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00:00Tony Vitello right now, and we'll put Steve Kerr aside
00:03because he's been through it now for so many years,
00:04but for Tony, you're into new ground, stepping up,
00:08the first ever to do what he's trying to do,
00:10and you start out 0-3 with one run scored.
00:12It's probably uncomfortable.
00:13You think?
00:14Yeah.
00:14It's one thing to coach.
00:16I coached the Little League team of majors, 12-year-olds,
00:19and we went 1-19, and it was a bummer.
00:22The parents weren't super thrilled.
00:24I drafted poorly.
00:26My first pick was a starting pitcher who had a webbed hand,
00:30that was probably regrettable.
00:31Loved the kid, but, yeah, this is a little bit different.
00:34Higher stakes.
00:36Tony didn't get to draft these guys.
00:38He steps into a job, and there are highly paid,
00:42veteran-experienced good baseball players,
00:44and when they don't play well, people are going to look at him.
00:47It's kind of unfair in many ways.
00:49It's totally unfair, but it's interesting that he was talking
00:52over the Yankees series about what, in effect,
00:55is kind of a tight sphincter situation with the Giants.
00:58He felt like he ramped up the pressure too much.
01:02He's given a lot of, like, you know, let's go get him speeches,
01:04and I probably got to take an L on that because there was a lot of stuff.
01:08I heard a lot of calls last week before the season even started,
01:11and people were like, we're not going to do this college rah-rah thing.
01:15And I'm like, where are we getting that Tony is a rah-rah guy?
01:19Tony is a big personality and coached Tennessee,
01:24but I don't have any information that tells me that Tony is running
01:29through the clubhouse with underwear and pom-poms.
01:33Like, I don't know that.
01:34I don't know why he would, why would he handle this that way?
01:38These are 30-year-olds with kids.
01:41Why would, I don't know that it's that.
01:44And I still don't fully know that it's that.
01:47Until then, now, they start losing games, and Tony's like,
01:50yeah, probably did a little bit too much of the fire-em-up speeches all week.
01:54And I'm like, oh, God, you are a rah-rah guy.
01:57Oh, crap.
01:59Nah, Tony, don't do that.
02:00That's a long season, dude.
02:02Very long.
02:03We got a lot of baseball games.
02:05But ultimately, he has to be true to who he is as a person and as a coach.
02:09Sure.
02:09The authentic Tony Vitello is, he's frank, he's glib, he's kind of funny,
02:14and he's a very emotional, fired-up, fire-and-brimstone guy.
02:17So he can't just dial that all the way back.
02:20But like you're saying, you've got, Robbie Ray's got four kids at least, four or five.
02:25I mean, he's been through multiple surgeries and, you know, Chappie's in his 30s,
02:29and you've got all these guys who've been playing pro ball for a long, long time.
02:33And to go full-on fire-and-brimstone, like from day one, that's probably not going to be the best
02:40formula.
02:40I mean, if I'm Tony, because now, now's when the Sphinxers actually do get tight.
02:46Because now you're 0-3, and you're playing every day seven games this week, Padres and Mets.
02:52There's no break.
02:53There's no break.
02:56Historically, recently, this group has not played well and hit well in San Diego.
03:00That's where they are tonight.
03:01So you've got three games over the next 50 or so hours in San Diego.
03:06And then you've got to get a plane and come home and face the high-priced Mets for four games
03:11back in your ballpark.
03:12And every single day that you don't put up five-plus runs and win a game,
03:17Sphinx is only going to get tighter.
03:20What if we come back tomorrow and you're 0-4?
03:23And then we come back Wednesday and you're 0-5?
03:26Oh, God.
03:27That's, you know what I mean?
03:29And you have your, actually, I guess Logan is throwing tomorrow.
03:32I was going to say, you're going to have your fourth and fifth starters.
03:34You're in San Diego, blah, blah, blah.
03:37But, yeah, you got Logie going tomorrow.
03:39Okay, hopefully, hopefully they come back three and three.
03:43But my point is, is like, if you all felt pressure last week, now is when it really starts to
03:50ramp up.
03:50Now, if I were Tony, and it's super easy to say this after the fact and super easy to say
03:57this from the chair where we sit.
03:59But if I were Tony, I don't think you come out after one or two games and start sharing with
04:05everybody that, hey, it's probably my fault.
04:09I might have ramped him up a little bit too much.
04:11I gave him a speech three or four days ago.
04:13I would have just brushed your shoulder off.
04:17Hey, y'all, this is one game.
04:19It's one series.
04:20Yeah.
04:21So we lost 7-0.
04:22We'll be back, you know, we'll be back on Friday.
04:25Yeah.
04:26Then you come back on Friday and you lose 3-0.
04:27Yeah, look, we're, hey, the Yankees are really good.
04:30We're a little cold here to start the season.
04:32But we got a billion games left.
04:35We're good.
04:36But, like, he immediately launched into what he thinks he's doing wrong.
04:41And I'm like, oh, God.
04:44Now what are we?
04:45Oh, good.
04:46You're searching already?
04:48Right.
04:49You're 0-2.
04:50And what are you searching for?
04:51I don't know.
04:52You've got good hitters who aren't hitting.
04:54And your pitching quietly has been pretty good.
04:57Like, Logan had the one sloppy, crooked inning.
05:00And other than that, you've had the Yankees, a very good lineup, under good control.
05:05And so the big problem right now is you're putting guys out there to hit who are better hitters than
05:11what they're actually doing.
05:12And I'm just looking at the lineup.
05:13You ran it down before.
05:15Your bottom five, 1-for-9, 1-for-10, 1-for-10, 0-for-9, 0-for-9.
05:19Yeah, everybody's stats are going to stink right now.
05:21I mean, Ramos, 3-for-10.
05:23Okay.
05:24And Matt Chapman has an RBI.
05:28Which is amazing.
05:29He's got a run batted in.
05:31His one hit was one that batted in a run.
05:34That's incredible.
05:34So that's kind of fun.
05:35Yeah, no, that is the goal.
05:37But three games in, you can't look at any of it.
05:39So I would be, if I was Tony, I'd be much rather of the mind of, hey, these guys are
05:43professional hitters.
05:44And if you look at their track record, this is not going to be a longstanding thing.
05:49Rough start.
05:50But you know what?
05:51We're going to turn the page and go to San Diego and try to see if we can actually hit
05:54the ball.
05:54You notice, I noticed something here with this Vitello thing.
05:58And I don't like it about fans, media, the whole process.
06:04And I want to point to this because, boy, I wish there was another way to do this.
06:09Maybe there is.
06:10But I don't know, probably not, especially in the age of social media.
06:15We want, in theory, we want whoever we're talking to as the assembled media and therefore the fans who are
06:27getting this content sent to them.
06:29We want people to be interesting.
06:32We want people to answer questions and say things.
06:36But then when they do, we collectively coach them into being boring.
06:42I think.
06:43The process.
06:44Listen to what we're saying right now.
06:46Tony is very, very, like, we've been in the room together now a few times.
06:51A few press conferences.
06:52I'm no beat writer.
06:53But he is thoughtful.
06:56He will take your question.
06:59He looks you directly in the eye.
07:02And he will try to answer it.
07:05And now, all of us are like, ooh, that dummy told us about his speech.
07:10Don't say that.
07:11Well, guess what we're doing?
07:12We're going to coach Tony into being Belichick.
07:16So along to San Diego.
07:18Exactly.
07:18No big deal.
07:20First three games, 159 to go.
07:23Nothing to see here.
07:24We're going to, and maybe that's the way it just has to be.
07:28Like, none of us individually are powerful enough to stop that from happening.
07:34But Tony already, I know this for a fact, Tony already had won what he considers bad experience with saying
07:43too much in a dugout at spring training.
07:45Y'all remember when he just, on his own accord, started talking about Tennessee with the assembled media and nobody
07:52liked it?
07:52And I don't think, I think Tony learned a lesson there.
07:55But part of the lesson was, I don't like what you all did with that.
07:59I was just trying to share something with you.
08:02Like, I'm a human being and I was trying to share something with you.
08:05And y'all used it against me.
08:07I don't think he liked that.
08:09And so we are.
08:10We're in this process.
08:11And so I would, as a fan and as a member of the media and all of us who are
08:16doing this, it's very early.
08:19And I would caution all of us against the idea of, let's coach Tony into being inauthentic and boring.
08:29I would, like, it's okay, quite frankly, because I don't think that anything he's saying is the reason that they're
08:370-3.
08:38They're 0-3 because they keep swinging through the ball when there are runners on base.
08:43And when they hit the ball with runners on base, it was ground balls that turned into double plays.
08:47And they had four of those.
08:48And as you're laying that out, I don't think that you're wrong.
08:50And it had me thinking about the latest example of this, which is Brandon Pajemski.
08:55So Pods now came on our station.
08:57You asked him the question.
08:59I was off and, you know, laid up with bad back.
09:01And he basically, you gave him a chance to walk back some of the things he said, and he did.
09:06And then the media postgame asked him again, and he did it again, and he walked it back.
09:10And it's only because fans heard what he said about, you know, I want to be better than Steph Curry,
09:16which is taken out of context.
09:17And he said what he said.
09:19And because we all are so outraged by that, not all of us, but many of us, and because we
09:24feel that he's over his skis, and he's doing too much, and he's saying too much.
09:28And it's now colored the way we think about him as a ball player.
09:31And so now on Twitter, he makes a mistake, and that's what gets retweeted in the video of an air
09:36ball or, you know, the play from last night where he should have passed it to Chris Stapps.
09:41He absolutely should have, and he didn't.
09:43Of course he should have.
09:44And Porzingis is begging for the ball, and he's on a heater.
09:46And so that one mistake becomes the narrative instead of, you know, Pods played himself a pretty good, pretty sturdy
09:53game, especially the first half.
09:55In the second half, nobody was any good.
09:56But it's all to your point of we want these players and these coaches to not say anything too dramatic
10:03and over the line, but we also want you to be entertaining.
10:06And so what we're left with is, you know, we're going to try to run the ball and stuff.
10:11And, you know, we're going to try to hit the open guy and stuff, and, you know, we're left with
10:14the Shanahan and even, you know, Bob Melvin and Bochy.
10:19And, you know, we're left with guys who aren't going to say anything that controversial, and if they do, then
10:26we're all going to pounce on it.
10:27Or they walk into the room like, I actually think, you know, Bochy, he'd answer your question for sure.
10:33I think Shanahan tries, but what Shanahan does is he walks in the room with a look on his face
10:38like, oh, you freaking people.
10:41All right.
10:42What do we got?
10:43Right.
10:44And so you walk into a room with body language that suggests, I don't love being here.
10:52I only like maybe 25% of the questions you're about to ask me.
10:56I'll perk up a little bit when you do ask me that question, but 75% of this makes me
11:02want to just go, that's not how what we do works.
11:05And you hear him say that, I feel like, in press conferences a lot.
11:09That's not how it works.
11:11Or you get someone like Steve Kerr, who I find to be incredibly, usually incredibly patient with the way that
11:20he answers.
11:21And that's why everybody loves to interview him, because he's, like, kind and tries to answer the question.
11:29Not if it's about health.
11:32Well, I was going to make that example, because even that, where he revealed something that he shouldn't have revealed,
11:38right or wrong.
11:39And, you know, we didn't run with it.
11:41But if it's compelling, we're going to put it out there, because that's what we do.
11:44And we want to share it with our audience.
11:46And it gets aggregated and picked up.
11:47And then it comes back around to him, and somebody tells him that he shouldn't have said that.
11:51Now he's got to come back, and he's got to retract it in some ways.
11:54And so it's all kind of a vicious cycle.
11:57And then you think about Vitello, you're 0-3, and it's fire and brimstone.
12:02And, like, already people are doubting whether or not this was the right hire.
12:07Three games in.
12:09My advice to Tony, and no one's asking for it, would be, dude, like, hang in there with your authenticity.
12:16Just hang in there with your, they're not going to lose all the baseball games.
12:21It's a really long season, but keep reminding everybody that.
12:24Like, I would get out of the, like, the daily grind of I've got to now share with everyone what
12:32I see that might have gone wrong.
12:33It's baseball.
12:35It's baseball.
12:36It's not a football game.
12:38And so it just, it isn't that.
12:41Like, every time that you suit up, you're not playing 1-16th or 1-17th of your season.
12:48Like, you, man, what is the percentage of 1 out of 1-62?
12:53Well, 1% is 1.6.
12:56So they've played basically less than 2% of their schedule.
12:59But I mean even just every time you go out there, you are playing what's essentially.
13:05About .6 of your season.
13:07About over a half of a percent of your season.
13:09Right.
13:09So treat it as such.
13:11Do you know what I mean?
13:12But, like, dude, stay you, because I really do.
13:16I think he, I think, I made this point last week with Grandy.
13:20I think we saw some of this with Casey Schmidt.
13:23Do you remember how fun he was when he came up?
13:25Yep.
13:26And he hit the ball for three weeks, and he was the bee's knees, and everybody wanted him on the
13:31air, and he's out there, and we're, you know, after games.
13:34That ball got Schmidt on.
13:35Yeah, post-game interviews, and we got gum on the brim, and we got, you know, hot seat, and grab
13:41ass, and all the things that Casey was doing.
13:43And then he started swinging and missing, and then everybody was like, oh, you're not very good at baseball, and
13:52Casey kind of went away.
13:54And he's not as big of a personality for the fans anymore, because I think there was a little bit
14:01of a distaste there.
14:02Now, look, that's part of it.
14:04This is big, big, big, big-time sports.
14:07So, I'm not asking for gumdrops and lollipops here.
14:11That's not what I'm talking about.
14:13But I think that it would be good for Tony if he would treat these things in a little bit
14:20more like, I got this.
14:22I got this.
14:24Yep, we didn't hit the ball today.
14:26I got this.
14:26We got this.
14:27They've got this.
14:29As opposed to, are we going to get every, after every loss, are we going to get a story of,
14:33well, last Tuesday,
14:35I gave him a 10-minute speech, and maybe I should have given him a 7-minute speech,
14:39and it's just like, don't overthink this, dude.
14:42Right.
14:42It's a baseball game.
14:44You got your lineup.
14:46Go play.
14:48That's to the best of your ability.
14:50But, yeah, they're going to have to win one at some point, or else this is only going to build.
14:53Well, and it's hard because he's never been through it in any way, shape, or form.
14:58And he had never even been to Oracle Park, for crying out loud, let alone manage a game there.
15:03So there's so much that is new.
15:05Not that it's a learning curve because he's been a baseball manager, but 162 is not, I don't know, 55
15:11at Tennessee or whatever the number is.
15:14And I like to just monitor what Tennessee's doing just for the sake of, like, the rhythm of that where,
15:19you know,
15:20they get swept by Vanderbilt, and they're now 18-10.
15:22So 18-10 for them is not great, and you're not into a desperation mode yet, but that's about half
15:28the year down,
15:29whereas you're playing 162.
15:31So you could go, you could start this year and be, I don't know, 3-10, and then you could
15:36rip off 11-14,
15:37and you'd be right back to 500 with 130 games left to go.
15:42So it's a, I mean, the whole it's a marathon, not a sprint is a cliche, and it's kind of
15:47foolish,
15:47but it's the reality.
15:49But if you've never run a marathon before, you don't understand what it's really like to go 26.2.
15:55Oh, gosh, no doubt. No, no, no doubt.
15:59So I, it's funny because that was even the question that I wanted to ask him,
16:04and I did on Friday morning before the second game,
16:07and I don't know that he was equipped to answer it yet because I asked him about it,
16:11and I think it's what you're talking about, the cadence.
16:14Right.
16:14I go, are you, like, how are you doing with the cadence of this?
16:18And what I meant by that was, like, you play every day.
16:21And even though the season hadn't started yet, he'd been doing it in spring training for a while.
16:27And that, the cadence, you know, in college baseball, you play Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
16:33and you might have some, like, middle-of-the-week game the next week
16:37before you get to the weekend again, but you might not.
16:40So you largely can grab those three pitchers and just pitch them again next week.
16:45Pitch them again next week.
16:47Plus, you can go hide for four days and just have practice.
16:50You can't do that anymore.
16:52Like, you're going to be chatting it up with the media, reacting to nine innings almost every single day.
16:59And his answer at that point, because they had only played one game,
17:02was he's like, I kind of feel like we haven't fully achieved it yet.
17:05And, in fact, I was kind of bummed that we didn't get that cadence
17:08because I wanted to come out and play on Thursday after the way we played on Wednesday.
17:13But that's the thing that I see right now that is maybe the most important thing for him
17:20because his ballplayers are largely veteran, therefore they get it.
17:26They get it.
17:27Baseball is the ultimate do not get too high, do not get too low.
17:33It is not a football game.
17:36And he's from the SEC, and he's got that mentality a little bit,
17:41and I just think everybody might benefit.
17:43And it's the beginning of the season, so it's okay, but slow it down.
17:47Right.
17:48Slow everything down a little bit.
17:50And dial it back.
17:50And, you know, you mentioned the cadence of college,
17:52and I'm just looking at their schedule.
17:54They have a Tuesday this week.
17:56Every Tuesday they're playing like Austin Peay in West Georgia,
17:59but then it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, LSU, Alabama, Mississippi State.
18:05So, like, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you've got the big series.
18:07You throw in a Tuesday against a smaller school, but that's the cadence of college.
18:11And you mentioned this where boom to Petco, division rival, bop, bop, bop, come back, the Mets.
18:18Bam.
18:18Next one, the Phillies.
18:19You've got series, series, series, and all these teams.
18:22You don't have an Austin Peay on a Tuesday, for example.
18:25You're going to have Colorado and Arizona, and I get it.
18:27But for the most part, you're going to be stacking series.
18:31And, you know, not that they're huge games early in the year,
18:34but you don't want to dig your hole too big too early.
18:36Not at all.
18:37Not at all.
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