The roar that came in Seattle on Tuesday night certainly wasn’t from the Orioles’ bats. Luke Jones and Nestor stay up late with the evaporating offense of the Birds and the enthusiasm of the soccer audience that came to the Mariners game as World Cup mania and baseball’s newest craze melded in the late innings of a tight game.

Nestor Aparicio and Luke Jones discussed the Baltimore Orioles’ struggles, particularly their recent 3-1 loss to Seattle. They highlighted the team’s inconsistent performance, noting a 10-4 streak followed by three consecutive losses. Luke criticized the offense, citing only three hits and no base runners from the second inning to the seventh. They also discussed the bullpen’s issues, with Grant Wolfram’s performance being a point of concern. Nestor expressed frustration with the team’s direction, comparing it to past seasons and questioning the leadership of new ownership. They also touched on the impact of the World Cup on attendance and the broader sports landscape.

Orioles’ West Coast Tour and Upcoming Events

• Nestor Aparicio discusses the Orioles’ West Coast tour, mentioning their upcoming game in Anaheim and a stop at Green Mount Station in Hampstead.
• Nestor highlights the support from sponsors like GBMC, Farnham, and Dermer, and mentions new sponsors coming in the summer.
• Luke Jones joins the conversation, mentioning he was at a Black Crow’s concert when the baseball game started.
• Nestor shares a personal anecdote about his former boss, Jack Gibbons, and his column on Gunner Henderson, expressing frustration over the team’s hitting efficiency.

Challenges with the Orioles’ Offense

• Nestor and Luke discuss the Orioles’ struggles with hitting, mentioning the team’s inconsistency and high strikeout rates.
• Luke points out the lack of base runners in the game against Seattle, highlighting specific instances where the team failed to capitalize on opportunities.
• Nestor and Luke reflect on the team’s past performances, particularly the Yankee series in 2024, and the ongoing issues with situational hitting.
• Luke mentions the importance of having a high-impact left-handed reliever, criticizing Grant Wolfram’s performance in a critical situation.

Comparing Bullpens and Team Performance

• Luke compares the Orioles’ bullpen to Seattle’s, noting the Mariners’ better bullpen ERA and the need for a lead in the ninth inning.
• Nestor and Luke discuss the team’s recent performance, noting the alternating streaks of wins and losses and the various issues affecting the team.
• Luke highlights the importance of having star players like Gunner Henderson and Pete Alonso perform consistently to overcome other deficiencies.
• Nestor expresses frustration with the team’s overall performance, comparing it to past seasons and questioning the direction of the franchise.

Impact of the World Cup on the Orioles’ Attendance

• Nestor and Luke shift the conversation to the World Cup, discussing its impact on the Orioles’ attendance and the overall sports landscape.
• Nestor shares a personal story from the 1994 World Cup, describing the unique atmosphere created by international fans in Baltimore.
• Luke reflects on the global significance of the World Cup and its influence on sports culture, noting the increased visibility of soccer in the United States.
• Nestor and Luke discuss the challenges of balancing their interest in the World Cup with their commitment to covering the Orioles.

Reflections on Ownership and Team Leadership

• Nestor and Luke critique the current ownership and leadership of the Orioles, expressing disappointment in the team’s direction.
• Nestor mentions the lack of visible leadership from John Angelos and the absence of significant changes in the team’s operations.
• Luke suggests that the team may need to consider new leadership if the current approach continues to fail, highlighting the need for better decision-making.
• Nestor and Luke discuss the broader implications of the team’s performance, including the impact on attendance and fan engagement.

Looking Ahead to the Future of the Orioles

• Nestor and Luke discuss the potential long-term impact of the team’s current struggles on the franchise’s future.
• Luke emphasizes the importance of having a clear plan and consistent performance from the team’s stars to build a sustainable winning culture.
• Nestor expresses skepticism about the team’s ability to turn things around, given the ongoing issues and the lack of visible progress.
• Luke concludes by highlighting the need for the team to address both on-field performance and off-field leadership to regain fan trust and support.

Nestor Aparicio 0:01
Welcome home. We are W N S T A M 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We call the Baltimore Positive Positively weekend here, and it’s positively summer. I’m excited about that. Been down to merry weather this week already. Our friends at the Maryland Lottery have me out at Sorrento of Arbutus here this week, while the Orioles are on the West Coast, next Wednesday we will be concluding our West Coast run. Anaheim on Wednesday, we’ll be up at Green Mount Station on Wednesday in Hampstead. One of my favorite crab cakes, one of my favorite people, and Chris and Dave in the Green Mount Bowl, and always love getting up to Carroll County. It’s all brought to you by friends at GBMC and Farnham and Dermer, and some new sponsors that are coming this summer as well. Luke Jones joins us now after wiping the sleep out of his eyes on a late Tuesday night. I was at the Black Crow’s concert, which ended right around the time the baseball game began. Quite frankly, you know, I’m in the middle of writing a Gunner Henderson thing. My, my former boss, Jack Gibbons, really the guy who is the reason I’m involved in this industry at all, from 1986 who gave me a break in life. He writes for Baltimore baseball and Connolly and Schmuck, and those guys, and he wrote a Gunner Henderson column, and I thought, man, I’m an old guy now, I’m reading my boss’s column, who love baseball, Jack’s a baseball nut, and he wrote about Gunner Henderson. I thought, no offense to Jack, but like, I gotta write about Gunner Henderson, because I started to.. it’s not a Gunner Henderson problem, although it is. It’s a.. but they don’t hit the ball, dude. Like, here we go again. This is third year, you and I. I mean, we go back to that. You always talk about the Yankee series two years ago, in May of 24 Beginning then, I think when this thing really started to fall apart, we started to talk about them not hitting the ball consistently, striking out too much, leaving runners, and like all the situational hitting things we talk about, which is they’re hitting efficiency isn’t very good, and then there’s this nights where they don’t get base runners.

Luke Jones 2:04
Yeah, I mean, what do you want me to say? In a game where they had two base runners after the first inning, I mean, it’s that you’re saying you should

Nestor Aparicio 2:12
go into bed at 10 o’clock and not stayed up. So,

Luke Jones 2:14
you know what I will say, it’s funny you mentioned how it’s not as bad as it used to be with the West Coast, right? Because so many of these teams have rather than like once upon a time you had the 1035 starts and 1105 even 1105 I mean, us, you have to go way back for that, but but even like the 1035 the 1005 starts, those are fewer, and you know that’s few and far between compared to 949 45 it’s it’s not awful, I mean the game was over at midnight, it’s kind of what happens when it’s three to one, right? There’s never midnight, used to be the third

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Nestor Aparicio 2:46
inning, dude.

Luke Jones 2:46
Exactly, exactly. So it was just funny when you were mentioning that. I mean, like, that part of it wasn’t so bad, but I mean, I remember

Nestor Aparicio 2:55
when I used to go out at midnight ago. Absolutely, it’s one

Luke Jones 3:01
of those photos. It’s 1130

Nestor Aparicio 3:03
Let’s go to Fells Point. When you’re a young person, like

Luke Jones 3:06
10 o’clock was when.. oh, I got to start getting ready now. It’s like, should I go to bed now or watch one bin? Now I’m at a Black Crow’s

Nestor Aparicio 3:14
concert. I’m the only person there that’s not silver, and I’m seeing people yawn before they even take the stage at 915 they’re serving

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Luke Jones 3:22
coffee at a concert, right? Yeah, yeah, but well, it’s funny how

Nestor Aparicio 3:25
sports has gotten earlier to get it over with earlier, right? Like, 11 o’clock used to be bedtime, right? Like Jerry Turbo, you know, your children are, you know, like all of that, right now, you know, baseball’s got to be over by 915 or you know, it’s it’s gone too late. We can’t get the, we can’t get home till 10 o’clock. So, baseball has moved back tremendously earlier, you know, given the sport itself over the course of time. But, you know, I guess the West Coast part of that, it bends into the fact that it did get over in midnight. You can, for I guess your advice is, you can make it to the end of some of these games where maybe you couldn’t before.

Luke Jones 4:04
Yeah, but at the same time, the home team needs to give you something to write to want to stay up and watch it, right? And that wasn’t the case on Tuesday night. Now, Brandon Young was good. I mean, I can’t have, don’t have too many things to say about Brandon Young that I’m disappointed or anything like that. I mean, it

Nestor Aparicio 4:21
was problematic.

Luke Jones 4:23
Yeah, I mean, really, for me, I mean, obviously, the offense was the major problem. I mean, like, you don’t, you don’t even have to watch the game to see that. I mean, you had three hits, right? You didn’t have, you went from the second inning through into the seventh without a base runner. I mean, like, nothing else needs to be said. I mean, Logan Gilbert was really good, like I thought he had good stuff. I mean, really, really good fastball. He gets good extension on his pitches, I think. But that said, I mean, they just didn’t hit the ball whatsoever. But for me, I really look at Grant Wolfram in the situation, second and third, one out. You got JP Crawford up, he goes, he gets the head one, two, I mean. That right there is a spot, Cal Raleigh on deck, that’s a spot right there. You need a strikeout, and he missed on the one two pitch, and then the two two and the three two. I mean, the pitches weren’t even close, so then you walk him, you load the bases, put you in a different position against Cal Raleigh, and like it was an oh one two seamer, it was a little up in the zone, like it wasn’t, was it the worst pitch ever, but that sequence was just like right there, that’s an example of what I talk about, that you need more high leverage, and specifically they need a high impact left handed reliever for a spot like that, and you know he just didn’t get the job done, but again this is also the problem when you get into one of these pitching dual type games, where runs are at a premium. You look at Seattle, they have a bullpen ERA that’s about a run better than the Orioles right now. Now, Ryan Hellsley’s back, that’s good. They need to have a lead in the ninth inning for that to matter as much

Nestor Aparicio 6:00
seriously in the off season as they did even getting started pitching, right, like in regard to Ephaly, in regard to spending money on Basset, you know, the pursuit of all of that, the pursuit of the bullpen wasn’t the biggest thing in the offseason for them, once they signed Kittredge and Helsley, and Helsley, and look, that’s a big expense, right after they got rid of Sir Anthony, and you know that whole group that they brought in from the Phillies, and you know the signings of various closers in the last couple of years, but the left-handed part of that, I don’t know that we’ve talked about that a whole lot, you know, you know, once the former cast went away. We were like, oh, it’s just next man up. I guess that’s going to be ends. I guess that’s going to be wolf, you know. You knew there was going to come a point in June in a bullpen where you’re going to have a left hander that we’ve not heard of, or somebody that’s not desired that’s going to get brought into a game, but to your point, in a game we only get three hits, two hits seventh, you need, you need hit by pitches to get base runners. Yeah, you know, like I hear you. And at that point, the bullpen was something we talked a lot about. And Tuesday night was one of the nights that got spit up a little bit, right?

Luke Jones 7:16
Yeah, I mean, not just a little. I mean, again, it wasn’t a full blown meltdown. At some point, you were gonna have to score another run, like either side was gonna have to score another run. It was one one in the bottom of the seventh inning, right? And Seattle was a winnable game, sure. But it also comes back to what we’ve been talking about here, as this team had its 10 and four stretch, and since then they’ve lost four in a row, they’ve won three in a row, they’ve now lost three in a row again. I mean, it’s it’s something different every night that you and I can pick apart, right? I mean, every morning when we’re breaking down the previous night’s game or the previous day’s game, it can be the hitting, it could be the defense, it could be the pitching, it could be the starting pitching, it could be the, it could be a base running issue, it could be the bullpen, right? It’s just, yeah, we keep waiting for this team to find its footing and play consistently better baseball. They did that for about two and a half weeks. Well, I’m not expecting that to happen

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Nestor Aparicio 8:07
at Dodger Stadium this weekend. Sure,

Luke Jones 8:10
and that’s where you kind of go back to, you look at this three city nine game road trip, and okay, Anaheim certainly isn’t a daunting place, but it’s the final leg of this road trip, but you have Seattle, who, as we’ve said, I mean, the Mariners aren’t this great baseball team, but they’re better than the Orioles, and you’re on the road, and it is sleepy, and I think for me what was kind of just

Nestor Aparicio 8:36
sleepy when everybody took the shirts off started going crazy, like I was listening on the radio coming up 70 and the World Cup crowd was going crazy, right? The

Luke Jones 8:49
tarps off thing is you and I haven’t talked about it too much, but

Nestor Aparicio 8:53
we haven’t talked about it at all. You want

Luke Jones 8:55
something? I don’t, I don’t think it’s anything that’s that deep. I think it’s just a bunch of young kids and young men and teenagers and 20 somethings are just, hey, you know, take our shirts off. Probably the older ones in that group have had a few adult beverages and

Nestor Aparicio 9:16
fight drunk people at baseball games, in a general sense, you know. I mean, you’ll,

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Luke Jones 9:20
you’ll find them, you know, you’ll find I just..

Nestor Aparicio 9:23
I don’t know that that’s the crowd as much as maybe the

Luke Jones 9:26
tarp, but the tarps off.. there’s, there’s a little bit of that.

Nestor Aparicio 9:29
Oh, okay, a little bit.

Luke Jones 9:30
Oh, not anything like out of control, but.. but I just.. it is funny some of these games that I’ll notice. I’m trying to think which series it was recently, I think it was San Diego, might have been the Seattle one of the Seattle games last week, where I looked down the right field line and there were three kids, or four kids, who had their, you know, their shirts off, and and then I look up again five minutes later and there’s 25 and then I look up again. 15 minutes later, and there’s 200 people, you know, and there weren’t a lot of people in the crowd overall, but so many of them have congregated there to do that, and we did look, it’s something fun, if it’s something that gets young people in the squirt

Nestor Aparicio 10:15
zone, where I show literally I am a Baltimore baseball historian, and if anybody asks me how that thing in left center field happened, I just say Greg Bader was running the team and he had a stupid idea. I don’t, I don’t even know where it came, maybe the team squirting with this, but, but like, hey, let’s splash everybody in left field, charge 20 bucks, and see who comes, what a great idea, and I’m like, okay, I mean, I, but that’s just what they’re trying to do. While Bill was an organic creation, right, unlike maybe real fan Dan, where I don’t know what that is. I mean, the team’s clearly adopted him, paying him, if he’s a mascot at this point, he’s a paid mascot for the team, but like, I, the tarps off thing started in St. Louis three weeks ago, like probably about a month ago. Yeah, I mean, it’s not.. I can only say this as a Bryan Adams fan. Last year he toured America, and I’d never seen this before, dude. I’ve been to 10,000 concerts, indulge me. He had a song halfway through, and he always does like a get up and dance kind of song, like he always has. He has a rockabilly soul, Bryan Adams does, plays a lot of rockabilly, and he has a song in the show, and he encouraged the men. He had a cameraman come out and said, if you take your shirt off, we zoom in. So, obviously, no, I didn’t see any women do this, but a lot of men did it, and then I went to South America, and in South America he was doing it in Montevideo, where, by the way, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, these racist pieces of garbage threw the Uruguay team off the bus the other day to their welcome to America was bomb sniffing dogs or on the Uruguay team bus, so, but in Uruguay, in all through South America, there were 1200 men in an arena with their shirts off, like a soccer crowd, you know. So I saw it take off in South America amongst soccer fans, so I guess the in between of all of this, soccer fans would be quick to do that. Guys take their shirts off when they score a goal, especially in Latin culture. So, I would think with this World Cup thing being here, that that could become a World Cup thing too, of the crossover. When I saw the Seattle crowd, that was a World Cup crowd doing World Cup stuff, and then taking shirts off. I’m thinking they’re here for a month, maybe it’ll turn into a World Cup thing, because I saw it at a concert, now I’m seeing it at baseball games. I have no idea why there’s frat boys did that in St. Louis. I mean, I don’t know what the reasoning of the rat, hey, let’s take our shirts off and swing them. I know Brian Adams encouraged people to do it at a concert, and I’ve seen, you know, it is a world, it’s certainly a soccer-oriented thing. I would say so. As Brazil and Uruguay and Colombia and Argentina sort of take over America here the next couple weeks, and they start putting people look like me in cages, we’ll see whether that part of it takes off even into the soccer thing, because I think it will. That’s just a little prediction. I’m throwing that out, because they were soccer guys. Do it in Seattle last night.

Luke Jones 13:27
Yeah, I mean, I, I think I think a lot of the fans from those various countries would tell you, we do our own things, right? You know what I mean. And I just, in a, in a matter of national pride, I’m not sure that’s gonna.. well, that’s

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Nestor Aparicio 13:40
the songs that are sung,

Luke Jones 13:41
right? I mean, that’s, and that’s kind of my thing. My very, very rudimentary look and appreciation for it would speak to the chants, the different songs that are sung. All that, I mean, I did see over the weekend what Scotland, I guess, a bunch of their fans went to Fenway for the Sunday night game or something like that. Today, okay, it sounded like that was kind of cool, but I have a little World Cup

Nestor Aparicio 14:05
story I haven’t told. 1994 when a World Cup was here, the Orioles, I obviously, that was a strike summer for baseball, but before the strike, the World Cup was this, was June of 94 and there were games at RFK Stadium that year, there’s three games I think they played down there. Pete Corinji is going to come on at some point and talk to me about it, because he went to those games, but, and that was sort of lore, you know. Our former morning show host, it was your co-host, he went to games. Part of the lore of the World Cup being here in 94 was a handful of people I knew went to some games, right, which is the most unique thing ever, other than me going to Germany in 2006 There aren’t a lot of people I know that have been the World Cup games, and now it’s come here, and still not a lot of people in the world. My buddy Ron Cassie, a senior editor for the Baltimore magazine, he was in Philly the other night for the Ecuador game. I mean, he put pictures up, he was at the game, and I’m thinking, how much you pay, dude, it’s. I’m going to say to him when I find him, but, but the World Cup being here, you and I won’t talk about that much, but there was a spillover of it, but in 94 Mike Messina and I, and sometimes David Siggy would go out drinking after games at Hooters or at balls back in the day, which is now the L Street Ale House, L Pat Street, whatever it is, for the, for the young people. If I say balls, dude, you know what I’m talking about. You don’t remember, you were not, you were a kid. Yeah, I believe I’d say I remember Brad Street Ale House was called balls,

Luke Jones 15:33
okay?

Nestor Aparicio 15:34
It was called balls in the early part. I’m familiar with the place, yeah, but it’s had a lot of names, but nonetheless it was balls, so we would always go there and drink after games and watch the West Coast games. Mark Messina was often a part of that too when he got a little older, but we were sitting at Hooters drinking beer after a game. I distinctly remember this. It was Messina, and I was kind of a quiet night. There was an usher who, that was a buddy of ours, an usher from Essex, that would come out and drink with us. It was one of, you seen his buddies, and we’re like sitting outside at Hooters on the outside deck, beautiful summer night, June night, and we heard a roar, we heard like, like a rumble, like a group of people at midnight on a friggin Wednesday night, I mean, like, it was there was nobody downtown, and this is, I don’t want to hear the Bang Bang Fox 45 crowd, like, were you afraid to get shot? No, I lived downtown for 20 years, I no, no, we’re not going that lane, but it was really a quiet night, the Oriole crowd had gone, all 46,000 of them went home that night, because there were that many people down there, then,

Luke Jones 16:42
right,

Nestor Aparicio 16:42
and this throng of people came. We are, it sounded like Vikings, and they were coming down the promenade from the other pavilion, coming from the north side down south. They were coming to Hooters at midnight, and they were 150 people. They were all dudes, mostly dudes. They were all dressed in blue, and they, some of them had their shirts off, and stuff like that. They were dressed, they were Norwegian, and they had Norwegian flags painted all over them, and they had Norwegian everything, and they were yelling, Norway, they were drunk. They were doing the next day, I think, or the day before, Norway was playing in DC, and they stationed in Baltimore, and the Norwegian fans all stayed in Baltimore, and they all came down, and they had no idea who Mike Masato was, which he loved. So we sat there and talked. They took over the bar, they came in, and there were five servers there, and there’s 200 people, and they were all like screaming their songs. They took over the bar, they were chanting, there was nobody there but them, 12 Oriole fans, me and Messina, but the World Cup’s awesome like that, you know? Like I caught myself in the middle of it 2032 years ago, 2032 years ago, you were, you were nine, God, my God, 10, something like that, but it’s a once in a lifetime thing, so it took over an Oriole game in the middle that I thought that was kind of the neatest thing, because it reminded me of the night the Norwegian people came.

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Luke Jones 18:09
Yeah, I mean, and first of all, this conversation is reflecting that there was very little to talk about with an Orioles game. Well, I’ll let you talk about yours. No, but just that every day, just a few. No, I was just poking some fun, but I think it’s interesting for me. I was 10 going on 11, right? I mean, I turned 11 in October of 94 Did you

Nestor Aparicio 18:30
even know it was happening?

Luke Jones 18:32
Yeah, I knew it was happening. Okay, but I.. and this really lends itself to what I was just about to say, and I say this as someone who’s.. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say that I’m a big soccer fan. I’m not, you know, I’m not, but I will say I do have more of an appreciation for it and what it means globally, and I think in 1994 even as a 10 year old who read the sports page every day, so it’s not like I wasn’t aware of it, I watched it, I mean, I remember what Alexi Lawless and Colby Jones, and some of the guys that were on that team, you know, very little, but, but I at least have some snapshot memories of it. I’ve watched St.

Nestor Aparicio 19:07
John Harks, and you’ll sound really smart.

Luke Jones 19:09
There we go, but, but, but I think, I guess, I guess I’d say from, from my perspective, that event as a 10 year old growing up in the greater Baltimore area, you know, Baltimore, and then southern tip of Pennsylvania, you know, Mason-Dixon line, that felt like so much of a novelty, and now it’s, wow, like, I, I at least have a greater appreciation for how much this means to the entire world, right? In the same way that I have very little interest in the Olympics, right? The Winter Olympics, I watched the women and the men’s hockey, right, and only the last couple rounds, because the US, you know, one goal, you don’t even like

Nestor Aparicio 19:50
hockey,

Luke Jones 19:52
but I all, but I, that doesn’t, I’m not, it’s not lost to me that the what the Olympics and what these global events mean. So, for the World Cup, I don’t have extremely high hopes for the United States making a particularly deep run, although first match very impressive, but, but I think you see how far the sport on that stage, not talking about just kids playing soccer in their local community, right, rec league and all that, which has gone on for decades, but I think in the 30 plus years, 32 years since that World Cup, you do get a sense of how much bigger it actually is in the United States than it was at that point in time. Is it ready to, you know, is soccer going to surpass the NFL in this country? No, of course not, dude. I was on the radio that

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Nestor Aparicio 20:41
whole summer in 94 and I took phone calls, and the Orioles were playing, and baseball strike was real, and we didn’t have a football team. We were never getting a football team ever. That was a year we were losing expansion teams, right? So we’d already lost the expansion draft at that point. So I would say to you that having done this professionally, I would say country didn’t even notice it in 94 when it was, yeah, I mean, I like, and that comes from a guy whose sports life put me on the radio at 26 years of age at that time, that like it wasn’t noticed at all by anybody, and I guess just watching the Oriole game on Tuesday night, it screamed, there’s a soccer tournament going, oh, I mean, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no denying it this time around, I don’t think, and maybe that speaks to me being closer to 60 than 20, and not being young and dumb, and having just been in Uruguay, having just been in Colombia, having just been in Argentina, you know, like seeing the passion for these, for the lead up for the World Cup in Argentina, I was in Argentina one day, I was in Buenos Aires one day, and everything I saw was World Cup oriented. And when I traveled last week to Las Vegas and LA, LA is a World Cup city, Philadelphia is a World Cup city, and when I was in Philadelphia briefly last week in the train station I was in, and the airport, they are completely world cupped up, like, if you, if you go to Philadelphia right now and do anything, you’ll see kiosks in the middle of nowhere with World Cup whoopee’s in them, that you know, you slide your card and you get a World Cup trinket. I mean, shit’s gonna be five cents six weeks from now, they have to ship it off to Africa, so I don’t know, I mean, like, there’s all I saw kiosks with junk, literally they were merchandise swag, get a keychain for $14 that has a World Cup logo, like junk in machines, and that’s everywhere. So I think the World Cup logo, if you move around the country at all this month, you’re just going to see it now, whether you’re subjected to the games or not. I’ll let you in a little secret, Luke. You don’t be mad at me, and Corinji is going to be really upset. I’m not watching, but I just.. because I just didn’t want to do 12 hours a day for a month. I just.. I didn’t get caught up in it this time. It’s the first time in my lifetime I’ve not watched

Luke Jones 23:00
it. Fair enough. Yeah, first up since 94

Nestor Aparicio 23:02
I haven’t sat, and in 98 I stopped my life in oh two. We hosted parties, and they were great. In oh six, I stopped my life for 14 days and lived in Amsterdam and went to games in Germany. So I love me some World Cup, I love me some soccer. I planned on going to Africa in 10, I didn’t go 14, my wife almost died in the middle of the tournament. We watched Germany play, so, like, you know, Qatar, I mean, right around then I started to see how sleazy it is. Yeah, you know, the Russia Qatar angle on the Olympics, and what these sleaze bags that are currently these criminals that are running our country have inherited with this World Cup, and I don’t know, people are gonna go back with a bad taste in their mouth about America a month from now. Whoever they are, they are. This is not a great place to be right now. And the World Cup being in the middle of it, of the political storm, and what’s happening to the Iraqi team, the Iranian team, that what’s happened in the 25 countries that Stephen Miller’s de racist to let people in, so that’s on top of all of this that we’re watching it, and I’d love for the baseball team to be more relevant, so like in 1994 where I didn’t have to think about the soccer tournament, because the baseball team was, I thought at the time, relevant, you know, we’re getting to the point where this West Coast thing, we’ve just spent 15 minutes talking about soccer, because a bunch of guys took their shirts off, because quite frankly, when we’ll bring it back to the team, and I was talking about Gunner Henderson in writing, but like teams falling down the mountain, and I don’t know how many people are going to be up at midnight next Monday night watching them play from Anaheim.

Luke Jones 24:36
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s fair, just just a couple things, because I love you

Nestor Aparicio 24:40
some soccer, right now.

Luke Jones 24:41
I was just gonna say, I’ve been watching some of it. Now, just the corruption part of it, I’m really.. I love the

Nestor Aparicio 24:48
game. I just cannot get past the dirtiness of it, and charging $4,000 for tickets, these creeps, and saying that they’re giving it back to fans, and kissing shitlers. And he’s the peace leader, I mean, God, it’s just, it’s as gross to me as Chad Steele and Greg Bader running the Orioles in the race, like it’s just dirty, it’s just, it’s not what it’s supposed to be, so the World Cup to me is makes me want to throw up, and it’s here, and I wish I wanted to go, and I wish I could afford to go, and I wish I had again, I just spoke it with love of the game. I was the first guy that loved it around, and the only guy that loved it around here, according to Pete Crensy, 30 years into it. I just.. it makes me itch that whenever I see the FIFA logo, it makes me itch. It’s.. it.. they’re they’re mafia criminals. I mean, they really are.

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Luke Jones 25:37
Oh, and look, I’m not gonna.. first of all, you’re well, way more versed in that within than I am, but at the same time I’m also not going to begrudge anyone for enjoying it. I saw Cape Verde draw with Spain, which was.. I don’t know a whole lot about soccer. I know enough to know that that was crazy, Chaminade, because I think Spain’s what ranks second in the world, and all that. I mean, that was crazy, you know. I, I saw, I guess, what Brazil was playing at MetLife, although it’s called what, New York, New Jersey Stadium. That’s one thing that’s kind of funny to me. They, you know, they have to strip their corporate names of these stadiums, which is actually that’s because the mafia didn’t get its points. I know, I know, but, but I saw Brazil come out, and they came out to the Helen Parsons, the old Chicago Bulls introduction music, right? Serious. So, so, like, I see things like that, I’m just like, this is pretty cool,

Nestor Aparicio 26:33
and it’s not, and it is once in a lifetime, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it might come back here 25 years if we don’t get scammed out of it by, I don’t know, Qatar or Saudi Arabia, or wherever else they would want to play it, but I mean, guitar, a couple, couple years ago it was a disgrace, I mean, it just would, it’s just, it’s a, it’s a disgraceful group of people putting this tournament on, I can’t get that out of my mind, I don’t talk about it every minute of every day, I, you know, I talked about it the day they raided him in Switzerland 10 years ago, and the fat guy with the parrot that was stealing millions of money, living in Trump Tower, literally living in Trump Tower long before Trump was known to be what Trump is, but this is 2020 years ago, the dirtiness of the US committee in trying to get these games and trying to out blood money Qatar and Russia, I mean, it’s, it’s gross anyway, but you, but serious gets played and people come and the guys run around the shorts and it’s they dive and it’s a good time, yeah,

Luke Jones 27:32
and you see the crowds and you see people coming from all around, or you know, people that are from the country originally and living here, I mean, like there are elements to it, despite everything you mentioned, that is reality, but there are also elements to it that are really cool. There’s 65,000

Nestor Aparicio 27:47
people from Ecuador piled into Philadelphia Stadium last week. So, yeah,

Luke Jones 27:50
I mean, like, that’s that’s wild, right? I mean, it’s awesome. So, I mean, it’s, you know, you, you, for me, I’m kind of taking it for what it is, and again, I, I just kind of drop in. If I have an extra hour, I put it on. I’m probably doing some other things, and

Nestor Aparicio 28:04
potato chips. If I start to watch it, see, I

Luke Jones 28:08
don’t have that problem. I won’t get anything done. I mean,

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Nestor Aparicio 28:10
literally, I’m telling you, I’ve watched World Cups. I’m not in the mood to watch it. I don’t have a rooting interest. I don’t think the US can win. I’m a bit of a conscientious objector, you know what I mean, like literally it’s just sort of like

Luke Jones 28:25
that

Nestor Aparicio 28:26
I don’t have to talk about it on the air every day, I’m not hosting viewing parties the way I’ve done for the last 30 years, and I’m just literally, my TV actually has a, I have a big piece of paper with something that that’s like a poster in front of my TV, so I don’t have my TV up right now. I just don’t want to put soccer on a 10 in the morning and watch it till 10 at night every day this month, because I’m not talking about it on the radio, and I’ve got work to do. You know what I mean? I got a crab page tour stop, and the Orioles are of much higher concern of me, or for me, but I think the Orioles season might be over in a week or two, dude. Like, and if I’m gonna, we’re gonna pull it all back in and wrap this in a bow, this soccer piece that we’ve wrapped around a Tuesday night in Seattle. I, I’m not out of things to say about the Orioles, but I might be soon.

Luke Jones 29:17
Well, it’s just. it feels similar to last year in this, in this sense. Now, obviously, last year they started off way worse, right? They were 16 and 34 through their first 50 games, but right after that they had a stretch where they won nine of 11, and they got back to, I think, it was a.. I think their high water mark, like in early June was 11 games under, and I think we even said it at the time, unlikely as it might be. If you’re going to go on a historic run, this was your jumping off point. And then they just settled into being a middling 500 ish team the rest of the way, and so far this is kind of feeling like that. For this group, right, they went 10 and four, you know, they had the seven and three home stand, they, they started off winning two out of three in Boston in the last in their last road trip, and then we saw what happened in Toronto after they won that Friday night game, they lost four in a row, they rebounded, they won three in a row, won that opener of the San Diego series over the weekend, where anytime you win a series opener, you’re saying, “Hey, there’s a chance to win a series, and they’ve lost three in a row again, right? I mean, it’s just.. it’s this same two steps forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, two steps back, right? I mean, it’s just not gaining any traction whatsoever, and to the point that we made a little bit earlier in the segment, you can point to something different about this club every night, right? When, when, when they falter, is the hitting better than the other areas of this team? Yeah, is it without fault or flaw? No, not even close. So the defense is at best below average, and at its worst, horrendous. The pitching over the 10 and four stretch, they pitched pretty, pretty well. Brandon Young pitched quite well last, last night. I mean, there’s no, there was nothing about him that I’m going to sit here and complain about. He didn’t strike out a lot of people, but that’s kind of this pitching staff in general, the bullpen, you know, Grant Wolfram was disappointing, but it’s not as though they gave up seven runs. I mean, they had two base runners after the first inning, one of them was Pete Alonso getting hit, right? I mean, like Adley Ruchman had an infield single at the end of the game is Alonzo getting hit, and then the next guy hitting a home run, because, yeah, you know, you got the tying run at the plate, or whatever. I mean, they were in the game, and the game got over early, as you pointed out 20 minutes ago. But hitting the ball is problematic for them at this point, in any, with any consistency. And then we start talking about the star players, right? Then we start to have to talk about Alonso, which are talking about Henderson, and

Nestor Aparicio 32:00
talk about the disappointing draft picks, and talk about guys giving opportunities, whether it’s Blaze Alexander, you know, whoever these guys are, Leoti Tavarez, guys that, when they came to camp back in February or March, did not appear to be primary players on this team, and they assumed that sort of role, primary players on a sub 500 team.

Luke Jones 32:18
Yeah, I mean, look, there have been success stories. I mean, Leo de Tavarez, not so much over the last month, but early on, Blaze Alexander over the last five six weeks has been terrific. Go look at his numbers over the last five six weeks, it’s why he’s playing almost every day. And if you put

Nestor Aparicio 32:35
Jordan Westburg in front of his name for those stats, I think you’d live with that, right?

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Luke Jones 32:39
Sure, I mean, Blaze Alexander’s hitting 297 right? I mean, he’s not hitting for a lot of power, you know? Maybe you know Westberg would be hitting for more power, but in terms, it’s kind of like what we’ve talked about with Brandon Young, like in terms of who he replaced in the rotation, and I guess it was Efflin at that point. I mean, you could say Dean Kramer, right? I mean, those two were kind of lumped together, but Brandon Young hasn’t been their problem. It’s been the other guys in the rotation that you actually had expectations for, who have been underwhelming, and that’s kind of where you look at the rest of the series. Oh, you

Nestor Aparicio 33:11
got a guy making $19 million it hasn’t been very

Luke Jones 33:14
good. I mean, you do, but but no one was expecting Basset to be the ace. I mean, Bradish has a four three ERA, you know Boz has been better overall over the last month, but he has a 406 I mean, Trevor Rogers has been the biggest disappointment, easily, you know, even with, you know, his last start aside, he’s been bat, just plain bad. So, you know, and you go back to Gunner Henderson, I mean, look, it’s still a simplistic way of looking at it, but you need your stars to be stars to overcome your deficiencies, right? I mean, Lamar Jackson has been the epitome of that for the Baltimore Ravens over the last, the bulk of the last seven or eight years, right? Any imperfection they might have, you have Lamar doing when he’s at his best, doing absolutely absurdly silly things, right? Things that you don’t draw up, things that Greg Roman or Todd Monken or Declan Doyle will have drawn up. Lamar does those things when he’s right. They haven’t gotten that from Gunner Henderson this year, right? I mean, Gunner, you know, he hits his 100th home run on Friday night, and has a three hit night, and you’re hoping that’s the start of something, and he’s had games like that, he’s hit home runs, but the consistency hasn’t been there, you know, the silver lining with Gunner, where I’m hoping maybe kind of sort of this might be where he’s starting to come out of it, if you do look at June, he has cut down on the strikeouts overall big time in the month of June, and he’s starting to draw way more walks. I’m hoping that’s maybe the start of seeing him not expand the zone as much, make good swing decisions when he’s hitting the ball in the strike zone. They have data for this when he is. Swinging in the zone, his numbers are really good. His problem is how much he’s expanded the zone, whether you’re talking about strikeouts, whether you’re talking about not drawing walks, whether you’re talking about rolling over, you know, hitting a lazy fly ball to right field, whatever it might be. So, but you need your stars to be stars, it’s that simple. And they haven’t gotten that from Gunner Henderson really at all, you know, save for maybe a couple weeks back in April, and you know, Pete Alonso has certainly been way better since the start of May, but they haven’t gotten the best version of Peter Alonso that I think they were really hoping to get, so, so far, right, and and then you talk about the injuries, or you talk about underperformance of other other guys, I mean, it’s just the entire thing, the sum is way less than the parts, right, in terms of what we thought the parts were on paper going into spring training, and thinking about this team’s potential, and it’s just, it’s thinking they were going to contend, lacking, and they’re pretending, yeah, I mean, it just is, and you know, I, I don’t necessarily think that they’re going to completely unravel here, and they’re going to be 18 games under 500 Well, they got too many good players for

Nestor Aparicio 36:08
that, right? But I mean, that really would be an indictment of Albernaz and Elias games under 500 which it feels like it’s on pace very much to do. This very much feels like 75 and 87 you know, I mean, like they’re playing that right, that’s what this feels like it’s going to be, and this is just it’s an

Luke Jones 36:28
indictment of everyone, though. At the same, I think the owners,

Nestor Aparicio 36:32
the owners, terrible, and that, that’s probably not going to change. I learned that I fought with the old man. People ask me, Free the Birds, 20th anniversary, I don’t care enough. I don’t care enough about any of them or the baseball team. I care about downtown, but I mean everybody should care about downtown. But my fighting with them 20 years ago about trying to make this better, and 20 years later it’s still not better. People wonder why I’m cranky, you know? I mean, like, I’m cranky because of this malfeasance and incompetence, and watching the Angeles family drive this thing into a ditch, and then have these people pick it up and say that they’re going to make it a real thing, and three years into it, he’s not sitting behind on plate anymore, is he? He’s not on TV anymore, is he? He’s not making bobble heads anymore, is he’s not sitting in the broad. Where the hell is he? He’s got married, he’s a billionaire. He doesn’t care, didn’t care about Baltimore, he didn’t care about any of this. So the guy running it feels absentee to me at this point, and he’s not going to be an active owner, he’s going to, he’s going to have the Whistler trying to get WBA all to say nice things about him. Rob Long say nice things about him on the broadcast. Melanie bring him on once a year. I mean, there’s no there there, I guess, from a leadership standpoint that to get in front of this when it goes off the curb this week maybe, and they come back and it’s really over how how they present themselves as an organization, not on the field, not during the whole thing, the television broadcast that nobody’s going to be watching in August if they’re 14 games under 500 just all of it, and I’m, I’m concerned about it as we sit here getting up on the All-Star break in the middle of summer when they’re playing in the middle of the night, and it’s real easy to do what I do with the World Cup, just ignore it and make it go away, and I don’t, I don’t want it to go away. I waited all off season, I thought they were going to win 92 games. I feel really duped, and I haven’t felt that way in a long time. I never believed in Angelos, this guy, for five minutes I gave him a chance. These people, and they’re awful. I mean, I don’t need to wait any more on this. It’s been two and a half years. They’re awful, and I don’t think that’s going to get better. I don’t think you coach billionaires out of this who think they’ve done something philanthropic and think they’re going to squeeze a bunch of money out of it, and they’re embarrassed by it, right? Like, the reason he’s not around, he’s embarrassed. The stadium’s empty. Well, I mean, and they haven’t made it better, they’ve made it worse. It’s worse. There are less people there than when Angelos owned the team, and it’s more disappointing because I can’t blame it on Angelos, and it’s not Angela. You know what I mean? Like, I’m looking at, say, all right, it still sucks. Now, who do we blame?

Luke Jones 39:17
Well, that’s where the one point I’ll make. And look, I’m not going to stick up for new ownership, but I don’t, you know, that they’ve been here five minutes,

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Nestor Aparicio 39:25
that long, a lot longer than five minutes now. It’s getting, it’s getting up longer than that. Can I

Luke Jones 39:29
talk? Can I talk? Yeah, okay. I’m trying to, they trusted Michael Isa to run this thing, he’s run this thing, it’s gone off the rails over the last couple years. I mean, there’s just no other way to put it, so for me the last sign, and this is where I, I’m going to give them the tiniest sliver of the benefit of the doubt, is are you going to be duped and continue to think that he’s your guy, and then you guys are just going to hide and hope it gets better or. Do you need to do what’s necessary, and you’ve already said this. And look, I’m not going to sit here and say argue for Mike Elias to keep his job if this is another dud of a season, right? After a two-year trend, we’re coming up on two years exactly since that day at Costa, where we’re talking about that Orioles-Yankees game, but I view it through that lens of, you know, can you fix it? Can you do what needs to be done in terms of hiring the right advisor or whatever, and go find a new person to run baseball ops, if, if that’s what it’s going to come to, which increasingly it’s feeling like I saw what they came up with,

Nestor Aparicio 40:37
Katie Griggs, and that was just the industry consortium, and look, you know, and a headhunter, basically,

Luke Jones 40:43
but just a couple more things. I touched on this briefly, you know, just in my 12 Orioles thoughts at Baltimore positive.com from from the San Diego series loss Saturday night, the New York Knicks won the NBA championship for the first time in 53 years. Now, James Dolan, and, man, you want to talk about an organization and ownership and perception of something? I mean, hit their relationship with Charles Oakley is still broken, and he is a

Nestor Aparicio 41:14
true piece of garb, James Dolan, but he’s trash, human trash.

Luke Jones 41:19
I’m not, I’m not. Yeah, this isn’t about James Dolan. It’s about a franchise that was listless, largely and unsuccessful, and flat out alienating their fan base, flat out alienating former players to the point where I don’t think Charles Oakley is still allowed in the Madison Square Garden, they had all that, all of that, but they won a championship, and that was 53 years. We’re on 43 years now for the Orioles, and I think three years ago, not, not that I had a thought that it definitely was going to happen, but I think you had ideas in your mind that this could be a great opportunity over the next 678 years, whatever, of that, you know, and it might still take some luck, and like this thing, let’s see what the next are the next

Nestor Aparicio 42:13
three to five years. I’m sure it’s going to be great.

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Luke Jones 42:15
It’s New York is a lot of money, but I’m talking about, but I’m just talking about a championship. Look, I understand what you’re saying, in terms of the long term, the aftermath of that didn’t help Kansas City or some other.. I understand that, but, but, but all those Royals fans still will always love that, that specific team, right? No matter if they’re in last place every year in the AL Central for the next three decades, but I look at that, and that idea that I had three years ago is feeling faint, fainter, and fainter again, and the other thing that I think that work in this, and this for me is a big part of the attendance piece, regardless of Katie Griggs and ticket prices and things that they’ve done in changing Birdland membership plans, and all that, is you flat out sold this, you know, this this multi year rebuild plan, and again Mike Elias walked into something that was already severely broken. I will continue to remind that he did not come in here and then just tank and take them. They were already historically terrible in 2018 but they did this multi-year tanking, not trying at the major league level, building, building it from the ground up, rebuilt, built in for infrastructure, Dominican Academy, all that, and like many of those things were good, and they were necessary, but the overall selling point was short-term pain for the long-term gain of something that’s vibrant, something that’s sustainable, something that should be a long-term window, you know, not a promise that you’re going to win 100 games every year, but a window of good baseball, where if this team, you know, if the stars align in a certain year, might be able to do it, and they should have a really solid chance to do it over the course of several years, for that to have lasted basically two calendar years, two and a half tops. I think that’s where you have a lot of fans, whether it’s like actively feeling disdain or just feeling such disappointment, that I think that’s where you run the danger of a more extreme dip in attendance and a more extreme tuning out of the product because of it feels like a betrayal in that way of not even getting into business and tickets and all those different issues but just in terms of what was advertised for what this rebuild was supposed to bring, and how little it actually did, and now you look at it, where it’s really difficult to feel like this thing is remotely going in the right direction at this point. I mean, Samuel Bisayo, okay, you’ve got Shane Boz under contract, I mean, like Gunner Henderson’s every day moving closer to four. Agency, Adley, Rochman, even closer to free agency, but, but even with those guys, they’re not winning, right? They’re not winning, and I think that’s where you just look at this thing, and, and it’s.. I don’t talk much about attendance, you know that, and I know I’m going to wrap up here. I don’t talk very much about attendance. It’s not my place to tell people to go to games or not to go to games, right? I don’t pay for, I paid for tickets a couple times in the last decade, right. So I don’t feel that’s my place, but I’ve really noticed the last couple weeks the crowds feel a lot lighter than they should be for the time of year, and that to me is very much an indictment of where this product, where this club is, and that’s that’s a top to bottom issue that they should be very concerned about. And that’s Reverend Katie Griggs, and he is Luke Jones. I’m Nestor. We are WNST, AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. Enjoy the games, whatever the games are. There’s plenty of games still being played.