A Clippers Rebrand, an NFL Mini-Mailbag, and Best MLB Story Lines With Rob Mahoney, Anthony Dabbundo, and Billy Gil

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney to preview the Clippers' season after a tough summer. Then, Bill opens up the mailbag to answer some NFL questions. Finally, Billy Gil and Anthony Dabbundo hop on the pod to talk about their favorite story lines of the MLB season. (0:00) Intro (2:26) Clippers preview with Rob Mahoney (37:48) NFL mailbag (01:04:54) MLB with Billy Gil and Anthony Dabbundo Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Rob Mahoney, Billy Gil, and Anthony Dabbundo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at https://michelobultra.com/SuperiorAccess The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in Four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. We did Rambo, first part, part two. It was me and Kyle Brandt. I had a fantastic time. Sly Stallone's 13th rewatchables, which puts him in third place all time. He's sniffing Cruz. Cruz has a pretty big lead. Cruz is at 18, he's almost at 20 with a lot of good Cruz movies left. But Stallone is, he's battling. He's trying to get to 20 before Cruz. Very fun podcast, so go check it out on Netflix or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up on this episode, at the very top, I'm talking to Rob Mahoney about the Clippers' post Kawhi trade. What do we do now? What do we do with this Clippers team? What happens? That's first.

• 1:23Bill Simmons?

  Second, I have a little mini NFL mailbag. I got a lot of good questions and had some more NFL stuff today. I wanted to chime in on the Chiefs game on Monday night. So we have that. And then last, but not least, Anthony Dabbundo, Billy Gil. We haven't talked baseball in a while. We have less than two weeks left in the season. The playoffs are going to be pretty cool. This has been a pretty bizarre, super fun, crazy baseball season. It might be our last for a while, so we wanted to talk about our favorite things from this season. That is all coming up next. First, a break and our friends from Pearl Jam. The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by FanDuel. The NFL is here and it's the most rewarding season ever on FanDuel with the all-time FanDuel Rewards Club.

• 2:07Bill Simmons?

  Every eligible bet can earn you points. Win or lose, you still get points. The more points, the bigger the rewards you can unlock. Head to FanDuel.com slash BS to start earning with FanDuel Rewards Club. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut.

• 2:59Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're recording on early Tuesday afternoon. Rob Mahoney is here. It's been a while. I just realized you hadn't been on in a while. It's like, just come on, let's talk basketball. Basketball's starting in five weeks somehow.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 3:10Bill Simmons?

  I know. I don't, I just feel like I did all my football prep. We only had week one of a football season. NBA is coming and there's lots of time to talk about where we're going, who's going to win. Jaylen Brown playing with LeBron, Paul George and the Celtics, just a million subplots. I gotta put the Clipper stuff to bed. I know you already talked about it on Ringer NBA Show, but just a couple of things here. My big question for you, as I look at this and I talk to the press Clipper fans and all of us wonder, should we keep paying for tickets for them and all these things? Should they just change their name? Is this it?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  You think that would cleanse whatever's going on with them?

• 3:49Bill Simmons?

  Is it rebrand time? And have we had a rebrand over the years in the NBA that has actually worked? And the answer for that is maybe not? Because we had like the Brooklyn Nets with the New Orleans Pelicans. We had kind of a Charlotte rebrand with the expansion team. Do rebrands work? Is it, is it just a way? Like, it works with products. Can it work with a sports franchise?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  The fact that this is the solution. It's like you're out five firsts, your owner's suspended for a year, half the front office can't even go to the arena. It's like, I guess, what else are you going to do at this point other than shuffle some deck chairs around, hire a graphic designer and call it good?

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And would you call it LA or would you go? I always thought they should be called the Hollywood Knights, even though they're not in Hollywood, and just have like a Knights with a K? Or you could just call it Hollywood Knights with an N? But either way, like, it just would feel completely different. I think they need to do something like that. Now, granted, everybody who would be involved in that decision is suspended for a year.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Bill Simmons?

  So I don't even know if they can do it, but I just wonder, have we run the course? Has 50 years of the Clippers just being a train wreck and coming up with scandals that we didn't even know could exist? Is it just time to start over? They don't even have a retired number, Rob. They've never made the finals. Can you just reset this right now in some way?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no history to protect. And whatever history they had, they just spat in Chris Paul's face to give Bradley Beal his number.

• 5:17Bill Simmons?

  They really did.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  It's, it's just awful. And like, I went through this exercise too, because I was trying to think about with all of these penalties, like, when is the next time we will see a relevant Clippers team? When's the next time they'll make like the second round of the playoffs? And I realized they've done it like six times in 50 years to begin with, so.

• 5:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I guess it's just kind of business as usual anyway, even if they don't have these picks.

• 5:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you think like all the terrible and weird and dumbfounded thing that's happened to them, the reality of them having the best team they've ever had during the COVID year, then getting shut down and then going into the bubble and being the team that most famously, out of all the teams, just quit in the bubble, right? And then the next year, they come back and they finally do make a run and have a real chance to make it. Kawhi gets hurt, but as that's happening, all their fans are wearing COVID masks in the stands or deciding whether they want to pull them down or up. And that's like the best Western Conference Finals memory they have. I, I just don't know what they do. I would vote for a rebrand, but maybe we have to wait a year. The other question is, what do you do with this team?

• 6:22Bill Simmons?

  The Kawhi trade went through, which was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. And I was actually genuinely surprised how much they got for Kawhi. A guy who was in the 2011 draft, who has a pretty checkered injury history, who just kind of orchestrated one of the biggest scandals in the history of the league. And then like, I didn't know, there's people around me, I didn't know what happened. And now he's going to Toronto at age 35 to try to turn them into a contender and they get a swap. They get two unprotected firsts much later. I thought that was kind of a miracle for them, right?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Well, there was all that, I wouldn't even say fuss or hubbub, but like, there were, there were people wondering if there was going to be a renegotiation. If, if everything that happened with the penalties would bring both teams back to the table, I think there's a million reasons why that didn't really happen in that form, why it didn't turn into the Raptors like squeezing the Clippers as hard as they possibly could. But you're right, given who Kawhi has been and the damage he's dealt to now multiple organizations in the process, and the fact that you can't rely on him to be available at basically any time, this was quite a coup under the circumstances.

• 7:28Bill Simmons?

  I couldn't decide who should have backed out and had more leverage, which is one of the reasons, like, I didn't think the trade was going to happen, because I thought you could have made a case for both. Like, the Raptors could have said, well, obviously you can't bring him back.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:45Bill Simmons?

  So for us, this is like a 50% off sale now. And you have nowhere else to trade him. You weren't honest with about what happened with us and we had to postpone it anyway because we didn't feel like, you know, we knew what the suspensions were going to be for him. Turns out there weren't. But how about just a first-rounder and we'll call it a, we'll call it a rap? The Clippers could have been like, fuck him, we're not trading him. Like, your final penance will be, you're just going to have to.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:14Bill Simmons?

  Play out one more year here and then not have a get out of jail free card.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Fail, like flunk Grady Dick's physical and it's like, sorry, our hands are really tied.

• 8:22Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, Kawhi.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Enjoy the year. But if it's only one year, I mean, how, how bad could it really be for him?

• 8:28Bill Simmons?

  How does he get more? He's in complete turmoil and so is the franchise and somehow fetches more than Jaylen Brown did will be one of the enduring questions of the entire 2020s. I can't believe it was two firsts unprotected, much less two firsts and a swap. I don't know if there was a little bit of a tax for having Brandon Ingram in it, who's basically two years, 81 million in a league where they seem, that's kind of the area where nobody is excited to pay that unless you're like an NBA player. But it leaves us with a really weird Clipper team where they have Garland for 42 and 44. They have Ingram for 40 and 41.

• 9:12Bill Simmons?

  And those two guys are basically locked in for the next two years at about 82 million.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to not put that twosome as one of the best two-man combos in the league, much less one of the best 20. I'm going to say that's in the bottom third, if you're just ranking everybody's two-man combos, their best, most expensive players. I mean, I'm, I think we could come up with 20 teams right now that would be better than that, right?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  You don't think that's in the, like, the season ticket renewal brochure, like in the materials, those two front and center?

• 9:43Bill Simmons?

  I don't.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I mean, it's bleak. Honestly, even including Brandon Ingram as a, any important or relevant part of this team, I think is just not realistic. It wasn't realistic even before all these punishments came down. It's like, to me, it's Darius Garland, it's Keaton Wackler, who they just drafted. It's, you know, maybe guys like, you know, Yannick Kona-Niederhauser, when he comes back from injury, like some of the younger prospects on the team, which they don't have very many. And that's kind of it. And then Brandon Ingram, yet again, is at a waste station before he gets flipped to yet another team for a couple of picks. He's just going to go around that particular carousel for a long time. And I just don't think he's a solution of any kind for the Clippers.

• 10:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's, this is the perfect situation for him because really, nobody wanted him for the last couple of years. And then Clutch finally found a team for him and Toronto actually needed a forward who could score like that. I think he probably served their purpose, but.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Bill Simmons?

  There's not a lot of teams that need a guy making 40 million, who's like 22 a game, kind of a surprisingly solid crunch time, end of the game guy, who has a couple spots and he can score, proven scorer. But it seems like all the smarter teams were not that enamored by him.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:56Bill Simmons?

  Including Golden State, who had multiple chances to trade for him and wanted no part of him. Boston didn't want any part of him in a Jaylen thing. So you have Garland and Ingram, you have the three young guys you mentioned, Miller, Sanders and Niederhauser, who I love Niederhauser.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Same.

• 11:11Bill Simmons?

  You, you have the artist formerly known as Bradley Beal wearing Chris Paul's number.

• 11:16Bill Simmons?

  You're rolling the dice with Wagner one way or the other now where it's weird to say this, but I don't know if any other rookie from that class has more pressure on him than Wagner.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 11:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, here's why. Because if he doesn't work out and he feels busty, or he feels bad these first two months, combined with everything else that has happened to this team, I just think that will be, um, just, you talk about it already crestfallen fanbase. He's the one thing they're holding on to, like, well, if he's good and, you know, we'll have cap space and we got some of these Toronto picks, but if he's not good coming out of the gate, now you're just, this is as bleak as it gets.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  See, I see it the other way where we just need to go in accepting that the Clippers are cooked for the foreseeable future. And if that's, if that's true, Keaton Wagner is like found money, right? If he, if he turns out to be a really good player, if he turns out to be the kind of star they can build around, or at least to complement other stars, that's a feather in their cap. I don't know that that cap is accomplishing anything because it's still going to be hard to bring free agents or lure other good players to the Clippers, given their circumstances. But I, I don't know that there's going to be that much pressure on him because it seems so accepted that this is a, a death penalty for the Clippers. And if that is true, how could you possibly hang anything around Keaton Wagner's neck?

• 12:40Bill Simmons?

  Counter. I, for the next seven years, when are they have another chance to get a blue chip guy?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, well, that, that would be depressing if Keaton Wagner disappoints the Clippers and the Pacers, if one ping pong ball had gone differently, could have gotten, you know, a top four pick. Like, the fact that this particular pick and its trajectory managed to disappoint two entirely separate franchises, if it goes that way, would be pretty tragic.

• 13:08Bill Simmons?

  I think he's going to be pretty good, but the, the bigger point to me is if he's not good and now you have no draft picks forever.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  And then on top of it, no free agent's going to really want to go there unless it's one of those situations where, oh, they had the most money and I didn't have a better option, so I'm going to begrudgingly go there.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Sure. Or like Rui Hachimura, I just want to stay in LA and also cash a check, which I think there's a, a not insignificant number of NBA players who do want to do that. So I think they'll be in the mid-level market. It's just, how are they going to get the high-end guys? That's always the question.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, they have $61 million in expirings.

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  Max Struce, Hachimura, um, Derek Jones, Lopez, Grady Dick, Dunn.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:53Bill Simmons?

  Put any sort of combination in them, which leads to my next question for you. Is, are the Clippers, with the move, if we're running the Clippers, you and I, because they don't have a GM, they're, well, I guess they hired an interim person, but no, like, what do you think we should do? My advice would be to take all those expirings and try to take somebody else's big contract and give me more picks to take the contract, right? So you're looking at somebody like Embiid in December, if the Sixers are like, wow, this guy's probably never going to be healthy again. Maybe you're like, well, we're here and, you know, if you want to wet our beak, we're happy to take him for a bunch of expirings.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:34Bill Simmons?

  Paul George for the Celtics, coincidentally, but two years left, 54 and 55. Could you load all the expirings, get Boston to give you a pick or two back, to basically take the extra year of Paul George? And then if you're the Celtics, you've basically rebooted. I don't know why they would do that because they seem like they like Paul George. There's, uh, Sabonis in Sacramento, which would just be two ships passing in the night. Here's the one that's interesting to me though, De'Aaron Fox.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Oof. You think, you think his value is that low?

• 15:07Bill Simmons?

  Starting a four-year, $221 million deal.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Bill Simmons?

  If I'm the Clippers, I'm at least calling the Spurs and being like, yo, we have Garland, we love him, but, um, if you want to talk about flipping four years of Fox for two years of Garland and throwing some of your stuff at us.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Bill Simmons?

  Like, we'll, we're, we're happy to have the conversation.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:30Bill Simmons?

  Right? And then if you're the Spurs, you're like, well, we, we messed up this Fox thing. We didn't realize we were going to get Harper when we, when we did the, you know, the wink, wink with the Fox extension. Um, we were going to have to have money to pay Wemby and Castle and eventually Harper. Um, could Garland be a two-year stopgap now instead of four? And could we use some of our picks and other stuff to, to basically get out of those last two years? And if you're the Clippers, you're like, well, Darren Fox, veteran guy, um, who with Wagner kind of weirdly makes sense as a combo. He's, we've seen both of those guys play off the ball and we could grab some more picks and, I don't know, it was just a thought. This is how bleak it's been because this was the most excited I was for any Clipper idea.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I think if you're the Spurs, you got me on the phone. Like, the Darius Garland, I thought you were just talking Fox for picks, basically, and salary. But if Garland is involved, I think that's something San Antonio could really think about. I mean, really, what the Clippers need to do is figure out, like, what the Raptors were able to do with Ingram, I think is very instructive, right? Like, I did not like it when the Raptors traded for Brandon Ingram in the first place. As a free, as an, like, an expiring contract, gave him that deal, turned him and some, some supplementary pieces in picks into Kawhi now. That's a, a great swing for them in, in the trajectory of their franchise, especially with how impressive they looked in the playoffs. The Clippers kind of have to do both of those things, though. Like, they have a Brandon Ingram,

• 16:57Speaker 01

  clearly, but they need the picks to supplement the deal. Like, they do need to reload the coffers in that way. So it's like, even the deals you can conceptualize are like three moves away before you can even get to the move that actually changes what this team is. Like, they need to get the picks in the door. They need to flip all of that into something more of value, whether they get a De'Aaron Fox or not, and parlay a player like that into another deal down the line. It's just like, the chain of events that now needs to happen for the Clippers to be good is so dizzying that I, I really can't imagine how they dig themselves out of this in any kind of near-term future.

• 17:31Bill Simmons?

  We said that about Brooklyn, right, in 2016, 17 range, when Boston had their picks. There's at least an end of the line where it's like, well, we'll have cap space. At some point, we will have our picks.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And free agency still existed then, so it's at least plausible.

• 17:46Bill Simmons?

  One of the crazy things with this Clippers situation is it's like, they took away five picks, but those five picks haven't even, we're not even on the clock with them yet. Like, I, I don't understand how OKC still has a chance to get more Clipper picks, but they do. This year, they can swap yet again. They can either take their pick or Denver's pick and swap it with whatever happens with the Clippers. Then the Clippers will take that worst pick and could potentially swap it with Toronto. But somehow, this OKC deal is still going. I mean, I, I thought we were done already and we're not. And that leads me to my next question for you is, you can't even really tank because you don't have your pick.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:28Bill Simmons?

  And I'm not sure why you would want to tank. But if you wanted a spite tank, which we've never seen before.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Who is being spited, though?

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  The Clippers, if they got into the bottom three.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  It's only two ping pong balls instead of three. See, you could basically say, well, what do we care? We don't have it anyway. Like, let's, like, really tank. We'll play all our young guys. We'll do, we'll, we'll try to trade, basically just Wagner. We'll try to dump the rest of the contracts we have and just kind of bottom out. Um, would be another, like, meeting I would have if I was running the Clippers. Like, could, our, our fanbase hates us. We have their money for this year anyway. Do we just completely bottom out so we don't get screwed by this OKC pick? Because the worst-case scenario is you end up like seventh.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:15Bill Simmons?

  And now you're turning over potentially the number one pick in next year's draft as the final piece of this.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  But like, that, that cost has sunk. Like, the ship has sailed. You are not getting that pick back. It's out of your hands at this point. Honestly, I'm not even sure you need to have that meeting because, sitting here today, going into the season, how many Western Conference teams are we sure are worse than the Clippers? I would say the Kings definitively.

• 19:39Bill Simmons?

  Sacramento.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Other than them, are, are we sure any other team is worse than this Clippers team?

• 19:44Bill Simmons?

  No. I would have them, what about in the East?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I mean, Brooklyn, probably, but even then, like, if you told me they went on a random spirited Julius Randall run, that seems more likely than the Clippers putting anything together.

• 20:01Bill Simmons?

  All right. So these are two separate questions. One is the long-term piece. But the other is the, the short-term piece of just who has a worse roster than them. So you would say Brooklyn and Milwaukee, I think in the East would be the candidates. And I'm just looking at the Fanduel odds. The three worst odds are Sacramento, Memphis, and then the Clippers. And obviously, you'd much rather be Memphis. You'd much rather be New Orleans. So they're also like, not, not a ton of death, depth.

• 20:34Bill Simmons?

  Death was a Freudian slip.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Too much death, frankly.

• 20:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. The Kings, at least, like, they have Levine on and expiring.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Bill Simmons?

  Which, he might actually play really well this year because he's playing for one more deal. It seems like Sabonis wants to get out of there, but. And if you're telling me, what, what team would I rather be this year from a talent standpoint? I think I'd rather be the Kings.

• 21:00Bill Simmons?

  Like, this Clippers thing, I'm, I'm putting all my eggs in the Wogler basket. Like, and this is somebody that was not even, I don't think, a top 50 prospect two years ago, who had a meteoric rise and I like him, I'd have high hopes for his NBA future, but I don't know what it's gonna look like this year. He's got this whole ball dominant hesitation, you know, that, kind of the ball's on a string. He's trying to beat people. He's shooting threes. Like, that's gonna be really hard to do in the NBA consistently night after night. So, and plus you're playing with Garland and sharing the ball with him.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Everything you say is true, but like, the alternative is Deandre Hunter is your starting small forward? Like, Demontas Sabonis, warts and all, is the best player on your team with a bullet? I mean, Darius Aikuff, I know you're a fan, the rookie point guard experience at minimum.

• 21:50Bill Simmons?

  He's another one who could be busted.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Comes with its ups and downs.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll see how all that goes, but I just, I'm not signing up for Sacramento's roster against, frankly, anybody's except maybe Milwaukee, which is just a collection of random guys who don't really fit together at all with no real organizational principle.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Those, to me, are the two worst roster situations in the league, depending on how you want to slice it.

• 22:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm not, like, doing backflips about Brooklyn either. But at least, like, they have guys who, in this new format, where you don't want to be in the bottom three, they have some stat guys.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:23Bill Simmons?

  Right? Randall will go get some stats at least. He'll put up 23 and 10.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  And Ja'Kor and Brown, I think, make sense together. Like, that's, that's a backcourt I think a, a fanbase should rightly be really excited about.

• 22:35Bill Simmons?

  So you, it sounds like you think Sacramento is gonna be the worst team in the league.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  I think, I think Milwaukee will probably be the worst team in the league, but Sacramento in the West feels, feels obvious to me.

• 22:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm looking at, so Fanduel, you do the 20-plus win odds.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  Sacramento is minus 140 if you want to bet on them to have 20-plus wins. Brooklyn's minus 320, Milwaukee's minus 475, and New Orleans is minus 900. Clippers are 11-1. So Fanduel agrees with you. Now, Memphis, I actually think could be a little bit better than, you know, the, the typical bad young team, because they have a bunch of gamers and they're gonna have a specific identity. That Milwaukee team, that Milwaukee teams, I don't know what to make of that team. It's just, it's, it's like a randomized NBA 2K team that's just like, hey, they're gonna have a bunch of centers and a bunch of shooters and.

• 23:34Bill Simmons?

  Don't know what to make of it. What, even though we're five weeks away, what are you the most excited about this season?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I think it's gotta be, I think it's gotta be Philly. Like, every time I look at that, I mean, every time I'm reminded of just everybody they have on that team, like, I, I have to see it. I have to see it in person. I need to see it as often as possible. I don't know if it's gonna work. I don't know if Joel is ever gonna be healthy, but the, the star power, the supporting, like, players they picked up, I mean, is that not your number one? Where are you starting?

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  I definitely, number one from, uh,

• 24:06Bill Simmons?

  I need to see this a few times just to, like, let this sink into my brain, what this is, right? I think out of all the teams that feel different than last year, that's the number one. I just don't really fully understand how this is gonna work. I'm fascinated by it. The upside is so high. The floor is even fairly high, just because with their two injured, their, Embiid is an injured guy and LeBron is an old guy. Even if those guys aren't playing a lot, you still have those other three guys that can play big minutes. I think the Celtics piece is gonna be interesting, too, because.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Well, you would.

• 24:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, but I'm saying from a, usually they've been more of a feel-good team or the up-and-coming team, but this is a city that really didn't like that trade. And depending on how those first two, three weeks go, I think, could be a team to watch. Now, they could come out and be great and everybody could like them and, you know, Paul George could fit in and, but if they, if they start out like 7 and 8, and Paul George looks old, I, the fans are pretty gamy about this trade still. And they, you know, Paul George did a press conference, he's, he's there, and I think he's saying all the right things, but. It's, it's the first really unpopular move of the, of the Stevens era.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Well, even if they're, let's say they come out and they're really good. Do you think any of the scar tissue from last season will pop up and be like, you know, this is a really good regular season, this is a nice run, but is this real? Is, is that gonna be hanging over them all year, do you think?

• 25:38Bill Simmons?

  I think that. I think just monitoring Tatum, what we're getting out of him for a full year, when he didn't even make it through the Sixers series. And then the thing Stevens said about,

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  when he, he, he said it in so many words. If you'd like decoded it, you knew what he was saying. He was like, we ran our course with those two guys.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:59Bill Simmons?

  Like, we, we weren't, we didn't feel like we were in the title mix anymore, paying those two guys $130 million a year to play basketball. It wasn't gonna work anymore. So it's a pretty big bet. I've announced a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if you saw, I talked myself into it. Took, took over 50 days.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  It's impressive.

• 26:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It was, you know, there was some therapy. There were some hypnotic tapes at night to listen to, but.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. How did we not turn, I mean, you kind of did turn it into content, but how did we not just, like, lock you in a padded room for 72 hours until you came out ready to believe in the Celtics?

• 26:32Bill Simmons?

  It sounds like an Apple TV series. It's like the new Apple TV drama from Vince Gilligan. So Philly in the East.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:40Bill Simmons?

  Who's your team in the West, then, that you can't wait for?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Oh, it's gotta be Minnesota. Yeah. I'm ready. LaMelo and Ant? I mean, sign me the fuck up for that. That sounds, that sounds like exactly what I am tuning in for and the process of who they're gonna be in the regular season, how they figure out incorporating Jonathan Kaminga, being a totally different style of team, making all these pieces fit together. You know, figuring out how they're gonna replace Dante DiVincenzo is probably gonna be out for the year.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Chris Finch has done this kind of thing many times of like, here's, here's a new formula, go figure it out, since he's been with the Wolves, but to me, this is easily the most exciting version of that.

• 27:17Bill Simmons?

  It does feel Minnesota and Philly have one thing in common, where you're gonna catch them on the right night, where they look incredible.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:23Bill Simmons?

  You know, it'd be like game 17, whatever location, and like, oh my God. Minnesota made 29 threes last night. That'd be a record.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  They had an interesting summer, though, because it just felt like they were in on everybody. They were like the guy in your fantasy draft that is just bidding on every guy, and you're like, what's your plan? You just, you've gone, you've gone in the 20s on 15 straight guys. Like, did you come in with any sort of plan? I really didn't. Minnesota was like that, too. It's like, Kaminga's available? Whoever? Like, Jaylen Brown's available? LeBron's available? Is Kevin Durant available? They, they just were flying around, trying to make anything happen. And as, on top of it, going through an ownership change that they kept pretty secret.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  But isn't, isn't that what a team in their position should do? Like, if you kind of ran into the wall and you have one of the most exciting stars in the league and a, and a supporting cast that also worked, but also kind of ran its course? And the Julius thing clearly was over. Nas Reed was valuable to them, but they, I can understand why they wanted to diversify their roster a little bit, thin out the bigs. That, that leads you to chase every star on the market. It's honestly kind of what we want. Teams of Minnesota's market size, this is what we want them to do, is to chase after things when they get real.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  I just would have been, if we're in that meeting, and it's getting close, and we're starting to really talk about this, at some point, you have to look around and go, why does Charlotte want to give this guy up?

• 28:52Bill Simmons?

  Under contract, pretty fair contract for somebody that is a top 30 guy.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:57Bill Simmons?

  Beloved by the fanbase.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  Kind of the, the best driver for whatever engine they had for this three-point, kind of up and down team. Perfect for that. Why do they want to trade him?

• 29:11Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't know if I would have gotten past that.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I, I understand it as a sticking point. And frankly, look, I'm a LaMelo believer, like who he is as a playmaker, very powerful to me. I, I see the vision, uh, if you'll pardon the pun. For me, it's the, a, like, the health. It's like the ankles, it's the injuries. Like, that's the part that freaks me out more than can LaMelo Ball be a winning player? Cause we've seen him have a transformative effect, not just last season, but basically every season he's played on Charlotte's offense. And so that feels real. That, that is a tangible thing. You can see it in games. You can see it if you want to dig into the data. I, I think he can be a serious basketball player in a slightly different context. I'm eager to see if this group can kind of nudge him in that direction, but I just, I just need him to stay healthy. Like that, that is my biggest concern for the Wolves for sure.

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, I mean, that is, that's the concern.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Well, but there's a whole different school that's just like skeptical of him as a basketball talent. And I'm, I'm saying like, that's not where I'm coming from.

• 30:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  You can have both, I guess.

• 30:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm in both. I actually, I'm doing a mailbag in the next segment and I got this email from Brian from the DMV, who I've been talking a lot for football about Justin Herbert and Jordan Love are like the nerd king, the king of the nerds, basically for QBs. All their advanced stuff is great. All the NFL nerds are like, even when they have a bad game, they're, no, no, it was actually a good game. And the question from Brian was, who's the NBA version of this? And he said, my nominee is LaMelo Ball. Incredible advanced stats, has never made the playoffs or contributed to winning. The nerd community will tell you none of that matters, despite the fact that it's parentheses, checks notes, about to be year seven for him. So do you think, do you think LaMelo is the nerd king of the NBA right now with the NBA nerds?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I don't think you could be the nerd king if you're also very popular with like 12 and 13 year olds.

• 30:58Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's, that's two separate things.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  But that can't be the split demographic. That doesn't make sense. I would say the nerd king.

• 31:05Bill Simmons?

  Does LaMelo Ball make sense?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Well, often not. But to me, the nerd king is much more like a Derrick White type than it is a LaMelo Ball type.

• 31:13Bill Simmons?

  The difference is Derrick White has actually won a title doing nerd stuff, right?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  So I was, I was wondering, is it, if it's not LaMelo, cause he might be in this separate camp.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:24Bill Simmons?

  Could Trey Murphy be our nerd king?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Oh, I like that one. Yeah.

• 31:28Bill Simmons?

  It's like incredible stats, just put him in anywhere, he'd be additive. It's like, we've never seen him in a winning situation ever. Why are we so sure?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Well, the only thing nerds love more than valuing undervalued players is trying to find them new teams via the trade machine. And like Trey Murphy's been living in it for five years straight. So he, he feels like a, if not a king, then certainly a prince of the nerds.

• 31:49Bill Simmons?

  I do think the nerds, like, I think Zach voted for, not to call Zach a nerd, but he dabbles in the nerd stats. This is a nerd stat thing, not a nerd thing. But, um, but I think he voted for LaMelo third team all NBA, or seriously thought about it because of his impact, just for the 28 minutes, whereas I, I'm a profound durability guy.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Bill Simmons?

  I just feel like, yeah, I, I think if you actually had to rely on that dude night after night for 35 minutes, like some of these other dudes, um, I don't know if you could do it, but we'll see.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  That, that to me is why it's like, what LaMelo does well is obvious. Like, he's a, he's a highlight machine. He's not, I think to me, if you're making the nerd king case, it's always like, oh, the secret value of this player is this thing that you're not seeing in the box score, or this thing you're not seeing when you watch. Like, you know, your Shane Battier's, your Derrick Whites, like, LaMelo is like front and center, highlight, neon, like, everything he does is so blatant that I, I don't think he could take that title.

• 32:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause in NFL, the QBs are in your face every play, cause they're the face of the team. So that's why LaMelo, like a point guard who has the ball over the time is probably a good analogy. Um, before we go, you've been doing a lot of prestige TV episodes. What's the show of the year so far? We're through mid-September. We have a bunch of good stuff going. Is it, is it Widows, whatever?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Widows, what? After crushing the Emmys, you can't even get the full title out?

• 33:15Bill Simmons?

  Widow, Widow something?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Widows Bay. Widows Bay has to be the show, has to be the show of the year. Incredibly decorated this week, but also just the best show top to bottom. I think the, the best formulated, the best written, incredible performances. I think, you know, you could argue Pluribus, or you know, the pit still is in that running for me. Um, there's, there's been a lot of really good TV this year, but Widows Bay feels the most cohesive.

• 33:39Bill Simmons?

  I didn't tell you, I was keeping it a secret from you. Uh, I banged out Furious, really liked it.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:44Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was like an A minus. I, it really was the first one in a while. I was like, oh, I gotta watch the next one. I want to see what happens. Um, had a really good time with it. I thought it was, uh, it was the, there's so many of these that try to do what that show did. And you're like, all right, I guess I'll watch another episode, but heart's done in it. That I thought was legitimately good. Well done.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  It's a little heatish. It's a little like banking into Silence of the Lambs by the end of the first season. Like, we're getting into some really exciting places. Furious is very good, if you haven't checked that out.

• 34:13Bill Simmons?

  And Emmy Rossum, basically like, oh, Claire Danes is the queen of the fucked up female lead character who has to solve crimes or some sort of issue?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:22Bill Simmons?

  Um, watch this. Watch what I'm about to do here.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Market corrected, do you think? Emmy Rossum's coming for the crown?

• 34:28Bill Simmons?

  She did some things that I don't even know Claire Danes knew were possible.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  Some faces, um, some of the choices that character made, uh, it was all from the Claire Danes playbook. It was funny, cause my daughter watched, uh, she saw The Beast in Me before she started rerunning Homeland. She'd never seen Homeland. And they only knew Claire Danes from the other show and then is watching Homeland. And she's like, dad, is this just what Claire Danes does? She plays completely crazy characters that make bad choices? And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's actually what she does.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Often so. But until Emmy Rossum does a full-on like whale cry, then I, I don't know if we can give her that particular lane just yet.

• 35:08Bill Simmons?

  What a battle. They're definitely head to head in the finals. Emmy Rossum, cause she did this in Shameless too. I feel like the whole time she's felt like Claire Danes gets all the publicity for this, but I'm right here and here I come. Um, what are you looking forward to this fall? Anything?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Well, we got Slow Horses coming up. Very excited about Slow Horses. And then it's like a very, I don't know, costume drama kind of fall, like East of Eden, into Gilded Age. Like, I guess, I guess we'll kind of wait and see what hits, but anytime Slow Horses comes back on the calendar, I'm psyched for it. Are you up on that?

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Not up on that one.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 35:40Bill Simmons?

  Should I be?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yes. Gary Oldman led.

• 35:44Bill Simmons?

  There's too much sports.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Fail spy comedy drama. I think you would love it.

• 35:49Bill Simmons?

  There's too much sports. The sports, especially this summer with the World Cup, baseball was really good.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:54Bill Simmons?

  Football's now back. Basketball feels like it's around the corner. All right, Slow Horses. You're like the 19th person to tell me about that one. Rob Maloney, great to see you. You can, you can, uh, watch and listen to Rob on Ringer NBA, plus, uh, plus prestige with Joanna, who you share custody with, with, with Mallory. I think that's really nice how you guys arrange that.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  It's an amicable situation. I think, I think we've made it work.

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You get every other weekend, you get her and Wednesdays and some Fridays. Uh, all right, Rob, great to see you. Coming back with a mailbag right after this.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Thanks, Bill.

• 36:26Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Welcome to your most rewarding season ever, and it's only happening on FanDuel. How rewarding are we talking? More rewarding than an 18-point comeback, or maybe even an offensive lineman catching a touchdown? Well, this NFL season, that feeling will not stop on the field. Look out for the all-new FanDuel Rewards Club. You heard me. Exclusive offers, surprises, much more. Every week, check the FanDuel app to see what's waiting for you. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Download the app to get started. FanDuel, play your game. 21-plus select states or 18-plus DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com.

• 37:10Bill Simmons?

  Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, or call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends. See who's the fastest, or who can putt better in the backyard, or who can get to somebody's else's house or the better route, whatever it is. Even better, if you put some Michelob Ultra on the line, or a refreshing way to up the stakes, like me and House are going to pick games against each other on Thursday. It's the NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of, uh, Michelob Ultra six-packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe

• 37:50Bill Simmons?

  Michelob Ultra will make a special BS podcast or Ringer six-packs. And then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for. Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at michelobultra.com/superioraccess. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 38:21Bill Simmons?

  All right. So much happened the last few days with football. I had to do a little mini mailbag for the NFL, um, before we get to the last part of this podcast, which is a, a good old fashioned baseball discussion. Um, my pyramid of teams, after one week, I won't, I won't read you all the teams, but I have Seattle at the top with Baltimore and Buffalo underneath them, the Niners, Rams, and Houston. And I think that's the top six right now, and then we can argue about it. Uh, bottom four, Atlanta, Tennessee, Cleveland, and Miami last. And I think it's a really interesting argument between Cleveland and Miami, both of whom looked atrocious last week. But I actually think there's

• 39:02Bill Simmons?

  slightly more upside with Cleveland because of some of their skill players. I didn't see any upside from Miami. Their defense is terrible. Um, it doesn't look like they're going to be able to run the ball. And it doesn't look like they're going to be throw, be able to throw the ball. So, uh, I have Miami 32nd. Happily, will switch after, uh, week two if Cleveland looks as bad as they did in week one. Uh, some mailbag emails. You can email at [email protected]. This first one, the reason I bring this up is I got a Browns email from Kev Dogg in Cleveland, who writes, as a Cleveland fan, the Browns' futility has always fascinated me. Fascinated is an interesting word. The Browns

• 39:43Bill Simmons?

  Stadium, which is currently Huntington Bank Field, if you're scoring at home, that stadium opened in 1999, and it has never hosted a Browns playoff game. Safe to say it won't this year or next year. And here's the thing, that stadium is set to close after the 2028 season, when the new Huntington Bank Field opens.

• 40:06Bill Simmons?

  So there's a chance, I'm interjecting here, there's a chance that stadium will have come and gone for almost three decades without ever having a home playoff game. Kev Dogg asks, what's more unbelievable, that Cleveland hasn't hosted an NFL playoff game since 1994, or that Cleveland built a pro football stadium that served a useful three decade life without ever hosting a playoff game in it? I think the latter. Although I guess the Cleveland not hosting a playoff game of any kind since 1994, but I think having a stadium, building it, and then never having a single great moment in it is like impossible.

• 40:50Bill Simmons?

  Even with the Patriots, when we were about to knock down the stadium, which was ultimately Sullivan Stadium, Schaefer Stadium, whatever you want to call it, it had never had a great moment. And then the last game ever in that stadium was the snow game, which is what the Patriots fans call it, the asshole NFL fans call it the tuck roll game. But when they beat the Raiders in the blizzard, and that turned out to be one of the most memorable non-Super Bowl games in the history of the league. And that was the last game in that stadium. So Cleveland, I guess, has a couple of years here to have their version of the snow game, and my money would be against it. Kev Dogg also, he has a PS. If Deshaun Watson makes it to Week 3, you're going to see something unlike anything in

• 41:35Bill Simmons?

  sports. The entire home stadium will boo the starting quarterback mercilessly from player introductions until the game's over. Maybe that's your playoff game. Deshaun's last start in Week 3. I can't imagine they'll start him, but holy shit. If they do, if they're 0-2, and they're like, hey, guys, here's Deshaun Watson, good luck. Joe from Denver said, last year Raiders-Patriots gave us the classic liar liar Week 1 game. Raiders won, stunk the rest of the year, Patriots dramatically improved. Which Week 1 game was the liar liar game? I think we have three candidates, and we talked about two of them on the Sunday Pod with Sal. Cincinnati 33, Tampa Bay 27, where Tampa just was incredibly sloppy with the ball to the

• 42:20Bill Simmons?

  point that Sal compared Baker Mayfield to the Savannah Bananas. That's one. Everybody's pretty high on Cincinnati, but we'll see. I mean, Cincinnati, definitely, the defense did look better. They won a game where Chase had two catches, but I have my eye on that because I think Tampa's better than that game and Cincinnati's worse, but we'll see. Cards-Chargers would be the obvious pick here because the Chargers were terrible and then did the whole, we didn't have a preseason, maybe that was a mistake, Harbaugh, maybe we should have gotten our guys some reps. You think? And the Cards looked great, but I gotta say, Raiders-Pats was just a terrible game where the Pats gave up a couple key third down passes, they couldn't get anything going on

• 43:04Bill Simmons?

  offense, and it was just kind of an ugly game. But you didn't leave the game like super impressed by the Raiders. The Cards were like putting on drive after drive on the Chargers. I think they must have had 6, 10, 11 play drives, they were getting third downs, they kind of did whatever they wanted. I don't, I think they're a little more for real. I'm trying not to do the overreaction and be like, the Cards are good, but offensively, that team was as accomplished as just about anybody I watched on Sunday. I think the liar liar game might be Chiefs-Broncos for a couple of reasons. One is the Broncos were another team that afterwards, they were like, man, maybe we should have cared about the preseason.

• 43:49Bill Simmons?

  This is something my buddy Gus Ramsey, diehard Broncos fan, who I wish I had talked to before the game, was saying that they have a habit of doing this with Peyton, where the Week 1, they always looked terrible, apparently. So, kind of wish I had known that. That was one thing. KC, you know, completely reinvented themselves with Walker, who was awesome. They're home, it's a Monday night, expectations weren't as high as they normally were for the Chiefs, we didn't know what we were going to get from Mahomes. And they had two touchdowns in this game. It's gonna sound like sour grapes. It's, I'll be honest, it's a wee bit sour, only because I lost my Broncos tease, but there was holding on the Mahomes touchdown.

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  There was a great video of Kelsey just bear hugging somebody as Mahomes ran in, and it gets called every time, it's the Chiefs, they don't get it. When Kelsey had that long lumbering run near the end, and Rashid Rice is basically just bear hugging, mauling somebody for 30 yards. I haven't seen a holding penalty for that long in my entire life. He's holding the guy for so long that I think the refs just forgot about the holding and just kept running. Those two penalties, plus Bo Nix was just awful, and it just feels like, are the Chiefs really going to do that every week? Like, the amount of time, Walker had, I think, 26 touches. I looked at his touches in his career, played four years in Seattle, he's never had more than 250 touches for them.

• 45:16Bill Simmons?

  And I just wonder, like, is that one of those, they're throwing us off the scent a little, and Denver can't be worse, and maybe we shouldn't get too over the top excited about that one? Now, the counter would be, the Chiefs are back. And I don't know what to think, but that would be my number one suspect for the liar liar game. I'm not sure the Chiefs are as good as they looked in that game, and I don't think Denver is going to have a game where they set the record for most missed tackles, or whatever the hell. Their defense was abominable. Ian from Nashville wanted Conspiracy Bill's take on something, so I brought him in. He said, Mahomes, this was after the Chiefs game against the Broncos, Mahomes running in the first TD and looking completely normal eight months after tearing both his ACL and

• 46:01Bill Simmons?

  LCL, smells fishy. Do you think he faked the December injury when the playoffs were out of reach? So down the line, people look at his legacy and think of it as the season Mahomes hurt his knee, instead of the fact that they were 6-8 heading into that game. Even Conspiracy Bill can't get behind this. I will say, I didn't think Mahomes was good in that game. I thought a couple of the scrambles were good, but his, I thought he missed guys the whole game, and then I looked up the stats after, I think 90% of his passing yards were yards after catch. So I still have some questions with Mahomes. We'll see how he does, and obviously, he's going to get better as the year went along. But I did not leave that game thinking, holy shit, Patrick Mahomes is back. And if you did, you're crazy.

• 46:45Bill Simmons?

  Jim from South Jersey was excited that we talked about the Taysom Hill Award for Most Dropped Picked Up Player in Fantasy on Sunday's pod. He predicts Devon Singletary will finally take the award home. He's sure to be added by millions after tearing apart Sal's dumb team's defense last week. He'll be dropped by millions after he fumbles away his chances coming weeks, and then picked up again when Scatabo eventually gets hurt, dropped again when he has his own mid-year injury. Water with lemon for all, he says. So Singletary, he thinks, will be the number one. I am voting for Dontavion Wicks on the Eagles, who I think a lot of people are going to pick up this week. I think he'll be dropped. I think then he'll have another 5 for 90, he'll get picked up again, and I just think that's how it's going to go for him.

• 47:28Bill Simmons?

  He's just going to be on and off the waiver wire. My backup choice would be somebody named Caleb Douglas on the Miami Dolphins, a receiver who was 5 for 94 last week when we'll get picked up. I just think in general, the Miami receivers are going to get dropped left and right, but I think it's going to be Wicks or Singletary as most added drop guy this year. John from Portland, Oregon asks, if Drake May is the next Tony Romo, a supremely talented successor to QB royalty, but also supremely boneheaded? That was hurtful. Tony Romo, by the way, zero NFC title games, and finished third in the MVP once in 2014.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  Drake May made a Super Bowl last year, just pointing that out, his second season ever. There are some questions that will hopefully be answered by the New England Patriots this week against the Steelers. Speaking of the Steelers, Marcus Reed in Edmonton said, I'm a longtime Steelers fan who enjoyed your Tomlin discussion on Sunday. I was talking about how much I loved how they used Tomlin at halftime. I've watched nearly every Tomlin Tuesday press conference over the years. Tomlin's greatest strength was his ability to communicate. It's not surprising to see NBC figure this out immediately and use him like Jameer Gibbs. I'm going to interject here. It was super surprising because NBC has always botched pregame shows and halftime shows, and had too many people, and they would cut to the field with Jack Collinsworth and Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison.

• 48:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't think any network over the last 20 years has made me go, what the fuck are they doing, more than NBC? So I actually think it was surprising they figured it out and used him like Jameer Gibbs. Anyway, Marcus says, he is getting a lot of touches, pregame interviews, pregame show, halftime. How long until he's doing Terry McCall, his ref reviews, sideline reporting, maybe even interviewing the coaches between the halves? I like this. Let's use him like Jameer Gibbs. It's like Dan Campbell trying to save his job with Jameer Gibbs. He's Tomlin for everything. I would have him come into the booth for the second quarters. I thought he was awesome. I think he's going to get better as the year went along, and this is like the first real kick-ass studio guy we've had in a long, long time. And it's pretty rare.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  Like, even in the NBA, I remember Pat Riley, when he was between Lakers and Knicks, and he did NBC way, way back when, and he was incredible compared to what we had dealt with with studio shows. And it was like, holy shit, like, he's actually staying stuff, he has, there's weight behind it. Felt the same way about Tomlin, so hopefully he keeps it going. Ben writes in, I've always loved your theory that sports cities are more in sync than we think. As a diehard Boston fan living in New York, I'm now terrified that I'm watching it happen in real time. Uh-oh. The Knicks finally overcame their demons and won a title, and ever since, it feels like the entire city's sports karma has flipped. Oh, no.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  The Jets and Giants are somehow both 1-0 for the first time since 2009. The Yankees are favored in the AL, and the Dodgers seem more beatable than they have in years. My worst nightmare, a Yankees World Series win. Regardless, I'm hating every second of it, so using your sports city theory, what needs to happen to kill the New York vibe? What's the loss that breaks the spell before this gets completely out of hand? Best regards, Ben.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  Ben, I think you and I both need to sit down and relax and have some settle down juice, but you did put the fear out of me here. I would hate to see some sort of New York shift. And if you look at the Giants winning the game, we didn't think they were going to win in week one, and their schedule is actually pretty easy the next couple of weeks. And if they can keep Dart and Scatabo healthy, I'm actually worried about them winning the division. Jets will be 7 and 10 or 8, 9. Yankees are favored, we're talking about baseball later, but the Yankees are almost favored to win the AL. I think the only reason they're not favored is because they have this, the Red Sox in a best 2 of 3. Maybe the Red Sox ironically will be the one that can end this. All they have to do is go to Yankee

• 51:31Bill Simmons?

  Stadium and win 2 of 3 games with 3 really good starting pitchers. So it's on their shoulders. But Ben, you put the fear out of me with all this. Terry in New Jersey said, "I know you think John Harbaugh is overrated, but as a Giants fan, I was thrilled with the performance against the Cowboys, and I think you should have been. I spent all Monday talking about how disciplined they were, how they didn't blow the lead, and how Dart didn't lower his head to take on linebackers." All true. "Has there ever been a lower bar for a head coach to clear than, hey, we didn't collapse in the 4th quarter? Or, hey, we didn't make dumb plays that got our quarterback killed?" That is from Terry

• 52:11Bill Simmons?

  in New Jersey, and honestly, it's all true. I felt the same way last year with Vrabel. And Vrabel was great, obviously, and won Coach of the Year. I'm talking last year, regular season, made the Super Bowl. Maybe it didn't go great after the season. But he followed Jared Mayo, and I was thinking about that, and I Googled Jared Mayo to see what NFL team he was on. And he's not coaching in the NFL anymore. He works for a hedge fund. So Mike Vrabel, he followed a guy who was the Patriots coach for 1 year, and then immediately left football, even though he's like 41 years old. I don't know if you're ever going to

• 52:54Bill Simmons?

  get a wider disparity of former coach, new coach than that. And also, I don't know how bad Dayball was, even though the energy wasn't great. But Harbaugh, if he can do half of that, you know, he came in, he gave them a real identity. They're just big, they're powerful, they're going to run the ball, they're going to not be idiots, and maybe it'll work. I might have been wrong about the Giants. Mike F. says, "What the hell were Tom Cruise and Taylor Swift talking about at that Chiefs game last night?" It was funny, there were people writing lip reading stuff about this, trying to decipher what they were talking about. I have no idea what they were talking about. Like, part of me was thinking it was like when Anchorman, when they were filming the TV commercials,

• 53:35Bill Simmons?

  like, "We're laughing, now we're serious." Or like when they have movie scenes where the extras are in the back, and the extras are having a fake conversation behind like our main characters. But I decided, I think he was telling her about all the right moves. And he was telling her about how he played Steph Georgievich. He was this Pennsylvania cornerback, had a chance to go to college, and then rifleman should have, should have taken the safety at the end in the pouring rain. Didn't, hands off to the Italian guy who fumbles, they lose the game, he ends up getting mad at the coach. Probably just told her the whole plot of all the right moves, and I don't think she was really listening. Andrew from Hartford, Connecticut, said, "I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan, but I even

• 54:19Bill Simmons?

  need, but I even need to appreciate how fucking psycho Scatabo is. Can we start a Wingrow Award for the most batshit crazy guy in the NFL? Maybe it could be portable across all sports, maybe it could be an ESPY. So you get a candidate from each of the major sports. He's my nominee right now for the NFL." That's Andrew in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wingrow Award, I had to get it on. It's definitely Dillon Brooks for the NBA, and probably Wilson Contreras for baseball. But that would be a really fun award ceremony, and you're right, Scatabo's probably winning that. Jim Comp wrote in, "Don't mean to pile on in your time of mourning after the Pats' loss, but Romeo Dobbs was every Packers fan drive to the airport guy. Top 10 in drop balls, usually biggest moments. Consistently

• 55:02Bill Simmons?

  got chances to be number 1 receiver, no showed. His Seahawks performance was something Packer fans are all too familiar with. I didn't even mention him walking out on the team during the season over contract role issues. The Packers spent big money to extend 2 other receivers, not him. Good luck." That made me a little nervous. Phil in Portland asks, "In light of recent podcast revelations, I'm thinking Aaron Rodgers' new nickname should be Cuck Rogers in the 21st century. Thoughts?" I'm going to move to the next email question. Brian from DMV asked that Justin Herbert, Jordan Love question. He thinks it was LaMella Ball from the previous segment with Mahoney.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  I like my Trey Murphy answer, but we did that one. Andy in Chicago, another NBA question, but tied to the NFL. "As a Chicago resident, entering a season in which the 2 most talked about players will be Caleb Williams and Caleb Wilson, I feel like I need some sort of mnemonic device for remembering which last name goes with which player. If you remember on Thursday, house called Caleb Williams, Caleb Wilson, and I can't believe I haven't done it yet. I'm like minus 450 on Fandel to do it before the end of Week 3." Andy writes, "As it stands, this is feeling like plugging in a USB cable where it's 50/50, but somehow I get it wrong 75% of the time. Can we get our best minds working on this?"

• 56:24Bill Simmons?

  So when we had the Fantasy Football Show, which was initially Hyphitz and Danny Kelly, and we called it the Danacy Football Show, and Craig was the producer, and eventually Craig became a co-host, and now we call it the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. And we called it Danacy, and we decided Danny Hyphitz would be Danny, and Danny Kelly would be DK, so that we weren't asking if Craig was talking to them, they wouldn't both be Danny, and it would be super confusing. And now somehow Hyphitz is Hyphitz, and Danny Kelly is DK, and we don't have a Danny on the show. Caleb Williams is already there. I think Caleb Wilson has to be called CW or C-Dub. I just think that's how it has to play out.

• 57:07Bill Simmons?

  It's like when OKC had the 2 Jalen Williamses, and one was J-Wil and one was J-Dub. I don't think we can have a Caleb Williams and a Caleb Wilson as the 2 identifiable Chicago stars. It's too fucking confusing. Just both, in both cases, you just want to call the guy Caleb. And I think Caleb Wilson just has to bite the bullet and be C-Dub or CW or, you could argue these are 2 separate sports, and this will never collide, but it is. It's already confusing, and we're going to need a solution. So we're needing both guys to get together and try to figure this out. But I think Caleb Williams should be Caleb Williams, and Caleb Wilson should be C-Dub. Kyle from Orlando said, "There's been a lot of dialogue about Justin Herbert, and he

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  said his dad's a longtime Pats fan who thinks Herbert is the modern day Drew Bledsoe. Insane individual talent, high pedigree, West Coast, franchise savior, destined for greatness, but Bledsoe couldn't handle the biggest crunch time moments, didn't have the it factor, was never a top 5 player, made 1 Super Bowl, that's it. Herbert has never won a playoff game or finished higher, and 9th and MVP, it's year 7, is he just Bledsoe 2.0?" I actually think Bledsoe was better. The first 7 years of Bledsoe, I think, was better than Herbert. And I know the advanced stats will say Herbert was better, but Bledsoe took a team to the Super Bowl. Herbert's never won a playoff game. So in a way, I don't think you can call him Bledsoe 2.0. I think, I think Bledsoe's the slightly

• 58:34Bill Simmons?

  rich man's Justin Herbert at this point. Bledsoe was really good for a while and took a ton of hits, and I think by the time we got to the end of the 90s, I just think, I think his, his, between offensive line stuff and just how many times he threw and how many times they used him, I just think he started to get banged up. So that would be my take on that. AP in the ATL said, "My buddies and I were watching Red Zone. Every time they switched to Jets/Titans, we let out a collective groan. No one wanted an update of this game in any capacity. Is there a way to get a feature added where certain games can be deselected from any Red Zone updates, like a reverse Red Zone? Can you use your powers at SportsR, YouTube, CMO to get this implemented?"

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  So I thought about this. I think there should be 2 Red Zone channels, and 1 would be the Red Zone channel that covers absolutely everything. And I think they have a Fantasy Red Zone channel just for the fantasy stuff. So I guess we already have 2. So I think there needs to be a 3rd one, where it's just like the best 5 games of the day, and you don't have to deal with Dolphins/Raiders, you don't have to deal with Jets, can't even remember, Jets/Titans. That's how bad that game was. And maybe it's like the filet mignon of the Red Zone. And if you want to watch that instead, it's just more updates for the best games. Just an idea.

• 59:59Bill Simmons?

  Andrew Grillo said that Sal and I touched about this briefly on the Sunday Night Pod, but his biggest takeaway from Ohio State-Texas was 0 teammates celebrating with Arch. It almost seemed like they were avoiding him as he ran around à la Jimmy V. Question, is this a red flag for NFL teams? If Arch falls in the draft, is this Bo Callahan? And then Arch had the thing with Holly Rowe, that wasn't great either. My bigger question for him, this seems like the most likely candidate we've had in a while to not want to go to the team that drafts him. Because I was looking, when I was doing the pyramid, and I was thinking about the worst 5 teams in the league potentially this year. I think it's a pretty safe bet, Cleveland, Tennessee, Miami are 3. Atlanta, maybe 4, maybe Indy,

• 1:00:42Bill Simmons?

  but if you go through, like, what would be the perfect team for him? I guess it would be Atlanta, right? And now, we don't know if Arch is going to go first or not, but Atlanta, I don't think he vetoes that. I think he'd be psyched to go there, and you know, he's from the South, obviously. Cleveland, I think you're just bummed out. We just did that email before, that they have a stadium that they're going to have for 30 years, maybe with no home playoff game. Tennessee, they're out of Cam Ward, Miami. Maybe you could talk yourself into Miami, but yeah, this, this could be interesting if he's the clear number 1 pick and doesn't want to go to the number 1 team. Tim Gallagher said, "I just put on Hard Knocks, saw perhaps the least surprising thing ever in the opening scene. Sam Darnold manages to fumble his Super Bowl ring opening the

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  box. I know you have high hopes for the Hawks this year, but this feels like an ominous sign."

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  I got this email before the season started and Sam Darnold got hurt in the first series. Maybe it was an ominous sight. Um, two more.

• 1:01:46Bill Simmons?

  Garrett in Oklahoma, my question, when are we ever going to zag on celebrity integration? I don't like when the musicians show up in WWE. I don't like seeing Jerry Seinfeld 50 times during an NBA game. I don't give a shit who is the guest picker on college game day. I can't be in the minority on this. You're not. I think the issue is these shows are produced by mid-level TV execs for the most part. I used to call them when I was at ESPN, the, the, uh, khakis and blue shirt police. And all they do is come in and they just want to keep their jobs.

• 1:02:18Bill Simmons?

  And occasionally they'll have an idea and the idea will be one of the three ideas that people in this exact type of job have had for the last 50 years, which is let's get a celebrity in here. Let's add a six person to the table. It's not like they're putting any real thought into any of this. None of them have ever done a TV show, hosted a show, been on anything. They're all, but they've all been behind the scenes people who worked their way up and now think they know more about TV than anybody else. And if the show doesn't work, they want to be able to blame the host because they don't want to have any blame. And the ESPN guys who are still there, they know who they are. It's always the host's fault. It's always, we just need this person. It's always, we just need more gimmicks. And that's why we get celebrities at the desk all the time.

• 1:03:04Bill Simmons?

  Because it's an idea that is born on like a Tuesday and everybody looks around and goes, that's a great idea. And then if it doesn't work, it's the celebrity's fault, not the idea of having a guest picker. All right, last question. Your parent corner contrasting getting a rescue dog or a purebred dog made me think we need an aspiration type company for rescue dogs. What does that mean? Aspiration existed so billionaires could pollute as much as they wanted, as long as they paid for the requisite amount of trees to be planted. Is that true? I never really fully understood what aspiration was. Maybe that's what it was. Anyway, Seth says, we need this for pets. You're in the clear socially to buy a purebred dog as long as you find housing, vaccines, et cetera, for 10 rescue dogs.

• 1:03:49Bill Simmons?

  Just a social pressure, get out of jail free card for wealthy people who want a clear conscience for buying a purebred dog. That's from Seth from Indianapolis. Yep, these are my readers, somebody comparing rescue dogs to aspiration. This is, this is, uh, this is why we go through these emails for, for beauties like that. I don't mind the idea either, by the way. We're going to, uh, take a break. We're going to come back. Billy Gil, Anthony Dabbundo, and we're going to talk about, uh, a pretty fun, pretty strange baseball season right after this. FanDuel is making it your most rewarding season ever with boosts and promos and teasers and a new rewards club and so much more.

• 1:04:27Bill Simmons?

  We were so excited. We were able to bring back teasers finally, uh, on Sundays, minus 110 juice on the Ringer 107, the favorite teasers. I think we split this week because the Broncos didn't come through for a couple, but I hit mine. I had Lions and Jags, um, for Lions, Bills on Thursday night. So if you want to do an SGP for this one, I, I just like this one anyway. It's, it's, uh, the Bills, the Bills are minus four and a half favorites, but Bills money line. I think there's going to be a lot of points. The over under is really high, but, uh, you can do the alternate total of 46 and a half over for that. And then Josh Allen, just to rush for 10 plus yards. And that is plus 106 on FanDuel and you can add all the player boost tokens or whatever they have going on Thursday.

• 1:05:12Bill Simmons?

  And I would recommend that one because I don't think the Lions are going to be able to stop the Bills, uh, especially if you saw their secondary last week. If you like that one, go ahead and place this SGP on the FanDuel app. Don't forget to check it out and use your rewards all season long.

• 1:05:28Bill Simmons?

  All right. Haven't done nearly enough baseball on the podcast in the last couple of months. Even though I've been watching a ton of baseball, but now it's mid-September, we're in the grind, six, seven weeks here. And then baseball might just go away for a long, long time. Billy Gil is here, Anthony Dabbundo is here. I think this has been a really good season. This is the most baseball I've watched really since probably COVID, maybe 2021.

• 1:05:53Bill Simmons?

  Dabbundo, what is your number one thing you think happened this season? If you had to say like, how will you remember this season? What's number one?

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  I think we have to talk about Pete Crow Armstrong. I don't think you could come on any baseball podcast and not talk about one of the best seasons of the century.

• 1:06:10Bill Simmons?

  Right. Okay. Make the case. Best seasons of the century.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Of the century. So since, since the turn of the century, 2000, I pulled up because he just surpassed 10 wins yesterday. Fangraphs war. There are only 13 position player seasons since 2000 that have had 10 F4 seasons. This is the name of players he's with. Barry Bonds, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, those guys all did it multiple times.

• 1:06:33Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Bobby Witt in 2024, Mookie Betts in 2018, Alex Rodriguez in 2002, and then PCA this season. He is lapping the field. He ran away with the MVP as Otani has kind of fallen off a little bit here, but really like one of the craziest two-way seasons we've ever had. And as a Phillies fan, I have reminded every Mets fan I know that yes, they traded PCA for Javi Baez five years ago.

• 1:06:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  Trade that will go down as one of the worst trades of the last 10 to 20 years of baseball.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  And on top of it, traded him to a big market that loves him. Billy, the Crow Armstrong thing, it's almost like, I, it feels like it could potentially should be bigger. And it isn't, but has he reached the status to you? It's like, oh, the Cubs are in town. I gotta go see this guy in person. He's not there yet, right?

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  I don't, I mean, not for me, but I also have bad feelings towards PCA for fantasy reasons where I had him two years too soon. I'd keep him, he'd then be bad again.

• 1:07:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  Then I let him go and then he turns into PCA last year. Then this year he, you know, is on another level. The, the best season since the turn of the century is kind of crazy. Like Barry Bonds had a 73 homerun season since 2000. Shohei had a 50 50 season like two years ago. It's, it's good, but I don't know.

• 1:07:51Bill Simmons?

  What was the season when Bonds?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  There in that conversation. Yeah.

• 1:07:54Bill Simmons?

  What was the season when Bonds just got on base like 70% of the time? Remember that, like 04, 05 win?

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. 2004 Bonds.

• 1:08:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was the, I think the craziest thing I, it was almost like his eyesight became 20 zero eyesight. He just knew exactly where the strike zone was. I've never seen anything like that. What do you, Billy, what do you think the number one thing you'll remember about this season is?

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  Man, I put together a list of like all of the different things. Cause I feel like baseball this year has been good. And for you, Bill, in particular, we were mentioning it right before we started recording. Timing wise, it was perfect for you, right? Like you got good baseball and exciting things that you cared about at just the right time. So start out with the World Baseball Classic, which I remember you weren't that interested in. It ended up being like a really fun tournament.

• 1:08:40Bill Simmons?

  I got in late.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Then, yeah. Then things, you know, for you started slowing down on the baseball front. You had March Madness and then the NBA playoffs. And at that time, the Red Sox were bad, so you didn't really have to focus on the Red Sox and the World Cup came. And then your Red Sox turned it on like just at the right time to get you all the way through summer where now you're paying attention to baseball. And now, you know, football's here and unfortunately now baseball starts taking a little bit of a backseat. So hopefully you can kind of keep paying attention to baseball and the Red Sox going on run. But if they fall off, it's the best time for them to fall off too.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, I also had my fantasy, my AL fantasy league that we still have a chance to win.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:09:15Bill Simmons?

  Got me watching games, like really every night. My wife was like, what's going on? Are you having like a midlife crisis? And I was like, no, I just enjoy the Red Sox and Cam Schlittler is pitching tonight and I want to see how he does. So it was just a lot of stuff like that. Anyway, I interrupted you.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  No, are these the semis for you? When is the finals? Is it next week?

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  We just go through, it's like primarily, yeah, we just go through. So we had, we're in second place right now and we need basically strikeouts and we need a little bit of a hail Mary. Cause Kate Anderson has turned out to be kind of a dud. And we had to start Patrick Sandoval this week for two games, including, but we're taping this before tonight's games, but in Texas. It's basically the fantasy baseball version of a hail Mary. We need him to go like six innings, 11 Ks, like, but that's where we're at. We're probably going to finish second, but I can't tell you how many texts me and my partner Han should have done about this. It's basically been half of my text.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  Few of them have bled into our chat.

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I just, we're just trying to game the system with this shitty team we had where we basically had Schlittler and three other guys and then all these Cal Quantrill, cater Montero. Anyway, Billy, go ahead. I interrupted you a second time.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  No, it's all good. Don't worry about it. Um, I guess stories of the season, I mean, we've talked about this a bunch of times, but I think 2026 is going to be remembered as the season of ABS. Like we introduced ABS, baseball is, you know, and their fans are not known to really like change and you like to kind of keep the traditions of the game and not change things much. And there was some, I think reluctance to change with ABS. We saw it a couple of years ago when they made the bases bigger and they implemented the pitch clock and it's like, whoa, this is not my baseball anymore. And then it like wasn't a big deal at all. And all of a sudden like, wow, these three and a half hour games are done in two hours and 50 minutes. And now that the bases are bigger, people are stealing more bases and it ended up working out. And ABS was the same thing. Like ABS

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  became an exciting spin on the game and the implementation of kind of figuring out the results of the challenge live in front of everyone on the screen, figuring it out along with the umpire where there's no, you know, two ways about it. I think it was a great thing for baseball. I think it's helped the game. Then you have kind of the dynamics of do you challenge? Do you not challenge? Who do you allow to challenge? Who's not allowed to challenge? What umpires actually don't know the strike zone? What hitters have no idea where the ball is? Like, it's been a fun season with ABS and you know, this is the year that it started.

• 1:11:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, you also, when you're at a game, it's really fun if your team challenges and you like, it's this random crowd reaction. You get out of nowhere either way. But the interesting thing to me is like when, when like, I remember when we first talked about this, like two weeks in the season and all of us were like, this is cool. Kind of like it. Now by September, and you've seen so many of these, you have these instantaneous reactions now where it's like, oh, terrible challenge. Oh, you, oh my God, what a mistake. Oh, this catcher sucks at this. And I think that's been fun too, Dabbundo.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's the difference between the live experience and the couch experience because when you're on the couch, they have the box. So you know whether it was a good challenge pretty quickly. Even the broadcasters are now like, well, they're going to lose that challenge. But live, when you're sitting at the game, especially if your seat isn't like right behind home plate, I often have no idea. We're kind of guessing and then they show it on the screen and the, you know, the crowd oohs and ahs. It feels like the tennis challenges from, from yesteryear. But my favorite bit of information that I've learned about ABS is actually what happens when a team runs out of challenges and front offices have found that the umpire will kind of take it out on the team and the team will get a slightly worse strike zone. After you've gone after the umpire and been wrong a few

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  times, that umpire is going to stick it to you. Uh, that has been my favorite, uh, learning thing. And they noticed it pretty quickly. This was back in May, when a couple of front office people mentioned it to me and I was like, really? Like I don't, I tried to find the data for it. I couldn't, but.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  Spite umpiring.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Spite umpiring.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Which was the game a few weeks ago, Dabbundo, where there was a, there was an altercation behind home plate. One of the teams ran out of challenges and the umpire just straight up called someone safe who was tagged out by like a foot at the play of the plate. And he knew like, they can't challenge it. What are they going to do? Like they could say, hey, can you guys huddle? Maybe have an umpire review? And they're like, nope, we're not going to do that. Cause the spite umpires have been great this year too. I think.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Their last stand.

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  CB Buckner, I think was like the first victim, right? Of like just public embarrassment. Was it like?

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  It was a Red Sox Reds.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was Eugenio Suarez had like three in a row that he got on him. And it was just like, man, Buckner is just going to retire after this season if he doesn't murder someone on the field today.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  I think we should keep going in a circle. So I'll go with my, my first one. And I don't know where this ranks, but just for me personally, the AL West dumpster fire that we have, and I ran it about the Mariners on Sunday. I'm not going to do a second three minute Mariners thing, although it did make me a hero on Mariners Reddit. I was very excited. Uh, they ran the clip of me just complaining about the team. Then Kate Anderson last night sucks against the Angels who don't even have 60 wins yet. Uh, they are just a pox on society. But if you dig deeper here, like we're, again, we're taping this for Tuesday's games. There's no team above 500 in the AL West. The best team is 75, 75 Houston, who is minus 44 for run differential. Yeah. So the only time this has come close was

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  the 2005 NL West. San Diego went 82 and 80. Everybody else was under 500. This year, Seattle's in third place. They're 70 and 81. The Sacramento A's are 61 and 89. And then the Angels are 57 and 93. And what's interesting is the Red Sox have played all these guys and I have these guys in different fantasy things and you watch these teams and they're not that bad. And maybe there's just a lot of good baseball players now, but like, I don't know. Sacramento, like they, they, I call them Sacramento derisively, but they lost a bunch of dudes this year. Like they lost Kurtz, they lost, you know, their catcher for a while and just in general. And yet they had these other dudes that will come up and hit game winning homers. And then I watched the Angels who I've been stuck

• 1:15:18Bill Simmons?

  with a bunch of times with Red Sox games and stuff. Even they're not terrible. I don't, Dabbundo, is there any explanation for why this division is this bad? Cause like the Red Sox play the Rangers this week. Their bats are, have been hot for like a month. And I feel like they could put it on us these, this series, but why is this so bad?

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think it's a case by case basis. I mean, I think Houston and Texas came in projected around 82, 83 wins. So maybe they've kind of had normal seasons. You've talked about the Mariners. I mean, I as a better have been very upset with the Mariners as well. Somebody who bet them preseason, they were the second favorite to win the American League. And I remember it was around the All-Star break, two of my buddies who host a Mariners podcast, Marine Layer, they were in Philly and we were talking and I've never heard a fan base so angry. You know, there's, there's cynicism, there's despair, there's annoyance, but theirs was so much anger. I was like, you guys were in game seven of the ALS. We want the manager fired. We're rooting against them. We're, we're sick of

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  this entire situation. And the irony of the whole thing is that DePoto, the general manager is the guy who went out and said, we want to be a consistently good team that wins, you know, 85, 90 games every year, gets into the playoffs and then plays playoff roulette. That's our goal. So we're not going to sell out. And this year, the irony of that is that they had just been a 52% team and won 84 games. They probably would have walked away with this division and honestly been maybe the favorite to win that little half of the, of the national, of the American League bracket. Um, the A's ran out of pitching and all their young hitters got hurt and the Angels are a dumpster fire. So it is the NFC southification of American League baseball.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  The Central, by the way, is not that much better either. Like the AL in general is like the East and everyone else. Not to go too deep into Mariners and all that, but that was one of the stories I think also of the season, not to cut the line, but is Cal Raleigh just fell completely off from last year where like, wow, this is like one of the best players in the AL to then he goes and he, in the World Baseball Classic decided that he was going to be the fun police and he wasn't going to shake hands with his teammates. And then, you know, you go into the regular season, like no, there's, there's nothing going on here. Like Julio Rodriguez is like, oh, winning the, uh, World Baseball Classic would be more to me than winning the World Series. And you're like, what's, what's going on with the Mariners? Are they going to be okay here? And they're like, no, no, everything's fine. Don't worry about then. And here we are halfway through September.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  They're 11 games under 500. They're going to miss the playoffs. And it's like, whoa, like this team last year looked like they were going to be kind of contenders for a while here and it all just fell apart. And part of it is Cal Raleigh just disappeared this season.

• 1:17:53Bill Simmons?

  And Munoz was the other one. Like 10 blown saves. It's pretty, pretty hard for a closer. That's, that's about.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Throwing 101.

• 1:18:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. When you think like the Blue Jays, who I think have been another weird story this year where they, they actually, they, they signed Dylan Cease, who's been awesome. I mean, the three best pitchers I've watched this year, the Red Sox go against where Schlittler, Cease, and weirdly Detmer on the Angels, who's like been lights out for two months. But they nailed the Cease signing and then they nailed their closer. Like Barlin came out of nowhere and has been completely lights out for them. And then you look at Munoz and he's been one of the worst closers in the league. Um, I, I don't know what to make of anything in this division. Everyone's kind of afraid of the Astros, but you know, how many guys are left from the Astros from eight, nine years ago? It's a completely

• 1:18:42Bill Simmons?

  different team. It does lead to, um, one other thing I wanted to mention quick. The Jordan Alvarez with the most half-assed triple crown run of all time. Is, have you had one conversation about this? He's leading in batting average. He's two back in homers and he's four back in RBI. And like with one good week, could be going for the triple crown, which seemed impossible, Billy?

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  Well, I, okay. I'm glad you brought this up because I remember when Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown and I, I think it was him and Trout is going back to back MVP. And it's like, well, the metrics say Mike Trout's had a better season. We can't give it to Cabrera. And it's like, well, Cabrera got a triple crown for the first time in like 40 years or whatever it was at the time. Like there's no way that you can't give it to him. And then all of the metric people were like, that doesn't matter. Like RBIs are not a thing. Like we're looking at the wrong stats. Yeah. Like these are the wrong things. These are the wrong measurables. And then about a month ago, I tuned in and I was watching MLB Network and I was shocked with like refreshing, a refreshing take that I wasn't expecting, which was Brian Kenny advocating for the triple crown mattering

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  again with Jordan Alvarez. And he's like, listen, I know you're going to be surprised by this. I wasn't a Cabrera guy at the time. I thought Trout should have won that MVP, but man, Jordan Alvarez gets this triple crown. I think that he should easily win the MVP. And I mean, he never really went away. Like you mentioned, if we, if he gets hot here for two weeks, he could end up winning the triple crown on a team that's 500 without him, wouldn't even really be in contention. He's probably going to win the MVP. It's him and Caminero, right? If he wins a triple crown, I think that the old school voters will give him the MVP regardless.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  If he makes the playoffs, yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  I think he's got it either way now, by the way.

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  It's a very quiet, anonymous triple crown, which is not that common. And it's been, what? When did Cabrera even do it? Like 2013?

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was early 2010s.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Bill Simmons?

  It's, I mean, he's definitely the scariest batter in the AL. Like if you're just watching all the teams, he's the one, when he comes up, you're like, if there's a guy on base, you're like, oh shit, what's going to happen? All right, Dabbundo, your next thing. What do you got?

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Well, I want to talk about, uh, so you mentioned Trout. It actually was a debate because Trout had one of those seasons, one of those 10 win seasons, those unicorn years that don't really come around very often. This year, there really isn't that person. And it's worth saying that even if you take out home runs and RBI and average, Alvarez is 18% better at the plate than every hitter in baseball.

• 1:21:07Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  It's, it's Pete Crow Armstrong, 157 WRC plus, Jordan 175. So he is way above everybody else at the plate this year. It's not really particularly close. And so I think for that reason, you have to, you have to give it to Jordan. Like I think it's over regardless of what happens in the last two weeks.

• 1:21:24Bill Simmons?

  Billy, what do you have for your next one?

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  Okay, so this one, let's, let's stay in the West because this was a moment of the season and it happened so long ago, it goes all the way back to April 4th. And at the time, it felt like a baseball is back moment. We had the World Baseball Classic, we were riding high, then everyone saw this moment, everyone reacted the exact same way. The Joe Adele game, where Joe Adele robs three homers, goes into the crowd, takes that incredible picture, steals one from Cal Raleigh, Josh Naylor, JP Crawford, and then someone with their iPhone just takes the picture of him standing in the crowd, holding the ball defiantly up in the air. They end up winning that game one to nothing. And then, after that, like,

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  ah, the baseball season just went on, all of a sudden, the Angels said, you know what? We're gonna trade him at the deadline, he's a guardian now, but also, we already made these giveaways for him, so, you know, we're still gonna give away the Joe Adele giveaways. So they gave away a Joe Adele Angels football jersey, August 30th, and tomorrow, September 16th, is the Joe Adele bobblehead commemorating him robbing three home runs.

• 1:22:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh wow, they're really riding it.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, he hasn't been on the team for nearly a month and a half now, but if you want to remember that moment forever, go to the Angels game tomorrow and you can get a Joe Adele Angels robbery bobblehead.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Are you guys aware of the Joe Adele lore? Like, this guy has been crushing fantasy owners for years. He's been the great hope. As a Joe Adele fan, I've, I've been rooting for this guy for so long. I remember when I went to a game, Angels Phillies, and he hit a homerun off the Phillies, and I was actually excited to the point where Phillies fans and Angels fans who were sitting around me were like, why are you happy that Joe Adele hit a homerun? I'm like, you don't understand. I'm here to see Joe Adele do something. He did it. And the three homerun robbery, I'm convinced I will not see that happen again in my lifetime.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:23:17Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty hard.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  It's a lot of luck and skill.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  It's pretty, pretty impossible.

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  It's gotta be one in a million chance. Do you think if, if he had just, if he was Joe, J O E Adele, different career?

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  Is it intimidating enough to be a Joe with a, just a J O?

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  I don't know. I love tweeting Joe in all caps, so.

• 1:23:39Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  He was also, by the way, like, a bad defender when he started, like, he's probably given away more home runs than he's saved by them bouncing off of him and going over the wall.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Well, that happened earlier, a few weeks later, he had one bounce off of his glove out of, out of the park. They said, well, he's, he's still plus two for the season.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  What was, was it Tampa or Sacramento? I think it might have been Tampa, where somebody knocked the home, not, caught the fly ball, but then it knocked it over into, it became a homerun, but it landed in the brunch setup? There was like a left field, I think it was Tampa, right?

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  It was in Tampa, it was the visiting team. I think it was the ninth inning, and I, I believe, it wasn't a walk-off, I think that ended up tying the game.

• 1:24:19Bill Simmons?

  Or game tie, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was like Nick Fortes, their catcher or something, hit it, he catches it, then he hits the wall right next to the foul pole, and then it hits like this picnic area for like corporate events or groups or whatever.

• 1:24:30Bill Simmons?

  Like chicken and waffles.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  What a place for the brunch, by the way.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  Pretty funny.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Right, right in the first row.

• 1:24:36Bill Simmons?

  Here's my next one, and I almost led with this. I think it's a really interesting debate. Mizerowski, has he replaced Otani as the number one, kinda must-watch guy in the league? And is this more because we've done the Otani thing now for a few years, and he's been on the Dodgers for a couple of years, and we take it for granted? It's a little like the Emmys last night, where the pit cleans up the first time, and then it's like, oh, I know the pit. So they win, they win one Emmy, but they don't win any of the acting stuff.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Otani fatigue, you're saying?

• 1:25:11Bill Simmons?

  A little Otani fatigue combined with like, this Mizerowski thing, with what we know about these flamethrowing pitchers, this might be a year of this, might be a year and a half. I don't know if he's doing it. We're watching it with Skeens down in Pittsburgh, where you're just not the same. So, I don't know. Do you agree with this, Dabbundo? This is the number one must-watch guy right now?

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  In terms of like pitching ninja, nerd pitching lovers, not even close. I don't know if the average MLB fan is, like, excited to tune into the Brewers, to watch Miz during the regular season, but I do think it, it produces a difference-maker for them in the playoffs. Because my next thing was gonna actually be what Milwaukee's done this year, which is remarkable yet again. And this year, it does feel like they go into the playoffs with more of firepower to go toe-to-toe with these superstar teams, because they now have a true 1A superstar of their own, that can go up against anybody else in the league and be competitive with them. And, and that feels like something that was lacking. I mean, last year, he pitched in the playoffs, but they didn't trust him to the point where

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  he was an, they had openers for him. He would come in for three or four innings, they weren't really sure. Then he shoved, and it's like, okay, this kid has arrived, and now he's gone out and just won the Cy Young.

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're gonna get the one seed, so he won't have to pitch for, I don't know, five, six days, so that's good. And in general, like, I agree with you. You agree with that, Billy? That it feels like even though the diehard baseball people know what's going on and they care, does feel like he needs like playoffs, like an NLCS against the Cubs or the Dodgers, where he just comes in and strikes out 12 of the first 15 in game four? Needs a moment like that, I think, to go really on the map.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think if he does it on the national stage, because baseball fans know, and Brewers fans obviously know, but if he does it in the playoffs, you know, on TBS or wherever the playoffs are on now, like, in front of everyone, when there's only one game on, I think people are gonna be blown away and be like, whoa, who is this guy? Like, he's arrived. I have an idea that I wanna float past you guys, because of, kinda like, baseball's become somewhat cyclical, where now we're seeing like, oh, small ball is somewhat back, and people are bunting and people are stealing, and like, there was a time where we thought like, that just is a part of the game that we're never gonna see again, and now, people are bunting because they don't know the defense. So, every team has someone that throws like 101, 102. He obviously throws harder than everyone, but every team's got these guys, even Aroldis Chapman's like 55 years old, he's still throwing

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  like 100 plus, right? Are we headed to a world where we have someone like an R.A. Dickey, or a Tim Wakefield, or a Charlie Huff come back?

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Ooh.

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  And they become the sought-after guy who can go in there with a knuckleball, who goes in there with, like, perfect precision at 85 miles an hour, and the hitters now are so conditioned to swing at pitches that are coming at 103, 104, that they're just so thrown off by slurs and knuckleballs and balls that they just can't get to.

• 1:28:07Bill Simmons?

  I'm really glad you brought this up. I don't under, because I grew up, I grew up with knuckleballers. I grew up with the Negro brothers, we had Wakefield on the Red Sox forever. And it really just feels like, there's a way to learn how to throw it, right? If you're a good enough athlete, where you can be the repetitive nature, and how you, how you use your fingers, your hand needs to be a certain length. With how unreliable pitchers are for innings, and you look back at some of the knuckleball innings that these guys throw, where some of them would throw like 270 innings, you know, Wakefield, year after year, was 200 innings, he could come in, he could, there was years where he started, but then also could come out of the bullpen.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  I don't understand why more people aren't trying this as a way to game the system, because even if you figure it out, you have a four ERA, but you can throw 220 innings a year, and you can pitch every five starts, but then also come out of the bullpen and pitch. Wouldn't that make you insanely valuable by today's pitching standards?

• 1:29:07Speaker 03

  I mean, is it just like an ego thing, like the granny shot at the free throw line, where just no one wants to do it now? Because like, hey, it's not cool to throw knuckleballs? Like, the best knuckleballers were the ones where the catcher had no idea where it was gonna go. And the catcher was guessing just as much as everyone else, just as much as the hitter. Where it starts up here, it's down here, and the catcher's like, just trying to not have a pass ball on this thing.

• 1:29:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was the Red Sox Yankees. There was, when we had Wakefield, and he always had, the backup catcher was always his knuckleball catcher. But then, in this game, it had to be Veritek. And then there was like guys on base, and, and it's extra innings, and we all knew that Veritek didn't have a lot of experience catching Wakefield. And it was the most harrowing, you know, 10 minutes of that entire season. I don't know, Dabbundo, why can't we have a knuckleballer again? What's your, do you have a take, or you just think we've had bad luck?

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  I don't, I think it's really hard to do. And I don't think, if you're coming up now, you're, you're gonna try to bet on yourself to be the one outlier pitcher who can pull off this incredibly difficult pitch, that even when it was in its prime, nobody really understood.

• 1:30:14Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  The pitching labs, they don't know how to teach it, it's kinda just like a thing that existed. And there has been talk about like, the seams have changed on the ball, which makes it less wobbly. I don't have like, definitely a ton of knowledge on that, but that was something that was, has been talked about in the past. But there's basically no, no guys left. I mean, Waldron from San Diego was around a couple of years ago, he kinda threw one, but even his knuckleball was like a part of a pitch mix that didn't really, wasn't like the main offering. Moron from the Padres kinda throws like a knuckle-y type change, but there's basically nobody left. I, I would not bet on its return.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  How much time does it take to perfect a knuckleball, do you think?

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's possible to perfect it. That's the beauty of it.

• 1:30:57Bill Simmons?

  I think Wakefield got the closest. The, the thing is, though, you still need to throw a fastball hard enough to mix it up on the hitters, so they don't time the knuckleball. But yeah, I'm looking at Wakefield's career stats, like, in 05, when he was 38 years old, he threw 225 innings.

• 1:31:16Bill Simmons?

  Right? He had 33 starts. Even in 2008, 2007, they won the World Series. He was 17 and 12 that year. He had 31 starts, 189 innings, and he was 40 years old. And that's the other thing with the knuckleball thing is you pitch forever. Once you figure it out, which was the Negroes. Those guys looked like your grandfather when they would come in. So, I don't really fully understand it, but I, it feels like a documentary somebody would make and then try to sell and nobody would buy it. It's like, I'm writing a, it's my documentary about the knuckleball and then everybody turns it down.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  So I forgot about this because of COVID, but remember Brian Wilson with the beard from the Giants? So in 2020, he tried to have a comeback as a knuckleball pitcher, but we all just kind of missed it because he didn't come back and because COVID happened and it was a forgotten season. But I guess Brian Wilson had the same idea six years ago and it didn't pan out for him.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  Damn. My next storyline is just looking forward to the playoffs and it's weird because the NBA fans are so upset about this Clippers bomber thing, even though like the Clippers made one conference finals with this Kawhi thing and it completely destroyed their franchise. They built other contenders, like pretty much every piece of it was a catastrophe. Whereas with the Dodgers, this led to them winning back to back World Series, right? This led to them being able to spend all this money on all these guys, overpay for, you know, even some of the guys they got recently, who I don't think has exactly turned out well. And it feels like they are now really a supervillain.

• 1:32:54Bill Simmons?

  And when we get to the playoffs, unless you're a Dodger, it's either you're a Dodgers fan, or even if like you're an American League fan, or you don't really care, like you're just gonna be like, I hope the Dodgers go down. And I'll be interested to see how that goes for them, like especially like if they play a place like, if they're in Philadelphia, right? In Philly, the fans are great anyway, but with the combo of that and the supervillain Dodgers, there's no feel good left from any aspect of this, even though they have a lot of likable guys. Otani, Freeman, Betts, people like these guys, but I, I think the ship has sailed, the bundle.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Oh, it's totally sailed. And right now, you know, with the way the bracket sets up, they would play in a best of five, either Atlanta, who they have a ton of history with from the early 2020s, back to back NLCSs, those teams had those crazy wars back then, not as much recently. And then the Padres, who were the other team that are sitting there, who they played in back to back seasons, or 2022 and 2024, Padres beat them in 2022, Dodgers came back to get them in four. And over a long series, you would certainly favor the Dodgers, but in a short one, with how good San Diego's bullpen is, they're going to be right there. So I, I really think people have kind of given the Dodgers this aura of inevitability because they won the last two, but they forget how

• 1:34:13Speaker 02

  close they were to not winning each of the last two. And they don't really quite realize how flawed this team is. Kyle Tucker's been below average. Mookie Betts has been average. They don't have a closer that they rely on right now that they trust.

• 1:34:24Bill Simmons?

  Otani seems like he's hurt.

• 1:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, Otani is definitely hurt.

• 1:34:28Bill Simmons?

  Dodger fans are worried about the Dodgers, just in general. And then you have, like you had two years in a row where you had to play all the way through October. You know, you got that piece too. What do you think, Billy?

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  How do we think the Dodger story ends, right? Because like what you're saying is true. There's no real good feel good left with this team, even with likable guys. They clinched the playoffs earlier this week. It was like the most subdued celebration ever where they just like had a toast with champagne glasses. No one looked particularly happy to be there.

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:54Speaker 03

  But when we, when the Mark Walter story kind of came out, it wasn't revolving around the Dodgers. It was, okay, he sells the Lakers and he goes and his soccer team might be up for sale. And then like the team president of Dodgers came out and like, well, we're fine. Like nothing's going to be for sale here. And then stories are coming out. It's like, well, this guy owes like billions of dollars to a lot of people. Like, I don't know that we can just take his word for the fact that this team is not going to be sold and something else isn't going to come out or happen in the offseason. And then once that happens, then what happens with Shohei Otani, who has clauses in his contract where he can just void his contract if Mark Walter is not the owner, if Andrew Friedman is not

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  running the team anymore. So there's, there's a lot going on with the Dodgers because they were also kind of like the centerpiece as the example for the lockout. And hey, you can't do this. And then the passes, the world's like, well, hey, anyone can do that. And then it's like, well, I guess, yeah, anyone could just commit fraud and, you know, sign these crazy deals and like just cheat your way to paying everybody, everything that they want and hope no one catches up to you. So in that sense, yes, but they get Scoobal at the deadline. People are like, what's going on here?

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:04Speaker 03

  He goes to the team two days before the deadline when it's like, where they're not going to be any better offers. They just decide. And then Scoobal also goes like major villain while also trying to keep one foot in like the good guy pond where he's like, well, I want to end my career as a Tiger. It's like, well, that, that was an option. Like you could have, you know, resigned with them if you really wanted to do that and saved everybody the trouble. So when he leaves, he says like, oh, you know, I don't like all this hate that everybody's getting. People like the Dodgers aren't the villains. And also he secretly stole an espresso machine that he bought the Tigers and put in their clubhouse and took it with him for some reason. Cause like, he's not making enough money that he can't buy another one. I don't know why he had to take that. So there's a lot going

• 1:36:46Speaker 03

  on with the Dodgers. And I feel like even after the season's done, there's going to be more that comes out here, you would think.

• 1:36:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially some of the deals he was making, like the deal with the TV station. I'm surprised more people aren't mad at this. I think it speaks to baseball's place as like an internet sport versus basketball and football, whereas basketball.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  People are pretty mad.

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  No, but I think this should be like, we should be, shouldn't we be having conversations about if they game the system and this guy did all this stuff illegally, what do we do about the two titles they won? I haven't even really heard that conversation.

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  I, I think we're distracted though, because I think there was the crescendo that happened around the deadline when they make the deal. And then we had a whole week of, is baseball ruined, over, canceled?

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  A joke of a sport. Then everybody got distracted, right? Like the Clippers thing happens.

• 1:37:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  NFL starts up, people get distracted, but hey, we got about two weeks until the Dodgers play a playoff game. And inevitably Scoobal's going to shove, or Snell is going to shove, or Otani's going to hit two home runs in a game. And that is going to start a whole new round of discourse as we get into the, I think that's what's coming.

• 1:37:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm here for it.

• 1:37:55Speaker 03

  I mean, relative to the Clippers, I feel like this is kind of a bigger deal. Like the Clippers just circumvented a salary cap that was arbitrary and it was made up by the league. And like, everyone seems like they're doing it. They were just doing it more.

• 1:38:09Bill Simmons?

  They just were the stupidest. Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  They were the stupidest and it got them nothing. They got absolutely, they cheated for no reason. They cost themselves all of this money, all of these drafts.

• 1:38:19Bill Simmons?

  Motherfuckers on the planet. The Dodgers won two World Series in a row.

• 1:38:23Speaker 03

  Well, and the worst part is Kawhi, now they're just like, okay, Kawhi, you know what? You want to go to Toronto? Like, sure, go to Toronto. Like, and he gets, nope. I think he paid like a $700,000 fine.

• 1:38:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:33Speaker 03

  For like $60 million he shouldn't have been making. It's not even like 1% is what his fine was. And then just go on to the next team while this franchise essentially has like the death sentence for like the next five to seven years, because they can't do anything about this.

• 1:38:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  If I'm a player, I'm, I'm trying to negotiate backroom deals as much as possible.

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Stick one over on the owners. It's no risk, all reward.

• 1:38:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially in baseball, there's a lot of risk. I wonder like.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  The Dodgers debt sheet is scary. I mean, whoever, if they do end up selling, they owe like a billion dollars to Otani and Tucker over the next seven to eight years. It's a lot of money.

• 1:39:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's funny. You go to the Dodger games. The Dodger fans just seem like they hate Tucker. I don't know if that's changed. I haven't been to a Dodger game in a month, but this guy.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  His attitude's not great.

• 1:39:19Bill Simmons?

  He, he seems miserable. They're miserable with him. It's always funny when that happens. And it seems like it happens more in baseball than every other sport combined, where you get this guy that you paid a lot of money for, and it just immediately goes bad. And you're like, what the fuck? You were like our big free agent. Like this was Bichette with the Mets. This was basically everybody the Angels signed. Randolph was probably the best one.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Does he count?

• 1:39:44Bill Simmons?

  Well.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  500 million dollar extension and he hit one, he's now hit one.

• 1:39:48Bill Simmons?

  So he's been on my AL keeper team. He just doesn't hit home runs anymore, but he's not 38. He's 27. Like, and you look at him, he's, seems like he looks the same. I don't understand what happened to his power. Very, very strange. This next segment is brought to you by PNC Bank. Dynasties are not a flash in the pan. They're more of a log fire blazing bright for seasons and seasons. It's hard enough to win one, much less to actually become a dynasty. But staying committed to steady, smart planning is one of the best ways to do it. Just like our sponsor for this segment, PNC Bank. All right. So how do you become, how do you become a dynasty? You need to have a principle

• 1:40:28Bill Simmons?

  that you believe in. And like, look at the Celtics with the Red Auerbach and Bill Russell in the second half of the 50s and the entire 1960s. Auerbach, he knew he had lightning in a bottle with Bill Russell. I am going to build everything around this dude. This is the best defensive player we've ever had in the history of the sport. He's the best rebounder we've ever had in the history of the sport. He's a really good passer. I'm going to build a really fast team about all this stuff he's good at. I'm going to play through my guards and then Russell can protect the guards the other way. And everybody I bring in are going to be athletic and they're going to fit in with Russell and the way we play. And that's how they did it. And guess what happened? By the mid 60s, Russell got older. So what kind of team do you want at that point? Well, we got to slow it down

• 1:41:11Bill Simmons?

  a little. Got to be a little more methodical. We need to, we need to be bigger. And all of a sudden, the Celtics guards are bigger. They're playing people like Larry Siegfried at, at point guard with Havlicek and Sam Jones and Bill Russell, just more size because they needed to be more physical. That's kind of stuff you do and you think about when you're trying to put together a dynasty. So it's pretty clear that consistency won over the long run in the Celtics case with Bill Russell. And it's just what you need if you're going to have sustained excellence. It's one over the long run for PNC Bank too. PNC Bank brilliantly boring since 1865. I have one other thing for you that.

• 1:41:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the, just quickly.

• 1:41:57Bill Simmons?

  I know we talked about this before, but I really enjoyed the Sacramento stadium. And I thought the games there were super fun. And like when the Red Sox went there, I felt like I was on vacation from the major leagues and we were just playing this goofy thing. And over and over again, it seems like the energy has been really good there. And I just wonder like, could this, as we start figuring out new stadiums, could this be a model? People look at, should stadiums just be smaller?

• 1:42:22Speaker 03

  Well, do you, do you want to do a thing, maybe where once, one team a season has to play in a minor league affiliate stadium? So like you can alternate a team a year. Because last year we had it with both the A's and the Rays, because the trop's roof blew off in a hurricane. So they were playing in the Yankees minor league stadium in Tampa. So we had like similar things where like balls are flying like way out. And it's a smaller, more intimate venue and the crowds are into it. I love what's been happening in, in Sacramento. And I liked when they played that weird series in Las Vegas that they were also playing in a minor league stadium.

• 1:42:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was fireworks.

• 1:42:59Speaker 03

  Energy's been great. That Las Vegas series, I feel like they were scoring like 15 runs each team a game. Like that was one of the highest scoring series in baseball. And it's these stadiums, if you could throw that in there and just alternate like, okay, you know what? This year, instead of like getting the field of dream games, like you had the worst attendance last year. You were in the bottom, you know, you'd have to do it with like the bottom third of the league.

• 1:43:21Bill Simmons?

  Your stadium gets relegated?

• 1:43:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, stadium relegation for a year. And you do it based on attendance, because like you can't do it to a team that sells out 35,000 a night, right? You have to do it like, this has to be like the Marlins, the Rays, the Pirates of the world.

• 1:43:36Bill Simmons?

  Angels would have been good. The Angels have to go play at some weird stadium in San Bernardino.

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  We're not going to get into it today, but the Angels were sold, like.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  I know, I had that on my list.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  God, like one of the villains of the game is now out of baseball. And this is a team that could maybe turn things around with new ownership.

• 1:43:54Bill Simmons?

  I thought the Athletics had a big feature about it that had, I just wasn't following it, I gotta say. The, the tidbits about how cheap he was, but then these giant contracts he would give out. I'm always fascinated by those owners where they, they basically do like three or four splashy things. And then they're just doing dumb shit and trying to make payroll decisions and, you know, driven financially. But basically because of these giant contracts they gave out, never understood his game plan.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  It's the idea that like, people are just going to come see the big star at the game every week, every night.

• 1:44:30Bill Simmons?

  Right. It's like a movie where it's like, we have Tom Cruise.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  Mike Trout, but the movie sucks.

• 1:44:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Speaker 03

  Well, but they also gambled on Anthony Rendon, who was not a star. And that was like.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  Well, he was when they signed him. He was one of those, immediately went to shit deals.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  He was the best free agent. He was the best free agent available that year. And they decided to treat him as a superstar in the league, which he wasn't. And then he just probably didn't want to play baseball. Like he was getting injured, but like he could never play baseball with any of these injuries. It was kind of crazy.

• 1:45:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 03

  That deal and what you're saying about like the bad spending of money is one of my biggest concerns with the lockout and with the potential of a salary floor. Where you now have teams that are required to meet a threshold and they're just going to be giving dumb money to whoever's available that offseason, just to get them up to the minimum. And then they're going to be handcuffed with these bad deals with people that shouldn't be making that money.

• 1:45:29Bill Simmons?

  It's like if you have a golf, like a country club membership and you, you have to eat $250 a month. And you go in, you're like, I'll have the steak and I'll have a steak. Cause you just have to get to the 250 anyway. The Angels are going to be like, I'll have an expensive outfielder and another one. But they, they are being bought by the Cronkies who, you know, have been pretty successful as owners across the board. They'll certainly probably be successful with them.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  They have a case for best owner anywhere right now.

• 1:45:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  The Avs, Arsenal, the Rams. Well, well, a little different there. Do you remember, do you remember when the Angels drafted 20 pitchers in one season?

• 1:46:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was in that athletic thing. I'd, I'd forgotten about it.

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  2021.

• 1:46:15Bill Simmons?

  They're just throwing darts, hoping to nail anybody. We, in this weird.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  None of them are any good.

• 1:46:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, in this weird AL keeper league I'm in, you kind of know to stay away from the Angels' prospects. Cause they'll be like, oh, he's the number two prospects on the Angels. Like, I don't even know what that means. They never have good prospects.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  They can't develop anybody. The only guy, that four made the majors. Sam Bachman was their first round pick. He's basically a bullpen guy that's been injured a bunch. Chase Silseth, Brett Carey briefly debuted and Kai Bush. Like I said, none of these guys were any good.

• 1:46:47Bill Simmons?

  You mentioned the Padres earlier. I had this written down too, because we do this with the Padres all the time. We get to mid, late September and they become the sleeper in the NL. And they're, I just was reading a piece on ESPN about this this week. Who's the sleeper in the NL? Everybody's like Padres, look out for the Padres, bullpen. I think I've lost money on this, like at least three of the last four years, talking myself into the Padres. Is there anything that could be different about them this year from a sleeper standpoint, Abundo?

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  Well, the bullpen's really good, Bill. I don't know if you've heard.

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  It was good last year.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  It's good every year. And they don't hit home runs. And look, the Brewers are making it work. They're one of my, my storylines. Brewers are 28th in home runs and they are one of the best offenses in baseball. But they've done a lot of different things, getting on base all the time. They've seemed to have broken clutch hitting in baseball. They're kind of like a separate case. The Padres are your traditional, like we don't hit home runs. Our hitters are not good enough at hitting the ball out of the park. And usually we get to October and as good as our pitching is, we don't score any runs.

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  You do the three one every once in a while, the three run day.

• 1:47:49Speaker 02

  And they haven't had it. And that's why they lost to the Cubs last year. It's, it's a big problem.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  My fear for this playoffs is that the super smart Tampa Bay Rays, who we thought we had finally gotten rid of. And they had had their little run and it was over and we didn't have to worry about them being basically Sam Presti of the AL. But now all of a sudden they're really good again. I don't really fully understand it. And then the Brewers who have the GM, who is, is the one that's being compared to Sam Presti. And could we have like the smart guy finals, Billy, where it's Tampa, Milwaukee? Two teams with all these obstacles and the big markets and the Dodgers spending money. And these two teams just out-thought everybody. Cause Tampa, Milwaukee, I'm sorry, would not be a fun finals.

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  I mean, I hope it doesn't happen just because Tampa is always used as the example of, look, there is a way to do it on the cheap and not have to have payroll and do it. And we could be the Rays. And it's like, but you can't be the Rays because you're not the Rays and you're not smart enough. You're just a cheap team. And also Andrew Friedman was great with the Rays. And look how great he is when he has a lot of money.

• 1:49:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:49:00Speaker 03

  First opportunity he got, when he had the opportunity to either have no money or have all the money to build a baseball team, he said, you know what I'd like to do? Have all of the money to build a baseball team. And I'll spend $60 million a year on an outfielder who hates being here. And it doesn't really matter whether he plays or not, because we'll just figure out a way to plug that hole another way. So.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  The $30 million backup outfielder.

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  You know, another thing about the Rays that bothers me as like someone down here in Miami, who now has like a bunch of Rays, like former executives running the team. And they're going to be the new Rays. And then like, wow, look, they really know what they're doing because they had a hot June, but then since have had losing months ever since. The thing that bothers me about the Rays and why I hope the Rays never win the World Series is similar to my, and this is just petty hatred, is similar to like my petty hatred of the Moneyball A's. Where it's like, look at this revolution. This was great. And at the end of the day, they never won a championship. So this was like a nice theory that worked out, that got them through the regular season and only got them so far. And it never got them over the edge.

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  And the Rays have been to the World Series twice, I believe, and have still not won a World Series. So we keep pointing out the Rays as like, they've figured out, look, this is the way to do it. It's like, except they haven't been able to do it yet, you know? Like they have these nice runs in the regular season, but they can't close the deal. And they shouldn't be using example for all the other teams because again, you are not the Rays and you do not have that front office running your team. You're just cheap.

• 1:50:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then they, the Campanaro trade is probably the most one-sided baseball trade of this decade. And it flew, it flew under the radar when it happened, but they gave up Tobias Myers, right-handed pitcher, who was, stopped playing baseball four years ago. The trade was in 2021. And they just stumbled on a Campanaro who, the moment he showed up on the Rays, if you were watching them or your team was playing them and you're like, who's this guy? He's terrifying. And he's been terrifying from the moment he showed up. And now it's probably the second or third most terrifying guy in the AL.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  By far, more than any other sport, the star player that came out of nowhere was actually on a different team. Bill, do you know who had Jordan Alvarez first?

• 1:51:18Bill Simmons?

  I was at the Yankees?

• 1:51:20Speaker 02

  It was the Dodgers. They traded Jordan Alvarez. The Phillies got one over on the Rays. Chris Sanchez, who's one of the top pitchers in the National League, they got one, they got him from the Rays for basically nothing. Curtis Meade, who's now a Nationals slash Red Sox.

• 1:51:34Bill Simmons?

  Our worst one ever was Jeff Bagwell, which somehow my dad was focused on it when we traded him. He was like a double A hitting 320 and they traded him for Larry Anderson for a pennant run. But there's, and I'm sure the Mets fans feel this way with PCA too. There's nothing worse in baseball than when your guy gives up a guy who eventually becomes a superstar. I don't, doesn't really happen in other sports.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  Tatis was a White Sock too. He went for James Shields.

• 1:52:02Bill Simmons?

  Like in basketball, it doesn't, it's really hard for it to happen. It's hard to.

• 1:52:05Speaker 02

  SGA.

• 1:52:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, SGA would be the closest, right? But even when the Clippers did that trade, I think they knew like, ah shit, they, they're on it. But I didn't think they knew it was gonna be what it turned out. Billy, how excited are you for Yankees, Red Sox, best of five, round one? As somebody who lives in Florida and doesn't care about the American League as much as you do nationally.

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  Best of three, Bill. It's a sprint.

• 1:52:28Bill Simmons?

  Best of three.

• 1:52:29Speaker 03

  I'm more excited for Yankees, Red Sox, best of three than I am for an Astros, Guardians, best of three. I'm disappointed by the fact that the result of the Yankees, Red Sox, best of three leads to a Yankees or Red Sox Rays, best of five, and on the other side, we're gonna have a White Sox, Guardians, or Astros, best of five. Like, it's kind of a shame that the East have to eliminate themselves and that there's a possibility that one of the teams not in the East will make it to the World Series. We'll definitely get to the ALCS and may somehow outlast and make it to the World Series, just because of how

• 1:53:07Speaker 03

  bad the AL is so bad. Like, the fact that there's only four, five teams that are barely above 500 in some cases, it's, it's weird.

• 1:53:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, like right now, the White Sox and the Guardians are playing a series that's basically probably gonna determine something. The fact that this is a big playoff series or a big regular season series in mid-September is kind of bonkers when you watch the guys on each team. You're like, really? These guys, these guys are battling for the three seed?

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  Can Joe Adele rob three homers, please, or something exciting happen in this series?

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Red Sox fans, we can't do this, obviously, and it seemed like there was an outside chance to catch Tampa, but really a chance to catch the Yankees and they couldn't do it. They would have been better off just being the six seed, right?

• 1:53:54Speaker 03

  Where?

• 1:53:54Bill Simmons?

  And having like five less wins and playing whoever was the three.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  Throw every game the rest of the season?

• 1:53:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, basically. Like, like in basketball, you would, you would probably think about it. We've seen people do it in basketball. Baseball's harder.

• 1:54:06Speaker 03

  Where does this season for you rank if the Red Sox are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in a best of three? Cause they gave you a nice, fun two months. You got Mickey Gas that you've been very excited about. Do you look back and remember this season fondly, or has it just become forgotten?

• 1:54:23Bill Simmons?

  No, totally fondly. It's, it's like, we had a Morgan Magic season. There's been a couple of these where the team was just, felt like they were gonna suck and then all of a sudden magically, it was the most fun two months. You guys were watching from afar. Like, every single game was, was, was like a nine or a 10 out of 10, right? It was all these comebacks, late innings. So it was just super fun. I think there's real optimism with the fanbase with this, just, it's a three games only and we have three starters, right? We, and we can throw, and Toley, who's been lights out. It's like a question of where he goes, but it's probably gonna be Sonny Gray, Suarez, game two, who's been, all the Philly fans tell us, like, lights out as a playoff guy.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  1.4 ERA in his career. He is the coolest pitcher in baseball. He's not the best. He's an old school junk baller for the most part, but he's the best.

• 1:55:14Bill Simmons?

  Trying to set it up so Toley's the, the third guy, like in a do or die game three, Yankee Stadium, or you miraculously win in two and you can push him over and he can start game one. But, you know, they have these three starters and they do have a really good bullpen. My question is the, the bats. I just don't, Contreras has not been the same since the All-Star break and Roman Anthony came up, he was a house of fire. Now it's like he strikes out every other time, it seems like. So unless we get this magical Mickey Gasper Renaissance to continue, Rafael is coming back, maybe Contreras, who's never been the same since he had the concussion. But it's gonna be the pitching.

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  Are you talking trash?

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  That's gonna be the pitching. I'm not, I'm worried about, I don't like that judge came back like right now and has the two weeks. Doesn't seem like they're gonna get Stanton back. They have this random, Jazz got hurt and Volpe came up, who I think all the Yankee fans had quit on, and is actually like been pretty good for them. But Schlitter is incredible. I mean, he, he's gonna clearly cruise to the Cy Young and where they pitch him. Did you know there's a Yankee debate about, do they pitch Cole or Schlitter in game one? How do you pitch Cole over Schlitter? Like, that would be a miracle if they did that for us.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  It's not gonna happen.

• 1:56:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would think Schlitter would start game one, right?

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  That feels like a WFAN debate. Oh, we gotta go with the experienced guy, even though Schlitter shoved in a game three last year when it really counted.

• 1:56:38Speaker 03

  Gotta outthink the Red Sox with that play, you know? No one's expecting it, so let's switch up the order there.

• 1:56:42Bill Simmons?

  If it were up to me, I would pitch Gray in game one and Toley in game two. Cause I think Toley's like, he's just, bigger the moment, the bigger he is. Like, he was awesome at the Dodger game I went to. He just loved being in Dodger Stadium, trying to shut them down. So I would do an and out have Ranger in game three as the, alright, show us, you're this allegedly awesome playoff guy. I don't think.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  It's not alleged, Bill. It's just somehow factual.

• 1:57:09Bill Simmons?

  I know, but you switch leagues.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

  Nobody really ever understood it.

• 1:57:12Bill Simmons?

  Right. And then I don't know if the Yankee fans love this team, is the other thing that gives me solace.

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  Who loves their team? That's a fun debate. How many teams love their team? The Cubs love the Cubs right now.

• 1:57:25Bill Simmons?

  I think the Brewer fans love their team. I would say they're, they're, and I know a couple Brewer fans. I think they're just like, nobody's talking about us, like big chip on their shoulder. I think the Cubs fans have loved the PCA experience, right? They haven't had like.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  They had a lot of homers. It's pretty fun to watch.

• 1:57:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, for the most part.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  And I'll tell you what, it's not the Phillies, it's not the Braves. I don't think it's the Yankees. It's certainly not the Astros, the Rangers, maybe the White Sox, cause this is their first year of being competitive again. There's not a lot of teams. The White Sox?

• 1:57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the fact that they are going to win the Central just shows how poor the AL Central is. Like, they should not have been in it.

• 1:58:06Bill Simmons?

  I will say one thing about the White Sox, cause we've played them a few times. The, they have some feisty young guys.

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:58:14Bill Simmons?

  They have, they just, Inaachi is, is, just wants to get in a fight every game. And I think in the playoffs, guaranteed, like he slides into somebody at second base and try, you know, he's just one of those guys. He's trying to get, it's, it's a little bit of an irrational confidence young team. Billy, who do you think is favorite of the American League on FanDuel right now? Don't look. Who do you think is the American League favorites?

• 1:58:37Speaker 03

  Is it not the Rays?

• 1:58:40Bill Simmons?

  It is the Rays. They're plus 290. The Yankees are plus 320. I personally think the Yankees should be favored. It's like, really, that price is probably, they're probably not favored to Bundo just because of the best of three Red Sox, right? It's like so scary. You just blow two and you're gone. Dodgers are.

• 1:59:00Speaker 02

  I would make the Yankees a favorite over the Rays if they played head to head, and I suspect the market would too.

• 1:59:06Bill Simmons?

  NL, Dodgers are plus 125, Milwaukee is plus 300, and the Bundo's Phillies are plus 750.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  Are we, we're the third favorite?

• 1:59:16Bill Simmons?

  Well, Atlanta's plus 700, so you're fourth.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:59:19Bill Simmons?

  The, the one thing with the Phillies, there, there is like a Schwaber roadmap. Cause that, I would say, for most beloved Phillies, how high is he up there now? If we're talking last 35 years?

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Uh, he's not on the level of Utley, Howard and Rollins, but he's probably of this era. He has certainly passed Bryce Harper.

• 1:59:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's sniffing it.

• 1:59:41Speaker 03

  He's past Bryce Harper?

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  It's not even close. Did you listen to the home run derby? I thought that was telling. I got a bunch of texts about that. When they announced Harper, everybody's excited. When they announced Schwaber, it was a different level of crowd pop. And I got a few texts from people saying, wait, wait, Schwaber over Harper? I'm like, yeah, this is just kinda how it's been for the last year and a half.

• 2:00:00Bill Simmons?

  He's so lovable. We had him.

• 2:00:01Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, is he just lovable fat guy? Like respectfully to the Schwabers?

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's slimmed down this year.

• 2:00:07Speaker 03

  He has slimmed down, which is kinda like, you're losing your brand there, you know?

• 2:00:11Bill Simmons?

  He's, I gotta say, he's a little bit of an artist. That was my takeaway from when we had him. Like, he, he basically does two things. He's like a restaurant where you go in and it's like, they're really awesome at these two things. Get, definitely get the smash burger and definitely get the chicken parm done. Like, that's it. Him, it's like incredible command of the strike zone and then this crazy power and that's really it. But there, there's like a real presence about him. And in big games, you just feel like, I don't know. You just have complete confidence in him. So I feel like he could vault up. If I had to bet.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  So, Bill, he has a chance to do something pretty wild this year.

• 2:00:48Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  He's currently the heavy favorite to lead the league in homers. He's also 14 strikeouts away, so 12 games to go. If he strikes out 14 more times, he will break the MLB record for strikeouts in a season. Wow.

• 2:01:03Bill Simmons?

  What, what's the number for that?

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  223. Mark Reynolds.

• 2:01:07Bill Simmons?

  That is unbelievable. Can you imagine striking out?

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  Schwaber's at 210. He, like, he bats at the top of the order. He plays every day.

• 2:01:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  And he strikes out 34% of the time and hits a homerun about 7 or 8% of the time. It's pretty, pretty amazing to watch.

• 2:01:20Speaker 03

  So if you clinch and it's at home and he breaks the record for strikeouts in a season, but you're already in, like, you're good, do you give him the standing ovation? Like, do you commemorate it?

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  I don't know. That's a good question. I don't think there's gonna be a commemoration.

• 2:01:33Bill Simmons?

  Rob Dear comes out, presents something with a plaque.

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  Mark Reynolds comes out, he's been traveling around with the team like the Merritts family.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Mark Reynolds pops the champagne, says, not me anymore, baby.

• 2:01:44Bill Simmons?

  Um, alright, let's all make World Series picks and then we'll go, just for what we think the matchup is gonna be right now. Feel free to change this in two weeks, but right now, knowing what you know, what would be your World Series, Billy?

• 2:01:56Speaker 03

  I'm gonna go with. I'll go Cubs.

• 2:02:03Speaker 03

  Cubs and Yankees.

• 2:02:06Bill Simmons?

  Cubs Yankees. Okay. What do you got, Dabbundo?

• 2:02:11Speaker 02

  I don't want to pick the Dodgers. I really don't.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Me neither.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  I, I re- the Brewers, Kyle Harrison, just like fell off a cliff in the last two weeks, last month.

• 2:02:20Bill Simmons?

  Last two weeks. It's been the last two months, basically. Yeah.

• 2:02:23Speaker 02

  Last, last, yeah, more than that. But like I, now I'm worried they don't have enough pitching. And it's like, how did we get here? This was supposed to be their thing. And they have the top two guys, Miz and Henderson. And then it's like, Dustin May might be the game three starter for the Brewers. So unfortunately, yes, if you give me the Dodgers versus any other team, I'm still going to take them. And I'm going to take them against the Rays.

• 2:02:44Speaker 03

  I would go Yankees Phillies.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  It would be funny. Phillies fans are in a meltdown right now because they've had a shitty September.

• 2:02:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:02:53Speaker 02

  Had their shittiest September since 2022.

• 2:02:54Bill Simmons?

  Scare me at all. And sometimes you need to get it out. You need to, yeah, you need to get that shit out before.

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  Get the losses out before the playoffs.

• 2:03:01Bill Simmons?

  You need to, it's a little different if your team stops hitting and you don't know where the hits are coming from, which is a little bit of the Red Sox problem right now, but, um. All right. So we, the important thing was all of us picked the Yankees to make the World Series. Hopefully that will backfire.

• 2:03:17Speaker 02

  I got the Rays.

• 2:03:18Bill Simmons?

  You have the Rays. So you have Rays and Dodgers.

• 2:03:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Ah, the Rays, huh?

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  They're going to out, out execute the Yankees in a, in a series and win it.

• 2:03:28Speaker 03

  Out execute.

• 2:03:30Speaker 02

  Yep. All the little things, Billy. Every Yankee fan, I can already picture the callers. I can't believe they struck out 12 times in elimination game again.

• 2:03:41Bill Simmons?

  I can't, I can't see it with the bullpen, but maybe I'm just too close to it. Like even we have Kevin Kelly on our team. He got, and he's been lights out the whole year. He's one of their best setup guys. Got completely shelled, um, a couple of games ago. It was like, oh, that's the Russian is cut for the, for the Rays because they've had all these relievers just, you know, do their thing. So.

• 2:04:02Speaker 03

  Baseball is one of those things like, so none of us picked the Brewers either. And the Brewers are the one seed in the NL. And I feel like it's kind of like Indiana last year in college football, right? Where it's like, I just don't see it happening for them, you know, like I just, and until it happened for Indiana, like the whole way is like, I don't think they're going to, this is Indiana. They're not going to win the national championship. With the Brewers, until they do it, I feel like it just goes back to like, something's going to go wrong for them in the playoffs. It just always happens and they're just not going to get over the hump. They're not going to beat, you know, either the Phillies, the Cubs, or, you know, the Braves or the Dodgers down the road.

• 2:04:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't trust the starters with them. The Dustin May, Harrison combo. I just, in an actual playoff series, I don't see it. What were you going to say, Dabbundo?

• 2:04:48Speaker 02

  I mean, they scored four runs in the NLCS last year. And I think people cannot get that out of their heads. Cause it's like, oh, here's this great Brewers team and we got Pat Murphy doing all the self deprecating jokes about how they're just the average Joes. They had that great series win against the Cubs in five. They get to the NLCS. They scored four runs in four games. And I think people are just like, wow, you know, that's what they do. Their offense goes to shit against better pitching. I don't know. Part of me says, hey, the Dodgers had elite, elite starting pitching last playoffs. They kind of look like they will have again.

• 2:05:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  But, I mean, it still was just four games. We shouldn't overreact to that.

• 2:05:22Speaker 03

  Does, does Craig Council regret that move from the Brewers to the Cubs?

• 2:05:27Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 2:05:29Bill Simmons?

  I'll leave you guys with this. I think it is lined up amazingly for the Yankees.

• 2:05:36Bill Simmons?

  You know, they, they haven't won since oh nine. Judge is going to be back in time, which seemed questionable. All their starters that they paid a lot of money for are all going to be there. When they actually have their whole lineup, they're pretty terrifying. I mean, Ben Rice is terrifying. Judge is terrifying. Um, when they have Jazz back, I know he's feast or famine, but he's scary. Their bullpen's really good. Like they have multiple guys that I would trust in a short series, a long series, whatever. And it just feels like, it feels like this is their best chance, especially with the Dodgers in a little bit of disarray. But I just have to bank on the one and only Aaron Boone. And some history from the last 17 years screwed up. All right, guys.

• 2:06:22Bill Simmons?

  Billy, give us a, give us 20 seconds on the Marlins season before you go.

• 2:06:27Speaker 03

  It was a fun season for a month there in the middle. There's hope. It's a fun team. Like they have exciting parts. They just won a series against the Dodgers. So they're young. Hopefully, you know, they can hit their stride and maybe this whole Rays thing that we've brought down here with Peter Bendix running the team for the Marlins. We figure things out. And if, uh, if there's a season next year, maybe this is a season you build on, but there may not be a season next year.

• 2:06:52Bill Simmons?

  I, I wonder like, does the Dodgers, them imploding with some of the money stuff, does that help or hurt the season next year?

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll say, I'll say no effect.

• 2:07:03Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:07:06Speaker 02

  It's, it's lame to say that. I just think the issues run a whole lot deeper than just the one boogeyman.

• 2:07:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but then, then Manfred's like, we should, we're thinking about expansion. It's like, wait, can we figure out if we have a season?

• 2:07:18Speaker 03

  They need to not expand.

• 2:07:19Bill Simmons?

  Please don't expand. I promise you don't need to expand. Yeah, we have enough.

• 2:07:23Speaker 03

  And, and as a Floridian down here, when you see like Orlando's in the mix, it's like, we have two teams right now. We're, we're just fine.

• 2:07:31Speaker 02

  Can't fill a stadium.

• 2:07:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're fine with those two. We don't need to add another one to the mix there. We're still figuring that out.

• 2:07:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that would be stupid. All right. Billy, AD, good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.

• 2:07:43Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. Thanks to Billy Gil and Dabbundo. Thanks to Gahow and Eduardo and Chris. As well. I'm going to be back on Thursday night after Bill's Lions. We're going to be live, um, right after that game on Netflix. If you want to watch it or you can listen to it later on that night. I will see you in a couple of days.

• 2:08:23Bill Simmons?

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