Should Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani be the AL MVP?

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Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. We have about eight games to go in Major League Baseball season. We are down to brass tacks as the saying goes. We have a week and a half.

Ryan Fagan, baseball writer, sporting news. My friend, there aren't a lot of races to talk about. We have only one division race that is still up in the air and it's a good one with two great teams. I think Braves and Mets. Everything else is pretty much decided almost officially. There's really not even a lot of wild card. There's some jockeying for position, but we don't have a lot. So let's start with the National League East because that's basically where our focus is, huh? Yeah, it's kind of crazy. I think, you know, baseball by expanding the wild card, you know, adding an extra team in each league. They wanted to create more anticipation, more September races, and it just hasn't happened, you know, and that's not due for planning.

It just didn't work out right. And that's kind of how it happened sometimes. But it is interesting to see we get to this point and you expect to have all of these do or die. Will they get in?

Will they knock it in? And I mean, really, the only teams on the outside that have any sort of chance of the Brewers and the Orioles for the Orioles, it would it would take a lot, right? Right. I mean, lowers have been a great story.

I love watching him. But these last two losses. I mean, they won yesterday, but the two losses over the weekend in heartbreaking fashion to the Astros.

Yeah, I think that probably did it. Yeah, four games out with three and a half games out with not a whole lot left in Seattle. The team they're chasing the closest has, I mean, literally every game that they play the rest of the way is at home. It's tough, but, you know, I think it's, you know, it's the other ALR at least team in the Phillies that probably if anyone that's in now is not going to be in, it's going to be them. Yeah, Phillies are just two games ahead in the lost column of Milwaukee.

Once we get into the middle of August, I never look at anything but the lost column because you can't unloose a game. So and so but let's go to the NL East, not just because I'm a Mets fan, but because we have a high concentration of Atlanta Braves fans here. I think it has been incredibly fascinating to watch these two teams essentially mirror each other over the last, say, four or five weeks. There have been just pockets here and there where one team was winning or losing while the other wasn't. But for the most part, they've just been matching each other one game separating they will play this weekend in Atlanta.

How do you handicap this? Ozzie Albee's injury isn't very bad for Atlanta, obviously, but how do you handicap a situation, you know, a race like this with two teams that have slightly different strengths? Yeah, I mean, it's if you're a Braves fan, you're not loving the way things have been trending and just in terms of injuries to show, like you said, all these comes back after being away for a long time and immediately, you know, gets an unrelated injury. Yeah, he's out again, you know, Spencer Strider with an oblique, you know, they've talked about how they're trying to, you know, just be very careful, be very cautious, not let it turn anything more. You know, quite frankly, if that's all it is, that's fine, because, you know, he's at an innings level now that he's not been at before and a breather right before the postseason might be a good thing.

But let's be honest. He's the guy. He's the difference maker.

Yeah, right. If we're talking about a seven game series, you know, which obviously the first round wouldn't be whoever winds up in that wildcard spot. He's the difference maker. I mean, more than 200 strikeouts, fewer than 100 hits this year allowed.

That's crazy stuff. That's the swing in this stuff that plays in the postseason. So, I mean, if the Braves are going to win, I say if the Braves are going to win World Series, they need him. But I mean, they won the World Series. They had two starting pitchers by the end of October. Right.

Well, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter. But yeah, this brazen and that's reason has been it has been fun to watch because it's not just been that they've both been great because they have both been excellent, but they've also had a couple of hiccups. And it seems like they have the hiccups at the exact same time. You know, at the moment that the brace ends like, oh, there's no hope that fans are saying, oh, there's no hope we're going to lose this.

And it's just been fun to watch going back and forth. I mean, you know, and while the Braves are getting injuries to the Strider and I'll be the ground all of a sudden looks human for the first ever, you know, so we'll see what happens with that as well. Yeah, last couple of starts for deGrom have been like Jacob deGrom before he became superhero Jacob deGrom. So, and, you know, Max Scherzer is back, who knows if he came back too soon, because this is the second he had two stints on the injured list this year. But then he comes back and he throws six perfect innings.

So who are we to judge? I went back and forth with a friend of mine who's an orthopedic surgeon, like, why is he pitching? Just give him another week off and then Max goes and throws six perfect innings. So Atlanta's in Washington, both teams essentially other than playing each other should be okay to win a bunch of the other game. So it's going to come down to that series in Atlanta coming up and who knows what what impact we're going to see from Ian all up and down the East Coast. I know the Mets. I don't think the Mets play in Miami. I think the Mets are home against the Marlins. They are the Mets are home against the Marlins Braves are at the Nets, but not probably doesn't matter where you play either of those two teams. Atlanta's offense without all these hasn't been a great year for metal. Somebody's got a lot of big hits. How does Atlanta's offense stack up without all bees?

I kind of think they're okay and they still might be better than New York anyway. Yeah, they've got so much power up and down that lineup, you know, and that's how they won the World Series last year. You know, they their pitchers miss bats and their hitters hit home runs and you know, they have the same type type of ability up and down that lineup again this year.

You know, I think, you know, it's with all these out. You'd love Von Grissom to get back to what he was when, you know, the first month or two that he came up. He's struggling a little bit more at the plate. But I mean, that's I mean, look, he was better than anyone could have possibly hope for that. The first month and a half, whatever it was, you know, you know, Michael Harris has been phenomenal.

He's still been that guy and they just have so many guys that can beat you. You know, you make a mistake at any point in the Atlanta lineup and you're looking at a three run homer, you know, and that's not what you want. But at the same time, you can, you know, if you there are there are swinging misses in that lineup. Let's say that and there that that that goes with the home run power. So, you know, you're not going to see a ton of extended rallies out of that lineup, but you are going to see quick strikes and and a lot of multiple run innings. That's the key. That's what the Mets have to avoid in this series.

Yeah, I think it's it's it's fascinating. Either one of those teams could go represent the NL in the wild and the World Series and it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Yeah, it's it's important to win the division like Major League Baseball is always wanted to stress winning the division is important.

No more. No year more important than this because if you don't win the division, not only not only do you have to go through the wild card round, but you're stacked up against the Dodgers as the number one seed. So it's avoiding the Dodgers may let somebody else worry about them. So that's there is a huge carrot by the way, the pitching matchups for the weekend are Bassett and freed on Friday. It's to Grom and Kyle Wright on Saturday and Scherzer and Charlie Morton on Sunday.

I said this before. I think the Braves starting pitching is good enough. It's not as good as the Mets, but it doesn't have to be the bullpen. If the bullpen is good, you're starting pitching just has to give you a chance and then you let the chips fall. So I'm not I'm the Mets have obviously the advantage when the game starts, but that doesn't really mean anything. Let me ask you two quick things before we let Ryan Fagan from Sporting News go.

You can follow him on Twitter at Ryan Fagan. He makes it easy. All right, so in your neck of the woods explain what happened to make Albert Pujols Albert Pujols again. I think Albert Pujols is someone who thrives on winning right?

I think I think there's a lot of other things. He's healthy this year is Peter better. You know, he's in a little bit better shape, but I think the biggest thing is he he he rises to the moment you look at his career like through his career. He's always done that even in his time in Anaheim. He was better with runners and scored position than he was with nobody on base his career.

Oh PS with runners and scoring position is a hundred points higher than it is with the bases empty. He's a guy who just rise on those situations and he didn't have him in Anaheim. We even saw last year when he when he went to the Dodgers.

He was better than he was in Anaheim. And I think the Cardinals this year have done a really good job especially early of only putting him in putting him in advantageous situations against left-handed pitching and against right-handers who didn't throw a hundred and five miles an hour with next to breaking stuff, right? They put him in positions to succeed and he responded very well and as the season went along and as he had this chase for for 700 home runs. He's even kind of started to hit those other guys too. And he just is playing at a level that it feels like old Albert pool holes, you know, Adam Wainwright said has said this a couple times, you know, he's like people would ask me.

What's Albert to host like or what was Albert pools like and he said this is exactly what he's like if you need a big hit he gets it if you need a home run he gets it and he steps up and you think there's no way he's going to hit a home run here and then he does it and that's what he's done. I think that's one of the coolest thing about this chase for 700 is so many of these home runs have mattered. They've come in tie game. They've come in situations where the Cardinals were trailing late and all of these things have happened.

And if they if our pool holes doesn't do what he's done over the last couple months. We're not talking about the Cardinals cruising into the postseason. We're talking about them in the dogfight with the Brewers and that's been what's so much fun about this. It's not just that he's chasing a number but he's doing it in a way that has been essential for the Cardinals getting into the postseason. I would just point this out as I ask you one more question pool holes first half of the year 215 batting average 676 ops second half of the year 315 batting average 1053 ops 15 home runs in the second half six in the first he has been amazing is Aaron judge the runaway MVP in the American League. You know, I saw CC Sabathia had a word t-shirt said on the front. Okay, Aaron judge the MVP and on the back. It said that Shohei Ohtani is the best player in baseball, right? Okay, I need to get that shirt because for everything Aaron judge is done right and you know, I've never really been one to say your team has to be contending to win the MVP because it's crazy to me to think that an individual will win. I think that an individual award for the best player in baseball automatically eliminates half the players in baseball, right?

If your team thinks you can't be an MVP that's crazy that that's not that's not how an award should work and you know, you can put whatever valuable spin you want on it. There's no denying Aaron judge has been unbelievable and it's not just the home runs, you know, I've talked about this a couple times but I mean like I looked up his numbers was last week with two outs and runners and scoring position. It was hitting like 415 with a 590 on base percentage. That's ludicrous and there have been times this year and it's been well documented of how bad the Yankees offense has been other than Aaron judge. There was a series in Tampa where he scored all of the Yankees runs in the three games against the Rays, right?

A couple home runs and then he scored a couple times when he got on base and somebody else drove them in. That's how good he's been. But Shohei Ohtani has been one of the five best starting pitchers in the AL and one of the five best power hitters in the AL. Yeah, I mean that's that's my fear is that we're we're already taking him for granted, which is ludicrous. But I've said yeah, I think Aaron judge will get my if I was voting which I am not he would get my first place vote, but it would not be run away.

He's just I look I it makes me laugh. I don't again. I'm a Mets fan.

I don't like like hear me hear me praising Albert pools Cardinal legend and Aaron judge Yankees legend. I'm in a I'm in turmoil right now, but you're going to have to take a shower and wash that all afterwards, right? Well, the hopefully the postseason will just be spectacular and it'll make me kind of put all of that aside and hopefully the Mets will will hold off the Braves and maybe the Mets and the Yankees will meet in the World Series that will be fun.

Although I don't know that either team is going to reach the World Series to be perfectly honest Ryan Fagan. We got to talk again, my friend. I appreciate your time.

I always enjoy it. Thanks, Adam. As we break and we come back with John Orand of the Sports Business Journal and the Marshawn and Oran podcast about TV sports. I will point this out Aaron judge earns no war recognition win above replacement for pitching none. His war is 10 Wow Shohei Ohtani whose pitching war is 5.5.

His war is 9.2. His he's had a good offensive season 30 some odd home runs but Aaron judge this year. Oh my gosh historic Shohei Ohtani has had a good offensive season and I'm not knocking that but in if wins above replacement is a guide. This isn't close. It's not close because of what judge has done offensively. My friend the one and only John Orand from the Sports Business Journal, but you might check out the podcast because I do he gives Andrew Marshawn from the New York Post top billing unjustified in my opinion.

John Oran because we've never talked to to Andrew if we did maybe I would maybe I would flip that probably not but he's also not only a Maryland fan, but a Baltimore Orioles fan before we even start. You're still in it. There's still hope so I hope you are keeping the flame lit. You know, it's so funny that the hope is for the next decade now, this has just been a fun season. However, the season ends. There is no chance of heartbreak this season because it's that the Orioles fans have been through more than two decades of just direct and all of a sudden we were expecting more than a hundred losses and and they surprised us and we have the team has really good young talent. And so it's been a lot of fun to watch this season.

I'm sure it has been and I'm sure Oriole Park at Camden Yards has been a blast. All right, every time every time I contact you like I want to talk about this this this and this and then you guys drop another podcast and I can't talk about all the stuff. I wanted to because we have new stuff that we have to get to.

So let me do let me start. Let me start this way because the The Martian and RN podcast is amazing. I listen to it all the time even when they get your name wrong and I appreciate the shout out a few a couple of months ago the the ESPN Monday Night Football booth.

It's not that the Steve Levy's of the world and the previous iterations Joe test tours weren't good at their jobs. But it definitely has a different feel with with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. It does bring us back to the days where Monday Night Football was a big deal.

Always is that just perception or is that reality? It's both actually, I mean the one thing about Aikman and Buck is it for the past 21 years when you hear their voices and all you have to do is sort of hear their voices. You know, you're watching, you know, the late game on a Sunday like what probably one of the top two me three games of the weekend. You're hearing the championship games the Super Bowl. I mean, so you hear that that that voice and it makes you stop to say hey, this is a big game and I like to test it or he doesn't have that voice for the NFL and the same thing with Steve Lee. You just didn't have that voice for the NFL. You can develop those voices and I don't think Kevin Burkhardt or Fox has that voice yet, but I think that he can develop to become that voice for the NFL.

But the list is not very long. Al Michaels will make you stop. I think Jim Nance will make you stop.

I think Iron Eagle maybe if you want to get get out of a sort of number one play by play guys. I think he's somebody that if they don't make you stop and get it. And so when people wonder why they're just being decided to spend so much money to attract those to those two announcers, a part of it is that perception. I mean, think of it almost as a marketing expense more than anything else. And it's not just for the fans. I mean, there's all the networks laugh about the audience of one and it's Roger Goodell.

It's sort of the league office. And if they're happy with the telecast, you know, all of a sudden you're going to get better games. You're going to get a better schedule and then everything sort of flows from that. And I think that you can certainly see what you can schedule. And it's a lot stronger than it has been in the past years. Yeah, it has been.

And there's also going to be flex possibilities as well for Monday Night Football. But it does have a big feel. You said audience of one. I was having flashbacks.

All right. John Iran, Sports Business Journal, is joining me here on the Adam Gold show. Let's get to the the Apple or the Amazon portion of this NFL. I know the ratings were lower, but the way I looked at it and you tell me if I'm wrong, the ratings were still really good and it just proves that streaming is real and we are headed. Well, we're going to see more of this, whether it's I don't know if Sunday Ticket is headed to Amazon or Apple, but maybe NBA League pass, maybe some other streaming. We know MLS is already on Apple TV. So what is the future of this based on the success early on for Amazon? You know, this is a constant topic on the podcast.

Yes, it is, as you mentioned. And it's hard to talk about because to me, more so than streaming. This talks about the power of the NFL and the NFL is such a good brand. And it just it can put you can put a Pittsburgh Cleveland game on Thursday night, make people go and try to stream it and still get 11 million viewers to come watch it. There's no place else on television that can amass 11 million viewers.

In fact, I tried to do a story or I did write a story a couple of weeks ago. I talked to the different networks. I said, OK, Thursday Night Football is now going to Amazon.

How are you going to counterprogram it? And all of these network heads said there's nothing that gets eight million viewers. I mean, you almost you still can't quite it's not like counterprogramming something that's just going to get like, you know, a million or a handful of viewers.

It still is. The NFL, it still is huge and it's going to take a lot of you over there. And so it's really hard right now for the media executives and advertisers into the NFL or it's streaming. Certainly things are going to extremely. And the Sunday ticket almost certainly it's going to. Well, the Roger Goodell has said that it's going to end up with a streamer.

But to me, these numbers, more than anything, talk about the strength of the NFL. All right. So let me let me just push this forward just a little bit more, because I know you guys talked about it on the podcast. Is are we headed? Are we any closer anyway? I guess we are, because every day we go by, we're closer to it of like an ESPN direct to consumer.

Yeah, we're getting we're a lot closer to that than I had originally thought. But it's not going to be and almost certainly is not going to be to where you can buy ESPN, the one channel for a certain amount of money. They're going to bundle everything in there so you can buy the Disney Sports package.

And that's going to be as you see the network. ABC Network, ESPN News to ESPN Plus, et cetera, and they're going to charge a monthly fee for that. Or you can get, you know, who knows what the fee is going to be all of Disney. And that includes ABC, Disney Channel, all those Fox networks that they got. Also, they're coming with a mini package that's going to have live sports, it's going to have live news, and it's going to have this incredible library that Disney owns.

And that'll be a really formidable package. And so everybody's trying to cut the cord because they were so tired of, you know, only want to watch ESPN and I'm paying for Food Network or more likely the other way around. We unbundled and now you're going to see big media companies like Disney rebundling and taking all their stuff and going to the market with everything in one package. You know, it's for those of us that kind of, you know, we cut the cord, so to speak, even though there's really not that much difference between YouTube TV and cable TV. I have basically every channel I had that I watched via either cable or DirecTV, I have basically on YouTube TV with some differences. So a lot of us did that because, oh man, I'm saving so much money as we keep adding services. And I'm a soccer guy, so I added Peacock and we've got Netflix and all of a sudden I'm not that far away from where we were with DirecTV or with cable.

It's still lower. It's still less money, but there's also for those people who are not technologically inclined, there's like, there's those layers to overcome. All right, if you want to watch this, you have to click on this and then you have to go here.

You have to bet. It's just it is in some ways a nightmare, but all of these things are pretty much available. How do you, when does the Apple MLS thing? That's like my pet peeve there.

That's like my pet peeve there. You cut the cord, but you still got a multi-channel video subscriber. So yeah, maybe you didn't get the cable going to your house or have the biggest satellite this year, but it's there. You didn't quite cut the cord. Cut the cord means like you don't take any of those multiple providers. There's just so many things and you need really good internet for all of that stuff to work, which some of us, some of us who live in areas that don't have really good internet have, have had challenges.

All right. I want to just get one or two more things in here before I have to say goodbye to Jon Arand. You can follow him on Twitter at Arand underscore SBJ. Greg Norman, who's the CEO of LivGolf, was quoted in a story about two weeks ago by saying that the the interest from the TV networks in Liv is enormous. So we haven't heard anything since then about a future TV deal for Liv, but I've done the math. There's one TV network left that might have interest and that's Fox. And if they're bidding against themselves, I can't imagine they're going to go too far deep into their pocket. So what are we looking at if you had to look into your crystal ball in terms of LivGolf and maybe not network TV, but the possibility of it being on a channel somewhere? It's going to be a hard road because NBC, CBS, ESPN, which of course is ABC, Turner, internationally, they all have long term deals with the PGA Tour and they're in bed with the PGA Tour. And so it is going to be very difficult for Liv to get in there and convince them to take it. But one reason why I'm not sort of laughing at Greg Norman and saying, boy, it's going to be a failure moving forward is that the one thing that I do know about television and television business is that if he can convince these people that he can bring a an avid audience, a big audience and a young audience to television, people, the networks will figure out a way to get it.

He's still kind of a long way from doing that. They have big names. I think that the problem is that it feels much more the live events feel much more like exhibitions. You know, you can't get toward the world golf ratings points from them.

So there's there are a lot of other hoops that they have to go through. But I I don't want to say like there's no path forward for them to get a TV deal, because if they can prove that they can bring an audience and you and I could get a TV deal, we can prove that we have an audience. Do we do we think that one hundred thousand streamers on YouTube TV or Dizzone?

I think you can get it on Dizzone. I'm not sure. But do you think or through their Web site, live golf dot com is one hundred thousand average viewers.

Is that good for something on YouTube? No, no, it's it's so hard to say because they count them in a different way. I don't want to get inside baseball too much. But the audience is online, as you would expect, have not been huge. Audiences at the events has not been huge, but they do have they do have big name golfers. And if they can get out of towards an exhibition and it's an actual, you know, an actual event there. If they can still play in the majors, if they can still be part of the world golf ranking system, there could be a path forward there.

But there are a lot of those or reasons that I'm learning to tie up before that happens. Yeah, I mean, where they should go is streaming, which is which is what they're doing. You know, look, I've watched a couple of events. I think you the way you characterize it, it does seem like an exhibition at this point.

But maybe that will change going forward. All right, John, Iran, good luck to your O's the rest of the way. I hope they hang in all the way to the end.

But I know it has been a fun year for you. And, hey, Maryland almost beat Michigan. Maryland football, can we talk about them for a second?

Finally looking good. There's such a thing as a moral victory in College Park nowadays. We'll put another another column up there.

We don't have ties anymore. So we can have an MV column just for just for a seven point loss to the Wolverines. John Iran Sports Business Journal. The Marshawn and RN podcast is a must. Thank you very much, man.

Thanks, man. Always love catching up with John Iran. Real quick about Phil Mickelson pulled out of a lawsuit. Oh, the initial lawsuit against the PGA Tour was fronted by Phil Mickelson. Once Liv joined it, Mickelson had kind of hinted that he was willing to pull his name off of it. He has. I'm not sure what that means. If he's going to be deposed as part of the lawsuit, he's going to be deposed, whether his name is on the lawsuit or not, since the whole reason he got suspended was because he was actively recruiting players off the PGA Tour to join Liv.

He also helped write a lot of the rules for Liv, which is why he has been treated more harshly by the tour than anybody than he really than anyone else. Dennis, before we get out of here, what is your team name in our fantasy football league? Devin Leary fanboys. Devin Leary fanboy.

How are you doing so far through two weeks? Undefeated. Oh, we don't. You and I do not play this week. I'm playing the Pink Panthers, whoever that is. That's our friend Jody from digital.

Oh, OK. I'm playing Jody from digital. She has a much better team than I do.

She is a 15 point favorite. Oh, in the matchup. I have a terrible team decimated by injuries.

I don't know how I'm doing one. It's the stupidity of fantasy football. Yeah, right. I had Jamis Winston going up against Tom Brady and outscored Tom Brady at quarterback. Lamar Jackson's my quarterback, so I'm feeling. Oh, gosh. Oh, you know, I, I wanted Jalen Hurts and didn't get him. Mm. This is the Adam Gold show.