Rates & Barrels - Pat Hoberg, Parity in Mid-June, Tatis' Quiet Move Back Toward Stardom & Snoop in the Brewers' Booth

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Eno, Britt, and DVR discuss MLB's disciplinary action against umpire Pat Hoberg for violating the league's gambling rules, and Hoberg's ongoing appeal. Plus, they consider the parity with all but two teams in the National League within two games of a playoff position as play began Tuesday, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s bid to return to stardom with less fanfare outside of San Diego, and Snoop Dogg's surprise visit to the Brewers broadcast over the weekend.  Rundown 1:12 Pat Hoberg Disciplined by MLB for Violating Gambling Rules 10:31 Can Hoberg's Appeal Actually Change Anything? 12:50 Mid-June Parity: Love It or Leave It? 28:57 Remind Us if This is Still Happening in September 34:05 Fernando Tatis Jr.'s Quiet Move Back Toward Stardom 42:36 Jurickson Profar's Amazing 2024 46:05 Snoop Dogg Dropped by the Brewers' TV Booth Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Tuesday, June 18th, Derek the Riper, Enosaris, Britt Giroli back with us after a few weeks off. It was a weird stretch of schedule, we had fewer shows for a couple of weeks, so you got to breathe there.

Then you're on vacation, Britt. Welcome back. Thanks for coming back. I know, it feels like I've been gone for a while, guys, but what's great about this time of year is I don't feel like I missed that much either. I was catching up and didn't really feel like a lot happened. I was preparing to be way behind,

but outside of weird things, like the Mets all of a sudden winning and all the grimace thing. Yeah. Snoop Dogg being on the Brewers that we'll get into later. I didn't really miss that much. So it's good to be back for like the, the stretch run, I guess. Yeah. When you're in it every day, you're like, you miss so much. But it's like, now I'm like, well, mostly a bunch of injuries.

Yeah. Which is any time of the year, right? You miss a week or two, there's going to be some guys that you're like, oh, he got hurt. He's not playing. Hey, you didn't miss a lot, but you did miss a couple things, I feel. And one thing was something you were supposed to miss. We were all supposed to miss this one. You may recall around six, seven o'clock Eastern on Friday that Major League Baseball dropped this little tidbit that umpire Pat Hauberg had been disciplined for violating rule 21, the league's gambling rules. And we don't know exactly what Pat Hauberg did at this point. Was that even during business hours? I feel like I got that like super late. It was really, really late. It was a peak Friday news dump.

Okay. So as they do each and every time, you know, Major League Baseball was very quick to point out that while MLB's investigation not finding evidence the games worked, but Mr. Hoburg were compromised or manipulated in any way, Major League Baseball determined that discipline was warranted and Mr. Hoburg has chosen to appeal that determination. Therefore, we cannot comment further until the appeal process is concluded.

The only thing I could really deduce from what they barely said was that they weren't giving him the lifetime banhammer. Right. They were not giving Pat Hoburg the tucupita Marcano. Beyond that, I don't know what corner, what part of rule 21 was actually violated yet, because they haven't told us. And I find that to be really frustrating. Yeah, but typical. This is how they do investigations, right? They're only going to release the bare minimum of what they need to release. I personally would like an absolute detailed rundown of every bet this guy made along with Ipe Muzuhara

and David Fletcher and anyone else who bet. Like anyone else who potentially is involved, you know, if you're breaking rules, let's see what you're doing. Let's see the receipts, right? But I don't think we're ever going to see that because Major League Baseball, I think very quietly has to be worried here that we're like just at

the tip of the iceberg, right? And the Titanic is coming. It kind of feels like that a little bit, right? Like we have betting stuff everywhere. Full disclosure, there are betting ads on our website, on the athletic, on the New York times, there are betting partnerships at all these stadiums. Everything's presented by all these betting companies. Pre and post games have the, you know, the bet shirt, the bet of the night or whatever.

They're hitting you with parlay ideas during games. They're telling you, here's a same game parlay you can try. Here's a promo code to try it, right? That's part of baseball as it's presented now because of the league's choices. Yeah, we are dangling this forbidden fruit and telling people like, don't eat it, don't eat it, don't eat it. Well, these people, eventually someone is going to say, you know what, I've got some inside knowledge here.

I could win some money here. I could, you know, it's so tempting, I think. And this isn't, I don't, correct me if you guys disagree. I think we're just scratching the surface on this thing. It's only going to get worse because players are now growing up in this betting culture And we are now seeing you know what happens when guys like e-pay use these illegal bookie We're seeing that it's addiction We know more about gambling as a disease than we ever did and we also have somehow let it enter our

Mainstream culture because of the money, you know, Major League Baseball didn't have to let the betting companies in. They did it because they have a lot of money. That's what all these companies have done. They have a lot of money. And because of this, now they're going to have to deal with the consequences, which is players involvement, umpire involvement. I'm sure we're going to see more in that regard. Are we going to see coaches involved, managers?

Would anything shock you? Is it going to take a star for them to really say we have a problem? I mean, a star like show. Hey, yeah, exactly. But being actually like, you know, directly involved directly involved. Yeah, she may be right. We still never know. We don't.

And you're right. You're right. That this is going to, it could, it's probably only going to get worse. And the reason I think the first group, we saw the player dump with two computer Marcano and in that player dump, if you look kind of closely at the dates, you realize that this is like the culmination of like a four year investigation. in 2020 as part of their of what they got in trouble for. So, you know, that was the first. Ever player dump of players betting during the time of baseball being in bed with the different betting companies. And so I would say that the first people that get in trouble is a mix of like, oh, I didn't know I could do that. I couldn't do that.

Probably the ones that bet on other sports probably thought, you know, or other games within it when they were in the minor leagues or something, you know, like they probably thought, well, I'm in the minor leagues. It doesn't count or whatever. You know what I mean? Like they, they're people that didn't quite understand the rules or just full on addicted people like Marconos reads, like he was addicted, you know, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of bet, you know? Yeah. eBay sounds like he was addicted. And so, you know,

that is like the first salvo. I am interested in this idea that like, what if you come up within this culture, your friends are all doing it, but you're more aware of rule 21. And so you just have burner, you know, phones and you are, you have a friend who does your bets for you or whatever. Like then that's going to be like the second generation and that's going to be kind of harder to track harder to bust. And it could involve, you know, at least privileged information, if not, you know, full on manipulating, you know, the stats.

And so, you know, we know that this is a possibility because it happened in basketball. Tim Donahue was betting on games that he officiated and actually made calls that made it more likely that he won his bets. And I guess it's good news that basketball survived that. Not many people question the veracity of basketball games anymore, but it is probably a little bit of a view into the future for baseball. I think people still ask those questions about basketball games. I don't think those are totally completely, but your broader point, the league is still surviving. The league is still making lots of money. The league as an entity still exists and thrives in its business sense. But you're also going to have a problem with umpires.

You're probably going to have umpires particularly because umpires make so much less than the players. Well, that's where I think every, every person involved in the game who makes a lot less money than the typical star player. What about clubhouse attendance? Just feeding information. Oh, there's so many people around the game that do not make a lot of money, who would be much more susceptible to nefarious behaviors here. Yeah.

Clearly. And that's not the only corner of the game you're worried about. So it's not going away. This is just the way baseball is now. And I think to Britt's point, this feels like tip of the iceberg. This feels like the first of many stories. And I agree with Britt in that all I really want is the full rundown. The easiest thing you can do to ease my concerns. It's like an Excel dump, like a spreadsheet dump.

Publish the data, publish the betting record, put it out there. Every book has it. Like you play every contest you enter, every game you play is documented there. Transparency will ease the concerns. And yes, I think some people will try and connect the dots. And some people will say it wasn't a complete dump. There was more. They didn't give us all the concerns. And yes, I think some people will try and connect the dots. And some people will say it wasn't a complete dump. There was more. They didn't give us all the baths. Isn't that the easiest way to try and reduce concerns and questions about the

integrity of the game is to say, hey, this is what happened. Here's every single thing that happened, especially if you have confidence in your own research, which the one thing I will say in these favor is that they have like pretty intense research practices, I think. I think they have. Yeah, their investigations department is very thorough. Derek, when you're talking, I just want to do DL like, show me the money. I just want to know.

We'll know more about the Hobart story eventually. At least I'm pretty confident we'll learn more after the appeals process plays out. Yeah, they can't talk about it now. I don't blame anybody for not really talking about it now because it's, you know, it's like, you know, the court case, we're doing the court case right now. And I can't really talk about it while we're, you know, sure doing it. But the process does seem weird. I mean, we, we, none of us are really sure of who issued, you know, the ruling and who gets to hear the ruling.

We haven't heard anything about sort of arbitrators being involved. So it is possible that Manfred is like issuing the ruling and then listening to it, listening to the appeal, which means what are you appealing? I mean, that's why like, you know, that's sort of the process for the, um, you know, like the sticky stuff. It's like, once you're in there, you're appealing to Manfred. And so if you're appealing to Manfred and you'd be like, no, I didn't put sticky stuff on there, he's going to be like, and it's the same. Okay. Oh, go away.

So Blanco, you didn't even, didn't even appeal it. A lot of guys don't even appeal their stuff. Cause it's like, I just got to go talk to Manfred and I'm not implying guilt of anything here. What I'm suggesting is that more transparency or something. The league has a vested interest in this not happening. As far as the Pat Holberg story, right? It's better for them for this to have never happened. So if there was some clear and obvious way that they could have just said, no, nothing bad happened here, they would have solved that already. They wouldn't have issued the punishment in the first place. Right. Or am I out of my mind?

Wouldn't they have done their due diligence to the point of knowing that they had to suspend him for whatever it was Pat Hover did before this got out and became a story? Yeah, that's why I doubt that the appeal is going anywhere. And that's why I think the appeal is stupid if it goes to Manfred. It does go to Manfred because what's the difference this time? I can't understand how that would lead to a different outcome and the league wouldn't want it to because then if an appeal of the arbitrator said, uh, but it's Manfred. So is Manfred going to go back and say, actually, no, he didn't violate any rules. Well, that wouldn't be good. Like But why would the league present it that way? Well, they either didn't do their homework, which I think they did, or they're going to go back on their punishment, which would just make them look bad either way.

Yeah, I wonder what the gray area is here. I think the Umberts have a really strong union, though, do they not? So don't they have like, it's kind of like players, players can appeal decisions directly to the league and they often lose. They don't often win those either. But it may be something with the union. Yeah, here's the statement right here. I have devoted my adult life to the profession of umpiring and the integrity of baseball is of the utmost importance to me. I look forward to the appeal process and I'm grateful that the Major League Baseball Umpires Association is supporting me in the appeal. That's all Pat Hohberg would say at this time. So that is kind of, I mean, their union is so strong that even if he's in the wrong, like you said, even if they have no leg to stand on, even if Manfred's going to say, dude, I already reviewed everything, I think they're going

to, they're going to have to appeal it and he's going to use the umpire's union um and whatever you know lawyer they provide or evidence they have or whatever to try to make a stronger case for himself that's how it reads to me yeah so we'll wait for the final final verdict to come down but kind of feels like this one's already been decided at least in terms of a punishment it's just a matter of what the final word ends up being. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of the hunt. But are you getting the thrill of the best deals? Rakuten shoppers do. They get the brands they love with the most savings and cash back. And you can get it too. Start getting cash back at your favorite stores like Old Navy, Best Buy and Expedia

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for your buck. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Onto the field things. We have parity in mid-June. We have several teams. Within reach of a playoff spot in the NL, all but two teams are either in a playoff position or within two games of a playoff position, exceptions being the Rockies and Marlins, who are 10 and a half and 12 and a half games back,

respectively, as play begins on Tuesday. And even that is not insurmountable in a vacuum. You could actually come back from that and be a playoff team. in a vacuum, you could actually come back from that and be a playoff team. So half the league, 15 teams in the league are between 33 and 38 wins entering play today. And I got the sense seeing some of the reaction around Twitter over the weekend that some folks are not happy about this. Why is it a problem? Is there a reason why parity in mid-June, especially when the season is not even

half over, is actually bad? Can either of you enlighten me as to what people are actually upset about here? See, I mean, you guys might feel differently. I'm okay with it now if we're sitting here in August and nobody has separated themselves. I think we have a real problem. I mean, this is what the league wanted is that with all the stuff that they did in terms of the luxury tax and the revenue sharing is they wanted to level the playing field. And what they did is they created a lot of mediocre teams and they added an extra playoff spot.

So where's the incentive for winning your division? Like what the Atlanta Braves have accomplished in winning God knows how many NLEs titles in a row. They have one World Series over that stretch, right? Look at what the Dodgers have done. One World Series over that stretch. So I think if you're a smaller market team, or you're an owner who doesn't want to spend, you're looking at these teams and you're saying, all we gotta do is get in.

We only need to be like an 80, 82-win team and we're good. That gets a little lucky, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we don't have to build this juggernaut. And if we don't get lucky, well, our fans will still cheer for us because we're in it through September, through the last week of the season, right? Which is also what baseball wanted. They wanted every fan to feel like they still had a chance and not people to stop going in July because their season is over. Right? Which for very few exceptions, most fans, you can make the case, look, our team is in it. We're a hot streak away. Look at the Mets right now. They've won six in a row

as we take this. Right in the thick of things now all of a sudden. So I think this is what baseball wanted and we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether it's good for the game or not good for the game. But I look at it as how do you change it? I don't see it changing. The players wanted to fight so hard in the CBA to get rid of tanking and they did some things, some measures that helped, but we're really not addressing the main issue, which is the mediocrity, the love of mediocrity. And I think in order to do that, you need to institute a floor and a cap,

and that's just probably never going to happen. Well, I mean, you could do it with just the floor, but no one's gonna give you a floor without a cap. Correct. So that's, you know, like maybe just a floor could do something about this, make some of the smaller teams pay, but yeah, you're not gonna get a floor without a cap.

It is interesting to think like this is what baseball wanted. Is it, but the upside, the other side of it, which would Derrick was sort of pointing to is like, even if it is what baseball wanted and we want to, we want to be cynical about that. Is it fine for fans? Is it good for fans? Like this seems like it seems okay for fans. I think for fans like this seems slightly. Why would fans I think for me the so I tweeted something that like oh the year 2029 the season ends and every team is within three games of 500 and Rob Manfred has a press conference to crow about parody. You know that was just a sort of a reducto abd absurd you know just like taking it to the absurd level and I don't think it'll ever get there, but. I do think that there's a little bit of a problem with larger playoffs, more wild cards, more mediocrity, and then crowning someone at the end of it and saying this was the best team.

What all this does is reduce the value of the World Series for me. And I know there's a lot of fans who say the winner of the World Series is the best team that year. That's it. They did the thing. They won the championship, right? I don't know. Maybe I'm too much of a numbers dork where I'm like, but actually we played 180 other games, you know, and I kind of feel like these other two teams were better, you know, and that's going to just happen more and more. So I don't know what happens with that split. Is that split not matter? Is that split always just going to exist?

The people are like, that was the World Series, the best winner and it doesn't matter. Or, or does it get more absurd? What if somebody gets in one game over 500 and just like gets like absurdly lucky and they beat, you know, all the teams that were like 30 games over 500 as of today, the Giants would be the last wild card in the NL. They're one game below 500. It won't come out that way. I think people would be furious if a team that was below 500 in the regular season found its way into the postseason and won the entire

thing. I think people would get really mad about that. I don't think it's going to happen. It could happen. You just make it more likely to happen the more you push the push it together like this. Let's look back at the last 10 World Series winners. There's a few outliers in the sense of the teams you remember as being distinctly great teams. The Rangers beating the Diamondbacks last year in five, I think as we get further away from it,

is going to be a forgotten World Series, similar to the White Sox sweeping the Astros in 05. And I'm not saying it doesn't count, it doesn't matter. I'm saying in terms of how people think about great teams in this era, unless the Rangers go back a couple of times, at least like the ALCS or make another world series appearance, I think they will be lost in history. You go before them, you have the Astros with Dusty Baker winning in 22. That was a team that was good for a very long time, right?

People are going to remember that team because they were consistently there. Atlanta in 2021, consistently good. The Dodgers, even though it was the shortened season, consistently good around that shortened season. Right. So that's why when we, I think at the time we said, does this count? Does this even matter? It was the shortened season. It was a longer playoff. It was an expanded field playoff. It was actually harder to win a world series there because you had to win more goofy series to do it. The Nats in 2019, maybe a slight outlier, just in the sense of like not a team that was always good every single year, but they were good for a good chunk of their time. That was kind of a heater team.

That was a really good team. They just started slow and people like kind of slept on them. Because they were 19 and 31. That's true. I mean, that's a really good team. They had strong from Scherzer, Corbin. It was a really good team. And they won in seven. So like that was a great outcome just in terms of like, hey, we were entertained. Great teams were there. All that was good. The Red Sox won in 18 before that. The Astros won in 17. The Cubs won 16. Like, so you go back, you have to go all the way

back to 2015 when the Royals, who were there in back-to-back years, the Royals lost in seven the year before they won because Madison Bumgarner turned in one of the most absurd postseason performances we've ever seen. So even that one, like some people are probably saying, oh yeah, the Royals won in 15. That was a good Royals team. Yeah, they had a mini dynasty there. They were good for like two, three years. That's not fair. They're not like, yeah. We've not really had a major issue with teams that shouldn't be in the World Series getting there. And the Rangers look to me more like a team that will be at least contending and good for the next few years. They spent a lot of money. And I have a good system.

An interesting story to follow. We'll see. They they kind of seem like the team that we're describing. That's like, let's build an 84 win team and someday we'll be in the World Series. And the other days we'll get a wild card and the other some days we'll sell at the deadline. Right. So do we fear because of the expanded playoffs being relatively new, are we overcorrecting because of something we just saw? Or is this actually going to be OK? I think you need to make the you need to incentivize winning the division again.

I mean, through I mean, we talked about what happened the first round by. Maybe that's not it. Like, maybe there needs to be, I don't know, something else that incentivizes it. Because, you know, to your point, like, do the people who win March Madness, are those not the real champions to you? Because it's always the hottest team. The team that wins the Stanley Cup every year. That's the hottest team.

Like this is how sports work. Otherwise you wouldn't have a World Series and at the end of September, we would just crown a champion, right? Well, they kind of do that in soccer a little bit. Premier League does that. Yeah, Premier League does that. And they've got Champions League beyond that, of course.

You qualify for that and play all over Europe. So it's always going to be a crap shoot, but getting there is hard. Like getting there, you know, 162 games. There are no Cinderella's. You don't just ride a one week hot streak. You know, you have to be good for a prolonged period to get there. It's usually, you know, now that they've added that third wild card, I think it kind of changes what makes a playoff team for better or worse, But in past iterations, it seemed like you had to get there.

And then whoever was the hottest team won. And that's just kind of the way it was lots of times ended up being one of the better teams. Sometimes it didn't. That's kind of how baseball works. So yeah, March of my name is interesting because they really, they really celebrate it. The whole idea of a Cinderella run. They're like, they love that, you know? And so it is interesting. Whereas my instinct in baseball is to kind of denigrate the team that didn't play that well in the regular season and goes on a heater, you know? But what if they survived a bunch of stuff, like a bunch of injuries and things too, right?

Like the 19 nets that were missing Trey Turner and Anthony Rendon. So they started 19 and 31. Did they not deserve to win because they were the wild card team or were they actually the best team and they overcame a bad month right? Like I don't know it does Aaron Judge like do what he's doing negated because he had a poor April? No, it's even more impressive because he's been at a ridiculously torrid pace to make up for such a bad April. So I think it's the way you look at it. My instinct when I see something like this, this like everybody's like within 500s, is say that there's no really good teams. And I could do that. I could be cynical right now and kind of go through, you know, these teams that you've lumped together, which include the pirates, and the Nationals, and the Mets, and the Cubs, and, the Reds and be like is there really like is there really a truly good

team in here, you know, but And so then the next thing would be well this incentivizes not doing anything But we we have two teams at the top and the Yankees and Dodgers That are obviously said I maybe there is an incentive to go to the middle, but we're not doing that. So it's not like we don't have the, if we didn't have the Yankees and Dodgers, it would look different.

If the Yankees and Dodgers were in this group and they weren't spending. And the Orioles, there's other good teams. There's not two good teams. But I'm saying from an expenditure standpoint too, from a like, we invested in this team, we have a lot of money invested. Philly spent a lot of money on this team.

That's true. Philly's, I should include the Philly's. But if we didn't have those teams at the top that invested a lot in order to sort of get above the fray, then it would be worse. But right now, maybe it is ideal. We have some teams that have decided it's best to make a super team and get out above the fray. And then we have the rest of the crew that's like, no, we're gonna fight for one of those wild cards and see what can happen. Do you guys think it's GM driven though? Cause I think it's to the ownership level.

That sets the budgets. Yes, a hundred percent. This is what we're doing, right? So I think if you're the GMs, you're just looking for, okay, we have the same amount of money as 20 teams here, give or take 10, 20 million. And what is the best way we can win? How do we do this in a smart way, right?

Like how do we do what Cleveland's doing, the Orioles are doing, right? Like how do we do this? And that kind of makes up the rest of it. I agree, I don't have a problem with it in June. If we're sitting here in September and like nobody has established themselves, it's a little more of a problem.

I think baseball wanted a playoff race and often we don't get division races anymore, right? I think maybe the AL East will be a true division race. It seems like the NL Central is always a division race. I don't know if that's gonna be the case this year, but they wanted playoff races so they added more of these playoff spots, right? So we're gonna probably come down to the wire, at least on that third playoff spot, but are we gonna have too many playoff races? Probably not, right? Other than ten teams fighting for a third wild card? I would say that one of the first years we had the wild card where they started every game at the

same time on Sunday and there were like six games that mattered. That was thrilling. I went to a sports bar where they had all the baseball games on and I was there with David Appleman from Fangraphs and we were just like, I don't even know where to look. Yeah. That year that the Rays and the Red Sox game was on. I think the Edmund Longoria hit a walk off to put the Rays in. I was at that one covering them and like that you're right. That was wild. That's what the league wants. They don't want people to tune out the last half of September.

They want as many teams as it is possible. Is it good for the game? I don't know. I think it's good if you're a fan, because most fans can go in September and say, hey, our team has a chance. I put, I just, there's a little bit of like, so what if my team like, you know, did some stuff but didn't really do the big stuff and could have added one more free agent but didn't and then, you know, gets the second wild card and just loses in the first round of the wild

card. I'd be like, could there be a system where that that prodded my team into investing a little bit more and being a little bit better as opposed to sort of settling for this. This is why my rapid expansion plan would be good. There'd be more bad teams that the teams that are contending could acquire players from and we could juice everything. No, expansion waters it down. Expansion makes it so much worse.

Does the opposite. It does. It makes it better. It makes everything better. How does expansion make it better? It makes it better because if you have 36 teams instead of 30, if you go all the way to 40, which is what I really want, you have more incentives to try different things with your roster construction. It's not just the small market versus the big market approach, but there's other approaches. Remember the story that Sam Blum wrote about the Angels being like the last chance saloon

for a bunch of late 20s, early 30s players who wouldn't have a job elsewhere? And remember all the times we've talked about these ridiculous relievers that teams are last chance saloon for a bunch of late 20s, early 30s players who wouldn't have a job elsewhere. And remember all the times we've talked about these ridiculous relievers that teams are getting off of waiver claims that are the fourth, fifth or sixth best reliever on a team that throw 99 with a nasty wipeout slider. Move that talent around, create more opportunities, have more tiers. More parity, move more players around. How many tiers of team are there right now?

Three, four? Like there's the Yankee Dodger, Philly, Oriole, whatever. Whoever you want to put in the top group. I don't care. You can put three. Three tiers. The middle. The big middle. And then there's teams like the teams that if we had an eliminator or guillotine, they call it in fantasy, but an eliminator style league where at the halfway point, the last six teams in the league are done for the season, that'd be cool.

Especially if those players were available to go play for other teams, like your season's over, you don't make any more money and your players are done. But I'm not sure that it fixes parody. No, it doesn't fix parody. A lot more, a lot more mediocrity. Yeah. You get a lot more mediocre players because those filler AAA guys now are suddenly in the big leagues.

So you're making the middle more bloated. You're not all of a sudden having more Dodgers. But we're also not expanding the playoffs. We're just adding teams to make playoff spots more scarce. So it's not everybody gets in. OK, so that would help too a little bit, yes. But all baseball wants to do is add back playoff spots.

We have relegation spots in that plan, though. Remember, that's that's where it gets totally out of control. We had a whole plan with with relegation. But that's not happening to the root question. I rarely side with the league and say the league actually has the right idea here. I think this is good. I think it's good to be school just got out. If you are in a place near Major League Baseball, it is much more likely that the team you could go watch

is contending right now than not contending. That seems like a good thing for the sport. And as Britt said, if we get to September and there's a lot of teams that we're looking at with negative run differentials and kind of sub 500 records that could actually get to the playoffs, then we've probably gone a notch too far. But I think let's complain about that if we get there.

Let's enjoy this while it lasts. Let's say, hey, this is kind of cool. There's some fun stories in here. And maybe the Mets will say, let's add. We exceeded expectations. We had the resources. We can spend money. Maybe you get a few surprising buyers as a result of this.

As members of the media, we should actually be rooting for this. Yeah. More readers staying around. Yeah. More storylines, potential storylines, more. It will kill the trade deadline, though. The trade deadline is, I don't know. Britt pronounced it dead years ago, so she's deciding it's over.

It's been dead. Like, it's just until you fix the parody problem and until Steve stops hoarding prospects like like all these like future lottery tickets when most never hit it is dead. Trade deadline is dead. So yes also speaking of the attendance since or how baseball likes this I think I saw on Instagram that this past weekend was the most attended baseball games in person league-wide since 2008. So parody is kind of working for the league. I don't think the league is upset about that. And when you go to a game, is it more fun to go to a game when there's 30,000 people there or when there's 13,000 people there, right? It makes a big difference. I go to A's and Giants games. Well, that's pretty big difference there.

Yeah, the environment at the ballpark is different. There's more of a buzz with more people in it. It goes kind of without saying, but I just don't see a problem with this. I mean, even the Astros, they're 33 and 39 right now. We look at them, we're like, well, yeah, okay. They just, they released Jose Abreu, great call by Britt. I thought they were gonna wait another year on that. She nailed that call.

But they could rally back and still be a team that is a problem. They're desperate to win this year. They just couldn't run that out there anymore. Yeah. So I look at some of the things like that. The Reds, we talked about them with Trevor on Friday. I like them as a team that could still get a lot better.

And as they get healthier, they get Noelby Marte back. They start doing some things that we expect them to do on paper. Suddenly they can make a run. They're the ones with the positive run differential down there. Yeah, they're sitting there with a plus 10, even though they're four below 500, so they probably deserve a little bit better. I wanna see what AJ Prelor does.

Two games below 500, still buying it. Keep going, AJ. Yeah. I'm amused, I just wanna be entertained. This is great. So there's a bunch of teams clustered in there. Yeah, it's an entertainment business. We should enjoy it, we should have some fun with it.

The Cubs, are the Cubs gonna let their crappy bullpen ruin their whole season? No, they're gonna do something about it. They're five below 500 right now. They're not gonna be five below 500 a month from now. Right now there's like three sellers. That's why the deadline is dead. No, it's also, as you guys know,

it's gonna come down to the day or two before, as much as Derek wants to see like May trades. Like it it's going to come down to the day or two before as much as Derek wants to see like May trades Like it is now going to come down to like the 24 hours before because so many teams are going to base it off of like The two weeks stretch before the deadline. They should move back the line, you know, I agree I totally agree August 15th like let's go Your playoff odds will be like will be fluctuate a lot there Your playoff odds will be fluctuate a lot there. Yep. I think that was part of expanding the playoffs that they didn't quite connect to how the

middle part of the season works, is they did not move the deadline back yet. That'd be a good move for future years. Push that deadline back two weeks. You would put it into mid-August. No, not September. Mid-August. You're in or you're out by mid-August. I think that would lead to a little bit more in terms of teams being aggressive,

owners being a little more willing to take on that extra salary or two. It also, since they got rid of the like waiver trade that you used to be able to do in September, you know, and then August 31st was the non-waiver. Yeah, the August trades. So they had that extra because I think they got rid of that. Yeah, it's been gone for a while. So if you'd so by moving into mid August, you're recapturing more time to do stuff.

Yes. So I love it. I'm on the love it side. Where are you officially going to fall on this one? Each of you need to vote on this one. I love the mid June parody. I love I said I like it. I'm on the mid-June parody train. I'm good. Mid-September parody, I'm out. Yeah, I'm obviously the most suspicious of it. I'm going to be tentatively in. I just, you know, I like that caveat of like September. Like the longer this goes on, the more I'm like, are these a bunch of mediocre teams? And it'll resolve itself. It will fix itself. I'm confident. Have some faith. Have a little bit of faith. So last week,

we talked about the players poll on the athletic and there was a star player who was notably absent from the entire thing. I control left it to be sure Fernando Fernando Tatis Jr.'s name did not appear anywhere in the responses that were published from the 2024 Athletic MLB Players poll. Britt, you wrote about Tatis a couple of weeks ago before the vacation, and I think he's living in the sweet spot right now.

As a player who's been suspended for PEDs, who is kind of going through that that interim period of no one's thinking about him right now, but they're forgetting what he did in a lot of ways. And now we're getting closer to the point where Tatis could come back, play really well for another stretch, have a few big moments and kind of quietly move back towards that group of stars that he was once a part of. I actually think we're kind of heading back in that direction. And you wrote a lot about this, like how he's still playing at a high level at the time

you wrote the story. I think his numbers were down a little bit relative to even last season. And he's actually started to heat up a little bit since then. But digging into to tease a little bit, did you get the sense that he's more than OK with things being a little quieter around him right now? Yeah, he is. And it's interesting, guys, the genesis of this story was this spring. I was like at Padres camp and watching him. And I was like, man, it's like this guy fell off a cliff nationally, right? Like you just didn't hear much about him anymore. He did. He was everywhere on the cover

of MLB the show and all over it will be social media. And then he gets, you know, pop for PEDs, he gets suspended. He comes back and he gets booed. And I feel like after like a month or two, people were kind of just forgot about him. Now I do have family live in San Diego. You know, I know you're out that way too. I know he's not a forgotten man at all in San Diego. Well, they love him. They love him. Yeah, he's very loved. But if you go outside of that bubble and Padres people that I talked to agreed, they're like, yeah, you're right. Nationally, he no longer is the, he was the face of baseball. I don't think there's an argument there. He was the face of baseball for a time. He was like the Ellie.

Like, remember he, he like tagged up on an infield fly ball. He like scored from second on a single. Yeah, he stole home. Stole home. He was a nightly reel. Yeah. And people loved it. And so. And he was like,

he had national advertisements you mentioned? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I don't remember those, but. He did, and Adidas dropped him. He had his own Adidas shoe, like special colorway shoe. And the reason he's able to do those cool cleats he's doing this season is because he doesn't have a shoe deal. He can do a Nike shoe, he can do an Adidas.

He did, I think, New Balance or Under Armour for Steph Curry. Like, so it was just so interesting to me because, you're right, Derek, like this guy's lived a full baseball life already and he's 25 years old. We also forget that. Like- He hasn't even hit his peak yet.

Yeah, he could come back, have two, three MVP seasons, and this will just be like a tiny blip. Like, oh, remember when he came back from PED? Like, you know, it's crazy to me. He'll come up again at Hall of Fame time. Yes, it's crazy to me how much he has been through. He changed positions on a platinum gold glove last year. And I don't think that got nearly as much attention,

like to go from shortstop to the outfield and to play it as well as he played it is remarkable. Like he's just a really interesting talent. Who you're right has somehow dropped from everyone's consciousness. And I don't think he minds very much because off the field, as I wrote, he's like, quiet. You have to like strain to hear him. He's very soft spoken. And so I don't think he's kind of this like flashy villain that people maybe had in their heads.

Like he's not a guy who wants to make headlines. He's not a guy who wants to say something that's going to end up being a soundbite at all. I think he goes out of his way to be intentionally boring. He's got like a little bit of the jitter. Yes. And he did say to me like, you know, I want to be in the conversation for like the it guy in baseball because it means I'm playing well.

But he also said like, I don't mind not being in the spotlight. Like he admitted all that stuff kind of took a toll on him a little bit. And I don't think people realize, you know, when you're 22 years old, and all of a sudden you're on the cover of video games, and you have all these deals and endorsements and like, you can do no wrong. Um, how much you really think you're totally infallible, right? And not making any excuses for him. I just think, you know, there is a danger and we still do it in baseball and running these 20, 21, 22 year old guys at the flagpole as the next Griffey or the next Jeter or the next whatever, instead of just kind of letting them play for a little while. And that fall is so, so mighty from the top. Um, and that's what we're dealing with with Tatees. You know,

you don't really know what the next chapter is. Is he going to be a guy who we always say, Oh, so much talent never really hit his ceiling. Or is he going to reestablish himself similar to Acuna who had those down years, not because of PDs, but because of his knee. And then all of a sudden reestablished himself again last year. You know, I don't know. And you can make the case with Acuna that we may sit and say, what happened with his career because we don't know what's going to happen now

coming off of this other injury. So it's really interesting with these young Latin guys, um, how the game perceives them, I think, and kind of what their legacy is going to be in like 10, 20 years. Like what are we talking about when we talk about Fernandez to Dees in 20 years? Yeah, the weirdest thing about being in the middle of a career is that a lot, a lot of times we're Hall of Fame, just, you know, you have to consider the fullness of their career. So the end of their career.

So a lot of times the last 10 years of a career can mean more for your chances of being in the Hall of Fame than the first 10, you know, and we always remember the sort of emergence on the scene and the and you know the the the flash and um yeah if if Akunia's legacy is going to be tarnished by you know injury and if he doesn't come back fully then you know he he might have a similar dip in what people perceive of him and his career. But one thing that's awesome for me as a numbers geek and looking at what Tatis is doing is like I think it's actually I don't think it's crazy to talk about the MVP and him and maybe

this year maybe he's not going to be in the MVP and him and maybe this year, maybe it's he's not going to be in the mix, but I'm looking at like the National League leaders and you know, you've got Mookie Betts who just got hurt and he's going to you're going to have subtract six weeks off of, you know, his full season. So I don't know if it's going to be him. Shohei's, you know, there. Freddie's there. Cattell Marte is having a good season. Bryce Harper's having a good season.

They'll all be in the mix. But right now, by war, Tatisa's in the top 25. And if you look under the hood like his Max Evie, his his raw power is all the way back to where it's been. He's he's hit a lot of all ball harder this year than he's ever hit in his career. And his strikeout rate and swing strike rate are at the best of his career. So he could actually be on the precipice of like a whitening hot streak. The only thing that doesn't line up with his regular career is not pulling the ball as

much. If he just becomes a little bit more aggressive in the next couple of months and like, I don't know, hits like, you know, like 1512 homers between now and the beginning of July, like not crazy. I think he could vault himself into the mix for MVP this year. But then just thinking about the fact he's 25 years old, that gives him two or three more shots at an MVP type career type season. So yeah, I think he's he's absolutely an MVP talent. And he's kind of going under the radar right now.

I mean, I don't think if somebody is talking about, you know, the best the contenders for the MVP and all the MVP crown, they wouldn't include him right now. But I but he could change that in a month. Right. It's close enough this year. It does feel a lot like everyone's chasing Shohei for MVP like every single year that Otani's healthy. Yeah.

That's happening right now. You're right to point out with bets going down though, that's one fewer legit contender that everybody's trying to overcome. There's some surprising names on the NL war leaderboard right now. Profar's ahead of him. Yeah, I mean, even as a team.

He's been at hell of a year. Profar season, it's a great story though because Jerks and Profar, there was a time, people listening to this show probably remember, he was the number one prospect in baseball, hands down. He was supposed to be a superstar, right? A switch hitting shortstop for the Rangers that was gonna come up and do everything.

He was gonna hit for average, he was gonna get to some power, he was gonna have speed, he was gonna come up and do everything. He was gonna hit for average, he was gonna get to some power, he was gonna have speed, he was gonna play great defense, had major shoulder injuries, missed a ton of time, and the time he spent in Texas, the last year he was there,

he had a 20 home or 10 steal season, which was a pretty big deal at the time. I know stolen bases are free now, and things have changed a lot in the time. Since then, he's bounced around a little bit between Oakland and now San Diego. And even this year, he was a free agent deep into the free agent process. Sign a $1 million deal.

Signed super late to go back to San Diego for a $1 million deal. And here he is as like a top 10 player in the NL through the first, almost the first half of the season and putting up the best season of his career. So it's just a good story to see him maybe make a run at being that player that people thought he was going to be. Health has finally been on his side for a few seasons and seems like he's really found his home in San Diego where they were desperate for outfield help too.

So it's just worked out better than anyone could have imagined. Like the script writers should get an A on this one so far. We'll see how it ends, but I love the beginning of the season for Profar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he carried them through some early stretches. He's, it is interesting. I mean, he probably right now, if you have to say who's an all-star on San Diego, it's Profar. He's your, he's your top guy. And I don't think he's ever been to an all-star game either. I think I saw on social media someone like promoting it or promoting him because it really

would mean a lot to him. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's interesting because I actually talked to him in spring training about Adrian Beltre, who obviously is going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in July and working on a bigger thing about that. And you know, he talked about how nobody had a greater impact on the way he mentally sees the game than a guy like Beltray and I even though I think he didn't pan out the way he was supposed to in Texas having guys like that when you're coming up I think can carry you through those lean years and

those tough stretches like watching guys who you know are among the best to do it and have those guys take you under your shoulder. He would take Profar out and buy him clothes and mentor him and pull him aside after it backs and really, I think, changed the trajectory of how Profar approached the game. Because he could have easily been a bust. It took a little bit of mental fortitude to stick with the game and keep doing it. Especially like a one-year, one-million-dollar like, you know, one year, one million dollar deal. He might have had better offers from Japan or something.

Yeah. So a cool story. He pointed out that his son, he's got a six year old son, loves baseball, and he wants to make the All-Star team because it's a big deal for his son. He's like, I never cared about the individual accolades, but it'll mean everything to him. So that's really cool. But a lot of good stuff around jerks and profarred a guy that I think most of us when he signed were like, well, he'll be the stopgap until someone else comes

along and it turns out, no, we were wrong. In the season previews, we gave his job to like three or four different people, some of whom are not on the Padres anymore, like Jacob Marcy and. Yeah. Grand Polly, different guys like that. Yeah. Yeah. Good storyolly, different guys like that. Yeah. Yeah, good story, though, out of San Diego.

In case you missed it, and I know Britt didn't miss this, Snoop Dogg dropped by the Brewers TV booth on Saturday. I didn't know it was coming. I happened to see first pitch that day, and on social, everybody was sharing Brewer's stuff, which almost never happens. I got my usual people I follow that share Brewer's stuff, but it was everybody.

Kastnoop was in town for a concert on Saturday night and he threw out the first pitch, but then he was in the booth for like 22 minutes. I was listening to it again today. It is amazing. And I think it's it's so tempting to have an inning or two in the booth where you get someone to drop by And it goes so well and it's so fun that you know who else could do this. Can we do this every day? Can we just throw anybody out there? And the answer is no you can't throw just anybody out there and I think part of what made it so good

It wouldn't hit those heights, but it would never hit those we could do more of this We could do more stuff like this. There's a there's a trap we could fall into and I'll get to the trap in a minute. But I think part of why it worked so well with Snoop, it's because of who he is. But you could tell he just loves sports like he was just excited about different things happening in the middle of this game between two teams that he didn't have a rooting interest in. He talked about being a big Steelers fan and a big Lakers fan, but otherwise he described himself as a fan of great athletes.

So that's more of just the curiosity of, I'll just watch what's going on today. And there's a point or Ellie Day-LaCruz makes a throw from short. And he just, he reacts in a way of just someone who's just admiring what he's seeing on the field and not just watching a play that happens a handful of times in a typical game. Right. And I think that sort of enthusiasm is what's missing in the booth on a regular basis. We got to hear that. We got to hear that clip. It's so good. I came in with a players coming in there because I'm a player. Get up in there. Oh, he said he can't throw't throw that. He ain't got no arm like that.

No, he doesn't. He does, though. No, he don't. Who is that with that rocket? It's Halley De La Cruz. Oh, Lord. With a howitzer. He got a rocket in his pocket.

Oh, he made it. Are you having fun? I'm having too much. Did you hang? It was amazing throughout. You could probably find 40 snippets from the time he was in there where everybody in the booth, everybody watching was just having a great time. And this is like second and third inning of a Brewers Reds game on a Saturday afternoon. So I do think you can do stuff like this. What I don't want, here's the trap. The trap is that teams are sitting around,

there are media people who are working extremely hard to say, how do we make our broadcast pop? We got 162 games. How do we make these games interesting? Or how do we add something different? I hope you don't get this idea in your head that, oh, wait, let's just have like the same person do it all the time. That would be the trap, right?

Cause it won't be as good if Snoop does this for every single team over the course of the season. Or they put him on the national cast. Yeah, like all of those different things, like you start to lose the quality the more you try to replicate it. And even if it's not just Snoop himself and you just did 162 guests. That's a lot of guests. You're not going to do a guest all the time. I think it's more like once a week. That's a lot to ask. You're not going to do guests all the time. I think it's more like once a week. A lot to ask of that production

crew. Once a week or every other week. And you don't know what you're going to get from a lot of guests on live sports coverage. Some of them are going to be good. Some of them are going to be as engaging. Right.

So my fear would just be that, oh, hey, you know, Michael Rappaport's agent called and he wants to do a spot in all 30 booths. Like, no, I don't I don't need 30 hits from Michael Rapoport trying to promote baseball. Like, I don't know if he even likes baseball.

It doesn't matter. But the point is, I think it's almost the element of surprise for us when we're watching and listening to games, having someone there that we didn't know was going to be there that day. Like, that kind of added something to it as well. If they hyped it up for a few weeks, even that, I feel like like would have been less cool

than just turning the game on one day and being like, hey, what's Snoop doing in the booth with the Brewers today? And what I really liked about Snoop too is that he was kind of like a fair weather fan. Like he was like kind of somebody who didn't know all of it. The more you know, especially the broadcasters know a ton, I think you fall into these sort of like, either you're a little bit cynical about the game or you know especially these the broadcasters know what time i think you fall into the sort of like either your little cynical about the game or you know i mean like you fall into these like you just.

You're not like fresh face being like wow you know and so snow coming in kind of remind you of all the cool athletic things we see some of which we just sort of parses like yes le has a good arm good arm. Yeah, that wasn't actually particularly that close of a play. You know what I mean? Like, whatever. It was a ground out, dude. You know, he thinks so party wants to be like, Snoop, that's a ground out. But it's so great to like have that, you know, capture that energy.

So it's almost better the, not the less that they don't, I don't want them to know nothing about baseball, because then it turns into like them explaining baseball to somebody. But he hit that real sweet spot of somebody who knows how baseball is played, knows about the game, but doesn't know every single player and doesn't know all, you know, every single nuance. So I thought that was great.

And I think that, you know, music might be a good place to start with this. Like I was thinking like, what would Zach Brian be like in, in, in, in there? Like, you know, there's a real affinity from the players to him in terms of his music and like, he's, I mean, she must be aware of baseball and he's always touring. So like, you know, that'd be interesting to see what he's, what his sort of deal would be in the box. And then, yeah. If he's listening, if he's listening August and Philly, I'll be at the concert.

So maybe it's a Philly. I can help facilitate. I mean, Pete Alonso got on stage with him this year. I think, did you see? Yeah. And Brent Rooker, Brent Rooker hit a walk off and then got on stage with him. Yeah. So I think musicians, I also think comedians would inject a little fresh life into it too,

if you had a comedian do a little bit. Because you're right, what it brought besides like the coolness factor, because Snoop Dogg is just like effortlessly cool forever, was like the fact that if you're someone who's not that into baseball and you're watching it because your husband's making you or your wife's making you or whoever, you're kind of like, oh, I want to pay attention. I want to watch Snoop, right? Oh, I want to watch Zach Brian. I want to watch this comedian I like for a few minutes talk about it.

Right? So you're kind of bringing in fair weathered fans. I think we'll go to games because it's fun to sit outside and drink a beer. It's fun to be, but like they won't often watch games. Right? So I think if you're getting that, if you're baseball, you're trying to get that. Like, how do we get people who go to a couple of games? Cause it's a social thing to do, but won't really watch it. It's leaning into the social aspect of baseball that I think is actually sort of unique.

There's something about baseball that is like, you, you, it's, it's going to sound denigrating, but it's not. You don't have to watch every single play. You know, like... Spoiler alert, no one does. Even when you're on a meet, you're like typing and tweeting and... That's why I think this trend in making spaces at the park that are more like bars is actually a good one. It's kind of cool.

It's kind of cool to hang out with people and then be like, Oh, something interesting is happening. And then back to the conversation. Like I got, I got yelled at, at a preseason football game. I was at a preseason football game in the bleachers at Gillette. And I was just trying to talk to my friend. I was like, this game doesn't matter. I'm just trying to talk to my friend. And some guy yelled at us for talking too loudly to each other and not paying attention to the game. And I was like, this game doesn't matter, dude. I can see this unfolding. This is the story tracks. Whereas baseball is more like, so many games, they have new stuff. Yeah. Everyone's just hanging out. It's more of a like, it's a,

like a picnic sport, you know? Like, like that's why I love berms, you know? You can just sit on the berm.. You know you can just have a burn Sit on the berm maybe a ball comes to you, right? You know so maybe you do like again so that's I think how you bring the people in that aren't at the game the fair weather people is you're like snoop or Dr.. Dre can I hear dr.. Dre on the mic? Right Nelly huge baseball fan guy Just named like the people that I loved in the 90s and early 2000s, but, I mean, if you're asking. Well, that's the demographic. That's the demographic. You want more of those

people watching, so. I mean, if you're asking me, like, yeah, that's what I want to hear. Like, you know, I don't know. Like, tell me if, like, Taylor Swift didn't do an inning in the booth that they wouldn't break all kinds of viewership for that Right like you have to embrace that a little bit. This is entertainment. This is social isn't Vanessa Hutchins married to a player Yeah, an angels player Cole Tucker. Yeah Yeah, like again all these people are gonna be whether that might be problematic having her in the booth for an agent That handsome man They should play him more often. I mean, I mean, I know you can do all kinds of stuff with it.

Like, I don't know. I often thought of like, there are some really hilarious player wives. Like, why can't they get the wives in there to roast these guys for like an inning or two? Like there's some hilarious, like relievers wives. This does seem to open up like a whole, the only, yeah, the only, the only sort of caveat I have is that, you know, these aren't like high paying jobs that are easy to do.

No. A lot of these. And we are asking them to do a lot more, but you know, it could potentially lead to higher paying jobs for them and it could lead to more people watching. And we do have a little bit of a crisis of watching right now when it comes to ballies dying, pre and post game shows kind of

having trouble. Even all these networks, all of them are having trouble sort of with viewership. They'll report like good numbers at the end of the year, like we more people watch the streaming than ever. But like. Yeah, but streaming is still growing in the, if you pull back, like streaming was new 10, 15 years ago. So the charts are still going up because people are still switching from old cable into streaming,

even though most of them have been streaming for a few years, right? Like that's misleading. That's the way they always presented that way. I think so. There has to be a crisis of viewership. If you know that Valley's is going belly up, like that's like, there's obviously something there.

Yeah. Things aren't, things aren't all perfect if, uh, if that's the situation. But I, I think the important thing you threw out there that I've forgotten about this because when I go to a game, it really depends like who I'm with. The people I'm with will dictate how focused I am on the game. That's true too. So if I'm there, like if you and I went to a game, we'd probably watch it a certain way. But if we went to a game with like... We would talk nerd stats and talk about players.

I was going to say, I would love to be behind you guys. But then if we end up going with a bunch of our friends who are not as into baseball as we are, we're not going to watch the game the exact same way as if it was just you and I going to a game. You know, when I bring my kids it's some... it can be sometimes more educational, like sort of lower-level analysis, you know. I don't know if I've always appreciated the differences in how I'm consuming baseball given the circumstances. That's unique to me. Most people consume it the way that I consume it with a larger group of people,

where it's a lot more laid back. And I need to think more about that group, because that's the group that shows up at the ballpark, buys a ticket. That's the bigger group. And wants to play more. That's the larger group of people. But that's where the question about the parody came from too.

It's like, well, you want more people to care about the game. So even if that's Major League Baseball's initiative, and we're off to Skeptical. I was bringing my nerd bias to the table, be like, but aren't they all good? Who cares? Yeah. They'll determine when they're good over the next 85 games. Like they will play all those games

and we will learn a lot about them over the course of that, right? So just trying to be more mindful of all that. That's something I've been trying to do the last little while. In light of our whole, you know, British baseball brouhaha, I would say that, you know, this is on the road to more inclusiveness. Yeah, of course.

It's more inclusive of lighter level fans. It's more inclusive of hip hop fans. It's more, you know, it's more inclusive of different ways into the game. Like you just said. Right. It's not a contest to see who can be the most nerdy. That's what I thought it was like 10 plus years ago. It's not. It shouldn't be that it will not be fun if it's that.

It would be a lot more fun going the other direction. I learned that a long time ago. There's giveaways and theme nights because they know fireworks. You have to get people into the park somehow. That not everyone is this diehard. Like you gotta get people in. And if you're gonna have fireworks after the game,

if you're gonna have dogs at the stadium, like those nights sell out. People will pay a lot of money to bring their pups, myself included, to the ballpark. Yep, exactly. My pups could just bark the whole time. Some aspiring good boys are not quite ready to go to the game at the park. And you know, is the dog parent of two of those aspiring good boys.

We're going to head out on our way out the door. A reminder, you can get a subscription to the athletic at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Find Britt on Twitter at Britt underscore Jiroli. Find Eno at EnoSaris. Find me at Derek van Riper. Find the pod at rates in barrels. It's going to do it for us.

We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. Easy to one, two, one, two. That'll do what it do. Thanks for watching!