Rich Eisen Show with Brian Webber Filling In Hr 2

Taste some of this. OMG. This is the Rich Eisen Show. No other way to put it. With guest host, Brian Weber.

Oh my gosh. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. I'm not talking to you. I talk to anybody out there. Haters. Rich Eisen. I talk to the haters right now. And now, sitting in for Rich, here's Brian Weber.

It's another hour of the program and a delight to be in for Rich. Talking NBA trade possibilities. The latest from baseball. Just a smidge of football.

And unfortunately, no Joey Chestnut. Details coming up if you want to. You can tweet at me.

I don't respond to all of the tweets, but I do register your thoughts. Coming up in 40 minutes, we'll say hello to our only guest today. Talking baseball. And I know I am running the risk of not being invited back tomorrow. I've been booked.

It's on the calendar. However, if you talk baseball in an uncreative, non-entertaining way, you don't deserve to be on the radio in back-to-back settings. You have my assurances with our conversation with Adam Burke of Vison on the way. We'll get the latest on Mike Trout. Still waiting for any word about the results of the x-rays. And I don't think we're going to get him while we're on the air with two more hours of the program left.

Trout, you might have seen the video, but I realize a lot of you have better things to do than log on on a holiday. Fouled off a pitch last night in San Diego. Quickly left the game.

Was shaking his left arm immediately. Told reporters postgame that it felt different in terms of level of discomfort. But because the game doesn't start until 6.40 Eastern time, folks won't start drifting into the ballpark until a 3 Eastern or so.

So we may not get definitive word, but we'll talk about what the implications could be when we check in with Adam. I'm going to tackle the advancement that baseball finally was open to putting its arms around in the pitch clock and how I think it has transformed everything. That's coming up, namely because I'm not doing three hours of NBA trade scenarios. But I'm not avoiding the NBA.

If you're with us for the first hour of the program, that was our focal point. Coming up in 20 minutes, we'll talk more about Dame Lillard. How many teams might have to be involved to get him to Miami because Portland, as they should be doing, currently balking at what the Heat are offering in their initial package to get Dame to bring his talents to South Beach, led by Tyler Herro. We'll talk about how many other teams might have to get involved. Would it necessarily be directly connected to James Harden forcing himself off another team and winding up with Eclipse, plus with Kevin Durant now forming another big three with Bradley Beal. Clearly the Suns much better, but are they better than the Nuggets? Understanding the Nuggets lost two of their top eight rotational players, Jeff Green and Bruce Brown.

Brown was a key contributor in the postseason. That is all coming up. Occasionally I luck into a good strategic choice and hopefully with all the forward promotion, even on a holiday, even if you don't particularly like my style or my content, I come with a plan.

Work the plan, the plan works for you. I'm not just walking in saying, you know, on July 4th in 1979, I had seven hot dogs. I'm never doing a show about Joey Chestnut. Now I'll acknowledge it.

We'll have some fun to wrap up the program about an hour and a half from now. But I've listened to enough terrible radio to have higher standards and I have a lot of empathy for my colleagues who's decided to mail it in on the 4th of July and their entire show was going to be Joey Chestnut driven. Because unfortunately, while Joey Chestnut to many of you is an American hero, and what says America on the 4th of July more than stuffing as many hot dogs as you can down your gullet?

Well, Chestnut may be a transcendent figure, but he's not bigger than Mother Nature. It is a torrential downpour in New York. Coney Island not only with a massive rainstorm, more significantly, lightning in the area and that's when the local authorities get involved. So the NYPD has stepped in and said, you can't stage this event with a crowd of 30,000 people looking for shelter right now.

So if there's any news, I'll let you know. I'm sure because gambling runs most of sports media now, some of you may have put down a buck or two on the women's competition and the great Miki Sudo defended her championship. 39 and a half hot dogs, remember, have to consume the buns as well. Here's my favorite part. And they snuck this in before the lightning arrived. Initially, it was scored with a tally of 37 hot dogs as I read directly from the wire copy.

But it was revealed she ate so quickly that the judges missed the actual total of 39 and a half hot dogs. And now you know the rest of the story. Have you been to a baseball game this year? And I don't work for Rob Manfred.

And let me prove I'm not just doing, hey, everybody, what a great day to talk sports kind of audio content. Rob Manfred is a fraud in every sense of the word. And coming up in the final hour, I'm going to do what I have planned to be a massive takedown of John Fisher, the billionaire owner of the Oakland A's running that franchise into the ground.

He stole it directly from the original Major League Willie Mays Hayes style. And now we're led to believe that somehow the A's are going to be more relevant when they wind up in Vegas. I'm not convinced. And I know this will seem very contrary to what we've seen with the Raiders and the Vegas Golden Knights and an NBA team. I'm not convinced baseball even works in Vegas because you're going to play 81 home games.

But just to balance things out, I'm not just sitting here saying, hey, let's have some Cracker Jacks. Great day at the ballpark. Manfred has done everything in his power to make baseball challenging to watch because he's so unlikeable. And my major time around MLB was in the Bud Selig era. Actually, it started with Francis Faye Vincent.

Look, I'm old enough. I did a show on Sports Channel Pacific in San Francisco. I'm Brian Weber. And for Rich Eisen, you can be a part of the show.

Don't tell me what you were doing in 1994. 844-204-7424. My Twitter handle is B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's. We're going to take you around the bigs in 30 minutes when we check in with Adam Burke of Vson. NBA talk on the docket coming up in 15 minutes. I did a show when I was the pregame host of, you guessed it, the Oakland A's.

Ding, ding, ding. I might have some passion connected to this topic. And the San Francisco Giants started my career in 1993. I was the Doogie Howser of broadcasting. I looked 13. I sounded 9. But it was cable TV and no one was watching, and I worked cheaply.

And I think people liked the story of a young guy who would hustle. That was also, believe it or not, I was more annoying than I currently am because there was no Google. So before you could look it up on your phone, I was the guy telling you, you know, Napola Joy once hit.407 in a season.

Francis Faye Vincent was still hanging around baseball when I started going to the ballpark on a daily basis. I survived that strike in 1994. Probably should have driven me out of the business. I was halfway on my law school plan.

That was always the backup idea. But I was bailed out because they had already sold the commercials to the games for the San Francisco Giants. We had to put something on. Brought to you by the good people of the California Lottery.

So I did a show called Strike Zone for two months. When I'd come on and say, hi everybody, I'm Brian Weber with the news. There is no news. No talks. Nothing happening.

Goodbye everybody. I never thought I would encounter somebody as unlikeable as Bud Selig. Bud Selig looked the other way during the steroid era. Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame. And I rarely defend the steroid guys because, and this is a nuanced conversation, while when they started to use the juice, it wasn't illegal necessarily if it was prescribed by a doctor, but clearly it broke all of the unwritten rules of baseball, namely, and I realize baseball has been built on cheating, but it destroyed the sanctity of the record book. When Brady Anderson was hitting 50 bombs, we knew something was going on and we all looked the other way. I'm complicit because after the strike, steroids say baseball. But I never thought we would find somebody who just seems even more duplicitous than Bud Selig until Rob Manfred came along, taunting the Oakland A's fans who showed up with that reverse boycott, who absolutely butchered the Astros cheating scandal. What did he call the trophy? A piece of tin?

Oh, and now suddenly he wants a mulligan for that. So I'm not a baseball pollyanna. I don't make a dollar covering baseball anymore. But I'm not of the mindset, and especially during this week, that sports is better when we only talk football.

I love the NBA as much as I love the NFL. And if I have any credentials, and I'm Brian Weber, Infra Rich Eisen, Google me. I'm kind of a big deal. No, if you go to Twitter, you'll find that I have a reasonable following. That's B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's. You can stop the bluster if you want to pick up the phone.

844-204-7424. The reason I'm here, I think, is because I work with Rich at NFL Network. I was part of the original morning show. So I am not trying to be a contrarian. The NFL saved my career in my 40s. But I think it's a better sports landscape when we have a degree of balance. I'm not telling you what to watch.

I'm not telling you what to care about. Still, maybe you're in the same category that I fell into. I was a lapsed fan. And that was primarily driven beyond my Rob Manfred thoughts. And I can divorce myself of that notion.

Two things can be equally true. I can have no respect for a loathsome character like Rob Manfred and still enjoy baseball. I stopped watching the game because of analytics. Because it largely became unwatchable. And I'm not anti-smart guy.

I'm not going to read you my academic resume, but I've squandered a lot of education to bark into this microphone. The problem with analytics and the reason why the pitch clock and the limitations on the shift and the other rule changes have all made sense. The game had fallen into the predictable pattern of all or nothing at all.

Because data-driven decision making said, don't put it on the ground. Remember, kill the bunt, you're wasting it out. Swing for the fences. Even if you fail, probability says you have a better chance at maximizing one of your 27 outs by looking for something that goes towards the warning track. And I don't disagree with the notion, but the game became a tough watch because the ball just was not in play enough nor quickly enough.

Well, what do you know? Pitch clock, at least for now, has solved 90% of that. The game is a good watch again.

It doesn't take 4 hours and 17 minutes to get through a meaningless matchup on a Tuesday in May. And I give the players a lot of credit. And I thought this was going to be more problematic than it's turned out to be. The players made the adjustment. Because some of them had dealt with in the minors, some of them had dealt with it in college ball. But I think they understood the product had become stale and tedious. And I didn't think it would be this seamless. But from virtually day one, and I know there's been some hiccups along the way. But if we're talking body of work, baseball is a much better product than it was just at the end of last year's regular season.

And it doesn't hurt, we're also looking at transcendent talents. I mentioned the Mets in a rant in the first hour of the program. They're getting set to take on the Diamondbacks. Arizona a couple years ago lost more than 100 games. I'm not going to read the entire standings to you.

I presume if you care you can whip out your phone. Excuse me while I whip this out. Arizona's in first place in the NL West. In front of the Dodgers who have a massive payroll, in front of the Padres who have an equally large amount of money devoted to their roster. And they have ascending talents in Arizona like Corbin Carroll who's just 22 years old. And he's playing the kind of virtual baseball we used to see not a million years ago, but not too long ago. With Carroll already piling up more than 20 home runs and 20 steals.

What do you know? It's not illegal to steal bases anymore in MLB. I'm not saying every game has to be like it's managed by Whitey Herzog at Old Busch Stadium in 1984 with Vince Coleman trying to move from first to third on a single array.

I just want some variety. But I also think if you're a baseball fan, you love to see a young player start to develop in front of you because then you build the relationship. If I was lucky enough to go to Darryl Strawberry's first game as a Met, Tom Seaver against Mario Soto on the mound, I'll never forget that. And I'm not comparing Carroll to Straw, who we all thought was going to be the next Ted Williams.

But I hope the point I'm making is coming into focus. What about L.A. Dela Cruz? You probably have heard by now the comp to Mickey Mantle. Now, you never want to have that kind of burden of expectations, but this kid is sensational. Adly Rushman, if you follow college baseball, was a terrific player at Oregon State. I don't think it's a stretch to say he has similar traits as what we saw displayed by Buster Posey on his way to the Hall of Fame coming up. Adly Rushman in the home run derby. The Reds, because of Dela Cruz and the return of Joey Votto, are playing terrific baseball.

There are a lot of good stories out there. Now, some of this is also the old sticking point for MLB. I'm fired up because I want to have other things to watch before we get to NFL training camps. And if I'm lucky enough to be sitting in for Rich on Labor Day, I'm not going to be talking that much baseball because that would be dereliction of duty.

That would be professional malpractice. But it's July 4th. I'm not doing my top 10 quarterbacks across the NFL just because I'm desperate for content. It's a positive development that baseball is offering more things to embrace. And I didn't even talk about Shohei Ohtani because I want to save that for later when we check in with Adam Burke of Vison coming up in 20 minutes. Plus, Ohtani's pitching tonight. And if you've enjoyed today's Dog and Pony show, I'll be back with you tomorrow. Barring something massive happening like Damian Lillard being traded, don't think it's going to happen tonight. My goal is to talk more Ohtani tomorrow coming off his latest start tonight in San Diego.

Here's a preview and you can help me on Twitter. B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's. Undeniably, he is underrated.

There's no question. He should be getting a lot more national attention. Ohtani's doing things, quite literally, we have not seen since Babe Ruth. So what's going on? Why is there not more national buzz?

Some of it is a byproduct that we just don't care about baseball the way we used to. But I got some other thoughts on that, which I will get into in full detail tomorrow. You talk about forward promotion. I'm letting you know what's coming up in 20 minutes. I'm letting you know what's coming up in the final hour of the program. I'm giving you a sense as to how tomorrow's rundown, I'll send it to you offline. B.W. Weber, Weber with two B. Letting you know how that rundown might be compiled.

8442047424 is the phone number. Keep tweeting at me. Coming up, we make the move back to the NBA. More thoughts on how the deal is going to come together.

The guts, the framework of the trade. The anatomy of the transaction that will send Damian Lillard from Portland to Miami, but how many other teams are going to have to get involved. We'll talk some James Harden potentially to the Clippers as well, plus as a veteran of enjoying your company on the 4th of July. Seven years ago today, Kevin Durant's free agent tour was heating up as teams were coming to Kiss's ring at the Hamptons. Well, now he's formed a new big three in Phoenix with Bradley Beal coming to the Valley of the Sun. Where do the Suns rank among the premier teams in all of basketball?

What about Durant's old team, the Golden State Warriors? We'll get into that coming up. I'm Brian Weber. I appreciate you giving me a few minutes on this Independence Day as we continue. It's the Rich Eisen Show. Are you currently enjoying the show on the Stitcher app? Then you need to know Stitcher is going away on August 29th.

Yep, going away as in kaput, gone, dead. Rest in peace, Stitcher. And thanks for 15 years of service to the podcast community. So switch to another podcast app and follow this show there.

Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I'm Brian Weber. I'm sitting at the Rich Eisen Show desk furnished by Grainger with supplies and solutions for every industry.

Grainger has the right product for you. Call clickrainger.com or just stop by. You can be a part of the program 844-204-7424, understanding that you might have more pressing obligations on a holiday. But I do want to make it clear that it doesn't have to be me droning on with takes for days. I am open to making it more interactive.

844-204-7424. But in all candor, your best avenue to have your opinion expressed is Twitter. B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's. We'll keep this more concise. Coming up in 15 minutes, we'll welcome in our only guest today talking baseball with Adam Burke of Vson. We'll get his thoughts on the wrist injury apparently suffered by Mike Trout last night. I don't think I have to use that disclaimer too strongly. He left the game after fouling off a pitch in San Diego and talked about having real pain in his wrist, but no official word on his status as x-rays were taken after the game, also foreshadowing.

Anytime x-rays are involved, they are precautionary, but also suggest something could be seriously amiss. That's on the way. As we get closer to the final hour of the program, much more NBA.

I had mapped out some thoughts on competitive eating. I'm conflicted because we're still in that lightning delay in Coney Island. Now, I've been careful to make sure I'm saying accurately that, according to ESPN, the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest is just in the weather delay.

Not officially canceled yet, but anytime you have lightning in the area, that could take hours to clear. I sat through a lightning delay in all canter, the strangest broadcast day of my life. I had lightning in Tucson, Arizona. Never rains. I was doing a baseball game for Pac-12 Network a month ago. Had not had a rain out in something like five years.

Well, monsoonal conditions. We're supposed to start at 6 o'clock local. Our drop dead time was 10 o'clock. The lightning in the rain stopped around 9.45. I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I'm going to have to call this game. And I was working by myself. And then the weather gods smiled upon me. One more bolt of lightning on the horizon, they called the game. The point of that laborious anecdote is I just sat through a multi-hour lightning delay.

So if you're waiting for Joey Chestnut, you may be waiting until tomorrow, which means I can address the exciting world of competitive eating at that point. I was with you in this very studio that I'm occupying. It wasn't the Granger desk then. We didn't have that kind of wonderful corporate tie-in. But I was working for now defunct NBC Sports Radio seven years ago today.

I was thinking about it because I left and went on a little quick vacation after the show. The focal point of that program was Kevin Durant. And that was a whole different version of free agency. That was like the peak of here's a transcendent talent that everybody wanted and Durant was so cool.

He made them come to him, not only come to him, he was in the Hamptons a la a billionaire, which on paper is going to get close to being because of all of his outside business interests as well, or a founder or disruptor. And I was thinking about how Durant's career has played out in contrast to Damian Lillard because Durant has been proactive. Now also contracts lining up with different timelines and Lillard made the decision that he wanted to remain committed to the Blazers because he believed at some point he'd get more help. Even after they parted ways with his guy CJ McCollum. For Durant, he's played it brilliantly. You can say he was ring chasing with the Warriors.

Who would not join that team? And look, I'm old school and I'm old. I fully understand the antiquated notion that if you can't get past the Warriors, because remember they were taking care of Oklahoma City head-to-head, Klay Thompson with that game for the ages on the road in OKC. It seemed like the easy way out. Well, the world has changed and our classic ideas of rivalries and what's the right way to handle your career, that's all evolved. But here we are now seven years later, Durant going to Brooklyn because he wanted to create his own super team.

Not going to waste our time together going through the morbid details of how that worked out. Then going to Phoenix and we saw even with conventional wisdom telling us that Durant and Booker with just enough Chris Paul basically is two and a half superstars and that's all Paul is at this stage of his career. Maybe a quarter because he keeps falling apart, but there are a lot of hot takes delivered when Durant forced his way out of Brooklyn and wound up in Phoenix that this clearly puts the Suns over the top. Well, CP3 wasn't even available in the playoff series against Denver. There were magnificent superhuman efforts delivered by Durant and Booker in a few of those games against Denver, but it didn't even go to a seventh game because Denver was the better team. Clearly, as we saw on the run to the NBA Finals and they take care of the heat in a gentleman sweep winning in five games. So it was quite obvious that Phoenix needed to upgrade if they were going to have a real chance to win it all.

And then they have a extremely aggressive fanboy, although I have to give him his credit. He played in Michigan State. He was a walk-on, but better than you and I did presumably. Matt Ishpia, if you could even walk on in a Power Five conference, especially with the heritage of Tom Izzo's program, you could play. But you got a guy who loves basketball with deep pockets, who wants to be a new version of Mark Cuban with even more basketball insight. And that's dangerous because he's going to be the de facto GM as well. Unless you believe Isaiah Thomas is running the shot, says CP3 has not even intimated.

He's flat out suggested. Yeah, I guess that Matt and Isaiah got tired of me. Well, you got Bradley Beal now in the Valley of the Sun. And seven years later, Durant still looking to duplicate the success he had with the Warriors. Now, you can make the argument he never should have left Golden State. But when you've won multiple rings, it's the old line from Wall Street, contemporary reference, late 1980s, not even greed is good. You know that one. Gordon Gekko, how many boats can you water ski behind?

How many rings do you need when you have multiple rings? Or is the challenge, can you replicate that success on your own terms? And that was clearly Durant's motivation to go to Brooklyn because he and Kyrie thought they could do it the wrong way. And didn't even need a coach, right? They picked Steve Nash, mostly because I think his name was Steve, like Steve Kerr, and they figured, all right, Nash is a good dude.

We're going to run the show and we know just how miserably that experiment failed. So now you have Durant lined up with Booker and Bradley Beal. Where do we slot Phoenix in the West?

And certainly they've upgraded. And I do think that the coaching move to Frank Vogel will pay major dividends. Most importantly, he's going to jumpstart DeAndre Ayton's career. And I realize that Ayton is a bit of a throwback because he's a traditional post player. In modern basketball parlance, a rim protector. He's not going out there to knock down threes like Jokic or Embiid or everybody else now because it's the NBA era filled with unicorns.

But it just didn't work between Ayton and Monty Williams. And Vogel has coached up big men, including Anthony Davis, primarily because he was healthy in the bubble and Roy Hibbert back to the success they had together in Indy. I think there's a ton of reasons to believe that Phoenix is going to be much better, but I don't think they're the best team, even in the West, because I realize the Nuggets lost Bruce Brown, who was terrific in the postseason, and Jeff Green. So that's two pieces of their eight-man rotation.

But if I'm just looking at tandems, tell me, and we can have the conversation on Twitter, B.W. Weber, Weber with two Bs, who's better than Jokic and Murray? Because even if you decide, Jokic is virtually unstoppable now.

We're going to focus our defensive efforts on Murray. That was obviously Miami's game plan in the finals, and we know how things evolve there. So yes, Phoenix vastly improved. I put them in the top four, but I don't think that the Beal trade necessarily buys them anything. You can't buy a championship in the NBA. As for the Warriors, I will keep this concise, and I will tie the Warriors to the Oakland A's coming up in the final hour of the program.

They are, I think, being a bit myopic, also believing that they're still light years ahead of everybody, just by going with that core group that I think we saw, to a large degree, was exposed last year. Now, I have to be fair in my analysis, Steph Curry wasn't healthy, but don't you think he's going to break down more physically moving forward, especially with his body type? Draymond Green is smart enough to know he only really will work with the Warriors, given his skill set. Plus, and I say this with a degree of respect, who else wants to bring on Draymond Green to have him yell at dudes?

And yell is being kind, because he flat out punched Jordan Poole in the face, as we all saw with the video. Poole was never the same, especially in the postseason. Completely disappeared, but Draymond won, because Poole lost his confidence, and maybe shouldn't have gotten that contract extension, which felt like a make good. Hey Jordan, you got your face cratered. A week later, here's 128 million in the extension, but Joe Lacob's of the mindset that just because it's worked in the past, it's going to continue to work with Steph, and with Klay, and Draymond, and the CP3 thing makes no sense to me, other than he can provide some decent minutes before he gets hurt, but that was just the cost of doing business.

They were so dead set on getting rid of Jordan Poole, primarily to make Draymond Green happy, they had to take Chris Paul back in return. We'll talk more Warriors coming up, final hour of the program, we'll tip off hour number 3, talkin' NBA in less than 25 minutes, straight ahead, the latest on Mike Trout's wrist injury suffered last night as we talk baseball, plus, who is the bigger disappointment, the Mets or the Padres, based on what they achieved head to head against each other a year ago. Looking forward to taking you across the bigs with Adam Burke of Vison, I'm Bryan Weber in for Rich Eisen on this July 4th edition of the Rich Eisen Show.

I'm Bryan Weber in for Rich Eisen, as we continue live on the 4th of July, 844-204-7424 is the phone number, you can reach me on Twitter, it's B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's, just feels right to talk baseball on the 4th of July, pleased to be joined by Adam Burke of Vison. Adam, I appreciate you taking the time, how are you today?

I'm good, thanks for having me Bryan. My pleasure, so when you looked at the video as we saw it last night or caught up this morning of Mike Trout fouling off the pitch last night in San Diego and immediately reacting like something was wrong, left the game, x-rays are pending, he told reporters postgame that he felt a level of discomfort he has not felt in a long time. We don't know the results of the x-rays, so I want to be responsible in our conversation, but just watching how things played out last night, how serious did it look to you? Yeah, I mean it's hard to believe that Trout's not just going to miss a couple of days with this, it certainly looks like an I-L stint will happen and hopefully the minimum 15 days will be kind of the best case scenario for him, but a lot of thoughts go through your mind, right? Yeah, the Angels team, they've had two of the best players in baseball the last few seasons and they still haven't been able to do a whole lot with it, and now you see Trout go down, you think about everything that Otani is already doing, and you also start thinking about the fact that the trade deadline is less than a month away. And the Angels have a very difficult decision to make because it appears that Shoah Otani has no interest in staying in Anaheim, so if Trout is out for an extended period of time, then does that shift their focus and their philosophy of what they do with Otani? It's tough, I mean their pitching has kind of been better than I expected it to be, but you need that compliment to Otani with Trout in the lineup, but if they're not going to have that, that's a massive concern obviously going forward. That took me exactly to where I wanted to go, so if we're talking potential trade destinations for Otani, it's the usual suspects, right? The Yankees, Red Sox, I'll let you take us where we need to go, but who would be in the market for Otani as a rental prior to free agency in the offseason?

Yeah, I mean that's the difficult part, right? You'd be giving up a large chunk of your minor league system to get this guy, and obviously in a two-month stretch, he could be remarkably beneficial for you, and obviously he's a two-way player in the playoffs too. At the same time, do you want to give up that much when, if you're a team like the Dodgers for example, you know you still have a pretty good chance to sign him this offseason, or a team like the Yankees, somebody like that. Do you really want to trade away your farm system for two months this year when you're going to have to pay him $500 plus million in free agency if you want to get him after the season?

So that's a difficult thing. I don't think that there's going to be that robust of a trade market for him. I mean, maybe in Atlanta, just simply because they just draft and develop so well that they're very confident in their ability to keep guys around. But yeah, I don't think the market is all that big for him. So it's a really difficult spot for the Angels to be in, I think, where they may ultimately lose him and get nothing out of it and not even get a playoff appearance.

I'm chuckling because we were just having a conversation off the air. Atlanta, the best record in all of baseball. Eight Braves going to the All-Star Game, and you throw a tie into the mix, it would feel like the Yankees with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig all over again as I'm dating myself.

I'm not that old. Talking baseball with Adam Berkevisen. So with the Angels getting set to take on San Diego, Adam, as we think about the biggest underachievers in all of baseball, Padres right behind the Mets coming off San Diego's terrific play in the postseason last year. Even with the win last night, still seven games under.500. We know the pitching's been strong. Team isn't hitting.

Do you have any confidence that the pods are going to come alive as we move deeper into the summer? Yeah, you know, look, I mean, from a talent standpoint, this is a top three roster in the National League for sure. And they've really underperformed in two key areas that kind of define a season. The first is they've been really, really bad in one run games.

They don't win close games. You look at too much Miami, for example, they've already won 20 games by one run. They're 20 and 5 in one run games, and they're on pace to be a playoff team despite not really having that great of a roster. San Diego is 5 and 15 in one run games. They're seven games under with a positive run differential because they've won in blowout fashion a bit, but they don't perform well in games that are decided by one or two runs. The second thing for the Padres is they've been dead last in the league and batting average with runners in scoring position throughout the course of the season. That's something that should improve given the talent level on the roster. I do think there's hope for San Diego going forward here. Joe Musgrove and really good of late.

Blake Snell has been awesome of late. I think that team still has a ton of talent. If they can just kind of get some positive vibes rolling, win some close games, get some big hits, that's a very dangerous team to watch in the second half. Adam, let's jump over to the Yankees. We're still all waiting for clarity on the return of Aaron Judge. I think he was wise when he refused to come up with any definitive timeline because why add even more pressure when you play in New York? Do you think the Yanks are going to continue to tread water until Judge comes back to the lineup?

It all depends. What do you get from Carlos Ordon who's going to come off the injured list on Friday? What do you get from Nestor Cortez when he hopefully comes back maybe sometime in August? The pitching really has to carry this team right now because offensively they're just not very good without Aaron Judge. They were the worst offense in baseball in the month of June.

As you mentioned, they were kind of treading water. They've kind of found ways to battle and win some games here and there, but it seems like the prognosis for Judge is maybe late August at the earliest. So that's a difficult thing for the Yankees and they're also in kind of a weird spot because they don't really have a ton of trade ammunition that I think they would want to move. They've got some top 100 prospects, some guys that have already played at the big league level like Peraza, like Cabrera.

They've got Jason Rodriguez, who's a really, really good prospect down in the minors, or Jason Dominguez, excuse me. But I don't think they want to part with any of those guys. So, you know, is this a team that makes a big push? I'm curious to see, but I mean, if they make a push plus get Judge back in late August, early September, then all of a sudden they're dangerous again. So they're kind of in a weird spot where I think that they're going to be, you know, a playoff team and maybe a team that nobody wants to face.

But the next few weeks are very, very important for them to see how Judge progresses and also decide what they want to do from a trade standpoint. Let's wrap it up in Cincinnati. And if you'd asked me three months ago if I was going to pose a question to you about the Reds, I would have said no way.

But obviously sensational lately when they had the 12-game winning streak, all the understandable buzz surrounding Elie De La Cruz. Do you think it's sustainable? Are we going to be talking about Cincinnati when we get to September?

I think it is sustainable. I mean, first of all, the division is pathetic. So that's a big thing that helps Cincinnati, you know, going forward here. You know, there are some people at Beeson that have Cincinnati 40 to 1, 30 to 1 to win the Central Division right around the time that Elie De La Cruz was called up.

So those people are sitting pretty right now. Look, I mean, they've infused a ton of young talent into this roster. They still don't have Christian Encarnacion strand up who actually had better numbers at AAA at the time that Elie De La Cruz was called up. So that's another bat that's going to be coming up for them soon. The biggest thing for them is they need to get Hunter Green healthy and they need to get Nick Lodolo back. And Lodolo had a setback in his recovery, may take a little bit longer for him. But Hunter Green is a guy that really changes the dynamic of this rotation.

Andrew Abbott's been good. They've kind of figured out ways to cobble it together, but they need greenback. They need Lodolo back. I think they need another bullpen arm.

But this is another example of an organization that has drafted and developed so well. They can be aggressive at the trade deadline if they want to. And I think they may ride the momentum of being in a weak division.

I mean, they're getting fans at the games now. I think this will be a playoff team. I'm not sure that they make a big run when they get there, but I think they do ultimately win that Central Division.

Got about a minute left since you mentioned the sports wagering component, and that's the focus of Beeson. How much separation is there now in terms of the odds between Atlanta and everybody else to win the World Series? Yeah, it all depends on where you look around, where you shop around for the odds. But I mean, Atlanta is down under 4 to 1 to win the World Series.

A lot of places, plus 350, plus 375 in that range. The Rays are about 5 to 1. The Dodgers still hanging around in that 550, 6 to 1 range. So there's a little bit of separation, but I think that that separation will continue to grow because Atlanta doesn't have a challenger. I mean, they're going to be the winner of that division. They're going to get one of those buys and bypass the wildcard. They may even get better at the trade deadline because they're such a well-run organization.

Right now, they look like the clear-cut best team in baseball, and I don't think that changes throughout the remainder of the regular season. Adam, you came highly recommended. I enjoyed our first conversation. Enjoy the rest of the 4th of July and hope we can do it again in the future here on the Rich Eisen Show. Sounds good. Anytime.

Let's do it. Adam Burke of Vson. And what I liked about Adam's analysis, and obviously you could tell he is knee-deep in baseball all the time, didn't frame everything in terms of gambling. And I'm not anti-gambling.

I want to be employed moving forward. I'll be transparent with you. I went through a fallow patch in my career, and one of the ways I was able to bounce back was hosting fantasy football shows. If you were with us yesterday, that's why I laughed when Jason Cole, author of Elway, A Relentless Life, longtime football journalist, asked me if I was posing a fantasy football question when I asked him about realistic expectations for Odell Beckham Jr. this year, after he missed all of last year with the torn ACL, now having the ability to catch passes from Lamar Jackson. I do not frame my content in terms of fantasy. Fantasy, fantasy alert. But I realize a lot of you still play fantasy sports, and I realize that gambling has increased the accessibility to what we do for a lot of casual fans. So, long as you bet responsibly, long as you're not throwing away your kid's college fund or needing to get another mortgage on your house, I got no problems with gambling. And if I'm going to be up front with you, because I like to work and how the industry is evolving, if you hear me not too long from today on another platform, taking you inside the sportsbook with B-web, I'm all for it, I think the gambling perspective is interesting when you get a general summation of the expectation of the betting public. And Adam put it out there nicely because, yeah, I was chuckling, the Braves with eight All-Stars, and you can't quibble.

They deserve that number going to Seattle next week. Now, I realize the All-Star game doesn't have the same luster as it used to, and players will always put their health first, as they should, but 20 years ago Clayton Kershaw might have tried to grind through the physical ailment that's going to keep him from pitching in the Midsummer Classic. But the Braves, all you have to do is think about where they're at right now. Nine-game lead over the much-approved Marlins in the division, they're winning at a 679 clip, and they've won nine consecutive games, and Adam threw out the possibility, I thought it was coherent analysis, if you're talking about who has the assets to make a play for Otani, in a rental picking him up before the trade deadline, who is deeper than the Atlanta Braves? Final hour coming up, you can join in, 844-204-7424, hit me up on Twitter, B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's, we will tip things off, getting back to the NBA.

How many teams are going to have to get involved for a little or two Miami trade? Details coming up, hope you're enjoying this Independence Day as we continue here on the Rich Eisen Show. with what everybody thought was this huge star, CM Punk. I said he was going to be the biggest financial flop in wrestling history, and I think I'm being proven right every minute of the day. We'll be right back.