Vrabel Scandal and Media Coverage

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That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this tablewood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Car vana. Pickup Fees May Apply . Welcome into Off the Pike. I'm Brian Barrett recording late night after the Bruins. Avoid elimination. Gutsy performance for the Bruins. We cannot say the same thing about the Celtics. Just an ugly, ugly loss for the Celts at the Garden with a chance to close out the Philadelphia 76ers. Now they have to go play game six in Philadelphia. Julian McWilliams from CBS Sports joined us earlier today, had a great story behind the curtain on everything that happened with Alex Corra in the firing. So you'll hear that coming up in just a little bit, but I want to start with the Celtics here. We'll start with the negative, then we'll get to the positive. That was horrendous. Just a brutal loss after you blew out the seventy sixers in Philadelphia, and for the majority of the first half, especially the second quarter, it felt like the Celtics were gonna win that game. And this really reminds me of 2023 when you just made things too hard for yourselves, where it just felt like just something is missing with this team, where you needed six to beat Atlanta in the first round. You needed seven to beat Philadelphia, of course, in the second round. And then you lost to the Heat in seven games and you came all the way back from down three-nothing. Tatum turns his ankle. But everything was hard in this po in that postseason few. In this postseason, I thought after what transpired on Sunday night, because it felt like, and I said after game three of the series, when the Celtics took that two-to-one series lead, I thought this series had been too difficult. I thought game three was too difficult for the Celtics. Then they blow them out in game four, and you felt like okay, order is restored. The Celtics will win this game on Tuesday night and they'll get ready for the New York Knicks in the next round. The New York Knicks did win, by the way. But unfortunately, that's not how things played out for the Celtics. And now you have a real series on your hand because we have so many things that we've talked about throughout this series that have sort of been aggravating on the Celtic side of things, and most of them flared up again in this particular game tonight. And look, you got demolished in the second half. It was 28 to 11 in the fourth quarter. You scored 11 points in the fourth quarter. And I don't know if you have the same feeling as me, but it's like this helplessness. When you can just see it happening, how many games like this? And look, I know they won the championship t in 2024, I know they made it to the finals in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three they made it to the conference finals, I get it. We sound spoiled when we talk about the Celtics team. But how many times have we seen this loss for the Celtics where it looks like they're gonna dominate the game and then all of a sudden they lose? I would argue that we saw this earlier in the series where you thought they were gonna be Philadelphia in game two. Against the Knicks, it happened twice in games one and game two last year. We've seen it so many times where you felt like you're gonna win this game, and you just know what's gonna happen. The offense is gonna get predictable, it's gonna slow down, you're gonna go to isolation basketball, and we're gonna see some really ugly numbers in the second half of the game. And that's exactly what happened. And to me, this was just utterly embarrassing how they lost this game. And I don't want to hear about the bad shooting in this one as it pertains to like the three-point shooting and the three-point shooting luck. Because I felt like in some sense that was appropriate in game two, even though I thought the shot selection could have been better for this team, but Billy in this game got up more threes than you. Okay, prior to this game, you outscored Philadelphia by 87 points at the three-point line. They got up more threes than you, and we'll get into why because, part of it is because your center can't stay on the court. But this is not about, hey, you just had bad shooting luck. No, Philadelphia got up more threes than you in this game. You got up the same amount of free throws, and they got up more threes than you. They beat you at your own game. And what stuck out to me is some of these issues, like let's just go through of them that you've had throughout the series. Let's start with this one. Because I really feel like if this isn't number one, the number one issue for the Celtics, it's 1A. And unfortunately, you know him the president of the Derrick White fan club. But he played 36 minutes and he had six points. He was two of eight from the field. He's 0 of 4 from deep. 97-94. You're down three points. Critical juncture in the g ame. Derek White misses a wide open three from the corner. And I don't know if you're like me. I didn't think it was going in. I didn't think it had a shot at going in because he doesn't have any confidence right now. And then if that does go in , that's a game changer. The building gets jumping, and you're feeling good about yourself, especially if you're Derek White. 100 to 94, he throws the ball away looking for Jalen, and Jalen has to go get it in the backcourt. I don't why Jalen didn't up quicker to get over half court. I mean I guess you give them credit for holding him up, but I don't know what he was doing after he missed that three. They came down and score a scored rather. And then it's basically a near turnover because Jalen has to fight for it on the other end of the court, and then 104-9 ninety4 fo.ur Maybe this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. You lose the game anyway. 10494, he misses another good look for three. So now if you look at Derek White in the series, he's now seven of thirty-three from D . That's twenty-one point two percent. He had six points in 36 minutes. You look at the series, he has three games in single digits, including this one tonight. His series high is 11. 11 points are the most points he scored in the series. 11 points. And look through his postseason resume recently. Look at last year, Knicks. He averaged 20.2 points per game, shot 40% from three. Orlando averaged 17.2 per game. Now, shooting was not great, 35% from deep, but it's not 21.2%. Dallas finals. He averaged about 14 points per game. Not a huge number, but he shot 39.5% from deep. He had three games where he made four threes in the NBA finals. Indy, 33.3% from deep, but he did hit four in game in the final game, game four, and he averaged 16.8 per game. Cleveland, 14 points per game, 39 % from deep. Miami, 22.4 points per game, 47.7% from deep. He has been a great, great, great playoff player for you in, terms of he's one of the best role players in the league, great in his role. And right now he's just not reliable. And I know Missoula finally put Pritchard into the game there late in the fourth quarter because I really think the reason for it is because Hauser knocked down a couple of threes, so they wanted to keep Hauser out there. But at some point, you gotta start thinking about at that point when Hauser's knocking him down, and I know how much White means to the team defensively, but it's not exactly like he's shutting down Maxie or anything along those lines at this particular point, you got to go with your best offensive players because the issue, and yeah, they had some real issues defensively that I'm gonna get into, but they had major issues in this game offensively as well, especially in the second half, and that's where you want to see more Peyton Pritchard. And right now, Derek White's confidence is just broken. And look, it's a tough call for Missoula because if you think about it, okay, well, if you do move on, knock on wood, which appears to be a real question now, if you do move on, and I still think they're gonna win the series, but clearly it's gonna be difficult for this team. So if you do advance, you're gonna need him for the next round. So do you lose his confidence even more ? But I would also argue at the same time, you gotta get there first. And if I'm Philadelphia, I'm starting to play mind games with him. And we saw he got a couple of good opportunities. And some of those are Phillies loading up on other guys, the Jalen's, the Tatums, etc. But I'm and I mentioned this the other night with Termini . I let him shoot a couple of open ones, get in his head right now. So if I'm Missoula, if it's going the way that it's been going throughout this series, and it's close, Peyton Pritchard's gotta play more minutes than Derek White, or at least as many minutes as Derek White. All right, let's get to another big problem. So that's number one: the guy that it has been one of your most reliable postseason players in terms of just everything he brings to the table, has just not been reliable. He's in his own head. He can't shoot right now. And this is not just like hey it's happened for five games he had the worst field goal percentage in the entire NBA this season so this has been going on for the majority of the season okay let's get Tak eda because Buse vich has no chance against Embiid. Zero chance. And what happened is when Kata gets himself in foul trouble, that's really when Embiid gets going in this game. Because if you look at it, Keita only played 26 minutes because he can't stop following. He had eight and fourteen. Now it's just getting to the point where it's inexcusable because the game starts out and he's really helping you. I tweeted it out at one point during the game, the Celtics had played six minutes and Keda had not committed a foul yet. It was like a minor miracle based on the way that sort of things have gone down in this series. And he starts out really helping you early in the game, gets a nice little push shot from Derek White on a feed, gets a Peyton Pritchard lob. Now he's unable to finish it, but he gets an offensive rebound. And then you start to think about it, the fouls start to come. Okay. 45-4 1 . This is driving me nuts. He follows Andre Drummond after Andre Drummond gets the rebound and he tries to do like the Derek White thing, where Derek White sometimes when he doesn't get the offensive rebound, he'll go behind the guy and he'll try to tap it out of his hands. Okay, this is a guy that is north of seven feet tall, and Andre Drummond is extremely strong. And he's holding the ball tight. He's at his own basket. What is the upside? The only thing I could possibly think about is they had Hacka Drummond on, but the next possession they didn't follow Drummond. So clearly they didn't have Hackadrumman on. That's the one thing I would have given them like the benefit of the doubt on. But at this point, I don't even want to do Hack of Drummond with Kata on the floor because Kate's too important to the team. But this is now the third game in a row that Keda has committed a foul after the player on the defensive end got a rebound and Kata has no chance of getting the ball. This is three consecutive games that he's given up a foul in that type of situation. Okay. So later on he gets an and one dunk from Jalen. Did miss the free throw. But again, he picks up that foul there. He picks up the second foul. Fifty-seven of fifty-eight . Into the third quarter , uh, you get that tough, or excuse me, this is at the end of the second half. He got that tough, like, they kind of call it like a hold. It was kind of like he was holding in bead, but you are holding him. Like, it's the way the way they allow these guys to play physical times, I get it, but he is holding the jersey. Okay. So then the fourth foul happens with 10 minutes left in the third quarter. And it's just on an Ubre drive where he tries to finish at the basket, and Kata does come down on him. Just stay up straight there. You don't commit the foul. You're significantly bigger than Ubre. And you gotta know I have three fouls at this point in time. I'm way too important to the team to commit my fourth foul of the game with 10 minutes left in the third quarter. And Philly scored 35 points in the third quarter, and he sat most of the third quarter. So you start to think about it, and you say, okay, well, one of the big questions coming into the season was the front court. I admittedly, and I've said this multiple occasions, I was wrong. I thought the Celtics could have the worst center rotation in the NBA. And then Keda was outstanding. So this is kind of a compliment to him that we're criticizing this so much because they need him. They desperately need ed Keda . He has become a very reliable center until the playoffs come around and he just can't stop following. He's had multiple games in this series where he's played less minutes than Vucevic. That's not the plan. Clearly. Like the plan isn't even to play Garza. And Garza's playing in some of these games because you have so much foul trouble as it pertains to Kata. He had five fouls in 26 minutes. Game four, he had four and seventeen. Game three, four and thirteen. Game two, three and twenty-eight, game one, five and fifteen. He is now tied for the most fouls in the playoffs. It is embarrassing. Okay . And you know, as a big, you're now playing in Bede. And this was happening even before in Bede, but now you're playing in Bede. You have to at least be on the court. And you have to acknowledge, like going into a game against a bead, you're playing a huge individual, you're gonna at least commit two fouls. Just like a given because of like the call-the call I said where he was grabbing him, but that's a foul that you're gonna get every once in a while. It's not an egregious foul, but they're gonna call that foul sometimes. So you gotta go into it knowing, okay, I'm gonna at least get two fouls just for guarding Embiid. So don't commit the stupid ones like the one on Andre Drummond. On Kelly Ubre, you gotta be better in that particular situation. But somebody needs to get on him. And look, this is the main reason that Embiid had 33 points in the game. And I would argue this is the main reason that Philadelphia got going when you look at guys like Grimes hitting threes because when you have Vucevic on the floor or Garza on the floor, you have to help more. And Embiid was able to dice up the defense because of this. He got so comfortable being guarded by Vusevich. Vusevich should never be covering Embiid in a playoff series, but he has to because of what's going on with Keda. You rather have Vusevich out of the court when Embiid's getting his breaks, but you can't do that. Missoula doesn't have that luxury because Ke ita is not disciplined right now. Okay, and if you look at it in that third quarter, what he played two minutes and three seconds. Vucevic played seven twenty-two, Garza played two thirty-five, and bead in the third was four of six. He got to the line twice. He had 10 points. He completely took over the game. In the second quarter, Embiid had 13 points in 10 minutes and 28 seconds. Cada played 441. He committed three fouls in the second quarter. After going foulless in the first quarter.ember Rem where you were for that first quarter that he didn't a foul. It's a rarity these days in the postseason. So in the first quarter, remember, Keda m his minutes were matched exactly with Embiid's. They both played 9-0-1. Embiid was one of six. Keda played nine oh one. He had eight boards and four points. He won the matchup of the first quarter. But then he's responsible for letting Indeed get cooking because he can't stay discipline, right? So, and you think about some of the things here, it's just the other guys get going, like Grimes getting off and hitting all these threes because you're committing extra defenders to Joel and Bede. So that's a huge thing in this series. And even going forward, if you're able to win game six or win game seven, how worried are you about Keda going into a Knicks series? I wanted to feel good about him going into the next round, and I don't know how any Celtics fan right now feels good about Keda because he just has not been particularly disciplined in this series, and some of these fouls, they're just so avoidable. They're so bad. Now, let me get to Missoula. This is a critique that I have for Missoula in this game. So, Pritchard, I would say he was your second best player in game four, he completely changed the game . I can't say he was the best because in that game Tatum scored 30 and he had 28 assist points. So he was responsible for 58 points. But Pritchard's the guy that changed the game by the way, he was able to score in the first half of the game into the third quarter. Pritchard was tremendous. They had no answer for Pritchard whatsoever. So in the first half of this game, he was the only player that was a double digit plus minus. He was plus sixteen in fifteen minutes. He scored nine points. He had six assists on four of six shooting. Now the final line, he did only go one of five from deep. But the point being is once again, he came into the game and he changed things for your team . And this is the guy that they can't handle right now with Embiid on the floor. Because, and it's really smart of the Celtics, when Pritchard's on the court, they are going after Embiid. Like he's catching the ball some of these times on the run, and he's just going right by Embiid, who they're setting a screen on Embiid. They are hunting Embiid when Pritchard's on the court. And look at what he was doing early on, gets a mid-ranger to go. Where now he's got Drummond on a switch, gets him in traffic. Off screen, right by Embiid, gets an and one, makes it 26 to 21. He moves Embiid. He goes right at Embiid, goes through him to score at the basket, gets an and one. Again, Embiid struggles with him on the court because he really has to move his feet and dealing with some sort of an injury tonight. Got hit in the knee, but he's also coming off an appendectomy. The conditioning's not there. That was a way to take advantage of him. He drove, gets in B to help, and he throws it back to Garza for a push shot. And then he just sprints to Walsh gets the ball. Layup pass Brimes makes it uh Grimes rather makes it 32 to 25. So a lot of this stuff was targeting Joel Embiid, making him move when Pritchard was on the court. So you go to halftime, you have a 57-50 lead. He's a plus 16. And he was the main reason from my perspective in this game that you had that lead in the first half. Pritchard again changed the game. So to start the second half, Philadelphia goes on a 15 to 6 run to start the half. Pritchard doesn't come in until 635 is left in the third quarter. And here's the thing: at one point , you had a lineup out there with Jordan Walsh, Sam Hauser, Nikola Vusevich, Tatum, and Jalen Brown. Two guys can dribble in that unit. Two of them can dribble. One of them's a non-shooter in Jordan Walsh. So you're already giving up things on the defensive end, you're giving up something because you don't have Kata on the court because Kata has now got himself into foul trouble. So Vucevic is out there. So now Enbiad has a massive advantage. I'm not saying that Kata 's a stopper of Enbiad, but he outplayed him in the first quarter and he can at least hold up. You can at least say just guard him one-on-one. You can't do that with Vusovic, right? And maybe you should because he's just spraying it out to open shooters at points during this third quarter into the fourth quarter. But you already have a disadvantage on the other side of the court defensively. At least give yourself an advantage offensively. Get a third ball handler out there. Once Keda goes out, you have to get Pritchard on the court because okay, you're not gonna have any hope stopping and being on one end of the court. That means you have to make them work on the other side of the court, and the guy that makes him work ironically is the most is the smallest player in the series. Just play Pritchard, especially if Kate is not playing, you have to play Pritcher there. So that to me was just dropping the ball for Missoula. And then let's get to Tatum and Jalen because fourth quarter, you have an opportunity to win the game. Your two best players got to do it. And I took no Tatum's just coming back from an Achilles injury, but we just told you he was responsible for 58 points in the last game. He'd been tremendous up until this point in the series. Tatum took two shots, he's owe of two. He missed two free throws. That was basically when the game was over, any Anyway.way, and I know he just got back, but he did throw a three off the side of the backboard. Jalen took six shots in the fourth quarter. He missed all six of them. And you lose that quarter twenty-eight to eleven . I will say this. I don't love them playing both of those guys basically for the majority of the third quarter. Tatum played 12 minutes, Jalen played 1058. Shireman didn't play a single minute in the third quarter. Like, if you have Pritchard out there with one of Tatum or Jalen, you can put Shireman out there. Like Shireman can give you some minutes, and for some reason Missoula has just decided that he's not going to play Shireman much in the series, despite the fact that he played, what, eight minutes tonight in this game? He did hit a three. And you look at a guy like Jordan Walsh and he made some hustle plays. I'm not denying that. Like the loose ball play that he got against Embiid, he did miss one of the two free throws. Like that was a great hustle play. But it's not exactly like he's this dominant defensive player. He's had some great moments, right? But it's not like he's not this big in terms of he's changing everything at the rim. Yeah, he does a pretty nice job on maxi, but when you're struggling offensively, I think you gotta lean into Shireman a little bit more. So that's another thing I would look at. Like if you're gonna play, it's tough to play those guys both the entirety of the third quarter because then the guy that carries over and starts the fourth quarter is gonna be somewhat fatigued. Okay. Now to Jalen specifically, couple plays eighty-eight, he hits this obvious foul on Paul George with the push-off. And he's actually complaining to the official. He clearly sticks that off arm out and pushes Paul George back. And then after that, 88-86 still, he takes this like ISO right. It's not even like at the wing. Like he takes this contested mid-ranger with plenty of time on the shot clock. I just don't understand that shot from Jalen Brown. That's just again going back to when they get into these bad habits and they go into too much isoball. And Jalen did come into the game tonight with the most isolation points in the playoffs. But that one, that's a shot. If you're gonna take that, it's gotta be late shot clock because that's a contested long two. I just didn't like that shot from Jalen. And I would say this about Jalen when we're talking about the off arm. I believe now this is a major problem for him because coming into this game tonight and he picked up a couple more, he had three more offensive fouls than anybody else in the postseas on. And we've seen it. It's all in the same play. It's on that push-off. They actually could have called one earlier on in the game when he pushed off on Uber. Like it was a very obvious call there. And so the thing is what is what's happening in the series is they've actually scouted him pretty well. So if Jalen's initial move doesn't work, and this is when he's trying to get downhill of course, what he likes to do is he likes to do a left to right crossover, but he likes to go through his legs. So then when he gets to the right, when he gets the ball in his right hand, he can get this head of steam and get by the defender. But if he doesn't get by the defender, he doesn't get the advantage on the play, so to speak, what is he doing? He takes that left arm and he shoves the defender. And it actually should be called more often than it is. Like Shea Guilt just Alexander does this all the time as well. I'm telling you this, and look, Jalen doesn't foul bait like Shea does. I mean I'm I'm not saying that. Like he doesn't do the tricks that him and Harden do where they grab the other arm, stuff like that. I'm not saying that. But his like chicken wing, his off arm is more obvious than anybody else in the NBA that you watch on a regular basis. It is really obvious when he does it, and he keeps getting called for it. And Philly's getting him on it over and over again. And yes, they do a good job exaggerating the contact, but it is technically a foul. So if Philly's on it and you advance, New York's gonna be all over it in the next round as well. So that's something that Jalen's got to clean up. And then as I would say, like I mentioned the thing on Tatum. I thought at times he's just playing too slow. And look, going back to Missoula, I would say Pritcher needs to play more than four fourteen in the fourth quarter. When the game's on the line and you're down, you need scoring, he's got to be out there more. Like White played 944 in that fourth quarter and Pritchard played four fourteen. White was 0 of 3, including I mentioned the big one he missed when it was a three-point game. And Pritchard just at this point he can't play 10 minutes left left uh less than White in the game. He just can't because Pritchard now has 75 points in 155 minutes. White has 41 and 168. So Pritchard has 34 more points in 13 fewer minutes. You just can't justify it and say, like, hey, you need his defense and everything else, because it's not like White's doing a ton of playmaking in this series, and it's not like he's completely dominating on the defensive. And he had some great chase-down blocks in the last game, and yes, he's an elite defender, but when he's giving up so much on the offensive end and this team is struggling at times to find the offense, you need more Peyton Pritchard. He can't play 10 more minutes than Pritchard at this point. I know that would sound crazy to say like a year ago, but this is where we are. Derrick White cannot shoot, and Pritchard has been one of your best offensive players. It's crazy, too. You look at the numbers, White actually has four fewer points than Cada does. And he's played 69 fewer minutes because I mean it's a criticism too of Cada. He can't stay out of foul trouble. But you look at the free throws, too. The Celtics were four of 23. 60.9%. No team this season shot self of 73%. Billy took the same amount of free throws, 23. They hit 20 of 23. You hit 14 of 23. That's seven points right there. Tatum was four of seven. Jalen was three of five. Jalen's now just twenty-five of thirty-four from the line in the series. That is a terrible number. He was he this year he shot a career high from the free throw night line, 79.5%. But last postseason, remember, 75.8%, 2024, 66%. The ch uh that was the championship year, 2023, 68.9%. So So this is something that has happened to Jalen in the past where he's really struggled at the free throw line in critical situations. And we saw it in this particular game tonight, which is I don't know how any Celtics fan wouldn't be concerned about this. So this is a thing. And here's another concern with Jalen . If you look at his numbers from two-point territory, and this is where he had been so good for the majority of the season, 34 of 72 from two-point territory in this series, 47 .2% on twos. 34 of 72. It's terrible. Last year he's at 49.2% and we said, hey, it's because he didn't have lift. Remember, he was dealing with that knee situation. And he's actually shooting worse than that this postseason from two title year he was at 60.7%. He came into tonight 37th of 54 qualified shooters in two-point shooting. When you won the championship, Jalen was elite from two-point territory, and that's a critical shot for him to be able to make because we know he's not the greatest three point shooter, and he has been getting to the line throughout the series, but I am worried about his foul drawing ability going forward in this series just because Philly's all over the R f the off arm and he keeps doing it. Like, dude, it's a foul every time. So that's something that has got to be addressed from Jalen's perspective is he's gonna be better from two-point range. This is where he makes his money. This is why he was so elite in the 2024 run. And you can look at this and say, hey, well, Philly hit 15 threes, you hit 11. And when you win the three-point battle, you win this, you win these games. But this is what I would also say. They got more attempts than you in this one. So this is a lot different than the other ones where you're taking way more threes than them. Like even in game two, you took more threes. They just shot better from three. This is they beat you at your own game, where they actually got more three-point opportunities than you did. And then the other thing I would say, like, going back to the Holand Bede thing, the one thing about Embiid that was different in this game, he had eight assists in this game. And that goes back to the whole thing of Cada not being on the floor, where you're having to help Vucevic, and then he's kicking out to open three-point shooters. And we talk about Grimes. He hits four in this game. We even saw Edgecomb got going a little bit in this one. He hit three threes. Remember, Edgecomb in the losses in the series hadn't hit a single three in the three losses for Philadelphia. He got some to go down. So I'm worried about game six. Concerns going forward, I would say this. The Pritchard thing, this is just a weird thing. So he scores 32 and 35 minutes in game four. He's the biggest difference maker in the game for you besides Tatum. He played 26 in this game. Go back to the Knicks two years ago. This is back-to-back years. Missoula has done this. In the Knicks game, where the Celtics won game three in New York, he played 35 minutes, he scored 23 points. The next game, he played 20 minutes in a loss. So back to back years, he goes from 32 to 26, or excuse me, from 35 to 26. He scored 32. And he goes from 35 to 20. What's going on here? Why are you not playing the biggest advantage that you had, like the biggest game changer. So, and then White is a major concern. Major, major concern. Jalen's off arm is a concern. K Dot, you got to be able to stay on the court because Vucevic cannot play against Embiid. And I will say this, we haven't seen it in the series. Clearly they don't want to do it in the bead minutes, and I get why. But if they get desperate enough, do we see some Tatum at center minutes? Because we haven't seen that throughout that series. Do we just try to speed them up a little bit? Is that what the Celtics try to do? And then you're seeing why Pritchard is so important with Embiid. Like Pritchard is very important. I know it sounds crazy, but because of what he does offensively, he's very important to play in the NB minutes and they pulled the trigger way too late in the third quarter. So we'll get ready for a game six on Thursday night. Alright, as for the Bruins , just a totally different situation from them compared to the Celtics. I thought that they were done. I thought the Celtics are to end the series, and I thought the Bruins, their series was going to end and they were going to go home. And of course, you're going to look back and say, how did you lose game one? And how do you complete no-show in game four? And I'm not saying this makes up for that because you're still going to win two more games, ultimately, to win the series. But the Bruins, the effort from them was just unbelievable tonight, especially too when you're shorthanded. Arvindson has been such a good player for you. He's out of this game with an upper body injury. And you look at overtime, they came out flying like right away. Jinot sends one to the net. You think that Coralie gets a goal there. Now it was called, like they did call it the play dead, so to speak. So you weren't able, like Corraly. I know they were upset about it for a second, but it was the right call by the official. But then later on in that overtime period with about eleven minutes left, you have an unbelievable save by Swayman. Unreal save on Tuck where it's on a rebound. Swayman's actually screened. He still makes the save. And that's the thing about the series. Swayman has been outstanding. I know you had the bad game the other night, but for the most part, he has been unreal in the series. And then what an unbelievable goal. We've been calling for Passenak from more from him offensively. What a ridiculous goal. He has lined like all the way the other way, jumping the like jump it out of the way the other way because he's his hands are just ridiculous. And by the way, Hampus Lynnholm, who has not had the best series, we talked about his turnover in game four where he's got nobody around him and he just muffs the puck. He has a ridiculous pass to pasta, and pasta does his thing where he's got lion jumping all over the place on that goal. So just a ridiculous finish by Pasternak in overtime to force this game six. And I really thought they just took it to him the, Bruins did. They were the more physical team. They were the more determined team. It was the opposite of game four. Now, the result is not similar. It's a 2-1 overtime, tough win where you have to come from behind and win. But the Bruins came out with no energy. They came out with no passion in game four. And tonight they go into Buffalo. This is tough for a young team to close out a veteran team. And I know the Bruins have a lot of young players, but you have some veteran guys here that have been through a lot of playoff battles. It's tough to close that team out. You can't fake desperation. The Bruins were a desperate team. They were embarrassed. They want to get it back to the garden because they embarrassed themselves in front of their home fans. They want to get back there. And they were incredible tonight from start to finish in terms of just the energy level, outshot him in this game. This is a rarity in the series where they actually outshot them 29 to 26. They brought it to him. They outhit him 43 to 27. Remember last game, the Sabres 35-24 in shots. In this one, the Bruins 29 to 26. And pasta said after the game to the fans, Yeah, we're going to shoot the puck more when we come back for game six, which is a good thing. This team has got to be aggressive. But early on in this game, where they finally, they being Buffalo, they get their first power play goal of the series. They had been 0 for the last 39, dating back to early in April. So Castilla gets a roughing penalty, and I totally disagreed with the call. It was just soft. It's just two guys battling after the whistle. I thought that was a bad call by the officials. Now, then you get the goal from Dallin where . And this was even kind of lucky on the power play. Like, it wasn't great execution by the Sabres. It's a little bit of puck luck where Thompson finds Zucker and then Zucker sort of gets behind the net and he tries to throw one out and it gets sent back to him. But the problem is it went right back to him that he's able to just throw it to Dollen because it went right back to him. So he just throws it right to Dolleen and Dollen's got a wide open net because Swayman's on the other side of the net. It was just bad puck luck there. But you're thinking after that point, well they finally got one on the power play, you're probably gonna lose the series if they finally got a power play goal. But even that, like it wasn't the entry by Thompson, it was kind of sloppy. Like he he got it over to Zucker, but he lost the puck and then he got it back. So even the entry was sloppy there. So that one was just, hey, you're out playing them and you get that, and you're thinking to yourself, oh man, it's gonna be difficult to win this game. And then 13 minutes left there in that first period, you got a power play. And pasta at one point just doesn't rip a shot where I thought he had an opportunity. I thought he overthought it. But you go to the end of the period and you say, well, you got the better chances. Ten to four in scoring chances five on five. Three to one in high danger chances five on five. I thought the better team in the first period were the Bruins, and we haven't been able to say that in the past few games here. Yet the other team is the one that gets rewarded because they got a little lucky on that goal. A couple of nice bounces for them on the entry from Thompson. And then, of course, the puck goes right back to Zucker. But then in the second period, Elias Lindholm, who has been a no-show for large portions of the series, remember at one point they put him down in the second power play in favor of Arvinson because he just hasn't done much, gets his own rebound after Geeky found him. Bad shot angle from Elias Linholm, but he's able to get his own rebound. Puts it back in one-one. You're like, all right, let's see what happens here. And then you had another chance on the power play, six minutes left there, and Geeky's just he's wide open now. It does look like Greenway kind of just like lifted his stick just enough, but it reminded you of that situation earlier in the series where he had a wide open net and he just didn't shoot it. Remember that? This one though, you could see like Greenway kind of got back into the play and lifted his sick, but then you look at it, you say, Alright, the bees in this series, like in terms, and of course, you get the overtime goal that we referenced earlier. That's how you won the game, obviously. But the bees had the edge in high day of chances coming into this one. High danger chances four, they were 46.8%. That was 11th in the postseason out of 16 teams, obviously. In this one, you had the better chances. So, yes, game one still stings. Game four was just terrible, but you have the experience. You have the premier goaltender in the series. Remember, they've already made a goalie change. I know line's been good, but of course you just get the breakaway goal from David Poschinok in this one. You get the re the juicy rebound from Lynn Holm in this one. You're feeling really good about yourself if you're a Jeremy Swayman. And the Bruins are out to prove a point after what they did last time at home. So I thought this series was over. Now we've seen it before. I mean, the Bruins had the 3-1 lead on Florida. I'm not saying this Bruins team is Florida, who of course went on to win the Stanley Cup, but you gave a veteran team a little bit of momentum if you were the Sabres, and a couple of things I would say is look, Arvinson's out with an upper body injury, and you threw Yuki Haryu in there to get more offense from the blue line, and he gave you something, and then give Sturm credit because he had to mess around with the lines a little bit, and Linholm always said it's not but a huge factor in the series. He puts him with Geeky and Middle stat. That line scores for you, of course Linholm gets a goal, so he messed with the lines about a little bit, had Pasta with Zaka and who's nets off. So messing with the lines a little bit. Sometimes that would it's that's what it takes. It's just, hey, we're gonna tweak things a little bit, and this is gonna just at least give us something different, at least give us some momentum. And to Sturm's credit, we saw them make changes in the last game or two games ago, I should say, in game three. It was the Bruins that made the changes in this one. One out of necessity because of an injury, but impressive performance from the Bruins and they're still alive. And I think this is kind of what you expected from the Steam in game four, just this type of effort. So going home, game six. Okay, one more thing before we get to Julian McWilliams, because I mentioned Marcelo Meyer. So just when you're listening to this, he had a six-game hitting streak going into this game tonight, and he extended it to seven, fought off a splitter and a two-strike count. I like what we've seen from Meyer recently. But uh one small concern in this one, the Sox, of course, they lose this game to the Jays. Totally pitched in this game, and he just wasn't good. So let's go through a couple of things here. Jimenez in the third inning singled on a sinker. It was only 93. Vlad doubled on a sinker middle middle. It was 94. And then Okamoto singled on a four-seamer. He got thrown out at second. Actually, a pretty good throw by Roman and, that'ss been an isue for him. But a four Ziemer at ninety-five. So that made it two to nothing. You threw him out at second, but of course they scored two runs there. But the velocity's down. The velocity in this game went from ninety seven point one in his last start to 95 on the four seamer. Down two miles an hour. 96.4 on the sinker, 93.9 today. Minus 2.5 miles per hour. The cutter from 90.6 to 88.2 down 2.4 miles per hour. Like that's that's a lot in terms of losing the velocity. And then we saw in the fifth inning, he walked straw in Clement with two outs and the first at bat, like he missed on four fastballs to straw. He walked Clement three were two seabers. So seven balls on fastballs and back to back at bats. And that's before you face Vlad, who of course singles up the middle on a sinker that was middle up. That made it three to nothing. So he's struggling with both command and velocity. And he only threw 68 pitches. Only 42 were strikes. That's sixty-one point eight percent. That would rank seventy second out of eighty-four qualifiers. Okay, the Yankees game he's at sixty-seven point seven percent. That would have ranked third among qualifiers. So he's constantly working from behind, his velocity wasn't there, and when you work from behind, you become more predictable because they know, okay, yeah, he's been working on his secondary stuff, but he knows he can locate his fastball. That's what he has to throw for strikes, and he was unable to do that. Now, he threw ninety-three pitches the last time he was out there, and he only threw sixty-eight in this one. And Chad Tracy after the game talked about they had planned this to be a shorter outing because of the workload he got in the previous game, and that's when he attr that's what he attributes the two things he attributes the velocity down to. Shorter rest than what he's used to at the AAA level. And then the fact that he threw 93 pitches in the last one. So definitely something to monitor. This is a young pitcher that I mean, you're asking him to now take on a major league workload until you see what happens with Sonny Gray, and he's struggling to get through the game, his velocity's down, so it's an adjustment that he's gonna have to make. So I don't know this means they're just going to spread out his starts a little bit more, but that was concerning to see the miles per hour be down and know that he can't go deep into the game. I know you're protecting a young pitcher, but if you're protecting a young pitcher and he's going to throw sixty eight pitches, you expect him to be throwing ninety-six-97 like he was before, but apparently just didn't have it because of his previous outing. Oh, real quickly on Vrieble, Jamie and I will get to him later. But just some things that have come out since this afternoon . They're following him all the way through the airport to his car. Like, come on, man. Like, what are we doing? And then they're taking pictures of his wife when she's out of the house. It's getting to the point where it just it's completely over the top to me. And some of it too feels like a lot of this now has become TMZ, where now the page six had Vrabel in the airport, but following to his car, that's TMZ, and then his wife, when she's out of the house, like I can't believe how big this story is. Like, I understand from a Patriots perspective the repercussions and what's going on here, but following the guy through the airport's just ridiculous to me. Like, he can't even fly commercial anymore based on this. Like, Mike Vrabel is more popular than he's ever been because of this scandal. And that to me was just the guy followed him literally. He's like following him as Vrabel's, I don't even know what you call that thing, like the walkway or wherever. You don't have to you basically don't have to walk, you go faster. And they're following and filming him through that. It's just crazy to me. But all right, coming up next, Julian McWilliams from CBS Sports . Off the pike is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA playoffs are here and everything's on the line. Every possession matters, every bucket swings the game. And tonight is your shot to boost your bet. That's right, all customers get a profit boost tonight, so when the moment hits, your win hits bigger. Alright, I'm looking at both Eastern Conference games coming up on Wednesday night. The Pistons are in a whole lot of trouble. I think they bounce back. They at least extend the series to six games. They can't lose this on their home court and lose 4-1 to the eight-seed. So we'll take the Pistons to win that game, and we'll take Cade Cunningham, despite all the turnover issues he's had. We'll take him for 40 points, rebounds, and assists. And then I'm going to take the Cavaliers to beat the Raptors. The Raptors have given the Cavs all sorts of trouble, but this series returns back to Cleveland. So we'll take the Cavs to win on the money line, and then we'll take Donovan Mitchell for 25 points. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, and make the playoffs pay off with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to FanDuel.com slash pike to get started. FanDuel, play your game, twenty-one plus in Select states or eighteen plus in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming, opt-in required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Gambling problem, call one-eight hundred-gambler, call one eight eight eight-seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit Welcome back into Off the Pike. Joining us now, it's Julian McWilliams, of course, CBS Sports. Big article up right now. What happened with the socks mess? It's up on CBS Sports .com. Why Craig Breslo fired Alex Core inside the Red Sox? Startling decision, which left some players in tears. Julian, first of all, congrats on the story, man. How are things? Good man. You know, it was funny, it was uh not funny. I was actually kind of pissed. I got a text, so all my family's in town for my son's birthday, like this weekend, and I got happy birthday. Yeah, turned one year old. And uh and I'm walking the dog, and somebody text my hey man, stuff is going down, and I'm like, Okay, fine. It was like, Yeah, the hitting coach and Dylan Lawson. And I'm like, and that's that's what I got. Like, those are those those are the two things like that I heard. And then he's like, But some other ones might trickle in as well and I'm like okay but I never it's I I maybe like I don't know like the freaking mental health coach I don't know I was like okay probably some you know, others, whatever. Then I saw Alex Core, and I'm like, oh my gosh. And so then my family immediately calls me, like, hey, do you see the news? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I see it. I see it. So Sunday was actually spent my son's birthday was at two o'clock on Sunday and I was just like between phone calls with people in the know and then trying to craft the story. Um it took a while. I was up to like four or five a.m. But it yeah, so I'm happy it came all together. Did you at least get a piece of cake ? I did. I did get a piece of cake. I did get a piece of cake. Not that much though, because like the kids, like they did a thing where the kid, like they put it in front of them just smash it. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I got whatever was left of that, but uh it's fine. Ended up working out. All right. Well, yeah, great stuff in the story. So let's start with this. So why now you had one source that said it was a culmination of misalignment that predates the current front office. The misalignment in part came down to the product on the field. You also wrote that Korra revered Dombrowski, which oh by the way, that was a story this morning, where the Phillies fired their manager and Cora . It was reported originally by Bob Nightingale that he didn't want the Phillies' job at this point in time, wants to be a dad, so he's gonna spend time with his kids. But that was a major story. Once you see that this morning, you're like, oh, does Korra already have another job? But apparently that's not going to be the case. Mattingly's the iterum manager there with the Phillies. And Cora can take some time off. And next year, he's getting paid right now a lot of money. So next year he could come back. But going back to this, you wrote Cora revered Dombrowski, an executive known for spending and acquiring star talent through free agency and trades. And he would tell us, Hey, I need a right-handed hitter to platoon for uh Mitch Moreland. Here comes Steve Pierce. Hey, I need a second baseman. Okay, here's Ann Kinsler. I'm gonna trade for a starter. Like he would just tell us, and these things would happen. Yeah, it was awesome. But he said his approach leaned traditional on relying on scouts, his coaching staff, and core to shape the roster. Under Bloom and Breslau, however, the philosophy shifted with a greater emphasis on metrics, roster flexibility, depth, and matchups. The organization moved toward a measured, process driven approach that one also coincided with a reduced appetite for spending that left core frustrated, sometimes using the phrase the roster is the roster during press conferences to signal his dis satisfaction. So before we get into a specific player you referenced here , this is two GMs that you knew, if you think about it, as you referenced with Corey's first managerial job, okay, he was in a position where he had the best team in franchise history. That's his first year on the job. And he's basically getting everything he wanted. So then after that, of course, you did have the situation where Cor is suspended, and Ron Reneke's the interim manager for a year, some of the most boring press conferen ces via Zoom you will ever see. Guy was absolutely lifeless. But then they bring Korra back. But Bloom's here. And look, Bloom supported the decision publicly, but we all know that that was the Red Sox ownership group. Then this one, you hire Breslo, Korowins the previous sort of power struggle, if you will, with Heim Bloom. So now Breslo is inheriting a manager that you didn't pick. So I just look at this from like an ownership perspective. Here is did you not think that these and all we already saw one of them was the there was friction in the relationship between Core and Hein Bloom by the end? You did it again by bringing in Breslau when Korra was still here. And I think about it, you look at the Celtics, do we think like any decision that Brad Stevens makes, him and Missoula aren't on the same page? So I just think from and this is a bigger, broader point here. How did they think this was gonna happen after they already knew it didn't work once? Like why would this be the way that you try to sort of have the organiz ation all uh operate? It just doesn't make sense to have it that way. And like everybody thought Core is a really good manager, but based on these philosophies, it felt like these were both doomed to field and uh fail in terms of the relationships. Yeah, I think they just it just goes back to their ownership and Sam K ennedy's love for Cora. Like they genuinely love that guy. And I still think uh despite them firing him or signing off on him being fired, I think they did. Look, he's the first manager I've ever known to be a part of like the hiring process for a GM, right? Like, and and he he he came out publicly and said , Are you gonna be a part of? I think Sean McAdam asked him the question. He was like, and he responded like emphatically at the time and said, Yes, yes, I'm gonna be part. Absolutely. Yeah, yes, I'm gonna be part. And like I've just never really heard of that. And you see the fact he came back in 2020, I believe, uh Haim wanted what was the guy's name from I think he he ended up in Philly or he might end up in Philly, but this guy from Sam Fold? Sam Fold. He wanted Sam Fold. Um wasn't able to get him because ownership and wanted a cora . And then you kind of know like, okay, well, at least bring in somebody else. And that was like where you can't brought in like the Will Venable thing. And that kind of miraculously disappeared where Will just went away and went to Texas. And we don't really know why, what happened there at all either, but I feel like it was some sort of dissension or divide between him and Cora. I don't know if Cora felt like he was like on his heels. Uh I don't know. Um and then yeah this this this this Brezel era has just been fascinating. And like the question that I have with that is that this is okay, coming into this, I'm curious if like if if Brezlow and his team were had the understanding or came in with to say, look, we'll take this job, but only under the condition that if we feel the need to do so, I need to be able to fire the manager, right? And and sign off of that. Because you because you remember uh you know Barrett that people didn't want this job. Like oh yeah. This was a tough job to come by. Like Breslow's like was like number four in the list of people that they wanted. He wasn't the main guy that they wanted for this job. And people cited the same things that you talked about: lack of communication, uh, power struggles, uh uh dysfunction with ownership firing every four years. They people Haim, despite whatever you want to say about him and what he did here, that's a well-respected individual across bas eball. From traditional scouts to uh longtime executives, uh Brian Cashman felt as though like Haim was done wrong here in Boston. I can you know say that for a fact . You know, so there's so many people that look at the situation and frankly look at the situation with Haim and say they were kind of turned off by it and turned off by Cora um because of how they felt like he treated Haim . So uh despite what you want to say about what he did here, like that's a well-respected person. And if you're coming into the situation, it just felt like there was, I'm not gonna say a black cloud of Korra, but he dominated the space, right? And and and he wasn't able to do that with Dembrowski because Dembrowski came with his his own alpha male niche. He came with uh his own um winning winning uh history uh he's a guy that's been involved in baseball for decades and decades uh core like I said he reveres him, calls him a great baseball mind, like all the time. Um so I think Core respected him. And I don't not gonna say that he didn't respect time in in in Breslau, but I do remember one time uh when after Haim got fired, um when he said something along the lines of like, you know, I was when we made the playoffs in twenty twenty one, like I was happy for the kid. Talk him out. Yeah, the kid, I remember that. And I'm like, hmm, like it just felt like okay, if Brezzo and I wrote in the story, if he's gonna go down swinging, he's gonna have to go down swinging his way. And that's something that I do respect. I'm not going to see say Core should have been fired, shouldn't been fired. Hey, that's that's that's Breslau's decision. He feels like he has to make a move, make the move. But it's just a dysfunction that erodes this organization that you look at and you're saying, What can they do to get rid of this? And I think it had to start with Court in some sense. Yeah, and I think too, just looking at this now, and I said like there was total justification for moving on considering where the team was at. And I thought that there's been some fundamentally things that fundamental things rather the team has struggled at, right? When you think about the fact that they couldn't get the ABS right for basically the entire time Core was here until the other day. Like they keep messing that up. And that partly falls on the manager. The base running issues, like the one that Meyer had the other day, that's not Cora's fault, but at the same point, it's like these things continue to happen. And now, if you're Greg Breslow, you have a guy in place that's gonna do things the way you want to do them. Like, I don't know if on Monday night, we're recording Tuesday, their second game of the series hasn't happened yet as we're recording, but sending Ranger Suarez back out for the eighth and let him finishing that inning, is that something that Korra does, right? And I also think about the fact that and look, Meyer as again, as I say this before they play on Tuesday night, one of the things that Tracy said is we're gonna play him against lefties. And that's like been a question all year. So I think that's especially where you're at right now, that's some things that obviously I believe Breslau wants to do too, is play Meyer every day and see what he is. So I do think there's factors to that. And the other thing is, to your point, what you were saying about the fact that there was no interest in this job and Breslau was way down sort of on the candidates list. Remember, like Gomes didn't want to interview from the Dodgers, Felvey, who's like no longer with the twins, didn't want to interview. That's where you were at because of the dynamic the ownership group created. Because you're the Boston Red Sox. Like this should be one of the most desirable jobs out there. But because you moved on from Dombrowski the year after he won't not even a full calendar year after he won a World Series. This is a guy that at that point had won two World Series. And then you tell Heim Bloom to rebuild. And look, I criticize a lot of the major league moves he made, but you move on from him after you told him to rebu ild. And at the time he had a top five system in the game. So you moved on from him. And other people looking at this being like, well, what what's my sort of avenue here to keep this job long term? They move on from everybody. So I totally understand like the dynamic that that created. But going to specifics from your story, I found this fascinating. The front office was bullish on David Hamilton, believing in his speed, defensive ability , overall athleticism, and underlying metrics made him a clear asset, perhaps even more so than story, referring to Trevor's story. But some of the coaching staff viewed Hamilton as a flawed player, one with tools but lacking feel for the game. Internally, there was a belief he could develop into an everyday player, though questions remained about whether that would happen in Boston. The front office, though still confident in Hamilton, traded him to the Brewers during the offseason. When he returned this month and played well against the Red Sox, the front office again began questioning the coaching staff's developmental process with younger players. Why do a lot of players go to other places and get better? One source said, Why do players come here and get worse. Now you had to know too, however, others disputed the claim, pointing to Romy and Ress Snyder and Jaron Duran. So I will say this just uh on Hamilton briefly. He got a bunt out in the Red Sox series, which is nice to see some, and he made a couple of nice plays. Remember, he couldn't last year when they needed him to. But Hamilton, as entering the week, he was sitting 234 with an OPS of 606 of 209 hitters with 90 plate appearances. The 606 OPS ranked 173rd. So it's not like he's doing great there. He's got a 25.9% hard hit rate, 199th out of 209. Now, like you said, he did have a good series against, and as they pointed, he had a good series against the Socks, but I'm looking at other guys like they moved on from York. He's hitting two nineteen. I think if you look at the pitchers, like a lot of them have been successful. Kyle Harrison 228 ERA, and they clearly altered sort of his not it altered his pitches, but his usage. Like he's throwing his change up a lot more and his changeup's good. Quinn Priester last year had success. You look at a guy like James Tibbs, and look, this is minor league numbers, so take 'em for what they're worth, but his OPS is over eleven hundred in triple A and a small sample size here, 138 plate appearances, 586 OPS in Portland, and Ken Rosenthal had the reporting that they looked uh essentially like they were changing and messing around with a swing and, my hunch is the Dodgers are like, yeah, just uh do whatever whatever the Red Sox said, just like sort of go away from that, go back to what you were doing before. But the two pitchers to me, that's like supposed to be a specialty. Now, I have said on multiple occasions, I believe they liked Harrison. It's just they got in this place where they needed a third baseman, so they made the trade for Durbin and probably overpaid based on Harrison. They got him back at the Raphael Devers trade. But so and look, we we'll get into like drive line and all that, but Tibbs' swing path apparently they wanted to change that. So like I I don't see a ton of exam like I know they're saying guys go somewhere else. I will say like one of the things that Korra didn't like to do, and we're finally seeing it with Abreu this year, and maybe we're gonna see it with Meyer as I alluded to, like a lot of these young guys just don't get the opportunity to hit against like same side, like lefty on lefty. Abreu finally got that. The only guy was Roman. And Roman, remember he sat him the second game that he was here because it was against a tough lefty. So maybe that's part of it. But I don't know. That's an interesting one to me where they feel like the development is more so like they feel like the evaluations are right, but the development's wrong. Yeah, yeah, and and and look, I'll say this: like as one person put it to me, they said, This is a league that's getting younger um and it's becoming a league where people want to you know it's a copycat league right we're looking around the good game the a lot of these younger guys are getting paid now and so I think the Red Sox are looking at that model right now and saying, okay, we need to do the best we can to get the most out of these guys in this like shorter period of time. And they probably felt like Alex was managing, like as if rosters are um are uh like you're growing into that roster and versus it now it's like okay what's what's are they like these guys want immediate returns on their value . And I'm not sure if that's even a realistic path, right, to to playing baseball because it technically really doesn't happen like that. I mean, you're seeing Roman go through his struggles that he had early in early, and I didn't think he would even have that. And I still don't think he's having that, like, like a like that deep dive that you see from like he's surviving out there, right? Like he's not even hitting much homers, but we saw that from him last year. Eventually he's gonna take off . But with guys like Meyer, who you just who you're not sure what they're gonna be, like somebody told me on Meyer, they that that was you know a part of this, like this like whole coaching staff. They're like he's insanely talented, but like insanely um uh uh uh like inconsistent. And a lot of that has to do with him chasing whatever like that. Now you saw he had what two hits last night. He looked really good last night. Prolybab feels a little bit more relaxed because he probably has somebody who he feels like is in his corner. Um I I would say this like Roman came in, not Roman, but Marcelo came in to the team from the from the years I've seen him and I wasn't regrant I wasn't the team as much this year but he has a little bit of that arrogance with him right and I think core had to put that a little bit more so in its place but now you're just seeing the league get younger and younger and younger and you're seeing more guys come up and being able to do uh act how they want to act. And I don't necessarily think that like again, core is more traditional in that fashion, right? Where you have to sort of earn your earn your stripes a little bit. That's why I think he's pushing him, um, some people will say unfairly, this this spring training. But yeah, no, to your point, I I just I I I don't know how all of this , how you could fit what uh Brezhnev's vision was, um, and be able to get that through to Korra uh to be a the messenger of that, if that's not necessarily what he's on board with. So I'd be fascinated to see who he hires in this next in this next go round, because look, his job is technically on the line if you're looking at the traditional way of uh at history and how the red sox have gone about it with it's every four years. And he's had a solid season last year, dealt with a lot last year with the Rafi trade, uh was able to get around the Bregman being injured, uh was able to make the post season, was one game away from making it obviously to the to the ALDS with the roster that was depleted, injured, uh didn't have much behind Garrett Crochet. But I I I think I do think also that it goes beyond just the hitting group. I think the pitching group there is like you mentioned it it it hasn't it's been it's been okay it's been okay. It's been fine. But Bale's regressed tremendously, right? Like we uh you'd say Kyle Harrison and Quinn Priester went somewhere else and got better. So it I don't think it was necessary much more about production versus these are cores guys. We got to get them all out of here . Yeah. It's it's really interesting because I think if I had a team like the twenty eighteen Red Sox, or I would even say the twenty twenty one Red Sox, where it was kind of a surprise . I don't know how many managers I take over, Cora, because I feel like he's a really good tactical manager, in-game manager when he has the roster, but considering he came up or his first year here, they won the World Series, 2021. Obviously, he loved that he loved managing in the postseason again. Finally got back last year. I still contend if he ended up winning that game too. You take that scorecard and you just like keep it. You get that thing framed because Bayo gave you nothing and he had to go through all these relievers until you got to Whitlock and there's nobody left. So Whitlock has to go like what was it, like forty pitches or whatnot. But for this type of team that has so many questions at this point, considering for his res ume, it probably like Tracy at this point, like for this group, and considering the GM is GMing for his job, it probably makes more sense where if you're Brezel, you're saying I want to go down my way. And clearly he won that power struggle with ownership. But it's interesting too because the front office you wrote did not believe in stories production last year, 25 home runs, 96 RBIs. Last year , or excuse me, this year when Korra moved Story into the two-hole, the decision raised questions internally. Uh, they raised questions too with me. It just he doesn't really profile. Like a lot of teams now, as you know, like you put your best hitter second. I mean, the a lot of teams do it. But it look, I have no problem with Roman hitting leadoff. I thought it should have been Contreras, but some of the numbers uh hitting second rather. Contreras, some of the numbers with him hitting second were not great previously, and he really was comfortable with the cleanup, but story hitting there was just kind of insane. And look, the strikeout rate last year was 130th out of 145, 26.9%. He did have a lot of hard hit balls though, so I was wondering like, hey, I I thought he had two hundred and six balls off the bat ninety five plus thirty-third in baseball. I figured oh maybe the uh the analytics guys would like that, that he's making good contact, that he's got a lot of power, but he does swing and miss obviously a lot. But the one thing that I'd say about that , if they were sort of aggravated about Story being in the two-hole, which, like I said, I did not think Story should have been the two-hole hitter to begin the year. But that guy would have been, and he's not having a good year, Bregman or Devers , right? So it's like well, part of the reason that Story, if those two guys were still on the roster, even if one of them was on the roster, Story's probably not even a candidate to hit in the two. I guess technically you could have met wanted to match like left right left right. I think they got too obsessed with that, especially at the end here when a lot of guys weren't hitting. I'm just like, all right, I I don't care if you go lefty lefty at the the beginning of lineup here. But that one's interesting to me because obviously Cora likes Story, but at the same point, like part of the reason Story was getting elevated to these spots in the lineup was because of what had sort of And I look Breg man has not had a good season and Rafi has not, quite frankly, has like had one good run with the Giants so far. Yeah, yeah. Do you see Rafi's not talking to the media again? Oh geez, really? Yeah, he hasn't talked since April 8th. Some like he keeps like walking out because he's struggling. So Rafi's back to doing Rafi things. Yeah, I was I was actually I was I was listening to what you're saying. I was just trying to go back to my text message and see when like the that that story thing came through. And honestly, like this was at the beginning of the season when when when like this was happening and and I got messages like, hey, like, I don't, we just don't understand like what they're doing by having him in a tool hole. Right? It's just not it just doesn't make sense. And for story, when it's funny when he came out like, yeah, I'm gonna have to have a conversation with him about the direction. I'm like, uh , I don't know if you're that guy. Like, by the way, I hated that. Like, I understand he's the elder statesman of the team, but he's played so poorly. And he talked about the fact that these are some of the best coaches in the game. It's well like, d,ude, play better. And this wouldn't have happened if you played a lot better, right? If you played the way that you did for three months last season, maybe the team's at a better spot and this isn't a conversation. Like, you're actually part, of the problem that you're complaining about, part of the reason this is happening, is because you haven't delivered, and that coaching staff, or the guys that were here and now not here anymore, they believed in you. And you actually, in a way, burned them. So, like him complaining about that, I was just, that is not the right messenger. Absolutely not. The wrong messenger. It's like, if I don't know, and and I don't know what and I get it. Like you say, he's the outer statesman of the team of the club, but there's just there just hasn't been um enough there. Um but yeah it it goes back to the like the beginning of the season where they're just like yeah we didn't we don't necessarily think this is real and and and they've thought that for a while. And the problem is not the problem, but the part of the reasons why he was in that situation because Core and them did believe in him. Fatsy did believe in him. Fatsy and and uh and Trevor are extre exmtreelymely, close. And they spent a ton of time together trying to get Trevor back on track. Um so you should have told him to stop swinging at sweepers and sliders in the other batter's box. You know, I I don't know if dude, I don't know if he can. And like that, that for me, and this is probably a different subject, of like just just goes to show you that the chase part of it doesn't end well. Like when you're when you're aging, when you're when you're still chasing, like as if like you're a 21 and 22 year old kid, when you can just get to anything and you know have like that Sedan Rafaela feel where you just have a nose for the bat, um, there's less forgiveness in that once you get older. And I don't I just don't think he's gonna change it. You see him at shortstop, he's slow, first step slow. Can't he just misses everything by like one or two steps, it seems like. So yeah, like there's obviously detention in that. And I'm fascinated to see what his role will be with this team going forward. Whether it's like, does he play every day? Do they end up DFA ing him? Which I could possibly see happening in this case where it's like let's just get just cut the head off the snake right because it's hard for uh for Marcelo to be able to play shortstop at the level if he sees story somebody who's story status who's been an all-star, who's been one of the premier shortstops in the game, who's just got a spot taken, like it makes for an awkward situation. Hey, let's let's just give this just give the reins all to Marcello and just go young, right? Like we're seeing a young trend across baseb all whether it's Vatello in in uh in San Francisco or the the the amount of young guys I forget the manager's name in DC but the the young guys that that that Paul Taboni hired in in DC . Like you're seeing everything go young. And and and core, it's fascinating to see him as like the older guy because when he first came in, he was seen and it was just like eight years, eight, nine years ago, he was seen as the younger guy, right? Of of the group. Like he wasn't necessarily seen as the guy who is like this elder this elder statesman of the group. Now he seems sound quote sort of sort of like the dinosaur, the way the Red Sox are putting it and i don't believe that to be true right i believe that that guy has a bunch of managing managing left i just don't think that this roster is built for him to be able to do something with because core when he gets to the big league level, he's like, hey, why aren't these guys thrown to the right bases? Like, why is it my job to tell this guy to, you know, hey, male third, less than two outs, like let's not swing for the fences. Let's put the ball in play. Like, right? Like, those weren't things that he had to go over in 2018. And frankly, I know they didn't play well in 2019, but 2019 as well, right? Like you put guys at positions, you expect them to make plays. He talks about outconversion over range and and now it's range uh over outconversion because the analytics suspect that hey you're a big leader you're gonna make the play well the problem is these guys aren't really making the plays so i think he looks at that he gets frustrated and if if you were to put him i know you know and i texted this morning i was like hey would you be interested in the Phillies job and he said, No, I'm going home to be with my family. So, and I think Bob Nightingale put that out there as well. Um, but I if you look at like that Mets roster and just the amount of dysfunction there, um, I truly think like that's like a dopamine for Korra where he can have these two stars that are have basically alienated themselves from each other and Lindor and Soto and go over there and say, I redid the Mets, I reshaped the Mets, and have an owner that's spending money. That's a perfect scenario for core. Now, anything less than that, a place where it's hey, where we are going to develop at the big league level. I don't think that interests him. Yeah. And you know, I was thinking about that as you were saying that. It does bring me back to just a couple of weeks ago when I believe it was Rosenthal had the comments from Cora pre game about the young guys getting contracts, right? Where Cora said this is not like essentially his point was this is not how it used to work. He said he wasn't making it saying it was a good thing or a bad thing. But then immediately like the next day he was pissed about it. Remember, he said it was bullshit that this became a story. And I felt like it actually I didn't even think anything of it, like the initial story, like the initial comments. I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was just like a throw something that Rosenthal said in the broadcast is like how the game's working now. Like we see a lot of teams signing these like the Atlanta Braves, part of the reason they were so good for like that three year period when they won a World Series. They had all these guys sign long term. Like they didn't they could go out and pay external money to other players, right? But I thought that Korra actually made it a bigger story by the way that he brought it back up the next day. And that kind of tells you like there is sensitivity around the subject. Yeah. So I did the that was really interesting at the time, like why he got so upset about that. But I think you're right. Like he he came into a team that was really good, fundamentally sound, and now it's like we gotta coach these things at the big league level and I think maybe that part of it sort of like aggravates him rubs him the wrong way because to what you were saying like the dinosaur thing he came over here and they had this whole plan, okay. What we're doing pitching wise, it they just took the Houston strategy. Fastballs up in the strike zone, we're burying breaking balls, and then he's the one that told Mookie, like, dude, I I want you to hit more balls in the air. Like that was a core thing. Yeah. Do damage. He wanted Mookie to elevate the baseball more, and Mookie had his best season ever. And now we're what? That was twenty eighteen, so we're eight years past that. And now it's like the front office doesn't think he 's aligned with the sort of analytics approach, if you will. Yeah, it's just I think for Corey's just gone too way too extreme. Like even if you look at that 2021 roster, like I I think that's a roster for him that he looks at like okay, I can deal with this because you have guys in the field that convert outs, right? Like Christian Arroyo. I go back to him, he had shitty range, but that motherfucker, every time a ball was hit to him, he made the play. Every time a ball was like every time he had to turn a double play, yes, he turned a double play. Bogarts, every time a ball is hit to him, he made the play. Like he might not have been great going all the way out there or great going up the middle, but every time what the ball was was actually hits him which majority of balls are hit to the vicinity of where you are, especially what how people employ the shifts and stuff like that now, you're gonna make the play. So I I'm I'm fascinated to see how this all ends. I'm fascinated to see what what direction the Red Sox going of what they want. Do they stick with Chad Tracy? Do they find a new manager after him? But it seems like for what they want and for what their vision is of the team. Like somebody even said to me uh Barrett they were talking about um saying well why we felt like we have guys on a good developmental track before they reach the big leagues. Like we feel like they're in like they're dialed into their new they even brought up their his their nutrition. They said they're dialed into their nutrition, they're dialed into like their uh their development of like, I don't know, like swing paths, yada yada, all these different things. We feel like we give these guys, we have these guys and we give them up to core of them in the big leagues, and then it's just like as person theal put it, quote unquote, just vibes, right? So it was a very, very hands-off in some sense where I don't think Cora and his staff expected by just the way they're wired, that they have to be so hands-on with things. I think they just kind of saw it as babysitting. Whereas the front office is like, no , we want to get younger, we want to get uh uh uh um we want to stay younger we want to get the most the return of value younger so now this is the new normal now you have to be able to develop develop to could to continue develop these guys versus them being developmental or being ready, quote unquote when they, get to the big leagues. Well, and that's one thing, too, where I would say that they've put themselves like in a bad spot sometimes with that because Christian Campbell was just basically, he was anointed the second baseman because he didn't have a great spring last year. Now he had a great beginning of the season, but once people realized like, okay, this is where we can get him out, and obviously he ended up being terrible in the field defensively. And to what you were saying about range, yeah, he does have range because an incredible athlete, the problem is when the balls hit Adam, he doesn't particularly field it well to the point where at points last year they're working him out in the minors to see if he can play first because they were desperate for a first baseman. But he's just not going to be a long-term infielder. And even the Meyer thing when he came up last year, they didn't want to do it. That was out of necessity because Bregman went down. Same thing about Roman. Now Roman's the guy that was ready the most, yet he was the third guy to come up. So, like my critique for them on that would be: I don't think you guys are bringing them up when you want to bring them up. And because Cora said multiple times, we want to bring them up when there's a path for them to play every day. When he was talking about Rome, then Meyer comes up at the very most he's gonna be platooning so I feel like sometimes they set themselves up to fail when they say when they're like their plan is like hey these guys are ready to go. I feel like you could argue that two of the three guys were actually rushed up to the major leagues, and yeah, it looked like it was an unbelievable thing when Campbell started off, right? I was still looking at it like, man, how how is he hitting like this based on some of the like metrics? Which is one thing where I'm like, do they really love the metrics on Campbell? Because I know he's been doing better lately, hitting the ball hard, but that was like a big thing where he wasn't hitting the ball hard. But that's interesting because it does feel like in some sense, like none of the promotions have been cle an. Yeah. And it's even Early, who was really good last year. Early was really good last year, but why was he up? Why was Tolly up? It's because they were dealing with injuries. Like it's never like planned for them the way they bring guys up. And I remember it used to be like such a big deal like back in the day when the Red Sox would bring up a young player because it had been like planned. Yeah. And and and I think uh dude I got so much other like good stuff in there that I wasn't able to like to work in there. That was just like, geez, like was because the way one person put it to me, they said that they feel as though the the the um the Red Sox for office is trying to win athletic artic les. Like , like, like, and I was like, what do you mean by that? He's like, dude, all they want is a recognition to see, see, this is why our system works. And they use Christian Campbell as the example, right? Of like nobody on that staff thought Christian Campbell was big league ready because he had a shitty spring, spring training. He looked over match, then all of a sudden he came down to see and he's like whoa, okay, maybe there's something here. And then you start to see like okay, he's struggling, struggling, and then busting him inside, busting him inside. And he all of a sudden just couldn't hit. And I remember the the game in the Yankee Stadium where I'm like, he's dude, he's up here for too long. He's clearing his head. Like the ball is hit to his right. I mean to his left, and he dove right. That was so weird. That was bizarre. Yeah. It was. I was like, oh shit, like this is too much for him. Like, you guys need to send him down now. And I think there was some pride in that. Like this was their investment. Like this is their like the Christian Campbell story that I feel like I'm gonna write next is is or or write at some point unless somebody takes it after hearing this podcast is like such a fascinating thing because that's legitimately like their lab rat . That's legitimately the guy, like not Roman. Roman doesn't prove a point. Like Roman came up and Roman was was blistering through the minor league system and you kind of saw where it's like okay he's gonna be this guy Marcelo same thing Marcelo was like a top overall pick but Christian Campbell was a guy that they got and said, okay, we can make him into something. Like he had what, one homer in college or something like that? Something crazy? One or two homers. He never really homer like that in college. Was a fifth round pick. Was a compensation pick for Bogarts, and all of a sudden that became the guy. They're like, we can make him into something under our system . And it worked at the minor league for all it it worked for all intensive purposes. It like he became this guy at the minor league system. And it's like, look, this is what we have, this is what we're confident in . No matter how bad he does in spring training, he's going to be on this team. And the belief and their model became so much such so so much so that it might have ruined the kid right and like it and like i spoke to somebody and they said and they said emphatically he's done. And I'm not gonna say that about the kid, but right, because he's still a 23, 24-year-old kid. But clearly, there are things that people know a lot more about baseball than me that see that saw him every day, says, Yeah, this isn't gonna work out, and not necessarily just from a talent standpoint, just from the the mentality where it's a it's a fine line of bringing guys up to the big leagues and asking them to go perform against Garrett Crochet or Garrett Cole, right? Like that's a big, big ask. It's a big ask for them for people to bring up Roman Anthony and expect him to be a face of a franchise of the Boston Red Sox when he's 21 years old and expect him not to have any throwing issues or wherever the hell was going on. Expect him to uh uh to then challenge his abs uh uh approach after failing and possibly costing his team in game . Like the kid is twenty-one years old. So there is still a develop there's still something that like maybe a developmental path mentally that has to go and that's not being taken into account too but so the whole christian campbell thing is uh just fascinates me and somebody from drive line this is where i this is where i do agree with the the quote unquote tr traditional baseball people about how drive line never takes ownership of the people that they mess up. Right. Because I was at I visited the drive line facility um probably during spring training, just to see how they go about their stuff in Arizona. And one of the guys is like talking about Christian Campbell, and he was like, Yeah, because Christian Campbell's a drive line guy. Like he's like the quintessential drive line kid. Um, is like, yeah, you know, um Alex Bregman messed up Christian Campbell. Like, that's what they said. Alex Bregman messed up Christian Campbell, you know, he started working with Alex and Alex started, you know, you know, tweaking some stuff. Now he's finally gotten back to what we asked him to do. And then so I texted somebody about that. I said, hey, Drive Line says Alex Bregman messed up Christian Campbell. Person responded, Alex Bregman didn't mess up Christian Campbell, Sinkers did. So, like, there's this divide, and and I can guarantee you that the front office feels like Cora and them didn't necessarily do right by Christian Campbell. And that I think more than Hamilton, more than Trevor's story, like those are just like just small examples it's Christian Campbell at the fulcrum of all of this in terms of philosophy and how far apart they are on philosophy. Well and, I think it's interesting because Campbell too, there'd be so many times you can tell he was in his own head because he'd be like falling over the plate, which is just how does this keep happening where he keeps being off balance and as you said sinker anything inside he really struggled he couldn't pull the ball but that is kind of funny that they blame Bregman for that. Hey yeah that that guy Bregman he took him out of what we were teaching him to do. So getting to the drive line thing you had in the article Kyle Bodie. Is that how you pronounce his last name? Yeah. Bodhi. He's the founder. He's a special advisor. Andrew Bailey, also, he's on that approach from the pitching side. They just promoted John Sauter opoulos to the hitting coach, drive line background. Yeah. How about they just brought up this guy, Jack Simonetti, who is now with the big league club. He's 26. He was the hitting coach in the uh Florida Complex League. He was the assistant coach in Salem last year. And now they brought him up. He's got a LinkedIn right now. Says he's got an NBA from Springfield College. You guys only twenty six years. I'm not saying you can't be young and be good at it, but it's just like my point this is they're aligning all the d driveline slash Breslau guys together here. So Breslau and Drive Line. People from the Red Sox texting the the hitting group on Fri sa Saturday and Sunday after I mean so on Sunday after they got fired saying, Okay, what do we got tonight? How do we how do we get through this? Like they don't a lot of these guys don't trust these guys. Right? Like and and like the front office might trust them. New number, who's this? Exactly. Like did they know all these guys? Like the major league players. So I do you think this is an aside before I get back to the drive line? Do you think he knew like who he had in mind for these roles before they moved on from Cora ? Some of them obviously. Like obviously they knew Tracy was gonna be I think I think this is probably in the works because I do feel like they're going all in on this on this on this drive line system. I mean and I and it started with Paul Tabone. And Paul Tabone's entire staff is drive line in DC. So it it it just kind of works out that way. And just like a little other part of it that was kind of funny was the Serapolis guy. I don't know if I don't know if I'm pronounced his name right, but I heard from somebody really reliable that he didn't even know like how options worked, like from bringing guys up and down like apparently so that's that's kind of that's kind of important and you may need to know that type of stuff yeah getting back to Breslau and drive line they emphasize pulling the ball in the air, but some of the organization questioned whether that approach fit the current group of hitters. One source, if we're telling the truth, a lot of young guys don't buy into any of that shit. Clearly, it feels like Campbell did buy into it, but I just from my perspective, I don't think it's every hitter can do things the same way. Like I think they have a good approach to how they look at young pitchers, even if they let some of those those guys go and I still think they were kind of forced to trade Harrison based on not having a third baseman, or they felt like they were forced, but they like big guys with huge extensions that can spin. And to their credit, like Tolle's velocity is way up from where it was at TCU. So I think if they have a good approach, like on the pitching side of things, but on the batting side of things, I just don't think you can do everything that way. And you had one source said, I think Craig's back is against the wall and he's gonna go down doing it his way, which this totally makes sense. If that's the way that if Craig Breslow thinks his job's on the line, he wants to make sure, hey, I'm gonna go out with my drive line philosophy, if you will. But some of the things I was looking at, and I know as we're recording here, Tuesday afternoon, Durbin's got a uh he's got a four-game hitting streak going, but it's not like he's hitting the ball hard. But if you look at the numbers on him, he's pulling the ball fifty percent of the time this year compared to forty three point three percent last year. So he was pulling it, but it's gone up higher. But the good you see him forcing the move. Like if you're at the game, like you see him really forcing it to try and that and that's why to me, Julian, he's rolling over so many balls. So he's got a sixty-five point eight percent ground ball rate, by far the highest in the game by like over two percentage points. So I think for him, like this may not be the best approach, but I think it is interesting because especially some of the guys that they have at the big league level right now, with like legitimate raw power, this is the right approach for Abreu. And I'm sure they love Abreu because this is what he does. He hits the ball in the air, and when he hits the ball in the air, he hits the ball very hard. He's got legit raw power. Contreras, where I actually think this approach would, and I think it has actually helped Contreras because he's pull his pull percentage is up 11 percentage points, and he's off to one of the best starts that he's had in his career. Like that type of guy, I think it helps, but it's not a sort of uh one size fits all thing where you can't have all the guys having sort of the same approach, right? And it feels like that's sort of their ethos where I even look at it from like a pitching perspective here. I feel like their pitching perspective, I know the types of guys they want, and I actually applauded them because I thought Suarez is not their type of pitcher, and they took it because they knew he was like a certain good pitcher. Like there was certainty with that type of guy because he had a proven track record in three out of the last four. He's had scoreless outings. He was awesome in the game on Monday night. And that's not their typical guy. But I even like I don't know pitching-wise, sort of what their philosophy is, because if you look at it this year, they're 28th in slider sweepers, uh, sweepers and slurve usage, 15.5%. They're only 26 in whiff rate. So the spinning, they're not getting swings and misses with that. They throw the highest percentage of cutters. And it's getting slugged at a 5-03 clip, which is 20th. And the pitching, granted, it's been a lot better over the past week and change. But I just so I really don't know like if they're using their system, I thought it was about spinning a lot because a couple of years ago we heard and they were the lowest four seamer team. Remember that? Like, hey Tanner Help, no more four seamers. Brian Bayo, no more four seamers. And no, it's like yeah, it's just a yeah, it's just a ton of cutters, and they're actually not spinning the ball at the rate they were a couple years ago. So I guess I'm kind of confused by the pitching element of the philosophy, but going back to the hitting thing, I I just think you can't have if you had the Yankees and like they have like a bunch of dudes like Judge and all these guys that are like six five even Bellinger is a big dude. Like if you want to have that approach and you're the New York Yankees with all these huge dudes, like yeah, have that type of approach. All or not nothinghing pull the ball in the air. But I just don't think you can do that with everybody within your organization. It's just not gonna work. Not everybody's the same guy. Like, would you tell put would you tell like Bogartz when he was like in his prime here? He always went the opposite way and he didn't elevate the baseball. It's some of the reason like if you always looked at his expected numbers versus his actual numbers, his expected was always way worse. But it's like, well, if it worked for like five years, it tells you the guy knows how to do it, so it works. I I just don't feel like you can do the same thing for every player. But the pitching part of it, like I don't know what their philosophy is right now. I I don't either. And and again, for for Andrew Bailey to be like this guy, and and granted, like it it got old fast from what I heard in San Francisco too, where it's like, okay, like he wants to spin the ball, like great, like Logan Webb turned into something, but like what about the other guys? Like Tanner Hau ke is like the quintessenti al like Bailey guy where when he's healthy it's like hey your shit moves so much like nasty like it's nasty like throw it right like you can throw anything your sweeper has so much uh horizontal break where you can just or was yeah horizontal breaks where you can just like use that at any moment like moment use that because people want to swing at it. Like Logan Webb sort of fell into the same bracket as him in that sense. And he has a specific guy that he got that he goes after, but again like I like it leads to more walks like when you're trying to throw as hard as you can and it's it's just their entire system right like the pitching coach in with the Mets now he has the same philosophy, Justin Willard. It's all about throwing your hardest stuff in the zone or being nasty in the zone as they say it. But like that doesn't always work out when you don't, when you're when your stuff isn't feeling it, when your stuff isn't feeling like I like Garrett Croch et. What is he getting away with this year? Yeah, granted, he had a great start whenever this weekend, but like his sweeper is like one of the worst in the leagues, I think. If I you you probably fact check that yeah when it was the best last year. When it was the best. So like that's insane. But it's for And his arm angles off. His arm angles different than it was last year. Yes. And so like that makes me wonder if it's if he's like tired. Uh you know, Lou Maloney said to me, like he when he came off for his Minnesota start, it was the first time he's ever seen him and he was like, damn, he looks tired, right? And that guy's a moose. Um, so I I'm just fascinated to see what does this team because again, like the whether it's hitting, pitching, everything is philosophical, it feels like with the Red Sox, but nothing think feel is is is hindered on or leans on adjustability. It doesn't feel like that. It just feels like, no, stick with the process, stick with the process, stick with the process. And it's like, well, that's not quite working out for me, Caleb Durbin, if I'm trying to pull the ball all the time, 50, and I'm just pulling, I'm just out there rolling over the ball, they're hitting balls in the air, uh, weak fly balls in the air to the right side. Um, so the philosophical part of it is where I think a lot of these teams are becoming or a lot or the the or Red Sox innocent, it's becoming their own detriment because they're not putting these guys in positions to be successful when they're not feeling their best. When you're feeling your best, cool, great, have at it, go . But when you're not, like, what do you do? Like Jaron Dur ant, like he's a guy that tinkers between leg kick, non-leg kick. If we're going with the drive line approach, it's like, hey, man just stick with the leg kick and just keep going to the pull side. And it's like, no, sometimes you'd be able to need to shoot that ball over the over the third baseman's head just to see it a little bit longer. So I I don't know the the they become stubborn in their philosophies, it feels like, and there's little adjustability. Um when you're hiring trainers, right? It's one person says to me, it's like drive line guys can make good trainers. They have to see the entire field. And frankly, like when you're look, when you're looking from a trainer perspective, you're not watching games like that. You're in a batting cage all the time. And that's a big difference in being in a dugout. Huge. Yeah. No doubt about it. I just I find it so crazy that they've just adopted this whole drive line philosophy up and down the organization. Alright, so as you mentioned in the article, one of the sources telling you that if Craig's gonna go down, essentially it's gonna go down his way. So as I look up at the standings, it's a little after two o'clock on Tuesday. They're only two out of the third wild card, which is like I think it says more about the American League than it does the Red Sox. And I will say this, one thing I have liked about Tracy so far is they have it aggressive aggressive on the bases and when you're not gonna hit for a ton of power, and they do have an athletic team to the whole athletic point, right? They are athletic, so they did steal four bases in his force in his first game So that's something I think they can do more of. I do think, and you mentioned Duran, I think this is interesting. And Lou mentioned he changed his swing on Marathon Monday. So we'll see how that changes for him going forward. But to me , I like the fact that Duran just put him back in the lead-off spot because look, I know he's hitting under 200. The OPS is south of 550. He cannot be a platoon guy. Jaron Duran, based on everything we know that he's gone through, he's dealt with a lot of he's talked about mental issues that he's dealt with in the past, right? Where and I think he's a player that can get in his own head. And we just sitting out a lot of games, I just don't think you can do it anymore. So at one point I said just play Yoshida at DH because Duran wasn't hitting. I think based on how this lineup is and you don't have a lot of power, I think that's the first thing and they've done it through through the start here. I'd play him every day because when he gets on base, we know that he can be dangerous. I think you need that element of the offense because you don't have a lot of power. And then obviously I mentioned Meyer. I I don't need to see IKF play. I don't care. Like the guy had reverse splits last year anyway. So I really don't need to see that guy play. So that's two things I could think. So if he is gonna get this thing back on track, you need the version of Duran somewhere in between the guy that because I don't think he's ever getting back to the guy that he was two years ago when he was an all-star. But some w some guy some sort of area between two years ago and last year. Like that's a really good player. Can you get Duran to be that type of guy the rest of the year? And I think the other argument he would make is the staff. So the question with that is this. So if you look at guys with at least 20 innings pitched because beo doesn't have a lot of innings 138 qualifiers if you look at expected era against actual beaux is 800 and or it's eight hundred. Eight twenty it feels like eight hundred. Eight twenty seven expected ERA, which is one thirty eighth. His actual is nine. Ray was five sixty-four, which is one twenty-third, actual is four thirty. So actually, if you look at it, he's actually been helped. Uh, Suarez is turned the corner. He had that the outing the other day against the Yankees was bad, but he's turned the corner. Early, now Early's ERA is 284. His actual is 505, his expected is five oh, f whichive is 105th. So he's actually been one of the luckier pitchers in major league baseball. Crochet, uh it's not even worth mentioning because it's it's it's four eighty three, but the actual six thirty. So but it doesn't matter. Like 483 is not nearly good enough for your best pitcher. And it did feel obviously he looked better as you said the other day, but there wasn't any game pressure on him either. I mean the Red Sox won that game 17 to 1. But I guess that would be the case, but I don't know. All right, we'll see what what Gray does coming back. And I think Suarez has certainly turned a corner. We'll see with crochet going for it. I did this thing a couple of weeks ago. If you look at the leaders in innings from twenty twenty-f.our Of the six guys, the the leaders there, five of them got injured the next season. The only one that didn't was Logan Webb. Everybody else dealt with some sort of injury where they were had multiple at least one I. So that could be the case with crochet coming forward. But I guess that would be the case is Dur an gets closer to the guy that he's been. We'll see if Meyer can because clearly they really believe in Meyer. If Meyer can deliver playing every day, and I ri I do like Meyer a lot as a player, and then this rotation, because this is what they've built it on, throws the ball a lot better than it has. And the one other thing I will reference that it's kind of gone under the radar because of how bad the season's been and obviously they just moved on from the manager. So their defense right now, their seventeen defensive runs saved, which is third, and they're nine outs above average, which is tied for second. Contreras is five outs above average, first among first baseman. Dermot's got four defensive runs saved. He can't hit, but he's tied for third and defensive runs saved among third baseman. So maybe the defense continues to perform well and but I think the biggest thing is it's this his fate is tied to the starting pitching staff that he's put together. If they don't perform better, this team's got no hope. Yeah, yeah, no, it it definitely is. And I think it's a pitching staff again that's like, hmm like that's a pitching staff that you wanna rely on? Like it's I I you know, I I and again, like I look at and I hate to bring 'em up, but like I look at the Yankees pitching staff, I'm like, okay, like Max F ried Cam Schlitzer, Garrett Cole when he comes back, Carlos Rodan when he comes back. Like that's a pitching staff. I'd be like, okay, let's let's fire up, let's go. But it's like Ranger Suarez, like guy that seems like he's he's checked in and out at times, right? Like it seems like when he like he's not going well, he just mails in his starts. Then he's when he's going well, so okay, let's go eight innings, right? Like it just seems to be uh Peyton Tolley, who's look great, but uh still unproven Conley early like Garrett Crochet uh that's a guy with bank on even though he's hasn't you know had a season that he's had that we're used to him see seeing so far or or used to seeing from so far. But yeah, it it just seemed that's a lot of pressure on a pitching staff. And a lot of pressure on a bullpen that's running out seemingly like Zach Kelly and uh Ryan Watson a little bit too much for my liking. Yeah, they were definitely short in the bullpen. And look, they had Clayton, for whatever reason, just has never been able to stay. Never been healthy. I think he's nasty when he pitches. But before we let you go , why do you think the ownership buys into him so much? Do they fully like they just think like this philosophy is gonna work? And do they look at it, I mean, you kind of references, but do they look at it as like, okay, well, if we can build this up internally better, we don't have to go outside and do what we've d done for so many years in terms of landing the big nine name free agent or the big trade. Now, the one thing I'd say to that is you've never really won a World Series where you haven't landed the big fish, right? Like even eighteen . Think about the guys you brought in, but you also that year, you signed JD Martinez. I guess thirteen is kind of an exception because they went with all these like veteran type guys. But even oh seven, you had traded for Beckett. We all know 04. You had traded for shillings. So every year that you've sort of made these runs, you have gone out and gone big game hunting. So I don't know if that's sustainable long term, but do you think that's they just buy into his philosophy? I I just think they buy into what they see around the league, right? Like I think they buy into um the trend of of in you know of when Haim came here as like, okay, people are getting m more with less. Right. And then so it's it it more so seems to be a buy-in to to the trend of whatever's happening in the league, be it if it's like getting younger, be if it's a drive line approach, be it if it's like um, you know, winning within the margins and and finding those guys and whatever can get them into the to the playoffs. Um and then I you know I I the to kind of quote the old Billy Bean phrase and like it's it's funny that the A's have like become sort of the anti the anti-analytics group but like they're if you talk to people who play for the A's like dude they're one of the least analytically driven teams now versus like the other teams I. had a I had a guy that I covered who played for both the A's in Baltimore and he was talking about saying like, oh, bro, like the Orioles under Elias, like compared to what I was doing with the A's, holy shit , like it's night and day. So I think to get back to your point, I think they just buy into whatever is trending at the time. And to quote Billy Bean, like, you know, I can get you to the playoffs, but the rest of it is luck. Um and and I really believe that they're buying into the luck part of it, b sh shaping out and just the team getting hot. Hey, we can be the Arizona Diamondbacks and make the World Series. Hey, we can be , you know, you know, the Texas Rangers have more talent, but like we can be the Texas Rangers and win a World Series if we just have one or two pieces plus a lot of like platoon type of type of pieces, but if we if we have the pitching to match it . So I I truly believe that they buy into the trending thing and with the most cost measured thing and say, okay, we can make this work. Look, it it's a lot easier for them to have 40 drive line guys that they're paying 50, 60 grand a year versus having six hitting coaches or like two hitting coaches that they're paying $500,000 ,000 to like in in their eyes. Like it's just all about cost efficiency and I think the ownership has just become that. Yeah. It's interesting. I wonder if they talk to Missoula about this, where they're like, Hey, you're the most analytically driven NBA coach. Maybe we just copy the Craig Brezzle I mean the uh Joe Missoula approach. Yeah, the problem is though that that Brad Stevens is smart enough to know that you need Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown. Yeah, yeah, that's true. He's smart enough to know you need the uh the star level players. All right, that's Julian McWilliams. Article up right now at CBS Sports.com why Craig Breslow fired Alex Scora inside the Red Sox startling decision which left some players in tears. Julian, thanks so much for the time, man. Really appreciate it as always and enjoy the rest of the season and enjoy drive line. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by Two Good and Company Coffee Creamers. How do you take your coffee? Piping hot, ice, strong, frothy? Well, if you love rich creamy goodness, and delicious flavor in every sip. Try two good and company creamers. They're made with farm fresh cream and real milk. Each serving has just three grams of sugar, 40% less than the leading coffee creamers. Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roasted vanilla, and lavender. So which one are you trying first? Find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle. This episode is brought to you by Viore. Look, I'm not a big , let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viore, I gotta say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably gonna see me wearing some Viore. Sunday performance joggers that they have. It's made with four -way performance stretch fabric, one of the most comfortable things you own. You will wear them everywhere. I promise. All you have to do is go to Viore.com slash Simmons and you get 20% off your first purchase with Viore, V U O O R I dot com slash Simmons. Enjoy free shipping on all US orders over seventy-five dollars, plus free returns, exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Welcome back into off the pipe. Great stuff there from Julian McWilliams. Make sure to read that article as well. Great stuff from Julian. Always enjoyed talking socks with Julian. That was a ton of fun too. Everything going on with this Red Sox team. It you can say this about the Red Sox. They may be dysfunctional. They are never boring. We bring in producer Extraordinaire, Jamie McClellan. Jamie, what's going on, man? Never boring, Brian. I I totally agree. And uh somehow two games out as you mentioned. Isn't that a nice little silver lining, I guess? Yeah, and you know what's crazy too? That is crazy. I I don't know, the American League, it's just like wild. It was kind of like this last year as well, where there wasn't this unbelievable powerhouse. Now, the Blue Jays, of course, emerg es that towards the end of the season, really them and the Mariners, but there's not really that like these unbelievable teams in the American League right now. So yeah, it is kind of fascinating where they sit at this particular point in time. I will say this too . Has there ever been a city or town where in one sport their manager slash coach gets fired, and at the same time, their other coach has a major scandal going on. Have we ever seen this before? I can't I can't remember something happening like that. It was wild enough that we've had this rable story, but now to add core to the mix of things, it's crazy. Totally. And it looked like we were in maybe like a mini era of stability, right? You have Missoula, might win coach of the year. Korra has one coach of the year, won a World Series, and then Brabel, Coach of the Year as well, and then all of a sudden it's a complete dysfunction apart from Missoula. Marcus Sturm, I will give credit to as well. Pretty good season. But um I don't know what to say. I guess with Belichick too. I mean, it's just been a a lot of drama with the coaches the past couple of years. Yeah, it's crazy. Speaking of Rabel back at the facility on Monday. Okay . Page six had pictures of him. So is Page Six just following him everywhere now? of him at the Utah Airport. He was shopping at a store called Hip and Humble. You ever been to Hip and Humble? I try to avoid all shopping at airports. I think it's all terrible. But um sometimes you know you're running late for something and you need to bring something home for the significant other, I guess. And that was that was after the the initial story, no? When yeah, this was this was when he was going to counseling. Oh boy. Oh boy. He was stopping at Hip and Humble. This is he was buying his wife a baby blue sweatsuit . So she not figured you were a hip and humble guy. I'm shocked that you're not a hip and humble guy. I'm more of a Hudson News guy, I'd say at the airport. Okay. I'm gonna check I've got to check out Hip and Humble. I never been to Hip and Humble. It sounds uh sounds interesting. Kind of a weird name, Hip and Humble . Um yes, I usually think of those not going hand in hand, but I would say uh Salt Lake City, the Utah people are a humble people, so perhaps it plays better in that part of the country. Yeah, by the way, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, just go on social media. The internet sleuths are out there where they found some Diana Rossini alleged podcast mix or a playlist, I should say. Yeah. That was like they found some mix that was sent to somebody named Mike. Like now it just I this story's getting crazier and crazier by the day. But that's all uh alleged stuff. We don't know exactly who those playlists are. But I just I I'm at the point now with the Vrabel thing where he needed to leave the team for day three of the draft, and I truly believe this was this draft, considering everything that was going on with Rabel , this was an Elliot Wolf production. And based on the way that he operated, I believe this is Elliot Wolfe's draft. And they basically said as much that Elliot Wolf controlled this draft. But he had to leave the day the team for day three, go to counseling on Saturday, and he's already back on Monday . That timeline doesn't make a ton of sense. I mean, one thing I floated out to you earlier was it seems like a big ask, but maybe like you gotta seriously sacrifice and look bad on my behalf just to make things even. I mean, for the other people in the family, because I a a couple days why did it have to be on day three of your of your draft that's the only thing I can think is just like you need to basically pay for what you did to the family but I don't know. Barizre though, right? Because I can't why he's already back. What was the point of doing it? Why did you do this this coming weekend or something? Yeah, it felt like essentially, I mean, the way that I interpreted it originally, he's trying to save his marriage, but But why why do why does it have to why do we beyond Patriots Nation have to have to pay for this? I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted the Patriots to have a good draft. Yeah, I understand that. I just the it's just the fact that he only had to go there for a day and now he's he's back with the team, like maybe he felt the offseason workouts were more important than the draft portion and he knew in advance that counseling was only gonna take a day apparently. I don't know. Bizarre story. I I think people, I mean, again, we've talked about will this affect the Patriots or will not. I I hope not, but I just uh you know, we'll see what happens with the new manager for the Red Sox, but in general, I mean it's just so hard to find these coaches. I just I really hope this works out because I don't want to have to be back in the business of finding a new coach, right? Yeah. And we'll see, because the one thing that we have found out about the story, and we learned the hard No, and you do not want page six and the New York Post on your tale because uh they are they're quite dogged, it would seem, right? I mean they will not give up on the story. They're just like legitimately stalking the guy now. They're in Utah waiting for him to get to wherever he's going for this counseling session. No, I mean I think that is a real part of the story, honestly. I mean, look, it's like kind of news. I mean, like we talked about when he's actually missing the draft . I'll count that as hard news that actually matters to football seasons. But like beyond that, it's like I don't know. Again, he did he did something wrong and I that's real, but we gotta pick our size, Brian, right? Are we gonna be on the New York Post side or are we gonna be on the New England side of things? Well, I think they probably didn't realize that it was gonna be this big of a story. And the fact that it's still got so many tentacles to it where clearly I'm sure their numbers are telling them that you got a lot of people reading this, you got a lot of social media views, people are interested in this story. That's why they keep going to these extreme levels. That's the one thing I said, I think I believe I said this on the pod last week, where I hated the articles that were out about who is Mike Vrabel's wife and who is Diana Rossini's husband. They had articles about them and like his wife played collegiate athletics and all that different type of stuff, like outlin ing who these people were. I'm like, that's that's too much for me. Like these people are already going through a rough time. But the way they probably interpret it is, hey, we have a couple of days until we put out the new pictures that they had from 2020. So let's keep this story, let's keep it juicier. So they put this out, which is unfortunate for those people that they write articles about. But clearly like this is a the way I interpret the whole thing, this story is way bigger than they thought it was going to be . Like there is legit interest in it. People talk about it all the time. I mean, clearly it's getting clicks. Whether or not, I don't know. It's like it's the right thing to do. I mean it's not an airport's hardly, you know, your private residence or anything like that, but you know, I'm I'm usually not always looking my best Brian when I'm walking through the airport. So I'm I'm glad there's not a camera following me around all day long after a six hour flight or something. I feel ya. Not a big flyer. I don't like flying . No? No. I mean I don't like doing it either, but I I force myself to. Prefer the train, Brian, like the big Amtrak guy. I hear ya. Alright, Jamie. Good stuff, man. Thank you, Brad. Alright, as always, make sure to get your voicemails in 617-396-7172. Email your thoughts and questions to off the pike at gmail.com. Thanks to Jamie McClellan for producing this podcast, and we'll chat in a couple of days.