate, right
off the fielding on the field. He is one of
the rare baseball players who I think to walk down
any street in America and people know who he is.
Of course, he's six ft seven, so that helps, but
he does have this star quality about him. He is
a drawing card. So when you sign Aaron Judge, you're
getting great offensive production, a guy you could play center
(13:09):
field at six ft seven, But you're also getting a
guy who will sell tickets and draw eyeballs to your
regional sports network. So the investment in Naron Judge is
going to be big, but I think the return is
just as big. So where the number goes, I think
now you're looking at over thirty five million a year,
probably again, maybe seven. Maybe he gets the eighth year
(13:29):
now because he has now played two straight years fully
healthy playing and almost more than nine of the Yankees games.
He's proven that where he goes, I still think he
winds up at the Yankees. I think in his heart
of hearts, you know, this is the only organization he
plays for and wants to continue playing for them. But
as I imagined, he was a Giants fan growing up.
The Giants certainly need a new star out there in
(13:51):
that ballpark in San Francisco. You've got the New York
Mets looming if they get bounced in the playoffs early.
Maybe Steve Colin wants to get the biggest star he
can get his hand ends on who is Aaron Judge. Listen,
there's going to be it's the top of the market.
Only the richest teams can afford him. But I do
think what all of said, and it's gonna be between
thirty five and forty million a year. Yes, so much
(14:11):
going on. It's so fascinating to watch him this season
and then into the off season. But as he said,
as he told you all that other stuff is why
he has an agent. Read his excellent piece about Aaron
Judge on SI dot com. It's really good. So much access,
so many things in there to unpack. Tom Verducci, you
killed it. Thank you, cool stuff, Thanks for having me.
(14:35):
After the break, we take a look at how the
Mets have stopped being while the Mets and have found
success this season. Stephanie Epstein, Welcome back to Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Thanks for having me. Great to see you again. We're
about to discuss something, frankly, stuff that I would rather
not making a filly native talk about. This feels criminal.
I've debated whether or not I should file an HR
(14:57):
complain about this, but we're making an exception because you're
the author of this piece. You wrote a story about
the New York Mets. Essentially the Mets not being MLB's
biggest and most consistent fail son, which is what we've
known them as for quite some time. I like, personally
stuff when they're more of a joke, but they haven't
been this season. As we record this, Atlanta has essentially
caught them in the NL East, and we will discuss
(15:20):
if the Mets are gonna end up metsing in the end.
But still on the whole macro terms, this has been
a good season for them. Yeah, they've played great, and
even the fact that Atlanta has taught them. It's not
the Mets haven't really played badly. Atlanta has just been
playing great. So you mentioned in your piece you start
with an anecdote and it involves new owner Steve Cohen
and President Sandy Alderson, and it certainly helps the Mets
(15:42):
in their metamorphosis. That Cohen is extremely rich, exceedingly rich
even by billionaire standards, and you start the piece with
Cohen giving everyone a raise at Alderson's request. Why is
that significant? I think that this is sort of how
the Mets should always have been behaving, right, like this
is the biggest mark it in the country and they
(16:02):
should should act like it, and over the past several
decades they have not really. I mean, I guess the
past decade is more accurate because it was after the
made off scandal, which the Crevier, the Mets, the Wilpons
were heavily invested in, that they really stopped being able
to make payroll almost They were taking out loans from
the league, and it became sort of a sort of
(16:24):
a silly situation where like scouts were getting pulled off
the road because they didn't want to pay for their expenses.
Good Morning, The New York Mets shut out from new
funds from Major League Baseball. Sources tell the New York
Times the league is not willing to give any new
substantial loans. They were really starting to nickel and dime things.
And you know, these are the New York Mets. They
should be. They could be on par from in a
(16:45):
lot of ways with the New York Yankees. And so
I think we get an owner like Steve Cohen who
has the money that he has, and he shows up
and one of his first act is to spend it
on the people who worked there. I think that says
to your employees, Okay, this might be a little bit different.
Pay your people more. Ends up working out great. Otherson
told you that it improved morale. You mentioned the previous owners.
(17:06):
How bad was morale under the Wilpons post Bernie made
off scamp. I think it just started to feel ridiculous
a lot of the time, Like why didn't they have
Old Timer's Day before the last this year? Because it's
expensive to have all Timers Day you have to pay
for you have to pay for it, and so they
didn't want to do that. Like why didn't the retire
numbers you have to pay for it, and so some
(17:26):
of these, some of the places that they cut costs
I think felt ridiculous. And the Wilpons, you know, it
was not a totally bad ownership experience. You know, they
made they made it to the World Series. They the
team was interesting, but I think by the end it
was starting to feel like a pretty a pretty bad marriage.
(17:46):
So things are obviously going much better now than they
were then, but you wrote that even under Cohen's new ownership,
they still have some old mets to them. Cohen's first
GM was fired. Jared Porter sent explicit unsolicited text to
a female reporter. Zack Scott reply paced him. He was
fired for allegedly driving under the influence after a team fundraiser.
We should note that Scott was acquitted. One review of
(18:07):
workplace culture led to the firing of the heads of
the legal and HR departments. The players were no better.
Francisco Lindor reportedly grabbed second baseman Jeff McNeil by the
throat last year, and then Lindour, Javier Baiez, and Kevin
Pollar began booing fans when they were playing well, which,
honestly stuff. I thought it was hilarious. That was like
the first thing the Mets had ever done. When I
(18:28):
was like, hey, good job Mets. But clearly they had
a lot to do to change the culture, right, it
was too silly. Francis Pilndor told me he felt like
it was an unprofessional organization last year, and I think
you can see that in the way a lot of
people involved with the behaved. So what what changed them
with the culture this year? Obviously they're doing well. They
(18:49):
meant at top the NL East all season. We mentioned
that the Braves are closing in on them, but there
had to be a pretty significant shift in the way
they operated. Yeah, it's a few things. One is that
just the players are older. They've added some sort of
like notable adults in that clubhouse, so there's not a
lot of people who, you know, Buck sometimes likes to
(19:09):
talk about eliminating sympathetic ears, like there are not a
lot of people in that room anymore who will listen
to you patiently while you're ripe about how your life
feels hard because you got in late on a charter flight. There.
Buck basically he once saw that players at a previous
team we're sort of browsing in the clubhouse, and he
came in and said, oh my god, did the did
the checks bounce? You guys are like, well, he was
(19:32):
like did did? Surely you're not the only reason you
could be behaving like this is because you're not getting
paid millions of dollars to play baseball game, right, And
they were like, well, we'll know, and he was like, okay,
then I don't want to hear it. And so that
you know, there's like a little bit of a red
ass quality to that. That is probably not that he's
able to leaven with other uh the other ways he
(19:52):
interacts with them, But I do think that that attitude
of shut up, play better has been really helping to them.
And then there is also it just helps to have
the most funny you can just go. You can buy
the best players, you can buy the best equipment you
can you can do kind of whatever you want that
you think will help. In the second year of owning
(20:12):
the team, poem and so I think that he's found
his footing and they're they're pretty willing to drop cash
on things that they think will help. I like that
attitude from Buck Shall Walter. I'm wondering what you make
of him. I got to cover him in another life
a long time ago, because I'm old, but I always
liked Buck shall Walter, and I like that approach where
(20:33):
he's sort of no nonsense on that front. Yeah, I
can see why sometimes his act gets tired at teams
where he sort of wears out as welcome. But I
think he's pretty much the perfect manager for this group
because I think they had they had like some babies
in the clubhouse last year. There were there was not
enough accountability. There was people were focusing on the wrong things,
(20:53):
and he doesn't have patience for that. And he also
has a pretty good way of empowering veterans to speak
up in moments like that. So there's you don't get
the sense that that sort of thing is acceptable because
the manager doesn't doesn't put up with the coaches don't
put up with it, and the veteran players don't put
(21:13):
up with it. And so you know, I was talking
to Taylan Walker about this, and he said, the stuff
about the thumbs down and the fake hitting coach and
the rat raccoon, all the nonsense from last year, none
of that would have gotten this far because Buck would
have sniffed that out immediately and put a stop to it,
so we wouldn't the media wouldn't even have heard about
it because it wouldn't have gotten pasted him. He doesn't
spend a lot of time in the clubhouse because he
(21:33):
thinks that's the player's room, but he does manage to
have his finger on the pulse. It's it's a pretty
good balancing act. I think he does. It's done a
really good job, and I think he does a good
job to have listening to these guys. I think he's
been criticized in the past for being maybe ruling with
too much of an iron fist, being a little bit
too much with pain, But here he's very good at
checking in with his veterans. When the team is going
(21:54):
to make a roster move. Very often the veteran players
will know about it before it happens, and so they
can prepare it for it. If you know, if they're
gonna send somebody down or release somebody, he tells the
players beforehand so that they can be ready to cush
on the blow on the clubhouse. And I think getting
that level of buy in from your veteran's important. And
you would mentioned it's not just buck too right. I mean,
(22:16):
there there are adults in the room. I like that
you wrote that Max Scherzer leads to professionalism parade. Tell
us about Max and the professionalism parade. Max is very
He's a big accountability guy. A lot of these guys
are big on accountability. And I asked him when that
became important to him, and said he had had a
really good season when he was with the Diamondbacks and
(22:39):
he sort of thought like, Okay, I've kind of got
this figured out. And then the next year he was
one of the worst pitchers in baseball. And that made
him realize that if you for one second think you
know what you're doing this game, will we'll turn you
upside down. He realized that you really have to every
day figure out what you've done right, what you've done wrong,
what you can do better. You have to focus on
(23:00):
those small steps and he has tried to bring that
to his career ever since. And so he does things
like after an outing, you know, this is Max chers
or he's a fairly intimidating guy. He's you know, so
he could intimidate his teammates, but he pulls them all together,
the other starting pitchers after he comes out of a start,
and he says, what did you guys see like good
and bad? Tell me what you saw, because in that moment,
(23:21):
he says, is when you can best learn from whatever happened.
And so they've got this sort of adorable little tradition
now where as soon as the starter comes out of
the game, the other starting pitchers swarm him and they
talk about his outing, and they feel comfortable saying what
they think he did well, what they think he didn't
do well, because if you can say that to, you know,
this future Hall of Famer on your staff, surely you
(23:44):
can talk to David Peterson about what he needs to
work on. And so that sort of willingness to have
your performance taken apart and to look for what can
be better. It sets an example. But it also he's
vocally saying this is what we should be doing. So
all that sounds good. Time should be good. They're playing well,
they're getting along, there's no drama, and yet they are
(24:05):
still the Mets not exactly great with the media. They
had agreed to make front office stafforts available to you,
and then didn't You got Alderson but not Cohen. Cohen
isn't Will Pond, but he also has some problems to
tell us about his day job and why it's a
bit dodgy. Sure, I mean, nothing is is just one
thing right, Nothing is just simply, very simply bad. And
(24:26):
I think Steve Cohen has gotten to the point where
he can be as successful as he is because he
has some business practices that pump up against lines or
sometimes allegedly crossed them. So for example, his firm settled
basically the largest insider trading case in history, paid the
largest fine for that. However, he was not personally accused
(24:47):
of wrongdoing, and he has denied personal wrongdoing, but he
did oversee a firm that admitted to wrongdoing. There have
been very scrievances filed against him for gender discrimination in
the years since then. They have settled all those, even
says they have denied wrongdoing. But he does bring his
own baggage, and you know, the team continues to make
(25:08):
some sort of goofy mistakes, like the way they handle
the media can be kind of ridiculous. I mean, he
he did oversee the organization when they were firing two
successive general managers, so it's not It's not as easy
as just bringing the guy with the money and things
get easier it takes some time, I think, to rebuild
a culture, and it seems like they are doing that,
but it is worth remembering who the people are at
(25:29):
the helm and they are rebuilding the culture. But as
you mentioned, they do still make the goofy Mets mistakes,
like how they handle the media, sometimes even their own media.
They still have a bit of an uncomfortable relationship with
their broadcasters, right, and they whine about Gary Cone and
Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling. How's that received? Yeah, So
if for people who have people who have not watched
(25:50):
the Mets broadcast, the Mets broadcasters are, if not the
best in baseball, then top two. And part of the
reason that they are such a great watch is it
they're pretty candid about what they're seeing, and often that
means the Mets will make a mistake and the broadcasters
will talk about it for the next three innings. Why
Jason were because he's a fool, That's why. And so
(26:12):
if you are met, you might not appreciate that. Fans
love it because they really learn about the game, but
the Mets are like, this guy is on my team plane,
why does it sound like who's rooting against me? And
so every year. A couple of times a year there's
some little issue where they start right, but it's it's
pretty passive aggressive. They don't usually get into it physically,
although that has happened, but for the most part, they
(26:34):
just start kind of complaining that these guys aren't nice
enough for them. And one thing I thought was really
interesting is that that hasn't happened this year. And it's
not just because they've been playing better. It's not just
because of the sort of accountability culture. It's because buckshow
Walter muted the TVs in the clubhouse, so they just
can't hear Yeah, just why would we Why would we
(26:55):
let this be a problem. We don't need to watch
the game with the volume on. We know what's happening,
so they just they can't hear it. If only they
had thought about sticking their fingers in their ears sooner,
all the problems would have gone away. I love that,
all right. I want to end this by asking you
the very questions that you pose at the beginning of
the piece and the nutgraph. Our attitude, personnel and money
(27:17):
and one competent season enough to erase decades of dysfunction stuff,
But simply can this possibly continue. Can the Mets avoid
being the Mets in perpetuity? We're gonna see. They've made
it through most of the season this way, and that's
something they hadn't done in a long time. Things are
looking up, but I think for most fans it's what
you do in the playoffs that matters, and so that
(27:38):
will be the ultimate Beside. Yeah, I'm over here acrossing
all my fingers and toes that they returned to form.
But we'll say, read her very good piece on the
no good because I'm required to hate them the Mets
on SI dot com. Excellent piece. I might dislike the Mets,
but I love having her on. Stephanie Epstein, thank you
for this, Thanks for having Meg. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
(28:09):
a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
And for more of Sports Illustrated's best stories and podcasts,
visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly
was produced by Jordan Rozsieri, Jessica you r Moski, and
(28:31):
Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer, our senior
producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive
producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our theme
song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck around
this long, we leave you with this. Did you expect this?
I mean, I know that a lot of people had
high hopes for the Mets coming to the season, but
(28:52):
they are still the Mets, and so far, so good
for them through almost the entire season. Yeah, I don't
think I expected it. I thought there was a chance,
given the sort of some of the personnel that they added,
but I don't. I didn't expect them to play like
this and to play to do it so undramatically, and
I'm not sure they did either.
On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, we have a
New York baseball doubleheader. Later in the show, a s
I Senior writer Stephanie Apstein takes a look at how
the Mets turned their team and their culture around to
produce a surprisingly good and surprisingly functional season so far.
But first, s I Senior writer Tom Verducci joins me
to discuss his sit down with Yankees slugger Aaron Judge
(00:26):
during his history chasing season. I'm your host John Gonzalez
from Sports Illustrated and iHeart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Tom Verducci, Welcome back to Sports Illustrated Weekly. Hey, good
to be here. All right, So you wrote a fantastic
(00:48):
piece on Aaron Judge, who's having a really excellent season.
The Yankee slugger is chasing home run history. You start
the piece with an anecdote on August twelve, and at
bat facing Red Sox petcher Nathan of All the changeup
on ball one, we judge to lead it off as
we go to the third, one to nothing. Tell us
why that pitch on that at bat was so important
(01:08):
and how it helps explain the season Judges having well.
First of all, Aaron Judge was really gracious with his time.
Doesn't do a lot of sit down interviews, so given
that opportunity, my challenge was to really, if you will,
kind of get inside of his head. Right. We can
all see the physical ability that he has, but what
is it about Aaron Judge that's making this season so special?
(01:29):
So I chose that pitch because to me, it's the
intersection of all these experience in the major leagues, everything
he's done physically to prepare himself. Now he's in a
situation where everybody knows he's the most dangerous hitter in baseball.
He sees so few actual good pitches to hit. An
amazing thing is when he gets them, he's hitting him
for home runs. So this was kind of entree into
(01:50):
the mindset, the preparation, the intuition, if you will have
Aaron Judge to figure out, how is it that this
guy still is hitting home runs when pitchers know they
can't afford to make mistake as So that was a
window up against Nathan of Aaldi the Red Sox where
he did take the split figure change up for ball
one down and away and his sense and it's a
little more than sense, but I'll say, his sense told
(02:11):
him the next pitch was going to be a fastball
up and in. That's exactly where it was. Swallow there,
deep west center field. Hit us hot, let us far,
let us got out of the ball park, and once
again he didn't miss it. I mean, sometimes hittors get
pitches they're looking for and they foul it off, they
popped it up, they hit it hard to the shortstop.
(02:32):
This guy hit it on a parking garage in the
left field. Yeah, he hit that pitch thirteen point eight
miles prior, harder than any ball hit all season by
any right hand batter on up and end fastball. And
as you said, he crushed it out of Fenway. And
it's so cool that you got to sit down and
talk to him about how he studies the game, how
he does his homework on pictures like this, and I'm
(02:53):
sure for him it was nice for him to do
that against the Red Sox in Boston. He gets a
little extra enjoyment out of that. At the time that
we were recording home runs through the first games, so
he's chasing this record. He had some thoughts on the
record and who holds the real one? Right? He did
and question all of us as fans of the game,
really ask ourselves all the time, ever since the steroid
(03:13):
era kind of blew up the record book, what is
the record? What the official record obviously seventy three home
runs by Barry Bonds. But it's interesting since testing for
p E. D s has been a place since two
thousand three, no one has even hit sixty home runs.
So in the minds of a lot of people, the
authentic record, if not the official one, is the sixty
(03:35):
one by Roger Marris in one. So I was curious
to think, what does Aaron Judge think about what the
record is? And listen, he grew up as a fan
of the Giants, but he said, seventy three is seventy three.
It was done. Whatever that arrow was, that's what it was.
You still have to go out there and do it.
So in his mind that is the record. But he
(03:58):
was quick to point out, have to bring this up.
The American League record is sixty one hit yet way
back there, and he said, I've got a shot at that.
And boy does he yeah, he really does. There's so
much going on for him, Tom, and as you said,
(04:20):
he doesn't do a lot of these interviews. I think
it's really cool that you got him to sit down
and and discuss this, because there's the on field component
where he's chasing this record or records depending on how
you you know, what your perspective is on it. And
then there's all the stuff swirling around him and the
club and the contract extension that he was offered started
this season, turning down a massive contract extension that created
(04:40):
some tension between him and the Yankees, right because the
Yankees went public with the terms, which it seemed like
Judge was not exactly thrilled about. No, you're absolutely right,
and that's what Judge told me, he said, Listen, I
thought those conversations talking about the contract negotiations were private.
And as you mentioned, right before Opening Day was played,
the Yankees not only announced that Judge had turned down
(05:02):
this contract offer, but they gave the terms of that deal,
and it was about thirty and a half million dollars
per year over seven years, would have made Aaron Judge
on average annual value, about the highest paid player. Obviously,
he found that unsatisfactory, but he didn't like the fact
that this offer came in at the last minute and
then was made public. Now, he said, told me, Listen,
(05:25):
I had a chance that I wanted to to make
a big deal out of that and go all negative
on team dates, front office, fan base, he said, But
you know what, I decided, I want to turn that
into a positive. I'm still playing for the New York Yankees,
no matter what the contract situation is, at least for
two I'm gonna make the best for this. And he's
done nothing but add to his value and who knows
(05:47):
how much farther north that number is going. But there's
that phrase, Hey, he bet on himself, He's gonna cash
it big. Yeah. I love that you bring up the
better on himself part, because everybody would think about it
that way, at least those of us who follow sports
that are not professional athletes would say, oh, he he
bet on himself. But you talked to him about this
and you wrote that the easy angle is that he
(06:09):
bet on himself. But Judge told you he doesn't see
it that way, right. Yeah. I love that response. I
thought it was really interesting. He said, it wasn't a gamble.
I'm not betting on myself now. It speaks to his
supreme confidence. But he said, listen, I'm still playing for
the Yankees. Whether I signed a deal or not. Talking
about two season that didn't change. And I think he's
at a point in his career where he is so
(06:31):
confident in himself. And the one thing I have to
point out here is that one of the reasons the
contract offer wasn't bigger was because Aaron Judge has been
hurt a lot in his career. But Aaron Judge went
a great detail explaining to me why that no longer
applies to him. He said a lot of things with
his training, both before games and after a games, and
(06:52):
he feels like his body is very different from what
it was in his younger days. So part of his confidence, Yeah,
he's a great hit or he knows it, but it's
also knowing he has a lot of confidence in the
way his body now is responding to the grind of
a season. Because he said, yeah, he's some people would
say you're taking a gamble, what if you get hurt,
But it seemed to me and Aaron explaining this to me,
(07:14):
that he's so confident in his routine right now, he
wasn't worried about getting hurt at all. So he's staying healthy.
Obviously a big deal for him and his season, and
it's going to help with the contract and those numbers,
as you kind of alluded to, or just ticking up,
ratcheting up. Another thing I found really interesting about the piece,
and it was so smart that you pointed this out,
is that he's having this historic season and he's staying
(07:36):
healthy and he's hitting the ball crushing at a time
when it's become really hard to hit a baseball. Through
three quarters of the season, the collective league batting average
is the fourth lowest since nineteen hundred, which just like
absolutely blew me away. Tom. Did you spend much time
reflecting on that or did Aaron Judge spend much time
reflecting on that with you? That he's having such a
successful season at a time when many of his peers
(07:58):
are not. Yeah, we talked the law about, especially the
velocity in the game that you see on a nightly basis.
That used to be maybe the closer for the other
team was a guy who threw really hard upper nineties.
Now you see it from one through nine. In terms
of the innings of a game. The number of pitches
thrown a hundred miles or more just in the last
three years has tripled, and a swing in a miss
(08:21):
one the two again for strike three, and the amount
of spin in the game today has gone up. There's
more breaking pitches now than fastballs. That's the first time
it's ever happened in baseball history. As you mentioned, it's
harder to get a hit in today's game that it's
ever been since the mount was lowered back in nine
So judges doing this at a time where I think
it's harder to hit than ever before. Now. One thing
(08:43):
he did tell me about how to combat that. A
lot of times before a game, he'll go in and
hit against a high velocity machine. This is a pitching
machine that cranks the ball up as high as a
hundred and ten miles per hour. And what they'll do
is they'll put some softer, dimpled baseballs in there, because
you're gonna get jammed. And even as good as error
judge is coming in that hard, you're going to get jammed.
(09:05):
So you get in there or train your eyes and
your muscles to hit against something that's actually even faster
than what you'll see in the game. And he said
that's really helped him. He's done this the last couple
of years to help slow down this extreme velocity we
see in the game. You mentioned that he doesn't give
a lot of these interviews, and yet he gave an
(09:27):
interview to you, and you've got so much good stuff.
I mean, all these anecdotes that you were throwing at
me right here are fascinating for me. Not to do
the like two inside baseball here, but get a little
inside baseball on the media with me. Like what was
he like to interview as a subject? Well, he was great,
first of all, because he's a very him. He's a gentleman.
He talked to me about his parents, both of whom
(09:49):
are school teachers, and he said that's where he gets
this really incredible respect he has for other people, even empathy.
He's he's great with kids. He has a foundation that
reaches out to a lot of kids and provides education
opportunities for them. But it's I'm all about just treating people.
And I think Aaron Judge, especially this year, has so
many demands on him, yet I think it doesn't really
(10:12):
affect who he is as a person. Yeah, I don't
think he loves talking about himself. It's probably not his
favorite subjects. So I'm glad he gave me that opportunity
to kind of dive into what makes him tick. Um,
but he's more about team and again about really other
people rather than talking about himself. If you want to
sit down and talk to Eric Judge about his teammates
(10:32):
with the team, he'll go out all day. So I
was happy he gave me this time because he is
a fascinating study. Uh. And one of the things I
really wanted to get into is the fact that you know,
it wasn't like this guy came out of the gate
like some phenomen You know, he had won seventy nine
his first year. He struck out almost half the times
he came to the plate. So what you're seeing now
is the evolution of a great hitter, not one who
(10:55):
is necessarily born from day one of the big leagues
that way. Yeah, from a reporting perspective, From a journalism perspective,
I love that you got this access, but just also
from a fan consumer perspective like this is this is
a really fantastic piece and you've got some really good
time with him. I want to ask you, though, where
you think all of this ends up on two different fronts.
Let's start with the record or records your perspective, where
(11:18):
do you think he ends up home run wise this season.
I think he does hit number sixty two. He's not
gonna get seventy three. But at first I was very
skeptical because I thought the closer he got, and the
more there is less help than the Yankee lineup for him,
the fewer pitches he would see to hit, which is true,
but I'm continually blown away by the fact that when
(11:40):
he does see something, he's hitting it out of the
ballpark field. Going back looks number Nickels, it is sort
of Barry Bonds esque, maybe not quite to that extent,
but his ability not to miss the rare pitch is
(12:01):
just incredible. So that's why I think he could still
get this done. I think the longest he's gone this
year without a home run is nine games, so he's
been very consistent. Listen, I think it's not a done deal,
but I think he does wind up hitting number sixty two,
And obviously that's American League record, the Yankee franchise record,
and especially in this day and age, that should be
celebrated big time. It will be celebrated, probably by his
(12:27):
bank account as well. I'm wondering what you what you
think happens there after the season. As you wrote, the
Yankees offered him thirty point five million per year, which
sounds like a ton to me. But then, as you know,
did eleven players make more, including two on his own team,
he's gonna get paid. What kind of numbers do you
think he's looking at? Yeah, and also I think you
have to besides all the home runs he hits, talk
(12:48):
about the impact that he has at the gate, right
off the fielding on the field. He is one of
the rare baseball players who I think to walk down
any street in America and people know who he is.
Of course, he's six ft seven, so that helps, but
he does have this star quality about him. He is
a drawing card. So when you sign Aaron Judge, you're
getting great offensive production, a guy you could play center
(13:09):
field at six ft seven, But you're also getting a
guy who will sell tickets and draw eyeballs to your
regional sports network. So the investment in Naron Judge is
going to be big, but I think the return is
just as big. So where the number goes, I think
now you're looking at over thirty five million a year,
probably again, maybe seven. Maybe he gets the eighth year
(13:29):
now because he has now played two straight years fully
healthy playing and almost more than nine of the Yankees games.
He's proven that where he goes, I still think he
winds up at the Yankees. I think in his heart
of hearts, you know, this is the only organization he
plays for and wants to continue playing for them. But
as I imagined, he was a Giants fan growing up.
The Giants certainly need a new star out there in
(13:51):
that ballpark in San Francisco. You've got the New York
Mets looming if they get bounced in the playoffs early.
Maybe Steve Colin wants to get the biggest star he
can get his hand ends on who is Aaron Judge. Listen,
there's going to be it's the top of the market.
Only the richest teams can afford him. But I do
think what all of said, and it's gonna be between
thirty five and forty million a year. Yes, so much
(14:11):
going on. It's so fascinating to watch him this season
and then into the off season. But as he said,
as he told you all that other stuff is why
he has an agent. Read his excellent piece about Aaron
Judge on SI dot com. It's really good. So much access,
so many things in there to unpack. Tom Verducci, you
killed it. Thank you, cool stuff, Thanks for having me.
(14:35):
After the break, we take a look at how the
Mets have stopped being while the Mets and have found
success this season. Stephanie Epstein, Welcome back to Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Thanks for having me. Great to see you again. We're
about to discuss something, frankly, stuff that I would rather
not making a filly native talk about. This feels criminal.
I've debated whether or not I should file an HR
(14:57):
complain about this, but we're making an exception because you're
the author of this piece. You wrote a story about
the New York Mets. Essentially the Mets not being MLB's
biggest and most consistent fail son, which is what we've
known them as for quite some time. I like, personally
stuff when they're more of a joke, but they haven't
been this season. As we record this, Atlanta has essentially
caught them in the NL East, and we will discuss
(15:20):
if the Mets are gonna end up metsing in the end.
But still on the whole macro terms, this has been
a good season for them. Yeah, they've played great, and
even the fact that Atlanta has taught them. It's not
the Mets haven't really played badly. Atlanta has just been
playing great. So you mentioned in your piece you start
with an anecdote and it involves new owner Steve Cohen
and President Sandy Alderson, and it certainly helps the Mets
(15:42):
in their metamorphosis. That Cohen is extremely rich, exceedingly rich
even by billionaire standards, and you start the piece with
Cohen giving everyone a raise at Alderson's request. Why is
that significant? I think that this is sort of how
the Mets should always have been behaving, right, like this
is the biggest mark it in the country and they
(16:02):
should should act like it, and over the past several
decades they have not really. I mean, I guess the
past decade is more accurate because it was after the
made off scandal, which the Crevier, the Mets, the Wilpons
were heavily invested in, that they really stopped being able
to make payroll almost They were taking out loans from
the league, and it became sort of a sort of
(16:24):
a silly situation where like scouts were getting pulled off
the road because they didn't want to pay for their expenses.
Good Morning, The New York Mets shut out from new
funds from Major League Baseball. Sources tell the New York
Times the league is not willing to give any new
substantial loans. They were really starting to nickel and dime things.
And you know, these are the New York Mets. They
should be. They could be on par from in a
(16:45):
lot of ways with the New York Yankees. And so
I think we get an owner like Steve Cohen who
has the money that he has, and he shows up
and one of his first act is to spend it
on the people who worked there. I think that says
to your employees, Okay, this might be a little bit different.
Pay your people more. Ends up working out great. Otherson
told you that it improved morale. You mentioned the previous owners.
(17:06):
How bad was morale under the Wilpons post Bernie made
off scamp. I think it just started to feel ridiculous
a lot of the time, Like why didn't they have
Old Timer's Day before the last this year? Because it's
expensive to have all Timers Day you have to pay
for you have to pay for it, and so they
didn't want to do that. Like why didn't the retire
numbers you have to pay for it, and so some
(17:26):
of these, some of the places that they cut costs
I think felt ridiculous. And the Wilpons, you know, it
was not a totally bad ownership experience. You know, they
made they made it to the World Series. They the
team was interesting, but I think by the end it
was starting to feel like a pretty a pretty bad marriage.
(17:46):
So things are obviously going much better now than they
were then, but you wrote that even under Cohen's new ownership,
they still have some old mets to them. Cohen's first
GM was fired. Jared Porter sent explicit unsolicited text to
a female reporter. Zack Scott reply paced him. He was
fired for allegedly driving under the influence after a team fundraiser.
We should note that Scott was acquitted. One review of
(18:07):
workplace culture led to the firing of the heads of
the legal and HR departments. The players were no better.
Francisco Lindor reportedly grabbed second baseman Jeff McNeil by the
throat last year, and then Lindour, Javier Baiez, and Kevin
Pollar began booing fans when they were playing well, which,
honestly stuff. I thought it was hilarious. That was like
the first thing the Mets had ever done. When I
(18:28):
was like, hey, good job Mets. But clearly they had
a lot to do to change the culture, right, it
was too silly. Francis Pilndor told me he felt like
it was an unprofessional organization last year, and I think
you can see that in the way a lot of
people involved with the behaved. So what what changed them
with the culture this year? Obviously they're doing well. They
(18:49):
meant at top the NL East all season. We mentioned
that the Braves are closing in on them, but there
had to be a pretty significant shift in the way
they operated. Yeah, it's a few things. One is that
just the players are older. They've added some sort of
like notable adults in that clubhouse, so there's not a
lot of people who, you know, Buck sometimes likes to
(19:09):
talk about eliminating sympathetic ears, like there are not a
lot of people in that room anymore who will listen
to you patiently while you're ripe about how your life
feels hard because you got in late on a charter flight. There.
Buck basically he once saw that players at a previous
team we're sort of browsing in the clubhouse, and he
came in and said, oh my god, did the did
the checks bounce? You guys are like, well, he was
(19:32):
like did did? Surely you're not the only reason you
could be behaving like this is because you're not getting
paid millions of dollars to play baseball game, right, And
they were like, well, we'll know, and he was like, okay,
then I don't want to hear it. And so that
you know, there's like a little bit of a red
ass quality to that. That is probably not that he's
able to leaven with other uh the other ways he
(19:52):
interacts with them, But I do think that that attitude
of shut up, play better has been really helping to them.
And then there is also it just helps to have
the most funny you can just go. You can buy
the best players, you can buy the best equipment you
can you can do kind of whatever you want that
you think will help. In the second year of owning
(20:12):
the team, poem and so I think that he's found
his footing and they're they're pretty willing to drop cash
on things that they think will help. I like that
attitude from Buck Shall Walter. I'm wondering what you make
of him. I got to cover him in another life
a long time ago, because I'm old, but I always
liked Buck shall Walter, and I like that approach where
(20:33):
he's sort of no nonsense on that front. Yeah, I
can see why sometimes his act gets tired at teams
where he sort of wears out as welcome. But I
think he's pretty much the perfect manager for this group
because I think they had they had like some babies
in the clubhouse last year. There were there was not
enough accountability. There was people were focusing on the wrong things,
(20:53):
and he doesn't have patience for that. And he also
has a pretty good way of empowering veterans to speak
up in moments like that. So there's you don't get
the sense that that sort of thing is acceptable because
the manager doesn't doesn't put up with the coaches don't
put up with it, and the veteran players don't put
(21:13):
up with it. And so you know, I was talking
to Taylan Walker about this, and he said, the stuff
about the thumbs down and the fake hitting coach and
the rat raccoon, all the nonsense from last year, none
of that would have gotten this far because Buck would
have sniffed that out immediately and put a stop to it,
so we wouldn't the media wouldn't even have heard about
it because it wouldn't have gotten pasted him. He doesn't
spend a lot of time in the clubhouse because he
(21:33):
thinks that's the player's room, but he does manage to
have his finger on the pulse. It's it's a pretty
good balancing act. I think he does. It's done a
really good job, and I think he does a good
job to have listening to these guys. I think he's
been criticized in the past for being maybe ruling with
too much of an iron fist, being a little bit
too much with pain, But here he's very good at
checking in with his veterans. When the team is going
(21:54):
to make a roster move. Very often the veteran players
will know about it before it happens, and so they
can prepare it for it. If you know, if they're
gonna send somebody down or release somebody, he tells the
players beforehand so that they can be ready to cush
on the blow on the clubhouse. And I think getting
that level of buy in from your veteran's important. And
you would mentioned it's not just buck too right. I mean,
(22:16):
there there are adults in the room. I like that
you wrote that Max Scherzer leads to professionalism parade. Tell
us about Max and the professionalism parade. Max is very
He's a big accountability guy. A lot of these guys
are big on accountability. And I asked him when that
became important to him, and said he had had a
really good season when he was with the Diamondbacks and
(22:39):
he sort of thought like, Okay, I've kind of got
this figured out. And then the next year he was
one of the worst pitchers in baseball. And that made
him realize that if you for one second think you
know what you're doing this game, will we'll turn you
upside down. He realized that you really have to every
day figure out what you've done right, what you've done wrong,
what you can do better. You have to focus on
(23:00):
those small steps and he has tried to bring that
to his career ever since. And so he does things
like after an outing, you know, this is Max chers
or he's a fairly intimidating guy. He's you know, so
he could intimidate his teammates, but he pulls them all together,
the other starting pitchers after he comes out of a start,
and he says, what did you guys see like good
and bad? Tell me what you saw, because in that moment,
(23:21):
he says, is when you can best learn from whatever happened.
And so they've got this sort of adorable little tradition
now where as soon as the starter comes out of
the game, the other starting pitchers swarm him and they
talk about his outing, and they feel comfortable saying what
they think he did well, what they think he didn't
do well, because if you can say that to, you know,
this future Hall of Famer on your staff, surely you
(23:44):
can talk to David Peterson about what he needs to
work on. And so that sort of willingness to have
your performance taken apart and to look for what can
be better. It sets an example. But it also he's
vocally saying this is what we should be doing. So
all that sounds good. Time should be good. They're playing well,
they're getting along, there's no drama, and yet they are
(24:05):
still the Mets not exactly great with the media. They
had agreed to make front office stafforts available to you,
and then didn't You got Alderson but not Cohen. Cohen
isn't Will Pond, but he also has some problems to
tell us about his day job and why it's a
bit dodgy. Sure, I mean, nothing is is just one
thing right, Nothing is just simply, very simply bad. And
(24:26):
I think Steve Cohen has gotten to the point where
he can be as successful as he is because he
has some business practices that pump up against lines or
sometimes allegedly crossed them. So for example, his firm settled
basically the largest insider trading case in history, paid the
largest fine for that. However, he was not personally accused
(24:47):
of wrongdoing, and he has denied personal wrongdoing, but he
did oversee a firm that admitted to wrongdoing. There have
been very scrievances filed against him for gender discrimination in
the years since then. They have settled all those, even
says they have denied wrongdoing. But he does bring his
own baggage, and you know, the team continues to make
(25:08):
some sort of goofy mistakes, like the way they handle
the media can be kind of ridiculous. I mean, he
he did oversee the organization when they were firing two
successive general managers, so it's not It's not as easy
as just bringing the guy with the money and things
get easier it takes some time, I think, to rebuild
a culture, and it seems like they are doing that,
but it is worth remembering who the people are at
(25:29):
the helm and they are rebuilding the culture. But as
you mentioned, they do still make the goofy Mets mistakes,
like how they handle the media, sometimes even their own media.
They still have a bit of an uncomfortable relationship with
their broadcasters, right, and they whine about Gary Cone and
Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling. How's that received? Yeah, So
if for people who have people who have not watched
(25:50):
the Mets broadcast, the Mets broadcasters are, if not the
best in baseball, then top two. And part of the
reason that they are such a great watch is it
they're pretty candid about what they're seeing, and often that
means the Mets will make a mistake and the broadcasters
will talk about it for the next three innings. Why
Jason were because he's a fool, That's why. And so
(26:12):
if you are met, you might not appreciate that. Fans
love it because they really learn about the game, but
the Mets are like, this guy is on my team plane,
why does it sound like who's rooting against me? And
so every year. A couple of times a year there's
some little issue where they start right, but it's it's
pretty passive aggressive. They don't usually get into it physically,
although that has happened, but for the most part, they
(26:34):
just start kind of complaining that these guys aren't nice
enough for them. And one thing I thought was really
interesting is that that hasn't happened this year. And it's
not just because they've been playing better. It's not just
because of the sort of accountability culture. It's because buckshow
Walter muted the TVs in the clubhouse, so they just
can't hear Yeah, just why would we Why would we
(26:55):
let this be a problem. We don't need to watch
the game with the volume on. We know what's happening,
so they just they can't hear it. If only they
had thought about sticking their fingers in their ears sooner,
all the problems would have gone away. I love that,
all right. I want to end this by asking you
the very questions that you pose at the beginning of
the piece and the nutgraph. Our attitude, personnel and money
(27:17):
and one competent season enough to erase decades of dysfunction stuff,
But simply can this possibly continue. Can the Mets avoid
being the Mets in perpetuity? We're gonna see. They've made
it through most of the season this way, and that's
something they hadn't done in a long time. Things are
looking up, but I think for most fans it's what
you do in the playoffs that matters, and so that
(27:38):
will be the ultimate Beside. Yeah, I'm over here acrossing
all my fingers and toes that they returned to form.
But we'll say, read her very good piece on the
no good because I'm required to hate them the Mets
on SI dot com. Excellent piece. I might dislike the Mets,
but I love having her on. Stephanie Epstein, thank you
for this, Thanks for having Meg. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
(28:09):
a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
And for more of Sports Illustrated's best stories and podcasts,
visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly
was produced by Jordan Rozsieri, Jessica you r Moski, and
(28:31):
Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer, our senior
producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive
producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our theme
song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck around
this long, we leave you with this. Did you expect this?
I mean, I know that a lot of people had
high hopes for the Mets coming to the season, but
(28:52):
they are still the Mets, and so far, so good
for them through almost the entire season. Yeah, I don't
think I expected it. I thought there was a chance,
given the sort of some of the personnel that they added,
but I don't. I didn't expect them to play like
this and to play to do it so undramatically, and
I'm not sure they did either.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!