The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Season Is a Wrap! Should They Rebuild or Retool for Next Season?

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Astros Season Is a Wrap! Should They Rebuild or Retool for Next Season?

This is Matt and Ross in the morning. Six o'clock at H-town. Good morning. It's Matt. It's Ross. And we're in the morning on Sports Talk 790. This has got to be the saddest day of my life. To two.

Swing and a miss. Smith strikes out. And that is the ball game. And that is the series. The Chicago White Sox defeat the Astro 7 to 3 to sweep the American League wildcard series two games to none. The White Sox head to Cleveland for a date with the guardians in the division series beginning

Saturday. We're going to miss you, Hunter Brown. Bye, bye, bye. Little Nick Allen. He's got the tears out. Big Yord on. And one hit. Tatsu you, my.

Should have been a game two starter. Crying on a pile of money. Here it is. The Manhattan's. On America Top 40, I'm at in Ross. What a jam that is. I've never been a radio DJ in terms of playing music. I still, I ask our programming guy at Mark Sherman over at Sunny 99.1, give me one shift a week.

Well, I thought they could put you on like midnight to three. I would love to do that. That's what I'm saying. But it would be only... They're young in it up. They don't play any 70s on the Sunny anymore. They do not. I mean, could you guys...

Barely in the 80s. Would you listen to Matt's Saturday night, Saturday, 79? I podcast. I kept the cats podcast. Okay, that's nice. I mean, you could say, no, I wouldn't listen at all, but you're podcasting. I'll put it off my plants during the day. It's good for them.

But that in the men of hands. What, oh. What a band or about a group, I should say. What a bleep show. What a bleep show. Also, God, Hunter Brown on the mound yesterday. I guess two days now ago. I'm in the clubhouse.

Jerry Payne. Yeah, we got diesel. on the mound, baby. We're ready. Back against the wall, Christian Walker. Oh, yeah, Hunter Brown, Ace. A.J. Blueball, Hunter's got our bag. Hunter Brown at the podium. I'm ready. Playoff experience.

I'm giving advice to the guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is how you show up in the big moments. Yes, that's correct. All those things are correct, yes. And it was a stinky wet diaper in the first inning for him and bad defense as well with no help from his friends.

So if you were to take the last 10 or 11 years not using yesterday. The Astros part of the reason why they have been so good. It's obviously the best players on planet. But they've also been an excellent defensive team. Absolutely huge part of it. Jeff Luno was a massive, massive proponent of having great defense out

there as evidenced by the team that he fielded. So even at nights where the Astro bats would be quiet or the Astros pitch and give up a few runs. You didn't give up extra base hits. I know extra bases, I should say. You don't give up extra outs. You don't give team second and third chance opportunities.

the defense for the Astros in the two games gets an F. It was atrocious. And some of it, I mean, not anyone's fault. Yordaun shouldn't have been in the field. Astros' former manager Joe Espada is somebody who loves defense too, as you know, Matt. He prioritizes it as well. He doesn't like to have Yorda on the left, and we saw that Yoron on the first inning. Took a terrible, like he took a Hesu Sanchez angle to that fly ball on left field.

Yeah, he normally, I mean, he also doesn't like him. out there because he doesn't want him getting hurt, but also he's not very good out there. No. No. He's, yeah, the little corner right there, the pocket, whatever you want to call it. Only the good ones can handle it. The Crawford Corner, I don't know what you call it, but it's tough

over there, but that's a ball that should have been caught. Can you believe that spot's been like that since a ballpark opened? I mean, I know there's nooks and crannies in a lot of different ballparks, like Fenway's got a bunch of them and Dodger Stadium's got a few weird ones and whatnot. But that's a, that's a scoreboard.

that jets out and then it's like a little a cave out there in left center field. Yeah, and then there's a little pocket, there's like a group of possums back there. Yeah, yeah. They're actually, they're brewing stew out there

in the back corner. I don't know what's going on back there. Campfire and everything. Yeah. Whatever it goes on back there, it's, I don't know, it's the Bermuda Triangle for sometimes. Like, I've walked that field before.

I've never walk in that left field because I feel like if I go in, it's like a millionaire and I'm not coming back out. No. Yeah, Jose Altova had some issues over there last year. Nobody has a good play out there. Right.

Who says all I love playing left field. It's tough. It's not easy, but it's a play that should have been made. And then Nick Allen with the error and then some soft hits and then some, well, some hard hits off a Hunter Brown. Oh, yeah. It's 80% I mean, it's 80% brown, 20% defense. How surreal. I'm curious for everyone.

And you too, Matt, what was going through your mind? When you see Joe and you heard the call from Robert Ford. Joe Espada has a decision to make and he's making it. Boom, Joe Spada out of the dugout in the first inning again. What is going through your mind? This is unbelievable. Well, I went to immediately to Twitter to give you an update on a Hunter Brown coin, which they took it off the market, ironically enough.

Bad day for the Boris Corp. Ooh! Boris Corp stock took a little bit of a dive yesterday. A little bit. And I'll say this. it, you know, we always think about the future, because that's what we do in sports with our teams, not about what's going on right now, but what's going to happen down the road. And look, we've talked about Jeremy Pena's contract status has got a year left.

Isaac Predis has a year left. I'm not trying to focus on that. Hunter Brown has got two years left. But can you have such a bad performance in a postseason game that makes the central intelligence of the Astros think about what they want to do with him long term now? Well, as I said on Twitter, Jeff Bagwell, the back of the baseball card doesn't have postseason stats, so we're good. Oh, okay.

And Jeff's only checking the back of the baseball card. Was Jeff even there at the game yesterday? I mean, you could have been in the buffet line. Imagine if you were trying to get a hot dog or a hamburger in the line. Oh, yeah. You sat down, your team is already down. Was it 3-0 early on? Yeah, I think so.

Oh, my God. Get to 4-0 in the first. 4-0, okay. Yeah, well, once NBC stopped taking over all the media dining. So can we We're going to throw it out there Sure why not Yeah it's early

It's 6 a. 10 We can peel the curtain back Yeah It's called we should call these 6 a.m. secrets I like it We need a sounder It's only for 6 a.m. listeners

We're not going to mention this The rest of the show All right so is there a song Help us out folks You maniacs Is there a song That's the word secrets Secret lover

That's what we are Yeah How do I know that song What's wrong with me? That sounds like a Bridge special. Okay, fair enough. That's fair.

I hear the secrets that you keep. That's it. When you're on at 6 a.m. Something like that. Matt and Ross in the morning. Ready to give you some 6 o'clock secrets. Okay, we will work on this for sure. Isn't there a, isn't there a Fleetwood Mac?

Matter of fact, find this song. Jonathan, find the song. The Secrets That You Keep is the name. I think it's the name of the song. Fleetwood Max got a secrets one too, right? Yeah. But secrets that you keep is a good one. See, if you can find it, it's kind of an 80s jam.

Honestly, I don't know I'm a big fan of the 80s generation. But if we can find the song, we'll give you the 6 o'clock secret here. But yeah, NBC took over the media dining for the Astros, and people got a little grumpy about that. But more importantly, you're grumpy about the local nine. Yeah, and we're not happy. And here's the thing. I went from, I don't know what the Astros future is,

to I have a clear vision of the Astros future. Really? Yeah. I'm intrigued about that. Yeah. First of all, I don't think anybody's got a clear future with baseball right now. I know, but let's not even think about that for a minute. Okay.

Let's just think of it. Let's presume that there's baseball going to be played at some point next year or down the road. Okay. All right, 6 o'clock secret, we'll find the song. We'll come back with it with little secrets with it you keep. And I'm not a super big fan of 80s music in general, but this is a jam. I'm going to download this song. I'm going to say it's okay.

It's not bad. For the 80s, for 83? If I'm in like aisle three of the grocery store, that's a toe-tapper. If you're at Lowe's? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're at Lowe's?

Well, I wouldn't be at Lowe's. You picking up some wood? No, I hate, I get, I get Hives going to hardware stores. I know. I understand. You're fancy mat. You can't lift your finger. I understand.

I mean, I could say you're being mean to me, but it's completely accurate. No, there's a million people out like you. All right. I'm not going to say I'm missed or fix it. No, you're more than me, though. All right, here we go. Here we go. One more time.

before play our secrets. The secrets that you keep. All right, here's our secret. So, members of the Assemble meeting, when you cover playoff games, you get there several hours earlier

because either doing live hits or in our case where you were doing a lot of live shows. I did another Fox 26 live hit from the field. Were you better yesterday or the day before? I think, honestly, the day before. Okay.

I'll go listen to it. I'll go look at it because you put on your Instagram. Shout out, Lenard Davis, Fox 26, for having me on. Appreciate it. Trying to build the show. I made sure. You know what? I bullied him to say 7-90. He wanted to just say 7-90. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. It's Matt and Ross in the morning. I said the same thing of Randy McElboy.

If you're going to get me on the show, by the way, I'm not sharing time another joke in another radio station. It's me or in my myself or nothing in about. Wow. You told Randy, it's me or if it's somebody else, I'm out? Yeah, that's correct. God, you are big time. We're... Damn. No, no, no, no, no, no,

I'm sorry. We are big time. Okay. This show, this radio station is big time. A lot of times they'll have you on with somebody else. And it is, Matt is right. It's kind of like you don't know when to hop in or out. You get 30 seconds and you've got to like give these little baby sound bites. You can't really have a good discussion

which is what we do because we're a long form talk show. Correct. So it does stifle you. Dang, I can't believe you. Big Dog Randy McAvoy like that. I said it politely. And said, hey, hey dog. Hey little pup. I didn't call him a little pub. It's either me by myself or I ain't doing it.

Now if it's you, it's fine. I got some respect for you, Matthew. Yeah. If it's me and you, it's easy. But I'm not sharing another gym. I don't need that. We're the stars. Not somebody else.

I don't need somebody gravy turning off of us. What if it's me? Can I be on with you? Yes, you can. Okay, good. I don't need a Ben Verlander jumping on with me. I'm the Hall of Famer. Damn.

All right, so our secret is this. So everybody gets there super early, covering things, and you know, you're thirsty, you're hungry, you want to get an early meal in. It's a 4 o'clock first pitch. You can obviously eat. before the game at 3 o'clock or 2.30, whatever the case it be. Maybe you're at 1.45. You've been working out. So the media dining room at the Astros usually opens up three hours prior to first pitch.

Because you've got TV cameras, you've got producers, and you've got people that have been at the stadium for hours and hours and hours. Well, NBC slash Peacock had the broadcast and they commandeered the media dining room. They said, shut you all, bum ass up. Every other media outlet ever. I mean, there's Japanese media, there's Chicago, Houston media, national media. There's people crawling all over the place that are not NBC affiliated. And you are not allowed to step in that room between 1 and 2.30. That means don't get a water.

Don't get you a little of that delicious cobbler. Don't get you a little pretzel or some nachos to hold you over. Yeah, it was crazy. Tom McCarthy snatched Ken Rosenthal's bow tie. That's crazy. Okay, I made that up. By the way, Tom McCarthy, great friend of the show now. I was with us on Tuesday.

He kept calling Joe Espada, Joey. Hey, Joey Espada. I've never called Joey. He's from 112 Feist. Has anybody ever called him Joey Espada? Am I missing that? No, I don't think so. I heard that too.

I was like, huh? Okay. Hey, is Joey a Spada? All right, back to the sports here. So I gave you the tease of what I... I really wanted the Astros to go into deep conversations about a lot of the contracts and it's going to be hard because you've got a lockout because once a lockout happens

in December you can't speak to anybody which means when they resume and hopefully we're not in a situation where it's a long lockout they get something to sign up they'll have a chance to have real true free agent negotiations but if they're let's say

March 15th March 30th April 30th and you want to have those conversations before the start of the season because a lot of players once the season start rushes we've seen this Yeah, they'll shut you down. They'll say, like, we don't want to talk anymore. Which maybe you'll have a change of that because of the shortened calendar.

Yeah, you're not going to have that chance necessarily. Might be a month of the season. This is very painful for me to say because let me tell you something. Whoa. These, this. Are you going to say? This voice announcer you've heard here for a long period of time has seen 100 lost seasons. A lot.

I've seen 90 lost seasons. I've so just finished, we just finished watching an 81 season. and I've done a lot of post game shows that y'all checked out. No way. Like 2010 to 2014 was, I mean, as, and I did about 80% of the post game shows during that year. Are you going to say the three words? Or the one word? It's a one word.

Rebuild. Ooh, see, my three words was blow it up. Okay, blow it up. That's fine. Same thing. Rebuild. Here's, let me give you a no particular order. Well, I have one, I have a follow.

follow-up question. Go ahead. Full blow up as an even Yordan on the table. No. Okay. You have to maintain it. It's tough. Because here's the thing. You're going to have to have a floor. And this isn't about saving money. This is about, this is about, this is about basically re-braining the franchise. So let me give you a no particular order. I find out who wants Christian Walker and you pay some of the salary. If Christian Walker gets moved, you move Isak Paredes to first base. And then what? He's a free agent after next year. You sign him to a deal?

You take your chance on that. Because Isa Predis does not, not going to have the crazy free agent interest that other players would have. He just had a 659 plate appearance, 155 games, war of four, which is great. How old is he? OPS of 806. He's 20. You have to have a first baseman. So, yeah.

So Christian Walker, you sell at 60 cents on the dollar and you pay some of that. First of all, the first pillar of your plan I like. I like that idea a lot. I might even try. I'd try to offer ESOC like a three, four year deal. I don't know he takes it. Yeah. Because he may, you know, look, he's bounced around.

Tampa, Chicago here. Maybe he's like, you know what? I don't want to bounce around. Detroit as well, yes. Yeah, that's right. Number two, I'm moving. on Jeremy Pena. Oh, okay, you are rebuilding.

Number three. And you're trying to get a Tucker deal where you get a couple major league levels? Correct. A couple major. What you got was two major leaguers in Wesnesty and Paredes who contributed this year and then a prospect in Cam Smith, who was also a contributor. Just, it would be nice if he hit a home run yesterday, so that's good. But nice if he could get on base a little more.

All right. Next, I'm trading Janier Diaz. Yiner Diaz? Mm-hmm. Okay. And you're giving Christian Vasquez a nine-year deal? No. You've got Jason Chivani, and you've got, what's the other guy's name? That's, oh, Yonik.

Walker Yonik. You let those two guys battle it out. Yeah. They like Chivani long-term at catcher, even though they've been playing, I think, some at D.H or maybe even first base, I can't have. Whatever. Chivani is going to have a great chance to make this team next year. Okay.

Okay. I'm not offering Brian and Bruea a contract. Henry Diaz, a great season for you, by the way. By the end of it. Yeah, Trey, when you get something left? I mean, actually, he's a free agent, correct? Dias, I don't think so, is he? Or maybe he's got one year left, but whatever.

I would trade you. I mean, I think he's got one year left. He's got 27 and 28. Okay, even better. So two years. Okay, I would trade on your Diaz. Yeah, I mean. So if you want to call what I just described to you,

Oh, and I would listen for Hunter Brown conversation. I don't know if I'd pull the trigger on that with two years left on that. But Hunter Brown, again, if you're going to go for, I mean, Hunter Brown and Yon-Alvarez being the big dogs on this roster, we already know what that is. That's 81-81-1. Yeah. But also, I think the counter argument to that is, hey, you had all these injuries and you have all these holes on the roster. and you still went 81 and 81. So I think it's time.

I would say, I came into this show, or I mean, thinking about this since last night because obviously we're going to talk about it. I think it's retool or rebuild. Yeah, you got to go, you can't do this thing where they've been trying to tow the line. You've got to get a couple of free agents, and I would say either pay Hunter Brown and Jeremy Pena or whatever.

You need to figure out what's going to happen. Brian Bray is a free agent and he's gone. Josh Hader is still here, but you obviously need some outfield help, whether that via via trade or just paying up for guys, and then say, hey, you know what? We're going to be healthier next year. And we were 81 and 81 with all this disaster season we had. Can we get up to 88 wins? Can we get up to 90 wins and be a contender in the American League, which we know isn't super strong? Yeah, I mean, that's basically 180.

I'm just, and again, I want to please allow me to change my mind on this. Yeah, of course. It's day one. But my first blush is... I'm not saying you're crazy. But I don't think Jim Crane's going to do what you... That's exactly right. Because Jim Crane, I think he can add a couple free agents, still stay under the tax,

and maybe do what you're talking about, shave some payroll with some competitive balance tax payroll. But we've already seen what you... Because if you send money on the side, that doesn't count. Yeah, but we've already seen what a deal can... do for a guy who doesn't want to stay. At bare... How about that's this? We can get the sounds next.

At bare minimum, Rossi. If Payneck doesn't get a contract done before the end of the year, before whenever the end of the negotiating window would be in his mind, then you move it. That's a bare minimum for me. Then who's your shortstop?

You can go find somebody. Carl's Coray is too old for that. He's still on this team. You can play Nick Allen and just suffer. I think Walker is probably, yeah. gone. You send a bunch of money with Walker. Parades at first, Corre at third. I mean, Quistair Walker, hit 29 home runs. I mean, opening day, whether it's in April or June or wherever.

Because you got Correa coming back. So you got to put, you got to put, you got to preys off at third. I think Correta is at third and Parades at first. Parade is at first. Yeah. All right. Sounds at 630 are next. You're going to hear from Jeremy Penaing as part of the Sounds at 630. If you'd like to join us this morning, 713, 212, 570. 790. That sounds very inviting. Well, it all sounds exciting. That sounds like a threat. That sounds stupid.

Matt and Ross bring you sounds at 630. Speaking of Jeremy Payne, my sounds this morning, a couple of different sound bites from him. One on playing for a guy he may not be playing for, especially if he leaves and or Joe Espada leaves. Here's Payne on playing for Skip Espada. Joe's great for us. You know, Joe's a stand-up, stand-up guy, stand-up man. He shows up every single day. He wants to win.

He works hard, and I think he did everything in his power to be the best version of himself, be the best manager for his players. And, yeah. And yeah, how about the future? I would rather not dive into that right now. You know, I want to focus on, you know, at the end of the season, and I'm open to talking about anything you all about the season. It is interesting because if I was in his spot and I'm under contract and I just lost a series of the White Sox,

the last thing I'd be talking about is my future. But on the other side of it, it is going to be one of the top two or three things this team decides on in the off season after the general manager and their manager. It is about the future, Jeremy Pena. So I just don't get it. I get why you ask it, but I also get why Jeremy. He's like, I don't want to get into this right now. Yeah, I'm thinking New York or L.A. You can't say that.

He may be thinking it. By the way, shout out to Ben and Sousa, who apologized yesterday for his comments. Yeah, you bullied him. No, I mean, hear heart to heart from our Instagram video. You watch our Instagram. So I'll read you that coming up in the 7 o'clock hour. But yeah, he did apologize. And that's, you know what, good on him.

People goof up. And even if he doesn't mean it, he did it. And we're on. We're moving on. Yeah, I will also go with some, of course, Astros post-mortem. one of the big storylines. I mean, Joe Espada, for all intents and purposes, I kind of jokingly said it in the first segment. Astros, former manager, Joe Espada. But here is the leader and the last man standing from the 2017.

Here's an Astros, Jose Altuve, on playing for Joe Espada. You know, she showed up every day, willing to win. I think he did everything he could to keep us dark to get winning. And, you know, but like I said, this is this is a team. We all work together. and, you know, I think we all, we all sad. And like I said, we wanted to go to the World Series and win it. But, you know, today's or final day of the season.

Bit of a subject change in the middle of that from Jose Al-Tufe. Didn't sound like a ringing endorsement. It's like, yeah, he comes here every day. He's here every day. Anyways, we wanted to win the World Series. Yeah. I don't know if the media that was assembled in the clubhouse was looking for that, do you want him to come back next year?

talk. And my guess is if I would have asked that as a player, I would have said, that's not my up to me, but I like playing for him. Yeah. That's how you kind of answer. Yeah. Well, you put it that way, Ross, it does kind of seem Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying, you know, you know these days you've got to read the tea leaves, Maddie. We do. We're the best tea leave readers in Houston.

And quite frankly, I haven't heard this because, well, at 6 a.m. I'll see what Hunter Brown had to say about a spot as contract weighing on the team. I mean, I can't speak for everybody in this room. you know, for myself, I know that Joe was with us every step of the way, and he was going to do everything he could to put us in the best position to succeed, and I think that's exactly what it did. That's more of an endorsement, I would say.

Yeah, and I'm pissed off. He pulled me in Sacramento, but that's not the here nor there. Yeah, he was, but, man, he was at one point in that first inning, he looked like a deer in headlights. He was like, I can't believe this is happening. He was like all of us. Folks, do you realize that was your ace? A's the Greg Maddox.

And you got to there. That's the Roger Clemens. By the way, you got to there ace. If I had told you before the game, Sean Burke went four innings and gave up three runs. Big home runs, too. They were in cheapies. You'd have been like, okay, hey. All right, then Hunter Brown's probably throwing out a quality start.

We got a shot. Well, didn't happen. You did use, by the way, a Brayew and Hater as we were debating about that yesterday. And Blue Ball. If you would have told me that AJ Blueball would have been. been the first reliever coming out of the Astros bullpen. I'd have slapped you silly. He'd got you four outs on 15 pitches too.

And by the redemption time. Peter Lambert, the goat. Lambert coin moving up nicely. Well, you got one year left. Speaking of your rebuild, you can ship off Lambert. You could. Get something for him. You absolutely could.

And again, please allow me Ross to change my mind 100%. I can't. Come on now. No backpedaling now. It's 640. There are three segments into the rebuild. Come on. man. But this is not

81.81 is not enjoyable. It wasn't fun. They can be, well, we've said this two years in a row now they can be healthier, so maybe they can't. I mean, it's best of the worst, worse, the best. Is there an electric substation anywhere near Dikin Park? I'm sure there is. Why?

That's what's happening in the 49ers. They're all in the electrical grid and they're getting injured. That's the conspiracy theory. Oh. Maybe there's some, maybe the water's got to something tamed in the water. They're pretty close to the light rail track. I don't know if that affects things. Yeah, we want more rail too.

All right, there's your sounds at 630. Oh, it's just some, just utter disappointment. Hunter Brown, what was that? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. You know how your stomach turns and knots when there's uncomfortable situations at work or at home? Or maybe you had some bad enchiladas or something? That's what Joe Espato was like.

Like, yeah, or it's like when, when things are going bad and you're kind of in disbelief and then they get worse and then worse. And then you're like, he's got to get it out. I was staring at that pitch count in the first inning and it was getting so high. It took him forever to get the first out. And all the color came out of his face. All right. We're going to segue to some Willie Fritz conversation. He'll join us next here.

It's Matt and Ross in the morning at 642 on Sports Talk 790. Saturday, 11 o'clock. ECU Stadium. Our Houston Cougars are going to take on the UCF Knights. It's a built for Houston game. 7-1-3-Go Coogs. The number you can reach to get your tickets. UHCougars.com slash tickets.

And right now to join us to talk about that game. And first to recap what happens Saturday in Statesboro, Georgia is the head coach Willie Fritz. Willie, good morning. I think it was, what, eight possessions and six touchdowns, very high efficiencies from your offense last Saturday against Georgia Southern. Yeah, they did a great job.

One of them that we didn't convert, we dropped a pass. I think we'd have been down to about the 20-yard line and then the last series we were kind of running out the clock and got down to about the 20-yard line. So the office was very efficient

every single series and did a great job on third down. I think we're eight of nine on third down situations and one of one maybe on fourth down. So Coach Nagel, the offensive staff, really had the guys prepared and they executed extremely well. And four

Connor, he's got Thomas, he's got young, he's got tight ends. I mean, there are, he's doing a really good job with his Wegman in distributing the ball to a lot of different receivers on that offensive side of the ball. Yeah, and the guy who, I think he had six catches is Trent Walker. Yeah. We'd had a little bit of difficult to getting

him the ball early in the season and he had a really nice catch, a fade ball down in the end zone for a touchdown and had a couple nice conversions with a good catches. So yeah, he's got, he's got, had some weapons. We're doing the best job we can to keep everybody healthy.

And Conner's, you know, he's seeing the field. And he's going to the guy that they're telling us to go to based on coverage and formation and all those kind of things. So he's playing at a really high level. Well, you're averaging, I think, six yards of carry on the ground. And especially on, you know, so many coaches that over the years have always said, hey, we've got to get at least four on first down. Open up the playbook a little bit. Imagine a lot of seconds and fours are your best friend. Yeah, they really are. And we had quite a few of those.

We had quite a few first-time runs. But, you know, even second-and-eight, second-and-seven are good. They didn't have a negative play in the ball game, you know. And when you're moving the sticks just a little bit, you know, it's a lot easier second-and-seven than second-and-12, whatever the case may be. So the guys did a good job of putting positive yardage out there. Mackay Hughes ran hard like he always does every week. and Rayshon Sanford probably had his best game as a Coog. I think he went for 120 yards and broke a bunch of tackles.

And also those guys are weapons coming out of the backfield, catching the ball also. So yeah, great job by the offensive line in the run game. I don't want to speak for every defensive player, but it felt like some of the kids were saying certainly after the game on the defensive side, hey, offense, we owe you one. So that side of the ball gave up a lot of yards and points and how did the tape look as compared to what you saw right after the game? game. Well, the good thing about it is, you know, the mistakes are fixable, you know, with, you know,

coverage bust here or there. You know, the big thing we just got to do, we pride ourselves in being a big time takeaway team. And then we, I think we've had the ball, hands in, the baller hands nine times. We've had two ball games. We haven't come down with any picks. You know, we've ought to be able to, you know, get some picks out of those, you know, those situations. So we just worked a lot on ball drills, deep ball drills. You know, just staying over the top and coming up and tackling and making them drive the length of the field. And, you know, the majority of the time, the offense, if you make it put together a 10, 12 play drive, it's difficult for them to do. So we can play a lot better.

We're going to play better this weekend. Willie, every coach likes to evaluate after every week. And then a lot of times, coaches will evaluate after the quarter pole halfway point of the season. You're through four games. What are you loving about your team and what do you want to see in the next? the next handful. Oh, there's a lot of room for improvement. I like the fact that we're able to run and throw the ball effectively,

offensively. A lot of times, teams are one-dimensional, and we're, you know, my belief is, you know, you run the ball to be able open up the past game. And that's certainly been the case for us so far this season. Been up and down a little bit defensively. I think we're tackling one of the last couple games, which is outstanding. We just got to do a better job of everybody being assignment sound. known exactly what they're doing being in the right spots and, you know, staying over the top

on deep balls, making them drive the length of the field, but also coming away with those takeaways. We've come so close to being able to, you know, get two, three, four of those in a ball game. We just haven't capitalized on it yet, and that's our goal moving forward. You know, special teams-wise, you know, I think our new kickers done a nice job, Jonathan Demas. We've done a pretty good job with coverage, you know, the first kickoff. the game last Saturday. I think we've got down on the 10-yard line, which is outstanding.

That's like a 15-yard positive play for you because they normally start on the 25. But there's things we can get a lot better at, and we need to get better at it because we're starting a conference play. As I've said many times before, everybody in the Big 12 is pretty good. You know, there's no gimmings.

I've been in leagues where there's been a few teams. You're able to bring your B game, C-game, D-game, and still be able to win. Not the case in the Big 12. We've got to play really well each and every week. And speaking of that, UCF's off to a three-in-one start. They beat TCU this past week. They go with two quarterbacks.

So what does that do for the scout room having to look at two different guys? Well, most of the time they're going to play the left team. And he's a dual-threat quarterback. You know, the thing they did last week is, you know, we've got the same recipe for success. What they did last week, they've had very few penalties. TCU had quite a few. They didn't turn a ball over.

TCU turned it over a few times. They were able to run the ball effectively. TCU had a tough time running the ball. They played really good on defense. You know, they just didn't make very many mistakes and came away with the, you know, an eight-point win. So they've, you know, Coach Frost, I think, does an excellent job.

And, you know, he's had a lot of success there at University of Central Florida. So this is going to be a heck of a challenge. for us 11 o'clock on Saturday. This may be a tough question because it's impossible to predict, but the weather could be a little dicey throughout the course of the game. Is there such a way to prepare yourself for that? Yeah, we do. We're snapping the ball with a lot of water on it and squirting water on it.

We guys are going through things. We do that with the, you know, the snappers for long snaps also, X-point field goal and punt. And so we work on it quite a bit. You know, there's been a couple times during preseason camp where it's been raining, and people think I'm going to go run into the indoor and we stay outside and work out there in the rain, you know, in the elements. You know, as well as it's not lightning, we know that it's sooner or later at some point in the season you're going to play when it's raining.

And we have a game already this season where it rained for quite a bit of honest during a game. So we've got a little bit of experience with it. It is so crazy that we've seen. It feels like more lightning delays in college sports in the last 10 years, maybe because the technology is a lot better, but man, that's got to be hard to keep your kids motivated and ready to go. And all by the way, when they say it's all clear,

you've got to get back on the field with like four or five minutes and get yourself ready. So hopefully that will not be the case for this game here, but man, you've got to kind of prepare for situations like that. Yeah, you do. And, you know, you're lucky when you're able to do it at home as compared down the road. You know, I've had to do it on the road before

and it's a little bit more difficult to do it on the road because you just don't have the space and to be able to do that. You know, at meeting rooms, you don't have, you know, places, you know, with the athletic trainers can look at the guys and different things like that. So, yeah, but it's something everybody's got to do. It's, you know, we keep everybody the fans

and players alike safe and, you know, that happens periodically in college football, pro football, wherever the case may be. Well, the great visit, as always. Best luck Saturday. Stay dry. And thank you for the time as always. Thank you. Go Coogs. You got it, Willie Fritz with us here on Sports Talk, 790.

Cougars against Central Florida. That'll be at 11 o'clock kick time at TDECU Stadium. And again, if you're going to the game, bring a raincoat. Do you own a raincoat? I do. I don't know. I don't think I've won in probably 20 years. That was a kid you had to have one.

I don't have like a big long train. Well, yeah, I go camping, so I have. Yeah, oh, you're definitely in a spot. Yeah. I've got like a small packable one. It packs down, and then it's lightweight. It's like, I don't know, 11 and a half ounces. Okay. Carly is...

If I wasn't a camper, I probably wouldn't have one. Carly went shopping for snowboots for the first time up in Rhode Island this week. How much that cost Papa Thomas? I have not looked. Because I know she wouldn't get them off Timo. Oh, no, no. They went to a designer area. Because everything into Rhode Island's designers, so...

Yeah. You asked me yesterday, why do I want to pick up assignments? Yeah, look at you. I got bills to pay. Tell her get a shifted Starbucks. Let's go. It wouldn't be the worst thing. Let's go. I'm the offseason.

That's right. 6.56. Thanks again to Willie Fritz. And he's brought to you by the Joint Chiropractor, the official chiropractor of the University of Houston Athletics. All right. We went call free in the first hour of the show. People are just in a haze. I don't recall, Matt, because the show is moving.

We are moving. What are really Fritz, I have to say about the Astros off-season? He's concerned about the managerial change because he likes Joe. Yeah. By the way, I might accidentally call Joe Joey a spot it because I kept hearing it Tom McCarthy. Joey is smart. I don't know why.

Maybe Tom, maybe him and Joe are boys. I don't know. Perhaps. Because I mean, I've not heard Blum do it. Callis has never done it. Robert or Steve has never done it? I don't think so.

I don't think Julia's done it? No. Who's saying, who did the play ball y'all yesterday? I didn't catch it. Okay. All right, let's get out of here. I'm fine.

A sad way to open the 7 o'clock hour. What do you got now? You'll find out next. Oh, God. This is Matt and Ross in the morning. I feel like everything that kind of could have went poorly did, you know, and I didn't overcome the whole inning, really. You know, looking back, I don't think I,

it's hard to say that you don't take anything back, you know, but I feel like, you know, the pitches that I threw, I was confident in. I threw them with the best of my ability and, you know, just didn't come out on the right end. proud of how we fought the whole entire time just to get to this point they look completely different in may and the way we got back and we fought back and you know we set our goal to win to this division and we accomplished that we wanted to play deep in october we we came short on that but just to wait our guys stay together

and we're able to get this far extremely proud of our team great at winning the division and getting to the postseason it's definitely something to be proud of but yeah I mean like I said, it's going to take a few days to reflect on the season and, you know, really figure out how to feel about it all. But, you know, like I said, just proud of the guys for getting this far. With you in 15 minutes. Thank you for holding. This is the massage music at the spa. Yeah, what the hell is this?

Well, we had audio. What did you pick up a Spanish guitar? Reality is this, and I know I hit me for saying that. You have sound music. You don't want vocals over vocals, so that's why I chose this. This is more pathetic. It's a sleepy, yeah. I like this.

Well, yeah, you want to be exuberant after an Astros loss? Hello and welcome. To today's daily affirmations. The Astros can't hurt you anymore. Yeah. All of you that destroyed Joe a spot on a daily basis, you're going to come up with new material. All is well.

Jose Altuvae hits postseason home runs. Jose Altuvei. Well, it might have been it was that, was that or was it not, his last postseason home run ever? I'm so mad that you asked that question because I was going to be, you can go first on that. Really? Yeah. Oh, it crossed your mind too. Yes.

How about that defensive jemmy had in the game? Astros' daily affirmations. you don't have to see Brian King anymore and Benet's who apologized Benet the dramatic piano came in too I like this

A little drum in the very end there Remember George Springer Remember the happy times Remember Marwin Gonzalez's Home Run in L.A. Tray Mancini's play at first base Chaz McCormick with banana pudding on his chin,

making a big catch in Philadelphia. Someone's driving to work right now. Eyes closed. Yeah, wake up! All right, turn it. It's commute time, man. Let's go. Turn it off.

Turn it off. Let's go. Good point, Jonathan. Well, they're on the median and everything. What do you want to play? Walking on Sunshine? Yeah, sure.

Why not? The White Sox are walking on sunshine. Or walking on the Astros back. It's crazy. Or walking on Hunter Brown. The Guardians or the White Sox are playing in the American League Championship Series. One of them is.

You know what? Let's go any of them, but anybody but the Yankees. 705 on Sports Talk 790. The Yankees did dispose of the Red Sox. Who told you, they're looking tough. The Padres disposed to the Chicago Cubs. Oh, hold on. I get to cash in a no chance,

no way, no how put my name on it. Astros aren't winning the AL-Pennant. Anything can happen when you go in the playoffs. Yeah, you can get your ass whoop. That can happen. in the first inning two geez team wasn't good

wasn't good for 162 games but they lost in ways you weren't expecting the defense even despite first game wasn't that unexpected I know game two was way more unexpected the defense just what the heck Nick Allen defensive specialist yesterday was one of those

games where you go to the old catchphrase it's baseball Yordon couldn't get the ball Nick out goal Glover Nick Allen, it boots a ball at third. He's not covering third for a stolen base. He doesn't normally play third. You had some soft contact hits where the baseball was baseballing.

Hunter Brown looked like he lost all the blood in his face, went completely ghost white, and didn't get out of the first inning. That never had, not never, but he had that blow in Kansas City. He had a little bit of Chicago or whatever, whenever it was. He's had a couple blowups in his car. career, but that's it. At home, backs against the wall, season on the line, and that happens? Yeah, that, that's an aberration. You can play that game a hundred times and that's not happening again.

But you put yourself in this position. The two seed was there for the taking, right? How many games did the... Oh, they got within a game of the two seed multiple times. 85 wins for the guardians. Win 86 games. Then you're a two seed and you're chilling. Yeah. Jose Altuva and his creaky knees can hang out and Yorna Alvarez and whatever happened to Essoc Paredes, what is his hamstring? Tighten up on him on his game two? Well, I mean, you know, he's never going to be a speedster.

No. But if you have soreness, it's going to obviously affect your ability for range. If you hit the ball about three foot to his left and three foot to his right, he's going to get it. Outside of that, one. He's got a little halo around. Remember the halo rule in college football? He's got a little halo.

Is there a semicircle around him now, too? Jeez. It's got a range factor. And outside of that range, he's not going to get it. But most of the time he's going to pick it clean, nice clean transfer, good, accurate throw. You're using his left hand. He's not. I'm left-handed so I throw the left.

You can't. It's radio. Shut up. People can't see that. Well, if you're on TV, we could say with both of it. But we're not. We're not cool enough. Okay.

Eight teams on TV. I'm sure some fishing show is on. Yeah, what is on Space City right now at 708? Can't be the replay of the Astros game. Replay a game 162. back in the good old days. Maybe they're playing Astro Classics. They weren't a good baseball team.

I mean, that was evident through 162 games. Even when they got healthier, they weren't very good. It took a nice four and two stretch over the terrible we're not even trying to win A's. And you got the two games split with the Mariners following getting swept by the Braves. Getting swept by the Braves and getting swept by the race the weekend before was the signal like, yeah, this is probably not a good baseball team that's not going to go on a big run. So we're not shocked. And then I think it was kind of eye-opening, Matt.

when we kind of went through the pitchers and you said this is the sugar land like we were counting when we were counting through all the pitchers it got used in game one and we're counting down everybody who's really normal under normal circumstances would be a space cowboy and half we're going through

half the guys. That's alarming. That's problematic. It also speaks to Dana Brown's disaster pitching off season and some bad luck with Ocurt wasn't available. Javier wasn't available. So you had some bad luck but also it's yeah

King and Hendrickson and Van Wye and Sousa and Uyola yeah here's why the rebuild has to take place you don't have a big group of people the future and they're 18, 19 years old

but that's two or three guys and to assume that those three 19 year olds are all going to be stars is way way too easy to do that you have a lot to address you've got to address at least two spots in your outfield.

And again, maybe three if Cam is nothing more than what Cam is. Hits these gargantuan home runs, but also goes through 0 for 20s on a regular basis. So you've got two spots in the outfield you've got to address. You've got to address a long-term solution at shortstop. You've got to third base has to be addressed in the next couple of years. You've got to address second base down the road. First base you're addressing. How many were there?

Maybe we're in real. I'm buying into Matt Thomas rebuild mode. Wait a minute. I'm sitting there talking, I'm trying to justify my rebuild and I'm doing it. Yeah. Who's your eighth inning guy? We don't know. Who's your seventh inning guy? We don't know.

Who, who, your starter? What's your rotation if we're going opening day right now? Hunter Brown, then who? Christian Javier. Lambert. Lambert, uh, West Neskey. That's four. Actually, that's not as bad as you think it is.

Yeah, that's not as good as you would think it is. Oh, no. Opening day. We got a face. Hayden Wisniewski? Oh, no, no, no. Nobody's quaking in their boots. He's good.

You're going to get Mike Burroughs another shot at that. Oh, shit, you're bumming. And Tatsu-I-I-Mai. And Tatsui-I-mi. Okay, so... There's your six. So you got a lot of question marks. Can Lambert keep it up for a second year?

He had a track record of not really getting it up. And he wasn't good the second half of the season. It wasn't bad. It's great yesterday. But he was giving you five innings, two runs. Right. Six innings, three runs. He just, he's not a lockdown guy.

He's not a number two guy. I'll put it that way. He's a three or four. But you need three or fours. Well, you got a bunch of three or fours. We're talking about that. I don't know. Is Hunter Brown pulled a Gladys Night last night?

I forget the words of her song? Clearly, the Astro's trust level in Tatsu, I'mai, is very low. I don't know what his incentives are for next year when he's opting in. You've got Mike Burroughs. Maybe you can retool or his repertoire or whatever and stop having moving up and down the rubber every other start. Yeah, we got him over here. We got his arm slot here. we got his arm slot here.

We got his, don't change it seven times in one season. Let him figure it out. Because I don't know what your rotation is either. Honestly, to me, the rotation is the least of my issues. Now, you don't have ones, but you've got lots of threes and fours.

Well, let's trade it. Let's trade. Can we trade you three threes for a one? Got a lot of threes. You sound like a caller on the 10th inning show. Yeah, exactly. So left field, we don't know. Center fill, we don't know.

Long-term shortstop, we don't know. Another year of Christian Walker, I think he's the most gonzo of all of it. No matter what you do, I think you pay somebody to take Christian Walker off your hands. Jose Al Tuvei. You can't trade him. Great in the field. Not training him.

You're not. You've done trade. Who would trade for him? No. Nobody. I'm sorry. If his name was Tom Jones, but it's not. Joseo Tuvae.

It's not, though. He's a replacement level player. Yeah. Literally 0.0 war on the season. Let me go check if the last couple of days is the season that ticked up. You had home run yesterday. Yes, he did. And he had a great defensive play, too.

Yeah, and also he had one. He probably should have got it. Probably something that was six foot would have got it. Okay, that's enough for you. Am I wrong? No, but you don't need to bring it up. Okay, well, we're talking, we're just evaluating. So, build the statue.

Yes. Right next to Jeffrey Allen Bagwell and Craig Dennis Bizio. War of the last three years for Jose Altovae. 24, 3.2. That's great. Winds above replacement, by the way. Point six and 25? Yeah, okay, whatever.

Zero point zero. Yeah, I don't care. He's my guy. I know he's your guy, but we're trying to feel the competitive team. He's an eighth place hitter. In the ideal world, yes, I don't think he should have been hitting. If we want to quibble with Joe Espada, because people say we don't criticize him, we always got his back.

I didn't like having him batting fourth, Altuve. I'm sorry. Yiner Diaz had a great September. I think he earned the opportunity to be the cleanup here. If Jose Altuve is batting four. fourth or higher next year. That means the Astros did not address their offense. 714. It's Matt and Ross in the morning. Look, we've been talking for an hour of 50. Now it's time for you guys get in on this. 713-212-5-790.

7-1-3-212-5-7-90. We've got a major trade in the NFL that could be impacting Sunday's Texans Cowboys game. We've got to get to that today on the show. By the way, some Texans players did return to practice. We'll get to that. We have, I just don't get it this morning at 830. Brian McTagrant at 9 o'clock. And believe it or not today at 950. 713, 212.570.790. 713-212-5-790. And that's how you reach us here with Matt and Rawlinson in the morning.

All right. We're going to be honest here. Yesterday we were about 12 calls deep, all pissed off about everybody. Y'all just checked out already. This is that quick. You moved on. Go on your cousin discuss of Joey Porter. Yeah.

Is that what we're doing? You know what? Now we're locked on Cowboys. boys, baby. Let's get in there and get on your rig and get in your boat and you get in your boat. Maybe you're on the back, you're on Lake Houston right now ready to get down to my gator. Get you get you some deep talk about whether Reed Blankenship can make another second interception this week. Let's go. I hope he can. Gee-ree!

Oh, you're talking about Nico Collins practicing. Nico Collins is back, baby. I'm plumb happy about that. I'm plumb happy about it. Plums, by the way. Underrated fruit. Are they? I love them. I think they're okay. I'm going to call them underrated.

You know what's underrated? Blackberries. People don't talk about blackberries. See? See what I'm saying? Underrated. Yeah. Plums.

Juicy? So if there's a bowl of blackberries in front of you and a bowl of plums, you're reaching for the plums? I'm going for the plums. Oh, that's because you're trying to stay regular? I don't think that's anything to do with it. I don't like the taste of blueberries. Blackberries? Blackberries.

Blackberries are even worse? is tart. Yeah. What? No, see, you're not, they're sweet if you got to pick the right ones. All right.

That's fruit talk. See what you people are doing? See what you people do? Call it, please. We had 12 people calling all pissed off yesterday, and now you're like, babe, I'm weird of me.

Do you want a short retool, or do you want a full rebuild for the Astros? Now, wait a minute, that's an easy question for the, for a general public. I want. Who would ever go for?

Man, I can't wait for them to cut this up in 15 different pieces. People have been calling. I mean, people have been saying, we took calls and trade Yordon all season long. I think there's a lot of people that want to rebuild. All right. So we'll throw it out there. Retool or rebuild?

I trade Yardon for three prospects that will never add up to how good he is. Okay. That's the problem. It's actually almost a problem because if, let's just say for some reason we wait the Magic One and Yordons on this roster, I think you do do full rebuild. You're like Hunter Brown, see you later. Jeremy Payne, it's been nice.

But because you have an MVP caliber player in his prime, and you do have Brown and Pena. You can convince yourself that you can kind of retool around them, sign a couple of guys, trade for whatever, and then be somewhat competitive next year. How are you going to, and there's obviously a will and a way to do this, but how are you going to trade Jeremy Pena this offseason? When you're a new general manager,

unless you have done your due diligence months before you knew you were getting the job, right? Because if you're going for the Astros, you know where the warts are, right? You've done your research. But if you've been out of the game, you have not assembled your scouting staff. There may be people out there that teams are offering players,

but you've got to, it's going to be almost a rush to judgment that maybe, think about this, I'm just thinking out loud here. Okay. If you're going to move Pena, maybe you wait till the trade deadline or do it? Sign Pena, sign Brown,

and sign Tarek Scouble. All right. There you go. Why not? Because What's the problem? They're going to both want All three of them

We're going to want Mega 6, 7, 8 year deals and that's what Jim Crane doesn't do it. That's not my cash. I know it's not your cash. So it's easy for you to say it. How old is Scoob's? Scoob's going to stay in Los Angeles, right?

Probably. He's 29. Ooh, two-time Sy Young Award winner? How many evenings? How's that arm? He won the... I didn't realize he was a Triple Crown winner in 24.

Is he due for a T-Sye? Tim. TJ, I should say. Isn't everybody do for a TJ? I just... Would you ask how many innings ever or how many innings this year? Yeah, all together, yeah. All together, 925 innings at 29. Oof, that's a lot.

Yeah. I can't put $40 million in his piggy bank for eight years. I can't do it. If I'm an owner, I'm not doing it. Okay, fine. Apparently, Teuaki Sato. Do you think Jeremy Payne and Hunter Brown both want seven, eight-year deals The answer, of course, is yes.

They won't that. Okay. Yeah. Are either one of them? Worth it? Worth it. Now, you can move Pena to third base eventually. Yeah, I say Pena's worth it. Okay.

It's a gold Glover at shortstop, and the OPS like 800. Okay. Those guys don't grow on trees, man. So you re-sign Pena. Mm-hmm. You trade Walker. You move Paredes to first. So your infield next year is Karea 3rd.

Again, obviously with health. Correa 3rd. who is nick allenger's second shortstop unless you go get somebody on the cheap well where's haltoefei al tuve is at second and paris at first can you go to like beer league four outfielders and put altouvae out there no he wanted to on game one remember he almost got caught doing that that's true your outfield is camsmith and right and who the hell knows in left and center again i love hose altruv man he's your second base you'd like to dh him you would like to dh him you would like doing, but Yarden Alvarez proved you yesterday why you can't deach him.

All right. Jose L. Tuvei, first base. Be serious. Okay, fine. My, okay, you want to be serious? Please. Say it with your chest, as you would say. I'm not saying anything. Come on.

If his name was Tom Jones, you'd be getting him off his team. That's not. He would be off the team. I know. But his name is Jose Al Tuvee, so you've got to bite the bullet and you got to have him at second base. But every great franchise with Hall of Fame as type players has this conundrum. The Astros had it back 25 years ago with Craig Bissio. I think he's got it right now with Jim Carlos Stanton. They want to get rid of that guy.

Yeah, I mean, that's not out of the question that every player that has meant so much a particular franchise has a downturn in his career. And obviously, Jose is going through it right now. If you can pay for the decline years of Christian Walker and Jose Abray, you can pay for the decline years of Jeremy Pena to try to contend now. See, it's not just that. You two-thirds your outfield is a mess. We don't want to pay guys in decline. Okay, then why is Christian Walker getting all this money? He's not. He's been moved.

Christian Walker has been moved. Yeah, you got to move on from him. So they've done it. They will do it. They just go to the wrong. But you don't buy the prime. When you sign these big year deals, when you sign seven, eight year deals, yes, you're taking it out on the chin in the back end.

But you're also buying the prime of a great. So you're buying the prime of Jeremy Payne at shortstop. So you're buying the prime of Hunter Brown. No more three-year deals for 32-year-old players. that are on the down sign because that's what the asteros have done the last two contracts at first base yeah is absolute disaster and you didn't get the prime of jose bray you didn't get the prime of christian walker so yeah you take it on the chin in the end that's what you do for sure and it sucks so the question so the question does a new general manager come in and say this is what we're going to do that

i've watched what you guys have done and i'm not letting that happen or does the new general manager say that's my first time being a general manager and i got chef back well as my lead lieutenant and my owner doesn't want to spend on six-year deal, so I have to work it this way. And that's where the problem lies. Because if you're going to go, oh, hey, we're going to get a bunch of folksy baseball guys who are going to make picks with their gut and we're going to scout and we're going to go with the

I test, and we're not going to spend money? It's not going to work. You need some nerd with like 15 spreadsheets who's going to find some guy with a pitch and some other team that you can turn him into gold. I test guy isn't turning people into gold. It's not happening. That's how you end up

with Mike Burroughs and Tatsui I'mai and Ryan Weiss and all that kind of stuff. You go with Jeff Bagwell and Foksy Eye Test guys. You're not going to find as many diamonds in the rough. It's not going to happen. You're not going to change a game. Jeff Bagwell is not revolutionizing baseball. Jeff Luno revolutionized baseball. No one has ever thought about the fact that Jim would tell Jeff just to be a community ambassador.

And I'm not saying he's not spinning, of course. Obviously, they're not the raise or whatever. the brewers or whatever. That's what Ray's do? They're a nerd factory. And while you try to get one of their nerds, you won a World Series and fired them. 730. It's Matt and Ross in the morning. It's 713. 212-5-790.

7-1-3-212-5-790. Rebuild or retool. We discuss all throughout the morning here on Sports Talk 790. 735. I just found the funniest thing on Twitter I've seen in the last 24 hours involving a media member. and you know we all make mistakes right Ross oh daily I mean I would love to bat

750 when it comes to accuracy of my takes or my research I had Astros in two my OPS is 702 it was two games Jonathan this is our friend on our sister's network IHartMedia sports Colin Coward I just sent the email to you this is Colin giving his audience this is why local radio is better than national radio

You just can't do anything particularly well. It's like going to Ruby Ruse days and trying to get steak and then pizza and then fish and then a good salad. You just can't do it. Ruby Ruse days? Do those even exist anymore? I don't know. Is that a buffet place? I mean like Meiji My Days is gone.

I think you're going to go with mold and morale. Same thing. What kind of restaurant? Was Ruby Tuesdays a, is it a buffet place? No. It's like a Beneggans chili set. Okay. I had a good salad bar. I'm trying to catch the analogy here. I'm sorry.

So when you do national radio, you don't really pay attention to everything, or you should. Okay. So when you try to do everything... You don't do it particularly well. It's like when you go to a restaurant and it's like Tex-Mex and Asian and it's like too many there. Like, you can't have pizza and sushi on the same menu. It just doesn't work out. I mean, cheesecake factory pulls it off pretty well. They do, but they have a huge kitchen. They have a huge menu. And it's actually, I mean, most everything's pretty good.

I like cheesecake. Vince Young loves it. Yeah, I know he does. Here is Colin Coward giving his audience yesterday a little baseball breakdown. We got Dodgers tonight. Have a little Dodger baseball tonight. Are you excited for that, Jay Mack? Yeah, I'm excited. I'm very pumped up.

Dodgers should do, well, wait a minute. Would you say Dodgers tonight? He didn't play last. That's that? That's it. Maybe he meant Padras. Maybe he did. I just, you get confused.

I mean Yankees, Red Sox. Cubs are playing. Phillies. All the big brands in baseball. Yeah, I mean. And Colin, look, Colin's a very nice guy. Yikes.

Is he a nice guy? I mean, he's great to me the one time I met him. Oh, okay. He didn't ask you to get him a coffee or nothing? No, but, you know, that's, that Jay Moore did more of that. Oh, okay.

And I'm planning, and was like, yeah, I'll be happy to do there. Yeah, that's actually true. That's 100% true. He's slurping it up. Anyways, uh, yeah. He gave Clanton his valet ticket. Yeah.

Apparently, Adam Clanton got Jay Moore's car wash, too. It's crazy. He tossed him his keys and gave him a vest too. And slimmed him of five. He's like, keep the change. Carl on 790 and 739. Hi, Carl. Hey, how are you doing?

Good, Carl. How are you? Doing good. I just was calling in to let you know all this money that they're throwing away. like, why don't they just bring back and eat the humble pie and bring that general manager back that got it all going in the first place? Jeff Luno? Yeah.

I would say probably because Jim Crane felt like he completely lost control of the organization, and he had a ton of egg on his face, and it was a national disgrace, and so I don't think Jeff Luno would come back? You don't? Also, didn't Jeff Ludo sue him for wrongful termination, too? so there's probably some bad blood there. Jeff's not coming back. Well, too bad.

So sad. What have we got now? Nothing. That's fine. No, we got Jeff Bagwell. He's going to look at the back of some baseball cards and make some good signings. Yeah, right.

Look at this guy's average. Oh, man, that's good. Only thing I'm thinking is we need somebody that will have a strong form team and we'll have an excellent baseball team. I mean, we used to draw from the well. man, we would get guys like Tucker in there, you know, from the foreign team. And they were excellent.

Yeah, but that has been the case in 10 years. The Astros have not been able to. And thank you, Carl, for the phone call. When's the last, again, you've not talked about this before, Ross. Remember when George Springer came up big excitement? Carl's Correa, big time. Alex Bragman, Lance McCullors. I can't.

Now, granted, these are all high first round picks. But when was the last time? And I'm sitting there's obviously when it's happened. but when was the last time we were generally speaking fired up about a prospect coming up to play. Kyle Tucker maybe.

Pena? I mean, Pena was a top hunter guy but it was just like Correa's gone. We liked Pena. Nobody was hyped up about Pena. And the reason why you brought Pena up is because Correa was moved on. So it wasn't like you, he was on the cusp of becoming a major leaguer.

You had to do it because of necessity. Now, he also allowed Carlos Sali because he was looking for a hilarious. contract and you had you had Jeremy Payne in the wings. You don't have players in the wings. You don't have an outfield ready to go. I don't think you do.

So that was the case where you got Joey L'Opufito ready to go. Lucas Spence had a big weekend and ready to go. Keep him in Sacramento. You know what? Sacramento should trade for Lucas Spence, honestly. That guy likes that ballpark. He loves it out there. Were he like Las Vegas in a year? Who knows?

Apparently? The ball flies out of there. Don't the, who's, who's, what's the two? The aviators? Aviators, yeah. Yeah, the Aviators, balls holly is flying out of there. I, seriously, I really do hope they figure out a way to keep things under control in Las Vegas because anytime you look at a Las Vegas aviators box score, it's like 17.14. It's about 18 to 17.

It's like playing Mexico City. And then everybody's like, Joey Lopofito's OPS is huge into PCL. Yeah. So is everyone's. Don't count Reno or Salt Lake City or Colorado Springs or, or Colorado Springs. Or at Las Vegas. Jonathan's PCL OPS is 850. It's pretty good.

I'll take that. You run faster in the thin air too, don't you? That's true. He's legging out doubles. He's beating Mr. Freeze. He said, come get this action, boss, Mr. Freeze. I'm going to send him to Atlanta. You know, we could actually get you a second career.

Let's get you like a make you a mascot. Yeah. Because Mr. Freeze is taking care of. You can't be turbo. Yeah, it'd have to be something space related here. Jet engine, fuel. or whatever. The comet tail. That's weird.

Shooting Star? Wait, they already have those. No, we don't know. Yeah, they wear booty shorts. Yeah. You know what? Go to break, I know. We got to think about this.

Wait, am I wrong? We're going to make you a masked mascot, full body suit, not an ounce, not a, not a, one percent of your skin showing, and we're going to make, we got to think of the definitive mascot. We can call out 790 appearances. We can make it like sports talk, 790. kind of a theme to it. Oh, and have a listener to tear their hands strings

and erase me? What's the technical term for speed of light? Yeah, we've got to think about this. 713-212-5-790. It's Matt and Rawls in the morning here on Sports Talk, 7-0. 7-13-212-5-7-0. What do I'm going to do to make you love me? What have I got to do to make you care?

What do I do when light me? Ben and Sousse Soe apologized yesterday So we found a good song for it Sometimes Ross Sorry is the hardest word Well Astros fans are saying It's too late to apologize

That's ridiculous Except I say too late Which is ridiculous It is too late to apologize Oh come on it is not He only apologized Because of the backlash Exactly

Well when do you ever apologize When do you ever apologize when you don't get backlash As Jonathan would say Stand 10 toes down Thank you Ross Jonathan. It's exactly what I was going to say. If I say something bad about you and I feel sorry about it and you are offended by it,

I would, and I hurt your feelings, I'd say sorry to you. Yeah, it's a totally different scenario. No, it's not the exact same scenario. He called out an entire fan base for booing. I'll read it. We put our heart and soul. We scratched and clawed to 81 and 81. No other season in the history of baseball.

Would you have made the playoffs? You're cold. I'm forgiving of you. Just say it. Yeah, it sucks to get mood. We get it. I'm sorry for the comments I made about our fan base. Anyone that knows me knows how much I care about this organization, the city and our fans.

This team took me in four years ago. What I was at my lowest. Wow, you're getting choked up. And they've seen me at my highest. Well, not much this year. I feel really bad about last night. One thing I would love for people to know is no matter how bad they feel about me or anything like that, that I'm feeling ten times worse.

and I will stop spiking sliders at 44 feet. I personally was emotional after an emotional game and was emotional in the wrong way. It needs to be about me there and look inside and know it's not about the fans. It's about me. I need to step up for this team.

I will today. Turn the page to today, hopefully win today, and keep this thing rolling. Wow, that doesn't really fit. And next year I'll keep my ERA plus above 100. So Bennett-Sus, if you're listening to show, I accept your apology.

I'm a forgiving person. Jonathan and Ross are not, they hate you. Move along. And I'll get my whiff rates up. But you can't play like you did. Say what you said. And you say sorry. Come on.

And I won't have a whip. I won't have a whip of 1.8. So here it is, Jonathan. This is the honest. And a fip of five. Here's the honest question. Did he really mean it? Or do the Astros go say, go find Chandlerone, who got your quotes and go tell him this,

that we prepared this beautiful statement for you? They told them, you don't know, we don't know. Oh, Chandlerone got some stares, probably. But all he did was print the quotes. I've said things before and I've had to apologize for. I think he finished his statement, go space cowboys. Stop. What are you going to be?

Cruel. Guy was, guy poured his heart. He said, you took a seat. No, I like Ben and Tzuza. We took him in four years ago. He heard him when he was lowest. Ben and Sousa can bounce back. He was good.

He was sharp when he first came here. We know that ERA is very volatile for, for relief pitchers. Yes. You had a band season. Bennett's going to be good next year. Yeah. Can be good. I fully, Bennett, if you're listening, which you're not,

I fully accept your apology. Shout out, Benny Suze. It's Benny Suz. We appreciate him. Now, if you don't want to accept it, that's on you. Bennett, Susie and his big band, we appreciate him. We appreciate him. Bon, bum, bum,

no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, we're going on. He's going to be at the VA. He's at the Houston Trubidor. Johnny on 7-9. Good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. Good show, good show.

You Ann Ross. Hey, man. I just opened Facebook, and I saw that Christian Walker and at Sousa, you know, saying stuff about the fans. First of all, Christian Walker, I don't care if you're listening or not. You have not owned up to nothing since you've been here. Maybe here and there, you've earned a little. bit of that money.

What you're going to do is go and go off vacation. Now, you go on vacation. You know, Sousa, space cowboys, go back, man, go back. And as a matter of fact, if I'm not wrong, I remember when you talk like this, you know, to the fans or anything as an astro, you're probably gone. and hopefully, you know, they think about first base and this other guy's pitching because he didn't, I don't think he did in good. I mean, I don't.

And Ross back there making fun of him and stuff, but he's right, man, he's right. Apologies or whatever. Can you imagine Matt, Matt, can you imagine Matt? Can you imagine if these were a Yankee fan? I talked about that yesterday. I didn't know. Thank you for the phone call, Johnny. I think you're-

Thank you, Johnny. Thank you, Johnny. Yeah, Matt was saying this yesterday. Brother, go to Philly. Go to New York. Go to Chicago. Go spot some sliders in a playoff game where it's 5 to 2 and unfortunately

you've been called upon and normally, yeah, normally you wouldn't be out there, Benezza, but you were. And you're throwing multiple wild pitches and runs are scoring. Go see how that goes over in Philly. Or basically anywhere. It didn't even have to be Philly.

They should be booing that in Tampa or wherever. So no matter where you are, country, if a team is losing a playoff game and throwing wild pitches and Christian Walker is testing his arm out to see how far he can throw it into left field, yeah, they're not going to

be happy. Sorry. That is what it is. I am team boo. You are paying your prices to go sit in the stadium. You can boo. I would not boo it, is what I'm saying. I wouldn't do it, but I respect your right to boo. You know what? You've got a fight for your right.

To boo. Yes. Let's put it that way. So you... That's good, Jonathan. I was just going to let it go. No, you weren't. You're pregnant to pause. You allow... Yeah.

You can boo. I wouldn't boo. But you have your right to boo. If Christian Walker had 42 bombs and was hitting 3.50 And it never made an air all season, he'd get a little grace. He's making $20 million. He's fine. You can cry on your pile of money. I understand it hurts.

Nobody likes to be booed. Nobody likes to mess up. And it compounds the problem. You're mad that you do through the ball and chuck the ball in the left field. And you're mad you're getting booed. I get it. It's emotional. We're human beings.

Krisha Walker's a human being. So it doesn't feel great. And Benet Soussa was emotional yesterday. And he said, you know what? I lost my, uh, I lost my head a little bit there. Yeah. Bennett, I'm good with you. I just come back and make sure you throw 60 feet, six inches next time.

I'll accept it. But yeah. Damage done. I mean, yeah. Let's get the ERA. down. Get the whip down too.

Get your PFs. 1.8 whip. All right. For those of people don't know, one, walking hits per innings pitch. One is like elite. Anything under that is mega elite.

Like 1.1's fine. You don't want 1.2 if you're a reliever. 1.8 is insane. Uh-huh. That's right. Rossi, we have to kiss and say goodbye to the Astros playoffs.

This is Matt and Ross in the morning. This has got to be the saddest day of my life. A three-run, home run for Chase Bidrop, and the White Sox lead at 7 to 3. It's going to hurt me. To two. Swing, NMS Smith strikes out, and that is the ball game, and that is the series. The Chicago White Sox defeat the Astros 7 to 3 to sweep the American League Wild Card Series,

two games to none. The White Sox head to Cleveland for a date with the Guardians in the division series beginning Saturday. Oh, the Manhattan's bringing us in on a Matt and Ross in the morning on a Thursday. Now look, at my funeral in the next 30 years, 40 maybe, hopefully.

And we'll see. I want positive songs, but this is such a good song. You want positive songs? songs? Absolutely. You want us to dance on your grave? No, dance at the reception. Oh, okay. Remember, you are to speak highly of me. You're going to play, like, hit the road jack? All right, I'm sorry.

Well, I don't have my... I don't have my plan on there. I don't want you playing... And Jonathan's going to be playing see-a-later soundbites over the whole thing. See-Later! That'd be pretty funny. That wouldn't. It would not be rude. We will just watch Matt go. We'll say that when they lower you down.

We're getting cremated. That's right. That's right. L.A. Ram's Media. It's over. Yeah. And so will baseball talk essentially for the Houston market until the Astros make a decision on Joe Espada and the general manager. Anything Can Happen, Deep Playoff Run lasted two games. It did.

By the way, this respected radio host that you're listening to right now had the Astros in two. Ross, how'd you have it? I had at Astros in two. Yeah. But I also am not shocked. They're not a very good baseball. We're going to stop being homers.

No. Yeah, we are. They could. Oh, Hunter Freaking Brown. How about you get out of first inning, Hunter Brown? How are them Cowboys going to come in and beat them Texans this week? Shut your bum ass up.

We're talking about the Astros right now, all right? Sorry. I was thinking about the next game. How about AJ Blueball get out of the first inning in the first game? He comes in and he redeemed himself. How about Hunter Brown get out of the first thing in the first game? Nobody predicted that. Yeah, White Sox bullpins very good.

Not shocking game one. But, I mean, you got to Sean Burke. He got him out of there in four innings. Hit big home runs. Three bombs off of them. Boms. Do your job, Hunter Brown. And then we're going to game three today.

with Hayden Wisniewski. Arrested Hayden Wissniewski. I don't even want to look at the wrist yesterday. Don't even do it. How about Yorda on one hit in the series? I know it was 0 for 7 in game 1. O for 2 yesterday, I think. Oh, that was it? That was it. I felt like they had the bases loaded for half the game.

Yeah, 0 for 2. I guess I was wrong on that. Oh, well, 0 for 9 with runners the scoring position in the two games. Is that bad? How many left on base? Yesterday was 5. So there wasn't a lot of track.

honestly. They were big solo home runs. That was about it. Six hits and then five hits. You got the three bombs, but they were all solo. Nobody on base. Yardot on one hit, two hit, two games. Yeah, somebody was messaging like, you gotta call Yorana under the carpet for this.

Like, no, he's fine. Two bad games. I'm sorry. Yoron's got a great history as a postseason player. I'm crushing him for these two. Literally, just hand him the 2022 trophy himself for that bomb. And by the way, that's now nine, is it nine straight losses for the Astros at Deakin Park in the post season? I think it's nine. I've seen different numbers reported. So I don't know exactly. Well, I mean,

it doesn't take a long to figure it out. Who's fault? The Astros? Y'all don't cheer enough. You're too busy booing. Too busy booing. All right, Bennett, Sousa. We'll get a Sousa to defend over here. We get a Sousa stand. Yeah, you guys booed us, so our feelings were hurt. We didn't pitch. When he got booed, he got a double play. No work. Bennett.

Now, I couldn't tell on the broadcast when Christian Walker took to the play. Were you at the game when you took an A-B? I wonder what the crowd was like. I was not at the game yesterday. So if y'all went to the game yesterday, how was Christian Walker received? Quite frankly, I left at like 3.30s. I was in traffic for about an hour. And I was listening to Dols of Tones.

Of course. Yeah, I was listening to Robert Ford and Steve Sparks. They were breaking it down for me. They were breaking it down. Brian McHaggart's going to join us. This is a disaster. You heard the calls. I'm sitting there in traffic getting cut off by everybody.

and then Hunter Brown can't get out of the first inning. It was great. You know what the weirdest part about listening to Robert and Steve yesterday was? Is that Robert's like, yep, our next broadcast will be in February in West Palm Beach against the Nationals. And I'm like, it is? I mean, it could be. Maybe he's going to go, yeah, give us a live breakdown on his day at the beach. I don't know, because I don't think he's going to be calling games.

I mean, Robert, he's done until February. Hopefully, I don't think he's going to be waiting longer than that. We'll see. Maybe that would be a short. short spring training, if anything? They'll have to have one. Yeah, they'll have to have one. I'm hopeful.

But maybe you know what you do. You don't go to Florida. Maybe you just do it in your own city. Although if you're playing, if you can't do spring training in Minnesota, because in April, it's like 36 degrees. Yeah. I don't know who, I guess I'm going to ask, like,

Chandler or somebody, who the Astros Union rep is, because for years it was McCullors. Do you think Channer's awake right now? I think so. I think he's one of those people. I just gut feeling. I have no idea. Channel Role by the way.

asleep for like five hours a night and he's good. If you have his phone number, he is an A plus texter. I mean, you send him something and he's got time to tell you, give you a response, it's coming back quick. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, he's on his phone all the time. He's a reporter. Of course.

But I can, I can check with him during the basketball season. I'm not always on my phone. Because you're Matt staring me down as he's saying this. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're doing the bird to you all. Yeah, exactly. I understand. I'm not the best texter. I understand.

I'm busy. You're not the worst. But you're struggling. Well, okay, you know what? That's all I want to hear is that I'm not the worst. It's your bottom five. 713-212-5-790. Anthony on 7-90.

Good morning to you. Hey, good morning, fellows. Hey, just wanted to go back to something y'all were discussing earlier. But I feel like the a Astros have to go through a retool instead of a rebuild. The only thing that makes me say that is I feel like you can't, you can't afford to waste prime yard on Alvarez. Now with that being said, I do, I have an unpopular opinion. I think that the Astros next GM is already in the building. I feel like that the Astros will, or I would like to see them promote Gavin Dickey.

The only reason I say that is Gavin Dickey was a part of the Jeff Luno tree, came in with Jeff Luno and was part of the scouting department that helped, you know, build that that dynasty that the Astros had. Now the question I do have for you guys is do you guys see the Astros going like a Joe's spot a route like maybe Omar Lopez or do you all see them bringing in someone with a good managerial background? Good question. Thank you, Anthony, for the phone call.

I can't tell you Gavin Dickey is a qualifying candidate or not. I don't know any of Dana's lieutenants except Jeff and Craig, obviously. Yeah, Dicky's been here since since Luna though. I would offer you no opinion. I don't know. I don't have an opinion on him at all. Oh, man, I think he's real sharp, makes a lot of great moves.

Really? What's your favorite? What's your favorite Gavin Dickey move? That one he made for the guy. Okay, that feels good. Now, I can tell you this. We can have an opinion about the managerial hire. Dusty was a salty veteran.

All right, here's his... AJ Hinch was a previous manager in with the Diamondbacks, before we got the Astros job. And Joe was a first-time manager. Well, let me ask you this. If you're a veteran team, do you want a guy that's got some W's and L's in his column?

Or if you're going young and you really are going to rebuild as compared to retool, do you go with somebody like, like Case in Point, Chicago, the manager of the White Sox. Will Vennible? Will Vennible. First-time manager. Yeah. Grew up with those guys.

Suffer 100 losses last year. We grew up, play better. We're in the playoffs. You could do that? Do you go ex-player? I mean, everybody, yeah. I mean, does Martin Maldonado want to get involved? People are mentioning Martin Tien Maldonado.

I don't know. That's kind of far-fetched, but I don't know, I guess. Catchers have been successful managers. Absolutely. Smart guy, great game planner. Yeah. Much beloved. If it's something he wants to do.

What is Martin been doing the last year? Just kind of chilling? I guess. I mean, does he have an itch to get back into baseball? I don't know. He's 40 years old. Yeah, with a little with the Padres last year, I don't see anything for this year. I'm just going to tell you all this.

Whoever gets a job, you're going to hate them eventually. Because you always hate the manager. Yeah, I'm not worried about it. So don't worry about the manager. Let the gym figure that out. And I guess more importantly, well, man, this is terrible to say. I mean, Joe has not been relieved of his duties yet. So this is, he's gone.

But it's, God, it's fine. Gavin Dickey with the organization since 11 as an area scout, promoted a regional cross-checker in 16? Okay. You got regional cross-checker on your resume, Maddie? I've cross-checked a few people. What do y'all think Houston's reaction would be if a spot of stays? Terrible people would yell.

They would hate it. See, it's not happening, though. So it's like, like what would be my reaction if they won the World Series? Okay. You're all right? I'm sorry. Special assignment scout, 23 promoted a special assistant to the general manager. for Gavin Dickey we're talking about.

Played for Florida. Mariners 12th round, 2006 draft. Six seasons of minor league ball. Got up to double A. It became a scout. Yeah. I mean, he's got the background. Yeah.

But look, there are 30 of these that are taken over by human beings. There are going to be a lot of people wanting the job, regardless of whether or not Jeff Baggwell was intimately involved in the organization. Which answer is going to be yes. Because Jim Crane has said as much. Jeff makes it probably a very nice salary to be a guy that Jim Crane calls on. I don't blame Jeff for taking the deal. He doesn't have to put in the hours of a general manager.

He just goes and does what Jim asks him to do. I want a team. I want a flock of nerds. A flock of the nerdiest nerds you could ever find. Just let's go. And Jim Crane can oversee him and stuff like that. I don't want Jeff Bagwell involved. How much will Jeff Bagg will be involved in the decision on this?

My guess is a lot. 815 on Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. Matt and Ross continue in the morning on Sports Talk 790. Do you accept Bennett-Su's his apology? That's one of the questions we're asking. Sure, why not? Are we retooling?

Are we blowing it up? They're not going to blow it up. I don't think they're going to. but maybe in the best interest of the organization for the long term. Atlanta blew it up. Chicago blew it up. By the way, Chicago had not won a playoff series since 2005 when they came to Houston. Let's see.

Jeremy Pena had a bunch of injuries, hamstrings. He only played, what, like 120 games, if that. Now, also, Yordon was mega healthy. And I mean, although I did win the bet with you, Matt, he does have an injury history, right? So we can't bank on him playing 158 games every single year. They didn't even want him to play that many games this year, but they didn't have any choice. They had to keep putting him out there when it was clear he wasn't 100%.

But, I mean, I don't know where you go with left field and center field, but you did have all the injuries pitching-wise. Is that going to be the norm? I don't know. Brown, Hader was hurt. Bad first half from a Brayu, but he's going to be completely gone. He's hitting free agency. So you need an eighth inning guy.

You need a seventh inning guy. I would like to get some kind of. a top three guy. I like Lambert Wisnisk. I like your, you have a lot of options, but you have a whole lot of great options. I mean,

is EMI going to all of a sudden completely turn it around? So you, I would like at least one starter. Center field, left field need to be addressed in a couple of relievers. And then probably Walker's gone. And maybe that can help you out somehow.

I don't know what kind of major league help you're going to get from Christian Walker. I mean, he has some value. Good first base. 29 bombs. But at $20 million, you're just going to have to ship a lot of cash with him. Correct. But you got congestion on the left side like you had last year.

Christian Walker this year, 156 games, OPS Plus of 103. Yeah. But went through a little bit of the Cam Smith, 0 for 20s, and hit big home runs and then we'd go on long slumps. All those type of things. Of course you can't say, oh, take the first month out and this happens. Maybe that, but if you do take the first month out, I mean, he was terrible basically. It was basically what it was the first half of last year.

Yeah. And is that because of age? He's at 35 years old. He slowed down. Was there some injury he played through? We don't know about. We don't know. Will the Astros?

How about this one? How about the, will the Astros go away from the let's go get a three-year deal for a 32-year-old type S player at any position in saying, helping catch you a lightning in the bottle? Because I think we're 04-2-in-it when it comes to that. Mm-hmm. I mean, I like the Walker signing when it was made. I like Jose O'Brien. do you want to missp. Oh my God, MVP.

Abraeu, this team is about to be eight deep in the lineup. Yes. Slugging first basement like the Astros are accustomed to. So you get Jake Myers back and mashing and then you're really set in the center field spot. Okay, I'm kidding. Sorry. This isn't a retool. This isn't a rebuild.

There's too many spots. There's a lot of spots. I think by definition you're rebuilding. You're going to have to open up the checkbook. And then you're really kind of, you're putting off the rebuild for a couple years. But it's a good problem.

As I said earlier, it's you have the MVP. The American League MVP is in the heart of his prime on your roster right now. So you can't, you can't full blow up. Unless you're okay with swalling a couple of years his prime. Unless you want to do the really the unthinkable full, full blow up and trade him. Which I say, again, I'll say the word unthinkable. and I would not do that. But you're not right.

You can't train an MVP. I mean, I'm sure it's happened once or twice before, but not, not this. Juan Soto got flipped around a bunch of times. Yeah, that's not about dollars and cents. It's about being competitive. Let's go to Garrett on 790 at 827. Garrett, good morning.

Hey, Matt. Ross, good morning to y'all. Thanks for taking my call. You know, I want to do heresy, man. I have to see a full rebuild, because at this point, you finished the season 500. You had players where, at the very most, you had two players of the nine get hot,

and the other rest were cold. You know, Yordon, as much as I love the guy, you know, I would actually, I would see if I could get five or six top 100 prospects from some team and bring them on. it's painful but you know it's just one of those things I think you have to do

because ultimately you know they were lacking mojo as a team you know Altovae you know it's second decision I think it's time to move on from him you know

long stretches where ultimately I don't think he really helped the team out you know a lot of poor at bats some defensive cues, and we could finally move on from the trash can error. You know, the only player I might keep potentially would be like a Cam Smith or something where really he didn't have a lot of value this season, but he still wanted to develop them.

So, I mean, I'd like to see them retool. I would like to see a Terriaki Sato come on somehow. joining my in a great sophomore season. But, you know, for me, you know, it was a painful season to watch. Ultimately, it was no mojo, like I said. You see the White Sox out there and Murakami and he's all partying it up. You know, and us were like, yeah, we made it to the playoffs, you know, and they blow their little horn that rolls out on paper or whatever that thing is.

So, yeah, I appreciate it. it guys. Hopefully I'm wrong. Yes, you're wrong on some things. But thank you anyway. We appreciate the phone call. Five or six prospects. Come on now.

Five or six top 100 guys? Yeah, come on. Let's relax. I believe it's Teruaki Sato, not Terriaki. Yeah, it's not terriaki. I mean, it's how you like your chicken, but it's not how you pronounce a player.

He's going to be the most sought after free agent. I think that's not. I mean, I mean, Josh Hater was a good, big signing. That's the biggest free agent signing right in Astros history. So I just don't think Terracuseo is going to be on the radar. Terric Scouble as well.

I mean, you know what? I'm pissed. Why are you mad? Because I'm Googling top free agents right now. I don't want to be doing that. Why do I have to go to Google.com and type in top free agents this offseason right now? It's kind of move. They should be keep playing.

Yes, true. Jim Craney's signing none of them. Well, even if you do it's a- Again, everything's going to be... Nope, number two, hell no. Number three, probably not. Everything is out of whack because we could have a very, very short free agency period. Don't sit on that, Ross.

Everything could be smushed in a very short period time. Yet there's even baseball in 2020. Say a Suzuki. I'd like say a Suzuki here. Here's my question. We go to break on this. How do you retool when you need two outfields? an eighth inning guy

potentially a shortstop potentially a catcher unless you think the two prospects are ready to go and potentially trying to move a first baseman so you can take your third basement and put them at first base. Brendan Lowell. And by the way, your pitching staff

is loaded with threes and fours and fives, frankly. Yes, three, fours and fives. You need a top three guy. There's going to be some pitchers on the market. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. They're not going to sign. or I'd be surprised.

It would be out of the norm for them to sign a big top three starter. But if you're going to go and run it back this next year, you need somebody, I think. Because the let's get a bunch of guys and pray method did not work this year. And by the way, the angels have new ownership that aren't going to make the same stupid mistakes Artie Marino made. What was their, what was their starter ZERA? I think they were 28th in baseball this year. And second highest in walks, I want to say. It's a miracle they made the play.

playoffs but I guess it's not because there's just a horrible division. You got six guys, but you got a lot of issues among those six guys. You really do. 831, Sports Talk, 790. 7.13, 212, 790. Brian McTaggart will join us in one half hour here on Sports Talk 790. We've got, I just don't get it. We're going to do one segment of that coming up in the next break.

We've got some other folks that want to get in. 713, 212, 790. I just don't get it coming up at 8, about 850. Brian McTaggart at 9 o'clock, and I will be handling today's edition of Believerna. All things about Ben-Itsusa. Really? Yeah.

Stop. I did it. You're doing Ben-Susa? I'm down to two questions left. Okay. Oh, by the way, teams interested with Teruaku Taruaki Sato. Met's, Yankees, Dodgers, and Phillies, and Blue Jays. So let's go ahead and table that discussion.

A, the Spenders. By the way, a couple of folks sent us a nice note. We appreciate everybody that did that. Marti Maldonano was a special assistant to the Braves this past season. Okay. Sounds like on the major league side of it, too. Yeah. He's going to be a manager or, I mean, I don't even know.

He's very smart, very intelligent. So bring him home. Bring machete home. We'll talk about the game planning he always did and how great it was. So let's go. He's worked with the Iner-Diaz before. Omar Lopez, like, well, what about me? I won the BBC.

That's true. WBC champion Omar Lopez would be a cheap option so you know Jim Crane likes that Yeah I don't know what Jim wants I think You want me to

Here's the thing Are we doing Real Talk at 130837? We can do real talk Let me give me one Before you get to real talk Real Talk is going to be Whoever like Jeff Whoever Jeff Beck will likes best

He's going to get the job Okay well Real Talk 790 at 838 he wants to win a championship, but more than anything, keeping the team competitive. So I think he'll spend enough, get a free agent or two or whatever, to make this, this team was 81 and 81 and made the playoffs. Get up to like 86, 87 wins.

So maybe a couple relievers or whatever, because those are always short-term deals. You don't have to commit long-term to a couple of relievers, maybe even trade for a couple of relievers. Maybe, maybe one starter or outfielder. something to prop the team up, basically. Is you're going to have, Yorna Alvarez is your big headliner.

And then as you, you know, here comes a boxing analogy, Matt. In the old days, they would stack cards, right? It would be the big, hunt. It would be a great fight before that, a great fight before that. These day and age, you've got the big headliners and there's a bunch of dudes you never heard of, but it's enough to kind of slap together a card. So it's going to be Yorda on Alvarez, Hunter Brown,

Jeremy Payne. Maybe. Maybe. And then enough enough support to prop them up to get them around 85 wins into a third wildcard, competitive team. But he's not going to massively open the checkbook and he's not going to rebuild. And I get it. I get it. You want to keep people coming through the gates?

Because here's the thing about rebuild. If you say we're going free rebuild, that basically means any marketing dollars you try to spend would be a waste of time. You'd have 14,000 people with your game. And you can't do it. And Jim wants to be profitable. You have the literal MVP. You got to build.

So you're starting with the, you have the MVP on arguably the best, as long as anybody that's not out of arbitration, the best contract in baseball. Not counting arbitration guys. Or, you know, pre-arbitration guys. Well, here's the thing. If you have the MVP, maybe by definition you cannot rebuild. Right. Exactly.

And that's fine. So get enough around him. He's not going to go crazy over the tax. He's not going to get in the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, sweepstakes or anything like that. But you're going to get a couple of guys. You're going to have Yordon Alvarez and

then a good enough team around him. Kare is coming back. He's good enough. Get a couple of relievers. Probably not even one starter. Maybe a couple half outfielders. And do enough. Do enough to win 85, 86 games and get in the playoffs and then probably be out in the DS.

Let me ask you this. And we've got Donald a good two in second. Let's say let's say the Jim Crane called a lunch together and invited Yoron Alvarez, Jose Altova, and Carlos Correa. Okay. Let's role play. What's that lunch like?

In terms of what do you all want to do? Because they're going to obviously say we want to win. They're going to, you're talking about a 33-year-old, a 29-year-old, and a 36 about to be 37-year-old. They're going to say, they're going to say, cut shit!

So do you even bother having... They're also saying, oh, we can't even talk to you right now. Do you even bother having lunch? I mean, maybe... Because let's say you go into your workplace. Here's a terrible analogy. Oh, love it. And you say, hey, we're a company that's, we do, we do a good price, but we don't market.

Let's go spend the money. If you ask your employees what they want, they're going to say spend, spend, spend. If you want to spend money, if you want to make money, you got to spend it. And that's what probably those three guys would tell them, right? Yeah. You got to go make a big check for paying you. We want to keep him here. Yeah.

Although his defense is taking a little bit of a step down. A little bit, yeah. A little bit. I mean, he's 29, 30 years old, short. stop, he's going to hit the wrong side of 30. Now, he can easily transform himself to third base. Absolutely. In my mind. Curry is there for next year and one

more? Yeah. And this is the problem. You're top prospects right now. 18 years old, 19. Logan Hughes is from MLB Pipeline. 21-year-old Logan Hughes just got drafted. Formine is 17. Riddell just drafted.

He's in rookie ball. He's 22, though. And then Jason Chivani. He got up to AAA now. and maybe can be knocking on this. So, or Chavoni, whatever we're calling it. Shavani, yeah, I think. Chivani, Chavone. We'll get it figured out.

We got Yulio to figure it out eventually. Jason S. Maybe he can be up next year. But his ETA is, I'll say it's 2028 on here, which I don't see that. He's 23 already. I mean, he rocketed up to AAA last year. So I would say that's probably going to be. So forget what I said.

What I'm saying is the luncheon and I've not been asked. You got a bunch of teenagers and your top prospects. So you've got to do something. And you don't want to trade those guys. So maybe you sign a couple of guys. I don't know. Maybe you do front-loaded opt-out. Not opt-out deals, but two-year deals.

Big up, I just don't, Jim Crane, that's not really in his DNA either. But you've got to replace the outfields. We cannot watch. It can't be Trammell, Lamont Wade. I don't know if Spence is considered a high-end guy. No, he's not. He got bumped down the prospect list. He had a good weekend.

but he's not even thought of a bat as a prospect. He's a fourth, fifth outfielder. Because here's another thing. Even though you had Cam Smith and Wright Field, if Cam Smith is who he is, monumental, he's home run blast, but rather than that, he's one for 19, then he can't live with that.

Then he's a 7, 8, 9 hitter. You can live with it because he plays Gold Glove right field. I should say Gold Glove. He was a finalist last year. I don't know about this year. Of course, they haven't announced it, but he's a gold glove finalist a year ago as a rookie. Real quick, let's go to Donald and Hobby Airport.

Donald, good morning. Okay, what I'm going to say is very unpopular, but I don't see any way that you can retool this team and make it competitive. I mean, Jim Crane is not cheap. He spends money, but he's a guy on a budget. He knows what he wants to spend. He knows how much he wants to spend. He knows how he wants to spend it. But I don't see how you get a guy here, a guy there, and make this team competitive. I say don't retool, reload. I don't see how you can, you know, on the budget that Jim Crane wants to do,

how you can make this team competitive. I don't see it. Yeah, Jim Crane's not cheap. No, he's not in a 92 Civic. No. But he's not in a Lamborghini. The squad. She's got a nice SUV.

Yeah. He's got like a nice, you know, Acura, RDX, something like that. Maybe he's in the BMWX5. Maybe you went to Honda Clear Lake. never know? Maybe he did, but he's not out there doing Bugatti's. Ferraris and Lamborghinis on the roster. He might drive one personally, I don't know.

What I'm talking about for the roster. All right, 844, Sports Talk 790, 713-212-5-790. Do you have something in your life that you just don't get? No need to worry, no need to fret. We will discuss the topics to see if we comprehend

the things that may confuse our friends. It's time to say, I just don't get it. All right, here we go. Really quick on mine. I just happen to look at the 4U tab. Oh, dear. Lindsay Singleton, John's wife. Oh.

Uh-oh. What's she saying? It's not what she's saying. It's what she's posting. What? She put a picture, her Twitter account, of the Wicked Witch of the West, laughing. Oh.

Not the Wicked Witch of the West. It's, um, who is that? Cinderella? Um, the mean stepmother. Or maybe that is it, or is it, Corolla DeVille. I don't remember which one is it. Oh, my gosh. Who is that? I don't know. I haven't seen the post.

Who is that? Snow White. Snow White. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the, what's her name? What's her name? What's her name? Excuse me? She was a bitch. I mean, she was. She tried to poison Snow White with the bad apple. I don't know. I haven't seen Snow White in 30 years.

Okay, whoever that woman is. Lindsay put a giff up there of her. It's an evil stepmother, right? Yeah, you've got to be. Whatever, whoever she is. Lindsay, come on. Let's sleep in dogs live, please. We're hurting.

Why do you know she did that? This is all over the social media world. I'm saying, oh, what do you know? There's no context, listen. Is it right as... Are you stupid? No. You're not.

You're smart guy. Okay. So you know. Could be for anything. No, couldn't they? Could not be for everything. Maybe she just watched Snow White on streaming. Maybe she was watching Disney Plus.

That's not an possibility. No chance. Zero. You don't pour salt on the wounds When your husband was a 4A player I mean he had some big moments but 4A player No she's crazy on social media all the time Okay

And so you don't get it What does she think he needs to be? Does she think John needs to be at first base? Clearly I don't get Didn't the Mets pick him up and stuff? I just don't get why you would do that I mean he didn't get rich in baseball

But he did okay for himself right There's sometimes players wives or mothers Oh, mothers special. You get a little wild on social media. I wouldn't do it. I just don't get it. She loves her man. That's why.

I get it. You love her man without running a social media to tell her world. She's standing by her man, like Tammy Wynette. To whom? George Jones, right? I don't know. She hadn't write a song about somebody for some reason. Oh, I thought it was Dean Martin.

It was not Dean Martin. You're weirdo. I know. I just say random things. You do say random things. Between that and your John McLean stuff, it's just ridiculous. Don Bill Luis. Neil Sedaka.

I mean, we got all the hits you play. Rossi, what don't you get? Okay, let me lay you out a scenario. Game one, wild card, playoffs. You're a diehard Astros fan. Astros are down 6 to 3. 9th inning. Christian Walker works a walk.

Walker walks. Okay, so you got a man on base. You're down three runs. Okay, Lucas, strikes out, not great. Camp Smith strikes out, not great. I see people on Moss, as they say, heading for the stands.

Or heading for the, excuse me, the concourse, heading for leaving the stands, exiting the game. I just don't get it. There's a guy on base. It's a playoff game. You're down three. How much time are you saving? Krisha Walker struck out in like four pitches.

I'm in Christian Vasquez. say. Seven pitches actually before we grind it out. Okay, in those seven pitches, how far did you make it? How much time did you actually save? You paid presumably for these tickets. It's a playoff game. There's a guy on base.

Why are you leaving? I don't get it. And it wasn't just like a trickle. It was a bunch of people. Now, okay, you counter argument. Hey, guys, it's Christian Vasquez. He's coming back to get out. And maybe the Christian Vasquez, truth, or stayed. Haven't the storylines already been written, Ross?

Yeah, exactly. But it's a playoff game. There's a guy on base. I don't get it. You're saving no time. You're saving no time getting out of there that much faster. Well, I was going to say it's 6.30. It's still a little bit of...

No, I wrote down the time. 7.19 p.m. Oh, my goodness. So you're not getting there early. You're not getting home early. It's not like if it was like 1130 or something, I might get it. 719. I don't get it.

Oh, God. Yeah, I know. You try to be contrarian every time I don't get it, but you can't this time. I'm going to say I get it. Oh, here we go. Why? How? You're such a jackass.

I leave early, too. No, it's not early. It's the ninth inning. There's two outs. Oh, that's not early. That's right. I don't get it. You're right.

Okay. But I can leave in the eighth inning with the best of it. Yeah, that's fine. If you want to, if you got to get home. First of all, it's seven o'clock, like I said. You don't got to get in bed by eight. I do. I do, unless you're us.

That's what I was going to say. 806, that alarm went night night. It's a 4 o'clock game. It's not like it's 10.30. It's 7.19 p.m. There's two outs. You can't wait one more out. I don't know.

I don't get it. All right. Jonathan, you got anything? All right. And I hate to. Oh, here we go. I get this to you guys. Really, it's Matt.

Uh-oh. I'm on the 4-U page. And I see this dude, Freddie, still posting in America. Now, it came with the, He's a fraud. But why isn't he walking at night in Jackson, Mississippi? Jackson, Mississippi. A long way from Germany.

I have converted you, and for that, I'm very happy. But he's still here. It's October. It's a scam, folks. It is. He's at the Chili's of Jackson. What is he doing? I don't get it.

You don't get it? I'll tell you why. I get it. You see how many views are on this post? 2.2 million. You all got scammed. Freddy, come hang out in our tent. Come sit in our 50-yard-line seats.

Come stay in our hotel. Come in our restaurant. It's a fraud. It's American fraud. We have a Houston fraud here against credentials for media events. He's an influencer. For qualified views?

Exactly. So why are we faking that? You know what I mean? If he's influencer, why he doesn't show his face? Now I'm getting like, all right. Because the world comes. The average between $3 and $15 per million qualified views. So he got two.

$30. bucks. He posted one video and he got maybe as much as 30 bucks. And what if someone's just doing this video for him and he's, you know, back in Europe? One before that, 167K, 200K, a million. Oh yeah.

This is all in the last couple days, by the way. He's racking up the cash on y'all. That's why you don't get it. I don't get it. All right. Mike on 790, what don't you get, Mike? I've got a question for you guys. Really quick. Jeff Luno, was he considered to be a good general manner?

Yes. For the Earth. Yes, he was. Okay. Is there any way that Jim Crane can give him a call and say, Jeff, hey, all is forgiven. Come back to the Astros. No chance.

No way, no hell. None zero. Zero percent. That's a shame. Because, you know, Korah came back, Hinch came back, but is it just absolutely burned the bridge? Jeff Lunoz sued Jim Crane. Jeff Luno got so much.

on Jim Crane's face when he had no control of the organization. There was the Brandon Tobman thing. There was a bad reputation all around baseball. And then he fired him. And then Jeff Luno sued him. Why? He's not going to get him back, Mike. Okay.

I was kind of curious. I didn't know the backstory on that. All I know is what he did while he was as general manager. And I'm just wondering if there was a chance they might with time passage and the situations the Astros in right now that they might want to reconsider for the benefit of the team. Got to go. My mic.

Thank you very much for the phone call. It ain't happening. Brian McTaggart. Jerry Huntsaker's around. Brian McTaggart's also around. He's next on 790. This is Matt and Ross in the morning. 9-01 on Sports Talk 790.

Our last regular Thursday morning visit with Brian McTaggart. Now we're going to get him on for breaking news if necessary. Not necessarily. We want to. We're going to miss Brian McTaggart. He can't be just spent an all off season going to a university. to Houston events, or can you, Brian McTagger? Good morning to you.

Well, I think I'm going to try. At least starting Saturday with the big UCF game. It is a big game. No question about it. What's America is saying? Big and UCF and Houston all together. Bring your raincoats and your galoshes, I think, is what you need. Could be a quag. Could be a quag. Yeah. All right, speaking of messy, what the

hell was the first inning yesterday, Brian McTaggart? Yeah, that was definitely messy. You know, I Steve Sparks before the game, I said, you think they're going to win today? And he said, we'll know by the end of the first inning, just referring to Hunter Brown. But yeah, anything that could go wrong, did go wrong in that inning. You know, a couple of errors and Alvarez not being able to catch up ball in left field. And it was just a disaster.

You couldn't ask for a worse start. You know, they battled back and got close with the homers. but you just knew after that first inning that it just wasn't going to happen and that they didn't. What does, do you, in your mind, just being a baseball guy, is that does hunters, Blazze, and Blase may be too strong of a term, just ordinary season and then the obvious meltdown in the Astros front office, which still is very much incomplete, what does that make you think about how much they'll talk about a hunter in the off season in terms of trying to extend him? And again, I don't want to get too much into that, but it certainly is something to be discussed at some point

by somebody who's going to be running in charge of this baseball team. Yeah, I think it'll be discussed, but I don't think it's a huge priority at this point. He's got two more years. And this is probably the time if you're going to do it and you get it done. And, you know, maybe you can get it done cheaper than you could, you know, after last year. But, you know, I think there are bigger, there are much bigger conversations that they have to have,

just with the lack of talent at so many different. different positions. But, you know, I think it's something that they'll, new GM, whoever that is, will probably approach Hunter at some point and see it. You know, I don't think Hunter is going to, Hunter and Scott Boris are all of a sudden not going to take a smaller deal just based on a season where he wasn't as effective as year before and pitched and was hurt for two and a half months. So, but I think it's going to be a huge priority for the Astros. Any chance. I think the answer to that is zero.

but I'm going to see what you have. Any chance that Joe's future can be determined by the new general manager, or do you think that Jim Crane is going to make that decision fairly quickly? Yeah, I think that will come fairly quickly. I mean, I think whoever the new GM is is going to have a chance to hire a manager. But I do think that Jim will make a decision on Joe sooner than later. I think you almost have to. So it's going to be an offseason where, you know, if they do part with Joe, Joe, they're going to be looking for a GM and a manager, but the GM is going to come first. And he, you know, if Joe's not back, the GM obviously is going to have, you know, the right-of-way to hire his own manager, which wasn't the case with Dana Brown because Joe was already here and, you know, got promoted. So I think there'll be a fresh start in a couple of those areas.

But that's just one of many changes that's going to happen this offseason. I mean, I think we could see changes with the entire coaching staff. Obviously, the roster is going to look a whole lot different. They're just in a spot now that probably haven't been in a long time. This organization just needs a reboot in a lot of areas, and it's going to be challenging to do financially, but it's going to start with the GM and maybe the manager and a lot of the coaching staff, and then you work from there.

And with the general manager, Brian, we knew the instructions for Dana Brown. It was rebuild the farm system, stay as much as you can under the tax, and then compete at the major league level. What are the instructions for the new general manager? Basically the same thing, because the farm system, while it does have some guys on the horizon, I mean, most three or top four guys are teenagers, and one was just recently drafted if you're looking at the MLB pipeline list. So it still would be to rebuild the farm system, but also I just don't know what the instructions will be in terms of trade. away your major league guys, whether it be Pena or Walker or whomever, and still trying to stay competitive? Yeah, I think you got to walk down both of those paths. I mean, I think they need to

keep what they're doing in the farm system. It's getting a little bit better. Like you said, most of their top talent, is it high A, maybe touching double A. Those guys are going to be coming a little bit quicker, maybe start to see some of those guys in 28 or 29. But certainly you look at the AAA roster, and there's nothing that really excites you. And, you know, double a there's a few guys you know sheavone the catcher obviously getting he got up to triple a at the end of the year but was a double a most of the year but one of the ways they could have some talent pretty quickly like you mentioned was would be to make some trades and i certainly would be willing to listen to offers for jeremy panya you do have uh korea coming back next year

i don't see a scenario where korea paredes and pena are all on the team in there so do you I think they certainly pick up Paredes' option because then they could trade him. But if you trade, if you pick up Paredes' option and keep him, you trade Pena, put Correa short, you could get a return for Pena. You know, if you look around the league, you know, teams are looking for short stops of that caliber. I would consider trading Yiner Diaz, you know, defensively. He's not good. But he had such a good offensive year in the second half that maybe there's some value there

to some other teams. of course you're going to have to go out and get another catcher, but a couple of your top prospects are catchers as well. So there's just a lot. There's just a lot. This is going to be a difficult job for any general manager to come in because there's a lot of things you have to do. And you have payroll limitations.

It was still a top, but I think they were the 14th highest payroll, so it's still a top half in the league. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting offseason for sure. Brian McTaggart, Astros.com. I'm MLB.com with us here on Sports Talk 790. And what about the rotation? Going into this year, we were like, hey, you know what? They got a lot of options, but a lot of those options washed out.

And they will have another offseason of a lot of options, but no sure things. Do you think would they look into the free agent market or trade market as well for somebody that can be a true number two behind Hunter Brown? Yeah, I think they have to. I mean, one of the reasons on Dane has gone is because The misfires last offseason, they added all this pitching depth. And that was really the focus of the entire offseason, was adding pitching depth, trading for Burroughs, signing Emi, Ryan Weiss, you know, on and on.

And those boots just didn't work out. I mean, you know, Burroughs could, you know, I'm not giving up on Burroughs at all. I mean, he could still be a guy who could contribute. But they need at least a couple of quality starting pitchers. I'm not talking about, you know, high-end. guys. They just need a couple of guys you can put in the middle of the rotation. And maybe they can trade for one. And, you know, maybe the paying your trade is something that they could get somebody like that. Maybe they can sign somebody in free agency. But they have

to upgrade their pitching. They absolutely need more pitching depth. I mean, the end of the year with a bullpen game on Sunday to win the division. They started the playoffs with a bullpen game. And then basically they had one last night because Hunter Brown doesn't last the first inning. And then they have another bullpen game. I just, you're just not going to. you're not going to go deep in the playoffs if you're pitching six, seven pitchers every night. It's just not a formula for success. So they have to find a way, again, to try to upgrade this pitching staff and do it better than they did last year. Because a couple of those guys, two or three of those guys they brought in were just complete flops.

So if any of your fans happen to see you at the U of H game this Saturday, and they say, hey, Brian, are the Astros going to retool? Or are they going to, what else you want to go? Rebuild. Blow it up. blow it up, any of the different terms you may hear. I know retool sounds cool because you've got some core pieces. Obviously, Yordon is that

core piece and Hunter Brown and you've still got Carlos Gray, who hopefully will be back. But with so many spots, improving of the starting rotation, the outfield's got two thirds of its spots that need to be improving. Frankly, Cam's got to improve from

year to year. It feels more like a reorganization, re-bring. branding, whatever you want to do as compared to just adding a piece or two, because a piece or tool means a retool. When you are starting over from scratch, that's five or six spots, and that's what this Astro team needs, don't you think? Yeah, I think they have a lot of holes, and they have, they do have a core of players, like you mentioned. You know, the Pena's, Correa's, pitching staff, you got haterback, Brown. You do have players that are going to build around, and I don't see them.

if they're going to rebuild, they're going to get rid of all those guys. I mean, we saw that 15 years ago where anybody with a contract or any value was traded. I don't think Jim Crane's ready to do that. He says the window's always open. So I think retool might be a better word. And how do you do that? Well, I mean, that's going to be up to the new general manager. But you probably do have to get rid of some guys to get something in return and try to get this turned around pretty quickly.

but, you know, when they rebuilt it 15 years ago, you know, they had all these guys coming up. They had Bregman and Krea and Springer and, you know, Singleton, although he didn't work out, but McCullors was just talent after talent. And those guys aren't here yet. Maybe in a couple of years they have that. So I think the only way you try to retool is you've got to trade from your core,

a couple of those players, and then try to get, you know, maybe some of the higher-end prospect or two from another team. And maybe those guys can help you sooner. than later. If you were flying the wall in the room between Jim Crane and Joe Espada, if they meet and say the next 24 to 72 hours,

what's that conversation going to be like, you think? If you were able to get in there with them. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know, Joe was asked point blank yesterday if he wants to be back and he says he does. Of course he does. I mean, there's only 30 of these jobs and, you know, Joe's this year. But

if I'm Joe, I'm like, how are we going to improve this roster? I can't manage this team again. If I'm plucking guys out of Mexico, the Mexican League, you know, like Nelson Velasquez, to start a playoff game. If we have a guy who was in the independent ball, not that long ago, Josh Hendrickson pitching key innings in a playoff game, if we're putting a rookie in center field in Lucas Spence, if we're throwing, you know, rookies out of the bullpen like, you know, Uola and other guys, I mean, it's just, it just was not a formula of. success. My question, if I'm a spot, is like, how are we going to improve this roster in the next year or two? Because I don't think anybody who managed his team this year could have gotten more out of them just with the roster they had. I mean, look at the bottom half of the batting order on a night-to-night basis.

It was just a couple. You had a couple of guys who weren't really big leaguers in that batting order every day. How are you supposed to win with that? That would be my biggest question is how are we going to improve this roster and how quickly can we do it. Yeah, and part of that, you kind of hinted at there. Brian would be the bullpen. I mean, that's been a hallmark of this great run. The Asheras have been, too. I mean, Abraeu is gone. I don't know who the seventh and eighth

inning guy is for the Astros next year, and where do they come from? You know, the bullpen did a pretty good job for a majority of the year. Losing Oakert was a big blow for sure. You know, the Abraeu, the month or six weeks where he was bad, you know, that hurt, but

bullpen's one of those things that you can fix pretty quickly. I mean, you can go out and sign a couple of guys on one-year deals, who can be good for you. So I don't think, I don't think that's as big as a concern. It's starting pitching depth, of course, that's harder to address and just the holes in the lineup. And you mentioned the outfield, probably one of the worst defensive, offensive outfields they've had, you know, left field, you rotated guys through there. No one was the answer. You know, center field, they're still looking for a center fielder since George Springer left. I mean, they're just run through a guy after guy.

Maybe Lucas Spencer is a guy. I don't know. We thought that last year was Zach Cole. Oh, Zach Cole's going to be the guy so far he hasn't been. Those to me are bigger concerns than the bullpen. Well, my friends, always great hanging out with you. We will find you when there's breaking news one way the other about the managerial situation. I'll see you Saturday at the game.

You cannot come to the press box. You don't have a credential. You're not accredited a member of the University of Houston Mediaists. You're not invited. but stay dry out there and you watch the Cougars take on the nights. When it's raining and I'm looking up there at you, you're not going to let me in?

Actually, I would because you're actually legit media. There's a lot of fake meeting this town, but you're legit media, so I'd let you in. Believe me, I understand that for sure. All right, Brian. We will catch up with you sometime in the next handful of weeks, I feel like with something going on with the administration for the Astros.

Thank you for the visit, as always. All right, no doubt. That's Brian McTeggard. Enjoy Cancun. We've got a lot of folks at all. want to talk. We're going to stay out of y'all's way. 713, 2.1.2.5.790. We've got believe it or not today, all things about Ben and Sousa.

Honestly, it's been more work than I thought it was going to be. Benny Sousa and his big band. It would actually make sense, but it would not be Bennett, too. It would definitely be Benny Susen, the big band. Chris on 790. Hi, Chris. Hey, guys. How you doing? Good. Yeah, good, good, good.

Hey, a couple quick points. first you brought up the difference between a re-tool and a rebuild and to be honest we have to be

we have to be clear-eyed and I know that you guys said we're not getting rid of Yordon I don't think Crane is thinking that

I think he wants all I think he wants all cards on the table and is looking for the best value right so just looking back just right quick

so when we have at Watt on the Texans, and there was some calls to trade him, and everybody was like, no, no, no, I don't trade him. A couple of years later, he's at Arizona, right? Same thing with D. Hop. I think that that's where we are with Yorda. This is going to be his MVP season, and yeah, it's going to be a general manager call, but it depends on who we get.

Hopefully, we get the guy from the Braves. Schwartz, I think his name is. I think he's a good dealmaker, but we'll see. I think that's a good position to be in. I think Crane's going to look at all the options. The other piece of that is to keep the cost low, we need to get Ozo Campo back here, right? I think the Yankees are looking at him,

but if we can get him back here, that will help on the international recruiting. Whoever, I think Brian Rogers is doing it now, Emma is a bust, right? Tang, not a bust, but we didn't bring him over here to be what he became this year. So I think instead of looking at the big names, I heard people calling in about Luno and blah, blah, blah,

I think Azo Campo was a key cog in our success, along with having a good farm system. If we're not going to, if we're not going to be cleared out about it, we're going to be where we are this year. But if we're clear-eyed about it, we'll go and I know Crane is, he's looking at if I get a good GM who can be a Daryl Morey dealmaker, we might, you know, get a huge hall for Yordon that would help the farm club. But the problem is, Chris, nobody's getting huge halls for anybody anymore.

The Dodgers did not have to give up a lot of their top prospects for Terrick Scouple to go from Detroit to L.A. This theory of you have a superstar that means you're going to get six prospects, that's not happening anymore. These teams are too smart to that. They're not going to give up everybody, especially when you're worried about contract statuses and whatnot. And Yoron, not the situation, obviously, but you are not going to go in there. Yordawn's only a DH, as awesome as he is. He can't play the left field in 28 of the 30 ballparks.

That cuts his awesomeness down to about 25% is what it was. Second of all, Father Tom is going to start catching up with him, and he's awesome. I'd rather keep him and see what he's doing and let him. place in left field at Dyken Park, then go to try to send him off for two or three guys, of which maybe one or two of them at the very most become major league players. Now, I get what you're saying. Retool, rebuild, whatever you want to call it, there needs to be massive changes. I just don't think Jordan Alvarez is on the top of that list.

Well, so it, you, so there is, we don't know what the value is. That's why I think the general manager, the general manager pick is the, the, the lynch pin in whether or not the next year, even if we play next year, is going to be worth a damn. Because if we get that pick wrong and it's Jeff Bagwell, you know, being Crane's messenger, I mean, forget about it. I won't go to a game because they don't have, he, Jeff, great player, love him to death, he's, he's not built for that, right?

I need Ago Campbell back here You know I need him back here Yeah we're going to let you run Thank you We've given a lot of time Thank you Yeah

I just don't The thing It's not only that Yordon Alvarez is an MVP He's under contract The next two years At $27 million It's a huge bargain

A huge bargain right now You need value You need to win baseball games And I don't think Jim Crane wants to go in a full When he first bought the team He was ready to strip it down And then build it back up

I think now he's in He's a businessman Jim Crane wants to run this business and make some money. And he's got the MVP on his hands. So try to build around him and then go from there. I think that's what they're going to try to do. So I disagree with his initial point that Jim Crane is thinking, strip this down.

I think he did that once and he doesn't want to do it again. But he might. We'll see. Complete strip down. If you didn't have Yordon on this roster, everybody should and would and could be calling for a full strip down. But you got the MVP. So that's already a great.

start to try to retool and rebuild, or a retool, I should say. 713-212-5-790. Very quickly, let's go to Warrior on 790. Warrior, good morning. Very quickly, after you let that say we've seen times while talking about the Astros. First of all, let me give you my opinion on next year's general manager.

This guy has a ring as a scout with the Marlins. He has a ring with Kansas City Royals. He's currently the Chicago White Sox director of player personnel who spent lots of time scouting in Japan. He's got 27 years as a Major League scout. His name is Gene Watson. He didn't get the job in 2020, I believe, or 21 when Click got it. But I think Watson is an obvious choice. Look at the players that he recruited.

Look what he did with the White Sox. Look what he did with the Marlins. Look what he did as the assistant. a general manager of the Kansas Hill rolls, and he has a working, he has a working relationship with Crane. I think he's an awesome choice. Now, earlier in the season, when they traded Argeti for Rorscho, I said it then, look at this guy, look at his stats, look at his longchankle, look at his inability to get around on a fastball, and he was injured goods. And they traded what I like to call a Saturday night pitcher, because I'm a big college fan, a Saturday night pitcher, and Arrogati. for damaged goods.

Now, you talk about Hunter Brown being your number one? Well, he's not a Friday night pitcher. They are good at two, three, four, and possibly five next year, but they still need a number one. Now, I called Houston Methodist this morning, and the warrior did too. I couldn't find Paredes' name anywhere

in the hospital. I think when you got a bad leg. Okay, we're going. Thank you very much. Got to hit a break. Got to hit a break. Got a break. So on time.

Jason Larry, up next, 930 on Sports Talk 790. What's that? Called the hospital. I mean, it's nice to do that. You also call Kalshi. I guess you can't call them. You can't call them.

You can download them. K-A-L-H-I. K-A-L-S-H-I. Download it. Put the code 790 in and you get $25 when you trade $25. That could be on tonight's Pro Football game between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. That could be on what's happening between

game three between Philadelphia. and Atlanta. Houston and Dallas. Houston and Dallas on Sunday. Boy, that's a must-win game for one of those routines. Oh, here we go. Oh, yeah, it is. I heard that on the news. Oh, yeah. Four hours of must-win talk tomorrow.

Must-win game. It's going to be. Okay, sure. Last week was a must-win too. All right, believe it or not, Benes-Susa coming up at 9-50. By the way, if you did not catch it, he did apologize for his statement, and I accept it. Others are mean and cruel and don't want to accept it. but that's fine. You live your life.

I'm more than okay with it. People make mistakes, especially on this show, 10 to 2. 713-212-5-790. Larry in Mount Bellevue. Good morning, Larry. Yes, top of the morning. I want to congratulate you and Ross

for y'all move up the ladder, man. Thank you. I really miss Sean, but y'all do a good job. That's nice of you to say that. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, got well feet, I'm going to call it a duck.

Jim Crane is laughing, smiling all the way to the bank. He made his, but I dare to question what happened if we keep three of those four players we got rid of? We got rid of the best utility man in baseball. He's having a good year. Bergman Man, I miss him He showed up Whenever they went

They showed up We got rid of Valdez He struggled a little bit But most of his problem Was the same thing with the rest of the problem now Is that we don't hit the ball We strack out too much We got to get home runs to win

We can't get three and four hits in a row you don't win a championship with a B team the Astros are a B team I congratulate them for finishing as high as they did but they're not going to win no championships with what they got Jim Crane likes to keep the players young stress them out three and four years

before they have to pay them when it's time to pay them they get rid of them paying you as fin to go because he got the wrong agent. He's going to get paid. But the Astros not going to pay him. We don't pay money. We're the only team winning that don't have superstars.

I mean, Yon's a superstar. We got one. Two. Josh Hater's a superstar. Al Tuvera used to get 200 hits every year. Now he swings in everything. We got a slugger that will not use.

the shock porch in left field. He wants to pull everything. So pitches are starting to pitch him outside. We fall out too many pitches. Hmm. Who's the slugger that won't go the other way? That's right.

Alvarez? Alvarez, the guy with 42 home runs? It loves hitting left hand pitchers. In the batting title, he had the highest batting average in baseball, Larry. Yeah, I know. but he's still in baseball. Thank you, Larry.

Appreciate you. He needs to go with the outside pitch. Is that Larry? I believe so. I think so. He moved to Mount Bellevue. I think he used to be an Alvin or something. Yeah, maybe he moved from parts of town.

Maybe he's looking for better real estate deals. He's circumnavigating the Houston suburbs. John on 790 at 940. Good morning, John. Hey, guys. How are you all doing? Great. Fantastic.

I can imagine. Yeah, I know everyone's real fired up right now, but I think the question I really had was about clubhouse chemistry. Obviously, things are a lot better when you're winning, right? But it just seems like when we were winning, the guys were having a lot more fun. Again, all comes back to winning. But the current clubhouse just doesn't seem to. team as, I don't know, as cool. Christian Walker seems like a bummer.

He's fine. Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, John, John, why are you worried about how they get along in the clubhouse? I mean, you know what? Teams that go 100 wins every year are always in a good mood. Teams that play 81-81, they're up and down, just like their team is. Come on now. They need Joe Beijini back.

Yeah, well, I don't know. It just seems like it's not as fun anymore. The Springer, Bregman, Correa, Altuve, Clubhouse. You know why? They were really good. And those guys all came up together. They were, I mean, there was a lot of man love. There was a lot of bro love there, for sure.

They all came up together. They matured together. You know what we need, Johnny? I tell you what? Club Astros. That's what we need. We need Club Astros back. I was all team club Astros.

I think that's the problem. I don't think they can agree on the playlist. Kyle Tucker used to take it over. You're right? What a bummer. Yeah, I know. Yeah. All right.

Yeah. No, I'm just, I'm grasping at cross. You're grasping. We are grasping at 790. Thank you, friend, for the phone call. I mean, they have leadership. Pena had a team meeting. Alvarez had a team meeting.

Everybody points Altuvae, how he leads by example and stuff like that. I guess they don't have a bunch of like Broski jokers. Like back in the day, Club Astros. is missed. It is. I don't know. It's easier to play club aster's. Maybe Peter Lambert's cutting it up in there. Who knows? When you have Michael Brantley and you've got Josh Redick and you've got George Springer and you have Kyle Tucker and you have

Gary Cole and Justin Verre. I mean, mega star, star, star, star, star, star. There's a personality. I mean, Karee is a good leader in personality too. I mean, Lamont Way maybe a swell fellow, but he ain't going to run Club Astros. Is that Colts trying to get Bible study going? I mean, well, it's fine. One month he was here. Yeah. All right.

He's trying to get the guys to drive to Sugarland for Bible study. Friday. Write that down. Write that on the score sheet. Jonathan, right. You guys are writing down Ross and stuff because Ross is conveniently forgetting a lot of these things.

I didn't have my planner today. I left it home on accident. Air check this show. We're going to get some more football in on the show tomorrow. There is an NFL game the night between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. It will be on Amazon. Did you see the Kirk Herbert Street's new contract with Amazon? I know you didn't see it.

No. So he re- Free Prime for life? He's getting a new deal. But there's a caveat and there's a clause in it that if they find somebody better they can relieve a obstrate of his duties.

What? Yes. What? Yeah. Dang. The job is his unless they find somebody better. You're kidding. I'm not kidding you.

What does that mean? That means that... How is he going to feed his dogs? There's only one dog. The other one dead. No, there's like six more. No way. He's got next man up.

He's not that many dogs. He's got a roster. All the same breed, too. Yeah. They all look the same. They're easily replaceable in those commercials. Jonathan, is he cloning dogs? He's going next man up.

He's got a litter. He's got a whole litter. Oh, my God. That's crazy. All right. So we got a lot of football tomorrow. Are we going to check in in Dallas? Do we want to care what the Cowboys are thinking about this game?

Are we going to get on? I don't know. Jerry Jones? I don't know. have time to jack with you today. That'd be kind of fun if we had Jerry Jones on the show. We'd be good. We get Jerry Jones on a mobile. Yeah, I guess we could. That'd be funny.

Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We should play America's fastest growing sports radio game show. We simply call it believe it or not and here's how it works. You call 713 212-570.

7-13-212-5-7-90. Today's edition of Believe it or not is all things about Bennett Soussa who said he was sorry for the things he said. And you know what, Bennett? I got your back on that. I'll read your statement about Benet Souza. Statement is completely and utterly accurate. You'll say this.

Believe it. Statements the erroneous photo bunk and made up. You will say this. Not. Two, believe it or not, on all things Benetusa wins a right now. Jonathan, how is our prize vote, by the way? All right. We have no more rush tickets.

The rush tickets were the first ones to go, huh? They're gone. Ain't that a blip. We got UBA tickets against Central Florida, right? Yep, and then we got Brad Paisley. All right, we can do one or two correct the answers on this? Two. Two correct answers.

Either get your Brad Paisley, October the 8th on the mud on the tires, food, the pantry campaign tour, or a pair of tickets to see the Cougars take on UCF this Saturday built by Houston Day. October 3rd, 11 a.m. at Td.E.CU. Stadium. Tickets are available by calling 713-Go Cougars.com. All things about Bennett Sousa, but first, you must believe it or not. 713-212-5-7-19.

Who in the line is, believe-or-not? And who are people just trying to talk to Astros, John? They help me out here. Yeah, the rest of I believe or not now. All right, let's go. Line number four. Kevin on 7-9, are you ready to play Believe it or not? Believe it.

Bennett, excuse me, Kevin, Bennett is the Astros are Bennett's third team, having previously played for the Cardinals and for the Rockies. Believe it or not. Believe it. No, it's the Cardinals and the Brewers. I got you. Not minutia.

A little bit minutia. Either you know or you don't. Okay. Sam on 790, ready to play, believe it or not? Sam. Sam, your phone sucks. You've tried this two straight days. Let's go.

Let's get you a better phone. As Charlie Palil would say, was that trivia or trivial? Let's open to the refrigerator. Scott on 790, ready to play, believe it or not? Yes, sir. Sousa's career ERA in the regular C. season is 3.9.7. He's got 11 career saves. Believe it or not. Believe it. No, I made that up. It's 4.83 is a career area with five saves. That's it. That's it. Michael on 790. You ready to play

Believe it or not? Believe it. On the wild card roster, Bennett was the tallest pitcher. Believe it or not. At 6.3, by the way. Not. That is correct. Josh Hendrickson is 6'4. Statement number two. You don't measure your relievers too, Rossi? What? Yeah. All right. Statement number two. Bennett had part of a rib removed in a 2024 surgery.

He still has that piece of the bone and a rib at his house. Believe it or not? Not. How can I make that up? That's very believable. That's gross. Also gross, by the way. Ralph on 790, Ralph, your favorite part of today's 6 to 10 radio show.

Awesome. Awesome what? The whole show you thought was awesome? Yes, this part, believe it or not. Okay. In 2025, MLB.com in a story released by that website, Sousa said his favorite band is The Strokes, believe it or not? Believe it. No. I don't even know what the strokes is. I told Ross. Give me a 2025-26 band.

Yeah, you got it. He said not. Sam on 790. Sam, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Bennett Sousa is not, I repeat, not related to American composer John Phillips Sousa. Believe it or not. Believe it. That's right. Statement number two for the win.

Bennett Soussa's dad was a shortstop in the Braves organization reaching as far as AA back in 1997. Believe it or not. Believe it. No, I made that one up. So nice, easy ones go to their family. Last one, Mac on 790 Mac. You ready to play Believe it or not? Believe it.

Bennett Sousa proposed to his fiance in Spain, an idea suggested by Lance McCuller's Jr. Believe it or not. Believe it. There you go. Congratulations. Believe, we're about to get some heavy weather in the next handful of days. That means your trees need to be at their very, very best, and that's why I believe you should be calling AFTree Service at AFTreeServis.com.

Affordable Tree Service, Martin Spoonmore, is going to be busy repairing trees and branches and limbs. to your house before the bad weather hits and you're going to get with them at 713 699-2663. 713 699-2663 or online and affordable tree service.com. Tree pruning. You can get tree repair. You can get stump removal. You can actually have trees transplanted from one part of your house or the other.

Those trees are a huge part of your house. Make sure they look through their very best. And you've got to do that today with affordable tree service. 713 699-2663. Write that number down. Memorize it and get with them today at 713-699-2663 for affordable tree service. It's an anything goes Friday on a Friday edition of Matt and Ross in the morning. Up next is Dan Matthews and my gosh, our boys are going to put a four-hour day in together. Well, Wexler actually works hard. And Clinton, you know, they went to 930 last night. See, shut you a bum-ass up. AC's climbing for, go looking for overtime on that.

as he should. No, he should not. He owes the station lots of money in time. Dan is up next on Seven Anni.