12 Burst results for "Stephanie Epstein"
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"The sucks. This really sucks. It does. Also like what happens to all the people who work for the a's. Congratulations, you have to move to Vegas now. Yeah, probably or you're out of a job. Yeah. It's rough, it's rough all around. Yeah, and the contrast is striking. The two teams whose ballpark situations have been unresolved for some time. The a's where every time men for disaster about expansion, he's like, we got to figure out the raise and the a's first, which makes sense because, of course, the way that they work these deals out is the leverage, right? And so if they were to add teams, then they would take away potential markets that those teams could threaten to move to. So, of course, they want to sort those situations out before they expand. So if you are someone who wants to see expansion happen, I guess this is a hurdle that had to be cleared or knocked over one way or the other. But you have the raise and they're unending ballpark uncertainty. And they've outscored their opponents by 83 runs. Right. When they're wedding, you know? And then the a's have been outscored by 86 runs. I mean, they're at opposite ends of the spectrum here with these near historic run differentials. And yeah, if you're going to be in limbo a little bit and keep your fans kind of guessing about whether you'll be around for the long haul. At least if you could keep winning while you're doing it, that would be nice. You could be an entertaining team in the ace just went full major league instead. So I don't know, the only thing I could think is that just the depths that they've sunk to and how unwatchable they are and just the message that they've sent, the signal that they've sent that we don't even want you to watch this team or come to this ballpark. Maybe that makes it easier to turn the page in a way just to be spiteful. I mean, they've been spiteful, so just to say, well, fine. You've driven us away, you know, maybe we don't feel as much for this franchise as we used to because they have just sort of its scorched earth. So it sucks. It's not the first time that they've relocated, and it's not the second type that we're located. So the athletics will go on. They're just an itinerant team there at traveling team. Maybe they should be like, what are those indie ball teams that just has no home and just travels around everywhere is just a traveling team permanently. It's almost what they've been like. But they were in Oakland longer than they were anywhere else, and they were there for a really long time. And it's been quite a long time since any franchise relocated almost 20 years. So as inevitable as it seemed or as long in the making as it seems, it's still just sort of sent shockwaves, I think, when that news broke. Yeah, but if they were traveling team, they wouldn't go play in the middle of the desert. Probably not. No. Condolences to ace fans, if you want to write in and invent, please do and share your thoughts and we will listen. Yeah. Crummy day for everyone involved. I'm very sorry. I'm just very sorry. Well, maybe this will cheer you up. I've got a Boris metaphor for you. Something. So Stephanie Epstein wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated talking to Soto and Boris and it's about basically how Soto says they cut off negotiations with the nationals when he says the nationals leaked the terms of the discussion or what was going on there and he took that as a betrayal and said no more. And there's a Boris quote in here. So Soto's agent Scott Boris says San Diego has not made an offer as is to an extension. He adds that he does not take its lack of overture to mean Soto is not a priority, quote just because you have all the ingredients when you have the oven sitting there for two years, it doesn't mean you have to bake the cake
The Lead
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The Lead
"Theft tally? In the end, he ended up with two Padres jerseys and a pair of batting gloves, two giants jerseys, and a giant face mask, a Jersey from the a's ten Dodgers jerseys and a paradigm gloves. So that is 15 jerseys, two pairs of batting gloves and a mask total. Wow. And what has become of all this missing stuff do we know? The tatis jerseys, they were not able to recover those because we've said he couldn't remember who he sold them to. All the other stuff is sitting in evidence lockup with Denver police because it belongs to the teams. You know, the season ended, the teams did not feel the need to come collect their merchandise. They actually offered it to the DA and the cop who investigated it as like a thank you, but because of ethics regulations, they're not allowed to accept a gift of that worth, so they just sit in evidence lock up waiting for someone to come get them. I feel like you should get one of those for your reporting on this story. Maybe all of them. Because of evidence rules, I am also not allowed to accept the gift of that sus. Of ethics rules rather. Fair enough, fair enough. Well, Stephanie Epstein, thanks so much for taking us on this mysterious journey and helping us solve the case. Sure, thanks for having me. One quick note here, it turns out this story might in fact have a sequel. Set in a different city with a different thief. Check out Stephanie's story to learn more. You can find a link in our show notes, and at SI dot com. Thanks for listening today. This episode was produced by me, under skeletal, production assistance by Daniel Gonzalez, fact checking by Charlotte Edmonds. Sound design and mixing by Erin may. The rest of our team includes Tiffany osinski mat straub, adrien Tapia, and Ian Hurley, the lead is executive produced by Dave Easton, Marshall Louis and Jen Sargent for wondering. For wondery, I'm out of skeletal.
The Lead
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The Lead
"Everyone, it is time to grab your magnifying glasses and your notebooks, because today we are diving into a mystery that we are calling the curious case of the missing MLB jerseys. It's a story that's been 6 weeks, involves 5 Major League Baseball teams, two police departments, and several very stressed out equipment managers. Reporter Stephanie Epstein brings us to the story. From wondery, I'm under skeleton. It's Friday, march 10th, and this is the lead. Stephanie Epstein, welcome to the lead. Thanks for having me. So Stephanie, you recently wrote this really wonderful sort of true mystery story for Sports Illustrated. Stephanie, are you a mystery aficionado? Did you grow up reading the books of Agatha Christie or anything like that? I did. Christine mysteries and my mom's a big Sherlock Holmes fan, so we read a lot of those too when I was a kid. Part of what drew you to the story, perhaps? Yeah. I was excited to come back to that stuff. Very cool. Okay, well let's start with the time frame for this mystery because that's an important part of the equation here. We're going back to the fall of 2020. So deep pandemic times, Stephanie, can you just remind us what that time was like within Major League Baseball? MLB impacted by the pandemic that spring and summer and into that fall. Yeah, and almost every way. Already, this was a shortened season because spring training had been suspended because that's about when COVID hit. Major league baseball now delaying the start of their opening day and calling off and canceling the remaining games for spring training. And so then everybody kind of went home and sat around until July. The return of Major League Baseball moved one step closer to reality on Monday evening as the league released its official schedule for the 2020 season. I mean, they did stage a 60 game season. It was chaotic and also incredibly regimented. They had to adjust the sizes of locker rooms to try to make sure that everybody was a part. The Giants went so far as to install like clap on clap off lights so that nobody had to touch a light switch. Everybody was just sort of nervous all the time. You know, there were no vaccines at this point. People are still like disinfecting our mail. Color reflections in northern liberties has been busy filling seats with cutouts. A creative way to pack the house. Even if fans can't be there in person. This is the finished product after it's been printed and cut. It was stressful and nobody wanted to be the team that shut the whole season down because somebody caught COVID. So there was nobody in clubhouses, very restricted access, very restricted everything. All right, well, it was in this very restricted regimented environment that our mystery is set. And our detective in this mystery, Stephanie, our air cure poirot, our Colombo, maybe our Charlie kale for fans of poker face. Our detective here is a guy named Brad Graham. So who is Brad Graham's? And how would you describe him? Breadcrumbs is the head home Clubhouse manager and equipment manager for the San Francisco Giants. And he is very precise and exacting. He has like every label on every bottle is facing outward, the zippers are all placed in the right place on the bag, the hangers are all space to finger width apart. He wants to know at a glance if somebody has touched his stuff. And he does. He can always tell. Because nobody puts it back quite right, except his staff. A very organized man. Yes. And so when and how did Brad Grimes discover that something had gone missing? How did he learn that a crime might be afoot? First thing, one of his staff members, James Clark, noticed that the zippers were askew. The zippers on the bags that carried the uniforms. Yes. There's, of course, a system for putting the uniform away together. You would fold the pants into the Jersey and that way you can drop the whole thing into the laundry hamper when they come out. And then they got into the bag and they realized that there were pants and no Jersey. And which jerseys, specifically, we're missing. Johnny cueto, Jersey, and a Pablo Sandoval Jersey. Okay, and do you know what Brad Grimes reaction was when he discovered that these uniforms were not where they should be? It was a little concerned, but their first thought was maybe something got pushed to the back of a locker and they didn't notice it and they left it without it. Maybe it's in a washing machine. Maybe after they were putting stuff away somehow, one of the players took his Jersey out and did something with it. But we checked in with all those people. And none of those things had happened. So that is where it started to get a little more concerning. So he realizes it has to have happened in Colorado because he had seen those jerseys himself in Colorado. So he checks with another team that was recently in. Denver, you know, they all chat with each other and he just says, hey, Spencer from the Padres. Could you lose anything in Denver? And Spencer Dowling, the Potter is equipment manager, realizes that he, in fact, also is missing too Fernando tatis jerseys. So now it's two teams. Okay, so now there are two teams missing jerseys and both teams have recently played in Colorado, which seems very suspicious. Stephanie, what is the reaction of the Colorado Rockies Clubhouse manager when he learns that not one, but two visiting teams have had jerseys go missing on recent trips to Denver. He's pretty upset. Mike ponter alley goes by tiny because he started with the team as a 9 year old. Started as a bad boy working in the visiting Clubhouse in Colorado. Clubhouse guys always kind of let me hang around and help him out and they showed me what they did on a regular basis and sort of year after year I kept coming back. It's been 16. He's really beloved in this game. He's from Denver. He's been around forever. And they joke he's kind of like the Chamber of Commerce over there. He is obsessed with Denver and he wants everyone who is there to have a good experience of the city. He wants them to have a good experience with the rockies. At this point, I bleed purple. Every year, my intensity and love and passion for the game of baseball and the Colorado Rockies grows greater. And so he's pretty upset when he finds out that something is wrong. In part, because he knows and trusts his guys and he knows that nobody he employs did anything wrong, but he has to sort of investigate them as if they did. So that doesn't feel good. And the whole thing is just, it's upsetting to him. Okay, well, it's around this time I believe that the rockies eventually discovers a person of interest and turned their focus to this person. So tell us about who we might call suspect number one. While their first thought is just like who is allowed to be in the Clubhouse at this point, it's not that many people reporters aren't in there. The people who sell bats and batting gloves aren't in there, friends and family, there's nobody in there. So they start watching security footage. And at one point a female custodian enters the Clubhouse wearing a backpack, so they think. Maybe this person. As it turns out, that pretty quickly turns out not to be the case. They interview her and she says she didn't do it, and there's no evidence that she did. The video doesn't show her having anything that she shouldn't have. And so they think, okay, start over. But it's around this time that a clue emerges.
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"It when, you know, I think there were parts of it that I wasn't a fan of, but I understand that if you're committing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars like Julio Rodriguez, like that might be there might be something to that contract, right? Like it might be kind of complicated, but it's my cool walk. Yeah, I understood with green because of the uncertainty that he'll be back and how good he'll be and all of that. And I guess with waka, there's always a little bit of uncertainty about health, but not in as acute away as there was with green. So I don't know. Suddenly, it's just these modest contracts are incredibly complicated. It seems, anyway, Padres somehow squeezing another player onto their ever expanding roster. And it also came out that they are now it seems like going to be switching over from a revenue sharing recipient to a revenue sharing payee. So because their revenue has increased so much and because they expect it to increase so much more with more ticket sales and sponsorships, et cetera. So it does turn out that you do have to spend money to make money or at least that is one way you can do it. So I don't know whether that pays for the spending that they've done on the free agent market and on the trade market and everything if you're doing just an annual budget, but it does go to shows that even in a modest media market, if you invest in your team and everyone gets super excited about it, granted there aren't as many alternative pro teams and said, yeah, go for people to get excited about, but still, Padres fans are excited about the Padres and I would be too if my team were allowed to roster 49 players. Yep, as Stephanie Epstein said, small market is a state of mind. Exactly. Yeah. I hope, by the way, that we'll get some news at some point about fewer blackouts in MLA TV, speaking of MOP TV, because it does sound like that's a priority now, rob Manfred made some statements about how that is a priority for the league. And we will see their hints are tied to some extent, but as we discussed recently with all the valleys possible bankruptcy situation, perhaps they'll be able to claw back some rates and show us more games because that'd be really nice too. If we could pay for MLB TV and also watch all the games on there, that would be great too. At least the ones that are not split up into 7 other streaming services. Yeah, I mean, I have so many streaming services now. And because I like poker face, I have another. I haven't used to have Ben. And so I feel overwhelmed by that. Well, people tend to churn them now. They just want to watch one show. As they signed up for a month and they binge that and then they let their subscription lapse. So there's a lot of turnover these days as people are trying to juggle several streaming services. So there's something that happens when spring training starts, which is it's very exciting and everyone shows up and then you start getting injury news pour in so whether it's a gram feeling some soreness or it's Frankie montas of the Yankees possibly going to miss the entire season or it's Steven Strasburg having another setback. It's like there's this Schrodinger's injury thing that happens like before pitchers report before players show up and start to do things that sometimes injure them or you find out about preexisting injuries. You can just sort of dream and fantasize about the season and look at who you got and then reality sets and when spring training starts and this guy's shoulder hurts and that guy's elbow hurts and often these things as you're ramping up for the regular season workload. That is when things tend to break or you realize that something you hoped would have healed over the off season didn't and that's why we see so many Tommy John surgeries or injuries that lead to John surgeries tend to crop up in spring training. So it's a combination of the optimism of renewal of spring and it's a fresh start and then almost immediately there's just an onslaught of sad depression goose too. So you can't have one without the other, I suppose. Yeah, it is a bummer, but you know it's like the 60 day IL opens up and you gotta tell people when people are hurt so you can start moving guys over there not the gram is going on the 68. Not saying that. Isn't what I'm saying, but part of it is that there is this option available to teams now that they can move guys there who are injured in more substantial ways than Jacob de Grom, who was, it sounds like just soaring cold, you know? And who hasn't been sore and cold or sore because of colts. So there's that piece of it too, where it's like, what did we get to put a guy on the 60 day and that opens up a roster spot for us? And now we can go sign a veteran to an overly complicated deal for no reason. Right. Yeah, I've been with the Padres specifically, they don't have to worry about the raster spots as much as everyone else does. Because they have like 90s what we've established. Exactly. They got a special exemption. So we've got a guest today, and it's a recurring guest, a favorite of ours at pal, Evan drellich, who is a newly published author of a very fine book about baseball called winning fixes everything, how PS bar's brightest mains created sports biggest mess. It's about the Houston Astros. It's about science doing, but it's about much more than that in the league as a whole and how a front office operates and functions or dysfunctions as the case may be. Evan's been working on this one for a while. So we will have him on to talk about this in just a moment. I'm going to give you a related stat blast this week's step blast to sort of segue into our interview here. Something like this will be a close and then the teaser changes to take it to discuss it at length and analyze it for us in a minute. Is to dance.
The MMQB NFL Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The MMQB NFL Podcast
"Last year, after picking all 272 games, I just I got the records and I had it all. I did it all on the back of an envelope from my financial adviser. So I just had this ripped open envelope that was covered in serial killer scratches, right? And I came out with all the records and they were right. Everything added up and then I turned it over to Mitch and I said, here's everybody's record for the 2021 season. And then the back office folks said, oh, people want to debate on a game by game level. So it comes back to me and they're just like, just tell us show your work impossible. So I had to go back and do it again. And I was supposed to be 72. It used to be two 56. They gave you this whole extra week, which is ridiculous, which I've been against from the start. Yeah. And anyway, so I'll hand it off to Mitch and I want to give him permission to tell the entirety of the story because I do think that there's some important things here that highlight the fact that I am a child and without Mitch, I'm lost in the wilderness and for context, I had just written the football preview issue cover story and there was a line in there that said, Bengals going back to the Super Bowl, why the hell not? And so I'll start the story by Mitch calling me and saying, hey, Connor, you don't have the Bengals going to the playoffs. And this was after I assume about four and a half hours if you going through NFL tiebreaker rules to try to figure this out. I like that this is like a safe space. Like we would never say this on Twitter, but the podcast audience is like, we're happy to take people behind the curtain and show them how the sausage is. I mean, it's too late. You already did. I'm on the record, baby. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened. I think I did it a little more dramatically than that because I called you to tell you. You were laughing too. Which made me feel better. It was very, I love being able to call and deliver news to you. It happened twice memorably this off season the other time was the Sunday Night that Tom Brady announced he was coming back. I just called you and said, cot did you hear the news? And you hadn't heard yet, and I got to deliver the news to you on the phone. That not only was Tom Brady coming back for another season, but you had a column about it too. Immediately. So get on it. And I thought you did an excellent job that night. So anyway, yeah, you did a good job. There was a back and forth and there was a fact checking and I should say other people on our staff helped as well, Dan falkenhayn and Marcus crumb helped. It wasn't like just me every time. I got some backup. But you did a good job. You answered all the questions. You put in the W's and L's in the proper squares and the cells filled up. But you did just sort of dump a pile of like, here are our teams and records and whatever. And I had the idea like, oh, you know, we should probably put together the standings and see, you know, because teams are going to be tied. So what are the standings? And I love NFL playoff tiebreakers. Unironically, this is my idea of a good time, like the fact that it's August and I was digging through the rule book like, okay, it's a three way tie, and they're in three different visions. And so this is the first thing that we do. And so I was like, yeah, let's put together the standings. This will be a good time. And now forgetting specific here, you had the Patriots Titans and Bengals, all tied at ten and 6 for the 6th, 7th and 8th spots in the NFC. And so I'm going through the tiebreaker and obviously Connor, as you know, the first thing you do to break that tie is you look, if anyone has a head to head sweep, if one team beats the other two opponents or if one team loses to the other two opponents, then you pull that team out and then you break the tie with the other two teams. And so I'm like, oh, they're tied. This is fun. And it was like, oh yeah, the Bengals did play against both of these teams and you just I'd say, I don't want to call it arbitrary because I mean obviously you put a lot of work into this, but it's kind of random putting your wins and losses to get a team to ten and 6 or sorry I should say ten and 7 because 17 games. So anyway, it was a little bit arbitrary that you just happened to have the Bengals losing to both the Patriots and Titans across the course of their season. That was not like a planned divine Connor at the controls thing. That's just, you're going through it and what are the odds that it actually matters, but just the fact that it was that combination, those three teams tied and then with the other teams that you had, the Bengals just happened to get the short stick and they were the 8th seed. And this I discovered this literally an hour after your Joe burrow cover story. For everyone to read and you're like, the hero of Cincinnati radio and I'm like putting this post together that's like, yeah, SI's Connor orr has the Bengals missing the playoffs. I can't wait for that to be scooped up and written about on every Bengals fan site. It's you know what it is and this is what I hate about the two 72 is that and I'll get tweets from a lot of people who cover individual teams and they're like, well, you know, I had the Lions going 11 and 6. That's great. What did you have every other team doing that led us to that point? Because everything else matters and it's like a Rubik's Cube and so yes, that rant over, but yes, I was enjoying this windfall of attention from the city of Cincinnati. And if you'll remember, last year I was the goat in the worst way in the city of Cincinnati because I picked the Bengals to win four games last year and when the two 72 comes out always in a bad mood because I'm doing a thousand radio hits and it's just every radio station disagreeing with my prediction. Unless I pick like the local team to go 17 and O and mo Edgar who does ESPN radio in Cincinnati is a great person. He had me on last year to argue with me about four wins and I remember just being at the end of my rope and saying, okay, pull up the schedule and find me four more wins on this schedule. This team is not winning more than four games and I was just mad about it. Furious about it. So I have a precarious history with the city of Cincinnati. So had that happened without Mitch's watchful eye. This is why you need editors. I would have been and people would not let me forget about this last year. I was made fun of all through the playoffs. I was made fun of through the Super Bowl, redeemed myself with the football preview issue cover story. And then I would have accidentally picked them to miss the playoffs in the following year. Unbeknownst to me. That would have been humiliating. You could have looked, I would say. The other thing I'll just point out, though, is I appreciate your sort of approach to this. And just sort of this idea that the games are the games and they cause the records and the sheet is what it says and I don't think you I don't think you try and like gerrymander it to get the standings you want. I think you genuinely try to look at all 32 teams and say like I remember what the colts last year that was a big one because you had them starting like oh and three and one and 5 and then bouncing all the way back to the playoffs and that was actually a great take and they didn't make the playoffs with the game very close to it and they did go on the roller coaster that you envisioned. But I like that you just sort of like look at each team honestly and try to decide and I very briefly made the argument Connor. I think this is awesome and I think it makes your whole point for you that you wow you went through the schedule one at a time and the Bengals missed the playoffs and you're the guy mister Bengals and look what you did and I was like that's your hook. That's what you should write about in the intro. And I think you heard me out for like 5 seconds and then you said give them a win against the Patriots. Just got rid of the whole problem. You said yeah, that'll be 11 and 6 and the Patriots can be 9 and 8 and we're gonna solve the whole thing nice and neat. It did, it fit in nicely with the whole Connor or football prediction universe because one of my bold predictions leading into the season I believe was that the Patriots were going to miss the playoffs. So having the Patriots actually missed the playoffs worked, but you're right. You can't, it's so hard to gerrymander this. And that's what I like about two 72 is I finished the exercise that I was like, I hate the commanders record. I hate the Panthers record and there was like two or three more teams that I despised. I just didn't like it at all. But just not a whole lot you can do about it because you one little pin and then all of a sudden everything just falls apart. And Mitch has to pick up the pieces. I didn't put up too much of a fight 'cause there were still tiebreakers for me to solve. So I still got to have a little fun with the rest of my afternoon. Gary is just looking like holy shit, I'm so glad I don't have to do this. That does sound like fun. No, my only because I'll turn this back to me. I got in note the other day on my Facebook page like my professional Facebook page that I don't know just random people occasionally write in. And most of it's like ask for fantasy device stuff like that. People can write in. I probably won't see it, and I probably won't answer it. Nothing personal. But a guy wrote me to say that on our division previews, which had my byline on it, the note was that Vikings record is ridiculous. You're nuts. So I was like, okay, the Vikings are 7 ten, but that went back to the note and I just got a chuckle because he marked it important with like a red exclamation point so that I know to get back to him. We really needed to discuss this. I think the Vikings at 7 and ten is fine. I mean, they're gonna be so routine ten and 7 and 7 and ten. The best part about her has them at 8 and 9 and this is a fun one. He had the Vikings and Cardinals tied for the 7th seed. And someone, me, gets to sit here and go, oh, play each other. They did play each other this year and Connor randomly has the Cardinals beating the Vikings in God knows what week that is. 7. It's weak eye, according to the cells of this Google sheet. And so yeah, cardinals, the cardinals are going to sneak in as the 7 seat at 8 and 9, according to Connor in this fantasy season where nobody gets hurt and we know exactly how good all the teams are, the entire year. This time of year, there's so many predictions and I did a I did a radio station in Baltimore. I think it was Baltimore today. And they had the actual hard copy of the magazine out. And you know, sometimes mistakes happen, like last year, the NFL Draft, a mock draft was put into the issue with my byline on it, and I did not write it. It was not my mock draft. And former boss, Peter king called me and he's like, hey, Connor, like, you know, I love the way you did the mock draft, just like kind of going wild. And I was like, what are you talking about? And then he listed a few of the players that I was like, I never said that. And he's like, it's in the magazine. And I was like, what? Oh no. But so when we do the division records for the football preview issue, a lot of that is, I don't know what that is, but my bylines on some of it, Gary's bylines on some of it, you know, Albert's bylines on some of it. And so in Baltimore today, they were like, boy, I can't believe you have the Steelers finishing in last in the AFC north, and I was like, I don't have this steelers finishing last in the AFC north. I think there could be pretty good. And they're like, not according to the magazine we're holding, and I was like, God damn it. You know, we predict too many things, you know? We gotta streamline, you know? 272 games is enough, but that means we're gonna be right on some stuff. Yeah. That's true. Okay, we're about to have an unprecedented moment on this show. For the first time, never requested until now. More than four, but fewer than 6 questions. Mitch has volunteered to play. We have 5 questions for him here. The first person ever to ask, I was mostly asking if I should be prepared. But you know, listen, I want it. The last time I was on this podcast, I answered what you build as an impossible trivia question when you asked me to name the last player to have a plus. Jason Hansen out of my ass. That was my last appearance. So I'm all in. Give me the questions. I'll take it. I'll just slip that in here. Let's remind folks by the way. We're getting that I knew that already. Damn, I shouldn't have reminded you. Sounds like I'm gonna get fewer than four questions, maybe. Let's remind folks, by the way, the all time standings here, SI's college football writer, Richard Johnson, first place tie with 6 SI staff writer Rohan Ned Carney, first place tie was 6, and then goes down from there. Stephanie Epstein, our wonderful senior writer who covers baseball in the Olympics. 5 Peter king, former boss four, Charles McDonald of Yahoo sports, four, Jenny rentis, former colleague, and now superstar Porter at The New York Times, got a four. Andrew Brandt, former packers executive and business of sports columnist at the MM QB got a two. And Albert breer, our lovely senior writer, football, content strategist, mmm, writer, is last place with one. So as long as this is a lot of pressure, I didn't regret asking for this until you gave me the complete history of all time scores. The game is nicknamed beat breer. Yeah, I mean, that's basically what we tell guests is like, oh, don't worry, Albert got a one and everyone's like, oh, okay, and it really does take a lot of pressure off. It would be like, it'd be like going on, it'd be like going on American ninja warrior and right before, right before you go on, someone's like, hey, the guy in front of you made it two steps, his pants fell down, and then he fell into the water, and he couldn't swim so like an old lady had to pull him out. And then she gave him a wet Willy on national television. Then you'd be like, okay, well, I can't possibly go any worse than that, you know? Would that be mine? Let's start the clock, put three hours up there, Shelby, and let's see, I will do the odd questions and Connor, you do the evens. First
The MMQB NFL Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The MMQB NFL Podcast
"60 minutes is so cool. And you gotta do like Mike Wallace though or something. Mike Wallace, that's true. More safer. John wertheim. John wartime of Sports Illustrated. Come on. Worth ons from the new class. That's true. He's like, he's like in family matters, like all of a sudden one year, like you just turned it on and then the wife is different. Carl's wife is different. It's just a different Gloria. It's just different person. They do that to you sometimes. Still good. That's John worth on. All right, so we got a couple of things coming up here. We're going to talk to him deshaun Watson at the top. We're also going to talk about the Steelers new general manager. We'll have a little bit of Pro Bowl, just a little bit of Pro Bowl talk, and then I got trouble takes, baby. Oh, I got no pro ball takes. I have a show's worth of Pro Bowl takes. We'll get to it. I will grit my teeth and we'll get to it. And in just a few minutes, we're going to be joined by Stephanie Epstein of Sports Illustrated to talk about the Trevor Bauer situation Major League Baseball, which has some similarities we're not talking apples to apples, but some similarities with the deshaun Watson, cases, but that's where we are starting here deshaun Watson on HBO real sports on Tuesday night. Two of the women who have shared their accounts of sexual misconduct and are currently filing civil suits against Watson spoke to HBO, one of Watson's attorneys also spoke to HBO with kind of his side of the story there. But we'll start with sort of the broader point here, which is this is really the first time we've seen from independent national media outlet, basically the video presentation of the story. We at Sports Illustrated that obviously you have basically put out every single piece of evidence on the actual case, but video makes a difference. It does. And I thought, you know, I commend the two women who went on Tuesday. I can't imagine that's easy. We work in a sports environment that we know is unfriendly to women in general. And I think anyone who's had the, I don't know. I don't know what you would call a desire to scroll through comments on any of these stories. And so you know what they're setting themselves up for. They know kind of how horrifying and unfair and dark this period is going to be, but there's just been a continued concerted effort to get their truth out there. And so I think, you know, kudos to them for doing it. I can't imagine that's easy. I can't imagine talking about the worst day of my life over and over again. And I think it makes a difference. I think we're starting to see, I mean, Kevin Stefanski was asked about it again today. During their was it OTAs, mini camp, whatever's going on right now. So I think it keeps it in the public consciousness, and I think it keeps the browns from having to be like, now, you know, there's nothing else we can do about this. So one thing we've gotten a sense of in the past 24 or 48 hours here is a little more of what Watson's defense is. He did have one of his attorneys on the HBO show sort of responding and reacting to again these accounts, which have come out. A couple of things that I want to mention before we get into one very specific part of their events, but first of all, I know russie harden has come out and said, you know, well, we chose not to try this through the media. Et cetera, et cetera. Well, they did. They did multiple press conferences. I have personally spent 8 to ten hours a total on the phone with their legal team, which is totally normal, but the busby team did not interact with us very much. Even when we had a lot of information criticizing them, they just didn't get into it. We offer both sides a chance to speak off the record. If they'd like, the hardened camp had taken advantage of that, I will say, because they kind of broke the agreement. First of all, when rusty basically flat out said that Jenny had some sort of Jenny friend who's had some sort of vendetta against Sean Watson and was biased and reporting. They did not like one of our questions to them, which we did not make public. That did they think it was appropriate to have a female attorney who had identified as a sexual assault survivor, basically make the argument at a press conference that Desean Watson was essentially too desirable to have done anything without consent because a lot of people would want to sleep with him. Therefore, these women also must have wanted to sleep with them. It seemed like a very inappropriate argument to make to us. They took a lot of umbrage with the way we freeze the question. And rusty Hardin. Ran with that. And said that Jenny was a biased reporter and it was all just kind of absurd. So I do want to set aside this misconception that Watson's camp has not attempted to try this in the media because they have and Tony busby obviously very, very much as. But one very specific thing that has come out is the Watson camp is now essentially saying that there were three women who had consensual sexual acts after massages with deshaun Watson. Now that there's 19 other plaintiffs, there are two others who file criminal complaints. There was the woman who goes by the student, Mary, who spoke to Sports Illustrated, but is not filing a civil suit at this point. There were more than two dozen women. They are saying these three did have consensual sexual encounters with deshaun Watson after a massage, and it just does kind of bring up a really interesting, I don't know. I guess angle here because..
The MMQB NFL Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The MMQB NFL Podcast
"Boy, I was trying to cook up a real counter take to this. Like I wanted to be the one guy who was like, no, this is actually awesome. And I can't get there. Yeah, how'd you land on that one? The one thing I'll say, so when they unveiled the uniforms and this is the worst part of it because of a podcast. So now I have to pay you a word picture. But they have that they have the, I'm guessing it's an alternate. It's the black with the burgundy and gold lettering and numbering on it. And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. Look a little bit maybe a little too Arizona state, but that's kind of neat. I like that. And then it got a closer look at it. It's got like the camo neckline and sort of that salute to service. And not that we on this podcast don't salute service of our brave members of the military, but the NFL just has this sort of it's over the top with their sort of military cosplay type stuff. And that just sort of, I don't know. It's just too much. So I have a lot of thoughts on this and there's just not nearly enough time on the podcast for me to complain about this. No, this is perfect for you. It is. So the first thing is they come out like three weeks ago and they're like, we know you all overwhelmingly liked the red wolves and it was by far the most popular choice, but somebody has the trademark on it. It's so sorry clowns. Like we're not gonna do the coolest one. And there was like these fan markups of like black and red like NWO like wolf pack style jerseys and I was like, this is freaking awesome. I haven't bought gear. The last NFL licensed equipment that I bought was when I worked for the NFL and I grew up a browns fan. I was at the Hall of Fame game and I bought my wife a T-shirt that said he's my manziel, which is horrific. Nailed it. That's a classic. You're gonna get so much on eBay for that? We use that to clean the floor. And it's kind of a mop rag. And but I would have bought like a red, that would have been cool and but now you're in this commander sphere where my argument is patriots kind of have the kind of the territory on the faux military name. And if you're a team, like do you really want like I mentioned this with presidents and senators like do you want anything that like once every ten years becomes like wildly divisive and unpopular, like that invoke something like wildly wildly divisive and unpopular? Like, no offense at all to, you know, I'm not saying I'm anti military pro military or anything like that. I'm just saying there's been like several very marked conflicts throughout our time that have made the military largely unpopular in our country. And so it's like, what are you going to do then when that happens? I don't know. It would be like if you name the team presidents like we're never again going to have a president with a 50% approval rating. So you can't name the team the presidents. And while I think commanders is not necessarily that serious, it's like if you want to do something for the troops like let's donate part of our proceeds to like helping them transition back from the military or like helping them find work or doing stuff like that instead of benefits. VA benefits instead of just being like, yeah, camo stuff. And like, I can't imagine if you're in someone in the military and you want to email the podcast and correct me. I put out and ask for submissions on this too before, but I was like, would you rather a team that's just like drenched in camo and like, yeah, where the troops team or would you rather just a team named like the bulldogs that donated a ton of money to the VA? Like, you know what I mean? And just did something for you instead of just like used your profession as sort of this like symbol of like whatever you're trying to get across? I think the bummer here is that so they rightly decide not to use the old name anymore. They get away from that. Long overdue. Long, long, long overdue. They get away from it. And they have a placeholder name. And they stumble into something that's no frills and because it's so bare bones and has like a European soccer field to it and is like so stripped down that it's cool. It's so uncool it's cool. And everybody's like, Washington football team. It's like, we're all business. We're in Washington and we're a football team. And says it all, right? And everybody's like, this is actually kind of cool. So once they don't get the red wolves thing, you could just park it right there, man, but we know they're not going to park it right there because merchandise is big business. And if they rebrand, they get to sell all this new gear. It's a business decision. That's what it was. It just happens to be a really dumb bad business decision because they had a name and it was working and everybody liked it and then they decided to get like, this is the name that they would pick. If you're in Hollywood and you're making a movie and you can't get the actual licensing. We can't get patriots and eagles and giants. What about commanders? And they're like, that's it. Green light. And it's just versus the vipers. Let's do it. It's just I think the commanders were the team that beat Shane falco at the end of the season. Yes. And so this is perfect for Washington and perfect for Dan Snyder because it's so bad. Like sure man, you're the commander's now godspeed. What happened to the hogs? That would have been. It would have been fun. You can have like you can have like a violent pig. I think we would all like that, you know? Yeah. Violent pig mascot. Yeah. Oh well. When they re rebrand back to Washington football team, we will get back on this show and celebrate it. John Gonzalez, thanks for joining us. And if you haven't already, please go check out SI weekly. It's not only a really good show. Connor ore has been on it. My name has been said on it. So what else do you want? Huge downloads and rating spikes when those two things happen. Sports Illustrated weekly comes out every Wednesday available wherever you get your podcasts, please subscribe and listen this week. We have a really awesome Olympics preview where we get into Aaron Jackson who's a speed skater who started in roller Derby and has now one of the best speed skaters in the world. First black woman to stand atop a World Cup podium. She's just amazing in here a lot about her. I know Gary, you're making a face. That's awesome. It's so cool. It's such a fun story. Our colleague Stephanie Epstein popped on to talk about Aaron, such a great fun thing, and then Ben Rhodes, who was the former deputy national security adviser for president Obama comes on to discuss the Olympic boycott, diplomatic boycott, and why that is, and then we wrap up with Michael Vick. Michael Vick was on the podcast, so good episode this week. Yeah. Michael Vick is like batting third. That's how deep this podcast. You gotta get to you gotta get through the first stuff to get to Michael Vick. That's incredible. Yeah. He was great. The mmm NFL podcast is Connor ore and me Gary Grammy. Thanks to this week's special guest John Gonzalez. We are produced by Shelby royson as size executive producer of podcast as Scott brodie and our senior podcast producer is Dan bloom. Mark raik is emeritus editor of the M mq and Andy Benoit is the founder of the MMP NFL podcast. Be sure to subscribe to this feed on Apple podcasts and once you do please leave a rating and review because it really does help other people find the show, which is also available on Spotify, stitcher, SI dot com.
The Bronx Pinstripes Show - Yankees MLB Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The Bronx Pinstripes Show - Yankees MLB Podcast
"Loss hurts because this team needs wins so desperately and they're playing a bad twins team and they were finally hitting probably mostly because twins. Pitching is terrible but they have. It's like the the momentum theory right. Like i think there is momentum in team sports and you can get on a good rolling get bad role. The yankees have been on a bad role. Maybe a series sweep of the twins were just only positive. Things happened guys. Hitting home runs stanton. Looks like he's starting to feel it a little bit again. The pitching was all right. Maybe that's a momentum thing but then even though geraldo chapman. I'm not worried about him. That's momentum stopper blowing a game like that. I don't think so because you have an off day going out going to philly you going against her already. Dvd's there there's like. Something's happening over there too. I think when you walk out of the clubhouse. You're if you're if i'm on the team on like what what What you get. Shell shocked but it doesn't change what happened like you should have won that game and unfortunately the guy who's been the most consistent player on your team for the entire season had a bad day had a bad day one guy literally one guy had a bad day and that happens so as a team when i'm looking at that and the bats are still going. I'm still feeling good. I'm still carrying that in to wherever you know it's just it's one guy. You can almost chalk that up to just fluky circumstances all right. Well let's start with is number one. I freaking hate. Josh donaldson calls out to calls out. He's always been at check. Seo when he was he's always been very capable. Yeah i mean. His twitter handle is bringer of rain. If you if you name yourself bringer of rain urine a-hole i don't know if it was always that but it was that when i remember when he was in toronto just murdering the yankees when he went is so i was looking at his twitter account last night too and he he. He essentially mocked his manager on twitter. It was like the only posted he's had in a while. Rocco baldelli hasn't been on twitter at awhile team essentially mocked his manager in like a video by putting his his Josh donaldson face on on many from austin powers was freaking strange. And you know it was like a funny thing but it's like it's still your manager like in season. It's a weird thing to do but delhi hadn't been on twitter since april felt a need to respond to it in like with like a little bit of a power. Move in the sense that like. Who do you work for. It was just it was. It was just weird that debt like that. A current player would mock their manager. Completely out of nowhere is thousand. Yes i don't know man. I feel like today's players have no problem mocking manager. So he's but he's he's like he's an older guy in the league. It was just it was out of context and it was a strange came out of nowhere. It fill. It felt like and your team is terrible so It was just a weird thing to me. It just looks like that guy is just an asshole. He's just a dick. And i have a feeling everybody thinks that yeah end. Part of it is because he's he's been he. I mean he's been hurt but he's been good for the large part of the last seven years when he's been murdering the yankees so that's number one if if you're just a terrible baseball player it's hard to hate you because you're not going to hurt my team. But he's been hurting the yankees. So that's why. But then he does stuff like like you just outlined and then he calls out garrett cole for his spin rate dropping coincidentally after the league is starting to crack down on all the illegal substances and unfortunately even though he went over five in the game against cole he gets the last laugh off. Chapman of the series with the game tying home run. It's like if if it had to be anyone donaldson's the last one in that lineup. I wanted to see tie the game right there. And and he he calls out coal fairly or unfairly. I encourage you to listen to the a podcast. I did on wednesday with stephanie epstein. Who co wrote the article on dot com really fascinating the the information that they gathered from all these players around the league many anonymous sources because no one wants to attach their name to this stuff. Even though the more we learn it's like ninety percent or more of the league is doing is using illegal substances and it's like sort of inherent in the game where it's not just pitchers going out of their way to come up with these concoctions. Teams are inventing these concoctions. The training staff is helping them develop them. They're using the editor traffic cameras to assess how that substance works versus another substance like. Oh this substance a gives you a hundred more. Rpm's on your fast. Bolden substance. Be so we're going to go substance it's like. Have you ever been to the doctor. A or b b. Okay a a or c. How they're getting to this level. It is insane. Baseball never ceases to amaze me with how much they will go to cheat. And that's that's that's what it is with this pitcher illegal substances and colds getting cold out called out for it fairly or unfairly. He seems to have become the face of this for baseball. He's he's also he's also not running from it either. I mean he's for all intensive purposes non-answer minutes to the spider now the spider tax stuff. When when he was when he was talking about it he he knows like he was he was in non that he's in the. There's a lawsuit that's happening with the the clubhouse guy from angels and he's in on that too so it's not. This is one of those things that i have a couple of opinions on this people. Talk about this fans talk about this. Like oh it's happening for years like shut up. Turn the other cheek like it's fine. It's happening for years and to a point that's fine yes. It has been happening. Pine tar the the rosin bag with the frog. clay buckled. Look like.
The Bronx Pinstripes Show - Yankees MLB Podcast
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on The Bronx Pinstripes Show - Yankees MLB Podcast
"Let's go what's up everybody. Welcome to the bronx pinstripes show. Today i'm joined by stephanie epstein of sports illustrated she was one of the writers on a story that came out a few days ago blowing the lid off the pitcher substance abuse not. Pd's but maybe it should be considered that actual sticky stuff on the baseball stephanie. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks a lot for having me. This is i was just saying before we press record is seems like there's a story like this every baseball season that talks about something that should not be happening in the game of baseball this year. It's the it's pitchers using illegal substances to doctor the baseball. Of course there was the astros scandal at the end of two thousand nineteen. Pd's back in the nineties. But this seems like that might be the story for twenty twenty one so i guess congratulations on breaking. Yeah this is definitely what What everybody on. The sport is talking about it. A couple of quotes from the article. It did equate it to to steroids. It being that much of an advantage players do you agree with that I think that there are good parallels to steroids. I think it in in the way that it provides an advantage in the way that it's sort of a slippery slope that you like you can get into it sort of slowly doing something that's only that's illegal but not that bad and then all of a sudden you find yourself really down the rabbit hole and then also i think in the way that some pitchers her some players in general felt like they of have to do it just to keep up. I think there's that's same issue of like. I don't want to do this but everybody else's and it's my career at stake so i guess i'm gonna make a choice. I don't feel good about the one of the quotes in the article kind of struck me and it's exactly like the steroids thing it's that whoever whoever gets the best gets promoted to major league baseball and teams don't necessarily care how you're going about that as long as the result of their. They'll look the other way. So if you're a minor league pitcher and you've been working your ass off for a decade to try and get to the majors and you can apply. Little substance engage again few hundred extra. Rpm's on your fastball. Which can get you another couple strikeouts per nine innings and that's going to get you to the big leagues which is going to get you a million dollar check. Why the hell wouldn't you do it. Yeah and in some cases it feels like the team is encouraging you to do it. Sometimes you know. The pitching coach is saying you should consider adding a little sticky stuff that the trainers are handing it out. You know it really feels like the team expects it of you yet. And that's i mean that it's not surprising is certainly not surprising that there coaching their players to use it. Because like you said you gotta do it to keep up. The opponent is using it. What why shouldn't i. I use it. But that just i think highlights the real issue here. Is that how how you ever going to eliminate this from the game or reduced from the game. If it's not just players going about it to do this it's being coached. They have people experimenting with different substances to see what works best. They're using some of these the camera to actually find out this substance performs better than this other substance like did scientifically proven to perform better. So like it's just like we're so far. Seems like it's so far gone at this point. Yeah i think it's way more insidious than people realize. I warned citizens league realized honestly until pretty recently. Do you believe that though. Because i feel like the league. The league is constantly just looking the other way on things. They knew they knew. The extras were doing. Something shady they knew teams were illegally using the video. Replay room and all manfred wanted. All men for did was sent a memo aids and he hoped the memo solved things and obviously didn't solve things so is is is is major league baseball telling umpires to police it. Their version of the two thousand seventeen memo. I think the league often finds what it wants to find in terms of poor behavior and in this case i don't think they were really looking for it until maybe last year and then this year and i don't know i mean we'll see they. I think that in this case it is so clearly making the game worse To have this much. Pitcher dominance that i think they will make a real effort to curb it because otherwise they're going to have to talk about moving the mound back in increasing the size of the bases and doing all this stuff. They don't want to do so. I think there is some hope in the league office that maybe this is actually as bigger problems. Some of the players you're saying it is and maybe this'll this'll meeting only thing they'll have to fix. Yeah i think. Do you think that's the reason that it's or one of the reasons that it's getting so much. Attention is because offense is an all time low right now. Oh for sure yeah. I think that's part of why the difference the big difference. I think between listen starrewards Game more exciting. This makes the game more boring. And so i think that's part of why you see them faster. Act because this sucks. I agree with you. I agree with you it sucks. It's three hours of strikeouts. It's it's gone down. No no no one likes that. Well yeah i guess. The the flip side argument for steroids is that a pitcher could also use steroids. A better could use steroids so in theory. They both get an advantage by using that performance. Drug i don't know how pitcher uses illegal substances on his bat. I mean i guess you could too much george brett. Too much. Pine tar sheriff bat. I mean there's obviously things are a hitter can do to improve their performance..
WNYC 93.9 FM
"stephanie epstein" Discussed on WNYC 93.9 FM
"Looking out the window from our offices in Lower Manhattan. I saw people running frantically for the train. I saw flimsy umbrellas that stood no match against the rain. It felt a little bit like New York for a second. Be safe. If you are out there, though, there's a severe thunderstorm warning in effect until 5 15 Tonight there's a flash flood warning until seven o'clock. From NPR News. It's all things considered. I'm Mary Louise Kelly and I'm Ailsa Chang. Major League Baseball has a new substance abuse problem. No, we're not talking about steroids that royal the sport a few years back. It's not enhanced players. This time. It's sticky baseballs, and unless you like watching batters strike out a bunch it's becoming a real issue. Joining us now to talk all about it via escape is Stephanie Kapstein, who reported on this for Sports Illustrated. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me well, these were being with us. So can you just explain how a stickier baseball makes a picture better? Any time you change the way the baseball behaves, it will behave differently. And so batters have watched hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of pitches over their career, and they've all behaved a certain way. If you see it at a certain point, doing something, it will likely end up in the place you expected to end up in this case, the baseball is ending up in a different place, so the more complicated answer is that it makes the ball spin faster. Which makes it move more, and that makes it much harder to hit. Okay. And the balls that you're describing in your reporting. I mean, some of them have so much sticky stuff that you could see the pictures. Fingerprints on them. Sometimes you can hear the actual rip when the picture releases the ball. What is this sticky stuff? Exactly? Yeah, People were telling me crazy stories about you can touch your palm to a baseball and lift it. Just without gripping it. It's like melt sticking. Exactly. There are a number of different kind of concoctions. The players use some of them even brew their their own. There's some they're sort of semi legal everybody they want. When the baseball comes out of the package. It's very slick, and so it's hard to get a grip. So the league wants you to have some. Wherever else you might hit a batter on the head because you don't know where the baseball is gone, So there's a little bit of a sticky substance behind the mound called rosin, and they're allowed to use that. It starts. You know, it's a slippery slope. Right? First, they realized that if you use, uh spray on sunscreen, a lot of it on your arms, you can mix that with rosin, and it gets even stick here. So that's a little bit stickier than what's allowed. But it's not a huge deal. And then on the other end of that would be a substance called Spider Tech, which is basically blue that's supposed to help Ironman lift stones and hold stones together, and it's so that stuff is so sticky. That usually you can't even if you touch your fingers together. When you have it on your hand, your fingers get glued together. You move it with rubbing alcohol. It's it's crazy. It's really sticky stuff. But the thing is, pictures have been doctoring balls almost as long as baseball itself right. Like, how is this problem? Different now than, say, the spitball, which I think has been around for what more than a century. Yes, Basically, the whole history of baseball is pitchers trying to doctor the baseball. The reason it's different now is that they have technology. And so they set up. This device called the track Man that tracks what the baseball is doing and you can apply the sunscreen rosin and you can throw and you can look at the trackman and see how many times the baseball spun while it was on its way to the plate. And then you can apply something like Spider tax. Stick your stuff and you can look at the track man and you can see just how much of a difference that made and so guys can be much more scientific and much more efficient in the way they're using it, whereas in the past You would kind of apply something and yes, and you weren't sure if it was helping. It was all based on the high test. Now they can look at it, and they have the data to tell them. This is working. Which leaves the question. What is Major league baseball going to do to stop the spread of ball doctoring? They intend, they say, to start cracking down on this suit. They've been actually collecting baseballs from every pitcher all shoes on and looking at them to see how sticky they are. I've decided it is quite a lot. And so they say that in the next couple of weeks they're going to start cracking down. They are going to empower umpires to go out there and say, Hey, I think I see something on your hat. Get the hat out of here. And if you do it again, we're going to eject not just the hat, but also the player. Part of the problem right now is that usually they rely on the opposing manager to say, Hey, could you go check that picture? But all the managers know that their players are doing it, too. So you don't really want to fall out the other team because you know that they'll come and get you next. Stephanie Epstein from Sports Illustrated. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Superhero fans will see one of the most anticipated streaming series from Marvel when Loki debuts tomorrow on Disney. Plus, NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the show starring marvels villainous God of Mischief is a sly examination of a bad guy who may be considering how to be better. Marvel's Loki kicks off by explaining something huge..
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Houston Astros fire executive Brandon Taubman over outburst at reporters
"Seminar recorded the episode that you're about to hear on Thursday morning when there had still been no major updates on the situation with the Astros in there assist THAN GM Brandon Todman in which they announced that they had fired todman following an investigation over the past two days in conjunction with Major League Baseball they interviewed Astros employees. target any specific reporters in the vicinity yesterday say our initial investigation led us to believe that Brendan Dobbins inappropriate comments were not directed toward any reporter we were wrong young we sincerely apologize to Stephanie Epstein Sports illustrated and to all individuals who witnessed this incident or were offended by the inappropriate conduct the Astros in no way intended to minimize the issues related to domestic violence our initial belief was based on witness statements about the incident subsequent interviews have revealed the titans inappropriate comments were in fact directed toward one were reporters now it's obviously a good thing that Todman was held accountable here even though the astros description of what they did as proactively assisting Major League baseball strange credibility given their actions leading up to this point it's good that they apologized to Stephanie App st in the end the other reporters who witnessed this I would not say it's a sufficient response in that they do not apologize in the statement for releasing their own first statement in which they supported Taliban and accused Epstein in sports illustrated of advocating their report which has been proved completely accurate and was very suit and corroborated by other reporters as we said in our initial episode they made what could have been a career ending Asians Bhai suggesting that that report was fabricated said there really should be some sort of reckoning for that and Luneau admitted on Thursday that before the team issued that original statement old Lee Todman and another astros employees were spoken to so they didn't even talk to the reporters about what they said they saw happened and yet also said this is not endemic this is not a cultural issue which is very hard to believe given how unserious Li they appeared to take this Lino claimed that quote the belief was that it was one colleague talking to another colleague having been overheard and it was not intended to be overheard which again pretty hard to believe clearly contradicted by the reports that were out there this also doesn't explain why allowed toubon false statement in a press release on Tuesday nor does it explain why Luna went on the radio and did an interview on Wednesday in which he said we may never know top content I would think that by that time there had been enough eyewitness reports to suggest that we had pretty good idea about what his intent was so whoever was responsible for releasing that I statement it seems should also be held accountable for that in any other members of the Astros Organization who may have backed up top account should be held accountable for that to Jeff Lynne did not say who wrote the statement but that a group of people were involved and that he did see it before it went out he acknowledged that it should not have gone out he also said that he is not actually reached out to any of the women who were subjected to Tomlin's tirade he said I have been traveling up here I had to have a pretty tough conversation this morning with someone that's worked with me for a long time fine but I will as soon as I can and no one really feels bad about the tough conversation you had to have with top man so this positive development in the sense that it would not have been conceivable for nothing at all to happen and no punishment to be applied but it doesn't seem quite sufficient obviously dismissing one person or multiple people probably wouldn't root out whatever versus traffic issues led to this incident but even the direct response to this single isolated incident still leaves a lot to be desired so we will see whether they're any further consequences whether MLB issues any discipline of its own the astros have really bungled this every step of the way it's obviously unfortunate that this happened at all but they should have immediately ED that we're we're looking into it provided that comment for the initial report that Epstein wrote for sports illustrated not issued defenses of top and in the intervening days while they were evidently still uncertain about what actually happened really kind of a clinic in responding as poorly as possible from start to finish that perhaps this will not be the finish maybe the really nail it in the for statement I three warm ups all right now you're up to speed they'll still hear my conversation with Sam because most of it still lies but now you know the
Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney
MLB to investigate comments made by Houston Astros assistant general manager
"Major League baseball is looking into claims about Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Tomen Major League Baseball Center will interview relevant parties regarding allegations published Monday that's all straight article the SL reports had tall been the astros assistant GM repeatedly yelled toward a group of female reporters during the team's American League pennant celebrate in his remarks reportedly reference Houston closer Roberto Suna who suspended for seventy five games in two thousand eighteen for violating the league's domestic violence policy before joining the Astros in trade from Toronto according to the report in sports illustrated what Tom and yelled over and over again was essentially that he was glad the Astros added a suna an act for which they were criticized heavily last year on Monday night the Astros put out a statement according to the article as quote unquote misleading and quote unquote completely irresponsible but on Tuesday the Astra seemed attempt to walk that back you're putting out statements by twelve men and owner Jim Crane would seem to acknowledge the incident that took place and Thomas Statement indicated quote unquote he apologize to anyone and he may have offended privately major league baseball's were furious about that statement that came out Stephanie Epstein who's The reporter wrote the story for sports illustrated talked about witnessing what tolman had done it was startling I mean none of us were talking to this person none of us we're talking about this person get I we were kind of surprised why why is this guy yelling at us and then once we started listening to what he was saying and seeing kind of the look on his face we realized Oh this is this is an unusual this is an unusual moment a little bit scary I would say and certainly unsettling that interview was on aside the lines Stephanie continued to talk about when this happened and at that point a lot of the players had gone and we're beginning to shower get dressed get ready to to go home with their families some of them were celebrating on the field so there were still players in the clubhouse certainly but it was not the same kind of raucous celebration usually see and generally also it's mostly or entirely players there you don't see that many front office officials is generally left to the players to celebrate so he was in a group Brennan was in a group of people a group of other front office officials I imagine I didn't know all of them and they were sort of chatting casually among themselves until until I guess he spotted US and decided to speak out she talked about the Astros Statement which so infuriated Major League baseball it starts out by confirming my reporting just it says that actually I misunderstood the context well there was no as the Houston Chronicle has has mentioned there was no interview taking place as soon as farther away from you album than we were so that seems like a stretch and he turned to face us that's been it was the other direction so that doesn't make a lot of sense and then it also seems like sort of a miscalculation I guess when and it's a room full of reporters I think it's likely that people are going to speak truthfully about what they witnessed so I'm not I'm not really sure what the plan was surrounding that's Ah I will say that I did not fabricate it in the summer of two thousand eighteen one a sooner became available after serving his suspension every team in baseball passed on him other than the Astros and Stephanie gave context of that decision honestly this is an attitude that I see across a lot of baseball on Sports in general is that when these teams acquire players with reprehensible pass they say listen the bargain is that we're going to get this guy for fifty cents on the dollar but we will pay a price and public outcry and this was the start of a conversation we are prepared to keep having this conversation but they don't actually want to have that conversation they want to get their guy what they paid for them and then they want to sort of move on and have us all focus on the fact that they are very good at winning baseball games and I don't think they get to decide that before game one of the World Series Aj hinch talked about the incident in the clubhouse it's unfortunate it's uncalled for it for me as a leader in this organization down here in the clubhouse on the field take everything that happens in the clubhouse to heart you know no one I don't I don't it doesn't matter if it's a player coach manager any of you members of the media should ever feel like when you come into our clubhouse that you're gonna be uncomfortable or disrespected I think we all need to be better across the award in the industry I understand why it's a question today and I you know I appreciate it but I was disappointed. Aj hinch was asked about how the Astros Organization that handles people. I don't think it's my job to evaluate that I mean I understand the question I appreciate it but the last twenty four hours I've been pretty locked in on the What's and I think answering that question at this moment is probably not fair to me enough fair to the organization I tell you this that majorly Paul would've looked into the todman incident either way but I do think that the statement the Astros put out on Monday night double down not only the whole situation them but I think for Major League Baseball which was absolutely livid over how the Astros seem to target the credibility of the report. are mentioning that report was misleading mentioning that the report was completely irresponsible and it definitely when you see on Tuesday how the Astros tried to walk back the comment until the organization comes forward and acknowledges that their statement was mislead being in completely irresponsible the Front Office of the Astros will have no credibility in this issue and whenever discipline comes down and I do think sums coming down I think more of it's going to be about the statement that the team put out under organization letterhead