Bobby and Alex are joined by Jordan Shusterman from Céspedes Family BBQ to reprise “Overrated/Underrated,” a segment in which they each bring up various topics from the baseball world and debate whether that thing is overrated by the baseball community or underrated by it.
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Transcript
BOBBY: Alexander, I’ve been called to do my civil service this week.
ALEX: Well, it is Inauguration Day, the day that this is coming out.
BOBBY: Yeah, and I’ve been called to do my civil service, head down to Washington and be one of the nameless, faceless people in the crowd, so that it doesn’t become the first story of this—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —administration.
ALEX: Right. You’re— you’re not a protester, you’re not a counter protester, but a secret third thing.
BOBBY: A third thing, yeah. No, I’ve been called to do jury duty—
ALEX: An NYPD plant.
BOBBY: I’ve been called into jury duty.
ALEX: Oh, my God.
BOBBY: Have you— have you had jury duty in New York City?
ALEX: I have not, no.
BOBBY: You’ve dodged it so far.
ALEX: I’ve dodged it so far. But I did within the last year, they finally sent me a letter. They were like, “Okay. We know who you are.” It was like, this is not a jury summon summons, but it could be.
BOBBY: Really? That’s kind of amazing.
ALEX: Yeah, it was, like, after I registered to vote here, like at my current address.
BOBBY: Like a few different times, right? And different places?
ALEX: Right. Yes, yeah. I actually have four times a chance of getting called for jury duty than anyone else in this city. No, you got called.
BOBBY: Yeah, I don’t know if I have to do it yet. I will find out on Tuesday evening.
ALEX: Now, when you say you will have to do it, are you saying you’re gonna go in to, like, the jury selection?
BOBBY: No. See, this is how I know you haven’t been called for jury duty. When you get called for jury duty, you call the night before, and they let you know if they need you to come in.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: And then you come in, and then you go through the process of jury selection. So there’s two different places where you might not get chosen. One is before you even go to the courthouse, and one is once you get there. So I’m hoping Tuesday night, I hop on the old phone, the telephone, and they say, “Hey, you’re good. Don’t even come in.” And now, if they do ask me to come in, what do you think my GP should be? Just like play the first five minutes of one of the Patreon episodes? To be like, you really don’t want this guy on the jury.
ALEX: No, dude, you need— you need to go for it. We need people like you on juries.
BOBBY: When you say people like me, you mean extremely stable, politically reasonable people?
ALEX: Yes, exa— I mean, folks who are generally level-headed about the world, about society, about how they interact—
BOBBY: Well—
ALEX: —with each other, and the justice system, more— moreover.
BOBBY: I— it seems like I know more about jury duty than you, but I probably know less than most people listening to. This was made for a great conversation. So—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —when I get in there, like, are they going to ask me if I have any questions before they select me? Like, do I get to sort of come with some hard-hitters? Like, can I just be like, “Is this, like, Juror #2?” Like, did you guys see that movie?
ALEX: Yeah, I was about to make a joke about that as well, because that’s really all that I have to go off of. It’s that and Jury Duty, the TV show.
BOBBY: And 12 Angry Men.
ALEX: And 12 Angry Men, yeah.
BOBBY: You’ve seen 12 Angry Men, right?
ALEX: I have, yes. Yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, great. That’s good to know. I’ve seen quite a few courtroom dramas in my day. I mean, one of my favorite movies of all time, A Few Good Men.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: I’ll— I’ll just keep asking them, is this like A Few Good Men? Is this like Jury Duty? Is this like Juror #2?
ALEX: Right. Be like, which one of you is an actor here? Which one of you— where are the cameras? Where are the cameras?
BOBBY: Am I the actor?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: That’s fun.
BOBBY: So there’s a chance I—
ALEX: I’m rooting for you.
BOBBY: I guess there’s a small chance that I get sequestered, and this pod doesn’t come out for the next couple weeks. That’s why I’m leading with this.
ALEX: You know, the show must—
BOBBY: Your honor, sorry. you can’t sequester me. I have content to create.
ALEX: The show will go on.
BOBBY: Is that right?
ALEX: It might be a Voice Memo that I just have to deliver via mp3 pile— mp3 file to— to people’s mailboxes. But we’ll go on.
BOBBY: When you say Voice Memo, like you can’t record yourself if I’m not here. You do record yourself?
ALEX: I do, yeah.
BOBBY: Well, I give you full permission to do whatever you want on the podcast if I am sequestered in a hotel in Brooklyn. Is that how sequestering works or do I get to go home?
ALEX: Did they really cut you off from the outside world?
BOBBY: Be like, Your Honor, I have to share opinions about the Dodgers and their luxury tax.
ALEX: Exactly. I have takes to fire off.
BOBBY: Your Honor, there’s too many people spreading misinformation. I’m trying to have an honest, frank conversation about what salary deferrals really mean for this great game of ours.
ALEX: Yeah. Something tells me your— your fellow peers on the jury may not appreciate the A-Rod bits as much as— as you or I.
BOBBY: You never know. A-Rod could be on trial.
ALEX: You never know.
BOBBY: We don’t know.
ALEX: He could be— yeah, he could be on the jury with you.
BOBBY: No, he’s a resident of Miami.
ALEX: It’s— I guess, technically, yeah.
BOBBY: I think probably more than half the year he spends in Miami, or a plurality of his time he spends in Miami.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Don’t know how that works. Can you just avoid jury duty by only living in a place for exactly like 1/3 of the time? Like which place calls you? Which place is your permanent residency? I don’t know.
ALEX: I don’t know. You should ask Eric Adams.
BOBBY: Funny enough. I was just up by Gracie Mansion yesterday.
ALEX: You— you carpooled back from Mar-a-Lago with— with him?
BOBBY: No, I toured an apartment that was literally, like, 50 feet from it.
ALEX: Oh, my God.
BOBBY: A pretty side Manhattan era.
ALEX: Wow. Okay, bougie. I see you.
BOBBY: It was mostly just for fun. Not gonna move there, but it was nice. What’s crazy is when you— if you ever tour like an Upper East or an Upper West Side apartment, you realize they used to build nice apartments.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And then they just stopped.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Because they were like, “We don’t have to do that anymore, so we’re not going to do that anymore.”
ALEX: Yeah. Right. People will still live in it if it’s not as nice. Where are they going to go?
BOBBY: Right. Sort of the Castellini mantra.
ALEX: Right. That— that quote, that man’s quote is, frankly— I— I think about at least twice a week.
BOBBY: Phil, we’re talking about?
ALEX: We’re talking about Phil, yes.
BOBBY: I don’t think I’ve ever heard Bob speak.
ALEX: Uh-uh. No. He speaks through his actions.
BOBBY: What percent— well, it’s—
ALEX: I feel like— I feel like I’ve gotten to know him through his vegetables.
BOBBY: What percentage of MLB owners do you think have— you have heard them speak aloud?
ALEX: I— probably under 50%.
BOBBY: Definitely— yeah. Definitely less.
ALEX: I mean— I mean, I was gonna say— I was gonna say maybe 25%.
BOBBY: Yeah. I was gonna say, like, 1/3.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, I know everything there is to know about Ken Kendrick. I’ve never heard that man speak.
ALEX: No. No desire to, frankly.
BOBBY: I— we have spent multiple cold opens of this podcast talking about Mark Attanasio and his sand. Never heard him say a word.
ALEX: I have heard him speak, actually.
BOBBY: When?
ALEX: I did— I— he was on a podcast, and I was like, “If Mark Attanasio is on a podcast—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: “—you know I’m listening.”
BOBBY: What pod? Rogan?
ALEX: Yeah. No, it was like a it was like a Bloomberg podcast.
BOBBY: This is a good time, I think, a good opportunity when we already have like a 75-minute segment coming up with Jordan Shusterman.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Overrated, Underrated 2025, which most of you have probably seen from the title. I think this is a good time to sort of bullshit our way through the intro. 75 minutes of real baseball talk coming up.
ALEX: Yeah. Well—
BOBBY: So it’s good time for me to check in. How’s your podcast listening these days? What are you firing up?
ALEX: I am not— I have— I’m not firing a podcast. I— I regret to inform you.
BOBBY: Should I just assume this is a forever thing?
ALEX: I have— I’ve listening to If— If Books— If Books Could Kill. I’ve been listening to an episode of that, here or there.
BOBBY: This is a podcast?
ALEX: This is a podcast, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: I— occasionally, I’ll try and make my way through— through a season of Revolutions, but those are dense, and frankly, I listen to more music than I do anything else, Bobby. I’ve been listening to a lot of pop punk lately for, you know, reasons that may be to be determined.
BOBBY: The one thing about Revolutions is that it’s great, but also there’s so much detail that if you don’t listen to it all in a row, you just forget it all.
ALEX: You just lose it. Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. You lose it. And then it’s like, why did I even to learn the themes of the Revolutions? It’s usually the same theme.
ALEX: Right. Like, I’m like, “Okay, I will listen to the— the season about the French Revolution over my travels, over the holidays, because, of course, I’m gonna be on a plane for— for many hours. I should do that.” And so I’ll crush, like, a dozen episodes, but I’m like, “Great. I’m, like, 12% of the way through the season, and the holidays are over, I’m back to work now.”
BOBBY: Yeah. You do commute, like, an hour [9:12]
ALEX: I do— I do commute, yeah. I just can’t lock in that early in the morning. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.
BOBBY: I don’t relate.
ALEX: I know you don’t.
BOBBY: I can lock in super early in the morning, because, you know, I have— I have one day in the morning, and then that day ends. And then I have a second day. And then you’re not going to believe this, but then that day ends.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And then what comes next? A third day.
ALEX: Third day.
BOBBY: You stack that up. I don’t even remember the hours that he uses to delineate between those two days.
ALEX: I think it’s— I think it’s eight, right? Because—
BOBBY: Well, no, because it can’t be eight. He has to sleep at some point.
ALEX: No, man.
BOBBY: You stack that up over a week, I’m gonna kick your butt. You stack that up—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —over a month, it’s over.
ALEX: I’m gonna eat your lunch.
BOBBY: Great stuff. Are you— were you suffering for the 12 hours without TikTok?
ALEX: It was—
BOBBY: Was that hard for you?
ALEX: It was tough. It was tougher, frankly, that my VPN didn’t work for it.
BOBBY: Would you like to weigh in on the politics of Joe Biden not being the one to save it?
ALEX: We can— we haven’t even talked about Roki. Like, I— I mean, hey, we don’t have to. That’s not what people come here for.
BOBBY: I just— I’m not interested in talking about the Dodgers.
ALEX: Okay. Right.
BOBBY: I’m interested in getting into arguments with people on Twitter about it.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s fair.
BOBBY: Apparently.
ALEX: You’re very good at that.
BOBBY: That’s something I’m interested in.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m winning all those arguments for the record.
ALEX: You are. You— you always are.
BOBBY: Yeah, man, he signed with the Dodgers. Okay, great. Congratulations.
ALEX: You wanna talk about a complete unknown?
BOBBY: Kind of, honestly. Maybe we should fake talking about Roki Sasaki first, though.
ALEX: Okay. Yeah, I don’t know, man.
BOBBY: Sasaki and Tanner Scott, I guess we should lump them together.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s— I suppose, but obviously, distinct situations, right? Folks were very, once again, upset because they didn’t understand how deferrals worked in the Tanner Scott situation. Sasaki—
BOBBY: 4 for 72 bro, like, five teams should have beat that.
ALEX: Yeah. That’s—
BOBBY: Just say 4 for 80.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, it’s just $20 million a year. I— it’s whatever. Yeah, fine. Whatever.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s goofy. The— the Sasaki thing is just— I— I struggled to understand why there— again, why there were no other teams who could beat this sort of thing. And, like, I— I get that much of— how the Dodgers were able to sign them as a result of just, frankly, financial engineering, right, and trading international bonus pool money, or trading players for pool money from the— the Phillies and whatnot. Like, you know, it’s just— you’re— you’re moving piles of money around to make space for more players. Like, sure, whatever. But the Dodgers are not the only people who are capable of doing this. They’re really good at it, because they’ve done it for such a long time.
BOBBY: Yeah. Well, I think it has less to do with the bonus pool money. I— like, I don’t think he got the most he possibly could have gotten if he had widened his purview to all 30 teams. But—
ALEX: No, of course.
BOBBY: Or he just wanted to play in Southern California.
ALEX: Right. Well, that’s— I mean, that’s a testament to like— I don’t know. The— the Dodgers management group is so good at viewing the team as an investment. For, like, better or for worse, they say like, “It is worth it for us to put money into this, whether that is salaries for players, whether that is, you know, having a, you know, all-time broadcast booth. Whether that is making sure the stadium is a place that people want to come to be. It’s like there’s no reason other teams shouldn’t have figured this sort of thing out, right? And I get that it’s cumulative, right? They’ve been doing this for— for years. We don’t have to talk about Walter O’Malley again, right? But this is an ethos that I think is, like, underpin their franchise for a really long time, is that they can and should be a marquee franchise. But they’re not— I don’t know. They’re not special in that, in, like, the ability to do that sort of thing.
BOBBY: No. I don’t think they are. But I also think— you know, I saw a friend of the show, Jarrett Seidler, talking about how the particular thing that has grabbed hold of the baseball internet in reaction to the Sasaki signing, in reaction to— even just a long tail reaction to Ohtani or signing Freeman, or just the team that they’ve built, the roster that they’ve built, their— their CBT payroll is now 300— over $375 million at this point, the highest ever. No team is really even that close to that at the moment. And Jarett said, “The problem isn’t that the Dodgers have money or are elite at talent identification. It’s that they’re willing to ditch the, quote, ‘sabermetric’ dogmas about term and how to leverage money to drive giant piles of cash up to the truly elite bat missing guys like Snell and Scott. The system is designed to handle a team being two of rich, cutting edge, and YOLO, but not all three.” And I think that’s really an astute point, and it is kind of what I was trying to make when I was saying—kind of the point that I was trying to make when I was saying, the Dodgers are the first team that I can remember in recent memory, and I wasn’t thinking about it this way in 2009, so maybe you could say the 2010— turn of the 2010— 2010s Yankees were this way too, but the first team that actually was the best team, then won and then kept trying to get better.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: We have just become so used to the fact that teams win, and then they take their foot off the gas so that they could cash those checks and save money and say, “Flags fly forever.” Like, when you look at what the Dodgers are doing in comparison to what the Cubs did, or in comparison to what the Nationals did, it’s— it’s like they’re playing a different game, but it’s kind of also what they should be doing. They just had the best financial season in the history of their franchise, and probably in the history of any franchise, any baseball franchise last year. Like the way— even the Dodgers reporters last year got information about how great the team did financially. Hundreds of millions of dollars pocket.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You got to put it somewhere. You can’t really, like, pay stock bonuses to the ownership group. It’s not like that kind of thing. It has to go somewhere into the organization. And you could hold on to that cash, sure, but then that means that it’s not the tax-dodging investment vehicle that every supports ownership groups get— gets into this for. So you either put it back into the franchise or you pay it to the government. Those are the two options.
ALEX: Right. And you go back into franchise, and— and most likely, you get better as a result, and then you make more money the next year. It’s like—
BOBBY: I— selfishly, it’s— it’s fine and I personally agree with the fact that it would have been cool if Sasaki signed with the Padres, but like, hate to break it to you, not the best pitching development organization in baseball. You know what they’re good at? Getting pitchers who are already developed, and paying a steep price in prospect capital for it. I hate that phrase, but that’s what they do. You know? Like it— yeah, it would have been great for Sasaki to be under Yu Darvish’s tutelage. But guess what? Sasaki is a person with free will who chose not to do that. I don’t know. Like, what— who are we even supposed to be mad at that Sasaki is on the Dodgers? God?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Sasaki himself? Like, I don’t know shit about him. I’m not just gonna be mad at him or the Dodgers.
ALEX: No, but I think it’s okay to say— I mean, the— the Dodgers are—
BOBBY: Don’t like it, play better, bro.
ALEX: Well, but— no, but that’s what I’m saying. It’s like—
BOBBY: If you guys invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. You know? If you guys invented the Dodgers, you would have invented the Dodgers. There’s only one of them.
ALEX: Well, yes, but I— but that, I think, assumes that there can only be one of them, that, like there are not other teams who— and— and true, the Dodgers are one of one. They may be the best team, frankly, we have ever seen, maybe? Like, certainly, you know, in— in the last two decades. But there’s this false idea that, like, they can only be one. The Mets turned themselves into the Dodgers, like, overnight, right? You know, it’s like—
BOBBY: Yeah, but they’re the only team trying, though. That’s the thing. They’re the only team that’s giving a shit enough to try to actually do that.
ALEX: No, I— I mean, I fully agree about that. I just think that’s probably a bad thing.
BOBBY: It’s definitely a bad thing.
ALEX: I’m not— I don’t think that— I don’t think that’s on the Dodgers. The Dodgers should go and get whoever the hell they want. I— go get Soto for all I fucking care, you know?
BOBBY: Hey, now.
ALEX: I mean, like—
BOBBY: Relax, relax.
ALEX: But— but like they— I think it’s good for the league that you have a team who, love them or hate them, like you feel some way about them, and you want to tune in, and watch them. Like, I think that is frankly amazing. The— the fact that they have the three best pitchers out of Japan in the last, you know, decade, two decades. One of them is also one of the best hitters we’ve ever seen. Like, I— all this stuff is amazing. And they have Mookie Betts, and they have Freddie Freeman. And, like, I don’t know. I— it makes me want to watch the Dodgers more, but it also makes me want to watch the other teams less, which, like, sucks. I think that power imbalance needs to shift and that’s not on the Dodgers to— to fix. And it’s not even really on the— on the league to fix. It’s on the teams to fucking grab those bootstraps, man.
BOBBY: I agree. I mean, if you want to stop finishing third for players, don’t make yourself a third rate franchise like the Blue Jays. Like— and it’s not on anybody, like any one person with the Blue Jays, as much as it’s on Rogers Communication, a telecom giant in Canada, the only team in Canada. This massive financial advantage that you have. Granted, there are some drawbacks to that, to try to convince a player to come live in Toronto, I think, is a tougher sell than to try to convince a player to come live in Los Angeles. It’s awesome to be rich in LA. That might be it. Like that might be the whole thing. I think it’s awesome to be rich in LA.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And also it’s hard to think about now, but like this isn’t going to be forever. The Dodgers are not going to be viewed as the best franchise, no holds bars that every free agent reaches out to first— to see if they want to sign them forever. Like this used to be the Yankees, right?
ALEX: Yeah, though that lasted for a while. I mean— I mean, I agree. It’s not gonna be— it’s not gonna be forever. But I don’t know, the Dodgers almost kind of feel like they’re just getting started. Like it’s gonna be for the next decade, right? It has been for the last decade and a half.
BOBBY: I guess I just don’t see them having, like, some prohibitive advantage that makes it unfun to watch. Like, there’s always going to be a— one team is always going to be better than the others. Like, there’s always going to be a, quote-unquote, “best” team, and they’ve been the best team, like, eight out of the last 10 years and only won twice, one and a half times, if you want to be an asshole about it. I don’t know. I just— I don’t know why I’m just not bothered by this.
ALEX: No, I don’t think I’m—
BOBBY: There’s all these different mechanisms in baseball for the fucking small— quote-unquote, “small market teams” to just be gifted talent that— that they haven’t earned and don’t deserve.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: There’s— there’s the draft, there’s the international signing pool, where, like, the Pirates sign the player that the Dodgers were gonna sign for— you know, they signed him for 1.8 million because the Dodgers signed Sasaki. Like both of those guys, probably, on a— in a, quote-unquote, “free market” that we love so much in this— in this game and in this country. Both of those guys probably should have signed with the Dodgers, because they probably both had the best chance of having a Major League Baseball career if they go to the Dodgers organization and not the Pirates. Like all of these different organizations being gifted ways to cut corners, like the fact that the Dodgers are going so far over the luxury tax, guess who’s not going to be complaining about that? All of the dudes cashing their fucking luxury tax revenue sharing check.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And yet, like I’m supposed to cry because the Royals don’t get the— get to have an equal shot at signing Roki Sasaki? Like I don’t understand. And— and defer payments, by the way.
ALEX: Spoken like a— spoken like a true, recently christened big market fan.
BOBBY: No, this is not— you cannot excuse me of being like some big market apologist about this, because I have been consistent on this pod since yester year.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —when the Mets were running— or when the— when the Wilpons were running the Mets like they were the Pirates, you know? The deferrals thing, I know— I— I know I’ve told our listeners that I’m most likely going to ban it, because this is just what the conversation is going to turn into every single time this comes up. Although maybe it’s not even worth banning, because once the season starts, it’s like, who cares?
ALEX: It’s like no one’s gonna want to—
BOBBY: No one’s gonna want to talk about this?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. I would argue that deferring payment should help small market teams more. In theory, if you were actually willing to run your baseball team like a baseball team and not a spreadsheet, deferring the payment would allow you to pay more for a player that you otherwise would say, “I don’t have enough money to pay this player right now.” The Dodgers have enough money to pay them now or later. It’s the players who want to defer the money.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s why this is not coming out of the CBA. It’s because both sides actually want this. It’s beneficial for both teams. And if you want to get mad about, like, tax evasion, then we can talk about that, I guess. I don’t know. You want to talk about why Joe Rogan moved his studio to Austin instead of California? Like, sure. But like—
ALEX: I don’t— I don’t even know what we’re talking about.
BOBBY: The players playing in California don’t want to pay the tax on the money now, and they’ll move to fucking—
ALEX: Yes, yeah.
BOBBY: —Texas or whatever after their career is over. And they won’t—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —have to pay as much on the deferred payments that they get from the organization, then. That is a benefit that helps every team equally.
ALEX: In theory, I mean, it does not mean that you just have more money to spend now. Like you still are putting that money aside, right? And, like, you still—
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: So if you are acting as a small market team, you can’t— you obviously can’t just defer the money and say, “Well, now, we have even more money to spend today.” Like it’s still, obviously goes— sits on your books. But— but I agree with you that it’s like— it’s a mechanism that more teams could just take advantage of, and they don’t do it. Except for the A’s who were like, “Yeah, we’ll pay you $10 million deferred over the next 10 years to Marcus Semien.”
BOBBY: Yeah, but actually, teams do take advantage of it, but nobody fucking talks about it. You know who took advantage of it? The 2019 Nationals, where most of their highest paid players had a lot of deferments on their payroll, and are still being paid by the Nationals. Scherzer’s record-setting pitcher contract, a lot of deferments in that contract. You know the greatest free agent contract of all time, or at least of this century? Scherzer’s contract with the Nationals, much of it was deferred. Like, this is not new.
ALEX: I mean— I mean, Bobby Bonilla, right? It’s like, we make a— it’s a punch line every— every year, right? It’s like, “Oh, it’s Bobby Bonilla day.” It’s like, “Oh, actually— that was actually a pretty decent move for the Mets.” I— I don’t know. It’s fine. Doesn’t— it’s not my money. He was getting it back then or he was getting it today. It doesn’t really— I don’t really care.
BOBBY: It’s way bigger of an advantage for the teams that play in Texas and Florida. Just by nature of the fact that there is no state income tax in those states. Like Corey Seager signed with the Rangers and they won a fucking World Series because there’s no income tax in Texas. Otherwise, he would still be on the Dodgers. But I don’t see people being like, “Wow, the Dodgers got screwed by being in California, not being able to get— you know, that’s not fair. Something should be in the CBA to protect the Dodgers and the Angels and the other teams that play in California.” It’s just fucking baby brain shit. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s stupid.
ALEX: This is so good. This is good. I appreciate this because I just haven’t been online the last 24 hours, so I have no idea what the general baseball response to this is, I’m only getting your reaction to it, and I’m kind of piecing together in my head how folks have been responding and what people have been saying, but I have zero— zero context. So this is great. Now, I— now I have some homework to do.
BOBBY: It’s just more— a lot more of the same—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —of people being like, “Deferrals are un-American.” You can tell it’s really breaking people’s brains because they want to be like, “The Socialist Dodgers are ruining baseball—”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “—from woke California.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re spending more money than other people, which is the capitalist— capitalist Dodgers. And so then they— they really twist themselves into knots to try to be like, “Well, it’s bad for the game. You know?”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “It’s bad— bad for the game.”
ALEX: Yeah. When— when we have monopolies, when we have companies who actually just devour the market share because they’re better—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: —at what they do than— than everyone else, that is bad, I think.
BOBBY: As I sink more of my money into Apple stock.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Exactly.
BOBBY: Like it’s just— honestly, that’s the best comparison. The best comparison for the Dodgers is they’re just Apple.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: They manipulate the market better than other people, but they make a great product. So like, what can you even say?
ALEX: I’ll keep buying it.
BOBBY: Yeah, man, I don’t know.
ALEX: And I’m gonna clown Androids all the way. Like, I don’t know. They— sounds like you should make a better product.
BOBBY: Do you think you’re ever gonna become an Android guy?
ALEX: I don’t— I mean, I never thought I’d become a PC guy until I started using one for my— for my work, so— but then I started get— working on the— on a Mac again, and I was like, “No, this is—” I forgot what I was missing.
BOBBY: Tech podcasts?
ALEX: Tech podcasts, I could do it.
BOBBY: I think you’d be a good tech podcaster.
ALEX: I was interested in, like, tech journalism for a little while, mostly just because I’m so fascinated by, like—
BOBBY: Yeah, then what happened?
ALEX: —how these oligarchs brains work, you know?
BOBBY: And then most tech journalists got laid off. The good ones got laid off.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And the other ones now work in PR for the companies that they were covering.
ALEX: Yeah, pretty much.
BOBBY: Pretty much. Okay, anything else about— that you want to talk about before we go to our segment with Jordan?
ALEX: No [28:07]
BOBBY: Completely unknown, this is your shot. Maybe we should say that for the outro.
ALEX: We can, yeah.
BOBBY: All right, let’s bring in our friend Jordan Shusterman. Jake Mintz banned from the podcast this year. Sorry if you were looking for Jake, that’s too bad. He’s not allowed on the show. We’re gonna do Overrated and Underrated, a segment that we did last year with our friends at Cespedes Family Barbecue. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Okay. We are joined by one-half of Cespedes Family Barbecue. We’ve banned Jake Mintz from the podcast for reasons that we don’t want to talk about publicly. But Jordan Shusterman is here. Hi, Jordan.
JORDAN: Hey, guys. Thanks for the invite. I’m— I’m excited to do this again. This was an exercise that— you know, there’s some podcast bits that it’s like, “You know what? Let’s just do it again. Some things— it’s like, do we really need to force it and do this over again?” And then the other— it’s like, “No, hell yeah, that was fun.” So—
ALEX: Yeah. That’s— that’s our whole shtick, I think.
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: —is just do a bit once, and then see how long we can do it before people yell at us.
JORDAN: For sure. No, I can certainly relate.
BOBBY: Yeah, just keep milking it, bro. You got to keep milking it for—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: Are— are you guys— wait, hold on. Before we even get started, are you guys excited to create content tonight?
JORDAN: Oh. I mean, come on. Come on, Bobby. I mean, I— I have— I haven’t— especially any opportunity to— to— to collab with you again is— is a treat. I was watching the football game the other day.
BOBBY: Why were you— why were you doing that?
JORDAN: Well, okay, fair question. But then Bobby Wagner appeared on my screen, and I was like, “There’s my guy.”
ALEX: Said, “Oh.”
JORDAN: “There he is. He’s still cooking.” And I was like, “Damn, that guy’s still playing football.” Like, I kind of assumed that he had maybe moved on by now, and you were the premier Bobby Wagner, but apparently not.
BOBBY: I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting. I got years, maybe decades to go before I pass him in, like, the Google Image query.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Well, but my understanding is that, like, you’re still in your prime, for sure. I don’t know if he’s— it seems like he’s kind of past his prime.
BOBBY: He might be— he might be in the Justin Verlander zone.
ALEX: No. But I mean, what I hear is that he doesn’t want to relinquish the title. He doesn’t want to relinquish the throne to you.
JORDAN: Oh.
ALEX: He will put His body on the line—
BOBBY: [30:33] Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: —to keep you from being—
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: —the most important Bobby Wagner.
BOBBY: I think putting your body on the line is just par for the course for the National Football League boys.
JORDAN: Yeah. So I said he’s 34, so that’s definitely football old for sure.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah. He’s also on, like, his sixth team. I know this only because every time he switches teams, the fan base from the previous team tweets at me a lot about how happy they were to have him on the squad.
JORDAN: Oh, that’s so nice. Anyway, I— I’m sure—
BOBBY: “We love our time with you, and my son’s so proud to wear your jersey.” Like, I get all of that, still to this day.
JORDAN: I love that. Listen, I— I know this isn’t new to you, and I’m— I’m sorry to bring it up, but I— I—
BOBBY: It’s okay.
JORDAN: —did just, you know, hear Joe Buck or whoever was broadcasting that, be like, “Bobby Wagner, what [31:17] he’s my guy.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: So it’s good to see you, Bobby. Good to see you too, Alex, obviously.
ALEX: Of course, yeah.
JORDAN: But, you know, our history isn’t quite as rich, so—
ALEX: Of course, no.
JORDAN: —it’s— it’s a little— a little bit different.
ALEX: We’re trying to get— yeah.
BOBBY: Your history includes such all-time classics as The Least Terrible Owners Draft, The 2024 Overrated, Underrated, and now, we— we— we dive forward into this wonderful future, The 2025 Overrated, Underrated parent— small parentheses, small print (or properly rated.)
ALEX: And for a few years, a mainstay on our All-GIF Draft until—
BOBBY: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: —until we deprecated that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: We’ll see if that comes back this year. But—
BOBBY: We took that one behind the woodshed, Jordan.
JORDAN: That was okay. That was a good one.
ALEX: To a farm upstate.
JORDAN: That was— that was another one that— that definitely— definitely had its— had its time, you know?
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: Starring on this— on this feed.
ALEX: Think of the Rabbits GIF Draft. Just think of all the rabbits.
BOBBY: The GIF Draft went away like the ducks in Sopranos, you know?
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: And some people are sad about it, but some people have to make peace.
JORDAN: Before we— well, sorry, I want to make sure we establish what has already been used and I— I do encourage people to go back and listen to last year’s, because when Bobby invited us on again to do this, I immediately came up with a bunch. And then when you sent me the list, I was like, “Oh, we did half this year, though.” So I did come up with some new ones, but— but why don’t you include it and then— and then, I have one other modest prelude? Even though this isn’t my show, but I think— I think— I— I have another thing to kind of set this up before we begin.
BOBBY: Okay, great. Well, I’m really excited for that. Well, first and foremost, if you didn’t listen to last year’s Overrated, Underrated (properly rated) if you’d like to choose that. If your name is Jake Mintz, you just choose that for every single topic—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —that gets brought up, no matter what it’s properly rated. Jake just knows the rating of everything. That’s what he did last year. This is a segment that we did last offseason. I think a little bit earlier in the offseason last year. Each of us can bring up a baseball topic of any sort. It can be as specific as one player. It could be as specific as one player’s single season, if you want it to be. Or it can be as broad as just the concept of baseball in general. And we discuss whether or not that thing is properly rated by the baseball culture at large. Does this make sense, gentlemen?
JORDAN: Absolutely.
ALEX: It does.
BOBBY: Wonderful. You’re—
JORDAN: I mean, doesn’t mean we won’t agree on maybe any of this, but, you know, I think we— it’s— we’ve established the guidelines for what we will be attempting.
ALEX: Well—
BOBBY: As they say in the business, that’s good radio.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And the three of us are generally— I— I think of us as being the arbiters for the broader baseball opinion, largely representative of its fan base right now.
JORDAN: Yes.
BOBBY: Yeah, you got white podcaster one, white podcaster two, white podcaster three, and white podcast four is—
JORDAN: What more do you need?
BOBBY: —notoriously absent because—
JORDAN: Realistically.
BOBBY: —he’s vacationing in Japan, another white—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —podcaster thing to do.
ALEX: He’s a conscientious objector to this exercise.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. Jake—
BOBBY: Let me read out the things that we did last year.
JORDAN: —Jake— Jake took— Jake took a moral stand by extending his honeymoon so he could not appear on this podcast.
BOBBY: Jake became like weirdly combative about 65 minutes into last year’s, and I said that we were gonna have to maybe ban him from this year’s. And it turns out that we actually did ban him from this year’s.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Here we are.
BOBBY: By happenstance. Here are the things that we rated last year on the podcast. Alex brought up Jumbotrons, retired numbers, Statcast on broadcasts, and ceremonial first pitches. As well as the podcast, Cespedes Family Barbecue. We rated whether or not you guys are overrated, underrated, or properly rated. I brought up MLBTV, robot umps, Jerry Dipoto, peanuts and Cracker Jack, and the artist known as Taylor Swift. Jake brought up to kick off the whole exercise, just came out— came out of the gate strong, Jackie Robinson, the 2020 B— 2020 MLB season, Alex Rodriguez, Bob Nightengale, and the concept of children at baseball games. And Jordan, your topics were the flyover, Scott Boras, Spencer Strider, which sparked quite a heated debate.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Heated debate amongst us. And the throwing it around the horn after a strikeout.
JORDAN: Hmm.
BOBBY: Excellent work by everyone.
ALEX: I— yeah, I gotta say, your— your picks were kind of catnip for this podcast.
JORDAN: Oh. Well, I hope I can deliver similar levels of— of catnip today. I will also say you should go back and listen, because I— I’m not sure I could tell you what I answered for all of these things, you know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: And who knows if my answers would have been the same here. The one thing I want to say before we get started is actually related to one of our topics from last year, Jerry Dipoto.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: The Mariners signed Donovan Solano—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: —this week.
BOBBY: Yeah, I heard that.
JORDAN: Like, who cares, right? Their first major league free agent signing.
BOBBY: Would you say he’ll anchor the lineup or what?
JORDAN: Well, to that point, okay. This was a quote from Jerry Dipoto in the press release. “Donovan has been among the most underrated hitters—”
BOBBY: Let’s go.
JORDAN: “—in the game over the past six years. His veteran presence, consistent performance and positional versatility bring a lot to our roster.” Why am I bringing this up? I always [36:40]
BOBBY: Because you’re wondering if Jerry Dipoto has been listening to the pod, is [36:42]
JORDAN: Well, well, listen, it’s— it’s—right. He’s calling his player underrated, to which I say, wouldn’t it be good if you just signed someone who was rated? That was really good?
BOBBY: Yo, but they tried that with Teoscar, look what happened, first season of his career.
JORDAN: Ah-ha. Uh-hmm. See, there you go. Anyway, so that just kind of made me start thinking about just the meta of, like, what is— do we want things to be underrated? Like, do we like being associated with things that are underrated or— or are we striving for things that are properly rated or presumably not overrated? But anyway, just keep that in mind as we move forward. But I’m— I’m ready to begin, however. Because I saw that— that word, that buzz word, and I was like, “Oh, how timely. Let’s do it.”
BOBBY: I think you’d like to have a mix. If you’re building a team, you’d like to have a mix of underrated—
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: —properly rated, most like a bell curve situation.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Maybe you have a couple overrated guys that you are picking up the latter half of their career. But you don’t want all underrated guys, because chances are, they’re not as underrated maybe as you think they are, as evidenced—
JORDAN: Hmm.
BOBBY: —by the Jerry Dipoto quote. I don’t think Donovan Solana was quite as underrated as he’s implying there. I think he’s like closer to properly rated, which is why he’s not—
JORDAN: Yeah, but—
BOBBY: —signing for more money.
JORDAN: —by— when— when you call the player you’re signing underrated, you’re, like, implying like, “I’m smart. I pick up this guy—”
ALEX: Yes.
JORDAN: “—who people should know is better.” So—
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That doesn’t sound like Jerry Dipoto.
JORDAN: No, no, no, no.
BOBBY: Jordan, why don’t you do the honors kicking this off this year, since Jake did so swimmingly last year?
JORDAN: All right. All right. Well, I’m gonna— I’m gonna come out pretty aggressive here, and I’m just going to go ahead and start with Shohei Ohtani.
BOBBY: Let’s go.
JORDAN: Now, obviously, I— I don’t want to bring up too many just like straight-up players. Although I don’t know if you guys have specific players. I know I brought up Strider last year, and that just— that must have just been the discourse was— was hot at the time. And there’s a couple other players who I think fit, like, overrated, underrated discourse more than Shohei Ohtani. But because Ohtani is—
BOBBY: The discourse for Strider was hot, because everybody was like, “He’s the greatest pitcher since Greg Maddux, yet he had a 3.70 ERA.” I’m just pointing that out.
ALEX: All right. All right. All right. This was last year’s. Last year’s pod.
BOBBY: Okay, I’m just pointing it out.
JORDAN: No, no.
BOBBY: Not only it was last year’s. It was on the Patreon feed last year.
JORDAN: No, listen, listen, I’m— we’re not— we’re not here to relitigate that. Okay? Let’s— let’s— I have another player that’s closer to that category, but we don’t have to do that.
BOBBY: Okay.
JORDAN: Shohei Ohtani, I think we can all agree he’s the greatest player we’ve ever seen. However, are we still underrating it? Now, the reason I’m bringing this up now is particularly after the season that he just had where he defied what we really understood to be possible, in a way that we didn’t think that was his thing.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: And so— so maybe this is a— you know, maybe this is a cliche conversation, but I’m still kind of intrigued, so— and I would love to get your opinions. So— and I— and then have that form my official answer. So I’ll— I’ll kick it to— to either of you to— to— to start the discussion.
ALEX: He still feels underrated to me. I’m sorry. I— every time I watch him, my jaw drops. And— and his broad appeal beyond the actual on-field sport of baseball, I think, is what’s so intriguing to me, is that we have not had a, quote-unquote, “crossover” star like this in— I— since, I don’t know, Alex Rodriguez, like Barry Bonds, further back. Now, obviously, how does that play into— to him being rated? I don’t know, but I think we take for granted that he’s kind of this world-dominating figure, right? He can— he can— you know, he can go both ways and— and— and no one else can do that. And— and yet he still finds ways to do things that we’ve never seen before that— like you said, that— that was not in his wheelhouse of what we were expecting him to do. His ability to sort of iterate off of himself and just say, “Ah, I don’t have time to pitch this year or I— you know, my— my body will not physically allow me to pitch this year, so why not steal, you know, 40 bases or something like that?” That to—
BOBBY: Famously, more than that.
ALEX: Famously more than [41:01]
JORDAN: Yes, I believe more than that.
BOBBY: 10— 10 more than that, yeah.
[laughter]
JORDAN: But he did also do 40.
ALEX: He did also do 40, right, yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah. He did 80, though, you know? He did 80?
ALEX: But that’s— that’s just— that’s just crazy to me. Whenever I see guys who are at the top of their game, who are still committed to the— the craft of, like, improving it. It’d be very easy for him to rest on his laurels and say, “I’ll— I’ll throw 130 innings a year of— of a 2.90 ERA,” and— and— and be done with it. And he doesn’t stop.
JORDAN: The— the degree to which— from— especially like in the last year in particular, that he has become that much more than this talented, two-way player in Anaheim, playing for a crap team, right? Not that that wasn’t amazing on its own, but for him to have the year that he had on the field and off the field, and introduce the world to his dog, his wife, his friend who swindled him out of tens of millions of dollars. And then win the—
BOBBY: Bro.
JORDAN: —and then win the World Series.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: With a messed up shoulder, and get another surgery. All of that happening in the same time. Like— because it— it kind of— it’s just so much, that’s so much. For so long, it was like, “Oh, we don’t know anything about this guy, but he is also the most amazing baseball player we— we’ve ever seen.” And so for to get— for us to get that much more from him in one year this far into his career, is why, yes, underrated, 100%. Like underrated as an entity. As an entity, it is an underrated thing.
BOBBY: I think underrated, for sure, because the only case that I could hear for— there’s no case for overrated. He— there’s— I— I don’t think I would listen to anyone’s—
JORDAN: Do I want to try to make it—
ALEX: You’re right.
JORDAN: I mean, yeah, he’s a DH dude. He can’t field. It’s the one thing we haven’t seen him do, field the baseball.
BOBBY: That’s— that’d be like saying if prime A-Rod, do they just made him the DH? He can’t field. Like he can field. He definitely field, if you want him to field.
JORDAN: I know, that’s why it— I know, that’s why it’s so funny. It’s like people were talking about him as if he was like Russell Branyan, right?
BOBBY: Right.
JORDAN: Like, in the DH discourse, it was [43:12]
BOBBY: He’s [43:12] gone out there.
ALEX: Yeah, there you go.
JORDAN: As if he’s like a DH, like, in spirit, it’s like, “No, no, no. He’s a DH out of necessity.”
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: He’s not—
BOBBY: Exactly. So I— I think the only case that you could make for properly rated would be that there are so many people talking in absurd ways about how good he is.
JORDAN: Yes, all the time.
BOBBY: And there are also so many people, all the time, saying, “Actually, this guy’s underrated.”
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. True.
BOBBY: Like we underrate how amazing his skill is, that you could say that there’s sort of like an equilibrium case for the fact that that net out to properly rated.
JORDAN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Because all the people talking about how often MLB posts him, how often MLB is just taken aback at his talent on social media, et cetera, et cetera. I— I also think, like, social media impressions should not dictate your opinion of people in general, but like— or baseball players, but really people just at all. But that— then again, you— if you take the qualitative aspects of what— the people who are, quote-unquote, “overrating” him are saying, all the stuff that you would actually have to say. There’s no way to talk about him that is not accurate. So, therefore, I don’t think he actually can be overrated, because you can say, yes, he’s the best baseball player we’ve ever seen. That’s true. Yes, he’s the first baseball player to do these two things that well. Yes, that’s true. Yes, he’s the first baseball player to do a 50-50 season. It’s not even exaggeration at this point. It’s just—
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: —fact.
JORDAN: Well, and— and that’d be my last point and then we can move on to the next topic, is as long as he’s doing new stuff, I don’t think he can ever be properly rated.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: You know, if he had sort of just, like, became this version of a two-way player, and we just accepted that that’s what he was.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
JORDAN: And he was just doing kind of the same thing every year from both sides and, like, we all acknowledge we’ve never this—
BOBBY: 110 ERA+, good power, lots of strikeout, yeah.
JORDAN: Like, if he was doing that like it would— it would—no, it wouldn’t be not amazing, but it would eventually, we would reach a level where it was like, “Okay, this is a thing that exists.” Wow. And we would acknowledge, like, “Wow, that’s great.” But we’re still ascending.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: So that alone is— is—
BOBBY: Not to mention—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —guys, he just won the World Series in his first year with the Dodgers in his five-year contract.
JORDAN: I know, it’s like [45:21]
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Sorry. I have a— I have even more [45:25] thoughts. I just keep seeing people— with the Roki stuff, everyone’s being like, “Man, he— this idiot signed with the Angels and he got burnt.” It’s like, you know what? It actually worked out fine. I think it worked okay.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Pretty great, yeah.
JORDAN: I think— I think he’s okay. Like, I—
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: —think that he maybe did make the right decision. I know it sucked for us because we didn’t get to watch him in the postseason.
BOBBY: Can you— can you guys try to imagine what Shohei Ohtani’s elbow would look like with six more years of Dodger pitcher development on it? Good Lord.
JORDAN: That— that UCL would be real developed.
BOBBY: Yeah, he would be playing right field, bro. We would be seeing that he’s not actually a DH.
JORDAN: First base. He could not throw from right at that point.
BOBBY: You might be right. Yeah.
JORDAN: All right. Anyway, so—
BOBBY: He might be in the Ryan Zimmerman zone. The best Ryan Zimmerman outcome possible, Shohei Ohtani. All right.
JORDAN: All right.
BOBBY: [46:14] where it go?
JORDAN: Yeah, go ahead.
ALEX: All right, let’s do it. First item to rate ballpark giveaways, underrated, overrated, properly rated. You can interpret this how you would like. I— I— I initially was going to include specifically bobbleheads here, because bobbleheads, to me, are the one maybe giveaway that I think are a little overrated. Very little use value that you can get out of them.
BOBBY: Hmm.
ALEX: That’s my take. You can push back on it if you’d like. However, as I— as I look behind you and see the multiple bobbleheads on your— on your wall.
BOBBY: Multiple bobbleheads behind me, too.
ALEX: I know.
JORDAN: Yeah [46:51]
BOBBY: The uses for when you become a baseball podcast who has the hashtag for—
JORDAN: Thank you.
BOBBY: —this video, bro.
JORDAN: Thank you. Thank you, Bobby. That’s correct.
ALEX: But I think, generally speaking, the idea of— look, I’m not— it’s not free. I’m not getting anything free out of this. I probably paid 70 bucks for the ticket, and I’m about to spend 50 more inside the ballpark. But the idea of going in—
BOBBY: Skill issue.
ALEX: —and saying— and saying, “Yeah, I do deserve this for showing up to the game on time. You know?” I— Mets T-shirt giveaways, their— their Friday T-shirt giveaways—
JORDAN: Hmm.
ALEX: —banging. Amazing sleep shirts.
JORDAN: Hmm. Uh-hmm.
ALEX: You know, you might get a little— a little replica jersey in there.
JORDAN: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: I’ve gotten some really cool, like, ballpark, like, replica— you know, like figurines as well.
BOBBY: Yeah. There’s a few of those on the— on the shelf behind me as well.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: It seems like you value the utility, though. And I think that the quality of the giveaway and clothing is— is— is big part of this conversation.
ALEX: It is, yes. And I’m sure it varies from ballpark to ballpark as well, right? Much of my recent experience is in—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: From ownership group to ownership group.
ALEX: —is informed by— by the New York Mets. But I would come to the table and think that it’s— think that they’re maybe underrated, but I turn it over to you both.
JORDAN: Okay. Here’s my— here’s my opinion on this. I think— because you’ve already established that, like, this is a huge range of items that—
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: —that are being given out, I think that my— my argument against it, and as overrated, is that I am often disappointed with the quality of the T-shirt, the jersey. Like, some teams are really skimping out on— on some of this. I mean, it’s just as low level as you could get.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: And then, like, the sponsor is way too big, and it’s like, I don’t want to wear this shirt.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s one nice thing about the Mets is they put the sponsor on the back. It’s usually pretty small. It’s usually, like—
JORDAN: Right.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —1-800-FLOWERS.
ALEX: 1-800-FLOWERS. That’s the one.
BOBBY: That’s pretty good.
JORDAN: Okay. That’s fine. some brands— some brands maybe were— were excited to represent with our team [48:48] but here’s the thing, this is where I have to kind of put my perspective aside and ackno—
BOBBY: Thank you for being an objective journalist here at Tipping Pitches. We appreciate that.
JORDAN: And acknowledge the reality of— of the— of the casual fa— is, my God, do people show up?
BOBBY: Oh, my God.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: I mean, the lines, you say on time, you— you better be showing up hours before. I mean, I— I— and and the degree to which these giveaways sway attendance is— is unbelievable. I mean—
BOBBY: Uh-huh.
JORDAN: —anywhere, I’ve seen it in Pittsburgh, I’ve seen it in Los Angeles, I’ve seen it in Cincinnati, I’ve seen it— and it’s like, I can’t even— oftentimes, I’m like, “Oh, my God. Like, what’s the giveaway?” And then I see it, I’m like—
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: —Really? Like—”
BOBBY: It’s like a towel?
JORDAN: Yeah. And so I think that—
BOBBY: It’s like the James Earl Jones speech from Field of Dreams, but it’s about getting a free T-shirt that has a picture of David Daniel Murphy’s face on it, you know?
JORDAN: And then— and then it’s like, “Oh”— and then you— then— this is a little bit more cynical, but then also, like, totally obvious, where it’s like you see the teams planning their giveaways on days where they wouldn’t normally get fans, right? Because—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —it’s like, “Okay, why would I waste it when the Yankees are in town? People are going to show up anyway.”
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: But, you know, “Okay, it’s the Rays on a Tuesday. Well, we got this pretty sick bobblehead. You better come down and— you better come down and pack the house.” So I think that just tells me that— that— I don’t know about underrated, but I— people love them and it— I— and— and oftentimes it really doesn’t even matter—
ALEX: What it is.
JORDAN: People— I guess, whatever, people like free stuff. That’s not exactly great.
BOBBY: I gotta be honest, I love—
JORDAN: So I’m going with properly rated.
BOBBY: I am gonna go properly rated as well, because of the fervor for them.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And I think sometimes I would lean towards overrated personally, like I don’t need more tchotchkes.
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: But if I’m trying to be like [50:37] talking about life.
ALEX: Speak for yourself, brother.
BOBBY: Well, Alex, I know your apartment and I know that the tchotchkes are just like—
ALEX: A core feature.
BOBBY: —on the ground, sort of, sometimes in some places. And it’s the same for me. Like when you live in New York, you don’t have a lot of space for for— tchotchkes. But I like when— when a team thinks of a way that they could tell a story through the season with the giveaway, you know? Like the one year the Mets gave away Gary Keith and Ron bobbleheads on different nights in different months. So you really had to come out to the yard more than once. And if you only got two out of three, you had to do a sort of— a sort of little bartering system. If you went with a group of friends, you had five Keiths, but you needed a Ron, you know that’s [51:16]
ALEX: Right. A giveaway economy, right?
BOBBY: Well, yeah, exactly. So what— what did Joe Biden say? “It— it hurts no one. It’s good for the economy. Give people jobs.”
ALEX: What did— what did Joe Biden say? “I was at a— I was at a pool once with a bunch of young kids, and I let them stroke my —stroke my hair as I was putting sunscreen on or something like that.”
JORDAN: He sure didn’t say that.
BOBBY: He said a lot of things.
JORDAN: Very relevant to bobbleheads— bobblehead economy. Oh, man.
BOBBY: So I think properly rated. If I had— if I had to narrow the scope a little bit to, like, Minor League giveaways, I think Minor League giveaways have gone a little bit out of control.
JORDAN: Hmm.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: If I’m being totally honest.
JORDAN: Yeah. That’s another one, though, that sways attendance, and that’s just such a huge part of Minor League business, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: And so if you can come up with a sweet bobble head of— of an alum from your high A team, like— I love those. I got Vlad Jr. on the Lansing lug nuts right behind me. You kidding me?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like, oh [52:13]
BOBBY: I got Francisco Alvarez on the Brooklyn Cyclones.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. So I— I— I agree, and that the range of those qualities certainly to be a [52:22]
BOBBY: Oh, they were bad.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. Some were bad.
BOBBY: My childhood bedroom, I had a Derek Jeter on the Trenton Thunder—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —and it— it— it did not look like Derek.
JORDAN: But— but again, to me, I’m really not going to blame the Minor League teams for stretching for— for those levels of those— those kinds of items.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: So great topic, Alex.
BOBBY: Wait, what’s your answer, Alex? Underrated.
ALEX: I think they’re underrated just because I like free stuff. I like going there and being like, “I do deserve this, you know? For suffering for all these years.” I deserve to pay $150 tonight instead of— whatever they’d mark up the— the T-shirt for that they produce for, like, seven cents.
BOBBY: All right, guys.
ALEX: Power of the sleep shirt. I don’t know what to tell you. Okay, Bobby, you’re up.
BOBBY: Well, I can’t sleep in T-shirts. I can’t sleep in something that has like a neck. I need it— I need it to be like a tank top style.
JORDAN: Interesting.
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Or no shirt at all.
JORDAN: Wow. We’re learning— we’re learning—
BOBBY: You’re learning some personal facts about me.
ALEX: Right. Tell me— tell me what you think about sweatpants, Bobby.
BOBBY: Jordan, overrated, underrated, properly rated speed round jeans, jeans. Quick.
JORDAN: Ooh, this is good because I didn’t wear jeans until I was probably, like, 15.
ALEX: Yeah, same.
JORDAN: But since then— then I was like, “Oh, jeans. Jeans are great.” And then now, I, like, no, almost never.
BOBBY: You never wear jeans?
JORDAN: No, I— I have, but I— I— I do, but, like, I don’t have very many pairs that I’m wearing very often. So probably—
BOBBY: Oh, man.
JORDAN: —I don’t have a [53:40]
BOBBY: Jeans are underrated. Okay. I’m gonna start here with an ode to the 2024 New York Mets season. And I’m gonna put forth the song, OMG by Candelita aka Jose Iglesias. The song, not what it did.
JORDAN: Not the sign.
BOBBY: Not what inspired, not what we got fucking Nick Castellanos over here, like being all smarmy about how he should have got the MVP. Fuck off, Nick Castellanos. The— the song itself as a musical product.
JORDAN: Yeah, it’s hard to know because, like, I’m not even really sure— I’m— I’m kind of feeling this way about this LiAngelo Ball situation. Like, I can’t really tell—
BOBBY: 27 minutes in and we’re already talking about LiAngelo Ball.
JORDAN: No, but— no, but— but I mean— like, I’m— I’m— I’m watching people react to it, and I can’t tell if people are like— like, who’s— it’s— it’s— it’s— it’s grown so fast, and I’m hearing it so much where I’m like, “Hold on a second. Like, what’s— is this because this is universally accepted to be a good song, or is it just like, this is— this is important? Like, this is part of the culture now, whether you like it or not.” And that’s kind of how I feel, like, with OMG, so—
BOBBY: Like, the movie, Wicked?
JORDAN: Yeah. That’s honestly— that’s a decent comp. It’s like, “All right, well, we’re doing this. Like, this is— you’re not— you’re gonna have to deal with this for a certain amount of time here no matter what. With that said, I think overrated.
BOBBY: Hmm.
JORDAN: But I don’t know. Like, I’m— I’m not— I’m not a music critic. I— I don’t know. I don’t dislike it, but it’s like— it’s not— I’ve had— there have been other viral songs that I’m, like, excited to add to my Spotify.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: This is not one of it.
ALEX: Right. You’re a big Gangnam Style guy?
JORDAN: I still— yeah, still.
BOBBY: Oh, I love Gangnam Style. That song’s a hit.
JORDAN: Do the John Wall, like, come on. I mean, that song— but— but anyway, so I—
BOBBY: That song sparked the whole era of Kentucky basketball.
JORDAN: Exactly. So— so I’m to that point, like— by the way, I— I was at a— went to a professional volleyball game the other day. Love it. Love volleyball. They— and they played Soldier Boy.
BOBBY: [55:57] things.
JORDAN: Yeah, just [55:58] Soldier Boy comes on. I was like, “Man, like, what does Gen Z think of this song?” Like this song’s almost 20 years old out now.”
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Like, I don’t really know how people associate. Like, I— I— look— there were, like, teenagers, like, still doing the dance. I’m like, “Damn, it’s kind of amazing that this is, like, sustained.” Why am I springing that—
BOBBY: That song is a five out of five masterpiece, full-on classic.
JORDAN: Oh, a 100%. No— no disputing about that, but that’s a different category. But [56:22]
BOBBY: Soldier Boy has, like, 10 songs that are bulletproof unassailable. Like that is a good artist.
JORDAN: OMG, I guess my— my— my challenge is I really am not sure what the average assessment is. I— I don’t know.
BOBBY: Right.
JORDAN: I don’t know. It’s so distorted. It’s— it’s— it’s— it has too much emotional sentiment. I know you’re trying to disconnect it, but I’m— I’m— I’m not even sure anyone has rated it as— as a song, you know, on its own.
BOBBY: It’d be a good piece for— for Lindsay in the New York Times.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Yeah. I— I guess I am curious, like is it on Spotify [57:00]
BOBBY: Song Exploder for OMG, what do you think, Alex?
ALEX: I think it’s worth it. I mean, hey, look, I— I don’t know about Spotify. I think it probably is. It hit number one on the Latin pop charts on iTunes after it came out.
JORDAN: True, true. That’s— that tells us something, yeah.
ALEX: Which— hey, that’s— it’s just— it’s a single data point. I— a part of me is just perpetually impressed that, like, a baseball player did this. Like, took the time to sit down, write these lyrics. Look, they’re not revolutionary, but it’s a— it’s a nice message. Hey, push your— push your— your worries to the side. You know? Everything’s gonna be okay, is, I think, generally, more or less, how the chorus goes. And— and the fact that this man made— like booked studio time to go in, put some headphones on, stand there in front of a mic, and— and sing it. I— I mean, I’d be— I’d be interested in— in the production process of it.
JORDAN: Here’s— I’ll say—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: —that the achievement of him doing the song and all— everything that associated with it, underrated. The song itself, either properly rated or overrated.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Guys, respectfully, I’m going to disagree. Okay? I think the whole firestorm around it, the sign, the run that the Mets went on, the people putting the label OMG, Mets before the team, people talking about Jose Iglesias hitting— by the way, you guys know Jose Iglesias hit over 300 last year, like 450 at-bats.
JORDAN: Oh, I’m— I’m aware.
BOBBY: Okay? It’s unbelievable.
ALEX: What happened?
BOBBY: I think that—
JORDAN: Yeah. Still on [58:27] though. Let’s also note. People teams haven’t exactly been like—
BOBBY: Yeah, I don’t think they’re really—
JORDAN: —lining up.
BOBBY: —believe in the peripherals there.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Feels like he’s gonna be back on the Mets, but we’ll see.
JORDAN: Yeah, probably.
BOBBY: I think all of that, the hubbub, the commotion, distracts from the fact that the song itself is actually pretty good, pretty catchy. It is fun.
ALEX: It is quite— it’s an ear worm.
JORDAN: Yeah, for sure.
BOBBY: It’s definitely an ear worm. Pitbull graced us with his— right? It was Pitbull who did the remix?
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yep.
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Which now actually has more streams on Spotify. I’m actually surprised at how few streams the original has. It’s like just over 2 million.
JORDAN: I— that’s— I was about to say the same thing. I was about the same thing.
BOBBY: Just over 2 million, that’s it?
ALEX: Hmm.
BOBBY: Underrated, guys.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s an underrated song. It hasn’t broken out into the wider world. Underrated.
JORDAN: What’s wild is Candelita, 183 monthly— thousand monthly listeners. I mean, like—
BOBBY: No one knows how that’s calculated.
JORDAN: —how is that not—
BOBBY: Like, I don’t know.
JORDAN: Yeah, okay. So that’s just—
BOBBY: That’s [59:26] number.
JORDAN: Do you have insight into Spotify, Bobby? Okay.
BOBBY: Why would I [59:31] listen to that?
JORDAN: But, yeah, no, I agree with you.
BOBBY: I don’t know what you’re implying.
JORDAN: The— the stream numbers is kind of surprisingly low. So maybe that— maybe that does mean it’s underrated. That’s— sure. More— you’re saying more people should check it out?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: Care to listen.
BOBBY: I think so.
ALEX: I do think— I think— I think I’m gonna start adding it to, like, playlists whenever I’m, like, hanging out with folks, you know? Not mention—
BOBBY: Yeah, you should.
ALEX: —anything about it and sort of see what is the response. “Hey, what is this new song you’re playing? Oh, my God.” And— and— and that’ll be the barometer, right? That I’m gonna do some in-person research.
BOBBY: You guys remember that song OMG by Usher? Another hit. Sounds like you should just put that in all songs.
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: Just like a little OMG.
JORDAN: I know. I was gonna say, I don’t know how many streams it’s gonna need to surpass the Usher song. That’s a lot.
BOBBY: That song is deeply underrated.
JORDAN: That’s— that one is—
BOBBY: It’s all about Yeah by Usher. It’s all about Confessions.
JORDAN: Well—
BOBBY: Let’s talk about fucking OMG.
JORDAN: Obviously. Yeah. But that, you know, Yeah is, you know, first song I knew all the words to, but, you know, did it have will.i.am? No.
BOBBY: Jordan, were you— were you deep in the minds crushing VH1 Top 20 Music Video Countdowns?
JORDAN: Not really— it definitely— it definitely showed up on TV at some—at some point, yeah.
BOBBY: I was there every— every Saturday morning.
JORDAN: That’s good.
BOBBY: That’s how I learned Toxic by Britney Spears.
JORDAN: That’s how you got educated?
BOBBY: That’s how I learned Hoobastank, you know?
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s how I learned about Usher.
JORDAN: Oh, yeah. That’s the baddest music video, I definitely remember. So—
BOBBY: That’s how I learned If I Ain’t Got You by Alicia Keys, I was like, “What’s going on here?” We got real artists on our hands.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Just like Candelita. Okay, Jordan, you’re up.
JORDAN: Bobby, you’ve already— I sort of hinted at this topic. Tommy John surgery, gentlemen.
BOBBY: Oh.
JORDAN: Now, this could go in a few different directions, for sure, but I’m gonna clear out here. Toss Bobby the rock. See what he has to say about UCL reconstruction, overrated, underrated, properly rated, Bobby? What do you think?
BOBBY: I think it’s actually become underrated.
JORDAN: Hmm.
BOBBY: I think there’s a lot of different factors in the baseball world that we are maybe hand waving because of elbow— like, because of Tommy John surgery’s ability, because of elbow injuries. Like we— we’re taking a lot for granted about people’s elbows and arms, and that we were just like—
JORDAN: Yes.
BOBBY: —yes, every pitcher is gonna have to have this. I think that’s broadly bad. But this is not good, bad or—
JORDAN: No.
BOBBY: —or, you know, whatever, I guess, is—
JORDAN: No, no, no.
BOBBY: —between good and bad equal.
JORDAN: No.
BOBBY: And the surgery itself, if you just think back to, like, the first guys who actually had it and came back. Like you want to talk about Chris Carpenter, right? Since then, now, every guy gets that and comes back and throws as hard or harder and is just as good, basically. There aren’t a ton of examples of, like, huge pitchers who were good before the Tommy John who are not good afterwards. Unless they have, like, compounding injuries, shoulder injuries, you know, like, the Matt Harvey type of situation. That is, to me, something slightly different. I think, like the Tommy John clearly didn’t sink him, because he was great in 2015, right? The thoracic outlet syndrome sunk him. So I think the surgery itself, the UCL reconstruction, the fact that they put a fucking fake ligament in there— or they take ligaments from other parts of the body—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —and they put it in your arm so that you have this, like Inspector Gadget arm, basically. I think it’s underrated. It’s amazing. Mod— modern medicine, you know?
JORDAN: Right. If we’re talking about the surgery itself, yes, right, the achievement of the— the miracle—
BOBBY: Dr. Neal Elattrache, underrated.
JORDAN: Yeah. Yes, right. Modern me— Keith Meister, shout out. Again, because, you know, Andrew is, you know, moving on— moving along here. We got[1:03:15]
BOBBY: He fell off, bro. He’s— he’s focused on the, bro.
JORDAN: —stepping in, stepping in. But— but— right. I mean, the emotions involved with, like, the news, when you see that someone is getting TJ is— it still sucks, right? It’s still like—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: —God— like, I mean it— it certainly doesn’t surprise us anymore, right?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: No. It surprises me when someone doesn’t have to get TJ. Like, the fact that Cole did not get TJ last year is stunning, stunning.
JORDAN: Yes. He— he’s now joining— again, there’s only one person that’s ever defeated the second opinion for that long, and it’s Tanaka.
BOBBY: Another Yankee, yeah.
JORDAN: It’s Tanaka. Tanaka was just like— yeah, no, sorry.
BOBBY: the Yankees are just asking questions, bro.
JORDAN: Right. So— but anyway, I bring that up to say that, like, but at the same time, you know, it’s like, “Damn. Like, I gotta wait to watch Eury Perez, right?” For example, I mean, as the other— with the young guys, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: You know, with the old— but then— but then now, because of what happened with Verlander, it’s not even like a— like a death sentence on a career, even if you’re that old, right? Like, when deGrom had to get it, it was like, “Damn.” But then there was also— this is why it’s underrated. With deGrom in particular, I was like, “Okay. Well, now that’s handled.” You know? It’s like, I was like, “Oh, like—”
BOBBY: Right, because it was like a— yeah.
JORDAN: Now, it’s like— it’s like—
ALEX: Hmm.
JORDAN: —in a way.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: It’s like, “Oh, like, now I can at least look forward to Jacob deGrom coming back, because everyone comes back from TJ. and like that by itself is like a—something we should not take for granted, for sure.
ALEX: Yeah. I completely agree. When— whenever I think about the science aspect of it, my mind is— let me think about the science aspect of anything. I’m just kind of like—
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: —we don’t— we’re not talking enough about this stuff. Like—
BOBBY: Every cold open for 2025 should just be about quantum physics.
ALEX: Exactly. Oh, my God. That’s even more high level. I’m just— I’m thinking about, like— like, you know, when you— when you—
BOBBY: [1:05:16] your UCL?
ALEX: Right, exactly. When you pour water into a glass, all the way to the brim, and it doesn’t quite go over, you know? And I’m just like, “How does that happen?”
JORDAN: How [1:05:23]
ALEX: So I do think the medical aspect of it.
BOBBY: Real surface tension hours in the chat, bro. Let’s go.
ALEX: —is— is underrated. I wonder— and again, I am just asking questions, but I wonder if maybe overrated isn’t the right way of framing it. But I do feel like a lot of young players—
BOBBY: Over diagnosed?
ALEX: Well over diagnosed or maybe, you know, with— with young players, you think of, “Hey, it’s a given, you know, if I blow my arm out, it’s fi— like, you know, I know I’m pushing myself to the absolute limit here, but I know I can get this surgery and they’ll have me back on my feet in no time.” Which I think kind of undersells, like, how grueling a recovery process is.
JORDAN: Totally. That I can—
ALEX: It’s gotten— it’s gotten way better. And, you know, you see guys coming back after a— you know, best-case scenario a year, you know, like 12 months. But, you know, I feel like there was a— and— and it’s hard to say how much of this was, you know, real or not. But I feel, like, a couple years ago, you have the stories about the kids who were, like, asking their parents to just get TJ, so they could get it out of the way, and they could add a couple ticks to their velocity. And when I see that, I’m like, “I think we’re maybe overselling, like, the role of this thing.” [1:06:35]
BOBBY: It’s also I don’t— I just don’t think that’s medically accurate. Like, I don’t think that’s really how it works.
ALEX: No, I don’t think it is, either. So that’s the only argument I can see for— for saying that it’s— that it’s overrated.
JORDAN: Right. Because we’ve—
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: —gone, like, too far towards like— where it’s like, “Oh, well, we just— you just pick up a TJ at the store and you’ll be fine.” Right? No, no, no. It’s probably not that simple.
Bobby” Yeah.
JORDAN: That’s— that’s— that’s— that’s valid.
BOBBY: I mean, I think that that would almost be, like, you’re not really talking about whether TJ is overrated. You’re talking about, like, adding velo, is that overrated or underrated?
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: Hmm.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Which I think is actually an interesting conversation. Obviously, it’s not overrated from the perspective of it makes your stuff better. But is it overrated from the perspective of like, “Okay, you have a career.”? Maybe. I think maybe.
ALEX: Okay. Incredible— incredible [1:07:27] are we done with TJs? Any other thoughts on TJ?
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. No, we can— we can move on, but— yeah.
BOBBY: We, in the baseball world, I don’t think the [1:07:32]
JORDAN: I’m just getting started, baby. I mean, we— we got— and by the way, right, I mean, truly, like, I— it’s on my mind, because, let’s be honest, that’s what, like, the first month of spring training is just like—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: “—Damn, that guy needs surgery.” So—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: [1:07:44] get excited. Sorry, go ahead.
ALEX: No, all good. Speaking of velocity, Driveline Baseball—
BOBBY: Let’s go.
ALEX: —underrated or overrated?
BOBBY: Dawg, this is the most overrated shit ever, bro. It’s so overrated. Driveline, specifically, has now come to represent, like anyone who is doing any sort of player development in the offseason. People are just like, “He went— he must have went to Driveline.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: He added two miles an hour on his fast ball with Driveline. It’s like you don’t— Driveline is actually a fucking place.
JORDAN: It’s like— right. It’s like— it’s like using a Kleenex.
BOBBY: Yeah, exactly. Like, people, you actually have to go there or not. It’s not just a weighted ball. That’s not the only thing that— the only place you can get that is not Driveline.
JORDAN: And— and— and—
BOBBY: Maybe they were the first movers on it, sure. But—
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: Right. There’s, like, codify now, I think—
JORDAN: Well, there’s a— I mean—
ALEX: Maybe— or maybe that’s more of an app or— I don’t even know.
BOBBY: Yeah, but it’s— but it’s [1:08:36] count.
JORDAN: [1:08:37] it’s more that— to your point, there are so many of these facilities now.
BOBBY: Yes.
JORDAN: And yet, we’re still like— it’s still, like, the first word or brand you use. So I think that, like, there has to be some merit to, like, there’s a reason why that’s the first name and brand that we keep associating with this concept, for better or for worse.
BOBBY: It’s just branding. It’s just good PR. I mean, Kyle Boddy like—
JORDAN: It’s good P— yeah, for sure.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Clearly, he was very vocal and told players—
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: —that were working with him to talk about working with him in Driveline. Like that is very obvious.
JORDAN: And I know why you use that as a transition in— in the context of like, training velocity and whether that’s—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —related to TJ, but I think that the other reason why all that stuff is potentially overrated is that it’s also not a secret sauce to being better at baseball. Right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: It’s like— it’s— it’s clearly— there’s clearly value in being able to train these certain physical characteristics in the offseason in particular. But far too often, we’re just throwing around like, “Well, he went to Driveline, so he’ll be better this year.”
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Well, you also don’t hear about all of the instances where a guy went to Driveline and then got DF’d in May, because that guy’s probably giving—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —fucking interviews in the playoffs about how he went to Driveline to save his career.
JORDAN: Right. Right.
ALEX: “Yeah, I went to Driveline.”
JORDAN: “Driveling ruined me.” Right. Exactly. So— so I think—
BOBBY: Yeah. No one’s hiring Driveline the next offseason if they don’t get them the contract—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —like they do with Scott Boras.
JORDAN: I think that, like, we’re a long way from any of these places because of just how dominant this kind of narrative and— and— and discussion around player development is. It would be very difficult for any of these places to be underrated at this point.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: But I don’t want to pretend like it doesn’t have value. I just think that the average perception of what any of these places is able to do for any level of player is probably currently being overrated.
BOBBY: Yeah. It can push you to, like— if you’re currently at 100%, you can be at, like, 105% or 110%. That’s pretty good. That’s, like, good return on investment. It’s not like turning random 17th round reliever into Spencer Strider.
JORDAN: No. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like it’s not.
JORDAN: No. And oftentimes, it’s like, “Okay, you’re turning random guy to even get— good enough to get signed. Let them—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: [1:11:16] we’re still not even talking about, which is a big deal. It’s an opportunity in a— in a world where Minor League Baseball is shrinking. Like, if you’re able to get into affiliated baseball, like, that is an achievement. That is more of an achievement now than ever before, really, you could say. So, you know, I don’t want to undersell that, but again, if we’re still talking about the end game of, like, being a good Major League Baseball player, like, it’s— we’re just— we’re not at a point where I think that’s as important.
BOBBY: Also, can I—
JORDAN: Where we know, yeah.
BOBBY: Can I say something that’s, like, a little bit sort of a third rail about Driveline? Like Trevor Bauer made them famous, basically, I think. Because he—
JORDAN: Oh, absolutely. Huge part.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: —is— he’s not the reason that they’re still successful with baseball players. Like they’ve obviously spanned far and wide, but he was the first high draft pick, high talent, famous person to be like, “I believe in all of these things.”
JORDAN: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: “And this is what made me a good player.” That—
ALEX: And talked about it constantly.
BOBBY: For— for that reason—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: I mean, if you read Ben Lindbergh’s book, The MVP Machine, about just these— these advancements, there’s a lot about Trevor Bauer and what he believed about how he was developing as a pitcher. The thing that I think that we sort of lose in all of the Driveline-ification of how we train pitchers is, like, it’s not like Trevor Bauer was actually some schlub. Like it was convenient for his YouTube channel—
JORDAN: No, oh, a 100%.
BOBBY: —to pretend, like, throwing weighted balls made him into a Cy Young winner.
JORDAN: Yeah, correct.
BOBBY: But, like, this guy was, like, a highly touted pitching prospect, went to UCLA.
JORDAN: One of— one of the best amateur pitchers we’ve seen.
BOBBY: Exactly.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: So it’s all— it’s all myth making.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: And so for that reason like— it’s not like they’re not adding value to people’s careers to be disingenuous for me to say that, but— and, you know, plenty of people that we’d like in the baseball world work at Driveline too, but— but it’s not. It’s not changing, transforming— it’s like a few years ago— or maybe like a decade ago at this point, when every NBA player was like, “I went plant-based in the offseason.” Plant-based diet, you know? “And I’m gonna have the best season of my career.” It’s like, well, what were you doing before, that you weren’t in good enough shape to be able to play an NBA season? Like, maybe we should talk about that, too.
ALEX: Yeah. Like he went to Driveline is just the new— into the best shape of his life in spring training.
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: Right? It’s like, “Okay, keep an eye out for this guy.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: No, I think you guys said it great. I— we— I think a lot of fans and— and— and maybe even players to some extent, I don’t know. I think maybe young baseball players, right, see it as that sort of silver bullet where it’s like, “Well, I can go here, and I can do the weighted balls, and I can do the wearables, and the, you know, high-speed, slow mo— high-speed, slow mo, I think that— maybe it’s an oxymoron. The— the— some expensive cameras that capture—
JORDAN: Motion capture.
ALEX: Right, exactly. Yes.
BOBBY: Edgertronic.
ALEX: Edgertronic. Yes, yeah.
BOBBY: Just give them a free ad here on the pod.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Seriously, lots of free ads here. And it’s like you still have to do the work. You still have— it might teach you a skill, but it’s not going to teach you how to be a pitcher. So— anyway, well said— well said, Gentlemen.
JORDAN: [1:14:02]
BOBBY: All right, I got one for you guys.
JORDAN: Let’s do it.
BOBBY: Ump scorecards.
JORDAN: Hmm, this one is— this is a personal—
BOBBY: I know.
JORDAN: This is a personal one. So—
BOBBY: So if you’re listening at home and you don’t know what an Ump Scorecards is—
JORDAN: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: —or what— what I mean by that, specifically, because you’re graciously not on X, the everything app. Ump Scorecards is basically just a project that you see it often on X, the everything app, formerly Twitter [1:14:35]
JORDAN: It’s one of our things, because it’s everything.
BOBBY: Exactly. This is one of the [1:14:38]
JORDAN: [1:14:38]
ALEX: This is one of the things that—
BOBBY: Right. This is one of— this is one of the things that you can get. They tweet out like a nice, little graphic of the performance of every umpire, every home plate umpire for every Major League Baseball game. This is like an automated thing based on the strike zone that the umps are judged on, and the— what the umps actually call based on that strike zone, using the tracking data that we have via Hawkeye. Hawkeye, is that what we use? We call it now Hawkeye? It gives you a percentage of balls that should have been called balls, strikes that should have been called strikes, and it gives you, very importantly, I think, for this overrated and underrated, it gives you the expected run value change of the outcome of the game on that scorecard. And then it talks about the different win probability calls. Like the calls that they screwed up that affected the win probability the most. That is Ump Scorecards. Is it overrated or underrated?
JORDAN: I can only call this underrated because I am obsessed with this.
BOBBY: I know. You’re like the number one fan, bro.
JORDAN: I am so— I— I look at this every day and I am, like, beyond fascinated. So I’m like, “Stop.”
BOBBY: Can you tell me why? I— I— I know why kind of, because we’ve talked a lot about it over the years, but I want you to kind of explain it all in one fell swoop.
JORDAN: I think it’s kind of as simple as— it’s so important— this is like— it’s this— like the— the strike zone is ba— that’s baseball, right? And so, like, this isn’t me wanting there to be robo umps, but I just love that it makes the umpires characters in a way that we can actually track, in a way that we can— we have— what you’re— what you’re— what you’re really— the— the most underrated part is— is the website itself. Like the actual leaderboards that— that you can— essentially Ump FanGraphs, like that is the fun thing. If— if that didn’t exist, if I could not easily sort all the umps and search all the games, and— and it was just like a— here’s the graphic and then I forget about it, and there’s no way for me to have them publicly, then— because I wouldn’t have any context, right? In a world where every scorecard appears and disappears and I can’t do anything with— any of that information and other information groups— groups together.
BOBBY: I think that’s how most people experience it, though, for the [1:17:05]
JORDAN: Totally, totally. And— and I realize that. But because I know that it’s more than that, and because there’s just so much more information with it, I— I love it. I love— I love— I love that I can have a actual, like, validated, objective opinions when I see, “Oh, God, Ramon de Jesus is behind home plate.
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: “Like, this guy stinks.” Like, in a way that’s more than just, “Okay, Angel Hernandez.” Right? Like it’s—
BOBBY: Right.
JORDAN: —it’s fun to add that level of that variance, that character into the average experience of a game, which— as someone who gets to do this for a living, I’m going to games all the time, and so I am compelled when I see, oh, you know, there’s Pat Hobart. Oops, too soon. You know—
BOBBY: I was going to ask you about Perfect Pat.
JORDAN: Well, of course, of course.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Imperfect Pat, if we’re— we’re being real. My God. Guy— guy had some issues. I don’t know if—
BOBBY: Did we ever hear— did we ever hear what happened with that?
JORDAN: No, but it is something I plan to be asking around about as the season approaches, so—
BOBBY: Okay. Sounds good.
JORDAN: [1:18:03] we can get back to— ba— so anyway, so I’m biased because I’m their number one fan. That’s why I would say it’s underrated, but that’s why.
ALEX: I— I think you are— I think you were generally right about all of its virtues. Like I think it is— and— and this is data that I think that, on some level, MLB is already collecting themselves, right?
JORDAN: Hmm.
ALEX: And evaluating umps based off of that. I think it makes sense that there would be a public facing version of this kind of thing, because, you know, they are central players in the game. They have the ability to sway outcomes. So I think it’s like—
BOBBY: MLB collects all that data and then they proceed to do absolutely jack shit with it.
ALEX: Yeah, nothing [1:18:40]
BOBBY: And they don’t assign the best umps to the most important game.
ALEX: Yeah. They’re like, “You got— you have a D minus on the season. So World Series game three, you got it.”
JORDAN: Right. A 100%. [1:18:48]
BOBBY: That’s our sport.
ALEX: All— all that being said, I think that the fan reaction to it on Twitter sometimes [1:18:57]
JORDAN: [1:18:57]
ALEX: Just I—
BOBBY: Wait. On what?
ALEX: Sorry.
JORDAN: On the what app? The somethings app?
ALEX: The something— on X, the everything app. I— it makes me want to do, like, a reactionary turn against it—
JORDAN: Solely—
ALEX: —just because of how—
JORDAN: This is totally valid.
ALEX: Yeah. How people use it.
JORDAN: I— and I— this is where I become conflicted because, like, to me, I don’t— I also— like picking one and be like, “Well, like, this game doesn’t count now.”
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: You know, like, the whole season is a fraud, because—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: —you know, Jansen Visconti had a bad night. You know, like—
BOBBY: Right. But you have to know—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —that if you put that in the hands of fucking Yankees fans—
JORDAN: I know, I know, I know.
BOBBY: —that’s how they’re gonna act, bro.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: I know, I know. So—
BOBBY: That’s how they’re gonna act. You— you show—
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: — Austin Capobianco that the Yankees just got hosed 3.7 runs.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because of Angel Hernandez. It’s over, dude.
JORDAN: And you know—
BOBBY: We’re having Jan 6 on fucking Yankee Stadium.
JORDAN: And you know now that that’s all he’s gonna be looking at [1:19:51] so—
BOBBY: Exactly. Exactly.
ALEX: Yeah. I— I just— yeah.
JORDAN: [1:19:57]
ALEX: You see— you see guys being like, “Oh, he hose us by three runs or whatever.” I’m like, “Sounds like your guy should have hit the next strike he saw.” I don’t know. He had other chances.
JORDAN: No. There’s multiple levels of skill issue involved, like—
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: But— but— but maybe, you know, maybe that is to your point. Maybe that makes it underrated, because people don’t know the full depth of— of what—
JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: So maybe I’m talking myself into—
JORDAN: But—
ALEX: —a position, but—
JORDAN: Yeah, no. But, again, I still recognize that, obviously, none of— the average fan maybe doesn’t know that that information is also out there. They could also interpret that info and use it in the same way, where they just become, you know, incredibly overly focused on this as the only thing that matters, right?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Like, because that— that’s— I— I don’t— to me, it’s just like another thing to pay attention to, because I’m lucky enough to do this for a living, and so I— I’m just always looking for more things to pay attention to, and so this is one of them.
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: But it’s— it doesn’t— putting this much weight in it. Yeah, I agree that— that can become overrated and— and bad.
BOBBY: I think how famous it got made it a little bit overrated. Like— because it’s per—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s the perfect catnip for the algorithm.
JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: That is the second your game ends, you get to see whether or not that call you were mad about in the fourth inning really did affect the outcome of the game—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —in— in theory, right? Because in reality, like Alex is saying, sounds like he should have hit the next pitch. This is the whole history of baseball, guys. Like we’ve been playing for 145 years in organized baseball, and for 143 and a half of them, we didn’t have this exact thing telling us exactly what should have changed about the game. So, like, we really are in this one specific moment in history where we know a little bit too much about way too many things and I think this is a perfect example of one of those things. But it’s kind of like a cipher for the type of fan you are. You know, like, for example, if you’re a Braves fan, you cry about getting [1:21:47] to death all the time. That’s all you do as a fan, and it’s your whole fucking purpose for being a fan. You don’t actually even like the players on your own team. You just like to talk about batting average on balls in play. You know?
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: And some other fans are that same way about scorecards.
JORDAN: [1:21:59]
BOBBY: So—
JORDAN: I know. And that’s— and— and— but that’s the other— the last point I would make about this is just, like, I think the larger one, whether it’s specific, okay, fan complaints or grievances about how it impacts their own team, it also is becomes a central figure in the robot ump discourse, right? And to me, like, this makes me want robot umps less. Like, every— half the quote tweets of bad ump scorecards are, like, robot umps now. And I’m like, “No, no, no, no.” Like, I want to keep— now, again, with the caveat of like, “Let’s get the best umps in the best games, obviously, right?” So we stand by that.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: But, like, no, this is part of the fun, is that you might end up with this crappy, you know, old ump who maybe can’t see super well anymore, right? And it’s like—
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: —that’s hilarious. That’s great. Like, that’s part of the game. And I— I don’t want that to change. And I think the variance within that, in the way that, you know, we have the White Sox and the Dodgers, like that’s great.
BOBBY: I think that— and— and robo umps, obviously, came up on Overrated and Underrated last year. And I think that I probably called them overrated, the technology’s abili— the technology’s ability is, I think, amazing, but my skepticism was about MLB’s implementation of their technology, because they never seem to know how to do that, for most of the history of the game. I think, actually, at this point, I’m pro robo ump, mostly because—
ALEX: Wow.
BOBBY: —of— I think that we’ve opened ourselves to a lot of corruption with sports betting and I think umpires—
JORDAN: Sure.
BOBBY: —are the weakest lever that could be pulled in that equation, frankly, because, like, players have too much to lose. Umpires— I don’t know, man. We had a fucking game fixing scandal in the NBA, like 15 years ago. Like, it’s not—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —totally unheard of to think that they might be the one who get pulled on for whatever reason. I know you mentioned Perfect Pat. We haven’t ever gotten a conclusion as to what happened there. I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I think I’m pro robot ump now, because of this.
JORDAN: Hmm.
BOBBY: Which would make, obviously, Ump Scorecards a mood.
JORDAN: I’m pro challenge system and I think we’ll see that soon.
BOBBY: I agree, I agree.
JORDAN: We will—
BOBBY: I like the challenge.
JORDAN: We will see. Okay. Let’s do one quick round here, one more quick round on the— on the regular feed and then we’ll do a couple bonus ones on the Patreon feeds. Does that sound good, guys?
ALEX: Let’s get it.
BOBBY: Okay. Jordan, it’s back to you.
JORDAN: All right. This is a— kind of a taking the temperature on— on something that is an annual event that we— that we have, and I— I wonder if my perception of it is skewed because of my experience with it. The Home Run Derby.
BOBBY: Hmm.
JORDAN: I know we’re currently— as a casual NBA fan, I know that the discourse around the NBA All-Star Game has plummeted to some pretty concerning depths, and I do still genuinely believe that, like, MLB All-Star situation has a lot of advantages. Not that it’s that important, but, you know, I’d like to think that, you know, one of the good things about a baseball game is that you can’t really not try because it’s not safe. So whereas, you know— I guess you could sort of say that about football, but I— not that anyone takes the Pro Bowl seriously. Anyway, I think they’re re—
BOBBY: They don’t even play the Pro Bowl anymore, bro. They play flag football.
JORDAN: Right, exactly. So they— they’ve truly—
BOBBY: Because of— you know why that is, right, Jordan? Because of the woke mind virus.
JORDAN: Oh, oh, not the—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —thing related to—
ALEX: Well, it’s— it’s kind of a mind virus in its own right.
JORDAN: The Home Run Derby, though— oh, I’m just curious where— where you guys are at because I—I— I feel like my perception of it is skewed, because I’ve— I’ve been lucky enough to attend each of the last six or seven of them. And so I know it is a very different experience on TV versus not, but I also know that there are other things that influence it. So it’s not really fair— like I guess the arguments in favor of it being underrated is because I still think it is better than what other ver— equivalents are in other sports. But I also know that there’s some people that think it sucks. So where are you guys at?
ALEX: I certainly don’t think it’s overrated, right? It is so one of one in the baseball season that I’m kind of like, “I— whether— whether you love it or you hate it, like you gotta deal with it for one night.” And then it’s done. And frankly, a lot of times, it’s really fun. I think the TV production aspect of it, like, I don’t think they do a great job. Like, especially the last couple years you’ve had a lot of, like, them just missing the— they’re picking up the ball as it’s halfway, you know, over the fence. I’m like, “All right, guys. Like, we’ve been doing this for [1:26:37]”
BOBBY: What do you [1:26:37] Alex? Show you the home runs? Don’t be so fucking entitled, bro.
JORDAN: This— this is the thing. Like I— when I go back and watch the highlights after the fact, having been there, like, it’s been very hit or miss. Like, sometimes, I’m like, “Oh man, like, this is better in some ways”— like, “Oh, I didn’t even notice these things or these interactions with the people,” like, whatever. And other times, I’m like, “This is brutal.”
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like, this is not enjoyable at all.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: So—
ALEX: But I— I think the product itself, I— maybe it’s properly rated, because I still think it’s a lot of fun. It’s such a unique environment. And you get to see the players interacting. And it’s similar with the All-Star game, but this is, like— you know, it’s far less formal. They bring their families, they bring their kids. You have guys on Instagram live and stuff. It’s just such a unique atmosphere. I love it.
BOBBY: [1:27:23] shout out.
ALEX: I never— I never get tired of it. Yeah, I’m a big fan of theirs.
BOBBY: I think this is way underrated. I think we need way more shit that’s just like, “Don’t big brain this boss. It’s just— it’s fucking cool when they hit home runs. Like, let’s show them— hit as many home runs as possible.”
ALEX: That’s why I’ve— like they— they’ve done these rule changes to it over the last couple years and I’m kind of like, “Ah, sure. If— if this is— you know, Rob Manfred, if you want to change the pace of play of the Home Run Derby, I guess more power to you.” But also, like, just let big boy hit dinger.
BOBBY: I think for the TV product, I think we got to get— get rid of, like, regular announcers. Like, I don’t think you need, like, a play-by-play guy on the Home Run Derby.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think you should just let two baseball players talk to each other.
JORDAN: This is not a job for [1:28:07] yeah, I— I agree. I agree with that.
BOBBY: Yeah. Like, why isn’t it just, like, Poppy and Pedro? Like, it’s pretty much that simple.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, that would be way more entertaining.
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: Although I guess for some people it’s like— it’s basically just batting practice, right?
JORDAN: That’s the thing. There are still people [1:28:21]
BOBBY: But I think that—
JORDAN: —just like can’t even—
BOBBY: Major League—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —batting practice is underrated too, though.
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: Absolutely [1:28:27]
BOBBY: Like, you never stood behind a player, while— like a bad player while they’re taking Major League baiting—
JORDAN: [1:28:32]
BOBBY: —Major League Baseball batting practice like—
JORDAN: That’s—
BOBBY: —you realize how awesome these dudes all are.
JORDAN: That’s the thing. And it’s not even a bad player. It’s just like— and again—
BOBBY: Like Jose Trevino is parking them in Major League batting practice. This is like a random guy, you know?
JORDAN: But— no, but— but, I mean, they all— most of them can, but they’re not like very rarely are they ever trying to before a game.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: And so there is novelty to seeing someone try and hit—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Like to watch someone actually hit seven or eight consecutive home runs is ridiculous.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like that is a physical feat that should not be taken for granted and maybe [1:29:16]
BOBBY: The one thing about the Home Run Derby that, I think, needs tweaking, because it’s actually starting to get distracting, is the, like, variance in pitching quality. Like, if the guy just picks—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —the wrong guy and then sinks the whole round, not only do I feel bad for the guy. It’s just not fun to watch for five minutes—
JORDAN: Hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: —when, like, the guy’s throwing sliders low and [1:29:36]
JORDAN: That— that kind of gets to the like— you could argue that maybe that’s the entertainment factor, but it does suck when it’s, like, someone you’re looking forward to watch hit, like, just like, pick the wrong old coach.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like that— that [1:29:51]
BOBBY: I think Bryce Harper’s dad should throw for everybody for the Home Run Derby.
JORDAN: Yeah [1:29:55]
ALEX: That’s fair. I would— I would accept that. I was gonna say, I think the variance in, like, who the guy— do you pick your dad? Do you pick your pitching coach? Do you— you know, maybe one day we’ll see a— a player pick another player. Like, I don’t know. I think it’s kind of—
BOBBY: Hmm.
ALEX: I think it’s kind of fun. Again, it’s like—
BOBBY: Alex?
ALEX: —it’s— yes.
BOBBY: Will you throw my Home Run Derby—
ALEX: Bobby, I would love— I would love nothing more.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
JORDAN: But you— here’s the thing, you have to imagine, there’s a percentage of the people that have been asked to do it ,that are like, “Oh, yeah, no. God [1:30:26] right? Like, there’s like— [1:30:30]
BOBBY: Yeah, bro. I think Dave Jauss— Dave Jauss, at this point is like, “My arm can’t do it anymore, Pete, please.”
JORDAN: Well, not even— I mean, yes, not even just for the standpoint of, like, the physical toll, but just, like, the— like, the nerves of, like—
BOBBY: Right.
JORDAN: Right? But— but you don’t want to say no. Like, I would love to know how many people have— have rejected the opportunity to do this, that I’m super curious about. I mean, I imagine that that is reliant on the strength of the relationship and, like, the comfort of, like, telling your—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —Major League star friend or whatever, like, “No, I’m not—”
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: “—gonna throw you a DP in Home Run Derby.” But I have to imagine there’s been a lot of them being like, “Yeah.” And then they—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: —like, go home to their significant other and they’re like, “I can’t believe I agreed to this.”
ALEX: Oh, this.
[laughter]
BOBBY: Well, CC would always be like, “Bro, if I throw out the first pitch, like, I don’t know if I could get it to the home plate from the mound anymore, after what happened to my shoulder.” So, like, if you ask an older player who hasn’t thrown in two years or three years or 10 years, I don’t know that they would be able to do it. I honestly don’t know. I don’t know. Okay. Alex, you’re up.
ALEX: All right. Hmm, which direction to go? Let’s go with something— let’s— let’s bring it back to basics, you know? Baseball cards, overrated?
JORDAN: Hmm, hmm, hmm.
ALEX: —underrated? I have— I have strong opinions about this, but I’m— I’m curious to hear what you— what you guys think. Because there’s been— I— there has been a rise and fall and a kind of rise and fall over the last few decades, I would say. And maybe there are new technologies that have risen to supplant their dominance. I know I have a few NFTs that I’m staring at right now. I turn it to you guys. What do you think?
BOBBY: I think they’re properly rated, like, literally properly rated. They’re priced on several markets.
JORDAN: Uh-hmm. Yes.
BOBBY: You know, they’re rated by different independent agencies.
JORDAN: Quite literally, PSA is rating millions of cards all the time. Yes.
BOBBY: I think that makes them— I mean, it is kind of a joke, but I think that actually makes them properly rated. Like, they’re the most rated thing.
JORDAN: They’re constantly rated and re-rated in like—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: —every second of the day.
BOBBY: And as you know, I mean, all of us here were believers in free market capitalism and, like, this is—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —just a perfect example of the free market that work here. This piece of paper is worth more than my house.
JORDAN: The— the argument— I mean, the— the market speaks for itself, right? So, like, I can’t—
BOBBY: I’m always saying that, yeah.
JORDAN: I can’t dispute that, right? I think for the average person who doesn’t care for what the market actually is saying, like, if you really simplify it, you could still be very [1:33:05] and be like, “You spent 30 grand on the Jasson Domínguez gold refractor, like really?” Like, that’s—
BOBBY: Like Alex Verdugo played over him last year, bro.
JORDAN: 30— or whatever. I don’t know what the number— whatever— whatever the numbers were for Jasson Domínguez when he was a— a child—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —and had played zero games and was all these things. Like, if we are— if we’re trying to detach from the monetary value that has clearly been established by multiple human beings willing to bid these cards up to—and spend and then sell them again, like be able to successfully flip them for— for similar prices. I think it’s properly rated. But if you zoom out and just take a very, very basic look of, like, where these— some of these prices are getting, I think you can maybe say overrated.
BOBBY: I mean, I agree.
JORDAN: I say that as someone who spends some amount of money on cards, but not that amount of money.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like, it’s more or less wealth hoarding at this point, right? Like, in the same way that people collect art, but they don’t actually really necessarily care about the art or how it was made or whatever. Like— because it’s a place to park some money and not have to pay taxes on it, necessarily. That’s what some people— professional collectors do with sports memorabilia, baseball cards included. The difference, I think, is that, like, art is art. You know, it’s like one of the great achievements of humanity, that we’ve created amazing paintings and different forms of art over the years. And baseball cards are like all kind of the same, more or less. It’s like a picture of a guy with some stats on the back.
JORDAN: My— my case for underrated would be if you focus more on the— on the purity and the wholesome experience of just opening a pack of baseball cards—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —still kind of an undefeated feeling.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Like even if you’re not searching— again, this— this experience has changed, because of breaking and, you know, searching for these cards that are worth whatever. But, like, even if you aren’t searching for a card that’s worth money, like opening up a pack of baseball cards is just like, “Oh, it’s the same experience of remembering some guys, except even if it’s a— you know, even if it’s new cards.” It’s like, “Oh, great.” You know? There is[1:35:19]
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I mean, in— in a lot of ways, it literally invented remembering— remembering some guys.
JORDAN: Yes. Yes. Yes.
BOBBY: Because— because Roth only remembered so many guys early— in the early period, because he worked for a baseball card company.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Right.
BOBBY: [1:35:31]
ALEX: This is— I— I must have sent you guys my notes ahead of time, because this is what I wrote down of why I think they’re— I think they’re underrated.
JORDAN: Sorry, sorry.
ALEX: No.
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: No.
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, honestly, I do think that, like— I mean, Bobby, it’s interesting, I think, that I said baseball cards and you immediately went to, like, financial vehicle. I think it says a lot, first of all, about how you see the world, and that’s okay. This is a—
BOBBY: I gotta get off this call, because I got a lot of Wall Street Journal to read before [1:35:54] that, so—
ALEX: Right, exactly. Tell me what’s on the front page of the Financial Times. I do think that, like, that kind of small class—
BOBBY: Profile of John Henry. That’s—
ALEX: True.
BOBBY: —what’s on front page of the Financial Times.
ALEX: I do think that small class of collectors kind of skewed the, like, overall perception of, like, baseball cards, right? It’s like now there is a market for them, and you can flip through the catalogs and see, you know, how prices are appreciating or depreciating. And I think, honestly, to Jordan’s point, like most actual— like— like as a kid, I kind of don’t really give a shit. I mean, sure, sometimes it’s fun to be like, “Oh, I got a rookie— you know, I got a Matt Chapman rookie card. I wonder how much this will be worth one day.” And the answer is, like, nothing. It’s not gonna be worth anything, except for, like, the memory you have of having that card—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —and then going back and thinking about, “Oh, Matt Chapman, I saw him, you know, when he played for the A’s, who— I saw them when they played in Oakland.”
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: And I don’t know, it’s—
BOBBY: Imagine how fucking pissed you would have been if you heard, when you opened that card, that he was gonna spend the rest of his career as a Giant and the A’s are gonna move to Sacramento.
[laughter]
JORDAN: Brutal.
ALEX: Look, the memories may be bad, they may be good, but they’re there, right? They’re real. You can touch them. And, yeah, I just think that— that feeling is kind of undefeated, going through and being like, what were the things they were highlighting on the back of this card? Was it, you know, his—
JORDAN: Hmm.
ALEX: —prowess in horse racing or was it that, you know, he had— he made four errors in an All-Star game or something?
JORDAN: But— but also, getting back to the memories that seem like I am way more likely to be excited to open a pack of 2014 cards than 2024 cards.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: [1:37:30]
ALEX: Oh, absolutely.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
JORDAN: Not even close. So that’s— you know, that’s part of that feeling.
ALEX: And they just— I— I’ve— they’re so unique to baseball, too. I mean, I’m sure there you can get basketball cards, right? Can you get football cards?
JORDAN: Yeah. No.
ALEX: Like, I’m sure you can.
JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: But there’s also just the history. There’s the—
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, far be it for me to be like, “Heard of this guy, Honus Wagner?” But I don’t know, it’s kind of sick. It’s kind of a— yeah.
BOBBY: My great grand uncle. Yeah.
JORDAN: Well, he’s no Jasson Dominguez. Listen, hey, Honus Wagner, I mean, if he— if he could— if only he could have known what the—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: What is it that— what was the T— what was the Honus Wagner card called? I forget.
ALEX: Like— yeah.
JORDAN: But the—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: The Jamaica stuff. Oh, my God. Anyway—
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: Do you think they have—
ALEX: If only he’d gone to Driveline.
BOBBY: Do you think they have cards for, like— like, bowling, you know? Like, can I get the PSA 10 Pete Weber, like the, “Who do you think you are? I am” guy?
ALEX: Right. Yeah.
JORDAN: Rob, maybe. But again, like that— also, then it gets to just, like, this Topps licensing, though.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Are they getting, like, $8—
JORDAN: Maybe they should— but then—
BOBBY: I mean, honestly, baseball cards— by the way, one— one case that I would hear for underrated about baseball cards as a concept and, like, as a history, baseball cards specifically play a huge role in labor rights. Like, to not to make it too Tipping Pitches for a moment.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: But you should. About time, yeah.
BOBBY: But, like, Marvin Miller looked at baseball cards and he was like, “This is a huge licensing opportunity for us. This can fund the MLBPA while we are still negotiating in the early days, the early CBAS, and we don’t have really many dues coming in right now because players are not making as much as they should be.” The licensing agreements that he was able to negotiate on behalf of the players literally funded the early days of the union. So—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —like, we wouldn’t be talking about their power now to this day if it weren’t for baseball cards, I think that part of it does get underrated.
ALEX: Yeah. Well said. Also, I— the— in Little League, when they make you your own baseball card, ah, nothing like it.
BOBBY: Yeah, that’s [1:39:26]
ALEX: I’m like, “Oh, look at that.”
BOBBY: Yeah. Now, they charge for 79.99 for that, though.
ALEX: I was [1:39:27] like, “Who’s your favorite team?” Yeah, I know. Yeah.
BOBBY: Like some—
ALEX: No thanks.
BOBBY: [1:39:33] photo company comes in and does it.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: And they’re probably hired on, like, Temu or whatever.
JORDAN: Right. That’s kind of— that’s kind of black [1:39:36]
ALEX: On Temu?
BOBBY: I don’t know what Temu is. Is that the right application of Temu?
ALEX: It’s— I don’t think so, but that’s— but, you know?
JORDAN: We’ll work on that.
BOBBY: Okay.
JORDAN: We’ll circle back on the team with references.
BOBBY: Okay, great.
ALEX: Okay. All right, Bobby.
BOBBY: My final one here— and before we go, do— do a couple bonus rounds on the Patreon, my final one here— hmm, I have so many to choose from. Well, since we have a third party here.
JORDAN: Ooh. Oh. A lot of— lot of pressure on me here.
BOBBY: Someone who is a little bit—
JORDAN: But not a fourth party.
BOBBY: Right. Not a fourth party. Maybe we could get his opinion on this. I’ve actually heard his opinion on this exact thing after we had dinner one time last year. Rob Manfred’s tenure as commissioner.
JORDAN: Oh, boy. Oh, wait—
BOBBY: Clearly, Alex and I have done quite— like quite a lot of honest work, trying to understand Rob Manfred.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: And what he has done for this great game. So just Rob Manfred, commissioner of MLB, overrated, underrated, properly rated?
JORDAN: I mean, the cop out answer is, lot can happen between now and—
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: —2029. There are some big things on the calendar, some big goals, some big opportunities for failure and success in front of him. And so if you simplify it to what has been achieved, if you’re just focusing on the state of the game financially, and, of course, the game itself and the rule changes. I mean, it’s like when you compare— I mean, you’re— you’re basically also doing it like as a— on the grade of commissioner plus, right? Where it’s like, if you’re rating him next to other commissioners and, like, their successes and failures over the years—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —it’s still a pretty small sample. And if you—
BOBBY: Right.
JORDAN: —condense it in the— in the [1:41:30]
BOBBY: How does Juan Soto have a WAR season and he only hit 2.95, right? Exactly.
JORDAN: —of— of history, it’s— you know, if you, like, zoom ahead 50 years, and it’s like, what did Rob Manford do? It’s very simple. He changed the rules—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: —in the game that sped up and people in attendance went back up. So, like that— that’s— if— if you stop it right here, like, that’s— that’s a— that’s a success. Like, I’ve— I— there’s— there’s a lot— there’s been a lot of bad moments along the way, but like, that’s what— if you’ve zoomed ahead, like that would be the first thing you would say. So I don’t really— even though— because of the— our experience and podcasters like yourselves and ourselves, who do talk about this all the time and, like, the missteps along the way, the labor stuff, where he’s pretending to golf while the sport is crumbling. Like, yeah, those did not feel good at the time, but like no one’s remembering that at all. Like that’s not—
ALEX: No.
JORDAN: —being part of any of the legacy for people that are not us, for the most part. So I think that, like, before the rule changes happened and were as successful as they have been, I don’t know what you would be hanging your hat on, but since that’s happened, it’s kind of hard to argue that it has been a failure. I imagine there are people listening to this and saying, “Jordan, I— how could you say such nice things about Rob Manfred?” And that’s okay. But that’s— I think that’s my best answer on an extremely complicated question coming at the hour mark of this podcast.
[laughter]
JORDAN: So— so, I guess prop— properly rated, not o— not over— I guess maybe underrated because of the way that people have been talking about it.
ALEX: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: Let’s go. Let’s go.
ALEX: To be honest, that’s almost where I was gonna end up.
BOBBY: Me, too.
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think he’s actually slightly underrated historically as a commissioner.
JORDAN: That’s— that’s— that’s where I got [1:43:21]
BOBBY: I think— to think that Rob Manfred is an exceptionally bad commissioner, you have to not know very much about baseball history.
ALEX: Right. You can think maybe he is not the biggest baseball fan we’ve ever had in the commissioner’s position, right?
JORDAN: Yeah.
ALEX: And— and I think it’s so hard, because we experience everything he does on an, like, instantaneous basis, right? And so it’s just like—
BOBBY: Right. Injected into our veins. Rob Manfred can’t speak at the World Series trophy ceremony.
ALEX: Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, hunk— hunk of metal. You know, tattoo, “I love baseball on my forehead. He has all these wonderful moments—
JORDAN: Or being like— like, oh, the A’s fans like [1:43:54] let’s just go to San Francisco.
ALEX: Right.
JORDAN: It’s like— like, yes, there have been many moments where it’s just like, how did you say that, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: But none of— we’ve just— this won’t be remembered. They won’t— that’s none of those things—
BOBBY: No.
JORDAN: —actively impacted the sport in a— in a big picture way.
BOBBY: That’s what we talked about in our episode that we did about him last— last month, Jordan. We did Main Character Month on the pod and we did an episode of Rob Manfred Eras Tour, basically, where we talked about, like, the different eras of his career in baseball be— like when he was a consultant, as a lawyer, when he came on, and then when he became commissioner, what he— what the opinion of his— him— of him is now and then, like, five years in the future, 20 years in the future. What will people remember about him and his tenure? And that was ultimately our conclusion too, is that unless the next CBA, unless the lockout and/or strikes—
JORDAN: Previous games, right.
BOBBY: —we miss— not only just games. Like, I think if we miss, like, 20 games, people won’t really remember that. That’ll be like a footnote. If we miss, like, the playoffs, I think people will care. But even—
JORDAN: [1:44:56]
BOBBY: Oh, obviously. I mean, I think [1:44:59]
JORDAN: I— I think it’s— I think even a month of games would be a larger stain. I think missing any amount of time.
BOBBY: You say that, and yet, during 2020, he clearly tanked it into a 60-game season—
JORDAN: Yeah.
BOBBY: —when it should have been easily 80 or 90.
JORDAN: Yeah, that one— I— I don’t disagree but that one was obviously—
BOBBY: We missed a month of games.
JORDAN: That one is obviously very difficult to—
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like, say anything definitive about it because of this larger context, but I hear you.
BOBBY: The larger context of mass hysteria—
JORDAN: [1:45:30]
BOBBY: —and how—
JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: —you know? you’re not gonna send us all inside for no reason.
JORDAN: Okay.
BOBBY: I don’t even have the energy to do like the big COVID bit. You know—
ALEX: To do the [1:45:36]
JORDAN: We did— we did 2020 season on the last [1:45:40]
BOBBY: We did, yeah.
ALEX: We did. Yeah
JORDAN: We can go back [1:45:41]
BOBBY: Exactly.
ALEX: I did— like, I mean, we’re doing this exercise, right? It was, like, the general baseball public, is Manfred over underrated? And the thing is, like, I think all of these little moments have radicalized a lot of fans against him, right? A lot of— a lot of people really hate Manfred, and I think they are— they are warranted in that— in that hatred. I think— I think it is earned, but it is maybe not reflective of the success or failure of his commissionership. It is not necessarily going to be his legacy.
BOBBY: People hate Manfred, but what they really hate is their owner, or, like, just the ownership class, and they just like, “Manfred is just the— the face of that.”
JORDAN: Right.
ALEX: Well, not everyone hates commissioners, right? Or maybe—
JORDAN: Yeah, I was gonna say, is there— is there— are there commissioners that people are, like, fans of? Like, even Adam Silver, is anyone like, “That guy is cool.”? Like—
BOBBY: They were for a hot second.
ALEX: There was a period, yeah.
JORDAN: [1:46:34]
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: [1:46:35] very briefly with Adam Silver, I was screaming into this exact microphone and being like, “That guy is basically exactly as the same as Rob Manfred. Like that guy is not different at all.”
JORDAN: Yeah, like— like we’re definitely past any amount of Adam Silver honeymoon.
ALEX: Yeah.
JORDAN: Like these guys, he gets it. He’s like, “Hmm.”
BOBBY: Yeah.
JORDAN: So—
BOBBY: I agree.
JORDAN: Anyway, good note—
BOBBY: Okay.
JORDAN: —to end on.
BOBBY: Thank you everybody for listening. If you’d like to hear more Overrated, Underrated couple speed rounds, we’re going to go do that on the Patreon feed. But in the meantime, please go check out all of Jordan and his— his friend and our enemy, Jake Mintz’s output over on Baseball Bar-B-Cast, is that what it’s called?
JORDAN: Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Yahoo Sports.
BOBBY: So many podcasts have had a name that is so similar.
JORDAN: Hmm.
BOBBY: Over the years.
JORDAN: It’s— it’s been [1:47:21]
BOBBY: Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Yahoo Sports, a wonderful podcast that talks just about so many topics. You guys just do so many podcasts about so many baseball topics.
ALEX: [1:47:28]
JORDAN: We do. We love it. [1:47:29]
BOBBY: You don’t talk about whether they’re overrated or underrated, though. That’s what [1:47:32]
JORDAN: We can’t— that is a— that is a Tipping Pitches exclusive, so—
BOBBY: Thanks, Jordan.
JORDAN: Thanks, guys.
[theme]
BOBBY: All right. Thank you to Jordan. Thanks to this week’s new patrons. Do this here in the outro, since we pre-recorded that segment with Jordan. Those new patrons this week are Kevin, Grace, Shreyas, [1:48:07] Andy, Owen, Ian, and [1:48:10] so you’re Chalamet pilled, huh?
ALEX: Never thought I’d see the day.
BOBBY: That you love Chalamet or that you love Bob Dylan?
ALEX: Maybe a little bit of both?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I don’t know. I— I— I love Bob Dylan. I respect Bob Dylan, but I was never really a Dylan head, if that makes sense.
BOBBY: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
ALEX: Easy to get [1:48:33] in on, you know? I love whipping out the— the Dylan voice at a party, you know? That’s always a crowd pleaser. People love it—
BOBBY: I’ve never heard you do that.
ALEX: People love it. When you do Bob Dylan at parties.
BOBBY: Will you regale the listeners now?
ALEX: No. No. Maybe, maybe on the— maybe on the Patreon later this week.
BOBBY: Wow. What a tease.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: What a tease. If you sign up for the Patreon, you can hear Alex do his Bob Dylan impression. And over on the Patreon, you’ll get some bonus Overrated, Underrated content in which, guess what? We talked about Chalamet and we talked about whether or not he knows ball, for real.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Whether he can really be considered a ball knower. If he’s too goddamn afraid to name some relievers, that’s all I’ll tell you. And then, of course, he invited Mad Dog Russo to the London premiere of A Complete Unknown. It’s like this man is like all-seeing, all-knowing.
ALEX: I know. At this point, I think he has to make a stop here for his press tour.
BOBBY: On Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: On Tipping Pitches.
BOBBY: Chalamet is in the walls, dawg. He’s listening to what we’re saying.
ALEX: I sure hope so.
BOBBY: All right, I’ll make a break out of that clip, and I’ll put it on social media, and I’ll— I’ll tag Chalamet and Chalamet’s people.
ALEX: All right.
BOBBY: See if we can get that going.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Do you think there’s, like, any kind of NYU alumni network that we could reach out to or— we could get Chalamet. We could get Karlie Kloss on the pod with—
ALEX: Uh-hmm. With Lady Gaga.
BOBBY: — [1:50:04] Gaga. That’s a good one. Scorsese, that’d be a nice one.
ALEX: Yep. Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: AnnaSophia Robb.
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: Big comeback last year. She was in a good movie called Rebel Ridge.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Great performance from her in that. Did you check that one out?
ALEX: I did. Great movie.
BOBBY: Really?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Wow. You never cease to surprise me. How do you feel about The Brutalist using AI?
ALEX: You can’t do this. End this pod, please.
BOBBY: Do you think there was any AI used in A Complete Unknown? I bet you there was. Where do you draw that line?
ALEX: No, no. I don’t.
BOBBY: Okay. But let me ask you this, is auto tune AI? Because, like, it is technically artificial intelligence.
ALEX: I mean— all right. This is—
BOBBY: It’s not generative AI, but it is—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It is like an automate— it’s automation.
ALEX: Yes. I am—
BOBBY: What I do in Pro Tools is like— it’s AI. It’s not manual.
ALEX: I was more offended at The Brutalist using AI—
BOBBY: For the architectural—
ALEX: —for the architecturers—the architecture in the three and a half hour movie about an architect. And they were like, “Yeah, well, we didn’t really have the time or budget for that.” I’m like, “Why are you making the movie then?”
BOBBY: Well, as you know— but although you, of all people, should know that renderings cost way too much money for a movie to render them, dude.
ALEX: Oh, my God. So true.
BOBBY: Come on, you know what renderings are going for these days.
ALEX: I know what they are, yeah.
BOBBY: That movie would have been a $200 million movie if they had to pay someone to make those drawings. I mean, you know this. John Fisher taught you so.
ALEX: True. Yeah. It’s a costly expense.
BOBBY: I’m— I’m willing— here’s what I’m willing to do.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: I’m willing to do renderings on the cheap. I’ll be the one man who won’t gouge anybody who needs a rendering. You need a rendering for a movie? We’ll figure it out here at Tipping Pitches Incorporated. You need a rendering for your new baseball stadium? We’ll figure it out, and we will not boil lakes in the process. We might boil Alex’s brain. We might boil my sense of self-confidence—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —because I can’t draw. I’ve never been good at arts and crafts, but we’ll figure it out.
ALEX: Yeah. And it’ll come from the heart. It’ll be human, is what it’ll be.
BOBBY: $1,000 an hour, that’s it. $1,000 an hour. That’s like a 100th of the cost that these architectural firms are charging the A’s and other associated franchises, or fucking Brady Corbet, I guess. To just use ChatGPT to draw them. $1,000 an hour, dude. And we’ll do just a couple hours.
ALEX: Yeah. One episode. This is— this was fun, Bobby. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed doing this with you.
BOBBY: You’re talking like it’s over.
ALEX: I know I am. I know we’d have another hour to go.
BOBBY: I don’t really know how this turned into 40 minutes of recording, but it did. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Please stay safe out there in the world. That’s my advice to all of you. I wish happiness and health to all of the people who finally got their TikTok back. We’ll be on the Patreon feed in just a couple days, patreon.com/tipping pitches. And we will be back here in just one short week’s time. Bye.
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!
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