WBC, United States, Baseball discussed on Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney

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Cover his baseball four ESPN, Dave, how you doing? I'm good. I was up at 6 a.m. this morning, buster watching Panama and Chinese Taipei in the world baseball classic. Just like you are, you're always up at 6 in the morning. Well, yeah, I got up at 4 o'clock here in Montana. So it was a little bit earlier than that. But it's fun to watch games that actually have some consequence. Like I love going to spring training games this year to see the impact of the pitch clock, but it's just something different when actually you could see people lose and get eliminated. That's just so much more fun. It is fun. Like you said, this year spring training obviously, you know, a million times more interesting than previous spring trainings. But I like the WBC, you know, it's something fun and even though maybe U.S. baseball fans aren't super into it, you know, it's a big deal everywhere else, especially over in Japan and Korea, you know, Japan. They won the first two. Didn't make the last two finals, a lot of pressure on that team to win it all this year. And they have an unbelievable team that does have a chance to win. I wonder if the fans Vis-à-vis the WBC, if they're going to fancy the United States are going to follow the lead of the players. I remember when the WBC first started, he's got a sense that the players didn't really care. The U.S. players, but increasingly, that's not the case. There's a conversation among those guys, you know, now you have Mike Trout leading the way. You got Adam Wainwright. At the end of his career saying, look, I want to participate in that. We saw the year when Marcus stroman was pitching in it. There was more excitement. It felt like it was building as they went forward. Yeah, no doubt. And trout, he's playing for the first time, the Dominican lineup has gotten a lot of publicity, a lot of tweets, but buster, especially now with Vladimir Guerrero junior out, the U.S. lineup is better. I looked at last year's numbers and based on 22 2022 numbers, the U.S. lineup is better. You got Nolan aeronaut on Paul Goldschmidt and trout and Mookie betts and Kyle Tucker and Kyle schwarber and Jeff McNeil, you know, Trey Turner, JT rail Muto. I mean, buster, I didn't go back. I wanted to look at some of the best all star lineups of all time. And I know the first All-Star Game in 1933, every player in the American American League lineup eventually made the Hall of Fame, but the U.S. lineup is one of the best lineups ever assembled in the Dominican lineup isn't far behind. So let's hope those two teams meet down the road. Yeah, and I just get a sense of that, you know, my conversation with players are playing in it. They just love the idea of going there and actually having the plate appearances mean something. You know, as one player, I'm not going to use his name in fairness to him, but he was talking about like, you know, I can get a couple of plate appearances in some exhibition game where no one cares. No one's really paying attention. Or I can go and have those bats where you have a higher level of intensity. And from what he told me, the conversation among the players is this might actually help you for the start of the regular season. It might be better prepared than playing exhibition games. We'll have to see about that. Some interesting news developing in the national league east, all three of the teams we see is major contenders, the mets, the braves, and the Phillies have all had some injury issues on. And so I want to get your read on these. Andrew payer came out of this game the other day with some elbow discomfort. The Phillies actually haven't forwarded information to reporters about what's going on. Scott Boris, you know, making an appearance in Phillies camp. They're gathering information they're telling us that to me, there's so many red flags and how this is playing out, especially for a guy who we thought coming into spring training had a chance to impact our rotation day. Yeah, we were hearing so many good things about him, even though he doesn't turn 20 until early in April. All indications were he had a chance to maybe even break camp as their number 5 starter. So yeah, you don't want to jump to any conclusions until you get more information, but certainly he was arguably along with grace and Rodriguez of the Orioles that one of the top two pitching prospects in baseball. So the Philly is at some point, at least they were counting on this guy this year. Now we don't know. Now we've seen when it comes to Tommy John injuries, you know, Tommy John surgery, and we don't know the Phillies haven't told us what it is. But we certainly have seen a lot of pitchers through the years have elbow discomfort, and that's where it winds up leading. There are a lot of variations now of elbow treatment. So it might be that he winds up depending on the severity of it, might be an extended absence might be something where he gets treatment for a short period of time and he's available this year. We'll just have to wait and see. And then react to the information when it comes out. Jose Quintana goes out with a fractured rib in his rib cage for the mats, it's a big loss. Yeah, no doubt, you know, one of their free agent signings had a real solid bounce back year last year after a couple of years and some injuries. So he was going to be in mainstay, doesn't sound like he's going to be long term, but they have an options here, David Peterson, you know, would now slide into that 5th spot. He was starting to relieve her last year. Very good underrated picture. That's really not much of a drop off. They still have Tyler McGill, who had some promising moments last year as a starter. So they do have the depth to survive without Quintana, you know. But it's a story reminder, buster, teams that make the playoffs are often the ones who starting pitcher stay healthy. Yeah, and last year, you mentioned about, you know, the question of how long he's going to be out, you know, the closest comp, I could think of was Chris sale, you know, who got hurt writing his bike. He suffered a fraction of ribs and it was months. It was months before he came back. And given Quintana's age, maybe they're careful. We'll just have to wait and see. The Atlanta Braves are hopeful that Kyle writes going to be ready by opening day, he's yet to appear in his spring game after having cortisone shot to address a right shoulder issue that shot occurred in January. First off, I don't think the braves are a team that really behind the scenes care about whether or not he's open for ready for opening day, I think their focus is going to be on hoping that he's ready for the season. Yes? Yeah, no, but no, absolutely. And it's not one of those wait and see situations, but look, we're expecting another dog fight in that division. The Met's braves, they tie last year, the Phillies might be right up there with them this year. So every win in that division is going to be so important. But you got to look at the long view here. You want Kyle Wright to be healthy in the second half and for the playoffs. But you also don't want to finish in second place. You want to avoid that, you know, best of three wild card series. So there's still a lot of pressure, especially in that division to be healthy and play well from the get go. And I was wondering sort of the impact that he might have physically after having this great season last year, 21 and 5, 3.19 ERA, a big step forward in terms of his production, the big leagues. But a lot of times in that case with a young pitcher, the next year, there can be a toll. I asked Jerry to poto about this win projection that bakota gave the Mariners 81.7. I did a double take, Dave, when I saw him, I'm like, what?

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