Selling Tomorrow

Episode 62 of Rice on the Mics is here, and this one had a little bit of everything.

Ian dives into a wild sports night built around the theme of Selling Tomorrow — from NFL Draft hope and projection, to playoff pressure, to two very different versions of New York baseball.

On the NFL side, the Jets come away with a huge first round, landing David Bailey, Kenyon Sadiq, and trading back into round one for Omar Cooper Jr. Ian breaks down why Darren Mougey may have had himself a night, what Bailey brings right now, and how the Giants used their two first-round picks to show exactly what kind of team they want to become.

Then it’s on to the Knicks, who now find themselves in serious trouble after another brutal late-game collapse against Atlanta. Ian gets into the bad offense, the standing around, the pressure on Brunson, Towns, Bridges, and Mike Brown, and why this series is starting to feel way more dangerous than it should.

Then baseball. The Yankees are rolling, fresh off a sweep of the Red Sox, and look like one of the most complete and trustworthy teams they’ve had in years. The Mets, meanwhile, may have won two straight, but Ian is not letting them off the hook. He sounds off on the 12-game losing streak, the bullpen chaos, the clubhouse questions, the Soto/Lindor dynamic, and why this team still feels like it’s living on borrowed time even after a couple wins.

NFL Draft reaction, Knicks panic, Yankees praise, Mets frustration — it’s all here.

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Transcript

A New York Sports Stress Test

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Man, oh man, oh boy, oh boy, did tonight feel like one of those nights where New York Sports just decided to test everybody's blood pressure at the exact same time. It's NFL draft day. The Knicks in Atlanta trying to prove that they're still the better team, Yankees down in Boston looking like the only adults in the room, and the Mets doing the thing that they've been doing lately, where even when they win, they're still somehow making you feel like you aged five years watching it. You know, for about 30 seconds there, it felt like the whole city got hit at once. The Knicks choke the ending, Jets pick at 16 comes in, and the Mets give up a game time grand slant. That's not a sports night, that's a stress test and a half. And that's kind of where this episode lives today. Borrowed hope. That's the theme. Every team in this town is asking you to believe in something, they're just asking in different ways. Draft night is the easiest version of it. You know, every pick is basically a promise, every fan base is talking themselves into the upside, the fit, what can this guy become, what the front office must be seeing, yada yada yada. The Jets bought themselves a pass rusher and a couple of weapons. The Giants turned one big move into two swings of what they hope to become their franchise team going forward. You know, that's hope. That's all it is right now, though. Hope. Hope with a handshake and a jersey in front of some cameras and a Roger Goodell bear hug. But then you get to the Knicks version of it. And that's not draft night hope. That's the kind of hope where you keep telling yourself you're still the better team and hoping that you're right. While you keep coughing up games, giving the other side reasons to believe they can hang with you. You know, at some point, if you keep playing with your food, you're the one who gets eaten. We're gonna get into all that. But the Yankees, though, they might be the one team in town that started to turn hope into trust. You know, the pitching looks real, the wins look real, the whole thing feels steadier than it has in a while. And if you're a Yankee fan, that's gotta feel pretty good right now. Then of course there's the Mets. Man, don't get me started. Even in a win, even in a couple wins, there are still some things that need to be said that I've been stewing over for the past couple days. Couple better nights does not erase what we just watched over the last two weeks. I put out two episodes, and there hasn't been a win since. So today's episode has it all. Draft night, Jets, Giants, Knicks, Yankees, Mets, and the idea that hope is great right up until someone has to pay it back. This is episode 62 of Rice on the Mics. Let's do it too. So we start this week's episode with the NFL draft, because this is where the whole theme of the show really lives. Draft night is borrowed hope at its absolute peak. Everybody is talking themselves into the future. Every fan base has a vision, every team has a plan. Nobody has taken a real snap yet. But everybody's already selling tomorrow like it's guaranteed. Hope. That's what makes the draft great. And that's also what makes it dangerous when your team doesn't really know what it's doing. So the Jets are up first in this city at number two, and they take David Bailey. My first reaction, I get it. Look, I was a little more intrigued by Rvell Reese, I won't lie, this whole last couple episodes, last week. I was definitely telling you I like Reese. Reese is one of those guys where you can see the upside and your brain starts running. You know, you start dreaming a little bit about what he could be. Bailey, Bailey feels different. Bailey feels like a football player right now. Bailey feels like a guy that you can line up this fall and just say, go make life harder on quarterbacks immediately. So when you play in a division with Josh Allen and Drake May, who quietly has some wheels, by the way, yeah, that's pretty damn relevant. You know, you need somebody who can get there, you need somebody who can be a problem. And Bailey's got a chance to do that early. There's another layer to it, too. You got multiple coaches on this Jets staff with some Stanford ties. I know Bailey's Texas Tech, but he did play at Stanford for Stanford for a little bit. So this wasn't just some blind leap of faith. They know Bailey, they've they've been around him. There's a little familiarity there. Kind of maybe that's why they canceled that 30th trip, you know. So while the fan vote did lean Reese pretty heavy, pretty hard, I can respect the front office saying, Yeah, we know this guy. We we trust this guy, and we think he can help us right now. So then from the Jets at two, now the board started bending. Arizona takes Jeremiah at three, kinda crazy. I don't know. We'll see how. I mean, the kid's gonna be a playmaker, so we'll see how he ends up in that situation. Tennessee takes Cardinal Tate at four. And now, now you know the draft is not going the way that everybody drew it up in their little mock simulators all week. The Giants take Reese at five, great pick. Chiefs jump Cleveland from nine up to six to cram. Mansour Delane, cornerback out of LSU. Washington takes Sonny Styles at seven, New Orleans takes Jordan Tyson at eight, and Cleveland lands Spencer Fano at nine. You know, all of a sudden the room changes. Couple of those names were supposed to be options for the local teams. Now they're just gone. That's when the NFL draft gets fun. That's when comfort just completely leaves the room and you see how they react. The Chiefs move was aggressive, and I kind of liked it. I'm not gonna lie. They didn't move up for the hell of it. They jumped from nine to six because they probably thought somebody else might beat them to the punch, or they had Delane circled and they weren't leaving it up to chance. They were leaving the draft with him. You know, that's how teams act when the board starts getting weird. The Giants at five take Arvell Reese, and I think they got great value. There's real upside there. He's a project, maybe, sure, but he's a project with serious physical tools. So when you pair him with, you know, last year's can't miss fall asleep in meetings pass rusher Abdul Carter, plus Kayvon Thibodeau is still hanging around. You know, that's a front seven that on paper should be able to get after the quarterback for the next couple years. So I can absolutely see why the Giants looked at Reese and said, Yeah, we're gonna take our shot here. The bigger Giants point for me is a bit more simple. Dexton Lawrence didn't want to be here. So you got a huge return. You made the trade that no one thought you'd be able to make it. You got number 10 overall. Fine. Great. But now you gotta use it right. Don't turn the pick into some emotional discussion about missing sexy Dexie, and we need someone to fill his spot. Nah, man, you made the trade, you got paid, now you gotta cash it in correctly. So at 10, they come back with Francis Mauioga. And that's where the Giants night clicked for me. You know, everybody and their mother spent a whole week screaming, Caleb Downs, Caleb Downs, great safety, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was pure public facing smoke. That was the noise. The actual message from the Giants was a lot different. They want to get bigger, stronger, and beefier. They want to get tougher up the middle. So Reese at five and Mauioga at 10, that wasn't a glamour, flashy draft. That was a blueprint draft. That was a blueprint first round. That's a team saying we want more focus on both sides of the ball and we want to stop getting pushed around. You can see the Harbaugh vision in it. It's not the soft, fake culture buzzword either. You know, I mean in a real football way. Some former players over the last week came out complaining that practices in Baltimore under Harbaugh were too physical and demanding. And, you know, we all we uh played full pads all the time. Well, if Harbaugh wants a tougher roster and a little harder edge, Reese and Maui Yoga line up with that pretty damn well. You know, Reese gives you defensive upside and the front seven speed. Maui Yoga gives you size and stability up front. So the Giants basically spent Thursday night saying, yeah, we're trying to get harder. Good. Now go prove it works. Meanwhile, Dallas moves up and takes Caleb Downs, which I think is actually pretty funny because that was the public facing Giants dream pick all week. Every Giants fan wanted that leader in the backfield. Everybody kept linking him there. Now Dallas jumps up and grabs him, and now you got two teammates in Arvell Reese and Caleb Downs, who are now division rivals. Look, man, Dallas wanted the flashy defensive chess piece. The Giants wanted to add more beef and violence to the middle of the roster. They both got what they wanted. We'll see which one ages better. Miami trades back and they take Caden Proctor, which to me, that means they probably wanted Maui Yoga. And they lost him when the Giants grabbed him and they said, Alright, who can we trade down with to grab some more picks? Who's the idiot? Dallas. The Rams, well, the Rams take Ty Simpson at 13. You know, will he be a first rounder? Will he not be a first rounder? All the smoke all season, will he make it to the Jets at 16? Well, he didn't. And you know what? I didn't want him on my team, but I actually love it for them. Love it for him, too. The kid gets to sit behind Stafford, learn from McVay, take a breath, and not get thrown into chaos right away. Which is what a would have which was what is what would have happened. There we go. I got there. If you went to any other team. You know, that's a really good quarterback landing spot. A lot of teams draft quarterbacks to sell hope to the fans immediately. The Rams drafted one and actually gave him a real environment to grow in, and now there's hope for the future, not for the immediate. Baltimore. Baltimore, okay, stick with me here. Baltimore takes Vega Yoane at 14. Great lineman. Selfishly very thrilled that uh he didn't end up with the Giants where he might have been projected, just because I didn't have to want to have to spend a lot of time rehearsing that name over and over, and I still didn't get it right. But hey, God bless. Good pick, good player, Ravens pick, makes sense, helps Lamar stop running for his life, gives Derrick Henry a new lineman to slam his helmet into the back of. Tampa takes Ruben Bain at 15. So now the Jets are up, are back up. Here we go, 16. This is where I thought the Jets had a chance to mess it up if they got impatient. You know, receiver names had already come off the board. Everybody in their mother is yelling that Garrett Wilson needs some help. He needs some real receiver talent across from him. It's a real easy moment for a team to panic and force a move just so they can say that they addressed what they needed. Instead, they take Kenyon Sadiq, a player who I personally had super high hopes for, and I think they thought he'd be gone before 16, either to the Ravens or Tampa. You know, the Ravens are still trying to replace Isaiah Likely, but he wasn't gone. And the Jets practice what I've been preaching over the past two weeks. Get the highest graded player on your board. You don't have to force wide receiver just because the room tells you to. You know, you could still add a weapon, you could still help the pass game. You can still make life easier on your offense without reaching for the wrong name. Then they go back and trade back into the first round for Omar Cooper Jr., which was huge. Once they made that move, the whole thing is perfect. I'm great with the Jets first round this year. Bailey at two, Sadiq at 16, Omar Cooper at 30, you got a pass rusher, you got a solid offensive weapon, and then you got an actual wide receiver to help Garrett and help the next quarterback of this team, and even Gino this year. That's a hell of a first round. What I liked the most was that they didn't force the board. They didn't make the Jets move. You know, Tate goes, Tyson goes, names start flying off. Everybody's getting antsy, they stayed calm. They let the room settle, took Sadiq, saw some talent late, traded back up and got him. That's how adult teams draft. That's a really, really good night for Muji. The poll that I had out this week too actually makes it even better. You know, the fans all voted they wanted Reese at two, and then the fans leaned that they wanted best available player over wide receiver at 16. So in a weird way, the Jets kind of split the difference. You know, they didn't give the fans Reese, but they did give them a much smarter version of the same idea. Don't force it. Let the board come to you. Then you go finish the job. Hard to be mad at that, man. Couple uh couple around the league things I do want to touch on before I leave football before we end this segment here. Some more news came out about uh Diana Rossini and Mike Vravel, and it has gone from messy to something bigger than messy. You know, at this point it's not even just tabloid nonsense. It's it's a true ethics conversation. It's an access conversation. Just more stuff keeps surfacing, weird photos or photos dating back to 2020. So that's six years these two have been getting after it. You know, there's kids involved. Not between the two of them, but it's just it's it's very very ugly and I don't know, more weirdness keeps getting attached to it. The whole thing just makes the media side of the football feel slimier than it already did, you know? Draft Week is already built on smoke screens and half-truths, I guess. The agenda pushing all of it. Once personal relationships and you know, questionable boundaries start bleeding into it too. Fans have every right to wonder who's actually reporting and who's just protecting access. You also have the whole Arch Manning shadow hanging over this drift. You could kind of feel it throughout the teams here. You know, there were some moves, but outside of Mendoza going one, nobody really treated this like a quarterback class. Nobody was moving around to trade up for, you know, the next guy. Everybody knows the bigger quarterback fantasy is sitting out there in 2027. So that absolutely changes how teams behave. You know, it changes how patient they are, how they value next year's draft picks. Changes how they value upside players versus certainty players. You could feel that all over it. So, yeah, that's the NFL read for tonight. Everybody bought hope. Every team, every franchise. Well, maybe not the Bengals or the Jaguars, actually. They didn't have a pick either. But yeah, the Jets bought pass rush and a couple of weapons. The Giants bought upside and trench identity. Dallas bought urgency. The Rams bought some patience. So now we get to see who actually knows how to turn those receipts into some real football. Now, now let's get to the Knicks. With a fan base that always, you know, takes things super rational and calmly because they just pulled off another late game masterpiece today. Hardcourt Knicks keep it right here. Pack it up, pack it in. The Knicks are cooked. It's over. Great season, everybody. Nice run. Hang the banner for the midseason cup tournament. You know, we'll always have that. First round collapse, summer of fake trade machine proposals. Everybody yell at each other on the internet. I'll see you in October. Now, do I actually think the series is over? No. Do I think they are begging to make it feel that way? Yeah, absolutely. That's what makes this so irritating. This is not one of those series where I'm sitting here saying, wow, man, Atlanta just is clearly better, the better team. You know, you got to tip your cap. What are you gonna do? It is what it is. No, man. No, the Knicks are better. They have more talent, they have the better top-end players. They should be winning this series. The problem is they keep playing like a team that thinks the talent part is enough. It's not. Not in the playoffs, not late in games, not when the whole building knows exactly what you're trying to do. Game three was embarrassing, man. Just flat out embarrassing. You came out flat. Not only do you lose 109, 108, not only do you blow another late chance, you get the ball with the game sitting right there for you, and you don't even get a shot off. Twice. Not a bad shot, not a missed shot, no shot. That is such a disgusting way to lose a playoff game. You work your way all the way back down from 20 at one point. You know, Brunson gets a three-point play, you finally feel, all right, maybe they're about to steal this thing back, maybe, maybe they can do this. And then the end of the game turns into a complete mess. That's not bad luck. That's not sometimes the ball bounces weird. That is bad offense. That is bad structure, that is panic. So yeah, I want to start joking that they're cooked, that the season's over. But the real reason this joke hits like that is because there's truth inside of it. You keep doing this against a team you're supposed to be better than. Eventually the joke becomes the result. The biggest issue for me is the same one that it's been all year. Late game offense. You know, everybody just standing around, everybody watching Brunson, waiting for him to pull a rabbit out of his hat while the defense loads up and says, Yeah, we know exactly what's coming. That is not real closing offense. That is not sustainable. That is borrowed hope. That's a our that's a that our oh, our best player is gonna save us instead of like, yeah, oh no, our team knows what to do in this moment. I mean, Brunson gave you 26. Cat gave you 21 and 17 boards, OG gave you 29. That should be more than enough to win this game. So I'm not gonna sit here and blame Brunson like he disappeared or saying, you know, that towns gave them nothing. You know, they gave you everything to win. They give you enough to win. The problem is everything around them gets way too shaky when the game tightens up. You know, all the hustle plays aside, Josh Hart gives you two points in 40 minutes. Bridges, Bridges, God bless him, gives you zero in 21 minutes. Zero points. And by the way, he hasn't scored in six quarters. Mikhail Bridges cannot give you zero in a one-point playoff loss. He can't. I'm sorry. You know, Hart can't be out there all night giving you two points and four missed threes while the offense is dying on a vine. There's your problem right there. Everybody wants to reduce it to, oh, well, Brunson had the ball late again. He's playing hero ball. Yeah, no kidding. Look around. Who exactly is making life easier on him in these moments? You know, too often it turns into Brunson dribbling in the traffic, and then four guys are basically waiting to see what happens next. They're standing around watching him. Cat is part of this too. I say that carefully because the stat line is good, but the conversation around him is always weird. He's got feet for hands. He can play well and he still feels disconnected from part of the game where the Knicks need him the most. You know, that can't keep happening. We've been talking about it all year. You can't have a guy with that much offensive talent and that kind of paycheck drift in and out of late game involvement while everyone narrows back down to one guy pounding the ball. Either put him in better spots or demand more presence from him in those moments. Pick one. I don't care. But right now it just feels like they're just hoping it sorts itself out. Mike Brown deserves a lot of heat here, too. The lineups get clunky, the rhythm gets weird, the no stars on the court stretches keep hanging over this team. The offensive shape never feels as clean as it should for a team with this much talent. There are too many possessions where it feels like the Knicks are improvising instead of attacking with a plan. Which, fine. That's the brand of basketball that Mike Brown's been coaching all year. And that worked when it was Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant while they were all in their prime and unstoppable. That does not work with this roster. And late in games, that gets exposed fast. The playoffs don't let you hide bad process. The thing that makes me crazy as a Knicks fan is Atlanta is not inventing this confidence out of nowhere either. The Knicks are just straight up giving it to them. Game two, the poll results that I put out, they were clear. The Knicks blew it. And game three only made it feel even more obvious. You let a team hang around, now they start believing. You let McCollum keep being comfortable, and now he looks like the Trey Young reincarnate. You keep letting the game get down to just make one more play than us. Now all of a sudden the supposedly worse team starts looking at a whole Lot more free than you do. Atlanta got more balance too, so I'll give credit where credit is due. Jalen Johnson almost put up a triple-double, drops 24, 10, and 8. CJ McCollum gives you 23, and Kaminga. Kaminga, for God's sakes, gives you 21 off the bench. I mean, that's not some overwhelming avalanche of offense, though. That's just a plain and simple multiple adults, multiple ballers showing up and helping. The Knicks too often look like a team that gets narrow when the pressure rises. It's been in this team's DNA for a couple years now. And honestly, I don't know how to fix it. That's why I keep saying the issue is not just talent, it's control, it's shape. Atlanta looked more organized in the biggest moments. And that's a terrible thing to be able to say if you're the Knicks. So where am I with them? It's pretty simple. I still think they're the better team, obviously. I also think that if they keep playing with their food, they're going to be going home early. You know, and that's not some grand dramatic declaration. That's just what it looks like. I've been saying for weeks that one of the top four seeds always loses to the one of the bottom four seeds. It just always happens in the first round for whatever reason. And now you find yourself staring at that reality and being a joke across the internet. You don't keep handing a team hope in a series and expect that it won't have any consequences. Atlanta has hope now. Atlanta has proof now. Atlanta thinks that it can beat you late. And the worst part is they should think that. Since you keep showing them that they can. God, man. I mean, all season you say everything's fine. We're going to figure it out. This group keeps things tight in-house. We're all good. Well, I gotta say, and I'm being nice here because the team is gonna get ripped all week by callers. It's not looking too good, boys. And come summertime, hope some of you can get your security deposits back on your leases. Because there's gonna be some changes whether we advance or not. Alright, let's do a quick little whip around for the rest of the playoffs because there actually have been some good playoff series here. Philly, team that thought that uh everybody thought was dead. They stole one from Boston, so that series gets a little interesting. Minnesota punch back against Denver. Road teams have uh been a little more comfortable than people expected early in these playoffs. Hence Atlanta, which is also why this makes it even more frustrating that the Knicks could they could be up 2-0 going into game three and choked away game two while every other team lost and the series was tied 1-1. Home court looks great until somebody comes in and takes it right from you. Uh Cleveland, Cleveland's sitting in good shape against Toronto. The Lakers handled their business against Houston at home, mostly because LeBron has found the fountain of youth again and KD has been hurt. And San Antonio has a Wemby concussion situation hanging over that Portland series, which is obviously a huge deal. The point is, this bracket got messy fast, and it always does. That's what playoff basketball is. But you spend all year trying to line everything up nicely, and one week reminds you, none of it means much if you can't execute when the game gets weird. And I come back to it again. That's why the Knicks are so annoying here. The talent is there, the names are there, the expectations for this team are fair. The trust is the part that's getting shaky. You know, I trust the roster on paper a lot more than I trust what they look like in the last two minutes of a close game. You know, right now those are two very different conversations. So, no, I'm not burying them completely. I'm still not doing the fake funeral music. The series is still alive. You know, you win on Saturday and head back to the garden, tied up 2-2. The series is most definitely winnable. But the warning light is flashing. And at some point, you either clean up the late game nonsense or you become the team that everybody talks about, like, man, I can't believe they got bounced. What happened? Yes, man. Anyway, let's uh let's get to some baseball. Where you think that rant was bad. I got a whole lot to say about the Mets. And the Yankees, the Yankees, uh they look like the real deal. Time to talk up next. So let's get to the baseball. Where one team in this city is starting to look like an actual team, and the other one still somehow turns every game into a stress experiment. Let's start with the Yankees since they've actually earned the spotlight as of late. They go into Fenway, finish the sweep, win four to two, and they push the winning streak to six. The whole thing just feels solid right now. That's really the word for them. Solid. Not fake hot start solid either. Not like Judge hit a bomb, maybe they'll survive solid. Like real team solid. I mean, Cam Schlittler gives you eight innings, only four hits, one earned run, five strikeouts, handles Boston again like he's done it before. Max Fried crushes, Luis Hill crushes. That's exactly what you want in a rivalry series. Go on the road, let your starters control the game, get a couple big swings, and shut the door, get on the bus. You know, Jazz ties it with a little homer around the pesky pole. Bellinger coming off the bench with a two-run single. Judge adds on, Bednar finishes it, and now the Yankees are sitting there with a three-game sweep, looking like the only adults in the room again. You know, the Yankees outscored Boston 11-3 in that sweep. They left town acting like they had somewhere better to be. If you're a Yankee fan, you gotta love that. Schlittler definitely deserves his flowers, too. I mean, Boston area kid, death threats from some clown Red Sox fans, goes on the hill, throws eight strong at Fenway anyway. Good. Beat him and go home. That's the answer. No speech needed. Every time I see this kid, he looks like Garrett Hole, like Garrett Hole Jr. Physically and pitching wise. Man, Yankees, Yankees really ran into one there, huh? But that's exactly why this Yankee conversation feels easy. I mean, they look complete, they look trustworthy. So much for all the people that were bitching and moaning about them running it back. They look like a team with a plan. You know, they don't just need one guy to drag them through every night. Rice looks good, Stan still got some thump, judges judge, belly's alright, jazz will run into a couple here and there. And the pitching is setting the tone with reinforcements on the way. You know, that's why when I get a mailbag and it says this might be the best Yankee team he's seen in years, yeah, it doesn't sound that crazy to me. That sounds like somebody watching the same games that I am. Like this team could actually make a run and they should they should be getting ready for October baseball. You know, I know it's early, but it ain't early if you're gonna look like this. There's ups and downs, but man, Yankees look good. Now I gotta get to a team that does not look good. That would be the New York Mets. Even in the wins, even the wins feel like they come should come with a warning label, you know? They have now won two in a row. Good. They needed it. Nobody's mad at a win. The rant here is still happening. It's been eating at my soul and my mental health for two weeks. The first one, okay, the street breaker on Wednesday night was already a perfect example of why this team drives people insane. Soto comes back, DHing, does alright, goes one for three with a walk. Lindor exits with a calf stream. Literally the same thing. Trying to score from first, round and second, pulls up around third, scores anyway. You know, the whole thing feels unstable, and then late in the game, Luke Weaver comes in and shuts the door on it. He strands his bases loaded in the eighth after a Devin Williams disaster, punches out three in the ninth, and then post-game, he's out there barking, hyping up the crowd, basically telling everybody in the building he's not afraid of anybody. He's not the biggest guy in the room, but I'm not scared of anybody. Good, great, wonderful. That guy needs to be the closer going forward. Devin Williams cannot handle this. The airbender cannot handle it. Pete Alonzo broke him. The Yankees couldn't fix him, and Luke Weaver had to bail his ass out last year. He's gonna bail him out this year, too. I've seen enough. Weaver is the guy with some actual pulse on his team right now. He feels like the guy who wants the moment instead of surviving it. Now, tonight's game, they win again 10-8. Guess what the score was? 7-1 after the third. They still somehow manage to make it feel like three different games happened inside one thing. You know, they jump out super early, Beatty with the three-run homer, Benge goes deep. You're thinking, okay, maybe, maybe they'll just play some normal baseball for once. Everything will be fine. Nice, easy laugher. I can watch the Knicks, I can watch, you know, the draft a little bit. No. The bullpen turns into a haunted house again. Ryan Jeffers hits a game tying grand slam in the eighth. And for literally, I'm not kidding, for about 35, 40 seconds, the city of New York got hit by a truck. Knicks choke the inning in Atlanta. Jets make their pick at 16, and the Mets give up a grand slam to tie the game. That is New York Sports 81 ridiculous burst of chaos. What happens though? Starting to turn around a little bit. Besheck comes up and rips a three-run double, and they end up surviving anyway. Good. I'm happy for him. That felt like his welcome to the Mets moment for sure. For you know, for all the grief that he's taken, he he's kind of been alright in the media. He gets it, you know. First series of the game, he's like, Yeah, I'm surprised I didn't get boo yet either. My swings are bad. And his swing is the reason they won the game last night. So, yes, two straight wins. Fine. Stack them. Win tomorrow, too. You know, I'm not asking I'm not asking them to apologize for winning. I'm saying nobody should pretend that this suddenly washes the stink of what we just watched for two weeks. 12 straight losses. That's not some cute early season wobble. That's not like, ah, it's only April, you know, it's early, they'll be alright. No. That kind of streak changes the way people look at you. It changes the standings, it changes the mood. No team that lost 12 straight has ever made the postseason. So when people keep trying to soften it with the calendar and this, that, and the other, I'm not really into it. I'm not really interested, man. You know, it's not early for every other team. A clash like that in April still counts. You don't get bonus forgiveness later in the season just because what the weather's bad in New York in April? It's cold. Tough shit. And you know what? This is this is where I want to get into the bigger mess thing. Because the losing streak, you know, was ugly enough on its own. Fine. The part that I really want to dig into where it really gets interesting here, this team, this team has no real center of gravity. That's what it feels like to me. There's no chemistry, there's no real leadership voice, no one guy where you say, alright, things are going sideways, that dude's gonna walk in the room, flip a table, grab somebody by the throat. You know, the Mets, the Mets have not had that kind of leader since David Wright, to be honest with you. Not really. And honestly, even after Wright, it kind of felt like they tried to hand that identity over to Conforto because they kind of had to. There really wasn't anybody else, but he was still just a kid. You know, you weren't gonna give it Harvey, you weren't gonna give it to DeGrom. It's it's different. Pitchers carry leadership differently. You only go only five one every five days, it's not the same. So then Lindor gets here. And you know what? I think he wanted to be that guy. I think he tried to be that guy. I just don't think he ever really fully became that guy in the room where everybody unquestionably looked at him and said, Yep, alright, I'll do what you say. That's our guy. So then what happens? Well, Pete's got stature, Nimmo's got tenure, McNeil's got his own edge, and now Soto comes in with the giant contract and the biggest bat in the room, and Lindor's supposed to still be the captain. But Soto's the best player, and the louder baseball presence. That's where things get messy. You know, not publicly, not officially. I'm talking about the feel of it, the tea leaves, the little stuff, the little moments, you know. Hell, Soto was asked if he if he had talked to any of his teammates during the losing streak while he was rehabbing. And he basically said, no, not really. I mean, you you couldn't just lie there and say, yeah, you know, a couple guys here and there. No, he kind of went out of his way to say nope, didn't really talk to anybody. They were on the road. I mean, have you heard of a cell phone? Have you heard of an email? How about a messenger pigeon? That's weird, man. I'm sorry. That's not what you want to hear. Doesn't play well with the fans. Two full weeks out, your team is losing every day, and you didn't really check in on anybody? None of your boys checked in on you, nobody's texting you just to say, oh, you know, how you feeling? How close are you? How's the leg? Keep your head up, you know. That's not normal. That's not great. That adds fuel to every little whose clubhouse is it whisper that's already floating around. Then now Lindor gets hurt with the calf. And now he's going on the IL with what sounds to be exactly like what Soto had. Maybe even worse, maybe even out a little bit longer. So now, now the timing gets real interesting. You know, Soto misses two weeks. The team immediately loses 12 straight and practically buries its season in April. During that stretch, you know, the Mets still had some big names that could have done something. They still had a quote unquote captain in Lindor. Still had a chance for somebody to grab the wheel and say, All right, you know what, I got it. This is my room. We'll be alright, follow me. And it didn't happen. Now Soto comes back and Lindor goes out. And here's the question that comes to mind that I've been kicking around. What happens here if uh suddenly the Mets start playing better? What if they go on a run here? What if they win eight straight? What if they go like 12 and 3 over the next two weeks with Soto back and Lindor out? What does it look like from the outside? I mean, it starts looking like they play harder for Soto. It starts looking like they are a little bit looser with Soto. It starts looking like they like it better when Soto's around and Lindor's not. It starts looking like the room may actually respond to him more than the guy who was supposed to be the face of this whole thing. Now look, am I saying that's definitely true? No. No. I'm just workshopping a theory here. That's all. None of us know what goes on behind closed doors. I'm just saying if you read the tea leaves a little bit, if you read between the lines, there seems to be some real drama cooking there. Uh you can feel it, and it's not good for this ball club. That's why this is bigger than just bad bullpen innings or bad at bats with runners. Yeah, those things are real too, but the Mets were awful in big spots during the streak and caused me so much heartburn. The offense vanished late in games, they couldn't hit fastballs, they kept blowing leads. Devin Williams became the face of the skit in a lot of people's minds. All of that is true. The other layer here, though, the human part of things, the room part, who does the team actually belong to? I'll tell you one thing, and it sure as hell ain't the manager either. You know, the players can pine and moan all they want for the reporters, but when push comes to shove, he don't know what he's doing, man. When are we gonna learn to not bring Brazeban in the middle of an inning? When are we gonna let pitchers pitch and stop pulling them with two outs and 89 pitches? And honestly, you know what, even more. If I'm being blunt here, the Mets were sold to the fan base like a smarter, sturdier, more together version of themselves than they were last year. So that's where a lot of the anger comes from, too. You know, fan favorites got moved. You were told to trust the vision, trust the people in charge, trust the roster construction. And some of us did. A lot of us got mad, but some of us did. We gave Stearns benefit of the doubt. Then this thing hits a 12-game losing streak, and the ballpark empties out, and Cohen's mad about it. And the team looks like it has no emotional wiring at all. You know, that's why the fans feel like they were sold a false bill of goods here. And that's another thing, too. Steve, Uncle Stevie, King Cohen. Thank you. Thank you for buying this team away from the Will Ponds. Thank you for spending a lot of money. Thank you for being a good owner. You gotta lay off Twitter. You gotta stop pressing send. In the words of Stephen A. Stephen A. Smith, no, Herm Edwards, Herm Edwards. Don't press send. Don't press send. Stop, bro. Just let it be. Let the team be. I don't need you telling me that if it was warmer outside, that it would have been a home run or this is coming around. Stop. Alright, so where am I at? Where am I at with this team after two wins? Well, they needed them. They count, they matter, but they do not erase this indictment. Luke Weaver should be closing. Soto helps, but he's one guy. He doesn't erase the weirdness going on. He can't put the whole team on his back. Lindora going down opens up a whole new layer of questions. The bullpen still makes nothing easy. The team still does not feel stable. The leadership structure is still muddy. And it fits the theme of the show perfectly. Borrowed hope is normal for a little while. Fans do that, teams live on that. The trouble is the trouble starts when borrowed hope becomes the whole product. It's early, soto's back, just win one. Things will be okay. Maybe. At some point, stop selling me tomorrow and give me something to root for tonight. That's where I'm at. Now, with all that being said, let's bring this thing home. One more time. Borrowed hope. That was the whole episode tonight. The draft is hope in its purest form. You know, every pick is a bet on what somebody can become. The Knicks are dealing with the dangerous version of it too. Where they keep telling themselves you're the better team and hope that it's true. But all you're really doing right now is giving the other team hope that they can be. The Yankees, right now, well, they look like a team that's actually turning hope into trust. And the Mets. Oh god, the Mets. Well, the Mets are still trying to talk people back into believing after making everybody question everything. You know, that's the thing with hope. Hope is not stupid. Hope is not weakness. Hope is part of being a fan. And it's part of being a person too. Everybody borrows it a little bit when things get messy. Everybody leans on it when the answer isn't here yet. Trouble starts when hope is the only thing left on the table. You know, at some point, you gotta give it something to stand on. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to happen overnight, but it just has to be real. So, whatever lane you're in right now: sports, life, anything, whatever. Just keep the hope. Don't let it be hollow. Build something underneath it, put some work under it. Give yourself a reason to believe in it. I appreciate you guys as always for listening, hanging out, supporting the show, reposting the clips, all of it. Make sure you follow along on the socials. It's gonna be at Rice on the Radio. DM me, keep sending me takes, keep voting in the mic check polls every Wednesday. Keep the conversation going. I mean, I'm sure you got a lot to say, and so do I. Lastly, if you're new here, we end each episode with a reminder to spread good energy in this world. Good things happen to good people. So make sure you're checking on your friends. Tell someone you love them. I am Ian Rice. This has been episode six. Two of Rice on the Mikes, and I'll catch you guys next week. Same time, same place.

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Cheers.