Alex and Bobby pour one out for Derek Jeter’s Tampa mansion and celebrate the real estate cycle of life, then discuss Albert Pujols’ historic achievement and the blissful lack of narratives, Aaron Judge’s home run chase and Apple TV’s ill-timed broadcast, and what the AL Central says about the state of competition in baseball.
Links:
Derek Jeter’s former mansion slated for demolition
Ken Rosenthal on what Albert Pujols can tell us about Aaron Judge
Songs featured in this episode:
Sturgill Simpson — “Life of Sin” • Janelle Monáe — “Don’t Judge Me” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
[INTRO MUSIC]
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and, and, and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
ALEX: Bobby, I know we haven’t talked much about this, this season. But it feels like it’s finally time, right? There’s a New York Yankee, who is at the center of a very historic accomplishment that’s about to be toppled.
BOBBY: Right?
ALEX: Derek Jeter is record setting, Tampa home, is about to come down. They’re taking the bulldozer to it.
BOBBY: No! Why?! Jesus, we don’t build houses in this country anymore.
ALEX: We–
BOBBY: We just tear ’em down.
ALEX: This is, this is what’s gonna turn me into a [1:07], probably.
BOBBY: This is the housing crisis everyone was talking about.
ALEX: Last year, Jeter sold his home for $22.5 million.
BOBBY: Dang!
ALEX: Already penny, yeah.
BOBBY: That’s a moat, bro.
ALEX: I know, right? Yeah, it has like an actual [1:25]–
BOBBY: You can’t get moats 30 million [1:26]–
ALEX: –like for average. Yeah, he sold it last year to a, to a trust that is maybe tied is maybe tied to a cryptocurrency coin.
BOBBY: Oh God, oh God.
ALEX: But all that to say–
BOBBY: That’s a whole different, that’s a whole different–
ALEX: I’m at it–
BOBBY: –to explore.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: We just have cryptocurrency trusts buying up homes and tearing them down? What? It’s like the opposite of the 2008 financial crisis. They were building too many homes and giving them away.
ALEX: Supposedly they want to tear it down and actually build a handful of homes on the–
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: –on the plot. Which–
BOBBY: Wow, joke’s on us.
ALEX: Yeah, joke is on us, which ironically, is what is there prior to Derek Jeter building this mansion, it was a collection of homes. It feels like cycle of life, right?
BOBBY: So did we find a crypto company that wants to tear down mansions and build new homes? Like in a roundabout way?
ALEX: Right, like, is this actually based?
BOBBY: I don’t really know. Why did Jeter sell the home?
ALEX: It’s a little unclear. I think they initially made the decision because he and his family moved to Miami because he was a part of the Miami Marlins.
BOBBY: Wait, what part of Florida is it in again?
ALEX: Tampa.
BOBBY: Tampa?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right, right. Because then Tom Brady was living there when he signs with Buccaneers.
ALEX: Exactly. Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: Underrated wrinkle of all of this.
ALEX: Super underrated, that they just have a group chat where they Airbnb each other’s homes.
BOBBY: Right, like a group chat or is there like an intranet? You know, like a secure site that you can only get into via password where you can just rent.
ALEX: Right. Well, you know how like the that, in the news lately there’s been a story about like, the celebrity dating app, right? It’s, I don’t remember what it’s called. But–
BOBBY: Not my news, I don’t know anything about this.
ALEX: Blissfully unaware about this exact [3:17].
BOBBY: I’m not, not, not a celebrity nor am I dating, so 0 for 2.
ALEX: I have to think that there actually probably is like a celebrity Zillow, right? Or like a celebrity Airbnb.
BOBBY: I, my understanding is that that’s kind of the entire thing of being a celebrity or a rich–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –person is that you have–
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: –access to eve- everything that everyone else does it.
ALEX: Yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like it was–
ALEX: Like to share your assets with others and, and receive their assets.
BOBBY: Like isn’t that why the French Revolution happened? Like that was the original like sort of celebrity Zillow, people were mad about it.
ALEX: So are you saying you can draw a direct line to from the French Revolution to Tom Brady renting out Derek Jeter’s house?
BOBBY: I think, yeah, that’s kind of like the our entire politics.
ALEX: Right. That’s like the, the domino meme.
BOBBY: We’re so off the rails already.
ALEX: Poor went out, Bobby and I are going to take a trip down there in a couple weekends just to drive by before it’s gone and pay our respects.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I encourage all of our listeners to do the same, to bid for farewell to this historic institution. I mean, this is my heart’s hurting over this even more than losing the Marlins home run statue.
BOBBY: Right. Do you think that let me swim in the moat?
ALEX: I can’t, I still just can’t wrap my head around the fact that a house has a moat. I also–
BOBBY: Even more of a connection to the French Revolution, dawg. He’s building it like a castle.
ALEX: So true. I mean, it’s also literally on the what, like the moat is kind of just–
BOBBY: The ocean?
ALEX: –the ocean.
BOBBY: Wow. I need to rethink that, I’m afraid of the ocean.
ALEX: That, that’s actually, that’s actually big, rich people energy, right? It’s saying why don’t I just make the ocean the thing that protects my home from–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –intruders.
BOBBY: Years and years of trade strategy right there. Informed–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Derek Jeter on where to build his mansion.
ALEX: Although I have bad news for him about, about the ocean and who is really going to be intruding his, his now former home.
BOBBY: Well, yeah, I mean, that’s just that’s just hubris–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to use the ocean as the moat.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe that’s why it’s getting torn down. Yeah, well, we’ll be driving down to pay respects. Should I not play the intro music right here as a moment of silence? Should we just introduce ourselves and then just nothing and then we’ll move on to the rest of the show?
ALEX: Well, I’ve been standing out of respect for this whole opening segment. So–
BOBBY: Right and we salute during the entire recording of this podcast, which has already been covered.
ALEX: I mean, I’m staring at a picture of the mansion on my wall right now. It’s like kind of an, it’s like a dream board. It’s like a vision board, you know, kind of like it’s something to aspire to.
BOBBY: Right. And I have dual holograms of Derek Jeter and Tom Brady on my desk. So, alright, no we’re actually going to talk about the Yankee who is in the news, Aaron Judge. We’re going to talk about Albert Pujols. And we’re gonna talk about the AL Central, because we have some thoughts. But before we get to all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[6:17]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Alex, we’ve joked many times, or at least I’ve joked many times on the podcast that this would be our last show. Because new opportunity has come up, or because I’m sick of you doing Cardinals apologia on the podcast. But I wanted to say that the reason that this is late, is because this really is our last podcast. Because I was in intense negotiations over the weekend with the Central Intelligence Agency to become the new host of their new CIA podcast.
ALEX: Just you?!
BOBBY: It’s actually me, leaving you this time, not–
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: –me getting rid of you. Or you taking a new opportunity to go work for Bill DeWitt?
ALEX: Well, I’m obviously disappointed. This was obviously an opportunity that you could not pass up. You get the–
BOBBY: No!
ALEX: –opportunity to write history.
BOBBY: I get the opportunity to overthrow foreign governments from the comfort of my own home studio.
ALEX: Right. They’re letting–
BOBBY: Think about that!
ALEX: –you work remotely even. They’re letting–
BOBBY: Exactly
ALEX: –they do it just like us.
BOBBY: They have created by microphone, you know, it now pipes into foreign leaders headphones directly. For an opposition to leaders actually.
ALEX: Of course.
BOBBY: No, this is all parody. I will not be hosting this CIA podcast.
ALEX: Should, should we do–
BOBBY: Kind have like not really convinced that that’s real.
ALEX: I am not either.
BOBBY: Have you checked it out yet?
ALEX: No, I haven’t, I haven’t subscribed. When I do, it’ll be the only one in my rotation with Joe West’s podcast. Which actually those two are probably closer thematically than, than one might think at the outset.
BOBBY: Well, I think they’re probably that’s enough content to fill all your time.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: All your free time.
ALEX: It really is.
BOBBY: Do you think that if you tried to subscribe to that they would just block you? Like they’ve already flagged you?
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: Keeps on cathing fire.
ALEX: I think they would be getting some mixed signals for sure. I think they would not–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –be so sure–
BOBBY: He got the minds.
ALEX: –how to incorporate that into my file.
BOBBY: Okay, before we actually get into discussing real things than not cracking dumb jokes. I wanted to thank the new patrons this week, those patrons are Chelsea, Marcus, Tyler, and Jamie. You can sign up for the Tipping Pitches, Patreon at patreon.com/tippingpitches. We have three tiers, $5, $7, and $12. And they get to various things that are all very exciting. All of them gives you access to our Slack, which is just continually blowing up even though you and I have not been on it much in the last week. And we’re trying to play catch up with all of the various discussions. It’s a beautiful, wonderful community that we appreciate very much and you can be a part of it for just $5 a month. It’s time to talk about Albert Pujols, he did it.
ALEX: Yeah, he did!
BOBBY: Your face, whenever we have to talk about a real baseball thing. Or you just smile and shake your head back and forth. He did it.
ALEX: I just I, I slipped back into 2017, Alex, right? And just like, yeah, the ball he hit was so far, and, and hard.
BOBBY: Well, it’s interesting that you bring up 2018 and us thinking about baseball and talking about baseball in 2017. Because if you had told us five years from then that we would be sitting down to talk about Albert making it to 700, I think we probably would have been really surprised, right? Because he was in a really tough spot in, in Anaheim. The Angels were not making use of his legendary talents. And of course he was having injury problems throughout his time with the Angels as well. But he was pretty, he was pretty far off pace. I wouldn’t say he was far off pace, actually, he was slowing down rapidly. And so you could see a world in which he would not maintain pace to get to 700. And he might not have these extra couple years that we now know that he’s had with the Dodgers and closing out with the Cardinals. And it’s not very, it’s not all that often in baseball, where you get to sit down and just have a collective moment like this. Where everybody knows how Titanic this is, and everyone can appreciate it, for what it is on almost entirely uncomplicatedly. Like, there’s no one sitting out there being like, this isn’t cool, this isn’t great. This isn’t one of the most historic achievements that we’ve gotten to witness in our lifetimes.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, his late career, renaissance in and of itself has been something to behold, as you mentioned, much of his Angels career was marred by injuries. And he wa- he was at 614 at the end of 2017. And he was already 37 at that point, which I think you kind of look at, look at where his career had kind of gone. And it seemed reasonable to think he might play out the rest of his Angels contract and then call it a day. Obviously, we’re incredibly lucky that he decided not to do that. And you’re right, that it seems kind of like a bit of a rarity these days that we can kind of bask in these historical moments, without, without including a more meta narrative about what it means for the sport. Or whether or not it counts, or, or how it plays into potential contract negotiations or anything. Like that, like it’s very, we were kind of able to enjoy this in a vacuum a little bit. Which is–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –kind of an interesting contrast to Aaron Judge’s situation, which I feel like has so many different narrative strands, kind of pulling it in so many different directions. That it’s hard to just like sit down and right. Because you’re thinking–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –about all these other things that are kind of in play at the moment. And Pujols was just like, pure, unabashed, celebration of one of the greatest hitters of, of our generation.
BOBBY: Yeah, I think the greatest hitter of our generation, you look at- I, I am always struck and I know this is not like great podcast fodder, or great radio, necessarily. But I’m always struck when I go to his baseball reference page, almost more than when I go to Bonds’ baseball reference page. Because when you go to Bonds’, it’s almost like if you made up a player that didn’t exist, he was that good. Like just OPS over 1000. Every year back to back to back to back, the 73 home runs, obviously absurd. All of the walks, all the OBP, it’s like if you just broke baseball in a simulator. But Albert’s baseball reference page is so unbelievably consistent. He never had a season with more than 50 home runs, 49 was the most he ever hit. Pete Alonso hit 53 in his rookie year. And Albert is at 700 because he just did that every year, 40s, 40s, 40s, 40s, 40s. Hit in 300, hit in 300. And there’s obviously people know this about him, his nickname is “The Machine”. But I think sometimes we forget how big of a number 700 is. And if you never hit 50 in a single season, how hard it is to actually do that? And I just, I am so thankful for his consistency for the like, millstone that it is in the baseball community. And honestly, how just humble and sweet he has been throughout this whole experience where he’s like, this is for the fans. It doesn’t matter if you guys keep the balls that I hit. I’m so happy to have rediscovered my love for baseball in LA. And then to close out with all of my guys in St. Louis with Yadi and Wain and all that stuff. Like, you know, I joked last week about you being too kind to the Cardinals. But this is actually one of the only things that can soften my hater heart. When it comes to the Cardinals, it’s like it’s, it’s been really, really beautiful to watch. And I, I think that we should just be so grateful for it. And we should celebrate moments like these on the podcast, because these are the things that keep us coming back to baseball despite all the criticism that we have for the league. Like someone like Albert, someone like Miggy, someone like Adrian Beltré, these guys that we’ve celebrated. Who have sort of come to the close of their career in the time that we’ve been doing this show. Their like the godfathers of the game. They’re like the godfathers of this next generation of baseball. And it was exhilarating to watch this. We were together watching–
ALEX: We were–
BOBBY: –the 7, 700th home run.
ALEX: –we were together, yeah. Yeah, you know–
BOBBY: We were together along with your mom. We were yelling in, in support of Albert. To the point where my dog was barking at us and, and wondering what the hell was going on.
ALEX: Stevie knew, she knew what was going on.
BOBBY: Right. Maybe she was just a big Albert fan. And she, she saw the, she saw the crack of the bat and, and knew what’s going on.
ALEX: And knew immediately, yeah. I think that point about his longevity and consistency is really important too. Because it really sort of underscores just how hard it is to be this good for so long. Because you look at a guy like you mentioned Miguel Cabrera, who was a very similar type of player to Albert Pujols, and is 200 shy of hitting 7 home runs, hitting 700 home runs. He’s already 39. And yet at one point, he’s a guy who you look at and say he could absolutely challenge home run record. Because his, the first decade of his career looks very similar to Pujols’ that consistency, that ability to hit 300. That ability to hit 30 or 40 home runs every year. And, and it makes you reflect on like when the next time we’ll see something like this again is, right? You, you maybe–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –could have made the argument four or five years ago that Mike Trout is on pace to put his name up there, on the all time home run list. But again, has dealt with myriad injuries over the last few years that his jeopardize some of those more historic runs that he’s on, even though he is still with those injuries. One of the best players in baseball right now and still the greatest player I’ve been able to witness with my own eyes over the last 10 years.
BOBBY: Dawg, people haven’t been paying attention because the Angels are 30 games back and extremely disappointing. And obviously Othani garners a lot of deserve good coverage of, of a bad team in Anaheim. And so it people have either just cognitively moved on from Mike Trout or the Angels are not playing interesting games anymore, but he’s still gonna hit like 45 home runs this year. He missed like 30 games, and he’s still–
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: –gonna hit 45 home runs. He would–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –he would maybe be a better case for MVP without the injury. But I can’t, I can’t get into that hypothetical because it’s already toxic enough as it is. Do you know Ken Rosenthal wrote a piece a couple days ago, after Albert broke the record, not broke the record out after Albert passed 700. By the way, 700 home runs really impressive. You know what Albert Pujols’ most impressive record is? All-time leader history of baseball, all the way back to Abner Doubleday, most grounded into double plays ever, 426. He’s got the–
ALEX: Unreal.
BOBBY: –bold, italics, bolded on the baseball reference page, brother. 426 double plays that’s elite. He broke that like two years ago too. But anyway, Ken Rosenthal wrote a piece about, about kind of what we’re talking about with Albert. And how, and his free agency in 2011, and how going to Anaheim was not what either side, not what any of the three parties anticipated. It wasn’t what Albert had hoped for, for the second half of his career. The Cardinals missed out on have, him having all of these achievements and having these chapters the harmonious from the very beginning of his career. And for the Angels, they weren’t ever really able to, to build around him and Trout in an effective way. And Rosenthal framed it in the context of what Aaron Judge is doing right now, which is, which just chasing the Roger Maris Yankees AL home run record. And what it might mean for his free agency coming up. And even though, I think you’re right to, to point out that it’s even more satisfying that there aren’t these sort of narratives. There aren’t these free agency conversations for Albert. I think it’s an interesting contrast with Judge because that’s like, what the story has been the entire year. All the way up until the minute before first pitch on opening day, when Brian Cashman just told the media what the Yankees final offer was, and what Aaron Judge turned down. And that they were going to be going into this year, without a contract. Without even his arbitration salary, which we didn’t know until two months into the season, basically. And, you know, I was heading into that ready to, to kind of critique what Rosenthal had to say. Because oftentimes, when you frame and, when you frame an opinion piece that way, and you say it wasn’t good for anyone that Albert left and free agency, you can sort of villainize the concept of not coming back on hometown discount. But I thought the article was actually really good. And it was right to point out that, you know, he used FanGraphs for calculation in terms of dollars per, per WAR and free agency and what that would mean that Aaron Judge is owed, and what he made in surplus value for the Yankees just in this season alone, which is like 10s of millions of dollars. And he pointed out that, it’s not just that the player lose uses things by leaving and losing this connection with the hometown fans that they’ve spent their whole career with. It’s also that these players are more valuable to the franchise they started with too. And that there needs to be some sort of reckoning in the actual negotiation of baseball, to account for that. Especially when you’re with a team like the Yankees that can’t afford it. It’s just not the same as like Manny Ramirez moving on from Cleveland. CC Sabathia, moving on from Cleveland. These are teams that have told you that they’re not going to spend the money to keep these players. And so at least you know. What with the Yankees, and with the Cardinals, to a lesser extent, you should be- because you are a marquee franchise, because you are exploiting the value of these players for your own financial gain. There should be a certain expectation of you to overcompensate for some of that, once they actually do hit free agency. And that is the kind of thing that engenders goodwill when we get to a CBA. Not Rob Manfred going and saying that he’s going to have more free flowing conversation with Tony Clark. It’s the actual behavior in the interim. And I think Judge’s pursuit of 61-62 in the season is a great example of like, of a litmus test of what we consider to be a broken system. And I wonder if the Yankees are gonna pass?
ALEX: Yeah, I thought his point in the column about the importance of mutual respect between a player and a franchise is something that shouldn’t be understated, right? There’s obviously it’s a business transaction, at the end of the day, and Judge wants to get as much money as he can. And the Yankees want to retain his services while paying him the least amount of money that they can. But when the stakes are so high in something like this, those intangibles really can make a difference. If you feel like you’re being short drifted by the franchise that developed you, and has puts you on the national stage that can leave a bitter taste in your mouth, right? Which I think is why kind of the negotiations were so fraught over the last few months. Because there really was a lot of sake even putting aside the AL home run record that Judge is chasing, he’s a franchise icon no matter how you spin it, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So the Yankees have an opportunity to like put their money where their mouth is, right? They haven’t had a player like this, that has really captured the national attention since Jeter. Can you imagine if they let Jeter walk halfway through his career, right? Can you imagine if they let Maris walk after he hit 61?
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean–
ALEX: Like that changes, that changes the, the narrative of what their franchise actually is.
BOBBY: Right. And what- yeah, it’s basically just like, the core myth of the Yankees–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –is gone if you let things like that happen. And it’s actually really interesting and fascinating that you bring up Jeter because I was thinking the same thing with regards to Randy’s documentary, ‘The Captain’. One of the most fascinating things in that documentary, was Jeter talking about his frustrations with Brian Cashman, with the Yankees front office. Because we know Jeter to be this, this loyal guy. Yankee lifer, never thought about going anywhere else. Never rumored to have wanted to leave in free agency. But then that scene in the documentary, where he’s talking about what it felt like for the Yankees, to try to save a penny, a couple pennies in arbitration, and how that pissed him off, and how he wanted to prove the organization wrong. It’s so interesting to read in the context of what Aaron Judge is doing right now. Because the benefit of hindsight, would lead us to believe that the most important player of the modern Yankees era of the post 1960s Yankees, that that was never in jeopardy. But it was, it was in jeopardy, because of what you’re talking about, because of the lack of what Rosenthal describes as sort of these like intrinsic, non quantifiable things that should actually play into the quantifiable numbers that you end up with. And, man, I just don’t, I don’t think they do. Like I think we’re in a cold, analytical world right now. And whether that’s the, the end I don’t even just mean that in sort of, like, the Sabermetric context. I mean, that in terms of the context of, you know, like TV revenues, betting money, what did the previous contract go for? What is this say about what the next free agent contract will go up for? And I know that, that’s incredibly entrenched. And I know that that’s how the market works. But sometimes I’m just like, does everything have to be market economics? Or can we just look at this as like a decision tree? Should the Yankees keep Aaron Judge? If yes, then what does it take? Because I really think that we don’t do that enough anymore. And I think that teams used to do that. Like I don’t think there was ever a question of why Don Mattingly should continue to be a Yankee. Or whether Lou Gehrig should continue to be a Yankee. Or Yogi Berra should continue to be a Yankee. And maybe that’s because at the time the players were taking hometown discounts. But okay, great, then all of your franchise value is built on the back of all these hometown discounts that the stars of yesteryear have taken. So why can’t Aaron Judge reap those benefits now?
ALEX: Right. Well, and they were also getting paid, because of what they had already done at that point, right? They were being kept around because teams were looking backwards and rewarding them for their performance. And obviously, we’re just in a different era at this point. So no matter how much Judge is historic chase matters to the franchise to the baseball public at large, teams just don’t look at it that way anymore. Which is unfortunate, because you would think that in cases like these, it’s worth breaking from that analytical mindset a little bit and thinking about what is this person actually mean to the history of this franchise? Because it’s not nothing. This man’s having the greatest walk year ever.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: I mean, he’s gonna get paid no matter what, and good for him. But I like as, as a general fan of baseball be cool. If you stuck with the Yankees gonna be extremely weird to see him in a Giants–
BOBBY: A Giants uniform.
ALEX: –jersey.
BOBBY: I like how that’s the default one. That seems–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –like the most, almost like the most inoffensive, aside from like–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –leaving the Yankees. Like the second best option or aside from–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –like staying with the Yankees, like I guess the second most inoffensive option would be him going to the Giants because they’re so far away.
ALEX: I know. Well, and also like they’ve spent the last few years kind of floating these trial balloons that they’re involved in talks with every major–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –superstar so it doesn’t feel–
BOBBY: They’re, they’re gonna-
ALEX: –like a surprise. at this point.
BOBBY: –they’re gonna get Goldschmidt. [26:51]
ALEX: [26:51] gonna get Harper.
BOBBY: Yeah. What are the most cursed spots that he could land? Astros number one.
ALEX: Yeah, but I don’t think he would do that, right?
BOBBY: No, he won’t–
ALEX: I feel like–
BOBBY: –I’m not saying realistic, I’m saying just like, of all of the plates.
ALEX: Just like what would be the hardest to watch?
BOBBY: Yeah. I think Astros and Red Sox tied for number one. I think Mets third.
ALEX: See, I think he looks good in the Mets jersey, man.
BOBBY: I think it would be great in Mets jersey.
ALEX: I don’t [27:19]–
BOBBY: I’m just saying–
ALEX: –at all.
BOBBY: –for the Yankee fan. What’s the most cursed?
ALEX: Okay, I gotcha. Yeah, [27:26] Mets is painful. See, I was going to like use zoom out more broadly, that’s just reflective of the era we’re in, right? The torch being–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –passed from one New York franchise to another.
BOBBY: The other one that I think that actually is sneaky cursed is Dodgers. Because Yankees fans would no longer be able to hold Mookie leaving the Red Sox to go to LA over Red Sox fans?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They would lose that trump card. And then it would just be like, the Dodgers don’t have enough, they have to invent a new position. Because they have so many good players.
ALEX: They literally don’t have a slot for it.
BOBBY: Hey Rob, can we have 10 players on the field at one? I have too many All-Stars.
ALEX: That would be insane. I’d watch that. I’d watch Judge of the Dodgers.
BOBBY: Aaron Judge, you are a Seattle Mariner. Get it done. Jerry, get it done. Last thing on Judge, I, this is true of Albert too but you know, I wrote in our newsletter last week, that I don’t think baseball has a star problem. Because I look around baseball and I see dozens and dozens of stars. We talk about them all the time on this show. And they’re younger than ever. They’re better than ever. They’re more international than ever. But I do think and you know, in the newsletter, I wrote that I think baseball has a villain problem, that there’s not enough tension right now. There’s not enough animation around the confrontation in baseball in a non toxic way. But I do think that baseball has a mono culture problem. And that’s sort of a nebulous thing to try to describe. But everything is so siloed for a number of reasons for because baseball has always been regional, number one, I think that’s the primary reason. But then, you know, the ways that we consume baseball are more easily siloed off from the rest of everyone else’s consumption of the sport more so now than ever. Like we sit at home on our couch, and we watch our own MLB TV account. We have our own Twitter circles of people who follow the same teams that we do. And we all tweet while those games are on. And we all like each other’s tweets while those games are on. We have our Slack channels in the Tipping Pitches Slack of all of our favorite teams. And there are very few things that rise to the occasion of of breaking through that now. And I think it’s getting a little better honestly. I think that there is more of an appreciation for the wider league now than there was maybe four or five years ago, sort of boomerang back a little bit. But seeing Judge, seeing every baseball fan, make it appointment television, to watch him, to watch Albert, has been really cool. And I think that there’s like a lot of fear mongering about the idea of losing monoculture, not just in baseball, but in, but in all of society. And I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. But I think for the purposes of the sport, and reintroducing itself, with a new era of players with a new generation of these young, super talented players who are, you know, playing loud, and all of this stuff that MLB is trying to market, I think it’s, it’s pretty important to have these touchstone moments happen in order to kind of like as, as like scaffolding for the rest of the stuff going on around the baseball world.
ALEX: I completely agree. And I’m glad you brought up that consumption as well. Because that’s something I’d like to briefly touch on before we move on from Judge completely. Is that idea of appointment television, right? And accessibility to the broader baseball public. Obviously, when–
BOBBY: Oh, no, I’ve opened the can of worms.
ALEX: Yeah, you had. Yeah, you had. Obviously-
BOBBY: I suddenly subconsciously forgot that we were supposed to talk about this.
ALEX: Yeah, but, but you knew, you knew, you teed–
BOBBY: I did know.
ALEX: –me up, even though you didn’t know you were teeing me up.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: There was a lot of hand wringing over the Friday evening broadcast. Which well ultimately didn’t mean anything because Judge did not hit his 61st home run. Although Pujols would hit 699 and 700 later, later on in the evening on the Apple TV broadcast.
BOBBY: Is like let’s get this done with, dawg.
ALEX: But there was a lot of discussion on Baseball Twitter about the relative and accessibility of baseball games being streamed on Apple TV. And how this is a moment that should be shared by all baseball fans, and not just ones who have an Apple ID or something like that, right? But then even the New York Attorney General came out and said this game should be free Mr. Baseball. And, and–
BOBBY: No comment.
ALEX: –and, and she was corrected by many people who noted that the game is actually free. But that’s not even–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –that’s not even really the, the point.
BOBBY: [32:15] cops on it, bro.
ALEX: I have to say, I think–
BOBBY: Yes! He’s adjusting in this chair, ladies and gentlemen.
ALEX: I think it’s a little bit funny that on such a potentially historic night, Major League Baseball accidentally blacked out their core demographic, which is like old people.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: Like, that’s just dumb luck, that’s there’s no way they could have predicted that. This is part of a, part of Major League Baseball’s push into streaming that really kind of went into overdrive this year, right? This is obviously a part of a contract that was signed months ago.
BOBBY: A lucrative contract, I–
ALEX: An extremely lucrative contract.
BOBBY: –if you’ll remember, started to leak when they were still in the lockout. And everybody was like, hey, turns out you guys actually do have money. So maybe you should come back–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –to the table.
ALEX: And like this sort of thing was inevitable, right? As more and more baseball games get streamed, there are going to be more and more instances where folks feel like, more people should have access to it than they actually do. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna be honest, I it doesn’t feel like as big of an issue to me as maybe some people were making it out to be.
BOBBY: I mean, like people died with the way that people were talking about this.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like you said, the Attorney General. Like, just why don’t you go work on laws, you know? Why don’t you go work on like, helping people?
ALEX: Yeah. I gotta say, it worked out for me. I was able to watch the game. You know what I can’t do living in New York and not having access to YES Network? Watch Yankees game. So this is, it’s definitely like a, this feels like–
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: –a micro, a micro [33:54].
BOBBY: Wow.
ALEX: I know. [33:57]–
BOBBY: [33:57] some things.
ALEX: I’m a single issue voter man, can I tell you?
BOBBY: Can I watch the game or not?
ALEX: Yeah. I thought this narrative was especially interesting, kind of amid the broader conversations being had about who MLB should be marketing itself towards, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And this was kind of an interesting corollary to that, where all of a sudden, people were concerned about whether your, your grandpa could watch the game or not.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like, I- I don’t know, maybe they should go to the Genius Bar.
BOBBY: Dawg, I’m out on the Genius Bar.
ALEX: Yeah, Genius Bar sucks.
BOBBY: First of all–
ALEX: They’re not gonna do anything for you.
BOBBY: The hubris of calling yourself the Genius Bar, when most of what you do is just a factory reset. Like–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –is, is YouTube the Genius Bar then, too? Like, we can–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –just call anyone a genius fucking–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –Siculus. Second of all, I’m just, I’m gonna be honest. I kind of agree with all the people who are like there’s no way old people are gonna be able to watch this game.
ALEX: Yeah, uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And that’s messed up. Because specifically, I think this is why it drove people crazy. Specific quickly for the Yankees fan base.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Which is steeped in history, steeped in lore, that there are people alive who remember the Maris home run record. And now want to watch Aaron Judge, in the later years of their lives, try to break this record that they have memory of. I think that’s pretty messed up. I also have to agree with your point, that it’s hilarious that MLB got themselves into this problem. Because and I’ll take it even one step further. Like MLB has effectively ruined baseball for a generation of people by making the games inaccessible in favor of lining the pockets of regional cable executives. And in turn lining their own pockets, of course. But they’ve clung to the past, against everybody’s wishes against their, against their own best interest, honestly. They’ve let this moment of like streaming TV, pass them by and making their game more accessible. Pass them by, and they can’t even turn to those regional executives. They can’t even say, we’re going to make an exception for you now, after all of this time. And so they’ve basically locked themselves into like the most balkanized version of consuming baseball that you could have possibly drawn up in like a homeland style pinboard like 20 years ago. If we, if you were like galaxy branding, what is the worst way to consume baseball? This probably is even worse than that. Well, you have to have Apple TV+, you have to have an Apple ID, but it’s free. But you have to make an account.
ALEX: Yeah. But you do have to enter your billing information. But you’re not going to be charged but–
BOBBY: But remind yourself to cancel it before you to get charged. But also, if you have cable, there is also a YES app, which you can sign into. But you can only sign into that and you can only consume it via the YES app. If you have cable, you can’t purchase anything else through that app.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So like–
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: –and the games not even going to be on that app, [37:05]
ALEX: Right. Right, exactly, I don’t even work here. I mean, and that’s kind of where I landed with this whole thing is, YES, broadcast execution, maybe less than Stellar. They are still working some kinks out. This is obviously Apple’s first year broadcasting baseball games. I have to assume they will get better against, against my better judgment. But while Apple caught the flak in this specific moment, this is but one example of this sort of thing happening all over the sport, right? I mean, if it, it cuts, the other way too, right? In that cable is not inexpensive. You, I, if we’re just speaking in technical terms, this the Apple game was free, right? Like–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –like this was, like bar none like the the cheapest way to watch a baseball game. And cable packages are not cheap, or necessarily any more accessible as it is. And obviously, this has been happening throughout the year, it just happened to come at a particularly inconvenient time for the sport. But it feels more representative of baseball’s sort of crisis of its identity in trying to figure out how it can adapt to the streaming world. Because right now, it’s sort of a piecemeal, thing where every other week, a certain game is going to be on a certain streaming platform, and you have to kind of figure out where that’s going to be. And you have to make sure you’re signed up for that. And it’s not going to be accessible through your, through MLB TV or your preferred cable provider, or whatever it is. And it’s on the viewer to really figure all that out. And that to me feels like the, the real issue here is that there’s so little consistency, that it’s hard to keep up with, even if you are a millennial who considers themselves to be like relatively tech savvy or whatever, right? It’s–
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, like later in the night.
ALEX: –yeah.
BOBBY: I was trying to put on the Mets-A’s game, and I was just, I went to Peacock, because I thought it was on Peacock. But really, I had just seen that it was NBC Sports Bay Area. And I confuse that with Peacock. Like, I’m not immune to these kinds of mistakes either by any–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –means. But I think you’re right to point out that this game was not less accessible. It was just accessible to a different subset of people.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: And like, and that’s why everybody was up in arms about that, because it’s sort of like, it’s flipping the problem on its head. It’s basically inverting the problem. It’s still a problem of the same magnitude. It’s just a problem for a different set of people.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And that I don’t understand this is why everybody, this is why we’ve been so mad about cable and blackouts and everything for the entire time that we’ve been doing this podcast. Is because like how everybody felt about that Apple TV+ game is how we’ve all felt–
ALEX: Exactly, yeah.
BOBBY: –about baseball for the last 10 years, dude.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, sorry, I live in the city of the team that I like, I think I’m probably like most people, most people just live in the place where they like the sports teams.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: And so what, we’re, we’re not allowed to get letters from the Attorney General in support of us? I’m uh, I’m at the Mets are about to clinch a playoff spot and I’m trying to figure out where the hell I can watch them play the Brewers? Because everything is lagging and these unnamed streaming websites, which I appreciate are not always perfect.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Where’s my letter, Attorney General? No, I’m only like, kind of joking, because–
ALEX: No, oh, I’m so serious about this as well. Yes, this is like–
BOBBY: The thing is like we’re, we’re driving ourselves crazy. Because we know the answer to a question. We just know that MLB just doesn’t want to do it. We know that the answer is just making everything available on MLB. TV without blackouts. It’s right there. The service is there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That stupid little map that they do when you’re, when you’re on the MLB TV app on your phone. They’re like, we’re geo locating you to make sure you have access. They just take that away, just take that away, it’s gone.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Everybody can watch everything from anywhere.
ALEX: It’s a line of code, it’s one line of code.
BOBBY: Literally one line of code. And Google Maps, like we, we could get rid of it, so easily. And that’s why I think this, this conversation is, is just yelling into the void. Because everybody just knows the right answer. And even Rob knows the right answer. He’s tipped his hand at this a few times now, in owners meetings. Whenever he gets asked about it, he’s just like, yeah, we’re trying. We’re trying!
ALEX: That’s actually the most relatable Rob Manfred has ever been is when asked about streaming and he kind of shakes his head and it’s like, I know. Like, I, *sigh*, yes, I know, please. It’s keeping me up at night. I mean, I don’t actually think it’s keeping him up at night. But I love that he doesn’t actually have a public answer for this. Like there’s no justification.
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: But, no. Because you can’t justify this.
BOBBY: This is where Rob Manfred and Michael Bauman meet in the middle. A chaos of streaming.
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: What you talked about with the obligation being passed on to the consumer, in terms of trying to figure out where to watch it, how to watch, et cetera, et cetera. They’re going to replace that, with just the financial obligation being passed on to the–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –consumer. They’re going to make it easier for you. So I’m going to be on MLB TV, but they’re not going to make it easier for free.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: They’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to basically pay someone off like it’s the mob to be able to get everything on the same place.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s convenient that we have, but we have to pay these racketeering charges.
ALEX: Right, you and I are literally funding MLB this like, court defenses? And–
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: –and like any union busting tactics, they pull out, like, that’s where our MLB TV money’s going. I mean, I just wanted to like, I want to be clear.
BOBBY: We funded the Save America’s Pastime Act.
ALEX: Yes, exactly, yes!
BOBBY: You heard it here first.
ALEX: I, broadly speaking, every, I think every person deserves to live comfortably has that right or should have that right. And that includes–
BOBBY: Having a moat.
ALEX: –having, having, having a moat and a TV on which you can watch your favorite baseball team. Even if that is the New York Yankees.
BOBBY: Single issue voter, single issue voter, I guess that’s a dual issue voter.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Moats–
ALEX: Access to TV–
BOBBY: –moats–
ALEX: –stream and a TV. But like we’re obviously not even close to there yet. And so we’re forced to sort of navigate this Frankenstein streaming world. And I, this didn’t feel much more different to me than, say, a national broadcast with the exception of that it’s on a you have to watch it on a different device. But a lot of the same complaints apply, I think, which is we don’t get to watch it with our hometown broadcasters.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: The, the production of the broadcast itself, maybe not up to your personal standards. It’s a lot of these sort of same–
BOBBY: For what it’s worth the Apple TV+ Broadcast looks way better than–
ALEX: Looks way better.
BOBBY: [44:25] broadcasts.
ALEX: Yeah, right. I am but I’m no stranger to being frustrated by the announcers calling a given game that has historic implications, right? This is not the first time we’ve run into this. I, I also can’t get over that on, on Friday evening, Apple generated a a a lot of controversy over this, over this very thing. And, and two nights later, ESPN, which is on cable, and which is nationally broadcast, put out one of the worst broadcasts I’ve seen in, in some time, covering Judge’s home run chase.
BOBBY: Are you talking about the Kay-Rod cast?
ALEX: And the, and the normal.
BOBBY: Or just the regular Sunday Night Baseball?
ALEX: They just–
BOBBY: I’m just going to be really real with you. My main TV and I’ll just didn’t watch it.
ALEX: That’s fair. That’s–
BOBBY: I was just like, he’s just not going to do it today.
ALEX: I just don’t think it’s not going to happen.
BOBBY: Most likely not going to do it. That’s the other element of this. That everybody was so mad like it was a foregone conclusion that he was just gonna go four for four with four home runs–
ALEX: Well, if you watched, if you watched ESPN broadcast last night, we’re recording this on Monday. You would have been forgiven if you thought that he was batting all the time. Because it’s the only thing they talked about. It, it was actually again, just kind of funny to me that like the Red Sox would be at the bat.
BOBBY: Oh, wow. Now we’re doing bread and butter stuff complaining–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –about ESPN Sunday Night Baseball.
ALEX: Exactly. Well, it’s like–
BOBBY: Full circle moment.
ALEX: –ESPN couldn’t let Apple catch the flak for a week, you know, they had to be like–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –hey, guys, we’re here too, you know. We’re gonna show you a mirror image of Judge hitting so that it looks like he’s hitting lefty and he’s running down the third base line.
BOBBY: I’m just gonna let that one marinate.
ALEX: The Red Sox would be up to bat and they’d be like, Aaron Judge up in seven batters. I’m like, so you mean in like, half an hour?
BOBBY: Bro, okay, remember earlier in the year when we talked about ESPN’s coverage of the All-Star break. And the All-Star Game Home Run Derby and everything. And the way that they talk about the stars, which I understand and, and I got, I get that it’s a hard needle to thread when you have diehards and casual fans in the same place. That’s, that’s a that’s a high bar to clear. But the way that they talk about baseball now is so damn infantilizing. It’s like, they are assuming that no one knows anything about baseball or likes baseball at all anymore. And I’m like, okay, it’s clearly not where it was in 1988 in the culture. But it’s not like this is competitive cornhole that we’re talking about here. This is baseball, people know who Aaron Judge is, they know what he’s doing. They don’t need to see a mirror image of him running in two opposite directions to prove that this is a cool moment. Just put the damn sport on the damn screen and talk about what happens. You don’t need to try to push these weird meta narratives about how XYZ players is saving the game, or that the game even needs saving. Just stop. It’s so insulting to people who actually like baseball and want to watch it. And it’s duly insulting, because we’re forced to watch these broadcasts, because they have exclusive access to them. There’s not even a place where we can go watch someone who is going to respect our viewership.
ALEX: Yeah. I’d like to say I didn’t appreciate the slander towards Caleb Hurt. who’s currently corn holds. best player in the nation right now. You mean to tell me if–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –you saw him walking down the street, you wouldn’t recognize him?
BOBBY: I mean, I have, he’s actually the third hologram on my desk. It’s Jeter–
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: –Tom Brady, and Caleb Hurt.
ALEX: Right. I know you’re wearing your Caleb Hurt jersey right now.
BOBBY: Right. Who’s their sponsor? For like me on deal or something?
ALEX: Right. Exactly.
BOBBY: No free ads, me on these, if you’d like to sponsor the podcast, please email us, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. Dude, Cornhole is sick.
ALEX: Yeah. Cornholes last.
BOBBY: Cornhole is sick. Those broadcasts are chaotic, you know why? Because it’s a, it’s a sport that has not been optimized for television advertising. They just throw, throw, next throw, next throw. There’s no time to talk, vamp, none of that bullshit. No time for commercials, they’re just–
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: –throwing. They got their little air pods in there probably listening to fucking MGK, you know. Talking about how pop punk is dead.
ALEX: Right. Yeah, I mean it, it watching a Cornhole broadcast kind of sounds a little bit like what it would sound like if you and I did a Cornhole broadcast. We’re like and that’s a crazy throw.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: That’s, wow!
BOBBY: Woah!
ALEX: Didn’t think that was going in.
BOBBY: Woah, he needed to make it in and he nailed it.
ALEX: He did, and he did.
BOBBY: You know what he didn’t do? Miss.
ALEX: Pass that one with flying colors.
BOBBY: Oh, this is like on the Tipping Pitches livestream when someone asked us to do play-by-play. And I’m like any wines and he delivers and that is just outside.
ALEX: The color guy remarking on the consistency of the dirt–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –you know.
BOBBY: Well, you were trying to recreate the Phillies broadcast and secret talking about petrified dogshit.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: Alright, let’s take a quick break. We’ll come back we’ll, we’ll do a brief conversation about the AL Central in Cleveland winning.
[49:40]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Alright, Alex To spend a ton of time talking about this but I wanted to talk about the AL Central. Because I feel like this is the this is is the division that we have been most hand wringing about in the last five or six years. More or less since, since they made the World Series in 2016. They obviously lost of the Cubs in seven, but they were a truly phenomenal team that was sort of all in as much as they can be all in with an owner like Paul Dolan. But everything after that, we love, we love it a lot of criticism at both of those teams from the 2016 World Series. Both the Cubs and the Guardians about not wanting to keep those cores around the fact that all of the Cubs core is elsewhere. The fact that Francisco Lindor is the centerpiece of the, of the 2022 New York Mets. Like a, a number of decisions that they made as a franchise, and for the purposes of this conversation, Cleveland as a franchise. Where there was a fork in the road, and they decided to go with the cost cutting measure. And I think it’s probably required of us to sort of tip our caps a little bit as to the fact that they’ve been able to continue to assemble good teams. Like from a baseball development perspective, they are one of the best, if not the best at developing homegrown starting pitching, no matter how many guys leave, they are able to replace them with someone who has just as good, if not better. Triston McKenzie is one of the most exciting pitchers to watch with just with his funky delivery and his like, almost unprecedented body type. You know, with the, with the nickname sticks for a reason. But for all of the things that you can love about Cleveland, I think that it’s like almost dereliction of duty by all four other teams in that division, that Cleveland was basically allowed to do a rebuild on the fly, and not have to pay for it at all. To get rid of all of their good players, for the most part. With the exception of Jose Ramirez who it’s a great thing that he’s still there. Because he’s basically a franchise icon at this point. It’s, it’s really damning indictment of the other four teams in that division. And I think, an indication of this wider trend in baseball where you don’t really have to try as hard as you used to, you know, and for the teams that are trying as hard as they used to, they’re winning more than ever, because the competition is so polarized. I saw a stat from Sarah Lange that the Dodgers have one 106 games for three straight years. And they’re the first team to do that ever, in baseball history. And now, obviously, the Dodgers are an exception, they’re incredible. But, but someone else shared a stat and I couldn’t find it, it was just one of those things that I saw in the timeline, and just, it was gone after that. But someone else tried to set that that was indicating that there is a higher than average concentration of 100+ win seasons over the last five years. And I don’t think that that’s a coincidence. And when I see something like the AL Central, nobody wanting to win it, and then Cleveland just emerging just based on their pure baseball development skills alone. Not because of any sort of aggressively competitive behavior that the franchise has shown. We talk a lot about things like this, before the season starts, about teams that are just tanking, or teams that are not trying or teams that are sort of like have one foot in one foot out. And they’re just ready to pull that second foot out at the first sign of distress. We don’t often talk about it as it gets to the end of the year. And I think that it should be pointed out that, you know, for the White Sox, for the Twins. Like there was a path for them to sort of box out the Guardians from this division. And neither of them did it. Both of them chose to penny-pinch. And I know the Twins obviously signed Carlos Correa, but that was sort of by accident. They were trying to shed money, and then realized that they could basically have him for a one-year deal and see if it worked out.
ALEX: I mean, it’s a sort of snake eating its own tail situation. Because when, when the best team in the division, regardless of who you thought it was the Twins that the White Sox, the Guardians, when they make the decision to cut costs, it actually gives cover to other teams to do the same thing. Because they’re effectively lowering, lowering their level of play and indicating to other teams that they maybe didn’t have to go at all in as hardcore as they used to. Because there’s going to be a crapshoot, whether you guys all go for it and try and win 95 games. Or you kind of sit on your back heels and aim for 82 and 83. And again, like I, I don’t think we can discount the impact of the expanded wildcard, either, right? And the, the broadening field of the playoffs that has allowed teams to do just this, right? I mean, the Guardians may not have even had it in their heads at the start of the year that they were going to win the divisions, right? But White Sox were talking a, a huge game and the Twins had just, had just signed Correa, as you mentioned, and it kind of seemed like it was anyone’s game between those three teams. It’s just unfortunate that it was anyone’s game because none of them were trying very hard. And it’s–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –it’s not exactly gonna make for the most exciting playoff atmosphere, if they’re facing up against a team that won 15 or 20 more games than them, right? That’s, there’s a bit of a power imbalance in there that the already that the already random MLB playoffs maybe didn’t exactly need.
BOBBY: Well, okay and I want to be fair, as fair as, as is absolutely necessary to the White Sox. Are seventh and payroll this year, 196 million, that’s their highest payroll of all time, I have to assume. But there were just obvious things that they did, to not push themselves up to the, to the luxury tax. Like not really even offering Carlos Rodon a contract, when he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball again, and was their best pitcher last year. Like not building out the depth that you need to be a wire to wire contender. And then having that come back to bite you, when a lot of people get injured. Like there is a, there’s a certain expectation of a team that has deep playoff and championship aspirations that you need to build it out around the edges. Not just rely on your pure talent if you want to be serious about contending. And I mean, needless for for me to say to our listeners, that Jerry Reinsdorf is not the type of person that is going to do that. And that’s without even folding in the whole entire Tony La Russa controversy of being so dead set on using a manager that is clearly not effective. And is clearly not what that team needs, If we can look back and say that at the end of his tenure year. I mean, I don’t want to, I want to be careful not to use this as like, as an example of something more than it is. Which is what you’re talking about that sometimes baseball can be random, sometimes there can be injuries. Sometimes the team, like the Guardians, or like the Rays, to be fair to them, are able to overcome the, the need to spend more to actually build a deep contender, because they’re so good at player development. And they’re so good at sort of making the whole greater than the sum of their parts. But I think that specifically with AL Central, it’s just been a shit show. And the teams that have designs on keeping Cleveland out from winning it with the 27th lowest payroll in baseball, they didn’t do enough to take any randomness out of it, they left the door pretty open for Cleveland. And, you know, to their credit, they, they stepped in and took it. But I just don’t think that this is really that sustainable to have an entire division be a bunch of like, moderately competitive teams.
ALEX: Yeah, I agree. And I, I want the Guardians to find success, because I enjoy so many of their individual players. But I’m not necessarily sure that we should be rewarding that sort of behavior. Which is inherently what this sort of thing is going to do, right? The success they find. shows other teams that if you’re in a weaker division, you don’t have to push all your chips into the middle of the table. You can, you can squeak by and that’ll be that’ll work out just fine for you, probably if you’re not in the NL West, which is the other end of the spectrum where you teams just–
BOBBY: You put all your chip demon–
ALEX: –should even trying.
BOBBY: You have no fucking chance!
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah, the Dodgers are sort of breaking this theory of ours. And in turn breaking the Padres and [59:03]–
ALEX: Right, the Dodgers are–
BOBBY: –and the process.
ALEX: –saying no, no, no, it’s it’s fine. They it’s not really worth it for them to try it.
BOBBY: Don’t try. Okay, that’s gonna do it for another episode of Tipping Pitches. Thank you to everybody so much for listening. Why don’t people call in and give us some voicemails for next week? What you think about that Alex? Voicemail number–
ALEX: I love it, love that idea.
BOBBY: –785-422-5881, can leave us a voicemail about anything and everything in the baseball world or out of it. If you have curiosities about Taylor Swift.
ALEX: Always, always the first topic outside of the baseball world–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –that we suggest music–
BOBBY: We’re not that.
ALEX: –subtle.
BOBBY: Taylor Swift, what else do we actually know anything about Alex? Pretty much nothing or really anything, whatever. You can write us at tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. I like to thank the five members of the Alex Rodriguez VIP Club tier that we shout out at the end of every episode. There are so many of you that we can only have time for five. Those five members this week are Grace, Ian, Destin, Lucas, and Maddie. Any other sage words of wisdom for the lovely listeners of Tipping Pitches, Alex?
ALEX: Well, I just want to note that it’s a little unclear when the house the Jeter built will actually be demolished. So I want to urge you to book your travels sooner rather than later.
BOBBY: Right. And if you need some entertainment, on your way down your flight to Tampa, please subscribe and download to the CIA Podcast. That’s my future endeavor.
ALEX: We’re really branching out here. This is we’re just trying to reach across the aisle.
BOBBY: Some multimedia empire.
ALEX: Right. This is your, your, you’re just this is the backdoor way of getting into a new fan base.
BOBBY: Between this and your co hosting gig with Joe West. I mean, I think that we’re gonna have memberships across the entire political spectrum.
ALEX: Huge. Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Okay. Thank you, everyone. We will be back next week.
[1:01:01]
[Music]
[1:01:15]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most, Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya!
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
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