PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Live by your own rules

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

On this episode, Jesse and Derek are discussing the new rule changes in MLB and when they could be implemented, the difficulty of selling season tickets during a lockout, and no bobbleheads on the D-backs promo calendar...yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here at PHNX. My name is Derek Monti. Of course, I am your mayor of PHNX and I am joined by my vice mayor, the one and only Thunderstake, Jesse Friedman. It's the golden hour over there, Derek. It's all right now is a golden hour here, baby. You know, it's good. This is the sun's shining through the clouds.

It's a beautiful day here in Phoenix. A little hot, Jesse, just a little warm on a little warm side for me right now. What are we at? What are we at? Is it 80s? It was in the mid-80s, low mid-80s. It was, you know, it's a bit too much too soon. But that's only because I am a recluse now.

I live inside my house. I don't get to go outside. I don't get to watch baseball that often. And let me tell you, when I go out there to watch the minor league mini-camp, I find that I burn very quickly now. Did you not burn very quickly before? No, no, not this quickly. No, no.

It's weird what lives. living inside of your house for two years we'll do for you. But, you know, of course, we'll get to that. All sorts of other fun stuff about, you know, sun care. But before we get there, I got to let you guys know that this show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King's Sportsbook app. We are very, very close to UFC 272. And Draft King's Sportsbook is the official sports betting partner of UFC.

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no matter the outcome of the fight. Jesse, not much to talk about today on the lockout front. Lucky for us. Yeah, right. Deputy Commissioner Dan Hallam, MLB Deputy Commissioner, Dan Hallam, and MLBPA lead negotiator. Bruce Meyer met in New York today

without the rest of, of the group. They obviously were not helping at all, so they sent the two reasonable gentlemen to have a discussion. I feel like we're getting back to the whole Hamilton, you know, dual kind of scenario again, right? This is where we're at with the negotiators trying to talk them out of shooting each other. Something like that. I didn't expect much in New York today, and it sounds like, from what we can tell, not a whole lot happened. An interesting piece of news did come out, though. I don't know if you saw this,

but apparently the final and best proposal that was allegedly made by the owners on deadline day on Tuesday was actually voted down by four of the owners. Did you see this? Some of the owners actually thought, yeah, some of the owners, four of them, actually thought that the proposal that the owners made, which of course was turned down unanimous.

by the players anyway. Some of the owners, four of them actually didn't want that proposal. They thought it was too generous. And so that's not exactly a sign of encouragement moving forward. Not at all. Not in the slightest bit. That does not bode well

for this entire negotiation. I kind of wonder if do you think Ken Kendrick is one of the four? We don't know. I don't think anyone's releasing names, but somebody put out, and I don't want to confirm that this is accurate because I don't know this person, but it was a retweeted and

liked quite a bit on Twitter. And it was listing the teams that were holding this process up. And it was the usual suspects and the Arizona Diamondbacks were one of the teams that were holding this up.

They didn't name owner names, particularly in this tweet. They just listed teams. And it was, at the time, it was about 11, 12 teams were on list of teams that were holding it up. They said it only takes eight to essentially cause them to not be able to proceed with this entire process. So we're just over the eight.

And obviously there's still four that think even the offer that they provided was too generous. That's crazy to me. There's something that's been interesting as part of this negotiation process has been the rule changes that we brought up yesterday. Yeah. It came out of it. It came out of nowhere.

Like, we hadn't heard anything about some of this stuff until, at least like we've heard rumors about this for several years, but not in this CBA negotiation. And suddenly all this stuff came out. It came out like almost during Manfred's press conference, right? Was that the first time that they had addressed it or that we heard of it? I think maybe slightly before that. I think it might have been leave slightly before that, but not by much. Yeah.

Here was, here was the telling thing is a lot of the things. things that they have brought up as far as rule changes are being tested out in AAA and other leagues. So there has been the moves are, the rule changes are in motion as far as testing them out to see if they're viable, seeing how they impact the game. Interesting rule changes, but per Bob Nightingale, the three rule changes at MLB wants to implement banning shifts of pitch clock and oversized bases cannot begin before the 2024 season unless the union agrees. MLB wants the rules to go into effect in 2023 so next season. So those rule changes are banning the shift, oversized bases, and again, a pitch clock.

Obviously, we understand the pitch clock, but let's talk a bit about banning the shift and exactly what that is going to look like. defenses will be required to have a minimum of four players standing with both feet on the infield dirt. Another change requiring two infielders to be positioned on each side of second base could also be instituted for the second, or right now it's being tested, but that's what it's going to look like is there's going to be a requirement to have two infielders on both sides of second base. So that's going to be what constitutes a shift, right? What are your thoughts on banning the shift? I mean, I'm kind of for it in a way, but I also think it's kind of ridiculous because I've always been a huge fan,

as you know, of bunting on the shift. If you're going to put a shift on me, I'm going to bunt on you down the third baseline all day long until you do something to stop me. it'll be comedic. It would be like something out of a 90s baseball movie. I would bunt on the shift all day long and not even feel sorry about it. There's some sort of unwritten rule about not bunting on the shift.

There should be some sort of unwritten rule already about not putting the shift on all the goddamn time, right? So now baseball has to step in and actually do something about it. The Diamondbacks over the last few years, statistically have been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the shift. they've been very, very good at leveraging the shift and taking advantage of opposing hitters' weaknesses. So from their standpoint, I mean, as someone who covers this particular baseball team, I'm not sure if that's good news to take away something that's been one of their biggest weapons. But let's face it, if we only talked about good news for the Diamondbacks, we wouldn't do the show five days a week. No, that's, we wouldn't exist, Jesse.

We wouldn't exist at all. That's fair. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, right? I think you would see a lot more of the prototypical, um, left-handed slugger type in, in the game of baseball. There would be more of them that would survive the transition from the miners into the majors because if you take away the shift, I mean, a lot of those guys, especially their batting average. I mean, that's going to be the biggest number. They're going to, they're going to, they're going to tick up, right? You're not going to be grounding out to, um, you know, the second baseman who's basically playing. And, um, you know, right field anymore. And so yeah, I mean, I think it's a really interesting spin on the game. I do think that at times the shift feels a little bit boring. It feels a little dull that like you can put infielders in a spot that you know statistically they're going to take away all sorts of opportunities for the opposition. And I think I think it was kind of an oversight for a while just that the rules of baseball never accounted for this. But they didn't need to.

because we didn't use to use so many numbers and so many metrics to decide. It's the analytics. Once again, ruins baseball. Jesse, you and your numbers. Me and my numbers. It's all my fault.

But yeah, I think there comes a point when like those analytics have kind of just taught teams how to play the optimal, the optimal method of defense. And it works well. But it's a little dull because there's not a counter attack, right? There's nothing that a hitter can do other than try to fundamentally change the way that they hit the baseball. And as much as we like to say, you know, learn how to go the other way,

like learn how to do this other thing that you're not used to doing, that's not an easy switch for these hitters to make. There's a reason that works so well. You can't just all of a sudden start hitting the ball to the opposite field with ease. So I think it would make the game more interesting overall. And the ones that do already do, they don't necessarily just do it against the shift. So teams don't play the shift. against those players because statistically their tendencies aren't to hit to the right side

80% of the time. It's worth the risk when you know you can place extra infielders on that side of the field and have someone hit into that shift, right? So yeah, like you said, though, it's boring. It's crap. It sucks. It sucks to watch. It sucks to see. I mean, it just, it doesn't even feel like you're doing a good job defensively. Like, yeah, of course you You have like 12 guys over there on the right side. You know, I mean. You're right. You're right.

It's not, it's effective, but it's not exciting, right? There's nothing about the shift that is enjoyable to watch. It's like, I think as a fan, if anything, it just makes you constantly disappointed because you're going to feel it more when your team is on the offensive side when, you know, the center field camera that we're all used to watching baseball from. a guy hits the ball into the outfield and just based on what you're used to seeing, normally a ball in that spot is a base hit. And then the camera pans over and there's just an infielder just standing right there ready to make the play. It's just kind of a letdown moment.

Yeah. I mean, I get it. There's a lot of things about baseball that are interesting. Like they want it to be higher scoring because they think that's more popular, but then they also want it to be faster. Can't have both guy. You're not going to have higher scoring baseball. games. It's not basketball. It's not other sports. The more they score, the longer the game's

going to be. So, like, there's just a lot of things that we have to sacrifice with baseball. I think the pitch clock helps. But I think for the most part, players kind of up to this point have been abiding by it, right? Like, it's already been there. Like, I know our pitch clock operator at Chase Field, he's a great dude. I love sitting next to him and chatting with him. I probably distract him properly operating the clock all the time. But, you know, again, there is, there, there is that clock already there and a lot of people just kind of have grown use already to sticking to that time frame. I don't know how much that's going to speed up the game. And I'm not that worried about speeding up the game. What I am worried about is baseball being more fun. More importantly, I'm worried

about baseball coming back. I worry about that all day long from the time I wake up until I go to bed at night. But I am worried about baseball being more fun. And I think that this would make it more fun. I think that that is something that, as much as I hate to admit it, because I'm a big fan of an 0-1 ball game. I'm not somebody that would be mad about a 0-1 ballgame. I can't get super excited about it when, you know, during 90% of the game, the team that won zero-to-one won it by having the shift on and constantly having five guys over on the right side of the field. It just doesn't feel the same kind of like good job about winning a zero to one game as it used to.

Yeah. And that's something. It just feels weird because defenses do play in different patterns, not necessarily the shift, but they shift. So I would just wonder how restrictive this is going to be to teams playing different defenses. For the most part, that's why I'd kind of laid down the rules from the, way that the minor league changes have already been implemented.

And I'm sure what we see in the minor leagues is typically going to be what we see in the major leagues barring maybe a change or two. But I really think that they are going to go with that, the two infielders to be positioned on each side of second base and just keep that shift from happening. My question is like, could you send a defender in motion? like what if they start with two feet on the dirt but then right when the pitcher starts going into his motion the defender just like darts to whatever side of the field you want to send them

I don't know. Like that Jesse it makes me if that's when I fear that you and I aren't going to be together long on the show someone's going to snatch you up and make you into some sort of an assistant coach or analyst or something because you have been giving out too much good information when it comes to things like that. that's a brilliant idea. And again, I wouldn't be surprised here.

Like, could you imagine? Well, because like you see that now when they, when they bunt, right? The third baseman will kind of rush in and kind of try to get a little bit of a running start on it, you know, or whatever. So, yeah, we we kind of, to a degree, see that now out of defenses. The other change would be the change of the base size, which kind of sounds weird. But, uh, the size of making baseball more fun, right, Derek? There's nothing that'll make baseball more interesting for the young generation than for the bases to be bigger. Bigger bases.

Bigger everything, Jesse. Everything's bigger. Bigger balls, bigger bats, bigger players, bigger bases. Yeah, bases, the size of first, second, and third will be increased from 15 inches square to 18 inches square in an effort to reduce collisions and injuries. So I'm not against that. I don't care. I don't care how big the bases, right? I've never been a big fan of like somebody sliding in the second and then just coming off of it a hair and getting tagged out.

You know, stuff like that has always been kind of stupid to me anyway, but whatever. Yeah, they'll like keep your hand on the base and wait and call time before you get up and all that stuff. Yeah, we've seen a lot of that. I still think we should do like exercise. We should put like an exercise ball and just use those as the base. personally. I think that would be kind of idea. It's a brilliant idea. It's a really idea. I think so too. Yeah. Because if you bounce off, then you bounce off.

Like that's totally a different story. That's, that's not only comedic, but that seems very entertaining to me. So I'm on board with that. Honestly, like this, this change doesn't bother me. Anything that you're trying to do to impact player safety is, of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, we've seen Diamondbacks players jam fingers and stuff when they've been sliding and such. So anything that can help reduce that, I'm all on board with. I don't really know. I don't fully understand why a bigger base reduces, reduces injuries necessarily. I guess it's, I'm guessing.

I'm guessing they're just talking about like colliding with the other player because like the base, the, the, whoever's covering that base can cover it up more. So yeah, there's a greater, greater opportunity of colliding into them or colliding into something like their foot or something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Whatever. again, I get it. And these rule changes, they're nothing compared to like the other hills that they still have to climb for the CBA negotiation.

But I still wonder what the fine print stuff was that they tried to sneak in at midnight. Because that's that that's such a, that's such a like, I respect that move. It's terrible. It's villainous. But I respect the hell out of it. Like maybe we can catch these players sleeping. have them forfeit their arbitration years or something. You know, something like that.

Like, I don't know. It's crazy the stuff that that is happening right now. And I just don't know why like, like, if you're the, if you're on the side of like the 60-ish-year-old men and you're negotiating with a bunch of guys like in their 20s, I just don't know why you would think that like, yes, clearly we are the ones who are more alert. We are going to take advantage of them falling asleep right now. I don't know if I buy that. I'm older enough than you than I'd take exception to that comment. And I don't like the direction. This is going.

I feel this is ages, Jesse, and I don't like it one bit. Well, I say that as someone who after 10 o'clock at night, I'm just, I'm just not useful for much. 10 o'clock. 8 o'clock over here, this guy. 8 o'clock. If we ever have to do, if we ever do like post game shows for night games, it's going to be a nightmare. Might be a little rough.

Yeah. We're going to need some help in the chat. Whatever. Yeah. Anyway, you can get that. Whenever that happens, you can get all sorts of great content from us. We'll have post-game shows or post-series shows, pre-series shows. We haven't figured it out yet.

We know you guys don't want that much of us. You don't want a pre-game post-game for like six games in a week. Nobody wants that much, Derek Montia. I know that. For a fact, my wife can attest to that. But I will say that you can get all of our great content from us are written content. In the meantime, over at go phtonx.com. If you haven't signed up to become a member, please do so.

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But speaking of which, I had a chance today to kind of peruse the schedule. Yesterday we talked about when the Diamondbacks might open up their schedule, what the schedule might look like. There were some naysayers, by the way, on, I want to say it was over at ESPN, but I could be wrong about this. I was reading an article. And most people, most writers had the season starting at May 1st or later. one guy said that he is optimistic that the season will start by July 1st and that all of those

predictions made me very sad Jesse very very sad most so most said May 1st that was May most said May 1st yeah most of them said May 1st sounds like May 1st I think lands on like a Sunday so it could be like that soft opening day where they have a couple of games on that day and then the rest of the teams open up the following Monday but the debacks I want to give a shout out to a special group of people over at the Arizona Diamondbacks. And that's their season ticket reps. Because they have a very hard job

right now. They really do. Apparently, from what I've seen, they have been required to still contact current season ticket holders from last season right now during the middle of a lockout to see if they are interested in renewing

their season tickets. And I don't even know what to say to that. My heart goes out to you, and, you know, again, the diehard baseball fans, I'm sure it's a much easier conversation than it is with the other people that are much more reasonable about this situation and will tell you, absolutely not. I am not renewing anything until this whole thing gets figured out.

Well, I can speak from personal experience, Derek. I've never been a Diamondback season ticket holder, but I got an email about a week ago, the Diamondbacks ticket rep asking if I was interested in finding out more information about ticket plans. Obviously, I don't think they were aware that I cover the team. Did you say, yeah, I want something on April 4th? You got anything on April 7th?

What about April 12th? Right, right, exactly. No, I feel bad for them. And I know we like to throw self-pity parties around here because, you know, we talk about the Diamondbacks five days a week and baseball at large and and there hasn't been much to talk about over the last few months and we've just kind of had to make do but but selling i mean selling tickets for a team that is not playing is another level of of difficult so my heart certainly goes out to all of them right now solidarity brothers

we're all in the same boat right now we're all in the same boat of waiting for this whole thing to end so we can do our jobs better than we currently can as it stands it is very difficult to talk about baseball. I've kind of joked about it, but it's, it's not easy to talk about this lockout situation and have kind of, even our emotions go up and down with it. Monday was such a high and Tuesday was such a love. And it was, again, very, very disheartening to hear some of the things we heard about the negotiations. As fans, I can completely understand people not only being hesitant to commit to anything like this, but even being, optimistic about when a season is going to happen at this point, especially when you don't really

have to worry about it until it does. I know there's some people that are big fans that they, they're mad that they're missing out on this. From my understanding, from what I heard today, Doug Deucey, our governor, has been reassured that the spring training, no matter when it happens, will happen, and it will happen in Arizona. I really, want to pretend that that's news, Derek, but I don't know about it. I don't know how significant it is that spring training will occur at some point. I don't, I mean, I guess is that to imply that. I ask you this, did it happen before they started restarted the season during the pandemic year, right? Or did they just kind of find a way? Like, I'm just saying, this could go so long. I feel like we're

talking about this in the context of it still being. spring, but one guy has this slated to start July 1st. So, you know, asking if it's still going to happen in Arizona with all the teams here, being here in Arizona in like June, I think is a reasonable thing to ask, right? Like that's, I, I wasn't really sure if spring training was going to happen in the conventional way where teams were still going to play against each other and not be back to wherever, you know, their, their home ballpark is located. I think the pandemic situation was was a little bit different just in that, you know, the whole point was to avoid teams, you know, being in close proximity with each other. So that was that was a pretty big obstacle. And having all the teams and having all the teams in two states really starts putting all of your eggs in two baskets, really. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that clearly in a, in the middle of a pandemic that was that was very, very bad and, you know, especially unknown.

at that point in time. It made sense to separate everyone. Sure. But yeah, this year, you know, if and when the season starts and, you know, hopefully we can use the word. If and when I hate you so much. It's, I've, I've been woefully wrong on predictions before on this stuff. I'm trying to.

All qualifiers. We're going to start using all qualifiers for any statements we make from here on out. Exactly. But, but yeah, I do think that spring training, it would make sense for it to happen here in, here in Arizona. and it might be shortened. I'm not sure if Doug Ducey was guaranteed anything on that front. I think there's probably a pretty good chance that it will be shortened.

Right. I agree with that. The teams will still, they benefit a lot from playing each other. And, you know, it's just different playing an intra-squad game versus playing another team and, you know,

seeing pitchers you're not familiar with and what and whatnot. That's a great point. Another thing is that the promotional schedule, which does not help the, season ticket reps with their job has come out. And the reason why I say this is because as we take a look at it, you will notice one very glaring, missing promotional item from this schedule. And that is, obviously, there are no bobbleheads on this.

We have a Mother's Day weekend hat. There's that MLB bag, a couple of bucket hats for Memorial Day weekend. The Father's Day, the dad shirt, that's pretty, that's pretty fire. That is a pretty dope catcher. It's going to fit and look exactly like that on you. So don't think it's going to fit you any better than that. But it's the Serbiantas with the yellow. I like that a lot.

And then we're advertising fireworks for some reason, which is going to happen all the time. Well, Fourth of July fireworks is a different level. If you come on a Friday game, you're going to see fireworks. I will say the thing that really bothers me about this is that they have Star Wars night listed. and on Star Wars Night, they have a shirt as the giveaway item. That bothered me. My reasonable side understands why this is happening.

It's the exact same reason why there are no player images on MLB.com, and that is because obviously the bobbleheads are going to be players, so thus their likenesses right now cannot be advertised by MLB in any way, even in the form of a bobblehead. Well, I mean, they could just do like a, you know, they could use front office people. they could make a Ken Kendrick bobblehead. They could make Eric Hall.

I don't want that. I don't want any of that. Give me, give me, give me Frank, the elevator operator as a bobblehead. And I will be there before everybody else. I will be there at noon waiting in line.

So I'm the first one to get one. No, I mean, that's obviously the only thing reason. But here's what I think. Couldn't they still have like an empty silhouette as like, like a bobblehead night still alerting you that this night is going to be a bobblehead

night instead of nothing? I think I think it just accentuates the lockout problem though. You're really going to advertise a bobblehead with a silhouette like that's question mark like Riddler style. I don't know. Like I'm just trying. I just want to know when the bobblehead night we're going to be. I need to know when I need to be at the stadium, Jesse. Well, we get bobbleheads. I don't know. In the past as media members, it was they were

always very gracious when you were sitting there. They'd bring you one. And, you know, you didn't have to get it at the gate. But during the pandemic, it's like the way that like fast food restaurants change their hours. They just decide to pull it on us. And I have no idea what not giving us the giveaway items had anything to do with the pandemic or how it's impacted. But I want my bobbleheads back. If there's one thing I want reinstated, now that we're post-pandemic or whatever, I don't care what we want to call it yet. I don't know if we are or not. But I want to my bobbleheads back. At least that. And on my free ice cream, Jesse, they used to have free cold stone ice cream. Don't even get me started on the tiny refrigerator filled with cold stone

ice cream that I, that's the only reason why I went to baseball games. That's the only reason why I did this job. It was for the free ice cream. But yes, I'm still, I'm still very concerned about Star Wars night having a t-shirt. Have they had a Star Wars night t-shirt before? Not that I, I mean, so usually, I'm not a big Star Wars guy. So forgive me. I don't normally go to. You're not a big, what is, what is, what are you a big guy of baseball? Is that the only thing in your life? I need you to have other interest, Jesse Friedman. What do you mean you don't like Star Wars?

When you come down here, we're going to just binge watch all Star Wars movies. And I'm going to make you like see how great they are. I have a hard, I have a hard time watching Star Wars movies. Oh, God. I'm sorry, Derek, they're really corny. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. of people agreeing with you in this room.

I'm so done with this entire show. I have literally never seen Star Wars. I got a little bit. You've never, you've never seen Star Wars. And the little bit, I saw like one episode one time. And it was just because I was passing through.

And it was easily the worst thing I'd ever seen before. Oh my God. It's horrible. I can't. I can't. And it's like the beginning. You started this. it's the beginning of when they used computers to like try to make stuff look cool with with and it was bad it was and I mean granted for the time I know it was legendary and whatnot but but compared to what I'm used to now Derek it's just hard to watch it's Star Wars is just a poor man's Harry Potter I don't my God I'm getting out of here I can't watch this shit I can't be a part of this network Derek come back I'm on your side I'm on your side Derek

Oh, Leah, did this guy out of here. What is happening? Harry Potter. It's not even shot in high definition. Have you seen it on, like, HBO Max? It looks terrible. Oh, okay. I can't.

You're making me, you're, this is, I'm, see, I was, I was, I was already upset about the lockout. Now I'm more upset than I've ever been in my whole entire life. I just I don't I can't well again I understand it's something special to me and not to you Jesse you don't watch anything you have nothing you did you watch the Harry Potter movies did you watch those I've seen two of the Harry Potter I knew you would answer with something like that I knew that would be something of your answer and they were good for the record far superior to star oh get out of here oh man well anyway this is this is this is the end of the P HNX-D-Bax podcast. I hope you guys enjoyed the 175 episodes we've done. But before we go,

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gambling problem dot 100 next step new customers only minimum $5 deposit required eligibility restrictions apply see draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details and before we go I did want to give you my draft king's pick of the week and it is that fight

and I know what I've been saying I have been saying that I'm going to be rooting from Osbadal but that's not where my money is going So my pick of the week is I'm taking Colby Covington. Is that his name? Yeah, that's his name. Money line on that. I'm taking the over on the rounds.

The over is at four and a half rounds. I'm taking the over. And I'm also taking the money line on Dustin Jacoby. And I think it's the first fight of the night. But that's what my MMA guys are telling me. And that's what I'm taking on my pick of the week. So again, go over the draft king sports book, download it, use our code of PHNX and get down. even if you haven't gotten down already.

If you're an existing customer, go over there and get down on the UFC, put together a parlay. I'm not supposed to call myself this because it's totally stealing it from Patrick, but I'm a big parley. And again, get down on the parlay is over there. Add yourself, the more legs you add,

the more money you win. And remember, you can add as many legs to your UFC parlay as you want. Jesse, that's all I got. What I got is we got Friday. We have Friday. Friday, I think, is the last day. and I don't know if any meetings are scheduled.

I don't know what's going to happen. But if we, if this weekend comes and goes and we get into next week, that means we have to cancel more games, right? Once we get into next week, I feel like that's the point where we might hear from MLB canceling more of the schedule. Well, there's a difference between we have to cancel the games and MLB is going to cancel the games. So you have to distinguish those two things. But yeah, I think it's likely based on what Rob Manfred said.

the other day, you know, they canceled the first two series. And he said the calendar dictates that we can't, you know, we can't play these two series. And so along the lines of that logic, it would only make sense that, you know, a few more days past, they're probably going to start canceling more games. So, yeah, that's, that's life right now, Derek. We're just, we just get to take our, our baseball schedules on our calendars and just draw X's with every day that goes by, because there's probably, with every day the passes, there's probably another game being canceled by Rob Manfred. So that is, that's where we're at right now. Well, here's what you can do. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at cap underscore

K-man with the K. Jesse is at Jesse and Friedman. Most importantly, follow our show at PHNX underscore D-Backs. You can get your baseball fix from us. I will be out at minor league minicamp as much as I'm humanly allowed. I don't know. I don't know if they like me out there or not, but the players didn't seem to mind me. They all gathered around me on the bench while I was filming the other day. I felt like I was somehow. Well, it's your, it's your like, Exotic sense of fashion, right? Don't they like? They really like my shirts.

Yeah. They really like my shirts. And I think I think I got a good thing going. It's an indelible part of my brand. What can I say? But of course, follow us on that. But most importantly, all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports. And that's on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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and buy yourself some sweet-ass merch. And most importantly, go to Draft King's Sportsbook, make yourself some money and use our code of PHNX. We thank you guys again so much for checking out the show. Jesse and I appreciate your time and remember kids. Baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when we give away bobbleheads.