December 13, 2024 • 28 mins
It iiiiiiiis Sportsfeld Storytime. This month, Jake and Zubes take a trip all the way back to August of 2015 to talk about a team that doesn't get enough press, the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays. Before the bat flip, before the AL East title, before the heartbreak, the focus was on one man and his Blue Jays debut. Yes, we are talking about the one, the only David Price. Take yourself back to a Monday afternoon game in early August to a sold out Skydome and David Price's first start as a Blue Jay. In the first episode, the guys take a look at where the 2015 Blue Jays were before the Price trade, talk some run differential, and talk some Troy Tulowitzki.
Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!
Follow @Sportsfeld on X! While you're there say hello to @theZubes and @JGoldsbie or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@sportsfeld.ca
If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/merchfeldIf you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Sportsfeld 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
And as always, thank you for listening to another episode of Sportsfeld.
Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!
Follow @Sportsfeld on X! While you're there say hello to @theZubes and @JGoldsbie or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@sportsfeld.ca
If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/merchfeldIf you enjoyed today’s show, please rate Sportsfeld 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.
And as always, thank you for listening to another episode of Sportsfeld.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nobody was busier at the trade deadline than the Toronto
Blue Jays. They really went out, got big name players
and they're all in right now. They're a team that
was sitting back there a little bit behind the Yankees
out of the wild card, but they made.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
A bold move.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
David Price has been acquired by the Toronto Blue Jays,
the best available pitcher at the trade deadline, bar none.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
It's a I'm shocked.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
I think it's unbelievable just to people that Alex has
went out and gosh, Troy Tulwisky, Josh Donaldson, now David Price.
These are top of the line names that are coming
to a team that's already pretty good. Now it's really good,
and you need that one guy every five days they
have it. It's it's it's to me, it's a game changer.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
Twelve starts from a guy is not going to really
doesn't make sense. But the truth of the matter is
that David Price, the abstract concept is a lot different
than David Price the concrete thing. You can get him
for four starts against the Yankees. You can get him,
and now you're pretty much guaranteed that either Price earlier
Dickey starts the wilds guard game. If that's what you
(01:11):
have to settle for, and it makes this just an
incredible exciting two months.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And there is the newest blue Jay popping out of
the tunnel, that is David Price. It doesn't he look
good in a Blue Jay's uniform And look at that smile.
He tells, y'all you need to know by what he
thinks about being in Toronto. And he gets to say
hi to some of the guys he hasn't seen just yet.
And he says he to Themarlow Hale and Pete Walker,
(01:40):
of course, and Pete Walker's got to be thrilled. He's
got a new ace. David Price joining the Blue Jays
were his first game here tonight.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
You can feel the excitement, you know, whenever you're in
the dugout, you can fill it in the locker room.
This is this is a group of guys I want
to win, and this is a management in the front
office that's one to win. So whenever you can kind
of put those things together and then you know, put
it in u in this city, I guess in this country,
you know they're they want to win, and that's that's
very important. That's what matters. They can hit homers, man,
(02:12):
I mean it's they're a tough group to pitch against.
It's whenever you're pitching against a team like Toronto, you
never have not an easy inning, but uh, an inning
where you can kind of be like, all right, you know,
I can I can relax a little bit this inning.
I mean not relax, but.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You don't have to.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
You don't have to go full bar.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
And with this team, you gotta be on your on
your p's and q's, you know, at all times. And that's, uh,
it's that's really tough, you know. It's it's mentally draining
whenever you face a team like this because you constantly
have to be in the game mentally because if not,
I mean, it's we can put up runs so fast,
and that's it's fun to be a part of that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The popcorn meet your expectations above and beyond.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
And I think some guys might have taken some before
I got here, but I was, I was completely okay
with that. This is the best popcorn I've ever had.
I mean, I get it every time I come here
in big bags full. So that was definitely enough popcorn.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Sports. It is sports Bellows Storytime Finally, something we never
do on this show, Jake, We're gonna talk about the
twenty fifteen Blue Jays a little bit.
Speaker 8 (03:28):
What a nice change.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
We never talked about twenty fifteen Blue.
Speaker 8 (03:34):
Let's look back on an off forgotten team that doesn't
get enough press.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Under the radar. People forget that the twenty fifteen Blue
Jays made a playoff run. You never hear about it.
You never hear about the playoffs. You never hear about it.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
And you know, and we they accomplished a lot and
we have those memories to live forever because they published
behind them.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, a magical a magical time, which we will get
into a lot over the course of the next four
weeks the premise of this specific show. Because we have
done Blue Jays shows of this vintage, I don't believe
we've done twenty fifteen. I believe we did the wild card.
Speaker 8 (04:21):
Game, yes that would have been twenty sixteen, correct, and.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
We did some hockey stuff. So I think this is
our first foray into the twenty fifteen team. This month's
series of episodes will be about one game in particular,
and that is August third, twenty fifteen, the David Price
(04:48):
debut as good as it gets, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 8 (04:51):
I'm surprised that, like this game being in August feels
surprising to me. How do you mean it's all July
in my head?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
The first.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Was it?
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Yeah, man, oh man, I'm surprised, yeah, because this was
all the very very end of the July. They didn't
they didn't get too low until July twenty eighth. It's
it's all very truncated a very short period of time.
Speaker 9 (05:23):
It is.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
It is very truncated.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Something that is never far from mentioned in the look
back at this time is we are talking about a
five hundred baseball team. Prior to the lifting of the
Jose Reyes era, they were middling. But this was the
first time that I think we were like on board
(05:49):
with the fact that they were outscoring teams by a
truly absurd amount and were not quite seeing the results.
At the same place the Tula trade, they were forty
one and thirty six, so not five hundred, but a
pardon me, that's the wrong day. In the Tula trade
they were fifty and fifty one. On July twenty eight,
(06:09):
they weren't even above five hundred. Eight games back in
the Division fifty and fifty one, four games back of
the wild card, truly among the more absurd weekends and
weeks of my life. We will get into that in
a little bit, but off the top, what do you
remember of the pre too low trade twenty fifteen times?
Speaker 8 (06:31):
I remember there was like a lot and heavy underline,
a lot of talk about the run differential and how
like they were very clearly much better than their record suggested,
which is kind of funny in retrospect when you think about,
like there were a few additions throughout the season obviously
(06:57):
not just pricing too low, but like they didn't make
a ton of like wholesale changes to go from a
you know, one game under five hundred team to thirty
games over five hundred team. So I feel like we
were all kind of there was like it wasn't quite impatience,
I don't think, but it was definitely like it felt
(07:18):
like we were waiting for them to figure it out.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
M Yeah, and this is not that long after. Infamously
the Jays had a pretty good team I want to
say twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen where they were pretty
good and they didn't do any twenty forty deadline yeah,
and Batista famously was like really disappointed in that, and
I think, I know, I personally expected that to happen again.
(07:43):
I expected to say, well, it's a five hundred team,
they're pretty good, but there's obviously a lot I think
similar to how we talked about this team last year,
whereas they have strengths, but maybe their weaknesses are a
little too big, and boy did that change quickly.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
And those like I feel like we had those memories too,
because like twenty fourteen was that season where they were
in first place into you know, sixty seventy games played
that season and they were sort of I remember there
was the game in August that year against The only
reason I remember this was because I was in Pei
(08:21):
and the game was like nineteen innings long and it
was still going like by the time I landed for
my connecting flight and had been going for several hours
before that. And I feel like around that time they
were like a game or two out of the wild
card and then just August September collapse. So yeah, I
think there were expectations of them being a semi decent
(08:44):
team and then you know, Stroman got hurt in spring training,
which was like, oh, well, there goes our staff ace
because then we were lying on like Dicky and Burley
to be kind of the guys who like did fine
and regulously no, no, nothing against them, but it was, yeah,
(09:05):
I feel like it was we were all ready for
there to be something like a.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Little more, and boy, was there something a little more.
I know that I've maybe mentioned this once or twice
in the show, because first of all, we were still
doing shows at this point, but this is one of
those It's always gonna be really crystallized in my mind
because this whole week was a huge event with me
(09:31):
and all my friends. It started off with the Tulawitsky trade,
and I was dating the woman who would become my
wife shortly after we had we'd been dating for let's
see June July, two and a half months at this point,
and we were going to a wedding and this wedding
was going to be the first time she had met
(09:52):
sort of my core group of college friends that the
guys that I, you know, grew up with. And I
was living with my roomad Zach at the time, and
we were in bed. She is a baseball reporter, as
people often know. We were in bed on the evening
of July twenty eighth, because I was about to leave
for the wedding was in Cornwall, Ontario, which is not
(10:14):
far from the Quebec border, which is not far of
course from Montreal. And the plan was the wedding was
on Saturday. The plan was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is Montreal
time with the fellas, and then we would all meet
up on Friday inn in Cornwall and party is a
bigger group, and then the weekend is the wedding. YadA, YadA, YadA.
(10:37):
So we are in bed because to be two whiskey
trade happened in the middle of the night. It was
a it was like I want to say one am,
or like midnight, eleven o'clock. It was really really, really
really late, and we are in bed. I remember this
so well, you know, enjoying our last evening before we'd
spend some time apart and reconvene on the weekend. And
(11:00):
she gets a text from somebody on the desk at
her office asking her how to spell to Lwitzky. And
I was like, why do you need to know? Why
do you need to know how to spell to Lowitzki?
And he has been traded to the friggin' Blue Jays,
and that I don't know about you. Obviously it wasn't
but at the time that was enough for me. That
(11:20):
was all I needed to see because we had gone
to her and I had gone to Chicago earlier that
month because they played the White Sox in July sixth,
they played the White Sox. On the row we went,
we went to a double double header sort of day.
We saw Cardinals Cubs at Wrigley and then we went
to the other stadium I think it's called Guaranteed Rate
(11:42):
Field now, and we got to watch Chris Sale against
Mark Burley. It was an hour and four to fifty
four minute game. But famously, in that game, jose Reyis
lets a ball go right through him to lose the game,
and I remember being like, I'm I'm one hundred percent
done with jose Reyis, Like I'm we were so excited
about him a couple years earlier. I'm completely done. I
(12:04):
don't care if he ever plays again, and lo and behold.
Three weeks later, Troy Tulowitzki becomes the starting shortstop on
the Toronto Blue Jays. I was awake for another two
and a half hours like tweeting NonStop and laughing and
gifts and excitement. How did you process that moment?
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Yeah, I remember, You're right. I had kind of forgotten
in the sort of haze of it all the very
loud who's a rais criticism and how everyone was kind
of done with him at that point. His defense wasn't
up to par. He just like wasn't the guy that
we thought he might be. And then it was like, Okay,
(12:46):
this is this is sort of one of the missing pieces.
I feel like I've told this story before. I was
at Sneaky Dease when the Tulu trade came down.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Every ivory of this era for you. You were sneak
I was like four years but that's the only building
you were in.
Speaker 8 (13:03):
I mean, that's not entirely inaccurate. I was with the
friend of the show, Jacob Kramer. I believe it was
a Monday night, I want to say, because I believe
we were at karaoke and we were kind of like
we were in that like weird time where you like
you don't really want to like be out that late
(13:24):
or like drink that much, which is kind of like
a go hang out kind of evening, and the too
low news. I got the push alert on my phone
at whatever time that would have been twelve thirty or so.
It was like that they got that they got too low.
And I remember, like I didn't process it probably like
(13:45):
it not that I didn't know who Troy Tulwhitsky was,
but like I had to google him to like because
like it just was such a it was like, it
can't be that try to a whisky.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right kind of we were you know, we saw the stats,
but it's not like we were out here watching rockies,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
And I remember I remember very clearly shoving my phone
into Kramer's face and him just kind of looking at
it with like disbelief, and then we immediately ordered a
round of shots and it turned into one of those
evenings of like, oh, we'll just go for a couple
but Ben, because of Tuo. We were there till like
(14:24):
two thirty in the morning, and I remember getting home
and I was still roommates with Chris Lund at that point,
and he was still awake for the same reason and
just being like, oh my god, like this is they're
doing it. They're They're finally they're finally doing it. And
like you said, like that was all we needed, like
(14:46):
it was like Okay, Tulwitsky amazing and.
Speaker 10 (14:51):
Obviously adding a guy like Troy, we're getting the best
shortstop in baseball in our minds, and those opportunities don't
present themselves. So we're just thrilled and we improved the
two spots today. We weren't too thrilled thrilled about trading
some of our better prospects like we did in this
deal for rentals. And that's not to say we're out
(15:12):
of the rental market or we won't look at it.
Speaker 7 (15:14):
We have.
Speaker 10 (15:15):
We've had discussions about players that are only available for
two months. But that being said, it's a rare opportunity
to get better, and getting better doesn't have to mean
a reliever or a starter.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
When you have a chance to get the best player.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
To respective position and a guy that also brings some
intangibles as well. Rare opportunities and we wanted to take
advantage of it. Again, we're always focused on the short
and the long term, and we fellow an acquisition like
this address both. I think you certainly have a list
of things you'd like to accomplish us like you would
in any off season, but at the end of the day,
(15:48):
you won't. If you have the opportunity to just improve
the club, we'll do that. That might be offensively like
we did here, it might be from a run prevention standpoint.
So any opportunity to prove the club will take it.
I mean, there's no order. We can't dictate the order
that things are going to happen, whether we acquire reliever
first or position player starter. So we're just looking at
(16:09):
it that we can't control the market timing what teams
are willing to do as opportunities present themselves. If we
aren't favorite the deals and we like them, we'll obviously
try to get them done.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Twelve twenty eight am was Ken Rosenthals breaking Troy Tulowitzki
treated the Blue Jays. Twelve twenty eight am. This is
this is supposed to be a David Price episode, and
we are obviously David Price tools. He was great, and
(16:43):
I was We were very excited, but David Price was
the big fish. As good as the Tulowitzky deal was,
and as much as they did need as I said
with Rays, they needed help defensively on the infield, and
that ended up being a huge part of what made
this all so successful. David Price was the big fish,
and it didn't start after the trade. It actually was before.
(17:07):
I have some tweets here from me from July twenty third,
which is a whole week before it actually happened that
I said, willing to make large personal sacrifices to the
baseball gods if the Jays bring in David Price. That's
July twenty third, a full week plus before he comes
(17:29):
on board. It was. It was one of those things
where it seemed like this used to happen a lot.
Actually around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, not as
much anymore, but reporters used to just throw the Blue
Jays into rumors because we have a really rabid online
fan base. Do you remember that happened all the.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
John John John Morosi was the king of that.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
He didn't trust this. Yeah, right, July twenty fifth, a
couple days later, still before the two. Oh it's right,
David Price has drawn interest from Blue Jays, Dodgers and Cubs.
Tiger's unsure when whether they will move him or not.
And because it was Morosi, I was like, oh, it's
Dodgers and Cubs, Like obviously it's Dodgers and Cubs, but no.
(18:13):
A day later, July twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, I figured
it out, Baseball Gods, if you bring David Price to Toronto,
I will give up beer for the entirety of his
time with the organization. I remember the.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
Day we got Price because it came down like mid afternoon,
I want to say, or like early afternoon, Yeah, and
was in the Yeah, and like, I'm pretty sure my
dad and I were supposed to go to lunch that day,
because I remember he got to my house and he
was like, are you ready to go? And I said no,
(18:55):
and he said why and I said, Ken Rosenthal just
said the Blue Jays and David Price are close. And
then I remember we like stayed inside kind of just
like waiting on Twitter for an hour or so. Actually,
I have no idea how long it was. It could
have been ten minutes, waiting to see if it was
(19:16):
legitimately going to happen or not.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Yeah, to give you sort of a timeline of of
my week there. We started out, as I said, in
bed with Melissa here in the David hearing the Tulowitzki
trade news. My roommate and I then went to the
game The next day before we left from Montreal, we
went to Blue Jays Phillies. They lost.
Speaker 9 (19:37):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Tulowitsky was not there yet, if you remember, he didn't
have his passport on him, but La Troy Hawkins did
and pitched in that game immediately, which, by the way,
you want to talk about why they needed David Price.
Felix du Brant started that game for the Blue Jays.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
Also like yah, also just to get like I think
a good to paint a good picture of sort of
the excitement of round that team before the good players
got here. I remember you, me and your roommate Zach
going to a game earlier in the year because it
was Chris Colobello's first game and we were like all
like all in, just like, let's the Colobello first baseman.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Finally it's good yes uh, And we were sort of
right and ended up being pretty good, pretty good. And
then Tula's first game, which was I would say probably
Tula's best game as a Blue Jay probably.
Speaker 8 (20:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
We were, we were.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
We had we had gotten to Montreal, we had checked
into our hotel, and we had gone to a bar
just in time to watch him lead off the fucking
game with a double and then hit an absolute bomb
off the second deck and the third inning. Man oh man,
(20:58):
the first the first two was he game. Obviously, the
first David Price game is just a little bit bigger,
but man, the first Tulow game was also just absolute magic.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
The first Tulo game was also like, like David Price
was a full house, everyone was all in. The Tulo
game was like a pretty average midweek kind of crowd too,
which I think lends like it to a lesser like
a lesser reception, I think, because like it was just
kind of like, okay, it's like a Wednesday night. There's
like twenty thousand people here, and then he went off
(21:31):
and everyone's like, oh okay, and he's.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Feeling comfortable hanging break fotball, see it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hockball was crushed. Pull off piel.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
To give you to continue that timeline. Then, of course,
we are partying in Montreal, and as you said, the
David Price news came down the next day. So my
friends and I are in our hotel room sleeping off
our hangovers, and we are leaving for brunch. We are
going to go to brunch, and then the sort of
David Price of the Blue Jays is close starts happening,
(22:05):
so you need a picture, like just like you and
your dad was. It was two more hours of us
sitting in the dark, refreshing our phones until we got
David Price. And then we're grown men. We're twenty nine
years old, jumping up and down on beds, screaming and clapping.
And then we went out and got loaded. I got
(22:27):
I got absolutely loaded because I couldn't drink beer, so
now I'm just drinking sight alcohol.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Boy, oh boy, that was a day, What a time.
And then, of course, famously, the next thing that happens
is the Blue Jays play three games against the Kansas
City Royals, so we are oh, that's right, that was
the fight weekend.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Darlison gets hit Pryor Pitch doesn't like that too much.
And Nowlson has something to say to Olkaz and.
Speaker 9 (23:05):
It looks as though they have been a warning put
in place by the home plate on fire, which I
don't agree with it all. The three two pitches, low
ball four, Donaldson flips the bat and goes troning on
down to first base. Baldcast came off the mound halfway
to the plate. It's almost like Edison wants a confrontation.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
He is continuing to bring it upon himself.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Jared, I got a funny feel, and there's gonna be
some fireworks here this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
So the whiskey is hit.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Man Donaldson is screaming at homeplate umpire Jim Wolf.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Donalson is standing there talking with Jim Wolf considered how
many guys are gonna have to get hit before you
wish spinning to the warning, hollering at Jim Wolf the
whole plane umpire, saying you're gonna let him take shots
(24:04):
of me all the afternoon. Himmons is gonna come up
to internew artist who was their first to King Thomas
and into the game.
Speaker 11 (24:16):
The Royal is really pitching inside to Toronto, and that
has made the Jay's angry next offering, and that was
at Escobar. Now both benches were warned Nick Thrum Sanchez
out of the games.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Pins Bass, I'm sorry, mops are going to take over here.
Both has is on the outside being held by his teammates.
Speaker 8 (24:50):
Boat has got job he side space carrying.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
It.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Sure was so Saturday at the wedding, We're watching Jay's
Royals in the in a pew on our phone Sunday,
we are driving back to Toronto from Montreal, listening to
the game on the radio, and as you said, it
was fight weekend. As that fight happens, we are in
three different cars, so excited that we pull over to
(25:32):
a rest stop so we can get out of our
cars and like shove each other with excitement. I have never,
not since, nor before, have I ever seen this happen
with my Like we love we all love sports and
we have fun. But this was like we couldn't we
couldn't handle it. We could like we was. It was
so foreign. It had been so long since the team
(25:52):
meant this much to anybody, and since they were this
good other than like maybe the maybe the day they
traded for jose reis like next day, we were all
really excited. Yeah, this was like, this was insanity. This
was just complete and utter insanity. Forty five thousand people
in attendance were pulling over on the four to oh
one like, we'll never have anything ever like it again,
(26:15):
I don't think. And with that being the year it was,
we had a ballpark pass.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
So that's right.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It starts with Tulow. We get to what we get
to Montreal and it's Tula's debut, they trade for him.
The next day, the fight happens in the drive home,
and then Monday off we returned to the city to
go to the fucking David Price game. It was as
good as sports get in my adult life.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Yeah, I remember that case, like the really the with
like the really big brawl game. I remember being in
my living room and like, this is like an end
of July game, Like this is like game like ninety
of the season. I remember just being in a living
room screaming at the television, cursing the Kansas City Royals
(27:03):
to the ends of the earth and like that game.
Because you're right, because I forgot that that was the
timeline of it. But it does make sense because it
was a that was just an extremely infuriating game, but
also coupled with the excitement of the days before and
the days to come, it was really like that was
the beginning of so what fuck you? You know what
(27:23):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
So it was just like it was fucking on and
I believe David Price was in the was in the dugout,
waving in.
Speaker 8 (27:32):
I think I think you're right, because there's the whole public.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Was in the tank for that. Yeah, Anyway, that brings
us up to the moment, and that is David Price
out of the bullpen onto the mound, and we'll get
into what that was like in the stadium and how
(27:58):
the game went in the next episode, A Sports About
story Time
Nobody was busier at the trade deadline than the Toronto
Blue Jays. They really went out, got big name players
and they're all in right now. They're a team that
was sitting back there a little bit behind the Yankees
out of the wild card, but they made.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
A bold move.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
David Price has been acquired by the Toronto Blue Jays,
the best available pitcher at the trade deadline, bar none.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
It's a I'm shocked.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
I think it's unbelievable just to people that Alex has
went out and gosh, Troy Tulwisky, Josh Donaldson, now David Price.
These are top of the line names that are coming
to a team that's already pretty good. Now it's really good,
and you need that one guy every five days they
have it. It's it's it's to me, it's a game changer.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
Twelve starts from a guy is not going to really
doesn't make sense. But the truth of the matter is
that David Price, the abstract concept is a lot different
than David Price the concrete thing. You can get him
for four starts against the Yankees. You can get him,
and now you're pretty much guaranteed that either Price earlier
Dickey starts the wilds guard game. If that's what you
(01:11):
have to settle for, and it makes this just an
incredible exciting two months.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
And there is the newest blue Jay popping out of
the tunnel, that is David Price. It doesn't he look
good in a Blue Jay's uniform And look at that smile.
He tells, y'all you need to know by what he
thinks about being in Toronto. And he gets to say
hi to some of the guys he hasn't seen just yet.
And he says he to Themarlow Hale and Pete Walker,
(01:40):
of course, and Pete Walker's got to be thrilled. He's
got a new ace. David Price joining the Blue Jays
were his first game here tonight.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
You can feel the excitement, you know, whenever you're in
the dugout, you can fill it in the locker room.
This is this is a group of guys I want
to win, and this is a management in the front
office that's one to win. So whenever you can kind
of put those things together and then you know, put
it in u in this city, I guess in this country,
you know they're they want to win, and that's that's
very important. That's what matters. They can hit homers, man,
(02:12):
I mean it's they're a tough group to pitch against.
It's whenever you're pitching against a team like Toronto, you
never have not an easy inning, but uh, an inning
where you can kind of be like, all right, you know,
I can I can relax a little bit this inning.
I mean not relax, but.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
You don't have to.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
You don't have to go full bar.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
And with this team, you gotta be on your on
your p's and q's, you know, at all times. And that's, uh,
it's that's really tough, you know. It's it's mentally draining
whenever you face a team like this because you constantly
have to be in the game mentally because if not,
I mean, it's we can put up runs so fast,
and that's it's fun to be a part of that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The popcorn meet your expectations above and beyond.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
And I think some guys might have taken some before
I got here, but I was, I was completely okay
with that. This is the best popcorn I've ever had.
I mean, I get it every time I come here
in big bags full. So that was definitely enough popcorn.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Sports. It is sports Bellows Storytime Finally, something we never
do on this show, Jake, We're gonna talk about the
twenty fifteen Blue Jays a little bit.
Speaker 8 (03:28):
What a nice change.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
We never talked about twenty fifteen Blue.
Speaker 8 (03:34):
Let's look back on an off forgotten team that doesn't
get enough press.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Under the radar. People forget that the twenty fifteen Blue
Jays made a playoff run. You never hear about it.
You never hear about the playoffs. You never hear about it.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
And you know, and we they accomplished a lot and
we have those memories to live forever because they published
behind them.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, a magical a magical time, which we will get
into a lot over the course of the next four
weeks the premise of this specific show. Because we have
done Blue Jays shows of this vintage, I don't believe
we've done twenty fifteen. I believe we did the wild card.
Speaker 8 (04:21):
Game, yes that would have been twenty sixteen, correct, and.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
We did some hockey stuff. So I think this is
our first foray into the twenty fifteen team. This month's
series of episodes will be about one game in particular,
and that is August third, twenty fifteen, the David Price
(04:48):
debut as good as it gets, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 8 (04:51):
I'm surprised that, like this game being in August feels
surprising to me. How do you mean it's all July
in my head?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
The first.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Was it?
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Yeah, man, oh man, I'm surprised, yeah, because this was
all the very very end of the July. They didn't
they didn't get too low until July twenty eighth. It's
it's all very truncated a very short period of time.
Speaker 9 (05:23):
It is.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
It is very truncated.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Something that is never far from mentioned in the look
back at this time is we are talking about a
five hundred baseball team. Prior to the lifting of the
Jose Reyes era, they were middling. But this was the
first time that I think we were like on board
(05:49):
with the fact that they were outscoring teams by a
truly absurd amount and were not quite seeing the results.
At the same place the Tula trade, they were forty
one and thirty six, so not five hundred, but a
pardon me, that's the wrong day. In the Tula trade
they were fifty and fifty one. On July twenty eight,
(06:09):
they weren't even above five hundred. Eight games back in
the Division fifty and fifty one, four games back of
the wild card, truly among the more absurd weekends and
weeks of my life. We will get into that in
a little bit, but off the top, what do you
remember of the pre too low trade twenty fifteen times?
Speaker 8 (06:31):
I remember there was like a lot and heavy underline,
a lot of talk about the run differential and how
like they were very clearly much better than their record suggested,
which is kind of funny in retrospect when you think about,
like there were a few additions throughout the season obviously
(06:57):
not just pricing too low, but like they didn't make
a ton of like wholesale changes to go from a
you know, one game under five hundred team to thirty
games over five hundred team. So I feel like we
were all kind of there was like it wasn't quite impatience,
I don't think, but it was definitely like it felt
(07:18):
like we were waiting for them to figure it out.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
M Yeah, and this is not that long after. Infamously
the Jays had a pretty good team I want to
say twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen where they were pretty
good and they didn't do any twenty forty deadline yeah,
and Batista famously was like really disappointed in that, and
I think, I know, I personally expected that to happen again.
(07:43):
I expected to say, well, it's a five hundred team,
they're pretty good, but there's obviously a lot I think
similar to how we talked about this team last year,
whereas they have strengths, but maybe their weaknesses are a
little too big, and boy did that change quickly.
Speaker 8 (08:00):
And those like I feel like we had those memories too,
because like twenty fourteen was that season where they were
in first place into you know, sixty seventy games played
that season and they were sort of I remember there
was the game in August that year against The only
reason I remember this was because I was in Pei
(08:21):
and the game was like nineteen innings long and it
was still going like by the time I landed for
my connecting flight and had been going for several hours
before that. And I feel like around that time they
were like a game or two out of the wild
card and then just August September collapse. So yeah, I
think there were expectations of them being a semi decent
(08:44):
team and then you know, Stroman got hurt in spring training,
which was like, oh, well, there goes our staff ace
because then we were lying on like Dicky and Burley
to be kind of the guys who like did fine
and regulously no, no, nothing against them, but it was, yeah,
(09:05):
I feel like it was we were all ready for
there to be something like a.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Little more, and boy, was there something a little more.
I know that I've maybe mentioned this once or twice
in the show, because first of all, we were still
doing shows at this point, but this is one of
those It's always gonna be really crystallized in my mind
because this whole week was a huge event with me
(09:31):
and all my friends. It started off with the Tulawitsky trade,
and I was dating the woman who would become my
wife shortly after we had we'd been dating for let's
see June July, two and a half months at this point,
and we were going to a wedding and this wedding
was going to be the first time she had met
(09:52):
sort of my core group of college friends that the
guys that I, you know, grew up with. And I
was living with my roomad Zach at the time, and
we were in bed. She is a baseball reporter, as
people often know. We were in bed on the evening
of July twenty eighth, because I was about to leave
for the wedding was in Cornwall, Ontario, which is not
(10:14):
far from the Quebec border, which is not far of
course from Montreal. And the plan was the wedding was
on Saturday. The plan was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is Montreal
time with the fellas, and then we would all meet
up on Friday inn in Cornwall and party is a
bigger group, and then the weekend is the wedding. YadA, YadA, YadA.
(10:37):
So we are in bed because to be two whiskey
trade happened in the middle of the night. It was
a it was like I want to say one am,
or like midnight, eleven o'clock. It was really really, really
really late, and we are in bed. I remember this
so well, you know, enjoying our last evening before we'd
spend some time apart and reconvene on the weekend. And
(11:00):
she gets a text from somebody on the desk at
her office asking her how to spell to Lwitzky. And
I was like, why do you need to know? Why
do you need to know how to spell to Lowitzki?
And he has been traded to the friggin' Blue Jays,
and that I don't know about you. Obviously it wasn't
but at the time that was enough for me. That
(11:20):
was all I needed to see because we had gone
to her and I had gone to Chicago earlier that
month because they played the White Sox in July sixth,
they played the White Sox. On the row we went,
we went to a double double header sort of day.
We saw Cardinals Cubs at Wrigley and then we went
to the other stadium I think it's called Guaranteed Rate
(11:42):
Field now, and we got to watch Chris Sale against
Mark Burley. It was an hour and four to fifty
four minute game. But famously, in that game, jose Reyis
lets a ball go right through him to lose the game,
and I remember being like, I'm I'm one hundred percent
done with jose Reyis, Like I'm we were so excited
about him a couple years earlier. I'm completely done. I
(12:04):
don't care if he ever plays again, and lo and behold.
Three weeks later, Troy Tulowitzki becomes the starting shortstop on
the Toronto Blue Jays. I was awake for another two
and a half hours like tweeting NonStop and laughing and
gifts and excitement. How did you process that moment?
Speaker 8 (12:21):
Yeah, I remember, You're right. I had kind of forgotten
in the sort of haze of it all the very
loud who's a rais criticism and how everyone was kind
of done with him at that point. His defense wasn't
up to par. He just like wasn't the guy that
we thought he might be. And then it was like, Okay,
(12:46):
this is this is sort of one of the missing pieces.
I feel like I've told this story before. I was
at Sneaky Dease when the Tulu trade came down.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Every ivory of this era for you. You were sneak
I was like four years but that's the only building
you were in.
Speaker 8 (13:03):
I mean, that's not entirely inaccurate. I was with the
friend of the show, Jacob Kramer. I believe it was
a Monday night, I want to say, because I believe
we were at karaoke and we were kind of like
we were in that like weird time where you like
you don't really want to like be out that late
(13:24):
or like drink that much, which is kind of like
a go hang out kind of evening, and the too
low news. I got the push alert on my phone
at whatever time that would have been twelve thirty or so.
It was like that they got that they got too low.
And I remember, like I didn't process it probably like
(13:45):
it not that I didn't know who Troy Tulwhitsky was,
but like I had to google him to like because
like it just was such a it was like, it
can't be that try to a whisky.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right kind of we were you know, we saw the stats,
but it's not like we were out here watching rockies,
yeah exactly.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
And I remember I remember very clearly shoving my phone
into Kramer's face and him just kind of looking at
it with like disbelief, and then we immediately ordered a
round of shots and it turned into one of those
evenings of like, oh, we'll just go for a couple
but Ben, because of Tuo. We were there till like
(14:24):
two thirty in the morning, and I remember getting home
and I was still roommates with Chris Lund at that point,
and he was still awake for the same reason and
just being like, oh my god, like this is they're
doing it. They're They're finally they're finally doing it. And
like you said, like that was all we needed, like
(14:46):
it was like Okay, Tulwitsky amazing and.
Speaker 10 (14:51):
Obviously adding a guy like Troy, we're getting the best
shortstop in baseball in our minds, and those opportunities don't
present themselves. So we're just thrilled and we improved the
two spots today. We weren't too thrilled thrilled about trading
some of our better prospects like we did in this
deal for rentals. And that's not to say we're out
(15:12):
of the rental market or we won't look at it.
Speaker 7 (15:14):
We have.
Speaker 10 (15:15):
We've had discussions about players that are only available for
two months. But that being said, it's a rare opportunity
to get better, and getting better doesn't have to mean
a reliever or a starter.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
When you have a chance to get the best player.
Speaker 10 (15:28):
To respective position and a guy that also brings some
intangibles as well. Rare opportunities and we wanted to take
advantage of it. Again, we're always focused on the short
and the long term, and we fellow an acquisition like
this address both. I think you certainly have a list
of things you'd like to accomplish us like you would
in any off season, but at the end of the day,
(15:48):
you won't. If you have the opportunity to just improve
the club, we'll do that. That might be offensively like
we did here, it might be from a run prevention standpoint.
So any opportunity to prove the club will take it.
I mean, there's no order. We can't dictate the order
that things are going to happen, whether we acquire reliever
first or position player starter. So we're just looking at
(16:09):
it that we can't control the market timing what teams
are willing to do as opportunities present themselves. If we
aren't favorite the deals and we like them, we'll obviously
try to get them done.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Twelve twenty eight am was Ken Rosenthals breaking Troy Tulowitzki
treated the Blue Jays. Twelve twenty eight am. This is
this is supposed to be a David Price episode, and
we are obviously David Price tools. He was great, and
(16:43):
I was We were very excited, but David Price was
the big fish. As good as the Tulowitzky deal was,
and as much as they did need as I said
with Rays, they needed help defensively on the infield, and
that ended up being a huge part of what made
this all so successful. David Price was the big fish,
and it didn't start after the trade. It actually was before.
(17:07):
I have some tweets here from me from July twenty third,
which is a whole week before it actually happened that
I said, willing to make large personal sacrifices to the
baseball gods if the Jays bring in David Price. That's
July twenty third, a full week plus before he comes
(17:29):
on board. It was. It was one of those things
where it seemed like this used to happen a lot.
Actually around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, not as
much anymore, but reporters used to just throw the Blue
Jays into rumors because we have a really rabid online
fan base. Do you remember that happened all the.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
John John John Morosi was the king of that.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
He didn't trust this. Yeah, right, July twenty fifth, a
couple days later, still before the two. Oh it's right,
David Price has drawn interest from Blue Jays, Dodgers and Cubs.
Tiger's unsure when whether they will move him or not.
And because it was Morosi, I was like, oh, it's
Dodgers and Cubs, Like obviously it's Dodgers and Cubs, but no.
(18:13):
A day later, July twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, I figured
it out, Baseball Gods, if you bring David Price to Toronto,
I will give up beer for the entirety of his
time with the organization. I remember the.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
Day we got Price because it came down like mid afternoon,
I want to say, or like early afternoon, Yeah, and
was in the Yeah, and like, I'm pretty sure my
dad and I were supposed to go to lunch that day,
because I remember he got to my house and he
was like, are you ready to go? And I said no,
(18:55):
and he said why and I said, Ken Rosenthal just
said the Blue Jays and David Price are close. And
then I remember we like stayed inside kind of just
like waiting on Twitter for an hour or so. Actually,
I have no idea how long it was. It could
have been ten minutes, waiting to see if it was
(19:16):
legitimately going to happen or not.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Yeah, to give you sort of a timeline of of
my week there. We started out, as I said, in
bed with Melissa here in the David hearing the Tulowitzki
trade news. My roommate and I then went to the
game The next day before we left from Montreal, we
went to Blue Jays Phillies. They lost.
Speaker 9 (19:37):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Tulowitsky was not there yet, if you remember, he didn't
have his passport on him, but La Troy Hawkins did
and pitched in that game immediately, which, by the way,
you want to talk about why they needed David Price.
Felix du Brant started that game for the Blue Jays.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
Also like yah, also just to get like I think
a good to paint a good picture of sort of
the excitement of round that team before the good players
got here. I remember you, me and your roommate Zach
going to a game earlier in the year because it
was Chris Colobello's first game and we were like all
like all in, just like, let's the Colobello first baseman.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Finally it's good yes uh, And we were sort of
right and ended up being pretty good, pretty good. And
then Tula's first game, which was I would say probably
Tula's best game as a Blue Jay probably.
Speaker 8 (20:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
We were, we were.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
We had we had gotten to Montreal, we had checked
into our hotel, and we had gone to a bar
just in time to watch him lead off the fucking
game with a double and then hit an absolute bomb
off the second deck and the third inning. Man oh man,
(20:58):
the first the first two was he game. Obviously, the
first David Price game is just a little bit bigger,
but man, the first Tulow game was also just absolute magic.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
The first Tulo game was also like, like David Price
was a full house, everyone was all in. The Tulo
game was like a pretty average midweek kind of crowd too,
which I think lends like it to a lesser like
a lesser reception, I think, because like it was just
kind of like, okay, it's like a Wednesday night. There's
like twenty thousand people here, and then he went off
(21:31):
and everyone's like, oh okay, and he's.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Feeling comfortable hanging break fotball, see it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hockball was crushed. Pull off piel.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
To give you to continue that timeline. Then, of course,
we are partying in Montreal, and as you said, the
David Price news came down the next day. So my
friends and I are in our hotel room sleeping off
our hangovers, and we are leaving for brunch. We are
going to go to brunch, and then the sort of
David Price of the Blue Jays is close starts happening,
(22:05):
so you need a picture, like just like you and
your dad was. It was two more hours of us
sitting in the dark, refreshing our phones until we got
David Price. And then we're grown men. We're twenty nine
years old, jumping up and down on beds, screaming and clapping.
And then we went out and got loaded. I got
(22:27):
I got absolutely loaded because I couldn't drink beer, so
now I'm just drinking sight alcohol.
Speaker 8 (22:33):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Boy, oh boy, that was a day, What a time.
And then, of course, famously, the next thing that happens
is the Blue Jays play three games against the Kansas
City Royals, so we are oh, that's right, that was
the fight weekend.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Darlison gets hit Pryor Pitch doesn't like that too much.
And Nowlson has something to say to Olkaz and.
Speaker 9 (23:05):
It looks as though they have been a warning put
in place by the home plate on fire, which I
don't agree with it all. The three two pitches, low
ball four, Donaldson flips the bat and goes troning on
down to first base. Baldcast came off the mound halfway
to the plate. It's almost like Edison wants a confrontation.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
He is continuing to bring it upon himself.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Jared, I got a funny feel, and there's gonna be
some fireworks here this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
So the whiskey is hit.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Man Donaldson is screaming at homeplate umpire Jim Wolf.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Donalson is standing there talking with Jim Wolf considered how
many guys are gonna have to get hit before you
wish spinning to the warning, hollering at Jim Wolf the
whole plane umpire, saying you're gonna let him take shots
(24:04):
of me all the afternoon. Himmons is gonna come up
to internew artist who was their first to King Thomas
and into the game.
Speaker 11 (24:16):
The Royal is really pitching inside to Toronto, and that
has made the Jay's angry next offering, and that was
at Escobar. Now both benches were warned Nick Thrum Sanchez
out of the games.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Pins Bass, I'm sorry, mops are going to take over here.
Both has is on the outside being held by his teammates.
Speaker 8 (24:50):
Boat has got job he side space carrying.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
It.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Sure was so Saturday at the wedding, We're watching Jay's
Royals in the in a pew on our phone Sunday,
we are driving back to Toronto from Montreal, listening to
the game on the radio, and as you said, it
was fight weekend. As that fight happens, we are in
three different cars, so excited that we pull over to
(25:32):
a rest stop so we can get out of our
cars and like shove each other with excitement. I have never,
not since, nor before, have I ever seen this happen
with my Like we love we all love sports and
we have fun. But this was like we couldn't we
couldn't handle it. We could like we was. It was
so foreign. It had been so long since the team
(25:52):
meant this much to anybody, and since they were this
good other than like maybe the maybe the day they
traded for jose reis like next day, we were all
really excited. Yeah, this was like, this was insanity. This
was just complete and utter insanity. Forty five thousand people
in attendance were pulling over on the four to oh
one like, we'll never have anything ever like it again,
(26:15):
I don't think. And with that being the year it was,
we had a ballpark pass.
Speaker 8 (26:20):
So that's right.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It starts with Tulow. We get to what we get
to Montreal and it's Tula's debut, they trade for him.
The next day, the fight happens in the drive home,
and then Monday off we returned to the city to
go to the fucking David Price game. It was as
good as sports get in my adult life.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
Yeah, I remember that case, like the really the with
like the really big brawl game. I remember being in
my living room and like, this is like an end
of July game, Like this is like game like ninety
of the season. I remember just being in a living
room screaming at the television, cursing the Kansas City Royals
(27:03):
to the ends of the earth and like that game.
Because you're right, because I forgot that that was the
timeline of it. But it does make sense because it
was a that was just an extremely infuriating game, but
also coupled with the excitement of the days before and
the days to come, it was really like that was
the beginning of so what fuck you? You know what
(27:23):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
So it was just like it was fucking on and
I believe David Price was in the was in the dugout,
waving in.
Speaker 8 (27:32):
I think I think you're right, because there's the whole public.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Was in the tank for that. Yeah, Anyway, that brings
us up to the moment, and that is David Price
out of the bullpen onto the mound, and we'll get
into what that was like in the stadium and how
(27:58):
the game went in the next episode, A Sports About
story Time
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.