BIG ANNOUNCEMENT AT 312 SPORTS + MLB writer Joe Sheehan talks Cubs and White Sox

Summary

Dan Bernstein Unfiltered – Episode Summary

Episode: BIG ANNOUNCEMENT AT 312 SPORTS + MLB writer Joe Sheehan talks Cubs and White Sox
Air Date: March 24, 2026
Host: Dan Bernstein (with Cody Delmendo, guest: Joe Sheehan)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Bernstein shares a major announcement about 312 Sports launching a new daily Chicago Cubs podcast, "Off the Ivy," featuring Bernstein, Matt Abbatacola, and Cody Delmendo. The main feature is a wide-ranging conversation with renowned baseball writer Joe Sheehan, diving deep into the outlook for the Cubs and White Sox in 2026, MLB trends, the evolving game, player development, labor issues, and what makes certain players fun to watch.

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Key Sections & Discussions

1. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: New Cubs Podcast at 312 Sports

Timestamps: 01:03 – 09:20

• New show: "Off the Ivy" will debut as a daily Cubs podcast featuring Dan, Matt Abbatacola, and Cody Delmendo.

• Show Vision: Levelheaded yet passionate discourse on the Cubs, aiming to provide both emotional and analytical insight for die-hard and casual fans alike.

  • Focus on the ups and downs of a 162-game season: "I try to be somewhere in the middle there and…not overreact as much as some fans do. But I think that will be what our show is about…" – Cody Delmendo (02:54)
  • Bernstein: “My goal is to bring our 312-sports approach where we know what to take seriously, we know what is there for us to have fun with and everything in between.” (03:55)

• Team Chemistry & Knowledge:

  • Matt brings beat-reporter insight as a lifelong Cubs fan.
  • Cody brings recent digital Cubs podcasting experience and a measured fan’s eye.
  • Dan provides deep statistical insight but stresses balance (“not everything is measurable”).

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2. Cubs 2026 Outlook with Joe Sheehan

Timestamps: 10:05 – 22:48

• Sheehan’s high expectations: Has Cubs projected as MLB’s 2nd-best team (tied with Red Sox at 95 wins, only behind Dodgers at 98):

  • “You look at last year where they outscored opponents by about a run a game… they were plus 144 run differential… fundamentally they were a really good team.” (11:05)

• Offseason upgrades:

  • Bregman signing, bullpen depth, strong farm talent (Ben Brown, Palencia).
  • "This will be the first Cubs bullpen under Counsell that's a plus for the team." (11:48)

• Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA) contract extension:

  • Seen as both wise and rare—signals commitment to youth and to core stars, can inspire other prospects to stay and invest in Cubs trajectory.
  • “He’s incredibly fun to watch… the way he plays center field is just so exciting. I’ve compared him in the past to Devon White…” – Joe Sheehan (13:00)
  • “It does give the fan base somebody to invest in over the next seven or eight years.” (14:00)

• Ownership’s message:

  • It’s a clear sign the Cubs are willing to invest—ending recent fan skepticism over spending and ambition.
  • "[The Cubs] are developing, bringing along talent…and they're also spending money on major league talent as well. You have to do both." (17:02)

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3. Cubs’ Organizational Philosophy & Future

Timestamps: 15:24 – 20:16

• Post-2016 frustration:

  • Why the “dynasty in the making” didn’t materialize, and why patience was necessary amidst rebuild.
  • Sheehan credits Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins for building a sustainable system, especially now that homegrown pitching (Horton, Brown, Palencia) is appearing.

• Positive signs about young talent:

  • Extensions like PCA’s send an “invest in Chicago” message to prospects up and down the system.

• Sheehan’s “long shot” picks:

  • Placed entertainment bets: “I took a flyer on PCA at 60-to-1 to win NL MVP.” (18:57)

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4. White Sox: Progress & Where They Stand

Timestamps: 22:48 – 28:58

• Raising the bar from “historically bad” to “just bad”:

  • White Sox could be a 72-win team, which marks significant progress from two years ago.
  • “For them to rise to just ordinary bad instead of historic bad is kind of a big deal...” (22:48)

• Positive moves under Chris Getz:

  • “A lot of successful trades so far… putting a team on the field…a lot better than the one two years ago.” (23:33)
  • Talent infusion gives hope, but pitching remains a concern.
  • Modern baseball = never more than “three years from contention”—Sheehan lays out the roadmap for Sox being competitive by 2027.

• Munetaka Murakami signing:

  • Sheehan supports it as a low-risk, high-reward move even if he’s skeptical of Murakami’s long-term upside: “You have absolutely no reason to do anything but see if he can learn to hit major league pitching.” (26:03)

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5. Baseball Trends: Aging Curves, Bullpen Management, and Pitching Prospects

Timestamps: 28:58 – 39:22

• The declining value of older players:

  • Fastball velocity, spin, and pitching wizardry have squeezed out older bats; clubs must avoid big long-term deals for players over 32:
    • “I'm out on most players 32 and up now.” (32:06 − 32:21)
  • Caveat: The Cubs' infield (Bregman & Swanson) could soon be an age-risk, but Sheehan isn’t overly worried given their established production and the team’s youth around them.

• Bullpen innovation:

  • Teams maximize veteran arms by focusing only on per-pitch efficiency (“Can you throw 15 pitches 3-4 times a week? Okay, you can do that…” (35:27))

• "No such thing as a pitching prospect":

  • Urges teams to aggressively promote AA/AAA pitchers—don’t waste their "bullets" in minors when they could help MLB clubs now.

• Ben Brown optimism:

  • Part stats, part stubborn faith: “I put him on a fantasy team two, three years ago and it didn’t work out, so I’m just going to ride it.” (38:37)
  • New pitch mix and role flexibility offer real upside.

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6. MLB Rule Changes: Automated Balls & Strikes

Timestamps: 39:22 – 46:26

• Automatic Ball Strike System (ABS):

  • Sheehan expects “count leverage” (using challenges mainly on 1-1 and 3-2 counts) and batter leverage to define challenge strategy.
  • Dislikes gamifying challenges: “Gamifying officiating is a bad path.”
  • Predicts the challenge system is only a step toward a fully automated strike zone, which he supports.

• On framing and catching:

  • “Umpires don’t call pitches, they call catches. And I would like to see that eliminated, make it a more fair fight for hitters.” (44:44)
  • Hopes rule changes will rebalance toward offense, change player development at lower levels, and even let catchers “hit again” rather than spending all their time practicing frame tricks.

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7. Labor & Business Side: Revenue Sharing, TV, & Work Stoppage

Timestamps: 48:03 – 52:32

• CBA/wage issues:
  • Sheehan predicts owners will again impose a lockout in December, but doubts 2027 games will be lost—driven by pending new national TV deals.
  • “This is an internal fight with the owners...the information on local revenue sharing is very closely held.” (51:12)
  • Argues for transparency in owner finances to facilitate an honest public debate about baseball labor issues.

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8. The Life of a National Baseball Writer

Timestamps: 52:32 – 57:47

• How Sheehan covers MLB:
  • “If you told me at 12 that my job would be watching baseball and writing about it all day, I’d be thrilled.” (53:10)
  • Explains his daily routine: Up mid-morning, writes, exercises, then uses multi-screen set-up to watch multiple games every night, supplemented by MLB highlight shows.
  • Goes to fewer games live due to ear-splitting volume at modern stadiums; prefers ballpark as a social/not work space when he does attend: “I haven’t gone to a ballgame to actually do work in more than a decade, and that’s been important to me.” (56:55)

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9. The Pure Joy of Watching Baseball

Timestamps: 57:47 – 59:34

• Who does a true baseball nerd simply enjoy?
  • Sheehan: “I think Pete Crow-Armstrong is a lot of fun to watch… hard to do that with defenders…”
  • Loves watching Paul Skenes pitch; admires young talent like Elly De La Cruz, Ohtani, Schwarber.
  • “We’re in a moment right now where there are an incredible number of watchable ballplayers… It’s also a golden age for baseball watching.” (58:27)

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Notable Quotes

• On New Cubs Podcast:

  • "My goal is to bring our 312-sports approach where we know what to take seriously, we know what is there for us to have fun with and everything in between..." – Dan Bernstein (03:55)

• On Cubs’ Prospects & Spending:

  • “If you prove yourself to that extent, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to keep you here in Chicago. That has to resonate downward, not just with your younger players, both your veterans as well.” – Dan Bernstein (14:18)

• On MLB’s Aging Curve:

  • “I look at the Alonzo contract this year and I have real questions about how well he’s going to age. … I’m out on most players 32 and up now.” – Joe Sheehan (32:06)

• On Owners’ Revenue Sharing:

  • "Until we have the same kind of information on Bruce Sherman's money as we do on Kyle Tucker's money, I think this kind of public conversation, anyway, is a little hard to have." – Joe Sheehan (52:21)

• On ABS and Framing:

  • “Umpires in today's game don't call pitches, they call catches. And I would like to see that eliminated, make it a more fair fight for hitters.” – Joe Sheehan (44:44)

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Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• Announcement of "Off the Ivy" Cubs Podcast: (01:03 – 09:20)
• Sheehan on Cubs as 2nd-best MLB team: (11:05)
• Insight on PCA extension & what it means: (13:00 – 14:18)
• Discussion on Sox shifting from “historically bad” to “ordinary bad”: (22:48 – 24:34)
• Baseball’s aging curve and “pitchers as witches”: (30:06 – 32:21)
• Sheehan’s honest take on watching games for work (vs. fun): (53:10 – 56:55)
• Sheehan’s "just-for-fun" favorites – PCA, Skeens, De La Cruz: (58:27)

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, deeply analytical yet always fan-centric.
• Bernstein—honest, slightly bemused “Chicago guy” with a critical but fair outlook.
• Sheehan—encyclopedic, candid, quick with context from both stats and historical perspective.
• Cody—passionate, relatable fan turned analyst.
• Constant interplay between data, emotional investment, and the evolving entertainment of the game.

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Summary Takeaways

• 312 Sports is expanding with a major Cubs-focused daily podcast, "Off the Ivy," embracing both numbers and narrative for Chicago baseball fans.
• Joe Sheehan believes the Cubs are among the game’s elite in 2026, thanks to a thoughtful mix of farm growth, spending, and smart contracts.
• PCA’s extension is both practical and symbolic for the Cubs and their fanbase.
• White Sox have reason for cautious optimism, but remain in rebuild mode; the blueprint for quick contention is there if they invest.
• Baseball’s obsession with youth, pitcher innovation, bullpen efficiency, and rule changes reflect fast-evolving realities in the sport.
• Sheehan’s hope: MLB’s looming labor fight doesn’t overshadow a golden age for both watching and writing about the game.
• Underneath it all, the episode’s message is clear—baseball is fun, and the best analysis comes from a place of genuine curiosity and affection for the sport.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Dan Bernstein]

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[Dan Bernstein]

Dan Bernstein Unfiltered Unfiltered on 312Sports

[Cody Delmendo]

it

[Dan Bernstein]

is DBU on 31 2. We are brought to you in partnership with my bookie and brought to you today by our friends at Giordano's. Before we get started with our very special guest today who for whom the timing could not be better regarding the Cubs news that's going on, I would just want to mention, speaking of Cubs news, a big announcement of something that we have had in the works here that is now going to be happening at 312 Sports. And we were pretty clear when we started 312 Sports that we were going to be taking things without hurrying everything out. We were going to be working in due time to continue to flesh out all of our operations here. And I am so excited that after a lot of preparation and a lot of talking and a lot of work and a lot of thought thought, we are ready starting tomorrow morning to launch a brand new Chicago Cubs podcast here on 312 Sports. It's going to be called off the Ivy. It's going to be every day. We're going to put it out early. Ideally it's going to be coming out before DBU each day and it is going to be a three man team to start. It's going to be Matt Abaticola, Cody Delmendo and me. Cody Delmendo, who is producing today's episode of DBU is here with us and Cody, I just, I'm so excited to do this. I'm so excited that you're involved in this with your podcast experience at multiple outlets. Everything you've done on your own with your longtime pod Wrigleyville forever. The, the, the, the detail with which you have covered the Cubs and, and to have that now as part of the 312Sports family is really cool. So, so welcome.

[Cody Delmendo]

I this is a long time coming, Dan, and I'm honestly honored to be able to not only work with you just like producing, but to now do a show with you is something that I never thought that would ever happen in my life. So this is a big moment for my career and again, I'm just really excited to, you know, get back to talking about the Cubs. And you know, we ride the roller coaster of a 162 game season and so some fans know how to handle it, some fans don't. I try to be somewhere in the middle there and, and, and not overreact as much as some fans do. But I think that will be what our show is about, is just trying to be level headed more often than not and, and also insert some really good analysis on, you know, the next big prospect or who's hot, who's not and you know, what's wrong with this team? Why is this team a World Series contender? All these, all these things. And I think we'll be able to, you know, provide a really good content for, for the people listening or watching.

[Dan Bernstein]

I'm excited too because it allows us to do it in our way. And just as Bears fans have really enjoyed forward progress and that we've gotten a nice foothold here with dbu. I, I got a nice email from somebody, a big Bears fan who said yeah, DBU helps me know how to feel about the Bears and then forward progress helps me know that, help tell me about them and what to think about them. And my hope for off the Ivy, it's going to be a little bit of all of that because of the nature. It's not 16 games, it's six months. It's every day over 162. And my goal is to bring our 312-sports approach where we know what to take seriously, we know what is there for us to have fun with and everything in between and all around where knowing that good teams have losing streaks, bad teams have winning streaks, where and you talk about riding the roller coaster and trying our best to kind of understand context. What does it mean? What are the answers? Why are things happening? So it's going to be my goal and I know that much of my Deference your level, your depth of Cubs knowledge and your day to day understanding and, and exposure to everything that's been going on in the minutia far surpasses mine. And having and you know, Matty is a lifelong Cubs fan who for several years was really involved and has and was covering the team as a beat reporter and has been able to build a deep set of contacts within the baseball world. And I just think this is going to be great. We're not going to try to do too much because you know, I get excited with all the numbers, I get excited with all the metrics and that's going to be a part of it for sure. But I know it's not everything and not everything is measurable and not everything has to be all the time. I'm going to do my best to measure what I can and make that part of the discussion. But I'm really excited to see where this goes.

[Cody Delmendo]

Yeah, well, you can bring that and me and Matt will bring, you know, the passionate fanhood that we have for, for the north side team in Chicago and, and again we'll try and be as level headed as we can as we go through 162 game season. I, I will say admittedly it, it's taken a lot of experience to get to the level head that I have now. It used to be one of those fans who, you know, kind of overreacted to not every single loss. But you know, you, you, you pile 1, 2, 3 in a row or something like that, it's, it can start to weigh on you a little bit. But I think over time I've learned how to, to be a little bit more patient especially since the, the Cubs are on their way up right now. So yeah, I, I think I, to go with that. I think it's a great time to be launching this, you know, this team to me is if they're not a World Series contender, they're an NLCS contender and we'll see what happens if they face the Dodgers. But this is probably the most competitive going into a season that they've had in 10 years. So it's a really exciting time.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, and the fact that they just locked up a star player and we're awaiting details of the Pete Crowe Armstrong contract and we're going to talk about that with our guest today as well. Really excited for it especially this year to see ownership make a move like that and even though he was under team arbitration control for some years to, to tear up that arrangement and give him a new one and Lock him in, tells fans to invest and tells fans that they don't have to think guardedly right now if they understand that they've got a core player. And maybe there's more. Maybe that signals the start of a desire to continue to identify and lock in core players here for what they certainly hope will be an extended run. So wherever you get your podcasts, I want people to know. YouTube or Spotify, Apple podcasts. Wherever you get your podcast off the Ivy, we may shorten it to OTI every once in a while but that's what it is. It's off the Ivy with Bernstein, Abaticola and Delmendo and we're going to be there for you. So we're going to develop this as it goes. What, what my goal is, the word that we've used for 312 sports is community. And Cubs fans are a unique community and I think that we at off the Ivy are going to find our way in that 312 sports way to fit in and we're going to be there for you every single day starting tomorrow and excited about it. I just, I can't. I'm, I am. I woke up knowing this was was happening today and I was bouncing off the walls and just felt like a little kid literally racing downstairs. So we can start talking about it. So Cody and I know that we have given you the official welcome here, but now that you are a full time and full fledged member of 312 Sports and an important part of this Cubs podcast, a welcome on another level.

[Cody Delmendo]

So I thank you. Yeah, I'm doing this. I'm really excited and you know, opening day right around the corner and yeah, like I said, it really is an honor to be able to work with you guys moving forward and just excited to see where we can take this.

[Dan Bernstein]

That is Cody Delmendo who is our sort of super utility guy right now at 312 sports doing a ton of production and doing the work that he's going to be doing with our brand new Cubs podcast. I mentioned that we are brought to you in partnership with my bookie and it is now time to welcome our special guest to Dan Bernstein. Unfiltered. Look who's here. I could not be more excited that Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter maybe one of the most.

[Cody Delmendo]

Not to interrupt you, not to interrupt you. Dan. He, he just stepped out of the studio real quick. He might have had an Internet problem. So we'll keep rolling here if you want but I'm assuming he'll come back.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, I certainly hope so. Well, there he is.

[Cody Delmendo]

Never mind.

[Dan Bernstein]

Okay, here he is. The the aforementioned Joe Sheehan is here with us today and dare I say Cubby Joe, because this, our guest, has been a Cubs believer for a long time and that certainly hasn't changed this year. How have you been, man?

[Joe Sheehan]

Good, man. Good to talk to you. Congratulations on all the success the show is having. We haven't talked since you were doing radio, so I'm excited to be on the new show.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, thank you for being here. And I've always, I get excited for the season when you begin to make that that big ship's turn toward looking at the when once these previews start coming out is when I know that the season is actually going to start. And I'm very happy that I have. It's going to take me a while, I believe, to see that Cubs preview because based on everything I can glean from what I know. Am I correct in saying that you believe this year the Cubs may indeed be the second best team in all of baseball?

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah, I have them projected tied with the Red Sox with 95 wins, behind the Dodgers at 98 and just ahead of the Yankees and Mariners. I really do think that you look at last year where they outscored opponents by about a run a game. They were plus 144 run differential. Obviously they didn't beat out the brewers for the division, but fundamentally they were a really good team. I like the changes they made in the offseason. Obviously, Tucker for Bregman, I think that's a small wash, but I do think Bregman's going to help them. But you look at what they've done in the bullpen, adding a lot of arms. The bullpen's been a bit of a weak spot the last couple of years, so they've laid in some depth here. You know, I like what we've seen out of Ben Brown in the spring. Hopefully he can be a big guy in the bullpen. We saw what Daniel Palencia did at the end of last year and then in the so that was, I think, a part of his team the last couple of years under Craig Counsel, where I expected Council to really be able to build the kind of bullpens he did in Milwaukee and it hasn't happened yet. I think this will be the first Cubs bullpen under Council. That's a plus for the team.

[Dan Bernstein]

Before we get started with a lot of the minutia of Cubs and White Sox and everything that's going on in the world of Baseball. Let's talk about the news that broke last night. Jeff Passon letting everybody know that the Cubs were, in his words, I believe, finalizing a multi year deal to keep Pete Crowe Armstrong a Cub. And it is, it's exactly what we ask of ownership and it's, it seems rare to say, oh, wait, hold on. What, What? How can this be true? Can we really celebrate the fact that a team is looking at a young core player and deciding before it has to, to try to keep him a Chicago Cub for a long, long time? But as the details may emerge while we're talking this morning, but it is, it is such good news to so many fans because he doesn't just have fans, he has super fans. People love pca.

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, he's incredibly fun to watch. I mean, set aside all the numbers, obviously, you know, great hitter against right handed pitchers. The defensive numbers are fantastic. But he's exciting to watch. I mean he's unique. If you take the helmet off, he's a very unique guy to look at. But the way he plays center field is just so exciting. I've compared him in the past to Devon White, if you remember the center fielder for the Angels and Blue Jays back in the 80s and 90s. That's the kind of player he really seems like. And you know, there's some growth to be had. He's got to learn how to lefties. The pitch selection's got to get better. And that's the thing. He's still just 24 years old coming into this year and he's young enough that you would expect him to still be the plus center fielder, still be the entertaining guy in center, but develop those skills at the plate that are going to make them even more valuable. I mean, this is a guy who was an MVP candidate for half of last year, obviously fell off a little bit in the second half. You mentioned the long term deal. You know, you said in the previous segment, you know, he's already locked up through 2030. So most of these deals usually add on some option years, some guaranteed years. It'll keep him in Chicago likely until he's 31, 32. And that is even if you know you have the guy for the next five years, there's value in, hey, he's our guy. Hey, we're not going to arbitration with him every year. Hey, we don't have to worry about, oh, he's getting close to free agency, we might trade him. I think it does give the fan base somebody to invest in over the next seven or eight years.

[Dan Bernstein]

And we also speculated the message that it sends internally and maybe to other prospects coming up. And what it says is unlike some other organizations that just know that they can't afford you, don't want to afford you, claim they can't afford you and would rather just grift the money away and let somebody else pay the big money. It says if you prove yourself to that extent, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to keep you here in Chicago. That has to resonate downward, not just

[Joe Sheehan]

with your younger players, both your veterans as well, who are saying, hey, this is an ownership group that is going to invest in the product. This is a question. I was one of the guys criticizing the Cubs earlier in the decade and saying, well, when are you guys going to take that next step? When are you guys going to push, push your chips in? And we saw with the Tucker deal, with the Bregman signing, now with the PCA signing, that this is a team that is now willing to spend some money on the product. We'll see if they dance around the luxury tax threshold, we'll see what they possibly do this year at the trade deadline. But I think some of the questions about the Cubs ownership has, have been answered over the last 18 months or so.

[Dan Bernstein]

You have been, you know, made fun of yourself. You've said you've been high man on the Cubs for a while now. And when you're here in town, you, we hear a lot of the nitpicking. We hear a lot of the high standards and we set a lot of high standards and say that, you know, when you made that huge move to get Craig Counsel, it was supposed to matter more. And it really hurts losing to the brewers and it hurts seeing what they've done with less. And there are, there are some, there's been some grumbling, frankly, some Cubs fans disappointed that it's one thing to lose. It's another thing to let that upstart team full of really good, smart, tough ballplayers show you the way to do it. Why have you in large part been supportive of the way the Cubs have done this? Why have you been generally high on them?

[Joe Sheehan]

It's taken a while to get to this point. I think some of the frustration you're describing on the ground there stems from the fact that the 2016 team never became the 2017, 2018, 2019 team. I think, I know I personally said that was a dynasty in the making and it never quite happened. So I think Cubs fans have some built up frustration. Like, hey, we were promised what the Red Sox got, we were promised what the Yankees got and never came through. And you go through this really tough stretch around the turn of the decade where it's now some bad teams on the field, and now you're trading away Bryant and you're trading away Rizzo, and now you're not having that immediate success afterwards. I've largely trusted Jed Hoyer's judgment. Remember, Jed was there when Theo got the job, and now he's been there ever since. And you look at Dan. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the gentleman's name. The. The. The. Carter.

[Dan Bernstein]

Carter Hawkins.

[Joe Sheehan]

Carter Hawkins. Thank you. You look at the work that they've done to build up the, The. The. The farm system. It's taken them a very long time to get to this point. Remember the Cubs, they're successful. They're drafting low. They're paying into the. The luxury tax system, they're paying into the revenue sharing system. It's harder to. To steer the ship around if you're a large market team, if you get bad. And I do think the Cubs did take their time in building up, particularly on the pitching side. If you look at even those good Cubs teams, 15, 16, 17, 18, there were basically no homegrown innings at all. And now you look at Kate Horton, you look at Ben Brown, who I'm very high on this year. You look at Daniel Palencia, whether you want to call him homegrown or not. He was picked up in a trade five years ago when he wasn't really much of anything. So I consider him to be homegrown. I think they've really steered this ship very well. You look going forward. You mentioned the message you're sending to future Cubs. How does Jackson Wiggins feel about a PCA contract? How does Kevin Alcantara feel about a PCA contract? How do they look forward to their future as Cubs? So this is a team now that's doing both things. They're developing, bringing along talent, whether it's pca, whether it's Moises Ballesteros, whether it's a Horton Palencia, and they're also spending money on major league talent as well. You have to do both. I go back to those 15, 16 cups, all of those players they brought through, but then they went out and signed to John Lester to complete the picture. I think that's where the Cubs are right now. Exactly. So you've got to do both. And this is one of the frustrating things a lot of teams don't do right now. And I think you make the argument, you know, for a little while that the Cubs weren't doing saying, well, we're going to do it with our young players. That's never enough. You have to both build the young talent and you have to spend some money.

[Dan Bernstein]

Did I see it correctly, Joe, that you took a flyer, and this is for entertainment purposes only, that you took a flyer on PCA at 60 to 1 to win NL MVP?

[Joe Sheehan]

I did. And again, this is the guy who last year was the favorite for mvp, very briefly, in the middle of the season. You know, Shohei Otani eventually won it because, well, that's what Shohei Ohtani does. But as a dh, he starts from behind. And from a WAR standpoint, PCA was ahead for a good chunk of the year. Geraldo Perdomo actually lapped PCA and a couple of other guys did by the end of the year. But, you know, we've seen him do it for three months. You bring him back at 24, you hope he makes some of the improvements I mentioned earlier in terms of drawing some walks and hitting lefties. He's still going to have that plus, plus value in center field. It's actually been a little unusual for a DH to win all, you know, to win consecutive MVPs. And in fact, we had a DH in the number two spot last year with Kyle Schwaber. Usually, MVPs come from up the middle positions, so you start with that with pca, the projected offense, the fact that I do think the Cubs are going to win a lot. And look, voter fatigue is more of an NBA thing because it tends to be the same pool of voters. One of the things about MLB's MVP, all their awards, that's a different pool of voters every year. So we can overstate the idea of fatigue. But I do think there might be an urge if you have a PCA having the year he had last year, playing for a Cups team that's going to win 95 games, according to my predictions. And maybe that sense of, hey, let's give it to somebody else. I had Perdomo at 100 to 1 and PCA at 60 to 1. Were the two long shots I gave out.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, we're talking about gambling for entertainment purposes or for your own entertainment. You know, college basketball is as hot as it's going to be. Get in on the action with my bookie. With everything that's happening in the tournament right now, you've got the sweet 16, you've got all these chances. We have all of these screaming, miserable coaches who are taking all the camera time from the kids. But it's not just about picking winners. The prop board's loaded. You got player points, team totals, futures, whatever you want. Value everywhere. There's always value in chaos. So jump in. One account, one wallet, whatever you like to bet. You want the spreads, you want money lines, you want parlays. Everything's in one place. @mybookie.ag, you would think the code DBU, your first bet's covered up to 500 bucks. And that means if it doesn't hit, you have what's called a bet back bonus token, and you can run it back up to 500 bucks. Once again, everything is at MyBookie AG. Get registered, make your deposit, use the code DBU. Then you're not just watching the madness, you're making it pay with my bookie. We're here with Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter, and it seems like newsletter's doing well. You know, I follow and I try to retweet when you have some of these, the sales for your friends and family and discounts like that. But I think it's cool in this era to see independent journalists of various kinds in various niches doing well and doing well on their terms. And I think you were, you were early to this, and I, I hope it's, I hope you're. You're still professionally satisfied as it seems to come through, through your writing.

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, it's certainly a mature product at this point. I did start it in 2010. We've been around 2,000 subscribers now for a while. Some people drop off, some people get new subscribers, but that's really the number. And, you know, you mentioned the independence part of it. That's the biggest part for me. I can write what I want when I want. I do a lot of different things. I have a lot of independence. And don't get me wrong, I've worked with great editors over the years, and I do miss that a little bit. But let's face it, there aren't as many outlets for writers as there were 10, 15 years ago. So, you know, I look around and I see all of the energy is in newsletters, particularly on the sports side. So I'm excited to see everybody out there trying to do good work and obviously trying to get paid. It's tough for consumers. I'm the same way. It's tough to pay for everybody you want to support, but this is the only way it's going to work. Right now, you have to support independent journalists.

[Dan Bernstein]

When we look at the white Sox. And this is. It's kind of hard because when you set the bar so low for so long, it skews perspective. And if the White Sox were to win 72 games this year, that's a heck of a year from where they were. For them to just be the way I've described it to people, just sort of out and about. For them to rise to just ordinary bad instead of historic bad is kind of a big deal to get back to. Oh, they're just a normal, inconsistent, not great MLB team. That's a big leap for them. Does that mean they're doing something right?

[Joe Sheehan]

Oh, absolutely. And as somebody who was a critic of Chris Getz early in his term, I think you've got to like the way he's turned it around a bit. A lot of successful trades so far, whether it's the crochet trade you want to look at, even the most recent one, trading Luis Robert for Luis Angel Acuna. I think they're putting a team on the field through these trades that's certainly a lot better than the one two years ago. And as you say, Dan, you know, they improved by 30 games over two years. Okay. They're still 72 and 90. So, you know, which way, which way do you want to look at it? I think they still got to build the pitching side of it, you know, hopefully this year. We saw both Hagan Smith and Noah Schultz stall out a little bit last year, have some health issues. Those are the two guys you're hoping you're going to front your rotation come 27 and 28. We'll see if they can make that kind of progress this year. For this year, you know, they got good work out of Shane Smith. Sean Burke filling in the gaps with some low, low cost free agents. Anthony K, Eric Fetty, I wouldn't be surprised. I expected, Dan, when I sat down with my numbers, that I would have the cut. The White Sox slipping back a bit this year. Typically when a team improves by that much in one year, they fall back the next.

[Dan Bernstein]

Called the plex class, the plexiglass principle.

[Joe Sheehan]

Right. James wrote about it a thousand years ago. But when I ran the numbers with the bullpen upgrades, with the offensive upgrades, and of course, a little bit before Kyle Thiel got hurt, I had them at, I believe, 72 and 90 is where I landed on, and I was a little surprised by that. But it gives you an idea of just how much talent they've infused into this roster over the last couple of years. Colson Montgomery finally getting healthy and being Effective. I think Miguel Vargas, we started to see him hit a little bit at the end of last year. This is going to be a decent offensive team. I do worry about the rotation and you know, we'll see what happens in that bullpen. But you know, 72 and 90 is again, it's 30 wins better than they were two years ago. Here's the thing about modern baseball. You're never more than three years from contention. You look what the Nationals have done basically going into back to back rebuilds.

[Dan Bernstein]

The Rockies are more than three years from contention.

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, you never should be is what I'm saying.

[Dan Bernstein]

Okay. Okay.

[Joe Sheehan]

Your access to talent through the draft, the ability teams have now, well, 29 teams have now to improve their own players, the way the game is built now, the way players have access to all of these tool front offices are so savvy about, hey, how do we make you better? And your access to talent on the market. Nobody should ever be more than three years from contention. So I look at the White Sox next year and say, okay, you've built the infrastructure now you got to go out next year, spend some money and you can actually target 84, 85 wins in 20, 27.

[Dan Bernstein]

Is Munetaka Murakami a novelty act?

[Joe Sheehan]

No, I think that's. That doesn't give him enough credit for what he did in Japan. This guy was a great player in the MPB for a while. He's coming over here and I want to say 26 or 27. There are holes in the game. When you see a player who has this much trouble making contact on pitches in the zone, that's a warning sign. In today's game, we worry about whether he's going to be able to hit the velocity that he's going to see in this country. We also didn't get a lot of information in the spring because he spent so much time with the Japan team in the World Baseball Classic. I want to say it's 17 plate appearances. So it's going to be a learning process. And one of the things I said at the time of the signing, Dan, was that this is exactly what the White Sox should be doing. Taking advantage of a player whose market slipped, who they can now sign to just a two year deal and see what he is. They don't have to worry about, oh, if he gets 145, we got to bench him. What are you going to play? Lenin Sosa at first base, give him 550 PAs this year. 550 PAs last year, next year, and see what you have in him, you have absolutely no reason to do anything but see if he can learn to hit major league pitching. So I love the signing for the Sox, even if I'm not that excited about the player. I think about Russell Branion. I think about the less we use of Joey Gallo. I, I don't think he's going to be a superstar here, but can he be a 2 to 3 win first baseman? You know, low average, low OBP, high slugging guy? Yeah, I think that's who he's going to be.

[Dan Bernstein]

Russell Branyan, that's an interesting name. Okay. Because you know, I was thinking of those guys because it's not really a three true outcome guy. Because he doesn't really walk. Yeah, you know, that's right. It doesn't fit in in that, that mold. I'm trying to think of White Sox that would fit. I mean, the Adam Dunn experiment obviously didn't work. Some of us were very excited about that and had to wear that one. But it's it, it's a corollary then to your the Rockies should throw all fastballs theory because saying that if you are here in your, in wherever your development is, you might as well do

[Joe Sheehan]

something, do anything, try something. Just go out and do the thing that might work, but because your cost of failure is so low, you just may as well go out and do it. And I look at the pitching staff as well. I wrote the other day, you know, I look at Grant Taylor and look at Sean Newcomb and these are two guys who have had success in multi inning stints, whether Taylor, you know, three inning starts and then coming out of the bullpen. Sean Newcomb, with a lot of multi inning work, use them in those roles. Don't lock everybody into one inning outings. Use Dominguez in the ninth and then try to get multi inning performances out of these other guys. And again, you know, Will Venable is a smart guy. I think he wants to go into a season and say, you know, can we get to 41 and 41? I mean, if you're the manager, you're not thinking we're bad. Let me just experiment. You want to try to win as many games as possible. And I think there's a middle ground where you're doing things that are somewhat experimental that also can help you win.

[Dan Bernstein]

You are. And maybe this is just something I'm noticing in your writing recently. It does seem like the aging curve is a theme to a lot of your analysis. And I'm just curious about the evolution of your awareness of the aging curve in baseball. Is this something that happened quickly? Is this something. And it really is, is. It reminds me of looking back on like actual evolutionary history. You know, Stephen Jay Gould has to go through the fossil record to point out punctuated equilibrium at one point, but you have to actually see it in the sediment in the fossil record to note it. Now that you've got some time since the great velocity increase and we're sort of sitting, I don't want to say plateaued, but we're reaching some of the limits of the human body. When did it really occur to you, boy, that we're. We got to move back our expectations for the ages of players contributing?

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah, I mean I go Back to the 88Bill James Abstract when he first did the study about that gave us the aging curve with the age 27 peak around 26 to 28. Guys kind of getting better up to that point and then fading after that. Then it was Jeff Zimmerman at Fangraphs, I want to say in the maybe 15 years ago wrote about how guys were coming into the league and basically they were as good as they were going to be. They were falling off a lot more quickly. And then I will say at the end of the 2000 and tens, I wrote about how because the fastball velocity had become such a big deal and this was before we went to the transition of guys not throwing their fastballs anymore, Velocity got to a point where it's chasing older players out of the league, not just in terms of performance. He was literally just chasing them out of the league. And in recent years we've seen players 36 and over have their low smallest impact on baseball. There are always going to be exceptions, but you basically chased out 40 plus, 38 plus, 36 plus. And if you look at hitters 32 plus there were. Dan, I apologize and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there were only something like eight hitters last year, 32 and over, who had at least three war. So you just don't have older players being productive anymore too. And so, and I think it's mostly the pitching. I think between the velocity and the spin and how pitchers have evolved into witches, it just chases older guys. You lose a little bit of that reaction time. I started looking and saying, hey, you've got these. The velocity has been picked up to the point where it's chasing older hitters out of the game. So the 40 somethings and 30 somethings now, you know, guys who are 36 are getting chased out of the league you look even. And again, I don't have the numbers in front of me, dan, but players 32 and over last year there were only maybe eight guys who were even three win players above the age of 32. So that's where I'm looking and saying, hey, I don't really want to be signing older free agents. I look at the Alonzo contract this year and I have real questions about how well he's going to age. I have questions. There are always going to be exceptions. Aaron Judge 33, 34 he's been able to hold on, but I think you're seeing what the pitchers can do as they evolve into witches. It used to be hitters could adapt. You would use experience, you would use the savvy that you learn as a ballplayer to overcome your loss in physical attributes. And now all of that knowledge just doesn't help you keep up with these incredible velocity and spin monsters. So yeah, I'm out on most players 32 and up now.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, what does that say about the left side of the Cubs infield then? If you've got Bregman and Swanson there and we've seen, for various reasons, Swanson has had some, some wild fluctuations within his Cubs seasons. You know, we find out later like, yeah, well I played a whole season. I had a sports hernia. I didn't do anything about it. Well, great. Thanks for letting us know. And I'm just trying to reconcile a lot of your belief in the Cubs with a couple of old guys on the left side there.

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah, I think you go to the established level they have where you say, okay, even if Bregman declines a bit from where he's been with the Astros and Red Sox the last couple of years, still probably a two to three win player, still a plus glove at third base. Now you wonder how long that's going to hold up. But you know, Nolan Arenado actually declined defensively and then bounced back last year to be very good. So I think it's reason to believe Bregman can be a plus defensive third base for the next couple of years, even if he slips down to a 115, 110, 105 WRC plus. Batman Swanson's the same thing. The defense is going to have to carry the profile. Remember Dansby, Swanson was never a superstar hitter. He had a couple of big power years, but by and large he's somebody who's going to be a 105 WRC guy, but he's going to get you there with a plus 10 glove at shortstop and you made that commitment three years ago. So this is going to be the part, the fact that he's held up as well as he has, I think is a bonus. So, yeah, you're taking on some age risk. Absolutely. Tucker's two years younger than Bregman. So by choosing Bregman over Tucker, you're exacerbating the age risk, but you're also doing it on a team that has a lot of young talent that you would expect to carry going through. So if Bregman does decline to a 2.5, 2.2 win player over the next couple of years, I think you can say that I don't see a lot of collapse risk in his profile until maybe you get to the back end of the deal. And Dan, there's not going to be many free agent deals that look great in year four, year five.

[Dan Bernstein]

And I think the Cubs knew that ever since the John Lester deal when they, they basically said it. And you know, Theo didn't, didn't hide the ball on that one. And he said you, you hope that you get the value out of these deals on the front end of these deals. And, and they actually maybe got more out of Lester than I thought when he was barely cracking 90 and still getting through these 35 pitch innings with, with little damage done just by, by working around the corners. Now the, the other side of when you say these, these sorcerers on the mound are driving the older guys out of the game. Oppositely the bullpen construction and the ability of teams pitching infrastructure to maximize older arms is also making this problem even worse because it seems like the Cubs among those teams that say, all right, let's see what you got. Let's say throw this less, throw this more. Change your angle here to add a little bit of sweep or a little bit of sink. The ability to take something as chaotic as bullpen construction and as unpredictable as bullpen construction and exercise a little bit of control over some of these veteran arms seems to have a ton of value now.

[Joe Sheehan]

Now. Well, it helps that we're, we've taken volume, we've taken endurance, we've taken durability out of the equation. Right. We're not asking relievers to give us 110innings. We're not asking them to pitch multiple innings very often. We're rarely asking them to pitch four days a week. So you're reducing the job down to can you throw 15 pitches three to four times a week? Okay, you can do that. Let's maximize the value of those 15 pitches, which could be a grip change, could be a pitch mix change, could be getting you to add a mile or 2 of velocity on your fastball, could be getting you to add multiple fastballs. That's the all the rage now, as the pitchers will, we'll talk about. There are so many ways to improve pitchers once you take endurance out of the equation. And I think the Cubs certainly been at the forefront of that. You have to start with a certain amount of raw talent. But I think the threshold for that for modern relievers is fairly low relative to what it might have been 25 years ago where you say, hey look, we need to get 80, 90 innings out of you. We just don't need that anymore. Between eight man bullpens and the flexibility to move guys on and off rosters effectively, teams play with 28 man rosters and 10 man bullpens. And until that changes, you're going to see teams say, hey look, all we care about is your per pitch efficiency.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, that's the other part of the aging curve discussion that I found interesting in your writing. And it is, and I'm paraphrasing here, there's no such thing as a pitching prospect. There are only pitchers. Where is the cutoff for that? You're not talking about an 18 year old kid in low A who throws 95, are you? We, you're talking about guys who are double A and or triple A. You just don't want the guys that close necessarily wasting their finite bullets on less important competition. Does that make sense? Is that right?

[Joe Sheehan]

That's. And that's the part of it that actually gets lost. You go back to Gary Huckabay at Prospectus coming up with this back in the early 2000s, I want to say there's no such thing as a pitching prospect. And there were two sides to it. One is that these guys get hurt all the time and you can't invest in them. And certainly that hasn't changed over the last 20 years. But the part that I think was lost, and Gary will tell you was lost, was the idea that if you have a pitcher who's getting guys out in the high miners, just push him to the major leagues. If he's good enough to get the double A and AAA hitters out, he's probably good enough to help you in the major leagues and he's just wasting bullets down there. And teams have been a little more aggressive over the years, but if anything, we've seen teams lower workloads in the minor leagues. You look at the top prospects on any top pitching prospects on a BP list. Keith Law at the Athletic Baseball America. Any of them. And you'll find that the top pitchers on those lists are throwing 100, 110 innings at the most. They're not being developed for a major league workload. So if that, if you're not even doing that, just get them to the major leagues. And this is the, like I say, this is the part of there's no such thing as a pitching prospect that was lost. We're a little too conservative with guys who are effective enough in the high minors. Get them to the major leagues and start using them because they can help you now. And likely it's not they're going to break.

[Dan Bernstein]

How much of your Ben Brown optimism is based on all this talk about his sinker?

[Joe Sheehan]

Oh, it's mostly stubbornness.

[Dan Bernstein]

Dan eventually be right.

[Joe Sheehan]

I put him on a fantasy team two, three years ago and it didn't work out. So I'm just going to ride it. No, I do think that the new pitch mix is going to help. We know he's got the velocity and I think if you take that guy and again maybe you make him a one inning guy and that's just the way the game is now. But I love the idea of him coming out with multiple pitches, able to go through a lineup one time, especially in a rotation behind a rotation that doesn't have a lot of guys who are going to work into the seventh and eighth. He's somebody, I think, who can be a bridge pitcher for you, throw two innings in the, you know, give you the six and the seventh on a lot on twice a week. Maybe it's 30 pitches, two innings twice a week, pick up a lot of strikeouts. Maybe eventually somebody you trust to come in with runners on base because he has the great strikeout rate. And you mentioned the sinker. I just, he's adapted this year in a way that I don't think we necessarily saw that coming from him that last year.

[Dan Bernstein]

We are talking with veteran baseball analyst Joe Sheehan here on dbu. And let's be honest, this is when basketball ball games are starting to get interesting too. This time of year is so good. What shouldn't be a question is your game day food. If you are watching these games in March and heck, Thursday's day game, if you're watching basketball and baseball, when everything opens, you need something that delivers when it comes to your setup. Giordano's is for you. I know it's for me too. You got the full lineup. Chicago deep dish if you want something loaded, tavern style pizza where you can cut it into squares and everybody can just be grabbing on it during the game. Thin crust. You want to keep it classic. I know I'm talking to a New Yorker here, so hold your tongue. You add in wings, cookies, game day deals, you got a real spread. No scrambling at halftime, no bad last minute decision food that shows up the way it's supposed to. All of these games we know are unpredictable. Your setup, your food doesn't have to be order now. Giordano.com Visit a Giordano's location near you for pickup and grab that perfect game day spread. There are game day deals happening now. Check them out. Giordano's. Your bracket may bust. Your pizza shouldn't so with everything I've read Joe about the automatic ball strike system as being implemented this year, the the rule of thumb I'm seeing is the math says 1 and 1, 3 and 2 and I don't know how much tutoring has to go on. I don't know how they can beat it into everybody's heads. Don't overreact. To get major league hitters in the moment to understand when it's okay or not okay to challenge because I guess the brewers wanted to hold up color coded cards and MLB's like nope, can't do that. The hitters, they're on their own.

[Joe Sheehan]

Well at that point you just tell them as on their way up to the to the the plate count leverage is going to be a big deal. You look at the difference between 2:1 and 1:2, it's 500 points of ops on average. So you look at 3:2, but even you know, 3:2, obviously walk strikeout, that's a big swing. But is it a big swing with two outs and nobody on, you know, do you really want to make the the run expectancy they have setting that at first isn't really all that great as opposed to maybe saving that challenge for situation for a leadoff guy in a tie game in the eighth inning. I think game leverage is going to be a really big issue here and also batter leverage. Look, there's no way around a a challenge with Matt Shaw at the plate. And a big fan of Matt Shaw isn't going to have the value of a challenge with PCA at the plate. Well against a right hander anyway. Or say as Suzuki at the plate, I want to see whether we're going to run into situations where challenges get burned by hitters who don't who the value of changing the count doesn't matter as much. It does for better hitters. I think that's going to be, you know, we've seen guys teams challenge willy nilly. There was a game earlier this spring, I believe five consecutive pitches were overturned. I don't know that we're going to see that level of challenging in the regular season because the games count. And that's when you start thinking about game leverage and count leverage and hitter leverage. And personally, I don't think any of that should be part of it. I think MLB doesn't want it to be part of that which they stopped. This great blue. This Brewer's idea was perfect. You can challenge, you can't challenge. And I think that the brewers had it right. Because when you make it a challenge system, and we've seen this with replay, it becomes less about can, are we getting the call right? And it becomes are we getting the call? That helps my team. One of the things that people hate about replay, Dan, is those calls on a tag play.

[Dan Bernstein]

Oh, and the guys at the hand is just above the base and it happens to come off. Yeah, we all don't. Well, I hate that.

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, it doesn't bother me as much because my feeling is slide better. You know, I mean, if you're off the base, you're off the base. Now, the fact is, for most of baseball history, that wouldn't have been called. But once you have a challenge system, you're not talking about getting the call right in some sense, it's just, can we get the call correct? And I think that gamifying challenges, gamifying officiating is a bad path. I have a lot of readers who are convinced that once we see this in process for a year, it's going to accelerate the path to full automated. Full automated system, which is personally what I'd like to see.

[Dan Bernstein]

Okay.

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah. I think that if we get there, take the umpire's Lord, take the catchers out of the equation instead, the batter facing the pitcher. Whether we get there next year, next five years, next cba, eventually I think we'll get get there. But in the short term, the challenge system is a lot less about getting the call right and a lot more about context.

[Dan Bernstein]

I think too, it's balances out the essential confrontation rather than it being here is a catcher who we know is great at fooling umpires. That's what framing is. And we know that umpire fooling is a. Is a marketable paid skill that would then come off the, off the books if, when we start going to, to an automated system Framing's out. Framing doesn't matter anymore. And that's going to change the way catchers go about their business. The way they set up, the way they, they can lean in a direction. They can make a catch that doesn't look like a strike because they're trying to hold a runner. There's all kinds of cool stuff that can come in.

[Joe Sheehan]

They might be able to hit again.

[Dan Bernstein]

They aren't spending all their time working on umpire fooling.

[Joe Sheehan]

I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but I've never been. I think framing is a pro. It's a hole in the game. I think it's a hole the catchers have learned to exploit. To me, umpires who can't possibly see whether this object moving at 90 miles an hour with a break on it is moving through an imaginary box in front of them have learned to rely on what catchers do. They've learned to rely on the count. Is it O2, is it 3, 0? That influences whether a guy makes a call. And I'd like to take that completely out of the game. Umpires in today's game don't call pitches, they call catches. And I would like to see that eliminated, make it a more fair fight for hitters. I do think, and this is a big picture thing, but you look at the last, the leagues hit under.250 for three for five straight years. I don't count 20, 20, 20, 20 doesn't count. The last time that happened was the 60s. We call that the Dead Ball Era. Two, the time it happened before that was the 1900s. We call that the Dead ball era. One, we've got to do something to balance out the game. And it's my feeling that if you call a rulebook strike zone and if you force pitchers to throw actual strikes, it will give the hitters a better chance. It will force. I mean, it might change the development of pitching, right? If you say to pitchers, look, you've got to throw the ball over the plate to get a strike, maybe they've got to worry more about command and control than about spin and velocity. This is long term second order and third order effects. But I really do believe that a fully automated strike zone would give us back options for hitters. It would give us hitters who can say, hey, maybe I can try to be a.290 hitter. Because the pitchers have to act differently than they currently do. Right now all pitchers have to do is spin it and throw it hard and they're getting strikes off the edges. And I want to see that out of the game, to make it for a more fair game.

[Dan Bernstein]

Yeah, I've tried to play this out and it, it results in maybe the necessity of a version of that kind of umpiring at lower and lower levels. And it's scaling it inexpensively. I think it's. The question is. And all I heard, you know, going through the, you know, through my son's high school baseball career, all we heard are the difficulty they had getting umpires and one umpire's late for a big high school game. And to get. There were so few umpires that wanted to endure the abuse and the low pay and everything else. If they could scale something that allows this system, it could be a win win to have it even helping budgets on the high school level ultimately. And that's when you're talking about a real change in the game.

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah. I read one particular reader point out that you are talking about umpire development when you talk about a change like this at the major league level. And are you going to be able to fill this pipeline? It was a similar question when I was advocating for moving the mound back. Okay, well, where do you start moving the mound back in AAA and double A and high school in Little league? I mean, where, where, where do you start that process? So I think any of the changes that happen in the major leagues have to think about the downstream effects. And, you know, golf is going through this right now with questions about how to, you know, what should the golf ball be able to do, what should the clubs be able to do? Should there be this concept called bifurcation where the professionals use one set of equipment and amateurs are free to use whatever they want? I think MLB might run into that eventually, where you've got the major league game, which is structured a certain way, and then everybody else is kind of playing a slightly different game.

[Dan Bernstein]

Let's talk about after this year and the clouds on the horizon of a work stoppage. It's not difficult to decipher what's happening here. You don't have to be some kind of great labor expert to hear the rhetoric that already is in the bloodstream with owners talking, well, we can't do this and we can't afford this. And look at the. The competitive balance is all thrown off and the Dodgers are the Dodgers. And yet there are some optimists out there who believe that looking at some of the young stars in baseball and the excitement of the wbc, the television deals, that there may be a situation where they, they just feel they can't impose a lockout. I would never put it past ownership and Rob Manfred, who I just don't believe ultimately cares about baseball enough or is an objective steward of the game in any way. What is your level of optimism, pessimism about something fair maybe being done, or the players simply standing their ground and saying, no, you don't need any of this. You need to just compete better?

[Joe Sheehan]

That's certainly my argument. Yeah, I don't. I do think it's going to be a lockout. I mean, Rob Manfred has telegraphed that for years now. On December 1st, they're going to lock out the players. They just see it as, this is a tool in our toolbox now. After the 2021, 22 lockout, this is what they're going to do. I'm a little more optimistic about the 27 season. I think the it's going to look like what it did in 22, where we'll have a lockout. It'll eat a lot of the winter. It'll push back spring training, maybe push back the first week of the season. I don't think we're going to lose games. And it goes to the two words you use, which is television deals. MLB's deals are coming up, and what they don't want to do is go into those negotiations with a broken product. And if you lose months of the 27th season, you're going to have a very hard time convincing the 17 streamers that MLB wants to divide its package up with to give you the money to do that. Remember, MLB is trying to use the national deals to make up for the loss in local revenue. There are basically nine teams with good local TV deals now and 21 others that are just kind of looking around. They're distributing through MLB or they're taking much less money from their local rsn. This is something that maybe has to fix. So it needs the national deals to do that, and it needs a healthy 27 season to go into those negotiations doing so. So I'm reasonably optimistic about 27. I think 32 is going to be more complicated on the other side of the TV deals, when MLB really wants expansion, when it really wants playoff expansion. I think there are concerns in the 30s when I'll be. I think I'll be 35 by then. So, you know, I should have no problem covering that stuff. But I look at, I, I'm. I. I don't think it's going to be fun. I think we're gonna have a lousy winter next winter. But I. The other part of this, Dan and we could do a six hour segment on this. Feel free, feel free to bring me on again. But this is an internal fight with the owners.

[Dan Bernstein]

Always. It's always, it's always owner against owner.

[Joe Sheehan]

481it the owners that are have these good TV deals are going to be asked to put in more money. Whether we get a cap system or a no cap system. The 21 owners that are have lost their local revenue, want more of the Dodgers money, of the Yankees money, money. And frankly, you know, one of the things I've said all that long, the information on local revenue sharing is very closely held. Like for the sake of. I know every detail of Alex Bregman's contract but I don't know how much the Cubs lose in the net local revenue sharing transfer. And my feeling is that that information would change this conversation. Everybody tags the Dodgers as the big villains or the Yankees or the Mets is the big bad. But if we could see how much money these teams are giving to, you know, 15 teams that are collecting every single year, I think it would change the competition. I think if we could see that Bob Nutting or Bruce Sherman or John Sherman in Kansas city is collecting 75, 85, $95 million a year and not spending it on players, I think that would change the conversation. So until we have the same kind of information on Bruce Sherman's money as we do on Kyle Tucker's money, I think this kind of public conversation anyway is a little hard to have. I think the local revenue sharing information is hidden in a way that favors

[Dan Bernstein]

the owners greatly once games start. I've always wondered this and people have asked me about this and joking about it. This, this idea of, you know, covering every. How does somebody cover all of baseball? What is your setup like? What's your day? On an average, there's going to be day games, there's going to be night games. I'm just curious, how many, how many screens, how much can you watch in real time? What can you go back and watch using all the apps that are available to you to time shift so many things? Like what? How do you consume the game?

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, let me start this by saying that if you told me it 12 that my job would be watching baseball and writing about it all day, I, I'd be thrilled. So everything about.

[Dan Bernstein]

I'm not saying you shouldn't be, I'm just saying this.

[Joe Sheehan]

Yeah, it's a lot what I'm about to describe but I get to write about baseball for a living so I'm happy about it. So Typically just to start from the night before, I like to know what I'm writing the next day. So I've taken some notes but I won't have written. And typically what I'll do is I'll get up mid morning. I keep writers hours. So this, this not this 10 o' clock interview today was a little early for me. But I get up, finish what I was writing for the day. I'll send that off to my editor, he'll send it back, I'll send out the newsletter. And then typically in the afternoon, you know, I try to get outside, you know, you know, see the sun and you know, actually do a little exercise. Oh look at the middle of the afternoon, big thing. And one of the things I started doing in recent years is running a gaming newsletter where I do picks or talk about issues in the gaming space. It's a free adjunct to the newsletter but the window for writing that is also in the afternoon so there's some, some conflict there. And then the games start here around 6pm because everybody's moved up their start times now. And we'll typically have is cable, extra innings up on my, the big TV. I'll have an iPad and an iPhone. So three screens and that's pretty much all you need. And one of them is basically a scoreboard so that the inning changes and I want to see Paul Skeens as half inning or it's second and third with nobody out in this game or there's this pitching matchup I really want to focus on. Maybe that'll be on the big screen and that's what I do from six. Well you know, it used to be seven to one and now it's more like six to 12:30. And then hopefully by the end of that period I know what I want to write that night. And I'm online, I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on slack talking about baseball during that period and then I get up the next day and I do it all again. Now the other thing that I, I add in there is I walk, watch a quick pitch on MLB Network which is just a wonderful highlights package. It's very much like the old school baseball tonight where it's just highlights and stats, highlights and stats. And that's been a big part of catching me up on stuff that I might have missed. You know, this look, if there's 15 games going on, some is something is going to be some Marlins Nationals game is going to get lost and I'm gonna have to find out the next day that Yuri Perez pitch well, or James would hit a home run or something like that. But that's the day, you know. And, you know, it varied a little bit last year. It varies a little bit depending on what's going on in the rest of my life. But, you know, I would say Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. That's what my day looks like. I'm writing and I'm watching games now. Lighter schedules on Mondays and Thursdays, more split schedules on the weekend, it gets a little bit different. But on most of those big game nights, on their watching and then writing and then doing it all over again,

[Dan Bernstein]

and you occasionally will mention that you go because, you know you've got a couple of major league teams that happen to be there. I sometimes, when I go to a game, have a difficult time framing it properly because I'm just besieged by so many. It's an attack on the senses. You know, everything is loud, and there's so many distractions. Do you go to a game for fun or do you say, look, I've gotta dial in here. I've gotta look at every vlog. My eye goes up here, so I know the pitching velocity. Or I gotta watch the game simultaneously. So when you choose to go sort of be there, does that change it?

[Joe Sheehan]

Well, I go to fewer games than you might expect, in part because I don't enjoy the experience of the two New York parks. The volume levels are just out of control. I would like to watch the game, and I grew up being to watch a game and talk to the person next to me, set a conversation, and you basically have to scream to the person next year. So I find that really unpleasant. So the two New York parks, I just. I don't go to as many games you might expect. I will say this no matter where I'm going, and I'll usually get to Baltimore once a year. I'll get to Philly once a year, try to get to Fenway once a year. I'm out in LA once a year. It is entirely a social experience.

[Dan Bernstein]

Got it.

[Joe Sheehan]

I haven't gone to a ball game to actually do work in more than a decade, and that's been important to me. Dan. I didn't come up as a reporter. You know, I came up from the outside, so I don't really have those particular chops. I've done that work. I don't think I'm particularly good at it. But one of the most important things for me was to make sure that the ballpark was a place where I can enjoy baseball. I never wanted to be A place where it was a workspace. So to this day I'm like that. If I'm, I think it's Bob Ryan. The great Bob Ryan from the Boston Globe once said, you know what, would you like to go to a game with one of these guys? And I said to him, I said, it's just like going to a game with your friend. Yeah, I want to talk about ball and but I'm not sitting there calculating weighted runs created after the somebody hits a double to left. I'm not giving you win probability added probably talking about games we went to or you know, you know, talking about our kids or whatever it is we might be doing. It is entirely a social experience for me. It is not a work experience at all.

[Dan Bernstein]

I'm happy to hear that. And I also as, as we wrap up, who do you want to watch purely as a fan in today's game? Forget your picks, forget your, you know, your reputation and like, well, what do you know? She. And you're the guy who said this guy was good or this guy was bad. And obviously you've got rooting interest based on your opinions of players that sort of function as, as, as a market currency out there. But just as that, that, that 10 year old that, that's in there, who do you stop and say I want to watch this guy because he's cool

[Joe Sheehan]

to bring it full circle. I think Petro Armstrong is a lot of fun to watch and it's hard to do that with defenders. Right, because you never know when a ball is going to be hit into the gap. It's harder in baseball than it is in other sports where, you know, somebody's going to have the ball in his hand half the game for pitch. I think pitchers make that easier. And I, I'm not, you know, going off the board here to tell you that I love watching Paul Skeens. I'll tell you right now, that's going to be the primary game on my big TV on Thursday. It's going to be the Paul skiing start and watching him do the amazing things he does with the baseball. As far as, you know, Kyle Schwarber's a lot of fun to watch. Swings hard. Sometimes he gets it, sometimes he doesn't. I think we're in a moment right now where there are an incredible number of watchable ballplayers. You know, Ellie Dela Cruz playing short. Whether it's PCA in center field, whether it's Schwaber or Tani at the plate, Skeens on the mound. We have this there's an element of watchability. So, yeah, I can give you all the numbers on those guys, but I can also tell you, man, I just love watching these guys play. Here in New York, we've got an Aaron Judge, we've got Juan Soto, we've got Francisco Le Indoor. Yeah, I talk about it being a golden age for baseball writing, but it's also a golden age for baseball watching.

[Dan Bernstein]

Well, here's hoping that baseball understands that when it comes to the big picture decisions that they have looming. Joshean, this was great. Thank you for doing this. And I've said this many times before, that if you are not subscribing to the Joe Sheehan Newsletter and making that a part of your baseball life, you're doing the whole thing wrong. That it, it is a, it's, it's just one. Once you understand how important it is to have that information and have it as part of the way you look at baseball. Once you have it, you can't envision a world without it. And I'm glad you're still doing it. And it's, it's been really important to help me understand the game for many, many, many years now.

[Joe Sheehan]

Thank you, Dan.

[Dan Bernstein]

That's Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter. So make sure you track that down and make that a part of your baseball day. You know, whenever the stakes are high, my bookie is where you turn bets into bankroll. There's always a big matchup on the schedule. Everybody's watching, everybody's got to take. And no matter the sport, the props can be just as much fun as the final score. And that's why my bookie is where you need to go. You know, I love props. I won my DBU pick last night. You see that? I, it was close, but I gave you modest Bouzilla's 21 or more. Don't get me started on the Bulls last night. I don't. I can't. I just every, my day is going fine. I can't. It was a hell of a game, though. We'll talk about it on OWC tomorrow because Dingleberry is home and we're going to be down here or maybe in studio. I think we're in studio tomorrow actually discussing all that. There were strong thoughts. There were things being thrown at the television, but there was all kinds of things that will bring you on on tomorrow's owc. But I did nail that for you on, on the DBU pick and those kind of props at my bookie. They're all over the place. Individual Performances, game milestones, all that action, get in on it. One account, one wallet. My bookie ag. The code is dbu. You can bet whatever you like. You bet the spread, you can bet the money lines. If you do parlays, if you put props in the parlay with all those things, there's even a casino for you to jump in during halftime or between games. Everything is at MyBookie AG. So register, deposit the codes, DBU and then your first bets covered up to 500 bucks. If it doesn't hit, you got the bet back. Bonus token, you can run it back and then you're not just watching the action, you're making it pay with my bookie. Also, quick note, we are doing these longer form interview pieces on DBU this week with Matt Abaticola on vacation and a reminder that if you missed the inter the interview with Ray Ratto yesterday, the hour with Ray Ratto, give it a go back and give it a listen it. I had so much fun doing that yesterday. And to touch base, the thank you for the responses that I've gotten via email and Instagram and elsewhere with people saying that so much of of Ray reminded them of Terry and they were smiling because, you know, Terry's old buddy still has so much of, of that sensibility. Yeah, I, I got that too and it made me happy as well. So take that time if, if you want, put that on later after you consume this one. Don't miss the Ray Ratto stuff because it really was an enjoyable listen. I, I went back and listened to it again just so I could kind of pick up on, on things that I might have missed from him. But we're doing this all week here on dbu. Thank you for being a part of it today. We thank Joe Sheehan for joining us. We thank Cody Delmendo for producing and looking forward to all the fun stuff we have going on here on 312 sports today has been brought to you in partnership with my bookie Dan Bernstein.

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