Hour 1: Carton Rips LeBron James for Holding Knicks, NBA Schedule Hostage

**Craig Carton** (0:04)
It's The Carton Show with Big Mac on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon in New York City. Got a great show for you today. Phone number to join, as always, 888-808-1019.
Woke up this morning, dare I say it, a bit of a chill in the air. A mid September, late September chill in the air that makes you worry about when the college football games get started, and tomorrow when the NFL slate gets cooking, it felt like a football Saturday and Sunday, and then 20 minutes later, I was sweating my balls off, getting eggs from the chicken coop. But I got a little taste this morning, a little scent this morning of football being in the air, and that made me happy. Good afternoon, Big Mac, how are you today, kid?

**Chris McMonigle** (0:55)
I'm doing fantastic. We both must have felt that way. I put on my new Giants shirt, and I'm feeling a little bit of football. Wreck-It Ralph, Disney, and the NFL have combined.

**Craig Carton** (1:04)
You are so in on this Disney.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:06)
So the Giants are Wreck-It Ralph, I got it at Fanatics Fest, but something, I don't know, I'm drawn.

**Craig Carton** (1:11)
Good thickness on that shirt, too.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:12)
It's beautiful. I'm drawn to it. I'm starting to get that football itch. I'm starting to have that speech yesterday. I can't get it out of my head. I'm so pumped up, I'm ready to go through a wall.
After listening to the great John Harbaugh, rile up the troops. We are the New York Giants, and I am ready.

**Craig Carton** (1:28)
Guys, I'm weird. This is the New York Giants. Anybody? This is the Giants. The Giants. Let me say it again.
Guys, this is the Giants.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:39)
No, let me say it this way, fellas.

**Craig Carton** (1:41)
This is the New York Giants. Anybody here nervous? Nah, Coach. Anybody here excited now that I've spoken?
Crickets, crickets, crickets, crickets. Coaches, are you here? Oh, my, don't he called those out. Yeah.
Football is right around the corner. Actually, a couple of training camps have opened already down south. So looking forward to a lot of football. Yankees yesterday get themselves a series win against the Pirates. No offense again. Still no offense. Max Fried was great in his first game back. And that's really the storyline of yesterday. What was Max Fried going to be like on a bit of a pitch count? I went over 60 pitches out. I got the 60, pardon me. I went over 50 pitches. That was the number you gave me yesterday. In between 50 and 60 pitches. Obviously, it looked great.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:33)
Looked every bit Max Fried. He dialed it up to 98 miles an hour. That's the hope, Craig. I've been trying to tell you this. The offense is still terrible. Yesterday, two runs just putrid.
The entire first half of the game was just three up, three down.

**Craig Carton** (2:48)
It's hard to watch Yankee Baseball, to be honest.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:50)
The offense is still just absolutely atrocious. They need the deadline. They need judge and Stanton back. We all know it. Right now, they are just a lousy offense. No matter how you look at it, what numbers you crunch, the eye test, the analytics test, however you want to discuss this offense, they are terrible. But the hope is, you've seen what the bullpen is, despite crews getting beat up in the first game of the double header. The bullpen's been great, and now that you've got Fried back, and then one day you saw Colestrike out 11, you saw Fried throw 98 and pitch excellent through five innings. And again, I know it's the Pittsburgh Pirates, but we're talking about one of the higher scoring run teams in all of baseball. No, they're a good offense. They've had a surprise year offensively, they've been a good offense. And those two pitchers that we're hoping on along with Cam Schlitman, you go into a postseason series, which we hope the Yankees will still get there. You get to a postseason series and you throw those three guys in a short series, that's the hope that you can cover up some of the holes offensively, because even with the deadline and judge coming back, it feels like part of the line up is going to be awful no matter what they do.

**Craig Carton** (3:50)
Yeah, and obviously, look, the Yankees, we're not going to know what the Yankees are till August 3rd in the trade deadline to see what the new Yankees are going to look like, because there's going to be new faces here, whether that's bullpen guys, whether they might get Mason Miller, which apparently he's on the table, allegedly out in San Diego. So look, the Yankees won the series. The good news is Garrett Cole back to back with Max Fried pitched very, very well. The continuation of the bad news is that the New York offense is putrid, and that's me being very, very kind. And if you think you're winning a World Series, when you ask your pitching staff and your bullpen not to give up more than a single run in every single game, you are not winning a World Series. But that is not my focus out of the gates here, Big Mac. As much as we're gonna do a lot of football today, obviously Yankee fans will take your calls throughout the day as well. There's something happening right now, and I'm not going to stand for it, sir.