The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Get Swept vs Red Socks Sitting 62-50, Astros vs Miami Tonight, NCAA Coaches Poll Talk

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Astros Get Swept vs Red Socks Sitting 62-50, Astros vs Miami Tonight, NCAA Coaches Poll Talk 

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 10 o'clock straight up here on Sports Talk 790. Hello. And welcome in to the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas. We will be joined by Dan Matthews hanging out from the previous program, the Sean Salisbury show with Dan Matthews. Dan, appreciate you hanging out. Why is it so dark in here?

I don't like the, you guys put on like the super bright, whatever these lights are. Yeah, because I mean, we get in here like 5 a.m. Yeah, they give me a headache. So I turned them off. These are the regular. Yes, I am very nocturnal. First of all, I just woke up six minutes ago.

Second of all, it's too bright in here, man. And then you've got the guys Adam and Adam who come in here, and they put on these TV lights and those really blasts you off. It's like you're standing in front of a Jeep at Jurassic Park, man. It's like, it's way too bright. I was going to say it's almost like the lights that people use for frogging. Excuse me? Oh, okay. Like when they're going to gig some frog.

Yeah, like for the airboats. I've never been frogging. Well, I mean, because you also have to make sure that, you know, the eyes close together, those are frogs. A little further apart, those are not frogs. They're swamp lizards. All right, so we're off to a hot start here. You try sticking one of those things with one of those prongs. It's not going to go well.

Okay. Dan's here hanging out for an hour. Who's coming in? Adam Wexer is coming in for the one o'clock hour. Chris Gordy's going to join us just for one segment. He is still on the road. in Boston this weekend. He's going to give us the Finway report where we kind of know how things went there. We'll get to that in a second. He's coming up at noon. We have to tell the truth at 1130.

I mean, we've got a jam-packed show here. Matt Thomas is out as he announced on his Twitter. His mother is having surgery. So thoughts and prayers out to the Thomas family. And I believe he is scheduled to be back tomorrow as long as everything goes well. So Matt is out. You can be here and get in if you like. It's 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3.7-9. 7-1. 3-21257-9. You can also send tweets to at SportsRV. At Dan Matthews, H-O-U, that is Matthews with 1T. And while you're here, follow my Instagram at SportsRV.

I'm trying to put more stuff on my Instagram. Don't shake your head, Jonathan. Matt's out. I'm going to get in like 20 plugs for my Instagram today. And you know what? The worst part is, ever since I started plugging my Instagram, Matt in a fit of jealousy has started plugging his. So give me the leg up, please.

Follow me at Sports RV on Instagram. I feel like your thirst traps land better than his do, though. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I'll be putting some more up today. Really tasteful ones. Just one nipple. All right.

713-212-5-790 is the phone number if you'd like to get in, as I said. We're all excited, Dan, about Carlos Correa being a Houston Astro and all these moves in Jesus Sanchez. And we're coming back, folks, and we're going to the... World Series. And then they get swept in Boston over the weekend. Yeah, then they forgot how to run the bases. They also did not field very well. Some of them never knew how to run

the bases. Well, that's true. But in... Asif Sanchez is throwing to the wrong bases. He's trying to throw guys out at home who have no cheese, got no chance of getting. I mean, yeah, you're right. All the fundamentals over the weekend were horrible. Nearly overrunning, which became a foul ball,

but you thought could land fair. And I even heard Robert Ford mentioned that too where he was like that ball had every chance to land fair too and he would have overrun that so yeah it was a comedy of errors all the way around and you know what i mean you guys you set the tone on friday not for it to be a bad weekend but you set it to be a great weekend of playing steve winwood back in the high life again and i heard that song and i was like you know what i'm feeling great this is going to be an awesome weekend and now i don't even want to listen to back in the high life again because i don't feel like i'm back in the high life again well they're not back in the high life

They're back in the, you know, I put out like some tweet about how the lineup was greatly improved for Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday, they scored nine runs and then on Friday they scored one. This is a sad country music song. This is what this is. Okay. This is, you get in your car and you have it on some station and it's some really just downtrodden song that you're just like, my God, this is not what I wanted on a Monday. No, it's not. And I guess things are going to be okay.

Jeremy Pena, thankfully, he left with a hamstring. What did they call it? A twinge? A cramp. Okay. We're going with a cramp. He cramped the hamstring on Friday. Then he was out on Saturday.

Then he was back in the lineup on Sunday. But do you remember a certain Houston Astro who had a mild hamstring injury and then missed a couple of days and then came back in the lineup? And everything was supposed to be okay? His name was Isak Paredes. Don't do that, man. And now... Don't do this to us. And now we're talking about him, how we talk about him.

how we talk about ribs, it's fall off the bone meat. It's not good. So I'm a little bit worried. Can you calm me down? Can you help me out at some point? I mean, I'm not feeling good about what's going on. I mean, I'm going to do my best because, I mean, we've said this numerous times before with this medical staff of, I don't think they'd put them back out there with any thought that, you know, there could be some sort of reaggravation or even making it worse or any of those other things.

And, I mean, it is worth noting with Paredes that it was the other. hamstring. We saw this over across the way with the Texans a few years ago. Remember Andre Johnson? He heard his hamstring in a game and you're like, uh-oh, that's not good. All right, he's back. Oh, he hurt his other one. Yeah, it's like you overcompensate and then you hurt the other one. And by the way,

I'm pulling the box score back up. I thought they changed some of the I thought some of those runs are supposed to be unearned because of Framber Valdez and what was going on with those past balls. I know that by the way, they both felt like past balls to me. They were. And now I know, I don't know if there some crossing up, which is crazy that that happens when you have a pitch calm.

But, okay. That was a disaster, obviously. Fourth inning for Framber Valdez where the six runs were given up. A lot of soft contact. It just had a mix of everything. You really hit the whole buffet. The things that always befall

Framber, you had a walk, you had some soft hit contact, you had some intermittent hard hit contact, and then Yiner Diaz, you had like the fielding, not doing the many favors. and then Fromber not doing himself any favors, letting a butt go basically through his legs. It was all of the bad parts of the Frumber bingo card that hit yesterday.

Like it's one of those, you know, they're turning the wheel right there. You got the bingo balls in there, and you know you have that one number pulled out, and you're like, oh, it's this one. Oh, that's a tapper up the third base line. That's going to allow for the guy to get on base, and that's going to frustrate him. And then another one comes out of the hopper.

Oh, that's the pitch that should have caught the bottom of the strike zone. and was not called a strike, so now Framber's upset. Like, it had it all. I didn't really feel like it was a classic. Like, he's completely lost control of this game. I felt it was more like a lot of bad luck than anything. I don't know. There was a little bit of that, but I mean, there was also too

where I'm even kind of thinking at that point of, do you pull him, man? Because this is just getting away from you. And it's not like your lineup has really given you tremendous at-bats that think that, hey, maybe there's a chance if Fromber can get us a couple more innings that we might have a chance in this one. there was never a thought of that yesterday with the way these guys were swinging it or not yeah the good news is it didn't matter if he just gave up two runs you didn't score again the entire rest of the game so they just the bat's quiet it's funny how that works and we always go back to its baseball never almost ever do things go according to plan in baseball you get all these guys in your lineup you're feeling like you're going to score some runs everybody in the lineup over the weekend for the most part's got like an oPS around 700 or above and and then you're you're going to score some runs everybody in the lineup over the weekend for the most part it's got like an oPS around 700 or above and then you're

you can't score two of the three games you score one run. Well, that's why I said the excuses are out the window, because you don't have Cooper Hummel out there anymore. You don't have Zach Short out there anymore. You have guys in the lineup that are supposed to be able to contribute that you know that you can count on because they've done it at this level. And you get five runs and get outscored by 10 this weekend. Do the math of how well this weekend went.

It didn't go. Abraham Toro's freaking dropping bombs on you. Well, I mean, him, Ref Schneider. I mean, Trevor's story. We don't have to see him until next week. That's not too soon. I mean, just every single turn, there was nothing that you could point at this weekend and say,

well, that was a positive. The bullpen, maybe? But at that point, did it matter? And how many put-outs did Breggman have at third? It felt like the ball was getting hit to him every other play. That's my point. And he was making plays. I mean, like where you get Christian Walker yesterday,

the fifth or sixth inning, gets the 2-0 and the count. And then the 2-0 pitch gets straightened up legs, Top's one over to third base, and it's just like, that's a two-oh pitch. That's one where the legs need to stay underneath you, and that ball needs to go over the wall. Yeah, look like he had his sprint speed wasn't looking too great on that play either. I don't know what's going. Would it have mattered?

As soon as Breggman gets it, it's not going to matter. You sound frustrated with the bat this weekend, Dan. I'm okay with this. To put it mildly, yes. Oh, man. This gumbo's been boiling for a while, trust me. No, I don't think you wanted to boil. I make it

everything turns into mushy in there. You want to take it to a blur but then you want to bring it to a simmer. Okay, yeah, you want to simmer it down. That's the problem. The good news is the Astros are taking on the Marlins who are somehow red hot.

What the hell, man? See, and here's how much the Astros make sense. They're going to win this series and then the Yankees who have been playing awful baseball and if you saw that this weekend, they're a mess right now. That Friday night meltdown was one for the ages. That one. And then, you know, Jazz Chisholm doing whatever the hell he was doing off first base base.

And then Aaron Boone getting upset with his first base coach. His first base coach is like, I can't run it for him, Aaron. Like that was pretty much the way that that conversation went. But what I'm saying is watch how it's going to go great this weekend. And then somehow the Yankees are going to get right against the Astros. Well, I hope not. But the Marlins are the, they're taking the Marlins on this first, right? That's correct.

And so not, is it, am I really? that's correct. Nine of their last 11, the Marlins have won. Now they're squared up at 500 ball. They're very much in the playoff picture right now. That's crazy. All right. Well, we'll see how that goes.

And what really hurt over the weekend is you threw Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez. You didn't have to face Garrett Crochet and you got swept. Yeah, that's how fun this weekend was for you. But you throw a guy on Friday, that's a sweeper slider guy. And as soon as I saw that that was what he relied upon, I was like, this team has no chance. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much been. If you have that and you throw it on the outside and you throw it with some regularity,

this team will try to pull it. And when they try to pull it, they're going to hit weak grounders to third and short. And that's exactly what you've been seeing. All right. Change up the approach a little bit. It'd be nice. Let's talk about the comedy of errors that was for the Houston Astros over the weekend. You get all excited for all the trades that are made.

Carlos Correa is back. There's a ton of Astros fans in Finway and you get swept. We can also talk about anything else going on. of course the Texans are still going on. And as long as there's been no major injuries, I'm feeling pretty good about that. Anything else you want to get to? Go ahead.

Yeah, we did have a caller who asked us about Graham Mertz earlier and how much he would play. Vagabond John from Minnesota. Okay. And I was like, I'm sure he'll play quite a bit. You're not going to see CJ? Okay. Graham Mertz talk coming up as well.

713-212-5-790. We got to tell the truth coming up at 1130. We got Dan hanging out for the first hour. Chris Gordy at noon. We got Adam Wex for at 1. I mean, it is a jam-packed show. The Matt Thomas show without Matt Thomas. You want to get in, you can.

7-13-21-2-5-7-90. 7-13-212-5-7-90. 10-18 in the a.m. here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas. He'll be back tomorrow. Ross via Real.

Dan Matthews, is hanging out with you right now. 7-1-3. 212-5-790. The phone number 7-13, 2-1-2-5-7-90. I didn't realize this, Dan, we were talking about this, and the break it came across the news wires. Julio Rodriguez is the first player in Major League history with 2020, as in home runs and stolen bases in each of his first four seasons. Yeah, I didn't realize that.

That's kind of crazy. Yeah, I didn't realize that until I saw that stat come across yesterday. I would have figured Lou Gehrig would have pulled it off in 1927. By Mickey Mantle. Yeah, somebody back. of the day. Nobody's done this but him. That's crazy. Especially considering a couple of these seasons have been disappointments

for him, but I guess not this year. I don't know. He's always, I mean, he's always great in center field, so he's going to give you some value no matter what there. OPS is 743. Looks like he's got some high, hot power. 20 home runs already. 2020 season. Congratulations to him, and I say all that to say this.

We should be pretty worried about the Seattle Mariners in this American League West race, which we kind of knew already, but they took three out of four against the Rangers over the weekend. You got swept. It's now just a two and a half game lead over Seattle

and the Rangers are kind of lurking back there, four and a half back. Yeah, I mean, first I would say screw Julio Rodriguez. No, just kidding. I actually like Julio Rodriguez. But no, that smell that you smell right now? Is it a stinky

Seattle chowder? That's two and a half. Seattle. Okay. And another one, another lingering odor? All right. Is Conner McGregor in here? That's four and a half. The Rangers behind you.

You're bumping lines in here, dude. So getting swept, three out of your last seven series, losing five out of your last seven and going six and ten out of the All-Star break. And, oh, by the way, going seven and fifteen. Since you left L.A., that's how that happens. Well, I can bring this up because Matt hates when I bring up. opponent's schedule strength, but since he's out, I can bring it up.

The good news is that the Astros, now of course we know they can struggle against teams who have losing records. Yeah, you just saw it for six games. But would you rather play 10 games against the best teams in baseball or 10 against the worst? Let's be practical about it. It would be the worst.

Well, I, come on. I know. But they have the 23rd most difficult schedule, meaning 23rd, I guess, eighth easiest. But in terms of opponent win, percentage. However, Seattle is 26th. Well, then win those games. Yes. That's the moral of the story. We use... Go ahead. We use the golf example all the time here of a good golf round for a pro golfer out there.

Make the most of your par fives. You par the par threes, which are, you know, they're really tough teams in this league. And then also to be able to steal one here or they're on a par four, they've been bogeing the par fives. The A's, the nationals, even though you won that series, still. I mean, both of those series right there, that cannot happen if you are going to see this thing through. That cannot happen. That, what just happened a week ago can never happen again, the rest of the way of this season. You do that again, you're not making the postseason, period. Well, yeah, I'm just making the point that it's not like the Astros.

I'm saying if they fumble this division, it'll be of their own accord. They've got a lot of easy games remaining. They still have seven left with the bad Orioles. the A7 left with the Angels, three more with the A's, who unfortunately have been owning them. Three more with the Rockies and three more with the Braves who are all bad teams. We've got some tough ones coming up as well. And we talked about that and we'll see what happens. You got three more with the Mariners.

Of course, that series looms large and six more with the Rangers. But this is very winnable. You are in the pole position. You're in first. And you've got all the reinforcements from the deadline. Astros need to go out and win this American League was. You've got 50 games left to go. And, I mean, you know, it's one of those that you haven't had to do the full-on sprint that you had to do last year.

But you've got to pick up the pace a little bit because you've got to win some series here. Like, you've got to be able to flip that trend as much as possible because the Mariners aren't losing. And they have not been losing. Neither are the Rangers. So, like, soon enough, the trend has got to turn. And this is no better time than now to try to do it. Rangers have the fourth most difficult schedule remaining, so they have the toughest road going forward,

at least in terms of opponent win percentage, which I always point out as one data point. Of course, it doesn't always mean anything. It doesn't always mean everything. They go out and win their games, and things are going to go their way. Six of those most difficult games for the Rangers are against your Houston Astros. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number.

Troy and Humble has been waiting patiently. Troy, go ahead. The floor is yours. Oh, you know what? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I got you. You do it, Jonathan. They have been a good since the L.A. Dodger series. And not only that, all the things you brought up, it's the bencherunery mistakes they're making. It seems like I know they've had a lot of injuries, but it's like the holes are starting to show up. We know their catching is terrible.

I mean, the amount of times the teams are stealing and taking second base without throws down the second base, that just aggravates me. man, the Astros can't throw anybody out. They can't make any plays from their catcher position. So I don't like the pickups that they made. You know, I think Cam Smith was needed a risk. I think Cedestead would be a good outfielder for them. And but as you said, the Rangers and Seattle, they got better.

And the Astros, they still had that cushion. They need to get right against these Marlins right now. And they still can do it. But, man, it's just frustrating to watch their level of, play how bad it's been and then you see the rest of the division catching up with you. So hopefully they can rectify the situation and we'll come on top. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Troy. And yeah, he brought up something that I've been kind of thinking about. I mean, we love yiner Dias. Why are you,

why are you slow blinking at me, Dan? We love Yiner Diaz. I just would like to see more out of the bat out of Yiner. Exactly. If you are going to be at the plate and you're going to be giving up past balls and you're not going to be throwing anybody out. We need to see. Now we've gotten a home run production. He's got 15 home runs. That's very good, especially at the catching position. But it's not

it just does not feel like he's been consistent enough and certainly he doesn't get on base at ton. Bingo, you just said it. He hasn't done it for prolonged periods. A couple of nice games against the Washington Nationals. That's great. But then pedestrian at best in the Boston series.

A huge reason why you lose this this series and I'm not putting it all on Yiner Diaz but that's what aggravates you is when you see what you saw yesterday with the past balls you're just kind of like dude if you're not going to give that part which is the part that you're known for

then I can't have you there like that to me means that you have to have Victor Keratini back there a lot more if you're not going to get more consistency out of the other part and I'm not backing off of that his cot stealing percentage is 13

A lot of it too is horrible. Now the, yes, the Astros pitchers don't do a good job of holding guys. At all. Lefties or righties. So the league, baseball reference has this metric called the league caught stealing percentage. Like his expected cot stealing percentage would be 22%. He's at 13%. Last year he was at 22.9. Before that, he was at 30, which is very good. I don't know what's going on.

And maybe some of it's bad luck, but I mean, 71 stolen bases on him this year. I understand that he is offense first when it comes to him being in the lineup. Yes. That is why Yiner Diaz is the everyday starting catcher. But when the offense is inconsistent at best, then that's when the other parts get amplified. And that's why yesterday when those two pass balls happened, you're just like, dude, like you catch the guy all the time. Like, how do you not know, like, this is what can happen when you put your glove this way? Like, that's, to me, it just was more of the fundamentals alluding this team.

And you just saw it over a three-game stretch where this looked like a fundamentally broken baseball team. His six-pass balls are tied for the most in the American League with Shane Langalear's and Carlos Navarra's of Boston. So, I mean, a lot of past balls, not throwing anybody out. And look, I'm not going to say it's no production at the plate. 15 home runs is some production. But it's not much out of that, outside of that. It's amplified again where you've got Jose Altuve going through one of his, hey, the ball is somewhat near the plate.

All right, I'm swinging at it, even if it's not remotely a strike. And we've seen him do that. The same deal with Christian Walker, who has given you some good performances. Yeah. He did over the weekend. and some homers. It's nice to see, but it's again, it's across the board where it just feels like it's feast or famine with this lineup where it's almost everybody is on or nobody is on. And you can't live that way. Like, you've got to have a guy or two that can pop and be able to at least you can look at him in the lineup and say, hey, you know, maybe this guy's not so great, but at least I can count on that guy. Where's it been? I don't know. Well, we're all good because Jason Alexander's on the hill tonight for the Astros. Again, Sandy Alcantra. Should be great. confidence all time high.

Well, at least Sandy's been terrible this year. So hopefully that can continue. Miami, a minus 130 for those of you playing Bookie at home, which means you got to lay $130 to win 100. Aschros at a plus 110. Oh, I mean, they've fallen short at times as favorites. So maybe they can be able to rise up. Underdogs can win, baby.

There's the underdogs right here. I'm not going to guarantee you much of anything. We'll see what happens. It's a 540 first pitch here on Sports Talk 790. So Adam and Adam, we'll have you for the Astros on deck coming up at 430. I'll have you for the post-game 10th inning call-in show. Hopefully it is a happy one. No, no, I want you to get the same calls that Matt got yesterday.

I don't know. No, I didn't hear. I didn't listen, but what happened? Let's see. You got one guy who said that the coach has got to do a better job, including, you know, having the guys bunt more. and then he said, the manager, you mean? No, no, I'm not talking about the manager.

All right, what's his name? And then the guy didn't even know the name. It's just like, like, PSA, all right? We understand you're passionate. We understand that you want to get your voices out there. They're managers. They're not coaches. The manager.

That's who you're trying to talk about. And then when you do call in, you watch and listen to this team enough. You know the names. Know the names. What we're asking. I'm going to go Nick Sabin on you, but I have to go Nick Sabin on you sometimes. Yeah, that's true.

If you're going to call for someone to be fired to say they're not doing their job, at least know their name. It's missing me the one rule. Your bit of intentionally missing the name. We're on to you. We know what your bit is. Stop doing it.

Dude, Dan is frustrated, folks, on a Monday morning. Just ain't Dan, brother. It carries over. 713. This is my nap time. 212-790. You want to come and say you don't know a coach's name. It'll be good for Dan Matthews.

713-212-5-790 is the phone number 7-13-212-5-790 it is the mad thomas show with ross without mad thomas back in a minute dan is grooving in the studio see all i needed was just a chance to be able to go out get some water yeah back in deep breaths and you get a little humpty hump here the humpty dance on a monday instead of a hump day there was a buddy of mine once who for karaoke It was at a Halloween party and he was Humpty Dumpty for Halloween. So they had him up there. The inflatable egg. Okay, but he was broken.

Yeah. Who was it when you were one of the king's men? No. Okay. No, I saw the video. I wasn't at this party. Okay, he did this song. But he did the Humpty Dance too.

You got to do the Humpty Dance if you dress up as Humpty Dumpty. If you're Humpty Dumpty, you're going to do the Humpty Dance. You know, I heard recently the kids aren't having house parties these days anymore. I saw, you know, we talked about this on, on the Salis Oh, oh, why are you, now let's hear from one of the kids first. We don't got to say, Gen Z weighing in. We don't have houses. We don't have apartments.

We don't have houses. No, you're doing it at your parents' house. Yeah. When they go out of town. Well, you can, dude, the amount of house parties in where you went to college, Austin, anywhere that we had in apartments? Tons of all. Oh, yeah. Tons of all.

I got stories from house parties in Austin, folks. I mean, maybe we're throwing furniture off the roof at the end of the night. And, you know, I can't confirm nor deny. Yeah. The statute of limitations, I think, has worn off. Okay, good. So then I can't mention that I saw a pregnant girl do a keg stand and it was very disturbing. I mean, sure you can mention that.

Yeah. Do you know if the product of the pregnancy is okay? Okay. I don't know. This is 20 years ago. That's traumatizing. It was very bizarre. You know, say, what were you in eastern Tennessee?

No, I was in West Austin. Oh, okay. Oh, anyways. 7-1-3-2-2-2-5-7. Now did you know that she was expecting or was it like, you know. What? You know, hey, hey, are you expecting? How far are you?

No, you don't talk to her. You don't look her in the eye. You just look around everyone else weirdly like, what is going on here? That's one of those where you mealy mouth it, you side mouth into somebody. What the hell's going on here? Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Yeah. This is like, yeah, I think she is.

All right. Anyways. All right. So, back to the Astros. This week, there. taking on the Miami Marlins. No, you can't. Were you saying the Yankees are going to get hot this weekend

when they take on the Astros? There's no way. It's just, it seems like it is anything that can possibly go wrong at times goes wrong. But then it's, the funny thing is when you think, oh man, this is not going to be good. This is going to be a terrible series like when they went to L.A. And then they do that. Can we

talk about Boston fan booing Carlos Corrella and Jose Altovae and then cheering for Alex Breggman and Alex Cora is their manager? it's the next level it's not even the next level of stupidity it's continued stupidity in the ocean of stupidity and then everyone got mad at hector Neris because of the whole intentional balk and then he was clearing incident

and then he was like all right they're training and then they're all like yeah they're stealing sign well no they're looking at grips it's kind of different guys but I understand why it's the low-hanging fruit but also it's the freaking Boston Red Sox this is what I don't get more than any if there's any other organizations that should get as much heat if not more than the Astros because not only was it

2017 with the Apple Watches, then it was 2018 with Alex Cora, the manager that was there who they fired and then rehired and Alex Bregman is there. And yet all of a sudden it's Astros are still the face of this cheating scandal that happened eight years ago now? I said it numerous times

during the whole Michigan stuff in college football that it's a case study of made teams are not going to have that stink on them, no matter how bad it is or no matter how far it goes. But say that same year, if that's Clemson, if that's Florida State, if that's, I don't know, LSU, throw them in there too, that they're accused of doing the things that Connor Stallions

was. Oh my God, take away championships. I mean, just completely shut down the program. You would have every single moral high horse hand-wringing column written by Pat 40 and everybody else like that in college football to say that those things should have happened. But for Michigan, oh, it was a competitive advantage. Hey, look, they were just doing it better than everybody else. that's pretty much how that's handled. And the Red Sox are one of those teams. Yeah, well. We shouldn't be surprised by this.

I need some bleep Al Tuveh chance and then Jose Altuve hits a home run this weekend. I really need that in my life. Maybe the bad news is, I mean, even though the Marlins have been playing better baseball, you're going to be playing pretty much an empty building the next few days. It's not bad or good. I don't think it matters. Well, I mean, supposedly it is good because the more he gets booed, the better off he is.

How do you do this weekend? Altuva? Yeah. And you got a hit yesterday. Yeah. What, did he get a hit on the Saturday? No, he did not do very much. That's okay.

I'm not worried about it. But I just want them to win ball games. I don't care if the crowd's empty, if the crowd's full. I don't care who they're playing against. So win some ball games, folks. I just really could use one of those Jose Altuve heaters. I really could right now. Those are nice.

And he can get 10 hits in a series. I mean, we've seen it. We've seen it this year. What was that series this year where he just went completely. nuclear for a few games. Was it against the Tampa Bay or Seattle or something like that? And then he had the, well, I think it was actually Seattle. It was the one where he did that.

And then, I mean, funny enough, you beat them three out of four times. Weird how that happens. And then what was it? The final game of the series against the nationals when he had four. People were wondering, could he finally get that? And then he didn't come up. Yeah. Someday.

You only saw it didn't travel to Boston. Weird. No, it's a, he's just a street guy. and we've seen that from him I mean basically throughout his entire career so not that worried about it but do you need the winds to pile up right now I kind of did take one of your

I think you brought this to the air once but so we were talking about earlier you know God you know with Jose L2 Bay standing in front of them I'm going to give you tremendous bat to ball skills I'm going to give you at least in the beginning part of your career good fielding metrics and I'm going to give you good speed

the only problem is you're not going to be able to run the bases very well. How does he get picked off at first there? I was listening to it at the time. How does he start heading for second? I mean, the ball there are times with him on the basis

where I'm just like, you've done this before, have you not? Like, you know that part of the game, don't you? And of course, we love Jose Altuve. We love him. Biggest fans. We can't say another. good things about the guy. Even with this.

The base running error, you know, it's honestly remarkable how consistent he's been. It's actually impressive. Because if I try to think of, I don't even know, who's the second most horrible base runner over this Astros run that you can even begin

to try and think of? Nobody even really comes to mind. Chaz isn't great. Yeah, you're right. That's a good one, I guess. Chas will have the occasional Gaff. Yeah. Hey, contact play. Leroy Chinkin. Uh, yeah.

And it went the same way it went for Leroy. I get that. And then, yeah, he got gunned out. The whole infield was playing in, and he went off of contact. And it was actually, I mean, it wasn't, okay, he was out pretty easily. And that Paris Chica send on Saturday where, oh, hey, that's a good send right there. Really? For Christian Walker?

Yeah, you're down by three. That was a perfect throw, though, too. The ball was right to him. It was a perfect throw as well. With his momentum coming towards home. Yeah, I get it. But it was a perfect, perfect throw. If it's anything but a perfect throw.

throw Walker is safe home. So, but then you're down by two as opposed to three. I know. I understand. But anyways, was Al Tuvei, base friending. Always an adventure. Always an adventure.

Okay, we're going to take a break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. Dan is hanging out for another segment. We have, to tell the truth, coming up at 1130. Then we have Chris Cordy coming up at We have you. If you want to get in, you want to talk some Astros. We've got a lot of angles. We've been talking about Altoouvae Base Running. We've been talking about Yiner Diaz catching defense.

We've been talking about, unfortunately, a signature, Framber Valdez blow-up inning. Anything you want to get to about the squad. 713-212-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. All right, Dan has to take over the role of fawning over Lauren Shahati on the show today. I mean, I think it's just this chair. I think this chair just brings us. Well, I get it. Would you rather stare at me or would you rather stare at Lauren Shahati?

That's an easy choice. And she is quite striking in person, too. Jonathan's got to shake his head. Sorry, Jonathan. I mean, you know, look, there's something that comes with this chair and you've got to live up to it. It's good. You possess the chair. So many things to say and so many things that I won't say. I was going to say, if what Jonathan just said is what I thought he just said, do I need to worry about this chair?

Wait, I want to spend more time on talking about the kids not going to house parties. Jonathan, now, well, you are also a highly successful Division I athlete. Now, were you guys partying in dorms or off-campus parties or at the clubs? What was it like? What's the party scene like at Old Western Kentucky? Western Kentucky is a bunch of house parties that you just, hopefully you get cool with some of the frat guys that let you in. You get a couple of them. And usually because I was an athlete, you had the other athletes that come in.

But at Western Kentucky, every sport had their own house to go party at. So, like, we have the track house. So, like, well, you know, going through there. There's the football house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's the women's lacrosse house. And you can softball. I think I've told Jonathan this that my cousin actually played football at Western Kentucky.

Oh, he did? For old Jack Harbaugh. Oh, really? Yeah. Really old Jack Harbaugh. Okay. And now Jim's starting to look like Jack. You see him.

He's got the dark. dark glasses that Jack used to wear. He even kind of gets that scrunched up face that he did. My cousin says that he's watched some of the games and he's like, I almost feel like I'm looking at his dad. So the two are related, I suppose. They look exactly the same

too. And then what about the SFA house party scene? Now that's and it's like the frat houses too, like they're all across the campus. It's not like in one central area like you would think. It's like you've got to go 15 minutes out to a weird cul-a-sac

with a bunch of woods and a bunch of like weird like big mansion houses and it's kind of sketchy over there but yeah this sounds dangerous yeah so estimate is more like you go to the local bar

you meet everybody okay because if you might get you might get a little tipsy you might be gone your ride's gone and you're stuck in the woods for whoever's going to take it

there's not a lot of readily available ubers at the old I don't think Uber is around there actually you got a walk That is the problem in some of these college towns, and like especially too, like after a college football game, oh, hey, we'll just get an Uber. I'm like, no, you're not.

You're not getting one the day. This town of like 45,000 people now has 150,000 in it, and they're all looking for an Uber. So now that's going to be tough for you. That's how we had to deal with it back in my day. You get a taxi cab and pay like $80 to go two miles. Like, oh, man, this seems like a rip. There's got to be a better way. And I guess there was.

All right, anyway, 713, 212, 5, 790 is the phone number here on Sports Talk 790. 713, 212 5790. We've been talking a lot of Houston Astros baseball here, and rightfully so. They make all the deadline moves. They got us feeling good about the Astros. They got us feeling good about the squad and what's going on and what's going to happen and the future is bright and they're going to cruise to an American League pennant. And just as baseball is want to do, best laid,

plans. Well, they don't necessarily go the way that you want them to. They got swept by the Boston Red Sox, and now you got Jason Alexander on the hill against the Miami Marlins. Confidence level, not super high. No, but, I mean, as I've said, this seems like this is

when the Astros do rise up. I mean, you took two out of three in that series against the Rockies and still shorthanded. You go into L.A. and you're like, well, maybe a salvage this weekend? That would be cool, a three and three road trip, and then you turned around. You're like, oh my God, would you swept these guys?

So it would be nice to see this team kind of pick themselves back up and realize that you're in the middle of a division race because now you're only two and a half games up and I'm not going to do the smell thing again. Thank you. But just to remind you that the Mariners are only two and a half games behind you. And they actually swing

the bats well now. That's the one thing that they had not done well for the last few years and it allowed for you to be able to overtake them and beat them. That's a problem. Yeah, I'm definitely more scared of the Mariners. And then I was feeling good that it was a two and a half point.

I mean, I'm sorry, it's two and a half games now, but was five games, now down to two and a half games. They are off today. And then next they have a three game set against the White Sox. Don't write off the Rangers either. No, I wouldn't. So, I mean, they've got a series against the Yankees, but

they're only four and a half games back of you. And they're starting to swing the bats better. You're trying to make me worried. I mean, I'm worrying myself, man. I'm not trying to make you do anything. I'm worried. all my own. This isn't something that I'm cooking up in my head. This is going 7 and 15 since

you left L.A. This is 6 and 10 after the All-Star break. This is getting swept in three of your last seven series. This is losing five of your last seven series. Odds to win the division right now, according to Fangrass. 54.1% for the Astros, 38.3%

for the Mariners. 7.5% for the Rangers. Of course, that doesn't mean a whole lot, but just putting it out there. That's where we are right now. You should still feel like that you're in control because you are. But then it's like also too, the beauty of that is also the curse of, well, you can't start losing games and then start looking at the TV going, oh my God, please White Sox beat the Mariners tonight. Like, stop living that life, man. That's the life we've been living for a long time.

It feels like waiting for some crappy team to beat the Mariners. But you win the game, it doesn't matter what happens the other way around. Well, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. Well, no, it definitely does help, but I mean, at the same time, I mean, like, why are you putting it on someone else where you're the one who can handle this? You're the one who can take care of it. You can take care of your own business, but they haven't been doing that consistently lately with all the injuries that they've had. So, I mean, we'll see what happens.

Are the injuries even really a thing now? Because you've got a capable good bat in Hazel in Hesuz-Sanchez. He takes over for Cooper Hummel and whoever else you were putting into that spot. I understand Jake Myers is still out, but Taylor-Tree, from out, probably of all the guys in this lineup right now, is you're looking for that Esauk Paredes extend that bat? He does that. I would say yes, especially in the pitching side, because, I mean,

you had, of course, Hunter Brown and Framber through two of those games, but Colton Gordon through the other. You got Jason Alexander going today. Now, the cavalry is coming very soon, and I'm going to feel a little bit better. And that's really where I worry less when I think about the pitching that is going to be coming here and back up to the Major League. level from the IL and then you combine that with this lineup even though they didn't score a whole lot of runs over the

weekend. I'm still feeling pretty good. I just read the 54% as far as the Astros to win the AOS and their numbers they have my numbers are made up. But according to sports RVs AOS percentages, I'm going a 65% for the Astros. Well and that is the thing. I mean you get

Aragetti back this week. You're going to get Javier back the week following but then it's also too the question you have with those guys in more Javier than it is Araggetti because he hadn't pitched in a year and a half so I mean you've got that that you have to contend with but how long can you count on these guys to go in the games four or five innings right now

let's see Arrogati threw 79 pitches in his last start or did he have another one since then I'm not exactly sure the last one he had was the longest one he had yeah you could those guys go up to like 80 90 pitches in theory Well, the guy like Araggetti, who unfortunately can be effectively wild, that's probably about a good four innings or something like that. I mean, he's off of that Lance McCuller's tree where spinning a bunch of stuff out there and we'll see where it goes.

Javier can be that guy too. Get a lot of swing and miss. That's true. Javier can run up the walks here and there. But look, it is what it is. You need those guys back. And are they going to be over the balance of a season more effective than the Colton, Gordon, and Jason Alexander's of the world?

Absolutely. So I'm still feeling pretty good. You trust those guys a lot more. But here's where I think things kind of could really help you out is that you also got JP France and Luis Garcia that are also going to be coming back sounds like at least they're on track to do that. Maybe you only need, you know, three, four innings out of those guys and starts.

And then you turn it over to those guys for a couple of three innings. And then you can get to the back end of the bullpen and your high leverage guys. Is it wrong that I'm like, I feel like J.P. France has got space cowboy written all over him. I just don't expect, I mean, unless some other guys go down and you really need to go to like a six man for a while or something like that. He had that good year for a while in 23, but then he kind of faltered down the stretch. And then, yeah, and I'm bringing in it to step from... You can fit the Ryan Gusso role for you right now.

Yeah, something like that, like long relief, spot start. That's what I'm looking for out of him. I'm just not counting on a whole lot from him. Garcia, too. I mean, because I'm not so sure that you can be able to stretch out Garcia a ton this year. Yeah, JP France is 30 years old, career ERA of 440, solid. Last year, before going down with the injury, he had five starts with a 746 ERA. But that was also the injury, too.

Yeah, and he got hurt. And he had the shoulder injury and then he had surgery. So, yeah, I'm feeling a little bit more confident in guys with maybe a little bit more of a major league track record. It's just swinging the bats. That's the part that really you could use. No, they're going to do it. They can be good. Lineups is going to be good.

No time like the present. You heard it here first. Line up's going to be one of the better ones in baseball. Well, then let's go. Okay. This is a bad weekend. Happens. It's baseball.

Not worried that much. Just a little worried. Okay. Two and a half. Convincing myself. All right. Dan, thanks for hanging out, man. Thanks, buddy.

Appreciate you. Dan Matthew's hanging out for an hour. I've got two hours solo coming up. You want to help out. You want to be my co-host for a couple minutes. You can call in. 7-13, 21-2-2-5. 790 is the phone number 713-2125-790.

Jonathan Allen will be hanging out with me. We have Adam Wexer coming up at 1 o'clock. We have, to tell the truth, coming up at 1130. So you guys can hang out as well, but we've got a lot of stuff going on. 7-13-2125-790 is the phone number 7-1-3-21-5-7-90. Hour number two of the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas is underway. here we are with you. Phone lines wide open at 713,

2, 1,2, 5, 790. If you would like to get in a 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-7-90, as the Astros get swept, ran out of town against the Boston Red Sox over the weekend. It did not go the way that we wanted. We were all excited, all fired up about this big trade deadline. Carlos Correa is back. He's wearing the number one jersey.

at very least, wasn't not cool to see Carlos Correa wearing it, for whatever reason when they put the orange on, that's when I was like, man, Carlos Correa is back in an Astros uniform, wearing that number one. Sorry, Bernard Rogers. You didn't get a whole lot of say, getting your jersey number completely ripped from you. So jersey number one, Carlos Correa,

he did hit a big towering home run over the weekend. That was good, but just nothing offensively to speak of for the Astros and only scoring, what was it? Was it five or six runs over the weekend? Not the way that you wanted it to go. And unfortunately, they get swept by the Boston Red Sox. But I'm still feeling pretty good. You get the cavalry coming as far as the pitching.

The hitting is going to be fine. I like the way that the team is constructed right now. And even though the Seattle Mariners continue to creep up and up and up, and they are very talented, they've made their moves, and they're going to be a force to be reckoned with in the American League West. bottom line is the Astros have the lead right now. They have a soft schedule in front of them as well. And I'm feeling pretty good about their prospects going forward,

winning the American League West, not threatening for like the one seed like they were, gosh, even a couple of weeks ago, right? We were like, oh, man, they're coming for the Tigers. Now they're two and a half games behind the Blue Jays and the Tigers for the number one seed. So it's not like they are completely out of those races. But right now, we were kind of set. our eyes on that and them being the number one seed or at the very least the number two seed so you can avoid that wildcard series to start off the playoffs.

Just win the American League West. That's got to be goal number one. And I'm sure that is goal number one for the team right now. It's not like they're necessarily worried about all that stuff that we're talking about here just on radio shows. But hold off the Mariners and then we will go from there. 713-212-5-7-9 of the phone number. As I mentioned, Yankees Keith is on the last. line. What's up, Yankees, Keith? How about them Yankees

getting swept by the Marlins over the weekend? That wasn't very pleasant at all. Just like y'all feel like crap, we feel like crap too. We're coming in to Texas and going to sweep the Texas Rangers. But I got a feel-good story for you, Ross. Oh, you do? Go ahead. Last weekend, last week I called you about the Junior Olympics being held in

humble Texas. I'm proud to say, my grandson won the gold medal. Well, congratulations, Keith. Benji Pascal, your family is proud of you. The state of Texas is proud of you. Oh, wow. And America is proud of one Benjamin Pascal. All right.

Thank you, Ross. Give me that chance. Yeah, we're going to start charging you for shoutouts, Keith. I mean, look, we appreciate you, folks. Hi, my name is Ross. the Sports Talk 790. We appreciate you folks who are very proud of your children and or your grandchildren and all those types of

things and you want to give shoutouts on this great, wonderful, huge platform that is Sports Talk 790. But we're going to have to start charging you. Yankees, Keith, you're going to have to make like a $20 donation to my Venmo at Sports RV next time you do that. Yeah, and give me 15 little tip

tip over here for the producer. Okay, you won't 15? You know what? You know what? No, no, you can get it to me. Make it 45. No, just 20 straight to Jonathan. Okay, he's extremely underpaid. He's doing a great job. Everyone, you know what? I was meeting even more people over the weekend. Jonathan, man, you got a fan club.

I'm actually getting jealous, Jonathan. Actually, for real? Yeah. Everywhere we go, we went to Tauyard Brewing a couple of weeks ago. I was at Carbog brewing a couple, like a week after that. Then I was at this other brewery. Wait, I'm spending a lot of time at brews. I was going to say, is it time to look inward?

Is it 100 number? Am I having a wake-up call right now? In the middle of the first segment of the second hour of the Matt Thomas show? I don't know. But yes, I was at another brewery this weekend. It was my brother's birthday. And there were people, yeah, shout out to the people at Rowdy's barbecue.

They were serving up some good queue. We were having some brews as well and hanging out for my brother's birthday. Happy 22nd birthday to my brother from over the weekend. Yeah, everybody's talking about Jonathan. So, I mean, you're turning into a star, dude. You know, I appreciate it. I'm just here. Cold and it's very small, small studio.

I think it was, I think the talk of the weekend was the Hognut's story. Oh, did they like that? Okay, see, that was, you know, and it's a true story. No, no, I know it's a true story, but we don't need to hear more. If you missed, I don't even know if this is going to, this probably shouldn't be replayed or anything. What hour was that this on Friday? It was a one o'clock. Okay, the one o'clock hour.

So if you want to try to find that on the podcast over the weekend, the hog nut story was it was one for the ages. I was crying, laughing. So that was the buzz of the weekend. So yeah, you got a lot of fans, Jonathan Allen fan club is certainly growing.

But anyways, thank you, Yankees Keith, for that shout out to your son. And you could use this as a jumping off point. I'm sure you'll all show them all the podcast. Okay, if you want to talk some actual Astros in sports, you can do so.

713, 21, 2, 2, 2, 5. 790 713-212-5-790 if you'd like to get in so yes we've been heavy on the a assurows and we've talked about the carlos caria deal and what a great deal it was and he is here now he's playing third base he had to play shortstop on saturday and it's just a great fit and it's just a man it's just such a kind of down moment we talk about this in baseball that it always happens to where things don't go the way that you wanted the script was written, right? It was perfect. Carlos Correa comes back. They're playing up

against Alex Breggman and Alex Cora at Fenway. Did you see all those Astros fans in Boston? There was a ton of them over the weekend. They were cheering and had signs. It looked like it was an Astros game in the crowd at Fenway.

And everybody's cheering for Carlos Correa and everybody's talking about how great it is and all this stuff and then they just lose. They lost in 10 innings on Friday. You had to use you burned you burned a bray, you burned Josh Hader. Then there was a walk off, and then you get swept. And now, I don't want to say it's like back to the drawing board.

You're still in first place. You're still in a very good spot. But it just did not go the way. The coronation, the Carlos Correa Coronation that you're hoping for over the weekend did not come to pass, unfortunately. But you're 62 and 50. Ran through the numbers a little while ago. You have the 23rd most difficult schedule remaining in baseball.

Unfortunately, the Mariners have like the 27. but you got a lot of games remaining against very bad teams. Teams you should beat. Seven with the Angels. Seven with the last place, Orioles who are selling off all of their players as well. So you're still in a good spot. You're still going to be American League West champs, if you ask me. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number.

Our old friend James and Klein has rung in. What's up, James? Yeah, the thing that disturbed me the most about this weekend series was on Saturday when they had got the first two batters on with no outs. and then Al-Tuvi, a guy that can't bun, didn't butt, he didn't butt hit into a double play and just killed that inning. That, to me, was like, oh, my God, please. Well, I'm going to tell you something. Jose Al-Tuvae is one of the better hitters in the planet, and I know he does like to bunt, but I would rather him swinging away.

You want him to sacrifice? Do a what? You wanted him to hit a sacrifice in that moment? What was the score then? A button for a base hit. The score, we were ahead at that time. And we had them on the ropes. If he sacrifices those people or even if he bunch for a base hit,

we got a guy on third base with no outs. But he hits into a double plane and kills the inning. All right, James. If only Matt was here. I'm going to explain this to you guys because this keeps happening. And I kind of just don't get it. It's 2025. Look around.

Now there are some buntz. And we had the caller call in and with the guys. you moment on Matt. Who was it? I can't even remember her name. Sheena or something? Yes. Sheena who sounded like she was running a marathon while she called in, but we do appreciate her for making the time.

And I wanted to go with this gotcha moment for Matt, and I kind of hid the background because I was also saying they should be bunting. It's 2025. I'm going to tell you this. Let's just walk you through this. Let's do a little bit of critical thinking for everyone. Do you think in 2025

that managers and analytical staffs and these vast amount of resources, I'm talking about in the millions over the years of research and development that these teams have been, have that are on the cutting edge of how to plan for games, what to do in certain situations, what is going to spit out into the algorithm, giving you the most opportunities to score the absolute most runs. Do you think they have done their research on that? I would hope you just said yes. So when you say yes on that,

and I'm talking about collectively all throughout baseball, they have all done this. And they know situationally, for the most part, what's the best thing to do? Especially in games where there are many innings left to go, and it's not close and late. They know that it is better for manufacturing runs to have Jose Altuve one of the greatest hitters

in the history of the planet who is on a freight train to 3,000 hits and the Hall of Fame, they would rather him swing the bat, put the ball in play to where you can advance

and or score the runners without getting any outs rather than giving away one of the outs where you only get three. You only get 27 outs in a whole game with runners on in that situation, you're only getting

three and an opportunity to score. You have a golden opportunity for a crooked number inning. That's why in general, they don't go and lay down buntz. Should we

just record this? They've done the research. They know the number's better than you do. They know the number's better than I do. Giving a way out is no way to manufacture a bunch of runs. Now, it's three at three to three in the ninth and you only need one run to win the game? I understand. And you will see more bunting late and close.

But I believe the scenario that our friend James is talking about was earlier in the game. I can't remember exactly what inning it was. Now, obviously, it was a disaster outcome. A double play doesn't get any worse than that. But you are never, ever, ever going to hit a home run bunting. That's the best play in baseball. You eliminate a lot of the best outcomes. And also, there's no guarantee, even though Jose Altuva is a good bunter,

he's had unsuccessful bunt in his career. That's another thing that bunt guy never factors in. Sometimes you pop up the bunt. Sometimes you whiff on a bunt or you foul a couple of them. Then you're down into a two-strike count, which guess what? The numbers show that. You're in a two-strike count. Things are not going your way.

So this is very, very simple. Ritimentary math here, folks. You eliminate your opportunity at the best. outcomes if you bunt. No doubles that score multiple runs, no home runs, no triples, no singles, no anything. And a lot of times you can ground out and advance the runners as well. But that didn't happen in this scenario. It was the absolute worst scenario. So we do what's called results-oriented thinking, which does have its place, but also you want to think about the process first. And we say that was horrible. Jose Al-Tuvae would have bunted. And then if Jose

Al-Tuvae would have popped out a bunt to the catcher, you wouldn't say word one. for some reason Bunt guy always forgets when that happens. So please folks, critical thinking is important. That's my public service announcement. Okay, those of you on hold, we will get to you momentarily. You folks want to get in

713-212-5-790. All right, we're going to do to tell the truth in the next segment. And if you guess correctly, now I don't want to unload like five prizes. at once. Maybe we'll only take five people and whoever guesses correctly, we will give

them prizes. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, because do we have a lot of stuff piled up? What do we got Jonathan? We got one, but we got one big one. What is it? What's the big one? We've got a four pack, four pack, take family and friends to a pit passes on Monster Jam at October 18th at NRG Stadium.

Wow. I don't know. October 18th. That's my stepdad's birthday. Thank you, Ross. Get him a birthday present, man. Give them some pit passes, bro. We got to start it off. I'm trying to get, just in case the Mac is back, and we got to get these prizes out.

We got one today, though. Okay, so a four pack there. And then what are we going to? Oh, so we're only taking one winner? I mean, we could do, if they want us, for us to talk, a night a T-shirt, we can give two. Okay, okay. We'll do two winners if you want.

Yeah, maybe we'll only take, well, I don't know. I think I'm going to be able to trick y'all. We're going to take five people. I got a gut feeling that only one or two. two of you is going to be able to guess, we'll have to tell the truth coming up. It will be three lies and one truth. Write this down, Jonathan. Three lies. Three lies and one truth coming up here on Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show with Ross. It will be to tell the truth in about eight minutes here. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number, as I

have been saying. Trey and Sugarland has rung in. What's up, Trey? Hey, Ross. You know, Robert Ford and Sparky have got to rank among the top announcers in the entire industry. And I'm wondering, why can't the radio broadcast sync up with the television broadcast? I'd much rather listen to those guys than the blah, blah, blah, blah on television. Oh, wow. But it's impossible to watch the game and listen to Robert Ford. sparky because it's not synced up. Do you know why that is? Yeah, so, I mean, they're just on different frequencies, like they, especially if they're on

the road or whatever. I mean, they have to send their signal back to, I think Space City Home Network has headquarters like in Atlanta or something like that. Now, here on the radio, we normally on a delay in case you start cursing up a storm or something, Trey. So we get rid of the delay, though, on the radio, so we are live time. Now, if you pull us up on IHeart radio, I know there are people who do this, and if somebody wants to tweet me some tips, and I can go from there, if you listen to us on the IHeart radio app, it is on a delay, and I don't know what kind of, do you have like a streaming service or satellite TV or cable, Trey, to watch TV?

Well, I've got, at the ranch, I've got DirecTV, and at home is Comcast, and it's the same in both places. It's maybe like 30 seconds delay. You might be able to pause IHeart Radio. and sync it up, but I don't know. I can't really verify that. I don't normally listen to both. But when it's on Apple TV, you can choose the broadcast. Like I was watching the game on Apple TV Plus on Friday,

you can choose the home radio broadcast. Oh, okay. But I just didn't listen to the Apple TV broadcast, honestly. But, you know, and just kudos to Robert Ford and Sparky. When you listen to the game, you can actually visualize what's going on. Yeah. They do a great job. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, well, I just wondering why they couldn't sink it up. I figured you'd have a good answer, and I appreciate it. All right, thank you, Trey. Yeah, it's just two different broadcasts. We're on two different. I mean, one's on radio, one's on TV. And we love that you love the broadcast. And Robert Ford and Steve Sparks do a great job.

Like you're saying, like, you know, he steps into the batters box, you know, he's checking his elbow guard. He's knocking dirt off the bat. those little radio things that kind of paint the picture for you. Both of them do a very good job of it. They're very well honed in their craft. And TV is just different, right? You know, Todd Callis and Jeff Blum, I think do a great job. I mean, Trey clearly disagrees with me. But I think both of them do really well. And I like both of them. And it's just, it's a different experience. TV, you can see most of everything that's happening. Radio, obviously you can't. And then you have to describe what's going on. and really you you feel the time more on radio 10 15 seconds of silence on TV where you can see everything feels a lot different than 10 to 15 seconds of silence on radio where I can just say this as a host you're like oh it's too much silence oh I got to say something I got to fill the time with something so it's just two different styles of broadcast and like I said if somebody can let me know I don't know exactly how you would necessarily go about sinking the two

especially if your TV broadcast, like if you're on one of these streaming services, I mean, you're like a minute plus behind. Maybe the MLB app will let you do that, but also you have to pay for that service. So I'm not exactly sure on that one. Does George have some tips on us on syncing the broadcasts?

Yeah, he's trying to weigh in on this. Okay, go ahead, George. No, not on the technology. I'm afraid. Sorry, because I don't describe that stuff. But, you know, yes, there are two different media. And so on radio, you have to do a little bit more than you on television. But one thing Steve Sparks adds, and I want to say when Sparky first started, I thought he was okay, but man, he has gotten good.

And I tell you, he adds analysis of pitching in a way that puts the TV guys to shame. And I feel like Jeff Blum on TV, I don't think he adds anything. He basically just repeats what Callis has already said, but he does it in kind of a more awshucks language. that doesn't actually add any information. Whereas, I mean, Sparks is telling you about section and pitch execution in a way that is fascinating. So I think there's a big difference in content, not just style or medium. Okay. Thank you, George.

Well, look, I agree that Sparky does a great job talking about inside pitching and what kind of guessing what pitch is going to throw or sequencing pitching and that type of stuff. But I think Jeff Blum does a great job. on the TV side as well, explaining things, and probably more from obviously a hitter's perspective as a guy who was a hitter. And I like when they talk about utility guys and what Dubon's thinking, when he has to move around and all, there's a million little things that I think they go through that Jeff Blum does a great job of as well.

So I like them all. And maybe that's too of vanilla of a stance from you guys, but I'm being honest. I like both broadcasts. And I think definitely, of course, we have some true gyms here on Sports Talk 790. you're home for your Houston Astros and Robert Ford and Steve Sparks. Okay, you guys want to get in? We're going to play to tell the truth.

We got a four pack of Monster Jam tickets plus pit passes. Pit passes, yes, Monster Jam on October 18th. And where can you find these tickets? Jonathan. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com, of course. Okay, Ticketmaster.com for these four pack of Monster Jam tickets plus pit passes. You want to win one of those? You got to win to tell the truth.

that is coming your way next. It's 713 212.790. 713-2-1-2-5-7-90. All right, we got one more. A room for one more. Contestant. One of you hung up? We got room for one more of you. 7-13-212-5-7-90. If you guess correctly, 7-13-212-5-7-90.

You get a four-pack of Monster Jam tickets plus pit passes October 18th. Tickets's available. at live nation.com. Okay, we're going to play to tell the truth, Jonathan. I'm going to explain it for the folks. You very know well. Three of these are going to be lies.

One of them is going to be the truth. Now, I will say all four of these opinions, I think are regular opinions, and I could or could not believe them, but only one, I truly believe in my heart of hearts, and I'm marking it right now on my, on my document. Oh, so you're doing it right now.

I'm marking it right now. And you're going to see my hands are up, Jonathan. Neither are, guys. Keep your eye on me. Well, yeah, I haven't read him yet. And nobody's guessed. So look, look, my hands are up. I'm going to flip the,

we have a, like, he's in a different, Jonathan's in a different room. So I have to show him like through the video camera. Of which one I truly believe. Three lies. Three lies. One truth. Let's go.

Number one, the Astros will win the American League West. But not only that, folks, it's not even coming down to the last series of the weekend. They're going to win by at least three games. You have this improved lineup. I know things didn't go the way that you wanted to in Boston over the weekend. Erigeti is coming back. Javier is coming back. You're going to have a strong one through four, maybe even five or six in the

rotation. The schedule isn't that difficult. I know they stumbled out of the deadline gates with this sweep against the Red Sox, but the Astros are going to win the West by at least three games. Opinion number two. Come playoff time. And this hurts to say, the primary catcher for the Houston Astros will not be Yiner Diaz. Victor Caratini gives them so much versatility with the switch hitting. He's better back there behind the dish. Dias with the past balls over the weekend. Too much of a defensive liability

can't throw anybody out. In playoff scenarios, you have to go with who is going to give you the best chance to win and I think that's Victor Caratini. We're starting off strong. Harts to say, but I think it's true.

Or do I? Number three. We talked about this off season for the Astros, you have Carlos Correa, you have Christian Walker, you have Jeremy Pena, you have Esauk Paredes, you've got Bryce Matthews waiting in the bullpen. There's a logjam on the infield. I have made the definitive, uh, what, proclamation, yes. I say definitively, the odd man out this offseason will be.

Esauk parades. You're not going to be able to trade the contract of Christian Walker or Carlos Correa for that matter. Jeremy Pena, while it does make sense because he's a Boris client, he's got two years left, doesn't make sense. Obviously, Bryce Matthews is going to stay because he's the future and he's under team control for a long time. Esauk Paredes is going to be the odd man out and will be traded away this offseason with the log jam that the Astros have in the infield.

You just wrote these down? These are good. Thank you. Yes. I'm going to be right now. I just came up with them after. You want me to Do we peel the curtain back? Yes, I started doing these last break. The 11-15 break I started writing these. Next. Astros, as I know, and you know, faltered in Boston.

They're playing a red-hot Miami-Marlin's team. Then they go to the weekend. They go to the Yankee Stadium for the weekend. I'm not saying they're sweeping either of them, but they're winning both series. They're going at least four and two, especially if you get over this Jason Alexander, hump, then you got Hunter Brown, Frumber

throwing in rotation. You also have Spencer Erigetti coming back. I'm feeling good baby. Two series wins. Four and two over their next six games. Your Houston Astros are going to win the next two series that they play. I went with four Astros' opinions because

we've been talking Astros all series. All show long. Okay. To recap, I only definitively believe one of these. The Astros win the West. by three games. Yiner Diaz is not going to be your playoff catcher.

Esoc Paredes is the odd man out this offseason. You see my hands are still up. Right, Jonathan? And Astros win both of these next two series. Keep an eye on my hands. They're still up. I'm thinking, hold on. They're still up.

Okay, Jonathan. Which of these four opinions do it actually, truly, in my heart of hearts? Believe. You know, you made it harder because you put all Astros. I think this is actually tough.

Hold on. Okay. Just talk it out. All right. All right. And audience is away because I got to get my cook up.

Maybe. You can't win a prize. He said they win by three. Right now, Astros are struggling in the Aleway. So we got... They're two and a half up. Mariners and Rangers

are still looking really strong. Diaz has been off all. This last couple stretch is... Hmm. I'm feeling these first two. I'm not even going to think about the other ones. I'm not. But there's three lies

though. Yeah, there's only one truth. And you believe that okay, you know what? I'm going to just take it quick, take it comfortably, trust my gut. And I'm saying that you believe that the Astros can still win the ALS in three games. Okay.

You think it's number one. Number one is what I'm going with. That's a dub. Ken, which of these opinions? Now, write these down in their their note, I guess, or something. Ken, which of the four do I believe? I think you're one, too. Number one?

Yes. Okay. Ken believes number one. Tyler. Which one do I believe? Aesok's out. Isok is out. Okay, that is number three? Three is three. Okay. Tyler believes number three is the true one.

Orlando. You're next up, which one do I believe is true? Yes, sir. I'll give you number one is true. Number one, okay. Orlando believes number one is true. That's three number ones and a number three. Jeremiah, go ahead.

I'm going number two. Jeremiah is going with number two. Okay, Jeremiah took the, okay, I like that. Hmm. That would be, Yanner Diaz is no longer the catcher. That was a hard one. That's a hard. I almost went there.

What does Ross believe, guys? What does Ross believe? Kyle! Which one do you believe? Number three. Number three. Okay. Number three for Kyle.

I should have had a drum roll, a sign of back right here for this. All right. Nobody picked number four. I thought that was the weak one. It's the last one I came up with. You guys are right. I mean, they might win the next two series, but who knows. I also don't believe, even though maybe I should,

that Jainer Diaz will not be the primary. Catcher. Look, he's not throwing guys out, but Victor Caratini's not throwing guys out either. 13% caught stealing for Yiner Diaz. Caratini's not much better at 17. You've got a lot more potential, I would say, more potential in the bat, even though Caratini's having a

better offensive season. It kind of mix and match him a little bit better and throwing Yiner out there every day. I think the ceiling is still high enough with Yiner Diaz. But honestly, it wouldn't be the craziest thing. That's why it's one that I could kind of believe, so we'll throw that one out. Then it comes down, too. Well, we got to kick out

Kyla and Tyler. They're gone. Bye. All right, down to, down to, down to. I think Isok Paratus is the most likely, but I said definitively, I think Christian Walker could be moved.

I still think there's a way outside shot that Jeremy Pena could be moved. Certainly Correa, I think, is probably the safest. It could be Paratus. Walker's been hitting, so maybe he's a little bit more tradable. So you,

wait, yeah, we only had two guys when. Okay, Orlando and Ken, Congratulations. You are the winner. Jonathan, you got it right as well. That sounds like that. Call me crazy, but this lineup and you get the pitching back and all that type of stuff, you already have a two and a half game cushion.

I'm feeling confident, baby. I'm feeling three plus games. First place for the Houston Astros. Who do we give these pit passes to? Do we give the Ken or do we get Orlando? Whoever got in first, I guess. You know what? Let's do this.

Ken will get right of first refusal. Let's flip a coin. Oh, you want to flip a coin? I mean, Ken got in first. He did he get in first? Okay, okay. Oh, wait, is Ken one of the all-time prize horse? You tell me.

You tell me. Has he won in the last 30 days? He won fair and square, though. He does call a lot. He did win. Okay, he won fair and square. Sorry, Orlando, you got in second, so you're in second place. This is how life works.

All right, appreciate all y'all calling in and playing to Tell the Truth. Coming up at noon, we will have Chris Gordy. He's going to join and talk all things. Astros as he was in Boston over the weekend. 1230, we'll have the news noon 1 o'clock. Adam Wexer's joining. Meantime, you guys can get in. 713 212-790 is

the phone number. Oh, I didn't even show you my document, but you know if I was going to change it, it would be for you to be wrong, and I didn't do that, Jonathan. So I think I don't know if you can see my ex. All the X is up to number one. All right, 713, 212 5790, the phone number. We'll take a quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with

Ross without Matt Thomas. Back in a second. Welcome back. To the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. Ross is here. Jonathan is here. You are here. Chris Gordy will be here in just a few moments. He's going to be on at the top of the hour.

He's going to give us the Finway report. He was out there. Just happened to be going to the Boston Red Sox. I'm going to sneeze for a second. Jonathan, you talk. So, you know, Gordy's enjoying us here in a little bit. Great job. Okay.

We made it, folks. Yeah, so Gordy. You know, that was wonderful. Gordon's going to be here coming up at noon, 1230. Jonathan Allen is going to give us the news at noon-ish. 1 o'clock, Adam Wexer will join. We've been talking a lot of Astros. Thanks to Dan Matthews for hanging out as well.

Congratulations to those of you who are able to win. Sorry, Orlando. He said, shut your bum ass up when we asked him if he wanted a T-shirt. He's like, no, I don't want no 7-90 T-shirt. Man, I wanted that Monster Jam. Well, we'll be giving away Monster Jam, I believe, the rest of the week. on believe it or not. But when Matt is out, we don't normally do, believe it or not, because I like to take the day off from writing the questions. I am just saying. Oh, Matt's going to do it? Oh, okay. No, I just take the day off when Matt's out.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Right, the question. Well, Matt, Matt's been stepping up doing them a little bit lately, so I'm proud of him. All right, anyways, you guys can get in 713-212-5-790. We just did to tell the truth. And yeah, you know, the more I think about it, I'm like, bam, I get a little overconfident believing that the Astros are going to win the American League West by three games. But I'm feeling pretty good about when Erigetti comes back.

And I understand, like, his entire Major League track record, isn't exactly like the dude is a multiple times. I'm a Young Award winner, but I'm feeling pretty good about where he's going to be able to be. He had that freak thumb injury. He only got, what, two starts this season, is going to kind of have to work himself in a shape. Is a guy that we've seen can rack up the walks,

and then that's when he kind of can start to get into trouble. But I'm feeling good as long as, what, it's August 4th. you've got 50 games left in the season. That's in theory, eight, seven, eight turns in the rotation, depending on how long if they want to go to a six man for some stretches or anything like that. In the old days, you would just say,

well, I would say not in the old days. And the old days you'd say, oh, 50 games left. That's 25 starts yet left for the young lad. And no, that doesn't happen now. But 10 starts, eight starts, whatever it's going to be for Spencer Arrogati, get him ready for the playoffs.

I think you're going to be in a pretty good spot. Javier's coming soon. I understand anybody can get injured, but same thing can be said for Frumber Valdez or Hunter Brown. Anything can happen to these guys at any point. That's just the nature of the beast. When it comes to pitching, pitching injuries, you've just got to know that at any point anybody can go down.

But there's no sense in getting anxious over it. You can't control the elbow tightness or inflammation as Brandon Walter has or anything of anyone else. So if they're out there, once they're there, once they're on the team, until told otherwise, which unfortunately the other shoe can drop, and we've seen it time and time again this season for the Astros, I'm going to say they're going to, I'm just going to, in my mind, mentally, believe that they're going to be out there, like I said, until I'm told otherwise.

So he's coming back. I think three games for the American League West for the Astros is probably right. It will be interesting because I did have the. thought about Yainer Diaz over the weekend. I was thinking about this, and this is why I stuck it into to tell the truth. If Yiner Diaz could or could

not be the primary catcher come playoff time. Because of Victor Keratini, who's been overall better at the plate, he doesn't have the power that Yiner Diaz does. What is it? 15 home runs for Yiner. I'm trying to pull it up. It's 10 for Victor

Caratini. Karatini has the better OPS. He has a sloth. He has a slightly better cot stealing percentage, but neither of them are any good. And he has fewer pass balls. So I could see that happening. I just don't think so. I think it'll just be kind of a split.

And then you go from there. Depending on where Yordon Alvarez is, he's going to be your DH. You've got guys who can play the outfield now. This team is, I'm feeling pretty good. And maybe that's why I'm talking about them winning this by three plus games. This is a stacked, in theory, I know the Boston Red Sox pitching disagrees that it's a stacked lineup,

but in theory, this is a great Astros lineup. And if you get, you've got Jeremy Payne back, as long as his hamstring's okay. Yes, I'm a little bit worried about his hamstring. But Yordon Alvarez, if he comes back, I mean, think about it. Pena, Altuva, Alvarez, Correa, Walker,

Sanchez, Diaz maybe you get Jake Myers back at some point this is feeling like one of those lineups from years past where you're 7-8 deep and you're feeling good. Do we have any updates on

Myers or Alvarez? We haven't heard. Okay, I know that Jordan Alvarez is swinging a bat and I think he's still at the Florida Complex League. Apparently he's swinging with more vigor. I don't know what the word they used was. but he's been swinging the bat a little bit better. And Jake Myers, all we've really heard about him is that he's rehabbing in Houston.

So yeah, he could be far away. And look, Jake Myers is having a career year. He's having the greatest batted ball luck of his career. So I think some of the luck will kind of at some point go down, but maybe not. Who knows? I can't predict the future any better than you can. But even without him, this is a pretty good line. lineup. If you're going with any of, well, let's see, you got Sanchez out in the outfield.

He doesn't play a whole lot of center, but he can. You can put Dubon out there. You can put Tramel out there. Cam Smith is going to be locking down right field for you for a while. I'm feeling pretty good about the outfield. Even if, even if Jake Myers doesn't show up, which I would love that he would. They said a couple of months, and that was what, at this point, maybe about a month ago. So you're in August 4th. Who knows? How's he going to be feeling with his calf injury when he comes back?

I'm not sure. But I'm feeling pretty good about that. And then again, you have the best one-two punch in baseball with Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez. Astros are in a good spot. No matter what. It's funny how we went, how much just one deadline can change the way we feel because it was three great moves made by Dana Brown, who deserves a lot of credit.

And there's still some of you out there who don't like Dana Brown, which is so crazy to me. How's Dana Brown a hater guy doing after that deadline? Didn't really cost you much of anything to shore up the team as much as they did, unless you were a huge Ryan Gusto fan. Sorry, Jonathan, that he had to go. I know. I was just a fan of him.

I don't know if I was a fan. No, you were Ryan Gusto fan number one, and that's okay. All right, we're going to take a quick top of the hour break. When we come back, Chris Gordy will join us. I don't know where he is now. He's somewhere up in the Great Northeast. He was in Boston over the weekend at Fenway Park, covering the Astros, drinking beers, watching the game.

So he's going to talk to us about the Stroes and what they got going on. Then at 1230, we got the news at noon-ish. In the meantime, you guys can get in as well. 7-13-212-5-7-90. But when we come back, Chris Gordy on all things Astros in Boston over the weekend. 1202 in H-Town, hour number three of the Matt Thomas show with Ross, with it without mad thomas he will be back tomorrow got adam wexler coming up at one o'clock we have the news at noonish

with jonathan allen coming up at 1230 but right now pleased to be joined by chris gordy who is of course one half of the crawford boxcast presented by cotrock brewing you can find it for free on the i heart radio app chris gordy joining us from parts unknown where are you right now gordy Still in the northeast and, you know, the accent's rubbing off a little bit. Oh, my God, you're so goofy. Need to get back down to Houston. All right.

I appreciate this. Good God. All right. So you were, so this was kind of serendipitous. Now, you were going to taking vacation and you were going to be in Fenway over the weekend anyways, going to the games. But then it happened that Carlos Correa got traded back to be a Houston Astro. And you went to which games of the series? It went to Friday and Saturday.

So, yeah, it was, I'll tell you this. It was pretty surreal being there on Friday at the ballpark and kind of waiting for, you know, to see Carlos Korea for the first time back in an Astros uniform. And, you know, we were talking with Chas McCormick and some of the players out on the field. I will say, you know, Chad's, Chas is great. You know, he's a guy who's been around so long. And he was even admitting to us, you know, hey, trade deadline.

was not fun for him because, you know, he said it's just, he's nervous, you know, he said he sees the Astros made these deals, made a trade with the twins, made a trade with Miami. And he said, I'm sitting there thinking, am I going to Miami? Am I going to Minnesota? Luckily, he wasn't traded, but he just brought up that it's kind of been funny these last few trade deadlines that, you know, his name has gotten floated out there at times. And so it's, you know, he said he wants to be with, you know, wants to be with the Astros. And I kind of asked him in almost kind of off.

a record, but just kind of like, kind of shooting the bull with them. And I said, I say, what would you rather? Would you rather be an everyday starter on like a bad team like the Marlins? Or would you rather be in a spot like this where you're kind of platooting, not playing every day with a,

but with a championship contending team like the Astros? And he said, I want to know the ring. He said, I don't care how it comes about. He said, I want to know the World Series ring. And so I just thought that was kind of interesting, you know, kind of a fun conversation off the cuff with Chas McCormick. Yeah, once Carl's Kraya came out, it was surreal to see him back in the Astros gear.

And it's almost like, you know, like we haven't seen a friend in a few years and you just pick up right where you left off. That's almost what it's like, except there's some new faces around the park. But, man, when we first got into the clubhouse and got to talk to Jose Al-Tuvae, I mean, if you watch the video we posted on the 790 Twitter, Altouva is trying his best not to smile. I mean, because he is just, he is ecstatic that he's got his buddy back in Carl's Correa. And really cool to see Correa and Jeremy Payne are chatting a ton. And, you know, it's just, it's a little weird because Pena is the guy who replaced Carl's Correa, but seeing those guys have a good bond from veteran to younger guy.

And look, I know the series didn't go the Astros way, but you could already see. I mean, Korea, I think, is going to be a nice piece to have to this clubhouse as a leader. And I think he's still got a lot of good baseball left in him. I mean, he hit that Friday night game, he clubbed two balls to center that ended up being long outs. But, you know, he hit the home run yesterday, had the unfortunate bat on Saturday with the bases loaded late and didn't, you know, didn't swing at strike three. But I just, I like what we've seen from Korea so far. I think it's going to, you know, at least for the rest of this season, I think it's going to, you know, at least for the rest of this season, think it's going to be good. We'll see what the

years to come. Yeah, we'll talk about, like, come to the bridges when we cross them as far as how the infield gets configured for next year for the Astros. But you mentioned being out there for this first couple of games. It seemed like to me, and we've seen this now with the Astros as good as they are,

a lot of fans are going out to these ballparks, especially a historic one like Fenway. What was it like the balance like? It seemed like there was a ton of Astros fans there this weekend. Oh, it was nuts on Friday, I mean, everywhere you looked, at least in our section, there were

Astros jerseys everywhere, and then in the section right next to the dugout, I mean, I don't know if it was all player family and friends or whatever, but it was all Astros fans, and it was interesting when they did the, you know, the player introductions,

you know, the opposing team, when they when that first video, Carl's career rolled on Friday, I mean, our whole section erupted into applause and people hooting and hollering, I think Brian McHagger tweeted from the press box, they heard booze. But from our section down on the left side of the infield, I mean, it was going nuts. So, yeah, Astros fans were definitely well represented, you know, to your point, yeah, Fenway Park is a historic ballpark.

And a lot of Astros fans made this trip. I mean, we were out about in Boston in the days leading up to Friday. I mean, we were seeing Astros people everywhere. It was, you know, Ghostros, Ghostros, everywhere you went. yeah, that was really cool. And, you know, again, unfortunate that the series didn't play out the way they wanted. But, yeah, I mean, even when, you know,

when they got their first couple hits on the game Friday night, I mean, it was, it wasn't 50-50, but it almost sounded 50-50 because the Astros fans there were so loud. And I'll say this. I mean, Red Sox fans were pretty timid. I mean, compared to when I was there back in the 2021 A. so yes, and maybe that's just because it's a playoff atmosphere, so everybody's more outspoken and drunk, yeah.

I mean, it wasn't really that. I mean, there were Red Sox fans that all around us this weekend that didn't even have a beer in their hand. So I was, that was a little surprised by that. Chris Gordy with us here on a Sports Talk 790, reporting from the Northeast. So they get swept, as you mentioned, did not go the way you wanted.

You get all excited and all this juice from being at Fenway. Carlos Correa is back, all this stuff, and now you lose. Meanwhile, the Mariners won three out of four of their series against the Rangers now just two and a half games back. How are we feeling about this American League West race? Well, I mean, the good news is you get to go play the Marlins who stink, but they've been played a better ball. You know, I know, but this is, you know, the A's did that too for a little bit.

And then they kind of, you know, every bad team kind of has that stretch where they play in inspired baseball for about two weeks and then they go back down into the doldrum. So, you know, hey, can Hazu Sanchez wake up and do something for us? I mean, that trade I just keep looking at going, I don't know what that move was. I mean, I know he's pretty good defensively. His average is nothing to scream about. I know it's not, you know, just stay in age you. It's not all about average.

But like, for them, for Joe to automatically insert him into what, the two or three whole? like, I was like, wait, this guy just got here? Like, is this really a table setter? Is this the guy that you think is,

oh, we got to get him in the top of the order immediately? I just, I was a little surprised by that. You know, again, putting Correa where you did, I'm fine with that.

But, yeah, they got a, hopefully these bats come alive down in Miami. I mean, they're going to have to. That was just what was so frustrating. That Friday that loss was really one you left on the table.

I mean, thinking you're going to win the game one. than nothing. I mean, the Red Sox, the Red Sox fans around us were literally going, let's just get a runner on, get him the third, and, you know, sacrifice, fly him in. I mean, that was what they were thinking was, we're just going to tie this game up because they couldn't do much of anything on Hunter Brown. So that one was unfortunate. The Saturday, when kind of got away from you, and then the Sunday, God, the fourth inning of hell for Framber Valdez, where just everything that could go wrong went wrong. But I need to see them, Ross, get this offense going a little

bit. I mean, Christian Walker had the two home runs in Boston, but like, if he was going to step up at all, this is the time to step up and do something with the bat because it's just, man, they left so many runners on base in Boston. It was just, you know, find the timely hit. Where's the guy that can move him over and drive him in? That's, that's really been their issue right now. I mean, we could talk about Colton Gordon's thinking, like I said, Framber's meltdown, but, you know, it doesn't matter getting Erigetti back and Javier back and all. these guys coming back, like, you've got to score runs. One run ain't going to do it in this league.

You've got to score runs. And so to me, that's what's so fascinating. And what other thing, Ross, I'll add, talking with some of the Astros fans that are here in Boston, guess what they're doing? They're staying up here because for some reason, the Astros are going down south to Miami for three games and then coming back up here to play at Yankee Stadium. There's a bunch of Astros fans that were in Boston that are going to make the trek over to New York and soon play at Yankee Stadium in a couple days.

So I hope they like a full beers, a cans of beer in their back of their head. Well, I mean, if you're making this trip, I mean, you got to have a couple grand in your pocket if you're doing Fenway and Yankee Stadium in the same week. But yeah, I just, I hope they find a way to take a couple, because if they lose two out of three, it gets swept in Miami and they come up to Yankee Stadium. I mean, we could be talking a week from now, Ross, this whole thing being falling completely apart. Well, we'll come to those bridges when we cross it. I think they're going to be fine. Like you said, you're getting some of your pitching horses back. The lineup is going to hit, no matter how it gets configured.

We'll see what happens with Yordon Alvarez coming back. But even if he doesn't imminently, this lineup is a lot better than it was, even though you have the Mariners doing their thing. And even though they held off the Rangers over the weekend, I'm still a little bit worried about the Rangers in this American League West. Chris Gordy, do appreciate the time? they didn't have some delicious Carbock brews up there in

Finway, did they? No, that's what stinks about being up here. You got to drink these stupid northeastern beers that they make that taste like sewer water, I guess. I'm excited to get back home real soon and get back to Dyken and enjoy Crawford Buck from our friends at Carbock brewing. And of course,

goes perfect with Astros baseball. Was out of Dyken last week, enjoyed some Crawford Box. And lo and behold, when I was drinking them there at Dyken, the Astros were with. winning games. So let's hope they can get back here real soon after this long road trip and grab yourself a Crawford-Bock

that. It was perfect with Astros baseball for right here in Houston at Carbock Broie. All right, thank you, Gordy. When you come back? We'll see. Oh, you go to the Yankee Stadium, aren't you? No, no, no, no. I'll be home much sooner than that. All right. All right, Gordy, appreciate the time

and we'll see you get here. All right, see you. Bye. All right, there you go. Chris Gordy out in the northeast. going and see the Boston Red So unfortunately beat the Astros three times in a row. Okay, we're going to take quick break. We got the news at noon-ish coming up at 1230. In the meantime, you guys can get in the next segment. We've been talking a lot of Astros here on the show.

Naturally, 713-212-5-790 is the phone number 7-13-212-5-7-90. 1220 in the PM here on Sports Talk. 7-90. Matt Thomas show. Without Matt Thomas with Ross. I am here. Jonathan is here. Thanks to Chris Gordy for joining us in the last segment. Appreciate him. Getting us perspective from, yeah, it seemed like there was a lot of Astros fans. He was mentioning that, I guess, on the press box side or whatever, the Prime McTaggart was hearing booze, but they were hearing cheers. So who knows, but Astros fans do like to travel in numbers these days, especially when it's a historic park line. like Fenway Park and go out there and support their squad. Unfortunately, they were met with three straight losses out there in Boston.

Phone lines open at 713, 212-5-790. 7-13212-5-7-90. We will have the news at noon-ish with Jonathan Allen coming up. Then at 1 o'clock, Adam Wexler, will join. We'll be talking about all things, Astro and et cetera. And you can get in on the phone lines if you would like to. as well. So Astros, I don't want to spoil a couple of things that Jonathan has

coming up. So we'll talk a little bit more Astros here. You know what? I'm a man of the people. Some people aren't men of the people, but I am a man of the people. Jason Alexander on the hill for the Astros tonight, how are we feeling? Probably not great. But the good thing is, Sandy Alcantara has been horrible this season.

He's been getting progressively worse for a couple of seasons. People were talking about them and him and Dylan sees as possible starting pitching options. No, I do understand the thought that, hey, you get him here in an Astros uniform with the Astros pitching brain trust, and he can figure something out, still got to have some life in that arm. I mean, just a couple of years ago, dude was a perennial Cy Young Award winner slash contender. Now he's got an ERA of 636.

Last year, 414, he was having a bad year. I think it was even worse to start the year, and then he kind of turned things around. I could be wrong on that, but yeah, Sandy Alcantara has been terrible this year, so hopefully the Astros' bats with this lengthened lineup can do a little bit of damage because they did not over the weekend. And I want to just chalk that up to, hey, just one of those things where they only scored what? One run on Sunday, one run on Friday, three runs on Saturday. five runs the whole weekend with this improved lineup.

I mean, it just looks dangerous. It just looks really good. Even with at some point, at some point, you're going to get Yordon Alvarez back. I'm going to convince myself of that. But then you're going to have like Pena Altuva, Alvarez, Correa, Sanchez, Walker, Diaz.

I mean, that's already six really good hitters. What's going to happen with Jake Myers? I don't know, but he was hitting over 300, having a great offensive season. Marisu Dubon has been up and down, but the fact that he's been able to keep his OPS afloat over 700 for a lot of the season, it's been very impressive. And I've been a guy who I never have been a Dubon hater or against Dubon or anything like that.

But there are some people who get it into their head that he is this everyday 300 type hitter when he gets on these hot runs, which is he has wanted to do because he puts the ball and play a lot. And you're going to see that with somebody who does what he does. Doesn't strike out. A lot of batted balls. You can end up with some luck and you're getting three, four, five hits over a weekend. And then everything is groundouts or popouts or lineouts or whatever. So he's going to fluctuate.

Just the nature of the way that he is at the plate. But overall for the season, he's been very good with the OPS over 700. So depending on where you peg him in the lineup, whether it be at second base, with a fully healthy Astros lineup with Correa now, with Pena, playing left, center, second base, wherever you want to put him, he's in a great spot where he can be a guy who can get on base, who can get hot at the right time, who can turn over that lineup. So you've got a pretty good, you're in a very good spot,

even with Yordon Alvarez, not yet back. And when he does come back, I say when, because when he does come back, you're going to be talking about, maybe not necessarily one of the best lineups in baseball, but a very, very good, deep lineup that can, get you places in the playoffs to where you can be passing the baton to to to manufacturing run after run after run and i'm really looking forward to that and that's why i do think and we did

to tell the truth about an hour ago i'm looking to them to get to this point to where they can win the american league west by three games i really do think it's possible blue jays are good it's not like i think they are like one of the best teams in the world i told you all season long that the Detroit Tigers were playing a little bit above their heads and they have had some slippage there. And you're in third place right now in the American League. Overall, two and a half games behind the Blue Jays and Tigers who are tied for the one spot.

You just need to get into one of those. I think it's really important that you not put yourself in a situation where you were last year, where you can be out of the playoffs in a flash because anything can happen is baseball. Anything can happen in a seven-game series? we've seen crazy stuff happen. Anything can happen in a five, three-game series. But the more games you give yourself,

more of a leash for error, which I do believe the Astros are one of, if not the best team in the American League, winfully healthy, the better you're going to be off. You don't want a scenario where it's just a crap shoot in a three-game series. Last year, Terrick Scoob will shut you down.

Frumber wasn't very good. Then Hunter Brown gave you a good start, but A.J. Hinch was working as Black Magic playing matchups in a bullpen game. and then you're out of the playoffs in two games. It's not good. It's not good for anybody. It's not good for Jim Crane.

It's not good for, I don't know, the Houston economy. It's not good for anything. Not good for us here at SportsC 790, if I'm going to be honest. We like playoff runs. Get them ratings, folks. We like deep playoff runs here at Sports Talk 7. I'm an Astros fan, and we all are, and we want them to get into those top two seeds of the American League,

which I think they can do. Red Sox are right behind them, only a half game behind the Astros. Four and a half for the Yankees. I mean, it's pretty crazy at the top of this American League. Mariners, two and a half games behind your Astros. They are off today. So if you can get the win tonight,

all of our heads can hit the pillow with the Astros, three games up on the Seattle Mariners. I'd be feeling a lot better about that than if it were two. But Jason Alexander has to go out there and be effective enough. And bottom line is these bats have to hit. you got stymied over the weekend only five runs in three games let's get a little something going tonight in Miami that would be very very nice for your Houston Astros

all right 713 212 5 790 is the phone number here on a sports talk 790 you're home for your strows we're going to take quick top of the hour break I mean sorry bottom of the hour break when we come back all the top sports news items of the day from intrepid reporter Jonathan Allen. That is coming your way next here on Sports Talk 790, The Matt Thomas Show with Rob.

All right, I don't know why I got to start talking like this when I hear this music. Yeah, don't worry about it, John. It's okay. We'll go to KJ first. We'll get to the news at noon in just one moment. Jonathan got excited. You know what happens. Happens.

It happens. It does happen. KJ, what's up? We'll get you in real quick before the news. At noon,ish. What up, Ross. What up, bro. It's a rev in the building the game.

Yes, sir. show is you with you with you, man. Just quick question, a comment and a question. When I saw that Pena hired Scott Boris as his agent recently, I kind of figured the bright was on the wall as far as the tenure with the Astros. I do agree with you 100%. When healthy, lengthwise, this lineup can go pound for pound with just about anybody. But I wanted to ask you, what do you agree with Pena possibly being on the outs?

Not now, obviously. but at some point and I also think them bringing Korea back probably paid a role in that this is just my opinion I want to hear if you heard anything

and also before I let you go can you find out what Pena's current contract situation is how much longer do we have them We have him for two more years two more years of arbitration

after this one so he's under he's under team control for the 26 season and the 27 and the 27 is the last year correct

so if they're going to move then it will potentially be at some point next year or maybe or next off season. But, okay. And just wanted to see what you had to say about whether or not you think them bringing career back is kind of them greasing the skids

on this replacement. Again, love to show boss. All right, thank you. Appreciate it. KJ. Yeah, we've talked about it and it's certainly, funny enough, we talked about it on this show, myself and Matt, before the trade was even made

with Carlos Correa, kind of trying to figure out the ins and outs of that. So, Esok, there are a number of factors in play right now, right? First of all, you have Esauk Paredes with the hamstring injury, likely out for the year. I don't even know if they've announced that, but I mean,

come on. Pradis is basically going to be out for the year. Then you have Correa, then you have Pena, then you have Walker in the infield, then you have Bryce Matthews, at some point. You would figure he would be a factor next year as well. So you add all that up,

you could have some issues of somebody needing to move on in the offseason. Now, could that be Jeremy Pena, who as KJ brought up? He's signed with Scott Boris, but he's also under control for two more years. Astros traded away Kyle Tucker, which was a big deviation from the way that they normally operate. They've been letting guys walk, right? as the least to my knowledge, Kyle Tucker is the first one that was going to be an impending free agent

and they traded away. And look how that turned out. You got a really big haul. You got Cam Smith who's producing for you at the major league level. Unfortunately, ESAC Paredes got hurt. And then Hayd-Wazniews-Sk was pretty good until he got hurt. I mean, this is just the nature of baseball. As it is, though, you have all those guys under team control for several more years

and you gave up one year of Kyle Tucker. That's a great haul. Now, what will Jeremy Payne you bring you back? There's a number of factors in play there. He would have two more years under control if you moved him in this offseason, which I don't think is likely, but I also don't think is completely off the table. If you just get this godfather offer that you cannot refuse, it would behooved Dana Brown to listen to that.

Jeremy Payne is also coming off of a career year. How much more would A, the Astros or B, other teams interested in Jeremy Payne? You want to see more of the sample size with this. We'll see. He had a good weekend at the plate for the Stroes coming back. And where does that leave Carlos Correa, who has talked about openly now that for the last couple of years he's wanted to move to third base, hasn't been able to because there was just no heir apparent for the Minnesota Twins. So Correa, more comfortable at third base, getting older. So then who would your shortstop be if you trade away Jeremy Pena?

So I still think Jeremy Pena is going to be here. Does that make Issaac Paredes the odd man out? Issaac Paredes has played first base before. Christian Walker, gold glove caliber first base, and he's been hitting a little bit. But he's not living up to the contract he was signed to at this moment. So could Christian Walker be on the move? Would you have to send some money with that to kind of pay for some prospects? Or if Christian Walker has a great last 50 games of the season, do you really want to keep him or does his value go up?

I don't know. But I would think of all the guys, of course, most likely to stay in the organization long term. it's Bryce Matthews because he's a good young player under team control for several more years. Also, Dana Brown's first draft pick as the Astros GM. And then from there, I don't know. It feels like just about everything's on the table. I don't know that anybody, how attractive Carlos Correa's deal would be to somebody else, how much money the Astros would have to send if you were going to trade him away.

But it kind of, I don't know, this would seem crazy to move him after you just traded him back. So I don't know how it's going to shake out. I don't think you can rule out moving any of those guys in this upcoming off season. Bottom line is, though, they're all in the team now, and we'll come to these bridges when we cross them. Sorry, Jonathan, go ahead and give us the top news items of the day. Don't shake your head at me like that. News at noon-ish. Jonathan!

I didn't shake my head. I see you. No, no, I see you. I see you. I see you shaking your head. That's all right. All right, what do you got, Jonathan? Well, welcome to the news at noon.

My name is Jonathan Nallon. My friend's coming, JK for short, here on the show. Here to give you the latest sports news on the nation. Just real quick, if you haven't been listening or you've been living under the rock, we did get swept by the Red Sox at Fenway Park, only scoring five runs in a three-game series, now sitting 62 and 50 playing Miami Marlins here today at 5.40 p.m. Ross, I know we've got these new pieces. I know we're doing all this stuff.

Is it something that we should be concerned with? Oh, we do. We let this series marinate and then we're like, okay, the bats are just getting scary. Do we need to switch lineups? What do we do here as fans right now? You know what's funny is that the lovely fun thing about baseball is that things can ebb and flow for three games. And you can be like, eh, short sample size. We don't know what it really is.

It can go for 10 games. Like guys can slump for 10, 30 or 50 games. And you'd be like, ah, it's a small sample size. Dudes can have really good, like, batted ball luck or whole teams can have good one-run game luck for an entire season. and you're like, ah, we just don't have enough sample size. So we always get out the microscope when it comes to baseball. So I'm not going to freak out over the three-day weekend that they only scored five runs. But who knows what's going to happen.

You're going up against Sandy Alcantara, who's not been a good this season. But also, have you heard before? Hey, this starter who's been really good and is having a bad season shut down the Astros. Zach Galen says hello. I feel like there's some other guys that we can go and feel like they can say hello as well. I don't even know how Giolyto is doing overall this year, but he was shutting down the Houston Astros, but he's been having a decent season, I guess.

So I don't know what the hell to tell you. Baseball is the most unpredictable of all sports. I do think they need to get the bats going. I do know that this is a pretty good lineup. So let me see. What's the Astros team total today? Let's go with the over. I'm feeling confident, baby.

I don't even know what it is. Over eight and a half. Ooh, that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot of meat on that bone. Jason, no, that's not for the team. That's for the whole game. Jason Alexander and Sandy Alcantara.

Let's go over eight and a half, folks. I'm feeling good. I'll be feeling better tomorrow when I think Spencer Arigetti is going to take the hill for the Astros. Even though I don't know if that's been officially announced. What else you got, Jonathan? Moving on, though. NCAA did just come out with the,

their coaches poll for the top 25 for the 2025 preseason college football. Who's number one? I'm going to start number five. Let's start with number one. We'll start with number one. We'll start with number one. We got five in our name. You got four at Georgia, three Penn State, two Ohio State. And Ross was number one, man.

It's got Texas today. I'm going to let Matt Thomas tell you. Texas fight, Texas fight, and it's goodbye to A&M. Yeah, crank this up. Texas fight. Texas fight, and we'll put over one more win. Texas fight, Texas five. For us, Texas that we love best.

Yeah. Hail, hail, hail, the gang's all here, and it's goodbye to all the rest. Yeah, get them. Yay, orange. Yay, white. Yay, long orange. Fight, fight, fight, fight. Texas fight.

Texas fight. Texas fight. I don't know this part. Yay, Texas fight. Texas fight. Texas fight. Yeah, this is right. All right, we'll go ahead and stop it.

There's no way he'd. Oh, my God. Number one, baby. And notable, sorry if I'll cut you out, but notable as well on the top 25. If you go and look at it, but Alabama's at 8, LSU, Gordy's at 9. And Texan, their name is tied for 21st with Iowa State. Oh, wow. I think it's nine teams from the SEC or something like that in the top 25, something ridiculous like that.

Yes, it's nine. And I also was intrigued to find this out. the first time ever Texas opens up at number one in the coach's poll. First time ever. Yeah. That's what this ESPN article I have that says. It's been that bad for a while.

Hey. Hey, come on, I'm just, I'm just saying, I'm a newscaster. I'm not, you know, just ask the question. Texas is a storied program, but they don't have as many of the accolades as some of the other programs. Arch Manning.

Sorry, well, that's the arch effect, I guess. We'll see how we is. I mean, week one, going and taking on number two. You said number two is Ohio State, correct? Yes, number two is Ohio State. They are three point underdogs in that game, so we'll see what happens.

But I'm excited. I am trying to be, I don't know what kind of fan of you are of whatever teams you're a fan of, Jonathan, but there's like confident we're going to win every game fan. And I am like Debbie Downer, I feel like something's going to go wrong fan.

And I feel like justifiably so, as the Longwoods haven't won a national championship since 2005. and they made the... I was three, guys. They made... Hey, come on, man. Just saying.

Nobody wants to know about you and suckling when you were suckling from your mother at those times. Okay? The good old days for Texas and me. Oh, my God. A lot of disappointing seasons. A lot of... Texas is overhyped every year.

I'm just going to say it. All right. I know it. I root for the longhorns, went to Texas, and I just, I know more than anybody. So I get worried. I get worried to like, when is the other shoe

going to drop? When are they going to disappoint me? That's the kind of Texas football fan I am. Now, during game days and the live time, I'm very realistic. I'm very excited. I'm very enthusiastic. But just like during the weeks,

for whatever reason, like Sundays through Fridays, I'm just like, oh, you're going to lose this week. That's my droopy dog. So I'm excited, but I'm nervous. And last thing I got for you guys

is the WMUA WNBA. I know we don't, but I do want to address how Oh, do you not have voicing about because another, you haven't heard, a sex toy had fell on the court. Fell, well, somebody threw it, correct? Yes, but another one got thrown.

Another one? At the, versus the game with Golden State, Valkyries, and Chicago Sky. Why is this happening? And Sky Center Elizabeth Williams came and told reporters, it's very disrespectful. I don't want to get the point of it.

whoever's doing it just needs to grow up. And for once, in a WNBA stance, I do agree with this. This is really absurd because then it just demoralizes us, our women as well, right? Yeah, they're getting arrested for this, too, the fans? I don't, actually, I didn't read anything about the fans getting in trouble. So that's another thing that WNBA has to get a hold of

because every sports league, major sport league, when this thing's happened, like recently with that guy, the Diamondbacks was, now this has happened on football games a couple of times, but these are incidents, these are piling up with the WNBA, right? Yeah, now it's probably going to get more headlines and probably going to keep happening, honestly. How are these people getting these into the games? It doesn't seem like they have tight security.

That's what I'm saying. It doesn't seem like anybody can just walk into these areas. What word did you use to describe the security? Anyways, that's the news. Okay. Presented by Jake Cameron. All right, we're going to take a break on that. On that note, you're on Sports Talk 790.

Rosvi Real with you, Jonathan Allen as well. Adam Wexer's joining at 1 o'clock. You guys can get in. Phone lines are open at 713-212-5-790. I'm going to make another plea. If you'd like to follow my Instagram, I would really appreciate it. At Sports RV. Look, I started pimping mine, and then Matt got all jealous that I was getting followers,

so he started pimping his. So if you really want to put Matt down, it would really help me out. You can follow me on Instagram at SportsRV. You've been trying to upload more content. And quite frankly, build it up because we're doing influencer initiatives up here at iHeart media so if you want to do me a solid look you can mute me right after i don't care follow me on instagram at sports rviary quick break here we'll talk some more sports we'll have adam wexer joining us up at one o'clock it is the mad thomas show with ross without mad thomas

with you until two o'clock here on sports talk 790 here on a sports talk 790 the mad thomas show with ross about mad thomas we got adam wexer joining us in a couple of minutes We're going to talk full number one Longhorns football for one hour, I think. Okay, maybe we won't do that. We might talk some Astros. We've got a lot of stuff going on to get to. If you'd like to get in, you can. 713-213-790 is your phone number, 7-1-3-212-5-790.

J.K. Allen running it through the top five of the coaches' preseason top 25 poll in the last segment. Texas Longhorns, again, I will say, I was surprised. see that they have not started the season number one ever in the history of the college football preseason poll or a college football coaches poll that's pretty crazy they are number one with 28 first place votes then you have ohio state second they have 20 first place votes pen state got 14 interesting Georgia with three first place votes clemson has two first place votes they are in sixth. You brought this up, I want to cut you off, because you brought this up the other day about Notre Dame

always being up here, and I still, and it kind of rubs me around it wrong way, because they're not even in a conference still, right? No, they're not. But they generally have a pretty difficult schedule. I mean, they have, I'll go looking at, I don't know what their schedule is here, but they play USC every year. They play, I think, is it Michigan? some, hold on. Let me pull up their schedule before I start completely pulling stuff. Yeah, they play Notre Dame. They play Miami. They play A&M. Purdue, Arkansas. Man, they got a tough

schedule actually this year. Generally year and year out, they are going to have a pretty difficult schedule. So while I understand Notre Dame doesn't have a conference and people want to get all mad at them about that, yeah, look at this. Miami, A&M. Purdue, Arkansas, Boise State, NC State, okay, that's not great, but USC in general over the years, very good. Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Stanford is the rest. So, yeah, they play a tough schedule.

What were you going to say, Jonathan? You just think that they, because they don't have a conference, they should be discounted? No, I was just thinking about how you were talking about that not too long ago, just about how Texas gets held to the standard about the NIL and, like, bringing people in, how Matt was talking about the huge disappointment. Yes.

Yes. And I was screaming at Matt. So I was like, Notre Dame hasn't won a championship since I think 1992. So I'm just, this is the thing. And it's just that there are all these different programs. And I had written a list that I've probably since deleted. They, they in their mind, their alumni groups are like, we need to be winning the championship at least every year or every other year.

And once you start listing all this, teams that feel this way and feel like they need to be winning, then you're up to like 15 teams. And well, if each of them won and took turns, that would be 15 years have gone by. So I understand that it's difficult, but what Alabama was able to do, and this is why Nick Sabin is the greatest coach of all time, in my opinion, with the scholarship limits that they've had, the amount of times that he was able to win a national championship and the standard that he set, you're never going to have anything like that again, I don't think, especially the way the the NIL, you have Texas spending ungodly amounts of money.

Then you have like the random Texas tech popping into their Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Miami spending a ton of money and wanting to win. Michigan winning one recently and fancying themselves as a team that needs to be. And even teams that don't necessarily win championships every year, but their fan bases think they should be in it. Like the Florida's and the Tennessees of the world, Texas A&M. It's hard out there, man. only one team out of the 12 wins a championship that make the playoffs and eventually it's going to go to 16 teams

one out of 16 is making it so they haven't done that officially yet but I think it's going to happen in the next couple of years at least to my knowledge that'll be fine actually I'm looking but you are preseason number one you spent ungodly amounts of money both in transfer portal

and in recruiting and and people say yeah they're going to be people in the alumni base of Texas Longwoods are going to say if Steve Sarkisian does not win a championship in the next three years, he needs to be out. There were people calling for Ryan Day's head when in the old system, Ohio State wouldn't even have been in the playoff. And they won it all. So it's just tough.

That's the only thing I try to preach. Everybody in this day and age is championship or bus, championship or bus, rings, rings, rings, rings, rings, or you're a failure. And I just don't see it that way. And I'm not saying that just because the Texas Longhorns are preseason number I've been consistent about this, especially when it comes to college football when you have so many different teams that are getting into the mix. But this is the way that sports discourse is gone. If you're not winning at all, you're a loser and you need to be fired.

That's just how it is. I just don't get with that line of thinking. All right, time for a quick break. The man himself, Adam Wexler, is here. He is actually here on time. I appreciate that. Not all the Adams do that. But anyways, we're going to take quick break.

One hour to go, the Matt Thomas show Adam Wexler's in the building. You want to get in, you can. 713. 212.790 is the phone number 719. 719. Now, Sports Talk 790 weather. Powered by Generator Supercenter, the nation's number one generac dealer. Your news radio 740 forecast, partly cloudy with storms this afternoon, high 87,

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You wouldn't hear any peripens or thallates because Old Spice... Hour number four? Yes. 4 out of 4 The Matt Thomas show with Ross Without Matt Thomas Here on Sports Talk 790

It is without Matt Thomas But it is with Adam Wexler Coming in early Which I do appreciate I know I'm interrupting his time Of watching the axe throwing championships Which apparently they do warm up throws for this Or is this do they do throws to see who throws first?

It's just Summer League Oh, okay Is that the Summer League axe throwing? It doesn't matter as much Have you done this before? I have not done axe throw, I know. I know you go to events where it's offered. Yes.

But I have ax thrown before. I mean, I've thrown a cushion one that had Velcro on it. I don't think that really counts. Yeah, I know. Sharp edges, got it firing hard enough to get into the target made of wood. I've done it. 94% bullseye percentage? I would hope so.

My God. I mean, they're not going to show us the guys that are in the 30s. I don't think you're going to make it to ESPN the Ocho. These guys are pretty good. All right. Well, anyways, they're throwing bullseyes. We're going to talk about anything. anything but axe throwing here on the Matt Thomas

phone lines open and available for you at 713 212-5-790 7-23212-5-790 2-790 ex and tweets to at SportsRV at Adam J. Wexler a number of things to get to Waxx but of course we have to start off with your Texas Longhorns number one in the coaches poll could you believe that they have never been number one in the preseason coaches poll ever? It's amazing A lot of wins in program history, one of the all-time winningest programs.

They do have national titles. It's been a bit since they've grabbed one. But yeah, it is a little bit surprising. I don't find it very surprising that it accidentally worked out this way. Opening weekend of the season features who? Number one versus number two. I think that's kind of not an accident either. I'm with you.

But whatever. Texas is number five all-time in wins. I remember the good old days when they were number one. They're within striking distance of rising up the ladder, don't you think? 961. Michigan has the most with a thousand and 12. Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Texas, Oklahoma. That's a pretty good list of good college programs in the day.

All right, okay, maybe we're not really going to lead with this. We had the trade deadline, Wex. We're all super excited. They've got Carlos Correa back. He's in Boston. He's taking on Alex Bregman and Alex Cora. And the Astros are ready to go. the lineup is all juiced and they score five runs over the weekend.

Yeah, there was a lot more love for the name and the jersey rather than 2025 Carlos Correa. And 2025 Jesus Sanchez, for that matter, obviously was in the lineup all weekend. They added players that made the 2025 Astros offense on paper better. But these guys weren't having bang-up seasons. These guys weren't on a roll. These guys weren't, oh, my gosh, this is going to turn everything around. and they both actually, you know, you got the first homer from Correa, Sanchez had a couple of hits and Astros special on the base paths.

They're not going to turn this offense around. If that's what people were expecting, they should make it a little bit less likely to have weekends like this as often. But yeah, their very first weekend, it looked exactly like the same offense that was struggling to score runs when they left town. Five runs in three games against, you know, Boston's clearly been playing good baseball. But the same thing that's plagued them before, those guys got here plagued them specifically

in the Saturday game. The Astros in 2025 have not suffered from a shortage of base runners. They've been one of the league's best hitting teams in terms of batting average, which means runners are on. They also drew a bunch of walks all weekend long, but they don't have any slug.

They don't hit doubles. Then they don't hit enough homers. And so nobody makes it around the bases to home plate. The numbers are all there for you over this about month and a half time where they've clearly fallen back to the pack. There was an opportunity to sit fairly firmly in the two

spot in the A.L. Sit fairly firmly atop this division. And obviously the drama has been ratcheted up right here on your home for Astros baseball over the next two months. This is what happens when you take Cooper Hummel out of the lineup. He was hot hitting his home runs and whatnot. Although I think he got a pinch hit A.B.

Yesterday. But no. I'm excited about Sanchez's numbers are really good against right-handed pitching. So I'm excited about him. Coray has been a lot better since the first month of the season, so I'm still excited about him shoring up the lineup. We'll see when Yordon gets back. But this, as they get healthier with Pena Beck, and we'll see what happens with the hamstring injury, never heard of a guy getting a hamstring injury coming back into the lineup and

then being totally okay. Cramp. I mean, it was in his hamstring. He didn't hurt his hamstring. Well, a cramp hurts. It hurts, but his hamstring is fine. Okay. Are you sure?

He played yesterday, didn't he? I saw him out there, right? He said Paratus came back from his hamstring injury and that one happened. Then he hurt the other hamstring. Then he's going full off 12 hours in the smoker off the bone. It's not good. I'm not feeling great about it. I don't want to hear the word hamstring from anybody for the rest of the season.

So yes, he should be good. He's younger. He's in better shape than Issaq Paratus. No, he's not younger. He's not younger. You think Isok Peredis's multiple hamstrings while running to first injury? He hurt each of them this year. You think that have anything to do with him being less than ideal?

body shape for a major league baseball. I can't rule it out. I can't rule it out. I mean, I don't know. I don't think it's related, do you? Do you think it's not? I don't know. I think it could be. Thin guys hurt hamstrings? Thin guys hurt hamstrings. Fast guys hurt hamstrings?

Yeah, Jeremy Payne is very strong. Hitting the weight room. I don't know. I am not his orthopedist. So again, Jeremy Payne didn't hurt his hamstring. His hamstring is fine. Who is more likely to hurt their hamstring? A guy who is in better shape or a guy who's not in good shape. I don't know. I would say. How about it's knowing your limits? Okay, what does that mean? Like running slower?

Aren't you supposed to full run it 100% no matter what? You give it your all, you give it your all. You give it your all. Oh, okay. You don't go 100, but they tell you to go 110%. Of all people, you know there's no such thing. You would never let that fly. How do you give more than 100?

There's only 100. I know, I know. Okay. So then what are you supposed to give? 97%. The Astros are no more hurt than they were going into the weekend. Pena should be in the lineup today and batting lead off the same top of the order. be available to you.

I can make this conversation continue down the negative path if you want to know which team has the most wins in baseball over the last 40 days. Is it the Marlins? I know they've won what, like nine or their last 11, something like that. One of two teams with 23 wins over the last 40 days. The Astros have 16. That's how the Marlins are back at 500. Let me pull up the game logs for Mr. Alcantara.

His ERA is still well above six. He has not had a good season. Last two times out, combined 12 innings and no earned runs given up. Looked like he said to the Marlins, I know what you want to do, and I want it too. I'm going to pitch my way off this roster, and it still didn't work. Okay, well, he's still on the roster, so now he's going to revert back. He's going to give up like six earned runs, and we're going to be feeling good. Is that what you're telling me?

I don't think it, you know, look at who they went against these last three days. Criswell and Gialito and Walker awful Euler. It didn't really matter who they were facing. It's more on them. We don't run into a great pitcher. They just are who they are, and anybody can become a great pitcher. You saw two of those three guys have their best starts of the season,

best start of the season for Gio Lito yesterday, best start of the season for Cariswell on Friday. It's not them. How many times? How many times have they didn't give guys, it was the same thing with that guy, JT. Genn, from the A's. There has been like 15 guys, it feels like, who've gotten their best start of the season against this lineup.

But the lineup's supposed to be better. You got, you started Hunter Brown, and Framber Valdez and you miss Crochet and you got all these guys in the lineup and you got swept. They only gave up 15 runs they only scored five.

They just clearly the extra inning game on Friday was very winnable. They were in position. They gave outs away three different times in that game. I don't think the Cam Smith out on the base pass was alarming.

You sent him on a hit and run. The guy flew out to short outfield and he got doubled off. The other two are very inexcusable, expected in Altuvae's case. How does he get picked off his first there? He just decided to zone out. And then Sanchez, I don't know why he's rounding

second and stopping and then say, well, why don't I just head on over to third and get thrown out by a mile in the first inning of the game while you're already in scoring position? Very, very unnecessary. Well, he's fitting in nicely. And then he also didn't he throw a ball home when he shouldn't have at some point, too?

Sanchez over the weekend. Well, okay. They're all going to learn at some point. I mean, I don't know. if we're going to do this all day. No. We'll pile on this segment. No, I don't want to. Okay.

I'll hold on. Do it, do it. Well, the last... You got 80, 40 more seconds. Boston and Boston's going to get both Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. The Astros are in good shape. Well, they've lost each of the last two starts for both of their aces. And on the days of their aces don't pitch, Jason Alexander, TBA, and TBA.

That's who's pitching in the next three days. We know one of the TBAs. It's Araggetti. Who has thrown twice. two games at the major league level this year he's ready enjoy it he's uh well at least he doesn't ever rack up high pitch counts so we should be fine i'll go deep in the game all right fine we're gonna take a break we're gonna be more positive i promise how we're feeling about the astros losing to boston over the weekend we can get into some texan stuff we're talking of course the college football poll your

texas longhorns okay i know they're probably not your texas longhorns are number one there we can talk about anything you want to get to seven one three two one two five seven ninety the phone number 713215.790. For the Houston Astros. As they take on the Miami Marlins. Maybe not. Maybe on the bus ride back to the hotel. Ooh, victory bus ride? I like that.

Feeling confident in Jason Alexander? Not too confident in Jason Alexander. The first game he pitched when he started, I was watching him and like, I can't, they're going to tear this guy up. This guy is going to be awful. That was the game he pitched well. Yes. And since then, it's been much more of what I expected when I saw his major league pitches.

When's Javier coming back? Next week, probably. One more rehab start before he returns. And honestly, about the Tuesday- Wednesday games, I don't really even think there's much to debate. I mean, Hunter Browns, you don't want to kill the guy. He's got a pitch on a certain day. And, you know,

Erigetti's got to kind of work around that. So the timing of those should almost have to be the two guys that pitch Tuesday and Wednesday, because who else is there? When you trade away Ryan Gusto at the deadline, and that was not an area of strength. You can say it's an area of good quantity, but I know what the situation is. I get it when you're Dana Brown. I think it's a huge, huge risk. I mean, he went into the deadline with six starting pitchers expecting to return to the Astros. Six. This year, this month, arguably all.

six could return. So I understand it. But how do you know how many of them are going to pitch? Probably besides Brandon Walter. And he's the one you might know the least about regarding when he returns. He pitched well in 2025 at the major league level. I feel confident when he returns. If he's healthy, he will do so again. But how could you feel confident about any of the other pitchers, including Lance and the four who have been out for months? They're going to be back, but you're banking on them returning and pitching well. Because now when they don't or if they don't, be fair. Well, then what? You have not added anybody who you have confidence in. You got to give the ball to other people. Brown and Valdez are going to start 20 games the rest of the way.

You got 30 other games. I think it's like, yeah, we'll go with those guys and then we'll figure everything else out because I don't think this is necessarily the plan as much it was, well, they're asking for Erigeti and three prospects for cease. Who knows what was happening with the Alcantara negotiations or whatever is starting. they were trying to go to and it was like, well, plan B or maybe even plan C is hope these guys come back and a couple of them are effective. And I think that's what planned that Dana had to go to. Yeah. And the other question you ask is, well, was there another left-handed bat, quality left-handed bat that might not have cost you, Ryan Gusto? You know, Ryan Gusto was going to be

a major leagueer last year. He made the team out of spring training this year. And of all the guys that they've used in varying roles pitching-wise, he's the one I find most promising for the future and he came off of his finest start. Those are the kind of starts that have held this together. Every once in a while, they needed somebody else to give them six innings. He gave them six innings and only allowed one run. You're going to win those games, and they did.

And then he had to be used. I understand it. Again, you gave something to get something. You got, as you've said, multiple times since they acquired Jesus Sanchez. They see a ton of right-handed pitching because of who they employ as batterers. And now they have a left-handed batter in the lineup prior to Alvarez's

return that's, you know, Probably in 820. You can expect him to hit 820 OPS against you. You expect him to get on base to drive in runs. Now, he's absolute total, unbelievable major league disaster against left-handed pitching, but we don't likely have to see that. So could you have gotten a different outfielder that bats left-handed? Probably, and it might not have cost you gusto,

but it's very unlikely he would have been as strong a hitter against left-handed pitching as Sanchez is. And Dana felt like improving the offense, which we don't know about the. the shot in the arm they're going to get because we're still uncertain about Yordon's return, very uncertain about the timeline on Jake Myers' return. I don't know that anybody else that's not currently there is going to make much of an impact

with them offensively. What about a guy who I mean, we feels like we talk about the least, but also I know he hasn't provided much but as far as his injury, blister, blister man. Lance McCuller Jr., what's the latest with him? What's going on

there? I think he's a rehab starter It's just a matter. I think it's only a one rehab start ramp up issue for him, but he's got to obviously start throwing and continue to throwing. So he's capable of at least going on a rehab start. He's eligible to, you know, come off the IL as 15 days have been spent there. He went on on the 20th. We're here at the 4th. But it's not imminent.

And even in his case, he just slams home that point even harder about the effectiveness. He was not effective at the Major League level this year. And now he's likely to get more starts the rest of the way. You don't have the options you'd like. JP France, Spencer Arrogatti, Christian Javier, Luis Garcia. They all threw over the last week's time for an additional appearance. And, you know, Arrogati is, he's going to be in Miami. He's pitching for them this series, and we'll start finding out what exactly you'll get.

I like that he has a little track record from last year, and he had one of two good starts. He's bat in 500 as a starting pitcher. One good start, one bad. I'll tip it in the proper scale, and you'll be two out of three. Yeah. Tuesday or Wednesday. It'll be interesting as far. I don't want to say like the growing pains because it's August,

but it is for a lot of these guys who haven't thrown a whole lot of starts. But if you can get Arrogati back and yeah, he's in a ramp up period. He's fresh. Yeah, exactly. Fresh arm. 79 pitches is last time out, which that can be like three innings for him, the way that he kind of racks him up.

Similar way to Lance McCullors Jr. has always had. I'm actually still feeling pretty good. Honestly. And no, you don't know, you don't know, anybody's going to have a setback, but we've already seen that from anybody. I mean, Hunter Brown or Framber Fountas could get hurt at some point. It is possible. No, it's not.

It can't. It could happen at some point. You never know what's going to happen. If these guys are going through up their ramp ups and their rehabs, and I know we have this like pitching injury PTSD this year because at one point what they had like eight starters on the IL, of course, I'm with you. It's not a good plan A. It's not a good plan B, but it's the plan they got.

and if your top two guys stay healthy and just two of the other guys can be good, that's enough to me to win the American League West and to win some playoff series. Yeah, I had a discussion about this yesterday. It's obvious from the standings, two and a half games back, that's where Seattle sits, four and a half games back, that's where the Rangers sit. I feel like the answer is obvious based on the numbers I just gave you, which team is more concerning? Is it hard to answer that?

It seems very easy to answer that. I would stick with the Mariners. Some are trying to say the Rangers, but I think especially with the movies the Mariners made and how good their lineup is now, I'm sticking with them. I'm with you. And I love, Merrill Kelly pitched very well in his first start for the Rangers. And they have the top three in the rotation that's as good as anybody in baseball. But they're just not as good as the Mariners. I don't think they're as good as the Astros. So you have six games against them remaining. So that can go a long way. If you take care of business there, then they're not going to catch you with what's left in the schedule most likely. You've got three left with the Mariners. That's one series. It could all be different. after this coming series, if they continue to win. And they also took care of the Rangers this past weekend, three times and four games. I like their lineup a lot. One through six, there's 14 other teams in the American League. Nine of those are in the hunt.

Do any of them have a better one through six in their batting order than what the Mariners put out there every day? I don't think so. Yeah. It's kind of crazy that they, every, we talk about this and the disaster weekend that was after the moves it got made. made all the pitching injuries and everything. And you're two and a half games back from all one seat in the American League. Everything is still, I mean, I don't want to go Aaron Boone. It's right in front of us.

Man, that is an all-time favorite line. He can't stop saying it this year as they drop out of the fourth wildcard spot. But yeah, all this losing, the Astros are a little bit under 500 for a little over a month. And they're still two and a half games up. And they're still within striking distance of not needing to see themselves in the wild card series. all while they're not only not playing, they're not winning, they're not playing good baseball. Not having offense or not pitching well, and both have happened is one thing, but playing poorly, doing things you don't normally do, making mistakes.

You're simply not making plays. You've got a guy learning a new position, Carlos Correa, and as soon as he learns third base on Friday, he played shortstop in his first game back with the Astros, because Jeremy Payne had to come out for extra innings after he finished off the ninth inning, and he was back at shortstop with Pena returning or out of the lineup on Saturday, you're going to be good defensively, and he's going to be very good over at third base,

and I think that it's going to be almost immediate. But there's going to be some times where it's not perfect, but it doesn't even matter. He has to hit, and Joe Espada is telling everybody that by batting him cleanup. Yeah, I think he will. I think it was like a 763 OPS since May. He gets bad.

about his approach is a little bit different or swinging. His excuse, I don't want to say excuse. Well, his reason, you want to call it excuse, you can, was that he was working with some different batting coaches in Minnesota. So he's back here with some guys that he's comfortable with. I feel okay that the bat from Carlos Correa is going to justify, especially if and when you get fully healthy with Yordon Alvarez coming back. Justify being in the four or five spot around.

Christian Walker, who's showing some signs of life here and there. Yiner Diaz, who's not having a horrible season anymore, at least getting his OPS creeping up to 700. And you're going to have 7,8 guys with an OPS 700 and above in this lineup. And that should be enough to manufacture some runs. Just have to figure out how to get the hits at the right time. Saturday had a ton of base runners, never got the hit they needed. Correa was up in that instance with the bases loaded and struck out looking. He had three hits in his first three games, drove one over the fence, absolutely destroyed that baseball,

which is something this team is certainly going to need. They haven't really put it all together offensively, and I think we know a lot of the reasons why. But, yeah, like you said about Carlos, back together with Puerto Rico's World Baseball Classic Hitting coach, Alex Indira. Yes. Everything should be great. That's this guy. All right. There was an opinion I gave on to tell the truth earlier today that I did not believe, but I don't think is crazy. I'm going to present it to Adam Lexer when we come back. You guys can also get in, talk some Astros. 713-212-5-790 is the phone. number 713-21-5-790.

It is The Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas with you until 2 o'clock here on Sports Talk 7-90. Don't know you can't control yourself any longer. Will this also be on the post-game playlist for the Astros? Kind of old.

After a victory in Miami. It gets the people going, though. Wait, is this from 1974? I mean, I know it's the opening night of the road trip, though it's, you know, and it's their second night in Miami because they got there yesterday. That's true. Are they in a celebratory mood, you know, win or lose, but presuming they win, are they going to enjoy South Beach tonight in advance of Tuesday's game? Do they enjoy South Beach Tuesday night in front of Wednesday's earlier start and fly back to Houston or fly back to New York? What do you do?

All nights? No, son. Now, Miami bars used to close at like 3 or 4 a.m. And then I think they recently passed a law now that it's back to 2 a.m., which is normal for most people. I'm familiar with that. So you're saying they didn't party too hard. I guess not. They'd be all right.

Normal 2 o'clock time. 2 o'clock their time. What's at, a 640 first pitch their time? 5.40 here on Sports Talk 790 with the Astros on deck coming up with, I don't know, some combination of the Adams. Let's usually. We both just hang for it. Okay. They both just hang for it.

I'm not listening. Sorry. That's coming up at 430 here on Sport. Let's talk 790. All right. So I mentioned earlier today, Wex, are you familiar with the, to tell the truth segment on the Matt Thomas show with Ross? Yeah, it's super confusing because I'm not a smart person, but I understand the premise. I say you say four things and one of them's not true.

Yes, yes. It's very convincing. It's very not confusing and a great bit by Matt Thomas that we use here even when he was out. Okay, one of the opinions I did not believe, but maybe I could as we go along, was that Come playoff time, your primary catcher, could it be Victor Carrotini over Yiner Diaz? A couple of pass balls over the weekend, although I don't know how many of those were charged to him. His six pass balls are tied for the American League lead. He is throwing out 13% of attempted base stealers.

Yeah, we had some... I could a phrase that better. A couple of, on the non-radio side, we had a couple of national broadcasts. And so play-by-play was a national voice or a Red Sox voice. And it was brought up a couple times. Yiner Diaz having a tough time this year throwing out runners. I know that people know better than to say that that are in the game of baseball, but they say it anyway. It's not all his fault.

Did his arm break or something? Does he throw – I know you have pop times and you have velocity on your throws. And I will acknowledge they aren't exactly where they have been in his career, but it's very marginal difference. But the difference is the pitchers don't hold runners. on and everybody knows it, and I still can't believe people won't note that when they want to rip the Astros catchers. The Astros catchers, he is light years better than Victor Caratini throwing the ball down to second base, in my opinion. But it's not on either one of them. Guys run wild on the Astros pitching staff, and they do it against almost all of them.

Get ready for it when Christian Javier gets wild and starts walking batters. A walk against Javier is a triple, and I think the Astros had better be ready for it. The pass balls, where was he before this year on pass balls? Had he even had one at all in his career? Remember that streak? He went, I don't know how many career starts without ever having one for multiple seasons. It just has happened. Maybe he got a little lazy.

He's also played a ton, way more baseball than he should have played, if not for other injuries. Because they spent six weeks, eight weeks with Caratini and Diaz in the lineup together nearly every day. He hasn't had to catch an overly incredible amount, but he's been in the lineup almost every single day. because so many other teammates have been hurt and he's been healthy. I don't think you're going to see Victor Caratini take over the catching duties to the point

that Yiner's watching playoff games. Yeah, I'm with you, and that's why it was something I didn't believe because it is the Yonner's only throwing out 13% of base Steelers, but I think it's only 17% for Karatini. And I mean, we get Joe Spada on every week

and it's come up a couple times this year and it's something they're aware of. they know this it's not a secret and they keep talking about working working on it and improving from that standpoint and it just doesn't seem to get done and this is something this is not even the first year we've been talking about this yeah i mean keep keep the running game to a minimum and you know the nationals was a good example of that you know the day where cj abrams got on base

four times it didn't matter where if he's on first he's going to be on second base in five seconds. First pitch, second pitch, you know, the guys in the order know to give their teammates an opportunity to get that stolen base, even all the way to third. Heading into yesterday's game, Caratini had thrown out five of 49

attempted base dealers. Diaz had thrown out 7 of 78. That's around 9% for Diaz. That's 10% for Caratini. It's a team problem. They're part of the problem, but it is a team problem. It's also not going to get fixed. Nothing's going to change in two

months. The pitchers aren't going to start throwing home more quickly. They're not going to start throwing over to first more effectively. And this is a little bit of this. And I'm sure it's league wide as rule changes. I mean, I know the fans like to stupidly boo when you throw the ball over to first base. Yeah, I don't know why that ever became a thing. I mean, you don't like when they're trying to, this is a baseball play. You don't like baseball plays? It's not slowing the game down. Well, now they can't slow the game down. And once you've thrown over twice, well, you're really up against it. What do you want them to do? Intentionally balk runners over to third so that it'll get caught stealing?

Well. Have you talked about Hector Nairis being third base coach? We didn't talk about it much. We did talk about it. Yeah. What's going on there? First of all, now, Dubon recently was intentionally balked over the third base because they thought that he may be reading grips.

And then so who was on second base for the Red Sox? I don't recall. And Hector Narris intentionally box somebody over to third. And then he wants to go ahead and, and then like start fights over it. Yeah, I'm not really sure why if it's, I don't know how much it happens, but it seems like it happens a lot

because there's nothing wrong with it. The combating it is hiding or doing what they did. If you think you can't do the things you need to do to prevent them from seeing it, well then you send them to third. You take your chances when they don't have an advance notice on what pitch is coming. It's happened to the Astros.

it's happened from the Astros. It's unfortunately, to me it's unfortunate, but it is just part of the game. I don't know, Hector Nerris is, I mean, he flies off the handle all the time for no reason. I also think his time here in Houston for this third go-round is going to be rather short-lived. When arms are coming on their way back,

even though technically they'll be starters, he's one of the guys at the very end of the list, and he'll be, I mean, I don't know about the new guys, he's yet the pitch yet, but Nerris has not been successful here. he was not successful with his last team this year. He was not successful with his first team this year. It's not a surprise. Yeah, Trevor's story.

That's who it was. As I looked it up, balked over. It just didn't make sense, but, yeah, Hector Narris does like to start stuff. I'm with you. I don't think he's going to be on the team much longer. Neither side really saying much of anything about this happening, but it seems like it's part of the game.

And there was a commentator. I can't remember who it was with Hector Nero. throwing a splitter that apparently that's one of the grips that's easier to read in a glove of a pitcher because they literally split finger so much that it makes the glove bow out

and then you can kind of relay that to the hitter I guess is what they're talking about. Yeah, seeing you know, relaying stuff that you can see on a grip going back and you know looking at, you know, tells, pitch tipping. It's just the way it is. Why they get a giant oversized glove if you throw a splitter and they can't read anything?

You grab an outfielder's glove. love. Those guys are using baskets out there. You can hide up whatever. You know, had a grapefruit inside those clubs. Or you just balk them over to the third and get the out. He did. And that's what he did. So, yeah, that was kind of crazy.

But it also seems like it's baseball. It's something that's been done before. Like I said, I can't remember exactly the scenario, but it happened to Marisa Dubon getting balked over. And the bench is cleared. And everybody just gets cardio these days. When the bench is clear, everybody just starts running in from the bullpen. There's got to be a big fat eye roll from the guys in the bullpen.

Because they know nothing's going to happen. Do they have to go? And they are, well, we got to go. Yeah, why? What if you just want to stay there? What if you're in the middle of warming up? Well, you're also late in the game, so you're probably going to pitch soon. Yeah. If you're the Red Sox pitchers in the bullpen, you had to run in for that, it's your half-inning coming up. You're going to be gas because you're definitely not in shape if you're a bullpen picture, right?

You'd like to think that? You just saunter on over slowly and then they go kind of stand around for a little while and then go back. That's basically what happened. Yep. All right of nothing. A whole lot of nothing. Well, a whole lot of losing too. For the Astros at Fenway Park this weekend,

we're going to take another break. The Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas continues for one more segment. You got the A-team with Adam Planton and Adam Wexler up next. We'll take a quick break here. Don't go anywhere. Hello there. Back for the final segment.

The Matt Thomas show with Ross. You've heard Matt's voice talk about it a couple of times. We will be at Toward Brewing. Friday for the show deciding if I really want to hang out with the show. Last time, I'm going to be honest with you guys. I had too many beers. But it is going to be a Friday.

So I don't know. Maybe I'll peer pressure myself into doing it. But we're going to be out at the Talyard Brewing in Sugar Land for the show. 10 to 2. We will have some Astros tickets to give away. We'll be hanging out, having some good fun. I think last time we had some golf passes, I cannot promise you any of that. But normally some good prizes, you can hang out, got some good

brews. I will tell you for a fact that I had a couple of flights of brews from out there. I liked them all. So if you guys want to come out and say hello, we'll be out there Friday 10 a m. to 2 p.m. for the show. And I might have to have a flight or so. Maybe two, maybe a return trip, maybe a round trip after the show as well. So make sure you come out and see us out there. Talyard Brewing Friday for the show in Sugar Land. Matt will be back tomorrow right now. Adam Wexler hanging out with me for a couple of moments. We've done. done like 85% of the show and the Astros. So just

for you, We're going to go Texans mode for a little bit. Again, the reports, not breaking news. Texans defense is doing better than the Texans offense. So I just want to ask you, I'm not going to hold you to do this. But I'll say by the end of the year,

Texans will have a top blank offense in the NFL. What do you kind of base that on? I'm going to base it on EPA. No. I'm not going to base it on DVO8. No, I'm going to base it on yards per game.

Top 14. How about yards per play? Sorry, yards per play. I'll say top 14. Okay. And I think that's a pretty nice, I don't know where they were last year in that particular category. But they didn't score enough points. They didn't score enough in the red zone.

They certainly didn't finish those drives off with enough touchdowns. They weren't. good enough on third down. And obviously all those things tie together. If they're a top half of the league offense and a top five of the league defense, they're going to win another 11 games, and they're going to win the division again,

and they're going to win a home playoff game among those 11. Well, let me give you the top teams in yards per play last year. Baltimore, Detroit, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Buffalo. So one non-playoff team, San Fran? Yes. So some pretty good offenses. Yep. The Houston Texans were 19th.

Yeah, I didn't bump them up crazy. That's five spots, top 14. That's nothing outrageous. But that also indicates what we're not seeing. Improvement. Better line play, better running game. I don't expect them to show anything like that here in camp, so it's a little unfair. They're clearly giving the ball to guys who may not carry the ball hardly at all this year

because they're not handing it to Joe Mixon and Damien Pierce isn't out there. Not even sure what Pierce's future is with this team. and for the first nine practices here in Houston, they really didn't have to shuffle the offensive line very much. Essentially, it was just a rotation at center. The newcomer, Jake Andrews, and the holdover, Jared Patterson, were splitting number one team reps at center. The other four spots weren't changing on a daily basis.

Cam Robinson and Tay Urstery were the tackles, Ursry on the right side, and Lake and Tomlinson and Titus Howard were the two guards, and it was rare that anyone would ever take first team snaps. That changed today in their first practice in West Virginia, when Cam Robinson went down with some sort of likely minor leg injury. Obviously, I'm here, so I was not there and did not see it. But they did have to shuffle the line.

And I would say it was a surprise in what they chose to do. I don't think I put too much stock in it yet. But they bumped Titus Howard back out to tackle for the remainder of practice. And most of practice still remained. He went back out to right tackle, and they shifted Ursy over to the left side. these are their first team reps that they went through today for their first West Virginia practice. You know, move Drew Scruggs into one of the guard spots, kept Tomlinson and the other. They have a lot of things to figure out, but the bottom line is, I can't tell you they have talent on this offensive line.

The veterans they added are journeyman caliber players at best, and unless Ursary is what Nick has never done before, a very good early round offensive line pick, then they're host. I actually think he is what he's never done before. A significantly better than Fisher. He moved ahead of Fisher on the depth chart back in April the day they drafted him, and it is played out that way. And same thing for Scruggs, and Kenyon Green obviously isn't here. Those are the last four top two-round offensive line draft picks for Nick.

Three of them are bad, and this one looks like he is good. Yeah, you brought up Blake Fisher, and that's basically what I was going to talk about. I thought he was really, honestly, he was just thrown into the grease a little too quick last year. he looked well overmatched. Felt like towards the end of the year, he was at least not horrible. So I was kind of hoping, when we talked about this offseason

and the guys it brought in and not really addressing, I want to say not addressing. I mean, Cam Robinson and Tayerseri are addressing it, but it felt like there was maybe some confidence in Blake Fisher. But as you mentioned, and Titus Howard getting bumped out, it seems like any sort of confidence

that I was kind of, trying to read in the tea leaves has evaporated. Yeah, I mean, if they think that, and I don't know this for sure, it was just one day. Maybe it was the thing they felt like made most sense for the 10th practice of training camp. They're five days away from playing their first preseason game on Saturday. And, again, the game itself and who's going to be out there is left to be determined. Fisher's been getting on most of the reps at right tackle with the second unit.

Well, your first team left tackle goes down, so you bump the right tackle over to the left. Well, the openings right there, you know, it would have made sense. but if I'm going to tell you that Titus Howard's a better right tackle than Blake Fisher, you're going to believe me because it's true. And then if I can say, well, with Cole Popovich and the new scheme and Nick Cayley's offense, they can play juice scrugs at guard that's now vacated by Howard and still put a better five out there rather than keeping Howard inside and bringing Fisher up. That's an assumption I'll make, but they wouldn't commit to that today.

DiMiko said, you're going to see a lot of lineups. We shuffled things around today. He said that four or five times during camp, and it's still true. everywhere else other than the ones, they've been shuffling guys all over the place, giving as many guys as they can reps, because they clearly don't have an obvious, these are our best five to start, and these are the next four that are making the roster. They don't have that because the talent isn't there. You've been a lot of these pressers and practices and all that type. Do you feel D'emiko's getting increasingly combative with the media or is he's just always been like this? I don't think he's combative at all, and I don't think it's changed at all. bad of. I would say, I don't even know. Shutting things down. I don't really

think so. The offensive line is the non-injury-related area where he will grow tired of those questions. And if you ask him a question about a specific player, he almost always turns it into the group as a whole. Yes. So he doesn't focus. But he's always done that. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't notice anything different. Quite honestly,

six-minute presser with Domeco. It's probably three minutes of fluff, two minutes of something you're not interested in. And here's a bite that we think we can pull out and get a lot of conversation about. It happens all the time. Listening to him go six full minutes and answering question after question after question. I don't really feel like his demeanor changes over the course of that time today or any other day, but there are two topics, the offensive

line because they're underperforming and bad and injuries. He does treat them very similarly, no matter how he felt. Like Saturday's practice before they left for the Greenbrier, his first question was about who chooses the playlist that they play at practice. He was happy to answer that. Yes. I followed up with the players. Okay. Well, hey, I want them to get a little extra juice for the get motor. Hey, you hear a song, you feel good, you play good. And I asked him right after that, how does he feel like the vibe of practice has been? Because we're all asking questions every day. Well, the defense dominated today. And this, and he said, I love the vibe. We're playing a game. You started playing football because it's a game. It's supposed to be fun.

I want our players to feel that way, even at this level. So he's all about the vibe of it. And I think that's part of why he's considered a player's coach and he's obviously been there and very recently. So the vibes are good. But if you ask him right after how good are the vibes, so when are we going to see Christian Harris on the field? I'm sure his mood will change. The vibes are bad with Christian Harris. I guess he's been working off to the side or something like that. Wex, thanks for hanging out. Great to be here. Looking forward to the next several hours. I appreciate it. Yes, he is going to stay. I am going to go.

Thanks to Dan Matthews for hanging out. Thanks to Chris Gordy for popping in. thanks to JK for producing the entire show. Now it's time for not just one at them. It's two of them. They call themselves the A team. My name is Ross Villarreal saying thank you so much to listening. Keep it right here on Sports Talk 7 out of your home for your Houston Astros.