Tim Kurkjian on the Dan Patrick Show Full Interview | 10/13/21

[Music] [Applause] [Music] tim kirchen espn baseball reporter tim how do i look today you look better than i do aaron boone told me not long ago that i look like dr fauci he's 80. you look like dr fauci he's 80. and then the other day when i was in boston for the wild card game i ran into some friends and the wife of who i know very well but i haven't seen her in years she said you know now that paul giamatti's lost a lot of weight and you've gotten a lot older you look like paul giamatti that i don't know if that's a compliment or not i don't look like paul giamatti all i know is you look better than i do and we are of similar age thank you tim i feel a lot better that's the only reason why i wanted you to come on to say something nice about me so thank you very much i i mentioned this uh last hour and my guys did not they whipped on it they didn't get the answer i'm gonna guess that you'll know this i have a favorite pitcher he's still in the playoffs he's had a lot of success in the playoffs and he's 37 years of age do you want to guess the pitcher that i i love he's a guy that i love watching pitch all right it's charlie morton yes it is i love charlie dan he's better now than he was when he was 27. he's better now than he was when he was 31. this is the beauty of baseball you know this the light goes on for certain guys i told you once that matt diaz like 12 years ago in the braves clubhouse i mean the pirates clubhouse in spring training told me pointed to charlie morton and said roy halliday and i'm looking at charlie morton's numbers and said he can't beat roy holliday and matt dyer said watch it's going to come for this guy and it has and now he's 37 years old he's got as good of curveball as there is in the major leagues he throws 98 miles an hour yesterday 37 on short rest he by the way he is a he's a expert barbecue guy he can make furniture he can play the guitar he can sing he can do all this stuff and yet he i think he wants to retire but he's way too good to retire they keep bringing them back and he's he's so good he says all right i'll play for another year because i'm good i know and he's and you know success in the postseason it's just he's one of those guys that you get to the postseason you see him pitch and you go i'll be damned you know he's on a different team but he's still very successful um right and he's so good by the way dan with barbecue sorry to interrupt he he has a little hitch on the back of his car where his truck where he can take the grill with him wherever he goes so he's going to get so i said if you ever this when he was with the raise i said have you ever taken the grill like to the ballpark he said no way you have to start grilling and and all that at you know three o'clock in the morning i'm not going to the trap at three o'clock in the morning just to feed my my teammates so he's really good at stuff like that i brought up jose altuve who once again had a really good postseason or he started out there and then i i was wondering that let's say they get to the world series let's say they face the dodgers the cheating you know scandal is going to come up again from 2017. are the voters going to hold that against jose altuve for the hall of fame i think some will um i've been a voter for 31 years and i'm not gonna hold it against him he's gonna have hall of fame numbers for sure just go look at where he is in his career now look at how many hits he's got he's got 19 postseason homers he's stolen bases he's won gold gloves he won an mvp and i understand he was in the middle of something he shouldn't have been in the middle of but i'm not so naive to think that yeah they're the only team that ever tried to steal a sign or cheat or something like that we've been doing this in baseball for 140 years and i'm not condoning any of it but if you're asking me would i vote for him if he has the numbers i will do i think some people will say no he was part of something he should have been a part of him not vote for him yes i think that will happen to some degree yeah and you know i i get usually a flood of emails whenever the astros do well because they're like see we don't need to cheat uh we're good and i always say but why did you cheat in the first place if you didn't need to cheat are they a great story this year if they go to the world series yes that's a great story it doesn't take away 2017. i still think baseball baseball had taken away physically taking away the world series trophy since you couldn't take away anything else except for a couple of jobs with manager and gm would would we be satisfied with that as uh you know the baseball jury um i don't think that's a good idea because if you take it away dan now other teams are going to say well what about us we lost the world series i'm just making this up in 1989 because the whole team we played against was juiced and then the 51 dodgers can say well the giants were stealing signs and they beat us in two out of three and ended up going to the world series why don't we win the national league pennant i just don't think you can open up that box because there are too many things in it dan look for the rest of time all those guys are going to have that as part of their resume some of them are going to have it in the first paragraph of whatever big story is written about them and they're gonna get booed for a long time dan you don't want people in your industry saying dan patrick's a cheater he we don't have any respect for him that may not be enough punishment you're not taking away the stats or the money or the trophy but i sure wouldn't want somebody who i play against all the time saying i have no respect for you for what you did that would hurt that would really hurt me i know that you want the astros dodgers well i i think that would be pretty good um but let's just say the giants who were supposed to win 74 games this year were supposed to win fewer games than the diamondbacks we lost like 200 games this year and the red sox who finished last last year let's say the red sox played the giants in the world series i mean that would be wildly interesting but yes i think everyone thinks that la against houston would be really cool a rematch and all that stuff i'm just a little afraid dan i'm sorry i'm way too much of a of a goody two-shoes here that we would get away from how great these players are and these teams are and concentrate more on what happened four years ago and i'm just not sure that's what we should be doing in 2021 all right set the scene for thursday night dodgers giants well the giants are so good dan and i'm telling you i've looked for a comparable and i can't find it of a team that was supposed to win 74 games and didn't add anybody of great significance where you can point to them and say well that's the reason they're so much better the 45 red sox won 71 games and the next year they won 104 and beat the yankees and went to the world series but ted williams came back from world war ii and hit 342. that's the reason they got so much better you can't identify that with the giants which is what makes their story so fascinating now they have good players i mean buster posey's a borderline hall of famer chris bryant these guys are good players but the whole team bought into this team concept they hit the ball out of the ballpark they pitch really well and the scene for for tomorrow night is going to be spectacular in that ballpark two teams who've never played in the playoffs of you know since 1900 playing in a winner take all game and dan at the moment they both have 109 wins 109 and they're playing a best of five and get and the deciders tomorrow night i can't wait i just wonder if uh there's any similarities with the oral herscheiser dodgers when they won the world series when they didn't have star power they had oral um but it wasn't a lineup that was a murderous row in fact you know didn't bob costas famously come out and say something prior to the start of that series about you know you you're going against a great team like the oakland a's and the dodgers really have no chance i'm paraphrasing bob here but you know that that wasn't a formidable lineup that they had right but the giants lineup is foreign they were leading the national league in home runs for most of the season and they think they finished second just a couple behind so they have a very good lineup they just do it in a slightly different way instead of having three hall of famers we're gonna hit 40 homers in the middle everyone on the team has hit five or more homers like 10 guys hit 10 or more homers and from one through eight in the order and the order always changes somebody can hit the ball out of the ballpark lamont wade wilmer flores all these guys who are are decent players but when you put them in the right matchup they become a really good player for that day that's the secret of the giants talking to tim kirchen baseball reporter and uh he'll be with carl ravage part of espn's regular baseball tonight telecast through the remainder of the postseason shows uh the show airs every night at midnight eastern espn radio also the national audio home of the postseason continuing that coverage all the way through the world series what's best for uh baseball with shohei ohtani his future well he's got to keep doing what he's doing and that's going to be really hard to do to pitch that well for me but where do you it is oh oh i see um he should play with the angels mike trout and he should be the stars that we all want to see and i don't think it's that far off but they are going to have to add literally three quality starting pitchers if this is gonna happen and then they're gonna have to add two quality relievers if this is gonna happen and they can do that i believe with the money they have i mean just imagine dan mike trout's the best player most of us have ever seen i saw willie mays play so mike trout might be the second best player i've ever seen but shohei ohtani is no one's ever seen that guy before imagine those two guys the best player you've ever seen and the most remarkable player you've ever seen taken their team into the playoffs i think you have to keep those two together and then do whatever it takes to build around them i'm not sure you can do it but i just don't think they're that far off from being a playoff team baseball is a funny game you go from real bad to real good real good to real bad all of a sudden i think it can happen with the angels but they better get some pitching soon but i just wonder how how long do you keep ohtani with the dual duties there with pitching and and being in the everyday lineup well as long as you possibly can because his stuff is tremendous that split dan is unhittable his offense obviously is his power is ridiculous he hit eight triples no one's ever done what he did last year when it comes to pitching defense and mostly speed and power it's just so i would tell him if you're up for it physically we want you to do exactly what you did in 2021 and if he can do that again don't stop i just wonder if he'll be sort of a baseball version of bo jackson where bo played football played baseball probably could have been a hall of famer if he committed to one sport i wonder if ohtani could he be a hall of famer at both positions if he concentrated on just one of those positions uh i think he would have a chance and look i love bo jackson i could tell you hours of bo jackson's story some of the things i saw him do but ohtani's a better hitter than bo jackson was and obviously he's a better pitcher than bojacks was and yes if botany said i just want to hit i think he could hit a ton of homers steal a ton of bases and be a way above average defensive outfielder i think if he just wanted a pitch i think he could be a 20 game winner with an era under three that's how good i think he is bo jackson by the way dan was the fastest and the strongest guy in the game i believe at the same time think about that he could outrun anyone and he was stronger than anyone jimmy stewart a scout once told me a long time ago he said i scouted bo in college he said i saw him hit a 500 foot home run and then he ran out and caught it before it hit the ground and then he threw it back the whole plate in the air that's how he described the tools of bojack not that it happened but you know [Music] he was joking yeah it's still he's one of those he's just one of those names that if he had stayed healthy you just wonder what he would have accomplished in in either one of those sports yeah uh george brett used to tell me he said i never never once missed a bo jackson at bat i never went to the bathroom once during a bojacks in a bat because i might miss something that i've never seen before and i was there that night dan you know that when he ran up the right the left center field fence in baltimore i was covered in that game he looked like a race car going around a ramp turn you know a 240 pound man at full speed running up the fence like that it was fascinating and every time harold reynolds used to tell me we love harold reynolds of course every time bo would get on first in like a double play situation harold would yell to him oh this is baseball because harold was gonna have to hang in there at second base if he was turning two or beau was stealing right we don't have to do that anymore dan but back then when 240 pounds of metal spikes came at you at 100 miles an hour that was a bad situation all right how does the postseason end how does it play out um well i've been wrong so far so badly but i picked the dodgers to beat the rays in the world series so i'm going to say stay with it somehow some way the dodgers are going to win game five that's taking nothing away from the giants and giants i just told you are great i just think whoever wins that series beats the braves even though i just did the brave series for four games and freddy freeman is is so good and their pitching was so great they dominated the brewers with their pitching i just don't think the braves can beat the giants or the dodgers american league i think the astros beat the the red sox but if you discount the red sox one more time you're making a mistake i just think the astros are better and i think the dodgers beat the astros in the world series now that's what i think but i certainly don't know and the beauty of this postseason like everyone is anyone who thinks he knows is going to happen is just hasn't been watching baseball for the last 40 years you're looking good tim dr fauci and i look an awful lot alike yeah he's eating i i was talking to a guy recently we're going over some old some old baseball from the 50s or 60s this was a few years ago and he goes oh you know a lot about baseball what are you 70 75 i was 58 years old he thought i was 75. it who's terrible keep your head up tim i will thank you bud all right see you soon that's tim kirchen espn baseball reporter

Channel: Dan Patrick Show

Views: 16,435

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Id: jxU9nwIjdpE

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021