The Ryen Russillo Podcast - The Improbability of UConn Hoops, Theo Epstein on Changing Baseball. Plus Ryen’s Solo Fantasy Baseball Draft.

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Russillo shares his thoughts on the absurdity of UConn's five men's national championship wins since 1999 (0:43), before talking with MLB consultant for on-field matters Theo Epstein about undoing some of the changes that analytics brought to baseball over the past 20 years, listening to the fans, boosting the profile of MLB star players, leaving the Red Sox after winning two World Series titles, ways to rebuild a baseball team, what is next for Theo, and more (11:20). Then Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:07:27), before he live-pods during his hour-plus fantasy baseball draft (1:32:22). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Theo Epstein Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's podcast is loaded yukon a fifth national championship for the men's team how improbable this is theo epstein on fixing baseball, on leaving the Red Sox, on learning about yourself as a young executive with a great resume. And what's next? Life advice. And as our bonus baseball episode, I draft my fantasy team by myself for an hour and a half. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats.

What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine, that's no. A bottle of wine, yeah. And a snow day, again, no. But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping, total yes.

Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. Total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. The UConn men have five national championships now, and that's fucking crazy.

They beat San Diego State last night. Not super locked into college basketball during the regular season anymore like I used to be, but watching the tournament, watching UConn play, you're like, man, they've got like seven or eight guys that are all really good. Watching anybody try to go at Sanogo was hysterical. It's like trying to post up a brick wall. San Diego State's an older team. They're tough.

The comeback during the Final Four was incredible, but the limitation they have as far as shot creators, it just kind of played out. They were lucky to only be down 12 at the half, I thought, where UConn kind of got a little weird at the end of it. It felt a little bit like the women's national final where you're like, okay, this is a really good story out of Iowa, but LSU is clearly the better basketball team. And that's what it felt like last night. So they feel like they were the right team to win this whole thing. And now they have five championships back in stores connecticut i've shared this

history before i'll do it again because i think i have some pretty good perspective on this my first sports memories ever walking up the tunnel at fenway park and seeing that huge green monster out there and going what is this sensory overload everywhere falling in love with fenway falling in love with yaz falling in love with peanut vendors and just all of it you know just being a little kid going to a baseball game with your dad. Hard to be more American than that, right? So the other one was the Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers are going for 70.

Sports Illustrated cover the 82-83 team that won an NBA title. That team was incredible. One of the all-time greatest teams in NBA history. It's just they didn't have back-to-back titles, so they get forgotten. And it was just cooler. Dr. J was cooler than anything the Celtics were offering at the time as a little kid. It drove my father fucking crazy, but that's where it all kind of started.

Moses, Mo Cheeks, Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones. I loved that team. And then the other thing is the Big East, going to UConn games. My father played a little college basketball, so he just was still always super into basketball. I was going to grow up being into basketball because he was, but I also loved it too. But you have to understand,

we went to those UConn games to watch the other teams. And for me, usually root against UConn. It's where I fell in love with St. John's. We had ties to Providence. My father's side of the family

is all from Providence. My uncle was involved in private basketball. My family on my dad's side, they were really close to the Mullaney's. So there was just all of these Providence ties that we had where if PC came in, we were rooting for Providence. When St. John's came in, rooted for St. John's. Georgetown was the coolest thing. It was just unlike anything else. If you were a little kid, you're like, this is awesome.

But again, I like St. John's, so it wasn't like I was going to root for Syracuse or Georgetown. I remember one year Georgetown showed up in sailor suits in the layup line. You're like, these dudes. I think it was a cursive script where it said G-Town on the little sailor flap in the back. They just had a style and a vibe about them that was different than anything else. I remember back then it was called the Civic Center and it was a joke.

People made fun of it. People can get nostalgic about the mall and where the Whalers played. You'd walk around and be chucks. I think they had a Margaritaville in there. I remember a lot of nights if there was this guy that my dad was friends with where we'd go to UConn games, that would always like want to go into the bar after. And I'd fucking sit in the lobby for like an hour and a half just waiting, which again, doesn't sound super safe when you're like eight or nine years old, but that's what was happening.

My father didn't drink, but it was like, okay. And now looking back on it, I'm like, God, that sucked. Why would you do that? And then I would just walk into the bar being like, hey, bro, I'm fucking exhausted. I'm like nine. Can we sucked. Why would you do that? And then I would just walk into the bar being like, hey, bro, I'm fucking exhausted. I'm like nine. Can we go home? I got school tomorrow. So, you know, there were all these memories and how many times I would spend, all these hours I would spend inside that building.

And then funny enough, when I moved to Hartford, when I was at ESPN, I moved into the building that was connected to it. My father's like, it's pretty funny. All the years we went to those games, the Civic Center, then it was the XL Center. And it wasn't the mall anymore. And it's just a town that's a tough sell. Hartford's a tough sell for anybody that's spending their time there. And you would just watch them lose. That was the point is you would never show up thinking it was

cool. Now, yes, if you're from Connecticut, if you're from the area you went to, you have some ties to UConn, you'd be rooting for that team, but it wasn't fun. Dom Perno was the head coach the four years that I was paying attention to at the beginning. And the whole point was like, they're not any good. They won 19 games in the Big East total in the last four years he was there. So the point of it all was

that you would go to like watch UConn lose and then hope the other team had awesome players. And really back then in the Big East, that other team always had awesome players. And really, back then in the Big East, that other team always had awesome players. It was Earl Kelly was the guy for UConn. He was the one guy that was talented enough to hang with some of the other better players coming from Q's.

Villanova was always stacked too. The attraction was who was coming in to beat UConn. So if you were to ever sit there going, hey, this program will become one of the elite programs in the sport, it wouldn't, I mean, forget getting drug tested or laughed at or all this stuff. It would be so fucking dumb. A guy would be like, don't tweet that. Again, we didn't have that option back then because it was an impossibility.

Then Jim Calhoun shows up in 87 and they win the NIT immediately he wins four biggies titles when they won the biggies title in 1990 it was like wait are they good and then in 1990 they lose in the elite eight I was at the Buckland Mall watching that game and I'm just kind of thinking like wait UConn's good and you felt like you wanted to root for him. But again, I was a St. John's fan, so I wasn't going to be like a fraud about it. But it was just this, and novelty is not fair because it's the lead eight. They win one of the best conference tournaments in college basketball. And you're like, well, how is this happening? And it's because of Calhoun. But even as great as Calhoun was, he didn't get his first title until 1999. That was his 13th season at Storrs.

But that's where this whole thing started. And that's why when you look up and see UCLA with their 11 titles, 10 of them between 64 and 75, Kentucky with their eight titles, only one since UConn's run. North Carolina's got a couple more recent ones. They have six. But then UConn, Duke Duke and Indiana all have five. Yukon has more than fucking Kansas.

Like what? Kansas. And if you've been to stores, you don't even notice it. The campus is nice. I don't want people to get defensive about this, but if you're driving down the highway, you don't even notice the campus.

You notice the sign in the highway, which will have to be updated now between the men's and women's total titles. There's also a huge billboard for this weird strip club no one ever went to. And if you're recruiting somebody to stores, you have the history, which is clearly how this works. Danny Hurley looks like he's absolutely the right guy. But it's like, all right, it's a little quiet. We're here in stores. And then if you don't want to be in stores for the night as a kid,

and again, don't forget that element of this. It's, yeah, but if we don't want to be in stores, we can go to Hartford. The natural recruiting base, which I pointed out last night, you know, there's, sure, the proximity to New York and New Jersey and that kind of stuff. Sure. And like,

look, if it's about proximity, then St. John should be a better basketball team. Um, but it's still a lot of like, Hey, this guy's at this prep school and they keep getting all of these dudes

to show up there. Uh, because it's not Duke. It's not UCLA. It's not Kentucky. It's not all of these other things. You could argue if you've been to Bloomington, which feels like it's in the middle of nowhere, I've been there. But Indiana is basketball. Indiana is basketball way more than anybody would think so with Connecticut. And you also have other places that are just better destinations scattered around the entire state. And they keep getting it done. I was trying to think of some kind of analogy for this. I mean, hell, UConn left the Big East for seven years and they were in the AAC and then they

come back and they win this year's title. If you were to say, okay, what's happening now somewhere else in another program where you go, okay, this is the equivalent of this. So like the first thought was what if Vandy won five national championships in football? I can't even say it out loud without laughing. Now, the other thing too is that Vandy's at least in Nashville. So you've got that all over stores. And even though that's never going to happen because there's too many other programs in the SEC that are taking football more seriously than Vandy does and the admissions part of it and all those other things, but at least from a pure recruiting standpoint of being a destination and also having more football players in the South, you could make an argument that it would actually maybe make more sense than UConn winning five titles.

Mississippi was another one. What if Mississippi State won five national championships in football? Starkville is not my number one SEC destination, but it's still a state in Mississippi where the most recent thing I looked at, they have 63 NFL players, 63 NFL players. So if you did a straight correlation of how many guys who were born in Connecticut or from Connecticut, high school in Connecticut, and if you include the prep schools a little bit more, but it's not like Connecticut's some NBA hotbed, even though it's proximity to New York City, you should be able to get them a few guys

or New York State as well. I was kind of thinking about this. Maybe this would be the best one. What if Oregon State won five national championships? I've been to Corvallis. If you live in a Corvallis, you kind of get what I'm saying, right? But even Corvallis is kind of more of a destination on your way to maybe something else, driving around Oregon on your way to Portland, then it would be for you to somehow find yourself in Storrs, Connecticut. And that's kind of the whole point of this run, is it's one thing to win all these titles. And when you look at this program, if you're an AD somewhere else that's never had any success

in a couple of the sports that really matter, You could look at UConn and say, hey, that's the model. But if you were to ever say that to anybody sitting there through those games in the early to mid 80s and going, I could see this becoming one of the main powerhouses in college basketball, you'd get laughed at then the same way you get laughed at today as trying to use UConn as a model. you'd get laughed at then the same way you get laughed at today is trying to use UConn as a model. With baseball starting, this is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

A lot of admiration for his success. And, you know, look, man, it's Theo Epstein. Now with Major League Baseball as a consultant for all on-field matters. You started this gig about two years ago. You fixed the Red Sox. You fixed the Cubs. Is the task now to fix baseball? No, I'm lucky to have a seat at the table. I'm just glad the industry is having these discussions about how to put the best version of baseball out there. Honestly, it was the last 10, 20 years, the game has been changing really fast, but none of it's been intentional. It's all been kind of side effects of teams and you know dms people like me and players trying to optimize performance

in one way or another and the result has been great in terms of winning and but it has not been good for the entertainment value of the game or aesthetically so just the fact that we're having these discussions talking to fans talking to players about what is the best version of baseball and then going through a real thorough process including a lot of experimentation about how to get there um that's really important for the industry so it's not it's not about saving the game it's it's about a lot of people coming together throughout the industry to try to you know course correct where we've gotten over the last 10, 20 years and then do everything we can to improve the game for the fans. And this isn't a new thought, but since we're hanging out, I'm just going to ask because I just think the irony, guilt would be the wrong word, but the irony of so many of you early on 20 plus years ago looking at baseball going, I can't believe this is the way they do it. They're doing it wrong and you were right, but yet it feels like you fixed the game,

but maybe hurt the product. Yeah. I mean, the only thing to say is, like guilty as charged when that comes up, but with this major caveat, which was, that wasn't my job, right? You know how it is When you're with a team, especially when you're a GM, you're responsible to the owners and you're responsible to the players and to the fans to do everything you can to try to eke out, you know, one more playoff appearance so you have a chance to win one more World Series. That one playoff appearance might come down to one more win. That one win might come down to one more win that one one win might come down to

preventing one more run that run prevented might come down to positioning one fielder you know one foot farther up the middle than he was otherwise and so like one research project that leads to a better algorithm for how to program your defense and moves that guy one foot leads to the win leads to the or prevents the run leads to the win leads to the playoff appearance gives you a shot at the world series and maybe you're hanging a banner so like that's what you have to be loyal to and so you know a lot of the a lot of the optimizations you know helped our teams win and help teams win across the industry um but yeah you're right you know they were not done with the fan in mind or the entertainment value of the product in mind. And 20 years ago, if someone were sitting down to design the future of baseball, they never would have said, hey, let's come up with a set of strategies and a set of rules that result in the league hitting 243. hitting 243 like that's that's not baseball baseball is better when the league hits you know 267 not 243 no one would have said let's design a set of rules so that the average pitcher in the

big league strikes out more hitters than bob gibson in his prime you know that's not baseball the ball's supposed to be in play at least somewhat no one would have said let's design a set of rules and strategies so the ball's in play once every four minutes or more you know so your 12 year old son or daughter has to sit around wait four minutes to see one ball in play no one would have said you know let's let's make sure doubles triples and stolen bases plummet to generational lows you know because those aren't exciting plays like no one would have designed it that way but that's how it emerged based on teams just trying to win one more game. So that's why I was really looking forward to when I was thinking about what I wanted to do after the Cubs. That was my top priority. It was somehow, you know, get a seat at the table where

we could talk about the big picture of the industry. Cause I always thought there was a way to, you know, listen to fans, come up with a consensus about what is the best version of baseball. And then you could reverse engineer your way there using the rules, using the equipment. But you have to have that conversation. The NBA did it. That's why they came up with the shot clock in 1954. It's why they got rid of hand checking. Everything was a reaction. They started to understand what sells, what do fans really like? Well, it's transition game, free-flowing offense, lots of possessions up and down. So they legislated their way towards that. And they, of course, corrected along the way. The NFL did it. There was almost a direct correlation between

passing yards and fan interest. And when they go through eras when it was hard to throw for a lot of yards, their ratings dipped dipped and then they start protecting star quarterbacks and eliminate you know bump and run you know down the field and make life a lot easier for qbs and wide receivers passing yards we go back up attendance and ratings that go back up so you know drafting off what those other sports have done we were just overdue to do that yeah you know a lot of us played a hand in getting us there, but I just think it's important. It's great for the industry that we're kind of coming out of that. Overdue is a really good word because, you know, look, baseball is my first love. It was my first job. And when I think about like the history of it, right. I mean,

the players union and ownership. And when you go back to like the Marvin Miller stuff, when I first started reading about it, like it was so combative. But in a way, I admired Miller's single-mindedness of whatever they offer. If you were ownership in baseball and say, we want to give everybody raises, the players union would be like, well, why is it going to be on Thursday instead of Friday? That would be the first thing. It'd be like, okay, thanks for the raise, but now we're pushing back. So you have the player element of this and that battle that's gone on forever. And then you have ownership that's looking at TV money. And yet you're going, okay, how hard is it?

How hard is it to tell baseball they needed to make these changes? Because it's not a sport that likes to change. Yeah, I think that's the biggest limiter has been the fact that it's harder for baseball to change. And that's really a result of the fact that baseball holds this special place in our culture and society, right? So we just went through the other sports and have been able to make changes, been proactive. Fans have gotten used to it.

They may sort of resist every now and then with a certain rule that doesn't resonate with them. But by and large, they just accept it and keep going keep going and in baseball whenever there's a change to the status quo it can be really personally offensive to our fans it's something about the fact that we associate baseball and this is all what part of what makes the game so special but we associate it with watching with our parents watching with with our grandparents, you know, our older brother or sister teaching us how to play. You know, we're watching, by and large, the same exact game with the same dimensions and geometry that have been passed down through generations and generations. And it's important to us.

You know, I think when I was growing up, it was, you know, it was what you discuss at the kitchen table. It was like politics and baseball, you know when i was growing up it was you know it was what you discuss at the kitchen table was like politics and baseball you know and and i think it just holds a special place in a lot of families so we're held to a bit of a higher standard that shows up in some other issues too like you know the steroid issue is treated a lot different in other sports than it was in baseball so it's a bit of a different standard but that's's a great thing. But it means that we're slower to change. But when I only came on board a little over two years ago, there were a lot of owners talking about the need for change, articulating it in different ways. There were a lot of players talking about how the game's gotten away from us. They're the ones who are living through it.

you know even you know they're the ones you think who are living through it you think players like sitting around for four hours and the ball's hardly in play and um you know they knew it was time for some change it was just a matter of i think being um being methodical about it and starting to starting to bring the conversation out in the open and listening you know listening is a huge part of this i mean people ask well, what was the process to change the rules? And as far as I can tell from MLB's perspective, the entire thing started as a fan outreach listening exercise. Like, hey, you tell us, what do you like most about was who our favorite player was how long we played the game but this is not always a lot of consensus when you ask fans about anything but there was a lot of consensus on this like you'd hear over and over again fans love stolen bases doubles triples great defensive plays they want to see action athleticism multiple players in motion uh on the field and on the base pass. Fans' least favorite events were things like pitching changes, mound visits, players standing around,

periods of inaction and inactivity. So that gives you a roadmap, you know, and that's why pace of play became really important in increasing the amount of action and then taking steps to make sure that we put the players in the middle of the action and gave them opportunities for their athleticism to be on display a lot more frequently. So I touched on the TV money here because I always think it's interesting when you look at baseball, the product, okay? Because if I look at NBA finals ratings and how they've declined from whether it's Magic Bird, Jordan, and then certain pockets, and I started looking at them, that overall number is still really low in comparison. The recent overall numbers, and then if you look at the shares, you're like, man, this is a declining product. But it's like, is it a declining product, or does it just need to be the best live product in comparison to all the other live products?

Or does it just need to be the best live product in comparison to all the other live products? So the TV money takes off everywhere, just like any college conference commissioner telling us, like, hey, look at all this revenue. I think Bud Seely was very guilty of this, of being like, well, who cares? Look at all the TV. He wouldn't say who cares, but he would promote the positive things. Look at all the TV money. Look at all the TV money. Where I literally think anyone could be a commissioner of any of these sports properties

because the way TV rights just ballooned that anybody was going to get better tv money so you know back to the regional part of it when baseball is the number one prime time product in 20 of the 30 baseball markets like i can't i you know baseball could be sitting there being like i keep hearing how we have to change and we're still the best part it creates a a really high floor. What I think we've been talking about in baseball the last 10-20 years is the floor. It's early. No one's going to spike

the football to change sports with the analogy. Until we make sure that we get these rule changes right and continue to make adjustments to bring out the best version of baseball but i think look if we put a more entertaining product out there and we find ways to deliver more action more athleticism for fans to engage them in more and in better ways going forward make it easier for them to watch games and engage

with players and actually the sky's the limit because what you've been witnessing is I think the floor and you said it we're living in an age and we have been in which live content is king and we're incredibly well positioned because we have twice as much of it as anybody. And we have a product that's only going to get better. We've got the best athletes ever to play the game uh currently playing the game and we have not done a great job of building huge platforms for our stars and that's something that's that's a real focus for us to you know create you know the lebron and steph curry's of of mlb build build huge platforms for them so they can lift everybody

up in the industry up with them. So yeah, it's a really exciting time to be in baseball because it's a great and high floor, but the ceiling is way up there. Are you surprised that Tani isn't a bigger deal? Well, he's a pretty huge deal. He's kind of godlike to those of us in the game. And then playing what many people term the meaningless exhibition exhibition which has proven to be anything but he had 65 million people tuning in you know to watch him play in the wbc alone so i'd say he's a huge deal um but yeah with the potential to to be even bigger and he's one of those rare guys who, you know, as,

as impressive as he is on the field, he's that impressive off the field. Like all he cares about is the right things like the sanctity of the game, playing the right way, winning, like delivering for his fans, making sure that, you know,

he promotes the game, doesn't do anything to hinder. He's, he's like pure baseball. This is the ultimate like baseball rat who happens to be blessed with you know ability we haven't seen in a century um and uh he's great for he's great for sport he's great for baseball he's great for the internationalization of baseball and yeah I think that's that's a great that's a great assignment right can we can we build a more entertaining game he get even more eyeballs on him

and help enhance star platforms so this guy can be one of the most popular athletes in the world as he deserves to be? Because that speaks to whether it's the World Baseball Classic numbers. When you throw it on, you may not even be planning your night around it, but you throw it on, you're like, holy shit. All right? So you've got those numbers. You've got the regional stuff we've already talked about,

but then I can look back to my first year at ESPN was 2006. I was there until 2019. Whether it was Scott and I in the beginning or me solo later on, the way we were going about mapping out our show during baseball season, it's like, okay, we've got Buster and Kirchner on each week, you know, two guests. And then you'd look at the numbers and you'd go, okay okay maybe we're going to just have one baseball insider on once a week and then by the time it was like 2015 it's the MLB trade deadline and we're like is there an open segment where we're talking about the Padres potentially looking to add depth to the bullpen so then it felt like and this may have been wrong Theo like maybe because the NBA drama is what it is and it's this huge soap opera that it plays well on talk radio and tv shows and all over social media that it's like, maybe baseball is better position than we realized, but we're following or we're falling for the idea of the perception wise, because it's not part of this daily conversation that it's,

it's somehow losing ground when maybe it wasn't. And I don't know the answer. I'm just kind of theorized. Yeah. Nothing makes me more sad than when i happen to flip on and i don't watch regularly but the you know the talking head morning shows or whatever like the let's fake an argument shows or or you know whatever it may be and like baseball doesn't even exist on those shows right now which is it's ridiculous it's the national pastime i think we're

a better country when when baseball is part of the national discourse and really prominent in it um but like we have to take responsibility for that too i think a lot of it comes comes down to stars like the nba has done a great job of of um you're creating these huge platforms you you tune in to an nba game like you know like if it's lakers warriors steph's gonna have the ball in a big spot lebron going to have the ball in a big spot. LeBron's going to have the ball in a big spot. You can count on that. You see it every night. Baseball, the way it's currently played, works a little bit differently than that, although some things we can do even within the course of the game

to emphasize our stars a little bit more. But that's why I think it's just so important that you talked earlier about the history of the somewhat toxic relationship at times between clubs and players. We need to get over that because it's in everyone's best interest for us to work together to promote our best asset. And that's our players and especially our star players. So, yeah, I think it's definitely an area of focus. And again, we're at the floor right now and our ceiling is huge. We play every night, not every three nights. And therefore, we should be the ones, our star

players should be the ones being talked about every morning on the talking head shows because something new happens every single night. Sometimes they're talking about, how many times can you talk about, is Dak Prescott a top 10 quarterback in the NFL like Monday Wednesday and Friday nothing has changed in in in you know the last three times you've talked about and we talk about well talk about baseball because our star players are performing night in night out things are constantly changing they're not wearing helmets they're very accessible to our fans um so look I think we have the raw ingredients to to make it happen we just have to continue to be thoughtful about it and keep it a focus okay uh i want to

share this with you you might know about one and we actually talked about the first one um but you've taught me two lessons and i use these lessons when i'm maybe comparing things or trying to explain something. The first one is the infamous bullpen buy committee. So you step in and you're running the team. And then I interviewed you during the 2003 season on our little AM station there. You were nice enough to come on. And the bullpen buy committee, when you put together all those arms, it was a fucking disaster for like six weeks. It couldn't have gone worse, which I'm sure you don't need to be reminded of. And I had you. I had flashbacks to PTSD.

Because the plan was, why would you do this? Why would we have our high leverage guy in the ninth and not bring him in a high leverage situation in the seventh? In theory, it actually makes a lot of sense. And by the way, I think that's actually what baseball ended up doing anyway. We're kind of there now, but. Right, right, right. But you said something that i thought was really smart and that was like it was like what did you learn from that and you were like i wish i just shut up about it i wish i had just done it not titled it and just done it and if it bombed because the lesson in it was if you're going to fail differently but you're going to announce to everybody that

you're going to do something different and you fail, it's way worse than just failing normally like everyone else. And I, I go ahead. I need to remind myself of that more. I should put that like, uh, you know, above my bed. So I see it first thing in the morning, but no, it's, it's very true. And we were, you know, we made a pact, like when I became GM and I had this group of great guys around me and we were all working our tails off and sacrificing like we made a pact you know hey we knew if we had you know a bad couple seasons that they were going to move on quickly and i you know i'd never get a chance they'd never get another chance in baseball and if things if things went well you know it could open the doors for for all of us and a whole new generation of younger people in the game and we sort of made a pact that we're not just going to do things to be safe.

Let's really do things the way we think they should be done. And we'd all been passionate and studying the game our whole lives. So we sort of made a pact where like, let's not be afraid to look stupid. Even if we're putting ourselves out there let's um let's hold ourselves to it have some courage and do what we think is right whether it's like you know trading nomar or embracing bullpen by committee when that was under the circumstances maybe a viable strategy but man that's that lesson you mentioned sure trumps don't be afraid to look stupid is like you don't you don't have to say everything You don't have to say it out loud all the time. And like, there's, there's, there's a lot of benefit to using discretion,

letting things play out, um, not manipulating your narrative, but choosing your narrative wisely to give yourself optionality as you navigate your way through the course of the season, especially in a market like Boston where where every syllable could be a controversy. Okay. The other lesson, and this one is more serious, and I don't know how you're going to feel about this, but you come with Larry Lucchino from San Diego at the end of 2001. They basically put Mike Port in place as GM, and you're this star, right? Gammons is writing about you every GM, and you're this star. Gammons is writing about you every week, and we're hearing about you, and we're like, who is this guy? What's his deal? Why does everybody love him so much?

And then after the 2002 season, they make the offer to Billy Bean. Doesn't work out. He stays in Oakland, and then you become the guy. And because that was nontraditional, because you were younger, because of your background, it was like, okay, how's this going to work? Well, it couldn't have gone better. You know, 03, you're that close. 04, you break the curse, the whole deal. You're from down the street. I mean, it's storybook stuff. But I felt like the other lesson in that was that when you're younger and you definitely owe the people that brought you in, you owe them a lot of gratitude for the success that you've had that there then becomes kind of this breaking point where you're like, hey, I appreciate everything, but I'm fucking awesome at this. think I, I don't know if it was a power thing or what, but how do you look back on kind of like a younger version of yourself doing something that I still think was kind of bold and going like, thanks for everything, but it doesn't mean you're in charge of like the rest of my life.

Yeah. Well, actually you're the first, um, lesson you talked about applies here too, because the biggest issue with that whole conflict was that it became really public. issue with that whole conflict was that it became really public right so i look at um uh leaving on october 31st 2005 as sort of like a good thing that i did my career but also one of the biggest mistakes and the biggest mistake wasn't that i sort of stood up for myself and tried to like redefine some of the values of the organization and the way some of the relationships functioned internally but it's that i i i the way i choose to chose to do it by by not signing a contract and then you know very publicly walking out of fenway park gorilla suit no less because it was halloween and we were drunk and it was funny but whatever um it became that that that created this whole public soap opera about it when

I could have accomplished the same thing. If I was a little bit wiser at the time, I could have accomplished the exact same thing just by signing the contract. It wasn't about the money or the contract. It was about what was happening. I should have just signed it and then gone to John Henry and said, hey, we need to work on some things under the hood here that aren't right i didn't need to make it a public uh issue the way i did and that really

you know that that created a big uh wake um that that that move and then and then the part about mentors and disciples and sort of growing up in the game and sort of like the need in some places for blind loyalty and what that creates. You're right. I mean, that happens. I can't generalize. Every situation is different, but look, it's, you know, it's sort of a coming of age issue in ways too, like fathers and sons, like, you know, read Oedipus I mean like it's it's complicated stuff and um it takes a lot of honest communication it takes in order to do it well and to sort of make sure everyone's treated well and you avoid conflict you have to be really transparent really open really self-aware really empatheticetic, really, you know, comfortable saying uncomfortable things, sort of working together towards the resolution. And like, that ain't happening when there are big

egos involved and you're in the middle of a baseball season in Boston. Like, I think people forget sometimes now, like, just how intense it was back then before we had won and sort of just the daily narratives and soap operas and living in the shadow of the yankees and what we were trying to become it was just so intense that like we didn't have time to be self-aware we didn't and i certainly wasn't in a position to i wouldn't have been self-aware if i was you know an adjunct professor or ta or something at that age i just didn't have it in me didn't have the emotional intelligence but certainly, the president and the GM of the Red Sox, with all that going on, we weren't taking time to really be mature about

some of these underlying dynamics. It caught up to us. There are so many things I wish I could have done differently, but I also learned a lot from it. I'm also proud of some aspects of the way I handle that situation too. You're so close to it you grow up with it anyone that's grown up you know red stocks fan it certainly wasn't like i was i was down the street like you were um i always wondered if the cubs thing i'm sure you get asked this i'm not going to ask which one you like more or what you appreciate more because you're just going to be you're going to get killed no matter what the answer is and maybe there isn't one but that you can go to chicago

and do it and it's it's maybe not the daily thing because it's not where you're from where i just imagine with boston there were a lot of great days and there were a lot of days where it was tough to be a normal person and i don't know if that was a little bit my guess would be it was a little easier for you in chic. And it doesn't speak to the passion. It's just that your attachment to one area versus the other. It's funny. It was easier in Chicago. You have that right for sure. I've always attributed it to being older and wiser and having a little bit more experience and being at a different part in my life so you know Boston in Boston yes it was way more personal because I was from there and you know if I'd had a rough day at the office and wanted to like check in with my parents just to get away from it

all they'd answer the phone and immediately ask what the hell happened in the seventh inning with you know guys on first and third last night and why did you bring this reliever in? And so that didn't make it any easier. When you're part of something and in some ways responsible for something that helps shape and in some cases define the happiness of a lot of people around you that you care about, it can be overwhelming. And that's a pretty big burden to carry you know especially at that age 28 going on 18 which is probably what i was but um so yeah it was you know i don't even remember major things that happened from back then like oh four feels like a blur like when highlights come on i'll

always sit or you know the games come on or something i'll sit and watch oh yeah that's right i don't even watch oh yeah that's right i don't even remember that because that whole ride almost in some aspects from getting the job through in the world series felt like a great night out with your buddies and i was surrounded by my good friends who worked there too where you know just ups and downs and crazy twists and turns and can't believe this happened can't believe that happened you don't remember everything you just end up in a great place and you get to look back at it you know with for the rest of your life but but i wasn't like handling it in a really mature way or processing it in real time and then chicago you fast forward by the time i got there

um you know i was married i had uh one son, had a second kid in Chicago, had the benefit of going through the whole Boston experience, late 30s, going into my 40s. And I had everything in a little bit better perspective. I didn't freak out at little mistakes or little, you know, potholes along the way and then by the time we got good and you're in the poignant dramatic tense moments i literally had you know 16 world series i got to have my eight-year-old son sitting next to me and i want i remember every pitch you know of game seven of that world series because i watched the whole thing through my son's eyes and i had this great appreciation for how lucky we are to be here how awesome is this My son's getting to experience this, what it meant for the city, like the Boston experience and seeing how much it resonated in such an intimate way with so many people that enhanced my appreciation for in real time what we went through in Chicago. So I'm not sure, obviously being from boston it meant more but man you get to

chicago and it meant a lot to those people i felt a part of that community pretty quickly and that there were more expectations on me in chicago because i was coming in with sort of you know this mandate is for change and being you know here's the guy who's going to fix it and you know they they put me uh my first week on the job in Chicago, the cover of the sun times was they superimposed me walking on water across Lake Michigan. And then like a year later, cause we lost a hundred games and got a high draft pick as a result, they had me with just my head above water in Lake Michigan. It was like a big deal there too, but I was just in a better place to really understand it and keep it in perspective and more self-aware too.

That's the thing about baseball. When you take over and you don't have talent, this is not, hey, let's hire the right coach and run a different system in football. In basketball, if you don't have one of the 10 guys, you have no chance and you already know it. So I think the fans almost accept it. In baseball though, when you come in and if the previous regime has not invested the resources into your minor league system, I mean, that's just such a different challenge than everything else. And I remember, again, it's slightly different roles in 2002 with you as the assistant GM. But when I was in Trenton, that was the last year where they were the Red Sox. It was 2002.

And that team was awful. And that was your AA team. And AA, the way that I had always understood it understood is that's kind of where your talent is and it's being refined. And then, you know, maybe you spend a little time at triple a, but if you're really good at double a you should be moving on. And it's the greatest lesson that I've ever had in my career. Cause I was around a baseball team every single day.

It gave me perspective that I would have never had, had I not been around it, the ups and downs that we had as fans, they don't have it they're okay after losses um they're you know they celebrate the wins it's this day-to-day thing and i also remember like never seeing any pitchers be able to control the inner half of the plate and double a like if anybody ever threw on the inside you were like wow this guy's going to the big leagues because like guys just couldn't do it they didn't have the command for it i also remember uh rolando vieira when you guys grabbed him and they were like this guy throws seven pitches

and we're like actually he throws one and it's 85 but and like sung song was there it was it was um but the point of going back down memory lane here is that whether it's chicago or boston you're in these major markets with pretty good budgets but it's like we can't do a free agent fix all the time there's no football fix the baseball when the franchise is that baron of town no you're right like when you when you take over a baseball franchise that um you know doesn't have much of anything in the minor leagues, and obviously the big league roster is probably not in good shape. You're probably a little older than you should be, some bad contracts you shouldn't have, not enough talent on the roster in the farm system.

It can feel like you're at the bottom of a well, and you're looking at how the heck are we going to get out of here? Because it's not just one impact player you have to come across, not just two or three. You have to change the whole talent base of your organization, build an actual nucleus, and then systems that create prospects, that create the depth that you need around a nucleus in order to actually win. And it can be really tough. And then you start to think like, okay, well, what are the ways we're going to climb out of this well? Well, there's one draft a year, right? And your first round pick is the most important.

So you better not screw that up. You better hit on all your first round picks or almost all of them. You have one trade deadline a year because no one trades anytime anymore except the trade deadline. you have one trade deadline a year because no one trades anytime anymore except the trade deadline so you have to hope that you know your best players are healthy and performing at the trade deadline and and that you know that you have a market we can flip them out for for some young prospects so you have to you know re-engineer your entire player development system to get you know make sure you maximize the talent of the the players you do have and can bring in players that you're buying low on and and can fix them you have to scout your

tail off like this so look one trade deadline one draft one international signing day a year there's not much margin for error so you know we announced a five-year plan when we got out to chicago and there were a lot of moments during during those five years like god we just screwed that up or you know what are we going to do we'd look at our whiteboard and we'd see like chance to have two or three good players right we need we need like nine or ten really good players like how are we going to get there and then it just turned we we hit on a number of trades we hit on our first round picks and you know we had good timing good fortune and it just it it turns but it can doesn't always work

yeah that's the thing about rebuilds and and you have to be careful because like it takes a while you're asking a lot of your fans there's huge sacrifices involved and they don't always work so we were lucky you know uh five years to the day after i took over we played our first world series game at rickley field so we could like puff our chest out and say see told you it was a five-year plan but like there were a lot of times when we didn't think that was going to happen and that was you know there was a lot of good fortune as well as you know some great work by a lot of people and a lot of sacrifices that went into that but it doesn't always turn out that way.

What's something you believed? Because I love how stubborn all of us can be when we're young. It's just like that peak dumb smart where you're so convinced you're smarter than everybody else but it only proves how dumb you are. But you have, look, everybody that's worked with you is like there's obviously a lot of talent and a justified intelligence level here but i think you've always been the scattering report on you is that you've always been good with other people and that's why

people like you so much but what's something you believe in whether it's evaluating players or team building that you definitely don't believe in now no that i believed in back then that well i mean bullpen back committees you mentioned earlier would be the most obvious example that, you know, it really does matter. Like, yeah, no kidding. They get the games, the games played by human beings and, you know, they're how they think about their job and the expectations around them and the pressure and the environment that matters to how they do their job. everyone can do every job of course and you know we were just you know we were looked past that towards the efficiency and leverage indexes and and everything else that would be an obvious one um let's see another uh

you know i i guess i guess um i've always been kind of like bat first in a lot of ways. You know, like my favorite player of all time growing up was Ted Williams. Like my favorite Red Sox as a young kid was Jim Rice. Like, you know, those are two totally different hitters and players, obviously, not comparing them but but like i i growing up i always kind of wanted to like build around some thunder and just make the make the other pitchers life hell it's like when we came in for three or four days like you might win one or two we're gonna leave you like battered and and and leave our mark and kind of count on that and you look at those three red socks you know that that way where you know i think we set the

all-time record for slugging percentage we come in and we might not catch the ball we might not you know pitch great out of the bullpen but like we come in and throw double digits on you and like you'd know we were there and it was a really entertaining and fun team but like it became pretty obvious pretty quick um that like that was just the most obvious part of baseball right and like you know great great great pitching and and like having a lot of thunder and like it it it became clear pretty quick that like the ability to to quantify the impact of athleticism as it shows up on the base pass and on defense was going to really quickly change the way winning teams were built.

And then you kind of fast forward our team in 2016 with the Cubs. We were one of the best defensive teams of all time. We turned more outs on balls in play or we turned more balls into play and the outs than any team ever you know and our offense was a bunch of young guys who kind of struggled at a lot of important moments too so that was i grew up like convinced like if i ever get this job like we're just going to batter people to death and that that you know that that went away really quick. And, you know, you can say we made that adjustment in 04 with those deadline deals, you know, trading Nomar for Cabrera and Mankiewicz.

I still remember my brother calling me asking what the hell we had just done. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you just traded Nomar for two guys in 220. But, you know, look, look what our infield defense did. You know, we called it a fatal flaw, and it was. Like, we couldn't catch the ball in the infield. Our starting pitchers couldn't get deep in the game as we were losing all the games in the sixth inning. And all that team needed was the ability to turn balls in play

into how it's more consistent. We went like 45 and 11 down the stretch. So that was a pretty quick, you know, I was like cemented in that notion and then did a pretty quick 180. Yeah, what I loved about that 0-3 team when you're officially the guy in charge and you don't appreciate it unless you watch every game.

And Bill Miller, to be at the back end of that lineup, to come in and win a batting title, by the way. I think didn't Manny like sit out? He's like, I don't care. Let him win it. I think, didn't Manny sit out? He's like, I don't care. Let him win it. I think that's what happened.

But Bill Miller, watching him never give away in a bat over six months. And then you think about, okay, the on-base was great and all that kind of stuff, so maybe that's baked into a player's approach. But to see somebody four or five times a night for six months

never give it away. Always kind of have a plan, pitch by pitch. I don't know that that's evaluated. It's certainly not the way I think lineups are put together today. It definitely isn't, but he was always somebody that stood out to me. When you guys brought him in, I went, oh, okay. I see what they're doing because if you had watched him before, he just was, again, it's cliche, but it's accurate. He's just a professional hitter. And I don't know if that part of it's lost in today's game. Yeah. I think you're, you're touching on a lot of different things. I mean, that, that, um, I think one, one thing you're mentioning is, is sort of like that winning by building a relentless lineup one through nine and professional hitters who are tough at

bats and grind other pitching staffs down. And, and that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier, how we built the O three team. And that that's something like the rest of baseball really cut, cut up with in a hurry. And you'd see, you'd see that emphasis on plate discipline and,

and Bill could certainly do that. The other key, another key to his acquisition, by the way, was just he was a switch hitter who was pretty unique in that left-handed. He hit the ball the other way really well and in the air quite a bit, and then right-handed, he was a pull hitter, but without a ton of raw power. So he would really benefit both left-handed and right-handed from hitting a femway. left-handed and right-handed from hitting a femway um so that and then also you know great defender awesome teammate you know fundamentally sound like this grinder who would make everyone around him better um so he was yeah he was you know he was a heck of a player um but now you're saying like I now when you just said like I don't know you think that might be lost in today's game. Like I think what's lost more is now just, is just, you know,

the, the bats, the ball skill, the, like the, the emphasis on putting the ball in play and what you're seeing is like, you know, a bit of a, an understanding now that, you know, hitting the ball hard and hitting the ball in the air is, is a really good way to win, but it's also a necessary pivot because the pitching is so much better than it is now. Like if you go back and look, it's really hard to compare the stuff that we faced in 03 and 04 and the stuff that you're seeing on a nightly basis out there now.

The average fastball was probably 90, 91 miles an hour in 2003. It's 94, 95 right now. You'd see a good hard, hard slider with late, hard, tough break. Every now and then back there, there were usually closers. Now you're seeing starting pitchers featuring closer type breaking balls all the time. You're seeing pitches that are literally designed in labs to be unhittable, to miss bats. And the stuff is so good that that's what we've fallen into as a result. Like hitters last resort has been popping one out of the ballpark.

And therefore, that's where launch angle and you know sort of eliminating the strikeout stigma has has come from in a lot of ways and so again back to where we started like we have to design a game that sort of mitigates the impact of of this unhittable pitching that we're facing because baseball is more than hoping you pop a home run now and then and you know getting back to bat-to-ball skills and putting the ball in play, meaning something, you have to create an environment which is rewarded. And the rule changes all speak to that.

You know, the anti-shift rules help the in-play environment quite a bit. You know, batting average on balls in play is up like 20 points already. The bigger bases make the trip around the bases incrementally easier. quite a bit you know batting average on balls and plays up like 20 points already uh the bigger bases make the trip around the bases incrementally easier so the value of a single the value of the stolen base um goes up a little bit so it's all related but you know i think i think there have been there have been countless uh revolutions in baseball since just the recognition that like you know a good grinding offense wear down a pitching staff and you can get into their bullpen we had 11 man pitching

staffs back then now we have you know up until we changed the rules to go to 13 you know we were up at 14 15 man pitching staffs you don't want to get into the bullpen now you know there's there's there's three or four relievers in each pen that pitch in the middle innings that are probably anonymous to even like diehard fans who throw stuff that's better than the closers that we faced in 2003 and 2004. You know, striking out 25% of the hitters they face. So. No, the velocity thing's so true.

And we'll finish here quickly. But, you know, living at 95 is entirely different than like throwing 95 like you know randy johnson obviously he's a freak and kevin brown kind of felt like that during his his peak years but i remember like when pedro came over and it's like oh this guy throws 97 you're like oh this is crazy and then pedro would like just decide one game to throw 89 all day and still by the way get everybody out which is why i always say like he's at the top of the list and the list starts underneath him. But now when you throw in a game, and I'll admit, I'm like, who's this guy? And it's 96,

it's paint, and he's like the fourth arm. And so I have to also check myself and being like, when there's zero change in your approach as a hitter at the start of the count and then two strikes, I think it is, to your point, you understand it better than I do, but just the law of average is like, sure, I could choke up, dickhead. You're not going to string three singles together against that kind of pitch. I think a lot of times we blame the hitters and this approach and lack of two-strike approach, lack of situational hitting.

It's really just how great the pitching is. You mentioned Pedro and burying velocities on his fastball. You know, pitching these days is almost max effort all the time. And that's a huge change in the game. That's an identifying characteristic, a core trait of modern pitching. As great as it's become,

is that it's max effort all the time now because you have, you know, the job of the starting pitcher used to be 20 years ago, get me as deep in the game as you can, you know, go out there and, you know, the starting pitcher would always say,

well, I want to handle it. I want to take the ball from the catcher after nine. Okay, great. But eight is also really great. And seven is really great to get, get the manager would want the starting pitcher,

get me deep in that game as you can. And now it's changed because of the proliferation of bullpens and max effort pitching and the fact that you have you know literally eight guys in the pen who are pitching in the upper 90s with 30 percent strikeout rates now now the manager in so many words and the organization tells the starting pitcher like your job is to go out there, blow as hard as you can, throw your nastiest breaking pitch as often as you can, more than your fastball, and miss as many bats as you can.

We'll get you out of there whenever you're tired. It doesn't matter if it's the fourth inning, fifth inning. Miss as many bats as you can. We got eight guys behind you who are going to come in, throw an inning each, and strike a ton of guys out so pitching as an art when you had to when when you had to modulate your effort level because quantity was just as important as missing bass it's as important as quality that's lost in the modern game and so i thought it was a big step and a really important step to limit the size of pitching staffs to 13.

When we were growing up, it was 10 or 11 on a pitching staff. Then all of a sudden, it was like, how can we live without 14 guys? Well, I think we've proven that you can. And the hope is that if you do put some restrictions on modern pitching, whether it's in the form of limiting the size of pitching staffs or in other means, that pitchers adjust by modulating their effort again a little bit, right? Like, so if you have, if you have fewer relievers, if the job, if, if the starting pitcher has to go deeper in games, you know, the response can be what you just described Pedro doing like, yeah,

I'm going to come out throwing 92 today when I needed, I've got, what you just described Pedro doing. Like, yeah, I'm going to come out throwing 92 today. When I need it, I've got 96. And I'm going to throw some 1-1 sinkers down the middle and get a ground ball in the early innings. Take my chances of getting a ground ball. Worse, it's a single. Because if I throw as hard as I can every single pitch, especially with this pitch timer now, I'm not going to be around in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. Right now, they don't have to. pitch timer now, I'm not going to be around in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. Right now, they don't have to, but I think it would be a real positive development for the game if we can, over time, get back there where the job of the starting pitcher becomes clear to get deeper in games.

We'll probably have to, limiting the size of pitching staffs and some other tweaks along the way will be necessary to help get us there in the spirit of the rule changes that we rolled out this year. Okay. Last thing, the resume, everybody knows it. I can't imagine you being as competitive as you are for this to be the last act, as important as this role is. So you're not going to tell us what's next. You probably don't even know what's next, what do you kind of hope is next yeah i mean the the the two biggest things i miss are the competition and the camaraderie you know you just you just can't you can't replace that especially in baseball like the daily referendum of where you are you know standing is speaking to you. It's a zero-sum game. It's

so competitive, especially with how smartphone offices are now. If you want to go from 88 wins to 93 wins one year to the next, it's not like growing a business where everyone can grow 5% every year if they do things right. You have to literally grab those five wins away from the other 29 teams. And they're trying to grab five away from you. It's incredibly competitive and it plays out in a really dramatic way every night. You have to be better than your 29 counterparts and inspire all your colleagues to be better than their 29 counterparts in order to have a chance to grab those extra wins. It's awesome. So I do miss that. And then the camaraderie. yes, being around the clubhouse and some awesome teams I've been lucky enough to be part of, but then the front office team also. Everywhere I went, I got to work with some of my best friends, not friends I'd bring in out of nepotism or whatever, or favoritism, but friends that would develop because you're all sacrificing together for a common goal that you all believe in. You believe in each other and

you end up spending more time with them than you do with their wives and their family. You end up going out and having a good time with them, weekend warrior stuff with them, living through the ups and downs. It's incredible. And that kind of camaraderie, you can't replicate in the central office in in most any other line of work so i miss the competition i miss the camaraderie i'd love to have that back and plan on it in some form or another and yeah i vote when i stepped away from the cubs to work at mlb i always thought that there'd be you know one more act in baseball and you know at this point in my life it's who you work with is increasingly important.

And then, you know, because I was lucky enough to be part of the Red Sox and Cubs championships, to me, like the mission has to really resonate. It has to be really meaningful. I have to really believe in it. It has to be a challenge. But the good news is I'm having an awesome time with my kids and at home with my family. I'm getting to be part of some really important changes at mlb and and growing the game which i care greatly about i'm getting to meet a lot of prospective owners um

working for arcto sports partners which is also doing some groundbreaking things and the world of um sports ownership and bringing the institutional capital to sports ownership so i'm in no rush you know. I'm not out looking for that opportunity or trying to find a way to scratch that edge. I think it's like the Supreme Court said about the definition of pornography. You know it when you see it. I'll know the next great opportunity when I see it and I'll be ready. Well, those of us that are baseball fans, you are a superhero.

You're a baseball superhero. You may not like it but it's true so we're looking forward to whenever that happens all right thanks man yeah great talking baseball with you 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 could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids,

I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com Okay,

this one's a little different, but let's do it. Maybe we'll do, well, no, this podcast is so long. Let's just keep it moving. Okay. FiveNine, with podcast is so long. Let's just keep it moving. Okay. Five, nine with a six, two wingspan, more of a puller than a pusher in the weight room.

But my true love is long distance running, living in a decent spot in SoCal with good toilet pressure. All right. A lot of toilet pressure commentary. For those who do the late to life advice. Yes, we did cover that already, but we appreciate your attention to detail. My wife and I were at the beach together playing volleyball when on a nearby court,

she observed a group of girls also playing volleyball with very bulbous posteriors. I made the odd pregnancy. Is that pregnancy? You guys both don't know what that is? Pregnancy or big asses? What are we talking about? Big asses.

I didn't think it was pregnancy. Yeah, I don't know what that is? Pregnance or big asses? What are we talking about? Big asses. Yeah, I mean, didn't think it was pregnancy. Yeah. Yeah, I don't. It's just a bunch of pregnant chicks playing volleyball. Well, maybe they have their own speed, you know? I mean, that would make sense. So they beat us 15 to 2, and they were super pregnant. What's the ruling on, you know?

All right, so big asses. I made the observation minutes earlier but played dumb obviously man smart but women's smarter so she saw right through the facade she thought the one girl in particular had worked on to improve her lower features but had suspicions of the others in the group as well i don't think that butt lift surgery clientele would participate in 10 a.m volleyball leagues and she was looking at hard work mixed with modern fabric technology so the guy's saying hey that's just you know getting the lunges in and fabric that's lifestyle and the right lifestyle brand i buy that i think that's true there's like miracle you could buy them you buy

on amazon it's like miracle yoga pants that just make you look better i mean specifically for volleyball i mean you know i think you know i think they just something about the whatever i'm not doing this i'm not doing this what aren't you doing i'm not doing it i'm just not doing it all right all right so uh the wife is so our guy's saying hey look hard work and pants and and the wife is saying don't shit on these ladies yeah don't shit on these ladies right hey look people people don't like other people fucking looking good i saw a guy last night and he goes that your fat video was really really good he's like you're not fat i was like i know i'm not fat i was like but people want me to be fat and i was like i think it's uh kind of a bigger picture thing of life itself is that I think people have a very hard time.

It's like, hey, how did you do that? Oh, I worked really, really hard and it paid off. Nah, that can't be what it is. It's also the opposite. People you go to high school with, you're excited. Oh, that person got fat. You're like, oh, it was like the hot chick or the hot guy in high school. You don't want to admit it out loud,

but you're kind of happy that they're not hot anymore. Definitely. Just human nature, man. It is a very weird thing about us. You try to avoid ever being like that, but I don't know. It almost feels like everybody has one person be like, hey, did you hear how bad Ted is doing?

Be like, no way. It's fucked up, man. It's really mean. it's really mean it's it's it's a complete waste it's real negative vibes man real negative all right so anyway the wife is pretty locked into her opinion which leads to my dilemma i found the pant style uh he gives us the brand here if kyle's interested and i'm thinking about buying it for my wife she has great features for the product and i would very much enjoy her wearing the gear. However, I don't know how I feel about the

attention it would grab. On one hand, I am comfortable in the relationship and trust her one hundo. He says 100%. I added the lame version of it. On the other, my wife would be a rubbernecking point of interest. For the record, the relationship is not platonic. Thank you. Whatever that means. Should I get her the pants or no? I'm going to defer rubbernecking point of interest for the record the relationship is not platonic thank you whatever

that means should i get her the pants or no i'm gonna defer to the married guys here i would say no uh only because if she remembers that like this conversation that you had with like no babe it's not probably not it's probably those pants and then and then he's like hey i got you these pants she's like are these the same ones that those fucking big ass bitches were wearing uh you know i'm just i'm just you know you're speaking for her right just coloring it up a little bit but like it's like oh really you want me to be like them you want me to be like those girls on the on the beach or whatever so like i could see that happening um i'm not really like oh i don't want i don't want dudes looking at my wife all the time i don't whatever that's just that's either gonna happen or it isn't regardless of the pants

i think but i just think she could be like oh you want me to be like those girls is that what you want i don't know how how cool or uncool she is but uh i just think you definitely run the risk of being like i got you the exact same pants i was talking about that makes girls asses look great and now you could be you could have them too so uh i think i think maybe don't do that yeah you too could have a great ass uh i would say i this is where like dudes and girls just like they're just not on the same page like this is i think this is a nice gesture by you i totally understand why you'd want to do this but it's the wrong call because i just think based on the previous evidence that we had that she was like kind of upset that you were maybe looking

or like she was a little bit jealous of the volleyball players it's just not going to go down well so while i like i think your head is in the right place i don't know that she's going to feel that same way so i think you just avoid the situation completely i would not buy the pants yeah it's not like getting like her getting you a shirt that like makes your arms just a little tighter around the arms it's like oh thanks babe it's like it's a little different unless you're like you know you know todd's got this great shirt at work and i think you would look good in it too. It looks great on Todd. It makes his arms and shoulders look great.

I got you some shirts to make your arms look a little better too. I love you. It's great. I don't know. Even then, you might not like that either. So just try to think about it

roles reversed, especially because you already had this conversation. Okay. The other question I would ask the emailer here is are you buying the pants so that your wife looks hotter or are you buying the pants to win the volleyball argument?

To prove the point. Right. Right? He said he would like her in it, so I think he's definitely got some stakes there. If you want to get her the pants and you're totally comfortable, like you're saying she's going to be checked out all the time, I don't know, there's good chance if she's at if you're projecting that she's already at a tier where people are noticing already and if it doesn't bother you um you know i think anybody that's ever with somebody that's really attractive like there's a line of like liking some of the attention to then going this is way too much attention and it's fucking annoying um but if you truly are telling the

truth and you're okay with all of that i would space this out like if you're going to get her the pants i would give it some time although in this specific case you're probably right is you can get the pants a year and a half from now and she'll be like are these the pants the girls in that volleyball game are wearing she probably would still still remember so i think there's some potential triggers here that would go beyond just her being checked out that maybe you have to process those a bit on your own because it could lead. And again, I don't know if you argue or not. Maybe you get along great. It might be really funny.

But other relationships, I could see this not being funny and turning in some stupid point of like when you get divorced in five years she's like i always knew when he bought me those pants you know yeah sorry i'm not projecting i'm just you know whatever i i my question i'm not gonna what's the win here for our guy like his wife looks even better but she already does look good so or she says you're right which she won't do no you're right about those pants there's absolutely like, there's just no wind for you here. So again, nice gesture, but I just don't,

I don't see like what the benefit for you. Like if your wife really wanted these, these pants, then great. Like you're doing her a favor, but it doesn't sound like she wants the pants. It's kind of more for you. And to prove a point,

this is a recipe for disaster. What if he wears the pants? See? And then doesn't, doesn't say anything. And then she's like, God, you've been like,

you look good today. And you'd been like you look good today oh do I I will say have you ever worn a pair of man's leggings before they're pretty awesome come on you know he's got different colors dude I walk around him they're incredible I've wanted

to get to a point where I'm comfortable enough in the gym to just wear those at the gym wait wait with like a tank top or like no so no shorts that's aggressive yeah I haven't done it and I won't a couple guys have done it

I feel like if you're not Terrell Owens you can't really you have to be like a professional athlete to pull that off but you've been mistaken for a professional athlete in the past so you know what i was never gonna say i was gonna say how is he gonna answer this and he didn't even actually clearly answer it so he just got a pause like yeah yeah yeah no when i went hiking in utah she was like hey and then the thing is is i am better off not having nice legs because i'd be better off because the disappointment when i say no is worse than if i just look sloppy you know it's like oh hey what's going on here like these guys are doing construction outside

of my house and they would like see the workouts in the garage during peak covid there was like some weird street maintenance stuff going on and the guy finally was like hey we've got to ask we've been trying to figure you out like what your deal is and like you're in there and fucking cranking away like do you play somewhere and i was like no and he was like oh okay i was like dude i'm older and he's like yeah he's like you never had any girls here so i we soon like we were arguing about it all the time like one of the guys was like if he plays hockey there's no women here ever and i was like all right cool thanks guys appreciate it thank you like it is covid dude you know i'm not running a fucking lady of the night enterprise over here all right i think we covered it all yeah don't do it maybe

for christmas maybe for christmas well mixed in with other gifts you know if it's not just like this thing just seven different colors of the same pant we need to have a female back on or a woman yeah it has been that long because you can't even remember what to call him yeah no we need it we need another we need to do like a the the i'm just gonna say the female only episode of life advice i think we need to do that we need to pick the right person though that's always the conundrum it was supposed to be Carissa at one point. Rossini would be great. Rossini would be good at this. She would just be so vicious about it, which is why I think it would be good.

Let's do a handyman one. This is good. 6'3", 170. Avoid long distance. Avid long distance. The opposite. Hiker. But our mountains are easily accessible in the summer. I walk a fine line between a dad bod toned summers i grew to my current height by the time i was in sixth grade so he was six three in sixth grade because of this my 12 year old so my 12 year old self relied on lanky arms to grab uncontested rebounds and putbacks from kids a foot shorter

than me a two inch vertical and constant pick and popping despite my obvious height advantage so i grew up in ohio so zadrunas ilgalskas was probably my basketball spirit animal all right thank you for the thorough background that was a paragraph on your basketball cup right we got there though because there was i almost quit a couple times but i'm i'm really glad I hung on to the end. Okay. Flash forward to the present and hitting smooth elbow jumpers and slowly getting back to the transition are the least of my worries. I have a D-bag friend who I need your advice with on how to deal with them. My fiance and I bought a 100-year-old home in 2020. We've been slowly renovating parts of it.

I've been trying to learn some do-it-yourself skills over the past three years so far i've just done some flooring drywall minor plumbing dude you're doing that's not just anything yeah jesus just i get the drywall man yeah like everyone can do drywall most people can't do it very well right that's kind of my thing with drywall where you're like oh because i never had to do it growing up and then a couple times i did have to do something i was like oh wait like this isn't wouldn't say it's good per se what i've just done here yeah right like this isn't good not to have a full-blown drywall conversation your corners suck you need a taping guy right you need like tapings like the real part that like moves everything out anybody can put some boards up but like you got it the tape you have to have a taping guy

a lot of it is um how much the first like a lot you know look it's like that's why i always think the framing thing is interesting because if your framers aren't locked in, then you're just on a fucking one way street of like problems the rest of the way, you know? So then, you know, you frame fucked up, then you're flooring and you're finished guys.

You're like, you're fucking framers suck, you know? And then the sheet rockers are mad. But then again, if you're a hack, you're hanging sheet rock and you're not doing all the things that are going to make the next,

you know, again, the sheet rockers are still the tapers. That was my experience. I don't know that there's a separate crew of tapers coming in, but the tape jobs, you know, kind of make up for some of the corners that are cut sheet rocking,

but basically like it's, it's one big thing. Honestly, it always felt like it was a one big battle of everybody trying to cut corners and then everybody blaming every other fucking crew. Because there's corners everywhere now. I mean, just cutting corners in the general sense of what I mean. It's like that you could blame a different one.

So there weren't like literal holes in the corner of the house. Yeah, no, there was a sheet rocker. I told this once before. There's a sheet rocker that my father was using for a while and you know i wasn't i think i was home visiting so i wasn't working anymore with any of these crews and like the guy was out and he always said cap that was how he was like cap your fucking dad fired me and i was like what he's like cap your fucking dad fired me and i was like oh i you know again it's not like my dad would ever be out or anything socially. So I was out and I was like, yeah.

And the whole thing is this sheet rocker had taken all of his scraps and threw them around the chimney flute, like where it was framed out. So he just, instead of doing his own dump run or just cleaning. He hid them in the house. He hid them in the house. He hid them in the house. He hid them in the house. And at this stage, like my father was doing some nicer houses and it was like, oh yeah.

When my dad had told me, I was like, dude, you, I heard you throwing your scraps like behind the walls. And he's like, dude, dump runs.

No joke out here in the venue, kid. And it's like, you you know actually it doesn't even make any sense because all he had to do was throw his waste in like the massive dump pile and somebody else is gonna have to pay for the dump run anyway so uh you know guy just didn't give a shit captain captain and then i was just like hey fuck off dude throw your garbage away all right anyway all right so let's go back to our guy here yeah yeah what what is he so he's got a gay brother just kidding some some diy stuff here uh so anyway this spring i decided to dig in something a little bigger so i demoed our master bathroom for renovation i have a buddy who fancies himself a handyman he's always fucking up his own house i've heard countless stories from his wife about the struggles their house has been

through during his never-ending renovations he's currently on a on year three of putting in a massive koi pond in his backyard that shows no signs of completion anyway despite his struggles his home does look lovely and he has tons of tools that I'd like to borrow instead of buy. Or rent. All right. Well, right out of the jump, cost effectiveness of this decision doesn't look good. Rent the tools and save the money on all the things that he's going to do wrong. All right.

Because clearly you care a lot about this house. And I think it's cool that you've gone about educating yourself on this to this point. But now you're asking a friend who has tools that you already know his resume isn't exactly Bob Vila, although Norm did all the work. I decided to ask this friend, let's call him TJ, to help on the home project. When doing my small projects in the past, I'm extremely meticulous. I've become a little obsessive and spent hours upon hours researching how to do these projects. I have a never-ending fear of fucking up my house. I won't bore you with all the details leading up to the issue in question, but TJ helped me demo the bathroom, replace the subfloor, and install the drainage. Due to his

overwhelming confidence, I take a backseat during a lot of these activities and provide him endless dinners and beer while he stops over. My frustration grows with these first steps because he damages the subfloor during the demo, which is why it needs to be replaced. And boy, if the house is 100 years old and some of the woodwork on the, some of it, you're just like, I can't believe the actual effort and the quality of the work. And some of these older houses actually can be astonishing, like how well it holds up. But when you start damaging that shit, it can kind of screw up everything, right? So he's got to replace the subfloor. He refuses to take my advice on proper joint spacing on the new subfloor. And he literally cracks through the original cast iron sewer line

jesus while trying to disassemble the old drainage he proceeds to throw together new drainage which an actual plumber has told me quote was a rig job so here's the issue for a few weeks now i've been making up bullshit excuses when he reaches out to come over and help i'm confident in finishing the rental myself and truly find his carelessness and inattention to detail too frustrating to even want his free help. Yeah, no shit, man. Like he ruined your plumbing? I don't even know why you're emailing us.

So after the third straight polite refusal for his help, he has to come over and help me move some electrical boxes. I tell him I've already moved them and they're already behind drywall. I get the following text, quote, just so you're aware, when plumbing codes aren't followed, the worst that happens is your house floods. When electrical codes aren't followed, your house burns down to the ground.

Is that a threat, guy? Yeah, Jesus. I find this response so fucking ridiculous. As do we, emailer. Since starting this project, he has this weird infatuation and sense of ownership over this project i know this text is a not so subtle hint that he's pissed i'm making progress without him how do i respond to this vague threat and tell him to go fuck himself i can't believe he has the balls to say it's cool if he fucks up my plumbing but way worse

things are going to happen with the work i've done on my own what's the correct way to deal with this cocky unaware dickhead who I call a friend? Love the show. Keep up the great work. I mean, all the evidence is on your side to tell this guy to pound sand, but clearly you still care about the friendship enough here that you're trying to figure out some other way. To get into the psychology of the handyman,

he wants to feel important. And when he comes and does these projects with you, even though he's clearly fucking them up all the time, the hierarchy of power is with him. So it makes him feel more important. That could be because there's a void everywhere else in his life where he doesn't feel important. I still feel like I have certain friends that tell me stories. And as soon as the friend is done telling me the stories, I realize no one listens to him when he's home.

That's why he's telling me this story. He has no power, no juice at home. So now he's doing that. As somebody who fancied himself a handyman a little bit back in the day, when I was actually okay at some of this stuff, I liked being the guy that could put something together. My skills diminished pretty quickly, and now they're pathetic. But I remember there was a house of girls that had these street level accessible windows and they were like, hey, don't you do carpentry or something like that? And I was like, yeah, I got a DeWall. I got an S-Wing. I come over there. And they were like, can you put in some sort of brackets for these windows?

And I was like, do you want them to look nice, like finished carpentry? Because I'm not a finished guy. I'm not a finished guy. I wasn't delicate enough. But I can figure some stuff out. And then you show up, and you're in college, and you've got your fucking tool belt on and that blue S-Wing handle, and then you fucking sawzall and some shit. And you're tacking it in there.

You don't want to go too crazy. Maybe you get a DeWalt drill so it's a little easier on the way out. And it was like ah like word like for a couple weeks there your boy was like yeah you should have seen him in that tool belt and he really like knew what he was doing i think you know i had a nail in my mouth and honestly you know one of those deals so it's a fun fucking role to play man it's a fun role when you can show up with the tools and you actually know what you're doing. So that's where this is coming from. This is an identifying thing. He feels special when he comes over to do this stuff. That's why he's hanging onto it so much, but he's also clearly a dick. That's a dickhead text to send.

Hey, I may only flood your house, but you may burn it it down so not only can he not do the work that he thinks he can do and you already knew this going in so a lot of this is on you just to save the cost on the tool part of it like are you that cheap like i'm asking you are you doing the diy stuff because you really love it it sounds like that's part of it it also could be because you just don't want to spend the money um which is also fine too you don't have the money and you really want to do this shit yeah right i mean all of these things are fine but like there's a lot of times man when you start cutting some of those cost corners where you're going to end up regretting it so now you got to figure out a way to how to tell this guy because the the number one thing is he can't be coming over to the house to help you

with any of this stuff anymore so we get criticized for this in the past sometimes but you know the wife is a card to play here where you could go hey after the plumbing mishap she doesn't want you doing this and it can salvage the friendship some people understand that that move would work i would do that if i were married all the time i'd be like just fucking blame me i don't care um there have been people whenever we suggested that play uh they they don't like that play in the playbook at all they're like that's total bullshit shouldn't do that whatever man um you know she's got to be on board i feel like you gotta let her know that she's taking the fall because you can't just be like you know because things are going to be weird between the two of them going forward right so she has to know why

you know your buddy is probably not going to be a super fan of your wife. Yeah, because no one like this is going to sting him. This is going to sting him because all those things that we've talked about that this is an identifying thing where he feels like I'm wanted here. All right. And if he had more going on, you know, who the fuck has a three year Koi pond project? Koi pond is a red flag. It's a hole in the ground. Right. I mean ground right i mean right because then when you have it it's like what are you gonna do like the first night you're gonna crack a beer and you're gonna watch the koi pond and then like three months later al jay all over the place you know dumping chemicals in there yeah i feel like i

also feel like like whenever i don't like go on Facebook at times anymore, but like whenever I do, there's always some video of some guy making a koi pond and it's like 15 minutes long and it's got like a billion likes and it just, I don't know. It just, it's a red flag to me. Yeah.

We're, I think this whole podcast is, wait, Kyle, are you pro or anti koi pond? I think it depends on how much space you have. You know, if we're talking a quarter acre acre i think you're making a big mistake i think you're right but if you got a little room maybe even a little little hiking path out to the bat koi yeah burn one down when you gotta say i'm going over there by the core

over by the koi pond that means like if it's like we're taking a little trip to get there i think that makes sense but i mean if it's just like you taking a little trip to get there, I think that makes sense. But I mean, if it's just like, you know, don't fall out, watch, you know, when you go out the back door, watch out for the koi pond. I think that's a mistake. I think there should be a little space

between your domicile and your koi pond. Yeah. Well, fair, fair. What else, guys? What else? Is there another play here? I think you could just say like, hey, this is a hundred year old house, man.

I just need, I got to get somebody with insurance. Like it's not even your, you could just maybe just go the insurance angles. Like I just need somebody. My whole life is invested in this house and you know, I'm nervous. And like, I just need, I need somebody with insurance to get this done. Maybe even somebody who knows more than, than I do and, and more than you do, or maybe you could leave that out of it, but maybe you could just go the insurance angle. Just be like, man,

I can't lose this. I mean, I really got fucking, you know, I got really shook with the, with the, with the plumbing thing. And I just,

I'm just going to go the rest of the way here with, with a, you know, somebody who's got license, whole life. Yeah. Yeah. License.

A little more documentation. Yeah. No, that's... I mean, you could throw just a labyrinth of lies at this guy and see if it works. Now, granted,

when you're going to lie that much, you're not going to be able to keep track of it all. But the point is, you are lying to get out of something, but you haven't done anything wrong. So if you ever got busted on it, then the end game is,

yeah, but I'm not getting busted for something I was hiding from somebody. I'm getting busted for trying to not have my house be a piece of shit. So you could call up and say, because I know everybody's saying, yeah, you could just talk to him. Hey, no shit. We're trying to come up with alternative reasoning here because he doesn't want to do that. The emailer clearly doesn't want to just say, hey, you suck at this stuff. So can you guys, can the boys come up with another right exactly kind of the point of this whole deal so other than the default hey just talk to him which you use in other times but then strategize how to talk let's just try to avoid that because clearly this guy wants to avoid it you could do something where it's like hey i was on the phone my home insurance company homeowners insurance and just was like i fucked

up and told him i had a guy who was helping me. Chance of those guys not. Yeah. Right. And then the homeowners are like, we have to send somebody out and do a new assessment and all of this stuff. And they're freaking out because something was wrong and I don't want you to get into trouble. So I couldn't say who it was, but I didn't have any documentation. And now they're freaking out. They want to raise my rate. And the only way I can avoid all this stuff is like, I have to, I have to figure out a way to like have somebody licensed come in. And the problem is that lie is going to get exposed.

Then when there's not a real guy coming over, cause you clearly aren't going to hire the real guy. Although you had to bring a plumber in. So there's a way you could just start throwing so much shit at him. Just overwhelming with dodgeball of lies where he's just like oh okay just keep him away from the homestead until you're done too either find a reason for that to be the case keep him away from the homestead until it's all right and then he could you know he's talking to buddies like hey i thought you were helping

that dude out guy doesn't have state farm. Apparently this insurance company has really given him the what for. So, uh, I, I think there's a way you could make it so confusing. He's not even going to be able to really keep track of what it is. And you're not going to be, but if you ever got busted on the whole thing,

you can just be like, yeah, dude, you broke my plumbing. It was, you're not good at it, but that's going to dip. That's going to devastate him because of what

this means to him his role that he gets to play when he comes over there and does this stuff it's going to be devastating and clearly you want to salvage the friendship so i i would i would do the the harmless lie first or blame the wife can you can you can you have the real conversation with him and just say hey man like that really the you know the the plumbing line kind of really fucked me up and it spooked me and then also still invite him over for some like pretty basic level task stuff so you're still at least around you're still hanging out he's getting a little bit of uh you know he's getting a little bit of a pump here and there from from doing some handiwork but it's not like the real important stuff like maybe you can have best of both worlds to kind of middle this thing yeah hey dude we're putting the uh knobs on the drawers bring your screwdriver

doing a little painting day paint day paint day i don't know man i've seen some paint jobs the diy everybody thinks they can paint and you're like no you can't so uh yeah i think everything's in your favor i would i would try to create some kind of the problem is maybe you could also do this i mean this is always the other one but you don't want to pay i don't think you want to pay for this is if you were doing flooring after he fucked up your sub floor unless the flooring is already done but like could you hire a guy who knows what he's doing but then again knowing the right guy to hire and all that kind of stuff and then have him work with them it's kind of like your buddy who thinks he's strong and then you would like work out with a dude who actually

really is strong and then the guy's just shattered repping out his 185 i i don't think that's the thing is like i don't think he's trying to crush his buddy he just doesn't want him to come over so like i don't think you know you want to make his confidence any lower than it is now that you're kind of icing him out long covet i don't know there's a lot uh i mean it's going to come to a head i think this is sort of unavoidable because he wants to do this so bad and you don't want him to and you shouldn't it's your house yeah you know like you've got to what would be worse losing him as a friend or having a house that's going to fall apart all the time it depends on how awesome of a dude he is i don't know definitely the house yeah there's a couple buddies that i'd be like i'd rather have that guy's my life than than a nice house now it's probably zero maybe

every time he asks you you could just be like hey man how's the koi pond coming like you know when's that going to get finished you know and just kind of put the thing on him but don't you have some tasks around the house that you guys. I don't think he'd love that. What if you said, hey, dude, I don't feel comfortable with you coming over here. Why don't you tell him you want to build the koi pond and but he'd love to see yours finished first. And then that way, when you're like, oh, I'm doing I'm hanging doors today. And he's like, oh, shit, I'm going to get that koi pond finished. Like, oh, yeah, I's like oh shit i'm gonna get that koi pond finished be like oh yeah i picked out my spot too for my koi pond i can't wait until you're done

and it's gonna take him so long your house will be brand you'll already listed it and flipped it at the end though he's like all right so when you want to start this koi pond you know i saw yours don't like it yep not gonna pass he's blaming wife again be like you know what she just started having kids. Yeah. We don't want to co-aip on. Like, dude, it's six inches deep. Yeah.

Yeah. Nah. Get her to be careful. Yeah. Yeah. Normally, we just say goodbye, but we have a bonus for you. It is me solo last week drafting my fantasy baseball team. And it takes well over an hour. Enjoy. week drafting my fantasy baseball team and it takes well over an hour enjoy

okay we're doing something a little different here I have no idea how long this is gonna go I am gonna live tape it's sort of live whatever the fantasy draft I'm in a league nobody knows I'm in a league. Nobody knows I'm in their league. I just pick randomly. I have the first pick. The draft starts in a minute and a half. So right now the projections are whatever they are. I did no research.

And Edmonton and LA is on in the background. Stole a little breakdown. Sam Kopitar is getting in there, taking some shots in areas he doesn't usually take shots from. So pretty aggressive from Kopi. But we're not going to do a lot of hockey on this. Although this could just be the alternative pod. The Bucks just got smoked by the Celtics and I'm going to tape the Pelicans game. So yeah, first pick, no research. Strategies. I usually go position players, heavy on position players. If an ace is staring me right in the face, I'll take them.

I just feel like with the way pitching has changed, you know, you start taking a lot of pitchers high. It could backfire. I've won these random leagues that I don't tell anybody that I'm in because that's pretty much the way I roll. So anyway, there you go. So I think I'm going to go Otani just to have him. You know, a lot of Trey Turner love here because of shortstop. There could be some pronunciation issues because I'm not super locked in yet. I did watch opening day today. It wasn't great. A lot of walks if you're a Sox fan, but there's still some baseball to be played.

We're going to have a few months to get some more of those games in. All right, so the draft is about to start. I have the first pick. Like I said, nobody knows that I'm actually in this league with them, so I'll try to keep it moving here. I'm taking Otani.

Okay. King 8 is on the clock. I'm not going to read all this, I think it's Team Boobs, no, not Team Boobs, it's something else, okay,

who just went, pick history, all right, they took Garrett Cole, I'm going to kill everyone in this league, I'm already going to win it, wow, did not expect that,

that was, wow, did not expect that. That was a bit of a reach there. All right, so we've got Otani, Cole, Judge, Trey Turner, Jose Ramirez off the board. I kind of want to go Acuna, but I don't think he's going to be there. So I have the 11th pick. I took Julio Rodriguez a couple years ago I think or was it just one year ago before everybody else one of the greatest picks I've ever made that's my move

and sometimes I just kind of pick guys that I want to have on my team it doesn't sound like that's a winning formula but when it's a random league and nobody really knows anybody, a lot of times people just kind of bail on it. Okay, so Julio and McCoonie Jr. just went off the board. Jordan Alvarez goes eighth. Should probably start putting some players here in the queue. My big Machado guy. I like Bo Bichette. He's going 13th overall.

Oh, wait, this is Snake. Of course, I'm an idiot. I'm still not in the clock forever. I'm not getting any of these guys. So let's start kind of looking down. I wouldn't be afraid of taking Fernando Tatis. I believe he's back April 20th. Let's double check that.

I'll forgive him. Yeah. All right. Vlad Guerrero Jr. goes. Mike Trout, average draft position, 22. He's missed some time recently. Do I want both Angels? That would probably mean

I wouldn't do well. Kyle Tucker going 7th overall in the ESPN leagues. Alright, Soto's off the board. Tatis. Yep, a lot of teams. A lot of GMs out there. Don't worry about character.

When it's fantasy, it's way easy to not worry about that. I have no idea how I'm going to fill 19 rounds of this. It's going to be bad. Okay. So Tatis is

off the board board Kyle Tucker goes Edmonton leaves the Kings one zip after one Mookie Betts still available the other thing I kind of like to do is is like all right Mookie's gone but uh you know somebody who usually goes high, but it feels like the average draft positions are kind of undervaluing them. I'm not afraid to go take those guys too. It's kind of like the Justin Verlander, although he is on the IL to start the season.

Okay, I'm coming up here in five picks. So Mookie's gone, Machado's gone. Boy, this is a weird spot, but I'm going to go back to back. So what do we do? Fill out the infield. Who's to say? More prep would have allowed me to really map this out and realize the depth or lack of depth at certain positions. But I didn't do any of that so if I do a quick look at this we've got four more first baseman in the top 50 second baseman tough to find so maybe

Simeon third Third baseman. Got some depth here, a little more depth. Gunnar Henderson, do we go for him early? Shortstop. Obeshed is still available. Lindor. Nah, I don't think so. Dansby.

How about O'Neal Cruz going 65th? I picked him up off of waivers last year. Was really excited about that. It was a huge day here at my house. We're able to get him. Bobby Witt, Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman all gone. So I got a couple more picks here. Maybe I just take Devers although him not taking a couple pitches in the ninth today

problematic you know when the guy's out of the bullpen he can't throw a strike make him throw a strike make him throw two strikes guy from the O's was Batista he was he was a mess I don't know how I feel about the tucked in ears I I know a lot of dudes rock it. You don't see it in games a lot. Okay, I'm up. Pick 20. Bichette is available. I love the guy. So, if I look at short stops,

I'm taking him. Boom. Third baseman. I'm going to go Devers. There you go. Wow. Wow. I'm not going to pick for another week. Could have gone Austin Riley. Was early on him a couple years ago.

Arenado's still around, obviously Bregman's going a lot later Yeah, there's some value there I'm alright I think I always ignore first baseman because you grow up with, like, there's always power at the corners It's not that great Projected home runs

Alonzo and Matt Olsen Goldschmidt, Mountcastle, Rowdy Tellez. Who doesn't love that guy? Anthony Rizzo, decent projections for him. Will Myers. I think I picked him up 15 years ago. I was really excited about that.

Yeah, I don't know. First base was a little dicey here. I love those guys that can do both, multiple. Okay, let me go back to second baseman. Albies picked him up right out of the jump. Read a spring training preview. He was all over it. Glaber Torres, Glaber Day.

That was a nice pickup in 2018. I think I had a million Yankees on my team then. Just trying to win the league, you know. Boy, third base. Or second. Yeah, second base gets that jazz chisholm. Junior. Good stolen base projections.

He's behind Rojas Jimenez. All right, do you want some more pick history? Let's see. So I took Devers Strider, little guy there for the Braves, Aaron Nola, Goldschmidt, Alcantara. I had him last year. It's a good time. Lindor, back-to-back Mets picks here. Lindor, Alonso.

All right. So I'm up in 11 picks here. Let's see. Let's just take a peek at what pitchers are doing here. So we've got maybe 12 or 13 in the top 100. Urias, who I always like. Dylan Cease I had last year. And it was a great time.

I think he and Manoa were my first two pitchers that I took. But look, I have rules. Doesn't mean I can't break them. I mean, I'm not an outlaw. I have a philosophy. Sometimes I stick to it. The thing that I always get a little weird with is like you kind of can't go into...

I know some people are just super indifferent about closers, but I don't want to like just totally ignore it because then you're scrambling all season. You're offering some guy in Albuquerque a trade and you're like, this guy didn't even log on anymore. Let me just throw Hader in the queue. What did Clay Holmes do last year as far as his innings?

I feel like he had some stupid numbers. Maybe that was like the first four months of the season where just nobody could hit him. I think that's true. But again, you know, this is our baseball pod. Not super locked in. Okay, pick history. What else we got? All right.

Cease is gone. Scherzer's gone. DeGrom is gone. He's on Texas. Just kidding. I'm not that out of it. All right. We go. Oh, wait, wait, wait. What about catchers here? Do we go Adley after his stellar opening day? I might do it. I might just, I might do a pick 40. That's about 20 spots higher than he's going. I'll put him down in the queue. Let's see here. That kid for Toronto is supposed to be pretty good, Dalton. He's actually going higher than Adley is. Salvador Perez. One night in New Orleans,

I met a bunch of guys that were in the Royals farm system. Perez was not one of them. Not the best story I've ever told. All right, little pitching run here. Michael Harris going in the fourth round. I know he's an outfielder, but then Woodruff after that,

and then Zach Wheeler. So, let's see. Wheeler, Corey Seager. Meet up in a couple picks here. All right, this is what I kind of default back to. I'll just keep going back and being like, all right, what do we got? Like if I can see, I'm not going to take Austin Riley, although I do need the, oh, this league is three outfielders, one utility. I don't have to do middle infielders and corner.

Oh, what? I don't know what I signed up for here. I think every other time I played this, it's been, you know, every position and then five outfielders, utility, a corner, and then a middle infielder. All right, pick history update here. Riley just went. Arenado just went.

But that's all right. All right, I'm on the clock. So players, let's take a look here. We're going all players, all positions, including the pitchers here, who's still available. So if I'm at pick 40, I have 45 seconds. I think I'm going to go Ozzie here to get the second base thing lined up because again, yeah, I think there's a pretty good drop off. All right, I'm taking Ozzie. What else?

Let's just take a quick sneak peek at the outfielders here. Do I take the kid from Arizona? I'm probably not going to get Adley or Dalton a catcher. All right, we'll do it. We'll take Carroll. All right, Corbin. Don't make me regret this. Probably need to look at one pitcher here.

So we've got Manoa. Galsman, Go Tigers, met him, had the Blue Jays hat on, didn't recognize him right away when I was on the sideline for the Alabama game. Boy, was he confused. Guy in a Blue Jays hat, sideline LSU, seeing him. I was like, hey.

But he was with somebody else I knew. And then, of course, to name drop Matt Bushman, who was with the Blue Jays staff. And I was like, yeah, I'm Bushman's buddy. So it worked out. It was a good recovery, but I can imagine he was a little confused to be like, how are you, how come you're not, maybe I'm just really cool around pro athletes. You know, maybe, maybe I'm just, I'm numb to it. Five minutes in, second period here. Oilers still leading. The LA Kings won nothing.

20 shots to only 13. Pucks in a little deeper here. All right, let's take a little perusal a little bit later here into what's going on. Wander Franco. Franco. I think it's Franco, actually. I feel like I draft Starling Marte

fucking every year. Obviously, Profar has to be in the queue to keep that streak going. Xander. Probably not going to need that for utility. Might be first baseman and pitcher. All right.

Will Smith, Cedric Mullins, Luis Castillo, starting pitcher. Not little Luis Castillo of the Marlins. He would be pretty old. He wouldn't go this high. And then, sadly, Rutschman just went. So I knew that was going to happen. It's all right, though. You can't get everybody you want.

You have to be emotionally detached from this if you're trying to build the right team. Boy, Ketcher gets light. Okay, so let's come up with a first base plan. Matt Olsen's still there. He's not going to be there. He's not going to be there.

They're projecting him for 40 dingers. I've picked up CJ Krohn before. Jose Miranda, no relation. Okay. Starting pitching, man. God. I'm going to have to take one of these guys because I love my infield right now

love it Reed Detmers had him last year Dustin May love that dude. Sonny Gray. Used to love him. I was pissed when he was,

when he went from New York to, or from Oakland to New York. I was like, God, it's going to be the worst. He's awesome. Then he wasn't great there. No offense to him. Nothing personal.

Okay, on the clock here, eight picks. Just, you know, working it out. Matt Olsen just went. Chisholm just went. Verlander's gone. Urias is gone. RealMuto's gone. Urias is gone. Real Muto's gone. Real Muto's gone.

Jazz Chisholm. Okay. Kershaw gone so Manoa and Galsman still there George Kirby he was good for me last year I had options on him though. I drafted Hunter Green.

That was, it was a little erratic. I don't remember this, so don't quote me on it, but I feel like he, he was a disaster in the beginning of the year. And then it got a little bit better. Do we look up his game log right now

to see if I'm remembering this correctly? He got roughed up pretty good today. Let me see here if I'm out of... Yeah, a 6, a 5-8 and a 5-4 ERA and a 5-1 ERA. And then I don't know, 5 starts to close the season. He was pretty good. So yeah, I've got the Hunter Green thing down. I think he works out with a buddy of mine.

Actually, I think I worked out with Hunter Green. We did not talk. But again, I'm in LA, man. Just, you know, you're out there in the streets. You run into people. You Darvish. I feel like nobody picks him. Maybe a little Logan Webb cue action.

Giolito, throw him the cue. When's Glasnow supposed to be back? Grade two strain of his left oblique. Expected to miss the first month. Buy low. Edmonton's on the power play. They've got control of it in the O zone. I can't.

I don't know who anybody is. I know who Dreisaitl and McDavid are. Okay. I'm on the clock in three picks. Schwarber's gone. Gunnar Henderson's gone. Manuel Klaes is gone. He was awesome last year. So... All right, hitting a lull here we're gonna have two picks in a row manoa's gone okay let's go back to overall let's see where the value is a rosarena available who just went who just went

bregman okay all right so i got a minute here a Rosarena available. Who just went? Who just went? Bregman. Okay. All right. So I got a minute here. Figure this out. I could take Dalton. Did he just go? No. Fromber just went.

All right. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, who did I just take? Uh-oh. Kind of losing it here. Okay, this is pick 60 I'll take Dawn alright okay back to pitchers is it worth going after on Dawn's Radon excuse me let's see what the biggest strikeout projection guy is.

Robbie Ray, I'm not doing that again. Blake Snell, no. All right, do I go back to position? Do I go to outfield? Let's just take a look. Springer. Chris Bryant. Taylor Ward grabbed him.

Uh-oh, uh-oh. Stay on page. Okay, 17 seconds. Not great. Let's go back to just total value. Nine seconds. Five. We'll take a Rosarito. 9 seconds. 5. We'll take a Rosarito.

All right. That was sort of like shot clock. But that's all right. We're okay with it. We really like our lineup. So right now we need one more outfielder, first base, utility, and we have not taken one pitcher yet. outfielder, first base, utility, and we have not taken one pitcher yet.

Feels like this might be a two-pitcher deal. So let's start prepping. Yeah, I mean, Freed's on the DL so we'll throw him in the queue now I probably I might put Romano in the queue as well closer for the Blue Jays

I'll look at some more closer for the Blue Jays. I'll look at some more strikeout projections. The wind projections are fucking pointless. Logan Gilbert's still there. Bassett was pretty good last year from what I remember. Maybe I'm just...

No, he was really good with Oakland. He was... Well, he was alright last year. What was his war? What was his BAIP? That's the stuff I need at my beck and call. And I just don't have it right now. I'm not taking Nestor.

That feels a little fluky last season. Sorry. Just saying it. Let's look at Berrios here. So he got shelled. That was a very uncharacteristic season for him, though. God, he got worked. 199 hits and 170 plus innings. It used to be, back in my day, less hits per innings was like a sheer sign you were really good. Now, literally, everybody does it because everybody's hitting fucking 240. All right.

I still have 11 picks to go. How about a little pick history update here? O'Neal Cruz gone. Garcia, Texas gone. Springer gone. Wander gone. Dansby gone. That's all right.

I don't need any of those guys. All right, so let's go one closer, one starter. Put Devin Williams in the clue, on the cue. Hayter, Romano. Uh... Devin Williams in the clue on the cue. Hayter, Romano. I just don't want to take Robbie Ray. And so, you know what? My team, my choice. I'm not going to do that.

Do I go Helsley? I used to take every Cardinal reliever. I would take setup guys back in the day. Duncan, the pitching coach, I was just automatic. I was like, oh, hey, they've got all these guys that throw 95 and strike everybody out. I'll take one of those guys. Yeah, there's Batista. I don't know. He scared the shit out of me today. Not touching that one. Do I take Camillo? We'll throw him in the queue. Yeah, he stepped up pretty big last year. What was his strikeouts?

80 strikeouts, 67 innings? 67 and two-third, just in case. Just in case he comes up at the office. I don't want to give you bad info. All right, but this is what I also like to do. I'll look at pick history again here. I'll kind of see what's going on. This is going to be a run on pitchers.

Redone, Hunter Green, Hugh Darvish all just went. So if I don't grab pitchers now, I'm probably going to be in some trouble. But that means I didn't take one until round eight, which is kind of in line with the way I like to work. All right, we'll go all positions here again. Max is not going to get to me. No, he'll be gone. Yeah, this could get dicey.

Tyler O'Neill, jacked. Always enjoyed his work. I had him last season. Alright, Max is gone. Knew that was going to happen. It's alright. Oh, I need to start looking up some of the younger dudes. All right, let's see. Oh, wait, is Yoshida still available? Hitting cleanup. He's going 197. hitting cleanup

he's going 197 I don't know what's going on there uh oh now I can't get out of this this isn't good alright now we're back. Tyler O'Neill just went, man, I'm like calling him out.

I'm like the guy that goes to the concerts. Like they're probably playing Nectar next. All right. Kirby's still there. Tim Anderson, don't need him. I'm going to have to not get greedy. I'm going to suck at first base again. Classic Rosillo. Why is Giolito going so late?

4-9 ERA. There are times too where I'm like that guy was really good and you're like nope that was four years ago uh g little got off to a good start he got shelled in the middle of the season pretty and then i finished okay so there you go there's your answer if i had done this in 2005 say they would have just been like after the draft was over nine guys would have quit like alright we got no chance see what this guy did

got Darren Bragg he's not even starting him alright I'm coming up here in three picks, folks. Devin Williams just went with twins. Hernandez, the outfielder. He's gone. He's 30? Former Blue Jay.

Did mash the last couple years. All right, who just went? Mountcastle, Haters gone. Okay, all right. So let's go take another peek at the overall players. Jimenez is still available. Salve is available Peña shortstop he didn't play last year

or he played in one game don't need him Romano is available oh it's my pick who just went Logan Webb okay so 35 seconds

not super sure what I'm going to do here Iglesias is on the DL for start the the season. I don't know. I wouldn't take him right now anyway. So let's take Romano. So that's good.

And then, God, I'm not taking Robbie Ray. He's just sitting there. He won't leave me alone. Do I go Presley closer out a starter might make some sense so so if i'm at pick 81 i go kirby where's strikeout projections yeah that's the thing with him Where are his strikeout projections?

Yeah, that's the thing with him. They're not great, Bob. Severino, God. I don't want to take a left oblique guy, so Tyler's going to have to wait. All right, 10 seconds to go here. Five, four. All right. We'll take Presley.

We'll try to, we'll just, yeah, I don't know. Don't love it. But that's, that's good in a way because now I don't have to worry about. Well, I guess technically I did take a picture with the first overall pick. So that's kind of stupid to say that I didn't take anyone until later on. But I think you get the point. Otani's slightly unique. Still 1-0 here at Minton.

5.42 to go in the second. So this will probably end where I can watch the third period. We're 33 minutes in. I hope you're having a good time. All right. We need to come up with another plan for an outfielder. Lars Neutbar I think I'm going to do it

he'll be there poor Cody Bellinger let's give him a little cue action just in case Benintendi. We're getting deep in the weeds now. Mike Yastrzemski. NBD. You know, my dad actually took me to game... The Sox won the first two, Shea, and then we went to game four in Fenway

to go get tickets. He was smart because he had me sort of as a decoy, and we pushed our way up to the front to rush rush in to see if he'd get tickets, you know, standing room or whatever day of. They would actually do that back then. I don't know. I don't know if they still kind of do some version of that, but it was mayhem. And he went to the security guard and was like, hey, my kid's going to get crushed.

Can we like stand up here? And then people were yelling at us, be like, dude, you're fucking cutting. And my dad was like, yeah, I know. But he was also 6'5 and had long hair. So he usually would get away with a lot of stuff like that. So we did not get tickets, even though we drove over to Fenway. This was the World Series. You know, it's cool.

He was like, we got to go. We got to go and be a part of this and see what the deal is. And we didn't go. And then we went across the street to a bar. My dad just, he didn't even drink. And he was just like, we're going to go. And I sat at the bar and had 500 ginger ales and no one in the bar cared you know socks on the world series let 10 year olds in here it was like i was starting fights i mean it was

one i was drinking ginger ale and i was 10 but there was this one guy that I didn't really like. Give me a hard time. I wonder what he's doing now. He's probably dead. Okay. Glaber Day. He's gone. All right. I'm up in 10 picks here.

All right. Let's finish strong. I like what I've done here because now I don't think I have to worry about saves. And then there's always going to be like 15 more guys getting saves that none of us are even thinking about right so let's just try to go high value here the rest of the way Xander is still available right so he could be my utility guy

I need another outfielder excuse me Volpe's out there can I take him? Probably not. Byron Buxton. I got excited about taking him years ago.

Hey, did you hear Rosillo do that fantasy pod? Yeah, he just started naming guys. Jesus Lizardo? Yeah. Yeah, when we mentioned that, that was great. He thought Chris Bassett was pretty good, but he forgot that it had been a year. Ian Happ available. Chris Sale. I'll just throw him in the queue

who knows still have 8 picks to go alright back to the starting pitchers what are our best saves oh well if I go relief pitchers where are we at with saves see there wasn't much of a run on the closers so I jumped the gun on the closers. So I jumped the gun on the closers there a little bit.

Totally okay with it. Let's go back to all pitchers. Let's see, is Kirby still available? See, everybody knows about the strikeout problem. Or lack thereof, not a huge problem, but you get the point. Sometimes I'm just not afraid to take a setup guy for the whip alone. I love that. I love taking a guy who's a setup guy and he's just sitting there.

Like this guy's got a.12 whip. Dudes are just ignoring him. I'll admit I don't know the pictures like I used to but that's okay we're going to learn we're all learning together let's take a look at Jordan Montgomery here let's take a look at Jordan Montgomery here yeah it's

it's kind of whatever I don't know why I only pitched 60 innings last year probably got hurt that's the thing is I just don't like taking pitchers that high and it's like cool you got five guys in the DL

I should have checked this league's DL rules. I love when they're like, yeah, we have seven DL spots. You're just picking up hurt guys all season long and then you're getting these alerts to drop dudes. Granted, when it's this kind of league, you can't get away with

hoarding as much. I was in a fantasy league with a bunch of the Boston media guys years and years ago. And we were with a dude who didn't work for a long time. And then he had all the settings where it was never anything on waivers. It was just a free-for-all. You could just drop somebody and then pick them up. Or if you dropped him, maybe he was on waivers for a day, but there was never a clear period. So so basically everybody else that worked was at a massive disadvantage because this guy literally wasn't working and was picking up everybody.

And I remember for, uh, Steven Strasburg, I was like constantly updating the available players thing. Cause he was coming up and he was going to be available before his first start, but he wasn't in the league he wasn't in the league and i dude i might have been setting like alarms because it was just he wasn't going to be on any waivers it wasn't going to be a one loss thing it was going to be strictly like he's now available to be picked up as a free agent and i was fucking furious this dude just picked them up. Okay, all right. So I'm up. Pablo Lopez, nice pick.

Good value there. That was pick 100. So let's see what we have here. Pitchers, Musgraves on the DL, IL, whatever. Boy, my starters. Matani's going to have to carry us.

It's just not that exciting. Let's just see who's the projected strikeout guy out of this. Blake Snell? Do we give Blake Snell another chance here? Yeah, you know what? People might just be a little over him. Let's go for it. That overall rank number staring me in the face a little bit. Now we're taking him. All right. So we got Blake Snell. I need three more pitchers and outfielder in utility. So let's just go back to all positions.

Starling Marte will not leave me alone. Castellanos. Oh, Castellanos. Excuse me. That happens to me. I'm getting a lot of Rasio lately. Andrew Vaughn hmm I don't know

I'm out of power there alright 19 seconds I'll take Yelich I might just take Zander I'm not taking Yellich. I might just take Xander. Throw him at utility. All right, I did it.

I feel good. I actually feel good about that. That was round 12. I believe we're at round 12. Oh, no, no, no. We're around 11. It's saying that I'm on the clock. What else do you guys want to talk about? Stroman

just went. Good luck with that. Altuve off the board starting the season on the IL. Dude. Carlos Correa

is still available. All right, I'll just throw him in the queue, but God, dude soured on him. Jim Carlos Stantonanton still available? I had him last year. I had a grind last season, man. If you only knew.

If you only knew how hard I had to grind. I had Trout. I had Giancarlo Stanton. I think my top five picks all ended up missing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't even think they played. I mean, Giancarlo missed 50 games last year, but I earned my salary last season.

Let me just put it that way. Tyler Ward, or excuse me Taylor Ward had him last season we'll throw him in the queue just in case it's a nice player maybe some holes in the swing

again I'm not a scout I'm just a guy I'm just a guy at home watching but that's what I saw. Did we go Duran here? Let's see. What does he... He had a sick ERA. see. What does he need? A sicky RA. I mean, a seat of one eight six under one whip. Only eight saves. Um, he ended up not being the closer looking this. Control was impeccable. We like that.

So what are they saying about him? Now I have to go back and find him again. The projections are not good. So yes, do I know the twins' clothes are off the top of my head? I don't I apologize it's early though I mean if you ask me who every starting quarterback was in the SEC today I wouldn't know

I'm just not in season Tim Anderson is gone, Max Muncy's gone Starling Marte gone Helsley's gone Correa is gone. As soon as I said it, he was literally, as soon as I said it, he went. I didn't even notice. All right, seven picks to go, folks.

Don't worry. It's going to start getting pretty exciting here. I promise. All right, let's go back and queue up some more pitchers. What's Musgrove's situation? Did he just go? God, that's incredible.

I'm on fire with this. What about Manea? 496 last season. Same number of hits as innings pitch for the most part. Strikeout to walk ratio is the worst he's ever been.

He's in San Francisco now. We'll key him up. Boy, he's going 365. That's not 365 like I bring it 24-7, 365. He's going 365 overall. Castellanos still available. Chris Bryant still available. Andrew Vaughn, outfield, and DH. Oh, excuse me, outfield, first base, and DH. And literally, just as I was about to put him in the queue, he was drafted.

I can't believe this keeps happening. Am I on Zoom? The contrarians... I can't believe this keeps happening. Am I on Zoom? The Contreras brothers available. All right, I'm on the clock. Who just went? Volpe just went. Okay. All right, 40 seconds to figure this one out.

Let's see if there's still some power out there Matt Chapman don't need him Brandon Lowe don't need him I think I just take Giancarlo yeah okay so first base and three pitchers

I feel at this point First base and three pitchers. I feel at this point, the first base options are not great. Although, man, did I love myself some Carlos Santana. And I'm not talking about just at Woodstock. How long has this guy been playing? Uh, it's 2010. Feels like it was longer.

All right, 30 seconds here. Innings pitched. Not for first baseman. There's not many of those guys. I go Brady Singer, maybe? Let's go back to pitchers. We've got 10 seconds. I'm not taking Nestor.

I go Clay Holmes. Do I take Glacius? All right. I don't even know. Let's find out how hurt he is. Retroactive 15-day DL to March 27th. Shoulder strain late in camp, but hopes to spend the minimum. Yeah, everybody hopes to spend the minimum.

He was a nice pickup for me last year, but you know what? I think that's the first pick I don't really love. But I'm hard on myself. Reed Detner still available? Or Drew Rasmussen maybe? Boy, some good numbers from him. Yeah. I may just do it.

I got a feeling about Drew. It's just he's a stuff guy. There's like an anti-stuff, excuse me, because of his stuff, it's like an anti-stuff thing. He's just not going very high. Dustin May is still there let's double check what's going on him tommy john um cactus league star what was that update that was this weekend puts him in line to handle nearly a full workload once the season begins to give up a three-run homer to Bobby Witt Jr.? That's all right.

Bobby Witt went really high. Remember that guy? All right, so I may go and just go with dudes I like and not worry about their draft rank. I always love Garrett Whitlock's stuff, but he's on the DL. I mean, he was unhittable two years ago. I might not even make, with this group,

obviously there'll be some moves that need to be made, but with this group, I might be below the minimum innings. Taylor Ward's gone. Bryce Harper. How long is he out? That would have been nice to know. November Tommy John. They're saying sometime in May. That's a great pick. It's a great pick. I love picks like this. Who else is gone? Who's flying off?

Eight picks to go. And Brady Singer just went. Okay, so we're back to the pitchers. We're looking at them. I might go glass now. Grade 2 strain of the left oblique. Yeah, I'm taking him. Which means he'll definitely be gone. which means he'll definitely be gone.

He did pitch six innings last year. But do when that guy's good. I'm going for it. But this usually means those dudes are gone. See, now when you leave the league, throw it on the auto-pick. If you're not locked into the late rounds like the rest of us, you know, do us a favor, man.

Go autopick. It's clear you're not taking this seriously. I don't even have kids that's how serious. Normally I'd have to be driving somebody or picking somebody up right now. But I don't. So, Clay Holmes gone. That's all right. All right. Will Tyler be there?

Let's just double check and see if there's anything else I'm missing. I can't even pronounce this guy's name. So I'm not even going to, I'm not even going to say it. He hasn't played. He's barely played. He's barely played and he's old too.

So, all right, he's out. Can't pronounce his name. All right. Uh, pick history. Who just went? Uh, LeMahieu. All right. Pick history. Who just went? Alamehu.

All right. So this would mean we go back to pictures. Where's my guy? All right. We're taking glass now okay and I should probably take a first basement here but

I'm not go tie little tie France Josh Bell A little Thai France. Josh Bell. Cronworth. I had him last year. 30 seconds. All right, we're going Dustin May.

I just like his stuff. I like his arm angle. I like that he hides the ball. It just jumps on you. You don't see it. You don't pick it up until it's late. Cody Bellinger is still available. He batted 192 this spring okay

moving on although sometimes he's just saving it for the bigs right that's what Pedro used to do he used to like to get shelled in spring training and they would talk about it when it didn't matter there's few athletes that cared less than Pedro. Severino's deal, other than always being hurt.

18 innings total over the previous two seasons. 15 to ADL. Low-grade right lat strain. Dudes strain their sides all the time. But I'll never forget the one year I worked in minor league baseball and being around a team every single day. Again, I always kind of talk about it as like it's the foundation of how I talk about everything because I was with a team every day.

And it wasn't like I was covering the team. I'm not going to pretend like I was part of the team or something stupid like that because I was just this guy who worked out in their facility because my gym membership would be canceled all the time because I couldn't pay the bill. And then the GM got pissed at me and told me to stop working out in there. And he said, the guys are complaining. And I was like, really? I was like, they don't even use it. And it's pretty important to me. And then I went to the manager, Ron Johnson, one of the greatest dudes of all time. And I said, Hey, are you guys complaining they don't even use it and it's pretty important to me and then i went to the manager ron johnson one of the greatest dudes of all time and i said hey are you guys complaining about me using the gym and he used to wear these uh wwe t-shirts and his favorite was the rock says and it was just the

t-shirt and he cut the sleeves off and it said the rock says and he would just walk around and be like fuck no no one cares you're working out in there hell i wish some of these guys were hitting the weights so anyway being around team that much um you just learn you learn so you also kind of like get perspective too like i remember they would get smoked in a series and i'd be like how come you guys aren't more bummed out and like one it's double A dickhead and two like we play a lot of these games in a row and we can't get that high we can't get that low

with it so you know and I was like wow that's interesting I was like these guys don't take it as serious as we do and they're the ones playing so I remember watching pitchers cover first on drills and I was like, Oh my God, like every one of these guys looks like they're going to

blow out an Achilles at some point, ACL, PCL, PCL is the weird one. MCL you can come back from. Um, and you would just watch and be like, God, did you guys ever, like, how did you ever play baseball? Did you not have to run the bases in your little league? And so, yes, there are some pitchers that are athletes, right? But there's a lot that aren't. It's amazing. All right, one zip. Euler's still in the lead here.

I don't have any stats for you. I wasn't really watching. Okay, I'm on the clock here in four picks. Whit Merrifield's gone. Kyle Wright gone. Freddie Peralta gone. AJ Minder. AJ was really good a couple years ago from what I remember. I think it's because I had him.

Okay. Where's the value? Where's the value right now? What do I need? I still don't have a first baseman. Let's just see if there's a first baseman that's sort of floating around still. I go Rizzo.

Is there a young dude I'm missing? Curtis Meade? God, this rookie preview is garbage. Why am I even on this? Top prospects to draft and stash. That's what I'm looking for. Okay, all right. okay alright

okay he's gone I was looking for Jordan Walker could have done a better job with this alright we'll go back to the pitchers because they're all going to get hurt just talked about Rasmussen the pitchers because they're all going to get hurt. Just talked about Rasmussen.

Jack Flaherty. Used to love him. I'll go Rasmussen. Whatever. I don't love it either. Trey Mancini. I should probably just look at the batters here again and see if there's anything I'm missing here. if there's anything I'm missing here.

Lars is still there. Boy, I really don't seem to want to take a first baseman, do I? All right, we'll just take a first baseman here. We'll go Rizzo. Love my Yankees. Loving them. Okay. So, I've got two more picks.

Just trying to search through it all. Let's look up one more rookie thing here and see if there's any other rookies hanging around. What's up with that Mets guy? Senga Oh, he played for Nippon Oh, dude, this guy's old, huh? What's his story? How old is he? 30?

Kodai? Is that it? I don't know. I'll have it by July. If I pick him, I'll know it even sooner. All right. So that's what we're going to do is we're going to try to... Is that Grayson Kid from Baltimore?

Let's find out what's going on here. Um, triple a Norfolk. All right. So don't worry folks. Beyond that one later. What's up with Patty? Not talking about girls. what's up with Patty

not talking about girls talking about Pret AAA Syracuse didn't watch the Mets today sorry God some of these

deals I need baseball America right now at the ready. But I did get Corbin. Who is the number one fantasy, according to this website? Not sexual, just player. I could have said that better. Phrasing. Ian Happ. All right, we've got Lars still in the queue.

Let's double check and make sure he didn't end up. Did they play today? That would probably, God, hustling to find some scores today. Let's let's see, oh man, that was a wild one against the Blue Jays, uh, Newt Barr batted, uh, batted second two hole today,

and Tyler went yard, right, sure did, wait, is he not the jacked one? I didn't take him now. Jordan Walker batted eighth. All right, stop dicking around on the clock and four picks. Draygon, Lizardo's gone. Oh, God, it's unbelievable.

Kodaios gone. Oh, God. It's unbelievable. Kodai is gone. I should just start naming guys I hate so they get drafted. All right. Four picks to go here. Clay's going to be gone now, right? Yeah. At this point, it's all value. It's two bench spots.

You know, some pitcher. But I'm going to get Baseball America. I'm going to log back on, get that account going. Take a look at John gray here. Not terrible last year. One 27 and a third. Three picks to go. Who just went?

One of these other guys do. Cody Bellinger. Do we take Grayson? God, boy, he could do a new profile pick. Although I'm not exactly fucking Val Kilmer in his 20s. Adam Wainwright. DL. Dude, Michael Wacca.

I used to love that. Dude, I'll tell you, Schilling came in. He used to talk baseball with us because he played professionally. When he saw Michael Wacca throw Matt Harvey too early on, he was like, oh, my God, oh, my God. He loved those two dudes. What about Kopech? I know. I feel like this is my William Bedford pick. I just won't give up on it. I took Kopech last year. Probably don't need to take him now. All right. I'm on the clock. probably don't need to take them now all right i'm on the clock let's just take a sheet of

that cleanup for the socks and they're gonna be good i'm on auto pick what the fuck okay they just went full-blown auto pickpick on us out of nowhere. Didn't want that. We got Yoshida, though, and we got Lars, which I think we already knew. No. Okay. So there you go. My team's going to be good.

Will Myers just went 182. 182 for Will Myers. That guy got drafted all the time. I took him a couple years. All right, so that'll sum it up. An hour and six minutes. That was the draft live. Edmonton still leads the Kings one zip in the third period.

I'll get locked in on that. I will watch the Pelicans a little bit later here. Let's check in on that score. Early, early here in the first half. Well, actually late in the first half or early in the game. Pelicans lead the Nuggets, Denver. And for those that made it to the end, there's actually a reason I did this. That was terrible.

And the next time you show up to work to tell your co-workers about how your fantasy draft went in a league that they're not in, remember this episode and remember how painful that was to listen to.

And when you do the same with someone you know, maybe tighten it up a bit. Thank you for listening to the Ryan Rosillo podcast, Springer Spotify. Thank you.