- 2 weeks ago
Seth and Sean kick off the show talking about the positives despite the Astros losing 2 of 3 to the Brewers over the weekend. Mainly, another good start from Tatsuya Imai, and some good news on the injury front pertaining to Josh Hader, Hunter Brown, Christian Javier and Jose Altuve.
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00:00Well, I feel good this morning, Sean.
00:02Stroking your beard.
00:03Yeah, it's June 1st.
00:05Getting ready to...
00:05Josh Hader's return is imminent.
00:08Tomorrow.
00:10Well, you know the whole thing about this,
00:11and I don't know where we're going to start this morning,
00:14but that's what's in my brain right this morning.
00:15We're starting with Josh Hader. Let's go.
00:16Well, it really was.
00:17At some point this weekend,
00:20somebody mentioned that it'll be his first time back
00:23since August 8th of last year.
00:25Sometime in August, yeah.
00:26And it struck me as something I should be pretty generally aware of
00:32was, okay, it was in early August last year,
00:34but it felt that feels so much longer.
00:38I don't know.
00:39In my mind, it was kind of like, oh, yeah, the end of last season.
00:42Not that it was damn near a full calendar year
00:46since we've seen Josh Hader.
00:48So it just, I don't know.
00:49It got me feeling better about life in general.
00:53I know, and I know that we're all striving to hinge how we feel in life
00:57based on when your closer is going to return.
01:00That's what all the philosophers say.
01:03That's what you should pin your hopes and dreams on.
01:05So I feel especially good about that.
01:07That should be the barometer for your mood at all times.
01:09How is your closer doing?
01:10And the reason why there's been such a void
01:12is because they've had no closer.
01:14That's why.
01:16They've had no closer since August.
01:17Maybe Abreu can step in and be the closer, Sean.
01:19Yeah, maybe he could.
01:20How's that been going?
01:21I haven't been paying attention.
01:22Yeah, he blew another game on Friday.
01:25Glad you asked.
01:26Oh, well, and the other thing, too, is just...
01:28Through nine straight balls.
01:30Nine straight balls on Friday.
01:31You don't say.
01:32You don't say.
01:34But Emai, ever since we geniusly reset his season,
01:38has been awesome.
01:41Do you know that was the fourth most pitches thrown
01:43in Major League Baseball so far this year?
01:45I did not until I read the recap of the game last night.
01:48Yes, yeah, yeah.
01:49Yeah, that's...
01:51I was...
01:51He had thrown 86 pitches through five innings.
01:55And by the way, welcome in, everybody.
01:56If you missed it, blah, blah, blah.
01:57The Astros lose two out of three to the Brewers,
01:59but they got a bunch of guys coming back pretty soon.
02:02So I think the mood is fairly positive right now.
02:04At least it seems like it's trending upward.
02:06So that's the general mood.
02:07Back to Emai.
02:09He had thrown 86 pitches through five innings.
02:12I thought that was it for him.
02:13I thought he was done, and he came back out for the sixth.
02:17He wound up throwing 116 pitches.
02:19He had to work out of a jam in the sixth.
02:21Yeah.
02:22But Espada, I've got Espada here talking about this.
02:25Espada said he wanted to go back out for the seventh,
02:28which I thought was pretty cool.
02:29Here's Joe Espada.
02:31He definitely emptied the tank there at the end.
02:33He came in, and he was like, I got more in there.
02:36Like, I could go back out there for another inning.
02:38I'm like, well, I'm sure you can.
02:41But it was really good how he's – there's more confidence.
02:47There is – there's a different presence about him when he knows, okay,
02:54you know, things are starting to go my way.
02:55And that's very – that's very important for him,
03:01just where he started and where he's at now.
03:03This is where Emai needs to get acclimated to being a Houston Astro.
03:07He's thrown 116 pitches through six innings.
03:10He's coming back into the dugout, and he's like, hey, Skip,
03:13however you say it in Japanese, through his translator, I got more.
03:16You can send me back out there.
03:18And that's where Espada has to say, no, no, no.
03:20We have this thing here in Houston called elbow discomfort.
03:23Yeah.
03:23And it happens a lot here.
03:25And we don't need to be pushing the envelope with you,
03:28veering you into elbow discomfort.
03:30Right.
03:31We've already – it seems like you're getting acclimated to American culture
03:35and the pitching mound and the slippery baseball and all of that.
03:38We don't want you to get acclimated to our illustrious history of UCL injuries.
03:44No.
03:45Yeah.
03:45We don't have to do the whole American Astros experience in just one fell swoop here.
03:51Okay.
03:52There's certain rides at Astro World that you don't need to go on, okay?
03:55Don't try to live the entire experience in three months.
03:58That's exactly right.
03:59Don't start off rough and then get it right, get it back somehow,
04:02because that's an Astros pitching thing now all of a sudden over the last three years.
04:06Hey, he started off rough.
04:08Yeah.
04:08Now he's got it dialed in.
04:10Yeah.
04:10No, let's just cut it.
04:11We'll just keep it right there.
04:14The fact that he did it versus the Brewers was really impressive too
04:17because they chase out of the zone less than any other baseball team right now.
04:24So you've got to throw strikes.
04:25And that's what eluded him.
04:27I mean, he was nervous to be aggressive, and he's making that switch and that change.
04:34He's more comfortable throwing his fastball.
04:36He was digging in and getting higher velocity on into the later innings.
04:41That part of it all felt very much like, okay,
04:45there's a guy who's overcome a lot of his obstacles.
04:48These last few appearances have been very, very nice.
04:51Very nice.
04:52It's one of those ones, like, if you had told me yesterday that the Astros are going to lose,
04:57but Emi is going to pitch super well again, I'm like, you know what?
05:00I'll take that behind, you know, as opposed to what's behind door number two.
05:03I'm like, they need – I know they need to win games too,
05:06and I know Seattle is going to start to pick things up here pretty soon.
05:09Like, the division is not going to be five sub-500 teams forever.
05:13Like, you know, Seattle is probably going to start winning some games here.
05:16They're 31-29 now.
05:18The Astros are four and a half back.
05:20So they won't – on Friday – it's a really weird thing, Seth,
05:24because on Friday they were two and a half back, and I was saying, boy,
05:28mathematically we could come in on Monday and they could be in first place.
05:33They could be in the playoffs.
05:34And they lose two out of three to the Brewers in their two games –
05:37they lose two games in the standings.
05:40But it's a weird thing because I'm like, all right, I'm not super discouraged.
05:44The Brewers are a good team.
05:45They threw that game away on Friday.
05:48You know, they had chances to win that game both in the initial nine innings
05:53and in the tenth inning.
05:54They had chances in that game.
05:56Brian Abreu pooped the bed again.
05:59But as you pointed out earlier, Josh Hader's coming back here soon.
06:02That's good news.
06:02We'll get into all the injury news in just a second.
06:05Look, compared to where they were at the beginning of the year,
06:08I just feel they have more going for them right now.
06:11You know, and especially Hunter Brown's going to pitch in El Paso for Sugar Land
06:15on Thursday this week, he's getting closer to getting back too.
06:19So if this is what Emi is going to be, you know, his last three starts have all been good.
06:24His last two starts have been excellent.
06:27If this is who he's going to be, and Eric Getty is who he has been all season so far,
06:32and you're getting back what you think, what we think is going to be normal Hunter Brown,
06:36then you can start to see the makings of something here,
06:39at least on the pitching side of things, with getting your closer back on top of that.
06:41Yeah, and I don't know how much we want to tempt Fader,
06:44if they've even issued a statement about this that I missed.
06:47But, you know, at some point, as Emi acclimates to American baseball,
06:51maybe they get him on a five-day rotation.
06:55I don't know.
06:56I haven't heard.
06:57Oh, I thought I saw something about them going to a five-man rotation.
07:01Yeah.
07:02Well, yeah, it's not based on schedule.
07:05That's where I'd like to be the one codicil to that.
07:08Where he gets four days of rest in between starts, like a normal Major League Baseball pitcher.
07:12Yeah.
07:13So, here's the injury updates for the Astros.
07:15And, again, the standings update is they're four and a half back in the AL West.
07:19Seattle started to win some baseball games.
07:21So, this dream of being in a division where 81 games, 81 wins, might win the division,
07:28I think that's going to go up in smoke.
07:30I think Seattle's going to pick up some steam here.
07:32But they remain, Seth, just two and a half out in the wild card race.
07:36Now, granted, there's four teams in between them in the wild card race right now.
07:40They need a lot of teams to start losing.
07:41Yeah, they're also, like, three games ahead of being dead last.
07:45Four and a half.
07:47Four and a half.
07:48Okay.
07:48Being dead last in the AL.
07:49I'm looking at the standings right here.
07:51So, yeah.
07:51But it doesn't feel like a precarious position because even in this series loss to the Brewers,
07:57who's a very – the Brewers are a very good baseball team.
08:00Yeah.
08:00They played like a – they played like a good baseball team can lose two out of three.
08:05That's right.
08:05There's nothing out of that series where I felt like, oh, they're light years behind
08:09teams like the Brewers.
08:10I don't feel like that at all.
08:11Nope.
08:12Nope.
08:12So, we have an Abreu meltdown.
08:14We got another Lambert quality start by Lambert standards.
08:17Five innings, two earned runs, bleep ton of traffic on the bases.
08:21Did you see on Saturday – that's why I love Mondays because we're just going back through
08:25three days of baseball.
08:27Did you see Yordan's single off the top of the wall on Saturday?
08:32Yeah, it was a –
08:33Dude, that's the freakiest – he's hit some bombs in his time.
08:38That might be the freakiest thing I've seen him do.
08:41It was a – it was like a line that barely got on the ground and it missed the home
08:45run
08:45by like – by 10 inches.
08:47It felt like it would have set some kind of record for trajectory on a home run in the
08:51stack cast era or something.
08:53Yeah, it was crazy.
08:54It was crazy.
08:55And he – it was a single.
08:57It was 115 miles an hour off the bat.
09:00Some of Yordan's home runs, they almost – they give the same effect of a rising fastball.
09:07Like, just where it just doesn't look right, you know?
09:10There's a – where a guy – a guy that throws incredible heat and throws a rising fastball,
09:15there's just an optical illusion about it.
09:17Yeah, man.
09:17That's where Yordan's home runs, they just – they kind of break your brain when you're
09:21watching things like that.
09:22Yeah, yeah.
09:23And he was bad yesterday.
09:24The Miz, Miz Lurowski or however he pronounces his name, he had Yordan's number yesterday.
09:30Yeah.
09:30Three strikeouts, three at-bats.
09:32Yordan was not great yesterday, but we'll give him a pass.
09:34You know, what with him being the – one of the leaders in the clubhouse for the MVP.
09:38How about – so they're off today.
09:41Let's give the – here's the – because we promised it.
09:43This is the update on the injured guys.
09:45Seth mentioned it.
09:46Josh Hader is scheduled to be activated tomorrow.
09:48So, this will be fun.
09:50We have our closer back, Josh Hader.
09:51So, these one-run games for the Astros, you know, if they get into a one-run game here
09:56where they're leading, you feel a whole lot better.
09:58You feel a whole lot better about them holding – you know, keeping that lead and winning
10:02the baseball game.
10:02I'll credit Brian King.
10:04He's done a nice – of the Bryans, he's done a much better job of holding down the
10:07closer's position when he's been asked to than Brian Abreu did earlier in the year.
10:12So, Hader's scheduled to come back tomorrow.
10:15Christian Javier is pitching at Corpus on Wednesday in a rehab start, double-A.
10:22Hunter Al Paso to pitch for Sugar Land on Thursday.
10:27And Jose Altuve is very close to facing live pitching as well.
10:31So, there's – man, knock on wood, after what felt like a first two months of the season
10:36where they couldn't go two days without somebody else getting banged up,
10:41getting hurt, this is all good news on the injury front right now.
10:45Yeah.
10:45The reinforcements are coming.
10:46I'm very anxious to see if Javier just resumes a role in the starting rotation or not.
10:51He wasn't pitching like he deserved it before he got hurt, before he got the shoulder injury.
10:55I'm knocking on wood as we speak, as you said, that everything's looking good on the injury
11:00front.
11:00You know, one mistake I had realized I had made for a long time was that my desk wasn't
11:05made out of actual wood.
11:07Where now – now that I have real wood, I feel –
11:10You changed your desk.
11:12I feel like I'm going to – yeah, yeah.
11:13That is – that's probably why all these injuries are happening.
11:15You're just tempting the baseball gods when you say knock on wood and it's not actual wood.
11:19It's for Micah or something like that.
11:21Yeah.
11:21Good job.
11:21Apparently the Astros are six and three in one-run games, which is – you know, I think
11:27part of that is that a lot of – for so long they were just losing so many non-one
11:32-run
11:32games.
11:33Yeah, yeah.
11:33Or it's one-run games where they've blown a save or something like that.
11:37What would you say – and we're just kind of riffing on the Astros here in the open.
11:42What would you say if I told you that the Astros were first in baseball in successful
11:51challenges from their hitters in the ABS system?
11:54Let's say that it matches the eyeball test but for – but for one guy – actually but
12:00for two guys because Vasquez was really a long time.
12:03He seems to have figured it out.
12:04He was struggling on defense with it.
12:06This is just for hitters.
12:07Oh, just for hitters.
12:08Just for hitters.
12:08Yes.
12:09Okay, then my God, they've overcome Cam Smith to an extreme degree.
12:12Exactly.
12:12Except Cam Smith, his actual average, it's not that much lower than the Major League
12:18Baseball but the problem is he's taking so many of them while not showing any actual acumen
12:25for it.
12:25Yeah.
12:26But the other guys are so good at it.
12:28Yeah, they're really good.
12:29So as a team, 59.4% is what their success rate is for hitters.
12:35It's really good.
12:36Here was Joe Espada before the game yesterday when they brought that stat up to him and he
12:40said, here's what our process is.
12:41Yeah, and we actually do a lot of work behind the scenes on showing our hitters, umpires
12:52where they're missing.
12:53We actually have who's behind the plate today, where are the areas where he misses.
12:59So we are creating, um, you know, a way for the guys just to be aware of this is when,
13:08this
13:08is, uh, the best time to do it.
13:11Um, this is the pitchers who are missing and they're not being challenged.
13:15We should be aggressive and challenged.
13:17So we, we have a really good process in place where I think the players are benefiting from
13:22it.
13:22That's really interesting to me.
13:23And I look, there's probably other times.
13:24I'm sure there are other teams that are doing this too, but I, I had never thought of that
13:29angle of getting a book, accumulating a book over the course of the season on all the umpires.
13:35Oh yeah.
13:36And where they're missing.
13:37Like that's, that's cause that's, that is who you're challenging.
13:40You're not challenging the opposing pitcher hitter.
13:44You're challenging the umpire.
13:45And that's just, I would love to see exactly what that looks like.
13:48You know, there's, um, and it's really cool.
13:50You know, the, the fact that the league is in communication with the umpires during the
13:55game about how they're calling it and everything.
13:58And so the umpires aren't necessarily always all that surprised when they, uh, when they're,
14:03when they miss one, uh, cause they're getting constant feedback and the strike zone has gotten
14:07a lot more uniform and, um, like the umpires, imagine that getting constant feedback, uh, constant
14:14accurate feedback has made them better at calling strikes.
14:18Go figure.
14:19Yeah.
14:19Right.
14:20There was the, I guess I only read the article about it.
14:22I didn't see it on social media or anything, but I guess we had our first glitch in the,
14:28um, in the ABS system era on a Saturday.
14:33I think it was on Saturday.
14:34It was between the A's and the, and the Yankees.
14:36The A's were, were at bat.
14:38I think it was Soderstrom was at bat.
14:40And the, the chat, well, I forget what the final call ended up being.
14:44The A's ended up lose being on the losing end of it.
14:47So it had to be one of their hitters challenging a strike saying it was a ball.
14:51And as it turns out, it was a ball according to the graphic, but for whatever reason, there
14:56was a communication error between New York, where, wherever they house the, you know,
15:02the eye in the sky there and the ump, that's how they end up calling it.
15:06It's not the ump looking at the, looking at the jumbotron.
15:09It's, they get the call from some human being in New York saying that's a strike or that's
15:14a ball and whoever was in the mission control just glitched and sent them the wrong, like
15:21told them the wrong ear.
15:23Yeah.
15:24Even though the radar said something like it was very straight.
15:26It was human error.
15:27It was human error.
15:28And it ended, the guy ended up walking anyways, the batter.
15:31So it didn't come back to bite him.
15:32And even Aaron Boone joked after the game, he's like, well, I guess we got one in our favor
15:36on that one.
15:36But it's the first kind of, it's the first procedural error we've had in the ABS system.
15:42Yeah, the, I mean, if you look at the difference and I don't, so when ESPN shows the tracker
15:47on this, they don't tell you like how many games these guys have called or anything, but
15:53I mean, they've got, they've got an umpire, uh, section, huh?
15:57Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:59Cool.
16:00Um, the, but the difference between the best and the worst, I mean, the, the, the, the Chris
16:05Segal and Andy Fletcher and some of these clowns are losing like 68 to 77%.
16:12Where the best guys in the league are being overturned like 33, 35% of the time.
16:18Yeah.
16:18There's a big gap.
16:20That's a huge gap, dude.
16:21Yeah.
16:21I mean, it's just, it's, it'll be nice over the course of a few years.
16:25You'd imagine.
16:26Yeah.
16:26You start swapping out some of these human beings with other, with human beings that
16:30are, are, are, are better at it.
16:32Yeah.
16:32You just got, cause they, cause you've got it in the minors too.
16:35Yep.
16:35Um, so it's a, it's an opportunity now.
16:37It's, it's like anything to, if any umpires are complaining about it, they're afraid of
16:41competition.
16:42Absolutely.
16:42You know, they're afraid of being held to a standard.
16:44They do.
16:45They, you know what?
16:46They need to, they need to incentivize umpires to be in that opportunity.
16:51Well, the incentive is you keep your job.
16:53Yeah, that's true.
16:54Yeah.
16:55I think that's a, that's pretty much it.
16:57Yeah.
16:57See, I like bonuses where I can make more money, not ones where I just maintain my employment.
17:02Well, getting a salary versus not getting paid at all is a pretty big gap in money.
17:06That's true.
17:07That is money.
17:07That is human money.
17:08Yeah.
17:09Yeah, that's true.
17:09Good point.
17:11Um, all right.
17:11So there you go.
17:12Your Astros lose two out of three over the weekend, four and a half back in the division
17:15because Seattle has started to find its groove two and a half back in the wild card because
17:20nobody in the American league outside of the division leaders can find their groove at doing
17:24anything right now.
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