The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Manager Joe Espada Talks Early Season and What They Expect Moving Forward

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Astros Manager Joe Espada Talks Early Season and What They Expect Moving Forward 

joining us from Seattle. Tough loss last night. Tough loss before the game. Skip, it's Matt Ross. Good morning to you. How are things? Matt, I'm doing well, man. How are you?

My Cougars lost a national championship, but that's on here and or there. We'll move on to your squad. Yeah, we should be, we should be proud of their season. You know, we watch the last minute and a half during a pitching change. They put the last minute on the school board there. and, you know, we all felt it, but I think we need to celebrate their season. You know, the boys play their heart out, and, you know, the whole entire city of Houston

should be proud of our Cougars. You almost said to play their ass off. You could say that sometimes, Joe. You can't say it every time, but you can say it once in a while. They did, man. They did, they did. You know, it was incredible to watch them, you know, come together out of the team. they play hard until the end

and that's what us coaches always want from our players is just to give everything they're at you give everything they have you know no you don't want them quitting you want them to fight till the end and they did that you know it's correct but I'll ask you this before we get to the logistics of your squad

and you know Calvin Samson the coach the Cougars was telling us about what he had to tell the kids and look you've only had to have that conversation once the manager it was last year against Troy in the two-game wildcard series I don't know if you get advice or you have been through as a player or a coach. Those are kind of be the hardest conversations you can have when you put in all the hard work

from spring training to a 162 game schedule to have a season abruptly in however it does. There's no way for you to prepare for that except that you just have to kind of just say with your emotions. Do you not? Yeah, there isn't. And, you know, when you have those conversations, you want to be genuine and open-hearted about how you really feel about your team and, you know, and as a family. I can see it's you put so much work into getting ready for a season. There's the ups and downs. There's the tough moments that you lean on one another just to get you through some tough, you know, tough events.

once you have to say goodbye and in college sports, sometimes you don't see those kids, you know, again, on the court. You know, I have the opportunity to see those guys the next season. Some of them, you know, going to free agency. That's more of a one-on-one conversation at the end of that meeting. But it's really, really difficult to have them for sure. I'm going to let Ross ask about last night in particular. This is it did not see the game,

but I do want to ask you about Spencer. explain to the audience what you heard did see happen and then anything in terms of a medical update about how long he potentially could be out. Yeah, so I did not see what happened, but I heard from our trainers and also from his Spencer that, you know, he was playing catch, a ball was hit during batting practice, Shattermanor's batting practice and struck him in the right thumb, obviously, and then we learned that he has a fracture. So right now he flew to Houston today, and he's seen our doctors.

And once we hear from our doctors, we'll know the extent and how long, you know, we will have Spencer out for. And how much of this is just some crazy freak thing? Was Spencer in the wrong place? I mean, this is just, have you ever heard of anything like this? No, you know, we had to happen where, you know, To this extent, I have never, never seen it. And, you know, it's a freak accident. But, you know, it could have happened to anyone.

And it just sucks to happen to Spencer. And, you know, we have to, you know, deal with this blow right now and get them healthy and get them ready back, get them back on the mound as soon as possible. and this opens the door for someone to, you know, give us some valuable innings in that rotation. Yeah, what have the discussions been about for a replacement? We know that Gusto has been kind of your guy. Are you all guys thinking about calling somebody up?

Lance McCullors Jr., also, even if it's independent of this discussion, he threw 50 pitches over the weekend and how do you think he's progressing? Yeah, so Lance progressing well. he's making his next start this coming weekend in AAA. So we want Lance to continue to build up. And then we're going to get over, you know, we're going to, the next two games, we're going to go with Valdez and Brown. And then we have that update to allow us to readjust and plan accordingly for that

Angels series. So right now we don't have, we have an idea of what we try. what we should do, but we want to really give the next two days an opportunity to win, you know, even a series today, win a series tomorrow, and then we see what we go from there. Two hits yesterday, Skip, in the game. And look, everybody goes through these offensive doldrums. And I think we even talked about this a year ago when you first started about, if this happens in the middle of June or July, it's just a blip on the radar.

when it's out to the early part of the year. And now that we've kind of basically in the two weeks of the season, are you seeing a little bit of signs? Obviously not the case last night, but the great comeback against Minnesota on Sunday who had to be very encouraging. And what does it say about where we are today with hitters? Because look, I would say offense generally speaking around baseball,

with exception to maybe the Yankees is a little bit down. It's down from everybody else. Yeah, you know what, I always think that, you know, the first two weeks of the season, pitchers come out at spring training, you know, they're coming in, they're coming in hot. You know, they're built up, they've got the best stuff. We're running, we come into some of these, you know, the weather.

It's, it takes hitters time to adjust and, and get ready for the kind of pitching that we've seen. In the last, the first nine games, we've seen some really good pitching. and I think it takes time hitters to adjust. I do like the fact that we still grinding and fighting through some of our bats. You mentioned the win in Minnesota. I think yesterday we faced one of the best starting pitchers in the game. We got them out of the game with 95 pitches, 5 and 2 thirds.

You know, those are things that we want to do as an offense. You want to get in the bullpen early. So we've seen so positive signs about our approach. And if you continue to do that throughout the season, those will turn out into positive results. You start getting hits. You start getting big hits. We're getting some guys who, you know, Altuay's out to a good start. I think Jordani is starting to square some balls up.

Paredes getting on base. You know, we are doing some things well offensively. We're putting some buntz down. We're stealing some bases. We're trying to steal some runs here and there. Those are positive. signs. We just got to give our, we got to give this some time and our guys will, we'll, we'll, come through. Cam Smith, not in the lineup for a couple of games for you. You're just given the

young guy a couple of days to clear his head. Then do you plan on using him today? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll, he'll play today, trying to get him, trying to get him a couple of days to, you know, he's been working on some things with our hitting coaches. We know, it's very important for us to, to understand that, you know, there's a process in, in place where, you know, you know, a young player adjusting to the major leagues, it takes time. We have to help him through that process and help them through that development process. And my job is to balance both, you know, help these young player, establish himself at the big leagues and also trying to win major league games.

So he'll be fine, but it's going to take some time for him to adjust. For I let you run, Skip. And look, I've not had enough of face-to-face watching Jose Al-Tuvae play to left field. You played him yesterday at second base. Two questions on Jose. And I promise this will not be a season-long conversation piece. But one, how much balance do you want between the two positions? And two, what was it like visiting with Jose over the weekend playing in a different ballpark,

knowing that you prepare for Minutemate, it's one thing, but you play in also, in theory, 29 different other major league ballparks? Yeah, and he's going to play on all the major league ballparks. So he's going to get, you know, he's going to get some playing time in left, and he's also going to go get some playing time in second base. You know, yesterday, example, you know, allows me to play some your dining left. I could D.H. Dias trying to get his bat going, trying to get an extra lefty bat in the line with Keratini. So I'm going to have to make those move to get everyone in there,

trying to put a good offense on the field, trying to create opportunities for everyone to play. and Hosey's open to do him both. And, you know, he played a really good second base yesterday, and he'll go back and play some left field today. I'm not going to, you know, tell you how many games going to be in left field, how many games are going to be in second base. This is, you know, I'm going to stay in the present. We're trying to win major league games,

and Hosey is working really hard at both, and Hosey wants to win. And as long as we are on the same page, and we'll continue to move forward with our plan. Skeb, great conversation as always. Enjoy the rest of your trip to Seattle. Look forward to seeing you back when you get home, and thanks for the visit as always.

All right, Matt. Take care, buddy. I thank you. That's Manager Joe Espada.