The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Tales From the Couch, Plus Shaking Up MLB With Jeff Passan | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on the 76ers' win over the Clippers and the Rockets' small-ball victory over the Celtics (3:30). Then Ryen talks with ESPN’s Jeff Passan about the proposed changes to the MLB playoff structure, developments in the sign-stealing scandal, and more (28:38). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's episode of the ryan rossillo show on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like basketball the game of life is unpredictable talk to a state farm agent today and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. The Spurs offense has been pretty good for a few weeks. That seems unpredictable. Just going to go a little basic Spurs on you. I was digging through their stuff the other night. I was like, man, DeJounte Murray, he had a really nice game. And I was like, he really didn't score that much.

And I still like DeJounte, but doesn't get to the free throw line, doesn't take a lot of shots. His three-point shooting has actually been pretty good the last few months, but he doesn't take many. And I'm not saying he should take way more, but I'm sure everybody else is. So there you go. A little unpredictable Spurs love for you out of nowhere. Get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. Talk to a State Farm agent today. And an announcement before we get to everything today, Bill Simmons and I will start our once a week NBA podcast, the two of us

together. It's a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it. I know a lot of you are as well. So we'll be starting that one up Sunday. I'll be flying back from Chicago and I will be headed right to his house, probably from the airport to get it started. Black Eyed Peas style. The plan for today, a little tales from the couch, really based on two plus games because I didn't go back. I wanted to really just focus in on Philly and the Clippers, and then also Boston and Houston. I feel like I watch those four teams too much. But sometimes the rotation of how things go, because you start weeding some teams out with 30 games to go. You're like, you know what?

I don't know that I need to tell the story of 2020 by watching more Knicks games. I just don't. Although, shout out to my man, Steven. Steven Stout, I believe. I hope I'm getting the pronunciation right. He went on first take yesterday. And for those that don't know who he is, I guess he's a big time music guy. So some people are like, how do you not know that guy?

How do you not know him? All I know is that the sports world, we're like, who's this dude coming on first take saying that he's the new Drake and that Drake made Toronto hot. And that's why he's been brought in by the Knicks hours later, a statement from the Knicks. And then also a state from Steven being like, you know, that's not really the case. Uh, it must've been a lot of fun being like, yeah, hell, go on first take, expand my brand, have more people know who I am, and then go on and start acting as if you're going to change things around. Like, I need to just, I'm going to show up on your TV show, and now we're going to get

free agents. And of course, you're just immediately thinking like, would KD and Kyrie have gone to Brooklyn? Had they known that the Steven guy was going to link up with the Knicks this hard a year later? Would they regret it? I don't think Drake had anything to do with Kawhi going there. And if he did, then Kawhi would have stayed. So there you go. And Drake cheering like a madman didn't help when Toronto bounced out of the playoffs earlier

than they probably should have in every one except for the year they lost to Cleveland in six games uh the time they made it further in the playoffs so I that sometimes I admire delusion because you just go would I be better off being that delusional would I be uh and first take you know they're like. You want to come on and do this? Here you go. And it was pretty comical to go ahead and watch. What wasn't funny, if you were a Sixers fan, was the last few days. Joel Embiid saying to the Philly fans, I don't know what was he saying, that he wanted to go join up with Jimmy Butler. Because remember when Jimmy Butler, who again, if you like Jimmy Butler, you still have to admit, and I was pro Jimmy in in Chicago I even agreed with him about some of the Minnesota stuff

about who his teammates were but then it was a bit contrived it was I thought totally orchestrated where he goes bananas after he doesn't get traded during the offseason shows up to practice goes crazy and then happens to be on the jump with Rachel Nichols like hours later. And that whole thing to act as if that, he didn't know what he was doing, good for the TV side of it, but I've talked about this before. He's smart enough to know what he was doing

and he ended up getting his way. And then he goes to Philly. And when you watch him with the Sixers, you could see that Butler was the guy that was like, okay, enough of this. Like, I'm going to try to make something happen here. And it's a really fine line, right? Of being somebody who has so much confidence that you're going to try to take that game over and then maybe doing too much of that, or being

somebody who doesn't have that kind of confidence and just can totally disappear in games, despite being a max player and somebody that sometimes people would think you were a top 20 player. Look, Paul George has had an up and down thing with the different injuries. He was invisible last night. I think he had three points, like six minutes to go in the first half. And I'm like, hey, has Paul George made a shot yet? And Paul George, for me, has too many of those games. He has them in the playoffs and everybody would sign him. Great for the Clippers for bringing him in. But my point is like there are different guys. And then you could also compare it all night to like Marcus Smart, who Marcus Smart's like, I got this shit. I'll fix it. You're like, no, you're not. And Marcus Smart had a bad Marcus Smart game. So there's always this thing where I'm trying to figure out who hits that lane perfectly of, I'll take over. I'm good here. I'll figure these things out. And I actually admired some of the stuff that Butler did with Philly, where he's like, look, if you two guys are going to figure it out, meaning Simmons and Embiid or Harris,

who's obviously always sort of a complimentary guy the way he's going to be set up in an offense, then I'm going to just go ahead and do it. And, you know, then he moves on. And, you know, there's a bunch of different stuff that you'd heard about why he moved on, but he just went ahead to Miami and did his own thing. And I think that's what he was looking for.

And look at the Heat. They're like, we gave up Josh Richardson to go ahead and acquire a guy like Jimmy Butler. And then Philly spent their money elsewhere. And we'll get to all that kind of stuff here again, which I think some of it's repetitive, but it plays into what happened last night. So Embiid basically after he posted something about the villain and the hero thing, which Butler had done too, where I think he was walking in the park, wearing some weird suit, another Batman reference. I guess that's why

Batman gets redone over and over and over again, because guys just love quoting it on Instagram. And then Butler was like, I know somewhere where villains are welcome, you know, emoji shrug. And then Embiid's like, you know, I hear you, brother. And you go like, okay, here we go. And so you do that in Philly and you do that when you're Embiid. It's not going to go over well. And he was hearing some boos, but I was asked about this on Doug Gottlieb's radio show. He was like, you know, what do you think of all of these guys doing these posts and all this stuff? And I think what you have to do as an older guy is just go accept what this is. Because I think when, man, I don't want to sound like Tom Brokaw here, but when you do the whole, when you grow up in

like whatever generation it was that I grew up, you know, you waited in line, you waited in line more and it's not being an athlete. It's doing whatever I did to get on the air. You just accepted, Hey, this is going to suck for a really long time. Um, it's the same as a lot of different businesses. And I've talked about this before building your book of businesses. You know, my first few friends that got into the financial world and just going like, yeah, I cold call and try to, you know, get leads and all this stuff. And it sucks. And it sucks. And maybe 10 years, I'll be able to get a summer share on the Hampton somewhere, you know, and that was just kind of the plan. And younger people aren't waiting anymore and younger people aren't going

to shut up. And other younger people are like, why would I, how would I just wait? And maybe they're right about it, right? Maybe they're right, but it also can be really annoying too at the same time. So if you're anti the athlete saying things like this, and I don't love the, hey, social media posts, let me flirt with another franchise. When Philadelphia stepped up and paid Embiid what they paid him, they paid him after playing only 31 games his first three years. But again, if Embiid were a free agent,

he'd probably get a max deal. Hassan Whiteside can bank over a hundred million dollars and anybody can. So I, uh, and Whiteside's actually been okay with Portland, but you understand what I'm saying back to the Miami thing. It was like, Hey, we were going to sign this guy. Look at his PER. Damn it. We'll look at his contract and we don't want to play him late in the fourth quarter. So that's, that's one of those deals where I'm just, I'm not going to get, it can bother me. I can think that you should probably in pro sports, not be flirting with other teams all the time, but I become more accepting of it because it's just the way business is done. Now, if you're a famous athlete and you're upset about something, you share your thoughts with

everyone and I'm not going to call them unprofessional, but it's just, I am going to let you know how I'm feeling at all times. And I'm going to hit send. And that's just kind of the way it is because a lot of these guys now have grown up with social media where it was always an option and not something that became an option later on in life. So Horford gets benched a hundred plus million dollar guy there and the Sixers problems on offense. I've talked about them all year. There's now a lot of pushback because it's all about Horford. I have seen some of the cleaning the glass stats and I've got to dig into it a little bit more about when it's Embiid and Simmons and no Horford is actually really good per 100 possessions. And then if you throw in Tobias Harris, it's even better. I'd have to go back and look at how many minutes

Embiid and Simmons have played to this point where it's just them and no Horford versus the three of them considering Horford was playing and then Brown kind of separates Embiid and Simmons more than he had in the past. But it's really hard to do the career minutes together with Simmons and Embiid because Embiid's missed so much time. And I can just tell you this.

I know no one in Philadelphia and all the Sam Hinckley sycophants want to believe that there are any problems with Embiid and Simmons together. I can tell you this. Last night, there were none. And Brett Brown even said afterwards, he goes, it's honestly like one of the best games I've ever seen from those two guys playing together. And it was really good. And Philly came out with an edge, I thought, because of all the angst and all the stuff from the last few days. And Horford saying, hey, there's some stuff going on in this locker room.

And Horford's been as professional as anybody that I've ever seen during his time in the NBA. But Embiid looked fired up. Simmons was incredibly aggressive, almost a career high in shot attempts. Let me go ahead and double check that because I don't want to get anything wrong here because I know you're going to be talking about this for the rest of your life.

Yeah, Simmons took 22 shots. That's too short of his career best as a rookie. On the other side, I mentioned the Paul George stuff. Landry Schammett was the second most aggressive player before Marcus Morris at the end. Kawhi, it was kind of a funny Kawhi game because his purpose, and this is something I didn't know about when I was younger and I was playing, but I remember I went down to David Thorpe's camp, who used to work at ESPN with us, and a guy I've known for a long time. And we went through this camp where basically they prepped 10 media guys,

10 NBA media guys on how you would prep to play getting ready for the draft. I also remember that Chris Ballard was in it and he was a really good player. And they asked Ballard if he wanted to play with some of their AAU guys and Thorpe wouldn't let me play with their AAU guys. And to this day, I'm still pissed off about it. Uh, age wise, I think, yeah, had to have been just North of Thorpe. Yeah. 31, 32, something like that. So we played, we did all these different drills. We did the workouts with them. We did the ice baths. We did the nutrition. We did the media coaching thing. thing um the media coach is a guy actually played an elf in elf really really nice guy um i ran into

him years and years later i think no actually i think it was just like a year ago in vegas for an nba thing um i should probably look up his name i don't have the time right now i'm sorry maybe i'll do it at the very end of the pod that'll be like a little trivia thing check on it for yeah check on that kyle get it on this because i actually now feel bad i think it's scott i hope it is but god damn am i rambling right now for tails to the couch um and one of the things that they taught us was that a lot of basketball players will be in a position and then they'll make the position worse before they make their first real movement so the first movement to get the advantage is actually screwed up because the first thing you do. So actually think about this.

Like if you're still playing and you go to drive, do you take a step back? And I'm not talking about like a jab step fake to get your shot off or try to dribble around somebody. Although, let's face it, some of us trying to jab step people. That's what I always love about pickup hoops is once everybody becomes really slow, jab steps don't even move because nobody reacts to it in time. So do you step backwards and set yourself up for some kind of disadvantage on an angle instead of always keeping your, your movement forward? So it's not about fakes, but it's, do you step forward with purpose? And the other one was when you go up for a layup and it's a little different when you can dunk, but when you go up for a layup, do you bring the ball down before you go up with it? So the ball is maybe at waist

high on the dribble up as you go to launch to take the layup, but do you bring it down to kind of reset yourself? And the chances are you do bring it down and you don't even realize it. So they were trying to eliminate all these little things that we had learned or basically we weren't going to unlearn it in a matter of days. It was incredibly awkward and uncomfortable to try to go, oh, that's right, like I do kind of move back a little bit before I go forward. The reason I'm telling you this story because you're like, hey, bro, read an ad soon, is that Kawhi doesn't, Kawhi's whole thing is that he doesn't,

like everything is purpose, no wasted movement. So when it's a hard crossover against a guy like Ben Simmons, who's a really good perimeter defender, hard crossover left, boom, done, right at it, north-south, not screwing around, and that in his shoulders and the way he can push off without making it look as bad as so many other guys in the league are right now because it's a real problem. But Kawhi, that's why, for one of the many reasons why Kawhi works. But he actually got annoyed in this game.

Like, he got annoyed at certain times. And the Clippers shooting, because they didn't take a lot of free throws, but their Clippers shooting from the outside is the only thing that really kept them in. So, as we get into the third quarter, another nice run by Philly. But then I thought, like, you know what? At the end of that third quarter, it was 79-75. I'm like, I think the Clippers might pull this game out, then I thought, you know what? At the end of that third quarter, it was 79-75. I'm like, I think the Clippers might pull this game out because I still... Maybe I'm too hard on the Sixers offense because I'll see these moments where it's like, why are Simmons and

Embiid running the pick and roll? I probably should go look that up a little bit more, or maybe it was working because it worked last night. It worked last night a ton, and I don't know if that was because of Zubac because you had Montrez or you had Zubach trying to deal with Embiid, and that wasn't really going to work. Embiid was really solid the whole night, very aggressive. And yet when they run that side pick and roll, you're like, okay, well, where's the shot here unless Embiid is going to pop? And then it's all these bodies and everything's kind of clogged. And then it was working last night. It was just working. And Kawhi got really frustrated on one of them where he got caught up in the screen and then a bead shoved him. It was actually an emotional Kawhi, which you don't really see any emotion from him whatsoever. You also had Richardson just step up because he has been missing time. He's felt like the guy in that group, despite the raw numbers, we were like, what, what's this guy do? He actually covered for them a little bit, playing the point. Um, and then two other bench players, because Korkmaz, who's just been on fire, and the more I've watched him this year, I've already mentioned this, like, hey, I kind of like

him more and more. And then Marcus Morris decided with like six and a half minutes to go that he was going to save the day for the Clippers. He had a three-point miss. He had a turnover. He had another ridiculous miss. He did hit a three, but it was with 12 seconds left on the shot clock, up faking like two different guys. And then, of course, he shoved Embiid, just like we told you he was going to do, late and down. He will shove guys. Sometimes he'll do it in the first quarter more, but I don't know. The Morris thing could really be more about, they didn't give up that much for it when you're good and you're giving up these firsts. But all told, I don't know if the Horford bench thing now

solves the Embiid-Simmons thing. I'm really going to be looking at Embiid and Simmons working together. How does that offense look and how does it look in the fourth quarter? Because the other weird thing here for the Sixers team is they are the best team

in the NBA at home and they're 9-19 on the road. And it's ridiculous. It just doesn't make any sense. I mean, before the week started, they were the sixth seed. They're now two and a half up on the Pacers now in the fifth seed. They play the Heat in the first round, and you still might pick the Sixers if you start doing, okay, but wait a minute, who's Miami's second best player?

And, I mean, it's Bam. It is. It is Bam out of Iowa, but it a minute, who's Miami's second best player? And, I mean, it's Bam. It is. It is Bam out of Iowa, but it isn't that guy that maybe you think of that way. And that's probably more of a discredit to Bam because he does everything. But it'd be like saying Draymond's the second best player on the team. You'd be like, oh, wait a minute. You know, like, is that really a superstar? It's like, well, no, he's different.

He's special. He's going to do some things that you're not used to. Is that really a superstar? It's like, well, no, he's different. He's special. He's going to do some things that you're not used to. But yeah, Philly now 25-2 at home, 9-19 on the road. I looked up the splits for him here. Offensively, they're 13th at home.

Defensively, they're first at home, and it's a really good number. And on the road, they're 25th in offensive efficiency, 105 points per 100 possessions, and then they're 10th in defense. I refuse to believe that Horford is the main reason all of these offensive numbers are this bad. But maybe it's kind of like the Houston thing, where you look at Houston and you go, that Horford is the main reason all of these offensive numbers are this bad.

But maybe it's kind of like the Houston thing where you look at Houston and you go, okay, drive, drive, and then dish when you're closed off. And with Simmons, sometimes it just might not look as good. Or you'll have those weird Simmons games we've seen in the past where you're like, why did you take four shots today? Why did you take zero free throws? But he's been better. His career scoring numbers are better. Not career, but at least for this season, when I was able to track, like he's 20 something

a game when MB doesn't play and he's 15 when MB does, but that could be just shot volume altogether. So this has become an inner Philly outside of Philly thing where, you know, what's, what's real and what isn't. And I'm still not a hundred percent convinced despite watching them as much as I have, but it's a nice win at home. And if we look at the first 500 teams in the NBA right now, Milwaukee's 12 and six, this is going into last night, Denver 15 and eight, really good number for the Nuggets. The Clippers 14 and nine, so that'd be 14 and 10. Now, um, Boston would be 12 and eight, 12 and nine. Now the Lakers 1410. And Philadelphia would be 13-15.

So again, the only team there with a record below 500 of those teams that we mentioned there, of those top five. Okay, I'll get to Rockets here. It's not so much a play-by-play deal, but I've just got something I think that's worth talking about with the small ball lineup. If you purchase supplies for a small to mid-sized business, Zorro.com, Z-O-R-O.com is your go-to resource.

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about this stuff before, but if he's healthy, it's, it's that big of a problem. He's that special. And if you haven't seen him yet, even if you're a casual, casual basketball fan, do yourself a favor and make sure you're watching TV the next time Zion's playing, basketball fan, do yourself a favor and make sure you're watching TV the next time Zion's playing because it's that great. So Houston beats Boston, ends Boston's win streak. And it was a really, it was a by design win here for Houston. They got a million points from Harden and Westbrook. It's not a million. It was 78 points. It's the first time in Rockets franchise history. not a million. It was 78 points. It's the first time in Rockets franchise history they had a pair of teammates score 35 or more together, and Harden really got it going with 19 straight, and anytime they had Westbrook with them and they were trying to do this thing, you're seeing it

more now where there's like a flash double at Harden to try to make him force a new decision, and he's a great passer. And during that 19-point stretch, I actually rewound it. And we all know how I feel about watching Rockets game, but I just forced myself. It was 43-43 at one point, 8-0 Celtics run. And then Harden absolutely takes over in the third, 57-50, 8-20 to go in the third. He hits a layup, then he gets some free throws, 59-53, hits a 3, 66-56, hits three free throws on a foul, 65-58, another 3, 68-58, went one or two for free throws, 69-58, another 3, 72-60, then free throws, 74-65. All of it was legit. There weren't any bad calls in there. I know that Houston had way more free throws in this one.

Yes, there are always going to be a few free throws that I cannot stand that they're rewarded with. Westbrook probably got more calls in this one than, you know, unwarranted call here or there. He got an end one where he went absolute kidney elbow to Marcus Smart, and he knew he did it and like dished it out on him. Westbrook had really mad moments in this, but here's what's happening.

I don't want to run through a bunch of different things with this because we all know what Houston runs, and Boston got really, I don't know, they sucked in this game. They really were, I don't want to say unwatchable, but their offense just got really kind of gross for them, and Jason Tatum is absolutely in my head because as soon as I started questioning the ceiling, he was like the best player in the Eastern Conference, not named Giannis. And then as soon as I was like, man, this guy's on fire, he was terrible, couldn't shoot the ball.

So he is not just rent-free. If he put a deposit down, he's going to steal it and he's going to still cause more damage than what the security deposit is. That's where it is right now in my dome. Let's do a bigger picture topic thing though here with Houston. Houston has, over the last few years now, done things that everybody initially said won't work, right? So this is almost a warning because I'm not sure how I feel about the small thing yet. I know what I thought about it the first night.

I've talked about it a little bit. I know what everybody else has said. But Houston's had this habit of hearing what everybody's saying publicly about their approach to basketball and everybody being wrong about it. Daryl said, I'm going to just open this thing up. I want to shoot a million threes. Oh, that's not going to

work. Remember game one against the Warriors, Rockets and Warriors, and then everybody on TNT going like this ISO spread it out, playoff thing, like this isn't going to work. And you know what? It almost worked. So their approach with Harden, it did almost work a couple years ago. Shooting threes has changed the way the game is played across the entire league. When they brought in Chris Paul with Harden, like, that's not going to work. Again, go back to 2018, it almost did. They split them up perfectly, then they found a way to make it close. I'm not saying Chris Paul had a great time playing with Harden,

because Harden off the ball isn't an interesting, well, he's not an interesting player. He himself is not interested in the play once he's off the ball. And then they bring in Westbrook and, you know, it hasn't been great, but now Westbrook's completely unlocked because they've just gone small the entire time. And so on top of that, it's like, well, this small thing isn't going to work. No Capella, they bring in Covington. I'm just warning everybody, They've had this weird habit of doing something that everybody says

is incredibly stupid and isn't going to work. And then it kind of works a little bit. And I'm not telling you I love them. I'm not telling you I'm picking them in the playoffs.

We all know where I stand with them. Regular season versus playoffs. And now things look differently. They're 2-2. So it could sound like, hey, Russell, what are you super impressed because they beat the Celtics?

They beat the Lakers. They lost in the last second shot that was ridiculous to the jazz and bogdanovich and when they lost to sacramento westbrook didn't even play and right now westbrook is like just unstoppable um because he's just driving all the time so does this mean he just opens it all up for westbrook and he's driving well they were doing that a little bit before too but they didn't even have Gordon last night. And if you look at the scoring for this or just the minutes, and I'm going to get out of this quickly and we'll get to Jeff Passan, but you know, 36 minutes from Tucker, 38 from Covington, 40 from house. And I knew this was going to be like a weird, like, Hey, get canter out of their game.

If canter is going to be in there, he has to beat up and get offensive rebounds. He allowed an offensive rebound in the second half. He never saw him again. He played only eight minutes. So Houston got Boston to go small, where Boston finally being small was bigger than the opponent because of how small Houston was

because you get those wings and Gordon Hayward had some moments in this whole thing. But I don't know, maybe it's different in the playoffs because you become more used to it, but it's throwing some teams off by going ahead and doing this. And the only other guys that played, I mean, I don't have to run through Harden and Westbrook's minutes in the playoffs because you become more used to it, but it's throwing some teams off by going ahead and doing this. And the only other guys that played, I mean, I don't have to run through Harden and Westbrook's minutes in this whole deal.

And if you're a Celtics fan, you're saying, ah, they shot 42 free throws. Boston only shot 25. It was more than that, man. I mean, there's always going to be a couple of calls, like I said, you're not going to love, but Boston lost this game. Austin Rivers and Ben McLemore, 20 and 18 minutes. The only guys really had any other time. Self-Elliotia got nine minutes. So just something to think about.

And Toronto and Nick Nurse, who was considered in the conversation of the best coaches in the NBA by people that care about this stuff and really do, like people that I trust say this about Nick Nurse. They didn't have a Baca the other night, haven't had Gasol. When they beat Minnesota, they went small. Hollis Jefferson was their five, and he was defending Carl Anthony Towns, and actually Towns couldn't do anything with him.

And then OG Ananobi got onto Towns a few times as well. So for Houston to do it, and you're like, what the hell are they doing? Here goes Daryl again. And trust me, if there was anything I could point out to hate on it and not give him credit, you know your boy would find a way, but this is why I'm the best,

because I'm so fair despite disliking things. A little bit of a compliment there. But that's just something to think about. It's just something to think about, okay? And Toronto going really small. It also started making me think about Carl Anthony Towns, because not a super impressive game. And they're just going to lose as many games

as they did before D'Angelo Russell. Like, I'm sorry. They're going to be more interesting. You're going to feel like you have a guy that's more as many games they did before D'Angelo Russell. Like, I'm sorry. They're not, they're going to be more interesting. You're going to feel like you have a guy that's more aggressive and more into it with D'Angelo Russell. I, I don't know. I'm not going to do

an I'm out on towns thing. I'm not doing that. That'd be irresponsible, a little too quick for that kind of stuff. But I don't think that their team is going to be, I just don't think

they're going to have this great record after this. I don't. But I got to, I got to keep watching them. All right, let's talk some baseball with Jeff Passan. But first, there's plenty going on at DraftKings. The leader in daily fantasy sports, DraftKings will have millions of dollars in total prizes up for grabs this week. Take your shot at big cash prizes with basketball contests every day or take a swing at golf, hockey every week. They've got more too. So draft your

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That's during your signup. You enter that code, you get a free shot at over $100,000 in prizes with your first deposit. Don't forget that's code RASILLO and get a free shot at over $100,000 in prizes with your first deposit. Minimum $5 deposit required. Eligibility restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com for details. ESPN baseball writer Jeff Passan. A lot of baseball news here, so let's try to get through it all. Let's first talk playoff expansion and there's a couple things at work here, but I'll try to get through it all. Let's first talk playoff expansion. And there's a couple things at work here, but I'll lay out the plan.

Feel free to jump in at any point. Be seven teams in each league, and that would mean the best team in each league would get a bye. And then you'd have two division winners, another wild card, and then two other wild cards. And what would happen then is that the team with the second best record, we get to pick from the bottom three teams who they would want to play. And those first rounds, we'd get rid of that one game wild card, which I'd be totally in favor of. I just think it's ridiculous and it's fake playoffs. But then they would pick their opponent and then the second team would pick their opponent, and then the last two wild cards would be left. So three-game series, all home games for the better team, and then we would get to the division round where the number one seed would be waiting on the bye. So that's what we have. I've thought about it. I know everybody hates change immediately

on social media. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. How do you feel about it? sure how I feel about it. How do you feel about it? I'm that same way, actually, where I'm still trying to process what the effect would be, right? Because that's always the question with things like this. What are the unintended consequences? And I think some of the unintended consequences, honestly, are problematic, but I think there are elements of it that really do work. And in the elements of it that work, I like a tiered playoff system where there are different levels that you can reach to have different incentives. If you're the number one seed, you get to go all the way to the division series without having to wreck your pitching staff. And I know that 2019 notwithstanding, starting pitching has not been nearly as big of a deal in the last few playoffs as it has in the past. But the idea that you're going to have to potentially spend your one through three in that three-game series and then start your four in the first game, it's just not good for those teams that do have to play in the wild card.

Then you have winning your division or finishing first in the wild card, allowing you to select your opponent like that again, is a potential benefit. And, you know, we're talking about the TV show element that would come with it. Who's each team going to pick and the drama like that, that that's all well and good. It's contrived. But listen, I have no problem with a contrivance. If in baseball, it actually starts some bulletin board material and causes a little bit of drama because baseball is a sport that historically has not had any of that and has been really averse to that. My problems with it are twofold. Number one, I worry that this kills the trade deadline. And as somebody who reports transactions for a living, perhaps I'm a little biased on this, but I think the trade

deadline is a seminal moment on the baseball calendar. I think that people love transactions. I think they love fantasy GMing. I think they love the dopamine hit that comes along with following what your team's going to do. And if you have a bunch of teams that believe they can sneak into the playoffs with 81 or 82 wins, those teams are probably going to be loath to make trades at the deadline. The second part of this is the question of competitiveness. of competitiveness. And MLB believes that it's going to cause a more competitive September, but I just need to see it in action to really buy into that idea. Theoretically, yeah, if you have those different tiers of playoffs, teams are going to be fighting for it. But I look at the five through seven, and if you're in that area, you have absolutely no reason to go for it at the end of September. Like that last weekend for you, if you know it's not up to you who you're going to be facing,

you're just going to rest your starters and line up your rotation. And to have the last weekend to, you know, potentially a dozen teams playing non-competitive games is the antithesis of competition toward the end of the year. Yeah, because whenever I read, like, I'll read certain things, it'll say, well, this means this means this. And it's always one of my favorite things after the fact to be like, well, actually, you know, the unintended consequences of this, the things you couldn't figure out. I mean, when they first went to the wildcard thing, they had it so screwed up where the teams of the two best records could actually end up playing each other in the first round. And you're like, how did you guys come up with a system

where that happened? And it's like, oh, wait. You're like, wait a minute. What do you mean, wait? And it would happen because of, you know, depending where the wild card came out of which division. When I heard about it, like, meaning more competition later, with the second wild card right now,

look at the standings on september 1st there's still five bad teams talking themselves into thinking they're still alive for the playoffs because they are so i don't know that this adds to the excitement of the pennant race considering um it's it's already kind of happened now like i'll look through and be like wait a minute that team's four under 500 they're only like five games out of the you know granted five with a bunch of teams in front of you. The anti-tanking thing, again, I think you and I have been in agreement on this one. The impact tanking has actually had and what it's meant as a storyline, I think has been

one of the more overblown things with baseball going on the last few years. And people just love doing it and pointing it out because it sounds like a good story. But I think we found out that Houston, it was more than just tanking going on with them. We'll get to that a little bit later. The trade deadline, unfortunately, has been kind of boring in general the last few years. I loved it. I would sit and listen to Peter Gammons. I would wait in a sweltering heat in a truck with the AM radio on just dying to hear if there was any new Peter Gammons nugget. And it just doesn't feel like it's that exciting anymore, but maybe you're right.

It was this past year, man. There were a lot of, listen, I know that because I was the person who was sitting there sweating, but it was because I was under a bunch of like bright TV lights, trying to figure out in real time what the hell was going on. There was a lot of activity at the trade deadline this year. And let's remember, Zach Greinke didn't come until after the buzzer. Justin Verlander on August 31st when they had a trade deadline and then came like two minutes before midnight. Baseball still has the ability to shock and surprise,

and it's a finite amount of times you can do it, but one of those is the trade deadline. Yeah, all right. Uh, it's a finite amount of times you can do it, but one of those is the trade deadline. Yeah. All right. All right. I'll give you that. Cause I, I still, I do always hold out hope for it. And I think that's what always makes it exciting.

Just like you had pointed out. Uh, how much is this really about? And you're smart to point out, like, it's going to be a television production, a little bit like the college football playoff selection committee, where instead of ranking the teams, you're going to have the teams actually pick each other. And then that's going to be hilarious because nobody gets madder quicker in a more insane fashion than baseball players, where they're going to be like, I can't believe, oh, that's what you want. It's like, hey, you know, we had to pick a team. We

had to pick one team. We couldn't pick none. So sorry we picked you. But this feels a little bit more like having extra playoff inventory for a baseball product that has to be finally worried about what it is instead of Sealy just pretending everything's great all the time and complimenting himself, where Manfred's trying to do real things that are also appealing to a new TV deal that's coming up here in two years. Yeah, and I think one part of the appeal here is that the playoff inventory is going to be bigger. And that appeals to teams and front office people and owners, especially, who can say,

yeah, but we fielded a playoff team in this year, this year, and this year. And it doesn't matter how they do in the playoffs, at least they were a playoff team. And I think it appeals to television networks, and that's a big part of this. There's going to be a lot of money spent on 16 potential extra playoff games. That's what the net of this is. Instead of the two wild cards you have, you have six series that could go three games apiece. And that first game is always interesting because it gives a team a great advantage. And then you have two other elimination games potentially after that. There's unquestionably more drama here. You have the ability of a dark horse, an 81 or 82 win team to go and beat the team that chose it in the first round, by the way, in three games in that team's home park. So there are a lot of elements of excitement that I think can come along with this. But if Major League Baseball is rethinking its playoff format, there are infinite possibilities, too, that don't involve this many teams.

The dilution of the playoff field could theoretically, and I think you can make an argument, a pretty strong argument for this, make the regular season less meaningful. Like if you can just sneak in with only 85 wins, are the Boston Red Sox really trading Mookie Betts? Well, it sounds like they're going to trade him no matter what, because they're worried about the tax bill now, which again, you know. not to get me going on.

But I have I have enjoyed watching your face turn different shades of red talking about this, by the way. So if I'm if I'm bringing something up that I shouldn't be my sincere apology. No, no, I I don't know. It sounds like they were pretty determined to go ahead and move on from him. But if I look back at it last year, yeah, last year was like a really top-heavy year. I mean, you had all these teams with 90-plus wins.

I'm imagining, like, I'm sure I can probably find a year where 85 got you close. Oh, I mean, there are,, I believe in the last eight seasons, this is what someone said, in the last eight seasons, I think there would have been 112 playoff teams under this format, and I think four of them would have been at or under 500. Yeah, I found one. I found the Twins in 17, 85 85 win team in the central. You know,

the Mookie thing is different. Actually, that is a good transition. What happened after Gratterall's medicals came back and you'd heard like Jeter Downs wasn't going to be involved? How did the Dodgers end up having to give up these prospects? And did it change the perception of this deal around the league from people you talked to once this finally went through? I mean, the Dodgers did CPR on this deal. There was a point at which a lot of people involved thought it was on life support. And I think the Dodgers said, we are not going to lose Mookie Betts because Brewster Grotterill's arm might not be as healthy as the Boston Red Sox thought it was going to be. And look, the Red Sox, you know, I understand why they did what they did. Like, if you're trading somebody like Mookie Betts, you don't want to get somebody back who's not going to pan out.

If you don't think a guy's going to pan out for one reason or another and you can back out of the deal, you know, it's not done until the medicals are passed. That's why, you know, when we report these things, we say pending medical reviews. And so I, you know, I think the Red Sox certainly had an element of cold feet here and they should have because they're trading Mookie Betts. And because, you know, I've gotten a little criticism for saying this, but Mookie Betts is the best all-around player in a Boston Red Sox uniform since Ted Williams. Like, that's just fact. David Ortiz has been incredible in the postseason and should be a Hall of Famer and is a legend in Boston. And Carl Yastrzemski, clearly a Hall of Famer and is a legend in Boston and Carl Yastrzemski, clearly a Hall of Famer, Manny Ramirez.

You can go on with guys, you know, Jim Rice, another Hall of Famer. Mookie Betts at his peak was better than all of them. And to trade a guy like that because of past mistakes, like that's what this comes down to. The Red Sox made bad decisions. They felt backed into a corner financially, even though they are making a half billion dollars a year in revenue. And they made a choice. And that choice was to try and plan for the future rather than to hold on to something in the present that may be nascent. And it's a hard thing for Red Sox fans to hear.

And ultimately, it may be the wrong decision. But it was something that I think they were absolutely going to do at some point. And when the Dodgers said, we will take half of David Price's contract back, it was almost a fait accompli. Yeah, once they can move off the price thing, and that was always my point once this all was coming down, was that the price contract was so irresponsible. It was so far beyond what he was offered anywhere else. Yep.

And he was the third highest paid player in baseball. And if David Price, when he signs a piece of paper and it makes him the third highest paid player in baseball, you've made a huge mistake. And I can't, you know, when they're like, hey, wait a minute, is this going to make him, is he only going to be behind Grinke? And I think it was going to curse Sean Grinke.

Like, is he those guys? Is he better than these 10 guys behind him? You know, granted, we can be talking about first contracts versus. Let me make a point here, though. And I think this sort of gets lost in all of the how dare they trade Mookie. a point here, though. And I think this sort of gets lost in all of the how dare they trade Mookie. And listen, how dare they trade Mookie is a perfectly good question to ask. But if you look at baseball right now and you look at financial behemoths, there are arguably four of them. The Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Chicago Cubs. Right now, two of them

are operating at full Death Star capacity, the Dodgers and the Yankees. They are developing players from within. They are not spending recklessly. They are the epitome of a well-managed baseball team that happens to have financial heft behind them. And so to me, this trade was not to say, let's get rid of Mookie Betts. This trade was to say, we want to be like the Dodgers. The Dodgers are in the position to make this trade because they have been responsible everywhere else. And the Yankees were in position to go out and get Giancarlo Stanton because they had been responsible everywhere else. And when you have two teams that have that much heft, that much might, and you can actually be one of those, there is a very strong argument,

I think, in favor of trying to do what you can to get there. And as painful as it might be, as painful as this is, as painful as this will be, if and when Mookie Betts signs a long-term contract elsewhere, it's still something that logically you can argue makes sense. The Yaz thing is not a terrible thing to say, by the way, at all. A little different era when you're looking at some of those stretches of the 60s, which is the first third of his career. It's not really even the first third. It's beyond that. He won a batting title hit

in 301. He had 44 home runs that great year in 67 where he was just a monster in that. He never had 200 hits, even though he finished with 3,400. I would push back maybe on the Manny thing, but I know what the war numbers are. I know what the four-year stretch of Mookie's career

and what that war number compares to, and it's like Mantle. I mean, they're just absurd. The comps are like three other guys. You're like, which one of these guys is actually the best player that ever played at some point during his career. So I,

I don't think it's a crazy thing to say. I just don't think, um, I think that Red Sox ownership, it's just an impossible sell. It's an impossible sell to a fan base that, you know, actually isn't like going,

Hey, thanks for the rings anymore. They're out. They're like, when you're in, when you're in, you are, you are never going to win in the public sphere.

You are never, ever going to win a trade like that. And, uh, there's a, there's a going to win. In the public sphere, you are never, ever going to win a trade like that. And there's a risk to it. But here's the truth. Until fans stop watching Sox games and stop going to Fenway, what's the disincentive for them to do something like that? And for anybody saying they did it because they were going to sell it, usually people will do a deal, but it's like they know they're selling the team.

Like you can talk about debt servicing and oh, you know, we're not going to get as much for the baseball team. I don't know that I believe that. Usually somebody would be like, let's just sign them now and backload it. Let's do a Marlins. Let's do a David. That's exactly right. David Sampson, right? Yeah. Who was like, everybody backloads their deals be like no one has ever backloaded the deals the way you guys did with like jose reyes um and then mark burley mark burley and then uh the reliever was it was it bell yeah he fell yeah good memory i had like god those marlins teams were such a debacle but that that one was so gross. I tried to purge that from my memory.

Everything that's happened in baseball in Miami has been gross. Gross. That entire thing. Like Derek Jeter took over the most epic tire fire possible. And I think the Marlins actually, oddly, are doing a pretty decent job of trying to rescue it. But that ballpark, what it's going to end up costing. I mean, listen, we could do five hours on publicly funded stadiums in the mess that they are. But the Marlins are trying to rescue themselves.

And the Red Sox are never going to be in a position like that. The fact, though, that they developed this guy who's on a hall of fame track and, uh, that it's not that they weren't able to keep them. They chose not to keep them. I think is pretty telling. Yeah. Right.

And if it's a 12 year deal, if that's what he really wanted, um, you know, I still think that this is kind of deal, especially the deal before, but then you started reading some of the scouting reports. You know, I don't want to do this.

I don't want to do any more Mookie because there's other stuff that I want to get to. We'll get to the cheating stuff, the updates, and all the new details with Jeff here in a second. But today's podcast is sponsored by ADT Commercial for Business. ADT Commercial serves businesses ranging from midsize organizations to large-scale enterprises. Think of them as a special team who has one focus, your business security.

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what are you hearing? Is there anything you can share with us irresponsibly so? Feel free. It's just a podcast about what's coming down with this socks investigation because it keeps getting delayed. Here's the difficulty of this investigation

with the Astros. You had Mike fires on the record talking about the scheme in great detail. You had John boy putting videos out there showing exactly what happened. Like a seminal moment, too. Like the Danny Farquhar at bat when the Astros realized that they were exposed. And so when you've got those two things in your Major League Baseball going and asking questions, you know you've got the players dead to rights. That's not the case with the Red Sox. There were no on the record sources. And what they were accused of doing is a lesser version of what the Red Sox, excuse me, what the Astros were. And so because of that, I think the sell to the players, they don't feel

nearly the scrutiny that the Astros players did or nearly the incentive to go and talk about some of these things. And while they have immunity, you know, immunity in air quotes, I think the Astros right now are seeing that immunity is not necessarily a good thing or not necessarily a salvation because what the public is going to think of you is ultimately going to be even stronger than what MLB can do. And everywhere the Astros go this season, they are going to get absolutely lit up. I mean, I've been watching videos lately of like Rafael Palmeiro at bat and Barry Bonds at bat. The Astros are going to get deeply booed everywhere they are. So there was another interesting development because this story just won't go

away. Like I read Jason Stark splits about the home road strikeout ratios because they still had a system on the road, but it wasn't going to be as well executed. And then you had this piece where McCann and Beltran played together with the Yankees and then they get to the Astros and then they say, well, wait a minute. Like, you guys, what you're doing here in Houston is behind the times. So then that opens up the floodgates of everybody finger-pointing even more.

So the Yankees are clear in this, even if we're maybe – I don't think it's a reckless assumption. It's just something that's probably going on, but not enough for baseball to care about it to the level of Houston or Boston right now. Is that fair? I mean, the Yankees are clear for now. This is not to intimate that anything's going to be coming down, but I think the idea that sign stealing was limited to these two teams is silly.

I also don't think that anyone was doing anything to the level that the Astros were. And that's an important point here. Fans in Houston rightfully and understandably get defensive about this and say, yeah, well, look at the other teams, but it's just such whataboutism. Yeah, right, absolutely. What the Astros were doing was egregious compared to what other teams were. And I don't think that Major League Baseball honestly has all that much appetite to look into this.

I mean, let's put it this way. Down at the owners' meetings this year, we were standing in the new ballpark in Houston. We were all wearing hard hats. And Rob Manfred shows up in his hard hat. You know, the athletic report had come out, I think a week earlier. And, uh, I asked him, do you plan on having some sort of George Mitchell type investigation into this? And he didn't give it a second of thought. He said, no, we're, we're not going to do that. And I think at this point, you know, genie's out of the bottle, like there's just no going back to that. But part of me wonders if

ultimately for baseball's sake or not having this drip, drip, drip of things that continue to come out, that would have been a better avenue to take because at the very least, you can wash your hands of it. And beyond that, you can avoid the, hey, is MLB covering this thing up question that people continue to ask. Well, I didn't think the Mitchell report, report like it just felt like hey let's do something and then you read it and you're like henry rodriguez whoa whoa the mitchell reports you know all these years later the mitchell reports a great read yeah and then i remember like it was like the red socks are caught up in this. We're like, well, what's going on? But Theo would ask, hey, is Gagne, is he a Royds guy?

And the other guy's like, I don't know, maybe. He's like, yeah, okay, all right. And then it was just like that's – so I don't know what would happen here. And it feels like you're right. The whataboutism is a great way to phrase it. It reminds me a lot of the scc transfer where the quarterback sucker punches somebody and gets kicked out of school and

everybody makes fun of them and then like seven of those other scc schools are like i hope he comes here um so you know i don't i don't get too worked up about any of that what i did really find interesting though is that once beltron now the story's being told and some anonymous sources in it as well that didn't want to go on the record that were with Houston at the time you know like Beltran was like we need to step this thing up and that it was player driven but it was also all these people in the front office and now it's explaining to me why retroactively anybody who I talked to in baseball seemed to despise the Astros maybe because they got too much credit or the fact they feel like these guys were incredibly arrogant about it when people were hinting at knowing more was going on, but that

Beltran was like, we're doing this and now we're going to bang a garbage can. And that I kind of love the idea of Brian McCann. I'm not sure if I believe it or not. McCann who would yell at somebody's grandmother, a wiffle ball game, if she didn't run it out to first base uh that he was somehow challenging Beltran but that he couldn't and that the younger players felt complicit but yet they couldn't challenge him so I don't know what to make of this thing if Beltran was the mastermind it was so intimidating that even though multiple Astros didn't want to keep going through what they were doing and raising the stakes of cheating that they felt like they had to. Basically, I don't want to come out of this story feeling like I have to like my can. I kind of do, though, right?

Yeah, it sounds like it. But then again, I mean, if you're the tough guy who yells at everybody all the time, you're just going to let it keep happening? I mean, was there so much turmoil in this dugout? Let's put it this way. I also think that Carlos Beltran is an incredibly easy scapegoat. That's another angle. Yeah.

I mean, Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora are the ones who are wearing this the hardest right now. And it's going to be really interesting to see, not just over the next couple days, but over the course of the season, just how much Astros players are talking about it. I mean, if you're not on the team anymore, you know, you saw with Charlie Morton, you saw with Dallas Keuchel, you saw with Marlon Gonzalez, we're sorry for what we did. Current Astros players going to be sorry for what they did. Are they going to talk about it? The lawsuit from Mike Bolsinger, the former Blue Jays pitcher who got lit up when there were 12 bangs of a trash can at a 29 pitch outing going to have any sort of chilling effect on this? I mean, this is a story, Ryan. This is a story that is not going away. Not for a long time. It's just

got tentacle after tentacle after tentacle. And we're getting to the point now where you really wonder if people are starting to recognize that they need to be out for themselves and that if some of these leaks to the Wall Street Journal were individuals who were motivated by self-interest and if others are going to say, well, this guy's doing this, then, well, you know what? I'm going to tell my story. I know you're busy, Jeff, so know what? I'm going to tell my story. I know you're busy, Jeff, so I really appreciate the time. You can check him out, ESPN.com and on all sorts of ESPN television shows. Jeff Passan.

Never too busy for you, buddy. Thanks to Jeff Passan and you for hanging in there during that Tales from the Couch. Shopping for a business, you'll find the supplies you need. We told you earlier at Zorro.com, Z-O-R-O.com.

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so no podcast Friday because the travel thing is not ideal. LA to Chicago, shockingly not as easy as you would think. Damn, really? Yeah, the options on it, I may end up having to take a red-eye Thursday into Friday morning so I can get there in time to do all this stuff. But that's starting your weekend on the worst. That's like how much worse do you want to feel? But a lot of business to be done here.

So it's not going to be. I'll be with Woj. That podcast is sold out i have nothing to do with that one so sorry and then the t-mobile event's gonna start i think around 3 30 local time i'm gonna tweet all that stuff out at ryan a rossillo but uh big shout out to them and then media members stopping by and we'll see what happens with uh partaking in some of these basketball skills things so i'll be there yet you You don't know yet? No, we're all working it out. Twitter live stream?

How can I watch this? I'm not going. Nobody sent me. So I'm just wondering how to watch this. I'm going. I'm kind of going for other reasons. So I actually have nothing going on with the ringer. I know.

I imagine some ringer people have to be. I think Bill might pop up. I don't know. Are you serious? That actually wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, just check me out on Twitter and I'll give you all the T-Mobile stuff. So there you go. Thanks for listening. Thank you.