Andy McCullough: I Would Describe Shohei Ohtani As Singular

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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 is another hour of the program and it's great to have you with us. However, you're consuming this audio experience.

844-204-7424 is the phone number. B. W. Weber. Weber with two B's on the X platform. Thanks again to Duke Minneweather for taking us inside the trenches, learning the nuances of what's going on in the offensive line. Nice foundation for NFL conversation that we're going to lean into coming up. We'll start this hour of the program. I understand that not everyone is as enthralled with the NBA as yours truly. So my goal is to offer you a full service radio program coming up in 40 minutes. If I'm talking baseball, I'm doing it concisely. I'm doing it in entertaining fashion. And there's a lot to talk about because, much like the Lakers gravitating towards bright, shiny things with LeBron continuing to be the puppet master, pulling the strings here in Southern California as I come to you from our Regal Studios in Los Angeles, LeBron will have the hammer at his disposal as we go through this again next year. If you don't know the news by now, as I bump into the microphone, always nice. LeBron would not do that.

That's why I am the Bronny James, a fill-in host. LeBron agreeing to what's being billed as a two-year contract. It's really a one-year commitment. And then he's got a player option for next year.

So he's got the ultimate amount of leverage as he's done every step of the way. He got his kid drafted. I just read more details of Bronny's contract. It includes some guaranteed money in the third year, which is virtually unprecedented for a second-round pick.

But we all know the reason why. His son is even on the roster. Again, I go back to the central takeaway that I have, and I'm not losing sleep over conversations of nepotism or privilege. But if the Lakers wanted Bronny, all they had to do was sign him as a free agent. Come into the league like everybody else who's undrafted with no restrictions.

You go wherever you want. Austin Reeves parlayed that into a spot in the starting five for the Lakers. But this was all about LeBron continuing a memorial to himself. And if you can pull it off, I guess, who are we to say that it's wrong? I'm not getting into value judgments.

I'm just saying the optics are terrible. And the Lakers look like fools by telling us that somehow his son earned his spot on the roster. I mentioned the baseball coming up in 40 minutes with Otani and Aaron Judge, both going deep again last night. We will check in with Andy McCullough, senior MLB writer for The Athletic, and he's also written a brand new book on Clayton Kershaw. So we'll talk about the career arc of someone who, for the majority of his time in MLB on the mound in the regular season, had earned a Hall of Fame ticket early on.

But, you know, everything changes for Clayton historically when we get to October. So we'll try to put that in context coming up in 20 minutes. We will try to debunk a narrative that's out there. Have you heard about the death of the NBA?

Duh, duh, duh. Now, it may seem odd that I would throw that out there because you're saying to yourself, hey, radio man, whoever you are, fill in for Rich. I'm Brian Weber, and I'll be back with you tomorrow because Rich believes in you so much. A lot of shows play tape, especially on July 4th. Think about all of the riveting conversations that Rich has on a daily basis on this program. They could bust out best of and play tape, but Rich wants this show to be as dialed in and timely as possible. So we'll be live tomorrow for all three hours.

And we've been fortunate on Memorial Day, typically a slow day. I was really feeling good about walking away from that program, having a chance to reflect on the sad news that we learned during the program that Bill Walton had passed away. So we're going to do it live as a loud man once said again tomorrow. But coming up in 20 minutes, there are talking points out there that something that happened in the NBA this week somehow foreshadows the overall decline of the league, which seems nonsensical just on face value, especially when we're talking about these unbelievable contracts, like, say, Jason Tatum getting three hundred and fourteen million bucks from the Celtics. That is coming up. But I understand this show.

I do my best to be open to where the audience wants to go. So I've talked a ton of NBA this week by design and based on newsworthiness, but I am not that much of a fool, despite some of the logical flaws in my takes. Football drives the train. As Duke reminded us, when we get to July 4th, that means we're less than three weeks away from the start of training camps. In fact, even earlier, if you care about when rookies report.

So if you are jonesing, not Daniel Jones, although I just found the Segway there on the fly, if you are going through football withdrawals, hang in there. Plus, Rich and the fellows back next week. And you know, by now this is the football show of record. Rich, after all, the first hire at NFL Network in 2003 and the face of the network. So as I was flipping around last night and I mentioned this during the program yesterday to give you something to watch, the Hard Knocks franchise, I believe, is over. I wouldn't even say in decline. It's the same freaking show every year.

I don't care who the team is. What are you going to see? The same formulaic and predictable stories. Let's find the rookie trying his best to make the roster and avoid the Turk. And then you know what's going to happen in that last episode. His key car to the facility doesn't work and he's giving the playbook back.

Or the veteran coming back from injury and he's rehabbing and grinding. It's the same show. And maybe I should just realize that is not going to change and stop subjecting myself to it. But I don't want to miss anything. And I'll just take you behind the curtain now.

If you want to get into media and you could have your own podcast in your own basement and probably do a much better job than I'm doing today. I'm not being self-effacing. There is no shortage of information. So I think you can tell if you listen closely. There are hosts who stop watching games circa 1998. They have no idea what they're talking about or they wander into a topic that they just glance at the headline and keep moving. I guess I'm too neurotic or I only know how to do it one way. If I'm going to talk about something, I'm going to watch it.

And when you live alone in a one bedroom apartment, you have plenty of latitude in the schedule. So I forced myself to watch as much as I could take of the new extension of the Hard Knocks franchise, the offseason summation of the New York football Giants. And it was dreadfully boring. Now, the only semi interesting behind the scenes revelation was conversations about why the Giants parted ways with Saquon Barkley. But we knew what the logic was. All that occurred in this program was putting in the focus that he's getting closer to 30. That's the magic number for running backs. In fact, the Giants GM knocked that down to 27. And he's running metrics that say if you hit 27, 28 more often than not, you're going to go into a steep decline as a running back. And they couldn't say the quiet part out loud once they decided to pay Danny Dimes, Danny turnovers. It was going to be extremely difficult from a salary cap perspective to give Saquon what he wanted. So they made the decision, as every NFL team would, quarterback over running back.

But in this instance, that was fool's gold because we knew, at least I did, that Daniel Jones had one good year coming off a last place schedule, coached up by a quarterback whisperer in Brian Deball, who just as a sidebar, if you're feeling a little husky this week and we should all lean out after the hot dogs on the grill tomorrow. Speaking of grills, you know, it is grill season and our friends at Weber have you fully covered because ready set griddle this grilling season. Get the Weber Slate rust resistant griddle with a carbon steel cooktop that's safe for metal tools. It is pre-seasoned and ready to cook on right out of the box. It's the griddle that stays ready, not rusty. This griddle heats evenly edge to edge.

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Get fired up for your new Weber Slate rust resistant griddle. That was another wonderful transition. I just jammed in there. So along the way, Brian Deball's leaned out. That was just a quick observation I noticed because you're seeing footage of the coaching staff during earlier in the off season. Now I've seen pictures of them. It looks like a million bucks. Speaking of many millions of dollars that have been wasted. I said it in real time on every show I fill in for.

Sadly, there is no current edition of the Brian Weber show. The marketplace has spoken and apparently I'm better as a guest host. Daniel Jones was a mirage and the Giants understandably wanted to stay in business with him, but they structured the contract in a ridiculously illogical fashion. They could have had both. Where was Daniel Jones going?

What was the marketplace for him? They could have set it up much more team friendly, pay as you go, year by year with a attractive signing bonus up front to reward him for the one good season. Because remember, his best year, the year they got him paid a couple of years ago in 2022. I looked it up this morning, 15 touchdowns, five interceptions, 3200 yards. And we all knew at least anybody with common sense who watches the games back to that central premise on a Sunday.

You turn on the Red Zone channel and you're there for seven hours. Saquon Barkley is the engine that made that Giants offense go. And that's why the Eagles getting Barkley was such a blockbuster move, especially as they took a step back last year coming off the run to the Super Bowl. So it was all spin. It was, hey, look at the talent surrounding Daniel Jones.

I think the line that resonates with me from last night on that show, before I flipped over to an old episode of the Sopranos, Pine Barrens is always good to watch. You could have had, this is the Giants brass speaking, you could have had Patrick Mahomes out there and the Giants still would have struggled based on the lack of talent surrounding Daniel Jones. OK, you can tell yourself that. So we got Jones now coming off the ACL, coming off a year that was much more representative of his body of work than the outlier, in my opinion, of 2022. And that got me thinking, we know the top of the league. I mentioned Mahomes. If you wanted to do the lazy man radio approach, Mount Rushmore football, call me at 844-204-7424. Has Mahomes already earned a spot on the all time top four list?

Hit me up on Twitter. I'm not going down that road. In fact, I usually find more interesting content on the losing side of the equation. So we know about Daniel Jones in a show me year and the Giants chose not to address the quarterback position in the draft. Although I can't hammer them too hard for that because all the draft, quote unquote, experts that I read and believe in noticed what we saw and they foreshadowed it in their analysis. Once you got past Bo Nix, who ultimately went to Denver at 12 and we had that run in quarterbacks historically, all of the activity inside the top 12.

After that, there was a massive drop off. So if the Giants wanted to be active in finding a replacement or someone to push Jones, they were going to have to trade up and do it in the top 12. But understanding now with Jones and Drew Locke, who has a worse quarterback situation than the Giants? So let's just think about it intuitively and I'll start in Las Vegas and I'm not taking shots at the Raiders. Fact, if you care about my biography and I'm Brian Webber in for rich eyes and eight four four two oh four seven four two four is the phone number conversation never stops on the X platform.

B.W Webber Webber with two B's coming up in 30 minutes. We'll talk baseball, more greatness from Otani and Judge last night when we hook up with Andy McCullough of the athletic years ago when I worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had an affiliation with the Raiders. I stood next to Al Davis in a white satin jumpsuit and talked about growing up on the mean streets of the Bronx, even though I was from the suburbs. But Al, of course, from Brooklyn.

So I was trying to get some street cred. I got no issues with the Raiders. I have a lot of friends who are passionate Raider fans.

But even if you are chugging the silver and black Kool-Aid, tell me what you're doing at quarterback and how did we get to this position? And do not tell me American hero Gardner Minshew is a pro bowler. I understand that is factual, but the Pro Bowl is irrelevant.

It's a skills competition that nobody wants to go to anymore. At the same time, we saw him do Minshew like things in Indy because that's who he is. You put him in as a backup and magic happens in the short term.

We get to a longer sample size and the league understands his limitations. But I love everything about him. I love his swagger.

I love his mustache. He feels like a Raider, right? Think about that combo. You got Max Crosby, who is the very personification of the Raiders. They should turn him into the new logo with a patch on his eye, menacing quarterbacks as he did with Minshew and called him the scared little boy. And you got Gardner potentially being the starter unless you believe it's Aiden O'Connell.

But I just lay that out. QB one is going to be either Gardner Minshew or Aiden O'Connell. This is not exactly Steve Young trying to take Joe Montana's job crossing the bay when the Raiders were in Oakland and they had those wars with the Niners in the preseason.

So that is a troubling situation. I talked about Minshew putting up big numbers in Indy last year. That came because, unfortunately, Anthony Richardson went down. I'm not going to say Richardson can't play.

I just don't know who he is. Remember, he did virtually nothing statistically in limited action in Florida. Then he broke the Internet at the combine because physically he's a unicorn. It's a bad sign, though, he got hurt that early in his rookie year.

So to me, this is the show me year. But if we're talking about question marks under center and who's got the worst situation, most problematic outlook at QB, I got to put Richardson on that list because I just don't know. And we'll learn a lot more when we get to the regular season.

I do know the Patriots have major trouble under center. Now, if you want to be somebody telling me that the Patriot way is going to continue, even as Bill Belichick now is living his best life on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and forgetting his shirt as he's taking the walk of shame and good for Bill, no days off, no days off. You're going to tell me that Jacoby Brissett coming back to New England is a good approach as the bridge quarterback to get them to Drake May. I am not as down on Drake May as a lot of people were because I didn't believe all the spin that made him the pinata. Every draft cycle, somebody gets beat up and that somebody this spring was Drake May. Now, he did himself a disservice counterintuitively by coming back for another year North Carolina.

He should have left two years ago when he was the it man under center. The numbers lagged a bit last year. Plus, and this is strange, but this is how it works in draft analysis. As I learned from my time at NFL Network, you give scouts another year of tape and they're going to find more flaws. And those flaws for May come down to footwork. And especially as we're talking about offensive line play in the last hour with Duke Manyweather, the head honcho of the O-line Mastermind Summit. This league has gotten so much more athletic, so much faster, even we're talking about what's happening in front of May.

Reaction time is accelerated. If you don't have good feet, you have no future. And again, he's an enigma. So if I'm talking about problematic quarterback situations, I got to put the Patriots on the list.

Washington would fall under that heading as well. Although I think Jayden Daniels, when he gets on the field, will be electrifying. And we have more of a resume as opposed to, say, Anthony Richardson, who had that short run at Florida. Daniels, if you tracked his college career, started Arizona State and then became a revelation. And LSU winning the Heisman, I think we'll see him week one because nobody waits to get on the field anymore. If not, it's Marcus Mariota, who is I. Although that's a good situation for Daniels because Marcus is a wonderful human being, by all accounts, and will mentor a young guy, irrespective of if he's there to take his job. Marietta knows the score.

That's why he landed in Washington. And finally, if we're talking about enigmas. We're talking about a question mark in bold, screaming caps at us.

And I guess a question mark is always in caps. If we're talking about a muddled mess, we got to be talking about Cleveland. And remember, Deshaun Watson has boatloads of guaranteed money still coming his way. And wasn't it the most Cleveland thing of all time that 117 year old Joe Flacco coming off the couch guides them to the playoffs while they're paying Watson all that guaranteed money? I have no idea where Watson is at this stage of his career. I hope that he has gotten the help that he clearly from a distance needs. I hope he is staying away from massage situations.

And let's just hope the creepiness is over. Watson had a brilliant start to his NFL career. You know how productive he was at Clemson.

Something went terribly wrong. But unfortunately, if you're a Brown fan, this is just another Cleveland debacle. And I have nothing against giving guaranteed money to players in any sport.

In fact, you could argue that NFL players deserve it more than anybody because of the physical toll playing football takes on their body. But Watson was the wrong guy. And of course, the wrong team was willing to pony up. So as we wrap up our morass, our conundrum, a lot of big words today, quarterback crisis. I should have gone with that. I'm going to work with my writers coming up next to have more clarity.

You got to put Cleveland in the mix as well. I'm Brian Weber looking to clarify things when I can. 844-204-7424 is the phone number. And you can tweet at me, B.W. Weber. It's on the X, Weber with two B's.

In 20 minutes, we talk baseball with Andy McCullough of the athletic straight ahead. I'm going to debunk a conspiracy. Are we really on the brink of an NBA bubble? No, not that bubble.

Well, the Lakers won their title with the asterisk during the pandemic. We're talking about a financial crisis that could be on the horizon. All that and more as we continue on a very busy Wednesday. Always appreciate the opportunity to keep the chair warm for rich.

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Code GameTime today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I'm Brian Weber and 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 click.rainger.com or just stop by 844-204-7424 is the phone number. I read those digits because I am open to talking with you, although in all candor, we've had so much content to process and make sure it's done in an entertaining fashion. Not a lot of opportunities for you to get on the air heading into today, but tomorrow is a holiday and I'm not going to lay it up, not going to buy some stamps and mail it in because we know the post office is closed on July 4th. But it'll be a little bit different approach in addition to all the MBA that we have been sorting through together. We will get to some lighter topics. My point is if you want to be a part of the show, your best bet is to head over to X. B.W. Weber, Weber with two B's or give me a call tomorrow and I'm here Friday as well. But I am not going to decide, hey, it's July 4th. Let me do my version of the hot dog eating contest on the air. That wouldn't work because we're not simulcast on the Roku channel.

And as you get older, you don't want to have more than three or four or you're heading to the emergency room. Coming up in just over 10 minutes, we'll talk some baseball with Andy McCullough. He's a senior MLB writer for the athletic. He's also the author of a new book on Clayton Kershaw, Talking Dodgers and Yankees. And it feels like every day because of the unique brilliance of Shohei Ohtani, there's another nugget that stands out as a testament to his singular talent. Case in point, last night he goes deep again. So he becomes the first player in baseball history as the Dodgers rallied to beat the Diamondbacks to have at least 25 home runs and 50 extra base hits before the All-Star break.

That's a ways to go prior to the Midsummer Classic. He's now done it three times, putting him in unique standing. We will try to come up with some context.

I don't know that there is a comp other than Babe Ruth and get the perspective of Andy coming up. I mentioned I am looking to knock down a fallacy here and we'll get back to the NBA in 30 minutes. Your thoughts on LeBron going nowhere, as we knew was going to be the case, getting every dime he could with a max contract, as most of us presume, and a sweetheart deal for his son.

And no issue from this standpoint. If you're going to placate LeBron and draft his kid, well, you might as well pay him. Now we can talk about the interest of fairness and the notion of nepotism and privilege. Bronny with three years coming his way and three years partially guaranteed.

First two are fully guaranteed, a chunk of the third year. So he got a little bit of a sweetener there. But the real issue comes down to this. Do you have any problem with any athlete having that kind of clout? I don't. I just want more transparency. We'll talk about it coming up in 30 minutes.

But because I do scour a lot of social media and try to remember the source of most of that material, I've seen this narrative. I don't love the word. This talking point narrative is just too inside baseball for those of us who work in the sporting press.

Well, that's a term that's 50 years old. The NBA is facing a economic crisis. The NBA must be in decline. Why else would the Boston Celtics be put up for sale on Monday, just a handful of days after they had a parade celebrating their 18th championship?

And the conspiracy folks will tell you, if you need further evidence, who else has cashed out in recent months? Or Cuban, who is typically the most zealous advocate of the NBA. Remember, he famously said when the NFL was expanding to take over Thursday nights, going from the partial package to the year-round property now, he dusted off that old line about pigs getting fat and hogs getting slaughtered. Well, the NFL is doing just fine other than losing that judgment for now in the Sunday ticket antitrust lawsuit. We'll find out what the judge does.

He can set it aside or how it happens on appeal. But if things don't change, the NFL is on the hook for a $15 billion payment. They can find the money.

And that'll sting, though. $15 billion with a B is real money. Remember the old line, a billion here, a billion there, now we're talking real money. So if Cuban, who loved being the mouthpiece defending the NBA, the face of his franchise cashed out, and the Celtics ownership has said, thank you, we will take our title and we'll walk away, what's going on here? Is the NBA facing economic doom?

Is the bubble about to burst? Well, each situation is individual for Cuban, he got a godfather offer from the widow of Sheldon Adelson, who controls a gambling empire in Las Vegas. That money was so overwhelming, Cuban as a businessman, couldn't bypass the opportunity to cash out. The motivation for the Adelson family is, you guessed it, gambling. While it's not legal yet in Texas, sports gambling is coming. And their next plan is when the new arena comes online for the Mavs, don't you know there's gonna be a sports book on the premises once they finagle their way through the State House in Austin to get the legislation they need to make sports wagering legal in the Lone Star State.

So that's the explanation for Cuban. As for the Celtics, why not cash out at the top of the market? Now you're saying, hang on, shouldn't the NBA be a thriving ongoing concern?

Yes. Once we get the final details of these new national media contracts, NBA on an annual basis is going to double the revenue in that area because they got so many parties involved. NBC is back in, queue up John Tesh and Round Ball Rock. Disney wasn't going anywhere because the NBA is such a huge tent pole when they put it on ABC and ESPN needs the volume. And Amazon is in because Amazon can spin whatever they want and they're trying to make Prime Video more and more of a necessity in addition to having football, in addition to having some boxing. Amazon, with their deep pockets, can buy into any sport they want. If you care about tennis, if you're one of seven people left who follows that niche sport with Wimbledon going on, they can buy that entire sport along with the Saudis and control it.

And unfortunately it looks like Turner is going to be outside looking in. So that is a windfall coming for the NBA. The concern in the near term is what's going on with regional sports networks and I do think that was a factor in the Celtic sale that that ownership group was looking around saying hang on, even with the bigger revenue pie coming for the national media deal, we may take a hit and we're talking about not a life-changing amount of money and again these are billionaires so their lives are different than us but any good business wants to grow and you never want to take a step back and in the short term as all these leagues figure out how to get you and I to pay direct to consumer as the cable bundle continues to fall apart, that is the question. Regional sports networks are not fully dead yet but they're on life support. Now the Yankees will always have their network, the Dodgers will always have their network, I'm talking about the Reds and the Twins and smaller market teams. Celtic should be in their own class but I think the ownership group looked at the landscape and said okay we could take a hit in the next couple years with our local revenue, why have a five-year time horizon to try to get that money back, let's get every nickel we can now cash out at the top of the market. So I'm not trying to be a mouthpiece for the NBA, I am not going to be hanging out with Adam Stern at some conference, I'm just trying to be factual and tell like it is, yeah the NBA is going to have a bumpy road coming up, so is baseball, so is hockey, football's in a different category because it's all national money but do not believe any conspiracy theorist telling you the departure of Cuban and the current ownership group in Boston somehow is reflecting an economic crisis coming for the NBA, it's just a pair of shrewd business groups maximizing their revenue at the right time.

Coming up speaking of dollars and cents, we know the Dodgers have tried to buy their way to the World Series with all the money they've spent with the headliner being Shohei Ohtani and the $700 million deal that he got from the Dodgers but are the Phillies, take a look at where they are in the standings, built to take down mighty LA, looking forward to talking baseball with Andy McCullough, senior MLB writer for the athletic, he's also the author of a new book on Clayton Kershaw. That's coming up as we continue, I'm Brian Weber in for Rich Eisen here on the Rich Eisen Show. Let's talk O'Reilly Auto Parts people, you love their jingle, you're going to love their friendly helpful service even better because they're in the business of keeping your car on the road and the parts knowledge they have, it's all you need for your maintenance and repairs, they've got thousands of parts and accessories in stock either in store or online so you never have to worry if you're in a jam, the team at O'Reilly Auto Parts can test your battery for free in or out of your car, if it needs to be replaced, they'll find you just the right battery for your vehicle, need your windshield wipers replaced, a brake light fixed or quick service, they'll help you there and find the right part or point you to the nearest local repair shop for help, the professional parts people at O'Reilly Auto Parts are your one stop shop for all things auto, do it yourself and you can find what you need in store or online so stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or visit us at OReillyAuto.com slash Eisen, that's OReillyAuto.com slash E-I-S-E-N, O-O-O-Reilly Auto Parts.

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Hey, no problem, thanks for having me. My pleasure and we will spend the second half of this conversation talking about the book, I've read excerpts and it is fascinating but since the Dodgers will be on the agenda, let's start with what's happening currently on the diamond, Otani continues to make history, I mentioned a couple minutes ago, this nugget with his home run last night, he's become the first player to have at least 25 home runs and 50 extra base hits prior to the all-star break in three separate years, Andy, you write for a living so I'll defer to you to come up with the right way of framing what Otani has done and continues to do, are we talking about one of the most singular athletes we've ever seen? I mean, yeah, he's like literally, you know, I mean he's not really pitching this year obviously because he's injured but when he, you know, is capable of pitching, he's doing something that has pretty much never been done in modern sports so yes, I would describe him as singular and right now, at a time when he is just hitting, he's sort of limited to only being the best hitter in the sport so yeah, he's probably the most talented baseball player who's ever lived, I think that feels pretty straightforward almost, you know what I mean?

Yeah, but it does feel to me, and I'm in my 50s and I grew up a baseball fan and understand that a football is king, that perhaps it's generational, perhaps it's a sign of the times, we should be talking more about what he does on a daily basis, I'm not saying that Otani's overlooked somehow, it just feels like the greatness should be celebrated even more from my perspective. Yeah, sure, I mean that makes sense, I think baseball's cultural relevancy has obviously diminished in the past several decades so it's less front of mind than the NFL is during the football season and people get obsessed about basketball free agency and all that sort of stuff, but yes, I mean he's an incredible baseball player and you know, besides that, I guess you can talk about it for sure, he's very good at baseball, there's no question about it. And we know Clayton Kershaw has been very good at baseball, though he's injured now, we'll get to the book in a second. As for matters on the field Andy, I know Philadelphia dealing with some injuries as well have the Dodgers bet with no Mookie bets and other significant stars being slowed down, but when you look at the Phillies right now, no Harper, no Schwarber, if we have a Philadelphia-L.A. matchup in the postseason, and right now the Phillies have a better record than the Dodgers, how would you slot these teams facing each other head to head? I mean I just think so much is going to depend on who is healthy for both teams, you know, the calendar just flipped to July, it's like way too soon to really map it out right now between the trade deadline and just health, I mean I think the Dodgers are waiting on so many different pitchers to come back from the injury list, you know, not just Kershaw but also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, you know, Walker Buehler, you know, the Phillies as you mentioned have several of their best hitters down right now, so I think there's a lot of room for both teams to improve at the deadline and then we'll see kind of how things shake out, you know, the Phillies rotation has been excellent, I mean by far the best in baseball, it's just a question of like alright, will those guys still be this effective, this healthy in several months from now, it's just kind of too soon to say, but it would be a good series if both teams are at full strength, they're clearly the two best teams in the National League. And then we jump over to the American League, and I don't want to be a slave to what has happened recently, but we saw the Orioles match up very well with the Yankees, we saw Baltimore win the division last year, would you make the argument that the Orioles, despite the Yankees having all of the luminaries that jump off the page like Aaron Judge, who homered last night again in Soto, do you think the Orioles are a more complete team?

Well, I mean, clearly, yeah, because outside of those two hitters, the Yankees offense is quite limited, their pitching is tremendous, and that's something that they've done well for years and years over there, but their offense is the clear sort of weakness of the club, and then outside of those two hitters, they sort of lack a legitimate slugging threat, gun-based threat, anything sort of threat, so yeah, you could argue that the Orioles are more complete, it's just you're talking about the two best hitters in the American League in the form of Judge and Soto, and that provides a significant advantage, so it is more of a top-heavy club, but the top is extremely heavy when you have those two players. We are focusing on MLB with Andy McCullough of The Athletic, he's also the author of the recently released new book, The Last of His Kind, Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness, so Andy, let's talk about the book, I was intrigued as to what the meaning of quote unquote the last of his kind was, what does that phrase stand out in terms of significant, and why did you choose to focus on Kershaw? Yeah, I mean, it's a book about just kind of trying to be the definitive account of his time in Los Angeles with the Dodgers, I thought that he had had a career that was sort of worthy of a full-scale biographical exploration, given that from kind of 2013 to 2020, he was the central figure of every October, with the sport sort of wondering if you would be able to get over the hump and win a title, so after the team did that in 2020, it felt like there was kind of an end to that sort of journey that would work in a narrative structure, and so that was what appealed to me about it, and the title The Last of His Kind, I really do believe, and given the way the pitching injuries have shaken out this year, and the way pitchers are continuing to be managed more closely than ever before, I really do think Kershaw is the last sort of player who can claim real part of the lineage of sort of being the number one starter in this sort of way that connects to someone like Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Sandy Koufax, all that sort of stuff, I just think the way the pitchers have been trained and sort of utilized in recent years has obviously changed very much, and Kershaw is kind of a connection to sort of a lost time in some ways, and really probably the last one who will get the chance to have a career like that, if that makes sense.

Thanks for that explanation, because obviously we know teams now go with the opener and all these radical different approaches on the mound. As we think about his remarkable resume, Kershaw, three-time Cy Young Award winner, first pitcher to win the NL MVP since Bob Gibson, but you also alluded to some rather infamous meltdowns in October, so when he goes to the Hall of Fame, how do you think history judges him based on that disparity between regular season and postseason? I mean, he's going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer, you know, if the voters have sense about it, it'll be unanimous pretty clearly. I think it just depends on what your perspective is, you know, I think if you talk to his peers, there's sort of, you know, an insane amount of admiration for the career he's had, for the success he's had, for the way that he has remained so effective throughout his career. I think that his postseason numbers, while they're obviously magnified, given, you know, and that's part of what the book is about, is like, you know, he has a 2.48, I want to say ERA in the regular season, which is the lowest in the live ball era, which basically means he is the best pitcher ever in terms of run prevention, which is the singular job of what a pitcher does, but his postseason era isn't at least 4.49, right, so two runs higher. It's also better than what you would get credit for with era if you got a quality start six innings and three runs, and that's just a different standard that he has judged, he's earned that standard, he doesn't, you know, shy away from it. And I think is his postseason career is, you know, there's, it's, I mean, I wrote a whole book about it, it's hard to sort of, like simplify into a soundbite, but there's a lot of different stuff going on there, and so what's his legacy gonna be?

I think it's going to be, you know, the best pitcher of this generation. And that's why people should buy the book, to have more nuanced reflections than we can do in a couple minutes here. Andy, I greatly appreciate the insights, thanks for taking the time, and congratulations on the book.

Thank you, thanks for having me. Andy McCullough, senior MLB writer of the athletic, check out the book, I have read excerpts available online, you should purchase it, because as Andy laid out, you can't just, well we couldn't sports talk radio, that's our job, after all. Come up with a sweeping generalization, as Andy laid out, Kershaw is going to go down as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, and remember, we're talking about better than a century's worth of achievement in the grand old game, balanced by the inability to duplicate that in the postseason. So we judge people by what they do in high leverage situations, to use the baseball term, by championships. How long did we talk about Peyton Manning not having the kind of success that he would need in the postseason to make him an all-time great? Well, he rectified that by winning a couple Super Bowls for Kershaw.

If you want to push back, remember, the 2020 championship came in the midst of the pandemic, just a 60-game regular season in that funky World Series played in Texas, still somebody had to win, but we're talking about a larger overview of consistent struggles come October time. Now, if we were going to go nerdy or this was a satellite baseball radio show, we could talk about, say, the payoff that Greg Maddux was unable to come up with come postseason time, his playoff numbers radically different than his incredible regular season numbers, although Maddux didn't have that many opportunities in the playoffs. So the beauty of baseball is you can skew the numbers any way you want. They play every day, after all, but I was intrigued as to why he came up with that phrase, the last of his kind, and think about what's happening now across baseball.

Even with the shift being largely abolished, people still can't hit. The ball is just not in play as much. We're not recognizing that because the pitch clock has changed everything with the rapid pace of play, but the dominance of pitchers has continued, and it feels like it's not going to change because now these guys are cranking it up at 103, 104. It's insane, the velo, as you kids say, that's coming off the mound. And baseball will always be a small part of the program when I'm here, however, I realize we have to focus on mass appeals. Coming up, more thoughts on LeBron James taking his talent to nowhere, he's staying in LA, and what a realistic expectation for Jim Harbaugh, year one with the Chargers. I'm Brian Weber, always a delight to be in for Rich here on the Rich Eisen Show. Somehow.

Settle it? Check out seasons one through four of Talkville before season five begins, wherever you listen.