PTI - How Good are the Dodgers Right Now?

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Tony Kornheiser and Pablo Torre discuss the latest on the Dodgers, the ALCS, and Coach Cignetti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Happy Hour is presented by Twisted Tea, hard-ice tea. Please drink responsibly. Pardoning the interruption, but I'm Pablo Torre.

Tony, I am told it is National Fossil Day. Tony Kornheiser, shout out to me. I'm a fossil and I'm a Muppet. Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm happy about that. We're doing some sports talk paleontology with you. Paleontology. Yeah, you know, that's my next doctorate in paleontology.

You just give it to me because I am actually a, I am alien-tological, if there is such a word. Welcome to PTI, boys and girls. Wilbon has a day off. I am joined by our great friend, the host of the podcast. Pablo Tori finds out Mr. Pablo Tori. And we begin today with the Dodgers getting a complete game three-hitter from Yoshinobu Yamamoto last night to beat the Brewers 5-1 and take a 2-0 lead in the NLCS. Yamamoto gave up a first pitch home run to Jackson.

and Churio, and then just two more singles than the next eight innings. The Brewers never had a single runner in scoring position. Pablo, what do you think of what the Dodgers are doing and how they are doing it? Tony, we begin by joking about how old you are, but this first topic makes me feel like I'm watching my childhood. We're getting complete games in the playoffs. We have a hoss. We have a series full of hosses, of aces, of guys who will do the thing that we haven't seen

since I believe Justin Verlander in 2017, throw a complete game in the playoffs. Complete game. To go back to, I believe, the last time this happened with two starters, this good over eight innings. We're going back to 83, I believe, 1983. It's a delight. I was told that baseball didn't have,

that in fact, the thing that had gone extinct, gone the way of the dinosaur, was this type of person. And so I want to make fun of the Dodgers for having, you know, Japan as their farm system. That's why Yamamoto is this way. But they got a staff full of these guys. Glass now coming up can do exactly this too.

So I want to go backwards first. I want to go backwards. Do you remember when the Seattle kid in game one against Toronto, the first pitch he threw, and George Springer, boom, parked it in the seats. And you looked at that game and you said, oh, whoa, Toronto is going to do to Seattle, what Toronto did to the Yankees,

34 runs in four games. And that did not happen. It did not happen. Last night is deja vu all over again, as Yogi would say, because it's a first pitch home run. And then after that, there is nothing. You know, they don't, Milwaukee doesn't get anything after that. The Dodgers starters have now gone in this series, 17 innings, giving up four hits. Crazy.

And struck out 17. You know, as you said, hadn't seen a complete game like this, you know, in eight years. The Dodgers starters E.R. Ray. now is 154. They're built for this. I understand Milwaukee beat them in the regular season 6-0. I understand in the regular season Milwaukee had the most wins 97. This is not the regular season. The Dodgers are built for this. They understand that they don't really have relievers. So they say to the starters keep going. You know what else, Pablo? They've become something we haven't seen in, I don't know when, a likable rich team because they spend money on the right

people in the right way. They collect active people. people, not old people who are past their prime. They know what they're doing. Well, well, I'll leave the obvious joke here aside that you just alloped to me. I will merely comment that the Dodgers are doing the thing that when I was growing up, the Yankees are the last team that I saw do. Right now, especially impressive is the fact that the postseason, as you know, Tony, as a huge baseball fan, is a roulette wheel. How do you keep the roulette wheel from spinning wildly out of control? You use your arms. The arms, the Dodgers have have rested control of chaos in a time of, you know, relief starters. It's just a

crazy time in baseball. They bring us back to a time resembling sanity and likability despite the expense. But you mentioned, I suppose, the ALCS. That resumes tonight in Seattle. And the Mariners, of course, won both games in Toronto. Mariners have never been to a World Series, Tony. We know that. They're up 2-0 now with the next two at home. So does this accomplishment making the World Series feel inevitable to you? Not inevitable. There is a small window that you can look through. There have been three teams in a seven-game playoff series that have lost the first two at home and still gone on to win. Three teams out of the 28 that that occurred to since 1914. And it's World Series teams because there never used to be in, you know, an LCS. So there's the 85 Royals and the 86 Mets.

There's the 96 Yankees. But so far, Seattle has been decided. decisively better than Toronto. I have some numbers here that I think are pretty good. They've outscored the Blue Jays 13 to 4. They've out homered the Blue Jays 4 to 2. They've out hit the Blue Jays 17 to 8. And the best Blue Jays player of Vlad Guerrero Jr. is 0 for 7. So maybe he shouldn't have taken so much delight in saying the Yankees lose. Him and Big Poppy yucking it up. Maybe that doesn't feel good now because their team now has a batting average of 131 in this series. Yeah, the Mariners, to me, are the most conventionally likable team available to us. He talked about the Dodgers being shockingly likable because of all of their payroll.

The Mariners have all of the makings of the true underdog. And the only problem that keeps me from inevitability, and to me, of course, there are three, really just three things that are inevitable in life. It is death taxes and Mike Wilbon taking off random Wednesday as a PTI in the fall. Short of that, short of that, yeah, it's hard. I mean, look, I watched the Yankees lose to the Red Sox with a giant lead, Tony. Like, I've seen three-one leads get blown. I've seen things.

This is a, it's a closer series than I think the outcomes have suggested. And I just caution that if there is a burial ground that is cursing this Mariners team, it's not quite over yet. That's the bar for inevitability. No, it's not quite over. I will say this. I had occasion to be in Seattle for football games, where the crowds were. It's the loudest outdoor crowd I'd ever heard. And I expect sort of the same from baseball.

I mean, they all know they haven't been to the World Series. They're all going to try and help. Let's jump into college football here. The story of the season off the field so far has been the firing of coaches. James Franklin is one of seven coaches fired from a big program before the halfway point in the season. The biggest story on the field so far is Indiana. There's six and O in coming out of a huge road win over number three Oregon. Indiana coach Kurt Signetti is the hot name now.

Pablo, do you think he's more likely to stay at Indiana or leave for an historically bigger program? I think he's going to stay. And I think it's the right move to stay. And I would not have said this five years ago. College football is different. We know this. We are frustrated by it because the influx of money in a fake free market has changed things. But the point is, Indiana, which gets those big 10 checks, they also are spending like they're in SEC school. They got a president who the stop before last was at Georgia. They have a staff in terms of the assistance and expenditures, Tony, that they've doubled in expenses as they've renewed Signetti. And Signetti, by the way, is paid like a top five coach in the conference. So the question is, will you compete for players because there's a market?

Will you compete for coaches because there's a market? Will you compete like you're a school above your station? The answer to all of that seems to be yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of people believe that that, that, there's going to be a pillow fight between Signetti and Matt Rule to see who gets the Penn State job. But I'm going to agree with you to this extent. I think it is so romantic to think that Kirk Signetti would stay there and build this into a juggernaut because Indiana has the most losses all time of any college football program. And he gets there. He gets there from James Madison,

A school that nobody outside the Washington, D.C. area or Richmond, Virginia, knows where it is. And he brings a bunch of kids with him. And less than two years, they're number three in the country. That's absolutely amazing to me. He knows, Signetti knows what it is like to coach at a big school. He was an assistant to Nick Sabin at Alabama. If he thinks he can do it at Indiana, they could name the field after him. And the romance of that may actually get to him.

Let's take a break if we could. Coming up, 41-year-old Aaron Rogers faces 40-year-old Joe Clacko tomorrow. We're going to ask Steve Young about that. We'll also ask him about Patrick Mahomes running more than ever. The Dodgers spend money wisely. Look at who they get. They trade for Mookie Betts. They sign Freeman.

They get Kiki Hernandez and Teasca Hernandez. They're run well. They're likable. Yes. Part of the interruption is presented by the refreshing taste of Twisted Tea, hard iced tea. Please drink responsibly, part of Happy Hour. You are watching, pardon the interruption, presented by Twisted Tea, hard ice tea, part of happy hour.

We have some NFL questions for our great friend, the man who actually did something Pablo bailed on, went to law school. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, let us start with this 41-year-old Aaron Rogers and 40-year-old Joe Flacco. We'll play against each other on Thursday night on a short week. week, it has been referred to as the icy hot bowl or the AARP bowl. When you watch two guys in their 40s starting at quarterback in the NFL against each other, you think what? Tony, I think this is super important because I think about two people that learned the game

in a more sophisticated era. And people go, when was that, Steve? That was before the rule changes for safety. People don't realize the difference in the game that happened when they didn't allow defenders to launch their headfirst into and cover more ground more quickly. And they also restricted how you could hit the quarterback. And so when Tom Brady was at the, you know, in Tampa, and I ran into him on a Monday night game and said, how do you feel like the game has changed? He says, look, Steve, it's amazing. The flats are always open because there's more space.

The middle of the field is unpatrolled where it used to be a death zone and no one can hit me. And so when I see two people over 40 playing in today's game, they're taking advantage of learning in a more sophisticated time and now playing in a less sophisticated era where there's more space. Essentially, the rule changes for safety made the, I'm going to be conflating here, but it made the field like a Canadian field, right? It expanded the space and all the great innovative minds jumped in. We talk about every week. Kyle Shannon, Sean McVeigh, Andy Reed, Sean Payton, they just jumped in and answered that call to innovation because of the rule changes. Now, Steve, one of the great quirks of this current season,

is that Patrick Mahomes is leading his team, the chiefs, and rushing. He's on pace to nearly double his career total. Of course, I look at Patrick Mahomes. I can't help but think of running quarterbacks, dual threat guys like yourself. How do you balance that? The whole thing of, I have this athleticism, but also I need to keep myself safe. How did you balance that? How does he?

It's the question for, because quarterback's the most important role in sports, it's the question, Pablo, that needs to be asked and talked about way more. because it is an incredible challenge. Patrick Mahomes cannot maintain being the leading Russia for the chiefs and go to the Super Bowl. Yet he has to threaten the line of scrimmage. He's learned that. He's learned that I need to be a sophisticated passer, yet I have to put into the defense's mind who have now been put on their heels because of safety rules.

I can now attack the line of scrimmage because of all this new space. Look at Justin Herbert. I even say Jared Goff needs to do more of this because in the biggest games, they are won in the biggest moments by quarterbacks who have threatened the line of scrimmage. So Patrick Mahomes needs to continue to do it. And now how do you figure out that right space, when to go, when to stay, when to throw it, when to run? And that really, it makes it even harder for guys like Justin Fields or Lamar Jackson because they're so incredibly athletic. Yeah, Justin Fields is the name I want to ask you about next because he gets sacked nine times, of course, over the weekend on Sunday.

And he says, we can't let that happen again. So how do you do that? How do you get the ball out quicker to avoid that kind of, again, damage to yourself? The number I tell them, anyone who wants to talk to me about dual thread and how, you know, the transition that you have to make, the reason why I was able to find what I hope was a pretty fine line of when to go on how to stay and how to be sophisticated and how to still threaten and ought to do all that, became when I owned all the data. When I memorized, I mean, you guys mentioned I went to law school and sorry, Pablo. Did you make it a semester? I don't, I didn't hear what the latest on that was. I don't even, I have an expired LSAT score, Steve. Thanks for asking, though my mom is watching.

But I can tell you that as much memorization that I had in law school, there was more required of memorization week to week in preparing to own the data for an NFL football game. And in owning the data, and you think about recent history with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, really showed you in like at an infinite item how much information they had to take in and own reflexively. In other words, I didn't memorize it so I could spit it back in a quiet room. I can reflexively spit it out.

It comes in my mind and I have all these ideas of what is the tendency for the defense? What's the blitz tendency in the red zone? What happens in goal line? What's the formation? How much it's all happening real time. And when your brain can slow down because you have owned all of that information reflexively, now your athleticism can come out. Now who you are as a quarterback can come out.

Now you can make those decisions about when to go, when to come, how to deal with it, how to throw it, where to go. Like, if you don't own the data, you're always behind. And if you're behind the data, you'll never be the athlete you could be. You'd never be the quarterback that you could be. You'll be a shadow of who you could possibly be. And so that's why I ended up saying, you know, quarterbacking is a, you know, it's a master's program in the school room. It's a brilliant answer. I feel stupid asking the next question.

That was so brilliant. You use the phrase, threaten the line of scrimmage. You struggled when you played with the bucks before you succeeded with the 49ers. When you look at the success, Baker Mayfield, and here's a guy who threatens the line of scrimmage, Baker Mayfield is having at his third stop now, what lesson should people learn from that? Well, we talked about it. I mean, I'm going to be very frank. There are terrible places for quarterback.

There are places that don't understand the position the way they need to. Everything about this discussion we just had has not, infiltrated every football team in the NFL. How to understand who's going to, who are the innovative minds? You talk about elite quarterbacks in the league today. Let's just say five. I mean, you know, I will argue, but there's five elite innovative play calling minds. There's five elite owners.

There's five elite places for quarterback. Like it all, there's always good spots and bad spots. I'm not, but, you know, Baker, me, anyone else has to own our play. You can't walk away from it. But as a guy now looking back, I got to be honest with you, There's good spots and there's bad spots. And Baker's found a great spot for quarterback that allows him to see, allows him to iterate to get better every week, which he's doing.

And the ultimate question, how good can you get? That's why I only ask for every quarterback alive today to get the opportunity to find out how good you are. And you need so much help in football because that's the nature of the game. 50 guys running all over place, chaos. Please give quarterbacks a chance to see how good they can get. And not everybody gets it. Thank you so much, Steve. Pleasure all the time. Thank you. You guys, the questions are just out of the world. I love it. You know, I love this.

I wish I could take credit for him, but somebody else is right. Let's take one last break. Still to come, Alex Bregman opts out of his deal with the Red Sox, but does that mean he's gone? And Russell Westbrook, Tony, has a new team. Yeah, I read about that today. I could spoil the party and say what team it is, but I'm not going to do it until later. I might need... Steve Young is brilliant, Pablo. Steve Young is brilliant. He wants to get us all...

He wants us to get graduate degrees. I get it, Mom. Yes, we should all go. We should all go get more degrees. Cool. Pardon the interruption is presented by the refreshing taste of twisted tea, hard iced tea. Please drink responsibly.

Part of Happy Hour. Happy time, people. Happy 72nd birthday Joe Kleco. The Hall of Fame Defense event for the New York. was part of a defensive front called the New York Sack Exchange, in honor of their quarterback sacks. They were Klekko, Mark Gassano, Abdul Salam, and Marty Lyons.

Klekko was defensive player of the year in 1981 when he had his personal best, 20 and a half sacks. He was first team all pro twice and a four-time pro bowler. Klekko was on the Jets for 11 seasons, and in that time the Jets made the playoffs four times. They never got to the Super Bowl, but compared to now, they look like a dynasty. The current Jets have the longest active playoff drought in the NFL 14 years,

and at 0 and 6, it's a pretty good bet. It will reach 15. Yeah, Tony, I live in New York, as you know. I love the back pages. I go to check what they're saying. It's just sad now. Like, the puns have been exhausted. We get it.

The Jets are hopeless, and I now officially feel terrible for them. Happy anniversary USC on this day 20 years ago, a thrilling game between number one USC and number 9-0. Notre Dame in South Bend came down to the final seconds. After initially celebrating their win on a last play defensive stop, the Irish were informed that Matt Lynard fumbled out of bounds before being stopped short of the goal line and the scoreboard clock accidentally kept running. So on the next play, Wynert was initially stopped on a quarterback sneak.

But he was assisted into the end zone by a mighty shove by tailback Reggie Bush. This became known as the Bush push. The play was never reviewed because before the game, the visiting coach Pete Carroll declined the option to review any calls. And there's history in just that summary. So first off, the tush push is for the bush push for the kids, not familiar. But then that rule, that rule used to be a thing. The visiting coach could decide would there be instant replay in the game for either

team. Crazy. And he made the wrong call pregame, it seems. Yeah. Totally crazy. Happy trails to Alex Breggman's existing contract. The Red Sox third baseman plans. to opt out of his contract and enter free agency for the second straight offseason.

Last offseason, Bregman and Agent Scott Boris didn't sign until the start of spring training, agreeing to a three-year, $120 million deal with the Red Sox featuring annual opt-outs. After batting 273 with 18 homers and 62 RBI, opting out is what Bregman has chosen to do. He could, of course, re-sign with Boston. Yeah, and Red Sox fans are wondering, are we going to act like a team with a ton of money, or are we going to act like a team that is losing our star players? Bregman is like the clubhouse leader. And so it's one thing, of course, if you're potentially losing a star player to the Giants,

that won a different story. And by the way, I know you're getting to errors and omissions. Yeah, Pete Carroll made the right call. I want to correct myself, he made the right call by no instant replay because the Bush push got pushed. So, you know, what else did maybe not me get wrong? Good job out of you, Pablo, going back 20 years and making a judgment like that. One error, Baker Mayfield is at his fourth stop, not a number. third, my bad, and one on mission.

Nick's guard, Malcolm Brogden is retiring. Let's go to the big finish if we could. Jason Kidd and the Mavs have agreed on a multi-year extension. Are you surprised? I am not. Jason Kidd is a fine coach. The Mavs have a fine team. Yannis says he'd like to play in Greece following his eventual retirement from the NBA.

Does that make sense? I'm getting tired of Yannis. Is anybody else? Russell Westbrook and the Kings agreed to a one-year deal worth $3.6 million. Is that a good fit? spiritually the kings are perfect the Rangers are the first team in NHL history to get their a shutout in their first three home games of the season is that a big deal you got 41 home games it's a big deal if you get shut out in the first 25 not the first three last one

Christian Polisick injured his hamstring and a team USA win over Australia your analysis analysis I would just I was just like I would just like them to be healthy the World Cups comment me Wonder Boyd be healthy yeah I would like Wonder Boyd to be wonderfully healthy. That'd be nice. We're out of time. We'll try to do better the next time. Dr. Alex Young, thank you very much.

And I'm Pablo Torre. Thank you for watching.