The Josh Innes Show - Can Astros Fans Handle A Youth Movement?

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

I believe Alex Bregman should be booed when if he comes back to Houston in a Yankees uniform. We discussed this yesterday. Some Astros fans on social media disagree with my take. Let's say the Astros move on from Bregman and Kyle Tucker, can the Astros fanbase handle a youth movement? This new group of Astros fans has never experienced losing. Houston could turn on the Astros pretty quickly if they aren't winning at a high level. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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His name is Josh. Perhaps you've heard of him. He's done some things, some some controversial whatever but he's here and he's doing a pod and he wants you to listen so tell your buddies about it and as always send me some messages send me some emails josh in a show at gmail.com and say hello or dm me on the gram that would be great I'd appreciate it thank you very much now we start here with some Astros stuff. So last night I'm sitting on the couch. I just recorded the pod about Alex Bregman and what it would mean if Bregman went to the Yankees and what it would mean for the Yankees, what it would mean for the Astros,

solely in terms of fan reaction. Because as we talked about, you've got the Yankees and their fans who've spent the last eight years telling you how big a piece of shit the Astros organization is. That the Astros are cheaters. That everybody that played for them are cheaters. Yet, hey, Alex Bregman's here. He's our guy. We want him. So, obviously, you can take the pieces of the cheating team.

The whole we can't take. But you can take as many pieces of the cheating team as you want. And you can live with yourself on that. And then on the other hand, you got Alex Bregman, who, look, I'm not going to turn down money if I'm Alex Bregman, but if the Yankees call and they give you the most money and you want to play, they're fine. But when Alex Bregman comes back to town, if the Astros fans do not boo him, they are spineless.

And I got some comments from people on Twitter about that and some are like yeah I got some likes on it and then some people were like I will never boo Alex Bregman he is a goat and we are classier than that well you're really not I know that a lot of you are new Astros fans who have no idea about anything that happened in the organization prior to 2016 but just spent years and years and years booing Carlos Beltran every time he came to the plate because he rolled out you booed Albert Pujols every time he came to the plate because he hit a home run that ultimately meant nothing so like let's not act like you're just the greatest people in the world like you're the

classy we give everybody a standing ovation all that shit if Alex Bregman comes back to town in a Yankees uniform and you do not boo this man you are pussies that's fine that's the fun of sports like people talk like people talk about it like oh you're you're garbage somebody said only trash New York people would boo a guy like Bregman when he came back. You should boo him because that's what makes sports fun. The fun of sports is that you spend your money and you for the rest of your life are committed to the Astros. That is your team. Alex Bregman can play for the Astros for eight years and the Yankees for two years, the Red Sox for four years. Baseball players are truly not committed to a city or a franchise. They are committed to the best situation for them. It's not like Alex Bregman's from Houston,

and it's not like Alex Bregman will live his entire life in Houston. He may, but he may not. These guys aren't married to it. It's like when you talk about the people in Philadelphia love Chase Utley. Chase Utley doesn't even live in Philadelphia. You know what I'm saying? The second Chase Utley stopped playing in Philadelphia, Chase Utley was like, peace out Philadelphia. Like you can love these guys as much as you want, but at the end of the day, you're committed to

the front of the uniform, not the back of the uniform. That's what makes you a sports fan. Alex Bregman can run off and go to four different teams, five different teams before his career's over. And when he's done and he comes back for these anniversary weekends, you give him the biggest fucking standing ovation ever. And you say, Hey, we love you, dude. Thanks for the home run in game five. You're a legend fucking a right. But when he comes back and he's trying to beat your team, if you give him a standing ovation, when he comes to the plate, that essentially makes you Cardinals fans who are the biggest group of cucks on the planet. You want to know how I know how? Every single player that comes back to St. Louis playing for another team gets a standing ovation every time. Now, it's a

different scenario for a lot of these guys because most of these Cardinals guys, maybe cucks were, look, Cardinals fans, I am one of them. They're certainly, certainly Cucks. They have a nice Cuck chair right in the corner. But they've never really had a situation like this, other than Albert Pujols, who left in free agency, presumably still in his prime, and didn't come back to the stadium for years and years and years with the Angels. Most of the people that leave the Cardinals are not superstar guys and some of them have been traded so it's a different scenario. This is a very this is a situation where a guy is still presumably in his prime. He's 30 years old still plays at a high level and is going to go possibly

again in this hypothetical he may not go there he might stay in Houston he might go to Detroit who knows where he's going to go. But in this scenario, this is a guy, because this is a unique situation. Like you can have Yankees players that go play for the Red Sox. That's happened before. And that's a big rivalry. But this is a unique situation where a team universally is hated by all of major league baseball because of a cheating scandal that happened eight, seven, eight years ago. And because of that, everyone has shit on your organization. You are in a unique situation as a fan base. That unique situation is it's not like where everybody hates the Yankees because they're the Yankees. And that's just the thing to do. They hate you because they think you only won because of cheating. They believe that your valor is

ill-begotten. So they hate you. And they have spent the last seven years talking about how you're cheaters, you're scummy. They hate you. Same with the Dodgers, same with the Yankees, more so than anybody else. Other teams in baseball have done it, but they don't matter. Yankees, Dodgers, those are your biggest competitors, Red Sox to a degree, and they all want to shit on you and say you're cheaters. This is a unique situation. Like I live in St. Louis. Every time David Freeze would come to the plate playing for the Pirates after he played in St. Louis, they'd give him a standing ovation. Well, it's a unique situation because he's a kid from St. Louis. He had the most epic postseason ever, had the biggest game six ever, and he went to

play for the Pirates, and no one's ever going to look at David Fries as an all-time great player. It's not like he's a guy who spurned you after he had an awesome series and said, go fuck yourselves, and then took a billion dollars to play in New York or something, not a Beltran type of thing. So it's unique. Whereas in this situation in Houston, if the guy goes, now, he goes to play anywhere else, you're not booing him.

Anywhere else. If he ends up playing in Detroit, like it is what it is. He's going, say he goes to play with his boy Hinch, who you know how I feel about Hinch. I think he's a weasel who allowed this cheating shit to happen and he gets way too much credit. Fine. I don't like baseball managers, fine. But if he comes back even with Detroit, you're kind of like, all right, you give

him a little ovation. It is weird just how the uniform will make or break how you feel about a guy when he comes back. If he goes to play with Detroit for more money, like they're Detroit, they're borderline non-threatening despite the fact they won this bullshit three-game series against the Astros. You still go, okay, it's the Tigers. They're non-threatening. There's no history between the Tigers and the Astros. Who cares? But if he comes to town playing for the number one franchise that has shit on

you for seven years, the people that have accused you of wearing buzzers, Jose Altuve, if he goes to play for that team and you do not boo him, you are cucks. And the second he's done playing, he comes back and you give him a big ovation. But if he's wearing pinstripes when he comes into that stadium, in this case it wouldn't be pinstripes, if he's wearing that gray Yankees uniform in that stadium and he comes to the plate for the first time and you bend the knee and give this guy a standing ovation, I lose respect for you. That's all. You can rip me for it. You can

say I'm a dope. I don't give a shit. But I've been associated with that city for most of my adult life. I've attended a lot of games there. I know the mindset of the fan base. If you go out and you do not boo that guy, when he comes to the plate playing for the Yankees, you're cowards, you're cucks. And that's fine. That's your prerogative. The other interesting thing about Bregman is like,

he's good, but it's not like he's going to be known as an all time great major league baseball player. You know, like he's solid. That's kind of like the hallmark of this Astros team that it appears that this run is, the run basically ended last year.

And it looks like they're going to start going to a full-on youth movement here in a little bit. I mean, just based on what we saw last night. Let me do this. Let me play a couple commercials for you as if you're requesting them. Like, please, Josh, play this Pampers commercial. I'm going to play a couple commercials for you as if you're requesting them like please josh play this pampers commercial i'm gonna play a couple uh commercials for you here and then we shall continue all right if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs you

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See terms at picksix.draftkings.com slash promos. So last night I'm sitting on the couch with Jilly and we're watching the television and I'm scrolling Instagram like all of us do when we're watching television. None of us can actually just watch what's on TV. Two people are scrolling, not paying attention to each other off in space.

Scroll, scroll, scroll. I had just seen the Garrett Nussmeyer announcement that he was coming back to LSU, which I was actually excited about. I got geared up for it. The video made me hyped up. I'm like, let's fucking go, Tigers, until week one comes around and they lose to Clemson next year. And I'll be like, well, fuck, what do you want me to do? But another thing pops up, and it's this random Astros of like videos and pictures of all these young players that the Astros have and that the basic gist of it was like the future is now type of deal like look we're like young

guns type of deal and it's a weird thing to put out in December considering the baseball season pitchers and catchers aren't reporting for like two more months. It's just a weird video to put out, especially given what's going on right now with the Bregman stuff, with the Kyle Tucker stuff. I mean, Fromber's name has been kind of tossed around in some stuff too. And what I took from that when I saw that when I was scrolling through was you're not seeing anything about Bregman and you're not seeing anything about Tucker. So I think what they're trying to do is lay the groundwork for,

we're going to lose these two guys, and it's going to be a full-on different team than you've ever seen, basically other than Jose Altuve. That's kind of what I took from that. What I saw there was a franchise acknowledging that, well, since 2016, there have been some stalwarts in this thing. And gradually, as things happen over time,

you've lost them, lost them, lost them, lost them. And you've lost guys like Correa, who left and was still very much in his prime. Springer, who wasn't. And guys like Marwin, who just move on. I mean, there's a bunch of different guys that were part of that initial fun core of that franchise that have now gone on to do different things some aren't even playing anymore all that you still have Altuve who will just live and die

here I just can't foresee Jose Altuve playing for uh anybody else other than the Astros he will live and die with the Astros and that's a beautiful thing because he will go down probably as the greatest Astro of all time greater than Big Biggio, greater than Bagwell, greater than Berkman, who's my fucking guy, greater than Nolan, greater than J.R. Richard. Just think of any guy whose name is up in the rafters there. Altuve is going to be the GOAT, the all-time great Astro. And I'm glad that he stays there. And I don't want to see him play for another team unless this team is just totally awful. And I don't want to see him play for another team unless this team is just totally awful. And I don't want to see him play for a bad team.

But anyway, point being in all of this is you're going to keep losing guys, guys, guys, basically what they acknowledged in that video. And I saw that scrolling through last night was that they're anticipating this being a big time youth movement. Obviously you'll still have the big fella. You'll still have Altuve. But once you get past those two dudes who are kind of the stalwarts of that lineup, it's going to be a lot of newer dudes, a lot of younger dudes, and they're trying to brace you for that. They are trying to let you know that, hey,

Tucker, we're going to get rid of Tucker probably if we can find the right suitor for him because we want to get something for him. And Bregman's probably going to sign somewhere else. They're not going to take our offer. And they're bracing you for that. And maybe all these young guys that they featured in this video, and I'm not going to pretend that I know who all of these guys are and how good all of them are. I'm not there as part of the day-to-day world of the hot Astros prospect universe like I was seven years ago. However, I'm curious to know and curious to see how long Houston as a city, which is a fickle sports city, which most cities are at this point. But basically, once you get outside of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, most cities are going to be fickle and they're going to ride with

you when you're winning. They'll give you a little bit of leeway if you've won enough as you kind of fall off. And then they kind of tail off as you're not winning as big anymore. The Astros, the last couple of years have not been winning as big. Obviously they got bounced in the first round this year by their former manager. You start losing guys like Bregman who were guys that were core pieces of this team when most of these people got into the Astros because let's be real like go back to 2009 when I got there 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 no one gave a shit about the Astros because the Astros were tanking before that they were middling and nobody gave a shit about the Astros because the Astros were tanking. Before that, they were middling and nobody gave a shit about them. Then they had 2004 and 2005.

Those were great years. Prior to that, there was that solid run of Astros baseball where they seemingly won the division all the time, but never really did anything in the postseason. There are people who have been Astros fans since well before then. But the reason why the Astros are as popular in Houston today is because a new group of people started following the Astros sometime around 2015, 2016, 2017, and wanted to glom onto a winner. They all kind of jumped on with this young group of dudes with Correa and Daltuve and Bregman and just go down the list of all those young guns, George Springer, all these young guns that they had there that they kind of grew up with. What I'll be interested to see is if Bregman does roll and if they get rid of Kyle Tucker, if they trade Kyle Tucker,

what that means for the interest. I think like out of the jump, people will still be interested, but this is not a city that's going to remain interested if you're not a truly competitive team. This is a fickle city. You've got a football team. And again, this is not apples to apples because the app, because the football team is the stepdad. It's the Texans. It's not the Oilers. So I get all that, but you got a football team that's better than they've been in a long time. And you still have a hard time getting people into the stadium early and they still leave early. You see what I'm saying? So this is not a passionate sports city. I ain't trying to rip you. I'm just trying to tell you the truth. I lived it. I was there. I've been over a decade

of my life living there and about 15 years of my life being associated with the city. I know how the city operates, like you know how the city operates. The Astros are hot because the Astros are consistently a World Series contender with big-name players that a lot of their new blood fan base grew up with. What happens when those guys are gone and there's a new crop of dudes and maybe those new dudes aren't as good as that hard? I mean, you're not going to see a group of players like the Astros had as a collective come through all that often anywhere. It does not happen.

That group of players that came up together and was part of that movement together was special. And that may happen once ever for a franchise. It just doesn't happen that often that a young core group of players like that, mostly because you're not seeing teams tank to that degree like the Astros did to get them. But like that group of guys was special. Will that happen again? You got a bunch of young dudes. You're trying to sell the fan base on the young dudes by putting out social media posts about how, hey, it's kind of a new era, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what kind of reaction Houston will have to a new group of dudes, especially if those new dudes don't win. And I already kind of sense

somewhat of a boredom that the fans have gotten. Like winning does that. If you win and you win to the highest level all the time, win and you win to the highest level all the time anything other than winning at the highest level is going to drive people to some level of boredom like we saw the first round series against Detroit and saw the empty seats I'm not going to rip fans for not going but I think fans do get to a point and it sounds ridiculous but just like no matter how hot a chick is there's some guy ready to kick her out of bed, right? The Astros, for seven, eight years, have been this dominant franchise that have owned the city of Houston sports-wise,

and people have gotten to a point where they don't know losing. Do you realize what percentage of Astros fans, like this new blood Astros fan base, has no idea what losing is like? They have no idea. They couldn't tell you the guys who played on the 2009 Astros fan base has no idea what losing is like. They have no idea. They couldn't tell you the guys who played on the 2009 Astros. They couldn't tell you about Michael Bourne, Hunter Pence, the end of Lance Berkman. They couldn't tell you about Carlos Lee. They don't know about losing. They don't know about being awful. They don't know about the tank. All they know is that 2015

comes around, 2016 comes around, 2017 comes around, and that's what they know. There's a ton of new blood people in Houston, which, hey, more power to you. At least they're buying the product. But there's new blood people in Houston. And all they know is that the Astros have been great. And as we've learned about fans, if social media teaches us anything, it's that sports fans do not cope well. They just don't. And I'd be interested. I mean, we saw it this year early in the season with the Astros struggling for the first time in seven, eight years.

People don't cope well with this shit. So you lose Bregman, you lose Tucker, presumably, in this hypothetical, and you get a bunch of new dudes, and those new dudes aren't playing, and they're kind of viewed as like replacement Bregman, replacement Tucker, replacement, in this hypothetical. And you get a bunch of new dudes, and those new dudes aren't playing, and they're kind of viewed as like replacement Bregman, replacement Tucker, replacement Correa. You start going on the list of these guys. How will people react to that, especially in a city like Houston that is fickle? People will tune out quickly.

It's just the way the city is. So it'll be intriguing to see. There's pressure on the Astros because you have to keep people engaged. And we saw first round playoffs, people weren't all that engaged because you get to a point where people have an expectation of excellence. And when that excellence doesn't hit, it's very easy for people to tune out and get bored. And I think that's what you're risking right now with the Astros.

And that could very well happen. So, again, that was a very that's new blood, new money. The Astros fan base, a large part of them is new blood. And how interested will that new blood stay when all of their favorites that they fell in love with are gone? And maybe the team isn't a dominant force anymore. It'll be interesting. All right. We'll talk later.