- 13 hours ago
Seth and Sean discuss being petty at the World Baseball Classic in part because Jeremy Peña might miss the start of Astros season due to a finger injury he sustained playing in it, feeling icky rooting for Aaron Judge even though he's on team USA, and what Joe Espada had to say about Yordan playing more Left Field.
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00:00I was not on the air last week, Seth, after the news came down that Jeremy Pena might be missing
00:06the start of the season. I guess he's getting... Oh, you weren't, were you? No, it came down on
00:10Thursday. I almost shot a video. That's why the studio wasn't trashed. Oh, I forgot about that.
00:16I almost shot a video and posted it on social media. I was so angry about this that he might
00:20miss the start of the season. I thought you were going to say you almost shot a videographer.
00:24No. Like, you're so mad that you just said, you know, you're in Vegas. There's a little
00:28videographers and influences everywhere. You almost shot one of them. I can tell you right
00:31now, if they had the take that I'm not like one of those world baseball classic bros like they are,
00:37I might have shot them. You never know. If Southwest had had the guts to let you carry
00:41your gun on a plane. Carry my gun on board, yeah. You thought this was supposed to be a more
00:45fun
00:46airline. What the hell is this all about? This was the new Southwest. So I was, but I, so I'm
00:53a
00:54little petty. I wasn't here to react to that. And this is where I am right now because I know
00:58people the take that is getting me more agitated. The more that I hear it is that, well, he could
01:04have just as easily broken his finger fielding a ground ball in West Palm beach. I say that take
01:09at spring training, right? That's his job. Yeah. His job is to play for the Astros. He would be
01:15getting hurt on the job. His job is not to play for the Dominican Republic in the world baseball
01:21classic. That's an extra thing that he's doing to me. This is the part that's going to get world
01:26baseball classic bros angry. And I know this is on the heels of a packed I can park last
01:30night with Mexico in the U S and the atmosphere is great. I watched the entire game. I really
01:35enjoyed the game. Getting hurt, playing in the world baseball classic to me is no different
01:39than getting hurt on a jet ski or cliff diving. I don't care that it's the same activity.
01:45Yeah. But the problem is that there it's an activity that they would be doing if they were
01:50in spring training might be more activity and at a higher degree of intensity, obviously
01:55and you're facing better players on a day in day out basis. But as of right now, it doesn't
02:02look like world baseball classic players get injured any more than, than guys in spring
02:08training. Right. That's also not their job. Their job is to play for the Astros. His job,
02:12he's the, his contract is with the Astros. It's not with the Dominican Republic. Yeah. But this
02:17is with the express approval of his employer that he's doing it. If you're, if you get
02:22injured on a jet ski or something and it's during training camp, you go off to Galveston
02:27on an off afternoon and get injured on a jet ski. That's certainly, it's not anything to
02:31do with, with playing your, your actual sport and that you also are, you know, you're, you
02:37might even have contractual, uh, uh, contractual clauses that you shouldn't be doing that.
02:42And I blame the Astros for letting him go play in the world baseball classic. I'm blaming
02:46somebody. I just don't like that. It's happening. Not on the Astros watch. I don't like that.
02:51It's a, it's a, it's his ring finger on his throwing hand. Correct. Yeah. On his right
02:57hand. Yup. And I wonder if it's more, so for throwing a ball, it probably wouldn't affect
03:01the swing and the bats a whole different deal. Yeah. So he's got, just got to let the little
03:05tippy top of his ring finger heal. I don't, I, I like, I feel like there's not too much that
03:11can go wrong there and maybe they have to cut it off at some point if it doesn't heal
03:15properly. And you play through that. If it, cause it's not going to affect, it shouldn't
03:19theoretically affect you throwing a baseball. If it's your ring finger and the swing and a
03:24bat, maybe somehow it does, but it doesn't seem insurmountable. So I would say we have to
03:28have a deadline of two weeks into two weeks into the regular season. If he's not playing
03:34yet, they got to cut the tip of his finger off. Got a Ronnie lot. That's my sound medical advice.
03:39Did not know where that was, that that's where you were going. If he doesn't, if he cares
03:43about the Astros, he'll do it. Um, text message. Tell you what U S born and bred. I can't bring
03:50myself to cheer for most of the players on team USA. Boy, I got, who are these guys who
03:58are shirking their work? When, when I tweeted something about the, it was, Oh, it was, it
04:04was, I think it was like the, it might've been the Astros account or Dyken park account or
04:07something was tweeting something glowing about Aaron judge. Oh yeah. And I just retweeted.
04:13I said, uh, no. And I got hit with, I got hit with a be better by somebody. Be better.
04:19Be better. Yeah. Be better. Bryce Harper. He's everything that America stands for.
04:25Yeah. I'll be honest. What about the big dumper? Don't you like the big dumper doing it for America?
04:31Yeah. See, you're helping me back up this texture right here. Yeah. I felt no, I, I enjoyed watching
04:36the game cause last night, cause it was a spectacle, you know, the crowd was into it. I think I
04:40always
04:40think it's interesting that, you know, technically it's a home game. It's in the United States, but
04:44the crowd is largely pro Mexico. Cause there's just more fans cheering for Mexico there. Yeah. Um,
04:49they were the underdogs too. I'll be honest with you at the end of the game in the ninth inning,
04:52I was kind of hoping Mexico would tie it up cause I wanted the game to keep going. I was
04:55enjoying it.
04:56I don't feel the, I don't feel the nationality with the U S baseball team. Well, some people
05:02do. This is the other problem. It's like whenever the U S competes internationally, but especially
05:06in one of their homegrown sports like basketball or baseball, there's a feel of, um, all right,
05:13listen, we are so much larger a country. It's kind of freaking embarrassing that, that we're
05:20making that this is as competitive as it is. I know there's a level for me where I feel a
05:25disgusted with ourselves that like, why are we not mopping the floor with countries that we are
05:32sometimes 100 times larger than in terms of population, Dominican Republic, like we should
05:37be ashamed of ourselves. Frankly, we should be ashamed of ourselves. That's what I feel. I feel
05:42shame when I watch, when I watch the world baseball classic. Yeah. Someone says, bro, I'm not cheering
05:46for Aaron judge. That's kind of how I felt last night. I don't care that he's wearing the United States
05:51on his uniform. I just can't bring myself to get like emotionally connected with Aaron judges.
05:56Did you hear his emotional pep talk that he gave? No, I heard about it last week about grinding it
06:00out and everything. I heard about it. Yeah. Did you see it? I listened to it and it wasn't. Yeah.
06:06I
06:06mean, people were making fun of it. I, I, it was like a 20 second clip from a speech where
06:11he might've
06:11been talking about a lot of other stuff. Yeah. I always felt, I actually felt bad for not Aaron judge
06:15individually, but anybody, somebody, anytime somebody takes a little clip of something to
06:20say, Oh, this person's a boring speaker. Yeah. Like you could, you could take 20 seconds of a
06:23Winston Churchill speech. It probably sounds boring. It's something without, without the context.
06:29Right. Now, as far as the Astros go, if Jeremy Pena does need to, to miss time, um, that, uh,
06:36Carlos Correa is willing to move over to shortstop. That was something that you and I, when the
06:41Pena injury first came down, that was a concern. Pena was injured at the end of last year with an
06:47oblique injury and Carlos Correa continued to play third base. Well, I'm guessing it was probably
06:51Dubon who was filling in at that time. Dubon's not here anymore. Here was Joe Espada on Carlos
06:56Correa. We still don't know the status of Jeremy, right? For opening day. But if the case is that he
07:02will need more time, um, uh, Carlos Correa will step in and, and be our shortstop. And we all
07:10know how good of a shortstop Carlos Correa is. Um, so once we, we get going here, uh, we'll
07:16get Carlos some starts at shortstop. I continue to play Nick Allen, uh, at short. Um, we have
07:22Isaac Paredes that can, um, we'll, we'll play third base. Um, is that the case? Uh, but we
07:28are, you know, we do have the players in camp, uh, to be able to, uh, you know, sustain
07:33and, and, and, and be able to move forward as we get, as we wait for Jeremy. Okay. And I
07:39know
07:39he's, he's mentioning Nick Allen there because he's on the roster and he's the backup shortstop
07:43and whatnot. If, if Jeremy Pena misses, say the first two weeks of the season, and I
07:48don't know how many games are on the first two weeks. Let's just say there's 12 games
07:50in the first two weeks. And the starting lineup is an Isaac Paredes at third and Carlos Correa
07:56at shortstop for all, but about one or two of those games, then something's wrong. Something's
08:02wrong. Yeah. You know, you can't, you can't sit here and try to sell us how having
08:07Isak Paredes on the roster is a good thing while there's this glut of infielders. No,
08:12it's this great thing. Everybody's going to get their rest and we can move around and
08:15we'll hear from a spot again on your Don and left field in a second, but we can move all
08:19around and boy, if there's an injury, that's real, Hey, we're going to be, we're going to
08:22really be happy to have Isak Paredes. You can't sell that to us throughout spring training
08:28throughout the off season, really. Cause they tried to move him all off season that they
08:31couldn't. Um, you can't sell that and then have Jeremy Pena go out, have a perfectly good
08:36Carlos Correa that can move over to shortstop is willing to move to shortstop. And then
08:39he plays shortstop in like four of the 12 games. And Nick Allen is out there with his
08:45600 OPS while Isak Paredes is languishing on the bench. Right. Can't do that. Yeah. Cannot
08:51do that. Um, and I, and I think again, if it's short term, fine, but one of the reasons
08:57Carlos Correa was really cool with coming back to Houston was because his body was getting
09:01beat up at shortstop and he wanted to be able to move to third base. So it's not a long
09:05term solution in case, let's say hypothetically to Pena's Pena's finger injury was something
09:11worse than just that. Um, that it's still, it's still not ideal. No, it's your, you're
09:17it's just, it's just not ideal. You're trying to trade away one of your best infielders all
09:21off season long. Um, and, and part of the problem is not only are you trading one of your best
09:27players away because of a jam packed infield. Your infield is jam packed with guys who aren't
09:35like L2 is not a good second baseman, but Christian Walker did not live up to his contract last
09:41year. No, the reason that you're moving Paredes instead of Christian Walker is because Paredes
09:45is tradable. And so you're trying to get rid of one of your best hitters to, well, you're
09:50still allowing for and making room for a couple of liabilities on the right side of your infield.
09:55Yep. Yep. Absolutely. So, so part of the solution, once everybody's healthy, maybe
10:00more Yordan Alvarez in left field. I know Dana Brown early on before spring training was saying,
10:06well, ideally we'd really like him to be the DH most of the time. It feels like a spot has
10:11answered
10:11this about Yordan enough. Seth, here he is again. Um, this is on the foul territory podcast. Um,
10:17it's almost like a spot is speaking into existence or into normalcy. Yordan playing left field way more
10:23regularly than, than anybody anticipated. Yordan is going to play left field, you know, um, you know,
10:31when he's in left field, we are able to have, um, some other guys, um, stay in the lineup, use
10:38the DH
10:38spot to get some of those guys, some of bats and keep everyone healthy and fresh. Um, but Yordan also
10:45loves to play left field. And when he plays left field is actually a number show that he is a
10:50very
10:50productive player offensively, because he's not only thinking about his at bats, he can go out to
10:55the outfield and clear his mind and help the team, uh, you know, in a different ways. And, and Yordan
11:02enjoys playing left field. So I've always keep that in mind, uh, when it comes to how often Yordan is
11:08going to play left field. You know, my favorite, my, my favorite part of that, Seth is the description
11:12of Yordan playing left field. Like it's one of those massage chairs in the airport. Like he can go out
11:17to left field and clear his mind out there. Yeah. Or as if it was also, he's almost talking about
11:21it
11:21like as a way is like, he's, it's a revelation to people or something like, Hey, yeah, listen,
11:26I know you guys have all been talking about how Yordan wants to play left field more. He doesn't
11:31want to be a DH and that maybe that's the best solution is for Yordan to play left field more.
11:36Um, but I've got news for you. Did you guys know that Yordan can play in left field? Whoa. I
11:42know I told
11:42you all off season that he's probably not going to play in left field all that much,
11:46but it turns out he actually can. Yes. Did you guys know? I like that. Yeah. Speaking
11:51it into existence. Um, he's gotten, uh, it's just been a, it's kind of like a long cold war
11:57negotiation between Yordan and the organization. It went from the organization telling everybody,
12:03Oh no, he's primarily DH. And now all of a sudden, Hey guys, you know, I had an idea. I
12:08think
12:08Yordan did a good job of letting a spot of think that it's his idea. Oh, that's, that's what
12:12one of the key kids, kids always, you got to take your ego out of something. If you want
12:16to persuade somebody to something, one of the most effective things is to let the other
12:20person believe that they came up with the idea. You don't need credit for it. You just
12:24need the outcome to happen. Especially when it's your superior. I feel like Yordan might've
12:28gone up to a spot on the, uh, like was sitting next to him in the dugout one day and
12:32was like,
12:32gosh, I don't know, man. Do you, do you think I could play left field more? I don't know if
12:36I have the confidence to do it. I gosh, I just, sometimes I'm scared in a spot. It was like,
12:41Hmm, you know what? I think, I think Yordan needs a, I need to bolster his confidence and
12:45start looking up stats about how much better a battery is when he's left field and everything.
12:50So one day a spot, it comes to Yordan and says, Hey, Yordan, you know what? Yep. I've been thinking
12:54just spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I think, I think we'd like to put you out
12:59in left
12:59field more than we had originally planned. So he gets the double benefit of spot of it being his idea
13:04to
13:04put him out there and the pep talk that got Yordan out of his fake funk that he was in.
13:09Yordan is just politely smiling. Yes. That's a, that's a great idea. I didn't even think of it
13:14that way. I can do this. Yes. Gosh. Okay. Yeah.
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