I thought the chat with Molly Knight was great and I look forward to more of the Molly and Joe Show. It highlighted some great points about the lockout I wasn't aware of.
Love how you avoided saying “Welcome” or “Thank you” to Molly at the beginning and end of the podcast. Well done, you know we were all listening for it.
As for the content - I’m not optimistic. The problem is, the players don’t have many (any) chits to leverage. Expanded playoffs? Maybe, but as you point out, everyone expects that to happen. So the players want a lot of things - things that may even seem reasonable to an objective third party - but the owners will say “what do we get in return” and the players’ only answer is “we won’t strike into the season.” And the owners showed two years ago that they were more willing than the players to have a shorter season, even when there was a reasonable opportunity for a longer one. Unless the players cave, it doesn’t look good to me.
I wanted to add MY personal Steroid-era factoid: how about Pedro Martinez putting up a 1.74 ERA in 2000 and the 2nd place finisher (Clemens) having a 3.90. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Pedro was amazing
(Please note, I am not saying Pedro used PEDs. I'm saying he somehow was awesome enough to put up a 1.74 during the absolute apex of the high-offense era, when no one else could manage better than a 3.9)
I thought the chat with Molly Knight was great and I look forward to more of the Molly and Joe Show. It highlighted some great points about the lockout I wasn't aware of.
Love how you avoided saying “Welcome” or “Thank you” to Molly at the beginning and end of the podcast. Well done, you know we were all listening for it.
As for the content - I’m not optimistic. The problem is, the players don’t have many (any) chits to leverage. Expanded playoffs? Maybe, but as you point out, everyone expects that to happen. So the players want a lot of things - things that may even seem reasonable to an objective third party - but the owners will say “what do we get in return” and the players’ only answer is “we won’t strike into the season.” And the owners showed two years ago that they were more willing than the players to have a shorter season, even when there was a reasonable opportunity for a longer one. Unless the players cave, it doesn’t look good to me.
I wanted to add MY personal Steroid-era factoid: how about Pedro Martinez putting up a 1.74 ERA in 2000 and the 2nd place finisher (Clemens) having a 3.90. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Pedro was amazing
(Please note, I am not saying Pedro used PEDs. I'm saying he somehow was awesome enough to put up a 1.74 during the absolute apex of the high-offense era, when no one else could manage better than a 3.9)
And to fend off one year wonders, FIP fans may prefer 1999 with an advantage of 1.39 vs 3.25 of Mussina. As you said, amazing.