The Press Box - The NBA Fan’s Guide to the World Series (Ep. 370)

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

In this special crossover episode, ‘Binge Mode’ hosts Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion draw parallels between the 2017 MLB World Series and the NBA by highlighting five commonalities between the two sports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To a special MLB NBA, wow, crossover episode on Channel 33, proudly part of the Ringer podcast network. I am Mallory Rubin, deputy editor of The Ringer.com. Joining me today. Now that he's finished polishing his CV for Brian Cashman's esteemed consideration, He's a quop, Brian. Check me out. It's a ringer staff writer and your maister, Jason Concepcion.

I bleed Yankee pinstripes, which is a thing that I believe that Yankee fans say. Yeah, good. Yes. Sure. Good. This is, wow. Yeah. Your love for America's pastime is palpable already.

It's hopefully flowing through the microphone into the cable down the, through the mechanisms of podcast machinery and out into people's ears. 27 rings. Wow, I'm convinced. I am convinced fully. The other thing flowing into the microphone, just love for being here with you.

This is great. This is great. This is great. This is great. We are here today for a couple reasons. Yeah. One, baseball is good. It's really good.

Especially playoff baseball. And while, admittedly, we do not get eight home runs and extended Michael Balman horror movie metaphors every year. Wait, it's not like that all the time. Sad to say, it is not like that all the time. But please don't tell Che Serrano. It's finally engaging. But we got that stuff this week. The World Series has been incredible so far.

You know what else is very good? What's that? The NBA. I believe that. That's true. A new season is underway. And so, guys, sports fans of the world, listeners, it might feel like you have to choose. But sweet listeners, we are here to convince you otherwise.

You do that. You know, Dumbledore might have said that it is our choices. But sometimes you can choose to do it all. And we, two of us, have really enjoyed sharing baseball and basketball with each other. these past few days. So to help you guys do the same, we thought it would be fun. Just hop on mics

and do a little NBA fans guide to appreciating the World Series. We also have something pretty special coming at the end too. Because Jason is going to reveal something quite astonishing about his personal baseball fandom. So please, please. It's a safe space.

It's a safe space. It's just you and me, buddy. You and me and all the listeners. That's right. And now we're going to show you five points, five corollaries between the NBA and the MLB. Two games that people think are very different, but in actual fact, a lot of similarities here, folks. Yeah. Let's start with number one, tanking.

If you are concerned about tanking, how should you feel about the Houston Astros being in the World Series? And the proliferation of tanking, of aggressive losing in order to get high draft picks. assets, which you can then turn into players, which you can then win titles with across sports. How should we feel about it? I think we need some Shirley Temples before we can properly talk about this. Well, NBA teams have always tanks. The incentive to lose, even with the lottery system, which flattens out the odds of the worst teams in the league, is just too strong. With the Philly-Dathlete, 76ers under former GM, Sam Hinkie.

Chris Ryan's team. Sammy Hinky, the process, took the practice to new. Heights of brazenness, Hinky traded away the team's good players for draft picks, traded an all-star just straight up for draft picks. Young players with upside, he'd take back or even cheap players with borderline NBA talent. He then hired a coach, Brett Brown, who installed a system designed to up the pace, up-tempo, take a lot of threes. Why?

Because then you're creating more possessions. More possessions with a bad team means more chances for that team to display just exactly how bad they are. Meaning, you lose a lot of games. Lose a lot of games, but what happens in return? You get those high draft picks. And, listen, the Sixers won from 2013 to 2016. They won 19, 18, and 10.

Not a lot. Ten. That's not a lot. But they got what they needed. They got the draft picks that became Joelle Embed, Mr. Shirley Temple himself. Ben Simmons shoots with the wrong hand, but he's playing great. Cat owner. A cat owner.

Big-time cat owner. Loves cats. And Markell Fultz is like, listen, he's going through a couple things right now. But the talent is there. And also Jaliel Ocalfour was on an all vegetable diet. You can't win them all. The talent is there, but the shoulders are not. Something wrong with the shoulder, we think.

Anyway, this aggressive dedication to maximizing the chances of losing has costs beyond just the losses. You know, like you have fans to think of who you're trying to get them to buy into this product. You've got a league to think of. this is theoretically something that flies in the very face of the spirit of competition, trying to lose like this, or not, excuse me, not trying to lose, but trying to maximize the chances of losing. In the case of the Sixers, after, you know, going on to four seasons of this, the league allegedly stepped in.

They made them hire former Raptors executive Brian Colangelo, and Sam Hinky wrote a 13-page screed and stepped down. So what can you do about tanking? and what are the things that make it similar across sports? I think the interesting thing for me about tanking is, how do you create a system that gives fans of a team hope that their team can get better? Right.

Without incentivizing losing to such a degree that smart teams will be this, let's fucking lose. Right. Let's just lose a lot. And a secondary issue, is it good that the title, the championship, is the most important thing in sports? Is there a way to make the kind of the middle ground also

desirable because what you have now is if you can't win the title and you're stuck in that middle area of borderline contention or just, you know, making the wild card every single year, then why even do it, right? Why not just tank? Why don't just lose 100 games for five seasons? Glad you mentioned losing 100 games for multiple seasons. Tanking is so fully in sports fans' consciousness right now, not only because of the Sixers, undeniably, one. of the stories, not only of the NBA preseason and recent seasons, but of the moment right now, the Astros are in the World Series, guys, and the Cubs won it last year. So two of the four LCS participants this season, the Cubs in the NLCS and the Astros in the ALCS were active tankers,

bringing tanking fully to Major League Baseball, no matter what people say. And plenty of people involved with those franchises, with the commissioner's office, and with media, will say there's a difference between rebuilding and tanking. Right. Right. They say that. Every sport, they say that. There is a difference between rebuilding and tanking. Exactly.

And this is tanking. Now, one of the teams in the current World Series, active tanker, the Astros, the Cubs, again, who won it last year, active tankers. This has become a huge narrative in baseball for one reason and one reason only. It works. It works. It works. Undeniably works. The Astros, they didn't just lose.

They redefined what losing in the sport could look like. From 2011 to 2013, the Astros lost 106, 107, and 111 games. Absurd. Asthma! It's crazy. They became the first team over those three years to, since the 1962 to Mets. You know when you're getting a Mets competition.

It's dark. It's not great. It's not great to lose at least 106 games in three consecutive seasons. And what did they do in 2015, just a tiny bit after that three-year period? They made the playoffs. And now this year, 2017, they're in the World Series. Why? Well, who were they able to acquire over that time when they were losing all those games and amassing high draft picks? We're not going to go through the entire list, but some of the names, of note. Guys, have you heard of Carlos Correa? He's one of the three best players in baseball, and he was their number one pick in 2012. That's a big deal. In 2011, the year prior, they got George Springer. You might not have heard of Mark Appel, but he was a number one overall pick as well, and they traded him to the Phillies and part of the Ken Giles deal. So they're either

taking these picks and turning them into elite major leaguers or using them as pieces in future trades. Guys like Kyle Tucker, who will be probably a major contributor on this team moving forward. Alex Bregman having a huge postseason. They've been way more successful with hitters than with pitchers, but they have amassed an elite farm system because of the way they positioned the draft based on the losses. What about the Cubs? Well, Theo Epstein, the Golden Boy himself, took over. And in the first few years of the Epstein regime, the Cubs went 61 and 101, 61 and 66, 73 and 89.

Those are bad performances. It's not quite Astros-esque, but it's really close. Their first round picks in the early years of the Epstein tenure included players like Kyle Schwerber and Chris Bryant. Chris Bryant won the NLMVP last year. That's a big deal. It's such a big deal, and it's so clearly effective that it is undeniably spreading. The team that has really become Astros Cubs 2.0, I think, the Chicago White Sox.

Jason and I talked about this a bit on binge mode live NBA Paloosa because it's kind of fun. It's kind of cool. The White Sox feel like the Sixers right now. They lost 95 games this season. And it is not a coincidence that that loss. total comes on the heels of trades such as Chris Sale for Jan Makata, the best prospect in baseball at the time of that deal, and Michael Kopeck, who, like, if you think Noah Sindigard throws hard, Google Michael Kovac. Also, just Google him anyway because he's extremely

handsome. At a meeting for Lucas Gieletto, formerly the top pitching prospect in baseball, when they dealt Jose Kintana to the Cubs, a team that, of course, was familiar with the strategy, they got Eloy Jimenez in return, one of the Cubs' best hitting prospects. When they shipped even lesser players like Todd Frazier and David Robertson and Tommy Connolly to the Yankees, they got Blake Rutherford, who's one of the Yankees' top outfield prospects. That is not an accident. They demand it in every one of those deals, the best possible haul in return. The other thing to keep in mind, and this was particularly key with the Astros and is worth

keeping in mind as we watch them in the World Series. it's not just about the player you're getting with the pick in baseball. It is about the money because the draft pool is a gigantic incentive for teams. You get more money if you have the number one pick. And here's the key. You can do whatever you want with it. You do not have to spend it all on that pick. Even more incentive to be shitty.

Exactly. Be shitty. Get the pick. Get the chunk of change associated with the pick. And they use that money throughout the draft. a lot of times in baseball, an elite prospect, will actually fall further in the draft than he should, not because he isn't good,

but because teams don't want to give him the bonus that they're supposed to based on his talent. Well, guess what? If you're the Astros and you have all that money, you can get that guy after your first pick. You can get him later, and then you're basically getting two guys of that caliber. They've been doing this successfully for years.

So the question is, what does this mean for both sports? Philosophically, fundamentally, as a fame, as a member of the league. Is this a problem? Because we always see that label, the tanking problem. Well, here's where I believe that it is a problem and it is unfair. The Sixers got about three years run at this before the league stepped in.

But, you know, Philly was bad for a long time. They're a big media market, but they kind of ignored, definitely on the periphery of NBA relevance for decades. if, let's say, the Lakers were like, you know what, we're going to tank for four years straight. It would be a disaster. It would be disastrous for the league. They would not let that happen.

So I'm interested to know why that hasn't happened yet in baseball, considering some of the teams involved in this. Right. I think part of it is denial. Right. So Rob Manfred, I would say in general, is actually a pretty candid commissioner. Like, he will just say we need to get more young fans to engage with baseball.

The sport cannot survive failing to do so. We need to speed up the game. Pace of play is a problem. Like, he's generally not afraid to say, this is bad, let's fix it. But so far largely has denied that tanking is a thing, let alone like a serious scourge in the sport. However, not everybody else in the game feels that way. Clearly, Buster Olney reported last February, February 2016, that the winter meetings had included a gathering of MLB owners specifically to discuss tanking concerns. So clearly this is a thing where people around the league are saying, all right, how worried do we need to be about this and when?

And maybe the teams that are doing it is part of that equation. It's not the Dodgers. Right. It's not the Yankees. At least not yet. So the nature of the sports is also part of the. why maybe it is perceived a little bit differently. Because in basketball, one superstar really can fix your team.

Yes. Right. So if you do this, you commit to this strategy and you land the right guy, you're good. That's not really the calculus. In baseball, you need no matter what a critical mass. And you don't need to look any further than what's happening with the Angels. They have Mike Trout, who is not only the best player right now. Just playing in a vacuum.

Might be the best player ever. And it just basically just doesn't matter. They can't make the playoffs. And the other thing is the timing, the nature of prospect development, right? You draft a player in the NBA, and then he's on your team. Right. He's there. You draft a player in baseball.

You just have absolutely no idea. You know, we certainly... Whispers. Whispers. Maybe you see the name appear on a baseball America prospect list and you get excited. We have seen a really, like a trend of accelerated prospect promotions in recent years as part of this rush or this influx of young talent into the game. But it could be two, three, four, five years. before a guy you draft pans out.

If he pans out at all, the success rate, especially for pitchers, is still extremely low. So, you know, whether the sport ends up rebelling, especially on the heels if the Astros win the World Series. But like, let's be honest, being in the World Series is enough two years in a row of a tanking team making and potentially winning the World Series. That's enough to take this seriously. Whether the sport rebels against that is a pretty interesting consideration. You know, on the one hand, again, it is working. the Astros and Cubs lost and then they won. And I think there's an argument to make that that is better than just never competing at all.

Yes, I would say that. I mean, listen, if you're going to rebuild in a standard way, it's probably going to take two, three seasons longer than that. And you have to get a lot luckier because you have less shots. Right. You could make the argument that though the pain is intense, losing 100 games, a season for multiple seasons. If you're showing out money on tickets or on. MLB package or anything like that, that is tough. Right.

You're just basically going to have to find another team to root for for three to four years. But you make the case that at the end of that, there is a pretty strong chance that you're going to be in the playoffs. Right. I mean, it's been shown to work. It works. It works. I think the flip side is the Major League Baseball introduced the second wild card a few seasons

ago specifically to increase parity in the game. To say that if more teams think they have a chance of staying. in the race, more fans will be engaged, and fewer teams will sell off their good players because they will think, hey, you know what? All we have to do is make that second wild card. Or that second wild card, make the wildcard game, and then we're in. We have a shot. Clearly, MLB is incentivized to have as many teams as possible remain competitive for as long as possible. That can't happen if more and more teams start tanking. But again, you know, there is a, there's a difference between a focused, condensed period of tanking that eventually leads to not only winning, but to real spending, to a commitment to building a contender.

And just saying we're kind of okay being bad and never really trying. Like, fans in the league have a genuine gripe if teams never attempt to compete, especially with the amount of money in the sport right now because of the regional sport network deals. You know, I personally, like as an Oriole fan, I would honestly prefer to see my team tank. Why don't they do it? I think it's right now it's because of the people running the franchise. I mean, Angeloas is the owner.

You're never going to be a progressive team. Duquette as the GM, I just think he thinks he's smarter than everyone and that every year he can keep going for the market inefficiency guy, the guy someone else who has given up on who can still squeak out. You know the Joe Saunders type

who's somehow going to beat you Darvish in the wild card and like that's replicable? No, it isn't. It just isn't. And Showalter. You know, who I adore is kind of an old school dude. And we're seeing a lot of really successful managers get fired this year. And that signals a larger sea change in the game, what is expected.

And there are still certain teams like the Orioles who are not caught up with that. And so what happens is you're lost. You're lost between these two poles. You're not willing to aggressively commit to tanking and then contending three or four years down the road. But you're also not going to spend. You're not going to spend on par with the Yanke. or the Dodgers. Like, are they going to pay Manny Machado?

No, because they would have done so already. So what do you do and where does that leave you? All you have at the end is a couple wild card births and a lot of disappointment. Right. Let's move on. Sure. One of the things about the postseason in any sport is that you get a lot of hero narratives and you get a lot of goat narratives.

So many goats. This dichotomy is part of what makes play a lot of. off sports so compelling. Absolutely. It is thrilling to watch somebody transcend to another plane of existence and it is devastating but in that way, also compelling to watch somebody totally flop.

Then there is the choker narrative, which isn't really the same as a goat. It's not necessarily someone who was overtly bad, clearly awful. It's somebody who is supposed to be great and doesn't quite live up to expectations and then has that held against him forever. Two of the great playoff choker narratives are NBA and MLB specific.

LeBron and Dodgers, ace, Clayton Kirshaw. Let's go through both of those players' postseason lowlights and highlights and assess whether we think that narrative is a greater injustice for one. or the other. Well, LeBron's case is interesting because he comes on the heels of kind of hegemonic success of Michael Jordan, a figure whose dominance totally reconfigured the way people view greatness in basketball, but also in other sports. He, you know, Michael just destroyed his competition, absolutely destroyed them. And he did it in a way that was unguilding, where, you know, clock winding down, close game. You expect Mike.

Michael to take the shot. You expect him to drive on three guys. You expect him to just transcend to that victorious state and just tear throats out. Now, LeBron's style of play is not that. It was never that. He was always more of an unselfish guy. So he had that against him when he first came into the league. The structure of basketball is also something that counts against LeBron when it came to this narrative of The Choker. It's only five players on the floor, 82 games a season. So barring. any health concerns, a star player can play every single game and will have outsized influence over outcomes compared to other sports, football, MLB. Still, while one player might be able to drag their team to the playoffs, winning a title without that secondary and even tertiary star is almost impossible. I mean, you could look at like the 2004 Pistons who ran the Lakers off the

floor in the finals as a team that essentially had zero stars, but they were just built in such a way that they just drove right into the weakness that the Lakers had as an older team. They were just a shut down defensive team that was almost tailor-made to take advantage of the weaknesses the Lakers have. So that happens every few years. In 2007, LeBron carried an absolutely pathetic cablers. Like, without him, probably don't make the playoffs. to the finals where they got swept at the hands of San Antonio,

who had three Hall of Famers, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Monaginobly, the Cavs second leading score that season. Larry Hughes. Larry Hughes had a blog called Larry Hughes stopped taking so many bad shots that fans had made because Larry Hughes took a lot of bad shots, 40% shooter, sub-40%, I believe, for his career, just a terrible, terrible basketball player. I think the third guy after that is Drew Gooden,

who's probably most famous for having like a really, weird hair patch on his neck. And these are the guys that LeBron just put on his shoulders and took to the finals, averaging 27 and 6 and 6 for the season. Now, losing to the spurs, that's a fair outcome, but it still helped perpetuate this narrative that James was not Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan would have won that. Right.

Because nobody ever saw Michael Jordan lose. Right. You know, James was a choker, therefore. And successive playoff defeats to the Celtics, who were the eventual champions in 2008, the magic and the Celtics again, with LeBron really disappearing in mysterious fashion as he was heading into free agency, agency really strengthened that narrative. Now, during that stretch, Moe Williams, Moe Williams, who had a velvet painting of a panther over his fireplace, best known as one does. As one does.

Moe Williams was the only cab beside LeBron to make an all-star team, his only all-star selection. And really, that selection speaks more to James' ability to elevate absolute garbage players to, unheard of heights than anything Moe was capable of doing himself. And even now, you look at James now, even after three titles, seven straight finals, which is unheard of. Seven straight finals appearances, he still gets criticized for passing to the open guy because, you know, Jordan would never have done that. Kobe would definitely never have done that.

In Cleveland's game three, finals lost to the Warriors. LeBron, in the waning moments, hit Kyle Corver, only one of the greatest shooters in NBA history for a wide open three in the corner that would iced it. And he was asked about it in the press conference. Do you need to pass that up? Why don't you take that to the hole? Why don't you do something with it? And these are the kind of storylines that still dog LeBron, even after all this success.

What about Kirsch? Your favorite hay baler himself, the farm boy. Shouts to my office made Amanda Dobbins, who... Popped up in MLB Slack with alacrity. Came running into the slack. Boy, did she. She had seen a tank top-clad post-game Kershaw. Wiping milk off his lips at the back of his palm.

Amanda's a baseball fan now is what we're saying. Kershaw has been simultaneously the best pitcher of his generation and utterly maligned for his, quote-unquote, playoff failures. Right. failures, is this just? Well, let's look at where things stood before this postseason. His career regular season totals, 2.36 ERA, as Ben Lieberg has noted, he has lowered his career ERA every year. That's insane.

He literally just keeps getting better. Like, he literally just keeps getting better. 2.60 FIP, 1.002 whip, 9.10.5.5.9.5. point nine strikeouts per nine innings. 0.6 homers per nine and a 144 to 64 record. That is Hall of Fame quality stuff. What about in the postseason, again, before this October? 4.55, ERA, 1.157 whip, 10.7 strikeouts per nine, which is interesting.

He's actually striking out more guys in October. One homer per game, which might not seem like a huge. difference but is, and a four and seven record. And there it is. Losing more games than he's won. When you're the best pitcher in baseball, when you're the ace of your team, you're supposed to win in the postseason, period. Those are facts.

It's hard to argue with the fact that Kershaw has not been as good of a pitcher in October as he has been every other month of the baseball season. But it is patently absurd to say that he is a playoff choker or that any of this is even his fault. Because for years, he was chronically mismanaged and failed by the organization. A lot of those home runs that he gave up, those cringe-inducing highlights. Like, guys, I know that Matt Adams had a rebirth this year and stopped being fat Adams and got tattoos and started hitting home runs. and stuff, but he was not that guy back when he was shocking the world by hitting a home run off Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs. That's not a thing that should happen. And it is a thing that did happen.

But Kershaw shouldn't have been on the mound at that point. The fact that the Dodgers did not have a bullpen for years. We're going to get back to the Dodgers bullpen later. And another question cost them games because they consistently stretch Kershaw beyond the brink of sanity. He also, even in that stretch of subpart performances still found ways to deliver electrifying moments. Talked about this on another baseball podcast a little while ago with Ryan O'Hanlon, Ryan O'Hanlon, but it's crazy to have lived through the 2016 postseason

and say that Kershaw is a playoff choker when he demanded that fucking baseball. We loved it. Don't we love that as sports? We love it. Oh, man, to close a game, this is a starting pitcher. And in game five of the NLDS against the nationals, he said, that baseball is mine.

And he came in and locked that shit down. That is the kind of thing as a sports fan that you live for. The idea that somebody not only can be great, but is so convinced of his own greatness that literally nothing will stand in his way of pursuing it, chills. I will actually truly remember that feeling of watching him close that game, for the rest of my life. And I want to be clear, I'm not a Dodgers fan. Here's the thing that I love about shit like that is we talked about the mismanagement of Kershaw.

We talked about how LeBron took numerous subpar teams to the playoffs and then the finals. When those teams lose, no one comes knocking on the door of the GM or the owner of the team or the coach even. People are not going to remember who ordered Kershaw to go out there beyond his physical limits where he would then give up homers. No one's going to remember that right away. I do, Don Mattingly. But people are going to remember him. Yes. People are going to remember LeBron.

Those are the guys that are going to have to live with it. So I love when a guy's like, you know what, I'm going to take the blame anyway. Right. I want to go out there and just let me lose it or win it on my own account. You're making such a good point, and it's something that I think is exacerbated in baseball more than any other sport. Get back to that in like 10 seconds. This season, it is worth noting that Clayton Kirshall has been Clayton Kirshah. He did have a rough first start against the Diamondbacks.

He gave up a lot of home runs. That was not great. He gave up four of them, which is a lot. That's more than you want to be giving up ever, let alone in a playoff game. But he has been excellent since. And in the NLCS, he pitched to a 2.45 ERA in the World Series, game one of the World Series. We got to watch him take the mound. You know what his whip was in that game?

Point four. Point four. He pitched seven solid innings. He struck out 11 batters and every moment was charged with urgency in a way that is really hard to replicate. And that gets me back to what you were just saying, Jason, which is not sure that any other sport

and this can work in a player's favor, but also as we've seen with Karshaw really work again. against him gives that me against the world vibe quite like a pitcher specifically in the postseason. Like the very nature of the thing

heightens the effect of any perceived choking that might occur. It's basically like if you missed your free throws, but the whole entire game was you missing free throws. Just you out there alone by yourself. That's terrifying. It's also amazing. But it is

terrifying. And so that's part of the equation too is like what should we expect from our superstars what is even reasonable and what is within their control all you can ask is that

a guy go out there and play hard right and like I know that's cheesy but nobody would ever well some like air conditioning conspiracy theorists might but most people would not say that LeBron and Kershaw don't try and when you're watching

an elite all-time great athlete attempt to lead his team to a title, sometimes it doesn't go well. That's right. And that's okay. Go Kirsch. Love him. I know you do. Just rooting for him. It really feels unfair to me.

Number three. Yeah. I feel like we're in the seven here. Number three. Hero Ball has been maligned in recent seasons in the NBA. Certainly as the rise of analytics has reconfigured the way people think about the sport. But the interesting thing about that is, as analytics has seeped deeper into the consciousness of the common basketball fan, we can now accurately gauge things that we formally thought of as bad. Right. Hero ball, for instance, ISO play when a player gets the basketball, dribbles it for 20 seconds, and everybody knows that they're going to take the shot. The defense is set for that, and then they take the shot anyway. That's a thing that we would formally make fun of.

But now, the last few seasons, we can actually say, actually, we know how valuable that is in these particular instances. So let's talk about things that once were bad that are now good. I would love to. Yeah, Hero Ball. See, now, Kobe Bryant, of course, is one of the heroes of Hero Ball. Carmelo Anthony is one of the heroes slash goats of Huraball. The guys who, coming down the stretch of a game, you know exactly what is going to happen. Everybody knows what's going to happen.

They have the ball. The entire team is looking at them. Their teammates are just standing around knowing that they are never going to touch this thing. The defense is set. This is terrible basketball. Ah, but is it? Ah, is it? Ah!

Is it? So it was quite strange. Last playoffs to watch the response to Joe Johnson of the jazz. Iso Joe. His nickname is literally ISO Joe. Isolation Joe. That is good shit. And watch his game winner against the Clippers in game one of the Jazz's first round matchup.

The response from. Twitter, from immediate Twitter, from various pundits, from the intelligentsia, from people who would, you would imagine would be like, ah, this is terrible basketball, we know what's going to happen, was freaking delight. Delight! Delight! The play was this. So 13 seconds left in the game. Chris Paul had just tied the game at 95 with a runner in the lane. Ball was inbounded to ISO Joe. He goes the length of the floor.

The ball does not touch anyone else's hands. He puts a few dribble moves on Jamal Crawford, who, to be fair, could not defend me, probably. And scores! And people went nuts. Twitter went nuts. Whereas, we would have, if it was Mello or Monta Ellis or Jare Smith,

we would have killed that person, especially it was two, three years ago. Why is this the case? Part of the reason, I think, is the success of the Cavs against the Warriors. The Cavs showed that in certain situations, like a very close game when the intensity is high. So the finals, playoff game, and the refs are letting the physical play go. And all of a sudden that very beautiful, intricate ball movement and player movement is just ground to a halt because guys can grab guys now. And they can't get open because the physical play has been amped up to a level that is just beyond anything in the regular season. And the refs are going to let it go because they're not going to want to piss off a crowd.

This is the finals. In those situations, guess what, a guy who can go one-on-one actually kind of valuable. Right. And thus, you know, Kyrie Irving over the course of the last season, last couple of seasons averaged almost seven points a game in 18 over time games. That's one and a half times higher than any other player in the last 17 seasons. What does that tell you that this guy, Kyrie, who doesn't really play defense, dribbles too much? If you set him loose in a one or two minute span and just let him do his thing, that's actually extremely, extremely, extremely valuable. So, Hereabal, it's actually great.

In measured doses, is there anything like that in baseball? Guys, if you've come around on here, a ball, may I interest you in three true outcomes? And the fly ball revolution. Let's start with three true outcomes, which, just in case you don't know, it's home runs, strikeouts, and walks. The idea is basically boil the game down

to pure hitter versus pitcher results. Yes. Take the bullshit. That's what we call defense, I guess, out of it. So we are now in a three true outcomes league. That's the punchline. Let's talk about why. Trying to hit fly balls,

you used to be widely maligned as just a straight up you're trying to hit home runs and juice your stats, kind of myopia. But now, ah, a lot of fun players are doing this. Have you heard of Aaron Judge? Well, you as a Yankee fan, surely have. He's one of my favorite young players to come up in the recent years. You love Aaron Judge. I can feel it.

I love Aaron Judge, guys. Oh, rise. Oh, there you go. Thank you. There you go. This is convincing. I'm pointing my thumb down. There you go. You're aware of the memes. That means you're legit.

Aaron Judge is three true outcomes personified. But he is not the only one. Cody Bellinger, who, along with Aaron Judge, will be rookie of the year this year. They will win in the AL and the NL. Joey Gallo, one of the best young power hitters we've seen in ages. Can't actually hit? Yeah, Jeff Chow

and I own him in an AL-only Keeper League and, boy, is he a daily conundrum. McGelson, no. Megan Schuster's favorite twin. A lot of the best young players in the game are poster boys for this kind of home or happy strikeout-heavy approach. And strikeouts, that's the other

part of it, right? Strikeouts used to also be maligned as a, can this guy actually hit in the majors kind of red flag? But now it's just okay. If you're going to strike out 150 times, you know, if you're judged, it's going to be even more than that. But it's a path to the power. It's what people want to see.

Or at least some people. This is certainly a divisive thing in the game. Well, how has this manifested? What have we seen? Let's just look at the micro view first, and then we'll go macro. Game 2 of the world series. Pretty good. Pretty exciting.

A lot of fun stuff happened, and almost all of it was because of either strikeouts or home runs. It's all home runs. Or baseball's hitting either umpires or the brims of hats. Admittedly, that was part of it too. Also, fans jumped into the bullpen. That was wild. It was just weird. The whole game was fucking on crack.

It was insane, but amazing. But the game featured eight home runs. Eight home runs. Home runs. There were players who do not hit eight home runs in the season. This game had eight. That is a World Series record. Six of them were in the ninth inning and beyond because, of course, that game went to extras. League strikeout rates. Well, the last time the Dodgers made the World Series. And as you may have heard, you know, people rightly think of the L.A. Dodgers as a power franchise. This is a return. This is a long way to return. When the Dodgers were last in the World Series, the league strikeout rate was 14.6. A decade ago it was 17.1%. This season, it was 21.6%. That is an enormous, enormous total.

6,105 home runs were hit in the 2017 regular season. That is not only more than in any other season in baseball history, it is 412 more home runs than in any season in baseball history. A lot of great reporting this year across the baseball media about juiced balls, including on the ranger.com. Please read Ben Lindberg's reporting on this. Whatever it is, the result is the same. We're seeing more home runs. We're seeing more strikeouts. This is a three true outcomes league.

Players with 20 home runs in a season. Why 20? Well, because a lot of the home run rise, it's actually concentrated in the middle. People always look at who's got the shiny number at the top of the leaderboard. It's really about the fact that more guys are just hitting a decent number of home runs than that two or three guys are suddenly going to challenge the bonds record every year. 2014, 57 players with 20 home runs in a season. 2015, that total was 64. 2016, 111.

And in 2017, 117. And shouts to Zach Cram for some of this data. Zach Cram is a king. He is a king. We like to call those Zaks. Zach Cram facts. Xax around the ringer office. What about fly balls? Fly balls are obviously home runs are fly balls. They're really, they're fly balls that go very far. So if you're going to hit home runs,

you're hitting fly balls. Why does this matter? Well, trying to put the ball in the air again, used to be frowned upon because it looked like you were chasing the dingers. And now that's okay because it's working more. Ground balls? Sure, maybe they go through defenders for base hits. Maybe they're double plays. Maybe that ball never has a chance of driving. driving in a run. Well, what if you're Justin Turner and franchises such as my Baltimore Orioles and Sean Fantasy's New York Mets have said, yeah, we're actually, we're good. You go good luck. We're okay. And then you join Los Angeles Dodgers and became an MVP candidate. How did that happen? What changed other than his beard growing? He's...

The beard is beautiful. He looks like he should be biting into a gold nugget. He honestly, he looks like Torman's long-lost brother. It's incredible. I'd like to see him on a wildling ranging. Justin Turner consciously decided after a long-ago chat with Marlon Bird back in 2014, that he was going to try to hit fly balls. And he raised his single-season home run total from 7 in 2014 to 27 this year. He then spread this philosophy to current Dodger sensation, Chris Taylor,

who, much like the Mets and the Orioles were like Justin Turner, now are good. The Mariners just gave Chris Taylor away, and now he is one of the best players in baseball. Justin Turner and Chris Taylor just shared NLCS MVP hunters. This is incredible. It's not an accident that that happened when they tried to hit more fly balls. So again, this thing that used to be maligned is working now, and you can't, if you're a rational person watching the game, you can't deny it. You can't argue that maybe it's a bad thing, but you can't deny that it's. happening.

Some more thing has happened in D.C. Where Daniel Murphy, who talks regularly about his analytically inclined nature, you know, how he visits fan graphs, how he visits baseball savant, he talks about other things as well and they're horrible, but that's for a different podcast. He retold his swing and he spread the philosophy to the likes of his teammate, Ryan Zimmerman, formerly one of the best players in baseball, long time. injury sort of is this guy ever going to be able to sustain his career again player who bounced back this year and looked like an MVP candidate for the bulk of the season. Josh Donaldson, MVP winner a couple years ago. When he was on the athletics, they prioritized flyball hitters like Brandon Moss, like Donaldson. And this is how the trend spreads.

A couple guys start doing it, more pick it up, it works for them, and then it's just the nature of the game all of a sudden. J.D. Martinez just given up on again by franchises and now is irrefutably undeniably one of the best power hitters in the game. He turned himself into an excellent slugger because of this shift and approach. Here's something he told Fangraphs. He said, I'm not trying to hit a fucking line drive or a freaking ground ball. I'm trying to hit the ball in the air. I always thought the perfect swing was a line drive back to the pitcher. I'd go out there and hit the ball perfectly, and it's a single.

Why is my perfect swing a single? That's a great question. Quote continues. To me, the numbers don't lie. The balls in the air play more. They're certainly going to pay more because these guys are going to rake in the money because they're hitting home runs. That's the nature of the sport. There are plenty of people who watched baseball this year and said baseball is broken.

Yeah. All it is is strikeouts and home runs. you feel like you're trapped in Bull Durham with the strikeouts or fascist speech, right? Guess what? Bull Durham is great, and so are home runs in strikeouts. Like, we watch sports to see a moment of dominance. That's the through line through everything we're discussing here.

And so getting to see someone like Justin Turner who, for a while, looked like he wouldn't be able to make it as a major leaguer, hit a home run in Game 1 of the World Series. Titanic Home Run. Because he looked at what was happening in the game and decided to evolve along with the understanding. That's incredible. That's incredible. It's exciting to me that we're in an era of the game where the players understand what's happening and what works and why and are responding accordingly.

Not everybody's breaks Harper. Not everybody can just hit that many home runs through sheer natural ability. Sometimes you need force of will and conviction. and we're seeing with guys like Turner and Taylor in the World Series, we're seeing that happening. The Astros are full of more of those natural talents, which is an interesting contrast. Carlos Graya just can just hit home runs.

You know, George Springer can just hit home runs. Justin Turner couldn't until he chose to. That's super interesting because you don't see that. That's a thing that you don't see in basketball, and maybe that's because of the longer pipeline of young players into the game where it just naturally weeds out. that wheat from the chaff, you just don't see a guy all of a sudden be like,

you know, I'm going to retool my game completely, and now all of a sudden I'm scoring 25 a game. That just doesn't happen. Number four. How you think about the NBA and MLB MVP races reveals a lot about how you think about the way the game should be played full stop. So what did the Westbrook-Hardin-Kawai Leonard MVP debate

from last NBA season, and the current Jose Al-Tuve-Aaron judge, ALMVP debates reveal about those particular voting block values. And where do you personally fall? Well, this is always a philosophical question because it's asking you to define valuable. What is valuable to you and who most exemplifies that? And so in the NBA last season, we had Russell Westbrook. He was the traditional eye test raw box score guy, average a triple double, 31 10 and 10. First time that has been done for an entire season since Oscar Robertson, the Big O,

1961, 62. Then you had James Harden. The efficiency candidate, the analytics candidate, averaged near triple double, 29, 8, and 11. But he got his points on a hair under 19 shots compared to Russes 24. It was the best player on a team that won 55 games, which is kind of like a traditional value. Created a league high 21.6 potential assists a game and created a league high 27.5 points from his assist. So add that 27 and a half points to his 29 points. I mean, you're looking at almost 60 points that Hardin is creating just by himself. And then you're Quiet Leonard, the two-way candidate. Opposing players scored less than one point per possession when they faced Kauai one-on-one. Zero point eight eight points per possession shot just 40% from

the field. He averaged career higher in points, 25 and a half points per game on 48% shooting. and ironically, here's the interesting thing. His defense was actually too good. He shut his man down so much that opposing teams would start running the offense through the four other players, making Kauai's teammates have to pick up the slack in that regard

and actually kind of weirdly hurting the team. When you're such a good shutdown corner in the NFL that the other team simply stops throwing to your side of the field and then people stop talking about you and suddenly it's like, has Richard Sherman lost? it. And it's like, well, they just refused to challenge him because he's so unbelievably good. That's right. Now, all of a sudden you find these other seams, all these other cracks in the lineup.

Personally, for me, it was Russ. Now, I do not think that his particular style last season was a style that you can win with in the long term. But I just love a spectacle. I want to see a guy go freaking crazy. I want to see a guy average a triple double for the first time in like 50 years. I want to see that. Can you win a finals like that? No. Can you win a championship like that? No. I don't freaking care. I want to see that. I want to see things I've never seen before.

That's why I like sports. I love a spectacle. I love going crazy, and that's why I love you in binge mode. Baseball. Yes. We're seeing something similar, where different kinds of candidates

have emerged in recent years and have fundamentally altered the way people are forced to think about the game. The trout wrinkle. The trout wrinkle. That's a type of sushi at Sugarfish. also is a reality in Major League Baseball nowadays. When Mike Trout is healthy for a full baseball season,

he's the best player in the game, period. The debate and the conversation ends there. And yet, it took voters two years longer than it should have to recognize his value across basically saber-metrically inspired categories where he far outstripped. Miguel Cabrera's more traditional, bold font. I'm leading in this baseball reference category numbers in the triple crown areas. Trout has won two MVP's, and he has finished second three times. That's crazy. This year,

he's probably going to finish third, but that's because he was injured and missed real time for the first time ever. So we kind of can't even consider it this year when we're looking at whether he deserve to win or not. Who were the two guys who are going to finish above him this year? Glad you asked. Jose Al-Tuvae and Aaron Judge. You might know Aaron Judge as Jason's favorite Yankee. All right.

You might know Jose Al-Tuvae as the guy shocking you every single night of the baseball playoffs. He is an absolute revelation. And honestly, just really fun to watch. The Judge Altuve debate is not exactly the same as the 2012 Mike Trout-Megel-Cabreira debate, a famous MVP showdown. That was really archetypal new school versus old-school stats argument. Trout led Cabrera in war 10.8 to 7.2. That's not a divide.

That's a chasm. But Cabrera won the MVP that year. he won the triple crown and the tigers made the playoffs and the angels didn't and that was all people understood at the time. And your grandfather knows what the triple crown is. Exactly.

Has no idea what war is. It is amazing how much things have changed since then since 2012. This year Judge won in F-War Al-Tubei won in B-war. Fangraphs and baseball reference have slightly

different war calculations so you often see a different leader. Basically, they had the two highest wars in the American League. Wherever you're looking, it's just a matter of the order. But they were really close. Judge beat Altuvein homers, 52 to 24. That's not close, but of course they're different players. Judge also beat Al-Tuvain runs N-RBI as well as advanced offensive stats like WRC Plus and OPS.

But, but Al-Tuvie was a much better base runner. And although they were actually both D.R.C. to good defenders. Judge is a very underrated right fielder. Al Tuvei was, he excelled at a tougher position. Second base is harder to play than the outfield. He also struck out a lot less, a lot less, which is the kind of thing that might matter to some voters and was consistent throughout the year. Jose Altuve was consistently excellent. Aaron Judge was extremely streaky. There were periods where he looked like Babe Ruth, and there were periods where it looked to keep along to the minors. This argument is about as close as it gets.

Ben Lindberg wrote about that on Theringer.com. Either one could win. Jose Al Tuvei should. And one of the reasons is because we're not in the era of the game anymore where a player like Miel Cabrera should be winning. Jose Al Tuvei is redefining the way that baseball can be played. Aaron Judge is incredible.

Like, my Yankee hating aside, Aaron Judge can hit a baseball really far, and that's cool and it's a good thing for the sport. Like, I'm all in on that. I really am. Jose Al-Tuvae is five-foot-six and has been the best hitter in baseball for four years. To not reward that is insane to me. He's even on his own team overshadowed by sort of more traditional prospects, more archetypal superstars.

The big strong guys like Carlos Correa and George Springer, Jose Al-Tuvre is doing something unheard of and incredible across the board in every way. Like 24 home runs doesn't sound like a lot. But again, he's a 5'6 second basement. That's actually incredible for what he is and what he's supposed to be producing. So all told, his value reflects what the game can be and what we've come to understand about it. And that should be rewarded.

The other question, of course, is when should we vote on this stuff? Because the postseason... Both sports. Yes, the postseason that out too, I mean, he's currently hitting his slash line, 360, 448, 720. That is a 1.168 OPS. He's got six homers, 11 runs, nine ribbies.

He leads Houston in every single one of those offensive categories. It's not actually a debate. If we vote after October, Altuve runs away with the thing. I would vote after the postseason. I think that voters now are rational enough to say whether what we saw in the postseason actually mattered or not. And I don't think that moving the voting period, would totally eliminate or undermine an incredible regular season run for, let's say, a player like Trout,

who was far and away the best, but maybe his team doesn't make it. I still think there's enough room for people to say, no, that guy was the best player in the game this year. But something like what we're seeing now, where Altuvei, again, with like the likes of Rolander, might be leading his team to a championship. It still feels like you can be a rational person who says it's not Mike Trout's fault that the Angels don't make the playoffs. He shouldn't fail to win the MVP because of that. And also say that if Altovae is this exceptional in the playoffs on the way to a title, that matters. I absolutely agree with that.

I mean, Dirk Novitsky, when he won the MVP in the 2006-2007 season, is kind of the emblematic player for that kind of thing. He won the MVP, an incredible season, and then crashed out of the playoffs in the first round against the Warriors. First time in a long time that a number eight-seated beaten a number one. and actually the first time in a Best of Seven series. Embarrassing. Now, should Kobe have won it that year? Should LeBron have won that year?

Probably. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think people, listen, people are sports fans are more informed than ever. They're able to separate regular season for postseason. They're able to weigh those things separately in their mind. And if a guy elevates his game in the postseason or, conversely, absolutely crashes out in the postseason, that should matter. Number five, why do the two sports handle their personalities of their players so differently when it seems so self-evident that baseball could benefit from an injection of personality-driven players? What is the impact?

Part of the reason that I've been able to really enjoy the Dodgers postseason and baseball writ large is not just your passion for the game now, which I love to share your passions. You know that. But it's, you know, it's like watching Pui literally make love to his bat and then lay it down gently on the field. I make love to my bat and he gives me hits. What a legend. You know, lick the bat. That is incredible. I need more of this.

And I just need a lot of this. And part of the thing that I absolutely love about it is it makes people crazy. Oh, my God. Which I guess is really part of the problem, that stodginess that's so ingrained in the MLB. Yes. The unwritten rules. The unwritten rules. Ah, the unwritten rules.

Now, why do unwritten rules matter? Well, you do kind of have to acknowledge an ugly truth, which is baseball is extremely dangerous. So true. The pitcher is literally holding a weapon in his hands. And the threat of not only fiscal injury, but of death is real. It's real. That sounds dramatic, but it's true and it's scary. And so pissing people off, offending them with the way you behave, that has to be.

That has kind of hung over the game as this cloud, this ever-looming, ever-present threat. The problem is that is so often charged with racial undertones, social undertones, and really outdated understandings of what is fun, interesting, or acceptable. So when Yassiel Pueig flips his bat, I love a couple things about it. I love that he does it. Right. Full stop. to watch someone celebrate something. Exactly. And then when angry old white guy tweets at him, I love that he tweets back. I love that. I absolutely love it. Love it. He's

leaning in so hard to who he is. You know, one of the things that we complain about with like athletes in general, we talk about this a lot with the NFL, you know, this is something that Bill talks about a lot. Why is, what is the NFL not doing that the NBA is doing, supporting its personality, building true stars. Part of that is just that those guys are wearing helmets. You don't even know who they are. Part of it is that they're not allowed to be themselves. They're literally penalized for celebrating or amending something about their shoes, right? Like, imagine if that were the case in the NBA. The guys all literally have their own shoes. It's just by definition different. Baseball, they can. They can do it. It's just that they're so

often discouraged because of like basically accepted standards. Social norms within the game. It's fun to me when Bryce Harper shakes his hair and not only flips his bat, but flips his head, and gets so into it and feels the same kind of excitement and energy that we're feeling as fans. It was cool last night to watch players on both teams leaping the dog out railing to sell. Clayton Kershaw looked like he had just, I don't even know. what he looked like. Like, I've rarely seen that kind of euphoria on a person's face. Kray and Al Tuve's multi-step handshakes is fantastic.

Corey Seeger wielding his bat like a giant... Go on? Dodger dog? Yeah, sure. The giant dodger dogs. Premium beef. Not the regular ones, the premium woods. And now we're back in binge mode, dare joy.

That stuff is awesome. If baseball players were encouraged to show a little more personality and to be themselves, both on the field and on their social media platforms, the game would be engaging in a way that it isn't for some people right now. Fans would have more gateways. You know, the truth is, it's easy for NBA fans who get spoiled by how exciting and energetic and effervescent the personalities are to look at like the Lovar-Lanzo situation and say, this is too much, actually. Like, LeVar, please stop shaking hands. That's fine. Baseball could use something like that. I agree.

It really, really could because it's something people talk about. It's something that you can't ignore. And the sad reality is that there's a lot of talent that you can't ignore on baseball, but not often the energy and personality and the cult of personality around that that draws the eye. What makes it so different when you watch them is that MLB announcers love to tell you about the player. Right. They love to tell you why this guy is. Here's why this guy is important and notable and what about him?

And I'm going to tell you where he grew up and all that stuff. In the NBA, players just take their message directly to you via social media via any other platform that people use in the world. They don't need a guy to tell you all about them. Right. Like, sure, show me Puegg's platoon splits. Yeah. Sure. Give me a stat cast path that he took to the ball to show me how gifted of a route runner he is in the

outfield. Really, though? Give me the Instagram of him and his baby sitting next to each other shirtless on the couch, chilling, watching TV, or playing video games. Where he's talking about how he conceived his child in San Diego. Legendary stuff. Great stuff. Speaking of legendary stuff. Sure. You know, today was a tough day for you because you're a Yankee fan. I am. Lifelong Yankee fan. Joe Girardi. Oh. Fired. Not fired. Not fired, actually. People who are saying fine. His contract was off. Not brought back.

Let go. Joe Girardi will not be returning. We're splitting Harris now. We are, but, you know, semantics sometimes better. Joe Girardi will not be. I expected it. Returning as manager of the New York Yankees. And I'm just wondering if you can, you know, sort of tell us how you feel about that

and sort of who in your life you're talking to about that to kind of help process your emotions and just sort of what this day has been like for you. and maybe even what the last, you know, 10 or so years have been like for you as a Yankee fan. Sure. Well, first of all, this is a safe space. I'm announcing that because whenever I'm in a podcast studio with you, Malady, it's a safe space. Thank you. Wherever together, it's a safe space.

I feel the same way. So I'm going to reveal now the roots of my Yankee fandom. Roughly a decade ago, I moved across the country with a friend who will remain nameless. I'll call him Paul. I'll call him Paul O'Neill. Okay. call him Paul O'Neill. Paul, somehow in this move, the subject of baseball came up, and I don't remember anything about this conversation, but Paul somehow seemed to get the message that I was a

Yankees fan. He came to believe this. Now, surely because you were. Baseball does not come up for a long amount of, like, I don't know, almost a year. When it comes back up, how about them yanks? Yeah. It had been so long, you know, like kind of that thing of when when you should know a person's name, but it's been so long now you can't ask, it's awkward. It had been so long that I did not know how to say to him, actually, you know what, and here's the reveal, I'm a Mets fan. I grew up a Mets fan. I had no idea how to say this to him because it had been so long and we were friends. And so for 10 years now, I've not seen him in a number of years, in probably like eight years, nine years. Paul O'Neill texts me regularly about the Yankee

game. What's going on? Hey, man, D.D. is doing, hey, Sev, what's going on with this? This has been going on for almost a decade now that I've been pretending to be a Yankees fan with this one person. Now, here's, it's sad, really. The great thing about it is

because I worked at Grantland and now work at the Ringer and I have access to Mallory Rubin, Ben Lindberg, Ben Glicksman, Zach Cram. I am actually the smartest fucking Yankees fan in the world. Like, there's been numerous times where I get a text, hey, something, something that I have no idea what he's

talking about? And I'll go, Mal, what does this mean? And Mallory will say, text this to him. Yeah. The, Mal, what does how about Starlin, huh, mean? Right. Mal, what does Cici's dealing nails? Or what does a fucking head is a piece of shit mean? That's true, though. Yeah. Yeah. She's deadly sucks. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I'm a Mets fan. And I've been pretending to be Yankees fan for like almost a decade over text

with a friend who, and now, this makes me look like a dick. There's extenuating circumstances that I'm not going to get into right now. Mallory knows. Other people know that this is not as bad as it seems. Also, this person, he has no idea about my life. Does not even know that I live in Los Angeles

or that I'm a writer now. Like literally texting me. the other day. Here's an actual quote. Last night was incredible. Could you hear the stadium from your crib? This is at 6.11 a.m. I live in L.A., exclamation point, me.

Really? Sorry to wake you. So you see what kind of relationship we have. But yes, I'm a Mets fan. And now I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. Ten years I've been pretending to be a Yankee fan over text. Ten years. I like to think of it as, for ten years.

It's not that you were living a lie. I was living off. It's not that you were willfully deceiving an acquaintance. Sure. It's... Pretending to be Yankees' bet over text for 10 years. Yeah, no, yeah. It was 10 years of digital Derek Jeter-esque gift baskets.

You know, just a little token to say, hey, I remember you. Exactly how you thought it was going to or have ended the way that you hoped. Right. But we're in trying our time together, and I want you to feel like it's lasting in some way. You know, there's also the interpretation that this is your The CETA's strong moment and your... Realm-shattering deception has finally come to light, which, God, does that make? Am I Ned?

Am I Paisal? Who am I in this? Oh, no. Helping to bring the truth to light. I think you're, you know who you are? Your jury, you're my jury, Cassell. Well, that is not going to end well for me. No, but we're not going to let that happen.

Just do me a favor and let me know if you see a dagger coming from my eyeball. You got it. Thank you. Okay, guys. That's it. That was really something. It was. Thank you for feeling safe enough to share that with us. No judgment here.

I always feel safe. Always accept you fully, no matter what. Thank you. Guys, postseason baseball is beautiful. The NBA is beautiful. All of you are beautiful. Being here with you is beautiful. And we would really encourage you to check out all of the great NBA and MLB coverage on Ringer properties.

Go to the Ringer.com and read everything from our great writers. Keep listening to other podcasts. The Ringer MBA show and the Ringer MLB show are cranking. check them out and you know the baseball's going to be over soon even if we get a full seven games that only goes to next Wednesday

it's a long dark off-season things will feel bleak but it's important to remember it's the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness nothing more play ball