Episode 376 - TALES FROM THE EAST & WEST COAST

In this episode of Batflips and Nerds, Russell, John and Ben discuss various topics in baseball, including the ongoing situation with Raphael Devers and the Boston Red Sox, the surprising revelation that the Pope is a Chicago White Sox fan, and the recent firing of Rockies manager Bud Black. They also share their experiences watching baseball on the West Coast, the excitement of college baseball, and the latest player injuries. The episode concludes with a segment on the highs and lows of the week in baseball, and the controversial reinstatement of Pete Rose.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Backflips and Nerds, the Baseball podcast
with the British Twist. I am your host this evening,
Russell Lisam and I am delighted to be back in
the UK and talking to my baseball friends about baseball. Firstly,
we have the man who has some serious opinions about
John Henry and others.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
So John, how are we doing?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I'm all right, I think yeah, you're teasing. I think
that's called the segment of the podcast. Let's see if
it lives up to billing.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
And also with John today, as the viewers on YouTube,
we'll see as we have the man who can give
us all of the fields for the world of Rocky fandom,
Ben Carter, how are you doing today, man?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm good.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yeah. But last time we recorded, I said the Rockies
a hit rock bottom and the very next night they
lost twenty one nil and then sacked two very important
people on their team. So I'm not going to do
anything like that this time because they can always get worse.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Is that way You've come in Tiger's full kit?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Correct?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Hope you're hoping to divert the Whodo onto a different franchise.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
YouTube viewers are going to be confused. It's Royals last week,
Tigers this week. Just a big AL Central.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Fan me, now, yeah, and the one who supports the
Al Central team is wearing a bunch of angels.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Geary picked up on the West Coast.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So yeah, before we get into the musings of my
trip that I've just been on in California for three weeks,
I think we have to talk through a couple of
key topics, which I've hinted on two of them already,
but I think we do have to start with the
latest I think episode of the telenovela that is Raphael

(01:45):
Devers and the Boston Red Sox.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Like this is just it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Like we we chatted at the start of the season,
how like, how do you not have a conversation with
your player before that player then says something out in
public and be like, hey, don't say this, And we thought, well,
maybe they will have learned from it. Well, I guess
the answer is they haven't. We've had the wonders of
Raffie Devers basically telling the whole entire public that he
does not want to play for a space. I think
there was a definite level of mistranslation. Again, as we've

(02:13):
had with some of this before from him stayings in Spanish,
just not saying he doesn't want to do it, but
the fact that he doesn't know how to do it
and it's a difficult thing to do. But John, who
is most in the wrong here devers Breslo. John Henry like,
how much should a player bend for a team?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, I think first things first is I'm going to
doff my cap for the culturally appropriate reference they're telling novella,
very very very nice.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's a really good barbecue boys, So that's fine.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
I did you. Oh well, there you go, Jake and
Jordan always splicing the trail for us. As Ever, it's
a good question, Rouss. I don't really think I have
a straight answer to it. Unfortunately, I have been I'll
be honest, quite surprised how much blowback there's been on
Devas in the Boston Red Sox fan base. I mean, look,

(03:06):
this is a fan base that likes to beat people
up unnecessarily, so you know that point. Notwithstanding, I feel
genuinely quite sorry for him, like I think in the summer,
in the off season, sorry, he was treated really poorly.
I think the decision to prioritize Alex Bregman for the

(03:29):
good of the team was probably the right one in
baseball terms. But as you said in your intro, there's
no way that he should have been hung out to
dry as the leader of the team, the face of
the franchise, and asked questions about how he felt about
that possibility, he should have been guarded away from it,
and he just wasn't. And obviously there are really difficult

(03:51):
circumstances with Tristan Cossus. It's difficult. It's the worst possible
injury that could happen to the Red Sox. You know,
they have two of the best prospects in baseball ready
to play, and they can play basically every single position
apart from that one. Well, they could play that position,
but why would you want them to be an entire,
entire waste of their talent. It's the worst possible injury
for the Red Sox, and there is an obvious solution.

(04:13):
Like Raffield Evers is a decent third baseman, he's not
fielding at all. He could fill in that position. But
I think it's totally understandable on a purely human level
that he is rightly, righteously angry and feels like he's
been totally jerked about. I don't know Craig Breslo personally.

(04:34):
He seems like he's a smart guy, a very good
baseball person, a good baseball player, and a great baseball mind.
But he doesn't seem to have a great deal of
emotional IQ and I think to approach Devers given the
circumstances and sort of expect him to toe the line

(04:55):
in a way that fit for the team immediately off
the bat was just a lacking an entire lack of
emotion like you. Contrast that to how Alex Koorra approached it,
and he basically said right away, I don't think he's
going to play first base. He completely protected his player.
I just feel really sorry for him now. I do
understand why John Henry went to Kansas City and said,

(05:17):
pull your finger out. I'm paying you thirty million dollars
a year to do this. You will be doing this
for the good of the team. I also find the
reporting of that really stranger. That he's gone there to
read the riot Act. I would imagine he's probably gone
out there to put an arm around him and try
and talk him around to it. I think he probably
will do it eventually. I just think it's been managed

(05:42):
really poorly, primarily by Craig Breslo. And what he said
was right, he's never done it before. It's not the
optimal solution. So yeah, it could have been handled a
hell of a lot better. And I find myself not
for the first time disappointed in the Boston fan base
that they have not been able to recognize first and

(06:03):
foremost that although these guys are athletes, although they're paid
a hell of a lot of money and they should
suck things up, I'm not saying that's not a tree point,
they are human beings, and that human being has been
treated pretty poorly for the last six months by the
team he's contracted to. So yeah, I think I think
he deserves a bit of a break.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
I think from my point of view, and I'll come
to you next Ben quickly, is that we saw him
then have the worst start to the season that is
probably imaginable, and everybody was just like, oh, you see, look,
he's not even going to give it anything to the team.
Since what eight games into the season, he's probably been
the second best player in baseball. He's been on an
absolute tear, and that seems to have earned him nothing

(06:47):
with with the fandom, which I can't understand. Like Ben,
if this was your franchise player of this was Chris
Bryant and he wasn't performing A wait, that is the truth,
how would you feel all?

Speaker 4 (07:03):
I think it's a very strange way to treat your
franchise player first and foremost, Like I get wanting to
fill a gap at first base, and the results have
been a very unique position. Where as John said, they
aren't short of hitting talent, they are just short of
hitting talent that can play first base right now, which
is not a position made teams find themselves in. But
usually the first person you are protecting our situation is
your mega superstar on the big contract. He wouldn't be

(07:26):
the one that you'd be like, right, you shove over
and play that position now because we need you to.
And I have a lot of sympathy for Devors for
the reasons that John outlined, Like he was jerked around
a bit in spring training where I don't think he
gave a great account for himself. He sucked it up
play DH as you say, has now been their best
player and one of the best hitters in baseball for
the last month and now is being sort of jerked
around a little bit again. So yeah, look I'm inclined

(07:49):
to take his side more than the Red Sox side.
Do I think he should have handled it differently, Yes,
of course, like airing us out in public in a
pretty explosive press conference not the best way to go
about it. But ultimately, it is difficult to play first base,
and we've seen guys try and do it. I Meank
Carle Shauber with the Red Sox right was an absolute
disaster over there. And look, Devers is a better defender

(08:10):
than Shauber ever has been. I'm sure he do a
better job at first base. You can see why he'd
want to protect himself a little bit from being lambasted
by fans in the media when he turns out not
to be a gold glove first base first time paying
the position. So ultimately I think he will give it
a go.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, it's bloody.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Exactly exactly, and I think he will give it a go,
and I think he'll probably end up perfectly serviceable there.
But the whole thing, presumably is that's a pretty nasty
taste in his mouth, and it feels like it has
the potential to spiral in a bad way for the team.
So yeah, we'll see. It's a strange drama.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
He's got ten years left on his contract, and after
five games of the season, we were all laughing and saying,
oh my goodness, that's a terrible contract. But now we're
kind of laughing at it for a completely different reason
because Russell rightly points out if it wasn't for our
and judge, he'd be the best hitter in baseball nor
injudges as you just go last week, arguably the best
righthanded of all time. He's been ridiculous since like eight

(09:06):
gomes into the season. His ops is like almost a thousand.
It's absolutely stupid. His ops last week was about eighteen
hundred in a week. And he's doing this whilst all
this guff is going on. Just pissed that guy off. Yeah,
put some love on that guy's name right now, please.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, So I think we've got I got two quick
questions which.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
I want to answer, ask you both about this.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
When do we think the redfield devis first plays first
base for the Boston Red Sox.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
I think it's probably going to be in June. I
think he's probably working out with them now quite quietly
behind the scenes. They're on the road at the moment,
so it's a little bit more difficult to do it with,
you know, outside of the view of Pete Pete Abraham
and his pals in the press box. But I wouldn't
be surprised if he's he's already taking reps with that

(09:57):
met Yeah. I mean, he shifted to dh immediately after
that whole fury broke out, didn't he. I'd set the
over under around June first, and honestly, I wouldn't surprise
me if, like next week we start seeing him taking
a few reps there.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
So yeah, I think he does come around eventually, but
what a weird way of getting there when they do.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And the one that I think is funnier. Who will
be a Boston Red Sox part or the Organization for
Longer Raffiae Evers, Craig Breslo or John Henry.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
I mean, that's a really good question. I think in
this order it'll be John Henry, Raffie Devers, and Craig Breslow,
to be honest. And we're also overlooking the real victim
of this scenario, which is none of those three. But
it's mass attacker. Yes, he's the real victim.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
He's taken a lot of black hathn't.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
He Because that guy, that guy really is the odd
man out if we're talking about people being the odd
man out, and he must have seen he must be
the only person who was happy to see Tristan Cossis
go down. It's my time. Wrong, you're staying on the
phantom il Son say you whenever?

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Okay, So talking about something else that's probably quite phantom
to some of us. The pope is a Chicago White
Sox fan. This is something that we all seemingly found
out over the weekend. A little bit towards the end
of last week, there was some initial rumors that he
was a Cubs fan, and then it came out that
he was a Chicago White Sox fan, and then beyond that,

(11:26):
there's evidence of him going to White Sox games, even
going to the World Series like in two thousand and five.
All of this to me is like, it's kind of
hilarious that like we now live in an age that
like anybody becomes pope and you can go back and
be like, what do they do for the last twenty years, Like,
oh my god, they're a White Sox fan. This is
the most amazing thing in the world. Have you seen

(11:48):
the tops Now card for the Pope? So they released
the tops now card, which is what Tops seemingly have
done to become even more ridiculous with cards than possible.
Whoever created the tops Now I need to like tip
the cap like you guys. The person is an absolute genius,
just being like something happened to megacard about it. People
will buy a ton of them because it's only available

(12:08):
for three days. The Pope one has sold over one
hundred and thirty thousand copies. It is basically the best
selling tops Now card of this year, and it's the
highest selling tops Now card for a non sport ever.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Is it the Pope at the World Series or is
it you know on on the Balcony St Peter's him
on the balcony in the side by the side by
side of him, him and the miter and him in
the in the White.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Sox probably come out sooner we might have been able
to get that, But I think then being on the
on like the on on on the kind of the
money when it came out, they went straight away with
that card and I'm just like to me, it's just
everything that's American like thrown together like into one thing.
It's like something that's overly religious. It's baseball. It's not

(12:58):
only just baseball fandom, it's baseball cards. I just can't
think of anything that is just more encapsulates America in
like one thing than a Pope baseball card.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
It's also very Chicago as well, right, Yeah, there this
Catholic guy who's from the South Side who's a White
Sox fan because he's and also like if you read
anything about him, he's like notoriously for the little guy, right,
he was a bishop in Peru and stuff like, of
course he's a white Sox fan. Although my favorite thing
that I saw about this in that sort of twelve

(13:29):
fourteen hour inter regnan where we thought he was a
Cubs fan, someone had mocked up the white smoke with
the blue w on it, which was I was genuinely
laughed out loud at that. So when I found out
it was a White Sox song, like, oh no, that
was such a good joke. Yea fly the w from
the chimney of the of the Sistine Chapel. But yeah,

(13:51):
very very lovely slice of Americana. And yeah, well the
White Sox needs something, don't they.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
We've got to get the Pope into that is the
leaked City Connect jersey that looks just like a Bulls jersey,
like that thing that tops card is going triple platinum
when we can get the Pope mocked up in that jersey.
But yeah, I mean it's It was a great day
to be on well just you know, social media generally,
but certainly baseball social media when we discovered that the
Pope is not only from Chicago but an avid baseball fan, seemingly,

(14:19):
although for which team. Yeah, I was unclear for a while. Yeah, delicious,
And I think it was assessed with as barbecue boys
who pointed out the clip of him out the World Series.
Someone found it. It was two outs in the ninth inning.
So some poor soul watched three and a half hours
of a twenty year old World Series game hoping I'd
be on hope to see the Pope at some point
in it. And in the final up that of the game,

(14:39):
his lid pops up on screen. That must have been
a euphoric moment when you're like.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
There he is, I've got him. There he is total
Leo the fourteenth as I live.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
I think the one thing that this hopefully cement is
that I think that we'll go to have a more
international baseball in Europe. Think we're going to definitely now
have the White Sox versus the Cubs having an international
series with the Pope throwing out the first ball somewhere
in in Rome. I think that like MLB will be
all on that if they can. Got to kind of

(15:11):
work out that SEO as best.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
As you can, getting sent Peter Square set up for that.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, but Dingers into the basilica or whatever and just
like damaging like one hundred thousand year or like a
two thousand year old architecture.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
I think it's a.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Some of fun. Robert Harris, I've got an idea for
Conclave too. I'm city.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
I can't believe Vatcan City is getting a baseball team
before roy Utah.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
This is outrageous, okaylight sightly different denomination that Ben. That's
true big rivalry actually.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
So the other thing that I alluded to in our
opening was the potentially expected, if not then still surprising
firing of the Rockies manager.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Ben.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
I think we have to go to you first. Was
this unexpected? Was this expected. Did we think that, like,
because there was only a season left, he was probably
gonna survive the entire time period.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
This was pointless, is what it was. I get it
because like they had to do something. You know, the
Pirates went and fired Derek Shelton. As we discussed, they
were the first to move. And I guess when you're
on pace to be the worst team in history and
you lose a game twenty one nil, you kind of
have to do something. I don't think Bud Black is
at fault here. I think he's a pretty good manager.

(16:36):
I think he'll get a job somewhere else, maybe not
as a manager, but certainly he's well respected within the league,
and I think the team liked him. But you do
have to do something right. I don't quite know how
Bill Schmidt as GM has kept his job. I guess
he's not been there that long. But this is clearly
an issue of roster building, right. This is not you know,
on field decision making. It's letting the Rockies down here.
You know, I have many ballpen moves poor Buddy Black

(16:58):
or line that moves he could make, and again he's
made some questionable ones. Certainly, you are the lineup, but like,
this is a roster building problem. So this is yeah,
shoffing the deck chairs on the Titanic. This won't make
any difference really in the outcome of this season for
the Rockies. But I also get optically for fans who
traveled to the game every every night and try to
cheer for this team, you do have to do something
and that is probably the easiest leaver to Paul right,

(17:19):
is going to the manager bring someone else in. We're
not happy with the level of baseball we've seen so
far this season. This doesn't represent us as a franchise.
We want to be better. It's not gonna change anything,
but at least it shows you're trying to do something
in a sort of superficial way.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Has anyone read the piece that Jakement's right second mention
for Jakements in this podcast about how the Rockies are
it's well worth. There's a good one in the Athletics
this week as well. Yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely ludicrous.
Like the paragraph that blew my mind the most is
like the list of how long the tenure is of

(17:57):
all of the senior executives. Yeah that I can't remember
exactly which one of them. But there's one of them
who's been there since the founding of the franchise, who's
like a VP of baseball ops. Schmid has been there
since nineteen ninety nine, so you know, you could say
he's not been the GM for that long. He has
been the gym for four years, right, and the team

(18:17):
has got worse in every single one of those four years.
But he's been there since nineteen ninety nine. Yeah. The
fundamental point here is that, as a load of people
have said before, other people have said it better than us.
There's a brilliant David Roth tweet about this. It's about
five years old, and it's still entirely relevant. They're not
actually trying to build a baseball team. They're just having
a nice time with their friends. That is literally what

(18:39):
they're doing.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Yeah, vibes, and isn't it a nice ballpark? And shall
we watch a game? Oh? We lost so well?

Speaker 3 (18:47):
I mean beyond I mean yeah, you're right.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
The tenure of some of the guys there, it's unbelievable, Like,
why does the same thing keep happening to us? We
should keep those guys in their jobs store for other
twenty years and see if things change. Same with I
mean Dick one for his son is currently the head
of I think it's pro scouting, like unbelievable. And I
read an article about how you know, it's not like
you just got given the job, but come on, the

(19:10):
owner's son having such an important baseball position.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's not how good franchises are run.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
And yeah, it's unbelievable that there hasn't been more wide
scale change in the history of this franchise given a futility.
But that is just the Rockies, right, and I don't
see it changing anytime soon. And part of the thing,
you know, I think, but Black was only the fifth
or sick manager in history. They don't tend to make
big changes, so this is quite a big change for them.
But like, at some point just tear it all down

(19:38):
right and restart. What you're doing isn't working. But I
have no faith in ownership to actually do that at
any point. So we'll see where this goes from here.
I think it just peters out and goes nowhere.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Really.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, the other amazing thing in Jake's piece is that
they have like no proprietary pitch modeling at all, Like
they have no model for what pitches are going to
work in their park. Who's got good stif off that
might work and they are probably the team that needed
the most. There have it. Never mind firing Bud Black
employee like Enosyrus or something, do that.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
I think the thing to me is like I wonder
if someone basically tried to do it, decided basically that
it's basically a possible, So why bother and let's just
have fun like.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Everyone everyone's everyone's still turning up having a lovely time,
sucking down on a blue moon. Keep it going.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
There's got to be a mass nerd somewhere who sees
it as a really cool challenge and wants to at
least try something different rather than like, let's just give
Carl Friedland a ten year extension and hope that works.
I mean, like I realized it's not a great gig,
But there's got to be someone out there who can
try something that you know involves using data or analysis
of some kind, rather than that man got a base hit, yes, Soday,

(20:51):
let's give him a start again.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
It ain't broke, don't fix it.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
I mean, it's broke.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
It's so like John said that having fun.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, who are we to young? His young yeah, quite okay,
So those are our hot topics.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
As I briefly mentioned at the start of this podcast,
I have been in California for three weeks and I
watched a few games of baseball, so I have some
West Coast wisdom that I wanted to pass on to
you and Ben and John to see what their thoughts on.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
From what I've seen.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Part one is a fairly simple one, which is just
if you get the chance, go watch college baseball.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Like it was.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
This is not something I anticipated I was going to do.
I bought tickets to go watch Major League baseball, but
my partner was like, oh, well, while we're there, like
can Parley, which is the team that the university that
she went to, we're playing in UC Santa Barbara.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
When we were right next to Santa Barbara.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
So for a ticket that was less than ten dollars,
we went to watch a college baseball game. There's like,
I don't know, two hundred, maybe five hundred people in
the stadium, all enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon to
just watch a game of baseball, which, if I'm on it,
these are two reasonable D one teams. There's not much
like the quality isn't how much lower than what do

(22:14):
you want at a major league level? Like, it's actually
like a really entertaining game to watch, and it's just
so much fun, like to be part of that, to
see have the casual conversations with people around, to be like, oh,
what you're from, like the UK, like amazing, like what
are you doing here?

Speaker 2 (22:30):
It was honestly, it was so much fun.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
And I think kind of I've wanted to get to
like minor league games before, but like college has always
just been a bit of baseball that I've never really
kind of put my attention to, just because I'm one.
There's just even more than there is of like baseball.
It's like so much more to kind of like you
dip your toe in. It's even scary than the concept
of dipping your toe into like major league baseball.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
But it was such fun to watch like a college game. Great,
I'd really love to do it. I mean, I think
it's on my baseball book at list to go to Oberha.
I mean that's obviously the big Daddy, But yeah, that's
a really good tip. And it sounds like I have
been to minor league games. I've been to a couple
of minor league parks, and it sounds like a similar experience.
Like when you're walking around with this accent, people are

(23:14):
just like, the hell's this guy doing? Everyone wants to
talk to you, don't like Yeah, so strange.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I walked in and I was like, you've got like
a just a ticket like and I was like, well,
where can I sit? It's their areas that I can't
sit or not sit. And I woke to the security
guard to ask you where I could sit, and it goes, well,
as long as you don't sit with the opposition fans
over there, everything will be okay. So straight away off
the security guard.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
That is where I want to sit.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
But yeah, because there's not many people there, you can
hear everything. Like you can hear all of the players cheering,
what's going on. You could clearly hear when some of
the coaches went out and had discussions with the umpires
what was going on. Hey, in college baseball, there is
umpire reviews. So in D one college baseball, so there

(24:06):
was a couple of reviews where like the the umpire
has to come out and then basically shout to basically
everybody who's watching what happened. He has a Mic, but
it doesn't really work that well. So he's just shouting
as loud as he possibly can to basically tell everybody
what the result of the replay was. And there was
a couple of plays overturned and it was like big
cheers as like as he was kind of walking up
to say what he was saying, some people started like

(24:27):
stamping on the ground like it was like a freaking
like seeing like Hawkeye in a tennis match. It was
just like utterly ridiculous fun. So, yeah, I really do
recommend it. There is so many college and there is
a lot of D one college teams out there. You'll
be surprised basically how easy during the summer it would
be to kind of catch a game.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
I'd love to go go catch one. Yeah, similar to John.
The only story I was going to add to this
is about a month old now. But friend of the show,
Michael Claire, I'm sure you guys read his amazing article
about Yashida University Siva University, Big Apartment playing Laming college
to two teams without the longest losing streaks in college baseball.
Went head to ahead and obviously in a double head

(25:06):
and ended up splitting, but It's an amazing story all
these fans who were going along to see history knowing
one of the teams had to win. I think one
was a ninety nine game using Street the other was
a bit shorter than that. But yeah, that was really fun.
Obviously a much lower level than d one, but a
really fun story about like like that they take this
really seriously. They just happened to be the worst team
to ever play, So that was that was a fun story.

(25:27):
But it's just they made the atmosphere seemed fun there
and it sounds like your experience was. It was also
pretty fun cool.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
My second talking point was I was after watching two
games live back to back between I watched The Angels
versus the Pirates and then I watched the Dodgers versus
the Pirates, and I was thinking about like how people
viewed baseball. Like in the past, they would have basically
only been able to kind of like see games, and
their opinions on players would be based on basically what

(25:53):
they saw. They might have read some articles and seen
other things. But the two games that I watched, the
players that the players who were outstanding in those games
were not really players who are outstanding, and it really
got me thinking, like, have you when you've gone and
watched a game, who are the players that if you
had no knowledge going into the game, you would have
come out basically said this guy is a superstar because

(26:16):
for Game one, for me, it was a Neil Cruz
and he's a good player, but like, he's not a superstar.
In Game two was Andy Parteres, Like I watched Schemes
pitch against Yamamoto and nobody in that top one of
that Dodger lineup got it hit par Has went three
for three, and it was like you were just like, Yeah,
this guy's obviously like much better than some of these

(26:38):
other guys. They're just hitting pop ups all the time,
Like why is he about nine? Like so I wondered,
like for you guys, and I would love for if
we can will push this out to listeners if they've
got their own opinions of their own based on it.
I think if I probably asked my sister, she'd probably
say they Degorious is one of the best players of
all time. From watching the from the London series, like
the first time round, I've.

Speaker 4 (26:57):
Got one from the first game I ever saw live,
which in San Francisco, it was Giants Mets with my
family and I dragged them along to see it. And
here's a good remember some guy's name Marlon Bird I
think hit a home run and had like four RBI
for the Mets, the only home run of the game.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
He was the standout player on that day.

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Obviously like a decent player, but very much a journeyman,
especially at that stage of his career. So yeah, that
was one where everyone was like, wow, oh by found it,
Like wow, that guy's really good, and I was, uh,
not really, but yeah, like you said that, that's a
beauty of baseball. And it works the other way too,
right where you can go Stidger Stadium, hear all about
the show here Tani guy watching him go over four
with three k's and think like, what were you talking about?

(27:35):
Like he was rubbish. That's both, Yeah. That the great
and the terrible aspect of it, I suppose is that
on any given day, anyone can kind of do anything.
So so yeah, I put forward Marlon byrd is my suggestion.
But I do think that's, like you say, part of
the beauty of watching the games live is you get
a perspective on these guys are all really good and
actually it takes a whole season to figure out the

(27:57):
elite from the average.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
So I've actually got like two or three that sprung
to mind right away, and I'll just touch on them
all quite quickly. It's like Ian Happ at the London
Series just then, he hit like three home runs in
his face of two days. So like, yeah, I if
you were at that series and that was the first
live baseball that you ever saw, you probably still think
that Ian Happ is the best player in baseball. He

(28:21):
was brilliant that weekend. It was in the middle of
a hot streak for him. Then I saw hundre and
Reu pitch for the Dodgers against the Giants again in
San Francisco in the very last game of a regular
season about six years ago. It was that season when
he was really good a right, So like he was
very good at the time, but he was unhittable, like unhittable.

(28:45):
It was just like that was before he got the
contract with the Blue Jays. So yeah, if you were
a novice baseball fan, you'd be like, yeah, hundred Reeu
is the greatest pitch of all time. But my personal
favorite one. I've talked about this on the podcast a
couple of times. Is I went to the first game
where Chris Sale pitched at one hundred miles an hour.
So if you weren't coming away thinking Chris Sale is very,

(29:07):
very good at baseball from that game, then then then
you there was something quite wrong with you. But Chris
Sale lost that game one zero, and the guy pitched
on the other side who pitched eight shutout innings was
Dylan Covey, who owns a MLB e r of over eight.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
So there you go, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
I think like the when I went to San Francisco
with Meta, I took a load of people to watch
a game for the first time in load load of
Brits and watching an acty barn stormer of a game
between the Mets and the Giants, and John Petterson hit
three home runs and they were all coming out going
like Jock, Jock, Jock, just load tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
He's gonna go over four with four k's.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Thaus.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Also, he was the fielder like front of where we
were seeing as well, so like the fans will loving
him as he was coming back out, and then obviously
like everybody's getting involved. It's just it's just the wonders
of like actually watching games live. Really obviously it's a
very simple to tell people. Please go go do it.
It might make a massive difference. I'm looking forward to seeing,
especially what happens to Jed when he goes to Detroit

(30:18):
in I think it's only a couple of weeks time now,
so to see what his thoughts when he finally comes back,
whether it'll be as a verbally say, persuasive in person
as he is, or Twitter he's.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Going to get. It's going to be like, you know,
have you buyers in person? Particularly in this little purple
patch the grind man's having.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
I can kind of understand watching baseball live, Like why
for such a long time the sport probably overvalued power
and speed, right, because when you're watching a game, those
are the two immediately noticeable things. It's like that man
just hit a ball a long way, Well, that man's fast,
look at him run. Whereas like drawing a walk, having
a great eye other things like that. It's kind of
boring when you're sat in the ballpark, right, You're not
going to go home being like did you see that

(31:04):
eight pitch ut back? Or he draw a walk that
was amazing whereas you are going to say that guy,
you got to second and stole third and then came
home on a shallow fly ball.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
That was really cool.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
So I feel like that does feed into our internal
biases around baseball, just things that look cool versus like
well actually provides value to the team, not to get
too nerly with it.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
I think that's perfect.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
My next thing that I noticed, and I didn't know
this going in before, and I thought I planned for it,
Dodger's parking is an absolute fucking joke. Like I don't
think I've come across something more utterly ridiculous in my life.
We were like a twenty five minute drive away from
the stadium. We planned to leave two hours before the

(31:43):
game because we knew that the traffic was going to
be bad because it's LA and I don't know if
any of you have ever driven in LA, but they
are absolute nutters, like some of the most ludicrous driving
I've ever seen in my entire life. And we knew
the journey was not twenty five minutes, it was going
to be like an hour because the rush hour.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Got there, got to.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
The field actually like forty minutes before the game. But
when you get to Dodge a stadium. When you get
into like the car park, you then have to kind
of go up the hill. It's very very very slowly
because there's like five lanes of cars like all trying
to gop the hills the oame time, and then when
you're in the car park, you get sent on this
really long, securitous route before you finally actually park your car.
So we literally left to do a twenty five minute

(32:25):
journey two hours before the game, and we got into
the stadium basically just after first pitch. It was so
ridiculous that it's just like I thought it was bad,
and I thought I planned for it. No, you need
to give it like even more time. It is utterly ridiculous,
Like and then finding out from talking to locals to

(32:45):
be like, ah, what you should have done is you
should have like parked over here and like walked or whatever,
and like might being told that like, yeah, you would
to just want to walk up the hill. It definitely
would have been faster, And it's just like, yeah, you
know what, walking up the hill in like twenty plus
degree heat or whatever to go to a baseball game
while there's cars blowing exhaust in your face, like no,
I don't really fancy doing that. I was just like

(33:07):
a far more organized place that has something l I know,
like a mass transit system that allows you to get
to places like easily and available. Hey, La, you might
want to do something you have the Olympics. Oh wait,
you're just going to put more buses on, aren't you.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
It's just a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Good quality urban planning, mass urban mass transit, good ideas,
good innovations. Guys. Look at look at almost every other ever,
almost every other bullpark in the country, which is in
the middle of the city. They're doing it correctly. Even
the Rockies got that right. Yeah, which isn't.

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Sorry, not entirely intentional. But I went to Dodger Sam
last year and we did like park and ride, So
got a bus in from about I don't know, thirty
minutes space and went it by and that actually was
really good. I was quite stunneder because we gave like
like you did, two.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
And a half hours.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
Three hours before first pitch. We set off because I
knew it was going to be a nightmare, and actually
it was. It was a breeze in the end, and
obviously we left the game a lot after the last pitch.
I don't want to try and rush out, so that
was probably helped as well. But actually that seemed to
work okay, But like you say, just general traffic in
LA is a nightmare. And I can imagine like like
you say that that worked okay for us because probably

(34:17):
because we left so early, But that's not a very
efficient way of getting fifty thousand people into a stadium. Yeah,
it blows my mind. They don't have a better transition
than that, but good luck to them.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
It's a beautiful stadium, like utterly, like you get there,
you look back up the city.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
It's stunning you sit in the stadium.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
The fact that like when you get into the stadium
that it's actually like below you, so you kind of
generally come in at like the second tier, so kind
of like your first view of the stadium is like
you can kind of like see it all absolutely stunning,
like beautiful design, all of that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
But like, hey, like.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
It's the modern time. Maybe like a train station nearby
or all these sorts of things. But hey, ho, like
who am I.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
To tell Americans how to deal with their public trying importation?
They just want to make the roads wider and and
that's their approach. The final thing I wanted to talk
about that I the ballparks is stories I overheard at
the ballpark. Like I know I'm a loud talker, and

(35:18):
I know that like if I talk, people will hear
what I'm saying. But gee, wish at like ball games
do you hear some of the most bizarre stuff I've
ever heard, just over hearing kind of like four very loud,
slightly drunk Americans discussing kind of things in there, sometimes
quite personal life going on around them and other ones.

(35:39):
I heard some very interesting business propositions like that when
we were at the Angels game, seemingly behind us, there
was about twenty people who were there for corporate seating.
Seemingly their company had some bought some sort of like
sponsorship into the Angels, and so they had a bunch
of seats that they could take whenever they wanted. And
they've spent a very long time talking about the fact
that we should get dispense series into MLB stadiums, and

(36:03):
how much better it would be wanted if they could
like just tooke up and watch a game at the
same time, or take some gummies and watch the game
at the same time, and I'm perfectly honest, I was
very brought around to their idea. By the end of
hearing the thirty minute discussion between basically ten like drunk
white dudes.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
I was gonna say, was it David Lties.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
And these guys seemingly were trying to become like the
Amazon of weed. Seemingly that's like what their company was
doing or something like that, and I'm just like, this
is just this is time magnific, just like hearing this
stuff is just like, this is why I love going
to the like sporting events just out there, because you
would just hear the most like insane stuff.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
That's absolutely incredible. I don't think I don't even get
anywhere near that. Definitely not beat it. That's that's brilliant.
I did once, when it was at a Red Sox game,
sit next to a guy who probably means going about
maybe six to seven years I'd say he must have
been about maybe ten fifteen years my senior, and he
was with two two young, youngish kids who probably didn't
want to be there, and they definitely did not want

(37:09):
a very long explanation of who Carton Fisk was. When
he came on the field. They were already not into it.
And after twenty minutes of this guy getting increasingly wrap right, quite,
you've got to understand he did.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
He did.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
He was doing the arms and every staying in. I
was like, mate, just give up. This girl is six.
She doesn't care. She was not alive in nineteen seventy six.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
But the thing is, like, that's what I heard of it,
gors No.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
I was gonna say, that's what I heard of the
Angels game, and I did not think it could be
topped by what I heard at the Dodgers game. All Right,
I'm not certain whether this beats it, but I thought
it was pretty close. So they ended up being like
a group of four guys that were sat next to us,
like behind a couple of rows. To start off with,
the game at the stadium was not fall even though
it was like a sellout, because people had to take

(38:00):
a lot of time to get in there, and seemingly
their friends had tickets in different areas, but they basically
chose to sit next to each other until people with
the tickets actually came and then they would go piss
off back to their own seats. And hearing some of
the discussions between these guys. They were talking, not particularly fondly,
of a certain woman that all of them seemed to know,
and it was like I couldn't quite work out, like

(38:22):
what was going on, whether this was like and I know,
like one of their brothers or or like one of
their sisters or something like that, because it was a
very like familiar kind of like discussion, and towards the end,
I pretty certain three of them are ex husbands of
like the same woman and they all go to baseball
games together now and have effectively bonded therapy that they

(38:45):
are the ex husbands of a certain woman.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
I really can't compete with that. I was gonna say.
I was sat last year at a Padres game behind
a woman that I couldn't confidently described as the world's
biggest Dreks and profile fan. And this was a little
bit before he had really broken out last year, screaming
at him in left field for basically the entire game
and only him as the Padres won the game. And
I'm now thinking she must be in a bad way

(39:09):
given the news that he got last month, never mind
the fact that he left the Padres, so that, yeah,
maybe not the place to to be.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
She's not having a great time.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Iss she no, not till so yeah, that is my
my dismatch notes on on baseball in on the West Coast.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Thoroughly worth it, obviously.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
I think most people would know that it is definitely
worth to kind of like get out and see those
sorts of games. But it's just it's so much fun,
and to be honest, like the baseball games in themselves
weren't even that entertaining. Schemes dominated, which is just like
it was a three nail game. Dodgers didn't really look
like doing anything. The Angels game has a bit more interesting.
They went three nil down and came back and took

(39:50):
the lead in the ninth, and that was like a
fairly interesting game. But there was also like I don't
know about a tenth of the people in that stadium
as there was for the Dodger stadium.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
So it looks like, la, if you've.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Got good baseball to watch, people choose to watch that
instead of watching the bird baseball.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Weird?

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, weird?

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Who knew?

Speaker 1 (40:08):
So to finish as we almost always do two good?
Too bad? John, do you want to start us off with.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Let's start with the bad so we can end on goods.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Okay, right, so, I think it's quite bad that we
now have basketball injuries in baseball, by which I'm referring
to poor old Tristan Cosslas, who we've already discussed, but
also as Waldo Cabrera, both of whom have really quite
sickening and horrible injuries to their knees, legs, ankles when

(40:45):
base running. I know that this is just a freak
coincidence that both of those injuries have happened within a
fortnight of one another, and it looks like it's a cluster,
and it looks like it's a problem, like it's it's
not elbows. But yeah, it's just really horrible. Two fun
players doing well in good teams suffering quite seemingly quite

(41:09):
similar and season ending injuries, both of which look like
potentially been quite limiting on their career. You know. The
cost us one to tell attender, and that's notoriously difficult
to come back from. The and the Cabrera pictures, I mean,
I have not seen the pictures of the actual injury,
because rightly, those have not been shown everywhere, but those
pictures that have been cradled by the Yankees medical staff

(41:31):
were absolutely heartbreaking. So yeah, I don't like and yeah,
I mean literally that we're recording this to day after
something similar happened to Jason Tatum. Right, this happens in basketball,
it doesn't happen in baseball. It probably won't happen again
this season, but yeah, those two clustered with Tatum, just
maybe be like, oh God, I hope this isn't the
start of something that we see seeing the hoops with

(41:55):
people's ankles and knees exploding on contacts. Don't want any
more of it.

Speaker 4 (41:59):
Something worse about a non contact injury, isn't there where
Like just immediately you're like, well, that is probably season ending.
And then, like you say, the one last night seemed
to be particularly graphic, which yeah, is awful to see
at any time, but like you say, when players are
rounding the bases, that would you would hope be a
particularly safe time for them on the field. And yeah,
it mnice to have a couple of those in pretty

(42:19):
quick succession.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah, and the cost is one just a total fluke right,
just run through the base and his knee called.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
The bag Weirdly, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
I always see this and kind of obviously we didn't
watch it when it happened, but it always takes me
back to is it Dave Dravecki who like broke his
arm pitching, and you're just like, it's like it just
these these are horrible and you don't want to watch them,
and you you you feel sympathy for all those players
because there's almost literally nothing they could have done to
to kind of do this.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
These are those those freaking accidents. Okay, so we're.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Moving swimply onto Robbers. I managed to put in our
call sheet today. I do apologize Ben, not that.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
One didn't change.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
It is one of Rob's bad brought up.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Brought up. Utah.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
I'm not thinking I should do like a rob impression
for my bad and talk about how I don't know
my bad is not enough backflips on the bases or something.
But my bad, unfortunately, is Jordan Walker of the Cardinals,
who is just bad. And it's kind of sad to
see because it feels like not very long ago, he
was kind of universally a sort of top ten, top

(43:26):
twenty prospect in the game, one of the Cardinal's most
exciting young talents, and it's basically all gone horribly wrong.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Since I think he's.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
Basically got worse consistently each year since he got to
the Majors, and this year he has been particularly bad.
His k rate is through the roof, his barrel rate
is down, like he very much looks like someone who
kind of has forgotten how to hit. He's been usurped
obviously in the lineup by I think it's Victor something

(43:53):
Scott who.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
The Cardinal's doing well.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
But I mean, he is no part of it right now,
and I feel like it's got to the point where
he probably he gets traded in the next couple of
months because the value is just completely shot for the Cardinals.
I presume he's out of options. Maybe he can be
optioned and they can try and figure this out in
the miners. But it's just weird to see a player
who was so promising for a team that is usually
very good at developing young talent just completely fizzle out

(44:17):
in the way that he has. So I kind of
hope he does get traded and finds a new start
with a new team and can figure it out from there.
But I remember being very excited about him making his
debut and what he could potentially be in the majors,
and it just has not worked out for him at all.
So yeah, fingers crossed that he can figure out whatever
it is is going on, whether it be physical or mental,
and get back to sort of the player we thought
he might be. He's not the first top prospect to struggle,

(44:39):
but yeah, given how he was seemingly going to be
sort of a key player for the Cardinals for years
to come, this has all gone pretty hardly wrong for him.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
So I have two observations on that. Obviously, I'm sad
because Jordan Walker was a lot of fun when he
first came up. The first is that he is I
think probably the biggest human being I've ever seen in
the flash. He is just so big, ludicrous, like this
is it when you see athletes up close, which we've
had the privilege of doing at the London Series. You

(45:08):
don't you take for granted that they are absolutely stacked
and some of them that they're like make Tautman just
couldn't believe how big he was, But Jordan Morker was
something else. He was enormous. The second thing even more asine,
and it's just because it like immediately popped into my
head as soon as you mentioned it. Have you have
either of you seen what Victor Scott's middle name is.

(45:29):
You're You're not gonna You're not gonna get it. You're
not gonna get it because because it's ridiculous. His middle
name is is not Dwayne, like that's an almost normal name.
His middle name is a kid, You're not nine d
w A N y n E nine hey.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Maybe like in one of his grandpa's is called Dwine
and it's it's he's named after someone.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
But Victor Dwan nine Scott. The second they go want
a name only in America Russell?

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Okay to me, I think might have a spicy one
here one day. Ceremonial contracts, I absolutely hate them, Like,
if you wanted to make this person like end on
your team, you should have signed them to a proper contract.
You should have forced them onto your twenty five man
roster and actually be forced to kind of put somebody
else back down if you want to kind of sign
someone and claim that they ended their career on your team.

(46:27):
This stuff with Eva Longoria being like, oh, he's ended
his career as a Ray No, he didn't, bollocks, and
so like there will be nobody at any point in
the future who will remember that he had this ceremonial
thing that allowed him to be a Ray in his career.
His Baseball reference page, his Fangrafts page will see he
ended his career with somebody else. This is just utter
lunacy for the sake of something when you, if you

(46:50):
really cared, you could have signed him to a contract.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
What I'm taking away from this is Russell hates the
late right Oliday solom hearing. All right, PIERROI big tragic accident,
but fuck it, you signed that one day contract with
the Blue Jays and I don't care anymore.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
This is an amazing take. I hate it, but it's
an amazing take. Ross I would have accepted if you
said they've gone too far. I feel like some play
to sign one day contracts. I'm like, eve An't even
that much of a legend for that team. Do you
really need to go back there just to sign a
one day contract. I do feel like Evan Longoria reaches
the threshold of one team legend to be able to
do this for the Rais. But no, if you're going
to go all in on the take, I'm glad you

(47:35):
went all in on a take. You've got a bet
of a player which says more about the rais than anything.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
But you've got to do a leacher roll.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
You've got to resign, you've got to go back out,
you've got to be awful in front of your home crowd,
and then when you actually were nowhere near good enough
to be playing baseball at that time, you've got to
go whole hog if you want to still basically be
finish your career as another as a player on a
certain team.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Where's the line as well? Like why Evan Longoria? Why
not like Carl Crawford, Why not Ben Zobrist or David Price?
Why this guy? I agree all of that, all right, whatever,
don't care, and I agree with you. I'm quite surprised,
even though you hate Roy Halladay.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Alright, all right, John takers to the good world of baseball.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Absolute schemes, as darn our friend, the Mets fan from
from up in the northeast of England would probably have it.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Paul Skeans is pitching in the World Baseball Classic, injury
and roster scheduling permitting, of course, just great in it,
you know, Iron Judge and Paul Skeans. That's not going
to be a bad roster, is it. I think it's
I think we probably had the same conversation when Judge
announced that he was playing the WBC just brilliant for
the tournament. Absolutely what you want to see. You want

(48:56):
to see a US team taking it as seriously as
as the Dominican team in the Puerto Rican team and
the Venezuelan team and the Japanese team in the Korean team. Brilliant.
I'm so so stoked. Yeah, absolute schemes, Yes, thank you.
I love it.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
So I think we need to get our guess is
in as early as possible of which random British player
is going to take Paul Skeins deep. And I know
people have already joked Harry Ford in our in our
in our chat group, but I think that's that's not
niche enough. We need to be working out like who
who else is? It's going to be like, is make
Coperniac going to finally have his like WBC kind of

(49:34):
like success or first w B s.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
A hit is going to be a dong off Paul Skins, Boye.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Trase Thompson coming back, obviously Boston Red SOXS legend now,
but ye, it's.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Going to be someone we don't even know qualify Brad
Marcelino is currently like got pinned in a corner of
some double A clubhouse somewhere in the Midwest. Just do it,
think about taking full schemes deep. You could be the
next just In Wiley.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
All we know is that like somehow Lian Carroll's worked
out that Roman Anthony has some sort of like British
connection as well or something like that.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
I mean that guy, Roman Anthony, he's playing for the
Popes Tea. That fella, come on all time.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Great, Ben, give us another, give us another. Good.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
I know we just discussed injuries in the bad section,
but I'm gonna mention some players who are actually coming
back from injury soon Touchwood, which I think is a
good We've got some high profile guys who are getting there.
I think today Ronald A Kunya Junior is starting his
rehab assignment and we obviously haven't seen him play in over
a calendar year now, so it's great that he's getting
back towards the level where he can contribute for the Brads,

(50:58):
and that'll be a big shot in the arm for them.
I think Brandon Woodruff also has been out for over
a season over a year now, possibly hasn't pitched its
twenty twenty three.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
He I think is coming back to the majors on.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Friday for the Brewers, which is great. George Kirby a
couple more weeks, but oh he did no brilliant while
that ruins that George Kirby nearing his return unless he's
also had a set back. He probably has, hasn't he
Why did I make this so good? And Clayton Kershaw,
he is also nearing a turn. He made a sick
play in the miners and as rehab a sign and

(51:28):
if you saw us. If not, I'm sure we can
get out on the socials. But it was like a
proper one of the best players you'll see a picture
make from like thirty nine year old half broken Clayton Kershaw,
which rules. So I'm excited to see him back on
the mound if indeed he does make it back. So yeah,
touch wood Woodruff does make a full recovery. But yeah,
a few guys who at least are nearing their return
after long absences.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Now.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
It's also it's always also good to see that I'll
quickly jump onto a player which I think was slighted
by the top ten last week.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Pete Crew Armstrong.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
How can you not be telling me that this guy
is not one of the top ten players in baseball.
The boy can hit, the boy can steal. The boy
is probably the best defensive center field that we've seen
in years. This is like the second coming of Ken
Griffy Junior. Okay, Like, how can you not like love
pikro Armstrong, Like honestly, like I hate the on pay
stats as a thing to say what it is, but

(52:21):
he's on pace for fifty stale and bases thirty nine
home runs and potentially have like a kind of like
defensive and offensive runs where both of them are like
thirty plus, which is things that kind of like only
the likes of like Kenny Lofton and Ken Griffy Junr
Have done.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
So he is playing like what the.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Peak of Hall of famers, and it's just amazing to see.
Like there's been I think in all of MLB, there's
been nineteen catches which they class as like a five
star catch. So far this year, Peter Armstrong has four
of those nineteen. Like it's utterly unbelievable what he's doing
and people should be dropping what they're watching to go

(53:03):
watch pc A play because it is just unbelievable right now,
and we don't know how long it will lasts, so
let's just enjoy it while it's bloody amazing.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Fun.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
He's also just like really weird well and I love that,
Like I can't I can't find it now. But there
was a video that MLB put out a couple of
weeks ago about the type of stuff that he's into
and here's a different cat, and I love that. I
love when you have people who just are unapologetically themselves
in sports. You know, it's not just the blue hair,

(53:34):
and it's not just the sort of the albino look
and the and the over the top histrionics on the field.
He's a either a bit like jazz Chisholm Right, He's
a real individual and I love that. Yeah, he's he's great.
Got a lot of time for him. Yeaholm.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
He rules.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
After we've gone for some great stuff, John brings down again,
what's awful off?

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Christ's like Rich Hill's back?

Speaker 2 (53:59):
The Dick Mountain has written why.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
I Mean, we've been doing this podcast for eight years
and I feel like this has been a segment in
every single one of them. Why is Rich hillback? He's
forty five years old. Just give the man a rest
for goodness sake, talking about one day contracts. His Sayonara
absolutely should have been pitching in the premiere twelve. I

(54:24):
loved that for a sort of a tale of adversity.
Here is the chapeau at the end of a brilliant
career in the face of adversity, where you reinvented yourself
and you were a wonderful story. But he just risks
becoming an absolute like the butt of a joke, Like
all of that goodwill that there was for him when

(54:46):
he came back for the Red Sox and he had
that season with Oakland and that Dodge's contract and he
cried at the press conference with his little boy there.
Now he's just like bloody clown car Foddiff for which
a team will take him in like June because they
need a ninth picture. So it's the It's it's the Royals.
This time. He's going to have two starts with the Royals.

(55:09):
He's going to be absolutely awful.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
Rich I'm begging you, man, stop, but John, don't you
do it anymore.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
It's gonna be the fourteenth team, John, Like this could
be like we could get the Rich Hill like heel turn.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Come on, think about it from the sena perspective.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
He's got to get the record, man, he's gonna get
the look Edwin Jackson deserves that. That's Edwin Jackson's record.
Rich Hill's got his own story. The Rich Hill story
is he was absolutely hopeless until he was thirty six.
He shouldn't be. He's the new Edwin Jackson. Don't do it, Rich.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
He's got five more good years in HM. I'm not
worried about rich Hill. If Jamie moyleer could pitture fifty,
why can't Rich Hill?

Speaker 3 (55:52):
So he just started. Jamie Moyer couldn't pitch at fifty.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
Ben Richell can't pitch a forty five.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah, mothers can't picture thirty.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
But okay, Chill was a little bit better than you, Russell.
I will say that much outrageous.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
John My probably like eleven Era and single A British
Baseball will have words with that.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Ben give us another bad second bag.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
Whether I have, oh I had, I don't know if
you guys saw this. There was a perfect game in
the minor leagues. I don't know if you saw how
this happened. But that's why it's in my bad the
way it happened. First of all, it was in a doubleheader,
a double A, and it was a seven inn game,
So was it really a perfect game?

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Now? Probably not?

Speaker 4 (56:39):
Also the picture Jonah Toong, I think he's the Mets
number six prospect.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
He pitched six and two.

Speaker 4 (56:45):
Thirds perfect innings and was then pulled for the final out.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Are you winding me up? What are we doing here?

Speaker 4 (56:52):
If we're gonna call it a perfect game, which again
I'll take the argument that maybe it isn't, then at
least let him finish the seven innings. Why has he
taken out of this six and two thirds but the
final out throwing a perfecto. That's the kind of thing like,
even if it's a double A, even if it's seven innings,
that's the kind of thing you can tell your grandkids about.
I pitched a perfect game. There it is, there's the
box score.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
I did it.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
Now. He can't really say that.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
He can say I pitched six and two thirds innings
and then my mate Josh came in and got the
final out and we got a perfect game together. I
think that sucks, and I get it. He's a prospect.
There are bigger things than the double A game against
the Binghampton Rumble Ponies. But a perfect game is the
kind of thing where like, pitch can't be damn to
let this man finish it. He was at ninety nine pitches.
He wasn't like one hundred and forty. He's at ninety nine.
Should have been given a chance to finish it off.

(57:34):
That's a bad but you know he congrats Joonah. Great
pitch and formance. I guess also he pitches a bit
like lyns Kim, so you're looking forward to seeing him
in the majors. Well, ninety nine of those that he
definitely needed. Pull Ben, Now that.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
You've given me that tid, I'm not letting you get
away with it. Think of a stress on that guy's tex.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
What, Yeah, it does not look healthy.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Was it Michaels who got a seven inning no hitter?
Somebody got a seven inning no hitter when we had
the in the major leagues during the COVID season. I
can't remember who it was now, and they said it
didn't count, so assuming yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
But on the on the other hand, friend of the
podcast rich To easily got a nine inning perfect game
for the lot for the cinrset Patriots against the Long
Island Ducks in the Atlantic League, and his team got
walked off in extras in the tenth and he claims
he pitched a perfect game, so you know, come see
he comes out, it's all mine. Inning's perfect game. Mate.

(58:34):
Whatever happened after that.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Don't get amazing. So I will go through my last bad.
I got the chance of what a lot of baseball
when I was in California on TV as well, just
because surprisingly when you're in California there are games that
like start at sometimes at like ten o'clock in the morning,
so you can watch like two or three games in
a day and still do other things with your life.

(58:56):
So I saw a couple of Yankees games, and I
then had to do some research afterwards. But Jason Domingez
is an awful field. Like some of the balls that
he's let drop in front of him, I thought was
some of like the laziest plays that like I've seen
in like in a long time, and then I went
to look at them, and it's like he has like

(59:17):
the exact opposite PCA has like zero star catches that
he's not got ninety nine per plays where he's taken
like there's the wrong route or not running hard on it,
and it's just bounced in front of him. And I
remember all of the Yankees fans being like, it doesn't
matter that we've got rid of Soto, like his defense

(59:37):
was bad, Well, you got exactly the same. On the
other hand, now, obviously he's a twenty two year old
player or whatever he is, like in his only second
major league season and has the chance to improve. But
it doesn't look good when this was supposedly like at
some point the best prospect in baseball, the probably most

(59:57):
talked about prospect in baseball, and he might not have
a defensive position at the age of twenty two, Like
how long can you actually do h in a career?

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
He's also not that good a hitter, an hotel, a
free home a game, but like he's on the Jordan
Walker path of this might flame out quite quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
I hope it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
He's a very exciting player, but yeah, you're given the
hype he had this this has the downside of going
wrong very quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
It's Yankees prospects, isn't it. This always happens with Yankees
prospects like Cabrera, bless him, not having the best week,
but Cabrera Volpi I means be better this season. The
mingez they're never as good as everyone says they're going
to be. I mean, this is a particularly egregious example,
but Yankees prospects just always all right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
So let's end on some goods. John, give us your
last good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Yeah. See, this is straight off the bat. This might
sound like I'm being a little bit edgy and actually
that I'm trying to make a bad into a good,
but I think this is, in my opinion, just unequivocally good.
It's the Detroit Tigers fans booing Alex Bregman when he
came up for his first at bat in ca America

(01:01:12):
Park as a Boston Red Sox. You will all recall
famous Detroit Tiger Alex Bregman for his shenanigans as a
multiple World Series winner with the Houston Astros. Yeah, I mean,
if you were, if you were asleeper the off season,
Bregman did get very close to signing for the Tigers,

(01:01:33):
and yeah, and the Red Sox piped them at the
last minute because he was basically holding out to join
the Red Sox all along and very very nearly joined
the joined the Tigers and then literally I think it
was in the space of about five minutes Jedge's mind
and came to Boston. I love this level of pettiness.
I absolutely love it. This is probably because I'm a
big fan of professional wrestling, but this sort of heel

(01:01:55):
heat for baseball players. If you go away and watch
the clip, it's absolutely tonic. Like it's it's much much
heavier than you know John Cena or gunther A getting
or seth rollins in the WWE. Right now, there's a brilliant,
brilliant message on Blue Sky and Twitter from Jason Beck,
who covers the Tigers that you could stomp on a

(01:02:17):
Detroit style pizza, downs a coney dog in ketchup, and
spit a can of Werner's while wearing an Ohio State
National championship t shirt and not get booed atk America
Park like Alex Breckman just did. Amazing. Just more of
this absolutely churlish pettiness.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Please.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
He's done basically nothing wrong to the Detroit Tigers. He's
taken a better contract to a team that he thinks
has got more chance to win. He's turned out at
this point of the season to be entirely wrong, and
they are absolutely right to harag him for it. Yes,
please love it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
We'll wait for the point.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
That's the point at the end of the season where
it becomes whether like them booing him becomes a freezing
cold takers, the Red Sox will win the World Series,
but it's gonna go well.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
I should point out that that was in a in
a game that the Red Sox absolutely got absolutely drum
rolled because Tanner Hack was awful, so that made it
even better.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
To be fair, was an early list for my bad.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
But I think enough's been discussed about Tannahu in other
places that I don't think.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
He was rich. Rich Hill saved him rich. At least
she did that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
Ben Tiger's rundf Friendshi was jumping about ten runs every day.
At the moment, they're having a great time of it,
And yeah, I agree, I love this. It's a proper
pantomime stuff doing him. Imagine trying to explain someone with
no context why they're doing him. Oh well, he almost
signed there but then didn't, and now they really hate
him for it. Perfect. The best thing about baseball is
these kind of things.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Yeah, not seeing the Tani like that? Are we what
have you got for us?

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
My final good is Charmer Simpson of the Tampa Bay Rays.
I'm sure you guys have seen. Made his debut a
couple of weeks back. Now is immediately basically the fastest
player in the sport and can basically do nothing else
apart from run seemingly, which rules. Congratulations, Billy Hamilton, you're back.
This is great. I mean I'm doing a bit of

(01:04:12):
a disservice. He is making some contact with a ball.
He's not hitting it very hard, but he's getting single,
he's getting on base, and he's causing absolute havoc on
once he gets there. He turned an extremely regulation single
into a double the other day. He's already wracked up
I think seven or eight steals. Like he is a
genuine menace at any time. He's running, and he gets
to run a lot, and that's awesome. So yeah, look,

(01:04:33):
I don't think he's going to be a Pete row
Armstrong level game changer, but I think he's fast enough
and got enough contact skills where he will be a
pretty good player for the Rais and maybe they can
do some developmental magic and turn him into a better hitter.
But there's no denying He is absolutely electric to watch.
It's kind of a highlighted night with him right now.
So excited to see how this plays out, if he

(01:04:53):
can sort of find his feet against major league pitching
and turn this into, you know, more than just a
speedy guy who's a bit the gimmick and become a
real sort of difference make at the major league level.
But he's very, very fun to watch.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
That's that's awesome. I think I did see that his
is his WRC plus and single figures though irrelevant.

Speaker 6 (01:05:11):
The man's fast, all right, and we'll end with me
on our final good do either of you two know
who Ayami Sato is?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Aamisato is a Japanese female baseball player, and she became
the first woman to play in Canadian professional baseball over
the weekend. So she pitched two shutout innings for the
Toronto Maple Leafs. Not the one that you actually could
think of, but somebody who has exactly the same name

(01:05:46):
in come on, yep. It was in the intercounty baseball
leagues in Canada. Like the first picture she threw was
was basically a soft grounder. Back to her, she wasn't
the soft one, but she basically made a play and
threw straight out to first to get the out immediately
to rapture as applause of all the fans who were

(01:06:07):
there watching. It's just a Yamisoto is has effectively been
the best female pitcher in Japan for probably ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
She's now in a mid thirties.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
She's responsible for Japanese the Japanese women's team winning like
the equivalent of the World Baseball Classic multiple times in
history in the last kind of like decade, and so
seeing these sorts of things continue to break ground, we
saw like it was seeing it like getting D one
D two pictures kind of like happening with that. There
is kind of like this growth of women in baseball

(01:06:38):
and not just being like, hey, you know what, women
play softball. Hey, there are some amazing women who do
play softball, but it's awesome to see that, like we're
continuing to break ground for women's baseball.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
Yeah, I love that great story, hard degree.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
I know you did want to end on a really
nice note, but I've just made the mistake of looking
at a notification of my and I'm afraid we're going
to have to have three bad because Pete I don't
know if you've seen it. Pete Rose has been reinstated
and it's now re eligible for the Hall of Fame,
and it just sucks on every single level, on a

(01:07:19):
on a on the level that he broke the cardinal
rule of baseball that he is a miserable was a miserable,
terrible human being who abused women and committed crimes at
a federal level and at the political level, which you know,
I won't go into in greater detail, but if you've

(01:07:39):
been following, you know why this has happened and it sucks. Sorry,
Ayami Sarte, I really want to cheer you, but I
felt like I just had to mention that. So yeah,
Russell's reaction is just looks disconsolately, it's trestfalling.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
It's just like we get why, we get that obviously
where Baseball's position sadly is in the political spectrum.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
But it's just like it's the.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
Same of just posthumously trying to wipe over some of
like the terrible things that somebody did, and it's just like,
well to come out with I'm just prickly reading here
that just regarding the phrase permanent and in eligibility to
kind of even then just kind of come up with
like a default way of changing what that means, not
kind of like even like un like banning the person,

(01:08:35):
just kind of saying, you know what, it just depends
over like I'm just kind of like finagling the little
rules around it to kind of be that, Like I'm
not even gonna be go out there and with my
pot my bad take and own it. I'm gonna come
up with some kind of technicality to kind of get
what we all know the President of the United States wants.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
So it sucks, and Pete Rose sucks. He is one
of the all time historic worst people that will never
not be the case, whether he's a Hall of Fame
or not. He's a Hall of Fame asshole as we'd
call it over here in the UK. And yeah, this

(01:09:16):
doesn't change it, So what a sad way. Sorry, I
had to say it because I'd literally just read it
and it was in my head.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Anything about it, John, If I had waffled a little
bit less, we may have been able to get through
this podcast where without doing that and had to given
ourselves a whole week before it became around towards recording
a podcast again and now we.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Don't ever have to mention him for the rest of
the season. It's done.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Now, it's done.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
I always thank you to John and Ben for joining
me today. Thank you all for listening or watching on YouTube.
As always, we have great articles going out on the site.
Please do go check that out at bout flipsandds dot com.
Please do go to We are a YouTube channel. We
are putting out original content.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
There is a The.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
First episode of The Baseball Beginner's Guide to Baseball Statistics
is out there. There will be a second episode hopefully
coming in the next week or two. And now I'm
back from my holidays, so do get out there. We
are trying to do more with baseball this year, and
hopefully it'll all be in a much lighter position than
how we ended this podcast. John, Ben, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Dear, sorry about that.