Transcript of A Clippers Rebrand, an NFL Mini-Mailbag, and Best MLB Story Lines With Rob Mahoney, Anthony Dabbundo, and Billy Gil

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The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did Rambo: First Blood Part 2. It was me and Kyle Brandt. I had a fantastic time. Uh, Sly Stallone's 13th Rewatchables, which puts him in 3rd place all time. He's sniffing Cruise. Cruise has a pretty big lead. Cruise is at 18. He's almost at 20. with a lot of good Cruise movies left. But, uh, Stallone is— he's battling. He's trying to get to 20 before Cruise. Uh, very fun podcast, so go check it out on Netflix or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up on this episode, at the very top, I'm talking to Rob Mahoney about, uh, the Clippers post-Kawhi trade. What do we do now? What do we do with this Clippers team? What happens? Um, that's first. Second, I have a little mini NFL mailbag. Uh, I got a lot of good questions and had some more NFL stuff today. I wanted to chime in on the Chiefs game on Monday night. So we have that. And then last but not least, Anthony DiBundo, Billy Gill. We haven't talked baseball in a while.

We have less than 2 weeks left in this season. The playoffs are gonna be pretty cool. This has been a pretty bizarre, super fun, crazy baseball season. It might be our last for a while. So we wanted to talk about our favorite things from this season. That is all coming up next. First, a break and our friends from Pearl Jam. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club. Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to fanduel.com/bs to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777. 877-777-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chatinconnecticut.

God, where is syndrome in my heart?

All right, we're recording on an early Tuesday afternoon. Rob Mahoney is here. It's been a while. I just realized you hadn't been on in a while. I was like, just come on, let's talk basketball. Basketball starting in 5 weeks somehow. I know, I know. I don't— I just feel like I did all my football prep. We only had week 1 of a football season. NBA's coming, and there's lots of time to talk about where we're going, who's gonna win. Jaylen Brown playing with LeBron, Paul George at the Celtics. Just a million subplots. I got to put the Clipper stuff to bed. I know you already talked about it on Ringer NBA Show, but just a couple of things here. My big question for you, as I look at this and I talk to depressed Clipper fans and all of us wonder, should we keep paying for tickets for them and all these things? Should they just change their name? Is this it?

You think that would cleanse whatever's going on with them?

Is it rebrand time? And have we had a rebrand over the years in the NBA that has actually worked? And the answer for that is maybe not. 'Cause we had like the Brooklyn Nets, we had the New Orleans Pelicans, we had kind of a Charlotte rebrand with the expansion team. Do rebrands work? Is it just a way, like it works with products. Can it work with a sports franchise?

The fact that this is the solution, it's like you're out 5 firsts, your owner's suspended for a year, half the front office can't even go to the arena. Like, I, I guess what else are you gonna do at this point other than shuffle some deck chairs around, hire a graphic designer, and call it good?

Yeah. So, and would you call it LA or would you go— I always thought they should be called the Hollywood Knights, even though they're not in Hollywood, and just have like a Knights with a K. Or you could just call it Hollywood Nights with an N. But either way, like, it just would feel completely different. I think they need to do something like that. Now granted, everybody who would be involved in that decision is suspended for a year.

Yeah.

So, uh, I don't even know if they can do it, but I just wonder, have we run the course? Has 50 years of the Clippers just being, um, a train wreck and coming up with scandals that we didn't even know could exist— is it just time to start over? They don't even have a retired number, Rob. They've never made the Finals. Could you just reset this right now in some way?

Yeah, there's no history to protect. And whatever history they had, they just spat in Chris Paul's face to give Bradley Beal his number.

So they really did.

It's It's just awful. I, like, I went through this exercise too 'cause I was trying to think about with all of these penalties, like, when is the next time we'll see a relevant Clippers team? When's the next time they'll make like the second round of the playoffs? And then I realized they've done it like 6 times in 50 years to begin with. So yeah, I guess it's just kind of business as usual anyway, even if they don't have these picks.

Yeah. You think like all the terrible and weird and, and dumbfounding thing that's happened to them, the reality of them having the best team they've ever had during the COVID year, then getting shut down and then going into the bubble and being the team that most famously out of all the teams just quit in the bubble. Right. And then the next year they come back and they finally do make a run and have a real chance to make it. Mm-hmm. Kawhi gets hurt, but as that's happening, all their fans are wearing COVID masks in the stands or deciding whether they wanna pull them down or up. And that's like the best Western Conference Finals memory they have. I, I, I just don't know what they do. I would vote for a rebrand, but maybe we have to wait a year. The other question is, what do you do with this team? The Kawhi trade went through, which is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.

Mm-hmm.

And I was actually genuinely surprised how much they got for Kawhi, a guy who was in the 2011 draft, who has a pretty checkered injury history, who just kind of orchestrated one of the biggest scandals in the history of the league. And then he is like, I didn't know. It's people around me. I didn't know what happened. And now he's going to Toronto at age 35 to try to turn them into a contender, and they get a swap. They get 2 unprotected firsts much later. I thought that was kind of a miracle for them, right?

Well, there was all that— I wouldn't even say fuss or hubbub, but there were people wondering if there was going to be a renegotiation, if everything that happened with the penalties would bring both teams back to the table. I think there's a million reasons why that didn't really happen in that form, why it didn't turn into the Raptors squeezing the Clippers as hard as they possibly could possibly could. But you're right, given who Kawhi has been and the damage he's dealt to now multiple organizations in the process, and the fact that you can't rely on him to be available at basically any time, this was quite a coup under the circumstances.

I couldn't decide who should have backed out and had more leverage, which is one of the reasons, like, I didn't think the trade was going to happen, because I thought you could have made a case for both. The Raptors could have said, well, obviously you can't bring him back.

Yeah.

So for us, this is like a 50% off sale now. Like, and you have nowhere else to trade him. You weren't honest with about what happened with us and we had to postpone it anyway 'cause we didn't feel like, you know, we knew what the suspensions were gonna be for him. Turns out there weren't. But how about just a first rounder and we'll call it a, call it a, we'll call it a wrap. The Clippers could have been like, fuck him, we're not trading him. Like, your final penance will be you're just gonna have to play out one more year here and then not have a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Fail, like, flunk Grady Dick's physical, and it's like, sorry, our hands are really tied.

Sorry, Kawhi.

Good loss.

Enjoy the year. But if it's only one year, I mean, how bad could it really be for him?

How does he get more— he's in complete turmoil, and so is the franchise, and somehow fetches more than Jaylen Brown did will be one of the enduring questions of the entire season. entire 2020s. I can't believe it was 2 firsts unprotected, much less 2 firsts and a swap.

Yeah.

I don't know if there was a little bit of a tax for having Brandon Ingram in it, who's basically 2 years, $81 million in a league where they seem— that's kind of the area where nobody is excited to pay that unless you're like an All-NBA player. But it leaves us with a really weird Clipper team. Where they have Garland for 42 and 44, they have Ingram for 40 and 41, and those 2 guys are basically locked in for the next 2 years at about $82 million.

Yeah.

I'm gonna not put that twosome as one of the best 2-man combos in the league, much less one of the best 20. I'm gonna say that's in the bottom third if you're just ranking everybody's 2-man combos. their best, most expensive players. I mean, I'm— I think we could come up with 20 teams right now that would be better than that, right?

You don't think that's in the, like, the season ticket renewal brochure, like in the materials, those 2 front and center?

I don't.

And I mean, it's bleak. Honestly, even including Brandon Ingram as any important or relevant part of this team, I think is just not realistic. It wasn't realistic even before all these punishments came down. It's like, to me, it's Darius Garland. It's Keaton Wagler, who they just drafted. It's, you know, maybe guys like, you know, Jannik Kohnen-Niederhauser when he comes back from injury, like some of the younger prospects on the team, which they don't have very many. And that's kind of it. And then Brandon Ingram yet again is at a way station before he gets flipped to yet another team for a couple of picks. He's just gonna go around that particular carousel for a long time. And I, I just don't think he's a solution of any kind for the Clippers.

Yeah, he's, this is the perfect situation for him 'cause really nobody wanted him for the last couple years. And then Klutch finally found a team for him. And Toronto actually needed a forward who could score like that. I think he probably served their purpose. But yeah, there's not a lot of teams that need a guy making $40 million who's like 22 a game, kind of a surprisingly solid crunch time end of the game guy. Who has a couple spots and he can score, proven scorer. But it seems like all the smarter teams were not that enamored by him.

No.

Including Golden State, who had multiple chances to trade for him and wanted no part of him. Boston didn't want any part of him in a Jaylen thing. So you have Garland and Ingram, you have the 3 young guys you mentioned, Miller, Sanders, and Niederhauser, who I love Niederhauser.

Same.

You have the artist formerly known as Bradley Beal wearing Chris Paul's number. You're rolling the dice with Wagner one way or the other now where It's weird to say this, but I don't know if any other rookie from that class has more pressure on him than Wagler.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Here's why. Because if he doesn't work out and he feels busty or he feels bad these first 2 months, combined with everything else that has happened to this team, I just think that will be— just talk about an already crestfallen fan base. He's the one thing they're holding onto, like, well, if he's good and, you know, we'll have cap space and we got some of these Toronto picks. But if he's not good coming outta the gate, now you're just, this is as bleak as it gets.

See, I see it the other way where we just need to go in accepting that the Clippers are cooked for the foreseeable future.

Yeah.

And if that's, if that's true, Keaton Wagler's like found money, right? If he, if he turns out to be a really good player, if he turns out to be the kind of star they can build around, or at least to complement other stars, That's a feather in their cap. I don't know that that cap is accomplishing anything because it's still going to be hard to bring free agents or lure other good players to the Clippers given their circumstances. But I don't know that there's going to be that much pressure on him because it seems so accepted that this is a death penalty for the Clippers. And if that is true, how could you possibly hang anything around Keaton Wagler's neck?

Counter. For the next 7 years, when do they have another chance to get a blue chip guy?

Yeah. Like, well, that would, that would be depressing if Keaton Wagler disappoints the Clippers and the Pacers, if one ping pong ball had gone differently, could have gotten, you know, a top 4 pick. Like the fact that this particular pick and its trajectory managed to disappoint 2 entirely separate franchises, if it goes that way, would be pretty tragic.

I think he's gonna be pretty good. But the, the bigger point to me is if he's not good, And now you have no draft picks forever.

Yeah.

And then on top of it, no free agent's gonna really want to go there unless it's one of those situations where, oh, they had the most money and I didn't have a better option, so I'm gonna begrudgingly go there.

Sure. Or like Rui Hachimura, I just wanna stay in LA and also cash a check, which I think there's like a not insignificant number of NBA players who do want to do that. So I think they'll be in the mid-level market. It's just how are they gonna get the high-end guys? That's always the question.

Well, they have $61 million in expirings. Max Strus, Hachimura, Derek Jones, Lopez, Grady Dick, done.

Yeah.

Put any sort of combination then, which leads to my next question for you. Is, are the Clippers with the move, if we're running the Clippers, so you and I, because they don't have a GM there. Well, I guess they hired an interim person, but And they're like, what do you think we should do? My advice would be to take all those expirings and try to take somebody else's big contract and gimme more picks to take the contract. Right?

Yeah.

So you're looking at somebody like Embiid in December. If the Sixers are like, wow, this guy's probably never gonna be healthy again. Maybe you're like, well, we're here and you know, if you wanna wet our beak, we're happy to take him for a bunch of expirings.

Sure.

Paul George for the Celtics, coincidentally.

Mm-hmm.

But 2 years left, '54 and '55. Could you load all the expirings, get Boston to give you a pick or 2 back to basically take the extra year of Paul George? And then if you're the Celtics, you've basically rebooted. I don't know why they would do that 'cause they seem like they like Paul George. There's Sabonis in Sacramento, which would just be 2 ships passing in the night. Here's the one that's interesting to me though. De'Aaron Fox.

Oof. You think, you think his value is that low?

Starting a 4-year, $221 million deal.

Yeah.

If I'm the Clippers, I'm at least calling the Spurs and being like, yo, we have Garland, we love him. But if you want to talk about flipping 4 years of Fox for 2 years of Garland and throwing some of your stuff at us, Yeah. Like, we'll have— we're happy to have the conversation.

Okay.

Right? And then if you're the Spurs, you're like, well, we messed up this Fox thing. We didn't realize we were gonna get Harper when we did the, you know, the wink wink with the Fox extension. We were gonna have to have money to pay Wemby and Cassell and eventually Harper. Could Garland be a 2-year stopgap now instead of 4? And could we use some of our picks and other stuff to— to basically get out of those last 2 years. And if you're the Clippers, you're like, well, De'Aaron Fox, veteran guy, who with Wagner kind of weirdly makes sense as a combo. He's— we've seen both of those guys play off the ball, and we could grab some more picks. And I don't know, it was just a thought. This is how bleak it's been, 'cause this was the most excited I was for any Clipper idea.

I mean, I think if you're the Spurs, you got me on the phone. Like, the Darius Garland pick, I thought you were just talking Fox for picks basically and salary. But if Garland is involved, I think that's something San Antonio could really think about. I mean, really what the Clippers need to do is figure out, like, what the Raptors were able to do with Ingram, I think is very instructive, right? Like, I did not like it when the Raptors traded for Brandon Ingram in the first place as a free, as an ex— like an expiring contract.

Yeah.

Gave him that deal, turned him and some, some supplementary pieces and picks into Kawhi. Now that's a, a great swing for them in, in the trajectory of their franchise, especially with how impressive they looked in the playoffs. The Clippers kind of have to do both of those things though. Like they have a Brandon Ingram clearly, but they need the picks to supplement the deal. Like they do need to reload the coffers in that way.

Yeah.

So it's like even the deals you can conceptualize are like 3 moves away before you can even get to the move that actually changes what this team is like. They need to get the picks in the door. They need to flip all of that into something more of value, whether they get a De'Aaron Fox or not, and parlay a player like that into another deal down the line. It's just like, The chain of events that now needs to happen for the Clippers to be good is so dizzying that I, I really can't imagine how they dig themselves out of this in any kind of near-term future.

We said that about Brooklyn, right? In 2016-17 range when Boston had their picks. There was at least an end of the line where it's like, well, we'll have cap space at some point. We will have our picks.

And free agency still existed then. So it was at least plausible.

One of the crazy things with this Clippers situation is. It's like they took away 5 picks, but those 5 picks haven't even— we're not even on the clock with them yet. Like, I, I don't understand how OKC still has a chance to get more Clipper picks, but they do this year. They can swap yet again. They can either take their pick or Denver's pick and swap it with whatever happens with the Clippers, and the Clippers will take that worst pick and could potentially swap it with Toronto. But somehow this OKC deal is still going. I mean, I, I thought we were done already and we're not. And that leads me to my next question for you is you can't even really tank because you don't have your pick.

No.

And I'm not sure why you would want to tank, but if you wanted a spite tank, which we've never seen before—

Who is being spited though?

The Clippers. If they got into the bottom 3.

Yeah.

It's only 2 ping pong balls instead of 3. So you could basically say, well, what do we care? We don't have it anyway. Like, let's like really tank. We'll play all our young guys. We'll do, we'll, we'll try to trade what basically just Wagner. We'll try to dump the rest of the contracts we have and just kind of bottom out. Would be another like meeting I would have if I was running the Clippers. Like, could we, our, our fan base hates us. We have their money for this year anyway. Do we just completely bottom out so we don't get screwed by this OKC pick?

Yeah.

'Cause the worst case scenario is you end up like 7th.

Sure.

And now you're turning over potentially the number 1 pick in next year's draft as the final piece of this.

But like that, that cost is sunk. Like the ship has sailed. You are not getting that pick back. It's out of your hands at this point. Honestly, I'm not even sure you need to have that meeting because sitting here today going into the season, how many Western Conference teams are we sure are worse than the Clippers? I would say the Kings definitively.

Sacramento.

Other than them, are, are we sure any other team is worse than this Clippers team?

No, I would have them. What about in the East?

I mean, Brooklyn probably, but even then, like if you told me they went on a random spirited Julius Randle run, I, I, that seems more likely than the Clippers putting anything together.

All right, so these are 2 separate questions. One is the long-term piece. But the other is the, the short-term piece of just who has a worse roster than them. So you would say Brooklyn and Milwaukee.

Yeah.

I think in the East would be the candidates. And I'm just looking at the Fando odds. The 3 worst odds are Sacramento, Memphis, and then the Clippers. And obviously you'd much rather be Memphis. You'd much rather be New Orleans. So, They're also like not a, not a ton of death depth. Death was a Freudian slip. Too much death, frankly. Right. The Kings, at least like they have LaVine on an expiring.

Yeah.

Which he might actually play really well this year because he's playing for one more deal. It seems like Sabonis wants to get outta there. But, and if you're telling me what, what team would I rather be this year from a talent standpoint? I think I'd rather be the Kings. Like, this Clippers thing, I'm putting all my eggs in the Wagner basket. Like, and this is somebody that was not even, I don't think, a top 50 prospect 2 years ago who had a meteoric rise. And I like him. I have high hopes for his NBA future, but I don't know what it's gonna look like this year.

Yeah.

He's got this whole ball-dominant hesitation, you know, that, kind of the ball's on a string. He's trying to beat people. He's shooting 3s. Like, that's gonna be really hard to do in the NBA consistently night after night. So, and plus you're playing with Garland and sharing the ball with him.

Everything you say is true, but like the alternative is DeAndre Hunter as your starting small forward. Like Domantas Sabonis, warts and all, is the best player on your team with a bullet. I mean, Darius Akuff, I know you're a fan. the rookie point guard experience at minimum is another one who could come with its ups and downs. Yeah, we'll, we'll see how all that goes. But I just, I'm not signing up for Sacramento's roster against frankly anybody's except maybe Milwaukee, which is just a collection of random guys who don't really fit together at all with no real organizational principle. Those to me are the 2 worst roster situations in the league depending on how you wanna slice it.

I'm not like doing backflips about Brooklyn either. But at least like they have guys who in this new format where you don't want to be in the bottom 3, they have some stat guys.

Yeah.

Right. Randle will go get some stats at least. He'll put up 23 and 10.

And Jaegor and Brown I think makes sense together. Like those, yeah, that's, that's a backcourt I think a, a fan base should rightly be really excited about.

So you think, it sounds like you think Sacramento is gonna be the worst team in the league.

I think, I think Milwaukee will probably be the worst team in the league, but Sacramento in the West feels It feels obvious to me.

Yeah.

I'm looking at, so I have FanDuel, you, the 20+ win odds. Sacramento's -140 if you wanna bet on them to have 20+ wins. Brooklyn's -320, Milwaukee's -475, and New Orleans is -900. Clippers are 11-to-1. So FanDuel agrees with you. Now Memphis, I actually think could be, a little bit better than, you know, they, the typical bad young team because they have a bunch of gamers and they're gonna have a specific identity. That Milwaukee team too. That Milwaukee team's, I don't know what to make of that team. There's just, it's, it's like a randomized NBA 2K team that's just like, hey, they're gonna have a bunch of centers and a bunch of shooters. And I don't know, don't know what to make of it. What, uh, Even though we're 5 weeks away, what are you the most excited about this season? What's your top 3?

I think it's gotta be Philly. Like every time I look at that, wow. I mean, every time I'm reminded of just everybody they have on that team, like I, I have to see it. I have to see it in person. I need to see it as often as possible. I don't know if it's gonna work. I don't know if Joel is ever gonna be healthy, but the, the star power, the supporting like players they picked up, I mean, is that not your number 1? Where are you starting?

I definitely number one from, I need to see this a few times just to like let this sink into my brain what this is.

Yeah.

Right.

I think out of all the teams that feel different than last year, that's the number one. I just don't really fully understand how this is gonna work. I'm fascinated by it. The upside is so high. The floor is even fairly high just 'cause with their 2 injured, their Embiid as an injured guy and LeBron as an old guy. even if those guys aren't playing a lot, you still have those other 3 guys that can play big minutes. I think the Celtics piece is gonna be interesting too because—

Well, you would.

Well, but I'm saying from a, usually they've been more of a feel-good team or the up-and-coming team, but this is a city that really didn't like that trade. And depending on how those first 2, 3 weeks go, I think could be a team to watch. Now they could come out and be great and everybody could like them and you know, Paul George could fit in. And, but if they, if they start out like 7 and 8 and Paul George looks old, I, I, the fans are pretty gamey about this trade still. And they, you know, Paul George did a press conference, he's, he's there and I, I think he's saying all the right things, but it's, it's the first really unpopular move of the, of the Stevens era.

Well, Even if they're, let's say they come out and they're really good, do you think any of the scar tissue from last season will pop up and be like, you know, this is a really good regular season, this is a nice run, but is this real? Is that gonna be hanging over them all year, do you think?

I think that, I think just monitoring Tatum, what we're getting outta him for a full year when he didn't even make it through the Sixers series. And then the thing Stephen said about When he said it in so many words, if you like decoded it, you knew what he was saying. He was like, we ran our course with those 2 guys.

Yeah.

Like we weren't, we didn't feel like we were in the title mix anymore. Paying those 2 guys $130 million a year to play basketball, it wasn't gonna work anymore. So it's a pretty big bet. I've announced a couple weeks ago, I don't know if you saw, I talked myself into it. Took over 50 days.

That's impressive.

Yeah. It was, you know, there was some therapy. There were some hypnotic tapes at night to listen to.

But yeah. How did we not turn— I mean, you kind of did turn it into content, but how did we not just like lock you in a padded room for 72 hours until you came out ready to believe in the Celtics?

It sounds like an Apple TV series. It's like the new Apple TV drama from Vince Gilligan. So Philly in the East.

Yeah.

Who's your team in the West then that you can't wait for?

Oh, it's gotta be Minnesota. Yeah. I'm ready. LaMelo and Ant. I mean, sign me the fuck up for that. That sounds, that sounds like exactly what I am tuning in for and the process of who they're gonna be in the regular season, how they figure out incorporating Jonathan Kuminga being a totally different style of team, making all these pieces fit together. You know, figuring out how they're gonna replace Dante DiVincenzo is probably gonna be out for the year.

Yeah.

Chris Finch has done this kind of thing many times of like, here's a, here's a new formula, go figure it out since he's been with the Wolves. But to me, this is easily the most exciting version of that.

It does feel Minnesota and Philly have one thing in common where you're gonna catch them on the right night where they look incredible.

Yeah.

You know, it'll be like Game 17, whatever location, like, oh my God, Minnesota made 29 threes last night. New NBA record. They had an interesting summer though because it just felt like they were in on everybody. They were like the guy in your fantasy draft that is just bidding on every guy and you're like, what's your plan? You just, you've gone, you've gone into the 20s on 15 straight guys. Like, did you come in with any sort of plan? I really didn't. Minnesota was like that too, where it's like, Kuminga's available, whoever, like Jaylen Brown's available, LeBron's available, is Kevin Durant available? They, they just were flying around trying to make anything happen.

Yeah.

And as on top of it, going through an ownership change that they, kept pretty secret.

But isn't, isn't that what a team in their position should do? Like, if you kind of ran into the wall and you have one of the most exciting stars in the league and a supporting cast that also worked but also kind of ran its course, and the Julius thing clearly was over. Naz Reid was valuable to them, but they— I can understand why they wanted to diversify their roster a little bit, thin out the bigs. That, that leads you to chase every star on the market. It's honestly kind of what we want Teams of Minnesota's market size, this is what we want them to do, is to chase after things when they get real.

I just would've been— if we're in that meeting, yeah, and it's getting close and we're starting to really talk about this, at some point you have to look around and go, why does Charlotte want to give this guy up? Under contract, pretty fair contract for somebody that is a top 30 guy. Yep. Beloved by the fan base. Kind of the, the best driver for whatever engine they had for this 3-point kind of up and down team. Perfect for that. Why do they want to trade him? I don't, I don't know if I would've gotten past that.

I, I understand it as a sticking point. And frankly, look, I'm a LaMelo believer. Like, who he is as a playmaker, very powerful to me. I, I see the vision, if you'll pardon the pun. For me, it's the, like, the health. It's like the ankles, it's the injuries. Like, that's the part that freaks me out more than can LaMelo Ball be a winning player? 'Cause we've seen him have a transformative effect, not just last season, but basically every season he's played on Charlotte's offense. And so that feels real. That, that is a tangible thing. You can see it in games. You can see it if you want to dig into the data. I think he can be a serious basketball player in a slightly different context. I'm eager to see if this group can kind of nudge him in that direction, but I just, I just need him to stay healthy. Like, that, that is my biggest concern for the Wolves for sure.

Well, I mean, that is, that's the concern.

Well, but there's a whole different school that's just like skeptical of him as a basketball talent, and I'm, I'm thinking like, that's not—

I mean, that's cool too.

Yeah, you can have both, I guess.

Yeah, I'm in both. I actually, I'm doing a mailbag in the next segment, and I got this email from Brian from the DMV, who I've been talking a lot for football about Justin Herbert and Jordan Love, or like the nerd king The king of the nerds, basically, for QBs.

Sure.

All their advanced stuff is great. All the NFL nerds are like, even when they have a bad game, they're here, no, no, it was actually a good game. And the question from Brian was, who's the NBA version of this? And he said, my nominee is LaMelo Ball. Incredible advanced stats, has never made the playoffs or contributed to winning. The nerd community will tell you none of that matters, despite the fact that it's, parentheses, checks notes, About to be year 7 for him. So do you think, do you think LaMelo is the nerd king of the NBA right now with the NBA nerds?

I don't think you could be the nerd king if you're also very popular with like 12 and 13-year-olds.

Like, that's 2 separate things.

But that can't be the split demographic. That doesn't make sense. I would say the nerd king—

Does LaMelo Ball make sense?

Well, often not. But to me, the nerd king is much more like a Derrick White type than it is a LaMelo Ball type.

The difference is Derrick White has actually won a title doing nerd stuff, right?

Sure.

So I was, I was wondering, is it, if it's not LaMelo, 'cause he might be in this separate camp.

Yeah.

Could Trey Murphy be our nerd king?

Ooh, I like that one. Yeah. Trey Murphy's a great one.

It's like incredible stats. Just put him in anywhere, he'd be additive. It's like we've never seen him in a winning situation ever. Why are we so sure?

Well, and the only thing nerds love more than valuing undervalued players is trying to find them new teams via the trade machine. And like Trey Murphy's been living in it for 5 years. straight. So he feels like a per— if not a king, then certainly a prince of the nerds.

I do think the nerds, like, I think Zach voted for— not to call Zach a nerd, but he dabbles in the nerd stats. This is a nerd stat thing, not a nerd thing. But I think he voted for LaMelo, 3rd team All-NBA, or seriously thought about it because of his impact just for the 28 minutes. Whereas I'm a profound durability guy.

Yeah.

And I just feel like, yeah, I, I think if you actually had to rely on that dude night after night for 35 minutes, like some of these other dudes, I don't know if you could do it, but we'll see.

That, that to me is why it's like what LaMelo does well is obvious. Like he's a, he's a highlight machine. He's not, I think to me, if you're making the Nerd King case, it's always like, oh, the secret value of this player is this thing that you're not seeing in the box score, or this thing you're not seeing when you watch, like, You know, your Shane Battiers, your Derrick Whites. Like, LaMelo is like front and center, highlight neon. Like, everything he does is so blatant that I, I don't think he could take that title.

Yeah. 'Cause in NFL, the QBs are in your face every play 'cause they're the face of the team. So that's why LaMelo, like a point guard who has the ball all the time, is probably a good analogy. Before we go, you've been doing a lot of Prestige TV episodes. What's the show of the year so far? We're through mid-September. We have a bunch of good stuff going? Is it, is it Widows whatever? Yeah, Widows what?

After crushing the Emmys, you can't even get the full title out?

Widow, Widow's Bay.

Widow's Bay.

Widow's Bay has to be the show of the year. Incredibly decorated this week, but also just the best show top to bottom. I think the, the best formulated, the best written, incredible performances. I think, you know, you could argue Pluribus or, you know, The Pit still is in that running for me. Um, there's, there's been a lot of really good TV this year, but Widow's Bay feels the most cohesive.

I didn't tell you. I was keeping it a secret from you. Uh, I banged out Furious. Really liked it. Yeah, I thought it was like an A-. I, it really was the first one in a while where it's like, oh, I gotta watch the next one. I wanna see what happens. Um, I had a really good time with it. I thought it was, uh, it was the right— there's so many of these that try to do what that show did, and you're like, all right, I guess I'll watch another episode, but Heart's not in it. That I thought was legitimately good. Well done.

It's a little heatish. It's a little like banking into Silence of the Lambs by the end of the first season. Like, we're getting into some really exciting places. Furious is very good if you haven't checked that out.

And Emmy Rossum basically like, oh, Claire Danes is the queen of the fucked up female lead character who has to solve crimes or some sort of issue. Yeah, watch this. Watch what I'm about to do here.

Market corrected, do you think Emmy Rossum's coming for the crown?

She did some things that I don't even know Claire Danes knew were possible.

Yeah.

Some faces, some of the choices that character made. It was all from the Claire Danes playbook. It was funny because my daughter watched— she saw The Beast in Me before she started rerunning Homeland. She'd never seen Homeland and only knew Claire Danes from the other show. And then I was watching her in Homeland, and she's like, Dad, is this just what Claire Danes does? She plays completely crazy. characters that make bad choices. And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's actually what she does often.

So, but until Emmy Rossum does a full-on, like, whale cry, then I don't know if we can give her that particular lane just yet.

What a battle. They're definitely head-to-head in the finals. Emmy Rossum, because she did this in Shameless too. I feel like the whole time she's felt like Claire Danes gets all the publicity for this, but I'm right here and here I come. What are you looking forward to this fall? Anything?

Well, we got Slow Horses coming up. Very excited about Slow Horses. And then it's like a very, I don't know, costume drama kind of fall, like East of Eden into Gilded Age. Like, I guess we'll kind of wait and see what hits, but anytime Slow Horses comes back on the calendar, I'm psyched for it. Are you up on that?

Not up on that one.

Come on.

Should I be?

Yes. Gary Oldman-led—

There's too much sports.

Fail spy comedy drama. I think you would love it.

There's too much sports. The sports, especially this summer with the World Cup. Baseball was really good.

Yeah.

Football's now back. Basketball feels like it's around the corner. All right. Slow horses. You're like the 19th person to tell me about that one. Rob Maloney, great to see you. You can watch and listen to Rob on Ringer NBA plus Prestige with Joanna, who you share custody with, with Mallory. I think that's really nice that you guys arranged that.

It's an amicable situation. I think, I think we've made it work.

Yeah. You get every other weekend, you get her on Wednesdays and some Fridays. All right, Rob, great to see you. Come back with the mailbag right after this.

Thanks, Bill.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Welcome to your most rewarding season ever, and it's only happening on FanDuel. How rewarding are we talking? More rewarding than an 18-point comeback, or maybe even an offensive lineman catching a touchdown? Well, this NFL season, that feeling will not stop on the field. Look out for the all-new FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Exclusive offers, surprises, much more every week. Check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Download the app to get started. FanDuel, play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7895. 877-777-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends to see who's the fastest or who can putt better in the backyard or who can get to somebody else's house or the better route, whatever it is. Even better if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line or a refreshing way to up the stakes, like Me and House are gonna pick games against each other on Thursdays this NFL season.

Maybe we keep track in ways of, uh, Michelob Ultra 6-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS Podcast or Ringer 6-packs, and then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri. All right, so much happened the last few days with football. I had to do a little mini mailbag for the NFL, um, before we get to the last part of this podcast, which is a good old-fashioned baseball discussion. Um, my pyramid of teams after one week I won't, I won't read you all the teams, but I have Seattle at the top with Baltimore and Buffalo underneath them, the Niners, Rams, and Houston. And I think that's the top 6 right now. And then we can argue about it. Bottom 4, Atlanta, Tennessee, Cleveland, and Miami last. And I think it's a really interesting argument between Cleveland and Miami, both of whom looked atrocious last week.

But I actually think there's slightly more upside with Cleveland 'cause of some of their skill players. I didn't see any upside from Miami. Their defense is terrible. It doesn't look like they're gonna be able to run the ball and it doesn't look like they're gonna be throw the— be able to throw the ball. So I have Miami 32nd. Happily we'll switch after week 2 if Cleveland looks as bad as they did in week 1. Some mailbag emails. You can email at BSPodcast33@gmail.com. This first one, the reason I bring this up is I got a Browns email from Kev Dog in Cleveland, who writes, as a Cleveland fan, the Browns futility has always fascinated me. Fascinated is an interesting word. The Browns stadium, which is currently Huntington Bank Field, if you're scoring at home, that stadium opened in 1999 and it has never hosted a Browns playoff game. Safe to say it won't this year or next year. And here's the thing, that stadium is set to close after the 2028 season. When the new Huntington Bank Field opens. So there's a chance, I'm interjecting here, there's a chance that stadium will have come and gone for almost 3 decades without ever having a home playoff game.

Kev Dog asks, what's more unbelievable, that Cleveland hasn't hosted an NFL playoff game since 1994, or that Cleveland built a pro football stadium That served a useful 3-decade life without ever hosting a playoff game in it? I think the latter. Uh, although I guess the Cleveland not hosting a playoff game of any kind since 1994. But I think having a stadium, building it, and then never having a single great moment in it is, is like impossible. I mean, even with the Patriots, um, When we were about to knock down the stadium, which was ultimately Sullivan Stadium, Schaefer Stadium, whatever you wanna call it, it had never had a great moment. And then the last game ever in that stadium was the Snow Game, which is what the Patriots fans call it. The asshole NFL fans call it the Tuck Rule Game. But when they beat the Raiders in the blizzard, and that turned out to be one of the most memorable non-Super Bowl games in the history of the league, and that was the last game in that stadium. So Cleveland, I guess, has a couple years here to have their version of the Snow Game, and my money would be against it.

Kev Dog also, he has a PS. If Deshaun Watson makes it to Week 3, you're going to see something unlike anything in sports. The entire home stadium will boo the starting quarterback mercilessly from player introductions until the game's over. Maybe that's your playoff game. Deshaun's last start in, in Week 3. I can't imagine they'll start him, but holy shit. If they do, if they're 0-2 and they're like, hey guys, here's Deshaun Watson, good luck. Uh, Joe from Denver said, last year Raiders-Patriots gave us the classic liar liar Week 1 game. Raiders won, stunk the rest of the year. Patriots dramatically improved. Which Week 1 game was the liar liar game? I think we have 3 candidates, and we talked about 2 of them on the Sunday pod with Sal. Cincinnati 33, Tampa Bay 27. where Tampa just was incredibly sloppy with the ball to the point that Sal compared Baker Mayfield to the Savannah Bananas. That's one everybody's pretty high on Cincinnati, but we'll see. I mean, Cincinnati definitely, the defense did look better. They won a game where Chase had 2 catches, but I have my eye on that 'cause I think Tampa's better than that game and Cincinnati's worse, but we'll see.

Cards-Chargers would be the obvious pick here. Because the Chargers were terrible and then did the whole, we didn't have a preseason. Maybe that was a mistake. Harbaugh, ah, we should, maybe we should have gotten our guys some reps. You think? And the Cards look great. But I gotta say, like Raiders-Pats was just a terrible game where the Pats gave up a couple key third down passes. They couldn't get anything going on offense and it was just kind of an ugly game. But you didn't leave the game like super impressed by the Raiders. The Cards were like putting on drive after drive on the Chargers. I think they must have had 6, 10, 11-play drives. They were getting third downs. They're kind of doing whatever they wanted. I don't— I think they're a little more for real. I'm trying not to do the overreaction and being like, the Cards are good, but offensively, that team was as accomplished as just about anybody I watched on Sunday. I think the liar liar game might be Chiefs-Broncos for a couple reasons. One is the Broncos were another team that afterwards they were like, man, maybe we should have cared about the preseason.

This is something my buddy Gus Ramsey, diehard Broncos fan, who I wish I had talked to before the game, was saying that they have a habit of doing this with Peyton where the week 1, they always look terrible apparently. So kind of wish I had known that. That was one thing. KC, you know, completely reinvented themselves with Walker, who was awesome. They're home, it's a Monday night. Expectations weren't as high as they normally were for the Chiefs. We didn't know what we were gonna get from Mahomes, and they had 2 touchdowns in this game. It's gonna sound like sour grapes. It's a— I'll be honest, it's a wee bit sour only 'cause I lost my Broncos tease, but There was holding on the Mahomes touchdown. There was a great video of Kelce just bear hugging somebody as Mahomes ran in, and it gets called every time. It's the Chiefs, they don't get it. When Kelce had that long lumbering run near the end and Rashee Rice is basically just bear hugging, mauling somebody for 30 yards, I haven't seen a holding penalty for that long in my entire life. He's holding the guy for so long that I think the refs just forgot about the holding and just kept running.

Those 2 penalties plus Bo Nix was just awful. And, and it just feels like, are the Chiefs really gonna do that every week? Like the, the, the amount of time Walker had, I think 26 touches. I looked at his touches in his career, played 4 years in Seattle. He's never had more than 250 touches for them. And I just wonder like, is that, is that one of those, they're throwing us off the scent a little and Denver can't be worse and maybe we shouldn't get— too over-the-top excited about that one. Um, now the counter would be the Chiefs are back, and I don't know what to think, but that would be my number one suspect for the liar liar game. I'm not sure the Chiefs are as good as they looked in that game, and I don't think Denver is going to have a game where they set the record for most missed tackles or whatever the hell. I mean, their defense was abominable. Um, Ian from Nashville wanted Conspiracy Bill's take on something, so I brought him in. He said, Mahomes— this is after the Chiefs game against the Broncos— Mahomes running in the first TD and looking completely normal 8 months after tearing both his ACL and LCL smells fishy.

Do you think he faked the December injury when the playoffs were out of reach? So down the line, people look at his legacy and think of it as the season Mahomes hurt his knee instead of the fact that they were 6-8 heading into that game. Even Conspiracy Bill can't get behind this. I will say I didn't think Mahomes was good in that game. I thought a couple of the scrambles were good, but his— I thought he misguised the whole game. And then I looked up the stats after, I think 90% of his passing yards were yards after catch. So I still have some questions with Mahomes. We'll see how he does. And obviously he's gonna get better as the year went along. But I did not leave that game thinking, holy shit, Patrick Mahomes is back. And if you did, you're crazy. Jim from South Jersey was excited that we talked about the Taysom Hill Award for most dropped, picked up player in fantasy on Sunday's pod. He predicts Devin Singletary will finally take the award home. He's sure to be added by millions after tearing apart Sal's dumb team's defense last week. He'll be dropped by millions after he fumbles away his chances coming weeks and then picked up again when Scatteboe eventually gets hurt and dropped again when he has his own mid-year injury, water with lemon for all, he says.

So Singletary, he thinks, will be the number 1. I am voting for Dontayvion Wicks on the Eagles, who I think a lot of people are gonna pick up this week. I think he'll be dropped. I think then he'll have another 5 for 90. He'll get picked up again. And I just think that's how it's gonna go for him. He's, he's just gonna be on and off the waiver wire. My backup choice would be somebody named Caleb Douglas on the Miami Dolphins, a receiver who was 5 for 94 last week and will get picked up. I just think in general the Miami receivers are gonna get dropped left and right, but I think it's gonna be Wicks or Singletary as most added drop guy this year. John from Portland, Oregon asks if Drake Maye is the next Tony Romo, a supremely talented successor to QB royalty but also supremely boneheaded. That was hurtful. Tony Romo, by the way, zero NFC title games and finished 3rd in the MVP once in 2005. 2014. Drake Maye made a Super Bowl last year. Just pointing that out. His second season ever. Uh, there, there are some questions that will hopefully be answered by the New England Patriots this week against the Steelers.

Speaking of the Steelers, Marcus Reed in Edmonton said, I'm a longtime Steelers fan who enjoyed your Tomlin discussion on Sunday. I was talking about how much I loved how they used Tomlin at halftime. I've watched nearly every Tomlin Tuesday press conference over the years. Tomlin's greatest strength was his ability to communicate. It's not surprising to see NBC figure this out immediately and use him like Jahmyr Gibbs. I'm gonna interject here. It was super surprising because NBC has always botched pregame shows and halftime shows and had too many people, and they would cut to the field with Jack Collinsworth and Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison. I don't think any network over the last 20 years has made me go, what the fuck are they doing? More than NBC. So I actually think it was surprising they figured it out and used him like Jahmyr Gibbs. Anyway, Marcus says he is getting a lot of touches— pregame interviews, pregame show, halftime. How long until he's doing Terry McCall's ref reviews, sideline reporting, maybe even interviewing the coaches between the halves? I like this. Let's use him like Jahmyr Gibbs. It's like Dan Campbell trying to save his job with Jahmyr Gibbs.

He's Tomlin for everything. I would have him come into the booth for the second quarters. I thought he was awesome. I think he's gonna get better as the year went along. And this is like the first real kick-ass studio guy we've had in a long, long time. And it's pretty rare. Like, even in the NBA, I remember Pat Riley when he was between Lakers and Knicks, and he did NBC way, way back when. And he was incredible compared to what we had dealt with with studio shows. And it was like, holy shit, like, he's actually staying stuff. He has— there's weight behind it. Felt the same way about Tomlin. So hopefully he keeps it going. Ben writes in, I've always loved your theory that sports cities are more in sync than we think. As a diehard Boston fan living in New York, I'm now terrified that I'm watching it happen in real time.

Uh-oh.

The Knicks finally overcame their demons and won a title, and ever since, it feels like the entire city's sports karma has flipped. Oh no. The Jets and Giants are somehow both 1-0 for the first time since 2009. The Yankees are favored in the AL, and the Dodgers seem more beatable than they have in years.

Hmm.

My worst nightmare, a Yankees World Series win.

Ooh.

Regardless, I'm hating every second of it. So using your sports city theory, what needs to happen to kill the New York vibe? What's the loss that breaks the spell before this gets completely out of hand? Best regards, Ben. Ben, I think you and I both need to sit down and relax and have some settle-down juice, but you did put the fear of God in me here. I would hate to see some sort of New York shift. And if you look at the Giants winning the game, we didn't think they were gonna win in week 1, and their schedule is actually pretty easy the next couple weeks. And if they can keep Dart and Scatterbaugh healthy, I'm actually worried about them winning the division. Jets will be 7-10 or 8-9. Yankees are a favorite. We're talking about baseball later, but the Yankees are— almost favored to win the AL. I think the only reason they're not favored is 'cause they have this, the Red Sox in a best 2 of 3. Maybe the Red Sox ironically will be the one that can end this. All they have to do is go to Yankee Stadium and win 2 of 3 games with 3 really good starting pitchers.

So it's on their shoulders. But man, you put the fear of God in me with all this. Terry in New Jersey said, I know you think Jon Harbaugh is overrated, But as a Giants fan, I was thrilled with the performance against the Cowboys, and I think you should have been. I spent all Monday talking about how disciplined they were, how they didn't blow the lead, and how Dart didn't lower his head to take on linebackers. All true. Has there ever been a lower bar for a head coach to clear than, hey, we didn't collapse in the 4th quarter, or hey, we didn't make dumb plays that got our quarterback killed? That is, uh, from Terry in New Jersey, and honestly, it's all true. I felt the same way last year with Vrabel, and Vrabel was great, obviously, and won Coach of the Year. I'm talking last year, regular season, made the Super Bowl, maybe didn't go great after the season, but he followed Jared Mayo. And I was thinking about that, and I Googled Jared Mayo to see what NFL team he was on, and he's not coaching in the NFL anymore. He works for a hedge fund.

So Mike Vrabel, he followed a guy who was the Patriots coach for 1 year and then immediately left football, even though he's like 41 years old. I don't know if you're ever gonna get a wider disparity of former coach, new coach than that. And also, I don't know how bad Dayball was, even though the energy wasn't great, but Harbaugh, if he can do half of that, you know, he came in, he gave them a real identity. They're just big, they're powerful, they're gonna run the ball, they're gonna not be idiots. Maybe it'll work. I might have been wrong about the Giants. Mike F says, uh, what the hell were Tom Cruise and Taylor Swift talking about at that Chiefs game last night? It was funny that there were people writing, uh, lip-reading stuff about this, trying to, trying to decipher what they were talking about. I have no idea what they were talking about. Like, part of me was thinking it was like when Anchorman, when they were filming the TV commercial, it's like, we're laughing, now we're serious. Or like when they have movie scenes where the extras are in the back and the extras are having a fake conversation behind our main characters.

But I decided, I think he was telling her about All the Right Moves. And he was telling her about how he played Stef Georgievich. He was this Pennsylvania cornerback, had a chance to go to college, and then Rifleman should've taken the safety at the end in the pouring rain, didn't. Hands off to the Italian guy who fumbles. They lose the game. He ends up getting mad at the coach. Probably just told her the whole plot of All the Right Moves, and I don't think she was really listening. Andrew from Hartford, Connecticut said, I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan, but I even need— but I even need to appreciate how fucking psycho Scatabo is. Can we start a Wingrow Award for the most batshit crazy guy in the NFL? Maybe it could be portable across all sports. Maybe it could be an ESPY. So you get a candidate from each of the major sports. He's my nominee right now for the NFL. That's Andrew in Hartford, Connecticut. The Winkler Award. I had to get it on. Uh, it's definitely Dillon Brooks for the NBA and probably Wilson Contreras for baseball, but that would be a really fun award ceremony.

And you're right, Scadabow's probably winning that. Um, Jim Comp wrote in, don't mean to pile on in your time of mourning after the Pats loss, but Romeo Doubs was every Packers fan drive to the airport guy. Top 10 in dropped balls, usually biggest moments, consistently got chances to be number 1 receiver, no-showed. His Seahawks performance was something Packer fans are all too familiar with. I didn't even mention him walking out on the team during the season over contract role issues. The Packers spent big money to extend 2 other receivers, not him.

Good luck.

That made me a little nervous. Phil in Portland asks, in light of recent podcast revelations, I'm thinking Aaron Rodgers' new nickname should be Cuck Rodgers in the 21st Century. Thoughts? I'm gonna move to the next email question. Brian from DMV asked that Justin Herbert, Jordan Love question. Uh, he thinks it was LaMelo Ball from the previous segment with Mahoney. Um, I like my Trey Murphy answer, but we did that one. Indy and Chicago, another NBA question but tied to the NFL. As a Chicago resident entering a season in which the 2 most talked about players will be Caleb Williams and Caleb Wilson, I feel like I need some sort of mnemonic device for remembering which last name goes with which player. If you remember on Thursday, House called Caleb Williams Caleb Wilson, and I can't believe I haven't done it yet. I'm like -450 on FanDuel to do it before the end of Week 3. Andy writes, as it stands, this is feeling like plugging in a USB cable where it's 50/50, but somehow I get it wrong 75% of the time. Can we get our best minds working on this? So when we had the Fantasy Football Show, which was initially Heifetz and Danny Kelly, and we called it the Danasy Football Show, and Craig was the producer, and eventually Craig became a co-host, and now we call it the Ringer Fantasy Football Show.

And we called it Danasy, and we decided Danny Heifetz would be Danny and Danny Kelly would be DK so that we weren't asking if Craig was talking to them, they wouldn't both be Danny and it would be super confusing. And now somehow Heifetz is Heifetz and Danny Kelly's DK, and we don't have a Danny on the show. Caleb Williams is already there. I think Caleb Wilson has to be called CW or C-Dub. I just think that's how it has to play out. It's like when OKC had the 2 Jalen Williamses and one was J-Will and one was J-Dub. I don't think we can have a Caleb Williams and a Caleb Wilson as the 2 Identifiable Chicago Stars. It's too fucking confusing. Just both in both cases, you just want to call the guy Caleb, and I think Caleb Wilson just has to bite the bullet and be C Dub or C W. Or you could argue these are two separate sports, and this will never collide. But it is; it's already confusing, and we're gonna need a solution. So we're needing both guys to get together and try to figure this out. But I think Caleb Williams should be Caleb Williams, and.

Caleb Wilson should be C-dub. Kyle from Orlando said there's been a lot of dialogue about Justin Herbert, and he said his dad's a longtime Pats fan who thinks Herbert is the modern-day Drew Bledsoe. Insane individual talent, high pedigree, West Coast franchise savior, destined for greatness. But Bledsoe couldn't handle the biggest crunch-time moments, didn't have the it factor, was never a top 5 player, made one Super Bowl, that's it. Herbert has never won a playoff game or finished higher in 9th and MVP. It's year 7. Is he just Bledsoe 2.0? I actually think Bledsoe was better. The first 7 years of Bledsoe, I think, was better than Herbert. And I know that advanced stats will say Herbert was better, but, um, Bledsoe took a team to the Super Bowl. Herbert's never won a playoff game. So in, in a way, I don't think you can call him Bledsoe 2.0. I think, I think Bledsoe is the slightly rich man's Justin Herbert at this point. Bledsoe was really good for a while and took A ton of hits. And I think by the time we got to the end of the '90s, I, I just think— I think his, his, uh, between offensive line stuff and just how many times he threw and how many times they used him, I just think he started to get banged up.

So that would be my take on that. Uh, AP in the ATL said, my buddies and I are watching Red Zone. Every time they switch to Jets-Titans, we let out a collective groan. No one wanted an update of this game in any capacity. Is there a way to get a feature added where certain games can be deselected from any Red Zone updates, like a reverse Red Zone? Can you use your powers as SportsR YouTube CMO to get this implemented? So I thought about this. I think there should be 2 Red Zone channels, and one would be the Red Zone channel that covers absolutely everything. Um, and I think they have a fantasy Red Zone channel just for the fantasy stuff, so I guess we already have 2. So I think there needs to be a 3rd one. Where it's just like the best 5 games of the day and you don't have to deal with Dolphins-Raiders, you don't have to deal with Jets— um, I can't even remember— Jets-Titans. That's how bad that game was. And maybe it's like the filet mignon of the Red Zone, and if you want to watch that instead, it's just more updates for the best games.

Just an idea. Andrew Grillo Said that Sal and I touched about this briefly on the Sunday night pod, but his biggest takeaway from Ohio State-Texas was zero teammates celebrating with Arch. It almost seemed like they were avoiding him as he ran around, out loud, Jimmy V. Question, is this a red flag for NFL teams if Arch falls in the draft? Is this Bo Callahan? And then Arch had the thing with Holly Rowe. That wasn't great either. My bigger question for him, this seems like the most likely candidate we've had in a while to not want to go to the team that drafts him. 'Cause I was looking when I was doing the pyramid and I was thinking about the worst 5 teams in the league potentially this year. I think it's a pretty safe bet Cleveland, Tennessee, Miami are 3. Atlanta, maybe 4, maybe Indy. But if you go through, like, what would be the perfect team for him? I guess it would be Atlanta, right? And now we don't know if Arch is gonna go first or not, but Atlanta, I don't think he vetoes that. I think he'd be psyched to go there.

And, you know, he's from the South, obviously. Cleveland, I think you're just bummed out. We just did that email before that they have a stadium that they're gonna have for 30 years, maybe, with no home playoff game. Tennessee, they already have Cam Ward. Miami... maybe you could talk yourself into Miami. But yeah, this could be interesting if he's the clear number 1 pick and doesn't want to go to the number 1 team. Tim Gallagher said, I just put on Hard Knocks, saw perhaps the least surprising thing ever. In the opening scene, Sam Darnold manages to fumble his Super Bowl ring. Opening the box. I know you have high hopes for the Hawks this year, but this feels like an ominous sign. Uh, ominous sign. I got this email before the season started, and Sam Darnold got hurt in the first series. Maybe it was an ominous sign. Um, 2 more. My question, when are we ever gonna zag on celebrity integration? I don't like when the musicians show up in WWE. I don't like seeing Jerry Seinfeld 50 times during an NBA game. I don't give a shit who is the guest picker on College GameDay.

I can't be in the minority on this. You're not. I think the issue is these shows are produced by mid-level TV execs for the most part. I used to call them when I was at ESPN, the, the khakis and blue shirt police. And all they do is come in and they just wanna keep their jobs. And occasionally they'll have an idea. And the idea will be one of the 3 ideas that people in this exact type of job have had for the last 50 years, which is, let's get a celebrity in here. Let's add a 6th person to the table. It's not like they're putting any real thought into any of this. None of them have ever done a TV show, hosted a show, been on anything. They're all— but they've all been behind-the-scenes people who worked their way up and now think they know more about TV than anybody else. And if the show doesn't work, they wanna be able to blame the host. 'Cause they don't want to have any blame. And the ESPN guys who are still there, they know who they are. It's always the host's fault. It's always, we just need this person.

It's always, we just need more gimmicks. And that's why we get celebrities at the desk all the time, because it's an idea that is born on like a Tuesday and everybody looks around and goes, that's a great idea. And then if it doesn't work, it's the celebrity's fault, not the idea of having a guest picker. All right, last question. Your parent corner contrasting getting a rescue dog or a purebred dog made me think we need an Aspiration-type company for rescue dogs. What does that mean? Aspiration existed so billionaires could pollute as much as they wanted, as long as they paid for the requisite amount of trees to be planted. Is that true? I never really fully understood what Aspiration was. Maybe that's what it was. Anyway, Seth says we need this for pets. You're in the clear socially to buy a purebred dog as long as you find housing, vaccines, et cetera, for 10 rescue dogs. Just a social pressure get outta jail free card for wealthy people who want a clear conscience for buying a purebred dog. That's from Seth from Indianapolis. Yep, these are my readers. Somebody comparing rescue dogs to aspiration. This is why we go through these emails for beauties like that.

I don't mind the idea either, by the way. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back. Billy Gill, Anthony DeBando, and we're gonna talk about a pretty fun, pretty strange baseball season right after this. FanDuel's making it your most rewarding season ever with boosts and promos and teasers and a new rewards club and so much more. We were so excited we were able to bring back teasers finally on Sundays, -110 juice on the Ringer 107, the favorite teasers. I think we split this week because The Broncos didn't come through for a couple, but I hit mine. I had Lions and Jags. For Lions-Bills on Thursday night, so if you wanna do an SGP for this one, I just like this one anyway. It's, it's the Bills. The Bills are -4.5 favorites, but Bills moneyline, I think there's gonna be a lot of points. The over-under is really high, but you can do the alternate total of 46.5 over for that. And then Josh Allen just to rush for 10+ yards, and that is plus 106 on FanDuel. And you can add all the player boost tokens or whatever they have going on Thursday. And I would recommend that one because I don't think the Lions are going to be able to stop the Bills, especially if you saw their secondary last week.

If you like that one, go ahead and place this SGP on the FanDuel app. Don't forget to check it out and use your rewards all season long.

Oh, meine Zehen bringen mich um.

Diese Schuhe sind viel zu eng. Trägst du immer noch diese spitzen?

Ich meine, sind nicht alle Laufschuhe so geformt?

Nein, du brauchst Altras.

Altra?

Altras sind geformt wie deine Füße, mit einer fußförmigen Zehenbox. Einfach viel bequemer. Bezwinge deinen Lauf mit Hallenzehen.

Okay, das klingt traumhaft.

Mehr Komfort, Kraft und Dynamik. Alles durch die Passform. Altra versteht das einfach. Altra, stay out there.

Alright, haven't done nearly enough baseball on the podcast. In the last couple months, even though I've been watching a ton of baseball. But now it's mid-September, we're in the grind, 6, 7 weeks here, and then baseball might just go away for a long, long time. Billy Gill is here. Anthony DeBando is here. I think this has been a really good season. This is the most baseball I've watched really since probably COVID, maybe 2021. DeBando, what is your number one thing you think happened this season? If you had to say, like, how will you remember this season? What's number one?

I think we have to talk about Pete Crow-Armstrong. I don't think you could come on any baseball podcast and not talk about one of the best seasons of the century.

Right. Okay, make the case. Best seasons of the century.

Of the century. So since, since the turn of the century, 2000, I pulled up because he just surpassed 10 wins yesterday, Fangraphs WAR. There are only 13 position player seasons since 2000 that have had 10 F4 seasons. This is the name of players he's with: Barry Bonds, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout. Those guys all did it multiple times.

Wow.

Bobby Witt in 2024, Mookie Betts in 2018, Alex Rodriguez in 2002, and then PCA this season. He is lapping the field. He ran away with the MVP as Ohtani has kind of fallen off a little bit here. But really, like, one of the craziest two-way seasons we've ever had. And as a Phillies fan, I have reminded every Mets fan I know that yes, they traded PCA for Javy Báez 5 years ago.

Oh my God.

The trade that will go down as one of the worst trades of the last 10 to 20 years of baseball.

And on top of it, traded him to a big market that loves him. The Billy, the Crow-Armstrong thing, it's almost like I, it feels like it could potentially should be bigger and it isn't. But has he reached the status to you? It's like, oh, the Cubs are in town. I gotta go see this guy in person. He's not there yet, right?

I don't, I mean, not for me, but I also have bad feelings towards PCA for fantasy reasons where I had him 2 years too soon. I'd keep him. He'd then be bad again.

Yeah.

Then I let him go and then he turns into PCA last year. And then this year he, you know, is on another level. The, the best season since the turn of the century is kind of crazy. Like Barry Bonds had a 73 home run season since 2000. Show they had a 50-50 season like 2 years ago. He's good, but I don't know.

What was the season when Bonds—

he's up there in that conversation. Yeah.

What was the season when Bonds just got on base like 70% of the time or whatever? Remember that? Like '04, '05 when he—

oh, Bonds seasons. Yeah. 2004 Bonds.

Yeah. That was the, I think the craziest thing. I, it was almost like his eyesight became 20/0 eyesight. He just knew exactly where the strike zone was. I've never seen anything like that. What do you, Billy, what do you think the number one thing you'll remember about this season is?

Man, I put together a list of like all of the different things. I feel like baseball this year has been good. And for you, Bill, in particular, we were mentioning right before we started recording, timing-wise, it was perfect for you, right? Like you got good baseball and exciting things that you cared about at just the right time. So start out with the World Baseball Classic, which I remember you weren't that interested in. It ended up being like a really fun tournament.

I got in late then.

Yeah.

Then things, you know, for you started slowing down on the baseball front. You had March Madness and then the NBA playoffs. And at that time the Red Sox were bad, so you didn't really have to focus on the Red Sox. And the World Cup came and then your Red Sox turned it on like just at the right time to get you all the way through summer where now you're paying attention to baseball. And now, you know, football's here and unfortunately now baseball starts taking a little bit of a backseat. So hopefully you can kind of keep paying attention to baseball and the Red Sox go on a run. But if they fall off, it's the best time for them to fall off too.

Well, I also had my fantasy, my AL fantasy league that we still have a chance to win. Ooh. Got me watching games like really every night. My wife was like, what's going on? Are you having like a midlife crisis? And I was like, no, I just enjoy the Red Sox and Cam Schlittler's pitching tonight and I wanna see how he does. So it was just a lot of stuff like that. Anyway, I interrupted you.

No. Are these the semis for you? When is the finals? Is it next week?

We don't, we just go through. It's like Premier League. Yeah. We just go through. So we had, we're in second place right now and we need basically strikeouts. And we need a little bit of a Hail Mary 'cause Kate Anderson has turned out to be kind of a dud. And we had to start Patrick Sandoval this week for 2 games, including— but we're taping this before tonight's games, but in Texas, it's basically the fantasy baseball version of a Hail Mary. We need him to go like 6 innings, 11 Ks, like, but that's where we're at. We're probably gonna finish second, but I can't tell you how many texts. me and my partner Hench have done about this. It's, it's basically been half of my text.

You, you have brought it to our chat.

Yeah, I just, it's, yeah, we, we're just trying to game the system with this shitty team we had where we basically had Schlittler and 3 other guys and then all these Cal Quantrill, Cater Montero. Anyway, Billy, go ahead. I interrupted you a second time.

No, it's all good. Don't worry about it. I guess stories of the season. I mean, we've talked about this a bunch of times, but I think 2026 is gonna re— be remembered as the season of ABS. Like we introduced ABS. Baseball is, you know, and their fans are not known to really like change and you like to kind of keep the traditions of the game and not change things much. And there was some, I think, reluctance to change with ABS. We saw it a couple years ago when they made the bases bigger and they implemented the pitch clock and it's like, whoa, this is not my baseball anymore.

Right.

And then it like wasn't a big deal at all. And all of a sudden I'm like, wow, these 3.5-hour games are done in 2 hours and 50 minutes. And now that the bases are bigger, people are stealing more bases and it ended up working out. And ABS was the same thing. Like ABS became an exciting spin on the game and the implementation of kind of figuring out the results of the challenge live in front of everyone on the screen, figuring it out along with the umpire where there's no, you know, two ways about it. I think it was a great thing for baseball. I think it's helped the game. Then you have kind of the dynamics of Do you challenge? Do you not challenge? Who do you allow to challenge? Who's not allowed to challenge? What umpires actually don't know the strike zone? What hitters have no idea where the ball is? Like, yeah, it's been a fun season with ABS and you know, this is the year that it started.

Well, you also, when you're at a game, it's really fun if your team challenges and you like, it's this random crowd reaction you get outta nowhere either way. But the interesting thing to me is like when When they— like, I remember when we first talked about this, like, 2 weeks in this season, and all of us were like, this is cool, kind of like it. Now by September, and you've seen so many of these, you have these instantaneous reactions now where it's like, oh, terrible challenge. Oh, you—

yeah.

Oh my God, what a mistake. Oh, this catcher sucks at this. And I think that's been fun too to butt up.

Well, it's the difference between the live experience and the couch experience, because when you're on the couch, they have the box, so you know Yeah. Whether it was a good challenge pretty quickly. Even the broadcasters are now like, well, they're going to lose that challenge.

Yeah.

But live, when you're sitting at the game, especially if your seat isn't right behind home plate—

Yeah, you have no idea.

I often have no idea. We're kind of guessing. And then they show it on the screen and the crowd oohs and aahs. It feels like the tennis challenges from yesteryear. But my favorite bit of information that I've learned about ABS is actually what happens when a team runs out of challenges. And front offices have found that the umpire will kind of take it out on the team and the team will get a slightly worse strike zone.

Right.

After you've gone after the umpire and been wrong a few times, that umpire is going to stick it to you. That has been my favorite learning thing. And they noticed it pretty quickly. This was back in May when a couple of front office people mentioned it to me and I was like, really? I don't— I tried to find the data for it. I couldn't. But spite umpiring.

Which was the game a few weeks ago, DeBundo, where there was a— there was an altercation behind home plate. One of the teams ran out of challenges. And the umpire just straight up called someone safe who was tagged out by like a foot at the play at the plate. And he knew like they can't challenge it. What are they gonna do? Like they could say, hey, can you guys huddle, maybe have an umpire review? And they're like, nope, we're not gonna do that. 'Cause despite umpires have been great this year too. I think CB Buckner, CB Buckner I think was like the first victim, right? Of like just public embarrassment. Was it like—

It was the Red Sox-Reds.

Yeah.

I think it was Eugenio Suarez had like 3 in a row that he got on him. And it was just like, Matt Buckner is just gonna retire after this season if he doesn't murder someone on the field today.

I think we should keep going in a circle, so I'll go with my, my first one. And I don't know where this ranks, but just for me personally, the AL West dumpster fire that we have— and I ranted about the Mariners on Sunday, I'm not gonna do a second 3-minute Mariners thing, although it did make me a hero on Mariners Reddit. I was very excited. They ran the clip of me just complaining about the team. Then Kate Anderson last night sucks against the Angels, who don't even have 60 wins yet. They are just a pox on society. But if you dig deeper here, like we're, again, we're taping this for Tuesday's games. There's no team above .500 in the AL West. The best team is—

Never happened.

75-75 Houston, who is -44 for run differential. Yeah. So the only time this has come close was the 2005 NL West. San Diego went 82-80. Everybody else was under .500. This year Seattle's in 3rd place. They're 70-81. The Sacramento A's are 61-89, and then the Angels are 57-93. And what's interesting is the Red Sox have played all these guys and I have these guys in different fantasy things and you watch these teams and they're not that bad. And maybe there's just a lot of good baseball players now, but like, I don't know, Sacramento, like they, they, I, I call them Sacramento derisively, but they lost a bunch of dudes this year. Like they lost Kurtz, they lost, You know, their catcher for a while and just in general. And yet they have these other dudes that will come up and hit game-winning homers. And then I watched the Angels who I've been stuck with a bunch of times with Red Sox games and stuff. Even they're not terrible. I don't— DeBundo, is there any explanation for why this division is this bad? 'Cause like the Red Sox play the Rangers this week. Their bats are, have been hot for like a month and I feel like they could put it on us these, this series.

But why is this so bad?

Yeah, I think it's a case-by-case basis. I mean, I think Houston and Texas came in projected around 82, 83 wins, so maybe they've kind of had normal seasons. You've talked about the Mariners. I mean, I as a bettor have been very upset with the Mariners as well. Somebody who bet them preseason, they were the second favorite to win the American League. And I remember it was around the All-Star break, 2 of my buddies who host a Mariners podcast, Marine Layer, they were in Philly. And we were talking, and I've never heard a fan base so angry. There's cynicism, there's despair, there's annoyance, but theirs was so much anger. I was like, you guys were in Game 7 of the ALCS.

Right.

We want the manager fired. We're rooting against them. We're sick of this entire situation. And the irony of the whole thing is that DiPoto, the general manager, is the guy who went out and said, we want to be a consistently good team. that wins 85, 90 games every year, gets into the playoffs, and then plays playoff roulette. That's our goal. So we're not going to sell out. And this year, the irony of that is that they had just been a 52% team and won 84 games, they probably would've walked away with this division and honestly been maybe the favorite to win that little half of the American League bracket. The A's ran out of pitching and all their young hitters got hurt, and the Angels are a dumpster fire. So It is the NFC Southification of American League Baseball.

The Central, by the way, is not that much better either.

No.

Like the, the, the AL in general is like the East and everyone else. Yeah. Not to go too deep into Mariners and all that, but that was one of the stories I think also of the season, not to cut the line, but is Cal Raleigh just fell completely off from last year.

Yeah.

Where we're like, wow, this is like one of the best players in the AL to then He goes and he, in the World Baseball Classic, decided that he was going to be the fun police and he wasn't going to shake hands with his teammates. And then, you know, you go into the regular season, like, no, there's, there's nothing going on here. Like Julio Rodriguez is like, oh, winning the World Baseball Classic would mean more to me than winning the World Series. And you're like, what's— Yeah, that's what's going on with the Mariners. Are they going to be okay here? And they're like, no, no, everything's fine. Don't worry about them. And here we are halfway through September. They're 11 games under .500. They're going to miss the playoffs. And it's like, whoa. Like this team last year looked like they were gonna be kind of contenders for a while here and it all just fell apart. And part of it is Cal Raleigh just disappeared this season.

And Munoz was the other one, like 10 blown saves. It's pretty, pretty hard for a closer.

Yeah.

That's, that's about throwing 101. Yeah. When you think like the Blue Jays, who I think have been another weird story this year where they, they actually, they, they signed Dylan Cease, who's been awesome. I mean, the 3 best pitchers I've watched this year, the Red Sox go against were Schlittler, Cease, and weirdly Detmer on the Angels, who's like been lights out for 2 months. But they nailed the Cease signing and then they nailed their closer. Like Barlin came outta nowhere and has been completely lights out for them. And then you look at Munoz and he's been one of the worst closers in the league. I, I don't know what to make of anything in this division. Everyone's kind of afraid of the Astros, but I mean, how many guys are left from the Astros from 8, 9 years ago? It's a completely different team. It does lead to one other thing I wanted to mention quick. The Jordan Alvarez with the most half-assed Triple Crown run of all time. Is that— have you had one conversation about this? He's leading in batting average. He's 2 back in homers and he's 4 back in RBI. And like with one good week could be going for the Triple Crown, which seemed impossible, Billy.

Well, okay. I'm glad you brought this up because I remember when Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown and I think it was him and Trout was going back-to-back MVP. And it's like, well, all the metrics say Mike Trout's had a better season. And we can't give it to Cabrera. And it's like, well, Cabrera got a Triple Crown for the first time in like 40 years or whatever it was at the time. Like, there's no way that you can't give it to him. And then all of the metrics, people were like, that doesn't matter. Like, RBIs are not a thing. Like, we're looking at the wrong stats.

Defense.

Yeah. Like, these are the wrong things. These are the wrong measurables. And then about a month ago, I tuned in and I was watching MLB Network and I was shocked with like refreshing, a refreshing take that I wasn't expecting. which was Brian Kenny advocating for the Triple Crown mattering again with Jordan Alvarez.

Ooh.

And he's like, listen, I know you're going to be surprised by this. I wasn't a Cabrera guy at the time. I thought Trout should have won that MVP. But man, if Jordan Alvarez gets this Triple Crown, I think that he should easily win the MVP. And I mean, he never really went away. Like you mentioned, if we, if he gets hot here for 2 weeks, he could end up winning the Triple Crown on a team that's .500 without him wouldn't even really be in contention. He's probably going to win the MVP. It's him and Caminaro, right? If he wins a Triple Crown, I think that the old school voters will give him the MVP regardless.

But if he makes the playoffs, yeah, it's a very—

I think he's got it either way now, by the way.

Yeah. It's a very quiet, anonymous Triple Crown, which is not that common. And it's been what, when did Cabrera even do it? Like 2013? Yeah, it was early 2010s. Yeah.

It's, I mean, he's definitely the scariest batter in the AL. Like if you're just watching all the teams, he's the one when he comes up, you're like, if there's a guy on base, you're like, oh shit, what's gonna happen? All right, DeBundo, your next thing. What do you got?

Well, I wanna talk about, so you mentioned Trout.

Yeah.

It actually was a debate because Trout had one of those seasons, one of those 10-win seasons, those unicorn years that don't really come around very often this year. There really isn't that person. And it's worth saying that even if you take out home runs and RBI and average, Alvarez is 18% better at the plate than every hitter in baseball. Wow. It's, it's Pete Crow-Armstrong, 157 WRC+. Jordan, 175. So he is way above everybody else at the plate this year. It's not really particularly close. And so I think for that reason, you have to, you have to give it to Jordan. Like, I think it's over regardless of what happens in the last 2 weeks.

Billy, what do you have for your next one?

Okay, so this one, let's, let's stay in the West because this was a moment of the season and it happened so long ago. It goes all the way back to April 4th. And at the time, it felt like a baseball is back moment where we had the World Baseball Classic. We were riding high. Then everyone saw this moment. Everyone reacted the exact same way. The Joe Adell game where Joe Adell robs 3 homers, goes into the crowd, takes that incredible picture, steals one from Cal Raleigh, Josh Naylor, JP Crawford. And then someone with their iPhone just takes the picture of him standing in the crowd Holding the ball defiantly up in the air. They end up winning that game 1 to nothing. And then after that, like, yeah, the baseball season just went on. All of a sudden the Angels decided, you know what, we're going to trade him at the deadline. He's a Guardian now. But also we already made these giveaways for him. So, you know, we're still going to give away the Joe Adell giveaways. So they gave away a Joe Adell Angels football jersey August 30th and tomorrow, September 16th. is the Joe Adell bobblehead commemorating him robbing 3 home runs.

Oh wow.

They're really riding it.

Yeah. He hasn't been on the team for nearly a month and a half now, but if you wanna remember that moment forever, go to the Angels game tomorrow and you can get a Joe Adell Angels robbery bobblehead.

Are you guys aware of the Joe Adell lore? Like this guy has been super crushing fantasy owners for years.

Yeah.

He's been the great hope as an, as a Joe Adell fan. I think I've been rooting for this guy for so long. I remember when I went to a game, Angels-Phillies, and he hit a home run off the Phillies, and I was actually excited to the point where Phillies fans and Angels fans who were sitting around me were like, why are you happy that Joe Adell hit a home run? I'm like, you don't understand. I'm here to see Joe Adell do something. He did it. And the 3-home run robbery, I'm convinced I will not see that happen again in my lifetime.

No, it's pretty high IQ.

It's a matter of luck and skill. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty impossible.

It's gotta be one in a million chance. Do you think if, if he had just, if he was Joe, J-O-E, Adell, different career? Is it intimidating enough to be a Joe with a, just a J-O?

I don't know. I love tweeting Joe in all caps, so.

Okay.

He was also, by the way, like a bad defender when he started. Like, oh, he's probably given away more home runs than he's saved by them bouncing off of him and going over the wall.

Well, that happened earlier, late, a few 2 weeks later he had one bounce off of his glove out of, out of the park. They said, well, he's, he's still +2.

Yeah.

For the season.

What was, was it Tampa or Sacramento? I think it might've been Tampa where somebody knocked the home, not caught the fly ball, but then it knocked it over into, it became a home run, but it landed in the brunch setup. There was like a left field brunch. I think it was Tampa, right?

It was in Tampa. It was the visiting team. It was, I think it was the 9th inning and I, I believe it wasn't a walk-off. I think that ended up tying the game.

Or a game-tyer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it was like Nick Fortes, their catcher or something, hit it. He catches it, then he hits the wall right next to the foul pole, and then it hits like this picnic area for like corporate events and like—

Chicken and waffles.

Yeah.

What a place for the brunch, by the way.

Pretty funny.

Right, right in the first row.

Here's my next one, and I almost led with this. I think it's a really interesting debate. Mizerowski, has he replaced Ohtani as the number one kind of must-watch guy in the league. And is this more because we've done the Ohtani thing now for a few years and he's been on the Dodgers for a couple years and we take it for granted? It's a little like the Emmys last night where the pit cleans up the first time and then it's like, oh, I know the pit. So they win, they win one Emmy, but they don't win any of the acting stuff.

Ohtani fatigue, you're saying?

Little Ohtani fatigue combined with like this Mizorowski thing with what we know about these flamethrowing pitchers. This might be a year of this, might be a year and a half. I don't know if he's doing that. We're watching it with Skienz now in Pittsburgh where you're just not the same. So I don't know. Do you agree with this, DeBando?

This is the number one must-watch guy right now in terms of like pitching ninja nerd pitching lovers. Not even close. I don't know if the average MLB fan is like excited to tune into the Brewers to watch Miz during the regular season, but I do think it, it produces a difference maker for them in the playoffs. Because my next thing was going to actually be what Milwaukee's done this year, which is remarkable yet again.

Right.

And this year it does feel like they go into the playoffs with more firepower to go toe-to-toe with these superstar teams because they now have a true 1A superstar of their own that can go up against anybody else in the league and be competitive with them. And that feels like something that was lacking. I mean, last year he pitched in the playoffs, But they didn't trust him to the point where he was an op— he was— they had openers for him. Yeah. He would come in for 3 or 4 innings. They weren't really sure. Then he shoved and it's like, okay, this kid has arrived. And now he's gone out and just won the Cy Young.

Well, they're gonna get the 1 seed, so he won't have to pitch for, you know, 5, 6 days. So that's good. And in general, like, I agree with you. You agree with that, Billy, that it feels like even though the diehard baseball people know what's going on and they care, Does feel like he needs like playoffs, like an NLCS against the Cubs or the Dodgers where he just comes in and strikes out 12 of the first 15 in game 4. Needs a moment like that, I think, to go really on the map.

Yeah. I mean, I think if he does it on the national stage, because baseball fans know and Brewers fans obviously know, but if he does it in the playoffs, you know, on TBS or wherever the playoffs are on now, like in front of everyone when there's only one game on, I think people are gonna be blown away and be like, whoa, who is this guy? Like he's arrived. I have a, a, an idea that I wanna float past you guys.

Yeah.

Because of kind of like baseball's become somewhat cyclical where now we're seeing like, oh, small ball is somewhat back and people are bunting and people are stealing. And like there was a time where we thought like that just is a part of the game that we're never gonna see again. And now people are bunting 'cause they don't know the defense. So every team has someone that throws like 101, 102. He obviously throws harder than everyone, but every team's got these guys. Even Aroldis Chapman's like 55 years old. he's still throwing like 100 plus, right? Are we headed to a world where we have someone like an R.A. Dickey or a Tim Wakefield or a Charlie Huff come back?

Ooh.

And they become the sought-after guy who can go in there with a knuckleball, who goes in there with like perfect precision at 85 miles an hour. And the hitters now are so conditioned to swing at pitches that are coming at 103, 104, that they're just so thrown off by slurs and knuckleballs and balls that they just can't get to.

I'm really glad you brought this up. I don't under— 'cause I grew up, I grew up with knuckleballers. I grew up with the Niekro brothers. We had Wakefield on the Red Sox forever. And it really just feels like there's a way to learn how to throw it, right? If you're a good enough athlete where you can be the repetitive nature and how you, how you use your fingers, your hand needs to be a certain length. With how unreliable pitchers are for innings, and you look back at some of the knuckleball innings that these guys throw, where some of them would throw like 270 innings, you know, Wakefield year after year was 200 innings. He could come in, he could— there was years where he started but then also could come out of the bullpen.

Yeah.

I don't understand why more people aren't trying this as a way to game the system. 'Cause if even if you figure it out and you have a 4 ERA, but you can throw 200 and, 20 innings a year and you could pitch every 5 starts, but then also come outta the bullpen and pitch, wouldn't that make you insanely valuable by today's pitching standards?

I mean, is it just like an ego thing? Like the granny shot at the free throw line where just no one wants to do it now? 'Cause like, hey, it's not cool to throw knuckleballs. Like the best knuckleballers were the ones where the catcher had no idea where it was gonna go. And the catcher was guessing just as much as everyone else, just as much as the hitter where it starts up here. It's down here, and the catcher's like just trying to not have a passed ball on this thing.

Well, that was the Red Sox-Yankees. There was when we had Wakefield, and he always had a— the backup catcher was always his knuckleball catcher.

Yeah.

But then in this game, it had to be Veritech. And then there was like guys on base, and it's extra innings. And we all knew that Veritech didn't have a lot of experience catching Wakefield. And it was the most harrowing, you know, 10 minutes of that entire season. I don't know, DeBando, why can't we have a knuckleballer again? What's your— do you have a take or you just think we've had bad luck?

I don't— I think it's really hard to do. And I don't think if you're coming up now, you, you're, you're going to try to bet on yourself to be the one outlier pitcher who can pull off this incredibly difficult pitch that even when it was in its prime, nobody really understood. Right. The pitching labs, they don't know how to teach it. It's kind of just like a thing that existed. And there has been talk about like the seams have changed on the ball, which makes it less wobbly. I don't have like definitely a ton of knowledge on that, but that was something that was, has been talked about in the past. But there's basically no, no guys left. I mean, Waldron from San Diego was around a couple years ago. He kind of threw one, but even his knuckleball was like a part of a pitch mix that didn't really, wasn't like the main offering. Morahan from the Padres kind of throws like a knuckly type change, but But there's basically nobody left. I, I would not bet on its return.

How much time does it take to perfect a knuckleball, do you think?

I don't know if it's possible to perfect it.

That's the beauty of it.

I think Wakefield got the closest. The, the thing is though, you still need to throw a fastball hard enough to mix it up on the hitters so they don't time the knuckleball. But yeah, I'm looking at Wakefield's career stats. Like in '05 when he was 38 years old, he threw 225 innings.

Right.

He had 33 starts. Even in 2008— 2007, they won the World Series. He was 17-12 that year. He had 31 starts, 189 innings, and he was 40 years old. And that's the other thing with the knuckleball thing is you pitch forever once you figure it out, which was the Negroes. Those guys looked like your grandfather when they would come in. So, I don't really fully understand it. But I, I, it feels like a documentary somebody would make and then try to sell and nobody would buy it. It's like, I'm writing a, it's my documentary about the knuckleball, and then everybody turns it down.

So I forgot about this 'cause of COVID but remember Brian Wilson with the beard from the Giants? So in 2020, he tried to have a comeback as a knuckleball pitcher, but we all just kind of missed it 'cause he didn't come back and 'cause COVID happened and it was a forgotten season. I guess Brian Wilson had the same idea 6 years ago and it didn't pan out for him.

Damn. My next storyline is just looking forward to the playoffs. And it's weird 'cause the NBA fans are so upset about this Clippers-Balmer thing, even though like the Clippers made one conference finals with this Kawhi thing and it completely destroyed their franchise. They built other contenders, like pretty much every piece of it was a catastrophe. Whereas with the Dodgers, this led to them winning back-to-back World Series, right? This led to them being able to spend all this money on all these guys, overpay for, you know, even some of the guys they got recently who I don't think exactly turned out well. And it feels like they are now really a supervillain. And when we get to the playoffs, unless you're a Dodger, it's either you're a Dodgers fan or even if like you're an American League fan or you don't really care, like you're just gonna be like, I hope the Dodgers go down.

Yeah.

And I'll be interested to see how that goes for them. Like, especially like if they play a place like if they're in Philadelphia, right? In Philly, the fans are, are great anyway. But with the combo of that and the supervillain Dodgers, there's no feel-good left from any aspect of this. Even though they have a lot of likable guys, Ohtani, Freeman, Betts, people like these guys. But I, I think the ship has sailed, the Bundo.

Oh, it's totally sailed. And right now, you know, with the way the bracket sets up, They would play in a best-of-5 either Atlanta, who they have a ton of history with from the early 2020s, back-to-back NLCSs. Those teams had those crazy wars back then, not as much recently. And then the Padres, who are the other team that are sitting there, who they played in back-to-back seasons, or 2022 and 2024. Padres beat them in 2022. Dodgers came back to get them in '24. And over a long series, you would certainly favor the Dodgers, but in a short one, with how good San Diego's bullpen is, they're going to be right there. So I really think people have kind of given the Dodgers this aura of inevitability because they won the last 2, but they forget how close they were to not winning each of the last 2. And they don't really quite realize how flawed this team is. Kyle Tucker's been below average. Mookie Betts has been average. They don't have a closer that they rely on right now that they trust.

Ohtani seems like he's hurt.

Yeah, Ohtani is definitely hurt.

Dodgers fans are worried about the Dodgers just in general. And then you have, like, you had 2 years in a row where you had to play all the way through October, you know, you got that piece too. What do you think, Billy?

How do we think the Dodgers story ends? Right? 'Cause like what you're saying is true. There's no real good feel-good left with this team. Even with likable guys, they clinched the playoffs earlier this week. It was like the most subdued celebration ever where they just like had a toast with champagne glasses. No one looked particularly happy to be there. Yeah. But when we, when the Mark Walters story kind of came out, it wasn't revolving around the Dodgers. It was okay, he sells the Lakers and he goes and his soccer team might be up for sale. And then like the team president of Dodgers came out and like, well, we're fine. Like nothing's gonna be for sale here. And then stories are coming out. It's like, well, this guy owes like billions of dollars to a lot of people. Like, I don't know that we can just take his word for the fact that this team is not going to be sold and something else isn't gonna come out or happen in the offseason. And then once that happens, Then what happens with Shohei Ohtani, who has clauses in his contract where he can just void his contract if Mark Walter is not the owner, if Andrew Friedman is not running the team anymore.

So there's, there's a lot going on with the Dodgers because they were also kind of like the centerpiece as the example for the lockout and, hey, you can't do this. And then the passersby were like, well, hey, anyone can do that. And then it's like, well, I guess, yeah, anyone can just commit fraud and, you know, sign these crazy deals and like just cheat your way to paying everybody everything that they want and hope no one catches up to you. So in that sense, yes. But they get Scubull at the deadline. People are like, what's going on here? Yeah. He goes to the team 2 days before the deadline when it's like, they're not going to be able to get enough. They just decide. And then Scubull also goes like major villain while also trying to keep one foot in like the good guy pond where he's like, well, I want to end my career as a Tiger. It's like, well, that, that was an option.

Yeah.

You could have, you know, re-signed with them if you really wanted to do that and saved everybody the trouble. So when he leaves, he says like, oh, you know, I don't like all this hate that everybody's getting. People like, the Dodgers aren't the villains. And also he secretly stole an espresso machine that he bought the Tigers and put in their clubhouse and took it with him for some reason. 'Cause like, he's not making enough money that he can't buy another one. I don't know why he had to take that. So there's a lot going on with the Dodgers, and I feel like even after the season done, there's gonna be more that comes out here, you would think.

Well, especially some of the deals he was making, like the deal with the TV station. I'm surprised more people aren't mad at this. I think it speaks to baseball's place as like an internet sport versus basketball and football. Whereas basketball—

People are pretty mad.

No, but I think this should be like, we should be, shouldn't we be having conversations about if they game the system and this guy did all this stuff illegally, what do we do about the 2 titles they won? I haven't even really heard that conversation.

I think we're distracted though, because I think there was the crescendo that happened around the deadline when they make the deal. And then we had a whole week of, is baseball ruined, over, canceled? Yeah, the joke of a sport. Then everybody got distracted, right? Like the Clippers thing happens.

Yeah.

NFL starts up, people get distracted. But hey, we got about 2 weeks until the Dodgers play a playoff game, and inevitably Scooble's going to shove or Snell is going to shove or Ohtani's going to hit 2 home runs in a game. And that is going to start a whole new round of discourse as we get into the— I think that's what's coming.

I'm here for it.

I mean, relative to the Clippers, I feel like this is kind of a bigger deal. Like the Clippers just circumvented a salary cap that was arbitrary and it was made up by the league. And like everyone seems like they're doing it. They were just doing it more.

They didn't win anything either.

They were the stupidest. Yeah.

They were the stupidest and they got nothing. They got absolutely— they cheated for no reason. They cost themselves all of this money.

They're the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet. The Dodgers won 2 World Series in a row.

Well, and the worst part is Kawhi. Now they're just like, okay, Kawhi, you know what? You want to go to Toronto? Sure, go to Toronto. And he gets—

nope.

I think he paid like a $700,000 fine for like $60 million he shouldn't have been making. It's not even like 1% is what his fine was. and then just go on to the next team while this franchise essentially has like the death sentence for like the next 5 to 7 years because they can't do anything about this.

Yeah.

If I'm a player, I'm, I'm trying to negotiate backroom deals as much as possible.

Oh yeah.

Stick one over on the owners. It's no risk, all reward.

Well, apparently, especially in baseball, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of risk. I wonder, like—

The Dodgers' debt sheet is scary. I mean, whoever, if they do end up selling, they owe like a billion dollars to Ohtani and Tucker over the 7 to 8 years. It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

It's funny, you go to the Dodger games, the Dodger fans just seem like they hate Tucker. I don't know if that's changed. I haven't been to a Dodger game in a month, but this guy's—

His attitude's not great.

He seems miserable. They're miserable with him. It's always funny when that happens. And it seems like it happens more in baseball than every other sport combined, where you get this guy that you paid a lot of money for and it just immediately goes bad and you're like, what the fuck? We— you were like our big free agent. Like, this was Bichette with the Mets. This was basically everybody the Angels signed.

Does he count? Well, $500 million extension and he hit one. He's hit— now hit one.

So he's been on my AO Keeper team. He just doesn't hit home runs anymore, but he's not 38, he's 27. Like, what?

I don't—

and you look at him, he seems like he looks the same. I don't understand what happened to his power. Very, very strange. This next segment is brought to you by PNC Bank. Dynasties are not a flash in the pan. They're more of a log fire blazing bright for seasons and seasons. It's hard enough to win one, much less to actually become a dynasty, but staying committed to steady, smart planning is one of the best ways to do it, just like our sponsor for this segment, PNC Bank. All right, so how do you become How do you become a dynasty? You need to have a principle that you believe in. And like, look at the Celtics with Red Auerbach and Bill Russell in the second half of the '50s and the entire 1960s. Auerbach, he knew he had lightning in a bottle with Bill Russell. I am going to build everything around this dude. This is the best defensive player we've ever had in the history of the sport. He's the best rebounder we've ever had in the history of the sport. He's a really good passer. I'm gonna build a really fast team about all the stuff he's good at.

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I have one other thing for you that, uh, oh, the— just quickly, I know we talked about this before, but I really enjoyed the Sacramento Stadium, and I thought the games there were super fun. And like, when the Red Sox went there, I felt like I was on vacation from the major leagues. and we were just playing in this goofy thing. And over and over again, it seems like the energy has been really good there. And I just wonder, like, could this— as we start figuring out new stadiums, could this be a model people look at? Should stadiums just be smaller?

Well, do you— do you want to do a thing maybe where once one team a season has to play in a minor league affiliate stadium? So like, you can alternate a team a year. Because last year we had it with both the A's and the Rays because the Trop's roof blew off in a hurricane, so they were playing in the Yankees minor league stadium in Tampa. So we had like similar things where like balls are flying like way out. Right. And it's a smaller, more intimate venue and the crowds are into it. I love what's been happening in, in Sacramento. And I liked when they played that weird series in Las Vegas that they were also playing in a minor league stadium.

Like, yeah, that was fire.

That energy's been great. That Las Vegas series, I feel like they were scoring like 15 runs each team a game. Like that was one of the highest scoring series in baseball. And it's these stadiums. If you could throw that in there and just alternate, like, okay, you know what, this year instead of like getting the Field of Dream games, like you had the worst attendance last year, you were in the bottom, you know, you'd have to do it with like the bottom.

Stadium gets relegated. You have to move stadiums.

Stadium relegation for a year. And you do it based on attendance. 'Cause like you can't do it to a team that sells out 35,000 a night, right? You have to do it like, this has to be like The Marlins, the Rays, the Pirates.

Angels would've been good. The Angels had to go play at some weird stadium in San Bernardino.

We're not gonna get into it today, but the Angels were sold.

Like, I know I had them on my list.

Our friend is gone. Like, one of the villains of the game is now out of baseball, and this is a team that could maybe turn things around with new ownership.

I thought The Athletics had a big feature about it that had I just wasn't following it. I gotta say, the, the tidbits about how cheap he was, but then these giant contracts he would give out— I'm always fascinated by those owners where they, they basically do like 3 or 4 splashy things and then they're just doing dumb shit and trying to make payroll decisions and, you know, driven financially. But basically because of these giant contracts they gave out. Never understood his game plan.

It's the idea that people are just going to come see the big star at the game every week, every night.

Right.

It's like a movie where it's like, here come the Cruise.

It's like, here come to see Mike Trout, but the movie sucks.

Yeah.

Well, but they also gave Anthony Rendon, who was not a star, and that was like—

Well, he was when they signed him. He was one of those immediately went to shit deals.

He was the best free agent.

Yeah, that was the best shit deal.

He was the best free agent available that year, and they decided to treat him as a superstar in the league, which he wasn't. And then he just probably didn't want to play baseball. Like, he was getting injured, but like, he could never play baseball with any of these injuries. It was kind of crazy.

Yeah.

That deal and what you're saying about like the bad spending of money is one of my biggest concerns with the lockout and with the potential of a salary floor where you now have teams that are required to meet a threshold And they're just gonna be giving dumb money to whoever's available that offseason just to get them up to the minimum. And then they're gonna be handcuffed with these bad deals with people that shouldn't be making that money.

It's like if you have a golf, like a country club membership and you, you have to eat $250 a month and you go in and you're like, I'll have the steak and I'll have a steak. 'Cause you just have to get to the $250 anyway. The Angels are gonna be like, I'll have, An expensive outfielder and another one. But they, they are being bought by the Cronkites, who, you know, have been pretty successful as owners across the board. They'll certainly probably be successful with them.

They have a case for best owner anywhere right now.

Yeah, the Avs, they love them in St. Louis.

The Rams, well, well, a little different there. Do you remember, do you remember when the Angels drafted 20 pitchers in one season?

Yeah, that was in that Athletic thing. I, I had forgotten about it.

2021.

They're just throwing darts hoping to nail anybody. We in this weird—

None of them are any good.

Well, in this weird AL Keeper League I'm in, you kind of know to stay away from the Angels prospects because they'll be like, oh, he's the number 2 prospect on the Angels. Like, I don't even know what that means. They never have good prospects.

They can't develop anybody. The only guy that— 4 made the majors. Sam Bachman was their first-round pick. He's basically a bullpen guy that's been injured a bunch. Chase Syllseth, Brett Kerry briefly debuted and Kai Bush. Like I said, none of these guys are good.

Brutal.

You mentioned the Padres earlier. I had this written down too because we do this with the Padres all the time. We get to mid-late September and they become the sleeper in the NL and they're the— I just was reading a piece on ESPN about this this week. Who's the sleeper in the NL? Everybody's like, Padres, look out for the Padres bullpen. I think I've lost money on this like at least 3 of the last 4 years. Talking myself into the Padres. Is there anything that could be different about them this year from a sleeper standpoint, DeBando?

Well, the bullpen's really good, Bill. I don't know if you've heard.

It was good last year.

It's good every year. They don't hit home runs. And look, the Brewers are making it work. They're one of my storylines. Brewers are 28th in home runs and they are one of the best offenses in baseball, but they've done a lot of different things getting on base all the time. They've seemed to have broken clutch hitting in baseball. they're kind of like a separate case. The Padres are your traditional, like, we don't hit home runs, our hitters are not good enough at hitting the ball out of the park, and usually we get to October and as good as our pitching is, yeah, they don't score any runs.

You need the 3-run every once in a while, the 3-run day.

Yeah, they haven't had it, and that's why they lost to the Cubs last year. It's, it's a big problem.

My fear for this playoffs is that these super smart Tampa Bay Rays, who we thought we had finally gotten rid of and they had had their little run and it was over and we didn't have to worry about them being basically Sam Presti of the AL. But now all of a sudden they're really good again. I don't really fully understand it. And then the Brewers, who have the GM who is, is the one that's being compared to Sam Presti. And could we have like the smart guy finals, Billy, where it's Tampa, Milwaukee, 2 teams with all these obstacles and the big markets and the Dodgers spending money, and these 2 teams just outthought everybody? 'Cause Tampa-Milwaukee, I'm sorry, would not be a fun finals.

I mean, I hope it doesn't happen just because Tampa is always used as the example of, look, there is a way to do it on the cheap and not have to have payroll and do it. And we can be the Rays. And it's like, but you can't be the Rays because you're not the Rays and you're not smart enough. You're just a cheap team. And also Andrew Friedman was great with the Rays and look how great he is when he has a lot of money.

Right.

First opportunity he got, when he had the opportunity to either have no money or have all the money to build a baseball team, he said, you know what I'd like to do? Have all of the money to build a baseball team and I'll spend $60 million a year on an outfielder who hates being here. And it doesn't really matter whether he plays or not because we'll just figure out a way to plug that hole another way.

So the $30 million backup outfielder.

You know, another thing about the Rays that bothers me as like like someone down here in Miami who now has like a bunch of Rays, like former executives running the team and they're gonna be the new Rays. And then like, wow, look, they really know what they're doing because they had a hot June, but then since have had losing months ever since. The thing that bothers me about the Rays and why I hope the Rays never win the World Series is similar to my, and this is just petty hatred, is similar to like my petty hatred of the Moneyball A's where it's like, look at this revolution. This was great. And at the end of the day, they never won a championship. So this was like a nice theory that worked out that got them through the regular season and only got them so far, and it never got them over the edge. And the Rays have been to the World Series twice, I believe, and have still not won a World Series. So we keep pointing out the Rays as like, they've figured out, look, this is the way to do it. Like, except they haven't been able to do it yet, you know?

Like they have these nice runs in the regular season, but they can't close the deal and they shouldn't be used as an example for all the other teams because again, you are not the Rays and you do not have that front office running your team. You're just cheap.

Well, and then they, the Cam Menara trade is probably the most one-sided baseball trade of this decade. And it flew, it flew under the radar when it happened. that they gave up Tobias Myers, right-handed pitcher who stopped playing baseball 4 years ago. The trade was in 2021, and they just stumbled on Camarena, who the moment he showed up on the Rays, if you were watching them or your team was playing them and you're like, who's this guy? He's terrifying. And he's been terrifying from the moment he showed up. And now it's probably the 2nd or 3rd most terrifying guy in the AL.

By far more than any other sport. The star player that came out of nowhere was actually on a different team. Bill, do you know who had Jordan Alvarez first?

Was it the Yankees?

It was the Dodgers. They traded Jordan Alvarez. The Phillies got one over on the Rays. Chris Sanchez, who's one of the top pitchers in the National League, they got one. They got him from the Rays for basically nothing. Curtis Meade, who's now a National/Red Sox pitcher.

Our worst one ever was Jeff Bagwell. Which somehow my dad was focused on it when we traded him. He was like in AA hitting .320, and they traded him for Larry Anderson for a pennant run. But there's— and I'm sure the Mets fans feel this way with PCA too— there's nothing worse in baseball than when your guy gives up a guy who eventually becomes a superstar. I don't— doesn't really happen enough in sports.

Tatis, I think, was a White Sox.

Yeah.

I think Tatis was a White Sox too. He went for James Shields.

Like in basketball, it doesn't— it's really hard for it to happen. It's hard to—

SGA.

Yeah, SGA would be the closest, right? But even when the Clippers did that trade, I think they knew like, ah, shit, they, they were on it. But I didn't think they knew it was gonna be what it turned out. Billy, how excited are you for Yankees-Red Sox best of 5 round 1 as somebody who lives in Florida and doesn't care about the American League as much as you do the National League?

That's best of 3, Bill. It's a sprint.

Best of 3.

I'm more excited for Yankees-Red Sox best of 5 3 than I am for an Astros-Guardians best of 3. I'm disappointed by the fact that the result of the Yankees-Red Sox best of 3 leads to a Yankees or Red Sox-Rays best of 5. And on the other side, we're going to have a White Sox-Guardians or Astros best of 5. Like, it's kind of a shame that the East have to eliminate themselves and that there's a possibility that one of the teams not in the East least we'll make it to the World Series. We'll definitely get to the ALCS and may somehow outlast and make it to the World Series just because of how bad the AL is. So bad. Like the fact that there's only 5 teams that are barely above .500 in some cases. It's, it's—

Well, like right now the White Sox and the Guardians are playing a series that's basically probably going to determine something. The fact that this is a big playoff series and, or big regular season series in mid-September is kind of bonkers. When you watch the guys on each team, you're like, really? These guys, these guys are battling for the 3 seed. I—

Can Joe Adell rob 3 homers please? Or something exciting happen in this series?

Well, the Red Sox fans, we can't do this obviously. And it seemed like there was an outside chance to catch Tampa, but really a chance to catch the Yankees and they couldn't do it. They would've been better off just being the 6 seed, right? And having like 5 less wins and playing whoever was—

Every game the rest of the season.

Yeah, basically. Like, like in basketball, you would, you would probably think about it. We've seen people do it in basketball. Baseball's harder.

Where does this season for you rank if the Red Sox are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in a best of 3? 'Cause they gave you a nice fun 2 months.

Yeah.

You got Mickey Gass that you've been very excited about. Do you look back and remember this season fondly, or has it just become forgotten?

No, totally fondly. It's like, it's like we had a Morgan Magic season. There's been a couple of these where the team was just felt like they were gonna suck, and then all of a sudden, magically, it was the most fun 2 months. You guys were watching from afar. Like every single game was, was, was like a 9 or a 10 outta 10, right? It was all these comebacks, late innings. So it was just super fun. I think there's real optimism with the fan base with this. Just, it's 3 games only and we have 3 starters, right? We, and we can throw, and Toly, who's been lights out, it's like a question of where he goes, but it's probably gonna be Sonny Gray, Suarez game 2, who's been, all the Philly fans tell us like lights out as a playoff guy.

1.4 ERA in his career. He is the coolest pitcher in baseball. He's not the best. He's an old school junk baller for the most part, but he's the best.

Trying to set it up so Tully's the, the 3rd guy, like in a do or die game 3 Yankee Stadium, or you miraculously win in 2 and you can push him over and he can start game 1. But you know, they have these 3 starters and they do have a really good bullpen. My question is the, the bats. I just don't— Contreras has not been the same since the All-Star break and Roman Anthony came up, he was a house of fire, and now it's like he strikes out every other time, it seems like. So unless we get this magical Mickey Gasper renaissance to continue, Rafael is coming back, maybe Contreras, who's never been the same since he had the concussion. But it's gonna be the pitching.

You talking trash?

It's gonna be the pitching. I'm not, I'm worried about, I don't like that Judge came back like right now and has the 2 weeks. Doesn't seem like they're gonna get Stanton back. They had this random— Jazz got hurt and Volpe came up, who I think all the Yankee fans had quit on and has actually been pretty good for them. But Schlittler's incredible. I mean, he's going to clearly cruise to the Cy Young and where they pitch him. Did you know there's a Yankee debate about do they pitch Cole or Schlittler in game 1? How do you pitch Cole over Schlittler? That would be a miracle if they did that for us.

It's not going to happen.

Yeah, I would— Schlittler would start game 1, right?

That feels like a WFAN debate. Oh, we gotta go with the experienced guy, even though Schlittler shoved into game 3 last year when it really mattered.

Gotta outthink the Red Sox with that play. Yeah. No one's expecting it. So let's switch up the order there.

If it were up to me, I would pitch Gray in game 1 and Tolya in game 2. 'Cause I think Tolya's like, we, he's just a bigger, the moment, the bigger he is. Like he was awesome at the Dodger game I went to. He just loved being in Dodger Stadium trying to shut them down. So I would do, and then I would have Ranger in game 3 as the, all right, show us you're this allegedly awesome playoff guy. I don't think he is.

It's not alleged, Bill. It's just, no, I know, somehow factual.

I know, but he's amazing.

Nobody really ever understood it.

Right. And then I don't know if the Yankee fans love this team is the other thing that gives me solace.

Who loves their team? That's a fun debate. How many teams love their team?

Because I think the Brewers fans love their team.

I think the Brewers fans love their team.

I would say they're, they're— and I know a couple of Brewer fans. I think they're just like, nobody's talking about us. Like big chip on their shoulder. I think the Cubs fans have loved the PCA experience, right? They haven't had like—

They hit a lot of homers. It's pretty fun to watch.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, for the most part.

I'll tell you what, it's not the Phillies. It's not the Braves. I don't think it's the Yankees. It's certainly not the Astros, the Rangers, maybe the White Sox, 'cause this is their first year of being competitive again. They should have beat a lot of teams. The White Sox.

Yeah. Like the fact that they are going to win the Central just shows how poor the AL Central is. Like they should not have been in it.

I will say one thing about the White Sox 'cause we've played them a few times. The, they have some feisty young guys.

Yep.

They have like this Inonachi is, is just wants to get in a fight every game. And I think in the playoffs, guaranteed, like he slides into somebody at second base and try, you know, he's just one of those guys. He's trying to get— it's, it's a little bit of an irrational confidence young team. Billy, who do you think is favorite in the American League on FanDuel right now? Don't lie. Who do you think is the American League favorites?

Is it not the Rays?

It is the Rays. They're +290. The Yankees are +320. Um, I personally think the Yankees should be favored. It's like, really, that price is probably they're probably not favored, Dabundo, just because of the best of 3 Red Sox, right? It's like so scary. You just blow 2 and you're gone. Dodgers are—

I would make the Yankees a favorite over the Rays if they played head-to-head, and I suspect the market would too.

NL Dodgers are +125. Milwaukee is +300, and Dabundo's Phillies are +750.

Are we—

we're the 3rd favorite?

Well, Atlanta's +700, so you're 4th.

Yeah.

The, the one thing with the Phillies, there, there is like a, a Schwarber roadmap. 'Cause that, I would say for most beloved Phillies, how high is he up there now? If we're talking last 35 years?

He, he's not on the level of Utley, Howard, and Rollins, but he's probably of this era. He has certainly passed Bryce Harper.

Yeah. He's sniffing at it.

He's past Bryce Harper.

Yeah. It's not even close. Did you listen to the Home Run Derby? I thought that was telling. I got a bunch of texts about that when they announced Harper. Yeah, everybody's excited. When they announced Schwarber, it was a different level of crowd pop. And I got a few texts from people saying, wait, wait, Schwarber over Harper? I'm like, yeah, this is just kind of how it's been for the last year and a half.

He's so lovable.

We had him. I was going to say, is he just a lovable fat guy? Like, respectfully to the Schwarbers.

Yeah, he slimmed down this year.

He has slimmed down, which is kind of like you're losing your brand there.

You know, he's— I got to say, he's a little bit of an artist. That was my takeaway from when we had him. Like, he's He basically does 2 things. He's like a restaurant where you go in and it's like, they're really awesome at these 2 things. Get, definitely get the smash burger and definitely get the chicken parm done. Like, that's it. Him, it's like incredible command of the strike zone and then this crazy power. And that's really it. But there, there's like a real presence about him. And in big games you just feel like, I don't know.

Yeah.

You just have complete confidence in him. So I, I feel like he could And fought up.

If I had to bet, I mean, Bill, so Bill, he has a chance to do something pretty wild this year.

What is it?

He's currently the heavy favorite to lead the league in homers. He's also 14 strikeouts away, so 12 games to go. If he strikes out 14 more times, he will break the MLB record for strikeouts in a season. Wow.

What, what's the number for that?

223.

Mark Reynolds. That is unbelievable. Can you imagine striking out?

So Schwarber's at 210. He, look, he bats at the top of the order. He plays every day.

Yeah.

And he strikes out 34% of the time and hits a home run about 7 or 8% of the time. It's pretty, pretty amazing to watch.

So if you clinch and it's at home and he breaks the record for strikeouts in a season, but you're already in, like you're good, do you give him the standing ovation? Like, do you commemorate it?

I don't know.

That's a good question. I don't think there's gonna be a commemoration.

Rob Deer comes out, presents him with a plaque.

Mark Reynolds comes out. He's been traveling around with the team like the mayor in San Diego. Mark Reynolds pops the champagne, says, not me anymore.

More, baby.

All right, let's all make World Series picks and then we'll go just for what we think the matchup is gonna be right now. Feel free to change this in 2 weeks, but right now, knowing what you know, what would be your World Series, Billy?

I'm gonna go with, I'll go Cubs. Cubs and Yankees.

Hmm.

Cubs, Yankees. Okay. What do you got, the Bundo?

I don't want to pick the Dodgers. I really don't.

Me neither.

I, I really— the Brewers, Kyle Harrison just like fell off a cliff in the last 2 weeks, last month.

Last 2 weeks? It's been the last 2 months basically.

Yeah, last, last— yeah, more than that. But like, now I'm worried they don't have enough pitching. And it's like, how did we get here? This was supposed to be their thing. And they have the top 2 guys, Miz and Henderson, and then it's like, uh, Dustin May might be the Game 3 starter for the Brewers. So unfortunately, yes, if you gimme the Dodgers versus any other team, I'm still gonna take 'em and I'm gonna take 'em against the Rays.

I would go Yankees-Phillies.

Ooh, it would be funny. Phillies fans are in a meltdown right now 'cause they've had a shitty September.

Yeah, I know.

They've had their shittiest September since 2022.

That doesn't scare me at all. And then sometimes you need to get it out. You need to, yeah, you need to get that shit out before, get the losses out before the playoffs.

Yeah.

You need to, yeah. It's a little different if your team stops hitting and you don't know where the hits are coming from, which is a little bit of the Red Sox problem right now. But, um, all right, so we— the important thing was all of us picked the Yankees to make the World Series.

Hopefully that will backfire.

No, no, I got the Rays.

You have the Rays? So you have Rays and Dodgers?

Yep.

Ah, the Rays, huh?

They're gonna out-execute the Yankees in a series and win it.

Out-execute.

Yep.

All the little things, Billy. Every Yankee fan, I, I can already picture the callers. I can't believe they struck out 12 times in elimination game again.

I can't, I can't see it with the bullpen, but maybe I'm just too close to it. Like even we have Kevin Kelly on our team, he got, and he's been lights out the whole year. He is one of their best setup guys. Got completely shelled a couple games ago. I was like, oh, that's the Russian is cut for the, for the Rays 'cause they've had all these relievers just, you know, do their thing.

So baseball's, it's one of those things like, so none of us picked the Brewers either. And the Brewers are the 1 seed in the NL. And I feel like it's kind of like Indiana last year in college football, right? Where it's like, I just don't see it happening for them. You know, like I just, and until it happened for Indiana, like the whole way is like, I don't think they're gonna This is Indiana. They're not gonna win the national championship with the Brewers until they do it. I feel like it just goes back to like something's gonna go wrong for them in the playoffs. It just always happens and they're just not gonna get over the hump. They're not gonna beat, you know, either the Phillies, the Cubs, or, you know, the Braves or the Dodgers down the road.

I don't trust the starters with them. The Dustin Maye-Harrison combo. I just, in an actual playoff series, I don't see it. What were you going to say, DeBando?

I mean, they scored 4 runs in the NLCS last year, and I think people cannot get that out of their heads because it's like, oh, here's this great Brewers team, and we got Pat Murphy doing all the self-deprecating jokes about how they're just the average Joes. They had that great series win against the Cubs in 5. They get to the NLCS, they scored 4 runs in 4 games. And I think people are just like, well, that's what they do. Their offense goes to shit against better pitching. I don't know. Part of me says, hey, the Dodgers had elite elite starting pitching last playoffs. They kind of look like they will have again.

Yeah.

But I mean, it still was just 4 games. We shouldn't overreact to that.

Does, does Craig Counsell regret that move from the Brewers to the Cubs?

I don't think so.

I'll leave you guys with this. I think it has lined up amazingly for the Yankees. You know, they, they haven't won since '09. Judge is gonna be back in time, which seems questionable. All their starters that they paid a lot of money for are all gonna be there. When they actually have their whole lineup, they're pretty terrifying. I mean, Ben Rice is terrifying. Judge is terrifying. When they have Jazz back, I know he's feast or famine, but he's scary. Their bullpen's really good. Like, they have multiple guys that I would trust in a short series, a long series, whatever. And it just feels like Like, it feels like this is their best chance, especially with the Dodgers in a little bit of disarray. And, um, but I just have to bank on the one and only Aaron Boone and some history from the last 17 years screw it up. All right, guys, Billy, give us, uh, give us 20 seconds on the Marlins season before you go.

Uh, it was a fun season for a month there in the middle. There's hope. It's a fun team. Like, they have exciting parts. They just won a series against the Dodgers. So So they're young. Hopefully, you know, they can hit their stride and maybe this whole raise thing that we've brought down here with Peter Bendix running the team for the Marlins, we figure things out. And if, if there's a season next year, maybe this is a season you build on, but there may not be a season next year.

I did.

I wonder like, does the Dodgers, them imploding with some of the money stuff, does that help or hurt the season next year?

Right. I'll say no effect.

Okay.

It's lame to say that. I just think the issues run a whole lot deeper than just the one boogeyman.

Yeah, but then Manfred's like, we should— we're thinking about expansion. It's like, wait, can we figure out if we have a season?

They need to not expand.

Please don't expand. I promise you don't need 2. Yeah, we have enough.

And as a Floridian down here, when you see like Orlando's in the mix, it's like, we have 2 teams. Right now we're, we're just fine.

Can't fill a stadium.

Yeah, we're fine with those 2. We don't need to add another one to the mix there. We're still figuring that out.

Yeah, that would be stupid. All right, Billy, AD, good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having us.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. Thanks to Billy Gill and the Bundo. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo and Chris as well. I'm gonna be back on Thursday night after Bills-Lions. We're gonna be live right after that game on Netflix if you wanna watch it, or you can listen to it later on that night. I will see you in a couple days. I wanna see them on the wayside. Never wanna say I don't have a few years with them. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts. Meine Zehen bringen mich um.

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