PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - The After Party

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

On this episode, Derek and Jesse discuss Jesse predicting the end of the lockout, baseball being back, and when we can expect to see D-backs games being played. 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 back to another edition of the PHNXDVACs podcast. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as the man who is still partying over Major League Baseball being back. And I am joined, of course. I kid, I joked all day long, of course, with our early emergency podcast that I was doing it. So I didn't have to hear from Jesse bragging about today predicting, not like he hasn't predicted. the end of the lockout several times before, but correctly predicting the day that the lockout was going to end. So I have to give him his flowers. Of course, I am joined by my friend, my co-host, my sootsayer, if you will, my prognosticator of prognosticators. It's the one and only

Thunderstick Jesse Friedman. I actually go by a prophet Fryerman. Yeah, no, I don't like that. I've seen the images. Oh, man. So truth be told, I tweeted that earlier today, right? Some of you probably saw it. I tweeted out, I'm going to say it. I think the MLB lockout is going to end. I think I tweeted that sometime this morning.

And honestly, about an hour afterwards, I was like, oh, my gosh, why did I do that? I'm such an idiot. That was so stupid of me. Because things looked really optimistic right when we found out that they came to an agreement on the international draft situation. Right. And then, but then all these details were coming out about all of the different things that they still had differences on. And the more I looked into those lists, I'm like, I think this will happen soon, but it might be a little bullish of me to say it's going to happen today. And sure enough, MLB made a proposal and the players responded. And the player's response was interesting, Derek. There are 38 votes altogether that were cast from the players, eight of them from the executive committee. And 30 of them, just the 30 team reps across the game. Nick Ahmed is the Diamondbacks rep. And I thought it was fascinating the results of that. The executive committee, all eight of them said no. All eight of the

executive committee members from the union declined, rejected the offer from the owners. And yet the 30 player reps, 26 of them said yes, 26 out of 30. So almost all of them said yes. So, almost all of them said yes. So you can see there was a split between, you know, the executives, the ones who were in the negotiating room and the players sitting at home who are just like, I just want to play baseball at this point, right? There was a clear disconnect between them, but they didn't need, I believe they needed more than half of the total 38 votes in order to proceed and they were able to get that. Now, before we get into this too much, I wanted to remind everybody that this podcast is brought to you by the Draft King Sportsbook app.

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pre-arbitration bonus pool at 50 million, which honestly, as, you know, not speaking too frankly, but this was kind of an amount that they were worried the mediator would set it at if they brought in that federal mediator a few weeks back, right? They would take zero, they would take 120 or 110, whatever the players were at, and kind of split it down the middle, which is exactly what they ended up getting. That might be a big part of the reason why the player representatives were, holding out. I also think that there is a strong possibility that the, you know, that, that those players that represent the union might have known deep down inside they could have gotten more out of the owners,

which is why they might have been the ones to vote against it. But like you said, a big part of it was the fact that these other players not only are seeing MLB continue to cancel games like they announced yesterday when they announced they were going to cancel games through the... Well, we have to use... I think we have to use cancel. No, cancel. Yeah, I was very careful on my article, by the way, on go phanx.com. I said specifically, remove games from the schedule.

Because again, as much as they were quote, unquote, canceling games, it really did feel like really what was happening was they were moving them around but trying to use the threat of canceling games, despite the fact that they didn't want to do that. Also, canceling games straight up and taking pay away from the players was obviously going to impact this deal getting done, right?

So I feel like baseball was kind of in a corner there about agreeing to not cancel these games and not take any pay away from these players. It was, I think it really came down to the CBT as being the big thing that the people in the negotiating room did not want to relent on. The final proposal did move a little bit more, more in the direction of the players.

But all in all, you know, if you go halfway between what the owners were initially offering and what the players were initially offering, I think the CBT probably landed closer to where the owners were at than where the players were at. Correct. It starts at 230, which is a $20 million bump from where it's at right now, which is significant. But, you know, it wasn't that long ago that the players were asking for, you know, around 250, 260 to start out this new CBA. there's some exciting things baked into here though Derek I have to be honest I figured that when this deal happened there would just be a lot of anger on on both sides like yes we have a deal but we still have a long list of things that we're mad about and we feel um I don't know I thought it would have like it would be a good thing there would be people excited but there would also still be a lot of people who are angry about what happened and just from what I've been able to sense today I feel like there's just a very positive outlook

on the outcome of today. Just that baseball, not only is baseball back, but baseball is better, right? I think there's this sense that the changes that have been made in this new CBA genuinely improve the product of the game. One of the big things that happen is there is no more runner at second to start every inning in extra innings,

which is not something we've heard much about. And yet I still think that's a very popular move. There's a lot of people who did not particularly like starting with the runner on second. based in extra innings. I hated that rule. I mean, don't get me wrong, though.

Trust me, as a baseball writer that hates to be stuck there for the 13th and 14th innings at times. Sure. It's still better than just this bizarre. Like, why is there a guy on second? Like, what? This is not. Not to mention the fact that honestly, like, I don't know.

There's a lot of things about the game that I find that purists are a bit adamant about and I don't agree necessarily with them. Yeah, but I think the DH is the same for me. I don't understand. And I know I think you, you like the DH a little bit or you, you liked not having the DH in the National League a little bit more than I did. But that's another thing where I've just seen so much widespread agreement today. Like that, like baseball is better today because there's a DH in the National League.

Zach Gallen's not about to hurt himself swinging a bat and sprint training again. Because he won't need, he won't be needing to do that anymore. Bryce Jarvis, the other day. day had a great answer about that speaking of minor league mini camp by the way i don't care when anybody says we're still your uh leader in debaq's minor league mini camp coverage but uh your your premier destination for that i will say he seemed a bit disappointed right so it's kind of funny to me to hear a pitcher's perspective on that batting is fun everybody likes to like to take it bads you might be at it you might not want to do it in a game in front of you know you know it

40,000 people, right? But at the same time, it doesn't mean that you still don't like to do it. Like batting is fun. And even if you're a pitcher, I think pitchers like to bat. They wish they were better at it, I'm sure. Price Jarvis, he was a converted player. So he's played other positions before. So it's not like batting was out of the norm for him.

But now that he's a pitcher, he did. He seemed a little melancholy about the fact that he was never going to get potentially a major league at bat, considering that. this was coming, right? But I'm with you, man. I'm on board with it. I try my best to say, you know, I don't like it necessarily, but I see how much it'll improve the game. And I also see how there's still plenty of strategy. So if you're like me and you think like, oh, wow, well, the DH kind of takes some of the strategy out of having a pitcher in your in your lineup, right, having to hit. Well, American League teams never have to. to deal with that strategy. And it doesn't seem to interact the game very much over there. Not to mention

there is still strategy in using a DH. Not every team is going to have a designated designated hitter. A lot of teams, the Diamondbacks, I'm presuming, are most likely going to go to a DH by committee of sorts and have to decide based on any given night who they're going to plug in in that spot, how they might, you know, maybe like pull that guy out, pinch hit for him or put another DH in or whatever. So it's going to be interesting to see. And I think it's, still going to add as much intrigue to the game, as much strategy to the game as the pitcher's hitting. It's just not going to require that one position to be so terrible offensively. There was a comment here from J.T. Hulahan. He asked, any truth to Gambo's claim that there will

be a more balanced schedule beginning in 2023. Haven't seen it from any of the national reporters. I actually did see it from the national reporters. So yes, there is truth to that. It sounds like they I also, on a side note, I'm very, I'm very happy that we're the ones vetting Gambos claims. Of course. That's, I mean, yeah, that's only natural. I was doing for years over Arizona sports. You kidding. I will say that, yes, the schedule does sound like it's going to be more well-rounded.

It's great for the debacks because it sounds like they are not going to face off against National League West opponents as much. There is. It's too much. It's just they play 18 times. They play every divisional opponent. They play 18 times. That's 72 games between your, I mean, that's almost half the season. It should be 26 times.

It should be more. Jesse, the entire 162 games schedule is based around the concept of you playing your own fucking division 162 times. I get that you don't. I get in the olden days they still played other teams in their league. But the focus was that the entire baseball season was supposed to be a playoff. Right. And even if you were 10 games.

back you still had 20 games to play against the first place team and if it's a situation like we've seen the diamondbacks experience before right where the diamondbacks were in first and a team like the dodgers initially in april and may were in third or fourth the whole purpose of that is to really prove who the best team in your division is and that's how that team earns you know the division title the pennant all of that stuff it's just boring you then that yeah i mean i get it i totally understand, you know, the fact is, is that it might be boring, but it is what it was intended for, right? Yeah. Baseball, when it was a smaller sport with less teams and you, you know, it was intended for it to be a pastime where you kind of watch them play the other teams so much that you knew the other teams as much as you knew your own team.

And, you know, a division winner was kind of a sound thing, right? like it just it was supposed to be in the minds of baseball it was supposed to be just a season long race for this this pennant this title now conventional sports modern day sports we we don't do that we you earn a bid into the playoffs you you get into the playoffs whatever way you can and then from there anything can happen and that seems to be more of what we want out of american sports right we want the idea of, yeah, you could be the best team, but we'd love to see an underdog beat that number one seed, right? So we want that to be a possibility.

Baseball is proceeding with this 12-team expanded playoffs that is going to see more teams in the playoffs. It's also, according to reports, they're not going to reseed in the second round. So there's not going to be a reseeding in the second round because your first two teams are going to get a buy. The other four teams will play in essentially the wild card round. And then from that point on, the one seed will play the four, five seed winner and the two seed

will play the three, what is it? And are those, are those still three game series? That's one thing I didn't check on today. I have not seen any updates about that. It's been weird because the rule changes keep coming in. We keep, we keep rolling back or we keep having different things come in like the nine inning double headers are back. So we won't have seven inning double headers any longer.

we won't have the runner starting on second base and extra innings. We also have the DH and we also have the elimination of shifts. And that's going to still be interesting to see what exactly the language is going to fall on the shifts and how it's going to determine what defensive modifications teams can and can't do when it comes to shifts. I mean, again, even though we've seen we see a lot of dramatic shifts in baseball, there tends to be a lot of defensive plays where there's different, kind of coordinated, you know, places for, you know, like, like places for everyone to stand. They're going to be strongly impacted now because of the fact that it's going to require

infielders to have so, like two feet in the base path and there's supposed to be two guys to the left of the base and two guys to the right of base. So all that stuff, all that stuff is, is, is being implemented. And it's still being figured out. But I think that, you know, well, by tomorrow we should have most. of the details ironed out as far as when spring training starts. So far it sounds like all teams are going to be required to start spring training and have everybody report by this Sunday.

So we're going to hit this fast. Next week will be camp, I imagine, and the following week after that, they said the 17th and the 18th will be when we'll see games start playing. So spring training will be here faster than we know it. The Diamondbacks had an interesting situation. right now they currently have a split schedule game where they will be playing one game in Phoenix or one game in Las Vegas on the same day. So it's going to be interesting to see if they get around to actually doing that. It sounds like those games will be rescheduled to not take place in Las Vegas any longer.

So they will all be here in Phoenix. Yeah, there were some, I think Derek Hall is the one who talked about that with reporters. Something Derek Hall also said that I think is, especially, especially interesting is he was asked a question about the Diamondback spending and how they're going to approach free agency. Free agency is officially open for business. Derek, as of about an hour ago, so free agency is now open. Teams can make trades. That's a possibility as well. Jacob says I looked at the roster today and the debacks are sneaky good. Jacob, that is quite a bit of optimism. He's cautiously optimistic about the roster. He's cautiously optimistic.

I will, I mean, we'll get into that, of course, over the next few weeks. The Diamondbacks roster is, is certainly not as bad as last year's record would indicate. But going back to Derek Collin, what he said, he was asked a question about the Diamondbacks approach here in free agency, in the trade market. This is what he said. He said, I see us being aggressive and being active. And if you're asking if we're going to get the payroll to north of 90 million, 100, 105, I could easily see that. So right now the diamondbacks have about $81 million in commitments according to Kott's contracts for the 2022 season, given the fact that the minimum salary just increased by about $100 grand or two. That number is probably bumped up to around $84 million now, roughly.

So the diamondbacks are about $84 million right now. Derek Hall just said, I could see that, talking about $100, $105 million. That gives the diamondbacks, Derek, about $15 to $12,000. million dollars potentially that they could spend. I think that's maybe on the upper end of what Derrick Hall was talking about. But this team is going to spend at least six or seven million. I think they're going to at least hit 90. And that's pretty much what Derek Hall said. And he mentioned 100 and 105 as possibility.

So we could see the Diamondbacks do something relatively significant in these next, in these next couple weeks as the season gets going. and Ken Kendrick said tonight on March 10th, I know exactly what you're about to say. At 5.24 p.m. We have teams that do not spend a fair amount on their team. Yeah, I know that a lot of fans are going to be just completely there's going to be an uproar about those comments.

It's a great time. It's a great time to once again throw it back to your article. on go p hnx.com. I'm not going to talk about once again how great you are as a writer and how great this article is. I will say though that if you go back and check out that article,

you definitely proved, I think, that... Derek Hall spends about what you'd expect. Yeah, I was going to say, Ken Kendrick is not have any ties to spending a lot of money because it's proven in the past that it's not effective for this team.

when they do. Now, the quote that could very well relate to this is it's not about how much you spend, but it's about how you spend it. And I think that's maybe the biggest problem with the Arizona Diamondbacks when it comes to their big spending. We've seen them spend big. We've seen it not work. We've seen it. Honestly, we've, we tend to see them spend money on guys that instead of them being a little bit ahead of the curve, might be a little bit behind on their career. It might not be at the, at the peak.

The problem, once again, as I pointed out in the past, is that this is baked into their DNA. Spending a lot of money on guys that are over the hill, won them a World Series, right? When you look at that entire roster,

from Jay Bell to Luis Gonzalez to Randy Johnson to Kurt Schilling, these were all guys that were supposedly past their prime, and the deback shouldn't really be spending the money they were on them. And we know how that worked out, right? So it doesn't surprise me, even though Kim Kendrick was not a majority owner at the time when they won the World Series, even though he didn't become a majority owner until like the Sedona Red Days came around. It's still something that's part of this team's DNA, unfortunately. As much as not having good relief pitching is part of this team's DNA,

spending money on older guys and having it work out is what this house was built on. Right. So I understand them going back to that well. But unfortunately, it seems like baseball is changing substantially since the late 90s and the early 2000s. And you can't exactly expect season veterans to carry the load like you may have it one time, right? Yeah. It'll be interesting to see Madison Bumgarner, for instance, come out and what he can do this season. We saw a lot of hope, a lot of promise that he would be back to his old ways there a bit last season.

And I hope to see more of that this season. More importantly, I'm excited to see about. what the Diamondbacks do with the future of this team. I've had a chance to be around these guys a lot recently. And to be honest, I'm excited about quite a few of them. So I can't wait to see what they do with this team, with this spending. Right. And, you know, again, this team overall, Jacob's statement,

I looked at the roster. I think the debacks are sneaky good, as crazy and as ridiculous. And I'm not going to call him a moron. I'm not going to say this is a moronic statement. would be, I would, I feel like that would be insulting, but other people would say that. As moronic as that lights out. Again, like you said, Jesse, this team underperformed last season. So it'll be like now with no pressure on them with this entire situation alleviated and maybe just with the right coaching staff in place, we might see these guys actually shine. And that's

something I'm excited about. Our bud, Bud, CWP, he says, glad to see that's gone, meaning the runner on second base such an artificial way to end a baseball game. I agreed with that 100%. I also didn't like the fact that at times they just traded runs for a little while there anyway because both teams could get that runner off second base home. So I wasn't a big fan of it myself. Josh Hent says I follow all the minor league teams for AZ, had a dance party with the Vassalia Rahad yesterday.

I don't know what that means. Did Josh Hunt have a dance party with that? Yeah. Do I have, is there a video of this? Honestly, I believe it. I believe it. Like I tweeted the other day, working for PH&X is a combination

of being on cool podcasts, writing fun articles, and wondering if Josh Hunt has more named creb than you do. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. He's still in all of our bunner. Yes, absolutely. Jacob says the second mad bum DHS,

you'll love it. I will freak the fuck out. I will lose my mind the minute that he does. I just, I don't know how like, as much as it would be fun for those things to happen. I'm trying to envision what kind of thing would have to happen for that to occur. Because right now the only reason I think I think roster.

Honestly, I think we'll see it. I think we'll see it at one point. Benjamin Garcia. I mean, how many like defensive replacements did you put in in order for Madison Bumgarner to have to TH? And like, why are you pinch hitting for your D.H. in the first place? Well, okay. Well, there's a couple of things there.

You're, you're imagining the second, you're imagining mad bum pinch hitting for the DH. I'm just saying you think he's going to start. That is what I'm suggesting. He's just going to flat out DH. I will say that. Okay. If you want, okay, we've gotten a lot of these comments today. Let's be honest, right? We are excited about baseball being back and a lot of Arizona sports

fans, understandably so, are quote tweeting are our excitement with a lot of nastiness and bitterness. Sure. And I don't fault any of them for it. Right. I get, we're getting a lot of like, you're getting excited about 110 loss season coming up and stuff like that. I get it. It's easy to take pot shots like that. It's easy to be very negative.

Being positive is so much harder. Being positive just destroys a small part of me every single day. I promise you. As much as I try to be positive, it's killing me deep down inside to be positive. Negativity is my nature. And I think it's a lot of our natures, right? So it's easy to say, okay. Yeah, what are you excited about with baseball?

You know what I'm fucking excited about? Seeing Madison Bumgarder, D.H. that's what I'm excited about because there's going to be a time and a place where Tori LaVallo is simply going to be out of guys. They're going to be on a long road trip. At the beginning of a game, like the game hasn't started. You're suggesting that he's not going to plan it out from the beginning, Jesse. I'm suggesting that he's 100% going to have him on the schedule. Really intending to DH maybe seven to 10 days even earlier than it actually happens.

That's what I'm saying. I am not. I foresee this happening. It's going to happen. Madison Bumgarner is going to D.H. I have more belief in this than Shane does in ASU. I have more belief that Madison Bumgarter

is going to deach in at least one game than Jacob Franklin has in this roster. That's my belief. I think we're going to see it. I'm excited. That's a bold take right there. It's a bold take, but it's going to happen. Trust me. I will say that I don't care about any of these rules

rule changes, right? I think Josh, speaking of Josh Hunt, in our comments, he said, baseball went through the flames of forge and I hope it comes out stronger than before. And this is exactly right. This was a test. Yeah. This was like something that could have broken the sport.

This CBA negotiation was not something that was very positive, but it was necessary, right? It was necessary for the players to get some sort of footing in this negotiation and this relationship with owners, right? Now what we have is we have Bernie Sanders getting involved. And even though we are through this, Bernie. Sanders, Jesse. He is very, he is very unhappy about this entire situation, calling baseball owners oligarchs and saying these are baseball oligarchs who negotiated in bad faith for more than 100 days in a blatant attempt to break the players' union. They over the last year eliminated

their affiliation with over 40 minor league teams, not only causing needless economic pain and suffering, but also breaking the hearts of fans in small and mid-sized towns all over America. and he was absolutely right about that. That's kind of the biggest thing when it comes to like the minor league situation, right, was the fact that we really treat these teams like they are nothing to the communities that they are in.

Right? We can just get rid of them because there's so many of them and they're just cogs in the wheel of baseball, but they are important to somebody. And so now Bernie Sanders is saying it would be wrong for Congress to simply celebrate today's agreement and move on. We must prevent the greed of baseball's oligarchs from destroying the game.

The best way to do that is to end Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption, and I will be introducing legislation to do that. At the end of the day, there's a good chance that the owners really shot themselves in the foot with this entire CBA process. The CBA, that's a lockout that was initiated by the owners. So it's the owners that decided that it was necessary. It was the owners that proceeded with locking out baseball players for 90s. days. It was the owners at times that did everything in their power, as you and I talked about, to make the players look bad instead of doing everything in their power to get a deal done. And that's the part that really makes me not feel sorry at all for MLB, the owners, or anything

that's coming based on this lockout, drawing the attention of Congress, lawmakers, legislation, all of that. Yeah. Well, speaking of owners, I want to get back to comments that Ken Kendrick made today. He did an interview with Burns and Gambo. And you gave probably the most memorable quote from that interview a little bit earlier in the show. Another thing that Ken Kendrick talked about is, and this is, of course, not necessarily super surprising, but he talked about how having a salary floor and having a salary ceiling are healthy things and how you look at all the other major sports.

This is the system that they have in place. and it was based on this comment that he that he said what you mentioned earlier about how we have teams in this sport who are spending just an unfair amount on their baseball team and in and i think he meant that both ways by the way don't you don't you think he meant it both they're not spending enough and they're spending too much yeah yeah he totally meant it both ways that's what he talked about he said that you know on the upper end there can be unhealthy overspending and on the lower end there can be unhealthy under spending, if that's a term. Sure.

So, yeah, he was against both of those ideas. And to Ken's point, I think it's important we acknowledge the Diamondbacks, as much as we laugh at that quote that you mentioned earlier about how there are unfair, you know, there's an unfair amount of spending going on with some of those, some of those bottom level teams in this league. The Diamondbacks are not one of them, right? the Diamondbacks are on a different level from the pirates and the Marlins. I mean, I'm pretty sure the pirates right now have about $30 million in 2020

commitments. They're in a different stratosphere than the Diamondbacks are. So I don't, I'm definitely not, you know, defending Ken's claim. I think there's, you know, I understand fans thinking it's ironic that he said something like that. Sure, sure. But, but there is something to be said for, you know, those, those teams at the lower end that just aren't spending hardly anything. They're basically spending the amount they make from revenue sharing. It's like they're spending almost none of their own money on their team year after year.

And that just frankly, you know, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I hate to say it, but I am a person and I need boundaries, right? Yeah, sure. I say that from my video game experience. These video games now, they let you do whatever they want, Jesse. You go here, you can go there, you get lost. You have no idea where you're at. Like, it's too open-ended for me.

I come from a different time where my video games were much more linear and they told you what to do. And as ridiculous as a comparison is to that, I can understand where people want guides and they want the guides to kind of be firm rules, you have to spend $100 million, but you can't spend over $230 million. That would make it easier for people to know that they're in the rules. You can attack the debacks all you want, especially for their spending last season. but last season was an outlier where they actually decrease their spending for the first time

pretty much in Ken Kendrick's entire time as owner, right? Like last year was the first time we actually thought about it. Maybe here and there, right? I'm going based on your article, but there wasn't a lot of, it's not like Ken Kendricks had a lot of ups and downs. For the most part, the spending has gone up over the year. I would say there have been ups and downs. It's just that like, if you can,

kind of average out the ups and the downs, you wind up with an owner who spends a pretty typical amount of money. So it's not that it didn't like oscillate year to year. In fact, I think it probably oscillated too much. And that's maybe a fair criticism is that, you know, why one year when you think the team is good, are you spending $130 million? And then the next year, you know, you're dropping that by $25 million because the team wasn't good when your revenue is still increasing, right? there's there's this this perception that when a team underperforms you know because there aren't as many fan in the stand as many fans in the stands there's not as much excitement the team's not making as much so they need to cut down on payroll that's not true at all that's not what the numbers say i mean but don't you think that's the case with the diamondbacks though with some things like because like for instance i don't think that they're for i don't think that their lack of spending last year wasn't smart i don't like it no i mean last year was different because of the pandemic. Every single team in the league lost a substantial amount of money in 2020. So I don't really count last year in that. I'm more talking about, you know, in the mid-2010s,

you know, in some of those years where the Diamondbacks weren't as good as we thought they were going to be. The team would often cut spending the year after that. And it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense why you would need to do that because the Diamondbacks revenues in those years, for the most part, we're still increasing and pretty dramatically so. So it just raises the question for me, you know, why is there this big change in spending depending on how good the team is? Obviously, there's a time to invest in bullpen pieces and there's a time to not invest as much in bullpen.

Like you're going to make different decisions based on whether you're contending or not, but why does the difference there have to be, you know, $20, 30 million dollars, depending on what the outlook for the team is? Greed might be the question, might be the answer. to that. Also, it might just be forecasts, right? Like they have so many analytics. They have so many people internally telling them not only projections about the team, but projections about finances, right? So those two things go hand in hand. And in some cases, they just feel like things don't look good for next year. So let's just go ahead and cut spending now or let's not spend any extra money to try to

make this team better. The one thing the Arizona Diamondbacks have done wrong is not believed in their at times. And unfortunately, it's reactionary, right? Like you said, oh, this team that we didn't expect to be very good is better than we thought. Let's try to add some pieces to make it better next year. And all those pieces didn't work out. So let's just cut everybody and not spend any more money, right? Like, it's very, it's very behind instead of being ahead of the curve when it comes to the team's performance.

Right. So I get that. But most importantly, Jesse, no matter what we've talked about in these last 35 minutes. Baseball is fucking back. It is back. And that's all that matters. And we get to watch baseball and we get to talk about free agency because this free agency period is going to

be crazy. And again, like what you said, it sounds like the Arizona Diamondbacks are going to spend money. So I would expect two or three two or three moves that are substantial talking and not by substantial. I don't mean Carlos Correa, but I mean like not like a minor league signing. Of course not. Because we'll pick up Chris

Bryant. We're crazy. Right, right. of course. That's right. Well, there's nearly 140 free agents on the market ready to be picked up, and things are going to happen very quickly. Friday is going to be a very, very exciting day. And we are probably going to have one of the most exciting mailbag Mondays that we've ever had coming in. You probably will. As if we haven't spent enough time on Twitter this week. Oh, I know. Tomorrow's going to be crazy. Saturday's going to be crazy. Our doom scrolling is not going to end anytime. No, it's not. But now. But now, it's more exciting. I don't think it's doom scrolling anymore. That's fair. That's fair. Excitement scrolling, baseball scrolling. We get to find out what's going to happen where these guys are going to go. I saw some talk about the Cubs picking up players. Get the fuck out of here. Cubs already cut most of their team. Like, I can't imagine them all of a sudden now starting to spend on players. That was Marcus Stroman. Marcus Strowman put out a tweet like tagging Carlos Correa and saying,

hey man, let's like make Wrigley go crazy. I don't. I don't know if that's going to lead to anything. I don't know. It's tampering. That's tampering is what I'm saying it is. But we thank you guys so much for checking out the show. And we thank you guys so much for sticking with us throughout the lockout. 99 days. We did not get the triple digits. It's over. The MLB has ratified it 100%. All 30 teams agreed. All 30 owners agreed. And now we will see what happens with baseball. The Arizona Diamondbacks opening day is now a home game. It's going to be against the San Diego Padres. on April 7th at 640 p.m. barring any changes to the schedule. We haven't gotten official word, but it sounds officially official like April 7. But it is going to be the day. And it does not sound like that time is going to be changed either.

So make sure to tune into that. And like I said, we'll be here all spring training. We'll be here bringing you spring training games. We'll be out there. So if you guys are out there, make sure to get in touch with us. And I'm excited, Jesse. We actually get to see real baseball. Not that I haven't been seeing real baseball,

but it's mostly been between minor leaguers on the same team. So I'm excited for this to evolve to the next formation of baseball for me personally. Faces are back on MLB.com, Derek. Their faces are back. Oh, yes. Not only that, but honestly, just from our show perspective, I'm excited for all the guests that we can now have. So many people, I wish I could just really explain this to you.

So many people we know we're affected by this and we're not able to appear on the show. do interviews, do any of that kind of stuff to the lockout was over. So now it's over, and I'm so excited to have all of our friends and guests come on because it's going to be a blast going forward. I wanted to give you guys my Draft King's pick of the week for this week. For Friday, I'm picking two NBA games. I'm taking the Dallas Mavericks over the Houston Rockets. They're a 10.5 point favorite.

I think that they're going to easily blow the rockets out. So if you want to do a same game parlay, on that game. Maybe take Luca Donchich for any of his game lines, any of his player props, anything like that. I think he'll be pretty safe there. I'm sure he'll go off again. As well as, I'm also going to take the Phoenix Suns by minus five over the Toronto Raptors. Suns just are playing incredible basketball right now. And again, the way that they beat the Miami Heat when the Heat were favorites. They just can't be denied right now. So minus five on the suns over the Toronto Raptors. I'm taking that. And, you know, again, if you want to talk about picks, there's a prop for three plus

players to record a double double in that game. There's also a DeAndre Aiton prop to score 35 points plus rebounds. 35 plus points and rebounds. So I don't know. I like the three plus. plus players to record a double double. I think that's going to be book. I think Aiton might do that, and there's a good chance of Toronto player might as well, but your mileage may vary on your pick. So those are my draft king's pick of the week.

We thank you guys for checking out the show. You can follow Jesse and myself on Twitter 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 on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Make sure to sign up on your favorite audio podcasting app. that way you don't miss any of our content coming out.

Leave us a five-star review, just in honor of baseball being back, and then go over to YouTube and subscribe to the PHNX sports channel and sign up for notifications there. That way you don't miss any of the content coming out from our PHNX team. They're all doing wonderful stuff, but none of that is as important as baseball right now. Well, I take that back. The Suns, they're Kings right now. But for now, we'll play second fiddle to the Suns happily.

Just today, Derek. Well, the Coyotes over here fucking talking about the coyotes being. the best team in the NHL right now. And they are obviously drunk. They have been drinking in that studio. I've seen the bottles of liquor, so they can't lie to me. I love how you're like, you're like pointing at the wall in your house.

I'm pointing at my awesome new wall. I'm pointing at my awesome new Mark Gray's blog machine is really what I'm pointing at. We thank you guys again so much for watching the show on behalf of Jesse and myself. We appreciate you. We appreciate you being baseball fans and remember kids.

Baseball is fun, but it is so much more fucking fun when baseball is back, baby!