Transcript of Michael Schur Isn't Worried About The Dodgers | The Pitch Clock

So I watched Rookie of the Year for the first time the other day.

What the hell's wrong with you?

You're from Chicago.

That Henry Rowengartner can sling it.

Henry Rosenbuser. Let's start the show.

Let's start the show.

Chet Stedman. Welcome to the Pitch Clock. Here's the pitch. A two-part baseball segment combining a nostalgic baseball trivia game and an interview with an expert. This is the Pitch Clock. Adolf Hitler! Rosenauer! Hi everybody. Chet Steadman.

Ah, the Rocket.

Oh man, the Rocket. Hey, welcome back to the Pitch Clock. I'm back this time.

Hi everybody.

I love when the guy from Home Alone gets stuck like inside the clubhouse. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Closet.

Yeah, I learned that's one of the—

It's in the Robert De Niro Home Alone. But it happens to him in the clubhouse too, no? Yes.

And then he gets stuck in the cage.

And he's doing that and the seeds are going everywhere. In the hotel it happens again. He's like, not again. A little help here. Help me now. Oh, God. What a movie. I, for years, wanted to break my arm so that I could throw 100 miles an hour.

So that you could be Henry Rowan Gardner?

For years. For—

Same.

For way too old of an age. I wanted to break my arm because I was like—

You thought that would make you throw 112 miles an hour?

What if? I could still picture like that John Kruk guy, like with the looking at the pitch. Oh, the big guy. Yeah. He's got like his tongue out of his mouth.

He's like—

What's crazy about that too is that Jacob Mizarowski throws 5 miles an hour harder than Henry Rowan Gardner did.

Anyway, Pitch Clock, modern day baseball. We're back.

Back, uh, we will have our guest Mike Schur joining us later on in this episode to talk about all things trade deadline and beyond. And we got a new trivia game going on, so what's up, Ethan?

All right, in your folders there is a packet of 10 career paths. You guys are going to tell me the player whose career path it is. It's simply— there again, there's 10, and they were all moved in that, and they were all moved at the 2006 trade deadline. Thank you. So 10 players, most answers correct wins. Jeremy, pick Pick a number between 1 and 10.

3.

Okay, Chris, pick a number between 1 and 10.

5.

The number was 4. Cool.

I'm going to go first.

Chris Cody, leave the room. Jeremy, open up your packet.

Okay.

While I have you here, I'll read off for the audio listeners the team names and career paths.

Jeremy here. We've already finished the recording, so this is me just warning you. Get ready for how long and complicated this is about to be.

The Padres, the Mets, the Pirates, the Yankees, the Cubs, the Diamondbacks, the Nationals, the Giants, and the Padres. I won't bore everyone with the specific years of the team, so I'll just say this player played from 2000 to 2014. Next page.

Okay.

Is a player who played for the Astros, the Phillies, the Yankees, the Angels, the Dodgers, and the Mets. This player played from 1996 to 2014. The next player played for the White Sox, the Brewers, the Rangers, the Astros, and the Marlins from 1999 to 2012. The next player played from— for the Blue Jays, the Dodgers, the Cubs, the Pirates, the Cardinals, the Orioles, the Brewers, the Nationals, and the Reds from 2001 to 2013. I can see Jeremy in the studio shaking his head right now.

In a state of panic.

The player on the next sheet played for the Cubs, the Braves, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Padres, and the Dodgers from 1986 to 2008. You have a player who played for the Twins, the Reds, the Phillies, the Cardinals, the Brewers, and the Rangers from 2001 to 2016. This is a monster. You have a player who played for the Expos, the Red Sox, the Athletics, the Cubs, the Brewers, the Pirates, the Royals, the Rangers, the Tigers, the Blue Jays, the Phillies, the Padres, and the Nationals.

What is this?

From 1992 to 2011. You have a player who played for the Brewers, the Rangers, the Orioles, the Mariners, the Twins, the Rays, the Nationals, and the Padres from '05 to '23. Fine, two more. The Brewers, the Rockies, the Cleveland baseball team, the Cardinals, the Nationals, and the Dodgers from '98 to 2010. And finally, the Cleveland baseball team, the Pirates, the Reds, the Tigers, and the Red Sox from 1997 to 2008.

Brother, this is gonna be so tough. It is a pleasure to welcome our most expert of baseball experts. I know he loves to be introduced that way. Mike Scher, back to the Pitch Clock. Mike, it's a pleasure to have you here as both your town and your team separately have been a huge part of the MLB trade deadline. We'll start with your town, and that involves the LA Dodgers. Tarik Skubal going out to LA, lighting the world on fire. Everyone's freaking out. They say it's the end of baseball. They say it's an inevitability that the Dodgers win the World Series. And of course, he loses his first start as a Dodger. But Mike, what were your overall thoughts on this entire ordeal with Tarik Skubal ending up in L.A.?

Completely overblown. There were two things going on. One is the owners are trying to force a lockout. They're running ads during all these games about competitive balance and blah, blah, blah. It's absurd. I mean, anyone who follows baseball understands that maybe they got 1% more likely or 3% more likely to win the World Series, and they're still probably no better than a 33% chance to win the World Series. Like, this is baseball. Stuff happens. And like, while the Schubel trade is being announced, they're getting swept at home by the Red Sox. And then Schubel goes out and loses his first start. Like, that's what happens. And if you project forward and you imagine a series between the Dodgers and the Brewers and Mizoroski shows up and shuts them down in Game 1 and suddenly they're on the ropes. They almost lost last year twice. They almost lost to the Blue Jays. They were an out away from losing to the Blue Jays. Like, They, they, they— it is completely overblown. Yes, they're the big bad wolf. Yes, they're getting everybody. It still means they still have problems. Dalton Rushing just went down with a knee injury.

Like, they have problems like every baseball team. And I think that a lot of what you heard was hype driven by the owners to try to make people root for a salary cap and nothing else.

I couldn't agree with you more. And it's funny, a lot of casual baseball fans and even maybe watchers and listeners of the pitch clock might not realize that, like, the Dodgers haven't had Snell or Glasnow basically all season long. They've been doing this with other guys like Justin Robleski, and that's their All-Star starter. And they've dealt with a ton of injuries. And Tarik Skubal himself had elbow surgery earlier this year. Another reason that he was a risky guy to trade for and really give up a giant haul. The Dodgers have the privilege of being able to do it knowing, A, they can re-sign him and B, they have a tremendous farm system.

What you just said, though, is really the key because everyone is saying, why didn't Team X offer more?. And the reason that the other teams didn't offer more is because everyone knows that he's a Boris guy and he's a free agent at the end of the year, and he's probably going to sign with the Dodgers because the Dodgers are going to offer him the most money. So it makes more sense for the Dodgers to offer prospects for that guy, knowing that they have a good chance to keep him. And then Pat Murphy came out, the GM of the— or the coach of the Brewers, and was like, yeah, we offered a big package of stuff and it didn't work. And so like, what do you want us to do? Like, they try, they went for it. A bunch of teams went for it. The Dodgers offered a pretty good package, although honestly, everyone's freaking out over how much they gave. I don't think that's too much at all for the rental of the best pitcher in baseball. Like, they made a good competitive offer. Other teams did too. The advantage that the Dodgers have is still the money, and they can sign him at the end of the year.

And so they have— it's like that. That's really what was at play. But I still think, like, baseball's fun when there's a bully. It was fun in the late '90s. I mean, just miserable for me, but it was fun when the Yankees were the bully.. And it was really fun when the Marlins beat them in 2003. It was fun when the Diamondbacks beat them in 2001. Like, even in a, even in a sport with, you know, where there, where there's a payroll disparity like there currently is, nothing is guaranteed. And there's every chance in the world that someone's going to beat them. And if people beat them, the schadenfreude is going to be higher than it's ever been.

I'm just saying, Tarik Skubal has a career 5.5 ERA against the Marlins. Adley Rushman is another topic of trade conversation here. Obviously, that's with your Red Sox seemed weirdly to be like a controversial trade. It seemed like takes were all over the place on, on both sides regarding this trade from the Orioles and what the Red Sox gave up. But Mike, how do you feel as a Red Sox fan with this team that's played so well over the last month or so acquiring Adley Rushman?

Well, you go through all the stages of grief with the, with the prospects for sure. But like, look, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If your team pushes all its chips in and goes for it, you lament the loss of the prospects. If they don't, you scream and yell and say, how come you didn't do anything at the deadline? And you saw both things play out with different teams right after it happened. In this case, they have 3 really massive glaring holes on their team— catcher, shortstop, and left field. They assume— we assume, we hope Roman Anthony is coming back. He becomes the left fielder if he can mend whatever ails him. They have no options at catcher and their shortstop, they're piecing together. And Trevor Story's coming back after a long absence and who knows what the hell that is. So they went after a bunch of shortstops. They checked in on Eli De La Cruz. They checked in on Zack Neto. These teams are asking the world for those guys who are not great, you know, players. Then they went after Adley Rutschman, who, when he's healthy, which is not often, but when he's healthy, arguably the best defensive catcher in the league.

And he's a switch hitter who can hit with power. He is a huge upgrade over what they currently had. They gave up a lot. For sure. They gave up guys. They gave up Anthony Ianson, who by all accounts is like a stud pitcher. And then they gave up a bunch of lottery tickets, which like, if you go back and look at any team's top 10 prospects from years past, you'll see a whole bunch of names you don't know. And the reason you don't know them is because they washed out at AA or single-A or AAA, or they got hurt and they were never heard from again. So like, the reason that you have prospects is to develop them into major league players or to trade them for established guys. And in this case, Rushman has a year and 2 months left. He's incredible when he's healthy. He's very, very, very good defensive catcher and he can hit. And that is a huge get. So, you know, the price was high in part, I think if you read between the lines, because the Yankees were also in on him. I'm sure they were offering a bunch of stuff.

And you saw very humorously, it was like a source in baseball says the Red Sox gave up too much. It was like, oh, that guy's got Brian Cashman's phone number and they chatted afterwards and Cashman ripped into him. Cashman was being a very sore loser afterwards. Like, so I don't know. Look, I lament the loss of prospects that I was looking forward to watching, but also a lot of those guys don't work out. And if they do, but Rutschman also works out, the thing I always think about in this situation is Josh Beckett and Hanley Ramirez. The Red Sox traded Hanley Ramirez for Josh Beckett. Josh Beckett won them a World Series. Hanley Ramirez played great for the Marlins. Everybody won. Yes. And it's like— and we also traded Yoan Moncada, who was the number one prospect in baseball, for Chris Sale. Yoan Moncada was okay. Like, Chris Sale won us a World Series. Like, it's— you have to make these trades sometimes if you want to be competitive.

I'm going to give you just the two that immediately jumped out for me. Okay. One of these. What was the first one with a Marlin on it? First one. Yeah, there it is. So Astros to Marlins in 2012. Yes, that's 100% Carlos.

That is Carlos.

Yeah. And that's a, that's an obvious one. So Carlos Lee started his career with the White Sox, ended up with the Brewers, Rangers, Astros for a while, and then finished his career in 2012 with the Marlins. So that I knew. And then the other one that I immediately knew was the player who went from the Cubs to the Braves to the Cubs to the Dodgers to the Padres to the Dodgers, traded from the Cubs— to the Dodgers in '06. That's Greg Maddux. Correct. Now I need to start actually, like, thinking. Yeah. Because this is not easy. And when I think of, like, the early 2000s and trades with the Mets at the deadline, I'm like, oh my God, it's got to be Carlos Beltrán. But this is away from the Mets. This is from the Mets to the Pirates in '06 and was there for 3 years and a Yankee in '08 and '09. That's what's like That's what's getting me because that means they were on the World Series team.

Yep.

You know what? I'm going to take a guess here. Do I? Am I wrong? If I'm wrong, well, I get— do I only get one guess?

I'll give you two guesses at each player.

All right. So the first—

the first—

I feel like he was there longer and it could have been earlier, but my first guess here is that Ruben Sierra?

That is not Ruben Sierra.

Okay. All right.

So you have two points already.

Okay.

You have Greg Maddux and Carlos Lee, and you have one guess on the front page.

All right, I'm moving on and I'll come back to it.

Okay.

So Astros in '96 and '97, a Philly right there from '98 to '06, and then a Yankee. This is a person I have to know. I'm trying to think of my, like, sweet spot of years or, like, sweet spot of teams. Yeah, right. So this is clearly like a role player.

I'll give you a hint on this one. He was. So you already got the Maddux trade. You already got the Maddux trade. The Maddux trade.

He was in exchange.

He was in exchange for Greg Maddux.

But that, it doesn't, unfortunately, I don't think it helps me.

He went from the Dodgers to the Cubs in the Greg Maddux trade.

All right. The first, not the first one. Second one. Is there a chance that '98 to '06 Phillies is Aaron Rowan?

That is not Aaron Rowan. Do you want me to tell you the answers now that you're guessing?

Yeah.

Okay. That was Bobby Abreu.

Really?

Yes.

The— this isn't right. It sucks. I'm not even going to bother. It's embarrassing.

Do it. Give me a guess.

Give me a name. The '01 to '06 Twins one?

Yeah.

And then Reds.

I had more no.

Nope.

That was Kyle Loesch.

Cool. The '92 XFL. Expose to 11 Nationals. I don't have anything. I don't have anything. All right, I don't have anything.

I don't have anything. Okay, I'm getting too—

I'm getting furious.

So Jeremy, your score is 2. I'll give you the names from starting from the beginning. The first one is Xavier Nady.

Okay, yeah, this is a great idea.

Bobby Abreu was second.

Xavier Nady.

Yeah, Bobby Abreu. Okay, you got Carlos Lee, so you're on the board there. César is Taurus.

For Blue Jays to—

Blue Jays to Reds. Greg Maddux, you got.

Okay.

Kyle Loesch, we spoke about.

Right.

Matt Stairs is the guy who was on a million teams. That's a good one. The next one is Nelson Cruz. That's Brewers to Padres. Brewers to Dodgers is Ronnie Belliard, was moved at the '06 deadline. And then the final one is the mayor, Sean Casey. All right.

He's going to get a few of these for sure.

I, I'm really curious to see. I'm really curious to see.

All right. You want to, you want me to get them in? Which team in Major League Baseball, Mike, improved their chances of winning the World Series the most at this deadline?

I mean, it's hard not to say the Dodgers, like Tarik Skubal, if he's the best pitcher in baseball, which he is when he's healthy, like. That's— it's hard to get a better upgrade than losing Emmett Sheehan from your rotation and replacing him with Terrence Scubal or whatever they're going to do. Like now they have— they have Scubal, they have 4 of the 5 guys with the lowest ERA since 2023 in their rotation. Now I'm assuming Snell comes back, but like, yeah, like if you have Scubal, Yamamoto, Snell, and by the way, Shohei Ohtani is your like 4th starter, assuming he pitches again. It's hard not to say the Dodgers, but a bunch of teams got better. That's the other thing. The Guardians got better. The Red Sox got better. I think the Yankees got better. They don't have— they didn't have any right-handed power in their lineup because Judge is gone. And they got Julio Ramos, who's— when he— like, he's going to hit 20 home runs. They also like— they got like— Garcia is the perfect Yankee. It's so annoying because that right— that porch in right field is so short.

Yes.

And there's a jet stream that goes out to right and he's going to hit 15 homers in home games for the rest of the year. It's going to make me crazy. So like a bunch of teams got better. Like, I mean, I don't know, the only teams that didn't get better are like arguably who are competing are— and the Pirates got better, by the way. I think that the Nationals, the Blue Jays, there were some teams that like bought and sold. I'll tell you, the biggest loser by far is the Braves. Like, I don't know why the Braves did not go after Schubel more aggressively. Like, I don't know why. If you have Schubel and Sale, 2 lefties facing that Dodger lineup in the playoffs where all their hitters, all their power hitters really are lefties because Teoscar and Mookie are having bad years. And you've got Muncy and you've got Ohtani and you've got Freeman. Like, if the Braves get Schubel, it is, I think, becomes like almost a coin flip in terms of who wins the series between the two of them. And I don't understand at all why their ownership did not act more aggressively.

And that plays to Dan's point that he made, which is I don't even think that the Dodgers traded for Schubel to have Schubel. I think they traded for Schubel to not let anyone else have Schubel. Yeah, it's crazy that way. And, and, you know, you mentioned Garcia, and he's one of the guys I want to highlight here. We're going to stick in the AL East when it comes to individual players when we do our Star of the Week here. Would you rather highlight Luis Garcia Jr., who goes to the Yankees, or another catcher who heads to the AL East in Liam Hicks, former Miami Marlins.

Yeah, look, going forward, I'm going to, I'm going to bet on Garcia because again, all he does is hit, pull the ball in the air and he's going to have, he's going to really enjoy his new Little League stadium.

It's what I honestly, as a guy who likes Liam Hicks, I hoped for Hicks would be that he would be traded to the Yankees.

Yeah, like it's hard not to see that working out. But yeah, the AL East in general, like Hicks or Garcia, Rutschman, like they're the bunch of— the reason you saw so many trades, especially in that division, is it just feels wide open. There were rumors that the Rays were going after Schuabel. Like everybody, everybody in the East except for 3 teams is within like 4.5 games of the playoffs. And they all feel like, look, it's a little like the way the Eastern Conference was in the NBA in the last couple of years where it's like, oh, you know, except for 24, with the Celtics, like it's been this kind of like, hey, this is ours if we want it. And no one wants to be the Cavaliers. No one wants to be the team that's like, I think we're good. Let's just run it back and see if we can see if we can take this. So I don't know. It's a fascinating last couple of months we're heading for because I really do think that you're going to see a lot of up and down movement in the top 3, 4 teams in the next 2 months.

Yeah, you could see teams shift within division, within the wildcard. There are in both both leagues, like 7 or 8 different teams competing for those final few wildcard spots. It's going to be a really fun, uh, baseball season down the stretch here. We're into August. Mike Scher, thank you for joining us now, and hopefully we can get you back here in September as things wind down. Hey man, I got 7 out of 10. That's pretty good.

Liar.

You're gonna give me— just when you think of a player, you're gonna guess. You have 2 guesses per page.

Uh, okay.

Which ones do you have?

I have the second page.

Yes.

I think this is Bobby Abreu.

That is correct.

I didn't know he was an Astro, but everything else makes sense.

Yeah, that's right.

Yep.

And what is the other one you have?

I have a few pages later.

Give me the team that it starts and ends with.

Cubs, Dodgers.

Yep.

You only have Maddox.

That is correct.

I haven't gotten past this page yet, so. Good luck. This is tough.

Yeah, it is.

I know it's tough. How'd you get 7? I know.

Liar.

It was a pretty impressive effort. Look, man, it wasn't quite my boys in the group chat.

I tried my hardest.

But it was an impressive effort.

You know your boys in the group chat that could look this shit up privately. That literally look it up. I can't believe the way that you're like bragging about your group chat. Dang, I was feeling kind of confident. It's tough, right? I know, man. Getting more than 2, that was my hurdle too.

Something I suggested to Jeremy that I will suggest to you that helped Jeremy a lot on his way to 7 correct guesses was think about who these players were on in MVP Baseball 2005.

It does help. This ain't easy. It's my blank. Okay, I got one here.

Yeah.

Carlos Lee.

Where is that one?

The third page started with White Sox and like Marlins.

That is correct. You have 3 points.

Oh man. I gotta get 4 more of these just to tie them.

Twin to a Red. Yeah.

Then to a Philly, then to a Cardinal. Dude, it was back-to-back deadlines.

Yeah.

Come on.

Back to back.

This one's easy.

I mean, this guy was traded at back-to-back deadlines. Okay. A lot of people get traded back-to-back deadlines. It's not like a a unique name. I am just telling you the truth.

Thank you.

Liar. I don't like this game. I don't like you.

I don't like this version of you. I don't like it either.

Truth.

I say, you know what, let me just take this guess. This is crazy. Xavier Naidoo.

That is—

I can't believe you got that.

That is—

it's because it's like amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. No, no. And I'm just— you want to know why that's amazing? Cuz I got two. Truth. I didn't get— I didn't get 7? I got 2. I got Greg Maddux and I got Carlos Soto, and that was it. You got Abreu right away and you got Xavier Naidoo. It's the Oliver Perez deal.

Is it?

Can we look up— was that the Oliver Perez deal? I just— that one, I couldn't— I couldn't keep the facade anymore. I just want you to know that I have now—

this is my— I saw you breaking. This is my out loud instruction.

I did not get 7. I only got 2. I was panicking. The time crunch killed me. Do you know what helped me? That's amazing. The '05 MVP thing, because I remember him being Xavier Nady on the Padres. On the Padres.

Me too.

Me too.

So you have won the game. I thought you might have gotten Sean Casey because you know Sean Casey.

Well, we should have gotten it, but guess what, everybody? Ethan's group chat did.

10 for 10?

God. They definitely didn't cheat.