Episode Transcript
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0:02
It's the Lockdown Podcast
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Network, your team every
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day. If
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You are Locked On MLB, your
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daily MLB podcast, part of
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your team every day. Bow
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wow and woof, baseball fans and welcome
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to Locked On MLB, part of the
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Locked On Podcast Network, where it's your
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team every day. This is The
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Daily Podcast, we talk about all Major League Baseball. I
1:55
am your host, Paul Francis Sullivan. Please,
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where did I put my... lower
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third there it is you can call me Sully.
2:03
I have been a baseball podcast for well
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over a decade now and we're about to
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This season is about to start and boy
2:34
it is going to be a strange fun
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season. Oh before we get going here let's
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go on and tell you that today's episode
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is brought to you by our friends at
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Prisepix. The easiest and most
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exciting way to play daily
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lockdown MLB for a first
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deposit match up to $100 and let's
2:59
just quickly go over the trivia
3:02
question. Trivia question I
3:04
briefly brought up the Oscars and the other show
3:07
that's my other obsession and I
3:09
asked which member of the baseball Hall of
3:11
Fame has two Emmy
3:14
Awards as well as being
3:16
a Hall of Famer as a player two Emmy
3:19
Awards. Now I've got a couple
3:21
people who gave answers that weren't the
3:23
ones that I was necessarily looking for.
3:27
Dingle Fuff says Bob Euchre who is a
3:32
Hall of Fame announcer he very well
3:34
may have two Emmys but I
3:36
was talking about a Hall of Fame
3:38
player. Now Mr.
3:40
Thormeister said
3:43
Frank Thomas won two Emmy Awards for
3:45
analyzing for being an analyst on
3:48
the MLB Network and I believe
3:51
on Fox or maybe it's Turner
3:53
forgive me they bounced around a
3:55
lot. Actually you might be writing
3:57
that I may have this trivia question wrong the answer I was
3:59
looking for was Joe Morgan, Joe
4:01
Morgan, little Joe, won a pair
4:04
of Emmy Awards well-being and a
4:06
broadcaster for ESPN. I was always a fan
4:08
of Joe Morgan. I know not everyone liked
4:10
Joe Morgan because he was not always the
4:13
quickest to embrace analytics
4:15
and everything like that, but I
4:18
thought he was engaging. I like listening to
4:20
him alongside John Miller. May
4:22
Joe Morgan rest in peace. Let's
4:26
talk about the big news obviously happened
4:28
today revolved around
4:31
Garrett Cole with
4:33
the Yankees. Now, there's not
4:35
much to say news-wise. Now,
4:38
if all goes to plan, on
4:40
Wednesday's show, a friend of
4:42
the podcast and the person who brought me into this whole
4:45
lockdown world, Stacey Gauseulias, who is the
4:47
host of the fabulous Lockdown Yankees podcast,
4:51
I texted her. I'm sure I was not
4:53
gloating because I am not a fan of
4:56
injuries. I don't think that that's, I
4:58
want the best players on the field. And
5:03
I can think of few things more
5:05
devastating for a team than if the
5:07
Yankees lost Garrett Cole for any significant
5:10
amount of time. He is the
5:12
best pitcher in the American league, assuming
5:14
that Jacob DeGrom is not healthy and that's
5:16
a pretty safe assumption. And
5:19
if you remove him from this Yankee squad,
5:22
I'm sorry, they're not a playoff team. They're
5:24
not, that means they are a wild card
5:27
contender right now. I do think Baltimore is
5:29
a better team. They won more games last
5:31
year. They improved by getting a legit ace
5:33
at the front of the rotation and they
5:35
have the best farm system in baseball. So
5:37
they're either going to bring up good players
5:39
from the farm or be able to pull
5:41
off a big huge trade now since they
5:44
have an ownership that's willing to pull the
5:46
trigger. I think this is the
5:48
Orioles division to lose. Never
5:50
sleep on Tampa Bay and don't sleep
5:52
on Toronto. I think the
5:54
Yankees are going to be a wild card contender, but
5:56
they need to have Garrett Cole. I'm
5:58
sorry. Cortez is a nice picture,
6:01
but you don't know what he got from him last
6:03
year. Carlos Rondón was fine when
6:05
he was with Chicago and in San Francisco.
6:07
He was garbage last year and he
6:10
could come back or he could be garbage again and they
6:14
dealt away a bunch of
6:17
pitching depth including Michael King who would
6:19
be a very very valuable piece to
6:21
this team right now if he wasn't
6:23
included in the Juan Soto trade. Now
6:25
the Juan Soto trade was essential to
6:28
be made. I don't
6:30
knock the trade. They needed to have
6:32
another bat. Their problem last
6:34
year was their hitting,
6:37
not their pitching. But
6:40
it will become their pitching if you
6:42
take away Garrett Cole for any significant
6:44
amount of time and by that I
6:46
mean even just
6:48
not missing a few starts. I
6:52
say this every game counts
6:54
obviously. The games are gonna be playing in
6:57
Seoul in about two weeks or a week
6:59
and a half are gonna count
7:01
just as the Dodgers and the Pobbits are gonna play
7:03
in Seoul are gonna count just as
7:05
much as any game they play in September. And
7:08
with the American League and nationally playoff
7:11
pictures inevitably gonna be all bunched together.
7:13
If your team like the Yankees every
7:16
single game is gonna
7:18
be one you gotta scratch and claw for. Soto
7:21
would judge, yes, they're gonna score some runs.
7:24
You take Cole out of the squad. Then
7:28
this is a mid to
7:30
low 80 win team and
7:32
I think that Houston
7:36
and Texas are better than them. I think
7:38
Baltimore's better than them. Right now I think
7:40
Tampa's better than them. I would
7:42
pick Toronto ahead of them and all
7:45
right, so you would have the Yankees.
7:47
So how many that's that's three division
7:49
winners. Two wildcard teams
7:52
and so it would be basically the
7:54
Yankees fighting with
7:57
not like Boston's gonna be piddly-fu but the
7:59
Yankees. Yankees fighting with maybe an improved
8:01
Seattle team and any team
8:03
from the central. They
8:08
can't afford to lose their ace. Now
8:10
I'm not going to go too deep
8:13
into what they have to do because
8:15
the MRI hasn't come back yet. So
8:18
the MRI could come back and it's just a little
8:20
sore, you know, you miss a start or two and
8:22
then by mid-April everything will be fine. That's a possibility
8:24
that's sitting right here on the table. But
8:27
the other possibility is wow, bad,
8:29
very bad.
8:34
Now of course,
8:36
you know, Blake Snell,
8:39
the defending Cy Young Award winner is
8:42
available. Of course
8:44
Montgomery, former Yankee is
8:46
available. Dylan Cease is
8:48
available to be traded with the Chicago
8:51
White Sox. But at that point you
8:53
have to wonder how much
8:56
does Cashman and
8:59
Hal Steinbrenner want
9:01
to push, how much do they want to push
9:03
the luxury tax? Because they're right at the cusp
9:05
of it. So if they pay through
9:08
the nose to get Blake Snell in there, the
9:10
luxury tax implication is going to skyrocket. Now
9:14
there was a time when the Yankees said we don't
9:16
care, we got to win something. But
9:19
these aren't that, this isn't that Yankees.
9:22
You know, they aren't going to basically
9:25
pay Blake Snell double and
9:28
that's one of the reasons why they haven't pulled the trigger on this. And
9:31
yes, they would love to get a Dylan
9:33
Cease from the Chicago White Sox. But
9:37
they've already made a bunch of
9:39
giant trades in order
9:41
to bring in for do-go, in order
9:43
to bring in Juan Soto. You create
9:45
a bunch of young pictures and
9:48
you know the White Sox are like, oh, Yankees,
9:51
you want to contend. And you've
9:53
gone all in for Juan Soto, which means
9:55
you have to contend this year. That
9:57
lasts for the sun, the moon, and the stars. for
10:00
Dylan Sees, which
10:03
they don't necessarily have right now. So
10:06
there's a very strong possibility in
10:09
their auditions season for Juan Soto that
10:11
this could be, if Cole misses a
10:13
significant time, not really a playoff
10:16
team. Now, as
10:18
I said, it's not time to hit the panic
10:20
button yet, because we
10:23
don't know the results of the MRI. But take
10:25
a look around baseball. Max Scherzer is
10:28
going to start the season on the injured list. Justin
10:30
Verlander is going to start the season on the injured
10:32
list. Shohei Otani is not going to pitch this year.
10:35
Jacob DeGrom is not
10:38
going to be back for a while.
10:41
And Gioletta
10:43
signs with the Red Sox. He
10:45
has Tommy John surgery. People are
10:47
having injuries left and right. Ace
10:50
pitchers are falling like flies. And when
10:52
you consider that Snell is unsigned, even
10:54
if he signs right now before I
10:56
do my next ad read, you're
10:59
not going to be able to get him from not being
11:02
in spring training to being ready to be
11:04
an ace at the Major League level in
11:06
two or three weeks. Even
11:10
if Cole comes back and it's just going to
11:12
be a quick stint on the injured list, you're
11:15
probably not going to have either Cy Young
11:17
Award winner starting the season on the
11:19
active list. Something has
11:21
to be done. Players
11:24
are bigger, stronger, and faster than
11:26
they ever have been. But pitchers
11:28
are falling like flies. And
11:30
the notion of an ace pitcher is
11:33
a commodity of which there
11:35
are very few. And a lot of
11:37
them are old and have been hanging
11:39
around for a while. What
11:41
can baseball do to fix this
11:43
situation? What can they do
11:46
to make this
11:48
right? Do you
11:50
want anything they can do? I think
11:52
they can turn to an old
11:54
fashioned pitch that has
11:57
fallen out of favor. But I
12:00
think once they bring it back, it
12:02
could lead to a new era
12:05
of baseball aces and
12:08
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was thinking about this today when I was trying to
13:58
figure out how I'm going to handle this
14:00
show. There's a pitcher
14:02
out there who had a very good
14:04
outing in spring training who has
14:06
my attention and should have
14:09
all of baseball's attention. His
14:12
name is Matt Waldron.
14:14
Do you know who Matt Waldron is? He's
14:17
on the thumbnail for
14:19
this particular video. Is
14:21
he an ace pitcher? He's a 27 year
14:24
old pitcher for the San Diego
14:26
Padres. And last year
14:28
he started six games and relieved in
14:30
two others, pitched 41 in
14:32
a third innings and did okay.
14:34
He had a 4.35 ERA, pitched okay. And
14:38
he pitched well the last couple
14:40
of goes at it in spring
14:42
training. He's
14:45
a knuckleballer. He
14:47
throws the knuckleball and will
14:49
probably make the rotation. I was
14:52
thinking about knuckleballers today. There
14:55
aren't a lot of them and they pop up
14:57
from time to time. And knuckleball
15:00
pitchers are kind of, I don't
15:02
know, they're looked as kind of goofy,
15:06
a little flighty, a little
15:08
flaky, and they don't have that sexy pitch.
15:10
They don't have that hundred mile an hour fast
15:13
ball and the curve ball that breaks here
15:15
and there. It doesn't have the big strong
15:17
badass ace stuff when they're up there. They
15:19
stand up there and they throw that little
15:22
butterfly up there. I don't, it's
15:25
difficult to describe what a knuckleball is.
15:27
You hold the ball kind
15:29
of with your fingers bent like this. You kind of push
15:32
the ball up where it doesn't have any
15:34
spin or rotation, which means you could throw
15:37
a wild pitch. You could walk everyone in
15:39
creation or it looks like
15:41
this sort of floating bee up there that
15:44
a batter can swing and miss that because I
15:46
don't know where the heck it's going to be.
15:48
A knuckleball done badly, you're basically throwing a wiffle
15:50
ball pitch to a major league hitter. But
15:53
done well and you see
15:56
pitchers making hitters
15:58
look stupid. Absolutely
16:01
ridiculous. Now Phil
16:03
Negro, arguably the most
16:06
famous and greatest knuckleballer of all time,
16:08
Hall of Famer, whose stats were just
16:10
through the roof, yes he would lose
16:12
20 games, he would win 20 games,
16:14
he would throw an ungodly number of
16:16
innings, and he was
16:18
asked why don't more people throw the knuckleball and
16:21
he was kind of incredulous, he said why do
16:23
more people not throw a hundred miles an hour?
16:25
It's a talent. Yes, but
16:28
it's also something that can be developed. It's
16:30
something that could be taught. It's something that I
16:33
think teams should take a
16:35
good, long, hard look at
16:39
developing knuckleballers. Think about
16:41
some of the knuckle, the quality
16:43
knuckleballers over the years. Something
16:45
that a lot of them have in common are
16:48
two things. They
16:51
have long careers and
16:53
they eat up a ton of innings. When
16:56
you think about like, you know, something
16:58
like I grew up with a Wilbur
17:00
Wood was a knuckleballer
17:02
who pitched for the Chicago White
17:05
Sox in the 60s and
17:07
70s. He was a starter and a
17:09
reliever and there were some years he
17:11
would throw 48 starts. There's some
17:14
years he would throw in
17:17
1972, which was a great year for the
17:19
Chicago White Sox, he led the league
17:21
with 376 and two-thirds innings. 376 innings. 49 starts. He completed 20
17:23
games and wound
17:32
up being a legit Cy Young
17:34
contender there. You know, Nikro,
17:37
as I mentioned, both the brothers
17:39
Phil and Joe Nikro, when Phil
17:41
Nikro started, he played for the
17:44
Milwaukee Braves. When he finished, he
17:46
was with the Atlanta Braves but also pitched with
17:48
the Toronto Blue Jays. He
17:51
was throwing 200-some-odd innings
17:53
when he was a 47-year-old man.
17:56
He was a legit all-star when he was in his
17:58
mid-40s. a ton
18:00
of games he lost a ton of games
18:02
he's among the all-time leaders in strikeouts and
18:04
innings pitched year in and year out
18:07
he would just throw that knuckleball and
18:10
you know some more Tom
18:12
Candiotti lasted a long time Tim
18:14
Wakefield like Tim Wakefield may he
18:16
rest in peace took that
18:18
knuckleball and threw for 19
18:21
years won 200 games
18:23
along the way consistently gave the Red
18:25
Sox tons of innings would he
18:27
get lit up every once in a while sure
18:30
but you knew that
18:33
Wakefield was going to go deep in the
18:35
game and you knew that every single year
18:37
you know you were going to get 25
18:39
to 35 starts or you know 20 to 30 starts I
18:44
should say from Wakefield and sometimes they
18:46
put him out he came out of the bullpen
18:49
sometimes he would start but
18:51
he was reliable you know he wasn't
18:53
always a superstar but you looked off and
18:55
said alright we're gonna 200 innings out of
18:57
the sky you can get a
18:59
you know a more recent Cy
19:02
Young winner in RA Dickey who
19:04
didn't have the super long career that some of
19:06
those other ones have but he wound up pitching
19:08
you know he wound up pitching for a decade
19:10
in the major leagues a little bit more than
19:12
that actually when he got the knuckleball
19:14
down won himself a Cy Young award with the
19:16
Mets going to 233 and two-thirds innings
19:20
in that wonderful 2012 and
19:23
even though he didn't he
19:25
wasn't spectacular for
19:27
the years that he pitched in Toronto he gave
19:30
them innings to he
19:32
first year 224 innings this is 10 years ago okay in
19:34
2013 2014 2015 he's still throwing over 200
19:43
innings a season when
19:45
he's in his mid to late 40s
19:48
because it doesn't put the wear
19:50
and tear on the arm that
19:53
the fastballs do that the curveballs
19:55
do lobbing
19:57
up those knuckleballs all
19:59
of a sudden son, if you have a
20:03
staff of knuckleballers, okay,
20:06
maybe there'll be some days that get lit
20:09
up, but the chances of their arms breaking
20:11
down become significantly
20:13
less. I've
20:15
said that one of the reasons why we don't have
20:18
as many ACEs anymore is economic
20:21
because ACEs command
20:23
the highest salary, and so why not set
20:26
up your pitching staff where you don't need
20:28
an ACE anymore. Your starting pitcher is going
20:30
to be maybe an opener or maybe not
20:32
get through the sixth inning because, oh, you
20:34
know what, come the second time through the
20:37
order, third time through the order, you want
20:39
a new pitcher in there, which means you
20:41
don't pay a pitcher a
20:44
big astronomical fee. If you
20:46
don't believe me, the defending Cy Young Award winner
20:48
is out there and no one's signing him because
20:51
he wants to make huge money, but
20:53
teams know that while he
20:56
is a fine pitcher, paying him like an
20:58
ACE isn't that smart because he's not someone
21:00
who's going to go deep into games. And
21:04
we're seeing that all your top pitchers are
21:06
breaking down. No matter how much you treat
21:09
them like a Faberge egg, you couldn't buffer
21:11
pitchers more than Jacob de Grom and
21:14
Matt Harvey were by the meth, and
21:16
yet they constantly kept breaking down. So
21:19
why not develop those pitchers who
21:21
are the knuckleballers? Why not develop
21:23
a staff of knuckleballers? Yes, it
21:25
supposedly takes time to do, but
21:28
if you're a fledgling team, like
21:30
I don't know the angels who
21:33
just lost their great player and whose farm
21:35
system is ranked 30th out of 30,
21:39
so there's a lot of hope there in Anaheim. Let's
21:41
say we're going to start developing knuckleballers, just
21:45
start developing through our system. Some
21:47
of them are going to make it, some of them not,
21:49
kind of like starting pitchers. The
21:51
Paul Skeins of the world, Paul Skeins could turn out to
21:53
be a great pitcher. He could
21:55
wind up having a career like
21:58
Steven Strasburg, where he's dynamite. when
22:00
he's healthy. Steven Strasburg is probably
22:02
the way aces are gonna be from now on.
22:05
Dynamite when they're healthy, breaking down a lot,
22:07
their peaks are gonna be super high and
22:09
Steven Strasburg's peaks were really high. But there
22:11
was also a lot of years like, yep,
22:14
he's gonna be injured, he's gonna lose a
22:16
big amount of time. Instead,
22:19
you have a bunch of pitchers who are gonna give you 250 innings.
22:23
Maybe not all of them are gonna be great, but
22:25
they're gonna be innings. They're gonna,
22:27
and with those innings, you also don't
22:30
have a worn down bullpen. But
22:33
with the knuckleballer, you also
22:35
have another thing that could happen in
22:37
baseball. An important illusion
22:40
that is slowly slipping away that
22:43
maybe the knuckleball can bring back. Is
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we've got two guard dogs for. adoption. First
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then there's Brutus. Six
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I got an interesting comment from a friend
24:57
of the podcast, Goro
24:59
Majima, who says, More
25:03
knuckleballers mean we're saving arms, but everyone
25:05
wants to throw 99 mile
25:08
per hour fastballs. Yes,
25:12
but not everyone can. And
25:15
if you're throwing those fastballs
25:17
and you're blowing your arm out
25:19
after 15 innings, I think what you'd rather
25:21
do is be on the mound pitching. And
25:24
I'll tell you what the knuckleballers could do. If
25:27
you start developing knuckleballers and
25:29
you have a key part of
25:31
your team that is not a freak of
25:33
nature, it's not a roided up hulking figure
25:36
or someone who could do something with their
25:38
arm that is impossible for anyone else, but
25:41
can strategically throw that
25:43
knuckleball, get those innings, get those
25:45
wins, it can
25:48
reinforce the myth that
25:50
the average fan can make
25:52
it. That the average
25:54
fan could become a big league ball
25:57
player. You can't watch
25:59
a hockey game. game and think an average
26:01
dude can just sort of put on some skates
26:03
and make it to the Stanley Cup
26:05
final. Basketball and football,
26:09
those are like Greek gods and bizarre
26:11
physical specimens. But
26:14
if you ever had a regular everyday
26:16
dude up on
26:18
the mound or regular
26:21
everyday woman on
26:23
the mound hurling up the knuckle balls
26:26
and all of a sudden the fan up there goes,
26:28
name it, that can be me. I'm
26:30
here in Los Angeles County. One
26:33
of the most popular jerseys you still see
26:35
at Dodger Stadium is out of Fernando Valenzuela.
26:37
He hasn't pitched for the Dodgers since 1990.
26:41
But he, because he had this look, he didn't look
26:43
like an athlete. He looked like just a guy. He
26:46
was a little pudgy, he had the messy
26:49
hair, he looked like a guy you'd see
26:51
all around LA. He was a regular dude
26:53
who was up there dominating with that screwball.
26:56
That was one of the reasons why he
26:58
caught the imagination. Yes, he inspired the Mexican
27:00
population, but it wasn't just people of
27:02
Mexican background who fell in love with Fernando. It was
27:04
the entire region that is still in love with him
27:07
because that sense of he's just a regular dude
27:09
who happened to be a major leaguer.
27:12
Well imagine if the pitching position, the guy
27:14
who comes up there or the woman who
27:17
throws 200 to 270 innings, just pushing that up. It's
27:21
not a superstar arm. It's
27:24
not the proverbial nuc La Luch
27:26
that gods came down and turned your arm into
27:29
a thunderbolt from Bull
27:31
Durham. To create
27:33
that illusion of, hey, that could be me. If
27:36
I just worked on my knuckleball, that could
27:38
be me. The whole thing
27:40
that made the rookie with Dennis Quaid,
27:43
which just makes my eyes explode with
27:45
tears when I see it, that sense
27:47
of that everyday person making it, that
27:50
illusion is going to have to become part of the
27:52
game as well. It helps
27:54
save baseball with the sense
27:56
of these are not just pampered millionaires
27:58
who have been gone on. either
28:01
these the Dominican academies or the
28:03
travel leagues no a regular Joe
28:06
or Joanne could make
28:09
the Major League roster if they
28:11
just developed that knuckler and
28:14
don't blow out your arm yeah
28:17
it's sexier to see the hundred
28:19
mile an hour fastball but what's
28:21
even sexier winning the game
28:24
and for people who love offense guess
28:27
what when a knuckleball is a knuckling
28:29
you're basically throwing batting practice the
28:33
knuckleball if it
28:35
takes three four five years
28:37
to develop knuckleball pitchers fine
28:39
it'll be 2029 and you have your team
28:42
full of knuckleballers eaten up innings
28:45
as opposed to what we have now which
28:47
is the aces just absolutely collapsing
28:49
like a house of cards falling
28:52
apart like the Avengers turning into
28:54
that dust at the end of
28:57
Infinity War that's a reference
28:59
my mom won't get but
29:03
give it a shot develop it
29:06
save your arms when you sign
29:08
a player to long-term deal you know they're gonna be around
29:10
for a long term eat up
29:12
those innings don't wear out your bullpen and
29:15
create a world
29:18
where someone out there listen to
29:20
a lockdown podcast and showing up to
29:22
the ballgame think that could be
29:24
me that could be me
29:27
I can't hit the ball out of the ballpark
29:29
I don't have a great huge arm I don't
29:31
have that eye as a hitter to be able
29:33
to hit it into the gap with that you
29:35
know off the charts baseball IQ if I throw
29:38
that knuckle up there I could
29:40
get a ring give
29:43
it some thought some team out
29:45
there I'm looking at you angels I'm
29:48
looking at you Marlins these
29:50
teams that have horrible farm systems and
29:53
are going nowhere in an awful hurry I'm
29:55
looking at you a's fill
29:59
your farm system up with that and give
30:01
it a shot. How could it be worse than
30:03
saying, hey, who are the two defending Cy Young
30:05
winners going into the 2024 season?
30:08
Oh, they're in their street clothes. A
30:12
trivia question today regards
30:15
a knuckleballer named Gene Bearden. Gene
30:18
Bearden, a knuckleballer from the
30:20
1940s, is
30:23
the last person in
30:25
baseball history to
30:27
do what? What
30:31
feat that hasn't been
30:33
accomplished by any pitcher
30:35
that Gene Bearden do in the 1940s,
30:38
knuckleball Gene Bearden do in the
30:40
1940s? Put the answer down here on
30:42
YouTube or locked on MLB pods on
30:44
Twitter or on Instagram. I'm your pal,
30:46
Solly Mizzoli, baseball on Twitter, so I
30:48
visible podcast on Instagram, begging
30:50
that we bring back the knuckleball and
30:53
restore baseball sanity.
30:56
This has been locked on MLB. I
30:58
am your host Paul Francis Sullivan. Please
31:00
call me Solly. So
31:18
we've got two guard dogs for adoption.
31:20
First up is Tinkerbell and
31:23
then there's Brutus. Six
31:27
times better protection can make a
31:29
big difference. Castrol GTX Full Synthetic
31:31
Motor Oil provides six times better
31:33
wear protection on critical engine parts
31:35
to help extend the life of
31:37
your engine. Castrol GTX Full Synthetic
31:39
Better Oil for maximum protection. Tinkerbell,
31:43
Inc. Claim based on sequence for a test
31:45
versus latest test limits.
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