- 1 day ago
Seth and B-Scott kick off the show talking about the Astros 10-1 loss to the Angels last night.
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00:00Dude, football season cannot get here soon enough.
00:06You didn't enjoy that baseball last night.
00:08Bruh.
00:08Is that?
00:09What?
00:10You mean I stayed up for this?
00:13That felt like, you know what, that felt like baseball karma.
00:16That was, so, for those of you who didn't stay up for all nine miserable,
00:20eight and a half miserable innings of that game last night.
00:22Right.
00:23You know, the Astros, the Astros at the mercy of the baseball gods won two nights ago
00:29because Jose Altuve was somehow, somehow was safe at home despite a perfect throw
00:37from the, from the, from the, from the outfield, kind of, from the extended infield.
00:43A perfect throw, that's a horrible base running decision by Jose Altuve.
00:48Yeah.
00:48That he got to kind of wink, wink, live to fight another day afterward.
00:52Yeah, so they, like, karma got him immediately in the first and second innings
00:56because Kai Wei-Tang couldn't find a sweeper, which is his go-to.
00:59And in the first two innings, multiple errors in the infield, just sloppy baseball.
01:05They angeled it up.
01:06They looked like a classic Angels team as they lost to the Angels last night
01:11because they just, they tried to, they tried to give the Angels every opportunity
01:15they could to allow that loss.
01:18Yeah, so the frustrating part about it is, Seth, is that the Angels, never mind that they're the worst team
01:25in the division, they're the worst team in the American League.
01:29They've got a case.
01:30Which is, which is the worst league in all of baseball.
01:33Yeah, and so, and all the National League has that's comparable to it really is the Rockies,
01:38but the American League is really bringing down the property value of all of Major League Baseball.
01:42And the Angels are chief among those offenders, if you will, and somehow the Astros can go out there
01:51and embarrass themselves against that team and lose 10-1.
01:56I know it's just one of 162, but let's not act like we haven't been watching this entire Astros season.
02:02And, like, they're at this stage now where they're playing basically 500 baseball, Seth,
02:07where they're, like, good to win every other game or so.
02:11But, you know, you go up against the Angels and you're, like, this is a chance to get right.
02:15If we're trying to feel good about the Astros season or feel like there's going to be a positive spin
02:21on it,
02:21it'd be good to kind of get right against, I don't know, the team in baseball.
02:26And they go out there, and this game was over, like you said, two innings into it.
02:31They're down 7-0, and you're, like, I don't know if I want to go to bed
02:35or if I want to stay up and watch this disaster.
02:37And this is a stretch of games where they've got a bunch of games in a very short amount of
02:41time,
02:42except they've got a bunch of games against sub-500 teams.
02:45And even though since we reset the season they've been playing like a 90-plus win team,
02:51you've got to capitalize on these opportunities versus teams like this.
02:54The Kiwi Tang over the last two outings would be the thing I'm most concerned about based off of last
03:01night.
03:02You know, okay, Jamie Payne is not an awful infielder, et cetera, et cetera.
03:05They've got a bunch of guys on base, but they couldn't do anything with it.
03:10That's their thing.
03:11Yeah, that's right.
03:11They've got a kink for that.
03:13Well, I think that's the problem is when they, as a group, say,
03:18all right, we need to practice more judgment at the plate.
03:20We've got to be more patient.
03:21They do a good job of it, but they've been neutered by that point.
03:25And they can't.
03:26It's like one or the other.
03:27They're either lambs or they're inefficient killers.
03:30You know, they're just either hacking away or they're just being patient at the plate.
03:36But Kiwi Tang, who just had a miserable leaving last night, couldn't find a sweeper, as we said.
03:42But we've fallen into this pattern of so many guys that either show up and you've never heard of them
03:50before.
03:51And, boy, wow, look at the first few games.
03:53They look awesome.
03:54And Kiwi Tang was great as a reliever, but then now as a starter, boy, all right, he's doing some
03:59promising things.
04:00I just hope they can write the course on him and that it just doesn't get another Astros pitcher where
04:07he gets a pitch selection glow up
04:09and some of the analytics help him out and everything, but then ultimately teams catch up to him.
04:14Yeah, so there were two things about the Astros this season that gave you a little bit of hope, right?
04:20And both of those things, a concerning part about how last night played out and you're mentioning Kiwi Tang, he's
04:26part of this.
04:27A couple of the things that made you optimistic about the Astros have kind of lost their shine a little
04:33bit, if you will.
04:34One of those is the Kiwi Tang, Peter Lambert, and even I'll throw Spencer Arrighetti in there,
04:43who was pitching at an AL Cy Young caliber before his last outing, or at least before the Pittsburgh outing,
04:51right?
04:52And then, of course, they lose to the A's.
04:54But, like, these things were supposed to be some, like, a positive, hey, at least they've got this going.
05:02And so Hunter Brown's coming back.
05:04And Hunter Brown, by the way, is going to have his fourth minor league start today.
05:07It should be his fourth and final minor league start before he joins the team.
05:11We'll see how that goes.
05:13But it's like, okay, they've had some surprise performances from pitchers that can kind of stabilize them until Hunter Brown
05:21gets back
05:21and they kind of have their full staple of pitching.
05:25And the hitting, at the very least, in the beginning of the season was pretty solid.
05:30But then to the point that you're making, it's a lot of feast or famine with the bats.
05:36And I feel like with the pitching, it's sort of regressed to the mean now.
05:42Like, how much could you expect or how long could you expect you were getting from Kai Wei Tang?
05:47Peter Lambert's on the mound tonight.
05:48How long could you expect to get what you were getting from Peter Lambert?
05:51He hasn't necessarily looked this sharp.
05:53And then the Spencer-Eric Getty thing, as well as he was pitching in as great of a story as
05:58it has been,
05:59and you've got to feel like there's going to be some regression to the mean with that.
06:03And so it's like, I mean, I've been sitting here the last couple days like, well, at least there's still
06:08Jordan.
06:09Right?
06:09Right, right.
06:10At least Jordan's on the mound.
06:11For now.
06:12But he's making an MVP bid, and at least there's Hunter Brown coming back.
06:17But a lot of the other things that I felt good about in a season where you haven't had as
06:22much to feel good about with the Astros,
06:24a couple of the things that I felt good about or felt best about, I don't feel as good about
06:30anymore.
06:30Kai Wei Tang being among those things, and then the bats being right there with it.
06:36Well, and I think, you know, with Eric Getty, too, I don't want to freak out after just two bad
06:41performances.
06:41He had a lot of seven earned runs in his last two appearances.
06:45There's two ways you could look at it.
06:47One, all right, look, he's still got a 2.21 ERA on the season.
06:51He's been magnificent.
06:53But at the same time, if you're being as objective as possible, he's a career 4.1 ERA pitcher.
07:01Exactly.
07:03So it's somewhere, and you still see that ceiling to where, man,
07:07this guy has the potential to be a Cy Young caliber pitcher.
07:13But it also, you know what really annoys me about it?
07:16Sean and I have been whining about how he's not on the leaderboard yet
07:19because he doesn't have enough innings pitched.
07:21And now he has illustrated exactly why there are minimum number of innings pitched.
07:26You're like, oh, yeah, pitching takes some time to accumulate a total body of work on all of this.
07:32Sample size, not overrated.
07:35And, yeah, he's still really good on the season.
07:37It's just a little bit of a reminder.
07:39Oh, yeah, yeah.
07:40You can't go out there and just, you know, you can't go out there
07:44and selectively pick a few games and say that's our pitcher.
07:47Sure.
07:47So, Kiwi Tang last night, this was his stat line.
07:51He went four innings, gave up seven hits, walked five.
07:56And that was a big thing.
07:57So you talk about not being able to locate the – not being able to find his sweeper.
08:01His command issues were just – I mean, they were just unavoidable.
08:05That's basically what lost him the game in the first couple of innings.
08:07So he goes four innings, gives up seven runs, five earned.
08:11You mentioned the errors earlier.
08:13Walked three and had five strikeouts.
08:16And then the bats, as I was talking about earlier, right,
08:19like the feast or famine nature of that, they left 11 runners on base
08:24and went one for eight with runners in scoring position, one for eight.
08:29So that just kind of goes to show you, like, not only was Kaiwi Tang bad
08:34and didn't really give you much of a chance to win early,
08:37but even the chances that the Astros had, the few and far in between chances
08:42that they had, they weren't good at capitalizing on them.
08:45And as I mentioned before, this is kind of their thing, man.
08:47They got a weird kink for just teasing you a little bit, taking you right there up to the edge
08:52and then saying, you know what, I'm good on that score and runs thing.
08:56I'm good on that, dog.
08:57The one really annoying thing about last night was that, you know, Trey Mancini,
09:03he continued his impact from three years in the minor leagues where he's now, this year,
09:10because he's only played in two games, both against the Astros,
09:13he's got a batting average of 500 with an OPS of 929.
09:17To be fair to the Astros and to Trey Mancini's credit, comebacks is what he does.
09:23Yeah.
09:24Like, he's a comeback kid, right?
09:26Beat cancer, beating retirement, beating the Astros,
09:29which apparently is not as hard as I would like for it to be.
09:33So, shout out to him.
09:34Most he's done on a baseball field on the same team.
09:37If he's shared a field with the Astros, this is the most impressive he's been
09:43while sharing a field, either playing for the Astros or against the Astros.
09:47The Astros just bring something out of this guy.
09:50Yeah.
09:52Astros World Series hero Trey Mancini, who we seemingly have not heard from
09:57since he became said Astros World Series hero, is back and in full effect.
10:02Thank you, Astros.
10:03The other thing that's bothering me a little bit is that Pena just hasn't been
10:09magnificent in the fielding in the last week or so.
10:14I feel like I can count in my feeble noggin at least three errors
10:18or should have been errors.
10:19Yeah.
10:19Well, he had that a couple of weeks ago.
10:21He had that one throw.
10:22He actually had one game where he had two really poor throws where I think
10:27Christian Walker picked him up on one, but then the other one just got away from him,
10:32and it was just such a routine, like not a difficult play at all.
10:36And it's weird because on the one hand, Jeremy Pena, prior to the last game
10:43against the A's, like 18 games or so, with Jeremy Pena coming back from the
10:49injured list, he had been, I'm not going to say tearing the cover off the baseball,
10:53but he was hitting pretty well, right?
10:54Like the redeeming qualities of the Astros.
10:57They were Jordan Alvarez, and then, of course, C-Walk, Christian Walker,
11:01and Isak Pedetis at some points, and then Jeremy Pena giving them a little bit of,
11:06packing a little bit of a punch, a little extra punch coming back.
11:09Yeah.
11:10But, man, then the defense, that's really what his calling card is,
11:13is being a gold glove level shortstop, and it hasn't really felt that way
11:17for a little while now.
11:18My feeble noggin was correct.
11:21He's had three errors since June 4th.
11:24Yeah.
11:25What's today?
11:25The 10th?
11:26Yeah, that's a week.
11:27Three errors in the last week.
11:28Yeah, man, get right.
11:29All kind of weird, like little weird bounces, but not crazy bounces,
11:33right there where the dirt and the grass meet.
11:38And then last night, what, Altuve, the ball drops out of his glove.
11:42That was the baseball gods right there.
11:43The ball dropping out of his glove on the toss from Pena.
11:48Or when he was trying to turn the double.
11:49You want to know what a real rollercoaster ride
11:53or what really illustrates properly this rollercoaster ride with the Astros?
11:58How we went from, and I can remember listening to you and Sean,
12:02and Sean specifically, lament the whole idea of Tatsuya Imai.
12:08You remember when he was too tired to pitch?
12:11Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:12Or fatigued or needed to get his strength up?
12:14And it was like, man, this looks like it's going to be an awful sign.
12:17And this looks like one of the worst Astros acquisitions outside of Jose Abreu
12:23that we can remember in a long time.
12:25It looked like it was headed.
12:27Now, obviously, it was really early on in the process.
12:29But that was just like, what, maybe a month ago?
12:32And now, until Hunter Brown gets back, which is going to be soon, just to be clear,
12:36he's making his final minor league rehab appearance before it looks like he's going to join the major league team.
12:42Knock on wood, nothing goes wrong here.
12:45But now, man, Tatsuya Imai feels like their most reliable guy outside of the Spencer Eric Getty stuff.
12:51I don't want to take too much away.
12:52But, again, he's had two rough starts back-to-back.
12:56Mike Burroughs is a disaster.
12:58All due respect, dude, it is just a disaster.
13:00He's out there throwing batting practice.
13:02That meatball four-seam fastball that he's got, that it seems like anybody that's just played baseball can hit
13:10and hit it out of the park.
13:11You've got Mike Burroughs still trying to figure it out.
13:13And then those three guys who surprised you for a little while and seem to be coming back down to
13:18earth,
13:19Tatsuya Imai until Hunter Brown gets back is like the proverbial ace, if you will.
13:24And that's a wild place to be considering where we were just like a month ago.
13:28If I cherry-pick to the extreme and excuse him for his first outing when he came back where we
13:33felt like,
13:34okay, man, this is more of the same here, since he's stabilized and maybe adjusted a little bit
13:38and he feels more comfortable, he's got a 2.91 ERA in four games.
13:42So extreme cherry-pick, small sample size.
13:45But the curve, the graph, if you look at it, it's headed in very much the right direction.
13:51And that's where, that's the one with Imai where I can right now say, look, it felt like he was
14:00just completely in over his head
14:02and he was lost and everything.
14:03And as much as his explanations felt useless, right now they look very much like valid explanations for what was
14:10going on.
14:11And you can, like anybody who's ever had to move to a new city, and especially if you've lived in
14:16a city or traveled even
14:18and had to work in a foreign country, it is, it's an all-out assault on everything you're comfortable with.
14:25So that part of it at least makes sense.
14:27And that's where, I guess maybe I'm most optimistic just because of what he is as a prospect
14:33and what they hope for him, and that if it was, if all those explanations or excuses or whatever you
14:39want to call them,
14:40they're all things that seem like you should be able to overcome them, you know?
14:44It wasn't like he had to change his mechanics dramatically or anything,
14:48or that he was battling injuries, well, other than his fatigued arm.
14:53That, okay, I'm okay feeling kind of sort of confident on that one.
14:58Yeah, I got to admit, man, this is why there's a benefit in going to the ballpark
15:04because whenever I just kind of hear it on TV or read the quotes or see some of the videos
15:11on Twitter
15:12and the guys talking about me, and I'll be honest, actually, I was at the, I was basically in the
15:18dugout
15:18when he first gave that answer about fatigue, and we kind of just looked around.
15:24I remember looking around at all the beat writers, like, have you ever heard anybody talk like that
15:28or say that the, or when he said that dinner was, like, on an off schedule?
15:33Yeah.
15:33Have you ever heard somebody say dinner was too early or too late, and that contributed to them not pitching
15:37well?
15:38Like, that's a very unique answer.
15:40I've never heard that before, and I thought it was, I kind of rolled my eyes at the time
15:43and thought it was excuse me making.
15:45Really got news when he came back and he talked about the difference between the mounds
15:51and just feeling a lot more comfortable in figuring out where he wants,
15:56like how he wants to leverage his weight on the mound.
15:59Yeah.
15:59And just not giving enough credit to how much the mounds are different or might be different
16:04or must be different in Japan versus here, and then even how different the mound is
16:09from ballpark to ballpark that he's going to go to, right?
16:12And this was at, of course, at Dyken when we were talking about it, but I'm like, man,
16:16some of these subtle things that you might not give enough credit for if you haven't done it,
16:21you know, if you haven't pitched at all, and then certainly if you haven't pitched
16:24in two different countries, you don't get the subtle differences between, like,
16:28how that can throw a guy off, like just not feeling like his body weight is properly situated
16:33on the mound.
16:34It's like he's not using proper leverage in his pitches, and it's like, oh, you know what?
16:38That might matter a little bit.
16:40No, no, and 100%.
16:41And, you know, I try to be cognizant of that.
16:43When you're reading quotes or when you're listening to an interpreter, I mean, there's always,
16:51you always lose some context when you read something.
16:54But then if you're even watching an interpreter, you just have, you have no feel for whether,
17:02like, how am I supposed to know if it's a good interpreter or not?
17:05Yeah.
17:05You know, like, I have no idea.
17:07And it didn't help, Seth, that this guy had, like, three interpreters within the span of,
17:12like, a couple of months.
17:13Right.
17:14Maybe less than that.
17:15Yeah.
17:15I mean, how is that?
17:17He was Murphy Brown in his attorney.
17:18Yeah.
17:18That's where I felt like, you know what the answer is going to spring for is get a really
17:24good actor, like a Japanese actor who speaks, you know, who speaks English and Japanese really
17:31well and have him come up and do the, I don't know if George Takai speaks Japanese.
17:36Is he alive?
17:37If George Takai is still alive, and I don't know if he speaks Japanese or not, but I think
17:43he's first generation American.
17:46Like, somebody like that, really deliver it the right way with accuracy.
17:49And don't make it sound like he's whining or complaining about something.
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