Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 211 | Voicemails: A's Rotation, Yoan Moncada, and Labor Disputes

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Jomboy, Jake, & Plouffe are answering your voicemails! What is the A's playoff rotation? (3:15) Do you like this PGA-style playoff idea? (10:40) Are we ignoring the Giants too much? (14:20) What do you make of good seasons this year? (20:35) Are we still in danger of a lockout? (31:10) What's up with Yoan Moncada's slump? (39:30) What mangers should come on the pod? (46:45) What are the ideal traits for a commissioner? (51:30) Leave us a voicemail at 917-426-2796 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 talking baseball. It is the voicemail episode, the last voicemail episode of the regular season. Let's do it. Hello and welcome to talking baseball. Thank you very much for joining us today. It is the voicemail episode. As I said in the intro, my name's Jimmy. Trevor's coming to you from the western coast.

He used to play baseball. a league called Major League Baseball. Jake did not, but he upped once in probably Middlebury Little League. Not sure what league you upped Jake. I don't know officially what it was called, but Jake's coming to us from Roosevelt Studio South, Treves Roosevelt Studio Far West. I'm from the Roosevelt Mid-Atlantic Headquarters

and BBD is Roosevelt Northwest Studios. And that's everyone, and that's where everyone's coming to you from. Jake, how are you doing? Jim, Electric, for usual. I'm doing well. Baseball. Holy smokes. And I think we'll talk about it in some of these voicemails.

I think a couple of them are about teams, and like there's kind of no takes to give. You accidentally win three games. You might be good. you stumble into too late losses this week and you might be out of the playoffs. So we'll try our best with that. And I think we might even have some callers

leaning us back to our roots trev as a labor pod. You know, you almost put Jim to sleep right there with your intro. Then you started mentioning labor pod. You're going to put me to sleep. So I appreciate if you took those, take those dorky glasses off, put your super cool sunglasses. on because that's my favorite Jake. I don't think you're ready for that though.

You got to earn that. If you earn that, you'll get it. I'm excited for voicemails. This is the last one we're going to do during the regular season. At first, I did not like them, but I've grown to appreciate them. And I like hearing from fans and trying to answer the questions. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the voicemails because they let us know things that we don't know about their team. It's always good stuff.

Let's just get straight into it. Because like we've said over and over, the baseball is changing so fast that to talk about it, we're recording this Wednesday at 1. By the time everyone listens to this Thursday morning, like so many different things could be the case that is pointless to do it. So let's just go straight into the voicemails. BPD, drop the first one on us. Hello, John Boy. How are you guys talking about A's? you're trying to figure out who their starters are.

So I'm just sending this voicemail in telling you who they're going to be. Because when you look at the staff, it's pretty clear. First off, Chris Bassett, he has an 0.89 ERA and 30 innings at home this year. Just phenomenal. Fires. So Fires was a weird one because he's so good. They win so many games with him on a mound at home. He just has weird stats.

So the third time through the order, he gets absolutely obliterate. Don't even think about it. Like 15 ERA. Okay. Next. Second time through the order, moderate, and then first time through the order, he's like, like, left out. And then third, the kid,

Jesus Lazzardo, who has only allowed 11 earned runs at home in 50. Point, in 40.1 in any speech this year. That's your one, two, three. There you go. So Lazzardo's in. No, Mania, no Bassett, who's been good.

Jake, is that how you had it? Bassett has easily had the best season, a 159 ERA plus. The only other of those guys mentioned with a positive ERA plus is baby Jesus. I don't see how you can take a start away from Bassett. It seems like he's earned it. And as we've kind of talked about with these playoffs series,

a little bit of funk works. And Bassett's kind of a different cat. He's, you know, big, lanky dude, it's not your normal look. So I think Bassett should get the pill. Montes has been bad this year. You can't give him the rock. Mania is the only one that I'd want to come back to Oakland fans, because the FIPP is really good.

He's got the best fielding independent pitching, fielding independent pitching on the team. The ERA is a little higher than that, and Mania's kind of done some big game stuff for them. So I don't know. And again, this kind of goes into this crazy. The A's for the three game set don't super excite me. But the further they go, it's almost the more exciting they get.

Because with any of these dudes on the bump, you almost feel the same emotion. I don't think you could be super confident or you could be super down on them. Yeah. I want to write different than what this guy said, just a little clerical. his second time through the order, he gets lit up. Third time, it's all right. It's not great. But the second time he gets,

he's a, hitters have a 1.0 OPS second plate appearance against fires of the starting pitcher. Yeah, I wouldn't write off Montess just yet. I know he hasn't been great, but he's something they leaned on last year. He said a few blow-up starts this year that kind of have altered his numbers.

them doing a piggyback day really short leash with him see if he can get going um they ended playing the astros montes has been really good against them for some reason but i do agree that bass it is earned a start uh baby jesus is going to be there and then after that yeah i would probably go mania right now but again montas is going to be involved um and and i think they're going to hope that he can turn the corner before this all goes down he made a start yesterday on the 22nd against the Dodgers, four innings pitched, five earnies. So not exactly what you want going into the playoffs,

but I got to imagine he's going to be involved in some way. And they get funky with what they do. They understand how to exploit platoons and all that good stuff. So we'll be seeing some of him. But I do agree Bassett is really, man, pitch his way into that. At the beginning of the year, we definitely wouldn't have been saying that. Yeah, I'm interesting.

I'm interested in Lazzardo. I don't know. It doesn't give me great confidence in days pitching. You know, three-game set. Great. They got the bats. But, you know, seven-game, ALCS. I don't know.

They're not bad. I just, how it's going to play out is interesting. There's a lot of bullpen, a lot of mixing, matching, like Trev saying, being smart with what you got. and I'm not smart enough to figure it out right now. How about Liam Hendricks? Talk about a guy they're going to lean on in the postseason. I mean, what a... I've known Liam forever.

He was a guy with the twins, a starter for the twins, and then kind of bounced around. He's found a home in Oakland, and the numbers he's put up. I mean, 13.1 strikeouts per 9. He is just... He's been by far their best pitcher.

It'd be interesting to see if they're going to try to get him to go, you know, multiple inks. I don't think he's done that. He's been in 21 games, 22 innings pitch. So I think they got him set up for one. But you never know in the playoffs. Yeah. Lelardo's test.

He said Lazzardo's good at home. The numbers are there. There's got 2-4 ERA and six games started at home, eight games total. It's pretty good. Yeah. And I think the only other thing that just comes to mind is when, you know, normal playoff series, we talk about who in the rotation can kick to the pin and tick up. Montes might be great for that.

I mean, Montes has some. pretty nasty stuff. He kind of hasn't had his A game this year. If he can be a two-winning bridge for them this year, you know, that might be a really important role because they are going to lean heavy bullpen and they've got dudes to do it. But if they end up in a five or seven game series, you know, you're going to have to shuffle guys up a little bit. The other guy we didn't mention, they traded for Mike Minor. He had one good start. I think a couple bad starts. So it's tough to see how he's going to factor in. But, hey, That dudes pitched a lot of good baseball in his career.

Yeah, they'll figure it out. They're one of those teams that gets it done. And yeah, Mike Bonner, I was just about to say that, Jake, you stole it from me. But he will factor in as well. Yeah, interesting. The more you add to the mix, the more I get lost. Like, I'm like, I don't know how they do this. But they have pieces.

Yeah. Yeah, they have pieces to do it. So that's good. All right. Well, thank you for calling in. dating us on the aist. I'm still confused, but I appreciate more info. A note on Liam Hendricks. He's got, he's been asked to get more than three outs twice this year, including a five-out appearance last week. So I guess I'm ready to go for a four-out save

at some point. Oh, yeah. I could, I could see more than that for certain the playoffs, especially when it's crunch time, the three-game set. Mike Minor, you got a lineup full of lefties. you sell them to a 555 OPS. Pretty bad against Ritey, so those are the things they're going to be looking at. Boom. You know, if you're going to,

if you're, you might piggyback a Montes and a minor and do something like that. So, um, how they can do it, man. What's the next one?

Hey, John, boy, Jack, from upstate question about, uh, playoffs. Because you guys are talking about various different

playoff. formats and I think I have a really interesting idea here so let's just get right to it. Instead of having division winners automatically going wild card and whatnot you just set a flat number of games

that the team has to win and if you pass that threshold you're in the playoffs. Now that leads of course to having a variable amount of teens every year but you know it puts an emphasis on

the regular season as well as the both season. So I'll just shut up and listen. Jake, you don't suck. I hard to disagree with a lot of this. Controversial call. Controversial call. He's basically taken like the PGA. Like, let's just find a line that we all like.

And then anyone over gets to move on to Saturday, Sunday, and anyone under is out. But I mean, the problem there is you have. have to have a certain amount of teams make the playoffs. Like if you set the line at 90 wins in the regular season, you have no control over how many teams can win 90. It could be more.

I don't have a balanced schedule. I want to pull up the standings from last year and see if there's a line that would have made sense. If you don't have a balanced schedule, this also doesn't make sense. because you could have really good teams beating up on each other and all of a sudden some of the best teams in baseball might not make it because they've been playing other good teams and then you have teams that are in a crap division

or playing Interleague against the worst division and those win totals will be inflated. So I don't like this at all. I also disagree with you about Jake not sucking. I think he sucks. I mean the fun part of this concept would be cutting out the riffraff, right? like something we've talked about a few times this year, you know, this NL battle that's exciting, how many of these teams are actually threats?

I mean, we're going to find out soon, which is fun. But, you know, it'd be kind of fun. Like the number that popped into my head as well was 90, Jimmy. And, you know, a 90 win baseball team is probably a good baseball team. So I like the idea of, you know, you would have had 10, you would have had 10 teams last year. But you would have only had one, two, three, four. from the National League and six from the American League. I don't have an answer for the imbalance.

I like thinking outside the box and trying to cut out some of the bad teams, but it's tough to get to. Yeah. There's no way to do it. I mean, if it was 90 games and last game of the season, you have two teams stuck at 89. I mean, that's as electric as a sport gets, but that's, I don't know. Yeah, Brewers got in last year with 89.

Turn on the brew crew. They're the only team that got in. But there was teams in the AL that had over 90. The Indians had 93 wins. They didn't make the playoffs. All right, next voice, ma'amount. That was an interesting idea. There's no way it would work.

Different scope. Yeah. What's going on, guys? This is Jesse from Ventus Clear podcast. I hate to pull a bird man on you guys, but you guys need to put a little bit more respect on the, Giants name, okay? Top 10 offensive

team in baseball and runs average, on-base percentage. Gotham's having a great years, just got Smiley back. I know they don't deserve to be talked about, like a great team, I understand it, but they need to be talked about like the legit wildcard team, like the Fields Reds and Brew crew and stuff.

You know, I'm not sure if it's because the NLS is that good or the AOLS is that bad. And lastly, John Boy, I got a question for you, Jimmy. I'm not sure what it is. It's a John Boy name like a hooty and the blowfish type thing because I know it's the name of the media.

It's your Twitter name, but you introduce yourself as Jimmy. So it's like you're not hooty, but everyone knows your hooty type thing. I love the show, guys, man. Thanks. Thank you very much for calling in. It's just like hooty and the blowfish. I don't really know if it is or not, but I think I'll just say to people now. It's just like

eating the blowfish. And then I'll get like young kids and I'll be like what do you mean? What's that mean? I'm like it's just like it. I don't know if this guy wants me talking about the Giants the same way I'm talking about the Reds and the Phillies. You're all slop.

I was going to say this is more for you guys. I've been on the Giants train. My guy. G.K. out there. The postseason's confusing people. Like you want me to talk to about the Giants like their wildcar team. I have been. Those teams aren't good. It's a bunch of teams fighting to be 500.

Jake's race to 30 wins. I think the Giants have been exceeded expectations. And I think we said yesterday that, you know, the Giants will be looking in the mirror at the end of this and saying, hey, that was great. That was a fantastic season. Great first year with Gabe. We found some talent. We had some fun. Things like,

you know, we got some bounces and all that. So that's good for them. Yaz is the real deal. Ruff's been hitting. Can't catch a lick, but he's been hitting. So I don't,

the tone is confusing because the expanded playoffs have, have changed the way you would view this team. If, if, you know, there wasn't expanded playoffs we wouldn't be talking about for the last two weeks at all.

Jake, you don't got anything? I mean, yeah, you guys both touched upon it. I mean, Trev, when you say you've been on San Francisco, I mean, it's not much more different than what Jimmy's been saying. I mean, what does that actually mean? Do they get the eight seed and do the Dodgers trounce them? I think that, you know, they're at a good chance of falling out of the playoffs. They finish with the Padres.

Their hitting has been legit. They do deserve that, you know, especially if we were to compare them to Cincinnati. Cincinnati's hitting's been terrible. This is what San Fran can do, and it's not a lot of household names. That's the problem. I mean, you know, hopefully Estremski becomes one. He's kind of earned it at this point on 390 on base. Alex Dickerson's been raking, Donnie Barrels, Donovan Solano.

So their hitting has been pretty legit this year. It's a, I mean, it's a case of what does it all mean? Are they going to sneak into the playoffs? And if they do is that. fun. I don't know. I mean, good for them for keeping their head above water most this season, but yeah, and this is why I've been a pretty firm believer in having you don't make the playoffs unless you win 90 games. I posed this question to you before, both of you guys before, and you shot it down. I said, is Gabe the long-term manager in San Fenn? You both said, absolutely not.

have you softened on that stance after seeing what he's done with this group of guys I mean look there's some good players there but look they're old and they weren't supposed to be doing what they're doing so do you give credit maybe to the hitting coach for extrapolating some value out of the bats or is it a Gabe thing where he's keeping that ship straight

you know steering it the way it needs to be steered again we just have a a warped view of everything. Like, I don't think this season will hold much weight in contract extension talks with Gabe. I think next year will hold a lot more weight.

I also don't know the Giants plan. But, like, almost making the playoffs and an expanded playoffs short season, I don't know if Gabe can really pound the table and be like, we were 500. Give me the extension. It's good. And they're exceeding expectations, but I don't know how much real negotiating power this has given him and getting the extension. I think it doesn't hurt him at all. But I think we're just kind of at like a net neutral moving forward.

We'll see what next year does. I think Gabe, I think Gabe's there for a few years. That's what I think. I think he's going to be their guy for whatever the next contract is. If they give him, I don't know, didn't he sign a three-year deal at the beginning of this year? Probably two or three. Yeah. You never know, man.

How many managers are there throughout the rebuild and then there when they make it as well? You know what I mean? They usually change. Thanks for getting us through the tough times. This is the guy we're going through now. Yeah. His nickname is The Body, so that's pretty cool. Gabe's nickname is the body.

Yeah, well, it's probably shaved super clean throughout. And support for this show comes from Monscaped. They are the best in the men's below the waist grooming, Jake. Manscaped offers precision engineered tools for your family jewels. They obsess over their technology developments to provide you the best tools for your grooming experience. And Gabe knows that for sure. Jake has had a lot of issues with trimming of his pubic region in his day. One time he accidentally, with his shaky hand, cut his dick straight off. And that's why Manscaped has redesigned the electric trimmer. The Manscaped Engineering

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And I got to say, like, typically that's a nightmare when you're using a trimmer down there. But this one is good. You're not going to be getting the Knicks or anything like that. Yeah. And I felt more confident in myself after I used it. I did. Nice. So thank you, Manscaped.

Yeah. Okay. Next voicemail. Really hoping I don't cut off my wiener again. BD, can I ask you something off the record? Yeah. You, uh... You're gonna ask about his pubes now?

You take care of yourself down there? No. That's a take care of. of them a lot better with manscaped. Good answer. Good answer. Nice. We had a roommate in college who had never once tidied up.

Yeah. So he could use, do you think of him when they said extra power, Jake? Oh, yeah. I thought of him. I was like, well, that would have been great because he was a couple sessions. Every guy's first time down there is scary.

You're up until that point in your life. you've kept sharp objects as far away from there as possible. Mm-hmm. And you're sitting there, blood everywhere with your dick in your hand, where it used to be connected to your body. Wondering what the hell happened. Then you throw on the LED light and you see all the other stuff. Next voicemail.

Thanks, Manscape. Hi, guys. This is Dalton from Cherubesque, Indiana. I'm a long-time Nationals fan, so let's not talk about this year. but I hear you guys talk about I'm like we're not holding it against guys for having a bad season this year because this season's weird and everything

but we're going to let them be okay but does that take away the validity of the guys that are doing good this year? Thanks, I really love the show and of course, take sex. Bye. Someone repeat this for me. What's this question?

He's saying that we have said don't worry about stats this year. They don't mean much and they're not going to be taken into consideration he's saying does that work both ways if a guy is going off this year is it not going to be taken into consideration just as if a guy has done poorly.

No. Good is always good. Good is always good. Bad can be excused. That's how sports fans' brains work. If one cares about sports fans' brains, he's talking about contracts and stuff like that, how teams are viewing them.

And to answer that, I would say that depends who you're talking to. and how the player's done. An agent can spin it both ways and a team can spin it both ways. Good is going to be an interesting year. Voight leading the league in home runs and he goes into arbitration and he gets some MVP votes out of that. Good is always good. Does it hold as many as much weight if he led the league in home runs in 162 game season and got MVP votes? No.

I do not think it holds as much weight. But you'd rather the good. than the bad for sure always. It's going to be kind of an ugly off season. I think it's going to be kind of an ugly off season. I think there's going to be a lot of fan bases that are going to be wondering how badly they should feel about a bad guy season.

And you know, you might look back and it was 44 games. So it's tough. A lot of people like Jim saying, the good will be good. Yeah, no, it's going to lead to a lot of weird, ugly debates where guys are going to be comparing 44 games to, you know, three or four year careers when they were a lot better. So, um, I don't know. I'm, I'm, I love offseason BS.

I love, you know, a good debate about do you give the guy a call? Do we need a replacement here? Do we believe that? This offseason is going to be ugly. Ugly. Uglie. You, G. L. Y, you ain't got no alibi. Jake's ugly. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Jake. extoriality is ugly. I'm ugly. Jake, come on. What were we singing? Come on, man.

Don't do it to yourself. When I put my head half in the frame, I don't know if you guys have seen me doing this, I can't even recognize myself. Yeah, I mean, the hair, the hair like this, we talked about it last time, is the strangest look that you've been falling into. I think it's you've combed it and then it kind of falls halfway in your forehead. Like I've got 90% of my face in the shot right now and I don't recognize myself. I mean, the picture you posted of you with the beer, Josh Wolf picture, like I didn't recognize you there.

Like you have so many different looks going off of this hair and quarantine. A good time for me to kill someone. Yeah. Yeah. Or I mean, just Rob. Ah, boring. Oh, Rob Blythe. Oh, just how you think of things, Jake.

I don't like the way you look right now. Yeah, I mean, no one, I mean, he. I got to give you just a little bit of advice. Like, you look like flight of the concords, like a D character from a flight of the concord's episode. Yeah, like the thing about it, Jim, is, and I think you might be, you're not doing it today, but I think you might do this also.

When you got a collared shirt on, you just can't wear a full like undershirt under it's just a super bad bad it's like a third grader look you can't do it but i mean he's got an umpire shirt on so it's a little different it's not that different a little bit he wasn't planning to wear the umpire shirt today this morning he had a different shirt on read a comment saying people come here for the outfits and just grabbed his umpire shirt and threw it on so i mean for those that aren't watching and just listening. Jake has left. He has his headphones on so he can hear us, but he's going to come back into view. I'm guessing in a whole new outfit. He was wearing his middle school umpiring

shirt with his Davey Garcia fake chain over that his Felix Gray computer glasses over that. I don't think of Felix Gray though. And then hat demonstration. And now he's got the razor. and he's doing a demonstration of the LED light. There we go. The fire blue, Richard. And he's shaving. Oh, my dick! Ah, he did it again.

Clean off. Damn. I don't know what is going on right now. Just anybody listening, don't wear a full undershirt under your collared shirt. Like, you have to get, I don't even want to say the name because in 2020 you can't say this. But the wife, you know what. Is there another name for that? Well, on the East Coast, sometimes they call them guinea teas, which is just as kind of weird.

Can't say that either. So whatever, you know, you guys know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah, I know you can't use that term for it anymore, but they haven't offered a replacement yet. Undershirt. We need a new name for those. Isn't it bizarre that Jake has his doctor on speed dial? And all he has to say is it happened again. And his doctor knows straight up that he just cut his own dick off accidentally. Isn't that like a weird thing of Jake's life? Just to have that.

All right, let's do the next voicemail. Thanks for calling. John Boy, Jake, what's going on? Jake, you have no idea who I am, but I actually watched you get kicked out of Stonebridge, Milford. I can't remember exactly how long ago it was. Yeah, that was funny.

Yeah, like I said, you have no idea who I am. I don't even think we talked, but then I found out who you were asked. Anyways, I saw it just passed an article talking about a lockout. I know the owners and players haven't having issues. Do you really think a lockout is going to happen after this kind of season where they weren't making money anyways? Just curious.

Your thoughts. All right. Bye. Thanks for calling in. I mean, Jake, is this the same guy? Is this now the second person that witnessed you get kicked out of Stonebridge, the bar in Milford? I'm not sure.

I remember when we initially told the story, quick recap, rainy night, somewhat empty outside bar. It was raining. And I peed at the bar. I tried to play it cool. It wasn't cool. It's an outside bar and you were peeing into like the river. You weren't just peeing in an inside bar in the middle of the inside bar. It's a little bit.

It was an outside bar. It still wasn't great. I did it while I was ordering because I thought I could play it cool enough. I thought that would be like a cover. Like no way someone would pee while they're ordering. They're not that dumb. So drunk got kicked out. When I initially told that story, someone reached out and was like, oh my God, I've heard that story for years.

I didn't know that was you. So it could be the same guy, could be someone else. Well, it's funny because Jake was getting escorted out of the bar. And you were like, I agree. Like I gotta go. Like you, I tied your guys hands up. You gotta kick me out.

Yeah. I guess. Because we were like, what do you do? And Jake was like, they're right. Right. I got to leave.

If I was in their shoes, I would have done the same exact thing. Back. Was there not a bathroom? Were there not a bathroom? I don't. No, the bathrooms are these porter potties like way underneath.

And you had to stand and wait in the rain. There was no overhang. and they were just gross. It's like an outside bar. A lot of people peed and tried to get away with it. The indoor one had like a huge line because it was a rainy night. Whatever. Some labor stuff, guys,

we haven't talked about this a while. We were the number one labor dispute pod going. And I don't know. I guess this call did bring something to my eyes and maybe this is wishful thinking. Because I think they already did the one year extension thing two years ago. but my word, if you're baseball, I mean, can you reach back in and just say like, hey, let's extend this another year. We're going to have another crazy season coming up. The last thing we need is labor stuff.

I don't know. Maybe that's too easy. But if we go full labor again, geez. Well, we won't. We won't. The 2021 season is normal. Like, I think we're going to go back to no DH. I think we're going to go back to the same as 2019 season for 2020.

in between the 2021 season, 2022, is when we're probably going to get a strike or a lockout. So we got one more year before it comes to a head. Trev's our player union rep. Yes, I do think, I mean, you saw how ugly this was. No one cared. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think there's a possibility of that happening.

Depending on how the offseason goes, how the beginning of next season goes, where we're at with everything. But I'm kind of with Jim. I think we're going to have a pretty normal year next year. I'm hoping we're going to be at least half capacity in the stadiums. Hopefully full. I wish this is a wishful thinking pod.

But there is a chance that that happens. If they're like, hey, look, let's just get through this collectively. I think they've done, got to say, I think baseball's done a damn good job of handling this. So we had some scares. And we had the Cardinals out for 10 days. We had the Marlins and the Braves doing, who was it, the Braves are they doing stupid stuff? And, you know, I think we've handled it well.

And everyone's excited and we have great races and we have great young players. Like things are going good considering the circumstances for baseball. Let's do it again next year. And then, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think there is a chance of it. Not to use as lame of a baseball analogy. But, yeah, there was two big strike. this year. There was the Marlins and then the Cardinals, and we were on the brink. If there was

another one, like we were going to need a timeout or something. So you're right, baseball does deserve a little more kudos. All the teams are supposedly bubbling the rest of the way, so that's good. I, Trev, I mean, Jimmy touched upon it briefly. Do you think they're going to go back to no DH next year? I know that's what's in the agreement, but after this year, I feel like maybe cooler heads could prevail on that. I don't know. Maybe next year they go back to. I think it's here to stay like very soon.

It all depends. If they want to, if they want to, you know, you know how what's going to happen. Jake, the players are going to be like, we're fine with including the DH.

We just don't want to make any big changes until the actual CBA negotiation. And MLB is going to say, well, let's, let's just get rid of some things that are easy. And they're going to say, let's do one, two, three, four, five.

And one of those is going to be the DH. And the players are going to be like, no, we don't want to do all of this right now. We'd give you just the DH, but you're asking for five other things. So just no across the board. And they're going to build the dam and not want to negotiate anything. So that's why I think we might go back to just the old CBA, no changes at all. And maybe they get the DH done. I wouldn't be shocked.

But I do think that's the MLOB. we'll use it as leverage to try and make 20 changes ahead of the CBA so they can get it in there. And then when the CBA negotiations come, they have this. Well, look, we've already been doing this. Who cares? And the players don't want to give it all.

I mean, I think that's how it's going to go. I think there is, I could be wrong about the DH thing. But the power that MLB has, I mean, they can suggest a rule. The union can shut it down. And then I think there's like a, year is time, they can just implement the rule anyway. That's how it's somehow it got structured that way.

So again, I don't know 100% that the DH is something that, you know, that would happen. You know, the stuff like the pitch clock and whatever like that, they could just implement that after a year of asking and they said, no, well, then they could just do it. So it'll be interesting. I mean, look, we are going to be a labor dispute pod again. There's no doubt about it because the CBA is up. coming and we're going to have to talk about it. And hopefully we'll do it just as good as we did this time. So I think we did a hell of a job covering it for you guys. But right now we're just happy we're talking like playoff. Motherfucking baseball.

Baseball. Not to be full, full Miss Innocent little riding hood, Jake Storelli, as you guys call me often. The DH is going to be an interesting thing for me. Because I wonder if, you know, there's been a war going on for a while. I, I, that, that could be a piece that both the sides could just look at each other and say, hey, you know, there will be a labor negotiation coming up that, you know, let's, I think both sides like this, let's do it. And that, that would be interesting. Do I think that's going to happen? No. Could I see a world where it does? Yeah.

Hmm. Okay. We'll see. We'll have to tune back in. Next voicemail. Hi, my name is Rubin. Hi, Jake. Hi, John Boy. Hi, Trev. Hi, Bibdu. I'm from Chicago, Illinois.

You can cross that off the list. That's cool. Anyway, I just wanted to comment on Yon Mankata's Lumpbox that Jake gave last week. Totally deserve it, as you said, Ofer, in the Twin Series. I just wanted to say, at the beginning of year, he did get COVID. And I believe James Fegan of the Athletic wrote an article about how he said he wasn't feeling as strong or his focus, and it lingered onto the field. also throughout his entire crew he's had a lot of lower body hamstring issues. I'm not trying to make excuses for the guy, but I mean, it's really visible on the field what you can see, you know, him doing and stuff like that.

I still think he's really good. We're just hoping, like you said, we can either get him going for the playoffs or get him going for next year because next year's looking pretty damn good. Anyway, thank you guys so much for what you do. I appreciate you guys so much. You mean the world to me. Go, Weak talk. Yanks are pretty cool, too. And, yeah, I don't know.

Jake sucks. Thank you very much for the call. that's very nice a lot of nice things are nice yon moncata has been slumping jake as you noted on slump watch in his last in his last what is it okay well

baseball reference being ridiculous he's got one hit in his last like 10 games it was bad i was i was doing my jakey late night flip around uh watching some baseball too if you know what i mean but yeah I was tuning into some white socks twinkies and the announcer is it more no is he on the call trev for the twins he's the color guy on the twins right now yeah basically yeah taken over for bert more no was talking about how like montata was lost and I knew he was kind of slumping and I saw a couple bad at bats I mean just fastballs down the middle looking not not even offering and I think

that's that's kind of one of the biggest jakey hot take that's one of the biggest tells of a slump um but you know he wasn't even offering at pitches down the plate and it's not like he was getting tricked they were fastballs um and yeah he's a switch hitter so you got to think about two swings and then yeah if you put covid on top of that you know everyone's experience is different with this thing i mean you know we we've heard araldus chapman say you know he didn't feel anything he was in his New York skyrise posting instavids of him like lifting heavier on it. And then we've, you know, there's the E-Rod story. And there's these other guys that have, you know, been exhausted by it.

So it's something to monitor. And you wonder if guys can be honest about it. If Juan Munkata shows up to a game two playoff game and he's exhausted, you know, can he talk to his manager and say, I don't have it today, Skip? I don't know. I mean that, you know, from a fan perspective, fans can't wrap their head around that either. So I don't know. You know, obviously, we don't like doing slump wash.

We've tried to cut it down this year because it's kind of showing guys in a bad light, although it tells part of the story. So I don't know. I got some interesting numbers here. If you guys want to talk some interesting numbers on Yoan Moncada. Yeah. His home splits pretty dang good. he has 104 plate appearances at home 105 away his OPS at home is 796 and his away OPS is 557 now a little digging a little deeper into that his BABIP which I like to look at 333 at home which is very sustainable but on the road a dismal 283 so that has something to do with it because you would take the

those numbers at home, 796 OPS, 110 OPS plus. So now think about this. How important is it for the White Sox to stay at home? And you have an extra bat like Moncada. If these numbers hold up, you know, that's an extra plus hitter in your lineup. If you're on the road and he keeps these numbers up, that's a negative player in your lineup. So they need to hold on to this. But I do, yeah, he's struggled.

And I haven't watched enough game, enough of their games to see what it is, mechanically. But sometimes it could be something as simple as that, just looking at like, man, maybe he's got a little bit of unluckiness on the road, and maybe that'll regress and we'll get him back to kind of the player that we think he is. Could be zapped of his power. I mean, we'll all let you know, Jake,

how I fare playing disc golf this weekend and see if my power has been zapped from COVID. First, first four holes, final five hole, something like that. Yeah. Well, yes. First four holes are always bad because there's no driving range. And I'm not just going to like stand in a field and throw discs and then go pick them up. So the first couple holes are always like, well, let's just see what happens here. We'll see. Um, also of note, not on yon montcata, but I got swine flu trev in 2009. Yanks won the World Series. Oh, wow.

I got COVID-19 this year. So, you know, part of me is a little worried that if the Yankees win the World Series, it kind of becomes my duty to get whatever the pandemic sweeping the nation is that fall. But also, I think I can do that. I can handle it for everyone else. So I didn't put it together until right now. Maybe it doesn't make you real happier about the Yankees odds now knowing their winning has a direct correlation to me being sick. I think the Yankees probably need to give you a ring if they win one this year.

This should give you a COVID ring. So thanks for sacrificing yourself for the greater good. I'll donate it. But I appreciate it from them. I'd probably donate it back to the Yankees for everything they've done for me. Oh, wow, give back. I don't know the rules on that. Moncada, and this is kind of a blanket statement that me and Jim have realized with a lot of Yankees players this year outside of like Voight.

So many guys are just going to, we talked about the small sample of the regular season. Guess what? If Jan Moncada goes out for the White Sox and has a 9 OPS this postseason, everybody going to love them. If Wamanata goes out and has a 500 OPS, half the people are going to be mad. Half the people are going to scream COVID. And that's kind of what this small sample size type playoffs is going to do to 90% of the players. Yeah. All right.

How many more voice smells do we have, BPD? Two. Hey, guys. This is Griffin from Chicago, Go Cubs. I was wondering if, you know, you guys have had a lot of cool guys on the show. You've had Ian Hap, Cole Tucker, Sean Doolittle. I was wondering if there are any managers who you've ever want to have on the show. Yeah, Gabe.

Gabe would be excellent. I'd like to have Jim Leland on the show and then make Jake do the whole interview by himself because I'd be too scared to talk to Jim Leland. I'd like to have Blune on talking Yanks. That'd be pretty nice. What a fucker, Boone. Just come on the damn show. He'd be alright here, too.

He'd be all right here, too. I used to play in a charity over-the-line tournament with Tori Lavello, manager of the Diamondbacks. And we used to face off and do that. I'd like to have him on. He's kind of a fiery dude. He'd be fun to talk to.

I mean, there's a lot of good manager personality. Lori Lavello. Rocco. Buck. I'd like to have Buck Show Walter on. Buck would be fun. Yeah, there's a lot of fun kind of dudes. And then there's also a lot of like not fun dude.

So I definitely wouldn't even want to talk to you. Like even if like this came up to me, but like, Oh. You know what? I got a soft spot for Brad. He bought me some drinks before. So, okay. He's a CT guy too.

We can make awesome this work. I think you like him. A guy. Number one, number one is ranky. Uh, we're trying to get Ron Renekian on. We,

I mean, we need right on right now. Yeah. Hey Ron, how you doing? Great, thank you for some of my. I was part of the full interview for a run again. Craig, counsel, that'd be fun. Craig, that'd be good.

We should set that up. Yeah, we'll probably catch a, catch a manager to Tree this off season. Treb, do you know that the brewers all I have to do is make vest uniforms and they win the World Series? Counsel in a vest doesn't lose. I would love to see counsel in a vest. and that would bring me back.

What, 98? Is that 98? 2001 with the debacks. That was 2001. You're right. 2001, yeah. 97. 97 with New Orleans.

If he's in a vest, it's one in the world. 98 for some reason, in my head, I'm like, that was like when I was a huge, the biggest fan. Trevor, I've got a question for you.

That might be unfair. One guy, current major league player active who will be an MLB. Steven Vope. Stephen Vote. Yeah? That's the easiest one to do right there. Does he want to if you know that?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he'll do it. Voting for sure. I mean, the catchers are kind of easy. You could see like a James McCann. People speak very highly of him. I'll go out of the box, go no catcher. I don't see if I can think of a good one.

I don't know. Sam Fold's my guy. You know that, but I believe he's more of like a general manager than a manager. It's just smart. Yeah, so he's not active, but he probably still could be the way he plays. Beltron. Like vote. Think about that, man. How far are we gone? How much crap has happened that? We don't even talk about that. Beltron was the manager of the Mets for six weeks in the off season. Yeah. Alex Coro, did he win a World Series or?

Definitely won one, yeah. And then just sorry. I mean, wow. Maybe Alex Corr will be the new manager of the Tigers. Sure, hope not. Maybe him and Hinch will get back together. That'd be awesome. Well, yeah, but apparently Hinch wanted him out.

Well, Khor said, Hinch said Hinch did the whole thing. Hinch said, Korn. did the whole and then before before cora left what I heard was that hinge there was no way cora was returning to the astros

as part of hinge's crew because him and hinge he didn't want him around can you imagine hiring a manager that he came out and said what was I supposed to do I can only do so much have so much you know

say over my players like no like you're never going to be hired for my team I'm sorry good call All right, next voicemail. What up, boys. It's Carter from Richmond. Still waiting on a Susan Walden shirt in the store. So get on that.

I had kind of an interesting question. Since you're all running for commissioner, and our boy, Bob, who was back in the news last week, I want to know what traits the ideal commissioner would have. You know, I know we're a pro players pod, but, you know, think about it realistically. What does the perfect commissioner look like? You know, how does he handle the media?

Like you and Jake, John. or, you know, how does he deal with players, Trev? I don't know. It'll be fun. Thanks, y'all. I think number one thing I'd want a commissioner is I'd want it to be clear that he loves a sport he is commissioner of. Doesn't need to lay it on thick,

but maybe you see him at games reacting to things sometimes. Maybe he does an interview during a game and gets giddy over play on the field, I just think it'd be good if the commissioner enjoyed the sport he was commissioner of. And it was clear. Manfred may enjoy baseball. It's not clear if he does. We don't know. I'd also think it's good that when the commissioner does have to address the media,

he has an air of professionalism and quality to him and doesn't put his foot in his mouth every time he talks publicly. Those are two things I think that I'd like in a commissioner. You can sell me a river of shit, but as long as you do it in a good way, I'll be like, well,

at least you went about it. It's kind of like what Brody Wagonin does. Like he won us people over because he just can be presentable. Manfred's so unpresentable. That worked on you, didn't it? That worked on old Jim.

It works. Be presentable. You can, you can, be awful, but like Manfred's just the decisions, the commissioner doesn't make the decisions. He just to guess man, the owners. So like, enjoy the sport and be presentable. See, that's where I want a real person.

Like, give me a real person, not some robot or a puppet. I need someone that's seems real to me. Like if I met Bob Manfred on the street, I'm not sure he'd actually know what to talk about. Like, or he'd be able to talk. Like he just has to be in that setting where he, you know, has. his answers that he's practiced a bunch. I hate that. Like, I want you to be a real person. I also like you to be transparent. Don't treat the general public like a bunch of idiots. Like, say what's going on, man. If, like, you have an issue that you say, look, this is a business decision. This is

what's going on. Say that. You know, if you were trying to do something, like, don't beat around the bush. Just be transparent with everybody. I think we can handle that, dude. And then also realize that you got to get this game in front of more people. Like, don't. try to go for the money grab all the time, maybe a little bit longer play. Like, let's get some exposure out there. It'll bring the bucks in. So we have to have something that understands, like, how to do that. He does not, not even close, does understand how to put the game in front of more people.

In fact, he tries to take it away from people. So I'm all mad. There's so many MLB managers that have had the name Jimmy before, zero, Trevor's. Only one Jake. Jake, what do you got on Manfred? I mean, the future commissioner that you like. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, the commissioner is not supposed to be the most beloved person in sports

from the fan perspective. I mean, they're supposed to take it on the chin sometime, but the big pitcher stuff is the stuff that makes me sad. You know, I understand that these owners want money and, you know, the grand door picture should be, hey, guys, if we can make baseball as big and as popular as it can be, that's going to be the best route to getting you guys the most money. It just seems there's so many short-term instant money grabs

that have overlooked the best way to do it. So I think it's, you know, not to be lame, but it's just having the best nature of the game. I understand money makes it turn, and you're going to have to make the owners happy 90% of the time, but also be able to do that 10% where you can say like, hey, you know, maybe this $10 million now will lead to $100 million in the future.

Again, Jakey Business School right there. so there'll be like a hundred million dollars ugh that's not enough let me go into my couch cushion what'd you find couch cushion whole box of pop tarts we uh we've got to pull out bed couch couch that we haven't used yet um so i don't think there's too much in there but you never know i guess well now you manscape maybe put it to work player yeah Jeff, what are you going to be for Halloween? I don't know, yeah. They're still trying to cancel Halloween here,

so we'll see how that goes. I usually want to be Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. I've been Aragorn many, many times. I have the costume already, and if I'm going to be able to pick to be somebody different for one day, like that's who I'm always going to pick. But maybe I'll do something that my kids like a little more.

I don't like that? They do, but they want something like they know. You want me to be something like, you know, Paw Patrol or Wildcrats or something like that. Shout out. Nice. Jake's going to be Pedro Martinez from his Philly days. Is that Fat Pedro?

It's kind of swaggy, Pedro. Fat Pedro's fun. He's like, he was starting to leak into fat, like full Jerry curl, like really embracing it. Okay. Yeah. I'm usually, I'm usually, uh, St. Bartholomeo.

I'll probably do that again. Do you have any early ideas? Open to suggestions. Well, we'll figure out. It's really an option this year. That was the last voicemail, right? Thank you to everyone who called in. I think we're good.

Fantastic stuff. We did get into labor dispute stuff, huh? Hmm. We'll be there. Number one labor pod. Number one labor dispute pod. in all the land. Do you think there's a real labor dispute pod?

Like a like how to do a union for dummies podcast? I like, probably. They heard us say that. They'd be like, we've been putting in years. How dare you?

You know what they would do? They would send us like a cease and desist, some sort of contract. I could see that. They wanted to walk the walk. You type in labor dispute. into the podcast app. Yeah.

Three of the top six results are baseball podcast. So that's a good sign for the sport. Has on any of ours? No. Fuck. We're blowing it. All right. Thank you guys very much for tuning in.

We appreciate you. Have a fantastic day. Enjoy. Good news. Thank you.