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Joe Sheehan: Ohtani On His Way To Being The Best Hitter In The League

The Rich Eisen Show / Rich Eisen
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July 1, 2024 7:43 pm

Joe Sheehan: Ohtani On His Way To Being The Best Hitter In The League

The Rich Eisen Show / Rich Eisen

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July 1, 2024 7:43 pm

7/1/24 - Hour 2

Guest Host Brian Webber talks about how no league is more player friendly, and player controlled than the NBA but if you don’t have a GM who is competent you don’t have a chance.

The billions of dollars generated by professional wrestling tells Brian Webber there is certainly room for the WNBA to grow.

Joe Sheehan of The Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter. RE: Ohtani NL MVP. The more guys keep getting hurt, he just keeps rising.  

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I'm living my best life. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Rich Eisen Show. Here's the other surprising part. With guest host Brian Weber.

Yeah, big shoes to fill. Eisen's a legend. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. The Rich Eisen Show. Do you know who I am? I'm a guy on television. I have my own show. And now, sitting in for Rich, here's Brian Weber.

It's another hour of the program, and it's great to have you with us coast to coast. 844-204-7424. The number to call. You can continue to chip away on social media.

Hit me up on the X. B. W. Weber. Weber with two B's.

Spent the vast majority, understandably so, of our number one in the program. Talking NBA. We have some second apron, second tier breaking news to pass along. We'll get there coming up in a minute.

Forty minutes from now, we'll say hello to our first guest. Talking baseball with Aaron Judge. Continuing to hit the cover off the ball, going deep. And Otani doing Otani-like things for the Dodgers. Looking forward to checking in with the always insightful Joe Sheehan of JoeSheehan.com. If you love well-written baseball coverage, I would encourage you to check out the Joe Sheehan baseball newsletter. And then, final out of the program, in addition to all the NBA analysis that I am cobbling together in real time. We'll say hello at 240 Eastern to Mike Vorkanov of The Athletic. Coming up in 20 minutes, it is the silly season for players not involved in free agency. I mentioned I am an enormous fan of Jalen Brunson.

Although, speaking of nepotism, you do recall it can work in the inverse as well. He got his old man an assistant coaching job with the Knicks, but if you're not going to help out your family, who are you going to be willing to help out? Brunson made an appearance in a very strange setting on Friday night. Details coming up. I am a women's basketball fan and announcer. So I'm talking just a little bit of Kaitlyn Clark as well in just over 20 minutes. Almost made more WNBA history yesterday. Even if you're not a big fan of women's basketball, you have to appreciate her impact as a star.

She has star power and the numbers back it up. Played yesterday in Phoenix and the game was billed as a generational battle. So Clark now taking the torch at some point when legends like Donna Taurasi walk away.

Although, Taurasi didn't seem that thrilled that the game was branded Clark v. Taurasi. The Phoenix Mercury had their biggest crowd show up yesterday in Arizona in 18 years. And that's all because of the magnitude of Kaitlyn Clark. Mention the news item that came across the sports wire as I take it back to 1998.

The old Twitter machine confirming what we had heard was in the works. And I'm just consuming way too much NBA content over the last 48 hours. So I don't mean to minimize the importance of it, but this is not a huge surprise. It speaks to how well run the Celtics are and they're going to run it back as they should coming off that championship run. Derek White, who quietly played a key role as a contributor, got rewarded four years, 125 million.

If you don't know his journey to an NBA title. Derek White was a D2 player at the beginning of his college career. I saw him play at Colorado, a former member of now the essentially deceased Pac-12. That all has become official over the last 48 hours.

So forgive me if I'm sounding downtrodden on a holiday week, but I'm still going through the stages of grief. When I worked for Pac-12 Networks for 11 years, I got a lot of mileage being self-important saying I am the only broadcaster who's an alumnus of two schools and now I'm an alumnus of a school getting set to join the ACC. That makes a lot of sense, especially that they're situated in the San Francisco Bay Area and a Big Ten school here in LA.

The whole world is upside down. But Derek White has earned everything he has gotten in the NBA. And if you paid any attention in the NBA Finals, he played critical minutes.

He could wind up on Team USA in the Olympics, although all sides point to Kawhi for now being healthy enough to play for Steve Kerr's super team. White stays with the Celtics. It was a foregone conclusion.

Now it's official. And it just reaffirms that Brad Stevens is a masterful GM and as much hype that the move of Paul George to the Sixers deserves. Nothing has changed at the top of both the Eastern Conference and across the NBA. Hate to go Warriors here with the metaphor, but Boston was light years ahead of everybody. Now you can push back and it's fair to offer context to the analysis that injuries were part of what went right for the Celtics on their way to the championship. They did go 16 and 3 after all.

So let's not talk about, well, yada, yada, yada scenarios. But yeah, I was paying attention. I realized that Miami didn't have Jimmy Butler and Boston lost Game 2 at home to the Heat. And I realized that Spider Donovan Mitchell wasn't there at the end of the second round series and Cleveland won Game 2 on the road at Boston.

I remember that I saw Tyrese Halliburton go down, although I just saw him in a wrestling ring with Jalen Brunson. There's your tease coming up in 15 minutes. But it was still a sweep, even though Indiana arguably should have won three of those games. And you get to the finals. Boston just played the comprehensive basketball that we saw for the majority of the season. And got that huge lift from poor Zingis, who unfortunately, like Kawhi Leonard and Joel Embiid, just cannot stay healthy.

But his return in Game 1 was magnificent, and you know how things played out beyond that. So with the conversation we've already had about Paul George and his meaning to the Sixers, and if you're a Sixers fan, there's a lot to like about this deal, primarily because it confirms that management matters. And I realize it's a players league. No league is more player-friendly and player-controlled than the NBA. But if you don't have a GM who is competent, you don't have a chance, because it's not just who's your number one option. You need talent surrounding, said Alpha, Joel Embiid. And looking back, James Harden has a few skills. He's a volume shooter. He can gain weight at will, apparently, when he wants to force his way off a team, and I should be taking no shots at anybody.

I am working all week, so I enjoyed myself over the weekend, and will be grinding it out in the gym. I'm Brian Weber, giving you too much information. Infrared shots at 844-204-7424.

You can head over to X. B. W. Weber. Weber with two B's is the handle. In a half hour, we talk baseball with Joe Sheehan of joshiehan.com and the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter. But looking back, if you're a Sixers fan, the best thing that has happened to you over the last 14 months was James Harden going to China and saying in a loud and clear voice, Daryl Morey is a liar. Because that said everything that led to Paul George signing with the Sixers in the wee small hours of the morning today in motion. And I would ask you straight up, having seen the Sixers with James Harden, and you got to factor in Doc Rivers as head coach, based on what you saw from that version of the team versus, I think, a much better coach, certainly an upgrade in terms of tactical knowledge in Nick Nurse. And now Paul George through his body of work. Do you feel more confident with George coming over, also aligned with the emergence of Tyrese Maxey, who got better than $200 million today? You feel better about this collection of talent backing up Joe Embiid or you want to go to the old school and say, yeah, we should have beaten Boston because and then you fill in the blank for all the things that didn't happen. I would rather have Paul George than James Harden.

That's really just what the question is, because Paul George, at the age of 34, chasing a ring, remember, he's never played in the NBA finals. I think he understands his role. I think he knows who he is.

I don't want to get existential. But this way, he knew what was important to him. And whether it was ego or he just wanted out of L.A., perhaps it was just straight negotiating when the other side makes it clear we're not moving beyond three years. And that wasn't just economics.

I think it was about uniform business logic. Remember that extension with Kawhi Leonard was a bit odd. It came out of nowhere. Everything leaks in the NBA.

You get the breadcrumbs. Well, this was a bolt from the blue and Kawhi took a three year deal. But once you had that precedent, if you are a soundly run business and even if you have the overwhelming spending ability of Steve Ballmer, how can you justify giving Paul George a fourth year when you didn't give it to Kawhi Leonard? And maybe that's on Kawhi. Maybe he just said, hey, I've made a ton of money.

I'm cool here. Kawhi Leonard could do virtually anything he wants to. I know people close to the Clippers and they have given him that level of autonomy. He practices when he wants to.

I'm not saying he is divisive. They just know Kawhi is his own dude. And when he's physically available, he's still a top 12 player in the league.

Problem is, you just can't count on him, as we saw again in the playoffs, getting hurt at the wrong time. And the Clippers knocked out round one by Dallas. In fact, while you had the run to the conference finals in 2021, this has been an absolute debacle in high leverage situations.

I looked it up this morning after I saw the George move. Clippers won three playoff series in the five years they had Paul George and Kawhi Leonard as running mates. And that's just not acceptable when you're spending the kind of dough that Steve Ballmer has been willing to pay.

And I'll give you another thing that probably doesn't come to mind. And I'm not stadium guy, but because I am situated here in Los Angeles, Clippers are getting set to move to a glittering new arena. They won't be tenants anymore. And the third most important one at what we use call Staples now crypto dot com arena in downtown L.A., the Clippers are going to have their own building. Ballmer has more money than the gross domestic product of Nicaragua. So he's going all in with all the amenities. You probably heard his fascination with toilets and more toilets per capita than any other arena in the NBA.

Well, that's the draw. The Clippers have just basically bought themselves the runway of at least a year or two of the novelty of, well, let's go check out this new building. And you still have James Harden for all of his failings. The man is a robust shooter.

He can knock it down. They will put some other pieces together because with Paul George gone, they have a lot more cap space. I'm surprised we're not hearing more about Klay Thompson to the Clippers and maybe that's going on behind the scenes. But as I said, just as a veteran of work in the NBA free agent cycle that always coincides with July 4th, it was occurring to me driving in.

And it also reflects in my estimation, I'm not trying to bash this stuff because I love it and this is where I want to be this week. I could have turned down the assignment, but it's not exactly, say, the same magnitude of 2016 when you had the Warriors descending upon the Hamptons, convincing successfully Kevin Durant to come to the Bay Area. And what is going on with Durant?

Very confusing from a distance to try to discern. Does Phoenix have any plan whatsoever? Frank Vogel had to go, I guess, because somebody had to pay the price for being swept by Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs. You had all the buzz last week that Houston was all in with their massive cap space on KD. And now the way-two meddling owner, Matt Ishpia, very wealthy guy who you probably know was a walk-on for Tom Izzo at Michigan State, was forced to go to social media and say, nothing to see here.

Well, things leak for a reason. And it feels like the Suns had a moment of clarity along the way, going, Bradley Beal made sense on paper, but that's not a big three that's going anywhere. And in fairness, though, injuries were a huge factor. Look and see how few occasions, especially during the regular season, you had all three of Durant's, Beal and Booker available at the same time. But this is not a banner, blow you away kind of year in NBA free agency, but it's still highly meaningful because of Paul George's decision. But just to amplify, Boston locking up Derek White to the four-year deal. You know that Tatum and Brown are both in their mid-20s. Al Horford might say goodbye and good for Al. Everyone says one of the best dudes to ever play the game.

He finally got his ring. But that is a well-constructed team that has depth and they have complementary superstars who, whatever the relationship may be, feed off of each other. And you could argue that if Brown had a different kind of ego, Jalen would have said, I'm out of here because I want to go to another team to be the man. So even with the splashiest transaction that could have happened, because Paul George was the marquee name on the market, did not last long.

When I went to bed last night, I did not think I'd be getting up in the middle of the night to have a glass of water, as my grandfather used to say, and I saw the Woge news and sat up for the next couple of hours thinking about the implications. Paul George elevates the Sixers to being the second best team in the East, still major separation between Boston and Philly. Knicks right there. And for all of the, it sounds like, shots I'm taking at Jalen Brunson, I'm not.

I'm a great admirer of his hard work and commitment to improving. The Knicks for once, after decades of dysfunction, are doing the right things from a team building standpoint. And forget about the fascination with all the Villanova guys, but there is, I think, significance there because they all like each other.

And that's why the pickup of Mikhail Bridges last week was all the more significant because he fits in from a standpoint of chemistry and cohesion. You got the Knicks now, better, but still way behind the Celtics and behind Philadelphia in my estimation. Milwaukee, we don't talk about them because they've given us nothing to discuss in meaningful games in recent years, primarily because Giannis has been unable to stay healthy, but they still have a top three player and Dame is a magnificent talent. So the George move, not only elevating Philadelphia, but changing the perception that the East is a collection of cupcakes once you get beyond Boston. And as for the Clippers, I really don't know what the plan is unless there's some 12 dimensional chess being put together behind the scenes by Lawrence Frank, their GM. To me, it just felt like they got tired of being in business with Paul George and they were only willing to go so far with the three year deal, that fourth year, not only the financial rewards, but from a psychological point of affirmation, clearly critical to George. And I think the Clippers looked around and said, we have maxed out what this core group of players can do again, flaming out in the first round of the postseason. Let's part ways with George, get a few more complimentary pieces and then load up for the next round of free agency, because I have a good feeling I'm going to be in this very chair in or around July 4th next year talking about the summer of somebody else.

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Last minute tickets, lowest price guarantee. Coming up in 20 minutes, as mentioned, we talked baseball with Joe Sheehan of Joe Sheehan's baseball newsletter. Coming up, we're going to take you inside the squared circle, what were a couple of NBA hoopers doing in the world of professional wrestling on Friday night?

And could this become even more than it's already developing into the summer of Kaitlin Clark? I'm Brian Weber, always having a good time with you whenever I'm fortunate enough to be in for Rich and the guys. This is The Rich Eisen Show. This Rich Eisen Show podcast is sponsored by Progressive Insurance, whether you're driving, cooking or doing laundry. Progressive knows the podcast you listen to go best when they're bundled with another activity, much like how their progressive home and auto policies go best when they're bundled. Having these two policies together makes taking care of your insurance easier and could help you save too. Customers who save by switching their home and car insurance to progressive save over $775 on average. That's a whole lot of savings and protection for your favorite podcast listening activities like going on a road trip, cooking dinner and even hitting the home gym. Yep, your home and your car are even easier to protect when you bundle your insurance together.

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With supplies and solutions for every industry, Grainger has the right product for you. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. In 15 minutes, we talk some baseball with Joe Sheehan of JoeSheehan.com, Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter. If you follow the grand old game, you've read his work for outstanding platforms like Sports Illustrated. You can pick up the telephone. I read the number for a reason.

844-204-7424. Appreciate the feedback on Twitter. That's B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's. Pardon me, X. I don't get a check from Elon, but I'm trying to be brand specific. It is now the X platform.

You can be a part of the program by using your thumbs the way they were designed to be utilized. I mentioned the move by the Celtics, keeping the core intact and a real nice validation for Derek White, who grinded it out as a D2 player at the start of his college career. Four years, 125 million bucks, key role player on the Celtics championship run. Well, perhaps writing that check was the inducement for Celtic ownership to put the team on the market. More breaking news across the NBA, and this is intriguing. Adrian Wojnarowski, another Woj bomb, but typically we don't talk about franchises being involved with the dollars and cents. Within the last 15 minutes, Woj reporting that the Celtics have decided to make the franchise available for sale. That's the ownership group led by the Grossbeck family. They paid $360 million in 2002, last valuation $4.7 billion, and that was prior to the championship.

So apparently they feel like it's the top of the market, and shrewd business people know when to walk away. Is this franchise going to be worth any more in say five or ten years? I guess the only consideration would be hang on until expansion comes, because it's clear the NBA is going to Vegas and most likely Seattle.

All the existing owners chop up the expansion fees, divide that money, plus it's about to start raining even more cash with the media deals that you've been hearing so much about that look like are going to exclude Turner Sports, meaning what's going to happen to inside the NBA, and is Charles Barkley going to have to take his entrepreneurial spirit and do the show on his own on YouTube as he is intimated he might be willing to do or winds up as the most coveted free agent in sports media history. Should be clear, beyond stumbling into the big words on occasion, that I consume a lot of sports media. It's my job after all, but it was the catalyst for me wanting to get involved in this industry a long time ago. Some people do it because they want to be near sports or they're failed athletes or coaches. For me, I was more fascinated by broadcasting itself, and sports was my favorite thing, so put them together and I'm extraordinarily lucky to still be doing this as a professional now for a better part of 35 years.

I will self-report though, if I'm thinking about the most impactful influences on my goal to be a broadcaster, I always mention the great Bob Costas. They'll never be someone as eloquent and thoughtful as Bob, however you may view him, and the great mean Gene Okerlund of the glory days of the WWF. I was an enormous wrestling fan back when we still believed it was real. I'm not going to kill this show by talking wrestling other than I was flipping around on Friday night.

Probably should come through your device that don't have that great deal of a social life, and what do you know, WWE SmackDown featured a run-in from Jalen Brunson. It was fitting because it was at the world's most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, and he brought out a chair and waved it menacingly in the direction of Tyrese Halliburton, who was magically feeling better, and I'm not in any way saying he was not hurt. If Tyrese could have got on the floor during the Eastern Conference Finals, we might have seen the Pacers in the NBA Finals, and remember Tyrese dealt with that lingering hamstring injury all the way back to December, still forced himself to play over 65 games to be eligible for the individual awards like all NBA team selection, but it did get me thinking, is this the best we can do now in terms of star power, and I realize it's a different world, but I go back to the hour in which Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone had a wrestling angle in the NBA Finals.

You can't tell me, looking back, and I'm going to get away from the squared circle in 30 seconds, but I was just having flashbacks to the early 2000s. Malone and The Worm started wrangling with each other in the NBA Finals and then magically showed up TNT to promote a wrestling pay-per-view that they also got a major payday to be a part of, so just felt like, and I know the world has changed and no one will be allowed to actually get in the ring and participate, and look, it's choreographed, but you could still pop an Achilles running around the ring. I just got a chuckle out of seeing Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Halliburton in the midst of MSG. Nothing physical happened, but it did remind me of a different time and space in the sports world where major names got involved with wrestling. When football didn't pay anything millions of years ago, a lot of NFL players wound up as professional wrestlers in the off-season when they weren't selling tires or working at a brewery, but thinking about that, and you'd be amazed at the ratings generated by professional wrestling, hey, the WWE for all of for all of the moral failings allegedly of Vince McMahon was a publicly held company on their own and now they've merged with the parent company that owns the UFC.

The billions of dollars generated by professional wrestling tells me there is certainly room for the WNBA to grow. I'm not telling you what to watch. I realize that it sounds a lot like when I'm wrestling with the microphone as I'm currently doing that I can be sermonizing.

I get it. My style is not for everybody. That's why I'm a filling host, not a daily host on a national platform, but if you just appreciate greatness, how about we frame it that way?

One of the reasons I wanted to be in the broadcasting business in the area of sports was to have a front seat to excellence. Most of life is fairly monotonous. What'd you have for breakfast today before you went to work if you're working this week?

Probably the same thing you had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Michael. We fall into ruts. Sports elevates us because these stars do things we can't do and undeniably Kaitlin Clark is a star transforming the interest of casual fans into a sport that has been largely overlooked professionally. Now I mentioned the Olympics are coming up. Women's basketball for United States has been even more dominant than the men.

We obliterate the competition around the world. In fact, there are so many talented women's players that they don't make it to the WNBA because the league is still small, mostly because of financial reasons, and they wind up playing internationally. So to see what Kaitlin Clark continues to do, if you don't know what I'm talking about yesterday, in front of a packed house in the Valley of the Sun, biggest crowd for the Phoenix Mercury since 1997, she messed around and almost had the first triple-double by a rookie in WNBA history. 15 points, 9 rebounds, doesn't assist. I watched the game. She is, in my mind now, accepting the realities that the transition to the pros, even for a star of her caliber, is going to be challenging, and she's letting the game come to her more, as backed up by having a dozen assists.

Still hit a three from the logo. Still has a magical impact in front of thousands of adoring fans, and it was an interesting generational tilt with Clark on one side and Diana Taurasi, who started UConn, of course, on the other side. So I'm not telling you what to watch.

I am not trying to be an advocate for anything. I don't get paid by the WNBA, but as someone who appreciates greatness and with fewer things going on this week, unless you want to watch the United States hanging on for dear life against Uruguay and Copa America, I'm not killing you, I'm not talking about that today. If they lose tonight, I'll bury them tomorrow, but be open-minded.

If you just appreciate excellence, how can you not fully embrace what Kaitlyn Clark is doing, even on a terrible team from Indiana? I'm Brian Weber, in for Rich Eisen. Coming up, we'll talk baseball. If I am focusing on MLB, we're going to do it in concise and entertaining fashion, and we'll get insights from somebody who really knows what he's talking about.

With Aaron Judge going deep again with 31 home runs now for the big fella and all the hype surrounding the Yankees, are the Orioles the most complete team in the American League? Looking forward to checking in with Joe Sheehan of JoeSheehan.com. That is coming up. I'm Brian Weber, in for Rich Eisen, here on the Rich Eisen Show.

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Shopify.com slash Westwood One. Brian Weber back with you, Monday edition of the Rich Eyes and Joe coming up. An hour from now, we'll wrap it up with Gusto talking more hoops with Mike Vorkanov of The Athletic. If I'm talking baseball, I'm always looking for someone insightful, and it's always a pleasure to check in with Joe Sheehan. Be sure to review his outstanding work at JoeSheehan.com.

I would encourage you to subscribe or be open to the possibility of checking out the Joe Sheehan Baseball newsletter. Joe, how are you? And since I follow you on Twitter, I want to give you major props for the Gay to Least tweet during the presidential debate on Thursday. Joe, President Biden has a cold. I think maybe 15 people actually got it. I appreciate you being one of them. Joe, the literary crowd has to hang in there these days. These are trying times, and I chuckled aloud when I was going through my keyboard.

So let me come up with a lame segue. Nothing cold about Shohei Ohtani, and maybe it's that I'm here in Southern California, or I just appreciate greatness, but I am running out of superlatives, and I won't do the, hey your wordsmith come up with better adjectives than me. But for the sake of a national program, where would you slot Ohtani in the National League MVP conversation?

The more guys keep getting hurt, he just keeps rising. If you look at the history of DHs, DHs generally can't produce enough value to be the most valuable player. The best seasons have been about worth seven wins, Edgar Martinez, Frank Thomas, David Ortiz. Don Baylor won an MVP in 1979, but he played the outfield for a lot of that year. Ohtani, of course, won't play any innings in the field this year.

But the competition, Mookie Betts led the war. He, of course, is going to miss a month. Bryce Harper now on the IL, missing time. Trey Turner missed a month.

Pretty much all of the other players who on a race basis would have been MVP candidates are kind of falling by the wayside. So you're left with Ohtani, who's on his way to being by far the best hitter in the league and perhaps simulating enough value. Number two, he's not a slug.

He's 16-0. He wants a 16 for 18, stealing bases. A bit of an error-prone base runner outside of that.

He can get caught on that. He makes a lot of base running outs. But this is as good as you could hope for from a guy who's not playing any in the field at all.

Brian, I got to tell you, we should have seen this coming. He had always had a when pitching, when not pitching split. He was a much better hitter as a DH than as a pitcher. So you're seeing what happens now when you just take that burden away from him.

And that gets me where I wanted to go. We discussed this on Memorial Day, given just how incredible these stats are. And thank you for giving me more context. Could the Dodgers have a conversation with him and say, look at what you're doing. You're transcendent at the plate. We've seen in the past. We understand that being a pitcher is part of your identity, but we would really love you consider the possibility for the good of the team becoming a one-way player.

You're welcome to have that conversation with him. But as you say, so much of Otani's identity has been tied up and being a two-way player. He was a two-way player in Japan. He signed with the Angels in part because they committed to letting him continue that. And even though the first three years didn't go well, he didn't pitch very much. He had Tommy John surgery. He stuck with it and of course had the three-year stretch where he was something like we've never seen before. I can see a scenario where eventually he isn't going to be a two-way player.

You go forward, maybe he gets into his thirties and the physical burden starts to be too much. But I think he's going through rehab right now. I think he's going to go into 2025, expecting to pitch.

And we're going to see how this goes for the next couple of years. I do think eventually he moves to the outfield. And one of the things, Brian, he's an incredible athlete. If you turned him into a right fielder right now, you basically have Larry Walker. That kind of bat and that kind of thing, of course, with a true right fielder's arm.

But yeah, I think when he gets to 33, 34, maybe he gets to that point. It's hard to treat him as a reliever. A lot of people have said, why don't you make him a closer because of the warming up factor. What do you do if Otani's do up fourth in the bottom of the eighth and you want him to pitch the top of the ninth?

That's a really hard thing to manage around. So I do think that he will eventually just be a hitter, but he's going to get to go through this cycle again of being a starter because that's who he is and that's who he wants to be. Talking baseball with Joe Sheehan, providing the kind of insights you will get if you check out the Joe Sheehan baseball newsletter.

Head over to joeshan.com. One more thought on the Dodgers. So you mentioned no Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto also injured, but the Padres haven't made up any ground in the Northwest. Joe, does that tell you more about the incredible depth of L.A. or the flaws of San Diego?

The flaws of San Diego. Remember, they've had some pitching injuries themselves, so it's not like they're fighting a fair fight here. Xander Bogaerts also has been out. So even with the Arias trade really bolstering their offense, you're still talking about a team that's an 85-win team maybe, whereas the Dodgers came into the season looking like a 100-win team. And yes, they've had injuries.

That's only going to drop them down to 93, 94 wins. You have to have a year like the Braves, losing Acuna and Strider, to lose 10 to 15 games due to injury. So the Dodgers have fallen back to the pack a little bit, but we're still seeing them play this season the way we expected to, which is 162-game spring training setting up October. We saw recently that Baltimore is not intimidated, matching up head to head against the Yankees. Of course, the Orioles won the division last year. Despite all the star power in the Bronx, Joe, if you stack the Oriole roster next to the Yankee roster, could you call it comparable in terms of overall level of talent?

I don't think so. I think the Orioles have considerably more talent. You focus on the top of that Yankee roster with Derek Cole and Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, and that's an incredible top of the roster.

But the Yankees fall off significantly once you get past that. They've gotten good work out of Mark Stroman this year. Clay Holmes has been good at the back of the bullpen. Alex Radugo has been up and down, but the Orioles, 1 through 26, are a much stronger team, even with the pitching injuries that they've had.

Everybody got a good look at them this weekend. They played the Fox game on Saturday and the ESPN game on Sunday, and you could see the team, the offensive depth that they have, and that's without considering the players that are currently in the minors for them, like Kobe Mayo and Connor Norby, Samuel Vasallo, Enrique Bradford Jr. This is an incredibly deep organization as well, so if they're tied today, Brian, and if I had to pick one of these teams to be better the rest of the way, I would go with the Orioles. I'm buying your analysis because you're in it every day. I'm Brian Weber, in for Rich Eisen. We're rounding the bases with Joe Sheehan.

Check out his excellent work at joeshian.com, and be open to subscribing. It's great value to the Joe Sheehan Baseball newsletter. Mets roaring back to be within a game of.500. We know in baseball weird things happen, so I guess I could come up with some grimace force analysis here, but I'll put that aside. What do you think has led to this resurgence for the Mets, and how does this change their outlook heading into the trade deadline after all the speculation they'd be selling?

Now they're going to be buyers, right? Well, it's definitely grimace, right? Like, if you're the Blue Jays and you're struggling, don't you go out and see what the Hamburglar is up to right now? Mayor McCheese has not went in on this joke? Come on. Like, shouldn't the Padres, you know, remember Ray Kroc started McDonald's?

Should they have an in on all these guys? I have a feeling you've written this on the Joe Sheehan Baseball newsletter. It's not all ad-libbing, is it? It is all ad-libbing, actually. I'm just riffing here.

Yeah, it's a Monday. You take what you get. No, the point about the Mets, though, is that they got, I don't say healthy, but they got their younger players into the lineup. You know, after shuffling through some guys, Mark Vientos kind of took over the third base job. Brett Beatty got sent down and opened up the door for Vientos to be fantastic. More importantly, Francisco Alvarez, who heard his thumb back in April, he backed through the lineup on June 11th, and since then, last I checked, Brian, I think they were 11 and 3 when he starts a game since coming back, and he's a tremendous bat behind the plate, strong arm, still working on the rest of his catching stuff, but this is the Mets basically finally getting their best team on the field, and at that, you know, they're still missing Koda Isenga, and now Sterling Martez on the DA, on the IL as well, so this is a team that could get better. You know, in that National League, Brian, you're talking about, can you just get to 83 or 84 wins?

So the Mets are clearly going to be in this race all year. Joe, as always a pleasure, thank you for the detailed breakdown of most of McDonald's family. The Big Mac character always confused me, because he just seemed like he was better than everybody, or maybe on the take, I don't know, even as a kid there was something that was off-putting. To all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun.

Yes, I am Gen X. Yeah, you have to drop the mic and walk off. Joe, I appreciate all the insights, and we'll chat down the road. Take care, Brian. Joe Sheehan, and the kids have no idea what he just rattled off.

A famous commercial for the Big Mac. I could give you, I'm not going to quote the lyrics because we get fired, we're on terrestrial radio, but DJ Rob Bass, I want to rock right now, there's a light in there about the Whopper and the Big Mac as we take it back to 1982, and yes, I know it's all about grimace, but baseball is better from a national standpoint when the Mets are at least relevant, and the fact that they have grinded their way back within a game of 500, I know that that division is a foregone conclusion, even with significant injuries. If you're not tracking the Phillies, and we already talked about, as Joe mentioned in passing, the devastating news to Atlanta, Ronald Cunha Jr., the reigning National League MVP, dumb for the year with a torn ACL, but remember, the last time he had that kind of important critical setback physically, the Braves won the World Series. Phillies now have to move ahead in the short term without Bryce Harper, as Joe mentioned, and Kyle Schwerber. Still, with 55 wins, it is Philadelphia who has the best record in all of baseball, and as we get closer now to all-star game and home run derby, it's a magnificent opportunity for baseball to take center stage. The problem is the audience is never wrong, and if I opened up this program, I couldn't do it today with all the NBA moves.

We'll get back to the NBA coming up in less than 10 minutes to wrap up the show, but if I choose other than July 4th, I get a little bit of a holiday rules protocol from Mr. Eisen. If I opened the program talking baseball, I would not be allowed to come back for hour number two because it is not a national sport on a daily basis anymore. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, even with the misery of the Cubs and the White Sox, I get it, but from a national standpoint, I mentioned to Ohtani or asked Joe to give me a good construct to sum up the greatness of Ohtani, and he laid it out. Why is Shohei Ohtani not a bigger star? Because we just don't care about baseball the way we used to, and forget about the two-way unique status. If there was a quote-unquote Ohtani of football, could you imagine the level of national recognition he would have? And I realize he's the biggest figure in sports and entertainment in Japan, but the days of our passion for baseball are gone, and they're never coming back. So I choose to approach MLB selectively. Joe's always great and very quick on the references. We're about the same age, so forgive me for being more self-indulgent than normal.

Anytime I can go down the grimest path, I got to shine there. And yes, to all be patties, the rest of the song. When we actually knew commercials, kids, you want to know why? Because they were on TV and there was nothing else to watch.

It's the old line from Seinfeld. Well, why would anybody want to watch this stuff? It's on TV. We didn't have 5,000 channels. We didn't have a supercomputer in our head. We didn't have access to every movie, every TV show of all time. We had to sit there and watch baseball and be miserable. Now I'm depressing myself, kicking off a long holiday weekend.

I'm Brian Weber, Infra Rich Eisen. The baseball portion of the program is done. Strong take there. But the Orioles have a much more complete roster than the Yankees.

I was blinded by my passion for the pinstripes years ago. 844-204-7424, the number to call. During the breaks, I scan the X account, make sure I'm not missing any breaking news.

So you can hit me up there. BW Weber, Weber with two Bs. We will have one more guest before we sign off, but we have a lot more to attend to coming up in the final 60 minutes, including that conversation with Mike Vorkanov of The Athletic. Straight ahead, back to the Paul George signing in Philadelphia. I've already laid out what that means for the balance of power, not only in the East, but across the entire NBA. Where do the Clippers go from here? And do the Lakers have a realistic shot at landing Klay Thompson?

If so, what would that mean? That is all on the agenda. Final hour on the way. I'm Brian Weber in for Rich Eisen. This is The Rich Eisen Show.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-07-01 20:53:06 / 2024-07-01 21:12:26 / 19

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