PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - POSTGAME: Corbin Carroll SETS FRANCHISE RECORD for Triples in Diamondbacks Win Over Guardians

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

📬 Arizona sports in your inbox! https://gophnx.com/newsletterCorbin Carroll set a new Diamondbacks franchise record for triples in a season as Arizona took down the Guardians on Tuesday night. We break down Carroll’s electric performance—including how he came close to legging out two inside-the-park homers—plus Eduardo Rodríguez’s outing against a familiar AL Central foe, and Geraldo Perdomo continuing to prove why he’s one of the most underrated stars in MLB. Jesse Friedman from Snakes Territory stops by to talk through the win and what MLB expansion realignment could mean for the future of baseball.An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsportsMERCH https://store.allcitynetwork.com/collections/phnx-lockerALLCITY Network, Inc. aka PHNX and PHNX Sports is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by the City of PhoenixPHNX Events: Get your tickets to PHNX events and takeovers here: https://gophnx.com/events/ALLCITY — including us here at PHNX — is teaming up with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America for an exciting three-year partnership. To learn more, visit https://www.bbbs.org/allcity/APS:  Find instant rebates, discounts and special offers on smart thermostats, energy-efficient appliances and more at https://marketplace.aps.com/default/heating-cooling/smart-thermostatsChicken N’ Pickle: Family friendly fun awaits! Visit chickennpickle.com to plan your visit today!Phoenix Raceway: Tickets, hospitality and upgrades are still available for the NASCAR Championship Series October 31st through November 2nd! Visit the link HERE to get yours now!Visit Mountain America Credit Union to learn more about their MyStyle Checking Accounts!bet365: https://www.bet365.com/hub/en-us/app-hero-banner-1?utm_source=affiliate&utm_campaign=usapp&utm_medium=affiliate&affiliate=365_03485317 Use the code PHNX365 to sign up, deposit $10 and bet $5 to get $150 in bonus bets!Disclaimer: Must be 21+ and physically located in AZ.  If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-NEXT-STEP, text NEXTSTEP to 53342 or visit https://problemgambling.az.gov/Branded Bills: Use code BBPHNX at https://www.brandedbills.com/ for 20% off your first order!Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.Shady Rays: Head to https://shadyrays.com and use code: PHNX for 35% off polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades rated 5 stars by over 300,000 people.Circle K: Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!Monarch Money: Use Monarch Money to get control of your overall finances with 50% off your first year at https://www.monarchmoney.com/phnxAll Pro Shade Concepts: Call 623-204-1476 or visit https://allproshadeconcepts.com/ now to schedule your free estimate!When you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, we have no idea where the cactus light is. We have no idea where Jesse Jr. is, but we do know that the Diamondbacks finally snapped their losing streak, beating the Guardians by a score of six to five. Corby and Carroll might be the fastest man alive. We're going to talk about it in 30 seconds with our guy, Jesse Friedman. Don't you go anywhere. Welcome in to another edition of the PHNX Diamondbacks podcast live from Studio K. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as your mayor of PHNX.

And I'm thrilled to be here talking to you guys about the Arizona. to Diamondbacks beating the Cleveland Guardians by a score of six to five. Of course, this show is brought to you by our friends of Bet365 and our friends over at game time. Make sure you go download that Bet365 app. It makes watching live sports more fun. Use our code of PHNX 365 as a new customer and sign up. Follow a few easy steps and you'll get yourself some bonus bets over at game time. Wait, get your tickets last minute and use our code of PHNX. You'll save $20 off your first purchase. Thrill to have you guys here. episode number two in our new studio.

I'm thrilled to announce it took me 10 minutes to get here door to door to door. Door to door. I can't even tell you. It used to take me 10 minutes to walk from the parking garage over at the Arizona center to our building. So I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm also thrilled to be joined on the ones and twos by the one, the only, the incomparable Damon dog here. Holding it down in studio, we're going to have lots from the clubhouse and more, but also joining us on the ones and twos. No, he doesn't do the production work on this show.

He saves that for Snake's territory. But it is our guy from Snake's territory. Jesse Friedman joining us. And Jesse, I figured out the formula. I just can't promote you being on the show. If I promote you being on the show, the Diamondbacks lose. If I wait until after they seal the deal, then nobody knows you're coming on. And boom, it's a surprise that you're here.

And we get to watch the Diamondbacks win a baseball game. I don't know, Derek. Maybe it's an E-Rod thing. I think my last appearance was an E-Rod game. This one was an E-Rod game. You him. We got a nice little thing going here. Absolutely.

Facing you, him and the Cleveland Guardians all mean a win for the Diamondbacks because he is beaten the tar out of that team in his time as a pitcher. And we're going to talk about that. But of course, we're going to first talk about this offense. And Corbyn Carroll setting a Diamondbacks franchise record for triples in a season. He had two tonight. The Diamondbacks caused all sorts of chaos. stolen basemen, or stolen bases, triple, triples, three of those tonight.

Just a big night for the Diamondbacks. It seemed like things were just bouncing their way, literally, with a lot of those triples that felt, Jesse, like they could have maybe been inside the park homers, but I might just be asking for too much in those situations. Yeah, I'm not sure either of those situations really warranted the Diamondbacks being aggressive. I know the Alec Thomas one happened with nobody out in the inning. be pretty egregious.

As much fun as a inside the park home run is, it'd be pretty egregious if you get thrown out at home to start off an evening. 100%. That definitely would have been the bigger mistake there. Well, Sean Larkin is the fall guy often for whenever those mistakes are made. And it appeared tonight like he made the right calls in all three of those situations. But it's still an inside the park home run, Jesse. So I feel like when you rob me of that experience, I still hold anger towards you.

though. I can't, I can't be mad at Sean Larkin. Today we talked about fun go bats and if a guy could actually use one in a real baseball game without it blowing up into shards. According to Larkin, he said, no, except the A100, I think is the one that he called out. But again, Jesse, Corbyn Carroll doing some magical things for this team this year. He has been incredible. It feels like Corbyn either hits a home run or hits a triple when he has a successful night at the plate for the most part this season. And of course, he now sets a franchise record for the most triples by a diamond back in history. Yeah, I know, I know Corbyn has maybe left a little bit to be desired to this season in terms of the on base percentage. It's still just under 330. He's not getting on base as

much as we have seen him at times, especially not as much as we saw him in 2023. But homers and triples aren't bad, Derek. Like, we can work with homers and triples. Those are, those are, those are pretty good. And when you lead, uh, you lead all of baseball in triples and you now have a franchise record, uh, for triples in a season after what is Corby and Carroll played now, 110 games this season. That is pretty, pretty remarkable. It is. And, uh, what he's done in his time with the Diamondbacks is remarkable. Our one, our only Damon Dogg himself, tweeting this out, Jesse. The active MLB leaders in career triples right now in baseball are Mike Trout and Starling Marte, and they have 55.

Corbyn Carroll already at this point in his career has 42. It feels like Carol is going to absolutely cruise past both of those guys maybe before the midpoint of next season. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, it's, it's, it feels like Corby and Carol easy. easily could hit 14 home runs over that, or 14 triples over that span. But he's just been doing some amazing things for this team. And again, tonight, they needed it because this one still was a very close victory.

We talk about the Diamondbacks not being able to win many of these close games that are a one-run game. But luckily tonight, the bullpen bent but didn't break. A couple of parts were very good. Some parts were super bad. I said the thing. But again, Jesse, the offense still remains very good. They have scored five or more runs in nine of their last 12 games. And they've gone 21 straight games now without being shut out,

which is the third longest active streak in the National League behind the Marlins and the Brewers. They have scored in 122 of their 128 games this season. And it just doesn't really feel like offense has been the problem for this team. Tonight was another case of that where they scored five plus runs. But it still ended up getting pretty close there with Erod's performance. performance and the bullpen. They have a way of making things a little bit interesting. This version of the Diamondbacks bullpen is fascinating, Derek.

I mean, I think I saw Azy Snake Pit tweet this out earlier that Andrew Saul Frank is now the leader in saves among active Diamondbacks players with two. He has two saves. And he's not the leader on, you know, in the entire team for this season. I believe Shelby Miller holds that title. But even Shelby Miller only had 10. I want to say, I think there's somebody else who has six. I think Kevin Gingle had three.

So it's just been a bizarre season for the Diamondbacks in the bullpen. Obviously not a good season whatsoever. And what we're left with right now is just a parade of rookies. I mean, it's Juan Burgos and it's Andrew Hoffman and it's Kyle Backus. And it's Andrew Saul-Frank at the end, who still technically has rookie eligibility. So it's not always pretty, Derek, but I guess it keeps things a little bit interesting just in that we haven't seen a whole lot of any of these guys yet. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, there's been a lot of reliance on the young guys. And even though at times,

I feel like they've earned that respect, I also feel like Tori went to that very fast. Now, he doesn't have very many options in the bullpen. So it's not like if, if, if, if, if, Guys like Andrew Hoffman and Wamburgos are there, like they're not going to be used, especially used in high-leverage situations at times due to need. But it really does feel like a lot of these young guys that came on as still minor leaguers when they were acquired at the trade deadline by the Diamondbacks. We're just immediately like, welcome to the show, kid. This is not a soft landing for you.

You're going to be here. We're going to be relying on you in the eighth inning to go out there and hold a two-run lead against the Cleveland Guardians. Like, it does feel like, you know, that their maturation as major leaguers happened very fast just due to need. And that is kind of unfortunate for like Andrew Hoffman, who piece of Yoshi is already blaming me for his career going up in flames because I tweeted something out. But no, that's not the case. Again, I've told you guys this before. My words and the things I write on Twitter have no impact on life.

Trust me. If they did, I'd already be a millionaire, Damon. can't be true no it's true damon no because i was told that my tweets about kettel marty were the reason that the diamond box lost the rockies this oh okay got you that's true article that's the reason why they lost the series in colorado you're so right about that i've heard you know that yes but uh offense did look like it was going to be one of those nights it's amazing that we were talking about corbin carroll setting a franchise record for triples when in the first inning he hit that rocket that was an unassisted double play that just made you feel like oh my god that like i thought

was worried tonight could be bad but now i'm worried that tonight might be the worst night i've ever witnessed of baseball being played but the diamondbacks did turn things around and again those triples definitely helped uh two out of the three triples scored again with one out in the fourth inning corbin carroll got his first triple of the game he would score on a lordis curriel ground out alec thomas would triple the lead off the fifth inning and that was the one that really looked like it was going to be an in the park home run. But again, I think, I think, I think, I don't have a lot of time between the time these things happen and what I do this show. But I think Sean Larkin made the right call there holding everybody up.

And then again, in the same inning, Corby Carroll hit his second triple of the game. That one would score Pardomo. Perdomo did hit an RBI single to score Alec Thomas. And again, Jesse, if we want to talk about offense, we can't say enough about what Geraldo Pardomo continues to do this season. It's crazy. again another Damon tweet because Damon just putting out bangers after banger tonight how many rbi does perdomo have now this season damon dog 81 derrick breathe it in i i literally am gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna fall asleep thinking about that tonight he really is he really is but again perdomo

our risk king he does the thing yeah just to just to add to that point there by damon perdomo at 81 rbi is getting very close to the diamond back speaking of franchise records, the Diamondbacks franchise record and RBI for a shortstop in a single season. I looked that up a few days ago, and it is held by Nick Ahmed, who had 82 RBI back in 2019. And of course, he did that in 158 games compared to however many Pardomo has played at this point. So I think Jerry's in a pretty decent spot to set that record. And 100, I will add, is very much within reach here with about a month and a half.

a little less than a month and a half of games to go. So that would be pretty wild. If Geraldo Perdomo had a 100 RBI season, I mean, what an accomplishment that would be for him. And it doesn't really feel like that's out of the question at this point with how many games a team has left and with what Perdomo's done this year.

And he got the thing going in the seventh inning, that little seventh inning magic that the Diamondbacks had with one out in the seventh. Perdomo singled with the game tied and then steal second base. The Guardians then intentionally, walk Catelle Marte to get to Corbyn Carroll. That was a good move there by Stephen Boat, who just continues to be a great manager in baseball.

Carol almost hit into the double play to end the inning, so that would have been huge had he done that because it would have played right into Votes plan. And if it would have been anybody other than Corbyn Carroll, Jesse, he would have hit into a double play, but because he's the fastest man alive, he beats that out. The Diamondbacks end up with runners on the corners. Carol would steal second,

and then Lourdeskourdeskiriel would absolutely deliver with a two-run single that gave the snakes a six to four lead that they would hold until the, not the fully, but six to five is how the game ends. But those six runs ended up being very critical. And glorious guerrille, it feels like since the departure of his good friend, Gino, it feels like Lordus has kind of stepped up in a lot of big moments for this team. And again, even though his numbers at times might not be great, it feels like his hits are very big lately. Yeah, it really has.

And you're right, Lourdes has been tasked with being the Diamondbacks cleanup hitter on an everyday basis. I mean, he has a really, really big part to play in this lineup now that Josh Nailer and A. Oh, Hennio Suarez are not here. And yeah, I mean, Lourdes has a shot to get to maybe 90 RBIs by the end of the season. I know it hasn't been a particularly good year for him overall. But for those of you who are big on the, you know, the traditional baseball stats, Lourdes could wind up with, you know, low 20s home runs and somewhere in the 90s with RBI.

And even as someone who, you know, is a big analytics buff and whatnot, I still like me some home run and RBI numbers from time to time. And Lourdes, Lourdes is in a pretty decent spot there. Yeah, he really is. Well, another couple of guys delivered. Jake McCarthy got the scoring going tonight with his stuff. third home run of the year. He was two for four with a run scored, a home run. Heraldo Brutomo, two for three with a walk, two runs scored and an RBI. And just a good team win here,

but a lot of it was set off here by Corbyn Carroll and what he was able to do with his feet tonight. We have more from Tori Lovolo from the postgame presser. Here's what Tori had to say about the win. All right. It's good to get back in the wind column, you know, after four grinding losses. And some, you know, baseball games that we were in and we felt, I felt quite frankly, we should have been winning. It was nice to go out and execute and win a one-run baseball game. Those seem to build a little bit of momentum. It was touch and go there, but we had Kyle Backus come in and get a massive out. South Frank with a pretty clean ninth inning.

So, you know, lower to heart rates there a little bit. In the ninth inning with him going out and executing a one, two, three inning for the sixth. save. Prior to that, I think we had some stubborn at bats. We just kind of hung in there. Jake with the big solo home run, another head he played to get on base via the butt. And you can see what we're trying to do. We're trying to just be a little bit gritty, not rely on the long ball, score runs by building innings, Gurriel, with a massive two-run single. The guys went out and play hard. And that's one of my ass every single day. And we're going to win some baseball games because we're a good baseball team.

We've just hit a little bit of bad luck. We haven't played great baseball. We haven't got good pitching. There's an assortment of things. And as we tighten that up, we're going to go out and execute and win baseball games. Erod, I thought, was fantastic today. Once again, I said in pregame, it's the O2. The O2 pitches that we got to tighten up was an O2 changeup that got hit for that two-run, home run.

But outside of that, I don't think there were a lot of mistakes. He was doing a really nice job of balancing a lineup that he typically has handled well, but you don't take that for granted. But he pitched into the seventh inning, did his job, and turned it over the bullpen that saved the game for us. There's talk in the chat, Jesse, about Tori being so fidgety there. Apparently, this is the first time people are discovering

that Tori Lobolo is Italian, because this man speaks with his hands often. And what you guys are seeing is him in control, as far as his hands are concerned. Those aren't ticks. It's not any kind of, you know, any kind of other thing. I will say this though.

Tori, stop touching my microphone when it's there in front of you. At times, Toro Lovolp picks up my microphone and will fiddle with it while he's talking. That is OCD. That drives me nuts. Then I'm with you guys there 100%. But again, just I think a big win in a night

from a team that hasn't really been able to see many of these close victories get locked down for them. A lot of them have slipped away and a lot of that has been because of the bullpen, quite frankly, which we almost saw again tonight. There's also some talk in the chat, Derek, about this being the voice of a man who has given up on the 2025 season. Oh, for sure.

Well, I know for a fact that Tori would never say that outright, I think there's probably a grain of truth to that. I mean, the Diamondbacks had a huge opportunity over the weekend in Colorado. They got the deficit down to four and a half games. There was some semblance of hope. And then they lost three games in a row. and lost the series to arguably the worst team in all of baseball. That was really tough.

And now you look up at the standings. There's seven games out even after the win today. Their odds of making the playoffs are basically down to zero. And so when you hear Tori say that line, as he often does, that, you know, we're a good baseball team. We're going to win baseball games. I'm not sure he really believes that anymore, Derek. And I can understand why.

Oh, 100%. And honestly, I think that we talked before the game about consistency. And there was just weird, weird discussion about consistency with the bullpen and how inconsistency can kind of be good for the bullpen when you're not, like, consistent with your usage of it. I don't know what the exact, like, discussion or where it was leading, but there's been nothing consistent about this team this year. And I don't know how you could expect a team that has had so much turnover, so many injuries, so many new faces being brought in constantly that you can have any semblance of consistency.

I remember talking to Sean Larkin about it with the defense, and he actually seemed very much frustrated by that, by the fact that right when they do have things going, they would experience an injury or they experienced the trade deadline, or they experienced this or experienced that. And next thing you know, the five days of consistency that they had has now been disrupted once again. I know that is typical on a baseball team because it's a long season, 162 games where you have to at times deal with injuries and calling guys up and kind of

swapping guys out. And I mean, even the Cubs sat Kyle Tucker because he's been struggling. So it's like sometimes guys aren't consistent. You need to remove them out of the lineup just so that you can kind of get somebody else in there that might be able to help you win baseball games. But this team has had zero consistency. this season. The only thing you could say has been consistent has been members of the offense. And you couldn't even say that about their defense lately. But, you know, guys like Heraldo Perdomo have been consistent all season long. That's why he's putting up the numbers we're discussing. Corbyn Carroll sets a franchise record for triples. And that's because Corbyn Carroll,

even though he hasn't been consistent in the way we're used to seeing him as far as on base percentage is concerned, his slugging is out of this world. And this man continues to gobble up bases like nobody we've ever seen, right? So there's been a lot of consistency with the offense, just a real lack of consistency in any way when it comes to the pitching staff. But defensively, Jesse, they've finally gotten things back on track. The Diamondbacks have committed one error in their last 54 and two-thirds innings spanning seven games going back to that August 13th game against the Texas Rangers. So defensively, things are working in their favor. And obviously, offensively, Corbyn can't stop hitting triples.

And we have more from Corbyn here on his triples. Here's what Corbyn had to say about his night. Yeah, pretty cool. I think it's just, I guess, feather in the gap. Just the timing. I'm trying to watch them as I'm running and kind of get an idea of their speed. speed that they're moving at towards the law. Yeah, just say, trying to judge it.

I'd ask Corbyn there in that second question, just what exactly he was looking at when he goes for those triples, Jesse. Tori has talked about his vision, and he's brought that up. Obviously, speed is the biggest factor. There's no reason for you to even address speed because the man is fast.

The water is wet, Corby and Carroll is fast. But what makes him that extra special level of base runner is the fact that you just see Corbyn take that glance over at where the ball is when he is going from first to second. And you can see he turns on the afterburners and gets into that next gear and is able to make it over to third. And in some cases, that's why it looks like he can even make it all the way home because of how fast he's able to, like he's so fast already out of the box. But for him to get faster as he goes around the base path is incredible. and what he was talking about there is just how, like as much as you can game plan for it, as much as you can try to read scouting reports on outfielders and defenders,

it's all in the moment. He says he just looks over there, he sees their position where they're at, and based on just certain things that he picks up when he's approaching second base makes that determination of how far he's going to try to go. That and obviously Sean Larkin stopping him, holding him up there or telling him to go.

But it doesn't really feel like we're going to see too many of those green lights to the plate, especially with the lack of success that they had sending people early on in the season. So that part makes sense. I think I think Sean Larkin just wanted Corbyn Carroll to really cement his status as the Diamondbacks triples leader. You're right. I think yeah, let's pad those stats, buddy. We have nothing else to play for at this point. Home runs are kind of whatever, you know, triples are really what the people want. Right. Home runs were so 2023, you know? Corbyn, I will say, is the fact that he is left-handed and plays 81 games a year at Chase Field is a help for him, for sure.

Chase Field has been one of the best triples ballparks for a long time, just because the corners of the ballpark are a little bit odd. And we obviously saw that today with those weird carams from both Corbyn and for Alec as well. So it's really just like the perfect recipe for Corbyn Carroll to hit an outrageous number of triples. And he has done exactly that. And, you know, that's not at all to discredit him setting this franchise record. Because as far as I know, Derek, those corners have looked pretty much the same ever since this ballpark was first built. So it's not like Corbyn has an unfair advantage over Tony Womack or Stephen Drew or, you know, any of those guys that he passed. Yeah, he does.

in the factor that he's had a chance to watch those guys play there and even improve on what they were able to do. But tonight was weird because it felt like all of those balls kind of did the same thing where they kind of bounced off of a corner, bounced back into the outfield like towards center field and had the, you know, guardians outfielders running all over the place. You also have Geraldo Perdomo and Corby and Carole both stealing bases. That's big for this team. Corby and Carroll gets his 17th stolen base of the year. Prudomo is 22nd. Corbyn was asked after the game, why isn't he stealing more bases? This is what Corbyn had to say.

I think I've been on second, third, and hit a bunch of homers. So I think it's a combination of that and having someone with a 950 opies behind me and not trying to take up there at bat. So I feel like, you know, in a position now where maybe it's a little bit more freedom to pick some spots. But, you know, with Catelle, I just, such a good hitter, you want to let him hit. For those of you that couldn't hear him in the back, he said, I'm too damn good. I always end up on second or third. That's why I don't steal bases.

Also, you nerds, there's a 950 OPS behind me, and I'm waiting for him to drive me in. So that's why Corbyn only has 17 stolen bases this year. Feels like sound reasoning. Yeah, I mean, I think it is pretty sound reasoning. It's easy to, it's easy to forget this because it's kind of a distant memory at this point. But for much of that 2023 season where Corbyn had the 54 steals, Catelle Marte was not the player that he is right now. Cotel finished that year with an OPS somewhere in the mid-800s.

And if I remember right, it really climbed quite a bit toward the end of the season. It was somewhere in the upper 700s, maybe low 800s for a pretty good portion of that season. And so, yeah, I mean, when you have that version of Cattel, as opposed to this version of Cotel, who's certainly been one of the best hitters in all of baseball and an MVP candidate when he's healthy, it's definitely a different story. So you can understand Corbyn being a little bit more hesitant. I also wonder if the fact that he's gotten caught, you know, at least at a decent clip here more recently, that that's caused him to pick his spots a little bit more.

it hasn't been as automatic for him as it was a couple of years ago. His sprint speed has dropped off a little bit, but he's still pretty fast. I think Corbyn Carroll still has the ability to be one of the best base dealers in this game. I also think, Jesse, that the secret is out about Corby and Carol. And I think when you are one of the fastest players in the game, that that's all that they're going to know about you, even like they can have the scouting report about what you've done this season. They could be they could learn more about your power and all of that. But the the word on the street is that Corbyn Carroll is in fact fast. And I think that when that's the case, you do have to

be smarter about it than you were when people really didn't know much about you as a young player. Right. And that has all changed very, very quickly for this man. You know, a winning rookie of the year will do that for you. Setting records like he has with this team will do that for you. And again, And it's just incredible to see how he continues to kind of transform. You know, he continues to adapt and become a different player. I mean, it goes back to the beginning of the season when he changed his batting stance and everything since then has been probably fairly gratifying for him knowing that that change has led to all of this success.

But we have more from Tori on Corbyn's triples and then we're going to take a quick break, talk about the pitching. But here's what Tori had to say about Corbyn and him just being a ridiculously good baseball player. No, because he has brought me to that level already, and I sit in that space where he is massive. He's a massive cat out there, and I don't know how else to put it. Two triples, set a franchise record, steaming around the bases in 11.5 seconds, it's just remarkable what he's capable of doing. And he will tell you that he's going to get better, so I'll go ahead and echo that too.

when he gets more experience and learns himself a little bit more, he's going to be even better, which is very scary. And I'm just, I'm honored to be his manager and watch him from the space that I get to watch him in. He's currently 13 triples behind MLB's career leaders in triples, which is Mike Trout. Okay. Okay, so wait. He has 42. Those guys have 55, so in their career.

Okay. He's that close to. So for active players? For active players? For active players, yeah. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. Nobody gets around the bases faster, right? He's running 30 feet per second, cutting off edges, doing everything he's supposed to do fundamentally to get to third base. But he's slugging the baseball. A ball in the gap is not a double. He's thinking three, and it's pretty remarkable. It's fun to watch. I take my eyes off the ball and start watching him somewhere around first base, and we all enjoy that show. we really do all enjoy that show. Of course, again, Corbyn Carroll, hot on the heels of Mike Trout and Starling Marte to have the most triples for any active player in Major League Baseball. He also has some other young, fast guys coming up behind him as well.

So maybe we see this triple thing kind of explode with how these bigger bases and everything that, you know, is currently happening with offense and baseball is driving that up. But we are going to talk about the pitching in this game, Erod and his. old nemesis, the Cleveland Guardians, and so much more on the other side of this break. Don't you guys go anywhere? You're watching the PHNX Diamondback Show. Well, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Chase Field. And of course, it's never ordinary over at Bet365.

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at the ShadyRase.com and use that code of PHNX for 35% off a pair of polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the Shades rated five stars by over 300,000 people. Well, Jesse, Erod didn't have his best stuff against Cleveland tonight, which he normally does because he kind of dominates that team, has done that for a number of years there when he was a member of the AL Central, but his four seam was working well tonight.

He threw it over 50% of the outing. And then he had that change-up compliment his fastball really well, except on the one time it didn't. That was on the Jose Ramirez home run. And the Guardians did hit him hard tonight, Jesse. They had eight hard-hit balls off of him. One was that Jose Ramirez's home run. Four of the others were for six.

singles that got smoked. So again, it wasn't one of those dominant performances over the Guardians that Erod has had in the past in his career, but he did, like I said, he did compliment his fastball well with that changeup. He got five whiffs on his changeup, which he only threw 19

times. So that and then one of those was a home run. So pretty good, except when it was it. I thought Erod was better than the final line in this game. You know, six and two thirds innings, you'll certainly, you'll certainly take that at any point four runs though not not great uh but yeah i mean you think about the first two runs that

he allowed in the game you know it was a couple of rbi i singles i think there were two runners that advanced to second on slow ground outs so they were singles where these guys got to second because of ground balls there's just no way you were going to hit turn a double play they weren't hit hard enough and then i mean carlos santana's rbi i think 75 miles an hour off the bat and then Nolan Jones I believe had the other one and that was over a hundred off the bat but it was on the ground it was you know I don't think it was absolutely terrible pitching by errod and then you mentioned the pitch to Jose Ramirez which yeah was a mistake it was an 02 count and I assume he meant to bury the change up or at least throw it further off the plate

than he wound up throwing it and he just left it in the zone wasn't necessarily a terrible in and of itself, but when you consider that it's an O2 count, you know, you've got to escape the zone in a situation like that and he wasn't able to do it. So on the whole, I think it was a better outing than it looks in the box score. I think we have his pitch chart image here from his outing. But again, Erod's fastball is just, it's, it's not ridiculously good, but when he has good location with it. I mean, he's just, like, he has, he has confidence in it. He attacks with it. And that's the thing that I feel like is different between him and some of the other starters

and relievers on this staff. Like, Eduardo Rodriguez will attack you with a fastball similar to the way Ryan Nelson will. Ryan Nelson's fastball obviously is better, but it's like the confidence that E. Rod has in himself to go out there and just pitch. Like, I just feel like if some of the other pitchers on this roster had some of that same just attack the zone mentality that ERA tends to have that they would probably find more success because it you just see this this pitching staff get caught up in too many three two counts where they were ahead early and they they threw balls the rest of the you know pitch count and maybe got some foul you know balls fouled off but it doesn't really feel like when they have when they're head in the count one

into 0 and 2 that they're attacking and trying to go after these batters and it felt like erod was doing that tonight yeah i i mean i never thought i would say this but it makes me wonder like what would zach gallon look like if he had as much confidence in his foreseen fastball as Eduardo rodriguez does i know the shape on gallon's fastball the velocity you know those things have dropped off a little bit here in recent years but it has felt like confidence is kind of a big part of it and also erod tends to have pretty decent fastball command. Not every outing. Some outings it's a little rough.

But he's pretty good at throwing it just above the top of the zone, which is where he gets a whole lot of those swings and misses. And we saw a good amount of that in this game. I mean, he threw up over 50% four seamers in this one. He kind of ditched his cutter almost. He really favored the four seam fastball. And it worked pretty well for him. G's comment in the chat made me laugh.

He said, I had bets on Corbyn to hit a double and this MF hits two triples. My buddy had had him to hit a home run. And when he hit that one off the right field fence, he was just sick to his stomach. He texted me. He was like, there's no way. That's a bad beat.

But we do have more here from Erod on his outing. Here's what Erod had to say about his night on the mound. I feel good. We know like command was good. all the pitchers was good and the only pitch of you that I miss was the change it to Ramirez I mean he's just such a good here you know he's a future hall of fame so I feel like it was a good change it down away should I just bounce a little bit more to get a

to get a soft contact a student amiss and that's it but overall I feel like really good with the with all my pitchers today and I did ask him there about the fastball complimenting the change up and again the whiffs that he got on the change up here's what he had to say about those two pitches working well together I mean, fastball is always, when it's good. When it's good, I always use it. You know, you guys hear the last game and this game, too, you know,

a better number of both to locate pretty well, the last couple of games. And the change was great today, too, you know. I feel like the only change that I miss. I miss it to the wrong guy, you know, the future Hall of Fame, like I say, and hit it all the ball. You got a couple of homered of me already. And pitchers like that are making mistakes. But over the feel really good with everything.

I honestly love the tip of the cap sometimes that pitchers give him post game interviews when they say stuff like that. Like he was like my only mistake was to a future hall of famer by the way just to just so you guys know like I wasn't just giving up stuff to fry tonight. I gave it up to Jose Ramirez. Let's keep that in the perspective. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's a I think it's a fair point. I don't know how many hitters in an 02 count, you know, punish that mistake the way that Jose Ramirez did. It wasn't it wasn't right down the middle. I mean, it was still on the outer. to the plate and I think fairly close to the knees, but Jose. He said it was a good pitch. He was like, that was a good change. He had a good change. I mean, it was, I think it, it wasn't a good pitch given the situation, but it was a

pretty decent pitch. And it was the kind of mistake that you feel is minor enough that a hitter is not likely to hit a home run against you, certainly. But it was interesting that he threw Ramirez all fastballs in the first inning. I believe it was a walk, I think a four or five. pitch walk to Ramirez to start things out. And then the rest of the game, he didn't throw Ramirez another four seam fastball. So I wonder if maybe in that spot, if he had tried one of those four seamers up instead

of the change up, maybe it's a, it's a different result. But we'll never know. We will never know. We will never know. We also won't know if Erod was actually debating, making a case for himself staying in the game. When Tori went to go get him, he did not want to come out of the game. That was kind of weird. That was a little strange.

It felt a little awkward after a period of time. He did go six and two thirds innings. It felt like afterwards he kind of stressed to us that he really just wanted to get. He just wanted to end the inning. And we've seen that out of Erod before where he doesn't want to come out at five and two thirds or six and two thirds. He just wants to stay in there to clean up whatever mess he feels like he left on the base path. And then you can swap him out for a reliever after that. But he did comment on that.

And here's what he had to say about not wanting to come out of the game. I mean, he was, I want to stay in the game. He just told me, like, you're doing for today, and I was a good job today. And I take, you know, like I said, normally want to stay, like, you guys see it already. I always want to stay out there for long and anyway, I don't care, like, how am I done and everything. I just want to be out there and pitch. Kind of finishing your inning more. On the seven, you say?

Yeah, I mean, like I said, like, I never want to come out, like when the matter come and take me out. You know, I always want to finish that inning. And that's what happened. there you know when i get one i want to finish out in inning but he take the decision and i take it and win the winning the game which is which is what i what i have to go out there for i believe he was that 96 pitches it's understandable however it's also understandable that he wanted to stay in the game the hundred pitch thing jesse still seems so arbitrary to me now mind you i'm 44 years old so i'm old and i'm old i'm not just like oh i'm 30 and i'm old no i mean it when i say it i'm

44 years old. I've been watching baseball for a long time. I watched, I've watched baseball for so long that I remember like pitchers regularly going up to like 120 pitches for a starter and maybe even beyond if they were having an excellent game or going out there trying to throw a complete game or some sort of no hitter or whatever, right? So it does at times to me feel like that weird round number of 100 is so arbitrary when it comes to that needing to be the point where Toy LaVallo pulls his pitchers out or slightly before that. And I get it, but it also like, I just, I don't know. I mean, obviously, I'm sure there's science behind it that says doing that is not good for your pitcher's arm,

letting them go further than that. It just feels like, you know, again, it's, you had a situation where Juan Burgos did come in. He didn't allow those runners to score, but he didn't make it easy. He came out there, gives up a hit. I think he walked a guy. And he did get that final out, but he made it, he made it a little nerve-wracking. Burgos, yeah, Burgos got that last out by using himself, he bounced off his shoulder. It's like the second time we've seen him do that already in his young career with the Diamondbacks.

I like that. He's willing to sacrifice his body and put everything out there for the win, Jesse. And that's the kind of attitude we need everybody having. I don't care how many injuries we have on this squad. I'm not sure how intentional this one was. Like, I think the ball just kind of hit him. and I don't know if there's much you can do about it. But hey, sometimes the best defense, Derek, is self-defense.

And we saw that from, we saw that from Burgos there. For sure. And again, he's one of those guys along with Superbad Andrew Hoffman, who I love and I want to be so good. And it feels like once again, he's falling in line with other Diamondbacks relievers this year, Jesse, where they're able to come in and kind of cruise through those first two outs in an inning of relief. and then all of a sudden hit a wall and not be able to get past it and just struggle at that point. Two thirds of an inning's pitch.

He gave up two hits. One earned run aloud. He walked one. And then they had Kyle Backus come in to clean up that a third of an inning. Not a lot of work here. But again, it's just not a great situation that considering that Erod gave you six and two thirds, Jesse, that you still needed to use four arms out of your bullpen in order to reach the ultimate goal. I'm glad Tori did that.

I'm glad Tori did not just let Hoffman. and sit out there to rot in the sun when he was struggling there and give up the lead, even though that felt like that was where they were they were careening towards that cliff, it just felt like, man, it's unfortunate that on a night like this, you'd hope to use maybe two arms, three at the most to get out of it, and you end up having to use a fourth arm. I think if you're a D-Bax fan, you just have to be happy that they won, you know. However many pitchers you have to use, you know, as long as you get out of there with a

win that's that's all the matter everybody put paving smith on the mound if you have to you know um well Andrew Saul Frank did have an uneventful ninth inning and it was great to see him come in there get the save again like you said currently leads the bullpen of all active current relievers with two saves uh and i did ask toy lovolo after the game if he liked Andrew saw frank for this role going forward here's what Tori had to say It's like a puzzle, you know. It's the toughest part of the game. I explain that a little bit in pregame today.

With such, it's just a, there's fluid down there with the guys and I want to keep it that way. You know, I'm manipulating the lineup the best that I can, seeing what the opposing team is going to do, and then how it stacks up is going to determine who's going to be left out there in the ninth inning. But I like South Frank. He could get some big outs in the seventh or the eighth inning and hand it over. to the bullpen in another situation that he's not involved in, but he's going to get big outs for us.

I know that. Corey in the chat, Jesse says, when Thompson comes back, I would send Hoffman back to the miners. He needs to work on command. I think Hoffman is very close to being a very good reliever for this organization, but I also agree with that. And like I said earlier, I do think that some of these young guys have just kind of been thrown into the fire. And, you know, for the most part, I feel like they've responded well.

I think that the pitchers, the young pitchers, they've responded well. They haven't been perfect. They've had their fair shares of failures, which is part of this season, right? Part of the season is learning that you can get nicked up, as Tori would say, and that you're not going to get nicked up to death. You're not going to lose your job over it. You might have a bad night. But if you can come back out in your next outing pitch well, all is forgotten.

Life moves on, right? But again, Andrew Hoffman, Wamburgos, those are guys that I feel like this team has asked a lot of in their very young careers at this point. And like I said, even though it hasn't been perfect, I still feel like both guys have done a good job as a part of this pen. I would say so. Yeah, I mean, Andrew Hoffman has run into some roadblocks here recently. Obviously, Tori gave him the ball again today and he struggled.

He wasn't able to finish that inning. But I think this could still be a good learning experience for Hoffman. You know, you just have to hope that some of these games not going his way don't serve as a confidence detractor for him that he's able to overcome this and power his way through it rather than sort of starting to question himself and wonder if he's able to get out at the big league level. If that were the case, then this wouldn't be such a great situation for him. And maybe he would be better served going back to AAA and working on some things over there. Well, and the problem is that it's not like AAA is a very friendly environment for, you know, pitchers to go to when it comes to. It's not a great place to build your confidence. Nobody's ever really said that about Reno for pitchers.

So best of luck. Well, again, Erod was good tonight. Not great, but he did have four strikeouts. So we do have to fire up the circle case strikeout meter, Jesse. It takes more energy and resources than chat GPT to get this thing running. But that's because we use the old light bulbs. and those things are very expensive and take a lot of energy. Four strikeouts tonight for Erod.

If you have already done the thing I've been telling you to do, you will get yourself a free, any size hot coffee for those four strikeouts. So you know what that means. With every K, you win at Circle K. Tech strike to 31310 to start saving on fuel, food, and drinks after every D-Backs home game. And if you do that, you'll get yourself a free hot coffee from our friends at Circle K. Jesse, one other thing I wanted to address. before we move on to the numbers from this game.

And that was the Phoenix Suns players. Your favorite team was out there at Chase Field tonight. They were all throwing out. They were taking batting practice. They were throwing out the first pitch. It was Connor Gillespie. And also, I know I'm going to mess up his name. Is it Igadora?

Igadaro. I'm just close. All right. I like him, though. He's friendly. These guys are great. You know who likes him. Gerald Borgette.

Oh, Gerald Borges. Borgay loves it. Jesse, have you seen this picture? calling him Geraldo Borgay, that seems like a missed opportunity for this particular podcast. Or Jerry. Or Jerry, Jerry B. Jerry B. Yeah.

We have not been calling Gerald Jerry B this whole time. That is a massive missed opportunity. Yeah, no, absolutely. But yeah, you have to find somebody, Jesse, that looks at you the same way that Gerald looks at. Jesse, I'm going to find that, I'm going to grab this for you for a second. You need to see this picture of Gerald talking to Oso. It is one of the funniest pictures you'll ever see. on planet earth. It's game changing.

Eric Ruby said that it's the happiest any person has ever looked in the history of mankind and I don't know if I disagree with them. Do we got that photo? We do have the photo now. Let's go ahead and show the photo I took of Gerald and his happiness.

There he is there. Look, just having the time of his life just loving it. Just beaming with joy at the idea of interviewing Oso I Godaro before the game. That's our sweet Jerry B. Oso and Colin both did a great job

on throwing out their first pitch and taking batting practice before the game, but the person I really want to talk about, Jesse, is Ryan Dunn. Ryan Dunn did not throw out a first pitch, but he did take batting practice and he also fielded grounders with Cotel Marte.

And he was taking it entirely too seriously, Jesse. This man was trying out for a 26-man roster spot tonight. And I've never seen anything like it. So shout out to Ryan Dunn for having the same commitment out there on the diamond that he does on the hard court because it was impressive. Apparently he does, according to his brother, have a long history of playing baseball. And because his brother was present, did not want to be harassed and taunted by his brother for the rest of his life if he didn't have a good showing out there today at BP and in the field.

And boy, did he. I mean, who cares though, Derek, what he looks like in VP and in the field. The question for the debacks is can he pitch? And it sounds like we didn't get any. Sounds like we got no clarity on that. We didn't see it. He didn't throw out for his pitch. We didn't get to see it.

We didn't get to see it. He didn't understand the assignment. No, for sure, for sure. Yeah, that's the question everybody asked. Mark Brown was back at the field today, Jesse. He was asking how my elbow was. And if I had gotten the call yet to come up and maybe throw some, throw some innings for Tori. I said that's a bad move. My UCL hurts just hearing you say that. But we are going to take a

quick break on the other side of this break. We are going to talk some more about this game. And we are also going to talk about MLB expansion realignment and how much I hate it because it feels like we're never going to get away from the Dodgers and the Giants of the Padres. Don't you guys go anywhere. You're watching the PHNX Diamondback Show. Well, our friends at Circle K have you covered. Not only with the free hot coffee, if you go ahead and text that 3131 or strike to 31310. But also go on over to Circle K at any time. Get yourself all sorts of deals,

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Diamondbacks in this one came up very, this was a very, very close game for the debacks, obviously. Not a lot of games. They don't win a lot of games by one run or by these fine of margins. Diamondbacks won this one six to five. They out hit the Giants actually nine to eight. Excuse me. This one is on me and not Damon because I did not update my numbers before we proceeded.

But two for six runners. I hate when you do that there. It's just the hits. Just the hit. I already have enough problems. Yeah, I know. And then I can just blame it on you and everybody will. believe it but two for six for runners in scoring position for the guardians two for eight for the

diamond backs runners in scoring position diamond backs had four extra base hits to guardians two and then extra base uh expected batting average there 220 for the guardians 284 for the diamond backs uh this one jesse of course a really close one that felt like again at times it was going to go in that negative direction that the diamond backs games seemed to go to this one did not um and i think i felt surprised I was like pleasantly surprised. Once we were through that ninth inning, especially with as quickly as it went, I was ready to go,

but still not thrilled to look at these standings, Jesse, because the NL West or the N hell west, as we call it around here, is ugly. The Padres, they finally snapped their four-game losing streak, but really none of this matters. Looking at this now just kind of feels like a futile effort in talking about this anymore. because what's the point?

The Diamondbacks, we cannot still try to hold on to any kind of hope as far as making up ground here in the wild card, despite the fact that it felt like they were so close to doing so less than a week ago. Dodgers sit at the top of the division at 72 and 54. Padres now are at 70 and 56. They are two back in the division, two and a half games in the wild card. Again, the Giants now 61 and 65. They are 11 games back in the division.

They are six and a half out of the wild card. D-backs right there with them at 60. 61 and 66. They are 11 and a half back in the division, seven back in the wild card. And then the Rockies, who did beat the Dodgers last night, by the way,

they got beat up on tonight by the Dodgers, but they sit at 36 and 90, and they are infinity stones back there. But Sean said, well, season died on Saturday. Well, died a while ago.

I think it's hard not to at least argue that the Diamondback season was officially laid to rest once they didn't win against Colorado. Rockies once they lost that series, three games to one, Jesse. But I feel like beyond that, you're starting to see the other teams that are in front of them get back into winning games like the New York Mets and things like that.

And it just makes you realize that even though those teams slumped, even though for a brief period of time, it felt like the gap might have shortened, it probably still, even if the Diamondbacks won the series against the Rockies, probably wasn't enough to get them into a good position. And even if they are in a good position, they still have a very very very. very daunting schedule ahead of them that like no matter how bummed out we want to be that this is officially the end of their season. I feel like, you know, that that that end of the season might have come here, you know, at the end of this month with some of these tough opponents that they

still have ahead of them. I mean, if the Diamondbacks had swept the Rockies, they would still be four games out of the wild card right now. So, you know, if it's any, if it's any consolation, which it probably isn't. It is. It is to me. I need to feel that. I need to hear that. I need to hear that because you know like again as much as you feel like when your team loses that that's like oh you drop back and that's it and it's over like the other teams have to lose too and then on top of that there's still a lot of baseball for the diamondbacks to play against very very tough opponents like their schedule in september is ridiculous i mean the brewers hardly lose games anymore they play the dodgers like two more times they play the giants two more times they end their

season against the padres on the road they have the reds in between there. Again, they just have a lot of tough opponents without having those weaker opponents kind of peppered in there. Not to mention the fact that as we've discussed in the past, they haven't really taken care of business against some of those weaker opponents this season. I'm just trying to think, Derek, about what would a successful, but like somewhat realistic finish to this year look like for the Diamondbacks? Like if we're no longer setting the bar them making the postseason because frankly i think that's rather unrealistic at this point where would we set the bar for what success looks like the rest of the way there's five games under 500 right now

yeah i guess a winning record is the first thing that comes to mind for me so to finish 82 and 80 they would have to go 21 and 14 the rest of the way and as you said they have a pretty difficult schedule one of the most difficult in all of baseball the rest of the season if you go 21 and 14 there rest of the way or maybe even just 20 and 15 and finish and even a 500. I think that would be pretty successful given where they are right now. Well, Jesse, we are going to head into overtime right now. It's late. I've already kept you. You have math stuff to do. I've kept you so late, but we're going to keep you just a little bit longer with our overtime here. I like to call it extra innings, but people around here overruled me. So we're going overtime. If you're watching on

Roku or you're watching over on Zumo. Make sure to come on over to go PhNX.com. We're going to keep the party going over here. Speaking of parties, by the way, make sure to join Bo, Johnny, the PHNX Cardinals crew,

sweet baby Noah, Damon Dog, the mayor. All of us were going to be doing our PHNX draft. My season last year was sunk by me stealing Travis Kelsey away from Jesse in the draft. I'm going to make sure to not just the carma. Just the car.

Karma. That's a Taylor's your song, by the way. I want to apologize to Jesse right now for it because I need better karma this year. So I'm sorry I did that and that wasn't my intentions and I'm a bad person. But you can come see all of this drama unfold. Not to mention you can see the Cardinals Live podcast starting at 4.30 p.m. followed by the NFL season preview at 6 and then our PH&X staff fantasy football draft at 7 p.m. All die hard to attend will receive a free ticket for the event.

And this was all going down at the residency night at the upper deck. that's on August 28th. We're going to sweeten the pot, though. Do you want a discounted room? You want to come out? You want to watch all of this and then maybe go check out the gaming floor and then stay a night. Have a nice little staycation I've been talking to you about.

Call 1-800 Winheila and use Cards FF for 25% off a room for Thursday night. And then I think if you're a local resident, there's no resort fees, I believe, for over there at Heila River Resorts and Casino. So I feel like I've really hooked you up there. No reason for you not to have a wonderful night, except maybe if you have to get up too early on Friday to go to work. Maybe you called out of work on Friday and then just come to a Diamondbacks game. I don't know.

I feel like I've set up your whole weekend for you, but you do you. And you can do you at Healer Riversorts and Casinos. Jesse MLB expansion realignment has caught fire. And it's all MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's fault. He was out watching the Little League World Series, right? He's out there having a good time. and he flames the fans of expansion by being on the broadcast and saying that two teams would, quote, give the league an opportunity to geographically

reallide. And as much as I get excited about that because I'm like, get these bums out of my division from California, it does not appear that those bums from California will be leaving our side anytime soon. In fact, I feel like we're attached at the hip with those bums from California until the end of time, Jesse. There was talk. I like this a little bit because just the way baseball is gone. Jim Bowden in 2023 suggested a Western Conference, Eastern Conference realignment similar to the NBA, right?

Which would just allow the top teams to get in regardless of the division. I like that because we play in this drunken orgy of violence that we call the NL West. And it makes our lives miserable with how good these other teams are. So it would at least alleviate some of that. However, the wild card does kind of do that already, right? The wild card does allow for other teams to make it in. And even though having the division means you have to play those teams slightly more, it doesn't necessarily mean what it used to mean 20 years ago, right? So, but the athletic in their article suggested a less drastic change, changing the divisions into eight, four team divisions based on their geographic locations.

And overall, Jesse, it doesn't feel like they changed too much. with doing this. However, in this scenario, the AL East would now consist of the Orioles, Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays. That doesn't change. They just remove the Tampa Bay Rays out of the equation and they put the Tampa Bay raise. I'm just going to cut you off real quick, Derek, because I put something on the screen that is not what you're reading right now. So I don't want to be misleading and do that. This was a potential thing that Fox came up with. Oh, yeah, several outlets based, because that's the thing is, that's what caused this, is that basically Rob Manfred got up there and was like, we're going to do it and we're going to do it.

It's going to change all the stuff based on geographic location. So now we do have to look at this and say that. That was Fox's realignment that David was showing. What I'm reading now is what the athletic suggested. And I hate it because what the athletic suggested, Jesse, actually makes a lot of sense, but it leaves us in the NL West with the Dodgers Padres and Giants. It frees the Colorado Rockies of being in this prison. in this hell that we're in.

It allows them to escape and have a chance to survive and thrive in another division. Meanwhile, we're stuck here with these California teams. And I hate it. I mean, if we want to get crazy, can't we just put California in their own division? Can't we just get out and put the angels in that division and just let the California teams play in the California Penal League? And then we'll have that and we'll all be away from that. Yeah, the debacks are in a tough spot here, Derek.

I've always said one of the best things about Arizona is its proximity to the beach, the fact that you can still get there in a weekend. But it does backfire a bit when you realize that every Arizona sports team is going to have to deal with every coastal sports team probably until the end of time. I think there are maybe some scenarios where this could work out well for the Diamondbacks. you know, maybe could there be a world where we get the giants, Dodgers, Padres, and Angels all in the same division as you're just kind of alluding to. We just put all the California teams in the same place. You know, that could be great for the Diamondbacks. But I'm a little bit skeptical of that.

I think the Mariners are a team that MLB will probably focus on in trying to reduce their travel. And so I wonder if that would maybe take the Giants up to Sanford. Francisco because I believe San Francisco is as close to Seattle as as any of these teams would be. So I don't know exactly how it's going to shake out. There's a lot of different iterations, but you don't really see any out there that actually help the Diamondbacks at all. Well, and some of the realignments have like put those teams together like the Mets and the Yankees together in a division.

And they put teams like as much as at times we're worried about losing the division rivals that we've hated for so long. You know, Mets and Phillies. Now, now you're going to give me the Yankees as my big rival in the division. Now I'm going to see the, maybe the White Sox and the Cubs being an actual division together where those games like not only are filled with hatred of one team being much better than the other, but also, you know, now it matters in the division. The way they have this stacked up, though, kind of makes a lot of sense, especially when

you look at like the AL West would be the athletics. the Angels, the new team, which would either be Portland or the Salt Lake City team in this case. I don't want Salt Lake City to get a team. I don't want anything good to happen to the people of Utah. I want them to experience pain and sadness. And also, if they got a team, then they could stop talking about taking art team. That's true. That's true because they now just see us as like some sort of like minor league system for them to get professional.

Yeah, for them to acquire a professional baseball. It's disgusting. team and I hate that and I hate them and I hate the whole state. So don't you want to beat them? Yeah, no. They would come in the league and automatically probably be my second least favorite team after the Dodgers. Yeah, fun fact,

AJ Bukovic broke the Seattle or the Salt Lake City B's scoreboard tonight with a home run. Good, good. Yeah, and then the Reno Aces proceeded to say on Twitter how they weren't going to pay for it. So I respect both moves, quite frankly. And thumbs down to Salt Lake City just as a whole. Also, Portland, much cooler. place would much rather take trips to Portland to go watch baseball games and Salt Lake City. Portland makes a lot of sense for the Seattle team too, as Jesse said, if that's one of the main

reasons here to be doing this because the Mariners travel is so crazy in particular. If you added a Portland team, like you really would be helping out the Mariners in particular by putting a team that's, you know, what, a one hour flight away from them? And then you put the Giants in that division as well. And then at least we get away from one of those teams. Maybe we are in the division with the Los Vegas athletics. Yeah. That makes sense. How about us, us Las Vegas athletics. The Rangers. No. Oh yeah. No, I'm fine. No. Rockies. Yep. Rockies athletics. Rangers D-backs. That's the one. I think we just figured it out. We just figured it out right here. Yes. I like that. Hell yeah. I like that. No. And I mean, honestly,

when you do see the maps and stuff, the grouping of us in the in the bottom makes sense. But yeah, you're Right, Jesse, as far as like the grouping is concerned, the odd man out is kind of the Giants, quite frankly. And like once that Las Vegas team is here, it would make a little bit more sense for them to be in our division, at least than the Giants with how close they, northern California is to the Pacific Northwest. I think either the Rockies would be the odd team out or the Giants would. It doesn't feel all that likely that the Diamondbacks would wind up being the odd team out. if we're just taking the current NL West and reducing it down by one. And I also think that, and this is something that the story in the athletic definitely emphasized is that while, you know, there's going to be all sorts of crazy ideas thrown

around and do we get rid of the National League and the American League and just go to an East First West system, my guess is that MLB is going to choose the path of least resistance when all is said and done. They've already made, Rob Manfred has already made a lot of pretty big changes to the game. Most of them, I think, have gone over pretty well. But the moment you start talking about getting rid of the American League, the National League, or making really significant changes to how the game is aligned right now, I think that's where Manfred could really get himself in some trouble. So my guess is something like what the athletic has, which is pretty similar to how things are lined up right now with just a few adjustments. That's probably the direction this is

headed. Again, Jesse, I'm very old, 44 years old, in fact, and that's much older than I deserve to be. But what I will say is in my time, again, there was a time where 162 games season actually mattered. And I know that's crazy to hear because in no scenario can I make a case that any sport should be 162 games long. No, no, there's no sport that that needs that. I'm glad baseball can do that and survive it and have people still be interested in it after 162 games. But there was a very good reason for it to be 162 games when none of those games at one point were played against the other league. The American League National League, they would not see each other until the World Series would be the first time we would ever even face an American League team. And not to mention the fact that those other bozos in the National League would get very little of our attention.

We're playing two series here, two series here, two series here, and then we are playing 25 series against the other teams in our division. Like, that's what it felt like. And that's the reason why it mattered, because no matter what your deficit was, if you turned your season around and the division leader didn't, and they started slumping, you could very much make up ground because of the fact that you played them so many times.

It also is the reason why good teams would run away with their division because they would just slaughter the other best. bad teams in their division and be up 20 games before the All-Star break, right? So, like, there was a time when all of this mattered, including having the smaller divisions, having, you know, the divisions and then the American League and National League and all of that. And I agree with you. I do think that, unfortunately, it's too drastic of a step to just immediately turn to a Western Conference, Eastern Conference.

Nor do I think that really fixes the problem. Again, the Wild Card has eliminated. The only thing the division still do is allows a bad team that wouldn't be, wouldn't have a buy in the first round, maybe have a buy in the first round simply based on the fact that they just won their division or whatever the case may be. And even that is kind of factored out because if you're the worst of the teams that won the division, you're still playing in the first round, right?

So Major League Baseball, I think, has done a good job at setting up their playoffs in the best possible way without adding too many teams, even though I know you believe that there are too many teams. and still making it fun, I guess not going too far without adding the teams to anger people like you, but still including enough teams

to try to make it more fun for everybody in Major League Baseball that their team has a chance to make it, especially when the one team in your division is so good that none of you have a chance to actually catch them and win the pennant. Yeah, I'm okay with it being at 12 right now. The 12 out of the 30 make the postseason.

My fear is that Major League Baseball as part of this expansion situation will try to go from 12 to 14. Yes. And that's when I'll get a little more grumpy. Because, yeah, you want the season to matter. You don't want to get to a point where it feels like we're just trying to find all the teams that are average or better. And then we're playing a month of baseball to decide who actually comes out on top. It would really cheap in the six months before that, at least in my opinion. So we'll see what direction they go there, Derek.

Knowing the fact that money talks more than anything, I have a feeling we'll see at least a push from the owner's side to go to 14 postseason team. Ernesto has a really interesting point here, Damon. Not that one. If you'd scroll up a little bit, Ernesto says that his prediction, I think he went too far. His prediction would be four divisions of eight instead of eight divisions of four. and then that way in that situation if you have four divisions of eight you have right you have you have two in in the a nl you have two division winners because you only have two divisions per league and then those guys get bad buys and then you have other teams that are in the first round of the playoffs right like there there is a way i think to maybe do this like that where it's a little bit more like the western eastern conference still give two teams buys in the first round and still not expand the number of teams that make the playoffs, but make it a little bit more open for the field that, you know, again, you don't,

you don't have a team getting maybe necessarily put out when they don't deserve to, even though I do feel like their current system helps and doesn't really do that, right? Like, if you're good, you're going to get one of those three wildcard spots, no matter how good the division leader or the leader in your division is, but I don't know. We had one person asking about who else would be the expansion teams. Rumored, per the athletic article, it would be either Nashville or Raleigh for essentially the National League

or the South opposite end of the country. And then for like the North Pacific Northwest, west side, it would be either Salt Lake City or Portland. It's criminal that there's not a team in the South, honestly, other than the Braves. Right. It's crazy. Well, when you look at a map of baseball,

baseball is really interesting on the way, it's located geographically like it is very much it's not exactly spread around yeah right right it's not it's not spread around for sure so wasn't there back in the day i know this is a little off tangent but wasn't the diamond backs like weren't they almost put in the a l west originally when the al west had four teams i don't know that i don't know the answer to that but it also i'm pretty sure that was like one of the what ifs that we like almost talked about on our what if episode um and and that that's an interesting one because it's like man how how different could things be because you got to factor in that the astros hadn't moved yet right so that's been the the cream of the crop in that division over

you know recent years and the milwaukee gurors were still we're still in the ale at that time right no they were i believe they they were moved right when the debacks were made so i think that the the diamondbacks very possibly could have been in a division with the mariners a's rangers and and and angels forever and think about how sweet life would be. I don't hate that. I don't hate that at all. Not even a little bit. But what I do think is, again, I think we found the right formula to having Jesse on this show.

We just hide his appearance until the Diamondbacks win. And then we let everybody know Jesse's going to be on the postgame show. Jesse, thank you so much for your time and your knowledge. We always appreciate it. We always love having you on. And Mark Brown, along with a number of other people, all said hello. So I know that they're all thinking of you. We got a super chat from Peace of Yoshi

Blaming me for something. Piece of Yoshi says, Derek broke Hoffman with his tweet, shake my head, hashtag blame pH and X. You've been getting a lot of that. Yeah, Jesse, I've told these people that I reject their curses and I reject the fact that the words I say

somehow impact this baseball team. But also, remember that my sweet, sweet boy, Blaze Alexander, loves me more than he loves most people. I don't see him hugging other people in the clubhouse. That's all I'm saying. So again, if you don't want to upset Blaze, you all have to like me, you'll have to watch

the show. You also have to watch Jesse's show. Make sure to check out Snake's territory with our guy, Jack. Jesse, tell Jack, I missed him. I don't know why he's not in the press box, but whenever he's not, I get very sad, and I definitely worry about him. So make sure he knows I'm thinking about him. And thank you

again for your time. We appreciate you stopping by. You can follow him at Jesse N. Friedman. Of course, I'm at Kp underscore caveman with a K, and Damon is at Damon dog with a DAWG at the end. We're all Damon's dogs. Bark, Park, Park. Shows at P.H. That was really late. It felt like Jesse's really lost his passion.

Yeah. Have you noticed that too? I mean, even he's saying it. Well, even he knows he kind of phoned it in on that one and that, you know, his heart's not. He used to pick me up and bring flowers and, you know, pay for dinner. And now he, now he just is like, whatever. I mean, like, look, relationships, they go that way sometimes, right? Like, sometimes you just, you don't have the same spark you used to.

It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It just means that sometimes the bark barks aren't what they used to be, you know? Or maybe it's a grind. It's that it's now nearly midnight. And I have to be up in like three hours. But beyond that, he's had it with you. He's had it with all of these people in the chat. He's definitely had it with Killer X.

That's for sure. but we appreciate you, buddy. We appreciate you all. Thank you guys for stopping by and watching the show, of course. As you know, Jesse's time is very valuable. It's the most valuable commodity. So we appreciate him sharing it with us. We appreciate you guys sharing your time with us as well.

We will see you tomorrow with another post game show. So make sure to join us for that. In the meantime, we hope you guys have a wonderful evening. Behave yourselves. Try to get some sleep. We'll be up early tomorrow, watch more baseball. So until then, thank you guys for joining us again. And remember kids, baseball is fun.

but it's so much more fun when you get to watch Corbyn Carol make that face he makes when he rounds second and gets another triple.