Sean and Seth talk about how excited they are that the Astros have made big move and added Tatsuya Imai to the rotation. Seth gets quite animated with a bat that we may need to stop keeping in the studio for safety purposes.
00:00Here was Tatsuya Imae's message to Astro fans yesterday.
00:07What's up, hey Sean?
00:09I'm Tatsuya Imae.
00:12I'm ready to play the championship.
00:16Let's go, Houston.
00:18Yes!
00:19Thank you so much.
00:20Are you ready?
00:21I'm ready!
00:22You ready?
00:23I got the bad!
00:26I'm not gonna hit Toro!
00:28I'm freaking psyched.
00:30Let's do this!
00:31He's holding an actual bat.
00:32I'm nervous.
00:33I'm gonna do the rest of the segment with me holding this bat.
00:37Let's do it.
00:38That's what Imae's got you pumped up for the season, man.
00:41I don't know how much English he speaks, but he learned that and nailed it.
00:45That was the shortest hype up speech.
00:50Yeah.
00:51It's got me amped up by a number two or three starter in the history of this baseball.
00:55This is the thing.
00:56There's been a little bit of a lull here in the Astros success as we, as we all know.
01:01And I feel like almost everybody's just been sitting back and kind of reassessing like,
01:05all right, what are the Astros now?
01:07They're not going to be like the 2019 or 22 or 17 Astros or anything anytime soon.
01:13But, like, to have a guy like Imae, who the Astros had to use a little bit of ingenuity and give a kind of deal that they've been loath to give before.
01:24Get him in here as it's also included in a renewed focus on scouting Japanese players and what have you.
01:32Maybe trying to find some inefficiencies in the market.
01:35Yeah.
01:36It feels more like the old Astros.
01:37It does.
01:38It feels like, yeah, you know what?
01:39Screw you.
01:40We're talking championship.
01:41Championship.
01:42I want to be built for these two.
01:46Yeah, I know, man.
01:47They're like you.
01:48I don't know.
01:49Stuff in this studio breaks a lot.
01:51All right.
01:52I'm ready.
01:53You're winning.
01:54A little bit.
01:56No, no.
01:57Like, how's he holding that?
01:58That's so confidently.
01:59Right.
02:00I choked up a little.
02:01You weren't swinging in the on-deck circle during the break.
02:03I had the Bregman going a little bit.
02:05You just choked up.
02:06About, like, one and a half inches up above the knob.
02:07Yeah, man.
02:08Choked up on the bat.
02:09Yep.
02:10Seth, actually.
02:11One and a half inches from the knob.
02:12I say that a lot.
02:13That's why he got to watch.
02:14Let's do this.
02:15I got to watch on the YouTube, man.
02:16What's that?
02:17Is there anything in here I could break?
02:18I was looking for something I could break.
02:20And not have to pay for it?
02:21Yeah.
02:22See, I think you could have hit Toro, but it would have been the visual of you hitting Toro.
02:25Well, no, and I realized I was about to hit Toro, which is three inches away from a TV
02:30screen.
02:31Like a plasma screen, yeah.
02:32And then also, I don't want to hit Toro in the head.
02:34No.
02:35Especially with Cal and Hannah coming in here in 15 minutes.
02:37Oh, yeah.
02:38Headless Toro.
02:39That would be a bad look.
02:40I bet Hannah would love smashing stuff with a baseball bat.
02:43I think so, too.
02:44That's an underrated thing.
02:45Maybe even very specific things with a baseball bat.
02:48What's that?
02:49Maybe even very specific things.
02:50Very specific things that you would want to hit with a bat.
02:52Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:53Yeah.
02:54So, yeah.
02:55Look, Emi, I'm excited about this.
02:57I can tell.
02:58No, I really am.
02:59You just broke three chairs.
03:00I'll tell you what, too.
03:01It doesn't take much, right?
03:02We're simple creatures.
03:03Yeah.
03:04He shows up at a Texans game, shows up at a Rockets game.
03:06Emi was key and critical in inspiring a young Kevin Durant to hit the game-winning
03:11shot against his former team, the Suns, because he was inspired by the presence of Emi.
03:16Kevin Durant had gone one for 11 in that game.
03:19If you choose to believe that at some point, Emi went up to him and said, Kevin Durant,
03:24remember, you're Kevin Durant.
03:26You can make that shot.
03:27He was at a game where Emi kicked six field goals.
03:31Oh, yeah.
03:32The Emi inspired Emi.
03:34We're bringing with us.
03:35The whole globe.
03:36Anybody from the Pacific westward.
03:38The whole globe.
03:39That's right.
03:40Is along for the ride.
03:41Houston sports starts at Hawaii.
03:43The Emi ride.
03:44Starting now.
03:45Go west, young franchises.
03:47He's 2-0.
03:48Are the Texans even scouting Japan right now?
03:50They should be.
03:51We're going to ask Cal and Hannah about it.
03:52We're going to get it right from the horse's mouth.
03:54Yes.
03:55We're going to Hawaii.
03:56We're moving westward towards American Samoa.
03:59And then on to the continent of Asia.
04:02Indeed.
04:03Indeed.
04:04That's one of my big, big, big book of business ideas is to go start a football academy in a
04:10foreign country.
04:11Like either Eastern Europe or somewhere.
04:14That's a good idea.
04:15Yeah.
04:16I know.
04:17I know a lot of our big book of business ideas.
04:19I take a reasonable amount.
04:20What a sketchy.
04:21You know, like 33% of their career earnings or something.
04:23Yeah.
04:24Mostly I'm doing it for the kids.
04:25Hey, man.
04:26But in 33% of their future earnings.
04:28Read the fine print.
04:29Yeah.
04:30I can't complain.
04:31I'm helping lift small villages out of poverty for the meager sum just to cover expenses
04:37of 33% of your future earnings.
04:38That's it.
04:39It's a lawyer's charge, right?
04:40Something like that.
04:41Yeah.
04:42It's all right.
04:43So, yes, that was Tatsuya Emai and that was Seth Payne bashing chairs.
04:48Emai will wear number 45.
04:50He's a big fan of Garrett Cole.
04:51We decided earlier in the show that that does not color our view of him at all.
04:56I don't.
04:57I like Garrett Cole a lot more than you do.
04:59And part of it is just that I do feel like Garrett Cole.
05:02You know what I respect Garrett Cole for doing?
05:04Not to get too far off topic.
05:05But when the sticky stuff was the big topic and they banned all the sticky stuff, he tried
05:12real hard to just be honest conference.
05:15He got destroyed for it.
05:17For Pete's sake.
05:18I know.
05:19I mean, that was the for Pete's sake.
05:20It was.
05:21Wasn't it?
05:22Yes.
05:23He's talking about.
05:24You can see.
05:25He was basically saying, look, we all use something because it's really hard to grip
05:28the ball.
05:29I can't believe.
05:30I can't believe that I didn't think of this.
05:32He met a my wearing number 45 and citing Garrett Cole, Garrett Cole and Zach Wheeler.
05:38Those are his two favorites.
05:39They both were 45.
05:40That is an open opportunity.
05:42Maybe we'll do it tomorrow to play that answer.
05:45The answer in full again by Garrett Cole.
05:47Yeah, it's one of the most hysterical pieces of audio ever trying to dance around.
05:52I may do that tomorrow.
05:55We'll see.
05:56Well, we were still on Wednesday's kind of a benchmark free show.
06:00It was a raw nerve for us because as the Astros had got caught doing something that
06:03a lot of other teams were also doing back when they were doing it for baseball to get
06:08up and basically say like, well, you know, lots of guys are doing it.
06:12So, and they soft pedaled all of it.
06:14Yeah.
06:15That was annoying.
06:16The way that it was treated like, well, you know, it's just, ha ha ha ha.
06:19Yeah.
06:20This is what they used to do back in the day.
06:22And then, and still to this day, but we're going to give everybody a pass.
06:25Right.
06:26Um, so the athletic had an, has an article, um, where Ken Rosenthal and one other writer,
06:32they go through all the noteworthy teams in this off season.
06:37I thought this was interesting when it comes to Kyle Tucker, the stuff they had about the
06:41Astros was, you know, the priority is to find a trade partner for either Paredes or Walker.
06:47Uh, they need a backup catcher.
06:50Um, you okay.
06:52I was looking for my scroll of questions.
06:55It's here somewhere.
06:56Then the melee that we just had.
06:58Yeah.
06:59I'm also a little bit lightheaded.
07:00Yeah.
07:01I'm swinging.
07:02Um, they need a backup catcher.
07:03They want a lefty bat.
07:04They want to leverage reliever.
07:06Um, Rosenthal does say that he, my burrows and wise coming here means that they might
07:11be done going and finding starting pitching.
07:13Yeah.
07:14Which if you're a Verlander fan is, you know, if you wanted Verlander back here, it's
07:17probably something that's bad news.
07:19The nugget about Kyle Tucker is really interesting because they suggest that maybe Kyle Tucker
07:26ends up doing one, like sort of a Correa and Bregman deal when they left to go to Minnesota
07:32and Boston that Kyle Tucker, you know, not knowing if there's that 10 year deal out there,
07:37or if it's out there, it might not be with a team that Tucker wants to go play for.
07:40Yeah.
07:41That he could go to a team.
07:42They suggest the Dodgers.
07:44Yeah.
07:45On a four year deal with a very high average annual value with opt outs after each year,
07:51basically the Bregman Red Sox deal before years, instead of three years.
07:54But I thought it was interesting.
07:55The reason why, because there's a feeling that Kyle Tucker might be more comfortable being
08:01like the sixth best player on a world series team than being the guy who is the tone setter.
08:09Yeah.
08:10Then be it Linda and say the Cincinnati red slurging from the very beginning, from his
08:14rookie year, we knew that he wasn't quite cut from the same cloth as everybody else.
08:19A.J.
08:20Hinch had to have a conversation with him about his level of his, his level of urgency.
08:26And he needs to be like these other players, like a Bregman or like a Correa or an L2 Bay
08:32or what have you.
08:33So that makes perfect sense.
08:35Yeah.
08:36If you drop into a spot where the people aren't looking to him as the savior, the guy who's
08:40going to set the tone or anything, then yeah.
08:42Great.
08:43But they teams are, it's, it's interesting.
08:45Cause Correa got paid partly because people looked at him as, oh yeah, this is the kind
08:49of guy that the young players need to be around.
08:51He's got, and not to mention Correa is just nails in the playoffs.
08:55He's awesome in the playoffs.
08:57It had been proven year after year after year.
08:59And so if you're trying to get over the hump, man, Cray is the guy.
09:02Yeah.
09:03So Kyle Tucker doesn't have that same leadership element.
09:05And he also doesn't have that.
09:07There's just that, that clutchitude in the playoffs.
09:10He's an immensely talented player.
09:11There's no question.
09:12And someone's going to pay him a boatload of money.
09:15I just thought it was interesting.
09:16And I, and I said the same thing to myself that you did when I just said it to you, that
09:20checks out that Kyle Tucker would want to go to Los Angeles.
09:23They're going to win at a really high level.
09:26And, and then he can be a cast member.
09:29Right.
09:30Or if he has a big year, he can opt out and go do it somewhere else.
09:33You know, he doesn't want to be snow white.
09:34He wants to be one of the dwarves.
09:35Yeah, man.
09:36Dopey.
09:37Dopey.
09:38Yeah.
09:39Yeah.
09:40Coming up next.
09:41We'll figure out what each one of the Astros are, which dwarf they are.
09:46Yeah, that's right.
09:47Dopey.
09:48Sleepy would be a good one.
09:49Yeah.
09:50All right.
09:51Pain and Pendergast with you.
09:52Cal and Hannah McNair jumping in with us here in studio at the bottom of the nine o'clock
09:55hour, 930.
09:56They'll be in studio with us.
09:57A lot to get to with the Texans owners.
09:58Excited to see them here in studio today.
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