The Book of Joe: 2024 MLB Resolutions

The Book of Joe Podcast with hosts Tom Verducci and Joe Maddon kicks off 2024 with some resolutions for Major League Baseball.  How can the rest of the league try to keep up with the Dodgers? Tom looks at the Dodgers pitching and how Yamamoto will be used in the rotation.  Joe chimes in with how the roster will be built in Los Angeles with all this talent including Ohtani.  Plus, what did Tom see in the Braves trading for Chris Sale?   

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Book of Joe Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey there and welcome back. Welcome to the twenty twenty
four first episode of the Book of Joe Podcast with Me,
Tom Berducci, and Joe Madden. Joe, Happy New Year, Happy

(00:28):
twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thank you, Tommy, saying back at you, I trust everything
as well. I've driven down the coast. I'm setting up
in Tampa for the next four months and looking forward
to it.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
As long as we're talking about New Year's Joe resolutions,
what's your position on New Year's resolutions.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm into just making one or two possibly for instance.
This for me right now, it's to be more consistent
with my driver. That's my nearest resolution. I'm going to
be very shallow about Oh, speaking of shall love to
shallow the club better? But yeah, I think I would.
Uh My resolution is I mean other parts. I don't
want you to phold lot of sugar anymore. Had too

(01:07):
much sugar. My sister made too many great cookies over Christmas.
But yeah, resolutions. Everybody wants to get in better shape.
I get it. We'rether going to try to do that.
You know, you're going to stop drinking for a month.
I guess that's a big thing these days, but very
superficially mine is to become a better driver of the
golf ball.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I love it. I'll sign me up for that as well. Yeah,
I mean, I want to just split the fairway and
know when I stand on that tea that I'm not
going to have to go looking for my ball when
I hit it.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
If I can do that two thirds of the time,
So happy, yep. I mean, all right, we're talking about resolutions,
and a lot of people also, as you say, you know,
they want to get back into the gym. I thought
you had a great idea about this twenty twenty four
baseball season, and it involves the LA Dodgers, okay, because
they're the it team right now, Joe, And the resolution

(01:56):
for every team now is how do we catch up
to the Dodgers. I can't recall, maybe it was the
nineteen ninety nine Yankees, the last time team is going
to go into a baseball season as such a heavy
favorite to be the best team in baseball. And I
remember back then with SI we were trying to pick
different teams each year, and this was after the Yankees

(02:16):
obviously had that great team in ninety eight. It might
have been two thousand and one ninety nine, of course,
and picking our preseason picks that year, either ninety nine
or two thousand. I think the cover was something was
like why fight it? You know, we were trying to
find reasons to pick other teams, and the Yankees just
slapped in the face that, yeah, we're that good, you know,

(02:36):
don't try to look for a reason. I think the
Dodgers are in that category. But Joe, you had a
great idea, and that is exploring a way to beat
the Dodgers because on paper, let's face it, they're the
chalk going to twenty twenty four, and I realized there's
a long way to go in this postseason or off season,
still a lot of free agents out there. But let
me start with that. Joe, you had this idea. What's

(02:58):
on your mind about the Dodgers and how they might
be gettaball in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, like you're talking about there, everybody I think possibly
is going to go after a conventional means. I mean,
they are who they are. They're very good up and
down the lineup, They're very good. They're going to be
very good on the mount in the bullpen. They have
this great lineage of success tradition. They got everything on
their side, great ballpark, now, they got show the other

(03:23):
young picture from Japan's there too. They're on paper unbeatable.
So for me, when I look at that, the last
thing I want to do is try to meet them
at their own game. That's the last thing I want
to try to do. Because if you're going to go
through the normal paces and try to design your team,
and here comes the game and the series, and you're
going to set up your pregame series and talk about

(03:45):
it and break them down like you do everybody else,
and then you go out there and attempt to play
the same game that they are, I don't think it's
going to work, quite frankly, And the best I can
describe it, I think would be kind of like the Race.
We were just talking about the Race before we went
on the air in two thousand and six, seven and eight,
whatever I had to define or develop our own way
of playing at that time to beat the Yankees and

(04:08):
the Red Sox within the Al East. Everybody was talking about, well,
the Race need to get out of the Al East.
They need to go to another division. To be successful.
I thought, no way, this is the best way for
us to get better faster, because we're playing the better
teams in their venues. Having said all that, I'm saying
it's almost like a gorilla baseball fair like guerrilla worfare.

(04:29):
You cannot go with conventional means. You've got to tack them.
You You've got to do different things. You got to
be unpredictable, you got to play a game that really
puts a lot of stress and pressure on them. You
got to give them more to think about, and again,
just play a complete game of baseball. If you're going
to go up there and try to bludgeon with them,
it's not going to happen. Four games, three game series,
four game series, you're going to lose a lot of

(04:50):
them two to one, sometimes three to zero, and definitely
three to onees. So I would really nurture a method
of play in order to not only advance within your
division during the season, but when you get to the
to the playoffs. I e. Arizona Diamondbacks. The only reason,
the biggest, the best reason, I should say, the only

(05:11):
one that they got as deeply as they did is
because they attacked it from a different angle to the
point where they eventually wore down the Phillies in Philadelphi,
which I didn't think was possible. So I think they
gave us a hint or a look at what it
can look like moving forward, and especially when you play,
like I said, a team like the Dodgers. I'm curious
when it comes to Baar, when the Diamondbacks actually, now

(05:34):
with confidence and a year of playoff baseball under their belt,
a World Series under their belt, what this looks like
now when they play like the Dodgers, where the intimidation
factor is going to be greatly lessened. So yeah, at
this point it's more than ever. And I keep expousing this,
but develop your own way of doing things, your own
method of doing things. The Dodgers has showing you what

(05:55):
they're going to do and how they're going to do it,
and you're not going to compete with that financially. So
it compete with them on the field, somehow, beat them,
beat them at the game itself, beat the game through
execution and surprise. That would be my method.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
I love that philosophy. Joe, and I go back to
something I learned. My dad was a high school football
and baseball coach and football teams were just awesome, right.
There was no way you were beating our team if
you tried to play us straight up. And I think
that's true today. If you see a major college football matchup,
one team is clearly better than the other. If you
try to play the superior team straight up, you're going

(06:32):
to lose. You better go at it in a very
different way. That doesn't mean you throw caution to the win.
You do things that are stupid, but you take a
few more chances. You come up with different game plans.
I think the same applies in baseball and a five
or seven game series. If you want to play the
Dodger straight up, I'm with you, Joe, you're not going
to beat them.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Last year they went into the postseason against Arizona with
a rotation of Kershaw, Bobby Miller, and Lance Lynn. Kersher
obviously had some physical issues, just wind up having shoulder surgery,
not to say Pitcher. I mean this year, on paper,
they would go Walker, Buehler, Yeshobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, I mean,

(07:12):
and besides, now you've got Otani in the lineup. I mean,
they're just absolutely loaded. So you mentioned the Diamondbacks. They
took out the Dodgers in three games last year. How
did they do it? Well? They held Mookie Bets and
Freddy Freeman to one hit in twenty one times at bat.
How did they do that? Brent Strom? Brent Strom is

(07:35):
a difference maker. He's the pitching coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
And it gets back to what you're saying, Joe, about
coming in with a plan and doing something that's a
little bit different, and again, playing a team straight up,
you're going to lose the Diamondbacks. This was amazing to
me because my first thought was, well, they probably threw
him a lot of spin, changed speeds a lot. They
did the exact opposite. Their percentage of fastballs. I'm not

(07:59):
using cutters here. I'm talking about four seamers and two
seamers went up from forty five percent to fifty two
percent against the Dodgers. They swept the Dodgers in three games,
throwing fifty two percent fastballs and the Dodgers hit a
buck seventy off their heaters. And here's the other thing,
Joe first pitches in that series three game series, the

(08:21):
Diamondbacks threw a strike sixty nine percent of the time.
So that's how you win when you're the lesser team.
In this case, it was attacked the strike zone with
quality strikes. I'm not talking about laying the ball over
the center of the plate. I'm talking about attacking, establishing
count leverage early first pitch strikes. We all know how
important that is. And don't run away from your fastball

(08:44):
as long as you can locate it, and you mix
it up, and the Diamondbacks have a bunch of pitchers
that throw both four and two seemers, so it's not
like it's the same pitch coming in. I just love
that approach and carried throughout the postseason. I think Brent
Strom is one of those guys as a pitching coach
who is a difference maker and people talk a lot
about and it bothers me, Joe the postseason, like the

(09:05):
team with the best record is somehow is supposed to
win the World Series. That's not what sports is these days.
You know, it's about matchups once you get to the postseason,
and I'm all about that. I'm fine with that. You know,
we wouldn't have a postseason if it was just, you know,
given the team with the best record the championship, you've
got to earn it in the postseason. And as much
as we talk about inequities of payroll, the great equalizer

(09:27):
is the postseason and the short series.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
We're talking about just briefly with the fastball. There was
a game against the Tigers here in town. James Shields
was pitching, and childsee really did play with this fastball
well because he had a great change up and I
loved when he started out out with his fastball. Didn't
show it the off speed too early. But anyway, the
Tigers jumped them early, got I don't know, three runs

(09:50):
maybe in the first Inny on his fastball, and he
came back into day that he was talking about I
got to change this. I got to change this. I
got to start using more off speed pitch. They said, James, no,
don't do that. Please. I said, just throw your fastball
in a better spot. Just get your fastball to a
better spot. Deal with your game plan, and if you
start locating better, all this other stuff's going to come
to play for you. And eventually I wish I could

(10:12):
pinpoint the game exactly, but he did. He settled in
and he won the game. But after getting his butt
kicked in the first inning because it was a poorly
located fastball. I still believe the best pitch in baseball
is the well located fastball, the commanded fastball. Wherever that is,
you might want it to be based on what you
know of that pitcher, maybe your individual strengths, and then

(10:33):
everything should play off of that, because it's really devolved
into so much breaking ball over the last several years,
as you know, and I know, I mean, I remember
with the Cubbies we got beat up in the playoffs
because the other teams went to so many off speed
versus us that we had a really hard time matching
up with the off speed and they got off their fastball.
But I think over a period of time, over the

(10:54):
course of time, a well located, commanded fastball still going
to always be the best pitch. And you have to
have a pitching coach like Brent Strong that might be
able to look beyond some of the noise and have
these guys understand that. And then eventually Bob's runkle. Here's
we got this particular outcome based on the fact that no, no, no,

(11:15):
stay with your basketball. Just look, let's us locate it
a little bit better and just quickly too talked about
like the different the chances, the opportunities you're trying to
take any game when you're possibly on paper not as
good as the other side, momentum. You got to gain
momentum via chances that you take. When you take a chance,

(11:36):
or you try something differently or execute in a way
that the other team's not capable, it does not do Wow,
it could really turn into a great advantage in that game.
And I e. The safety squeeze. We've talked about this
in the past, something that Zim gave to me, but
I know there were games that we gained momentum carry
the game through and win games just based on a

(11:57):
bunt to the first base side. We took a chance
on that and part of the chances to run around
third base getting down a lot. So you gain momentum
via taking chances or bringing Rizzo in the slot between
the mound and the first and the first base bag
to cover the bunt versus the picture in a dead
sacrifice bunt situation, we took a chance, we complete double plays,

(12:20):
and all of a sudden, Wow, here comes a wave
of momentum based on taking chances. Your players always respond
to that. Like a thousand percent of the time you
go first to third, you really push the envelope, you're safe.
Everybody goes nuts in the dugout. You took a chance,
you gain momentum. I don't know that that's spoken about
it up And again that's the gorilla kind of game.

(12:41):
I'm looking forward to beat the Dodgers. Yeah, you're gonna
have to. You're gonna make mistakes in the sense sometimes
you're gonna look bad once in a while because you
got to push it, push it, push it. And if
you do that to the one time and that it
really works, all of a sudden, you're gonna create that
On the other side, I don't care how good they are.
I don't care. I know what their meetings are going

(13:02):
to be like before the game. And as a human
being baseball player on the field, when you're being pushed, pushed,
pushed all the time, and all of a sudden you
do make a mistake, it's going to come back and
benefit you somehow the team that's doing the pushing. So
that's what that's what I'm talking about. You get to
gain momentum via chances, and that's pretty much what you're

(13:22):
talking about there.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, and you know how important and powerful momentum can
be in the postseason. I saw it happen last year
with Texas. You know, they lose on the last day
of the season. Instead of having a first round by,
they have to fly to Tampa to play the team
with the best record at home in the American League,
and we all know what happens. They went the entire
month in the postseason undefeated on the road eleven and
oh and you can if you were around as I were,

(13:45):
you around the Texas Rangers, you felt that momentum. That
team was coming to the ballpark expecting to win games.
It was a bonding experience to have to go on
the road as much as they did. But once you
get through those first couple of wins, man, it just
kept building on itself. So thinking about the postseason, Joe,
We've talked about this a lot. It's a very different animal.
And we sit here today we make evaluations about teams

(14:07):
based on what we think they're going to be over
one hundred and sixty two games. But the more I
see it, especially with the expanded postseason, the more I
really believe it is a completely different season. When it
comes to who's going to win the World Series? You
want to tell me the Dodgers the best team in baseball?
No argument, I got you there. They're probably gonna win
one hundred and five or more in twenty twenty four.

(14:29):
Do I think they're a lock to win the World Series?

Speaker 2 (14:31):
No?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Put it this way. They've been the best team for
a while now. Certainly Atlanta can challenge them on that regard.
But last three years, the Dodgers in the postseason are
seven to twelve. Their last six postseason games, they're zero
to six, scoring thirteen runs. That make them a bad team. No,
it's just what happens in the postseason environment. You get

(14:53):
up against the team that can game plan for you,
and you know, I do think the Dodgers can be
picked off of the postseason. And I don't want to
say easily, Joe, I want to underestimate it. But I'm
not handing them the trophy here in January.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
I mean neither. Absolutely not. I mean I was involved
with the Cubs team in twenty sixteen where we did
wire to wire it. If you remember before that season,
I was in the winter meetings and shoot, I think
it might have been Vegas. I'm not sure where it
was at. However, David, you know, you do that little scrum,
and I came up with the line just extemporaneously to
embrace the target, because that's what you got to do,

(15:30):
and that's what we did do. Let's go, come on,
bring it to us. You want pressure, you want expectations,
you want all this stuff, and that's that was a
big part of that Cup team being successful. But then
there's other years where we came up a little bit short.
Not so much in fifteen because nobody expected it of us.
But in seventeen, that's the third year in row in

(15:52):
the NLCS, and that's that's that's really close. Obviously, the
winning three World Series in a row, that's pretty good stuff.
But when you lose in a situation like that in
seventeen and all of a sudden, people became disappointed. And
I didn't quite understand that, because again, you look at
how we got there, all the different circumstances we had
to survive to get there, and we did, and you

(16:14):
play well and then you lose at the end and
then you're not so good anymore. And then, of course
in seventeen or eight till we lose in the wildcard
game and we're no good anymore. I mean it's tough, man,
it's hard. It's hard to win like that on an
annual basis. It's very difficult. The Astros. That's what makes

(16:34):
them even more impressive. It's almost like they got you know,
the old Yankee group involved with Jeter and his group,
maybe a dash of a Michael Jordan whatever in there too,
or Larry Burner or Tom Brady. They got this thing, man,
that what they've done is really impressive. The fact that
they've gotten that far annually, done that well annually, that's

(16:55):
pretty impressive. Man, that's really impressive. But overarching point is
that it's not easy to do. And sometimes you know,
now that I'm doing this a little bit more, you
read and you listen, and there's a lot of criticism
involved in the group that doesn't that's expected to. But
last year I think the Diamondbacks showed exactly how you
get to the World Series in today's game, especially how

(17:17):
you turned around with eighty four win season. You can't
do it in conventional ways.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, and as you know, Joe and you live this
in Chicago, expectations can be weighty. Now you had a
good group as far as handling those kind of expectations.
But a team like the Padres last year they freely admit,
you know, after getting to the NLCS against the Phillies,
there were, and rightly so, expectations about that being a
World Series team in twenty twenty three. They came far short.

(17:46):
And if you talk to the Padres people, they'll tell
you it began with trying to live up to expectations,
going to spring training with a different mindset and feeling
the pressure if you will, and just never got it together,
never really played as a unit. Listen, we know the
Dodgers can hit right. Last year they were second in
the major leagues in runs per game, only the Braves
were better. They're getting Gavin Lucks back and they basically

(18:09):
have replaced Jad Martinez. What a nice year for them,
by the way, with Choe hey Otani, who's one of
the best two or three hitters in baseball, if not
the best, So we know they're going to score runs.
What about their pitching? After this break, I want to
ask Joe about their pitching, especially their starting pitching, their philosophy,
and whether Yamamoto is going to be one of the

(18:31):
best pitchers on the planet as he was in Japan.
All right, Joe, I talked about pitching, and I still
have to remind people man were not in the nineteen

(18:54):
sixties anymore. No one's throwing two hundred innings, no one's
thrown two hundred and fifty innings, no one is throwing
complete games. So stop evaluating starting pitchers on how deep
they go into games. I like to see the game
go back to that, absolutely, but we're not there, Okay.
Average start in the postseason last year was five and
two thirds innings, right, Actually, almost two three quarters of

(19:17):
the starts in the postseason were less than six innings.
It's basically, give me eighteen to twenty two outs. That's
what a manager is looking for. And even that's a lot,
and it'll take a little bit less, but basically, give
me eighteen outs as a starting pitcher. Look at the Dodgers, Joe.
They've been doing this for years and they have more
wins than anybody since Dave Roberts took over that team

(19:38):
as the manager. In the last eight seasons, they've had
only nine starting pitchers who were qualified for the EERA title.
That means one inning for every game played, so essentially
one hundred and sixty two and only nine starting pitchers
in eight years for a team with the best record
in baseball. It's a gig economy, folks. People carve it up.

(20:01):
They apportion it up. And I look at the Dodgers,
this come Joe, and I see Yamamoto coming over. We
know over in Japan, and you went through this with Shohy.
They're pitching on the sixth or seventh day, and they're
they're getting a longer season, they're getting more travel, they're
getting different baseball. Don't expect Yamamoto be thrown up two
hundred innings. That's not happening. You have Walker Buehler coming

(20:21):
back off Tommy John surgery. So again, are they going
to push into two hundred innings. No, You've got Tyler
Glass now, who basically is you know, never thrown two
hundred innings or anything really close to it. So you're
gonna say the same thing with the Dodgers. A very
good pitching staff, but they're going to apportion it up.
They're going to pitch guys in the sixth and seventh day,
and they're gonna take guys out of the games preemptively.

(20:43):
Until make sure they get them if they can to
October healthy, Joe. I don't necessarily have to like that,
but that's where the game is at.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Now. I'm with you and having said all that, and
you're right on the money. That's what Andrew and the
boys do well. Depth. They bring up guys with long
names with a bunch of continents and no vowels that
you've never heard of before, that pitch, pitch well all
the time or play well all the time. I don't
I don't know the depth depth specifically because I don't
really follow their minor league system, but I'm here to

(21:13):
tell you that's exactly the way they want it. Glass now,
Glass now is no He's there's no way to check
that box and have any idea what he's going to
do next year regards the number of innings pitch. He
just he just has it. To this point. The guy's
really gone a long way, both you know, and stature
and financially, just because he's got such a great arm
and then what he does pitch. It's so oppressively good

(21:36):
that he's gotten to this point without really having done
a whole lot historically compared to a lot of other
great pitchers in the major leagues. But they're good with that.
I'm good with that. That's what Andrew and the boys
would say. They want am Moto. I think this guy's
going to be outstanding quite frankly, all you know what
I've seen on video, and I love what I see
on video. I know he's not tall, but I love

(21:58):
where the ball comes out of his shoulder. I think
he's hard to pick up. And then he's got these
at all, as they say, a tunnel out of the
same spot. I think he's got great confidence. I think
this guy is going to be unbelievably good build. There's
the key if you can get back and be well.
But beyond all that glassnew this this this core of

(22:19):
others that they have, and I know they have this
core that they've already have, probably have them listed on
a board somewhere. Who's going to be able to be
ready in April, May, maybe June, and then here comes July, August, September,
which the group will be expecting to be ready at
that time. Who's going to be the guy that's going
to make this impact in August September for us that

(22:40):
we're going to hold back hole back hole back to
the very end. They got it. They got they got
it laid out, they got it wired, they got the
numbers down there. They know exactly what to expect from
these starters, and they're not going to expect anything more.
I don't think you're going to see David glasnow can
be pitching probably a no hitter going into the seventh
and maybe he's got like ninety son pitches. He's going
to be out. There's going to be no kind of

(23:00):
a warm, fuzzy there where. Uh you know, let this
guy give the guy an opportunity to pitch a no
hitter at the expense of not being there to pitch
for us in the playoffs this year. It's just I
firmly believe that. So, yeah, it's all going to be choreographed.
They're pitching is choreographed. It's hard to argue, but that's
the kind of guys they hire. They hire guys to

(23:22):
pitch that way under those circumstances, those number of metings.
In order to do that, you got to have depth. Man,
you gotta have good arms in the pen. You have
to have good arms in triple A, a option optionable
kind of guys and arms and the reason why other
other teams can't do that is because their arms aren't
that good, and furthermore, the depth of the arms isn't
that good. In furthermore, they don't have the team and

(23:43):
the base that this team has to you know, push
like last last year. I mean to win one hundred
games last year with the group they put out there consistently.
I kind of just speaks to the to the method,
to the to the machine that they become. Most of
the teams cannot do anything near that.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
That's a great point to me. The secret sauce of
the Dodgers is not the money. Listen, it's great to have,
but it's their player development system. And you're right, they
keep you know, whether it's Bobby Miller or Emmitch and
they've got a ton of guys who've got front of
the rotation stuff. They're not there yet in terms of development,
but front of the rotation stuff who will just have
to pitch out of the back of the rotation for

(24:19):
the Dodgers, which is the perfect way to bring in pitchers.
And by the way, Brandon Gomes, their GM, was telling
me that their pitching staff in double A last year
had the second highest velocity of any pitching staff in
baseball that includes major league teams, by the way, second
hardest throwing out it's in Double A. So they've done

(24:40):
a great job identifying what I like to think of
as good athletic pitchers and really getting them to their ceilings.
I'm not talking about first round guys. It's easy to
see Garrett Cole at UCLA and say that guy's going
to be a stud. The Dodgers have done an unbelievable
job of finding guys, even a Tony Gonsolin type guy

(25:02):
or Dustin May, you know, later in the draft, and
really developing those guys and maxing them out and they
just keep coming. That's really been to me their secret sauce,
the inventory that allows them to keep governors on their
starting pitchers. You brought up Yama Modo. I want to
talk about him a little more. Joe, you mentioned five
foot ten. As you know, in this game, historically there's

(25:24):
been a bias against short, right handed pitchers. Now I
think it's overblown because, first of all, I think there
haven't been that many to begin with, right I mean,
there's not many guys who are that short who can
throw the ball at major league level, so you're dealing
with a short group of universe of players of that
type anyway. But I look at him and I see

(25:46):
a guy who's a pitch maker. This guy knows how
to pitch. Now, I will caution you, Joe. I think
watching him throw, he reminds me of Masa Hero Tanaka.
The fastball is going to get hit in the major leagues.
He's one of these guys with very flat shoulders when
he throws his four seam fastball, and that was the
knock on Tanaka when he came over, and his numbers
were very similar. Came over at the same age, and

(26:07):
sure enough in the course of his career, and he
pitched great for the Yankees, but his four seen fastball
permitted a slugging of over six hundred in the big leagues.
So I see Yamamoto very similarly in that the fastball,
he can't throw it as much as he did in Japan,
but he doesn't have to because his secondary stuff is

(26:28):
so good, the big curve ball and especially the splitter.
Once people see this guy's splitter, I think it's going
to be almost unanimous that he has the best split
finger fastball in the game. Better than Gosman, better than Senga.
I mean it's a complete wipeout pitch. But what I
like about him again, like a Musina, a David Kohne,
a Tim Hudson, this guy's a pitch maker. He's an

(26:51):
athlete on the mound. He's highly competitive. You know, in
an elimination game last year in the Japan series, he
wound up throwing almost I think the number was over
one hundred and forty pitches just refused to come out
of the game, set an all time record in their
championship series for strikeouts. I've seen the competitiveness, I've seen
the pitch making ability. I think this guy's just going

(27:11):
to be dynamite. I mean, the era is definitely going
to be below three. I believe high strikeout rate, low walks,
and yes, so give up some home runs on the
fourth seamer. But again, he's not going to be throwing
that forty to forty five percent of the time. The
secondary stuff definitely plays.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah. Listen, and I again, I know him just briefly
from watching him on TV, and all the stuff you
mentioned right there is absolutely Germane. This guy's got a
good face. I like the way this guy looks when
he's out there. I saw him in an interview. Of
course he wasn't speaking English, but I love the way
there's a lot of confidence coming out of this young
man and so again not knowing anything really except it's

(27:52):
kind of like a scouting feel, even via television whatever video. Man,
you might be right with his fastball, I'm curious to
see how that all plays out. But his other stuff
is that electric, and if he gets these hitters, so
wary about this other stuff, that fastball is going to

(28:13):
play even bigger. As you know. Yeah, the size of him.
I remember, even as a we used to run the
minor leagues for the Angels for years, and I would
write down the average height of my right he's and
the average height of my left handed pitchers, and yeah,
you're right. I think it was like six ' three,
right around six y three, even back then, right and
the pictures were at least that tall average wise, and

(28:33):
lefties could be shorter than that. Even at that point,
you're going to get this real tall, abnormal left hander.
But you got you got the crafty left hander that
was able to survive more easily or readily because of
the movement on his pitches and there was shorter left
handers because of that. In our game today. Sonny Graham
a big fan. I love Sonny Gray Stroman. You know

(28:54):
Stroman when he's when he's right on. Man, this guy's
as good as it gets too, and he's been durable,
son He's been kind of durable too. Overall. I like
where his arm comes out of. Talking back to Yamamoto,
I like where the arm works from, and that's that's
what I'm also basing this off of. I think there's
deception in there, trying to remember Tanaka in my head

(29:17):
if his arm sat was a little bit higher than Yamamoto,
although it could be very similar, that to me is
going to matter a lot where the ball comes out
of to the hitter with him, because I think he
definitely has it looks like his ability to really ride
a basketball above two. But again, good face. This guy's
got good face. And for that and all these other reasons,

(29:38):
I believe he's gonna have a killer year.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Well, it was made possible by Shohei Otani. He yeah,
I mean, let's face it. I mean it was a
jaw dropping number when we heard seven hundred million dollars
and then you find out, Well, wait, a second, sixty
eight million per year is being deferred starting ten years
down the road without interest. So he said it at

(30:01):
the press conference, and listen, we are so jaded in
this world, Joe. We we think any good deed must
be a trojan horse like this has got to be
a workaround to the CBT. The Dodgers are cheating the system.
Show he's getting this when we don't see it. No,
in this case, it really is this simple. This is
a guy who this year will be making fifty million
dollars off the field in endorsements. So he has the

(30:25):
ability to say, you know what to for ninety seven
percent of my salary ten years down the road, and
now I don't even bother give me interest. But he
did say at the press conference, and listen, you know
him as well as anybody that he said. He did
it so that it would help the Dodgers in terms
of their CBT number, the competitive balance tax, which now

(30:46):
instead of being a seventy is forty six. Uh So
that saves the Dodgers a lot in tax money and also,
as show he said, allows them then to reinvest that
money in other players to make the team better around him,
and sure enough they turn around and they get Yamamoto
the biggest contract in the history of baseball for a

(31:07):
pitcher only, so you know, Joe getting back to Show Hey,
I'm surprised that I'm not surprised because of who he is.
To me, it's I listen again. I'm not trying to
say this guy's giving up money because he's got so
much coming in. But it was a very humble gesture.
That's the way I see it.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
One hundred percent. And when I saw Andrew talk about
it on a clip whatever, it looked to me like
he was legitimately surprised by the offer from show Hey
to do that. Originally, my first thought was that it
might have been an idea from Andrew to show Hey.
But then it all appears to me that Show had
the idea, and he promoted the idea him and Nez

(31:48):
in order to exactly what you just said, to ensure
the fact that the Dodgers have a much better chance
to win now and in the future. One hundred percent,
that's he's been saying it all along. When you're with
Show I'm telling you, man, there's no hidden agenda he is.
He is all about pure intentions, and his main, pure
intention is to win and to be part of that group.

(32:12):
He's there to support everybody around him. He's of course
he's gonna garner the spotlight, it's all the eyes are
going to come in. But he's in a way he's
not trying to do that. He's trying to promote everybody else.
At the same time, he wants to win, to be
able to collect all these accolades and whatever, and this
kind of money without winning would be a great void

(32:33):
in his life as it moves forward. He needs to
win a World Series in order to validate everything's done
to this point for him internally, I believe, and probably
not just one, more than one. And if the first
one shows up, now you're going to see in action
the next and I reference this a lot, but the
next Michael Jordan, the next Larry Bird, or the next

(32:54):
Magic Johnson, or the next Tom Brady. The way he
attacks the season and how you're going to see nothing
different in his prep and how he goes about things
just because he had won the previous year. After all,
I mean, like you've been talking about, he's made as
much money as he possibly ever going to want, and
he's going to make even more than that. So even
in spite of that, his motivation is still there to

(33:16):
play and play hard and to do well. And he's
a level This comes down to the level five we've
talked about. All he wants to do is Win's he's
made his money, he knows he's belonged there for a while.
And the level four is I want to make as
much money as I can. He's done that level three
being I belong here, I can do this. Of course
he's overcome that years ago. But then he makes the

(33:36):
money and now there's only one level left for a
guy like show it. All I want to do is win.
So the Dodgers have that that that kind of a
level of a person as a baseball player for the
next ten years. And I promise you he's never it's
never going to be where he goes shows up the
spring training that he does not want to just win.
That's there, it's embedded, it's it take it to the bank.

(33:56):
That's who he's going to be. That's who he is.
So that's what they got. That's what they got, And
there's no there's no phoniness. It's not a true jin
horse for anything else. Man, he wants to win, and
he's going to show you.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, listen, I was saying all along, I thought he
was going to be a Dodger. I've said that at
least for a year, if not more, because I thought
the Dodgers could give him everything he wants. They have
the money to sign a player like that. Let's face it,
not many teams ken It's Southern California. There was no
way he was going to be playing for a team
that plays in poor weather. So it was either Dome

(34:30):
or Southern California. And the track record of the Dodgers,
they've been the postseason eleven straight years, We've never seen
show play a postseason game. We all feel robbed as
baseball fans of seeing the best players in the game
play in the postseason. And that goes for Mike Trout
as well. Got in there once and didn't win a game.
So that's why, to me, the Dodgers made a lot

(34:52):
of sense. But I didn't see it coming down this way.
And kudos to Shohe and Nez for running the free
agency they did to offer that up to the LA Dot.
And I've spoken with some agents who actually are not
happy about it because they think, why should a player
make it easy on a club like the Dodgers when
it comes to a financial commitment. But this is the player.

(35:15):
It's like, when we talked about this, people in the
media criticizing Show Hey for not running an open book
when it came to his free agency. He's not that
kind of a player, and he's not the kind of
player who's going to get every last drop of money
out of a team. And again he says he's doing
just fine, folks. But the way he went about it,
put it this way, We'll probably never see anything like

(35:36):
this again. No one has come close to this. Max
Suers are once deferred half of his salary in Washington
with a Nationals fifty percent. That had been a record.
This is ninety seven percent of his salary. It's like
everything else he does, it's a unicorn of a contract.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, there might be some criticism at all, kinds of
conjecture leading up to these different moments, whether his signing,
how he went about his signing, etc. But the thing
I love about him, and even when he left the
team that time during the season and everybody's concerned about
he didn't talk to anybody. He always concludes with a
solid reason. He's not going to leave you a hanging.

(36:12):
He's going to come back and give you the specifics.
So there's there's no there's not a whole lot of
showmanship going on in order to arrive at a certain point.
There's things he wanted to get done, probably with regarding
the arm surgery and how to do it or to
see and then he's going to come back. He's going
to talk to everybody. Uh, the same thing when it
came down to his signing. We're going to go through
this properly with class and dignity. We're gonna treat everybody

(36:35):
equally well, and then we're done. We'll come back and
to give you the reason why we did it. So
he does, he does, It should not it should not
be a surprise to anybody. That's who he is. It's
not manufactured, it's it's not convoluted or what it's. It's
who he is. Uh, we just got to get used
to it.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Okay. The Dodgers spent one point two billion dollars on
three players this offseason, Yamamoto Otani in glass. Now, are
they good for baseball? We'll tackle that question right after this.

(37:19):
Joe I think it's great for the game that the
La Dodgers now are the kind of team that, let's
face it, they've got a bullseye on them when it
comes to the other teams, not just because of how
competitive they are and how locked and loaded they are,
but because of how they've stepped up with their financial might.
And if you're in a market like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, I mean,
you name it, Saint Louis even, you know, you look

(37:41):
at the Dodgers and say, you know, this game it's
an unfair game. But first of all, we've talked about
the postseason and how that the best team doesn't always
come through on the other side. But let's talk about
the Dodgers in their payroll, right because they're probably going
to wind up paying about thirty three thirty five million

(38:02):
dollars in taxes over the luxury tax thresholds. Last year,
the New York Mets were way beyond that. They paid
one hundred million in taxes. The Dodgers are not breaking
new ground here, folks. You got to put this into
perspective that what they're paying on salaries here is way
less than what the Mets paid last year.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Listen, they created must watch TV all throughout the world.
Is there a game that you're not going to want
to watch the Dodgers play. I don't think so, because
the show is going to be in the lineup every night,
and because of that alone, they're going to want to
watch it. From See the Shiny Sea And so it's
here they've created must watch TV that everyone benefits from. Everybody,

(38:45):
every team, every organization again, from all the teams in Japan,
the United States, Dominican, whatever, Venezuela. Every baseball entity benefits
by this group being put together as they have. It
is the latter day Yankees. You can talk about the
Jeter group back in the day that everybody wanted to

(39:06):
watch and see and cannuc get enough of. This is
that next group. It is the Beatles. It is all
those different things wrapped up in a baseball group. And
with that and I absolutely believe that one hundred percent,
and that if you are not them and you're going
to play against them, God, could you got to one
to have a piece of them? Right? I want a

(39:27):
piece of them. It's like George mister Costanzo when he
was going after e Lane on that last spot at
the end of that one show. You want a piece
of this? Yeah, you want a piece of this. It
would be so much fun that the Dodgers Sachet in
the town or go to Dodger statem would play this
group from an opposition perspective. To me, that is beautiful.

(39:49):
I would be all over that. I love that concept.
I love the idea of having to prepare to try
to play and beat this team, so there must watch.
Everyone benefits and if you're in another ball club of
the organization, wow, what a wonderful opportunity you have to
go in there and compete against them. And again, that's

(40:10):
the there's a negative to the Dodgers situation. Everybody's going
to feel that way about them. Yeah, regardless if they
become heroes or villains, it doesn't matter. Both sides are
going to feed them, but it's going to feed the other.
The opposition is going to be very interesting to see
all other teams play against them.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
It's so much fun to watch this team and listen.
Pretend you're Dave Roberts for a second, Joe, and you've
got three MVPs to the top of your lineup. Would
you go bets Otani's freeman. I mean you can't lose
either way, right, And I'm sure I don't know if
you used to do this, but you check with the
players and see what their comfort level is where they
like to hit. I mean, you don't worry about putting

(40:47):
two lefties together. Lefties rights don't matter with these guys.
So what are your initial thoughts about their batting order.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, I mean, you're right, I would, I would like,
I would really try to consider it all. I mean,
some of it could depend on Bets. I mean, if
I know Bets a couple of years ago was not
hitting lefties, correct. I don't know if he's changed that
around or not.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, that was kind of a one year anomaly, but
it was extreme to the point where we thought maybe
he was ringing a lefty. In the postseason, the pitch
to him.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
We'll see if if he's actually like on top of
the lefties. It's nice to put him into make a
Mookie bet sandwich between O, Tawny and Freeman, because then
all of a sudden, he's going to see more lefties
because of that. If in fact that that would if
you think that would benefit him, because it will not
bother show a leadoff whatsoever, and have bets behind Show.

(41:34):
I think that provides protection. And again, if Freeman is
behind Show, Hey, even though Freeman hits lefties, I don't
know if it provides the same protection for Show as
a good right hand hitter with too so I think originally,
just you know, this is extemporaneously just looking at it,
I like the idea of Show going first with Mookie second.

(41:55):
It sets him up. It could protect Showing even a
little bit more, and then and then take it from
there whatever comes out after that. To me, that'd be
kind of an interesting way to look at it from
the beginning.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
It's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but that makes
a lot of sense either way. I'm having those three
guys at the top of my lineup. Don't overthink it.
Don't try to find someone you think is a leadoff hitter.
You know Maximunsey gets on base. No, No, just have
those three best hitters start the game. You talk about
pressure on the opponent. Wow. And as a fan, you
better you better get to Dodger Stadium early for a change,

(42:28):
because you don't want to miss the bottom of the
first inning those three guys coming up.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Well, even batting practice, I mean, my god, they're going
to be selling that that's a notoriously a late showing
up early departure ballpark. I'm curious it's going to be
a little bit different like earlier to show up a
little bit later departure. Now, when what that does a
the concession stands, there's just no telling the exponential factor
is going to be impacted by all of this, just

(42:54):
based on this group of players alone. I'm again it's
it's must watch TV and it benefit benefits everybody, and
again to play against them, gosh to be well, actually
the division, you know the game, it's a balance schedule now.
But nevertheless, that would be a lot of fun having
to prep for this.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Hey, by the way, I got to bring this up
show Hey Otani, Besides all the money he's getting, he's
got a Joe Madden clause in his contract.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
He does.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
He has a clause in his contract that stipulates that
if Andrew Friedman or principal owner Mark Walter leave the organization,
he can opt out. And that brings me back to
you and the Rays and how you wind up in Chicago,
And I don't know that there's I'm sure there must
be other examples of this but none come to mind

(43:44):
right away with this type of clause specifically tied to
personnel in an organization.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, that was my agent, Alan Nero put that in there.
At that time. And Andrew and I were very close
and we were kind of really interconnected tightly in the
way that organization was formed and on and off the
field with the with the Rays. So but again that
was all Alan. Of course, I never even thought about

(44:12):
something like that. And then when Alan, when Andrew took off,
I got a phone call immediately from Matt Silverman told
me that this clause had kicked into my contract. The
other member was Matt Silverman. That was the other one
of those two guys leaving would permit me then to
become the the free agent in time that I that
I became so which with Shohey, it's all about he

(44:33):
he respects these guys so much. He sees that that
there's so much part of that group winning uh that
maybe in his mind's either they will not be able
to sustain this without those people and personalities in place.
Don't doubt it. I don't doubt it at all that
he's he's thought about it to that level. Again, I
didn't think about it to that level. That was all

(44:54):
Alan Neiro put that together for me. But retrospectively it
was it was right on the money, made all the
sense in the world. However, they've done really well since
we've all left. I mean, Eric really picked it up.
Cashi's done a great job. But there was an interim
period there where they had to rebuild too. But that's
what it comes down to. It's a little bit of foresight,
prescient moment on a show's part. But again I had

(45:16):
to thank g Allen Nero for that moment for me.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah, I mean it just goes to show you show
hey man, he misses nothing because if you sit down
and think about it, here he is. He really is
doing the Dodgers a favor. And yes, they basically fell
out of their chairs when he decided, hey, do you
guys mind if I defer almost all of my salary.
So he did a solid for them, right, So, but
he realizes too that there could come a day where

(45:42):
ownership changes hands and maybe this humble gesture he made
by deferring all that money so they can turn it
around and spend it on other players, is no longer
in play because the next owner maybe wants to put
it in his pocket. So that's his way of assuring
that his intentions are being honored. That if in fact
there's changed at the top and there's no guarantee that

(46:04):
someone behind them, either Friedman or Walter runs the team
the same way, he's got protection. I mean, this guy
doesn't miss anything. I thought it was a great idea
to put that in there. And listen, it was Justin Turner,
the former Dodger, when the details of the contract came
out with six hundred and eighty million dollars being deferred here,

(46:24):
Justin put out a tweet basically saying, well, the next
owners of the Dodgers can figure out that how to
work it out. And you know it was tongue in cheek.
I get it, but he's not far from the truth
that it's so far down the road that could be
the bill for somebody else. And this is show his
way of guaranteeing that his intentions are honored as long
as they're as long as he's there in LA because

(46:46):
otherwise he has a chance to get out if things
change that drastically.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Pretty cool it is, again, You're right, I don't know
who did the research for him, if he did it himself,
but somebody's researching for him because he does not. Again,
he does not miss a thing, doesn't miss a thing
on or off the field. It is very bright on
his part. And yeah, kicked it down the road a
little bit regarding the amount of when the money's going

(47:11):
to be paid off, But he did consider everything, and
that's what he does. He always considers everything.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
One last point and this is a minor point, but
I already start looking at matchups in the postseason. I
saw the Atlanta Braves made a trade for Chris Sale
in the Red Sox. My first reaction was, are the
Red Sox really checking out? Because I realized the guy's
been hurt a lot, but Chrisdale still has potentially dominating stuff.
I mean, if you're going for it, you don't trade Chrisale.

(47:38):
But they did, and they get six years of control
out of Von Grissom, who could be a good Major
League infielder slash alfielder. I get it. But the other
thing that struck me was Chris Sale is left handed,
and if you're the Atlanta Braves to win the World Series,
you know you're going to have to go through the Phillies,
which they have not been able to do the last
two years, and or the LA Dodgers, and I look

(48:00):
at both of those teams, Joe, and in a perfect world,
I want dominant left handed pitching against the Philadelphia and
Los Angeles lineups. You know, Los Angeles now with Otani Freeman,
Munsey Autman. Not to say it's a it's a picnic
as a lefty, but given a preference, I would load

(48:21):
up on left handed pitching.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Another question, that's a great pickup on your part. I
didn't I didn't process all of that, and they already
have freed there too, right, so there's there may be
more to come. But a guy like Sale when he's
right that that arm angle could be devastating. I could
see the Red Sox given up on that. I mean
they put a lot of time in with them, a
lot of injuries, a lot of maybe you know, things

(48:44):
did not turn out to where they had planned originally. Okay,
so let's move it forward. I know that I don't
know the young infield that you're talking about. He's an
infield the right the kid from Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, it's probably a natural shortstop. He'll play second base
for the Boston Red Sox. They you know that praise
did to have an idea that he was going to
a platoon with Jared Kelln in left field. They actually
started having him work in winter ball, some fly balls
in the outfield. Really good athlete. Hasn't really done much
in the short period of time of the big leagues.
But he's still very young, and I'm sure the Red

(49:17):
Sox see something there that, hey, this guy can be
an everyday player for us for the next six years.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah, somebody scotted it even before he got there, like
even probably out of college or high school where he
came out of and had some kind of a liking
to them. With the Red Sox, with their new folks
in charge of they probably feel as by looking at him,
there's different things we can do to possibly make him
into the kind of player that we originally thought he
would be when we scotted him several years ago. So

(49:42):
that's that's what happens in a moment like that. But
with Sail, you're right on, I think with the projection
left on left, how we beat these guys when he
gets to the playoffs. And again, not just to talk
about the Dodgers, but to include the Afhillies, in that
conversation is pretty right also, So yeah, it's going to
be interesting to see. Listen, I'm sale when sales rightious

(50:04):
man's that's like kind of I don't want to say
a poor man's Randy Johnson, but gosh, it's not far off.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, no, he listened if I'm and the Dodgers, like
a lot of teams, are like this. You want swing
and miss stuff in the postseason, and that's Glass, now,
that's Bueller, that's Yamamoto. And Chris Dale when he's healthy,
has swing and miss stuff. There's no question about that.
That's again, give me a five inning starting pitcher who
misses bats and and you take it from there with

(50:32):
the off days and a full rested bullpen in the postseason.
One last thing here is we talk about the Dodgers, Joe,
they might not be done because when they signed Otani,
I was told by a Dodgers source that their next
two targets were Yamamoto, who they did sign, and Josh Hater.
How about if the Dodgers add Josh Hater to this team.

(50:54):
Because I don't know about you, but you know, and
I know Josh Hater is talking about Edwin Diaz's money
twenty million a year times five years. Josh Hater right
now is having a career very analogous to Billy Wagner,
and Billy Wagner pitched for a long time the way
that he did with that extreme attack angle from the
low armslot, high strike zone, high ve low. A lot

(51:15):
of similarities there with Josh Hater. Listen, twenty million dollars
a year, that's what the qualifying offer was this year.
And there's only a handful of to me, pure closers
in the game. I'm like change game changing closers, just
like true aces. There's not thirty of them. Josh Hater
is that kind of guy. And you know this, Joe's

(51:36):
a manager and you didn't have it very often, but
when you have that one ending, lockdown guy that makes
life so easy, everybody just slots into their roles. The
formula is set. You know, you don't have the uncertainty
of when that bullpen phone rings, who's up. Josh Hater
is the last piece on that team. It wouldn't shock
me to see the Dodgers wind up with him. Listen.

(51:59):
I think he's a great fit for Texas. There's some
other teams in the mix here that I'm sure will
make a runned hit him. But I think Josh hater
is a goodbye. If that's what the number is. If
it's Edwin DIA's money, I think that highly of what
a true closer can mean for a team that wants
to win the World Series.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
That's what's going to take. He'll get that from the Dodgers,
Edwin Diaz money. He'll get it. He is that good.
He's that good. You watch it from the other dugout.
It's it's incredibly difficult to swear up left these en rightings.
I mean sometimes even think that the writings it's a
more difficult time for the right than the lefty, at
least the lefty. The ball can come flat across the

(52:36):
strikes on if you if you have the propense in
your ability to hit the high fastball, which some lefties
can get on top of, like Show, Hey, you could
catch up to a guy like him. Possibly, but wow,
I definitely say that being I don't I don't think
that money that edgrew would run away from that money.
I think that they would easily pay for that based

(52:56):
on uh, you know, Show Hayes' willingness to defer this
gives him while so many other options they thought they
didn't even have. Before all this started last October November,
they were probably not even including here in the conversation
because they thought it would not be within their reach
based on that to pay show. But now because of

(53:18):
the contract that he did sign or didn't sign, this
absolutely opens up paid and I don't think that number
is going to be deterred at all.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
I know this that whether they get hater or not,
and you talked about this, shows they're the team this year,
the Dodgers. You're gonna want to watch them play, yep,
you know, all year long, just to see that lineup
and action, to see each time somebody goes to the
mound with wipeout stuff. They're just absolutely a loaded team,
and I think that's great for baseball. It's the fact

(53:47):
that they're in Los Angeles and the rich history of
the Dodger franchise. Yeah, that adds to it as well.
But it's good for baseball to have a super team
like this. Whether they win it all or not, we've
talked about that. No guarantees, but man, I can't wait
to see this team in action. It is good for
Major League Baseball.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
And has Vin Scully. That'd have been awesome.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah, well, Joe, I mean it's another Art's our first
edition of the Book of Joe for twenty twenty four.
Whether it's the year or the Dodgers or not, who knows.
But good to get off the ground here in twenty
twenty four and to take us out. I'm sure you
got something for us to get us out on the
right foot.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
I do. I went to Benny Franklin, how about Ben
back in the day, just to really open up the
new year with new season, and he said, be at
where with your vices, at peace with your neighbors. Now,
let every new year find you a better man.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Ben Franklin, Oh beautiful words of wisdom.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Love it, rock and roll. That's right.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Enjoyed it, Joe. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Thanks Tommy, be well, see you, buddy.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
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