Gwynn & Chris On Demand
CBS Sports Matt Snyder breaks down the All Star selections
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I also say it because I really do like chatting with him about the national pastime. Matt, thanks so much for taking some time. How are you? Everything good? Yeah, I'm great. About a week and tall to be headed to the All-Star game, so good times. Always fun. The All-Star game, I think that's the part we don't get. It's just how much fun it is for everybody to go be there the event. I know teams, front office people don't get a chance to see each other all year. Get together at the All-Star game. It's the All-Star game, the unofficial place where some of the trade talking begins. I don't know about that. I've never heard anything like that. It's special for that or anything. And I mean, in this day and age, that's why I always think that the winter meetings have got to the point where it's kind of worthless because people talk with technology all the time these days. But I guess it is better to meet face to face. So, I suppose it's possible. We've seen deals come together shortly after the All-Star game. Remember, mainly Machado or the Dodgers? That was pretty quick from the Orioles and the Dodgers. That was pretty quick, like right after the All-Star game. So, yeah, I suppose it's possible. I'd never even really thought about that before. Yeah. One thing we always think about this time of year once the All-Star elections are announced are some of the snubs. And you wrote about that today in cbsports.com. One thing you didn't have to mention in your article was any Padres getting snubbed. We got everybody and then some to the All-Star game. Were you a little surprised that the Padres ended up with five? I mean, we're kind of in the same neck of the woods as the Phillies and Dodgers with that. Yeah, not really because if you look at the individuals who all made it, they're all worthy. So, it's not like anybody is kind of out of whack and they don't deserve to make it. It just so happens that they are a pretty top-heavy team this year. And even if you lumped in players that are generally All-Star caliber like Maney Machado, Zander Bogart, there's a lot of star power on that team. It's just kind of thin. But yeah, I mean, I didn't think, like I said, I thought they all deserved to make it. So, you know, I didn't have a problem with it at all. Even a rise because I've seen some, maybe it's the analytic people who want to pick on a rise because it doesn't put up the power type numbers. Yeah. I love to watch this guy hit. So, I'm happy he's in the All-Star game. But do you think that people who have a gripe, do they have a real gripe or no? Yeah, he would be the one where possibly you could argue against that. I'm trying to think of who, like, if person Walker should probably be on the team. But I would have Christian Walker before Peter Lonzo, for example. I think it makes the team board well-rounded. I'm sure that it's completely driven by batting average. And there are a lot of people who don't like bothering with batting average to just stay in age. I still maintain that, well, it's the third most important race that because it's not as important as on base percentage. It's not as important as a sluggish percentage. It's still important. And when the league averages down in the 240s and you've got a guy hitting over 300, he's valuable. So, I think you can justify it. Talking to Matt Snyder, CBSSports.com here on 97.3 The Fan. Now, Jackson Merrill, it was a nice surprise for us all here in San Diego to see him make it to the All-Star team. And it's not like he's just being thrown in because he's a rookie and they need his name out there. What have you, do you think he was a deserving of an All-Star spot? And B, what have you thought of his season so far? Oh, yeah, he was definitely deserving. I mean, I think maybe you could make an argument for like brand and memo over him or something, but that's unexciting there. And, you know, this is, I don't think that you should change your criteria or anything to make room for something like this. But I think you've got to give him credit when he'd never played center field before this season. And he learned it on the fly in the spring and then to be in double digits and home runs and stolen bases. That's a well-rounded player right there. So I am perfectly good with him being on the team. Even if he was one of the last guys taken, I like him. I'm there. I think it's a good selection. Matt, I don't know if you heard. He's the first Padre rookie ever to make the All-Star team. Ever. Yeah. No, I did not hear that. That is crazy. I thought for sure. I just thought off the top of my head the Benito Saniaga, who is a rookie of the year back in the day had made an All-Star, but apparently not. So did you have a long hitting for maybe a hitting for after the All-Star break? Absolutely. That's one thing that's fixed out of my mind as a kid was a long hitting streak and he was rookie of the year. So yeah, I would have thought that too. Yeah. Yeah. Jackson Merrill is the first. There are 32 guys that are first time All-Stars overall and probably a few more will be added, you know, in the days to come. Does that tell us anything? What it tells me is that guys are better sooner than they ever were before. Yeah. I think so. It probably started back in 2011 with Mike Traut, Bryce Harper, Maney Machado all coming up together and kind of taking the league by force. And then it continued with Ronald Acuna Jr. and Juan Soto at such a young age. And now it continues up through this generation. Guys, like you said, they're better than ever at a younger age. But also there's veterans in there that are first-timers like Seth Lugo and like age 34 putting it all together. So there are good stories sprinkled throughout in terms of like a broad takeaway. Other than the players are better than ever at a younger age, no, not really. It's kind of a coincidence. I think like I said, because you mix in guys like Lugo, who are first-timers as veterans or jerks and pro-far, for example, just putting it all together, finally, after all these years. We just had a lot of stuff coincidentally happened this season. It is true. There has been a lot of stuff that's happened. And you just mentioned jerks and pro-far talking to Matt Snyder of CBS Sports.com. And I was saying this on Friday. It seems like jerks and pro-far is annoying to everyone except for Padres fans because it seems like everyone has an issue with something that he does, whether he runs around the bases too slow or he celebrates a walk-off hit too much. What are your thoughts on pro-far? Do you think he's kind of annoying? No, not at all. And I'm not a Padres fan, so there you go. I have not heard of this annoyance. Well, I mean, when he's not running the bases as fast as he's protecting from injury, from injury, right? Thank you. And the celebration thing is absolutely nonsense because everybody, not everybody, but a lot of guys celebrate. That's weird. No, I think what sums up pro-far to me, the way he's put everything together this year. And they've needed him because Machado started slow, Bogart's went down, Tati's is down right now. He had to step up and he's stepped up and then some, but a perfect illustration for me is that game last week. Wednesday or Thursday? No, I think it was Friday when they brought in Robert Suarez. Yeah, and he gave up the grand flame and then he gave up that to run bomb the Randall Grigik. And then pro-far led off the bottom of the ninth with that homerun. It's like, that was a perfect illustration of what he's meant to this team. When everything else goes wrong, there's pro-far right there to pick everybody up. Yeah, I said the same thing about pro-far. I don't think he's the MVP of the league, but he's done MVP-type things. You know, those are kinds of things that happen. Let's go right real quick back to Jackson Merrill. Paul Skeens is a revelation. The fans in San Diego are already mad because they think Jackson Merrill is going to lose the rookie of the year to Paul Skeens. I don't know if they'll be right to be mad, but how do you see that or is it too early to tell? Because Skeens seems like he's almost a key to me. Yeah, it's probably too early to tell because Skeens has only had 10 starts. By the end of the year, you don't know are the pirates going to shut him down or they can limit his workload. They were handling him with kid blows at the start of the year. So it's hard to tell him how much of a workload he's going to have, but let's say if he ends up around 100 innings, gosh, it's awfully tough for me to give it to a pitcher with only 100 innings, you know? But if he gets up to like 135 to 140, he's probably going to have so much value there that you'd have to give it to him over Merrill. It's it'll be interesting to see how both play in the second half. And again, how much of workload the pirates allow Skeens to take on, but games obviously would be the sexy pick. It seems like that's all anybody wants to talk about. And he might start the All-Star game, which would be amazing. He's the first ever guy to be drafted number one overall and then make the All-Star team the very next year. So that's a heck of a story. It's just it's only 10 starts. It's not even 60 innings. So what kind of workload is he going to end up with? This is why I love Matt. He has everything in perspective because we have a chance for Jackson Merrill to still win because there's people like that out there. Exactly. And I saw this. I got like a newsletter every day from baseball, not from a baseball site. And it said Paul Skeens. It was going through all the big things he's done so far this year. And it said, struck out of Tony on three pitches over 100 miles an hour. No one talks about the next at bat when a Tony took him deep for a two run shot. I do understand the Paul Skeens. He's five to no with a two-something ERA. You know what? For the Scravey show, I'm going to go over his run support because he's getting help from the run support as well. Okay. All right. I was curious to see. Obviously, anybody who says that people think war is the only set that matters, that's nonsense. It's just a tool. It's a catch-all. They're essentially a dead heat in war right now. At baseballreference.com's version, Jackson Meryl 2.5 or Paul Skeens is 2.6. So if somebody was looking at that, they're in a dead heat. All right. Real quick, Matt. What do you trade deadline? If you're the Padres, you just had a nice run. You won 12 out of 15 games. But you also just heard that you Darvish is on personal leave and may not be back at all. We don't even know. And some of these teams in the wildcard are two, three games behind. You know a couple of them are going to make a run. So the Padres probably have to do something, don't they? And if so, would it be a tinker thing or do you think that they can pull off something big? I mean, AJ Proler, I guess we never know. You're the mad scientist. If you look at the construction of the roster, you have to be all in. All right. You have to pretty much do whatever you can to make the playoffs and hope that they make a deep playoff run. Otherwise, what are we even doing with all these huge contracts? And, you know, I know they traded one soda one year away from free agency, but still the rest of the makeup of the roster says win now. So, and look, we just saw the Diamondbacks make the World Series from 84 wins last year. The Padres team two years ago was maddeningly inconsistent and they never got tattooed back and they were waiting all year for that. And they ended up in the NLCS. So they know all too well that all you've got to do is make it there and then anything can happen. So I think they've got to be all in. It's just, it's so hard to find the sellers right now. Like, I think that the Blue Jays and Tigers have probably fallen enough down that you can say they're sellers. But, you know, and we see a report about the Rangers. Maybe they'll be sellers now, but above them in the American League, the Rays are too close, even though they just traded some volley. That was to make room for Shane Boz. But there's, you know, nine, ten teams in contention on the National League side. The Cubs have the third worst record after the Marlins and Rockies who are obvious sellers. But the Cubs are five and a half out. It's kind of hard to sell when you're five and a half out. I think the Nationals seem like they would be a seller, but they're only five out. So it's just, it's going to be tough because there are teams, let's say the Orioles, for example, if they decide to flex their muscles, they have so much more prospect depth than the Padres do, and they desperately need starting pitching and bullpen help. So, you know, it's going to be tough out there. I think that's kind of what baseball had in mind, you know, by extending the wild card to keep more people in it and keep there from being a bunch of sell-offs in the month of July. Matt, always great talking to you. Enjoy the all-star game and the festivities next week. And I can never thank you enough for, you know, consistently coming on our show and making time for us. We really do appreciate it. Thanks again and look forward to talking to you soon. All right, sounds good. Have a good one. You don't just live in your home. You live in your neighborhood as well. 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