Final Dating Advice and Episode Outro

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Twenty-one plus select states, eighteen plus DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call one-eight hundred gambler, call one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG. org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast. That's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit spectrum.com/slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply services not available in all are as you know unless you're wearing Philly ladder you're you're a Philly I don't like you know I love that It's Philly man they hate you. Welcome to the ringers Philly special. I am your host Sheo Kapati and you know what we said we gotta bring back the Sunday night pod this week because there's too much going on. There is a the first three games of the Phillies season, maybe not the most exciting opening series in uh in baseball history, but still, we have some first impressions we had to get off our chest. And then Saturday night, Sixers, I was Texting Cliff. Sixers played, you know, one of the most entertaining games of the season. And now this kind of wacky year has taken maybe a little bit of a different turn, or maybe not. We'll get to that as well. So that's what we're gonna do today. We figured why wait until Monday? Why wait until Tuesday? Let's just get some of these takes off our chest. So we've got our friend who's on three and a half hours of sleep? He was in Vegas doing the ringer gambling show live out there. He took a red eye because he's got young bones and he can do a red eye and still feel like he can you know function the next day You look great. You know, I wouldn't say you look like you're dragging. I think you look gre at. I appreciate the compliment. Uh, even though it doesn't feel like it. I got like the dark circles under my eyes. I haven't really slept well. I actually texted Bo uh a mid flight to ask if he was able to play tennis on Monday, what his schedule looks like this week. And he texted me, go to sleep. It was like four AM Eastern, five A.M. Eastern. So one, you know, what was Bo doing up that early? Great. That's a good question. Two, uh I I did not sleep for more than about ten minutes on the flight. Uh had a layover. It was a disaster. Great weekend in Vegas, had a great time, but that place, man, three days there, and it's like, please get me home as soon as as soon as possible. I slept, I set my alarm for 1:30 . Really wish I had just slept through the whole afternoon, honestly. I don't think I gained anything by watching three hours of Phillies baseball today. Alas, here we are. Red eye with the layover Bunsey. What are we doing? They didn't hold the point of the red eye is you get on, you hope you sleep, and you wake up and you're in your destination. But the layover messes the entire thing up. It's a bad move by you. Who knew O'Hare would be so packed at six AM on a Sunday? Who knew? Okay. All right. There you go. That''ss okay. Bunsey still going to bring the heat with this podcast as we talked about. The Philadelphia Phillies. Dropping two of three to the Texas Rangers. Blackluster offensive performance here. Uh the last two days starting pitching, not great, but maybe not cause for concern. We'll hear what Bunsey has to say. But you told me you have a good, bad, and ugly. Is that is that true? Now that was only like you know 10 minutes ago. So I don't know if you you're sticking with that. All right. So you give me good, bad, and ugly, and then I've got leftover topics that we can hit on if they don't fit in the good, bad and the ugly. How does that sound? Sounds good. Yeah.. Okay. All right All right. Where are you starting? Yeah. Let's see. I think we have to start with Chris Sanchez. We got to start with Chris Sanchez. Come on. There you go. Chris Sanchez signs the big extension. Opening day. His first start. I mean, you could go back to just last season. I was actually thinking about it. They gave him the home op ener. But Sanchez was essentially coming into the season, you know, he was the fourth man in the rotation as far as how they lined it up. Going into this season, I don't think there was any doubt who was going to start opening day, and I don't think you could have drawn up a better opening day. Kyle Schwaber hits the home run, Alec Boehm has a big swing, they led wire to wire, got a little dicey at the end, Phillies made history with a save, but really it's Chris Sanchez. And and to some of the Rangers even commented on the quality of the changeup. When he gets those afternoon starts, and we talk about the shadows, of course, when he gets those afternoon starts at the bank, I I almost start to feel bad for the opposing hitters trying to go up against him. I mean, it is as tough of a matchup as you will find in baseball. He was completely dominant. Uh, three hits. I mean, 10Ks. This guy the the the arc of his career going from somebody who was barely in the bigs, a trade that was honestly panned for a bit because Curtis Meade looked like he was gonna be a breakout prospect for the Rays. Now Meade's been bouncing around the league. It looks like he's gonna be in Washington potentially for a little revenge series this week. Uh he's barely in the league. And Chris Sanchez is a frontline starter. And now your Cy Young favorite, thanks to a certain outing by Paul Skeens on Thursday. So there's a lot of excitement about Sanchez. I think the sky continues to be the limit. I didn't think he could reach last year's highs, but I'm not gonna doubt him an ymore. Nine eat Phillies are 19 and 2, I believe, in their last 21 uh home games that Christopher Sanchez starts. You've been on this since at least last year, maybe even before that. You were telling me about this constantly. Yeah, I mean, he is an absolute joy to watch. Sky, Sky really is the limit when you kind of consider how young he is and how my you know how long he might be in Philadelphia, how we might be talking about this guy when his career is over. Obviously, a long way to go. You gotta stay healthy. There will be some bad seasons uh in there, most likely,. But yeah that was about as encouraging a start as you could have hoped. I love the emotion he showed. You know, he knew he was coming out after the sixth. He gets that last strikeout and it's just yelling on his way uh to the dugout. He crowd favorite for sure. So yes. How did how did the Cy Young odds flip like that, Bunsey, after one start? Isn't that weird? Like Skeens gets shelled there in his first start. Christopher Sanchez is great, but it's like it was one start. You expect them, they were going to make what thirty starts uh if they're in the Cy Young race, but now like you said, Christopher Sanchez plus three hundred to win the Cy Young and Paul Skeens is plus four twenty. Is that is that common? Is that weird? Did that surprise runs? That's like three starts worth of runs for for Paul Stears, though. Yeah. That he gave up. And I know the defense certainly did him no favors on Thursday. Like if you had if you regraded that game and said, well, those were kind of errors by O'Neill Cruz, then you might come up with a different ERA. But when we look in in August and September and we look at the top line and we say Chris Sanchez's ERA is 2.3 and Paul Skeens is 2.7, the difference could honestly be that O'Neill Cruz screwed him out of a few runs uh at that point in the season. So just get ready for the stats that are gonna come out. It's gonna be if you remove opening day, Paul Steen's ERA is one point six since since uh that that opening day game when he couldn't get out of the first against the Mets. Uh I mean I'm not surprised by it though. I mean the gap wasn't that big last year. Uh you know, Chr Chris had a couple bad starts on the road down the stretch where he didn't have his best stuff. That kind of took him out of the race. But I remember at one point in August thinking like, hey, we're only like one or two schemes blow-ups away from this being 50-50. It never got there. But the gap is not that big at this point. And Philly is going to be competitive and we'll see what Pittsburgh looks like uh this season. I know there's a lot of buzz for the Pirates and for myself included. Uh, but a tough opening weekend for them. All right. So everyone, write yourself a note that when if those things come out that if you take away Paul Skeens' opening day start, you need to respond well with well, if you take away Christopher Sanchez's worst start of the season, here's what his numbers would be. Because it's the same thing. Don't let, don't let him, you know, take you down that rabbit hole. Don't fall into that trap. We'll be ready. I know Bunsey will be ready. So let's whenever Cristina Sanchez has a start that looks like his worst start, we will take note of that and we'll make sure the comparisons are even. So fun. Christopher Sanchez, go in the Cy Young. I love it. All right. That was the good, definitely the best thing to come out of the weekend. It was Christopher Sanchez's uh start there on uh on Thursday . Bad. I'm I'm very curious because you are uh a hey, don't get it carried away with this small sample, let's zoom out. So I'm thinking this would be somet hing that if you have it in the bad category, that would be something that you actually have concerns about uh going forward the rest of the season. Maybe I'll be wrong, but that, you know, uh got a pretty good read on you at this point. So what is your bad after the first three games? You know, I gotta say, I wasn't done with the good yet. Oh, oh, you got multiple. I got multiple good things. Bunzy, listen, we just came up with this like nine minutes ago. Okay, so we didn't nail down all the D we can take we can take the listeners behind the curtain The quality of Justin Crawford's at bats I thought were good this week. Interesting. Now I don't I won't necessarily comment on the c quality of the contact that he had. I think there's still a lot of work to be done there. But what I think is at least encouraging about what we saw on opening day, working good at bats, getting a couple hits, yes he gets the bunt infield swinging bunt single on Sunday. But I thought for the most part, and and a peculiar decision, which we'll get to about Rob Thompson in the ninth inning today, uh I thought it for the most part his at bats were competitive. He never looked overmatched and he he faced a tough, you know, slate of pitchers here. Like Texas it was one of the best rotations in the league last year. Uh of course the Evaldi's good. We know DeGram doesn't pitch, but their bullpen's pretty good too. And then you know Gore, who who shoved on the Phillies multiple times last year for Washington. The Phillies can't seem to hit that guy. Um so a tough matchups for him. I thought for the most part though. His his at bats were competitive. Uh he was not overmatched. And I think that's always the risk when you get these rookies that come up. And this year, apparently not. Every rookie is hitting like 500 this weekend. Uh, it's insane. But Crawford to his credit, uh, hasn't really hit the ball hard yet. I think that's what still needs to be seen. But in terms of foul and pitches off, being selective, I liked what I saw from Crawford this weekend. I thought it was an encouraging weekend, uh, even if I remain dubious long term on him. I'm with you this season. I enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the Crawford experience. It's kind of everything we sort of expected it to be, where he literally had he he has not hit a ball hard, I believe, you know, by the uh metrics in three games. So he didn't hit the ball hard. He's not really hitting the ball in the air yet, three hits and a walk in the first four games. As many hits as any other player reaches base four times in three games. I'm with you. You know, today I thought the this game Sunday certainly he he looked a little overmatched in a couple of those at bats where he strikes out. But I don't think that was the Yeah, but I don't think that was the case uh for the three games overall. It didn't look, you know, it looked like his approach was fine. And, you know, this has been his story at kind of every level where you're like, well, he doesn't do this, he doesn't do this, and then you look up and last year he hit what 334 in triple A. I'm not saying he's gonna hit 334 uh in the majors, but this is kind of what it kind of plays tricks on you, where you say, Well, he's actually getting on base a lot, but it does, you know, the underlying metrics don't back up that he's gonna continue to be able to do this. So um I thought it was fun, uh, fun, certainly uh debut for him on Thursday with the two hits. I love that Carl Crawford is can Carl Crawford just go to every game? I mean I love the shots of him every time Justin's up. It's so cool. It's like this guy with this long major league career and his son's out there and he's got the iPhone out and he's trying to get a good angle. And then you see him, he's like breaking down his son's at bat. You can just see this is what he's talking about. Oh man, why you know why do you do that? It's really it's really fun to have him uh have him at these games so I find that to be really fun terrific catch on Saturday uh against the wall there's defense yeah huge yeah I think that's a big that's a big sticking point absolutely look if he's not gonna hit consistently which we'll see The defense has been something the scouts have disagreed with on him for a while. Some have given him great defensive grades, others have given him good, not great defensive grades. Given his alpha offensive profile, he kind of has to play center and the Phillies are kind of banking on him being good in center, because we're gonna get to the rest of the outfield defense in a minute. Uh, because this platoon thing with Marsh and Kemp is off to a bad start, uh, with Kemp playing left field. It is it was an ugly Sunday. Well maybe I'm teasing something. Uh there. Now with that being said though, I mean the defense that play, like I got it got me out of my seat. Yeah. And he caught that 'cause I'm thinking, oh, I thought first I thought it was gone. Like here we go. Then I'm like, okay, it's off the big wall. And then all of a sudden he c he brings it down and I out of my seat. Very excited. So those kind of plays that we saw from from Rojas and Badar Bader, we're seeing from Crawford. That's that's impressive for somebody who's in their first big league weekend and oblyv,ious we saw a lot of bad outfield defense around the league this weekend. So credit to him. Even today, I think he had a throw to second. I don't know if they showed a replay. You know, the one where they he uh he missed the guy yeah just missed him. But um it seemed like it was a pretty I mean it seem it was certainly an accurate throw. I I again we didn't see a replay of how strong it was. I did love Kruk yelling at that one about uh the guy hadn't crossed the home yet and then they had to tell. Duran didn't score, Duran didn't score and T-Max like he slides in safely to second. You know what? It was for a game that didn't have a lot of juice, the broadcast I thought was very good today, where they were keeping me entertained with Crock doing laundry uh and all that stuff that they were talking about with Cole Hammels, I thought was I think uh listen, Mike Schmidt was my favorite athlete uh as a child, my first favorite athlete, my favorite Philly. Um I don't know that he was great at the gig of you know being there for the Sunday games. And I thought Hammels was pretty good. I thought Hammels with Cruck there is pretty good for once a week. You know, they they get into stuff actually about the game, the intricacies of the game, and um that's fun. But then just when they get into storytelling mode, that's pretty fun too. So I don't think I ever thought Cole Hammels would kind of be good at this, but uh, I thought it was pretty pretty fun broadcast. All right, so we're on the same page with Justin Crawford. I will say, Tre y, when Justin Crawford gets on base, can we give him a chance to steal? Like, isn't that part of his uh you know? I got the Trey Channel too. Yeah, I don't know how many times it was, but I there were multiple times where Trey swinging at the first pitch, where I'm like, let's get, listen, Trey, you are a singles hitter now. So let's get Justin Crawford uh to second base in scoring position and let's see his wheels a little bit. So he didn't get a chance to steal a base in these first three games, despite getting on base four times. So that's something I would like to see here in the future as well. But yeah, gets on base 40, 40% of his uh played appearances, he gets on base. Again, I'm not telling you that's going to last, but as far as a debut series goes, um I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience. All right. What do you got? What's ne xt? So this one is a good and and a bad. Uh JT Real Muto had a very interesting weekend in the stat cast metrics world. Uh his bat speed increased considerably. And in fact, since they started tracking this publicly in 2023, his bat speed this weekend was the highest it's been in four years. Really? Wow. See, that's why I love buttons. So you're like whoa, wait, I'm on my eye test, yeah. Right. So did JT find the fountain of youth? Uh what's going on here? You know, now that being said, uh it was matched by the highest swinging strike rate of his career as well. So it was not a great weekend for JT at the plate over all, but we saw increased bat speed. So this is where this gets really challenging, right? Because when we talk about baseball, I'm not gonna come on here and like rip Kyle Schwarber for having a bad weekend at the plate, for striking out a bunch, or even Bryce Harper. Like three games is nothing. I'm not going to go full Tony Vitello, which I don't know if you've been following the saga with the Giants, new manager, but it's incredibly funny . But we can look at some things and the things that stabilize first for pitchers, it's like, okay, how good your stuff? How good your command? Forget like did the batted ball find a gap or not? How good your stuff? How good your command looking crisp. For hitters, it's like all right, bad speed, quality of contact, swing decisions. Those are the things that we can look at right away and say, all right, are we encouraged or not encouraged? Now, the two b ad were I thought just had awful weekends uh at the at the plate. Trey Turner. I mean we, he had a bad spring. And I intentionally didn't talk about it last week because I was like, you know what? A veteran guy who isn't in the WBC when he was there three years ago, he's probably a little bummed that he didn't get the inv ite. He's not playing in it. He's kind of going through the motions. Like he's a vet. He's earned the right to not really care that much about spring training. When you come out first weekend and you're not swinging like you're a singles hitter, you're swinging like your, you know, peak uh you know, bonds up there at the plate trying to pull everything out of the park, grounded into multiple double plays, uh, in front of everything, getting pull happ y, comes up in a big spot yesterday, three straight swings and misses. Terrible.inst Aga pitches in the zone. Like it just felt like his timing was way off. And like, you know, that's early. It's three games. But I was not encouraged. And and Turner talked after the game. He said, you know, three of my best years came after bad springs. So he doesn't, he's not concerned. And I'm not that concerned long term. He's never concerned. What has he ever been concerned? I'd like to be just a little bit more inspired by the leadoff hitter. The leadoff hitter is not inspiring me at the moment. He hasn't inspired me this spring. He hasn't inspired me in the first three games. I'd like to see something from the guy. And I haven't seen he gave us nothing this weekend. I thought just a completely lifeless ser ies. I agree. Yes. Uh if I find him to be uh and this will not come as a surprise to the regular listeners. I just find him to be kind of a frustrating player to watch. And I think it probably just has to do with my initial expectations of what I thought, you know, when he was this monster piece that you're acquire that you're adding after you know the the most fun season in over a decade. Yeah. I had certain expectations for him and he just uh hasn't lived up to it. And again, it's not just the numbers, it is the the dated, you know, a lot of baseball is just sort of the day to day of watching these guys over and over and over again. And like, you know, that is a uh that is it's fun for instance, it's fun to watch Kyle Schwarper every day. Cause even when he's in a slump, you're like, this next wing might just be a majestic bomb, uh, you know, 400 plus feet, and he can do that. And I find more frustration than those moments with Trey Turner. So it's only three, yes, it's only three games. Um, not overreacting, but uh it was not a great three games for Trey Turner. Two hits, uh, no extra base hits, three strikeouts, like you said, bad strikeout in a big spot there uh on Saturday, and so we will see. All right, let's take a break. We come back. So where are we? Are we on the bad? Did we shift to the bad? Is there more good or that was all the good? Well you know, the problem with the good, bad and the ugly is that there's al there's always a little bit of both in the good and the bad, right? Um so we're gonna get to the starting pitching in a minute. Okay and not take a break. We'll come back and Bunsey will walk me through this exercise that you know, it's it's kind of an old podcast staple, but apparently your boy's a little confused here. You know, maybe it's my old age. Maybe Bunsies to blame. I don't know. But we'll see. We'll get through. All right. We'll take a break. We'll come back. It's all of it . The Ringers Philly Scialpe is brought to you by FanDuel. Baseball fans, big hits get even bigger when customers choose their own reward every dinger Tuesday. Bet reset or 50% profit boost? How will you play your game? Maybe you go Bcery Harper, maybe you go Kyle Schwarber. You decide. Make your choice and the reward will be ready to use on your next home run bet. Just visit fanDuel.com slash ringerphilly to choose your reward for home run bets every day dinger Tuesday. Play ball with the home for home runs on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB. 21 plus select states or 18 plus DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming, opt-in required. Rewards are non withdrawable, restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements, and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook dot fanduel dot com. Gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler, call one eight eight eight-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connectic ut. This episode is brought to you by the Home Depot. Spring is starting, so it's time to wake up your yard. And at the home depot, they've got everything you need to do with low prices guaranteed. Mowing your lawn is a dream with top-brand outdoor power tools like the Ryobi 40 volt mower with up to 50 minutes of runtime. 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But I'm like, yeah, I don't think there's a lot of other things I'd rather be doing right now. So um yeah, that that was a little bit. I was thinking about that earlier today, like how much sports have I watched here over the last three days? But you know what? It's been fun. We joked about this last pod, right? The the opportunity cost of the time spent watching the Phillies every year. It's just like, you know what? Well, I had that day Saturday because the two options we we did stuff Thursday and Friday night for the tournament and then Saturday Tate and Sal and they all left. Um so I had two options. It was either Saturday, take the morning flight and lose the whole day traveling or take the red eye. And I had golden nights tickets. Shout out Dan Duva for hooking me up uh tonight's game last night, big hockey guy. And so I was like, all right, I'm gonna go to the game, but what am I gonna do all day? I'm exhausted, it's been a long couple of days, late nights. Uh I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna go to the sports book and I'm gonna sit there and watch sports all day. So 1230, USA Belgium. Got the guy to put it on the top right corner screen to watch us get housed by the Belgians. One o'clock. Phillies Rangers. Got him to put it on the screen near me. Two o'clock, uh three o'clock. First first ball for Iowa, Illinois. I'm sitting with some lovely Iowans, huge fans of the of all the sports teams at Iowa. They were lovely people, very unhappy in the second half. Then I watched the first half of Purdue uh against against Arizona. Then I went to the Knights game, watched hockey. Oh my gosh. And then I took the Uber to the airport. I got to the airport 48 minutes before my flight took off. And no issues. And I thought to myself, that was a hell of a day. Yeah. It really is the best. I I made some friends at the book. I made some friend I went to a an uh the game with a guy I met the night before, just a random dude who came to our watch party and was like a nice guy. So that was like a day of my life. And I thought to myself, what did I accomplish tod ay? Not much. You know, I do find that's life sometimes. Yeah. It's it's it's the goat distraction from you know uh other stuff happening. That's I think that's why, you know, the the listeners to this pod would probably say that that all right, I'm not, you know, I'm gonna be in my car for whatever an hour and I'm not gonna think about work or the world or maybe there's a family thing or a health thing or something. Everything going on. Yeah. It's just like all right, let me listen to these guys talk about the Eagles or the Phillies or the uh whatever for an hour. So yeah, no regrets. It was all good. All right. What do you what do we got? Good, bad, in between, ugly, you lead the way. Well, let let me me let you start. Since you have a different viewing experience with Aaron Nola than I do. Mm-hm m. So what was your experience on Saturday watching N ola? Was it frustration? Was it annoyance? Was it excit ement? It wasn't excitement. No, it was exciting. Five innings? Six innings? What did he get for? Five innings. Three runs. Five innings two sorry three runs so if you look at it it like wasn't worse than Lazardo um today now the home run in the first inning the uh you know experience of watching Enola um i it it's not my favorite. It's probably like, you know, most, it's not like you. It's probably like most people listening where I get it. He's probably gonna give him a ton of innings. Um, you know, there's gonna be some ups and downs. There will be good stretches, there will be bad stretches. This is kind of who he is at this stage of his career. I wasn't ex- I'm not expecting a monster bounce back this year. I'm expecting better than last year, but not a monster bounce back where we're like, oh my gosh, he looks like you know one of their two or three best starters. I don't, you know, I think best case scenario, he's not starting a g ame. Well, I don't know actually. Well we'll s we'll see how the playoffs go. But I don't yeah, I I didn't feel that strongly. I mean, I was, you know, laughing a little bit that he's the the home runs he continues to give out that it's obviously been a major, major issue and that continued just with the second he's on the mound. I you know I was a little hopeful we talked about before that that Italian pride maybe might have kicked in and we see a different guy. All of a sudden, it doesn't look like that necessarily happened. So I can't tell you that I had a strong uh a strong feeling one way or the other, other than this is kind of like a you know pretty usual Aranola experience. But what was your experience? Are there underlying things where you say, Well, let me tell you about this it actually wasn't that bad and I'm excited about the future? That's where I feel like you're going with this, but maybe not. Yeah, I me an the the velocity was pretty good early. It did start to tail off later. And I think that's one thing that they really need to to kind of keep an eye on because he started at a much higher point than last year. The stuff models liked his stuff much better than at this point last year. I went up and pulled up the first month, and Nola's stuff was in the tank uh this time last year. So it is kind of a feeling like he's ahead of sched ule. But I just think that the he's never going to shake the home run problem at this point in his career. He is a guy who throws ninety-two, ninety-three, who fills up the zone more than any pitcher in the league. And every once in a while you're just going to miss your spot by a few inches and it's going to be a ninety-three right down the middle, and good hitters are going to tee that up. They're going to be sitting on the tendency and they're going to hit home runs. You just hope that the home runs come when there aren't people on base. And that really is what determines his success. But 14 swings and misses. I mean, seven strikeouts. This is a Rangers lineup. They will strike out a good amount. They will swing and miss. But I thought the secondary stuff was really good for Knowles. And I I think that's encouraging as well. So I agree fully with what you said. We're like, I'm not getting back to pretend that this is gonna become twenty eighteen Aranola or even the twenty twenty, you know, uh f two Aaronola is gonna walk through the door, right? But uh I do think that it is reasonable to say that he now has a much higher floor with the stuff he's showing because of the swings and misses, because of the ability to get out of jams. I mean, when he walks the first two gu ys in, I think it was the third inning uh on Saturday, I'm a little, you know, like, all right, that's very unusual. I mean we see Aaron Nola walk back to back guys almost never. And then he was able to pitch his way out of it. Gets a little bit of help from the defense, but but able to pitch his way out of it in ways that I'm not sure he would have done last year. I think last year you might have seen it unraveling. So the fact that he didn't was encouraging. Then of course Berger tags him off the foul pole. But ultimately, uh, I think encouraging signs that Nola can be a perfectly good like number three starter for this team this ye ar. All right. I want to introduce a segment called I'm Just a Guy Asking Questions. Okay. Okay. Just thinking about this on the fly because of a couple things you've said so far. I'm just a guy asking questi ons what is Aaron Nolis trade value and does he have a no trade c lause? Ooh I don't think he has a no trade clause. All right Cliff's laughing. Well here's what I'm thinking. All right because because here's my second question with I'm just a guy asking questions. What is Trey Turner's trade value? And does he have a no trade class? Because here's I I'm looking at Aaronola has a full no trade. He has a full no trade. Okay. Well I guess you never know what he would want. I'm sort of just looking at the strengths and weaknesses of this roster and what assets they have if they you know, because we thought last offseason, oh my gosh, they like after the way they lost last year, they're gonna shake things up. They're not gonna run it back. And it's not that they're totally running back, but they're mostly running it back. They're running back. Jason's Jason Stark had a column where he's kind of like, this is unprecedented to have like this many. Your lineup looked this similar for four years in a row, basically. He was going through all the teams that have done that. So I was just thinking about as I watched Turner, you know, and I know the war was great last year, and I'm not, you know, he hit over 300 and he's uh can run and some people love his defense. I was just wondering, like, you know, he signed that monster contract. Is this a time to because I feel like we don't have this these conversations in baseball. Like, if this were an NBA team, you know, we would be having those conversations. Like, all right, well, what could they potentially do? Well, can we get the lottery machine, trade machine, cooking? Or or just like is there a um, you know, power hitting outfielder that a team would move for Trey Turner? Is there a power hitting third baseman that a team would say, send us Aaronola and Alec Bohm and we'll give you this guy? You know, it's different parts of the roster where I've just, you know, I I I as you were talking and I was thinking about that watching the team um over the weekend, because like you know, there are guys you know that you're not gonna move, obviously, the your your top end. Starters, you're not gonna move, Harper, you're not gonna move, Schwarber, you're not gonna move, and then there are guys who have no value, real muto. You're gonna like you're not gonna trade those guys. Boom, it seems like would just have to be a throw-in with something else. You're not, you know, they've been trying to trade boom for two plus years and they haven't been able to trade. both So I was thinking about Trey Turner and Aaron Nola specifically in that context. Would these guys be assets that another team would potentially trade for where maybe you get a little I don't know if you're getting younger or you just you're filling a hole that you have on the who plays shortstop for the Phillies is the problem. Can Brighton because Mundo play second base ? You want a mundo to play every day? I don't know. It depends whom who am I getting for Trey Turner. If I'm getting a certain level of player, then yes, I'm fine. You know, he he played extended stretches last year. And I'm not saying he's amazing, but it's like he didn't kill you. I wasn't worried about I mean, I thought his defense today was tremendous, had Mundo. It was like a reminder. Great defense right there at second base. So I don't think that would be something that would necessarily kill you if you move stopped to short and in window for second, uh to second, if you're getting better, if I'm getting something I want at another place. That's all. Yeah, I think the problem is most teams just have a short stop. Um Okay. And it's very rare that they're just gonna move for a new one mid season. Like you rarely see short stops that are good. Like everyday players get moved uh in season because of that. I mean, if you go around the league, you won't find a team that's competitive, that doesn't have like okay, this guy's our short stuff. And like the Dodgers had that problem and they were like, okay, we're gonna teach Mookie Betts to play it. Like that's how we're gonna play it. Still doesn't get enough grade. It is crazy. Yeah. Doesn't but I think that that part is hard. No, NOLA is a different story because there's such a uh a shortage of pitching right around the league. Uh, but the no trade makes it pretty tough. I can't imagine you'd want to trade away pitching because again, the problem with the Phillies, as much as we love the rotation, as much as the rotation amassed more war than every other team in the league last year, they don't have a lot of depth. Like, God forbid one of those guys goes down. Yeah, that's true. Who's the seventh starter on the Philli es? Like, are they stretching out Alan Ron Hell? We love Ron Alan Ron Hell, but like I don't know if I want him starting every five days for the Phillies. So yeah, I mean there's just not a lot of upper miners pitching depth. I mean they traded able, uh, but Gary didn't really turn out. He's gone now. So there's just not a lot of upper miners pitching depth to trust that if they were to trade away a guy like Nola who's gonna go you know 100 eighty innings every year, two hundred innings, those are hard innings to replace, as much as we all pan him because he gives up a home run every third inning, maybe every second inning. Uh it's it's it's it's kind of the the price, the cost of doing business. So I think it's just much harder. And that's the inertia that this team has suffered from. We've talked about this. Every year we say, oh, there's no way they can run it back. But then when you actually sit down and try to actually figure out, okay, how can we maneuver this? It's really hard. I mean, they built a team that is not very flexible. Uh, and and they're they're kind of paying the price for that, not just on the field, but I think with with the fan base, there's a lot of frustration. We've we've seen all the warts of these players now. We all know we have the they we watch them every day. They have the same tendencies, they have the same flaws. It's almost kind of fun. Like when Adolis Garcia swings at a bad pitch, you're like, oh, that's new. I haven't seen him do that very often. Whereas when Nick Cassianos did it left for like three years, you're like, oh, here we go again. Right. Uh, you just have seen the same thing. Trey Turner, it's funny, Ray Dunn texted in our group ch at, our hot stove Phillies group chat. He said uh guy next to me yelling about how Trey's about to ground into a double play with one out in the ninth. And then three seconds later, Trey ground it into a double play, right? So like we've just seen that JT's got the same problem. Uh like we've just seen these guys have these same flaws for so long that you know, we we're just not by we're not surprised by anymore. We just accepted this as our f ate. All right. If Zach Wheeler comes back healt hy and you got Wheel er, uh Sanchez and Lazardo, let's just keep keep that in our back pocket. All right. I think that was a success ful first uh installment of I'm just a guy asking questions. What do you think? I think that worked out. I like it. I like it. Throw some of those at you throughout the season. Can I do one to you? Ple ase. I'm just a guy asking questions, but is APS not incredibly fun and even more fun than the implement implementation of the pitch clock incredible in it adds incre it added so much excitement i mean this was on my list. was I like when, is when is he gonna get to this? Uh I find it to be so exciting. I find it to be hilarious. I find it to be interesting as we've talked about who's gonna do it, when are they gonna do it? Who has the authority to do it uh so it starts out in the opener and Zach Pop's just like this is my time I'm challenging this and I'm like Zach I'm like did somebody tell Zach Pop he was allowed to do this? Is he going rogue? What is happening here? He challenges a pitch. Uh, which it was fine to challenge, you know, I actually thought it was fine to challenge it when he did, but I just was surprised that he was the one to do it. He lost there. Uh, you mentioned JT earlier and you know you were talking about it in spring training. Jason Stark was talking about in spring training. It's like he doesn't have the framing, but does he have the special eye? And he's on fire. What'd he go? Three for three when he challenged the last two games. So those were those were very exciting. Then you had Schwarber on Saturday. He uses it. He's wrong. And then the next pitch he gets called out where it's like, I think he could have used it there on the called third strike. He didn't. He didn't have it. He didn't more. So that was interesting as well. Like, does he learn? Is next time is he like, I'm only using this uh if it's on a called third strike? I also don't know who are they, what ground rules have they laid with this? You know, because Schwarber when he was asked about it, it seemed like he was pretty well informed about like it he wasn't talking about talking about it like someone who hadn't thought about this or who had who no one had talked to about it, um, his process for doing it. So yeah, and then did you sa I'm sure you saw the Reds game, right? Oh yeah. There was a guy two s two rows in front of me at the sports book just losing his mind, Red Sox fan. Like he was a boomer type. So it was like what is this ABS B S kind of thing? And I he probably had money on them too. So he was just livid. And uh Bill was texting us about it. Uh Bill, Billy Gill and me in a baseball group chat about the ABS and how it's revolutionizing baseball and how he's so excited about it. And he's like, this is riveting television. And I said this is somet hing riveting. And tennis, you know, had the same thing. They had the challenge system for years and then they went away from the challenge and they went straight to the automatic robots. Like they just have these computers that call the lines and they have like an automatic AI voice that says out when it goes out. It has taken away from the sport. I miss the challenge. I think there should be challenges. It adds a nice fun wrinkle. It adds the drama and the anticipate anticipation. Like the crowd does the clapping and they get all excited. And it's like, oh, it was out. And then when it's really close, they zoom in and you' youre're like oh wow that missed by in you know in baseball it's like 0.1 inches or in in tennis it's like two millimeters in out. Um it adds drama in ways that I was excited about. I didn't think I realized how much fun it would be to literally feel like an entire crowd of people is just trolling the umpires. Like on what in what sport do we ever get to just sit there and have the umps repeatedly, like the referees, the umps, the officials, just repeatedly wrong and just like hey again and then they just have to stand there and take it. Yeah. So for so for those who didn't see the red scheme, uh first of all, Google it because it's incredible, it's incredible footage. Uh Eugenio CB Buckner Suarez uh challenges a pitch and it was CB Buckner, right? Yeah. Two two pitch. Yeah. So so it's two two pitch. He challenges it, gets it right. Crowd starts. I mean, they' theyre're amped. They're so excited about this. Next pitch called third strike. He challenges it again. And now the crowd's like, are we gonna get back to back? And then they they show the graphic on the screen. The crowd, the only thing I can compare it to is when they shoot t-shirts at the Sixers game and it's like the most exciting, you know, like well, Brickin for Chicken is the last bricking for chicken as well. It's like that the crowd is whipped into a frenzy. Like people are giving high fives. Even the announcer was like, this is the mo this is the loudest the crowd has been all day, and they've hit two of them runs today. I mean, they're going nuts. And I think the presentation is great. It hasn't taken long. Okay, so that was that was a concern that I'm gonna out. You challenge the screen, it says three, two, one, they show it, and then I love they're showing me the exact distance, Bunsey, because this adds a comedic value. Like the uh the Rangers, I think it was the Rangers, right? Challenge one today. And like it was yeah, their catcher and it wasn't even close. And the broadcast is laughing. They're like, oh my gosh, that one was like over, you know, that was almost two inches outside. And he was challenging that first strike. But then there are the ones where it's literally a tenth of an inch. And it, I even I forget who it was, but you could tell it might have been Suarez, where he was like about to just turn around and yell at the ump. Like his instinct was to be, you know, just and he was like, wait, I can challenge this. And then he and then he taps his helmet two times. Uh, baseball has absolutely nailed it with the rule changes over the last three years. And for this step, I'm sure there are going to be hiccups that I haven't thought about, but so far, absolute home run, adds excitement. The fans in stadium love it. As a viewer on TV, I love it as well. So two thumbs up for me. Yeah, we were talking through potential like hiccup scenarios and it's like what happens? Three, two count, right? Ball four, guy gets caught stealing, but it was actually strike three. Like if there's like a weird in between there, do you send the guy back? Because he thought it was gonna be a ball, but it was actually a strike. It's like then there was there's some questions, but uh we haven't seen it yet. It's been exciting. I I think that you know, like I said, baseball has done such a good job of finding ways to incorporate narrative and drama and anticipation into the sport. It's what baseball has always been known best for. And you even see it with Mason Miller now has a walk-up or entrance music, right? All the closers now, like if you're good closer and you don't have entrance music now, you're lame. Like you need to have a good song and good like light show you know we have ours the Mets uh I don't know if the Mets have a new one with with with Williams but the Dodgers took the trumpets from the Mets we took Elon Comprendido from the twins. Mason Miller now has one. So it's very uh exciting to see baseball embracing short form video content virality too, Sheel. I mean in a lot of ways, like all these videos we're seeing are short form videos that are. Oh, I thought you were talking about me. You you're not talking about it. I wasn't watching Red's Red Sox. Okay. I wouldn't have been watching it, but that little clip goes viral and you're like, wow, you know, in Cincinnati today, the crowd went wild. In San Diego, everybody's really excited because Mason Miller has a great walkout music now and he gets a big save for the for the Padres. So yeah uh the baseball's so back Shield so back. I mean yeah I found it to again the games weren't even good that the Phillies played but I was into I was uh you know I probably watched every pitch uh almost these uh these three days. Now, Cliff, I did think when he was talking about short form vertical video, he was talking about me with the blow-up fanatic there uh on the lawn. I noticed he didn't include that. Uh should my feelings be hurt about that. I didn't see that. You see it? This man stood in front of a blow up a Philly a Philly fanatic doll. You well, you know it,'s Philly season. Time is here. I'm gonna enjoy the season. I gave Buns a shout-out for that cli in that one. Yeah, yeah. You gave me my shout-out too. You got your stuff. Yeah, yeah, but I'm surprised you may see it. Yeah, it was funny though. Keep it coming, man. Engagement driver. I got a message from Cliff that these you know, these videos are outperforming his expectations. I think. So in terms of numbers or qual ity? Both. I mean, Dave, like the quality of these are really good. You just put your phone up, making sure the thing is good. You getting right to it, get right to your point. No, no sugarcoat, nothing. Engagement driver. People are excited. I'm looking at the page literally right this second. There's a bunch of comments and whatnot. Nah, man, these are good, man. Keep it up, brother. Keep it up. Listen, we have uh as as the listeners know, the loyal listeners know, when we get to 3,000 followers for Philly Special and 10,000 for my account on Instagram. You get the video of me making the smoothie that I make every morning for breakfast, Bunsey. So I don't know if you're gonna be in Vegas or at a wedding or whatever for that one. I need you know, weend can s that one to you personally so that you don't mention it. Cliff, we gotta remember to do that. You know, maybe just send it to the Oh I I won't miss it. I won't miss it. I'm home for I'm I'm look, it's rare I miss things online, Sheel. It's right. I listen that, is true. Bunsey will text us stuff and he'll have a whole third to himself where I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't, you know. I was confused how how you were confused about the de Gram text. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory. So I texted it. What was it? Saturday morning at like 8 30. I think it was eleven thirty Eastern. I texted she like DeGrom's gonna be scratched today. And then I was like, hashtag Tony Scoops is back. And uh and you were like, I don't understand this. I was like, I don't you know, that felt like that was pretty self-explanatory. You know, you didn't say your wording on that. I didn't know if you were using some type of slang that I didn't, because you didn't so you didn't say degram is scratched. I don't know if you just said the gom de gram's gonna scratch. Would you have said that? I don't hear all right now we gotta go to the I gotta check. Because the way you said it, 'cause you do have some baseball vernacular that I not I don't necessarily know uh all about. So I think that's what had me uh a little bit confused here. Let me see. I'm gonna I'm going beyond Cliff saying Zach Pops, Jordan Romano this year. I'm going you know Okay. De you said your sources say DeGrom will scratch today. So will scratch. You know, I feel like yeah is gonna be scratched or is scratched today or I don't will scratch. I didn't know like it's scratch something that I'm not familiar with other than he's not gonna pitch. But that's probably on me, but that's okay. I was trying to get a pump in like Cliff, you know, on a nice Saturday. Yeah. You know. We gotta do that. I had planned to go for a running better, you know. I'm training for the Broad Street run right now and I was supposed to do a run in Vegas. Too damn hot. Too hot. No. No no Vegas runs for me. There you go. All right. ABS, fantastic. What else do we got, Bun sey? Jesus Lozardo uh ran into a home run issue as well. The Phillies got cooked by the long ball. Uh but I I mean I thought the stuff was really good. Now hit the command numbers were not great, but uh I I was very impressed by the swings and misses. Fifteen swings and misses for Lazardo, the strikeouts were there. Strikeouts to walk ratio continues to be the most predictive stat for any pitcher ever. And so giving up a few homers in March to you know some some red-hot Andrew McCutcheon, who knew, uh, thought he was retiring. Uh came out of nowhere. Didn't even realize he made the Rangers until Wednesday. So with Lazard o, the key thing to watch as always, and I've said this before, is just the fastball velocity because his fastball is not one that on its own has impressive ride. It's one that relies on its velocity to kind of sneak up on hitters to get by hitters. Uh and you did see him run into a little bit of trouble with it, getting hit hard. And when you go back to last season, most of his struggles came hitters jumping that fastball early in counts. And I think that's one thing to watch with him. But when he's able to get ahead and use those secondaries, he is just wiping dudes away with whiffs. And I it's so impressive to watch. Um so even on a day when he I guess technically give up six runs because of the uh Garcia error and a couple of poorly timed homers, no concerns at all about Lazardo off of one start here. He's just gonna give up six runs every like fifth outing, sixth outing, and then dominate the other ones. I'm okay with that. Yeah, it's fine. Um yeah, I'm I'm mostly with you. I don't want to be a hypocrite after be you know our Aaron Nolan discussion, but um yeah, I mean he looked incredible like other than when he was giving up those home runs I thought he looked incredible uh even early on they're like oh my gosh like look you know look at this um so I thought uh it was fine it was unfortunate if he was someone who pitched poorly in the playoffs last year, then I'd be like, you know, I don't know if you can uh trust him, but that was certainly not the case. So yeah, it goes back to what you were saying in the offseason where he had like a few you know a few of these starts last year that kind of messed up his overall numbers, but the underlying stuff was very encouraging that this is a top-end uh starter. So seven strikeouts, uh one walk in this game, and I feel like he'll bounce back. And because I did I will I was like, man, should they have should they have Adam McCutcheon? Like man, he just he just uh ripped that one. Uh Can he still play left? If he could, he might play better left than Otto Kemp. That was the ugly. Okay, that's your ugly. Yeah, that was tough. I mean, didn's not even close to tracking these flyballs. Yes, it did, right? It was like he's a few. Yeah, and he it's one thing if you get close and you try to take away a a hit. But he wasn't even close on either of those. And one led to a run score and the other one cutch was probably always getting a double out of it. But just complete misplays, and it's your home park to o. Right? It's one thing if you're in a foreign park on the road and that's like you know, you misplay a ball, it takes a weird caram off a wall, you're not used to it. Citizens Bank Park is one of the easiest places to play outfield in the in the league. It's a small outfield. There's only really a problem with that weird center field wall uh in the left center field, and Kemp just completely overrunning boss and having them squirt by him, like it cannot happen. He's not that athletic out there. His arm's not great. And if their plan is to run this plato on, they're gonna need better defense. I I Kemp's gonna have to really hit to make up for that defense. Like I one of my takes preseason that I tweeted, I don't know if I talked about on this show, but this outfield uh continues to disappoint. And that's one of my bigger, bigger takeaways from the opening weekend. This outfield is just could it's it's the biggest weakness. It's it's not it shouldn't be as hard as it's been to fix. And I'm concerned that they're gonna go come into the trade deadline like 23rd in outfield war, 24th, 25th. And we're like, okay, how can we upgrade the outfield again for like the third straight year? Last year it worked. They got beta, right? But this year, who know s? Well, we covered Crawford already. U h Marsh looked good, I thought, at the plate. Brandon Marsh is a good we we've been over this. Brandon Marshall football player. Yeah. Valuable. Now if you use him correctly. Right. He only plays against righties. He's a good defender. Yeah. Just don't overexpose him. Don't make him an everyday center fielder. Don't make him face tough lefties. Yeah. That's okay. You can have you can be a not quite full time player, a two thirds player, and be very valuable to a baseball team. You're not gonna you know be win MVP awards. You're not gonna get $100 million contracts unless you're Nick Castellanos. Uh but you can be a pretty effective player. That's what Marsh is. Yeah. No no doubt I mean he's yeah, he had as many hard hit balls as anyone on the team. He had what a couple doubles uh in the one game. He's a good left fielder. You don't want, like you said, don't want him in center field. He's a good energy guy. He's a good teammate. So Brandon Marsh good at baseball, but it doesn't solve your problem when the other team is pitching a lefty uh a lefty and they don't really have a solution for that in left field right now. And I that that yeah, I'm with you. That should be one that shouldn't be that hard. It's like the you're not looking for a full-time starter. Like you can't find anyone who's better than Otto Kemp as a uh Plato player. Now, I imagine by the time we get to July, August, that hopefully they will have done something and that will look a little different. Now we'll have a lot more data on Crawford at that point as well. But uh yeah, I'm with you. That's not great. I think they face a lefty on Monday as well. Uh, I believe. So, you know, it it is gonna um surface uh a bunch of times until they figure it out. And then Garcia, you haven't really mentioned yet. Were you this isn't a great now I guess. Impression. What did you think? Uh I wasn't that I I thought like, okay. I mean, he hit a couple balls really hard today. He hit I mean he smoked that ball today, and he had another really hard hit ball today. So he hit a couple uh balls really hard. He got the lucky, you know, uh burger, drops the foul ball, but then he comes back with a double in that spot. Uh in the outfield, I don't know. You lose one in the sun. I can't just Just yeah that happened. So yeah, I'm not gonna go crazy over that. He had the sliding catch, which wasn't you know, like as good as the Crawford catch, but at least it was something there. So I'm in wait and see mode. Listen, if you're gonna uh if you're gonna have a guy who you're not sure of, at least make it a jacked guy. You know what I mean? Just where we can dream of man, if he actually connects on one of these, it's gonna go flying. So I'm mildly intrigued. I wouldn't say overly optimistic. It would be where I am with Gar cia. Yeah, I would probably be a little less intrigued, but a little bit hopeful, maybe. Okay. I don't know I didn't see much from him this weekend that suggested a real difference from what we saw last year or two years ago in Texas where yes he can still hit the ball hard when you get when he gets pitches in the zone to to slug he can still do that but uh the defense was certainly improved. The catch he made in right field was excellent. Uh underrated, and I think one thing that he gets credit for, and can actually hurt the outfielders in the perception of the fans, is when you get a really good jump, you make difficult plays look easier than they actually are. And he did an excellent job on that play getting a good jump to the point where most guys don't even get to it. The fact that he gets to it is is a is a plus and then he makes the play is like a plus plus. So yeah, definitely an improvement in the outfield defensively there. You know, lose a ball in the sun, that happens. But uh the plate stuff, a lot of swing and miss still for him. No, no, like at his age, the swing and miss doesn't tend to go in the other dire ction. Doesn't tend to trend positively at 33 plus and had already been trending negatively for two ye ars. We're gonna need to see a pretty big change, I think, for this to be successful. But I'm hopeful as always hope so i mean it's a tough it's a tough one just because it's not like anybody had you know i haven't talked to anybody who had like big expectations for it was like this is a big you know this is gonna be a big risk. He can be better than Castellanos in some ways. It sounds like he's a much better um sort of clubhouse guy uh than Castellanos was. And you know, so so was fired up for him and their boys and then he ends up getting the hit. So I like that. But in terms of it's like you kind of know I'll I'm with you at this stage of his career, you mostly know what you're gonna get. Can he connect on twenty-five home runs and play good defense and then he's gonna have those frustrating bats, but maybe he can come through in some big spots. That's kind of what you're hoping for from Garcia. Um , you mentioned the lefty thing. You haven't mentioned the lineup yet. What do you think? We talked about this in the preview where Turner, Schwarber, Harper, and then Stott against righties batting fifth, which I think you alluded to in our uh in our preview episode there. What did you think of that as sort of the lineup to start out the se ason? So what I would do. Uh I thought Bryson Stott, since we're gonna be watching Stott now closely, I guess we're gonna have to do this. So he had a couple line drives the other way. Which I think is really the one thing we're looking for. We have had so many lazy flyouts. So for every time he doesn't for every time he hits a ball the other way that is not a routine can of corn for the left fielder, that is something worth being appreciative of. I I really don't ever think it's gonna improve. We've we've got a pretty big sample of what it is for Bryson Stott, but if he's able to better optimize that contact quality skills, you can see that. And I thought I thought we saw a little bit of that this weekend. Uh overall, I would give Stodd a pretty good pretty good start to the year. Uh now Turner Schwarbern Harper sunk all weekend. If they sink all year, then the Phillies are a bad baseball team. But come on, I I I'm not gonna overreact to three games with those guys. So I'm willing to flush those three games down the toilet. Again, we are not Tony Vitello. We're on to Washington. Bad pitching staff coming to Philly. Uh good chance for the for the offense to get right here. Weather looks great. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I'm making my my debut. Andrew Payner makes his debut at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday. So there's a lot of excitement and a potential get right here with uh the Rockies and the Nationals on the schedule the next nine days. Three hard hit balls for Stott or the series. Yep. And that has, you know, we we've talked for a long time. He doesn't hit the ball hard. That's the thing it takes a lot for me to for ch change an opinion on a vet. Yeah. Usually I'm like, eh, just throw it in the average. We've seen enough of this guy. We know what he is now. But I'm I'm encouraged and and in fact I'm getting a lot of of crap in the group chat about it. Friends who were saying, you know, I thought you had morals, thought you had beliefs. Can't believe you turned on st turned into the pro stat because we kind of been anti-stat stat. I think the there's a little bit of the fan base has really liked the guy and like I like the guy. He's easy to root for. He's been a he's been a great Philly, he's come up in big moments and had big hits. He's got the walk-up song, all that stuff. And I think a lot of people have wanted him to be more than he has been as a Philly. And they just keep expecting, like, oh, this is this is it's gonna happen now. It's gonna happen now. And we've always been kind of like the Like the I don't know about that. And now I've turned, I've joined the crew. It's like ah not so fast, Sheel, not so fast. I'm in. I like it. I and I also like how you, you know, now the a great storyline for me as a viewer is your note about when he goes opposite field, low ball flight, and when he's pulling it, uh try to launch it for uh extra base hit. Other other over the shortstop over Cal today. Nice little ye.ah Base hit. That one's surprised me uh as well. Okay. So thumbs up on Bryson Stott. All right. You got anything else for us, Bunsey, or should I hit you with some of my leftovers here? That's all I got. Okay. Uh all right. So we head to Washington . On to Washington. I'm with John Harper. Did not look good. It is three games. I'm not gonna he did walk twice today where I was like, wait a minute, what happened to this thing about yeah, the whole I don't know if he's gonna get to a hundred and fifty walks. Like he said, at least he walked a couple times. Um, today, real Muto. We talked about Crawford. We talked about uh how about the bullpen on Saturday? How about Jose Alvarado's initial uh initial appearance. That looked very good on uh on Saturday. Banks looked good uh on Saturday. Keller got in there today, so still remain bullish. The main guys looked good. Yes, not the guys you're throwing out the main guys down five. Pop and Backis come in, they stink uh, you know, yeah. That is what it is. Uh somebody texted me so much for the improved bullpen, and I said, Well, I mean, like if Zach Pop and Kyle Backis are pitching big innings for the Phillies this year. Something has gone very wrong. Uh I thought Duran looked sharp. I know that he threw wild pitch. He, you know, these guys have an unbelievable ability to get these weak soft contact bloops, choppers, and you know, and sometimes it's actually like nobody ever squares you up. So the weak contact fine singles like Langford gets the blooper that goes over Harper's head, then the wild pitch, uh Kutch gets one that gets past Turner and all of a sudden you give up two runs. You're like, Ha, how did that just happen? Uh not exactly sure. So that that's dunk, but yeah, Alvarado, Banks, Bolin, and Keller all looked good over the weekend, I thought. Pop Back is not quite as much. So, you know, I think Zach Pop is now put himself in the prime position that when Orion Kirkring makes his return, Pop is probably the first guy that gets sent out. Uh and then eventually Zach Wheeler returns. We assume Walker's gonna go to the bullpen. That probably sends Mesa out or Bacchus, one of the lefties. It was a tough start for Kyle, but uh they do like his kind of weird delivery that he's got going. But when you have the weird delivery and you stink , that makes me dislike you more. Like if you're gonna be a gadget guy, you gotta be good. Yeah, it's uh yeah, like you said, the guys who they are actually going to pitch, I still remain very bullish on, and the other ones uh,, you know, back us so be and pop. Yeah, we don't we don't need to uh spend too much time. On that wheeler, you mentioned Wheeler did pitch for Lehigh Valley, so that's good. Arrow continues to point uh up on that. I don't remember if we mentioned it last pod or not. Now I can't remember who said it. If it was uh if it was ESP, one of those preview things I read, they had on the record, one of the big baseball guys was like, they expect Wheeler in mid-April to make his debut with the Phillies, where I hadn't really seen a specific date with that before. So sorry, I'm usually better about a tri uh uh attribution. I don't know if it was passing, I don't know if it was the only, I think it might have been only, but I was like, oh, that's pretty exciting as well. I'll uh I'll say that well we have to we haven't mentioned Matt Gelb's name yet, so I'll say that yeah we were texting he said he he thinks mid April as well. Well see you can't do that to Bundo because he didn't say that uh did he say that on the record? Like are you allowed to use that on the record? I think he said it I think he said it on the record too, 'cause there was talk in a group chat about it. So I'm gonna assume that he said that on their pod. I have not listened, but uh mid April. Got the clubs coming to town, that's a big series. All right. You might have to send a follow-up text. I don't want you getting in trouble. You know, just make sure we're allowed to use that uh in the pod there. All right. The other only other thing we wanted to talk about, I think, was just this uh John Middleton intervie w he gave where the red wine was just sloshing around and it was really mesmerizing. You just kept looking at it, going, is that gonna spill? Is that gonna end up on a shirt? Is that gonna end up somewhere el On Tim Kelly, our good friend Tim Kelly's sports. There you go. Yeah. I mean it could I I was I was texting, I said this is might be his Apex Mountain. I mean he the fact that he avoided getting the wine spilled on him. He got this very newsworthy close up interview. I mean, how often are we that close to Top Middleton with the uh the wine flowing? That was funny. Yeah. So we talked about three times. I know it it it really was mesmerizing. All anyone could talk about was the wine uh afterwards. But he was asked about the Harry Callis stuff, which we talked about um on the last episode. Uh and yeah, I'm glad you uh you uh attribution to Tim Kelly on this, and then the quotes obviously were in the AP story, but um John Middleton said the yearly payments that they were making to the Callis family for Harry the Case. He said, the money we saved, it's going to maybe buy some napkins or something like that. It's not serious, serious money. We're not going to go out and buy a new player. Now, the money that blank is paying us, that can fund a player, he said, to which I say, okay, I need to see that. I would like to see that. Which player is it funding? Maybe an outfielder. Maybe it solves your outfielder problem. I don't know. So you had that. Now this thing has gotten kind of ugly um to be fair here, because Matt Breen of the Inquirer caught up with Harry Callis' widow, who said taking down that sign takes away everything he did for the city. Eileen Callis said, I think they betrayed Harry. It's not about me. It's about what they're doing to Harry. I think they betrayed him for everything he did for them. Phillies declined to comment. Uh, Eileen Callis says they paid them $20,000 a year to use the likeness uh for Harry the Kays there. They will pay her again this season because they missed the deadline to break the contract. They told her they will not pay her in 2027, but said, hey, expect to continue celebrating wins, you know, with high hopes. And I know there's no we saw the statue. Well Eileen Callis, you know, Cliff said this in our group ch at. Said CTC. You wanna keep using high hopes? Maybe everybody put a little money in the Kellas family's pocket if you want to play that. So that's kind of where we are. She says she feels betrayed for Harry and everything he gave to the fans. She said there's always a compromise. You could have had the, you know, blank energy deck at Harry the Caves, which I mentioned last week. And she said everyone would have been happy. It would have been a winin-w. So this thing has gotten a little ugly. Um, I think it's certainly, if nothing else, has been a very clumsy execution by the Phillies. Now, whether it's you're really wronging Harry Callis when you're still honoring him at other parts in the ballpark. I don't know about that. I just told you last time that there's sort of, you know, the connection to this specific person is gonna be different than if you do other things at the ballpark um you know where you're you're changing and uh adding sponsorship and taking money like there's the clock capitalism yeah you know there do you care about the clock I don't care about the clock at all do you care about the clock I don't care about the clock. Don't care about the out of town scoreboard. No, don't care about the out of town scoreboard. So again, we came, I think, from a similar place with this uh last time where it's we understand it's okay, you know, sell out when you need to sell out 'cause you as long as you stay top five payroll in major leagues, I'm good with it. They have tried to win. This isn't a that hasn't been a franchise under Middleton where you're like, oh man, they're ducking stuff. Winning has been important to them. I think they just sort of missed the boat on this one. And there could have it feels like there could have been a much easier solution to this, which would not have made people upset. So I don't know where they go from here. Maybe they don't go anywhere. Maybe Bunsey isn't able to sing high hopes next year. Um, I would think there's gotta be someone in the organization who can try to smooth this thing over and they come up with a way where they, you know, they could even come out and say, all right, we shouldn't have done that. We made a mistake, we're gonna honor Harry by doing this or something. Or I I feel like there's a solution there that they'll eventually have to come to because you don't want to have a fractured relationship to again, he didn't play for the team, but really an icon when you think of um generations of Phillies fans. So I mean there's no other former player outside of like what, Richie Ashburn because of Ashburn Alley ? Like am I missing something that they don't have to do anything? Well yeah In the stadium that is so f so regularly referenced every you know between the statue and the high hopes and the the bar there's no player that has that left like Mike Schmidt doesn't have that. He's the most famous, most accomplished Phillies player of all time, right? So you know I think it falls a little hollow when you when you it does feel a little sour grapesy from from Harry's widow. So I that part of it for me, it's like uh okay. I don't think it tarnishes his legacy with the Phillies or like the Phillies are tarnishing his legacy. I don't necessarily agree with that because again, there still is a statue, his son still sings the anthem all the time at the games. They still play his song after every game. Even friends from out of town are like don't know who Harry Callis was to the level of like you know we do who who come to Phillies games with me. They're like , like who is that? Right? They like don't really know necessarily. Yeah. And I have to explain it. Like he was the broadcaster until 2008. Like we're going on 18 years here now. So I get all of that. But I'm also of the belief that like there was so much of a better way to handle this. And Middleton making jokes about napkins. I mean that's just very out of touch, out of cat like it's kind of 20 grand. Listen, a lot of your fans are put 20 grand in their pocket. A lot of a lot of your fan base that's you know paying tickets, yes. But you know, that to me is like just c you know, I don't know what to prep professional sports owner on the scale of things they can say to embarrass the fan base that you know that doesn't even register. But yes, it it certainly is not the best way to handle it there. Did I tell you they called about about uh last week about going from partial to full season tick ets? No. They called me. They were like, have you any interest in going from partial to full season ticket plan? Guy was trying to give me the I was like, give me your best sales pitch. Give me a minute on what I got 'cause I was it was always gonna be a no. Because like I you know, I don't have that kind of money nor do I wanna spend eighty one nights a year at Citizens Bank Park or have friends who are gonna join in on the on the fun of that, but I was like, Give me your best sales pitch. I was like, why should I be excited about the Phillies? I wanted to see what the guy had. You know, what did he have? Okay. I was overall, I give him like a B minus. It was a decent pitch. But uh but yeah What was the pitch? Not not he just kind of gave me the the reasons to be so excited. He started like giving me all the the accolades of the players and stuff and like why there's some why this deer is gonna be different. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. And then he mentioned the all-star game. That they're they're really selling the all-star game as their big selling point. It's like just because I have season tickets doesn't get me access necessarily to that either. They're still gonna be thrown in the lottery. I'm I didn't say that. I just th thought that. I was a little busy when you call. But uh I took the call and I I pul I respectfully declined and I said uh you know, between work and and having a life like I don't really have that kind of time. And then the guy said, Oh, maybe your company would like to go in on uh seats at the I said, I don't think you're very interested. I picture Cliff, I picture this guy giving Bunsey the pitch, and then Bunsey's like, I don't know about that. You know, Andrew Payne is, you know, like spin rate is I think you're a little too optimistic and he starts breaking in like well I don't I don't know Justin Conference of rookies? Yeah go full George Costanza he'll just bring up the most irrelevant effects I didn't know who he was dealing with. Yeah, try to please case. But you gave him a hard time. No buttons. I just asked for a pitch. And then after the pitch, I said I appreciated that and that is funny. That's getting what I said what I said. I said that I had you know, I don't really have the time or the money to to to do that, so I'm gonna have to pass, but I love being a parcel season ticket member. I said I've thoroughly enjoyed my my years of that and I look forward to continuing it in the future. And then I said, you know, then he he did the work thing. Uh I mean you the I will say if the team is floundering, like I know some people, the Sixers this year, when they're doing like their callbacks to try to get people to re-up their partial or their full season tickets. When the team is in the dumps a little bit, you have the leverage. Remember that. If you're a fan, you have the leverage. Their job is to keep you at the table, keep you at the games, and they know that going into the season the Sixers' expectations were not great. Embiid, you know, who how much is he gonna play? Take advantage of that. Get more out of these people. Get them to give you some perks or some kind of great you get better seeds negotiate price or what negoti ate? Okay. Well that that's all you as a negotiator. What do you want? I'm saying you didn't say that to the Phillies guy? You didn't say that to the Phillies guy? You wasn't like, yo I don't feel like I have leverage. There's a waiting list, Cli Cliff. If they boot me off there's a lot of people waiting to take my spot in section one thirty six so that is true I don't leverage button sixers maybe the flyers who are struggling actually flyers flyers been streaking a little bit actually recently. I'll do That's true. Big picture. Yeah. John Tortarella fired today. Hey, they only a couple points back from a wild card spot. A couple points back from maybe getting in there and sneaking into the playoffs in the division. Never know. Let's see. Uh my dad somehow pulled that off when tickets from the vet to the link. He got better seats at the link than he had. By the way, um, this Yukon Duke game is really close. His two minutes left is sixty nine sixty five Duke right now. All right. There you go. I mean, I don't know when you're listening to this on Monday morning. I you know, I don't know the how relevant that'll be for you, but for Bunsey and I, we like the update. All right. Oh, I think don't get me wrong. I got the game on right here on my laptop. All right. We'll take a break. We come back and we want to talk some sixers to end the sho w. Somewhere out there is a Chevy truck. And the person who drives it, well, that's a Chevy person. You probably know one. Your buddy, your sister, ones who always show up. They're the first to rise, the last to leave. They always have that little extra something. And maybe you've got it too. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Visit Chevy.com slash trucks to explore the line up. All right, we're back here on the Ringers Philly Special. So uh now this might be irrelevant too by the time you listen, but I'm gonna give you where the Sixers are in the standings because I know some of these teams play on Sunday night. So they are currently the seventh seed, half a game out of six, half a game out of five between the Hawks and the Raptors. So those those are the two teams you're rooting against. And I thought they had one of their most entertaining games of the season, Cliff, on Saturday night. Sorry, were you about to say something? Keep in mind about the tiebreaker stuff. I just looked it up. Uh okay. They Atlanta has swept the Sixers this season, so they don't own a tiebreaker just in case the record uh is tied. And the Raptors, they split the season series, but the Sixers have the divisional record, so that'd be the tiebreaker for the Sixers over the Raptors if it gets jumbled up in that mess uh with the however many games left there are for each team. All right. So they got the tiebreak over the Raptors, but the Hawks have the tiebreaker over the Sixers. So obviously they're trying to avoid the play-in. They're trying to get to six. It would be great to get to five. And they've had this weird such a weird season where early on we're going, oh, it's kind of exciting. Edge comes fun, maxi's uh made the leap, and you know what? They might not win anything, but at least they look like they like each other and the vibes are good. And then they have this stretch, you go embeat injury, George suspension, maxi injury, McCain trade, where you're watching going, who are these people playing for the Sixers right now? Marjon Buchan. And now Saturday night, you're like, oh Maxie, Edgecombe, George, and Bede, all play, Barlow in the starting lineup. You got Grimes and Ubre coming off the bench. You're like, this is weird. I'm not I wasn't expecting to have all these people kind of on the floor with whatever it is, uh nine or ten games left. So uh exciting win and they're certainly more watchable now. Uh and I had to I gotta give you my Paul George thing here first and we could talk about other aspects of you I love how much you love the Paul George thing. I wanna hear this. I find him to be one of the most hilariously entertaining guys I've watched for reasons that maybe only entertain me. So he had a terrific game. 26 points, 13 rebounds, four steals. I mean, he he played really well. And a big three-pointer. Big three-pointer, but he had two things that had me cracking up. One, he has a he gets fouled late in the game, makes the shot. He thinks he has an AN-1. Now the rest make it pretty clear that no, like non-shooting foul, two at the line. He goes to the line, makes his first shot, starts running back off the line. His teammates have to explain to him: no, no, no. You get you have two shots, PG. It wasn't one. And he's like, Oh, my bad. And at that moment, Cliff, uh, you know, the the driving down Broad Street after the NFC Championship game made so much sense because that was the kind of energy there. So that cracked me up first. I don't know if you caught that or not. And then the second one, big steal. I mean we're talking I don't know two minutes left. I forget how much time has a big steal uh passes the ball and but the camera's still on. He has to look down and make sure his shoes are still tight. So like the rest of the team, I mean it's like a two-point game. He gave them he gave the ball to Maxi. Maxie's what Maxi had to walk it up the court because his shoes tight. I mean no the rest of the team has passed half court and the camera's's on him and he going down doing a little shoe tie felt like I was coaching you know nine year olds again this guy's hilarious but no one told me the entertainment value when he actually plays Clef the team content. He's perfect for team content. Remember everything everything he does with team content. I wonder why his podcast is so successful. Yeah. Yeah. But but if but for him, it comes from a genuine place of like just like not understanding or not knowing like these certain situations and scenarios. His lack of awareness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like his lack of awareness, some of these are just so funny. Like I remember a time where, and I this isn't like the exactly the funniest thing, but I think somebody had like swiped them or something like that when when he was uh playing for the Clippers and it ended up being like one of Justin Bieber's homies, if I'm remember correctly. And he tried to he put on Instagram like a picture of like the car like, yo, anybody know who this is? Like tag uh tag me hit my line or something. Like he tried to get the culprit of who uh swiped his car. Trying to dox them. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, yo, though, send that. Oops sorry. Chris, send it to the police. He just put it up on Instagram. Like, yo, who was this? Yo. Hilarious. Hilarious guy. Good good to have him back. Important guy. They don't have a lot of guys who can defend effectively. No, and that's straight up. That's I think one of the big things is that with him in the in the game, the defense is considerably better. I know it's still not great. Like it's I it's probably their biggest flaw is gonna be the defense,, but yeah yeah. And rebounding and rebounding. The rebounding was atrocious from just like the guard standpoint. They couldn't they do not box out, they just ball watch, they don't move. Like it's it's crazy. It is insane like how much they get out rebounded. But though I mean the Hornets have they have been killing it uh in recent you know, since like New Year's, I think they're fifth or sixth best. On fire. Yeah, yeah. They've been really good. Um and they're they're gonna scare whoever one of those teams um in the top four. Uh and Bede, I don't what it is. He just can't move on defense anymore. However, he did have that big crazy block though. Great. Yeah. What'd you say? I know, but he just can't move on defense anymore. He's in a different phase of his career. I mean, it's unfortunate, but it's been evident most of the season, even when he's been out there. Their rim defense has not been good. The perimeter defense suffers as a result of that. Yep. They got I mean the Charlotte shot really poorly from three. That wasn't that was game they were hot. Yeah. They were. I knew they were live because uh Simmons texted me that he had a parlay. He had Arizona and the Hornets. He's like easy wins here. He's like, I don't care that Maxie's back. I'm like, okay. I mean we'll see. Sixers got some juice. Don't under rate us. Don't underestimate us. And uh he didn't text me after the game ended, interestingly enough. But if you if you s if you saw the stallions from each, you know, the main three the big three guys, I mean the game was perfect. I mean, you got what, twenty-eight from Paul George was it? Twenty-six from Maxie. Maxie looked amazing after the first quarter, you know, getting his hand back, his his hand situation corrected. Like Maxie looked amazing. Uh in the in the rest of that game following the first quarter. He was awesome. Uh and then and then beat man just in his sleep like the it just is like no effort just on the offensive end. Yeah. Dia b I'm mad though that Diabate was getting to him on the offensive on the offensive end on his side too though. Like he did get him in foul trouble early on, but Diabate was putting this in where he's good. He's a good player, man. I like him. And beat it at twenty-nine. Big block at the end, like you mentioned. He's just when he plays, it's like he's gonna get you twenty-five to thirty-five. It just feels like you said, yeah. Every every single time. The other stuff he can't do. You know, he's not gonna protect the rim. He's not gonna be the same rebounder, but he's still gonna give you that big boost on offense. And there are stretches where it just feels like he's gonna be unstoppable and can keep you in the game. Maxie, you mentioned he returned. He looks probably 26 points, seven rebounds, eight assists. Nice to see him hit three threes, had that big dunk on Miles Bridges, the the vibes and the, you know, the reactions from the teammates after that. And Ubre had one too. It's like, all right, you know, that's at least something. Uh Drummond, who I've ripped before, you know, he he gave them real big minutes in that game. Great pass out to who was that? VJ for the three. And then he had a couple other uh nice plays there. So I'm gonna do something I almost never do here. All right. I don't know if you guys are ready for this. I'm gonna give you an optimistic tak e on the Philadelphia 76ers with what do we have? Eight games left, I believe. 41. Oh, they're 41 and 33. Eagles Super Bowl score. All right, so I'm gonna give you the optimistic look on the Sixers. Okay. Is it possi ble that that injury could have been good for Tyrese Maxsey, given all the minutes he played and how overworked he was to get that break that now with nine games left, he comes back, he can get back in a rhythm, and now by the time the playoffs roll around, he's actually going to be a better player than he would have been, a more effective player than he would have been if he would have just played that entire stretch. So that's number one. Number two, could it be that the time off and the embarrassment for Paul George with that suspension could be good for him because the two games he's played since then, he's looked pretty locked in. He's looked like a two-way player. He's looked very engaged. I like that there are times offensively where he's like, I don't need to just sink in the background like we need a bucket. I'm gonna try to get us a bucket right now. And he's like, Oh yeah, he actually can do that from time to time. So we've got that from George. Is it possible that this is as healthy a version of Joel Embiid as you actually could have hoped for at the beginning of the season? Like if I would have told you this is the version you're going to get. Defense isn't gonna be great, rebounding isn't gonna be great, but with nine games left, he's gonna get you 30 uh on any given night against almost any opponent, and at a very efficient clip because of how often he gets to the line and he will be able to play. I mean he played 36 minutes in that game, that he's gonna be able to play 36 minutes consistently when you are in late March getting ready for the playoffs. And then is there a possibility that the lack of pressure they're under? I mean, they're going to be underdogs regardless of who they play here in the first round, and no one is considering them to be any type of a threat uh at all. Bunts has his hands on his head. Something crazy. This game. This must be this game. Hang on. Oh my God. Duke just melted down. Did UConn win? Let me see. Hold up. Duke just turned it over. Ruin it for me, yo. See, I'm Oh. Oh my goodness. Hold up. The freshman kid. Yay! There's no way that just happened. Oh my goodness. There's no way that that just happened. Terrible podcasting. Okay. What ? Oh my goodness. Yo, that was crazy. After our podcast, if you listen to this on Monday, hopefully that's entertainment value. Oh my gosh. Yo, that was so did UConn win? Is the game over? There's 0.3 seconds left. It was like a step above the over a turnover. Second straight year, do completely full. Caraban saw him, just gave it gave him the rock. Dude. Just heaved it. Yeah. Crazy. Cliff Bunsey. Listen, before we came on, Bunsey said, game's over. I know. Yo, what did I say? What did I say? Cliff said, and we said they're down by 15. And Cliff said, crazier things have happened. That was on the record. Cliff did say that right before Caden Boozer with the turnover for this podcast. We can't keep doing play by play of the Yukon uh Duke him. It's just not a good one. I'm trying to keep it together here for the listeners. Yeah, shot of the tournament? Optimistic view of the Sixers, Bunsey. I saw you making some reactions to some of the things I was saying before you turned your attention a way. I mean you just described why load management is so popular. Part of the problem with the NBA right now is that the teams have realized that hey, if we if our guys don't play a little bit and get some time off in the middle of the season, they'll be fresher for the ready when when everybody actually tunes in for the big games. So yeah, I mean I certainly agree. And the injuries that, you know, Paul George gets suspended, so it's not an injury. Maxie gets a hand injury. It's not like it's soft tissue or there's like a significant rehab process with them with them like a muscle injury type deal. So yeah, it's just dramatically different than you know, having like a a serious injury that's gonna linger perhaps a p potentially. And then for Embiid, any injury that is not lower body for him is like, well, we'll take our chances with those 'cause we know like oblique, you know, those kind of injuries. They can be nagging, they can come and go. But if it's not a knee or a foot, like all right, that's okay. Like on the scale of bad to worse with injuries for MB, you'll you'll take that on the list. So I think that there there's a certainly a bull case. I just don't know if they play enough I still don't think they play enough defense to like make a run here. Yeah, I mean the most likely scenario is they're not playing in the second round of the playoffs. But at least with their players back here, it's going to give me a reason to watch down the stretch here uh and watch in the playoffs cliff. Whereas, you know, a few weeks ago I was just like, you know, when they went on that West Coast trip, uh Utah you know was it VJ by himself it was VJ Justin Edwards yeah Don Barlow Quentin Grimes like you know just the kind of like the the the backup team there trimmed Wiffer getting a lot of minutes too as well yeah I mean uh look obviously the suspension did Paul George some good. He said his knee and his body wasn't right. 25 games. Paul George is what 36, I think, right now, in this current moment. So why you why you say oof like that? Well I'm just saying. I mean when they say what No, but he's but he's left on that guy. Okay, but Paul George is you gotta understand he's it's Paul George thirty-six with a hefty injury history. So clearly twenty-five games of just sitting and practicing and getting your body back and rehabbing is gonna do you a lot of good, correct tyres max he was handling that low he i remember he had more minutes than right he had like five thousand more minutes than shea before had uh after shea went out for a little while I wonder where it's at now I'm not sure where his minutes now seeing that he missed a a bunch of those games. But you know, Maxie coming back with MB, with Paul George, and VJ playing kind of that fourth fiddle, off the dribble stuff, shooting, um, playing defense. Yo, how many wild moments has VJ almost had this season, like almost had. Like almost dunks? Yeah. Yeah, he has. I like that he keeps going for him. It is really exciting. Absolutely. Yo, it feels like like two, two, three times a week, there's always just like, oh my goodness, VJ Almens just did something. Yeah, so he played second fiddle to that. Don Barlow just kind of playing his role, being, you know, in the dunker spot against some easy layups, playing defense as well, too. And then everything else falls in line once Embiid, Maxie, and George are on the court playing 28, 30, you know, 40 minutes for Maxi or whatever. So I mean it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be entertaining. Can they mess around and um and be beat a team in that top four? I mean, I think so. You I think they could beat the Cavs. the Like Cavs they they've been solid, but the Sixers could definitely match up with the Cavs. I I think at least. And I think the N I don't want I you know what, man, I went to a Sixers next game where they got blown up by four. Yeah, don't let's do it. The Knicks have been hot too. The Knicks have been super hot too, um as well. So I you know, I don't know much about I I'm not sure about that matchup. I think it'd be fun. I mean, uh another Sixers Knicks series in f you know, I guess the Knicks would have in theory, a home game each game, right? Well, that's what it looked like, yeah, last year. So we'll say listen to modern line. Next year's James Harden, that would be kind of fun. Yeah. Sixers matchup with James Harden. Yeah. That'd be fun. Bottom line, at least there's reason to watch now for uh you know down the stretch and in the playoffs with the game. And they got some games, yeah. I mean the game coming up. Miami fun games. This this Miami game is a Spurs Wolves. It's gonna start on me. This Miami game. They might get that Miami food. Sunday night in Mi ami. It's a lot of things to do on Sunday in Miami fluke. Yo, live on Sunday. You know what I mean? Get it, get you a little bottle or two, eleven. You know what I'm saying? It's a good time in Miami. They've had all season. Can they just win some games and try to get you know you can get you can get the South Beach flu in the offseason? You got a whole off-season. Can you just try to win some games and get that? I mean, look, you could I my thing is you could go out and have fun in Miami and still beat that heat that he team is just so like up and down Jekyll and Holly. All right. Let's see what we're saying. 24 hours from now. We'll see. Maybe and should be coming back too. I think they said Ant's coming back versus Maverick, so he'll probably play in that Sixers Wolves game as well. I forget what else is beyond. I don't have the schedule in front of me right here, but at Miami. They have three they have three they have three Mickey games left. I've been calling them the Mickeys, uh, the teams that are trying to lose. They have Washington, Indiana, Milwaukee. So if they win those three, then they have five tough games. They're at Miami, home Minnesota, home Detroit, at San Antonio, at Houston. That's a tough four gamer. Four games in six days against those that those might be some losses. But uh yeah. They should, I mean they,'re gonna be right in the mix for the six six East. Six E, yeah. And the Travis and playing great without K too, so that's gonna be a tough one as well. Five of their next six games are against real opponents, and then you know what Washington's mixed in there, and then you finish with Indiana and Milwaukee. So we'll see. Let's see what they do. Let's see what they do against Miami on Monday. Like Cliff said, you get Minnesota on Friday. You get Washington in between there. Yeah, that is going to be a tough stretch. Friday, Saturday, Minnesota, Detroit, then Monday, San Antonio, then Thursday, Houston. So we'll see what they look like against those teams. We'll see if these players are actually going to be on the court when the playoffs begin, which is not a guarantee, but at least they're in a better place. I was excited watching that game. That that remembered earlier in the season. Highly entertaining game. It almost so many lead changes. Uh you know, like a play in yeah. I I was gonna say it felt like a playoff game. It felt more like a play-in game, you know, the uh with the two teams. But that's okay. It was uh it was entertaining, so maybe they will entertain us a little bit between now and the end of the season. I don't know if you saw, but uh people people are attributing it to the end of CR month . I don't know if you've seen this at the ringer. CR month at the ringer. Shout out to CR Miller. I watched two of the CR Month movies and I'm gonna try to watch more because you know, what a pleasure. So CR man, what a guy. Every month is CR month here at the ring. Did I did I so I didn't I left this out. Okay. But the so the one date that I went on on WBC night. Okay. The girl was a big fan of the ringer. Oh. One of the first things she said to me was, How are you celebrating CR month? Oh, and you haven't proposed yet? Bunzy. Two dates. Two dates is gonna be it for this one, unfortunately. Yeah. So should have picked Nolan the WBC. Should have picked Nolan the WBC over uh over the date, evidently. Real quick, would will the Phillies finish in the bottom half of run scored the se ason? No. No. Bottom half a run scored? No, come on. Oh no, yo. Definitely not. Especially hard. Oh my gosh. Um Yeah, what I mean. They scored four runs on Saturday. Don't ask how. Don't ask what needed to happen for them to get those runs, but they did score. Let's finish with this email since we got to we got to uh Bunsey's dating advice. This is from this was a Bunsey specific email uh from Rachel who said, Hi, Ringer Philly gang, first time, long time, love all your content. I finally felt moved to write in after this week's conversation with Tony Bunts. First of all, I highly recommend. And she mentioned a bagel spot, which I I uh sent your way. All right, she's talking about the uncle that okay. She's talking about that. All right. Secondly, this is the more important thing. I want to rip Sheol for his terrible advice about dating, where he where he encouraged Tony Buns to hide the truth about his sports sickleness from his date, intimating that he would never meet a woman if he said he was trying to schedule the date around when Aaronola was pitching in the WBC. First of all, this basically amounts to lying, big red flag. Second of all, I would argue that there's nothing more attractive than authenticity. As a woman in her early 40s who is dating for the first time in a long time post-divorce, I can say with confidence that if a man I was trying to schedule a date with told me that, it would immediately be a green flag. Now, I too am a Philly Sports Sicko, so I'd probably suggest we watch together, but the bottom line is that there's someone out there for everyone, and the right people will love us for our most authentic selves, sports, sickness, and all. Keep up the great work and go bird. So maybe I led you astray, Bunsey. I mean that, was a pretty uh convincing case from Rachel that listen, just be who you are from the get-go. And eventually there'll be someone who accepts it. Even if you say, can we reschedule this date? Because I have to watch Aeronola pitch for Italy inexplicably in the WBC . Right. I mean there are like you said there are levels there are levels to it. Yes. Uh a WBC game, semifinal. Yeah. If it was a Phillies playoff game, I w I like one, I would have known I wouldn't scheduled it to begin with. I would have planned around that. But yeah, I I don't have any regrets. I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm getting up there in age, uh, relatively. And uh I gotta be more intentional about my dating. So I'm working on it. We're working on it, yeah. We'll see. Now for the record, I don't think Cliff, I didn't say lie. I just said I don't think you should choose. I don't think, yeah. I don't think you should reschedule or say you're gonna be late because of Aeronola pitching for Italy in the WBC. I think I think I could be wrong, but I think that was my advice, and I do stick by that. Now Cliff had to listen. Someone mentioned Cliff, you know, we should have a reboot. I think it was caller Cliffy was the, you know, instead of caller daddy, caller Cliffy because of his wonderful that he had on a recent mailbag cliff. So credit for your uh your takes on a recent pod about dating. So there you go. Shout out Alex Cooper. Is that the daddy gang? What they do, Buns, they call it that. I have never listened to Bardia. I'm out of here. Bun. I've never seen that's the first time I've seen Bun speechless. He did not, he didn't know. He didn't respond. He was like, why are you asking me? Because Bun's in there. Buns is in that he's in that zeitge. I feel like Buns would know something like that. Like they call it the daddy gang or for something. I forget. She's from the area though. She's from the air. Shout out to yes her. And uh yeah, if we ever want to do a home and home, uh she wants to come on Cliff going with her, we're open to doing that. She probably has some great dating stories of uh of Philly sports sicko. Bro, no, that's that's what that's how her pod started was like a was talking about dating in New York. It was was like like yeah, it her and her homegirl like started to pot about like the you know the ins and outs of day in New York City while they were in their twenties and then it was a mess and then that's why it got so popular and then now it's like a watered down version of what it is. So I don't know. I I th don't knowough. Al Scooper if you heard this yet, you know what I mean Cliff's asking me. He knows all about it. He's uh he's in this like guys I'm out. Caller Cliffy spinoff. I'm I'm too busy celebrating CR month to to be on caller daddy. Shout out CR, man. Shout out CR. Shout out C R. Celebrate CR month. I think it's still going on. I don't think it's gonna be limited to a month because I think it ends in end of March, right? Maybe. I think we can extend that bad boy. It's been such a success. I mean, the Sixers keep winning, you know. I do think I do like that theory. Maybe maybe CR month is what they needed to finally get over the um. If they if they make a run, I will absolutely be on board with uh pushing that theory because well you know it's gonna I believe in the past if they get a little too hot Simmons uh if we were to get a Sixers Celtic series that would be the end of CR month that day that would be when it ends No more CR month if we get a six or something. We'll have to take yeah, we would have to take over CR month, I think. So there you go. Which I think we're you know, we could certainly do with CR revolved and everybody. So there you go. If we get to Sixers Celtics, maybe we just do a second CR month. All right. We've covered everything. Phillies, Sixers, Vertical Video, Bunsies Dating Life, C R month. I mean we we hit UConn. Yukon basketball. UConn basketball. I'm cracking up, you know, thinking of people listening to that. Uh, the day off. We got we got pickleball too. You know me. Pickleball. There you go. I gotta check out the end of that game now as we finish recording. All right. Later this week, we're going to have ZB on. We're figuring the date. He is at the owners meetings. We'll hear from Howie Roseman, Nick Siriani, and Jeffrey Lurry. So we'll do that. And then everything else, we'll figure out. All right. Thanks to Bunsey. Thanks to Cliff. Augustine. You say his name now. Cliff Augustine at least once an episode. I'm Shioka Pati. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringers . 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MYRESET. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. org/slash chat and connect Or visit mdgambling help.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8 Hope NY or text Hope NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 1-877-770-786 7. Thought sweet green was just salads? Think again. There's a new way to do sweet green. Wrapped and ready. These handheld wraps pack bold flavor and 40 plus grams of protein into something hearty, satisfying, and built for life on the go, from craveable sauces to satisfying textures. They're designed to keep you going without slowing you down. So put that fork down. Try the new wraps today in app or at order.sweetgreen.com available at participating locations only. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. 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