Episode 22: Jason Churchill (Baseball Things)

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number twenty two of the Marine Layer Podcast with TJ. Matthewson and Lyyle Goldstein. On today's pod, we're joined by Jason Churchill, a prospect insider and the host of Baseball Things. We sat down with Jason and had a long conversation. We talked about a lot of things, baseball, mariners, ballparks, broadcasters, a whole lot of stuff in this conversation with Jason Churchill. He's awesome. He makes great content around the Mariners with his podcast Baseball Things, and we're so happy that he could join us here on the Marine Layer Podcast to talk about a lot of things. It was a long conversation. So the only other thing we'll have in this episode is speak your Mind, which we will close out the show with. With that, let's get it rolling and we welcome you into this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, recording here on Monday, March twenty By the time you're listening to this, it will be Wednesday to twenty ninth an opening day will be tomorrow. I'm happy it should be a holiday. It should be a federal holiday. I should be off of work on that day. 00:01:12 Speaker 2: Day after the Super Bowl and opening day in Major League Baseball, no work, no school, national holiday. Also here in Seattle, it's gonna be sunny. How often in late March early April. Is it's sunny for opening Day? 00:01:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like thirty four degrees outside right now, So I don't want to hear it pouring rain. I mean, I'm like, I don' want to hear it. Thinks it was sixty last week briefly four got down to like twenty five. 00:01:41 Speaker 2: So I guess, I guess this is how my brain works that because we're both in the Pacific Northwest, even though you're about four hours away from the Seattle area. Just in my brain, I'm like, oh, well, it's sunny here, so it's probably sunny in Corvallis. And it's not, is it. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: I always try to like, I always think the weather's the same, like you said, but uh, it is it is. It's a little farther apart. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to I mean, it's not even just the Mariners, the fact that we get a full day of baseball, and I'm excited because we'll just have more to talk about. Funny enough, the episode we record next week will be the first episode we will have recorded with actual baseball being played, not just Mariners, I mean in general, which we want to We of course want to talk about the Mariners. That's the podcast is centered around the fact that we are Mariner fans. But hey, there's a lot of other interesting stuff that happens across this league that you know, we want to talk about as well. So I'm really looking forward to that. Oh, there's nothing. There's not more of a we're back moment. We'll have to brainstorm how we're where exactly we're putting this into our episodes, Lyle, because we've talked about this, but we do have our first umpire of the week that the guy came out today here on Monday. My goodness, I've never in the Phillies spring training game today, I've never seen someone got tossed for something so small. So jt Romudo is catching and he puts his glove back like this. Oh, if you're listening to this on the podcast, his right hand or his left hand is back over his shoulder with his glove extended for the umpire to put a ball in it. And he sees the umpire threw it back to the pitcher. So he takes his glove down and he puts it back in his lap. The umpire about to put it in there acidentally throws the ball on the ground, gets pissed off and toss his JT out of the game for taking his glove down. Go look up the video on Twitter if you can even find it. Speaking of messes, Twitter is another one recently, but regardless, it's one of the funniest videos ever. I got a great cackle looking at that today. 00:03:49 Speaker 2: Let's give people a teaser here when the regular season starts. So the next show that we do part of what we're gonna do during these regular season shows, we'll have a few segments, but one of a is going to be highlighting an umpire that has just been insufferable and miserable to watch throughout a single game or the week. We have a special name for it too, I mean, I mean, right up TJ and I Sali right up, Seattle fans. Ally, we're gonna leave you with that as the teaser, and we'll spoil what the name is next week when the segment actually starts. But if you are somebody that likes to hear umpire slander, come right to this podcast because we will not shy away. 00:04:28 Speaker 1: The thing I don't like. And this can go right back to my beef with Twitter. So we're not gonna get umpire scorecards this year. I don't believe, not on Twitter. Not easily available. 00:04:38 Speaker 2: We're not. 00:04:38 Speaker 1: I don't think so, because because automated accounts cost money. Right, Yeah, you're right, right, So I'm well, I guess we'll find out on Thursday. I am pretty certain that the umpire scorecards might not be available. I could be wrong there at least, so there is a website with umpire scorecards that you can go look at, right, So that's not going anywhere. Just the fact that there is a Twitter account pushing it out. This is not confirmed information. I'm not an MLB insider on these sort of topics, but I know some of these automative accounts, which it's real shame they're going away because I find them extremely helpful for keeping up with things in a full day of baseball. So we'll look out for that on Thursday. I do love a good scorecard, though I can't wait for our first eighty five percenter of the year. It's gonna be a mix, It's not just gonna be ejections. It's just not just gonna be something an umpire said, Uh, you know, we're gonna mix in some scorecards too. It's like, man, dude, I mean, you're a professional and you're hitting it like eighty five percent in the strikes. I mean, this just can't happen. I mean it could be a whole number of things, and I'm looking forward to the creative ways we'll dig one up. 00:05:45 Speaker 2: If we were just gonna do umpire scorecards, we could do C. B. Buckner every week. I mean, that guy's got to be Yeah, we could eighty fifth percentile just about every game he's behind the plate. It's ridiculous. But anyway, we're looking forward to that. We're certainly looking for to Mariners, baseball, to baseball in general. Being back, I think we have a pretty good podcast here this week to set everybody up for Opening Day because our interview with Jason Churchill it's about an hour and twenty minutes. But Jason Churchill is awesome. I mean TJ and I have followed him for years. I said it to him during the interview. He is one of the smartest Mariners people you will find. I mean, he knows his stuff. So well, he does his research, he's in depth, he knows what he's talking about, and you can tell from us talking with him in the interview that he really dives deep into this stuff and really has his information. He's really on top of his information. So it's pretty cool. And we cover a lot of topics too, not just mariners. It's a very easy flowing conversation. I enjoyed it a bunch. I mean, I know we say this every week. It was one of my favorites. 00:06:50 Speaker 1: It is always great to like. It's when we get an interview that's not really formal, right, Formal interviews get a little painful at times. I mean it gets a little stacked, a little little stiff. But Churchill a just it's a great conversation. So don't want to rob you any any more time of waiting to listen to that. 00:07:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, let's not do that. Also ten seconds here. Side note if you were a member of payroll Twitter, this episode may not be for you, or maybe it is. See what Jason Churchill and the two of us had to say about payroll Twitter. So let's not delay it any longer. Let's get to our interview with Jason Churchill. We welcome Jason Churchill onto the Marine Layer podcast. Jason's the host of the Baseball Things podcast and genuinely he is one of the smartest Mariners people you will find. Jason, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is really awesome. We really appreciate you joining us. 00:07:45 Speaker 3: Hey, no problem, guys checks in the mail for that. I appreciate that. I feed off people like you guys. You know you guys that you're wearing the Mariners gear and you watch this team religiously. I told a lot of people last year that the reason why it was fun wasn't because the team was good, it was because of everybody's engagement in it. The buzz that you hear that was a lot of fun, and you guys are certainly part of that. 00:08:07 Speaker 2: Do you choose to respond to certain people versus other people on Twitter? Because I know you're talking about the fan engagement and I know, like like any fan base on Twitter, it can be a bit of a cess pool, and we certainly see it in the Mariners world. So do you kind of pick your spots? It's like, Okay, I think this guy just made a good point, or are you like I'll respond to anybody. 00:08:25 Speaker 3: I'm using it the other way. It's a really good question. I'm using it the other way because I'm kind of a glutton for punishment a little bit. When someone says something pretty stupid. That's that you're generally, you know, more likely to get something from me if you're just the complete idiot in the room. 00:08:42 Speaker 4: But it sounds like you think you have you're onto something. Those are the ones I kind. 00:08:46 Speaker 3: Of seek out a little bit, like this guy needs his head flipped around, you know. Uh seriously, though it's kind of random. I'm trying to actually use Twitter less and I think by opening day my Twitter. 00:08:59 Speaker 4: Commenting days will be to a minimum. 00:09:02 Speaker 3: It's it's time consuming. So in terms of picking and choosing what you what you spend your time on on social media, Yeah, for me, it's just going to be a lot of I'll use it as a marketing tool because genuinely that's its value to me, and I'll keep the conversations in the in the right spots. But that's the battle, right Like we're all out on social media, we experience things with each other even if we're not sitting next to them at the stadium, we're at the ballpark. We experience it with social media, you know, in large part. And it was really cool to see last year with the Mariners breaking through and the excitement that built up and how nervous everybody was and how elated everybody was when Cali It's the Homer and all that good stuff. And in the Toronto series that was obviously great as well. But yeah, picking and choosing is not necessarily my specialty because I'll seek out the ones to rip instead of the ones where it might require, you know, something positive. So I think instead of saying, hey, Church, just be more positive, I'm just going to refrain from common a whole lot. I think that's a little bit of a little bit of an easier path for me. 00:10:04 Speaker 1: When you spend less time on Twitter, is anyone you're gonna miss? 00:10:08 Speaker 4: No, absolutely not. 00:10:12 Speaker 3: And you know, some folks are asking me why I'm doing this. Is like, there's there's value to Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and things like that, but there's not a lot of value in creating Twitter threads, and there's not a lot of value in your followers unless it becomes transactional in some way. And when you do a you know, a podcast or have content that's wind a paywall. You certainly use social media, need social media to some extent for that purpose, but beyond that, it's just a it's one of those rabbit holes that you just really don't want to fall down, but it's really difficult to avoid sometimes because you're interested in the topic. We're interested in baseball, we're interested in the marriage, we're interested in football or whatever it is. Politics sometimes is the worst hole to go down on social media. So for me, it's just I'm trying to get away from and spend my time doing creating more content, doing more podcasts, or having conversations with the subscribers and the baseball things, slack channel, things of that nature. So less social media, more direct, you know, kind of have conversations with actual people that subscribe to the show or that I know in real life, you know, maybe church go out and have a social life for once, you know, in a blue moon, and that's kind of part of it as well. 00:11:26 Speaker 1: Talking with your subscribers on prospects Insider, which you founded in two thousand and six, So if you want to go find Jason and others work there. Prospects insider dot com also the host of the Baseball Things podcast. That's something you launched back in two thousand and six. I don't know if it was necessarily ahead of its time, but I was reading the feature piece on Barrett Sports Media on you earlier today and I didn't realize, Jason, before all of this happened, you were like a message board guy. 00:11:52 Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's kind of a funny story. 00:11:56 Speaker 3: So back before a lot of this even existed, when blogs were starting to kind of become a thing, like two thousand and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three, like most people didn't really know what a blog was. You know, there were message boards out there. There was one in particular called baseball boards dot Com and uh, and I found it. I thought it was interesting, and I'd interact with a few people, and a guy by the name I'm just gonna go I named it. A guy by the name of Joe Kaiser is one of my best friends to this day, contacted me on there and said, hey, I'm running the Mariner's version of Dogman dot Com on the same network, which at the time was called The Insiders, And then Fox ended up buying it and now it's Dogman is at two four seven Sports with the CBS brand. So that's kind of where I learned how to write, That's where I learned how to communicate baseball. That's where I got my opportunities in baseball, and that's how it started. But yeah, it started on a message board. That's where Joe Kaiser kind of found me and says, hey, you seem to really like this stuff. You want to come over and help me build something over here, and that that turned into Inside the Park dot Com, and then a couple of years later, I was like, I'm just gonna start my own thing and focus on the minor leagues and the prospects, and that's where prospect Insider came from. 00:13:11 Speaker 2: So it sounds like when you were a commenter, you tried to provide insightful, well thought out remarks and thoughts as opposed to no, are you gonna say you were? 00:13:23 Speaker 3: You were more like I was, I think, to be honest with you, I was just I was just like anybody else, you know. I was a fan of the game. I was interested in in the Mariners. I was interested in the farm system, and I had had an opportunity to go through at the time, which was a like a bird Dog School for Scouts years back in Florida, and it doesn't exist anymore. Man, it's been gone for a long time. So I got to learn a lot there and I thought I had some insight on some things, and to some extent I did that maybe others didn't that they didn't have experience in. But what I wasn't good at then was conveying the point. And you learn that as time goes by as a as a radio guy or a podcast guy, or a writer or even on social media, you learn what resonates with people and what's effective and what's not. Back in the message board days, it was just like no, no, no, that's bas that's not what's going on here, and then you really don't know how to explain yourself, right. So that was the very early days of trying to be able to convey the point or actually provide legitimate insid or analysis, because if you don't explain it to people and they don't see it, it's just anecdotal. It's subjective, and at the end of the day, people really aren't going to care. You're not Pat Gillick, you're not Jerry Depoto, you're not Brian Cashman. You know, what I mean, you're not King Scout like you know show. And that's about that time is when we started to see the birth of what I like to consider today the voice type of content that we see out there, where you know, someone might go out and like Travis Satchik is really good at this, Keith Law is really good at this. Some of the folks at Fangrafts are really good at this. Like it's not just hey, I went and saw this player and here's what I thought. It's I've been watching this player just like everybody else. Here's why I think he's struggling. Here's why I think he's succeeding. And you're using data to back it up. And the more data that becomes available to us, the more interesting that gets, and the tighter the conclusion is. 00:15:14 Speaker 4: Right. 00:15:14 Speaker 3: We just didn't We didn't have that back then. So it was very subjective and very anecdotal. And so you're not winning a lot of arguments because you know, you can't show your work. It's like, well I know more than you. That doesn't work, right, Like you guys can't walk around. I can't walk around and just say hey, I know more than you, Like that doesn't work. Right, you have to do the work and build a reputation or and or show your work, show your data, show evidence. That's a struggle and even in my day job these days, it's a little bit of a struggle to convey to writers. Hey, if you want to be some sort of a voice, some sort of an authority on this, like show the work and then eventually, you know, five years down the road, ten years down the road, people will be like, well, I mean it's you know, it's TJ. Matthewson, or it's Lyle Goldstein. They know what they're doing, like, you know, then you have a name in that in that realm. I'm still trying to get there, to be honest with you, you know, in that way. You know, at least some people looked at me for content, but in terms of opinion to come to a conclusion. You know, I'll get there maybe when I'm eighty, maybe ninety. 00:16:14 Speaker 2: So what I'm taking from that is you learn to be a little more insightful than the group of mariners Twitter people who call themselves payroll Twitter. 00:16:23 Speaker 3: Good lord, oh boy. Yeah, So I gotta be honest. I ignore it because it's not content, it's just whining. Even though I agree, yeah, John Stanton should spend more money on his baseball team, But doesn't it really end right there? Like there's no argument against it, right, there's no argument that they shouldn't in general, spend more money on the team. So now we're just arguing semantics. How should they spend it? How many players should they spend it on? Which particular players should they spend it? That's Jerry to Poto's job, and I guess payroll Twitter as you put it, which is a great phrase, they're basically suggesting they know how to build a baseball team better than Jerry to Poto. I mean, do we really think, by the way, as Mariners fans, as Marin Marror's observers, that Jerry to Poto has spent every penny that's available to him for this year, do we really think that? I mean we shouldn't, right, Like, there's always a contingency plan, there's always looking ahead, right, So so was this really John Stanton being cheap at least to this level, or was this Jerry Depoto and Justin hond saying well, we have a different plan, let's do this differently. We're not necessarily going to add a forty million dollar player. We're not going to add, you know, one hundred million dollars in payroll in one offseason. That seems to be what payroll Twitter wanted and thinks should have happened. So you know, yeah, that's a payroll Twitter's a funny thing to me. 00:17:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, just to kind of bounce off that idea, I'm kind of in the same boat as you that if the Mariners take the approach of how the Braves modeled themselves, how the Astros modeled themselves, like those teams still spend a lot of money. But for example, like you know, if it was up to payroll Twitter, they would have given Trevor Story all the money in the world. Trevor Story didn't have a great year last year, and now he's injured. I think people would be having buyers remorse all of a sudden these days if they had made that signing and they were close to signing him too. 00:18:11 Speaker 3: Yeah, they were, from what I'm told, they had the largest offer too, or were willing to make the largest offer to Trevor's Story last year and it didn't happen. And now we're probably sitting around thinking, you know, it's probably a good thing. They didn't do that, because if they did, would they have been able to go out under the parameters that Jerry Depoto and Justin Owner want to work under the payroll budget that they've been given. Would Castillo have an extension right now? What would Huli ra at Riga's extension look like? Would it look different? Would have taken longer to get done? Would it have been shorter? Would have been longer? 00:18:43 Speaker 2: Like? 00:18:44 Speaker 3: Things change, you know when you're trying to plan things out. So that's the thing to me about, you know, fans that want to go out and make baseball decisions. Like the general idea again, going back to the top of the conversation, the general idea that owners, including John Stanton the Seattle Mariner, should spend more money than they do on their product and somewhat significantly, is one hundred percent true. I don't think there's any argument against it. How they do it and who they spend it on, well, that's up to the experts. I'm not an expert, are you guys? Experts on that you might be, But if you're not, then maybe whining about it probably isn't the right way to go, you know. So that's why we don't hear some people whining about it, and some people are whining about it. 00:19:24 Speaker 1: Think you can count me as a as a guilty party of wine just a little bit. 00:19:28 Speaker 3: Now, Are you whinded about the general idea of them not spending? Are you like, oh, my gosh, they're idiots for not giving Carlos Korea two hundred and fifty million dollars, Like there's a difference between those two things. 00:19:39 Speaker 2: I was. 00:19:40 Speaker 1: I was more to the point when it got down to six years of what. I don't understand how you're I don't know if they made an offer or not. I don't know how you don't when it gets down that low in that case, when it actually becomes reasonable and not thirteen years that it got paint a guy into his h forty two season. 00:19:58 Speaker 3: It's a fair question to ask. And I don't have any inside information on the Carl's career situation, but when two clubs back out of larger deals, you have to start wondering what is actually going on in those in those exams, right, Like, what is it that teams are finding that they don't like so much? So that might actually explain why Seattle didn't really want to engage because maybe if it was going to take six years at the start, maybe they would have engaged right and then maybe learned later on, Hey, we don't necessarily like the like the physical results. But if the Mets are saying, well, we don't really love this and we want to do something different after agreeing to a deal with them, then I'm going to buy that something in there is legitimate that's going to scare some teams away. If the Mets can be scared away, then who can't, Like the Mariners would have been scared away too. That's the way I'm kind of looking at this because of the way the Mets have been spending the last year or so. So I get that, and that's fair, you know, to ask, at what point don't you jump in? At what point did Dansby Swanson not make sense for you? Whether it be second base or shortstop? You know, to me, the ones are, you know, from a baseball standpoint, not a spending standpoint, are Michael Conforto and essentially any mid rotation pitcher, including Taiwan Walker and Jamison Taale. Like those guys to me would have fit in kind of how I'm looking at the budget moving forward. Especially Conforto, to be honest with you, not a lot of guaranteed money. The upside is an above average to plus bat that you can you know, and right now, like, what position are we talking about with the Mariners right now? More than anything the designated hitter spot. Even though we know there's going to be a rotation, we also know that that's going to be done with outfielders. So Michael Comfortzo would have fit in. They're lopsided right handed to left handed. There's just so many things about that that were perfect. But again, I'm willing to give the club the benefit of the doubt because there's an injury history there that that's certainly not my area of expertise at all. So it's really tough. And sometimes people look at me and say, you're just somebody called me the other day. 00:21:54 Speaker 4: What do they call me on Twitter? 00:21:57 Speaker 3: Some sort of a stanton apologist, even though I'm you know, sitting here saying yeah, they should spend more money. But whining about it doesn't make you not a stantonopologist or a stanton apologist. If you're not whining about it. It's just hey, I'm not going to tell them exactly how to spend their money. So that's a tough one when injuries are involved in that, but that's fair. Did you guys feel the same way about the trade turn when Trade Turner was offered more money by the Podres and the Dodgers I'm hearing, and turned it down to go to Philadelphia. Did you guys think why didn't Seattle get involved in that? Or did you actually make this kind of analysis in your head and saying I get that ten eleven, twelve years, same thing with Ander Bogart's for twenty five thirty thirty five million dollars paying these guys beyond age thirty five, I get that that's a little bit of a problem. Did you kind of think that way or were You're like, no, they should have done it. 00:22:45 Speaker 2: So I think TJ and I this is why I think our dynamic on this podcast is good, because I'd like to think we both know what we're talking about, but our views can be a little bit different sometimes. At least mine was, Yeah, that's way too long to be given a guy a contract for even a player as good as Trey Turner, who I think since twenty nineteen is second in baseball and f war like at forty years old, even at thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine years old, you're not going to be getting any bang for your buck. And that's how those contracts go. But I actually prefer the way to Poto has kind of managed his way in his time as the GM and now President of Baseball. Ops were, Yeah, he doesn't want to give out another Robinson Cano contract. He's trying to keep a flexible payroll while still giving him opportunities to spend money elsewhere. So yeah, when when Turner got that deal, especially knowing that usually how it goes with Seattle is they have to overpay to get any free agent, I was like, yeah, I think I'm good. 00:23:37 Speaker 1: It didn't take too long into free agency to sort of figure out that Trey Turner was not happening. Yeah, I don't think. I mean, just think about it rationally. Dude's from Florida. Every indication, every rumor that came out the entire offseason was East Coast, East Coast, East coast, East Coast, and the you know, Padres offered Mets level money for pretty much everything. Now they're they're that committed to it. So when he's turning down thirty more more million dollars. It's like, no, that's. 00:24:04 Speaker 4: Just like like TJ. It sounds like you were on this whole. 00:24:08 Speaker 3: You're gonna have to overpay to do it, like overpay even with the market and it sounds like even lyle if the Mariners could have given Trey Turner what the Phillies gave him, you'd still probably be like, well maybe not, maybe that's not a good idea. 00:24:21 Speaker 4: So there's a limit. 00:24:22 Speaker 3: You got there in a different way, but there's a limit, right, See, I look at it this way like my limit might be different, because it is. It's probably a little different than both of yours. But why is payroll Twitter's limit more accurate than Jerry to Poto's limit. That's usually where I end the conversation. So you're saying you have this figured out more than John Stanton, more than Jerry to Poto, Like, because there's a limit there, there's got there's a limit for everybody. Well, look what we saw the Dodgers do this past offseason. They didn't really do much right. They didn't spend a ton of money, and people are like, well, they're saving up for Otani. That's not really the way Freed and see works, I could have signed a bunch of one year guys and still had a bunch of money for Shoeo Tani, right, and they they didn't even really do that. So every team has a limit. Dodgers, Mets have a limit. They saw the Korea physical and we're like, yeah, let's not risk three hundred plus million dollars to do that. Every team has a limit. And while Stanton's limit with the Mariners might not look like what fans want it to look like, if you admit that there's a limit, that means there's a budget, and that means that there's somebody in charge of managing that budget, and that's Jerry Depoto, and Jerry Depoto knows what that budget is. Justin Hollander knows what that budget is. John Stanton knows what that budget is. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: We do not. 00:25:29 Speaker 3: We're just sitting here pretending, right, we're thinking we have a general idea, but we really don't know at the end of the day what that looks like and what are the consequences of that or what do the circumstances have to look like for Stanton to go what the hell? And because at some point, at some level, it might make sense for John Stanton to say, what the hell, let's just get this guy, Let's get that guy. Let's get this guy and win a World Series, and we'll just make up for it on the back end. I don't know what that is, because I don't know what the limit is. I don't know what the actual budget is. 00:25:57 Speaker 2: I think if they're going to go all out, like you're making the point of for anybody, it's gonna be for the guy next year, like there's no guarantee they land. But the POTO usually doesn't offer contracts like that. That's at least my two cents on it that if he's gonna give out some ten year contract, it has to be a unicorn type of baseball player, which of course Otani. 00:26:16 Speaker 3: Is I'm worrying about. At least back channel, I'm hearing about numbers like fifteen years and five hundred and seventy five million dollars. 00:26:25 Speaker 1: Fifteen okay, so the fifteen years. The fifteen years is to is to dumb down to the payroll, the year to year payroll, kind of like what the Padres tried to do with it was with Judge. I think they offered it. I think they gave him fourteen, sure right, I think that was yeah, yea. 00:26:44 Speaker 3: Even even Brandon Nimmel got a deal like that. Nimo could have got won sixty or could have got one forty one to fifty for five or six years, but he got more guaranteed money and drew the AAV down by taking eight years instead. It's the same idea, Yeah, Xander Bogart's got more guaranteed money taking on an eleven year deal or whatever instead of eight years and twenty million dollars less. So they know they're not really going to be earning that money later. Just like you said, Laly, they know that when they're thirty eight, they're not gonna be very good. So if they were a free agent at that point, they're not getting twenty million dollars a year on the market, them mouths will take it now, even if it drags their AAV down. So yeah, I mean, I don't know if Otani's gonna end up getting fifteen, But when those kinds of numbers are being floated around like it's gonna get a little crazy, it's gonna get crazy. And I think ultimately it comes down to the Mets and the Dodgers at the end of the day in terms of dollars, Like, if Otani takes the biggest offer, I think one of those two teams are going to be it. 00:27:38 Speaker 1: Everything we've heard from him though from his camp, and I don't know how true it is, it's just that money isn't the number one priority. Of course, when you're throwing around six hundred million dollars, you know, you could say, oops, I forgot that, But it seems like that might not be the deciding factor. If we're going to shed the slightest bit of optimism that it's not just going to be who's the highest bidder? 00:28:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, where does he want to be? Yeah? 00:28:03 Speaker 3: Because I mean, I don't know Seattle gets involved here seriously at all. They're going to be rumored until they're not. You know, but if the Dodgers are out there floating five hundred plus million, and the Mets are out there floating five hundred plus million, and the Angels are willing to go four hundred and fifty five hundred million plus, which they might be, especially now that already moreno is gonna hang around like who else gets involved? Like who else can get involved? Maybe the Yankees decide this is just a player. We need to go break the bank for and put him next to Aaron Judge in the lineup and put him next to Garrett Cole and go in a world series or two. I don't know, we'll see. Does Boston get back on the train of spending money. I would say probably not, but I guess it's possible because the revenues are huge. I don't know who else can really get involved there, Maybe san Diego, Like maybe san Diego's kind of the dark horse here because they're already spending tons of money and there's really no end in sight. But at the end of the day, Yeah, where is Otani going to be comfortable? Where is he actually spent time where at this particular point heading into his platform here his walk year, Where is he spent time, like if we were handicapping this right now, other than the dollars, other than the largest offer and the and a great chance to win Mets Dodgers, or where he's familiar with the Angels. Where else makes sense? I don't know. Maybe only Otani knows and the people that are close to him. I'd like to ask Mike Trout that question and get an honest answer, To be honest with you, I don't know how close he actually is with Otani, but I'd like to ask somebody like Trout, if you had to bet and you couldn't bet the Angels, where do you think Otani is going next year? 00:29:34 Speaker 4: I bet his guests would be pretty good. 00:29:38 Speaker 1: That's an interesting way to think about it. It's not going to be He just seems like he just declined a comment on that. 00:29:42 Speaker 2: I feel like. 00:29:44 Speaker 3: That's what I qualified it is. If he gives you an honest answer, I bet he'd have a really good idea. I'd like to ask his teammates they might actually have a better idea than than Otani himself. 00:29:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's possible, and you're right. I mean, the odds of it being Seattle is probably incredibly slim. I think people just like to hold on to hope, and especially because they were essentially runner ups last time, or however you want to claim it that they've got a shot again. But again, I mean, nobody really knows the level of money that they don't. 00:30:10 Speaker 3: I think if the money was going to be there, I think they would I think it would make like, like, it doesn't make sense that he would continue to have interest in Seattle as a market and where Seattle is headed as a team. 00:30:20 Speaker 4: I don't know. 00:30:21 Speaker 3: Who knows, Like you can get really creating with contracts too, so like Seattle did with the Julio deal. I don't know. And again you guys made the point. Maybe Otani's like, once it gets to a certain point three hundred million, three hundred and fifty million, four hundred whatever that number is, who cares Or I'd rather, you know, maybe pulls to Tom Brady and signs for two seventy five, because again, maybe that's the threshold for him, and he'd rather play for a team that had a little bit more space to go out and spend and win, you know, if that's what's number one. I mean, he's signed a big deal with New Balance. He's going to make you know, a billion dollars over the next like ten or fifteen years at New Balance. Maybe maybe you're right, Maybe that's ultimately at the end of the day, he doesn't want to go to Well, he spent some time in the area. Maybe that's not it. Maybe he's not a fan of New York. Maybe he's not a fan of Chicago. It's a good question. I don't know how to handicap it. Outside of who I think is going to offer the biggest money, it's impossible for me to do. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: I think next offseason is going to be really, really fascinating because I think it's the first time in a long time. I think baseball could have an off season that rivals what we see maybe in the NBA, in the NFL like this year. I had no idea free agency started this week, but you could. You know, you log onto any social media website and the NFL once the free agency starts, firing, people are people are all over the place, and I finally think with with Otani that that could be it. I mean, people are going to be just hanging on the edge. 00:31:43 Speaker 3: I think he actually signs quick. If you're asking me right now, and I know you're not, but if you were, how quickly does Otani? I think it's pretty quick. I think he signs maybe before the winter meetings. Like, I don't think this is going to drag out. He's not the kind of guy that wants the attention. He's not going to sit around and and and kind of be hanging there and not really know where he's playing. I think he's going to want to know, and he's just going to tell his agent just get me this and get me to that place and then walk away. I think that's what the conversation is probably like, and I think that's what we end up seeing next year. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: Divish actually kind of made an interesting point. We had him on a couple weeks ago, and I hadn't thought about this, and I don't know how much this will play a factor, but he was talking about how his mom's from Japan and he's talked with a bunch of people that are involved with baseball in Japan, and they were kind of thinking that another view Otani might have on this is he was saying that in Japan, you know, signing with the best team that's already a super team or taking the most money isn't quote unquote the honorable thing. So maybe that's something he kind of takes into account. It was just the point that Divish made that I hadn't thought about, and I thought, oh, maybe that's another thing that plays a factor. 00:32:46 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not necessarily something they do in free agency over there isn't. 00:32:50 Speaker 4: A frenzy the way it is over here either, So. 00:32:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's why I wouldn't necessarily handicap the Dodgers and the Mets his favorites, other than their going to probably be the ones that offer the most money, I don't know that they're actually the favorites, even if they are the ones that offer the biggest contracts. Because of that, you know, players that come over from overseas, Korea, Japan, even Cuba, they have different priorities, you know, and sometimes it's just how they grew up or how they learn the game or what they're used to. But Altani certainly seems to fall into that category, like he's gonna probably pick a place that that offers a chance to win, and obviously they're going to offer a ton of money, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be a big market. That doesn't mean it's going to be the super team, the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Mets, things like that. So it's a good point. It's gonna be fascinating, I think. To me, the thing that's most interesting about Altani right now is do the Angels end up trading him, because they have to know their chance to keep him aren't great at this point, Like things would have to go so well the first half of the season for that to change. But I wouldn't put it past him. I definitely wouldn't say the Angels have no chance, but i'd put them behind. You know, probably half of those other teams that we've been talking looking at the bigger markets and some of those clubs like San Diego and Seattle that might be in play even if they're not in the bigger markets. 00:34:07 Speaker 1: What's the hull like for him? 00:34:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question, pretty big. 00:34:14 Speaker 3: You're probably looking at an Angels team that's going to prefer a combination of an impact prospector to with an impact major league or two, which is going to make it really difficult. Like what contender that's trying to pick up show Heotani for the stretch run because that's what you're doing, is going to want to give that up, and that's going to make it really interesting to see what happens. Are the Angels at the end of the day, willing to essentially give up on their chances to keep show Haotani and take back prospects in return instead of getting major league quality players in return that help them this. 00:34:47 Speaker 4: Year and beyond. 00:34:49 Speaker 3: So if they're willing to trade for prospects, we're probably going to see Otani i don't know about probably traded, but they're going to get into deep conversations if they're willing to do that. If they're not, I don't think it goes very far. I think it finish, finishes out his his contract, and then its ree agency coming out of the Angel season. 00:35:08 Speaker 2: You can tell me I'm an idiot if you think this question is just stupid, which is totally fine. But if Otani goes somewhere else next if Otani goes somewhere else next year, I mean, this is just kind of something I've thought about. At what point does Mike Trout kind of sit there and think like, am I ever going to play in another playoff game? 00:35:26 Speaker 3: Like? 00:35:26 Speaker 4: Is there ever any think that right now? 00:35:30 Speaker 2: Yeah? Like, like is he sitting there and thinking to thinking to himself, like is it time for me to finally ask for a trade? Is there ever a point where it gets to that point? 00:35:38 Speaker 4: That's a good question. 00:35:38 Speaker 3: I'm not sure Mike Trout is the kind of personality where he would force that it's something his agent could That's a possibility. I don't know that Trout is is that kind of a personality. He's pretty loyal. I remember hearing an interview with him, actually with Dave Simms on the Mariners Network. Dave asked him why why eld A, Like, why have made La home? And he just said that his wife fell in love with La and living at the beach, even though they were from the East Coast, even though they're from Jersey, New York, and and that was it. And now they've been there, you know, twelve years or whatever. I don't know, it would take a lot, I think for Trout to ask for that. I think as long as they go in the seasons with a chance and he knows that the owner is committed to winning. And the one thing I think we can say about Artie Moreno that isn't just hey, he medals too much. He's obviously not cheat, and he's willing to spend to win. Like it just hasn't happened. His medaling hasn't been you know, hasn't been helpful. But it just hasn't worked. They've spent money in a lot of the wrong directions and it just hasn't worked out. And he allowed Mike Slosha to derail Jerry Depoto's planner. 00:36:45 Speaker 4: Maybe they are in the position of. 00:36:46 Speaker 3: The marriage are in right now, but yeah, I think as long as Trout is sold on the direction of the team, probably sticks it out. 00:36:53 Speaker 4: It'd be really weird to hear. 00:36:55 Speaker 3: I'd be surprised if we ever heard that Mike Trout is asking for a trade. I'm not saying it's impossible. It just seems weird, doesn't It doesn't It seem out of character for him totally. 00:37:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just wonder if if he's just got the itch to play in a postseason game, try to win a World seriesly, I mean, obviously he does like every player, but I guess to the point where he thinks I might have to do it somewhere else. That's that's where my mind was going. 00:37:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly don't know Mike Chop personally. It just it just seems from afar that it's not in character. But who knows. You know, he's getting a little older, he's on the other side of thirty. It's it's kind of time for them to win it for him to have that opportunity, and you know, he's only been there once. Said, hey, guess who was the general manager when he had that opportunity. 00:37:37 Speaker 2: It's true, you know, I think anybody that's been listening to this interview now for the last twenty five thirty minutes, whatever it's been can probably tell. I mean, you know your stuff really well. Both Baseball, the Mariners prospects and people who follow you, who follow you on Twitter certainly know that too. And we've both followed you for a while. And I've always wondered, how did you learn as much about the Mariners as you have over time, because like, there are a lot of smart Mariners people out there, but I know, like when I see you talk about them, like I weigh it differently. I weigh it a little bit more than some other people. 00:38:07 Speaker 4: Wow, I appreciate that. Thank you. 00:38:10 Speaker 3: Uh. I think you have to First of all, you have to care about it. You have to care about actually learning it and not trying to cheat it, not trying to cut corners. That's the hard part. And I think one of the advantages I have over some others is how many different levels of the game that I've been able to learn from people, Like I've seen high school kids, I've seen college, I've seen minor leagues at every level of the miners, I've seen big leaguers in for the last almost twenty years, I've been able to ask people in baseball questions on a regular basis, and not just pumping them for information. I'm pumping them for what am I looking at here and learning the subjective scouting side of it, as well as talking to some people that like to move data around and come to conclusions and provide you know, analytics quote unquote, as most broadcasts like to call it, John Smoltz's favorite thing. Those people are looking at information that's factual and trying to come to projections with it. And I have access to ask people questions like that, So I'm trying to be as well rounded as I can to form opinions and to you know, so to speak, come to conclusions. And I think that's what makes it unique for me. I think I've been doing it a long time too. I think that's the biggest advantage. I mean, how old are you, guys? I turned forty nine years old two weeks ago, which is a little scary to think of because when I first started, I wasn't that young. When I started, I was in my thirties already. We're talking two thousand and two, two thousand and three when I started really digging into this. So I've been at it twenty years and that experience will help you talk to a Ryan Divish. He sounds a little different. And when he talked to Ryan Divis than when he talked to like, Oh, I don't know the typical Beat reporter because Divish is invested in it. I just spent time sitting behind a plate talking this guy. You can tell the difference between a Beat reporter or a columnist that goes the extra mile to learn that side of things, the scouting side of things, the front office side of things, the player development side of things, the numbers and how they meld it all together, and those that really don't and focus on it. It doesn't make the others wrong or worse, but it does make Ryan Divish a little bit unique in my opinion. That's why he's always been, you know, my favorite of the Beat reporters. But I've always tried to do that. I've seen Ryan at games. He'll sit back there, make notes, talk to scouts. He does the same thing. And that's how I've tried to differentiate kind of how I view the team, how I watch baseball, how I look at baseball from so many different layers. And I'm getting even more of that now in my day job with access to guys, so we valuate players from the age of thirteen or fourteen all the way through college and the pro game. And you know, when you have access to it, I'm very lucky, a lot of luck involved. This isn't like, oh, I should talk to this guy because this is who he is. It was like, here's a nobody that has the nads to ask me a question, and I'm going to go ahead and talk to this poor kid. That was kind of the approach to me when I was, you know, when I was pushing through and it all started an effort. In two thousand and three, I was at a game and Charlie Kerfeld, who at the time was with the Mariners former Houston Astros pitcher, came up to me and asked me if he could if I could check a score on my computer form. And that's the first scout that I ever met, and Charlie has been a great resource for me ever since, and that just kind of gave me confidence. I'm gonna ask people questions, and you know, I've since learned that if I started asking those questions sooner, I'd be a little further along. And it's one of the things that I pushed when I talk to younger people, make the ask man like, there's no such thing as a dumb question, you know, like prefacing things with like this might be a dumb question, so please call me an idiot if it's a dumb question, Like, I get it, but there are no dumb questions. And I've asked a lot of questions that could have fallen under that category. But because I asked it, I gained the information or developed a relationship, and that's been really big for me. 00:42:00 Speaker 1: You were spending a lot of time in everyt also in Tacoma as well, with the with the with that that first gig you gain. 00:42:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, inside the Park when when Joe and I were doing inside the Park, we uh, Joe thought he'd reach out and say, you think we could get credentialed at Cheeney Stadium and at Everett Memorial. I was like, no, no, and then he did and it was like we were in I remember the first game I watched was Rich Harden against Rafaeld Soriano at Cheney Stadium, which was a great matchup. And then the second game I saw was also Rich Hardened against Raefeld Soriano, like a week later. Pretty crazy to see back to backstars like that and having access like that and kind of kind of a boots on the ground mentality. 00:42:43 Speaker 4: You'll learn a lot that way. It's pretty incredible, you can. 00:42:46 Speaker 3: I remember walking into Dan Rohan's office and asking him questions that the old manager of the Rainiers and and who was the one after that? They they had a guy after that who had a really good player development history. And I'm drawing a blank on his name at this point, but Dave Brundage actually is the guy. He'd won championships at Double A San Antonio in the system and came up the Triple A. He was a lot of fun to talk to. People that asked me who was my favorite interview ever, it's Roger McDowell. Happened at Cheney Stadium, I don't know, fifteen sixteen years ago. We were sitting down the left field line at Cheni there and I wanted to ask him about pitchers and the injuries and how he managed pitchers and handle pitchers and just get his take on the whole. You know, guys were dropping like flies in pretty much every organization, especially Pitts with Brian Bullington and guys like that in the early to mid two thousands, and the conversation turned into his old Mets teams, and he was on that eighty six Mets team that won the World Series and the eighty eight team that was in the LCS against the Dodgers. The oral Herscheizer led Dodgers, but he talked more about the eighty seven Mets than the other two because he thought that team was actually better. But when you get those opportunities to talk to people like that and learn like that, like the it's endless, Like the possibilities are absolutely end this and I took notes on everything. 00:44:02 Speaker 4: I recorded a lot of stuff. I watch games. 00:44:06 Speaker 3: I watch every Marriner's game at least twice, so I get I get keel Nick's at bats twice, I get Julio's abats twice. That way, when I when I see something that's different or new, I actually recognize it. I watch a lot of minor league games twice, usually on some sort of a DVR kind of situation, so I can rewind and watch at bats and watch pitching deliveries things like that, and ask questions. Asking questions is the most important thing I could ever teach A kid, or a young person or even an adult. I'm telling friends of mine that are older than me, ask the question. Ask ask them like, don't sit back in wonder, just ask the question. And that's really been helpful for me, even though I did battle, you know, kind of the bravery wall a little bit. Do I want to walk up to the he's the general manager of this app? Do I want to walk up to Pat Gillick right now? Because I really didn't. I was afraid to do it, but I was glad I did at the end of the day. And that's really set me up for to have a chance to talk about baseball and right about baseball, you know, for a living all these years, to be involved at that level, and it's been a lot of fun. I get to come on and talk with you guys too. We've just sending like the last half hour forty minutes talking about Mariners baseball. And if I hadn't asked all those questions of all those people that scared me ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, we wouldn't be here talking about this. So that's really one of the biggest difference makers for me is seeing all those games and developing relationships. So I had access to people to learn more. 00:45:26 Speaker 1: Where's your favorite spot in the minor leagues? It sounds like you've been to a lot of minor league spots. 00:45:30 Speaker 3: Then, yeah, I've seen most of the colleague stadiums, most of the about half of the old Midwest League stadiums at least, seen a few Eastern Leagues, a few of the old International League stadiums. I think my favorites. I really do like Geenie Stadium as long as you're sitting mind the plate. If you're up in the press box, you can't see down the left field line, So a little bit of a design flaw there if you're sitting in the press area at that ballpark. But I really like I saw him a Desto and Stockton last year at Stockton and really really liked that ballpark. That was one of my favorites. I think Nashville and Memphis are right at the top. I think Reno is near the top. And all three of those are in the Pacific Coast League. I haven't seen the Mets affiliate, the New Orleans affiliate down there. I haven't seen, oh the Texas League I saw. I saw San Antonio in two thousand and three, I don't remember it a whole lot, but I remember really liking it, and a lot of folks like the the backdrops in the Texas League quite a bit. So hopefully I'll get out and see more ballparks this year. But i'd say i'd say, yeah, those three Pacific Coast League ballparks stand out the most for me. 00:46:40 Speaker 4: Hey, do you. 00:46:40 Speaker 3: Guys remember when Portland had a team? You might be two youngs of Portland had a Triple A team for a while. 00:46:48 Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, So I work here in Corvallis Jason, and I work with the former voice of the of the Portland Beavers, Mike Parker. So he is, he's very He has plenty of store clories to tell about them playing at Providence Park and such. It's a soccer stadium now, but I from everyone I hear about, of all the stories about it that was before my. 00:47:09 Speaker 3: Time, yeah, it's an interesting ballpark. You wouldn't go to it and say, or at least at the time. I don't know what it looks like now as a soccer stadium, but you wouldn't go to and say what a beautiful ballpark. You'd be like, huh, this is interesting because it's kind of sunken. If somebody really jumped into one and hit one out the left field, it's into the street downtown, and if you're standing around, you're able to get hit if you're parked on the side of the road, if somebody really tanked when like four sixty, you're getting hit. And then in right field, like above right field, there's like this, there was like this gym and people you could see people on their treadmills and workout machines. It's just so odd and so had all these little goofy intricacies about it. Yeah, Chris Metz got me in quite a bit down there in Portland. That was That was a lot of fun. I like quirkiness in ballparks like that quite a bit. So you know, I love I love T Mobile Park, I love Oracle Park, the old AT and T down in San Francisco. I think the most underrated, amazingly, the most underrated Big League stadium I've ever been to is the New Bush Stadium in Saint Louis. Like, I don't understand how people can go to that stadium and not go this might be the best park here, This might be the best park in this league. 00:48:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so I was a bush stadium actually not that long ago. And and I agree, I mean so I guess the city of Saint Louis maybe for some people tanks their opinion a little bit. I mean, that was just kind of what I took away. But if you're just talking about the ball. 00:48:38 Speaker 4: How long were how long were you? 00:48:40 Speaker 2: Yeah? It was like last May. 00:48:44 Speaker 3: No. 00:48:44 Speaker 2: And I was gonna say, but the ballpark itself unbelieva. 00:48:47 Speaker 3: Because the area around the ballpark is the model for the rest of Major League Baseball. Now they have this whole like a baseball city sort of thing going there, and it's amazing. And that's what DC is trying to build. That's what the Orioles really want. That's they got a little bit of that. That's what Seattle really wants, but haven't even made really one significant move other than buying the old brewery over there and building a new restaurant in pub. That's what every major league club wants around their stadium. It is absolutely amazing. So I would totally understand that if you saw the stadium before that was all built, but the last couple of years is essentially it is. It's amazing. It's absolutely great. I asked Ken Rosenthal last year. We're in Saint Louis actually, and I asked him. We're on the back of a golf cart being driven back to the hotel, and he goes, I go, hey, Can, what's your favorite park because this one is like underrated, right. He goes, see, I really do like it here, he goes, but Ken worked in Baltimore, so he spent a lot of time at Camden, and so he said Camden was his favorite, but that Bush might be the one right next to that. 00:49:47 Speaker 4: Camden's kind of his home ballpark, Camden. 00:49:50 Speaker 1: I got to go to Camden for the first time over the summer. It is, Oh, it is just a beautiful ballpark. Maybe a little bit more shade, but the ballpark itself was was unbelievable. What I like how you mentioned like how the area around the ballpark for Saint Louis really makes it that much better. Because that's why I'm sort of a proponent for downtown ballparks, because that's not really something you can do. When you PLoP a ballpark out in the middle of nowhere and you just surround it by a bunch of concrete, It really I think takes away from the atmosphere, which. 00:50:21 Speaker 2: Is why I like t Mobile where it is. 00:50:24 Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think off the top of my head, like what you would do to sort of make it like that ballpark atmosphere you're really shooting for. 00:50:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, round, you know what would have been a good step one to that several years ago building a basketball arena south of te Mobile Park, putting that much more value in every other venue and every other business that might want to be down there. 00:50:47 Speaker 4: But yeah, usually it's just red tape. 00:50:49 Speaker 3: Like everybody agrees doing things like that is a good idea, but a lot of it's red tape. Who owns these builds, Like I think it's goofy that King five is literally kitty corner. The building that King five is in is kitty corner from the ballpark. That whole building over there. Sorry, Chrisy again, you're like the greatest human being of all time. But your building should not exist over there, like your building should be somewhere else. 00:51:12 Speaker 4: Let's move it. 00:51:13 Speaker 3: Let's put let's put shops in there that are baseball related. Let's put restaurants in there, Let's put bars in there, Let's put merchandise stores in there. It's a perfect spot. Instead, it's very corporated and very you know, it's like what are we doing down here? And then like what is across the street when you're standing like and you're looking across at at King five, that building when you look this way, what is it? 00:51:34 Speaker 4: Really? Nothing? 00:51:35 Speaker 3: Like, what are we doing down there? Like we're I don't want to say it's wasted space. There are businesses over there, but they're not really the kinds of businesses that would benefit most or benefit from or benefit most of the people that are down there on a regular basis, like people that have painting companies, And it's like like what are we doing right? Like, and they've been down there for years and I think there's just a lot of red tape in terms of turning that around and making that kind of a baseball city sort of a situation. 00:52:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, I the words didn't come out right about my experience at Bush Stadium, Like all the time I spent walking around the ballpark and in the ballpark again, it was amazing, Like I have my own personal list. 00:52:10 Speaker 4: You just don't like the tear right itself, which. 00:52:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, broh okay, okay, okay, So that was it like when I started to walk around some of the rest of the town, I was like, Eah, but no, the ballpark in the area around the ballpark, yeah, awesome, Like like bush stadiums in my top five or six parks. 00:52:25 Speaker 3: There, and about every eleven feet on the concourse in that stadium there is a different kind of nachos that you can buy. 00:52:35 Speaker 2: Now I must have. 00:52:36 Speaker 3: When I was there last, I got one kind of nacho. And I was lucky enough to be working a game with Darren Goldsmith, which means John Smoltz was there, and as goofy as that guy can be on the air, he's goofy in a positive way off the air. He got this huge plate of nachos, and because he didn't want to get stuff all over his shirt before the game, puts on this huge bib that went all the way down basically to his knees and they end up showing it on the broadcast and he ate that whole thing. But that stadium, like seriously, like every ten or fifteen feet, it's like, Oh, they have nachos that they put chicken on. Oh they have nachos where they put like nine kinds of cheese. Oh, they have nachos where it's more like a taco. It's like, is that is this nacho stadium? That's what it felt like, and I was I'm all for it because it's one of my favorite snack foods. 00:53:21 Speaker 4: So uh. 00:53:22 Speaker 3: There are a lot of little little things about that ballpark that are great, and I think every stadium kind of has that. Although to me, T Mobile Park, what is the signature thing at T Mobile Park? The grasshoppers could be Yeah, if you go away from food, the roof obviously, but I don't know the garlic fries, which are just awful, Like come on, like, you're not to get out of here with your garlic fries? Like right, Like, I like, how dare you infringe upon my comfort watching a baseball game with your garlic fries? That's my host garlic fries. Yeah, they're not for me. 00:53:58 Speaker 1: I would say that. I would say that's the signature to take. I think now that you mention it like T Mobile, it might almost be at fault that it has too many. 00:54:04 Speaker 3: As because now there's not this one thing that sticks out. Yeah, that's a good point, right. 00:54:09 Speaker 2: I like the garlic FRIESE I'm but I'm in the category of people I think Ryan Divish included who do not like the pen. That's the part of t Mobile Park I stay away from. 00:54:18 Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, that's not for me. I'm too old to hang out in the pen. I walk out there and people are like, what's this old guy doing here? 00:54:25 Speaker 2: Like, I just want to be with people that want to watch baseball. And that's not. 00:54:27 Speaker 4: Exactly people with their back to the field. 00:54:29 Speaker 1: For you, you could, Yeah, you just got to push to the You just got to go to the front. 00:54:33 Speaker 4: You gotta get their in the front road. Yeah, you gotta get their own I know. 00:54:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's that's the dedication. 00:54:40 Speaker 3: All might be pretty enough to get up there. Usually they only let the ladies up there. It might work for you guys, if you get there early enough. You know, that's how they do it, right. 00:54:48 Speaker 4: I'm totally I've never tried to push it. I'm absolutely lying. 00:54:53 Speaker 2: Well, maybe maybe we'll have to give it a shot at some point this year and before back. You know, you said something a couple of minutes ago that I actually really wanted to ask you about, because you were talking about one riding back in a golf cart with Ken Rosenthal. You were also talking about working a game with Aaron Goldsmith and John Smoltz. I think this is something that maybe not a lot of people know about you, but that is another job you have, is you do stats for Aaron Goldsmith for national baseball games and some of the national football games that he does, whether it be college or NFL. I guess mostly Goldsmith does college. But how did you end up making. 00:55:26 Speaker 4: That total luck? Total luck? 00:55:28 Speaker 3: Like in twenty nineteen, I was on a weekend vacation in Oregon at Moltnomah Falls and Goldsmith text me. And I knew Goldsmith a little bit from when Steve Sanmyer and I had the radio show at CBS, because we had him on and when we did a remote, he would always come over and sit down and talk to us. 00:55:47 Speaker 4: So I knew him a little bit. 00:55:49 Speaker 3: And he texted me one day and he goes He goes, Hey, it's Aaron Goldsmith, and I'm curious if you'd like to go to Saint Louis. Happened to be the first trip. Happened to be Saint Louis as well, and do stats for me for the Cubs and Cardinals on Saturday. And it was like it was like the previous Sunday. So I'm sitting around Sunday and it's like five or six days away, and I remember replying saying, well, I don't know really what that means or what that entails, but yeah, you know, like why would I turn that down? 00:56:16 Speaker 4: Right? 00:56:16 Speaker 3: So just incredibly lucky, like right place, right time, like somebody said. I think somebody said to him, like maybe see if Churchill can do it, you know, And yeah, so Aaron, and Aaron's no longer going to do Fox games, so he's he won't be gone for all those weekends during the during the baseball season. He won't be gone in September doing college football, which would be great from Aeronors fans that I want to see him on the television broadcast. But it was just pure luck, like just about everything else that's ever happened to me, so much fun to go on those trips baseball and football, And for football, I was the spot, or so I used to make the joke that all I did was point at things, because if you know what a spot is, that he's just helping the play by play guy like this guy made the tackle, this guy recovered the fumble, this guy causes it. 00:56:56 Speaker 4: That's all I'm really doing. 00:56:57 Speaker 3: So I'm standing there watching a football game and getting paid to do it's ridiculs. 00:57:00 Speaker 4: Right, So just luck. I was just lucky. 00:57:02 Speaker 3: I wasn't really necessarily all that great at it, but the play by play guy kind of dictates what he wants pregame and what he wants during games, and Aaron always made it great. And I got to know Aaron, you know, the last three or four years doing that, and. 00:57:16 Speaker 4: That was a really fun experience. 00:57:17 Speaker 3: And then I get to come on podcasts like yours and drop names like Ken Rosenthal and John Smoltz for crying out loud. So how much more fun does it get? 00:57:23 Speaker 4: You know? Eric Carrolls. I remember Eric meeting Eric Carross a couple of times. I remember I would tell you this. 00:57:29 Speaker 3: The guy that I that I enjoyed meeting the least, and I don't mean because he was like a bad dude or he was rude or anything like that, was Tom Raducci. We're in DC doing a game, and Aaron's an analyst was Tom ra Ducci, who I actually think is pretty decent on the air. I actually liked the broadcast. I like what he brings to the table. But the reason The biggest reason I didn't really enjoy meeting him and talking to him was because I tried to tell him that George Kirby was better than Logan. 00:57:57 Speaker 4: Gilbert and he wasn't having it. 00:57:59 Speaker 3: And I'd really like to run into Tom Raducci again just to because he wouldn't remember me, because I only met him the one time, and just ask him which guy he likes better now and for the long haul, just to see if he's changed his mind, and then remind him that I don't like, you know, just to blow mind you go up just a tiny bit there. But he was just not having it, and it was just like he just put up a wall and he was like, Nope, Nope, that's not gonna happen. 00:58:24 Speaker 4: Nope. I was like, I'm sorry, all right, you, I think I'm right. He was still like. 00:58:30 Speaker 3: This was in July, by the way, so Kirby hadn't really done a ton, right. 00:58:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean especially because like if you if you look at Logan Gilbert's Savant page, like I mean, like Logan Gilbert is still a good pitcher, don't get me wrong, but you know, he he gets hit fairly hard, and there's still some stuff I think he has to clean up. We're I mean, Kirby, TJ and I were just talking about this last week. He has a chance to throw as many as like seven pitches this upcoming year, and we looked the only guy that threw seven pitches in the Big League last year was. 00:58:58 Speaker 3: So tawny, right crazy, Yeah, we might see him just use the cutter instead of the slider, so we might be down to six, you know, want want. He's incredible, Like when he started going back to the two scenimer, which is a pitch he's had and just never really thrown a lot, and it was working and moving, and I'm like, what are we. 00:59:19 Speaker 4: Looking at here? 00:59:20 Speaker 3: Like this is Greg Maddox with velocity, Like this is essentially a modern the closest thing to a modern day Greg Madx with velocity at that particular age anyway, that we've seen in the last twenty five years, Like guys do throw harder now. Maddox was like ninety to ninety two most of his career. Kirby's gonna be like ninety four to ninety seven, dotting every area of the zone with like like you said, maybe up to seven pitches depending on the day, depending on the month, depending on the year. He's a lot of fun to watch, and it's a lot easier to project guys like that that pound the strike zone and have really easy deliveries. Like you said, Gilbert's got some things to clean up. Although I like like what we've seen so far in spring. I like his curveball usage, and he looked pretty good. 01:00:00 Speaker 4: Early on. 01:00:02 Speaker 3: Tuesday in his latest doubting So we'll see what I think both guys. Both guys are really good. Both guys are number three or better starters. I'm just a curby guy, just a big George Kirky fan. 01:00:14 Speaker 1: This is a pretty lofty Uh. It's a pretty lofty thing, but it makes sense. It makes sense. Before I think we got a couple more Mariners questions, but I have one more non Mariners question for you, because you said it was going to be your project this season on Twitter to watch all thirty broadcast teams and then rank them. Lal and I are both broadcasters. We both went to school, we have degrees in sports journalism. We've done a ton of play by play, so we pay, you know, closer attention than the general fan, Probably not as close as you, but to what a given broadcast is so looking at that for the season, like what are you looking forward? Do you have an early favorite of what's going to be number one or what they're are? 01:00:52 Speaker 3: So what I'm going to try to do is be as objective as I possibly can with the admission that I'm going to favor certain types of things on broadcast that other people might not. So this will be a subjective ranking, but I'm going to be as objective as I possibly can. I'm gonna try to think for the casual fan and for the fan that likes to get a little nerdy and geeky about data and things like that, and just kind of kind of roll it up into a ball and just kind of see what happens as I watch. I'm not a big voice guy. I don't really care all that much about the broadcaster's voice. It really doesn't matter to me. I mean, I can recognize, like, oh, listen to that, like that is that is a radio voice, But can can you Like I think most people think Vin Scully's one of the greatest, if not the greatest, baseball play by play guys of all time. Did he have a great voice? Not really, it was very distinct, But did he really have a great voice. I mean, I don't think so. And everybody loves him and he's great and elite and again maybe the best of all time. So so I'm glad that I have that to kind of roll back on. So now it could just be substance, and now I can think about things like, do I always know what even though I'm watching television? Do I understand what's going on? Do they talk too much? Do they talk over the analyst? Does the play by play I get the analyst involved? Are the three guys in the booth? How does that dynamic work? Some people don't like three man booz Sometimes it can work. I think it depends. And I'm focusing on the TV broadcast, not the radio broadcast, because that's a whole of the ball of wax. So yeah, I think, and I haven't really written down, but I will kind of the criterion, you know, for that, and as soon as I do, I'll have a better answer. But yeah, I want to think for everybody that watches baseball games, the casual fan that watches a game or two a week, the fan that watches every night but isn't really a baseball nerd so to speak. And then the absolute diehard that tries to know and hear everything and understand everything. Does the broadcast bring something to the table for everybody? And is it proportionate to the expected size of the audits because most of people that watch those games are just casual fans, like we know that, so a little bit, a little bit bigger piece of the pie has to go toward with the casual fan needs out of the game. But I think even geeks like us, I think you guys would throw yourself yourselves into that category. You still need all those basic things when you're watching a game. You still need Hey, remind me how many outs there are, even though I know I can look up at the screen or you know, tell me remind me that Diego Castillo has pitched two days in a row, so he's probably down. Because if I'm watching a game, like if I'm at a game or I'm watching a game, it's a little bit different. But if I'm watching a game just to have fun and I'm not really thinking about things like that, if I'm more of a casual fan. 01:03:34 Speaker 4: I need to be reminded of that. 01:03:36 Speaker 3: And even if I'm the nerd that's like, you know, boy, I don't like the Diego Castillo matchup Aaron Goldsmith or Dave sim saying we were told before the game that Diego with Stelle is probably the only guy down of the bullpen. I need that stuff. But if you watch broadcasts, not all of them are good at reminding you of those things. Not all of them are good at asking the questions of the manager and and you know, the pitching coach or the hitting coach or whoever might be the relevant conversation at that particular time, broadcast things that they might need to know during that day's game. Some are good at it, and some of them really aren't. I can tell you from my experience working with them. Aaron Goldsmith is going to do that homework. I know that so, and that's gonna be the tough one for me if I don't rank the Mariners number one. First of all, will I live to see the next day? And will Aaron Goldsmith be arrested right away? Or will you? No? 01:04:26 Speaker 4: And if the Mariners aren't number one, where do they rank? 01:04:29 Speaker 3: That's gonna be the big question, because that's obviously the broadcast team that I hear the most, that I listen to the most, that I know the most. I have conversations all year round with Dave Simms as well. Nobody really knows Mike Blowers, so I'm not sad that I don't know Mike Flowers. I don't take any anything from that, but yeah, they're gonna rank pretty high. I think that the home team is going to but I'm looking forward to doing that. I'm gonna start out. I'm gonna do it division by division, I think, and listen to at least one full game, take notes, and then around around the fifty game mark, just kind of see how many how many teams that I've that I've watched, that I've listened to, and how many times I think I need to go back. And I'm gonna make this as scientific as I possibly can. I mean, I'm a lot of fun doing it. I also hope to meet some of these people on the road this year, which is gonna be fun. I plan on visiting a bunch of ballparks this year that I haven't been to. I'm starting with Cleveland and Pittsburgh on a trip in May, and on that same trip, I'm gonna go to the Buffalo Minor League ballpark for the first time. So I'm gonna drive. I'm gonna fly into Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. 01:05:40 Speaker 4: And do that. 01:05:41 Speaker 3: But I'm hoping to meet some of those broadcast teams too, so it'll make it even harder not to rank them high because I'm gonna like them personally, right, That's how it always goes. 01:05:49 Speaker 4: So it's gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to it. 01:05:52 Speaker 1: Were you texting Goldie every single day when he was getting quurted by Saint Louis? 01:05:56 Speaker 2: Now? 01:05:56 Speaker 3: Because should I tell you this? I I already knew. I knew what was gonna happen. I knew before he before he went to Saint Louis what was happening. I just couldn't tell anybody. Yeah, all right, And I just I almost thought of hey, asking him, Hey, do you mind if I break this? But then I thought, no, let's just let's less somebody with a bigger, like beat reporter style following break this, and and they'll talk to Aaron and it'll be in the Times, and it'll be on Root Sports, and it'll be you know, and it'll be on seven ten, and so I just let it go. But yeah, I knew, like you know, I don't I'm not sure to be honest with you how much Aaron has talked about this, But he had some family move out to Seattle in November from Saint Louis, and I just thought, I'm not even gonna ask him. I know he's not leaving. I know he's not And then I heard from him before he went to Saint Louis that he's going to do it. But he was like ninety nine point nine to nine nine percent sure he just wasn't going to take the job. And as soon as you realized I just can't do this, like keep out out. 01:06:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, he I mean, he's another person we definitely hope to have on here at some point. I know he's already been asked a million times about the whole Cardinals Mariners like off season free agency that he had, but just to hear a little bit about it from him. Plus he's another baseball nerd, So. 01:07:10 Speaker 3: I think, here, do this when you when you guys have him on, do this. Ask him something that involves me that would be funny, like ask him like ask him something along the lines of how thankful he is that he got to work alongside me for for the last three or four years doing football and something along those lines, and it'll probably sniff it out that I set you guys up for it, but do something like that. So before you have him on, like, let's have a short conversation and I'll I'll give you something really good to ask. He's Aaron Goldsmith is one of my favorite. 01:07:46 Speaker 1: They were welcoming Aaron Goldsmith on just kicking it off. Aaron, how thankfulre you that Jason Churchill made you? 01:07:53 Speaker 3: You know, maybe something not quite that, but yes, right along right along those lines that that's exactly the flavor that you He is. 01:08:01 Speaker 4: Like you know, when you. 01:08:02 Speaker 3: Watch people on TV, they always tell you, you know, things like you know, don't meet your heroes, you know, things like that. And when you watch a guy broadcast games in your hometown and then you meet him and he's not only what you hoped he would be, but beyond that's that's Aaron. 01:08:19 Speaker 4: It really is. 01:08:20 Speaker 3: I cannot say enough good things about Aaron Goldsmith as as a person and getting to meet his kids and getting to meet his family and and getting to work alongside him. He is just like the he does the little things man, and like I told him, I told him that really quick story. So the broadcasters the play by play guys get a car allowance. The stats guys don't. And when I say car allowance, that doesn't mean rental car. Because when I did football, I was the driver. That was one of my jobs. As the spot I also drove, so like I would drive like Aaron the stats guy, and like brock he Order. Mark Helfrich to the stated that somehow I think brock Keward nominated me for that. I didn't know that was part of my role, and it turned out to be part of my role. 01:09:04 Speaker 4: So that was me. 01:09:05 Speaker 3: But like they'll send a car for the play by play guys at the airport take you to the hotel, you don't have to wait for an uber like a little car, like a big black, sweet looking suv or something along those lines. Right, Well, Aaron always, like, you know, like a lot of times we had the same flights, you know, and we're on the same plane, and he would always make a first class versus non first class joke. 01:09:30 Speaker 4: By the way, he was always in first class. I usually was not. 01:09:35 Speaker 3: So he would always pretend like he couldn't talk to me anymore. And but we'd get up the plane and he'd wait for me and we'd walk and i'd you know, i'd like he would include me in his car allowance, right, And that may seem like a small thing, like, well, he'd be a jerk if he didn't, but I didn't think of it that way. And one time we were in h maybe we're in We're in Atlanta. It was the last game we ever did together. And we got up the plane and we're walking and we see the driver and Aaron's like, yeah, I'm Aaron. 01:10:01 Speaker 4: You know, there's two of us. 01:10:02 Speaker 3: And the guy's like cool, and he takes our bags and all this, and I go, hey, Aaron, what if all this time that we've been doing this, that we would you would wait for me off the plane and we'd walk all the way to where you're gonna get your car, and then you just get in your car and say see it at the hotel later, and you just take off and leave me sitting there. 01:10:21 Speaker 4: Waiting for an houver. 01:10:22 Speaker 3: And I just wish, I really wish one time he would have done that, because it would have been a story that I would have told my entire life. But he like he thought about things like that. He thought about like early on, like how do I make sure Churchill's comfortable at the ballpark, Like maybe this is the ballpark he's never been to. He's never met these people the first time I met John Smoltz or Ken Rosenthal. Like Aaron made sure I was included, even though a lot of this stuff was really meant for the broadcast people, the actual voices that you're gonna hear on the broadcast. But I never got left out, and not in baseball, not in football, because Aaron made sure I was always involved. I was always on the emails. I was always involved when the car and he was going to buy dinner, Like we went to Manny's in Minnesota, like in Minneapolis for the Twins game the Friday night before the game, and this is a place like they give you a private room and they were like, I don't know ten of us there in the bills like twenty five hundred dollars afterwards, like one of those places. It's a place I don't belong, you know, to be honest with you, But like he made sure I was included in that, Like he's just he's that guy. And when we had a conversation after he'd he told me, you know it, like I'm done with. 01:11:30 Speaker 4: Fox and I'm staying in Seattle. 01:11:35 Speaker 3: Like he apologized to me first of all for like the fox thing not being on my plate anymore, Like come on, man, Like what kind of guy does that? But like I couldn't say, I can't say enough great things about about Aaron. He's just he's a great dude, and he's fun to listen to, and he cares about the gig and he cares about the game. And I think the one thing that I truly truly disagree and think Aaron is insane about is the pitch clock. Broadcast asters love the pitch clock, and I am out on the pitch clock. 01:12:04 Speaker 4: That's about it. But that was that was a great experience. Answer your question. He was. I had a lot of fun. He was great. 01:12:10 Speaker 3: It wasn't about making extra money, Uh, it was about being able to go into see those ballparks with those people. And and here John Smoltz tell stories, and and here. 01:12:23 Speaker 4: Aaron's a great storyteller. Two. 01:12:24 Speaker 3: So if you can get stories out of him when you guys have them on Metal, yeah, Peo will tell stories till the cows come home. Yeah, it'd be great. 01:12:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the little a little bit of time I've gotten to talk with him. Yeah, he was always great too, Like we we talked with him a couple of times when he was doing as games and and he got lunch with me once and was awesome. Like talking about broadcast, Yeah, like he. 01:12:45 Speaker 3: Will not ignore people. If you get a hold of him, he will talk to you. He will answer yeah, so you when you guys want to get him on, as long as he can do it, he will absolutely do it. 01:12:53 Speaker 2: Like you know, yeah, Okay, I got to ask you this because all this Aaron Goldsmith talk sparked one more question I had before. Maybe get back to one or two final Mariner questions. Is sometimes on Twitter you'll tweet out like feel good broadcast edition, And it's usually when Goldsmith's. 01:13:08 Speaker 4: Goldsmith and Blower What do you mean by that? 01:13:09 Speaker 2: When you're when you're talking. 01:13:10 Speaker 3: So knowing that I'm gonna get Like, let's say the game is incidental in the fourth inning it's ten nothing Mariners or the White Socks are up eight nothing and the starting pitcher and it's just a dog game. That is when Aaron Goldsmith is at its best, because yeah, he will get Mike Blowers more involved than it seems like Mike Blowers wants to be involved in the game at that point, Like I don't want to say Blowers is checked out, but the analyst often checks out, you know, a lot when the game just is a dog like that. But that's when the funny happens. That's when Goldsmith brings out, uh, some of the fun in in Mike Blower's being a little bit unheard of in in some cases like it's harder to get Do you remember, you guys remember I think it was last year, maybe the year before, but I think it was last year when Aaron mentioned that they went to buy ice cream before the game and Mike Blower's card didn't work. 01:14:06 Speaker 4: Do you remember that. 01:14:07 Speaker 3: Blowers did not like the fact that Aaron mentioned that his card didn't work, because it made it kind of sound like the card was declined and Blowers was broke or something, and Mike was like, the card didn't get declined, and like you just tell like there's this slight level of annoyance. And I mean, I just called it the Field Good Edition because like, first of all, I stole that from Sports Center from twenty five thirty years ago when Craig Kilbourne would be on with Carl Ravitch and he called it the Field Good Edition. You know, he'd open up with that, so I stole that. But it's so much fun to hear Goldsmith challenge himself with pulling content from Mike Blowers, particularly in a game that's a dog. 01:14:49 Speaker 4: It's the best. 01:14:50 Speaker 3: And I think if I were Aaron and I were interviewing for a job, I would pull out like a ten to nothing game and say, look what I do for your audience when the game is terrible and nobody cares about the outcome anymore, Look how I keep people. That's what I would do. Yeah, He's he's magic when it comes to that. And Blowers, you know, give him credit. He will play along just enough for things to be really funny when it works, when when he's enticed to to talk and react. 01:15:17 Speaker 4: To Goldsmith in that way. So yeah, so that's why I call it the Field Good Edition. 01:15:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I always enjoy it. Yeah, I'm this. I'm the same way. I think he's phenomenal when especially when it's like a blowout type of game. You were talking about Blowers card. There was some game too, I can't even remember when it was, but they were talking about all being out at dinner and Blowers made a little joke. He was like, yeah, Eron, I can't believe you actually pulled your car, your card out of your wallet or something like that. 01:15:42 Speaker 3: Like, yeah, yeah, they have a lot of fun, and that's that's one of the things. And like, you don't hear that from from everybody. You don't hear Blowers ribbing, you know, everybody does he rib sims like that. I don't know, I don't remember hearing it. Does sims, you know, rib blowers like that. I don't know if they have that kind of relationship or not. But listening to other broadcasts, you don't hear that level of engagement between the play by play guy and the analyst. Some do it, there are few. I think the Mets broadcast does a pretty good job. I think when Dave Cone is on the Yankees broadcast, they do a pretty good job. But a lot of them are missing that element. And Seattle does that well. And Goldsmith's kind of the you know, he's kind of the director that he's kind of the orchestrator of that and he should be like he's their dude on TV. And from what I understand, he's going to do more games this year on television than he ever has before. So if you're a Goldsmith fan, I think that's good news. 01:16:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. You know, if we were going to get back to one or two Mariners questions here as we start to kind of wrap this up, I've got to ask at least this one because TJ and I have been trying to kind of crack a riddle here the last week or two, and for the life of us, we cannot do it. So we're hoping maybe you can you can provide some insight on this. Well maybe riddle's not the right word, but we're staring at Luis Castillo stats because we've been talking about some pitchers over the last week or two and how they're going to kind of profile and project in twenty twenty three. I mean, we're looking at Castillo, who historically has changed Up's been his best pitch of his career. It's been his outpitch. It's what he goes to. It was, at least by run value when you look at Baseball Savant his best pitch. His fastball's never graded as some elite pitch. I mean, it's a good pitch. He throws it hard, but fast. Forward to twenty twenty two. I mean, the results he got on his fastball were ridiculous, to the point where guys were slugging less than two hundred against his fastball, Like his numbers before that never even got close when you look at slugging against his fastball, So like, how in the world does that type of progression and evolution happen in one yea. 01:17:45 Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just it really depends on the situation. But sometimes it's just a manner of how often do you throw that pitch or how. 01:17:51 Speaker 4: Do you use that pitch? What areas of the zone are you attacking? 01:17:54 Speaker 3: Because he throws both the two and a four seamer, and generally speaking we would think, okay, four seamer up, two seamer down, get the run on the two. Four seemer has the same run to the same side, but it carries a little bit better to the plate and stays up, stays above the hands when you try to throw it up in the zone, things like that. But he can use both of those pitches in multiple ways, and I think maybe just where he was throwing it the zones that he was using when they made that trade. I thought one of the things I thought that I expressed on baseball things was I think there's a pretty good chance that the Mariners get more out of Luis Castillo in general than the Reds did. And the biggest reason was they probably have the different idea of how he should go about using the pitches that he has. Not hey, let's change the grip or anything like that necessarily, not let's change your delivery. But like you know, it almost goes to the old reliever thing. Remember they brought in Austin Adams and a couple of years back, and then he had a good like first half and then they traded him, you know. 01:18:53 Speaker 4: To the Padres. 01:18:54 Speaker 3: In one of the multiple you know, Woodshed moments of Age Prother's career where Jerry Depot just spanked him in a deal. It was the usage. It was how do you use it? How often do you use it? And I look at Castillo the same way. If you pull up those slugging against or ex Boba numbers on his fastball, look at the monthly splits and see how different it is pre trade and post trade, because there is a little bit of a swing upswing in fastball value after he got to Seattle. And I just think that tells me it's strategy. Without looking into it deeper. That tells me it's just strategic. And how he's using his fastball. His changeup wasn't that great last year. Like I see the run value, You're right, Like the value still there, nobody's really hitting it, but it's not the swing and mispitch that it was two three years ago. And I think his slider is actually a better pitch than it was a year or two ago. And it might be the better of his secondary offerings right now, but he can get I'm big on fastball value, always have been big on fastball value. If you have good fastball value, it takes pressure off your command, takes pressure off your ability to locate your second pitches or the quality of your secondary pitches. And even though Castillo has quality secondary pitches, the fact that he has two different fastballs he can get value from any time he wants. I mean that place you know that takes him quite away. Is that gets you through five innings right there, just using fastball on the occasional slide or a changeup, And that's why he can go six and sometimes seven. I think he's a good, solid, like number two starter. I know he's the Mariners the fact on number one, but I think what we saw from him after the trade last year was legitimate number two. Like, if he's in the Yankees rotation, he's right behind Garrett Cole, if he's in the if he's in the Mets rotation, he's behind either Verlander or Surezer. In Verlander, he's that very next guy after the elites. Castillo's in that group. 01:20:46 Speaker 1: You know, that fastball, Like just the tenet of having a good fastball seems like it is a core philosophy and what the Mariners do. If we're looking at one similarity between the four high end star rotation, I mean it's the fastball. I mean Robbie Ray plus Logan Gilbert of you know that's his plus pitch. George Kuby, same thing. And you know Castill the best season of his career with that fastball. So I don't think that's a coincidence. 01:21:12 Speaker 4: No, it's not. The mirrors aren't really unique there. 01:21:14 Speaker 3: I just think they're unique to the Reds there and unique to a few other teams that are focused on other things. They're not really trying to scrape out every single victory at the big league level, and they don't have a lot of finished products where they can just because you're so focused when you're a young pitcher. Teams are so focused on throw strikes, like command is one thing, but you have to just at least hit the strike zone. You know a certain amount of time. You don't want to get the two and three ball counts, like you don't want to walk guys. So they're so focused on the basics that they don't get to the point where the guy's twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight years old. Then you can just take that a different layer and say, how about if you cook the command and control that you've developed up to this point in your career, and you started attacking different parts of the zone, or you started throwing a two seamer as well as the fourth seamer. Some organizations just aren't in a position to do that because there's risk there. Like when Castillo is twenty five years old, there's risk there because he's not established. He wants to get established, he's going to be He's probably gonna want to avoid changing too much because he knows he's good and he's trying to establish himself, get to free agency, make a bunch of money, but now that he's there and he's making a bunch of money, it's like, I'll do whatever the team wants me to do. I'm theirs for the next five years. It's a little easier to do that. It's easier to do that the Yankees and the Mets, of the Dodgers, of the Astros. And you're having success, and you're on a good team, and you have guys that are either entering their prime or they're already in their prime to some level, to try to get them to do a different thing or two to take their game up a step. Otherwise, these younger players are thinking, convince me, then convinced like that. That's why it's impressive that the Logan Gilberts and the George Kirbyes of the world are out there on their own doing things that could make them better this year. That sometimes include gripping a pitch differently, throwing a completely different pitch, throwing two completely different pitches, using their just differently, changing their deliveries. They're doing it themselves, and that's kind of I don't want to say it's a new thing, but it's a newer thing in Major League Baseball where players are taking control of their own development all the way through their thirties, Like this isn't a yeah, you do that when you're twenty, and then after that you just coast. You can't coast anymore, right, So they're taking it into their own hands. They're not necessarily sitting around waiting for the team to to kind of dictate that. And that's why we see guys like Gilbert and Kirby doing things that maybe Luis Castillo didn't do a whole lot of before he came to the Mariners and started playing for a winning team. 01:23:32 Speaker 4: It gives you that leeway. 01:23:33 Speaker 3: Okay, I'm already this pretty comfortably, and the team's going to support me, and now I want to do this because I want to take another step. 01:23:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, it has been pretty remarkable just what these Mariners arms have been able to do, especially because I mean you look on paper, I mean the starting rotation has the chance to be the best it's been in some time. I think the roster has the chance to be the best it's been in some time. So if we were going to kind of give you one final question and one final Mariner's question here, Jason, I think this is a good cap off question. Is how much better is this twenty twenty three roster compared to the roster just a year ago and twenty two? 01:24:07 Speaker 3: I will I will answer that question by asking you this question, how much better do you think the combination of Luis Castillo, Julio Rodriguez, cal Raley? And I'll cut it off right there. I'll just leave it right there, just those three. I could go a little further. I could throw George Kirby in there, but let's just go Castillo, cow Raley and Juli Rodriguez. How much more valuable to the twenty twenty three team are those three players? And you can think about wins above replacement. That's a good way to do it. Versus last year. If those guys were I don't know what the totals are, but if those guys were worth ten wins above replacement last year total to the Seattle Mariners, what are they worth this year? Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, something like that, somewhere in that range. Right, that's how much better they are? Because right, how much better they are? I think that's a good way to gauge it. Who Driguez has a chance to take another step forward, cal Raley has a chance to take a big step forward. They're going to have Luiska Steele for what fifteen to twenty more starts than they had him last year. That's an upgrade over what Chris Flexen was giving him or would have given them. You can stop right there. We can talk about Kirby being unleashed for another twenty thirty innings. Then he gave him last year, Logan Gilbert in another year. They have a lot of guys trending in the right direction. So if they were truly a ninety win team last year, which is probably pretty close and pretty fair, and that absolutely that is the fact that it is how many wins they had last year, I think they're at ninety two, ninety three, ninety four this year, with a chance to get to ninety five ninety six. 01:25:39 Speaker 2: Oh, go ahead, t J. I looked like you were going to say something. 01:25:43 Speaker 1: Jason answered the question. 01:25:44 Speaker 4: So I was gonna just how reading minds these days? How about that? 01:25:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was gonna say it, guess to kind of close off my final thoughts based on the war thing that you were just talking about. I mean, I guess I kind of know this off the top of my head. Which kind of shows you. I guess I focus all my time in the world into baseball and not much else. But I think off fangrafts, Julio's war was like five and a half. Cols was about four, and Castillo's was also right around. 01:26:13 Speaker 4: Right, But for the Mariners it wasn't four. 01:26:16 Speaker 2: That's a key, right, right, that's total. So I mean, yeah, I mean Julio could get as high as would it. 01:26:23 Speaker 4: Shock you if he was a seven win guy this year? Would it shock you? 01:26:25 Speaker 3: He only played one and thirty two games last year, So if he plays one hundred and fifty, one hundred and forty, five hundred and fifty, that's a six win guy. If he puts up the same numbers, right, that's not even considering the fact that he could actually perform better in those one hundred and forty five hundred and fifty games than he did last year one hundred and thirty whatever. 01:26:42 Speaker 4: And that's Julio by himself. 01:26:43 Speaker 3: So the upside's pretty big with this, with this buckled and I think cal Rawley, by the way, one of the things I just keep. 01:26:49 Speaker 4: Pounding in my own in my own head, in my own. 01:26:51 Speaker 3: Conversations with myself because I do talk to myself quite a bit cal Rawley's batting average is something to watch this year. It's a weird thing to say, because batting average is not a good ending cater of how well a player is performing. But I do think it is a sign of progress for cal Raley. You can't hit two hundred ish and expect to put up a three twenty three point thirty three forty on base percentage. I mean that's really I mean, he's not Ricky Anderson, right, not hitting buck ninety seven with a three to seventy on base right, He's cal Raley. He's a good player. He's not Ricky Henderson. So if we see cal Raley showing signs of with an ability to hit two thirty two forty and eventually, maybe not this year, but eventually two fifty two sixty as some of the rule changes help things like batting average, I mean, we're talking about a perennial All Star here and a guy that's probably gonna make a lot of money but might also in his peak, be a top ten MVP guy one year. Like that's the kind of upside we're seeing it. Let me let me say this, He's twenty five years old, right, twenty five, twenty six, he hit what twenty five homers last year? Would it surprise you if you hit thirty homers this year? 01:27:55 Speaker 2: Yeah? 01:27:56 Speaker 4: Now would it. 01:27:57 Speaker 3: Surprise you if he hit two twenty five this year with a three on base percentage? Would it surprise you? No, that's only what twenty points higher than. 01:28:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it not Yeah, No, twenty points higher. And you can even think of it this way. It's like, so, what did Cal hit? If you throw out his first month, if you do the same thing with hitting like a bucket, like oh fifty, the same thing with Julio, right, like what is he hitting? And that's just off of. 01:28:20 Speaker 3: Last bigger and not off a fuller sample than everything that happened before that. So it means just as much because of recency and sample size as what happened before that. Now, none of us are sitting here saying April didn't count for Julio or April didn't count for Cal. But when you're trying to project forward, that's a good way to look at it. It's a really good way. It's possible, Like I wouldn't bet on Julio hitting three forty, but would I bet on him hitting, repeating his batting averaging on base from last year at least. Yeah, And I think cal Rawley's gonna take a ten to fifteen to twenty percent step, you know, in the right direction. And I mean we're talking about all star potential MVP type in Juli Rodriguez as early as this year, all star caliber catcher, uh three maybe four all Star caliber pitchers. You couldn't say that when we started last year, the confidence in saying that we knew some of these guys had the ability. But now it's like the floor is a lot higher. So for me, when you push the floor up, and while it's not dollar for dollar or win for win, when you push the floor up, the ceiling goes up to. 01:29:20 Speaker 2: There are so many fun storylines with this team to watch in twenty twenty three. It's going to be as exciting of a season as fans have experienced in quite some time. As great as twenty two was, I think twenty twenty three is the chance to be even better. Jason, you really preview that well. You've previewed everything that we've talked about incredibly well. And I think this entire interview has been a blast. Mid season or at some point during the year, we'll have to have you back on again to kind of catch up on some of these things and check in on all the things we talked about, because really this. 01:29:47 Speaker 4: Is you got it. Absolutely anytime, guys, thanks so much. Anytime. By the way, do both of you live in Courtaalace? 01:29:56 Speaker 1: No, just me, that's that. I work here in corvall So we're I cover Oregon state here and there or out here and there. 01:30:04 Speaker 2: It's pretty much, uh for now, I'm back in in the Northwest. 01:30:11 Speaker 3: And okay, okay, so you're not that far. Well, you live in the same city as Aaron Goldsmith. About that buzzy here. Yeah, I'm gonna be in Corvallis at some point in April if you're gonna gonna come. Yeah, if you're gonna be in town, I'll come stay high or you can come say high or whatever we can make that happen. I'll get lunch or whatever. We're neighbors, so let's not be strangers. It's ridiculous. You live like fifteen minutes away. I'm members round so yeah, definitely, let's go to a game. You come up, t J. Do you come up for games every once in a while. 01:30:41 Speaker 1: I went, when I get some time off, Yeah, spent when baseball season dies down, it's. 01:30:44 Speaker 3: A little When college baseball season dies down, it's easier. Is that what you're saying? 01:30:48 Speaker 2: Yeah? 01:30:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, cool sounds good anytime, guys, let me know. 01:30:52 Speaker 2: Definitely. Jason Churchill, host of The Baseball Things podcast. Thanks guys, that was a fantastic interview with Jason Churchill. I know I've said it a bunch, I'll continue to say it. He is one of the smartest Mariners people you'll find. If you want to get smarter about the Mariners, go follow him on Twitter, go find his work. I mean, he's awesome. He was absolutely one of my favorite interviews we've done, so we appreciate all the time he gave us too. All Right, TJ, I think we're ready. Let's close out this show with speak your Mind. 01:31:24 Speaker 3: Speak your mind. Spot. 01:31:29 Speaker 2: That would be unwise. What is necessary is never unwise. You've been kind of keeping me on my toes all day about this, So what are you thinking about this week? 01:31:44 Speaker 1: I'm not one to venture into the NBA too often. I'm just not the biggest basketball guy. Doesn't help the Sonics left when we were what ten. That doesn't help right for my basket waunters. But there's no league like the NBA in terms of generating storylines. And another one this week that I totally, it totally flew right past me, and I didn't even think about this is something I should have been paying attention to it closer. But Kyrie Irving's Dallas Mavericks are seven and thirteen since they traded for him. Just as we said when it happened, why would you ever trade for Kyrie Irving? 01:32:24 Speaker 2: Why would you? 01:32:25 Speaker 1: Why would you ever at this point of his career attempt to deal with Kyrie Irving and the path of destruction that he has left behind. Not one stop, not two stops, not three stops, like three stops, and his Mavericks are now sitting at thirty six and thirty nine a game outside of the play in Are. 01:32:52 Speaker 2: You kidding me? The doubt like this is? 01:32:55 Speaker 1: When this trade happened, the Mavericks were supposed to be Western Conference favorites. That like they were supposed to be Western Conference favorites, they are now not even gonna get any play in tournament like that is that's unbelievable. They have lost to the twenty five and fifty one Charlotte Hornets twice in the last four days, the ones, you know, without their best player in LaMelo Ball, who's been out almost all season. It is incredible the efficiency that Kyrie Irving can do this to teams. Just it gets faster. It was like two years with Lebron, one year with the Celtics, like i'd probably say three quarters of a year that he actually played with the Nets, and then it has taken twenty games with the Mavericks. 01:33:48 Speaker 2: And he's had other stars every stop of the way. It's not like he's playing on teams like the Hornets or like the Magic or somebody like that. No, he's playing on real teams with elite talent. Yet somehow he's always unhappy. I mean, I don't get how he hasn't just retired and hung it out at this point, Like I love this. He's making it. I get he's making like forty million dollars or whatever it is per year, maybe a little bit more than that, but like you're always miserable, Like why are you still playing if you're just miserable all the time. 01:34:20 Speaker 1: And like Luca's gotten kind of to be a mess too. He picked up a sixteen technical foul yesterday, which gets you an automatic suspension, which I believe I didn't double check. I believe that got waived. But once you get sixteen techts in a season, you get an automatic one game suspension with the Maps needing to now win every game, which is which is crazy. And I see stuff floating on Twitters like would this run actually cause Luca to leave Dallas? Which would be crazy if you imagine you you have hit the home run of all home runs by getting Luka Doncic and training for him with the Hawks, and he leaves because you make some bad personnel decisions and the team plays like absolute shit down the stretch for and just to miss the playing game. It's just that's crazy. That just it just blows my way because like everyone could see it coming and the Mavericks decided, you know what, it's worth it, but it was not. 01:35:16 Speaker 2: Obviously, I mean, this has to be it. If everything really crashes and burns in Dallas with Kyrie, there is not going to be another contender. The trades firm, right like, there cannot be another contender after that's the trades firm. The only way I feel like he keeps playing is again, if he goes to some bad team, just puts up his numbers every night, complains whenever he wants and kind of does whatever he wants, and I'll just make his money and not make the playoffs. 01:35:42 Speaker 1: Got me? You you really don't. I'm like, I'm just at a point where, like, especially with a lot of these stars in the NBA, just. 01:35:50 Speaker 2: It's hard to like see. 01:35:51 Speaker 1: Them like like there somebodies can they can just carry teams at sometimes and then also at the same time can just destroy them by literally just being a bad personnel. 01:36:00 Speaker 2: That's it. That's all you need to do. 01:36:01 Speaker 1: You one bad apple on a in a five person rotation on the floor kills the whole thing every time. It's crazy, And I you know, you'd think teams would learn their lesson with Kyrie Irving, But what do we know. I mean, Kyrie Irving just for the shits and gigs, could end up in either Phoenix or la next year. Could you imagine that he either goes back to Lebron or back to Kadie, Right, wouldn't that be funny this league? 01:36:26 Speaker 2: Oh? I would laugh. It would be perfect script script writing. We can put it like that. 01:36:32 Speaker 1: Well, I think to be honest, I think he's probably he's probably favored to go to the Lakers, right, He's gotta be probably that that would be the only organization I could see that would be like, this is a great idea? Are you kidding me? 01:36:44 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:36:45 Speaker 2: It didn't worry. 01:36:45 Speaker 1: I thought Westbrook was a good idea. And I was trying to tell him. 01:36:48 Speaker 2: I was telling no, yeah, well, full of one's shame on them, but full you twice, shame on you. If they trade for Kyrie Irving next year, that's on the lake. Okay, let's get to my speaker mind here. It's a little bit of a different tone than Kyrie Irving, and that gave me a good lap, especially that little rant you gave there at the start. It's actually more about us. I was just kind of thinking this week, as season's about to start. I mean we're running now what four and a half months on this podcast, and I was just kind of thinking back to the time we started, and you know, we were pretty excited to start it. I mean, we both loved the Mariners for a long time, and we talked for a long time about starting something like this, and we finally had the time and felt like we had the skills to do it, I guess. And not only has it been a blast I know on my end, I think on yours too, but hopefully for everybody that's listened so far, because I mean, you know, without listenership kind of becomes hard to do. But the fact people follow us on social media now and we get some real listens on the episodes. Like I'm not saying we're taking the world on or anything like that, but the fact that like just through four months with no baseball going on, that people want to kind of tune in. It's it's been a blast, and I don't think we plan to stop anytime soon. So you know, I was just kind of reflecting on that a little bit and thinking about, you know, it's been a blast so. 01:38:07 Speaker 1: Far, got all deep on me there for a second. I needed a heads up. 01:38:12 Speaker 2: Oh my bad. 01:38:14 Speaker 1: Getting a little sentimental here. It's been so hard. We've really we've really just really it's really been such a grind. It has been. It is it has been. It has been a ton of fun. And what I what I think the thing I've realized the most here on this podcast is like I think, not even just for like viewership wise, of what we realized just like how much fun just having other people on this, Like we spent the first was nine or ten episodes. It's just us, just us talking, and it's great when we're it's you know, spitting numbers at each other. But then we get you know, the first couple of guests. We get Jordan Schusterman and jojoyle Lot and you really like you know, appeels back layers and we can like loosen up and relax a little bit. And I hope to you know, get to one point where all of our episodes are like our conversation we have with Jason Churchill. I mean, it's just us sitting they're talking. It's like we're not like we don't need to be rolling through a script essentially, we were just sitting there just like shooting the shit essentially for you know, an hour an hour and a half about the Mariners, about life, about baseball, about Kyrie Irving, like you know, that's what good podcasts are. It gets to the point where we want to get where it just feels like you guys are sitting there hanging out with us, like that's it, That's what the best podcast. 01:39:28 Speaker 2: Do. 01:39:28 Speaker 1: You feel like you're sitting there right next to all the other podcast hosts and just hanging out, like listening to them have a conversation. That's all it is, right, So, and that's what we hope to get to this and we'll try and you know, incorporate some some fun things as the season goes along to sort of loosening it up a little bit and had a fun element and things to keep track of, Like I already know that as soon as I said Julio is going under thirty and a half home runs, He's gonna hit thirty one by the All Star break before he goes into the home run derby, and we can keep track, like, yeah, we welcome into this episode, and uh, Julio's home run track or teach is at twenty two and it is June fifteenth. Yeah, I guess I was wrong. 01:40:09 Speaker 2: We'll track some stuff this year, for sure. That's on your Maybe we'll track the Julio home runs on your end, you know, on my end, we'll be tracking Jared Kellnick and Dylan Moore, that's for sure. But yeah, I mean, I think I hope at least through the first four and a half months, there's there's been a decent amount of where people just kind of feel like they're sitting with us and listening to a conversation, because that's what we try to have it be. And hopefully with our guests, it's kind of showed the same thing. And our goal with a lot of these guests is we're trying to get a lot of different perspectives on. I mean, we have somebody like Chris Langan on who knows more pitching than probably ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the entire planet. We have somebody like Jordan Schusterman on who's in the you know, baseball content world, and he's got his own take on the Mariners, similar to how we do who we pump out content, similar to how he does, not at his level, but he's got a fan perspective. And then we have people on like Corey Brock and Ryan divishover the team and they've got their perspectives, and you know what, as time goes on, too, we're gonna start to try to stretch out some of the guests we have too. I mean, we'd love to have as many Mariners people as possible, but we're gonna try to get some guests, you know, just across baseball in general, get some fun interviews, maybe outside of the Mariners world, and keep incorporating it because you know, I think we can do that, and I think it's gonna be interesting stuff. And like you said, with the fun stuff, I know I can't stress it enough, but we're gonna do some cool stuff on our social media accounts when when the season starts again, we're gonna do some on camera stuff around the stadium. I think we're gonna plan to do some fan interviews, fan interviews, some food reviews, a bunch of stuff like that. Like it's been fun through the off season, but I think once baseball starts, we're gonna be able to do that much more content. So hopefully only up from here. 01:41:47 Speaker 1: What's the first thing you're trying tomorrow? I know you're gonna be there tomorrow, so keep keep tuning to our social media accounts. I won't be there for opening day tomorrow. If you're listening to this on Wednesday, I will not be there on opening Day. You will, though, what are you shooting for? 01:42:00 Speaker 2: First? 01:42:02 Speaker 1: Do we have an idea of what our first food review would be? 01:42:06 Speaker 2: I gotta decide. I mean, it's probably got to be one of these new t Mobile Park foods that they're unveiling. I guess the other thing I was thinking about too, is am I going to do a food review on opening day? I was hoping to, you know, hopefully talk to some vans on opening day and get some interviews for some content in that way. But let me put it like this, within the first weekend of games, I will do a food review. And what that first food review is. I mean that Ballard pizza looks pretty good. Although that might be up your alley as somebody who actually grew up in the city of Ballard or neighborhood of Ballard. However, it's classified the cal zone. You know, it's it's called cal cl and then zone, but it's a cal zone. I mean, that looked pretty good. I'm gonna have to weigh my options because you know, I want the first food review to be something interesting. It can't just be I don't know, like a plain hot dog or something. I hope it's something. 01:42:57 Speaker 1: How about the crickets. 01:43:00 Speaker 2: I had one of those ones, never again. My dad was so insistent on trying them. When they unveil them, and I think it was twenty nineteen. We both had one. You know, you kind of talked me into it, even though I'd refuse for like an hour and a half. I had one and we were both like, this is the worst thing I've ever tasted. 01:43:17 Speaker 1: Did you get a leg stuck in your teeth? 01:43:20 Speaker 2: I don't know if I got a leg stuck in my teeth. Just in general, it's it was terrible. Like I know, they tried to have it be this whole thing and their signature dish, but it's what it sounds like, you're eating bugs. Like it wasn't good. 01:43:34 Speaker 1: But from a marketing perspective, genius, because everyone wanted to go eat bugs at a ballpark, which you can't do anywhere. 01:43:40 Speaker 2: Else that that is true. So I think our first food review is going to be something better than the Grasshoppers. But yeah, we're going to do a bunch of fun stuff throughout the season. And also not that I really expect people at all to recognize who we are, but if somehow you're in a Mariner's game and you recognize either one of our faces, you know, stop and say, hey, I mean my whole thing with this is I want to connect with as many Mariner fans as possible, and you know, I love talking to Mariner fans and I know there's a whole community of them out there, so you know, feel free to stop us down or flag us down if you ever see us walking along. You have the concourse a team mobile park or anything like that. So yeah, I mean that was a little shpiel. I just wanted to give on this podcast because you know, it has been fun so far. It's become a major passion of ours and I think it's going to keep going. So I'm looking forward to see to seeing where it can go. But with that and for the final time this off season, that'll just about wrap up this edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. And you guys know by now you want to listen to the full form podcast, you can do so on Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. Full video podcast is on YouTube. If you want to follow us on social media, which one more time you're gonna want to do, especially when the season starts. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, shorts at Marine Layer Pod For TJ Matthewson, this is Lyle Goldstein. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. Talk to you next week. 01:45:36 Speaker 3: Wh