The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Feeling a Rocky Mountain High, Steph Does Steph Things

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Astros Feeling a Rocky Mountain High, Steph Does Steph Things

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Welcome to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show at Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. You play this when things are going well in Colorado, but the Rockets won there like once early this season. Yeah. And they avoided them in the playoffs. That is a Rocky Mountain High. We're really honest with you.

Yes. And we couldn't play this in three days last week in Denver. So today's today. Okay. I know you hate it. And that's fine. It's okay. I respect you.

I mean, it's fine. It sounds like you're waiting in the lobby of the doctor's office. Let's let it finish out. Come on now. Really? Yeah. It's got a crescendo to it. Listen to hit this new note at very end.

It's not the way. It's a homemade airplane? Yeah. Does he think he's Orville right? Yes. From Lubbock, ironically enough. Or no rights from Lubbock? No, John Denver is.

Oh, sorry. Is that a stage name or is that his real name? John Denver. I believe it is a stage name. Oh, okay. Sounds like it. You know what? They call me.

Matt, Texas. You know what? I'm going to refer to myself as Matt. If John Denver could have been John Denver for whatever his life is, I'm Matt, Texas, the rest of the show. Yeah, from Detroit, who loves in and out. Hey, I like Waterburger too I know

And you should be ashamed of yourself too Why? Because you like it or not better than two Yeah, I don't call myself Mr. Texas You can, Mr. Texas Can have a pallet for any country In part of the world And all glorious 50 states

Hell, I'll be eating lobster rolls By six months a year pretty soon Why are you eating lobster rolls six months a year? Well, because that's the New England thing to eat Oh, okay. You're spending even more time on the road? No, probably. Well, I mean, I'm going to go up and see here.

But you're going to come too. This is great. Let me taste them. You're going to come up for a week and we're going to do the shows up there and you'll be like, oh my God, this is America. I'm going to be out of money within minutes. I'll take care of so.

You're a free place to stay. All right. We're about that. I'll be eating at the Dunkin every day. Hey. You know there's a Dunkin' Donuts opening up inside of Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, probably up there. That's how popular they are.

Yeah, if you are Boston North, I'm going to guess what, four-hour radius of Boston and you try to gas for a Starbucks. I mean, you can find them, but they'll scoffing. Yeah, you're going to get punched right in the throat. Correct. Yeah, that's for sure. Good morning, everybody.

It is 10.08 on Sports Talk 790. Welcome to you on the Matt Thomas Show. We also have a good show for you today. We feel like we always try our best to give you a good show. Sometimes the shows are great. Sometimes they're not so great. I mean, I would say we still have a level of excellence that we do not go under. Every show is at least a seven.

I would agree with that. I've listened to other shows in the marketplace, and they're normally about two and a half. Some are tense. You know, I got to get us up with some coffee and then I'll try to get our numbers up. Well, thank, you know what? The effort's there. Today on the radio program, we're going to talk to Brian McTaggart, 11 o'clock.

We have, I just don't get at 1130 today. Wonderful. We have Craig Ackerman. I'm going to bug out at one because our flights at two. So Craig Ackerman's going to hang out with you for a segment. You know what you have to do. What? You have to tease him with about at least two Texans questions.

Really? Why? Because he hates the Texans? No, he just thinks that every time that we do a show, all we do is talk Texans for four hours. What? I know. You? It's a show she doesn't listen to this show? Thanks for listening, Craig. Yeah. Ask him who the Texans should draft in the first round. No, I'm not going to do that. He'll chuckle. I don't want to make Craig angry because it's easy to agitate. He gets agitated by the most random stuff. Mm-hmm. Oh, here's what you, can I give you a checklist really quick. Manees. And how he loved

honey mustard for 99% of his life. Then he finds out the mixture has got mayonnaise in it and then he loses his mind over it. I don't want to bring that up either. Oh, I would. I love Craig. I think he does a great job on TV calls. You must tease him. I watch him 75 games a year do a great call. I think

he's a swell fella. He's always been nice to me. So I don't want to get Craig mad at me. All right. So nice, polite Craig Ackerman Ross talk at 1 o'clock today. Yeah, we're breaking down some Rockets basketball, baby. It's a round one. Playoffs are here.

I know. All right. 10-10 is the time. Spencer Getty. Phenomenal. 10Ks. Yes. Six strikeouts.

Mm-hmm. That really long main. Mm-hmm. Different than a former astro pitcher Ryan Stanick kind of Maine. Who told you? And I think maybe you were on this train too, Matt. We were talking spring training like Spencererogetty's kind of been an under-talking. about name because we had him on. He's talked about how much he's learning, how he's healthy now.

Right. I mean, we, he's got great stuff and a great head on his shoulders. Well, I took a call last on the 10th inning show and thank you for listening. I didn't catch it. That's fine. Nor did most of Houston, but that's neither here nor there. Um, well, most of Houston doesn't catch a Super Bowl. Call or called in. I think he's maybe called our show before. He was just complaining about why Spencer wasn't called up earlier. And I just said, look, two things are in play. Number one, it's April the, well now April the 16th. This is, if he's here for the long term, which I would assume

that's going to be the case, this is water under the bridge in terms of missing the first two weeks of the season. Number two, I do believe, not to get that anybody gave me an intelligence on this, but my thought would be they wanted to bring him up when they could get length out of him and that he could get a better testing of

being able to go five, six innings, because if there's anything that's been a part of this Astros rotation this year, for the most part, it has been, I mean, there's been how many games the Astros play this year. 19? Yes. Four guys have gone six innings or more. Four times in 19 games.

That is a terrible, terrible ratio. And Spencer Irgetti, last night was the fourth one that went. So they wanted to get a guy put in the rotation that's not going to put their bullpen in a horrible situation in the fourth inning of most games. Now, was this guy just asking you for a reason or was he being mad about it? He was mad about. He's like blaming the Astros because they're trying to sit back of her guys. I said, look, this isn't about service time. This is about him being ready. time. This is one of those times in life folks where, of course, it is our duty and our right as

Americans and as sports fans to question managers, general managers, presidents, senators, governors, state representatives. It's our, it's our right to question. But sometimes we have to lay back and say, they know more than we do. If Spencer Erigetti was not called up immediately, and he's been one of the Astros' best pitchers in the last couple years, and he's coming back from multiple injuries, and he needed to build himself up. We're just going to have to trust that Dana Brown and Joe Spada and the people with the Space Cowboys and Spencer Aregetti

and the pitching coaches that they know more than we do. I know it's crazy to think that somebody might know more than we do, but sometimes we have to trust that, especially when it comes to matters of baseball, and it's a starting pitcher, starting on a team. team. So if Spencer Erigetti's not out there and he's at AAA building up, obviously

there's a reason for it. That's what I said. I think building up, making sure they're absolutely ready because they don't, I think from a confidence standpoint, they don't want to bounce him back and forth between Houston and Sugar Land. Because I think they do have high hopes that Spencer Arrogati is a long-term member of the Astros rotation.

So like I said, if things are going well and in two months, this is a moot conversation. But most importantly, you think about what happened directly last night. Directing last night is that he was the best of Spence Heragetting. Now, he's always at a high walk rate. Yes. He's always at a high strikeout rate.

Yes. But yesterday, good control, excellent strikeouts, and most importantly got you through six innings. And he threw 100 pitches. You know why? He was built up from AAA. He was ready to give you 100. Yeah, so just trust the process as a general manager once. Definitely earlier when all the injuries were happening, like when they all happened in Colorado,

he had just thrown in AAA. The timing wasn't right. Right. So I don't know exactly what the timing was. I got news for you too. The guys that are wearing major league gear and the guy that's wearing the suit and the tie that's trying to hold onto his job, meaning Dana Brown and the manager, they need the best 26 out there. This is not a rebuild.

This is not let's look, arrogating season at Sugarland. They need him to come up and win baseball games. He did it last night. Exactly. So, I mean, it looks, and this is the funny part too. When he gets built, what we should be saying? Matt, this is what we should be saying. We should be saying this was perfectly handled by the Astros because he looked great out there. Looks like he's ready for the season. So when things go

well, maybe we should say to ourselves, hey, you know what? Maybe they handled this perfectly. As I've said before, and it's, again, through no fault of anybody per se, it's just the reality of it, is there are more people that think they can run a baseball team and there are more people that can run a football team or basketball team because I would think a large amount of people that have been a fan of baseball have some participatory process in it and say hey you know it's easy to like for instance you and i ross do not sit around going man i wish the texans would have gone covered too in that play yeah you know we just don't do that football it does not work that way either ball is caught paul is thrown properly uh pass rusher gets to the player players are made penalties that's about this

what question play calls all the time people but yeah but you got but in in basketball it's okay why is this guy getting jump shots or why is this guy particularly playing or why is Reid Shepherd now starting that kind of stuff so everybody's got their nuances but at baseball to me the second guessing is way higher than it is in the other two sports at least that we talk about all right uh yordawn goes deep again yesterday uh and brian abray you over parts of two innings walks off the mound in a good mood we need that and Enel de los Santos, who had a terrible save percentage before his last two saves for the Astros, came in and shut the door down again as the Astros won by a final score 3 to 1.

So we've got that to get to get to 713-212-5-790, 7-1-3-212-5-790. It's Matt and Ross. We're with you today until 2 p.m. Brian McTaggart. We'll join us at 11 o'clock. We've got to the news at noon, Craig Ackerman at 1 o'clock and you. And I just don't get it. 713212-1-2-5-790.

7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Please join us. Killing back at the curtain of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. You know, you get in here and you get settled in your spots. You look at the headlines. It gets something that would draw up some interest. And I just happen to find something involving the Los Angeles Dodgers. Okay.

That's not going to interest you. They've won a ton of games. They've won a ton of games. And there's a reason for, by way, Lauren Shahati. Good gracious. All right. You know what? I'm changing the channel. My God.

All right. What is that noise? It's admiration. It's appreciation. Oh, please. What do you call that? I wasn't like going, I was like, hey, it was like, basically. All right.

I'm going to hose you down. Congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers who said, we're going to pay payroll tax. We're going to pay luxury tax. We're not going to care how much it costs because we're. We're going to win a World Series. We have a regional TV network that helps us fill, takes care a lot of money. Unfair advantage.

We have a 55,000 seat stadium that's full almost every single night. They routinely draw over $3 million comfortably. They are one of, they are behind the Yankees, the biggest brand in baseball, and they're one of the top 15 brands in all sports. I'm going to give you a chance to guess and don't look at the story. And I'm going to give you. I have no. I'll give you $50 million to the direction.

Wow. That's how big. That's how crazy it is. Okay. Go ahead. How much. did they spend in payroll and luxury tax in 2025? 50 million either way?

50 million either way. $409 million. $409. Your final answer. Sure. $515 million. Oh, my God. Their payroll was $345.3.

Their tax on that was $169 million for a grand total of $514.7 million. All right. Now we're going to play, what's the other end of the spectrum? Oh, the lowest. Okay. Can I guess, pirates? No, but you got two more guesses.

Tampa Bay, Colorado, somewhere in the Cincinnati. Keep going. One of those. Worst, just tell me. Miami, yeah. Okay. I will give you $3 million either way. $41 million.

$68.7. Okay. So, let's put this in perspective. they the los angeles dodgers paid in luxury tax more than what the marlins spend on payroll wow let me read you one more statement the dodgers total was seven times the 68.7 the miami marlin spend and more than the payrolls of the bottom six combined you take the bottom six teams in baseball you add them all up they will not add 514.7 million dollars that's crazy that's why i've always said this rossi i don't know how how this lockout is going to be fixed when you have such a discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots. Usually when you go in and you work together, like, we're going to fight the employee or the employee is going to fight the big man. The big man is all about the same. They're all in comparable terms.

This isn't common. The Miami-Morlands are nowhere in the, even in the same stratosphere as the Los Angeles Dodgers. And it's not just the Marlins as the team you just brought up. I, yeah. But I also get the players side to where if you make a salary cap and it's like 250 million or 300 or whatever million, then that's $200 million. The players and the other owners are just allowing the Dodgers to pocket. To where they can throw their hands up and say, yeah, whatever.

And then it just goes in lines the pockets of the owners rather than the players. So I don't know. This is a weird situation. Here's what the players are afraid of. You get a salary cap and the Dodgers are capped off at 300 where they would. normally have spent 515. The Dodgers say, well, that's the rules. They've got to go.

So now there's all these other teams that are going to spend this money. And the problem is the teams are not going to spend it. Even with a floor. Yeah. They're not going to make up for the amount of money the Dodgers would have spent on players. You need a 90-100 floor, which is, I believe, both the NFL and the NBA. Now, it could be off a tick or two, but both of them around 90, 9 to the floor is 90% of the cap. But the thing of it is, though, on the NFL side, as you know, they split everything.

They split the television deals, they split the apparel deals, they split the, I mean, the only thing that's different is I think the ticket sales. Everything, and actually that's not true. I think the road team gets a part of the ticket sales from the home game. So it all kind of evens out. The NFL is even. The NBA is even. Baseball's not even.

And that's where I think the players are going to push back on, well, it'll help the other team spend. Unless you put that 9,100 floor into play, the Marlins are not going to all of a sudden say, well, the Dodgers are spending $200 million less. We'll take. we will get now four or five players because we'll be able to spend on that money. No, you're not. You're just going to pocket what they have. I think I'm starting to get this.

It's marinating. My gut feeling is that the players are going to avoid a cap. They're going to really dig in. I think you're right, and I think that's going to be why we're going to miss baseball next year. They've had all this time to dig in. And then prepare, save money, get the war chest built up. Yes. Except for the employees that work at stadiums.

they can give two craps about them. Well, they're the employees of the owners. Why don't the owners give them money? They should. Somebody needs to make sure that people are taken care of. Okay. And it also includes like, frankly, the Robert and Steve's of the world and broadcasters and accountants and ticket. I mean, there are people that work for Major League Baseball teams that are responsive, their salaries based off a ticket sales.

My guess is they're going to be furloughed. A lot of teams will furlough those employees. And you know, the reality is this? and this is an awful thing to say, I don't think the owners will sweat that because there are kids that are 22 to 30 years old that die to work for a sports team. If that batch of kids go away because they can't afford it

because they're in ticket sales, they'll get the next batch of 22 to 30-year-olds that will take over. So they're not going to be fine. Yeah. That's why we need the Astros be good this year because we could be, if we're settling in on a lost season and then you miss a season,

ooh, it's going to be a lot of time before the city of Houston just runs back to Houston Astros baseball. They're turning it around, Matt. Two-game win streak. Yes, they are. Going for three today. Going for the sweep. Yes.

Of the Mighty Rockies. Mighty is a strong term. Ryan Weiss, ready to deal. All right. You want to make a prediction on Ryan Weiss's stat line? When we come back? Okay, I'll let you think about it for a minute. That's what you call the cliffhanger of the year, folks.

I don't know if it works. Did Ross's cliffhanger? You know what? I do want people to vote on my poll I put up at Sports RV. That is? On my Twitter. Question. It's about a song that we got in an argument about yesterday, and I'll leave it at that. Oh, I saw it.

You know, I don't love that. You know, I don't love that song. Okay. But I did vote. What were the times here? Good song or not a good song? I think I vote a good song. Okay.

And it's losing, I'm assuming. You voted good song? Yeah, it's not terrible. Not wretched. It's not a mini Perverton or whatever her name is, Riverton. You know what? Don't argue music with Matt. You shouldn't.

I know. Because I am a cultural icon of many decades. 1029 on Sports Talk 7-9. It's one decade. If you would like to be in a celebratory mood and join us on this radio show to brag about your local baseball team, we're here for you at 713-213-2-790. 7-1-790. We do appreciate you 10 o'clockers because y'all mean a little extra something to us. Isn't that right, Ross?

Yeah. Got a lot of them. I mean, we're out and people are, people talk about, tell me how they're 10 o'clockers. Some folks on Instagram talk about how they're 10 o'clockers and stuff. So the 10 o'clockers are out there, Maddie. And we appreciate them. All right. Here's what I'm going to do right now. Do you want a password again?

Nope. Oh, that was fun. That was fun, but we're not doing believe we're out today unless you're doing what I'm going on. Oh, hell no. All right. If you follow me on Instagram until 11 o'clock, I'll follow you back. Wow. You're hilarious.

That's for only 10 o'clockers. Okay. So right now between 1035 and 11 o'clock, 25 minutes of, I don't care who you are, what you look like, where you're from, what you'd like to do. If you want to cuss and discuss Texans football, that's your entire page.

I'll follow you back on Instagram. At SportsMT, but only for the next 25 minutes. Okay. So we'll see. I'll follow you back as well, at Sports RV. Okay. All right. So I let it out there.

You get the limited time. offer. I think 25 minutes is fair, right? Yeah. All right. 713-212-5-7-90. Call your shot on Ryan Weiss's line. Let me give you a few parameters.

Okay. Does he go? The over-under is 5 in a third. Oh, that seems like an easy under, quite frankly. Okay. Four runs. I will go under that as well. Nice.

Okay. That feels good. Nice by Weiss. Nice by Wines. Yeah, we're going to be calling Ryan Nice after this start. Well, you know, he wanted to be a starter. Yeah. And was very polite to a level to say, you know, I'm not usually used to.

What do you want to say? Maybe I can get them one out. I don't know. He's like a big hulking dude just coming over from Korea. Of course he wants to start some games. You know what? No, your role. No.

He always dare to be great. All right. We need to table this till tomorrow. He wants to be great. He's going to show us how great. I mean, what do you want him to say? Hey, do you want to start or do you want to relieve? I mean, I guess he could go.

No, no, no, no, no. Do you want him to go boring, vanilla? Well, I'm just here to help the team in any way possible. I think whenever role, I'm ready to be and hold hands and kumbaya with everyone. If you're a first time, I think you're first time major liquor, you want to kind of just know, just kind of walk gently out of those, all those tricky waters. I got no problem with him saying I want, I want to start. He has got the cuff.

You know what you're going to do tonight? You're going to get out on that map. You go get him seven innings. Those finger guns? Yes, they are. I don't know what's happening. What? I can't finger gun?

Well, I want Ryan Weiss to have the confidence of a starter when he's out on the mound. I'm okay with it. But he's so far he sucks so far. Yeah, he's not been good. I want him to be really good. He was good at the first couple of times out, but guys might be catching up to how they're thinking with Rapporteurs, I'm not sure.

We got a lot of pictures in their fields lately. What's going on with that? What do you mean? I got email not happy. And who else? I don't know. This two was plenty. There's one.

I mean, I don't know. I hope Ryan Wise not in his way in his feels. I mean, I don't know. Okay. You know what? Take this. Honestly, Ryan, good luck. I mean, I wish you another, but the best of luck.

Honestly, I want him to be very, very good. Because the asterisk is starting pitching. Yeah. Because there's no timetable on Hunter Brown. There's no timetable on EMI. There's no timetable on Christian Javier. Ryan Weiss, let's go. That's LFG.

Yeah, he hadn't pitched for a week. Last two times out. He threw 60 plus pitches last two times out, but he also gave a bunch of runs and didn't go three innings. Okay, well, things can change. I'm team Weiss. Yeah. Five innings, two run ball. I think, I mean, I don't know.

I would definitely take it at this one. You heard of here first. All right. Five innings, two run ball. Ryan Nice. Ryan, so nice. Yes. They named him Weiss.

What's wrong with me? a lot. All right. Poor guy didn't want to go back to Korea. He said he loved it over there, though, and his wife did too. It's nice. Maybe he can help with a transition for EMI. Low crime, great technology, great transportation.

Food is good. Food is amazing. Oh, my God. Look at all these people that have to follow back. How many is it? God. Look at that. Yes.

Oh, my God. Like 15. All right, here we go. Y'all asked for you got a time. Toyota? Follow back, follow back, follow back, follow back, follow back, follow back, follow back. Oh, look at this. I'm so happy for y'all, y'all.

Look at that. That's all it takes is a followback? All right, I'm in. I can do this. Oh, something called. Oh, stop, Matt. I can't read that one. Jesus.

You never know who's listening. You never know. 713, 212, 570. This is great. I got to request some of these people, unfortunately, here. That's fine. All right. So, Jordan, I mean, let's get to 1.30 if he can knock this out and you can just crush me for a couple of days.

Why? Because he, every time he gets the plate, he's scaring the bejesus out of people. That's great. I don't need to crush you. He's a great hitter. You knew that. I did know that. I never said he wasn't a great game.

It was just... He's on a place to play a lot of games, but I mean, all it takes is one chin fracture. Ah! Don't you put that into existence? Kyle Tucker says hello. Oh, my God. I was listening to the boys this morning. You know that Kyle Tucker and Cam Smith,

the Cam Smith just has about every offensive metric better than Kyle Tucker? That's great. And a much affordable price? Much more affordable price. Much more affordable price. Cam Smith is looking like what we thought he was, spring training in the start of the year last year. He's looking like a dog.

Now, the outfields the last couple days has been a little bit more of adventurousome. but, you know, again, he's relatively new to the situation. I think he's been one of the best outfielers in terms of, uh, I know you're a big outs above average guy, Matt. No, I'm not. He's been, he's been one of the best in baseball. Out's above average? As compared to somebody's average, he's a bet he's about out above it. Yeah, see, it's very easy to understand.

Look at that. Didn't crack your brain in half. I'm ready for some XBA talk. Okay, good. No. It's very easy. You hit the ball hard, you get high XBA. Bing, bang, boom.

Uh, you hit the ball. ball heart and it gets into a glove, it's an out. That's my metric. That's my metric. I don't care what the metric. The metrics are the Astros are winning two games against a sucking color off. If you get somebody with a 300 XBA and a 200 XBA, you probably want the guy with the 300, correct? Every time I hear you XB, say XBA, I think of XB.A. Alidotius. Isn't there a song with that in there?

Supercalifragilistic? X.P. Alidotius. Okay. Thank you. I didn't, I knew the pull, and you got it for me there. Thank you. All right. So, yeah. So, yeah. That's going well. And frankly, there is now a concerted effort for Brian and Bray to reestablish himself because for the second straight day he was not brought in a... He was born in a leverage situation.

Close game. Three one game. That's leverage for sure. Absolutely. But maybe just trying to slowly regrow that confidence back a little bit. It was great. And I mean, yeah, he did walk the first batter that he faced. That runner got to third.

And you could hear the groans at Diken Park on four pitches. All right. So they had the servicemen out. in right field yesterday. Yeah. It was, what is it, Fleet Week? Fleet Week. What does that mean?

They're down in Galveston. They're flying the planes around and whatnot. Again, I'm not overly familiar with it, but it was great to see so many fans in that one little section that all were in the same uniform and we're obviously serving our country. That's fantastic. Somebody sent me a, I was either an IMDM or an Instagram DM that said those guys were trying to start the wave.

How do you feel about that, Matt? I'm troubled. because I appreciate their service to our country. I appreciate the time and the effort and the knowledge and training and the opportunities to get to get themselves off their feet and get away from the hustle and bustling and the pressure that comes with serving our country. It's a lot of pressure.

But you just cannot do the wave. And that's the thing that's going to make me consistent and consistently great is that I'm not going to selectively say who can do the wave and who cannot do the wave. You under no circumstance can do the wave. You just can't, especially when you're serving our country. Well, it was a 3-1 game. That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying if it's like 8-0-0. I'm saying if it's like 8-0-and-you're drunk in the 8th inning, start the way of, who cares? But it happened on two days ago. You were there at the game out tonight, right? Yeah, I tweeted it out. I tweeted out Wade Busters H-O-U. Ooh, did I give it a retweet? That's fine.

That's my burner account for the only. It's a burner account. That's okay. No, I mean, it's whatever. I'm trying to find it because, yeah, it was 7 to 5. Astros, top of the eighth. Because Colorado was coming back, because it wasn't at 7 and 2 at one point. Yeah, there was a man on and no outs.

It was a tense situation. Then some jokers in the right field started wave. It went around a couple times. Did he have cigarettes on his shoulder? You know, like you wrap the t-shirt and put the cigarettes on right there? No, they're in his back pocket. Were they? Jorts?

Yes. Long hair. Uh-huh. Hey, what's wrong with long hair? The mullet is something else. Oh, okay. There's a guy in the NBA that does stats or on the league. He's national stats. guy. He travels the country

to do stats. It's a great, great side gig, right? Sure. Major mullet. Yeah, mullets are back a little bit. I don't know. With the mustaches. I was in this room of 200 people.

He was the only one. One of the 200 does not make it back a little bit? Yeah, it used to be zero. But does he get out of the shower? The young kids bringing the mullet back and the moustaches. Does he get out of the shower and go, this looks good? Jonathan knows.

On that SFA campus, you saw some mullets, right? Oh, wait to me Yeah, but that's notcadocious I mean that's just That's just a part of right of passage Oh, please And Western Kentucky Yeah, why are you going to Mollett country?

Mollett country? Yeah I can't help Two places that would be Mollets would be Western Kentucky and SFA It just would be I don't know I just

Are you jealous Matt? No Now there are things I'm jealous about For sure And I'll never tell you them publicly What they are But very publicly I'm not jealous of mullets.

You gotta grow out. It's a whole process. I would have wings if I grew my hair out. Yeah, you have to take care of that thing. You know what I'll do? I'm gonna come show you a picture of me when I was fat and I had the hair on the sides.

You'd be like, damn, how do you get a looking woman like that to marry? I'm like, economic and charm. And can I can't, okay, can't. And charms. I'm sure you're pretty charming. And salary potential. That's good. It worked that well.

We both got what we needed. 1045. Matt and Ross with you here today until 2 o'clock. Brian McTaggart in 15 minutes here on 790. More on the Astros coming up in about to 10 minutes from now. Coming up in 40 minutes, I just don't get it. And mine is about our friend Adam Clanton and our friend Cole Thompson about things they don't get. And I don't get, they don't get things. It's a sports related one, but we've always got things to do non-sportualated.

So we'll do that coming up at about 40 minutes. minutes from now. We're going to get back to the Astros with Brian McTagger coming up in about 10 minutes. But do you see Steph Curry again last night? I mean, he's been hurt 60% of the season, maybe 70, and he's getting older. And all he does is still take 35 foot three-pointers, closes his eyes, shoots him from his chest,

and they go in, and the Golden State Warriors, they're like Rossi are they like a cockroach that just lives in your house that you just can't get rid of I don't know maybe it's more like Michael Myers or Jason or something like that

they always come back and they come back I'm not going to win the championship or anything like that but man Steph Curry is great Traymond Green was locking down Kauai Leonard

at the end of that game too and the Golden State Warriors live to fight another day. So the seventh spot is the Blazers. Yes, they've already guaranteed that because they beat Phoenix. Aux couple of weeks back. War your sons for the eight spot in Phoenix. Yes.

And then Hornets Magic, which doesn't, I know doesn't sound cool, but it's actually going to be a pretty good game. These planes have been fantastic. And I know that they're just not resonating with folks, and I get that because we got bigger fish to fry. We've got the Rockets and Lakers coming up this weekend. But, so Jalen Green is going to have to try to beat

Golden State to keep their playoff life align. Dylan Brooks. Oh, yeah, absolutely. there too. Devin Booker? Yeah. Oh, I don't see a line. I wonder why there's not a line. It'd be too early in the morning maybe?

No, no, there would be one like laugh at the game. Does somebody get hurt? I don't know about it. Who's got status? Quentin Post is a game time decision. That must be it. If you and I went to a bar. And we had a hundred-dollar bills in our hand.

Yes. And we said, who's Quentin Post? Or name Golden State Warriors. And for every person the names Quentin Post, you get a hundred or hey you can't name Draymond or Steph. Name Warriors.

Be difficult. You may get a few Brandon Pajemskys but there'd be no way they would pronounce it properly. Be tough. Rossi, they just won't go away. They're fine. They're away.

No, they're away. It's fine. Now, I do. They're going to be the eight seed and they're going to get smashed. Can I be completely selfish for a second? Go ahead. Who's going to give? And again, I know you're,

not thinking of a whole lot beyond the first round, which is fine, but I can do that because I'm just a brooding fan. Can Golden State give Oklahoma City some sort of serious? I'm looking for somebody to tire them out or at least get them beyond a fifth game. I don't know. I would say Phoenix overall, but Golden State's been playing pretty well too. Phoenix had the better season by far, but Steph Curry was hurt. Maybe with Steph Curry back, it's the Warriors.

I'd say it's a toss-up, and so let the chips fall where they may, Matt. Okay. It's okay. They're going to be out in the second round. It's fine. I don't know why you get so mad at me. Not my attitude at all. Because you're not the only one thinking of that.

I just, you know what? This is my favorite time of year. The intensity goes up. You know the players backwards and forward. You know, like, for instance, when I have to do a Rockets game versus, I don't know, Washington, it ain't the biggest throw in my life. I mean, I'll do it because I'm professional. Do you make a board every single game?

Every single game? Yeah, you should. Especially with the Washington's the world when I don't know the players. I use that board more than others. No, I'm talking about it in a playoff series. Oh, yeah, I'll just highlight the stats. But yeah, I still build a board every time, yeah. It's less preparation because, again, you don't really care how they did 40 games ago.

You're caring about how they do right now. But, yeah, Steph Curry helped them, and they won in Phoenix last night, or excuse me, in Los Angeles. And now the question about the Clippers is, does Kauai Leonard, want to return? Does he want to go somewhere else? And how do the clippers adjust with the still the NBA have trying to figure out whether or not they were pilfering money to him on the side? Oh, by the way, quick note, the Rockets are having an official watch party at Kirby Ice House in the Heights and I will be there. That's at what, T.C. Jester in 610, is that right? I think it's around. Ella Boulevard maybe in that area. I was just told Kirby Ice House in the Heights. That's where I'm going to be. You want to watch Rockets basketball on Saturday?

I will be there starting at 630 for the pregame. And Cole Thompson said he's going to come hang out. Oh, sweet. I'll be there for the post game. well. Yeah. I can tell you this. Cole will be doing shots live on air for the post game if the Rockets win. I drive by it every day.

I'm away home to work. Okay. It's, first of all, it's humongous. So it would be plenty of space. I'm sure the weather Saturday's not supposed to be great, so you're going to want to go inside and relax and take a load off. Is that true?

It's supposed to ring? Yes. It's kind of sad. My daughter's proms is Saturday. So she's not overly thrilled about that. They're not outside, are they? No, but they're going to Galvison after. So that's the kids.

do. Okay. Running this house for like 20 people. Oh my God. Crazy. I just went to Galveston and thought I had a hotel and I wasn't old enough to rent it so they told me to go away and then one of the guys in my group called the guy a D-sucker. It was not great. What? I've told you that served before, haven't I? Oh, yeah, I think so.

I almost got thrown in jail for it. Can you call a guy a D-Sucker? No, guys, please stop. Okay. You can't? I mean, yeah. I believe. Do words hurt? All right.

Let's move on. All right. You tell me. I don't know. You're getting big, big beast with Gary. Yeah, where is Gary? His words. Hey, Gary, can you all hear me?

Yeah, I'm Gary. Can you hear me? I got a horrible take I've got to tell you about. I don't know like good takes from people. That's why we get to Biscuit here on 790 at 1056. Before we get to Brian and McTaggart here on Sports Talk 790. And as soon as I get the potline potted up here, which will be right now. Biscuit, good morning to you, friend.

Hey, top of the morning, my brothers. How y'all? You know, Ross, me and you talk about little B-ball all the time, man. You know I'm old school as a cum, Ross. But Dale's baby boy, you didn't play this stuff into the top ten all the time, man. That's an interesting conversation. The only thing is I like my top ten people to be elite defenders.

That's why, I mean, Hakeem, of course. That's why I have Hakeem over Shaq. That's why I have, I mean, Kobe can sneak in. there as well. The only thing is for me, to me, Steph Curry's defense is actually a little underrated. He isn't as bad as people.

It's better than it used to be. Right, better than it used to be early in his career to where he was pretty good. But like when I'm watching Austin Rivers take you off the dribble and like just thrash you on the perimeter, I got questions about your top 10 status.

But I could see the argument. Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. I don't think defense has put enough in the equation for many people's lists, you know, because that's why I have COVID, you know, you've been nine times first team all defense, you know. And I definitely think Shaq is overrated because of his defense is not being there. Right. But he's a great rim protector, but outside of five feet, he, you know, he was just hanging out.

Who do you think people like more? Keeme or National Shaq? Shack. Yeah. I think it also helps. He's on TV all the time. Yeah. I think the general public would put it,

Shaq hired in the King, but for me, Olajuwon, I'm putting him higher. You know, you win MVP and Diva's a player of the year? Yes. But I was... Yeah, and Biscuit, thank for the phone call.

I was having a conversation about Shaq versus Akeem just yesterday. The re... And I look, you know, you know, you know, I am... I get giddy just being in the company of the Kim, Elijah Juan. I mean, he's one of my heroes.

and to be able to call some of his games from the PA standpoint. And I guess I don't have the frame of reference because he is significantly older than Shaq. But it feels like to me, and I'm not trying to take Shaq over Akeem in a matter of respect, but the one thing I do think about that probably haunts Akeem more than Shaq

is that for a five or six or seven-year stretch, Shaq was the most feared center in the game. Was Akeem ever the most feared for a five or six or seven years stretch? I would say most feared, but he wasn't as dominant. It wasn't a point to where if you look at like Shaq's efficiency and scoring, like he was, it was like 60% plus. He's a two-time scoring champion. Like he led the NBA in scoring twice, Shaq did.

And he was just completely unstoppable. You knew what he was going to do. He was just going to bully you. and I think had a little bit more offensive skill than people gave him credit for as well. His feet were very quick for how huge he was. That's why he could spin, turn, fake, and then you were just done.

And then he would just bowl everybody over. And they literally changed the rules of basketball for Shaq. That's another argument in his favor. Zone defense came back. Illegal defense went away so that people could double team Shaquille O'Neal. So all I'll say is this. When people say Shaq over Akim,

it hurts. Mm-hmm. but I'm not going to get into a nasty Yamama joke contest over that argument. I'm just not. Yeah. Because I love Akeem, but I understand why there is the favoritism toward Shaq.

Four championships, the two. I mean, obviously, I mean, Shaq had Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade. Yeah, greater wingman, for sure. All right. More on this little bit. Let's get to Brian McTaggart. He'll join us next here on Sports Talk 790.

This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. our friend Brian McTaggart going to spend 10 quality minutes with us, maybe 11 if he wants to. 713-212-5-790. We'll talk to you after we talked to Brian as the Astros yesterday got a 3-1 victory. Can you pot him up for me? Please, I'd appreciate that. I sure will. We love to have Brian McTaggart on the program.

All right. So let's end this, please. My philosophy was for Spencer Arrogati, Brian, that first of all, we're not going to worry about him not pitching in the first two weeks of the season in three months from now, as long as he's been in the rotation every fifth day. That secondly, they were just not 100% sure and wanted to stretch him out as long as they could. So, you know what, one or two extra starts at Sugar Land ain't going to kill the kid. Is that correct, at least in your perspective on things?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think he came to camp probably thinking he was going to make the team. And the Astros brought in, you know, a handful of other starting pitchers, you know, Emyrower's and even a couple other guys who were going to compete. You know, Nate Pearson ended up getting hurt so it didn't work out. But, you know, Weiss and Tang, but their plan all along was if this goes really well, we're going to have Arrigi open the season, our AAA rotation. You know, he didn't start a game in gratefully play at all.

He pitched sort of in long relief. So it was pretty clear that he wasn't being given a chance to make the club. And then, you know, when pitchers start or falling left and right, They're going to go to a six-man rotation. He was right there further than, man. He was terrific last night. And I think he had a little bit of a chip on a shoulder. Well, he said that last night.

He pitched with a little bit of a chip on a shoulder for not making the team. And he came out and pitched really, really well. Curve ball was crazy. 16 swings and misses on the curve. So, yeah, it looks like he's going to be in the rotation to stay now. It was a big pick me up. And the reality is this. You know, the striker numbers have always been good.

it's been the other control, the walks that have caused the issue. So if he turns the corner in his major league career, that strikeout to walk ratio has got to be much improved. Yeah, he's got to cut down on the walks. He walked four guys. One of them scored. He hit a couple of batters as well. So he does tend to spray the ball a little bit at times.

But, again, with the stuff that he has with the curve ball and the sweeper, his arsenal, he's got a lot of ways to get hitters out. And when he's pitching as well as he did last night, I don't think it's just a Rockies thing. I think that's stuff that can play against any lineup. But, man, they needed that. They needed a starter to come out and throw six innings because they hadn't had that done since, I think, March 31st.

So it's the first time this month that one of their starters had gotten six innings. So it allowed them to reset their bullpen a little bit, which is good because, you know, with Weiss going today, I mean, he probably can't go more than three or four innings. So it'll sort of be a bullpen day today. They need as many of those guys fresh as they can get. Yeah, Burroughs did go six against Seattle. but that wasn't great. He was kind of doing it because he had to.

So, yeah, there's four guys. And he had six runs, so yeah. Yeah, that was not great. So, yeah, four. The reality is this, Brian, it's four guys out of, what, 19 games? That's not a great ratio of guys going six innings for you out of your starting rotation. No, and only three of them are quality starts. So that's got to turn around.

And I think if they can just stabilize this rotation a little bit, I mean, Burroughs has got to pitch better. you know, Monday he gave up two home runs to Naylor. I mean, other than that, I mean, a lot of weak contact. I mean, there's things there that make you think he can get it turned around pretty quickly here. But the thing about their pitching depth is they knew that they had Gordon and AAA and had Arrogatee, at Alexander, and they thought at some point during the year they would have to need those guys. They just didn't think they would need all these guys within the first few weeks of the season. So they just have to try to weather this storm to the country.

can start getting some of these guys healthy. But it doesn't look like Brown or EMI are going to be back anytime soon. And or Javier, I mean, none of these guys are really even throwing yet. So it's going to be, after weather the storm, but the storm is going to be pretty rough here, I think, for a few weeks. I was going to bring up Tatsuya E. Mai. Can you just give us your thoughts on the curious case of Tatsuya E. Mai with the comments that a lot of people ran with about not being able to eat on time and all that type of stuff. and just how interesting this situation is with him trying to adjust and him admitting it's not as easy as he thought it was going to be.

And then the success hasn't been there on the mound. And now, as you mentioned, he's not throwing. Yeah, I mean, I think his comments were part of a broader issue where he said this originally. He said that I'm having trouble adjusting to the American lifestyle on and off the field. And I asked him off the field what specifically, do you mention the food? But I think that's just part of the whole thing. I mean, this is a guy who, you know, was in Florida for six weeks coming from a new culture. Everything is new to him.

The language, the food, it's not going to be easy. And we've seen a lot of Japanese pitchers or players come over, and it's going to take them a while to make the adjustments. You know, he's talked about the different ball. He's talked about the different mound. The mound was too hard in Seattle. The weather's not used to, you know, what he's used to playing in. So he's adjusting to everything there is. Even interpreters, he's got his third different interpreter now that's following him around.

So he's sort of just kind of a flag out there waving in the wind and trying to figure out which way to go here. So, yeah, the food is one thing, and that sounds bad. But I think it's just a broader thing of him getting adjusted. And the Astros are trying to help him. Joe Espott has talked to some other guys who've had some Japanese players and things they can do to get him more acclimated. but he's not injured. You know, all the scans and tests came back clean, so they're just going to give him a blow here.

And, you know, his stuff in the bullpen in Seattle, everybody said it was electric. He was throwing 98, and the people were like, wow, he's going to go out there and dominate. And, you know, he didn't. He was all over the place. It was a disaster. And it just makes you wonder if, you know, if he was nervous, there was a huge crowd there that night, $44,000, I think they had honored each row with a statue. A lot of Japanese media, a lot of Japanese fans.

he's certainly aware of that. So I think there's pressure on him there as well, but just needs a little bit of a reset, you know, maybe start getting ramped up here, start throwing again, and maybe get on the mound later this month and see if he can be in a better frame of mind. Brian McTaggart, MLB.com, Astros.com with us here on Sports Talk 790. What do you think of the last couple of outings for Brian Bray, you the velocity? Still not exactly what we're used to, but at least he's getting some outs. Yeah, he's putting up zeros.

I mean, he looked a lot closer. last night to the Brayu that Das was a hope. He walked the first guy, but then got four outs, a couple of strikeouts in the eighth inning. The Velo was pretty good last night. He hit 97. To me, the slider was really good.

You know, that's going to be a swing and miss pitch. He was getting some strikeouts on that. So it was another step in the right direction. So, you know, I think Joe will continue to keep him out of these high leverage situations. I mean, that kind of was a high leverage situation. And like Joe said in Seattle, when asked if he was going to

Keep Abraeu out of the closest role or out of high-leverage situation. There really haven't been many. Now, he ended up getting one a few days ago, but, you know, yesterday he comes in and, you know, the time runs at the plate and then time winning runs at the plate, and he got the job done. So it looks like he's on the right track, but he's going to have to start stacking these good outings, though I think for the Astros to have total confidence in him. It's interesting that you've gone to Dillo Santos the last couple of times, and he's a guy that has not had a great track record of being a saved machine.

It feels like to me it's going to be by committee until either Josh comes back or Brayu settles down to take over that role once again. Yeah, I think totally. It wouldn't surprise me if Brian King gets a shot. You know, it's going to be based on matchups. I mean, if they're facing some lefties in the ninth inning, you could see King come in and face those guys. So Joe was asked, you know, who, you know, who are you going to have it closer?

and he's like, we're preparing all our relievers to pitch in high-leveraged situations. So, yeah, it has been De LaSanto's a couple nights in a row. He's gotten a job done, but tonight could be somebody different. And it probably would be somebody different because De LaSanto's pitched a couple of games in a row now. So, you know, the best thing they can have happen is they score a bunch of runs, and they can, you know, give all these one-inning bullpen guys another day of rest and try to kick that can down the road until they can get him back and get him back right. What has been your thoughts about the left field and center field spots in terms of who's been playing, who's been getting days off, how much Yordon's being used?

I know they're trying everything in their power to get Bryce Matthews out there, but the bat just right now isn't there for him. Yeah, kind of a slow start with the bat. You know, he's playing against lefties. With Myers going down, you've got Loperfito playing more center field. So it's given maybe Matthews a little bit more opportunity out there. But, you know, he's going to have to certainly swing the bat, I think, at some point. you know, Loperfito continues to hit the ball hard. He spoke a couple balls yesterday that were hit right at, you know,

one to right field, another one to second base. So, but I like the quality of his bat so far. But, you know, they really don't have a whole lot of options right now beyond Bryce. I mean, with Zach Cole being hurt, I don't think there's anyone really at AAA. They'd be willing to bring up here. So they're just going to have to continue to mix a match with what they have and hope Bryce can get it turned around a little bit when he makes. those rare starts against the left-handers.

All right. So look, one-and-nine road trip was not great. The two home wins doesn't necessarily satisfy all that. The biggest blessing, I think, for Astro fans that are listening right now is the fact that no one's really separating themselves within the division, for that matter, around the league. Why do you think everybody's off to such a mid-start

collectively around baseball, with the exception of maybe that team in Los Angeles? The American League is, again, nothing's ever going to be determined here in the first 20 or 25 games of the year, but no one's really setting themselves apart at this point of year. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any one reason. I mean, I think on paper the Dodgers were the better team and they're proving at that.

I mean, you know, the American League East is a division where you got two or three teams who could win that division and they're sort of feeling each other out. There have been, you know, a couple of injuries here and there as well. And I mean, I think teams are still feeling out this ABS thing, to be honest with you. I mean, walks are up big time. It's probably neutralized pitching a little bit. batterers are getting on base more. So there's going to be some adjustment period, I think,

especially for the pitchers on what's going on with that. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, Astros are right there. I mean, the season is like 10% old. So if they can just get their starting pitching stabilized and then slowly start to get these guys back, you know, the offense has been really good. This division is not going to be a great division. I still think Seattle's a team to beat.

But, I mean, they're struggling as well when they're not playing the Astros. So plenty of time, 140 games plus. You know, a lot can happen. And but it'll be really interesting when they go on the road next week to see if they can play better on the road. They go to Cleveland. They got a lot of road games coming up. They got to go to Boston. So they got to get this road thing turn around.

Lastly, and look, Janar Diaz is not public enemy number one for the Astros. He's hit a little bit the last couple days. But defensively still is a work in progress. And the whole ABS thing has not been his best friend. Once in a while, people ask us about Walter Yonik, and the bat just hasn't been good for him at Corpus Christian. It's ever been really great as a minor leaguer. When do you, as a reporter, start kicking the tires on talking to some minor league folks and worrying about whether or not this guy can ever really hit at the professional level?

Well, I mean, there are only, what, two weeks into their season? I mean, he hasn't played at AA yet, so I think we're way too early for that. I mean, I think he's got to give him a couple months worth of the bats at the AA and see where he's at. When he was playing at high A, he played high A ball for pretty much two years. You know, his numbers last year were a lot better than his first year after he got drafted. So it's taken him a little bit to adjust to each level. But, man, he's such an elite defensive catcher that you've got to be patient with them because they could really use that kind of presence behind the plate.

I will say, Yiner had a couple of really good challenges yesterday. He picked up a strikeout for Erigetti. Erigetti was like, oh, no, don't challenge this. And he did. And ended up being a strikeout. So he did a pretty good job with ABS yesterday, but certainly with his limitations defensively, Yainer's going to have to hit, and he hasn't done that so far.

But, you know, Yonik is probably a conversation in a couple of months see how he's hitting because I don't think he's going to be in the big league club this year, but I think next year he comes to camp, maybe if he had a pretty good year to play with a chance to compete for a spot on the big league club. And you've seen him actually catch a game before? Yeah, AAA. Yeah, he was great. He was, you know, the pop time, the things you hear in spring training when we saw him in spring training were great.

He got a really strong on a second base. He was throwing behind runners behind the batters to try to pick guys off first base. So he was probably the guy in spring training that opened more eyes than anybody else just with what he was able to do behind the plate calling pitches. He looked like a major league ready defensive catcher. It's just going to be a matter of how much he can hit. Thank you for the conversation as always friend, and we look forward to reading your material at MLB.com on the Astros.com website as well.

Brian McTaggart, talk to you with the audience tomorrow on the On Deck Show. Thanks for being with us this week. All right, safe travel, back. Thank you, Brian McTaggart, MLB.com. I usually tell him safe travels. He's telling me safe travels. That's a nice kumbaya. It's beautiful.

It is. Wow. Us kougars just like to make sure we take care of each other. You're a cougar? Well, I'm a University of Houston, Cooger. Oh, okay. As is he? Yeah, that's true.

The league group. Go coogs. Go coogs. All right. We got to just don't get it coming up at the bottom of the hour. Okay. And mine is to a couple of our cohorts, sports-related wise. It's a very sporty.

It's a very sporty. I just don't get it. Okay. But get that coming up in a few minutes here. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Are you hungry right now, Rossi? A little bit.

Would you like some buy one, get one for your boneless wings? Well, I've got to be here, too. 1122 in the a.m. here on Sports Talk 790. Ross Villarreal with you. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Thanks to Brian McTaggart for joining. Talking to Astros baseball. You guys want to react to anything he had to say. 713. 212-790 is the phone number. 713. 2125.790. We also have Craig Ackerman coming up at 1 o'clock. He's going to break down all 3.3.5.790. He's going to break down all 3. things Rockets versus the Los Angeles Lakers. A bit of NBA news, speaking of that, Luca Donchage and Cade Cunningham have had their exceptions granted.

They are going to be able to be eligible for postseason awards. Luca Donchich had his late season hamstring injury. And then Cade Cunningham had his late season collapsed lung injury. So they are going to be available, or I would say eligible, according to the NBA and the NBPA, they have ruled in favor of both of them in their extraordinary circumstances challenges.

So all is well that ends well. We can stop crying over Kate Cunningham and Luca Dantzich not being eligible for the postseason awards. I think you and I agree, this has been so media driven. You know what the collective fan is thinking right now? And I'm getting, I don't know if we have very many collective NBA fans here.

Millions. Millions. They're like, let's get the playoffs going. Let's go. Let's win. And the reason why it is so impactful from media perspective is because media can vote for these people now. And if they get to a certain level on all NBA teams, it does affect their financial futures, which really should never be put into process.

Media vote should not determine how much a player should be paid. That's got to be fixing. I don't know if it'll ever well be, but it's a weird deal. Especially third team. Like third team all NBA? John Wall got $50 million a year for being in third team one year. Yeah. It seems like a little much.

but what do I know? I'm excited for the playoffs. NBA playoffs to meet night after night, great action. The sweet spot is also kind of like I feel like maybe the divisional round of the NFL playoffs

when it's the NBA, the second round. When it's generally like the top four teams of each conference, if you get chalk, and I'm calling Rockets chalk because they're big favorites over the Lakers, you would have Thunder Rockets,

spurs, nuggets, Pistons, Cavs, Celtics. That's night after. night a great basketball. I'm excited. That's what I'm saying. Please enjoy it. I know it's difficult and I know people are mad about the politics or the missing of games, the tank. This is the good stuff. The basketball product's great. The basketball product's great and I wish more people enjoyed it. And I'm not just talking about those that listen to this show or this audience.

I'm just talking collectively. Nobody hates their sport more than the NBA fans that Even NBA fans complain about the NBA the entire time. It's exhausting. Let's talk to Leo in Richmond, Virginia at 1125. Leo, good morning to you or good afternoon.

Good afternoon, guys. Hey, so real quick, I just wanted to talk about Dana Brown's really dumb comments about Hunter Brown, and it reminds me of a scene from Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. So there's a point in the movie

where Al Pacino's trying to close some real estate deal with some schmuck, and Kevin Spacey says something he's not supposed to and blows the deal. And Pacino lays into him, goes on this whole rant, and he ends the rant with, let me tell you something, you would know it if you knew the first rule about anything, something along those lines. You don't open your mouth unless you know what the shot is, you child. And that's what Dana Brown comes off like when he says stuff.

like this. He seems like a child, an impetulent child. It doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't understand the logic of saying what he said about Hunter Brown. All you're going to do is piss the guy off. It doesn't make any sense. He said stuff like this in the past where

it just seems like there was no reason for you to really say that and to keep doing it. You're three years in on the job now. You should have some media training at this point. Just a piece of advice for Dana Brown. Just shut up. You don't have to say anything.

Just shut your mouth, say nothing. Like Luno and Click used to do, be robots, and don't make yourself look like an idiot. Don't embarrass your bosses. And especially, don't embarrass us the fans who pay good money to go to the games, who watch every night on TV. You are embarrassing us. So word to the wise, shut up. First timer in Richmond, Leo coming in.

All guns are blazing. The Glenn Gary Glenn Ross pull. I like that. Have I seen that movie? I'm going to say no. It's a great. I heard it's a great movie. It's great.

Didn't Michael Man? Didn't Kevin Spacey win an Oscar for that? I'm sorry, David Mamet. Right? Say that? Didn't Kevin Spacey won an Oscar? He might have. It's on my Facebook Reels

when they nominate the award ceremony, and I think he was a nominee. Okay. I mean, the Alec Baldwin cameo is great. Jack Lemon is great in that movie. it's from a play and it's very very what's the opposite of ornate

it's stripped down okay let's go ahead no no I'm sorry go ahead it's a great conversation it's a great film put it on your list Jonathan

that's a disconnected comment it just is there's been a many disconnects between Dana Brown and I feel like the players or Joe Espada and things that he's said and things that have happened

that's just a fact It's, so I'm not going to tell the general manager, shut up. Dana is very, very oftentimes ready to give you details about things and discuss things. And so I appreciate that. I'm not going to. I don't want guys to be robots. No, I don't want to be. No, robots are no fun.

Robarts, you have to do a guessing game. Yeah. And I don't want to guess. This should be an open, it's an honest conversation about a lot of things. Cicero bot is not fun. But, cassero bot sucks. Let me tell you, you know, I'm getting this of Casario sound bites. No, I don't want to do that.

Nobody wants to do that. And I'll put a dollar in the tip jar. Thank you. I think it's up to 50 now. $50,000. I don't want Nick Casario. I mean, he may be great. And ultimate, the number one thing is going to be a great general manager.

So I'd rather have a great general manager who's a robot over a lousy GM that talks a lot. So can I get a nice combination of both? Of course I'd like that. As I say that, however, there is a disconnect. There are things that Dana have said that have not matched with the manager has said and not match with the players. I feel like, now I wasn't there,

but I can read between the lines because I'm a reader, between lines, that Hunter wanted to go, Dana, you had no problem with me hitting 98 on the gun. You didn't say jack squat about it when I was doing it.

And by way, I've done it before in the past. I'm your ace. Leave me alone. Remember we played the comment on Monday? It was odd. And I just don't. think you want to have odd comments that potentially could piss your player off. Yeah, it shouldn't have been said. I get Dana's like looking for a reason or, you know,

he's asked like, what's going on with Hunter? He's like, well, he was thrown really hard. Maybe that happened. Maybe that was it. And it was kind of, maybe more of a flipping statement. He should be probably more measured. Also earlier this year, he was saying that Jeremy Payne was going to start in back-to-back games for the first time. And then an hour later, he's not in the lineup. Yeah. So there have been some things. And those are just two examples. There have been a you. So look, I appreciate Dana being forthcoming. I'm not going to argue that at all.

So maybe I'll, can I go glass half fullness and say that sometimes when you're as open as Dana can be at times, that you're not going to about a thousand with your comments? Problem is, if you want to be disconnected with your Zach Allen, I can

live with that. Or Nick Allen, too. Or Nick. You don't want to be disconnected to your ace pitcher, who is the reason why you have any hope of having a really good starting rotation because your number one is a true number one. You're talking about Spencerergetty? Exactly.

So, Dana, I'm not telling you. In fact, Dana, you keep talking. We appreciate it. 930s, Wednesday. Yes. Sports Talk 790. Keep tuning in. Let's make sure.

I mean, I don't want to say, if he's always defending the player, no matter how bad the player is, then it comes across as then he's not being. to us, right? But it didn't, it didn't sound great when he's like, man, maybe you should take it down a notch. I don't, I don't know.

It was, it was a disconnected joint. It was an off, not off putting, it was just a disjointed disconnected. Yeah. That just, I think, probably pissed Hunter off a little bit. It seems like the lines of communication have been broken a couple times. It feels like. It just has, and it is what it is. 1131, Sports Talk 790.

Matt and Ross with you here. Things in life you don't get, Rossi, do you have something in your life you don't get? All right, we'll let you hear from you about that. We'll get the rest of you in. Andy and Roger will get to you as well. Do you have something in your life that you just don't get? No need to worry. No need to fret.

We will discuss the topic to see if we comprehend the things that may confuse our friends. It's time to say, I just don't get it. All right, those of you on the line, we'll get to you in a matter of moment. It's really quick. Let's take care of the business that we do every Thursday, 11th. 30 here on sports talk at 790 and that is things we don't get. So I listened to the A team yesterday with Adam and Adam and, you know, Clinton hates things occasionally, or like every day he hates something.

I say. And then this morning apparently Cole Thompson doesn't like this either. He doesn't like, these guys don't like the playing game. It's a little extra, a little umph to 7, 8, 9, 10 that it turned out to be excellent. And I don't remember ever watching playing games going, this is horrible. I can't believe this is happening. I like it. Ratings have been good.

Games have been good. It's been great, not good. They've been great. So, and then they're like, well, I hate the first four. Well, again, are we really? Hey, I love the first four. I know you love the first four. But the reality is, do you really want to give Bethune Cookman and Maryland, Baltimore

County, the guaranteed spot to go in there and knock it out and be great? No. They're like 21 and 17 on the year. Like 16 and 15 on the year. No, I'm not a big fan of the same. 76 added, but 68 was fine to me. And then they also, you know, so I just got to realize these leagues are trying to add extra layers of income. And the plan's not been terrible for me.

The expanded playoff to 12 has not been terrible to me. And if it gets to like 24, 28, it's getting kind of ridiculous. But I'm okay with the latest round of expansions of postseason playing all the sports. So I say to those that like I want my, just my eight teams playing in each, we'd have a whole. whole week off in between the playoffs. I mean, get something to watch. I would say I don't get it. It's something to watch.

You get the extra rest, game planning time if you're the Rockets and whoever. I like the plan. But I like the NBA. Yeah. I like good games. I like the Walcott. I like the best of three Walcott. I wasn't a huge fan of the one game Walgart.

I like the best of three wall card. I guess just on their side, it's just different. And I guess I get that. You're diluting the playoffs. You're letting. I initially was resistant. I didn't like it at first. Because you're letting 10 teams get into the playoffs now instead of 8. And it's 20 teams out of 30. And the playoffs is kind of ridiculous.

But it's extra drama. It's fun. I will say this. Of all the things have been added, I'm not a huge fan of the in-season tournament. It doesn't move the needle for me. And I don't, it clearly doesn't move the needle for the people of Las Vegas. People are not running from all over the country to go watch their team play in Las Vegas. Because again, if you're planning a trip to Las Vegas, doing it three, six, nine months in advance.

You're not doing it with a week's notice when your team beats a team in a knockout and I go to Las Vegas to play. And that's the reason why they're going to be moving. I think everything but the championship game out of Las Vegas. Play and term it to me. I know what they were trying to do because it obviously works in soccer. It just doesn't resonate here in the United States. But everything else, I mean, again, expanding college football, spending of playoffs,

I'm okay. Here's the thing I will say this. You just can't hate everything that changes in sports. If you do that, then you're going to be caught. You're going to be never, you'll never enjoy anything ever again. Is this a message to Clinton? No, I'm just talking about anybody. I mean, I don't like the ABS.

I don't like instant replay. I don't like additional. I mean, you got adapt. I would say adapt. Not fundamentally change everything, but adapt. That's great advice, Matt. Adapt to change. Thank you.

Rossi, what don't you get? I'm going to go with. we talked about earlier. I understand that some teams can spend more in Major League Baseball, but I don't get how you have in the same league. One team spending $68 million and another spending $500. They're in the same sport. Now they have their own TV deals, of course.

They have their own fan bases as well. But how can you have it almost 10 times as much spending in the same major league that you have in the other. That I don't get. That seems like a massive problem for the league. And again, a disconnect between owner 1 and owner 30 because the discrepancy between those 29 people

is incredible. One team spending 68 million and one team spending 500 plus. The top six teams don't spend $500 million. You add the payrolls of the six fewest teams in baseball and they don't spend $550. Bottom six, yeah. It's nuts. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't know what's going to

I don't know what's going to change. everybody's going to be digging in, though. I got another one for you. I went and got me some French toastics at Ruger Ring yesterday. Okay. And I love French toastics. Okay.

So I said I'll have a French toast combo. I thought the combo would have been a piece of sausage or something, a piece of bacon, because there's a carb that's a leader in the clubhouse when it comes to the main meal that you're eating. Okay. You know what the side is on an order of French toastics from Ruger Ring? Tots?

Hach browns. Yeah, that's what the size is on combos. They give you a potato. with the combo. Yeah, but I don't want a carb in a carb. I want a carbon of protein. And I don't get you. How are you?

You think they're going to give you a side of sausage on the combo? Don't you think better? Have you ever heard? Yeah, go ahead and make that a combo with a side of sausage. Well, I should have said. That has never happened in a fast food history. That's like saying I like a potato, uh, let's see, uh, chicken pop pie with a side of French bread.

Too many carbs. Yeah, people get that. Nah. Man. Jonathan, what don't you get? Me, maybe. What's wrong with you? I'm sorry.

I just didn't say it. I just had double carbs too much for breakfast, but I wind up eating them anyway, so I'm a fraud. I know. I know. I guess from this Masters is Sunday, and I kind of got onto golf Twitter, a little master's Twitter for you action.

And Roy McElroy, I find out, you know, everybody knows now, but he didn't, he had an extra amount of time to, you know, practice the course of the Masters. And there were so many people against this saying it's cheating, this and this. Obviously, he's going to win back to back. Isn't that the whole point of when you win the Masters?

Is that you go back and you're the only one allowed to go and like practice that? No, everybody was allowed to practice, actually. So what's, why is everybody upset? I don't get it either. I'm getting, okay, I just don't understand that. It's like you put an extra work that everyone can put in and some people were upset about it for some reason. like really mad. Like it was like

I don't think you should be able to do that honestly. Why not? Why? You don't get to practice your core same course over and over again. Part of the challenge is the course that changes every day. But everybody can do it.

Yeah, but they shouldn't be able to do it. Why not? You should get one practice round. Okay, but if everybody can do it and Rory can do it and he did it, then what's the problem? Yeah, someone has to explain that to the reason. I would just say, I guess my fundamental rule would be then you should not.

You should be able to get one practice or two practice rounds in a week of, and that should be your practice. Okay. This is my own personal take on I just don't get it So you think it's okay for him to do it over and over again Especially since I had thought just now until Ross told me I thought because he won

He was allowed to go back and practice Because he has that advantage because he won Well he doesn't have a membership now right Doesn't he doesn't he doesn't get so I don't know He and Dwight D Eisenhower I don't think Dwight is going to be there Oh he's not? No I maybe I does that

Bill Gates is a member Can you can you pass it on from one relative to another I don't know I don't think so. I'm going to guess no. All right. Phones next. Andy, your first,

Roger, second, Keith, third, those three. Let's get to you guys next as we continue the Matt Thomas show with Ross. The news at noon is coming up. One o'clock. Craig Ackerman is going to jump in

for a segment with Ross as I head off to Los Angeles to see the Rockets by the Lakers in game one on Saturday night. It's Sports Talk 790. Here we go. Let's go the phone, see what you guys are thinking about here

on a just don't get it Thursday. The news at noon coming up. Craig Ackerman. Friend. Yes. Respected broadcaster. Excellent job on the play-by-play all season long, Mr. Ackerman. Yep.

And he'll join you at 1 o'clock. Can't wait. And come on be with us still too here on 790. Andy and Cyprus on 790. Andy, good morning to you. Good morning. You got that about 10 minutes. Nice call.

Hey, I just don't understand. Dana Brown. Has he questioned any of the other pitchers how they got ready for the season? Has he done that? The answer is no. So he goes out for one of the best young prospects in Major League Baseball. They just gave a $5.71 million contractor this year and questions his professionalism. And we know with a quick response by Hunter, he ain't happy.

So we can enjoy him for a couple more years and then don't look for them resigning him because I can imagine a phone call was to Scott Boris from Hunter saying, what the hell? And Boris saying, well, do you really want us to be here? And he's going, hell no. He goes, well, then make a statement. It probably went something like that. What do you guys think? Do you think he's a little pissed? Who, Hunter, about what Dana said?

I would assume, yes, he's not pleased. What's the percentage of him resigning? I don't see it happening. Well, I'll say, I mean, it has to do with Dana's statement. Ultimately, you can be pissed as a general manager all you want. If Jim Crane gives him a blank check, he'll fill it out and he'll stay. Well, I don't know. That young man like that, I mean, Dana Brown's an idiot.

There's no call for what he did. Well, I wouldn't call him an idiot, but it was certainly, as I said, I don't want Off putting his two Disjoining it A disjointed None It's an off-the-cuff moment

He shouldn't have what he said He shouldn't have Look I do that for This shows four hours I do for three of it Yeah I don't know I don't know why that would come out of his mouth

I like a Gator Brown Everything Cash cures everything It literally does Cash rules everything around me Cream get the money Dollar dollar bills y'all Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dad you know Thank you Actual is Eleanor All right Keith What don't you get at 1153 Keith How many Keith

How many Keith do I know You That's it Oh okay I'm my bad I thought I was third Anyway Hey Matt

When I was 8 years old I went to Toledo Sports arena And saw somebody Called Bobo Brazil Oh yeah I was eight I thought it was funny

But I don't get 65 years later it's a multi-billion dollar company is all over the ESPN. It's not a sport. It's a joke with an unfunny actor. And I can't understand how the hell is that still going on to WW. Well, the reality is Keith, and thank you for the phone call.

They're not looking for you as an audience. They want 18-year-olds or 34-year-olds. Anybody else is gravy. They have no interest. They want to make sure 18 and 34-year-olds love them. I just never got into it. Again, between 18, well, heck, before that, between 12 and 34, I love professional wrestling. I don't like it now because it ain't the wrestling that I watch as a kid.

So I, instead of, I don't come on here and get off my yard, lawn. I just say, I don't watch it. Isn't that amazing, Rossman, something you don't like. You just don't necessarily spend two hours hating it. You just move on something else? We do it for at least half an hour on Wednesday. That's true. Sometime this time.

Yeah. I love retro wrestling. I watch hours and hours and hours of retro wrestling on my phone. Really? Yeah. And I listen to wrestling podcast about yesterday year wrestling. Wow. How much stuff is there to uncover?

So you're like one of the preeminent experts on old school wrestling. Yes. Anybody wants to call in. How about this? I'm going to see if there's a challenge. We've got some OGs out there. Okay. Can somebody talk to me about Mid-South wrestling?

I mean anything. Can we have a 90-second conversation and no more than that about Mid-South wrestling? If you think you can talk 90 seconds of Mid-South wrestling with me, I will... I'll just thank you. How about that? Sometimes you just need thanks from people. So if you think you're going to efficiently

and effectively talk 90 seconds of Mid-South wrestling, 713-21-25-7-8... And I'll be the judge of it because I know me some mid-south. Okay, you're Mr. Mid-South. Yes, I am. Roger on 790 Roger good morning that was the theme that is Houston wrestling man

that is Houston wrestling's theme but I'll give you have credit for that that guy is a very good pull on you Roger and for that I'm going to give you a little longer leash and not call you a price for today all right thank you very much for that yeah uh crown plumbing IW marks uh Thunder Bowl

all those commercials came up Yeah, and how about this one? How about this one? Gallery model home furniture. How about that for a poll? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You know, my favorite, my favorite group was,

there were, there were the Rock and Steam, the Blade Runner, those were my favorite. I did like the New Zealand Sheepherders. They were okay. Yeah. Jimmy Coronet's Midnight Express was okay. Yes. And, and, you know,

You know, you had Messiah Eito, you had Kamala, the Gundam Giant. Kamala, yes. He had the first appearance of Cocoa B-Ware. Yes. He wasn't the red rooster. Then he was Terry Taylor. Terry Taylor, yes. And, you know, you had the thought.

Roger, this is so good. I'm never calling you a Pryor again, at least for the end of the month. Absolutely, man. All right, Roger, I got to roll. Save your rockets take for it. later tomorrow. We'll save it there. That was amazing, Ross. Kamala, J. Y.D, Midnight

Express. Wow. Terry Taylor. Unbelievable. The missing link. Oh, man, my favorite. Haxall Butch Reed, hexaw Jim Duggan. Oh, wow. The Fantastics. Those are my OGs. Y'all know, if y'all know who I'm talking about,

mad respect to you. I have no clue what you're talking about. J. Dub. What don't you get 1157, J-dub? I got one name for you about a mist soft wrestling. You probably heard of or never heard of. Have you ever heard of Staggerly? Staggle-lead.

I know who Staggerly is. Really junkyard dog when he lost a loser leave town match. He had to put a full uniform. It was green and it was red together. And Staggerly was his team song. Here you go. That's what I'm talking about. Exactly.

I don't think many of people know that. How about this? Let me tell you, I'll give you some big money. I'm going to go. I got to go get my friend. I know. This is terrible. Who is the Midnight Rider?

Midnight Rider. Midnight Rider. I remember that. Midnight Rider. Well, I remember you guys said the Rock and Roll Express. You said the Midnight Express, I was going to bring in the Rock and Roll Express. They got to get all the time in the tag team match. Mm-hmm.

The Big Soft Ratt. I'm trying to see who the Midnight Rider was. You had two seconds. No, it was Dusty Rose. Dusty Rose lost a loser to leave town match and it came back as a midnight rider. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right.

You got me on that one. Thank you, J-Dub. You guys can't stop me. You can't stop me on Mid-South wrestling. You may be able to stop me on Texan's defensive line help, but you can't stop me at mid-South. You just can't. Last one before we get the news at noon.

Joe, good morning to you. What's up? Hey, not the Hacksaw Jim Duggan, but the other Haxaw. Butch-Reed. Butch-Ree. yes sir and there's one guy that i just can't remember his name he came out there with a scheme with a mask kind of like uh the uh what he called it from those mad max films

you're talking about humongous humongous yes yes yeah those are my days too let me tell you joe that's what separates me from the rest of gibronies doing sports radio in houston texas i gave you humongous nobody else in the market can absolutely i could i've been trying to figure that out for a few weeks now. That's what I'm here for. Thank you, Joe. There it is, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. All right.

With the Astros at a Rocky Mountain High, we'll get it to you next here at 1159 on Sports Talk 790. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. As the Astros, game number two of the series belongs to Spencer Araggetti and friends. As the Astros, after a one-and-nine road trip, come back in the friendly confines of Minute-Made Park. of them now won, was it seven consecutive home games? Is that true? Two with the halos. Yeah. Three, the Red Sox. That's five.

Yeah. Two, Colorado makes seven. Woo! That's some good math there, Matthew. I appreciate that. That's why they call you Matthew. They call me Mr. Texas, but they can also come back. Nobody calls you that. Nobody's, everybody's joking. I don't know. It feels pretty genuine to me. I don't really mean it. Everybody's like... It's like one guy, Ivan.

All the people on Instagram that now follow me and that I follow them back, Because I did that in the 10 o'clock hour on the show because I'm Mr. Texas, it's an honor having you here. I don't believe you. All right. Time down for the news. A do it in 1206. How are things, everybody?

There is. Well, as you mentioned, Matt, the Astros get the victory over the Colorado. Rockies, 3 to 1. Spencer Quality. Erigetti. Six innings pitched. One earned run.

He did walk four batter. Did rack up 100 pitches. Yep. But you know what? Six quality start, 100 pitches, 10Ks. Couldn't ask for much more. Yeah, 10Ks as well. Also, some good news. Brian Abraeu, despite walking the first batter that he faced

after coming in in relief of Stephen Ocurtt, was able to get four outs with a couple of strikeouts as well. Slider looking good. Fastball was ticking at 93 here and there. But also got up to 97 a couple times. We know who's a guy who throws 97, 98, 99. occasionally touching 100. We have not seen that,

but encouraging signs a good start, a quality start, plus, as they say, Matt, and also Brian Abraeu with four outs without giving up a run. And the reality is this for Abraeu, they should slow this as much as possible. There's no need to necessarily

rock the apple cart when it comes to bullpen by committee right now until Josh Hader's back. By the way, I know Josh got a header's back. encouraging update a couple days ago. I think I might back up my May 1st return to him. I think he's going to be closer to May 10th, 15th. Yeah, he's throwing bullpins now.

Oh, no, he's doing live BP is the next step. Generally, the relievers aren't going to need long rehab. You're throwing one inning. He doesn't need to build up. Well, he's going to need to pitch two days in a row at some point just to do it. Yeah, I'm hoping within the next couple of weeks. But yeah, if you have to push it back, whatever. When he's ready, he's ready.

Again, you get him for 120 games. And he's going to get you 35 saves. Well, then the Astros are in a much better position. To me, what's going to make this a wrong prediction on my part is the fact that you're going to get healthy players returning. It is a good sign that Tatsui Emai's arm issues is nothing medically related. Imaging is good. Hunter Brown went to go to old change in his arm. Yes.

Changes spark plugs. Yeah, he's the brake pads too, I think. Yeah, I think he wants everything. He thinks he's going to Callahan break pads. It costs him a G at least. He can afford it. That's true. And they had to put on Scott Boris's tab.

That's true. Scott Boris tab, nice. Are you taking care of? Are you surprised, and we get some more headlines here, are you surprised that so many people are kind of catching onto the, what what Dana said, Dana said that didn't necessarily jive with Hunter and the way Hunter reacted? Or is it a little bit due by nothing? I think it's piling up.

Because, like I said, it was the Pena thing earlier this year. There was like three or four times last year with injuries and guys coming back and on the right track and then they weren't on the right track. The whole hand, the hand, the hand, yord on a hand thing became a debacle as well. Kyle Tucker thing going back before that. And some of that could have been

that Dana was in a position where he had to say some things that he didn't want to say because he was just having to answer questions. Right. I don't know. I'm just telling you for anybody that's really mad at Dana, you shouldn't be really mad at him for anything.

I mean, it was a misspeak, whatever the case would be. Everything gets fixed if Jim Crane says, Hunter, we can't imagine losing you. Here's your blank check. Fill it out. Let bygones be by guns.

And Hunter be like, that's fine. But I don't think, I don't think any damage was done to the point that Hunter's like, I'm never going to pitch here. The reason why he's not going to pitch here is because the Astros have made a concerted effort over the last 10 years of the Jim Crane ownership to put money in piggy banks of people,

but just not doing on a long-term basis. And if you're Hunter Brown, seeing what other guys have gotten in the last four or five years when it comes a long-term compensation. Hunter Brown's like, I'm not willing to play the short-term game. Yeah. Now, things could change if Major League Baseball reworks its economic package in a couple of years, but I still think when you hire Scott, you're going to try to get as much money as humanly possible. Just go make some good draft picks, Dana Brown. Yeah. Replan's that system. Kyle Tucker deal is looking incredible. Cam Smith is looking like a star, and Issock Parades is an

everyday contributor right now. And when he'd Hayden & Winski to come back at some point. His arm fell off, but join the list. All right. Elsewhere in the NBA, you had some playing in action. We'll get to that in a second, but some big news for Luca Donchage and Cade Cunningham. They are eligible for NBA postseason awards after they issued an extraordinary circumstance challenge,

the 65 game rule, and it was approved by both the NBA and the NBA Players Association. So Cade Cunningham played 63 games, missed 12 with a collapse lung. Louis Goddantage finish with 64 games because of the birth of a child abroad and his hamstring injury. Both of those guys eligible for NBA

postseason awards and thus super ridiculous max contracts. Congratulations. I like the 65 game rule but obviously there's a wiggle room. I understand the exceptions. My baby was born in Serbia. Now wait a minute.

He saw the birth of the children, which is cool. Yeah. But he and the acts are nastily fighting each other right now. Is that true? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Maybe I'm assuming it's the same mother. That's a shame. By the way, I haven't read my Serbian tablo. Slovian, I should say. Luca is back in the States now. Do you think that the Lakers are just trying to generate some pub just to keep the rockets

off kilter about who they're coming back? I don't think so. What do you mean? Like, you think you, you think he made doca's quaking his boots? About anything? Yeah, they're ready. No, thank you. Yeah. Rockets ready. Saturday. And again, Luca's going to be doughy. He's going to be out of shape. Yeah. 7.30. Game number one, I'll be out at Kirby Ice House with the official Rockets Watch Party as well.

Cole Thompson's going to be there. Come hang up. You can buy some cocktails for people? I'm not buying anybody anything, no. All right. Question, ask, answer? No, I don't support. I don't support that.

Matt. If I was there, I'd buy a round. You're such a fraud and a liar. I've been working with you for 16 years. I've never seen you buy a round of anything for anyone ever. Including me. I bought you sandwiches this week. That's true.

Apologies accepted. What else going on? What else is going on? Well, the NBA action. You had the 76ers beat the Magic 109 to 97. Warriors beat the Clippers 126 to 121. Stop me if you heard this before. Steph Curry was amazing and Draymond Green played great defense down the stretch

as the Warriors beat the Clippers 126 to 121. Now you have the final play in matchups set for tomorrow. Hornace v. Magic, Warriors v. Sons. Would Draymond Green, does he have to be an A-hole? Because that's what Motors inspires the rest of his game. That gets him going. Okay. There's guys like that.

We can go through the list. Pat Bev's, the Dylan Brooks's, etc. They need to be the bad guy in order to show how good they can be. Yes. All right. Yes, they do. And, by the way, Cameron Boozer has not determined whether or not he's going to come back and play a Duke next year. Caden, his brother's like,

back, I'm not as good. They're twins, right? Yeah. Don't you feel bad? I mean, I guess sibling rivalry happens everywhere. But when you're a twin with identical DNA and you're not as good, it's got to hurt. Yeah. Like, dang, this guy's bigger, stronger, faster, better than me.

And we have the exact same DNA. Yeah, I will say, I don't know a lot of twins in my life, but the ones I grew up with, they were both equally excellent athletics. Like a man and Osir? Very close. Very close. But they're the exception, I would say, rather than the rule. Apparently, Osar is going to get some votes for defensive player of the year.

Brooke was much better than Robin. Yeah. Who else? Who are some other twins? Oh. Isn't Ellie Delacruz who's on the Cincinnati Reds? He's like six or four. He has an identical twin brother.

He's like 5'10 or something like that. No way. Yeah. I'll look it up. Who are the twins that one can, came out as gay many years ago. Jaron and Jason? Jason. Jason? Yeah. They were both not very good, though, right? But one was better than the other, wasn't it?

Yeah, Ellie Dele-Cruz and his twin brother. Oh, my gosh. He's like a foot taller. That's not fair. Anywho, there's your news it, dude. Thank you very much. 1215 on Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. You want to get in on the Astros, winning two straight.

you want to get into early Rockets playoff chatter. We'll do that too. If you want to get into the Texans. We're down to what? A week from today's day one of the NFL draft? What about that? By way, Pittsburgh apparently not the place to be. Ticket sales or hotel rooms are plentiful for the NFL draft in Pittsburgh.

40% of the city is still available to purchase a hotel in Pittsburgh. Should it rotate or should you do making an event every year and do it like in New York City every year around? All right. 713-212. 5.790. Madden Ross at 1222, Sports Talk 790. We are with you today until 2 o'clock.

Ross will take over the reins at 1. And Craig Ackerman, the voice of the rockets, will be on television voice of rockets. We'll be with us in about 35, 40 minutes from now to help you out a little bit. If you miss the Brian McTagger conversation, which is always good. Check it out through the podcast, or you can listen to every little replay at 1.30 this afternoon. So we've got lots of good stuff for you in the next hour and change.

Jam packed with excellent stuff. Tomorrow, for sure, we'll have the voice of the Lakers. John Ireland's going to join us at 1030 tomorrow our time, 830 in the West. And also I'll be on eating from you guys's breakfast table, right? I mean, he could come to the hotel if he wanted to. I'd go to his house, but that feels kind of weird. It's going to be 830 local time? Yeah.

be all right so he and i share we'll go to emily in just a second here he and i share something we're the only two broadcasters in the nba that have radio shows beyond our games really he does two out of 30 yeah he does a three and a half hour show in los angeles and i do the four hours with you so okay he and i uh share stories about hotels and which has good at wifi and that kind of stuff like that so but he and i do are the only only two in the NBA that do full-time radio shows and there's only like five or six of this period that are brought by play guys that do shows. Used to be quite prevalent, but now they just don't, just lots of radio shows, frankly.

So, and hopefully many more radio shows to come. Yes. Of course. Thriving here. Yeah. On Sports Talk 790. All right. So that's tomorrow.

Maybe EMA Adoka. I don't know the schedule because we're going to the Pacific time zone. So if we do, we'll probably catch EMA early in the show before they go to practice. It's compared to usually we talk to him after. So we'll try for that. Now in Florida stories, we'll have our normal Friday open. I've got to wake the strippers up at 10 a.m. Los Angeles time tomorrow. What's a rule on that? They sleep till noon, at least in the West Coast.

They're probably sleeping until at least one or two. Yeah. That's when we started with Good Morning Strippers, 2 p.m. Guys, man, I need a ruling from the two of you because majority rules. I've already vote, yes, so that's one third. Uh-oh. No. Can we play all L.A. songs tomorrow on the show? All day long?

All day long, 10 to 2. I'm going to guess if you want to. I don't mind it. I got a request. Please. Bobby Womack's version of California Dreaming. Jam. Okay.

No, it's equal opportunity. Okay. So tomorrow, all of our songs will be L.A. and or California led. Okay. Going back to Cali. L.O. Cool Jake. Going back to Cali. Notorious B.I.G.

Yes. Of course. I love L.A. To live and die in L.A.? Tupac Shakur. Yes. It's the place to be. Now, I.M. I.S. is a Neil Diamond banger.

But it's only talking about L.A. for like the first two paragraphs. I think we need California or L.A. in the title. I think you're probably right. L.A. Woman, Doors. Ooh, jam. Can you write this list down? This is good.

You should Google L.A. songs. Okay. You got it, Jonathan. We're doing L.A. songs all day tomorrow. He's got a steel trap up there. Hotel California will be on there. Call them Steel Trap Allen. They do?

Yeah. I like that name, actually. Yeah, still trapped. Then why didn't you stay at West. I forget it. That's the Harvard of Western Kentucky is Western Kentucky. Oh. It is the Harvard of Western Kentucky, I guess.

West of Kentucky, yeah, for sure. They use all the letters of alphabet there in Western Kentucky? Some do. Okay. Some, some. I got you. All-A. music is part of the Friday edition of the Matt Thomas show from L.A. and from Houston.

713-212-5-790 is how you reach a show. Let's talk to Emily on 790 and 1226. Emily, good afternoon to you. Good afternoon. I'm actually her husband. She had a rant and she doesn't want to actually end now. Okay, I can't say it as articulately as she can, but I am kind of perturbed about the Astros because they did get talent.

They're mafamanos. They got rid of talent. Right. You know, you got, look, you got to get rid of Springer because, dude, he got a real good contract. Correct. Okay. I'm very angry that we got rid of Kyle Tucker. The dude was a five-cool player.

There's four, maybe five in the MLB that are, and you pay them. Correct? What's your name? Emily's husband? Oh, oh, oh, yeah. No, yeah. I'm Casey. I'm sorry.

Can I ask you a question? Where is Emily? She ran away. She's in the garage. You want me to go get her? Yes, please. Put the phone down. Put the phone down.

Yeah, we'll wait. We'll wait for Emily. No, no, no, no, no. I'll go get her. No, you don't have to talk. Just wait for Emily. Well, just put the phone down. go get Emily, put her on the phone, and we'll resume this phone call.

Ross and I've got to talk about Texans anyway. Hang it, Stan, just put the phone down for a minute. Oh, Texans? Yeah, we're going to talk. What did I just tell you? Put the phone down, do not speak again, and go get Emily, and when you, Emily gets picked the phone back up. There you go.

Please hold for Emily. Okay. Yeah, wait, we don't want to talk to you. Talk to Emily. Ross. You all about, good. It's awesome. Okay, just wait one second.

Okay, sure. So, Ross, can D-Lyme be an option for the Texans? What do you mean? For the number 28th pick? Yeah, sure, why not. A lot of people are mocking them, D-L-Mocking. A lot of D-L mocking. I know you're Mr. Mock Draft.

I do. I've been looking at them. We'll call you mock-Mach-Thomas. Dugler has his full mock draft out. I thought about getting him on the show next week. Will he return our emails, though? He responds to me, but he says no. Every single time?

Maybe you can try now. Yeah. When he was NFLDraft.net, He would come on all the time. Now he's big-time athletic. He's very busy. That doesn't feel very nice. I mean, it is what it is.

Yeah, that's fine. People big-time us. All right. 7-13-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90 if you want to get in. Is Emily there yet? Emily, are you there yet? I think they're arguing about, she probably doesn't want to come on air anymore.

Wait? I think we got something. Maybe. Most famous Emily's? I think Emily's a beautiful name. Emily Blunt? Yeah. Very nice.

Big fan. What's, what movie is she known for? I don't know. Sicario, tomorrow. What is that one tomorrow, never the Tom Cruise one? It's been a bunch of stuff. Okay. A lot of movies after 1990, unfortunately, Matt.

I've watched movies past 1990. Really? By the way, there's a... Hey, shut up. I watch a trailer for a movie coming this Thanksgiving. Oh, yeah. She was a... Oppenheimer, she was the wife.

Excuse me, I'm going to say this very slowly to make sure we particular license. The name of the movie is Fockers-in-law. You're going to watch that? Yeah. You know who's going to play the in-law? The new member of the family? Ariana Grande.

She's marrying into the Fokers family. Ben Sillowell will be there. I watched Meet the Fockers. It was okay. It was okay. Meet the Parents was amazing. Apparently Little Fockers was terrible. Didn't see it. I didn't even watch it. So I think I'm good on that.

All right. Last call. Emily, that's what you want to watch. Emily, are you there? I think they're still arguing. No, I told you,

I don't want to go on. They hung up. I said I didn't want to do it, Casey. I think you started something, Matt. Yeah, you started a fight in their wedding and their marriage. All I wanted to do is, it said, who called, Jonathan,

who called to talk to us? So, it said Emily. So Casey called me. Oh. And then Emily was in the background saying, I don't want to get on. And he was like, no, it's too good.

And he said he'll wait. Casey, I told you, Casey. I didn't want to get on the air. Okay. Well, you know what? You always do this. You always do this. I say I'm uncomfortable with something.

And then you push and you push. Stop it, Casey. That's what's happening right now. You know, it sounds like a double date with your boss and his wife. You don't want to go out for that, but you have to do it. And it's just the right thing to do. And then they fight the whole time. No, but if Casey and they're living their life, that's fine.

That's okay with that. If they don't want to go on the show, it's fine. We gave, we gave Casey his run. and he's very unhappy, very unhappy that Kyle Tucker is not wearing Astros gear. Yeah, they got Cam Smith and Isok Paredes. Come on now. They kind of won. It's looking like a win. Our friend Jay just sent me an email.

WTF kind of call us that. I don't know. We don't know either. I'm a little worried about Casey. No, they're doing great. I don't think so. You don't know. There's a communication breakdown, like between Dana Brown and Hunter Brown.

Is Emily going to sound like a 60-year-old smoker? I don't we don't know that Pedro that's rude but they're Kyle Tucker fans they had the Astros conversation on the brain We can take more Astros talk when we come back Yeah let me I'm gonna ask you serious question about this Will we ever in our time is you and I watching Jim Crane ownership let Astros ever go get somebody That's like that is it is it in Jim's DNA or does it take a special situation? We'll discuss that next 1232 Sports Talk 790 713212 570 713-212-5-790.

I got a rocket Lakers note for you just to get to you in the next 15 minutes. Just kind of a thought as I'm writing down the roster names. Don't let me forget to do that in the next segment of the show. We'll stay on task here. Do you think there'll ever be a blank check moment? And I'm not talking about literally here's the check filled out for whatever you want. Let's talk about potential candidates. I think Yorda on no.

I think Jeremy Payne, no. Cam Smith, probably not. Give me some guys. Who am I thinking about? Now, the next candidate would be, obviously, Hunter Brown. To me, and look, my baseball-trained mind is only as a fan and as a broadcaster and as a guy that's watched this Astros team for a long period of time. And I've not watched every moment of Hunter Brown's life. I don't think Hunter Brown has had these injury elements a lot in his life, but you hope,

Hopefully this is just a, as he said, getting an oil change, getting some spark plugs, getting an tire change. And he's going to get back on the mound before you know it, he'll be just fine. And spending crazy, crazy money on pitching is even a bigger risk for guys that are not everyday guys. Because if you spend a lot of money on that, it means you're going to not spend money in other places. And the Yankees aren't a great example of that, but they've spent a tremendous amount of money on Gary Cole. And it hasn't paid off. Max Scherzer has been really, really awesome, but Ross Max Scherzer hasn't been healthy

for basically the last five years, give or take. Steven Strasbourg got crazy money a decade ago, and that never really panned down. So if you miss on a super high-end pitcher because of not necessarily performance, but more about injuries and health, it can certainly put a dent into your long-term success

because you've spent some money behind one pitcher or one player that plays every fifth day. I'm going to say, yeah, if I'm looking at the highest paid pitchers from last year, Zach Wheeler with the Phillies, Shoie Otanis had Tommy John like twice. Zach Wheeler's been relatively healthy, but he was hurt some last year. Jacob de Grom hurt all the time. Blake Snell.

I believe that Tommy John? Garret Cole. Now, Garry Cole won a Cy Young. And he's been a good pitcher for the Yankees. We haven't seen him in a year and a half. But he's had Tommy John. Corbyn Burns, I believe, is right now recovering from Tommy John. Right?

So, let me... So, Kate, so we've given you a few examples, and I'm sure there's other directions in the other ways that guys are winning 20 games left and right. I get that. So if... I'd rather pay a position player. If Jim doesn't have the history of paying crazy money

for guys that play six days a week. How are we expect them to do this for a guy that pitches once a week? He's probably not going to do it. Unless you're buying out arbitration years, which that's what we've seen what happened is when you're buying out arbitration. You don't have to spend that big, big money with guys into their 30s. You'd rather pay guys in their late 30s. At least Christian Walker's having a good bounce back season.

But last year, you paid $20 million, and that was a loss because Christian Walker was bad. So it can happen with old guys too. It can happen on short-term deals. It can happen on long-term deals. It happened with Jose Abra. you. So what we have to do ultimately is maybe just encourage a buyout of arbitration years, add a couple of years onto that. Scottie Boris is going to say shut your bum ass up. Scottie's going to

say that. They're going to try to get maximum dollars. Now the financial ecosystem might be changing in a big way. And that's why that's the big wildcard. And that's maybe why we didn't see long-term extensions generally put together, except for guys that were buying out arbitration. Who's the Tigers a kid that just got signed away to a long-term extension. We can't keep track of all of them. There was a Pirates guy too. Yeah, but those deals

are involving arbitration years being bought out. Maybe the Hmm. Maybe the gazillion dollar. Kevin McGonagall. Yes. Eight years, 150 million. How many those years was arbitration?

He's like a rookie. Now, so let's put it this way. If someone is going to get their bag, and maybe a bigger bag than we probably thought, if Cam Smith, Ross, continues to hit the way that he's hitting and fielding the way that he's fielding, generally speaking,

and by the way, he's just a really sweet kid, I could see Jim Crane buying out arbitration years for Cam Smith. I was it right now. It almost feels like that's the time. But here's the thing. You're asking Jim Crane to buy out arbitration years for a guy that's had three good weeks as compared to the back half of last year,

where it was a tough watch. Well, you got to gamble at some point. You do. I mean, because you got no farm system. Well, then what are you going to do? Unless you're just hitting a reset on the whole, a whole. I mean, you got to keep up with the Joneses. You can't say we're not paying anybody ever.

And oh, we're going to do this gamble, and then we're going to wait. And then it's too late. And it's going to cost you too much. And then you let them go or you have a Kyle Tucker situation. And you trade everybody away. But what if you're a newbie astrophan? What evidence do you have? And I'm not trying to argue.

I'm just trying to say at the point. If you're a newbie astrophane, what evidence do you have besides Christian Javier, Jose Altuve and Alex in Yorra? Alvarez, it says the astros do keep their kids around. Do keep their young guys around. The only examples you have is you buy arbitration out. Because Jim Crane doesn't pay anybody. So if he's not going to pay anybody, then you have to figure out some other ways. And here's the thing.

It's not fair. It doesn't pay anybody is not fair. Yeah, that's right. But you know what I'm saying? Like the Bregman goes away, Correa goes away, Springer goes away, Coal goes away, Coray is back. Kyle Tucker gone. But I think some Astro fans are conditioned for waiting for the next shoot of drop,

waiting for Jeremy to be talked about as a potential trade, waiting for if the Astros do not get into serious conversation with Hunter Brown. I mean, if you're Brian or Brayu, do you think you're really going to come back to the Astros next year? No. Even forget, look if he was wonderful this year. I'd be shocked. I'd be shocked if you'd be back. And Josh Hader was signed to a big deal.

that's true. Josh, there are some exceptions as there is the case every year. But you've got no farm system. I think in three, four years, I mean, we'll see. It could be this year. The team's not contending. There has to be, and maybe a thought in Jim's mind that says, we're going to get a reworked system.

And I've got basically a year and a half to get my minor league system in order. And if I don't have it ready by the time the new economic structure of baseball is in 2020. Maybe he's got to have a philosophical change. I don't think that's a possibility, but he's got to at least think about it. Especially because he's got some guys. He's got Cam Smith. He does have Jeremy Pena.

He does have, Yordon's probably due for another contract in a couple of years. He will have, who else would be? I think this year and next Yordon has like $27 million he's making. It's like a bargain. That's really, it's a steal for the OPS he's putting up so far. I lied. It's one more year after that. So three more.

You got this year. Okay, it is this year and two more years for Yordon. Okay. At 27 million. That is a friggin' steel. We can backburn of that for a little bit. Okay. So I'm going to go back to my central question that I think I know the answer to. Is he ever going to do it?

And my guess is I've got a decade of evidence that says anytime he extends, with exception of the few exceptions, the Verlanders, the Josh haters of the world, exceptions rather than rule, that by and large, what Jim will do is he will put a lot of money in the guy's contracts that involve. of arbitration years, but there's really no evidence that he is going to extend players, because we've got Bregman, we've got Springer, we've got Cole, we've got Correa. Correa turned down an extension.

We have Kyle Tucker. I think Springer did too. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, turning down, offering extensions, I'm saying extensions that would be on par with other teams offering. I mean, Toronto was going to pay a lot more. I mean, those guys, they declined to get

arbitration bought out. And I believe Kyle Tucker did too. So yeah, you can try to buy arbitration but they can bet on themselves and say yes, which I think Hunter Brown and Jeremy Payne are probably going to do. And when you get Scott Boris as your client, as your agent, that already sets the tone. You're probably going to get paid.

And also, the flip side, though, is that throwing money to the problem doesn't solve everything. Mets have been spending a ton of money and they haven't won Jack. Yankeesies, San Diego Padres, Yankees. Phillies isn't spending the money. They won a stray World Series. They won a stray World Series. in the last few years, right?

The only team that really spends crazy money and wins is a team that's probably win the World Series this year, the Los Angeles Dodgers. At $515 million. All right. 1245, Sports Talk 7 out of him. Matt and Ross with you till 2 o'clock today. Craig Ackman's in 50 minutes. A thought or two from me

as I write down the Lakers roster. I've written it down, Rossi. Oh, by the way, no, Phillies have only made one World Series. They've had a massive payroll the last five years. Yeah, they had a one against the, The Astros. That's a good example. Throwing money at the problem doesn't fix it either.

Thank you, Chas McCormick. Shout out, Chas. He's in the Mexican League now? He's got a minor league deal with the Cubs, I believe. Yeah, he's not the Mexican League. I'm just kidding. He's got a show on Eastbound and Down, too. Is that what you're going?

He's playing with the Charos. 1246 on 790. A lot of folks have called, and I've been on a couple of radio shows the last few days about my thoughts about the Rockets' Lakers series. And obviously, again, I don't want to be disrespectful to the Lakers.

I'm not going to be disrespectful to the Lakers. They still have players. Arabia has been good. Luke Canard is good. LeBron James is slowing down, but he's still way past, I mean, still has enough left in the tank to win a game for them if necessary. Jackson Hayes. Dionne, when he's, when he wants,

when Deaigne's vested, he's good. When he's not vested, you can push him around. Jared Vanderbilt. Mark is smart. It's one of the best defensive players in NBA. no one talks about. It ain't going to be a cakewalk. The Rockets have to win this series.

And I don't think there's any if-hands or butts about it. Because, again, two mega-megas, well, one mega-mega-megas star and one really good 22-point a night score is not playing for them. It'd be like taking Kevin and Jabari out the team. Those guys get hurt. Lakers should be significant favorite. Yeah. Rockets are big favorites.

You're five-and-a-half-point favorites on the road. I mean, you need to take care of business. I think they're going to as well. Yeah, I just think for mental health sake, I don't even care about what Vegas thinks. I just think you're just the better team. You've got to go on and play the second round. Game one victory. You heard you're here first.

I'm very helpful for that. And then game two will be on, I mean, Tuesday, and then we have game three on Friday. Double digits. In each one of them? Double digits, game one. Game two, I don't know. I can't see that far into the crystal ball. Yeah.

It's so easy to get to think about putting the horse before the cart. Yeah. Or the cart before the horse. Or the horse after the cart. Yes. Or the heart or the cart. Okay, whatever. Forget the cart.

Forget the horse. Forget everybody. Yes. Counting your chickens before they hatch? Mm-hmm. Before the roosters come to nest? That's something else. I think so.

Come home to roost? There you go. Rockets should win the series. I'm not ready to tell you how many games. That's what you did on Tuesday. You said five. Okay. Five it is.

That was your gut feeling or was that just me? It might have been you. Maybe I'd pick you back off of yours. No, I think you said it first. Oh, did you? You at first. Okay. He definitely did.

All right. I would rather just be done in four, get a nice little break before playing Oklahoma City. Here I'm presuming Oklahoma City. Come on now. Yeah. Thunder and five. Thunder and five. Rockets in five.

Oh, yeah. Can we root? Thunder and 5. Can we root for the Blazers? Hard to beat the spurs? You okay with that? Blazers are not beating this? Are you insane?

I'm just, I said, can't? I said, can we? You're just, really? I love underdogs. You were climbing through so many hoops to try to figure out a way the rockets can make the finals? Yes.

There's many reasons why. I know. There's one big reason why. Because I love calling the games. Yeah, okay. It is. Don't out me like that. I didn't say a word.

Minnesota, Denver. Who wins? Denver. Denver and six. Okay. All right. We're going to write these down? We're going to do it tomorrow.

We'll do it tomorrow. Yeah, okay. Because, well, everything will, no, no, everything won't be set. No, we've got plans on Friday, for sure. Let's go to Scott, before we get to the top of the hour. Scott online, number two, joining us on the Matt Thomas Show at Ross 790. Scott, thank you for holding, and good afternoon to you. Matt, Ross, what's going on, guys?

Hi. So before I wanted to give my thought on something and ask you else question. First, before I do that real quick, Matt, I wanted to give you credit. Before the baseball season started, I called in during spring training and talked about how clunky ABS had looked and that I thought it was going to really ruin moments in the game during the regular season. And you said that it would work itself out and you were right and I was wrong. It has not been nearly as clunky during the regular season as it has been. Wait, I thought I said it was in spring.

No, we both did. It's not clunky. It's only going to get better. It's only going to get more fluid. And as I said on the show that are dangerous to tell the truth, Scott, these umpires are going to actually at the end of the day, big knowledge for a very good job they do. Because when they're missing, they're missing by inches.

I mean, and that ain't much. Fractions of inches. And so if anything, the umpires should use us as a tool to say, you know what, we got this. Now, it's never going to go back. We're not going to lose ABS. In fact, it probably would be closer to getting full ABS and getting eliminated, but I don't think that's going to happen.

But so far, the challenge system has been really good. And I like the fact that unlike in the NBA, when you challenge and you win, you can challenge your heart's contend until the calls are wrong. I love that part of it. Yeah. No, I agree. I think it's worked out. It's worked out really well.

And I think players are getting better and the catchers are getting better in understanding the corners a little bit and where the weak spots are, the spot I mentioned that on y'all's show the other day. So I think it's improving. To switch topics on the Astros a little bit, you know, the other day y'all are having gut feelings and, you know, we're talking about potentially if things continue to go poorly, what might happen around the trade deadline. And I know we've won two in a row, and I hope, with all hope, that there's nothing

that we, you know, we don't need to be sellers around that point of time. But to humor us for a second and say that we had to do something like that, we're in a how would we even go about moving pieces to reshape the team because if you wanted to trade a jeremy paena or trade uh hunter brown i don't know if he was someone that we want to trade but if you wanted to do those things for prospects what are you doing what they're just wasting your years of yorda on you're wasting the end of altube and korea's career and i'm not saying it wouldn't be the right thing to do but without i mean it seems like you need to go either all in towards trying to win and hopefully the team put us in that position or blowing the whole thing up.

Like, they're doing it halfway wouldn't make much sense. And I think that might be a tricky spot that we find ourselves in. And I hope not. I mean, obviously I hope not. I hope we play better baseball and start pitching better more consistently, and this isn't even an issue. But a half rebuild of trading your best young assets and then keeping our core guys that are at the tail end of their career, that doesn't seem fair to the team or fair to them. The answer would be this.

Thank you, Scott. We'll have time to talk about it. The answer would be they'd go to Jose Ltuve. Say, Jose, what do you want to do? Jose is changing the direction of the franchise? No, no, no, no. He's saying, what do you do if you decide to sell off? Does Jose become part of that equation

unless he just said, look, I've only want to play for the Astros. I want to ride out my career. I've been with this team since day one. I want to get my 3,000 hit. I'll stay with the course. I would imagine he would. I mean, the team wasn't very good when Vigio got his 3,000th. No, it all depends on the individual athlete.

Lance Perkman would have loved to have been a Houston Astro as long as Lance Berkman was playing for a competitive Astros team. When they kept selling off parts, remember when McLean was trying to sell the team? He knew he had to go. That's why they made the move to trade him to, was it St. Louis or New York or one of those two teams. He was either New York or St. Louis he won a championship with, but I think it was New York before there or something. So, yeah, it comes down with the individual preferences. And he was going to retire, and then the Rangers offered him ungodly money. He's like, okay, I'm back.

Oh, yeah, he's fully admitted. I was like, I don't want to play. You're going to pay me what? Okay, I'm back. No, the reality is you have to have that heart to heart. Now, Yordon, that's a different issue. You can still build, you know, how old Jordon? 27?

29, I think. I'm not great on ages. You can still build Ron Yordan for the next six years. years. I wouldn't be thinking about asking Jordan what his thoughts were. He'd be 29 in June. So he's 28 and... Okay. 300 days-ish. So there's still plenty of plenty of prime as in the case yesterday, in the case this entire

season. Yeah, this is his age 20... So they call it the age 29 season. Most of the year he'll be 29. And everybody else, I mean, if things really fall apart, do you go to Josh Hader with that conversation? Sure, you do. You have to field a team, though. You do. But you can also... And again,

here's the biggest question mark is, how is the world of baseball economics going to be a year from now? We don't have the answer to that. Yeah, so I don't know. So maybe you would really hold off in doing that massive fire sale, unless you knew exactly you could replenish your funds because you're not having to compete with 10 major league baseball teams for those high-end players because those 10 may already be tapped out with a salary cap.

These are issues Ross will discuss when baseball resumes in 2020. I don't think a cap's coming. I think my initial gut feeling was a soft cap. But if both sides are digging their heels, players are more important. You're not getting scab players in 2027. No, they'll set the season out. We will have empty fields.

There'll be no scabs. The scab bit is done. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. All right, you got Craig Ackerman coming up next. Yes. Talk to a little rockets. Excited. I'm going to get in the car and listen and really enjoy it.

Wonderful. One o'clock. Sports Talk 790. Talk to you tomorrow from Los Angeles. Craig Ackerman joins Rossi next. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 1.3 p.m. It is our number four of the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas.

A lot of stuff to get to you here. We'll have the Brian McTaggart conversation coming up at 1.30. We've been talking a lot about the Astros. A couple of wins in a row against the Colorado Rockies. They will go for a sweep. 710 first pitch here on Sports Talk 7.90. 6 o'clock Astros on deck. coming your way. But also coming up this weekend, it is your Houston Rockets facing off against the Los Angeles Lakers, the opponent that they asked for.

And right now, great friend of the show, Craig Ackerman, of course, doing the play-by-play previously on radio, now doing TV, doing a great job as always. Craig, you know what? I'm just going to go ahead and start with that. Craig, you always do a great job. I love watching you all season long doing the pre- and post-game shows. I catch, of course, a lot of the games. I'm a huge Rockets fan. Awesome. awesome season for you, Craig, and unfortunately I'm sorry that you're not going to be able to work a first round series. Well, first, I appreciate it. Thank you. It means a lot. Yeah, bummed that we're not given an opportunity any longer under the current

new network TV agreement that the NBA signed this past off season. But, you know, it's out of our control. We'll make the most of it. We will have post game shows on SCHN and SCHN and SGHN plus after each and every playoff games. So looking forward to that. And looking

forward to hopefully a deep playoff run by this team. All right, yeah, a lot stuff to get to as far as the playoffs and all that, but let's kind of want to recap the season a little bit. I mean, we got that bad news that Fred Van Fleet was going to miss time. Did we know Stephen Adams has been

out? And he had those couple of lulls, especially there in December, and then around a little bit after the All-Star break. But how much I know for me, in the last couple of weeks, the winning nine out of the 10, I am so much of a happier place of where I am about how good this team can be than I was before that stretch.

Well, winning, winning will do that to you. There's no question about it. The season has been a bumpy ride. There have been honestly more than they suffered more than their fair share of losses than they probably should have over the course of the year. Every season, every team probably loses, you know, a handful of those games that they probably had no business, losing the Rockets number was probably in the low 10 to 12 range where they probably should have not lost those games. But it is what it is. It happened. It was a bit of a bumpy ride.

The highs were certainly very high. The Rockets got off to a ridiculous start to the season, which raised the expectation bar so high. And then they hit the road quite a bit, and the schedule kind of hit them a little bit in December, as you mentioned. And then the Stephen Adams injury, and they kind of had to rework themselves from there. And then, of course, they did take advantage of a soft. their schedule late in the season, but still has some quality wins down the stretch. And now they're playing as well as they have since the start of the year. They're knocking down shots, which is so important to not only this team, but any team

in the league. And I think as a group, my sense is that they feel pretty confident in their chances going into this series. And I think part of the up and down has been Alperin Shangoon. And I think he's a big key for them going into the playoffs because I feel like Kevin Durant's going to be pretty steady as he has been all season long. And I'm in Thompson. Maybe some fluctuation from Jabari.

but I think one of the big X-en actors is Alperin-Shingon. What have you seen from him in terms of, you know, he came back fast from that ankle injury. He played poorly after that, but he has really been coming along strong and really all facets of the game. Well, I think same thing for him. It's been a little bit of a roller coaster ride for him this year as well.

But look, you need the Rockets' three best players are Kevin Doreen-Hungungun and Amanda Thompson, and every team needs their best players to step up in playoff time. So they need him to play well. I think on paper, it is a favorable matchup with DeAndre Aitin, who is a very good rim protector. The big issue, obviously, with Aiden is whether or not he is motivated to play, which is, I think, a little bit crazy at this stage of the game. But I think he probably will be. But even with that, Schengun has always played well against the Lakers.

He played very well against the Lakers this season. The Rock has dominated the paint against the Lakers over the course of the regular season. and I don't think that ultimately is going to change. But if Shangoon does play poorly, the Rocket's chances decrease substantially to win this series. But I expect him to have a big series. Craig Ackerman with us here on Sports Talk 790. And speaking of up and down, let's just keep with the theme. I'm really intrigued about what we're going to see from Tari Eason.

Of course, we can discuss on whether or not he's going to be in the starting lineup or Okie or Reed Shepard. And I feel like that can change maybe even game to game or certainly series to series. but just on Atari specifically, I think he's a big X-factor as well because if he can knock down threes and play that defense that we know he can, it feels like it's almost like a secret sauce to where it's almost like they can't lose

if Tari's knocking down shots and playing great defense. Yeah, I mean, if he plays well and or Jabari, especially if they both play well, the Rockets rarely lose games. And one of the big reasons why the Rockets got off to such an amazing start of the season was that Tari was on fire. Now, 50% three-point shooting was not going to be sustainable for him or, frankly, anyone in the league. But I think if he did a 180 at the end of the season, we're shooting, you know, in the low 20s or

whatever it was from the three, I don't think that is something that will, I don't think he's that poor of a shooter either. So hopefully he can settle in, get into a rhythm, reach some havoc. I think this is the kind of series that will, that plays well into a skill set, especially if the Rockets play with more tempo, which I think, they need to, and I think they will in this series, get out in the open floor, crash the offensive glass, be very aggressive. And again, if he's knocking down his shots, again, he's not a 50% three-point shooter, but he's also not a 20% three-point shooter. And I think, again, if he's consistent in that area, the chances of the rockets moving on to the next round are important. Again, the same thing can be said for Jabari. If he shoots the ball in the mid-30s

from three, he hasn't had the same. Jabari's had a terrific year outside of a third. two-week. Lull, he's been a lot more consistent, but he shoots the ball well from three. I think again, the rocket should be in pretty good shape. All right, gut feeling game one starting lineup. Kevin Durant, Alperin Shingoon, Amin Thompson, Jabari Smith, Jr., and?

Well, I mean, look, you can make a case for all three of those guys joining the core four starters. Reed Shepard gives you much better floor facing, obviously another legit three-point threat, another playmaker that also allows

a man Thompson to play the position that he's probably more suited to do on a regular basis, which is play off the ball and then just wreak havoc on opposing teams because he's practically unstoppable when he's in that position. So you can make the case there. You can also make the case that, again, when you look at the five-man lineup combos for the Rockets this season, when Rita's play. played with Opperen Shangoon, the Rocket's defense has not been great. And so you can make a case for Josh Okie.

He we saw very late in the season, step in, especially against Minnesota. For defensive purposes, he's also shot the three really well. I mean, I have no idea what direction they're going to go in. Tar Easton, I believe, was in the starting lineup when the Rockets rolled the Lakers on Christmas Day in L.A. And you can make a start, you can make a case for all three. I think ultimately Tar Easton will be coming off the bench because the Rockets do need that kind of energy and spark that when he's at his best. of those three guys, he's the only one who really can provide that.

So I think ultimately, Tari will probably stay coming off the bench. So it will probably come down to Josh and Reed. And I think, look, I don't know if you necessarily need as impactful a point of attack defender in this particular series with Reeves and Luca out for the Lakers. So perhaps maybe Reed starts there, but maybe ultimately they still lean in on making sure that they can send multiple bodies at LeBron James and try to force some of these other guys to beat them. And then I think they were probably lean Josh.

think the Rockets do have some some possibilities here and I think again as I said you can make a strong case for either guys starting ultimately which way they'll go we probably won't find out I mean I would assume they're not going to tip their hand until you see the starting line of release prior to game one so we'll see but I think again there are strengths and weaknesses for both Josh and or Reed in that starting lineup and on the on the Lakers side you mentioned of course Luca and Reeves are going to be out and I'm curious because LeBron had a lot of success against the Rockets in those couple of games in March, but he was playing

off ball. And at this stage's career, he's much better off ball than being the primary guy running everything through him. So I'm curious what you think about how he'll handle doing that, especially I mean, with the couple of days off in between games, should probably help him at 41 years

old, but just the Lakers' offense, and if we're on the flip side, saying how can the Lakers win this series, how much, or what is it going to take for the Lakers? Well, I think LeBron is going to be just fine. Again, you can make a case for him that he's the best player ever. I think he's going to be just fine. I think the Rockets, especially, Luca has torched Houston wherever he's been. Dallas, especially the Lakers two wins here at Toyota Center. I mean, Luca was vintage Luca.

You pretty much always expect him to go for 40 plus when he takes the floor against the rocket. So he's their best player. And obviously, Reeves and LeBron are their second and third best players that they have. and now they're missing two of their three best players. So I think the Rockets ultimately will try to send more bodies at LeBron because they can because they don't have the other players that they have to worry about in the same manner like Luca and Reeves when LeBron is on the floor, so they'll probably try to send more bodies at him. And then I think ultimately whether LeBron gets his or not, whether they send lots of defensive help his way or not. I think when LeBron sits, that is where the Rockets have to dominate and win those minutes without LeBron

because they don't have another option beside him in that manner to create and score with Reeves and Luca out. So whether or not they slow LeBron down or he still gets his or however they decide to attack LeBron James defensively, if they don't win those non-Lebron James minutes in this series, they're probably not going to win this series. But I expect them to win those minutes. So to me, that's a big key. Limiting the turnovers, look, the fourth quarter in that first loss against the Lakers, Obviously, live ball turnover have plagued the rockets all season long, but Lakers are going to play a lot faster without Luca.

Luca is a more methodical guy, and so without him, and the Lakers before Luca got there played at some of the most tempo in the entire league in the previous couple years, even though LeBron was getting up in age. I expect the Lakers to try to play a lot faster, and so you cannot aid their ability to score in transition by live ball turnover, so the rockets have to limit that. Marcus Smart, I'm assuming, is going to be a pretty disruptive defensive force for them. But when LeBron sits, if the Rockets don't win those minutes, they're going to be in a world of hurt.

Craig, Ackerman here on Sports Talk 790. Craig, I'm just going with Rockets in five. It could be six or more if the Rockets really shoot poorly from three and the Lakers are hot. But I think outside of that, I think they're the clearly better team. I don't know if you want to make a prediction. I try to avoid public predictions in these circumstances. But I think ultimately, as you look at these two, teams right now on paper, especially without Luca and Austin Reeves, the Rockets have the edge. And I think the pressure certainly is on them to win this series, despite not having home court advantage because of that. Again, I expect Kevin Durant to do what he's done the entire season. And I think Shingoon is going to get his against the Andre Aiton. Amin Thompson will, as he is on most of the time, is going to be the best athlete on the floor.

And if the Rockets use that athleticism like they did in that Christmas Day game in L.A., crash the glass, overpower the Lakers with their athletes and all their wing players and their length and so on and so forth, I think, again, the odds are pretty good that the Rockets will get out of this series. All right, Craig, thanks for the time. Again, sorry we won't be able to get you on the coverage, at least during the games. I wish I was actually on my way to the airport like Matt is. I know. I'm sorry. It is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is.

All right. Well, speaking of Matt, if you want to take any shots at him, you can feel free. Well, it was a pleasure joining the Rosh show with Matt here today. So you were able to shed some of that dead weight this afternoon. So I'm happy for you. That's why you're the best, Craig. Is that a good enough shot at Matt? Oh, yeah. I'm going to record that and play that on a loop for him.

I know he's listening right now. So he's shaking his fist in the air right now. So thank you, Craig. Appreciate the time. Great job, as always, like I said. And we'll talk to you down the road. I appreciate it. Thank you.

And Matt, say, travels to Los Angeles. All right, there you go. Craig Ackerman TV voice of the Houston Rockets, radio voice of the Houston Rockets, Matt Thomas, on his way to Los Angeles. Quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. You guys want to talk some Rockets Ball taking on the Lakers game number one on Saturday. We will be out at the Kirby Ice House Heights location.

It will be the official Rockets watch party. Now, generally, they have clutch and some power dancer. Well, they don't call them Power Dances anymore. Clutch City Dancers, I think is what they're called these days. So I can't guarantee you that. out there. Cole Thompson will be hanging out. We're going to have a have a good time. Kirby Ice House. It'll be a Rockets fan watch party for

game number one. 730 tip. I'll be there for 630 Rockets Launchpad. All right, quick break here. On the Matt Thomas show with Ross, 713 212-579. The phone number, if you want to get in. 713 212-5-790. All right, coming up

in just a couple of minutes, we will have Brian McTagger, great conversation with him talking about the Astros. Want a couple of games? in a row against the Colorado Rockies going for the sweep today. It'll be Ryan Weiss on the Hill. Oh, and two on the season. Well, the 7.36 ERA, oaf, that's not great.

Whip of 2.09, that's not great. Wox and hits for endings pitched. One flat is pretty elite. Anything under that is extremely elite. For a starter, you want them around like 1.2 max. 2.09 is bad. But it's early. That's what we're going to say with all these pitchers.

all this bad pitching that we've been seeing from the Astros. You got some good pitching yesterday from Spencer Ergetti. He had the quality start, six innings of one run ball, got enough from your offense. Yordon continues to hit Christian Walker. Also had a, I think he had a run batted in and that one. Oh, he was on a sack flying. That's right. Didn't have a whole lot of an offensive explosion, but it'll be interesting to see where things balance.

I think at some point the hitting might not be as good as it has been early in the season. and then the pitching will not be as bad as it has been at some point of this, at this far end of the season. 8 and 11 could be better. 8 game losing streak was horrible. Maybe Erigetti can help stabilize your rotation. Josh Hater coming back in the next couple of weeks. Brian Abreu may be turning the corner.

And we'll see what you can get out of Ryan Weiss tonight. He wanted to be a starter. He talked about that. and was very clear about that being the role that he wanted to have for the Houston Astros. And guess what? Going up against Colorado Rockies at home going for a sweep, you're in a pretty sweet spot. Hopefully the Astros can get some runs and get the victory. They are favored according to the Vegas odds.

It was like a minus 170 is the last I looked. Minus 171. Yeah, it looks like it's minus 168 now. So some slight fluctuations in there. That means that's what you've got to lay to win 100 bucks. So that's where the Astros are. Hopefully going for the sweep. And then we're all just going to feel a lot better.

Even though it's the Rockies, nice landing spot there. Cardinals have actually won a couple of games. They're looking maybe decent. They're 10 and 8 at this point. They'll be in town for the weekend. Still should be some winnable games for the Astros. Get the sweep here. Win two out of three against the Cardinals.

And then you're sitting in 500. After all this disaster, it's crazy. It's almost like you can write a book about the start of the season for the Astros. We're only 19 games in. Long, long season. Hopefully, the season is not yet over for the Houston Astros. 710 first pitch going for the sweep here on Sports Talk 790. Okay, short segment here.

We have Brian McTaggart coming up next here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. All things, Rockets, of course. Thanks to Craig Ackerman for joining in the last segment. And Astros coming your way after this quick break. On the Matt Thomas show with Ross. without Matt Thomas. He is off for his number one gig. Rockets radio play-by-play.

Missing time, missing days. It's fine. Anywho, he was here earlier for a conversation with Brian. I just said that to get a smile out of Adam Clanton, who's hanging out in here. And it worked. All right. Anyways, we earlier talked to Brian McTaggart, weekly guest, MLB.com, and of course, Astros.com, covering the Astros like nobody's business.

Great conversation with him. wanted to bring that to you guys. Here he is starting off talking about all things Astros, beginning with the Spencer Araggetti start that was. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think he came to camp probably thinking he was going to make the team and the Astros brought in a handful of other starting pitchers, you know, EMI Burroughs and even a couple other guys who were going to compete.

You know, Nate Pearson ended up getting hurt so it didn't work out. But, you know, Weiss and Tang, but, their plan all along was if this goes really well, we're going to have Ari Getty open the season, our AAA rotation. You know, he didn't start a game in gratefully play at all. He pitched sort of in long relief,

so it was pretty clear that he wasn't being given a chance to make the club. And then, you know, when pitchers start to fall in left and right, they're going to go to a six-man rotation. He was right there further than, man. He was terrific last night, and I think he had a little bit of a chip on the shoulder, He said that last night. He pitched with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder for not making the team.

And he came out and pitched really, really well. Curve ball was crazy. 16 swings and misses on the curve. So, yeah, it looks like he's going to be in the rotation of stay now. It was a big pick me up. And the reality is this. You know, the strikeout numbers have always been good. It's been the other control, the walks that have caused the issue.

So if he turns the corner in his major league career, that strikeout to walk ratio has got to be much improved. Yeah, he's got to cut down. the walks. He walked four guys. One of them scored. He hit a couple of batters as well. So he does tend to spray the ball a little bit at times. But again, with the stuff that he has with the curb ball and the sweeper, his arsenal, he's got a lot of ways to get hitters out. And when he's pitching as well as he did last night, I don't think it's just a Rockies thing. I think that's stuff that can play against any lineup. But man, they needed that. They needed a starter to come out and throw six innings because they hadn't had that done since, I think March 31st.

So it's the first time this month that one of their starters had gotten six innings. So it allowed them to reset their bullpen a little bit, which is good because, you know, with Weissko in the day, I mean, he probably can't go more than three or four inings. So it'll sort of be a bullpen day today. They need as many of those guys fresh as they can get. Yeah, Burroughs did go six against Seattle,

but that wasn't great. He was kind of doing it because he had to. So, yeah, there's four guys that have been. And he's six runs, so, yeah. Yeah, that was not great. So, yeah, four. The reality is this, Brian, it's four guys out of, what 19 games that's not a great ratio of guys going six innings for you out of your

stunning rotation no and only three of them are quality starts so that's that's got to turn around and i think if they can just stabilize this rotation a little bit i mean burroughs has got a pitch better um you know monday he gave up two home runs to nailer i mean other than that i mean a lot of weak contact i mean there's things there that make you think he can get it turn around pretty quickly here um but the thing about their their pitching depth is They knew that they had Gordon and AAA and at Arrogati, at Alexander, and they thought at some point during the year they would have to need those guys. They just didn't think they would need all these guys within the first few weeks of the season.

So they just have to try to weather this storm so they can start getting some of these guys healthy. But it doesn't look like Brown or Emeier are going to be back anytime soon. And or Javier, I mean, none of these guys are really even throwing yet. So it's going to be, they have to weather the storm, but the storm is going to be pretty rough here. I think for a few weeks. I was going to bring up Tatsuya Imi. Can you just give us your thoughts on the curious case of Tatsuya Imi with the comments that a lot of people ran with about not being able to eat on time and all that type of stuff? And just how interesting this situation is with him trying to adjust and him admitting it's not as easy as he thought it was going to be.

And then the success hasn't been there on the mound. And now, as you mentioned, he's not throwing. Yeah, I mean, I think his comments were part of a broader issue where he said this originally. He said that I'm having trouble adjusting to the American lifestyle on and off the field. And I asked him off the field what specifically, do you mention the food? But I think that's just part of the whole thing. I mean, this is a guy who, you know, was in Florida for six weeks coming from a new culture. Everything is new to him.

The language, the food, it's not going to be easy. And we've seen a lot of Japanese pictures or players. come over and it's going to take them a while to make the adjustments. You know, he's talked about the different ball. He's talked about the different mound. The mound was too hard in Seattle. The weather's not used to, you know, what he's used to playing in. So he's adjusting to everything there is.

Even interpreters, he's got his third different interpreter now that's following him around. So he's sort of just kind of a flag out there waving in the wind and trying to figure out which way to go here. So, yeah, the food is one thing. and that sounds bad, but I think it's just a broader thing of him getting adjusted. And the Astros are trying to help him. Joe Spott has talked to some other guys who've had some Japanese players and things they can do to get him more acclimated. But he's not injured.

You know, all the scans and tests came back clean. So they're just going to give him a blow here. And, you know, his stuff in the bullpen in Seattle, everybody said it was electric. He was throwing 98. And people were like, wow, he's going to go out there and dominate. And, you know, he didn't. He was all over the place. It was a disaster.

And it just makes you wonder if, you know, if he was nervous, there was a huge crowd there that night, 44,000, I think they had honored each row with a statue. A lot of Japanese media, a lot of Japanese fans. He was certainly aware of that. So I think there's pressure on him there as well. But just needs a little bit of a reset, you know, maybe starting getting ramped up here, start throwing again, and maybe get on the mound later this month and see if he can be in a better frame of mind.

Brian McTaggart, MLB.com, Astros.com, with us here on Sports Talk 7-9. What did you think of the last couple of outings for Brian Brayu? The velocity, still not exactly what we're used to, but at least he is getting some outs. Yeah, he's putting up zeros. I mean, he looked a lot closer last night to the Brayu that the Astros. He walked the first guy, but then got four outs, a couple of strikeouts in the eighth inning. The Velo was pretty good last night. He hit 97.

To me, the slider was really good. You know, that's going to be a swing and miss pitch. He was getting some strikeouts on that. So it was another step in the right direction. So, you know, I think Joe will continue to keep him out of these high leverage situations. I mean, that kind of was a high leverage situation. And like Joe said in Seattle, when asked if he was going to keep a Breu out of the closures role or out of high leverage situations, there really haven't been many.

Now, he ended up getting one a few days ago. But, you know, yesterday he comes in and, you know, the time runs at the plate and the winning runs at the plate and he got the job done. So it looks like he's on the right track, but he's, he's, he's, he's going to have to start stacking these good outings, so I think for the Astros to have total confidence in him. It's interesting that you've gone to Dullos Santos the last couple of times, and he's a guy that has not had a great track record of being a saved machine.

It feels like to me it's going to be by committee until either Josh comes back or Brayu settles down to take over that role once again. Yeah, I think totally. It wouldn't surprise me if Brian King gets a shot. You know, it's going to be based on matchups. I mean, if they're facing some lefties in the ninth inning, You could see King come in and face those guys. So Joe was asked, you know, who, you know, who are you going to have it closer?

And he's like, we're preparing all our relievers to pitch in high leverage situations. So, yeah, it has been De LaSanto's a couple nights in a row. He's gotten a job done. But tonight could be somebody different. And it probably would be somebody different because Delos Santos has pitched a couple of games in a row now. So, you know, the best thing they can have happened is they score a bunch of runs and they can give all these one-inning bullpen guys another day of rest and try to kick that can down the road

until they can get a bray you back and get him back right. What has been your thoughts about the left field and center field spots in terms of who's been playing, who's been getting days off, how much Yordons being used? I know they're trying everything in their power to get Bryce Matthews out there, but the bat just right now isn't there for him. Yeah, kind of a slow start with the bat. You know, he's playing against lefties.

With Myers going down, you've got Lopoporfito playing more. center field so it's given maybe matthews a little bit more opportunity out there but you know he's going to have to certainly swing the bat i think at some point you know low perfido continues to hit the ball hard he spoke to a couple balls yesterday that were hit right at uh you know one to right field another one the second base so uh but i like the quality his abat so far but um you know they really don't have a whole lot of options right now beyond brice i mean if you with zack cole being hurt um i don't think there's anyone really it's at AAA, they would be willing to bring up here.

So they're just going to have to continue to mix the match with what they have and hope Bryce can get it turned around a little bit when he makes those rare starts against the left-handers. All right. So look, a 1 and 9 road trip was not great. The two home wins doesn't necessarily satisfy all that. The biggest blessing, I think, for Astro fans that are listening right now is the fact that no one's really separating themselves within the division, for that matter, around the league. Why do you think everybody's off to such a mid-start collectively around baseball with

the exception of maybe that team in Los Angeles. The American League is, again, nothing's ever going to be determined here in the first 20 or 25 games of the year, but no one's really setting themselves apart out at this point of a year. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any one reason. I mean, I think on paper the Dodgers were the better team and they're proving at that. I mean, you know, the American League East is a division where you got two or three teams who could win that division, and they're sort of feeling each other out.

There have been, you know, a couple of injuries here and there as well. I think teams are still feeling out this ABS thing, to be honest with you. I mean, walks are up big time. It's probably neutralized pitching a little bit. Batters are getting on base more. So there's going to be some adjustment period, I think, especially for the pitchers on what's going on with that. But, yeah, you're right.

I mean, Astros are right there. I mean, the season is like 10% old. So if they can just get their starting pitching stabilized and then slowly start to get these guys back, you know, the offense has been really good. This division is not going to be a great division. I still think Seattle's a team to beat, but I mean, they're struggling as well, and they're not playing the Astros.

So plenty of time, 140 games plus. You know, a lot can happen. But it'll be really interesting when they go on the road next week to see if they can play better on the road. They go to Cleveland. They've got a lot of road games coming up. They've got to go to Boston. So they've got to get this road thing turn around. Lastly, and look, Yonner Diaz is not public enemy number one for the,

for the Astros. He's hit a little bit the last couple days, but defensively still is a work in progress, and the whole ABS thing has not been his best friend. Every once in a while, people will ask us about Walter Yonick, and the bat just hasn't been good for him at Corpus Christian. It's ever been really great as a minor leaguer. When do you, as a reporter,

start kicking the tires on talking to some minor league folks and worrying about whether or not this guy can ever really hit at the professional level? Well, I mean, there are only, what, two weeks in other season? I mean, he hasn't played at double A yet, so, yeah, I think we're way too early for that.

I mean, I think he's got to give him a couple of months worth of the bats of AA and see where he's at. When he was playing at high A, he played high A ball for pretty much two years. You know, his numbers last year were a lot better than his first year after he got drafted. So it's taken him a little bit to adjust to each level. But, man, he's such an elite defensive catcher that you've got to be patient with them because they could really use that kind of presence behind the plate. I will say Yiner had a couple of really good challenges yesterday.

He picked up a strikeout for Erigetti. Erigetti was like, oh, no, don't challenge this. And he did up being a strikeout. So he did a pretty good job with ABS yesterday. But certainly with his limitations defensively, Yainer's going to have to hit, and he hasn't done that so far. But, you know, Yonik is probably a conversation in a couple of months to see how he's hitting because I don't think he's going to be in the big league club this year. But I think next year he comes to camp, maybe if he had a pretty good year at the plate with a chance to compete. for a spot on the big league club.

And you've seen him actually catch a game before? Yeah, AAA. Yeah, he was great. He was, you know, the pop time, the things you hear in spring training when we saw him in spring training were great. He got a really strong on his second base. He was throwing behind runners, behind the batterers to try to pick guys off first base. So he was probably the guy in spring training that opened more eyes than anybody else just with what he was able to do behind the plate calling pitches.

He looked like a major league ready defensive catcher. It's just going to be a matter of how much he can hit. There you go. Brian McTaggart, astros.com and MLB.com here on Sports Talk 790. Great conversation with him weekly. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. We'll wrap it up ahead of not only one Adam. There's another Adam on the show. They call themselves the A team and they're coming your way at 2 o'clock here on Sports Talk 790.

Don't go anywhere. I mean, kind of. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross, without Matt Thomas. Shout up to Maddie Nation, everyone out there. All right, a couple of minutes left here before we get out. You have the Astros coming your way. 710 first pitch, 6 o'clock Astros on deck. Of course, the A team coming up at 2 o'clock.

Make sure you don't want to miss that. Everyone knows that. And we had the conversation earlier with Craig Ackerman about the Rockets in action this weekend. against the Los Angeles Lakers, I still think, as I told Craig, once it's a scenario where there's not a single rocket who's knocking down threes, and Luke Canard,

and I don't even know, Jake LaRavia or whoever is knocking down a bunch of threes, and LeBron James is like dropping triple doubles, which he can be, he has the capability to do at this age, and you also do have in the first round series, the benefit of playing on Saturday, then two days off, then you play on Tuesday, then you get two more days off,

and you have two days between like game four and five. The series is really spaced out in a first round series. And generally, the older, just over the years, the data has shown the older team is, the more they struggle later in the playoffs because that's when you have to move into playing every other day. So maybe there are some ways and some paths to, victory for the Lakers, but for the most part, I just don't see it.

Kevin Durant's been steady all season long. I think he's going to continue to do that. Outbrinching Goon has been playing his best ball all season long as well. Reed Shepard continues to blossom. I mean, Jabari and Tari can go cold here and there, but quietly Jabari Smith, Jr. has been really good for the Rockets. They ask him to guard one through five. He's a switchable defender.

He doesn't lock down one through five, like say, I don't know, a prime. but LeBron was doing that in his prime, like guarding Powell Gasol and switching and stuff like that. And some others have done it as well, being great switchable defenders. Draymond Green is somebody who comes to mind, locking down one through five. But he's been good.

He's good one through five, which has value. And then he knocks down threes. Midranges have been very good. I like the value that Jabari Smith Jr. brings. So I'm sticking with Rockets in five. Of course, we'll make some more NBA playoff predictions. tomorrow on the program. Matt had to leave early because he is flying out with the rockets to Los Angeles.

He will be back on tomorrow for the full four hours. I will talk to you then. We also have our traditional Friday open. Should be a fun show. Right now, you should stay tuned because it's two different Adams. That's right. Two guys, one name. That's believe what they call the show. That's coming up at 2 o'clock here on Sports Talk 7.90. You're home for your Houston Rockets and your Houston Astros. Teams that win championships in this town.