- 2 hours ago
Seth and Sean kick off the show talking about the Astros 2-1 win over the Dodgers, Peter Lambert's performance, Shohei Ohtani's disliking the mound at Daikin Park, and Tatsuya Imai's latest issue with playing in the MLB.
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00:00Popped up, Isak Paredes waits for it, and the Astros have their best win of the season,
00:07a 2-1 win against Shohei Ohtani and the two-time defending champs.
00:13What a ball game. The fans showed up for this matchup, a lot of them anticipating what Shohei
00:20Ohtani was going to do, but a couple of Astro blasts give them the lead, and that was enough
00:27for Peter Lambert to go out there and throw seven, Shuddy.
00:31Yeah, best win of the year. When Todd Callis said that last night at the end of the game,
00:35I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, there's not a ton of them to choose from.
00:40That was the best win of the year, I think. You get a shutout, Peter Lambert, over 100 pitches for
00:45you,
00:45seven innings. He was getting you the outing that I think many were hoping they would get
00:49earlier this week from anybody, well, the two bullpen games notwithstanding.
00:53That was big last night, and as we welcome you in here on a Wednesday, Sean Pendergast,
00:58Seth Payne with you, and here's the thing, Seth, I'm looking at the standings right now,
01:03and I know the Astros have been terrible this year. It's been a very depressing season,
01:06and we got another injury to talk about. We went a whole day without an injury,
01:10and now Carlos Correa is out. Who knows for how long? Tweaked an ankle.
01:15The numbers, the standings will not let the Astros die. The Athletics are leading the division at 18
01:23and 17 right now. That's right. They're mighty Sacramento A's. They're four games back.
01:29Like a Redwood rising above the slums of Sacramento. Yes.
01:35Honestly, in this division, especially considering they got series coming up against the Mariners and
01:41the Rangers, two of the teams that are ahead of them, I mean, you're like an 8-2 week and
01:46a half
01:47away from being right back in the thing right now. So we're getting ready to fire Joe Espada and
01:52everything. Okay, so with Cray out, which I think Chandler called it a bad ankle injury. I think he
01:59used the word bad. McTaggart said he's going to be out indefinitely. There are a lot of tea leaves
02:05that make me feel like this isn't just your typical non-Astros discomfort.
02:10Right. This is Astros discomfort. Yeah. Yeah. That just, it seems, it seems like this might be more
02:16than just a turn of the ankle or something. So apologies if I'm pessimistic about an Astros
02:22injury situation. But Peter Lambert, you out-dueled Shohei freaking Otani. Who saw that coming?
02:30Uh, I did. Yeah, you did. Otani's not all that great against the Astros. There's one thing the
02:35Astros have going. Come high, come low. Uh, Mike Trout has struggled against the Astros
02:42comparatively. Uh, in his career, he has. In his career, yeah. Not this year. Not this year, no.
02:48Yeah. He had like four home runs. Yeah, yeah. But your global point is a good one. Yeah, historically,
02:54yeah. Otani has struggled more against the Astros. Aaron Judge? It's not like he had a horrible
02:58outing last night, but he hadn't let up a home run. No. He hadn't, he had yet to let a
03:01home run
03:02up this season. Yep. And then, and then, damn it. Schoonmaker. Schoonmaker. Schoonmaker, yeah.
03:11It's Schoonmaker. It's not Shoemaker. No. I, yeah. Or Schoonmaker, as you called him yesterday. I know
03:16there's, every time I want to say his name, I'm like, it's not Shoemaker. It's not Shoemaker. It's a
03:20Shoemake. Yeah, but somehow Schoonmaker comes out. It's a verb. It's not a noun. He shoemakes. It's not a
03:26Shoemaker. Yeah. He's not a, yeah, he's not a, it's a verb. It's not a job description. Right,
03:31right, right. It's a verb. It's a description of what he's doing right now. Yeah, yeah. What
03:34are you doing? Shoemaking, man. I'm the shoemaker. Yeah. He has a home run before you go calling
03:38it like, well, it's a, you know, Dyken Park special. Four Major League ballparks, that would
03:43have been a home run in time. Four. Four. That's right. That was a jack. That was a jack. Like
03:50the second or third row at least. Yeah. No, but he's, look, and he gets called up. He was in
03:55working out in the weight room when it turned out that Correa was injured, so they came in.
04:00There's, I'll tell you, there's nothing worse than all of a sudden, like getting a workout
04:04in and somebody's like, hey, I know you're fatigued from this workout, but you got to go
04:08actually do the job that really matters. I hope it wasn't a leg day for his sake. Oh, okay,
04:13Skip, who's pitching? Shohei Otani. Yeah. Yeah. No, he knew that he might have to be available
04:18in the game, so it wasn't like he was probably putting in a monster workout or anything. That's
04:22a funny story, though. So Peter Lambert's the big story last night. They get seven shutout
04:27innings from him. Closes it out with a double play in the seventh. 103 pitches, I think,
04:31is what he went. Here's, let's play Espada, then we've got some thoughts on this. Here's
04:36Joe Espada on Peter Lambert's outing last night.
04:39Pure competing, grinding, stepping up. Knew exactly what we needed, and we couldn't have
04:48for a better performance. That was pure grit right there.
04:53He didn't have the swing and miss stuff like he's had the pass away.
04:55I don't really care. I really don't care. It was exactly what we needed. Swing and miss,
05:03but he was ahead in the count. He was inducing contact early. We played some really good defense
05:09behind him. That's just what we needed. We needed him to get deep in the game, and couldn't get better
05:15than that. I couldn't quite hear. It sounded like it was Mick Taggart asking that question.
05:20Oh, okay. I just assumed it was Chandler because Espada got tested, but he brought up he didn't
05:25really, Lambert didn't really have his swing and miss stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I, and I, you know
05:30what? I'm going to give, we were pretty tough on Joe Espada yesterday. If you missed it, Ryan Weiss
05:35did eventually get sent down to the minor. Something, Espada was aghast about getting asked about by
05:39Chandler Rome on Monday night. I'm going to give Espada a pass on this one. The pitching's been so bad
05:44this year.
05:45Yeah. Espada just basically like, dude, we have a six ERA. I'm going to translate. I'm going to
05:51translate Joe Espada's English. Dude, we have a six ERA. You think I care how we're getting the
05:57outs out there tonight? Peter freaking Lambert. Lambert just out-dueled Shohei Ohtani.
06:04Are you worried about the swing and miss? Did you see Shohei Ohtani out there? Did you guys see how
06:08big
06:08he is? He's really big. Yeah. Uh, that was, uh, that was awesome. Yeah. Well, but then plus, uh, uh,
06:13it was, um,
06:15yeah, the, the entire environment and atmosphere and the plays that they had to make defensively,
06:22including a couple of the double plays were just really, really nice. Cam Smith had a beautiful catch
06:27in the outfield after which he went Spider-Man on the bullpen. Yep. That was a, that was impressive.
06:32That was cool. Yeah. That was really cool. Um, so yeah, they, they, um, I, I, I have, you know,
06:38zero qualms with how they got the outs last night. They needed that. Here's the, here's the issue is
06:43they, they need so many more outings like that just to normalize this bullpen right now. Yeah. Like
06:49that, that if this were a better Astros team with just a, you know, with a pitching staff that was
06:54average instead of just the worst in baseball, that would have been a huge outing last night that
06:59they're, that they're resting all these guys, but they've been so taxed. They pitched two bullpen
07:04games. The two games before last night's game were both games where they emptied the bullpen to start
07:08the game. So they need so many more games just to normalize, but we've been on this kick, you know,
07:13with the Astros being so bad, the pitching so awful. Are we on a spot to watch, you know,
07:18Bob Nightingale of USA today. Uh, now that Carlos Mendoza, the Mets manager has been given a
07:23stay of execution and a vote of confidence. Joe, a spot is up next on the guillotine on the
07:28chopping block. And I'm like, man, I, when my teams are bad like this, I just don't like to
07:33look at the standing set. I just don't like to, I'm just a man. I just need to win a
07:36game. I can't
07:36be worried about how far back they are. And today I decided, you know what, I'm going to go take
07:40a
07:40look. You know, should, is this something, should they be selling? Should we be, should we've had that
07:45conversation yesterday about you, who, you know, who are the assets they could move to go replenish the
07:51farm system and their fun conversation. Well, they're not fun conversations. They're relevant
07:55conversations to have, but this division is so bad again. I mean, it's, it's, you know,
08:01the, the A's are leading their 18 and 17. You're going to play the Mariners and the Rangers after
08:06this red series coming up. They, the Astros have a day game today and then they play the Reds for
08:11three. Uh, and then they play Seattle and Texas next week. And if now losing Carlos Correa obviously
08:19hurts, you know, losing, losing Yiner Diaz is not as painful, but now Cesar Salazar is going
08:26to have to catch a couple of games for you. He's not good, you know, offensively like
08:29and Yiner, you pointed this out yesterday. Yiner had started to come around a little bit lately
08:34too. That's, that's the shit. That's the shame and all that is that he was, he seemed to be
08:39starting to figure some things out at the plate. And now, you know, Christian Vasquez, who's been
08:44really good hitting the baseball this year, but he's going to be your everyday guy now. So it's
08:48just, they cannot escape this injury curse right now. It's like, it's like nothing I've
08:53ever seen before. Of the opening day lineup, they're now missing, uh, Correa, Yiner, Loper
09:00Fido and Jake Myers. And then if you add into that, that Jeremy Pena, you know, was injured
09:05at the time, but would have been the regular shortstop. So five on this, on this, uh, which
09:11is still a league leading offense in major league baseball, not as high as it was early on.
09:15Um, it's been, it's, it's been just absurd. It's been ridiculous how bad the injuries have
09:20been on this team. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to feel a little bit better to Sean, taking
09:24a trip through the standings, just always remind yourself that the team with the third
09:28highest payroll in baseball, the New York Mets are 13 and 22. They are. There's some, there's
09:33some in the Philly, the Phillies are, I think the Phillies are one of the few teams that spend
09:37more than the Astros also. And they're really bad this year. I got nervous. I pulled up some
09:41power rankings yesterday. I think it was the athletics and the headline was something like
09:44some, some two teams that have never been at the bottom of the power rankings before. And I thought,
09:50Oh crap, I saw this. No, it's not. You did. Uh, yeah, I couldn't even command F on it. I
09:55had
09:55to scroll down just to build suspense and it wasn't. No, it's a good reminder that, okay, as bad as
10:01it
10:01is, man, at least somebody's always got it worse. Yeah. And well, in baseball, like nobody's running
10:08away with it. Like I know the Tampa Bay Rays are leading the American league right now. Do we think
10:11that's going to hold up over the course of a season? You know, if the Yankees were leading by,
10:16you know, if the Yankees were 10 games over 500 right now, I'd be like, okay, well that's,
10:20that'll probably hold. They spend 300 million a year. But the last I checked, the Rays are leading
10:24the American league in overall record. You have a look on your face, like the Rays are in last place
10:30right now, not first place. Like I messed that up. The American league? The American league. Yeah.
10:34The Yankees are 25 and 11. Oh, they are? Yeah. Oh, you know why? You know why? Because
10:38I looked at the wild cards. I hate ESPN does the wild card standings. Yeah. They don't
10:42put the division leaders in the wild card standings. That's the problem. Okay. I was
10:47looking at the wild card standings. So the Rays. I was trying to figure out 10 games over
10:50500 because I always get confused in how people talk about that versus the mathematical part
10:55of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I was 25 and 11. That's my bad. Thank you. Thank
10:58you. Yeah. The Yankees are really good. So either way, I mean, if you're the
11:02Astros, you're just trying to get back in the hunt, whether it's division or wild
11:05card, you're just trying to work your way back in. So big one last night. So did I
11:11see this correct that Otani doesn't like the mound at Dyken Park? It's true. It's
11:16true. Is this a Japanese thing or is this just a... No, this is an Otani thing with
11:21the... Because Emai doesn't like mound. Emai's got a mound issue also. So last night I was
11:26watching the highlights this morning from the Dodgers. And during the Dodgers broadcast,
11:32they were talking about how Emai doesn't really like the mound, or at least the mound
11:35this year at Dyken Park. So here's the Dodgers guys talking about it.
11:40Otani, the night before he pitches, always takes a quick trip to the mound just to feel
11:44it out, visualize, get a quick feel for the mound. And when he did so last night, he said
11:49that he noticed a little slope off of each edge of the rubber. And he has that big step
11:53in his windup. And he didn't really like how it felt. He's never pitched well in the Sparks.
11:59You wonder if it's something that he's noticed before.
12:02Yeah. Yeah. We got garbage cans buried underneath the mound, you clowns. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh,
12:09the Astros mound. I'd be saying this even if it weren't Dyken Park. Let's just go pitch.
12:14Yeah. We've done this to sabotage not only the Dodgers pitchers, but our own pitchers as well.
12:20We don't care. No, I don't know, but it did. It made me think, okay, like Otani, very detailed,
12:27very focused on getting every little thing right. And ultimately, maybe that's, you know,
12:33Emai, we just keep hearing more and more things about how things are different and everything's
12:39just not quite right. And he's got the same level of obsession with detail that Otani does.
12:44Yeah. Yeah. Seemingly in completing capability of handling any of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
12:50Emai's got new beefs. Is that what I'm hearing? Well, there's just more explanations for all of
12:55the things that are different here versus what he's used to. He walked a bunch of dudes last
12:59night at Sugarland, right? He walked like five guys at Sugarland. He only gave up one run,
13:04but he had a bunch of guys on base. He walked five guys. I want to say it was seven
13:07guys. Was it only
13:08five guys? It was five. Yeah. I'm looking at the, I've got the numbers and headlines. Yeah.
13:12Here's Emai's line. It was a three innings pitched, one hit, one earned run, five walks,
13:18three strikeouts. He threw 63 pitches, 27 for strikes. So the latest is aside from what the
13:26ball that's more slippery, the mounds being different when they eat dinner, we can add
13:32these next two items to the checklist of things that bother Emai. This is his translator.
13:37So I think that one of the reasons is in Japan, we don't have any pitch clogged. And then I'm
13:44able
13:44to take more time between pitches. And then also, for example, before games in Japan, you can,
13:52you can take some time every pitches and then he can, I can go to throw like inside to the
13:59lefty
13:59can like get a first pitch strike with sliders. And then for here, we do like scouting,
14:07scouting report. And we talk about the weakness of the hitters. And then I'm thinking, I want
14:13to do more. I want to talk about more of the strength that I have using a slider for the
14:19first
14:19pitch count, get more strikes with a slider. Okay. So if I heard that correctly, yeah, he's
14:27got an issue with the pitch clock. Yeah. And he's got an issue that the scouting over here
14:32focuses more on the weakness of their opponents than what Emai can do to impose his will on
14:38somebody. He'd rather go out there and throw sliders on the first pitch because these major
14:42league hitters would never catch onto that. Right. Apparently. He's idiots.
14:53Skip, you gotta understand. These guys are morons over here. Like he's like the L2 of the pitching
14:59world. I'm just going to go out. Emai's going to throw a slider on the first pitch and L2 is
15:04going
15:04to swing. Did you see L2 base with yesterday? No one. He reached. Was it old school? Was it old
15:14school? Old school. It almost feels like it feels like the first pitch. I think it was for the
15:19strikeout. Yeah. He just, Oh, I did see that. He reached. I did see that. It was the length of
15:25his
15:25entire body. Yeah. He almost fell down. Oh my God. I was, I'm almost like, yeah, you know what? He
15:31hasn't had one of those this year. You probably need to get it out of his system. I took a
15:36screenshot. I'll show it to you during the break. Oh my God. He's got, look, he's got a, he's got
15:42to dial it back in, you know, the, uh, the, he's the, the, him adjusting to his own strike zone.
15:49Yeah. Feels like now pitchers have adjusted to his, his accurate strike. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
15:54so Emai is going to be back pretty soon. I would guess. I mean, he threw 63 straight coming up.
16:00Yeah. You got to stretch a 13 straight games. Yeah. You need Emai. Give me all you got.
16:04Got to have Emai out there. Please, Kiwi Tang, please end up being a starter that can all of
16:08a sudden just without, you don't need a break in period or anything. You give, uh, we just
16:13need Kiwi Tang to go out and throw 120 pitches in his first start. Whenever that comes, if it
16:17ever comes. Yeah. They'd love to start him, but they keep, they, they keep calling them
16:21back. No. Yeah. So, um, so Emai rehab, there were, they had a few guys playing the Josh
16:27Hader pitched an inning last night, Seth. Josh Hader pitched an inning at Sugarland
16:31last night. Yeah. That's big. That is big. And it was a good inning too. It was a clean
16:34inning. I mean, he hit a guy and he walked a guy, but he didn't give up any runs. We're
16:38coming off of a Brian, a Brayu, uh, non-car accident, you know, multi-inning non-car
16:44accident. A multi-inning almost drove the car off the cliff, but reeled it back in. He turned
16:50into the, he turned into the skid and then boom. It's all coming together, man. Right. It's all
16:55coming together. They're only four games out. Josh Hader pitched an inning at triple
17:00a last night. Emai only gave up one run with five walks. Yeah. But, uh, but, uh, yeah,
17:06it's all coming together, man. Uh, good morning to be an Astro fan. I was looking at Emai's
17:10pitch chart and it was the impressive thing was he wasn't just not throwing strikes.
17:14He was, he was aggressively not throwing strikes. Oh, you did. Oh, you did the, oh, wow.
17:19It was, uh, uh, modernist painting of some sort. Yeah. Dots everywhere. Dots everywhere. Okay.
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