FOX’s Sports PxP Adam Amin Joins Giving National Perspective On The Astros & American League As A Whole
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
A very underrated sports theme for a television network. It's
Baseball Night in America and tonight's on Channel twenty six.
You will see one of the nation's finest broadcasters. Now
he does primarily NFC games because he works for Fox
(00:28):
on the NFL Sunday, but when he ever does a
Texans game, Adam means gonna be with us for like
two hours in the show, Adam, how the hell are.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You very much looking forward to finally doing a Texans
game and getting to sit down with you for two hours?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I know it's cannet way. You are the television voice
of the Chicago Bulls. You are on Baseball Night in
America tonight for the Astros against the Oroz and of
course every Sunday you can see him on Fox NFL Sunday. Adam,
I gotta be honest with you. You're running into a game.
If you saw this game on your schedule back in April,
you're probably think and okay, Astros Oriols might be a
(01:02):
potential ALCS matchup down the road. Orioles have fired everybody,
They've traded off players. They're playing okay since they're terrible
first two months. Meanwhile, the Astros don't score runs anymore,
so kind of a not what your thought was gonna
be matchup when you first got your schedule.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, I didn't think we would run into the Astros
in a week where they've scored what twelve runs and
have given up more than fifty. I did not think
that was gonna be the case. But I also didn't
think this would be an Astros team that would have
Carlos Korea, and I could go back into my twenty
twenty three notes to remember everything I had about him
the last time we saw Korea when he was playing
for the Twins. So it's a very different looking Astros
(01:41):
team that I was expecting. It is a significantly different
Baltimore team that I was expecting. I know, I don't
know what to think about the Orioles, but I still
feel very everybody we run into during our travels who
talk about the Astros, it's the old model of consistency.
And this is one of those rare times that I've
(02:04):
hopped into Houston into a Houston game and thought, this
is not like the Astros I'm used to seeing. So yeah,
in April, this is not what I would have expected
to be seeing but it's got weight to it, right,
This is a game that's got some impact to it
for Houston obviously, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
With the game and a half of late game lead,
especially with Seattle not winning any games as well, So
that's been a good sign. Let me ask you this
from a national perspective, because you do get a chance
to do different call different games. And one of the
complaints from my audience is when an ESPN or a
Apple will come in is that the cheating scandal comes
into play almost every single national broadcast, and there is
(02:38):
a fair amount of resentment for it. Not that the
city Houston, Adam knows what the Astros did, but it's
almost like a situation of how many times are we
going to hear this? And I don't think you wouldever
intentionally do it, but I just think when someone comes
in and doesn't see a team a whole lot, it's
a narrative that comes into play. What is your general
thought now that we are, you know, eight years removed
(02:59):
from that, and does that ever get up in conversations
when you're sitting down at a production meeting saying, hey,
do we bring up correas yesteryear? Did we bring up
the fact that l ZL tube still gets booed everywhere
he goes in plays.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I think that's the reason behind it, is the booing,
because it's impossible not to associate those things, right, And
I think for most audiences, again, we are calling games
for a national audience, which means essentially we're calling them
for both sides. Imagine, if you know, I get to
imagine this because I'm the local guy for a team
(03:31):
in the NBA, as you mentioned, so I hear it
on the rare occasions, and those occasions are rarer and
rarer for the Chicago Bulls to be on national TV.
But I think the occasions where the Bulls are on
national TV, you know, we get tweets Stacey King and
I my partner, who are like, oh, these guys don't
know this about this team, or they're always talking about
the other team or their biased and I'm like, no,
(03:53):
that's Dave Pash. He's a good friend of mine who's
really good at his job and called me two days
ago to ask me about the like he knows what
he's doing, he knows what he's talking about. I think
it's little things that start to connect, and I understand
where a local audience would get frustrated by it. But
if you're calling games for the national side and suddenly
you're hearing fans boo jose L twove, it's impossible not
(04:18):
to mention it because it's coming through on your TV
and if we've learned anything on the national TV side.
I think baseball is an exception to this in a
lot of ways. Not fully, but it is an exception
in a lot of ways. Most sports that we cover nationally,
fans don't know much about the teams. And I want
to believe that fans know so much more than they
(04:40):
ever have, and that's true, but it's only a certain
percentage of fans. Most people that are tuning in and
flipping through their channels and landing on a Fox Baseball
game or a ESPN NBA game or whatever it may be,
whatever the case ends up being a Fox NFL game.
Like we're we're really introducing a lot of things to
fans who are watching this casually. So I think that's
(05:01):
why the natural tendency is to just explain the most
basic concept. But I have been in production meetings and
we covered the astros a couple of years ago in
the playoffs against Minnesota in that series, and I remember
saying like, I don't really feel like we got to
talk about it. It's not going to be a subject.
And I think the only time we mentioned it is
when the Astros were about to clinch the series. I
(05:24):
think it was like the seventh inning or something like that.
It's like, you know, just as kind of a roller
coaster of the last at that point, six or seven years.
I think now like it is further and further away.
But I went to a Toronto White Sox game earlier
this year and fans are still booing George Springer, like
one dude. And it's a light crowd in Chicago, but
(05:45):
one dude is still booing George Springer and you can
hear it throughout the ballpark. So for certain fans it
does still mean something. I don't know how much it means,
how much of the vitriol is real and how much
of it is manufactured. I'd probably lean much further towards
manufactured at this point. It is something that I got
(06:05):
tired of talking about. I can't really imagine a scenario
where we might talk about it tonight other than Correa
and al Tuve getting booed by Baltimore fans when they
show up to hit. That's probably the only connectivity we
would feel. And if it's drastic, yeah, I probably would
have to mention it. But it's not something that I'm
going to go. Let me go into my notes and
(06:26):
deep dive the twenty seventeen. How many times can I
mention Jeff Luno in this like that's not what I
want to do and that's not what I care to do.
But I think that's the general thinking about this stuff.
And I know that was a long answer, map No,
it was.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It was very thoughtful and I think people and I'm
going to talk about autens here directly, do you guys
understand that. I think that makes a lot of sense.
So I just felt like it was need to be asked,
and Adam is so talented and thoughtful that I knew
you'd give it. The responsible answer on that, Adam Iman
Fox Sports. He'll be doing the Baseball Night in the
American Game tonight Astros and the Oriols. You'll see him
on Fox INNFL Sunday. And you're also and I didn't
(07:01):
even know this, you're quite a dj Am. I correct
on this.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I guess your mileage may vary, but yes, I do
perform as DJ in Chicago in various other places.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yet so do they ever go, You're at this club
and you do this and like, wait a minute, I
just saw him call a game against the Bucks two
hours ago.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is that how it turns out your life?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
What?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
What's going on with that?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Well, you know, oddly enough. So for some background, when
I was thirteen, my brother bought me a pair of
turntables and a mixer. And I'm from Chicago, the birthplace
of house music, so it was just something that was
part of your childhood honestly, growing up either in the
city or in the suburbs. And I loved the music
so much that I started DJing, and then that became
(07:44):
a profession of mine up until the point I got
hired at ESPN when I was twenty four. That was
fourteen years ago, so I just stopped doing it. It's
a creative thing that I really enjoyed doing, and I
think house music I've been reading more about this is
like the one of the fastest growing music genres in
the world. Kids that are going to college or in
college now are listening to like remixes of the songs
(08:05):
that I used to listen to when I was a teenager.
And maybe this just makes me sound super old, but
it felt really good that there was some connectivity there.
I got back into DJing a couple of years ago,
and then this year one of the fun events. We
had a Cubs Red Sox game in July for Fox
on a Saturday night in Chicago, and one of my
buddies is a DJ at one of the clubs down
(08:27):
the street I had. He asked me to play a
set after the game, and guess who came along? Aj
Perzinski and Ken Rosenthal, sixty two year old venerable baseball
reporter with a bunch of Emmys and awards on his mantle.
Ken Rosenthal came out to a club in Chicago stand
on stage with me while I DJ during, you know,
after a Cubs game. So that's that's the type of
(08:49):
stuff that once in a while we get to do
and people do kind of look at me off of
me and go, aren't you the didn't you just do
the So we'll see what happens. I'm doing it tomorrow.
We've got I've got Bears chiefs orrow night in Kansas City,
and then I'm DJing at a club in Kansas City tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Are you a better DJ than Kenny Albert?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I think so. I don't know if I want to
necessarily challenge him, but I'd like to believe that I
can do this. Thod I think I think he.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I think he's got six games to call tomorrow. I
didn't want to have time to djay anything the very
talented and that feel.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The reason if he were if he did have time,
he probably would end up being better than me anyway,
because he was just the most versatile dude on the planet.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That's awesome. Adam A meaning with us here from Fox Sports. Uh,
you as a football broadcaster, you get a chance to
visit with teams the day before, you get to low
a little intricacies about not necessarily play calls with strategies.
Do you get that on the baseball side or tours?
It just because it's such a daily grind that you're
not gonna be able to get a whole lot of
(09:49):
that inside dirt that you would potentially get on a
Saturday before a Sunday football game.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Usually it's a little bit more nuanced stuff and it
often just relates to the starting pitcher and it's like
you know, today, we might go in and say, well,
what is Brandon Young? What did Brandon Young do well
against you guys the other day that you know you're
looking to attack, or what's stuck out on Saturday. You know,
that's a question we might ask to Joe. You know,
we might go into Tony Manzelino's office and say, how
(10:14):
do you attack you know, hit her X hit or why.
I think it's it's a little bit less about strategy,
and because because of the day to day grind of it,
and so much happens in terms of variables in the
first now like five innings of a game, and you're
really getting into this a lot faster because it's not
like fifteen years ago even where you'd go, all right, well,
(10:36):
we got our number two pitcher going, so I'm expecting
to throw him for seven innings today or six innings today.
The wheels have to start moving so much earlier that
it's impossible to predict for managers when they're going to
start making moves. I think we ask about tendencies, we
ask about recent successes, we ask about development, and I
(10:56):
think that's a little bit different on the football side,
where we are going in and saying this is the
matchup you're playing Minnesota. You're a defensive coordinator and you're
preparing for Justin Jefferson. And by the way, the answers
for a lot of those defensive coordinators often end up
being the same thing. Well, we've got this coverage for this,
we got this coverage in these down and distances, but
guess what, he beats it anyway. So it's a that's
(11:19):
when you hear the cliched stuff. It's a matter of execution.
We have to execute better basically just meeting. My guy
has to be better than yours. My guy has to
have a better step than yours. He has to think
one step ahead than the other guy, and he's got
to jump around and guess what, fifty percent of the time,
he's probably gonna get beat over the top. Like That's
that's how a lot of the candid coaches in the
NFL will tell you. And I think that's where we lean.
(11:42):
We lean more towards like specific strategy for that day,
whereas the day to day grind of baseball does have
certain things that you can talk about because of the
starting pitchers and some tendencies and maybe who's available and
who's not in a bullpen, and we kind of have
to put our put the puzzle together as the game
goes on.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
In baseball, we're gonna get probably at least four to
five Seinfeld references for Jason Alexander ton on does that
feel fair?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We got to think about how many we can we
can muscle in. Here's the other thing though, too. I'm
watching The Marvelous Missus Masel right now. I don't know
if you've ever seen that show. I am a My
girlfriend turned me on to it. I'm a huge stand
up comedy nerd, so she turned me out of the show,
and I'm like, this is a great show. Jason Alexander
plays a small role in the show. So, like I
(12:27):
keep forgetting the man has ranged. I don't want to
just pigeonhole him into Seinefeld. That's the one thing I
got to keep in mind.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Last question for you live in Chicago. Kyle Tucker is
a former Houston astro. He's been wearing it the last
week or so. What's going on with him on the
North Side right now?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Well, there's a I think I read some potential injury
issues with the course of this last month. He's been
playing through some injury. The offense just hasn't been there
as of late. Yeah, fractured hand. I guess fractured right
hand in June, and he'd been playing through it for
the last month plus, so you can tell that the
offense had kind of tailed off. He'd been great even
(13:03):
when I saw him in July. But I think it's
probably starting to become more and more of a factor.
And listen, the Cubs have hit a skid that many
teams do. Again, the Astros may be a team that
can sympathize right now where your best hitters, who have
had a track record, whether a short or long, of
being relatively consistent and relatively productive, just have hit a slump,
all at the incorrect time and all at right around
(13:25):
the same time. And the guys that are getting on
base aren't getting driven in. And that's been a prolonged
issue now for the better part of a month. And
during this time, look at the Milwaukee Brewers. They've just
bulleted their way in the first place. I know the
Cubs won the last couple of games and what is
a very important series, but the whole talk in Chicago
all year, all year has been got to sign got
(13:47):
to resign Tucker got to resign Tucker, And my general
thought was, I don't know if the Cubs front office
as a track record of actually pulling the trigger and
making the move. Not necessarily that they don't want Kyle Tucker,
but are they willing to pay upwards of around four
to maybe five hundred million dollars for a long term
contract for him. I was never convinced of it. Now,
you're really going to get people with Milwaukee surging the
(14:10):
way they have, the Cubs flirting with more of a
wild card slot than than anything else. And again, anything
had happened in this last stretch forty games or whatever
it is, but I still feel like the Cub's front
office hasn't shown the track record to resign Kyle Tucker.
And my gut feeling at the beginning of the year,
my gut feeling towards the end of this year is
probably going to be the same where I would imagine
Kyle Tucker is going to test the market, not the same,
(14:31):
won't come back to Chicago, but I think he's gonna
end up testing the market.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
All Right, I've kept you too long, but I'll give
I give you the last question on this who is
your gut feel feeling now that you can change your mind,
who's won in the America League. It looks really wide
open right now.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It does. It looks tremendously wide open. And I at
various times this year I've said the Yankees, the Astros,
and the Tigers all have a shot. If the Astros
are healthy in a month. I feel really good about Houston.
I really do. If they have your Don Alvarez, if
they have you know, Jake Myers back, if they get
some reinforcements for their offense. I think this is a
(15:06):
bad slump. I don't panic when it comes to the Astros.
I rarely ever have. I think the Yankees are still
very talented. Same deal. Their reinforcements need to get back.
Judge isn't fully healthy yet dealing with the elbow. Stanton
had been in and out of the lineup for most
of the year. I still feel good about Detroit. I
know the Astros just saw him. I know it was
a rough series, but Detroit hit a skid a few
(15:29):
weeks ago. I think I still leaned mostly towards Detroit
in a big series. I still lean again lean towards Houston.
I got it's really hard to choose. It's really hard
to choose because it's been such a mishmash in the
American League this year. But yeah, I think Detroit and
Houston are the two teams I'm leaning towards.
A very underrated sports theme for a television network. It's
Baseball Night in America and tonight's on Channel twenty six.
You will see one of the nation's finest broadcasters. Now
he does primarily NFC games because he works for Fox
(00:28):
on the NFL Sunday, but when he ever does a
Texans game, Adam means gonna be with us for like
two hours in the show, Adam, how the hell are.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You very much looking forward to finally doing a Texans
game and getting to sit down with you for two hours?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I know it's cannet way. You are the television voice
of the Chicago Bulls. You are on Baseball Night in
America tonight for the Astros against the Oroz and of
course every Sunday you can see him on Fox NFL Sunday. Adam,
I gotta be honest with you. You're running into a game.
If you saw this game on your schedule back in April,
you're probably think and okay, Astros Oriols might be a
(01:02):
potential ALCS matchup down the road. Orioles have fired everybody,
They've traded off players. They're playing okay since they're terrible
first two months. Meanwhile, the Astros don't score runs anymore,
so kind of a not what your thought was gonna
be matchup when you first got your schedule.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, I didn't think we would run into the Astros
in a week where they've scored what twelve runs and
have given up more than fifty. I did not think
that was gonna be the case. But I also didn't
think this would be an Astros team that would have
Carlos Korea, and I could go back into my twenty
twenty three notes to remember everything I had about him
the last time we saw Korea when he was playing
for the Twins. So it's a very different looking Astros
(01:41):
team that I was expecting. It is a significantly different
Baltimore team that I was expecting. I know, I don't
know what to think about the Orioles, but I still
feel very everybody we run into during our travels who
talk about the Astros, it's the old model of consistency.
And this is one of those rare times that I've
(02:04):
hopped into Houston into a Houston game and thought, this
is not like the Astros I'm used to seeing. So yeah,
in April, this is not what I would have expected
to be seeing but it's got weight to it, right,
This is a game that's got some impact to it
for Houston obviously, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
With the game and a half of late game lead,
especially with Seattle not winning any games as well, So
that's been a good sign. Let me ask you this
from a national perspective, because you do get a chance
to do different call different games. And one of the
complaints from my audience is when an ESPN or a
Apple will come in is that the cheating scandal comes
into play almost every single national broadcast, and there is
(02:38):
a fair amount of resentment for it. Not that the
city Houston, Adam knows what the Astros did, but it's
almost like a situation of how many times are we
going to hear this? And I don't think you wouldever
intentionally do it, but I just think when someone comes
in and doesn't see a team a whole lot, it's
a narrative that comes into play. What is your general
thought now that we are, you know, eight years removed
(02:59):
from that, and does that ever get up in conversations
when you're sitting down at a production meeting saying, hey,
do we bring up correas yesteryear? Did we bring up
the fact that l ZL tube still gets booed everywhere
he goes in plays.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I think that's the reason behind it, is the booing,
because it's impossible not to associate those things, right, And
I think for most audiences, again, we are calling games
for a national audience, which means essentially we're calling them
for both sides. Imagine, if you know, I get to
imagine this because I'm the local guy for a team
(03:31):
in the NBA, as you mentioned, so I hear it
on the rare occasions, and those occasions are rarer and
rarer for the Chicago Bulls to be on national TV.
But I think the occasions where the Bulls are on
national TV, you know, we get tweets Stacey King and
I my partner, who are like, oh, these guys don't
know this about this team, or they're always talking about
the other team or their biased and I'm like, no,
(03:53):
that's Dave Pash. He's a good friend of mine who's
really good at his job and called me two days
ago to ask me about the like he knows what
he's doing, he knows what he's talking about. I think
it's little things that start to connect, and I understand
where a local audience would get frustrated by it. But
if you're calling games for the national side and suddenly
you're hearing fans boo jose L twove, it's impossible not
(04:18):
to mention it because it's coming through on your TV
and if we've learned anything on the national TV side.
I think baseball is an exception to this in a
lot of ways. Not fully, but it is an exception
in a lot of ways. Most sports that we cover nationally,
fans don't know much about the teams. And I want
to believe that fans know so much more than they
(04:40):
ever have, and that's true, but it's only a certain
percentage of fans. Most people that are tuning in and
flipping through their channels and landing on a Fox Baseball
game or a ESPN NBA game or whatever it may be,
whatever the case ends up being a Fox NFL game.
Like we're we're really introducing a lot of things to
fans who are watching this casually. So I think that's
(05:01):
why the natural tendency is to just explain the most
basic concept. But I have been in production meetings and
we covered the astros a couple of years ago in
the playoffs against Minnesota in that series, and I remember
saying like, I don't really feel like we got to
talk about it. It's not going to be a subject.
And I think the only time we mentioned it is
when the Astros were about to clinch the series. I
(05:24):
think it was like the seventh inning or something like that.
It's like, you know, just as kind of a roller
coaster of the last at that point, six or seven years.
I think now like it is further and further away.
But I went to a Toronto White Sox game earlier
this year and fans are still booing George Springer, like
one dude. And it's a light crowd in Chicago, but
(05:45):
one dude is still booing George Springer and you can
hear it throughout the ballpark. So for certain fans it
does still mean something. I don't know how much it means,
how much of the vitriol is real and how much
of it is manufactured. I'd probably lean much further towards
manufactured at this point. It is something that I got
(06:05):
tired of talking about. I can't really imagine a scenario
where we might talk about it tonight other than Correa
and al Tuve getting booed by Baltimore fans when they
show up to hit. That's probably the only connectivity we
would feel. And if it's drastic, yeah, I probably would
have to mention it. But it's not something that I'm
going to go. Let me go into my notes and
(06:26):
deep dive the twenty seventeen. How many times can I
mention Jeff Luno in this like that's not what I
want to do and that's not what I care to do.
But I think that's the general thinking about this stuff.
And I know that was a long answer, map No,
it was.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It was very thoughtful and I think people and I'm
going to talk about autens here directly, do you guys
understand that. I think that makes a lot of sense.
So I just felt like it was need to be asked,
and Adam is so talented and thoughtful that I knew
you'd give it. The responsible answer on that, Adam Iman
Fox Sports. He'll be doing the Baseball Night in the
American Game tonight Astros and the Oriols. You'll see him
on Fox INNFL Sunday. And you're also and I didn't
(07:01):
even know this, you're quite a dj Am. I correct
on this.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
I guess your mileage may vary, but yes, I do
perform as DJ in Chicago in various other places.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yet so do they ever go, You're at this club
and you do this and like, wait a minute, I
just saw him call a game against the Bucks two
hours ago.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Is that how it turns out your life?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
What?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
What's going on with that?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Well, you know, oddly enough. So for some background, when
I was thirteen, my brother bought me a pair of
turntables and a mixer. And I'm from Chicago, the birthplace
of house music, so it was just something that was
part of your childhood honestly, growing up either in the
city or in the suburbs. And I loved the music
so much that I started DJing, and then that became
(07:44):
a profession of mine up until the point I got
hired at ESPN when I was twenty four. That was
fourteen years ago, so I just stopped doing it. It's
a creative thing that I really enjoyed doing, and I
think house music I've been reading more about this is
like the one of the fastest growing music genres in
the world. Kids that are going to college or in
college now are listening to like remixes of the songs
(08:05):
that I used to listen to when I was a teenager.
And maybe this just makes me sound super old, but
it felt really good that there was some connectivity there.
I got back into DJing a couple of years ago,
and then this year one of the fun events. We
had a Cubs Red Sox game in July for Fox
on a Saturday night in Chicago, and one of my
buddies is a DJ at one of the clubs down
(08:27):
the street I had. He asked me to play a
set after the game, and guess who came along? Aj
Perzinski and Ken Rosenthal, sixty two year old venerable baseball
reporter with a bunch of Emmys and awards on his mantle.
Ken Rosenthal came out to a club in Chicago stand
on stage with me while I DJ during, you know,
after a Cubs game. So that's that's the type of
(08:49):
stuff that once in a while we get to do
and people do kind of look at me off of
me and go, aren't you the didn't you just do
the So we'll see what happens. I'm doing it tomorrow.
We've got I've got Bears chiefs orrow night in Kansas City,
and then I'm DJing at a club in Kansas City tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Are you a better DJ than Kenny Albert?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I think so. I don't know if I want to
necessarily challenge him, but I'd like to believe that I
can do this. Thod I think I think he.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I think he's got six games to call tomorrow. I
didn't want to have time to djay anything the very
talented and that feel.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The reason if he were if he did have time,
he probably would end up being better than me anyway,
because he was just the most versatile dude on the planet.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That's awesome. Adam A meaning with us here from Fox Sports. Uh,
you as a football broadcaster, you get a chance to
visit with teams the day before, you get to low
a little intricacies about not necessarily play calls with strategies.
Do you get that on the baseball side or tours?
It just because it's such a daily grind that you're
not gonna be able to get a whole lot of
(09:49):
that inside dirt that you would potentially get on a
Saturday before a Sunday football game.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Usually it's a little bit more nuanced stuff and it
often just relates to the starting pitcher and it's like
you know, today, we might go in and say, well,
what is Brandon Young? What did Brandon Young do well
against you guys the other day that you know you're
looking to attack, or what's stuck out on Saturday. You know,
that's a question we might ask to Joe. You know,
we might go into Tony Manzelino's office and say, how
(10:14):
do you attack you know, hit her X hit or why.
I think it's it's a little bit less about strategy,
and because because of the day to day grind of it,
and so much happens in terms of variables in the
first now like five innings of a game, and you're
really getting into this a lot faster because it's not
like fifteen years ago even where you'd go, all right, well,
(10:36):
we got our number two pitcher going, so I'm expecting
to throw him for seven innings today or six innings today.
The wheels have to start moving so much earlier that
it's impossible to predict for managers when they're going to
start making moves. I think we ask about tendencies, we
ask about recent successes, we ask about development, and I
(10:56):
think that's a little bit different on the football side,
where we are going in and saying this is the
matchup you're playing Minnesota. You're a defensive coordinator and you're
preparing for Justin Jefferson. And by the way, the answers
for a lot of those defensive coordinators often end up
being the same thing. Well, we've got this coverage for this,
we got this coverage in these down and distances, but
guess what, he beats it anyway. So it's a that's
(11:19):
when you hear the cliched stuff. It's a matter of execution.
We have to execute better basically just meeting. My guy
has to be better than yours. My guy has to
have a better step than yours. He has to think
one step ahead than the other guy, and he's got
to jump around and guess what, fifty percent of the time,
he's probably gonna get beat over the top. Like That's
that's how a lot of the candid coaches in the
NFL will tell you. And I think that's where we lean.
(11:42):
We lean more towards like specific strategy for that day,
whereas the day to day grind of baseball does have
certain things that you can talk about because of the
starting pitchers and some tendencies and maybe who's available and
who's not in a bullpen, and we kind of have
to put our put the puzzle together as the game
goes on.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
In baseball, we're gonna get probably at least four to
five Seinfeld references for Jason Alexander ton on does that
feel fair?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We got to think about how many we can we
can muscle in. Here's the other thing though, too. I'm
watching The Marvelous Missus Masel right now. I don't know
if you've ever seen that show. I am a My
girlfriend turned me on to it. I'm a huge stand
up comedy nerd, so she turned me out of the show,
and I'm like, this is a great show. Jason Alexander
plays a small role in the show. So, like I
(12:27):
keep forgetting the man has ranged. I don't want to
just pigeonhole him into Seinefeld. That's the one thing I
got to keep in mind.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Last question for you live in Chicago. Kyle Tucker is
a former Houston astro. He's been wearing it the last
week or so. What's going on with him on the
North Side right now?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Well, there's a I think I read some potential injury
issues with the course of this last month. He's been
playing through some injury. The offense just hasn't been there
as of late. Yeah, fractured hand. I guess fractured right
hand in June, and he'd been playing through it for
the last month plus, so you can tell that the
offense had kind of tailed off. He'd been great even
(13:03):
when I saw him in July. But I think it's
probably starting to become more and more of a factor.
And listen, the Cubs have hit a skid that many
teams do. Again, the Astros may be a team that
can sympathize right now where your best hitters, who have
had a track record, whether a short or long, of
being relatively consistent and relatively productive, just have hit a slump,
all at the incorrect time and all at right around
(13:25):
the same time. And the guys that are getting on
base aren't getting driven in. And that's been a prolonged
issue now for the better part of a month. And
during this time, look at the Milwaukee Brewers. They've just
bulleted their way in the first place. I know the
Cubs won the last couple of games and what is
a very important series, but the whole talk in Chicago
all year, all year has been got to sign got
(13:47):
to resign Tucker got to resign Tucker, And my general
thought was, I don't know if the Cubs front office
as a track record of actually pulling the trigger and
making the move. Not necessarily that they don't want Kyle Tucker,
but are they willing to pay upwards of around four
to maybe five hundred million dollars for a long term
contract for him. I was never convinced of it. Now,
you're really going to get people with Milwaukee surging the
(14:10):
way they have, the Cubs flirting with more of a
wild card slot than than anything else. And again, anything
had happened in this last stretch forty games or whatever
it is, but I still feel like the Cub's front
office hasn't shown the track record to resign Kyle Tucker.
And my gut feeling at the beginning of the year,
my gut feeling towards the end of this year is
probably going to be the same where I would imagine
Kyle Tucker is going to test the market, not the same,
(14:31):
won't come back to Chicago, but I think he's gonna
end up testing the market.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
All Right, I've kept you too long, but I'll give
I give you the last question on this who is
your gut feel feeling now that you can change your mind,
who's won in the America League. It looks really wide
open right now.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It does. It looks tremendously wide open. And I at
various times this year I've said the Yankees, the Astros,
and the Tigers all have a shot. If the Astros
are healthy in a month. I feel really good about Houston.
I really do. If they have your Don Alvarez, if
they have you know, Jake Myers back, if they get
some reinforcements for their offense. I think this is a
(15:06):
bad slump. I don't panic when it comes to the Astros.
I rarely ever have. I think the Yankees are still
very talented. Same deal. Their reinforcements need to get back.
Judge isn't fully healthy yet dealing with the elbow. Stanton
had been in and out of the lineup for most
of the year. I still feel good about Detroit. I
know the Astros just saw him. I know it was
a rough series, but Detroit hit a skid a few
(15:29):
weeks ago. I think I still leaned mostly towards Detroit
in a big series. I still lean again lean towards Houston.
I got it's really hard to choose. It's really hard
to choose because it's been such a mishmash in the
American League this year. But yeah, I think Detroit and
Houston are the two teams I'm leaning towards.
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.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.