The Best of The Dan Patrick Show

00:00:00
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox Sports Radio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Gerald McCoy NFL Network analyst and six time Pro bowler, third overall pick and twenty ten out of Oklahoma. You can see him all season long NFL Game Day morning Sundays at nine am Eastern on NFL Network. Great to see you again. What advice would you give Jackson Dart with his style of play?

00:00:28
Speaker 3: First off, Good morning, Hey doing it Dandy? I always love coming back. First off, Good morning. Secondly, man, b there's a fine line between Charla, make a play and dangerous play. You are pay to deliver the ball with your arm. That's what you're paid to do. Everything outside of that is extra. Okay. He has to start to understand when is the time to run and how to run. Nobody's telling him not to run because we've seen running quarterbacks before, but there's a way to do it. There's a reason that some running quarterbacks don't get hurt, don't get hit the way it gets hit. He wants to get as much as he can out of this run instead of taking what they're giving you. When you see Baker Mayfield doing the extra or whatever, trying to get the extra yard is necessary at the time. Other than that, you see Lamar JACKSONI he make his move, he make you miss. He get out of bounds when he get down. You see Jalen Hurts, he get his yards whatever he get down. Michael Vick, he run, run, he get down. Cam Newton went through this, and Cam Newton he's six six to sixty and he was taking these hits and even Cam start to understand, forget all that I'm getting down or I'm getting out of bounds. If he wants to have a long career, which he should have because he's extremely talented, he has to understand. Man, there's times when you have to go the extra a mound and then there's times where you need to just get what you can get in there. Get down. He's tried so bad to make a play because of what's around him and everything that he feels like the world is on the shoulders. That's going to be a detriment for him. And you don't want to see the app.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can't run like Skataboo does who can take contact. But I would have RG three talk to Jackson dark because RG three might be the fastest quarterback who's ever played that position. But you gotta be You gotta be smart when you scramble, when you decide you want to take on a hit, or you know you're not going to get out of bounds.

00:02:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, my brother Key to leave where on the show called The Gridiron, it's about underdog fantasy, and he says that's all the time. If you want to do running back stuff, you have to deal with running back stuff. So if you want to go in there and duck your shoulder and try to run this dude over and all that, you gotta take what comes with that, which is what comes with being a running back, getting hit all in your knees. You might take a couple extra hits, your shoulder's gonna be banged all up and all that. But that's what running backs do. Running Backs are built to deal with it. You are a quarterback, don't do running back stuff, but want to deal with it like a quarterback. If you gonna do running back stuff, you gotta deal with running back stuff. I love that he says that because it's true.

00:03:43
Speaker 2: What does Jonathan Taylor have to do to win the mv pick Just.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: Be consistent the rest of the year. You know what he's doing right now at this level, it's incredible, and if any year is the year to go win it, it's this year because there's not any quarterback that's like, wow, looking what this guy is doing. Like last year, what Lamar was doing was unprecedented. What Josh Allen was able to do to elevate his team, putting his team on his back to do the half the games he was having was freaking at that game he had out in La versus the Rams, freaking incredible. We're not seeing those types of games from quarterbacks. So if he's consistently like what he just did yesterday versus the Falcons, that's an MVP game. So when he wins the award, they're gonna look back to everybody has that game. That's his MVP game. Now he has to have these consistent moments throughout the year. See Saquan any other year would have been the MVP last year, but look at what he was up against. Jonathan Taylor's not up against that this year. So he just has to be consistent with what he's doing, give us one more of those like type games, and then consistently play the rest of the year and they keep winning it. I think he'll win MVP.

00:05:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think he will because we've created the Offensive Player of the Year award and that's that's. Hey, We're gonna give it to a running back or a wide receiver and I think, yeah, well that's.

00:05:16
Speaker 3: What that's Yeah, well that's that's not right because here's the evidence. And this is me, indie fans. I don't care how y'all feel. Y'all are fans of your team? Y'all not paying attention. This is the most valuable player. Okay. Drake may is playing far beyond his years. He's playing great. He is. Matthew Stafford is playing phenomenal. He's playing great. Okay, But you see yesterday and the last two weeks is why Jonathan Taylor should be at the top of the MVP race. When they when Pittsburgh took Jonathan Taylor out of the game, We've seen what happened to the team. It was not the same team when Jonathan Taylor did not take over the game we seen yesterday. Don't care. Everybody likes to look at numbers. What did your eyes tell you when you're watching this game. Daniel Jones interception, three fumbles, all of them really should have been taken away. But that would have been another two to three turnovers from the quarterback. Okay, so what do we do? Stop depending on him? Give it to the running back, Give it to the running back. Give it to the running back, Give it to the running back. He's the reason that game was even one. Everybody wants to talk about that one throw he made. He's the quarterback. We need you to make a throw. Make a throw, please? Okay, but who made all the key players who put when they needed something to happen, they put it on Jonathan Taylor. That is a running back. Why is he running us to a win versus a team where our quarterback should be doing it? Granted, I understand the Founders are a good pass defense. However, that's not what we've seen yesterday from Daniel Jones. What we've been seeing so the last two weeks should be evidence that that guy is the MVP.

00:07:09
Speaker 2: Talking to Gerald McCoy, NFL Network analyst, you can see in NFL Game Day morning Sundays at nine am Eastern on NFL Network. Most disappointing teams so far is who?

00:07:22
Speaker 3: Oh? Most disappointing team?

00:07:29
Speaker 2: Ye?

00:07:31
Speaker 3: Right now, it's a two man race. Now. Granted one of the player's main player got hurt. But the Baltimore Ravens, you expected them to be a lot better at this point, especially defensively, and the Buffalo Bills, right, but a lot of people had both of those teams in the super Bowl. Now a lot of people are wondering if he at a point now now it's a race of Baltimore gets in if they can win the division. In Buffalo, with how they're looking up and down, how they looked against Kansas City, it was almost like that was the super Bowl. Then you go down to Miami and it's like, what the heck happened? So I would say both of those two teams because of the expectations, Like the Packers. A lot of people can say, well, the Packers, they are losing these games. They shouldn't lose. But Packers were a good team, but they were in the mix. Not people had them in the super Bowl. You know, a lot of people had either Buffalo or Baltimore in the super Bowl, and where they are right now, that's not what we're seeing. So I would say those two teams.

00:08:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would probably. I think the Ravens are gonna win their decision.

00:08:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they have it. They definitely have a shot because if you look at the schedule with what they have left, the defense is playing much more improved. And uh, well I c yeah, lamar, yeah, Like you look at Pittsburgh. They gotta play Pittsburgh twice. Pittsburgh is so you don't know what you're gonna get from there, Like they play a game they did versus coach and then they'd do what they did last night, and it's like, eh, so yeah Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh had the hardest schedule, so yeah, Baltimore is probably gonna win the division, so they'll get in. But even so, what we've seen from them all year, it's like you're watching the Baltimore Ravens, then you watch the Buffalo bill and like, what the heck is going on? You know? So I would say those two teams if I'm looking at like actual disappointing teams for you expected more.

00:09:28
Speaker 2: You ever land on a quarterback, like try to land on a quarterback?

00:09:34
Speaker 3: Like no, it just happens. You play the game is put. This is what I say to anybody, And this is this is what bothers me about these rules is the people who are making the rules have been on the field on the grass when the game is being played, not just in the game, but practice workouts combine. Are you've seen how fast these athletes move. You've seen how fast this game is. Defensive linemen are taught you have two point three seconds to get to the quarterback. That's what we're taught. That's the clock in our head. So imagine how fast you have to be moving to get to the quarterback. There fast. It's not like you getting off the ball, you just running the straight line and going to hitting him in two seconds. You got to get past another professional athlete who might be bigger, stronger than you and has help. So once I get there, why do you think that we glorify a person who can get to the quarterback and get them on the ground the ball in his hand. When we do that, it's glorified by everybody. It's called a sack. When you get ten of those, you're put in a different level. There are seventeen games now. The average game you're playing offensive snaps sixty snaps. Okay, defensively you might get thirty five to forty. So if you calculate all of that and you can get to the quarterback, ten times you're put into the elite category. That's how hard it is to do it. So when you're doing that, you're not thinking about, oh, let me fall on the side of him when I get to him. You're thinking get him on the ground by any means necessary. So this oh you can't falling. And I heard Michael Straighthead saying something that I love that. He said, they act like quarterbacks are not football players too. We're all football players. Those are football players. And it's just like you get push this agenda of oh, the game is fair and it's all about protection and all of we just trying to no, no, no, no, no, it's about keeping those guys healthy so we can see points so we can make money. Because if we're talking about protection, why that a corner offensive lineman who on average is six two six three and up three hundred and twenty pounds up. There used to be where a corner who was probably five nine to six feet one eighty to two hundred pounds could cut an offensive lineman who was pulling. Well, now you can't do that anymore. And we're talking about fair or safe. Nah, man, come on stop it. I like y'all.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: I like y'all fired up.

00:12:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it an that's just they man. The game is too fast for this for y'all to still be like, come on, man, that's just that's bad.

00:12:40
Speaker 2: Matthew, Matthew Stafford a Hall of Famer right now.

00:12:43
Speaker 3: Heck yeah, yeah, forget Matthew Stafford is gonna be one of the people that forget the All Pros, forget the Pro Bowls and all that. What did your eyes tell you? And what do his numbers say? Matthew Stafford was a victim of arguably the greatest era of the string of quarterbacks that came through Mattie Stafforge was drafted in two thousand and nine, and he just ran into a string of quarterbacks, the Drew Brees, the Tom Brady's, the Aaron Rodgers, and right a couple of years later, Cam Newton showed up, Matt Ryan was around, Philip Rivers was around, all that, Eli Manning was there. All of these people kept showing up, kept showing Andrew luck, all these people kept showing up. With Matthew Stafford's consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, and now look at him, he might be playing the best football of his career. He's already won the Super Bowl. Okay, he left Detroit, came to Rams, won the Super Bowl. Now he's just sacking it up at this point. Yes, Matthew Stafford is the Hall of Fame. Absolutely.

00:13:42
Speaker 2: I think sacks are overrated. Okay, I think pressures and hurries are more important. You can have a sack in a game and we might say, oh man, you had a good game. We don't watch the tape, yep, but but I see pressures and hurries and you might affect fifteen plays as opposed to maybe one with that sack. I think we focus too much on the sacks and not enough on the hurries, the pressures that defensive lineman have.

00:14:15
Speaker 3: You know, we call that. It's a word for it. Oh, it's called smart. We call that being smart. You actually watch the game. A lot of people look at the number. Okay, look at the number. All right, even when I played, I'm not going to give you twelve to fifteen sacks. But go watch the game. I'm in the backfield most plays, disrupting something. I'm on the quarterback. He can't to sit back there and hold the ball. I'm moving them off off the spot. All of that. That's what Micah does. Micah. So everybody's looking at the I'll tell you even better with Max Crosby. If you go look at Max Crosby's SATs right now, go look at Crosby's stats, and they're gonna look at other defensive ends stats. You're gonna say, oh, well, he's playing better than Max. Go watch the tape. Max is on the running back, the quarterback, he's in the backfield, he disrupting, he's doing all of that. That's what makes Max one of the best in all of football is because he's always disrupting something. It ain't always who gets him on the ground. Because in basketball, there's a stack called an assist. So if I have the ball, because sometimes I feel I gotta break this down like I'm talking to five year olds. If I have the ball and I give it to my teammate and he puts it in the basket, that's pot of assists. Okay. They even have hockey assists where I passed to him, he passed him and then it goes in. Okay, they have those as well. So if I beat my man and I make the quarterback, oh oh oh, he see me. He all over the place and he running to my teammate. The teammate gets the stack, who calls the play? See. I even teach my son that, I say, son, stop trying to be so you so proud of it making the play. Go disrupt stuff. You might not always make the play. So then you know what You've been on the airways well a long time. You know why because you are s M A R T. You are smart. You know what it's Monday. So I'm gonna use it even bigger word. You are intelligent, my brother, you are Thank you for watching the tape.

00:16:27
Speaker 2: That's how you get invited back right there. That's smart on your part. That's well, that's why I always talk about Aaron Donald. Aaron Donald is like up there with Reggie White, in my opinion, like what he did when I when I get pressure up the middle, now the quarterback has to go right or left, just like you did. I'm gonna I think those guys are more valuable because they disrupt. They get the quarterback off his spot. If you're a great you know edge rusher on the right, I just go the other way up the middle. You know, now I've gotten you off your spot and you on an Aaron.

00:17:05
Speaker 3: Of that you ont known example of that. So we always try and get pressure up the middle. Tom Brady he hated any quarterback hates pressure in their face because that's their window. A great example of why you need a guy the middle is yesterday when the Falcons were playing the Coats. The edge guys were getting pressure, but Daniel Jones wasn't getting sacked because the d tackles weren't getting pressured. They were sitting at the line of scrimmage. So it doesn't matter if these guys are right here. The quarterback is talked to whether he is a launch point at seven yards. When I say launch point, that's where his footsteps and he moves back up into the pocket. That's his launch point. So when we used to rush, we used to when people be thinking dhas the line, but we're just out there going. Well, some of us are, but I wasn't. So you got to know the launch point. Some people's launch point is at nine yards, some people's launch points at ten. You got to know the launch point because you got to know when the counterback. So if the edge just come off the edge and they're just running the rail, which you talk never to run around the quarterback he's just gonna step up into the pocket. The old line is talking to build a pocket for him. If there's no pressure up the middle, then he could step up in the pocket and make it throw. So that's why you need pressure up the middle. That's why you gotta have a guy in the middle of your defense. That's why when Warren Sap was doing what he was doing at the undertackle, it changed everything. Tony Dungey said, I need somebody in the middle of my defense that can make everything go, and that's what Sap was, and then everybody just you know, copycatted.

00:18:32
Speaker 2: It great to talk to you. Thanks you always.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: Huh, yes, sir, I appreciate you.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: That So, Gerald McCoy, Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to listen live there.

00:18:51
Speaker 2: He is Rick Neuheisel, former head coach analyst for CBS Sports. All Right, did Fernando Mendoza win the Heisman this weekend? Listen?

00:19:02
Speaker 4: In any other year I would have said yes, because that was quite a stage and quite a dramatic finish, and one that got all kinds of play across the country, but this year has been so different with the names that we're seeing and with the drama unfolding, with guys like Diego Pavia who had an overtime thriller in Trinidad, Shambliss, these names that I think are going to be fun for voters to vote for going forward. And Julian's saying, you know, playing Robinhood and splitting apples with the arrow. I mean, the guy's eighty two percent passer. I don't remember anything like that, so I don't think we're done yet. Jeremiah Love, there's another one. There's another one. I mean that play against Navy where he looks like he's down and then kind of twist, spins off the pile and goes forty five yards further for the touchdown. All he does is just keep scoring touchdowns. And the Notre Dame machine we have all kinds of respect for, so it can't count him out either. All right, let's start to handicap this. Do you have trends now where you go, Okay, this is going to like you can make declarative statements here. Let's start with the SEC What do you think happens? I think the SEC is going to get five. I think we're to the point where we can say five teams are going to come out of the SEC, which five are still going to be up for grabs. But I think and I think that Texas, with the schedule as it lays out with Georgia this week and then follow the finale with A and M, I think they might be the one team that can get there with nine and three. How about the Big Ten? Big ten is going to have to push to get to the four number. Right now, I think the top three, the two undefeated Ohio State and Indiana are in obviously finishing off what they expected to finish. And then I think that Oregon, by virtue of that win in Kennick is in obviously pending a big game against SC, and they've got Washington at the end, assuming that they split those at worst they're in. The question will be the s C Michigan thing. If SC or Michigan. Obviously SC has the win over Michigan and they do get Iowa this week and they get Oregon, winning both of those games will make SC a potential ten or eleven seed. Big twelve looks like they're getting one. Maybe ACC is going to get one. I think Big twelve has a chance for two based on Utah starting at thirteen, because I think Utah is playing good football. The fact that Texas Tech won that game was great for Brett Yormark. Had Texas Tech taken the loss, I think it would have been one. Acc for sure is one.

00:21:54
Speaker 2: Talking to Rick new Heisl, CBS Sports college football analyst, former college football head coach, a lot of rumors out there, always a lot of rumors.

00:22:05
Speaker 4: Well, how about Lane Kiffin having Florida come to town legally? You think there's going to be a twenty four hour security around his.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: What do you think Lane does?

00:22:21
Speaker 4: I think he stays, you know, the sec based on the paradigm we've got right now where you just kind of pay. There's really no advantage any longer to have the blue blood reputation as long as you've got the Greenbacks in your pocket. And Ole Miss has proven and shown Lane that they'll go out and do what he thinks is necessary. He's got the acumen and the energy to go out and recruit guys like Trinidad Shambliss and go and check on him rather than just reading it off the film. So I think he stays. You know, he's saying how happy he is, and he's got a chance to prove it.

00:22:58
Speaker 2: I was talking to somebody who said, get ready for chaos this offseason with the college coaches. Now, I don't know what chaos, how you would define that. Yeah, but he says that coaches that you don't think would move, or athletic directors who you don't think would move their coach, things are going to happen.

00:23:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:23:18
Speaker 4: I think we're at a point of affordability. I think if Lincoln Riley, for instance, wanted to go back to Texas, if there was a place in Texas that he could go and get a great number, I think he'd leave Los Angeles. And I think the Trojans would be happy to say that's okay, because it's expensive to have a guy that's making, you know, eight figures as your coach. I think that we have the Jedfish at Washington. I think will have his eye opened. That doesn't mean that he doesn't like Washington. I think he's just looking around. That lost to Wisconsin hurt that cause there's some other guys out there that I think are going to at least test the waters.

00:24:01
Speaker 2: Like Jeff Brohm at Louisville.

00:24:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, he and Clark Lee and Eli Drinkwitz all have not inked anything. You know, the Sexton clients are going to use this leverage to kind of ruse and see what makes sense to them. Obviously, Brent Key at Georgia Tech has already said, cut me open. You see what I bleed. That's kind of given us a tip that he wants to stay. But maybe a little early in the negotiation to be saying such a thing.

00:24:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I can't remember when we had all of these openings during his season.

00:24:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody think everybody think of this, Well, I think so, because everybody's trying to get to the head of the class. Because we've got an early signing date coming up on one of these early Wednesdays in December. We've got a transfer portal and now we've only got one transfer portal and that's going to start January tewod through the sixteenth. So all these teams that are kind of trying position themselves for the CFP, those coaches are going to be late to the dance if they get another job, which is going to be really chaos. This is why most of the athletic directors wanted the one transfer portal to be at the end of April, but all the coaches want to know who's going to be on my team so I can build for the entirety of the year. Were bass awkward, as they say in this business, and it spends for some time. If that's been the case.

00:25:25
Speaker 2: How would you feel if you were the opposing coach when USC swaps out their punter and with a different jersey number.

00:25:34
Speaker 4: Thinking that this might be a topic of conversation with you, I read from the hymnal. Otherwise the NCAA rule book the following are considered unethical practices changing numbers during a game to deceive an opponent. Now, to be fair to Lincoln, he did this before the game. But the Big ten is saying you can't have two guys at the same position wearing the same number. And so now this is going to be like Dan Lanning last year putting the twelfth guy on the field against Ohio State. This is going to be a rule change. It may be within the week that will get.

00:26:09
Speaker 3: The rule change.

00:26:10
Speaker 4: But some would call that clever, some would call that a dirty, dirty trick. I pat David Brown on the back for making no such claim. Good to talk to you as always. Always a treat, my friend. Good games they remember are played in November. You owe me a song here soon? Oh next time, next time, I'll have something. Yeah, how about yeah before Christmas? The games in November are the ones we remember. There you go, something just sultry like that?

00:26:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Bud, You got a pal, Rick new Isle.

00:26:45
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch the live edition of The Dan Patrick Show weekdays at nine am Eastern six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio w app. Fox Sports Radio was taking over YouTube and you can be a part of it.

00:26:59
Speaker 5: To just go to YouTube and search Fox Sports Radio, hit that subscribe button and smash that notification bell and catch all the videos from your favorite shows, Tube Pro's and a Cup of Joe, Dan Patrick, Colin Coward, Doug Gottlieb Cavino and Rich The Odd Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington, The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon, and The Ben Maller Show Fox Sports Radio on.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: YouTube, subscribe, hit that thumbs up icon and comment away. I asked Fritzy reach out to Jeff Passing. Does a wonderful job covering baseball their MLB insider. I know he's busy because they have the UH I think the GM meetings in Las Vegas. But you also have a controversy here with a pair of pictures with the Guardians, and they could be headed to prison. Jeff Passing kind enough to join us. Jeff, thanks for joining us. Bring us up to speed. Can you explain the situation with the Guardians pitchers.

00:27:54
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's not great, Dan, and this is really the intersection of gambling and sports and where it allegedly can go wrong. An indictment was unsealed yesterday by the Eastern District of New York, which at the same US Attorney's office that indicted Damon Jones and Terry Rozier and others involved in a separate alleged gambling scheme. In this case, Luis Ortiz, a Cleveland Guardians pitcher, and Emmanuel Classe, who is widely regarded as one of the best closers in Major League Baseball, three time All Star, two time Mariano rivera.

00:28:35
Speaker 3: Reliever of the Year in the American League.

00:28:37
Speaker 6: Allegedly conspired with betters to place proposition bets on individual pitches so, for example, you can bet whether a single pitch is going to be a ball or a strike, and they would get together, according to prosecutors beforehand, and say this pitch in, this is going to be a ball. And what would happen is, you know, ten thousand or so dollars would be wagered.

00:29:08
Speaker 3: Sometimes it was more, sometimes it was less.

00:29:10
Speaker 6: This allegedly happened a significant number of times, up to the point where the government alleges that more than four hundred thousand dollars was made on Emmanuel Classe's pitches alone. And then this is something that's going back down allegedly to May. At twenty twenty three, orties came in, according to prosecutors, joined the scheme.

00:29:36
Speaker 3: This year and on June fifteenth through a ball.

00:29:42
Speaker 6: Then was paid five thousand dollars to do so, and class got five thousand dollars for facilitating it. On June twenty seventh, did that one more time and the payment was seven thousand dollars. Now, Ortiz's attorney came out and said he is completely innocent of all charge. Jes Basse's attorney was not quite as vociferous, but said, essentially we will have our day in court and.

00:30:09
Speaker 3: The whole thing.

00:30:11
Speaker 6: It's just really interesting to me, Dan that I'm in Las Vegas right now for a Major League Baseball event when this is happening, and it shows the way that gambling has infiltrated professional sports, and you really do wonder, can the toothpaste be put back in the tube or is this the new norm?

00:30:32
Speaker 2: They don't cap prop bit.

00:30:36
Speaker 6: I think it just depends on where you're doing the gambling. And the reason that this was caught in the first place is because they're betting integrity firms out there that tracked this sort of thing, and they saw that Luis Ortiz had a pretty significant amount of money placed on one of his pitches.

00:30:55
Speaker 3: And then that's interesting.

00:30:57
Speaker 6: You know, With Class A, I suppose it's a little bit different because he's as good as he is, he's as well known as he is. With with Ortiz, a little bit different. Who you know, nobody knows who Luis Ortiz is. And so it happens a second time. And once it happened the second time, the betting integrity firms flagged the books and Major League Baseball was informed, and almost immediately both Ortiz and class were placed on non disciplinary paid leave and have been gone from the Guardian since July. And you know, regardless of how this turns out in court, the notion that they are going to be back pitching at any point in Major League Baseball seems unlikely.

00:31:47
Speaker 2: And I've mentioned this before that you'll have guys who are on the periphree. They live in a vacuum because they're probably thinking nobody's going to be tracking this. You know, I'm nobody. I can throw this pitch, my buddies can make some money. I get a little kick back here, just like Johntay Porter with the Raptors. He's a no name player, and hey, I got an over under and I'm gonna be under. I'm going to take myself out of the game. Terry Rogier. That's the problem. It's not star players, it's the guys who don't think anybody's watching. But Vegas has to watch.

00:32:26
Speaker 6: Of course, Vegas has to watch, and frankly, all of us as sports fans, should be apoplectic about this. Games are only as good as they are believable. And the second that you start chipping away at the idea that what we're watching is real, what we're watching is on the up and up. What's the point of watching sports if you don't feel like there's real competition. And it's so interesting to me that it's almost taken gambling to remind us of this point. Why people were so angry about the Houston Astros cheating is because the expectation of fair play of both sides doing this the right way. And I don't think I even need to use air quotes for that. There is a right way and there is a wrong way, and what the Astros did was wrong. And even though Emmanuel Classe and Luis Ortiz, if they did this, could say, hey, it's just one ball, I can get back into the count. Class A in twenty twenty four had one of the best relief seasons in Major League history. Even though all of those things are true, it's just the fact that if this exists at one point, is it not a slippery slope. Hey, you know, I threw one ball. I can come back from a two to zero count. Or if it's the third pitch in it bat and the guy is down two, can waste a pitch.

00:34:00
Speaker 3: I can waste two pitches.

00:34:02
Speaker 6: And then you get to the point, Dan where it's like if you open the door to that, then you're just inviting more and more and more.

00:34:13
Speaker 2: Talking to Jeff Passing, ESPN Senior Baseball Insider, what's the spicy topic there in Vegas?

00:34:22
Speaker 6: Oh boy, Well, it's the Major League Baseball off season, so spiciness it's it's muted, like we don't have a ton of spice going, Okay, we need some more, we need some more flavor to the off season. I don't anticipate there's going to be any big free agent signings this week. I don't think that, frankly, we're going to have a big trade go down. This week is more about just feeling out what the market is going to look like. And because MLB does not have a salary cap, that's off season is accordingly slow. Teams you know, they are able to maneuver around and respond to the market and don't feel like they have to go out and spend all this money early on to take up their cap space.

00:35:03
Speaker 3: And it's one of the things I appreciate about.

00:35:06
Speaker 6: Baseball likes it's an actual market and it operates that way without those sorts of restrictions.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: You got a couple of Japanese players who I think are being posted. Is it just a pipeline to the Dodgers if they want them.

00:35:21
Speaker 6: They don't anticipate that this offseason because if you look at now, I think it's twofold number one. If you look at what the Dodgers need. Of course, they could always use another starting pitcher, but among the four that they had starting for them this postseason with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnam, Shoho Tani, you add to that two more guys on their roster, Justin Robleski and Roki Sasaki, who are starting pitchers, and you throw Gavin Stone and River Ryan coming back from major arm.

00:35:54
Speaker 3: Surgeries in there.

00:35:55
Speaker 6: The Dodgers have pitching depth, like real pitching depth, frankly, from which they can trade. And Morikami they just signed or they just picked up Max Mounsey's option. Now that that does not keep them from pursuing Lunataka Morikami, who is a massive power left handed hitter, hit fifty six home runs in a season twenty two years old, and has a chance just an enormous ceiling.

00:36:22
Speaker 3: But between him and Tatsuya am I.

00:36:25
Speaker 6: Who's a right hander who's about Yamamoto size and has that kind of high octane fastball, really good command, and good off speed stuff as well. I think the bigger thing dan other teams want Japanese players to other teams understand there's enormous talent to be mined in Japan and you're not going to get those top end guys in the future if you haven't illustrated in the past that you're a landing spot for Japanese players, that you are friendly to the Japanese culture, that you understand and the mindset of Japanese players coming over the Dodgers. One of the best things that they did was corner the market in Japan and say we want everyone in Japan to be wearing Dodger blue. It was brilliant, not just in a baseball sense, but in a financial sense as well. And I think all the other teams around the league are like, well, you know, if you can't beat them and join.

00:37:22
Speaker 2: Them, behave there in Vegas.

00:37:25
Speaker 3: Jeff Okay, I make no promises, then.

00:37:30
Speaker 2: You already look guilty. Thank you, bun.

00:37:34
Speaker 3: So.

00:37:34
Speaker 2: Jeff Passon