The creators of the 'Cespedes Family BBQ' will host an MLB show for DAZN

The Major League Baseball League has trusted two young men in their twenties behind one of the biggest (and strangest) baseball Twitter accounts to broadcast live a match 3 watch group from the World Series last year. Three hours, they thought, should be enough for Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman to "Family BBQ Cespedes" enter a few millennial zingers while watching the Red Sox and Dodgers.

And then the game lasted 18 innings. Mintz and Shusterman continued to hook up without pausing. The show allowed local natives of the Washington DC area to be auditioned for the weekend's DAZN Streaming Service, Whip-Around's new flagship show. The show will air from 22h. at midnight on Saturdays and Sundays during the MLB season. Former ESPN presenter Adnan Virk will head the ChangeUp office on weekday evenings.

We have caught up with Mintz and Shusterman as Opening Day gets closer and closer and their rehearsal schedule warms up to learn more about the show and what they expect from this season. The questions and answers have been changed for reasons of length and clarity.

[A leak investigation cost Adnan Virk his ESPN career. Now he’s starting over.]

You are organizing a TV show! How did it happen?

Mintz: DAZN has really invested in the baseball space, which is great. We came to audition the week after the Super Bowl and I guess we did pretty well because now we're doing the show. We just went to the MLB Network Studios and we talked about baseball for two hours and apparently they liked it.

We had already made videos, but that was all we wanted to do on our own social platforms. If we just wanted to do something, we would open a phone and shoot it. There was no big strategy. For example, I'm interested in what Jordan thinks of the White Sox pitcher, Alex Colome, so I'm going to record it.

Shusterman: I also think that's why we're so excited about this opportunity, turning these random conversations to our offices in the afternoon into much richer topics to discuss and go into a crowd of different directions that you would not necessarily go. And a show where you can do live research, it presents many natural opportunities to do it.

What do you want "ChangeUp" to look like?

Mintz: The first thing I want to do is celebrate and amplify things on baseball that already please Jordan and myself. And that comes from being able to do live research. For example, "Manny Machado must fight in San Diego; look at it. Or: "Raisel Iglesias arrives for a stop in Cincinnati. Let's go see that. And being able to talk about those moments and try to amplify them and celebrate them is something we are totally excited about doing. What we preferred to do until now during rehearsals is to double the box in two games. So if something happens on one of them, we will get to the bottom of things. If anything goes on the other, we will return.

Shusterman: From our point of view, when we watch games at night, the majority of our audience is obviously on Twitter, so if you see something, capture it and tweet it. Maybe it's a screenshot or a GIF or something. But what's cool about this show is that there's still a lot more room to follow her and talk about those moments.

You created Cespedes Family BBQ as a blog for fun while you were in high school. Now you are MLB experts. Does this show give the impression that you have achieved a new success?

Mintz: That's a very good question. I think the first instinct we have every time we get to do something cool is Holy Shit. The wonder, the shock of the idea that people wanted us to do this and how cool it was, was the first immediate response I got. "

Shusterman: I agree with that, but also with the televised vigil and other really interesting opportunities we had with Cut4 and the MLB, it gives me the peace of mind that I have a reason to do it. It's not like I was chosen from a crowd.

Mintz: I think it strikes us every time we explain the name "BBQ of the family Cespedes".

Shusterman: Yes, because we did not think we had to explain the name to anyone.

Well, now you have to explain the name.

Mintz: Yoenis Cespedes, His Highness our dear Yoenis. When he came from Cuba, he put together a training tape to send to the teams. Most of these training cassettes last an average of two minutes and it's just the guys who hit, run and throw. Yoenis lasted 20 minutes. It was mostly him who was lifting weights and, like, was catching baseballs behind his back. And then at the end, there was a minute and a half of clip showing a pig roasting a pig on an open pin at a barbecue, which we later discovered to be his birthday party. anniversary.

Shusterman: Let me explain why this is the name of a site and not just a joke. He represented this crazy thing about the baseball we love. We became friends because we were the only ones in our school who knew Yoenis Cespedes. Like, even for me, I think back to my college days. I loved baseball, but it was not my # 1 sport, but by the end of college, baseball was my favorite sport and I was quite in it. I had the impression that everyone was football and basketball, and Jake and I connected.

Mintz: On Facebook.

Shusterman: Literally, it was just a lot of Facebook posts about baseball players that other people did not talk about. Non-national players. We were talking about other big leagues and minor leagues. And that led us to make those jokes and comments about baseball and think, "Let's get it somewhere so we can come back to it." Even when we had access to Twitter, it was the same idea, but on a different platform. we try to blow it up or turn it into something.

Mintz: I think that there was a certain degree of vanity. Every writer must exist, even in the smallest details, where you have to believe that what you say is worthy of being examined by other people. And I think we had 2%, because when we were in high school, we just wanted to write these things.

Shusterman: And then, as we started to spend more time together, we grew to a point where we realized that we could present this information and that it could be something more. But it took us a long time to make it serious.

[John Skipper explains DAZN’s new MLB highlights show]

Let's see the season quickly. What is the story that intrigues you the most?

Mintz: I'm really intrigued by the Phillies, which is kind of a generic answer and I understand it. But here's why: no matter what happens, it will be a story. If the Phillies are a juggernaut and they simply crush people, it will be the biggest story of baseball because Bryce Harper is part of the team. If the Phillies are super disappointing, it will be the biggest baseball story because of everything they did in the off season. If they are well and they win the second place of Wild Card, it will be the biggest story of baseball because they will probably face another very good team, like Cubs or Cardinals.

Shusterman: I agree with that, and I would say that NL East, I do not remember the time when four teams made so many additions at the same time. Mathematically, any of them will end up being disappointing. And it's also great because I think last year there was so much talk about the top teams at the start of the season, and we could say that they still exist –

Mintz: In the AL.

Shusterman: Yes, in AL, but I'm excited by the fact that there are a lot of teams, especially in NL, where we can see them understand or ignite.

Mintz: And then on the players' side, all these young players we saw just arrived, Ozzie Albies, Ronald Acuna Jr., Juan Soto, Gleyber Torres, all these guys were so good at this young age that we were not Never really saw before. And I'm really excited to see them take a step forward and become the next group to be the faces of the game.

Shusterman: We already have the next wave of guys that we are passionate about with Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Eloy Jiménez. We are going to have another wave of very good young players, but I do not want to forget that Juan Soto will be 20 years old for the whole season. It's amazing how completely baseball is stacked with guys at this age and they succeed immediately.

Last: Best move in low season? Pay attention. It's a paper based in Washington.

Mintz: Reds getting Puig.

Shusterman: Yes.

Mintz: They immediately make themselves extraordinarily relevant.

Shusterman: Yes.

Mintz: And observable.

Shusterman: Yes

Mintz: I will look much more Red now and because of that, I will be able to watch all the fun players they already have, like Joey Votto, Jesse Winker, Raisel Iglesias and Gennett Scooter.

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