Diamondbacks Zac Gallen & Merrill Kelly, Joey Chestnut, NBA Free Agency, Hot Seat/Cool Throne Plus Our Annual Dingers Only Fantasy Draft
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Hey, Pardon My Take listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

On today's part of my take, it is time. We have Dinger's only draft. Max still hasn't done his punishment, but we're doing our Dinger's only league for the 2025 MLB season. We have Brandon. We have Steven. We have Zach. We have Jerry drafting our teams. We also have a great interview with Diamondbacks pitchers Merrill Kelly and Zach Gallen in studio. We

We also are going to talk to the greatest athlete of all time, Joey Chestnut, before his big return to Nathan's hot dog eating competition on Coney Island on July 4th. And we're going to recap some NBA stuff. We're going to talk some NFL trades. We got Hot Seat Cool Throne, and it's all brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. Nothing says summer like long days, clutch plays, and firing off a few bets on the game, all with DraftKings Sportsbook.

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Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Use code TAKE. That's code TAKE for new customers to get $150 in bonus bets instantly when you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings. The crown is yours today. It is Wednesday, July 1st. And boys, I know it's vacation week, but we got to talk some NBA. We have a big show. We have a big baseball show. Dingers Only is back. Two great interviews, but we're going to talk some NBA.

NBA free agency has started and it's a dud. I'm going to say right now it's a dud. What? You weren't thrilled with like a couple of minor pieces moving here and there. And then miles Turner being the big, the big implication. Actually, the biggest news of free agency was that Dame is,

getting waved and stretched. They're stretching and waving Dame. So I guess he's technically a free agent right now. Ironically, stretching would have prevented this entire thing for Dame to begin with. Exactly. But I guess Dame might get to go to whatever team he wanted to go to a couple years ago. So that's good for him.

Yeah, it's just been not as exciting as it has been in years past because the new CBA, a lot of people are saying that CJ McCollum, our good friend, ruined free agency. I would say he probably did a good job in making the league more parity in the league and teams being able to get good quicker and not having super teams, but

listen, a lot of NBA fans love the offseason drama. I have a take, PFD. I'd like to throw at you because we know Adam Silver listens to everything and we can easily bully him. And we'll talk about who's the winners and losers and Dame and all that stuff and LeBron James. All right. Two-part take. One,

They got to get rid of the apron word. I'm so sick of it. It makes it. Listen, I read. I basically Googled explain the second apron to me as a five year old. I found a bunch of posts. I read an article. I watched a video. I think I fully understand it, except for the fact that they keep calling it the first apron, second apron.

If they just called it jail and prison, I think it would make a lot more sense because that's really what it is. The second apron is prison. They basically – for people who don't understand what they've done with the salary cap is they used to have all these rules where if you go over the salary cap, your owner has to just pay extra money, and these guys are really rich, and it doesn't matter.

Now they've made it, if you go over the second apron, you lose future draft picks, you lose ability to trade cash, you lose ability to mid-level exception signs. So they restrict you. They put you in prison. If a team is going into prison in free agency, I understand it a lot easier than the second apron. I think instead of jail and prison, it should be jail and hell.

Fine. And it's very confusing that they use the word apron and it's like teams getting under the second. It's kind of sexual. It makes me think that we're getting busy now. I don't know if it's sexual. I never thought of it as sexual. That might be a bonk. I thought of it as somebody's apron.

Yeah, I thought of it more as like you're just wearing an apron in the kitchen and you're getting splashed with oil. I want to get under the apron. I want to see what's underneath there. They wear two aprons, BFT. Like, oh, they're getting another second one. If you get under the first apron, that's okay. That's like first date shit. If you get under the second apron, now we're talking like we're moving in. But what you just explained, jail and prison makes sense because then you could say your team got out of prison.

Well, jail and hell. I like jail and hell. But prison is more than jail.

It is. Yeah, that's true. It's like first apron, second apron prison in jail. I mean, I also thought like you just do like a fire here in the fire storm or, you know, a volcano eruption. I don't, I don't care, but they just need to get rid of the apron, especially because it's hurting guys. Like my good friend, PFD, who's like getting rock hard every time he sees the word apron. First guy ever. Dude, I love you. You know, no, no, no, no. It's getting, getting under the apron is what gets me going.

I don't care if there's two aprons, but if I'm getting under two aprons, then I'm grinding, man. I'm bumping. But either way, do you like my idea? Jail and prison. Explain it to us better.

No, I do like the idea. Just jail and prison. You did it one time. You conflated the two because jail and prison are so close. Like, they're so similar. That's why I'm thinking jail is first one. And then hell is the second one. Yeah. Wait, what do you mean? I conflated the two. You switched them up one of the times when you explained it because it's confusing because they're so similar. No, prison's always the second apron. Or maybe it's the alligator. Alligator Alcatraz is the second apron. That's fine. That's fine, too. So that's the first one.

fix that adam silver change the name i don't care just make it so that it's relatable to us i don't give a fuck about this apron first apron second apron you sound you're basically making a bunch of people walk around and sound like nerds when they say it when they go on like well owners yeah the war yeah with boners the war yeah they're incels they're nerds who can't get their boners touch the warriors need to get under the second apron no the warriors have to get out of prison okay that's the problem that's it

And you're making America hard. Yeah, you're making America hard. All right, here's the other one. Because it's, I miss the days of just chaos. I don't think this should happen every year, but I think it should happen randomly. It could happen during the season. It's essentially, it's video game rules. And Adam Silver just says, for the next hour, salary caps off.

I kind of like that. It's when you go to the menu in your video games and you turn off salary caps, you could do any trade ever. And you have to get it signed. Like you have to get your player signed in that window. And so everyone would just go crazy.

Like, all right, the Nuggets are going to sign Jokic to $1 billion, 10 years. Salary cap's off. But it actually has to be signed. The legal document has to be signed, and you have no idea when it's coming. So you basically have an hour to scramble, try to get a hold of your players, try to get a hold of free agents, everything, get the deal done. And then he's like, boom, salary cap's back on. And then it would be great because, like, four years from now –

You're like, oh, shit. Why is KCP making like $400 million? Oh, that's because he was the only guy they could reach during the salary caps off window. I like that idea. I also like the idea of designating one guy, maybe per roster every two or three years, who's allowed to just his individual salary does not count towards the cap. Yeah. You have one guy that's immune to the cap. Yeah. I mean, SGA, we should talk about that.

That's a spicy meatball. Congrats. Fleeced. He fleeced the thunder. Four years, $285 million. What is that? 71.25. Is that right? 71.25 mil per year. Someone did the math because it obviously escalates. I think it's in his final year of the contract. He'll be making over $1 million per game.

So, and he's still not the highest paid player. Jason Tatum still has that, but SGA, pretty nice. Pretty nice. Hank, I have a question for you. Yes, PFT. With the Dame stretching and waving, did the thought cross your mind? What if we did that with Tatum? No. Didn't you think about it? No. Dame's so much older. Yeah, but you didn't even think about it. I know in the gym. Tatum's already grinding. What if you stretched him?

No. Dame's washed. Not waved him. No, no. Not waved him. Just stretched him. No. Washed. You don't even know how to do that. We don't need to do that. We're talking like a probably eight to ten year difference.

Somebody did the math. They said SGA is going to make $106,000 per free throw next season. That's awesome. That's pretty good. Good for him. Yes. So I'm looking at the calendar right now. It is Bobby Bonilla day. Does that mean that Dame also gets paid on Bobby Bonilla day? Hmm.

I don't know. I think he gets – so I think his – he gets all the money and then the cap, like the stretching part of it is the next five years, the Bucs have a count against their cap like $20 million or whatever it is. So that's the stretching part and then they waived him. I also don't know – can you guys explain to me Chris Haynes? That guy is weird. So I –

He's maybe related. He's maybe married to someone who's related to Giannis. He's also like best friends with Dame. So the Bucks, he was the Bucks insider. But then there's the story that he said that Giannis was upset that Dame was stretched and waved. And then Shams had a story that Giannis essentially recruited Miles Turner. And Miles Turner wouldn't have been able to be recruited if it weren't for Dame getting stretched and waved.

I don't really understand the situation. I think Giannis probably... I probably am going to agree with Shams here and say that Giannis wanted Miles Turner and was okay with the stretching and waving. But the whole thing... And he also got caught. He did... He tried to act really quick during free agency. I think it was maybe James Harden. He did...

No, wait, who was it? Oh, yeah, I think it was James Harden. He did AI. No, no, it was someone who changed to the Clippers. He did AI for them in New Jersey, and it spelled the name of the town wrong. It was Dallas. That's what it was. It was Dorian Finney-Smith, and he said, or whoever went to Dallas, and it was like D-A-L-L-I-E-S because it was AI. So he's a weirdo.

Yeah, I think that Giannis just kind of had to tell him that I'm sad that Dame is leaving because he doesn't want to be like, I'm so pumped that he's not going to be on the team anymore. You know, like there's no harm in just him saying like, I'm bummed out that he's gone. I think he's probably pumped to have Miles Turner. I think he's probably very excited that the Bucks are going to try to remain competitive somehow. Should we talk about LeBron?

Yeah, but one last thing about the Bucs, though. That does suck for the Pacers because this is the reality of having Hal Burton get injured where you can't just run back the team that was in Game 7 of the Finals. And the Bucs and Pacers hate each other. So that was kind of a double whammy for Pacers fans to have Miles Turner go to the Bucs. But yeah, we should talk about LeBron. I have a question for you. Yeah. Is LeBron scaring free agents away from Los Angeles? Mm-hmm.

They don't really have any moves because they've paid everyone a ton of money. They paid Luka, LeBron, and Bronny, I think, like $90 million. I heard someone add them all. He added Bronny. I was like, that's a great move. I think, and this is, okay, so we're not experts in the NBA, so I'm just going to throw this out there. I think LeBron thinks he still runs the league, and he doesn't run the league anymore.

Yeah, I think that's what's happening right now. I think he did the whole old LeBron of like, I'm taking the money. And listen, no problem with him taking the money. He's LeBron James. He deserves the money. I'm not going to sit here and be like, take less money. I mean, if you want to maybe win a ring and have flexibility, you should take less money. But that's not – never look at another man's pockets.

I think the statement where he was like, I'm going to be monitoring the situation. He was expecting every team to be like, oh, shit, LeBron. We could trade for LeBron. And everyone's like, why would we want to trade for a one-year retirement toward $53 million for a guy who is going to basically hijack our entire franchise? So I don't think he has the power that he used to have.

I like to say that people are scared of the Lakers because of LeBron, just because it puts more blame directly on LeBron rather than saying he's out of his depth right now. I think the reality is that the Lakers didn't really have a whole lot of options. They might try to go after Aiden. He's the one big that's still out there that could potentially sign with them. But he did, when he signed his contract, he said, like,

I'm doing this because I know it's a challenge, but I want the Lakers to remain competitive and build for the future as I'm also on the team. And when I saw that statement, I thought, like, I don't know what LeBron's trying to get out of this, but surely he must know that it's going to be impossible to build for the future and win now when he's taking that big contract and getting his maximum value. Correct. Correct. All that's true. He might just be dumb.

Well, that could be the case. I think he also just setting it up being like, I made it clear I wanted you to build a contender. He's Tim Robinson. We're all trying to find the guy who did this, who made it so we couldn't sign any players because they can't sign any players. But he made it clear he wanted them to sign players. So when they don't sign players, he'd be like, wasn't I clear? I said I wanted you to sign. I wanted you to make a championship team for me.

I just heard Dave McMenamin say on ESPN that he expects the Lakers might get involved with another team that signs a big, thus making their starting center expendable, and then move that person to the Lakers. So any center in the league right now that's currently on a team is on the table per Dave McMenamin.

Yeah, Wendy had the report. He was like, yeah, everyone was shocked by this. They were like, yeah, we don't want to trade for LeBron. There's no takers right now because obviously it instantly becomes the Cavs and everyone talks about the Cavs. I feel like the Cavs have kind of moved on from that. Why would they? They had the one seed. I know they got injured and they got bounced in the second round, but why would you want to do that with LeBron again? I don't know. He doesn't have the million dollars.

He doesn't have the pull that he wants to add. If it was 30, not 50, then it's a lot different. Yeah, right. That's where he's just selfish. Right. All right, winners. The Nuggets is a winner. Feels like they finally got bench depth, got a real backup center, and that was a good Michael Porter Jr. trade where they got someone who's half the money and then able to actually get some depth. They got Bruce Brown back, which is nice.

Uh, I also have the Rockets. The Rockets might be my pick. All right. Like I know that you don't win championships July 1st. The Rockets are going to be really good. I'm, I'm a big, I, I think the Rockets are going to be awesome. They basically have, they have three centers now and they added Kevin Durant and, uh,

I'm a Rockets believer. I love what Bruce Brown did, by the way, when he left in free agency after telling the Nuggets, like, I'm not going to go anywhere in free agency during the parade. And then waking up the next day and be like, oh, yeah, I can make, what was it, like $30 million more? Like 40 or something. 40? Yeah. Somewhere else? Yeah. You know what? I'm actually going to go, but I'm going to be thinking about the Nuggets the whole time. I'll come back as soon as these checks stop coming in. That's a great move. I really appreciate what Bruce Brown did.

And he's going to be like really good again because he's going to play with Jokic.

Like he, he, he basically took a sabbatical where he's like, I'm going to make the maximum amount of money. I'm probably not going to enjoy playing basketball the same way. And then I'll just come back and it will be awesome. Yeah, no, it was a good move. Why do you like the rocket so much? Katie, Katie, their, their depth with like their center depth. They have three big, they got Clint, Clint Capella back. Obviously Steven Adams, uh, Shingun, like they're going to, Steven Adams can just,

They can just basically rest everyone all year. I think Katie's going to be. I think Katie's got a little fuck you going tour coming. I don't know. I think he's got a fuck you tour coming. It does feel like a let him know season. Yeah, I let him know. Just feeling it in my bones. I think he's got one more of those in him, and I think this might be the year. And I think the more I thought about it, I know we talked about his legacy and all that stuff.

The Rockets is perfect for him where it was a really good team last year, the two seed. And now he can be the old guy who brought the young kids along. I,

I think this might be a KD legacy year. I think he might win it all and then be like, now this one counts. Is Chris Paul. He's a free agent, right? Yeah. So he's still out there. Played 82 games last year. 82 games as healthy as he's ever been. I do think that Katie has got a lot left in the tank for sure, but I really liked what the nuggets said. I think that the nuggets like Cam Johnson, that's good. Michael Porter jr. He's been a great player, but yeah,

His back is just fucked up right now. You can't really count on him. So I like Cam Johnson, whose brother's name is Puff. Did you know that? No, that's great. His name is Puff. Not great right now. Puff Johnson. Well, we don't know. True. It's out. We do know.

Four out of five. We do know. Do you think there's any chance that on four out of five charges, they're like not guilty? But maybe on that one. Yeah. Maybe on that one he is. Maybe. The Hawks have done a great job. The Hawks are going to be good. I mean, it goes back to the draft with the pick that they got from the Pelicans. I feel like the Hawks are doing some things. It's all vibe check for me, too. I don't know. Hank, you lost Luke Cornett.

You did get out of prison, but you were in prison. Yeah, no worries. It's a sad state of affairs. Yeah, that's it. It's just the championship team is gone. Drew's gone. Horford isn't gone yet, but he's gone. Porzingis gone. You got Luka Garza, though. Big Ten beast. How is that even news? I don't want to be mean, but he doesn't play.

But I think it's news. That was a news. It's like he's not. Did you hear all the reports? It was like, yeah, they inquired about Luka Garza the last two years. And they were looking at, by the way, at breaking moves. Oh, no. Breaking moves. This is bad breaking moves. I don't like this. Halftime injury update. Red Panda fell before getting started left court clutching her left wrist. Oh, no.

Please be okay. Oh my God. Not the red Panda.

Does she have an off season, you think? No. Fuck no, dude. Come on. Halftime of what? Probably the Champions Cup, the Cup Classic, whatever the NBA does. The World Cup of Clubs. Yeah. No, no, no. The Champions Cup for the WNBA. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah. They have one of those, too? Yeah, yeah. Oh, no. The Commissioner's Cup. Commissioner's Cup. But I think it's the Commissioner's Cup. Yeah.

In the WBA? Zach, can you look that up for us, please? It is. It is. It's still the Twister's Cup. Damn, they copy everything. They want to be us so bad. Wait, are the courts different? He's giving us the thumbs up. He's giving us the thumbs up. What'd you say? Did they make the courts different? I don't think so. It doesn't look different on the... No offense. Wait, what'd you say? I said Zach looks like a thumb on the video feed. Yeah, he doesn't have the best...

Yeah, he's not working with the best Wi-Fi. Zach, what's going on there, dude? My bad, guys. If I look like a thumb, that's on me. If the Wi-Fi's coming out, I tried to get as close to the router as I could, but I didn't want you guys to get any background noise, so I was trying to stay on different side of the house. You look great. What's behind you? Uh...

Like a little office. No, but what's on the wall? My mom makes these picture frames that are like – so it's beech wood and a picture frame, and then they're like put together. I'd like one of those. That's sick. I can get you one of those if you'd like to, man. Yeah, I would like one of those for the studio. I like that. What's that? We got another one over there. Oh, nice. We got a little Rascal Flatts action on the wall there. Okay. Yeah.

That's a Voxel Flats Melt. Great song. I like that you're using a laptop right in front of another bigger TV or bigger computer that's right behind you. Yeah. That stationary, we already had the one lighting issue. I want to make sure we're mobile for you guys. You need the frames for rivals. Yeah. Also, yes, I need all the frames I can get. All right. I have a couple other NBA notes I want to throw at you guys. I'm going to throw a potential trade at you. I want to tell you, you got to say yes or no.

If I offered you, you have the one pick in the draft. If I offered you the fourth, fifth, and tenth pick, would you trade? For the first overall pick? Yeah. Fourth, fifth, and tenth. That's pretty good. Deep draft next year. Deep draft.

I have no idea if it is or not. I'm just saying that. Yes. Yes. Okay, great. All right. So the Bulls should have Anthony Edwards on their team. That's perfect. Okay. All right. Because the Bulls have officially completed the trade. They have the, from the 2020 draft, they now have the fourth, fifth, fifth, and 10th pick in terms of players from that draft because they have Patrick Williams. They drafted fourth.

They got a Coro from the Cavs who was drafted fifth and they have Jalen Smith who was drafted 10th. So kind of stacking the 2020 draft boys. That's pretty good. Yeah.

The Bulls are incapable of trading for picks. They actually don't know how to do it. They traded all their good players, Zach Levine, DeMar DeRose, and Alex Caruso, Lonzo Ball. The only pick they got back was their own pick. That's it. And that was just out of spite, just to get their own pick back. Yeah. They don't know. They actually, I don't think that they haven't read that they can do that. In their defense, it's a lot harder to trade for nobody. To be like, hey, we're going to get...

nobody back, but it's a good strategy when it's good pick. When you get picks, it is the correct strategy. It is the correct strategy to do for sure. But if you're very, if you're a stupid person, it's hard to conceptualize a player that doesn't exist yet. Yeah. But I, I, I do appreciate that. They listen, they're going to be bad again and they're, they're run by incompetent losers and owned by incompetent stooges. But yeah,

If you can stack multiple picks from one draft class, I always will kind of buy in. Cause I'd be like, dude, we had three, three of the top 10 picks one year. Like that's gotta be good. They probably played McDonald's all American games together. Went to the same camps familiar with each other. Yeah. It's gotta be good. Um, all right. Uh,

I like what the Bucs are doing outside of Miles Turner because they now have 66% of the Gary's in the NBA. Okay. Kind of like that. I really do think that if they, if Giannis wants to trade or the Bucs season goes sideways, they have to do everything possible to try to get Gary Payton the second on the team. And imagine if the Bucs could, could basically sell tickets being like, we have 100% of the Gary's in the NBA.

Yeah, so there are, I'm guessing, three Garys. There's three Garys. They already had one, and they added another, which is significant in Gary news. Like if you add the second, it's basically playing Monopoly. They have two-thirds of an entire property now. They just got to get the last Gary, and they can charge everyone a ton of rent. You want to hear something crazy? Yeah. The Lakers have 100% of the LeBrons in the NBA right now. That's true. That's true.

corner of the market. They don't have 100% of the Lucas. The Celtics have half of that share. What if the Lakers could get a really good player in a trade, but they had to give up? Obviously, you had to trade probably Dalton Connect, and then the other team was like, we need Bronny, or it's a no-go. Yeah, I think they would...

They'd have to do it, right? Would you trade your own son away? You'd have to trade him. Knowing LeBron, he'd probably make it like a viral moment where he goes up to him in the middle of a game and does the, well, he probably didn't get to that part in Godfather 2 yet, but someone would tell him, hey, you got to go kiss him like he's Fredo and let him send him on his way. What the Lakers should do to see if LeBron is actually committed

They should tell him, we have to trade your son because we're getting this great player. And then once LeBron agrees to it, then they say, that was a test. You get to keep your child. Very good.

very Solomon Solomon. Yeah. Solomon. Yeah. King Solomon. Yeah. See if he's willing to sacrifice his own child for the betterment of the team. See if he's the true King. Yeah. And if he, and if he won't do it, then, you know, he's not the true King to begin with. Yeah. Then you rebuild. Yeah. I like that. Make it a whole decision. Make it like a, a deal or no deal. Put Bronnie in a suitcase.

Yeah. All right. And then the last thing, Duncan Robinson, our friend, a recurring guest made a ton of money going to the Pistons. I like that. Also crazy because he,

I didn't know, but he is the leader in Heat franchise history for three-pointers made and by like a large margin, which is something that kind of shocked me a little, but also makes sense with how the NBA has gone with the three-pointers. But did you guys know that offhand? Not offhand. If you had asked me, I probably would have guessed –

James Jones, Mike Miller. I'll tell you this. You can't guess number two. You can't guess number two, which is just as shocking because obviously I've revealed that Duncan Robinson is one. Tyler Hero? Yeah. So you did guess it. Tyler Hero, number two. Yeah. It's crazy. Udonis Haslam, just out of sheer longevity. Udonis Haslam, not on the list. Yeah. Dwayne Wade all the way down at number nine. But shout out Duncan Robinson. He has...

200 more threes than the second most threes in heat history. So records about to be dames. Yeah, it might be dames. Well, no, because Dame, no chance Dame plays enough games. You have to make like,

Maybe if he made 600 threes for two years. What if he's just so happy to finally be in Miami? It's like, what if Dane was right that he just needed Florida to unlock his best potential? He goes down there, just buries threes all day. That could happen. Hey, Max, did the Sixers do anything? No, they lost Yabu and then signed Tyrese Maxey's friend. Okay, well, that's cool. Where'd Yabu go? I forgot to do the Knicks.

Oh, you mean Don Staley's Knicks? Yep. Memes? She's a good coach. She is a good coach. She's a good coach. She's a good coach. Philly. Trendon Watford was the guy we signed, by the way. I forgot his name. Do you like what the Knicks did, memes, outside of maybe hiring Don Staley? Yeah, the Knicks are broke, so they got Jordan Clarkson and Yabu on vet minimums. Okay.

Yabu's a nice player, though. Yeah, Yabu's good. Jordan Clarkson, there was a clip of Mike Breen roasting him during the game, but I'm sure it'll be fine. So you're going to get Mike Brown as your coach, right? Yeah, Mike Brown's going to be the guy. Is he, officially? He's the only guy coming back for a second interview. Oh, okay. Yeah. I guess Rick Brunson, too, is still in the running, right? Yeah, and Don. And Don. And Don.

All right, should we talk a little NFL? We had a trade. The Steelers got – they traded Minka Fitzpatrick to the Dolphins for Jalen Ramsey. They also got John Hughes-Smith, which I think was a separate trade, correct? Yeah, I think it was. The reporting on all of this was a little weird because I don't know how you guys experienced this trade. I experienced it through our good friend Jersey Jerry, who will be on Dingers Only with us. He texted me Super Bowl on –

And was like, I can't believe this trade. And then the reporting came out that. So I think Jerry thought they just got Jalen Ramsey. Yeah, because the way it came out, it was just. Well, it wasn't even that big cat. The way I found out about it was through Adam Schefter. I have notifications on because I need to know what's going on.

So I saw his post about a trade. It said Jalen Ramsey has been traded from the Miami Dolphins to, and then it was the dot, dot, dot. It cut off right there. I think that Schefter knows exactly how many characters to use to make people actually click through and look at his tweet instead of just looking at the notification. I think that he's that good. So I saw that. I clicked on that. And then they didn't say what they gave up for it.

They didn't say anything about the details of the trade. It just looked like the Steelers were getting Jalen Ramsey. And then it did come out. Yeah, it was actually Johnnie Smith was, I believe it was in the same trade. Okay. It makes sense it was, yeah. Steelers got Ramsey, Johnnie Smith, and they swapped a 2027 seventh rounder for a 2027 fifth rounder. So they ended up with a fifth round pick.

in Pittsburgh and Miami ended up with the seventh round pick. Got it. Because if you believe some of the things coming out of the Steelers at the end of last year, there was belief that possibly Minkah Fitzpatrick was the guy who... Remember there was that... There was a weird press conference. It was either... I think it was Cam Hayward. I think TJ Watt said something as well where they're like, it's hard when 10 guys are doing one thing and one guy's doing another. And that...

Some people thought might have been Minka Fitzpatrick. So maybe that's an addition right there, just getting him back to the Dolphins. I don't know.

I thought it was TJ saying that he's the one guy doing the right thing and 10 other guys are all collectively doing the wrong thing. But yeah, Mika is a fine safety, but he does freelance from time to time. Ramsey is still a really, really good cornerback. They have Ramsey and Joey Porter Jr. So I think it's all in all, it's good for the Steelers. It feels like this is the Steelers all in season, right? John Smith is also like that. He was a really good. He's been a really good tight end.

the last couple of years. So that, that part for their offense, I feel like is significant. Is he Pittsburgh though? I don't always have to worry about that. I don't know if he's a Pittsburgh tight end. You got to always worry about that. Cause they got Pat Fryer, Ruth Pittsburgh tight end. He's a guy that you could easily mistake for Heath Miller. And then you got big ass Washington, uh,

I'm mostly concerned that Darnell Washington isn't going to be playing as much because whenever he steps on the field, you just look at him and be like, holy shit, who the fuck is that guy? How is he not the best player in the NFL? Yeah, I mean, you –

Darnell Washington and DK Metcalf lining up on the same side will be like what Bain did to Heinz Field. It would just completely tilt. But yeah, I don't know if Darnell Washington can catch the ball. That's the only problem. But I do like when he gets on the field. I like the Johnnie Smith. He was good last year. He started to come on...

Was it the end of two years ago? And then last year he was very good, I feel like. He was really good. And then two years ago, I think he started to pop a little as well. He had a big season. And then the Dolphins replaced him by getting Darren Waller from the New York Giants. Darren Waller was retired.

And so I think they swapped like a sixth and a seventh round pick with the Giants to get a retired guy that was still on their payroll to come down to Miami to play. Yeah. Just don't make him fullback. That's the only thing. Because that clip came out that he basically retired when the Giants made him be fullback in Buffalo for like three consecutive plays. He's like, what the fuck am I doing here? The big story, though, is PFT. We're officially in football month. There is a football game being played this month. I know it's preseason.

but that's really, it just starts to get that. I was, I was walking. I went on a hike with, with my kids today and I'll, I'll, I'm not ashamed to admit that I started daydreaming and,

about like the first NFL Sunday. And I was like, this is going to be awesome. I'm so excited. We're pretty much here. We're pretty much here. Like July is, it's great at the start. We got, you know, the 4th of July, that whole week feels like just a vacation for America. And then, you know, it's hot outside still going to be, we're going to be tan from how tan we are right now. We're still going to have that same Pantone on our skin and,

Once football season kicks off, once we get actual live football played, yeah, it's the hall of fame game, but we're going to see all the guys. They're going to be wearing the jerseys. We see the coaches, uh,

It's going to be great, and we're pretty much there, so congratulations. It's going to be great. Should we do Hot Seat, Cool Throne, and then we can get to all of our interviews and dingers only? Yep. All right, so Hot Seat, Cool Throne brought to you by our friends at Truly Unruly Lemonade. Combines the high-alc fun of Truly Unruly with everyone's favorite lemonade, Lemonade Let Loose.

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That's truly unruly lemonade. 8% ABV, 100% delicious. Level up your lemonade with truly unruly today. Okay. Hot seat cool drone. Hank. My hot seat is Malik Beasley. Oh, yeah. He is under investigation for basically, what would you call it? Ringing games. Gambling on games. Gambling on games. It's not insider trading, but like, what was the hard part of that?

It's not insider trading. It's called... Gambling on games. Gambling on games. He's playing in. Gambling on games, player props. The videos that came out after the investigation came out were very bad, to say the least. I don't know if it's one of those things where if you could do this for any player, I feel like it's not, obviously. But the videos that came out were...

absurdly obvious that he was probably gambling on games. There were, there was one where he took the ball, the full length of the court with like three and a half, four seconds left to cover the spread. And he was the only one out there trying. And, and you could see like the relief in his face when he got to the other end, there was the other one where, uh, so he, he had also tweeted at Anthony Edwards to hit, what was it like six threes tonight? Uh,

In a game, there was that one. And then there was another one where he was playing defense, where his controller just unplugged. And he got blew by, I think it was Halliburton blew by him. And he didn't move a single one of his feet. Both feet remained firmly planted in the ground. I don't think you could do that with every player in the NBA. And not only that, but I'm sure you guys saw there was like, you know, the

gambling circles like people know and and shit gets out there and there were tweets from like january whereas like if you're investigating terry rosier like investigate malik beasley he's the one and a lot of that stuff where he is still innocent but there's a lot of proven innocent yeah we should say that so it's like it's this might not be you know it might not be guilty and

And the same thing happened when Terry Rozier, the allegations came out, there was videos and it was like, he was clearly gambling. So this could all not be true, but would you rather be in court? Yeah. Same. Would you rather be accused of betting on your own personal unders when you didn't actually bet on your own personal unders and then being validated? And they're like, it turns out you just suck.

Or would you rather get investigated and you did bet on them and you made a ton of money betting on them and they found out that you were gambling? Yeah. I mean, listen, you can make that much. When you look at free agency, like the greatest, um,

Like the greatest lottery ticket you can have. Obviously you have to be an NBA player, but it's like they get paid so much money. There's no way you can make enough money gambling that it is worth doing that. It is kind of a compliment to be like, you're good enough that you can control the outcome of these things. You know, if you told me it's your own overs. Yeah. If you told me like, Hey, we're going to play five on five basketball at the Barstool Chicago, uh, like office. And we're going to, we're going to put lines out there. And I had, and like,

I wouldn't be good enough to be able to affect the game, you know? Yeah. The total point spread. I agree. I could not make a shot. I could bet. Yeah. You could bet your unders and just not make a shot. But other than that, like you can't,

It's basically a compliment. Malik Beasley, you're an impactful player if you're proven guilty. On the other hand, I feel bad for NBA players. Sure, they make all this money in free agency, get any woman they want. But at the end of the day, they don't get to sit on their couch and hit a four-leg parlay on an NBA game like I do. Facts. And they'll never have that joy. That makes me sad. Facts. Yeah, he's not going to get signed now. That kind of sucks that he was a free agent.

Yeah, crazy story. How pissed do you think hockey players are right now? You got to move your free agency if you're hockey. You can't go head to head. What was Luke Cornett's deal? That he's a fine player, but what was his deal? I don't know. I think he got 40. He got $40 million guaranteed? Yeah, four for 40, I think. So he's getting paid Connor McDavid in the money. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Sam Bennett's contract, it was like, this guy was the most important player on the team. He was eight years, $8 million. Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, by the way, the Panthers are just going to be good again. They got everyone. Biz might be right about the state income tax. I also love it. I'm assuming NBA players are the same way, and this is more like we were just with the Chicklets guys last week, and I love hearing them talk.

talk just strictly money when they talk about other players like oh how much that guy get like how much you make like that they just talk strictly and like how much they made in their career also when it's public it's very funny whitney told us a hilarious story about how when he was like two years out from retiring and he talked to his financial advisor and his financial advisor was like all right so like when you retire like you'll get a job and he was like what do you mean he's like i wasn't planning on it

Which is very funny. The Knights got better, too. Yeah, they did. But the Panthers brought everyone back, didn't they? Yeah. It's fucking crazy. Team dinners, man. It's all about team dinners. Zach, talk about the Panthers for 20 seconds while I turn on the light in this room because I realize that it's just pitch black in here. Yeah, this one's going down. So I did say the Panthers did bring all the boys back.

They repeated the whole game comeback. Do you guys think they're going to be this dominant again? Is it going to be that much fun to watch? I like that. Good question. Great question, Zach. Zach, they all go to team dinner every night. You can't get in the way of that. I think unless this –

They keep correcting the success of their wins. We all went to team dinners together. Unless this ate into their Dairy Queen budget, I think that we're looking at another championship for the Florida Panthers. Hey, congratulations. It's July 1st. Congratulations to the Florida Panthers on winning the 2026 Lord Stanley's Cup. Hank, I think team dinners can be attributed. We eat dinner together a bunch. I know. I didn't realize it until all the post-game interviews. I was like, yeah, this team. Team dinners.

It's going to force some team that absolutely hates each other to try to do this, and it's going to be so awkward. Because team dinners work in theory if you like everyone, but if you have a team that doesn't like each other, it's going to tear them apart. All right, your cool throne? My cool throne is WNBA pettiness. Yeah. Kaitlin Clark was voted number one all-star team by the fans, number nine by her fellow players. I have some takes.

Do you have a take on the Caitlin Clark situation? Yeah, I have a take. I think that it is good for good for the league. Okay. Because we're talking about the league right now. Okay. I agree. I'm going to piggyback on your take. Tag me in. First, this is about this year. Caitlin Clark has missed almost half the games. So,

I mean, she's I know that she's incredible and I think she's one of the best players. And she's also like the WNBA just expanded. They're bringing back Detroit, Cleveland. And then what's the other one? Nashville. Nashville got a franchise.

Um, the Caitlin Clark defenders are such losers now. Like what, what do we care that she's the most popular player? What, what should her like rivals do? Should they just be like, Oh, we love you, Caitlin. Thank you so much. We want to kiss your feet and like, and, and hope you just, of course they don't like her. She's better than them.

And she's more popular. Like, of course they're petty about it. I think that's good for sports. They're trying to hurt her though. The hurting part. I agree. That's too far. But like, this is like to be like, this is bullshit. I can't believe they don't like her. I can believe they don't like her. She gets all the attention. They're jealous. Who cares? That's good for sports. Caitlin Clark will have a longer career, better career, make more money. She's going to win in the long run. It doesn't have to be like a world war three. Every single time there's a slight on Caitlin Clark.

It just it loses all of the like oomph for me when you're just when the Caitlin Clark defenders are crying about her constantly. When have we ever cared about the the breakdown of all star vote percentages in the WNBA? Right. Has that ever happened? We do care now.

So, yeah, is she worthy of a higher percentage? Probably, yeah. But she also has been hurt. And it's also good that the league hates her this much because it pisses everyone off and it gets more people talking about the WNBA. And then she's going to go out there with a chip on her shoulder and she's going to be great, shove it in their faces and prove to them that she's better. And that's going to be great for the league too. Not only that, but what is like one of the –

The number one complaints we see online about sports, specifically the NBA, specifically basketball, is, well, all these guys don't hate each other like they used to. They used to hate each other. They used to, like, the Pistons and Bulls hated each other. The Pistons and Celtics hated each other. MJ hated Isaiah. All this stuff. Like, hate was what fueled the league. And now you have that back in the WNBA and you're going to complain about it?

Like, who cares? Her peers don't like her because she is more popular than them. That's just a fact. And she can just be better and win championships and shove it in their face. Like, I just don't. I would not be offended if I was a if I was a Caitlin Clark fan. I would not be going to my pitchforks because she was voted ninth in a season when she's played half the games.

Okay, counterpoint though. Isn't it also a sign of the growing league that we have this many Caitlin Clark fans that get this pissed off? True. Because of perceived slights, right? This is like the Caitlin Clark defenders that have to show up and stick up for their person. I think it's all good. I agree. I think what we're going to see though is we're going to see like Caitlin Clark is going to go on a little tear. She's going to be great. The Fever are eventually going to win a championship. She's going to get some players from teams that maybe used to hate her.

Can you start when the big one though? That's a good question. We don't know. I, so when she gets like, like clotheslines going through the lane, that's what I'm like. Yeah. Caitlin Clark defenders. That's when you need to rally the troops and go after on a fucking vote. Like Tyrese Halliburton was voted most overrated. And then he went to the finals. Who cares? You know, I need to see the athletic poll of the WNBA for most overrated player in the league. What do you think? What do you think the result would be?

I don't know, but I just there are 90 percent, 95 percent. Caitlin Clark. There are definitely pitchfork moments for Caitlin Clark that are like, yeah, you have to defend her a vote that essentially it basically should have just been a poll to every WNBA player. Do you like Caitlin Clark? Yes or no. And they would have voted no because they don't because she gets all the attention and she's good for the league and she outshines everyone, even if she's only playing half the games.

The injury aspect is actually a valid point. That's a good point if you're going to go just by a sports breakdown of it. But, yeah, the difference between the fan vote and the player vote was crazy. It was crazy to see. But, again, let's not burn out all of our emotion on defending Kaitlin Clark right now. There's going to be – listen, you've got to rest up for the playoffs, okay? Yeah.

She also, if she was not in the all-star game, I'd be like, pitchforks, do it. She's the captain of the all-star team. This was totally irrelevant. It was a completely irrelevant vote that just doesn't matter. Right. I don't even get mad at the hard fouls because I also like Sophie coming in, coming to her defense and knocking people out. That's also good for the league.

Yeah, agreed. Well, that is. Yeah. Did you see Sophie Cunningham take a shot at Detroit? That was a little weird. What'd you say? She was just like, players don't want like, why didn't you make a Miami players don't want to play in Detroit? It was like, okay, I don't know. Detroit, like Detroit's kind of, Detroit's kind of back in terms of sports. And now we're going to see that's going to be on a quote card right before they play against Detroit, a playoff series at some point. Yeah.

Also, the other team was Philly, and those teams aren't coming until 2030. Okay. So, yeah. Oh, Philly's the other team, not Nashville. She said Nashville. She's like, why didn't you put one in Nashville? She's basically like, why don't you put them in party cities? I don't know. I get it. Cleveland and Detroit love their sports.

How successful do you think a WNBA franchise would be in Miami? Probably not that successful. They can barely get out of bed to watch their Stanley Cup champion Panthers. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Detroit won like three WNBA championships, right? Can you fact check that? Like three or four? Weren't they a dynasty? Wasn't Bill Lambert the coach? Am I making all of this up? I think Bill Lambert was the coach. Lisa Leslie. Yeah, yeah. No. No.

I remember the NBA when they would do the All-Star game and it would be like the WNBA player. Yeah. The NBA team. So there's history there. There's big history there. Detroit's back. Scooble. Did you guys watch Scooble on Sunday night? Yeah, it was lights out. What a fucking hoss. Detroit's shocked. Yeah, three-time WNBA champions. There you go. I know my WNBA history. 203, 206, 208. No one's ever said it like that. 206, 203. Why did you say it like that?

All right, PFT, what's your hot seat cool to run? My hot seat is Shador Sanders. Yes. So the quarterback room in Cleveland right now is Joe Flacco. Can you pick it? Dylan Gabriel, Shador. And everyone's kind of looking for Joe Flacco to take on some sort of mentorship position, some sort of leadership role for the young guys. I think Joe Flacco is more concerned about just winning a starting job and keeping his career going. But lucky for Shador Sanders, he found a mentor,

in Cleveland that's taking him, quote, under his wing. Do you know who that person is? I do.

It is Deshaun Watson. Deshaun Watson has stepped up to show the young guy the ropes. That's a bad phrase. I should not have used that phrase. He's taken him under his wing to kind of introduce him to the NFL and what it's like to be a pro, show him the meaning of being a true professional. So shout out to Shador. Got a good mentor there. Good luck. Good luck.

I don't know if this is like a contractual obligation where they're like, hey, Deshaun, I know you're not really playing right now, but if you could kind of hang out with the young guys and lead by example. You think this is maybe a situation like who saved who? Like an old person getting a pet? Yeah, it could be.

Save two here. It could be like that. That type of responsibility might be good for Deshaun. Also, if Shador is literally under his wing all the time, then he's not going to be getting jacked off in massage parlors because the beds aren't wide enough. So that's good. Well, Shador. But the bed's not wide enough for two at a time. Shador could go skiing.

He could. Yeah, Shador could be the lucky Pierre in between Deshaun Watson and Joe Flacco just going to town. Joe, I'll tell you this. I've shaken Joe Flacco's hand. I would not want a handjob from him. No. That guy's got fucking monster hands. No, he's meant to beat off in cold weather. That's why the Steelers and the Ravens wanted him out of college. If Joe Flacco gives you a handjob, you'd just be like, whoops, I broke it.

Yeah, this guy's got hands that could jack off a Clevelander. We got to tell Joe that we had this conversation when we see him maybe in Tahoe. I mean, shake his hand. Shake his hand. Tell me if that could make you come. The answer is no. Mount Rushmore of people you would least like to get your hand job from. Andre the Giant. Greg Abbott. Greg Abbott. No, not Greg Abbott. Jason Pierre-Paul. Wait.

Who's Greg Abbott? The pitcher. No, that's the politician, isn't it? Oh, Jim Abbott. Jim Abbott. Yeah. Also Greg Abbott. Well, he's probably got some strong arms. Yeah. The guy, that Indian dude with the, with the like hundred year fingernails. Yep. Yeah. The ones that curl around. That would suck. That would really suck.

All right, your cool throw. My cool throw is the U.S. men's national team, the Lads. Boys, we're in the semifinals now of the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Hank is locked in. I know you watched that PK shootout against Costa Rica. The good news is –

The good news is we got a goalie now. His name is Freeze. He's the ice wall. Ooh. That actually – that plays. Yeah. The goalie's name is Freeze, and he was awesome in PKs. He was a beast. What I didn't realize, though, is once we got rid of Greg – because we were a Greg Out podcast. We got Greg fired. Mm-hmm.

There's another Berhalter. His son is on the team, but his son is on the team because I think he just made the team not through nepotism. Oh, shit. But he also missed a penalty kick. He Baggio'd a penalty kick top left.

and and skied it so i don't know maybe we might be all burr halters out now was greg there greg was in the stands like upper deck they had him sitting like in the 400 row and he was watching his son take the penalty kick and they got the whole reaction uh tough tough moment for a dad and a family to watch at the same time but yeah listen i think i think greg burr halter um

Way better human being than a soccer coach. Yeah. So he was in the stands for that. So that means that we beat Costa Rica. We're playing Guatemala in the semifinals tonight. Tonight, Hank. Lock the fuck in. Who are the other two teams? Mexico and some team that's going to lose to Mexico. So what's going to happen? Is this your first CONCACAF Gold Cup, Hank? What's going to happen is... Not by...

Not willingly. You're not consenting to this? No, no, no. Let me break it down for you, Hank. Here's how the CONCACAF Gold Cup works. All right? The U.S. is going to play against Mexico in the finals. We're going to beat Mexico in the finals, and we're all going to be like, U.S. soccer's back. We're good. And then we're going to blow it again in the next tournament that we play. We're automatically in the World Cup. Who cares? Agreed. It's the pageantry and the spectacle of the Gold Cup, Hank.

Got it. And Saudi Arabia is in this. So, yeah, they're a famed CONCACAF member. I think Qatar was in it last time, too. Yeah. We just let anyone in it. Just the bags big enough. Yeah. Yeah. All right. My hot seat. I also had Shador Sanders. I'll pivot.

uh it's my self we're not doing a fire fest this week reminder we don't have a show friday on uh fourth of july this is an extra long show so if you have to work friday save dingers only for yourself we have two great interviews coming up zach gallon and uh merrill kelly in studio and then joey chestnut uh so extra long show and then we'll be back three times a week obviously on monday but my fire fest or sorry my hot seat is me i went to dinner with my wife last night and um

There was a couple of fans. There was like a table of young kids that, that were like, asked me for a picture. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. And then there was this table with, with this guy with his big beard and older. And I, and he like, was like, what's up? Love your podcast. Like, Oh, that's sick. And I mentioned my wife. I was like, look at me. Like,

we're doing the the young kids we're doing the old guys and she's like that guy is the exact same age as you and i had like the moment where i was like fuck he totally is because he had a beard i was just like and i i had one of those moments where it's like oh yeah i forgot i'm 40 like he he was he looked exactly the same age that's great i got the old guys i got the young guys it's

So yeah, we are old world world. Um, yeah. Like I'll see like another guy came and he had like two little kids and he was like big fan. I was like, Oh man, like, look at this. I'm getting, getting the older generation. Like, wait, those kids are the exact same age as my kids. Fuck. What the hell? Um,

Yeah, go ahead. Anybody older than Hank is old. Yeah. That's the way to look at it. Yeah. And then my cool throne is dudes named Ryan because this happened a few days ago. I think it happened last week, but ESPN had an article about it. Did you guys see the Ryan's Day Out in Colorado? It was pretty fucking awesome. So the Rockies have three Ryans on the roster. I think they actually have a fourth who's on IL.

And there's a group of Ryans who just do meetups around the country, and they tried to break the record for most Ryans at a baseball game. There was like 500 Ryans out in the bleachers, and then Ryan McMahon on the Rockies hit a home run for him. And it was just like such a dude's rock moment where they just basically go around. They did a St. Ryan's Day in Boston. They did another –

other random ryan's outing they just get all the ryan's and they all just meet up i like that that is very cool do you think that you said the rockies have four ryan's they have three currently on the roster one is on the il do you think if two of the other ryan's go on the il they'll send tom hanks there yeah pull the last one out and save him yeah they have to no they'll send ryan day

It was then Ryan Day out there. But yeah, it was – I mean, I don't know. It's pretty cool. Like, the world's kind of a cynical place. These people are just hanging out, and they actually have –

When you go, you have to show your ID to confirm that you're a Ryan. By the way, our guy, Rosillo, not invited. It has to be R-Y-A-N. And they also have like a notary public guy there who can legally change your name to Ryan if you want to join. Oh, if you want to just be part of the festivities? Yeah. I like that. But also, there should be somebody that...

There should be somebody that monitors the Ryans to make sure that they all go by Ryan. Yeah. Because Ryan is probably a pretty commonly skipped first name for people that just go by their middle name. That's true. So they had a St. Ryan's Day in Boston. They had a Ryan Rodeo in Austin. They had an All Ryans game show in San Diego. They just party with just Ryans. It's fucking awesome. I like that. Yeah. All right, Zach, finish us off before we get to our interviews.

I do have a cool throne for you guys this week. Hot seat?

We can go hot seat first. Yep, we can do that. My hot seat this week is recently, gentlemen, we all played Dungeons & Dragons. It did come out in the last couple of days. I did see that in the moment while we were playing together, I did not realize just how indecisive I may have been in some of the decisions going back and watching the game film. And I would like to say, Hank, I do want to apologize for contributing to messing up your birthday. It's okay. It's not your fault.

I didn't know how bad some of that went. And I just want you to know, Hank, I'm sorry. And I hope it was a great birthday after that, man. It was a great birthday. And I don't want you to worry about it for a second. It was funny. And I do have a hot seat as well. I did think Big Cat was paying you to do that at one point, but that's all right. He was so mad at me.

There was no hand-to-hand transactions on that. That was just a misstep. Zach, in terms of watching the YouTube and seeing how the costume shopping went for Dungeons & Dragons, any decisions you would have made a little bit differently there? Are you happy the way things turned out? Most of them. You guys didn't have full costumes. That's 100% on me. I dropped the ball.

It's okay. Listen, we play Dungeons & Dragons. By the way, thank you for everyone who listens to that episode. Shout out Tim Woods. We play it twice a year around our vacations. And so you'll have another chance. Sometime in February, you'll have another chance. On the costumes? Yes, on the costumes. I would love a redemption costume if that's okay with you. Can we keep the time limit? No, no, no. The time limit starts tomorrow. Yeah. Same costume shop, right? Is that cool?

Yes, I think we stick to he gets an hour.

He's got to get it done in an hour. He's got to get it done in an hour. I think we also should, next Dungeons & Dragons, we should get one of those sand timers for Zach. Yes, yes, that's great. We walk in, we get an hour sand timer, and once it starts, that's it. But also in the game, too, when we make him make a decision, he just flips it and just be like, all right, Zach, here we go. I'm going to become hyper aware of time, I promise you. No, I don't want you to change. I don't want you to change.

Okay. That too. I can work on that. PFT, you bounced out for a second. Zach decided that he was going to work on being more decisive than I told him don't change, and he's going to also work on that. Okay. Which one are you going to work on first? The decisiveness. I'm going to lock that in for you guys. But I don't want you to change. Yeah, you're right. No, I got that wrong. I got that wrong. The timing stuff. Yes. Okay.

That was a brain fart. No, that was good. That was good. Which one are you going to work on first? Yes. Okay. Your cool throne. I do have a cool throne for you guys. My cool throne this week goes out to the gentleman at Optic Texas. They defeated the Vancouver Surge or CDO. They are Call of Duty World Champions and Call of Duty Black Ops 6 champions.

Uh, shout out to those guys. Uh, first ever in history, back to back champions. I'm not even an optic guy, but you can't deny greatness. That's so awesome. Mercury is coming up. They did some roster cuts earlier in the season. Another one doing too good. Kenny got dropped. They picked up Mercury's distance shifting around. He wins MVP. Shout out to the young guy. Uh,

Everybody just frying. It was fantastic. Huck, Shotzi, Dashie, all the boys, congratulations. Back to back, never been done. Is Mercules next? He's the new GOAT? I wouldn't say new GOAT. He's got a long way to go, but he was a great contributor to the team. Jack, didn't he get dropped from the Stallions? It is a little bit of a redemption, yes. Great ball knowledge there, Hank. Fantastic ball knowledge. Picking him off the street?

He's getting dropped and picked up. But now he's with the boys. Now he's with the hitters. Hex picked him up. Daddy Hex said, look, come over to the green wall. We're going to show you how to do it right.

And they might just do it again next year. I don't understand anything you just said. Wait, Mercules, that, like, to Merc someone is to kill them, so that's an incredible nickname, right? Oh, it's an awesome mashup. Hercules, Merc, Mercules, fantastic. It's 10. Okay, yeah, that's a great nickname. Wait, Zach, did you watch it live? I didn't. I wasn't able to catch all of it, but I've watched all the clips since then, yes.

Okay. Zach, I got a question for you. In this Call of Duty tournament, are all the players in relatively good shape? This is Super Bowl BFT. Let's just call it a regular tournament. Okay. World Championship. Are all the players in really good shape? Mentally or physically? Physically. Are there any big boys that are playing? There's some big boys at the desk.

Hank is like, yeah, for sure. Because in my day, that's how you identify. A gamer usually had a little heft to them. And from what I've been seeing with the advent of speed and ADHD medication, it feels like all the guys are real thin. And I would like to see some of the bigger boys coming back. I think the heftiness isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But maybe some of these guys maybe dial back on the Ritalin a little bit. Maybe get some more carbs in them. They're all short. Yeah.

They're all short? That's pretty cool. They're all like 5'5". Posture's not the best, but those fast twitch muscles. Immaculate. Is there a tall, fat guy that we could call Kendrick Merkins? That'd be good. Not on Optic, but I can find you the tallest, fat guy they got in the CDL right now. Okay. Oh, PFT, I had a short king stat for you. Fuck. That's weird because I'm not that short, actually. No, you're not, but I had a stat for you, and I saw it, and I was like, oh, I'm going to save this. Fuck. Fuck.

I don't think I have it, but I, Oh no, I have it. Here it is. Jose Altuve, 242 career home runs. Every other player listed five, six or shorter since integration, 241 home runs.

So he's lapped the crew. He's literally the pound-for-pound greatest. He stands head and shoulders above the crew. Yeah, yeah. Everyone else combined, 241. He had 242. Good for him. Pretty sick. Okay, let's get to our interviews. Merrill Kelly, Zach Gallin, Joey Chestnut, and then our Dingers-only draft, which I'll just say it, never our best work, but still...

It was actually way better than last year's. Yeah, we called some of the players too. Yeah, we got some of the players on the phone. And also last year, we drafted a lot more players that had already been taken. And we drafted a lot more players that were already injured, like on the disabled list. Right. So I'd say in terms of getting it right for the most part, I'd say we hit like 80%.

Yeah, and also Zach realizing his decisiveness might be an issue. We did tape this last week before he realized that. So might still be an issue in this draft. And as of right now, we're all live. So all the teams are live. I've been watching my guys being pissed off every time they hit a home run being like, save it, save it. Yep. But it's officially live and we'll update it every single week. Okay, let's get to the interviews.

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Best friends. Let's start there. I was reading that you guys are best friends. Are you both saying that the other one's your best friend? Yeah, sure. I would say so. Of course. I mean, Meryl said that a lot faster than you, Zach. Well, I don't want to talk over him. Okay. Yeah. That's best. That's a best friend. Great. It's like, you don't want to talk over. Are we talking best friends on the team or best friends in life? Let's talk best friends in life.

I mean, I feel like we both have circles outside of baseball. We can't trump, but on the team for sure. Best friends on the team? Yeah. We've been together. We've been in there longest. We've both been here since 2019. So it's been a long time. Okay. So if we played the newlywed game right now, you guys would be really good at it? That's a good question. That is a good question. If it was the baseball, like a baseball version of that, I think we'd be all right. Or golf. Or golf. What's Merrill's favorite pitch, Zach?

change it okay what's zach's favorite kerbal okay is that right sounds like you guys are good so far what's uh what's zach's favorite movie oh zach's favorite movie yeah that one would probably stump me i don't even know if i know the answer to my favorite movie that's perfect you guys are in sync uh there you go meryl who's the guy that absolutely owns zach in the league yeah they're

I don't know. If you get this, it would be impressive, actually. Oh. So someone we're not thinking of. Yeah. I'll give you a hint. They're not active. That's the thing. Oh. They're not. Are they retired? Is it some guy on the Savannah Bananas? Yeah. I might hang him up if that was the case. I don't know if they're retired, but they're just not in the majors anymore. Got it. We used to play them a lot. In division? Yeah. Hmm.

Charlie Blackman? No. Who is it? Rymel Tapia. And what was the reason for him? Yeah, I should have known that. Rymel Tapia, I think last time I faced him was 2023 maybe in Milwaukee. And I swear to you, I think it was like he's hitting 600 off me. Like 12 for like 20. Like whatever that math comes out to be. 10 for 19.

And I'm like, oh, at least I never gave up a home run to him that day. But what is that? That guy killed us. Is it in your head or is it something he just figured out? I think it's just something that he does. Like he just. 10 for 18 with a home run and two RBIs and 19 plate appearances against Gallup. That's pretty damn good. And if you do the AI overview says Rymel Tapia has had considerable success against Zach Gallup.

Considerable. Considerable is an understatement, I think, if you ask me. I'm like, here comes this fucking guy again. I would imagine if you looked up his numbers against the Diamondbacks in general, they'd probably be really good. Who owns Merrill? We were just talking about this. We were just talking about this. Someone who's still in the big leagues. I know. We just played him, too, right? You can guess the team. The team should be pretty obvious. You just said it. You're like, I don't understand.

I'm drawing a blank. No, you're thinking of the guy that I think shouldn't beat me. That does all the time. Oh, who's that? But the guy who owns me is different than that guy. Uh, wait, who's, who, who should, who's the first one? I can make that last night. Let me put this guy on blast. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

Jacob Stallings. Okay. That's right. Stallings. I don't know. I can't think of who. He's been in the league for a while. And so when he gets you, you're like, this is bullshit? Yeah, I'm like, gosh, damn it. This guy got me again. Every single time I watch him, I'm like, there's no way this guy's getting hit off me. And every single time he does, he'll drop one in for a two-RBI blooper over the second baseman's head, knock me out of the game sometimes. Yeah, so who's the answer to who owns you? I can't think of who it is. L.A.

Freddie? Mookie? Close. Freddie probably does too, but Muncie. Oh. Muncie. I wouldn't have guessed that. We went on a family vacation with my wife's family, and her uncle's pretty funny. He puts together these gift bags for everybody, but in there, there's like a...

dark joke for everyone, right? Like, and he literally hand typed a letter from Max Muncy to me and the Dodgers thanking me for my services against the Dodgers. But I think Muncy's probably hitting, I would guess 500 off me, something like that. Okay. And Merrill, what's what Barstool sports employee has the most unhealthy obsession with Zach? Hmm.

That's a good question. Do you know that? Yeah, we know. I'm not the one to ask about that. There's a few teammates that would get this right. I don't know that he would know this. Okay.

But there's a handful of guys that would right off the bat would be like, I know exactly who you're talking about. And who's that guy? That'd be Rico. Yeah, so this is a real topic we have to talk about because, Zach, I obviously was busting your balls when we were walking in being like, oh, I'd love to see you in a Cubs uniform. I won't push any rumors, but you are in a contract year, so it's got to be in your head a little bit. Do you think if Scott Boras walks in and is like, hey, Zach, we're ready to get a new contract,

But this guy Rico, he's bringing us down. And teams are going to see this relationship and they're going to be like, you know what? The price went down. I mean, you have to cut him loose because he does. It is bad for you how much he rides for you. And he turtles when you have a bad game. Does he really? Yes. That was the big. Well, I respect that at least. I mean. He's just so ride or die? He's so ride or die. You know he would literally murder you for Nate Oates.

So you don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. In the grand scheme of it, yeah, this is a good point. And I never thought that I would be over-nadoed, so I'm fine with that. Okay. So I don't think he actually rides as hard for you as you think that he does. I think that this season...

He's kind of gotten off. He's definitely gotten off this season. Because I'm probably losing him money this year. We're being frank about it. Well, first start of the year, March 27th, happy gallon day to all who celebrate. That's what he posted. Then your next start, happy gallon day to all who celebrate. Your next start, happy gallon day to all who celebrate. He hasn't done that since April 7th. Oh, no. Yes.

Well, I haven't pitched good since April 7th, so that's probably why. He's probably like, I'm losing money every time this guy's out here. No more happy gownding. But to be fair, he was at least riding –

For whatever it was. Yeah, it was a long time. And we love Rico. Yeah, we got to bust his ball. But I think it was the NLCS where I think game one where you got touched up a little. Yeah, I'm feeling it. And then he went silent. And then when you guys won game three, he went after Max. And it was like, dude, where were you game one? He does that. He goes silent on Twitter when things don't go his way. And then game seven. Yeah. Are you guys... I mean, that...

Did Max even that game seven? I mean, that was an all time meltdown. He looked ridiculous. You guys, I've heard you talk about Merrill because you grew up a little bit in the area, but like the Max was just convinced that the bank was going to win that series. He was like, they can't go and win two at the bank. There's no way we're pitching against the crowd. Yeah. Yeah. That is how he thinks he

I think it actually would have been easier to pitch against the crowd, if we're being honest. Some guys that are yelling at us, we bring them down into the box and see how it goes. I don't know, dude. He was the Matt Stairs of the CAA baseball, Hofstra. So he could probably take one off you guys. Maybe we should make that happen. We should make that happen. Bring you Eric Sim out and we'll make a whole thing out of it. He does have to pitch against a college lineup at some point. Yeah. Because he lost our fantasy baseball league last year.

Do you have any advice for him? Pitcher to pitcher, how should he approach that lineup? What lineup are you facing? Who are you facing? We don't know yet because Max keeps putting the punishment off. It was supposed to be Tennessee, and then we had a couple rain outs, and then I broke my foot on a... Whatever, we don't have to get into how I broke my foot. He broke his foot being drunk. Just walking home. That sounds a little intentional. It sounds like you're trying to get out of it. No, I mean...

Do you have any pitching background? No. We got a radar gun out. I think I was topping out at like 62 at the moment. That might actually be good for you. Yeah, I know. That's below the hitting speed. That's what Scooble said. If you threw like 85, I'd be like, you might want to wear a helmet. 85? Come on.

Yeah, PFT did it against UIC baseball. Only gave up what? Two earned runs? Yeah, earned runs, asterisks. I balked a lot. Yeah, I had like four balls. How many innings? Two innings. Two innings, okay. Struck a guy out. Big Cat threw out the strike at it first base. I dropped the third strike, but still threw him out at first. So it's like we both got a strike out. Yeah, yeah. Which is the stupidest rule in baseball of all time. I love it. I love it. It's so stupid. Really? You think that's the...

You swing at a pitch. That's that bad. That, that is yes. That bad. And then just because the ball like bounce away, you get to go to first base. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta catch it. Like I literally made you swing at a pitch that didn't even make it to the plate. It was that bad. And you get to run to first base. It still counts as a K though for you. Yeah. If we get them. Yeah. Yeah. So you could get, think about it this way. You could get unlimited K's in a game. That is a good way. Think about the positive way. I,

I've made that joke to the catcher before. I'm like, you just wanted me to get another strikeout, right? That's what I missed that one. Four punches in the inning. When you guys, like, so Zach, was it, when did you have your 13th strikeout game against the Yankees? Was it last year? No. This year. It was this year. Yeah, in April. Did you? That was probably right after that guy stopped, right before that guy stopped tweeting. Yeah, Rico. Yeah. When you, when, like, do you know when you have it like that on a given day? Or how fast during the game are you like, oh shit, it's different today? Uh,

Um, yes and no. I mean, there's been games where I've, um, I go back, there was a game against the Dodgers where, um, in the bullpen, I felt like shit. I'm like, well, let's just see what's going to happen today. And then wind up punching on like 12 or 13 that day. So like, you don't really know until the game's going on. And in that Yankees game, I didn't know that I had 13 Ks, like stuff was just moving how I wanted it to. They were swinging at pitches that I wanted them to. So it kind of worked out, but I'd say like,

probably by like the third inning you're like okay like everything's kind of working how i wanted to like you've been through the lineup like one time you're like all right i got a pretty good idea of what's going on do you think the rec specs help you because you do look like a nerd and like guys don't take you as seriously like opposite intimidation yeah right uh no way can this nerd strike me out yeah that's probably probably how i was going to have the long hair yeah the long hair yeah it's uh

Yeah, the astigmatism. That's what I'm chalking it up to. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it's a reverse kind of intimidation thing. Yeah. Have you guys noticed the stitches on the ball being any different this year?

I just talked about this the other day. The drag. You seen that? Yeah, I don't. You have a drag set for it. Well, you guys have to say you don't notice it. Considering it helps you, yeah. Yeah, I honestly haven't noticed it, to be honest with you. I give them some far home runs this year, so I must be using different balls. They must just have the ones specifically for when I'm pitching and then the other low drag ones. I mean, I will say the last couple years, I mean, I'll get balls back that are exit VLO like 73 miles an hour, and the whole half of it is just...

Like the whole half is just lopsided when you get it back. And balls that aren't even like scorched, it'll be like a little jam shot pop up and I'll get it back and the whole half will just be like cut off. The other thing I'm interested in with like how they prepare the balls is the mud that gets put on them. So do you have like a specific way that you guys like to have your balls handled?

We actually give our bullpen catchers a lot of shit for this because they're the ones in charge of rubbing our balls up. Yeah. Some days they don't rub our balls that good. Yeah, and some days they're a little dry. So we tell them to get a little bit more moisture on the balls. It's a little bit better. I like that, yeah. If you pull one out and it's a little chalky, it's like, ah. Come on.

Come on, man. Yeah. Take some more time rubbing those balls, please. What that mouth do? Wait. So Merrill, you, you, you were the, I think you're the only pitcher to pitch in the world series in the Korean world series. Is that correct? I think I saw that somewhere. That's crazy. That's wild. So what was it like pitching in Korea? Awesome.

Is it just the same game? The talent level. Pretty much. Yeah, the talent level is getting there. When I was there, it was still to be desired a little bit. There were guys that could play in the big leagues all the way to guys that probably wouldn't even sniff the field on my junior college team. Really? And anywhere in between that. The game pretty much is the same. Once you get in between the white lines, it's the same. There's a smoke break after the fifth inning. They do a fifth inning break rather than a seventh inning break. Okay.

because obviously Koreans just pound cigarettes. So the fifth inning break is funny. All the starters will come off and they'll go pound their cigarette and all the bench guys and the relievers will go out in the field and stretch and run around and warm up and stuff. And then we'll come back out and resume the game. That's weird. And you were on the Wyverns, right? Yeah. Do you know what is a Wyvern? It's like a mythical dragon. Yeah. It's the best way to describe it, I think. We play Dungeons and Dragons a couple times a year.

A couple times a year? Yeah, yeah. Whenever you're feeling risky. We do it on the show, yeah. Okay. And our dungeon master, Tim Woods, is obsessed with wyverns. He thinks that the wyvern is actually the purest form of the dragon. Something to do with the wings and the legs. You think he's an SK fan or what? Maybe. Maybe we need to get him an SK jersey. I don't know if they make them anymore. They sold. It's a different team now. So when you're playing in Korea and you're going up against a guy that you said probably wouldn't even play junior college ball.

Do you have to lock yourself in more when you're facing that guy? Because you're like, I can't let up a hit to this guy that sucks. Honestly, I just try to throw it right down the middle and want them to hit it. Because they're pesky over there. They'll just foul shit off until they die.

So I would rather just here's a first pitch fastball. If you hit it the best you can, it might make it to the outfielder. And otherwise, it's going to just bloop into somebody's glove. So I'm just going to give you a first pitch heater and hopefully move on. Yeah. And focus back on the guys that face actually. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Do you guys miss batting? Were you still? No. Batting was the best. No, batting was so awesome. No, but home runs like by.

by a pitcher was so cool. So cool. Yeah. It was the only time that the pitcher hitting was good was they'd come up with like bases loaded one out and like a big spot and you're like, oh, thank God I can either get a strike out here or a double play unless you're facing like the couple of guys that could hit. But for the most part, like my

My dad used to get, he would be like, swing the bat. I'm like, dad, they don't pay me any more or less if I'm getting hit. All I can do is get hurt. That's all I can do. I remember you and Bum got into it that one day at BP. Yeah. Because that's his argument. Like, they don't pay me to hit. And, you know, Mad Bum was a good hitter. He liked to hit homers. So he, like, really took pride in it.

So the fact that he said that really offended me. He got mad at you? Yeah, he got mad. He's like, no, they literally do pay you to hit him. This is when they were negotiating between the DH or no DH, whatever they were doing. And I just was like,

All you can do out there is get hurt. I just saw the total downside of it. I was a decent hitter. I could bunt. I was fine. It was just more of like, this seems like an occupational hazard. You did. You ended up breaking your arm. I had a hairline fracture in my elbow. From bunting? From taking BP in the cage. One of the first weeks in spring training, I was like, this doesn't feel right. They couldn't figure out what it was. Finally, I got an MRI. They were like, you have a tiny hairline fracture in your elbow. You're never going to take BP again?

I haven't. Oh, I took it that year because we were hitting. But like I had to be like I had to bunt the first like two months of that season because they don't want me to swing. It was like, yeah, it was a whole thing. Wait, was hitting was Bumgarner like was he actually pissed? Because that's a guy you don't want to have pissed at you.

I'm not sure. I think he was like 60-40. I think he was trying to give me the young guy, rookie kind of hazing type of deal, but also was like, I want to keep hitting. He was upset. He loved it. What is the rookie hazing in Major League Baseball? I feel like it's just wear a weird costume.

We don't even do that. Nowadays, it's nothing really. Damn. How society's gone, it's like... It's gone. Yeah, you can't really do that much anymore. The last probably thing is bring beers on the bus, would you say? Oh, man, that's real brutal. Every once in a while. Yeah, exactly. Every once in a while, somebody might get up there and sing. We might have somebody get up there and tell their life story and sing, but even there's a couple guys that don't really like that either, so it doesn't really much...

there's not really much of that that goes on anymore at least in our organization that's the only organization i've been with so i can't speak for other teams i don't know what they do but

As far as we go, there's not really much. You should just have Rico come on the road with you and be like, the hazing is you have to stay in a room with him. He sleep talks. He like screams in his sleep. Night terrors. Yeah, he has night terrors. I've seen some of that from Survivor. That would be awesome. You're with Rico. What are the night terrors? He screams. So he sleeps with the lights on. He screams in the middle of the night and he plays show tunes on his speakerphone.

Yeah, that's not real. There's no way. That's how he sleeps every night. He falls asleep to show tunes. Yeah, the rent soundtrack. I had to share a room with him for a couple of nights and I couldn't believe any of it was real. The rent soundtrack is so random too. Yeah, no, I didn't have a sleep mask on or anything. It was just like, this can't be real. Just raw dog. People raw dog flights, you were just raw dogging sleep. I was raw dogging Rico. Yeah, I had to raw dog Rico. Raw dog.

And trying to fall asleep in that environment is... Oh, miserable. It's challenging. It's like you can't believe that this is a real human being. No wonder he's fucking crazy. And I love him, but he's nuts because he stays up all night screaming and listening to show tunes. Does Rico know the rant...

soundtrack like by heart probably I don't know it's probably absorbed into his brain yeah right like I was like what is the osmosis yeah just kind of he probably like if yeah like he went to see rent and like the you know the lead got sick he could like jump on and just be like I got I got it I'm good I got I'm I'll handle it in Korea did you ever get to see the bunting derby

I was a part of it. You were part of it. That's to me. There's some YouTube out there somewhere. I don't know, but MLB needs to incorporate the bunt Derby into the all-star. I love watching it. Yeah. So what was that like? What, what did they have you do doing that? Uh, it was cool. Cause my, I flew my brother over. My brother came over for the all-star game. So he's the one actually threw to me. Uh,

But yeah, they just have these three targets set up one to the left side, one of the like down the first base side and then one right in the middle. And you just, yeah, just like it sounds, you just bought and you try to get it in the target as much as you can. How'd you do? I did. All right. I didn't win. My brother was a little amped up, was firing them in there a little bit, a little too hard. He was a little excited. And then we,

We do it, and then we watch the next guys come up, and they're literally just lobbing these balls in there. And these guys are just like – Softly tapping it. Placing them in there. Yeah. We didn't talk strategy before that, I guess. They got to bring that to Major League Baseball. It used to be in AAA. Oh, yeah? In the AAA All-Star Game, they would do it.

In 18, I was in it. Really? And I was like, this is... Yeah, it was... To your point, the BP was coming in too fast. I'm like, you can't stop this ball. No. It doesn't. Yeah. I mean, I just think it would be the most electric thing to gamble on.

yeah i could see that i could definitely see that because then you're trying to look up stats of like all right this guy actually a good bunter and written like the games yeah you take that into the bunting derby yeah every time you make contact like i'm watching to see where the ball is going to land you have a good like five six second rush of adrenaline watching on tv be like oh that's going to fuck it'd be great yeah um how much of your guy's success as uh pitchers do you owe to dan heron and is it all

Why do you laugh at that? I was surprised it took this long to get it. Yeah, I mean, we give him all the credit. You tell me if that's wrong, but he is a genius. Yeah, I talk to Dan a lot. What does he do, actually? Because I actually don't, like, in real honesty, I don't think he does anything. He puts together, he writes up all of our scouting reports. Okay. All the starting pitcher scouting reports. Dan is the one behind. About the other lineup. Yes.

And he's really good at that. Yeah. That's pretty sick. Yeah. He's an awesome dude. He's the best. Yeah. He's he, he puts good reports together. Sometimes too good. What does that mean? Like there's so much information on there that like, yeah. I'm like, Dan, how did you, how'd you find this number? Like, and then I got to go look at it and be like, damn, he found, I don't know how he found that number. Does he come out like every now and then, like actually like talk to you guys about pitching? Cause I know he still lives in California. Yeah.

So he was just in, yeah, he was just with us, Colorado, Colorado. Yeah. Does he give you like tips? Cause it Dan's career is like fascinating because he basically, he was such a stud and then obviously got hurt with his back, but then continued to, you know,

be in the MLB for a really long time. Yeah, where he basically pitched two different ways. So he kind of knows everything about pitching, it would seem like. Yeah, the cool thing about Dan is that he always is just like... He never wants to make it about him. He's like, I'm not going to talk about what I did. But if you got questions, he'll try and answer them, which I think is cool because...

people who play a long time could be like you know me me me i did this i did that and it's like he's like do your thing if you need questions like i'll answer questions if you want me to yeah that's why we give a lot of credit all the credit because we know it makes him uncomfortable he's not that type of guy at all so we like to really give him a lot of credit so much credit you guys should give him a lot of credit just to make him uncomfortable we do we do give him a lot of credit like you wouldn't be here without him right now yeah so much

credit. I haven't said it in a while. I love you, man. Just want to say thank you for all you've done for me. He'll get uncomfortable. Yeah, he'll definitely get uncomfortable. Ask him how his pug's doing too. I'll say he's got a cool pug marrow.

RIP Bernie, right? Yeah. And the PMT boys give you so much credit. So much. He's going to hate listening to this because he just gets so he does not want any of it. He stays in the he stays in the shadows. Merrill, I hope he'll expect because I told him we were coming. Yeah, he's like, I know something's going to come out. Well, I asked him, I was like, hey, if you got any good questions for Merrill or Zach, let me know. They're coming in. And he just hearted the message. I was like, thanks, Dan.

fucking thanks for nothing he was looking out for us yeah if i was a starting pitcher you wouldn't give me a full report but he didn't give me shit no good for him see i respect that because i've gone on other podcasts where like they've been like we know you eat this for breakfast and i'm like who is your source like who are you talking to yeah you call your dad yeah the source was actually kind of a like out of the blue i was like wow like there was actually yeah yeah yeah wait what does he eat for breakfast yeah yeah

I saw him at Kith the other day in Toronto eating French toast. Oh, that's kind of heavy. Yeah, I got a French... What do you eat for breakfast? No, like...

Most of the time, it's either French toast. I like chicken and waffles or Eggs Benedict. Most of the time, a French toast is kind of crazy. So that is worth a question. Being like, what do you have for breakfast? French toast? No, I wouldn't say that. Most of the time, it's Eggs Benedict. That's what I go with. That's my go-to. Like I start every day with French toast? Yeah. That is crazy. Admittedly, I'm not even a breakfast person. You want to pitch in the big leagues, eat French toast every day? Yeah, just eat like shit. Eggs Benedict, though, is a theme, though. It's my favorite, too. Yeah.

Do you eat differently on days that you start? Not really. Like I try to keep it the same, like, which is not the same every day. Just eat breakfast, you know, go about my day. Just try to keep your body off balance a little bit.

Yeah, keep it on its toes. Like, make sure we're... Do you lose track of what day of the week it is? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. All the time. I would imagine that would be something that would be different about baseball players. Yeah. I mean, we're in our third city in a week and a half, third time zone in a week and a half. Yeah. Everywhere. You don't know. Yeah, you don't know what day is... You know what day you're pitching, and then after that, it's like, I don't know.

You kind of know by like what time the game is. You're like, all right, it's a day game. It's probably Sunday or Wednesday or Thursday. Anything else? Flip a coin and, you know, it ends in Y. We know it ends in Y. Like, yeah.

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on Netflix Friday, July 11th at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time live on Netflix. Okay, let's get back to Zach Gallin and Merrill Kelly. What's your favorite day of the five-day starting? What's the day? This is very sad and pathetic that I'm not motivated, but I always daydream of being a pitcher the day after I had a start because I feel like that would rock.

just being like walking around the dugout being like all right boys i took care of business yesterday up to you that's if you took care of yeah if you took care of business yeah well in my in my dream i'm always taking care of business yeah yeah they call those dig me days okay spa days your spa day yeah oh like look at me like dig me day i was like i got to pro ball i'm like

dig what is that in there that they explain it to me but does if it's got to feel good right even if you're not trying to look for it like being like i i had a gem all right i pitched great deep into the game and then the next day you just kind of could chill yeah there's definitely something to be said knowing that you just pitched really well and walking into the stadium the next day knowing that there's absolutely zero way that you're going to contribute to that game right other than cheering on the boys and you know

doing whatever in the dugout, like there's no way that I'm going to enter the field of play today. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be great. Like a little mini vacation that you're on. Yeah. Do you guys get butterflies when you have to pitch? Yeah, I would say so. Not as much as when I was younger, but it's there. They're still there. Cause yeah, it's more like an anxious, like, let's go, let's play like the game. Sometimes I'm like, I wish this game would start. So you must love it. You wait five days. Do you like pitch clock or no? Oh no. No.

Yes. And as a fan watching the game, yes. When I'm pitching in the game, there's times that I would love for the game to slow down a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Like sometimes you're out there and you're just like, it's five seconds already. Yeah. Like what are we doing? Like you just turned around and it's three seconds you have to throw the ball. But to your point, you're watching the game and it's over in two hours and 30 minutes. You're like, this is the greatest invention of all time. Yeah. Pretty nice. I thought I was going to hate it, but I don't mind it. How do we feel about the robot umps?

Tough question for I feel like for us to answer because we haven't experienced them yet. Yeah. The guys in AAA have done the whole ABS system and they've seen what it does. I like the idea of the challenge system a lot better. Yeah. I think it kind of brings everything together. It's like because in my opinion, the pitches that are missed throughout the game. Right. Like if you miss a pitch in the first inning, like, is that really going to make a difference in the ninth?

But I go back to the World Series, that strike three that Moreno got called out on that was this far off the plate. You know, if he taps his head right there to ball four, he's going to first and the game changes in a big way. So I think the ABS, I think, is a little bit much. I don't know how you make that consistent over 30 stadiums. Yeah. But I like the idea of the challenge system. Yeah. Yeah. What about pitching on short rest? You guys both done it.

Is it brutal? I don't know if I've ever done it. I don't know if I've ever done it. Yeah. I don't think I've ever done it. Because that's one of those things where from a fan's perspective, I'm like, yeah, why not just go pitch on short rest? Like, just fucking suck it up, dude. Yeah, you're right. Just blow your arm out. I would do it. I'd pitch on short rest. Take a couple of anti-inflams and just run out there. When does your arm start to feel good again? Does it take the full four days off?

uh probably depends on the guy yeah in theory you probably could like most guys could probably pitch on short rest like one day but over a period of the season like the compounding factor it would be like a problem i think but yeah you could do like i mean you see guys doing the playoffs all the time yeah you get the adrenaline boost like it works out but probably not the safest way to go about yeah how sore are you after a game let's say you go eight innings how sore are you when you wake up the next day

Pretty sore for the most part. If it's except like if we're in Colorado, you're like extra sore just from like the elevation, the lack of oxygen, all that stuff. So like you get super sore. I would say I get sore on day two for me. That's when I'm like like day one. I'm like, all right, like my body's sore. Like I feel like I pitched eight innings, but like my arm is sore on day two. Like trying to play catch and move and, you know, you get that.

delayed onset or something called DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. Yeah. I wouldn't know about that. What, uh, where's your least favorite place to pitch? Not Colorado, not taking out Colorado. Cause that's an easy answer, obviously in division for you guys, but what's it, maybe it's like time of day to shadows or whatever, but what's the place you're like, man, this sucks regularly when the wind's blown out.

Yeah, that one is not fair. Yeah, we were just talking before the game you guys played against the Cubs this year where I think it was 16 runs in an inning and a half. It's just you guys aren't even –

What's even your strategy in that? Try to keep it on the ground. Yeah. Throw a sinker for the first time. Yeah, throw some sinkers and change-ups and cutters and try to get them to hit it on the ground. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good for me because, for me, I induce pop-ups, fly balls, like whatever. So I'm like, phew, this is tough. Everything's going. Yeah. Is there another one, though, that you're like, oh, this is a tough place to pitch? Or it's like so batter-friendly? Because of the – yeah. Well, I got another one. I'm going to do a two-part. Is it because –

of the team that you face in that stadium or is it the stadium itself? I got this place just sucks pitching in. Give me both. Um, for me, I love pitching in the LA stadium, but I get absolutely shellacked there. So I don't like pitching there cause the, cause the Dodgers just light me up. Yeah. The lineup's not fun to pitch again. Yeah. Um, but the atmosphere is my, probably my favorite place to play in the league. They're either there or Petco. Yeah. Um,

Cincinnati's tough. Yep, that's what I was going to say. Cincinnati's pretty brutal. Ball flies out there. Ball flies in the mound. I know they're supposed to have regulations on how high the mound is, but whatever they're doing, they're cheating for sure. What do you mean? It's way lower. That mound is so flat. Oh, shit. We're going to have to look into that. Look into it. That's crazy. Our mound at home feels like a mountain compared to...

And you can notice right away when you stand on it. You can notice it from seeing the dugout. You're like, that's a flat, that mound is flat. Why would they do that? My guess is like, maybe their pitchers are like, this sucks. I have to pitch here all the time. Well, if you think about like, they could then try to acquire the pitches, pitchers that like pitch best on that type of mound, like sinker ballers or whatever it is that works on that mound. Yeah. They'd be like, all right, we're going to stick with these guys because it benefits them, but it's really disadvantage. Yeah. That's crazy. What's the highest mound? Uh,

I feel like ours is pretty big. Ours is pretty big. I feel like it's San Francisco kind of high. San Francisco. I never even thought about this. Miami's high. I think Miami's a high mound. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it is supposed to be all the same, right? Yeah. Yeah. You would think.

But I don't know that there's a rule on the angle of the slope. Got it. It just has to be like whatever it is, 10 inches high. But I don't know that it says like, okay, well then where you land has to be four inches high. Right, right. I don't know if there's a rule with that. Yeah, you're right. 10 inches. I didn't know that. Did you know that off the top of your head or did you just throw that out? I can't even see it.

Yeah, but they can make it 10 inches and then just have it be like 10 inches across. Yeah, right. You guys been operating with this thing the whole time? Yeah. No idea. Yeah. We got Max back there. I noticed you didn't say the bank. What about the bank? Not a tough place to play. Yeah. Uh...

It's definitely, I mean, it's that those games in the playoffs were the most hostile sporting event that I've ever been a part of hands down for sure. But I don't know. It also makes it fun for us. You know, it's like that's feed off it like COVID. One of the reasons why playing in COVID sucks so much is because it was silent. You know, it's like you pump in the crowd noise and you see cardboard cutouts in the stands and it's just quiet like everywhere.

For us, baseball is fun with fans. That's one of the reasons why we play. When it's that loud, it's like white noise. You don't really hear it at that point. As opposed to like

I played in New Orleans where there was like 30 people at each game and you'd hear that like one idiot like in the corner being like boss and you're like that's way worse than just like 45,000 people just screaming the whole time whether they're screaming for you against you at least it's like it brings energy yeah it's fun what was it like Merrill being called the worst pitcher in the league by your own coach

He actually said that? Yeah, he said, I'm not going to lie to you. He said, since the All-Star break, you are the worst statistical starting pitcher in the big leagues. You should have reversed it. You've been like, well, you're the worst coach for putting me out there every five days. Like, you moron. Yeah, then my ass would have for sure been in the bullpen. I was trying to avoid the bullpen at all costs. I literally went to Asia to avoid the bullpen. I wasn't going to try to do it here. Wait, you didn't like the bullpen that much?

I mean, that's yes and no. My role in Tampa was like what's called a swingman. Yeah. It's like I was a long relief, and then if somebody got hurt, I would start. And then when that guy came back, it didn't matter how good I did. I could be the best starter for six straight starts in the rotation. But if that guy came back, I was the guy that went back to the bullpen. That would be frustrating. And I just – yeah, I hated it. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't fun. That nine-game stretch was probably the lowest point of my career. Yeah.

I couldn't get past. If I made it to the fifth inning, it was a miracle. So how did you get out of that? Honestly, my back was just against the wall. I didn't really have a choice. It was like I tried some different mechanical stuff, and I started doing like a Felix Hernandez turn and just started letting the ball absolutely fly and –

it worked. Stuff started ticking up. The velo ticked up, stuff started moving again. Um, and then once I got a couple of games after that under my belt, then the confidence started coming back. And after that, it kind of just took off. Yeah. Open pitchers. That's gotta be just a complete mindfuck. Not being able to prepare like the same way every single time, not knowing if you're going to get into the game. How do you manage that? I understand it sucks. And that's why you, you know, you're like, get fucking, I'll go pitch in Korea. Uh, but like, what's that, what's that like day to day? Um,

I mean, one of the reasons I like starting is what you said. Like, I know what day I am pitching. I know what days I have to do, but that's how my brain works. Some guys don't like that. Some guys can't handle knowing when they're pitching. Some guys, they work way better in the bullpen because it's just they turn their brain off, and then once the phone rings and their name calls, then they turn it back on. Yeah, it's a different mentality just because you're never –

Unless for me, I was a long guy. If I threw three innings or four innings in a game, I knew the next couple of days I was down. But for normal bullpen guys, like they're pretty much on call every single day. So the thought of not being able to turn your brain off is different than, like I said, that day one. It's like I know 100 percent I'm not getting in the game for those guys. They never have that feeling. And I didn't I didn't enjoy that. Who's the best hitter on your team? You got some all stars coming up.

Yeah. You got to get some guys in the all-star game. Yeah, I think for – I mean, for sure, my guess would be Cattell and Corbin. I think Cattell's leading second base voting right now. Yeah. Corbin's probably up there too. Gino. Gino. And then Perdomo. And even Naylor. Sneaky like Naylor's having a good year. Yeah, having a really good year. Eight something OPS. Yeah, 300. Yeah, so, I mean, offense – our offense is so good. Yeah. It's like – it's honestly incredible. Yeah.

That's been our strength. In my opinion, our best overall hitter is, in my mind, gotta be Cattell. Yeah, he's an absolute beast. Switch hitter hits for power, hits for average. Does he talk to his bat?

was that was that that clip yeah yeah it was he does talk to his bat right what does he say to his bat i couldn't tell you it's in spanish he's just he's just like well tell me this is it is he angry at his bat or is he like happy with i think in that clip he was probably angry with it yeah i think he was telling him when was he talking to his bat i can't remember when it was there was a clip of him sitting there talking to he was like having a full conversation with his bat yeah

Did the bat talk to Marty? I don't know. But I saw it and I was just like, oh, shit. Seems like the bat did something here. Yeah. Yeah. Marty's funny. Marty's got all kinds of stuff going on. Yeah. I read that you guys had a, was it officially a players only meeting? Yeah. Yeah. What happens at a players only meeting?

For starters, it's players only. Well, pretend we're players. We're in here. It's just us. Yeah, we struck out UIC. Yeah, yeah. You struck out UIC? UIC. Oh, I thought you said UIC. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't talk in the media. I'm not a very vocal leader. I'm just like... Are you a snitch? Yeah, I'm a snitch. I just dry snitch on it. I run right to Tor. He's got his recording out on the back. He's got his phone. It's more just like... It's basically try to nip whatever's going on in the bud. If anybody's got something to say, say it now. If you got something against... If you don't like what a teammate's doing, if you don't like...

What the manager's doing, if you don't like how, whatever you don't like or whatever you think is going on at that time, it's just a come to Jesus meeting and try to figure it out. Most of the time, it doesn't always work. It's kind of a thing that we just feel like, it gets to the point where you feel like you have to do something. Right. Somebody needs to say something because it's just gotten to the point where it's just that bad.

But yeah, it's just kind of like air it out. If you got something to say, say it, pick your stuff, pick your shit up and let's go. All right. Very important question. If Dan Heron was in town, he would not be running that meeting. Would you, would you invite him to the players only? No. He would eat. What if he was like, please guys, he wouldn't, he would never want to be, he would not want to be, he would not want to be a part of that. If he was just like, please guys, I just, I want to feel like a player again for one second.

Probably not, honestly. I can imagine maybe 10% of the time a players-only meeting works really well, and the other 90% it just turns into just an argument.

Yeah. Honestly, not. Because the players only meeting happens and it's like, all right, a veteran calls the meeting and then it's like that veteran calls it talks. And then there's probably like two or three other veterans that talk. And then it always the question is, if any young guys want to say anything, get up and say something. And then no one says it. It's like unless it's per domo. Yeah. Like so it's one of those things of just like, all right, let's.

talk about this i guess i don't know but it's not yeah it's a weird thing it is a weird thing zach is it true when you were uh five years old you refused to play t-ball so that you could play little league yeah i didn't want to play so you're just like i'm not doing this and uh well i just thought it was like okay well because okay so my brother's a few years older than me so i kind of knew like the lay of the land of how it worked and i was like every game ends in a tie and

everyone gets like a dollar at this now I'm like that it sounds terrible and my dad coached the seven eight nine year old team so I was like why would I go play t-ball when I could go play real baseball that's so funny that was you at five yeah that's like it fits perfect I'm like I want no part of that's so fun I'm not a baby oh

Exactly. Even though I was like this tall and the grass was taller than me in right field. It was – yeah. Did your brother play baseball, like continue playing baseball? Yeah. My brother played all the way up until college, through college, and then just was – he was a good player. He was just undersized. So like just – he was –

If Dustin Pedroia would have came a few years earlier, maybe he would have had a little different career. That's good. Yeah, the undersized guy wasn't getting any love then. So, wait, you're five years old and you start playing with seven-year-olds? Yeah, seven, eight, nine. How were you?

Like, you were facing off against nine-year-olds as a five-year-old. Yeah, I didn't get a hit the first, like, when I was five. Like, I didn't get a hit. Like, I was just up there. The entire year. The entire year. Like... And the funny part is... Yeah, all the nine-year-olds are saying, there's no way I'm getting a fucking hit to this guy. Look at this guy. Like, there's no chance. I would have drilled you if you were, like, a five-year-old and I'm nine. So, like... Who is this fucking guy? Exactly, yeah. I'm just going to drill this kid. I had to wear, like, a...

I forget if it was like five and six or whatever. You had to wear like a vest. Like if you got hit with a ball. Because you stop your heart or whatever. Wear that with like the face mask. Like batting helmet. It was tough. But I never got a hit. So I'd come back to the dugout and be like upset. Like cry. Because I want to be good. So I get to six. And I struck out at six. And like the first at bat, I came back and my dad was like, no more fucking crying.

Like, we're not doing that shit anymore. And I was like, all right. And then I got a hit and I was like, all right, all is well, it's good. So yeah. But yeah, he was like, we're not doing that shit anymore. Danair needs to include that in your write-ups. Like, hey, no more fucking crying. Yeah. Yeah, remember five. Yeah.

I can see your dad saying that too. He didn't actually curse, but he was like, we're not doing that anymore. That was five-year-old stuff. This is six-year-old. This is big league stuff. See, I could have seen him cussing at you. I could have seen him say it. Yeah, no. But it was good. And yeah, they made my dad draft me in the town draft. My dad was like, let me just give him a uniform. I'm going to put him in right field. He's going to play one.

once every other game. And the commissioner was our next door neighbor. He was like, uh-uh. He's like, you got to draft him. My dad's like, I got to draft a five-year-old? And my dad gives my brother credit. He's like, listen, you got to take him in the third round or whatever. He's like, take him in the third round. He's like, because next year, you're going to have to take him in the first round. He's like, so if you take him in the third this year, you'll get your first round pick next year too. So my brother GMed it and it worked out. That's incredible. I love that.

I think that's fair though. GM and little league. Yeah. I think that's fair to make your dad draft you like, yeah. Yeah. If you want him to play at five, if you don't want to play T-ball, you got to do what you got to do. The spot drill is not going to be somebody else's problem. You,

You have to take them. You have to take them. Imagine if I got drafted by somebody else. Somebody else's dad was like, no, no, I won't. I want the five-year-old. Give me the five-year-old. Well, this has been awesome, guys. I got one last question. Roback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com. Promo code TAKE, 20% off your first purchase. Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, roback.com. Promo code TAKE. I pitch this to every pitcher, but Ephus, come on. Just once.

Honestly, I think about when position players go out there and pitch, and they get out. Sometimes when I'm getting hit, I'm like, maybe I should just throw an Ephus up there. It would screw them up. You know they would be like, what the hell was that? Maybe I'll mix a palm ball in there from time to time. Yeah, you actually have one that's like,

a real pitch i would be throwing like a just yeah rookie of the year oh yeah rookie of the year like yeah just floated in are you guys do you guys get pissed when someone pimps a home run

Not so much anymore. Yeah. You just got to pimp a strikeout back out. Yeah. If it's directed like at you, like there's some sort of – He stares at you? Yeah, something like that. But like if you want to do a cartwheel like around third base, like whatever, like cool. It's just the game now. It is what it is. Yeah, it kind of goes back to the rookie stuff. Like that stuff is acceptable now. It's not like, oh, you watched it for half a second too long. Now I'm going to drill the next guy in the head. Like that just doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. You sound upset about that though. I'd be upset about it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't love it, but I mean, what are you going to do? Don't give up the home run. Don't give up the home run. Have you guys been kicked out of games before? I've gotten tossed twice. What'd you do? Yelled at them. Both of them were the same way. It was a check swing. Happened this year.

Check swing, no call, walk. I forgot you got tossed this year. Check swing, and it was like a blatant swing. And it was Lazdee. Check swings, by the way, we agree, the umps are just guessing. Yeah, and they're not paying attention. They're not paying attention. That's a total guess. Because this swing was like almost, if he hit it, it would have been a double. Yeah. So no call, Lazdee has it first base, and no call, next pitch, walk him. And I think I got taken out of the game after that.

And I just turned around and told him it was. As you were walking off? And the two times I've gotten thrown out in my career actually are funny. It's because I've been leaving the game. So it's like.

All right, cool, buddy. Like I'm literally fucking walking to the clubhouse right now and you're going to toss me. It's like, what does that do? You should just make that your thing. That's the good thing about being a pitcher. Yeah. You could, you're out and you're like, I'm just going to get tossed. You should make that your thing. Every time you get pulled from a game, you get kicked out. Just yell at the umpire for no reason. Start chirping at them. Did you get fined for the last one? I don't know. Honestly, I have no idea. I think it comes out of the check. I think it's only, I think it's like 500 bucks, something like that.

Yeah, there's been times on check swings I've seen the umpire, like they're just like looking in the stands. It's like, no, they're not always just the games. Some of the calls they miss. It's like, dude, I don't know how you didn't see that. It was right in front of you. You have one job in that moment. You're supposed to be looking right at it and you missed it. By the way, I didn't mention this, but Merrill, do you know that you're the only Merrill in MLB history?

which is kind of crazy i didn't i feel like a hundred years ago there had to be just walking everywhere yeah right you know and you're actually zach you're the only the second zach spelled z a c there was one before me yeah there was hold on i'll find it that's crazy yeah we got a we got a zach of our own that's the ac yeah yeah yeah see i thought zac was just like very uncommon that is but um there's more people now that i've seen two people think that your name is zach allen a lot

What's funny about that is that there was the guy that plays for the Broncos now, Zach Allen. My dad's watching a game back when he was at the Cardinals, and he's like, Zach Allen with the sack. And my dad was like, huh? Is he playing football now? Not realizing that there was another play. So a little bit of a confusion there. Zach Curtis, who debuted for the Diamondbacks in 2016. He hasn't been in the league. His last appearance was in 2018.

When I was in AA, there was a bench-clearing brawl that I think he was involved in at one point in time. Zach on Zach Crime? I was not. I was on – yeah. But I think there was something that happened where, like, the bench is cleared for some reason. I do remember that name. Yeah, he got called out from, like, high A. I remember Zach. Yeah. Do you guys have a move ready to go if somebody charges at you? No. No.

You got to throw the glove, I think. Yeah. That's the first, like... Disorienting a little bit? Yeah, it's really... Or just try to get the ball back as fast as possible and act like I'm going to throw to them. Yeah. See what happens. We gave Cal Raleigh the tip that, like, what catchers should start doing is just, like, just throw your leg out there and triple. Yeah. Because if you get tripped and you fall on your face, you're not... You're not going to... You're so embarrassed. Yeah, it's over. You just kick their foot. It's over. You just tell your catchers to do that. Yeah, just stick your foot out. Yeah, right. You ever seen... It's done. You guys ever seen the video of the guy, like,

judo kicking the catcher in the chest before he ran out to the end. Yes. That was pretty gnarly. Have you guys been charged before? No. You would have fucked him up. Most of the time I try to hit somebody I miss, honestly. That's like the worst thing. It sucks. It's way harder than it looks. It's way harder than it looks. Intentionally trying to hit somebody. It's just a terrible part of the game. The only thing you can't do is just run. If you run, then it's bad.

you have to just what the infielders tell you is like just give us enough time to get there right so you kind of like hold them off so you gotta throw the glove to like stun them a little bit and then just you know if you want to get a punch in throw the rosin bag out yeah rosin bag pick up some dirt yeah throw it in their eyes gladiators just try not to get hurt I think yeah basically don't get hurt like what's his name Granky uh

Yeah, broken collarbones. That's right. You do like a little sidestep to the left, and then you swing after he runs a little bit past you. And then by that time, the shortstop should be there. Yeah. So that's a wrap. I can see Nailer. I can see Jay Nailer getting over there and tackling somebody for us for sure. All right. Well, thanks so much, boys. We appreciate it. It was awesome having you guys here. And best of luck rest of the season. Appreciate you guys. Thanks, guys. It was fun. Cool.

Before we get to Joey Chestnut, it's brought to you by great friends and Netflix. Big news, Friday, July 11th, Netflix and most valuable promotions bring you the fight the world's been waiting for. Katie Taylor, the Bray Bomber, she's from Ireland, going up against Amanda Serrano, the real deal from Puerto Rico. We've seen the first two parts of this trilogy before. I'm going off the script right now because this is, whenever they get together, it's my favorite fight to watch of the year.

An awesome fight, great matchup of styles between Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor. Katie is seeking the ultimate glory against Amanda Serrano, who is fighting for redemption. It's the final bout of their history-making trilogy. If you like watching people punch each other in the face, this fight is for you.

Great matchup. I'm going to be watching it Friday, July 11th on Netflix. Katie Taylor versus Amanda Serrano, 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, live on Netflix. Check it out. And now, here's her great friend, Joey Chestnut.

Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest, recurring guest, the greatest athlete of all time, which we have said for many years on this show, it is Joey Chestnut ahead of his return to the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on 4th of July, Coney Island. Joey is back.

So let's start with that, Joey. How good does it feel to be back? And are we feeling like this is, hey, this is going to be a special one. You got to prove, hey, whatever happened last year, there's an asterisk there. The king is back.

Oh, yeah, it feels really good. It's last year. Things didn't go as I wanted. But we we worked it out. And yeah, I'm hungry. This is this is what I love doing. It's Fourth of July hot dogs competition. Yeah. How did it feel last year not being a part of Nathan's? Did you feel like an absence? Did it feel unusual for you?

It was very, it was weird. Uh, the watching the guys eat and like, I, yeah, I told people I didn't watch, but I watched and then I, then I went off to do my own little event. But, uh, yeah, so yeah, it was weird watching them and like, oh man, I could, it's, uh, it's just, that's the way that's life. Sometimes, sometimes you're, uh, you're, you're on the wrong side. When you were watching it last year, did that make you hungrier?

Uh, yeah, it made it easy. So last year I was, I was at a military base Fort bliss in Texas eating against some soldiers where they were awesome. And, uh, it was the group of five versus me. I ended up almost beating their, uh, being what Pat did and, uh, in five minutes. Wow. It made it, it was, yeah, it was, uh, it motivates you to see people, uh,

When you're not there. I have a question that you probably get a lot, but I'm genuinely curious how you break this down. How much further can you push yourself? How much further is within the realm of human possibility to go when it comes to eating hot dogs? Because every year I see you eat and I'm like, well, he'll never beat that. That's insane. How do you how do you approach that?

Yeah, the last record, 76 in 10 minutes, is a tough record to beat. It's going to be a hard one. It'll take perfect conditions. Not too hot. If it's windy, the hot dogs get cold. But if we have enough warmth, like 78 degrees, 75, and then...

If it's kind of dry outside, the buns get stale. So you need to have fast buns, warm dogs, and not too hot. Because, dude, I'm getting older. I'm a little bit fat. So once I start sweating really hard, I'm in trouble.

I like that the wind comes into play, like an under in football where it's like, oh, they're not going to be able to pass the ball today. The wind is going to really dry out the buns and we're going to have problems and they're going to get cold. Yeah. The wind affects... Everybody has special... Their water temperature that they like for drinking water, for dunking. This year, I'm thinking...

I did that event with Netflix last year when that was a no dunking event. And I learned that like towards the end of the contest, it's actually a little bit easier to not dunk. There's less movement involved. So I'm trying to plan it out. So I'll make the switch because it's...

Sometimes I slow down bad when I'm dunking. Yeah. So you're tinkering. I like that. So what, like, you know how marathon runners they'll, you know, a couple of weeks before they'll try to run 20 miles. What is the lead up? Like what, is there a lead up where a week before or two weeks before you're doing, you're pushing yourself as hard as you can to see where you're at or have you done that yet?

Oh, yeah. Every fifth or sixth day, I'm doing practices. And so I'm in the cycle, I call it. Before every practice, there's a cleanse. After every practice, there's a recovery period where it's super high fiber food, trying to get back to normal. And then there's one day of normal eating. Then there's the cleanse again. Then another practice. Last two practices, this is – it's go time. It's close to breaking records. So it's –

I don't need to break the record necessarily in the last two practices, but it would help. But it's...

it's, uh, there's been years where I smashed the record in my last practice and then, then didn't get, get the record in the finals. But, uh, we'll, we'll see. We'll see. I'm, I'm feeling good. So can you describe your ideal setup? Like if you were to plan the weather for, for a day or two leading up to the event and the event itself, what, what are the perfect conditions for slamming hot dogs? Oh, perfect conditions. Uh,

75 degrees, a little bit of cloud cover. Not completely, but it was sunny. And then not windy and not too humid. A little humidity is good. But if it's too dry, the buns get stale real fast.

And then, yeah. Maybe rains the night before, like a golf course, like soften the air up a little bit? A little bit, yeah. Yeah, soften the air up. So you were talking about your training regimen. What's the most that you've ever eaten in training, like outside of competition? Oh, outside. So for the 4th of July contest, I want to say it was –

Jeez, I think I hit up to 82 in practice one time. And that was just perfect. Well, that's eating indoors, fresh, perfect hot dogs. And that's just not realistic. Fourth of July, everything's cooked ahead of time. Everything's sitting for a little bit. And you've got those outdoor conditions. So I've learned to actually I've been eating outside in Indiana. So it's hot right now. Yeah.

I'm a last practice. I was sweating so bad. It, the numbers went down a lot, but, uh, I'm hoping I can, yeah, it's I'll be all right. All right. So we have this debate in football. Kurt Warner always says that football should be played in a dome in perfect conditions. Do you think that hot dogs eating should be an outdoor sport or do you think it should, it should go to dome and we should, we should be playing this in a dome?

I think it's a, well, when there's history involved in Coney Island, it's got to keep it outside. Yeah. But I think for a lot of other events, like I did the Netflix event that was indoors. They wanted a record. So they made fresh hot dogs and really fresh hot dogs indoors. We smashed everything.

I did 83 that day. And they were a little bit smaller than on the 4th of July. So, they're a different record. But indoors, you're seeing some massive numbers. So, when you get there on the 4th of July, are you even thinking about anyone else? Or are you just going against yourself? Because, like, it's crazy how much...

Further you are than everyone else in terms of the hot dog eating and like the winner last year at 58. I don't think I mean, you I don't think you've had a 4th of July where you've been under 60. Right. So are you are maybe like 10 years ago, 12 years ago. But are you are you even thinking about the competition? You're just like it's me versus myself.

Yeah, I think that's the best. Anybody in this kind of competition, you're going against yourself. If you worry about other people, you're not focusing on your training anymore.

your numbers that you've hit, uh, the things, if I, if I'm worried about what anybody else is doing, it's taking away from what I'm doing. So it's, uh, I'm really just trying to go back to good practices and yeah, I'm not, if I, if I, if I'm doing, if I'm doing okay, I should blow everybody else away. Are you in your prime right now for eating?

Oh, fuck. I mean, there's different primes. There's like my physical prime. Shit. That was probably that was like 35. I was I was a beast. I could get away with doing less practice. I could recover quickly. My body was just an animal. But and I know my body so much better now. It's it's ridiculous. I like I can I

I make a choice. If I'm breaking my diet, I know when I'm gaining weight. I know what it takes to lose weight. And also, I know how to train muscles in my throat to make them stronger so I can just keep swallowing the meat. It's like sports science at this point. I hate to ask the question, but is retirement on the horizon anywhere for you right now? I don't know. Retirement would be death.

I'm doing this thing until the wheels fall off, baby. Actually, yeah. If you retire from eating, you do die. Or somebody knocks me off. And if they knock me off once, they'll have to do it again because I'm going to come back. But, you know, it's...

To be the man, you got to beat the man. And I'm not going to walk away. Yeah. Well, I don't think I've ever asked this, but is there one record or competition that you did that you can think of and be like, I would never do that again because it was so disgusting? I did crab cakes in Delaware once.

And in this casino, they did us dirty. They had them all sitting out there and they were, uh, as soon as we got on stage, it was, um, you could smell fish.

And like people got sick during the contest. I got sick right after the contest. I almost it was the closest I've ever been to getting disqualified. And and it turned me off to the food for like two years. And so it's weird because like it was the grossest contest. But now now that now that I'm eating crab cakes again, I was like, all right, I really want I want to make a crab cake record. This is so I want it now. Yeah. What what how many did you eat that day?

I did 39 and Sonia Thomas. This was my first year in eating and competitive eating 20 years ago. Yeah, so I did 39. I think she did 42 or 41. Oh, wow. There's nothing worse than eating, knowing you're going to get sick and not winning. It's just painful. What about you ate 141 hard-boiled eggs in eight minutes one time? That had to be gross. Yeah.

No, it was actually really good. I liked Hard Boiled Egg. It was perfect weather. Dude, so it was weird. So, like, this weather, like, it was perfect for this food. So, like, we were in Kentucky, and it had this downpour. It was, like, raining on us, and all the hard boiled eggs were, like, slippery. And, like, they were sliding down. It was, like, wild.

And it was like, oh, yeah. And I smelled like sulfur for two days. Oh, God. Is there a record that you've attempted or a competition that you've done where the aftermath of it is especially bad? Like I'm talking about, you know, the toilet situation afterwards. Is there one that was so gross that you're like, I'm not doing that again? There's a couple that...

Like I know going in, they're going to be rough. Like anything with bratwurst, bratwurst, man, there's, they add extra fat in there and it's, it's running through you. It's, you're not in control. It's a, there's, there's accidents bound to happen. Slides right out. What about a food that you've, you've never competed with that you would like to try? I want to go to Alaska, eat king crab. Yeah.

They have big, big-ass legs, and they cut them in half with a saw, like a circular saw. So that would be rad to get it like a $1,000 – rack up a $1,000 bill at a restaurant. They should put you on the deadliest catch. Like as a punishment, you have to go on one of the guys' ships, and then you eat the crab as they bring it in, so you deduct from their total points on the season. Oh, my God.

That would rock. So if you win on 4th of July, that would be your 17th title, which is incredible. Will it be the most gratifying one because of the one-year ban last year? Or is there one that you look back at and you're like, no, this one was the one that I always think about. Like, that was special. They're all special in weird ways. It doesn't have to be records or just different parts of my life. The year I had the protester...

I was there. I was competing. Yeah. That was your year. Yeah, I got covered in fake blood. Yeah. The first one was rad. That was a long-ass time ago. Yeah. It was almost 10 years ago. Yeah. They got you with paint. Yeah, they got me with paint, and I was next to the guy who –

I can't remember who he was. He's kind of a hippie guy. He only ate one dog. He was like, he said he was going back in time to the first Coney Island hot dog eating competition. He was going to eat one single dog. Yeah, yeah. He's definitely a hippie. Yeah, yeah. That was wild. Yeah, that one was crazy. But yeah, there's some special ones. Like, yeah, there's the first time I beat Kobayashi or even the next time, the overtime year. So it's weird. Like,

This is my 20th year going, so there's a lot of weird memories, a lot of history. It's awesome. I mean, 20 years, 17, hopefully getting 17 this year is going to be special. I'm excited. It didn't feel like the 4th of July without you in it. I'll say that. I think we said it on the show, but it did not feel like... I kind of canceled 4th of July in my mind last year.

The 4th of July is always going to go on. I was eating hot dogs somewhere, but it is good to be back on Coney Island. And thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple last questions. People don't know this, but like how quickly after you finish the contest, are you drinking beer? Cause you go out that night.

A little bit late. Yeah. Usually my goal is to try to make it out right after fireworks. Sometimes I get out of the hotel room and I'm, oh yeah, fireworks are still on. It's a good recovery. It depends on the year. Some years if it's super hot, then I'm not going to do anything. But it takes a long recover. But yeah, right around 10 p.m.

I'm on a liquid diet. I'm trying to get there. How many beers do you drink after eating 70 hot dogs? I don't think we should say this. No, you can say it. I mean, how are you having? It's not going to make it. I end up time traveling. There was one time when I woke up and I was like, I think I'm in the green room for today's show. Laughter

That's incredible. There are a few haters out there of the entire sport of competitive eating. I don't like to give them the time of day. I don't like to give them any mental energy of mine. But do you have a case that you can make to any of the haters out there that might have in the past not watched the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest? Do you have a case that you can make to be like, hey, this is actually a competitive environment. It's athletics. This is sports, and we're pushing our body to the fullest limit? Yeah.

It's, uh, yeah, it's really easy to be negative. I can't think of an offhand of anybody I've had a conversation with, but it's been a while, but, uh, yeah, there's, there's people who are always going to be negative. They're going to say, I remember there's people who used to say golf wasn't a real sport and there's people who just knocked and knocked and knocked WNBA for years and years. And now it's, uh, people eventually they, they, uh, eat their words and, uh,

Well, I'm still eating. Yeah. Um, all right. My last question, uh, is the row back question. RHO BACK.com promo code take 20% off your first purchase. Q zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, row back.com promo code take. Uh, so we were, we were texting. I was going to try to get you up here for the first day that we opened our ice cream machine. So we have a full soft serve ice cream machine in the office. We're still going to do it. Uh,

Man versus machine. How many ice creams do you think you can eat? Do you think you can put the machine out of business with the amount of ice cream you can eat? I want to try. It depends. Like some ice cream machines, it comes out super frozen and hard. Some of it's a little bit more creamy. Not ours. We're soupy. We're soupy. Oh, a little bit soupy. Oh, soup and cream. I like it. Yeah, I'm thinking...

Close to two gallons worth. So I did an ice cream contest, and after the contest, I was like shivering. It was like everything was cold. So I think close to two gallons would be in about eight minutes.

It'd be close to that. Yeah. Okay. Maybe that's what we'll do. We'll fill the machine up with two gallons and be like, have at it. I mean, it would be awesome if you broke the machine. Like this is John Henry. This is the story of John Henry against the, uh, the steam powered driller. You could do this. I wonder if it doesn't slow down. Yeah. If I, if I hit the machine starts shaking. Yeah. That's when you know, you've got it. Yeah. You've got a beat. Oh man. Well, Joey, we're, we're so pumped for you to have you back. Uh,

want to say a number you're going for? I mean, you're going, are you going for the record? Are we going to get a record? I'm trying to hit that record. 77 be perfect. Uh, the last, anything above 70 is really, really, really tough. Uh, so, but yeah, if it's, if it's good conditions, uh, I'm, I'll be feeling good. Is there a, is there like a minute mark where we, we should look for you to be at a specific number to make 77 possible? Oh man. Should I say it? Yeah. If I, if I met 50 hot dogs, uh,

In five minutes. That's almost a lock. That means I have five minutes left. All I have to do is average just over five hot dogs a minute, five and a half hot dogs a minute, and then I'm there. Is 100 possible? Will we live to see 100 hot dogs?

Probably not by me. But yeah, I think competition. I'm a little bummed out there's nobody pushing me. That's the best way for me is 77. Like last year when I did the contest against Kobayashi, I didn't know what he's capable of. So I was willing to really just...

go all out, no holding back and not worried about like on the 4th of July, I'm a little bit worried. Like if I, if I have a bad burp, it might look like a barf. So, so especially towards the end. So I have to be really careful to make sure I don't have those bursts. Yep. So it's, Oh, seven. Yeah. A hundred, a hundred be up there. I like the most I've ever, like even eating after the 10 minutes, the most I've ever gone up to is 90.

Okay, we're going to push ourselves. You eat after the 10 minutes? Like you're not full yet? No, so I do the 10-minute practice, and then I take a breather, and then I start eating. I try to convince myself, all right, let's eat like you did in the beginning.

So you have to practice eating fast while you're full. So then you convince yourself that you can do it again. You're a beast. You're a monster. Yeah. You're an absolute beast. I'm so glad that you're back on the 4th of July at Nathan's. We're all going to be rooting for you. Let's set some records. Yes. Greatest athlete of all time. Greatest athlete of all time. We'll be saying on 4th of July. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much, Joey. Thanks, Joey.

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Third year in a row. For anyone who's not familiar with this, we do this. So this is the third year. Dingers only. It's our fantasy baseball draft that we do halfway through the season. And the only stat is home runs. That's it. Every team has to draft nine positions. Every position on the field. Obviously, DH instead of pitcher. And...

Home runs is it. Whoever has most home runs wins. Whoever has the least home runs loses and has to get six outs against a college baseball team like PFT did. Like Max did. Oh, wow. Attempted to do. Attempted to do. Did you get there? Attempted to do twice, and then there was an unfortunate accident that prohibited that up until baseball season. Whose fault was the accident?

Mine. Hand up accountability. Why don't you explain to people what happened? Actually, no. I was over-served. Oh, so bartenders saw issue. I don't have to shout out the exact bar. That's also on you because you should just be able to drink more. I was over-served. There's no such thing as me being over-served. You also could have not drank anything because you were in training for the baseball.

Yeah, well, whatever, Brandon. Oh, fuck. By the way, Brandon. I don't know why I said it like that. Brandon was in it last year. He's in it again. Jerry was in it last year. He's in it again. Zach is a new entry, and Stephen Che is a new entry. He was a commissioner last year. Are we worried at all about Stephen Che being the commissioner and also participating?

Yeah, I am. I'd just like to say I am. You know what? I'm going to match. Yeah, because really I'm not, but if he wins somehow, then I'm going to be very, very concerned. Would anyone like to double the concern? I'll sign off on that. All right, so we got a match. I'll match Jerry's double. I trust Steven. I'll say it. If Steven wins, I'm going to be going like this. Remember who trusted you, by the way.

So, Max, are you going to do this ever? Yeah. Because it kind of ruins Dingers only. No, we're going to. Like, imagine that you're in a fantasy football league and the person who finishes in last, they don't do their punishment for your friend's fantasy football league until after the draft for next season. What do you think should happen to that person? I'm willing to take last pick.

Although that'll make things more confusing. No, and also it's snake draft. Yeah. So you kind of just gave yourself an advantage. That was a terrible. Are you going to do it? Yes. How are you going to do it? What steps have you taken recently to advance ourselves into doing this? Where are you going to put it? What do you mean? What? Where are you going to put it? Where do you want it? Probably out on YouTube. We'll probably film it, record it, and put it out on the news. Is that what they call your butthole? When do we start talking about butts? When is this happening?

It's happening maybe after Grit Week. Okay. So maybe two months from now. That's what you're telling the AWLs. Well, yeah, the AWLs are upset.

I think they have every right to be. Rightfully so. And they have every right to be. But we had two dates set, two dates got rained out, and then I broke my foot, and then the college baseball season started. And teams aren't going to do that in the middle of the season. Okay. So it's not like I just didn't try for a year. There was ample amount of trying. There was a lot of trying. I think you should have to do four innings. Three. Three.

I think you should double it. Three. You've waited the whole year. This is a negotiation test. Three. Three. No deal. Four. Two. No, he's going backwards. Get three. Get three. Two college baseball and then two women's softball. But that will make it so hard to plan. Two innings of beach. One and one. Okay. How about three plus you have to wear one? What? You're going to get beamed.

With what? A baseball by a pitcher. All of us. What? All of us get to throw one at you. No deal. Why? We can't throw that at her. All? Yeah. Not at the same time. One. Four. One. The winner of... No, that's not... The winner of this... I know, because then that would just be buying myself more time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think three innings. You have to think about getting hit by a pitch for the next year. Three innings, two. One. Two people. One. Three innings, one. None of us can throw hard. I try. If I went through this entire year and just didn't do a single thing about it, I would be more. Well, this year, 2025. Yes, the teams were playing. But you said this year. Yeah. Three innings, one of us gets to be in you, but they get multiple pitches until they hit you.

Five pitches. You can't duck it, though. It should be. You got to stand in the box. You can't jump around and shit. No, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal. Deal

that position left field center field right field at least 10 games we're good and they can be in that position you said it you do get a drop right you get one drop if your player is accused of pedophilia pedophilia that's the uh what's his name rule wonder franco i had wonder franco i had to drop him had to take a stand for what's right you also get an injury right you get one injury one injury slash pedophilia but you have to specify if you're dropping the person for injury or for pedophilia okay

But it's only one injury. So if you drop someone and then another guy gets injured, you can't. And if another guy gets pedophilia. It's also one pedophilia. Those are separate. Yeah, you have to keep the second pedophile. All right, exactly. So if you draft two pedophiles, you're just out of luck. You just hope that they don't get caught. But you do hope they get caught eventually. I hope they get caught. You don't want them to just not ever get caught. You just don't want them to get caught while they're on your team. Where's Wander Franco these days?

I think he went home. Did he do a DUI recently? I think he did something else. I think he added something onto his charges. I think he just went home. Tampa. No, that wasn't what I was talking about. That's not where he is. He's in court. I mean, the smartest thing he could do is to get another charge. And then everyone's like, Wander Franco, isn't that the guy that got DUI? Yeah, DUI guy. Wander Franco. He's from the Dominican Republic. I think he went. Oh, yeah. Prosecutors seek five-year prison term for Franco. At least he blew above. Oh, that was 42 minutes ago.

He's in court literally right now. Okay. Hey, he's currently on Major League Baseball's restricted list after initially being placed on administrative leave. Okay. So he's restricted. But...

For the record, I dropped him before MLB acted. That's true. You were the first person to speak out. So, credit to me. Did you hear about Juan DeFranco? At least he blew above .18 this time. That's the jokes that would happen if you got a DUI. All right. We ready to go? Let's do it, boys. Let's get some juice in here for the Diggers Only League. All right.

Jerry, you have the first pick in the Dingers Only League draft. Then we're going around the horn here. Snake draft. So, Steven will have the eighth and the ninth pick and then coming back around. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. My first pick is...

Tough one, but looking at the at-bats right now, blows everybody else out the water without at-bats. I'm going Shohei Otani. Okay. DH. Why did you say that was a tough one? Well, because Judge, you know, Judge is there too. Best player in baseball. I got you. I got you. I got you. Oh, nice. Nice.

I wanted to pick my guy judge, but... I'm going to cross off names for a few minutes, and then I'm going to stop. You blew that first pick. Just absolutely blew it. You blew that first pick. How? People are going to be studying this draft for years to come, and they're going to look at your first... That's like Darko Milicic going in the top three. He's got 26 home runs. Good for you. Was that the Otani draft? Zach, you're up. What position does he play? DH. Okay. Interesting. Positional value. Zach, you're up. I think that's pretty good positional value, to be honest with you. Okay.

I would like to take Aaron Judge as my first pick in this draft. Okay. Is that a bad pick? No, it's a great pick. That's an awesome pick. Great pick. Great fucking pick. So I have him as a right fielder. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because he plays right field. That would be where he plays. Good point. Okay. So I am going to, once again, I was rewarded with nothing. I won dingers only in a route last year. Yeah.

What? That's how all of our—winning means nothing. Max, shut the fuck up. I'm just saying. I am simply talking. Okay, go ahead. A member of my team, I got in the eighth round last year. I'm getting him in the first round this year. No, don't. I am doing it. Why wouldn't I do it? I'll trade pitch with you. I have to do it. I'll trade with you. He's so far above everybody else in this position. I wanted to call him. You can't call him. I had him last year. I had him the year before. I know, but I had him last year. I'll make a trade for you. How are you going to trade? When we come back around, I'll let you pick in front of me.

I don't think that we can do this. Take his whole second round pick. Make him skip his second round pick. Trades are allowed in drafts. Yeah, trades are allowed. So I get your first round pick and your second round pick? No, no, you get to jump in front of me. I'll let you jump in front of me the two times in a row that it comes back around.

So you move up twice. Yeah, but I won't be able to get anybody this good. I can't. Why? Why do you get to just play the guy? Three times I'll let you know. I'll just give you my second round pick. For what? Not even a pick swap. Just give it to you for this guy. For this guy? What are you guys doing? That's a pretty good deal. That's a pretty good deal from BFT. I'll give you my second round. My second round is more valuable. Just take him. Cal Raleigh. Fuck. It's stupid. I couldn't not take him. No, he's 1-1. Yeah. I know. I am a little worried he's hit...

Too many home runs so far. Yeah. It's going to be tough to keep the pace up. Correct. What are you doing? Ask him to be on your team. He's probably at the ballpark or something already. He's probably pooping. He's big. Might be pooping. If he doesn't pick up for Brandon, then he's back. This is your phone. He's back on the waiver wire. He's your phone. He's back on the waiver wire. He's not answering. He's back on the waiver wire. No, because that's your phone.

Kyle Rowley. Catcher. He's got 31 home runs. I know. That was the 1-1 pick. The second best catcher at 17. Yeah, Jerry. He's a catcher. Logan O'Hope is good, too. I'm last year. I'll take my guy Kyle Schwarber, then. DH, right? Left field. What'd you all for? Wait. Because I was going to pick him. Schwarber's played more than 10 games left field. He definitely wasn't coming back to you. He's left field on ESPN. How many games has Kyle Schwarber played left field, Max?

He's played left field a bunch. This way? I think you would prefer him at DH. You think so? I don't know, Max. I think for sure. There's so many left fielders. There's so many DHs? They're about the same. Okay. PFT, you're up. Okay, so I guess he's my DH. I got to take my guy. I got to take James Wood, Mr. National, left field, hitter of the highest pop flies you've ever seen. Mm-hmm.

James Wood, 22 years old. Love that. Future face of this league. Good pick. That's beautiful. Jay Woody. I will be taking... This is where it gets really boring for the listeners. I know. You know what? You know what? Yeah. What? I will be taking PCA. It's a good pick. It's a great pick. Inside the park runs count too. It's a great pick. Who's that guy, Max?

MVP. And Steven was going to take him. I was. I wanted to take him bad. It's a good pick. Center field, a good positional value. Yep. All right, I'm going to go positional value. I'm up in the air. I guess I will go with Eugenio Suarez of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Third base. He's got 25 fingers. Not even close to how you say his name. How do you pronounce it, Brandon? Eugenio? Eugenio.

Okay, that was way off. A. Hugh Henio, Suarez. That's my pick, 25 dongs, 19 second place, so that's good positional value. That's a lot of dongs. Did he say he's third base? He's third base. Okay, Steven, you have two picks. Hugh Henio. I am going with New York Met, Pete Alonzo. Okay. Polar Bear. Polar Bear. Home run derby does not count.

No, I think it did. I think we said it counts as one home run. If you win? Yeah, it counts as one home run if you win. Oh, sick. Okay. I think we did make that rule. Very dumb rule. And then I am also going positional value. I'm going Logan Ohapi. Great pick, Steven. Just terrific. Just terrific pick. Great pick. Great pick. You guys are picking well right now. Yeah. A lot of good picks. All right. My next pick, we won last year. We were doing a Stella Blue thing at the Cubs game. We were there during BP. Fuck.

and I watched this guy legitimately hit 15 straight home runs during BP, and I was like, big head, who the fuck is that guy? His name, Sayak Suzuki. Sayak? Pat Sayak? Sayak. One night in town. Wiz Khalifa. Left field, Sayak Suzuki. So you can do left field or DH. You choose left field? I choose left field. Okay. Good pick. I'm just going to say I'm going to say good pick for the Cubs.

You've said good pick for every player, just about. Uh,

I think your pick was bad. You wanted my pick tremendously. Very badly. We'll still talk. Zach, how do you think this is going so far? I think it's going great. I'm ready for my pick. It's going great. It's going all right. All right. A couple of missteps, but. I am going to make my second pick with shortstop from Cincinnati Reds. Boom. Ali De La Cruz. Good pick. Just terrific pick. That's a great pick. That's a fun pick. You got two fun guys. That's what he's doing. Knox's team is fun right now. I wanted him so bad.

That's fine. I'm going to go with Mr. National World Series champion Juan Soto. Good pick. Right field. Good pick. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I will go with... I need him. I'll do Kyle Tucker. Right field.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You're going to say good pick? Good pick. That's a damn good pick. Hopefully they re-sign him. I will take a right fielder as well. He's way down the board as far as home run lists, but this is a future list. Ronald Acuna Jr. Ooh, that's a good value. Good pick, Brandon. Good value, Brandon. Yep, all his home runs are ahead of him. Zach. Zach.

Zach. I would like to go with Salvador Perez. What position is he? He's a catcher. Run on catchers. He has not caught this year. Oh, boy. Wow, Max. He hit you with that one. I'm pretty sure that most of it. Check that, but I'm pretty sure they switched him to DH this year. Wow. He got you on that one. Shane? He did. All right. You're back up.

So he's the age? Are you picked? Did you get any stats on that, Shane? According to Shane, he said he's caught 40 times. Oh. Oh. Okay. I might be wrong. Yeah, he is one of the most. I know. I remember there was a story. That should be a fourth inning.

For that mistake. There was a story that he hadn't caught at all this year. If he wasn't going to catch on, I think he would. Didn't we talk about it on PMT that he switched it? No. Salvador Perez? No. Okay, I'm sorry. He was on the Seamhead Express. He's a great player. Okay. Jerry. Yes, I will go with first baseman Spencer Torkelson. Yep. The Tigers. The Tigers.

Good yak gauntlet time. No, bad yak gauntlet time. Okay, and you have another pick. Oh, okay, perfect. I will go with... That one surprised you. I have DH and I have first base. Next up, I will take shortstop Francisco Lindor. Good pick. That's a good pick. Really good pick. Great pick. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Good pick, dude. Wow.

How do we feel about taking Mets? It's the worst podcast we do every year. How do we feel about taking Mets knowing that Frank the Tech is going to scream about how much they suck for the entire season? Won't do it. Will not. I might just take all Mets. Cannot do it. Will not do it. Okay. Who's up? Zach. I would like Brandon Lowe, second base. Lowe? Brandon Lowe. Correction. Okay. First, second baseman off the board. Good pick. How do you feel about that pick, Zach? It was a good pick. I feel decent about it.

I'm sorry about the Salvador Perez thing. All good, man. I appreciate all the information. It's huge. All the information. Someone took Junior Caminero? No. Shit. Yes, Brandon? I'm working on two guys. That's normal. That's so hot. You going skiing?

I got to keep my Mississippi State boys together. He was also on the team last year. He's going to get hot again. DH Brent Rooker. Ooh, nice. A little early for him, but I want him. That's a reach. That feels like a reach. He hit 38 home runs last year, Hank. We're in 2025, man. He said it felt like a reach. I'm a ball knower. I'm going to take center fielder Brian Buxton. Okay. Byron Buxton, sorry. Buxty. I'm going to go with –

Friend of PMT, Atlanta Brave, first baseman. Good pick. Matt Olsen. I feel great about that pick. That's a great pick. I feel really good about that pick. Great fucking pick, PFT. Good guy. First team all good guy, too. Shout out to everyone who's listening right now. You're trudging through. Voted least likely to be a pedophile amongst his peers in the athletic. Hell yeah. We are putting Joey Chestnut and Zach Gallin and Merrill Kelly in this show, so it's not...

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. This wasn't a total loss of a show, even though listening to us just say names over and over is... I don't think I saved Matt Olsen's number. Big Cat, can you call him real quick? Yeah. I just want to tell him. Because when I got a chance to talk to him in Milwaukee, I said, I'm looking at you for dingers only. I'm going to say... You made a case. I'm going to say I got your coach on the line. Okay. Like they do in the drafts. Yeah. Okay, hold on one sec. We're 0 for 1 on these.

Is he playing right now? It is pretty close to game time. Yeah, it is. Also, I don't think I've ever called him. He's got three hours. He's hexed, dude. Playing the Mets. Matt, big cat from the Dingers Only League. I'm going to put you on right now with the manager that drafted you.

Hey, Matt Olson, this is PFT Commenter. I just took you in the Dingers Only Draft. I want to say we're excited to have you as part of the program. Let's give him hell this year, buddy. Hey, it means a lot. Happy to be a part of this program. And part of being a part of the program is you get unlimited ice cream at the office whenever you want to stop in. I'll send you a card.

I did notice that it worked for somebody recently. Yeah. Cal Raleigh. There you go, Cal Raleigh. So anytime you want, 24-7, you're in Chicago, let us know and you get the ice cream machine. Can we move it to a clubhouse for a series? No. Absolutely not. I'm hearing from the cream team that we can't do that. But you do get access to it on site here at Parcel Sports.

Okay. Sounds like a deal. All right. Glad to have you part of the program. Give him hell. All right. Thanks, Coach. Thanks, Matt. God bless. All right. That was nice. See you, Matt. Thanks. That was a nice moment. Dingers only. It just means more. Steven has a lot of phone numbers of baseball players, so he will have to call anyone who drafts one of those guys. That's fair. Okay. Great pick. Max? That's your name? I'm going to go with second baseman Cattell Marte.

Good one. Is that how you pronounce his name, Brandon? Good one. That's a really good pick. Yeah, sure. Really good pick. All right, I'm going to go with the guy. He missed a lot at the beginning of the year, but he's back now. I think he's going to make a tear to end the year. We're going right fielder, Mike Trout. Okay. He's just looking up his stats. All right. Steven, would you like to call him?

I knew that was coming. That's why I said that beforehand. Yeah, I mean, I can call him. Yeah, give him a call. It's going to get awkward. I don't want to hear this. It's going to get awkward. You don't have to call him. Oh, okay, no. I thought I had an outstanding text, and I do not. An outstanding text. What do you think he's doing right now? Do you think he's reading, like, Eagle Season Previews? Is he playing? He's been playing. He's playing. He came back recently. He's got 12 homers. Ugh.

I'm sure that'll continue. All right, here we go. You got to tell him he's live or he's on air. Yep. Is he going to pick up, you think? I don't know. We've talked on the phone a couple times. Hank, there's a lot of pressure on you. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. I mean, we're all texting about the fantasy league. I knew Mike Trout was going to get picked, and I knew Steven would have to call. Please don't answer. Please don't answer. Probably not. Your call has been... All right, take a picture of Hank and send him a text saying, Hank just drafted you in dingers only.

Let us know if he gets back to you. Okay. All right. I'm disoriented now. Let's go with Corbin Carroll is injured, so I'm not going to go with him.

I'm going to go with right fielder, L.A. Dodger, Teoscar Hernandez. The Oscar. That's not really how you say his name, Steven. Teoscar Hernandez? That's not it. How is it? It's the Oscar Hernandez. The Oscar Hernandez. This whole draft was leading up to me picking the Oscar Hernandez. You're a real fucking asshole. All right, you have another one. I share his birthday with my son. Oh, great. Wow. I'm sure he's so excited about that. Who do you share a birthday with?

Stephen? Elmo. Yep. Perpetually three and a half years old. I'm going shortstop. It's Spanish for the mo. Shortstop, Dansby Swanson. Okay. Good pick. Good flow. Good pick. Thanks.

All right, this might be a reach probably, but I'm going to go first baseman, local kid, South Shore, Cohasset, Mass. He is a New York Yankee that goes by the name of Ben Rice. Okay. Okay. Sure you have the name right? When you say local kid, you meant to you specifically? Yes. Okay. What position is he? First base. Southie? Coho. Donnie's, Donnie's, Donnie's. Southie. They call that Southie in Boston. He's a skip. Uh-oh.

He's wicked strong. Clippers, Skipper. I forget what their mascot was in high school. Okay, you're up. I am going to go with outfielder, specifically right fielder, Fernando Tatis Jr. Okay. Oh, good pick. Bamfine pick. A lot of aura. Yep. So much aura. I'm going for aura on this one. So much aura. Yeah, that's a good pick. All right, you're up, Skipper. Really glad this guy fell to me.

Colorado Rocky, first Rocky, positional value, Hunter Goodman. Catcher, playing at altitude. All right, I'm going to play a little defense on myself here. Let's see. Are any of these guys hurt? I don't think so. Quite possibly. Yeah, I'd say it's a high probability. Definitely, definitely some hurt guys. You're trying to get my pick before I get my pick. You have the pick before me. What value would it be to me? What if I lose my time on the clock?

You're running the clock. All right, I'm taking front of the program Christian Yellich. That made sense. Is he right field? Left field. So I'm going to take a risky pick here. This guy is hurt. I think he's coming back within a week.

Two weeks, three weeks. I don't know. Whenever he's coming back, yeah, I'm doing it, Max. God damn it. I thought no one was. Of course I'm doing it. I was looking at you like you should do it. You had plenty of time to do it. I know. I know. I understand. I think I'm getting great value if he gets back healthy. Bryce Harper, first baseman. Oh, that's great value, Brandon. Great value. You really love Philly, huh? Great value. That's my first Philly. Yeah. I do. It's important, Philly. Great value. Unlike Dax. How we feel. I thought I was going to.

Feeling okay. If it's possible, still on the board, I would like to go with Junior Caminero from the Tampa Bay third base. They just cut him. That's terrible. We're confirmed? Okay, well, I'm not going to go with him. No, he's fine. Okay, I'm going with him. Zach, how would you feel pitching against a team, a college team? Headgear or no headgear? You could have a net in front of you if you wanted.

I just don't – I don't know if I can keep it strike, so I might hit him with the ball. I wouldn't want to do that. Yeah, yeah. I don't throw too fast, but I wouldn't want to hit anybody. Okay, but you could do it. You're worried about them. I'm not too nice on the mound. Yeah, I don't want to hit anybody with a ball. Yeah, okay. All right, Jerry, you're up. Okay, I am going to go with – he was on my squad last year, I believe. Yes, he was. Third base, Jose Ramirez. Okay. That's a damn fine pick. Good pick. Thank you so much. And I believe I have another pick, correct? Mm-hmm. Ooh, okay.

I will go center field. O'Neal Cruz. Damn good pick. Good one. Thanks, guys. Fun player. Great pick. That's an order pick, too. Yeah, it is. That's a great pick. I had him on my board. I had him on my board as well. I think he was on my board. Everyone had him on the board. We're about to get to the portion where we start picking guys who have already been picked. Yep. And super hurt guys. Uh-huh. Super hurt guys. Just like really hurt guys. Some guys might not be alive. Okay. You're up.

Is it possible to go Byron Buxton, center field? Is that perfect timing? I picked him two rounds ago. Oh, that's terrible. My bad. Sorry. Okay. I'll go Trent Grisham. Okay. Okay. Hasn't been picked. What position? What position is that? Trent Grisham is a center fielder. Back-to-back center fielders. It's about that time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You better believe it. It is about that time, Brandon. Let me call this guy. Oh. Yeah. All right. Got him? Whose number does Brandon have? The Mississippi State guy? All right. Let me just call him right now. Sorry, guys. No, you got this? I had to look it up. Who's he calling? Who do we think he's calling? I'm calling my guy. Who do we think he's calling? Oh, is this not Stowers?

Shit. Oh, no. It's an Oriole? Mississippi State? Picking Bobby Witt Jr. Oh. Shortstop. Doesn't have that many home runs yet, but he's going to get hot. He will get hot. BW. Bobby Witt Jr. Takes BW. He will get hot. All right. I'll go. Wait. Let me make sure he's not hurt. Shortstop. I'll go third baseman Manny Machado. Okay. Aura. Fun to watch. Big time aura. All the Padres have aura. Pods. Big time aura. Podheads.

All right. PFT. All right. I'm going to go center fielder for the Milwaukee Brewers. Jackson Churio. Nice pick. Fun name to say, too. Chip-chip. Churio. Nice pick. I have a guy that I'm struggling with position. Okay. Rafael Devers is the pick that I would like to make. But he's struggling with position. Listed as a DH. How many games has he? All of them? We clarified before. Shane just said all of them.

He's been a DH. All of them he's been a DH? That was the thing, right? All of them. Okay, fine. I'll keep him at DH. That's fine. Wait, he's listed as third base in baseball? In his own words, he said, I am a third baseman, right, Hank? Yeah, but he hasn't played there. But he said, for the rules of the... I just said I'm fine with keeping him at third base. Are you fine with keeping him at third base? At DH? Yeah. It should be up to him. Would you think he'd want a DH, or do you think he'd rather play third base? Yeah, you might have a clubhouse cancer on your head. That's fine. That's tough.

All right. Similar to Mike Trout, this guy missed a big chunk of the season. I think he made his return on – he's had six at-bats this year, but he hits bombs. He's going to hit a lot of bombs. No, he's had 19 at-bats, zero home runs. Giancarlo Stanton. All right. He's battling back from double elbow to the night. I didn't know he played baseball still. What position is he? DH. He'll probably stay healthy.

Does he go by Mike now? No. It's been eight years. Actually the opposite. That's him though, yeah. You looked him up and it still says Mike Stanton? No, my memory reference bank. Your memory reference bank. Your brain? Yeah. All right, it's on me. Is anybody? Yeah, it's memory reference bank.

Let's go center field. Have I taken that? Nope. Let's go Andy Pages. Whoa. That's a reach. Big time reach. Really bad pick. Is he hurt? No. Just a reach. All right. Let's go. Center field's off the board. Right field's also off the board. I love my squad right now. I do too. Let's go third base.

Isaac Parides. Isak. Isak? Hopefully he doesn't suck. Cub for life. He was on the Cubs last year. Oh, hell yeah. All right, I'm going to keep – I'm going for just sex appeal. I'm just going for a lineup that pops off the lineup card.

I'm going to go Mookie Batts shortstop. He's had some injuries. I was just looking at him. He's got nine home runs this year. He lost a lot of weight. He had a toe injury, but he's back. He's playing. I was looking it up because I was about to maybe take him, but then I looked at it and I was like, oh, maybe it's because he didn't hit home runs when he lost all his weight. He only hit one home run this last month.

He's had a ton. He's battling, but he's, again, these are all big-time players that are going to have to contribute going down the stretch. Live up to their names. Yeah. I'm also going to go with... I mean, Mookie, Mike Stanton, Mike Trout. That's a power. You just interrupted Max. It's okay. I'm also going to go for a vibes guy.

Again, I'm struggling with his position, but I'm available at both of his positions right now. I will be going with Vladdy Jr. Okay. Team of CM? He's on the Blue Jays. I believe he's a first baseman now, not a third baseman anymore. How many homers does he have? Not as many as you would think. He has 10. But, you know, you've got to go for talent at this. Yeah, you've got to go for upside. You're drafting for upside right now, 100%.

I'm going to go with a sabermetric pick. I got deep into the math on this. Ideally, you want your players to get as many opportunities to hit home runs as possible, yes? Mm-hmm. Why not take a guy that hits leadoff? Shortstop, C.J. Abrams. He's going to get, like, four more at-bats than some of your guys' clowns. That's good sabermetrics. Why would you say clowns? Because you guys got a bunch of clowns on your team. He's right. It's true. I will go with shortstop, Jeremy Pena. Yeah.

From the Houston Astros. Spanish for pineapple. Seven of eight teams right now have a shortstop. Speak swinger. Oh, that was a mistake then. I wish I knew that. Whether you could wait on, but just no idea. I'm going to go. Whoever doesn't have a shortstop, don't. I have a. Don't pick them. That's me. Yeah. No, I got Bobby. Left fielder. Has anybody picked Taylor Ward? No. Then I'm picking Taylor Ward. Who does he play for? The Angels. The Angels.

No, that's a bad pick. Taylor Ward. That is generic player number 45. Shit, can I change my pick? This is just called dingers only, right? We're just hitting dingers? Why did I do that? I'm not worried about sex appeal. I'm not worried about noise. Taylor Ward. I'm drafting player first name, last name. If you met a girl named Taylor Ward, she's hot as fuck. Yeah, if she's a chick. Yeah. How do you know mine isn't a chick? Can I switch my pick if the person picks up? Yes. No. No.

If a person picks up. He's going to get his next pick. No, what are you talking about? It's a shortstop. Everyone else has a shortstop. Who are you throwing back? I would have rather had Gunnar Henderson just because I could root for him instead of Jeremy Pena. Oh. Can I just do that? You don't have to call him. I'm actually fine. He has to pick up. I'm actually fine with that. I mean, everyone has a shortstop. I know. But I just wanted to see him pick up. All right, fine, fine, fine. If he picks up, otherwise I'm keeping Jeremy Pena. And whoever doesn't have a shortstop, just pick Gunnar Henderson whenever you want.

Gunner hasn't responded to me since I asked him to go on a spatchup party. Well, you're not banned. Well, since you what? You guys made me ask him that. Damn it. All right, I guess I got Jeremy Pena. He's a fine player. Yeah, I know. I just wanted to root for Gunner Henderson. I was stupid. I don't know why I did that. He's only hit eight home runs, so I didn't see him on the board. Fuck.

That's a strong message. All right, Jeremy Pena, be a hero. Hey, it's me, Gunnar Henderson. But you already knew that. He's going to be so mad when he finds out he didn't get drafted. He might still. Who still needs a shortstop? Does anybody know? Okay. Don't draft him right now, but you know what? If you draft Gunnar, I'll trade you Jeremy Pena. Can I think about it? Yeah. Awesome. All right. All right. What did you decide?

I'm going next, right? Yeah, but what did you decide about the trade? Oh, right now? Yeah. Oh, you feel good about paying you this year? I mean, he's got 11 home runs. Obviously he doesn't feel good about it. No, literally, I do feel good about him, but I just would rather have Gunnar Henderson, but it's fine. You don't have to. Is it cool if I keep – can we think about midseason, maybe a swap? Can we table it until now and I go Gunnar later? The deal is now officially off the table. Okay, that's fine. We won't trade then. All right, go ahead and make your pick. I got you. Sorry about that.

I'm going to go with, has Ezekiel Tover been taken? Nope. I would like to take Ezekiel Tover. Okay. What position is that, young man? Shortstop. Wait. You son of a bitch. You're not taking the better of me. And you also take the shortstop when you need to. Everyone else already had one. We just had this conversation. It's three home runs. Why are you taking him?

I was just trying to keep track of who was taken and who wasn't taken. I know he was on the non-taken board. Ezekiel sounds like a strong name. I was really going off first name. I thought you were like friends with this guy. No, I don't have too many guys. I don't know too many guys in MLB, but I feel like he might be a stick later in the season. Terrible pick. That's fair. Yeah. Okay. Jerry, you're up. All right. I need a second baseman.

I will go with Jackson Holiday. You bitch motherfucker. Yeah, I'll go with him. I like him. It's a good pick. Good pick. And then this is going to be a reach because I don't think this guy has zero home runs this year. Okay. He plays left field. Oh, a left fielder with zero home runs is hard to do. Jordan Alvarez. Oh, that's pretty... Is he hurt? Yeah. He's a DH, but...

He is hurt. He is returning sometime in the next two months, month and a half. Okay. That's good. He hits home runs. Astro Jordan Alvarez, no progress. I'm pretty sure they found him. I think I drafted him last year right when he went on the start of like a 60-day deal. Yeah. He's a great player when he plays. Yeah, he's returning though, they said. Yeah, that's what they said last year. What is the last update? No progress. No progress. We'll see. I read a different report. We'll see. We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. I mean, listen, if he... We don't know. Nobody knows. Yeah. I know he was supposed to... I think he was a setback. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, but we're good. Well, no progress means no bad progress either. True. All right. Back up, Zach. All right. Would it be possible to take Brent Rooker? Has Brent Rooker been drafted? He's been on my team for about 45 minutes. That's fair. I missed that one on the lineup. That won't happen again. Sorry about that, Brandon. We'll do that again. He's just picking guys that no one would have drafted.

Ian Happ of the Cubs. He available. Yes. Great pick. Very much so. I'll take Ian. That's a great pick. It's red hot right now. Two home runs on Friday, which if you're listening to this right now, it was like two weeks ago. Yeah. Center fielder of the Seattle Mariners, Julio Rodriguez. Ooh, good one. Has 10 home runs, but is averaging 29 over the last three years. J-Rod. Good one. Good one. All right, I'll take Michael Bush, first baseman. Okay. Okay.

I'm going to go with Matt Chapman, third baseman, Giants. Good pick, PFT. Good pick, PFT. Has anyone taken Riley Green, left fielder for the Tigers yet? That's a hot-sounding name. Yeah, Riley Green sounds hot as hell. That chick has got the only fans. I would click on the only fans just to see how much it was. Super shiny lip gloss. PFT, who did you just take? Took Matt Chapman. I feel like this person's been taken.

From the Colorado Rockies catcher, Hunter Goodman. Yeah, a while ago. I got him a long time ago. It felt like that was true. Good intuition. How does he play into your aura team, Hank? He didn't. He just was high up on the board, which is why he had been taken already. Oh, man, this is tough now. All right, I'm going to go, just because I loved his walk-up song in 2016.

Javi Baez. Nice. I'm in love with him. He's back. He's back. What's his position? He's a center fielder for the Tigers. Good pick. Oh, he got traded for a PCA, right? Yeah. Correct. I am going with... It's great being around Steven because his baseball knowledge literally started this year. I am going with... What's his favorite? Left field. New York Mets.

Brandon Nimmo. Okay. Frank's going to be mad about that one. Then I will go with a designated hitter. I believe that's his position. Let me double check. Would you give Frank a team? Yandy Diaz. And have it be all Mets. Yeah. He just gets all the Mets. This is going to be analytics. Good pick check, by the way. Good pick. Analytics pick. Short porch and right field.

Jazz Chisholm, second base. That's just a real solid pick. I will be taking catcher, not to be confused with actor, Will Smith. Which one are you taking? The catcher, not the actor. Okay. The actor also hits. So I'm up. I got to pick a DH here. Actually, my favorite part of this Dingers Only draft is when they do the team that we didn't draft. Yeah. Shane, are you working on that? Or memes? Yeah.

It's memes? Shane just tried to talk. I don't have a mic anywhere near him. I can. Okay, do it right now. Okay, so I'm up, and I am going to be taking... Has anybody took Wilmer Flores yet? I have not heard his name. Designated hitter, Wilmer Flores. You sure he's still in the league? He's hit 11 home runs this year. And the 11 is red, which I think means... Good. Also, fun fact about him, Wilmer Flores' bio...

He is the brother of Wilmer Flores. I'll be goddamn. Wow. So there are two Wilmer Flores. That's sick. Which one did you take? I took Wilmer Flores. Cool. Has anyone taken Mr. October Tommy Edmund?

I have not. Dodger? Okay, yeah. He's good. I'm going to take him. Great pick. Mr. October. I have an issue. By the way, just so we're all clear, the official first day of this league is July 2nd. Wednesday, July 2nd. So these home runs don't count. No home runs count for the next eight days. Last year, y'all did the same thing, and then you started a text message saying, should we just start now?

No. You're going to do that again? No. Just depends on how many home runs you get. Yes. Yeah. I think last year it was like, should we just start today? Should we just start today? No, whatever. Okay. It doesn't really matter. I have a guy who I... Who would like to vote yes if you'd like to start today? What's today? Today. Today, today, or today when it comes out? Today, tomorrow. Today. Today, today. This day. June 23rd. No, it should start July 2nd. Okay. Whenever Bryce Harper gets back. All right. What position is your guy? Second baseman.

Tommy Edmund. Who'd you say? Mr. October. I have a problem. I have a guy that has almost assuredly been picked, but I haven't heard him be picked, and I haven't scratched him off. So I'm going to ask, and he's definitely been picked. So just tell me he's been picked. Okay. Who's got Jose Altuve? He's not been picked. Not been picked. I'd like to pick Jose Altuve, second baseman for the Houston. Good pick. Not as good as Tommy Edmund. He has way more home runs. Than Tommy Edmund? Yeah. Yeah.

Are you sure about that? No, because Tommy Edmonds is not even on my second base list. How many home runs does Jose Altuve have? Twelve. Tommy Edmonds has ten. Not way more. A few more. Yeah. Zach? Okay.

Has anyone drafted a Ben Rice from the New York Yankees? How do you keep doing this? I got my list swapped. It was my fault. Good kid, local kid. Yandy Diaz. Taken. Also been taken. Has Jose Altuve still been playing all second base? He's been playing left field, too. It said second base on the thing that I Googled. Yeah, but he's been playing left field. I think he's enough second base that he should be a second baseman still. Correct, Steven? I'm looking. All right, can you all look? Okay. All right.

Okay. We good? Yeah. That's why I was more upset at myself because I didn't see him on my second baseman list. Vinny Pascantino. Who's that? First base. Royals. That is correct. Yep. Pick him. That's who we're picking. All right. Jerry. Perfect. I will do. I need a catcher. This is the last round. Or not this pick. There's one more round. I need a catcher. Yeah, fuck it. Let's go with...

Let's go with Wells. God damn it. Austin Wells. God damn it. He wasn't going to make it to you, Hank. Austin Wells. Let's go with him. God fucking damn it. Catcher. Okay, now I need a... Oh, ooh. My right field there. Your right field there. Okay, I will go... Man, I don't know much about this guy, but the name sounds like he hits home runs. I remember a couple post-seasons ago, he was hitting home runs. Nick Castellanos. Yeah, he's had a good year.

His power numbers have been a little bit down. All right. I'll go with him. My right-hand player. Perfect. Zach, you need a DH. Is Saya Suzuki available? No. No. Not here. Are you just looking at my draft? I think he was a second-round pick. Was he a second-round pick? Third or fourth, yeah. Great pick. Tenth overall. Solid pick. Tenth overall. Great value. I mean, that would have been an awesome pick if you got him. I'll go with Jonathan Arata.

Okay. Okay. Doesn't hit her. Ten bay dove raise. Okay. Just the raise now. Ten bay raise. Yep. Brandon needs a third baseman. Eight years ago. Eight? Maybe more. Another injury guy coming back. Jordan Westberg. Baltimore Orioles third base. Where'd he go to school? Mississippi motherfucking state. All right. I'm going to take injured player, but he's got a lot of pop.

He's got 10 home runs in how many bats? 200 bats. Shea Langelaire from the A's. He should be back. I just Googled it. He should be back in the next week or two. So Jackson Holiday, we've ruled him as a shortstop. No, someone already picked him. I picked him. He picked the second baseman, right? Yeah. You need a second baseman. I need a second baseman, yep. So I will be going with, at second base...

Ozzy Albies. That's a good pick. Atlanta Brave. Good pick. That's a good pick. Thanks. Mostly because it's a name I recognize. I guess this is the injured round here where someone takes someone who is going to be off of injury soon. I will be taking third baseman Alex Bregman. Good pick. Great pick. Would you like to call him, Che? Damn, I should have done that. Bregman? Yeah.

He would be likely to pick up. Every article about Ozzie Albies is about how bad the current slump is. He has been awful. But he's going to be better. He should be better. He only has six home runs. No outstanding tests. He's going to hit 25. I think getting drafted on this team is the spark that he needs. He's batting 100 for June. All right, I'm going to go recurring guest, friend of the program, catcher for the Seattle Mariners.

Cal Raleigh. Great pick. Great pick. Oh, Bregman's calling back. Oh, there we go. Nice. Hand it to Max. Tell him we're doing the Dinger. Alex, what's up, buddy? Yeah, we are doing – you are on part of my take right now. I'm going to pass you to Max. You've just been drafted in the Dinger's Only League. Hey, Alex, pleasure to speak with you right now. I just want you to know that you've been drafted by Team Max to the Dinger's Only League and part of my take. Do you accept? Yes.

I don't even know what that is. All right. All right. That's cool. Tell them what it is. It is a fantasy baseball league between the members of part of my take plus a few more. And it's just a fantasy baseball league. Homers only. All right. How's your health? You feeling good? Yeah, I'm feeling good, bro. You'll be back soon. I love that. Love that. Thanks for joining my team.

Have a good one. I don't know if he did join your team. I don't think he accepted it. You were too nervous, Max. I was nervous. You couldn't wait to get off the phone. I was nervous. I was nervous. Damn, dude. Maybe send him a follow-up text, Che, and be like, sorry for Max. He's a loser. I thought that went pretty smoothly. No, you were too blue.

that? I thought that went pretty smoothly. Zach, what do you think? You were so fast. I thought it was on our first interaction with somebody. I feel like it went pretty decent. I was pretty, yeah. I don't know why. I don't know. Jay, clean that up. There's something about a phone call that's more nerve wracking. Max, clean that up. I don't want Bregman to hate us. Give me a thumbs up. What? Your thumb is completely blocking your face. Okay. All right, Steven. Bregman's been drafted. Wait, who did you pick? Wait, who'd you pick? Cal Raleigh. What are you doing? I thought it was...

I thought we were going to move on. Has anyone taken Augustin Ramirez of the Miami Marlins? No. All right, I'll take him. Good pick. Great pick, Hank. I had him on my board. He's actually better than Cal Raleigh. Steven, last pick. Mr. Irrelevant. Mr. Irrelevant. I'm just checking to make sure this guy is healthy. He's got an absolutely dynamite name.

Oh. Yep. He's hitting like 150. This could be anybody. He might be. Second baseman, Arizona Diamondbacks, Tim Tawa. Dynamite. That's a dynamite name to you, Tim? Tim Tawa? Yeah.

Okay. I feel like we left a lot of board here. Yeah. Augustin Ramirez. I don't want to say third base. We left a couple guys. Well, Corbin Carroll. Corbin Carroll's out there. But he's hurt. How hurt, though? I don't know. He thinks he's getting an MRI, but he has 20 home runs. I think I drafted all guys from the National League. How is that possible? Yeah. Entirely National League? Everybody on my team is in the National League. Corbin Carroll is a big mess.

Big miss. Big miss. Who are the hurt? Stash him. Well, you can't stash him. We don't have any. Oh, you're saying. Stash him. Just eat his non-home runs and so on. Yeah. So it's a race to see whose right fielder gets hurt first. Yeah. Me and Sid, we miss. Anybody take Freddie Freeman? Nope. Nope. Yeah. First base. Soderstrom is a really good hitter too. Okay. Who else? Want me to go down the list right now? Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Murphy, catcher. Okay. Braves. Tommy Edmond. Nope. Got him. Yes. That feels good. Sean Murphy might not be the best hitting catcher on that team. That feels really good, knowing that I got a pick that the baseball guys knew. Daniel Schneeman, the Guardians, for second base. Zach Netto for shortstop. Austin Riley, third base.

Okay. It's not a bad year. Tyler Soderstrom, center field Joe Adele, and then right field Corbin Carroll. I think we did pretty good. Yeah. I think that was a good draft, boys. I love my team. My team pops off. I love my team. Yeah. Hanks, you said something earlier of like. If you post this lineup card. Yeah. That you want to like a star power. And that's what I kind of went for. You read your team real quick.

Eugenio Suarez. Nailed it. Sia Suzuki. Mike Trout. Ben Rice. Drew and Carlos Stanton. Mookie Betts. Javi Baez. Jazz Chisholm. Yeah. Augustin Ramirez. Everyone say their name.

It's USA All-Ran. I'm Brandon. No, I'm Team Earth. I actually think if you put my lineup next to Hank, I think mine pops with the word just as hard. I think mine pops better. I think mine pops more as well. Do you want to pop off? Yeah, let's pop off. I'll pop off with you. Hank, you listen to this. Tell me guy for guy.

James Wood, Juan Soto, Matt Olsen, Hunter Goodman, Jackson Churrio, CJ Abrams, Matt Chapman, Wilmer Flores, Ozzy Alves. Yeah, no, there's no... The end of there. I'm popping so hard. There's zero pop. No, I'm popping harder. I'm popping harder. Zero pop. You want to pop? I want to... Yeah, let's... I'll pop. You pop first, and then I pop. Cal Raleigh. Last guy to pop has to eat the cookie. Cal Raleigh pops. Raleigh.

Ronald Acuna. Yeah. Bryce Harper. Yeah. Julio Rodriguez. Yeah. Bobby Witt Jr. Yeah. Jose Altuve. Pops. Yeah. Now I go Brent Rooker, Taylor Ward, Jordan Westbrook. I didn't pop. Taylor Ward. All right. So can I pop? I mean, Mike said. I'm popping better than that. Will Smith. Nah. Vladdy Jr. A little. Marte. Yeah.

Bregman. Pops. Ellie. Bregman doesn't pop. Pops. Bregman pops. Bregman pops. Bregman pops. Ellie De La Cruz. Riley Green. PCA. Tatis. Devers. That's a good pop. That's a good pop. You want to hear my pop? There's a lot of pop in there. All right, Mike. To start, I'll just throw these. Shaylang Lears, whatever. Michael Bush is good. Tommy Edmond. Gunnar Henderson. Pop.

Wait, did you make that trade? Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. Jeremy Pena, Manny Machado, Christian Yelich, Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwarber, Byron Buxton. All right. Decent pop. I mean, I have two. I have the Kyle. Guys, I think Kyle Schwarber and Kyle Tucker. This is going to be the most competitive year of dingers only ever. You want to pop, Jerry? I'll pop a little bit. Pop it off. First base, Spencer Torkelson. Okay.

VH, Otani. Shortstop, Lindor. Center field, O'Neal Cruz. Third base, Jose Ramirez. Second base, Jackson Holiday. Could pop. Left field, Jordan Alvarez. I don't think he's going to play for the rest of the year. The name is pop, though. The name is pop. The pop was Labrum. And right fielder, Castellanos.

That's Pop. Yeah, Pop. What do you got, Steven? Say hello, Pop. Catcher, Logan Ohapi. Sick name. Your definition for sick name is... Logan Ohapi? It's just names. Really weird. That's a cool name. Pete Alonzo, first base. Second base. Not Pop. Tim Tawa. That's a cool name. How could that be the coolest? Tim Tawa. Shortstop, Dansby Swanson. Swag.

Oh, God. Third base, Ice. Isak Paredes. Isak Paredes. No pop. Left field, Brandon Nimmo. This is the least amount of pop. Can we agree that this team? Well, we haven't heard that yet. Center field, Andy Pajes. There's no pop. Right field, the Oscar Hernandez. Incredible amount of non-pop. No sex appeal. Here's the thing. You don't know 90% of your team.

No, I know. Yeah, absolutely. Do Pete Alonzo, Logan, a hobby and the Oscar and Dansby. I know all of those guys. If you were to make Brandon Nimmo, I've heard of a team logo for your squad. It would just be beige, beige and gray. Toby Anderson. Zach, end us with a pop. Aaron judge. Pop Salvador Perez. Pop. Brandon Lowe. Pop. Wow. Junior Caminero. Trent Grisham. Okay. Ezekiel Tover. Pop. Ian Happ. Pop. Pop.

Vinny Pascantino. Pascantino. I think if you said it with the Italian hands, it pops. Vinny Pascantino. Pascantino. Yeah. All right, gotcha. And Jonathan Arata. Why didn't you take Gunnar Henderson? It was a mix-up. Self-miscommunication. Memes and Shane, do you have any grades? Which team pops the hardest? Give Max an A. Hmm.

Let's go. Give Brandon an A. Yeah, Brandon's really good. Why don't you say I was really good? Max, yours is really good too. All right, thanks. I like Big Cat and PFTs. Yeah, you do. Wow, Hank, you're not going to pop. No. Hank's was good. No, it wasn't. You don't mean that. Who's bad? That's a better question. Unfortunately, my man Zach had a tough time. A lot of ball left.

A lot of ball love. A lot of ball love. We also last year picked pitcher tiebreaker. Yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Oh, it was just tiebreaker. It was just – it was strikeout. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could do that, I guess. Okay. Tiebreaker. We could just go the same one through eight. Okay. And it's strikeouts. It's just strikeouts. Most strikeouts. It's just purely tiebreaker for last place. Correct. And last year we just spoke up, so – Paul Skeens. Give me Garrett Crochet. That's what I'm going to pick.

What are we doing? We just spoke up. Cy Young? Just take it. Oh, give me Scooble. What? All right, fine. Go in order. I'll take that. All right, well, I don't know his name. Who? It's the Asian guy. Wait, no, it should be going back. Shohei Otani? Otani? No, no. Who had the last pick? No. I did. Yeah. All right, he's right. Okay. All right, Paul Skeens. Wait, what is this? What are we talking about? It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Paul Skeens for me. Good pick. Hank?

Yeah. Sorry. I'm looking for any pitcher that's hit a home run this year. No, no. It's just a break. No. Pitchers don't hit anymore, Hank. It's only in the event of a draw. Pitchers don't hit anymore. I'm already obsessed for that. They're all DHs, Hank. Otani would be a great pick. All right. Give me Scooble. Good pick. Nice. Good pick. It's a great pick. Crochet. Brandon was the one. Actually, no. Give me Zach Wheeler. Zach Wheeler. McKenzie Gore. Why can't I get this for strikeouts?

Where are the strikeouts? Oh, let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Crochet. Chris Sale. Hurt. Thank you. What? Didn't he hurt? He got hurt that night? Logan Webb. Hunter Brown. I don't know who that is. I think we fucked up, too, because so many names got thrown around. Was Crochet still not there? Crochet's picked. Max picked. No, he was not. I switched to Zach Wheeler. We both made up. I switched to Zach Wheeler. There's so many names thrown around.

Take crochet Matt or Zach. I'll take crochet. There you go. Yeah, Chris sale fractured ribcage Yeah, that stinks. He got it doing a diving play with two outs on the ninth of a shutout I just wanted to fill and it's not gonna matter unless it does matter good You got a pick there Jerry. I can't I can't find him the Asian guy on the Dodgers. Yeah, I'm a moto. That's the name, right? There's a snee-o-bull. Yep. Yep. Oh

There's definitely like five Asian guys. I'm pretty sure he's talking about Yamamoto. He's a pitcher. They have another guy that just got hurt, right? Sasaki. No, I'm not thinking of that guy. He's talking about Yamamoto, right? The guy with the most strikeouts. Yeah, Shinobu. Yep, him. It's like the... Whatever. That's like the one team that you can't say that. You can't say Asian guy. Are they just filled with Asian players? Yeah. I don't know. I don't watch baseball.

All right. Good job, boys. All right. That was a great draft. I think this was guy for guy the best draft yet. Yeah. It's going to be a slugfest in the league this year. It's going to be scenes. Who do we think does the pitching challenge first? The loser of this year or Max? The loser of this year. I think Zach's going to do it before Max does. Yeah. You are saying Zach's going to lose? I was making a joke. Ezekiel. He's going to lose.

We haven't even gotten to the second yet. All right. Okay, that was our show. Reminder, no show Friday numbers. No show Friday for the 4th of July. 99. We'll be back on Sunday night for a show on Monday, and then it's chill week.

You got one there, memes. Did you get any in there, memes? Yeah, one for four. Yeah. Wait. No, I got it. No, I know before. Yeah, yeah. Out of the four we just did. Oh, okay. He says it so quick. Yeah. I'm going to go with 59. Oh. Oh. That's not going to hit. Okay. That's a terrible number, memes. I'll take 11. What did you guess last, memes? 59. 21. All right, I'll do 21. What the fuck is wrong with you, 15? 27. Come on, 27. 71. 71.

I've been meaning to fucking take 71. Love you guys.