Hour 4: Darryl Strawberry Defends the Rebuilding Mets and David Stearns

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
We're all sitting there at home last night, monitoring our own business. Here's George Springer, line drive to left. Soto can't make the play.
Here comes Ewing. It's hard not to laugh. Talking about it.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:16)
That's his bad of playing.

**Craig Carton** (0:16)
And then Soto doesn't even make the throw in.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:19)
And coming off the story about him sitting by himself in the like just, it was an ugly start to the game for him.

**Craig Carton** (0:24)
Yes.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:24)
And then in the post game, blame in the field. Now you said it was a leading question.

**Craig Carton** (0:28)
It was a leading question. Did we have it actually, Pete? I think you have it in there. Just to be fair to Soto, the question that Botcha Galoop Jones asked him, set him up to talk about the field. So the question, to be fair, Gelbs does a very good job obviously, but the question led him down a path of answering about if the field played a role, which is a ridiculous question to ask a major league baseball player.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:54)
It played a role in one specific angle.

**Craig Carton** (0:56)
Come on, what are we doing?

**Chris McMonigle** (0:57)
It probably rolled a little bit faster than his play for his puto we're talking about.

**Craig Carton** (1:01)
Because again, I think if you don't hear the question, the immediate response is, Juan Soto is blaming the field. That's not fair in this case. Look, it's a terrible misplay, horrendous especially in light of the story that came out from Chavez earlier in the day.
But here's the question and the answer.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:19)
Juan Andy was just talking about how on turf specifically, those plays are a little bit different and those bounce a little bit higher.

**Craig Carton** (1:25)
Did that catch you off guard in the moment?

**Juan Soto** (1:29)
Yeah, and I actually was trying to think right before that. You still come through the ball, you know, because it's weird hops and everything. And it just stuck a weird hop on me and bounced a little different.

**Craig Carton** (1:42)
Alright, so the question is, was the AstroTurf to blame for you misplaying the hop?

**Chris McMonigle** (1:48)
Was that in your head? Were you thinking about the turf? He could have just said, no, I misplayed the ball.

**Craig Carton** (1:51)
Which would have been a better answer.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:52)
Would have been a better answer.

**Craig Carton** (1:54)
But definitely a better answer.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:56)
He's not a very good outfielder. I mean, he's not terrible. People talk about him like he's an absolute butcher out there. He hasn't been quite that bad, but he's not a very good outfielder. He made a bad read on the sinking line drive. It didn't matter if that was at Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Yosemite, it doesn't matter. That ball was terribly misplayed and it was going to get behind him. And then it makes it worse when Ewan comes over and literally just tosses it.
It was just like, oh my god. I know they brought up the World Series play in 2015, obviously, which was similar. And then, but it's just, it's just ugly. And then on top of that, he has the no comment on the stuff about Chavez. When asked about the Chavez comments, he says no comment.

**Craig Carton** (2:39)
No comment, which, yeah.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:41)
I don't know if he could have made it better by saying anything, unless it was patently untrue. Unless it was patently and he called it false.

**Craig Carton** (2:47)
I didn't, yes, I want to hear Soto talk about that, obviously.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:51)
Now's not the time either.

**Craig Carton** (2:51)
But I also, I want to hear other players talk about it. I want to know, and maybe they didn't, I did not watch the game.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:58)
Well, they backed him up in other scenarios.

**Craig Carton** (2:59)
No, but I want to hear, and I want to be fair about this, cause I did not hear or watch the entire game last night. I probably saw about four innings of the game last night. Cause it was easy to switch over from the Yankees, cause it was like 7-0 pretty quick, right? And I'm like, did Rondo reference it? Did Keith Hernandez talk about it? Did Gary talk about it?
Did Gary, I was Gary, did like Todd Zeal, did those guys? Like I'd love to know the guys that are at the ballpark every single day and apparently didn't know or didn't recognize the allegation from Chavez. I'd love to get their take on it. And how did everybody miss that? As the story last year and to be fair, not just the S&Y guys, not a single F&H host talked about it that I'm aware of. So everybody sits here, we watch every inning of every game.