Phillies First Impressions, And Did the Sixers Season Just Get Interesting?

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2:22Welcome to the ringers, Philly special, I am your host, Shiel Kapati and you know what, we said we got to bring back the Sunday night pod this week because there's too much going on. There is a the first three games of the Philly season, maybe not the most exciting opening series and in baseball history, but still we have some first impressions we had to get off our chest. And then Saturday night six years I was sex and cliff six years played, you know, one of the most entertaining games of the season and now this kind of wacky year has taken maybe a little bit of a different turn or maybe not we'll get to that as well. So that's what we're going to do today. We figured why wait until Monday, why wait until Tuesday, let's just get some of these takes off our chest. So we've got our friend who's on three and a half hours of sleep. He was in Vegas doing the ringer gambling show live out there. He took a red eye because he's got young bones and he can do a red eye and still feel

3:23like he can, you know, function the next day, unlike people like me, his name is Tony Bunts, Anthony DeBundo, you look great. You know, I wouldn't say you look like you're, you don't have to lie, you're dragging. I think you look great. I appreciate the compliment, even though it doesn't feel like it, I got like the dark circles under my eyes. I haven't really slept well. I actually texted Bo, a mid flight to ask if he was able to play tennis on Monday. What his schedule looks like this week and he texted me go to sleep. It was like 4 a.m. Eastern 5 a.m. Eastern, so one, you know, what was Bo doing up that early? Great. That's a good question. Two, I did not sleep for more than about 10 minutes on the flight, I had a layover. It was a disaster. Great weekend in Vegas had a great time, but that place man, three days there and it's like, please get me home as soon as possible. I slept, I set my alarm for 130. Really wish I had just slept through the whole afternoon, honestly. I don't think I gained anything by watching three hours of Philly's Baseball today. Alas, here we are.

4:25Red eye with a layover bunsy. What are we doing? The whole point of the red eye is you get on. You hope you sleep and you wake up and you're in your destination, but the layover messes the entire thing up. It's a bad move by you. Who knew O'Hare would be so packed at 6 a.m. on a Sunday? Who knew? All right, there you go. That's okay. Bunsy's still going to bring the heat with this podcast as we talked about. To fill it off your Philly's. Dropping two of three to the Texas Rangers, Black Luster offensive performance here, the last two days, starting pitching. Not great, but maybe not cause for concern. Well here, what Bunsy has to say, but you told me you have a good, bad, and ugly. Is that true? That was only like 10 minutes ago, so I don't know if you're sticking with that. So you give me good, bad, and ugly, and then I've got leftover topics that we can hit on if they don't fit in the good, bad, and ugly. How does that sound? Sounds good. Yeah. All right. Where are you starting? Yeah.

5:26Let's see. I think we have to start with Chris Sanchez. We got to start with Chris Sanchez. Come on. There you go. Chris Sanchez signs the big extension opening day, his first start. You could go back to just last season. I was actually thinking about it. They gave him the home opener. But Sanchez was essentially coming into the season, you know, he was the fourth man in the rotation as far as how they lined it up. Going into this season, I don't think there was any doubt who was going to start opening day. And I don't think you could have drawn up a better opening day. College rubber hits the home run. I like foam has a big swing. They've led wire to wire, got a little dicey at the end. Philly's made history with the save, but really it's Chris Sanchez. And some of the Rangers even commented on the quality of the change up when he gets those afternoon starts, we talk about the shadows, of course, when he gets those afternoon starts at the bank, I almost start to feel bad for the opposing hitters trying to go up against him. I mean, it is as tough of a matchup as you will find in baseball. He was completely dominant. Three hits. I mean, 10 case. This guy, the arc of his career going from somebody who was barely in the bigs, a trade

6:29that was honestly panned for a bit because Curtis Mead looked like he was going to be a breakout prospect for the race. Now Mead's been bouncing around the league, it looks like he's going to be in Washington potentially for a little revenge series this week. He's barely in the league. And Chris Sanchez is a frontline starter. And now your side young favorite, thanks to a certain outing by Paul Skins on Thursday. So there's a lot of excitement about Sanchez. I think the sky continues to be the limit. I didn't think he could reach last year's highs, but I'm not going to doubt him anymore. Nine Philly's are 19 and two, I believe in their last 21 home games that Christopher Sanchez starts. You've been on this since at least last year, maybe even before that, you were telling me about this constantly. Yeah. I mean, he is an absolute joy to watch sky. Sky really is the limit when you kind of consider how young he is and how, you know, how long he might be in Philadelphia, how we might be talking about this guy when his career is over. Obviously, a long way to go. You got to stay healthy. There will be some bad seasons in there, most likely, but yeah, that was about as encouraging

7:32a start. And you could have hoped I love the emotion he showed, you know, he knew he was coming out after the six. He gets that last strike out and he's just yelling on his way to the dugout, a crowd favorite for sure. So yes, how did the Saiyans flip like that, Bunzi, after one start? Isn't that weird? Like, Skins gets yelled there in his first start. Christopher Sanchez is great, but it's like it was one start. You expect them. They were going to make what 30 starts if they're in the Saiyans race. But now, like you said, Christopher Sanchez, plus 300 to win the Saiyong and Paul Skins is plus 420. Is that, is that common? Is that weird? Did that surprise runs? That's like three starts worth of runs for Paul Star, he gave up. And I know the defense certainly did him no favors on Thursday. Like if you, if you regraded that game and said, well, that was kind of errors by O'Neal Cruz, then you might come with a different ERA. But when we look in August and September, and we look at the top line, and we say Chris Sanchez's ERA is 2.3 and Paul Skins is 2.7, the difference could honestly be that O'Neal

8:35Cruz screwed a matter of a few runs at that point in season. So just get ready for the stats that are going to come out. It's going to be, if you remove opening day, Paul Skins ERA is 1.6 since that opening day game, when he couldn't get out of the first against the Metz, I mean, I'm not surprised by it. It wasn't that big last year. You know, Chris had a couple bad starts on the road down the stretch where he didn't have his best stuff. That kind of took him out of the race. But I remember at one point in August, thinking like, hey, we're only like one or two schemes blow up so away from this being 50, 50, it never got there. But the gap is not that big at this point. And Philly is going to be competitive and we'll see what Pittsburgh looks like in this season. I know there's a lot of buzz for the pirates and for myself included, but a tough opening weekend for them. All right. So everyone write yourself a note that when if those things come out, that if you take away Paul Skins' opening day start, you need to respond with, well, if you take away Christopher Sanchez's worst start of the season, here's what his numbers would be because

9:37it's the same best. Don't let him, you know, take it down that rabbit hole. Don't fall into that trap. We'll be ready. I know bunzy will be ready. So let's, whenever Sanchez has a start that looks like his worst start, we will take note of that. And we will make sure the comparisons are even so fun. Christopher Sanchez, go in the side, young. I love it. All right. That was the good, definitely the best thing to come out of the weekend on Christopher Sanchez's start there on Thursday. Bad. I'm very curious because you are a, hey, don't get carried away with this small sample. Let's zoom out. So I'm thinking this would be something that if you have it in the bad category, there would be something that you actually have concerns about going forward the rest of the season. Maybe I'll be wrong with that. You know, I got a pretty good read on you at this point. So what is your bad after the first three games? You know, I got to say I wasn't done with the good yet. Oh, you got multiple, I got multiple good things. Bunzy, listen, we came up with this like nine minutes ago.

10:39Okay. So we didn't nail down all the, we could take the listeners behind the curtain. Okay. So that was the first good. All right. The quality of Justin Crawford's at bats. I thought, oh, this would be interesting. Now, I don't, I won't necessarily comment on the quality of the contact that he had. I think there's still a lot of work to be done there. But what I think is at least encouraging about what we saw an opening day working good at bats, getting a couple hits. Yes, he gets the bump in field swinging, bump single on Sunday. But I thought for the most part and a peculiar decision, which we'll get to about Rob Thompson and the ninth inning today, I thought it for the most part, his at bats were competitive. He was overmatched and he had faced a tough, you know, slate of pitchers here. Like Texas, it was one of the best rotations in the league last year. Of course, you have all these good. We know the ground doesn't pitch, but their bullpen is pretty good too. And then, you know, Gore who shoved on the Phillies multiple times last year for Washington, Phillies can't seem to hit that guy. So a tough matchups for him, I thought for the most part, though, is a bats were competitive.

11:40He was not overmatched. And I think that's always the risk when you get these rookies that come up. And this year, apparently not every rookie is hitting like 500 this weekend. It's insane. But Crawford to his credit hasn't really hit the ball hard yet. And I think that's still needs to be seen. But in terms of foul and pitches off, being selective, I liked what I saw from Crawford this weekend. I thought it was an encouraging weekend, even if I remain dubious long term on him. I'm with you this season. I enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the Crawford experience. It's kind of everything we sort of expected it to be where he literally had, he has not hit a ball hard, I believe, you know, by the metrics in three games. So he didn't hit the ball hard. He's not really hitting the ball in the air yet three hits and a walk in the first four games. As many hits as any other player reaches base four times in three games. I'm with you. You know, today, I thought this game Sunday, certainly he looked a little overmatched in a couple of those bats where he strikes out, but I don't think that was, yeah, but

12:43I don't think that was the case for the three games overall. It didn't look, you know, it looked like his approach was fine and, you know, this has been his story at kind of every level where he like, well, he doesn't do this, he doesn't do this. And then you look up and last year he hit what, three thirty four in triple, I'm not saying he's going to hit three thirty four in the majors, but this is kind of what it kind of plays tricks on you where you say, well, he's actually getting on base a lot. But it does, you know, the underlying metrics don't back up that he's going to continue to be able to do this. So I thought it was fun, fun, certainly debut for him on Thursday with the two hits. I love the Carl Crawford is, can Carl Crawford just go to every game? I mean, I love the shots of him every time. Justin's up. It's so cool. It's like this guy with his long, major league career and his son's out there and he's got the iPhone out and he's trying to get a good angle. And then you see he's like breaking down his sons at bat. You can just see this is what he's talking. Oh, man, why do you know why do you do that? It's really, it's really fun to have him have him at these games.

13:45So I find that to be really fun, terrific catch on Saturday against the wall there. Defense. Yeah. Huge. Yeah. I think that's a big, that's a big sticking point. Because look, if he's not going to hit consistently, which we'll see, the defense has been something the scouts have disagreed with on him for a while. Some have given him great defensive grades. Others have given him good, not great defensive grades. Even his alpha offensive profile, he kind of has to play center and the Phillies are kind of banking on him being good in center because we're going to get to the rest of the outfield defense in a minute because this platoon thing with Martian camp is off to a bad start with camp playing left field. It was an ugly Sunday. Well, maybe I'm teasing something there now, but that being said, though, I mean, the defense, that play, like I got me out of my seat, yeah, he caught that because I'm taking, oh, I thought first of all, it was gone, like here we go, then I'm like, okay, it's off the big wall. He brings it down and out of my seat, very excited. So those kind of plays that we saw from from Rojas and Bader, Bader, we're seeing from Crawford. That's impressive for somebody who's in their first big league this weekend, and obviously

14:48we saw a lot of bad outfield defense around the league this weekend. So kind of to him, even today, I think he had a throat a second. I don't know if they showed a replay, you know, the one where he just missed him, but it seemed like it was pretty, I mean, it was certainly an accurate throw. And again, we didn't see a replay of how strong it was. I did love Cruck yelling at that one about the guy hadn't crossed it all yet, and then they had to tell him. They're under the score. They're under the score of Team Max, like he slides in safely a second. You know what? It was for a game that didn't have a lot of juice. The broadcast, I thought was very good today where they were keeping me entertained with Cruck Done Laundry and all that stuff that they were talking about. Cole Hamilton's I thought was, I think, listen, Mike Schmidt was my favorite athlete as a child, my first favorite athlete, my favorite Philly. I don't know that he was great at the gig of, you know, being there for the Sunday games. And I thought, Hamilton's was pretty good. I thought Hamilton's with Cruck there is pretty good for once a week, you know, they get into stuff actually about the game, the intricacies of the game, and that's fun.

15:52But then just when they get into storytelling mode, that's pretty fun too. So I don't think I ever thought Cole Hamilton would kind of be good at this. But I thought it was pretty, pretty fun broadcast. Sorry. So we're on the same page with Justin Crawford. I will say, Trey, when Justin Crawford gets on base, can we give him a chance to steal? Like, isn't that part of his, you know, I feel like, yeah, I don't know how many times it was, but there were multiple times where Trey is swinging at the first pitch where I'm like, let's get, listen, Trey, you are a singles hitter now. So let's get Justin Crawford to second base in scoring position and let's see his wheels a little bit. So he didn't get a chance to steal a base in these first three games despite getting on base four times. So that's something I would like to see here in the future as well. But yeah, gets on base 40, 40% of his played appearances. He gets on base, huh? Again, I'm not telling you that's going to last, but as far as a debut series goes, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience. All right. What do you got? What's next?

16:52So this one is good and a bad JT Real Mute Show had a very interesting weekend in the Statcast metrics world. His bat speed increased considerably. And in fact, since they started tracking this publicly in 2023, his bat speed this weekend was the highest it's been in four years. Really? Wow. See? Yeah. You're like, whoa, wait. That's the JT my eye test. Yeah. Right. So the JT find the fountain of youth. What's going on here? You know, now that being said, it was matched by the highest swinging strike rate of his career as well. So it was not a great weekend for JT at the plate overall. But we saw increased bat speed. So this is where this gets really challenging, right? Because when we talk about baseball, I'm not going to come on here and like rip college rubber for having a bad weekend at the plate for striking out a bunch or even Bryce Harper. Like three games is nothing. I'm not going to go full Tony Vittello, which I don't know if you've been following the saga with the Giants new manager, but it's incredibly funny. But we can look at some things and the things that stabilize first for pictures. It's like, okay, how good your stuff? How good your command? Forget like did the bat at ball find a gap or not?

17:54How good your stuff? How good your command? Looking crisp. For hitters, it's like, all right, bat speed, quality of contact, swing decisions. Those are the things that we can look at right away and say, all right, are we encouraged or not encouraged? Now, the two bad were, I thought, just had awful weekends at the plate. Trey Turner. And we had a bad spring and I intentionally didn't talk about it last week because I was like, you know what, a veteran guy who isn't in the WBC when he was there three years ago. He's probably a little bummed that he didn't get the invite. He's not playing in it. He's kind of going through the motions like he's a vet. He's earned the right to not really care that much about spring training. When you come out first weekend and you're not swinging like you're a single sitter, you're swinging like you're, you know, peak, you know, bonds up there at the plate trying to pull everything out of the park, grounded into multiple double plays in front of everything, getting pull happy, comes up in a big spot yesterday, three straight swings and misses. Terrible. It's that. Pitches in the zone like it just felt like his timing was way off and like, you know,

18:57that's early. It's three game. But I was not encouraged and Turner talked after the game. He said, you know, three of my best years came after bad spring. So he doesn't, he's not concerned and I'm not that concerned long time. He's never concerned. I would like to be a little bit more inspired by the lead off hitter. The lead off hitter is not inspiring me at the moment. He hasn't inspired me this spring. He hasn't inspired me in the first three games. I'd like to see something from the guy and I haven't seen, he gave us nothing this weekend. I thought just a completely lifeless series. I agree. Yes. I find him to be, and this will not come as a surprise to the regular listeners. I just find him to be kind of a frustrating player to watch. And I think it probably just has to do with my initial expectations of what I thought, you know, when he was this monster piece that you're acquired, that you're adding after, you know, the most fun season in over a decade. Yeah. I had certain expectations for him. He just hasn't lived up to it. And again, it's not just the numbers. It is the day to, you know, a lot of baseball is just sort of the day to day of watching these

19:59guys over and over and over again. And like, you know, that is a, that is, it's fun, for instance, it's fun to watch Kyle Schwoper every day because even when he's in a slump, you're like, this next wing might just be a majestic bomb, you know, 400 plus feet, and he can do that. And I find more frustration than those moments with trade turners. So it's only three. It's only three games, not overreacting, but it was not a great three games for trade turner, two hits, no extra base hits, three strikeouts. Like you said, bad strikeout in a big spot there on Saturday. And so we will see. All right. Let's take a break. We come back. So where are we? Are we on the bad? Did we shift to the bad? Is there more good? Or that was all the good? Well, you know, the problem with the good bad and the ugly is it there's always a little bit of both in the good and the bad, right? So we're going to get to the starting pitching in a minute. The non-scientious starters will come back and Bunzie will walk me through this exercise that it's kind of an old podcast staple, but apparently your boy's a little confused

21:01here. You know, maybe it's my old age, maybe Bunzie's to blame. I don't know, but we'll see. I think the lack of sleep might be throwing me off my rhythm here. All right. We'll take a break. We'll come back. It's all of it. The ringer's Philly Special is brought to you by Fan Duel, baseball fans. Big hits get even bigger when customers choose their own reward every Dinger Tuesday. Bet reset or 50% profit boost. How will you play your game? Maybe you go Bryce Harper? Maybe you go Kyle Schwarber. You decide. Make your choice. And the reward will be ready to use on your next home run bet. Just visit fandall.com slash ringer Philly to choose your reward for home run bets every Dinger Tuesday. Play ball with the home for home runs on Fandall, an official partner of the MLB. 21 plus the next dates or 18 plus DC, Kentucky or Wyoming opt in required. Rewards are not only with drawable restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements and max wage or amount. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com.

22:02Gamling problem called 1-800 gambler, call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to by tax act, like an expert coach tax act offers step by step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way, add expert assists to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax act helps you find the directions and credits you deserve, so you can get them over with. Visit taxac.com to learn more, conditions apply, see taxac.com for details. All right, we're back here on the ringer's filly special. I did think this weekend was a reminder that, you know, even though for as long as I've done this as a job, that like I am still just a sports sicko, you know, just like just sitting there, like it was, I mean, it wasn't a lot of entertaining baseball and I'm just like, I've never felt like I was wasting time.

23:04I'm like, this is great, you know, then on the other screen, I got the sixers on and then I got March Madness on it. And I'm like, I'm having a great time. And these aren't really, except for the sixers games Saturday night, there weren't really great games in there. But I'm like, yeah, I don't think there's a lot of other things I'd rather be doing right now. So, yeah, that, that was a little bit, I was thinking about that earlier today, like how much sports have I watched here over the last three days? But you know what? It's been fun. We joke about this last pod, right? Yeah. The opportunity cost of the time spent watching fillies every year. You can't stick it out. You can't stick it out. Well, I had that day Saturday because the two options we did stuff Thursday and Friday night for the tournament. And then Saturday, Tate and Sal and they all left. So I had two options. It was either Saturday, take the morning flight and lose the whole day traveling or take the red eye. And I had golden night's tickets, shout out to Anduva for hook him up to night's game last night, big hockey guy. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to go to the game. But what am I going to do all day? I'm exhausted. It's been a long couple of days, late nights.

24:04I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to go to the sports book and I'm going to sit there and watch sports all day. So 1230, USA Belgium got the guy to put it on the top right corner, which is get housed by the Belgians. One o'clock, fillies, Rangers. God, I'm going to put it on the screen here, mate. Two o'clock, three o'clock, first ball for Iowa, Illinois. I'm sitting with some lovely Iowans, huge fans of all the sports teams in Iowa. They were lovely people. Very unhappy in the second half. When I watched the first half of Purdue against Arizona, then I went to the night's game, watched hockey. Oh my gosh. And then I took the Uber to the airport. I got to the airport 48 minutes where my flight took off and no issues. And I thought to myself, that was a hell of a day. Yeah. It really is the best. No, I made some friends at the book. I made some friends. I went to the game with a guy I met the night before, just a random dude who came to our watch party and was a nice guy. So that was like a day of my life and I thought to myself, what did I accomplish today?

25:06Not much. I do find that life sometimes. Yeah. It's the goat distraction from, you know, other stuff happening. I think that's why, you know, the listeners to this pot would probably say that, that, all right. I'm not, you know, I'm going to be in my car for whatever an hour and I'm not going to think about work or the world or maybe there's a family thing or a help thing ever. Everything going on. Yeah. It's just like, all right. Let me listen to these guys talk about the Eagles with the Phillies or whatever for an hour or so. Yeah. No regrets. It was all good. All right. What do we got? Good, bad, in between. Ugly, you lead the way. Well, let me let me let you start since you have a different viewing experience with Arinola than I do. Mm-hmm. So what was your experience on Saturday watching Noah? Was it with frustration? Was it annoyance? Was it excitement? It wasn't excitement. No. Okay. Yeah. I didn't think so. I kind of threw that in as a prayer. I mean, what did he end up doing five innings, six innings?

26:09What did he get through? Yeah. Five innings, three runs. Three runs. So if you look at it, it wasn't worse than Lazardo today. Now the home run and the first sitting, the experience of watching an Ola, it's not my favorite. It's probably like, you know, most, it's not like you. It's probably like most people listening where I get it. He's probably going to give him a ton of innings. You know, there's going to be some ups and downs or it'll be good stretches. There'll be bad stretches. This is kind of who he is at this stage of his career. I wasn't expecting a monster bounce back this year. I'm expecting better than last year, but not a monster bounce back where we're like, oh my gosh, he looks like, you know, one of their two or three best starters. I don't, you know, I think best case scenario. He's not starting a game. Well, I don't know actually. Well, we'll see how the playoffs go. Well, I don't know. Yeah, I didn't feel that strongly. I mean, I was, you know, laughing a little bit that he's the home run. He continues to give out that it's obviously being a major, major issue. And that continued just with the second he's on the mound.

27:10I, you know, I was a little hopeful. We talked about it before that that Italian pride maybe might have kicked in and we see a different guy. All of a sudden, it doesn't look like that necessarily happened. So I can't tell you that I had a strong, a strong feeling one way or the other other than this is kind of like a, you know, pretty usual aeronol experience, but what was your experience? Are there underlying things where you say, well, let me tell you about this. And it actually wasn't that bad. And I'm excited about the future. That's where I feel like you're going with this, but maybe not. Yeah, I mean, the velocity was pretty good early. It did start to tail off later. And I think that's one thing that they really need to, to kind of keep an eye on because he started at a much higher point than last year. The stuff models liked his stuff much better than at this point last year. I went up and pulled up the first month and all this stuff was in the tank this time last year. So it is kind of feeling like he's ahead of schedule. But I just think that he's never going to shake the home run problem at this point in his career.

28:10He is a guy who throws 92, 93 who fills up the zone more than any pitcher in the league. And every once in a while, you're just going to miss your spot by a few inches and it's going to be a 93 right down the middle. The good hitters are going to tee that up. They're going to be sitting on the tenancy and they're going to hit home runs. You just hope that the home runs come when there aren't people on base. And that really is what determines his success. But 14 swings and misses, I mean, seven strikeouts. This is a ranger's lineup. They will strike out a good amount. They will swing and miss. But I thought the secondary stuff was really good for noles and I think that's encouraging as well. So I agree fully with what you said where like I'm not getting back to pretend that this is going to become 2018 aeronol or even the 2020, you know, two aeronols going to walk through the door, right? But I do think that it is reasonable to say that he now has a much higher floor with the stuff he's showing because of the swings and misses because the ability to get out of jams. I mean, when he walks the first two guys and I think it was the third inning on Saturday. I'm a little, you know, like, all right, that's very unusual.

29:12I mean, we see aeronol walk back to back guys almost never. And then he was able to pitch his way out of it. That's a little bit of help from the defense, but but able to pitch his way out of it in ways that I'm not sure he would have done last year. I think last year you might have seen it unraveling. So the fact that he didn't was encouraging that of course burger tags him off the foul pole. But ultimately, I think encouraging signs that nole can be a perfectly good, like number three starter for this team this year. All right. I want to introduce a segment called I'm just a guy asking questions. Okay. Okay. Just thinking about this on the fly because of a couple of things you've said so far. I'm just a guy asking questions. What is aeronolous trade value and does he have a no trade class? Ooh, I don't think he have no trade class. Cliff's laughing. Well, here's what I'm thinking. All right. Because here's my second question with I'm just a guy asking questions. What is trade turner's trade value and does he have a no trade class? Because here's a, I'm looking at the aeronol has a full no trade.

30:12He has a full no trade. Okay. Well, yeah. I guess you never know what he would want. I'm sort of just looking at the strengths and weaknesses of this roster and what assets they have if they, you know, because we thought last off season, oh my gosh, like after the way they lost last year, they're going to shake things up, they're not going to run it back. And it's not that they're totally running back, but they're mostly running it back. They're running. Jason Stark at a column where he's kind of like this is unprecedented to have like this many, your lineup looked at this similar for four years in a row, basically, he was going through all the teams that have done that. So I was just thinking about as I watch turner, you know, and I know the war was great last year. And I'm not, you know, he hit over 300 and he's can run and some people love his defense. I was just wondering like, you know, he signed that monster contract. Is this a time to, because I feel like we don't have these conversations in baseball. Like if this were an NBA team, you know, we would be having those conversations like, all right.

31:12Well, what could they potentially do? We'll get the lottery machine, trade machine, cooking or just like, is there a, you know, power hitting outfield there that a team would move for trade turner? Is there a power hitting third baseman that a team would say send us arenola and Alec Bome and we'll give you this guy. You know, it's different parts of the roster where I've just, you know, I, as you were talking and I was thinking about that, watching the team over the weekend, because like, you know, there are guys you know that you're not going to move, obviously, they are your top end starters. You're not going to move. Harper, you're not going to move. Shorber, you're not going to move. And then there are guys who have no value, real mutate, like you're not going to trade. Those guys, boom, it seems like would just have to be a throw in with something else. You're not, you know, they've been trying to trade Bome for two plus years and they haven't been able to trade Bome. So I was thinking about trade turner and arenola specifically in that context. Would these guys be assets that another team would potentially trade for, or maybe you get a little, I don't know if you're getting younger or you're just, you're filling a hole

32:15that you have on the roster. Who plays shortstop for the Phillies is the problem. Can Bryson probably play shortstop and Bundo play second base? You want to Mundo to play every day? I don't know. It depends on who am I getting for trade turner. If I'm getting a certain level of player, then yes, I'm fine. You know, he played extended stretches last year. And I'm not saying he's amazing, but it's like, he didn't kill you. I wasn't worried about, I mean, I thought his defense today was tremendous and Bundo is the reminder that he's a great defense right there at second base. So I don't think that would be something that would necessarily kill you if you move stop to short and then Mundo for second to second. If you're getting better, I'm getting something I want at another place. That's all. Yeah. I think the problem is most teams just have a shortstop. Okay. It's very rare that they're just going to move for a new one mid season, like you rarely see short stops that are good, like every day players get moved in season because of that. I mean, if you go around the league, you won't find the team.

33:15That's competitive. It doesn't have like, okay, this guy's our shortstop. And like the Dodgers had that problem and they were like, okay, we're just going to teach Mookie bets to play it. That's how we're going to play crazy. Still doesn't get enough credit. It is crazy. Yeah. But I think that part is hard. No, Nola is a different story because there's such a shortage of pitching around the league, but the no trade makes it pretty tough. I can't imagine you'd want to trade away pitching because again, the problem with the Phillies, as much as we love the rotation, as much as the rotation and mass more war than every other team in the league last year, they don't have a lot of depth. Like God forbid, one of those guys goes down. Yeah, that's true. Who's the seventh starter on the Phillies? Like, am I stretching out Alan Ron Hell? We love Alan Ron Hell, but like, I don't know if I want to start every five days for the Phillies. Yeah. I mean, there's just not a lot of upper-minor pitching depth. I mean, they traded Abel. But Gary didn't really turn out. He's gone now. So there's just not a lot of upper-minor pitching depth to trust that if they were to trade away, a guy like Nola, who's going to go, you know, 180 years every year, 200 innings, those are hard innings to replace as much as we all pan him because he gives up a home run

34:18every third inning, maybe every second inning. It's kind of the price, the cost of doing business. So I think it's just much harder. And that's the inertia that this team has suffered from. We've talked about this. Every year we say, oh, there's no way they can run it back. But then when you actually sit down and try to actually figure out, okay, how can we maneuver this? It's really hard. I mean, they built a team that is not very flexible and they're kind of paying the price for that, not just on the field, but I think with the fan base, there's a lot of frustration. We've seen all the warts of these players now. We all know. We watch them every day. They have the same tendencies. They have the same flaws. It's almost kind of fun. And Adolis Garcia swings at a bad pitch. You're like, oh, that's new. I have to see him do that very often. Whereas when Nick Cassiano did it left for like three years, you're like, oh, here we go again. Right. You just have seen the same thing. Trey Turner. That's funny. Ray Dunn texted in our group chat or a hot stove Philly's group chat. He said, guy next to me yelling about how Trey is about to grab into a double play with

35:20one out in the ninth. And then three seconds later, Trey grounded into a double play. Right. I think that JT's got the same problem. Like we just seen these guys have these same flaws for so long that, you know, we were just not, but we're not surprised by them or we just accepted this as our fate. All right. If Zach Wheeler comes back healthy and he got Wheeler, Sanchez and Lazardo, let's just keep that in our back pocket. All right. I think that was a successful first installment of I'm just a guy asking questions. What do you think? I think that worked out. I like it. I'll throw some of those at you throughout the season. Can I do one of you? Please. I'm just a guy asking questions, but is APS not incredibly fun and even more fun than the implementation of the pitch clock? Incredible. It adds, it added so much excitement. I mean, this was on my list. I was like, when is he going to get to this? I find it to be so exciting.

36:21I find it to be hilarious. I find it to be interesting as we've talked about who's going to do it? When are they going to do it? Who has the authority to do it? So it starts out in the opener and Zach pops just like, this is my time. I'm challenging this. I'm like, Zach, I'm like, did somebody tell Zach pop he was allowed to do this? Is he going rogue? What is happening here? He challenges a pitch, which it was fine to challenge. You know, I actually thought it was fine to challenge it when he did, but I just was surprised that he was the one to do it. He lost there. You mentioned JT earlier, and you know, you were talking about it in spring training. Jason Stark was talking about in spring training. It's like, he doesn't have the framing, but does he have the special eye? And he's on fire. What did he go? Three for three? When he challenged the last two games. So those were, those were very exciting. Then he had Schwarber on Saturday. He uses it. He's wrong. And then the next pitch, he gets called out where it's like, I think he could have used

37:21it there on the call third strike. But he didn't have it anymore. He didn't have it. He didn't have it anymore. So that was interesting as well, like does he learn? His next time, is he like, I'm only using this if it's on a call third strike. I also don't know who were they. What ground rules have they laid with this, you know, because Schwarber, when he was asked about it, it seemed like he was pretty well informed about, like, he wasn't talking about it like someone who hadn't thought about this or who no one had talked to about it. His process, we're doing it. So yeah. And then you saw, I'm sure you saw the Reds game, right? Oh, yeah. There was a guy, two two rows in front of me at the sports book, just losing his mind, Red Sox fan. Like he was a boomer type. So it was like, what is this ABS, BS kind of thing? He probably had money on them too. So he was just livid and Bill was texting us about it. Bill, Billy Gill and me in a baseball group chat about the ABS and how it's revolutionizing baseball and how he's so excited about it and it's like, this is riveting television. And I said, riveting.

38:21This is something riveting and tennis, you know, had the same thing. They had the challenge system for years and then they went away from the challenge and they went straight to the automatic robots, like they just have these computers that call the lines and they have like an automatic AI voice that says out when it goes out. It has taken away from the sport. I missed the challenge. I think there should be challenges. It adds a nice fun wrinkle. It adds the drama and anticipation, like the crowd does the clapping and they get all excited. It's like, oh, it was out. And then when it's really close, they zoom in and you're like, oh, wow, that miss by, you know, in baseball, it's like 0.1 inches or in tennis, like two millimeters in, out. It adds drama in ways that I was excited about. I didn't think I realized how much fun it would be to literally feel like an entire crowd of people is just trolling the umpires. Like on what, on what sport do we ever get to just sit there and have the umps repeatedly, like the referees, the umps, the official, just repeatedly wrong and just like, hey, again, and then they just have to stand there and take it.

39:22Yeah. So for those who didn't say the red scheme, first of all, Google it because it's incredible, it's incredible footage. Yeah. You, Henny L CB, Suarez challenges the pit and it was CB Buckner, right? Yeah. Two to pitch. Yeah. Two to pitch. He challenges it, gets it right. Crowd starts, I mean, they're, they're aunt, they're so excited about this. Next pitch called their strike. He challenges it again and now the crowd's like, oh, we can, I get back to back and then they, they show the graphic on the screen. The crowd, the only thing I can compare to is when they shoot t-shirts at the Sixers game and it's like the most exciting, you know, like, you know, the brick and for chicken, they're brick and for chicken. Yeah. That's true. It's like that, the crowd is whipped into a frenzy like given high fives, even the announcer was like, this is the mode, this is the loudest, the crowd has been all day and they've hit two on the rocks today. I mean, they're going nuts and I think the presentation is great.

40:24It hasn't taken long. It's quick. That was, that was a concern. That's the biggest thing. No. It's in and out. You challenge the screen. It says three to one, they show it and then I love they're showing me the exact distance bunzy because this adds a comedic value like the, the Rangers, I think it was the Rangers right challenge one today and like it was, yeah, they're catcher and it wasn't even close and the broadcast is laughing. They're like, oh my gosh, that one was like over, you know, that was almost two inches outside and he was challenging that first strike. But then there are the ones where it's literally a tenth of an inch and I even, I forget who it was, but you could tell it might have been for us where he was like about to just turn around and yell at the ump. Like his instinct was to be, you know, just, and he was like, wait, I can challenge this and then he, and he taps his helmet two times, uh, baseball has absolutely nailed it with the rule changes over the last three years. And for this step, I'm sure there are going to be hiccups that I haven't thought about. But so far, absolute home run, adds excitement.

41:27The fans in stadium love it as a viewer on TV. I love it as well. So two thumbs up for me. Yeah, we were talking through potential like hiccup scenarios and it's like, what happens? Three, two count, right? Ball four guy gets caught stealing, but it was actually strike three. Like, if there's like a weird in between there, he is sending the guy back because he thought it was going to be a ball, but it was actually a strike. And it's like, then there's some questions, but we haven't seen it yet. It's been exciting. I think that, you know, like I said, baseball has done such a good job of finding ways to incorporate narrative and drama and anticipation into the sport. It's what baseball has always been known best for. And you even see it with Mason Miller now has a walk up or entrance music, right? All the closers now, like if you're a good closer and you don't have entrance music now, you're lame. Like you need to have a good song and good like light show, you know, we have ours and the meds. I don't know if the meds have a new one with with with Williams, but the Dodgers took the trumpets from the meds.

42:27We took on Compranito from the twins, Mason Miller now has one. So it's very exciting to see baseball embracing short form video content, virality too, Shield. I mean, a lot of ways like all these videos we're seeing are short form videos that are I thought you're telling me you're not telling me I wasn't watching reds red socks. Okay. I wouldn't have been watching it, but that little clip goes viral and you're like, wow, you know, and Cincinnati today, the crowd went wild in San Diego. Everybody's really excited because Mason Miller has a great walk out music now and he gets a big save for the for the Padres. So baseball so back to you so back. I mean, yeah, I found it to again, the games weren't even good that the Phillies played, but I was into I was, you know, I probably watched every pitch almost these these three days. Now Cliff, I did think when he was talking about short form vertical video, he was talking about me with the blow up fanatic there on the lawn. I noticed he didn't include that should my feelings be heard about that. I didn't see that. It's been a long few days in Vegas.

43:30This man stood in front of a blow of Philly, a Philly fanatic though. Well, you know, it's Philly season time is here. I'm going to enjoy this. I gave funds a shout out for that in that one day. Yeah, yeah, you gave me my shout out to you. You got your stuff. I miss it. Yeah, but I'm so proud you see that. Yeah, it was funny. You know, keep it coming in and gave me a drummer. I got a message from Cliff that these, you know, these videos are outperforming his expectations, I think. So, you know what? In terms of numbers or quality. Both. I mean, Dave, like the quality and he's a really good, you just putting your phone up, making sure the thing is good, you again, right to it, get right to your point, no sugar code, nothing. The basement driver, people are excited. I'm looking at the page. Literally right to second. There's a bunch of comments and whatnot. No, man, these are, these are good, man. Keep it up. Brother, keep it up. And we have, as the listeners know, the loyal listeners know when we get to 3,000 followers for Philly Special and 10,000 for my account on Instagram, you get the video of me making

44:32the smoothie that I make every morning for breakfast, bunsy. So I don't know if you're going to be in Vegas or at a wedding or whatever for that one, I need, you know, we can send that one to you personally so that you don't mention it. Cliff, we got to remember to do that. You know, maybe just send it. Oh, I won't miss it. I won't miss it. I'm home for. It's rare I missed things online, she'll listen. That is true. Bunsy will text us stuff and he'll have a whole third to himself where I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't. Yeah. I was confused. How you were confused about the Grom text. Well, I myself explain it. I text together, but yeah, I didn't know anything about it. What was it? Saturday morning at like 8 30, 11 30 Eastern, I texted she'll like, the Grom is going to be scratched today and then I was like, hashtag Tony Scoops is back and and you were like, I don't understand this. I was like, you know, I felt like that was pretty self explanatory. You know, you didn't set your wording on that. I didn't know if you're using some type of slang that I didn't know because you didn't so you didn't say the Grom is scratched.

45:33I don't know if you just said, the Grom's gonna scratch. Would you have said that? I don't know. All right. Now we got to go. Oh, maybe. I got a check. I do have some baseball vernacular that I don't necessarily know all about. So I think that's what had me a little bit confused here. Let me see. I'm going beyond Cliff, saying Zack Pops, Jordan, Romano, this year, I'm going, you know, Peck. Okay. You said your source is say, the Grom will scratch today. So will scratch, you know, I feel like it's gonna be scratched or it's scratched today. We'll scratch. I didn't know. Like it's scratch something that I'm not familiar with other than he's not going to pitch. But that's probably on me. But that's okay. I was trying to get a pump in like Cliff, you know, on a nice Saturday. Yeah. You know, I had planned to go for a runner, you know, I'm training for the Broadsheet run right now and I was supposed to do a run in Vegas, two damn hot, two hot, no, no

46:34Vegas runs for me. There you go. All right. ABS. Fantastic. What else do we got, Bunsy? Hey, so Zardo ran into a homerun issue as well with the Phillies got cooked by the long ball. But I mean, I thought the stuff was really good. Now the command numbers were not great, but I was very impressed by the swings and misses 15 swings and misses for Lazardo. The strikeouts were there. Strikeouts to walk ratio continues to be the most predictive stat for any pitcher ever. And so given up a few homers in March to, you know, some some red hot Andrew McCutcheon who knew. I thought he was retiring, came out of nowhere, didn't even realize he made the Rangers until Wednesday. So with Lazardo, the key thing to watch, as always, and I've said this before, is just the fastball velocity because his fastball is not one that on its own has impressive ride. It's one that relies on its velocity to kind of sneak up on hitters to get by hitters. And you did see him run into a little bit of trouble with it, getting hit hard and when

47:37you go back to last season, most of his struggles came, hitters jumping that fastball early in counts. And I think that's one thing to watch with him. But when he's able to get ahead and use those secondaries, he is just wiping dudes away with whiffs. And it's so impressive to watch. So even on a day when he, I guess, said to give up six runs because the Garcia air in a couple of poorly timed homers, no concerns at all about Lazardo off of one start here. He's just going to give up six runs every like 5th outing, 6th outing. And then die on the other ones. I'm OK with that. That's fine. Yeah. I'm mostly with you. I don't want to be a hypocrite after being an hour of air no discussion. But yeah, I mean, he looked incredible like other than when he was giving up those homeruns, I thought he looked incredible. Even early on, they're like, oh my gosh, like look, look at this. So I thought it was fine. It was unfortunate if he was someone who pitched poorly in the playoffs last year, then I'd be like, you know, I don't know if you can trust him, but that was certainly not the case. I was back to what you were saying in the off season where he had like a few, you know,

48:39few of these starts last year that kind of messed up his overall numbers. But the underlying stuff was very encouraging that this is a top end starter. So seven strikeouts, one walk in this game. And I feel like he'll bounce back and be good. I did, I was like, man, today they have, they have Adam and Couchin like man, he just they just ripped that one. And he still played left. If he could, he might play better left than Otto Camp. That was the ugly. Okay. That's your ugly. Yeah. That was tough. I mean, didn't just happen to him in spring training. Did they read the story about this? Yes. Yes, it did. Right? He's not happy now. He wasn't an outskiller game. Yeah. And it's one thing if you get close and you try to take away a hit, but he wasn't even close on either of those. And one led to a run score. And the other one, Couch was probably always getting a double out of it, but just complete misplays. And it's your home park too, right? It's one thing if you're in a foreign park on the road and that's like, you know, you miss play a ball. It takes a weird caram off a wall. You're not used to it. Citizens Bank Park is one of the easiest places to play outfield in the league.

49:41It's a small outfield. There's only really a problem with that weird center field wall in the left center field. And Camp just completely overrunning Paulson, having them squirt by him. Like, it cannot happen. He's not that athletic out there. His arm's not great. And if they're planning to run this platoon, they're going to need better defense. I, I, I, I, I, Camp's going to have to really hit to make up for that defense. Like, one of my takes preseason that I tweeted, I don't know if I talked about this show, but this outfield continues to disappoint. And that's one of my bigger, bigger takeaways from the opening weekend. This outfield is just, it's, it's the biggest weakness. It's not, it shouldn't be as hard as it's been to fix. And I'm concerned that they're going to come into the trade deadline, like 23rd in outfield war, 24th, 25th. And we're like, okay, how can we upgrade the outfield again for like the third straight year last year that worked. They got beta, right? But this year, who knows? Well, we covered Crawford already. Marsh looked good.

50:41I thought at the play. Brandon Marsh is a good, we've been over this. Brandon Marsh. He is. He is a player. Yeah, valuable. Yeah. If you use him correctly. Right. You only play against varieties. He's a good defender. Yeah. Just don't overexpose him. Don't make him an everyday center of fielder. Don't make him face tough lefties. Yeah. That's okay. Quite full time player, a two-thirds player and be very valuable to a baseball team. They're not going to, you know, win MVP awards. You're not going to get a hundred million dollar contracts, unless you're in the cast Yanis. But you can be a pretty effective player. That's what Marsh is. Yeah. No doubt. I mean, he's, yeah, he had as many hard hit balls as anyone on the team. He had what a couple doubles in the one game. He's a good left fielder that you don't want, like you said, don't want him in center field. He's a good energy guy. He's a good teammate. So Brandon Marsh, good at baseball, but it doesn't solve your problem when the other team is pitching a left, a lefty and they don't really have a solution for that in left field right now and that, that, I'm with you. That should be one. That shouldn't be that art. It's like, you're not looking for a full-time starter, like you can't find anyone who's

51:46better than Otto Kemp as a platoon player. Now I imagine by the time we get to July, August, that hopefully they will have done something and that will look a little different. Now we'll have a lot more data on Crawford at that point as well. Yeah, I'm with you. That's not great. I think they faced a lefty on Monday as well, I believe. So it is going to surface a bunch of times until they figure it out. And then Garcia, you haven't really mentioned yet where you, this isn't a great, now I know I know what you're like. What was your first impression? What do you think? I wasn't that. I thought like, okay. I mean, he hit a couple balls really hard today. I mean, he smoked that ball today and he had another really hard hit ball today. So he hit a couple balls really hard. He got the lucky burger, drops the foul ball, but then he comes back with a double in that spot. In the outfield. I don't know. You lose one in the sun. I can't just get that out of the side.

52:48Yeah, I'm not going to go crazy over that. He had the sliding catch, which wasn't as good as the Crawford catch, but at least it was something there. Well, I'm in, wait and see, mode, listen, if you're going to, if you're going to have a guy who you're not sure of, at least make it a jacked guy. You know what I mean? Just where we can dream of man. If he actually connects on one of these, it's going to go flying. So I'm mildly intrigued. I wouldn't say overly optimistic, it would be where I am with Garcia. Yeah, I would probably be a little less intrigued, but a little bit hopeful, maybe, I don't know. From him this weekend that suggested a real difference from what we saw last year or two years ago in Texas, where yes, he can still hit the ball hard when you get, when he gets pitches in the zone to, to slog, he can still do that. But the defense was certainly improved. The catch he made in right field was excellent underrated. And I think one thing that he gets credit for and can actually hurt the outfielders in

53:49the perception of the fans is when you get a really good jump, you make difficult plays look easier than they actually are. And he did an excellent job on that play, getting a good jump to the point where most guys don't even get to it. The fact that he gets to it is a plus and then he makes the play is like a plus plus. So yeah, definitely an improvement in the outfield defensively there, you know, lose a ball in the sun that happens. But the plate stuff, a lot of swing and miss still for him, no, no like at his age, the swing and miss doesn't tend to go in the other direction, doesn't tend to trend positively at 33 plus. And it had already been trending negatively for two years. We're going to need to see a pretty big change, I think, for this to be successful. But I'm hopeful, as always, hope to be successful. It's a tough one just because it's not like anybody had, you know, I didn't talk to anybody who had like big expectations for it was like, this is a big, you know, this is going to be a big risk. You can be better than Castellanos in some ways. It sounds like he's a much better sort of clubhouse guy than Castellanos was, you know,

54:51so it was fired up for him and their boys and then he ends up getting the hits. Well, I like that. But in terms of, it's like, you kind of know, I'm with you at this stage of his career. You mostly know what you're going to get. Can he connect on 25 home runs and play good defense? And then he's going to have those frustrating bats, but maybe he can come through in some big spots. That's kind of what you're hoping for from Garcia. You mentioned the lefty thing. You haven't mentioned the lineup yet. What do you think? We talked about this in the preview where Turner, Shorber Harper and it's not against Wrighty's batting fifth, which I think you alluded to in our preview episode there. What did you think of that as sort of the lineup to start out the season? That's what I would do. I thought Bryson's not, since we're going to be watching, stop now, closely, I guess we're going to have to do this. You had a couple of line drives the other way, which I think is really the one thing we're looking for. So many lazy flyouts. So for every time he doesn't, every time he hits a ball the other way that is not a routine

55:53can of corn for the lefty other, that is something worth being appreciative of. The contact quality, I really don't ever think it's going to improve. We've got a pretty big sample of what it is for Bryson's style, but if he's able to better optimize that contact quality skills, you can see that. And I thought we saw a little bit of that this weekend. After all, I would give Stata a pretty good, pretty good start to the year now, Turner Schwerber and Harper sunk all weekend. If they think all year, then the Phillies are a bad baseball team. But come on. I'm not going to react to three games with those guys. So I'm willing to flush those three games down the toilet again. We're not Tony Vittello. We're on to Washington, bad pitching staff coming to Philly, a good chance for the offense to get right here. Weather looks great. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'm making my debut Andrew Painter makes his debut at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday. So there's a lot of excitement and a potential get right here with the Rockies and the Nationals on the schedule the next nine days. Three hard hit balls for Stata or the series.

56:56And that has, you know, we've talked for a long time. He doesn't hit the ball. That's the look. It takes a lot for me to change an opinion on a vet. Usually, I'm like, eh, just throw it in the average. We've seen enough of this guy. We know what he is now, but I'm encouraged. And in fact, I'm getting a lot of crap in the group chat about it. Friends who were saying, you know, I thought you had morals, thought you had beliefs. I can't believe you turned on turned into the pro stop because we kind of been anti-stop. Yeah. I think the, there's a little bit of the fan base has really liked the guy and like, I like the guy. He's easy to root for. He's been, he's been a great Philly. He's come up in big moments and had big hits. He's got the walk up song, all that stuff. And I think a lot of people have wanted him to be more than he has been as a Philly and they just keep expecting. Well, this is, this is, it's going to happen now. It's going to happen now. And we've always been kind of like the, I don't know about that. And now I've turned, I've joined the crew. It's like, ah, not so fast. Shio, not so fast. I'm in. I like it. And I also like how you, you know, now a great storyline for me as a viewer is your

57:57note about when he goes opposite field, low ball flight and when he's pulling it, try to launch it for an extra base hit. You get a hit today. Over the shortstop. I know. Yeah. Base hit. That one surprised me as well. Okay. So thumbs up on Bryson's dot. All right. You got anything else for us bunsy or should I hit you with some of my leftovers here? That's all I got. Okay. All right. So we head on to Washington. On to Washington. I'm with you on Harper. Did not look good. It is three games. I'm not going to, he did walk twice today where I was like, wait a minute. What happened to this thing about? Yeah. I don't know if he's going to get to 150 walks. He said, at least he walked a couple of times today, real Muto, we talked about Crawford. We talked about, how about the bullpen on Saturday? How about Jose Alvarados initial, initial appearance? That looked very good on on Saturday. Banks looked good on Saturday. Keller got in there today.

58:58So still remain. Look good. The main guys look good. Yes. Not the guys you're throwing out. The main guy is popping back his come in. They stink, you know, that is what it is. Somebody text me so much for the improved bullpen. I said, well, I mean, like if Zack Pop and Kyle Backes are pitching big innings for the Phillies this year, something has gone very wrong. I thought Doran looked sharp. I know that he threw wild pitch. These guys have an unbelievable ability to get these weak, soft contact bloops, choppers and, you know, and sometimes it's actually like nobody ever squares you up. So the weak contact finds singles like Langford gets the blooper that goes over Harper's head, then the wild pitch. Couch gets one that gets past Turner and all of a sudden you go up to Roger like, how did that just happen? Not exactly sure. So that's stunk. But yeah, Alvarado, Banks, Bolin and Keller all looked good over the weekend. I thought pop, back is not quite as much. So, you know, I think Zack Pop is now put himself in the prime position that when Orion

1:00:00Kirkering makes his return, Pop is probably the first guy that gets sent out. And then eventually Zack Wheeler returns. We assume Walker's going to go to the bullpen that probably sends Mesa out or back is one of the lefties. You know, it was a tough start for Kyle, but they do like his kind of weird delivery that he's got going. But when you have the weird delivery and you stink, that makes me dislike you more. Like if you're going to be a gadget guy, you got to be good. Yeah, it's, like you said, the guys who are actually going to pitch, I still remain very bullish on and the other ones, you know, back is so big. And pop, yeah, we don't, we don't need to spend too much time on that Wheeler, he mentioned Wheeler did pitch for Lehigh Valley. So that's good. Arrow continues to point up on that. I don't remember if we mentioned it last pot or not. Now I can't remember who said it if it was, if it was ESPN, one of those preview things I read, they had on the record, one of the big baseball guys was like they expect Wheeler in mid-April to make his debut with the Phillies where I hadn't really seen a specific date

1:01:03with that before. So sorry, I'm usually better about attribution, I don't know if it was passing, I don't know it was only, I think it might have been only, but I was like, oh, that's pretty exciting as well. I'll say that, well, we have to, we haven't mentioned Matt Gelb's name yet. So I'll say that we were texting. He said he thinks mid-April as well. We'll see, you can't do that to Bondo because he didn't say that, did he say that on the record? Like are you allowed to use that on record? I think he said it on the record too because there was talking a group chat about it. So I'm going to assume that he said that on their pod. I have not listened, but, all right, mid-April, you might have come in the town, that's a big series. All right. You might have to send a follow-up text, I don't want you getting in trouble, you know, just make sure we're allowed to use that in the pod there. All right. The only other thing we wanted to talk about, I think, was just this John Middleton interview he gave us where the red wine was just sloshing around and it was really mesmerizing. You just kept looking at it going, is that going to spill? Is that going to end up on a shirt? Is that going to end up somewhere else? And it was really hard.

1:02:04On Tim Kelly. A good friend, Tim Kelly Sports. There you go. Yeah. But it did. I was texting. I said, this is going to be his apex mountain. I mean, he, the fact that he avoided getting the wine spilled on him, he got this very newsworthy close-up interview. I mean, how often are we that close to John Middleton with the wine flowing? That's funny. Yeah. So we talked, I watched that video like three times. I know. It really was mesmerizing and all anyone could talk about with the wine afterwards, but he was asked about the Harry Callis stuff, which we talked about on the last episode. And yeah, I'm glad you, you attribution to Tim Kelly on this and then the quotes obviously were in the AP story. But John Middleton said, the yearly payments that they were making to the Callis family for Harry the Case, he said, the money we saved, it's going to maybe buy some napkins or something like that. It's not serious, serious money. We're not going to go out and buy a new player.

1:03:06Now the money that blank is paying us, that can fund a player. He said to which I say, okay, I need to see that. I would like to see that. Which player is it funding, maybe an outfielder? Maybe it's all your outfielder problem. I don't know. So you had that. Now this thing has gotten kind of ugly to be fair here because Matt Brayne of the Inquire caught up with Harry Callis's widow who said, taking down that sign takes away everything he did for the city. Eileen Callis said, I think they betrayed Harry. It's not about me. It's about what they're doing to Harry. I think they betrayed him for everything he did for them. Philly's declined to comment. Eileen Callis says they paid them $20,000 a year to use the likeness for Harry the case there. They will pay her again this season because they missed the deadline to break the contract. They told her they will not pay her in 2027. But said, hey, expect to continue celebrating wins with high hopes. And I know this and we sell the statue.

1:04:07Well, Eileen Callis, Cliff said this in our group chat. He said, CTC, you want to keep using high hopes? Maybe everybody put a little money in the Callis family's pocket if you want to play that. So that's kind of where we are. She says she feels betrayed for Harry and everything he gave to the fans. She said, there's always a compromise. You could have had the, you know, blank energy deck at Harry the case, which I mentioned last week. And she said, everyone would have been happy. It would have been a win-win. So this thing has gotten a little ugly. I think it's certainly if nothing else has been a very clumsy execution by the Philly's now, whether it's you're really wronging Harry Callis when you're still honoring him at other parts in the ballpark. I don't know about that. I just told you last time that there's sort of, you know, the connection to this specific person is going to be different. And if you do other things at the ballpark, you know, where you're changing and adding sponsorship and taking money, like, there's the clock.

1:05:08There's some. Yeah. Yeah. Do you care about the clock? I don't care about the clock at all. Do you care about the clock? I don't care about the clock. Yeah. Not the out of town scoreboard. No. Don't care about the out of town scoreboard. So again, we came, I think, from a similar place with this last time where it's we understand it's okay, you know, sell out when you need to sell out because you as long as you stay top five payroll and major leagues, I'm good with it. They have tried to win. This isn't as bad as a bit of franchise under middle 10 where you're like, oh man, they're ducking stuff. Winning has been important to them. I think they just sort of miss the boat on this one and there could have, it feels like there could have been a much easier solution to this, which would not have made people upset. So I don't know where they go from here. Maybe they don't go anywhere. Maybe bunsy is enabled to sing high hopes next year. I would think there's got to be someone in the organization who can try to smooth this thing over and they come up with a way where they, you know, they can even come out and say, all right, we shouldn't have done that. We made a mistake. We're going to honor Harry by doing this or something where I feel like there's a solution

1:06:11there that they'll eventually have to come to because you don't want to have a fractured relationship to again, he didn't play for the team, but really an icon when you think of generations of Philly's fans. So I mean, there's no other former player outside of like, what, Richie Ashburn, because of Ashburn Alley, like, am I missing something that didn't have had to, well, you had Bulls Barbergy. Like in the stadium that is so, so regularly referenced every right between the statue and the high hopes and the bar, there's no player that has that, like Mike Schmidt doesn't have that. He's the most famous, most accomplished Philly's player of all time, right? So, you know, I think it falls a little hollow when you, when you, it does feel a little sour grapesy from Harry's widow. So that part of it for me, it's like, okay, I don't think it tarnishes his legacy with the Philly's or like the Philly's are tarnishing his legacy. I don't necessarily agree with that because again, there's still is a statue. His son still sings the anthem all the time at the games.

1:07:12They still play his song after every game, even friends from out of town are like, don't know who Harry Chaos was to the level of like, you know, what we do, who come to Philly's games with me. They're like, we're like, who is that, right? They like don't really know necessarily. Yeah. And I had to explain it. Like he was the broadcaster until 2008, like we're going on 18 years here now. So I get all of that, but I'm also of the belief that like there was so much of a better way to handle this and Milton making jokes about napkins. I mean, that's just very out of touch out of cat like it's kind of 20 grand. Listen, a lot of your fans, you know, what an apkins, 20 grand in their pocket, a lot of your fan base that's, you know, paying tickets, yes, but you know, that to me is like just, you know, I don't know what's a professional sports owner on the scale of things they can say to embarrass the fan base that, you know, that doesn't even register. But yes, it is. It certainly is not the best way to handle it there. Did I tell you they called about about last week about going from partial to full season tickets? No. They called me. They're like, have you any interest in going from partial to full season ticket plan?

1:08:15I was trying to give me, I was like, give me your best sales pitch. Give me a minute. I was, I was always going to be a no because like, you know, I don't have that kind of money nor do I want to spend 81 nights a year at Citizens Bank Park or have a friend who we're going to join in on the, on the fun of that. But I was like, give me your best sales pitch. I was like, well, I should I be excited about the Phillies. I wanted to see what the guy had, you know, what did he have? Okay. I was overall, I give him like a B minus. It was a decent pitch, but, but what was the pitch? Not, not, he just kind of gave me the reasons to be so excited. He started like giving me all the, the accolades of the players and stuff and like why there's some, why this deer is going to be different. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. And then he mentioned the all-star game that they're, they're really selling the all-star game is their big selling point. It's like, just because I have season tickets doesn't get me access necessarily to that either. It's going to be thrown in the lottery. I didn't say that. I just thought that. I was a little busy when he called, but I took the call and I pulled a respectfully decline. And then I said, you know, between work and, and having a life, like, I don't really have that kind of time. And then the guy said, oh, maybe your company would like to go in on seats that I said,

1:09:19I don't think you're very interested. I picked your, if I picture this guy, give him a bungee the pitch and then bungee's like, I don't know about that, you know, Andrew Paners, you know, like Spindrains. I think you're a little too optimistic and he starts breaking in like, wow, Justin Gottfrieder Rookie, huh? You've seen his ground ball, right? Go full, George Costanza. He'll just bring up the most irrelevant facts and try to do what he was dealing with. Yeah. Try to please case. Bunch of gave him a hard time. No. No. I just asked for a pitch. And then after the pitch, I just appreciated that and that is what I said, but I said, I said that I had, you know, I don't really have the time or the money to do that. So I'm going to have to pass, but I love being a part of season ticket member. I said, I've thoroughly enjoyed my years of that and I look forward to continuing it in the future. And then I said, you know, then he did the work thing. I mean, I will say if the team is floundering, like I know some people, the sixers this year,

1:10:21when they're doing like their callbacks to try to get people to re up their partial or their full season tickets. When the team is in the dumps a little bit, you have the leverage. Remember that if you're a fan, you have the leverage. Their job is to keep you at the table, keep you at the games. And they know going into the season, the sixers expectations were not great and be, you know, who how much is he going to play? Take advantage of that. Get more out of these people. Get them to give you some perks or some kind of how so just kind of why you get better to go see a price or what do you get? Go see it. Okay. I was a negotiator. What do you want? I'm saying you didn't say that to the Phillies guy. You didn't say that to the Phillies guy. He wasn't like, yo, I don't feel like I have leverage. There's a waiting list. If they boot me off, there's a lot of people waiting to take my spot in section 136. So I don't have leverage, but he's just he's maybe the flyers that were struggling. Hmm. Actually, fires, fires were streaking a little bit actually recently. Don't do that. That's true. I mean, we're just commenting on a big picture as a franchise. John Twitter.

1:11:22Hey, the only a couple points back from a wild car spot, the couple points back from maybe getting in there and sneaking in and play else in the vision. All right. Let's say my dad somehow pulled that off when tickets from the vet to the link. He got better seats at the link than he had a lot of way. This Yukon do game is really close. There's two minutes left. It's 16 on 65 Duke right now. All right. There you go. I mean, I don't know when you're listening to this on Monday morning, you know, I don't know how relevant that'll be for you. But for Bunsy and I, we like the update. All right. Don't get me wrong. I got the game on right here on my laptop. All right. We'll take a break. We come back and we want to talk some sixers to end the show. This episode is brought to my Whole Foods market. You know, with just one trip to Whole Foods, you can travel the world. First stop, discover the taste of the Mediterranean with big sales on brands like Dececo, Arreos, and San Pellegrino with Whole Foods prepared foods dinner is solved.

1:12:22You can roam the world with empanadas, burritos, soups, and more. Maybe expand your snack repertoire to South America with colorful and crunchy Peruvian potato chips, then straight to Mexico for dessert. You can pick up a trace Leche's family pack cake for only $10 every Friday. All aboard, save on regional flavors at Whole Foods Market. All right. We're back here on the Ringer's Philly special. So now this might be irrelevant to by the time you listen, but I'm going to give you what their sixers are in the standings because I know some of these teams play on Sunday night. So they are currently the seventh seed, half a game out of six, half a game out of five between the hawks and the raptors. So those are the two teams you're rooting against. And I thought they had one of their most entertaining games of the season, Cliff, on Saturday. Sorry. Were you about to say something? Tybreaker stuff. I just looked it up. Okay. They Atlanta has swept the sixers this season so they don't own a tiebreaker just in case

1:13:24the record is tied and the raptors, they split the season series, but the sixers have the divisional record. So that would be the tiebreaker for the sixers over the raptors. If it gets jumbled up in that mess with the however many games left, there are for each team. All right. So they got the tie break over the raptors, but the hawks have the tiebreaker over the sixers. They're trying to avoid the play and they're trying to get to six. It will be great to get to five and they've had this weird, such a weird season where early on, we're going, oh, it's kind of exciting. Edge comes fun. Max is made the leap and you know what? They might not win anything, but at least they look like they like each other and the vibes are good. And then they have this stretch. You go and beat injury, George suspension, Max the injury, McCain trade where you're watching, going, who are these people playing for the sixers right now? Marjan Buchen. And now Saturday night, you're like, oh, Maxi, Edge come, George, and beat all playing

1:14:27Barlow in the starting lineup. You got Barlow, Ubrei, coming off the bench, you're like, this is weird. I'm not, I wasn't expecting to have all these people kind of on the floor with whatever it is nine or 10 games left. So exciting win and they're certainly more watchable now. And I had to, I got to give you my Paul George thing here, and we could talk about other aspects of it. You love, I love how much you love the Paul George. I want to hear this. I find him to be one of the most hilariously entertaining guys I've watched for reasons that may be only entertaining me. So he had a terrific game, 26 points, 13 rebounds, four steals. I mean, he played really well in a big three pointer. But he had two things that had me cracking up. One, he has a, he gets fouled late in the game, makes the shot. He thinks he has an end one. Now, the rest make it pretty clear that no, like non-shooting foul to the line. He goes to the line, makes his first shot, starts running back off the line, his teammates

1:15:28have to explain to him. No, no, no. You get, you have two shots, PJ. It wasn't an end one. He's like, oh my bad. And at that moment, Cliff, you know, the driving down broads freed after the NFC championship gave me so much sense because that was the kind of energy there. So that cracked me up first. I don't know if you caught that or not. And the second one, big steal. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, two minutes left. I forget how much time has a big steal, passes the ball, but the camera's still on. He has to look down and make sure his shoes are still top. So like the rest of the team, I mean, it's like a two point game. He gave him, he gave him about a maxi, maxi, maxi, had to walk it up the court because his first time. I mean, no, the rest of the team has passed half-court and the camera's on him. And he's going down to a little shoe time, but like I was coaching, you know, nine-year-olds again. This guy's hilarious, but no one told me the entertainment value when he actually plays Cliff. He's perfect for Team Conto, remember everything he does the team time to play his podcast is so successful. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:29But for him, it comes from a genuine place of like just like not understanding and not knowing like these certain situations this scenario is like, he's like, the weirdest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like his lack of awareness, some of these are just so funny. Like I remember a time where, and this isn't like the exactly the funniest thing, but I think somebody had like swipe them or something like that when he was playing for the Clippers and it ended up being like one of Justin Bieber's homies if I remember correctly. And he tried to, he put on Instagram like a picture of like the car like, yo, anybody know who this is, like tag, tag, hit my line, like he tried to get the culprit of who swiped his car. Try to talk to them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, you know what the fuck, I'm sorry, I'm creed sitting to the police, you know. He just put it up, he just put it up, he's like, yo, who was this, you know, hilarious, hilarious guy. Yeah. Good to have him back there. Important guy, they don't have a lot of guys you can defend effectively. Yeah.

1:17:30And that's straight up. That's I think one of the big things is that with him in the, in the game, the defense is considerably better. I know it's still not great. I guess it's probably their biggest flaws going to be the defense, but yeah, and rebound it. I was just about to say, yeah, the rebounding was a choice from just like the garrison point. They couldn't, they do not box out. They just ball watch. They don't move. Like it's crazy. It is insane. Like how much they get out rebounded. So, I mean, the owners have, they have been killing it in recent, you know, since like New Year's, I think they're fifth or sixth best one, yeah, yeah, it ain't been really good. And they're going to scare whoever one of those teams in the top four and beat, I don't know what it is. He just can't move on defense anymore. However, he did have that big crazy block, though. Great. I know what it is. Yeah. What'd you say? I know what it is. He just can't move on defense anyway. He's in a different phase. Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's been evident most of the season, even when he's been out there, their rim defense has not been good. The premium defense suffers as a result of that. Yep.

1:18:30They got, I mean, the Charlotte shot really poorly from three. That was, that was, they needed a game. They were, they needed benefit. Yeah. They were. I knew they were live because Simmons texted me that he had a parlay. You had Arizona and the Hornets. He's like, easy wins here because I don't care the max. He's back. I'm like, okay. I mean, we'll see. Sixers got some juice. They're at us. Don't underestimate us. And he didn't text me after the game ended, interestingly enough. But if you, if you saw the stat lines from each, you know, the main three, the big three guys, I mean, the game was perfect. I mean, you got what, 28 from Paul George was at 26. I'm actually, Max. He looked amazing. After the first quarter, you know, getting his hand back, his, his hand situation corrected, like, Max, he looked amazing in the, in the rest of that game following the first quarter. He was awesome. Matt. And then beat, man, just in his sleep, like, this is like no effort, just on the offensive end. Yeah. I'm mad though. That Diabata was getting to him when he offensive on the offensive end on his side, too though. Like, he did get him in foul trouble early on, but Diabata was putting his, he's a good player, man. I like him.

1:19:31And beat at 29, big block at the end, like you mentioned, he's just when he plays, it's like he's going to catch you 25, the 35, it just like you said, yeah, every, every single time, the other stuff he can't do, you know, he's not going to protect him. He's not going to be the same rebounder, but he's still going to give you that big boost on offense. And there are stretches where it just feels like he's going to be unstoppable and he can keep you in the game. Max, he mentioned he returned, he looks bright, 26.7 rebounds, 8 assists, nice to see him hit three, three, he's had that big dunk on Miles Bridges, the vibes and the, you know, the reactions from the teammates after that and Ubrei had one, too. It's like, all right. You know, that's at least something drumming who I've ripped before, you know, he gave them real big minutes in that game. Great pass out to who is that VJ for the three and then he had a couple other nice plays there. So I'm going to do something I almost never do here. All right. I don't know if you guys are ready for this. I'm going to give you an optimistic take on the Philadelphia 76ers with what do we have?

1:20:32Eight games left, I believe. 41. Oh, they're 41 and 33, Eagle Super Bowl score. All right. So I'm going to give you the optimistic look on this six years. Okay. Is it possible that that injury could have been good for Tyrese Maxi given all the minutes he played and how overworked he was to get that break that now with nine games left, he comes back. He can get back in a rhythm and now by the time the playoffs roll around, he's actually going to be a better player than he would have been a more effective player than he would have been if he would have just played that entire stretch. So that's number one. Number two, could it be that the time off and the embarrassment for Paul George? With that suspension, could be good for him because the two games he's played since then he's looked pretty locked in. He's looked like a two way player. He's looked very engaged. I liked that there are times offensively where he's like, I don't need to just stick in the background like we need a bucket. I'm going to try to get us a bucket right now. And he's like, oh, yeah, he actually can do that from time to time. So he's got that from George.

1:21:33Is it possible that this is as healthy a version of Joel and bead as he actually could have hoped for at the beginning of the season? Like if I were to told you, this is the version you're going to get, defense isn't going to be great. Rebounding isn't going to be great. But with nine games left, he's going to get you 30 on any given night against almost any opponent and at a very efficient clip because of how often he gets to the line. And he will be able to play, I mean, he played 36 minutes in that game that he's going to be able to play 36 minutes consistently when you are in late March, getting ready for the playoffs. And then is there a possibility that the lack of pressure there under, I mean, they're going to be underdogs, regardless of who they play here in the first round. And no one is considering them to be any type of a threat at all, Bunt has his hands on his head. Something crazy. This must be this game. Hang on. Oh, my God.

1:22:35Did you kind of win? Let me see. Hold up. You just turned it over. Wait, yo, five seconds left. Run it for me, yo. I'm sorry. See? Oh, oh. Oh, my goodness. Hold up. The freshman kid. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way that it just happened. Oh, my goodness. There's no way that it just happened. Terrible podcasting. Okay. Let's. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That was crazy. After our podcast, if you're listening to this Monday, hopefully. What? Entertainment value. Oh, my gosh. Yo. That was insane. So did you kind of win? Is the game open? There's 0.3 seconds left. 0.3 seconds left. 0.3 seconds left. One. Brad Mullins from the literal logo. The March Men's logo. It was like a step above the loader. Our second straight year due completely full of care. I saw him. Just gave him the rock. Dude just heaved it. Yeah. Crazy. Cliff Bunsy. Yeah. Come on. Bunsy said games over.

1:23:35I know. Yeah. What did I say? What did I say? What did I say? And we said they're down by 15 and Cliff said crazier things have happened. That was on the record. Cliff did say that. Right. What did I say? And boozer with the turnover. For this podcast. The young guy. You can't keep doing playback. Of the Yukon. Dookin. It's just. Okay. Let's. On Monday. Okay. I'm trying to keep it together here. For the listeners. You. I'm sorry, but that was crazy. That was just. That was nuts. Okay. So what do you. Yeah. Shot of the tournament. Optimistic view. Of the sixers. Bunsy. I saw you making some reactions to some of the things I was saying. Before you turned your attention away. I mean, you just described why load management is so popular. That's true. Part of the problem with the NBA right now is that the teams have realized that. Hey, if we. If our guys don't play a little bit and get some time off in the middle of the season. They'll be fresher for the minute when everybody actually tunes in for the big games. So. Yeah. I mean, I certainly agree. And the injuries that, you know, Paul George gets suspended.

1:24:36So it's not an injury. Maxi gets a hand injury. It's not like it's soft tissue. Or there's like a significant rehab process with them with them like a muscle injury type deal. So yeah, it's just dramatically different. Then, you know, having like a serious injury that's going to linger. But potentially. And then for M.B. Any injury that is not lower body for him is like, well. We'll take our chances with those. We know like oblique, you know, those kind of injuries. They can be nagging. They can come and go. But if it's not a knee or a foot. Like, all right. That's okay. Like on the scale of bad to worse with injuries for M.B. You'll take that on the list. So I think that there's certainly a bull case. I just don't know if they play enough. I still don't think they play enough defense to like make a run here. Yeah. I mean, the most likely scenario is they're not playing in the second round of the playoffs. But at least with their players back here. It's going to give me a reason to watch down the stretch here. And watch in the playoffs cliff. Whereas, you know, a few weeks ago. I was just like, you know, when they went on that West Coast trip. Well, you saw.

1:25:36It was DJ Johnson Edwards. Yeah. Don Barlow, Quitting Grimes. Like, you know, just kind of like the backup team. They're trying to wafer getting a lot of minutes to as well. Yeah. I mean, look, obviously just suspension to Paul Jordan. Good. He said his knee and his body wasn't feeling right. 25 games. I think right now in this current moment. So why you say it was like. I'm just saying. I mean, when they said there's still a lot of. But he's 36 left on that. Okay. But Paul George, you got to understand. It's Paul George 36, what a hefty injury history. Yeah. So clearly 25 games of just sitting and practicing and getting your body back and rehab. And it's going to do you a lot of good. Correct. Tyrese Max. He was handling that low. Remember, he had more minutes than, right? He had like 5,000 more minutes to shave before after she had went out for a little while. I wonder where it's at now. I'm not sure where his minister is now seeing that he missed a bunch of those games. But, you know, Max, he coming back with Embed with Paul George and VJ playing. Kind of that fourth fiddle off the dribble stuff shooting playing defense.

1:26:37Yo, how many wild moments has VJ almost had this season? Like almost had. Like almost dunks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's like that he keeps going for him. Yeah. It feels like like two, two, three times a week. There's always just like, oh my goodness. VJ almost did this. Yeah. Yeah. So he playing second fiddle to that. Dom Barlow just kind of playing his role being, you know, in a dunker spot against some easy layups. Playing defense as well too. And then everything else falls in line once Embed. Maxie and George are on the court playing 28, 30, you know, 40 minutes for Maxie or whatever. So I mean, it's going to be fun. It's going to be entertaining. I mean, I think so you I think they could beat the calves. Like the calves. They've been solid, but the sixes could definitely match up with the calves. I think at least and I think the. I don't know. You know what man, I went to a six years next game when they got blown up before. Yeah. I don't. That's the next one. The next of us super hot too. As well. So I you know, I don't know much about I'm not sure about that matchup.

1:27:38I think it'd be fun. I mean, another six years next series. Sixers Nick series in you know, I guess the next would have in theory a home game each game right Well, that's what it looked like. Yeah last year. So we'll see That would be kind of fun. Yeah, six is magic with James Harden. Yeah, that'd be fun bottom line At least there's reason to watch now for you know down the stretch and in the playoffs And they got some games. Yeah, I mean the game a lot of stuff games coming my end I will say that this this Miami game is a kind of spurs wolves. It's gonna start on me Just Miami game. I get that Miami food son. Son and I Miami It's a lot of things to do on Sunday Miami I'll say that Live on Sunday Get your little bottle or two eleven. You know what I'm saying? Good time in Miami. They've had all season Can they just win some games and try to get you know, you can get you can get the South Beach flew in the offseason

1:28:41You got a whole lot of season can you just try to win some games and get My thing is you could go out and have fun in Miami still be that he team is just so like up and down All right, let's see what we're saying 24 hours Should be coming back to I think they say names coming back for some average so he'll probably play and that's six His wolves game as well. Um, I forget what else is beyond I don't have the schedule in front of me right here But at Miami they have three they have three they have three Mickey games left. I've been calling them the Mickey's The teams that are trying to lose they have Washington, Indiana, Milwaukee, so if they win those three Then they have five tough games. They're at Miami home Minnesota home Detroit at San Antonio at Houston That's a tough four-gamer four games and six days against those that those might be some losses But uh, yeah, they should I mean, they're gonna be right in the mix for the six 60 60 in the trades and playing agree with okay, too So that's gonna be a tough one as well five of their next six games are against real opponents and then you know What Washington's mixed in there and then you finish with Indiana and Milwaukee so we'll see let's see what they do

1:29:44Let's see what they do against Miami On Monday like Cliff said you get Minnesota on Friday get Washington in between there Yeah, that is gonna be a tough stretch Friday, Saturday, Minnesota, Detroit, then Monday, San Antonio, then Thursday, Houston So we'll see what they look like against those teams. We'll see if these players are actually going to be on the court when the playoffs Begin which is not a guarantee, but at least they're in a better place I was excited watching that game that that was a good game earlier in the season High entertaining game it almost so many leachanges, you know, like a plane Yeah, I was gonna say it felt like a playoff game. It felt more like a play-in game, you know With the two teams, but that's okay. It was it was entertaining. So maybe they will entertain us a little bit Between now and the end of the season. I don't know if you saw but People people are attributing it to the end of C.R. Month I don't know if you've seen this yeah, listen. I'm on board with that C.R. Month at the ringer. Shout out C.R. Man back at the end. I watched who was the C.R. Month movies and I'm gonna try to watch more because, you know, what a pleasure

1:30:46Show me your man. What a guy every month is C.R. Month here at the ringer. Did I so I left this out Okay, so the one date that I went on on WBC night. Okay, the girl's big fan of the ringer Oh, one of the first things she said to me was how are you celebrating C.R. Month? Oh, and you haven't proposed yet Bunsy The two dates two dates is gonna be it for this one unfortunately. Yeah So today to pick no one WBC Should have picked no one the WBC over uh over the date of it Will the Phillies finish in the bottom half of Runscore this season No, no bottom half of Runscore now. Come on. I don't know. Yeah, definitely not especially our part. Yes, after three games, they can't hit you You know what I mean? This court four runs on Saturday. Don't ask how She doesn't have to get those runs, but they just let's finish with this email since we got to we got to bunsy stating advice

1:31:46This is from boy. This was a bunsy specific email From Rachel who said hi ringer Philly gang first time long time love all your content I finally felt moved to write in after this week's conversation with Tony Bunts first of all I highly recommend and she mentioned a bagel spot which I sent your way All right, she's talking about the uncle that okay, she's talking about that all right Secondly, this is the more important thing. I want a rip shield For his terrible advice about dating where he encouraged Tony Bunts to hide the truth about his sports sickleness From his date Intimating that he would never meet a woman if he said he was trying to schedule the date Around when Aranola was pitching in the WBC First of all, this basically amounts to lying big red flag Second of all, I would argue that has nothing more attractive than authenticity as a woman in her early 40s

1:32:49Who is dating for the first time in a long time post divorce? I can say with confidence that if a man I was trying to schedule a date with told me that it would immediately be a green flag now I too am a Philly sports sickle so I'd probably suggest we watch together But the bottom line is that there's someone out there for everyone and the right people will love us for our most authentic selves Sports sickness and all keep up the great work and go bird So maybe I let you astray Buntsy. I mean that was a pretty Convince in case from Rachel that listen just be who you are from the get go And eventually there will be someone who accepts it even if you say Can we reschedule this date because I have to watch Aranola pitch for Italy inexplicably in the WBC Right, I mean there are like you said there are levels there are levels to it Yes WBC game semi-final If it was a Philly's playoff game I like one I would have known I wouldn't scheduled it to begin with

1:33:51I would have planned around that Yeah, I don't have any regrets. I'm you know, I'm getting up there in age relatively and I got more intentional about my dating so I'm working on it. We're working on it. Yeah, we'll see now for the record I don't think cliff. I didn't say lie. I just said I don't think you should use I don't think yeah I don't think you should reschedule or say you're gonna be late because of Aranola pitching for Italy in the WBC I think I think I could be wrong But I think that was my advice and I do stick by that Listen, someone mentioned cliff, you know, we should have a reboot. I think it was caller Cliffey was the you know instead of caller That's wonderful For your your takes on a recent pod about dating so there you go Is that the daddy gang? What they do buns. They call it that I have never listened to

1:34:53I've never seen that the first time I've seen bunch of people You never respond to it's like why are you asking me Cuz bun's in there He said that's like I feel like most would know something like that like they call it the daddy gang or something I forget she's from the area, though. She's from the air shout out to Yes, her and yeah, if we ever want to do a home and home She wants to come on We're open to doing she probably has some great dating stories of Philly sports sick. Oh, that's that's what that's how her pod started was like I was talking about dating in New York It was like yeah, it was like her and her homegirl like started to pot about like the you know The ins and outs of dating in New York throughout air in their 20s and then it was a mess And then that's why I got so popular and then now it's like a water down version of what it is So I don't know I don't know though. I was who were you here to see? I mean let's ask him me. He knows all about it He's like I'm out Caller cliffy spin-off I'm too busy celebrating CR month to to be young caller dad. Shout out CR

1:35:55Shout out CR Celebrate CR month. I think it's still going on. I don't think it's a limited tool month because I think it ends in and the march right maybe I think we can extend that bad boy. It's been such a success. I mean just like just keep winning You know, I do think I do like that theory maybe Maybe CR month is what they needed to finally get over them if they if they make a run I will absolutely be on board with pushing that theory because well, you know It's gonna happen if they get a little too hot Simmons if we were to get a six years Celtic series that will be the end of CR month that day No more CR month if we get a six or six We'll have to take yeah, we would have to take over CR month I think so there you go Which I think we're you know, we could certainly do with CR Yeah, everybody so there you go if we get to six or Celtics Maybe we just do a second CR month. All right. We've covered everything Philly's Sixers Vertical video bungee's dating life. See our month. I mean we hit you con you con basketball you con you con basketball

1:37:01I'm cracking up, you know thinking of people listening to that The day off you got we got pickleball too. You know me pickleball. There you go I got to check out the end of that game now as we finish recording all right later this week We're gonna have ZB on and we're figuring the date. He is at the owner's meetings. We'll hear from how he roseman Nick Sireani and Jeffrey Lurie So we'll do that and then everything else We'll figure out all right. Thanks to bungee. Thanks to cliff Augustin You say it's named Cliff Augustin at least once in episode. I'm Shio Kapati. We'll talk to you next time on the ringers You 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus and present in DC

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