- 2 days ago
Seth and Sean talk about the Astros getting swept by the Cardinals and the Rockets going down 0-1 in their playoff series vs the Lakers. Great weekend!
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00:00It seems like it should be the simplest thing in the world that if you've got 29 pitchers on your
00:04staff,
00:05at least a couple of them should be good.
00:07You would think. No. Nope. Not the case.
00:10So, no, it wasn't a good weekend from a sports perspective,
00:13and I'm fighting off the sports existentialism, the feeling of what's all matter anyway.
00:20If there's one thing I know, it's that baseball seasons last forever,
00:25but they don't feel nearly as long as the gap between games one and two of an NBA playoff series.
00:33Okay.
00:34Where time slows down, you lose a game in a miserable fashion.
00:39You take 27 more shots than the Lakers and still get crushed.
00:44But this, when you lose a game like that in the playoffs,
00:48it feels like there is no hope and there never will be again.
00:51I forgot. There's a lot that's happened since you and I last did radio together.
00:55You know, Will Anderson Jr. got extended since the last time you and I talked.
00:59That's the good news is Will Anderson Jr.'s extension,
01:01but Kevin Durant got hurt since last time you and I talked.
01:05Like, there's a lot.
01:06Man, that was a long weekend.
01:09That's a lot that went down.
01:11It is. Time has slowed down.
01:13We should be grateful for it.
01:14All of you guys who are miserable about the Rockets and the Astros right now
01:19need to appreciate that time passes more slowly when you're miserable about things.
01:24So it's basically extending your life.
01:27Yep.
01:28Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:29While simultaneously somehow shortening it, too.
01:31It's extending the misery.
01:32Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:35You'll live a shorter life because of the stress,
01:38but it'll feel like it's longer than it is.
01:41What do you feel like starting with today?
01:44I'm going to let you punch the numbers into the jukebox here.
01:48What do you feel like starting with?
01:50Between the Rockets and the Astros you're giving me, and Will Anderson Jr.,
01:54I can't figure out which microphone to use.
01:57It's evidenced by, remember two minutes ago?
02:01I do.
02:02Let's start with you.
02:03I think the Astros are what have people the most miserable.
02:05I was there yesterday.
02:06I was in attendance for that game.
02:07You were.
02:09My undefeated streak is over.
02:10I was 2-0.
02:12They had gone into that game losing 11 of 13.
02:14I went into that game 2-0 as the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.
02:18And whichever one the Cardinals are is the one that won.
02:23Dude, I had the text.
02:24Well, I texted you six outs into the game, six outs into Mike Burroughs,
02:29and I said, all caps.
02:30Burroughs was dealing.
02:31Six up, six down.
02:33And you texted back that when your phone dinged,
02:37as Brandy predicted, it was me texting you about Mike Burroughs.
02:40It was after he'd gone the first time through the order.
02:43It was magnificent.
02:44Yeah.
02:44And then for a little while after that.
02:46Yeah.
02:46And then he just started walking, putting every single person on base.
02:49I had it loaded up, dude.
02:50He had, he, all he had to do was get, I think, one more strike,
02:54and he's through five.
02:55Perfect.
02:57And then he gives up a soft single, and then he gives up a walk,
03:00and then he gives up, he, ultimately, he puts five straight guys on base,
03:05and he doesn't even make it out of the fifth inning.
03:07He was 14 up, 14 down, and I had the, man, I had the text queued up
03:11and ready to go.
03:12All I had to do was hit send, and I never got to hit send on it
03:15because Mike Burroughs couldn't get out of the fifth inning.
03:17I was so excited because I'd come up with a nickname for him,
03:20the Ginger Ninja.
03:22Yeah.
03:22Yeah, you don't get that.
03:23When you don't make it through five, you don't get the Ginger Ninja.
03:26Yeah, the Ginger Ninja.
03:28That's good.
03:29He was, he's got a magnificent red beard, like a well-groomed Viking,
03:33he looks like out there.
03:34And then he just looked like a drunken Viking by the end of it.
03:37Yep.
03:38So, and at that point, I didn't text you.
03:41At that point, I tweeted, I hate this pitching staff.
03:43I hate them all.
03:44And that was it.
03:45That was the entire tweet.
03:46I just don't.
03:46I hate.
03:47All of them.
03:48Even the good ones.
03:49All of them?
03:50Do you hate all of them?
03:51Even the good ones by association.
03:54Well, who are, okay, who are the ones that I shouldn't hate right now
03:56on this pitching staff?
03:57Okay, these are the guys you shouldn't hate.
04:01Should not hate.
04:02We'll go with, let's go with, okay, all right.
04:04Brian King joined the HBP party yesterday.
04:08Yeah.
04:08But by and large, Brian King has become one of my favorite Astros pitchers.
04:14I will put Brian King on the do not hate list, and here's why.
04:17I don't even blame Brian King yesterday for unraveling in the 10th inning,
04:21because in my mind, that's another game that Brian Abreu kind of tangentially
04:26loses for you because he's unusable right now.
04:29Brian Abreu, at the beginning, if that game were the second game of the season
04:33yesterday, Brian Abreu comes in in the 9th or 10th inning of that game,
04:36without question.
04:37But he came in in another game this weekend and gave up a three-run homer.
04:41You know, like I think it was Friday night.
04:44I'll see your Brian Abreu, and I'll raise you a Spencer Arrighetti.
04:49Okay.
04:49No, yes, Spencer's had one good start.
04:51Okay, that's good enough to stay on the do not.
04:53Okay, I'm writing this down.
04:54The do, D-N-H list, King, King, and Arrighetti.
05:02What about Kai Wei Tang?
05:04Yeah, Tang's definitely on the do not hate list.
05:06I like Tang.
05:06Yeah, I like Tang.
05:07I've never, of all the Taiwanese pitchers that I've grown to love in this life,
05:13he is by far my favorite.
05:15Hunter Brown, I feel like, obviously, yes.
05:19What about De Los Santos?
05:20He's got a 1.17 ERA.
05:22Oh, no, no.
05:22De Los Santos does not belong on the do not.
05:25He belongs.
05:25No, no, I should say he does belong on the do not hate list.
05:28He's been really good so far.
05:29Right now, the Mendoza line for Astros hatred, Astros pitching hatred for me,
05:34lies at Steven Okert.
05:36I feel like Okert, every single time he comes in, there's seven guys on base.
05:42He's had to come in in some dicey situations.
05:45He's got a 3.48 ERA.
05:47Yeah.
05:48And I know, look, it's not the inherited runners aren't his to own and whatnot.
05:52But still, it feels like every single freaking time, it's a really murky situation.
05:59That's his job, though, man, is to come in in mid-game murky situations.
06:04You know?
06:04He's right there where I could go either way.
06:06And then after that, yeah, they can all go die.
06:08He gave up a run yesterday.
06:09So, he right now is on my do not.
06:11He wasn't his runner, to your point.
06:13But he came in, tried to put out the fire, and immediately gives up a hit.
06:17Nope, sorry.
06:18Opens on the hate list.
06:19Sorry.
06:19That's a good way to put it.
06:20The Mendoza line is him.
06:21Yes.
06:22Beyond that, every starting pitcher who's had multiple games.
06:25So, we won't include Spencer Arrighetti with that.
06:27You and I went over this before the weekend.
06:30Yeah.
06:30And as Brian McTaggart noted yesterday, every starting pitcher for the Astros.
06:35Because I know there's a lot of people out there that just want to blame injuries and nothing else.
06:39Every starting pitcher who's pitched multiple games other than Hunter Brown has a 5.40 ERA or higher.
06:47Yeah.
06:48It's bad, man.
06:49Yeah, it's bad.
06:49The guys that aren't injured don't escape scrutiny because there are injured guys.
06:55Especially with the starters.
06:57Yeah.
06:57You can say, okay, well, the relievers have been taxed too much, this, that, the other.
07:00Every single starting pitcher who's pitched multiple games.
07:03I've got high hopes for Arrighetti, but none of the other ones have been good.
07:09It's been atrocious.
07:10And then you add to that all of the injuries, and it's miserable.
07:13Well, and other than Hunter Brown, the injured guys stunk.
07:15I mean, Christian, what, am I going to sit here and be like, oh, my God, they missed Christian Javier
07:18in his whatever.
07:19What's his ERA?
07:20It's got to be like 9 or something like that.
07:22Javier, hold on.
07:23My eyeballs aren't warmed up yet enough to look downward like that.
07:2712.54.
07:28Yeah, look, he's, oh, my God, Javier's injured.
07:31What are we going to do without his 12.5 ERA?
07:34They've only got three guys who are in the double digits right now.
07:38So, you know, it's just.
07:40So, Bray is down to like 14 or something like that.
07:4314.73.
07:44Oh, my God.
07:44He's practically.
07:45Yeah, the trend is good.
07:46He's practically Mariano Rivera.
07:48He's unbelievable.
07:49I feel like he's got the pitching version of the yips.
07:51Every time they say, don't worry, it's mechanical.
07:54All right, great.
07:55He's lost his two miles per hour, and he's not going to get them back.
07:59Yeah.
08:00Yeah, not usable right now.
08:02Like, he did a tight game, an extra inning game, and they just don't use Brian Abreu.
08:06That's how bad he is right now.
08:07The other thing that I'm petty about from yesterday, this Bryce Matthews sequence yesterday.
08:13Oh, goodness.
08:14Yeah.
08:14Where Isak Paredes comes in.
08:17No, I'm sorry.
08:18Isak Paredes gets the base hit to tie the game at four.
08:23And then, I don't know how many outs there were at that time.
08:25If it was one or two outs.
08:26If it was two outs, I've got to go back and look.
08:29If it was two outs, I'm going to be really pissed.
08:32Sometimes these managers overthink it, man.
08:34With the pinch runners, you know, Bryce Matthews is sitting there on the bench.
08:39He's not a natural third baseman, but he can play third base.
08:42And he is faster than Isak Paredes.
08:44And, boy, if we get a chance to bring him all the way around from first, this would be the
08:48lead run.
08:48And, here's the thing, in a tie game, there's a decent chance that, A, that guy's not going to score.
08:55And, B, you just took a better bat out of the lineup.
08:58And, in this case, too, you took perhaps a better fielder out of the lineup also.
09:02Because not only did Bryce Matthews, not only did he bring him into pinch run, but he got picked off
09:07of first base.
09:08If you get brought into pinch run, to pinch run, like you have, when you get brought into pinch run,
09:14Seth, you have one job.
09:15And that is to be sound and fast on the bases.
09:18Bryce Matthews gets picked off to end the rally in the ninth inning.
09:24And then he makes an error in the tenth inning that opens the door for the three runs that the
09:30Cardinals score.
09:31That's about as bad a day as a Major League Baseball player can have.
09:34The guy only played one inning, essentially.
09:38He pinch ran and got picked off, then played in the tenth and made a horrible, just a grammar school
09:45error out there.
09:46And, I'll tell you what, if the game didn't end with Christian Walker getting out, Bryce Matthews would have come
09:51up in that game with guys on base and probably struck out.
09:56And, if you say, Sean, you're being a little bit mean by saying he would have probably struck out.
09:59No, he strikes out like 50% of the time.
10:02He probably would have struck out.
10:04I am not a fan of when these managers feel very, very compelled to get some guy on the base
10:12paths who is slightly faster than the guy who's already on the base paths.
10:17On the gamble that somehow the bottom part of your order is going to bring him around from first base.
10:23When you're staring at extra innings and there's a chance, I mean, one more hitter and they would have come
10:28back to Paredes' spot in the order.
10:30And, because you're overthinking it, you got a guy out there who's not as good a hitter as Paredes' and
10:35who, oh, by the way, got picked off first and made an error in the tenth.
10:39That was some horrible, horrible chess that is not, this is not revisionist history for me.
10:44I said it to the guys I was at the game with.
10:46I'm like, I don't like when managers do this, when they pinch run late in games with guys who are
10:51slightly faster than other guys,
10:53when the percentage chance of that guy coming around to score is minimal.
10:56Because the downside of removing Paredes, and I know Paredes hasn't been great this year,
11:01but he just came up with his first huge clutch hit of the season.
11:04The downside of removing Paredes is just so much bigger than whatever upside you're getting out of the extra tenth
11:11of a second
11:12that Bryce Matthews gives you rounding the bases, in my opinion.
11:16Yeah, yeah.
11:16So, that's all.
11:18Yep.
11:18It was, um, uh, da-da-da-da-da-da.
11:22You've been looking something up for the last two minutes.
11:24You've been looking at the outs, and I got lost in the, um.
11:27The play-by-play?
11:28Yeah, the bottom of the eighth Paredes, single to right, L2-Ve scored, Walker scored.
11:32Yep.
11:33And then, um, yeah.
11:34Yep.
11:35So, there you go.
11:36There you go.
11:37Um, bad times.
11:38Eight and 15.
11:39About the same pace as they were two years ago when they got off to that 12 and 24 start.
11:44But at least we got the Rockets, uh, to, to put Salve on our wounds.
11:49The, uh, okay, so, what was the timeline on the Durant injury reporting?
11:55It was, uh, Friday is when the report came out.
11:58Yeah.
11:58Friday the report came out that Kevin Durant.
12:00When did it, was it, when was it known that he wasn't going to play?
12:04Right before the game, he gave it a go.
12:06Right before the game.
12:07Yeah.
12:07Okay, I didn't miss anything then.
12:08No, no.
12:09He warmed up.
12:10I kind of, I just, I didn't realize that I was completely checked out, um, uh, for most
12:16of the day.
12:17And, uh, I didn't know Will Anderson had signed the extension until, like, noon on Saturday.
12:21So, I, uh, I felt like I had missed major news or something.
12:23Wow, you put your phone away, huh?
12:26Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:27Good for you.
12:28So, from the time, I thought nothing of Durant's injury when I heard about it on Friday.
12:32I was like, yeah, whatever.
12:33He'll play.
12:33He always plays.
12:34He's a soldier.
12:35And I think, I think even people who didn't unplug their phones thought that, you know what
12:38I mean?
12:38Like, I think we, I think we were thinking it.
12:40I think a lot of rocket fans were thinking that throughout the day on Saturday is that
12:44he always plays.
12:45And this is a big concern that for that very reason, this is a huge concern.
12:50Say what you will about Kevin Durant.
12:52And, and he's been great this season.
12:54He only missed four games all year.
12:56So, he's been durable this season.
12:57This is a fluky thing that happened in practice earlier in the week.
13:00And it gets reported on Friday.
13:03He always plays.
13:04That he didn't play in that game, to me, is super concerning for this game tomorrow
13:10night.
13:10Yeah.
13:11The Kevin Durant didn't play in the game.
13:13I mean, and then if you look at the young guys out there just trying to, you know, gumption
13:18it up, I like, all right, Reed Shepard, you're a defensive liability and the Lakers attack
13:25the hell out of you.
13:25But you got to make it up for it on the offensive side of the ball.
13:28And just, just, just being abysmal shooting.
13:32Well, Shane Goon is abysmal shooting.
13:35And every other young guy on the team is falling apart.
13:37Other than Tari Eason, who went seven for seven in the game.
13:40Right.
13:41And he was our X Factor.
13:42Right.
13:43It was like, all right, this team will go as Tari Eason goes.
13:46Right.
13:46If Tari Eason is playing really well, then you got nothing to worry about.
13:49The spacing will be immaculate.
13:50Yep.
13:51And the spacing was not a, the spacing was there.
13:54It was there for the taking.
13:55If they could have made any freaking shots.
13:57Yeah.
13:58They were, they were pathetic.
14:00Yeah.
14:00It was disgusting.
14:02And then Shane Goon is, I'll give Shane Goon this.
14:04He wasn't timid, at least.
14:06He wasn't settling for mid-range or anything.
14:08But he's just blindly flailing into the, into, into the jumbled up mess in the paint.
14:15And, and, and taking shots to no avail.
14:18Not, not kicking it back out of the mess.
14:20Yeah.
14:20It was just, it was every, it was every worst version of the Rockets.
14:23Yeah.
14:23A couple, a couple things.
14:25A couple things on that.
14:26First on Shane Goon.
14:27It gets lost in the wash because Jalen Green was so bad last year in that Warriors series.
14:32Shane Goon wasn't great either.
14:33Shane Goon missed a lot of easy shots in that series last year against the Warriors.
14:37So he's got a lot to prove in terms of being a performer in the postseason.
14:41And the second thing is that Kevin Durant was brought onto this team to any, and, and all
14:48season long, he was exactly this to essentially be an eraser to take janky possessions.
14:54And get it into his hands with five on the shot clock.
14:58And then Kevin Durant goes and finds a shot that only he can make him and five other guys
15:03on the planet can make, you know, contested fadeaways, things like that.
15:06He's not out there to do that.
15:08Like you, you, you literally gave up certain things with your young core.
15:13I think he gave up a little bit of your ethos defensively by getting rid of Dylan Brooks.
15:17You sacrifice some smaller things for the greater good, which the greater good was Kevin Durant
15:22being Kevin Durant.
15:24You don't have him.
15:25This team is lost offensively right now without Kevin Durant.
15:28He's the guy that would make wrong possessions right for you all year long.
15:34And that guy doesn't exist right now.
15:35And he might not exist tomorrow night.
15:36And if he doesn't exist tomorrow night, there's a decent chance they go down to nothing to
15:40a team that doesn't have Luka Doncic.
15:42Well, and, and LeBron, LeBron did the savvy and smart and veteran thing and ended up being
15:49a facilitator and his experience in the playoffs.
15:53When you weigh that against not having get Kevin Durant out there at all, um, that's a,
15:58that's a bleak outlook right now.
16:00Yeah.
16:00It's a, so now at all, um, somehow Sean, the Kevin Durant might be more important than
16:05Tari Eason to this team.
16:06I'll say it.
16:07I'll say it.
16:08Yeah.
16:10Uh, they were, they shot 44.8% at the rim.
16:14So they were horrible in the paint by comparison.
16:17The worst team in the NBA this season was 63.1% at the rim.
16:22Just terrible, man.
16:23They had their manhood taken from them if they ever had it.
16:26Yeah.
16:27But, uh, let's say hypothetically, they had their manhood.
16:29Uh, they definitively did not by the end of this game.
16:32They did not.
16:33They did not.
16:33So they, um, we'll get to, uh, we'll get to Charles Barkley on the Rockets.
16:38We'll get to Amin Thompson after the game.
16:40We tell that we got a lot to get to on the show.
16:42The Astros get swept over the weekend by the Cardinals.
16:45They're eight and 15.
16:46I haven't even looked at the standings.
16:47It's not worth it.
16:48They need to win some games.
16:49They go to Cleveland.
16:50Cleveland now Cleveland's played some decent Cleveland just took three out of four in the
16:53series they were playing in this weekend.
16:54So, and they got the Yankees coming to town next week.
16:57So I don't know if things are going to get better anytime soon.
16:59Thankfully, the Yankees haven't been playing all that well lately.
17:01So we'll see.
17:02We'll see.
17:03Uh, Rockets back in action tomorrow night, 930 tip off.
17:05So get a nap.
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