Transcript
Colin Cowherd (0:00)
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J. Mac (1:09)
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Colin Cowherd (1:38)
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Rob Manfred (2:46)
Now let's get this party started.
Colin Cowherd (2:48)
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio Here we go on a Wednesday. Baseball commish, Rob Manfred in one hour is the Major League Baseball season. Obviously started in Tokyo with the Dodgers Cubs, but it starts tomorrow as well. Major League Baseball. The team's operating going forward starting tomorrow. And Rob Manfred stops by in Los Angeles. It is the Herd. J. Mac. It was interesting. So, you know, you can, you can add new members. One of my favorite bands of all time was the Eagles. Right, right. And that you can, you can add people to the band, but you know, Don Henley had the voice. Like in the end you can add a lot of bad members. And the warriors can add Jimmy Butler. And Jimmy Butler makes them better. But it is Steph's team. And last night was a great example because Jimmy Butler returned to Miami, to the Heat, where he got him to the finals. And he has been great. He has been great. When Butler and Steph play together, warriors are 15 and three. But last night's the difference between the two. Steph didn't play, Jimmy did. And the offense dried up. The starters for the warriors at half had 10 total points. And LeBron and Steph are transformational all time players, top 10 players. Luka got traded for a reason. Remember, LeBron left Miami on his terms. Jimmy was traded out of town. Right. So Luka's a great scorer, but the team's not as good defensively because he doesn't share the ball as much. And in the NBA, if I don't touch it, I'm. I'm not playing. D on the other end. And Steph between iq, eq, off ball, on ball, scoring culture, building leadership. I love Jimmy Butler, but he's combative. He's a bounce around the league guy. He's a super grinder. He's a more offensively skilled Draymond Green. But Steph's the entire package. LeBron's the entire package. You can love Keith Richards, it's Mick's band. You can love Butler, it's Steph's band. You can love Luca, it's LeBron's band. And you saw it last night is that without Steph, this looked like the team pre Butler, nobody could score. The movement's not as good. They're not talking as much. And the Heat in the Mavs, listen, both got to finals, right? The Heat got to the finals. But when they did with Jimmy Butler, Jimmy was overwhelmed. And Luca got to a finals. But do you remember that Finals? He was out of shape. He was gassed. LeBron James with Matthew Della Badova can lose the finals. He's not out of shape, he's not gassed. He just doesn't have enough combatants on his side. So it's, it's. I can, I can absolutely love Jimmy Butler. And you can add players to teams, even like B plus, A minus guys. I've said this. Everybody's got this. Hey, Luca guarantees this. Luca gets worked on the defensive end. We talked about this with Rick Bucher yesterday. When LeBron sat out and he didn't play with Luka, they not only lost, they were getting boat raced by bad teams. Because Luka sort of reverts back to who Luka is and why it wasn't always great chemistry with the Mavericks. Guys are sitting around watching, they don't touch the ball. And this was Buker yesterday Talking about the LeBron, Luka Dynamic. When LeBron stepped out, it became the Luca show. Yes. And it looked like Dallas. And the reason that you had everybody defending as hard as they were, because they were touching the ball. They knew that if they ran the floor, the ball is going to be passed ahead and I might get a fast break layup. And that doesn't happen much when LeBron's out. So here it's interesting. I had said this. I gave baseball about 15 years off. I didn't talk much about it. The game got really slow. There was no urgency. The emergence of the iPhone, people are distracted. And the stars were not in the right places. Ohtani was down with the Angels, who feel, you know, invisible here in LA county, which neighbors Orange County. And then Bryce Harper goes to the Nats and Aaron Judge becomes a star and Ohtani is now a Dodger. And all of a sudden you look up and baseball speeds the game up. The defensive shift is eliminated. The bases are bigger, there's more base run runners, more stolen bases. And baseball the last two years, ratings up, attendance up. So Rob Manfred as a commissioner of baseball on in one hour. He's always got a battle, the purists. Baseball is like half amusement park, half museum. And, and the museum crowd, the old school people, they're grumpy. The sky is falling with any change. So yesterday was a great example of that. So Jeff Passon was on, he's very popular baseball writer for the Other Place. He was on a podcast and he said, you know, baseball's in an incredible place right now. They cannot have a work stoppage and all the seam heads come out of the woodwork. Nobody can compete. Oh, good Lord. The minute the Dodgers, Yankees make a World Series, the sky is falling crowd. Nobody can compete. We need a salary Cap. Baseball's never going to have a salary cap. Union's too strong. And do you know, nobody is repeated in baseball to win the World series since 2000. That is the longest streak of any pro league in America and the longest streak in baseball history. In fact, last year I looked it up this morning. The Guardians, Orioles, Royals, Tigers and Brewers all made the playoffs. In fact, Detroit won the playoffs. There's. They're all in the bottom half of the league in payroll. The leagues never had more parity. Never. But speed up the game of the pitch clock. The purists didn't like it. The change in extra innings, the larger bases. Good God. They suggested the Goldknit bat used once. A game where a star can bat out of order. People freaked out. Baseball's in an incredibly, incredibly healthy place. But no sport has more ninnies and whiners than baseball. I looked it up this morning. So you had last year you had six guys sign 100 plus million dollar contract. Six guys. They must have been all Dodgers. Nope. One was a Yankee, one was a Dodger, one was a Diamondback, one was a Met, one was a Red Sox, one was San Francisco. Six different places they haven't had a repeat champ. But the minute the Dodgers and the Yankees get in, the sky is falling. The purists are outraged. You have parody all over the sport now. I will say this Dodger team is insane. But we've all had somebody in our social circle. Hopefully you've eliminated them. Where, you know, you go up and say, man, what a beautiful day. And they say, well, it could rain tomorrow. That is baseball purist. The sport's great. There's all sorts of bottom payroll team. I mean in the NBA you have eight teams that feel like perpetually the Wizards, they're just not watchable. They had John Wall and they weren't watchable. They can't compete. They had Beal and Wall in their prime. They can't compete in the East. So I mean, yeah, the A's situation's ugly. But the NFL several years ago had the Raiders change where they were playing. The Chargers moved, they had three. St. Louis moved out to LA. There was a real bumpy two year stretch in the NFL where like franchises were moving all over the country. Yes, the A situation's a mess, but this idea, it is just, you know, look, I gave baseball 15 years off. The first eight years here and the last eight at the other place. I just didn't talk it much last year and a half. Baseball has been unbelievable. All the stars in the right place, the game is faster. More base runners, more stolen bases, more activity. In fact, one of my questions now is I think there's parody in baseball. The place where you lack parity is pitcher and hitter. Not enough teams can hit 265 to 270 as a team because the mound, pitchers are bigger, stronger, faster, throwing 100 miles an hour. And batters, even good ones, can be overwhelmed in this sport. That's where you lack parity. The pitchers against the hitters, the sports fine. And as I've said, who pays 40% of baseball's bills? TV networks, they don't care about parity. They want six really good teams, preferably in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, L.A. and Philadelphia and maybe Houston. That's where they want the good teams and that's where they are right now. So, J. Mac, we got a lot of stuff, you know, it's, it's interesting. People are pins and needles on what Aaron Rodgers is going to do. And, and I've said he's a slightly better version of Russell Wilson. So Russell Wilson signed with the Giants yesterday and it landed with an absolute nothing burger. Well, I don't think I. That is a third to fourth place team, right?