PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Will pitchers and catchers struggle with MLB’s new rules being implemented this spring?

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Reporting Day! Baseball is officially back and comes loaded with new rules this season for players to adapt to. We discuss Rob Manfred and Torey Lovullo’s comments on the new rules, as well as some more projections for the Diamondbacks in 2023.BUY D-BACKS TICKETS HERE: https://gametime.hnyj8s.net/c/3442941/1410622/10874 SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX: Make sure to get your hands on our new “Slim Valley Reaper” t-shirt! Go to https://phnxlocker.com/products/slim-valley-reaper now!DraftKings: Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now (https://bit.ly/3Jl1dMX), use promo code PHNX and make your first deposit of FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS INSTANTLY! Gambling Problem? Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (CO/IL/IN/LA/MD/MI/NJ/OH/PA/TN/WV/WY), 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS/NH), 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), visit OPGR.org (OR), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA).21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/KS/LA(select parishes)/MD/MI /NJ/ NY/OH/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. VOID IN ONT. Eligibility restrictions apply. BONUS bets: Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 bet. $200 issued as bonus bets that expire 7 days (168 hours) after being awarded.  See terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/basketballlterms.OGeez!: Learn more about OGeez! at https://ogeezbrands.com//. Must be 21 years or older to purchase.Underdog Fantasy: Sign up for Underdog Fantasy today! Go to the link https://play.underdogfantasy.com/p-phnx and use promo code “PHNX” to receive a deposit match up to $100Four Peaks: Drink, eat, find, and experience Four Peaks at https://www.fourpeaks.com/.  Must be 21 or older. Enjoy responsibly. Bad Birdie: Use code “PHNXBB15” for 15% off your next order https://glnk.io/7qnq/phnx-sportsMor Furniture: Save up to 50% all through the holidays! Check out https://morfurniture.comRoman: Go to https://ro.co/PHNX today to get 20% off your entire first order. 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. 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.

Are there? Joe. Yeah, look who's back. It's the father-overlord Jacob himself. Look of pure terror. Oh, my God. I was like, what is happening right now? This is insane.

Well, we are so glad to have you back, sir. And so glad to see her. We weren't obligated to say that at all. No, we weren't. Not until he switched a video up and made us be obligated to say it. But of course, thank you. For bringing your wonderful bundle of joy into our show. And of course, that child likes me more.

That's all I'm going to say. The child must be protected at all cost is all I'm saying. But welcome it, of course. That is Faj. Faj is back. And we are excited to have it back. Finally, we'll have some order around here because things have been chaotic without him.

This is the PHNXD back show. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as the guy that used to be in charge of things around here before Faj returned. This guy's the vice mayor. He's thunderstick, Jesse Friedman. And he was on fire today out there. at MLB Media Day, weren't you? I mean, I guess.

That's the same kind of intensity you brought all day long. Take better photos, Jesse. Let's go. You got to take better photos, Jesse. That's a fact. But welcome in. This show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King Sportsbook app. America's top-rated sportsbook app.

And we are very excited. We had a very busy day. Baseball is back. Bitch. It is back. It's here. It's now. You can't run from it now.

We are committed to it. Nine months of our lives gone down, down the two. I guess is what I'm saying. I feel like I'm just, I'm so rusty on, on these days where you wake up in the morning and you're thinking about baseball. And then you're just attending baseball events for the entire day.

Just all day. Just the entire day. We had not only. For the last two days, basically. We have been, for the last two days. We had been in baseball meetings. Yesterday ended a little bit earlier.

And we did our show a little bit earlier yesterday. But yeah, we're doing the 5 p.m. thing now, Derek. And, yeah, this will become a normal thing for us. theoretically. So 5 p.m. tomorrow, 5 p.m. the day after that. That's right. 5 p.m. That's the new time. 5 p.m. at least during spring training. And then of course, well, we always welcome your feedback. So of course, if you are a P.HNX diehard, make sure to leave us some comments even here in the chat about your thoughts on our time frame. We want to make sure

that we are bringing this show to you when you guys want it. And of course, with all of the stuff going on here in Arizona, in spring training happening, we kind of need, We need the day to kind of absorb it all. Today was a very packed day as far as our adventures go. Of course, pitchers and catchers reported today, and we were very excited about that. To be back out at Salt River Fields, to hear that glove, that ball in that man. Oh, my God, it was so good.

It was so good to be out there. And, of course, we got to see the majority of the pitching staff out there, kind of throwing some BPs and seeing what they look like. We talked to Drey Jameson, Valentine's Drey King. Friend of the show. He was very excited to see us as everybody. course. I think he was excited to see me, Derek.

I don't know. I don't know. He was cursing with one of us and it wasn't you. But I will say that he was very excited about the way the ball was coming out today. And I mean, that's very encouraging for somebody who seems so ready for the competition that this camp is going to bring. I mean, we talked to Tori today about depth. We asked him, I asked him if he felt like this was the deepest team that they've had. And at least in his time here as manager, and he felt.

feels it is. He feels like obviously what happened with 2021 definitely left a mark, as we've talked about it leaving a mark, and that they will make sure that they never leave themselves in that position again, which I think is why we're seeing the depth that they went out and added this last season. I think it's important to note that there's a difference between having, like having the deepest team that maybe Tori Lavello's had and having the best team. By saying that the D-BACs have the deepest team, we're not necessarily saying that this is the best team that Tori Lavello as ever had, right? I mean, 2017, 2018, those were some pretty darn good baseball teams.

But the reason that those teams were good was because of the elite level talent, right? It was because of Paul Goldschmidt. It was because of Zach Granky. It's because of Robbie Ray, who was very good in 2017. That's kind of the difference between, you know, that year and this year. The debats don't necessarily have that top level talent at this point. But in terms of depth on the roster, that part is impressive. At least I'm sorry to cut you off.

Not yet, not yet, not yet. Right. At least big, not big league proven talent. The thing that's exciting about the young talent on this team is the fact that it is the future, right? So like even if we see a regression from some of these guys like we saw with Alec Thomas at the end of last season, it's no reason to really panic because these guys are very young. They are gaining that experience. And of course, this team isn't really in a must win now situation, right?

We were very excited about the Kevin Durant news. But you have to admit that the Phoenix Suns are in a must win now situation. based on the way they've constructed their roster. The Diamondbacks have the luxury right now of even if they don't perform very well next season, there's still a lot of growth there. These guys are very young, and we're going to see them continue to mature as members of this organization. It sounds like they are very committed to the team that they have. And another interesting thing is Tori said he was committed to playing guys every day

and not switching things up as much as he has in the past. So it's going to be interesting to see him as a manager going forward in 2023. I think there's some evolution. that's happening with Tori Lavello on a few things. One of the main things that we talked about today with him was the closing role, right? Which is one of the big questions for this team going in to spring training. Who's going to close, right? We've talked about Kevin Gingle, Scott McGuff, right?

Maybe Andrew Chaffin coming in now. He's officially a member of the team. We'll talk some Andrew Chaffin here in a second as well. But yeah, it sounds like Tori Lavello is more open to going into this season without a predefined closer, which is something that the debacks have always had under Tori Lavello's regime. It seems like he's kind of evolved. It seems like a lot of that has come from the front office. Mike Hazen has said in the past that it doesn't really sound like he and the front office

care that much about having a defined closer, whereas Tori Lavello likes to have one. I think that's kind of been a point of disagreement between those two parties in the past. And it sounds like the front office is kind of convincing at Tori Lavello in small ways. Like maybe you don't need to go into the season having these super rigid defined roles. It sounds like Tories may be pulled back on that a little bit. I think one thing we saw last year was a commitment to Mark Malanson being the closer, even when things went south for Malanson.

I think it was a perfect example of how you can't necessarily just commit to a guy just because that guy's title is closer. That's the problem with that and that philosophy. However, it's a very popular philosophy in Major League Baseball. a lot of managers do have a particular closer, and that is their most dominant relief pitcher that they know they can turn to night in, night out, to win games for them. And I just think that one thing Tori brought up

that I found interesting was bringing up the Tampa Bay Rays, who once again kind of break the mold when it comes to baseball philosophies. They kind of broke the mold about the idea of like overpaying guys just because they won you a World Series, and that's why we see that team, wait, no, I'm sorry, I'm thinking of hard. raised it they have no problem they have no problem like letting guys go away right they have no problem even when they had guys that were very very good very talented uh they had no problem

not committing huge amounts of money to guys and and honestly with the way that they've kind of stayed stayed competitive a bit more than the diamond backs have it's not a terrible philosophy to have to not be hanging on to big contracts of guys just because yeah you know now they're like like what we talked about with zack gallon zack gallon's contract uh if the diamondbacks do resign or bring them back it's going to be huge right so So it's like it really depends on that point where the diamondbacks are and being competitive on deciding if they do give someone a gigantic contract like that to stay a part of this organization. But the Tampa Bay Area has also kind of changed things when it came to just using the best available relief pitcher that matched up against the opposing team in that ninth inning role, regardless of, you know, of who's been there or who's been successful or whatever. They just kind of play it the same way you would with any relief pitcher late.

in a game and they just, they seem to have had success with it. There are just some pros and cons to naming a closer at the beginning of the year, right? The pro is that that guy knows his role, right? When the game is on the line, when you have that lead in the ninth inning, everybody knows who's getting the ball, right? I think there's some value in that. But there's also this ugly flip side to it that we've seen a lot of over the last few years, which is when you name a closer at the beginning of the year, you're going to stick with him.

You're going to stick with him even when it doesn't make sense to stick with him. And you could make an argument that naming closers has lost the diamondbacks a lot of games because that's why Mark Malanson was still going out there. Right. That's why Brad Boxburger, Greg Holland, right? Some of these closers the last few years. Stop it. I got to name the names, Derek. I got to name the names to make my point. I think a big reason why those names have cost games for this organization is because they were named the closer. And so you kind of had to go back to them. Yeah. Going back in the chat, we had a couple of good questions or a good point. First of all, Gabriel Ferris says dinner date with the boys. Let's go. Let's fucking go. That's right. I'm starving.

All I had to eat today, you know, funny story. All I had to eat today was a Nutragrame bar, which I thought I ate for breakfast. And then when I was looking for a charger with Jesse, I found my Nutragrame bar that I apparently had eaten. That's all I've had to eat today. So things aren't looking good. But I'm excited and I could use some dinner. Michael asks, did you see Mason Saunders at all today? No, but I did hear that Madison Bumgar.

was there. I don't know about Mason. Some people saw him. Somehow we never, I never actually saw Maddum today. Oh, right, right. Yeah, I do believe Mason and Madison did make separate appearances today. And Ben asked, how does going to workouts as a fan actually work by the way? Well, they have an area for you to stand in and you can stand, like, you can kind of see the bullpens. They allow you to kind of walk around the different fields, especially once the workouts kind of spread out. Today, they were just kind of, basically in one area. It was mostly the pitchers and catchers just doing the bullpens over over over there.

But you could watch it from where you were at. You can get autographs. There were not very many fans out there. Not that many. No, I mean, there's a lot of real estate out there to be had. There is. Plenty of space. Plenty of space.

And I think you'll probably have some good luck getting autographs and whatnot. Because there were not that many fans out there today. And a lot of the position players were out there. They said that a lot of the WBC guys are trying to get an early jump. on their workouts and just preparation for those games and the time that they're going to miss with the team. However, once we get through this first couple of days and we get to the entire squad being out there, you should see all the guys. And that's, you see a lot of fun stuff out there, to be honest, as a fan. I think you see a lot of just kind of, the one thing I always find

fascinating is how rudimentary their skills and their drills are, right? Yeah, it's like, hey, I think I could do that. Yeah, like they literally do stuff where they're like rolling a ball slowly on the ground to them and they're like playing catch and they're doing stuff that you just kind of think like, huh, that's kind of little league. Like that's what I would see like kids doing on the first day of coming back to baseball. But that's those are the basics. Those are the fundamentals that they literally start out with on day one and expand.

And I think that's kind of neat. And I just find that to be interesting because of course, you know, when we play baseball as kids, we think like, oh, this is kind of stupid, this is kind of silly to be doing this, the big league guys do that. Yeah, they really do kind of tear it down to like the bare bones of playing this game. And it is pretty crazy. I mean, even like when guys are throwing their bullpins, they'll just kind of play catch with the, you know, with the catcher for a little bit before they, before they actually start. So, yeah. Also, I also like the fact that you get to see some like backlock games at point during the workouts where it's like Diamondbacks players versus Diamondback players.

And a lot of times, like I think I brought this up before, but they're calling their own balls and strikes and such. Yeah, you can hear them chirping at each other. Yeah, they're chirping each other about it. It's great. And today was great. It was great to be out there. It was great to see some fans out there

enjoying the fact that you could be out there at these workouts. Because, again, I know it sucks that the fan fest went away, but I really feel like this is better than fan fest. You're not waiting in line. They're just walking past you. You get 20 autographs in like the same time frame that it took you to wait for the, you know, for the bathroom, potentially.

But it was also very good to see Andrew Chafin allegedly out there. We allegedly had media. I had no idea that was Andrew Chaffin. There was a large fellow with long hair and a gigantic beard. And apparently we were told it was Andrew Chafin. And then he came out and spoke and answered questions as Andrew Chafin, but there's no way to know that for sure. But our guy is back. He's hilarious.

Andrew Chafin is genuinely hilarious. I wasn't around the ballpark when Andrew Schaffin was a diamond back. So this is my first time getting to actually see him up close and hear him do interviews. He's like every single answer he gives, it feels like it's some sort of like tongue-in-cheek. It's like, wow, this guy like he has a hard time turning off like the, you know, his personality, which is great, which is exactly what you want to see in a baseball player. So it's fun getting to getting to chat with him for a little bit today. And I think we had a question here.

Gabriel asks, are they working out on Monday? Actually, Gabriel, because I love you so much, I'm going to look at the schedule because I have it right here. And I will tell you if they are working out for sure on Monday. But in the meantime, Andrew Chafin did get asked a couple of things about potentially being a closer. Tori Lovolo got asked about that. It doesn't seem like that's what they brought him back for. Lovolo talked about how in the past, how much he relied on Chafin.

And it sounds very much so, like Lovolo is very excited. to have Chaffin back so he can do that once again. People don't realize Andrew Chaffin leads baseball in appearances since 2017. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Andrew Chafin, like this guy that, you know, he's bounced around from, you know, several different teams these last two years. He's been one of the better relievers in the game for the last few years. But he's not really like a household name reliever.

So it's pretty crazy. Nobody has made more appearances in the last five, six years than that guy. It's crazy. Going back to Gabriel's question, yes, they are. working out on Monday. And for those that are interesting, because I know this was a topic that we discussed before, they are also working out on Saturday and Sunday. So you can go out and you can see pitchers and catchers work out this Saturday and Sunday. That starts at 940 both days, as well as on Monday, it starts at 940. So if you want to get out there, get out to Salt River

Fields early, get a chance to see the guys. They're very friendly. I was, guys said hello to me. Like, who's watching this show? I know who's watching this show. Buddy Kennedy's watching the show. Shout out, buddy. I love Buddy Kennedy. But yeah, I think that was the most exciting thing was seeing just everybody back. I mean, there were a lot of, there were a lot of guys that didn't necessarily need to be there back. Yeah, it wasn't just the WBC guys who were back among the position players.

Trying to think of other guy. We saw, we saw a WC guy. Catell is a WBC guy. We did see Kyle Lewis out there doing some something or other. I got a very exciting development. Jesse. Oh. Did it seem like Ketel remembered me this time?

I do think he did. He did. He came up and gave me a lot of remembering you. So he recognizes my face. I still could quiz him and I bet he doesn't know my name. I'm fine with it because I was so happy to see everybody out. He looked great by the way. Kattel looked very lean, I guess you could say.

Like he looked physically in very good physical shape. Like he has been working out during the off season. So that's very encouraging considering we talk about how big it would be for him to rebound. Back to, you know, what he was in 2021, even though the rest of this team was kind of a train wreck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, other guys we saw out there, Lordus Curiel Jr. made an appearance. He was at least in the clubhouse.

The hair in person is, it is impressive. It really is impressive. As far as guys that we saw throw bullpens, there were a few, at least, that went when I was there. We saw Ryan Nelson. We saw Dre Jameson, Bryce Jarvis, Debeck's prospect, Blake Walston, Daback's prospect as well. we're all out there. We're not entirely sure that Kyle Nelson and Ryan Nelson aren't actually related because say what you will.

There's a substantial height difference between the two. Right. Big brother, little brother kind of deal, but yeah, I forgot their numbers for a second. And so when Ryan Nelson came out, I was like,

oh, that's totally Kyle Nelson. And then he starts throwing right handed. And I'm like, oh, apparently either Kyle Nelson learned how to throw right handed or that's actually Ryan Nelson. And the answer was the latter to,

to no unsurprised. But you're, thank you're welcome for the little list that i brought yeah you did you did give me that list i will say uh uh jay jameson's bullpen it's always hard to judge bullpins like what are you really looking for but um it did seem like jameson uh was working on a few things he talked to us yesterday about adding a change up um i saw what appeared to be a few changeups that that looked effective um in in his bullpen today so uh always fun getting out there and just just kind of seeing what what guys are looking like at this point and i mean honestly it's uh

It's just a special place. It's all river fields is a lovely place. It really is. And seeing, again, Dre Jameson, as many of you saw on our Twitter account today, throwing to Gabriel Moreno, that had future vibes written all over it.

It was very cool to see. So it was just exciting. I'm ready for baseball to be here. And this team, you know, it's easy to doubt this team. It's easy to take a look at what they did and say,

did they really add enough or do enough to make this team different than what they were last year. Picota is. doubting this team. Oh, I'm someone at Pocote. I'm going to fight somebody at Pocoda before this episode is over. We're going to get to that. In the meantime, we have to remind you to check out Jesse's wonderful writing over at go phnx.com. And if you're not a diehard member yet, make sure to get a diehard membership so that you can get all of his writing. Full count is a wonderful

newsletter as well as the writings of Gerald, Craig and Howard. We got some wonderful writers around here. Make sure to get all of their stuff. Get yourself a free piece of merch like, this hat I'm wearing our t-shirt every year at the PhNX Locker.com as well as 20% off all future purchases. Members access to our members-only Discord where we are going to ask you guys what kind of shows you want to see during the regular season. We're not going to plan this. We're not going to take the heat on this one. We're putting the responsibility on you guys to decide when Jesse and I do shows. But all of that is what you get for being a die-hard member as well as members-only merch like a wonderful die-hard jacket, which don't use the inside part.

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It's the only compliment I get all day is when people thumb put a thumbs up on the show. You got a few compliments. They did. They like me out there, don't they? Also, I'm drinking a wonderful Four Peaks Brewing Company beer, and you should too.

So make sure to grab yourself some wonderful Four Peaks beer, wherever you get your beer at. And if you have a chance, check out their 8th Street pub where you can do some wonderful things like what they got coming up soon. They got an entire events calendar to check out over at 4Peaks.com backslash events for all your beer week entertainment as well as future events. But what's better than just drinking beer? Paring that beer with Girl Scout cookies. And that's what I do on a nightly basis at my house

because my daughter is a Girl Scout. So I don't get free cookies, by the way, which is. No? No, that seems like I have to I have to buy the extra boxes that are left over when they're stragglers and stuff like I get I spend way too much on Girl Scout cookies during this time of the year, but it's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth every single penny. Put those thin mince in the freezer right now is what I'm telling you to do. Check out four peaks cookie pairing at their A Street publication in Tempe on February 16th. So when is that? Is that a neat? That's tomorrow. Thursday. I don't even know what day it is anymore. But yeah, make sure to check them out. Must be 21 years or older to enjoy it and enjoy responsibly. Jesse we got to we got to see a PowerPoint presentation on some rules yesterday

we did that was very exciting and Derek had an opportunity to volunteer to go show off his pitching motion in front of Jeff Passon and all the other reporters and he didn't do it he sat on the sidelines

I'm smart I'm not a dumb man I heard the chuckles when someone got up there and started doing it shout out to Evan Thompson who was brave enough to get out there and get on the mouth I mean they weren't chuckling out of Like they were chuckling because they were like, oh man, I didn't like, I know this guy. Think they, you think they're going to pick them up?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were talking about like somebody's about to place a waiver claim or something on that, man, I'm pretty sure. I will say this, speaking of Jeff Passon, we were both very, we're both fans of hoodies and sweatpants. And today we saw Jeff Passon doing a live hit for ESPN with a tie, jacket, and shirt, sweatpants on. And that. His outfit is a total fraud. It was, just so everyone is fully aware of that.

And I mean, I had so much respect for this man. I can't tell you guys how much respect I have to Jeff Basson after that. But it was great meeting him. And it was great learning a bit more about these new rules because apparently I feel like, and I could be wrong off. I'm going to ask Jesse's opinion on this, but I feel like we understand the rules better than a lot of the players and the managers.

I don't know. Is that, is that bad to say? Because I'm just saying, like, we asked them about, specifics after learning what we learned in yesterday's rules meeting. And it doesn't feel like they have the specifics down yet to a T. Because there's a lot of them. I also like for for guys who have spent time in the minor leagues in the last few years, it's not going to be that big of a deal because all these rules were tested down there. Yeah. So like we talked to Dre Jameson yesterday. You know, he wasn't like it, it sounds like it, that's not something that's really been at the

forefront of his mind for the last few months because he already is experienced pretty much everything that's coming to baseball in 2023 anyway. But yeah, there were so many questions today to Tori Lavello in particular. Also, we talked with Rob Manfred as well, the commissioner, Major League Baseball, about the real changes. And from the D-BACs perspective, it sounds like they have everything they need to in place in order to get guys ready and prepared. It doesn't sound like the D-backs have put a whole lot of thought at this point into the

run-game side of things. Tori said that's kind of something that will come, Later on, a big question, of course, we were all interested in because, you know, I wrote about how Jake McCarthy could steal 60 bases and all this other nonsense because of what the pitch clock could possibly bring to the game. So we'll hear more from them down the road as the team works through this more. But yeah, I mean, this is a spring training like no other. You're not used to coming in and having to make all sorts of adjustments and whatnot. And I don't think it's been something that the players are thinking about much up to this point, but now that process starts. Once I started hearing some of the nuances and the specifics about the changes to like pitch delivery and things due to the pitch clock, that's where I started really seeing the layers of complexity that these rules have.

It's way more complex than I initially realized for sure. Like for instance, we were in a meeting and one of the presenters from MLB was Morgan Sword, who has an incredible name. That can't be a real name. I don't believe it is. No, there's no way. It's a wrestling name is what it is. But he showed us in a video that we're going to a clip here that we have for you where talking a little bit about how pitchers that move, how it's going to impact them because they need to come to a full stop in order for that pitch clock to stop essentially. And he also know when to like start the pitch clock.

When to start the pitch clock. The pitch clock starts when the pitcher starts their motion. But if you can't tell when a pitcher starts their motion, then it throws the whole system off. So that's like a new point of emphasis. That's the opposite because if that was the case and the pitch clock only runs when he's delivering, you're wrong about that. It's when the pitch clock stops because they need to stop it when he, when he, because it's not in the delivery that the pitch clock stops. It's when you come to like a full stop ready to the plate. So they don't have to be in the delivery for the pitch clock.

Once you start your pitching motion, you get. You only have 15 seconds to deliver the pitch once you start. No, thank you. You're obviously right. It starts the moment you get the ball back. from the catcher, and then it stops once you start your motion. And it's different out of the stretch. For instance, you don't have to come to a full stop out of the stretch, but you can only

have like one foot back. Yeah, one step back, one step forward. One step back, one step forward. And here he is explaining the nuances a little bit about that. So when a pitcher is kind of continually bouncing on his foot like this, it's not clear at what point you have begun your pitching delivery and complied with the timer. So again, I think we think we've cleaned that up and we should be good, but just to make you aware of it. All right.

And then secondly, from the wind-up position, there's a couple different areas of emphasis, but one is, and I'm going to show you a legal delivery here from Shane Bieber, where, you know, this is sort of the traditional setup where you watch his left leg here. He's kind of pumping his legs back and one step back and one step forward. Totally legal, right? Now, we have had pictures in the last couple of seasons to develop more complex windups where they are back and forth and taking multiple steps. The rulebook doesn't permit that, and we're just going to be a little bit better about calling that, so you only are allowed one step backward.

And see, it's, again, Mike, like you can see, that's the meeting we said in, by the way. It was like a college class, basically, about the new MLB rules. It was the coolest college lecture. Jesse was geeking out. I mean, Morgan Sword was holding a baseball. ball the whole time. Somehow just made him so much cooler. I don't know what it was.

Okay. So see, and Mark says I'm lost already with this explanation. You're absolutely right. They're just saying that in general, certain guys that have those pitching motions where they kind of bounce around and kind of have a lot of motion.

Johnny Quato, for instance, is an example that was given. Obviously, I don't like to give this example. Mike Clevenger, considering the kind of heat he gets for his pitching motion being kind of funny

and moving and never coming to a stop. A classic example is Luis Garcia as well from the Astros, whose delivery is now illegal. So there are some pitchers, and Tori was asked this today. We're not aware of any Diamondbacks pitchers at this point, but there are some pictures around the game that Major League Baseball has already warned, you need to change your delivery, or it is now going to be called a Bach when it maybe wasn't in the past. So this is a new point of emphasis that Major League Baseball is bringing in. Yeah, and the other thing about it is when they talk about, like, assessing violations for the pitch clock winding down or them not delivering or being ready before the pitch clock expires, they are merely talking about assessing a ball. That's it. Yeah, it's not the end of the world. Yeah, it's really not.

And they, you know, obviously Tori today talked about we don't want to be in those situations where we have bases loaded and someone's balking or walking someone in because they're violating the pitch clock rule, right? Another really interesting thing about this that they talked about was pitchers aren't going to necessarily be able to wait until the clock gets down to zero. They won't be able to do that because then the other team is going to have too good of a jump on everything. Like if a pitcher is consistently letting down to zero, the base runners are going to be able to get that jump. The batter is going to be able to have that like that jump on the ball coming in versus not really knowing when the pitcher is going to deliver. it, right? So there was just a lot of interesting stuff. We talked about the umpires will now have a technology, like a band. They said they can wear it on their wrist or their forearm or even their ankle, which I found to be hilarious, just thinking of them wearing like, and, you know,

it's like one of those tracking devices that we put on people who are home jailed. But it's definitely a tracking inklet at the same time. We won't, we won't be convinced otherwise. We're not going to release these umpires out to the wild without. knowing where they are. So we need to track them at all times. But there's a lot of technology actually being developed with this. They will have a system where they can speak to the other umpires now. It won't just be the intercom system for them talking about challenges.

They will have the ability to talk to the other umpires as well as someone in the booth in regards to the person running the clock. Yeah. And apparently the person running the clock is discouraged from talking the umpires ear off the entire game. Yeah. We're telling stories because you're bored up there. sitting alone, right? Yeah, that's not what the system is for.

But we also heard today from Tori Lavella that the debacks expect to use pitchcom for all of their communication this year between pitchers and catchers, which is another big thing that, you know, became more popular last season and this season. It sounds like that's all the debacks are going to do. Here again, yesterday was the technology. They were showing off what the umpires wrist bracelets were going to look like and what the little rumble pack essentially is going to look like. that will notify them about the pitch clock expiring.

This is Joe Martinez, who has the best hair. The best hair. Look at this incredible hair. But yeah, they were just showing what all the technologies are going to be for this. When the clock expires. It's a pretty, like... It's a pretty simple system. Yeah.

But basically, they're just saying that the umpires, the umpires are going to have to watch for the batter to be in the box by the 8 second mark. Yep. And at that point, their attention is diverted directly to doing their job, which is calling balls and strikes. And the rumble feature is essentially so that they don't have to actually be watching the clock.

These clocks are going to be in the stadium up kind of be over the outfield. And they'll also be on both sides of the batter's eye, which is, and those ones are especially frustrating at Slar River Fields because one of them's red. One of them's red and one of them's amber. and I hate it. It's the worst. And they said it's just because they tested it out there. So the original one they put was red,

but all of them will be the softer, easier amber color on your eyes. But I also don't really, like this goes back to umpires being human beings and making these calls, right? Like my biggest problem with all of this stuff is for at least this first year, this is so much to have going on in your head very quickly during an at-bat, during a delivery. And I feel like you're just giving the umpires more to have to monitor now.

And I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's something for them to think about outside of the strike zone. So maybe they can have like more of a pure strike zone instead of thinking about how much they hate the batter. And for what he said to him last time when he was going back to the dugout, I don't know. But Ben says we got to start bringing up more umps from AAA. You're not wrong.

Well, there are some. There are some umps coming up from AAA because we had several umpires retire. So those umpires are going to know what they're doing more than anyone else this season because they've dealt with a lot of this stuff already. That was one of the biggest stories coming out of MLB Media Day today as far as the rules. There was a lot of questions about that. But the other big focus was Diamond Sports Group missing their interest only payment. They officially missed it. I believe it was yesterday was when it was due.

$140 million. $140 million. So they are now technically on the road to default, which, a lot of people had a lot of questions for Rob Manfred today, his media availability in regards to that. One of the biggest questions, obviously, is what happens? Like, what happens if the R, if Valley Sports? Like, we know a little bit more, it seemed like, than some of the people around there.

We know that if Valley Sports defaults on this, that it's going to go, the company essentially, that, that aspect, Diamond Sports Group and everything that they kind of hold kind of defaults to the creditors, which are companies like Fidelity and, other investment firms, but they will not run it, obviously. They will just turn around and sell it off. Although we think it'd be hilarious if they did. Oh, man, we would love that. They probably won't.

Man, we talk about rule changes being thick. It's like this big if those guys get involved, all the red tape. But Rob Manfred was kind of asked about what's going to happen. Should they not be able, the biggest thing is should whoever, including these creditors that take over on the debt, should they not pay the major League Baseball teams, those contracts are essentially null and void, and baseball MLB would be responsible for broadcasting games, which they would do everything in their power to make sure that that doesn't take away from people being able to access the game. And this is what Rob Manfred had to say.

Forgive me with this question, because the question is very far away, but my mic is very good, it's very close to him. I'm just curious to sort of what your level of concern is here with the ripple effects of potentially in bankruptcy and just what do you see is sort of fall in that way? Yeah look the change you know it's hard to escape the reality that the change in media consumption has been particularly hard on the RSNs obviously we want all of our broadcast partners to be successful we don't want them to have financial difficulties and you know we have been spending a lot of time effort trying to work with Diamond to figure out exactly where they are you know obviously our first choice would be that Diamond pay the clubs what they're

contractually obligated to pay them but because I guess I'm a contingency planner by nature we are prepared no matter what happens with respect to Diamond to make sure the games are available to fans in their local markets we think it will be both linear in the traditional cable bundle and digitally on our own platforms. But that remains to be seen. As I said, our first hope is that Diamond figures out a way to pay the clubs and broadcast the games like they're contractually committed to do. And that's it. That's really what it comes down to at this point. They still don't know how Diamond sports is going to proceed. They seem to be in communication with them. And obviously it feels

like there is kind of a plan laid out. It's the reason why Diamond is defaulting on this payment opting to go to the bankruptcy route. But it is a little, it's a little unnerving, especially for a team like the Arizona Diamondbacks that rely very much on that contract due to the size of it for their budget and their finance planning. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of questions that were asked on this particular topic. There was a follow up about, you know, currently does, is Diamond still able to pay teams what they are contractually obligated to pay them? The answer to that question was yes, basically. At least Rob Manfred said that that is what their intent is.

That's the intent that has been communicated to Major League Baseball at this point. But he did, as you heard there, he talked about the possibility of Major League Baseball stepping in, which they are prepared to do, according to Rob Manfred, in order to deliver these games to local markets by themselves. I honestly don't know how Major League Baseball would do this. Last I checked, MLB Network did not have the scope of like broadcasting individual games and individual markets like 10 of them a night across the country. This would require a lot of heavy lifting on their end, but I guess they've already kind of figured out how that would work practically. But yeah, I mean, if this happens, it will be significant for a number of reasons.

Well, and we also had questions about are the broadcasters, team employees or would they have to, if MLB brought in broadcasters, would they have to be outside, you know, or would they be MLB broadcasters? Would they be like national broadcasters? It would appear that it would still be the Diamondbacks broadcast team because they are employees of the team and not Valley Sports Arizona, for instance, in our case. Even like even if they did have the ability to switch broadcasters with teams, I doubt they would. That doesn't seem like, I mean, you'd hate to take this entire situation and cause people. to lose their jobs as a result. So I would be pretty surprised if that changed. Ben says if he actually hopes they pay and keep the contract, he's probably the only one at this point because the possibilities for what they could do without those contracts is too good. That's absolutely one of the things that they address blackouts.

And they said that blackouts has been the one word that they've tried to address the one thing that they've tried to fix with this entire situation is trying to bring sports, baseball, their sport to as many people as possible that actually want to watch it. to not restrict it, to not make it so that you're paying for a service that doesn't allow you to watch your team just because you live in the city that the team plays or you live close to there, which is even more outrageous. We talk to people that live back east. Sean DePaz was saying what a nightmare buffalo is, for instance, because you get restricted from all of these other regional areas that are close to you. And I know here we've had people in California and Las Vegas and other places say that they are unable to watch Diamondbacks games. for that exact reason and it sucks it really sucks so pugs and hug says i want you guys to broadcast let's go

let's go we we have we have talked about that in the past i'm the play-by-play guy derrick does the color commentary i think we can make it work i'm ready for it damon's our sideline reporter yeah oh yeah damon's with it let's go i'm trained yeah he's ready he's ready to go i know it so of course it's going to be interesting to see how it develops and what it what it how it impacts us here in the valley there are some teams that don't have to worry about about the impact of it because Diamond Sports does not broadcast their games. So the fact that Diamondbacks are one of the teams that this impacts makes it something that we need to watch. Obviously, I know how people feel about Valley Sports Arizona and about how accessing their games in other ways is difficult.

But hopefully we see this situation, you know, not impact us being able to watch baseball. One of the biggest things that came out from Rod Manfred today was a question that, was asked to him if major league baseball does go through and take over broadcast and they're the ones uh you know who are broadcasting games directly to people around the country um would they have the ability to maintain all of the revenue that major league baseball teams are bringing in on all of their tv deals and the answer from rob manfred was not in the short term nope those are his exact answer is no so and that's that's the answer that we feared right we feared the possibility that as a result of this, the Diamondbacks could be losing out on TV revenue that is a very

significant portion of the, at least a relatively significant portion of what they bring in on a year-to-year basis. And it could affect the amount of money that the debacks are able to invest in their team. Maybe it already has affected the amount of money the Diamondbacks have been able to invest. I know they have moved the payroll forward about 20, 25% this year. But maybe they were prepared to do more in this situation derailed. that. So we'll have to see how that unfolds this year. Ryan H. in the comments asks, what's your catchphrase for a home run? Jesse? I don't have one. I don't. And believe it. So I was trying to be a play-by-play broadcaster

as of a few years ago. And I did an internship and I did play by play for a team for a whole summer. And that was the one. Now fortunately, the team I covered never hit home runs. So I didn't. This wasn't actually. Not never. Not never. I'm being over the dramatic. Very rarely. So it was never a huge, a huge issue. But that was one thing I couldn't figure out because anything I came up with didn't seem good enough. Like that's one thing if you're a play-by-play guy, you got to nail the home run call. And I haven't figured it out yet. You have any advice, Derek? Anything come to mind for you? You got to do something that has a lot of energy to it. And preferably something that has like a pop culture reference, which you're not

very good at, also entwined. So like my home run call, for instance, would be like, I will smash your face, your face in the windshield and then take your mother, Dorothy Mantooth out for a nice seafood dinner and never call her again. See, that works for like a home run goal. That's a mouthful. It's a lot. I mean, if I wanted to maybe like kiss that bitch goodbye,

like I would need to be a little like, there would need to be like some sass on it. Kiss that bitch goodbye. Like that's I don't think it's offensive and I'm probably going to get canceled. I don't think you're allowed to say that on like public TV and radio. Look, we we don't do things traditionally around here. You know

that Jesse. But of course, I don't know. I think that either way. It would be much more exciting than what we're getting out. That first thing you said, I mean, that that's long enough that the hitter might be all the way on the basis. That's what I'm saying. Which is fair, which is I respect that. Right. Like something that you can really just get. See, and whammy, whammy. It started off with a whammy. It's an anchorman reference. You probably haven't seen that film. But yeah, I figured that one. See, Mark's on board with it. More furniture, by the way. Jesse needs your help. He needs some furniture. idea. So make sure to tell Jesse what he needs to buy for his home and get what you need to

buy for your home. You know, this is a wonderful time of the year. This is when we have guests here in Arizona because they think that this is like they're escaping their winter, their habitat, wherever they have bad weather at. They come here. Like, oh, this is beautiful? How much is your place? Is there a place available in this area? That's where you, that's where we got to send them back in, right? But I get in the meantime, you want to make things comfortable for them. So grab some furniture for more furniture.com. If you have guests coming over, the big games. I know that, but get ready for baseball season. You know you're going to want to watch it in a big,

nice comfy chair, and you can get yours over at MooreFurniture.com. You can get their white glove delivery service as well and have them set it up for you so you don't have to do anything. Save big on the best furniture in the valley when you head to MoreFurniture.com. And also, if you like saving money, not just that.

Also, get down on game time. Jesse's favorite app in the whole wide world because he loves procrastinating and he loves saving money. He also loves aesthetically pleasing app. So, go down on game time app, get the game time app and save yourself money last minute. You know you want to buy tickets, but you forgot that they were even coming to town, the concert, the show, the sporting event. So grab your tickets at the last minute with the new schedule, by the way, with MLB.

Very exciting. A lot of fresh faces coming to Chase Field that we've never seen here before, a lot of big matchups, a lot of fun teams. The one thing I didn't think about was they did say that you will see every major league baseball team here every two years. So over the course, course of this year or next year, we will see all 30 Major League Baseball teams here in Phoenix matching up against the Diamondbacks. So that portion of the new schedule is a lot of fun. They don't come this year. They're coming next year. That's right. So save up to 60% on those tickets when you buy them last minute. The best way to support us is by buying your tickets through the link in the description. Before I go, I have to yell at the people at Pocoda because we were we were

just hanging out. We were having a good time, telling jokes, talking about Corby and Carol being the next greatest baseball player for all of mankind. And then Pocoda has to come around and just ruin our week, our offseason, whatever you want to call it. Let's take a look at Pocoda's projections because I hate this and I hate them and I hate everybody that works at Pocoda. I hate the website. I think they're stupid. I think they all smell. And I'm not with this, Jesse. Their projection is that Arizona will win 73 games in 2020. Is that an update? Because I believe it's actually 70.7, not 73.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was different. Was it updated? It was 70.7? I did this. I got this screenshot from the website today. Okay. I guess maybe they added a couple.

Yeah, because they knew we were pissed off and they were like, shit, we got to do something. And guess what, Dakota? That's not enough. Yeah, I mean, that's still projecting the debacks to be, I mean, it's basically the same record that had last year, right? 73.7883. That's just lazy. You're just lazy is what you're doing.

Yeah, they just, well, okay, I don't know. I'm a little, we're going to have to check on this because this has the giants being 80.5 and 81.5. And when I saw it the other day, it had the giants at 88 wins, I believe. Or no, actually, no, I'm getting, I'm getting confused. I'm the problem here. I'm getting Zips and Pocoda mixed up. You are getting Zips and Poccaps and Poccaps. Has the Giants at 88 wins.

And yeah, as you see here, Pocoda has the Giants is basically a 500 team. So, yeah, it's always felt like Pocoda and, and Pocoda comes from baseball prospectus. They just kind of, I don't know. They have their own little world, like in terms of almost everything. You look at baseball prospectus' top 101 prospects list. We talked about that earlier in the offseason. A lot of their stuff just doesn't look the same as what you'll see at other outlets.

This is a really significant, though. And if you go in and you can download, you have a subscription, you can go in and download their individual numbers for every individual player. I'm looking at the offense numbers right now, Derek, and it is pretty bad. Baseball prospectus has the Diamondbacks best hitter. It's pretty close between Christian Walker and Cotel Marte. We have Cotel Marte projected for 260, 332 on base, 422 slugging. Christian Walker 244, 328 on base 426 slugging, which should be a pretty mediocre year for him coming off last season.

What stands out the most, though, is their projection for Corbyn Carroll. I hate it. Derek, you're not going to like this. I fucking hate it. 233-305-406. That's probably not going to do it in rookie of the year voting when it's all said and done. So across the board, it seems like Pocoda just doesn't believe in the D-BAC's offense. And that's primarily why they're so low on the team this year.

Pocoda, I just have a couple of questions for you. Pocoda is not a person, Derek. I want to address them like a person. I'm going to address them like a singular entity. And I want to say, where do you get off? And where do you find this audacity? Where do you get the audacity to actually say that Corby and Carol is good? Like everybody else has him in the top like one to three, you know, for prospects breaking out in this season.

And you just want to come and rain on the parade. Was he? He was lower on their list as well, wasn't he? Corbyn Carol on their top 100 prospects list? I believe he was. I believe he was. I don't have it in front of me. I want to say he was more like top five, top 10 instead of in the top one or two.

Baseball prospectus, they're also the ones who they recorded a podcast about their top 10 prospects for each team. And their podcast about the Diamondbacks top 10 is pretty downer. Like compared to everything else you hear what Keith Law has been saying about the DBACs farm system. If you go listen to that baseball prospectus podcast, it makes it sound like the DBACs have like maybe a couple average big leaguers in there and that's and that's it. I'm overstating it. But, but yeah, they definitely perceive the team differently. And I think, I think some of that has to do with maybe the batted ball data. I don't know this for sure, but my, my guess is that Pocoda puts a little more stock into exit velos and, and that kind of thing. Whereas I think Zips

goes a little bit more off of past season performance and minor league performance. Why Dan Zimborski is a much better human being. a better human being than you, Pacota. Than Pacota, yes. But I do acknowledge that if you look at the debacks, a lot of the DeBACs main position players from a batted ball standpoint, the numbers don't look very good. And I can see why, you know,

a projection system would just see those numbers and say, oh, Corwin Carroll's actually not that good. Did you look at his exit velos last year, that kind of a thing? Right. And it's not taking into account things like his speed and other things. General awesomeness as an individual, all those things. His shine, he shines bright like a diamond. I just know that Pocoda tends to actually be based more on what people have done.

And that's the one question mark about the Arizona Diamondbacks. We don't know what they've done yet. And even the things we've seen from them like Jake McCarthy's second half last season, we still question how realistic this is. Is this guy really this special of a player or is he going to come back down to earth? Is Corbyn Carroll really this fast? Is he really going to steal 900 bases next year? Maybe, probably, but we don't know for sure, right?

So I think that's the difference. Zips tends to take a lot of other factors into consideration and kind of like give the idea that this person is on a trajectory where Pocoda is mostly looking at their track record as a major leaguer. And honestly, Cattels dropped Christian Walker at his best season last year. There's just a lot of inconsistency with this team from top to bottom. Yeah. I don't know exactly how these systems.

work in comparison to each other. So I don't want to say something that I don't necessarily know is true. But yeah, one thing I will say is that, especially with Brandon fought, the fact that he pitched as well as he did in Reno last year, I think Zips really looked at like his 10 starts with Reno and was like, oh my gosh, this guy had a sub three ERA in, you know, in a ballpark in a league where the average starting pitcher has an ERA of six, right? And that really is an off-the-charts, like outlier kind of data point that maybe Zips really freaked out about. And Pocoda didn't necessarily.

I don't know exactly what goes into that. But there's definitely a difference here. The big thing, though, is that this team is definitely unproven. Right. And, I mean, you have some guys that, again, Kattel, Christian Walker, we've seen what they're capable of. We've seen what a lot of these guys can do in stints, but not over the course of an entire season. could tell we've seen him do that over the course of a season. Christian Walker, we saw that last year.

But like Carson Kelly, for instance, he's a guy that we've seen have really good stretches, but never really put it together, either due to injury or just kind of having that be a, you know, a positive stretch that he kind of came back down from without doing it for a long sustained period of time. And then if you factor in everybody else, everybody else is very young with very limited time playing professional baseball. So we really, but the one thing I heard a lot today. from people who were national media people,

from people who kind of we talked to for a moment or so, is that these guys like Corbyn Carroll, Jordan Lawler, Brandon Fott, and, you know, obviously Drew Jones, these guys are special. And they're not just looking at these guys as like, oh, I hope they can be a big leaguer. There's a different sense of confidence as to how these guys can help this organization win ball games.

And the future is very exciting for this team. That seemed to be kind of, from what I talk to people about today, the opinion from a lot of people, not at Pocoda. Can I just say, project us at 73 wins all you want, but the second that you come for Corbyn Carol is the second that I grab my fucking pitchfork and my torch and I burn the Pocoda offices to the ground. Throw stuff at you. Do not touch my Corbyn Carroll. No, you don't come for Corby and Carol. That's right. I will say one other thing on Pocoda real quick. A big factor in like these projected standings numbers is the depth chart.

And in coming up with a number for how many wins a team is going to come up with, you have to go in and you have to project like, all right, who's going to start at center field? Who's going to start at shortstop? Who's going to get most of the plate appearances at all these different positions? Who's going to get the most innings out of the bullpen? You have to make decisions on all those things. and these systems don't necessarily do a good job of that. When I look at Pocoda's depth chart that they use,

Kyle Lewis is taking 25% of the abats in center field, which would be utterly disastrous for the diamondbacks. You do not want Kyle Lewis playing center field. Lovel has even asked that today about both Gurriel and Kyle Lewis, and he said there's a good chance you're going to see both of those guys with the option that they have center remain as corner outfielders, and that's exactly what we thought, if Kyle Lewis even gets very much time as an outfield.

or we're not saying he won't, but I definitely see him being used as a DH role potentially more as far as getting at bats. Yeah, like I don't even know if Kyle Lewis is going to play corner outfield, much less, much less play center field. So,

so that's another factor here. Right. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, you're looking to like them to throw shade at Pocoda. We should have worn our sunglasses today, Derek. We'll come for you again, Dakota.

Don't think we fucking won't. We're not forgetting this. But anyway, in the meantime, We need to have some fun. So let's get out. Let's go to Octane Raceway and Mavericks. Let's go drive some go carts and have a good time and get over these bad things they said about Corbyn.

Carol. I don't need this negativity in my life. But thanks to Octane Raceway of Mavericks, I can get wonderful specials. Like today, of course, is winning Wednesday. Half-price arcade games all day to go. Why wouldn't I go when the arcade games are free? So all sorts of fun. We had fun out there.

Jesse still doesn't acknowledge that I beat him in bowling, but I absolutely did. Well, we weren't playing it. We weren't playing on the same lane, though. The score is the score. We can be in fucking 10 late. We weren't in direct competition. The score is the score. I'm in competition with everybody at all times.

I think I got Drey Jameson fired me up yesterday about that. So I'm ready. I'm ready. I want to go take on Sean deposits and stuff because I'm so sick of him beating me and everything. But you could book some fun this spring at Octane Raceway and Mavericks. Cart racing, virtual reality, laser tag, axe throwing, bowling. We got to compete in axe throwing against each other. But I am not going ax throwing.

We're going ax throwing. No. taking them. That will not be happening. Of course, the great arcade, great food and drinks. They've still got it all. Check out octane raceway.com and mavericks.com

to learn more about their wonderful facility. Get the kids out there. They'll have a blast. Also, we thank you guys, again, so much for joining us. If you haven't had a chance to check out our friends at Underdog Fantasy, make sure to download that app

before baseball season comes around. We are riding with pitch counts this year. Remember, higher or lower, the pickums game, the more legs you add, the more money you can potentially win up to $1,000 over at Underdog Fantasy. You can also draft daily fantasy teams against your friends, up to five of your friends, and the highest scoring squad for that night can win some cold, hard cash. Blast, have a blast over there.

We like to match up. We actually like to work together around here a little bit more than we like to draft teams against each other. But the competitive juices are flowing now, and I'm ready to take on Shane and something fantasy-related. It's easy to get started. go to underdog fantasy.com or download the app, sign up with promo code PHNX. An Underdog will match your first deposit up to $100. Well, thank you guys for being here for this very late episode of the PHNX Sports DeBax podcast. We're not used to this.

It's dark outside, Jesse. I don't know what to do with myself. It's like almost dark. Right. We'll be here again tomorrow. Same time. We'll also be out at Salt River Field. So if you do opt to go out there and check out the workouts.

Make sure to say hi to us. We'll be very mad at you if you don't. In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter. I am at Kapp underscore Kman with a K. This guy's Jesse and Friedman. The show is at PHNX underscore Dbacks, but of course all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

We appreciate you guys, as always. Thank you for stopping by on our new time. We hope this works out for everybody and we should be doing this up until the start of the regular season, but make sure to drop us that feedback on what you think of the new schedule in the Discord. And in the meantime, on behalf of Damon, Jesse, and myself, we thank you guys so much.

there's that show schedule. This is where you can find us the rest of the week right here at this time. We thank you guys again for stopping by. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when you tell Pocoda go fuck themselves.