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Seth and Sean kick off the show by discussing the rough spot the Astros are in with an injury problem and a bare cupboard of prospects that it makes sense to move up as they face the Cubs this afternoon.
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00:00This is the thing, all right?
00:01We said the Astros' new season started, well, let's see, we said the Emai's season started May 18th.
00:09May 18th, and you had the Astros' season starting when they had a chance to win the Twins series on
00:15Wednesday morning.
00:16But they're at least now...
00:17They're 0-1 in your new season so far.
00:18No, I thought, no, no, no, I think we started the Astros' season at the beginning of the previous series
00:23versus the Rangers
00:24because that would give them a winning record potentially.
00:27Oh, you retroactively went back and started it, that's right.
00:30So right now they're at .500 since we restarted the Astros' season, right?
00:34Right, right, yeah, they're 3-3.
00:36So they're 3-3.
00:37Which would have them right in the mix in the AL West if this were the whole season.
00:40Yeah, all you've got to do is take on the mighty A's, you know?
00:43The mighty .500 A's, yeah, that's all you've got to do.
00:47So, yeah, so they were off yesterday.
00:49So how are you feeling now six games into the new Seth Payne Astros' season?
00:53Six games into the new Astros' season, I am inclined to say, hey, it's a long season.
00:59You've only played six games.
01:02You're 3-3.
01:03I don't know if a lot of people know this, but you've got a three-day weekend coming up this
01:07weekend.
01:07True.
01:08And you, like, this might be, as I've long looked forward to, the Memorial Day weekend where you can just
01:16sit back and watch the Astros take a commanding, a commanding 6-3 lead over all of your foes.
01:25The good news is the Cubs are playing like hot garbage even more than the Astros are right now.
01:30Oh, no.
01:30The Cubs are ice cold.
01:31They've lost 9 of 11, and they've lost five in a row, including three to their division rival Milwaukee Brewers.
01:38Milwaukee retook the north over the weekend.
01:42Well, it's really the central, but they're both up north.
01:45Yeah, the Cubs are playing really bad baseball right now.
01:48And this game today, it's a day game, by the way, everybody.
01:51It's a Friday afternoon game because that's what they do at Wrigley Field.
01:53They still play day baseball on random days during the week like they used to back in the day when
01:59there were no lights there.
02:00So it's an afternoon game.
02:02It's 1 o'clock here, 1255, something like that.
02:05It's on Apple TV.
02:07Oh, so it's an Apple TV afternoon game.
02:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:10In fact, Seth, we're going to have Heidi Watney on at 820 today, the sideline reporter for Apple TV.
02:15I can't wait to tell her about Memorial Day.
02:19She's going to be shocked that it's a long weekend this weekend.
02:23So, yeah, it's on Apple TV.
02:24So America gets to bathe in the same pool of tears that we've been bathing in for the year.
02:31No, no.
02:32Oh, sorry, we're 3-3.
02:33Ever since I restarted the season, the Astros are 3-3.
02:36Okay.
02:37And Alex Bregman, you know, you might be getting nervous about it.
02:40Oh, boy, Alex Bregman knows these pitchers and everything.
02:43For whatever it's worth, Alex Bregman is not having a great year.
02:46No.
02:46He's got a 682 OPS.
02:48OPS, people are gushing and gushing and gushing about what a leader he is in the clubhouse.
02:54But it takes more than just that, Sean.
02:57Eventually, you have to get your OPS over 700.
02:59If you're making $30 million a year, yes.
03:01We've got a great quote coming up in the next segment from Rod Wright, the Texans defensive line coach.
03:07Yeah.
03:07And he basically, he's gushing about Will Anderson, but he's also making the point that, hey, it's awesome to be
03:14a better person than you are a football player, but you better be a pretty good damn football player if
03:20that's your calling card.
03:21Finally, somebody said it.
03:23Yes.
03:23He said it about, no, he's saying with Will, it's really hard to be a better person than football player
03:28when you're Will Anderson.
03:29Yes.
03:29But if you're anybody else and you're thinking, boy, this is a swell organization and the Texans are going to
03:35appreciate that I'm a good fella.
03:37Yeah.
03:37No, no, no, no, no, no.
03:38You've got to hit the prerequisite of being a really good football player.
03:43You better go get 14 sacks if that's going to be the case.
03:46Yeah.
03:47So I'm looking forward to the, I haven't listened to any of the Rod Wright that you sent because I
03:50wanted to listen to it fresh.
03:52You know, I wanted to listen to the cold.
03:53You know what, and it's like a month old interview that they did on Texans All Access, but it was
03:58right before the draft and it kind of got lost in the shuffle.
04:01So I'm glad Texans Jacob, one of our listeners, had tweeted out a clip from it yesterday and it made
04:06me go back and watch the whole interview.
04:09We've got some good curators in our Texans audience.
04:11I will say that.
04:13Between Texans Jacob and Garrett from Stressens, they serve a purpose out there, man, for guys like you and me.
04:22Well, especially this time of the year when there's not all that much actual news going on.
04:27We've got OTAs next week, Seth.
04:28We've got the schedule for OTAs.
04:30You and I will be allowed to be out there on Thursday next week.
04:33Thursday, Friday.
04:34Oh, we're allowed on Thursday.
04:35So they're out there on Wednesday and then we're allowed on Thursday.
04:38Yep, yep.
04:39Thursday's the one day the media are going to be out at OTAs.
04:41So, yeah, we'll be out there.
04:43And then they've got some OTAs the next week and they've got minicamp.
04:46I'm more looking forward to the press conferences than I am the actual OTAs themselves.
04:51There are things to OTAs I'm looking forward to.
04:54I'm looking forward because they'll trot some walkthrough, you know, skeleton, depth chart stuff out there.
05:00You know, they'll be, you know, just walking through some things.
05:03I'll be anxious to see who the first five group of offensive linemen are out there for sure.
05:08You know, see where they've got Keelan Rutledge lined up and things like that.
05:12And then, you know, we'll always talk about how you don't read too much into that, which is true.
05:16You know, they shuffle guys around and everything.
05:19And sometimes during training camp we go way overboard in saying, oh, my gosh, such and such started at left
05:24guard today.
05:24What's it all mean?
05:26And it doesn't mean anything.
05:28But over time, when you start seeing guys, rookies especially, work with the ones a lot more frequently, then that
05:34means something.
05:35Yeah, well, and they've shown they're not afraid to work the rookies with the ones really quickly with Kamari Lassiter
05:40a few years ago.
05:41So we'll see if Keelan Rutledge gets that treatment or not.
05:44Yeah, at the center position especially.
05:46You know, there might come a point where all of a sudden Keelan Rutledge is always out there working at
05:50center with the ones.
05:52And it's okay to read into that.
05:53Yep.
05:54We'll hear from Rod Wright in the next segment.
05:57Back to the Astros for a second.
05:58So they're in Chicago.
05:59They've got the Cubs this weekend at Wrigley.
06:01The Cubs, even with the bad stretch of baseball they're on, they're still a playoff team in the National League.
06:06They'd be a wild card.
06:07They'd be the second wild card team right now.
06:09They're 29-21 on the season, which feels like the promised land, even for the new Astros, Seth.
06:16You know, 29-21 feels pretty good for a 3-3 baseball team right now.
06:20Yeah.
06:21Eric Getty, Tang, and Lambert are your three starters this weekend.
06:24So these are the three guys that have been your best starters over this recent stretch of the pitching staff
06:29starting to get it together.
06:31And that's probably the most frustrating thing for people with the Astros, Seth, is early in the season the Astros
06:36are hitting at a pace and walking at a pace and being disciplined at the plate in a place where
06:42they were at the top of the league and the pitching was historically bad.
06:47Like one earned run worse than every other team in baseball.
06:51They seem to have figured some things out in the pitching.
06:53The pitching's actually been pretty good over the last, you know, couple of weeks, whatever, and they can't hit.
07:00Oh, my God.
07:01Chandler Rome had some stats.
07:04Chandler is the perfect writer to capture futility, I think, because he just comes armed with all sorts of numbers.
07:11This might have been the most depressing one that I've read in a long time because it involves Jordan Alvarez.
07:17Jordan Alvarez, who during the Astros' horrible start, was the best hitter in baseball, and they still couldn't win games.
07:25And then the month, the calendar flipped to May, and everything's imploded in May.
07:31And so I hesitate to look at compartmentalized numbers for Jordan because his overall numbers are still so good.
07:38But in May, his OPS is 694, which by, you know, Jordan's standards is awful.
07:44Yeah, but it's below average.
07:46It's below average, right?
07:47It's not horrendously below average, but he's a below average hitter.
07:50Yeah, average is around 700, so he's slightly below average.
07:54But again, if Jordan is slightly below average in this lineup, the lineup is completely unplugged because he is so
08:01crucial to the guys that bat ahead of him and bat behind him.
08:05Like, his presence when he's hitting well is so crucial.
08:08The depressing part wasn't that Jordan's OPS in May is 694.
08:13I mean, that's depressing.
08:14Don't get me wrong.
08:15The depressing part is that's the best OPS on the team for any of the qualified hitters right now in
08:21May.
08:21Yeah.
08:21In May.
08:22In May.
08:23And that's – it is interesting because, like, Braden Shoemake, I guess, doesn't qualify, but he played in 19 games.
08:28So he's got an 800 OPS in May, and he'd be one of the best guys if he had more
08:35at-bats.
08:35And yet, that's the classic, all right, Major League pitchers will probably start to get a feel for exactly how
08:42they need to pitch Braden Shoemake,
08:44a 28-year-old guy that they're seeing for the first time.
08:50Yeah.
08:50That – it's not like – I don't know if this is going to be the summer of Shoemake.
08:53If this is – that would be awesome, though, because it just rolls off the tongue.
08:58Which is still – yeah.
08:59The summer of Shoemake, which is where he's a slightly better than average baseball player.
09:03Yeah.
09:03No, if this is who he is, he wouldn't have been available in a trade for another minor leaguer.
09:07If we have to make him – if we have to make him the guy that it's the summer of,
09:11yeah, the Astros are not in great shape.
09:12No, no, no.
09:13So that – that was – that was supremely – supremely depressing for me.
09:17It was like just a right-hand jab with the 694 OPS and then a left-handed haymaker with the
09:22– oh, and he's the best of all these guys.
09:25Well, no, no, the thing with Jordan is it's not like you can sit and say, well, it's been bad
09:29luck or this or that.
09:29He just doesn't – he looks like a mortal at the plate.
09:33He's striking – he's striking out a lot.
09:35Yeah, it just – he looks – to the point where you just start to wonder, okay, what – it's
09:42– everybody goes through it.
09:43It's just now it's a couple years in a row that we've seen Jordan go through it in a way
09:48that he almost never had previously in his career.
09:51Yeah.
09:51And he's still got over 1,000 OPS on the season.
09:54Yeah.
09:54That's how good he was at the beginning of the season.
09:57Right.
09:57It's just – we're definitely not accustomed to see Jordan look so lost at the plate for such extended periods
10:04of time.
10:04No, no.
10:05Here's a few others from Chandler.
10:07Astros have scored three or fewer runs in 15 of 19 games this month.
10:11Only two teams have fewer walks.
10:13Only three teams have more strikeouts than the Astros.
10:17So they're just – it's not even – they're scoring very few runs and they're not even having good competitive
10:23at-bats.
10:24No, and it's just so strange because the Astros started off the beginning of the season looking like, oh, this
10:30is like the old Astros.
10:31Look at the judgment at the plate.
10:33Yeah.
10:33Look at how – they're just – they're making pitchers pitch to them and now pitchers aren't pitching to them.
10:39You know, like they're not throwing to the inside plate at all.
10:42They're doing – they're just – I don't know how the entire team came into the season with such a
10:50good approach and just so much command.
10:54And then it's – the entire squad has lost it.
10:57Yeah.
10:58Do we blame Victor Rodriguez?
10:59We were giving him a lot of flowers.
11:01We were giving him a lot of credit beforehand.
11:02Yeah.
11:03Yeah.
11:03That's the – that's the cruelty of the double-edged blade that we wield.
11:08Is it hypocritical for us to not take the new hitting coach to task on this god-awful May that
11:14the Astros are having?
11:15To our credit, intelligent people that we are, people who know and understand that, yeah, Memorial Day is this Monday.
11:23Right, right, right.
11:23Ball knowers, yeah.
11:25Yeah, that – yeah, ball knowers and calendar knowers.
11:28Calendar knowers, yes.
11:28I do – I think even as we were saying, hey, maybe – we were saying, maybe Victor Rodriguez made
11:34that much of a difference.
11:35Maybe just – they changed the hierarchy, too.
11:37They used to have co-hitting coaches.
11:39Now you've got one voice.
11:40Yeah.
11:41And that one voice was incredible in the month of April.
11:46Yes.
11:47But now maybe he's got laryngitis.
11:49Laryngitis, I was going to say.
11:50His voice sucks now.
11:51It turns out he stinks at singing.
11:54One scout – this is more from Chandler – one scout looked at the Sugar Land team.
11:58It basically said there's no MLB position players on this roster right now.
12:03Yeah.
12:03Which kind of –
12:04To be fair, it's because a lot of them are up in the majors.
12:07Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:08That's true.
12:09Yeah, that's true.
12:09Hey, our AAA team is currently playing Major League Baseball games, okay?
12:13I don't – but that's the thing, too, though.
12:15I don't even know how many of these guys that are playing for the Astros –
12:19Yeah.
12:20Our bona fide pros.
12:20They're here out of necessity.
12:22They're not here because they earned it.
12:23Right.
12:23You know?
12:24And so I don't even know – that's the big thing for me.
12:27And I saw Chandler and Tyler Stafford on their podcast.
12:30And I think they were – I can't remember if the two of them were talking about this
12:33or if they had Redick on talking about this with them, Josh Redick.
12:36But they were saying something that you and I were saying the other day,
12:40which is the scary thing about this is you're injured, guys.
12:45You know, I know Correa's done for the year and Altuve's got an oblique,
12:49but you're starting to get guys back now.
12:51And it's not like Altuve was hitting all that well before he suffered this oblique injury.
12:56Like he – like a lot of these guys had plummeted into the toilet after a really hot start.
13:01There's no help on the way.
13:03There's nothing – there's nothing right now to look forward to.
13:06The Astros have some minor leaguers that are crushing it right now.
13:10Guys that Dana Brown drafted, they're all an A-ball.
13:12You know, like none of them – none of them – by the time they're ready to get here,
13:16Dana Brown might not be the guy bringing them up.
13:19He might be gone by the time they're – in fact, if I had to bet, I bet he would
13:23be gone
13:24because none of them are coming up this year.
13:25And do you think Dana Brown, if it keeps going like this – do you think –
13:28if it keeps going like this, Seth, they're on – what are they, 20 and 30,
13:31something like that right now.
13:32So they won 40% of their games.
13:33You win 40% of your games in 162-game season, you're one of the worst teams in baseball.
13:38It's a 65-win season.
13:40There's no way Joe Espada and Dana Brown survive a 65-win season
13:44when neither of them have a contract after this year.
13:46No, and especially when Dana Brown was supposed to be the guy that came in
13:49and restocked the farm system.
13:52And then you're reading about how the Astros don't have any viable options
13:56in their minor league system.
13:58Right, right.
13:58Like that part of it is – it's – I think that – you had retweeted somebody yesterday
14:05who said that there was a lack of accountability from the leadership of the Astros.
14:10I did?
14:11I thought you did.
14:12Ooh, I don't know.
14:12Maybe that was an older one that just came on my timeline.
14:14Yeah, yeah.
14:17So anyway –
14:17I'm going to go check.
14:18I'm not saying I didn't.
14:19No, no, no.
14:19I think that we are getting to this point where I do feel – it feels like the messaging
14:23sometimes is almost like when the manager or the owner or the GM talk,
14:29it's almost as if it feels to me like they're talking down their nose at me as a fan.
14:36And remember, this is an awesome organization that knows what they're doing.
14:40Well, all right.
14:41The last couple years, you haven't been an awesome baseball team.
14:44Yep.
14:44This is what I – you're right.
14:46I retweeted Clayton Anderson, who's also a good follow for kind of curating things.
14:50The part of his tweet that I was – because the only thing I tweeted was totally agree,
14:54and he tweeted a long tweet.
14:56So, yes, the first sentence of his tweet, it really amazes me at times how non-accountable
15:01the Astros' leadership is.
15:03This is the part I was agreeing with.
15:05He says, at this point, I feel like a pitcher could go out, give up 12 runs,
15:08eight walks in three innings, and Espada would say something like,
15:11well, his velo was really up there today.
15:13He did a good job getting us through those three innings.
15:16I really liked how he finished off his final batter with the placement of his sliders.
15:20A lot of encouraging signs to build on, end quote.
15:22That's the part I agree with, and that's the part that – I've stopped getting overly angry about it
15:27because Joe Espada is just never going to be a guy who goes – who, like, does the Hal McRae,
15:32rip his phone out of the wall and flip his desk over and talk about how bad the guys suck.
15:38He's just never going to be that guy.
15:40But it is – it does – it bothers me, man.
15:43It bothers me when it's a pitcher who clearly had a bad performance,
15:47and Espada's trying to highlight one or two hitters where something looked good there.
15:51You know, Burroughs is the classic example because Burroughs kills himself with home runs
15:56in seemingly every outing that he has, and it ultimately turns into Espada saying,
16:02phew, it's just those two pitches.
16:04Because, you know, it's just, okay, well, what about the guys that were on base for the home run?
16:07You know, like it was –
16:08Yeah, right, right.
16:09I mean, yeah, they're all like, well, it's just one bad pitch.
16:12We're not going to crush them for that.
16:12That's a three-run home run.
16:13That old – because it's – look, when you go through a rough stretch
16:16and you're a genuinely good baseball team and you're going to ALCSs regularly,
16:22it does make sense.
16:23That old baseball keeping an even keel mentality and everything, it all does make sense.
16:28But now we're pushing, you know, three years of this now of them talking like it's still
16:37that same organization.
16:38And you start to worry about, all right, what level of – what level of the rat poison did
16:43they consume to where they just feel like, well, hey, we're the Astros.
16:47It's – you know, this all works out.
16:49We take no-name pitchers and turn them into something special.
16:52We're going to get the very best performances out of these 35-year-olds.
16:56It's just – it's not that simple when you're not winning playoff games.
17:00It is not, for sure.
17:01All right.
17:01For a series.
17:02Yep, yep.
17:03Yeah, well, three and three since the start of the new season here on Payne and Pendergast.
17:08We'll see if they can build on that today against a Cubs team that is ice cold right now.
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