Alex and Bobby discuss the Houston Astros’ World Series victory and reflect on the narratives surrounding their win, Dusty Baker finally getting his, the beauty of this Phillies team, and more, then run down a few of Probably Popular Opinions and answer listener questions about tweets and Wet Guys.
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Songs featured in this episode:
Crosby, Stills & Nash — “Wasted on the Way” • Mavis Staples — “You Are Not Alone” • 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.
BOBBY: Alex, I want to start this week’s podcast with an old friend of ours, a close friend, a friend that we have brought up countless times on the Tipping Pitches Podcast. In passing, in depth, as a joke, seriously. Do you know who this old friend is?
ALEX: I do- I don’t, honestly.
BOBBY: This old friend is a, a, a little guy named Collusion.
ALEX: I’m, I’m so curious where you’re going with this.
BOBBY: Here’s where I’m going with this.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Andy Martino sny.tv speculation about the Mets and Aaron Judge began immediately after Judge turned down the Yankees last contract offer on April 8, the morning of opening day. It was a reasonable topic to wonder about then and remain so today. But the truth of the situation also remains unchanged. On that day Mets sources that they did not plan to fight the Yankees this offseason for Judge with free agency set to begin next week that has not changed. Owner Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner enjoy a mutually respectful relationship and do not expect to up-end that with a high-profile bidding war. Can they–
ALEX: What?
BOBBY: –say that?
ALEX: What?
BOBBY: Hang on, wait now.
ALEX: No, no, no. [1:43] secondly.
BOBBY: Our friend Collusion just stepped into the room. He’d like to announce that he’s here.
ALEX: I’m sure that Mets fans would be completely fine if Aaron Judge was not signed by the team, if it meant that relationship stayed intact.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Because frankly, I mean, that’s again, that’s this is why I go to the ballpark room my Steve Cohen jersey, right? Because I care–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –about him and his relationships, far more than I do the the onfield success of the team.
BOBBY: Truly, nevermind not building a good baseball team. Nevermind not having any money not running out of high payroll. What the Wilpons really did to damage the New York Mets was that they didn’t have respectability.
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: You know, and Steve Cohen has brought respectability back into that office.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And how Steinbrenner sees that and he respects that.
ALEX: Right. I mean, I’m, this is, this is what matters is that we have an adult back in the room, right?
BOBBY: So like, okay, this is not actual collusion, because they didn’t put out like a statement saying that they don’t plan to sign Aaron Judge because they want to let the Yankees try to sign Aaron Judge. But this is as good as collusion.
ALEX: Right. I mean, it’s, it feels like–
BOBBY: Functionally collusion.
ALEX: –more of a broader indication of how front offices operate. Which is not entirely based on what will specifically make their team better, right? Or at the very least, is not done without regard for the broader market implications.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –of any given move.
BOBBY: So like, okay, whether or not you plan on signing Aaron Judge is not collusion. Like if you don’t want to go after Aaron Judge because you think that he’s gonna be too costly. Because the other teams that are in the, in the running for him are willing to pay XYZ. And he just came off the best walk year in the history of baseball. All of that can be true, but as soon as you say that stuff directly to another owner, then it’s collusion. Straight up, that’s collusion.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Colluding to keep salaries down, because you’re telling an owner directly conspiring behind closed doors with your “good relationship” that Andy Martino somehow knows about that you don’t want to pay him more money. You’re not gonna–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –run Hal Steinbrenner up. It’s no longer a market, it’s now the ownership side colluding.
ALEX: Right, exactly. I mean, I mean, especially when Steve Cohen and the Mets are one of the teams that would have the most financial like wherewithal–
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: –to be able to pull off a move like that, by taking yourself out of contention. You are fundamentally suppressing the market for Judge.
BOBBY: It’s okay, the Mets don’t have the money to do it anyway, because you know who they gave that money to? They gave it to my best friend Edwin Diaz. Let’s go, Narco, forever! Or at least, five more years.
ALEX: Also, can I just say, I, I really have to hand it to you–
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: –for the episode following the conclusion of the World Series.
BOBBY: Thank you.
ALEX: Starting this out with, with like, 10 minutes of Mets talk.
BOBBY: It, it’s only–
ALEX: Only way to do it.
BOBBY: It’s some of my finest. I’m really proud of it, I’m really proud of myself. Alex, the Houston Astros won the World Series!
ALEX: What?!
BOBBY: We also got some new patrons, those patrons are Lindsay, and Riley. We’re going to talk about the Astros winning the World Series. We’re going to debut a new segment, the intellectual property of which belongs to your partner, Gabriella, it’s called Probably Popular Opinions. We’re also going to do a couple listener questions that I’ve reserved at the end of this podcast. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[5:14]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Do you see that the Astros won the World Series? Did you check that one out?
ALEX: I did see it come across my Twitter timeline, that that had happened.
BOBBY: When I know you didn’t watch the actual game. I was gonna put you on the front street right now.
ALEX: Yeah, no, no, no, no.
BOBBY: Alex didn’t watch the World Series because he’s a coward.
ALEX: All right. I did not sit down and watch Game 6 and it’s entirety.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: I was, I was at a concert, sorry. So sue me.
BOBBY: I, I’ll tell you what happened. Yordan Alvarez remembered how to hit a baseball.
ALEX: Uh-huh. And, and–
BOBBY: So the Houston Astros won.
ALEX: –some. Yeah. Uhm, I was trying to surreptitiously pull up YouTube TV on my phone in between songs, you know–
BOBBY: Blip that.
ALEX: –just a little–
BOBBY: I’m bliping that. Nope, no free ads.
ALEX: No- yeah. It didn’t mean that I actually saw the, the Alvarez home run. I did see the end of the game–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –which ended in less than dramatic fashion.
BOBBY: Foul territory, there should be–
ALEX: Urgh!
BOBBY: –we need to pass a rule that says you’re not allowed to end the season in foul territory.
ALEX: Right, exactly. Yeah, it’s kind of like–
BOBBY: Pablo Sandoval, Kyle Tucker, no, just let the ball drop. Come on, let’s keep playin’!
ALEX: Yeah, it’s kind of like when you foul off a pitch with two strikes, it’s like, okay, well that one didn’t really count. You get–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –to do, you get to do it one more time.
BOBBY: Speaking of fouling off a pitch with two strikes, Kyle Schwarber, what are you doing, baby? Come on! Just kidding, we’re not gonna talk about individual players from the World Series. Let’s start here. Good World Series? Bad World Series? So, so World Series? What do you think?
ALEX: Frankly, I thought this is a pretty damn good World Series.
BOBBY: I did too.
ALEX: Like as far as World Series go that don’t involve any of the teams that I might pull for, I feel like this is about as good as you can get. Despite the fact that the, you know, the Phillies after their kind of magical run forgot how to hit.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: Which kind of hurts, hurts your chances a little bit. The, the atmosphere of it all–
BOBBY: Can you win a World Series game when you don’t get a hit? Is that possible?
ALEX: I, there was some
BOBBY: Anything is possible, it just hasn’t happened yet.
ALEX: There were like, you know, all these, there was discussion over Thomson’s, you know, decision to pull Zack Wheeler in favor of Jose Alvarado.
BOBBY: You’re talking about Game 6?
ALEX: In Game 6, yes. In a pivotal moment–
BOBBY: The game you didn’t watch?
ALEX: –the game I, the game that I didn’t watch. Which obviously led to 450 feet of–
BOBBY: I didn’t even know you could hit it there.
ALEX: Sanity.
BOBBY: I didn’t even know that there were seats up there. Never had cause to think about whether people sitting, were sitting up there or not.
ALEX: Yeah, no.
BOBBY: Until Yordan Alvarez hit one.
ALEX: But, but point being it didn’t, didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if it was Wheeler pitching, didn’t matter if it was Alvarado hitting if you can’t score it’s, it’s not really going to do anything for you.
BOBBY: I forget who actually said in their, in the postgame whether, it was, it was- it was either, it was one of the Astro stars. It was like Bregman, Altuve, or Verlander, said it’s not every day that someone hits one to dead center and it’s still a no doubter.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But this one is such a no doubter.
ALEX: Unreal.
BOBBY: So four games have happened since we last talked on the podcast. We live streamed one of those games for the listeners sake at home and for my sake so that I can reorganize my thoughts. Let me just quickly give you a one line summary of each of those games. Game 3, the Phillies hit five home runs at the World Series record, they won seven nothing. Game 4 was the one that we were streaming a combined no hitter, we’re just streaming that game.
ALEX: The duality of man.
BOBBY: We were talking about milk.
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: We were talk- we were doing deep, deep investigation into the pitchcom website.
ALEX: We, we actually really we [8:54].
BOBBY: We were hacking into it, guessing passwords. More to come–
ALEX: People are pulling up like the page source.
BOBBY: Yeah, more to come later in this offseason.
ALEX: Frankly.
BOBBY: It was a combined no-hitter between Framber, Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero (lol), and Ryan Pressly, the Astros won five nothing. Game 5, I think best game of the series, honestly. 3-2, a lot, a lot of tension, a lot of tension. Basically every pitch was one pitch away from–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –trying the game. There was a lot of traffic, Justin Verlander started this game. A good start from him, not a great start guys first World Series win. And Pressly got the five out save which was fucking impressive as hell.
ALEX: Uh-huh. It was not easy.
BOBBY: On the road against the heart of the order, and he got it done.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And then Game 6, of course we’ve, we’ve talked about it. We’ve already explained, Yordan three-run home run, he finally wakes up. Astros win 4-1 and the Astros win the series in 6. I think that feels right, honestly. The Astros were clearly the better team, I think demonstrated pretty, pretty clearly that they were just the best team in baseball.
ALEX: I mean, absolutely.
BOBBY: And I think submit themselves into an interesting place in terms of legacy. Now I’m not even talking about like the cheating, the signs stealing, what this team means for redeeming the 2017 team, because I’m not the broadcast, which was obsessed with talking about that. I just mean in terms of team construction, this team and this is, of course, recency bias, as, as all things are anytime we’re talking about a World Series that is just wrapped up. The way that this team was constructed is about as perfect as it gets.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: And I know that we’ve joked many times that the real cheating is the fact that the Astros can just turn anyone into a fucking amazing baseball player. But it really does feel like that, and you look up and down the lineup. And there’s really only like one or two or three max spots where you don’t feel good about the person coming up, and you don’t feel good that they’re gonna give you a great at bat. And on the pitching side, they basically just didn’t put a bad pitcher on the mound at all.
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: Like for no innings–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –the entire postseason.
ALEX: I, frankly I’m surprised that the Phillies did not get no-hit more times.
BOBBY: I mean, the starting pitching is one thing. Framber was tremendous, two times he probably shouldn’t be the World Series MVP, even though Jeremy Payne won it. And I think that of course the narrative was dying to give it to Jeremy Payne this rookie, who replaced Carlos Correa, who was the cornerstone of this era of Astros baseball in many ways. But the bullpen, I mean, just dude after dude with pinpoint command throwing 98 with movement. And I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know if they can recreate this, I don’t know if all of these guys are going to be just as good next year. Relievers are very fickle in terms of how good they are and their injuries and all of that sort of stuff. But, I mean they just not to do you like a tired sports radio trope but the conscious outclassed everyone they played.
ALEX: Yes. I, it like it, you know, and before the series, you predicted an Astros steamroll of the Phillies.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Which like–
BOBBY: Astros in 5, and I felt really good about it.
ALEX: Right. And like, I, I guess it wasn’t a steamroll so to speak until like Game 4.
BOBBY: I mean, if Dusty pulled Verlander in Game 1 it would have been Astros in 5, so.
ALEX: But like, you know, credit to the Phillies for hanging in as long as they could have. Because–
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: –I think that regardless of who the team is, in that situation in the National League seat, I’m not sure the outcome is remarkably different than, than the one we actually got. This Astros team is a bonafide dynasty. I know they have, they have too–
BOBBY: Wow, strong, I like it.
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: Coming up next on the next era of Sports Center.
ALEX: Yes, yeah, exactly. Are they a dynasty? How do they rank among baseball’s all time dynasties? They’ve, they have made it to the World Series.
BOBBY: Four times since 2017.
ALEX: And won twice.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: Like, come on!
BOBBY: And the other year has they made it to the ALCS.
ALEX: Ridiculous.
BOBBY: I just unbelievable sustained success, unbelievable roster construction. A profoundly hateable team, honestly though. Like for on a national stage against the Phillies, who are profoundly likable team and who pulled just about every on the fence viewer in the entire world. I think, you know, obviously I hate the Phillies, obviously I hate their fans. I mean, I, I personally like many of their fans but on the whole hate their fans hate that another Anneliese team and it’s the World Series before the Mets. But all that being said I think the Phillies did more than prove that they are worthy of being there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like two innings into Game 1, I was like you know what? I don’t even feel bit bad about the Mets losing the wildcards to Padres because they would get dominated by this Astros team. Like good luck with this Mets lineup trying to hit against fucking Bryan Abreu. Wow!
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: No way! The only person–
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: –even getting bat to the ball is Jeff McNeil.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t have to do that.
BOBBY: I, I and it just has to be profoundly frustrating for Phillies fans to just watch. I imagine it probably reminds them a lot of how I felt in 2015 against the Royals where they were just like the Royals were just slightly better at so many things.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Cumulatively that leads to you losing the series in five games or you losing the series in six games and one of them being a no-hitter. Like I am always shocked about how the level of baseball that is played this late in the season. Like that there, that the pressure does not get to these guys more and they just look, they look so good. Like it truly does almost always when the World Series rolls around feel like two teams worthy of being there.
ALEX: Yeah, I think the, the, you know, part of the difference between I think this World Series and. and like the one you mentioned in 2015 is like I think with the, when you’re facing off against that Royals team, you can look at it and say, well, we have a, a path here, right? This is a team like succeeds at fundamentals, right? And like, like our they’re real like baseball players team, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Which I think is, is, frankly like beatable. This Astros team is like you’re playing MLB: The Show and you’ve traded for all the good players, right? It’s kind of like–
BOBBY: Except Kyle Schwarber–
ALEX: [15:13]
BOBBY: –who is doing his damn best on the other side.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: You just say like, I’m just gonna hit one homerun per night, you guys could get on ahead of me, that would be great. But if–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –not, then I’m just gonna hit up rocket shot solo.
ALEX: Yeah, I can’t even begrudge him for laying down a bunt with two strikes. You know, at that point, what does he have to prove? He’s done his part.
BOBBY: You know, you’re right about that. But the one thing that I will say, to, to pivot back to Game 5, and we’ve been talking a lot about, I’ve, I’ve been referencing a lot my sort of like five pocket rules for a perfect baseball game that I talked about a few weeks ago before the World Series started. As we were like halfway through this, this postseason. But series tied 2-2, Astros up 3-2 in the bottom of the eighth and Kyle Schwarber. The very same Kyle Schwarber, who just hits a home run, 50% of the time as he goes up to the plate, I guess. Hits a rocket down the first baseline that Trey Mancini, who hasn’t played in the field since October 3. Just smothers and makes a tremendous play and that’s only a half-inning after Rhys Hoskins bobbled the ball at first base on a similar-ish play, and the Astros scored off of it and took the lead. So, you know, for all we’re talking about how dominant the Astros are, dominance in baseball is at most like a sliver, you know, and things can go wrong.
ALEX: Right. It’s fleeting, honestly.
BOBBY: Right. Which is why it’s eternally frustrating when you’re on the other side of it and you lose because there are just so many threads you could pull for how your team could have won this series. And I, my heart truly does go out to the Phillies fans in my life and even not in my life who might be listening to this podcast. Because I don’t, I don’t actually wish that on anybody. Like the, the not knowing what would have happened had your team made XYZ play. Had Chas McCormick not made that catch against J.T. Realmuto had Trey Mancini not smother that ball at first and the Phillies tie that game, who knows what? Like it’s there’s no way to know.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, the difference honestly, like I think you can play that game a lot–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –in the World Series. And make a very reasonable case and say this series looks completely different if this one play changes, right? If that ball actually goes out, or you know, goes through someone’s legs or whatever. The thing is, you play that with this World Series, and I’m still kind of like, Astros are probably fine, though. Like, it’s not gonna matter at the end of the day.
BOBBY: Yeah. I mean, who knows, upsets happen all the time in baseball.
ALEX: They do, they do.
BOBBY: Let’s wrap this up. I guess my lingering questions from this World Series that I feel like are just going to be talking points in like the mainstream baseball media ecosystem that I’m curious what your thoughts are. Number one, being Dusty, him being sort of the figurehead, the rallying point. Or, I don’t know, I guess were you surprised? Because the, the baseball real world really did feel like they sort of coalesced around him. Why do you think that is? Just because he’s gotten so close so many times or what?
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, it was kind of the last remaining feather that he had to put in his cap, right? On, on top of what is sure to be a Hall of Fame career, right? But he, he’s taken every team that he has managed to the postseason, right? And, and still, this Astros team is the, the best one he’s ever managed as far as like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –record goes, right? He’s also the first black manager to 2000 wins. And one of only 12, you know, entirely. So I do think it felt like it was really a long time coming. It was only a matter of time. But I think there was a little bit of anxiety around it, right? He’s getting up there. He couldn’t make it happen last year. And you know, there, I love Dusty, and his hiring was also a bit of a cynical like PR ploy.
BOBBY: Yeah, absolutely.
ALEX: And so there was a question of like, how long do the Astros really need to keep him around, right? And I have no idea what happens next, but like this when I think both seals the Hall of Fame case for him, which was sealed long time ago.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And also, in a sense, I think it certainly doesn’t wash away anything that happened in 2017. But the Astros can now say, look, we, we did it clean.
BOBBY: Okay, that was my other thing. The other lingering question, which everybody seems to want to talk about, again, is what is the impact that this has on the Astros reputation?
ALEX: I don’t care.
BOBBY: How much does it matter?
ALEX: I don’t care.
BOBBY: And do we even need to opt into this conversation?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Is this something that is–
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: –necessary–
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: –from a talking about this team perspective?
ALEX: Nope.
BOBBY: See, the reason that I, I mean I, I understand. And I personally agree that I, I was able to just kind of watch this team without really thinking about all of that stuff. Of course, there are a few players that, that reputation will always kind of follow them around. Altuve, Bregman, Gurriel, mainly being the three hitters that are still leftover from that 2017 team. But it did seem to be like the dominant story whether we wanted it to or not. And I, we didn’t even get to make that choice like the broadcast decided to foreground that. The Ken Rosenthal doing, did a sideline report in the ninth inning, when it looked like or maybe in the eighth inning, when it looked like the, the Astros, we’re gonna pull it out, talking about how many different players there are on this team. And basically trying to put the story to bed. And I’m like, didn’t we just do this a year ago? Just because the Astros didn’t win doesn’t mean that the team is still is not different–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –anymore. I couldn’t bring back all of the 2017 players because they didn’t win last year. I just, I wonder like, are we going to be talking about it and 50 years, 60 years, 80 years? If the Astros win the World Series in 2140 on the moon? Are we going to have to say like, you know, this isn’t the same Astros? I don’t know, it just, it feels like the lowest hanging fruit. And in many ways, obviously, the broadcast decides to grab the lowest hanging fruit most often because it has the widest appeal story that most people know about these teams. But at some point, we have to make an active choice to just have this not be the thing that people talk about. And it can be the reason that you’ve rigged against the Astros whatever, that’s fine.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like the organization is still fucked up in many ways. And it, it’s not just the sign stealing. This is the same organization, the same owner that decided to hire Brandon Taubman decided to stand behind him until it was not publicly possible for them to do that anymore. Decided to advance the McKinsey-fication of baseball by firing all their scouts. Because, because Jeff Liu now, I don’t even, I don’t even know like, thinks that baseball should be played on a spreadsheet. Like, this is the same organization and you can have legitimate gripes with I guess I’m just not really interested in it being about the sign stealing anymore. If you’d like dislike the Astros because they’re villains in it. Maybe the kernel of that started with the sign stealing thing, but it’s evolved into other things you don’t want see them win anymore. That’s totally fine. It just feels like, it just feels like the lack of nuance with how the like proprietors of baseball have approached the story is, frankly, like off putting and strikes me as an inability to sell your sport. And inability to sell why this team is interesting and good and fun to watch at the highest level in the World Series. I mean, you and I just won’t even analyze baseball and we’d spent 25 minutes talking to you about how good of a series it was, how good this Astros team was, and like we’re not even being paid to do that. You know, like Joe Davis, John Smoltz, Ken Rosenthal, Tom Verducci, these guys are being paid to do that.
ALEX: I mean, I think I’ll say speak for yourself, the, the Black Sox scandal is the reason I still don’t root for the Chicago White Sox. No, I, I, you’re, you’re completely right.
BOBBY: [23:14] park on the game.
ALEX: It really was. It, it impacted, everything. It’s why we’re still talking about it today.
BOBBY: We open every pod with a moment of silence. We don’t we, I don’t leave this part in. But Alex and I hold a moment of silence for the other team?
ALEX: Yeah, the Reds? Yeah.
BOBBY: Can’t make this moments of.
ALEX: No, I, you’re, you’re right that like I, I completely understand why people are holding on to this. It was, it was very brazen and, and blatant what they were doing. And I think the manner in which they, they cheated really does have an impact, because it was so sort of out in the open. And–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –and like crude, the people are almost like, are you kidding me that you guys got away with this? You know, because here’s the thing is that every team at one point or another is looking to find some sort of edge, right? To give them that advantage on the mound, at the plate, whatever it is, it may not go to these lengths. But you know, I, I, I caution people looking at this sort of thing in black and white terms, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: With the Astros are bad and the other teams are, are you know, capital G, good, and it’s like, most of these teams exist in that, you know, putting it lightly moral gray area, you know. And so if this impacts–
BOBBY: Not do, John Middleton on the up and [24:41]–
ALEX: No, he’s good, he’s good.
BOBBY: –holy straight as an arrow. The cigarette company, it was all good man. Like they definitely, it was all good for society.
ALEX: He was, again, you have to look at it in the context of the time that’s everyone was doing that.
BOBBY: Everyone was selling their families cigarette company to make money to buy a Major League Baseball team. We’re all doing it.
ALEX: Yeah. I, I understand why people hold on to the scandal and why it will be a reason that people you know, feel this taste for the Astros. I just think that like, after this World Series, it’s not really worth, like trying to couch everything the Astros do.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: In, in, in that as like a reaction to that or is something that is disproving that.
BOBBY: I think that the thing that bothers me the most about it is that it just seems uninteresting. It can be interesting to you personally, as a fan, it can be the reason that you disliked this team, you can root as hard as you want for the Phillies, so many people that I like and respect, intellectually, and personally sharing that opinion, having that view of this series, and that is totally fine. But when you are a reporter, when you are an opinion columnist, when you are a broadcaster, when you are the person who is trying to tell the next generation of baseball fans who are watching this World Series, why they should be interested in it, it just seems incredibly retrograde to continue to talk about this team from 2017. Like, if I wasn’t invested in it, then why would I be invested in it now? Like, can we just, from a marketing our sport at its most pivotal moments perspective, find fucking anything else to say, just anything else to say. And if you want to do it in your column a couple days later, that’s fine. But on the actual broadcast, I don’t know why, it just really bothered me. Like, can we, like can we just not do this on the broadcast itself? Can we not do the quasi apologia, quasi reaching out to the other side who’s still mad about all of this stuff? Ham handed way of talking about this sign stealing scandal. Like, who, who is it serving other than, like intellectual, the intellectual laziness of the sideline reporter giving it?
ALEX: Yeah, I mean, I certainly don’t think it’s serving anyone. I understand why they do it, right. Because there’s a broad swath of baseball fans who are still holding on to this dearly, right? And so like–
BOBBY: But those fans are not like, they’re not like, thank you, Ken Rosenthal, for acknowledging that there are still five players on the team from 2017. And now I feel–
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: –vindicated.
ALEX: –I don’t know, they might, they might be, right?
BOBBY: I’m selfish, I’m wrong.
ALEX: You know–
BOBBY: I’m right, I swear I’m right. Swear I knew it all along.
ALEX: I mean, I think there probably are people out there who were like thank–
BOBBY: No way! No thank–
ALEX: –God Joe Davis is, is talking about. Is, you know, is, is bringing this up.
BOBBY: But he wasn’t like chastising them. Like it was–
ALEX: No, I mean, no, I know–
BOBBY: –just like–
ALEX: –I know.
BOBBY: –there are five players that were still on the team from then. And I think that this, what this does is prove that they’re still a good team.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, all right.
ALEX: There we had. Okay.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Cool.
ALEX: Damn, I could have told you that.
BOBBY: Literally, literally. Just think fucking talking about something–
ALEX: I know, I know.
BOBBY: Okay, maybe this rant makes absolutely no sense and people are gonna be mad at me because I was rooting for the Astros. Can we debut Probably Popular Opinions? I don’t even remember what we were originally talking about when this came up, but your partner Gabriella was like, that would be a funny idea. If instead of hot takes or unpopular opinions, you guys just did. We just all shared something that was like, that’s probably a popular opinion.
ALEX: I mean, I think, I think, I don’t even think she laid the segment out like that. I think she said, she started off by saying so I have a Probably Popular Opinion.
BOBBY: Oh, and then of course me with my little–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –poison brain–
ALEX: And they’re like [28:16] segment.
BOBBY: –was like that’s a podcast segment. Listen, you can’t turn the producer off.
ALEX: No, you really can’t. Art imitates life, man.
BOBBY: Don’t kill the producer inside your head. So Probably Popular Opinions, these are gonna be rapid fire. They’re gonna be quick. We don’t need to over explain them on account of the fact that they are probably popular, which means most of you already disagree with them. My first Probably Popular Opinion, despite the fact that I have just shit on the broadcast that Fox put out there is that Joe Davis, the center of that broadcast, he play by play announcer of that broadcast. He’s very good at his job. He’s really good.
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: Yeah. He has a nice delivery, a nice positive energy and tone to his broadcast. He’s excited to be there. I’m excited to be there with him. I’ve enjoyed his national broadcast with Fox. I’ve enjoyed his Dodgers broadcasts in my time watching the Los Angeles Dodgers a team that won 111 games. It was completely absent from October, which is unfortunate. But Joe Davis got to carry that torch for the Dodgers franchise. And he acquitted himself nicely. He’s very good at it. I’m excited for him for years to come.
ALEX: Yeah, I saw people whining that Joe Buck wasn’t in the booth. And I’m like, I don’t really understand what Davis is not bringing what Buck was, sorry.
BOBBY: Nostalgia.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah, that’s it.
BOBBY: All right. Your first Probably Popular Opinion. PPO, this is the PPO that everyone is talking about.
ALEX: Probably Popular Opinion. Ball don’t lie.
BOBBY: Ohhh! Let’s go!
ALEX: I’m just saying you know, again, we, we already kind of–
BOBBY: So Probably Popular Opinion, the Astros are better than the Phillies?
ALEX: I, pretty much.
BOBBY: I love it. That’s fucking awesome, awesome opinion, awesome take.
ALEX: Look, I mean, it’s, it’s obvious, they won the World Series you can look at that, you can look at it on paper. And as we said the Phillies absolutely deserve to be here.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: And, and what we talked about you know is in October, anything can happen, right? It only takes a couple bad bounces, and you’re back in the game. Unless you’re playing the Houston Astros.
BOBBY: It really–
ALEX: There are no bad bounces.
BOBBY: Dude, it’s so funny, and I’m not the first person to point this out probably won’t be the last. But it’s so funny that we did an entire discourse cycle. And honestly, everybody fucking shit themselves over how all of these 101 teams were going out and how the new playoff format was too tough on these teams. And how baseball is a dilution of the regular season and how we need to send the Dodgers to the World Series and crown them champions before they ever play a game in October, and all of this dumb stuff. And at the end of it, the Astros are just like, what was that that you guys were talking about? Oh, no, we actually just went out there and won the game. We actually went out there and beat the teams that were in front of us.
ALEX: Don’t matters–
BOBBY: No matter what the format was.
ALEX: –[31:04] gone.
BOBBY: Whether we had played them 17 times earlier in the year and the Mariners, no we swept them.
ALEX: Yup!
BOBBY: Whether they have been trying to beat us for the better part of a decade now. In the New York Yankees, nope, we swept them too. Whether they were the team that just eliminated the 101 win Braves and the Padres who eliminated the 101 win Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. Now we beat them in 6, and we could have beat them in 5 and we basically outclassed them at every position, except Bryce Harper.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And Kyle Schwarber. Probably Popular Opinion, Astros are good. I take it one step more specific than you.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: My second PPO, the 2022 Astros are better, significantly better than the 2017 Astros were.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: They had the lowest postseason bullpen ERA of all time. Do you wanna take a guess at what that number was? They, they surpassed the 1973 Oakland Athletics by the way.
ALEX: Hmm. There we go.
BOBBY: Just take a guess.
ALEX: 0.8.
BOBBY: 0.83.
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: Pretty good, Alex. Nice work.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, you didn’t watch the games. But, did read Sterling’s Twitter account, which is where I got that fact from. The lineup, probably equally deep. You know, they don’t have Correa or Springer who they had in 2017. But of course, Jeremy Peña was a breakout star and Yordan was not on the team in 2017. So as little lengths to it. I think the, the starting rotation, Framber emerging is one of the best pitchers in baseball and being on this team Cristian Javier embarrassing the Phillies.
ALEX: Yeah,
BOBBY: Like it’s probably better than what they were able to throw out in 2017 with Charlie Morton and McCullers coming in and relief. Like to me, this team just feels more complete. And they feel like a one or two step evolution from what they were in 2017. So Probably Popular Opinion, this team is better than 2017. Not just because the 2017 team had the added benefit of trash cans.
ALEX: See, there it is, again, you’re perpetuating the narrative, man. Why you gotta, why you [33:04] than that?
BOBBY: Bro, let it go, bro. It’s not all about this. All right, your next one?
ALEX: Probably Popular Opinion, don’t think the Dodgers should have traded Yordan Alvarez for Josh Fields.
BOBBY: Oh, my God.
ALEX: I know, everyone–
BOBBY: Everybody’s servicing this like it wasn’t like some–
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: –gotcha! Ooh, gotcha! Yeah, it turns out some players develop.
ALEX: I do, I, I just find it a little bit funny that the Dodgers who are maybe one of the only other teams in the league, who aren’t as good at developing players as the Astros.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: We’re like, no, it’s okay. We don’t know what to do with them.
BOBBY: I know and the thing is, the Dodgers are better at developing hitters–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –than the Astros. The Astros are definitely better at developing pitchers and relievers, specifically. The, the Dodgers don’t know what the fuck they’re doing in the bulpen. They’re be like, wow, I don’t know, close my eyes and throw a dart. Oh, Craig Kimbrel, great!
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Uhm, but yeah, that’s what makes us so weird. I mean, you’re right, they shouldn’t have traded Yordan Alvarez. They should have kept him and they should have turned him into what he is now, right?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That is your Probably Popular Opinion, however, maybe the trade was the thing that he needed.
ALEX: Right. I mean that–
BOBBY: Maybe that was a wake up call for him to just put on 30 pounds of muscle and become one of the best pure power hitter in the game.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s the benefit of hindsight, right? Is you can do this with any trade or like move–
BOBBY: Right, yeah.
ALEX: –that does or doesn’t work out.
BOBBY: Agreed.
ALEX: All that being said, I’m actually kind of glad that Astros ended up with him and not the Dodgers. I don’t think my brain would have been able to handle, handle Alvarez raking in between fucking Mookie Betts–
BOBBY: And Freddie Freeman?
ALEX: –and Freddie Freeman, Trey Tr- like, urgh!
BOBBY: Yeah, this just in, the Dodgers were still a good baseball team, even though they got eliminated. Okay, my third and final, Probably Popular Opinion. This one is for the TP heads, specifically. Not only should the owner not get the trophy first, they shouldn’t be allowed on stage at all. Unless they’re willing to take one at bat during the series. Jim Crane you want to get on the, on the, on the stage with the team? Fucking contribute.
ALEX: Yeah, go face Ryan Pressly.
BOBBY: Go pinch run, do something, get on the field.
ALEX: Anything.
BOBBY: If you were not on the field at any point during the playing of the baseball game, you shouldn’t be allowed on the stage to accept the trophy. That’s the Probably Popular Opinion. Frankly, just an opinion that everyone agrees with. It’s like just the most obvious thing ever. Rob Manfred handing the- Rob Manfred, the most hated man in baseball, handing the trophy to the owner. One of the 30, 31 most hated men in baseball.
ALEX: Yeah. Handing it to him first, also.
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: They are always first in line. The man who signs the checks.
BOBBY: Listen, Alex, they write the checks.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. right.
BOBBY: None of this even possible without him.
ALEX: I mean, right, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be here without him, right?
BOBBY: Right. Yeah. Nobody would be able to hit a baseball without Jim Crane. Thanks Jim Crane for your service.
ALEX: So stupid, so dumb.
BOBBY: I mean, Jim Crane, specifically, it’s just the worst.
ALEX: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: It just looks like if, he looks like he’s stepped straight out of there will be blood into this. Like you stepped off one screen onto the other one.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like okay, dude.
ALEX: Yeah, get this man the fuck out of here.
BOBBY: All right, your third and final Probably Popular Opinion. This is a hard phrase to say.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. We can workshop a little bit.
BOBBY: Your third and final PPO.
ALEX: My third and final one, and I’m sorry, I’m cheating a little bit because I’m, I’m not going to do World Series.
BOBBY: Cheating?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: On the part about the Astros?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Likely, like the story.
ALEX: And being in the trash can.
BOBBY: Nobody can hear that.
ALEX: I know, I know.
BOBBY: Nobody can hear that, it’s fine. I’m leaving all this in.
ALEX: Cool. I’m only bringing this up because I don’t believe we, we talked about it on last week’s episode. Booing politicians, sports events? Good.
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: So good.
BOBBY: Man, Ted Cruz really on rocks.
ALEX: National pastime.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: You know, I, again, under no circumstances do you have to hand it to Yankees fans. But, no, just, we’re just really good. It’s, it’s the kind of thing that warms my heart. Frankly, I don’t even, no matter who it is.
BOBBY: Right. Just, yeah. This is across this, we can reach across the aisle.
ALEX: We can, we can [37:19]–
BOBBY: We can do any proposition.
ALEX: You really can.
BOBBY: Here’s the thing. Why just at sporting events? Why not boo Ted Cruz at the grocery store?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Why not, he doesn’t go to the grocery store. Why not boo Ted Cruz at the Michelin restaurants that he probably eats lunch at.
ALEX: I mean, this does happen from time to time.
BOBBY: Right. But everybody gets so upset about it.
ALEX: I know, and then it’s good to sports.
BOBBY: And suddenly okay to do it.
ALEX: Like, like let politicians eat.
BOBBY: Yeah. I want to write that column. Let politicians eat their popcorn in peace.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Ted Cruz–
ALEX: Just wants to enjoy movie.
BOBBY: –wants to watch them run around and play baseball, even though he doesn’t know the rules.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’ll bet you a million dollars, a million dollars. That Ted Cruz doesn’t know the rules of baseball.
ALEX: No, he’s probably like, it’s extra innings, what’s the man doing out there on the second base? What?
BOBBY: Not in the playoffs though. Not in the playoffs.
ALEX: Not true.
BOBBY: Again, another, another farce by the way. That Rob Manfred is like, listen, I know this rule is total bullshit. But we’re gonna keep it.
ALEX: Right. We’re gonna keep it not during the playoffs. So are they keeping it during the playoffs in the future? Do we know that?
BOBBY: No, no, no. [38:21]–
ALEX: So it’s continuing to be same thing?
BOBBY: –just like it is. Yeah, just only in the regular season. Just another way the Major League Baseball devalues the regular season. Okay, that’s all of our Probably Popular Opinions. Through Ted Cruz more, I love it.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Great work. Do you have anything that you would like to say as a final takeaway from the 2022 Major League Baseball season? It’s over! It’s done.
ALEX: I’m so sad.
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: And so I always get so fucking sad!
BOBBY: I, yes.
ALEX: Like the day after the World Series, every year is the worst day of the year for me.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: It’s just real brutal.
BOBBY: I know, you know, the second that the last out was made. I just kind of got quiet and I got sad. And Phoebe, I turned to Phoebe and I was like, just makes me sad. And she’s like, why? Because there’s like no more baseball, or, or what? And I was like, yeah that like, it’s not just that. It’s that I’m watching all of these players and all these fans so happy and I just don’t know if I’m ever gonna have that. Like every celebration I watch is a celebration that it, that I didn’t have. It’s just another stark reminder–
ALEX: You’re the protagonist of baseball.
BOBBY: –that I’ve never felt this. Every year 26 years so my life it’s ended in disappointment, every single year. And once I have it once, it’s over and done with. I never have to complain about it ever again. But until I have it that one–
ALEX: Yeah?
BOBBY: –time–
ALEX: You think, you think you never will?
BOBBY: Well I;ll, it’s not that I’ll never complained about the Mets but I will never have–
ALEX: Unless you can say it’s happened in your lifetime.
BOBBY: I will never have that dread well up in my stomach when I watch another team win the World Series. I will instead think back to when the Mets would have won it. You know, like, from whenever the Mets won the World Series if the Mets won the World Series. From every year on from that, every time I watch the World Series end, I will always think how I felt when I watched the Mets won the World Series. Even now, I think how I would have felt had I been alive for 1986. Because I’ve watched it so many times, you know, like, but we don’t have that. We don’t have that. And so that is part of what informs my dread and depression when the baseball season ends. It’s a bummer, it’s a real bummer.
ALEX: It really is. I mean, I, yeah, this is my like seasonal depression, right? Is just the offseason.
BOBBY: This is my Probably Popular Opinion. It’s better when season is still going. Alright, let’s take a quick break. We’ll do two very fast listener questions, some final thoughts on the season, and, and a preview of the next couple weeks because I am going to be gone. So we’re gonna have a couple banked episodes that I’m really excited about. But all that after the break.
[41:00]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Alright, Alex, I have two questions for you. From the wonderful listeners of the Tipping Pitches Podcast, both of them cropped up during the playoffs. And because we’re not going to be doing a podcast in real time for the next two or three weeks. I wanted to answer them before they got buried. Before they got buried by the passage of time. One of them comes from McKenna, who was just on this podcast just a month ago. McKenna says, My question is what percentage of, what is the percentage breakdown of Bobby versus Alex tweets on the Tipping Pitches account?
ALEX: Hmm, good question. I, it’s changed over time. I think.
BOBBY: Yes. I do think you used to tweet more than me–
ALEX: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: –from the TP account.
ALEX: Uh-huh. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve taken a step back from a Twitter consumption in the last year largely for mental health reasons. So like, right now–
BOBBY: I’ve leaned further into my Twitter consumption largely for mental health reasons, in a bad way.
ALEX: Like, I don’t know, where would you put a right now like, 70/30?
BOBBY: I was gonna say like, in terms of actual tweets, 80/20. In terms of engagement, you’re more of a quality versus quantity. So maybe your tweets get more engagement than mine on average.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So the engagement is probably like 70/30 or 65/35.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: In terms of who generates the most like views and likes and retweets and whatnot. But in terms of the number of tweets that are sent I sent probably 80% of them.
ALEX: Yeah, part of that you, you are a bit of a volume shooter.
BOBBY: Definitely.
ALEX: Big thread guy over here.
BOBBY: I’m more of a, I treat our Twitter more like a just a thought, just like a diary.
ALEX: Bit of a diary, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. And you treat our Twitter more like a, it’s much more edited your version of it. Mine is like little chaotic.
ALEX: Yeah, you’re just like the thought comes into my head talking out there in the world. Yeah, I, I can’t do that.
BOBBY: This is why, okay, this is to put, this is why I’ve been getting so frustrated with now that, now that people are like who follow us don’t know that there’s a podcast or like don’t until to extent, to a certain extent that that has always been true. We’ve always had like board a wider reach on Twitter because there’s just like, way more people on there and we’re like part quote unquote “part of baseball Twitter”. But the people who don’t get the, get the jokes at all just frustrated, frustrating me even more now. Like you can’t, you can’t possibly think that I’m being serious when I say things. Like listen to one episode of the pod.
ALEX: I know. I mean, I, that’s you can’t interpret tone online.
BOBBY: Nope.
ALEX: It’s just impossible, sorry.
BOBBY: You really can’t. Thank you to Elon for ruining Twitter. So that–
ALEX: Everything was good up until then.
BOBBY: Okay, next question comes from another Alex. Not you, another Alex. In honor of Brandon Marsh, who are some other notable current or historical wet guys? An important question. There’s a lot of conversation about this one in the Slack. Someone dropped I forget who did it but someone dropped the article that David Roth wrote in 2019 for Deadspin, before Deadspin was murdered and sleep. Where David Roth wrote a blog that was like every team has a wet guy now. They used to be fewer, they used to be fewer and far between but every team has a wet guy now. Some of the names that came up were Brandon Crawford, Jason Giambi, Clay Buchholz. I thought that those were wonderful submissions, and I don’t really have anyone to add. I’m sure if I did a lot of research and thought more about who, who the wetest guy is throughout baseball history, or John Kruk was pretty wet, if I remember correctly.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: The reason that I wanted to ask this question, well, because I’d love to hear your answer. If you have someone in mind or if there’s someone from the A’s or someone from your childhood, other than Giambi, who you remember as particularly soaked. But the Mets don’t have a single wet guy on their team. And we’re not talking enough about how that might be the reason that they got eliminated too soon in October. Not one wet guy?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Look at that. Look who, look who made it to the World Series? Look who won?
ALEX: Who–
BOBBY: Randy Marsh makes it to the World Series. He’s the wet guy.
ALEX: Who, who’s the Astros wet guy?
BOBBY: I think Luis Garcia.
ALEX: Luis Garcia? Okay.
BOBBY: It’s pretty wet.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But a story history of wet guys on the Astros.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: Your man, Josh Reddick.
ALEX: Yes, that, I mean, he was the first name who popped into my mind.
BOBBY: Wetter than wet can be.
ALEX: Super wet.
BOBBY: Like uncommonly wet, unnervingly wet maybe yeah, so damp. But yeah, he’s legend. Is that, so that’s your that’s the wet guy of your childhood then?
ALEX: He is the wet guy that I think stands out in my mind. You know, I think it’s, it’s important to note that while there are, there are physically wet, guys.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I think there’s also a wet guy mentality.
BOBBY: Absolutely.
ALEX: You know.
BOBBY: Absolutely, yes.
ALEX: Like, like, the thing is, Josh Donaldson isn’t physically wet all the time. But he strikes me as like having some sort of wet guy energy.
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: No?
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: What is, what is your definition of a, of a wet guy again?
BOBBY: He strikes me as like, dirty.
ALEX: Fine line.
BOBBY: Like, Marsh–
ALEX: Right, I mean–
BOBBY: –is clean–
ALEX: Right, like–
BOBBY: –you know.
ALEX: Yeah. [46:16]–
BOBBY: You know, I met Josh Donaldson. And he was not dirty or wet, you know.
ALEX: I mean, I guess–
BOBBY: He seemed like he had showered recently.
ALEX: There’s a sense of like, I think with the wet guy of like, I, you know, I don’t necessarily care how I’m perceived by other people. And I do think that like Donaldson kind of runs counter to that, right?
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: He’s very eminently aware of what other people think about him.
BOBBY: Maybe you’re just, you’re just thinking that because his Twitter handle is Bringer of Rain?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s just like, incepted into your mind. I think that you’re right, though, that like, it’s not just about how wet you are. It’s about how committed you are to being wet.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like Buchholz was basically the godfather–
ALEX: [46:57]
BOBBY: –to Brandon Marsh.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He was talking about how he was pouring water on his head all the time. And I don’t know, there’s something about that. That like you were born into the darkness like bein you were born into the wetness you’d like how it feels to have your hair being. So I think most people when they get rained on they’re like ah, this feels kind of shitty. Like I don’t like the feeling of being soaked all the time. And Brandon Marsh, and Clay Buchholz, and not even, I don’t even think Crawford falls into that. Although he does appear physically wet on television. Same goes for like Cole Hamels and Chase Utley, like they weren’t wet with water. They were wet with hair gel. That’s an entirely different, hair gel guy is a different guy.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, and I think that there’s a bit of like, and I don’t want to misconstrue long hair with, with wet guy.
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: Because they are distinct–
BOBBY: deGrom, not a wet guy.
ALEX: –Jacob deGrom–
BOBBY: He was never a wet guy.
ALEX: Was never a wet guy.
BOBBY: As dry as it gets.
ALEX: Right. Syndergaard a little more wet.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: But there are plenty of guys over the years who have had that long hair and clearly tended to them well. Bronson Arroyo, sticks out. Jayson Werth was, was, was not a wet guy.
BOBBY: I got to wet guy for you.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: R. A. Dickey.
ALEX: Yeah. That is one wet man.
BOBBY: Okay, this has been [48:20]
ALEX: Cory Rasmus?
BOBBY: Keep going.
ALEX: I’ll keep going, man.
BOBBY: Let’s go.
ALEX: Bryce Harper, in his life was at one point a wet guy and I think–
BOBBY: Yeah, now he’s not.
ALEX: –shied away from it.
BOBBY: Yeah, he’s not anymore.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s afraid.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He’s afraid of being wet. Just too focus on playing baseball. You know, I think that Luis Garcia to jump back to the Astros really quickly before we land this plane, and end this podcast. He, not only seems like a wet guy, he kind of looks like a pirate. You know, his hair is like piratey. Like, he looks like he just had to jump overboard to rescue his first man. Or his first mate, whatever you call them. Like the style of his hair, and the style of his facial hair too, which contributes to this. It’s, it’s giving Pirates of the Caribbean, lowkey.
ALEX: Yeah, he’s the only pirate who’s gonna sniff the World Series anytime soon.
BOBBY: Man, can you imagine Bob Nutting getting the trophy? He wouldn’t even know what to do with himself.
ALEX: No, stop. I don’t want to think about that.
BOBBY: All right, do you have any other wet guys? Or should we, should we land this plane? Who’s to say.
ALEX: I, I think we should, we should land this plane because I, I am scrolling through photos of baseball players right now. And we could probably go for a while this, there’s a deceptively large amount of wet guys.
BOBBY: I mean, there’s a reason that, that Roth wrote piece.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe we should just have him on.
ALEX: He hust write on that, yeah.
BOBBY: We should just have him on to talk about it and–
ALEX: [49:48] wet guy.
BOBBY: –he really thinks that it, that it adds to their skill in any–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –way because he would be the person–
ALEX: Right. Well, what–
BOBBY: –to know that.
ALEX: –characterizes a, a wet guy?
BOBBY: We just have to wait and find out. Uhh, okay, that does it for this week’s episode of Tipping Pitches. That does it for the Major League Baseball season as well, which is wild to say.
ALEX: [50:06]
BOBBY: I believe it’s over. We’ve teased it a few times now. We have new T shirts, new merch coming out, it’ll be a T- two T shirts, sticker, and a crewneck sweatshirt. Can I say that? [50:19], can I say that? [50:20] crewneck sweatshirt? The crewneck sweatshirt, I’m excited for, for the winter. I hope that that stuff’s my stocking this year. But really, in reality, I’ll probably just order it for myself. So look forward to that. I want to thank people specifically for coming out to our livestream. I know I mentioned it already that we live streamed Game 4 of the World Series, the, the game that ended up being a no-hitter for the Houston Astros.
ALEX: Yeah, which we talked about, approximately, not at all.
BOBBY: Three minutes.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Maybe.
ALEX: And they give was the seventh setting, and we were like, yo–
BOBBY: Oh there hasn’t been a hit yet, that’s a while.
ALEX: –what is going on?
BOBBY: I, I had a lot of fun doing that stream. I had a lot of fun with all the people who came out. Thank you to everybody who came on stage, ask questions, shared. comments, concerns, thoughts, milk facts. Helped us get to the bottom of PitchComs, website, HTML, all of that good stuff. Maybe we’ll do this in the offseason. If we get really bored, maybe we’ll, we’ll do a little playback stream of a little Dominican Winter League and just get really weird with it. Because we don’t need to talk about those games supposed to the World Series where we didn’t talk about it, even though we should have been talking about.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Exactly. Maybe that’s the perfect format for us.
BOBBY: Uhm, I wanted to give people a little heads up in two weeks. So I’m going to Italy, so I will beout, we will be out for the next two weeks that we–
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: [51:40]
BOBBY: So cool, amazing. So I, I will be gone for the next two weeks. So we decided to bank two podcasts for you. Next week will be our Dumbest Things of 2022 with Batting Around, which is just a, just a tremendous, downright tremendous, one of the best podcasts that we do every year.
ALEX: My favorite one.
BOBBY: And I, I’m already excited to do it next year. That’s how good this podcast, this podcast was. So that’s next week. In two weeks, we will be having an interview with the filmmakers for a documentary called The Last Out at, a doc about three Cuban baseball players and their journey to try to make it to affiliated ball. To get signed with a Major League Baseball team. Those gentlemen are named Sami Khan and Michael Gassert. We already watched this doc, we already had a wonderful conversation with those guys. And we’re really excited for you to hear that. I would just say that, you probably want to watch the documentary before listening to this conversation. Because I think you’ll get the most out of the, the, the podcast episode if you do watch the doc ahead of time. That’s not to say that you can’t listen to it.
ALEX: Yeah, I think, I think–
BOBBY: Talk a lot about just the system in general.
ALEX: Yeah, the conversation I think was very illuminating, regardless. But, so in the film doesn’t necessarily feel like a prerequisite for the conversation. Although it’s–
BOBBY: It’s a lot about the movie.
ALEX: –it’s, yeah, it’s a lot about the movie. And I think that all of our listeners would enjoy the movie on its own merits. So I think you all should watch it, regardless of whether you listen to that episode or not.
BOBBY: Yes, so wanted to flag up for people a couple of weeks ahead of time so that you can carve out some streaming time at home to check that out. Quick shout out to the five members of the Alex Rodriguez VIP club tier. If so many of you that we only have time shout out five every episode. Thank you to all of you though. And specifically this week to Jake, Craig, Ben, Tristan, and Drake. Putting out new music and signing up for the Alex Rodriguez VIP clubs tier, booooo.
ALEX: Boooo.
BOBBY: Bad joke. Thanks all of you. Alex, send us home. 2022 baseball season, 2022 world series champion Houston Astros. What do you have to leave the people with this week?
ALEX: Nothing. Now what?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: That Slack better pop off in the next four or five months, y’all. Because–
BOBBY: You have nothing better than to do.
ALEX: –I got nothing better to do now.
BOBBY: How about 2023 Oakland A’s, World Series champs?
ALEX: Yeah, I could see it. I think so. My, I mean, you know that my World Series is John Fisher selling the team. That’s really the, the kind of, my, what my hopes and dreams are wrapped up in
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like I will actually shut tears when that happens.
BOBBY: All right, thank you everybody for listening. And we will be back next week.
[54:21]
[Music]
[54:37]
[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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