After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 4

This is hour number seven on the radio for me on Tuesday into Wednesday. It's been quite the haul, but there's a lot going on and also you guys are keeping me company. Thank you for letting me know that you caught me in the afternoon, whether on TV or here on CBS Sports Radio filling in for Maggie and Perloff. It was fun. It was out of my comfort zone. It was a good challenge, but this is home to me and this feels like my broken pair of slippers.

Or my favorite pair of jeans. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio and I only said that twice on the other show. We are live from the Rocket Mortgage Studios.

When you need an expert to help navigate the home loan process, Rocket can. So sue me. It's been ten years of saying After Hours. It's probably impressive that I only said it twice and that I only called Manny Machado Maggie once. There's a lot happening in Major League Baseball and so we're excited to welcome David Sampson, former president of the Miami Marlins, now analyst on CBS Sports HQ. He's got the Nothing Personal podcast and he always wakes up early with us whenever we ask. David, it's good to have you for a couple of minutes. Let's talk about Fernando Tatis a little bit.

Because you spent so many years in baseball, I'm interested to know what was your reaction when you first heard about his 80 game suspension? Wait, wait, hold on. Sorry, there's something so unbelievably wrong. It's probably on our end, but you sound like a robot or a clone and so we're not able to hear what you have to say. Jay's going to work on that real quick because I want to make sure we get all of your answer. I've not heard that one in awhile.

Again, that's probably our equipment and not you or your phone. So we'll get to that. Also the Yankees in a major slide. They've now lost 8-17 since the All-Star break and their offense has completely disappeared.

So that's a challenge. The World Series champions have won 8 games in a row. We've got a couple of major battles in divisions like the NL Central and the AL Central where the Cleveland Guardians are on top ahead of the Twins and the White Sox by a game each. And so a lot going on in Major League Baseball even as we get to mid-August now.

Hard to believe. We don't have baseball to get lost in the middle of preparation for football. Let's try again. So David Sampson, former president of the Marlins. Let's hope this works.

What was your reaction when you heard about Fernando Tatis and his suspension? I thought that my morning voice sounded like a robot and that you were commenting on what's really my voice right now, which is deep. Very, very deep.

I call it my lounge stinger voice, my sleepy voice. Yeah, I got what you're saying. But apparently there was something more technically wrong. But I was mortified that there was nothing wrong on your end and it was only on my end because I did not admittedly because I went to bed way too late last night, like about an hour and a half ago. Oh my gosh. I thought that I did not wake up early enough to do any practice of my voice prior to our segment. Me, me, me, me, me, me. Go ahead if you need to do some vocal cord warm-ups.

So I'm gonna do it now, and it's gonna go something like!!! conduct that taught hot hot hot hot hot hot heat senior hot hot hot hot heat tyroids hot hot hot hot heat junior steroids?! child's family, family, family, family.

family, family, family, family, family, family. Steroids. Steroids. Steroids. Steroids.

And let's do this thing. So your reaction that apparently was not total shock. And it was disappointment, but it was not surprising. I had to be senior on my team. I think that the senior knows his way around steroids. I think that the junior had three hundred and forty million dollars guaranteed and wanted to get back as quickly as possible to help his team and took a calculated risk.

And he and the risk failed. And he still has three hundred thirty seven million guaranteed. He's only going to lose three million in this 80 game suspension. And his reputation, his Hall of Fame trajectory. I'm not exactly sure that Tatis Jr. and Tatis Sr. care one iota about that. So his dad went on a radio station in the Dominican Republic and talked about how baseball is tarnishing his son's reputation, destroying it, and in fact, ruining baseball. He says millions of people will tune out because his son isn't playing.

And I get it. He's obviously on his son's side. But my question to you would be, is there any room at all for baseball to investigate this on a case by case basis just just in case he might have actually been using the medicine for ringworm? Well, well, listen, it's even if you were using the medicine for ringworm, which I don't even want those words to come out of my mouth because then your editor could somehow make it believe.

It's great. I said he was using the medicine. He won't.

I promise. Which he was not clearly using the medicine for ringworm. It's the biggest horse hockey story of the season so far. So baseball has to be consistent and it hurts. When we got a call in 2016 that Gordon had been caught doing steroids, the same steroids same thing. Yes.

As as Tatis Jr.. I couldn't believe it. I asked him at the time, the deputy commissioner, I said, I need a recount. I need you to stop the count. I need you to do something because this can't be happening. It is. It is.

I want to know every process. So a couple of things on that, Amy. The Padres didn't know about this when they traded for Juan Soto. The Padres didn't know about it when he first tested positive.

They only found out when the appeal was dropped and the suspension was going to be starting. Then the phone call comes in. It is the one area in Major League Baseball where there's no it's the one area where the front office is totally blindsided by the phone call they get. Wow.

Because I've got it. But first our player and it is first it's disbelief. It's like the three stages of grief they talk about. There are three stages of someone caught doing steroids when you are president of a team.

The first one is denial. Like you've got the wrong guy. You eat somebody mix the tea like that. We have to go back from the beginning because there's no way my guy was dumb enough to do this. Then MLB shows you the proof and says, no, it is your guy. We tested not once, not twice, but thrice. And there's no appeal.

And then you say, well, what do you mean? Of course he's going to appeal because he didn't do that. There's no way my guy on a long term contract who I just signed, who's going to help our team win, did not appeal because he'd never do steroids. That's the second sort of level of grief. And then the third one is when you go to the game and you talk to your team and you have to tell your team what happens and you have to explain to your players that this good player's not going to be with you for 80 games.

It's a horrific process, might I add. And the Padres just had to go through it. And they were riding such a high with the acquisition of Juan Soto and Ted, he's coming back. And the thought of him being with Machado and Soto and them competing to win the world series.

And then it just disappears. And the Padres have not played well since, uh, it's, it's really something, Amy, I must tell you. Um, I appreciate that insight and your personal perspective as a guy who went through it with the Marlins, former president of the Marlins, David Sampson is with us here after hours on CBS sports radio. I also found it interesting that we heard multiple Padres, as well as the general manager, come out and say how disappointing this is and how much they can't trust him right now.

And this probably includes the December motorcycle accident that he didn't have the surgery for with the broken wrist until March. Just how poor his decision-making has been, but does it even matter David? Because as you point out, he still has nearly $340 million owed to him and a full, no trade clause at 23 years old with 12 and a half years on that deal.

So that's the thing. So all these players can say what they want and the manager and the owner and the leader of the team, Manny Machado. And guess what Fernando tattoos cares or hears both things. He cares not any hears little because he knows that he's not going anywhere, that he can buy a house, raise family in San Diego because he's in control of his destiny. He's going to be there longer than every single person who criticized him. He's going to be there longer than the manager.

No question about it. Maybe even longer than the owner. And if they do want to trade him, he gets to control exactly where he wants to be traded because he has a no trade clause. So he looks at the situation, talks to his father and says, wow, I'm in complete control.

There's not one thing that can be done to me that I do not either do to myself or want myself to have done to me. And that's the power that we give a 23 year old player when we give him a 13 year guaranteed contract for $340 million. That is our fault. And we do it time and time again.

You cannot create the monster if you're Frankenstein and then be upset when you get eaten. I just want to remind people that you have given a contract of 13 years to a player in the past. And we've talked about it, but since Giancarlo Stanton and the 13 year deal that he signed with the Marlins, how much has your perspective changed on contracts that last longer than a decade? How much has it changed, Amy?

Zero. When we signed Giancarlo Stanton, Giancarlo Stanton and I laughed. We laughed. We looked at each other and I said to him, you wanted to say no, didn't you? You wanted out of Miami so badly that you wanted to say no to that deal, but you couldn't, could you?

And he smiled. I said, the reason you couldn't is that you just got $325 million guaranteed, not like any other sport. I'm talking about guaranteed. You are set for life, you, your family, grandchildren, your parents, everybody.

You get hurt, you can't play, you stink, whatever the case is, you've got that money. In return, you had to get married to me in Miami. And he said, you did it.

And I said, gee, you did it. And what we were talking about is that we each found a place where our comfort no longer mattered. It was getting the deal done that mattered. So our comfort in going out 13 years was not very high. His comfort in staying in Miami was not very high. We had to have him on the team because we did not want any of our media or fans to believe that we were going to let him go because we had let everybody else go who was great in our organization. The previous owners had let every other great player go in fire cells led by Huizinga and John Henry, by us previously. So we needed Giancarlo Giancarlo needed us because he didn't know what position he would be in after he had been hit in the head. He just wasn't sure what he would be like as a player. And we were giving him the biggest contract of all time, right? So there was no way he would say no, there was no way we would say no. But there was also no way that we each thought that he would be a Marlin for the entire contract. And he wasn't.

So every situation is different, is my point. That was a long, true story of giving you insight into that negotiation. And it was never, there was never an argument between us. It couldn't have been, it was my most friendly contract negotiation because the player had so much leverage and so did the team.

And when both sides have a ton of leverage, deals get done very, very quickly. David Sampson is with us here after hours on CBS Sports Radio, former Marlins president. And now as we talk to him, every time we talk to you, actually, David, we get stories like this that you've never told before.

So thanks for sharing that insight again. Giancarlo is one of the Yankees who is hurt and trying to get back to the field. And certainly their offense has taken a major hit. How confident are you in the Yankees now at this point where they've lost, let's see 17 of 25 since the All-Star break?

Well, I've hired personal security here in New York, which is not normal for me because I'm so small that people could generally not find me. But the fact of the matter is that months ago, I explained that the Yankees weren't good enough. And I implored Cashman Steinbrenner to bring in one to two top level starting pitchers. And I was mercifully, mercifully, what's the word on Twitter? Not just teased, but I was, I was put through the ringer. I was, what does this guy know? He only has one World Series ring.

This guy doesn't know one thing about building a team. You were roasted. He's roasted.

Thank you. Mercifully roasted. You used to act like my producer Coco when I can't come up with a word. He's right there, right there with it. But you were like eight seconds later than Coco would have been.

But I appreciate you being there. So I got mercifully roasted because Yankee fans, at that time, the Yankees were, as you recall, we're going to set a record, they were going to be the best team in history. And now all of a sudden the starting pitching is not as good. All of a sudden the hitting has gone in a bit of a slump, they're not scoring runs, and they're not winning games. Now people are saying to themselves, are they possibly not even better than the Astros? And oh my God, they may not be better than the Mets, which is of course the worst nightmare of the Yankees to ever say those words. If George Steinbrenner would hear you say that you thought your team was worse than the Mets, he'd fire you on the spot, like on the spot. Right now the Mets do have the better record, which is something that you probably, and by you I mean you collectively, probably wouldn't have thought once they were on that meteoric first half. So that is true, though they still have a nine game lead in the American League East because the teams behind them are all kind of fighting on even ground. What impresses you most about the very young Cleveland Guardians? They're taking advantage of a situation where I thought, and everyone else thought, the Chicago White Sox, despite Tony La Russa at manager, that they would find a way to win the division sometime in May was my projection.

I thought their magic number would be one somewhere around May 15th, and they clench it May 16th. And the division has not turned out that way because the White Sox are one of the most disappointing teams, in my opinion, in baseball this year. And Cleveland and Minnesota have taken advantage of it. And they were always going to be fine teams, right? People thought Cleveland, Minnesota, Minnesota added a lot of pitching. They got gray and the thought was they had a chance to be competitive and they were playing fine. The Guardians sold off players, they got rid of Lindor, they have some injuries, they had a window of winning that in my view was closed, but yet they're playing around 500 baseball, which means you're still in it in that division where you shouldn't be. So I think it's pretty exciting if you're in that division, but how do the White Sox not win it?

With their talent and their lineup from an outsider standpoint, that's a division you win and you have time to win. But every time I think the White Sox, maybe last night, beating Verlander was the beginning of them waking up and saying, all right, it's time to go now because they're the team that is the most likely to get hot despite schedule, despite home road opponent. When you're a player, you're not focused on that at all. You don't look at ease of schedule. You don't look at home versus road. That's very much a media created statistic. Players inside the clubhouse know when they're going well, there's no team that they will lose to whether they're home on the road, whether it's an afternoon game or a night game followed by an afternoon game.

Just don't focus that way. Here we sit mid-August, about six weeks to go in the regular season. So we're getting close to that stretch run. Who is one of your favorite stories or maybe a favorite dark horse, a team that has been a lot of fun to follow and could make some noise come October? Well, I'm sorry to say this, but I'm looking at the last two games of Atlanta, New York in this pivotal four game series.

And we're going to know a whole lot more in 48 hours. If DeGrom and Scherzer do what they're supposed to do for the Mets and they come out of this series with a split with the Braves, I think that that means the Mets go on and win the division and become really the team to beat in the National League playoffs. If, however, the Braves can just sneak in one of these two games, somehow just beat either Scherzer or DeGrom and then be three and a half games out after having gone through the Mets. I think the Braves say to themselves, we're a better team, which I think they are from one to 26.

We're deeper. We're winning a lot. We can catch these New York Mets and we can win this division.

And it doesn't happen often that in the middle of August, when you're five back or three and three back, four back, it doesn't happen often. But believe me, it can happen with the Braves. That's how good they are. And now on yet another streak, this one at eight games. So yeah, there's a lot happening in that division as always. And so far, the Mets have shown staying power and tenacity.

But with two injured starting pitchers in the last two nights, I mean, you're talking about potentially the deck being shuffled yet again, even as they get Scherzer and DeGrom back. You can find David Sampson on Twitter at DavidPsampson, S-A-M-S-O-N, former Marlins president. He's on CBS Sports HQ.

He's got the Nothing personal podcast. Do I dare ask why you only had 90 minutes of sleep? No. OK, I won't. We need a little mystery in our relationship.

We will leave it at that. But thank you for not blowing us off, even though this was an extreme turnaround for you, David. Amy, I must tell you that I'm about to start recording today's Nothing Personal at 6 a.m.

Sexy. And I must say that I love when you call. I love being on your show.

I always do it live and I will never say no to you. Oh, thanks, David. Well, we'll look forward to that new podcast, especially if your voice sounds like it does right now. That's just by the way, that's me on a normal Wednesday morning. Good to talk to you.

Take care of yourself. We'll see you again soon. At the beginning, he was a robot, then we realized he needed to do some warm up exercises for his voice. But man, it was worth the payoff, was it not? The insight on Fernando Tatis, his own player D Gordon and how he found out about D getting suspended for the same exact banned substance that Tatis just popped positive for on into the Giancarlo Stanton and why a 13 year deal got done.

But the fact that he still doesn't think it's a good idea even though he did the first one and on and on and on. Good stuff from David Sampson. That is worth catching on the podcast if you did not hear the whole thing.

After hours, AmyLawrence.com. I did have people ask me the last couple days, why isn't your podcast updated? Those people who didn't realize that I wasn't here, that I was hosting a different show. I just got a tweet about what Maggie is going to say when she finds out that I called her Maggie Machado. No, no, no, no, no, John. You got it wrong. I was talking about Manny Machado and because I'd been saying Maggie and Perloff for two days, I accidentally called Manny, Maggie. I didn't call Maggie by the wrong name. I called Manny by the wrong name and no, there is no audio evidence of that mistake.

It's gone somewhere into the stratosphere, never to be found or heard again. Right Producer J? Never. Right. Good.

Glad we're on the same page. It's after, oh buzzing the tower, baseball is your brain. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS 4 Radio.

You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. On a one-two count here, Charlie fires the one-two, got him looking, strike three. What an inning for Charlie, three strikeouts looking, getting Alonzo Vogelbach and McNeil.

Fans getting into this and loving these strikeouts. Now the line in the pitch, swing and a miss, he did it again. Second time tonight, Charlie has struck out the side and he's gotten nine through five innings. One and two on Alonzo. Swung on, missed another curve ball. He strikes out Alonzo and that's a dozen for Charlie.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. We just talked about the Braves and the Mets with two more games to go in their series. It's a battle atop the NL East and it hasn't been this close in quite a while. The World Series champions are on another eight game win streak. Meanwhile, the Mets who have led this division going back to nearly the beginning of the season, they've shown a lot better staying power than last year.

In fact, this time last year, they were already folding like a cheap tent. The Braves are within three and a half though, and they do have the heart and the metal of a champion. On Braves radio, Charlie Morton with 12 strikeouts in nearly seven full innings, scoreless, only allows three hits to the Mets, but the Mets may have bigger problems actually. For the second consecutive night, they lose their starting pitcher before he's finished his start. It was an oblique injury for Carlos Carrasco on Monday.

On Tuesday night, Tywan Walker, after two innings, is out with back spasms. I knew my job tonight was to go as deep as possible, try to give the bullpen a break. I felt like my stuff was good and I felt like I was going to be able to go six plus innings and the timing can be worse. Never had anything like this before.

My staff's not very concerned, too concerned about it, so get in right and wrong and kind of see how I feel in the morning. They get Max Scherzer and Jacob DeGrom back and then they lose Carlos Carrasco and Tywan Walker? I mean, I'm not saying those are the same caliber pitchers, but you still have to have guys that could fill out your rotation. We've seen the Mets answer every challenge from the Atlanta Braves, so we'll see what happens. The Phillies have played extremely well lately, but still, the Mets have set a fairly torrid pace.

The cushion is not nearly as thick as it was, but they still have the upper hand and two more games coming up before the series is over. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. If you missed any of the show, we're back to podcasting. Poor Jay. When Amy's not around, his job is so easy.

He answers phone calls. I do doubles. Oh, that's true. I forgot about the double. I apologize.

That's true. He did actually spend eight hours in that little bitty smelly room on the other side of the double pane glass while I was doing a daytime shift and filling in for Maggie and Perloff. However, here I am doing a double of my own, so I suppose we're on equal footing. Marco Belletti's here, which makes the whole thing so much easier. What time is it? What day is it? Where are we? What are we doing?

I have no idea. I'm with you right now, completely upside down. It was so strange to be here in the middle of the day. People I hadn't seen in years.

It was pretty crazy. But crazier than that, I'm on the train because Princess Leia had to stay home since I was working during the daytime and took the train into New York City, which is where our CBS Sports Radio headquarters are located. I'm sitting across the train from a man and a dog. Really sweet looking French bulldog, clearly about to give birth or had just given birth.

Just biology. I could tell. Right. So I strike up a conversation with the man because I love dogs.

I can't resist. And I mentioned that my 13 year old dog, I had taken her on the train previously, but it made her nervous. She hid under the seat. And he said that he was taking her to the vet, that she was only four years old, I think, but that he'd had a dog previously that was 14 and that he used to take him on the train. He says to me, I cloned him. I thought I misheard.

The train's kind of loud and I didn't know what he meant. I cloned him. He said, look it up.

Clone French bulldog. You'll see it. There's articles on the Internet. The New York Post did an article on it because I was the first. No joke.

I come into work. I Google clone French bulldog. There he is. He's a celebrity hairdresser.

Britney Spears, Alec Baldwin, Grace Jones, some others that not that matters. His name is Roberto Novo. And yes, in fact, right before everything shut down in 2020, he cloned his French bulldog Machito and now he has other Machitos running around.

He cloned him and got three Machitos. There is an organization called ViaGen. Is that what we ViaGen in Texas that actually clones pets. I'm assuming not people since that would be illegal, but clones pets.

And animals. And I read about the whole process. I read it out loud. Jay's blown away. He can't believe it. $50,000 to clone his French bulldog.

But they're actually photos. He has three or had three, I don't know if he has all three still, had three bulldogs, French bulldogs that are identical to each other and to Machito. And he talked about how Machito was like the son he never had. And so he couldn't bear to lose him.

And this was his way of preserving Machito. How long has this been going on? Well, I don't know. But he did it in right before the pandemic.

So 2019, 20, late 19, 20. I feel like with all the information that we have and all the things that are right at our fingertips and all the stuff that I have to kind of sort through on a daily basis. How did this not, you know, make its way to the forefront? Because I got to tell you, this one's that's kind of big.

I met him. And I feel like this is kind of like, you know, this is almost movie territory. Like, you know, if we're already cloning pets, like we're getting to the point where we can clone people now. So like, that's kind of important that I feel like that should be more important than finding out. I mean, you talk about hairdresser, like I don't need to know what Britney Spears is doing in her wedding. Like, I don't care.

I don't care about Draymond Green giving out, you know, blunts for party favors at his wedding. That stuff I know I find constantly cloning of things I'd like to know about that. I feel like that's something that I should be aware of. Here's the thing that I didn't think to ask him because I didn't know he was being serious and I had no idea what he was talking about. The French Bulldog that he had that was pregnant. Was she a clone? Or can you not get a female cloned French Bulldog from male DNA? I suppose probably not. So maybe not. I got to be fair.

I have no idea. I'm not smart enough to know any of that stuff. It's like Jurassic Park. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, that's the only thing that I had in my head. I feel like I'm looking at the eggs so I can hatch in front of me. So see, they can clone animals. We know they've been cloning animals for years. You know, isn't that the gold bloom in the line like nature finds a way? Like it doesn't really matter. I think if you start cloning things like, yeah, we're going to figure things out. Google it. Roberto Novo. N-O-V-O.

Clone French Bulldog. It is legit. There are pictures. It's the same guy. He's all excited. Machito now has an army of clones, which I mean, I'm a big Star Wars fan and I love the Clone Wars. You know, there's all kinds of they could be implanted with chips that make them turn on their owners. I have no idea.

Just crazy stuff. I'm concerned. I'm not going to deny like this is this is actually $50,000 to clone a pet. I don't have $50,000. So that doesn't really matter.

There's no chance. No, probably not, because I don't know that I don't I think that would freak me out a little bit. Oh, it freaks me out. But at the same time, like if you tell me, you know, I've only had one dog and she's been gone for a while now, 2008. So if you told me in 2008, yeah, I probably would have at that point, because I didn't want to lose her. Oh.

Again, done at 50 grand, so it really doesn't matter, but this whole thing is just a little funky to me. Like, I feel like, again, we should know this, like this is something that I should be. You're welcome. I'm aware. I feel like this is there's so much what's the word garbage that we have to go through on a daily basis to find information. This should be at the forefront. This is important.

This is something, unless I just missed it, that I was asleep seven years ago when they started doing this in Texas, like, no, no, no, it's just it just happened before the pandemic. Yeah. But he cloned his dog. He was the first one.

He was the very first. All right. That's why it's a story.

So did this just fly under the radar because the pandemic that pushed this aside and we've yet to revisit, well, we need to revisit. That's exactly what it is. Yes. Thank you, Jeff. Wow. Oh, I thought you called him Jeff. I was like, no, that's Jay.

I am unbelievably impressed, Jay, that you just came up with that. That's amazing. Have you seen the new one yet? No, I haven't.

So good. Have you seen the new one yet? I did.

I took my son to see it in the theater. He was scared. No, not scared at all. No.

No. He was waiting for somebody to be eaten. It took a while.

He's eight. He was looking for a dinosaur to eat somebody. We were like, whoa, let's go. I love it. Did you like it? I thought it had some good one liners.

It was a good combo of the two. Yeah, it's fine. Look, it wasn't great. It was fine. That was basically how it was. It was fine.

Yeah. It's not bad. It's not great. It's fine.

It's it's not the first one. It's not your son like it. He loved it.

It made me happier because as long as he was happy and quiet, we were good and quiet. Hey, look, dad, someone's about to get eaten. Yeah, no, he was. I think it was like 10 minutes in. He was like, somebody can get eaten at some point.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, definitely somebody's going to die. Just give it give it a few minutes. Google it. Clone French Bulldog Roberto Novo celebrity hairdresser. I'm just saying it's after hours with Amy Lawrence. Here's our latest sports update.

I need a French Bulldog somewhere. You are listening to the after hours podcast. The first second of the pitch swing and a fly ball down the left field line back at it goes Ben attendee to the wall and it is gone. Randy Arosa Raina with another first inning three run home run and the Rays take a three nothing lead here in the Bronx early.

Here's the two on the judge. Gleyber Torres off first judge the tying run and the pitch is grounded up the middle and running the second is allowed to step on the bag and that will do it. It'll be a two to two Trevino and the right hander deals struck him out swinging ballgame over Tampa wins. Well not only did the Yankees lose but we well know that if there hadn't been a fumble ball at third base they would have been shut out for the third game in a row yikes. I think there's no question you got some guys that that are pressing a little bit you know at the plate a little bit you know we've talked about that for the last several days you know to varying degrees guys going through it again part of it part of the season we got a few guys that are in a rut we got to prepare and get ready and fight our way out of it you know it's part of it and you know it's no fun when you're going through it but that's where we are right now. Aaron Boone manager of the Yankees this is where you earn your money right your team started out like a house on fire had an historic first half with a pace that had people comparing these Yankees to some of the best teams in baseball history but it's not been that way since the all-star break they've lost 17 of 25 they're now 8 and 17 since the all-star break and forget the pitching for now their pitchers have in fact kept them in the equation the last few games but the offense is nearly non-existent as you hear with John Sterling on Yankees radio and before that Andy Freed yikes on Rays radio the Yanks have scored a grand total of one run in three games only four hits last night against the Rays now their lead in the AL East Division is still nine games because the teams behind them are relatively even in all fighting amongst themselves but for the Yankees it's not about winning the division the grand goal is World Series and this team right now looks to be going the way that some recent Yankees teams in October have gone where the offense has disappeared flat-out disappeared it's got to be creating a little bit of deja vu some consternation for Brian Cashman maybe Aaron Boone I know they've had a couple of injuries they're trying to get guys healthy but here's the other problem with that when there's no offense that protects Aaron Judge there's no offense around him teams don't have to pitch to him and so he becomes ineffective as well when there's no protection before behind and we saw it with the Red Sox even going back to was it right after he hit his 46 home run they just didn't give him anything to hit or they just flat-out walked him intentionally and so it's not only the rest of the guys who are not producing and individually affecting them and the fact that they're unable to push runs across in bunches that vaunted powerful explosive offense but you're limiting what your superstar can do as well if you don't give him any protection pitchers can pitch around him it's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS sports radio it's a question that doesn't necessarily have answers that's sports right what goes up must come down eventually and there's still plenty of time I don't mind adversity for a team that has World Series or championship aspirations you got to go through a little bit of a tough stretch to figure out what you're made of that's every championship team and we've got recent examples in baseball to be sure we've got examples in every sport that I could give you a couple of recent champions who were dead last at some point in their division their conference their sport St. Louis Blues we remember how was it 12 games below 500 for the Washington Nationals in 2019 and they faced elimination a dozen times in the postseason and still ended up as the last team standing right so it's not easy to win a title it was maybe a little too easy for the Yankees at the beginning so it's okay to see whether or not the losing exposes their lack of leadership their lack of substance their lack of character or does it bring out the best in them and that will prepare them for October you can find me on Twitter a law radio also on our Facebook page after hours with Amy Lawrence our YouTube channel as well I would love to say everything's back to normal whatever normal means but I'm actually out the rest of the week it's not on purpose the whole working on the daytime show and filling in for Maggie and Perloff if you missed it man I I'm not gonna tell you is perfect because that's not the case and I don't like watching myself on TV but I will say that I was more upset about the fact that I said after hours instead of Maggie and Perloff not once but twice that was the worst the first time I did it was at the end of an hour I kind of locked into the mode that I've been in for 10 years we call it hitting the post in the business where you have a hard out the computer cuts you off even if you're in the middle of a word middle of a sentence if you go I could actually try it here at the end of the hour the next minute if you want to see how it sounds no I won't but my brain just locked into the same thing I've been saying at the end of every hour for 10 years it's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio and I said it at the end of the first hour and didn't even realize it till we were done Jay didn't even know it at all he's watching TV had no idea that I had used the wrong name of the show got it totally normal to me he's so used to it at the end of the second hour I started with it's after hours like and that was how I finished up the hour thankfully no one heard that and then yesterday the only problem was I called Manny Machado Maggie Machado I mean I don't see any problem with that either no one will ever hear it again I'll talk to you Sunday night it's after hours with Amy Lawrence CBS Sports Radio boom!