PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Wildest dreams

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

On this episode, Jesse and Derek discuss the discouraging news from Tuesday's meeting between MLB and the union, Jesse's article about an April to remember, and letting Derek spend all the money on fixing the D-backs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, officially known, of course, as your mayor of PHNX. And I am joined by my vice mayor, my co-host, the one and only Thunderstick Jesse Friedman. Chris Bryant has our cover photo for this show. Oh, we're going to get into that. I'm spending a lot of money today, Jesse. I'm spending money like I am terminally ill. And we're going to go around that.

we've disappointed everyone because I think we're unveiling that you're the one spending this money, not the diamondbacks, that that's probably not going to happen. You're ruining this. You're ruining this from the beginning. Let me get to my fantasies. Let me get to my wildest desires and dreams thing. But of course, I have to let everybody know that this podcast is brought to you by the fine folks over at the Draft King's Sportsbook app. You guys know what time of year it is.

It's time for the Super Bowl. And if you are a new customer, the Draft Kings, you go over to Draft King Sportsbook app now, an official sports betting partner of Super Bowl 56, and you will get 56 to one odds on any team, either the Bengals, yay, or the Rams, boo. And that's a shout out to all my Rams friends, but bet just $5 and get $280 in free bets if your team wins. Jesse, bad news, buddy. bad news it looks like my valentines day date of this lockout ending for MLB is definitely in jeopardy because we didn't have very positive news coming out today in fact if you want a climate check

on how today's meetings went look no further than first this tweet from jeff passin that says the meeting between the major between the major league baseball players association and MLB is over little progress was made the on time opening of spring training at this point is in grave danger and frankly would take a miraculous deal coming together to rescue a delay feels inevitable and that that tweet is bad enough because jeff passin is not yeah i don't feel like he's necessarily a very hyper hyperbolic person i don't feel like he's somebody that jumps to these kind of conclusions without having a fair amount of information and reason behind it. It's not like he, you know, can say 100% certainty that this deal isn't going to happen. But from everything, obviously,

he's hearing, uh, things are not good right now. They're not. I don't know if you saw Jeff's follow up to that tweet. I thought that his, his tweet in response to his first tweet was, was, uh, kind of amusing. He basically has said the exact same thing every time. Every time there's a meeting between the players and the owners. Jeff Passon tweets out, something like what he tweeted today, right? As we, I guess for our listeners on the audio side, we're talking about yesterday. We're talking about Tuesday as we do this here on our live show. But yeah, basically Jeff will tweet out a general description of how the meeting went, which is generally not well. The two sides are far apart, something along those lines.

And then he will reply to it and say, no deal is done. And yet, that was never an expectation anyway, right? We were never expecting a deal to be done. So he'll kind of say those two things. And that's his little response tweet is like, yes, the conclusion here is we don't have a deal. But then again, we didn't really expect one anyway. And today, Jeff Passon, instead of doing that whole thing, he was basically like, of course,

we never would have expected ah hell uh he said something like oh hell you guys know the drill we're never this is never going to go down right um so yeah if you go over to his account you'll you'll see what i'm talking about but that's just this situation right i mean there's a lot of repetition it kind of feels like we're going around in circles like there aren't really there isn't really any real progress being made in some of these meetings uh we know they have another meeting scheduled for later this week, but we're told that they will not discuss the core economic issues in that meeting, which to me just is kind of hilarious. Like, hey, let's have a meeting, but let's not discuss like the things we really need to

discuss. You know, let's just kind of dance around it and talk about a theory on that. I have a theory on that. I don't feel like they're making any progress on the core economic structure, right? And so because of that, none of the, they're not getting to the rest of the, of the, the meal that they have to get to. There's other things to negotiate. There's other things to talk about that to be honest,

they probably see more eye to eye on than financial. Yeah. You know, financial things that they're much farther apart. Or I mean, just to get something done, right? Because they still at some point have to talk about that. So if they're so far apart right now on the economic structure and how they're going to proceed with arbitration, these years of service, everything like that, which by the way, again, the players union conceded more on.

And it's weird because we're not hearing this same, we're not hearing this same thing from like the owner's side. We're not hearing like, well, the owners today conceded a bit on their, you know, stance on this thing. Like everything you hear as far as details coming back from these meetings is about the players giving up more and more on what they want. And that part of it doesn't seem as much of a negotiation. as much as it's just the owner's standing firm in this lockout that they generated, right?

The owners are responsible for the lockout, not the players. And they won't be letting the players play again until the players agree to not want the stuff that they want. And that right there just seems like this is a very one-sided negotiation. Again, let's get Scott Boris in there to negotiate for the players. That's what I say. Shout out to Josh Hunt. Josh Hunt in the comments that finally. made it to a live show. We thank you, sir. Welcome to the family, by the way, and happy anniversary.

Josh's wife got him an anniversary present, which was a P.JNX membership. Josh is the guy who has a who got a D-back shirt, right? That's right. And Josh, Josh says, could it be a PR approach to at least have something to tell everyone that they agree on something? And that I also agree would be a positive, right? To have some sort of positive come out of the negotiations as far as where they're at, progress they've made. Hey, they agreed that they're going to implement the universal DH. Like, that's some positive news that sounds like in some way they've made some sort of progress, right?

And that part of it, I could absolutely see with them right now, right? And then there's another tweet from Chelsea Janes, which is even more depressing. MLBPA offered up changes to its pre-R pool proposal, dropping demand from 105,000. to 100 and reduced number of players who would accrue additional service time under the plan to combat service time manipulation per a league official sides met for 90 minutes described as quote unquote heated jesse heated were they going to throw punches over arbitration and years of service time what the hell is going on and now i like again uh i think the the players association changed their request from i think it was like 10 and 30 years

down to like 20 and 7 or like I'm sorry not that not years but the top uh war that would get that bonus pool they reduced the bonus pool down so if fewer players would get it instead of the 10 and 30% it was our top 30 and top 10 it was 7 and 20 like they're they're conceding in every way and it doesn't feel like the owners are meeting them at that halfway point so much so that we're described as these meetings getting heated, which I, again, you know how athletes, baseball players are, these guys are? Like, what does heated being? And can I get video of it?

Can I get video of the meeting being heated? I think we would all love to be, you know, a fly on the wall in these meetings because- It would hear ratings than the World Series. It absolutely would. It absolutely would. And not only that, but this is just kind of a week. weird situation where reporters do have information about what is discussed. Not many reporters. It's pretty much just Jeff Passen, Evandrelic, those are pretty much the only guys that we hear

from after these meetings. They're the ones who have all the information. But there's not really a whole lot of information that comes out, right? I think we've all kind of gotten used to these meetings happening. And there being a little bit of information that comes out. But usually most reporters are just directing people to the articles they've already written about the situation. Like, hey, go look at that thing I wrote last week. That pretty much all still applies because nothing happened today. Which, I mean, a lot of that is probably just the result of the two sides, not getting very far, right? There's just not much to talk about.

But I also wonder, even if you're writing updates, like you and I can both attest to this, it still feels very repetitive if nothing's happened, right? It's like, what information really am I providing from the one that I wrote? a week after the lockout happened as to now, right? You don't want to just publish stuff just to publish it and have no new information in there. But the problem with that is it's kind of an out of sight, out of mind situation at that point. It's easy for there not to be updates, so then it kind of can fall out of the news cycle. And then fans who are the ones who are truly going to lose out at the end of the day are the ones that, you know, aren't being updated on this.

So it's easy not to get mad about it. It's easy not to start putting some sort of public pressure, some sort of public scrutiny on MLB to get this deal done in some way, right? And really, that's kind of what they're hoping for. It feels like they're hoping to just wait this out. Like, if they waited out long enough, MLBPA will continue to drop its demands. They'll continue to relent on issues and financial concerns. and eventually they'll just submit to whatever CBA that they, you know, essentially can to get the deal done so that, you know, baseball isn't impacted beyond March and April and May because once you start getting into that point, holy, I don't know what the hell you're doing anymore. We're getting close to some of those key days, right?

I think they, some of the reporters were talking about today how some of those deadlines, chief among them, of course, is, your February 14th deadline. But there are some other ones too, right? Pitchers and catchers are supposed to report within a couple weeks here. That deadline at this point, like you talked about earlier, is basic, I mean, there's just no way to it would take an absolute miracle. So the question now is, you know, can we make some spring training games happen? Can we make opening day happen?

I mean, that's really the, that's really the big one. And I know we've talked a little bit about spring training already and how part of it would still go on, right, with the players that aren't on 40-man rosters. But from what we can tell, it sounds like spring training games, as we know them to be, you know, games that you can attend and, you know, buy hot dogs and by merch and all of that stuff that we're used to seeing in the Arizona market, those games would not happen. So there would still be a piece of spring training left with with players around potentially. but the public part of it,

you know, the part that fans enjoy so much, it appears that part would actually not happen at all until this thing gets done. So some of those days are drawing closer, Derek, and I think you're right. The owners are taking advantage of that and they're leveraging that in these negotiations. It feels like both sides kind of wanted that pressure

to be put on the other side, but who's really being affected here and who's going to feel that pressure? You know, who is going to be seen, as being greedy and who is going to get that taken out on, right? Like, owners are already seen as being greedy no matter what, right? But the players are the people that are on the field and the face of baseball. They're the ones people root for.

They're the ones people buy jerseys and cards and pops and all this other stuff of, right? Like, that's the problem here is that as ugly as this gets, owners still get to hide away in their owner's box and not really have to face the public the same way that the players and the manager and people that are on the team do, right? And that really is it. And I mean, again, when the players are making all of this money, it's easy to make them also look greedy when really what they're trying to look out for are the players that don't get that same cut of the pie that some of the guys that make the bunny get. Some of those guys that even when they're really good are still restricted and are tied down by that rookie

deal that they got and still being under that first couple of years contract, and all of that kind of stuff. They're really just trying to make it better for those guys and honestly make it worth their time to be some of the best players in the game, right? It's in some cases it's not worth it for them to even step up and start showing what they can do until their contract year perhaps or whatever.

You know what I mean? Like it's just a weird situation with baseball where you're not really giving your new breakout stars an opportunity to make as much money as they are essentially making the game, right? I mean, some of these guys are incredible in their rookie season and in their sophomore season, and, you know, there's no compensation for them all of a sudden being a league leader in home runs or strikeouts or any of those kind of categories when, or especially war, right? That's something I almost based my entire fixing the debacks segment on later,

but it's a very important stat. something that a lot of people believe in. By the way, Josh Hunt writes, did you guys see the nine outreach program for the minor league system? And yes, I did. And we are going to talk about that this week. It's a black community-focused outreach program. And I think it's something spectacular.

It's one of the good things that major league, minor leagues, are doing to try to expand the game. But all of that is for not if it continues to drag on with this whole situation which shouldn't surprise us. I mean, are you surprised at all by the fact that there's still no deal done? No, no, Mr. January 28th? No. No.

Okay, so truth be told. No, gosh, here we go. So now that the day has passed, I can stop being obnoxiously, irrationally confident about it. And I can go full disclosure with people. And I can acknowledge that it's been. I'm pretty sure that a week after I made that prediction, I was like, there's no way. There's just no.

It's just impossible. There's no way this is going to happen. So I felt that way. I felt that way for a long time, Derek. And I'm going to wager that you probably feel that way right now about February 14th. I think we were both a little bit bullish on this. I think I really think February 14th was more of me being hopeful, right? I think that February 14th in my mind was the last chance for it to not impact the season.

I know that February 14th, me, my wife always kind of joke about it, but that's like our, like we celebrate Valentine's Day as if I'm going off to war, you know, she'll be like, all right, well, I'll see you in September, you know, because this is the start of me disappearing from my house for, especially when I had two jobs, you know, I would, I'd work 16 to 20 hour days sometimes, as ridiculous as that sounds, but I really would. So I'd be at the office and then I would be at the ballpark right after that and that would be my entire day. So yeah, I mean, I'm used to this time of the year being the time where I am ready to start smelling that grass and be out there watching the pitchers and catchers report and having them

look at me and wonder who I am and what I'm doing. They're taking pictures of them. And, you know, it's a great time. I just in my mind knew that if a deal did not get done by February 14th, the season's going to be impacted in some way. There's there's there's no stopping it from being impacted at that point because that's the length of time it takes for them to get prepped and ready and to get the season underway.

So we're at that point now, ladies and gentlemen, where we are going to experience a delay. And Jeff Passon's tweet not only confirms that, but really puts a dark and gloomy cloud over the situation because his tweet makes it feel more like we're not just losing spring training this is going to be possibly a lengthy delay that is going to rob us of a lot of our favorite time of the year like I said spring training is my favorite time of the year I

love the baseball season is really great but spring training especially here in Arizona is just wonderful and yeah I'm kind of I'm kind of bummed out about that so hopefully some miraculous thing happens in these two sides can see eye to eye

my solution again Scott Boris another idea, celebrity Big Brother is starting. So I say, again, to get ratings, we lock them in the house together. They can't leave. And they have to negotiate and work the deal out. And they will vote, we'll vote them out. Like it can be like an audience voting thing out. We'll vote them out one by one.

And that big table in the middle of the Big Brother dining room, you know, like throughout the season, it gets smaller. We'll just do that over the course of one week. Like they come out the next day. Table's smaller because there's less of you now. And we're going to keep voting you now. until you make a deal. And then it'll be nobody but Scott Boris and Rob Manfred together at a very tiny table

in an uncomfortable room. We should just have them duel. Like at some point, I mean, this is how they solved these types of issues in ancient times. Oh, I'm with it. I'm with Hamilton. Hamilton. Come on. Oh, yeah.

We could have a resolution really quick. Yeah. No, yeah, for sure. Uh-huh. Uh, because, you know, there's the, there's the rules. There's the 10 steps or the, The Ten Commandments. And then, of course, right.

Right. And then they have to have, you know, they'll have an advisor who comes and negotiates on their behalf. Like, that's how you get a deal done. When you have, like, Rob Manfred on that side and like, I don't know, Max Schurzor on the other, who's shooting at each other? I don't know. But Players Association on one side, MLB on the other. And I don't know. Let's get the deal done before someone dies.

That's what I say. Speaking of which, if you, if you, if these kind of mad ramblings appeal to you, you got to go over at go phtnx.com. Jesse has a brand new article we're going to talk about a little bit later, but go over there, sign up to become a member, get an annual membership and you will get a free t-shirt over at the pHNX locker.

Be like our friend, Josh Hunt in our comments. Get yourself or get somebody get you a membership for an anniversary, birthday. That's really, that's really the way to do it. That's the way to go. Make it so clear to someone in your life that you are just obsessed with PHN. Yeah. This is what you want. At some point, they're going to be like, wow.

I mean, I could get, you know, my boyfriend or whoever it is, my husband, whoever it is. I get them a lot of stuff, but like this is the thing they're going to enjoy the most. So correct. There you go. Correct. I know it's like not only that. Not only am I getting him a membership. I'm getting him a T-shirt on top of that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, the DMs. the DMs made my heart flutter to think of somebody loving me that much to get me a membership to go phtnx.com and then asking me like and giving me the shirt she could have kept the shirt for herself he would have never know that. That's true. That's true. He could have easily done that and she didn't. And he chose this podcast of all shirts to get. So again, shout out to Josh Hunt. We thank you so much. And you can be like Josh by signing up to be a member over at go phnx.com. Or you can get the annual

a month-to-month membership, if you don't get the annual one, you get your first month for just 50 cents. That's, again, another great deal. And once you decide that you like it, you can come back and join us this whole time. But, Jesse, we talk about your article. Obviously, you've proposed a question out there, but let's talk about what you have been up to in your writings

that took longer than necessary to post to our website. Yeah, it, this one, this one, took a while for me to kind of put together exactly where I was going with this. But, but yeah, I think it's pretty fun. It was a good time. It was a good month. It was a good month, Jesse. I don't care what anybody remembers about the 2021 season, but man, if you were around

for April, you could understand why those of us that were, were so confused as to what happened in May and beyond. Yeah. So, yeah, the article is basically looking back on April of last year. which I'm guessing a lot of people have completely forgotten about because we all think 52 wins when we think of the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks. But they were actually pretty good for a little while there.

They were 14 and 12 in the month of April. They were tied with the Reds, as we talked about the other day, with the most run scored in baseball as of the end of April. And they were also, what was really interesting, is they were tied for the league lead in defensive run saved after April.

And of course, we've talked at length that how much their defense was an issue down the stretch. That wasn't the case at the beginning of the season. So suffice it to say, a lot of things went right in the month of April that very quickly spiraled after that, right? But my idea for my story was, hey, let's forget about May and June and July and August and September.

Let's forget about all of the trouble that the Diamondbacks brought us last season. let's just focus on April. Let's just live in that world for a little bit. And, yeah, it was fun. I just kind of look back on that month. And some of the crazy things that were happening in Diamondbacksland, Carson Kelly was knocking the cover off the ball.

There were some other fun things happening too. Yeah, it was an unreal start for him. He was really the highlight for me. He was hitting like three something, right? At some point, like 325 or something like that? It was over 340, but he was, his on base percentage was over 500. And he was slugging over 700. He had way more walks than strikeouts.

It was an incredible start. And he had a good season overall, but the months after that for Carton-Celly were a significant move in the opposite direction. But that's the thing is, is that he also got substantially injured a couple of times throughout the season. And I mean, you can be on a role when you're healthy, but it's just hard to get back to where you were at. especially, you know, like, obviously you're limited by the injury, but I think that there's got to be a point where, uh, you're frustrated that you're not as good as you were. Uh, you know what I mean?

Like I, I know how I am after I don't play call of duty for three months, Jesse. And when I hop on there, I'm rusty. I'm bad. I die a lot. And I don't want to play the game anymore. You're right there. The Carson Kelly struggles coming back from injury is just like when you don't Just like when I don't play Call of Duty,

hey, video gamers out there will understand where I'm coming from on that one. But no, I'm just saying it's when you stop doing something that you might have been really good at at one point. And then, you know, you take a hiatus from it due to injury due to whatever reason, right? And you come back to it. It's frustrating when you're not as good as you were. And I feel like, again, it only causes sometimes you to press even more, which doesn't help. and then you start getting more, you know, like the frustrations, especially with baseball, just kind of build.

At times you can't stop hitting the ball. It's like golf is another one of those games where sometimes where you get keyed in on golf, you can just be incredible, no matter who you are. Normal person, you can be just locked in. And then you come back to play the very next weekend and you're terrible all over again. Right. And that's like that's the part of games like that, like, you know, batting in a box and golf and those kind of things that that are about your swing and your timing and being locked in for a period of time and then not, you know,

or or just losing it. Just, you know, losing the ability to do something that a week ago, you, it seemed effortless. Like you couldn't stop hitting the ball, you know. Like I watch old clips of Barry Bonds and it seems like he's hitting a goddamn beach ball with a tennis racket. Like, you can't pitch anywhere close to Barry Bonds and not have him hit the ball. It was stupid. He would swing so far out of the strike zone and still hit the ball. And again, like watching someone of his hitting prowess hit, you just like, I can only imagine being that good at the game of baseball.

Right. And the, the bitch about it is that you are for very small period. You know, you have those flashes where like a day or a week, you know, you're outstanding. And it's it's the ones that put it together consistently for a long period of time. Those are the ones that end up being the great players, right? But like I can only imagine just even if you're not injured, how losing that touch, you know. And again, like what the Diamondbacks went through this season, it, I can only imagine after the start in April that they had, how frustrating it was for things to go as south as it did.

And then just again, constantly trying to do everything you can to be like, no, there's no way. Like there's no way we're going to lose a historic amount of games. There's no way we're going to set a franchise record. And so every time you go out there, you're pressing that much harder to not lose the game. And you're just losing the games that much more because baseball's like that. You can't just go out there and demand success and create it out of nowhere. It's got to be the right.

kind of, you know, headspace. And they definitely were not in it after April. I remember Jake Lamb was kind of the same way in that he would start the season really, really well and not necessarily due to injury, but he would just, he would just kind of fade down the stretch. That's, that's something that we see with certain players. And I think it's something we, we've kind of seen with Carson Kelly to a certain degree. I think he's kind of tended to start out of the gate really, really well. And then kind of fade toward the, toward the end of the season. So last year definitely an injury, I'm sure, played a role there. But it'd be interesting to see if he can be more consistent this year. Motion in our comments says,

looks like the Aces are going to be the 2022 Diamondbacks at this rate, and he's 100% right about that. And I'm okay with it. I'm with it. So whatever we need to do to have some good players up here. And especially with how high those seven players we talked about yesterday are ranked with Keith Law's system. It's a lot of players. And it's good to see that many that are that are close and around that same time frame. Yeah. Hey, Alec Thomas isn't on the 40 man.

So we'd still have, you know, Diamondbacks would still have Alec Thomas even if, you know, there's no guys from the 40. So what you're saying is is go watch spring training. There you go. There you go. Although, yeah, I don't know what it'll look like. I don't think that if the lockout is still going, I don't think you'd be able to attend games. I don't, I don't know if you'd even. and be able to go over there as a fan

just to watch some guys work out. It's a pretty bizarre scenario. So we'll have to see what that looks like. If it happens, hopefully it doesn't happen. Jesse, we have a new sponsor, by the way, which I want to give a shout out to. We are now sponsoring with Athletic Greens. And here's a really weird, coincidental kind of thing.

When I got back from D.C., I was given some of this product from our sponsor. from from from from the fine folks at p hnx and i i i you know be coming back from having the stomach flu and then finding out i had covid uh really sucked and i wasn't really able to start taking something especially like this that i thought was going to kind of like mess with my system because it's a you know it's it's it's vitamins it's minerals it's whole food source superfoods uh probiotics you know and it's just things that i was a bit hesitant to start taking uh And then I got to a point where I didn't really have anything in my house left to drink that wasn't alcohol because I wasn't drinking alcohol.

And I had drink pretty much all of like our, you know, liquids that I could drink. So I started taking athletic greens. And it's really weird. I am a big time like I have issues with my esophagus and I take a lot of, uh, um, thumps, you know, like a lot of acid reducers and things like that. Yeah. And just, and it's weird, it's weird because as, uh, you know, obviously being a sponsor, uh, I want to say good things about this company, but I really from personal experience, I have nothing but amazing things to say about them because I haven't been taking like,

uh, heartburn reducers and such since I've been taking this. And it's, uh, over the course of the last week, it's kind of become part of my daily routine. And I, I honestly have nothing but really good things to say about this. Now, I am a pretty, uh, unhealthy person. So I'll say that. Like I drink energy drinks. I drink pre-workout supplements on empty stomachs. I typically drink things and do things that probably I shouldn't or I don't take it the right way.

And this is a fantastic product. And I know a lot of people have heard about it lately. I know it's kind of been kind of popping up everywhere. But, you know, honestly, I, the idea of being able to take one scoop of something and drink it and be done with like my supplements and my vitamins. And especially like my wife is dieting right now. She has to take a number of greens every day. And like the ones who satisfies that number of greens that she needs to take for this diet.

So yeah, very quickly, Athletic Greens has become a part of our lives here at the Monta household. So right now they're giving you one free year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens.com. Go for the Diamondbacks. and again, it's athletic greens.com. So just use code diamondbacks and take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. And Jesse, I'm going to get you some because I'm telling you. Please do.

Yeah. It's, I don't know. Like I said, I've had issues with a lot of stomach stuff and I don't really take great care of myself. I go to my doctor and I talk to him about everything except like the daily ailment that I have all the time. everything good yeah i mean i have heartburn every day but like yeah no big deal and uh again honestly i've been taking this stuff for a week and i haven't been using uh my normal like uh pepsid acid reducers any of that stuff so wow i it's like i'm all about it because if i can't if i can take something that's not chemicals uh it's definitely better right so uh go check out

athletic greens for sure uh and i have going vitamin d is there vitamin d is that one of the that you mentioned vitamin D yeah that's i think one of the freebies that they add i could i could use i could use some of that derrick because the sun doesn't come out in the pacific northwest ever so i actually need to get that probably as soon as possible we have had to just there are a number of people in my life who who insist that i start taking vitamin d otherwise they're convinced i'm just going to like shrivel up into a reason we are going to get you so much sun when you i'm going to get like we're going to get you so So tan when you move to Phoenix.

I'm just going to burn. Yeah. Well, remember the other day we talked about fixing the Arizona Diamondbacks, Jesse, and we kind of pretended like we were multi-billionaire Bitcoin guys that like maybe have one year left to see the Diamondbacks do some things. Well, I'm going to take a stab tonight at fixing the Arizona Diamondbacks. You're going to do it. You're going to fix them.

I am going to fix them in one evening with three guys. That's all it's going to take, Jesse, is three guys. I'm going to spend a lot of money on those three guys, but we're going to take a stab at it. Now, we chose to go in two different directions. We're going to talk on Thursday about your ideas on some trades that you would make in order to fix the Arizona Diamondbacks. But I am going to do what billionaires with no responsibilities do,

and I'm going to throw money at it. I'm going to throw money at the problem. The lockout is going to end, Jesse. and I am going to take my newly acquired Arizona Diamondbacks team, and I'm going to go out and I'm going to throw $160 million over six years at Chris Bryant. Wow. And I'm going to fix. That explains the cover photo then.

That is the cover photo. Now, I need Chris Bryant in my life. Here's why, right? First, to obviously get him off the San Francisco Giants. That's a priority. We need him to not be on the Giants or the Dodgers. or the Padres. So that it's,

it's almost a defensive move as far as trying to get him away from other teams in the NL West. The other thing is, obviously he is one of the most effective as far as war is concerned, as free agents available on the market. And that's my focus,

is bringing in players that are going to add wins to this team. Chris Bryant is still 30 years old. So as far as I'm concerned, a veteran 36-year-old, Chris Bryant still on this team, mashing the ball next to the likes of Alec Thomas and Christian Robinson and Corbyn Carroll is a fantastic idea. It doesn't seem that far-fetched considering he seems like a pretty good athlete that's going to have a long career. I don't

doubt that Chris Bryant will still have a good baseball career into his mid-30s. So I don't mind that. I'm making sure that none of the guys that I'm throwing money at are over 30 because that's a critical part of this plan is I'm essentially creating to a degree a new core with Cotel Marte, Carson Kelly, and Zach Gall. Right. And these guys are all critical to that. So now that I've solved the third base problem, I'm going to solve right field. I don't feel like we necessarily need to fill every positional need, which at this point consists of the starting rotation, third base, center field, right field. So I am allowing for still some flexibility as far as we're going to do in the close future.

Maybe Alec Thomas comes up. Maybe we fill it with, you know, one of the young players, right? But in right field, we're putting Nick Castiano's, right? You just went to like top free agents and found the most expensive ones. I did not Google top free agents. I told you I have a plan. Now, Chris Bryant has a secondary reason, right? Everybody from Chicago loves him.

And if you're a Phoenician, you know. that Phoenix is Little Chicago. We have a lot of Chicago transplants. We have a lot of Chicago restaurants and eateries. That is fair. There is a large population of people here that are fans and they stay fans. Chicago Cubs fans, especially when you win a World Series for their team and end a decade or like century long, you know, curse. You are forever endeared to them.

So Chris Bryant being on this team is going to attract new fans to this team, which Nick Castiano will also do, right? There's the whole joke, you know, with the fly ball, Nick Castiano's, right? But more importantly, it's, I've told you in the past, it's his relationship with Joe Mather. Right. I think if you got Nick Castiano, who's already a part of Joe Mather's system and has completely bought into what Joe Mather is doing, I think other people will buy in too because obviously he's had success.

And with him being here as a leader on the team, I think that impacts the rest of the team. I think that impacts the rest of the team. I'm not just throwing money at top free agents. I'm throwing money where the money will be effective. I'm thinking these are moves that will not only make these guys, bring these guys to the team, obviously, top right fielder, top third baseman, right? But if the Diamondbacks want to make moves and they want to do something,

this is something, and this isn't just throwing money at guys that aren't talented. These are guys that have proven over the years that they are really good baseball players. and then I'm stealing Carlos Rodan from the Chicago White Sox and I'm giving him all the money that he wants. Five years, $75 million. A young player, fantastic piece of the rotation. And honestly, there's my one-two punch with him and Zach Gallen, with Madison Bumgarner being moved down lower in the rotation, but still there and still effective because I think Brent Strom is going to get something out of Madison Bumgarner that we haven't seen yet of Mad Bum in a Diamondbacks jersey, right? So that's it.

Now, yes, that's going to cost you 300. What's the damage, Derek? $350 million is what that's going to cost you over the next five to six years. But I don't feel like that's that ridiculous compared to what the Texas Rangers spent. And I don't know if these guys would actually go for this or if they're going to go for more on the market. The market's going to be crazy once it opens back up. And I think with the expedited time frame, I think teams are going to go. crazy and they're going to make decisions that they wouldn't normally make.

It also means that players could find themselves in a position where they're not picked up and might have to, might have to, you know, settle for less than they want. Nick Castiano's hitting deep fly balls to left field at Chase Field. Sounds good. Yes, sir. But yes, that's my idea. Now, okay, now, that's not it, though, Jesse. That's not it because now I'm going to pair that with changing the jerseys

back to purple and teal i'm going to do this all at once now you fix the problem i'm going to do this now okay here's the thing and when we introduce these three guys they're going to be introduced at the same time and they're going to all be in the purple and teal jerseys and i'm doing this because this is what i want to send as a message not only a unity thing where we're not going to have these guys all like we're doing this like almost like miami heat style with lebron james back in the day lasers and smoke show and stuff i'm going to get people excited about it but i'm going to be people back to the chase field. I'm going to bring people back with affordable ticket packages. I'm going to bring back quality eateries. Put me in charge of this team. Give me all the money.

And I will make you more money. That's the way that this works. You got to spend money to make money, that kind of deal, right? So that's what I'm proposing. Will it work? I don't know, Jesse. I don't know. People would go crazy over the purple and teal. You'd attract a lot of fans just by virtue of that But you mean to tell me that it wouldn't cause like the ultimate stir? Like let's say, let's say even if you added two of these three guys, you mean to tell me people wouldn't be excited and rejuvenated? I feel like at times they think that it's a matter of, you know, people losing interest in the team or something.

No, it's that you're not providing them with an exciting product. And you can make them, you can make all the fancy commercials. you can put up graphics, you can choose whoever you want to be your new face of the team, right? To put David Peralta up on a poster, Cotel Marte, it doesn't matter. It's not whether or not those guys, like, attract people. It's the fact that people know this team isn't good, and they're not coming out to see them because they don't feel like you're trying to put a good team on the field. You know, it's a very transparent feeling.

So anyway, that's all I got. We've gone on for way too long, but I'm going to feel. fix the diamondbacks, Jesse. I'm telling you. You can find out more over at go phnx.com. Obviously, if you haven't signed up to a member, do that. Most importantly, go to Draft King's sportsbook, use our code of pHNX, and get down on this Super Bowl 56 action. You can get 56 to 1 odds, which are just ridiculous. And you'll get yourself that for getting $5, Jesse, you'll get $280 in free bets right now using our code of pHNX. And if you aren't a new member, obviously you can do what

I'm going to do during Super Bowl weekend. And I'm going to combine multiple bets for a same game and a same game parlay. I can't wait to see what the options are once you open up that same game parlay menu and see what crazy things. I'm more looking forward to like mascot sightings, coin tosses. I want the ridiculous stuff. Can you bet on like the halftime show? There's got to be like a half time.

I don't know. I don't know. I bet on the Royal Rumble last weekend, Jesse. So I mean, you can pretty much bet on a lot of things on the draft king sportsbook app. Remember, it is safe, secure, and reliable. Best of all, you can deposit, withdraw your cash whenever you want. And use our promo code, again, if you're a new customer, PHNX over at the Draft King Sports Book,

the official sports betting partner of Super Bowl 56. 21 and over only, Arizona only, gambling problem, dial 1,800 next step. New customers only, eligibility restrictions apply. See draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. And that's all I got. Thank you guys again so much for checking out the show. We appreciate you guys being here in the comments with us. again, happy anniversary to Josh Hunt and his fantastic wife for getting that membership.

You can get yourself a membership. Get your wife to get you one. If not, if you are a wife, get your spouse to get you one, whatever. Get somebody to buy you one or buy yourself one over at go phtonx.com. And you'll get that free t-shirt. If you already have a membership and you just want another t-shirt, my wife will not stop bothering me about the Booker lowrider shirt. She keeps bringing it up to me in the most casual.

way. She's like, hey, did you get that shirt? Hey, I was going to go to the Sun's game next weekend. Did you have that shirt? So I think she's getting that shirt for Valentine's Day. But of course, you can buy your significant other, a fantastic shirt over at PHNX Locker.com for this Valentine's Day when we're going to have the MLB lockout end, Jesse, because 14th is the day. Thank you guys so much for checking out the show. Like I said, if you're watching this right now on YouTube, make sure to subscribe, sign up for our notifications. That way you don't miss any of the wonderful content coming. out from the PHNX team. We have some amazing announcements coming this week. So I hope you guys

are excited about that. Shout out to our new PHNX Sundevils crew over at the ASU. If you're listening right now on your favorite audio podcasting at, make sure you subscribe if you haven't done so already. And please leave us a five-star review. We've discussed this, but Jesse is a five-star man. This is the face of a five-star man over here. So please drop us a five-star review. No matter how wrong he was. He's wrong, but he's accepted it. And we love him for it. But, We thank you guys again. On behalf of Jesse and myself, we appreciate you so much. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when the news about the baseball negotiations isn't so depressing.