Transcription
The Yankees imploding in the fifth inning of the deciding game—turned out to be the deciding game five of the World Series—they're up 5-nothing, and uh, I think they allow all five runs were unearned. They allowed—they allowed actually six runs in the inning, all unearned. Aaron Judge, they—I let up a single five in the inning. They went up 6-5 later and then gave up two in the eighth. Okay, all unearned though. The leadoff single by uh, Kiki Hernandez, right? Y and then from there it was all just butchery. Uh, Judge drops an absolute easy line drive right to him. He closed his glove before the—before the ball got in there. It was right at his belly button. Couldn't—couldn't catch it. As easy as it gets. Next batter, grounder to the shortstop, Volpe. Vul—yeah, Anthony Volpe, Vulpi. Uh, he's got the runner at third dead to right, spiked it, bounces the ball. Runner safe. Now the bases are loaded. Mookie Betts hits a little—and so now bases loaded, nobody out. Gerrit Cole gets back-to-back strikeouts. Yep, on eight pitches. BS, including Otani. Yep. Okay, so the—the Yankees kick the ball all over the place, load the bases with nobody out, and Cole nuts up. Strikeout, strikeout, including Otani, and then he gets Betts to hit a little spinball down the—down the first baseline. Except Cole then doesn't cover first base. And then we left out the Freeman double. Freeman doubles. Tasar Hernandez doubles or they had RBIs, I can't remember, doubles or singles, but her—whatever. Back-to-back RBIs. 5-5. Buan—man, your thoughts? Pats—CR—pants crapping of epic proportion. Epic, as historic a meltdown as you will ever see. Complete, total, 100% choke job. Absolute choke job. Judge was peeking out of his eye to see where the base runner was, missed the ball. Volpi saw Hernandez get in there, rushed it, spiked it into the ground. Sneaky easy play. It was—it was, they said on the broadcast, a difficult play. No, it wasn't. I mean, he's going towards the back. It's—I guess it's unusual for a shortstop to throw to third base like that. Doesn't happen very often, but it's from me to you, it's like it was even shorter than a second baseman's throw. But Ma and I were talking about it off here, and they mentioned in the broadcast, you've got to give some credit to a guy I can't stand, but Kiki Hernandez made that—made Volpe's life difficult with the way he kind of rounded a little bit, and I think he made that throw like panicky for Volpe, and he screwed it up. I mean, if you watch it right before he gets to third, like maybe 15-20 feet, he purposely gets in the way, he rounds it out a little bit and turns this way just to make it harder for him to throw to the bag. Still had it. He had a lane, absolutely he did. And he could always throw it to the coach's box side, you know, foul territory side and make it easier on the third baseman that way. He spiked it. He panicked. He panicked. Judge, I think got lazy and took his eye off it. Volpi panicked, and Cole had his head up his ass. Would Cole have beaten Betts to the bag if he was running full speed? It have been close. Okay, so I—cuz I went back and looked at it, you got to go to first. Okay, he—he gagged. I'm not sure he would have beat him. It would have been close. Boy, was Rizzo playing deep. He was. Why was he playing so deep? Uh, probably to—you didn't need to hold the runner. I get it, bases loaded, but probably to avoid a ball shooting down the line and take away a double. Okay, opposite field. I know, I'm with you. You know what I mean? Like he didn't make up a rush to go to—to first either. But what Cole did there was—what I'm convinced what happened there is Cole was caught in the moment, was like, I got out of it. I'm ready to—and jump over the line and go into the dugout. And he just froze. My mouth was agape. I—this was—you're right, this is Mount Rushmore of meltdowns. It's up there with the '86 Red Sox, Seahawks, Malcolm Butler. This was Altimer. I couldn't believe it. I—I was like, holy crap, he nutted it up, he got out of it, and then they flashed to him. No, you got it, cuz he wanted to—I got out of it and jump over the line and go into the dugout, celebrate with the boys. I got of this mess. And then you knew what was going to happen after that. And that's where—as much as I dump on baseball, baseball in those moments in the postseason, nothing better, cuz when the pants crapping starts, oh, it's a—it is a chocolate waterfall afterwards. It really—you knew that the implosion was coming after they Eed that up at first base. It is—it's a fudge fountain. No, no, but between—if you're flipping back and forth between the Pacers at the end of that game and the Yankees in the fifth inning, Hershey Highway. Oh, totally 100% again. It was like there was some sort of stomach ailment in my cable system. Everybody—whatever channel they turned to, that somebody was crapping and said, I'll go to one channel, somebody's crapping their pants. I'll go to another channel, somebody's crapping their pants. You start to wonder if something's wrong with the feed. And so this is where I also get on their dopey manager, who should have been fired two years ago anyway, in um, Aaron Boone. So they were right to get on him in the broadcast too, where before he's giving up those extra hits to get the game tied, he needed to go talk to Cole when—but the—when—so this I don't get now. I—the time to—the time you would have done it after the mess at first base, go talk to him and be like, hey, we good? Oh yeah, okay. That would have been the time. So—and Verducci actually said this during the broadcast. So what am I saying? Yes. No. That obviously would have been the time. They should have used a mound visit at that point to slow it down, like that point. Yes. You don't do it when he's, you know, okay, bases loaded. I would say bases loaded before uh, who was before Otani? He struck out two. Lux—kin—Lux. Okay, so like there when Volpe throws it into the crapper, he didn't do it, but then he struck out the next two guys. No, it's after the first. I'm—I'm not coming out there, but you're right. You're right. You're right. He could—he should slowed him down, and he had the chalky face and the sweat on him too. You could tell like—and yeah, Verducci's like, well, why—what—what's he doing there? He's just like letting them hang out to dry. He's on the mound for 17 minutes. Go talk to him, settle everything down. I couldn't believe it. It was ghoulish. It really was. On the eve of Halloween, I was like, this—and I know that of course as Red Sox fans, why wouldn't you enjoy this, but I was like, this is wow, what a meltdown that was. Unreal. And there's nowhere to hide. Right. Right. Cuz it's—you can feel the panic. Well, and it's one thing about the sport that Mike, you've said this a million times, it's an individual sport disguised as a team sport, and the fact is—but we all know who's making the mistake. You know, it's not like you don't know the blocking assignment or someone where ran a bad route or—no, there's nowhere to hide. Judge, Volpi, Cole—what mistakes. And I think Cole's was the worst. The other two had a physical element to it, so it was, you know, Judge just dropped the ball. Volpe spiked it, you know, he was tight. I don't think there's any question. And I—this is so obvious, it goes without saying. Derek Jeter makes that play in his freaking sleep. He shoots it out of his ass. He throws it left-handed and gets it there better than Volpe does, but Volpe was terrified. So that's what it was. It was fear. It was fear of making a mistake. And then the Cole thing, I'm with Murray, because to his credit, Smoltz called it. Smoltz said after he struck out Otani, Smoltz said of Cole, this is where it's dangerous, cuz now you think you're basically out of it. All you got to do is get a popup or a ground ball, and you let up. You can't let up. You got to finish it. And on the grounder, Ver—he let up. He thought he's going to get this step in the bag and that's it. And this is sort of related. Rizzo looks a little fat to me. He's had some injuries. I'm serious. The broken fingers too, right? So he hasn't been able to play. I—so he's out of shape or something. So he just doesn't look like he usually looks. I'm not picking on him for it. I'm just—I think there's a reason. But I think that's part of the—the reason, like he couldn't run to the bag. He just looks a little plump. I'm serious. It's okay to call a professional athlete out. I know it is, but I have respect for him as a competitor too. I think he's a good competitor. So there's something—even it before that happened, looking at him in the batter's box, I was looking at him, he looks a little chubby. What happened to him? And I thought it's got to be related to his injury and not playing or he—he looks a little out of shape. I can't help just going back to Mookie Betts. I—so I'm sure—I'm sure Freeman was the World Series MVP. Yes. Uh, but Betts had himself a good postseason. He was a factor in this postseason. So that one thing, if you still wanted to hold out anything about what the Red Sox did there, you could always say, well, Betts has never really only won in the co-year, and he didn't do anything, and he's been a really bad postseason player. Not anymore, fella. He had two home runs in the DS, in the LCS. He was a monster. He hit .346 with a—1.188 OPS, nine RBIs, two home runs, 19 total bases in the LCS. Nine—nine runs scored in the World Series. Five hits. Respectable hitting. A .278. Scored four runs, four RBIs, including the game-winning RBI in the seventh inning, sac fly brought in the winning run to win him the series. He had 18 RBIs total in the postseason. Drew 11 walks. He was legit. Big factor in their win. He was. And the—the final at-bat was just a good situational at—I mean, it's a guy who knew what the situation called for. Game was tied. He came up with a man on third, less than two outs. First pitch was a fastball. He hit a deep fly to center. It's all you have to do. Keep it simple. Just situational at-bat. You don't have to hit it out of the ballpark. Like, obviously you want to make good contact, but he needed a fly ball, and he got a deep fly ball. It's the second time he did it in the series. Eight-time All-Star, League MVP, three-time World Series champion. Did you know, Red Sox fans, no active ball player has more World Series championships than Mookie Betts? He is then, by definition, the winningest player in Major League Baseball. And you didn't want to pay him? Who would want that? Uh, that's the most damning statistic too. Uh, active—so the most champ—most active championships in Major League Baseball, Mookie Betts. Uh, email of ours, uh, Jason, frequent emailer, usually a hate emailer, sends something that was actually kind of helpful. He went back and found a Tom Werner interview after the Mookie Betts trade and tell me how these—these comments aged. He uh, links to a Chris Catillo story in MassLive two days after former Red Sox star Mookie Betts signed a 12-year, $365 million extension with the Dodgers. Red Sox chairman Tom Werner said it was too early to lament the fact that boss Austin was unable to sign Betts before trading him to LA. Quote, "It's always difficult to trade a talented player of Mookie's caliber, but let's revisit this conversation in 12 years," Werner said on WEEI's Ordway, Merloni, and Fauria show. "Hopefully, you—meaning the host and I—will still be here. That's a very, very long-term deal for a team to swallow. You guys know as well as I do that the history of long-term deals is checkered at best. We made what we thought was a generous offer, but for us, it's time to turn the page. One thing that I've stressed, and I don't think it's been stressed enough," said Warner, "is that year in year out we are one of the highest payrolls in baseball. We're going to deploy that money in other ways. We've made some great decisions over the years. We've made some decisions that I regret. I think that given our choices and given Mookie wanted to test free agency, I think we got an outstanding player for hopefully longer than six years, but six years in Alex Verdugo," he said. Finally, on this, when people are partying in Los Angeles, I just want to remind Los Angeles, because I come from Los Angeles and I spend the winters here or there, that in the past 20 years Los Angeles has won zero World Series championships and the Red Sox have won four. How have all those comments aged, as you would say? Uh, badly. How long did they have Verdugo for? Oh God, three years maybe? Okay. Pumping up that we'd have Alex Verdugo for six. They've only had him for three before they blew him out of here. Might have been four. Want to remind you that uh, we are one of the highest payrolls in baseball and we're going to deploy that money in other ways. Uh, four years later they no longer are anywhere close to the highest payrolls in baseball. And we now know how they've deployed. When he said, "We're going to deploy that money in other ways," we now know how: the PGA Tour, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and a kitty to buy an NBA team. Never mind probably a center back for Liverpool. We now know how they've deployed the money. If I were Warner, I would never open my mouth again. And that comment, "Let's revisit this conversation in 12 years," what a douchy, disingenuous comment. In 12 years, everyone knows when you sign one of those contracts, no one's banking on years 10, 11, and 12, or 8 and 10. Did he sign for 12 years, Betts? He did. Okay. Everyone knows that by the time you get to 10, 11, and 12, that's dead money. Everyone assumes it. That's not what you're doing. So to say, "Let's revisit this in 12 years," douchebag. That's a douchy comment, and he knows it. Big time. It's not how any of those things are sort of judged. But let's judge it well again. Four years later, uh, this was uh, July of 2020. Here we are, four and a—four years in change later. Dodgers have won two. You've won none. You no longer have the highest payrolls in baseball, not even close. And where have you deployed that money? Certainly not—not back into your baseball team. Maybe your other holdings, but not your baseball team. And you get Verdugo back for six years. Again, I can't remember how long he lasted. It wasn't six. Well, it was four. And the other thing he says it like that'd be a good thing. Like, as it turned out, Verdugo was a complete waste of time. They—they really—they got nothing out of that trade. We have Verdugo for six years. Thank God it was only four. Oh my God. Uh, I think we got an outstanding player for hopefully longer than six years, but six years in Alex Verdugo. Hopefully for longer than six years. Hopefully—hopefully less. Hopefully for longer than six years. So like, good God. He was the final out of the World Series too, as it turned out. So that to me—I still look at that—I still look at Mookie Betts post-Red Sox, what the Dodgers are, what you are, what you got fed at the time, what it's turned out to be, how the Red Sox promised or told you they'd spend that money in other ways, and it turns out they have just—not have anything to do with the Red Sox. They've put it elsewhere, and you're sitting here with your proverbial schmear in your hand with an increasingly lower payroll team that's nowhere near the level of where Mookie Betts went. Mookie Betts has turned into the ultimate winner in Major League Baseball, the winningest player in Major League Baseball, the only active player with three World Championships to his resume. He's getting better as a postseason player. He posted this year in the postseason was—is a factor in them winning another championship, and you watch him, you look at him, and it's a different guy. Someone who enjoys life, the game, is a standard bearer, a leader, face of the franchise, and uh, well, you didn't want him. He might be the best all-around player in the game. And again, I'm just looking at the OPS leaders since he went to LA: Judge, Otani, Stott, Alvarez, Yordan Alvarez with Houston, Bryce Harper, Freddy Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr. Basically, all those guys are—the majority of them are DH types or, you know, average defenders at best. Otani and—and Betts to me are probably the two best players on the list. Like, what a mistake. If you like that clip, check out more videos from Felger and Mazz here. For more Red Sox analysis and opinion, hit this playlist. And for all the latest from the Sports Hub, download the app at 985thesportshub.com.