Hey everybody, it’s that time again, Fred and the Fantastics with Art and Laura. Maybe Mark will join us right here, and we’ll talk about anything and everything in sports on BLEAV and on PodClips. Number one, numero uno, the LA Dodgers we’re taping this Friday afternoon, folks. The Dodgers, at this point, have lost six in a row, faced the Giants tonight, and they’re going up against Logan Webb. Laura, how long does this streak go? They’ve lost six consecutive ballgames. Your comments?

Yeah. It’s been very distressing to see the slide. And it’s not just the pitching, although I think the pitching is kind of the cause of it initially. But we’ve got Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Teo Hernandez. I mean, a lot of players are just not playing well. I don’t know if they have nagging injuries. You know, Mookie Betts had that injury early on, who knows if that’s affecting him? Even Shohei has kind of been in a slump. I don’t know, maybe because he’s pitching, who actually is pitching really well. I don’t know if the last time he pitched, I think he struck out the side in the second inning. So, but yeah, we’ll see. I mean, they had a similar low, kind of at the beginning of the season after they won, you know, like ten in a row, and then they lost a few in a row. So, I mean, they’re so talented, I can’t imagine they’re not going to bounce back. But it’s been, you know, for a Dodger fan, it’s been kind of distressing, especially that 8-1 loss.

Art, too many times they go with relievers, relievers, relievers. Your thoughts about the Dodgers and the six-game losing streak?

Well, you know, the losing streak, to be honest with you, I can understand that. Because, like Laura said, they do have some guys out, Muncy’s out. Mookie’s been kind of struggling, I think he’s only got one home run in his last 20 or so games. Freddie Freeman had a real rough, rough end of June. He seems to be coming back a little bit. You know, we’ve talked about Dave Roberts over the years. This is going to be the big year. I mean, we’re going to find out if he can really manage because it’s been pretty easy the last 10 years. And now they’re faced with a lot of problems. And you know, I look at the Dodgers and I see that talent, but I also, I’m questioning just a little bit, I remember how great their farm system was and what happened to James Altman, and what happened to some of these young kids. You know, are they, are they ready if they? If they tapped into that crew a little too much, and these guys are being forced into the system? It’s going to be very interesting. It’s going to be a great seminal series this weekend against the Giants, because the Giants, as I look at the standings, the Giants have crept into second place. They’re five behind, the Dodgers are for their last hit, and the Giants are seven of their last 10. You know, the Giants, not a real good away team, but the Dodgers played great at home. So, you know, we’re talking about a game tonight, that’s a big ball game. And you’re at San Francisco, and you know how cold it is. What did the great man say? The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

All right, and you mentioned the Dodgers and the young guys, Altman, whatever. A couple of years ago, they let Mike Busch go. And of course, he’s a star now, and a starter, and a Hall of Fame, and an All-Star player from the Chicago Cubs. You know, we talk about the good moves they’ve made, the Dodger Organization, Friedman and company. They’ve made some horrible ones, too. Alvarez in Houston, when he’s healthy, he’s one of the big power bats in the league.

Yeah.

And Busch, among the mistakes that they’ve made already. Art, want to talk about that?

And, you know, the little left-hander that pitches for the Angels, Anderson, is another guy that had a great year with the Dodgers, and he would fit into that hard-throwing rotation. You know, you’d have, you’d have a guy like Kershaw and a guy like Anderson to go with three guys. You know, you look at May, you look at Glasnow, you look at, you know, Yamamoto, who throw the ball pretty hard, Ohtani, who brings it at a hundred. You want that mixture of, of, of fast ballers and off-speed pitchers. I mean, I looked at, you know, Claude Osteen in the days of Sandy Koufax, I mean, you, you know you. If you went from him to Osteen and then followed up with, with Drysdale or Bill Singer or Don Sutton, you saw so many different angles, so many different speeds of pitching. I think it was tough to be a hitter. So I think there’s something about that. And, uh, you know, I’m a Dodger fan too, you guys. But the one thing I gotta question right now is they just, they don’t seem to be playing great fundamental baseball either.

All right, uh, let’s say I go east 3,000 miles. Juan Soto did not make the All-Star game. Laura, would you vote for him? The negative I would put, uh, and certainly he’s had a very good last couple of months, but he didn’t hustle right away at the beginning of the season. Maybe that’s the reason that he didn’t make it, but Laura, are people envious of him? Jealous of his $765 million contract? Laura, what do you think?

You know, um, in my career as a lawyer, I tried to act with precision and integrity and within the law. When I vote for my All-Star selections, I, I, I vote from the heart, so I would never vote for Juan Soto. I don’t care what, how, what it is,

And to what you’re saying. He’s a liability in the outfield, he hasn’t been hustling, he’s doing a little more hustling now. I mean, he does have 21 home runs, Fred, but he’s not batting, I think he’s batting in the two seventies. And I look at the outfield, you look at a kid like Crow-Armstrong for the Cubs, who’s having a magnificent season. You look at Yelich, what he’s done with the Brewers, another team, nobody’s talking about it in the Milwaukee Brewers. All they do is play fundamental good baseball under Pat Murphy, and they’re going to be there in the end in the National League. That’s my long-term prognostication on that. This team is, is so fundamentally excellent. You know, I look at the Mets, the Mets got all this talent, but they, they don’t seem to be doing well. I look at the Phillies, yeah, the Phillies, they’re a good ball club, but they seem to fall asleep occasionally. I think it’s wide open in the National League. And this might be the year that a team like the Brewers, with a very small, you know, salary cap, they might be the team to watch in that league.

All right, we’ll take a quick break right here on Fred and the Fantastics back in 30.

Back on Fred and the Fantastics, Laura and Art, and yours truly, Fred. You can email us at [email protected], [email protected]. When we went to the break, Art indicated the Milwaukee Brewers. One of the advantage of DirecTV is that if you buy the Major League Baseball package, which is overpriced, but if you, on the big screen, if you, if the Dodgers are on the road, you can get the broadcast from the home team. So that’s more fun for me because I get a more objective viewpoint of the Dodgers. Listening to the Brewers broadcast or the White Sox broadcast, or whatever, and the Dodgers are on the road. Art, do you agree with me that, nowadays – lookit, I did Dodger Talk and I almost got fired because, Peter O’Malley saved my job because I was objective. But I’m listening to the Dodger games on radio, or on TV, and they’re not objective. It’s pro, pro, pro-Dodgers. That’s why I think it’s important, maybe for a fan of any team to get a, get the outlook from a team playing against your favorite club. Art. Any comments?

Well, I love it. On Tuesday nights, I play in a golf tournament and I don’t usually get home. I’m about an hour away from the house where we play. And I get to listen to all the broadcasts. Because, because, you know, the sun goes down at 8:30, and the games on the East Coast come on. And, and I get to listen to all the different announcers. And I will tell you the difference between the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and now are the radio teams are really homers. I mean, on almost every broadcast, it’s, you know, we go to the seventh. Good guys were down by three, you know, and I’m like, good guys, wait a minute, those guys are baseball players, they’re not bad guys, you know? But it used to be the you know, you give the line score and you’d go off to the commercial. I guess that’s the new way of broadcasting. I don’t like it, I love the way Vin Scully did it, the way Dick Enberg did it. Do you know, I mean, I go back to the old guys who, you know, you could tell they were broadcasting for the A’s or the Dodgers or the Yankees, but they, they broadcast the game. And they told you, in their, in their mind’s eye, what they saw. They didn’t see it from, you know, a Yankee perspective or a Dodger perspective. But that’s just, I agree with you, Fred. I do get a kick out of that. I like listening to different announcers, and I will tell you, there’s a dearth of great radio announcers out there right now.

Laura. What do you think as a Dodger fan? Do you think they’re so pro-Dodgers on the TV side and the radio side that it’s really not, was not objective? And as a fan, are you upset at all?

Well, you know, it’s, it’s interesting that you say that, because I haven’t listened to any of the opposing team’s broadcasts. But, you know, I watch the games when they’re on ESPN or Fox Sports, which are supposedly neutral. And they sort of fawn over the Dodgers, too, so I think it’s sort of, the Dodgers are kind of like this glamor team. You know, they’ve got Shohei Ohtani, who’s, you know, the, the best player in the, the consensus best player in the league. And so it would be, and I always find it interesting to listen to the ESPN and the Fox News broadcasters to see how they evaluate the Dodgers.

And they do the same thing with the Yankees, a little bit, the American League. I mean, it really is true. The Aaron Judge moment is like the biggest moment, the Ohtani moment,

Right.

Is the biggest moment. And let’s be honest, you guys, one of the best teams in baseball right now is in Detroit. A bunch of young kids, Tarik Skubal, and, you know, I mean, Javi Baez. Who’d have thought he’d be starting in the National League All-Stars?

No, No,

I feel,

I think you’re not getting any games of the week or whatever the ESPN counterpart is, or the Fox counterpart, so. But I wanted to, I need to ask you guys, do you, I have a, I have a real criticism of the way Roberts manages the bullpen. I don’t, sometimes I think he leaves the starting pitchers in too long, sometimes I think he takes them out too soon. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of coherence about how he manages the bullpen. And the other thing that I sort of criticize.

Maybe he has to ask him, how’s your arm feel?

I don’t think he should, I don’t think Ohtani should lead off when he’s pitching, that doesn’t make any sense.

That’s the goofiest thing ever. When he has to run around and get his pad on.

I’m not even sure why Ohtani leads off in the first place. I mean, to me, he should be batting third or fourth. I don’t quite get,

Because each place in the batting position, over a season, you’ll get 20 extra at-bats or some, some number like that.

That’s exactly it.

So they want to get Ohtani as many at-bats as they possibly can. But I agree with you,

Fine, but it has to equal wins for the team.

No, I agree. No, I agree with you that perhaps when he starts, you back him up to third or fourth slot. But, and also, you know, going two innings isn’t helping anything. Because then they just have to go to the bullpen, and that bullpen isn’t as good as people think.

It’s like what Tampa Bay did, that designated starter where the guy would come out and he’d two innings, you know, that really bothers me too, guys. But I got to say, I agree with you, Laura. One of my big problems with modern-day 2025 MLB baseball is these pitchers go five innings. You have to have four pitchers who are on that day, or you’re going to lose. In my era, you needed two or three, you know. When the setup, the closer, the setup became the closer guy. Yeah, I just think it’s real tough to depend on four guys to be on their, their stuff night after night.

Tuesday, All-Star game. They’re going to use that electronic home plate umpire. You’re going to be able to appeal. Laura, you’re an attorney, so you’ve had a lot of appeals in your lifetime. Do you like that idea? You know, it’s going to come to baseball because some minor leagues have it this year, but,

Cyclops.

Yeah, I can’t stand it. But do you think that the future is not too far away? Or maybe that’s the end of it?

I mean, I wouldn’t mind it on the, on the foul lines, although they don’t typically make mistakes on the foul lines. In the strike zone, you know, there’s a little bit of subjectivity and how the umpires call the strikes,

Just so you know, I watched, I watched Wimbledon the other day, and Cyclops made three mistakes, and the referee did not overrule it.

Yeah, it seems like,

The ball actually hit on the line,

Yeah. I don’t know, I think they’re, I think I think they’re taking the charm out of the game by making it too, too perfect,

Cut and dried.

Trying to make it too perfect. They’re, they just seem to be taking the charm and the, what makes it fun, out of the game. And it becomes just, you know, just mechanical. And yeah, I don’t like it.

Art, let me, let me throw this up. What Laura just said, I don’t mind it if one umpire is a low-pitch umpire, who’ll call a strike as long as he’s not a high-pitch umpire, too. As long as he’s consistent in his analysis, I don’t need the computer. I’d rather have a human being make that decision. Laura, er, Art, do you have any problem with an attorney that, attorney, with an umpire that, if it’s right on the line and it’s low, he’ll give, call it a strike, and another one if it’s a, you know, right, at high.

It’s like Eric, when Eric Gregg would umpire a Maddox game and the catcher would set up eight, 10 inches off the outside corner, and he’d hit the glove and he’d call a strike. I mean, that was a game that I knew I was going to bet on Greg Maddox, I don’t care what I had to lay to do it, with Eric Gregg and Greg Maddox. And, and you know, he was, that was his, the way he umpired. You could throw it a foot inside the inside corner, and he probably wouldn’t call it a strike. That was his strike zone, but it was consistent, Fred. And that’s all you want, because you have scouting reports on players, pitchers, everybody, you have scouting reports on umpires as well.

Art, our final, uh, 30-second, uh, retort, right here on Fred and the Fantastics.

Well, I gotta say I’m really excited because we got the British Open, the final of the majors coming up in professional golf, where all the players from all the tours, the best 156 get to play in Royal Port Rush, which is it’s going to be like winter time in San Francisco, it’s, it’s going to, you know, test the players a little bit. I’m, I’m excited about that. And if you get a chance this weekend, folks, you want to watch some of the great basketball players and hockey players and Hollywood celebrities play golf in Lake Tahoe, the Celebrity American Celebrity Championships are going on. That could be some fun stuff. Steph Curry – watch this kid play golf, he’s going to be on the Champions Tour someday.

Laura, you have a final comment on Fred and the Fantastics?

Well, I’m looking forward to the MLB All-Star game, and I’m looking forward to the second season, and hopefully the Dodgers getting their act in order and winning the World Series.

All right for Laura, for Art, for Mario. Thank you guys and gals for listening to Fred and the Fantastics, and back around the corner on this program. Bye, everybody.