This is unleashed Are you listening?
Can you hear me? Hear me.
This is unleashed Are you listening?
Can you hear me? Hear me.
This is unleashed Are you listening?
Can you hear me? Hear me.
This is unleashed. Are you listening?
Can you hear me? Up everybody BT unleashed here
we go. What's going on?
Hopefully everybody's having a good day as today's the day J
Rod today I get in the car and I head down to DC and I get ready
to jump in. I'm getting ready to jump into
something that I I don't I was thinking about this this
morning, right. I had to run out for a second
before the show. I don't know.
I don't know that I've ever looked forward to an event like
I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, you know, but that that's
like that's also a little prisoner of the moment, like,
you know, like the The Jets AFC championship games and Yankee
world like there's there's a fairly long list there.
But but I wasn't in the middle of that.
You know, I was in the stands or I was watching, you know, in
front of ATV set with a bunch of my buddies for The Jets games a
few times. So it's going to be awesome.
Man, I am so curious. We'll get to the Yankees.
Obvious. I got something on Ty Simpson as
well and, and not just for The Jets, but it, it's, it's very
interesting what's happening with Ty Simpson.
The the thing that I think is going to be really interesting
that I can't wait to see. You know, first of all, the
prices are so expensive like we talked about, right?
We talked, it's crazy to get in, but the I think the
resourcefulness of St. John's fans after being sent out
West and and you know, even though they represented very
well, there was a good contingent to Saint John's fans
out there. I'm so curious to see how
they're able to infiltrate this situation because number one,
just in terms of sheer proximity now, it's also not not that far
for UConn fans. So and UConn fans are amazing.
I mean, they up until St. John's got their act together,
Saint John, UConn would just take over the guard.
It was basically what they call that Store South or store
whatever. They got something like that,
something like that. So I know that the Husky fans
will be there. Obviously Duke fans are
everywhere and Michigan State fans are used to traveling and
going to big games and supporting Tom Izo.
So, you know, you almost wish there were a couple of programs
in there that weren't so. Close so so nearby.
That's but also so blue bloodish.
There were these, you know, the, the one thing about the Saint
John's fan base now, and they, they're, they're phenomenal and
they're, they're, they're energized, but because of this
dormancy that's that's infiltrated the program, you
know, the greater part of the century, they're not used to
traveling at this point of the year, you know what I mean?
And, and, and I, I just, I really, really think though that
the Saint Johns fans are going to be there.
They're going to be so, so strong.
They're going to be loud. Whoever's there, they're going
to be loud, that's for sure. I think the numbers will be
really good. So I can't wait.
I'm going to probably hit the road today.
Team went down yesterday. I'm going to probably hit the
road today, Jay, right around 4 I'm doing.
Are you driving down? I am, I am, yeah.
The, the team flew down yesterday and, and obviously I
could have gone on the flight with them, but there was no need
to like I didn't want to just go there, sit in a hotel room and
really do nothing. So I'll go, I'll go down today.
Yeah, it's probably going to take about, it's probably about
a 5 hour drive depending upon when I leave.
But my buddy Jimmy Faylor from Fox, I'm going to jump on his
show around 3:30 to to talk about St.
John's and Duke and I'm sure some other stuff as well.
So I wanted to make sure. Yeah, they asked me the other
day. Yeah, I'll stick around do that.
So if I wasn't doing that, I'd probably leave a little bit
earlier. But it's all good.
I'm not going to complain about logistics.
St. John's is in the Sweet 16 with a
legitimate chance to get to the Elite 8.
I think St. John's is going to win.
I got into it a little bit yesterday.
I'll get into it more tomorrow. Tomorrow will pretty much be all
Saint John's a little met reaction as well as the as the
Mets open up today at Citi Field, the Peralta era, you
know, Carson bench making his first start and doors back.
No peep. No, you know, no memo very
different look for these Mets no Diaz, but I'm very curious to
see wow of the you know, just I don't take make too much of one
game there. It's one baseball game.
But I do think that this I hit this yesterday, that this Mets
lineup is going to be a little bit more energetic, a little a
little less reliant on power because Pete's obviously gone.
But I just think top to bottom, I think the Mets lineup has a
chance to be just better, more efficient.
So I'm looking forward to watching Freddy Peralta pitch
today. Obviously last night, start with
the Yankees. I'll get to Ty Simpson in a
little bit. Listen, guys, I mean, come on.
I I understand that the whole thing with Netflix is a lot to
complain about. It was a massive production.
The commercials were annoying, you know, the, the pregame
stuff, you had actors, you had wrestlers, you had a hand going
out there throwing out the first pitch.
We're trying to, you know, it was, it was, it was dragging on
here. But you know, I mean, listen
outside. For me, my only real complaint
is because I love Netflix and I'm many of you do as well.
Now I'm not yet of the mindset where I view, I view Netflix or
even Prime as and, and Peacock for some of these other
basketball games that the Mets are on Peacock today too.
Like I'm not getting the mindset where, you know, I'm like, I'm
fully OK with that because I'm I'm just old school in the sense
that I want my Yankees on yes, I want the Mets on SNYI want the
Knicks on MSGI, want St. John's on FS1, which is the
conventional home for the Big East and all those others.
I want to watch the masters on CBS.
Like I don't want to have to jump through hoops to have two
or three different remotes to go from one streaming device to a
chat or whatever. But listen, I, I, I'm not going
to be the kind of guy who just complaints to complain.
I came home, it was a little chilly, man.
I was outside for a while yesterday.
We had baseball practice from 4:30 to 6:00 for my son's team
that I coached one of them. And then right after it on the
same field, my daughter's 9 year old team travel softball team
had an exhibition game and it was a bar burner 00.
It was just, I think they played four, maybe 5, but I think it
was 4. No runs were scored in the
entire game. Some good defense, some good
pitching. But point is I was out there.
It was cold. Like you realize when, when,
when you are a a Northeast baseball mom or dad, you know,
for the first month of the season, you're out there, you
think it's almost football weather.
Like once that sun begins to go down a little bit, as it did
right toward the end of my son's practice.
And then obviously for the start of my daughter's game, I was
chilly, man. I jumped in the car room in
between her and bats, whatever. But the point is when I got
home, we had sushi. And then I mean, it was actually
simple. Got home, think, put on Netflix,
watch the pregame show. I mean, I ignored a lot of it,
whatever, but it was, you know, like the production was what it
was. You had to expect it was going
to be an infomercial for all the Netflix programming.
And you know, I guess I'm able to compartmentalize that.
Like I I get it. I understand there's a lot of
complaints here today. They did miss the first ABS ABS
challenge. Now I don't really know.
It's easy to criticize Netflix for that if you think about it
like and and I know that they got knocked around for that
today, but I don't know how you really how you really work
around that because when they spoke with Tony Patello and
that's a very interesting move. I mean, I'm not going to get too
much into it now, but the Giants manager, I know some of you
learned this last night. Some of you really followed the
sport. So some of you already knew
this, but the Giants manager was the manager at the University of
Tennessee went from D1 high level Division One baseball to
the major leagues. Never played in the majors.
I'm not even sure if Tony played in the minors, but I know he
maybe he played. I know he never coached in the
minors, never played in the majors.
So he's the first one ever to go from, from the college game to
the pro game. I think you're going to see more
and more of that. I I really do as the game gets
younger from an executive point of view, I think you're going to
start to see these, these, these college coaches.
Because if, if you're coaching like the ACC or managing of the
ACC or the SEC, you know, it's, or even the big 10 now as these
conferences have changed, like, I mean, the, the, the, the
analytics, the usage of analytics and, and all the
technology. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's
obviously not as much as the major leagues in terms.
I love his support staff, but you're basically doing the same
thing. So when they fight, I, I, I, I
give the Giants credit. I love them for having the, you
know, the the foresight this hour.
We like this guy. We identified this guy.
And we really don't care that it's a big leap of faith that
he'll be able to make the transition.
But the point is, is that they were they were interviewing him.
And that's when Jose Caballero tapped the helmet.
Wanted to get the replay. I actually thought it was a
ball. It seemed like it was a little
bit inside. Whatever.
I mean, if we're going to start ranting and raving about now
replays for for pitch challenges on a ball and strike, now we're
just going down a rabbit hole that that I really don't have a
whole lot of interest going down.
But I mean, people are talking about the whole history was made
last night in San Francisco. Like you would think it was 1973
and Ron Bloomberg was the first designated hitter, which he was
for the New York Yankees like, and you're going to go down in
history as the the first designated hitter, right?
I saw that the Hall of Fame already took Caballero's helmet
and they wanted to authenticate that to get to get that out to
Cooperstown. All right, fantastic.
But they did get knocked around a little bit because when they
were interviewing Patello, that's when Caballero tapped the
helmet and and they missed some of it.
Now listen, it was, I timed it out.
It was about 20 seconds. It didn't take that long.
The umpire turns around, looks up, gets the thumbs up, gets the
thumb down, let's play, let's go.
It literally took 19 or 20 seconds.
So it's not a big deal. You know, you can't do it every
single pitch. So it's not going to be that
much of a hindrance in terms of the time or the pacing of the
game. And I'm of the mindset, you
know, if we're going to lean on technology, right, to see how
much somebody's, you know, curveball spins or his four
seamer spins, the revolutions or, you know, we're going to
talk about chase rate and with rate and barrel rate and all
those other exits below, then why the hell wouldn't you lean
on technology to reverse a call that was wrong?
The funny thing though, and I'm like, wait, am I, is my eyesight
going here or is it just well, it is a little bit, but or is it
or are they just missing calls? There were calls, I think the
first pitch to error judge the judge.
He had a rough night, man. He just wanted to I don't think
he cared what he did that last that bad.
I don't care if I hit A5 hopper back to the pitcher.
I just can't go down 5 whiffs. So yeah, he was going, he was
swinging early in the count. He didn't want to get deep in
the count there that that's that's a tough start for 4
strikeouts for anybody. OK, who you are.
But I thought the first pitch to Aaron Judge was a little bit
high. And I think that there were
other pitches that were, you know, outside of that little
box. I'm like that that looked like a
ball, but they're not going to challenge it.
So it's really, you know, I baseball's back.
That's what I really care about when watch the Mets today.
I know school bulls pitching today.
I'm going to check in on the game that I absolutely love and
all the other nonsense and all the other stuff that is to me,
you know, an ancillary piece of the game.
I'm not going to allow it to to strip away my enjoyment.
Yankees look really good. And listen, this is this is one
of the great things about having somebody like Max Freed and then
eventually somebody like Gary Cole and somebody like Cam
Schlittler as he evolves as a young pitcher.
See, I like right. I don't love the Yankee lineup.
You know this. I don't need to always reset my
positions. I mean, it's largely based on
quickly. I just don't like Grisham as a
lead off hitter, you know, but most of the other components I
really do like. I I, I do wish they had one more
righty, which is why I I would have liked them to be an on
Bichette. But you know, the, the, the
Yankees going to hit. I mean, the Yankees had the
number one offense in baseball last year, even if it was a
little misleading because Aaron Judge does so much and they're
reliant on the home run and all that stuff.
But one of the reasons why I think if certain things come to
fruition, and I didn't think this last year going into the
season, and I really haven't thought this for the last couple
of seasons and and go back and find the tapes, even when I was
on the fan, like I wasn't getting on the air opening day
saying, Yep, I think the Yanks are going to win the
championship. Like for me, that expired a long
time ago. There was a point where whether
it was the pursuit of a free agent or going into a big series
or, you know, down a down a game in a, in a playoff series, he
obviously in October, like because the Yankees won so much.
9698992000 you know, I mean, 2001 they should have beat the
Diamondbacks, broken back base, hit Mariano Rivera up the
middle. It happens. 2003 they let a
young Marlins pitching staff kind of punk them.
Yankees probably should have won that, but they didn't and then
obviously got a little thin at some early exits.
A rod was dumped to the bottom of the order in Detroit with
Tori, and then it just, you know, went down a little bit and
they kind of languished and plateaued out.
Then they rebuilt it in O 9. And of course, they won when
they spent $250 million that offseason getting Sabathia, who
I thought was pretty good on the game last night.
I think he's got he's got a great personality.
So I think that CC's got a chance to really grow into an
outstanding commentator. But they got CC, they got
Burnett, they got Mark to share or they win, right?
I just lay out the history because there was a point where
if you were a Yankee fan, no matter what the situation was,
you just had this innate confidence based on what you've
watched or what you, you know, previously had watched forever.
Like, Oh yeah, the Yanks are going to find a way.
Like there were points when there was a free agent, Like you
didn't sweat it. Oh, you like off the Yankees
really want him. The Yanks will get him because
they're the Yankees. They always win and they'll cut
the biggest check and you've got the OR of the Yankees.
So there was never any sweating out of Oh my, you know, they are
they going to get this guy done. You know, like like everybody
was sweating out the Sodo stuff and obviously some of the other
stuff this year, even with Bellinger, it wasn't a home run
that the Yankees were going to get the offer to the point that
Bellinger would have would have re up.
So that's long dissipated, right.
So I'm not the kind of Yankee fan.
Listen, I do this for a living. I'm not nine years old with Don
Mattingly posters all over my bedroom.
Those were in the man cave. No, but I, I'd like to think
that I, that I do objectively attack even the teams that that,
that, that I grew up rooting for and that I still, that I still
root for. So I'm not the kind of guy who,
no matter what, thinks the Yankees will win.
So I don't think the Yankees will win the World Series this
year unless and now I get to Max free the other components,
right? Last night was a great example
why you need an ace. Now a lot of people say, well,
you know, the games become a really byproduct of the bullpen.
Certainly you get to October, you've got to have high
leverage, flame throwing arms, multiple ones coming out, even
6th inning, really not even just the 8th and the 9th, certainly
7th, but it's even kind of crept into the 6th inning because
pitchers don't go that long anymore.
So you've got to have a stable of viable arms out there, right?
And and that's true. And like, you know, when, when,
when, when, when I wish I was to say when we but depending upon
how old you are, like when I was younger, every single you just
knew the ace, right, And there's obviously a few around baseball
right now. The schemes is the school Bulls,
the Freeds, Peralta for the Mets, Garrett Crochet.
There's obviously 789 legitimate top aces, but last night was an
example why you've got to feel really good, not just because
the Yankees won 7 zip and they hit, you know, and they just
look pretty sharp. But somebody like Max Freed, if
you were a if you were a little less than than Max free talent
wise, you don't make it past the third inning because he was on
the ropes in the first inning, gave up a hit.
Granted a little bloop there that that Grisham didn't get a
good jump on and that sun was tough.
I mean, a 5:00 start out West, you got the shadows halfway
across the diamond. And like it's not hard enough to
hit a fastball that, you know, although Webb doesn't throw that
hard, you know, relative to his peers.
But like when you're in the shadows and a guy's throwing
9899 miles an hour and then he busts off, you know, change up
or something soft and there's a 13 or 15 mile per hour variance
and you're trying to decipher spin and pick up what kind of
pitch it is. And Oh yeah, by the way, hit the
ball's light that it's dark that it's light again.
Good luck hitting that. I mean, even Jazz, like he said
when he was getting interviewed and out that that I enjoyed that
part. Like he when he was in second
base miked up. I do love his energy and I do
love his his most of the time, his approach to the game.
But even she's like he said, I couldn't even see that when he
got hit in the rib sack. I couldn't really see the ball.
So, you know, it's it's tough enough to do that.
Anyway, the point is, is that last night could have been
instead of a 17 or an 18 pitch first inning for Max Freed, it
very well could have been 323335 give up two runs.
Not that two runs is a deficit that you can't overcome, but
residually what that does for the rest of the game.
And then as a byproduct of that, what it does for the rest of the
series. Well, now you you unnecessarily
tax your bullpen early and then you get deeper into the series
and, you know, maybe one arm that you would want for the
third game or if you're playing A4 game series, he's not
available because he was thrust into action unnecessarily
because the starter couldn't, you know, wiggle out of a jam
early. And to me, that's the best part
about the Yankees. Obviously, you think about the
Yankees, you think about Aaron Judge.
That goes without saying. And Aaron Judge, OK, what
happened last night? You know, Aaron Judge going to
bang fifty home runs, win the MVP, drive in 120, have an OPS,
minimally over 1000, have a WAR. I don't know.
Last year it was 10. I think 3 of the last four years
or so it's been 10. Even if his WAR takes this
massive drop to 8 1/2 or 9, you know he's going to be the legal
leader in WAR. You would think that he would
be. So obviously Judge is the man,
but the Yankees real chance to win a World Series this year is
going to be the starting pitching.
And I I identified this a while ago where, you know, just
following Gerrard Cole's comeback and obviously the
emergence of Cam Schlettler. And now you get to to a point in
the season here and, and we're obviously not there yet.
We just started, but all right, you give the ball to Max free,
then you give the ball to Cole, then you give the ball to
Schlittler. Eventually when Cole comes back,
then, Oh yeah, by the way, you know, maybe Boone flips it,
maybe Rodon becomes 3 and Schlittler becomes 4.
Maybe. But either way, you know, if
Rodon's a three, he's a pretty good three.
If he's a four, he might be the best 4IN baseball.
And then even as you stretch things out and get to the number
5 spot in the Yankees rotation, whether it's Will Warren or
Clark Schmidt or whomever, well, now that number 5 is going to
be, I would think the constably better than almost any other
team in baseball. They're #5 So the Yankees are
obviously going to win a lot of regular season games.
And because they have, you know, even without Cole right now and
Rodan, you know, somebody like Freed, it's just paramount
because there's a chance like let's just say Schlitter doesn't
have it. You know, let's say that Ryan
Weathers, I mean, you know, I know he throws hard and he he's
electric. He's got electric stuff.
He's a lefty 9899. All right, very interesting
upside. Injury prone.
Yankees are very good with these reclamation projects, if you
could call them that for the pitching department.
They really don't do it with hitters.
They're great with it in pitching and when when you have
competent arms and competent arms on the back end and elite
arms on the front end, well, you #1 you obviously win a lot of
games. But also those guys on the front
end, when they don't have their best stuff, they find a way to
plow through it and then they find their good stuff.
And you know, I don't think that Max Freed had his best stuff
last night to start a matter of fact, the post game show.
I don't even know what the post game show was about.
Like let like last night's, even though I'm not, I'm not really
bagging on that Netflix's coverage.
It was what it was. But what in the world were they
doing post game? I mean, they're giving out
jackets. You got Jameis Winston slinging
hot dogs. Get your hot dogs.
Yeah. You want onions?
You want sauerkraut? What do you want on your hot
dog? Max?
For Max. I had a laugh.
I think it was called like the maybe the champion dog.
What? Whatever the hell it was and the
jihadi who did a good job with that tough spot.
I don't think anybody's going to look great doing that because it
was corny. But she was good and she's
talented. And she, I think she or, or
maybe Jameis said, Hey, what kind of hot dog you want?
And you see Max free like he's like, you got the champion, you
got this. He's like, I'll take the
champion hot dog. So jihadi's like, hey, you going
to eat it? And or no, he opened it.
And she was like, well, what are you doing?
He's like, but I don't even know what's in it, you know, very
nicely. But can I take a look at what
hot what, what, what's on the what's on the hot dog?
I mean, it was just a weird setup, really.
I think it was called the Netflix MVP jacket.
I mean, like the leather sleeves, like the old 1960s or
70s varsity jacket. You handed out varsity jackets.
You're slinging hot dogs. I mean, that was corny.
Like the other stuff was just kind of long, you know?
All right, here's the WWE promo. Here's John Cena talking about
ABS. Here's that other guy coming out
hyping up the crowd. Here's the comedian, here's the
hand dancing across the field. First pitch with a hand from
from the Addams family. Like there was a lot of wacky
shit going on, but it was fine. But the the the last thing that
I watched at the end, that's where I'm like, I would jump in
the shark here, guys. I mean, it was it was just a
little weird, but you know, Freed to me if that's a lesser
pitcher, right? Say if that, and I think will
Warren's fine, but I'm going to use will Warren right?
So say if the Yankees don't have a Max Freed, say if he never
signed with them and Garrett calls out, well, now you've got
a completely different complexion.
There's if that's the case, there's a chance somebody like
well may have been Cam Schlittler, who I love, but it
it may have been somebody like Louise Hill, who's not even the
starting the year on the team. He might have been the opening
day starter, right. And if somebody like Louise
Hill, he's a better example than Will Warren, because when Louise
Hill doesn't have it right away, you know it.
And he almost never fights out of it.
And it's an uphill battle. Can't find the strike zone,
can't command the secondary stuff, can't really locate his
fastball, can't work ahead. And when that's the case, you
know, here comes the pitch count.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. It continues to grow.
And then invariably, you know, you give up a couple of runs,
which obviously you know, for the end result is not good.
But now you got a guy who's thrown 67 pitches.
It's, you know, 3 2/3 or 4 to 3rd, you know, bullpen, bullpen,
bullpen, 3 or 4 more arms that you don't necessarily want to
use. You know, Yankees didn't really
use their high leverage arms less, but no need to they didn't
at all. Not not that they really didn't.
They didn't. So kudos to Max freed for for
for plowing through that because that very easily could have been
again, a 35 or 36 pitch inning. And instead it was not.
So Yankees start the season the right way.
They look pretty good. They look pretty sharp, good
energy. And you know, I, I, I think
it's, I think it's just tight. It's right that baseball back.
My God. I mean, it's just awesome
sitting there watching baseball. I love it.
And the other thing I don't have a problem with and it this isn't
whether it's a Netflix thing or whatever other streaming outlet.
No, Apple, obviously Apple does baseball.
Like people talk about growing the game of baseball, right?
And how it's lost some popularity and it certainly has.
I mean, you know, think about the mantra, America's pastime,
the 50's, the golden age of baseball.
It was a song. Willie, Mickey and the Duke, you
know, Willie Mays, Duke Snyder, Mickey Mantle, of course, and
three great center fielders, Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, New
York. And that golden age of baseball,
that era, you know, that was he coming off World War 2 and guys
like Ted Williams and and and and so met Bob Felder, so many
great all time baseball players. They lost a couple of years of
their prime fighting for our country.
So when they came back, they were they were obviously
embraced and obviously uplifted. And NFL wasn't nearly as
popular. You know, hockey is, I don't
want to say hockey's a niche sport that's not a dish dish,
but it's not as it's just, it's just not as popular.
So the NBA certainly in the 50s, I mean, it barely existed.
And then in the 70s it was basically dying and you had the
ABA and it was it was, it was riddled with drugs and poor
attendance and it was a broken product.
And then obviously Magic and Bird, they you know, they
helped, they did perfect timing. You know, white guy from the
farm, black dude with style, totally different players.
They play in the NC double, you know, just in terms of how they
play the game play in the NCAA championship.
You got the Hick from the farm. It's just with the Courtney
moustache and he's a tight shorts and you know like he just
he looks like a complete non athlete.
But then he goes out there, he kills everybody.
But his style was so different and then he got magic.
The swag, you know, he had, he had the little Afro back then,
the no look passes, you know, the chain.
And it was, you know, hey, Celtics on the East, Lakers on
the West, white guy, black guy that obviously helped rebuild
the NBA. And then Jordan came in the mid
80s etcetera and it just exploded took off right Barkley,
all those stars, Ewing came to the Knicks, the Knicks became
good again. So baseball to me has has
certainly withstood the test of time.
It will because I think that they finally learned they needed
to modernize some things with the pace.
I think the level of athleticism in baseball is off the charts.
It's never been like this. I mean, if you look look at some
old baseball cards really from the 80s, right?
And obviously before that, but I'm just talking about when I
started looking at baseball cards in the 80s, right?
You know, your first baseman was generally a, you know, a guy
looked like he could be a bouncer.
Your left fielder, your right fielder had an arm, but he
really couldn't run a lick. You know, your catcher was going
to hit two O 9 with four home runs and like think like Ron
Karkovice guys. It just looked awful in uniforms
and could not run at all. Your shortstop was going to hit
230 and bumped every time up. Your second baseman pretty much
the same thing as slap guy. You had three hitters that you
really had to worry about that you had to navigate in the
lineup. Now it's totally different.
Almost everybody could run. Almost everybody's got juice in
their bats and just a little side turn here.
What's happened in the game of baseball?
And then I want to get back to the marketability of the game.
But what's and and tying it in with Netflix, What happened?
What had happened was what what happened.
I'd say about I've been saying that I remember saying this to
Tiki when we were doing the national show and, you know,
explaining to him how the game was changing from an athletic
point of view, right. So back in the day, you would
have, all right, you know, we have a college first baseman or
high school first baseman, and that guy would get drafted.
And he would, if he made it, if he was good, if he hit enough,
he'd be a Major League first baseman, right?
And then same thing you'd have like an outfielder.
Grant is an outfielder. What happened, I'd say probably
about 20 years ago, is that almost all of these teams just
started drafting. I mean, not, I mean I'm a little
hyperbolic here, clearly, but for the most part, they focused
on shortstops and they would get, you know, the best high
school shortstops and the best college shortstops and then they
would all get drafted. And they still, this still
happens like the Yankees a couple of years ago, drafted I
think 5 or 6 different shortstops.
Of the 5 or 6, maybe one will make the minors, but I can
promise you of the five of them will make the majors.
But of the five or six that were drafted, I can also promise you
that maybe one or two will wind up playing shortstop extensively
and exclusively in the mitre. So they'll draft all these short
stops. And then based on natural
nutrition, how you handle the position, how your body grows,
you know, and develops as you get older, how you hit,
obviously you know you'll get moved off the position.
And a guy who is drafted as a shortstop before you know it,
maybe he's playing center field, maybe he's playing left field.
Obviously a lot of short stops. If they, you know, a tick slow,
whatever it might be in the range department, boom, move 25
feet to your right or third baseman or boom, move 25 feet to
your left and you are a second baseman.
And then a lot of lefties that were drafted that were, were
good athletes, you know, pitchers, outfielders, first
baseman, those guys generally gravitate to the position of of
first base. So even first base has become
much more athletic. So the game is incredibly
healthy from an athletic and an explosive perspective.
That's something deniable. Just trust me on that.
So if all that's changing, right, don't you think that we
have to kind of just suck it up and take it on the chin and
understand that the marketability of the sport to
match the other sports popularity, particularly
football in the NBA? Don't you think it's got to take
a little bit of a script from WWE, like a little bit of a
circus element, the high production stretch things out.
That's why to start the show, you know, I said, all right, you
got the comedian, you got the WWE guys, you got the little
hand dancing across the field on a skateboard.
I think it was whatever the hell it was.
So I just I've learned to accept it.
I think most of the kids find it cool.
Like at one point my son did say, listen, all right, let's
let's start the game. But you know, like when he sees
a wrestler cutting promo on the middle in the middle of the
diamond, he's not thinking because he's 11.
He's not thinking what I'm thinking to an extent, even
though I'm, you know, I'm not going to be that guy.
Get off my lawn. You got to evolve, you got to
grow. He's not thinking like, what the
hell is this weird man? What's going on?
Because that's kind of all he knows.
Like that's all he's been exposed to.
And and I think. We'll be right back.
Read that. I don't know, am I?
I mean, you are right now. You are right now.
Hang on, make sure this is OK. This fucking thing.
Oh my gosh. All right.
Yeah, I think, I think we're good.
I think we're good. We're good.
All right, we're good now. We're good.
Jesus, I don't know.
I don't know why that happened. Netflix pulled the plug on you.
But I'm not going through Netflix here.
You know, I'm going through a company that I've worked with
forever that I love. So anyway, sorry about that
guys. The I guess the presentation of
baseball, you just going to have to learn to deal with it because
I, I get it. Sometimes it's cathartic to
complain to. It is I I get it makes you feel
good, right? You know, you, you take
something. Certainly I feel better.
You know, when The Jets lose 30 to 6, I feel a little bit better
getting on the air and losing my mind that just eviscerating
everybody, even though it doesn't solve anything.
Nothing really changes until it changes.
But I think that some of you in your protest with the way the
game of baseball has gone, you know, kind of reaching into some
of the other tricks of the other sports.
I think that maybe you think in some weird way or some some
convoluted way that that's going to be heard and that's going to
change the way they actually attack the sport and market the
sport. And it's not, it's going to get
more and more and more WWE because that sells.
So I, I did enjoy the game. You know, again, a couple times
I'm like, let's go. It's taking a long time here,
but baseball's back now. Jay, you're, you're interesting
to ask here because you're, you're basketball's your
favorite sport. By the way, Jay Rod's back for
the dead. I mean yesterday.
You know, shout out, shout out, my man Yitzy from high urgent
care. He he revived me.
He did my guy, my guy. Yes, Sir.
Is there anything real quick? Is there anything better than
than urgent care? Like when I was when I was
young, I remember like, yo, if you had like strep throat or
yeah, you had a real fever, 103, we had something else, whatever.
And you couldn't go to school, which was awesome.
When you when you, when you miss school.
I mean, it was like there's a snow day and there's a sick day.
And if you're a little sick, then it's great.
If you're really sick, it kind of stinks because you can't do
anything. But there were no urgent cares
when I was young. Like I had to go.
Doctor Cuskin, I don't know how I still remember my Yeah, but
I'm talking about when I was like 567.
I still remember what his office looked like, guys, a million
years ago, million years ago. But I also remember like, and it
was around the corner. So we walked there, my mom and I
and the OR and and my sister, if she was, if she was sick too,
and we but we'd be in the waiting room forever.
Now you just go in, you're literally going to urgent care.
Like if you think you have COVID.
Yeah. You want a COVID test?
I'm not. I usually I'd never get one, but
I mean, I did when it first started.
But yeah, yeah. You want a test?
No. Good.
Yeah. All right.
Here's no, you don't have COVID now.
You don't have this. I don't have strep.
I don't have the hey, you know, here's a little amoxicillin, you
know, here's, you know, 5 pills that you take or Z pack.
You take this. Z Pack's the best.
See, I ever. Here's the other thing, Jay,
that I remember too, Like when, when we, when, when we were sick
as kids, there'd be like 5 bottles of shit that you had to
take the cough syrup, which tasted awful.
I mean, that was awful. I hate that stuff.
You know, but then there was like this pill and that pill and
I, you know, and now, which is like, all right, here's AZ pack
and then our urgent care and we have, we have primary doctors,
but the, our urgent care is right next to the pharmacy.
So I'm going to call it in. You walk 2 steps next door, you
pick it up, you go home, you start.
I think the first day you pop the 2 pills and then it's one
day after. So good to see that you're back
from the dead because you're looking awful.
Like I was worried about you, Jay.
I mean, I, I honestly was not sure I was going to going to
make it through the day yesterday, but you know what,
like, I'm glad, I'm glad everything cleared up pretty
quickly and back at it. Good man, good.
So as I start to ask you here, do you, as you watch these games
now, whether it's the NFL on Prime, baseball on Apple,
baseball on Netflix, what is your mindset?
Do you think it's too much, too hokey, 'cause you're younger and
you process this stuff differently?
Because it's kind of all you know, not all you know, you're
not nine years old, but you know what I mean.
No, I mean, for me, I think, listen, I think there's a little
too much theatrics for some of it.
I think maybe you could go for one or two things.
Maybe you go for the Jay USO and the Little West Side Story
people dancing on the taxis and stuff like that.
Like, yeah, I think that's fun. I don't think you need the whole
smorgasboard of everything coming at you.
But yeah, I mean, I think for the younger audiences, like
you're saying, like your son, you know, it gets him into it
with some of the synergy from, you know, the other products and
stuff like that. Do I personally need it as, you
know, someone who, yeah, I'm still a younger audience, but
does it really get me amped up to see Jay USO and some yeet
sunglasses? Not not, not in entirely, but
yeah, I think it's fun. I think it's good, like I said,
good synergy, good to bring in multiple brands, multiple fans
from other entities. But on the whole, no, it doesn't
really impact my want or desire to watch a game.
So, but all right, so it doesn't impact your want through your
desire, but does it take away from your viewing pleasure?
2 very different things, no? I think it just kind of I think
it kind of just makes me go, you know, today, today, today, like
once it once you hit like the because what was it?
The game was supposed to tip off at nine O 5.
It started like 930. Or eight O 5.
It was 20 minutes of the nonsense like it was getting.
Yeah, that's. What I mean once once we got to
like, I'm trying to think, I think once we got to what did
the Giants come off like a bus? I mean, obviously both teams got
to the thing, the trolleys. Yeah, once you got off of done
with that, I think you could have just ripped the game after
that. So yeah, got a little impatient.
But no, on the whole it is what it is.
I wouldn't mind seeing like the Yankees, you know, and, and a
lot of Yankee fans would resist this because they're so rooted
in tradition and as am I. But like, you know, the beard
policy now, the fact that it was for Devin Williams and Devin
Williams pretty much sucked last year and now he's gone.
All right. That's who you that's who you
bent the rules for, you know, or even the the patch with with
Star Insurance, who I have a lot of good friends there, you know,
Star Insurance, great people. I think they paid 20 or $25
million to have that patch on the jersey, the advertising.
And you know, the soccer team started doing that first, then
the NBA, then the NFL, the practice jurors.
He's like you're either first or you're 4th.
I mean, but eventually you get to jump in and grab a piece of
the financial pie or you're an idiot.
Like that's the commissioner's job to do that, that as an
owner, that is your job to to help increase the revenue
stream. So if I've got a great insurance
company like Star and they're willing to pay me 20 or I think
it was $25,000,000.20 or $25 million per year, I think was
per year to to have that visible for every single Yankee game, no
matter what station or streaming they're on.
To me that's a win win, 25,000,000 bucks in my pocket.
And if I'm Star, I'm sitting there saying, okay, and by the
way, $25 million, you know, would pay for probably, you
know, a good, I'd say, depending upon which players we're talking
about, obviously back in the roster.
And that's 8910 players right there.
Yeah, You know, because Rice doesn't make it.
Rice isn't making money yet. Wells isn't making money.
Caballero's not making a lot of money.
Bope, he's not making a lot of money.
Some of these, you know, Louise, Heels not making a lot of money.
Will Warren, Clark, Schmidt, these guys aren't making any
loot. The real guys making the loot.
Judge Stanton, Gerrit Cole, Max Freed, Grisham at the 22 this
year and Bellinger as pretty much it.
So, yeah, I, you know, like, so I do think that Yankee fans
would kind of roll their eyes if if we were to see this for the
Yankee home opener. But if you're going to do
something to symbolize the city, right, like they obviously did
last night, the trolley and how the Giants came out of that,
Well, then, I mean, listen, you kind of biting off the idea you
want to be original. So I, I, they, they wouldn't do
it. But like, if you told me that
there was like the fake train with graffiti on it, like that
just looked like New York, right?
And you had Yankee stepping off the train to like.
You know I'd be sad. Pounding throughout the stadium,
I was like, that's pretty cool. I like.
It even and even if you get like if you had like a dude like Nas
come out with the Yankees rapping New York State of mind
or doing, you know, something from Illmatic, you got him
coming out who's like a famous San Francisco artist.
I'm trying to E40 something like that.
I mean. He's you pulling something.
But but yeah, yeah. Journey right and journey from
out there. I thought they.
Were yeah, yeah, I guess it'd be a little bit if they came out
and did. Don't wait, I'd be sick.
Don't stop believing as you're coming off the trolley.
That would be. Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
No, San Fran at that stadium is at that stadium is absolutely.
Oh, my bad. Hold on.
I was trying to pop something up here.
James, 555K. The inside of the stadium there
is the nicest part of San Francisco these days.
I have not been to San Francisco in a while.
I know it's a massive complaint. I know you can get that off
there, Jay. Thank you, brother.
I, I know that homelessness has, has always been an issue in San
Francisco, sadly. I mean, listen, when you, when
you, when you look at just like the topography of that part of
the country, I mean, it's absolutely gorgeous.
Like I've, you know, I told you we lived there for about two
years and the way the stadium set up, have you ever been
there? I don't know if I asked you.
Have you been to that stadium? The furthest out West I've been
is Texas so. Oh my God, barely West of the
Mississippi. You got to get out there, my
man. Big time.
Yeah, dude, all right, you're young, but you got to do it.
So, so imagine I'm going to try to explain it to you here.
So you got the stadium and then you've got it's it's within like
their, one of their, you know, I don't know, cool areas called
Stoma, South of market South, South of markets.
That's the acronym SOMA South of market, Market Avenue, I guess
so like our Soho or something like that, right.
Got it. And we lived there.
We had a really nice apartment. Oh God, we were.
We were probably 4/10 of a mile from Oracle Park right there.
That's. So nice.
Oh my goodness, phenomenal. My wife was selling for the, for
the TV station there, like their regional cable network.
And I know I mentioned that before.
So we would get, or she would get and then by extension, I
would get, we'd sit right beyond the Giants dugout because, you
know, we got to know the Giants owner a little bit and it was
just awesome. So we would walk there like on a
Sunday and get like the garlic fries, maybe get a Margarita.
And it really is an absolutely beautiful vibe.
And, and right, I, I know you saw the panoramic shot.
You see a lot of water. I know you know about Mccovey's
Cove in right field, everybody with the canoes, right?
But like right behind the stadium is, is what they call
the Embarcadero. And it's basically imagine like
the West Side Highway, people bike the West Side Highway.
OK, well, this is like the West Coast or San Francisco's version
of, of the, of the West Side Highway, only this is a lot
nicer, right? And I know they built up the
West Side Highway, but this is gorgeous.
So it's right on the water, a lot of different restaurants and
you can literally walk base. And I've done it and it's not
it's, it does it like it's a long walk, man.
You can walk from Oracle all the way down to Fisherman's Wharf.
I mean, if I was to Google it, I'd have to say it's probably 5
miles. It's I think it's about a five
mile walk, something like that. You could bike, you could walk,
you could skate, you can, You Can Dance, whatever you want to
do. And then really what what I
think really makes it pop. And I do think God bless the
Yankee Stadium. I love it.
The Bronx, all that stuff, City fields, nice, great Dodger
Stadium, OK, but everything around it, like you've got the
Bay Bridge and you've got the Golden Gate Bridge and you've
got Alcatraz. It's just, it's it palm trees,
even though it's not San Diego, it's gets a little chilly.
It's just gorgeous, man. But yeah, I mean, I, I know it's
taking a sharp, it's, it's in sharp decline, but really the
entire state of California is in in a lot of trouble there.
So, but even when I even when I lived there, I'm trying to think
about the economy in 2010, 2011 there, the homelessness was
still an issue in San Francisco. Because I remember I, I, I would
walk from our apartment to my old radio station and I would
pass like I have to go like under or under an overpass, not
on a highway, but just whatever. And I would see, you know, a lot
of a lot of tents set up and a lot of homeless people.
It's unfortunate. It's horrible.
But yeah, I mean, I haven't been there in a while.
So the other thing that I that I have learned to be fair is that
it's not a political commentary, but a lot of things that are
said about certain areas, they're a little bit overstated.
Again, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about how the
cities run politically. And I'm not even talking about
the the economics. Like California as a state is
busted. Like it financially truly is
busted, right? And in a lot of ways, so is New
York. But I remember hearing when, you
know, when I found out we're going to San Diego for Saint
John's. You know, San Diego, it's
gorgeous, but man, homelessness everywhere.
It's a mess. I was walking around, walked to
the Brazilian steakhouse. I walked around down to the
Marina. I didn't really see.
I didn't, you know, I didn't really see.
I did see on the highway as we were, you know, taking the team
bus to the arena, either for shoot around for practice or the
game and the game that had the police escort, which is always
which is always cool. The the the California Highway
look remember the old show chips You you can't remember.
I mean, I remember like either seeing like spoofs on it or
seeing like maybe an intro or certain shot.
No, I took ATV class where we watched an episode of it.
Are you serious? 100% yeah.
We did like a whole run through like just history of TV and we
watched chips. That actually sounds like a
really cool course. It was cool.
It was awesome. It was, it was with this guy Bob
Thompson. He's like a pretty, he does like
journalism, like on TV and stuff like that.
So he's a cool guy. The so so those guys who would
give you the escort, they were wearing the, the, the, the chips
gear, like the big black gloves and the tan outfit, the
sunglasses. It look like you want to mess
around with these dudes. I used to love that show.
I, I, Erik Estrada was on it. The other guy, he had Ponch and
John and then you had the the police captain and I just love
the music. Bam, Wham, bam, Wham, bam, Wham.
Like edited chips. God, those 70s and early, I
guess that was that had to be the 80s because I wasn't
watching in the 70s. Yeah, great show.
It was, it was the 80s, right. So either way, you know, Yeah.
I mean, I was just reacting to that comment.
I I don't know. I mean, I know what I hear.
I have not been to San Francisco in a while, but the ballpark is
phenomenal. It really is.
It's just gorgeous restaurants and boating and and anything
that you want. We actually rode our bike over
the this. I would let you.
I wouldn't do this if you paid me again, dude.
So I really wouldn't. And I listen, you know, and I'm
talking about if you paid me a lot of money, I'm not sure I
would do this. We biked, we did it.
One of the worst ideas I ever had.
Oh, let's go. You know, we had just gotten
married way before kids, all that stuff we tried married six
months. Hey, let's go to there was some
sort of boating sailboat competition like in the Marina
that we went through, which is really cool like, you know, like
craft beers and food and like just awesome just a good day
walking around Hey, what? Oh, there's tandem bikes.
Let's let's take a tandem bike over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Oh my gosh. Dude, it sounded like such a
great idea. First of all, to even get out of
where I forget where we were, whatever park, not Warren Park,
not Harding, wherever we were to get out of the park, just to
like get to the base of the bridge.
It was, it was like climbing Mount Everest here and it would
get tandem. You know, my wife's smaller but
and she's she's a good athlete, but I feel like I'm doing all
the work. And then we finally get when you
have you ever walked across any bridge, Brooke?
Oh, I mean, I've walked, I've, I've had, I've made similar
mistakes trying to bike over the Williamsburg Bridge.
OK, so you know what I'm saying. Yeah, big time.
The crown like oh this is easy. I remember when I was doing
Boomers bike tour, the last stretch was getting over the
crown of the Barrazzano. And I'm not ashamed to admit I
got off my bike and I was walking for a little bit.
I'm like, I'm fucking between the chafing in between my my and
I put. And he told me he's like, dude,
put Vaseline on your legs and get the bike shorts with the
pads. I'm like, God, I got you.
I got you. I'm ready, I'm ready.
I mean, I'm chafing everywhere, I'm sweating, I'm tired.
I think it was 40. I get the metal over there.
I think it was 45 mile 45 or 50 miles, man.
And I hadn't biked forever. And I remember the night before,
true story, the night before I was and I, I got, it's too long
of a story to tell, but somebody who used to listen to the fan
that became a friend runs a bike shop and I remember talking
about it on the air. I might do this for Boomer.
I might do this with Boomer, you know, for his Cystic Fibrosis
Foundation, which was great And but I'm like, I don't have a
bike. I haven't ridden a bike.
Well, anyway, this guy say, Hey, I got you.
So I actually need him. I, I buy him dinner, buy him a
beer and he drops this sick bike off.
It had to be a $1500 bike, like legitimate bike man, right.
And like one of those hybrids, not off road, not those little
teeny tiny skinny tires like a man's bike dude.
It was, it was, it was awesome. And, and I remember, I mean, I,
I didn't, I didn't really train that much.
I didn't, well, I took it like for a ride twice just to get
used to it in the neighborhood, maybe a mile.
And then the night before, I'm in my backyard at the fire pit
with a couple of guys from town that I'm buddies with.
And I had the bike tour the next day and the, I think we had a
baseball game that night. I coached their kids and we're
good buddies. And we're sitting in the
backyard and I'm like, yeah, I have a beer, whatever.
And before, you know, it's like 11:00.
It's still having a good vibe. I don't really want to go in
it's 12 O clock, it's 12:30. I'm like they're like, you could
actually do this bike toward them.
I'm like, yeah, I could do it. I could do it.
So anyway, the crown of a bridge is absolutely brutal.
So I admittedly couldn't finish it, although I finished the
race. I walked the rest of the way for
boomers thing. But when we did this with the
Golden Gate Bridge, it was crazy dude, because it was so hard.
It really was maybe just I'm maybe I'm just a wuss on a bike.
I don't pretend to be a great bike right, I get that, but it
was really physically exerting. But the good part about him,
once you you actually got to the crown and for those of you who
know the Golden Gate and know the surrounding areas of of the
Bay Area, you coast all the way down into Sausalito, which is a
beautiful town, water restaurants.
So we just coasted literally didn't even have to pedal.
We were in neutral the whole way and we just wound up putting the
bikes on the side, sat outside, had a nice dinner and then we
ubered it back. I'm like there's.
No. I'm going back over that bridge
so the Yankees get off to a good start.
Happy about that. Stadium look great whatever the
pregame postgame theatrics, they are what they are.
You kind of knew it was coming with Netflix.
You didn't think that they would have some benign presentation.
It's Netflix man and if you're baseball is part of the deal
that you have to make to keep making money.
You almost have to swallow hard if you're if you're if you're
like if my dad's watch, I don't even I don't even know if my dad
was able to. I know that they have Netflix,
but I don't even know if he watched the game like if my mom
was out, he didn't watch the game because I don't know if he
knows how to get on Netflix. So if you're if you're the older
generation, you know, and even if you did watch it, then you're
probably sitting there saying, all right, what a hokey
presentation. This is just bullshit.
Come up, give me the game. But you know, I think if you're
a little younger than that, you accept it for what it is.
And it's the growing, it's the new business model.
So all good. I'm not going to complain just
to complain. So the Yankees did look good.
Jay, get a bunch of texts up there about that about the
Yankees. I want to get into something I
saw on Ty Simpson, which I think is very interesting.
I want to read this one first. All right, BT what else do you
want to who else do you want to hit lead off?
Let's see. Yeah, Grishit lead off for the
majority of the year. And they had the best office in
baseball. Austin Rice, SFG.
All right, that's I mean, yeah, I get that part.
I just don't think he's a conventional lead off hitter.
You know, he's you know, he's I don't know, there's just
something about him that I I just he doesn't profile to me as
a lead off man, you know, 34 home runs.
I know the OPS was good. He's going to run into a bunch
of balls this year. He's he's a fine center fielder.
But I wanted a guy like Grisham. Put it this way, when the
Yankees were winning World Series after World Series, would
you had a guy like Trent Grisham leading off?
The answer is no. And like, to me, that is
emblematic of not the demise of the Yankees, because that's
ridiculous, because the Yankees are still really good.
But the evolution, that's not a compliment of the Yankees.
Like, I don't want him batting first.
And you know, I've told you this every time it comes up.
Boone has his booty called me yesterday, by the way.
I was talking to booty before the game.
He was checking in. He's going to come on the show.
I don't know when soon. He's like, let me just get a
couple of games under our belt so we'll have something to talk
about. I'm like, oh, good, I got you.
He was just going to check in. I think he was going to check in
to see what I went. What the fuck happened with Gio?
I think, you know, he's like, what's going on over there?
But what am I missing? I'm like, not much.
He didn't miss much, man, that's for sure.
So anyway, the, the, the, the lead off spot to me.
And it's not just subscribing to an old antiquated philosophy.
I don't need you to to be a speed merchant.
I don't need you to run a 644, you know, 460 and be that kind
of a lead off man. I don't, I don't need you to be
a Punch and Judy guy, But I just, I just need somebody that
I feel like against a good pitcher, like a late game high
leverage flamethrower, you know, elite closer, elite set up, man.
I just, I mean, I can lean on numbers.
That's the easy thing. But the eye test, I look at
Trent Grisham and I feel like his is that bats aren't quality
enough for me to be a lead off hitter.
I don't want Trent Grisham getting in the way.
Here's really my main gripe here to answer it more directly.
My main gripe is I don't want him being the bridge and also
being a deterrent in in those situations to getting the bat or
passing the baton to Aaron Judge.
That's really what it comes down to.
I mean, think really guys, think about it's also a million years
ago, but think about like those 77 and 78 Yankee championship
teams. Who was the lead off man?
What was Mickey Rivers? Totally different game and I
don't even really ever remember Mickey playing.
I just missed that that Yankee era.
I knew he ran like the wind. They had a higher batting
average than you would probably think if you actually looked at
the stats. But you know, it was a you were
able then to get to Reggie and those guys, Thurman, etcetera,
right, Greg Metals, you know, and then obviously much more my
generation. Well, I mean, in the 80s you had
Ricky Henderson for five years, 4 1/2 years with the Yankees.
And then you had Derek Jeter and you had Nobby and you had like
Soriano a little bit. But it's just it's they've
gotten further and further and further and further away from,
you know, my ideal lead off hitter.
Now, if Jazz had a little bit more of a discerning eye and
wasn't always swinging for the fences and had a little bit
better contact rate, then I'd say he'd be perfect.
Because he does fly and he can. I mean, he he's got easy power
as well. Like he doesn't hit cheapies
when he hits him, he hits him. He's got that wiry strength, you
know, that explosive very, you know, very fluid, fast, quick
bat boom. So I mean, he profiled great,
but he just strikes out a little bit too much.
So that's my answer. You know, I think Lindor's a
better Lido fitter, you know, and, and I think there's other
better Lido fitters like I would love, I would have loved for the
Yankees to have gotten say they would have gotten Bichette.
Well, now you got another righty hitter and now all of a sudden
you go, all right, let's go one, let's go Bichette who's clutch
on base, All those numbers that you know, especially if you're a
Met fan or Toronto Blue Jay fan. So so somebody like Bichette in
the leadoff hole, then you get judge #2 then you get bellinger
#3 and then you get Rice, who was batting 4th last night.
Obviously that's righty. So maybe against the left, you
put Stanton in the four spot that there's some wiggle room
there and then you put Stanton 5.
So I that that to me is much more my preference.
But they didn't do that. Even if they would have gotten
somebody like Kyle Tucker, I would have preferred somebody
like Kyle Tucker as a leader. I just think those guys are
better than Grisham, period. All right, Avery Summit notice
after when Caballero lost the challenge on the next pitch, the
I'm called and Abby's ball to strike.
They're humans too. It'll be interesting to see how
they respond to being showed up in front of 40,000.
Oh, this is their worst nightmare.
Oh my God, are you kidding me? I mean, it's their absolute
worst nightmare. Think about this, right?
I'll give you a good example. I'll personalize it for a
minute. So everything is presentable now
in in a way that that it that it just was not presentable that
forever. So if you're an umpire, well, or
an NBA ref or an NFL ref and Cole's reversed, I mean, all
right. I mean, if it's an egregious
miss, you're going to lose some respect with the league office
when they grade you, which will determine who does the playoff
games, who does the World Series, who does the Super Bowl.
I mean, that's all graded out. If you don't grade out well, you
don't get those, those late season responsibilities, which
is which is good. So there is at least some
accountability there. And I would imagine if you grade
out, you know, too poorly for too long, eventually you're
going to disappear, kind of disappear, right?
So now it's like as soon as there's a bad call, bang right
on social media, everybody sees it, everybody weighs in.
And to personalize it. A good example is this nonsense
that's been going on this week with me and Greg.
Think about it so back and and I know that Mike like I don't
Mike, I don't I don't think that Mike ever, you know, engaged in
these kind of radio beeps or whatever radio, whatever you
want to call it. But like, say if he did right,
you know, in 1993 or 1994, all right, maybe Raisman would write
about it, but the whole world wouldn't jump in and have an
opinion and just continue. You know, it wouldn't be a three
day story, which is what this nonsense turned into with me and
Greg. You know who, by the way, did
turn down the invitation to come on the show?
He said it was funny what he said too.
He's like, yeah. He's like, I don't I don't want
the ratings to to go down. First of all, problem.
And the ratings are good. So I'm not just going to say
stuff that's that's not accurate.
The ratings are very good on the show.
But I promise you, if I actually came in studio, it will be the
highest rated segment of the week.
So that would be good for you. The bad thing is you would lose.
So, so I understand why you don't want to do that.
I do get that part. But like things like that, they
just go on forever. They go on forever.
And then, you know, eventually they dissipate.
Like this one's dissipating now and you know, and then there's
the next little flare up that or the next little story, the next
Miss cold, the next egregious botch of whatever.
So I, I think, yeah, they're they're going to be very
sensitive to it. And there's less to argue about.
And, and that's the one of the things that I don't like about
this. And I know we've gotten further
and further away from this. Like, what was the last time you
saw a manager like RIP a base out of out of the field?
And like, I think the last time I saw that was McClendon from
the Pirates. I think he did that a long time
ago or like Wally Bachman, if you ever saw that video when he
was in the minors code to managing the minors, throwing
Batsa on the field and balls and going absolutely bonkers, which
was a Wally bag. That stuff's funny.
That's some old YouTube stuff that you guys can go and really
enjoy, you know, But now, I mean, Boone will have moments
where he he obviously flips out here.
But when Boone flips out, it's usually at an egregious goal,
you know, low in the zone to judge or up and they call the
strike and you know, I mean, we're savages, you know, that's
the whole origin of that. And when there's nothing to
really challenge anymore, like if there's a play at first base
outer safety, you're never going to see a manager run out
because, alright, let's, let's review it.
Look good. Uh oh, he missed it.
Let's go review it. Then they then they get it right
or they don't. And most times they get it right
when they do review. So, you know, that is what it
is. But I, I think that like
anything that's new, you'll get used to it and then it'll be
baked into your, your viewing pleasure, if you will.
And it'll, you'll become almost desensitized to it, you know,
like it, think about this, like when the pitch clock was first
introduced, yeah, there was a lot of resistance and there was
a lot of, you know, feedback and the disengagements from the,
from the rubber, you know, twice.
If you do it twice, then you have to throw over whatever, you
know, all right, I get it. So, and, and I understood like I
could, I could see why people would have an issue with it.
And, and I remember talking about that a lot too.
But like in 10 years or even really now, it's not even that
much of an issue. So each year, the energy and the
attention that it's given, it just dissipates and it's less
and less and less of a story. So as things change, even if
there's initial resistance. It just seems like, God, why is
baseball doing this Or God, that's a weird thing for the NFL
as new fans watch it. That's all they know as they as
they age and they, you know, they grow with the sport.
And the older ones, you know, the older fans just sit there
and say that man is what it is. Let's go.
Maybe even after the initial resistance.
So all right, let me give you a little something on Ty Simpson
here. Ty Simpson.
It's going to be interesting. So Ty Simpson tomorrow has a
private workout with The Jets, right?
This is not just about The Jets. This is about, I got 5 things,
five teams that that could draft Ty Simpson.
There's always an outlier, but I think it will be one of these
five teams. Now they're having dinner
tonight. He did throw out the combine.
We know that. So he showed off his talents to
the evaluators there. But he's also, he did the pro
day yesterday, Alabama. So I like the fact that he's
embracing being being judged and being analyzed.
I think that that's a good thing, right?
And then tonight they'll have dinner.
Mooji's going to be there. Glenn's going to be there.
Frank Reich will be there. Their quarterbacks coach Bill
Musgrave will be there. So the entire Jets contingent is
going to sit down tonight with Ty Simpson.
And he said a couple of things, like I think Jake was the one
who asked him if Jake has been my one of my Co host on the the
jet on the jet selected that we just started, which by the way,
is off to a really good start. It's on my YouTube page.
Obviously go down. You'll see the collaborations.
So there's a couple of segments. We hit Gino, we hit Aaron Glenn,
we hit Muji, we hit the revamp defense.
That was Tuesday night episode 1.
We'll do it once a week, every Tuesday if you have the banner J
Rod, if you have that ready, if you want to pop that up, if you
can, if not, it's not a big deal, but you could go down and
by all means like it, subscribe it, check it out.
There you go. Thank you.
So this was I'll be a couple of days old here.
So Tuesday was the first one and it's live on YouTube, all the
all the other podcasting platforms.
It's officially up on Spotify and Apple.
It's myself, it's Jacob, Rich Samini, it's a great crew
through The Jets collective every week.
We'll do it for, you know, the whole year, right?
It's like we'll take any time off.
We'll just lead into the draft and into OTAs and into training
camp and into the season and probably start going live after
games, all that stuff, right? But the the, the, the
conversation the other night on that show was interesting
because I was only the one, I was really the one that was
somewhat OK with Ty Simpson being drafted by The Jets.
But Jake did say to him at the combine.
Whatever Jake asked him and Ty Simpson, like the sound bite was
something like I'd love to be a Jet, which is something nobody
says, right? Of course you're going to say it
because you know, you know that The Jets need a quarterback.
You know, they've got a couple of first round picks and why
wouldn't you say it's good for business?
And then, but then I also saw something where, you know, he
was talking about, how about the Browns possibly drafting him and
his dad. His dad's a college football
coach for the UT Martin, I believe University of Tennessee
Martin, for those of you don't know, he is a coach, his son,
which I like. So is Chad Pennington from an
intelligence point of view. I'm like a processing of the
game. I do like that.
Not that it means you're going to be a star, but I but I do
like it. You're a student of the game.
So Ty Simpson's dad is friendly with somebody on the Brown
staff. So he was asked about that.
He's like, oh, it will be an honor, a dream to play for the
Browns. So basically anytime anybody
asks them from one of these teams that needs a quarterback,
he gives a very favorable review.
OK, got it. So Ty Simpson is is guy now.
Dan Orlovsky had a pretty interesting take.
Said he thinks he's better than Mendoza.
And now there's some people who think I saw an article on this.
I don't know if it was awful announcing.
I know who had it it it was a question, but it was like, is
Dan Orlovsky now turning to the world of hot takes?
I I don't, I don't necessarily think that that's a hot take
because I really do like Fernando Mendoza.
But to think that he's, you know, John Elway and beyond
reproach to being, you know, based on the subjective
evaluation of film, I think it's ridiculous.
And I also don't think that Orlovsky's a hot take guy.
I think he's I think he's I think he wants to be a coach
someday. I really do.
And he's kind of flirted with that.
If you remember some of the stories.
Was it Detroit either way, not Detroit somewhere some team was
thinking about maybe hiring him two or three years ago.
I think eventually he probably gets into that maybe.
So I don't think he's a hot take guy.
I think he watched the film, likes what he sees.
But also, I think it's it's also part of the notion is, is that
Mendoza is good, but, you know, flawed to to for some, some
people think he's great, but it's also a by product of being
just lucky in terms of timing where there's just not many good
quarterback prospects out there, right?
So listen, here's what you got to know about Ty Simpson, All
right? You know, and I've told you
about this where Alabama couldn't run the football and he
was put in a position where, you know, he had to throw a lot and
behind the sticks quite a bit when they tried to run early.
You know, he got, he had gastritis and he lost about 20
lbs and he's not that one of the I wish he was a little bit
bigger. To be fair, he measured in a
tick below 6 two and 200 something like 2O2.
Like, you know, that's kind of like Zach Wilson.
You know, I, I, I like to see my quarterback at least, you know,
63, you know, 220 at least the night that you get drafted.
And then maybe when it's all said and done, you 63230, you
know, as you tack on some some some grown man weight over the
years as you're getting past your mid 20s and into your late
20s. So I don't think Todd Simpson
going to necessarily have that, but he did lose a lot of weight
and he did really have a a pretty weak cast of amazingly
saying this of talent around him in Alabama.
Now who could actually draft him?
I mean, the answer is obviously anybody like if you're a team
that's got a great quarterback situation and you don't have a
real pressing need to address another situation early in the
draft, You know, like the Chiefs did with with when they had Alex
Smith, who was pretty good, not great, but good, good enough.
110 games, a lot there for Andy Reid.
I mean, I think it was 3/3, maybe even 11.
I think you have three years in a row where he won double figure
games. Alex Smith was fine.
He was good, you know, good at the end with Jim Horborn and
very good for Andy Reid. So you never know, they could be
a surprise team that jumps into the the upper part of the draft
and maybe takes in. I think it's going to come down
to these five teams, The Jets, the Cardinals, the Rams, the
Browns and the Steelers, right? So as we know, The Jets have the
number 2. They're not taking them there.
The Jets have the number 16 possible get back to that.
And they've also got the number 33.
Very possible either a 33 or using 33 to trade into the back
end of the first round and doing like something like the Giants
did with Jackson Dart moving up a few spots.
That would be I would say I think I would think that that
would be advisable because I like Ty Simpson more than most
but whatever the Cardinals all right and these are all I
actually put these in the odds. There's actually odds on what
team's going to draft. Let me give you that first here.
So in order Jets are plus 140 shortest odds along with the
Cardinals at plus 140. Then you got the Rams
interesting Stafford's age that situation, OK, they're the third
shortest odds at +400. Then the Browns with Shadour and
brothers right at plus 650. Then you've got the Steelers
little wild card at plus 750. Now told you about the The Jets
draft equity. The Cardinals have the third
overall pick, right behind The Jets.
They're not taking them there. They've also got the 34th.
So basically, The Jets and the Cardinals are in the same spot.
Jets have two, Cardinals have three.
Jets have 33, Cardinals have 34. All right, now we get to the
Rams, then we get to the Browns, who are #6 they're not taking
them there and #24 maybe. And then you get to the Steelers
at #21 maybe all right, right. So to me, and he's already met
with the, the Rams have the 13th pick.
I should have said this before. He's already met with the Rams.
And as I said, he's meeting with The Jets dinner tonight, thrown
for thrown for The Jets tomorrow for their entire contingent.
Now, the one thing that I don't get, and we did talk about this
on the Jet Collective the other night where, you know, and Rich
was saying this and and Jake was pretty much more in alignment
with Rich than with me. Like if you're going to take a
quarterback 33 or 34, you're obviously taking that
quarterback because you eventually view him as a
starter. Like you're not, it's not like
taking a flyer on a guy in round four like Bryce Petty or you
know, somebody like that, right? It's a totally different
profile. You're if you draft a
quarterback early in Round 2, like Drew Brees got drafted
first pick around 2 back in the day by the Dolphins, somebody
like that, you are going to play that guy eventually going to
give a chance to play. So if that's the, if that's the
philosophy, which it obviously is, then why wouldn't you just
say, all right, I've got 33, I've got 30-4, I've got 35.
I don't know for sure that Ty Simpson is going to be there at
333435, which by the way, I don't think he is.
I'll tell you why in a minute. I think he's a guaranteed lock
first round pick. So you're going to have to be
proactive and jump in front of a couple of teams and really read
the draft board perfectly to make sure that you get in front
of any team that you think could jump you by jumping into the
back end of the first round. If, by the way, The Jets don't
take him at 16. But there's see, there's two
different things there. There's actually drafting the
player and I'm talking about Ty Simpson now, but there's also
the the philosophy and I just I, I I'm really I don't get it's
confounding to me where if you think highly enough of a player
to take him early in round two, why wouldn't you be proactive
screwed into round one and then have the extra fifth year of
evaluation and controllability like the Ravens did with Lamar
Jackson? I don't I don't know why you
wouldn't do it now. You got to be right.
You got to really like him. Like if you're on the and the
Ravens, obviously labs and Ozzie knew something great gift as he
left the building. That was a great read and a
great, great move. And that's one of the reasons
why the Ravens are the Ravens. And this is one of the reasons
why The Jets are The Jets and the Cardinals are the Cardinals
and the Browns are the Browns. And all the other teams that
stink are the teams that stink and the teams that are really
good and are proactive and smart.
That's, that's one of the separating factors.
Like it's not just that they obviously have better players or
they have a franchise quarterback.
What did they do to put themselves in a position to get
the franchise quarterback like that?
I, I, I almost feel like the evaluation of some of these bad
teams kind of misses the mark. You know what I mean?
Like this team's not good. No shit they're not good.
Because your general manager didn't see what another general
manager saw that gave that other general manager the confidence
to leapfrog five teams out of fear of them taking a player
that he really coveted. Him doing it, being aggressive
and proactive and then doing it and then being, you know,
confirmed right and validated by doing that move.
So I it's just, it's to me, it's, it's, it's like crossing
wires, man. Like, I don't get that I'm ever
pushing back. I think it was more with Rich
where if you are, if you are more than OK, we're taking Ty
Simpson early in Round 2. I just, if anybody can explain
this to me, by all means try to I'm I'm like, I'm open minded.
I just, I don't get it. Like that's been a tried and
true philosophy of mine for a long time.
I you know what? They just screwed up 7 spots and
get him, get him in the freaking building.
Now I will say this all right, the jet situ and the Browns, but
at least your door played. I mean, I don't I don't think
he's that good, but at least he got already got on the field
right. One of the differences with The
Jets taking time. I think Jake was saying this and
I do agree with this. Like if you take Ty Simpson in
round two, if he falls to round two, which again, I don't think
he will a matter of fact he won't and I'll tell you why in a
minute. But just perceptually, like the
energy around a quarterback drafted 34th or 37th in Round 2,
going to a downtrodden, you know, morbid situation is
different than moving up into the first round to get that same
player. And then eventually your fans
are going to be like, I want to see this player.
Not that they wouldn't want to see Ty Simpson play if he was
drafted around 2:00. But there's going to be more
energy around by just more calling for it.
More talk on the radio, more talk on the pods, more, more
digital traction. Like, let's go, Hey, Gino threw
2 picks last night. Jets are one and four.
You know, let's it's time for Ty Simpson.
I think there'd be, I think maybe I shouldn't even say this
with the Jet fan. You never know.
I think that Prudence would probably win out a little bit
more if it was a second round pick because then it's like, all
right, they didn't burn a first round pick on this guy.
They at #2 they took defense at #16 they took a receiver or they
went defense, defense and whatever they did.
All right. Those guys are playing opening
day Week 1. All right, we can wait Ty
Simpson round two. But if if if Ty Simpson goes
one, there's going to be internal pressure with, you
know, from the fans putting that pressure on The Jets and also
internal pressure to develop him and show people that they did
the right thing that their their swing was the right one.
And that can kind of that lack of of well, I think what that
would do that would probably lead to rushing things because
the clarity would be skewed. And when you're not thinking
clearly and you're listening to the noise, generally you're a
little hasty. And you not all the time,
usually decisions that are wrong are made out of either
obviously, you know, just not knowing what the hell you doing
or being a little bit overly hasty.
Let's get him in there. We know he's not really ready,
but God, these fans just won't shut up.
All right, let's throw him a piece of meat.
All right, Ty Simpson starting Week 7, even if he's not ready.
And then that just makes a bad situation worse.
And then around and around we go.
Now here's why Ty Simpson is going to absolutely get wrapped
in the first round because there's nobody else.
And you know, if you have if you have an average quarterback, you
don't have a quarterback because nobody's winning a championship
with an average quarterback, right?
So the pursuit to land your franchise quarterback is the
most, it's the most pressurized aspect of any decision of any
general manager and owner. You know, if he's the kind of
guy who gets his hands in the football stuff, you know, like
Mara a little bit for the Giants.
Woody's just sloppy. I'm not even count Woody, the
Ravens owners, you know, Bashati's a little bit involved,
whatever. And and obviously, if you have a
coach that you really believe in and he's got a little juice in
the war room, it it's it's going to it's going to lead to an
acceleration of of probably what you what you might not be ready
to do. Because if you don't have one,
well, you're not going to win. And if you don't win, job
security is obviously going to diminish very fast.
It's going to go away. So if there were, listen, if
there were two or three other quarterbacks and going into the
season, there were kid from LSU, obviously Dante Moore.
Hey, Dante Moore comes out. He got Mendoza, he got more
Simpson kid from Ness Meyer from LSU.
Like there were thought to be, you know, 3-4, maybe 5 first
round quarterbacks. Now Mendoza is obviously going
one. And if Ty Simpson does not go in
the first round, nobody else is going in the first round.
So I just think based on the circumstances, Ty Simpson
already won. Because even if you don't think
he's a first round pick, he's going to wind up getting taken
in the first round. He just is.
And you know, as I've said, and I laid out the teams that I
think would obviously make a move for them, The Jets, the
Cardinals, maybe maybe the Rams. That's not desperation, That's
just foresight that that's actually, that's the way that
see, that's called clarity. That's the exact opposite of
desperation. We're good.
We've already won a Super Bowl here.
The head coach, general manager fan base content, we know that
they want more than we know that they want to keep winning,
obviously keep winning and winning and winning and winning,
but that we've already delivered.
So and we already have a Hall of Fame quarterback who's who's not
young but still awesome. So we could pretty much do
whatever we want because we've got that latitude and we've got
that that equity. I think it's a better way to put
it within the fan base. All right, Whereas, you know,
these other these other teams now the Cardinals, and this is
not to this is not to diminish at all like the Cardinals fan
base, but the Cardinals fan base is not like The Jets and the
Browns fan base. So the teams with the shortest
odds to actually draft Ty Simpson, Jets are a circus,
Browns are a circus, Rams champions, Steelers, you know,
platinum franchise, Tomblin's gone.
We'll see what happens there. And and the Rams, as I just
discussed, obviously have a lot of equity.
So you know, somebody like the and then the Cardinals are are
obviously a a disaster in a circus, but there's just not as
much energy within their fan base.
And that that's not a knock. That's just the reality of it.
Like Jet fans and Brown fans and Raider fans or, you know, next
level nuts in terms of trying to break out of this hell hole of
football. And trust me, because I've
talked to people within these organizations, not the Browns,
but The Jets, they feel it that they even if they say that they
want to ignore it, even if they try to ignore it, it permeates
their thought process because it impacts job security downstream.
It just does. So it kind of speeds things up
in terms of putting a player on the field that's not ready or
maybe drafting somebody a little bit too early.
Listen, I think, you know, just to take it back to The Jets for
a second, I think that The Jets are going to do probably, you
know, let me see 2 and 16. All right, so we got this.
I'm just writing this down. This, this, this, this, this,
this, this four things or that, that maybe 5 things.
Bear with me. That, that, that.
OK, so I think The Jets can do 13 thing.
Why don't you narrow it down, knucklehead?
I mean, you should probably tell No.
I mean, but I I have narrowed it down.
I'm being facetious, I think with two and six.
Forget about the 33rd pick right now, 30, Yeah, 33rd The Jets.
Are they going to go? It's very clear to me.
Defense, Defense 2 and 16, that's one defense.
Wide receiver, 2 and 16, that's 2.
Defense, Ty Simpson at 16, that's three trade out of two.
Like say if they don't love Reese and they want to take
Styles or they want to take Caleb Downs, but they're a
little, it's a little hard for them to justify doing that at
2:00. But somebody loves another
player, right? Like Reese.
Well, you could trade out and maybe if it's more of two spots
and then you could then go defense again and then defense.
So that would be the 4th scenario or even, you know, I
guess it's now 6 trade out defense and then wide receiver
or or defense defense receiver, because you'd be getting an
extra pick. Like there's a lot of ways to
play this. Like there's no way The Jets
aren't going defense with their whatever whatever pick they like
234 if they trade out the Giants a fine, which would be
incredible. Like imagine like if the Giants
actually drafted a running back again.
Could you imagine that after all the stuff with Saquon?
I know it's a different player. I know it's a different regime
now. I think that Harbaugh is going
defense. I think he's going to go safety.
You know, whether it's downs, I think he's going somebody like
that. I really, really do.
And whatever, Jim, whatever John Harbaugh wants, he's getting,
you know, I mean, that's it. Like it's it's his show.
We all know that the general manager is still there, but
horribaugh is getting his pick period, right.
This is his draft dude. We all know that he's going
defense, but I don't know if he's incredibly enamored with
like is Jeremiah Love such a different type of prospect?
I mean, is he different than Saquon coming out of Penn State?
I mean, I I I don't know. I mean, I don't think he is.
I mean, I think he's tremendous, but I'm I'm just don't forget
what's what Saquon was that Penn State.
So like I'm just using the Giants as an example, say if
Harbaugh was bypasses what I believe will be his real
mentality of drafting defense and he wants Jeremiah Love and
and then the Cardinals want Jeremiah love at three as well.
Well, the only way you get him is you do business with The Jets
and then five becomes 2 and then two becomes 5 and then The Jets
can still take styles or. Yeah, I can say Reuben Baines, I
certainly wouldn't take him there.
Not I wouldn't take him to top seven, maybe back end top ten.
I don't think The Jets would do that at all.
Somebody else will. I don't think that they will.
So there's a lot of different machinations here.
It's going to be a lot of fun. I think this draft is going to
be absolutely awesome. I really, really do because I
think you're going to see some trades and there's so many.
And you know, the die hard Collin football fan doesn't need
this, but like the average French fan kind of does.
Like, you know, when you've got, you know, 4 kids from Ohio
State, when you've got a wide receiver from USC, you know when
you've got a running back from Notre Dame, you know, when
you've got an edge guy from Miami, Miami's actually got a
couple of players. You know, like that is brand
recognition that that helps sell the the draft even more.
And let's face it, the NFL draft doesn't really need a whole lot
of selling so that you know, if if there was other quarterback
prospects, I don't I I then you tell me.
All right, Ty Simpson maybe slides 3334.
I think that's I think that's I think that might happen, even
though I still think he's at least a back end of the first
round talent. But at least I do I do.
So if The Jets take up at 16, I would want to know how hard they
tried to trade back to be able to get him, you know, or how
aggressively they tried to trade up from that 33rd pick back into
the first round to get him. But I would not crush the pick
like I'm on the record now that I'm I'm I'm intrigued enough
with Ty Simpson, and I trust that Gino will play well enough
where it's not so ugly, where the clamoring for Simpson too
early would destroy and stunt his development as a young
quarterback. That's what I believe.
Now, a lot of people disagree. That's fine.
That's why we talk about this. You know what I mean, Jay.
Yes, Sir. Yeah, BT how do you say this
guy's phuk? I mean, you know what he's
saying. You know what he's trying to
say. Yeah, I know.
What he's saying there BT What do you thoughts on Carson Beck
Heard the jet. I I don't want any.
That's a guy. I want no part of it.
Not a fan? No, not a fan of his attitude.
He's not a real fan of his game. Just don't like Carson Beck at
all. I don't want him on The Jets at
all. Watching wind up being great,
going to work out that way. J Rod no, I'm not a Carson Beck
fan at all at all. And then listen, that the other
thing that obviously complicates is and not just let's I tell
you, I'm not just going to do New York stuff, not just for The
Jets, but for the Cardinals and for the Browns, right.
So I think the Browns are a little less desperate.
I know that that sounds crazy that I mean the Browns or as
desperate as anybody, but at least pertaining to the
quarterback spot, like at least they've got somebody in their
building. I don't think Shudor Sanders is
that good. You know, I myself, and I'm not
hating on the young man like a lot of people do I, I, I, he
felt, I think it was unfair how we fell.
I also never thought he was as good as some people.
Like there was a thought the giants were going to take him
inside the top five. There's no way that was going to
happen. I just, you knew that one, they
weren't taking him three, where they wound up taking Abdul
Carter, but there was a thought that they would.
I I never felt that about him at all at all.
But you know, I mean, there's an element of at least
functionality and intrigue because he played a little bit
last year. So I don't think that they're
quite as desperate as The Jets and and the Cardinals still have
percent right. So maybe maybe The Jets might be
the most and the Raiders need one, but they got Mendoza.
So, you know, maybe desperation does force your hand a little
bit, but I don't think Mooji's going to operate that way
because it's not year three or year 4.
It's he's just getting going. And I think when you look at the
when you start to grade out a Mooji and forget, forget about
Glenn for a SEC, you can't win if you have no talent.
I think Muji's graded out very well for all the reasons I've
talked about as a general manager so far, those moves
inside the margins, the willingness to take the
aggressive swings by trading, you know, sauce and Q like I I
really like with stockpile draft picks, you know, flipping 6th
and 7th picks and even the move for Gino, where I'm not saying
Gino's going to throw 35 touchdowns and and The Jets
going to be really good. He'll be a functional
quarterback. He'll be, I think at at the at
the worst, an average NFL quarterback.
And I think The Jets will run the ball a lot because their old
line is good and, you know, third and four, third and five,
when Justin Fields or Brady Cook couldn't hit somebody who was
actually open, you know, to move the chain and keep the defense
off the field and keep the game tight.
Geno Smith will so when I say he'll be a functional
quarterback, he will definitely give you that.
But I I think that the the desperation is, is also has to
be measured by what's what's, you know, lurking in 2027 and
Jets have three first round picks. 2027.
The Browns don't have three, but they've got another year of
evaluation for Shudor Sanders in 20.
Like, you know, say, if you're on the fence, like I don't think
there's any and I don't know this to be true, Jay.
I don't there's anybody in the building.
And if so, then OK, then I stay corrected.
There can't be anybody in the Browns building that looks at
Shudor Sanders and says he is absolutely the guy.
Full conviction, future star, absolute elite franchise
quarterback. Nobody's thinking that.
But I also think there's a few there's enough people thinking,
all right, you know, let's see what the full offseason, you
know, a little bit of an improved or the defense was good
for the Cleveland Browns, but little bit more of an improved
roster. And let's watch him play a full
season. And then we have better more
Intel and a better ability to make the right decision on what
we do in 2027. And, you know, and and The Jets
had that as well with Gino here. But because the I I think that
the different thing though, with with Gino here, like and and you
know, I they're not going to be as bad as they were last year
for the reasons their defense will be better and Gino will be
better than with what they had. But let's say The Jets go 6:00
and 11:00 or 7:00 and 10:00 and they're more competitive, not a
wild card team and but not buried by October, not Oh, and
six and with a couple of games early, maybe teams you should be
even if it's ugly, whatever. Well, if you do win enough of
those games and they could based on their own line and and I
think the uptick in quarterback play, you know, how are you
penalized in 2027 for your your ability to get the quarterback
that you might really want now that you view much better than
Ty Simpson? Well, the answer to that would
be all right, even if it does complicate the road to Arch or
somebody, Dante Moore, whatever. Next year, you do have three
first round picks to move up and do whatever you control the
draft next year, whatever The Jets want to do.
The Jets, The Jets in a lot of ways control the draft this
year. They really do.
So the only way the Raiders would have controlled it is if
they would have said, you know what we're not we're open for
business. We're not drafting Mendoza.
But once they want it and we all know that they're going to take
Mendoza. Now The Jets control the board
because there's a lot whether it's Reese and some other
defensive players, Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles kid from Texas Tech
to defend the the edge rusher. You know, beauty's in the eye
about other but whole of the beholder.
So The Jets might look at Reese as AB player.
I don't know that they do, but they I'm saying if they if they
do and you've got another team that's drafting 8th, 9th or 10th
and they're like this dude is a franchise changer.
Well, The Jets could jump out of two and they can still take
another defensive player that's kind of equal or maybe you know,
better at certain things in a different position.
So I I do think they have great control this year, but next year
there's no doubt that they control the entire draft.
So very curious how they play it.
And you know, the final thing with Ty Simpson is that I just
think he's going first round. I really do.
I believe that and that's what I want to see.
All right. What?
Bailey's a kid from Texas Tech. What do I think of Bailey at #2?
I wouldn't do it. I really wouldn't do it.
I don't even really think I want The Jets to to take recent
number two. I am just, you know, and
sometimes I will admit you can take that down.
Jay. Thank you.
That's a good question because Bailey, that's that's what I was
talking about before Texas Tech. All right, He's much more.
Here's the word on the street. I've seen him play twice this
year, right. I think that he is ready.
He is ready to put his hand in the dirt in the NFL and go out
there and get, you know, 8-9 sacks and be a good pass rusher.
All right? Is he going to do anything else?
I don't think so. I think he's kind of A1 trick
pony myself. A lot of people tend to agree
with that. And I also don't think that he's
like he's not Miles. I mean, I know he's not Miles
Garrett. He's not somebody like that
where all right, man, this guy's coming in and he's going to be a
1516 sack guy when it's all said, like Bosa when he's
healthy or some of these other players that that we watch in
the NFL. He's not that kind of player.
I don't think I think his his floor is pretty high.
So and and you know, I hate these control.
Oh, the floor is high and his ceiling is high and you know,
all these these other you're gonna hear it all, all you can
hear all the time. You can hear it on draft night.
You heard it the combine. If you watch that, you know, oh,
look at this quarter. Great hips, great adjustability
to the ball in flight. I got Oh my, these expressions
there there apps. Can you play football dude?
You know, can you get out of field?
I don't need to see a plane against air and doing drills
that you already have practice you've trained 5 weeks for
because you know what the combine entails the gauntlet
where you have balls coming from every direction.
Can you get separation off the lot of scrimmage when somebody
jams you in right under your chin?
Can you do that? Because that's a wide receiver
for me. Can your first move?
Can you get inside leverage if you wanted a slam?
Can you get outside if you doing something else?
I mean, can you do that? And you can't.
You can tell that now. You can obviously tell with the
film, but sometimes the film lies because you're playing
against inferior competition in college.
And the gauntlet, again, you can run out, go out there 10439 and
catch every single conceivable pass.
And he could jump to the moon. He could touch the bar and have
the highest vertical. And you can squat whatever you
squat and bench press whatever you bench press.
But again, when somebody is opposite you and it's a grown
man, not a college kid, a grown man and he's got grown man's
strength, even if it's only like a 2425 year old corner who's
been in the league for a couple of years and you're a receiver.
I'm telling you now, I never I never experienced this, but I
but I do know this when you first try to make that move and
those those hands hit you like those hands, it is just a
different kind of pop. It's just different right under
the chin strap. And once it's just that that's
all it takes to get you off your route.
Like if that happens, you don't recover.
Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen to you every single
play. And then eventually, you know,
you'll play teams in the NFL that have average corners or
subpar corners or maybe you have another star receiver opposite
you that obviously gets the main corner.
All right. I mean, I, I know there's a
million circumstances, but if you're getting drafted like that
high, you know, you, you better be able to do all that stuff.
And you know, whether it's Bailey at Texas Tech, all right,
if you're going up against a tackle and you know, he's just,
he's just, I mean, every tackle is big, But I mean that elite
combination of, you know, hand manipulation and instinct and,
and obviously quickness and, you know, recoverability, like if he
misses his first move, the next move right there, almost like
jiu jitsu, you know, you miss your first move, you're not
missing your second and you're definitely not missing your
third. So I think that that's what does
make this evaluation really hard.
And one of the things that I learned probably most from Tiki
of of all the things that I learned about him, really does
pertain to the quarterbacks, right?
Like, not that I was working with with with Tiki when Tim
Tebow was getting drafted, but yeah.
How many college quarterbacks, Grossman, You know, so many
college quarterbacks, they put up these arcade like numbers and
then you watch them in the pros. Like Andre Ware was one of those
an old name Andre Ware from Houston, Achilles Smith from
Oregon who went to Cincinnati. He was a he was a Joey
Harrington who played at Oregon and then obviously drafted to
the lines third overall. Zach Wilson.
You know, how many how many guys is what, what he really taught
me. He's like, watch, watch, watch a
college game and watch how open the receivers are.
So you're like, I know we all love stats.
I get that. But you know, quarterback X for
whatever school, right? They threw 393 yards and three
touchdowns, no picks, had a perfect quarterback rating.
And then you see the throws and it's it's a like the space is
like this. You're throwing to you're
throwing to a spot in college, you're throwing to an area right
in the pros, you're throwing to a keyhole.
And it's done with anticipation because you know, if you're a
quarterback and Obama's not what they were, but if you're a
quarterback like you know, and and obviously you know, somebody
like Borough with LSU was phenomenal.
But if you're at LSU when they have all those great receivers
or you're at Alabama when they had all those great receivers,
you know, he's going to win off the line of scrimmage.
And if you're just confident, which they all are, because
they're all five star guys who got drafted and got millions of
dollars through the NIL situation now, like you're not a
scrub. You're not taking some guy,
you're not taking some player who was six and five, you know,
on a, on a small little public school there, a little Catholic
school in, you know, Montana. I love my beautiful state, but
college football is not incredibly strong out there.
And like he just happened to be a good player in a bad
conference. You're taking the stud from
Texas. You're taking the stud from
Alabama. I'm talking about high school
now from Alabama, from Georgia, from Florida, from California,
from New Jersey, which is very good for high school football
from Pennsylvania, from Ohio. Like those are those are
probably the main I think I mentioned Michigan's pretty good
too. Those are the hot pockets for
football. So the point is when you watch
these quarter and go, just go and do it.
Go and watch if you want, watch every throw Mendoza made and and
I like Mendoza and watch every throw Ty Simpson made.
And then, you know, tell me who's open.
You know what I mean? And when that when that radius
talk about catch radius as a receiver, But when that throw
radius shrinks and it it shrinks, like, I mean, it goes
from a softball to like a speck of dust.
That's how much it it changes in the NFL from Saturday to Sunday.
That's where you will learn if that's the guy who's going to be
an elite thrower of the ball at the next level.
Now there's other aspects to it. How big are you?
You know, what's your anticipation, what your your
ability to read what's in front of you Diagnosed quickly.
All right, they're trying. They're presenting this, but I
already know on film that they ain't doing that.
They're actually coming from this side.
So you call out, hey, running back, pick up this guy, you
know, give me a little chip lock here or pop put that.
You know what? Let's check into the run like
those are, though. That's next level stuff.
And ideally every quarterback would be 64235 and run like Josh
Allen, you know, and hit like a freight train and look to hit
opposing defenders like he's a linebacker.
But there's other ways to skin the cat.
There's other ways to win games here.
There's other ways to get your team in the end zone.
Look at Geno Smith, at least with the Renaissance with
Seattle, he's not sculpted. You know, he doesn't have this
amazing body. You know, he's he's he's quick.
He's getting older now, decent speed, but never Lamar Jackson
or one of those burners like that.
I mean, the guy almost won the MVPA couple of years ago, put up
big numbers. So there's a lot there.
I know. Just got to I I love talking
this stuff, man. I can talk draft and we will.
Oh, God, I can't wait for the draft, Jay.
Like I can't wait for the NFL draft.
I'm super pumped up. I really am.
I used to go to the draft a lot when it was the radio.
Really. Yeah, yeah.
Where do they where do they hold the NFL draft?
Is it in Florida? No, it remember it now.
It revolves, it rotates, remember?
You go from. City to city now, because I.
Remember seeing the one with the boat?
Yes, well, that was in Vegas. I think that was the Bellagio.
Really. I think that was, was that, was
that right? Was that the COVID 1 or maybe
right after? Right after the COVID one would
be my guess. Can you do me a favor?
Can you pop this up? Just, you know, Google recent
NFL draft locations. I know Detroit had it.
I know Philly had it. Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh has it this year, right?
It's I think, I think they've done this for about 6 years.
Maybe it was really. It's this year, Green Bay, last
year, Detroit, year before that Kansas City.
Then it was Vegas, Cleveland, virtual Zoom, Nashville before
that one in 2019. Now we're going back.
Arlington, TX 2018 Philly Billion 2017 Chicago 20/16/2015
and then 1965 to 2014 it was New York.
So so they started good. Good job there, Jay.
That boy. No, no problem.
Because there's no stats involved.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Just the names. That's easy.
So 2014 was the last time they
did it in New York. That's where they started
jumping around. Where was it in 2015 again?
2015 with Chicago, for two years for 2015 and 16 with Chicago.
Wow. I, I, you know, they say, I
mean, we all hear time flies. Yeah.
And that's true, you know, and it, it, you know what it really
hits you like, and it's, it's morbid, but it's unfortunate.
It's the reality. Like when you say, say like the
a famous actor or a musician or, or famous athlete, like they
pass away, right. Yeah.
And like, it just comes up in a random conversation and you're
like, yeah, what was that like 2-3 years ago?
They're like, Nah, that was that passed away nine years ago.
How many times does that happen where you're like 9 years?
Wow, that. That no decent amount,
definitely. I think that happens all the and
not just with death, but all the time.
Like if I had to, if I had to get that right and like my life
depended on it, I, I don't think I would have been close.
And I mean, I'm, I'm pretty good with a lot of the details on
this stuff. I follow this.
There is no way that I thought 2015 was the first on site now I
would have been like, did they start that after COVID and I
didn't think. That.
Right before, yeah, I would have been wrong.
I would have said probably 2019. I really probably would have
said that. I got to keep it.
I got to keep it a buck. Got to keep it a buck, as the
kids say, Jay, no reason to lie. I would not have gotten that
right. And it's a great idea.
The funny thing, too, is you see some of the footage of like, you
go back to the 1984 NBA draft. They did a documentary on this
like Sam Bowie, Hakeem, Michael Jordan, that one, of course,
right. David Stern when he did just
took over with his little skinny tie, his little cheesy Mustang.
Rest in peace, by the way, great commissioner.
So I'm not I'm not making fun of him, but just the way he was
such an 80s look, right. And it was at the fell Forum,
which is the little tiny theater at the garden, right where they
do some concerts and kid shows and stuff used to be called the
fell Forum. Now I just think it's the the
theater at MSGI think and you see like general managers, it's
like so unsophisticated. They're sitting there, they're
banging back heaters. They're cigarettes everywhere,
you know, like you got the little you know.
Then they thought they but they modernized it.
They had like the phone with the helmet phone like into the 90s,
like it it and then like writing stuff on paper like did they?
Have an audience at that one at the 84 NBA Draft.
Like they they did. OK, so they did, but it wasn't
many. They did.
Yeah, they did. And I think that I think if I
remember the documentary properly, they had to basically
give tickets away, like they had to entice people to come because
nobody was conditioned to do it. Yeah, I mean, the the the drafts
and I, I used to go to a lot of NBA drafts even more.
Than I went to the 20171 when Tatum got drafted and Lonzo and
Fultz and you did. It would have been the year.
Was it the year the Knicks took Frank?
Maybe Frank Neil could have been.
You got to see like Lavar Ball all toss his hat in the crowd
and everything. It was a fun time.
So yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, I think that was
actually Franklin Lakita. Yeah, it was cool because I
remember, I think the first one I went to, I had started at
10:50, ESPN Radio, and yeah, I was doing whatever updates and
doing weekend shows, whatever, just starting out, and they gave
me the assignment to go to the NBA draft.
I remember I was one of the first credentials.
It was my first New York credential.
I've been credentialed in Detroit, like for the Tigers and
the Pistons. I basically went to every Piston
game. Almost everyone Tigers were so
bad. I would just kind of go just to
show my face. But the Pistons were a show and
of course I'd go to the Lions games, right.
But I think that was my first New York credential.
I was so pumped up, man. And I remember that was the year
that the Knicks strength and Mike Sweeney only remember this
from Georgetown, like 8th or 9th.
He was a disaster. Good God, Oh my.
But I remember interviewing him and then I probably did that for
a good four or five years and it was always fun.
And yeah, like the old footage, like you hear stories of of
players, and I don't mean guys who are 85 years old, I mean
guys who are, you know, in their like 40s and maybe not 40s, but
certainly 50s. And then beyond where they just
found out when they got drafted, like they got home, like they
went to maybe or go fishing and they walked home and their mom's
like, yeah, he got drafted by the Packers.
That that's how it would go. That stuff is so crazy.
Like those stories, I feel like I find those.
So I mean, obviously I guess so much more interesting than like,
you know, dude who's the number one pick who just goes up on
stage because I don't know, it's cool.
It's cool when you you don't expect it.
At James, James, James, you know, I got to keep I got to pop
some other people in there. But it's a good question.
How did the how can The Jets break the curse of ruining their
quarterbacks here like Simpson, but afraid that they would F it
up like the others? Keep that up.
So James, to me, that is a lazy take there.
James, I know what you mean because I've lived it.
Like you, I've lived it. We all have.
But see, it's I just think it's an inaccurate way to describe
some of the failures here. Number one, they Zach Wilson,
they drafted the wrong guy, period.
They just drafted the wrong guy. They didn't mess him up.
They didn't. The Saints signed him.
The Dolphins didn't even want him.
Like when tour was out, the Dolphins didn't even want to
play Zach. So The Jets, you know, I wasn't
good with The Jets, irrelevant with the Miami Dolphins now is
going to be the backup, maybe the third, but certainly the
backup out in New Orleans. And if that doesn't go well, I
mean, Jack Wilson is going to be out of the NFL in two years, you
know, 'cause he hasn't proved that it can be a competent
backup. Like it's one thing if you get
drafted highly and you play a lot and you put enough on film,
you have a couple of average years, but it's just he's not
the franchise guy. And then you move to other
teams. But you can you can cobble it
like Tyrod Taylor. That's a great example.
You can cobble some examples together of guys that, you know,
we're able to regenerate because they just showed enough, whether
it was being a good leader in the meetings and certainly
competent enough when you had a spot start.
And then maybe you had a start for more than a spot, you know,
and you won a couple of games and there wasn't a massive drop
off and you get respect around the league.
I mean, Jack Wilson's put nothing on tape, so they just
read to the wrong guy. Sam Darnold.
If you really think about it, Sam Darnold's first year or two,
we're actually pretty good with The Jets.
Not, I'm not talking about from a record perspective, but like,
I really thought The Jets got it right with Sam Darnold because I
remember watching him, I think his first year, he had 19
touchdowns, maybe 17 picks. Like, I'm like, all right.
I mean, he threw for over 3000 yards.
He ran a little bit. I remember him trucking one of
the Denver Broncos on national TV on a Thursday.
And what are their, I think it was their safety who is coming
up to try to get him, you know, a little bit past the box.
And he was, maybe he was on the right side of the screen and
Darnold just laid him and ran right through him.
So I don't think they drafted the wrong guy and Sam, I don't
think that they ruined Sam. I just think that the situation
was not a good one for Sam. And it's not like the next team
that Sam went to, he was phenomenal.
He didn't do anything for the Carolina Panthers either.
You know, where the Niners, they really play.
So I know it's easy to pile on them.
I get that. It to me, it's not about ruining
a quarterback. It's about I'm going to go the
exact opposite approach. It's about properly insulating a
quarterback. And what do you mean by that?
Well, you get him in the building and he's got a little
bit of stability and stability starts for a quarterback with, I
mean, you prefer the coach who's been around for a couple of
years and knows how to handle the media and he's got a little
little cachet. But it's got to start with an
old line. Because if you are if you are a
young quarterback, and this definitely happened to Zach
Wilson and many others around the NFL.
Carr not not that would have been David Carr with the Texans.
He got sacked like 70 times his rookie year.
And when you get here's what happens guys, when you don't
have an offensive line, and obviously if you don't have an
offensive line, not going to run the ball that well.
So you're going to be, you know, third and nine, third and 12, he
gets sacked. 3rd and 13. Now they're just now it's an all
out party to crush you, right? And when that happens, and that
happens too frequently and he gets sacked, you know, 5055
times in a year, even 40 like you, you, you be just it's it's
almost like self preservation. You become condition to stop
trying to read the field because you know you're going to get
hit. And it's not even that you're
afraid. It's just that again, you got to
protect the ball a little bit and you got to protect yourself.
When you got a guy who's 6 foot 5260 on the edge running a 4-5
and a half 40, you know who could bench a truck and could
squat a store, I don't blame you.
And then you get a little gun shy and then you never really
develop the ability to scan the field.
And now, now you're 3-4 years in and everybody knows you can't do
it. And you lock into one guy and
you're so predictable. It's almost like that's not
great example here, but it just popped in my head.
Maybe you'll be decent. To me, it's similar a little bit
to somebody like Anthony Volpe, like a young hitter who comes up
and has not shown. I know he's got some power, he's
got some speed as well. But I'm talking about from an
average and an on base and a quality at bat perspective.
He's he, you know, he hasn't learned it yet.
And now all of a sudden the word on the street, you know, and
again, he's not a quarterback. So you're not going to get rid
of him because he's not making $50 million a year even.
Yeah, whatever. I know it's different.
But when you don't develop the ability to have quality or
that's not inherently in you, I don't really know if you could
even develop that. I'm of the mindset that you
probably can't just from having played at, you know, the level
that I played at knowing you know, you, you can kind of the
young, the young good hitters in baseball.
To me, the main key is truly being able to differentiate
between a ball and a strike. Because if you can do that, if
you can differentiate between a ball and a strike, right, you're
going to put yourself in a situation where you're going to
have to get something that you can hit all right, 203-0311 O
2-1, something like that. Rather than, you know, if you
expand the zone on the first pitch on a high fit, which Volpe
always does high fastball doesn't catch up to it fouls it
back. Yankee fans, you can actually
see this. I think I see it every at bat
fouls it right back. Missed that OK, all in one.
That was also a ball. All right.
So now not only is it all in one, I missed the pitch that I
think I could hammer and I fouled back and now I'm screwed
because now the percentages, the ability for the pitcher to fool
me and now go deeper into his repertoire.
It they just expand. Oh, now guess what?
Here's a little change up on the black and or slider that's going
to bust away from me and now I'm going to flail at that and roll
it over or take it for a strike or swing miss O2 and now you're
cooked, you're out, you're dead. You know you unless you're Tony
Gwynn and you're in your O2, you're dead.
So I don't, again, it's not perfect, but the like that early
that like that incubator stage, I think for any athlete, but
especially in the batter's box and as a quarterback, you got
it. You just got to have certain
things inherently and the things that you don't have inherently
and that aren't innately within you, you got to get it fast.
You got to find a way to acquire it and at least make a weakness
no longer a weakness, even if it doesn't transform into a, into
an ultimate strength, it can't be a fatal flaw.
And the bad quarterbacks don't do it.
The guys who hit 220 don't do it.
There's absolute, again, I don't know if it's a perfect example,
but there is absolutely a correlation between the two and
what else we got here. What what is this?
Dan Orlovsky's a no talent dope. The only highlight of his career
is stepping out of the end zone when he's with the Lions.
I mean, I, I don't think he's a no talent dope.
I think Dan's pretty good. You know, I'm not saying he's
amazing unless he's always right.
I don't, I don't get that. I mean, listen, is he beginning
to lean into the debate world a little bit more than when he
first started? I don't watch those shows enough
to really give you an informed opinion.
I just don't find them really interesting anymore.
I just don't watch him, you know?
So I don't know. But like when he first burst
out, I see enough things on social media and listen, if I'm
going through channels like, and what's what's the show that he's
on with Rutledge? And I think Ryan Clark's on that
show. And what's the big dude Marcus,
who's I like Marcus. Like if I'm buzzing through
channels and they're talking about something interesting on
the NFL, I'll watch that. I don't think he's I don't think
he's a clown at all. I I don't I'm curious why you
would say that. I don't think, listen, here's
when you become a clown in our industry, you become a clown
when you, when the substance right, the meat of the
conversation, like the reason why you're there, the reason why
Dan's there is you can mock him stepping out of the end zone.
You know, only played football at UConn, didn't play at one of
these big schools, whatever. Although when he played at
UConn, they were pretty good and he was a career backup.
Oh, he's a scrub in the NFL. Like if you want to minimize and
that that's fine. I don't do that because I
realize, I mean, it's just how hard it is just to get to the
like for baseball, the lowest levels of the minors or to be a
pro athlete. I mean, come on, man.
I mean, how we just trivialize things.
That's one of my issues with the way people now talk about
sports. This guy's a scrub.
You couldn't shine this guy's shoes.
You couldn't shine them if he actually gave you a cloth and
wax and said shine them, you couldn't do it.
You couldn't shine their shoes. And by the way, neither can I
That's just you. I mean, so anyway, so I think
that you crossed the line of being interesting and
informative and whatever to Clownville when overtime, the
reason you're in that chair or behind the mic or in front of
the camera, the reason why you're first there, you know why
you were first brought there and somebody's paying you to do it.
That now becomes secondary to shtick.
You know what I mean? All right, I can let me say
something preposterous. Let me go against the grain,
even though I don't believe it, because this will generate, you
know, 1.7 million clicks and you know, awful announcing is going
to write about it and Parrot Media is going to write about
it. And so and so is going to want
me on their radio show because they they want to talk about it.
And I'm going to gain everyday thousands of IG followers and X
followers and Subs, you know, Subs on my YouTube show.
Like to me, that's a clown. I don't think Dan Orlovsky's a
clown at all. I'm not saying he's the best
football analyst out there, but I think he's I do think he's
good. So that but that's just my
opinion. You know, the evaluation of
talent is obviously very subjective.
Gio thinks I'm terrible on the air and many of you don't.
It's opinion, you know what I mean?
It's his opinion what else we got there.
Jay Rod hook up a couple of texts here, buddy.
Let's see. Jumping in that car heading
South in about four hours. Get ready for the Johnnies
tomorrow. Dude, I mean, couldn't, couldn't
be more hyped up for that. We got to, I got to like find a
good bar in Midtown to go do for that game.
Dude, it's going to be like something around MSG.
Let's see, who do you want the Giants to draft BT from Charles
Barkley, 223, but likely not the real.
Some people would say that Charles turned into a clown, but
I don't think he has. I don't think.
I love him. I love Charles Barkley.
Although those glasses he's wearing, have you seen the
glasses he's been wearing lately?
They're grandma glasses that they're like, first of all,
they're like Peach, which is fine.
I mean, I I got pink shirts. I got pink sports guy.
Yeah, going. But what the hell is he doing
wearing those things? They're like the size of
softballs. They're not even properly on his
face, and they're like grandma glasses.
And I love the guy. Charles Barkley's awesome, but
Charles Barkley's great because Charles just doesn't give a shit
what anybody thinks. He don't care.
He's got FU money and he's going to go out there with his boys
shack and they're going to get into some fights here and there.
And Kenny's going to, you know, although the show's not the same
since they left. It's not, you know, Kenny kind
of in between, you know, being a sticking jabs here and there and
playing the part. And I think, I think that show,
that was the greatest show of all time to me, like the
greatest studio show of all time.
The best. Yeah.
But did you see the picture of the glasses?
Now, yeah, now I'm seeing it. Now I'm seeing it.
What the world? They're like alien glasses.
They're huge. Are they peacher?
Are they like see through? Yeah, maybe that.
Yes, maybe that dude. Are they because I'm seeing one
that have that has like a paper mark in the middle or something
like Harry Potter or? Something Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's going to have the little grandma chain connector pretty
soon, right? He's already almost.
There, he's got the plastic, whatever it's called.
Yeah. On the back of it.
Yeah. Come on, it's bad.
It's. Bad.
I mean, it's almost like wearing glasses like this, you know?
Like like this. You know where on the tip of the
nose, I do have to get real ones.
These are the cheap ones from Walgreens.
The lowest, the lowest power. You know, you kind of see
somebody like this. Yes, yes, Jalen Brunson last
night. Yes, the that show's phenomenal.
But he's not even a clown because like, you know, in
between the comedy, which is what makes them phenomenal, are
are real salient points and and like, you know, BS like a real
his interpret. Now, not everybody agrees, but
his interpretation of the NBA. Now I also do listen.
Do I think I can't prove this? Do I think that a guy like
Charles Barkley, I mean, I don't know this, but I strongly
surmise that he's not. Do I think that he's sitting
there on his off nights, you know, watching film and what?
There's no way he shows up and he gets globs of money to beat
Charles Barkley and like, I don't think he knows all the
rosters and. He almost gets money to not
watch the games. Like, do you know how many clips
of Charles Barkley? They are just going like, who's
this guy? Who's this guy?
Like it almost works out better.
Yeah, yeah, Shaq's fit in so well to that show, too.
You know, he's hilarious. I mean, I love the dynamic and
like, growing up, for me, obviously it was just like a big
part of like the entertainment and watching a game, you know?
Now it's a little different, I say.
But like, I also obviously still enjoy it.
Love that. All right.
Let me answer the question by the way, from Charles.
That was almost, Oh yeah, the question.
I mean, I don't think there's, I don't think there's any chance
the giants do anything other than go for defense.
I, I really do, you know, all right, Kayvon's not going to be
here much longer. Obviously Abdul Carter started
to really flash as the year went on.
You know, a lot of pressures early and then he, you know,
then he started making more impact plays.
I, I still think Abdul Carter's going to be great.
I thought that they, when they drafted him third on my home
run, loved it. I love when they took Jackson
Dart and Carter last year. So I think Carter's going to be
terrific. I think Kayvon Thibodeau's going
to be gone now. Like to see Sexy Dexy get his
act together and with Horry, I think he's going to coast in a
little bit here. The numbers support that and
somebody like Horrible was going to, you know, really, you know,
kick everybody in the ass. But no nonsense here.
I think that he'll be motivated to play better and for another
contract, otherwise he'll be gone very soon.
I listen, if I'm the Giants, I'm taking one or two players.
I'm taking either Caleb Downs or I'm taking Sonny Styles, period.
That's it. I you know, I talked about
earlier in the show, you know about Jeremiah love again, I
wouldn't do it. I would be stunned as strong.
I'd be really surprised given the giants history with taking
running backs at 2 or if they trade with The Jets worth or
whatever. You know, if they move up.
I mean, if Jeremiah love is there at 5 is a little different
than Saquon. Not really still top 10,
anything about a couple of $100,000 like monetarily as you
get through and then eventually a million or two each year.
It's not going to really change the economics too much.
So I don't think they're doing that.
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think there's any chance
that they don't walk away with a with a power defender.
And I don't think it's going to be on the edge either.
Like I don't think it's not going to be Ruben Bain, not
going to be Bailey, I don't think from Texas Tech.
I really don't think, I think it's going to be Caleb Downs or
I think it's going to be Sonny Styles.
And I think either pick would be a home run, really.
I really wish I was this sure about what The Jets were going
to do with #2 because I, I, I like Reese, but I'm not, I'm not
sure about him. And I don't want Bailey to.
It just seems too safe. I don't love that pick.
So I really wish I'm sitting here saying, I think for sure
The Jets are going to take Sonny Styles or Caleb Downs instead.
I'm saying the Giants. So I think that's about it.
We, we cranked out two hours here today, right?
Let's go. Here we go.
Let's go. Last comment.
Brent Depreal, BT pal. What's up, brother?
Love the show. Let's go.
Congratulations on the Yanks. My Mets are up next.
Can't wait. Yeah.
Isn't that like an hour? Yeah, yeah, right.
They'll do the pre game stuff. It's on Peacock by the way, so
once I can figure out which remote it's on, I'll pop them
on. I still, I still love, I love
the opening day introductions much like I love.
I really think I'm still a kid watching that stuff no matter
what team it is. Obviously more for the Yankees,
but and then obviously get to the postseason, get the red,
white and blue bunting like the pomp and circumstance for me of
opening day, which is a lot of the energy behind where you
know, the baseball fans getting screwed with Netflix and
Peacock, which which I get it should be on S&Y should have
been on yes last night, whatever.
But I love when they call out the players dude.
Not love it, come on, it it it also last night.
This is like a weird thing, but like it's showing me man, the
high 5. That's like base like baseball.
They don't really do the DAP UPS or like I didn't see too many
funky handshakes. It's just the high 5.
Well, you know what? It is OK at least.
When I was seeing the lineup go out.
No, I guess you get a lot of fist pumps too.
Get a lot of fist pumps, right? So I'm going to have a little
trivia question for you here. Who invented the high five?
Who is basically responsible for the high 5?
Anybody know that in the watching the show there's no
way? There's no way you know this?
I don't know, Babe Ruth. Yeah, it's not a bad guest
there. No, No way.
After Babe Ruth, back then, they wouldn't even celebrate.
Oh, really? No, I mean you see the footage
of like Lou Gehrig or? If you were to ask me, I would
have guessed the high 5 has been like a congratulatory sentiment
since the 1400s when the kings and Knights, but I guess not.
You're saying it. Was a little joust after?
Yeah, a little jousting. There, it's like a 70s sixties.
It it is a 70s thing. So why don't you type this up
and don't tell me the answer here, just Google who is largely
responsible for the high 5 in Major League Baseball.
Don't give me the answer yet. And and I believe I believe that
it's actually Dusty Baker is the name that's going to pop up.
And it was when Hank, Hank Aaron hit the home run.
Wow. I got to see this, is there a
video of it? Yeah, well, there's definitely a
video of of when he hit #715 to pass Babe Ruth.
But the. Yeah.
So that was obviously in the 70s.
I think that. When did he break the home run
record, 75? No, I think it was a little bit
earlier than that, maybe 73 or 74.
Either way. Dusty Baker, a young Dusty Baker
was, I think it was on deck. And you know Hank, he definitely
no. It says it was October 2nd,
1977. The baseball season was coming
to an end when Dusty Baker, a left fielder for the Dodgers,
hit his 30th home run, making Dodgers the first team.
And as Baker approached home plate, Glenn Burke, an
outfielder and the next at bat, raised his hand over his head.
OK, OK, so we were conflating a few things here.
So no, I knew that. I knew that Hank Aaron's home
run wasn't in 77. I was.
To be fair, I wasn't. Got it, got it, got it.
No, that no good. Good job though.
I like the context there. Good job by you.
I wasn't sure if Dusty had the high five with Hank Aaron.
I wasn't sure about that, like when Hank actually hit the
record, but I knew it was Dusty and Dusty was responsible for
that. But if you look at any of the
old, you know, like Lou Gehrig crossing home plate or Ted
Williams or any of these old, old Willie Macy's old timers,
especially like the black and white footage, right?
I mean, it's almost like they barely nobody would be waiting
it Like it would just be like say the on deck guy, say Babe
Ruth hits a home run Garrick on deck or or the other way.
It's just be like this, like you just basically shake hands.
And that's so funny. Basically no acknowledgement.
And then the one thing that they do do is that they've got the
wild celebrations in the dugout, which I do love for baseball.
Like, you know, the Seattle Mariners have that big Aquaman
thing and they've got the jacket right.
The Mets at the OMG at the Mets are still doing that.
You know, like I like those props.
I think that they're fun. And if you hit a home run, you
come in and like the Red Sox, they, I think they throw the guy
in the little little cart, they shove them down the dugout.
You know, oh, that's fun, you know.
Yeah, yeah. But like when you actually see
guys going through the dugout, the amazing thing to me about
these celebrations is how choreographed they are and how
they like Aaron Judge and everybody Lenore, everybody I
see every night, they've got different handshakes with with
every different player. Some are like this and like this
and they're going like this, like how do you remember it?
And do you actually, you have to practice it Like there's no way
you just bust into a routine like, you know, without knowing
what you're going to do and anticipating what I'm going to
do. So I mean, how much time do they
actually spend? If they have like 10 different
handshakes, it's. Great.
That was like my always my thing with LeBron is like he's got
handshakes with dudes who aren't even on his team, like him and
Jason Tatum or like him. And you know, some, I mean,
obviously Kyrie, you're like some, some dude like that'll
have a handshake and you're just like, yeah, like when did what?
Just like during TMUSA practice, you just quickly cooked this
thing up. I know.
Exactly. So it's fun.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right, man, Let me and and did have one more there.
What do we got there? Thanks BT.
Super chat from Barclay. Another thank you, Charles.
I don't think he's going to. I mean, you really can't start
slower. The only way you would have is
if you would have whipped five times.
But no, I mean, I even said yesterday I'm like Aaron Judge,
more or less. One of the themes on the show
yesterday was let's not even though we're going to let's
maybe tap the brakes on reacting to every baseball game like it's
a football game, right? And I haven't necessarily heard
that today about Aaron Judge. I haven't listened to the radio.
I've just done what I've done today.
But you know, I'm sure there's some Yankee fans overreacting on
social media. I don't.
And I don't even think that that's an overreaction because,
you know, he could start slow. It is baseball.
You never know. And he has started slow before.
I think at the end of the day, when it when April's all said
and done, I'm not saying he's hitting 390 or 410, but I would
think that he's going to have, you know, 8-9 home runs, 20
something RBI's and be on course when he heats up for three month
Bender that he's invariably going to go on to wrap up his
fourth MVP. I think that Aaron Judge will if
it's oh, he's healthy, have 50 plus home runs and have an OPS
closer to 11 than than 1000. OK, and, you know, 118 to 125
RBI's and, you know, lead the league in OPS and have the best
OPS plus have the best WAR, probably closer to 9, you know,
nine and a half, 8910, something like that and score well over
100 runs and win the MVP. You know, there we go.
And then that again, that won't be enough because he's got to do
it in October. You know, for a lot of people,
you know, I get it. You know, I want to see Judge
win. And if he doesn't, there's going
to be a lot of shrapnel that comes his way.
But as I hit yesterday, if you guys missed it, check it out.
There's only so much you got like Aaron Judge could do
because you know, unlike a basketball player like a LeBron
or Kobe or an MJ or any great player, you've taken 20 plus
shots a night and then you have all those defensive
opportunities, You know, whether it's help defense or on the ball
deep and whatever it might be, rebound assist.
I mean, you could do anything just based on the usage rate and
how much you touch the ball over the course of an NBA game, NBA
Finals, right, versus the amount of it bats.
And I literally went through the math yesterday.
You know, if Aaron Judge is in the World Series and the Yankees
losing 7 and he gets destroyed, well, let's go.
You know, sometimes 4 is 28. All right, let's go.
Maybe a couple of walks mixed in.
Let's give him 3334 plate appearances over the course of
the of the game, of the season, of the of the series.
And then, you know, maybe two or three balls hit too many
outfield. So 7 * 3 is 20, one 7 * 4 is 28.
You mix in a couple of walks, you're talking about sixty
chances to do something. Whereas you know somebody like
Jordan or Jaylen Brunson for the Knicks.
Now Jalen's going to take 20 plus shots the first game he
plays. He just is.
Yeah, so easily so. It's a little different
evaluation for me, but not for everybody.
All right? I got to bounce, man.
I, I got to finish packing here, get ready to head down to DC
today. Little later in the show.
I'll be on my with my buddy Jimmy Fala, if you guys want to
check that out. Fox across America.
He wanted to talk some St. John's and Dukes.
So I'm like, Yep, let's do it. So I am going to, we're going to
actually, to be fair, we're going to record that today and
we're going to run that tomorrow for those guys.
So I'm going to do that around 3:30.
Then I'll pretty much get in the car, start heading down to DC,
go to St. John's hotel.
We'll get you some content tomorrow morning and then
obviously, hopefully with the Mink man, I think Nikki's going
to jump on at some point. Again, Nikki Lauderulo, she's
down there. She was at she'll be at practice
today and the press conferences and all that stuff and open
shoot around. So I'll get there tonight.
I'll do some stuff tomorrow. The game tomorrow night, if the
Johnnies win, stay there through the weekend, play either
Michigan State or UConn. God, just please give me St.
John's and U Conn for the right to get to the Final Four.
Give me that, please. I know I don't want to get
greedy. Basketball guys.
I waited a long time. You gave us Rick Pitino.
You gave us a couple of the championships for the Big East
tournament. You gave us a couple of wins
this year. We're in the Sweet 16 in DC.
close. St.
John's fan. Yeah, you hooked us up.
I get it. Basketball gods.
But I'm going to be greedy. I need more.
I need to be in Indianapolis for the Final Four.
I need to be Duke. That would be as much pleasure.
The only thing that would exceed that would be beating UConn and
all their fan Husky fans. I love you.
You programmed. I got respect for.
I got. I do.
But you guys get a little too squawky, too much, you know what
I mean? I'd love to put you guys in a
body bag and send you back to Connecticut as St.
John's and me and I or whatever. Get ready to go to Indianapolis
for the Final Four. Man, please.
Just a couple of more gifts here.
Let's go. All right, so I will see you
tomorrow when I see you. Have a great rest of your day, J
Rod, good work out of you. Good bounce back.
Have an awesome day. Like it.
Subscribe and check out The Jets collective sub on that.
Like that. Check out the content and I will
see you tomorrow from DC, the site of the Sweet 16 for St.
John's and Duke Peace.