Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 55 | Astros Update, Cy Young & MVP Winners Announced & Some Moves

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

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The Astros are still in a scandal. The Cy Young and MVP award winners were announced, and we will talk about them. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to talking baseball. It's a podcast. We talk about baseball, Major League Baseball. Sometimes Jake tries to talk about other sports, and we stab him in the throat with our words. My name's John Boy.

I'm coming to you from Harlem, New York. and I have my co-host Jake, the forementioned dude who he stabs sometimes coming to you from Denver wearing his Breckenridge, Colorado pocket patch, salmon colored shirt that I'm a big fan of. How are you doing, Jake? Good color on me, pinks and purples. They show well on my skin tone. A woman at the Atlanta airport said once, I'm good, man. You mentioned Breckenridge.

I think we're going to get our first skiing this weekend. Excited for that. And yeah, I mean, how about I appreciate you said baseball in the news cycle. That's something I like, good news or bad news. And a couple other people did say that. But yeah, shout out to football for trying to get into things by a player trying to rip a human's head off and then beat him with the thing that was protecting his head. Here we are talking football once again.

I knew you'd like that. But I'm good, man. Yeah, we've actually, we've got a little bit of player movement. It kind of, it's been under the radar with everything that's going on with the asterisks LMAO. Have you heard that one, Jim? I have. Someone emailed me and said, am I the first to do this? It's so tough because you and I are like inundated to a blind degree with it.

But it's now any time. anyone hits a table or there's a video of someone drumming or even the football thing last night someone's like oh it must be a change up and it's like that joke was cool for 24 to 48 hours I think we gotta start getting better material out there oh yeah I mean people have already but that's what people do they can't think of new jokes so they just hammer the jokes they've heard and I I think I do want to give a quick uh an apology to Astros fans before we say probably more bad stuff about them coming up in a minute. Dude, it's got to be bad for the diehard baseball fans that are Astro fans,

because there's no defending what's currently going on. So the people that are defending on it are the breezy Astro fans that just want to talk trash on the internet, and they're making them look awful right now. Oh, yeah, the casual fans are always the ones that make your fan base look bad, because they have nothing at stake, so they just talk out your butt. Oh, oh, we... Oh, we don't, yes. Oh, integrity of the game.

We don't care about that because we got a banner. Well, you don't like the sport. I got news for you. You don't enjoy the sport of baseball. And that's what I like. What's going on in Harlem, Jim? Are you in Spanish Harlem? Can I start saying that?

I don't believe I am. I think that's got to be Southern Harlem. I love Maria Maria, one of my favorite songs ever. Yeah, well, I like that song by Ellen John where he talks about Spanish Harlem. Would you look at this? A couple packer heads that like Spanish Harlem, never been. Spanish Harlem is on the east side.

Dude, that Ellen John song is like, is fantastic. Meatballed down my pants. Make me think one of my testicles fell out. Well, Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters. It's a good song. Good song. Like Ellen John. Oh, yeah.

Similar person. He's me and him. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. What do you want to talk about? I'm going on two Houston radio shows today. Oh, man. Yeah. You think they're going to come at your neck? Well, one emailed me.

Dude, I have a lot of... Everyone wants to talk to me, and it's like, I don't know. It's not really worth it. But I'm trying to find the email. They asked if I could come on and I said, hey, Houston kind of hates me right now. Are you trying to railroad me? Is this a trap? I said, either way, I'll come on.

Just with like a little heads up if I need to have my shield up or not. They said it's going to be friendly. What you were saying and a lot of people just aren't looking at all the evidence or not evidence, accusations. And I'll give Houston fans that. It's just accusations. A lot of people like when I was looking, like they don't understand what I'm doing. I'll say that. Someone blew up with Astros Tritter.

They don't understand what I'm doing. People are saying things, players and coaches, and this is a little update. And then later on in the show, we're going to talk about Cy Youngwinner, some movement and MEP. People keep coming out and saying things. Like, I told you personally about the eyeline thing I heard and the bullpen catcher in the bullpen. That came out publicly. So then I went and tried to find something. I didn't really find anything because it's going to be impossible to find.

But I just posted that Springer video. and I was like, ah, this is, he's kind of looking off to the right, but we're not going to find any evidence here. I literally said that in the tweet. Like, there's no damning evidence from this. And then the whistling, you can hear whistles, but honestly, I don't know if it's just a Houston thing or if it's every stadium. I've only tried one.

If you listen for whistling, it's almost like, holy shit. Why are so many people whistling? Yeah. Yeah, and that's, it's kind of. kind of in a tough spot right now because, and I don't want to give this as too much of a compliment to you or too much of an insult to other people, but like, I don't know, I saw there's a video on my feed today that was like a guy that got a video and he's like, I don't know, this is something, but check it out. And like, those people kind of aren't helping right now. Like, if you just

grabbed the video and like, the video was Springer striking out on a slider, but there was like some clapping beforehand. And it's like, hey, we don't need this one. We've got other data. This one's cool for now. Yeah, and I think that's the only, again, I hate going to bat for you, but I thought it was funny, the couple comments that have been like, all right, dude, like let it go. Like, kind of, no, this is not only the biggest story in baseball. This is the biggest story in sports right now. And yeah, like, it's kind of cool for everything we've got going on, but also it's a big deal. And the only people that are saying it's not are Houston, fans and probably bad Houston fans.

So it's tough. Yeah, I had a lot of, there's a lot of Houston fans that are in a position. They're like, this sucks, but I'm going to wait. And I appreciate that. Like,

I'm going to wait until it's 100% or not, because this sucks if it's true. It looks bad. I hope that it's not. But someone's like, you're putting your integrity on the line, like me. Like I'm going out and fishing for these.

Players are saying accusations, and I'm just trying to, find video to back that up and sometimes i haven't been able to and sometimes the banging is very very easy to yeah and i mean like people people within the sport are contacting you like it's not yeah i don't know like at first it was uh sounds like the jfk shooting is like john boy operated alone now it's like this is a very real thing people and the other thing and we'll move on i promise is that actually i forget what i was going to say all right nice strong clothes damn that's how you win the room over like eyes where are you here's one thing that we haven't talked about that i don't

think baseball has fully talked about yet and again it we're kind of in a tough spot because among some of the discovery stuff of course there's a couple opportunities to take a couple jabs at Houston and I mean it's sports you might as well you know hit him in the belly a couple times see what happens but do we how how far deep do you think this goes with like core and beltrane because I mean it seems like they're the originators and now they manage two of the bigger teams in the sports one of them that won the world series the year before yeah so I mean what I can tell you is that I it's been reported and I've been told that was very much put this in place or was one of the people that helped put this in place with the bullpen catcher at the end of the year and he brought the bullpen the bullpen guy to boston with him so i don't know i think it's systematic and that's the problem that's the root of it and it was like it was a system put in place and then that if true if that and that we don't have any evidence of this just a couple hearsay if the earpiece thing is true right that the bullpen

Catcher or a coach was wearing an earpiece, that means that they heard the banging, that getting faded out by the crowd and thought, we need another solution. And then, you know what he means? So that means this was like an operation. Yeah.

And we don't know if that's true or not yet, but if it is, that's bad. Yeah. It's crazy. It's going to be fun to see what other details leak out on this. Yeah. All right.

Why are you smirking like that? Well, not nothing. No reason. You just look like Thomas the train engine right now. One of my first college Halloween costume, Thomas the tank engine. Yeah, you looked good in it. I didn't look great. I didn't look great.

Yeah, actually. Actually, yeah, those pictures are actually kind of hard to look at. Yeah, I got some tough acne, some water weight on at the time. I did change. I traded the Thomas the Tank Engine outfit for a girl that was wearing a sexy referee outfit. Oh, you did? Yeah, there's one pick of that out there. Nice.

Nice, nice, nice. For the holidays. Are we going to a break or are we going straight into everything else? I think we go break and then awards. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with awards. All right, we have awards coming up. and let me tell you here and now

I did not know who won what until I sat down at my desk this morning been so inundated with all this nonsense and going on interviews and TV stations one TV station interviewed me Jake and then they just posted the interview as a tweet thread I was like we need to weed out what shows I go on

I had to talk we got to like do some searching with Bill like they said it was a TV interview and they just posted the videos on Twitter What the fuck's that about? It's a waste of my time. Another interview I did in Canada, they just didn't air it because the impeachment trials ran long or something like that. God damn it.

Can't trust those Canadians, man. I'm not making any breakdowns because I'm taking all these interviews. So anyway. So I didn't know who won. Do you want to do Cy Young first? Because that's kind of what I looked at the notes you put in the sheet. I was like, holy shit. Yeah, and chronologically, we are a cronpot.

We've always been a Kron Pod, and the true ones know that. The Sy Young came out on Wednesday. And I guess let's check the easy box first in the National League, Jacob de Grom won. Back to back, N.L. Sy Young for your New York Metropolitan's. They've got a couple NLE's trophies to hold on it. They just need to get that ring now. Some of that's not true. But good for DeGrom.

He's a stud. and I don't know, is he kind of like underrated in baseball? No, I don't think so. He just has the Mets effect where people are like, oh, and DeGrom. Yeah, that's true. Because it was, I don't know, I guess it's just funny because all of the end of 2018 was people rabidly defending DeGrom or Keith Oberman being a human idiot. And they were saying like, he's got the best.

No, don't look at the wins, people. And most of the baseball was like, we're not, we're not. We'll look at the ERA and the other stuff. Like, we got it. We're all over it. So it's kind of funny that there was like that full defense of him. And then like we talked about last podcast, like, I don't know, you just looked at the number at the end of the year. And I don't know, we always expect Ryu would step up and finish stronger.

Maybe Scher was coming up and he got hurt and it was like, well, here's DeGroms here again. Let's do it. It's DeGroms. It's DeGroms to win. Yeah, it's funny that we thought there might be a shot. And then we looked at it and we, like, last episode, like, oh, that's DeGroms. So good for the baseball writers. Oh, let me go into the voting.

Oh. I forgot. I love going into the individual voting. I didn't hear any crazy Scy Young votes. There is one silly National League MVP vote that I doubt you've heard of. So I'm excited to share that. Coming up in a little bit. Good good to go.

No, Yahoo Sports MLB was suspended. That's where they were posting who voted for who. The fuck. Tough. How did that happen? Tough break. Okay. Jake, can we talk about the, I'll dig into the votes and then we'll talk about.

I'll let you find your votes on your voting websites. Jim, in the AL, Justin Verlander, one of the great pitchers of this decade, and the second best pitcher on his team this year, won the American League Cy Young. Yeah, this kind of shocked us. We both thought it should definitely be Cole. And I'm trying to look at the stats and figure out why it's not Cole, you know? Yeah, that's a good question. That's a really good question.

Like what did these voters see besides maybe Verlanders been around longer, Verlander's been nicer to them? I hope that didn't come into play. Obviously it comes into play. You'd be naive to think it doesn't. All right, so here's what I got. I'm going to make the case. I'm going to act as a voter voting for Verlander.

And I'm going to make the case for Verlander. Ooh, this is fun. This is like high school debate. This is debate team. In high school, they put us on two sides and like cats and dogs debate. And they put me on the cat side. And I was like, I'm out. Yeah.

You just lost a participant. They're like, no, they're like, no, Jimmy. It's like, this is what we're learning, how to debate something you don't believe in. And I said, that sounds. very wrong and dumb. Why would you teach kids to do that? Yeah. You want me to just lie for the point of lying?

Like, this is a real class in high school. I was very upset by it. Teacher kind of was like, well, that's what debate is. And I was like, that's stupid. Yeah. It is. Anyway, I'm going to do it.

Verlander. Okay, Jake, he's older. See, you could have used that right now. He comes with more. Wisdom. Teacher was right. No, he's older and he comes with more wisdom. Point one, okay?

Okay. One point. He won one more game than Garrett Cole. Huge. 21 wins. He played in one more game than Garrett Call. So now we have the scale of balance. 10.2 more innings?

Yes, more innings. Lower whip? He had two more complete. complete games and he had a complete game shutout and a no hitter. I wonder how much that plays. He gave up less hits and less walks. Higher war, Jim. He's a war guy.

Is this box? He had no box. Ooh. Garrett Cole had three box. That's huge. Huge. And lower whip. You covered that.

lower home run to nine really we gave up seven more he gave up seven more he gave up seven more oh hits per nine hits per nine hits per nine higher home run per nine and more no less strikeouts so that's what they i mean that's i guess was enough it's pretty close it's closer than i originally thought but it's very close i mean cole has the era by point oh which again, I mean, that's super tight and ERA is ERA is ERA. The bigger things for Cole is like, I mean, he didn't lose like all summer. I think it was Mike Wilbon, someone that's not a pure baseball guy, but a good sportsperson. And he was like, hey, it's the sport of the summer.

And Garrett Cole didn't lose. He rode that winless streak from the start end of April or end of May, whatever. was. I don't know, you're right. I mean, when you just look at the numbers on paper, I mean, it is very tight, and Justin Verlander's very good, but I don't know, Cole was just dominant, and I think, like, if you took a poll on the Astros, they'd say Cole, and if you took a, if you took a poll around the league, like, if you were a batter, who would you least want to face? I think it's easily Cole this year for this year. I agree. I mean, Cole was the dude. He had a win or he didn't lose a game for like the second half of the season.

Yeah. It's like 16 in a row. Yeah, I get the numbers mixed up in my head now because it carried into the playoffs and they started doing that thing. But yeah, man, I don't know. I think when we look back at, when we look back at this in a decade, like you'll say like, yeah, those stats are there. And maybe the Verlander no hitter is a thing in this, which seems kind of ridiculous. Because the stats are pretty similar face level, but I don't know. If you were in it, you know that it was Garrett Cole all day. Okay, so I have a guy that we need to take his vote away from him. Okay.

So you know my rule about this. If you're not... Lose your vote for a year. Yeah. I don't know what the standards are. If you're like in the 1% that didn't vote the same way as everyone else, you lose your vote for a year. Sure.

It's called the dummy penalty. Yeah. So if you, what should we say? If you have a guy, like if you don't give a first, a guy who gets a first place vote, a top three vote or something,

you should lose your vote, something around that. We'll learn it. We'll learn it. But it's definitely called the dummy suspension. And Mark Wicker from the Southern. California news group, he gets a dummy suspension. And I'll play the dummy suspension sound effect we have.

Thank you. That was pretty quiet. Could you hear it? It was really quiet. I did not hear it. Gong. You went gone. Okay.

Gong. Yeah. I just hit the T button. Saw what I played. His name, did I say his name already? Mark Wicker. He is the Los Angeles Dodgers beat reporter. And the only person to vote,

Riu. as a first place winner in the National League. So we're going to the National League. That's what I have up. Every single person voted to Grom besides the L.A. writer who wanted the L.A. guy to get it. Dunce dummy suspension. Dense dummy possession. Okay.

So we're done with the AL. We're on to the NL. We have our dunce dummy suspension out. That's tough. That's tough, but we'll see you in two years, that guy. Mm-hmm. Do you see Sunny Gray got some votes? Yeah, Sunny got a couple votes.

Soroker got a couple votes. Flaherty, Strasbourg, Kirby Yates. Like, that's a tough one. Like, the Kirby Yates person should lose their vote. Who voted for Kirby Yates, and where'd they put them? Patrick Corbyn got a vote? It's like guys. Wait, what, the Yates got a fourth place.

vote from Mark Wicker the same dude no the same dude had Yates 4th and Ryu 1 can you tweet it Mark Wicker I think we hit the level

no I have to I was okay but Jen Ryu and Yates he's he got the people need to know he got Flaherty 3rd which is fine

dude Mark Wicker what's your deal who gave Corbyn a Can you get that one quick? Yeah, I can because my eyes are... Gotta be a DC guy, right? Human detective work. Corbyn...

Do you know what spot? What place he got voted? I think it was like the minimum vote he could get. He got one point. Do they vote for like six place, or they just vote top five? I don't have a vote anymore. I don't think he got a top five vote. Okay.

So we must have got like a sixth place vote. Why would they vote on like your sixth best person? He had won. Yeah, and that's a couple people reached out and they were asking like, what's the solution? Because we've, like the manager of the year, you know, we saw Terry Francona got one random second place vote. I don't know.

The best solution in my head is like, let's do a primary and get it down to three candidates. and then you can only pick those guys? Does that make sense or does my brain too simple? No, that makes sense to me. Okay, cool. Primary. Learn that one in the history classes. Yeah, it's good shit.

So you said there's something funny in the AL MVP, but let's not move there yet. I want to look at the AL-Sai-Yung you were talking about, was my question. No, there's one comical vote in the NL-Sai-Young, and now I'm hoping it's that same guy, Or the NL MVP, and I'm hoping it's that same guy. Mark Wicker.

Mark Quicker. Dude, Yahoo Sports had all these up so easily, and now I can't find them. I don't know what website has them. If anyone in the chat knows what website has, who voted for her. I can't find it. It's very bothersome. All right. So in the end, we vote MVP?

We're fine with Verlander winning in the end. I thought I was going to be a little more disappointed. It does suck that Verlanders already won one, and Garrett Cole, like, was the best pitcher in the AL, but somehow didn't win it. Yeah, and I guess, and this ties into the voting a little bit, I kind of want to see ALMVP votes because I feel like Garrett Cole got ALMVP votes, which I don't know, that would be kind of ironic, like if he has more ALMVP votes than Verlander,

which I think he does, but he didn't win the SIE Young. I don't know, like, you're right. It's nothing to get to throw your arms up about, but like, I don't know. were a part of this season it was coal mark wicker i saw someone tweeting about him i'm sure he's getting some not fun times wicker leaks

wicker leaks wicker leaks all right let's take a quick break and then we'll do the MVP all right MVP voting this is the biggest award in baseball it's kind of like should be on the same level as the si young but because they refuse to establish what the MVP is and that pitchers can win the MVP, it makes it bigger than the Sanyang.

It should just be the best hitter in baseball. Like it's weird that we have like the best pitcher in the leagues, but we don't have the best offensive player or like, you know, field player in the league. Yeah, they, we've done this a little bit before. It should be two words. It should be best player in MVP. That would make it a lot more fun.

And like I do like the silver slugger and gold glove stuff because I think that's an interesting way to give out some merits to different dudes if you're a fielding specialist or a hitting specialist. But yeah, and you know what kind of has ruined this is war, wins above replacement. Like that stat was made up to kind of show a player's value. And people have looked at that and been like, oh, well, that player had the most. value this year. So yeah, you kind of screwed us on that one more. Let's do the NL first. Your NL MVP is Cody Bellinger.

Cody Bellinger. Come on down. He's a pretty good NL MVP, though. I mean, the Dodgers had a really good regular season. He went nut job for most of it. it would have been fun to see Yelich finish the season, but once Yelich got knocked out and Milwaukee did pretty good without him, it was kind of bellies.

Yeah, but I saw something that was, Yelik missed the last two weeks, right? I want to say it's closer to three. Okay, three weeks. If he missed the first three weeks, would it have counted against him in the same? same manner. That's what I saw and I thought I was an interesting point.

Not the same manner. But, you know, I think you're counting stats and stuff like that are impacted. But again, that's where it's another gray area with MVP. Dude, Cody Bellinger's so young. He's 23 years old. Yeah. Yeah, he's really good. Do you think... I didn't realize he was that young. If the Brewers played like shit without Yellich, does he win the MVP?

That's interesting. So if he gets hurt and the Blueers, the Brewers blew it, does he get more votes? Could be, because you can say, look what they did without him. He carried that team. Right. And now there's probably some dumb people saying, like, look how good they did down the stretch without him. Yeah. So the games.

What the hell is this? Oh, I have this wrong. I have I have Yelich career versus Bellinger's last season. Ooh, love it. It's not fair. So Bellinger played 26 more games. I mean, that's almost a full month. Yeah.

Jakey math. Good job. Almost a full month. We had more played appearances. Yelich had a higher OPS, a higher slugging, a higher on base percentage. a higher batting average. More total, or no, not more total, no counting staties going to win.

A higher OPS plus, he only had, did all the N.O. awards? He only had three less home runs than Bellinger. Yeah, this was, this was Yelich's to win easy if he didn't miss three weeks. Did the NL blow all their awards with injuries? Like Tatease was next.

a neck for rookie of the year. He gets hurt. Yelich had like a mini leg up on Bellinger for the MVP. And then Sy Young like Scherzer had a good chance. He got hurt. Ryu got hurt and had a little slump. Like, I know you kind of blew it this year. Damn. Dude. I'm happy for Bellinger. I think he's a deserving MVP winner. So I'm not trying to knock him at all. He had a fucking fantastic season.

but Yelich had him in a lot of these categories. I didn't realize that if he didn't get hurt and he stayed true to how he was playing for the next three weeks, it was Yelich's easily. So that injury really hurt him. Yeah, and that'll be an interesting week of this offseason or spring training when, dude, Yelich's numbers are like silly. They're Barry Bond stuff.

So that'll be fun. It'll either be like this right before the start of the season or a boring week of the off season where someone's like, Hey, Christian Yelich is a real Barry Bond. A real Barry Bond. So you want them to take steroids? No. I just don't know what you meant by it.

All right. So, Jim, here's where it gets fun. So you'll appreciate this. Well, actually, no, you do have one asshole you have to find. Okay. Somebody gave Cody Bellinger a fifth place MVP vote. Everything else was first or second. Someone gave him a fifth place.

Like, yeah. Like, that dude should be in trouble. You fucked up. Someone gave him a fifth. It looks like you get the vote on top 10. So the other ones I had. Yes. So who gave him a fifth?

Here it is. Tracy Ringgo. Oh, no. Ringo Loshji. Ringolosci from Colorado. He had Rendon, Freeman, Aronado, and Gelletch above Bellingerlinger. So he had Yelich. four and Bellinger 5.

Yeah, I mean, you got to lose your vote for that. Dude, he's the only one that didn't have Bellinger or Yellich. Dude, why are such big, so why are, not all of them. Obviously, 99% of the baseball writers aren't assholes, but why are they like these assholes that get votes? You know what? It's not Bellinger or Yelich. They're not even top three.

Go fuck yourself. You're just wasting your vote. Yeah. Yeah, that's like. Yellich had one fourth place vote, and it's that person. That sucks. So Rendon had the majority of the third place votes. He had 24 of them. Kettle Marte finishes fourth. We made some Kettle Marte jokes as the season went on. He had a crazy year. If you're a Statsky, go look at it. Go look at his season.

Akuna finishes fifth. Aronado, 6. John, this is the one that had the NL talking, because you're right. I mean, when there's 10 votes, you know, you're going to have people that sneak in a Yasmani Grandel or a Strasbourg or Eugenio Suarez for the Reds had four 10th place votes. The one that had everyone talking yesterday, Jim, Kevin Pilar. You got a vote? Kevin Pilar got one 10th place vote for the National League MVP. for his 719 OPS season with a 259 batting average and a 287 on base percentage? Like, that's brutal.

And I don't know, man. Let's look at that guy's ballot. And let's look at if he did everything else good, then I'll be like, okay, you don't get doused. Kevin Pilar had a 1.0 war. Okay, let's look at the rest of his ballot and see how he did otherwise. A 293 on base percentage. Jake, if he did everything else fine, I'm fine with him fucking around with his 10th place vote.

Okay, that's fair. He had, his name is Henry Schulman from the San Francisco Chronicle, which is Polar's team. Right. He had Bellinger 1, Yelich 2, Rendon 3. All day. Marte 4. Uh-huh. Freeman 5.

Okay. Alonzo 6. Yeah. Aronado 7. Yeah. Soto 8. Okay. Akuna 9.

Yeah. Pilar 10. I like it. I'm not dunce in them. What I'm saying here is, I want this to be the future. I want the top nine guys you have to take very seriously. And then that 10th guy, you just give it to who you like the most. Like I'm wondering does Kevin Pilar have something in his contract

If he gets an MVP vote, he gets 100K And he threw this rider like 10K He's like, hey, just give me your 10th place vote That'd be awesome I mean that that feels like a no-brainer Okay, well maybe Trevor's story has that He got a one vote, a 10th place vote Trevor got a lot of votes

Well and he got one 10th place vote Two But he also got two six place votes Suarez got some votes Sores yeah Colton Wong was the other one He got two tenth Ten spotters

Goldschmidt had one A 3U had one seventh Yeah I don't know It's a It's a solid list The Kevin Pilar That'll be a run-in-baseball nerd joke For the next year or so

I'm happy for Pilar and I'm not giving him my dummy suspension, the voter either. Okay, that's fine. Who cares about that vote? Good job. Did, can one of my, I'm assuming yes, and that's part of the reason he got this vote, can one of my, one of my Giants' followers or listeners reach out and tell me if Pilar still plays like a cool center field?

Why wouldn't he? Because I think the, well, I think the metrics are starting to fall off, and he's getting a little older. I mean, he's 30 years old. So I don't know. Just curious. Well, do you still play a center, a good center field? We're going to find out soon, I think. All right. The AL MVP was an interesting one because you had Trout who got hurt, similar to Gallich.

You had Bregman, who's amidst the scandal right now, which doesn't come into play at all, obviously. And then Simeon, who like, I'm going to. going to be honest here simian just doesn't have the name or the campaign is kind of a two-man race i haven't looked at the voting though so yeah so break out anything interesting we've got good news jim uh trout and bregman got all first place and second place votes oh we got no assholes no assholes uh that's fantastic trout trout 17 first bregman 13 uh and then vice versa for second place uh Simeon had the majority of the third place votes.

He had 22. LeMayhew had six. He ends up finishing fourth. Simions are really interesting one because he played a really good shortstop and he had a really good year with the bat. That's kind of one of those mental mind fucks a little bit because I think when you think of Oakland's lineup, you think of Matt Chapman and Matt Olson first. But Simeon did have a really, really good year by a lot of advantage.

metrics too. Let's see. LaMayhew Bogart's he had a big year. There's Matt Chapman, George Springer, who if he had the full year, he would have had an interesting case. Mookie Betts finishes, which I don't, Jim, our guy, Jeff, Jeff, is it Pesan or Passing? I always say Peson. Let's go Pisan. That's how close we are with him. Got to figure that out before winter meetings. He had Mookie like fourth. He had LeMayhew. like eighth. And that one's kind of tough for me. A. as a Yankee fan, but I'll try to keep my bias out of it.

But DJ LaMayhew was so good and so solid for this whole season. And it felt like Mookie was gone for like half, not gone, but he wasn't MVP Mookie bets for half the year. But DJ's not going to get, like, if you look at MVP as the best player in baseball, he's not going to get those votes. If you look at it as most valuable to your team, he should get those. knows, but that's very split in how you look at it. I would counter you with, like, we saw it this year, and living in Denver,

I had a lot of my Rockies fans and sports riders bumping me and being like, yo, you like it, huh? It's nice. It's like, yeah. But remember, we had the whole stretch where David Cohn said it, that DJ LaMahue looks Little League out there, that he's just the best player on the field. And I don't know. I mean, this is part of the problem and why Kevin Pilar got a vote is that when you do watch a guy every day,

sometimes you do get blindsided by whatever you're thinking a little bit. So I don't know. I mean, it's six one way, half dozen the other in the end. I'm trying to see if there's any standouts. So Garrett Cole finishes one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine. Garrett Cole finishes 10th in the MVP voting. Verlander 11th. How about that?

that's what whatever it doesn't really matter but I mean okay well if you wanted to make that case Cole won more like more the game team won more when Cole was on the mound so MVP but then the side

that's all right that's baseball baby couple odd balls is there any is there any weird so Boston writer voted Bogart's third the only third

The only third place vote was from a Boston writer, so hometown love there. Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, he had a good enough year that if you throw him in with Lemayhew and Simmy, and it's close. But yeah, that's a Homer vote. Justin Verlander had one third place vote. Let's see. Who are our wild cards at the bottom? Jorge Solerick gets a 10th place vote.

But I love that because he had a big year. Like, knock yourself out, Royals Ryder that put that in. Detroit Ryder put it in. Oh, how about that? Well, yeah, Detroit. There's a lot of games he had to watch. Charlie Morton gets one. Sure, knock yourself out, Ray's voter.

Yon Moncada, he gets one 10th placer. J.D. Martinez gets one 10th placer. Max Kepler with a 9 spot, Jim. Yeah, Houston voter. Christy Rakin. Jose Ibrayu with a 7th and a 10th. And Eddie Rosario with two eights. So there's that.

I don't see anything egregious here. No, nothing too crazy. And you are right. I mean, once you get to the 8 to 10 range, you can throw shit at a wall a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. If we wanted to throw our hands up on the Cy Young, Garrett Cole finishes higher in the MVP voting.

Don't, da, da. I would have voted for Cole. I would have voted for de Grom. I would have voted for... Actually, dude, I've never looked at the Trout and Bregman breakdown. I'm going to look at it, okay? Okay. Let's see.

It is interesting because you have Trout playing 22 less games than Bregman, which is similar to Yelich and Bellinger. It was what, 26 to 22? You have... Yeah, something like that. You have... Bregman with 90 more played appearances. You have Bregman with 84 more at bats.

Bregman has 12 more runs scored. He has a ton more hits. He has 10 more doubles. Did Bregman lead the league in anything? Yeah, I'll check. He has four, Bregman has four less home runs than Trout. He's got more RBIs. So he's going to have the counting stats, right?

Because he played longer. But Bellinger had the counting stats because he played more games. But Bellinger won. Bregman lost. Trout had more stolen bases. All the counting. Trout led the league in on base, slugging, and OPS. But Bregman had him in batting average, had him,

didn't have him on base percentage, didn't have him slugging, didn't have him in OPS. That's interesting. I think we also have a factor here, the human. element of the vote is that like everyone in baseball loves trout and wants trout to be the best ever you know what i'm saying yeah people want to say i got to watch that guy play look at his mvps look at his silver sluggers look at his stats and this just helps pad to the allure that is we're watching one of the best baseball players ever right now i think there's a tiny little a little smidge of that.

Yeah, I don't know. I think we're almost going too deep into this. I think the two right guys won the MVP award. I mean, Bregman was there with a lot of them. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. But I think, like you're saying, they are similar when you start mirroring the games and some of the counting stats. But I think Mike Trout's 134 games are more impressive than Breggman's 155 or whatever he landed

at. I don't have his page in front. But then I would say, I would go. And then I would say, I would say Bellinger's 155 are more impressive than Yelich's 130. If I'm a, if I'm a Houston fan, I think you can have a great. I think you can be a bit upset about this one. Four worthy guys. Yeah.

Those guys got all the first and second place votes minus one asshole. Trout, though. Can we just, can I just go over this with everyone? Sure. Trout came up in 2011 and he played 40 games, not a full season, doesn't count. Didn't even pass his rookie limit. So who cares? 2012 Trout's rookie year.

I won't even say All-Star because he's played, he's been an All-Star every season since his rookie year. He won rookie of the year, okay? He came second in MVP voting in 2012. In 2013, he came second in MVP voting again. In 2014, he was the ALMVP. In 2015, he came second in MVP voting again. In 2016, he was the ALMVP. In 2017, he got injured.

He didn't play a lot. And he was the fourth place finisher in MVP voting. 114 games. 114 games. In 2018, he came second in MVP voting. And in 2019, he came first. in MVP voting. So in eight full seasons,

he now has three first place finishes in MVP voting and one, two, three, four second place finishes in MVP voting and one fourth place finish when he was injured. He's won a silver slugger

every single year since his first full season in 2012 besides the injured year in 2017 when he only played 114. games. His career is incredible. Yeah. No, no comment. Yeah, he's special. And this is, go look at the baseball reference of your baseball person. It's fun to look at all the bold italics for categories he led the league in are

pretty insane OPS for the last five years. Jim, the cool part for me, because he's been special since you mentioned his rookie year. Like, we knew this dude was different, where he led the league in steals with 49, by the way. In 2014, he led the league in strikeouts, which, again, not a big thing, especially when you're doing everything else he does. He led the league in total bases that year and won the MVP.

But he's cut down on those a lot, and that's when things get really cool. When you see a special player that's like, yeah, I won the MVP, I had a really cool year. All right, time to get into those strikeouts. Got to get rid of those. It's like, oh, you're different. Yeah, it's crazy.

Crazy. All right, we have some free agent signings and appings that we have to talk about as well. Yep. We'll take a quick break and then we'll come back with those. All right, we had some free agency signings. We had some qualifying offers accepted. I think the leading news stories are that Jake Oterizzi accepts his qualifying

off from Minnesota, which we'll get into. Jose Ibrahim, accepted his. qualifying offer from the Chicago White Sox. That's interesting. Will Smith get signed by Atlanta and Darren O'Day also signed with Atlanta. They are trying to bolster up their bullpen and move fast because as we've said on this show multiple times, the relief pitching market was not big and it's kind of done now. It's almost dried up. Yeah, let's let's do relievers in Atlanta first because they're they're kind of the two.

two, well, two of the major topics. A, Atlanta is that they're trying to get their free agency done with. They signed two relievers. One of them is pretty impactful. Will Smith, he was on the Giants. He's been really solid for a long time. I think it's interesting. He got more money than Aadivino and Zach Britton. Not a lot more, but a decent chunk. And I think if you asked around the league, a lot of people would lean Aadivino and Britain over Will Smith. But I don't know. Atlanta Maybe they saw the market and they were like, let's do no joke and get this guy. And that was obviously a weakness for them in the postseason. So good for them.

I'm kind of interested by their route. But yeah, they brought back Flowers, Markechis, and they signed two relievers. I'm wondering, I mean, are they kind of tapped out? Do they got one more move or what's going on in the ATL? Well, I've seen links of Bumgarner that there's a serious. Yeah. They're going to make an offer, which makes sense. You have it making sense.

So that's kind of cool. But good for Atlanta, man. This market was not good, right? We said that a lot. Yeah. You wanted to get the free agents that you believed in, you believed in. And they were, I mean, what do we have here? They were, Will Smith was the, like, highest regarded free agent relief pitcher.

Will Harris is behind him. He's still available. but then you also got Darren O'Day for, you know, backup purses just to bolster it when you got the top guy. Will Smith was kind of the top guy available. So good for them. Yeah. The only wild card in the relief pitching pool is Delen Batanzas. He's got dirty stuff, but he missed all of last year.

He's going to miss part of next season. No. Did you hear the update? No. Delin said he's not going to miss any of next year. Oh, there you go. I thought I said that. And then you talked me off the ledge.

I heard, I don't know if you can trust him. Okay. Well, he might miss start him next year. He said that by December this winter, he will be fully recovered from his Achilles injury and have a normal offseason by December, which I just find very hard to believe. And also really good for free agent stuff.

Yeah, could be lying a little bit. That's what I'm saying. I think there's a little embellishment there. And yeah, maybe I understood, Will Smith a little bit because he's been Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Francisco Giants. If you take out his rookie year, which we just did with Mike Trout, he's out a 303 ERA. I didn't do that with Mike Trout. Yeah, yeah, you did.

He run, he run, he wasn't a rookie. He just got, it was like a call up. Yeah, I mean, that's, I'm taking out Will Smith's first season. He started games that year. He started 16 games. He's only started one since. I think that can be an outlier for Will Smith as well. Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

I'm just saying Charles' rookie year. He won rookie of the year. Yes, his first season playing baseball. Let's settle there. And Will Smith was great last year. 276 ERA, 34 saves for the Giants, 96 strikeouts and 65 innings. So good for Atlanta. You know, he's not the flashiest name, but he did have a good year.

And he's kind of a fun guy. We saw him on a couple breakdowns. hopefully he fits with that Atlanta squad. Should, they, what is their identity? Went to high school in Georgia, Jim. Perfect fit. Love it. From there.

Wow, that is wildly amazing. Can we get to these qualifying offers? Because they're what's super interesting. Yeah. You want to go? Yeah, because we talked about this a little bit. I don't know what platform. Jake Oterizzi accepts the qualifying offer for Minnesota.

because they kind of damned him by making a qualifying offer. Because the way we saw the market play out is these teams, so the rules are, if you get a qualifying offer and you say no, no thank you, I'm going to go to a free agency, well then any team that signs you has to give Minnesota a draft pick as compensation since you said no to the qualifying offer. and the whole point was to incentivize teams to offer qualifying offers to their players that have been with their team because it's good if you have guys coming back and loyalty and that type of stuff.

And it used to be the generic stereotype was, oh, our guy is going to be here for the first six years and then he'll sign with the Yankees or he'll sign with the Dodgers. So when that happened, the idea was that if you were the twins, if you were whatever other, team you were, sorry Twins fans, qualifying off, for example, is that if that player leaves, you still get a first round pick so you could build your farm system and things like that. Now, those used to be a lot less valuable in Major League Baseball. Now they are a pretty decent form of currency. Yeah, the draft picks and trades and all that. We've learned that they're super huge. And Kichel didn't get signed because he had a draft pick attached to him. And a lot of other guys, Mustakis, didn't get signed because he had a draft pick attached to him.

So if Odrizi says no to this qualifying offer, teams may want to pay him the same money or more, but they don't want to do it with that draft pick attached. And he could be waiting all winter. So his hands are kind of tied because he's pretty deep on the free agent pool right now. And he's got a draft ticket patch. So he's just like, I have to take this because this is money on the table right now. So qualifying offer system kind of sucks. A lot of systems in the CBA suck right now.

good for Jake Oterizzi because it is a decent chunk of money and he does get to stay and be with his team and good for Minnesota for the fans that like Oterizzi and bad for the fans that don't like him. I'm not sure how many go each way. But it is just such an interesting trickle effect with the CBA and all the rules and shit. Yeah, and it's strong.

The thing that is saving the qualifying offer currently is that you can only be offered it once. So Oda Rizzi, he can be offered. it this year he accepted it so if he goes out and he has another good year he will hit free agency with with no hassle or anything um it's kind of tough because he he probably could have gotten a four year 15 year four four year 15 i don't know three 15 15 four for 12 um and kind of would have been his last contract and now he's got to go out and do it again uh so so we'll see hopefully it ends well um and yeah i think if you're the other starting pitchers you're you're a little

If you're the if you're that second tier, if you're the reuse, if you are the Kershaws, that kind of tier. You know, that's that's one other, one less guy who's fighting for money from a team like the twins that probably wasn't going to go out and and shell out money for someone they weren't familiar with. I don't know. Maybe that got a little weird at the end. You don't know. So tell me about this, a brayu one. He accepts the qualifying offer because no one wants a DH anymore. Same reason why J.D. Martinez didn't opt out of the Red Sox.

He saw the market for first base slash DH guys and said, oh, shit, no one really has a spot or wants this. So I'll just opt back into the Red Sox contract, which is good money. And I think of Bray, who probably saw the same thing. And his team was like, this is the only team that really needs you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the teams that are looking for DHS are the White Sox in Texas, and basically Chicago kind of brought their back. Jose Abrae, who did play 125 games at first base.

He's not special over there. I think he could probably pick it for another year, maybe two. He's going to be 33 next season. So, yeah, this one's kind of tough for me because it's nice that he stays in Chicago with the White Sox. And he's about as steady as a hitter as they come. casually did lead the league in RBIs this year. So, yeah, I don't know. It's nice for that part of it.

For Jose Ibrahim, again, another guy that you hope he has another solid Jose Abraeu year, because if he goes into next year going to be 34, can't really play first base anymore, like his market's going to suck. So that's the tough part of this whole qualifying offer thing. Yep. And then, I mean, yeah, that's interesting. But yeah, you better have a good year. Have a good year and go get a two-year good money or three-year decent money contract to DH First Base somewhere after that.

But yeah, it's a, and that's, I think most of you are with us. But if that would be the overlying thing in this, if Jose Abrae, who hit free agency this year, he probably gets three years, 15 mil per. Instead, he's getting one for 17, one for 18 essentially, which is more for this year. But if he has a bad year, he might screw himself. He'll have a great year. You're going to get Puege in right field. They're going to have fun. Pweig, they'll have like a little, yeah, they got a Cuban connection.

Munkata got MVP votes. So this big graph, I don't know who made this, but I'd give him a shout out if his name was on here. John Becker, that's who it is. my sophomore biology teacher here are the teams that are out according to John Becker who's done a great job keeping out with this on Garrett Cole

Baltimore Toronto Detroit Seattle Colorado fully out Jake okay just keeping everyone up to date and that's all that was that update

okay interesting I'm going to rule out Kansas City. I didn't see them. Yeah, I don't know. And I think, how about this to kind of tie things off a little bit? A, what you said with J.D. Martinez accepting his option, not a huge market for DHS right now. And the other, so the guys that do have qualifying offers attached to them, and it's something to watch. Cole, Rendon, Strasbourg, it's not going to matter at all.

Nope. Do you think it affects Wheeler at all? No. No, because I'm with you. I think a team falls in love with him a little bit. What about Bumgarner Donaldson? Yeah, maybe a little bit. Like money-wise.

It feels like you want to get those guys into camp a little bit, but I mean, someone like Josh Donaldson, you know, you're going to sign him what, two, three years? He's kind of getting older. He's got a little bit of an injury history to teams, might be a little fickle over that first, first round pick. And the only other guy out there is Marcel Ozuna, which I don't know. He's going to be an interesting one to watch.

I don't think it affects him if you convince yourself that he's going to be your slashing right fielder for the next four seasons. I think you're okay with giving it up. Yeah, I think so. I think so as well. I have, do one more thing and then we'll end this, but this is, I think if I keep up with this over the offseason. and I'm not keeping up with it, John Becker is, but I'll share it.

He has in here, team has a legitimate shot, has made an offer or are in the top candidates. And there's a couple now that he has, Brett Gardner and the Yankees. It's kind of obvious, but there's been reports now that they are working on something. He has Madison, bumgarner, and the Atlanta Braves. The Braves have made, they are a top-tier candidate. They have interest. It's like noted, right? Yeah, he likes the ALEs for.

mad bum, huh? Or the NL East. Does he? Yeah, he's got Atlanta with the green, but he's got Philly and Washington with the baby blue, which is interested. Yeah, but it's not him that he links the tweets if you click those, the blue. Right, right, right. Strasbourg with Washington, and that's because they made an offer already. Yep. And then there was another one that was interesting to me. Oh, Howie Kendrick with the Tampa Bay raise. Yeah, I mean, it could be a raise move. I guess if you're fully bought into what Howie Kendrick was last year, and you're not one of the front offices saying he's older

and he's going to regress back to the mean? Yeah, I guess that would be a good raise risk-reward move. Like, if you get the 950 OPS Howie Kendrick, yeah. And then for Alex Gordon, what's going on with Alex Gordon? He's got team is out. on player and is not interested for every single team in the league. And then he has the Royals as being very interested. Has every other team come out and said no to Alex Gordon?

I don't know. Feels a little Wainwright-ish. Oh, by the way, Adam Wainwright re-signed with the Cardinal, so that's good. And Ryan Zimmerman has interest from the Washington Nationals, Mr. National. Yeah, I bet. So that's the end of that. And that's the end of the show. And we thank you for hanging out with us, and we appreciate it.

And Jake, any final words? Thanks for seeing us. We'll see you guys, what, Monday, Tuesday? We'll see if there's any other breaking news. Let's get a trade. Let's get a trade. We'll be back Monday, and then Jake and I will be traveling, and we'll maybe do some shows together later on.

Yeah, if you're one of our GMs that listens, do a trade. That way we'll know you're a fan. Thank you. Thank you all our GMs that listen. Do the trade. Jake sucks.