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Seth and Sean dive in and assess the biggest Astros concerns as power ranked by Chandler Rome in the Athletic.
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00:00Let's get to the Astro concerns. Chandler Rome kind of taking inventory of the Astros a tenth
00:07of a way through the season here. So he does the six concerns for the Astros. And let's keep in
00:14mind, just to lay the groundwork for this, they have the best offense in baseball right now. They
00:18have the highest scoring offense in baseball right now. And yet they're on a seven-game losing streak
00:22and they're in last place in their division because they have the worst pitching staff in
00:28the sport. They've issued more walks, the Astros pitching staff, than the offense has scored
00:33runs. 96 walks. We're at that very convenient stage of the season, Seth, where all we have to do for
00:39the most part is just multiply everything times 10. And that's what you're on pace for. We're 16 games
00:44in to 162-game season. 96 walks. That's nearly 1,000 walks. And even if you look at some of
00:52the
00:52advanced stats or something and it doesn't look as bad, the problem is that you've gotten more
00:58innings out of your relievers than your starters at this point. Yeah, that's not normal. It doesn't,
01:03I don't care. Okay, great. The starting pitcher's ERA, expected ERA isn't as bad as it looked,
01:09right? I don't care. I need to, can you give me five marathon innings? Can you make it through five?
01:15You know, it's funny when they showed that, I know you saw this graphic. They showed the last
01:21like 10 starts for the Astros and how many innings each of them pitched. And when Lance went four and
01:26a third the other day, it was one of those things like, Hey, he went four and a third, you
01:32know,
01:32like it was, it looks, you just look like, it looks so like, just so hysterically dark, funny.
01:41When you look at like, they've had multiple starts where guys like eat, like, it's not too
01:46good. He might touch me. He might pitching a third of an inning the other day. Logan Gilbert was out
01:50there and I was looking at him in awe as if he was, I thought it's like, Sean is seven
01:59innings.
02:00Is that a complete game? I don't remember what that is. Will you get credit for it? No. Oh,
02:04there's two more. Are there? Yeah. He, uh, he made it deep into the game, man. I mean,
02:09I look at, I mean, he lasted seven times longer than Cody bolt. Oh man, dude. When I saw Cody
02:18Bolton leaving the mound with a trainer yesterday, I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Oh my God.
02:22I've never seen anything like it. All right. So here's Chandler Rome. Chandler says this an
02:26eternity remains in the season, but concerns are plentiful. Here's a list of six ranked from least
02:31to most concerning. All right. So let's see if we agree with these seven. All right. Number six,
02:36Joe Espada's managing. I wish I were in a position to criticize Joe Espada at this point. I really wish
02:42I was, uh, because I, I don't know exactly how you're supposed to manage this rotation. I don't,
02:47I don't know what you're supposed to do. I can't fault him for that. I think that if you look
02:52at man
02:53for the three years now that we've heard them talk about how they want to improve the plate
02:58discipline, et cetera, et cetera, it's, it's showed up and that's been improved. The fielding has been
03:05good. They've been more aggressive on the base paths and that's, that's been benefit. I think
03:10part of that is just finally Paris Chica learned that it's okay to wave guys home. Um, and so that
03:16part of it, that's the least of my concerns right now. I, I hope the Astros pitchers get to a
03:21certain
03:21level of health and competence that we can start blaming Espada for some of these things.
03:25Yeah. I don't, they, they don't, they don't play like a poorly managed baseball team, right? They
03:32play like a team that has really, really bad pitching and, and major injury issues in that
03:37pitching staff. Chandler even says that here, this almost feels like Chandler's just putting this in
03:41as a, and this is probably why it's ranked six out of six. Yeah. Just sort of a token acknowledgement
03:46that, Hey, when you're six and 10, it's going to fall on somebody. And I will say this, that if
03:51this
03:51continues, Joe Espada is easily in the most danger of anybody here, you know, they're, they're not
03:57going to fire their GM in the middle of the season. Um, this, they could look at this. I could
04:02totally
04:02see Jim, Jim Crane, let a GM go after winning a world series. I could absolutely see him looking at
04:09this in may or June and he's spending 250 million or whatever he is on a team. That's that's circling
04:16the drain and him going, look, this, this, this team needs a, this team needs a jolt.
04:21Well, I think, I think Josh Miller's on the extreme hot seat though, too. Look at what happens. You
04:25swap out your, your hitting coaches. And so far with Victor Rodriguez and whatever else they've
04:31done to kind of streamline the process there that's paid dividends. And right now it's not
04:36like he's the one person by name that we know, but when it comes to the entire analytics staff
04:41and what, you know, they, they took a look at their medical systems in the off season
04:47and they made changes. Okay. So maybe that somehow gets streamlined, but as far as the initial
04:52injuries themselves and what, what can you supposedly one of the more analytically advanced
04:58teams in the league still, I hope that what can you guys do to either through pitch selection
05:05or whatever else it might be, figure out a way that guys just don't keep routinely leaving
05:09every two innings for three straight years. Now, is that like, this is a one-off anymore? We can't
05:13just say, well, injuries are flukish from year to year. No, no. And I don't look around enough
05:18to go. Does any other team have issues like this? Like for multiple years now, there's a, you know,
05:22teams get hit with injury. I was just reading yesterday. I forget who I was. Blue Jays are the
05:27one blue Jays. The blue Jays are who I was reading about. Cause I was reading about Springer's broken
05:32toe. Um, George Springer fouled the ball off his foot and broke his toe. That's who I was reading
05:36about. But yeah, like, is this it's it for multiple years now it's been happening. So yeah, someone
05:42says on the text page, base power text line, six concerns starting pitcher one, two, three, four,
05:47five and the bullpen. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you could do that article if you wanted to. All right.
05:51Number five, Yiner Diaz is disappointing start and he had a disappointing start last year too. And he
05:59Chandler points out he's the outlier in this offense right now. Free swinging catcher. I did hit home run
06:04yesterday. So that was good to see, but he is, he is an OPS of well under 600, right? And
06:10it's,
06:11it's well, then the thing is look, he's not a good catcher, but he's supposed to make up for it
06:16with
06:16his bat. So when you're a guy that we're supposed to be excusing, uh, your deficiencies as a defensive
06:22player by, by virtue of the fact that, Oh, you're a catcher. You can hit, we just want you to
06:26hit,
06:26or at the very least watch a few pitches go by. He's at the seventh lowest pitches per plate
06:32appearance in the league. Yeah. I, nobody trusts him to make a challenge. I don't know if he, uh,
06:37even has a vague understanding of where any strike zone, either historical or under the new ABS is,
06:43uh, the, that part's the frustrating part. Yep. Yep. So he's also, he's, he's kind of skating by
06:50without as much scrutiny as there would be because everybody else is hitting so well. Well, he's hitting
06:54so well, like everybody in front of him is hitting well. So he's going to come up with guys on
06:59base
07:00all the time. And he has, he is, he said five Astros Chandler says five Astros have taken more
07:04plate appearances with a runner in scoring position than Diaz who's hit seventh, eighth,
07:08or ninth in all, but one game this year. Houston's lineup still has the highest OPS and has scored
07:13more runs than any offense in baseball. And that's despite having, uh, that's despite having
07:18Yon or Diaz off to an awful start. Um, Vasquez hasn't completely come down to earth yet on
07:23or Sean. It's a, I don't know why I called you hon sitting in a nine 84 OPS right now.
07:28No, you're right, sweetie. It's, uh, his, uh, is he ever going to start playing like the
07:34back of his baseball cards? Yeah. He's got a career six 68 OPS. I know. I know. He's
07:39at nine 84. I like him. I just, I, you know, I like the pudgy catcher is a, is a,
07:45uh, him
07:45and Alejandro Kirk, man. I like those guys. Okay. I have not scrolled through the rest of
07:50this article. I'm literally going through and looking at this for the first time. And the
07:55fact that Brian Abreu is brutal beginning as a closer is only fourth on the list in
08:00any other, in any other year, that should be number one bullet. And the problem is it's
08:05just, I don't, I hate that the word closer is even there. Yeah. If it were, if it were
08:10even like an, if he were just struggling on a normal level, then I would listen to the
08:14excuses about how, Hey, he's not actually, you know, he's not naturally a closer. That's
08:19not his role. He's throwing, and you know what else bothers me? Hmm. All right. He's
08:23thrown two miles per hour slower than he typically does, but don't worry. It's mechanical. Yeah.
08:28Okay. Fix it. Yeah. Yeah. And I got no appetite for, well, you know, he's not used to coming
08:36in as a closer. Right. Oh, sorry. Was, uh, was, it was, was three. Was he, what was the
08:41deficit last night when he came in? It was six to one, six to one, five run deficit. Yeah.
08:45Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. But you're not used to being a closer. Yeah. He did. He, to his
08:49credit, sure. He put people on base, but he didn't, uh, he didn't allow any runs.
08:53They didn't go home. They didn't go home. Um, we'll save a Bray you. Cause I'm finished
08:58the inning. A Bray is going to get an ironic acknowledgement and acknowledge me in just
09:02a little bit. So I'll, I'll save going through all of Chandler's numbers here. I don't, we don't
09:06need to sift through a bunch of numbers to tell our audience sitting in their car right
09:10now that Brian and Bray you has stunk this year. And he wasn't all that great yesterday
09:13either when he came in and got his clean inning air quotes. So hater, uh, hater hasn't started
09:18facing hitters yet. And, uh, so who knows when the hell he'll be bad. Yeah. I think last
09:22I checked, he probably needs to do that before he comes back to face hitters. One of the big
09:27milestones that can play and catch got a chart in my room. And, uh, yeah, we haven't, we haven't
09:32ticked that off yet. Um, number three, the off season pitching additions. Again, if you're
09:37just getting in your car, Chandler Rome has his power ranked his six biggest concerns
09:41about the Astros again, this is number three. I shudder to think what number two and one are
09:46going to be. I haven't looked yet. It's a, look, it was the time tested strategy. This
09:50off season, Sean, you know, everybody always says, Hey, quantity over quality, whenever you can
09:55never, you never lose with quantity over quality. So let's sign as many pictures as possible.
10:01And we'll have a, we'll have this long, almost a scroll. We have to like unroll a scroll to read
10:07all of these magnificent pictures. We have, they suck. Yep. They're ever, their ERA 6.56 of the,
10:13of the five additions they added, the, the, of the five of the six additions they've added have
10:19played so far in the major leagues. And, um, they've been awful. Yep. They've been bad. They've
10:24been really bad. I mean, part of it is when I watch Ryan Weiss go out there, I'm like, Oh,
10:27what you're telling me is the guy that signed for like a $2 million one year deal out of the
10:32Korean
10:32league or wherever he was. Oh, that's not working. That was the plan was for that to actually work.
10:37Yeah. Because you know, quantity over quality that we really thought it, boy, if ever there
10:42was a place that should work, it's in major league baseball, right? They're just going to roll anybody
10:46out there, mess with their pitch selection a little bit. And then there we go. Number two injuries,
10:52uh, talks about how this winter they hired a new strength and conditioning coach, a new director
10:56of sports medicine and performance, a new assistant athletic trainer, a numerous occasions,
11:01Dana Brown lauded the quote, deep dive. The front office took into the team's maligned return to
11:07play procedure. Yeah. Which is probably why they're being so cautious with people like
11:11Jeremy Pena. And it's probably why Carlos Correa got a day off because he's recovering from an illness
11:16he was suffering from last week, despite getting three hits on Saturday night. Yeah. So, so they looked
11:23at all these things and they are even more injured now than they've been two weeks into any season
11:29over the last few years. Yeah. So there's a, you know, people wonder sometimes, all right, man,
11:34like messing with guys, pitch selection isn't everything is awesome for getting this ideal,
11:40perfect performance or an improvement, but what's it do to you over time? If maybe you're throwing
11:46things that your body's telling you that you shouldn't throw or just going by feel or whatever
11:50it is. And that's why I, that's why I just, I just wonder if the Astros pitching development
11:56program, including the coaching, the analytics, everything, and everything, uh, if they just do
12:01as good a job as they used to have kind of marrying the two, like the being that bridge between
12:06the
12:06player and the analytics and figuring out, okay, there's what works mathematically what,
12:12and then what works with you. But then especially when you got a bunch of, a bunch of either young
12:16pitchers or, you know, people who have come in, you know, eager, eager, eager to be converts to the
12:22Astros way of doing things that they're just, they're just the thrashing these guys elbows all
12:28the hell. Well, I don't know. And how, how capable are they of overhauling it? You know,
12:34like how capable Dana Brown is at his core, an old school scouting guy. He's not an analytics guy,
12:40you know, like it's, you know, would this be something that is Jeff Luna, we're here.
12:43He would see what the glitches are and would do something outside the box to address that.
12:48You know, he, you know, Jeff Luna was, was a very spatial thinker when it came to stuff like this.
12:54Dana Brown, more of an old school baseball guy, more of a scouting guy, you know, how capable
12:59is he to spearhead some sort of overhaul that addresses all these things? I don't know,
13:04but something's got to be done. And so number two is injuries. Now, number one is actually,
13:09I think what Dana Brown was brought into, to address, and that's organizational depth.
13:13Number one concern. Few franchises in the sport have enough depth to overcome
13:17this constant attrition is what Chandler says, but fewer feel more ill-equipped to handle it than
13:22the Astros. That's not what Dana Brown would have you believe. He was saying yesterday,
13:26their organizational depth is what's going to carry them through this spate of injuries with
13:30guys like Colton Gordon and Lambert and Jason Alexander coming up. I guess there's one thing that
13:36I can't abide. It's having both a Cody Bolton and a Colton Gordon in the organization.
13:41At the same time, it's driving me insane. It's almost as bad as the Jans situation.
13:45Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's Jalen's or the Jadens. They're just, I cannot keep everybody straight.
13:51I'll tell you where the organizational depth hurts them aside from just, Hey, they need guys right now.
13:56I brought up that graphic, the picture that I saw Seth over the weekend on social media,
14:03and it was an Astro fan posting a picture. And this is just one way of lamenting the horrible
14:08situation they're in right now, pitching wise. And maybe this is also probably indicative of
14:13how some people feel about Dana Brown as a general manager, but it was a picture of
14:17Zach Greinke, Eric Cole, and Justin Verlander, just kind of all sitting there in the dugout with
14:22each other, kind of looking bored during a game. But the three of them are sitting next to each other.
14:25And it said that the caption for the picture was Jeff Luno got these three for three piles of trash
14:34or something like that. Yeah. And that plays into this in a way in a piles of trash is, you
14:40know,
14:40that that's a little extreme. They traded away some of their best prospects to get,
14:45to get those guys because they had the prospects to give away to get those guys.
14:50Yeah. That's a, yeah, that is, I mean, it's, it's a little unfair to act like Dana, Dana Brown's
14:56operating with the same checkbook or the same bank account, you know, in terms of prospects.
15:02But I, I, I don't know. Like it would help. I'd feel a lot better if Bryce Matthews were hitting
15:07better than he is right now. Um, yeah, there's one thing I don't like to see is people point out
15:12like,
15:12well, Hey, this first draft pick already got elevated to the majors. Like, all right.
15:16He strikes out all the time. Yeah. When you draft the guy and then you elevate him,
15:20and I'm not being down on Bryce Matthews right now. It's just, I don't, I can't look at him as
15:24evidence that the process is working just because the GM who drafted him elevates him to the major
15:30leagues. Yeah. You know, that's like me. That's like me grading my own paper. What's your,
15:34of all the ones Chandler outlined here, injuries, organizational depth, the pitching additions
15:40aren't pitching well, Brian Abreu, uh, Yiner Diaz, and then Joe Espada himself.
15:47It's gotta just, it's gotta be the, the off season pitching additions, just because it's
15:52a, it's a, it's a, it's a big fat reminder that yeah, the organization isn't going to spend
15:58for actual pitchers. Yeah. Um, and that they're just going to try to bubble gum and bailing wire
16:03their way through this thing with probably it's how many more years of this is it going to be
16:08of just signing random guys you've never heard of and then trying to present them like,
16:12there you go. Put them through the Astros pitching car wash. Everybody's Charlie more.
16:16They think everybody's Charlie Morton. That's the problem. They think everybody's Charlie
16:19Morton. It's almost like one, two, and three are kind of intertwined with each other,
16:23you know, because, because the off season pitching additions have not pitched well
16:28and they're either, you know, they're either not pitching well or injured.
16:32Yeah. Your organizational depth is exposed. You know, it's almost like all three of them.
16:36I'm with you. I can't like the organizational depth hasn't even dawned on me just because
16:40every day is such a triage situation with the team that I'm watching on the field at
16:46the major league level. I, maybe I should be more concerned about it because eventually they're
16:50going to need to keep dipping further and further. They, there was a, there was a highlight that
16:54popped up this weekend, Seth, that some guy on the, on the single 18 for the Astros, they're
16:58throwing a, he hit 102 on the gun and struck a guy out. I'm like, that guy will be a
17:02middle reliever
17:02for the Astros by May 1st, the way things are going right now.
17:05Well, and, and, and it's just, and by far too, you just don't even get into the, the fact that
17:12the, the major league roster construction has been janky since the off season and they haven't,
17:19and it's worked out well because of the injuries, the pain you in, because Cara Correa is not always
17:23available. But again, the, the overall sum total of things is, man, why the hell do you have all
17:28these guys in the infield that you're still, they're still open to trading Paredes, I would imagine,
17:34despite the fact that it's worked out in the short term, it's just, everything's janky, man.
17:38Yep. Yep. It is.
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