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Chapter 1: What experiences led Bradfo and Julian to the GM meetings in Las Vegas?
I mean, nothing says Vegas like Julian McWilliams. We have been to Toronto. We have been to – you've been to Los Angeles. I'm in Las Vegas. The great game of baseball is take us to all corners of the earth, Julian. And I'm in New England. Now you're just like hunkered down. That's right. Like going through free agents, getting your wits about you.
We were just talking about, before we came on, this is baseball's been boring, behind the curtain slash after dark. We're talking about Vegas because that's where the GM meetings are right now. And... The challenges that come with Las Vegas. The challenges that come with having a baseball event in Las Vegas.
In case people don't know, Julian, baseball desperately wants to do this thing in Las Vegas because they want to have this awards show. They want everybody here. It used to be like the GM meetings were just like this nice little thing that nobody showed up at. Now we have to have an awards show. We have to have credentials. There's a golf tournament. All this stuff. Now we're in Vegas.
So tell me why you don't like Vegas.
Well, I just remembered this. And, you know, it takes me back to the time I was there. When was it? Was it – I think it was probably Winter Meetings 2018. Yeah, I was still covering the Oakland A's. And I'll never forget, I walk in and I'm like – what is that smell? Like you clearly smell cigarettes.
And it's like, but they try to mask the cigarettes and you quickly find out with like this perfume and all the hotels smelled the exact same. And it drives me nuts. And so, so much so. And so, you know, like Vegas is like dry air too.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does baseball face when hosting events in Las Vegas?
So I remember between the cigarette smoke and the dry air, they had like some GM thing for David Forrest. Dude, I got such a bad nosebleed that I couldn't show up. And I was like, they were like, hey, the PR guy's like, hey, are you coming? I was like, dude, I kid you not, I have the worst nosebleed. He's like, what? I was like, I'm bleeding, like, profusely.
Like, it was the worst nosebleed I've ever had. I'm like, I can't step out like this. And it turned out it was from the freaking, all that shit in there, plus it being, like, so dry. I hate the smell of Vegas. I'm not a Vegas guy. I'm not a Vegas guy at all.
When you tell them, say, hey, in Vegas I have a nosebleed, that could be problematic.
Exactly.
Julian, do you need help? How can we help you? That's not a good thing. No, it's not a good thing. Let me tell you my story. I think it was from that same winter meetings because you're right. Like you stay in. You get a headache, Rob. Yeah, well, it's like three days. You don't go outside. You have to force yourself to go outside. Here's the thing.
With every winter meetings, you have to do that, right? You have to force yourself to go outside. But in Vegas, it's like you're in there and you have that air that you're talking about. And it was the only time. It was the only time in my life. My life. that I've thrown up on a plane going back from Vegas. I believe it. It was turbulent, but the whole air thing had just got to me. And to you.
And Dan Duquette is sitting two rows in front of me, and he's just kind of laughing.
He probably thought you were drunk.
I don't know.
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Chapter 3: How did the World Series impact team strategies heading into the offseason?
The GMs were out. Everybody was out because they weren't threatened by this massive amount of media. You go to the GM meetings now, nobody wants to come out because they're besieged by these people. So anyway, it's okay. It's all right. It's okay. It's all right. Well, speaking of traveling around, like you said, you have traveled around.
And I haven't really – it was a little bit chaotic probably the last time I saw you, right? It was. Listen, you want to talk about work ethic.
I'm writing a story. It's about 2.45 a.m. I see Rob walking around. The park. I mean, you're still out there just chasing interviews.
Well, that's the problem. That's the problem is that, you know, so what you're talking about is after the Game 7 of the World Series, you're on the field. The families are there. The players are there. You're interviewing. And you could sit there and talk to people forever. But you realize it's 2 o'clock in the morning. And at some point, you've got to pull the ripcord. So listen, it was great.
It was great. I do want to get your eye test, your eye test of the whole thing because that's what you do. That's your brand. It's the brand, baby. But when it comes to that, I don't know if I told you. I didn't even realize. So this is another thing about the playoffs, and you experienced this. There's zero sleep. It's just people don't understand.
I know that the Chilean Myers didn't complain about the same thing, sticking the straw through the ground. But I'm telling you, for sportswriters, It's great to be there, but there is zero sleep. And that was the perfect case of it. Like you said, leaving the field at 2, go up to the press box, get in my car, go to the hotel. Now you just know you have to power through.
You still have to post whatever you have to post, stories.
And you can't sleep. No.
And then you're going to catch a flight.
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Chapter 4: Which free agent is Julian most excited about for the upcoming season?
Yes. Right?
Yeah. Yes, there were. I mean, Tommy Edmund made two after booting a ball. I mean, the list goes on. And, like, even, like, when Dave Roberts subbed in Pahez in game seven for Edmond during the middle of the inning, then all of a sudden Pahez makes that play. Like, that's not stuff you're thinking about in the moment.
It was the craziest – it was the, by far, like, the most – I think the most emotionally taxing game for me where I'm like, I didn't know – you really didn't know who was going to win. And I think Mookie said it. Like, the Dodgers – Not at any point did they have the momentum in that game. No. And so they won it.
When you were driving away, when I was driving away the next morning, not realizing that I had an extra hour, I did feel bad for the people in Toronto. Like, I was watching the people in Toronto. I was watching the walk around.
And Porter with all their World Series stuff on.
Yes.
uh toronto city yeah i don't know how you could i don't know i i really like like i moved up rob and then i know you were you were out there in right field uh yeah over the bullpen yeah yeah don't worry i was in you know what they i was in the the ox box in uh in L.A. You're in the nosebleeds.
I'm going to say this, Julian. As you know, I deferred my seat in the main press box.
You're right. You did.
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Chapter 5: What lessons can teams learn from the recent World Series performance?
Like, that's the first thing I think about because the Dodgers have probably the worst bullpen down the stretch in all of baseball. Even with Alex Bessia there, like, he wasn't – he hadn't been that good either. I know he had the situation going on, and obviously that takes – That trumps whatever baseball thing we're going on.
But anyway, from just an on-field perspective, it's like, dang, relievers didn't matter. And because if they didn't have Yamamoto closing out that game, do you trust anybody to hold that lead? Well, not to interrupt you, but that's the bizarre part about this. Do you trust anyone? Do you trust Luke Snell, Tyler Glass? Like, you went to your best players, and your best players are pitchers.
That's the weird thing is that the Blue Jays were kind of running out of pitchers. The Dodgers had, like, four guys down there who could pitch. Like, guys who, you know, Will Klein or Dreyer or, you know, Trinan, like, they were all down there. But anyway, I like where you're going with this starting pitching thing. Go ahead.
It was just – and I know that you say, oh, well, the Dodgers won with no starting pitching the year before and yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. But I think if you're looking at both teams – And what they brought to – I mean, Gosman pitched well. Like, Bieber got thrown in a tough situation, but he pitched well in parts of the series. Scherzer pitched well.
Like, none of this reliever stuff, none of this opener stuff really mattered at that point. It was just like, who are the best pitchers on the field that we can go to at any point? Like, Trey Savage, you know, Bieber. All these starters were just like relievers.
And it seemed to become that after that sort of that game, that 18 inning game or during that 18 inning game, where it's just like, dang, dude, like I didn't expect the Blue Jays to do this and have this pitching staff. But dang, they have it. And then, by the way, like Yamamoto doing what he's doing.
It just reminds me... It really reminded me of how the old school Giants used to win World Series. It was never with their bats. The Dodgers did not have a good offensive playoffs. They didn't. You can count how many times... I don't think they even scored more than six runs or seven runs in any game during the playoffs. So it wasn't about their offense.
it was just flat out their starting pitching. And then not their starting pitching once it got to the – not just – not all their starters once it got to the World Series. No, it was one guy. Right? You just said – you just mentioned, Rob, that the Blue Jays are running out of pitching. The Dodgers were as well, but they still had that one guy that you paid that money to who's –
showed up as one of the better pitchers in the game, and he delivered the way in which you couldn't think, you possibly couldn't think, you would think he would deliver.
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Chapter 6: How do the Blue Jays' recent experiences shape their future decisions?
There's like a million things you can ask. Nobody asked about that. Not one person asked about it. Even the bench-clearing brawl or whatever, bench-clearing brouhaha, where I got Robleski on the field and he said the same thing he said a couple times about apologizing to his mother. But you had a bench-clearing fracas In a game seven. Yeah. But I want to ask you this.
And one of the Dodgers people asked this on the field after. I thought it was a good one. He's like, was what Yamamoto did more impressive than what Otani did in his three-home run game? In other words, will we see that? Will we never see that more likely than what Otani did? I would make a case for it.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think you could ever see that again. I just don't know. Unless the same guy does it, he's the only guy I can believe that can do it. Right? Like, if you're telling me he could do it again, all right, yeah, okay. I've seen it before. Again, like I've said before, I have to see stuff with my own eyes for it to happen. I've seen him do it.
I'm not going to bet on Blake Snell to be able to do that. I'm not going to bet on Garrett – Garrett Crochet to be able to do that. Plus, it's more impressive because it literally won them a World Series.
They had to have that happen.
They had to. You could have figured out a way to win a game. More impressive, I guess. Okay, Otani pitches and hits, but sometimes we have to give credence and reverence to a moment of damn this is just some like flat out dominant stuff just on one side like on one side that's like shifting the game in a game that has no momentum in their favor nothing It was nothing.
They had nothing going, ever. And when they felt like they had something going, the Blue Jays responded every single time until they just could not finish the job. But Yamamoto did. That's more impressive to me. It is. It is, particularly against that lineup. You're tired, Rob. Him pitching against that lineup is more impressive than Ohtani hitting against that lineup. It is.
They're a better hitting team than our pitching team. That's just a fact. It's a fact of the matter. So, yes, don't get me riled up. What Yamamoto did was the most impressive thing of the entire World Series because you felt the seismic shift of it. You really did. You really did.
Well, wasn't there the expectation because he is a human being – with Yamamoto and had never been done before on Zero Days Rest. This isn't Bumgarner. You had a day between games when he did it.
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Chapter 7: What insights can be drawn from the performance of key players during the playoffs?
Like, even... I think he's a freak. I think he's, like, one of those, like... Like a spud web, like, but like 10 times better. But I'm just saying from the freakish nature of like, this isn't supposed to like, that doesn't look right. Like that doesn't, it's something like a, okay. I'll give it a better example. I don't know. Like Isaiah, I don't know. Isaiah Thomas, just like, okay.
A dominant little guy. You got to go – Isaiah Thomas, like, maybe not athletically. Look, just the way even – whatever. That's neither here nor there. Just the way even he bounced off the mound, he covers first base faster than any pitcher I've ever seen cover first base. Like, the ball is not even in the hitter's glove. He's like three-quarters of the way there, it almost seems.
I mean, in the fielder's glove, he's like three-quarters of the way there. It's impressive, like, everything he does. I was like, God damn, this dude is fast as hell.
Yeah.
He just bounces off the mound. It's incredible.
So, okay, this flipped the page once again. Now, as we said, I'm in Vegas. You're monitoring things from CBS headquarters. Good job.
Yeah. CBS headquarters in Dorchester.
CBS headquarters in Dorchester Avenue. What – What free agent, if you could take any free agent, Julian McWilliams is building a team.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of gambling on baseball in light of recent events?
No, I'm not. Well, no, I wasn't. Is that code?
Yeah, threw the cougar.
She's a cougar, all right. But, Vlad, Vlad, you tell me. I'm going to say this. Please tell me if I'm full of hoey. If he hit the open market, he would be $600 million, not $500 million.
Yes.
That's how good he was.
I think from a position player standpoint, by far the best player. Oh, in the open market?
By far.
By far the best player.
By the way, what he did across the board, people I don't think understand how good. I know the gold glove thing. Base runner. Oh, the whole thing.
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