PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Meet me in the middle

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

On this episode, Derek and Jesse are discussing updates from the meeting between MLB and the union, Harrison Bader from the Cardinals taking up a new job during the lockout, and reversing the draft order to prevent tanking. 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 the PHNX DBAX podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, of course, officially known as your mayor of PHNX. And I am joined by my vice mayor, my co-host, my friend, the one and only, Thunderstick Jesse Friedman. Derek, they met today. It happened. There was no, they didn't cop out, we're told at least. There was no, I'm sick. I have COVID.

I can't be on a Zoom meeting. That would be a terrible excuse. I think at this point, this juncture, the meetings happened and we don't have a deal, right? No deal was made. Another day passes and we get closer to Jesse's January. I would have been kind of shocked. Like, could you imagine if they actually had a deal today? There was no way.

It would be the most reasonable thing in labor agreement history for them to just come together and hash it out over the course of one day. But of course they didn't. They talked about some, as we discussed yesterday, some core economic issues and some aspects of the game. But Jesse, I don't know if we made a lot of progress on day one. Apparently the players were not happy with the offer from the owners. And it was expected that they weren't going to be. Yeah, they didn't expect to be happy.

The owners didn't expect them to be happy. And frankly, none of us expected either side to come away happy from this meeting. So why would they? Why would any of us have optimism at this point with regard to the labor negotiations? But no, I mean, this is a, this was still a valuable first step, right? We saw Jeff Passon tweeting about this earlier today. And he emphasized that you have to understand how this process works, right? Like we talked about on the show earlier in the week, neither side is going to come out the gate with their best offer.

right, they're going to try to just compromise a little bit at a time. And so there's a lot of back and forth that awaits this situation. And we also have to factor in that as much as, you know, pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report on February 14th, but you also have to recognize that players have agreed to a shorter spring training camp before in 2020, right? It was three weeks, I believe, between the time that they, you know, started practicing and the time that the season started. So there's a pretty decent chance that they could get the players to agree to something like that again.

And if that's true, that kind of pushes back the date to maybe March 1st. And that being kind of the date where, you know, these sides really do have to start focusing on things in order to, in order to avoid missing games, which of course is the big motivation in this whole thing. Yes, Karen, at least they were talking. We can be thankful for that today. Absolutely. And that's the biggest piece of progress here. But I think Jeff Passon and what you just said are you're both correct, right?

It's why we kind of have joked about the dates that we set, but both of us kind of know deep down inside that both of these dates are in peril. Well, you know deep down inside that your date is ridiculous. But I'm sorry. I have to. I know. Yes, I know deep down inside that your date is in peril, and I know deep down inside that my date is in peril. I know that the Major League Baseball season is somewhat in peril. I don't mean to be that, I guess, I guess that, you know, arc, but spring training tickets go on sale on Saturday, Derek. So I don't know what you're worried about, but, you know. Presale tickets actually went on sale today for spring training. So they've already. They've already started. This has already begun.

Okay. And again, I have no idea how this is going to play out. Again, it's a, it's a situation where I imagine tickets for the first couple of games are in jeopardy and might be rescheduled. I don't know how they're going to shuffle the season from this point once, once it's impacted. I think the biggest problem here is that the two sides, I will say that the owners came out of the gate with some surprising things, according to Jeff Passon's update on it. But like he said, sometimes it's big proposals.

Sometimes it's incremental. The union's going to counter sooner than later. Hopefully, and that's the big part. Hopefully, when we talk about the union countering, we're not talking about a delay when it comes to that, right? But it's definitely a long process. like a month from now. If we don't hear from the union for, you know, several weeks, then that that could be, then you're, you're kind of a dangerous territory. But, but,

but yeah, Jeff seemed to think that, you know, they'll come back pretty quick. And, and I think that seems pretty reasonable. Um, but I will say that, uh, there was an interesting, you know, part of this whole thing is, is competitive balance. And again, that's, that's kind of part of the negotiations that they kind of offered up some of the things offered by the owners initially at least according to Passon's tweet was that there were some things in regards to funneling additional money to all players with two plus service years awarding draft picks to teams that don't manipulate service of successful top prospects that one is hilarious to me that we're going to we're going to reward you for not screwing with the system yeah and like I mean again what

dictates that like a top prospect as far as when they were drafted, right? Because again, draft position doesn't necessarily dictate if it's a top prospect or not. Yeah, what they signed for something. I don't know how you possibly come up with an objective, like threshold for what makes a top prospect as opposed to everyone else. I'm sure they, you know, they probably came with with more details than what Jeff put in his tweet. But yeah, that is an odd one for sure. Rounds one and two, you can't screw with everybody else. Fuck their career. You can do whatever you want with them, right? you know, let's not forget how far down the line, Jeff, uh, Mr. Paul Goldschmidt came to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

So, uh, again, you know, who's to know what is and isn't, you know, a top prospect once they arrive, uh, under a team and start playing for the minor league system and working their way up. But, uh, yeah, definitely. It was just like the, like the MLB pipeline rankings. Like it's, it's just like, it's just like Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo doing their thing. And they, they get to decide the, fortunes of all of these players. Just one through 156. Everybody after that, you can do whatever you want with. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, it's a, it's a weird, a weird situation. But, but yeah, there's still things here that were significant. You mentioned players with two plus

years of service time, major league baseball. The owners have expressed a willingness to, to bump up those salaries a little bit. As well, they should. I mean, some of of these guys are incredible players the moment they, you know, they come out of the gate and they're making, you know, five or 600K for a while. Great point by Karen, by the way, in regards to the entire manipulating service time thing. And doesn't that just mean they go look for another loophole? You're absolutely right. And some way, shape, or form.

I mean, that's, how do we make it so our guy doesn't qualify as a top prospect so that we can do whatever we want with him, right? Right. Then what? You stop playing him in the minor league system, start doing things like that. Yeah, it's all bad because, again, it doesn't, it doesn't bode for any kind of honesty system, right? And it's kind of like the way that they did things with, you know, like even their drug testing in the past where it was non-existent, but it was kind of on like some sort of weird honor system where at a time where every other major sport was fully testing their players for performance enhancing drugs. So MLB's always been just kind of like one of those leagues that didn't really care much about enforcing their own rules. It's what led to the Astros scandal and the Boston Red Sox scandal, right?

Where they're cheating, but they're doing things technically that you're allowed to do in the game, kind of, right? But they're just taking it to such an excessive level between their use of technology and use of like tribal drumming. You know, those two things combined together somehow led to. us literally having them doing sign, you know, stealing signs. Well, and there's the, the sticky stuff situation, right, with the pitchers this last year. And that was, I mean, that was something to Major League Baseball. I mean, you're right. They haven't come out and enforce many things, but my gosh, pitchers were, were just.

Padded down. Yeah, basically, it was a full on TSA situation. Yeah. Yeah. We had, I thought Caleb Smith was going to murder an entire umpiring. crew right before my very eyes like I was there for that game I was watching that I watched I watched the whole thing unfold I actually alerted the other writers in the press box to what was happening just because it kind of just escalated very quickly but you could tell like based on the number of times

you had seen an umpire check a pitcher's glove and such you could tell that something was up about about like a minute into it right because they do the they do the check and like once I saw Caleb Smith kind of changed the way he was standing, like, from going just standing there to, like, putting his hands on his hips. I was like, uh-oh, uh-oh. It was a sassy pose from- yeah, but he, he went for it at one point. He lunged. He did a lot. There was a lunging at the umpires at one point. And he, he was not having it. But let me tell you, mud and sweat and a lot of other stuff can really make a sticky pace. So when you're one of those guys that likes to rub stuff on your glove, even if it's legal stuff, uh, maybe you get to the point where you're,

just creating some sort of new bonding material between the ingredients you've mixed together, your own sweat, your gloves, leather, all this stuff. I don't know, but you definitely got poked for that one, that's for sure. But yeah, an interesting article on the athletic from Jason Stark kind of gave a new twist on what could be a way to potentially prevent tanking, which, you know, I'm not for that, Jesse. You know what I don't care what time of the year it is. It's still tank season, baby. It's always tank season in Arizona.

Get your tank tops out. It's tank season. I don't know if that's good for our marketing, Derek. You declaring that our baseball franchise will remain in tank season for the foreseeable future. I don't know if that's a message you want to spread. I don't know if that's what I was spreading. I just, I'm a big fan of that graphic. What can I say?

Of course, we want to prevent tank season. and we want to prevent all teams from tanking. We don't want the Diamondbacks to tank anymore. Of course, we don't want that. What we do want to see is competitive balance in baseball. We want to see teams stop being bad. We want the Seattle Mariners to make the playoffs for Christ's sake. We want to see these teams get better.

They're one of the teams that had a mad dash to try to improve their team or a friend of the program, Robbie Ray. He's over there now. Again, we saw the Texas Rangers spend a half a billion dollars on new players for their team. But Jason Stark, he has a wild suggestion, Jesse, and I don't know if I like it so much, but it's kind of crazy. It is pretty crazy. Yeah, competitive balance is going to be a huge factor for both sides. This is one of the few things that the players and the owners agree on is they want to move competitive balance in the right direction. And so, yeah, I think this is pretty much Jason Stark's own idea.

If you don't know, Jason, he's a columnist over at the athletic. and it's pretty compelling. So basically Jason Stark proposed a change in the draft order where essentially it gets flipped around, but not entirely. Basically what would happen is all of the teams who make the playoffs, which as of right now is 10 teams altogether, right? You've got the three division winners in both leagues.

You've got two wildcard teams from both leagues. So you would still have those 10 teams getting the back 10 pick. So they would pick 21 through 30 in reverse order, right? So the very best team in the first team, league would pick 30th and then second best, 29th and so on. So in that sense, it's the same. But what's different, Derek, is what happens in picks 1 through 20.

Rather than the worst team in baseball, getting the first overall pick, the worst team in baseball would pick 20th. And the best team in baseball that was not among the playoff teams would pick first. So essentially what it does is it creates incentive either to get into the playoffs, in which case you're in the playoffs,

and you probably don't care where you pick, or to try to get as close to the playoffs as you possibly can, because the closer you get to the playoffs, the higher of a draft pick you'll get. If you're the best team that doesn't make the playoffs, you get the first pick. If you're the second best team, it doesn't get into the playoffs,

you get the second pick and so on and so forth. So I think it's pretty compelling, Derek. I was dreaming earlier today after reading this article about what it would look like. if all 30 MLB teams were actually trying at the same time. Like what a, what a wild concept that would be. If there were no teams that were tanking, every team had incentive to go get that extra reliever, you know, to go try to pad your lineup,

grab that extra utility player, because you know that there's no, there's no reason not to, right? You are going to be incentivized always to be as good as you can be, either to make the playoffs or to, get the best pick you can if you don't make the playoffs. So I thought it was, I thought it was pretty interesting, which I don't hate this. I agrees with. Yeah, what do you think, Derek? Give me your take. I don't hate this idea at all. I don't eat. I'm with Robert York. I find it to be interesting because,

again, the baseball season is so long, right? So the worst part about it essentially when it comes to teams tanking is how long you have to deal with your team tanking, right? Exactly. When you talk about the football season, right? The football season is, you know, 17 games now, right? It's 17 games now this Yeah, which I still don't understand. How is the, how do they play an odd number of games, right? Like one, every team plays more home games than road games or more road games than home games. I still don't understand the NFL, but I don't. We never will, right? But at times what I think about is the fact that there is this, uh, the, of course, the shorter time span, the law, the less you have to deal with it, right? If your team loses every single one of their games, that's only

17 games, 18 weeks, you had to deal with it one game per week that you had to deal with your terrible team being terrible, right? It's so much different in baseball when you talk about a 162 game season, right? There's just this lengthy, uh, drawn out like I saw, you know what? It's like, okay, I saw a video today that someone created as an art exhibit, a robotic arm and the robot. robotic arms job was to scrape hydraulic fluid that it was leaking out back into itself as like some sort of exercise on futility, right? That this thing is constantly leaking its own, you know, hydraulic fluid that it requires,

which they, of course, grossly colored red just to really enhance the idea of our own mortality when you're watching this exhibit, right? But apparently at one point, the robotic arm used to have enough time while scraping its own hydraulic fluid back into itself to, like, do a little dance, right? And then it would go back to scraping its hydraulic fluid, but people... What are you even talking about right now, Derek? I'm going to get back around to it, right? I'm saying that watching this thing slowly, like, die and scrape its hydraulic fluid back

into itself to keep its, you know, life going. It's, it, that's literally like watching a team, you know, play 162 game season where you know, much like the coyotes, right, where there are times, I'm not saying the Diamondbacks were that this season, right? Yeah. But I will say at times, the Arizona Diamondbacks did have time to do a little dance, didn't they, Jesse, while also still trying to scrape their own hydraulic fluid back into their machine and keep their thing running at least until the end of the season.

And it was sad to watch at one point because of how many injuries they experienced, how much, you know, like just everything. But a big part of it was because in the first place, they were kind of set up for failure. Their depth, they were so limited depth-wise that they did not really have an opportunity to be successful from the get-go. Then they experienced catastrophic injuries. And of course, of course they did when they weren't ready for even, they weren't even ready for minor injuries. They weren't even ready for two or three starters to be out, let alone

nine to 13. There's there was times where this team wasn't set up to even compete, even though they didn't outright say it in the beginning from the get-go, right? So, and that's the problem is, is that like to watch these teams struggle for the entire season is, isn't fun. And at one point, you have to feel like within the organization, everybody's kind of given. up. It's not to say that they're still not going to go out there and put out their best effort and play baseball and whatever, but you feel like they're not focused at all on winning baseball games anymore at any point. This idea essentially makes this long 162 game season like a constant playoff for all the teams that aren't really going to make the playoffs, right? You have the good ones

that are giving an effort that are going to miss, you know, just by a couple of games or whatever. and then they deserve to kind of be rewarded for their efforts throughout the season. I don't hate this idea. The only problem I have is I don't know what this does for competitive balance because I feel like by not giving bad teams good draft teams. The Diamondbacks would pick 20th next year is now you're saying. I mean, no, but the point also is that to be honest, you're, I guess you're making the bad teams have to go out there and spend money, right?

They can't rely on getting get draft pick, top draft pick after draft pick until they've assembled this farm system of really great players that they can bring up, kind of like the Astros did, you know, but the Astros were a bit of the blueprint for this tanking issue that's now kind of taking over baseball because teams have seen it work for not just one franchise, but several franchises. Yeah, I think that's a very valid point. And I think that's the thing that even Jason Stark acknowledges about this is that I don't know if he's even sure that this is fair, right? It's a little, it's a little weird, right? If you are, you know, scraping for a playoff spot and you're right there. If you get the playoff spot,

you're going to pick likely 21st. And if you just miss the playoff spot, you're going to pick first overall. It's like there's this very fine line between the first pick and the 21st pick, which is, which is very odd. And yeah, GMs, absolutely Karen, GMs would be put in some very odd circumstances that they have not really been put in in the past. And I don't know if this totally fixes the issue. Like the Diamondbacks probably would still trade Eduardo Escobar because they know that he's a free agent at the end of the year and they're probably not going to bring him back and you still want to get something for him.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that logic still holds. And so I don't think this makes all of the bad teams buyers at the trade deadline. Right. There's still going to be. People are still going to be. selling but maybe maybe you don't trade off you know those more minor pieces that probably don't you're

not really going to get a whole lot in exchange for them maybe you just keep those players around and try to finish with the best record that you can um i agree with that i agree with that's because that because that's the frustrating part is to see a team that really wasn't that bad but might have had a difficult first half of the season all of a sudden start dismantling themselves and as a as a fan you might have felt whether you were right or wrong that the team was like a few pieces away and then you see the the fire sale you see the yard sale where they're putting out all their good stuff for super cheap you're like no wait what why are you doing this right so right uh but yeah just to address this i'm assuming you guys will be doing post game shows during the season

i'm ready for this chat to be buzzing after a walkoff you and me both ruler 14 and robert It's going to be buzzing every, it's going to be buzzing every, every single day. We don't need walk off. We just need, we just need baseball. We just need actual games happening. That's what we need. Yeah, yeah. But I will say this, it might be a lot to do pre game and post game for 162 games this season.

So I don't know. You're not up for it, Derek. You're just not. You're not. You won't do that with me. I do have a refrigerator full of monsters. So, Jesse, you know I'm ready for anything at any time. but I just don't know if if if we have the stamina for that.

Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yeah, we'll see. We got, we definitely have some plans to do maybe a pre-series and post-series shows and and some shows in between. So keep an eye for that. We want the season to happen so that we can get to all of this because we're, we're excited. We're excited to do it.

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winnings it's just winnings on top of winnings uh that promo code phnx this wildcard weekend at draft king sports book an official sports betting partner of the nfl 21 and over only arizona only gambling problem dial 1-800 next step new customers only eligibility restrictions apply see draft kings dot com slash sportsbook for details. Jesse, you would appreciate this story because, of course, not only do we have a story here about MLB players using their time wisely during the lockout, but it's a teaching situation. It is. Yes.

Due to staffing shortages for teachers in this St. Louis area, St. Louis Cardinals, centerfielder Harrison Vader stepped in to be a substitute PE teacher for a day at Merrimack elementary school in Clayton, Missouri on Monday. He said being a substitute science or math teacher was above his pay grade, but he definitely felt at home as a PE teacher. And I just, I thought this was kind of cool. I think obviously with the situation, the pandemic, this is a real thing, right? And I mean, as nice as it was to, to have him go out there and spend some time with the kids, it's a great thing. You know, he, uh, I, maybe he needed to go out there for the full week is what I'm saying like put in the whole effort right if you're going to substitute substitute like this staffing shortages are real these teachers are worn down let's get them some help but I did think that this was very cool and it got me to thinking what other like players or coaches maybe on the debacks would make good substitute teachers oh my gosh did you see did you see Karen's comment just now that's incredible what's that

Karen was Harrison Bader's host family in Peor? Wow. That's incredible. We need to have you on the show. Karen McKenzie says I was Harrison, Harrison's host family in Peoria, Illinois several years ago. Yes, excellent. That's amazing. That's amazing. And he seems to be an excellent young man to go do something like that for the schools. He must be like, he must be the coolest. I mean, like, I mean, if he was to go and be, a substitute math teacher. He might be maybe a little in over his head from what he said. Sure, but the kids know what they're doing. All he has to do is give them the assignments and then be cool Mr. Bader, right? Like, that's all I would. Well, and P.E., like, if you have a,

if you're a kid and you have a major league baseball player filling in, I honestly feel bad for the normal P.E. coach. Like, like what happens when the regular P.E. coach comes back and replaces the major league baseball player that the kids have been used to working with. That's going to be a little bit of a letdown probably. So I kind of feel for whoever Harrison is replacing. But that's, yeah, I mean, that's got to be a pretty amazing thing for the kids. But your question is who else? Who would be a good substitute teacher? Yeah. Okay, Zach Gallen. Okay. Brett Johnson says Zach Gallen would be a cool substitute teacher. maybe David Peralta so we can watch movies all day, all class period.

I thought the same. David Peralta was the first name I thought of when I thought, cool substitute teacher that will let me do anything, right? Yes. And I feel like I would know that. Which is the only kind of substitute teacher that kids really want. That's the only what we want. Absolutely.

Who wants anything else? Who wants something that's actually going to, you know, teach us or try? That's the worst is when a substitute teacher tried. I think Tori Lavello would just be a cool teacher in general. I feel like his approach, how much you'd like him, maybe even get Mike Hazen in there as a counselor. I don't know. Mike Hazen's vice president president, vice principal principal material is what I'm thinking here. But I don't know.

Who else? Dalton Varshot, P.E. teacher. Okay. I think Dr. Barso has quite a physique. I mean, he is a very fast. and yet very well-built 5-10-ish dude. It's really pretty incredible.

Who comes to my mind first would be Carson Kelly, after David Peralta probably. David Peralta, I feel like you probably hit the nail on the head there. Carson Kelly's just kind of like a funny guy. Like he's just one of those people that, from what I can tell, which albeit is limited experience in press conferences and whatnot. But he has a sense of humor that I. I feel like kids would, kids would appreciate.

For sure, for sure. Nick Ahmed actually is a bit obsessive of nutrition and such. Yeah, I don't know, maybe a good science teacher or nutrition teacher.

I don't know, nutrition. Nick Ahmed would probably be great. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to date myself here, but I know that, I know kids have like more specific classes than I did back in my day,

especially like in high school and stuff now. So I'm not going to try to act like nutrition might not be a class at this point, but who knows. But yeah. Oh, yeah, Brett Johnson, for sure, for sure, Eduardo Escobar. I don't, Spanish. They wouldn't get any, they wouldn't get anything done. They would get anything done. Nothing at all.

Oh, man. Oh, man. But for sure, I think it's super great. Back to Karen's story, which I find to be great. She says Harrison stayed at their place straight. off a college world series at Florida, which again, I think that that's really something outstanding about the baseball community. And again, it kind of shows how much the minor league guys need a little bit of help when

they're trying to get away. Yeah. Now they have housing, apparently, from what we know. But, yeah, I mean, it's a huge thing. There are so many host families that have stepped up big in baseball over the years. I remember when I met Christian. And Christian Robinson a couple years back, he raved about his host family as well. So a lot of host families have had a huge impact in this game that we probably don't talk about enough.

Right. And it's something that's, I don't know how common that is in other sports, but it seems to be quite common in baseball. Yeah, that's a great point. Because baseball has this enormous, monstrous minor league system that other sports don't really have an equivalent for. and they don't make very much money, hence the need for housing and people to open up their homes and help them out in that way. So there's a huge deal for it. It's a broken sport, isn't it, Jesse. It really is a broken sport. Well, now they have housing from what we can. I mean, from the agreement that was put in place not that long ago,

it sounds like at least we have a step in the right direction as far as this is concerned. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And Karen says, for him it wasn't money it was the fact it was a mid-season more hard to deal with leases yep and i totally get that too sure that's something difficult um you know even at a major league level when these guys are getting traded around and uprooting their lives and yeah you got to wonder how they do that you know yeah like if you're renting a place and then suddenly you get traded and just like that's that's not really something that most apartment complexes in my experience are used to dealing with that would be that would be the greatest reaction to like someone losing they're uh you know like having a difficult situation during a trade it's just oh skip i just signed

my lease uh you know like but uh anyway i have a article coming up on go p hnx dot com about yismani tomas uh the more i dug into it the more uh the more the onion peeled back but honestly the one thing i found very interesting about his entire signing was uh just how much you really can't blame the Arizona Diamondbacks for what was kind of a hot trend in Major League Baseball at the time with, you know, Cuban players being available and coming over to the United States, defecting from Cuba. So it turned into a more interesting reveal for myself even than I thought. But definitely go over to go phtnx.com. You'll get that piece once it's posted, as well as all of our other wonderful writing articles, pieces, content, all of this stuff over at go phnx.com.

get it for us, the Sons, the Cardinals, the coyotes that don't deserve, they don't deserve Craig Morgan, but the coyotes, they're there. They don't deserve the designs either, but I'll get to that later. But yeah, go sign up at go phnx.com, become a member, get an annual membership and you'll get a free t-shirt over at the PHNX Locker.com. Some amazing designs. I'm not wearing one tonight. I'm wearing my Oakley-Docle shirt. Shout out to this band, they're local and incredible. but yes, you can go get a free t-shirt over at go PHN or at the PHNX Locker.com, as well as join our members-only Discord and get some members-only discounts over at the PHNX Locker.com. Right now, I think we have buy one, get one 50% off for all Arizona Cardinal shirts.

Yes. And they're a big playoff game on Monday against the Rams. So get down on that if you're a member. Fill your closet like I have with PHNX shirts. And also, if you're not interested in the annual membership, if you hate free T-shirts, go get the month-to-month option, and you'll get your first month for just 50 cents. After that, you can decide that you did, in fact, want the free t-shirt

and come on over for the annual membership option. But yeah, check out that article once it's posted on Yosmani Tomas, because, of course, it's my belief. And again, I still think a case could be made for a few other guys, including Russ Ortiz, but it's my belief, that Yismani Tomas was the worst contract in Arizona Diamondbacks history. Yeah. We can't wait to let you depress us all, Derek.

So thank you for playing a role in that. It's what I do. It's what I do. I do that for my kid. I do it for my wife. Why wouldn't I do it for you guys? I love you guys. You guys are family.

Gosh. I have to share the misery. But I wanted to give you my draft king's pick of the week before we go. Obviously a huge weekend of NFL games. And I mean it. If you haven't signed up yet for Draft Kings and I completely wouldn't understand why unless you're Jesse and you're in a different area that doesn't allow it. This is the weekend to do so. And I would do so.

If I was betting my money, which I did, I could show you on the Draft King of Sportsbook app. I would roll these two little things into two-leg parlay, maybe even add a couple of legs to it. But I'm taking the Buccaneers covering the spread over the Eagles at time of planning this show. it was at eight and a half. It has since moved up to nine and a half. I'm still taking it. I think the Buccaneers are going to score 10 plus on the Eagles. I'm also taking the over at 46 because I think there's a good chance

the Buccaneers might hang up 46 alone over the Eagles. But that's my pick of the week. You can tell me your pick of the week. Go on the Draft King Sportsbook app, make your pick, and then send it over to me. And yes, by the way, to Brett Johnson, like the Ned Flanders cover band Oakley Doakley, that is absolutely the band that I'm talking.

talking about yes they no idea you're talking about no it is this is a band jesse and they all dress up like ned flanders from the system from the simpsons and they play uh hall rock music and it's pretty great they're fantastic okay uh brett also knows the real nickname for yosmani tomas which is the king of rino but uh back to draftings pick of the week he is the king of the rino at least he was at one point he isn't anymore he's i think moved on to the nationals franchise at this point uh and again I don't understand why National League teams keep trying use Moni Tomas, but maybe one. I haven't looked in a while. Is he still there?

Is Yasmani Tomas still floating around in national? He is still floating around in baseball. Let me tell you. And, you know, again, maybe an American league should try, teams should try their luck with him at some point down the road. But I don't know what to tell you other than to go to PHNX Locker.com and get yourself a shirt. Get yourself. Oh, Brett Johnson says he believes.

the gnats let them go so i think so uh i wouldn't doubt it i wouldn't doubt it but go get yourself a t-shirt over at p hnx locker dot com i'm telling you they're the king of soft style you will enjoy them very much and there's some wonderful designs including the new bird gang design with a little bit of this action going on for those that are listening to this i'm making a bird with my hands uh on the visual podcast uh and of course uh there's all sorts of great shirts for the coyotes and like I said. They absolutely don't deserve them. The coyotes cut out shirt, which I purchased myself over the holiday season, it was one of my presents to myself, is a wonderful shirt. Unfortunately, it's sold out, so I just have to rub it in people's faces that I have it, and you don't. But I'm sure

it'll be back. And then when you does, you'll need to grab it immediately. But the coyotes have all sorts of great shirts. Everybody has a bunch of great shirts, except who, Jesse? Except who? Except who? We don't have, yeah. That does. All right. We have one great shirt. We have one great shirt that I love a lot, but we need some more. And let me tell you, that's the most important reason why this lockout needs to end, right?

And yet, Brett Johnson agrees the mosaic shirt, easily one of mine as well. But we need some more D-back shirts. And that's not going to happen. Like, I know our design guy. I know him. He has a bunch of them locked away that he won't even show me. And he'll, he's going to unleash them. But we need the lockout to end.

So there is motivation for the lockout to end. If, as if we didn't have enough already, let's get this lockout ended and the season started. So we can put some amazing Dback shirts on the old PHN locker.com. But again, in the, in the meantime, can he make an as the cactus turns shirt without Oh, Jesse. Jesse. Jesse, we absolutely need to ask cactus turn. As a matter of fact, I, I feel.

bad for not labeling our brief talk about what happened today as our weekly installment. Oh, yes. As the cactus turns. But it'll be back. Don't worry. Don't worry. We left it on a good cliffhanger. So, but yeah, see, Brett Johnson says, come on, Manfred.

I need some more PHNXD back shirts. Thank God. I know. Let's get this lockout over with. But we appreciate you guys showing up in the chat so much. This chat is going to be popping. whether this team is terrible or this team is good, we are going to have some goddamn fun in this chat

and on this live show throughout this season. So we thank you guys so much for joining us. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter in the meantime. I am at Cap underscore Caveman with a K. Jesse is at Jesse N. Friedman. Our show is at PHNX underscore D-Backs, but of course all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports. And that is on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

If you're listening right now in your favorite audio podcasting app, please subscribe to us there. Give Jesse a five-star review. The man is grading papers while he's in the middle of doing our show. So come on, give him all the love. Not so much. I am in the room of like a eight-year-old's dream over here. But, you know, whatever, it is what it is.

You guys can also subscribe to us on YouTube, sign up for notifications. That way you don't miss any of the content coming out from the P.H. team. And again, you know, sign up for a membership over at go phnx.com and get that free t-shirt at the PHNX locker. And use our code. I'm not joking. I know you might not want to do it, but this is the weekend to do it. If you've waited this long, if you've held out this long, go to draft king's sportsbook, sign up and use our code of PHNX. You'll get all sorts of extra wonderful benefits that the rest of us that have been gambling all season long won't get. And you'll have yourself a wonderful weekend. But go do that right now. And, you know, thank you guys

again so much for joining this on behalf of jessie and myself we can't thank you enough for tuning in to the live show uh fulfilling our lives with your comments we appreciate it so much we want you to all have a great night and remember kids baseball is fun but it is so much more fun when we can bet on it