The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 148 - Nick Roman talks baseball

JOHN

Nick Roman is a longtime host and broadcaster in the Los Angeles area. Currently, he is the anchor for the LA Report podcast for the multimedia platform LAist, and host of NPR's All Things considered on KPCC, the public radio station based in Pasadena. Before joining KPCC, Roman served as a producer, anchor and news director for KLON/ KKJZ in Long Beach for 20 years. An avid sports fan, he's done several stories for NPR's Only A Game. He is an alumnus of KUCI - that's the University of California at Irvine's student radio station, where he was a darn good football and basketball player. Even if he does say so himself.

NICK

Yes, I do.

JOHN

Welcome once again! Yes, you do. You should. You were. And I was terrible. Nick Roman, welcome back to our wonderful podcast. We are going to talk about baseball. We want to talk to you about how baseball looks halfway through this season. There have been lots of changes, lots of stars, lots of people talk about lots of stuff, and we'd like to know the good, the bad and the ugly of it for 2024. So first of all, are you liking the baseball you're seeing?

NICK

I am. It's - well, let me put some qualifiers on it. I like the fact that Shohei Ohtani is a tremendous baseball hitter. That he hits, you know, baseballs deep into the night.

DON

Spoken like a true Dodger fan.

NICK

Well, I think like a true international baseball fan, because it's so amazing to see how well he does and what a great player he is. I like the fact that there are a lot of teams that are kind of competitive, it's sort of bunched up in the middle in the National League. I like the fact that, you know, the Baltimore Orioles have kind of revived their franchise and have more great young players than just about any team you've ever seen.  I don't like the fact that the Chicago White Sox are a absolutely miserable ball club, and it's sad for the folks in Chicago, the few that still enjoy watching White Sox baseball. I like the fact that the Cleveland Guardians are like whaat? You know, like, how did these guys get great? You look at that roster and you kind of go through and you go, I don't know this guy, I don't know this guy, I don't know this guy. And then you look at the box score and you go well, they won again. They won again. They won again. But the one truly bad thing is how many great players are getting hurt and are gone. The Dodgers have gone through that to a great extent, but they have so much depth that they can kind of survive it. The Phillies didn't have it to the great extent, but still they've lost a couple of big stars for an extended period. The Braves have been wiped out. You know they lost their two, their best pitcher and their best hitter in Spencer Strider and in Ronald Acuña. So those are the things mostly that I like and that I don't like, but there's more.

DON

The thing that that I like as a Phillies fan is that the Phillies are doing so incredibly well. They've won, what, 63 games now at the halfway point, at the All-Star break. And they managed to survive losing, like you said, Trey Turner and JT Realmuto, and for a very brief time, even Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. But one of the things that made me smile was at the All-Star game, when it was pretty much an all-Phillies infield - they had Harper at first, they had Turner at shortstop, and Alec Bohm at third base - and the one of the big highlights was when Turner made a really nice play, and all of them were miked up and they were all congratulating one another. That's kind of how this Phillies team has been running. But you're right, there are other surprise teams. The Milwaukee Brewers have surprised me. They  lost Corbin Burns to the Orioles, their star pitcher, and they didn't really make any big moves during the offseason, and yet they continue to win, and they continue to hold on first place in that National League Central Division. So yeah, that's a surprise to me.

JOHN

You know, people are already having this conversation, and I know you've heard about it, Nick, where they're looking at two guys who are having remarkable years, who often have remarkable years. One is Ohtani, one is Bryce Harper, and they're already starting to say if both of these guys finish up with comparable stats, do you give it to the guy who's the designated hitter, or do you give it to the guy who has to go field every day? What do you think about that?

NICK

If Ohtani was pitching, then you'd give it to Ohtani. Because he's not pitching, you might still give it to Otani because he's just so tremendous and does things on the baseball field that, you know, at least with a bat in his hand, that look that so many other people you know can't do. But, you know, coin flip. I don't know. Ohtani's won a gazillion of those kind of awards, and Bryce Harper's won a few of himself, and so, somebody's going to win it. And I guess they're both lucky that Acuña is hurt. Might not win it anyway, you know, so there you go.

DON

But then again, Acuña goes out, and like you said, the Braves are scrambling, but Marcell Ozuna, who the Braves faithful wanted out, packed out of the door two years ago, is carrying that team right now with his hitting.

NICK

Yeah, well, you know, there's some teams that are just smarter about player acquisition and the managers know what to do better than others. And you know, the Phillies, the Braves and the Dodgers, at least in their front offices, really know what they're doing. The Milwaukee Brewers, I don't know, there must be something in that beer, because they lose really good players and they still seem to have more coming up all the time and the and the same is going on with the Cleveland Guardians. So, some teams are just super smart. You know, the Baltimore Orioles finally got smart, took them a long time, but they finally got smart, and I was listening to an Orioles game, and they were going down the list of players and I go, “Oh my God, that guy's great. And he's what, is he, 23? Oh, that guy’s great. What is he, 22?”  You know, they're going to be good for a long, long, time.

JOHN

Don, of course, has been an Orioles fan forever, and I have to say the team is great. The crowd is monumental. I mean, they are. There’s such cohesion in the crowd, and the park is wonderful, and it just feels like an old-time game every time you go to it. We were just at some minor league ballparks recently that weren't that much smaller than Citizens Bank and had the same feeling. And that's just, that's one of the great stories in baseball, is how they have created this cultural party right over there.

NICK

And new ownership too. And that's going to make a difference. It's going to make a real difference for the Orioles. You know, the Angelos family had, that team had been down for so long. And then right at the tail end, they brought it, you know, and they turned it around and hit, you know, it was like going to Vegas and hitting on the roulette table in draft after draft after draft. And you see all those guys now out on the field, Adley Rutschman, and Gunnar Henderson, and a whole bunch of other guys whose names are not especially well known, but they are great, great players. And they’ve got more coming, too.

DON

One of the things that I was happy to see from the Orioles in the All-Star game was Anthony Santander finally getting a nod. Because that's a guy, along with Cedric Mullins in the outfield, they've been there through rough times and are finally now riding a crest of having good fellow players. And are seeing the results of the of just hanging in there and being decent players. So, I'm glad that happened.

NICK

Yeah, that team is loaded and, you know, for all the talk you always hear about the Yankees and about the Red Sox, the Orioles, you know, that's, they're the team. I haven't been in that ballpark, by the way, for some years, but the day that I was there, it was just, it was a marvel. And, you know, they've been talking about, well, you know, it's old and we should renovate this, that and the other thing and maybe we need a new stadium. The place is classic!

JOHN

Exactly. I mean, if they were thinking that way, I mean, Boston would have had a glassed-in indoor stadium, you know, by 1960. I mean, really the Fenway ballpark is there not because it's comfortable, and not because it's convenient to sit in, you know, there's a lot of places in Fenway where you can't really - you can sit right behind the Pesky pole down right field and not see very much. By the way, listeners, if you ever go to Fenway Park, make sure they don't try to put you down there, all right? You know, ask. Ask where they’re putting you, because they that's where they'll try to put you.  At any rate, Fenway Park is not there because it's comfortable. It's there because it feels great to be there and you know that's sort of the, I think, Wrigley. I don't know if, has anyone here been into Wrigley because I'd love to go there.

NICK

Many times, yeah, many times.

JOHN

And I think of Wrigley as sort of the same thing.  It's sort of a glorified bleachers section for sort of like three-quarters of it, isn’t it?

NICK

Yeah, pretty much and I can tell you that the seats were built for the not-21^st-century bottom.

DON

Well, I have sons who live in Chicago, and in Baltimore, which is one of the reasons I've gone to so many Orioles games over the last few years. I'll go down and pick up my son, and we'll go to an Orioles game. We've been doing that for like 3 or four years, so we were there when they lost 100 games, and we were there last year when they won 100 games. And I will tell you the crowd was pretty much the same either time, they were behind that club 100%. And I have been outside Wrigley Field, I have not been in Wrigley Field. I walked around outside it, because my son's house, or condo is probably about 10 blocks away. So, I always make a pilgrimage there. One of these days, I'll buy tickets and go inside.

JOHN

I hear it's pretty fun!

NICK

It is!

DON

Well, you know, it looks fun. We do walk around. There's an L station behind the park, up above, and we have gone up there to wait for a train to take us to different places in Chicago, and I kind of look over the L there, which overlooks a couple of those rooftops that are outside Wrigley Field, where people have converted their rooftops into patios and you can buy admission there and kind of watch the game from afar, but you can still get a pretty good view of the field from those.

NICK

The first time I ever went to Wrigley was in 1985. It was actually two days after my wedding.

DON

Honeymoon!

JOHN

Oh, poor Mrs. Roman, sort of sitting there, going ahhh!

Speaker 2

No, no, no. She is a huge baseball fan, and she was more than thrilled to go, and we got to the ballpark, thinking we could just buy tickets. And there was nothing. And a very kind usher - they called them Andy Frains because that was the company that that hired these guys - and, you know, he said, “Oh, you look sad,” and we go, “Yeah, well, we want, it's two days after our wedding. We want to go to a ball game and we couldn't get in the ballpark.” He reached into his pocket, and he pulled out two tickets. And he said, here you go. So in we went.

JOHN

Oh my gosh, that wonderful sound.

NICK

We were sitting down the right field line, and we didn't have those poles in the way. There are places where you, you know, you I've sat there too where you can't really see. But it was great. We've sat in the bleachers a couple of times. You're talking about that L station. We were taking the train one time to Wrigley. And the train stopped and it was a super hot day. And those trains are enclosed. And we all, everyone on that on that train was just sitting there sweating. And I remember a woman, a young woman who had, like, it looked like a portfolio case, like she was about to make a presentation. And she had this perfectly starched yellow dress. And her hair was perfect, and her makeup was perfect. And it's so hot and she's sweating and I'm thinking, oh my God, she's thinking, “I'm going to lose this job because I’m gonna look like a mess when I get out of here.” And it's silent on the train and some guy, some guy says in the back of the train he goes, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Chicago Weight Loss Clinic.” And we started cracking up. Yeah, and we've sat in the bleachers. You know, you take your shirt off and you drink a bunch of beer and it's it's tons of fun. It is a good place.

DON

Like I said, my son lives near there and they call the whole area “Wrigleyville,” so it's pretty nice. I'll tell you another good ballpark before we move on and actually start talking baseball, is PNC Park out in Pittsburgh. I've been there a few times. And that is a gorgeous park, and the river is right the other side, over the outfield wall, and the view that you have is not only downtown Pittsburgh, but this beautiful yellow bridge they've built to connect the ballpark to the downtown.

JOHN

And it's the Roberto Clemente bridge.

DON

Yeah, that's beautiful. Beautiful.

JOHN

You see, that's one of the, I think that might be the third, or fourth most beautiful park. It is such a gorgeous park, and they did it right, you know, they brought it into the center of town, which is something that, you know, Philly couldn't do. They tried to. They tried to build the what is now Citizens Bank in the center of Philadelphia and local interests would not have it. And so they brought it down to that industrialized sports section that they have way, way down in the south of town, which is quite a bit farther away. And really, that feeling of the Pittsburgh park is the way it really should feel. It's - you can hit a ball into the soup, you can hit into the river. It's tremendous and it's got one of the greatest, as Don is saying, it's got one of the greatest spectacular skyline views of any ballpark, really. It shows you that really, if you've not been, folks, this is a really great reason for going to Pittsburgh and for reminding yourself that Pittsburgh isn't the old Pittsburgh. It really is a good-looking town these days.

DON

So, let's bring it around to players again, Paul Skenes. What a guy, huh? What a pitcher. You think the Pirates can actually hold on to him and some of their other budding talent and actually put together a winning team in the next couple of years?

NICK

I hope so. I mean I think they can, and they have to. I mean that guy is - I think I've seen, because I have the MLB app, I think I've watched almost every one of his starts, because it's that amazing and, you know, you're just, you're stunned at how good he is, and he's Southern California kid too, so that's another good reason to watch. He is something else. And their shortstop, O'Neil Cruz, is another guy who's sort of like, what is this?  They've got more like that too. And, you know, Ke’Bryan Hayes over there at third base. The Pirates, you know, 10 years ago, they had a run where it really looked like they were going to be, you know, stick long time in the playoffs. And they didn't do anything at the trading deadline. And I hope that's not their history this time around. I mean, they're under 500 right now, and this might not be the season for them, but soon enough it will be. And they have to do something for those fans. Because, you know, the three of us, we remember those great Pirates teams in the 60s and 70s and even all the way into the early 90s that were winners and had stars. Just the best players around. And, you know, I remember going to Dodger Stadium many times - you know, it's like, “Well, who's playing?  It’s Pirates! Well, we're going! We're going.” You know, you gotta see Stargell, Clemente. We're going!  You have to give those fans something more to hang on to than just one player. That player also has to have a team around him that is successful, and I hope, you know, you just sort of pray every time I watch him pitch, it's like, “Please elbow hold up. Please hold up! Don't, don't, don't flame out. Don't do all the stuff that we've seen so many others, you know, have bad stuff happen to them.”

DON

Yeah, and living in central Pennsylvania, there's a lot of my friends and neighbors who are from the Pittsburgh area and who remember all those old good Pirates teams. And they've looked at the Pirates over the last 10 years as, the minute they get a good player, that player is marked for trade, and they trade him away and they don't get anything in return for him. And then the team just continues to muddle on. And this looks like it's a different team with Skenes and some of the relievers they have, and like you said, O’Neil Cruz.

JOHN

Bryan Reynolds is good.

DON

Reynolds, they still have some good outfielders out there. You know, it looks like a team that's on the way the Orioles looked maybe last year or the year before. Where suddenly that young talent is coming up and they're figuring out how to play baseball. And I think that's a key thing is, is you figure out the game, and when to be intense, and when to kind of just lay back and have fun. And I think they're probably one team that's on the cusp of that. I think another team that's on the cusp of that is the Red Sox, frankly.

JOHN

Yes, I think yes. I just saw that Papi on the All-Star game TV broadcast boldly predicted that Red Sox would be the World Series versus the Phillies, which is a pretty bold, you know, and of course, totally free of bias, you know? But I wanted to talk about, well, two things. The first thing is the White Sox. We were talking about Wrigley, and how Wrigley's always there, so in a sense, they'll always pack the house. It's a cultural thing. Everybody goes, it's part of being a Chicagoan. And a lot of people are White Sox fans too, but, you know, only a handful of years ago, the White Sox were a very formidable team. How do you throw that all down the john so quickly? Because it's all gone. As you said, they are a steaming mess. And is it just incompetence by the front office? I don't get it.

NICK

I think it goes above that. Ownership is a problem too, and, you know, you see teams with that kind of, you know, ownership that I don't know what they're focused on, but they're not focused on hiring - you know, when they hired Tony LaRussa a couple seasons ago, my first thought was, well, that's not going to work. And it didn't. And, you know, the other thing was that they had these great players who were great at the time. You know, Jose Abreu, who just all of a sudden, it just turned around on him. Same with Tim Anderson, who was a batting champion, and now I think a couple weeks ago he got cut by the Marlins. So, you know, and I think Abreu got cut by the Astros too.

DON

I think you're right.

NICK

It's a mystery to me, but when your front office misses on draft after draft after draft, and also on trade after trade after trade. And for those of us who also watch the Angels, we know what this is like. You have damned yourself to 10 years of not even mediocrity. You know, obscurity. Ineptitude. And that's what you're seeing. And it's such a shame. There's another thing, I think that - this is sort of weird, but it kind of plays into it too. The White Sox built their stadium in 1989, and it looks like a typical regular kind of ballpark. Four years later, the Orioles built their stadium, and people went, “It's a marvel. It's amazing.” Four years difference from standard kind of thinking to creative and amazing thinking I think makes a difference, which is sort of an indication of how the White Sox think generally. You know, they are just, they don't they can't seem to grab onto something, and I don't know if they're still living with the Black Sox scandal of more than 100 years ago, what it is, but something is definitely wrong.

DON

And, you know, you think about it seriously. We're talking, the teams we're talking about, the Orioles have a nice, cozy stadium. The Phillies have a nice, cozy stadium. The Guardians! That is a nice stadium up there, it used to be Jacobs Field, and I can't remember who the naming rights went to, but...

NICK

Progressive.

DON

Progressive. Yeah, right. That's a nice little stadium up there, close to the lake. The teams that have invested in the team atmosphere and in the surrounding community do a lot better, not only in drawing crowds but eventually drawing decent players, ‘cause I know that, you know, players on the Orioles are happy to be there, players on the Phillies are happy. The Phillies went from, nobody wants to play there to now everybody wants to play there. You know, so it's one of those, that's where I think there's just a whole culture, I want to say, that's coming up that's making baseball more approachable for both the players and the communities that they're in.

NICK

You've had that in places like Saint Louis forever and a day. It’s sort of, you know, that even when the Cardinals are down, they're not down for very long. They figure it out pretty quickly. I've been to that ballpark. It's a beautiful place. People love the Cardinals. I mean, you know how deep that goes. And even you know, to a certain extent, there is such that great history with the Dodgers. And for the Giants, when they built that fabulous place up in San Francisco, the result? Well, that, and drafting Buster Posey made a difference, too. Turned into, you know, three World Series. And they're still kind of living off that, but they're coming back around again. One of these days, that team will be back to where it was.

JOHN

That's another one of the most beautiful ballparks in baseball, it's just gorgeous, and that big Coke bottle. You can't beat it, you know? Yeah, in left field.

DON

And again, one doesn't think of - to be honest with you, when people talk dynasties, the Giants don’t pop into my mind, but they did. There was a stretch there in the early 2000s where they went to the World Series, like, every other year with some regularity.

NICK

2010, 2012, 2014.

DON

Yeah, they picked up free agents this year, kind of toward the end. And they didn't get a lot of bargains. And I think that's coming to bite them in this part of the year.

NICK

And they've been beat up by injuries too, and they're still the, you know, the minor league system is not what it ought to be. They hung on to those glory days of the of the 20 tens. Which you understand, you hold on to some of those players maybe a little bit longer than you need, then you really should have, hoping that they could, maybe, you know, capture lightning in a bottle, and they actually did. In 2021, they were tremendous. Everybody had a great year, and then it all turned around the next year. Part of it was, Buster Posey said, “Yeah, you know what? I am going to retire,” and that made a gigantic difference, but they'll be back soon enough. They're smart. They know what they're doing. And I feel more confident about the future of the Giants than I do, say the future of the Angels, which I'm not sure there actually is a future.

JOHN

Oh, my goodness, the Angels, the poor Angels. I mean, we've all been Angels fans for years and years, and they've been victimized by luck, by stupidity, by bad trades, by everything you can be victimized by. And now you have Ohtani just down the highway now, smacking balls out of the ballpark, meanwhile, Mike Trout is sitting around absorbing tens of millions of dollars for just being a pretty great guy, and he's probably not coming back this year. He's been hurt again, and they don't have much. You know, they have a bunch of guys who want to play good. You know, a very pretty ballpark.

DON

And a few years ago, the owner of the Angels was looked upon as a genius because they had done such great deals and brought up such good players through the system. And that's all out the window now, right?

NICK

Yeah, the last, the drafts from most of the 2010s, once they got done, after they drafted Mike Trout, it was if they as if they said, well we don't really need to draft anybody else, do we? They were disastrous. You look through every year and you just go, some of the best players that they drafted are now, you know, playing for other teams, pitching for other teams. One of them pitches for the Baltimore Orioles. You know, and there's been this churn of general managers, and then there was a churn of field managers. If Joe Madden couldn’t make that work, nobody could make it work. It goes all the way to the top of ownership there, constant stories about neglect of the minor league system, scouts that aren't scouting, like, you know, Latin America, terrible choices constantly in in the draft, and then a rash of injuries that's just, that's been shocking. That kind of stuff. And then there's all the ugly stuff too, like the death of Tyler Skaggs, which, you know, uncovered a bunch of stuff that related to the front office. That was just terrible and awful. And eventually, Mike Trout was not going to be as durable as he had been in his younger days. And so, it's a couple of freak injuries, breaks his hand, you know, hurts his knee, and at some point, Ohtani just said, this is enough for me. I'm done, you know, I've served my time.

JOHN

Back to baseball in a minute, but first, here's a soothing musical innertube.

DON

Nick Roman has been a fixture in Southern California radio news for more than 30 years. He is KPCC's host of All Things Considered.

JOHN

His love of sports has led him to file numerous stories for NPR's "Only A Game."  Nick has also worked for the past 25 years teaching broadcast journalism to students at Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton.

DON

To find out more about Nick, check out his page at Nick Roman | LAist.  Get in touch with him by email at nroman@scpr.org.

JOHN

And now, back to the Musical Innertube, already in progress…..

JOHN

Well, so I was counting this morning. And I think there's something like 14 teams that have a shot at getting a wild card. That is a testament to how the baseball system of, you know, postseason play is really a thing of beauty. It just, suddenly everybody's excited. All sorts of cities. That's partly because you can play a bunch of games in a row, so you get these great series. You get the short series that are jam-packed and full of tense excitement because people can go out pretty fast. A good team can get beaten by a not-so-good team. You know, the first team to win three out of the first five and you're gone. You know, two out of the first three it's so exciting and it's very well designed. And 14 teams, that's a lot of excitment.

NICK

Yeah. Well, we'll see if it's still 14 in a couple of weeks. You know, teams will have to decide before the trading deadline whether they are real or whether they're, you know, Memorex. And, you know, if they decide that they're real, then they're going to make some deals and kind of, and try and, you know, beef up and get to where they've got to be. So, I would expect that you might see, say, the Cardinals, who are in that, maybe the Padres, who’ve always been bold for trades. Perhaps, oh, let's see, Tampa may have to make some decisions about whether they're in it or whether they're not. And then, you know, some teams that will just say, OK, well, we're done for and we're doing something else. And that's the Toronto Blue Jays. They'll, I think they'll unload a bunch of guys. The few guys that the White Sox have, Garrett Crochet, in particular, the pitcher, he's likely to go, and then also whatever, whatever, you know, small, you know, change - bottom of your pockets with the lint - the Angels have, they'll trade that too. So, I would expect to see like Tyler Anderson is a very good pitcher, likely to be traded. And Carlos Estevez, as a relief pitcher, is likely going to get traded. So, you know, after that, then you're going to really, that 14 probably gets cut down to, you know, to a more reasonable number, and then you just see who plays well and who you know doesn't get hurt.

DON

If you're sitting at the bottom of the standings like the White Sox, like the Marlins, like the Colorado Rockies, and you're in a position to sell right now, I would think that you're in the catbird seat, when these other teams come around looking for pitching help or infielders or outfielders. Because you can take a player that's a fairly good pitcher, or a fairly good outfielder, and demand a pretty decent return in prospects to get those, in a way to build up your own minor league system.

NICK

It's yes and no on that. The Dodgers in 2018 cut a deal with the Orioles for Manny Machado, but they didn't give up - when you look at who actually made the trek back to Baltimore, none of them have turned out to be really significant players. Sometimes you know that big player isn't the one that makes a difference. But I'll give you two other examples, because I I've looked these up and I remember them real well. In 2016, the Dodgers needed a relief pitcher. And so, they made a trade. With the Astros to get a guy named Josh Fields, who was a pretty good relief pitcher, and he, you know, middle innings guy and he did well for the Dodgers. They gave up a kid that they had signed, I think out of Cuba who really hadn't done very much, that he'd only been with him for a few months. He was Yordan Álvarez. Who's like, you know, big time slugger now for the Astros. The Pirates the very next season had a lefty named Tony Watson, a relief pitcher, and the Dodgers again needed some relief help. So, they traded a kid that they had just signed out of, you know, the Caribbean, the guy named O'Neil Cruz, who is now the starting shortstop. So, you know, you don't know if that's going to work out. Many, many years ago, that's what happened when the Braves got John Smoltz from the Tigers, and when the Astros got Jeff Bagwell from the Red Sox. Deals that were, you know, needed to make something immediate. Sometimes it works. Oftentimes, there's nothing to it. So, it's a crapshoot, and you have to play it exactly right and know what you're doing. So, we'll see if the Angels actually know what they're doing, or if Toronto actually knows what they're doing, when they trade those big names that, you're right, Don, that really should geta return. Might not, though.

DON

Two things that occurred to me, that, number one, those Astros, they were, like, written off for dead 4 weeks ago, and now they're only a game out. Part of that is because Seattle has been playing so crappy. Seattle, again, is another one of those yo-yo teams. They were a surprise to me at the first part of the season, they have excellent pitching and you know, pitching usually wins ball games, but they don't. They don't have really any kind of offense to back up that pitching, unfortunately. And they could get overtaken by the Astros and even by the Texas Rangers in a in a few weeks.

JOHN

Yes, so they have woken up, haven't they? Yes, they have.

DON

Yeah. Plus the other thing is, I keep harking back when we’re talking about the Angels, a lot of the Angels are now ex-Phillies. We have the catcher,

NICK

Logan OHoppe. He’s good

DON

Logan O Hoppe, who is very good, and was a really good minor league player for the Phillies. But they had JT Realmuto and he was standing in the way. One of our friends, Scott Lauber, who writes about the Phillies for the Philadelphia Inquirer, says it was the perfect baseball trade, O’Hoppe for Brandon Marsh, who is now playing for the Phillies. He still can't hit a left-handed pitcher to save his life, but he is a vital part of their whole thing. So yeah, you never know when these trades go down, who winds up the winner and who winds up with somebody who's not quite on the winning side.

NICK

Yeah. Well, there was another trade that same season between the Angels and the Phillies, where the Angels traded Noah Syndergaard for Mickey Moniak, and neither really worked out, so, you get that too, where you go, well....

DON

John and I were at the game that was Noah Syndergaard's debut with the Phillies. And of course, they went all out. The big board had “Thor” and lightning and thunder, and he came out and he pitched, and he won the game. And the reason he won the game was because it went five innings, it got rained out. So, it was an official game.

JOHN

He was throwing slop. He threw all garden variety poo-poo right up to that plate. You know, it was really interesting to see how he reinvented himself.

DON

I think the Phillies won that game, something like, you know, six to five or something like that. It was only because Alec Bohm hit a home run in the fourth inning, just before the rain came, a two-run home run, and managed to put the Phillies on top. But if they'd left him in for any more innings, it would have been brutal.

NICK

Well, you know, and that that points up another thing. You remember when Noah Syndergaard really was Thor with the Mets, and when Matt Harvey really was The Dark Knight for the Mets, and when everybody talked about how good Jacob deGrom was for the Mets, and all three of them have been torn up by injuries, and have had their careers - you know, Syndergaard is, last I heard, Syndergaard was going to do, like, a showcase before spring training next year to see if anybody wants to take him.

DON

Now, well, the Dodgers had him for a while last year, right?

NICK

They did, yeah. And then they wised up. And they traded him.

JOHN

deGrom is out for the season. Am I correct?

NICK

I think he is. Yeah. I haven't looked to see where he is, but he hasn't been pitching. I know that much.

DON

And I know that Scherzer just came back for Texas and said we're going all the way. Apparently, he looked pretty good in his first couple of games back, but he's only pitched two or three games by this point.

JOHN

So I think this is one thing that we need to talk about before we let you go, and that is the 103 mile an hour pitch.

NICK

Oh my God.

JOHN

I think that you're seeing, little by little, a change of philosophy in baseball, both among the pitchers and among their managers. People are realizing that, yeah, you can throw the ball 105 miles an hour a couple of times. But if you do it all the time, it's going to shorten your career. And I think we've just talked about three real fireballing, you know, 100 mile an hour pitchers who now are struggling. I think only one of them is still pitching, Matt Harvey, and they are, you know, they were great in their prime, but you do not last. I mean, I think, who's the guy who's been pitching 100 miles an hour forever, for about 10 years. He's the outrider on this. He helped Chicago win the World Series years ago, in 2016.

DON

Chapman.

JOHN

Champman! Aroldis. And, you know, he still can get it up to 100 miles an hour. He's a little bit different. And also, his career has not been lights out, you know, he's had a funny little career where he gets bounced around a lot of times, people go, “Well, you're OK, but goodbye.” And I think people are beginning to realize that they gotta be working on pitching rather than, you know, trying to get up to 109-110, you know, because the human body, no matter how you - I mean, really, the human body is mortal. You may be a God, but your arm isn’t.

NICK

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that that, you know, you look at someone like Tyler Anderson on the Angels that doesn't throw all that hard, but he's been he's been really good this season, a couple of years ago he was really good for the Dodgers, made the All-Star team. There's still a world where if you're a lefty and you're just smart, you can live in it. They don't really offer that same thing to the righty who's smart, unless your name is Greg Maddux. And it's a shame, because it is moving the game away and it's also putting bodies at risk. I mean, you look at all those pitchers on the Dodgers who have been torn up by, you know, some sort of elbow problem and it, and it does get, it gets scary. You look at a kid like Hunter Greene, who's on the Cincinnati Reds, who throws 100 miles an hour, and you look at Paul Skenes, on the Pirates, who can do the same, and you just, every time they throw, you know you sort of, “Let's run down to, you know, Saint Timothy's and light a candle”. Because I don't know if he's making it. If that elbow can hang in there. Baseball has to figure something out. It's a philosophy thing. That, and they've got to figure it out. And I'm not, I'm not sure that they - well, obviously they haven't, because you just look at the at the, you know, injured lists and you can see just star after star after star and it's frightening, it really is frightening. And then to think that, you know, there's sort of this myth that well, if I get Tommy John surgery, I'm going to be OK. Yeah? Go ask Noah Syndergaard. Go ask Walker Buehler, who's struggling through it, right now.

JOHN

That's not a guarantee.

NICK

Yeah. I think the worst thing that ever happened was that Tommy John got Tommy John surgery and turned out to be great afterwards. Yeah, he had been a bust, things would really change.

DON

There are a couple of pitchers out there who have undergone Tommy John surgery twice and are still trying to do it.

NICK

Yeah. Walker Buehler’s one of ‘em!

DON

The other thing, I was watching the As play the Phillies just before the All-Star game, and I saw Miller, who's the closer for the A's, and he was also in the All-Star game, and he's a guy who throws 100 and I --

NICK

I'm sorry, this team that you just mentioned, what is their name again? I’m not familiar with that.

DON

Well, I would say “The Oakland A's,” but they're only in Oakland for another couple of months, so you don't have to worry about that. They'll be “The Something As,” maybe Sacramento.

JOHN

Also known as “The Oakland Guests.”

DON

They'll be Sacramento, and then they'll be Las Vegas, and then maybe something else after that, you never know.

NICK

By the way, the Sacramento ballpark is quite nice. I've been there, it is quite nice.

JOHN

You're gonna love them in Sacramento.

NICK

I'm very surprised that they picked Vegas, and didn't just say, you know, hey, let's just go out to Sacramento, because I think I think you're right. I think there's a lot of fans out there and they would have done fine, but, you know, who knows?

DON

Yeah. Well, the only thing we can all agree on is the Oakland Coliseum is one big, huge turd, and they’re much better off out of it.

NICK

Yeah. Well, the sad thing is, that I think that's actually, literally true.

JOHN

Yeah, well, worst baseball stadium. Ever. Ever.

DON

Well, it's the worst stadium, baseball or otherwise, it's terrible.

JOHN

It was ugly, it was bad for the players and the people who came to the game. You were way far away from the action, no matter what the sport was. I mean, it was terrible for football too, it was a naked obscenity, you know.

DON

And to Oakland's credit, they said if you own a team in this city, you should build the stadium. We shouldn't have to help you. But on the other hand, Oakland knows what happens when you do that, now, that you lose every team that you have and you're stuck with a huge turd sitting in the city, that you're now going to have to raize and make into a parking lot or a duplex or something. But, to go back to Miller, who's the closer, he's throwing 100, and it just it brought back memories to me of Chapman. You couldn't hit him for the first year or two because he was throwing 100. However, he wasn't pitching, he was throwing. And after a while, professional baseball hitters can hit 100 mile an hour fastball. And so, when you get into throwing instead of pitching, after a couple of years, even if you're only throwing one or two innings a game, they catch up with you and they say, OK, I'm sitting on that fastball, and when it comes and it's 100 miles an hour, I'll whack it. And I think that's what happened to Chapman, and that might well be what happens to Miller or any of those others that throw 100 and don't worry about pitching. Because I think some of the really good pitching staffs now, like the one in Seattle, like the one that the Phillies have and the one that Milwaukee has, are pitching. And the Red Sox, they have pitchers as well, guys who place the ball where they want it, and they can get up to 95 if they want to. But mostly they're throwing, and pitching to contact and throwing the ball where they want to instead of just leaving it up there and hoping for the best.

NICK

Yeah, I agree.

JOHN

I might mention that Aroldis Chapman blew two straight American League Championships for the Yankees with a well-placed fastball to the same batter, you know, to the little guy on Houston -

NICK

Altuve.

JOHN

you know, and just grooves it. About 99, Altuve said, “Let me get my knife and fork. This is Thanksgiving.”  And you're right, these guys can hit 100 mile-an-hour pitch, you know, I mean, it seems impossible, but they really can, they really can.

DON

So, Nick, where do you think we're going as we're headed into the second-half? Who do you think stays on top of the water? Who do you think sinks?

NICK

Dodgers and Phillies I feel, yeah, I'm real confident about that. You know, obviously they're going to have to, you know, fist fight their way through a five-game, a best of five series early on and that, you know, you hope you don't catch somebody who's hot, and that's happened to both of them in recent years, so they're familiar with it. On the American League side, I mean, you got to go with the Orioles because, you know, they're just that good. And I think the Cleveland Guardians because they are that good, and nobody knows it. But they are that good. And then in the World Series, I don't know because I don't know what happens, you know, it's sort of useless to predict. I'm OK with any of those teams. I mean obviously I'm a huge Dodger fan, so you know they're my favorites. But if any of those teams win, you know, I would be able to look at it and go, “Yeah, that makes sense,” because all those teams are that good.

DON

John, what do you think?

JOHN

I think it's going to be Cleveland versus Saint Louis. And I said that only because it's an utter nightmare for all of the TV executives who are going to try to sell ads. I know that's not going to happen. So, I would say, first of all, I want the Phillies very much. It's hard for me to say that because I love the Dodgers, too. We all grew up in Orange County, in Los Angeles County, all of us, and we love the Dodgers. It's hard though, because, man, I would love to see Phillies, Orioles. Man, would I love to see that World Series.

NICK

That'd be something!

JOHN

The ball be flying! Yeah, I think.

DON

That would be great. The Orioles have run into problems lately. I'm looking for them at the trading deadline to get pitching. If they get pitching, I think they're in it, because they're using a lot of kids from the farm system who come up and pitch pretty well for a couple innings and then get their clocks cleaned. So, I think probably they need to get some pitching help and if they do, I think they'll manage to hold off the Yankees. The Yankees, I think, don't have pitching. I think Gil's okay, but he's not going to shoulder the burden.  I think Judge and Soto are good, but I don't think they can carry the team if they go into any kind of slump, that nobody else picks up the slack for them. I think Cleveland is interesting. God, I wish the Chicago Cubs were better, but I don't think they're going to matter. And I hate - I'm going to say this right now - I would hate it if Saint Louis got in there, because for years and years when the Phillies were pretty good, Saint Louis would catch fire at the end of the year and lap everybody and get into the World Series. I’m thinking specifically (of 2011), when the Phillies had 102 games and they were, they had a great pitching staff and Ryan Howard blew out his Achilles on the last play of the game when the Cardinals went into the World Series after that. Now, having said that, that's kind of what the Phillies did when they got into the World Series against the Astros a couple of years ago. They caught fire at the very end and managed to beat everybody in the post season. So, I kind of had to retract that a little bit, but I'll go back to it now. I don't want Saint Louis in there at all. So, I think Phillies and Orioles would be outstanding. I think Dodgers and Yankees would be an interesting one.

JOHN

Oh my goodness. That's the one everybody's talking about, is a replay of the 1981 Series.

DON

I also would like to see Houston back off a little bit. They've had their run for the last few years and it's, it's enough. I think they can let somebody else come up.

NICK

I have no love for Houston.

JOHN

I don't really either, and I'm afraid it's gonna be like Houston, Arizona World Series. Arizona looks like another dark horse that’s getting hot now, and they have a lot of good players. You know what I mean? They're one of these, they popped our bubble last year. Man, they can do it. They've got the players. So, anyway. This is why baseball exists, is for old farts like us to sit around and, you know, dream about it. Thank you for coming on, Nick Roman. We always love hanging out with you.

NICK

I had a great time, you know, talking baseball. This is not a very hard thing for me to do it all. If you guys are just, you know, if we had hot dogs and peanuts and beer, then you would really make it terrific. I mean it was good as it is, but that would make it just perfect.

DON

OK, so next time, everybody come loaded down with food. It'll be kind of difficult to hear what we're saying when we're eating, but I agree with you. I think hot dogs and beer are worth it. Thanks, Nick.

NICK

Sure thing.