The Ryen Russillo Podcast - The Giannis-Knicks Flirtation. Plus, Jeff Passan on Judge Saving the Yankees, More MLB Playoffs, and Life Advice!

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Russillo opens with the Giannis-Knicks story and the biggest red flags for the Bucks, even if it’s unlikely to happen. Then, ESPN baseball writer Jeff Passan stops by to talk about Aaron Judge saving the Yankees, the disappointing Phillies, and more MLB playoffs. Plus, he sticks around for some Life Advice, including questions about a major hater and a party faux pas. (0:00) Welcome to the show! (1:47) The Giannis-Knicks smoke (14:55) Jeff Passan stops by! (15:17) Aaron Judge saved the Yankees season (23:22) The disappointing Phillies (34:13) How the Brewers got here (45:36) Sneaky rooting for the Mariners (59:13) Life Advice with Passan! Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Jeff Passan Producers: Kyle Crichton, Steve Ceruti, and Jonathan Frias _ _ _ This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. Don’t settle for just any insurance when there’s State Farm. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's episode, we've got a couple different things. I want to talk about this Janus story because I do think it's alarming. It's not more of the same. It's actually different. I just really don't understand the timing. So we'll talk bucks. We'll talk Janus in one paragraph in particular that I think should be alarming. I don't really have trade destinations for him right now.

like, yeah, sure, he'd look great next to Wemby. I don't know if the Knicks have the assets to pull that stuff off. We're talking baseball because it's the playoffs and it's Jeff Passon. So we'll run through the judge home run, some of the Philly complaints up against his Dodgers machine, how great the brewers have looked, how the mariners have been rebuilt. We'll do that, some other bigger baseball stuff as well and get you ready for the rest of those series. And Jeff Passon sticking around for life advice. We don't do this a lot.

You never let me do this before. We'll knock $100 off that true coat. But we're doing life advice with Passing. It's going to be a lot of fun, so enjoy the pod. This is the Ryan Mercillo podcast presented by Fandul. And if you're betting on the NFL, Fandul, is the place to do it. They've got everything. Same game parlays, quick bets for when you want to jump in live and your way so you can set

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Must be 21 plus and present in select states, 18 plus in D.C., Kentucky, and Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler or visit rG-7777-7.com. Call 888 789-77 or visit CCPG.org or 4 slash chat in Connecticut. Since it's Wednesday, and we do do a ton of football. We're doing a little baseball today. Let's do a little basketball to start the show on a Wednesday, October 8th, because October 7th is a weird day for an NBA rumor. And that's what we got yesterday from Shams Sharania on ESPN, talking about the uncertainty of Janus's future in Milwaukee.

There's a bunch of different ways to kind of look at this article, whereas the opening public shot, is it summarizing the uncertainty from the Bucks ownership and front office about their star? Is it the Knicks who, I don't know what that package is, considering all the assets that they've given up, unless it's. It's like, hey, you've got to wait a few months on a bridges deal. So, look, there's a lot of things in this that I already can tell. Like, if you're a Milwaukee Bucks fan, I know this sucks. You've been hearing about this now for a really long time, and your guy's still there, and it feels like the entire NBA world is trying to conspire to try to find a way to get Anitakucoop out of Milwaukee, and it's super frustrating.

And I totally understand that. The NBA is a really gossipy world. It feels a lot gossipier gossier. I don't know if that's a word, more gossipy than the other leagues. and I think that's accurate. But there is one thing that I always remind myself whenever I'm hearing something. Like, if I'm hearing something about a player and everybody is saying the same exact thing about that player, is it a chance that everybody's just repeating what everybody else is saying?

And it just sounds way better than, hey, do you know anything about this? Nope, I don't know anything. Or if you're like, hey, seven people have said Donovan Mitchell's leaving. So I'm just going to say he's leaving. And whenever I, you know, whether it's, you know, the people I talk to or the stuff you listen to, that we all listen to, the stuff that we read, because it's, A lot of the stuff, you're like, okay, well, where you're actually getting it from? Even if I'm talking to different teams about a player, and no one is ever saying anything that's

specific, nothing is different than anything else, anyone else is saying. It doesn't mean that it means everyone's wrong, but it's kind of like, yeah, I don't know. It kind of sounds like everybody's just kind of repeating the same stuff. And that Mitchell stuff was just like, oh, that guy's out of there, that guy's out of there, that guy's out of there. But it's like, okay, but where? Like, what would he do? Because the Knicks thing didn't happen with that trade.

And then he ends up with Cleveland. Now, the Knicks have made all of these moves, and Brooklyn doesn't really make a lot of sense because of roster. So where is it actually going to happen? And then he does a deal that's structured in a way that he can reassess where things are. But a guy that everybody had leaving Cleveland decided to stay in Cleveland. So if you're a Milwaukee fan, I think there's some similarities there where it's like, okay, but give me something specific on Janus. The problem is, is this feels real specific. And I would go back to the Combine, which is referenced in this piece, because when I was at the Combine in Chicago this past year,

everybody was talking about Janus. Nobody was talking about the guys on the floor. It was just Janus, this, yonis that. And I would wait, like my rule of, am I going to hear anything that's very specific that seems different than just the general like, hey, that guy's out of there? Because it's more fun, right? It's human nature. It's more fun to sound like you're plugged in.

And even if something you're sharing isn't even all that insightful, it's better than saying nothing. I think that's a very, very human nature thing in the way. information moves. But in the Yannis case, when I would ask teams, like, stuff was specific. And the one thing that I could never forget where I thought was like, that's alarming. Again, if you're a Bucks fan or the Bucksman office, is like, one team had told me the agent said, hey, if we were to do this, like, we're going to be in control of this. Like, it's going to be honest. We're not just going to wait around and let them dictate. Like, this is the kind of power.

I think the second best player in the world should have. And if this were to happen, it reminded me a little bit of the Russell Wilson thing, where remember when he was still with Seattle, and there was this report that he wanted to be traded, and then his agent was like, well, no, but if he were to be traded, here are four teams that,

so you're like, well, that's not good. So I think there's a lot of not good in this article about what could happen over the next year or so. So, this paragraph should scare you a little bit. So, again, quote, Buck's sources had feared in part because Ante Cumpo's expressed desire to win another championship that he would make a formal trade request during the week of July 28th, I guess, when Horst, the general manager, John Horst, embarked on his one-day trip to Greece.

Imagine getting on that plane. They're like, I'm going to fly to Greece for a day. Hopefully, Janice doesn't ask for a trade. League sources close to the situation, they're always so close. We're expecting the same thing. Anto de Kumpo was continually asking himself, even after the buck's stunning release of Lillard to sign Miles Turner, can this roster truly compete for a title?

Ante Duccoop had serious questions about this and shared his feelings directly with Horace, league sources said, if the guy writing the article is saying this line, Ante Kumpo was continually asking himself, that means someone in that camp is telling Shams exactly what Yannis has been thinking. That's not like a thought of maybe he was thinking this, maybe he was thinking that. That paragraph has a lot of stuff in there, at least to me, where I'm like, okay, like it all feels a little bit more real.

Now, the other part of this from Milwaukee is kind of banking on where they're at in the east. I don't know, man. I mean, maybe it's the Tatum injury. The Halliburton injury, no fear yet of Cleveland, despite an incredible run last year, and then, of course, losing in the playoffs. The Knicks feeling like they have kind of a playoff ceiling that isn't awesome. Is it Philly? Is it Atlanta?

Is it Orlando? I mean, I looked at the Fanduilots today. Milwaukee, even with this uncertainty in the east, because I don't think it's like impossible to sit here and say, hey, what if Janus just crushes again this year? Things work out. Could they be a top four seed with the void around the east? It doesn't feel great, but it doesn't feel impossible. They're eighth to win the East this morning on Fandle.

I was actually a little surprised by that. And the Turner deal, which is not egregious, it's four years, 108. For that kind of player, 27 million. I mean, he's not my favorite guy, but I like him a lot more the last couple years than I liked in the previous years when it felt like he was in a trade market forever. That kind of money for him, that's totally fine. But you're going to remember, they wave Lillard, they stretch it five years. That's $113 million.

Stop me if you've heard this before. The cap is going up so you can eat some of that dead money. It's not awesome. But then you factor in Kuzma's two years remaining in $45 million. You know, it's Janus, it's Turner, it's Kuzma. Those are your top three paid players. And then it's the rest of the pieces where you're like, is Kevin Porter, Jr. are going to be playing point card again?

What's going on here? So it's not a great team. And even though I think Horst in this front office and ownership and everybody, they were incredibly committed to doing something different and got really creative. It's like all of that for Miles Turner. It does remind me, and I brought this up numerous times with other teams and how they've moved. February 2008, the Cavs, like, man, we got to do something for Liberon. We got to do something for LeBron.

They paid Larry Hughes. They had a decent size number on Drew Gooden at that point. And they flipped them for Ben Wallace, who was owed like $40 million and Wally Zurbiac was owed like $25 million. Again, those numbers seem like nothing now 17 years later. but those were big, big numbers at the time. And it was like, we might be a little bit better. We also are probably a little bit more expensive. And hey, check it out, LeBron.

We did something. And what you end up doing is you're doing any marginal move that's probably more expensive, that screws you more long term, just by trying to show your star that you're active, that you're out there, that you're trying to do anything. And look, Janus plays against all these guys. And he can look around.

And at this stage, 31 in December, he's probably going like, I mean, who would ever be sitting in that scenario being like, we're awesome. We're going to kill everybody this year. And look, some of the playoff success, lack of success, obviously the playoff success, because of Janus and an unbelievably constructed team compliment around him going back to that team that won a title in 21 and 50 points in an elimination game in game six. He makes all his free throws. I mean, this is like all-time stuff. but to be fair in thinking about the acquisition of Yannis, which I still think teams would be like, whatever, I have a chance to do this.

If it's within the next year or so or into next summer, you know, he's missed playoff time to the last three playoffs. And this team has gone nowhere for, you know, it's like a three-year run here where there's really not much to look at. So why would this all of a sudden get better with this roster? So look, even if they were a top four seed, hey, they get off to a good start. That was brought up a lot, right?

Or if they get off to a good start, things are kind of clicking. You know, they figure it out somehow. One of the other teams is hurt beyond just Boston, Indiana. Like there's a path we could talk it out of like, how does this work? But what does that even mean? What if at the end of the year, they're a top four seed in the east? And then it's like, Giannis is facing a summer in 26 where he has one year left on his contract at $58.5 million, going into a player option for $27,28, at $62.7 million.

Like, what's realistically going to happen? And where will the bucks look like versus the NBA landscape at the end of next playoff run where you're like, okay, Janus is going to be psyched to be here and do another extension with this team. And it's an extension that will be eligible for next October, I believe. It's four years, $275 million. So that's when he would probably have his leverage. But it doesn't really matter because he kind of has that leverage right now.

I think the weirdest thing about the story is why now? Why? Why is this out? Because clearly this is out for a reason. They wanted Shams to do this. But on October 7th, and it also gets back to, like, one of the things I've talked about for a long time is we haven't had the international guy do what the American star has done in the NBA. Not like some of the all-time American guys being like, I'm done. Like, you're trading me. Hey, you have two years left in your contract. Don't care. Hey, you have four. You have four. four years let your extension hasn't kicked in yet with four years left don't care not playing is it your back no it's my elbow you know hey fire the coach fire the gym or i'm out of here you know we haven't we haven't really had that happen uh whenever i bring it up too it's like if one of these guys ends up doing it one of the profile high profile international guys it's like oh see rsillo like i didn't say it was never going to happen it's like the qb that i don't like that throws for three touchdowns on a Sunday. I was like, I didn't say he was going to have zero

touchdowns the rest of his fucking career. So maybe the best thing for Milwaukee fans is that Janus might just be bad at this thing where he wants out. He feels this tremendous loyalty. He said all the right things. I mean, he really is just an absolute joy to listen when he listens to a, well, joy to listen to, but when he himself listens to a question and then spends a little time trying to figure out. Like when he talked about the thing with Halliburton's dad, I was like, man, you know, I love the fucking guy. I love him. But October 7th, man, that's not how this is done. You're going to be hot. You're going to be getting this stuff out in July. So maybe that's the sliver of optimism for Milwaukee fans that it doesn't

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. He covers baseball for ESPN. He's a terrific guest with us. It's Jeff Passon. All right. I read your piece this morning on the judge home run. There's a lot of stuff in there that I love. but you know look they're down oh two they're at home at six one it's the largest deficit

overcome an elimination game yankee history it's the biggest blown lead for toronto all season long um six three judge hits the home run an absurd sequence of pitches um what did that home run mean for judging the yankees i think it saved their season certainly and i don't think it's being overly dramatic to suggest that because as as Aaron Judge goes, so go the New York Yankees. I also don't want to act like this was a feat done in like Game 7 of the World Series. I mean, we're in the third game of the division series at this point.

So this is not going to be on the highlight reel of Aaron Judge's career, that final moment. Like I think we're still waiting for what that final moment is going to be. But to me, it was just, I just get so annoyed with the idea that because you haven't done something, it means you're not going to. And I understand, like, it's human behavior. When we see somebody do something consistently and the consistent behavior in this case was Aaron Judge faltering during the playoffs, you know, it tends to burrow into our minds. that this is standard operating procedure. This is how it goes.

But Aaron Judges has always just been too talented and too accomplished to not be able to have moments like this. And I wonder if his career winds up being a little bit closer to Clayton Kershaw's, where he's had some October moments and he's found success, but they're kind of balanced out by those bad ones. or if in his mid and late 30s, he just completely flips the script and becomes a god in October. And a lot of that is going to be dependent, Ryan,

on the teammates that are surrounding him and the willingness of Steinbrenner family to go out in this world where the Yankees are no longer the big bully on the block. They're no longer the ones who are spending the most or even making the most money anymore and put a representative team around him year and year out. can we talk about the pitch though at least here just because you have you have some numbers like basically judge only hits home runs on pitches in the strike zone right and so for him to muscle this ball down that line for it to even stay fair um like give me some of the stuff that you had from the piece this morning on what his batting averages in the strike zone against everybody else which i couldn't i had to read it twice

and the fact that he put one out at this kind of velocity. 53 home runs this season, all 53 on pitches in the rulebook strike zone, where Aaron Judge is batting 400 on the season. That is 40 points higher than Boba Chet, who's second. Judge is slugging over 850. It's 100 points ahead of Otani. Like, it's just the, it's the rule of Aaron Judge. like you try to get ahead of him so you can throw pitches outside of the zone.

And it's because when it comes to balls that are there, he's not good. He batted 109 on pitches outside of the strikes zone this year. Had one RBI did not have a single extra base hit. So the scenario is the Yankees Trail 6 to 3, guy named Louis Varland, who the Blue Jays got at the trade deadline, comes in, and Louis Varlane used to be a starter, transitioned to a reliever, pumping a hundred. And it's not just like a week hundred.

It's a hundred with a lot of backspin on it, which translates to what baseball evaluators call carry. Essentially, when you have more backspin on a fastball, gravity takes it down less. So there's an optical illusion on high-spin fastballs, and high-spin high-velocity fastballs are the absolute apex of what you can throw. Louis Varlane throws a 90-mile-an-hour curveball.

Ryan, that is a real thing these days. And I'm sure we're going to talk more about the velocity in this postseason because it to me is the defining feature. But he sees a 90-mile-an-hour curveball, fouls it off, swings through 100-mile-an-hour fastball. And Louis-Varland at that point has to figure out, okay, am I going to go back to that breaking ball and make sure it's out of the zone?

Or am I going to beat him up and in where pitchers have been following, scouting report saying you can beat Aaron Judge up and in with good parry fastballs. And so Louis Varland goes with a fastball and it's measured at 1.2 feet off the center of the plate. Now that's 14.4 inches. If you bisect the plate, that's 8.5 inches right there. So it is 6 inches inside of the innermost part of the plate and well above the belt. And what Aaron Judge does to put his body in a position to do this. It's not just like you pull your hands in and you swing. The man is fucking six foot seven and two hundred eighty two pounds.

And to have the appropriate exception to organize your body when something is traveling at you that fast, running in on you and still be able to stay inside the baseball, but not too far inside where you hook it And it just goes foul. To manage to keep your body in a position to hit a ball like that hard and keep it fair is a monumental thing that a handful of players in the history of baseball can do. Only the best do what Aaron Judge did last night.

And that, I think, was the manifestation of that talent that I was talking about. He's too good to completely collapse in a month where there's good pitching because he hits, good pitching. And he consistently hits good pitching. In this scenario, though, he went out of character, and that to me was like the most interesting part of it. Aaron Judge is the most process-oriented athlete I've ever run into. It is obnoxiously boring. And, you know, he always goes back to that because going back to it's the process, Ryan, I think is like the safest thing anyone in sports can do. Like it's a built-in excuse. My process has been good. If I followed my process, and it didn't work.

Oh, well, I'll go back and do it again. He didn't follow his process this time. The moment was there. He needed to adjust, and he had the ability to do so in absolutely magnificent fashion. On the Toronto side of this, Barland was the scheduled starter here for game four against Schlittler, but, I mean, again,

it feels like these teams in ways that we've never seen before, I mean, other than the last few years, it's just no one seems to care about the next game. No, nor should they. I actually like that. Like you got 27 outs today to get. How do I get them? I will deal with the consequences of that tomorrow.

And in playoff baseball, like, you have to think that way. It's enormously risky. And you wind up putting yourself in a position if you're the Toronto Blue Jays where you have to rely on Eric Lauer to get bulk innings for you. And Eric Lauer was good this season. But still, Eric Lauer is a soft tossing lefty against the lineup

with a bunch of guys who can hit them all over the fence. Like it's one of those things where I think Toronto found itself out over its skis after game three for game four, knowing that in game five they've got Kevin Gossman and Trey Savage in their pocket if they need both of them. let's switch to philly uh they're pissed off we could talk about harper and schwarber's numbers 114 here with a bunch of ks we could talk about the bunt call in game two we can talk about no one was fine with the bump by the way okay well let's let's go through it who do philly fans

or what do philly fans have a right to be pissed about philly fans have a right to be pissed about two things in that situation and i think number one is, so let's look at the scenario. Man on second, down a run. Bryson started to play, a guy who has the ability to manipulate the bat well and is good at bunting. And in that situation,

you don't know what the Dodgers are going to do. What you know is that Nick Castellanos is on second base, and he's the first part that I think they have the right to be mad at because it's incumbent on him to read what's going on around him and react accordingly. And what the Dodgers were trying to do is Mookie Betts called the wheel play. For those unfamiliar, because bunt defense really isn't used very much anymore, how the wheelplay works is that when you think a bunt is happening and there's a run around second,

you are essentially sacrificing the ability to police him by crashing your third baseman and your first baseman to get the bunt. And then the wheel is that the shortstop and the second baseman roll around to the corners. So right there, Mookie Betz is going on a dead sprint on that first pitch showing that he had the wheel play. Normally, if you're the Dodgers, it's imperative that that first pitch is the strike because running the wheel is like the kind of thing when you show it. The other team should know, okay, this is how we have to handle it. We cannot bunt it hard to the third basement. We cannot bunt it hard to the first basement.

It's almost like you try to get it back to the pitcher and hope that the pitcher does a poor job. of fielding under panics and wants to just go to first and get that out. So right there, like, it's both the Phillies on their bench should be hauling out or either calling time out or preparing, doing something. And Nick Castiano's, Jimmy Rawlins, I thought, did a really excellent breakdown on TBS's postgame show about how base runners need to understand these little scenarios and just don't anymore. because when Mookie Betz starts crashing to third base,

all Nick Cassiano's has to do is run with him. You have no risk of getting backpicked at second base if the bunt doesn't get laid down because there is no second baseman there. The second baseman came crashing over to first to run the wheel. And so Mookiee Betz starts on the sprint and Nick Cassiano's has just taken a regular secondary lead. Then the bunk gets put down.

And it necessitated a really good play for Max Muncie going in, picking the ball up, wheeling around, and throwing it to third base. Mookie Betts being there and laying down the tag. This was an execution error in both the Phillies not understanding after that first pitch what they needed to relay to their base runner, who's not very good, and their base runner just not getting what his responsibility was in that sense. And that's what the Phillies have done in October's, not just 2025, Brian, but going back for this whole generation.

They just have not been able to execute best when it's necessary. And when the top of your lineup's not hitting, if you don't have execution, you don't have shit. The matchup, though, it felt like once Nola was announced, then it was like, okay, now we're really mad about all of this stuff. And I was looking at, you know, there was a number there. And it's like, okay, against curve balls, the Dodgers, right-handed curve balls. They're hitting like 140 is the number?

Or no, 214. 140 they'd be like all right no problem and then phil's manager's like look he's been in a ton of spots and it's like okay but you also have sweraz as an option and all this so it feels like it's building into getting pre-pissed off about what could particularly happen in game three there's nothing about like i bring this up to people and it'd be like all right it's one thing to be bummed out but you're like pre-bumbed out you're you're pre-bombed out you're pre-bombed out about something that may not even happen here but um Yamamoto's been just right we think it's turn to run runs since the start of September.

So how do you see this pitching matchup, which clearly seems to favor, based at least on recent history here, the Dodgers going home? Yeah, I mean, I think the Dodgers are overwhelming favorites. I think I said after that game on Twitter that that was a must win for Philadelphia. And technically speaking, it was not, you know,

they're still alive. But for all intents and purposes, going back to Los Angeles, down to nothing, having to face you, Shinobu Yamamoto is an enormous task. Now, admittedly, like, Christopher Sanchez could be on full rest for game four, and we saw how awesome he was against show a tommy like. That's the part of this that I think is roughest for Phillies fans.

They got two bangor performances from Christopher Sanchez and Jesus Lazzardo and still couldn't win the game. Like, if that's what the Dodgers. are playing like at this point, man. They've won nine in a row. Otani hasn't really gotten all that hot with the bat yet. You know, had the four strikeouts three looking in game one. You know, Mookie Betts this series hasn't really gotten it going.

Like, if this is just like, if the Dodgers are playing like this and absolutely stomping Philadelphia right now, what's it going to be like when they start playing really well? Like, that's the scary part for all the other teams involved. And that's why, like, I'm not rooting for anything. You know me. I don't, I root for, like, matchups and storylines. And the idea that the Dodgers and the brewers are barreling toward each other

in the National League Championship series is just so rich and delicious with story. And such a, I think it's like all of the issues. baseball is facing existentially right now distilled into one series. And I don't mean to be too overly dramatic and say that would be the series for the soul of baseball. But I really do think the Dodgers and how they fare during this postseason is going to have a demonstrable effect on whether we see baseball in 2007 or not. I think if the Dodgers win the World Series this year, all of the owners who say this

game is unfair and needs a salary cap are going to have another arrow in their quiver to fire in that they're going to have the backing of fans who are just tired of the Dodgers at this point and tired of seeing what they do. Are some of those owners going to be owners with payroll that ranked in the top 30 of the USA Today 2002 baseball playoff or baseball payroll edition? I go back to that all the time. I'll look back from 25 years ago and then I'll see a couple salaries in 2025 and be like this salary would have been the entire payroll right right like there's I mean seriously like anybody can do the exercise it's it's embarrassing for some of these teams today like your payroll would have ranked like 26th into you know so you're just

sitting there I know like so I mean look the Dodgers part of it like I understand the angst and all but them being good because they're like being expensive and good, and now they think they're going to get all this public momentum to be like the Dodgers are bad. The Reds are bad. The athletics are bad for baseball. It's not the Dodgers fault. No, but the Dodgers win. And if another team wins and yours doesn't, that inherently makes that other team bad. And is it fair? No, of course not. The Dodgers are just an extraordinarily well-run machine. They're a really, really good business that everybody else is jealous of. I think something I wrote earlier this week.

I had a paragraph in there where I tried to explain what the Dodgers do. It was the story about how Roki Sasaki came back from throwing like 93 at AAA and found 100 miles an hour again and is now essentially Dodgers closer. And it's a story of not just player development, but of exceptional communication inside of a large organization. where in other places egos might have taken over or there would have been some sort of glitch in the matrix. What the Dodgers do, though, is so much better than just go and spend money. It's like you can have two things at once.

You can have a huge financial advantage over other teams, but if you don't complement that with sound decision-making and with good process and with the ability to look at a player like Sasaki who's broken and put Humpty Dumpty back together again, then you're like the 2010 Yankees, you know? You're just loaded and, you know, not 20 times wrong. It's more like the early 2000 or mid-2000s Yankees, but those Giambi teams and those teams that just had nothing beyond those stars

who were past their prime. That's what the Dodgers could be. Instead, they're a machine. And I think that's the most frustrating part. They, not only do they have the most money, but they might have the most competency, too. I'm doing this just because I wanted to make sure I followed up on it on the payroll stuff. And now I have a million tabs open. So I don't know what's going to happen here.

At what point, at what point do you have too many tabs in a window and you just start another window? I'll just, I go, hey, guess what? It's been too much. you're not reading that article. I hate those articles. They sit there, dude, and they judge you. I'm digitally judged by my browser. And it's like, you are so lazy that you haven't read this.

I'm like, I know. And I just click out another tab because I start feeling guilty. I get browser tab guilt, and it's awful. All right. Well, I'm going to have to make this point another time. But basically, like, if you look at the athletics payroll, I think if you go back to 24, or some of the Pirates payroll. Like, it's just absurd to think that those are mid-tier payrolls

almost 25 years ago, if you look up some of that stuff. Let's say on the Brewers then, because they've looked great for good reason. Now, what I do love about them is that they're not a home run team, but they're a score runs team. One of their players, I was reading about it this morning, and his quote was like, look, we make them throw us out. And they forced, essentially, they had the most. most errors made against them of any team.

So in a world of like trying to figure out prioritizing velocity, the home run lineup that we have with Seattle, that's so impressive. And it feels like you can solve a lot of your playoff problems. Milwaukee's also hitting the cover off the ball on top of everything else. It feels like Milwaukee's kind of this wagon of a team at the right time. And the Cubs, it just, it felt overwhelming in those two games. it was overwhelming and they're one of those teams that you still have to like rub your eyes and say really like you know you look at the roster and it does not look like a wagon you look at

the record and 162 games is the great adjudicator like there is no small sample over the course of an entire baseball regular season and if you end the year with the best record of any team it is not an accident and I appreciate you pointing out the base running there because it is really, really good. They're near the top of the sport and going from first to third on a single, going from second to home,

going from first to home on a double is stolen bases. They're right near the top. Like they make you make plays. They put pressure on you like that. They run a hard 90. They are really fundamentally sound. And the way that they're built

I think it reflects their financial state. Mark Adonazio, their owner just does not spend money in free agency. It's become like something of a running joke, just how few free agents the brewers actually do sign. And yet, I appreciate that you brought up velocity and home runs because while the brewers do not have home runs, they do have a ton of velocity. You look at their bullpen, and it is guy efferves.

after guy after guy who can reach triple digits. And I think that reflects just how much of a development organization that is. It's hard to develop home run hitters because once you start messing with the guys swing and trying to get a little more uppercut into it, you often take him out of, you know, how he is naturally meant to swing. And I think like the launch angle revolution that existed, you know, 10 years ago when guys started trying to do more uppercut swings, that's

kind of stopped right now. Like nobody's messing with his swing to try just to get uppercut. Maybe a little bit more loft on it, maybe hit the ball in the air more. But to hit home runs, that's a hard thing to do. On the other hand, like developing velocity, that doesn't cost

money, man. Like, you can find 100 miles an hour in the fifth round of the draft these days. And as Cam Schlittler showed with the Yankees, you can find 10 miles in an hour over the course of two and a half years. Like the team's ability to develop hard throwing pitchers is better than ever, which I thought that we were getting close to like reaching that, that point where it

flattens out a little. Oh, no. Like the average fastball this postseason, last I checked, let me take a look right now. But last I checked, the average fastball this postseason was 96.1. miles per hour. Like, think about that right. In 96 on the average fastball. It's down in 95-9 now, it looks like.

We're not that many years removed. I mean, it's not 25 years ago. Is it 10 to 15? Like, if you had one guy touching 96, 97, everybody was excited about whenever you get to see him. Yeah, like Ricky Vaughn was sitting 96 to 97 in Major League, and he was the biggest thing in baseball. And that was, you know, that was 30 years ago with this.

point that's like ice cube in america's most wanted saying 225 is one i'm benched and it's like dude would you even brag about that now like guys who don't throw hard throw 96 now that's that's that's that's the it's it's so it's so hard to hit velocity that's the thing when you look at when you ask yourself why is it so imperative that guys throw hard all you have to do is just look at the splits look at the on pitches of 100 miles per hour, 99, 98, 97. Like, it's directly, I'm not even going to say correlated. Like, it's causative. The harder you throw, the better you are.

So guys train themselves to throw hard because they know that's their paths to the big leagues. And the weeding out process is the ones who can get it over the plate. Like if you can throw hard and you have some, even like, tiny semblance of control, you're going to be a big leaguer and you're probably going to be an effective one.

I do have Seattle thoughts, Mariners fans. Don't worry, but staying on this, because I was looking at it the other night, you know, whether it's me getting pissed off about the inability to hit a cop, man. I don't know if that's an age thing. It just blows my mind how many guys suck at throwing the ball in from the outfield. And it feels like it happened. They don't work on it. That's why.

Yeah, but if you're good enough to be, but think about it. Like, you're good enough to be a major league baseball player. it means you've probably thrown this ball thousands and thousands of times. So Ben did not have any arm or any idea of accuracy or like the cutoff guy. You're like, where was that throw? Like, there would be throws. I'm like, I don't even know who he was throwing it to. And I don't, it would be like a bunch of basketball players being bad at jumping.

Because like even if you can't shoot or you have no vision or you have. have no handle, you physically have jumped thousands and thousands of times playing this sport. So just the act of throwing a baseball, I imagine most of these dudes have done. Is this like, is this like cut off PTSD from having to watch Manor Ramirez and Johnny Damon throwing the ball in from left field all those years? I think it was more like Bernie Williams last gold glove where I was like, are you guys fucking kidding me? And it was clear like he just physically was shot at the end. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't like I thought he was a terrific centerfielder.

They fixed the gold gloves, actually. Like, gold gloves. No, that's a long time ago. Yes. I have a lot of Bernie Williams, BTSB. Raphael Palmero winning a gold glove the year he played like 90% of his games at the age was the best. That was the best. There's also something else I would think is worth bringing up.

Whenever they put up the Yankees like all-time home run stuff, can you put up a games played thing? I'm totally with you. The Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth numbers, people don't understand what those numbers really are. It's like Bernie Williams played in a hundred plus playoff games. He played like another season of playoff games. Go ahead, go ahead. Oh, no, just everybody else. You just used to go right to the World Series.

Right. That's why. There weren't four rounds of playoffs. Every time I see it, it's like, man, that's great. He's up there with some all-timers. Like, well, no shit he is. He played in 121 playoff games. Let's do it right now.

I'm on it. I've been referenced guy all morning. All right. Do you want to guess how many playoff games Mickey Mantle played in? 65. That was actually the number that I had in my head. But I didn't stay. I just followed you.

How about this number? I'm going to throw this at you. See? now I just lost the fucking tab again. This is awful. The tabs you're beating you. I know. I'm not even sure.

Okay. All right. I found it again. We're back in. Baseball Almanac. I'm on it. All right. So speaking of the velocity and everything we're talking about,

and we've discussed this in the past, it's just zero approach whatsoever. Like when a guy chokes up now, it's like noted. Like that guy, did that guy just choke up? Oh, my God. Right. What's wrong of them? What?

So in the early 90s, we averaged on a whole for the entire league, 23, 24, 23, 93, dialed it up a little bit. 26,000 strikeouts total, all right? So we're in the low 20s for a stretch there. Every year since 2017, excluding the 2020 season where we had stuff going on, every season, 2017 all the way through 2025. We've had over 40,000 combined strikeouts in a season of baseball. Yep.

Yeah. All right. That's it. No, it's, I wish there were fewer strikeouts. It's why I really like watching the Blue Jays play. They don't strike out. It's why I like watching the Brewers play. They do not strike out. They put the ball in play.

To a lesser extent, the Mariners, but the Mariners have some guys in that lineup, We're ball and play merchants, and that's my style of baseball that I love. I want to see fewer strikeouts, absolutely. It's just, unfortunately, not a particularly realistic thing with the combination of stuff and how guys approach strikeouts. And that's why strikeouts have always been so confusing to me. I understand exactly why pitchers want strikeouts, right?

Pitchers crave strikeouts because if the ball is not in play, you don't have the inherent 29 to 30 percent chance of it landing. every time a ball is put into the field of play. But with hitters, shouldn't something that the person you're opposing desires extremely be something that you want to avoid? Like, how can strikeouts be great for pitchers, but also acceptable and okay for hitters?

I understand there are context issues there. And the argument is that you gain more by swinging the way that guy's swing that tends to lead to show. strikeouts. But at the same time, it's just like you can have both. Like there are guys who are capable of hitting the ball hard and putting it in play. And those to me are the ones that every team should be going after every year. I just don't understand the lack of change of approach. You know, every pitch used to mean you had to reassess then what the situation is, right?

and especially if there's a guy on second and you're not a home run, you have to figure out a way to make contact. And it's like, no, I hit 2-11 with 12 home runs this season and I'm closing my eyes on a one-two count and swinging as hard. Like, no one will ever convince me that because of launch rate, that's still a good approach. All right, old man rant over. Let's talk Seattle. I'm just going to say, do you have old man basketball takes?

what's like your best old man basketball take um i don't know i'm so i'm so young and modern in that sport so i don't really know i don't know what it would be i think maybe uh i don't think it's an old man thing it's just certain players that are really prolific like stat counting players that once they're off the ball are completely useless so it's like that player may have stats that tell us he's more valuable than this guy but if he doesn't have the ball then he doesn't know what to do or play basketball that means he's probably not as valuable uh but i don't think that's old man i just think that's the eyes baby that's just watching that's the hours put in what's the uh old man basketball

too many too many threes too many threes yeah too many threes i understand i i'm i am beginning, I think this is like what middle age is doing to me. I'm beginning to push back in my head on the idea that efficiency is a god. Efficiency is a god in business. Efficiency in sports makes it too predictable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some other arguments you could make here of like did we solve everything or make it all worse right exactly that's exactly right yeah now the three point thing you want to talk about the mariners no i just felt like you know seattle fans were huge in seattle large um i was reading an article about them this morning okay and i don't know if it's a bit results based because i do have a results based question

for you here i still have some stuff and you're sticking around for life advice I hope so All right And I You are right Yeah yeah done No problem We're making it up here

Towards the end So I'm just gonna fill I'm just gonna fill the The war gone sit in the back Who? Exactly Yeah exactly Thank you

I read an article this morning That was basically It was really interesting It's good I can't even say that it was wrong Because I'm not locked in enough But the Seattle build and how it was it was almost like they won a bunch of games seven years ago they're like we're not this good

so we could trick ourselves or we could we could shift um and i don't know if that's a shift in the way some western conference teams are trying to avoid the golden state warriors which would have made sense it's like you know what what's the point um i don't know if houston was that kind of team it was presented maybe that like hey Houston's just absolutely i mean you do go back to some of those Houston teams you're like that team was was stacked but what does this Seattle series and a chance for them to be in the ALCS for the first time in a very long time what does this say about again look they're a game away from it and we can't get too carried away about like hey up to oh because here we are talking about the Yankees having all this momentum but i think there's a bigger picture

Mariner's thing on on how deliberate it felt like this front office was about resetting it and building for these moments now with this roster? You're spot on there. And they were not in a position to go chasing

because ownership there never was going to spend like go gobs on free agent. But I think what the Mariners understood is that like players, development in baseball is everything. It's Paul Toboni just got hired from the Red Sox where he was the

scouting director and was in charge of the farm system that's produced Roman Anthony, Marcela Meyer, and has a bunch of other guys coming in. You know, I talked with him when he took the Washington National's job and he said, young under control position playing talent in particular is everything in modern baseball. And it allows you to do all kinds of other things. And, The Mariners got Cal Raleigh in the third round, and they signed Julio Rodriguez out of the Dominican Republic. And, you know, their farm system right now, like, in addition to their big league club being exceptional, their farm system might be the best in baseball, too. So this is not going to be like a one-year flash-in-the-pan thing. They are set for the next half decade if everything breaks right.

And it's hard sometimes to humble yourself to the idea that what you're doing isn't working and you essentially need to have a fresh start. But I think when ownership will give you the rope to do that and you believe in the development process that you have in place, then you can. And the interesting part of the Mariners to me is, like, they've had this pitching for three years now. And the fact that almost all of them have managed to stay healthy or healthy enough with their arms to continue performing like this, like Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, I know Brian Wu's out with a peck right now, but these are all guys that they've developed. And finally, the Mariners actually went all in or pretty close to all in at the deadline, getting Gino Suarez, getting Josh Naylor to lengthen this lineup that's been phenomenal. And I just like, I don't root for teams, you know that.

I am rooting for Seattle just as a city. Like, they're not Cleveland, they're not Buffalo, but in terms of baseball, man, they have been through it. And to see them get this now, like Toronto, Seattle will be really fun ALCS, because this is organizations, two of them, that for 30 years haven't seen, you know, for the Mariners, their entire history. They haven't been to the World Series.

Blue Jays haven't been to the World Series in over three decades. And tortured fan bases, like getting their moment. That, to me, is like what sports is for. Two quick things before we pivot to extended passing. A year ago, maybe it was more than a year ago, I was worried about the pitch clock in the playoffs. I didn't care about the pitch clock in the regular season, I was like, my favorite thing is, is that moment where pick an inning, pick a score,

pick a scenario, batter pitcher matchup, but just checking the runner at first, looking over the camera shots. Like, it's my favorite part of baseball and just going, like, he has to get, like, depending on which side you're rooting for, like, it's 1-1, and you're like, okay, what's he, like, did he throw two different? Like, what is he going to throw here? Because he can't be 2-1. He can't be 2-1.

And I was like, the pitch clock is going to ruin that. I'm worried. It has not. I don't even notice it. It's been great. So you were right. It's just so awesome. Like I'm so, I'm just so glad that it worked.

And I think it's like one of those stories of business innovations done exceptionally well. Like is, I was asking someone this a couple days ago. And I'm curious as someone, you know, who's not there day to day, your thoughts. did the pitch clock change the public's opinion at all on Rob Manfred like will that be in the first paragraph of his obituary

that he's the one who instituted pitch clock and baseball well he deserves a ton of credit for it you know and I think my frustration is always that the history is so bad between these two groups anything from baseball and ownership and then the union and it doesn't matter what they propose and it just gets really frustrating even though I

would just historically say I'm always on the player's side of things when it comes to CBAs or any of this kind of stuff. It's like, hey, get in the fucking box, man. Like, you know, it's just like, why, why do you want the right to take forever in between both pitches? Like, who, who is that for? What does it really mean? And it's like if Manfred, which all the data would tell you is, I mean, it's, it's just really hard. Like, it's, that moment. that I'm talking about, that what's, is it going to be one, two, or is it going to be two one, right? Because then it changes the entire bat, especially if it's a really good hitter. And then if it's a really great pitcher, it's like, man, he might not even give

it on two one. And that's like my favorite stuff. But that moment doesn't mean anything to you unless you've paid all of that attention before, right? And I'm worried that like, you know, the idea you can have anything within a second at your fingertips, it's like, is baseball even position it can be an incredible product but is it even positioned because how long do I have to sit around to care about that count and care about that pitch right and it's you know it's just amazing how often when you're introduced to a storyline or a character then you care about that person whether it's a documentary or whether it's something that's scripted it's like you have to make like when I watch a movie and be like yeah this movie was all right but I didn't care about anybody

like I didn't care about whether or not this guy lived they got back together I just didn't care and you have to make all of us care to pay off on any of this stuff so um i think manfred has done something that it seems so silly now removed from it being like who didn't want that like why we've got to figure out a way to get people invested without immediately going how long does that thing take no and i don't know if more people are watching it because i well i'm i'm i'm convinced that it's like that. Okay, but I'm talking about like, is it a, is it a bump up, which, you know, is that, or are we returning this ship around here on baseball's like that's, that's the thing that I'm worried about long term about support. I don't want to do a fixed baseball thing here because we're in the midst of awesome playoffs.

No, no, but I think, I think it's worth mentioning that when something is bleeding, like stanching the bleeding is, is not an easy thing to do. Sometimes if the product is bleeding, it just fucking bleeds out. And this was the tourniquet on baseball. Like this, this I think is what is allowing the game to heal a little bit. That's perfectly said, perfectly set, the tourniquet of baseball. Unrelated. I hope you've seen my threads posts and that if I see breaking news in baseball, I may share that with my audience, but I do credit you.

have you noticed those no honestly i think i guess i have to follow you now don't i like you know i mean i'm tagging you on all of them i'm not just writing your name so that you don't get the love so i want people to be able like well if rsillus is passing at it first i did i did mention i did see one of them i think i don't i don't check mentions on social media like just i would i would just rather not social media man like it's a it's a real it's a real like cognitive dissonance with me because i understand it's an enormous part of my job and and in a lot of people's minds it's like it used to be like i would i would occasionally get recognized by someone and they and they would i know seriously

very popular they would say you know like i i i really i really like your writing i enjoy your stories met that more in my heart. It made me feel really good. And now it's like, I enjoy your mediocre sentences written in fewer than 280 characters. And I'm like, what, like, what has this done to me?

What have I become? I think, I think, and that's how, like, 25 and below, it's like, I'm known through social media. It's not the TV thing. It's not the writer. It is Twitter, and that is a terrifying thing for me. Yeah, you had a trade, and I had read somewhere else that cash was involved, so you had

kind of the headline of it, and then I said, following up and confirming Jeff Passes' report, cash was involved in this trade, but I'm different than some of the other vultures. I'll be like Passon did have it first. How bored are you looking for posts and that you have to make a bit? I don't know. Baseball news, that isn't even news. Well, look, I mean, if cash is involved, that's part of the transaction, I just think. It always is. Right.

Okay. Cash is involved, indeed. There's probably going to be an ad between this, hopefully not in the middle of the Yannis monologue, but let's throw to a hard break and then bring Jeff Passing back for life advice because he just wants to come on, apparently, and talk about the guy worried about the bad neighborhood. And then we're going to have them read emails with us. So let's do it. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari, 355 cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Today's life advice is presented by state farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having state farm. It's like expecting the leadership of a team captain on the football field, but getting a sea captain. What? Sure, they're both captains, but who's going to run your offense? So don't settle for just any insurance when they're state farm. We're mixing it up today. Three wide, four wide. Van Pelt used to do that Brad Doherty. Four wide. Um, when he was doing his NASCAR stuff. So Rudy, Kyle. Nice. And Jeff, Jeff Passon, who's just, he wanted to stay, and we love it. I, like, on days where the top of the show or the guest is in a sport that I'm not

particularly interested in, I will pull it up and tap the moment that goes straight to life advice. Like, I, be honest, how often, like 90% of the time you do that? Like 80, yeah. Listen, if there's one thing I'm bringing to life advice, it's going to be honesty. So I didn't, you know, I don't want to lie about that. But I'm so perpetually entertained by this segment. And I was telling Sir Rudy, like, I'll yell at the radio.

Like, I listened when I'm in the car. And when I heard about the guy who didn't want the poor girlfriend, I, like, I am, No, that's what it is. You mean, that's what it is. Right, but just so the audience is going to cut up, her financial state, not. Well, no. So if somebody's looking at her, that poor girl, like, the phrase there contains multitudes. He told on himself immediately.

The second that he was prioritizing the well-being of his car over the potential of a relationship with her, he told you everything about it that you need. to know. It was never going to work if his car was the first thing he thought about. Good guy, Jeff. Nice. Yeah, you're really nice. Is this what you're going to be like on all of them?

I mean, we'll see. Like, I don't know what the questions are here. I'm really excited to hear him, though. Well, because the guy followed up. Oh, really? Yeah. Dun, dun, done. There we go. It's perfect. Passing to even know we were doing this.

No. Thank you. Thanks for going through my scenario on the show. Should have made it a bit more clear. Apologies. We had the movie on, but didn't really watch the movie. So after we finished, it was a little past midnight when she was wondering if I wanted to stay or not. She wanted you to stay, by the way. We have hung out before and that was when we were still co-workers. She's always been pretty cool and not caring if I stay over or leave. Okay. It's a new 2025 Honda Accord. Maybe splurged a bit too much on, but they gave me more money I thought for my old one. So that's why I just went ahead and did it. Plus, I wanted all the features I didn't have before. So wireless charging in that thing. This guy's, think about it. He just got the car, Jeff.

He's excited. It's got the features. It's something he normally wouldn't do. Does that change your opinion at all? As somebody who owns a Honda Accord, I can tell you right now, it's not a car. that if the girl is worth it, then you're going to be very concerned about. Like a Honda cord?

I thought it was going to be a nice car. I'm sorry. Oh, man. Oh, no. Those things last a quarter century, Jeff. What do you mean? It's proven. They're great cars.

I do feel like the Honda Accords fans are, yeah, they're big fans of the cars. I don't know. Mariners fans driving around it right now. I've had this since the last ALCS. I'm definitely a little particular about things for sure, but more so right now with no job, just to be another whole thing to deal with. Surrity kind of nailed it with me thinking I might have left something on the table with her,

and that was my mindset going in. I think I'm awesome, but I wouldn't say she has no options either. Okay. All right. So it went for potential narcissism to, no way, because he was aware of somebody else's thing. Narcissists are bad at that. Nearest Amtrak station to me is about 25 minutes the other way, so ends up being a longer commute.

She also doesn't have one close to her as well. There are, in fact, two parking garages, about a 15-minute walk away. So I might try that for next time and see how that goes. What comes to the worst? I can just Uber from the garage to her place. If it's dark out already, thanks for the advice. If the parking garage doesn't go well, I'll just chalk it up to bad timing, the distance a bit too much for right now.

We never know what will happen in the future. I appreciate you all. All right. Okay. That's life advice right there. Never thought about the garage. How about that? But we didn't know.

Didn't Sir Rudy kind of throw it out? No, it was offered up as an option, I think, by Kyle, which is smart. Yeah. But then if you're, man, I don't know. He must still want to hook up with her. He's already mapping out garages and the Amtrak thing and the whole deal. So maybe she is worth it. He does want it to work.

He does want it to work. The hour plus would have been just too crazy. We go to different schools. Could never work, you know? That would just be way too much to budget on top of a life. Guys looking for a job? I don't know, man. Okay.

Right. We had a million bottles. This is not going to work, guys. I'm sorry. Do I have to be the one to point this out? Come on. We're talking about a parking garage 15 minutes away. There's no way the guy is going to go and walk 15 minutes to and from every time. If he's concerned about things, Uber's going to become too expensive.

Like, they're just, sometimes it's not in the car. and that's okay. And accepting that is the real sign of maturity and growth. And leaving the door open by exiting like a gentleman and not ghosting it, totally leave it, it's back on the table. What if he knows karate? Benichin to test that out. Game changer, yeah.

Yeah, because karate, you have to be in like a real, like, defend yourself situation. You can't just try that shit out at the bars, you know, like that's part of the tenants, right? You have to, your back has to be against the wall. So maybe. Yeah, you've made an oath. Yeah. That's just, just hitting the pads. Like, that's a whole different spiritual thing.

So a lot of Rolex people chiming in to our guy on that vintage Rolex. Some of the service stuff that we talked about, there are a lot of people hitting us up saying, if you give it back to Rolex, they will replace the vintage parts with new parts. something to think about there are far more educated people than me on that one. So good luck with all that. All right, let's get to a couple emails here because we're going to get

hot here with Jeff. We've got to figure out. Let's go right at it. Ooh, this one's spicy. I've been saving this one. Wrong to celebrate my biggest haters' demise. So, Jim Stats, 510,200, built like a white version of Mike Tyson, circa his mid-90s

return. Oh, okay. Could stand to lose five to 10 pounds to get in the peak shape. He also, yeah, he was going through it a bit there prior to Buster Douglas. All right, play like Draymond and pick up because it's all I got, but someone must initiate the action. All right. All right.

So I think it might be, it might be worth pointing out he thinks he looks like Tyson and plays like Draymond. So potentially something. Yeah. Like. It's all coming. together very quickly here. You don't even have to read it.

Maybe a touch of a darker submission, but feel the need to shoot it out there into the universe. My wife's sister recently died suddenly, completely unexpected. Mid-40s had an undiagnosed heart condition. While tragic, that someone so youngish would, die, she was not, and I repeat all caps, not a pleasant person.

A less discerning person might use a disparaging and derogatory term that starts with a C to describe her. I would never do that. Crazy? Come on. We don't say crazy. So I will simply settle by describing her as a miserable bitch. Sorry, kids. This is aggressive. Ear muffs, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not even the word. It's the content here. I mean, remember, the title. was wrong to celebrate my my biggest haters' demise and then he's like, so my wife's

sister died. All right. She did not like me and expressed it many times, but I always held my tongue in check to not start drama for the sake of my wife, who was the exact opposite personality of her sister at this point in her life. All of her friends passed her by in terms of having family, so she lashed out and drove many of them away. The few friends that she retained were

just as miserable as her. Tale is oldest time. There are other unpleasant details about her life, but suffice to say she is not a person who lived a fulfilling and happy life. After getting over the initial shock of her sudden passing and the logistics that come with it,

I have now settled into my emotions with a clear head. I'm ecstatic. Tony on peyote in Vegas after Chrissy died, ecstatic. I am so happy that I will never have to deal with that nightmare for the next 40 years as I had dreaded.

My wife is still in the grieving phase despite their very turbulent relationship and I cannot talk with her about this most likely forever. Yeah, good instincts. Good awareness. six months from now. Full court vision.

Very good. Now that some times passed, hon, that's never happening. However, I would love to commiserate with someone who knew her as I am sure other people have feigned remorse that are passing. Is there any good way to reach out with feelers to people who knew her without any negative blowback or do I just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the newfound bliss in my life? I also realize I could be viewed as a cold-blooded asshole for having these feelings of joy in the scenario and I'm fine with that because that's how.

awful she was so a nice easy one for you jeff floor's yours take the lead on this oh boy um like die needs to find a little bit of peace in his life there's no such like you're alive man and and if the only thing that you're taking away from her passing is joy um you're not being there number one for your wife and that's it i've been married for it's going to be uh 19 years in january passin's like the oldest young guy it's like it's crazy yeah um and i have i have had actually a a very similar relationship with it was with my father-in-law it was it was a you know My father-in-law essentially is the reason that I'm married.

And I'll be very quick with the story. It can get very long-winded. But Wright Thompson and I were going out trying to go drink for drink with the World Beer Drinking Champion for a story that he was going to write. And I met my wife that night, but I did not get her phone number. So in Wright's story, as I was editing it, because he was all fucked up that night. And I needed to be there to like see, okay, is all of this true? He talked about how I was talking with the woman and did not get her number.

And I wrote in parentheses, Sarah, if you're reading, J-Passen at Caseystar.com, she saw it, did not get back in touch with me. Her dad, however, did. And so that is why I am married these days because of that email. But he was a really complicated person. And he did some things that I did not like. And he passed a couple of years ago. And, you know, in some respects are like, is my life easier without the constant, like, knowledge that he could be doing something chaotic? Yes.

But the loss, it doesn't matter to you. You are a secondary character. You have enormous main character energy right here. This is about your wife and how she's trying to deal with a really tragic thing. And the fact that you're sitting there doing cartwheels in your head and celebrating it while your wife's still trying to process her feelings, your number one priority should be making sure that she's doing okay and putting aside every last feeling you have about this woman, whether she was good to you, bad to you, or otherwise, and be there and be supportive for your wife. Like step to the side, bro, you are not the guy here whose feelings matter. And the person whose feelings matter are the ones that you should be prioritizing. Wow.

Well said. We haven't had a lot of debut life advices, but hard to follow that up, Jeff. Yeah, usually we're trying to give our guy the benefit of the doubt, but I mean, it's your first run. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We'd like to keep the listeners usually. My question would be, what's the end game here for the guy, too? Like, you want to go out and, like, get beers with other people and just talk shit about her?

like what I don't understand like what what is what beyond her dying there there's there's more enjoyment for you to get out of it's like that's that's insane so I'm putting aside everything that Jeff said about like yeah this is kind of like more on your wife and how she feels and it is you like why are you trying to suck every last drop of I don't like fun out of this horror horrible thing like just just be happy that maybe you don't have to deal with her anymore that that's the win for you so I I yeah the main character energy here is wow yeah the other thing I'd say is I mean nobody's kind of as stuck with this woman as you were. No one has felt maybe a co-worker, but like you'd have to like, you know, go through

the company Rolodex or something to get in touch with those people. Like no one feels as stuck with this person as you do because it was your in-laws. No one else will have that relationship to be like, God, every freaking Christmas, Thanksgiving, like this is going to be terrible. This, like, no one really had, they just will choose not to be around her unless there's someone she worked with. And I doubt they'll, you know, you'll get in contact with those people. So anyone you ask is not going to feel as strongly about this as you do because no one else was really stuck with her. the way that, you know, you were or maybe your ex-husband or whatever. And yeah, so I just think when everyone's going around the table saying what they're thankful

for, you can go ahead and do that in your head. But, you know, that's about as much joy as you're going to be able to find out of this. And I got, I am with Jeff a little bit. I think there's got to be a little more to life than, you know, playing that back in your head all the time. You know, I'm not going to compare it to the relationship I have with these rabbits. We did lose one recently. You know, outwardly, I'm very, very.

very very there for my wife and you know she was cleaning him yesterday and she thought about the one we lost and there were tears and I hug grabbed tissues like that's what you got to be on the outside and on the inside you know who knows what's going on in there that's okay sounds like you need another rabbit man he did text us that he has to share the travel stories with the rabbits cross punch so we'll do that another episode yeah maybe Friday I hung out with rabbit yesterday on. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. So that was a real photo of a rabbit. I mean, I've been seeing so much AI stuff that's merged with reality. I don't know what's what, but that was a real thing. Yeah, you thought I would do that to you? No, I was at my brothers. His wife has a couple rabbits.

They threw one on my chest and it was just hanging out. I think its name was Pumpkin. And it was a little bunny. And I took the picture for you and Sir Rudy, just me chilling with a rabbit. because I don't even know when the next time that's going to happen is the years between the most recent rabbit hangout and then what happened yesterday has been a really long time. Jeff, that was incredible, but you're right. Like, what does this guy want to do? Does he want to start a club? Does he want to make shirts? Here's what I would say is that everything Jeff said was much more mature than anything. I would say he makes sense there. You have to think about the other person not yourself. There is likely a scenario year plus from now where there'll be some sort of thing and you're going to be in the corner tanking beer. with somebody else who hated her just as much as you did and you two are going to be having the best time ever so I think this thing will happen naturally even if it feels like right now you're coming off as a dick yeah play the long game yeah all right all right maybe uh one a little less intense oh bad hosting here we go I got thanks here yeah let me give you my stats quick six four nice solid could dunk with two hands at age

but now maybe you can get some foam on that backboard uh 40 years old 40 year old former d3 hooper in new england player comp late career and tony macdice super athletic forward always attacks the rim dude you might be able to dunk again i don't understand you guys that could just throw it down with you hate that right he hates that so much just don't like i think a lot of the inactivity happens because of a mental state of like oh i couldn't do it i mean you know what i i do think a lot of guys want to be old too they're like oh man you know just getting up there in age and they just like they like like like like that part of life and i'll fall into that shop to two every once in a while and i'm like actually no dude you're

like in your mid 30s like relax like i don't know why i want to be old just a guarantee it's it's it's gonna happen to everybody it's pretty i'm pretty sure of it uh my biggest thing with the old thing is just don't tell bad stories don't tell bad stories because i see much older people doing it a lot i had a thing the other day Farmer's Market was included, so that already adds a couple years to, like, the experience. You were telling a farmer's market story? No, but I'm going to tell one right now, but I didn't, I told myself. Old God, move.

Yeah, yeah, here we go. Let me pull up my suspenders. There's an awesome fruit guy here in Manhattan Beach. Everybody goes to them every single week, like hybrid fruits, a cherry apricot thing, mango. I mean, it's wild what they're doing over there, all right? but there's like small little windows so I had family in town I bought some fruit for them I was like you got to try all these different fruits whatever they were like fine there was still some leftover fruit gap two weeks goes by went to the farmer's market I'm like oh you know

what that fruit's probably bad let me get some new one but I hadn't thrown out the previous fruit yet but I known it had been two weeks bought the new stuff through it in the fridge for whatever reason I put it behind the old stuff I was cleaning out the fridge post family coming a visit because there always ends up being food in there that I don't fucking want, mayonnaise jars in particular. I chucked the new fruit. And I go into the old fruit, take a bite, and I'm like, you threw away the new stuff and you kept the old stuff.

So I went to the farmer's market yesterday. Again, it's not even a mile from my house. I bought the new fruit. And as I was checking out, my guy's like, what's up, man? And I'm like, don't tell him that fruit story. I'm going to work hard. He's not going to like it as much as you think he's going to like that. No one is.

No one even listening to this right now liked it as much as me telling you that I didn't tell that story. So, yeah, this guy can't dunk and I've yet, I've yet to tell the fruit vendor that story. We'll see. Two years. This reminds me of a couple years ago. Jeff's like, what the fuck? I thought we answered emails. Let's get back to the email.

Wait, are you an anti-Mayo guy real quick? I don't love that. Oh, man. Usually I can spot those guys. And it's like, and it's not anti. It's like hate it. Not in the house. like, do I check out?

Don't even accidentally give me anything with mayo that you didn't know. I'm actually not going to forgive you for not knowing. That's how much I hate mayo. There are a couple of guys that are just vehemently opposed. Look, lightly apply to a chicken salad. I'm in. You are. Sandwich.

Yeah, it's okay. But you start doing dumb shit like putting it on a steak and cheese, you know? Wow. That's just irresponsible mayo usage, though. Mayo is the most, Mayo is the most functional condiment I think there is, and it took me like 30 years to realize this,

and I'm really disappointed that I didn't hop on the train sooner. The best way to toast a bun for a hamburger is to lightly spread some mayo on it, put it down in the pan. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that gets back to the root of what the mayo is, so that would make a ton of sense,

Jeff and I would agree with you there, but you know, somebody throws together a chicken parm, and you're like, oh, shredded lettuce and mayo to go what asshole is throwing mayo on chicken harm that's a user error not a condiment error well though i don't know ryan seems like he's walking it back it sounds like you were upset there was mayo in your fridge yeah it sounds like it sounds like you don't like mayo in places mayo should be which i think everyone agrees with like i like but that wouldn't translate to how i can't believe they bought some mayo while they were here i mean that's you know it's fine that they

bought mayo i don't want it around yeah all right all right so you're not as reasonable as you just tried to come off, that's okay. Well, because I'm not making chicken salad at home anymore, although I do used to. A little shout out to the AA Trent and Thunder when I couldn't afford anything. Still waiting on the commission check. But I used to make this,

I found out it was a big, you know, back with the cooking background, I would make this vat of chicken salad, right? So it was a lemon grape, a couple bay leaves in there. Seems like you only use one at a time. Maybe a walnut, a little too expensive at the time. uh walnuts uh the legumes i was just marketed out of that entire thing so i would make

bats of this chicken chicken salad so i would use mayo back then now i'm not things have gotten better i'm not making bins of chicken salad to get through the week i got to say things are doing pretty good for me over here moving all that stuff i uh pretty moving i got back into the tuna salad game made a vat of that the other day yeah anything to add any food prep stuff Chip, you just want to get back to the email. No, I mean, I would, the truth, I could talk food all day. I would 100% be a chef if I were not a writer. I love cooking.

It is what I do like when I have any downtime I have. I'm guy with way too many food pictures on his phone, like, problematically. So I spent my summer trying, I spent summer perfecting a fried chicken sandwich. great thing that'd be able to smash dude yes and it's any hints you know anything for the rest of us that are out there you're submerging that chicken or are you making sure it just gets half and you're flipping responsibly shallow fry yeah oh no no no I used to do the shallow fry but then when my 18 year old started wanting to gain weight I realized that I had like a test subject where all of, like, my late-night munchy desires could be projected onto him,

and he was capable of eating all the things that I always wanted to back in the day. And so, yeah, you got to go full-fry. Nice. And the key to the crust and the combination of rice flour and cord starch. That's how you get, like, the crispy, shattery crust on it. Always brine it in pickle juice for 24 hours beforehand. And I, in the little slaw, I take a beet and I shred like either a red or a yellow beat. And it gives color and there's a lot of sweetness inside a beat.

So it complements if you like spread on some Nashville hot cayenne juice onto the chicken. You can get like spicy savor. It's good shit. I like that a lot. Love everything I just heard. Ryan's puzzled. No, it looked like Surrey wanted to get in there. No, I was just saying.

Yeah, your face was actually, the only time I've had beats recently was when we went out to dinner, Ryan. I think that was in, like, it was in Utah, maybe. I forget where it was. Was it Park City? I'm not a big beat guy, but in the right setting, I love a beat. But no, I was, I was going to say passing, I know earlier you said, like, you were kind of like anti-social media, and I do get that. But it sounds like there needs to be some sort of like burner Instagram cooking, like chef pass an account because like I would follow that. That's good holds of content.

Like, that's the good part. Hold on me. There's the chicken. Here it is. There we go. That was like a stock photo for like a, yeah, for like a chicken place. Good, goodness. And let me, you know what I'm just not going to do this. I could do it all day.

It's very boring. I'm sorry. Let's get to the email, right? I want to see the beat slot, but yeah, okay. All right. So this guy can't dunk anymore. Currently only able to rely on the mid-range jump shot and pick and pops, trying to avoid the Achilles and knee injuries with every move I make.

Let me get to the situation. A friend of mine, let's call him Larry, invited our friend group from college at his house for a hot Sunday afternoon. Cookout. Cook out. Put some clothes. There are about five of us, all with kids, we live within two hours of the Boston area, and somehow we all made it to work that day.

I was on my way back from my in-laws, Lakehouse in Maine. Must be nice. Wow. I decided to bring one of my two kids to the house on my way back to where I live, south of Boston. You've named drop my town.

Sounds great to hear it on the airways. Need them, dead them. Duxbury. Our friend group gets to the house all around the same time. two coolers left out, one for beer, one for water. No food or apps have yet to be seen. About an hour into the party, party host Larry came out to the outdoor table that all of us were sitting at and said, quote, we're going to order from this local takeout place and he sent us the menu.

I proceeded to text him my order thinking that the party host were going to treat us. He received my text and then told me in front of everybody that I would place the order and I would pay for it on my own and he could pick it up while he was getting his own. food. I was taken back by Larry's response. And I could see the eyes of the other guest light up as much as light up in a way that was as much shock as I was in. Another friend of mine, let's call him Dominic and I got together and ended up ordering pizzas and appetizers for everyone and their families to take from. Okay, so you and Dom stepped it up. Larry isn't my best friend of the group. He maybe ranks five out of five. That's last. Yeah. Let me tell you, I am not a fan of his wife.

She's made some political Instagram posts that basically tell you if you don't agree with her, you're racist, Nazi, and to unfollow her, even though I agree with 75% of what she posts. It just makes me uncomfortable why she's like that. I know that this style of posting was not the idea of Larry, but his wife, since Larry comes from a very culture background, child of immigrants, big family, that just doesn't usually happen. It's clear that she runs the show in that household, the breadwinner of the household while Larry is still trying to find his way. I'm not going to

say anything to him questioning his decision or hosting talents and haven't really talked about it with the other guys there, but I, am I too old fashioned for thinking that this is crazy? At least let your guests know that there will be no food beforehand and that we would be responsible for feeding our own kids. The host have two kids on their own as well. Let me know what you guys think is this normal. I don't think it's normal to invite a bunch of people over to your place and then say, hey, everybody, I'll pick up the orders that you all individually pay for. Are we coming over? Are we coming over?

Honestly, my biggest takeaway from that email is just some of the guys that sign up for hell. You know, some dame, little twinkling in her eye looking at you at a way. You've never, you know, maybe been just on a, just an absolute rut of like seven years. And you feel like, I'm paying. Ice cold. You know, just fucking cannot. The slump busters are turning me down.

I'm putting away. I have two college funds. I have two college friends and no kids. Right? I got to get in the game now. It's like, all right, but this woman is going to boss you around and make you look like an absolute dickhead

in front of all of your friends. I'm in. That was my takeaway. It doesn't answer any of this stuff. Jeff, you are our guest. Your first thoughts. I think there's a common theme. and this goes back to that episode where the college or was it a high school graduation part

the college graduation party where they had the tiny table and like the I'm not crazy I heard this right we've done a lot of days we need a little more info I think there was a table all right that's a good start wasn't there a college graduation party with a table and not enough food and there was like all kinds of disappointment. Oh, yes. This was like the Mexican food that was prepared. And then there was like they were asking for money for the bad food. I remember.

And by the way, the pictures were unbelievable. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Sad gray meat. I think it gets back to this. When you go to a party that sucks, don't focus on how much that party sucks. Focus on all the things that you can do to make sure your parties do not suck going

forward. You're going to go to bad parties. Like, it's an inevitable thing. And it knocks you off course, especially if you have kids. There's nothing worse than hungry kids who you don't know when you're going to feed or how you're going to feed or what you're going to feed. But poor Larry. Like, you've got to give Larry a little bit of a break here. Even though he's five of five on the list, if somebody is hosting a bad party, they probably don't even know it. And, And, you know, if you can have that conversation with him subtly afterward, or if you can invite him to a party and show, this is what a real party is supposed to look like. Teach him a moment.

Then, yeah, then you would be, then you would be making the world a better place knowing Larry's not going to have shitty parties. I think the kids are the thing that would have stopped me from making, like, jokes, like parents, I mean, like, you know, wives and whatever, like, okay. I'm actually okay in this scenario to be like, did you hear that stuff? that Kyle was saying at Larry's party, I mean, because everyone would get it. The kids, I think you don't want to like, you know, bash adults bashing each other in front of kids. I think that's certainly a thing that would have stopped me. But outside of that, I think I certainly

would have had a few light, jokey things to say, and it probably would have came up three or four times. Not directly, maybe to the other people, definitely wants to Larry. And that's okay if her, if his, you know, uncool wife is around to here. It is, like, very obvious. horrendous form to have somebody over at your house and not provide food and kids like what do you think's going to happen with the kids be like sorry larry's wife said no food is non-cater we only got a six-piece nugget sorry how many garlic knots are your kids going to eat before uh from my like we we have this this running thing and i've been at a fantasy baseball league um since i was 10 years old like we started it off with our dads doing stats by hand in 1991.

Like, that's how old this thing is. And this league is still around. And one year, we're at the draft and a buddy of ours is coming by. And we ask him to bring some food. And he shows up with one small domino's pizza. And so ever since then, it has been the running joke that Mike Lipson, I'm sorry for doing this to you, Lipson, Mike Lipson will not bring enough food to whatever you need. And I think that, that to me is like, if you're hosting a party over by food, like there's never anything wrong with.

You assume all the risk. Yes, you do. But it's a necessity because you don't want to be the person who ever runs out of food at a party. That is a memorable thing at a party. You will always remember who did not bring enough food, have enough food. You know, if you have, if you have have leftovers at the end, you'll eat the leftovers. Like, you'll figure it out. I'll send them home. People like to be pushed. They twist my arm. I'll take those chicken wings. I guess. I guess like, well, I'll help you.

If it's helping you out, I'll take them home. I grew up in a family, I grew up in a family where my mom would get so nervous that we wouldn't have enough food that she would literally tell us to eat last. Right. And we would have, and we would be freezing chicken cutlets for like six months. Like, you know, like, I, hell yeah, dude. But like that's, and so I, so I said, son of immigrants. to our email report.

Shout out to the Rudy's what's up. I, these people don't get it. I didn't understand that part of the email. I'm sorry. It's fair. These people don't get it. And I think this is just like an ongoing joke

with your friends. I don't know that I would shame Larry necessarily because it does sound like he doesn't need to be shamed right now based on the situation. Maybe a little, all right, maybe a little bit, Jeff. He needs to learn. He needs to hate this so much that he pushes back and be like,

I'm sorry. I'm running out to Price Chopper. And I'm just going to get a spread. Fine. I'll do the grill. If you don't think it's, if it's beneath you, I'm sorry. I can't ever let this happen again. I'm already that guy in the group chat. They've changed my contact picture to empty plate or something. Like, we have to, like, it has to be enough that he will push back against this lady who's, you know, kind of ruining all of his interactions with, with his friends when she's involved. Maybe you just like, this time you grab a beer this place, you just pause and be like, Venmo. Yeah, sure. I'll go pick. I'll go pick one up for you if you want one. Uh, it's such a bummer. It's such a bummer because I, I think you're right. If the emailer is, has this figured out the whole thing, like, you don't want to make a scene at it, but you do exactly what you did. You look around, you're like, are you fucking kidding me? This is going to happen. And you pulled the all time moves saving it because I cannot get past the part with kids. If you were younger dudes and you invited dudes over and you're like, hey, there's no food. There's even an age that I think under that threshold. It's like, what did you think I was doing? This is catered a fair. We're 26. Yeah, what are you out of your mind?

How dare you? And then show up. Like, I didn't put, you think I get an apron on? But then there's a number where north of that age and being like a real person, it's expected if you're taking the initiative to invite all these people and that you know kids are going to be there. Kids don't want to hear about budgets. Kids don't want to hear about like any of this stuff.

The kid thing is crazy because you could just get like a packet of pizza rolls or. you know bagel bites and like the kids are gonna be fine like you don't even have to go above and beyond it's like the bare minimum for kids all right we got one last one here uh hey boys

five seven what did you say it like that I don't know no I just say it like that 5 7 but play like that because I read the next part a longer old boykins I mean, we never had that before.

So I'm not laughing at 5.7. I just am like, all right. Here's a dilemma. No, I saw Earl Boykin, so I knew. Right. As like a borderline short guy, I know the look from tall guys when you're, when he got a little height shame going on. I don't. There was no height shame.

I saw Earl Boykins, I laughed. All right, all right, all right. I laughed at 5'7. If we're taking accountability here. I laughed at his pronunciation, his delivery of 5'7. If you know, Ryan, you know delivery of everything here. And he hammed that up a little bit.

Anyway. All right, here we go. I work in a very specialized profession. The profession is media. And the issue is, is there are certain sports that seem to be prioritized on certain shows. If you go on this show and yell about the NBA,

you'll be a guest. If you go on this show and yell about the NFL, you'll be a guest. But if you work on baseball, you seem to be stuck. How can I get more run on first take? Jeff P? That's fucked up.

I'm 5'9, asshole. I think this one's, fake, too. I think this one's fake. Yeah. Because the height is wrong. You know what the most wrong part of that is that I have like a burning desire to be on a hot take show?

I'm just not good at those. I don't think baseball is good for those shows. I would actually end with the result part of baseball evaluation I think is even worse than NFL or NBA. So all we have, as the audience is you took this pitcher out, then the team

scored runs against the next pitcher. And it's like, that's the dumbest thing. And then that's all the show can be the next day. Football, you can get mad at interceptions, basketball, there's all sorts of stuff. Rarely can get mad. Baseball does not allow itself. Like, guess

what happened with Schwerver and Harper? They just haven't hit the ball well for two games. I, you know, as much as But it's interesting seeing the sports media landscape and just how NFL dominated it really is. And here's the thing. Like if things had gone differently 20 years ago and I had gotten a different job instead of like the national baseball writer job at the Kansas City Star, I might be covering the NFL right now. And it might be a completely different thing.

But I think there are avenues around. That's what I like about the media landscape. now you will talk baseball with me all sorts of different people will talk baseball with me i'll go on pardon my take and there are shows on esPN that want to talk baseball like there's enough room even if baseball is not on like the most prevalent shows there's enough room still and enough ability for people to find it that it doesn't matter what sport you have right now like if it's interesting people can watch it and you can put it out there so uh even though it took took me way too long to get that joke.

And I'm sitting here to have like, oh, God, I'm so dim. I enjoy going on and sparring with Stephen A when he wants to talk baseball. And if that is more infrequently than I wish it were, that's okay. Take advantage of it. And use that opportunity when it's there to spread the gospel. 2-4-6-8. who do we appreciate Jeff Jeff

Jeff Passing everybody life advice baseball insight full circle we covered it all 90s we came out yeah we came out with like 104 on the outside

on that first one and you handle it like a champ you mean a ton to us thanks for coming on the show and we'll have you on again I imagine thank you for thank you for letting me do this

like I'm at the point in my life in my career now where I've been doing this for a long time and what matters to me is getting to do fun things with people that I really like and you guys allowing me into this this vaunted circle here

and just on the show all the time it means a lot so sincerely thank you for that and for all you guys do in getting me through very long car rides thanks man that was Awesome. Jeff Passon, everybody. Thanks to Jeff, thanks to Kyle, thanks to Steve, thanks to Jonathan Frius. We want to remind everybody that we have a read because today's life advice was presented by State Farm.

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