Did the Patriots Overachieve in 2025? // Red Sox Offensive Struggles // Felger Has More ABS Thoughts - 3/31 (Hour 3)

Oh, right, of course, because I should know who that is. I don't care what you think. I'll tell you something to rub me right. The filter in that is a 98.5 to sports hub. Robert, would you describe yourself as relieved or related about this past season's performance, given that you had said how big a struggle it was the last couple of seasons? Well, last season was great. You know, I'm newly married and my wife couldn't believe the difference of winning the way we did last year and how it changed the whole week. And she let Mike Rable know that. And it was an incentive, an extra incentive for him to know. But in all seriousness, you know, I think actually the team way overachieved what any of us thought would happen. And it was wonderful. And winning that championship game in Denver when we have such a past history of difficulty winning in Denver, it was very special and so proud of this team. And most of them are still young. So admitting they weren't that good. Yeah, basically, they weren't as good as the record. Yeah, he said they way overachieved what we expected. Okay, but way overachieved, way overachieved. Okay, so that would you say that then you're a product of what? An easy schedule. Oh, luck. Oh, those things. Well, they might be one in the same actually when you look at it. Yes, they benefited from some very good fortune, one of which was a cream puff schedule. And you think he's acknowledging it there? Yes. So what's your expectation for year two, right? If you win a division, win 14 games. That's what it was, right? Yeah, 14. 14 games. You win 14 games, you win a division, go to the Super Bowl. The next step is obviously championship, right? Like that's where you go from there. You would think. If that's who you are, if you're a 14 win team and a division champion and a Super Bowl participant, when you look ahead, you say expectations, we go all the way. Robert, what are your expectations for next year? Number two, please. What would represent a successful season this year? Because it's going to be tougher sledding, it seems. Yeah, we have a pretty tough, I think the hardest schedule a lot of West Coast travel. You know, my objective every year is we make the playoffs. And as we saw last year, when you're privileged to make the playoffs, anything can happen. Oh, so just make the playoffs. They sound like the Red Sox. Well, so there's two things. I think he's absolutely right and is kind of spitting the truth. I personally think the schedule is a huge factor when you have an easy one and when you have a hard one. It's just a big, big factor. The talent is so evenly spread across that league that things like strength of schedule and travel and things like this are one of the things on the margins that determine your season. And those were one of the things on the margins that determined your season last year. You just don't want to hear it. But it's true. And Robert Kraft acknowledges that when he says way overrated. And he also acknowledges what's facing you this year. You're going to have a tough, tough go of it this year. Never mind the fact everyone guns for you and, you know, you're not sneaking up on anyone in that whole thing. You have everyone's attention now. So you're, you know, every week that says this, your opponent says this team went to the Super Bowl last year. Like that just is an extra thing that you got to fight against. Never mind the teams that you're playing and the road trips that are coming your way. You're going to have a tough time of it next year. I think making the playoffs next year is a worthy goal and would to me constitute a good answer for what they were last year because I didn't get stupid about the thing last year. You were a good team with an easy schedule. You were not a great team. Sorry. You weren't. If you were a great team, you wouldn't be talking about the owner wouldn't be talking about the travel schedule. When you in the middle of Tom Brady's run, were you talking about the travel schedule? Nope. We have a certain expectation because you were a great team. You're not that yet. And that's okay. The only thing that's not okay is if you can't acknowledge it in the middle of an easy schedule, which you couldn't. Obviously, we've been over this. But the owner, I think, just sort of acknowledged the obvious and disagrees with you and how most of you felt for the bouncer last year. I just don't like the idea of letting them use it as any sort of cop out now. Page two is that that, Mas, you are absolutely right. Now you can speak the truth, Robert. I'm glad you do. And you can set your fans straight, which I think some of them need setting. But it's a slippery slope to go from that to, well, what do you want me to do? We're going to have a tough schedule. We overachieve last year. Listen, we overachieve last year and have you seen our schedule? So let's go easy with what you expect from us. IE, there's no reason to ramp up the spending or get over aggressive to put us over the top because if we're being honest people, we really didn't belong there in the first place. That second thing is a dangerous store to open for an owner. Yeah, I just think it's really, you get into that area in any sport. You start talking about, well, you know, we got a freebie this year. No, no, no, no, no, you don't get freebies. It's not allowed unless you're planning to cut ticket prices and add rates and everything else. Because the reason people watch is because they expect to see a winner and you're obligated to put that on the field or on the ice or wherever else every chance you get. So no, and this is why I will say that I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that their off season to date has been a little bit more eventful than what I was expecting. 100% their free agency was better, more aggressive than I would have expected. Yeah, so when they went into the off season, I thought, okay, this doesn't mean you have to make blockbuster moves again, but it doesn't mean you can just sit there on your hands and sign every freaking scrub to some sort of, you know, incentive laden contract and nobody to fill any holes. If you still have holes and you're still building, well, then I expect you to act in a way that makes me believe you filled them. You can't just, you know, accept it and all of a sudden, you know, not attempt to fill the holes. So at least I feel like there was some effort made to address a couple of their needs. It should be more in the draft. There should be a couple more after that and free agency still. So you have to go full throttle to use a term. No, not necessarily, but you can't put it in neutral either. No, you got to build off it. So can we declare as a show maybe expiration date for that term being used by the organization? Which is, I don't want to hear them talking. If they get off to a rough start next year, one in four, one in five, something like that, I don't want to hear anyone from Robert on down to Mike Vable, the coaches, anyone from a Patriot saying, well, you know, last year we kind of defied expectations and no one really expected that. I don't want to hear any of that. You have to build off that. You get off to a rough start, use the schedules and excuse tough. So I just want you to be consistent. I'm more concerned about our listeners and our arena here, Murray, the people we talk to on a daily basis. The fan base. So many of you, so many of you last year said that their success had nothing to do with their schedule. And have you seen the bill schedule? You know, all of that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanted to dismiss the schedule as a reason for their success because you thought they were legitimately that good. Okay. If you feel that way and if they start one in five, you are not allowed to call and say, well, last year was inflated. They weren't really that way. Wait, wait, wait a minute. When they were that, I didn't get that call. You don't get to, you don't, you out there don't get to use that excuse. If that's how it goes this season. Okay. I can take that because there's someone, there's someone that's going to use this if they get off to a rough start the first month, month and a half next year. I don't want to hear it. I never said you stunk. I said you were a good team with an easy schedule. But let's face it, that the fact that you were a good team with an easy schedule means your wind total was inflated. And then that playoff road was an all-time or suck quarterbacks. Okay. So I'm on planet Earth. You weren't that good. You weren't as good as your record would indicate. You weren't as good as your Super Bowl standing would indicate. You weren't. I'm sorry. So next year, if you come back to Earth, I am on the intellectual solid ground. I'm on intellectually solid ground. I've been consistent the whole way. Is your elbow okay, Jimmy? I don't understand why your elbow is twitching all of a sudden. I thought you didn't do that. I thought you didn't praise yourself. I'm not praising myself. I'm just saying I'm being consistent. You weren't as good as you thought you were last year. So when you come back to Earth this year, there's the reason. Because you're playing in California and you're playing good teams. And this is going to come back to Roost. You out there, you have to be consistent. You told me the Patriots were really that good last year. So if they get off to a bad starter, they're a bad team this year, then you got to hammer them. Or you got to tell me that they failed. Right? Yes, of course. I'm just trying to keep it consistent, Jimmy. I'm just trying to get some sort of realism from the people before we launch into this next thing. That's not going to happen. No, that's totally fair. The other part of it for me too is the schedule is tougher. And I guess now I'm speaking more about ownership again. So then improve the roster. Like you have that power. Yes, no, that's, and don't let the owners off the hook. Their mindset should be we're always trying to get better. Well, we're going to have a tougher schedule. Well, they built making improvements. That's right. Belichick to his credit actually did some of that. Not always. Well, you would basis, you were trying to build the roster based on the opponent's coming. Yeah, like the year 2014 when they went to the Super Bowl, that was the off season. They got Rivas and Browner because they were going to play a bunch of teams that could throw. So they had quarterbacks and receivers and they said, we're going to go out and build our secondary. So Bill planned for that kind of stuff. They got to do the same thing. And I happened to believe in variable as a coach. Anything less than double digit wins to me is a disappointment. They should get 10. Ideally, I think it should be 11. I'll give them just the playoffs, whatever that takes. Be a playoff team. I want 10 wins. If they have just be a playoff team, I'm good with that. They have the quarterback. They have the coach. It's in the second year of the rebuild. So those two off seasons to put new players on the roster. And I recognize that they're going to have a harder schedule. 10 wins. 10 and 7 is not asking too much. 9 and 8, please. 500. You can take 500 and blow it out your ears. Before the games were even played, make sure this deal is closed with AJ Brown. You know, again, build off this. You defied expectations last year. You did go to a Super Bowl, but now justify it. Make sure you do what needs to be done so you can continue to be a good, solid playoff. I guess the bottom line is here is we can say this. The owner, like, let's be careful. Don't give yourself some sort of built-in excuse. Agreed. It's your job to improve the team and invest in it. And that's where it should be. All right. I swear to you, right to your phones after Big Jim Murray smiles and we hear from a word from our sponsors. Now, more of Felger & Merge on the Sports Hub. Mike, Robert said yesterday he felt that you guys overachieved last year. Do you agree with that? We had to talk to Robert about that. Him and I had a really good conversation. He said it's going to be a tougher schedule on a tougher road and playoffs remain the goal. What do you look at this season, obviously? The championships will remain the goal. They will never change. I appreciate Robert's support, but we want to win the division. We want to host playoff games and we want to compete for championships. And so we got a taste of that. We saw what that looked like. We saw the environment that it created to be able to play those playoff games at home, which was unbelievable and so much fun. I just watched the reactions. I watched the videos. That's the part that I really didn't get to appreciate coaching a game is seeing the fan videos. The videos from the fans and that perspective. We'll play whoever we have to play. We understand what this looks like. We're going to play the division winner schedule and that's how it goes. Everything about this league is hard. 6177790985. Back to your phones as promised. Ron in Medford. Go ahead, Ron. Yeah, guys, you know what? I know it's automatic that if you get an elite quarterback, obviously you got to pay this guy. But beyond the quarterback, there's no other position on the field with the way the rules are now that if you get a guy you consider to be an elite corner, you've got to keep him. And why would you ever trade over draft picks? Just try and find the guy you got, especially in today's NFL where you can't breathe on a pro. You can't breathe on a receiver and this kid is showing what he can do. Well, I think you made a case for why not to pay him? If you can't breathe on the guy, you can't play tight man-to-man press coverage. You just got to play zone and keep your hands off him. What's the point of paying Daryl Rivas and Browner and guys like that? You can't mug the receiver. You can't play tight man-to-man coverage. I definitely would pay him. 100%. But as I said earlier, if they're going to go down this road of screwing around with the contract and him not showing up and this back and forth that's going to develop subtly through the media and all of this, I'd rather them trade him for two first round picks. And if you're going to play zone, would you rather have a zone corner or two first round picks? Two first round picks. Yeah, if they're going to do that, then probably the two first round picks. My only answer, my only connery would be this. Don't you think in the playoffs they kind of put the whistles away a little bit? Yes, they do, man. And I think that as the season went in and as I think Christian Zalas showed who he was more and more the deeper they went. Yeah, so like, you know, will you get the value out of that guy the first 13 weeks, 12 weeks of the season? Probably not. Can you get him in the final six of the regular season and then the playoffs, especially the playoffs? Hell yeah. And I would tell you that I think the playoffs alone would be worth it. He's not Patrick's or Tan, but he's one of the top four or five corners in the league. Again, I'd prefer they keep him. But to your point, Mike, if this is going to get ugly and there's going to be residual bad blood, like they really got to read this. And if it's going to go down that road, they might want to consider trading them. We've got Glenn in New Orleans on the Red Sox. Yes, Glenn. Yeah, last night, listening to the Astros telecast, Todd Callis said that since MLB began playing games in March, the Red Sox are 8 and 16. That's the worst record in MLB. Cora never has the guys ready to start on opening day. He thinks opening day is May 1st and April is spring training for the regular guys who he thinks are going to post 140 games a year. Who's been the lone constant through all of the bad base running, the bad defense, runners in scoring position over the last five or six years? It's Alex Cora. There needs to be a new voice and nothing is going to change with him as the manager. Glenn, thanks for the call. He's not wrong about the slow starts. One in three this year. One in three last year. Two in two and 24. Two in two and 23. One in three in 2022. One in three 2021. Where'd you come up with that so quick? Uh, sock scoop on Twitter. I saw it get tweeted a little just a little while ago. How about their overall April record before May 1st? I'm just curious. Uh, Matt, your thoughts? Is that Alex Cora or is that the organization? I think it's both and it's not wrong to bring up Cora in this case and I'll tell you why. Because I think Cora operates with a long term mentality in every season. Most managers do. I think it's worse here though because of the success they had when Cora was a player. That's how Theo and Frank Kona managed it, but they were stacked. Those teams were loaded. They had so much freaking talent, they could, you know, basically, Before the soft opening. Yes, yes. And even then it wasn't a soft opening because they were so loaded they would win games on talent alone. You know, so they could go through in April and end up 13 and 12. You know, it'd be fine because at some point they were going to win 22 out of 30. So you just wanted April? Sure. Uh, last year, 16 and 11, 2024, 15 and 11, 23, 15 and 13, 2022, 9, 13, 17 and 10 in 2021. It's really the first two weeks because we went through this last year too. Yeah. Once they get into the third or fourth week, they start playing better, but the beginning has been brutal. So, you know, I'd want to give some sort of nod to the organization as well or some sort of blame to the organization as well. They're just an organization that does not focus on fundamentals. We've been over this, you know, a guy like Roman Anthony comes up here to the big leagues and you have to instruct him how to take a knee on a ground or in the outfield when he gets here because you weren't doing it previously. And so I don't know, does that impact how they start when it's not just as warm or weather the balls flying out, everyone's comfortable. You guys sort of played a little more baseball to start the year. I don't know. I mean, does it speak to that? Yeah, probably. They just don't spend enough time teaching them the game. They don't want to play the game. Yeah. And then this year when you add in the fact they don't have a ton of power, now you're not scoring because you can't play. This gets back to that whole run prevention thing. If you're going to play that way, you better do the little things and this team doesn't. Paul and Charlestown. Yes, Paul. You guys, next week, Tuesday, Tiger Woods has to show up at the champions' dinner for the Masters. It's like they're Super Bowl. It's Super Bowl week for them. I just wonder, you're going to look at Jack Nicklaus, Gary Playa, what do you say? Hey, Tiger, you flipped it on the car? You know? You're going to send him at the kids' table? You know that? You're going to send him? He's not the first, Paul. I mean, Dustin Johnson doesn't come in there with exactly a clean nose. No, he doesn't. I wonder if that room is more forgiving than others. Probably. I mean, not a guy like Gary Playa or Jack Nicklaus. Those guys are kind of, or Tom Watson. Those are guys kind of a-holes. But the younger guys, I don't know. I don't know if they, that's not their issue. Did you see any of the Photoshop jobs that were on Twitter? Did you see any of those? Maybe. I mean, some, I've seen some things. Well, it's a photo of someone fitting Tiger with the green jacket, but instead they turned it into an orange jumpsuit. So there was stuff like that. So, you know. I mean, can Phil Mickelson bust his balls at that day? Yeah, exactly. There's plenty of dirt in that room. He had Mickelson to go on a bend. Picture Murray, get you updated. We come back with more at 617-779-098. Boston's best sports talk. You can count on it. A tool, a plus a tool is a fact. Me sento papatiado, perché ero, Felger and Maz, Leudancer. Durbin 0 for one. Ground ball to short. Correa 12-2, that's one out of first double play. And that is beginning to get very old. Fourth game. Caleb Durbin grounds into a double play and he says what? Durbin 0 for one. Ground ball to short. Correa 12-2, that's one out of first double play. And that is beginning to get very old. So we began the show with that because when he said that, that comment to me in the middle of the game was stark. I mean, again, fifth inning game four. I mean, not the middle of August. Nothing should really be getting old by that point. But Caleb Durbin has sucked so bad that I think, oh, Brian was saying that about Durbin. Now that feels 14-14. That feels for a team broadcaster to pile on a player like that so early in the season, if at all ever, is certainly rare. But it's just the way it felt to me. And others called in early in the day and said, no, he's just talking about the offense in general and the runners left on base. Or he's talking about the number of double plays that they've grounded into. They've grounded a bunch of double plays this year. So he's just talking generically about that. I said, I don't know. That felt sort of in the moment. I can't look at this guy anymore. That's what it felt like to me. And then I said, I wonder if the manager feels the same way, because the next time Caleb Durbin came up to bat, he was actually on the bench and they pinch hit form with Masataka Yoshida. To which I said, well, I wondered if the manager was saying the exact same thing that Dave or Brian was, which is this is beginning to get really old. Four games into the year. Three and a half games into the year. Well, the lineup's up for tonight and Caleb Durbin has been benched. For Montessario, the other scrub brewer that you got for Kyle Harrison, who also Montessario also hits right handed. And last night you could say, well, at least Masataka Yoshida bats left versus Durbin right. And you could make the matchup claim that, okay, Cora was playing a left-right thing. What's the answer today? That Durbin stinks. That's the answer. So when O'Brien said this is getting real old, that's beginning to get very old. I think that's the way the manager felt as well. Yeah, look, the guys clearly screwing himself into the ground. Over 14, only two balls out of the infield the entire year. So that that stat is amazing. Two balls out of the infield and 14 at bats. And if you watch it, you can understand why he's overmatched. He can't get to it. They used to say all the time, if you get to the ball early, you'll pop it up. If you get to it late, you'll ground out. You know, it's sort of a really generic, you know, I mean, there's a lot of variables there. But even so, it tells me he's just not getting to it. He can't get, he's getting tied up on everything, can't hit it with any authority. I was trying to look up his average exit velocity. I bet you he couldn't get a speeding ticket right now. And I will tell you the insult to injury is Kyle Harrison, the pitcher, one of the two left-handed pitchers you sent to the Brewers for Caleb Durbin. Look pretty good last night in his Brewers debut. It's not his major league debut, but he threw five, five innings, one run allowed, eight strikeouts. Look pretty good. I watched it. I'm not going to tell you that he's Steve Carlton or anything, but he throws in the mid-90s. He's got good control. He's working on his secondary stuff. He's decent sized guys like 6'2", 2'20", something like that, who throws relatively hard. And like I mentioned, his good control. He's only 24 years old and he's cheap as hell. And I just, I just, I'll ask again, why would the Red Sox move on from that? Even if they feel it's a little redundant, they've got some good young arms between Connolly Early and Peyton Tolle and Brian Bayo is still here. Maybe they felt Harrison was blocked, but there was no, there's no harm in keeping them in the fold to see how that all shakes out. He wasn't costing you anything. He was in the minor leagues for you and he's got a nothing contract and he's got plenty of service time left. And there's no harm in keeping that guy in your system to see if the guys ahead of him stay healthy and or are as good as you think. Yet you've got to trade him for a guy with really no ceiling and Caleb Durbin. I just don't understand what they were thinking there. Or it really makes me question their judgment. It's the second time they've done this with the Brewers. The Red Sox handed us Quinn Priestor last year, 13-3 with a low 3 ERA on a team that won the most games in baseball. And not that the Brewers are some sort of championship team or Quinn Priestor is some sort of championship. He's not. He's a solid major league starter that cost the Brewers nothing. You just gave him to us. And now you did it again with this Harrison kid who has more upside. He does throws harder, he's got better stuff. He's from the left side, younger, all of it. All for a guy with really no ceiling and Caleb Durbin. And four games in, you're already seeing it. He's already on the bench. Yikes. Yeah, they get desperate. They lost out on the breakman thing. So they scrambled to sign Suarez because they had to spend the money somehow was earmarked. So they did this with John Lackey years ago too. They ran out and they spent it on a pitcher instead of a hitter. And then they traded for a third baseman. They thought they could squeeze something out of and he doesn't have a lot of ability. I mean, it's really though. This one to me, this is as bad an acquisition in terms of talent. Now he might end up, you know, getting, he might finish at 270 where he did a year ago. I have no idea. But the upside on this guy, this guy doesn't have much talent. There's just no ceiling on this player. No, none, none. Like this is, this guy is, I said yesterday, he's a four-ray player. And Kyle Harrison has some ceiling. Yeah. He's an NL central player. He's, this is what he is. He's a guy that should be playing in that division. It's the lower half of the major leagues. That's where he belongs. And for him to be playing third base in the American league, East, whether it's from Boston, New York, Toronto, or even Baltimore is a freaking joke. You just question their judgment. You know, both their, I don't know their ability to assess the talent, but why they're doing the things that they're doing. Why are these guys here? You know, what, why is Ranger Sora is here? He's here because you had some money to spend and you struck out on all the bats. You didn't want to overpay for the offense. So at the very end you said, well, we got to come back with something. And so you just gave it to one of the pitchers that was left on the market. And that's why Ranger Soros is here. Sonny Gray is here because the Cardinals agreed to swallow some money. And so he was a good deal. And he follows in this long line that caller had that great list of guys like Garrett Richards, Garrett Richards, Paxton, Lucas Geolito, Walker Bueller. These veteran guys, Sandeval, who are damaged goods and therefore come to you on good contracts. And you just take a shot because they're short term deals for not a lot of money and low risk. So, you know, in the aggregate sort of low risk things. They're not high end contracts. And so Sonny Gray is just in the long line of these sort of flyers that you're taking. But he's only here because the Cardinals swallowed money. If you had to take on his full contract, he wouldn't be here. Caleb Durbin is here. Why? Why again? So are you chasing your tail on Devers to Bregman? And you had to come up with a real answer at third base to sell your fans. So you say, oh, well, here's a young guy who was third in the NL rookie of the year voting. And, you know, that's how we'll explain it to our fans. And we got a younger, better version coming of those guys. And so you trade a good young left handed pitcher with upside. For a guy who if you just watched them for five minutes, you'd see is kind of limited. And so like the way they built this roster mass should shake your confidence in where they're going. Because they're not making baseball evaluations or making contractual evaluations in analytics evaluations. They look the analytics guys, all they do is take the numbers and go, oh, where is the end tap potential? Let's see. He hits the ball soft, but I don't think Durbin has any. Well, the only thing is is apparently you didn't hear this, maybe not. Millican on Friday said that they got him into the organization in part because they think they can increase his bat speed through drive line. Oh, great. Good gracious. Yeah. Millican mentioned it on Friday. In fact, I'll pull that cut tonight. We can play it tomorrow. Millican said it on Friday that they want to get him into drive line. They think they can increase his bat speed and get more home runs out of them. So rather than getting a good player, we bring in a guy that's an experiment. Bingo. So this is what they do, Murray, is they find the guy where they say, where is the room for growth? And oh, we can get another 3% out of his, you know, potential out of his home run power. If we do this, let's get him into the operation and see what we can get out of him. And if his 11 home runs can turn into 18, then we're good. And in our ballpark, if he hits fly balls that are 316 feet, then we're good. That's a home run. That's how they do it. It's the bare minimum. They look at where the, you know, the cutoffs are and say, you know, the cutoff is at 320 feet. We got to get him to 321 and then they'll go out and get him. That's the whole logic. But if you watch the guy play, you look at the bat speed, you're like, he looks like he's swinging a freaking tree trunk. Like he's got a great oak in his hands. It's slow. You're off season. Johan Aviado, 9 e-R-A, Ranger Suarez, 8.31 e-R-A, Sonny Gray, 6.75 e-R-A. Caleb Durbin, 0 for 14, 12 balls, failed to get out of the infield. Only two balls have been hit out of the infield the entire year with Caleb Durbin. And Wilson Contreras, 1 for 12. There's your off season so far. And that final ground into double play last night by Caleb Durbin. I felt it. I felt it in that call from Dave O'Brien. Enough. I can't look, I can't look at this anymore. Said Alex Cora. And so the other bum from Milwaukee's in there tonight. Let's see how that goes. There's your red. It sure is. Take a seat. He has not, he didn't see another at bat last night and is on the bench for tonight. So there's a Red Sox reset for you back to your phones. I promise 6177790985. And real quick, my latest ABS outrage comes your way right after this. I want to get to the gossip. Everything you said is right. What's happening that was this. And in this case, it's the same umpire C.B. Buckner. One of the things I would say we should do with this. And I've always thought this. Is the guys who are worse at calling balls and strikes, we should have relegation. They shouldn't stop being umpires, but they should just do first, second and third base. Like the guys who are best at calling balls and strikes should call them more often. Baseball, if you're a manager, your job is to put your guys in position to succeed. If we're putting umpires who are the worst ball strike callers behind the plate, we're putting them in position to potentially be embarrassed. You know, let's not do that. Let's put the guys who are best at this behind the plate most often. I agree with that. I think it's one of the things I like about ABS and overall I'm against it. Overall I am anti-ABS, but there are some good qualities to it. And if it shines the light on truly bad umpires, truly bad umpires like C.B. Buckner, and that leads to improving the umpiring, then of course I would be for that. If that gets C.B. Buckner out from behind home plate, then that's a positive. I'll take that. And that's Joel Sherman's idea that we can really track it. The public tracks it now. I mean privately they've been tracking it for years with the Quest system. So the umpires have the data already on how they are on balls and strikes, and they're graded accordingly and all of that. But now that it's sort of been, there's a light shown on it publicly, that it ramps up the pressure on the truly bad umpires, and they get reassigned or just don't give them the dish. I'm all for that. That makes sense right now. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. I love Joel's idea. Now you know, they say and it makes sense that the day behind the plate is more of a grind, right? You're on every pitch, like you're focused on every pitch. So you might want to say, you know, I don't know, you're going to have three guys on every crew that can work the plate. The fourth guy, if it goes a four gamer, doesn't necessarily have to do the plate. So ideally, you know, I'm not telling you you can't work two days in a row, but to do a whole series behind the plates, probably a bit of a grind. So, but whatever, that's all workable. I'm not looking for excuses to not make it work. I love the idea of what that he offered. As long as it really shames the C.B. Buckner's of the world, because that's been very entertaining, and that can make the umpiring better. See, he missed 28% of the strikes in that game. So he's truly bad. The problem is you all mostly treat every blown call is like, ah, you suck. When it's ridiculous what they're asking these umpires to do. And I spent a lot of time yesterday and last week, I'm not going to repeat it, but the way they measure the strike zone now is different. It's no longer at the letters. It's no longer at the knees. It's a predetermined measurement taken in spring training. These guys standing upright without cleats 30 and 30. I'm sorry, 53.5% of your body height at the top end, 27% at the low end of your specific height in bare feet, standing straight up in a morning in February. That's ridiculous that the umpire has to figure out where the 53.5% line is on your torso and the 27% line is around your knees. That's preposterous. Okay, so it's not a blown call to call a strike at the knees. That happens to be at 26.5% of your body height. That's not a blown call. And furthermore, in all my reading on this, this is another thing I didn't realize. According to Jeff Passon and among others, that do you know that there is a margin of error built into the system? The system can detect the accuracy of the pitch to 1-6th of an inch. 1-6th of an inch according to the league. Heading into last night, there were at least a dozen challenges that were awarded on pitches that fell within the margin of error. Less than that, right. Which is telling you it might have been actually a strike. It might have been wrong. So the Hawkeye is guessing at 1-6th of an inch or less. The Hawkeye is guessing just like the umpire is. Exactly right. This is what I was saying the other day. What's the margin of error on the machine? 1-6th of an inch. And so like for example, the Roman Anthony won that he got all this credit for. That was I guess 0.9 of an inch. So that would have been outside the margin of error. What 1-6 is 0.1. 0.17. Okay. Rounded off. There have been a bunch of calls. We've seen it. Oh yeah, that are just 0.1. Yes, yeah, there was one the other night. Yeah. If it's 0.1, that's within the margin of error. Meaning the machine doesn't know either. Correct. In fact, I think it was the one that Anthony got wrong on over the weekend was 0.1. That was their last challenge? Yeah, I think it was 0.1. So what are we doing on the really close ones? The robots guessing too? And that's taken up time out of my day. See, but again, people believe the machine and they don't yell at the machine, but they yell at the ump when it's a pitch that's that close. 1-6th of an inch. And there's no guarantee the machine's right either. So these pitches that are truly on the edge, everybody's guessing, but you feel better that they go to the machine. Well, the machine's not a huffy prick when like, you know, it's not right. The machine's not going to be like, I'm getting challenged. Well, that's true. But be that as it may. It's taken the games are getting longer. Time of games going back up, folks. I keep giving you these numbers. Yeah, that's definitely not a great sign. The numbers are going. The time of game are going back up. And your, your belief that the machine is always right is just that bothers me as much as anything. This machine is guessing on the really close ones too. But we're going to turn it over to it and then like call these umpires a bunch of bums. No, you missed the call. The computer as it could have been just as wrong as the umpire, it turns out only 1-6th of an inch. That's it. That's what we're doing. So that's my ABS outrage of the day. Silly, right? I don't need this. I don't need this. If the machine's going to guess too, what is the point? And it just goes back to the thing I've been telling you for years and I'm right. It doesn't work. Replay doesn't work. At the end of the day, it doesn't work. You just want to believe, no, no, you. Yeah, yeah. People just want to believe it works. They want, they want something there that they think is accurate and they can live with. They can't live with the uncertainty. The machine doesn't talk back. And I like watching these bums get shamed. These clips every night on the Internet have been fantastic. You see them rip off their mask. Decided to challenge the play. Put it up. I don't feel the umpires have done that. There's been a little of it. Buckner wasn't happy. He's a special case. I take him out. You're justified in everything you say about a guy like CB Buckner. I'm not talking about him. Again, I've watched two. I was watching the Red Sox and the guy called the bruise game was like excellent last night. He challenged only two or three times the entire game by both teams and all of them, I think were point one or something. They were right there. It's like, what are we doing? This guy's got command of the zone. Everyone's fine. Now we're just playing with the we're just playing with ourselves. We're just playing with the new toy to play with the new toy and it's taking up time. It's like he has with his apps. Yeah, totally is what it is. My apps. But one six of an inch is like, boy, you sure you sure proud of yourself and your new machine. One six of an inch is not that is not that accurate. It's the machine is guessing to on a lot of these pitches. It turns out. Yes, absolutely. Back your phones on everything. I promise 90 quick seconds for an update. No commercials. 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